Judaism in antiquity was a rugged, grounded faith. Poised between wandering in the wilderness and entering a promised land, the spirituality of biblical Judaism was one of creation as a sign of God’s greatness and munificence, of learning to love a particular land as our inheritance and as God’s gift. Biblical festivals and holy days pulsated to the cycles of agriculture and of weather, recalling not only the great events of Israel’s past, but also the way the earth could adorn itself and provide for its denizens throughout the year. Small wonder, then, that the exultant voice of the book of Psalms, arguably the world’s greatest collection of poems, is one that sees God in the rising of the sun, the way the birds get their food, the way the sea and its breakers roar.
Something happened along the way. Perhaps it was our recurrent conquest at the hands of foreign powers, perhaps it was the trauma of being ripped from our land and denied permanent status in any other place, perhaps it was the natural response to being denied a place among the peoples of the world. But for whatever reason, Jewish spirit turned inward, away from mountains and field, into the more portable and modest realm of the study hall and the sanctuary. The model Jew was now one who sat inside a dimly lit room, eyes focused on the folio of a book. In a world of violent desire, Judaism heard the voice of God in restraint and sublimation. In a world of might and suffering, Judaism heard God’s will to mandate compassion and discussion. In a culture which denigrated intellect and celebrated athletics, Judaism elevated the Sage as the highest possible form of spiritual life.
That shift served us well, preserving the Jewish people in a difficult era and retaining our focus on acting as God’s witnesses in a brutal world. But something was also lost when we went inside, when we took our faith and shut the windows and closed the doors. When the Torah became domesticated, something of its burning brilliance was reduced.
In our own age, what we need is a Torah not only of books and restraint, but also of sun and field and sea. At a time when Jews live in democracies as equals, or have returned to our own land, it is time to summon the resources of that grounded Torah of land and life and seasons.
Today’s Torah portion is one such resource. The Book of Numbers, Ba-Midbar, begins by recording that “God spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, from the Ohel Mo’ed, the Tent of Meeting.” Why does the Torah, so cautious in using extra words, bother to tell us that God spoke to Moses in the wilderness? What is it about wilderness that can serve as an irreplaceable medium for conveying God’s true voice?
Moses Maimonides, the Rambam, understood the connection an antidote to moral depravity: “If all countries you know or hear of follow evil ways, as is the case in our time, then one must go out to the caves, the clefts of mountains, and the wilderness.” When the values around us have gone haywire, when the distance between what people profess and how they behave is insurmountable, then the way to restore spiritual balance and sanity is to escape the confines of civilization and head to the wilderness.
You see, society has a way of accepting its own particular assumptions as self-evidently true. Each culture just assumes that the way it sets priorities, and the choices it presents are the way the world ought to be. To question those priorities, to even be able to think outside of the constraints of popular assumptions can be quite difficult when in the thick of it all.
One of the great blessings that wilderness provides is precisely that it is not tailored to human standards, does not contour its shape to fit human foibles. Returning to real wilderness means returning to a place in which people are, at best, visitors and guests, where our standards are not the basis for how things operate, where our will and our arrogance doesn’t parade as the measure of all things.
In the wilderness, the world reflects the grandeur of the God who made it. The wilds still pulsate with the novelty of creation, with the unbounded energy of life and of living things. There, the richness of life is sufficient purpose for the myriad creatures and the indifferent majesty of forest, desert, and swamp. They neither need nor seek a human purpose or benefit to justify their existence.
Returning to the wilderness then, reminds us to consider value not simply in terms of our own gratification, but by the standards of how well creation continues to demonstrate the power, wisdom, and goodness of God. The wilderness reminds us of the true source of all values, our own included.
That may be why God’s voice is heard in the wilderness. That may be why Torah was given on a stormy mountain top, and why we need to look beyond the tops of our books more than occasionally.
The Torah, you see, is wild.
Shabbat shalom.