History has shown us that words can kill, can gather, and can heal. Next week, we will start the book of Deuteronomy, D'varim, which means literally "words" and contains thousands of Moses' final utterances. This week, we finish the book of Numbers, B'midbar, a more action-packed book than D'varim, but filled with words all the same. 

Literally, B'midbar translates as "in the wilderness," appropriately named for the place where the Jews wandered for forty years.  But B'midbar also contains the word "word" itself, davar.  We can perceive the midbar as a wilderness of words, a place of fantasies and dreams.

Unless we read Mattot and Mas'ei from this perspective, the parshiot seem devastatingly brutal. A central narrative describes Moses' victorious attack on the Midianites, after which he laments only that they haven't also killed the women. Tales of such violence can be difficult to read.  They evoke the images of the Middle East splashed daily on the front page of our newspapers, stories of tribes bent on annihilating each other, settling old scores, and clearing the way for their own future, no matter the cost. 

Words, however, can be transformative.  In the beginning of Mattot we read about how seriously this people takes their words.  We learn of two kinds of speech-acts, the neder (vow) and shvua (oath), which possessed enough power to create new legal entities and change personal status.  With a vow one can turn permitted food into prohibited delights.  When the nazir takes his oath he commits to a different standard that forbids eating grapes and cutting his hair. 

Time and again in B'midbar words transform characters and situations.  Bilaam intended to curse the Israelites but offered blessings instead.  Pinchas, overcome with anger and self-righteousness at seeing Cozbi and Zimri embrace in illicit love, hurled his words and pierced the transgressors with his fury.  The nazir, so passionate that he could not stand not being a priest, took upon himself a new regimen of piety, enacted with a vow of words.
 
If the midbar is a world of ideals and extremes, perhaps Moses' violence, Pinchas' zealotry and the nazir's piety have a place.  Instead of seeing the Midianites slaughtered, we are meant to see the eradication of evil.  Instead of seeing Cozbi and Zimri impaled on a spear, we are meant to see the abolition of idolatry.

In the end, the wilderness of words may be our best hope for the future.  In working out our angers and fears with words, we can spare ourselves more violent reactions. Only in our fantasies can we envision the world as it ought to be.

Ultimately, B'midbar is about the journey, moving from place to place in search of peace.  It is a long journey with an elusive goal.  We, the Jewish people, have been on a long journey back to our ancestral home, and we have gathered many enemies along the way.  In the world of the wilderness, we are inevitably forced to fight them, with weapons, blood and pain.  But in the wilderness of words, we can envision a day when this bloodshed will end.  In our dreams, we can keep alive the hope for peace.  If we cannot envision even the dream of peace, we cannot make it a reality.

Rabbi Michael Paley is the Scholar in Residence and Director of the Jewish
Resource Center at the UJA-Federation of New York.  He is also an adjunct
Professor at the Columbia School of Journalism.  Rabbi Paley is also a
member of the UJC Rabbinic Cabinet Executive Committee.