Drashot

Jewish religious values are, in some important ways, profoundly counter-cultural. The individual is important, as every human being is created in the Divine image and has infinite value. But, according to our tradition, the individual can live a meaningful and fulfilling life only in community. Jewish values reject the so-called “rugged individual”. That is why our sages disliked the nazarite, the person who takes on strict personal vows, and why there is no Jewish tradition of religious seekers who go off on their own. Life is lived in community. We see that in this week’s Torah portion when Korach challenges Moses for the leadership of the Israelites. Our portion begins, “Now Korah, son of Izhar son of Kohath son of Levi, betook himself,… to rise up against Moses” (Numbers 16:1-2) Commenting on this verse, Rashi writes, “He betook himself on one side with the view of separating himself from out of the community so that he might raise a protest regarding the priesthood to which Moses had appointed his brother. This is what Onkelos means when he renders it by ואתפלג — “he separated himself” from the rest of the community in order to maintain dissension.” Separating oneself from the community, or placing yourself higher than others leads to discord and conflict. This echoes the statement of Hillel in Pirkei Avot (The Sayings of the Sages) 2:4, “Do not separate yourself from the community.” In community we find support, in our times of joy and in our times of sorrow. In community we find strength that we may lack, as it is said, We succeed together, but we each fail alone. In the Jewish view, success is communal. This goes against some basic American values and Ayn Rand would not agree, but it has served us well over our 3,000 year history and continues to serve us to this day.

What we see and how we see things are two very different things. Two people or two groups can see the same events or facts and come to different conclusions. In our country today we seem to be divided into two camps who each see the world in fundamentally different ways. In this week’s Torah portion, the Israelites have reached the border of the Land of Israel God commands Moses to choose 12 spies to explore the land. They return and tell the Israelites that it is a land “flowing with milk and honey.” (Numbers 13:27) But ten of the scouts add, “However, the people who inhabit the country are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large.” (Numbers 13:28) Caleb and Joshua, the other two scouts respond, “Let us by all means go up, and we shall gain possession of it, for we shall surely overcome it.” (Numbers 13:30) Two groups witness the same thing but make very different conclusions. Rashi explains that Caleb went to Hebron and visited the graves of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob and Leah. He reconnected with his ancestors and had his faith reinforced. Where others grew afraid, Caleb grew brave. We can face life with fear or faith. The choice is ours. Each of us can draw on the Jewish tradition to strengthen ourselves, just as Caleb did.  

Freedom isn’t everything it’s cracked-up to be. Freedom requires taking responsibility for one’s choices, actions and consequences. Freedom brings with it uncertainty. The choices may be ours but the outcomes of our choices are not clear. Some people can live with uncertainty. They understand that this is the price of freedom. Others cannot, they are willing to live under authoritarian rule because it makes life feel simpler. That is why some people support dictators and demagogues; they want to give their autonomy away. This is the condition of the Israelites in this week’s Torah portion. Freed from slavery and moving through the desert toward the distant goal of the Promised Land, they begin to long for their life of slavery. It may have been hard and dehumanizing, but it was predictable and had a few physical rewards. “The riffraff in their midst felt a gluttonous craving; and then the Israelites wept and said, “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. Now our gullets are shriveled. There is nothing at all! Nothing but this manna to look to!” (Numbers 11:4-6) So the Israelites fell into despair. In a way we are like the Israelites. We move through our lives, our futures are never certain and always out of reach. Events beyond our control could radically change our lives, whether disease, social unrest or natural disaster. How to cope with such a condition? The Jewish tradition offers us three strategies. The first is gratitude. Every morning the first prayer we are supposed to recite is, Modeh Ani Lifanecha, which gives thanks to God for giving us another day of life. Psychologists are confirming what our sages always knew, that practicing gratitude makes us happier and more fulfilled. As our sages wrote, “Who is wealthy? The one who is satisfied with what they have.” (Pirkei Avot 4:1) The second is hope. Judaism is ultimately an optimistic religion. We believe that human beings can always change and grow, that the world can be made better and that the world will ultimately be redeemed and made perfect. The last strategy is Shabbat, a day of rest, of peace, of cessation from labor, and of joy with family, friends, community and God. If we practice those strategies we can revel in our freedom and live a rich and fulfilling life.

Every Friday evening, after we light the Shabbat candles and before we make kiddush I bless my children, with the three fold Priestly Blessing. Even though my children are now adults, I never miss an opportunity to bless them. We also share this blessing with each child who becomes b’nai mitzvah at our congregation and with each couple at their wedding. In special moments we bless others. 

In this week’s Torah portion, God tells Moses to tell Aaron to give the priestly blessing to the Israelites, “Speak to Aaron and his sons: Thus shall you bless the people of Israel. “May God bless you and protect you. May God’s presence shine upon you and show you grace. May God’ always be before you and may God grant you peace.” (Numbers 6:23-26) 

This is where the practice began. Discussing this in Midrash Tanhuma our rabbis wrote that God says to Moses and Aaron, “From the beginning I have blessed My people; from now on the blessings are transmitted to you. You are to bless My children.” Thus we have a transition from Divine to human agency to transmit blessings. God hands the power to create holiness over to us and it is up to us to pass this on. 

The same is true for the entirety of the Jewish tradition. It is up to us to embrace it and to pass it on to our children in all its holiness and wonder. Thus when a parent blesses their child, or a rabbi blesses the wedding couple, we are transmitting the Jewish tradition. We are demonstrating that we can create holiness in our lives with intention and with words and in this way we invest our lives and our world with greater sanctity. Have you blessed anyone today? Perhaps you should.

Shavuot (The Feast of Weeks in English) begins this Thursday evening, May 25. In ancient Israel, when the Temple still stood, it was a pilgrimage holiday celebrating the Spring wheat harvest with a sacrificial service. After the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E. and we could no longer make sacrifices, our sages of blessed memory reimagined Shavuot as Hag Matan Torateinu, the Holiday of the Giving of Our Torah. They connected Shavuot to Pesach through the ritual practice of counting the Omer, a reinvention of the ancient practice when the Temple stood, of bringing a measure (an omer) of grain to the Temple every day between Pesach and Shavuot. In this way, through creative reimagination, our rabbis created new meanings for Shavuot. If Pesach was the celebration of our physical freedom, liberation from Egyptian slavery, then Shavuot became the celebration of receiving our collective moral purpose from God, symbolized by Torah. We need both, freedom and purpose to lead lives of meaning and value. From this we also see that Jewish religious practice contains within it elements of continuity and change. The forms, the holidays, may remain constant, but their meaning changes over time. This is true for us today. For much of Jewish history, communities outside of the Land of Israel celebrate two days for each holiday, while Jews in Israel celebrate only one day. The Reform movement changed this practice, celebrating one day of each holy day. This was a recognition that with the granting of citizenship to Jews in Europe and America the fundamental condition of the Jewish community had changed. For this reason, we celebrate only one day of Shavuot. To keep our Torah reading on track with other Diaspora Jewish communities we divide Parashat Naso into two parts and read some this week and the rest next Shabbat. Continuity and change, compromise and commitment, faith coupled with uncertainty,  these are the qualities that keep a religious tradition alive and vital in our lives. The challenge is holding these different qualities in balance.

Wilderness) in Hebrew, or the Book of Numbers in English. It is called the Book of Numbers because it begins and ends with a census of the Israelites. “Take a census of the whole Israelite company by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head.” (Numbers 1:2)

The Jewish religion has always had an ambivalent view of counting people. When King David takes a census, it brings down a plague that kills 70,000 (II Samuel 24:15). On the other hand, rabbinic sources state that a census is permitted if needed to fulfill a mitzvah (Bamidbar Rabbah 2:17), but it must be done indirectly. 

In traditional Jewish communities a minyan is counted using different verses from a psalm or by counting, “Not one, not two, not three..” This ambivalence reflects the Jewish view that each human being is unique, holy, and special, created by God in the Divine image. To count them is to diminish their holiness, reducing them from a holy being to a thing that can be counted. 

We should keep this in mind whenever we are tempted to lump people into groups, like liberals, or conservatives, or minorities, or gays. People may be part of an ethnic group, a political party, or a religious group, but they are also much more; they are human beings, created in God’s image. Any time we diminish a person in any way we are desecrating God’s name and we open the door to a host of behaviors that harm others and lead to the tragedies that are the scourge of human history.

In our society we seem to admire celebrity, wealth, power, no matter how it is acquired, whether through cheating, exploiting or abusing others, or causing profound damage to our society, body politic, or the environment. All that matters is success; that is the only virtue. But as Lilly Tomlin said, “even if you win the rat race you’re still a rat.” The second part of this week’s Torah portion, Kedoshim, offers a different idea of success and virtue, “You shall be holy, for I, your God יהוה, am holy.” What follows is a list of behaviors that make us holy. These include, respect for parents (and elders in general), not worshiping false gods (like wealth, power, and success), regularly setting aside some of our wealth for those in need, honesty in business, and fair treatment for anyone regardless of their social or economic status. These are the virtues that Jewish religion and God wants us to admire and live by. Imagine what our country would be like if we actually did.

Life is uncertain. Tragedy can strike at any moment. Two mass shootings in the last week, the most recent at a bank in Louisville and last week at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, remind us that tragedy can reach out and touch any of us at any moment. These are human created disasters. Natural disasters too can destroy lives in an instant. We go about our lives as usual and suddenly everything changes and nothing is ever the same again. How can we make sense of this? Is it even possible? In this week’s Torah portion, the Mishnah, the Tabernacle is initiated into service with it’s first sacrifice. It is a moment of awe, wonder, and joy for the entire Community of Israel. Then, almost immediately after Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, are killed when they bring “strange fire” into the Mishnah without permission. (Leviticus 10:1-2) Joy followed by tragedy and Aaron’s reaction is silence (Leviticus 10:3) The Hebrew word for his silence is yadom — ידום, which means to be struck dumb. In the face of the death of his children, Aaron is stunned into silence. But then something else happens,  Moses and Aaron discuss what they could have done differently, how they might have prevented the tragedy (Leviticus 10:19-20). In the face of the continuing wave of mass shootings sweeping across our country, leaving behind the bodies of children and adults, shattered families, communities, and those who have had their loved ones torn from them, it is not enough to be stunned into silence. We, all of us, must examine what we can do differently to prevent future mass killings and end this plague of gun violence.

My father used to say that in the city he grew up in, Kosice in eastern Czechoslovakia on the border with the Soviet Union (two countries that no longer exist), they were Jewish but dressed European. In other words, they were what we would call today modern-Orthodox. They were observant but dressed as their neighbors did, suits and no beards for men, dresses and no wigs for women. They did not wear traditional clothing that identified them as Jews. This is true for us today. Whether we know it or not, we all wear clothes and hair styles that identify us, by our work, our economic class, whether we are urban or rural. So it was for the Kohanim (priests) in ancient Israel. In this week’s Torah portion we read, “Make sacral vestments for your brother Aaron, for dignity and adornment.” (Exodus 28:2) Commenting on the verse, Ibn Ezra (12th Century Spain) wrote, “They shall glorify themselves with these garments, for no other Israelite shall wear similar garments.” The special clothing of the Kohanim identified them as priests during the sacrificial service and were designed to mark their special status. This is one reason that we dress up for special occasions, weddings, funerals, or attending synagogue. As our society becomes more casual in its dress standards perhaps this indicator of specialness is being lost. Perhaps we are losing something of value, another blurring of boundaries between the special and the mundane.

Special note: the Shabbat before Purim is called Shabbat Zachor. We read a special maftir, Deuteronomy 25:17-19, that reads, “Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt—how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. Therefore, when your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!” According to tradition, Amalek is the perpetual enemy of Israel, for they prey on the weak and helpless, and question God’s moral revelation at Sinai.  Because Haman, the villain of the Purim story,  is considered to be a descendent of Amalek we read this special Torah portion on the Shabbat that precedes Purim.

Generosity has documented health benefits. According to researchers, generous behavior lowers blood pressure, releases “feel-good” endorphins that make us happier, lowers stress, improves our relationships, and helps us live longer. With all these benefits, it’s surprising that more people don’t practice generosity. In this week’s Torah portion we begin the process of building the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, in which God’s presence dwelt in the midst of the Israelite camp. God directs Moses, “Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart is so moved.” (Exodus 25:2) Commenting on this verse, Sforno (Italy, b. approx. 1470, d. 1550) wrote, “G’d commanded that the procedure should not be like the imposition of every man’s contribution for the public charity fund which was treated as a tax. Contributions were to be accepted only from volunteers.” God does not want people to give grudgingly or out of obligation, but freely, from the heart. In other words, out of generosity. Perhaps God knew that generosity was the key to health, happiness, and good relationships. It wasn’t enough to build the Mishkan, it had to be built with the right spirit, with an open heart. Imagine what our society would be like if all of us participated in our political and public life with a spirit of open heartedness and generosity. Perhaps we would all be happier and solve more of our problems.