A shul is a thing. Some people never get it; they drift through our intentional community, enjoying its benefits, and never feel a sense of being part of it. Some people thrive on it: they snuggle in happily, deep among the branches of the Tree of Life, making a nest that survives every storm. And some people delightedly stumble upon it, and whether they are part of us for a little while or a long time, they leave their mark forever in the warp and woof of our community’s spiritual weave.
The “thing” is a place where you belong. Yet the stories we tell ourselves of our individuality and autonomy lead us to believe that we can take it or leave it. At the end of the day, don’t we all need a nest, a secure place to hold on when the storm breaks?
Psychologists and philosophers and Jewish tradition all share the same insight: that we all need other people.
Much of human behavior, thought, and emotion stems from our psychological need to belong. In psychologist Christopher Peterson’s words, other people matter. In fact, they matter so much, that they become a source of our self-esteem. We may even base our self-concepts not only on our unique traits and characteristics (individual self), but also on the attachments we form with significant others (relational self), and the social groups we identify with (collective self), thus, continuously navigating our self-definitions between “I” and “we” (Brewer & Gardner, 1996, p. 84). https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/between-cultures/201704/belonging
Our parashat hashavua is a double this week: both Hukkat and Balak are being studied all week long in the Jewish world. Both offer insights into what it means to be a self among other selves, and interdependent.
Parashat Hukkat begins with the Ritual of the Red Heifer, has long been considered a frankly inexplicable, if effective, recipe for bringing someone who is separated from the community back into it. We even have a category for the inexplicable: hukkim, things we do on faith, without understanding why. As with many other Jewish rituals, what it means is less important than the fact that it works.
The following parashah showcases a description of the People of Israel as a collective seen by others, namely a king named Balak and the prophet Bil’am. We seem threatening to them; a tent city suddenly appearing in their neighborhood, which they see as a problem. Balak hires Bil’am to curse us, but when he really beholds us, what burst forth from his mouth is a blessing so beautiful that we quote it every morning when we walk into shul to pray:
מַה־טֹּ֥בוּ אֹהָלֶ֖יךָ יַעֲקֹ֑ב מִשְׁכְּנֹתֶ֖יךָ יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃
How fair are your tents, O Jacob, Your dwellings, O Israel!
– BaMidbar (Numbers) 24.5
The two parashot are together this year, and we might see the juxtaposition as an opportunity to consider the importance of seeing ourselves within the group/s to which we belong, and how we are seen by others as part of that group. Because of antisemitism, many of us expect to be misunderstood or even targeted for hatred by others; worse, some of us within our own community have made others of us feel unwelcome.
The question remaining is how to turn the curse into blessing. Where is the possibly inexplicable ritual that will show us the way to belong?
If we all need belonging, then ask yourself:
How are you making your way through the relationships of your life?
where does your individual self connect with your relational self?
what is the collective self to which you feel you belong, and are you finding the blessing of it?
It doesn’t have to make sense. But if your belonging does not delight you, then it will never hold you when you need it most. On this Shabbat may you find the joy of belonging, wherever it is you truly belong, and may it hold you.
Torah for the 21st Century by Rabbi Ariel Stone 