In this week’s parsha – Parshat Beha’alotcha – we join the Children of Israel’s journey through the wilderness: in the search for the way forward, for leadership, in the quest for answers, and in the complexities of interpersonal relations, and all while very much on the ‘way’. In the parsha, we become aware of the Divine Presence (the Shekhina) in the Mishkan and of a life of mitzvot as an expression of closeness to God, along with the twists and turns of longing for the cucumbers and melons of the past that evoke questions about commitment itself and the long journey.
The parsha presents further facets of the different roles within the worship of God, indicates the realms of the permitted and the forbidden, and shares with us landmarks along the way via the presence or absence of the cloud. The parsha grants us an opening onto welcome and unfortunate events, gossip and grievances, and a complex view of the role of leading the people.
And in our story, through the events on the calendar, we have just received the Torah only to be immediately faced with an attempt to translate the voices and lightning, the promises and the commandments into life. During the Jewish People’s journey in the wilderness, it becomes apparent that, despite the presence of providence and leadership, profound questions surface as to the purpose of the journey and the authority of those leading the way.
Towards the end of the year, we will once again stand with the People at Sinai with the dramatic description: “The mountain was ablaze with flames to the heart of the skies and dark with cloud and fog”. In other words, the cloud and fog can give rise to revelation and commitment and, on the other hand, can leave a lack of clarity and darkness.
Our parsha demonstrates how the presence of the cloud does not act as a screen but rather testifies to God’s presence and signals how to move forward.
However, we have no such definite signs or wonders in our own lives and no clear signposts signaling us how to conduct ourselves morning and night. Our daily choice is to cleave to “doing good” and hope that we are conducting ourselves in an optimal manner, both individually and collectively.
Numerous expressions of movement from Egypt via the wilderness to the promised land exist in our daily language, describing a process of private and communal transition and movement.
In recent years, we have become increasingly familiar with daily mental and emotional difficulties and life challenges. These lead us to the recognition that pain exists in a broader sense than we previously supposed, and that open wounds exist at every human gathering.
It can also be said that in general we are undergoing a journey in a wilderness of recognition regarding many of life’s complexities and that, as a society, we have no desire to return to our previous state of being unaware of this complex reality. On the contrary, there is more daring and willingness to assume responsibility and contend with the difficulty.
Moriah Ashkenazi’s poem describes the remembering of a period of difficulty that even the syntax in it breaks down only for life to begin anew and yet, although it is difficult to believe in the return to a comforting routine, the fulfillment of the promise is, in retrospect, a powerful memory when pondering the source of strength required to traverse the wilderness.
For a moment in the parsha, the ills of the past and the insecurity about the promised good are forgotten. Daring to remember and touch one’s personal hardship and life’s scars is not a commonplace daily occurrence. Delving into the past and recognizing that sometimes an extreme difficulty that led to countless tears ultimately creates a growth process and ripples of life. However, there is not always a path with a clear and complete destination or an arrival in the “promised land”. The emotional and spiritual thirst that is like a long journey through the wilderness, a feeling that even the water of life cannot slake our thirst, all tell of the trauma etched into the body and not just the soul, although occasionally, even there, droplets of water slowly restore faith and life.
Our parsha expresses an oscillation between a clear presence of God’s closeness and a question as to whether this is a solace for the past, whether the proposed path is easy to adopt as a group and whether a noble spirit is only given to part of the group. The poem “The Lake” shares a personal experience and the recalling of stains and cracks, even after rejuvenation, still leaving the question how, despite everything, we can yet traverse the depths of the wilderness to the lake of life.
I wish to propose that these fluctuations of bringing close and distancing fractures and hopelessness that the Jewish People manifests in the journey though the wilderness because of echoes of the exile and slavery. It is not always obvious that traumatic emotional experiences are the gateway to something new, but the question remains as to our responsibility to alleviate the burden of those around us and how walking as a group through our wildernesses may provide the relief of which we all share a part.
The Lake \ Moriah Ashkenazi
A woven light waits for me, a necessary fate,
A shimmer of existence flickers, a golden violet, trembling that is me,
I remember a hollow devoured, its countless stars gathered lights into stone fists,
Now, drops of glass descend softly,
A shower of lights in the fields.
I remember a cracked moon, hovering above me, a promise above the abyss,
In its illuminated web, like lashes on a heavy eyelid,
I remember thirst, standing at the edge of the living lake, unable to drink,
And yet, this promise:
You will live.
Tears turned into a lake, a prayer deep, high on the mountain,
Every word that was like a bone, splits in the body, becoming a gate,
And how can it be that on the threshold of silence, you forgive,
What happened there, how could you explain the threshold of shards?
And yet, this promise.(From the Book ‘Arise’, Afik 2022)
