Bamidbar 5780: Rabbinic Intern David Chapman
A friend of mine said this week: our plans for the future are like the pieces of furniture in our homes. We get so used to seeing them, we stop thinking about them. We take them for granted. Then, one day we wake up and all the furniture is gone. We wander from room to room looking at the blank walls and empty spaces thinking – what’s left? We’re tentative about getting any new furniture because … what if it happens again? What if we get attached to something – even something small – and we wake up someday to find it has all vanished again? If this happened to you, where would you start? What item of furniture would you dare to place again first? What plan would you dare to make after all plans have been cast aside?
This week we open sefer Bamidbar, the fourth book of the Torah. After an entire book of mostly law and little narrative – Vayikra, or Leviticus – the story now kicks back into high gear. Both chronologically and geographically, very little “happens” during Vayikra. The camp does not move much -- it remains at the foot of Sinai. And only about a month passes over the course of the whole book.
But during Bamidbar, time speeds up – about 40 years will transpire and Israel will move from the wilderness – the midbar – of Sinai, from which the book gets its Hebrew name, Bamidbar – all the way to the plains of Moab, on the precipice of entry into the Promised Land. Finally, now that many of the laws have been delivered, Israel can begin its journey.
But not so fast … First, in our parsha for this week, the Torah relates two important preparatory tasks: a complete census and detailed instructions for each tribe as the people move through the wilderness. We can appreciate the spiritual and psychological value of a census at this point. This census comes on the heels of several passages in Leviticus in which God threatens plagues and destruction if Israel does not follow God’s law. So perhaps God wanted now to boost morale, to remind Israel of its strength in numbers. We are getting ready for an arduous journey – let’s take stock of how strong we are.
Each one of the twelve tribes gets counted, and each one is given a specific location in the encampment. We can also appreciate the logic here. Let’s get organized. Let’s make sure that everyone knows what to do. Some of us – in times of uncertainty – we are planners. We spring into prep-mode, making to-do lists and action items. Maybe, we think, this thorough, impenetrable to-do list will protect me from life’s unpredictability.
But, at least in my experience, it doesn’t always work. I knew this, but this spring I had to learn it again anyway. We started this particular moment just after Purim when schools were shutting down and the panic level started to rise. Jonathan and I started off with a thorough two-page full color daily schedule for our toddler, and a detailed Google spreadsheet for ourselves, hoping it would help us remain level-headed and productive during this moment. While – as Rabbi Ain wrote about in her essay – Jewish time
Despite the meticulous plans we might lay out …stuff happens. We have to adjust. And even as we are taking care of our own needs, we have to think about what new needs are emerging that must be attended to. Like the story I shared before about the house missing its furniture, sometimes the careful plans we laid before the journey started have to be scrapped and redrafted. Sometimes the job we thought we were doing in this effort must be reconsidered in the light of new challenges.
American Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron calls this moment “When things fall apart.” She uses this phrase as the title of her most well-known book. Note that she calls it WHEN Things Fall Apart, not IF. Things falling apart is inevitable. It is part of life. Chodron writes: “Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and they fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” Like the mishkan itself, even the most carefully constructed holy tabernacle must be able to be dismantled and packed up at a moment’s notice when circumstances change.
Let’s look at the tribe of Dan to understand how this plays out in our Torah. According to the census that takes place in our parsha, Dan is the second-most numerous tribe, after Yehuda. At first, Dan is assigned to the northern flank relative to the mishkan. We learn that when the divine cloud lifts from the tent, Israel is supposed to break down the camp, dissemble the mishkan and set out for its next destination. But how are we supposed to travel through the midbar? Here, the Torah gets a little confusing. On one hand, we hear k’asher yakhanu ken yisa’u -- as they camped, so they traveled, meaning that when they camp set out to move, Dan would be in the north. If you picture this on a map, and Israel is starting out in the wilderness of the Sinai peninsula, we would be moving northwards towards Eretz Yisrael. So is Dan leading the way? It doesn’t seem so, since a few verses earlier, the text tells us that Yehuda, the most numerous tribe, travels in front.
We have to turn ahead to the next Parsha, Naso, for another take on Dan’s task. Numbers 10:25 tells us: וְנָסַ֗ע דֶּ֚גֶל מַחֲנֵ֣ה בְנֵי־דָ֔ן מְאַסֵּ֥ף לְכָל־הַֽמַּחֲנֹ֖ת
The tribe of Dan traveled as the m’asef of all the other tribes. This is often translated as the “rearguard,” but m’asef means the “ingatherer.” It’s related to the word for harvest. Sukkot is also called Chag Ha’asif, the festival of the harvest. The idea that this means that Dan traveled in the rear is based on an explanation found in the Jerusalem Talmud and expanded upon by Rashi. Because Dan was so numerous – remember, they were the second biggest after Yehudah – they could travel behind and gather any items dropped by the other tribes. Chizkuni, another medieval French commentator, went even further. The tribe of Dan did not just collect lost items, Chizkuni explained. Dan gathered up all the stragglers – the people who, due to fatigue or illness or injury – could not keep up with the rest of the camp. So Dan’s great numbers allowed it to spread out – to push forward guarding the northern flank and at the same time to follow at the rear making sure no one is left behind. And we know how important that role is from the story of Amalek, as told in Deuteronomy, Israel’s mortal enemy who attacked from behind and preyed on the vulnerable in the rear of the camp. Dan’s job was to protect precisely those stragglers.
Apart from their great numbers, what else might explain why the descendants of Dan were singled out for this dual role? We can look back to Bereishit, for Dan’s origin story, for a clue. Dan was the fifth son of Jacob. After Leah bore Jacob four sons, Rachel was jealous, so she gave Jacob her handmaid Bilhah and Bilhah’s firstborn son was Dan. Although three other tribes are also descended from the handmaidens Bilhah and Zilphah, Dan always carried a little bit of a “black sheep” quality. There is a tradition that later, in Eretz Yisrael, the children of Dan became idol worshippers. Dan’s name means judgement, as in the judgment Rachel thought God passed on her in her inability to conceive a child. It’s a heavy load to carry.
But despite – or perhaps because of – this experience, Dan is given the critical job of gathering in others at the margins. We don’t know, but I like to think that their DNA-level experience of being outsiders informs their ability to perform this role.
As we as a society start to explore re-opening, bit by bit, day by day, we still have so many questions and so much uncertainty about our future. We can keep in mind the teaching of Pema Chodron – even as things start to come together, they very well might fall apart again. I invite us to think like the children of Dan in our Torah, forging ahead while also making sure no one falls behind. Who is not here with us in the camp, as the camp moves forward? Who is fatigued, physically or spiritually? Who has lost something valuable, without which they feel they cannot move ahead? Who is vulnerable? Who is alone? Sometimes what causes someone to fall to the rear is seemingly mundane – think of all the people who are struggling with loneliness today simply because they don’t have a strong internet connection? And sometimes the reasons are deeper: grief, anxiety, misery, fear… Whatever the reason, as the census that opens our parsha reminds us, we are strongest when our full contingent – all our numbers – marches through the wilderness together.
