- Clergy
- Shabbat
As we approach the festival of Shavuot, most years (and this year included) we read from the torah portion Bamidbar - “in the wilderness”. For our ancestors, bamidbar meant leaving what they knew - slavery in Egypt. For us, bamidbar can infer leaving what we know. For us and our ancestors, bamidbar invokes traveling in uncertainty.
When we feel that we are traveling in a wilderness, how can we bring equanimity to that untamed place? Perhaps it’s by realizing that while we previously may have thought we were established, settled, “safe”, those concepts are actually illusions. In actuality, as human beings, we are constantly bamidbar, in the wilderness. We have no guarantees. As we enter this shabbat, moving toward the revelation of Shavuot, let’s spend this time together by recognizing that we are in this wilderness together and be open to each moment as it unfolds, whatever it may bring.
If you’ve joined us for Shabbat over the past few weeks, you will have noticed that we take a moment to count the omer. During this period between Pesach and Shavuot, we count the days, tying our liberation from slavery to our revelation at Sinai. Our Torah portion Bamidbar begins with a different kind of counting - a census. Our tradition teaches us not to do a census using numbers, not to use a number as a stand in for a human being. Each one of us is created as a reflection of divinity. We can glean from this that there are positive and negative ways of accounting in the world and we need to guard ourselves to count in ways that are wholesome.
This past Wednesday marked the entrance of the Jewish month of Sivan. Rosh Chodesh Sivan is distinguished as the day on which the Jewish people arrived and camped before Mount Sinai. They were preparing to receive revelation but they didn’t know it. What if you had the foresight to know you were about to have a collective experience of revelation? How would you live your life in the next few days to prepare yourself? Would you be like our ancestors and create a false God? Would you still and ready your heart?
Shavuot begins Sunday evening. We are told that each one of us stood at Sinai and that we all relive that experience each year. I pray that we enter mindfully into this new month of Sivan, allowing ourselves to prepare to be present for experience. Revelation happens everyday. We just have to show up and notice.