Sometimes you have to pack up and go, no matter how lavish the edifice you have created, no matter how much effort you put into the conceiving and the doing and the making. No matter how many fine elements you put into it: precious metals, expensive threads, gemstones, skins of exotic animals. Sometimes you have to pack up and go,
This is the lesson, or a lesson, that I see in this week’s Torah portion. I see in it something about the confluence, the conversation, between holy aspiration and the inevitable fact of impermanence.
The Torah portion is called Bamidbar, and it is made up of the opening chapters of the Book of Numbers, right in the middle of our Torah scroll. It takes place bamidbar, which literally means “in the wilderness.” It unfolds in a place where there are no milestones; in a landscape where we might encamp but where we are unlikely, unwilling, or unable to take root.
Bamidbar. In the wilderness.
Wilderness itself plays a dominant role in our ancient narrative. The wilderness is practically a character in and of itself. After the exodus from Egypt, we stay in the wilderness for 40 years – and 123 chapters of Torah. But despite being in a desert under an open sky, eating bread that magically appears every morning, our ancient ancestors – at least as we imagine them – pushed beyond mere desert subsistence. They put their creativity to work, building a holy tent, a mishkan, with an altar and implements and curtains and cloths and basins and bowls and all sorts of holy regalia. They created this holy tent with the elaborateness of a palace, with the sacredness of a Temple. For weeks of Torah portions we read the plans and for weeks we read the execution of the plans.
But now, in this week’s portion, we begin to receive a different set of instructions – about how to pack up the tent and move. There are blankets involved, and skins and crates and poles. There is a clan dedicated to the task of packing and another to the task of shlepping. This means that all the equipment for moving and the contrivances that make the holy tent portable had to have been conceived in advance and built out at the same time as the mishkan itself. The mechanism for movement was hardwired into the system.
This feels to me to be a powerful message for us. That motion is not the enemy of constancy; impermanence is not the failure of permanence. Instead, staying and going live in relationship with each other, in a rhythm. Staying and going are both part of the plan; both equally in the nature of things.
In this time that we are living in, this time that feels like a wilderness, with no reliable milestones to guide by, we are feeling a threat to so many of the edifices we have created, and that we have poured our faith into. Democracy, decency, kindness, safety. In this time that we are living in, it is easy to feel like all those institutions, all those values, have failed. That we are facing a world in which all those things are shortly to be abandoned.
But I would say, it is our ability to be in motion, to be flexible but strong, that is being tested. This is the time to demonstrate that we can pack up our most precious things, and that we know how to do that. How to wrap them so they are kept safe from dents and dings. To show that we know how to carry them, or to designate and trust the people who will carry them, and that when the landscape is right, in a kind place with water and shade, we will unpack and rebuild.
This is not fleeing or failing. This is succeeding at working with impermanence, at taking impermanence into account. Packing up and going are part of the plan. We pack, we go, we rebuild, and we rejoice for as long as the landscape allows it. And then we do it again.
It feels like there is so much being lost right now. But we still carry those things in us. Like Levites carrying crates of holy regalia. They are not lost. They are in our hands, on our shoulders, in transit. And we will keep carrying those things while we are in motion. And when the time comes to camp again, then oh what a lucky and blessed day, when once again we sink the posts and set the beams, iron out the tent flaps and stand again on holy ground.