The Silence of the Desert

19 Sep 2026 - Quotes

Numbers 1:1 - “And the Lord spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai…”

“How exactly is Torah essentially connected to the idea of wilderness?

One interpretation is psychological: ‘Anyone who does not make himself open to all [hefker, literally ‘ownerless’] like a wilderness cannot acquire wisdom and Torah.’ To receive the word of God, we must make ourselves open, the way a desert is. We have to engage in active listening… We need an open mind and a receptive heart.”

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“However, there is something altogether deeper at stake, and it is suggested by the assonance, the similarity of sound, between midbar, ‘wilderness’, and davar, ‘word’. There is a connection between the silence and barenness of the desert and the unique revelation that took place there.”

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“In the great river lowlands where civilisation began (the Tigris-Euphrates and the Nile), the eye is captivated by the shifting scenes of nature; in cities, by the works of man - art and architecture. Only in the emptiness of the wilderness is the eye subordinate to the ear. Only in the desert can the sound beneath sound be heard…”

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“The historian Eric Voegelin saw this as fundamental to the discovery by the Israelites of a completely new form of spirituality:
‘… When we undertake the exodus and wander into the world, in order to found a new society elsewhere, we discover the world as the Desert. The flight leads nowhere, until we stop in order to find our bearings beyond the world. When the world has become Desert, man is at last in the solitude in which he can hear thunderingly the voice of the spirit that with its urgent whispering has already driven and rescued him from Sheol [the domain of death]. In the Desert God spoke to the leader and his tribes; in the Desert, by listening to the voice, by accepting its offer, and by submitting to its command, they had at last reached life and became the people chosen by God.’”

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“… the desert was the place where the people would be alone with God. There, undistracted by the sight of natural or man-made beauty, they were hyper-sensitised to sound. They could hear the voice of God…”

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“In the silence of the desert, the Israelites heard the Word and became the people of the Word.”

Quotes taken from pp. 49,50,52,53,54,55 of Covenant & Conversation - Numbers: The Wilderness Years (2017), by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Buy here