Organizing Principles for these Wilderness Times
In our Torah cycle, this Shabbat we begin reading a new book: Numbers or Bamidbar. Chapter 1 features a census of the Israelites by tribe, and Chapter 2 begins: "The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying: The Israelites shall camp each with his standard, under the banners of their ancestral house; they shall camp around the Tent of Meeting at a distance."
From the verses that follow, it's easy to picture exactly how the twelve tribes were organized around the Mishkan, the portable Tabernacle structure.
the tribes of Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun camped on the front, or east side of the Mishkan,
the tribes of Reuben, Shimon, and Gad camped to the the south,
the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, and Benjamin camped on the west side,
and the tribes of Dan, Asher, Naphtali camped to the north.
The Torah's text goes on to enumerate exactly how many troops resided in each of these camps, to list the name of each tribal chieftain, and to detail the order in which these groups were to march when it was time to move the Israelite camp from one spot to the next. Rashi further comments that each of these tribes had their own colorful banner -- a flag or sign, color-coded to correspond to their gem on the High Priest's breastplate -- so it was easy to identify who was who. Through its words, this Torah portion depicts a clear map for arranging the collective body of an enormous mass of people, broken neatly into a dozen sub-communities. Everything about this arrangement signals organization and order, which was perhaps precisely the point, particularly in the midst of the Israelites' unpredictable 40-year wilderness journey.
This week, in addition to reading Parashat Bamidbar, we also find ourselves in the final days of lead-up to the holiday of Shavuot. This means that I've been reading the text described above while simultaneously thinking about another time when all the Israelites gathered around en masse: at Mount Sinai. On Shavuot, we celebrate the giving of Torah to the collective Jewish people -- often depicted as a wedding between God and the people of Israel -- but the truth is that things didn't go so well the first time around. As you may recall (and if not, you're invited to review Exodus 32), when Moses ascended the mountain to receive the commandments from God initially, the people down below panicked and turned to idolatry, fashioning a molten golden calf which they then made sacrifices to and danced around saying "This is your God, O Israel."
The story of the Golden Calf becomes a shameful chapter in our foundational history and the paradigm for thinking about both sin and forgiveness (to this day, the vocabulary of this story features centrally in our Yom Kippur liturgy). This tale of failure -- of a crowd acting out of control, with a mob mentality -- is typically not the focal point of our Shavuot holiday celebrations. However, this year, as we read Parashat Bamidbar just a day before Erev Shavuot, the juxtaposition feels clear to me, and I think we would do well to read these two texts in light of one another and pay attention to the cautionary tale. Perhaps the Golden Calf story offers us a warning about how easy it is for large groups of people to veer off course, and the strict system of organization described in Numbers chapter 2 serves as an antidote and an invitation into a more productive type of well-coordinated collectivity.
In our own contemporary society, without a doubt, we can see examples of both models. The pattern of the Golden Calf rings all too true: that it's easy for large groups of people to move in the wrong direction, often from a place of fear, begin to elevate false leaders or gods, and turn to violence. (Please fill in your own blanks when it comes to examples... there are many and I don't want to give over airtime to negative examples this week!)
But also, organizing people into groups is an important key to unlocking the potential for human productivity and goodness. The Israeli judicial protests that began rather organically in January 2023 grew in their organization over the months that followed. Not only did they draw hundreds of thousands of protestors into the streets of Tel Aviv week after week, but after October 7th, it was that same organizational system that pivoted quickly to aid Israelis affected by the attacks when the Netanyahu government fell down on the job (in other words, solid organization led to quick mobilization). This year, we've witnessed another example of effective organizing in South Korea, where after the country's president declared martial law in December, protestors took to the streets en masse and with great coordination, leading to his impeachment, indictment, and removal from office in the months that followed. (Relatedly, research out of the Harvard Kennedy School claims that "nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts -- and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.")
Right now, I am paying careful attention to how our communities -- both the Jewish community and our broader American society -- are realigning and re-organizing themselves (ourselves?) in real time to meet the challenges of this dramatic moment. In early April, for example, I highlighted that many national and local Jewish organizations were banding together to reject the false choice between confronting antisemitism and upholding democracy (i.e. essentially, the using of antisemitism as a pretext for anti-democratic federal actions). Since then, I am proud to report that Seattle's JCRC signed onto that JCPA statement, with over 80% support from its member orgs! This week, I also observed American faith leaders from across traditions come together to speak out against the administration's cruelty and injustice towards immigrants (click here to see a short video from Faith in Public Life). Shifting topics a bit, the American Jewish community has obviously been divided when it comes to Israel/Palestine politics and attitudes towards the Gaza War, but I'm grateful to see growing consensus emerge now across an increasingly wide swath of Jewish communal orgs when it comes to supporting humanitarian food aid for Gaza (speaking of which, here's an opportunity to donate through NIF), drawing on our own Torah's language around the belief in the dignity of every human life and our obligation to love and care for the stranger.
Through all of these examples, I can feel our organizing muscles growing stronger as we traverse our own wilderness. I am inspired by the way our Israelite ancestors arranged themselves in a carefully constructed constellation around the Mishkan, with clear and coordinated leadership in and among the tribes. Today, I see us improving in our community and society's ability to arrange ourselves into multiple "camps" -- each with our own strong leaders, values, and colorful flags -- and then to coordinate with intention across all of these camps for efficiency and impact. Parashat Bamidbar shows us one model for effective organizing, and the holiday of Shavuot reminds us that as long as we are careful to array our camps around "Torat Emet" ("teachings of truth") and not around a misleading golden calf, our coming together has the potential to be revelatory and to move us collectively in the right directions.
Shabbat Shalom, and wishing you a sweet and meaningful Shavuot holiday this Sunday evening, Monday, and Tuesday,
Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum
