Hukat: Numbers 19:1 - 22:1 Balak: Numbers 22:2 - 25:9
Haftarah Portions: Judges 11:1 - 33 and Micah 5:6 - 6:8
July 15, 2000
12 Tammuz, 5760
Focus Passage: Numbers: 21:10 - 20
The Ambiguity Of An Unknown Future
The people of Israel, as well as all people of G-d are a sojourner people, destined always to be on the way. They never each the point of thinking that G-d has no more tomorrow's to challenge them onward. So, with Israel in the wilderness, the future was always open; and that openness was uncertain and ambiguous. Note the words of movement: " They set out"; "From there they set out"; "From there they set out.... in the wilderness..." Can you imagine the frustration and the discouragement of constantly pitching tents, only to break camp and begin again?
Yet in the sameness of their repetitious living, there was the pull of G-d's tomorrow. The call to follow G-d into the future prevailed, and Israel finally stood on the land promised long before. But the journey was not without its ambiguity, for uncertainty is the inevitable accompaniment of a pilgrim set in history to achieve the purposes of G-d. Perhaps as threatening to Israel as the traditional enemies whom they encountered, the leadership they lost, and the fiery serpents that plagued them, was the monotonous sameness of every tomorrow that seemed to get nowhere. Modern lives are challenged to triumph over the same kind of obstacles. G-d has set humanity on a star crossed voyage. The voyage of redeeming the world for G-d. The why is a better tomorrow, the how is the Torah.
Shalom U'Vracha,
Thomas and Greta
