Finding a Balance: Parashat B’midbar/Shavuot

Parashah B'midbar 2016Parashat B’midbar/Shavuot
Numbers 1:1 – 4:20

As we prepare to go on our journey to the Promised Land, God sets forth for us an image of an ideal planned community. The twelve tribes of Israel are arrayed in a clean rectangle, with three tribes to each side. In the center is the sacred shrine of the community, the Tabernacle. As I pointed out last year (Torah Sparks May 21, 2015), God gives the Levite tribe (including Levites and priests) the job of protecting this inner core of holiness. The protection that they provide is not out of concern for foreign incursions. The “foreigner – zar” – is none other the Israelites, themselves (Num. 1:51). The guard duty of the Levites is specifically directed toward preventing any stray Israelite from defiling the sanctuary by unauthorized entry.

Is God worried that the Israelites will vandalize their sanctuary? Hardly. Rather, as the verse indicates, God is worried that they will seek to enter the sanctuary to come close to God, but without the necessary preparation. God shows a similar concern when the Israelites encamp around Mount Sinai, prior to receiving the Torah. God tells Moses to fence off the mountain so that no one will be tempted to ascend the mountain to draw closer to the Divine Source of revelation.

In that case God’s worries were unfounded. No one tried to climb the mountain and join Moses. However, with regard to the Tabernacle, the Israelites had already experienced the tragic deaths of two of Aaron’s sons who tried to enter it unbidden. So there was a real precedent to give God reason to worry. But why would people be more susceptible to the lure of the holy in the case of the Tabernacle, while they were all too happy to keep their distance from Sinai?

Perhaps the difference lies in the origin of each space’s holiness. Mount Sinai was a piece of nature occupied by God’s Glory. But the Tabernacle, though expressly dedicated to God’s Glory, was the work of human hands. All the Israelites took part in making the Tabernacle come to be. By warning us lest we be tempted to defile the holy shrine that we, ourselves, created, the Torah alerts us to a tenuous state of being in which we must learn to abide. We must “take ownership” of our spiritual choices, actions and projects. But we must not confuse such “taking ownership” with actual owning. History gives us too many examples of noble causes betrayed by people who have persuaded themselves that they are the owners of the cause, who may do with it what they please, forgetting the real meaning and essence of the cause itself. The cause begins in holiness and ends in desecration.

This tension is also vividly present in our relationship to our Torah, whose gift we celebrate this Shavuot holiday. We have been given a Torah to have and to hold, to study and to make our own. Yet, we must constantly remember that the Torah is not simply ours, but is God’s gift to us. In our sought after familiarity with the Torah we must not forget her holiness. In Biblical times the Levites were charged with preserving that balance for us. Today we must serve as our own priests and Levites, embracing the Torah as our sacred center in both love and awe.

Shabbat Shalom – Hag Same`ah
Rabbi David Greenstein

 


Subscribe to Rabbi Greenstein’s weekly d’var Torah

Image(s): “Balance” © Christoph Habel used with permission via Creative Commons License

Latest posts by Rabbi David Greenstein (see all)

What do you think?