Wandering in the Desert of the Nations
Every year we finish the book of Bamidbar, the book of the desert, during the period of the Three Weeks. More specifically, it’s the third book of Bamidbar that we finish. As we spoke about in Parshat Beha’alotcha, Bamidbar is a broken book. It is split by pesukim 10:35-36. The first book of Bamidbar is the story of how we traveled from Har Sinai, intending to enter Eretz Yisrael immediately. The two pesukim that discuss the Aron traveling are their own book. And the end of Bamidbar is the story of the path we ended up taking. It’s the story of wandering in the desert for forty years before we were able to get to our destination in Eretz Yisrael. It is this last book, the book of our mistakes, that we are finishing up this week.
The three weeks are a time of deep sadness. However, Rav Schorr points out that there is a duality to this time which creates opportunity for us when we are open to it. We call these three weeks the period of Bein HaMeitzrim, based on Eicha, 1:3: “All her pursuers (rodfeha) overtook her when she was in a constrained place (bein hameitzarim).” There is another way to read ‘rodfeha,’ her pursuers. We can read it as rodef – yud-hey, as those who pursue Hashem. In this way, this famous verse of mourning and entrapment can be turned around to read: All those who pursue an understanding of Hashem will grasp it during this period of constraint.
The underlying idea is that periods of sadness, periods where we feel most constrained, can often also be the periods of our greatest growth. From a place of constraint, we can find expansion. The mashal that Rav Schorr uses to explain this is of a king in a castle. When all is running as normal, when the king is guarded in his inner chambers with all the bureaucratic trappings of his palace, what hope does a simple person have of seeing him? But when the king is traveling, then there is opportunity for people to get closer. We lose the grandeur of the palace, but the overturning of the usual order brings with it opportunity. When we are in galut, Hashem is in galut with us. He travels with us. And though it might seem paradoxical, if we open ourselves up, we can find ourselves closer to him. The purpose of galut is to help us grow.
The connection between the end of Bamidbar and the period of the Three Weeks is a reflection of a deeper connection between the concept of desert and the concept of galut. The two are connected by the nevi’im. Speaking about galut, Hashem informs us, “I will bring you to the wilderness of the nations (Yechezkel 20:35).” And the first Shabbat after Tisha B’av we read the famous pasuk, “A voice calls out in the wilderness, ‘clear the way of Hashem; make a straight path in the desert, a road for our G-d.’ (Yishayahu, 40:3)” The exile that we are currently wandering in is the desert of the nations.
Very often in Hebrew, words that are opposites are connected with the same root. A word, a davar, is a thing that governs and shapes the world. A midbar, a desert, is a place that is unshaped, and therefore ungovernable. It is the opposite of speech. With our words we impose order, form and meaning on the world around us. The desert is the place where there is no existing form and structure. Hashem brought us to the desert, to the place that was ungovernable, because in giving us the Torah He was giving us a new system of governing the world. When we are in a place where there is already structure, it’s very easy to slip into the existing structure, and not create our own. When we are in a place with no path, we are free to create something new.
The desert was the place we were sent to in order to refine and fix our ability to speak. Bamidbar, therefore, is a book that focuses on speech. The sins of Miriam, the meraglim, Korach and Moshe by the rock, were all sins of speech. When the meraglim sinned, the punishment was to return to the desert. We sinned with speech, and we needed to be returned to the empty space where we could recreate proper speech. We go into the desert when we need to learn to speak again.
At the end of the journey in the desert the last generational mitzvah we are given is the laws of vows. A vow or an oath is a way that we use our words to shape our reality. Yaacov was the first to make an oath in the Torah, and he made it when he was in a difficult situation (See Bereisheit 28:20). He set the precedent for us. There is an idea in halacha that a person can make a vow in a time of trouble, and it will help him. The simple understanding is that we vow to do something good, and the good deed is what saves us and helps us. But the deeper meaning is that it is the vow itself that lifts us up.
We are in the period of Bein HaMeitzrim. The Hebrew words, meitzar, straits, tzar, narrow, and tzurah, form, are all from the same root. All forms are constraining. Before something takes a form it is boundless, limitless, but once it assumes a form it is limited. We feel the limitation, the oppression, when the form does not fit us. Oppression comes from living in a reality that doesn’t fit us spiritually. The way out of oppression is learning to speak correctly. This is the deeper meaning behind the words in Mishlei 21:23 “He who guards his mouth and tongue guards his soul from oppression.”
The three weeks, if we include the fast days on both sides, consist of twenty-two days. Rav Shapiro tells us they correspond to the twenty-two letters of the Aleph Bet. These days are days that we are trapped in a narrow space because we are living in a world that we did not form correctly with our words. On Tisha B’av we read Eicha, which is written in alphabetical order. We mourn with the intention to learn to speak and see the world in a way that is not spiritually oppressive. We use our words to re-create our world.
May we all be blessed with words of comfort, and the ability to use this time to grow.