Our parsha, Bamidbar, means “in the desert.” In the desert — why was the Torah given in the desert and not somewhere else? One midrash, citing the first verse of our parsha, explains that a person cannot receive the Torah unless they make themselves hefker like the desert (Bamidbar Rabbah 1:7).
Meaning of Hefker
Hefker is a property term that means “ownerless.” Wild animals and fish and birds are considered naturally hefker, not owned by anyone, as is the desert. We can also declare our property hefker, no longer owned by us, as we might do with an unwanted piece of furniture that we put out on the curbside. Setting it out like that is a symbol of our renunciation of ownership, of our declaring it hefker, abandoned and ownerless, free for the taking.
What would it mean to make ourselves hefker? And how might it help us to receive the Torah, to be more open to receiving the divine wisdom that wants to come through us?
Thought Experiment: Be The Couch
Maybe imagining that you are a couch set out on the curbside, but instead of imagining that you are being discarded, imagine that you of your own free will walk out of the house on your little couch legs and decide to sit on the side of the road, decide to be hefker, to be ownerless, to leave your owners behind. You are setting yourself free.
I wonder if you can feel how frightening that might be, leaving your home like that for the wide unknown world, a sudden sense of groundlessness and insecurity. Wait, that was my home. That’s how I defined myself. Who am I out here and where do I belong? Freedom is terrifying. Surely the Israelites felt that in leaving Egypt for the open desert, leaving behind ownership and enslavement, yes, but still there must have been a tearing sensation involved in leaving what was familiar, heartbreak and grief for what was lost mixed with fear and uncertainty about what comes next.
Inkling of Something New
Sensing that terror and shakiness and sorrow, but maybe also sensing the seed of possibility, the inkling of something new emerging out here on the curb, out here in the wilderness. A sense of inherent ground, a belonging to the earth and to yourself and to God that is beyond place or circumstance or ownership. A sense of reaching deep down inside yourself to find your own ground. I am my own ground. My roots are inside me. No one can take that away from me even if they discard me, even if I am far from home. It is in my wood, in my bones, in my soul, unshakable, intrinsic, not dependent on anything or anyone outside me. Perhaps that is what it means to be hefker, not to be owned, to understand this truth, out of the necessity of losing everything else, coming to understand that you are your own ground, that you carry a sense of self and belonging wherever you go.
What We Are Owned By
To become hefker, to become ownerless What is it that we are owned by? Or maybe better – what are we owned by that is not of our true essence, that is not of God in some way? We are owned by our cultural conditioning, by the heaviness of history, by our trauma, by our past. We are owned by our pain, by our vanity, by our need for things to be a certain way, by our desire to please and look good, by our desire for success and perfection, by our resistance to failure and sadness and anxiety. We are owned by our fear. We are owned by others’ expectations of us and by our worry over how we are perceived by them, by our need for validation and approval. We are owned by our external identities, by our careers and professional and familial roles.
These things are not evil. The problem is the way that we let them own us, be in charge of us, define us. I am the fancy purple couch that the prince sits on. We think we can only stand up tall while that is true. What happens if the prince doesn’t like purple anymore? What happens when we get old and torn and faded and our cushioning becomes saggy and no one wants to sit on us anymore? Who are we then?
Shedding and Letting Go
Declaring ourselves hefker is a way of freeing ourselves from all that owns us in this life and entering into the vast open desert where all of those expectations and desires and history and conditioning can blow out of us and we can start again, fresh and new, becoming who we are meant to be, allowing God to be born in us and manifest through us in a new unique way.
We’re not throwing it all out. We’re certainly not throwing away all the parts of us and the people in our lives that are important and beloved to us. On the contrary, what we are doing is freeing ourselves so that we can return more whole, more capable of true love and connection from this place of integrity and authenticity.
We are shedding layers of false self, shedding layers of things that own us and inhibit us and constrain us from living into our truth, from living into our divine essence. We are making ourselves hefker, renunciating anything that can demand our allegiance other than our one true heart and alignment with God. It is a form of divine worship, a form of purifying ourselves from the many traces of idolatry that insinuate themselves into our being. We put ourselves out on the curb, freed from all else, so that God can pick us up. We let go of the rest so that we can turn to God and say – I consent to You alone. I consent to You alone.
So I invite you to imagine walking out the door of your home as a couch or as yourself, walking out to the curb to make yourself hefker, to no longer be owned by all of that. What wants to be shed right now as you make your way out to the street? You don’t have to shed it all at once. Maybe it happens in little bits as if you are shedding feathers or layers of fabric as you make your way down the path, one layer after another; maybe they are dropping off you to the earth and you turn around and see the trail behind you. We don’t force this shedding. It is a ripening, a softening that happens naturally in its own time. We just make the space for it, allow it, invite it, coax it every so gently.
Or maybe it feels like an untying of knots, a sense of release, a disentangling of all the different strings that have you all bound up and confused, not even knowing who you are, disentangling those strands to find your one true cord of self, undoing the others, letting them fly off in their own direction.
So what might you shed? What is it that is asking to be released inside? Maybe it’s been there for a long time and feels comfortable and familiar, but something is shifting now, there is an opening, even the slightest urge towards movement, towards growth and change. What wants to be shed?
Maybe it’s others’ expectations of you, how that weighs on you and owns you. Maybe it’s your sense of responsibility for them when what they need is to live their own lives. Maybe it’s the assumption that others can give you what your little child never got, how you keep hoping they can fill that hole, but they cannot. Maybe that assumption is one of the feathers flying off now into the breeze. Or maybe it’s the block to receiving love, the veils that inexplicably cover your heart sometimes. Maybe a few of those veils are ready to disintegrate now so you can offer and receive love fiercely and freely as you were born to. Or maybe it is the intergenerational trauma that lives in you, the fear and despair that weigh you down like bricks. Maybe some of those bricks are ready to slide off your shoulders now so you can walk and move and dance and sing a new song to God.
Checking for what owns you, what impedes your growth and freedom, what impedes your being you, checking for what is ready to be released and shedding it in this moment like an old snake skin. Watching it slough off you and blow out with the desert wind. Feel how things blow out of the desert so quickly. Nothing stops them. They just blow out across the wide expanse. Letting it go, letting it go.
The Call
Acknowledging any fear that arises in the process. It’s terrifying. We are moving, like the Israelites, from the known to the unknown, from the constraints of Egypt into this vast wilderness where we have no bearings. Even the food, the manna, tastes strange and unfamiliar. Letting the shakiness be here, but also sensing your determination and courage to keep stepping forward, even if in small steps. There is no turning back now. Something is calling you forward, some faint voice that you can barely make out, as Mary Oliver calls it, “a new voice which you slowly recognize(d) as your own” (“The Journey”). Or in our terms, God’s voice outside and inside you. You can hear it beckoning to you as it called to Avraham, calling you out of your home, lekh lekha, go forth from your homeland on a journey that I will show you, without a clear destination other than lekha, towards yourself. Can you hear that call? It is the call of hefker, too, of dropping what owns you so you can proceed into the wilderness of your own divine heart.
Claiming of Self
Perhaps a bit ironically, this becoming ownerless, this letting go, is a profound claiming of self. I am hefker, I renunciate all that tries to own me and therefore I own myself, God owns me, my highest divine essence owns me. Indeed, it was in this desert space of hefker, of ownerlessness, that God called out – Anokhi – the first word of the 10 commandments – Anokhi, I, the divine I. It is here, in our wilderness, in our stepping out of the walls of home, sitting on the curb as if discarded, as if lost and groundless, it is here that we, too, find our true “I,” radically free to be itself.
Decluttering
We are letting go of all the rest. All the other voices and demands become distant and blurry as we move further away from the house, their sounds and urgency slowly fading, gradually making room for us to pick up the sound of our own divine Anokhi in the expectant silence of the desert expanse. We are decluttering our minds and bodies and hearts to make space for God in us. We are normally so filled with chatter. How could there be room for God to enter and fill us? Leaving behind the bombardment of reaching arms and worrying thoughts and turmoil for a moment and entering the solitude of the internal desert so we can listen to the sound of our own Torah coming through us.
A New Experience
Through the letting go of hefker, we are being invited into a new solid ground of connection to self and God. The experience of that curbside, that hefker desert, can be so frightening at first, out alone with nothing to hold on to, none of the usual things that make us feel secure, a kind of free falling through space, a bewilderment, a desperate grasping, but it is precisely through that experience that all the false grounds of our lives fall away and we are invited into an experience of true ground and belonging, tucked right here inside us.
It’s like we’ve been eating fake food our whole lives and become so used to it that when we taste the real thing, it feels scary and unfamiliar. But it also feels right and good, deeply nourishing in a way we did not imagine was possible, like for the first time in our lives we feel full and satisfied. Can you taste a bit of this new unfamiliar nourishment, like the manna, how sweet it is, this connection to God and self, like honey down your throat, to feel that secure and beloved, that grounded in yourself. You didn’t know it was possible so you kept reaching for external ownerships of all sorts, thinking that was the answer, to let the world own you, to sell your soul to all the passersby. Yet here you are out in the middle of nowhere without any of those trappings, here you are a hefker discarded couch, more lost and empty than ever and yet also somehow more full and found, finally full and whole in yourself.
Photo by Dick Hoskins at Pexels
