B'midbar: the wilderness

Who can name the most significant Jewish holiday of the year?

Tonight at sundown, when Shabbos ends, we begin our annual celebration of Shavuot. Shavuot is our most significant Jewish holiday of the year, because it is the formal beginning of our peoplehood, of our covenant, and the kickoff, as it were, to our time in the wilderness. But that is tonight.  Today, our Torah portion is about B’midbar, the wilderness.

In our Torah story, 49 days ago during our festival of Passover we celebrated leaving Mitzrayim, the Hebrew word for Egypt, which means “narrow place.”  We left Egypt to go where?

The Promised Land:  Eretz zavat chalav u’d’vash,  “land that flows with milk and honey”.

Who can tell me what comes in the middle?  

The middle between Mitzrayim and Eretz zavat chalav u’d’vash is midbar, that unknown, unmapped, empty space of wilderness. It is midbar, an in-between place, that is at the center of our attention this morning.  In fact, this midbar  is the overriding theme of the entire Book of Numbers which is what it is called in English, but in Hebrew it is called, B’midbar, “In Wilderness.”

Notice I did not say “in THE wilderness.” This is what we usually hear as the meaning for b’midbar. It is literally “in wilderness” and not “in THE wilderness.” There is a technicality I won’t get into about a missing patach under the bet that makes our word b’midbar literally mean “in wilderness” and not “in THE wilderness.”

Why is this teensy tiny technicality even worth noting? Who cares about Hebrew grammar, right? When we read this word as “in wilderness” rather than as “in THE wilderness”, why might that be important?

It is important because wilderness is not about a specific geographic location as much as something much larger and beyond geography….. what I’d like you to think about this morning is that perhaps wilderness is a state of being.

Is Mitzrayim only Egypt, or is it also a small, narrow place, a birth canal through which we must go to leave constriction and reach a liberated life? And by contrast, we look at The Promised Land:  Eretz zavat chalav u’d’vash,  “land that flows with milk and honey”. This, too, is a place of flowing where we are completely liberated. Again, it is a state of being as much as it ever was a specific geographical place. Maybe even more so.

So in our Torah story today, we find ourselves in that in-between state, b’midbar, in wilderness. The place and state of being of transition, of being of neither here nor there, of being where we live most of our daily reality.

There is an English word for the state of in-betweeness. Does anyone know it?

Liminality. I could speak all day about liminality, but don’t worry; I won’t.

Liminal comes from the Latin limen, meaning “doorway” or “threshold.” Notice that the threshold or door itself is neither that room nor this room, but only serves as an in between portal. A doorway. A gateway.

Judaism is immersed in liminality, with edges and fringes, thresholds and gateways, transitional states and connecting points and margins. The wedding canopy called a chuppah which both defines the home and yet remains open-sided to let others in, the entire month of Elul, the ten days in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, all of these are examples of liminality.

B’midbar, the wilderness, is a liminal space, an in between state of being. There is a Catholic concept of in between-ness we know as limbo.  Our Jewish notion of liminality is very different from limbo, especially b’midbar, because our Jewish concept of the in-between state is a time of discovery and curiosity and adventure, actively moving and transitioning, not static nor stagnant. 

When we look at the Hebrew word for wilderness, midbar, we see that it comes from the root dalet-vet-reish. Many interesting Hebrew words come from this root, and all of them are related. But here’s the thing;  this root dalet-vet-reish is the root for the word, “word” in Hebrew. From the root we derive the Hebrew words  D’var, m’daber, devarim… all of these share the same root as the word for wilderness, and yet, they all refer to words or speaking, while midbar refers to wilderness.

So let’s ask ourselves: what does the wilderness have in common with words and speaking? Does anyone have any thoughts about this? What happens in the wilderness that doesn’t happen in our cities and our promised lands? What is in the wilderness that isn’t in other places? What ISN'T in the wilderness that is in other places and states of being? What comes to mind when you hear the word wilderness?

Only in b’midbar, in the silence of the wilderness, only after letting go of the unnecessary, shedding the inessential, surrendering the endless noise and voices in our heads, are we able to hear the still small voice within our hearts that comes to us in the wilderness.

This liminality of the wilderness is where we meet G!d. Wilderness is where we encounter our innermost selves. It is the place of growth. Midbar is the only way to the Promised Land. It is a sacred place. And what is most sacred about midbar is that it is a continual, unfolding journey. It is never a destination point.

Today we hear a lot about destinations: destination weddings, destination vacations, destination parties, even knitters talk about destination yarn stores! Yet, our lives are not lived as a destination life. Those who are living for where they might get to are short-sighted. We all know that our lives are lived as a journey. Destination speaks of destiny, of a fixed event or thing or time or place or something on which we must focus and try very hard to get to. But then what happens when we get there? It’s not always what it was cracked up to be, right?

The story of b’midbar in our Torah tells us of several crucial things that happened during that time of journey and transition.  For today, I will share only one. We talked about it 3 months ago at our gathering in February, and that is the creation of the mishkan, the portable sanctuary and temporary meeting place between the Hebrews and G!d.

What other word which we’ve used in our prayers this morning sounds similar to mishkan?

Shechinah, which we said when we recited our Sh’ma on page 13 of our booklets.

Remember that I said all words which share a common 3 letter root share a common meaning, right? So the word Shechinah shares the same root as the word mishkan.  Shechinah is the hovering presence of G!d which came to the people in wilderness in the mishkan, the portable sanctuary. The mishkan is the dwelling place and the Shechinah is She Who Dwells Among/Within Us.

Once we reached the Promised Land, what happened to the mishkan? We no longer needed something temporary and portable, so we built a massive permanent structure, the Temple. We had arrived in the Promised Land, everything was peachy, and life was good. We had reached our destination, right?

Our Torah story today reminds us that we are still on a journey. The wilderness seems a bit, well, wild at times. Unsettled, no map, each day a new beginning and every night a new ending. Nothing is certain. It is the liminality of daily life.
However, even in our uncertainty, if we look, we can find, perhaps, the adventure of a lifetime.

Even the rabbis of old have said that if we desire change, if we hope for anything new to come from within ourselves, we must first open ourselves up like the midbar, “oseh atzmo k’midbar: Make yourself like the wilderness” (Midrash, B’midbar Rabbah 1:7). What does this mean? How can we make ourselves like the wilderness, and why would we want to?

Mitzrayim, midbar, and eretz zavat chalav u’d’vash, all three of these represent more than just geographical locations. They represent transitions in our lives.

When I am Egypt, I am narrow-minded, too often thinking only of myself, emotionally stuck between a rock and a hard place. I want to become a n’shamah, “soul,” that flows with the sweetness of honey like the Promised Land. I want to embrace others with a heart that is wide open. But in order for this to happen, in order for me to transition from the narrow place in my soul to the flowing place in my soul, I must become wilderness.  Midbar is a metaphor for this doorway from narrowness and smallness to flow and openness.

It is no coincidence that we read Parashat B’midbar on the eve of Shavuot. We are reminded that midbar is a necessary liminal space where we live most of our lives.

The key is in being aware and not getting stuck in old ruts, not choosing stagnancy over curiosity, in meeting life full on as an adventure, the good and the not so good, the happy and positive and the sad and annoying and exasperating as well. To live it fully and authentically, not just getting through it to somehow get to some magical destination where all is well and the milk and honey flows.
It is the wilderness which keeps us alive, vital, and mindful of the sacredness and fragility of life.

So let’s celebrate being b’midbar, wilderness. That’s where all the curiosity and adventure lives. It’s not the destination, not the high points that get us through the day to day grind. It’s how we live in the day to day grind that gets us through to the high points.