teeming with possibility

This week marks 10 years since I was ordained as a rabbi. The hum of nigun Rosh Hodesh Sivan has been in my head all week. It was the melody we sang as we processed during our smicha ceremony. The same melody Rabbi Mó and I chose to sing as we entered our new sanctuary for the first time. And given that today is actually Rosh Hodesh Sivan, I encourage you to listen to Rabbi Mo’s three-part harmonies and let it soften you. Summer is coming. 

That year, as is true this year, it was just a few days before Shavuot, a holiday known to the rabbis as zman matan torahteinu /the time of the giving of Torah. And since the festival of Shavuot is always preceded by the reading of parshat Bamidbar, the very beginning of the book of Numbers, this parsha always marks my ordination-versary. 

Believe it or not I still remember the dvar Torah my classmate and beloved friend Rabbi Jordan Braunig shared. And today, I want to share some of those words with you, with his permission. Some of you may already be familiar with his wit and wisdom from the Elul Prompts. 

Rabbi Jordan began by asking, 
“What is it, after all, that we are supposed to learn from our tradition's mythic story of a Torah revealed to us on a long lost mountaintop?  Believe it or not, I am not the first to ask this question.

In a midrash on the first words of the book of Bamidbar or Numbers the rabbis ask this exact question, lamah b'midbar Sinai?  Why in the wilderness of Sinai?  You might have thought that Torah would be given in the land itself, in one of the holy cities or at the site of the Temple, but no – it's given in the sticks.  So why is it given in the wilderness?  The midrash answers its own question, stating: By three things was the Torah given, ba’eish, ba’mayim u'vamidbar – by fire, by water and by wilderness.  

The first two are easy enough to understand.  Fire and water are each essential for life – fire warms, it illumines, it sustains – water, renews, hydrates, transforms.  Wilderness on the other hand...

But, it is the Torah that comes by way of wilderness, that confounding and compelling image, that speaks to the experience of studying Torah…

To find your way into a text, to really wiggle your way in, is to experience the vastness, the unknowability of the wilderness.”

I am personally forever grateful to my teachers allowed us the freedom to see where the study would take us.  

Where would we emerge?  
Who would we be?

In a world full of push notifications, Torah study is so compelling because we can get lost in it and because we can find ourselves in it. And this parsha always reconnects me to those possibilities. 

Rabbi Jordan continues, 
“The midrash goes on, elucidating just what it means to receive Torah by wilderness.  It teaches that in order to acquire words of Torah a person must make herself as unclaimed, unbounded, ownerless as the wilderness…”

Given the many demands on my time and heart, this reminder is precious. Torah study is an invitation to not know, to be open to what could be. 

The midrash then goes on to ask the same question and answer it differently. Lamah b'midbar sinai? Why in the wilderness of Sinai? So that no one people can say it was given to them on their land and therefore belongs to them. Torah is itself ownerless, it is all of ours. In this moment of political and religious conflict, remember that. 

Rabbi Jordan concluded, 
“A version of this same midrash appears in the Pesikta d'rav Kahana, but it includes one additional line.  Posing the question there.  Lamah b'midbar sinai?  Why in the wilderness of Sinai?  It answers, “just as the wilderness has no end, so too Torah has no end.”  

In this heartbreaking and blooming world, it feels helpful to connect to the sense of wonder I felt at this time in years past. I offer each of you the very beautiful blessing Rabbi Jordan offered me some 10 years ago. 

May your experience of Torah be limitless. May you find wisdom at each juncture of your journey. May you be blessed to study Torah that illuminates and Torah that refreshes. Torah that is wild and boundless and teeming with possibility.