Numbers Cycle Three Bemidbar 1:1- 4:20

Bemidbar

BeMidbar is the name for this week’s parsha and also for the book itself. Often translated as in the wilderness, the rabbis of the Mishnah have taught that the proper translation is in wilderness or in a wilderness. So here’s the question. Do we use the word the, thereby giving the verse a more logical flow in our English language? Or do we struggle a bit and adopt the indefinite article or even no article at all?

Let me backtrack a bit. In Hebrew, the vowels are often found as signs under the letters themselves. And in Torah, since there aren’t any vowels, we interpret the signs. Of course, for the most part, we follow the classic translations of the sages. Sometimes though, the vowels are changed to emphasize or de-emphasize certain ideas, to create accessibility. Tiny changes though can have huge repercussions.

Let’s look at in wilderness. No doubt, it sounds strange to us. But without any article at all, it emphasizes the very idea of wilderness itself. We imagine a great openness, one so daunting we get confused, frightened. We hesitate to explore the corners in fear we will get lost or hurt. It’s a place without boundaries or a core, with tangles of thoughts, of dreams abandoned or left uninterpreted, of unlimited pathways to hope and redemption, of daunting spaces that drown our souls. Joseph Campbell describes it as the dream landscape of curiously fluid ambiguous forms where (the hero) must survive a succession of trials. In Greek literature, it’s the underworld. On the other hand, it’s breathtaking, exquisite, all encompassing, alluring, a vision we want to keep, know with intimacy. It includes any and all wilderness, as if there is only one. Therefore there’s a non-specific feeling we get, a purity, a guttural need to bring it all within, to be it, and in sorting through it, to bring the most luminous paths, all numbers within numbers, all names within names, all souls within souls so prevalent in the root word of gilgul (1:3, 1:20,1:22) to one sacred point.

Let’s look at a wilderness. Inferred here (grammatically) is that this is one of several or many. A wilderness is simply a universe among many universes. This paradigm in which we live is not the only one. Here, there’s a clear polytheism within our sacred monotheism. Even God, after the scene with the snake in Eden, says man has now become like one of us, knowing good from evil (Genesis 3:22). Us could easily infer that same polytheism. As Hillman quotes the Greek philosopher Thales “All things are full of Gods”.

Once we resort to the wilderness, we have certainly limited our perspective. There is only one wilderness or we are just short-sighted. This simple change in translation therefore, while fitting beautifully with immediate story, cuts off our abilities within that same story to achieve our ultimate goal. For after all, how can we get to the Promised Land if all we see is our own limited paradigm? Also, it takes great expanse to find the point within. Therefore, the same specificity that assuages our fear (on a heightened level) prevents us from finding the edge that leads to return and intimacy. Raba, for example says this: When people open themselves to everyone like a wilderness, God gives them Torah.

To shed more light on this problem, let’s look at what happens right after the word bemidbar. There’s organization, the counting of men, a counting of the Levites, the mapping of the camp, the counting of the first born. There’s human work and action moving inward, an action of necessity, of survival. And it’s pretty clear that if the expanse is greater, so too is our capability to find the depths within. Think of the expanse in our lungs caused by an inhale. That same expanse is reflected in the exhale. In other words, we can only exhale as much as we inhale. We can only move inward as much as we move outward. The expanse of wilderness therefore determines our intimacy with God. As Rashi says, because they were dear to Him, He counted them. So we want a wilderness beyond boundaries, daunting, exquisite, open beyond our dreams, because only then can we approach the most intimate point of God.

Finally, what about other places in Torah? Could bereshith, for example, mean in a beginning? What about behar? Could that mean in a mountain? And since (as we see so clearly in the book Bemidbar) there isn’t any before or after in Torah, what if we put the three words together? We would move from within a wilderness to within a mountain to creating a beginning, a new beginning with Hashem.

So, may we be wild. May we respect the wilderness of others. May we dare observe the darkest corners, the most radiant vibrations within our psyche. May we celebrate our wilderness and also work to count our men. May we allure all the possibilities to one exquisite moment. May we find a good place to camp. And may we follow the paths of each letter of Torah to the nexus; to the heart-point of God’s cherished love.