Our combined voices were revealed as one

Parashat Bamidbar - Rabbi Shoshana Karlin, 2025/5785

This week, we are starting the book of Bamidbar, also known as Numbers.  This Parashat gives us a key to achieving balance and harmony as a light amongst the nations.  It celebrates the unique energy we each bring to the world, our combined energies, and aligns with Shavuot. 

For Shavuot, the day we were given the Torah, occurred after we all, as a nation, every Jew who had ever existed and would ever exist, agreed that, “We will do and we will hear.”  We will follow all 613 mitzvot without question, and then seek to understand, first together as a people, as a nation, and then the individual interpretation. 

Our combined voices were revealed as one, as we are one with all.  All existence contains ingredients, energy, and attributes of the Divine.  The twelve tribes of Israel, as accounted for and given their place in the promised land in Bamidbar, were celebrating and highlighting these individual attributes.

Each tribe had a specialty. Awareness, Discipline, Divine Connection, Receptivity, Balancing moral order, Agility in Faith and Speech, Protection and Persistence, Pleasure and Blessings, Deep Insight, Partnership, Channel of Divine Energy, and Survival Under Pressure. 

Within each tribe and specialty, there were individuals.  As we see the number of the tribe members counted, they represent the diversity and numerosity of the stars in the sky.  A celestial pattern we can observe, such as a constellation, and all that we cannot observe within that pattern.  Within the Divine attribute of Awareness, how many ways can we represent that attribute?  Endless. What about Discipline or Receptivity?  Endless.

With Torah, we were given a way of life as one.  At Sinai, we were given a choice to be a part of this one.  Without understanding the details, with all our hearts, we were born as a nation.  And in Bamidbar, we are each given a way to bring light into the darkness by celebrating how we can all work together in diversity for global harmony and bliss. 

As a nation recognizing and lifting all voices that stand together for a common Divine goal, we are not destined to live in a desert, a midbar, on earth.  All divine attributes together, all of us, choosing to walk with Torah and illuminate the world, not for the sake of the individual, but for the greater, choose to be holy co-creators in Divine existence.

This Shabbat, read about the tribes of Israel.  Learn about their attributes, get a sense for which attribute resonates with you, and how you can express it to harmonize with the others in our nation to bring more light to Earth.  Shabbat Shalom.