Dear TBZ Community,
One of my favorite songs, and certainly one beloved in my family, has been playing in my head all week: Count on Me by Bruno Mars. It is one of those songs that sounds simple and sweet, but carries something deeply true about what it means to love and to belong to one another.
“You can count on me like 1, 2, 3,
I’ll be there
And I know when I need it
I can count on you like 4, 3, 2
And you’ll be there”
And later:
“You’ll always have my shoulder when you cry
I’ll never let go,
never say goodbye.”
There is something profoundly Jewish in those lyrics. The song speaks about friendship, but also about covenant. About the promise that we do not walk alone. About the sacred hope that in moments of fear or grief or uncertainty, someone will stand beside us.
This week’s Torah portion, Parshat Bamidbar, begins with counting. Tribe by tribe, family by family, name after name, the Torah walks us through a census of the people of Israel. It can feel, at first glance, dry and administrative; a long list of names and numbers that many of us rush through in order to get to the more dramatic stories ahead. And though this week’s parasha is literally about counting people, it is perhaps even more about knowing who we can count on. About remembering that every person matters, every name matters, every soul matters. The census is not only a bureaucratic exercise, it is an affirmation that each person is seen.
And in the midst of all those names and numbers, three Hebrew words perhaps say it all.
In Bamidbar, the Hebrew word for the Book of Numbers, but also literally meaning “in the wilderness, we read:
וְאֵלֶּה שְׁמוֹת הָאֲנָשִׁים אֲשֶׁר יַעַמְדוּ אִתְּכֶם
These are the names of the men who shall stand with you (Numbers 1:5).
The Torah understands something essential about the wilderness: nobody survives it alone. The people are counted in community. They journey in community. They grieve in community. They receive Torah in community. They support one another in community. They stand with you in community.
These words felt especially alive to me this past Sunday as I walked with members of our TBZ community in the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute’s Mother’s Day Walk for Peace. For thirty years, the walk has gathered families impacted by homicide alongside clergy, organizers, neighbors, and community leaders, to insist that grief does not have the final word and that healing is holy work.
I am so proud of our TBZ team for all their work recruiting walkers and for their extraordinary fundraising efforts. We were recognized as the top faith community fundraiser, raising a total of $21,777. More importantly, we showed up. We walked together. We stood with others in community.
It was an extraordinary experience to stand with mothers carrying unimaginable loss, with children and families whose lives have been forever changed by violence, and with thousands of others who showed up simply to say “you are not alone.” We will walk with you. It was even more meaningful to experience this in community with all of you.
I felt deeply honored to offer the opening prayer that morning. As I prepared my words, I kept returning to the idea that peace is not only built through policies or speeches, but through accompaniment, through refusing to abandon one another in moments of pain. In the prayer (that you can watch here) I said:
“May we walk with Love, the kind of love that refuses to abandon one another.
May we walk with Unity, seeing our lives and futures bound together.
May we walk with Courage, to confront pain, to speak truth, and to choose compassion over despair.”
That, too, is Bamidbar: a people learning how to walk together through uncertainty. A people discovering that holiness is not only found at the destination, but in the ways we carry one another through the wilderness itself.
The holiday of Shavuot is next week and we will be celebrating the receiving of Torah. Often we imagine revelation as something triumphant and glorious, a mountaintop moment disconnected from struggle. But that is actually not the case. Torah is given in the middle of the hard journey, not at its end. Perhaps because that is when we need it most. The story could have been written differently: We could imagine the Israelites first entering the land flowing with milk and honey, building homes, planting fields, creating stability, and only then receiving Torah as a kind of reward for surviving the journey. But that is not our story. Torah arrives in the middle of uncertainty, when people are tired, frightened, and questioning, when there is no clear map forward.
God gives Torah to a people who are uncertain, grieving, vulnerable, frightened, exhausted, and still carrying the trauma of what they have survived. Torah arrives not after the questions are resolved, but in the midst of the questions. Torah does not erase the wilderness. Torah accompanies us through it. Torah holds us there, challenges us there, and sustains us there.
Our tradition itself asks why Torah was given in the wilderness.
Our Rabbis teach:
לְפִיכָךְ נִתְּנָה בַמִּדְבָּר, דֵּימוֹס פַּרְהֶסְיָא בִּמְקוֹם הֶפְקֵר, וְכָל הָרוֹצֶה לְקַבֵּל, יָבֹא וִיקַבֵּל
[Torah] was given openly, in a public place, and all who want to take it may come and take it (Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael, Tractate Bachodesh 1:18).
The wilderness belongs to no one. It is open. No gates, no borders, no ownership. Torah emerges in a place that reminds us it is meant for all who seek it.
There is something humbling and vulnerable about the desert. In the wilderness we are stripped of the illusion that we control everything. We become more open, more searching, perhaps more capable of hearing truths we could not hear otherwise.
I think many of us know something about wilderness right now. Personally, communally, nationally, globally. We know what it feels like to walk through uncertainty, fear, heartbreak, and deep questioning. We know what it means to wonder where hope will come from.
And we also know what it means to stand in community. I often say that I do not know how I would walk through these times without community. I certainly know that standing together, and counting on one another, is at the center of the journey. It is what allows us to keep going, even when we are not fully sure where the road is taking us. And it is precisely in these moments that Torah belongs to each and every one of us.
Maybe that is why this Bruno Mars song speaks so much to me.
“You can count on me like one, two, three
I’ll be there.”
Perhaps that is also what it means to truly count on one another. Not to solve every problem or remove every pain, but simply to remain present for each other in the wilderness. To stand with one another. To remind each other that every soul counts, every name matters, and no one should have to walk the desert alone.
May we continue to build a community where people know they can count on one another.
May we continue to walk beside one another through moments of grief and moments of joy.
May our neighbors continue to count on us for support, and may we know that we can count on them as well, that we are part of an interdependent society.
May we approach Shavuot ready to receive Torah that can strengthen, challenge, and sustain us on the journey ahead. Torah is waiting to be received by each of us, because it belongs to us all.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rav Claudia