The
Wilderness Within
Parshas Bamidbar
Posted on May 27, 2025 (5785) 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.
Always
Small
Parshas Bamidbar
Posted on June 5, 2019 (5779) By Rabbi Berel
Wein | Series: Rabbi
Wein | Level: Beginner
Population numbers have
always meant a great deal in human history. We do not find tribes or
influential societies that were composed only of a very small number of people.
All the great tribes in the ancient and modern world were built on large
populations that would be able to fuel the economy of the Empire and provide
sufficient numbers of soldiers for its armies.
Naturally the exception to
all of this has been the story of the Jewish people. The Torah itself warned Israel in advance that
they never would be numerous, relatively speaking. The Torah did not mean this
as a curse or as a completely negative fact. Rather, it was a simple
declaration as to the price, so to speak, of persecution, poverty and
powerlessness. Yet the very same verse in the Torah guaranteed the survival of
the Jewish people and the eventual triumph over all would-be adversaries.
In light of this it seems
surprising that in this fourth book of the Bible, a count of the Jewish people
is taken a number of times, and that count is detailed to the ultimate degree.
If numbers do not matter when it comes to Jewish society and the story of the
Jewish people, then why did the Torah put such an emphasis upon numbers and
detail for us regarding the exact population of the Jewish people at the time
of Moses?
I think that perhaps the
answer to this lies in the statistics and numbers that the Torah details for us
in this week’s Torah reading. The number of the Jewish people at the time of
Moses constituted over 600,000 males between the ages of 20 and 60. By adding
into this some female population, those over 60 and those under 20, we arrive
at a population figure of perhaps 3 million people. If there were 3 million Jews
that existed 3300 years ago, simply by natural increase and according to trends
of population, there should be hundreds of millions of Jews existing in today’s
world. Yet the actual count of Jews in our world, at its most optimistic level,
is about 15 million people.
This fact, when seen in
the background of the account of the Jewish people when they were in the desert
of Sinai, and the fact that numerically speaking we have been at pretty much of
a standstill over all of these long centuries, is itself the confirmation of
the words of the Torah that we will be a small people in terms of population.
Certainly, there are many
rational, practical and correct reasons that are advanced for the lack of
growth in Jewish population – persecution, conversions, forced and otherwise,
disease, poverty, and the continual erosion of the Jewish population by
assimilation and a low birthrate.
But no matter what reasons
we accept to account for this historical anomaly, it is clear that Heaven, in
its usual hidden way, somehow accounts for this as well.
Shabbat shalom
Rabbi Berel Wein
Human
Nature
Parshas Bamidbar
Posted on May 22, 2012
(5772) By Rabbi Berel Wein | Series: Rabbi Wein | Level: Beginner
The book of Bamidbar is
perhaps one of the saddest, so to speak, of all of the Holy Scriptures.
Whereas the book of
Shemot, which records for us the sin of the Golden Calf also gives us pause, it
concludes with the final construction of the Mishkan and G-d’s
Presence, so to speak, resting within the encampment of Israel. But the book
of Bamidbar, which begins on a high note of numerical accomplishment and the seemingly
imminent entry of the Jewish people into the Land of Israel, ends on a very
sour note. It records the destruction of the entire generation including its
leadership without their entrance into the Promised Land.
The narrative of the book
of Bamidbar ( Numbers) tells us of rebellion and constant carping, military
defeats and victories, false blessings, human prejudices and personal bias. But
the Torah warned us in its very first chapters that “this is the book of human
beings.” And all the weaknesses exhibited by Israel in the desert of Sinai,
as recorded for us in the book of Bamidbar, are definitely part of the usual
human story and nature.
Over the decades that I
have taught this book of Bamidbar to students and congregants of mine,
invariably many of them have then asked me incredulously: “How could the Jewish
people have behaved in such a manner?” I cannot speak for that generation of
Jews as described in the book of Bamidbar but I wonder to myself “How can so
many Jews in our generation relate to the existence of the State of Israel in
our time so cavalierly?
How do we tolerate the
cruelties that our one-size-fits-all school systems inflict on the ‘different’
child? How do we subject our daughters to the indignities of the current
matchmaking process?
How, indeed!?” And my
answer to myself always is that for the great many of us, human nature trumps
common sense, logic and true Torah values. I imagine that this may have been
true of the generation of the book of Bamidbar as well.
One of the wonders of the book
of Bamidbar is that the count of the Jewish people at the end of the forty
years of living in the desert was almost exactly the same as it was at the
beginning of their sojourn there when they left Egyptian bondage. Though the following is certainly not being
proposed by me as an answer or explanation to this unusual fact, I have always
thought that this is a subtle reminder to us that that no matter how great the
experiences, no matter how magnificent the miracles, no matter how great the
leaders, human nature with all of its strengths and weaknesses basically
remains the same.
It is not only that the
numbers don’t change much, the people and the generations didn’t and don’t
change much either. Human nature remains pretty constant. But our task is to recognize
that and channel our human nature into productive and holy actions and behavior
– to bend to a nobility of will and loyalty. Only by recognizing the propensity
of our nature will we be able to accomplish this necessary and noble goal.
Shabat shalom and Chag Sameach,
Rabbi Berel Wein
