Wilderness revelations: Israel calling us home
As we start a new sefer — Bamidbar — we find that Am Yisrael, having left Mitzrayim a year earlier, is about to spend a second year in the wilderness.
This is the timeline: They had arrived at Har Sinai and received the Torah seven weeks after the Exodus; they then spent about 10 months at Har Sinai during which they were party to the sin of the golden calf and the building of the Mishkan. The Kohanim were instructed on the korbanot and the Leviim on the transport of the Mishkan. They learned the laws of tumah and tahara, shmita and yovel, kashrut, taharat hamishpachah, and personal and business relationships bein adam l’chaveiro. They were instructed about the shalosh regalim and were reminded multiple times to keep the Shabbat holy and central in Jewish observance.
They then journeyed to a place from which they could enter the Land of Israel “immediately” (per Rashi quoting the Midrash Sifri). But that was not meant to be, for they sinned three times (running away from Har Sinai like dismissed children from school, because they were afraid Hashem would burden them with more commandments; complaining about the manna (no meat or fish); and, finally, the sin of the meraglim (spies).
They were condemned to 38 years of wandering and dying in the desert, with only a select few surviving to enter the Holy Land. What started joyously ended tragically, with descendants of the Great Exodus being the ones to enter the Land, rather than their parents and grandparents.
We read this story every year. As a kid in school, I’d wish and pray that perhaps this time it would be different, maybe they would not sin with the spies and they would make it into the Land. I would wish it so, as we might do when watching a horror movie we’ve seen a dozen times, warning the hero, “don’t open that door, the axe murderer is inside!” — knowing that wish is futile.
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At this point, I want to engage in some self-revelation. I am not naturally an optimist. If something can go wrong, I assume it will, usually to me. When people talk about the glass being half full or half empty, I say the glass is broken and leaking everywhere. But when I’m here in Israel, I feel happy, smiling like a demented idiot.
Israel is beautiful, there is so much to do and see, we have lots of friends, the food is great and Torah learning unmatched. But you can get all that in lots of places. To me it has more to do with the feeling of finally being at home.
You know how you can sometimes be in a luxury hotel and it’s nice and relaxing but after a few days, you are relieved to get back home — the same home with the leaky toilet or the irritating neighbors and the pressing bills and responsibilities. But it’s your stuff.
Israel, with its constant war, running into shelters, political infighting and religious rivalries, is loaded with problems. But it’s your stuff. It’s your home. It’s your family. And when it’s threatened you will defend it in every way you can.
I used to feel that way about the United States, my birthplace. I was always a proud American, bled red, white and blue — especially as a religious Jew who gave thanks to the nation that welcomed the Jewish people, gave them opportunities to thrive, live and worship freely. To fight for truth, justice and the American way was always for me, not just a slogan, but an aspiration.
But sadly, now it is a hotbed of vicious, often violent antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment, the likes of which America has never seen. What’s more, an increasing number of Americans, especially young people, hate America and everything it stood for. They falsely consider it an “Empire” that needs to be dismantled and destroyed.
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I now better understand the sins that plagued and doomed our people as we were about to enter the Land of Israel from the midbar. We will read about it in the coming parshiyot in Sefer Bamidbar. The rabble who remembered “the fish that we ate in Egypt free of charge; the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic” (Bamidbar 11:5). Were they crazy? They were slaves in Egypt!
The spies, all leaders of their tribes, and Korach and his confederates, preferred to stay in the wilderness rather than engage in the difficult but normal task of entering and living in their new G-d given home. They were remembering an Egypt that no longer existed, perhaps never did, or were so consumed with thoughts of power they never possessed in Egypt that it clouded their thinking.
As I sit in my apartment in Jerusalem, I feel blessed. We are among those who have made it home, out of the wilderness to the Land of Israel. And I worry about my co-religionists, my family and my friends who are still in the wilderness, in a land that is no more.
Come home, where life is hard but meaningful, where tragedy and happiness often coexist, but where one’s full potential as a person and a Jew can be fulfilled.
Shabbat Shalom, Chodesh Tov, Yom Yerushalayim Sameach, v’Chag Shavuot Sameach!
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
