Reflections from Rabbi Ellis

This week we close the book of Bamidbar and bring to an end the wandering of the Children of Israel. The next and final book of the Torah, Devarim, is all words of advice and reprimand from Moshe; he tansmits them to us on the plains of Moab. Bamidbar is the hardest book of the Torah. The book of Bamidbar spans a thirty-eight-year period, yet the text only actually describes about six of those months. The only thing we know about the thirty-seven years that we spent in the desert we learn from this week's Parasha.

So, what does our Parsha tell us about these thirty-seven years? They (the Children of Israel) set out from Ritma, an encamped in Rimon Peretz. Repeat this seventeen times - just change the place names. That’s it, no other information is provided. What do we learn from this then, the fact that all the Torah won’t leave those thirty-seven years off the record, yet doesn’t tell us anything more meaningful about that time than place names?

The first answer that comes to me is that even when we feel that our efforts or time was wasted, we still need to reflect on it and make an accounting. Maybe nothing of note happened in these places, that too is something to remember and learn from. The act of remembering in and of itself has value, even if not all our memories have clear lessons to teach us.

The second answer is that these various encampments come to tell us about the need to keep moving. Once the Children of Israel found a site that was big enough to accommodate all of them there was no practical reason to leave. Resource degradation was not an issue because G!d miraculously provided food, water, and shelter for us. Pollution was not a problem because the food and water were miraculously completely absorbed into our bodies. Why then did we not remain in one place for the duration of the thirty-eight years we were in the desert? G!d wanted us to move for our emotional and spiritual health.

Staying too long in the same place creates complacency and inertia. We acquire all sorts of things and traits that don’t serve us, but we are not motivated to do away with. Nothing quashes spiritual growth more than physical comfort. So, we see that when we were in the desert every two years or so G!d instructed Moshe to strike camp and head for a new location. He did this so that our change from place to place would translate into spiritual movement, that we will come to understand that the only way for us to leave the wilderness is to keep moving.

This all feels particularly relevant to me this year as we prepare, this week, to leave the only home we have known as a family and join a new community at the Spanish Portuguese Synagogue of Montreal. Baruch Hashem, we have had a wonderful life in Katowice and Warsaw. Poland has given me a more amazing family than I ever could have imagined. Still, we have reached the point where the only way for us to keep growing is, like our ancestors in the wilderness, to keep moving forward.

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Yehoshua Ellis