My friend has a little wooden sign in her kitchen that says, “Sorry for the mess, but we live here.” It always makes me smile because it acknowledges that life is often a messy business.

Between the kids leaving crumpled up homework, snack wrappers and shoes everywhere, and the dogs bringing in tennis balls, sticks and who knows what else, our house and car often look less than presentable.

And when we’re traveling? Forget it. The car becomes a true roving mess on wheels. Being out of our routine at home makes traveling an even tougher time to keep it all together.

When I read the instructions in Bamidbar, the parasha this week and the name of the new book of the Torah we are starting (aka Numbers), about how the Israelites should arrange their tents when traveling through the wilderness, I could relate!

I usually travel with a family of only four, but imagine you’re traveling with 600,000 Israelites, their families, animals and everything they carried with them out of Egypt. Can you imagine how many snacks they must have needed!

Oh, and all this with no roads, GPS, air conditioning or drive-through restaurants. It was not an easy trip.

Bamidbar is all about the Israelites’ journey from Egypt through the desert to the Promised Land. But it is also a journey from surviving as individuals toward living as a community.

In Egypt, they worked as slaves in homes and worksites, building cities, cleaning and serving. The Israelites didn’t have the opportunity to come together as a community until they crossed the Red Sea out of Egypt.

God gives the people specific instructions on how to set up their tents, who should camp next to whom and how to display the flags of their ancestral houses. Picture a portable neighborhood, with the mishkan at the center.

God’s instructions might seem like minutia. But every parent knows that having a routine helps create order out of chaos. When we know what is expected of us, when we know how we pack our bags for school, who walks the dogs in the morning, and all the other little tasks that make life function, everything goes a little more smoothly. By giving the Israelites a routine for their camp, God is giving them a chance to get to build community, tent by tent. The people get to go from travelers to neighbors, and from neighbors to a united community.

Tents arranged around the mishkan, flying colorful flags of their tribes, the Israelites moved through the desert on the way to the Promised Land. I picture them greeting old friends and neighbors each time they stop, helping one another set up their tents, giving snacks to hungry children and relaxing together after a long day of walking.

This is the sight that the prophet Balaam will encounter later in this book after being commanded by Balak to curse the Israelites. Instead of a curse, all he can utter is this blessing:

“How beautiful are your tents O Jacob, your dwelling places Israel.” (Num. 24:5)

The tents themselves may have been beautiful, but it was the sense of community that struck Balaam as something holy and unique.

The Israelite camp itself was a physical embodiment of the values that drove them, and the lessons in our Torah. You could see in its structure and routines the commitment to God and to one another as they traveled and as they camped.

When we structure our lives well, our values become part of our routine and part of our community rather than an afterthought or an aberration. We live here together, mess and all. But when we build our values and our tradition into our daily routines, we can turn the mundane into the sacred, and a neighborhood into a true community.

Rabbi Andrew H. Terkel is executive director of Be the Narrative, a national 501c3 organization that develops interactive educational programs that connect Jewish and non-Jewish peers to learn about Judaism and dispel stereotypes. He is a member of the St. Louis Rabbinical and Cantorial Association, which coordinates the d’var Torah for the Jewish Light.