Overcoming Adversity: Chukat

Overcoming Adversity

D’var Torah for Parashat Chukat

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

This week’s portion, Chukat (“The Law [of the Torah],” Numbers 19:1—22:1) is as mysterious as it is eventful. 

It begins with a description of a rare ritual, the sacrifice of a totally red cow, with not as much as one black or white hair on it.  It must be unblemished, never harnessed with yoke or any other burden.  This ritual is so unique that tradition holds it was offered only nine times in the past—with one last offering yet to come, when the Messiah arrives.

The purpose of this ritual was to purify Israelites who may have come in close contact with death or a corpse.  After being sprinkled with water mixed in with ashes of the Red Heifer, such individuals were considered ritually purified, fit to carry on with life, along with all its demands and requirements.

What makes this ritual so unique is that, unlike all other sacrifices, the animal is not slaughtered or burned at the altar by a priest—though the High Priest is assigned with supervising this highly complex ritual.  Nor is the offering made within confines of the Temple; rather, it takes place wholly outside the camp.  Any and all people who are involved with this sacrifice become impure for the day and are only readmitted at the end of the day, after immersion in a miqveh (a ritual bath) and a change of clothing.

It is only after giving the specific and detailed instructions pertaining to this sacrifice that the Torah continues its story of the wanderings of the Israelites in the Wilderness.

With such an introduction, one can only wonder what the rest of the portion can contain.  And indeed, it’s nothing good.  First, Miriam dies.  Then Aaron.  Moses, in an astonishing and unprecedented display of anger and bitterness, disobeys God.  God had commanded him to speak to a rock and order it to produce water; instead, Moses strikes it with his staff. Not once, but twice.  Twice he lifts his staff, and twice the staff comes down and strikes the rock.  Sweet water comes rushing out, but the price Moses will have to pay is bitter indeed.  He will not be allowed to enter the Promised Land, only view it from afar.

With such terrible disasters, it’s no wonder the portion begins with the Red Heifer ritual!  Best have a cure already in place for such times as when adversity strikes!

The deaths of Miriam and Aaron and the spiritual failure of Moses carry dire consequences for the people.

The Sages (the Talmudic Rabbis, roughly 2^nd-6^th century CE) teach that as long as Miriam, Moses’s and Aaron’s sister, was alive, a well of fresh water accompanied the Israelites throughout their wanderings in the Wilderness of Sinai.  When she dies, the well disappears.  Similarly, Aaron is credited for the cloud that guided the people on all their journeys.  This, too, is withdrawn when Aaron dies.

Moses’s gift was manna, which was the Israelites’ daily food as long as he was alive.  After his death, this gift, nourishing and sweet food offered freely from heaven, is also fated to disappear forever.

If Judaism were based on miracles alone, our story would have ended right there and then.  Where would we find water?  Who would feed and guide us when we are lost?  And just as importantly, how would we be aware of God’s presence in our midst?

Miracles, however powerful, are one-time occurrences.  You can’t count on them.

Maybe that’s why the ritual of the Red Heifer is ordained in Chukat:  To give us a way to recover after adversity, a chance to rediscover our faith. 

Yet now that the Temple is destroyed, with the Ritual of the Red Heifer no longer possible (no matter that some people in Iowa or elsewhere are trying to genetically breed a perfectly red cow specifically for this purpose)—how can we possibly hope to become fit to serve our God again or carry on with life when adversity and hardship strike?

Once again, the Torah portion has a cure in store.  Numbers 21:17-20 is quite likely a passage from an exalted psalm, a song sung while digging for water in the desert.

Rabbinic commentaries to these beautiful verses explain that it was Moses and Aaron who, following the death of their sister, Miriam, dug this well.  Yet the text may suggest still another possibility: that the well may actually have been dug by all the people.  Like the Tabernacle, which was created through the generous contributions of every Israelite—whether of silver, gold and other expensive materials, or through expert craftsmanship—so this blessing of the well’s water is brought forth by the collective effort of all the people.

No matter who did the digging, the meaning is clear.  From that point on, we, the people, are going to have to be responsible for finding the water to quench our thirst.  Its blessing is always there; we may just have to do a bit of digging to find it.

So it is with life.  Though there are many moments of celebration and joy, there are also difficult moments.  There are times when faith seems to disappear; when exhaustion makes us lose our temper with the people we love the best; when food turns tasteless; when we question the very presence of God within our midst. 

That’s when a ritual may be helpful.  A blessing said over a simple candle or cup of wine.  A prayer asking for a spark of hope to light the darkness.  Letting Shabbat into our lives is such a ritual, much more readily available than any red heifer.  With its help we can rise again, overcome adversity and set upon the path of life again.  That is, after all, the purpose of a ritual.

One thing is clear, however.  With the Tabernacle long gone, so is the office of the High Priest, and so is the Ritual of the Red Heifer.  At this point in our history, what it takes to produce miracles must be the work of our hands.  No one can do it for us.  We ourselves have to do the digging.  What we can be sure of is that, if we do, the song will surely follow, as certainly as will the rush of water into our arid souls.

© 2014 by Boaz D. Heilman

A Tale Of Two Miracles: Korach

A Tale Of Two Miracles: Korach

D’var Torah by Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

Since the dawn of humanity, human beings have treated the earth in two ways:  Some saw it as a never-ending source of supplies—dirt, stone, clay, metals and fuel. Others saw the earth as either divine in itself or, at the very least, imbued with divine life-giving powers.  Mountains, hilltops and valleys became places where gods and other mythical creatures lived and were worshipped.  Wells, springs and seas were seen not only as physical boundaries separating between countries or regions, but also as pathways to the underworld and the afterlife.  Temples were built and religions flourished at such places. 

Even in the Torah, the Earth seems to have special powers, though these are placed under God’s unique control.  So it is that God blesses the earth and commands it to bear ongoing life; or, conversely, after the failure of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, that God places a curse on the earth so that it would no longer yield its fruit to humankind without intense, “sweat of the brow” labor.

Yet, when Cain kills his brother Abel, the earth “opens its mouth” to swallow the spilled blood of Abel.  Ancient, apocryphal stories (not included in the “official” version) abound about the earth’s role in covering up this crime.

In this week’s Torah portion, Korach (Numbers 16:1—18:32), the earth opens up once again. At Moses’s command, “The earth opened her mouth and swallowed them and all their houses and all the men who were with Korach and all their property.  They and all they possessed descended alive to Sheol, and they perished from among the congregation.”  (Sheol was the name by which the ancient Hebrews identified the underworld, a place where all souls and spirits were collected and thought to have lived after the bodies they had once inhabited died.)

Earthquakes are not unknown in the Middle East.  It is, after all, the region where three continents meet.  The Syrian-African rift stretches all the way from the Hermon Mountains in Lebanon, down to the Dead Sea, then on to the Red Sea and beyond.  It isn’t inconceivable that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah’ fire-and-brimstone upheaval originated with volcanic explosions. 

But, at least as described in parashat Korach, the timing of this particular cataclysm was more than coincidental, more than just so much tectonic activity.  Korach, a Levite man from an aristocratic family, had joined up with two leaders from the tribe of Reuben—the first born of Jacob—to demand that Moses share his leadership.  Why was all power concentrated in the hands of the few, Korach asks, supported by powerful warlords who felt that their natural rights, too, had been usurped. 

It is as proof of Moses’s rightful leadership that the earth opens up and swallows the rebels, their families and all their belongings.  It’s a terrifying moment that causes panic to spread throughout the people. 

Yet what makes this miracle so unusual is that it isn’t God who commands it, but rather Moses.  It is Moses who calls upon the forces of nature, and nature obeys.  All the other miracles in the Torah are caused by God.  Moses’s staff—whether striking the Nile so that its water turns to blood, extended over the Red Sea to make it part, or hitting the rock to produce water—is no more than the lightning rod which guides God’s energy with precision and power.  In Korach, however, it is Moses who calls the shots, while the earth obeys.   This astounding fact is unique; no wonder that the Israelites find themselves panicking to an unprecedented degree.  They have almost gotten used to God’s miracles; this one is different enough to stand completely alone.  The people will continue to gripe and moan, but they won’t rebel again.  Moses’s power will never be questioned again.

Nor will such a miracle ever happen again.  In a famous story in the Talmud (“Achnai’s Oven”) the Rabbis will once and for all decree that miracles cannot be used to prove leadership.  In doing that, the Sages establish a new way of determining halakha (Jewish law).  From that point on, it would be a democratic process, based on majority vote (though, of course, the due process of Jewish Law, not unlike our own more modern civil law, is also based on precedent and past understandings).

Yet, though powerful and unique, this miracle is not the only one this portion recounts.  Immediately following the story of Korach, yet another miracle happens, as different from its predecessor as can be. 

One of the questions raised by Korach and his rebellious band is of the validity of Aaron’s role as High Priest, a role that is to be passed down exclusively to his descendants throughout the generations.  In response to this claim, Moses is told by God to take the leader’s staff from each tribe chief.  He is to add Aaron’s staff to those and place them all in front of the Tent of Meeting, in full view of the entire people.

Overnight, Aaron’s staff—an almond branch—blossoms, flowers and gives fruit, while the other staffs remain dry and lifeless.

The power of this miracle is enough to make the role of the kohein—the priest—an eternal inheritance, even to our own day.

It isn’t only that this staff, cut off from the living tree, has the power to live again (a powerful symbol in its own right).  It’s that it is disconnected, separate and alone.  Not rooted in the earth, disconnected from its ancient trunk, this staff’s life comes from a different source.  It is solely the power of God’s spirit that makes this staff flower and give fruit.  The earth, mythological giver and taker of all life, has nothing to do with this awesome miracle.  Instead, with this marvel a new power is declared.  The blossoming staff proves once and for all the power of a spiritual, not earth-bound God. 

It isn’t by happenstance that these two miracles appear side by side in parashat Korach.  The total effect goes beyond their first purpose of proving the validity of Moses and Aaron’s leadership.  In this portion we are witness to nothing short of a spiritual revolution.  It is, in fact, the capping of the story of the Exodus.  In Egypt, God and Moses wrought miracles meant to prove that God’s powers supersede Pharaoh’s.  In Korach, this power is defined once and for all.  It is by God’s spirit—or as the Prophet Zechariah expresses it: “Not by might, nor by power, but by [God’s] spirit” (Zech. 4:6)—that God rules over both heaven and earth.

That is the source of all life, of all strength.  And that, too, is the secret behind the survival of the People of Israel, some 3,600 years old and still here, still blossoming, still giving fruit.

© 2014 by Boaz D. Heilman

Israel's Three Abducted Boys

When A Crime Becomes An Act Of War: Israel’s Three Abducted Teenage Boys

Reflections over events of the past week

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

June 19, 2014

When teenagers are kidnapped, it’s a crime.

Unless you are dealing with Israel. Then the situation becomes not criminal, but political.  In the Middle East, the abduction of teenagers isn’t merely a crime of passion or even revenge between feuding street gangs.  There it is an act of out and out war.  The teens are taken as hostages, pawns in diplomatic negotiations on a world stage.

A week ago, three Israeli teenage boys, Eyal Yifrah, Gil-Ad Shaer and Naftali Frenkel, were abducted by Arab terrorists.  The three are being held as hostages—assuming, please God, that they are still alive.

In any civilized country, the taking of teenage hostages is a crime.

In the Middle East, however, it’s an act of self-defense against an occupying power.  At least that’s how Haneen Zoabi, Member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, excused the abduction.  In Israel, of course, she can say that without fear of persecution—she is a member of the Knesset, after all, not to mention citizen of the only democracy in the Middle East—Israel.

But aside from the histrionics, what are the terrorists really going to accomplish by their criminal act?

They’re getting world attention.  The number of “likes” for them goes up in the social media and along with that also monetary donations and support of international NGO’s.   It took the European Union five days before it condemned the abduction of the Israeli teens. 

What made these teens “legitimate” victims is that they go to school in Gush Eztion, near Hebron, part of the area that the world expects Israel to give the Palestinians in return for peace. 

The two-state solution is seen as panacea not only for the region’s political woes.  For some, it is key to the establishment of a new world order, a world at peace.  For some, it represents peace in our own time.

But we’ve heard that naïve rationale before, right before World War Two, right before the Holocaust.

The truth is that this war crime, this abduction of three teenage boys, isn’t about settlements or liberation from foreign occupation.  These so-called “freedom fighters” aren’t fighting for anyone’s freedom.  They are terrorists who have taken a vow to the death—a vow to see nothing less than all of the State of Israel destroyed. 

Of course, in this battle that’s being fought all over the media, Israel has to be at its most ethical.  Israel must always answer to a higher standard.  Because Israel is a democracy, and it prides itself on its higher sense of morality.

In response to the abduction, Israel has held intensive searches.   It has arrested hundreds of suspects, including about thirty of the 1,027 it had traded for Gilad Shalit less than three years ago.  Shalit, just to remind you, was abducted by Hamas and held hostage in total isolation for five years, without any contact with the outside world.  Not through the Red Cross, not through the Pope, not through the UN or the World Court.

Unlike the three kidnapped boys, the prisoners Israel just took for interrogation will be arraigned in court and detained in prisons where they will be observed and monitored, visited by the Red Cross, where they will even have television privileges.  Because Israel prides itself on the fact that within its borders, laws of justice prevail over the laws of vengeance.

The human drama waged by the terrorists is made more complex by the increase in number of rockets fired by Hamas from Gaza into Israel.  Obfuscate the obvious.  Create a smoke screen for whatever may come next—negotiations or war. Either way, the terrorists think that they can win—in world opinion if not on the field.

And so the drama is all laid out again, not on the battlefield per se, but on our computers and hand-held screens.

But for the families of the abducted teenagers, the drama is not about war or peace.  For them it’s about hugging their sons.  For them, it’s about ever seeing their children alive again.

Unfortunately, in this terrible scenario some people see moral equivalence.  They perceive parallels between “freedom fighters” held in Israeli prisons and teenagers held as pawns by terrorist organizations.  The truth is different however.  The “freedom” the terrorists seek is not for a Palestine existing alongside Israel.  It’s for a completely Judenrein, Jewish-free, Palestine. 

For Israel, this isn’t about public opinion.  For Israel, this is about survival.  For Israel, the abduction of Eyal, Gil-Ad and Naftali is yet another violent act in an ongoing war to safeguard its existence.

We pray for the safe return of the three boys; we pray for their anguished families waiting anxiously for any bit of news about their loved sons.  We pray for the peace of Jerusalem.  We pray for peace.

(c) 2014 by Boaz D. Heilman

Rekindling Faith: Sh'lach L'cha

Rekindling Faith

D’var Torah for Parashat Sh’lach L’cha

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

This week’s portion, Sh’lach L’cha (“Send forth unto yourself,” Numbers 13:1-15:41), recalls a much earlier parasha, Lech L’cha, where the first ancestor of our people, Abram, receives a call from God to go forth, to set out for a land which God “will show you” (Gen. 12:1).

In both portions, the ultimate direction is the Promised Land.  But whereas Abram perceived the purpose and resolve behind the command and set out without hesitation, Moses knew otherwise.  As a prophet, he knew in advance that the mission of the twelve spies that he was to send out to scout the Promised Land was doomed. In an ancient midrash (Midrash Tanhuma, rabbinic commentaries going back to the third century), Moses asks God about the purpose of such a mission.

God’s response is that there is a lesson to be learned here; the people had not yet learned about the consequences of slander.  This would be their lesson.

Sure enough, ten of the twelve spies come back with slanderous reports, and the people believe them.  The lies spread like wildfire throughout the camp, causing much mourning and bewilderment.

It isn’t that the land is bad.  In fact, the land itself is bountiful.  As evidence, the spies show a single cluster of grapes so big that it takes two men to carry it.  There are other fruit as well, each a symbol of the land’s fertility and abundance.  The life-giving force embedded in the land is clear.  It runs with rivers of milk and honey.

No, it isn’t the land.  Rather, it is its inhabitants who cause the people to tremble with such uncontrollable fear.  The ten spies describe the men who inhabit Canaan as giants who wield iron swords and spears and dwell in huge, fortified cities.  Among them live Amalekites, the Torah’s standard-bearers of evil.  Chariot-driving Canaanites control the plains.

By comparison the Israelite spies saw themselves as grasshoppers about to be squashed under foot.

The hyperbolic report discourages and dismays the Israelites.  In their usual fashion, the people bemoan and bewail a fate worse than slavery—led astray by God and Moses, abandoned to die in the uncharted wilderness.  Yes, two of the twelve men who had been sent to explore the land, Joshua and Caleb, come back with positive reviews, but their voices are not heard and the people threaten to pelt them as well as Moses and Aaron with stones.

The open rebellion is soon quashed, as God appears in a cloud before all the Israelites, and the punishment is soon decided and announced. For forty years—a year for each of the 40 days the spies spent in the Promised Land, the Israelites would have to wander in the desert.  All the adults, the generation born in Egypt, would die out, and only those born in freedom would be allowed to enter the Promised Land.  All that is, except for Joshua and Caleb, the two spies who never lost faith in God.  Joshua would lead the conquest and bring the people in, while Caleb would receive as his reward the city of Hebron.

It’s a harsh lesson and even harsher retribution.  God is portrayed here as quick to anger and overly zealous.  Why such extensive punishment?  Would it not be enough to punish the unreliable spies?  Why must the rest of the people, who merely responded to what they heard, be punished?

What’s more, both God and Moses knew from the start that the mission was doomed.  Why would God even suggest it, let alone command it?  Is it fair to penalize the people when the whole situation is such an obvious setup?

The midrash suggests that the lesson contained in this parasha is of the consequences of slander.  Yet there might be another moral here.  Like Lech L’cha, the story of Abram setting out in search of God and the Promised Land, this portion, too, is really about faith in God.  As they begin their journey home, the Israelites’ fear isn’t only for their own safety; they are afraid for their wives and children, fearful that they would be taken prey.  They had not yet learned to trust this God who, for four hundred years seemed to be absent from their lives.  Now, in response to their fears, God vows to take them under God’s own, personal protection.  It is the children, the tender and gentle children for whose safety we fear, who in forty years, strengthened by their unsullied faith in God, will inherit the land.

Memories of past terrors hold too much power over us.  In our imagination, they loom bigger than life, appearing in our darkest moments, when we are most given to despair.  At such times, instinct takes over as we scramble for cover and safety.  Yet that may not be the best response.  It isn’t the real danger that makes us rush so, but rather the exaggerated, nightmarish apparition that lies deep within us.

When such night terrors attack, hiding under the bed is hardly the best response.  Turning on the light might be a much more effective solution.

And light—as the Torah would have us remember—is the beginning of God’s sacred work of creation.  As we light a candle, as we say a blessing over the flickering light and watch it grow, so also do we allow the glow of God to expand within us.  Faith is our inner light, and it can ease our minds and souls just as the radiance of the candle dispels the darkness around us.

In this parasha we are given a promise:  God will take care of our children.  The knowledge that it will be their blessing to enter and live in the Promised Land is enough to restore our faith so that we can continue on our journey, no matter how arduous it is.

In Sh’lach l’cha we are granted, for at least a moment, a glimpse of the future.  In this portion we can see the many tumbles and falls that lie ahead, but along with these we can envision the ultimate victories that also lie ahead.  The road to the Promised Land may be blocked—at least for the moment—by giants and forces beyond our control.  But our faith—the faith we teach our children and which they in turn will teach to their children—will ultimately lead us home, to dwell in peace where once there was war, to bring about holiness where once evil reigned.

It is this taste of the future that has sustained our people for thousands of years.  Our refrain, “Next year in Jerusalem,” was—and still is—on our lips every Passover, reminding us that our journey is not yet over, but that our goal looms closer with every generation; that with every new, innocent soul that awakens to the dream and hold fast onto it, we are brought one step closer to the Land of Milk and Honey.

That is our belief.  That is our faith.

© 2014 by Boaz D. Heilman