The parasha that we read today was filled with some pretty obscure details. You may have found yourself skimming over the census of the Levite workforce and the assignments of specific duties to specific clans in moving and transporting the parts of the Mishkan. See, during those 40 years of journeying through the wilderness, the mishkan was the holy place that we built to house the Presence of God, to make sacrifices, and to receive the word of God. But we were on the move, so it had to be portable. It was like being on a massive backpacking trip with 600,000 people, and we had to be able to break camp, pack up, move, and set everything back up again.
And today, we read about who did what work. All Levites, the Gershon family was responsible for the cloths, coverings, screens; the Merari family was responsible for the planks, bars, posts, sockets, pegs; and the Kehat family (in last week’s parasha) handled the most sacred objects: the Ark that held the 10 Commandments, menorah, altar, sacred utensils.
These details might seem pretty irrelevant to us. After all, we no longer have the Mishkan and all of its parts, and we do have people who know that they are descended from Levites (any Levites here?), but we don’t know which family they were in. But as we prepare to celebrate Shavuot beginning tomorrow night, and we experience ourselves receiving Torah, we affirm that the Torah is eternal, that it has endless teachings for us, that it speaks directly to our lives.
So, let’s look a little deeper at our parasha here to see what the Torah is really offering us with these seemingly irrelevant details, and I think we’ll find that the Torah is teaching us something so essential to our lives.
First, the Torah is saying that there is a holy place in our midst, a place where God resides, and this place needs to be attended to and carried – by us. Second, the Torah is saying that we carry this place through the wilderness.
We’ve just started the book of B’midbar, “in the wilderness.” The books of the Torah follow the progression of our lives. Bereshit, Genesis, is the beginning: our coming into the world, the stories of our origins, our families. Exodus is our adolescence: we become free people, and no longer under Pharoah, we learn who we are. Vayikra, Leviticus contains a lot of rules of how to live in society, it’s our entering adulthood. So, B’midbar, the wilderness, is, you guessed it, the time that for me started a few years ago and lasts through 40 years of wandering until you get to the last book of the Torah, Deuteronomy, which reviews everything that happened so far, which is like retirement, old age.
What do the Levites do during the 40 year journey? Just like us, they work, and they schlep. That’s what the Torah says – they do avodah, their labor, and masah, their porterage, the carrying around of the items that they are responsible for. And they also do Mishmeret, guarding of all of the sacred items that make the Mishkan. So if we read this parasha not as obscure details from an ancient time, but rather as we read Torah, that is, as a mirror of our lives – as the Sfat Emet teaches: Torah is compared to water because when we look into it, it reveals a reflection of ourselves – the question for us is: what is the work of the Levites today? When we’re in the midbar, in the wilderness of our lives, what is the avodah, the masah, the mishmeret, the work, the schlepping, the guarding that is needed for us to carry a mishkan, a sacred place where God can reside with us wherever we are in the wilderness? I’m asking you a personal question: what of all the labor you do allows you to have a holy place in the wilderness?
The Torah’s model for a Mishkan in the wilderness is a central place where all of the tribes are stationed around the central shrine with the Levites and the priests in the innermost area. It’s a community, and all the duties of the Levites that we read about today are performed in cooperation with each other. It’s a community quite like the community we have here, and you all are the Levites. I want to hold up a mirror to you and show you the work you do to carry this place as a mishkan in the wilderness.
Look at you. The Merari’s work was to carry the planks and bars – look at you who do the heavy lifting, the hard work to get this building rebuilt. The Gershuni family had to carry the softer stuff, but the work was just as hard, like the many of you who prepare meals for the sick, who comfort the mourners, who teach the children, who serve on committees. The Kehati family guarded and protected the ark and the sacred utensils, just like you who serve as gabbais and Torah readers and prayer leaders.
This past week, we honored our volunteers of the year, and we celebrated people who do a lot of the heavy lifting in carrying this Mishkan. And this past week we also had reason to remember why we need a mishkan. When there is a loss, all of our levites are in place to care for the dead and to care for the mourners. Week after week after week, it’s astounding the number of people around here who carry a plank or two and in doing so, make a Mishkan in the wilderness of Marin County.
And so our parasha turns out not to be so irrelevant after all. It invites us to look at the work we do in our lives. We all do plenty of labor and schlepping like the Levites did, but do we do work that is avodah, masah, mishmeret? that holy work that allows us to carry with us a mishkan, a holy place, as we journey these years through the wilderness?
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