Bemidbar
Numbers 1:1 - 4:20
Many of our children, at this time of the year, stand at the edge of new roads in their life’s journeys. This past week we celebrated Midrasha graduation, parents are preparing their kids for the college experience, college seniors are graduating all over the country, some destined to join the work force others transitioning to graduate schools. Transitions are rarely easy but we try to help our children along the path.
On this Shabbat we start reading the fourth book of the Torah, Bamidbar, which also gives the name to this week’s Torah portion. Literally “In the desert,” though the book in English is known as Numbers. It is the ultimate narrative of transition, 38 years of wandering around in the desert, getting rid of the slave mentality and raising a new generation born in freedom. Erich Fromm reminds us that “The desert is not a home. There are no cities. There is no property. It is the place of nomads who have that which they need, and all that they need is life’s essentials, not belongings… life in the desert as preparation for a life of freedom.” (Ownership or Self-Realization, p. 59).
It’s nice to have 38 years to figure out what life is all about with a little help from God!
On the other hand, Elaine Robinson asks, “Imagine not having had that time to reflect arriving in a new country, looking for safety and protection and being sent away or being abused by those around you or being treated like a pariah.” This is what happens with millions of refugees all over the world today. Particularly the displaced from Darfur, who, often fleeing genocide, are not only displaced (moved from one place to another) but also “dis-timed” moved from a simple life under the sky to the complexities of contemporary urban environments.
Migrants and displaced persons don’t have the luxury of a guiding God, as the Israelites had in the desert, neither do they have the time to make a smooth transition of learning -language, culture, technology. Thrust into a new environment their only hope is that we understand their plight and keep extending to them a helping hand until they can stand on their own.
Time and again the Torah reminds us, when challenging us to be righteous and compassionate human beings, that we were strangers in the land of Egypt. We had 40 years to reflect in the desert on the harm inflicted on us by slavery as we moved towards a life of freedom in the Promised Land. Those who today don’t have that luxury depend on us, on our compassion and generosity, our patience and our sense of justice. Their hope is that we remember how it felt -in our spiritual genes- to be slaves, to be displaced, to be freed, to have been strangers in another’s land.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Roberto D. Graetz
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