Shabbat Shalom. For some reason I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. For causes that remain unknown to me I find myself awake at odd hours of the night, stumbling into what used to be our guestroom but has now become our nursery; and occasionally, while changing a diaper in this strange room, I find myself thinking about parenthood.
On the one hand, I think about Ayelet’s birth, just three weeks ago and that miraculous moment when she entered this world. I think about the first time I held her and how strangely natural it felt; accompanied by this sudden, visceral revelation that this beautiful child was indeed ‘our’ baby, and therefore all felt right in the world.
On the other hand, I think about all the new learning experiences of these last three weeks, the ups and the downs. The learning curves associated with nursing, negotiating infant car seats, sifting through Dr. Spock books as well as sorting through a plethora of grandmotherly advice. And it was during one of these late night swaying sessions when a funny thought occurred to me:
Imagine if you will, the example of putting together that crib that I mentioned several months ago. First you gather the power drill and allen wrench from the basement, setting them beside the cardboard box for when the need arises. Then, you open up the box, examining each piece to make sure everything looks kosher, after all, this crib is pretty precious seeing as not only will it hold your child for the next eighteen months or so, but it will also be holding all of your hopes and dreams, at least metaphorically speaking. Finally, after organizing each and every detail of the construction process you notice that one element is missing: the instruction booklet! You search high and low, under the box? Stapled to the plastic baggy holding the screws? Nothing. Is it possible that they forgot to include instructions on how to build a crib! This is an outrage, a shanda, clearly cause for litigation, or at least a phone call to the Swedish company responsible for this glaring error! Right?
But essentially this is what it is like when you have your first child. The most precious of all things enters into this world, carefully packaged to ensure a safe delivery, and after you open up the box, and clean the little one up from all the Styrofoam peanuts, you discover that there are no instructions! No little pamphlet or manual that comes with this gift of new life. No important safety instructions that you must read, or a manufacturer’s tag that you can not remove… there is nothing! You know I have half a mind to call up the maker of this perfect little package and ask for a refund!
But as a Jew, I know that when I am in need of some careful guidance through the thicket of life, I can always turn to the Torah to find some instruction, and so I flipped in my Tanakh to Parashat B’ha’a’lot’cha for some sage advice from our ancient tradition.
In many ways, this morning’s parasha serves as a tipping point in the Biblical narrative. For weeks, months really, we have been busy reading the parshiyot dealing with Revelation on Mt. Sinai, the construction of the Tabernacle in the desert and the Priestly Codes concerning T’hara and Tumah, the pure and the impure. Now we stand on the precipice of the Children of Israel’s journey through the desert and the many compelling stories which accompany this path through the wilderness. In some ways it feels like Parshat B’ha’a’lot’cha is akin to that moment before you leave the house for a big trip. You check to make sure everything is in its right place, you want to be certain that you packed enough food, the right clothes and have your itinerary in hand before setting off on your journey. And it is in these moments before Moses and the Children of Israel set off on their trek through the wilderness that I find an important lesson from God concerning parenthood.
Often the lessons we internalize are learnt by means of repetition. As a general rule parents engage in the time-honored tradition claiming that if you want your child to learn something, you have to repeat it one million times. For example, the mantra of choice repeated by my own parents during the early years of my childhood was “Joel, be aware of the world around you,” (I had a habit of running into things as a kid.) But it sunk in! So when the Torah repeats a word or phrase numerous times the rabbis encourage us to pay close attention!
In this morning’s parasha, in the section describing the journey of B’nei Yisrael the Torah tell us seven times that the Children of Israel set off and encamped only “Al Pi Adonai,” “According to the command of the LORD.” Chapter 9 verse 20 reads:
עַל-פִּי יְהוָֹה יַֽחֲנוּ וְעַל-פִּי יְהוֹה יִסָּֽעוּ:
“They encamped at the command of the LORD, and they broke camp at a command of the LORD.”
All the commentaries agree, the Torah repeats elements of this phrase seven times to make it clear that God, and God alone was responsible for the movements of the People of Israel in the wilderness. God picked them up and God set them down. God was actively, closely and intimately involved in their every movement while they journeyed through the desert.
While reading a Hasidic commentary by the Ba’al Shem Tov’s grandson Moshe Chaim Ephraim of Sudilkov, in his commentary Degel Machaneh Ephraim, we learn that this glaring repetition of the phrase “Al Pi Adonai” comes to teach us a lesson about parenthood, and indeed God’s love for humanity.
He likens this repetition of phrases to the following mashal, a parable:
He writes:
כשאביו לימד אותו לילך, when a parent teaches a child to walk בתחילה מוליך אותו מעט בידו at first they walk for a while hand in hand ואחר כך מניחו ומרחיק את עצמו מעט ממנו,
Afterward, they must distance themselves from the child
וכוונתו כדי שילך התינוק בעצמו.
Their desire being, that the child should learn to walk on their own.
The Degel Machaneh Ephraim goes on to explain that this mashal, this parable, has a clear nimshal, an exegetical lesson we can learn from the text about God and his love for humankind. He writes: The nimshal relates to our Heavenly Parent who at first revealed to the People Israel the paths towards Avodat Hashem, Serving God’s Holy Name, with explicit detail. God told the people Israel, where they should journey as well as where they should encamp. God told the people Israel where to worship, what was pure and what was impure. God held us hand in hand, as we learned to walk as a people, but ultimately, in both the biblical narrative as well as in our modern lives, God begins to stand at a distance, allowing us to learn to walk on our own.
Over the next several weeks as we read the stories of the Israelite people’s rebellions in the desert as well as the story of the spies who failed to trust in God’s message, we see that already in Biblical times, God was being a good parent, standing at a slight distance allowing the Children of Israel to walk, and even sometimes to stumble on their own path towards the Holy Land.
So too, we can sometimes feel this distance from God in our own lives. We may find ourselves hearkening back to those days of yore when God was so clearly and unmistakably a part of the lives of the Jewish people. We may yearn for the times when God’s miracles were felt as readily as rain, when God’s presence was in the physical form of a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. At these moments of perceived distance, we might well glance to our left and our right to see if our Heavenly parent remains at our side, we might even burst into tears for fear of their absence.
But maybe, just maybe, this distance is only perceived. In actuality perhaps God is exhibiting good parenting skills as God demonstrates the artful practice of letting go. Allowing us to walk on our own, perhaps even allowing us to stumble and fall, all with the intention of letting us learn to walk.
Finally, I want to ask as a new parent, what can this mashal and nimshal, this parable and its accompanying lesson teach us about God? To answer this question, I ask you a new one: I ask of each of you this morning a simple question: “Is it easy to let go?” Well? Is it easy to distance ourselves ever so slightly sometimes from the people we love in order to allow them the space to grow and succeed on their own? The answer is most decidedly no; it is not easy. In fact, it is one of the hardest things in this life we can do. And I imagine it can sometimes be a struggle for our Heavenly Parent as well. But yet each of us knows, in our heart of hearts, that this is the very definition of parenthood, the very essence of love. To be present for our loved ones at all times, while still perfecting the graceful art of disappearing.
And even without an instruction booklet, without a manufacturer’s label on this, the most precious of gifts, I still know this much.
והכוונה שלי כדי שתלך התינוקת בעצמה
And my intention is that this little one will learn to walk on her own.
Shabbat Shalom.
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