Bamidbar (Numbers 1:1-4:20) June 4, 2022/5 Sivan 5782

This week, we begin the fourth book of the Torah, known in English as Numbers and in Hebrew as Bamidbar (technically, it should be B'midbar, but the grammatical construct being used shows definiteness by specification rather than using an article, and the name we use drops the specification, so we insert the definite article, or rather its assimilated form with the existing preposition, so that we call the book "In The Wilderness" and not "In a Wilderness"). But you didn't come here for a lesson in the nuances of Hebrew grammar, at least not when it's unrelated to the topic of the parasha. So, here we go. 

This portion is boring. It's 159 verses of census-taking, for example, "As for the Tribe of Asher, their rolls by clan and household, listed by name, of all those 20 years and older, eligible for military service; the enrollment of the Tribe of Asher was 41,500". It repeats this exact formula for each tribe, with the names and numbers changed, and then it lists each tribe and its population a second time in the context of the camping arrangements (i.e. which tribes will camp on each side of the Tabernacle) and the chieftains of each tribe. It is this census that gives the book its English name "Numbers" (The only one of the five books whose English name is less descriptive of its contents than its Hebrew name). But you didn't come here for a rant on how boring this parasha is either, so I won't give you one. Instead, we're going to talk about the setting.

Why was the Torah given in the wilderness? Why would God choose the emptiness of the desert as the place to form the Israelites into a Chosen People, ready to enter the Land of Israel? The midrash in Bamidbar Rabbah recounts a teaching of the sages that the Torah was given through three media - fire, water, and wilderness. The midrash explains that the Torah was given through all three of those things because they are all free to everyone.

Just as the wilderness is free to all, so are the teachings of the Torah free. "Anyone who does not make himself ownerless as the desert," the midrash says, "cannot acquire the wisdom and the Torah." To make oneself ownerless is to open oneself to learning, because learning takes a degree of humility and flexibility. If we assume that we already know everything, we fail to give our learning the appropriate diligence required to make the lessons stick. And if we are stuck in one particular track of thinking, we risk ignoring anything that does not fit into our preconceived notions of what we know. If we instead approach our studies with the knowledge that there exists a whole world of things that we don't know yet and with the willingness to receive ideas that contradict our pre-existing ones, the Torah can become open to us.

One of the innovations of Judaism is that the holy texts are open to everyone. The Torah is not some secret that is kept by the priests, inaccessible to the common crowd. On the contrary, every one of us is expected to learn the laws and the teachings of Torah in its widest meaning (that is, not just the five books but the corpus of Jewish teaching) so that we can live the life expected of us. That doesn't mean that everyone needs to be a great scholar, but it does mean that a great scholar can come from anywhere. But even those of us who are not great scholars are not exempt from learning, and those who with more knowledge and more background are responsible for helping their fellows to learn. That is why we don't just read the text of the weekly portion and leave it to be understood or not understood, we accompany the reading with an explanation and an interpretation of what we have read. The meaning of "D'var Torah" is not commentary or sermon or teaching. The meaning is "a word of Torah", because even the commentary and interpretation becomes part of the wider sense of Torah. 

Too often, we associate the giving of divrei Torah, especially in the synagogue, with the rabbinate, but that need not be the case. When I was visiting Berlin a few years ago, I spent Shabbat morning at the New Synagogue, the city's Masorti community. After the service ended, one of the members introduced himself to me, and he commented that the service was shorter that day because the rabbi was on vacation, so there could be no d'var Torah. This mindset, that without a formal teacher there can be no teaching, is not conducive to the long-term success of the Jewish people. In the core ritual by which we transmit our Jewish identity to the new generations, the Passover seder, we read: "even if we were all wise, all scholars, all sages, and all learned in Torah, it would still be incumbent upon us to study the Exodus from Egypt, and whoever expands the teaching is all the more praiseworthy." While it is great to learn from someone more learned than us, the lack of such a person does not exempt us from having to learn all the same. Even if we are all profoundly learned, we must teach each other, because there is something to be learned from everyone. In Pirkei Avot, Ben Zoma is quoted as saying "Who is wise? One who learns from all people, as it is said [in Psalm 119:99], 'from all who have taught me I have gained insight'". We can never complete our learning; there are always new ideas to discover and New perspectives to consider. For that reason, every fall at Simhat Torah, as soon as we complete the last verses of the Torah, we start right up again at the beginning. Because the cycle of learning can never truly finish, only repeat.

That is the message of Torah: Keep learning, because only one person gets to be king and only one family gets to be priests. But the crown of scholarship is open to all, no matter who we are or where we come from. An educated nation is a strong nation, and an educated person is a strong person, so let us strengthen ourselves and our identity through our learning.