BAMIDBAR: INTERNALIZING THE RAPTURE
By: Suri Davis
If only: “Shivti b’vais Hashem, kol yimai chayai, lachzot b’noam Hashem/oh to dwell in the house of G-d all the days of my life…”
Numbers 4:5-6: When the camp is about to travel, Aaron and his sons must come and take down the partition curtain and cover the ark of the testimony with it. They must put a covering of tachash-skin on it, and on top of that they must spread a cloth completely turquoise. Then they must put its poles in place.”
The Rebbe in the Hitva’aduyot 6845, vol. 4, pp. 2139-2141 questions why there is such care in hiding the furnishings and utensils of the Sanctuary. “The lesson for us in this is that even though these furnishings express and embody sublime levels of Divine consciousness, G-d does not want us to bask constantly in the experience of the spirituality they express. Rather, G-d desires that we spread awareness of Him in the “desert,” in the mundane, material world, even though doing so prevents us from maintaining the intense consciousness of G-d that is ours when the Tabernacle is set up and all its furnishings are uncovered.”
I wonder why we couldn’t remain in the state we were in in the desert, where G-d provided for our every want or need. Why Rashbi was instructed to return to his cave, when he was angered by a farmer working his land, rather than learning Torah. Our challenge in life, after Adam and Eve sinned is to resolve the material world and wants and needs with the challenge of imbuing it with spirituality and resisting material temptation in favor of religious laws, even as we daven by looking at our Apple watches to see who is texting and calling us.
We are about to celebrate Shavuoth, and on the second day of Shavuoth we say yizkor, prayer for ancestors who died. G-d partnered with us in creation, as we say in kiddush every Friday night, Asher barah Elokim laasot/as G-d created and continues to create, with us as partners. Our parents who partnered with G-d to parent us are brought in to the three holy festivals and Yom Kippur, an acknowledgment of this partnership between G-d and man.
Shavuoth is the when G-d gave us the Torah on Mount Sinai and is likened to a marriage, and when we sin, G-d tells us that He remembers are young love together after Exodus from Egypt, when we were enraptured with Him and followed Him in the desert for 40 years.
By covering the holy utensils, we acknowledge that we cant stay in the honeymoon suite forever, that we have to continue with the material world in which G-d placed us while staying true and dedicated to G-d our eternal partner. It forces us to take that rapture of our holy relationship and internalize it so we can live in the challenging world G-d gave us. When bombs fall on Israel, even the most secular Jew turns to G-d for salvation, as do Jews worldwide.
Every Shavuoth we are reminded that our challenge is to feel that we were at Mount Sinai receiving the Torah, feel the rapture, capture it year round and internalize for the entire year. When we chant the Torah portion each week, it acts as a mnemonic reminder of this rapture mandate, to sustain us until we merit the final redemption, speedily in our day.
Gut chodesh.
Shavuoth Sameach.
Good Shabbos.
-Suri