Displaced
Shabbat Shalom - Bamidbar - 5.14.26
True story: I have a part-time family genealogy hobby. After more than three years of researching, I’ve been able to cobble together some version of a family history. That’s not always easy to do when you’re Jewish. My family wasn’t displaced by the Holocaust, but rather, the pogroms that stretched across Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. Many of the documents, along with the oral history, are simply gone.
I’m not alone in this sad legacy. Much of Jewish history has been erased. In fact, if you have ever traveled the world—whether the Middle East, Europe, or Africa—you will see the ruins and placards commemorating the places where Jews once lived.
Once lived, but not anymore.
This week’s Torah portion, Bamidbar, brings us to the Book of Numbers. God instructs Moses to take a census. From there, we are given a long list of names, tribes, and tallies that make up the children of Israel. Many rabbis use this portion to speak about how everyone counts in our community. This year, however, I see something different. I see a story of displacement.
The Israelites have just left Egypt. They are standing in the wilderness with no permanent home, and therefore, no guarantee of safety. Behind them is oppression. Ahead of them is uncertainty, and suddenly, this ancient story feels weirdly familiar.
A Jewish community settles somewhere. They build businesses, contribute to science and culture, integrate into the fabric of their society. They raise children who feel like they belong there…
Until one day, they don’t anymore.
It’s easy to understand why Jews feel such a profound connection to Israel. Zionism, stripped of all those social media lies, is ultimately a very simple idea. It’s the belief that the Jewish people deserve safety, self-determination, and continuity in the land where our story began. And Jews have kept their eyes pinned on Israel for thousands of years. Not only in Bamidbar, and temple times, but beyond.
For thousands of years, Jews have prayed in the direction of Jerusalem. For thousands of years, Jews have celebrated holidays that mark agricultural rhythms to the land and moon in Israel. For thousands of years, Jews have eaten foods, and lit candles, and built huts, and smashed lulavs, and shaken etrogs, proclaiming at the end of every Passover, “Next year in Jerusalem.”
And it strikes me that despite all these years of wilderness--despite the sense that we are once again being failed by history--that we are still here. Empires have crumbled. Dictators have fallen. Entire civilizations became no more than footnotes in our history books—but we, the Jews, have survived.
Not because history was fair to us, but because we looked at each other, took an accounting of our names and numbers, and set about fighting for better. For each other, too. For the wilderness is not a story of displacement, but rather, the place where we as a nation took our first steps together towards home.
Shabbat Shalom.