This sheet on Numbers 7 was written by Avidan Freedman for 929 and can also be found here
Chapter 7 makes me think of graduation ceremonies. For some, they are insufferably long, hours and hours of waiting to snap that one fuzzy picture of that one special person among hundreds or thousands that you came for. Does everyone really need their name called? Can't we cut to the chase here?
A similar feeling of futility might fill you as you read today's chapter. Do we really need all this repetition, everyone asks? Are we going to go through that whole list again?
In both cases, the frustration is a question of perspective taking. Prince #8 wasn't bored by his own gift- for him, it was the moment he had been waiting for. He wouldn't give up on it for the world. For Prince #2, though, it already seemed rather redundant. At graduation, no one would want their own loved one's moment cut short. Just those of all those other guys.
But, as Rabbi Hanoch Teller pithily puts it, to the other guy, YOU are the other guy. The ability to recognize and honor that insight is an essential part of creating a community. Ideally, every member of a community would feel genuine joy at the joy of another. But even when that's not possible, the most minimal requirement of community building is the willingness of each member to suffer boredom so that another can celebrate. If you're not willing to do that, you don't have a community. You have a large group of very fidgety individuals.
As the Jewish people ready their camp, this is the lesson we learn from the longest, most repetitive, most boring chapter in the Torah. So take a deep breath, sit back, and savor your boredom. Your community depends on it.
Rabbi Avidan Freedman is the Rabbi of Hevruta, the Shalom Hartman Institute's post high school program for Israelis and North Americans, and an educator in the institute's high school.
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