Parashas Bamidbar
Rav Chaim Lifshitz

Parashas Bamidbar


Fata Morgana (Desert Mirage)
OR
Hisbodedus?

A solitary desert wanderer has nothing in common with the monastic who secludes himself in a monastery or with a prisoner in solitary confinement in his dank cell. The prisoner feels that human beings have cut off his freedom. The solitary monastic feels his solitude is due to his own freely willed aspirations. Therefore he willingly secludes himself.

The lonely desert wanderer is different from both of these. Yirmiyahu the prophet longs to be a desert inn, to mourn the betrayal of his people.

A desert is beyond place and time. Infinite wide spaces, empty of flora, fauna, or humanity. It is boundary-less.

It is not like being lost in an evergreen forest, which can bring one to despair yet also to hope. The forest is fraught with risk, but also with surprise. From behind one of the trees in the thick of the gloomy forest, a wild beast of prey might suddenly leap out, but a forest keeper might also suddenly appear and extend a helping hand, not to mention the abundance of edible fruits than hang from the trees.

The one imprisoned in the cell is also not completely solitary. He lives the bustling life that transpires beyond the walls, and is filled with sorrow and with hope that the torment he is living will end one day.

All of these exist inside a place and a time. The sensation experienced by the one who is lost in the desert is different in that it is a condition beyond place and time. It was not for naught that benei Yisroel wandered in the desert for forty years.

Another group that freely and willingly chooses to seek solitude is represented by the masmid, the creator and innovator in Torah who encloses himself within his own creativity. These are the misbodedim, the solitude-seekers who are enveloped in ananei hakovod, clouds of glory. The dimensions of place and time are chosen by them, and created by them. They do not suffer. Their hisbodedus expresses their own relating to place and to time.

We must emphasize that place and time do also exist in the previous examples cited. The chidush, the radical innovation in the way that masmidim relate to place and time is that they themselves create their own entirely new way of relating, yesh miyesh, using the materials they have been given.

Contrast this with the solitary wanderer in the barren desert, whose existence is not measured by place or time because these do not exist in his environment.

And lo and behold: It is precisely in this place-that-is-no-place, and at this time-that-is-no-time, that the Creator chooses to endow Am Yisrael with Torah, which creates a dimension of height without the earthly dimensions of place and time.

For this reason, Parashas Bamidbar grants them a private and personal dimension in the midst of the larger group of humanity. This is the dimension of depth, the dimension of a personal point of departure, of personal extraction. It is meant to provide every individual with a point of contact, with a hold on reality that provides and serves as an individual, personal point of departure. This endows every single individual with intrinsic, inalienable value.

The Torah discusses the net worth of the individual in Parashas Bechukosai at the end of Sefer VaYikra: An individual is worth no more than twenty shekalim. And this is when he is in his prime, between the ages of twenty and sixty. Before and after this, his value drops much lower. We can easily imagine that such an individual, when he seeks seclusion, is really needing to be related to.

Thus we find that before any relating to any place and time, one must first relate to the other human beings who are like oneself.

Relating to genetic extraction is more than just relating to a biological fact. It means relating to a community, to family origins. It reflects a value that is shel kayama, an eternal value, far more lasting than any mere relating to place and time, which is a purely technical/external involvement that risks obscuring the value of the individual, and contributing nothing at all to his unique worth.

Our Parasha deals with relating to the dimension of depth, to the personal individual source, to origins and extraction.

From here we learn the value of identifying with our own ethnic group, which holds more, far more content than any other relating to any other dimension.

From here we learn the value of tefilah betsibur, praying together with a congregation, because the individual prayer rises through the prayer of the congregation, even when that individual prayer has been deficient.

From here we learn the value of the individual, who merits the [heavenly] attention that has been generated by the group.

From here we learn of the need to relate to and to identify with our ethnic group, our community, and our nation.

The Post-Modernist tendency toward an empty individualism comprised of isolated, rootless individuals does not express liberation, but only the throwing off of a personal yoke in exchange for wantonness.

Such individualism does not express the self or its qualities, even though the self has an exclusive copyright on positive individualism, meaning that hisbodedus that defines and is compatible with the needs of the self.

Modern individualism means giving liberty to the yetser, to the selfish needs of ego only. This expresses a severing and a disconnecting rather than the return home of the prodigal son.

Yet relating to the spiritual dimension of height also requires these other two dimensions. It requires the tangible realness of a sense of place and time. When these are included within spiritual activity, a three-dimensional experience of existence unfolds, affording a sensation of value-based quality attached to an expression of tangible realness.