B'Midbar: The Meaning of, and in, a Flag

"I love it when a plan comes together!" I'm stealing this line from the old 80's TV show, The A-Team, because it just applies so well this week. Not only were we able to successfully complete our giant mosaic art project in the Main Sanctuary
of the shul just in time for our annual Congregational Meeting, but it also dovetails beautifully with this week's Torah portion. And the parashah connection was quite unintentional. To sum it up briefly, for anyone who SOMEHOW managed to miss the last two years at Ohev Shalom; the community worked with an incredible artist, Heather Bryson, to create large mosaics, depicting the banner flags of each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel (along with two additional panels). Incredibly, the choice of image for each panel came straight out of the Torah, this week's parashah in fact! Well, sort of.

As always, nothing is ever simple with the Torah. Jacob had twelve sons, right? And they seamlessly turned into the twelve tribes, correct? Nope, not so fast. That would be all TOO easy. One son never actually
became an "official" tribe, and another one received a double portion, for each of his two sons. So when we chose to make renditions of our ancient ancestors, we had to decide whether to portray the twelve children of Jacob OR the twelve tribes of Israel... because several panels would be different. Furthermore, this week's Torah portion does indeed tell us that each tribe had a flag. We read: "The Israelites shall camp each with his standard, under the flags of their ancestral house" (Numbers, 2:2). The problem is, the Torah never tells us what color or symbol was actually ON each flag. Again, much too easy for the likes of our Torah...

Instead, we look to rabbinic sources - written hundreds, if not thousands of years after the fact - to help us determine (or perhaps imagine?) what really happened.
In B'Midbar Rabbah, a rabbinic work that was possibly written as "recently" as the 12th Century, the tribal colors and symbols are enumerated. But again, that work was written nearly 2,500 years after the supposed Exodus took place, so how reliable a source is it really??? Even if it's quoting a rabbinic tradition that was 500 or even 1,000 years old, it's still pretty far removed from those ancient desert wanderings. Which is why, by the way, you can travel around the world and see a plethora of interpretations of what the tribal flags actually looked like... and no two depictions are exactly the same. Now, you might say: "The Torah is a pretty wordy book. It's not especially terse. Why didn't it just pause for 12 verses and describe each of these flags and save us A LOT of trouble?!?" A fair question indeed.

Earlier this week, my colleague here at Ohev, Rabbi Kelilah Miller, used a technical term from the world of pedagogy, which actually answers your query perfectly. She referred to "a provocation to constructivist play," and that, my friends, is EXACTLY what the Torah is doing.
"Constructivist play" means essentially learning through personal discovery and exploration. The Torah is provoking us to make meaning of the text. It doesn't want to GIVE you the meaning, it wants you to create your own meaning. And indeed, our new mosaic panels truly reflect our congregation and this specific moment in time, just as much as they do the ancient Children of Israel about whom we read in the Bible. So no, the Torah never makes it too easy for us, and most often challenges us to form our own opinions. And yes, that can be pretty frustrating sometimes. But it can also lead to some amazing interpretations, and every once in a while, it can also produce some pretty breathtaking artwork.

Photos in this blogpost taken by Rabbi Gerber, showing the conclusion of our Children of Israel Collection.
1) Seven panels on the left side of the Sanctuary
2) Seven panels on the right
3) Plaque showing the dedications of each panel
4) Plaque in memory of Charlotte Snyder, who made this project possible