רְאֵ֗ה אָנֹכִ֛י נֹתֵ֥ן לִפְנֵיכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם בְּרָכָ֖ה וּקְלָלָֽה׃ 

See, this day I set before you blessing and curse (Deuteronomy 11.26)

Our parashat hashavua is the last before the month of Elul, in which we prepare spiritually for the High Holy Days. It starts as plainly and starkly as possible: Look. The word ראה re’eh in Hebrew means more than to physically see. It means pay attention, watch, and understand – and here it is in the imperative: look!

Our ancestors seem to see the blessings and curses of their lives and imaginations as a binary: one is unalloyed good, and one is just plain bad for you. But we know that the Torah’s ancient Hebrew uses opposites not as a binary, but rather a merism, a grammatical construct in which two opposites are invoked to indicate a totality. “Night and day” means all the time, as Frank Sinatra sang (and wrote) in 1962. 

This invites us to consider what might usefully be seen, not only in something that is partially a blessing – the silver lining, as we say – but, more painfully, something that is nearly completely a curse.

A bit more than a month from now we will be confronted with an incredibly difficult text, in which we are challenged to find the meaning in the Akedah, in which Abraham nearly murders his son Isaac in an intended ritual sacrifice aborted at the last moment. We are usually so distracted by the amorality of the story that we don’t notice the use of the word which is central to our parashah this week: ראה – see, look, behold:

וַיִּקְרָ֧א אַבְרָהָ֛ם שֵֽׁם־הַמָּק֥וֹם הַה֖וּא ה’  יִרְאֶ֑ה אֲשֶׁר֙ יֵאָמֵ֣ר הַיּ֔וֹם בְּהַ֥ר ה’ יֵרָאֶֽה

And Abraham named that site ‘ה-yireh, whence the present saying, “On the mount of ‘ה there is vision.” (Genesis 22.14)

Here is the idea that through the moments of our lives that are traumatizing – the moments we might call cursed – something can be seen that otherwise remains hidden from us.

It is much more comfortable to turn away from painful moments and painful memories in our lives – to shut away that which is cursed behind a door that we promise ourselves we’ll never open. But what might we deprive ourselves of seeing, and of understanding, when we do so?

Pay attention – study more Torah, with others similarly seeking spiritual growth from our ancient sources. Watch – don’t judge, just take it all in, even the hard parts. And then, perhaps, with the help of the community’s support and some sense of holiness that we can just barely begin to see – understand.

“Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.” – Leonard Cohen

וְהָיָ֣ה ׀ עֵ֣קֶב תִּשְׁמְע֗וּן אֵ֤ת הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים֙ הָאֵ֔לֶּה וּשְׁמַרְתֶּ֥ם וַעֲשִׂיתֶ֖ם אֹתָ֑ם וְשָׁמַר֩ ה’ אֱלֹהֶ֜יךָ לְךָ֗ אֶֽת־הַבְּרִית֙ וְאֶת־הַחֶ֔סֶד אֲשֶׁ֥ר נִשְׁבַּ֖ע לַאֲבֹתֶֽיךָ

And if you do obey these rules and observe them carefully, your G*d ‘ה will maintain faithfully for you the covenant made on oath with your ancestors (Deuteronomy 7.12)

In our parashat hashavua we find the people of Israel inhabiting a liminal space, neither here nor there – much like any of us when we are preparing to step forward, across a threshold. It may happen multiple times in a lifetime, but each time is unique: once you take this step, you will be different. Life will be different.

And then there are the steps that you did not realize were fateful until you looked behind you. Parashat Ekev presents us an opportunity to sensitize ourselves to what these moments mean.

The people of Israel waits on the far side of the Jordan River, just as, forty years earlier, their parents and grandparents had waited at the Sea of Reeds. Mythologically, even earlier, our eponymous ancestor was waiting at the Yavok River. Jacob-turned-Israel received his name as a result of that night of struggle – the name of the river, “struggle” in Hebrew, carries the memory of it.

Each of these crossings through water is a hint of the birth of something new. But each also offers a challenge and, eventually, the scars of real human experience, that lessen us physically as they open us up past a childish certainty of self-sufficiency, toward what it means to live and grow.

Every year the book Devarim, Deuteronomy, bids us to slow down and listen. Not plot-driven but contemplative, this book reviews, considers and derives meaning. Note the promise made at our parashah’s beginning: if you observe, you will always find the covenant there for you.

Notice that this is not a promise that “everything will be all right.” Only that you will always be steadied by this framework of purpose and meaning if you consistently do it. The commitment to regular action leads to a certain wholeness even, and especially, in the face of brokenness – in oneself and in the world.

Hear, O Israel: life is a struggle. You will not emerge unscathed. But you will experience moments when you are standing at the shore of something new – no more certain than our ancestors were when they argued, according to the midrash, about who would go into the Sea of Reeds first, or when Jacob emerged from the River Yavok, limping into his life as Israel.

We as a people stand at the other side of the Jordan as we look toward the High Holy Days. In our brokenness and sadness – because that is what life brings – we need the seven weeks of consolation that we move through now, toward Rosh HaShanah and our yearly chance to appear before HaShem and account for our lives. Paradoxically, as Judaism has long taught, it is only through brokenness that we can begin to become whole.

Jacob limps because he is a mortal who has striven with God and one cannot emerge unscarred from such intense intimacy. He limps because mortals lack perfection and have their points of weakness (Achilles and Oedipus are two other well known examples.) He limps because scars are a language and this is the mark of chosenness [commemorated by Israel’s taboo against eating the sinew of the thigh of permitted animals.] He limps because of the cost of dreams, the cost of growing up….He limps while crossing, because even after prevailing in the struggle with the unfathomable he is still not exempt from fear on approaching the border of the Promised Land. He limps because this homecoming is temporary; another exile awaits him and his offspring in the future. – Ilana Pardes, The Biography of Ancient Israel

Life repeats its patterns generationally within a people, within families, within individual lives. “Once again, dear friends, into the breach!” We are invited by life itself to hold hands and prepare for the crossing, limping toward wholeness as we go.

On the night of 22 Kislev 4957 [1196], Rabbi Eleazar ben Judah of Worms was engaged on his commentary on Genesis; he had reached the parashah VaYeshev. Suddenly two crusaders entered his house and killed his wife Dulcina, his two daughters Belat and Hannah, and his son Jacob. 

Rabbi Eleazar went on to author HaRoke’akh, a work of halakhah and ethics, along with many other ethical and mystical works.

This Shabbat is called Nakhamu, after the first lines of the special haftarah always recited after Tisha B’Av:

נַחֲמ֥וּ נַחֲמ֖וּ עַמִּ֑י יֹאמַ֖ר אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶֽם

Comfort, oh comfort My people,

Says your God. 

דַּבְּר֞וּ עַל־לֵ֤ב יְרוּשָׁלַ֙͏ִם֙ וְקִרְא֣וּ אֵלֶ֔יהָ כִּ֤י מָֽלְאָה֙ צְבָאָ֔הּ כִּ֥י נִרְצָ֖ה עֲוֺנָ֑הּ כִּ֤י לָֽקְחָה֙ מִיַּ֣ד ה’ כִּפְלַ֖יִם בְּכׇל־חַטֹּאתֶֽיהָ       

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and declare to her that her term of service is over, that her iniquity is expiated; for she has received at the hand of HaShem double for all her sins. (Isaiah 

The voice inviting us to find consolation comes from a great distance – a prophet who promises us that life will go on, and HaShem is still there. That word resonates through the life of Rabbi Eleazar ben Judah of Worms, who heard it, responded by somehow discerning how not only to keep living but to keep giving of his Torah to his students. And that voice is now in our ears.

It’s not easy to hear, and even less so to understand. But we are the people who are commanded to shema, listen, for a still, small voice – called in Hebrew a bat kol – that is there underneath the chaos of sirens, screams, and our our heartbeat pounding in our ears.

This is what the voice says: getting up off the ground after Tisha B’Av and starting the work of consolation does not indicate that everything will be all right. The voice – which we might call our inner voice, although it is connected to our history and community – is more subtle than that. It calls us to get back to the work of our lives, to do teshuvah, to return.

We are fifty days from Rosh HaShanah, and the voice in our spiritual ear is calling us to return. Teshuvah, return,isn’t only or maybe even primarily about atonement from the harm we do in our lives. The real challenge of Return is the invitation to discern as far back in our lives as we need to in order to draw forth the gossamer thread of belonging. Where have you been at home and whole with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your wherewithall?

For us to hear this still small voice and follow it toward wholeness, we have to rise above a natural desire for “fairness.” Conditioning our belief on reward for the just and punishment for the wicked is transactional Judaism, and just like most household and human beings, we run at least as much on trust, and faith that debts and imbalances will be addressed over time.

Teshuvah is the art of learning to rise above transactional ethics and seek intrinsically meaningful life, not rewards and punishments. After the pogrom, Shabbat will still come. During the climate crisis, Torah study will still be a mitzvah. Our ancestors forced into a synagogue in Blois in 1171 and murdered en masse when the building was set on fire were said to have sung the Aleynu as they died.

All the words we need have been given to us; in prayers composed by those who came before us, especially the Psalms: 

אַל־תַּסְתֵּ֬ר פָּנֶ֨יךָ ׀ מִמֶּנִּי֮ בְּי֢וֹם צַ֫ר־לִ֥י הַטֵּֽה־אֵלַ֥י אׇזְנֶ֑ךָ בְּי֥וֹם אֶ֝קְרָ֗א מַהֵ֥ר עֲנֵֽנִי׃ 

Do not hide Your face from me in my time of trouble; turn Your ear to me; when I cry, answer me speedily. 

כִּֽי־כָל֣וּ בְעָשָׁ֣ן יָמָ֑י וְ֝עַצְמוֹתַ֗י כְּמוֹקֵ֥ד נִחָֽרוּ׃ 

For my days have vanished like smoke and my bones are charred like a hearth.

הוּכָּה־כָעֵ֣שֶׂב וַיִּבַ֣שׁ לִבִּ֑י כִּֽי־שָׁ֝כַ֗חְתִּי מֵאֲכֹ֥ל לַחְמִֽי׃ 

My body is stricken and withered like grass; too wasted away to eat my food. (Psalm 102 3-5)

The holy Presence is here for us if we are able to feel it; we are here for each other if we are able to discover for ourselves what it means to be resilient. Not because life is fair, but because life is, and remains, and will always be, a beautiful gift which we redeem with a simple, single mitzvah.

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.

כָּל מַחֲלֹקֶת שֶׁהִיא לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם, סוֹפָהּ לְהִתְקַיֵּם. וְשֶׁאֵינָהּ לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם, אֵין סוֹפָהּ לְהִתְקַיֵּם. אֵיזוֹ הִיא מַחֲלֹקֶת שֶׁהִיא לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם, זוֹ מַחֲלֹקֶת הִלֵּל וְשַׁמַּאי. וְשֶׁאֵינָהּ לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם, זוֹ מַחֲלֹקֶת קֹרַח וְכָל עֲדָתוֹ:

Every principled dispute will in the end endure; But one that is not will not endure. Which is the controversy that principled? Such was the controversy of Hillel and Shammai. And which is the controversy that is not? Such was the controversy of Korakh and all his congregation. 

Pirkei Avot 5.17

Our parashat hashavua is named for Korakh, a cousin of the Israelite leader Moshe’s, of the Levite house of Kehati. The parashah begins with Korakh’s challenge to his relative, who just happens to be HaShem’s chosen leader: “They gathered together against Moshe and against Aharon.” (Numbers 16.3)

This distressing turn of events becomes more interesting when we notice the Hebrew of the accusation:

וַיִּֽקָּהֲל֞וּ עַל־מֹשֶׁ֣ה וְעַֽל־אַהֲרֹ֗ן וַיֹּאמְר֣וּ אֲלֵהֶם֮ רַב־לָכֶם֒ כִּ֤י כׇל־הָֽעֵדָה֙ כֻּלָּ֣ם קְדֹשִׁ֔ים וּבְתוֹכָ֖ם ה’ וּמַדּ֥וּעַ תִּֽתְנַשְּׂא֖וּ עַל־קְהַ֥ל ה’

They gathered – vay’kahalu – together against Moshe and against Aharon and they said to them “you have taken on too much. All the  community is holy and Hashem is in their midst; why do you exalt yourselves above HaShem’s kahal – gathering?” (Numbers 16.3)

Here we note that the Torah records that the group that aligns itself with Korakh is called a kahal, the same word which is the root of our familiar word for a sacred gathering, kehillah. 

It’s all very subtle: this is a kehillah and that is a kehillah. Who is to say which is the “correct” gathering, or club, or political faction? So much is relative, after all, and each of us has our own perspective. Who’s to judge? Aren’t we all different, and, as Korakh insists, aren’t we all holy?

Jewish ethics reminds us that it’s not the person, it’s the action; a group that may be doing the right thing one day may err on another. We’re not allowed to write off any person, or any group – but we are responsible for judging actions and consequences. As it so happens, among our Psalms there are those recorded as “for the sons of Korakh.” They had their good side, and their place among us.

That’s what disagreements often are: it’s not about someone being entirely wrong, or evil. We each take up a piece of the truth to defend, and if we are honest about it, there may be a bit of light on both sides of the divide.

All this changes, according to our Sages, when someone is not arguing in good faith, but from their own agenda. In the Talmud, this kind of argument, what we call in Hebrew makhloket, is described as “not for the sake of heaven.” This means that those dissenting or rebelling do not have everyone’s best interests at heart, as Hashem requires – a good example in practice of what it means to fail to love another as we love ourselves.

This was Korakh’s failure. The Torah records that Korakh’s rebellion ends when HaShem causes the earth to open and swallow up every single one of those who joined him. Midrash explains why: Korakh’s rebellion was not in recognition of the Israelites’ holiness but sprang from his desire for advancement. He was a Levite, after all, and resented the accident of birth that made him a porter of holy things, rather than a priest. Those he gathered around him may have believed that they were rising up against a caste system, but their leader was using their honest desire for equality to further his own personal agenda.

Makhloket is a rare opportunity: when we grant that both sides are worth listening to, and worthy of the respect we also wish to receive. The students of Hillel and the students of Shammai disagreed on how to apply halakhah, but they still treated each other as communal companions and social equals. Their disagreement was principled, and they separated the arguments from the value of the human beings.

By teaching of the difference between Hillel and Shammai and Korakh, our ancestors imply that we are to discern this difference; that it matters. To invoke the ethic of listening to both sides when one side is manipulating or simply misled is nowhere near “the sake of heaven” but more likely a result of cowardice or avoidance.

To listen to both sides when Jews disagree over the fate of the area variously called the Occupied Territories or Judea and Samaria has been for many years an honest effort to balance Israeli security fears with the ethical revulsion of interfering in Palestinian lives. But the settler pogroms now taking place in Palestinian villages – and the rhetoric of those who speak of security while encouraging this violence – has no place in a makhloket l’shem shamayim.  

This is not “you shall know the heart of the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23.9); this is not “when you see the ass of your enemy fallen under its burden you must help to raise it” (Exodus 23.5); this is nothing but evil. 

Jewish settlers may act out of inherited trauma; but the politicians manipulating hatred to gain power are truly deserving of having the earth open up and swallow them forever. We, however, do not live in Biblical times. Our work to neutralize the evil will be more complicated and more difficult.

And may G*d help us if we turn away from the task of calling out evil for the sake of “hearing both sides.”

Not yet.

This week we marked the 75th year since the declaration of independence of the modern State of Israel (we say it that way because this is the third time that Jews have been in a position of self-rule in our at least three thousand year history). 

When the state was founded, the Ashkenazi Jews who were primarily involved in that political act were a traumatized people, many still not sure what had happened to their families in Europe, and they themselves often concentration camp survivors. They wanted to go home. They wanted to be safe in the land that for two thousand years had been ingrained by Jewish culture to be the home we longed to return to. Every year at the end of the Seder we repeated it: “next year in Jerusalem!”

Last week we marked Yom HaShoah, the Day of Remembrance of Holocaust and Heroism. The juxtaposition of these two modern Jewish holy days, as well as the historical proximity (the Holocaust took place between 1939-1944) and the birth of the State of Israel in 1948, has led more than one Jew and non-Jew to believe that Israel was founded as a result of international guilt. 

It is true that in a way, the state of Israel was voted into existence by the United Nations when the British partition plan for two states in the area, one Jewish and one Palestinian, was approved in 1947. And no doubt there is something there. But this explanation erases fifty years of urgent lobbying and smuggling, and one hundred years of emigrating and struggling.

For the Jews of Europe, antisemitism had risen to such murderous heights that it caused the beginning of a wave of Jews leaving their homes – which they were told quite definitively were not, after all, their homes, although they had lived there sometimes for more generations than they could count. The ancient impulse to go home, coupled with the rise of European utopian socialism, offered Jews a dream of a better place, their own place, where they could sit under vines and fig trees and none would make them afraid (after the prophecy of Micah 4.4)

There was so much death, so much terror, and so much fear. Those of us who were not there can barely imagine it, even after all the Yom HaShoah information we’ve learned. The land of Israel was not easy, though: of 50,000 Jews who left Europe for Israel in a wave of emigration which is today called the Second Aliyah, many died of starvation (they weren’t farmers) and disease (mosquitos were rampant), and many more returned to Europe. According to some counts, only 5000 stayed and survived.

Today the State of Israel is rightly accused of visiting upon others the terrors and abuse Jews suffered from for so long in Europe. This may be due to PTSD, or the rough neighborhood, or some other form of doorway to evil, but it must be said that the Jewish state is not promoting the values of justice for all and kindness toward strangers as the Torah and our prophets insist that we must. This breaks the hearts of all Jews who care about our people, and causes some of us to do what we can to support the efforts of all who are working for justice in Israel.

Somewhere between all the death that we remember on Yom HaShoah and the vibrant resurrection some of us saw in the birth of the modern state of Israel, hope has turned to tragedy. Partly because as Jews we care about the welfare of the Jews of Israel, and partly because the state of Israel represents us in the world to antisemites – and not only that; many of us are proud of the state and linked by family or friendship to some of its citizens.

Our perspective as Jews, as secular and Western as our outlook may be these days, is rooted in Jewish religious culture. It derives from two thousand years of the development of our sense of mitzvah, and of what it means to be a mensch. All of this is derived, ultimately, from the generations of Torah Study that have always guided us.

So let’s consider:

Our double parashah for this week consists of the two sections named Akharei Mot “after death” and Kedoshim “holy.” As juxtaposition is a regular urge to midrash in rabbinic Judaism, much commentary has been devoted to just what meaning these two names might yield to us as we consider them, each in our different contexts, throughout Jewish time.

Akharei Mot:

“Do not follow the acts of the land of Egypt, where you once lived…follow My judgements” (Lev.18.3)

Comparing the State of Israel to any other state is politically legitimate and yet, for Jews, entirely inappropriate. The Jewish state should act Jewishly. Thus from Jeremiah all the way to our own sense of distress.

“‘You must not enter the Holy at any [spontaneous] time,’ so that Aaron should not die as his sons did.” (Rashi)

We may not act as we wish regardless of the respect due other human beings, or we will defile the holiness we are supposed to be creating among us, and it – and some essential aspect of our community’s life – will die.

Kedoshim: 

“You shall be holy as I HaShem am holy.” (Lev. 19.1)

We are not supposed to be comparing ourselves to other peoples and other nation states. We have an independent Jewish standard by which we judge ourselves and our people.

“Holiness may be found wherever there is a safeguard against immorality.” (Tikkunei Zohar 56, quoted in Likutey Moharan 1, 36.8)

An excellent support for the idea of checks and balances!

There’s a natural human desire to find meaning when people die, that it might have been for some worthwhile purpose. We lift up the memory of those we love after their deaths through doing justice, which we call tzedakah. In this way we, “after death” make “holy” meaning for their lives and our own. 

On Yom HaShoah we reflect on what it has meant for the Jewish people to be helpless victims and doomed rebels. By declaring Never Again we hope to make the memory of their lives holy. Similarly, in the two national memorial ceremonies held yearly, both that of Israel and the joint Israel-Palestine memorial, those who have lost loved ones to the Israel Palestine conflict mourn, and want to see those lives made holy. 

As the historic events of the last 16 weeks in Israel have made clear, we are a long way from learning how to sanctify the lives lost. But the vibrancy of the protests – up to half a million people in the streets, out of a population of 9.5 million – is awe-inspiring. 

Our siddur records the traditional doctrine that “because of our sins we were exiled from our land.” According to ancient Jewish tradition, idolatry and immorality caused the first exile, and baseless hatred the second. May we learn from our own history, and not repeat it! And may we who are way over here in the U.S. see ourselves not as helpless bystanders but capable of support for the power of good not only in our communities here, but in our beloved Jewish communities of Israel and all the Diaspora, that one day we might all be able to say with the Psalmist:

יְבָרֶכְךָ֥ ה’ מִצִּ֫יּ֥וֹן וּ֭רְאֵה בְּט֣וּב יְרוּשָׁלָ֑͏ִם כֹּ֝֗ל יְמֵ֣י חַיֶּֽיךָ׃ 

May HaShem bless you from Zion;

may you share the prosperity of Jerusalem

all the days of your life, 

וּרְאֵֽה־בָנִ֥ים לְבָנֶ֑יךָ שָׁ֝ל֗וֹם עַל־יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃ {פ}

and live to see your children’s children.

May all be well with Israel! 

Psalm 128.5-6