Dear Friends,
In the journey of Torah, of time and of holidays, we have travelled from Passover, from Egypt and from conscripted slavery all the way through Shavuot, the Festival of the First Fruits and of the Giving of the Torah. We yearn to be free, individually and as a people, yet we have seen again and again that complete freedom is tantamount to chaos. Torah and Judaism teach us that we can move away from the experience of being an amorphous enslaved and powerless people toward the experience of being a people with a Torah, with a vision, with goals and, above all, with hope!
We treasure our sense of freedom even as we treasure having some semblance of order in our lives. Our Torah portion of Naso is all about order. In the Biblical story, as our people attained freedom, they were “organized” around the Tabernacle in a very specific physical and spiritual order which was necessary to maintain the very precious gift of freedom which was so desired.
A sense of order allows us to pour our values into an accepted framework. And, it allows us to build upon those values for the good of all.
The blessings of freedom, along with Torah and mitzvoth, provide us with a sense of order so that we may move toward the realization of the vision of our prophets – a vision of peace, of justice and of mercy. Freedom cannot be maintained without some semblance of order. And the order of Torah and mitzvoth help us to achieve our goals, individually, as well as communally.
May we live in freedom and in peace as we work within our “ordered” universe to increase blessing in our world.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Gilah Dror
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