Every Shabbat morning, our services at CSS begin with a joyous rendition of a line from this week’s Torah portion: Mah Tovu Ohalecha Ya’akov Mish’ki’no’techa Yisrael, How beautiful your tents O Jacob, your dwelling places O Israel(Numbers 24:5).
Usually sung in a round, this an opportunity for all of us to look around our room and notice the beauty of our surroundings. This has been especially important during the pandemic, as we gather in our virtual Zoom room. Looking both at our own individual space, the place we are sitting, into the spaces of our fellow congregants, as well as the frame on our computer screens, gives us a unique window into what it means to be together as a community. We are at once isolated from one another and together as a community.
When I think of the actual blessing in the Torah – the one recited by the prophet Bilaam overlooking our ancestors in the valley below – I imagine him seeing us as we were in that very moment and as we will be as a nation long into the future. We are both a ragged collection of former slaves and a mighty nation that will one day rule Canaan. Bilaam had been enlisted to curse the Israelites by the Moabite king Balak, but, on God’s command, blesses them instead. This multifaceted way of looking at the world is the view we have when we video conference, expanding what it means to be together at all.
As we begin our second decade as a congregation, we see ourselves both how we are right now, and how we hope to be in the future. Like the Israelites on the Plains of Moab, may the way we are right now only be a small window into how we one day will become.
Mah Tovu Ohalecha Ya’akov Mish’ki’no’techa Yisrael, How beautiful your tents O Jacob, your dwelling places O Israel
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex