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Naso
Numbers 4:21-7:89
Judges 12:2-25

Studying Torah this week, I had a most disconcerting experience. I had a vivid vision of seven little men wearing pointy hats, carrying shovels and axes on their shoulders and marching over the hillside singing "whistle while you work."

As I watched all this unfold in my imagination, a question arose: Are they singing and whistling to take their minds off their work, or because the work fills them with joy? Since I couldn't ask Walt Disney his opinion, I decided to go back to the Torah.

This week's Torah portion, Naso, describes the role of the Levites as carrying the portable mishkan (sanctuary) and its furniture. Two of the Levitical clans were given wagons and oxen with which to transport the disassembled mishkan. The clan of Kehat, however, responsible for carrying the ark and the other holy furniture of the Tabernacle, were not given wagons. They carried all their burdens on their shoulders.

With playful poetic imaginativeness, our sages in the Talmud (Arachin 11a) interpret the Torah's phrase "they lifted it on the shoulder" (Numbers 7:9) to mean that the Kehatites lifted up their voices in song as they carried the ark.

The great Torah master, the Chofetz Chaim, enlarges the rabbis' vision by teaching that "the ark carried its carriers." Not only did those who carried the ark feel no burden, but they felt themselves swept off their feet, uplifted by their task. They experienced the exquisite lightness of being in carrying the heavy furniture of the sanctuary. It was, for them, an indescribable joy.

There is something paradoxical about this teaching: It is only when we lift the heavy burden that we discover its lightness. Oftentimes, people try to avoid their burdens, deny them or escape them, because they fear they are too heavy to bear. Some life burdens are perceived to be so awful or dangerous that they are swept under the rug of the subconscious, as if that makes us safe from them.

Yet if we face the challenge, approach it, lift it to the shoulders, we might discover it is, at the very least, bearable. Or perhaps in lifting the burden we will find the ability to sing a new song of redemption or of gratitude.

People come to me all the time seeking relief from their burdens: a growing tumor, the death of a parent, a painful divorce, a rebellious teenager, the normal disappointments of life. Some plead, "Take away my pain." Others seek comfort, to hear me say, "It will be all right." And some ask, "Why is God doing this me?"

Like any friend or confidante, I understand that words of comfort may be called for, yet I know, too, there is something else, unspoken often, that needs to be said: God's world, as it is, is sufficient for a life of blessing, and redemption is found not in the disappearance of travail but in finding its lightness, the spark of divinity embedded within each moment.

On this Torah passage, the Kotzker Rebbe comments that lifting up our burdens requires immense concentration and exertion, for "one does not acquire the least spark of holiness without effort." There is no ongoing spiritual growth without persistent practice. The Kehatites carried the ark on their shoulders. Yet each time they lifted it up, song burst from their hearts.

If we could pray for the courage, the strength and the spiritual effort to lift up our burdens, we might be graced with just enough faith, hope, gratitude and compassion to lighten the load and make it buoyant. We might actually find ourselves singing, and as each note is strung together to make a melody, the broken and disassembled parts of our lives might come together in a new, lighter mishkan and a joyful heart.

I think the dwarves knew what they were doing all along.




Rabbi Lavey Derby is the senior rabbi of Congregation Kol Shofar in Tiburon.

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