Community Blog

Shabbat Shalom! This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Beha’alot’cha, which has several vignettes of life in the desert: the mounting of the lamps in the Tabernacle, how the Tabernacle was broken down and built back up along the Israelite’s journeys, how the Levites were consecrated for service around the Tabernacle, the rules regarding Pesach and Pesach Sheini, the Israelites complaining about eating manna every day and are served up a large serving of “Screw around and find out” from God when they are gifted so much quail that they don’t know what to do with it and a plague strikes them “while the meat is still in their teeth.” Plus, Miriam and Aaron complain about Moses’s wife, and only Miriam is punished for this sin. So there’s a lot going on in this parasha. 

About a quarter of the way through these many tidbits of information, we are told “On the day that the Tabernacle was set up, the cloud covered the Tabernacle, the Tent of the Pact; and in the evening it rested over the Tabernacle in the likeness of fire until morning. It was always so: the cloud covered it, appearing as fire by night. And whenever the cloud lifted from the Tent, the Israelites would set out accordingly; and at the spot where the cloud settled, there the Israelites would make camp” (Numbers 9:15-17). The Torah makes sure to reiterate throughout the rest of the chapter that the Israelites followed the cloud, whether it was convenient or not. Sometimes they would make camp and have to pack back up so quickly that they “did not even have time to send their beasts to graze,” as Sforno comments, and other times they could be camped out for a full year and have to scramble to gather a year’s worth of sprawl when the cloud moved. 

A lot of the commentary on these passages focus on the emphasis the Torah places on the disparate timelines of camping. There’s an implication about the Israelites having to stay on their toes and pay attention to the cloud, but mostly the rabbis were concerned about understanding the timelines themselves. Which does make sense, since at one point in this parasha we are told that God is speaking to Moses during the first full moon of the second year since leaving Egypt, but Rashi points out that the book of Numbers starts out with the second full moon of the year, thus we learn that “there is no earlier or later in the Torah.” So is there really a difference between two days, a month, and a year in the Torah? 

Surprisingly, I didn’t see any of the ancient commentaries contrasting the Israelites’ willingness to to make and break camp without warning to follow the cloud of God, with their constant whining about how the food was better in Egypt - UNDER SLAVERY! While their whining throughout the desert always seems ridiculous to me (these are people who have witnessed miracles and been redeemed from oppression to slavery!), in this context I have a new appreciation for them and their complaints. 

Jews are known to complain. We are a sturdy, resilient people, but we are not generally stoic. We make our displeasures known, even to God. What sets Abraham apart from Adam and Noah is his willingness to argue with God, to fight back when he thought God was about to do something contrary to his understanding of what Divine Justice and Love were. There is a pretty vast difference between “will the righteous judge of the universe bring death upon the innocent along with the guilty?” and “Can’t we get some variety on this menu of freedom?” but the point stands. When your enslavers feed you better than your omnipotent, omniscient redeemer, maybe something is askew in the system of Divine Justice and Love that you were led to believe in, and you do need to call attention to this injustice. 

But when push comes to shove, for all our arguing with God and our stiff-necked stubbornness against so many of God’s directions, we follow the Divine path as best as we can see it. And there are few guidelines as clear as a literal cloud or tower of fire representing the physical presence of Shekhina moving forward, beckoning us onward. If only the path of Torah in the modern world were so clearly lit for us. 

This Shabbat, we welcome two new members of our community into the Israelite peoplehood. May they be empowered to push back against any and every perceived Jewish authority that does not stand up for the attributes of Divine Justice and Love that led them to Judaism. May they always follow the path of Shekhina through the wildernesses of life into a holier state of being. And may we all be enriched by the growth of our community through their presence. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.