Shabbat Shalom.
This week’s parasha is Bamidbar. We, like our ancestors, are currently in a wilderness not of our choosing. We complain of the old days, when we could get a haircut or go to the grocery store or actually had an income – the ancestors missed the cucumbers and melons.
And they’re right. The wilderness isn’t easy. This book of Torah is nothing but the gradual, nearly imperceptible loss of an entire generation to the wilderness. And yet, our midrashim tell us one who isn’t as open as the wilderness can not receive Torah (Numbers Rabbah 1:7)! And the active is declared true as well, to open yourself like a wilderness leads to the gift of Torah (BT Nedarim 55a)! Many of us already marginalized people know what the wilderness times feel like – when things are in a limbo of uncertainty, the possibility of change present, your self unmoored. We have lived with the wilderness more than others with safer lives. And we know the lessons that can be gleaned
The wilderness times are scary, but they can also be sources of great positive change. This cannot deny there will be many negative changes; there already are. But I hope against hope maybe we humans will use this time in the wilderness to better ourselves and better our universe.
eish zarah 