Parshat Bemidbar: 5781 And All That

 If I cite the names W.C.  Sellar and R.J. Yeatman, I could vouch that very few of my contemporaries will be aware of the tome for which they are justifiably famous.  Making its debut in Punch magazine, it was published in book form by Methuen in 1930.

You might be better versed and know that I am referring to ‘1066 And All That: A Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates’

I must confess that I have never read the book although I was familiar with its title due to seeing it in my parents' library, amongst the numerous books that I'm going to have to sort out very shortly.  This is not a task that I am particularly anticipating.

I refer to that particular title because, looking back from the vantage point of mid-May or alternatively, eight months into the Jewish year I think I can say relatively fairly, that this year of 5781, has been nothing short of horrific.

Need I mention the nightmare that is still Covid, which has taken the lives of so many? Then, the loss of numerous Torah Giants, including Rabbis Steinsaltz, Lamm, Rabinovitch and Twersky.  And if that weren't unimaginable enough, our beloved, irreplaceable Rabbi Sacks.

Adding to the despair, I am still trying to come to terms with the loss of my own mother, just over a month ago.  As I write these words, Israel is in flames, quite literally, with rockets and riots, deaths and destruction.  '5781 And All That' is anything but a parody but it is and will no doubt be memorable for all of the wrong reasons.  So what comfort can this week's parsha provide?

Two months before he passed away last November, Rabbi Sacks ztl saw the publication of his final book: 'Judaism's Life Changing Ideas: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible'.  Though modest in size, its contents were anything but, as our leader's thoughts were collated from his weekly 2017-18 (5778) ‘Covenant and Conversation’ booklet. 

Each week's Dvar Torah imparted the kind of wisdom that only its author could impart.

We are about to embark on the fourth book of the Torah, known to some as 'Numbers' and to others as 'Bemidbar - In the Desert'.  Rabbi Sacks begins with the following:

‘The books of Exodus and Numbers have striking similarities.  They are both about journeys.  They both portray the Israelites as quarrelsome and ungrateful.  Both contain stories about the people complaining about food and water.  In both, the Israelites commit a major sin: in Exodus, the golden calf; in Numbers, the episode of the spies.  In both, God threatens to destroy them and begin again with Moses.  Both times, Moses' passionate appeal persuades God to forgive the people.  It is easy, when reading the book of Numbers, to feel a sense of déjà vu.  We have been here before.’

‘Where the books differ’, he continues, is to realise that ‘there is a difference’.  Whereas:

‘Exodus is about a journey from, Numbers is about a journey to.  Exodus is the story of an escape from slavery.  Exodus means just that: departure, withdrawal, leaving.  By contrast, in the book of Numbers the people have already left Egypt far behind.  They have spent a prolonged period in the Sinai desert.  They have received the Torah (as we will read on Monday) and built the Sanctuary.  Now they are ready to move on.  This time, they are looking forward, not back.  They are thinking, not of the danger they are fleeing from, but of the destination they are travelling towards, the Promised Land.’

Reading these words, I stop and think about what I and we have been through in the last year-and-a-half.  In the deepest darkest months when Covid was creeping up on us at every turn, we held onto the belief that things had to get better.  They would probably get worse, but they had to improve.  Didn't they?  Then the vaccine came along and we deigned to believe that spring and its promises could not be too far away.  We hoped.  We prayed.  We held onto something, however slight, however fragile.  The hope, Hatikvah, that things would get better.

 

And here we are, in the depths of yet another crisis, watching the people we care about running for their lives, not from the plague, but from their neighbours.  The destination that we were travelling towards seems to have vanished like a mirage in the desert and we are walking backwards, towards Egypt. 

The first verses of Bemidbar tell us that:

‘(1) On the first day of the second month, in the second year following the exodus from the land of Egypt, the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting, saying: (2) Take a census of the whole Israelite community by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head.’

Rashi infers something beautiful from these introductory Pesukim:

‘Because they were dear to him, He counts them every now and then: when they went forth from Egypt He counted them (Exodus 12:37), when many of them fell in consequence of their having worshipped the golden calf He counted them to ascertain the number of those left (cf.  Rashi Exodus 30:16); when he was about to make His Shechinah dwell amongst them (i.e.  when He commanded them to make a Tabernacle), He again took their census; for on the first day of Nisan the Tabernacle was erected (Exodus 40:2) and shortly afterwards, on the first day of Iyar, He counted them.’

In ‘5781 And All That’, it may seem that we, like our ancestors, are walking in the wrong direction but somehow, we have all been here before and despite all of our travails and missteps, Gd still decides to count us and demonstrate how special we are to Him, because every Jew matters, full stop.  Every Jew who survived Covid and every Jew who didn’t.  Every Jew who prayed alone.  Every Jew who didn't pray.  Every Jew who looks at the situation in Israel and cries.  Every Jew who doesn't care about what is happening.  Every Jew who survives a terrorist attack and every Jew who doesn’t.  Every Jew who acts in a way that embarrasses the rest of us.  Every single one of us is counted and valued by Gd.  When Rabbi Sacks tells us that we on a journey 'to', he knows that there will be countless challenges on our way.  He knows that some of us won't make it.  He and my mother left us before they could complete their journeys.  But his words, our Torah, our heritage, our future are assured, however blinded we are by the events that envelop us.

As he concludes with his Life-Changing Idea (#34):

‘Remember your destination.  This will help you to distinguish between an opportunity to be seized and a temptation to be resisted’. 

As he writes:

‘The Israelites, in their journey.  made a series of mistakes.  They focused too much on the present (the food, the water) and too little on the future'.  When they faced difficulties, they had too much fear and too little faith.  They kept looking back to how things were instead of looking forward to how they might be...they knew how to leave but not how to arrive.  They experienced exodus but not entry.’

I believe that we need to hold onto these thoughts as we navigate the choppy waters of '5781 And All That' because every nightmare has to end.  Every storm has to cease and whatever happens and however long it takes, eventually the sun will reclaim the sky. 

Shabbat Shalom and stay safe.