12 May PARSHAT BAMIDBAR: WHO OWNS JUDAISM? WHY GIVE THE TORAH IN A DESERT, NOT IN FIVE-STAR RESORT?

The Desert
This week’s parsha,
named “Bamidbar,”
which means “in the
desert,” is always
read preceding the
holiday of Shavuos,
when we celebrate the giving of the Torah at
Sinai, more than 3,300 years ago, in the year
1313 BCE.
One reason for reading this parsha as a
preparation for Shavuos is because the Torah
was given “bamidbar,” in a desert. It was at
Har Sinai in the Sinai desert where the
newly liberated Hebrew slaves were molded
into a nation and given the blueprint for
repairing the world. But that only carries the
question over: Of all places, why indeed was
Torah given in a wilderness?
What is more, our sages describe Sinai as
the marriage between G-d and His people;
whoever heard of getting married in a barren
desert? The Torah should have been given in
a splendid environment, perhaps in the
Hilton or the Waldorf-Astoria, not in a
desolate wilderness!
Let us introduce one more question: Why

was it necessary for the Jewish people to
wander 40 years in this desert before
entering the Promised Land? Was 210 years
in Egypt, including more than 80 years of
hard labor, not enough? Why liberate them
from Egypt only to put them through another
40 years in the wilderness?
There are many explanations for the unique
relationship between Torah and the desert.
Here are three.
Absolute Sublimity
1) Had the Torah been given in a civilized
city or community, people might have
defined it as a product of a particular culture,
milieu, and environment. Sophisticated
academics would explain to us the particular
“genre” of Torah, as if it were an outdated,
modern, or post-modern, piece of literature,
an epic or lyric, a work of history, law,
tragedy, or philosophy. They would
enlighten us as to whether Torah belonged to
the time of the Athenians, the Hellenistic
age, the Greco-Roman period, the Byzantine
age, or another period of civilization. Torah
would be labeled, classified, and qualified.
It would be “put into perspective.”
But Torah cannot be put into a particular

cultural or artistic perspective. Torah is not
culture, literature, art, history, law, or fiction.
Torah embodies the eternal truths about
existence, life, and destiny that speak in
every language, in every culture, in every
age, and to every soul. The Torah cannot be
reduced to a particular time frame or
reference point. It benefits all the arts but
never competes with them.
Professor Abraham Joshua Heschel (himself
a scion of the great Chasidic masters) put
it thus: “Why does the Bible surpass
everything created by man? Why is there no
work worthy of comparison with it? Why is
there no substitute for the Bible, no parallel
to the history it has engendered? Why must
all who seek the living G-d turn to its pages?
“Set the Bible beside any of the truly great
books produced by the genius of man and
see how they are diminished in stature. The
Bible shows no concern with literary form,
with verbal beauty, yet its absolute sublimity
rings through all its pages. Its lines are so
monumental and at the same time so simple
that whoever tries to compete with them
produces either a commentary or a
caricature. It is a work we do not know how
to assess. Other books you can estimate, you
can measure, compare; the Bible you can
only extol. Its insights surpass our
standards. There is nothing greater. In
three thousand years it has not aged a day.
It is a book that cannot die. Oblivion
shuns its pages.”
“Absolute sublimity.” Such a work must
be taught and transmitted in a desert. A
desert is not associated with any particular
culture or form of living. A desert is
barren, raw, and plain. A desert is not
sophisticated; it is real and simple.
Ownerless
2) Had the Torah been given in a particular
city or community, its inhabitants would
have claimed copyrights on it. Had the
Torah been given in Boro Park, Crown
Heights, Williamsburg, Lakewood, or
Monsey, these communities would claim
“ownership” of the Torah. “We know how
to interpret Torah, how to assess it, how to
appreciate it. It belongs to us.” The same
would hold true if the Torah was given
in Teaneck or the Upper West Side.
The desert, on the other hand, is
ownerless. Nobody wants the desert. It
belongs to nobody. Torah, too, is
ownerless. It belongs to every Jewish soul
on earth. Nobody holds any “rights” to
the Torah. It is the living, vibrant
conversation of G-d with every living Jew.
No group, denomination, or community
“owns” it more than anyone else. (Of
course, those privileged to study Torah

and adhere to its integrity and formula ought
to teach and inspire; but nobody owns it.)
Life in the Fast Lane
3) Had the Torah been given in a civilized
and splendid terrain, we might have believed
that its objective was to guide the beautiful
life and the splendid heart.
But that is not Torah.
Torah does not tell us that life is easy and
that faith is bliss. On the contrary, we were
placed in a personal and global wilderness,
and life is a battle. And it is precisely this
battle that G-d intended us to face, day in
and day out. Do not be disturbed or
demoralized, the Torah teaches, by your
traumas, challenges, inconsistencies, and
weaknesses. Do not be shaken when you do
not live up to your highest aspirations and
often do not actualize or maintain your
inspiration. Do not be discouraged; because
the Torah was given precisely to help us
pave a road in the barren desert of the human
psyche, to create a highway in the jungle of
history and in the personal jungle of our
anxiety-ridden brains.
Had the Torah been given in a beautiful city,
then all we would have is a guide on how to
live in beauty, in ecstasy. But Torah came to
teach us how to confront our wilderness and
to transform a desert into a paradise.
That is how the spiritual masters explained
the reason for the Torah being given on a
mountain. Why a mountain, and not flat
land?
A mountain is essentially elevated earth.
That is the profound message of Torah: With
earth, gravel, dirt and mud, you must battle.
That is intrinsic to the human condition and
the reality of our world. Yet you must
remember that your mission is to elevate the
earth, to introduce holiness and G-dliness
into a mundane and soiled world.
G-d did not desire holy people doing holy
things; he wanted people who think they are
unholy doing holy things; to disentangle
themselves from the voices that tell them
they are anything but whole and one,
derivatives of infinite oneness. He desired
that earthly human beings become mountains
of moral dignity and divine grace.