Bamidbar: Take This Hammer (Pad it With a Silk Scarf)

Bamidbar (Numbers 1:1-4:20) is one of those Torah portions people like to skip. The word itself means "in the desert."It refers to the Israelites gathering and organizing themselves in their wanderings in the wilderness. Filled in its initial verses with genealogies of men organized into militias, the portion has an adamant left-brain energy. But at its conclusion, there is a description--one of many in Torah--of the portable tabernacle that accompanied the Israelites in their desert wanderings. This brief section is full of wonderments and sensory details of vessels and pans, colorful cloths and strange materiels. The writer of this section presses the point that only the specialist, the assigned priest, can enter the tabernacle, further elevating Bamidbar’s strangeness. I offer the following commentary about the building of the mishkan, the tabernacle, in a more poetic approach and ask readers to relax and receive it with a softened mind and ear tuned toward the Great Mystery. There will be no test at the end, except the one we are daily undertaking as we struggle to live meaningful lives.

The mishkan is unlike any other abode

with its gold, silver, copper pans,
with its blue, purple, crimson dyes,
with its goat hair and dolphin skins
stretched along the branch-lines of acacia
scented like baby’s breath, milky clean.

Yet, we have had to give up
even this shelter, to go within, to find
the true center, where the light
of the everlasting flame singes our hearts,
the way a spark scrapes the branch
into aromatic incense.

What shall we do after forsaking
the letting of blood, the gouging of the mollusk
to make our purple dye?
The torment of the sea-beasts to weave
fabric for our tent of meeting?

One must go out to come in again,
changed.

The pan of oil reflects the fire that burns within,
oil strained through goat hair and cloth,
the blood of ten-thousand generations.
The pan of copper mined in hard labor.

The closer we approach,
the more concentrated the fire,
the more consecrated the fire.

Fire of our souls awakened as in a dream,
gasping for breath like a new-born baby,
gasping for hope, reaching for God.

***
We released the Sky God;
he was only a blue balloon
held on a very flimsy wire.

We watched him slip through the hole
in the immense blue veil of ozone.

Goodbye Osiris, goodbye Baal, goodbye Zeus, goodbye Odin.

We had to forego the psalmist’s prayers for revenge.
Don’t you remember the disembodied tears raining down on us at the Sea of Reeds
when we shook our timbrels and chanted our victory song?

We followed an elusive rainbow, its glittering prism 
that seemed to shoot
in every direction except the one 
where we were headed.

God of the tabernacle, the sanctuary,
God of the Tent of Meeting,
God of the desert,
variegated smoke leading us on.

Some of our ancestors tried to give God a home,

a stone altar sprayed with sacrifice,
a Temple,
Yerushalyaim.

But the Temple become the mistress of the rulers
and their all-too-obedient priests.
The Temple, fixed to land, was burned to ashes,
the way our lambs and doves, sinew and fat, were burned;
the Temple was sacrificed to God.

It taught us: God is not in the land
     any more than God lives in the sky.

I tell you, it used to cost a fair shekel to visit the Holy Place,
and nobody could go inside.

This made God anxious;
our God will not be a kept God:

       we must go out to come in.

The tabernacle voyages with the people,
an ark, a ship of the desert,
a prairie schooner carried on our shoulders.

The tabernacle went with us,
to shtetl and farm, to factories and foreign lands,
to Shanghai and Manhattan and Palm Beach.

The Temple demanded that we come to it,
made us alien to the center
of our own holiness;
it kept men on retainer, men who wore magical vestments and gems,

who spoke in code.

The tabernacle let us know
we had a center where ever we roamed.
***

We Jews have given the world
the important gift of knowing
that wherever we live
God dwells among us, within us, around us.

But old habits--slow to accrete--take as long to discard.
We Jews have learned you must become a
resilient
flexible
portable
prepared
people.

We Jews have learned
to take comfort
in strange lands;
we are still learning
that hospitality is the pathway to peace and prosperity,
that culture is a two-way street
that must be paved with mutual respect.

We Jews have learned from others:
how to make new menus from strange foods to sustain life
how to make new medicines from barks and herbs to heal disease.

We’ve learned new words from our foreign hosts:
like “trust in God but tie up your camel first,”
like “be sure to read the small print,”
“a penny saved is a penny earned,“
“silence equals death.”

    like you must go in
    to come out.

Sometimes you have to abandon
family, spouse, children, friends, pets, house, your country.
Sometimes you must allow
family, spouse, children, friends, pets, house, country
to take their leave of you.

***

In haste, lech lechah, we are told
to pack
to go
to flee
to take that new opportunity
to head west, north, south, east
to Africa, Argentina, Canada, California.

Yes, we have to go very deep within
to find the honest road that can take us farthest out.
We may lose track of everything that
was once important:
    it wasn’t.

We must discard what cannot accompany us:
    everything but our truth must go.
We say goodbye for the moment:

    It will be there;
    it is always right where we left it,
    in the last place we look.

Through the archways and the drawn curtains,
through the long empty passageway,
the column of our souls
where smoke lingers,
where all the encumbrances

between soul and God

are stripped bare
leaving us space for our safe
our very safe
return.

Jannie M. Dresser, copyright May 2010