Midbar means Wilderness

Word or thing

Midbar means Wilderness, from the root davar, “word” or “thing”

I arrived in Phoenix and why I came I could not say. Within an hour of landing, I was driving myself around the desert, nowhere to go really, but I was drawn to the microcosm where I worked twenty five years before and from where I left for Israel. From one midbar (*wilderness) to another.

What is this place to me? Why was I drawn back here? It is the midbar, the place of the word, or of no words, or the place of the single word, midabber, speaking, well placed, the one word that works. Which word is it? The matter, the thing, the economy of words, the heart of the matter, this is where it happened for me, the combustible puff of self that the chemistry of the desert sun worked on me, this is where it happened. Is that why I return here?

Mihaly took me by the hand and led me gently gently through the doors and into the first room. They all looked up from their books, I saw surprise and jealousy in a few faces, I had a guide into the mysteries, it was noted and then everyone returned to their work. Mihaly took down a large compendium from the shelf. Here it is, he said, drawing the book down from original editions, some manuscripts, some in the hand of the scribe, transcribed here in Israel sitting by the Sea Kinneret. This is it, he said quietly, and read to me in Hebrew and then in his English: All that happened to them happens to us.

There was only one name left for me in that place and I walked up to the desk, “can I help you” she asked. I had no notion of whether he was still there, whether he had retired, if this was even the office out of which he worked, certainly he is near the end of his days here if he hasn’t left already, she asked me again can I help you and I mentioned the only name I knew, my old friend, “yes” she said, “he is here. He is right here,” she said, “I saw him sitting in his office, right there, around the corner.”

She picked up the phone and asked me “who shall I say is calling,” I gave her my name, she repeated it into the phone and then she said, “yes, he’s here. You’ll be right out I’ll tell him.”

He walked out of his office too surprised to register surprise, he saw me and took me into his room and we talked of everyone we remembered.

We then walked the halls looking at the names on the doors, I remembered one or two but that’s all, everyone was gone. Then we came to the youngest brother of the two giants who befriended me. Both gone now, I was told, died, done. The story in a sentence or two outside the office of the youngest brother.

I went into his office. “I knew your brothers,” I told him. “They were good friends to me,” I said. “I remember your name,” he said. I took his hand in my hands and I began to cry. I told him what I remembered about his brothers, he was crying too, as was my friend standing with me. We added our tears to the river of tears that have been cried over the giant brothers in the years since I had been there.

On my way back, I cried harder alone in the car as I rode through the baked desert, the declining light of the deepening sky, orange stripes, clouds, the approaching monsoon. I cried and I’m not through crying yet.

Mihaly took me into his room after we finished in the library. I’ve been to Arizona I told him. I was a cowpuncher there, I apprenticed myself to a nazi keeper of primates I did. He told us war stories, I hated the stories and he watched me as he told them, Mihaly smiled and took little notice of the details of my wonderful life. I will live with you here among these books and manuscripts, I said, will you take me there? I will, he said.

“He’s right around the corner,” she said to me, “right there. Who should I say is calling?” Repeat it several times because I have jumped out of a late chapter of a book to remind him of who we are. It’s me. “Tell him it’s me, I don’t know who I am. Tell him it’s me and I don’t know who I am but thank you my dear a thousand thank yous for laughing with me.”

I sent up the last smoke of self that was baked into a sweet savour for the Lord in this desert heat, I was vomited out from one midbar to another twenty five years ago of my little life, I stood in my sadness and my grief.

The big chimpanzee grabbed me one day as I was cleaning the cages, I said. He was choking the life out of me as I held the broom. The boss took a metal pipe wrapped in rubber and beat the animal on the arm until he let go, but not until he had choked half the life out of me and strangled the breath out of my lungs entirely.

Charming, Mihaly said, come next time my boy and we will unlock more secrets of the texts for you.

I had returned to the wilderness of Phoenix to teach, and of course, to do more gigs. The day before the gig, we were sitting and learning towards the end of the book we call BeMidbar, in the Wilderness. We began to discuss the term. Esther brought down the Sfes Emas, the “language of truth,” on Numbers 30:2. Davar, it means the deepest sense, the essence, that is why the Torah is given in this language. It is not about making something happen in the world, like the language of the first chapter of Genesis, it is about the pure articulation of the deepest inner reality. That’s the sense of midbar, it is the place where a person speaks from essence, from the source, the heart of the matter.

At the end of the wilderness story, we are still trying to unfold the essentials, Steven said. We are confronting the midbar most deeply as we are leaving it. I wonder if that’s just good storytelling, you know, not telling the full story until the end.

At the gig the next night, I wanted to talk about the wilderness but I didn’t.

“Tell me about your travels,” C said. “I hope you don’t think I’m prying.”

“I don’t think you’re prying.” That’s why I came to Arizona: to remember. To return. As I was leaving the midbar, I was taken to the root and transformed. Baked clean. I’m fried.

Tell me the Secret of Shabbat, I said to Mihaly. The secret of Shabbat is the secret of unity, he said. The inner and the outer: one. The separations, gone. He told it to me as if he were reading it off the wind above his head. The raza de Shabbat is that the deep swallows the artificial, the inner subsumes the outer. I need meaning. It completes me. That is the secret of Shabbat.

The gig was good. I mentioned the waiting. I am always waiting; I am only waiting.

Sam looked like he was sleeping.

Diwan resisted the notion of waiting because it sounds too passive. “I take action,” he said, “I’m an action figure.” He said he doesn’t sing; later I heard him singing Psalm 121 like an angel leading the Levitical choir.

“This may be an active waiting, not a passive waiting,” said Stanley.

What does it feel like to be up against the un-budge-able? What does it feel like to be waiting? I was thinking how to describe it but I kept my mouth shut.

Sam opened his eyes and said in an Eastern European accent, “We are all in the condition of waiting. Our House of Holiness has been destroyed, we are waiting for its rebuilding. We are in-between. I am patient. I am waiting too.”

“But I believe perfectly well that I am waiting for something. Do you know the story of Joshua ben Levi? He goes looking for the Messiah, Mashiach. He asks Elijah, where is he? Elijah says, he is outside the gates, with the lepers, bandaging their wounds one by one. Joshua ben Levi finds the Messiah and asks him the question: when will you come? You know what his answer is? Today. Later Elijah asks him, Joshua ben Levi, what did Mashiach say? He doesn’t repeat it because he doesn’t want to be disappointed. What if he repeats the story, what if he expects the Messiah, today, and the Messiah doesn’t show up, what then? Well, I am waiting, today. It’s not passive because I am on fire with expectation, today. I will be on fire tomorrow too.”

Sam looked like he went back to sleep, or he is the Buddah.

There was some silence in the room.

“It’s like tzimtzum” (contraction), Pearl said. “God said, wait here, I’ll be right back. . . dot dot dot. We live in the ellipses, isn’t that what it’s called? The three dots. I live in the ellipses. I am waiting for God.”

“I live in the ellipses,” I repeated. “Yes, I live there too.”

There was more silence in the room. Then I told the story that J. told me, a story that he had heard from Shlomo, may his memory be a blessing.

The Kotzker Rebbe, you know, withdrew from the world for the last nineteen years of his life, J. began. What that was about, no one is sure. But the Kotzker, Menachem Mendel, saw few people during those years. The Kotzker had a friend, Reb Isaac, to whom he was bound up, one soul to another. Reb Isaac was so close to the Kotzker that Reb Isaac named his son Mendel after Menachem Mendel, the Rebbe of Kotzk.

During the years that the Kotzker lived in seclusion, Reb Isaac died. Thirty days after his death, his son, Mendel, came to the Kotzker. One of the Kotzker’s assistants welcomed him. He sees no one, the assistant said. I am Mendel, the son of his friend Isaac, perhaps he will see me. So the assistant went to the Kotzker’s study, spoke to him through the door. I will see him, the Kotzker said.

Mendel disappeared into the rooms where the Kotzker was secluded.

Mendel said, my father was always so close to me. Even when he went away, I heard from him. Always. He was dependable that way. It has been over thirty days since he’s died, and I have heard nothing.

The Kotzker said, yes, me too. I also expected to hear from him. He was dependable. I too thought he would contact me, but he has not. So -- I went to find him.

You went to find him . . . said Mendel.

I went to find him. I went first to the next heaven, I sat in the circle of Rashi, I listened to Rashi’s Torah, it was so beautiful. When he was finished, I asked him, has my friend Isaac been here?

He was just here, Rashi said, he just left.

So I ascended to the next heaven, where I sat in the circle of Rambam, I listened to his teaching, it was so wonderful. When he finished, I asked, has my friend Isaac been here?

Just left, said the Rambam. He was just here.

So I ascended to the next heaven, I sat in the circle of Abraham our father and Sarah our mother. I listened to their teachings, they were so beautiful, and when they were through, I asked, has my friend Isaac been here?

Just left, said Avraham our Father.

Then I met the angel Gabriel. I asked, have you seen my friend Isaac? Gabriel said to me, yes, he was just here, he went that way, through the forest. If you follow him through the forest, you will find your friend Isaac.

So I traveled through the forest and on the other side of the forest I came to the edge of a Sea. The waters of the Sea rose straight up in the air, and there was a terrible cacophony of sound, like crying, or groaning. And standing there at the edge of the Sea, leaning against a staff, was your father, my friend, Isaac.

Isaac, I said, what is this place? And what are you doing here?

This is the Sea of Tears, said Isaac, this is the Sea of Suffering, and I swore that I would not leave this place, until God had dried every tear.

And that, the Kotzker said to Mendel, is where your father is, and that is why he has not contacted you, he is waiting next to the Sea of Tears, and he has sworn that he will not leave that place until God has dried every tear.

My voice broke towards the end of the story, and again it had swept me away, the story-picture of Reb Isaac leaning on his staff at the edge of the Sea of Suffering, swearing he would not leave that place until God dried every tear. That is just the version of waiting I hold in my heart, that sense of waiting, that is it exactly. I knew it and it broke my heart more.

Later that night we swam after midnight. I was exhausted. It is good, good to be outside the camp, and beautiful, so beautiful in the land of exile. I looked up into the sky at a thousand stars over the midbar and every one was a soul on its way, somewhere new.