On the first day of the second month, in the second year after the exodus from the land of Egypt, The Eternal spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting…
Bamidbar 1:1
Sefer Bamidbar (Numbers) teaches us that there is no shortcut to genuine religiosity. To achieve it, one needs to dwell for years in a desert, full of dangers; wild animals, storms, war, and unbearable heat.
It is surely not by accident that the Torah opens this book with the words: “The Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai”. The wilderness is not merely a geographical location. It is a spiritual condition.
But while the road is dangerous, it is the journey itself that is the greatest accomplishment, not the final destination.
To be fully religious is not possible. To live in constant awareness that we exist in the presence of God would be so overwhelming that we would become completely paralyzed. One can only make a sincere attempt.
Instantaneous transformation is impossible.
The Israelites began as a band of liberated slaves who had no idea how to deal with their newfound freedom. Before there could be any meaningful change, they first needed to learn what freedom truly meant—not merely throwing off the yoke of slavery, but by accepting an exalted mission of spiritual and moral grandeur.
Freedom Without Transformation
Yet what the Torah and all of Jewish history teach us is that the Jews continued to struggle with freedom but never fully internalized it.
The first generation that left Egypt failed at freedom. It was simply too much. That generation could only lay the foundation for the next generation, the one born in the desert. Something needs to die before something new can grow in its place. But even that second generation did not fully succeed.
With the giving of the Torah at Sinai, one could have hoped that the impact of slavery would finally be overcome and that the Jewish people would discover genuine spiritual freedom. But it did not happen.
The people did not fundamentally change. Human nature is caught in an infinite web of entanglements that resist every novelty and fight back against every attempt at transformation.
Moshe’s Great Disappointment
This greatly explains the ongoing tension between Moshe and the people. After the ten plagues in Egypt, the splitting of the Red Sea, and the giving of the Torah, Moshe realized that no amount of miracles could effect real change. Much remained exactly as it had been before.
In fact, the most severe breach was yet to come with the adulterous affair between the Israelites and the women of Moav and Midian (Bamidbar 25:1–3). “The people began to commit harlotry with the daughters of Moab.” If anything proved how little the Israelites had changed, it was this incident. How could this happen after all the miracles, after everything the people had experienced?
What happened to Moshe’s great dream that the Jewish people would become “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Shemot 19:6)?
Even God, as it were, is deeply pained. His great plan for the Jewish people did not unfold in the way He might have hoped.
What became clear was that the Jewish people would never be fully religious. The Torah given at Sinai did not produce the expected spiritual transformation. Some of its demands were too idealistic, too difficult, too disturbing, or simply beyond the capacity of ordinary human beings.
Addressing this tension, it became the task of the sages of Israel to humanize, soften, and cultivate the demands of the Torah so that Judaism could become livable for a people struggling with their religious commitment.
But even that did not fully work.
Religion as Spiritual Risk
So why not abandon the plan and admit failure? Why not argue that becoming a holy nation is a mission impossible? Why continue with endless trial and error?
The answer is clear: trial and error is precisely what religion is all about.
The process of learning, growing, failing, and refining one’s faith through experience, mistakes, setbacks, and renewed attempts is itself the essence of religion. It is the spiritual journey, with all its hardships and missteps, that makes religion genuine.
As the sages taught: “A person does not fully understand the words of Torah unless he has stumbled over them” (Babylonian Talmud Gittin 43a).
And this is also the nature of the Jewish people, and which gives rise to realistic hope—not the hope of fully becoming a holy nation, but of striving to become one while knowing that the task will never be completed.
This is a nation unlike any other.
The Desert Between Law and Freedom
It is not accidental that Sefer Bamidbar takes place in the wilderness. The desert is highly symbolic. It is a place of danger, where norms are broken and new identities are forged; a place lacking the ordinary checks and balances of civilization.
Within this fragile duality lies profound strength: law and freedom clash, yet they also embrace.
It is highly significant that many of the normal existential requirements for a nation and a religion are absent in the case of the Jews. Too much order leads to Divine dictatorship; too little order leads to chaos.
This is the reason the Written and even the Oral Torah never became the final word, and why codification in the form of Halacha never really succeeded. It is the combination of law, spirit, human insight, moral intuition, and emotional sensitivity that becomes the road on which one must travel.
Only in this way can one continually strive to become a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
The great French composer Claude Debussy once said, “Music is the silence between the notes.”
It is not always that which one puts in, but often that which one leaves out, that matters most.
But the space is never fixed. It continues to amplify and expand. And so it is with Halacha and with the task of the Jewish people.[1]
Becoming is the great art.
Notes
[1] See my book Jewish Law as Rebellion, Urim Publications, Jerusalem New York, 2018, chapter 27.
Questions to Ponder
- Why do you think the Torah was given in the wilderness and not in a city or settled land? What might the desert symbolize in our own lives?
- Why do you think it is often so difficult for people to change, even after powerful experiences or moments of inspiration?
- The essay suggests that religion is not about perfection, but about striving and “becoming.” How might this idea change the way we think about mistakes, failures, or religious struggles?
Diving Deeper
Rabbi Cardozo argues that the Jewish people were never expected to achieve spiritual perfection, but rather to live within the tension between law and freedom, failure and aspiration. This raises a profound question:
If Judaism is fundamentally a journey of “becoming,” rather than arriving, what does this mean for the idea of absolute religious truth or fixed Halachah?
Rabbi Cardozo suggests that spiritual struggles, uncertainty, and even failure are essential parts of religious life. How might this perspective shape the way we educate, judge, and inspire ourselves and others?
