Radical Torah

To steal the title of Peter Dreier, et al’s seminal book on metropolitan planning: Place matters. Very simply, where we live profoundly influences who we are and how we interact with others.

The book of Bamidbar/Numbers begins, “God spoke to Moses b’midbar/in the desert of Sinai, saying. . .” Given the exegetical principle that no word of the Torah can be considered superfluous, virtually every commentator on this text begins by asking some version of the question, “Why does the Torah bother to tell us that God spoke to Moses in the desert? The people have been in the desert since the book of Exodus—where else would we think that God spoke to Moses?”

In other words: why, at this point in the text, is it important to remind us where the people are?

Rashbam (Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir, 1085-1174, France) begins answering these questions by contrasting the beginning of the book of Numbers with the beginning of the second-to-last parashah in Leviticus. As Rashbam notices, that text begins, “God spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai. . .” Now, God speaks to Moses in the desert, rather than from the top of the mountain. The biblical text gives no indication that the people have moved locations in the time between the end of Leviticus and the beginning of Numbers. What, then, has changed?

Rashbam responds by suggesting that the events of the end of Leviticus happen before the construction of the mishkan (tabernacle), while the beginning of the book of Numbers takes place after the construction of the mishkan. Before the building of the mishkan, he says, God speaks from the mountain; once the mishkan is completed, God speaks from the desert.

(As an aside: To understand Rashbam’s explanation, we need to take into account another accepted exegetical principle: the Torah is not necessarily written in chronological order. Even though the description of the building of the mishkan is recorded within the book of Exodus, it is possible that an event that precedes this construction may be described later in the Torah.)

That said, the next obvious question is: Why does it matter whether God speaks to the people from the mountain or from the desert? And why would the construction of the mishkan have an effect on the location of the divine-human encounter?

The mishkan represents the Jewish people’s first successful effort to take responsibility for their own religious lives. Before the construction of the mishkan, the people had primarily been passive participants in their encounters with God: God brought the people out of Egypt and gave them the Torah, with little active participation on the part of the people. In constructing a religious structure of their own, the people signal their willingness to take a more active role in creating a relationship with God.

As a result of the creation of the mishkan, Rashbam suggests, God begins to speak to the people from the desert—from the place where the people live—rather than from an inaccessible mountaintop. This shift acknowledges the people’s new ability to meet God face-to-face, and may also recognize that the mishkan has transformed the desert into sacred space. By creating sacred space, the people have also succeeded in changing the tenor of their relationship with God.
Moving the encounter with God into the desert not only changes the form of this relationship, but also changes its content. In the desert, God commands a census of the people. Rather than perceive the people as one aggregated mass of 600,000 people, God here begins to relate to the people as individuals, each of whom needs to be noted and counted.

In the desert, too, the people can be more open to accepting Torah. The midrash comments that, in order to accept Torah, one needs to make oneself as open and unblocked as the desert. (Bamidbar Rabbah 1:7) Just as God can better see the people within the context of the newly sacred desert space, the people can also better encounter God within this space. Outside of the milieu of the sanctified desert, the relationship between God and the Jewish people would take a profoundly different form.

To return to my opening comment: place matters.

Just as the Jewish people’s experience with God changes according to the place, so too, our own relationships, interests, and commitments are deeply affected by the places in which we live. In particular, places can either facilitate positive interactions—as the desert facilitates a powerful meeting between God and the Jewish people—or can block such interactions.

In America, place has assumed new significance, as neighborhoods become increasingly segregated, and as more and more people seclude themselves in gated communities. The more that we separate ourselves according to race, ethnicity, class, and political outlook, the fewer chances we have for encounters in which we are as “open as the desert.” As such, we may lose out on countless opportunities to receive Torah.

(cross-posted to jspot.org)