Learning and Yearning
The Torah was given in a desert. It is a place where we thirst for much more than what we have. The desert dynamic of Torah reminds us to pay attention to our soul’s’ cry, “when will I enter the Promised Land where my soul’s thirst for G-dliness will be satisfied.“ BAMIDBAR BAMIDBAR
A Desert Torah?
Much has been said of the fact that in most years, we read the opening parsha, of the fourth Biblical book, “Bamidbar-In the desert”—which carries the same title as the book itself—on the Shabbos that precedes the Festival of Shavuos. The most obvious connection between this specific theme of the desert and the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai is that the Torah was given in the desert. However, the fact that the Torah was given in the desert and not in the Land of Israel, itself, begs for further clarification.
Several explanations have been advanced as to why G-d chose to give the Torah in a desert.
The Midrash explains that the message
BAMIDBAR conveyed by the giving of the Torah in the desert is that the Torah can be claimed by all, just as there is no monopoly on owning desert land. (That was, before oil was discovered.)
Alternatively, the desert is the symbol of humility, a necessary trait for sincere and enduring acceptance of the Torah.
However, if we put so much weight on the symbolism attached to the theme of a desert in conjunction with the giving of the Torah, a powerful question arises:
Insignificant Location
Usually, when a major event occurs in a designated area, there can be two possibilities. Either, the place is chosen because of its uniqueness. Or the event gives the place a new face. Uniqueness is either the cause or the effect.
In our own day and age, we can think of numerous memorials that were established in places where some major event—victory or BAMIDBAR catastrophe—occurred. “Ground-Zero” is an example that readily comes to mind. Occasionally, that place will be designated as a national landmark. Historically, watershed events serve as foundations for an enduring civilization that grows out of that event and within that location. Cities, and even societies, are often built on the grounds of historical and cataclysmic events.
Yet, when it comes to Sinai—both the desert and the mountain—began as and remained totally insignificant geographic locations. The desert remained a desert and the mountain carries absolutely no holiness for Jews. And while we have answers as to why G-d chose that location for the giving of the Torah, we do not have an adequate rationale for the lack of an impact that Torah had on that location.
More importantly, we must ask ourselves, what possible lesson can we learn from this apparently negative phenomenon—that the giving of the Torah at Sinai had little or no impact on the environs in which it was given?
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What has the Torah Taught You?!
A blunt message from the lack of significance attributed to the Sinai desert and Mountain is that one can study Torah with total devotion and still remain a spiritual nobody. This can be illustrated by a story of a Jew whose rabbi asked him what he had learned. The Jew quickly rattled off a litany of tractates of the Talmud and other Torah literature that he had studied. The rabbi was unsatisfied with his response. “You’ve been telling me what Torah texts you have learnt, however you said nothing what these texts have taught you!”
To be sure, as our Sages told us, one should learn Torah even if it is done superficially and for some ulterior motive. Torah possesses intrinsic holiness. Yet, its stated goal is to affect our lives in a positive way and get us out of the “desert” into the “Promised Land.”
We Must Know We are in a Desert
On a deeper level, it can be said that had the Torah changed the desert and transformed it into a blossoming and verdant inhabited area, BAMIDBAR in both the physical and spiritual sense of these terms, we would have lost the value of yearning for a better situation. In order for us to grow, we must develop a sense of yearning for a better world. The experience of emptiness that generates a feeling of yearning can be a positive force when it leads us to act in a way that will get us out of our internal exile.
When we feel depressed, we might find some comfort in the knowledge that it might be a result of our soul’s sense of emptiness and yearning to go higher. When we quench our soul’s thirst by way of the study of Torah and observance of Mitzvos, the soul feels satisfied and the depression may leave us as well. And no matter how good we are, we are still in what is Biblically known as the “desert of nations,” the physical and spiritual state of exile that we yearn to get out of.
Putting it simply: To get out of the desert, we must first know that we are in a desert.
King David eloquently expresses this idea in his book of Psalms (Psalm 63) when he BAMIDBAR speaks of how his soul thirsts for G-d in a “parched and weary land.” The desert symbolizes the emptiness we feel being in exile far away from Jerusalem and the Holy Temple. And while even in exile we adhere to the Torah scrupulously, we still feel a void in our lives, because we have not yet arrived in the Promised Land and the holy city of Jerusalem.
The Torah was thus deliberately given in a desert and remained so, so that we are constantly reminded of the need to pay attention to our soul’s’ cry, “when will I leave this wilderness and enter the Promised Land where my soul’s thirst for spirituality and G-dliness will be satisfied.“
From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Bamidbar by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.
