Pinchas 5772: Reflections on Interfaith Marriage

Why do we Hate Balaam? Musings on Parashat Balak 5772

As I sat on the phone formulating my response, I stewed.  I stewed with desire to unload my anger against a giant corporation that in my mind was willfully, and cruelly blocking my ability to close on my home so that I could live a normal life.  All these emotions welled up within me as finally the other end of the line picked up, and suddenly I had a human being to speak with instead of my image of what that human being would be.  Try as I might, as much as I wanted to spew the curses that had been welling up within me, as much as I desired to make her feel my pain in her very being, blessing spilled forth from my lips. Words of thanks, and appreciation  were all I could say once i was in the presence of this sweet and caring human being. As I told many people later, the woman on the other end of the phone was from the midwest, the odds were that she was going to be pretty nice on the phone.   
Moving to Westchester turned out to be much more of a journey than I had expected. My family and I spent five weeks “in between homes” on our way to our new home in Port Chester. I still do not know how or why it took five weeks to get this done, however, on that journey I had a number of experiences. This experience of interacting with a person I felt like I needed to hate, brought me back to our parashah. For it is throughout our parashah that Balaam consistently tries to curse another group of people, namely the Israelites, yet the words that come out of his mouth are consistently words of praise, as I will sing from our text:

23:5. How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel!

ה. מַה טֹּבוּ אֹהָלֶיךָ יַעֲקֹב מִשְׁכְּנֹתֶיךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל:

And yet our tradition has hated Balaam even though these beautiful words came from his mouth.   Our biblical text rarely has a kind word to spare for him, and our talmudic text is scathing, where throughout the text his epithet is not simply Balaam but wicked Balaam! He is described as plotting secretly against the Israelites, and some of the allegations against him are simply appalling. 
So I wonder: What is it about Balaam that is so horrendous? How is it that a person who speaks so positively of Israel, is so vilified?  Balaam as a character has a few key traits that create this perfect storm of hatred.  However, the one I wish to focus on is that we never meet him. 
How can I say that you may ask? We read about him in the Torah, we are reading about him this week in our parashah.  Yet, how does Balaam interact with our people the Israelites in the desert? From a distance. From a vantage point where he is looking down at the Israelites, and the beautiful words that he speaks time and again, are described as being put into his mouth by G-d. Other than his death, Balaam is never described as interacting with any Israelite. (Numbers 31:8)
No it is in part for the exact same reason I was so ready to loathe the person on the other line that we as a people have been uncomfortable with Balaam.  He’s an unknown.  He’s never been in our presence, never had a conversation, he’s only talked to G-d, and in the end he barely listened to what G-d had to say.  

So I wonder what that has to say about our own perceptions of other people that we may never meet.   How often do we give ourselves the opportunity to be in someone else’s shoes rather than dissecting them based upon what we perceive? How often do we stop and take a moment to process where they are in the world before we assume certain stereotypes about them?

Susan T. Fiske, a noted social psychologist, has recently done quite a bit of research on this particular question. She argues that our perception of people stems from our preconceived view of their role in society. Her study suggests that we see most groups that we are not a part of as either envied groups, or scorned groups.  Envied groups are often seen as “ ...competent, but we view them as not on our side, so they seem cold...and untrustworthy.”(

http://www.russellsage.org/visiting-scholars/susan-t-fiske-interview)

 On the other hand, we have scorned groups.  In a recent study, Fiske showed images of characteristically scorned groups to participants who were in a Functional MRI machine, and monitored their brain patterns when seeing the scorned groups. The area of the brain that recognizes other people did not light up when the participants viewed members of the scorned groups.   “Fiske suspects that this hesitation to value the lives of those we scorn comes from not fully recognizing members of scorned groups as fellow human beings.”

(http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/10/compassion.aspx)

It is so easy to ascribe any motive or emotion to a group of unknown people.  To say that any person, based upon their job, political allegiance, or simply their appearance makes them a caricature of everything we imagine they are capable of.   What is infinitely more challenging is to take the deep breath, and step back and try to see the people we are interacting with as far more than merely thoughtless automatons that represent everything we imagine they are.  Rather our challenge is to take a moment, and try to see the person as a human being, created in G-d’s image, and therefore worthy of being recognized as a individual regardless of their opinion, position or group affiliation.

A few years ago a book came out entitled: Why We Hate Us by Dick Meyer.   The premise of the book was deeper than the title, he argued that a deeper social shift was occurring in American society creating this erosion of trust and morality. However, his title and many of his examples throughout the book ring true: we hate us.  A short excerpt from his book provides a multitude of examples: “They loathe snails who drive slowly in the left lane. They don't like people who talk full volume about the heartbreak of their psoriasis on cell phone headsets in restaurants and quiet bookstores....They don't like it when they're talking with someone who starts thumbing their little digital personal device to answer an email from someone five hundred miles away.”
(

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93261726)

Our challenge throughout our lives is to not reduce people to things.   To not look out at that person who is doing something that irritates us, and group them together into this faceless mass that not only irks us but enrages us.   That we don’t look out at a random stranger and see the wicked Balaam, the unknown entity, but a fellow human being created in the divine Image.

Joining this community, it is with great joy that I look forward to seeing that spark within each of you as I come to know you over the years.  I hope that I will not be a faceless Rabbi to you, and that all of you will not be a throng of congregants to me.  Rather as a Kehilah Kedoshah, a holy community we work together to know each other and continue to make WRT, our community, a place to be proud of, and most importantly, our home.   

Shabbat Shalom.

When We See Ourselves As Grasshoppers

In this week's parasha, Shelach-Lecha (Num. 13:1-15:41), a leadership team of 12 spies, each one a chieftain of the 12 tribes of Israel, is summoned by Moses into the Promised Land to determine the quality of the land, its soil, its produce, its cities and towns, and its inhabitants.

The spies agree:  The land flows with milk and honey.  The fruit is rich and plump and abundant.  The towns, however, are fortified and the people are armed and dangerous.  There are even giants living there!

Two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, insist that the Israelites have the "right stuff" to overcome the obstacles and inherit the land.

The other ten, however, fixate on their negative appraisal, which leads to the Israelites spreading the bad report so that the people panic and insist that going back to Egypt would be better than trying to enter the Promised Land.

It's a disastrous moment in the Jewish Story, one that leads God to punish the people with 40 years of wandering in the wilderness until the entire faithless generation dies out and only Joshua, Caleb, and the young will enter the Promised Land.

Look at Numbers 13:33, in which the ten disheartened spies say, in part, "We looked like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and so we must have appeared to them [our enemies]."

What a terrible appraisal!  And how human, to conclude from their own negative self-image that everyone else saw them as weak and powerless too.  But we do this all the time, don't we?  Extrapolate from our own views of ourselves how we think others see us?  Low self-esteem can be so destructive in relationships, adolescent development, and in our abilities to rise to our fullest potential.

I am eager to hear your comments about what it means to see ourselves as grasshoppers.  How does it hurt us, and how can we overcome this tendency?

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Jonathan Blake

In All Humility - Shabbat Beha'alotkha 5772

Dear Friends,

On Friday night, Rabbi Jan and Cantor Alane "Lanie" Katzew were honored as this year's recipients of the highest honor that WRT bestows upon congregants, the Brotherhood Award.  The following remarks are the D'var Torah delivered by Rabbi Katzew upon the acceptance, on behalf of himself and Cantor Katzew, in absentia.  Lanie was at another congregation, fulfilling a special commitment to honor a rabbinical colleague upon his retirement.  

In All Humility - Anavah

By Rabbi Jan Katzew

Delivered June 8, 2012                          

Westchester Reform Temple   

Shabbat Beha’alotkha 5772

Humility, anavah in Hebrew, is an under-rated, misunderstood trait in our culture, but it is the pre-eminent virtue in Jewish thought, singled out as the trait that made Moses Moses.  In the words of a contemporary student and teacher of Jewish ethical traditions, “being humble does not mean being a nobody, it just means being no more of a somebody than you ought to be”.  Humility involves a balancing act in between selflessness and selfishness, figuring out just how much space to take up in the room, in a conversation and in a relationship.  Humility is a lifelong pursuit, a process that demands constant mindfulness, self-awareness and empathy. 

Think about the most humble person you know – not a platonic ideal, but a real person, someone in your life who embodies and ‘ensouls’ humility. What makes him or her humble in your mind? Is he shy? Is she self-effacing? A follower? If any of these associations ring true you may be surprised to learn that the greatest leader in Jewish memory, Moses, is described in this week’s Torah portion, B’ha’alotkha, as anav m’ode, very humble, more than any other person on the face of the earth. That is the only character trait attributed to Moses in the Torah and he is the only individual in the entire Bible described as humble. This extraordinary combination led Jewish philosophers to venerate humility above all other virtues. In Duties of the Heart, an 11^th Century book by Bahya Ibn Pekuda, not a household name perhaps, but arguably the finest example of Jewish ethics, wrote “all virtues and duties are dependent on humility."

Our Sages try to teach about humility  through a story that I hope will ring true here and now. Anyone who sits in a particular place to pray in the synagogue, the God of Abraham stands in his or her aid, and when he or she dies, people say about him or her “this was a humble person”.  Where is the humility in sitting in the same place every time you pray in the synagogue? The answer is that by fixing yourself to one spot you free up all the other space for others to use. A humble person knows her place and takes up only his rightful space, no more and no less.

Humility and self-esteem are intimately related. Moses was not obsequious. He stood up to Pharaoh. He even stood up to God. But apparently, his hutzpah did not nullify his humility.  Hutzpah and humility may seem to be antithetical, but they are not really opposites. They can co-exist in each of us, just like they did in Moses, albeit on a different scale. Rav Kook, former chief rabbi in Palestine, wrote, “When humility is genuine it inspires joy, courage and inner dignity.” To know how to navigate between conceit and self-effacement is the art of humility. 

In the Talmud, the difference between Hillel and Shammai came down to humility. In a debate between these two schools of Jewish thought, a voice from heaven cried out: Eilu v’eilu divrei Elohim Hayyim, these and those are words of the living God, that is both Hillel and Shammai were inspired. However, Jewish practice is determined according to Hillel.  Why? Because when the school of Hillel was teaching about Jewish life, they first cited Shammai’s opinion and then shared their own. They gave honor to their counterparts and yet managed to carry the day with their own arguments.  

In the Rabbinic mind, even God modeled humility in human creation. In the Biblical account of Creation, everything was created by divine fiat. God said, “Let there be light. And there was light.” Except for the creation of a person about which God said, “Let us make a being in our image, in our likeness.” Us? To whom was God speaking? As you may imagine, Biblical interpreters have had a field day, or more accurately, a couple of field millennia trying to answer that question.  Was God conferring with Godself? Or the angels? Or the beings God had already created?  However, one thing was clear. When it came time to create a partner in Creation, God sought a second opinion. Humility involves communication, cooperation and collaboration.  We act humbly when we listen to others.

Apparently, the Men’s club internalized this nuanced understanding of humility because they sent two representatives, Mark Lewis and Scott Silberfein, to our home to share with Lanie and me the humbling news that we were to receive the 2012 Brotherhood award. How could we claim that we did not merit such an honor when they came together and told us that they had consulted with others and that we had been chosen? So Lanie and I looked at each other and said, in all humility, “thank you."

Thank you for making Westchester Reform Temple our spiritual home for a decade. Thank you for relating to us not as Rabbi and Cantor Katzew, but as Lanie and Jan. I cannot overemphasize the difference between being a position and being a person. As we prepare for our transition to Cincinnati, where I will be privileged to serve on the faculty and administration of Hebrew Union College, Lanie and I will miss this kehillah kedoshah, this sacred community. We will miss the brilliant, insightful and inspiring sermons. We will miss the beautiful sounds that transform music into prayer. We will miss the breadth and depth of learning and programming. We will miss the wealth of talent and power of synagogue leaders and volunteer partners. We will miss the architectural grandeur and environmental aesthetic of this magnificent sacred space. We will miss the rich, close and often unpredictable nature of Shabbat morning Torah study. But, most of all, we will miss people, people who have opened their homes and their hearts to us. We will miss being here in this sacred space ready to meet God and each other. It can be a humbling experience to be members at Westchester Reform Temple, where excellence is expected. I am grateful to be standing here on this bima on behalf of Lanie and myself to accept your gracious honor as recipients of the 2012 WRT Brotherhood award. I am even more grateful, however, now to leave this bima and take my rightful place, hopefully not too prominent and not too modest, but rather my appropriately humble place, in this wonderful congregation alongside you – our haverim – our fellow members, our friends.

Shabbat Shalom!

“A small deed done in humility is a thousand times more acceptable to God than a great deal done in pride”  - (Orchot HaTzaddikim)

CONFIRMATION / SHAVUOT REMARKS 5772

Confirmation Class of 5772!

You made it!

Can you believe it?

I can’t believe it!

After all, we had every reason to believe that we’d never make it to Confirmation this year.

We made it, despite your rabbi’s unintentional icecapades on the morning of Halloween.  I figured, that’s it, the Confirmation retreat is definitely off…. But thanks to the Confirmation Class of 5772, we made it!  You stayed clear of my crutches, schlepped my luggage, brought me Advil, propped my gimpy foot up on a pillow all weekend, and didn’t make too many jokes about my facial hair experiment.  

We made it, despite the bus conspiring to break down on its way home from our mitzvah project at the Westchester Food Bank.  Rather than kvetch to Grace, or insist that your parents bail you out, you organized the only logical response:  a massive song session.  Who would have guessed that the Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys would have such a far-reaching cultural impact but Grace is pretty sure that she heard Will singing along to “I Want It That Way.”

We made it, despite repeated attempts to make one another other violently ill on the flight simulators at the Air and Space Museum during our trip to Washington, DC.  Yes, Ethan and Annie, I'm talking to you.  

We made it, despite Rabbi Jacobs taking off in the middle of the year in order to begin his new work as, basically, the Pope of Reform Judaism... and then, just when things were starting to settle down, we learned that our very own Crabbi Dan Sklar was heading off to an outstanding new position as Senior Cantor of Temple Israel in Westport, Connecticut.  

Yes, Confirmation Class of 5772, you made it!  So for a few minutes I want to reflect on why I think you made it and what I think it’s going to take for you to make it in this complicated, challenging, and often confusing world in which you are rapidly growing up.

Since 2000, the Global Language Monitor (GLM) has been selecting the Top Ten Words, Phrases and Names of the Year.  To select these words, phrases, and names it analyzes language usage in the worldwide print and electronic media, on the Internet and throughout the Blogosphere, including social media.  In its annual global survey of the English language, GLM announced its Top Words of the Year for last year.   Tellingly, “Occupy” was the Top Word, and “Arab Spring” the Top Phrase.  But do you know the top name for this past year?  No, it was not Dan Sklar, although if GLM had analyzed global e-mail output for the last year, it might have yielded a different result!  

Hint:  Think Different.

The top name of the last year was Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs was the top name of 2011, and “Think Different” was the top slogan for Apple Computer from 1997-2002, right up through the introduction of the iPod.  “Think Different” is an amazing slogan, one that I embrace, despite its deliberate misuse of the adjectival form “Different” instead of the adverbial, “Differently.”

The “Think Different” campaign featured posters with photographs of different icons like Albert Einstein, Jim Henson, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Amelia Earhart, and Mahatma Gandhi.  It presented this text:  “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Confirmation class of 5772, “Think Different” is one of the two reasons you made it here today.

You are growing up in a culture that does not want you to “Think Different.”  You are growing up in a culture of conformity.  The voices of conformity speak not just in unison, but in a mind-numbing monotone:  Get yourself into the right school.  Get yourself the right clothes.  Get yourself with the right crowd.  Get yourself some sleep and exercise and healthy food, unless you need to study some more, in which case, don’t.

Over one hundred seventy years ago, Ralph Waldo Emerson put it this way; remember it well:  “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood [today, we would add, ‘and womanhood’] of every one of its members….The virtue most [requested] is conformity….Whoso would be a man [today, we would add, ‘or a woman’] must be a nonconformist” (from "Self-Reliance"). 

Think Different!

Confirmation Class of 5772, do you know the most common spelling mistake in the history of Confirmation?  A number of you made it in your Personal Statements.

It’s okay.  Don’t panic.  Jessica Miller, our amazing Intern who joined the RAC trip and helped to coordinate today’s service, caught them all.

It’s when a student spells Confirmation like this:

“C.O.N.F.O.R.M.A.T.I.O.N.”

Oh, that pesky “O!”

Your spell-checker won’t catch it, because “conformation” is a perfectly acceptable word.

But make no mistake, it’s a mistake.

You are not the “Conformation Class of 5772.”  You made it here today because you gloriously, giddily, wildly, celebrate nonconformity.  We have students towering over six feet tall and barely scraping 5 feet tall.  Sorry, Alex.  Although, the heels are fabulous.  We have cheerleaders and knitters, athletes and artists, geniuses with a lacrosse stick and geniuses with a xylophone mallet.  This is, no doubt, the first Confirmation service in the history of Reform Judaism to feature a Xylophone solo.  Next year, the theremin!  Look it up.

We have singers and speakers, lovers and fighters (well, debaters), bloggers and tweeters.  We have pianists, composers, wordsmiths and woodchoppers--and that’s just Rabbi Sklar.  We have representatives of J-Teen, BBYO, and NFTY.  We have students who have been to Israel and some who are going this summer.  And you are all part of YoGWRT, the Youth Group of WRT, whether or not you like the name and the logo with the sprinkles on top.  

“When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money,” said Steve Jobs in 1994.

“That’s a very limited life,” he went on.  “Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is - everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

...That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.

I think that’s very important and however you learn that, once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

Now I could just stop here--and perhaps you wish I would--but I feel that to end by just repeating a brilliant statement by Steve Jobs would actually dishonor the point of his remark.  And, what’s more, I promised that there were two reasons you made it here today, and “Think Different” is only the first.

The second is that “Nobody can make it out here alone.”

Confirmation Class of 5772:  You have not come here today to conform but you have come here to confirm, to confirm your unique voice in the chorus of your ancestral faith, to confirm the place of your unique thread in the fabric of this amazing global civilization that we call The Jewish People.  

You are growing up amid a crescendo of disgust at so-called “organized religion,” some of it justified and much of it misplaced.  When the Catholic Church shelters priests who sexually abuse child parishioners, is it any wonder that a new generation has grown up to resent the religion itself?  When a group Jewish extremists, grown men, find justification in their version of Orthodoxy to spit on an eight-year-old Orthodox girl for wearing allegedly “immodest” dress, as happened this past December in the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh, is it any wonder that the vast majority of Israelis laugh at the idea of joining a synagogue?  It is a shame, and a crisis, that the reputation of organized religion has been hijacked and sullied by its most fanatical elements.  

But it is a cop-out--both intellectually unsubstantiated and morally weak--to dissociate from organized religion because of the abuses of a fanatical fringe.  The whole point of being part of a congregation, being part of a religious movement, especially a movement with a progressive outlook and a social conscience like Reform Judaism, is to band together to multiply the good that any one of us could do alone.  

Alone you can read a book; as a Confirmation Class we learn and practice Torah.  Alone you can write a little check to tzedakah; as a Confirmation Class you raised over $6,000 at our Fundraiser, and as a class you selected two very deserving recipients about which we will hear at the end of today’s service.  Alone any one of you can visit Israel; with NFTY-in-Israel you can travel with teens from all over North America to understand what it means to be part of a people that has survived oppression, exile, and every Jew-hater’s prediction.  Alone you can write a letter to a Senator or Representative; as a Confirmation Class you can lobby in the halls of Congress.  Alone you can whisper a prayer to God; as a Confirmation class you can lift the voices of hundreds in song, as you have today.  Alone you can feed a table of hungry people; as a Confirmation Class you can stock the county’s Food Bank, the bus be damned!  

Together, we have power.  Alone, we are, ultimately, alone.

You did not come here to conform, but you did come here to confirm, and you can’t come to this bimah alone.  Judaism does not work by oneself.  You need the Jewish People and the Jewish people needs you.  Synagogues, the hub of every Jewish community, need you--to care enough, to lead, to continue to confirm your choice to be Jewish, to be part of a bigger Jewish picture, in 11th grade, and 12th grade, in college, and after college.  

Today is Shavuot.  We read from the Book of Ruth.  We read the Ten Commandments.  Both are about confirming--confirming one’s place amid a community, confirming one’s commitment to something bigger than him or herself.  Ruth, born a Moabite, says to her Hebrew mother-in-law, “Wherever you go, I will go.  Wherever you dwell I will dwell…. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God.”  Ruth confirmed that she couldn’t make it out there alone.  She needed a people.  It was the same at Sinai.  The Torah says when the people heard the ten commandments, they proclaimed in one voice, Na’aseh v’nishma:  We will do it.  We will listen.  We, the people.  Not each man, each woman for him and herself.  We.  Together.  We confirm.

So here we are, Confirmation Class of 5772.  We made it.  Thanks to two messages we made it.  You will need these messages to make it in this difficult world.  The first message is Think Different.  The second message is Nobody can make it out here alone.  I didn’t come up with either of them.  The first, as you know, belongs to Steve Jobs.  And the second, to Maya Angelou.  Listen to her words:

Lying, thinking

Last night

How to find my soul a home

Where water is not thirsty

And bread loaf is not stone

I came up with one thing

And I don't believe I'm wrong

That nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires

With money they can't use

Their wives run round like banshees

Their children sing the blues

They've got expensive doctors

To cure their hearts of stone.

But nobody

No, nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely

I'll tell you what I know

Storm clouds are gathering

The wind is gonna blow

The race of man is suffering

And I can hear the moan,

'Cause nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Bemidbar: "Standing Guard"

The following essay is from the book "Text Messages:  A Torah Commentary for Teens."  Jeffrey Salkin, editor.  Jewish Lights Publishing, 2012).  The hardcover edition comes out on June 12, 2012, and the Kindle edition is already available.  Click here for details. 

BEMIDBAR

Standing Guard

by Rabbi Jonathan E. Blake

“The Levites, however, shall camp around the Tabernacle of the Pact…” (Numbers 1:53)

What, or who, represents the greatest threat to you as a Jew today?  

There are two possible answers.

On the one hand, you might believe that the greatest threats to the Jewish people today are external threats: anti-Semitism, “anti-Israelism,” and the threat of a nuclear Iran, whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who denies that the Holocaust happened and who would like to see Israel disappear from the map.

On the other hand, perhaps internal threats to the Jewish people are more dangerous. Jews from different streams of Jewish life, like the ultra-Orthodox and the non-Orthodox, are constantly going at it. Some Jews don’t even like it when other Jews express different opinions on Israel and what it means to be Jewish. 

And then, there’s that old threat – assimilation. There are many Jews who just want to be like everyone else in America.  Throw in rising rates of intermarriage, and the fact that fewer people are choosing to join synagogues.  Each of these, and all of these together, might lead to the weakening of the Jewish community – not because of external factors, but from the inside out. 

   

So which type of threat is more dangerous to us as Jews – the external, or the internal?

In our Torah portion, we read that the Levites, the biblical priests, took on the responsibility to “stand guard around the Tabernacle” (Numbers 1:53), the central shrine in the wilderness.  The Levites served as the Tabernacle’s security force!  

When you consider what we know about the Levites, it’s an intriguing choice. While other tribes consisted of warriors, the Levites were religious professionals. They ministered to the ancient sacrificial system; conducted communal rituals and celebrations; taught sacred texts, and even composed and performed religious poetry and music.

Perhaps the Levites’ main function in guarding the Tabernacle had nothing to do with their skills as security guards, and everything to do with promoting a vibrant Jewish life for the entire community. After all, the entire Tabernacle was already fortified with a heavily armed military encampment, comprised of all the other tribes.  

What was the job of the unarmed Levites? Teaching holy words; bringing uplifting music and ritual to worship, and ministering to the needs of the people.  

I imagine the Levites made it their top priority to ensure a thriving Jewish congregation, aware that no external threat could ever destroy a community that was strong and united from within.

Just a little thought for Parashat Bechukotai, 5772

I was studying this week's parasha, Behar-Bechukotai, and stumbled upon a lovely teaching by Ovadiah Sforno, the 15th-Century Italian Sage.

In Bechukotai, the Torah enumerates blessings and curses.  Blessings, for those who abide by God's strictures.  Curses, for those who disobey.  Among the promises offered to the obedient is this:

...I will establish My sanctuary in your midst, and My Being will not abhor you.  I will walk in your midst and be your God, and you shall be My people (Lev. 26:11-12).


Commenting on the phrase, "I will walk in your midst," Sforno notes that the verb form for "walk" (hithalech) is in the reflexive, which Sforno interprets to mean, "walking from place to place."  From this point Sforno extracts an important lesson:  for the Jewish people, God is not confined to a sanctuary, a shrine, not even to a holy land.  God is found wherever we seek God; indeed, "wherever the righteous of [each] generation are to be found, that place is the holiest dwelling of the  Most High" (Sforno, ad loc). 


I am heading into the sanctuary now, but remember that God is not in that place alone.  Where do you find the Most High in your life?