Make Your Desert Bloom

Every year, we read a Torah portion called Bamidbar—in the desert—on the Shabbat before Shavuot. This portion describes the census of the Jews in the desert. Just as we count forty-nine days and then celebrate Shavuot, so should we read about the counting of the Jews and then celebrate Shavuot.

This explanation seems random: We match one count to another and merge them into a pre-Shavuot cholent? There must be a deeper message here that underscores the festival of Shavuot. The Jewish mystics did not disappoint and pointed to a much deeper meaning here that yields a delightful life lesson.

When People Coalesce

When you count a group of people, individuals are transformed into a unit. Instead of three thousand individuals, they become a single unit of three thousand. Each person was an entire world before, but now each person is much greater than before. Until now, they were only as valuable as their respective skills. Now, they are part of a larger unit. What one lacks, the other fills in. They are one.

Think of a book. Essentially, a book is a string of letters. If a child, who can only read letters, chants the entire string of letters aloud, the book makes no sense. The letters wouldn’t convey anything. Letters only convey ideas when strung into words that form sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. Each letter indeed has independent meaning, but when read as a long sequence, the letters lose their meaning. In other words, a book only has value when letters coalesce to form words.

The same is true of people. Each person brings a host of skills and values to the table. However, each person’s value is unrelated to the value of others unless they coalesce to form a community and work together. If they don’t merge, and each is out for themselves, they work at cross purposes. Each wants the resources that belong to the others. Not only does a community fail to form, but the lives of the individuals deteriorate into chaos. When they coalesce, a new reality is created where each person’s value finds greater expression through the communal prism.

Before the Jewish census, the Jewish people were a disparate group of individuals thrown together with no real connection. Before they could come before G-d as a nation to receive the Torah, they had to coalesce into a community. That is why we read about the census before the festival of Shavuot, when we received the Torah.[1]

Rocks That Form Cities

This very thinking also applies to the name of this Torah portion, which, as we learned, is Bamidbar—in the desert. The desert has plenty of rocks—large rocks, small rocks, rock outcroppings, etc.

Cities also have lots of rocks. In the old days, most houses in the Orient were stone. The difference between the desert and the city is that the desert’s rocks are haphazard and strewn about. They aren’t organized into groupings of structures. In the city, the stones are organized into a deliberate scheme of buildings.

Stones are arranged to form walls, walls form rooms, and rooms form a house. Then a row of houses forms a block, rows of blocks form a street, rows of streets form a neighborhood, and rows of neighbourhoods form a city. They are all comprised of rocks. In the city, the stones create cohesion and union. In the desert, they are disparate and sow confusion.

Organizing The Stones of Creation

G-d created the world with letters and words. These divine letters are the bedrocks of creation. However, you don’t see these letters when you gaze at the world. You see a disparate collection of individual things. When G-d gave us the Torah, he taught us about the Divine unifying theme that permeates creation. In the Torah, the scattered items of the world find unified purpose. They are all created by the same alphabet. It is like the long sequence of letters that only finds meaning when one discovers how to form words.

This is why the Kabbalists referred to letters as stones. Letters form words and sentences as stones form houses and cities.

Isn’t it fascinating that the Hebrew words for desert and communicator are similar? One is midbar the other is medaber. They are formed by the same letters. The midbar, the desert, is filled with haphazard piles of stones. The medaber, the communicator, organizes the stones in proper sequence to make sense. The Torah is G-d’s communication. He speaks to us through letters that are organized into words. This enables us to organize the world’s chaos into something with cohesive meaning.

Make Your Desert Bloom

It is not only the world that is chaotic without the order introduced by the Torah, but also our lives. Our lives are comprised of many aspects that are not necessarily related. We form ties with people around us, but we have different types of ties with various kinds of people. Our family might be very different from our friends. The persona we bring to school might be unrecognizable from the persona we bring to play.

We have many eclectic interests that are not necessarily related. We might enjoy travel and being at home, indulgence and discipline, saving and spending, caring for ourselves, and giving to charity. We might also like to read and to hike, we might be interested in medicine, history, music, and geography. These are not necessarily related.

On the surface, our interests can seem eclectic and random. They are like the letters a child reads in a book without understanding the code that gives them meaning. Our life feels chaotic, scattered, and desert-like when seen like this. Our task is to make our personal desert bloom. Our task is to find the unifying meaning that streaks through each of our eclectic interests.

It is like music played in a symphony. Each instrument sounds different, but they meld into a beautiful symphony when arranged. The difference between cacophony and symphony is harmony. When we find internal harmony, our scattered elements merge, the differences meld and complement each other.

During Shavuot, our task is to turn our lives into a symphony by making space for G-d in everything we do. We might have disparate interests, but if we serve G-d in all of them, the chaos becomes order. G-d isn’t served only in charity; He is also served when we invest in our family. G-d isn’t served only in discipline; He is also served when we indulge in ourselves, but for His sake. Such as splurging on Shabbat celebrations or hospitality.

In this way, we give meaning to the eclectic interests of our lives, and we make our personal desert bloom. When we read the Torah portion this Shabbat about transforming individuals into a group and a desert into a city, let’s take the message to heart. Let’s ask ourselves how we might bring unified meaning to our lives to enjoy harmony rather than chaos.

[1] Historically, the census occurred after the Torah was given because the Jews formed a community without it. However, every year on Shavuot, we receive the Torah again on a higher and deeper level than before. Thus, we need to work on our unity and cohesion in the lead-up to this festival. This is why we read about the census, the counting of the Jews, every year before Shavuot.