ויהי בנסוע הארון ויאמר משה
‘קומה ה
ויפוצו אויביך
וינוסו משנאיך מפניך
ובנוחו יאמר
‘שובה ה
רבבות אלפי ישראל
When the ark began to travel, Moshe would say:
Rise up, O Lord!
And Your enemies will scatter
And Your foes will flee from before You!
And when it came to rest, he would say:
Return, O Lord!
The myriads of thousands of Israel! (Numbers 10:35-36)
This short passage – which we sing as part of our regular synagogue Torah service – appears in our parsha amidst stories of human complaint in the desert and divine retribution. The passage is set apart from what comes before and after by two upside down nun letters in the Torah text, creating a bracketing effect, as if to say – this text is different; it is from another world, perhaps like Shabbat, a little taste of the world to come placed in the midst of our world of wanting and complaining and restlessness and strife, but also marked off as different and sacred. I want to consider the nature of this alternative vision in relation to our internal life.
Who are the enemies spoken of here? Who are our internal enemies, the ones who block us on our journey, who hold us back and even attack us sometimes, like an emotional auto-immune disease? Fear, shame, negativity, despair, self judgment, inner criticism, doubt, skepticism, self loathing, self aggression, and all such forces that tend to push us down, to stop us from moving forward and to cause us to be stuck and to suffer. These are our enemies and therefore these are God’s enemies, as it were, enemies of goodness and progress. Or at least that is how we perceive them at first glance.
What is the suggestion in this passage of how to face such “enemies”? The first step is kumah – Rise up! Rise up, O Lord! The first step is to come into contact with the piece of divine inside us, to uncover that place of divine connection, to feel into the strength of God that resides in us, and to RISE UP, to gather strength and courage and power and confidence and clarity and all the divine energy that wants to flow through us, to gather all that in a stance of rising, of assertiveness and power, a stance of – Here I am, strong and sure, ready to face whatever comes.
And how does this rising up affect those inner enemies? Notice that the Torah never speaks of fighting them or rejecting them or destroying them. No. Rather, what happens is that in the face of this rising up in strength and power of divine energy, the enemies scatter of their own volition. Mipanekha. “From before you,” or “from before your face.” Coming face to face with the strength of God in you, with this mighty, courageous, light-filled force, the fear, the judgment, the doubt, they relax a little — oh, someone is in charge, they see – they step back; they give space.
Maybe before it felt like they were all lined up together in a big clump blocking the way – that’s what it feels like sometimes, a big mass of confusion and overwhelm – but now, seeing your strength, they separate, they untangle, they lessen their hold on you, they take a step backwards, each in her own direction, so that there is a lot of space between them, so that now there is plenty of room for you to make your way, for you to pass through them. They are still there, but dispersed. It’s as if the divine energy inside you creates space wherever it goes, breathes space into all the tight places inside you so that all those clumped up forces that line up in fear can relax a little and separate.
This first part is the energetic part of the process, but what happens next is rest – uvenuho yomar– when it, the aron – our bodies, our selves, we, the containers of God in the world – come to rest, then what is said next is – shuvah Hashem, shuvah, Return! After the energy of rising up in power, of showing the “enemies” our courage, our power, our assertiveness, a different need arises, a need to re-integrate, to return all the lost pieces, to bring them all back home to their source.
Shuvah Hashem revivot alfei Yisrael – return, O God, all the myriads of thousands of Israel. Return them. Bring them all home. Who are these myriads of thousands? Surely they are the very same plural entity of the first verse, the ones we perceived to be “enemies” when we started our journey. After we have found the strength to assert our divine power, to scatter the forces arrayed against us inside, we turn again towards them in kindness and compassion. We turn again towards them in peace, in rest, in calm, and what we see is something very different – we see that they are part of “Israel,” part of ourselves, part of the beautiful multitude of humanity inside us.
And we welcome them home. We welcome the fear and the judgment and the skepticism. And not just them. We can see now that there are thousands inside us of different flavors, each a glorious manifestation of Israel and of ourselves and of God, each aluf, majestic, a chief in its own right – the young ones inside us who long for connection and love, the hurt ones, the joyful and playful ones, the creative ones, the sad ones, the angry ones – we welcome them all back, all to return and reintegrate so that we can become whole again. This is a messianic return – veshavu banim legevulam – the children return to their borders; the exiles return home inside us. Our hearts open now to them. All parts, all the myriads of thousands of parts, are welcome home.
This process does not happen once. It has to happen many times. Again and again, we need to introduce our inner “enemies” to the divine rising-up power inside us, to our Self Energy, to let them feel that someone strong is in charge so that they can relax and untangle and give space, and then we need to bring them back home again, to keep bringing them home to taste the peace of another world, a world not broken up by strife and restlessness, but on its way to redemption and wholeness.
Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels
