The Wilderness Within

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Posted on June 6, 2019 (5779) By Rabbi Naftali Reich | Series: Legacy | Level: Beginner

 

 

Was it an accident of geography that a barren wilderness lay between Egypt and the Promised Land? Was it an accident of geography that the Torah was given to the Jewish people on a rocky mountain in a parched and desolate land? Would history have taken a different course had they encountered wooded mountains and verdant pastures when they emerged from bondage in Egypt?

 

This week’s Torah reading seems to indicate that there is a significant connection. The commentators observe that the reading begins with the words “And Hashem spoke to Moses in the Sinai wilderness.” Why was it necessary for the Torah to tell us the obvious, that the Torah was transmitted in the wilderness? These words, explain the commentators, contain a powerful implied message. In order for a person to make himself a receptacle for the Torah, he must first render himself a wilderness. In other words, he must distance himself from the concerns and pressures of society and live a more insular life.

What exactly does this mean? Are we meant to seek the wisdom of Torah in pristine corner of the world, far from the sounds and smells of civilization? Can’t the Torah be discovered in the synagogues and study halls of great urban centers where millions of Jewish people live? Of course it can. The Torah is identifying the mental rather than the geographic locales in which Torah can be found.

 

The Hebrew word for wilderness, midbar, reveals a certain ambivalence. On the one hand, it refers to a remote and isolated place. At the same time, however, it is closely related to the word medaber, one who speaks or communicates, which is quite the opposite of isolation.

 

A person who learns Torah has to function on two levels. He must focus on becoming a medaber, a person who interacts with others and communicates to them the values and ideals of the eternal Torah. But first he must fortify himself and become a midbar, a person

insulated against the pernicious influences and peer pressures of society, a person who stands on his principles and refuses to compromise in order to curry favor with others.

 

The Torah does not seek to make people into hermits and monastics. Rather, the paradigm of a true Torah Jew is one who brings the light of Torah to society with a sincere smile on his face and tempered steel in his heart, a gregarious recluse.

 

An idealistic young man came to seek the advice of a great sage. “I want to change the world,” he said. “I want to make it a better place. Where exactly should I concentrate my efforts?”

 

The sage smiled. “You remind a little of myself when I was young,” he said. “At first, I wanted to change the world, but I discovered that I could not. Then I decided I would at least change my community, but I discovered that I could not. Then I decided that perhaps I could at least change my family, but that too was beyond my ability. Finally, I realized I should at least try to change myself, and that has been a lifetime struggle. But I believe that if I had started with changing myself I might have been able to do something for the world as well.”

In our own lives, there is practically no spot in the developed world where we are not blanketed by an aura of decadence and corruption that seeks to penetrate our very souls. So, what are we to do? Are we to abandon our homes and careers and go off to a desert island?  Not at all. But we must always be acutely aware of the spiritual dangers that lurk everywhere we turn. We must imbue ourselves with the spirit of Torah until it becomes like an impenetrable suit of armor. Only when we are thus fortified can we venture forth to bring the message of the Torah to society at large.

 

Text Copyright © 2009 by Rabbi Naftali Reich and Torah.org.

Rabbi Reich is on the faculty of the Ohr Somayach Tanenbaum Education Center.

Desert Generation

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Posted on May 22, 2020 (5780) By Rabbi Berel Wein | Series: Rabbi Wein | Level: Beginner

 

 

This section of the Torah is entitled, Bamidbar, in the desert. It is hard for us to imagine, though it may be less hard in our current situation than it was before we were put into quarantine, how the Jewish people lived in the desert for four decades. Since they had no gainful occupations, and they had no struggle to feed themselves for the miraculous bread from heaven fell and the well of Miriam and of Moshe provided them with water and sustenance. What did they do with their time? The apparent answer is that they absorbed themselves in understanding, studying, and assessing the laws and values of the Torah. In any event, they had to raise a new generation of people, a generation that would pursue the goal of entering the land of Israel and settling it and creating a more normal, so to speak, Jewish society.

Our rabbis have characterized the generation of the desert as being one of great intelligence, knowledge and understanding. Yet it was a generation of seemingly no purpose because it was doomed to die in the desert and not accomplish the goal that was entrusted to it when it left Egypt. It was told that it would accept the Torah and then march into the land of Israel.

Moshe was successful in having them accept the Torah, but he was unsuccessful in attempting to have them move to the land of Israel. In fact, an element of the people would say that not only would they not go forward to the land of Israel, but they would be willing to retreat and go backwards into the land of Egypt, the land of affliction and of plagues.

It is hard for us to imagine such a generation, with its sole task only to mark time until it passed away and made room for the next generation, which would perforce enter the land of Israel and build there a society. The desert had however positive aspects to it as well. The Talmud teaches us that the Torah was given to a generation that could live in the desert. If one can relieve oneself of desires and of outside pressures and live as though one is in a desert, then the Torah can find a real home and purpose in the life of that person.

The generation of the desert represents to us a two-faced and double-edged society. On the   one hand, negative because of its refusal to progress towards its ultimate goal, the land of Israel and, on the other, a society of blessedness, free from daily wants and pressures with the ability to intellectualize Torah into its very being.

 

In Jewish tradition, the generation of the desert is always represented not so much as a transitional generation but as a wasted generation. One who has opportunity and ability and does not employ that ability to fulfill the opportunity presented, is seen, in the eyes of the Torah, as wasting one’s existence. And the Torah has a prohibition against wasting anything, certainly time and opportunities.

 

Because of this, we are always troubled when reading these portions of the Torah that will follow for the next few weeks and this section of the Torah which bears the name of the desert as its title. We are struck with a feeling of pity and sadness that the generation that had the possibility of being the greatest ended up being a wasted generation, dying in the desert, having no home, and little or no opportunity, after its great start when freed from Egypt.

Every generation must be on the watch, that it should not be a generation of the desert. We can learn to take advantage of situations which allow us to study and to employ intellectual realism, but we have to also beware that a generation of the desert that does not build for the future and does not take hold of its opportunities will not be remembered as a positive and great generation amongst the story of the people of Israel. We are faced with great challenges, but with great opportunities. And our generation certainly will not be remembered as a generation of the desert, but rather as a generation of Jews who helped build the land of Israel and who have rebuilt the Jewish world, wherever Jews exist.

Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Berel Wein