Big Bird and Bamidbar
Big Bird is a friend to us all—one of the most universally recognized characters in the world. Through the wonder of television, he and his pals have found their place in the hearts of children for over 45 years. The Sesame Street Muppets taught us our letters and numbers. They taught us to share and to be patient. And much of this they did through songs so catchy that I continue to hear them in my head decades after my viewing years have ended.
I have a special relationship with Big Bird. You see, while the rest of you had to rely on TV to bring Big Bird to you, he was, literally, my neighbor. In 1980, in the otherwise unremarkable town of Langhorne, Pa, Sesame Place was born—a sort of amusement park featuring the Sesame Street Muppets.
To garner interest in its early years, Sesame Place used to send Big Bird to local events and busy plazas to represent the new park. I really did run into Big Bird at the grocery store! If I found myself lost in the olden days before GPS, I could follow the signs for Sesame Place, and they would lead me home. After I moved away and would return to visit, the local water tower, adorned with pictures of Big Bird and his friends became my landmark, giving me my bearings, my welcome mat letting me know that I was home.
Landmarks are an important element in travel. They might let us know how far we’ve come, or how far we’ve yet to go. They can announce the arrival at our destination. They can welcome us home.
The Israelites did not have landmarks. This morning we entered into the Book of Numbers, the narrative that encompasses 38 years of the exodus. This week’s parsha focuses on a systematic counting of the people, a census to assess the community’s strength in the threat of war. As we delve further into the numbers narrative, we watch the Israelite community in the midst of chaos. There are challenges to Moses’ leadership. Squabbles within Moses’ family. Hunger among the people—to name only a few.
I’d like to suggest that the chaos was a result of a lack of landmarks. Nothing looked familiar. The distance between Egypt and Canaan seemed immeasurable, if not in physical distance then certainly in the actual length of the journey. There was no highway sign letting the Israelites know that they were 1.5 miles from their destination. There was no familiar “Sesame Place” sign to lead them home.
And, as much as the Israelites lacked geographic landmarks, they also wanted for landmarks in time—milestones. It is difficult to ascertain chronology for the exodus. We have the exegetical principle ein mookdam o’m’oochar batorah—there is no before and after in the Torah. That is to say, we should not assume actual chronology based on the way things are portrayed in the Torah. In the timeline of the exodus, the Israelites were told that the journey would last forty years during the second year of the exodus. So for the bulk of the exodus, the adult Israelites were inhabiting the wilderness, knowing that there would be nothing beyond that for them. This certainly must have effected their relationship with time.
Luckily, in our day, just as we have physical landmarks to dot our journey, we also have milestones, those moments in time when we take pause and mark the passage of time. Some personal milestones are obvious. Birthdays. Bar Mitzvah. Graduations.
Some communal milestones are obvious. Elections. World tragedies. Human triumph.
And then there are the moments in history that we use to mark time that are less obvious, but that cause us, either individually or communally to recognize the passage of time. For me one of those moments took place this past Wednesday night, with the final episode of Late Night with David Letterman.
I haven’t watched Letterman much in the last decade. I switched over years ago to comedy central’s late night programming, which featured, incidentally, Letterman’s replacement, Stephen Colbert. But I was a Letterman regular “back in the day.” From my junior high school years, I can remember students recounting his antics from the night before. And even if you had missed the show, you were in luck, because the Top Ten List was replayed each morning on the radio as we were on the way to school.
I remember watching the final episode of Johnny Carson’s tonight show. As the clip reel rolled, it was unbelievable to see some of my favorite celebrities in the 60s and 70s, well before I was born. It was amazing that this man, Johnny Carson, had touched generations, and the final episodes of Carson certainly brought me to tears. And while Letterman didn’t exactly replace Carson, for those of us who followed him to CBS, it certainly felt that way. He was our “new” late night host. I was reflecting on this, preparing for Wednesday’s final episode, and I realized that Letterman’s Late Night reign, though it shifted slightly, had lasted longer the Carson’s. And that his role is the 11:30 spot had begun 22 years ago. And I was still thinking of him as our “new” late night host. So for me, Letterman’s move to the 11:30 slot, and his retirement mark passages in time, the first signifying a shift in my stage of life, from pre-pubescent to full-fledged teenager. The second, my changing relationship with the passage of time.
Tomorrow morning we will encounter what is probably the original “Top Ten List,” aseret hadibrot, the ten commandments. We will hear it as if for the first time, and I pray that its impact will cause us to engage in the continuous conversation. Reaching Shavuot lets us know where we are in our sacred calendar. It is a shared milestone in our year and an individualized milestone in our lives. And we will also have a landmark—we will stand, together with the rest of our people, at the base of Mount Sinai, just as the midrash suggests we did at the giving of the Torah. Recognizing Sinai we can reflect on all that our people have known, and imagine all that we have yet to accomplish as we continue our journey.