Chava Torah

Bemidbar/Shavuoth

There’s a place where you can go in Oregon. They call it an energy vortex. When my children were young I used to take them there. According to sources, it’s a spinning often turbulent flow (of energy)…. In short, it’s a mass of energy that moves in a whirling motion causing a depression or vacuum at the center. Up I-5, in Gold Hill, the Natives used to shun the vortex as forbidden ground.  Today, in 2012, it has a long-standing reputation as a must-see when visitors come to town.  It’s set up like any entertainment facility.

Therefore, some of us pay, observe and decide it’s a scam. It sure has scam-appeal. There’s a gift shop, photos from maybe fifty years ago, everything that would normally send me running  towards the nearest authentic river where I know I can  do some real rafting  for a swipe of my very real debit card. I’m not a scientist though so I can’t report on accuracy of our local vortex.  From what I remember perspectives change. What is taller seems shorter. What is level seems slanted.

In any case, most of us need foundation for belief. What I mean is that (as some might say) we need to see the tree, the rock, the house, and even ourselves in this vortex. Otherwise, it remains esoteric, ephemeral, a non-reality of invisible hypothesis, an attempt to defy logic without tangible back-up, a subject of mockery for the skeptics and a handle of faith for the dreamers. However if we have cause to believe it through personal experience, the balance shifts. So, giving the owners the benefit of the doubt (and trusting they are not out to take us to the cleaners and pull the wool over our eyes as so many heathens are said to do)  it’s  the real deal. We know where we are…in Gold Hill Oregon. We know what time it is (approximately). We know the day (hopefully). We know the month and year (even more hopefully). And we know what normally happens on our earth (for the most part).

Now, imagine if Rashi entered the Oregon vortex. He’s the commentator of Torah who  brought the p’shat…logical reasoning…into the limelight in the middle ages. He might say this: Some experiences do not fit into our usual perspective. This is the way of the earth.  And while the p’shat method (and this is one of my favorite quotes) is really only a blip in the history of Jewish scholarly tradition…we are all products of modern thought and fortunately or unfortunately we tend to see ourselves as a logical crowd. So we can’t dismiss Rashi. The writers of Vortex-Rabbah now would create amazing myths around our vortex. I would love to quote some potential material but in the interest of keeping this short, I shall refrain.  And our Talmudic rabbis would possibly use it to uphold or disprove or do both around the halakah of gravity.  I don’t know what the Vortex Kabbalists would do. Or maybe I do. Because alive or dead they are vortex-central. In short, they are already doing it.

What we need to remember though…and it’s hard… is that neither Rashi, Vortex Rabbah or the Talmudic rabbis or Zohar mystics are the main subject. They are all swirling around the vortex. And as a matter of fact, we are swirling as well.

Now let’s look at this week’s parasha Bemidbar:

  

It begins like this: On the first day of the second month, in the second year following the exodus from the land of Egypt, the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tent of meeting saying:

To look at this verse… in terms of time, we are in the first day of the second month…and winding out….in the second year after the exodus.  In terms of place we are in the wilderness of Sinai… and winding in…in the tent of meeting. In terms of transmission,  the Lord dabar or speaks….a wider out-put of communication… but he says (omer) something with a direct force-of-meaning. No doubt,  this winding-in to saying points to a certain behavior on the part of the Israelites.  I will get to that behavior soon.

If there ever was a preparation for a big event, though, this is it.  As quoted from midrash Bemidbar…God is about to make Israel great. And since we walk in God’s ways, we are about to make God great. And here’s the clincher.  In order to recognize greatness we need to feel and know how to be in this construct of time/place referred to by God, really be in it.  Therefore, we can almost see the grammatical swirling in this verse from (as Rava points out) the general to the particular,  and the creation of this point of consciousness.  And we can also do a camera shot of it.  A still-frame. As a teacher of mine says.... All of Torah…in fact…the words… create a still-frame in the continuum of our own evolution simply for our human vision. Therefore, this opening verse is more than information.  It’s the thesis statement or the road sign for revelation. We can’t go there if we don’t know where or how we stand here and now.

 So then….what is in the still-frame?  In short, the whole parasha is about our numbers,  our names, and the placement of our tents. It has the minute descriptions of the families of the Levites, including their role in caring for the mishkan. And we are reminded once again that it is as easy to be sucked under the vortex as it is to rise. For example….God is taking the Levites instead of our first born. Historically, it was Molach who wanted the first born of the Canaanites, and these children would be incinerated on the lap of the idol.  If there ever was a hell that would have to be it. If there is a heaven though it is this structure and our ability to march forward, as it says in Torah, as our camp has been set.

It seems pretty cut and dry.

But, the question arises, how have we really been set? Is the path of heaven open to anyone free-of-mind enough to set up the camp right? Conscious enough to jump lock stock and barrel onto that esoteric swirling of energies that give us the propulsion to rise into the glorious pulse of God! Oh how beautiful it would be if this were so! We could meditate night and day. Just allow ourselves to grow into, as Ezekiel writes, those beings of the chariot of fire, those with faces of man, lion, eagle and ox.

No, there’s more according to Rashi. And this is it:  The detail afforded for each person is exquisite. Our heads are raised to be counted. The numbers are exact. The names are mentioned whether or not we will hear of these people again.  Each being is given a separate kelipot, a body in our minds for eternity. The whole process is an astonishing act of lovingkindness on the part of God.

Therefore,   loving-kindness is not just an alternative, it is an obligation if we want to get it right. That is if we want to be on that continuum of revelation. If we can show this same loving-kindness from one person to the next…with equanimity and a trust of right intention…no matter what this person is capable or not capable of being or doing…we are setting our tents up right.

On the contrary though (the Talmudic rabbis say) we also must look at those who do the opposite…who humiliate others publicly…who push their heads down…. or give others a degrading name. These people threaten the whole structure of Bemidbar, the structure of our revelation and therefore end up in the land of Molach.…without any chance for redemption. That’s because this action, in Talmud, is seen as murder, for in this way we drain the blood of others, whiten their faces, until as Rav says of King David (quoting Psalms) there is no more blood left of me.

No doubt, in Bemidbar, Torah and Talmud give us a difficult challenge. There is no staying-in-place when it comes to God. There is only swirling-up or swirling-down. And say what we say, mean what we mean,  if our words cause any kind of damage to another being openly not openly intentionally not intentionally privately publicly for the sake of honesty or even not knowingly…we are no longer camped out as God has described.

Of course, those of us flailing about in a down-flowing vortex, whether shouting claims of love and truth or not…well it’s easy to twist logic at that point and say that the whole thing is a scam. It’s easy to ask for your money back and to try to get the hell out of there.

But it isn’t a scam. Torah is real. The tablets are being given to us right now.  And like it or not, we are each faced with it, with its laws and boundaries, with its exact demarcations, this necessity to set-up camp and march forward and serve God with loving-kindness, the knowledge and/or the fear, the awareness of revelation, whether we see the continuum or not,  the interior and exterior, the general and particular. And we are to do this with continued self-introspection, compassion, forgiveness, faith and hope that God will forgive us as well. And no doubt, Torah is as close as it will get to us this moment on Shavuoth,  fifty days after Pesach, on the 6^th day of Sivan, as we work to raise our heads up in the Rogue Valley of Oregon in Ashland right here in the sanctuary of Temple Emek Shalom.