And You Shall Love

I have been working on this post for weeks now.  Each time I start and each time I stop again, because something feels incomplete.

This morning at Torah study, I feel like I found the other bookend to this post.  This post is about the midrash Bamidbar which states:

“The Torah was given to the accompaniment of three things, fire, water and wilderness. ‘Fire’; is derived from the verse “Mount Sinai was smoking in its entirety because Hashem descended upon it in fire” (Shemot19:18). ‘Water,’ is derived from the verse, ‘Even the heavens trickled; even the clouds dripped water’ (Judges 5:4). ‘Wilderness’ is derived from the verse ‘Hashem spoke to Moshein the wilderness of Sinai.’ (Bamidbar1:1) (Midrash Rabbah Bamidbar1:7)

The Torah and Jewish tradition often speaks in triptychs.  We have three times of daily prayer, we have three components of the TaNaCh, we have the three patriarchs (Abraham + Isaac +Jacob), and now we have fire + water + wilderness.

Rabbi Eleazer Posner writes that:

The number three symbolizes a harmony that includes and synthesizes two opposites. The unity symbolized by the number three isn’t accomplished by getting rid of number two, the entity that caused the discord, and reverting to the unity symbolized by number one. Rather, three merges the two to create a new entity, one that harmoniously includes both opposites.

So many things come in threes but in this case we have Fire, Water, and Wilderness

Fire

Fire serves as light, warmth, a visual cue to one another.  Fire can also reck great destruction.  I think I associate fire with the recklessness with which I stumble through the world sometimes.  The flame of passion that fills our belly when we are fighting for something we believe in, or falling in love, or taking a great leap forward.  I am full of big feelings  and while these emotions help to propel me towards goals and people and truth, it can also literally burn. me. out.  I think about the passion that I bring into my job, and that passion has driven me to get to my dream job.  A job, by the way, that I had to apply for four times before they would hire me.  I think about the passion,that burning flame of justice, that has motivated so many Americans to pray with their feet, marching up and down the streets to call for justice in a political time that worries so many.

On the other hand, I think about these kinds of fire have led to the vitriol responsible for white supremacy, xenaphobia, sexism, racism, and classism.  The fire set by fear is one that can burn entire societies to the ground.  This fire must be staunched: eliminated strategically, and quickly.

I found this amazing speech given by Pope Francis where he discusses how the fire of fear can destroy an entire society:

“No tyranny is supported without exploiting our fears. Hence all tyranny is terrorist,” continued, add that in this terror, “sown in the peripheries” with massacres, looting, oppression and injustice, citizens who still maintain some rights “are tempted with the false security of physical or social walls.”

“Walls that enclose some and banish others. Citizens walled, terrified, on one side; excluded, exiled and even more terrified, on the other. Is this the life that God the Father wants for his children?” he asked, explaining that fear “feeds and manipulates.”

What do we know about fire? We know that it consumes, it spreads, and it can also be extinguished by an equally powerful force: water.

Water

Water is the second component of F+W+W.    Water is innately feminine in the Torah.  For example, Rebecca gives water to the camels all the way back in Genesis.  In Exodus and Numbers though, Miriam is the keeper of water. The Well of Miriam lives and dies with her, such that when Miriam dies, the Israelites cry out from dehydration.  Miriam gathered Moses from the River, and Miriam celebrates at the Red Sea when the Israelites cross.

Water sustains life. Water is responsible for the lushness of the world around us.  But of course we know water, too, can be destructive.  In the crossing of the Red Sea, the waters split for the Israelites, but they destroy the Egyptians.  We know from the story of Noah that waters can flood the earth and destroy all the Earth, and of course our good friend Job is pitched into the raging seas for sinning against God.

Water is the necessary foil to fire.  Water can be the coolant to our fire.  Water can also be the powerful current which washes away our paths.  Water allows us to both float, but also risks the possibility of sinking.  In our times today, We must strategically cool the furious heat which propels us through this world, while being mindful of not being swept up in its currents.

Another key component of water is the fact that water starts high, and it runs low.  It comes from the sky in the form of rain, and flows down the mountains and valleys into the streams  and oceans and lakes. Water fills our world, even the deepest and darkest crevices.  Similarly, God will reach into the deepest part of our souls and touch those deep dark places.  A brilliant Podcast called Where Should We Begin, a podcast that follows couples in counseling, has an episode titled, ‘Trauma doesn’t like to be touched.”  No matter how low we are, the divine will flow over us eventually, and though it may be painful at first, it is where healing begins.  Similarly, tears are often the first sign of pain and anguish, giving us our first breath of healing.

Wilderness

For me, wilderness is where the magic really happens.  Perhaps this is because I am an “earth sign” (taurus), according to the zodiac; which originated from Babylon and to which the ancient Hebrews certainly were exposed.

Wilderness, for me, is my baseline.  I feel like my neutral state is wilderness.  I sit permanently in the center of a brazen world in which I feel startlingly out of place.  Of course the Torah refers to the wilderness in a multitude of places.  The Israelites spent 40 years wandering the wilderness, looking for the Promised land after all.  Much of my people’s history has been set in the scenery of the unknown.

Fire and water have no power without the background of the wilderness.  The wilderness is the setting which suddenly erupts into life. I think of this moment in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (yes, you’re welcome), when Harry meets Hagrid’s half-brother, Grawp, who he mistakes for a part of the ground until it starts to breathe.  This is sort of what it’s like to realize that the wilderness is not just a setting, but an active character in the Torah.

The Israelites bravely trudge forward into the wilderness, expecting to end up somewhere, but finding that being in the wilderness is a crucial part of their development as a people.

There is a lot of discussion indicating that wandering in the wilderness was important, because the generation of Israelites that left Egypt did not know how to be independent people.  They had been beaten into submission for so long, that they were unable to care for themselves.  This is learned helplessness, in contemporary psychological terms.  Slavery was miserable but at least it was dependable.  Indeed, it is crucial that we allow ourselves to wander in wilderness, because without it, we will never grow and evolve.

In a banal example, I develop the orientation for the new nurses joining my unit at the hospital.  One of the biggest things I try to teach them is to “mistake out loud.”  We have to be willing to try and fail and wander around in order to find anything worth having.

Rabbi Alice Goldfinger is someone you should read about for many reasons, but she also wrote a beautiful devar where she says:

If we only do what we do well, we will never do anything new, let alone anything that is imaginative, life-changing, or world-healing. We must dare to be wrong, to run onto the battlefields of social change or spiritual lethargy; we must be willing not just to make mistakes, but also to learn and grow from them.

The Israelites interact with the wilderness in many powerful ways.  Not the least of which comes in this week’s parsha, Balak.  When Balaam, a sorcerer hired to curse the Israelites finds himself instead praising Adonai and blessing the people of Israel, he startles himself.  He is won over by Adonai and in Numbers 24:1-2 we read that

“He [Balaam] did not go, as at other times, to look for omens, but set his face toward the wilderness. Balaam looked up and saw Israel camping tribe by tribe.  Then the spirit of God came upon him.”

Balaam is an outsider, he was meant to be on the wrong side of history.  But when he was brave enough to turn his head willingly towards the wilderness, he was met with the Spirit of God.

When I think about the political discourse of our times and the out-shouting that rules rather than civil discord, I think about this quote.  I think about the fact that if you are willing to hold yourself in uncertainty, you will be much more equipped for the world ahead of you than if you cling to what you know.

As an aside, I want to mention a concept from another parsha that, to me, tempers the wilderness.  That is Aaron and the Clouds of Glory from Exodus 40: 34-38.

34 Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.  35 And Moses was not able to enter into the tent of meeting, because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.–  36 And whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the children of Israel went onward, throughout all their journeys.  37 But if the cloud was not taken up, then they journeyed not till the day that it was taken up.  38 For the cloud of the LORD was upon the tabernacle by day, and there was fire therein by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.

I so love these versus because it speaks to a very real part of living in the wilderness.  Sometimes you have to stay in place and sometimes you have to move on.  But if you grit your teeth and push through when you are meant to stay in place, you will miss being in the presence of God, and will head purposelessly in the wrong direction.

There is this incredible piece from 2012 that an author named Tim Kreider wrote called The Busy Trap .  I think it should be mandatory reading for life.  He challenges the idea that as long as you are moving you are moving in the right direction. He writes:

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.

It’s a lie we tell ourselves.  That in order to be productive we have to be moving.

Sometimes we must hunker down and live in the discomfort and the unknowing.  It is unwise to set forth blindly. Maybe, when the path ahead seems unclear, it is because we must stand in place and looking inward to find the peace we are seeking.  Only once we settle and rest and recalibrate are we then ready to stretch ourselves again and move into the wilderness afresh.

With that, I am off to enjoy the rest of my Shabbat.  I wish you the proper balance of Fire + Water + Wilderness.  May you have you own clouds of glory to guide you as we wander through this life together.