The Time God Got It Wrong – Korach

Part of a yearlong series on resilience in Jewish spiritual life.

Watch enough cable or online “news,” and you might sense a U.S. society more polarized than ever before by political party, class, race, ethnicity, geography and religion. Public disagreements speedily become disagreeable, and disputes fuel scorched-earth campaigns to destroy disputants.

What are we to do? What’s a loving God to do? Turns out that our ancient narrative of God has bloody hands, too – which might be trying to teach us something by shocking our conscience. This lesson, it turns out, offers a key to navigating our complex and conflict-riddled world with spiritual and emotional resilience.

In one of Torah’s most poignant and perplexing narratives, from this week’s Torah portion (Korach), an understandable rebellion against Moses becomes deadly. Moses responds with humility and genuine leadership, by falling on his face. By contrast, this narrative’s God responds with alarming pique: “Stand back from this community that I may consume them instantly” (Num. 16:21).

Yes, you read that right. Torah records God to respond with not only a death sentence but also a communal death sentence that would be levied against everyone. No, not against only the rebels: everyone!

Nachmanides confirms this interpretation, and he offers no justification. Rashi, who usually has much to say about everything, seems shocked into silence: for once, Rashi has nothing to say. He’s left speechless.

Thankfully, the story turns out better than it starts: Moses talks God down from the rafters, and God limits divine punishment only against the rebels. Whatever we might make of the rebellion or the response, at least innocents aren’t condemned with the rest.

But what are we to make of God’s conscience-shocking over-generalizing threat against everyone?

If we’re brutally honest with ourselves, we must admit that we too paint with over-broad brushes against perceived adversaries and people who seems different from us. So affirms social identity theory, but we don’t need highfalutin psychologists to tell us what we already know from experience. Racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and other forms of group discrimination are only the most noxious forms of the very human (and very flawed) trend of lumping people into in-groups and out-groups, then painting out-groups with broad brushes that paint them negatively.

In other words, our brains are wired to generalize criticism of others. Think about all the times you say, feel or think about “them” (or any subset of “them”) as a group. Check the news and watch this facet of social identity theory play out. Once we see it, it seems to be most everywhere.

Resilience lies in naming this dynamic (in psychological terms, thus “inoculating” somewhat against it). Name the dynamic and we become less likely to paint with such broad brushes, with all its flawed us-them thinking that’s often so damaging. If we all could honestly name our own us-them thinking and expose it to genuine light, odds are that much of today’s public vitriol, racism and hatred would wane.

Maybe Torah teaches us this lesson precisely by positioning God as the One to go so far over the top. If an ostensibly omniscient God can look again and repent of painting with too broad a brush, then perhaps we can too. And if we do our parts, we and our world can become more fair, more safe and more resilient for it.

– Rabbi David Evan Markus

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Call Me By Your Name

Part of a yearlong series about resilience in Jewish spiritual life.

Have you ever imagined yourself with a different name? My grandmother wanted to shed her Yiddish name and be known as Shirley, an American sounding first name. For similar reasons my father changed his surname from Kramowitz to Krame. Their motivations reflected the values of assimilation. Yet, name changing is also deeply rooted in Jewish tradition. And with the proper intention, a name change can transform us. From Torah this week we learn that resetting a person’s name can not only elevate a person’s soul but is a marker of greatness.

In parshat Sh’lach, Moses “names” Hosea ben Nun to lead a band of scouts into the land of Canaan. All of those who are familiar with the text know that the spies will return with a false report, afraid of the people they encountered and lacking in faith that they can conquer the land. Theirs’ is a sinfulness that damns the people to wander for 38 more years. But Hosea ben Nun is not among those sinful scouts. Just a few verses earlier, Moses had changed Hosea’s name to Yehoshua (Joshua) by adding a yud. The yud added represents God, just as yud is the first letter of God’s name. With that reminder, Joshua is sent on the scouting mission. By taking God into the name, Joshua is sanctified and guided in his service as a leader. And he is made more resilient.

Not every name is easily upgraded with the addition of the “yud” of the Divine name. But each of us has the opportunity to incorporate Godliness into our lives if we consider our names to designate us as representatives of God. Perhaps that is an insight as to why the protection of a name is so important in our tradition. We are taught to value names. Names are a portal to righteousness. We do not take God’s name in vain and we do not slander the name of our peers. We learn at Pirke Avot 4:17 “Rabbi Shimon said, there are three crowns: the crown of Torah, the crown of priesthood, and the crown of kingship. And the crown of a good name is superior to them all.”

And for those who would take on leadership roles, their name or title can serve as a powerful reminder to know before Whom they stand and Whom they serve. Whether leaders are named or elected, how would it be if each considered their oath of office as if spiritually incorporating a “yud” into their name?

A name change might not be sufficient for those who are power hungry or lead without skill. But for the true public servant, the lesson we learn from Joshua and the scouts is that we need leaders who operate from faith and not fear, from the pursuit of Godliness and not greed. Perhaps there would be far better Government if our leaders had names that reminded them that their service was named by God.

R’ Evan J. Krame

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Waiting to Exhale

Part of a yearlong series about resilience in Jewish spiritual life.

“Waiting to Exhale.” No, not the 1995 Whitney Houston movie hit. I mean life’s occasional sense of waiting – waiting with anticipation, waiting with diminishing patience, maybe even Waiting for Godot.

When we must wait, how can we wait with inner healthfulness, even resilience?

We moderns crave our agency – our autonomy, our capacity to act – and with good reason. For hundreds of years since the Enlightenment emphasized the rights and liberties of the individual, Western society has trended toward the ingrained belief that each of us controls our destiny. In Thomas Jefferson’s immortal words, each of us enjoys the rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” We usually believe that we claim these rights by our own means.

True enough. But sometimes our own means and agency aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Sometimes they’re even illusions.

Into all lives come things we can’t control. Often we wait, because what we await is beyond our control. Waiting can challenge us. Rather than name this challenge and work out its difficulties on their terms, sometimes we deflect the challenge into things that don’t serve us.

Suddenly far from living in our own agency, the challenge of waiting controls us. We become quiet victims of impatience, deflection and the inner drive to control precisely what we can’t control.

Cue this week’s Torah portion (Beha’alotecha).

Not once but five times in the same paragraph, Torah recounts that our desert ancestors followed a cloud by day and fire by night atop the Mishkan. They moved when it moved and stopped when it stopped. “Whether the cloud was on the Mishkan for days, a month or a year,” they waited and moved only when it moved (Num. 9:22).

When Torah repeats herself, Torah is focusing attention. By repeating herself five times, Torah emphasizes that our ancestors had no control of when and where they went. Their desert wandering was precisely to teach trust and patience in a transcendent reality beyond themselves.

Among life’s deep truths is that sometimes we control less than we may think. In pivotal moments, some choose rebellion, sublimation or passive fatalism. Torah offers another choice: trust and patience.

What fire do you follow? What fire is worth your trust and patience – however dark the night, however long it takes, wherever it leads?

Find that fire and you’ll find your resilience. You might even find that it’s not about waiting to exhale: it’s about our journey, and what lights our way.

– Rabbi David Markus

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Who are you working for?

Part of a yearlong series about resilience in Jewish spiritual life.

A famed microbiologist, Stanley Falkow, died this month. Falkow’s work was described as writing the operating manual for how bacteria cause disease. While his accomplishments were monumental, it was the description of his parents in the obituary that drew my attention and called to mind a lesson from Torah this week.

Falkow’s father was from Kiev, Ukraine and worked as a shoe salesman in Albany, NY. His mother from Poland rented rooms and later opened a corset shop. Neither parent is named in the obituary. As the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I imagine that Stanley Falkow’s brilliance came from the genetic legacy of two brave, working class parents who sustained a family with ordinary labor. Torah tells us that this work was holy in its necessity and sacred in its normality.

In reading parshat Naso, we get great detail about the role of three priestly Levite families assigned the mundane tasks of schlepping, assembling, and disassembling the mishkan, the portable tabernacle where God’s presence lodged among the people in the desert. While portage and construction tasks might seem ordinary, the tasks were holy service needed for the deployment of a hallowed structure to make God manifest among the people. And Torah makes certain that we do not forget their names. They are the Gershonites, Merarites and Kohathites.

Perhaps some of these Levites didn’t enjoy toting the dolphin skins and hanging the draperies as a profession. Perhaps they were intelligent enough to be leaders, skilled artisans or physicians. Yet, the work was necessary and the task was sacred. How similar they are to the vast generation of immigrants to this country who took jobs far below their skills or without intellectual challenge because they were engaged in the sacred task of supporting families they had brought to safety in America. Their dedication, resilience, and strength made it possible that their children were well educated, and made manifest in this world God’s gifts such as enabling immunologists to block disease causing bacteria.

We have the opportunity to take lesson of the story of the Levite families from Torah then, and apply it to the stories of that followed. How can we understand that the priestly families were the porters and maintenance men of the traveling tabernacle? This is not merely a commentary on individual acceptance of God’s employment plan for us. Rather, I see this as a demonstration of faith in a story greater than one’s work history.

We don’t quite have the Kohenic caste system anymore, but we do have the lesson that schlepping can be holy. It makes possible the “v’shochanti b’tocham” lesson of Torah, that God still dwells among us, no longer in the mishkan, but within each of us. That Godliness is demonstrated by our commitment to a better future built on the hard work of past generations.

Few of us will ever win a Nobel Prize for discovering a cure for disease. But none of us stand alone in our accomplishments. Rather we are the legacy of generations of people who have preceded us, eking out a living and dedicating themselves to the holy endeavor of enabling future generations to dream, discover and design a better future for the world. In their stories we find a legacy of resilience that stands as testament to their faith in the future and God. Let’s tell their holy stories in the Torah of our lives and not let future generations forget their names. And don’t ever forget who you are really working for.

R’ Evan J. Krame

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What Counts? – A tribute to Israel

Part of a yearlong series about resilience in Jewish spiritual life.

I just returned from two weeks in Israel, in the days preceding the 70th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. The country felt consumed by this momentous occasion – recounting Israel’s history, counting Israel’s blessings, and counting on the future to bring both immense blessings and wrenching challenges.

Most historians agree that Israel’s resilience – as a people, as a nation and as a modern state – has few equals. Israel’s resilience formula has been a rarefied combination of diversity, daring, desire and duty. Israel has prevailed not in luxury but in necessity, at risk of annihilation. And when Israel has faltered, often it’s because Israel fell out of sync with her core values.

So this week’s Torah portion coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the State of Israel’s founding (Numbers / Bamidbar) begins with especially poignant words: “Take a census of the whole community of the children of Israel” (Num. 1:2). Count their numbers and recount what they’re about, all of them – no matter who they are or where they are or how they are. Take stock. Really take stock. Leave nobody out.

But Torah, being Torah, hides a message within this message. Torah doesn’t quite say to count them numerically. Instead, Torah uses euphemistic language: in Hebrew, s’u et rosh – literally, “lift the head.” This kind of counting isn’t about marks on a ledger, but about lifting people up.

That’s the meaning we traditionally attribute to Psalm 24:7, which uses these same words: “Lift up your heads, oh gates, and be lifted up, you everlasting doors – and the King of Glory will come in!” Handel’s Messiah early segments famously begin with exactly those words.

Israel’s resilience lesson to the world is about lifting people up. Lifted up, people are capable of incredible daring, compassion, creativity, industry, courage and beauty. Pushed down or kept down, people are capable of incredible fear, hate, ugliness and destruction. Israel has experienced both. Which ones will win Israel’s future – and the future of the world – is up to all of us.

I want to believe, in the words of Psalm 24:7, that if we truly lift people up, the One we call the God of Glory will come in. May Israel help lead the world in fulfilling that resilience promise for us and all our descendants. Especially this week, let that be what counts most.

– R. David Evan Markus

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Take a break, a long break

Part of a series in a year long exploration of resilience.

One key to a satisfying life may be taking long break from our routines. This is a Jewish concept we first read in the Torah this week, requiring a sabbatical for the land every seven years. To uphold a sabbatical, one must have faith that productivity and yield will be restored. And if a sabbatical works for making farming more fruitful it should work to help make us more productive. Taking a sabbatical is not only a key to continued fecundity for the land but also a chance for the individual to flourish.

Here’s a sabbatical that really amazes me. A couple I know in their 50s set out to spend a year on a boat traveling through the Caribbean. They found their dog a new owner, rented out their home and set sail. At each port they might do water aerobics or play beach volleyball, sip cocktails whenever they want, and watch the sunset each night. I suspect what they may have missed out in income doesn’t compare with the value of soul-restoration from a yearlong seaward sabbatical.

For some academics and clergy, the sabbatical from work is engrained in the arc of a professional career. For the rest of us, the idea of a mere two-week vacation away from our work can invoke anxiety. I marvel at the Europeans who typically take a month long vacation in August. And Torah suggests a year long sabbatical! For most Americans I think that the concept of a yearlong reboot is as mythical as the unicorn.

Just writing about such a sabbatical makes me anxious. Could I leave family and friends behind for a year? Would I be able to leave my work for a year, and would I even have any work when I returned? And yet the lure of sipping a pina colada every night at dusk on a soft white beach certainly is enticing. And the reboot of a long retreat might just help me to be more resilient when tough times are upon me.

I suspect that one has to build up to a real sabbatical. Like taking off one day a week, rather than one year in seven. Just one day a week of no cell phone and no work, no shopping and no schlepping. Perhaps it means allowing myself a glass of wine with lunch, time to read a book, sitting with friends, and quietude to allow my thoughts to flow freely again. Yes, that’s shabbat.

As we read parshat Behar in synagogues on Saturday May 12, I’ll be leading a hike to the Potomac River. I plan to make time to sit quietly, listen deeply and hear my own heart song over the rush of the water. As it says in Psalm 23,  “God leads me to water in places of repose; God renews my life.” I might never get a full year sabbatical, but I can take a weekly retreat to the paradise of my soul. Will I see you there?

Rabbi Evan J. Krame

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There is No “I” in Team

Part of a yearlong series about resilience in Jewish spiritual life.

Here’s a true confession of a self-described “Resilience Rabbi” spending a year writing about resilience: sometimes I don’t feel very resilient.

Sometimes I feel tired, drained, even hopeless. I suspect we all have those moments when we don’t seem to bounce back from adversity, when the proverbial turkeys get us down. After all, life is dynamic and our inner realities don’t always flow in ways that our left brains would call “rational.” In those poignant moments, it can be hard to fully feel anything else – or anyone else.

It’s through this lens of emotional and inter-personal realism – that how we feel individually can freight, shade or even block our sense of each other – that I read this week’s paresha (Emor). Through that lens, I receive a valuable resilience lesson about how we balance ourselves and others, what’s within us and what’s beyond us.

Emor begins with individual instructions for now-outdated spiritual practices about the sacrificial cult (Lev. 21-22), then describes Shabbat and the spiritual calendar (Lev. 23), then directs all the people to bring “clear oil of beaten olives for lighting, for kindling lamps regularly” (Lev. 24:2). The individual practices are just that – individual, personal to each of us. Shabbat and the spiritual calendar are collective.

Take that in. There are individual spiritual practices, and there are collective ones. We’re called into both. Individual practices without the collective can become isolated, self-absorbed and even self-righteous. Collective rites without individual experience can become performative and dull, even fake.

Jewish resilience wisdom is precisely in balancing and harmonizing the individual and collective. When individual lives feel dull and diminished, Torah’s wisdom calls us to reach for the collective. When our participation in community feels dull and diminished, Torah’s wisdom calls us to recharge within.

Only when we fire on both thrusters – both individual and collective – can we bring what Torah calls the “clear oil of beaten olives for lighting.” Pure olive oil is especially difficult to make: it requires much effort to pick olives, carry them, press them and refine their oil into pure clarity. By their nature, the many steps of making pure olive oil ask communal teamwork in which every participating individual’s effort is necessary but no participant’s effort is sufficient.

In modern jargon, there’s no “I” in that kind of team. The wisdom of Jewish spiritual life is precisely that it tacks from individual to collective and back again. That’s how we all can shine brightest.

Just ask the pure olive oil, shining bright as our quiet resilience teacher.

Rabbi David Evan Markus

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Goats off a cliff

Goats are all the rage. Check out the many goat’s milk products on the shelves at Whole foods. Have you tried baby goat yoga?

In Torah this week, goats also figure prominently. A Yom Kippur ritual is described, where one goat is slaughtered and one goat is tossed into a valley. Either way, the hapless goat is being sacrificed to relieve the entire community of their sins.

Happily for the goats, our tradition has developed a less violent way to atone. The methodology, described by Maimonides, includes recognition of the sin, regret, recompense, and recommitment to avoid such behavior in the future.  And we are obligated to both ask for and offer forgiveness.

Generally, the only people thinking about Yom Kippur in April are rabbis. But the lessons for us to learn is that atonement should be a daily practice. Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi, z”l, urged each of us to take time before sleep to review our day, recall our errors, and notice those offenses that have harmed us. The goal is to maintain a practice of forgiveness.  Zalman urged that we should both seek forgiveness from those we have harmed and we should be open to offer forgiveness to those who have harmed us. The atonement process is multi-directional.

I have had trouble forgiving some offenses I have experienced in my life. Forgiveness is particularly challenging when the offense comes from someone who has been in a position of power or has been privy to intimate aspects of my life. Yet, I have learned that forgiveness is a gift we give ourselves, as we are unburdened from the anxiety and tension associated with victimhood and regretfulness.

Cue up the story of the Buddhist monk who carries an elderly woman across a river but receives no thanks. He continues to be angry for hours until his companion asks, why are you still carrying that woman on your back?

I don’t think we are required to excuse all bad behavior. But our lives can be improved if we learn how to unburden ourselves of the anger and fear that results from our being harmed by others. The brilliance of the daily multi-directional forgiveness practice is that to the extent we are honest about our own fallibilities we are better able to forgive the failings of others. In the process of forgiving, we can regularly experience the benefits of emancipating ourselves from the cycle of wounding and woundedness. A forgiveness practice is an opportunity for us to find resilience even when we have been hurt.

Besides, opening our hearts and releasing our pain seems a much better atonement technique than tossing goats off of a cliff.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame

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Time Out From Nomophobia

Part of a yearlong series on resilience in Jewish spiritual life.

Have you experienced a fear of being with out your hand held device? For many the modern influence most negatively insidious on life is the urgency creep of hand-held devices exemplified by the fear of being without them.

This is “NOMOPHOBIA,” a portmanteau for “No Mobile Phone Phobia.” For some it goes beyond fear, they are addicted to their smart phones. Like slot machines, our devices’ sounds, colors and lights trigger the brain’s endorphin “reward cycle,” driving us to the next click, scroll and swipe. They’re so addictive that some are pushing for addiction controls.

When devices supplant “live” interactions, reports abound that some spouses, parents, teachers and employers compare device attachment to a plague – prevalent, catchy and tough to cure. This plague analogy might be too much (these technologies also do great good), but it still holds.

This week’s double Torah portion (Tazria-Metzora) tells of tzora’at, an ancient plague (in Hebrew nega, what we’re “touched” by). Torah’s tzora’at sounds like leprosy, but houses also could catch it. One touched by tzora’at was sent outside the camp to “dwell apart” (Lev. 13:46).

Dwelling apart wasn’t just infection control: it was spiritual repair. Thus was born the retreat, the time out, the change of place to change circumstances and how we experience them. This idea flowed into Talmud (B. Rosh Hashanah 16b) and then the aphorism, “change place, change luck.”

We don’t need to change our physical place to change our circumstances and how we experience them – though there’s much wisdom in the spiritual retreat and vacation. Then again, wherever we go, there we are. Which leads us back to “Nomophobia.”

Resilience isn’t about being plague-free – whether tzora’at, illness, smart phone or dumb phone (though do try giving devices a Shabbat rest). As poet Lynn Ungar put it, our eternal promise isn’t safety, but that “we might, at last, glimpse the stars, brilliant in the desert sky.”

That’s our resilience lesson: it’s the courage to call plagues what they are, then take initiative to exit from them however we can – into the open, perhaps to glimpse the shining lights beyond. Sometimes it means going out literally on retreat. Sometimes it means stepping out to an outsider’s perspective on our inner lives – and calming all the rings, beeps and swipes so that we can truly see and hear.

Rabbi David Evan Markus

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Get Up!

Part of an ongoing series about resilience in Jewish spiritual life.

“I’m an optimist who worries a lot,” said former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on NPR recently. In that phrase, Albright summed up our daily existence.

Each day I wake planning to rise out of bed and fulfill my responsibilities, reflecting an optimism that the world won’t implode. At the same time, each day I wake wary that the day will include some disaster. I don’t even need to turn on the news before I start to worry.

It seems part of Jewish DNA to anticipate calamity. It is no wonder. Jewish history is an endless stream of adversity stretched across millennia: exile, pogroms, and the Shoah.  Madeleine Albright’s family experienced the Shoah as they escaped Europe. Accordingly, enduring tragedy has become part of the greater Jewish identity. And still all tragedies are personal. Our perseverance collectively is made possible by our steadfastness individually.

The call into resilience emerges within our response to calamity.

The Jewish story of unexpected tragedy roots deep in Torah. In Leviticus 10, after Aaron made ritual sacrifices to culminate his dedication of the Mishkan – the holiness-infused traveling tabernacle in the desert – Aaron’s two oldest sons, Nadav and Avihu, made their own offerings and got zapped by fire from above. Aaron didn’t see that disaster coming. It left him literally dumbstruck.

We’ve all been Aaron. The fire that burns, the disease that kills, and the accident that maims, all can leave survivors bereft and dumbstruck. These and countless other tragedies defy explanation, but we still crave to know why. We’re left feeling like the world isn’t predictable and it isn’t always safe.

Our ancestors responded by imagining, even insisting on, some predictability to explain Aaron’s tragedy. Were Aaron’s sons deserving of destruction because they were drunk or bursting with ego? Was Aaron’s silence a natural reaction or a reflection of his priestly responsibilities? There’s no definitive correct answer. Like our ancestors, we are left to grope with the questions and also with our inability to answer fully.

But we know one thing more: the next morning, somehow Aaron got up and continued with his work and his life.

These days, I find myself less eager to explanation calamity and more curious about Aaron’s psycho-spiritual capacity to wake another day and continue his service as High Priest.

Maybe Aaron is our ultimate resilience teacher. After the horrific loss of his sons, somehow he persevered and, what’s more, he continued to serve the same God that Torah says sent the fire from above that consumed Aaron’s sons. How did Aaron do it? Was it his faith in God?  Was it love for God? Was it fear that ceasing service would cause more adversity? Was it worry that such horrific loss could be found random or meaninglessness? Many questions remain about Aaron’s resilience after losing his sons.

I would love to see a panel of psychiatrists and theologians interview Aaron about his reaction to this tragedy. It seems almost miraculous that a human being could carry such heartbreak and still persevere – but we see it every day, sometimes hiding in plain sight, among ordinary people carrying extraordinary loss, whose names and stories are less prominent than Aaron in Torah.

What is the wellspring of this seemingly super-human resilience?  Is it also the Source of Life, the One who creates?  If so, the resilience roots in the supernal source of every challenge: every challenge, however insurmountable it may seem, contains also the seeds of super-human resilience.

Resilience doesn’t mean that life doesn’t touch us, change us, and even sometimes burn us.  Resilience means that we don’t quit living, and that we summon the strength – whether within us or from beyond us – to live as if a better tomorrow will come, even with the memory of calamity and the anticipation of more to follow. Perhaps the fire from above sets our hearts ablaze with determination.

Maybe you recall a poster that half-jokingly summarizes each religion in a few words: Confucianism is “Shit happens” and Hinduism is “This shit has happened before.”  For Jews, the poster says, “Why does this shit always happen to us?” Let’s offer an alternative: “When shit happens, we get back up.”

Just ask Aaron and Madeline Albright, this week’s resilience teachers.

R. Evan Krame & R. David Markus

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