SECOND THOUGHTS ON STATUES AND SINS

Chances are there is some metalwork in your home which you don’t give much thought to: pots, pans, railings, fences, etc. This week’s parashah is a section of Torah that might get you thinking about the metal work in your home, because it touches on just that issue. This week’s parashah is Korah, and you might recall it focuses on the most infamous of rebellions during the 40-year trek in the wilderness. Korah and his followers are unhappy with how much power the two brothers, Moses and Aaron, wielded over everyone else. They demanded that power be more equitably divided among the people for all the Children of Israel were holy. This was very much an internal family squabble. But it was a very large family squabble as it was a very big family. Korah had 250 followers in lock step with his demands.

So Moses constructs a plan to determine where holiness lay and where it does not. He asks Korah and the 250 followers to take their fire pans, used in the burning of incense, and make an offering to the Lord. They do just that. But almost on cue, an earthquake erupts, swallowing the leaders of the rebellion, including Korah and his entire family, and then an overwhelming conflagration breaks out and consumes all 250 men. All that remained were the smoking fire pans. What an extraordinary human tragedy. One would presume at that point to take the fire pans and junk them. But that is not what God instructs Moses and Aaron to do. To the contrary, God asks that all the fire pans be hammered into sheets of metal which will then plate the altar of incense. Now it must be understood that the altar already was plated. This new cover would be a second cover. But why would fire pans used in an attempt to overthrow the legitimate authority of Moses and Aaron be then used for a visible altar, and one that is understood to be integral to the worship of God? It seems strange. The Torah asserts that the visible plating would be a warning to all would-be rebels to reign in their passions. Still, why would such a dark period be given such prominence and reverence within the community?

              America right now is deep into an iconoclastic mood, that is, we want to tear down statues commemorating what many claim to be tributes to racism and bigotry, in particular, statuary that glorified the racism against our black brothers and sisters who have suffered mightily since the founding of this country and even before. By the same token, art provides testimony to an age, for better or for worse, and when we hide such art from view or destroy it, we do damage to truth and that’s something that no moral human being can support. One sure way to misunderstand where we are today, is to ignore or distort who we were yesterday. There is much about our past that we can be grateful for, and much that ought to humiliate us. But that’s who we are and like God’s solution for what to do with the fire pans, it is sometimes better to keep the sins, our sins, visible.

We live at a time that has been very cruel to the arts. It is no wonder that the thrust of social sentiment is to destroy the statuary rather than mold or chip away at new ones that might dramatically express a new sentiment about who we are as Americans today, or at least what we hope to become. Periods of crisis, like the one we find ourselves in, tend to be periods of great creativity, and now is the time to capitalize off the anger, the frustration, and the hopes of people for a nation yearning to be free of racism and bigotry. We have all become very adept at telling each other how terrible we are and damning ourselves for our sins, as if there is anyone in this world who can actually lay claim to living free of sin.  

And yet, there is another way. Like Abraham Lincoln, who hoped to rebuild the South after the Civil War, and Nelson Mandela who evoked widespread amnesty for past crimes in order to kickstart a new and improved South Africa, the time has come to move forward without further humiliation. I am the first to admit that sometimes the only way to effect change is to put up your dukes and fight. Then again, to bring about change forcefully but peacefully, ala Mahatma Gandhi or a Martin Luther King, is a real test of one’s character and proof of one’s true mettle.

THE TOUCH SCREEN AND THE HUMAN TOUCH

Their mother had died the day before and I was in the midst of meeting with them to help prepare for the following day’s eulogy. The son began to describe a trip to the national parks, years ago, in which the family enjoyed a three week excursion, witnessing the wonders of nature, the glories of sleeping late and homework-free evenings, and the love that his parents showered on him uninterrupted by work obligations or synagogue meetings. The daughter then turned to her brother and asked, “What trip was that!” She then proceeded to tell me about long hours of imprisonment in a moving vehicle, the boring nature of nature, the anxiety surrounding unstructured time, and the unsympathetic response of her parents—particularly her mother’s—to her protestations. And such is memory. Two people, having experienced the same event, will experience it and thus remember it in different ways. Even one person might remember an event differently after many years. That cannot necessarily be explained only as the effects of aging. New experiences help us evolve and we begin to remember the past in light of whom we have become.

The slavery in Egypt—was it a horror or just an aspect of the good ole’ days? If I were an Israelite, I’d vote for horror, and I’m sure I could find some fellow Israelites to support me. But what about this memory by some of the wandering Jews: “If only we had meat to eat. We remember the fish 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 11:4b-6). From the “Where’s the Meat?” Israelites, slavery may indeed have been horrible, but at least they had what to eat. The experience of slavery is remembered by various Israelites in very different ways.

A more contemporary but complicated memory has to do with our relationship to the Internet. It was not long ago that many top social scientists and clergy were questioning America’s addiction to their electronic screens. It looked as if everyone walked around deep in prayer, heads bowed and hands together, though their hands were holding a smartphone and their eyes were glued to a screen. Some began to wonder if the next generation would even be able to read or understand facial expressions, let alone communicate with a hard copy human being, assuming fate would bring them into contact with one. That was a few months ago. Today, after three months of no concerts, no sports, no theater, no synagogue, and for too many, no work, most of us are thanking God for the Internet. In a period of serious social isolation, what would we have done without our electronic toys and their glowing screens? But how are we to remember this newfound relationship with our electronic toys—blessing or some unnatural addiction?

The same question might be asked of the Israelites’ desire for meat. What could be bad about such a desire? It seems innocuous enough. God granted the Israelites this indulgence, sending enough flocks of quail to sate their gluttonous passions for days. Yet the whole scene ends with an outbreak of a plague that kills many, and that very spot in the wilderness earns a dark and ominous name, Kivrot Ha-Ta’avah, Graves of Desire. In this case, the Torah teaches that sometimes too much of a good thing is not a good thing.

A similar lesson is conveyed in a racially charged narrative in which Aaron and Miriam complain about Tziporah, Moses’ wife, for being a Kushite. The implication seems to be that she was dark-skinned and therefore unsuitable for Moses. God takes great umbrage with this charge and strikes Miriam with “snow-white scales” (Numbers 12:10). Many commentators see this as a clear rebuke of racism, as if God were saying—If you like white then I’ll give you white. But the white that covers Miriam is the most unwelcomed white there is. The Torah teaches that the color white may be pleasing, but there is nothing inherently good or superior to the color white when it comes to human skin tones.

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, many non-profit organizations commiserated over the difficulty involved in getting people to come out to anything. Study sessions, board meetings, lectures, socials, etc., all garnered tepid responses and the only successful in-person events were those that culminated after a tremendous human effort. It was not a model of a healthy social network, nor was it sustainable. The lure of staying home was abetted by a plethora of electronic devices that brought into our homes everything we ever needed, including concerts, sports, theater, and so forth. Some argued that life had changed, that the in-person event was a thing of the past as people grew more individualistic and our social networks atomized.  Still, at least, we had the option of going out—to a ball game, a concert, the movies, a dinner with friends. But then the pandemic essentially sent us packing to our rooms. It was at that point, when we were no longer able to choose to leave, that we realized what we were missing:  the inability to shake a person’s hand, give a friend a hug, whisper a notion into the ear of a loved one, or embrace one another in a warm welcome or heartfelt good-bye. Those rituals are uniquely human though impossible to do in Cyberspace.

When all this virus disruption is over, I hope we remember these electronic tools not only for what they provided, but also for what they failed to provide. Our addiction to them may be a contemporary idolatry, a form of worship so all-consuming that we deny face-time, that is, with our actual faces, with those who need our attention the most—our spouses, children, parents and siblings. The Corona virus may have taught us a profound lesson in the need to turn off these electronic devices for substantial parts of our day. And maybe all day on Shabbat.

The touch screen is only a cheap thrill when compared with the ultimate upgrade, the blessing of the human touch.

SOMETHING NICE ABOUT THE POLICE AND WHAT THE DEMONSTRATIONS TELL US ABOUT WHO WE ARE AS AMERICANS

The demonstrations and protests of recent days, charging police with brutality and their departments with systemic racism, has gotten me thinking about whether there isn’t a broader context in which all this unrest rests. Certainly the killing of George Floyd as captured by a simple cell phone video, and so many other instances of unarmed black men killed while in police custody, calls for change and an end to the racial injustice that has plagued our nation since its inception. Like so many others, I find my patience having run out with a political structure that fails to correct the flaws that are themselves the very opposite of what we Americans hold dear. At the same time, the more generalized attack on the police as an institution is misguided. One crisis, the pandemic, has driven the other crisis, anti-Semitism, off the radar, but it was a mere three months ago when our synagogue and so many other Jewish organizations were working closely with the police to protect our institutions from attack. The police have been our friends and continue to be so. That some bad actors remain in their employ is a problem and that these bad actors are immune from prosecution is an even bigger problem. But to attack the police as an institution itself is clearly unsound. They arrest criminals, keep drivers honest, help maintain public order, break up fights, etc. The police are an essential service and a wholesale vilification of them is simple nonsense.

There’s a reason why we stumble into hatred of authority. In recent days, our experience with authority has been uniquely negative. Think the Catholic Church and how people whom we should otherwise respect have fallen from grace as testimony of sexual misconduct has repeatedly surfaced. The Church had its way of protecting bad actors, moving them from parish to parish, with hopes that a new space might give rise to needed reforms. Instead, it gave the head pray-ers a fresh population to prey upon. It was not a tactic that inspired trust in the Church as an institution.

Our politicians themselves, authorities legitimated by the consent of the governed—that’s us—are themselves held in virtual contempt. A 2019 Gallup poll found only 13% of Americans giving senators a very high or high rating in terms of honesty or ethical standards. That percentage dropped a point when Americans assessed members of Congress as a whole. The long and short of it is fairly clear: we have a problem respecting authority. And that’s a posture that the Torah will find problematic.

In this week’s parashah, B’ha-alotekha, Miriam and Aaron are taken to task for speaking ill of Moshe’s wife, a Cushite woman. Many modern commentators see in this episode racial discrimination, the Cushites being a dark-skinned people. Of course, the presumption here is that Moshe, Aaron and Miriam are white, a presumption with no textual support. Who knows what color they were? Jews are a multi-colored group. Moreover, when God reprimands Aaron and Miriam, it is not over their alleged racial insensitivity, but rather their challenge of a man with whom God speaks, “mouth to mouth, plainly and not in riddles” (Numbers 12:7). There is a hierarchy of authority in the wilderness and Moses is at the top, governed only by God. In the wilderness, authority is to be honored, not challenged, and for a group of Jews as unruly as the Children of Israel, that was probably a plus on many levels.

This respect of authority never sits well with contemporary Americans. We are a nation born of a rebellion against a ruling authority, the British Empire. Even before that, we were all and still are the heirs of that 18^th century historical period known as the Enlightenment that rejected the wisdom of the Bible, attacked the authority of the Church, and ignored the guidance of the clergy. There were good reasons for the Enlightenment to move people in those directions, but it did place an enormous burden on the individual who was often left at a loss for knowing how to proceed in life ethically or socially.

The authority of tradition rests in the fact that it is old, that is, it’s been going on for a long time. It’s been going on for a long time because it organizes our time, inspires our imagination, guides us in our moral dilemmas, and consolidates disparate people into a more or less cohesive group. When all that is taken away, we are left to the whims of cruel authorities who will consolidate people for their own inimical purposes, whether that authority is a despot or something more naturally sinister like a pandemic. Believe it or not, pandemics do consolidate people—around illness, health care, death, and fear. It’s not a good way to get organized.

One of the most marvelous by-products of the pandemic was a reinvigorated Kabbalat Shabbat on Zoom. We all somehow knew that on Friday, with the sun setting, and our week so horribly disrupted by social isolation, it was good to get into the Zoom Room and see our friends, neighbors and family. And sing. And sway. And dance a little. And reflect on our lives. And wish each other Shabbat Shalom. All in the name of this prescription that we had been given long ago to remember and observe Shabbat, as we learned from our ancestors and through the study of Torah.

Just to be clear, no authority is above the law and certainly not above ethics. To protect bad actors from prosecution is a recipe for disaster. There is work to be done in the law enforcement agencies throughout the country. Trigger-happy police must be prosecuted. Clerical sexual predators must be prosecuted. And as for lousy politicians, there’s an easier solution there. Vote. But when we disparage whole institutions, whether it is government, the police, or religion, we are indulging ourselves in foolish fantasies that would suggest we can live without them. But we can’t. We never have and we never will.

The authority of Torah is an authority worthy of our respect. It organizes us and guides us with principles that places respect for God’s creatures, regardless of their color, up there with truth, love and kindness. There are all sorts of time-honored institutions that are in need of reform, but let’s be sure that we engage in a surgical strike and not carpet bombing. God gave us brains for a reason. At a time of civil unrest and emotional distress, cooler heads must prevail.

ADAM, EVE, AND GEORGE FLOYD

In spite of the fact that we are still in the midst of a pandemic which has forced upon us a very unnatural way of life, and that we were all witness to a horrific arrest of a black man on a minor charge that ended in his death, and that for now more than a week the county has been subject to civil unrest the likes of which have not been seen since the Vietnam War, let’s get out of town for a bit. I don’t know about you but I’m exhausted. Let’s take a trip into time past. I'd like us all to journey back into mythological time to the point where the first man, Adam, wakes from a deep sleep and witnesses a creature he has never seen before, Eve. If you recall your biblical tales, Adam had searched for a partner among the beasts in the garden of Eden and much to his dismay found no suitable partner. And God, wishing Adam not to be alone, schedules surgery, knocks him out, removes a rib, and builds another being who will become known as Eve. What did Eve look like? What did Adam see when he first set eyes upon her? We’ll have to use our imagination a bit for this, but certainly her anatomy was not quite like Adam's. That must have been noticeable. Her hair did not look like his and perhaps her skin color did not match his own. She was quite possibly shorter than him, or maybe taller, and perhaps she weighed more than him, but let’s not do that to her—she definitely weighed less. And Adam looked at her, a creature different from himself, and exclaims, “This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23). Now some theologians have long noted that Adam was not the brightest banana in the Garden—his partner, Eve, seemed to be far more curious, far more verbal, and far more daring than Adam, and yet Adam, in his innocence, gives us one of the Bible’s earliest insights into our relationship with each other, and that is no matter how different we are from each other, our humanity is the common denominator that unites us all. Adam was able to recognize Eve’s differences and yet say—she and I are fundamentally the same.

America has gotten itself into a bed habit. We are forever looking at each other and figuring out just how unlike we are from one another. Our differences are dizzying. We are split into Democrats and Republicans. Gays, straights, bisexuals, Christian evangelicals, Jews, Muslims, blacks, whites, cops, non-cops, white collar workers, blue collar workers, red state, blue state, purple state, deep state, antifa, white supremacists, millennials, boomers, Generation Xers, males, females, gender benders, etc. Under certain circumstances, we can’t even look at one another and figure out which pronoun to use. Given all this diversity, someone is going to look at it all and blithely remark—It is our diversity that unites us. But frankly, we don’t look so united these days. We have become a nation of disjointed individuals, divided by a myriad of categories, with rigid, formidable boundaries guarded zealously as if they were built out of gold.

The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis as captured on a cell phone camera was so awful, so wrong, so perverse, that it is hard to believe that anyone, let alone the police, could be so deaf to the pleas and desperation of another human being, unless Officer Chauvin, now charged with murder, was blind to the fact that his knee was on the neck of another human being. We should be careful to not blame the sins of the few on the group as a whole but the question is worth asking: have we become so divided, so individualistic, so separated one from another, that all we can see is “the other” but never the underlying humanity that unites us all?

The Bible still rests at the foundation of our nation, but it along with God have taken a serious beating in the name of a host of contemporary movements that have a better way. But that better way seems rather elusive, and given the anger in the streets, coupled with the looting and burning of both public and private property, in many cases the businesses of black-owned small businesses, things have never been more disunited and chaotic.

In parashat Naso, the term used for counting or taking a census is Naso, which literally means “to lift up,” almost as if one were lifting something up to the light to see it better. Over the years, it has become increasingly clear to me when looking at people carefully, that very few of us fit neatly into any category at all. Once you sit down and talk to people—more than a “How are you?” or a “What’s up?”—and listen to who they really are, and understand a little bit about their joys and sorrows, their fears and challenges, their dreams and aspirations, it becomes clear as the day is bright that they aren’t a whole lot different from who you are. You might even discover that these people, purportedly so different from you, are actually the bone of your bone and the flesh of your flesh.

                                                                                            

I really don’t know what kind of legislation can be passed which will lift us up out of the rut our nation finds itself in. But I do know that each one of us has the ability to lift up our neighbors, our friends and family, and see them in their full complexity and not as a simple label that they have either adopted for themselves or were subject to by a society dumbed down by identity politics. God did not make us one-dimensional—none of God’s creations are. God does not want us to be alone, live alone, or die alone. But God wants us to know that we all are descendants of a single source and that the way we see each other is a testament to whether we are human or beast.