B’midbar Sinai…- in the wilderness of Sinai. Our parasha opens after the Israelites have been wandering for some time, on the first day of the second month of the second year since the exodus from Egypt. It is time to become a people. How is this defined? Through census, military readiness, and worship to God, but also through transition, a turn over of generations, and spiritual searching.
Throughout the book of Shemot the Israelites had been reactive. God was the active party, molding the Israelites through shared experience and covenant. In the wilderness the Israelites move from reactive to proactive. They mature from a nascent people to a Nation able to stand on their own.
The midbar represents both a physical wilderness and a spiritual one. Throughout history wilderness represents transition. Avraham leaves the comfort of his home, and takes his family into the unknown for God. Jacob wanders, finding God where he did not expect. Elijah and Elisha go to the desert, as do major figures in other religions. The desert, especially Midbar Sinai, has been, and continues to be a haven for spiritual pilgrims.
Bruce Feiler, in his research for his book, Walking the Bible, discovers the stark reality of the desert. But despite the difficulties, he writes of connection to God, of discovering “the spiritual significance of the land and its relationship to the people and to God.” While following in the footsteps of the ancient Israelites, Feiler “realizes that although Moses is denied entrance himself, it is not the land after all that is important for Moses. It is his meeting with God.”
Centuries after the Israelites wandered, Henry David Thoreau would write, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise [sic] resignation, unless it was quite necessary.” Thoreau was not a hermit. He did not retreat from society, but to the edge of it for spiritual discovery.
It takes a brave person to step away from his/her comfort zone, but if we are to discover our boundaries, we must wander into the midbar and realize our potential.
I hope you had a Shabbat shalom.
