It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…
I’ve always wanted to start a drasha that way. I don’t know if Charles Dickens conceived of his famous opening lines to A Tale of Two Cities after having contemplated Sefer Bamidbar, but the list of dichotomies at the beginning of the book could have been written as an overview of Sefer Bamidbar.
The forty years in which we wandered in the desert were the best of times. We followed God, day by day, on a journey through the wilderness, fed and sustained by ongoing miracles, learning Torah from Moshe Rabbenu, and accumulating the survival skills to survive on our own.
And the forty years were the worst of times. We rebelled and complained again and again. We wandered for forty years so that the entire generation that left Egypt could die off before we reached our destination. Each step of growing independence was accompanied by backsliding and complaint. Moshe saw his own mission as one of failure and burnout.
These two perspectives are reflected in Tanakh and have made their way into our liturgy. Tehilim, Psalm 95 concludes with these famous words:
אַרְבָּ֘עִ֤ים שָׁנָ֨ה ׀ אָ֘ק֤וּט בְּד֗וֹר וָאֹמַ֗ר עַ֤ם תֹּעֵ֣י לֵבָ֣ב הֵ֑ם וְ֝הֵ֗ם לֹא־יָדְע֥וּ דְרָכָֽי׃
אֲשֶׁר־נִשְׁבַּ֥עְתִּי בְאַפִּ֑י אִם־יְ֝בֹא֗וּן אֶל־מְנוּחָתִֽי׃
Forty years I was provoked by that generation; (or wrangled with / contended with the generation
I thought, “They are a senseless people;
they would not know My ways.”
Concerning them I swore in anger,
“They shall never come to My resting-place!”
This gives rise to the most incongruent matchup of melody and meaning in contemporary Jewish life, (second only to the legendary “who shall live and who shall die, tra la la la la.”) when we sing, melodiously, to Shlomo Carlbach’s so-called Friday night nusach, “forty years….”
The alternative perspective is recounted by Yirmiyahu, the prophet Jeremiah in words that are now the Haftarah for the second day of Rosh Hashanah:
זָכַ֤רְתִּי לָךְ֙ חֶ֣סֶד נְעוּרַ֔יִךְ אַהֲבַ֖ת כְּלוּלֹתָ֑יִךְ לֶכְתֵּ֤ךְ אַֽחֲרַי֙ בַּמִּדְבָּ֔ר בְּאֶ֖רֶץ לֹ֥א זְרוּעָֽה׃
Go proclaim to Jerusalem: Thus said the LORD:
I accounted to your favor
The devotion of your youth,
Your love as a bride—
How you followed Me in the wilderness,
In a land not sown.
The years in the desert were a time of rebellion in which we provoked God, endlessly to anger, until God condemned a generation to die. And the years in the desert were a time of romance and intimacy as we followed God through an uncharted wilderness.
Our times as well can be understood as the best of times and the worst of times. Maybe, upon reflection, in every generation one can see oneself as living in the best of times and in the worst of times.The world is vast, human experience contains multitudes, and we have freedom to respond to stimuli in ways that increase light or that spread darkness.
I had the opportunity to hear Bar Kuperstein speak this past Monday. Bar was a security guard at the Nova Festival and was among the very last Israeli hostages to be returned. He has a remarkable story of suffering and perseverance and survival and pride. The Jewish people are blessed to have him, and the other hostages and their families, among us as the heroes we need right now. One thing that he shared, which I have been turning over in my head all week, was that, uncharacteristically, his mother did not object to his working on Shabbat of October 7th. God was pushing him to be there, he later shared, because as the head of the security team, he was able to open an emergency exit and lead hundreds of festival attendees to safety before being taken captive. That’s an example of an individual looking at the circumstances of his own life, seeing unparalleled victimization and enduring unspeakable suffering, and choosing to tell a story of agency and heroism.
No Jew with a historical perspective can claim that things have never been worse. I do think, however, that this moment in Jewish life marks a degree of confusion that has not existed for many generations. It has been, perhaps a century, since as many paths and strategies presented themselves and vied for the allegiance of Jews searching for safety and searching for stability.
A century ago, Rav Kook, newly appointed as Rabbi of Yafo and the surrounding agricultural settlements, noted that three forces were vying for the allegiance of the younger generation of Jews and Rav Kook identified those factions as representing, each one of them, a specific value. Orthodoxy championed the banner of kedushah – our sacred traditions. Liberalism championed the value of humanity. And Zionism championed the banner of the Jewish nation, our national revival. Rav Kook saw all three forces as being necessary elements in a full redeemed identity and his dream, unfulfilled in his lifetime and I would argue, as yet unfulfilled, was for all three elements to combine in a new vision of a redeemed Jewish identity.
I have found Rav Kook’s analysis helpful in thinking about individuals or groups whose vision for Jewish life I do not share. Even as I disagree with their diagnoses of our current reality and their prescription for the future, I can, at times, succeed in identifying a positive value they are championing, even if I differ in the mixture of values that animate their worldview.
This form of pluralism has become harder in recent years. The moral valence of political differences has increased in every direction. The stakes seem higher as crisis follows crisis and expected allies let us down again and again. In the realm of religion, the narcissism of small differences leads us to encounter those in our community who live or believe or practice slightly differently as a threat to our own identity rather than as people making different choices.
Sefer Bamidbar offers a model of a unity of purpose with open diversity of expression. When we were encamped in the desert, we had a common goal and moved together in a common direction, but we did so in groups of tribes and family clans. Each tribe with its own place in the sun. Each tribe with its own piece of earth to pitch their tents. Each tribe with its own banner and flag.
Today, I encounter so many prominent voices in the Jewish community who are seeking purity. They want to be a part of a Jewish community that can speak with one voice but the only way to achieve that is to shrink the boundaries of the community or to cut ourselves off from others in self-imposed silos until we can only hear our own voices.
I worry when I hear Jews speak as though the only redeemable and worthy Jews are those who share every one of their core assumptions. That is not how the Jewish people are described by the Torah.
The generation of the desert argued endlessly. They failed repeatedly. They wore Moshe down and they angered God. And yet they stood at Sinai. They received the Torah. They carried the Mishkan through the desert together.
The dream of a perfectly pure Jewish community is not a Torah dream. It is a fantasy of control born from fear. The Torah asks something harder: to build a camp large enough for many banners surrounding the Mishkan and oriented towards a common future.
Sefer Bamidbar is the story of a flawed generation. A generation capable of rebellion and faith, panic and courage, greed and transcendence. It was the best of times and the worst of times. And, in some ways, every Jewish generation is. The question before us is not whether we will live through an age of confusion and argument. We will. We do. The question is whether, despite everything, we can keep moving together toward the Promised Land.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 