Rabbi's message for Shabbat Beha'alotecha June 12-13 5780

Dear Members and Friends of Kehilat Shalom Calgary,
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This week’s Parsha, Beha’alotecha, provides helpful insight to guide us in negotiating the challenges of our current times. The parsha follows a thematic arc: it begins with light, leads up to distress, and concludes with healing.
From Hope and illumination…
Beha’alotecha begins with the great Jewish symbol of illumination, the Menorah. Hashem tells Moses to instruct Aharon, Moses’ brother, to mount the lamps of the Menorah – the great seven-branched at the center of the Mishkan (tabernacle) and later the Beit Hamikdash. Not only was the Menorah’s light necessary for the Kohanim/priests to conduct their sacred service, the menorah represents the illumination, both physical and spiritual, which Hashem provides to humanity and the world. Beha’alotecha goes on to describe the purification rituals and the paramters for the Levites to serve in the Ohel Mo’ed – the Tent of Meeting encompassing the Mishkan. These various sections depict the lofty heights of religious observance which the Jewish people had attained with the dedication of the Mishkan.
The parsha describes how the Jewish people in the desert stood ever at attention to G-d’s command to travel. When I consider the Jewish people’s journeys in the desert, I recall the television show M*AS*H about a military hospital in Korea. M*AS*H stood for “Mobile Army Surgical Hospital”, and at any given time the entire hospital would be commanded to take itself down and deploy elsewhere. Similarly, the massive Israelite camp in the desert – the Mishkan and all of the twelve tribes’ encampment – could at any time be commanded by G-d, through the signal of the rising of the column of cloud, to pack themselves up and journey on elsewhere. The military analogy is underscored by the Torah’s description of the silver trumpets used to sound the calls for leaders to assemble, or for the people to prepare to journey, at a moment’s notice. The length of such stays varied greatly; they could be for “two days or a month or a year” (Bamidbar/Number 9:22). In all, the Jewish people traveled between and camped in forty-two different sites during their time in the desert.
As Rabbi Nechemia Krakover observes, the readiness to journey or to camp at G-d’s command required an enormous commitment on the part of our Jewish ancestors. While it relieved the Jewish people of the challenge of their own independent decision-making, it must have strained them greatly to have no control, and to endure such continual upheaval, throughout forty years.
… To unrest
Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that our ancestors in the desert often show tremendous unrest. As Beha’alotecha unfolds, the Jewish people complain about the manna which sustains them, and
turn to a blinded nostalgia of their time in Egypt: “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish that we used to eat for free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.” (If there is anything we Jews ever talk and complain about, it’s food.) Beyond the absurd myth that they ate like kings in Egypt, the claim that they ate food “chinam”, for free, absurdly ignores the price they paid living in perpetual slavery.
Moses responds with despair. Rather than have to bear the burden of leading such an acrimonious and ungrateful people, Moses tells G-d he would prefer that G-d kill him right away. To alleviate Moses’ distress, G-d has him appoint seventy elders to share the burden of leading the people, and essentially to provide Moses’ companionship in his leadership.
Amid the distress, a strange incident occurs: two random laymen, Eldad and Meldad, are struck with the Divine spirit and begin prophesying in the camp. A young lad runs to report this to Moses, and Joshua reacts by calling out to Moses to arrest them. Moses, maintaining his cool, sees no such need; not only does he perceive no threat, but he even adds, “If only all the L-rd’s people were prophets!”
Miriam's confrontation
At this point, Miriam along with Aaron confronts Moses. In a somewhat cryptic incident, she challenges Moses about his Kushite wife. Hashem reacts by afflicting Miriam with the disease of “tzara’at”, a severe illness akin to leprosy, meted out to those who commit the wrongdoing of Lashon Hara -- speaking ill of or slandering others.
The great Jewish scholar Abarbanel examines this incident in exquisite detail, outlining and resolving ten crucial questions about it. (Unfortunately, I have not found any translated version of this in English to share.) Through reference to Midrash and other rabbinic commentary, Abarbanel explains that Miriam, accompanied by Aaron, confronts Moses for having divorced his wife Tzipporah. Miriam tells Moses that he cannot use the burdens of his leadership as an excuse, for she and Aaron have the power of prophesy to share in his leadership as well. In anticipation of a slogan that is very much current, the description of Moses’ wife Tzipporah as a “Kushite” meant two things: a) She was Black. b) She was beautiful. Miriam reprimanded her brother for not attending to her needs, and to his marital responsibility to provide her intimacy. Hashem punished Miriam, however, for castigating Moses unnecessarily and not appreciating the validity of his decisions. Moses apparently made the decision to separate from Tzipporah during his multiple stays of forty days upon Mount Sinai. From there on, he remained perpetually attuned to and attentive to G-d – who spoke to Moses not in dreams or visions, as G-d did with every single other prophet including Miriam and Aaron, but directly face-to-face. Moses’ exceptional and constant connection with G-d seems to make it impossible for him to serve as a proper husband to her. Hashem inflicts Miriam with tzara’at to signify that she failed to show the care and equanimity in speech required of someone in her elevated position.
Prayers for Healing
Seeing her peril. Moses beseeches G-d on his sister Miriam’s behalf. In heart-rending prayer, he calls out, “El na refa na lah”­ – “Oh please, G-d, please heal her!” G-d answers this most concise of prayers, eleven Hebrew letters in all, by assuring Moses that the retribution is necessary; Mirim remains quarantined for seven days before being able to rejoin, and the Parsha concludes with the camp moving on once again.
Two big questions
There are two important lessons which we can draw from this week’s parsha for our troubled times.
A) We are liable to act in ill-advised ways in times where we perceive ourselves as having no control. In this time of COVID-19, we have faced less than three months of restrictions, and yet bristle against what is asked of us. The Israelites had to endure forty years of adherence to G-d’s commands to go and stop continually while in the desert. Perhaps as a result, they resisted G-d by acting out, impulsively and recklessly, in other ways: complaining, transgressing, even revolting. Today, we are taking care to reopen our society and economy in a manner that ensure we can continue to function, albeit safely. Yet people, in their rush to return to perceived normalcy, take needless risks, or even reject the need to wear masks and maintain physical distance. This heedlessness can be seen among people protesting on the streets, and among people shopping in supermarkets.
Question #1 - As we reopen our society, will we respond in a balanced manner with consideration to the well-being of our society, or act in a manner that jeopardizes one another?
B) Thoughtless speech is dangerous. The polarization and inflamed rhetoric so evident on social media today (and reflected in political society) have not arisen solely because of pandemic; over the past decade, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have served to spark hateful movements and mobilize violence in such diverse places as Myanmar, Sri Lanka and the United States. The same risks are amplified today. There is a fine line between democratic dissent and violent uprising; between speech that validates justice, and speech that fans the flame of hatred; between kindness and cruelty. The Israelites were repeatedly reprimanded in the desert for outbursts which destroyed the people’s trust in G-d and one another. Miriam was punished for her ill-considered accusations against Moses. Moses showed presence of mind to tolerate the voices of other prophesiers, and kindness to pray for his sister who (in her rush to empathize with her sister-in-law) showed unfortunate thoughtlessness to him and his leadership.
Question #2 – In a time of strain, will we prove kind and tolerant towards one another, or fracture into distrust?
I leave these questions for you to consider over Shabbat and the coming week.
Shabbat Shalom um’vorach!
_________________
Rabbi Leonard Cohen
Kehilat Shalom, Calgary
(403) 850-0106
leonardecohen@gmail.com