Parshat Bemidbar, Numbers 1:1 -4:20
Memorial Day weekend is here. For most of us this signals that summertime is about to begin. You know what they say, after Memorial Day you can begin to wear white shoes!
With summer comes the inevitable summer vacations and the dilemma of what and how to pack. Should I travel lightly and avoid checking bags that they now charge fees for? Or should I make sure to have just the right outfit for every occasion? In either case, packing for a summer trip brings both ingenuity and skill to ensure that everything fits and arrives with the fewest wrinkles!
In this week’s Torah portion Bemidbar, the beginning of the fourth book of the Bible, the priests are given packing instructions! Aaron and his sons are told precisely how to pack up the Tent of Meeting for transport as the Israelites will now make their way through the Sinai desert toward the Promised Land. Aaron and his sons, the Cohanim, are strictly responsible for covering all of the utensils used in the sacrificial system, the altar itself and the Ark of the Covenant. They are to cover them in special cloths of blue and crimson (royal colors) and then further cover everything including the Menorah in some kind of skin. In some translations this is goat skin and in other translations dolphin skins. But they must carefully wrap and prepare all of the special vessels and ladles, and bowls and fire pans and furnishings as well. The priesthood must do these special tasks before the Kohathites and the Gershonites and Merarites, groups of Levites, come to carry the pieces of the Tent of Meeting through the wilderness until they would make the next camp.
The priesthood attends to such packing detail. The highest caste must do this seemingly menial work. Their attention to these details helps to keep the mysteries of the sanctuary intact. The Sages taught that God’s Divine Presence dwelt in the Tent of Meeting and no one but the Cohanim could encounter the Divine One. These unique and special vessels and the altar were likened to seeing God. Thus Eleazar, Aaron’s son, had to cover them and prepare these details so that the Kohathites charged with carry these specific things would not look upon them and die.
Packing up the Tabernacle in the desert is hardly packing for summer vacation. But the fact that the Torah outlines the packing process in great detail tells us a lot about the sanctity and holiness of all of these parts of the Tabernacle. It shows who is responsible not only for packing but for taking care of these details, this minutiae, and shows a loving responsibility faithfully executed. I say faithfully executed because all of these utensils and holy bowls and fire pans contain the Holiness of the Divine in them.
Today where do we find access to the holiness in the vessels that help us encounter the Divine? All too often our own awe and wonder is replaced by cynicism and a failure of faith. But if we can capture the awe; capture the holiness inherent in Jewish life then we might just overcome the idea that we need to that it doesn’t exist anymore—only for Bible stories. Access to the Divine and Holy Presence of God is still a possibility today but it takes a combination of prayer and prophetic purpose to instill in our souls the loving and faithful determination to reach to out to God and find God is reaching out to each of us. In a few days our community will be called upon to live out and speak out and march out in prophetic purpose our vision of a world of justice and equality for LGBT people. As we await the Supreme Court decision (perhaps next week) let us use this time as a time of preparation and packing—packing ourselves with the hope and inner fortitude and prayers for strength so that we might bring about a world of the includes our prophetic vision of inclusion.
Posted by Eric at May 20, 2009 03:46 PM
