Aimless Journeys?

Rabbi Melanie Aron

June 9, 2001

Earlier this year I was asked to teach a session of the Lehrhaus's Lessons for Leaders program on the book of Numbers. I presented the view that the book itself, like the ancient Israelites, wanders aimlessly. Numbers is without structure, a hodgepodge, a kolbo, a kind of stewpot into which everything is thrown. Think of what's included in this Torah portion: the description of the 7 branched menorah, the purification of the Levites and their work orders, the Second Passover, the cloud and pillar of fire that led the people, the trumpets that called them to assembly, the physical arrangement of the camp, two stories of rebellion by the people and one of rebellion by Miriam and Aaron; all sorts of stories and incidents gathered into one Torah portion without any real connection or even a clear chronological sequence. In the plot too, there is a sense of aimlessness. The people complain and rebel and are punished and then immediately complain and rebel again. Moses appoints leaders to help him, and shortly thereafter, they have either disappeared or turned into rebels themselves. The people wander from place to place, returning to locations they have already visited. There is no sense of progress and certainly no arriving.

The group I taught that night, took umbrage at this description of a book of the Holy Scripture. Moses is a great leader, they said to me. The Israelites are learning from their experiences, of course they are progressing, after all the book ends with the Israelites at the edge of the promised land.

That's true, I said. But they were at Kadesh at the border of the promised land when the book started as well.

I think that Numbers was meant to be different. Along with the other books of the Torah; Genesis with its compelling stories, Exodus and Deuteronomy with their legal passages, the constitution of a new society, Leviticus focused on a worldly order to reflect the order of the sanctuary-- we need a book that's more like real life. We need a book that's open to the possibility, that we don't always arrive, don't always come to a finished product. In fact, Numbers notes, the finished product may always be beyond reach, just after the end of the book. Maybe it is something in the journey, in the struggle, that is really the most important.

In preparing for our board installation last night, I found a wonderful midrash that sees our individual lives and humanity itself as a work in progress:

Then Isaac asked the Eternal: Sovereign of the Universe, when you made the light, You said in Your Torah that it was good. When You made the expanse of heavens and earth, You said in your Torah that they were good. And of every herb You made, and every beast, You said that they were good. But when you made us in Your image, You did not say of us in Your Torah that human beings were good. Why Lord? And God answered him: Because I have not yet perfected you. Because through Torah you are to perfect yourselves, and you are to perfect the world. All other things are completed; they cannot grow. But human beings are not complete, they have yet to grow. Then I will call you good."

The journey may seems aimless, it may or may not be edifying, but within it is the potential for growth and for reaching our human potential.