Rabbi Meir says, “Whoever studies Torah for its own sake, merits many things.” What does “for its own sake mean? Generally, to do Torah, to learn from Torah, what it is we are to do.
The Sefat Emet teaches: Midrash likens Torah to a wilderness. Torah needs to be as ownerless as a wilderness. In Bamidbar 21:18 we read,” From the wilderness to Mattanah.., which can be read as place name or as a gift. So, Bamidbar is both a place of wildness, a wilderness, and is also a gift to those who said yeish, at Sinai.
What might be that gift -the gift of word, daber, the gift of reading, understanding through word, speech, that lives in Bamidbar?
Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, was a Rabbi of the Shoah, like Rabbi Oshrey. Both lived in that void on earth, those innumerable places of wild evil, a wilderness now void of justice, a tohu vavohu, where word made no sense. Rabbi Shapira addresses the moment of discovery of word:
“The adult, too familiar with the shapes of the letter, will approach them with less imaginative excitement. Few adults are privileged to sense the wonder of the letters themselves; it is children who are inspired to read mysteries within their shapes”.
Indeed, says R. Shapira, only one who is learning something new, can be said to be learning directly from God.
In Talmud, Rebbe, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, says”…I have learned most of all from my students: “Ones student is the source of greatest revelations, simply because what he is learning is new to him, and therefore he is being taught by God.” Ta’anit 6a
Similarly, when one is relearning Torah, Torah that one has already learned, one should learn something new from it, so that God is again given the opportunity to be our teacher.
When I read this, my mind went back to the Victoria Library, when it was in the basement of the Legislature Buildings. I can see my small self, standing in front of the rows and rows of books, my mother waiting, not an inkling of impatience, as I looked and looked at the books. I must have been barely 4, as my hair was still long and blonde. I breathed in an awakening, a life, that revelation that I recognized at 4; God lived within those books. I stood in awe. God lived in that chasm of space/time – between my choosing, my reading, my comprehension, that then lived back into my bones.
I still have those breath-intake moments with word.
So, in Bamidbar, we read what was revealed in those 38 years of taking in what was, and what continues to be Sinai today. We read and don’t read of life and death of that generation that left Mitzrayim. We read into that emptiness of wild space, our own potential. Our own willingness, tinged with fear, with skepticism and not a little kvetching. But mostly, I hope, we read a sensibility like I had standing in front of those books. I didn’t know what I didn’t know but I knew God in that moment of not knowing.
Someone asked me this week about my belief, in God, in where souls go after death. I had to pause, because I had to consider how to share what I hold in my body, my bones, what has been years of my welcoming God and God welcoming me: sending God’s angels, my Rabbonim in my dreams and my messages from beyond the veil of this world. What is so personal to my own soul – how can that be shared? I started with saying that I believe in believing in what is-ness. For me, Bamidbar is translating into Word what each soul heard at Sinai, making each individual present, part of that larger collective experience we call Torah, as their stories were and are shared. We speak using clumsy words, but word is what we have. We heard God.
Our Navi Hosea, said it best about Word: “I shall lead her to the wilderness, midbar, and I shall speak, ve-dibbarti.”
Pirke Avot 2:16: “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to desist from it.” Rabbi Tarfon.
We live in times of audacious courage, be that Jew.
Much love,
Rabbi Lynn
Bamidbar
May 19, 2026 by Rabbi Lynn Greenhough • From the Rabbi's Desk
Rabbi Meir says, “Whoever studies Torah for its own sake, merits many things.” What does “for its own sake mean? Generally, to do Torah, to learn from Torah, what it is we are to do.
The Sefat Emet teaches: Midrash likens Torah to a wilderness. Torah needs to be as ownerless as a wilderness. In Bamidbar 21:18 we read,” From the wilderness to Mattanah.., which can be read as place name or as a gift. So, Bamidbar is both a place of wildness, a wilderness, and is also a gift to those who said yeish, at Sinai.
What might be that gift -the gift of word, daber, the gift of reading, understanding through word, speech, that lives in Bamidbar?
Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, was a Rabbi of the Shoah, like Rabbi Oshrey. Both lived in that void on earth, those innumerable places of wild evil, a wilderness now void of justice, a tohu vavohu, where word made no sense. Rabbi Shapira addresses the moment of discovery of word:
“The adult, too familiar with the shapes of the letter, will approach them with less imaginative excitement. Few adults are privileged to sense the wonder of the letters themselves; it is children who are inspired to read mysteries within their shapes”.
Indeed, says R. Shapira, only one who is learning something new, can be said to be learning directly from God.
In Talmud, Rebbe, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, says”…I have learned most of all from my students: “Ones student is the source of greatest revelations, simply because what he is learning is new to him, and therefore he is being taught by God.” Ta’anit 6a
Similarly, when one is relearning Torah, Torah that one has already learned, one should learn something new from it, so that God is again given the opportunity to be our teacher.
When I read this, my mind went back to the Victoria Library, when it was in the basement of the Legislature Buildings. I can see my small self, standing in front of the rows and rows of books, my mother waiting, not an inkling of impatience, as I looked and looked at the books. I must have been barely 4, as my hair was still long and blonde. I breathed in an awakening, a life, that revelation that I recognized at 4; God lived within those books. I stood in awe. God lived in that chasm of space/time – between my choosing, my reading, my comprehension, that then lived back into my bones.
I still have those breath-intake moments with word.
So, in Bamidbar, we read what was revealed in those 38 years of taking in what was, and what continues to be Sinai today. We read and don’t read of life and death of that generation that left Mitzrayim. We read into that emptiness of wild space, our own potential. Our own willingness, tinged with fear, with skepticism and not a little kvetching. But mostly, I hope, we read a sensibility like I had standing in front of those books. I didn’t know what I didn’t know but I knew God in that moment of not knowing.
Someone asked me this week about my belief, in God, in where souls go after death. I had to pause, because I had to consider how to share what I hold in my body, my bones, what has been years of my welcoming God and God welcoming me: sending God’s angels, my Rabbonim in my dreams and my messages from beyond the veil of this world. What is so personal to my own soul – how can that be shared? I started with saying that I believe in believing in what is-ness. For me, Bamidbar is translating into Word what each soul heard at Sinai, making each individual present, part of that larger collective experience we call Torah, as their stories were and are shared. We speak using clumsy words, but word is what we have. We heard God.
Our Navi Hosea, said it best about Word: “I shall lead her to the wilderness, midbar, and I shall speak, ve-dibbarti.”
Pirke Avot 2:16: “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to desist from it.” Rabbi Tarfon.
We live in times of audacious courage, be that Jew.
Much love,
Rabbi Lynn