In this moment of high political drama in U.S. and European history, politicians are claiming moral and even spiritual mantles to advocate causes.  This week’s Torah portion (Balak) focuses us on that political use and misuse of spiritual authority.

Balak was king of Moab, through whose desert territory the Israelites had to travel en route to their destination.  Balak resented the intrusion: he recalled how the Israelites triumphed over Balak’s ally and now feared that they would consume him also (Num. 22:3-4).  Balak summoned his priest, Bilaam, to curse the Israelites so that Balak could defeat them (Num. 22:6).

In modern terms: the head of government commanded spiritual authority to achieve a policy and political goal.

If this idea offends, it’s because the “separation of church and state” is a core ideal of civil society.  Our framers taught from experience that excess power in one hand risks danger (for both secular powers and spiritual ones), so they separated powers – secular from spiritual, federal from state, executive from legislative, judicial from both.  We’ve been fighting those border wars ever since.

Fast forward to modern U.S. politics.  How often do politicians claim spiritual mantles for their positions?  How often do candidates wear cloaks of faith as political tool or single out one faith for diatribe or worse?  How often do houses of worship and faith-based educational institutions advocate for candidates and political causes?

How separate should separate be, and why?

I approach this question with skin in the game.  I’m among the only public officials in the U.S. also to serve an active Jewish pulpit.  I’m a constitutional lawyer and judicial official sworn to uphold the rule of law, bound to one of the nation’s strictest judicial ethics codes, with extensive training in institutional governance and public ethics.  If anyone should advocate and embody a wise separation of powers that limits power and its mere appearance, it ought to be me.  And yet, I also was ordained as a rabbi.  I serve a synagogue.  I co-lead a spiritual organization.  I teach in two seminaries.  I counsel congregants and clients.  All of this is legally and ethically valid.

Ethics and separation of powers aren’t about broad feel-good pronouncements: we have more than enough of those in spiritual life and secular life – and they don’t get us very far.  We rarely need boundaries so rigid that they entirely exclude: that’s why the U.S. Supreme Court repeatedly upheld “IN GOD WE TRUST” on our currency, a pledge of allegiance to a flag of “one nation under God,” and clergy elected to office. What we need in deciding issues of ethics and governance is caution and reflection, facts over appearances, and level-headed reason – not discrimination and not walls.

Against that backdrop, what was most troubling about Balak using Bilaam’s spiritual role to curse Israel was singling out any one people for special, sickening treatment – then doing so under the validating cover of spirituality.  By definition, religion and spirituality are never about that.  Anyone who says or behaves otherwise is unworthy of either secular or spiritual authority.

We make values real by what we say and what we do, whom we empower and how. Take that debate to your dinner tables, workplaces, vacations and houses of worship – and the ballot box.

R’ David Evan Markus

Some fear is healthy (“don’t stand in a busy highway”). Other fear is insidious, paralyzing, hope-draining and soul-snatching – and existential fear can be toxic if left to fester. This week’s Torah portion (Shlach) calls us to see existential fear what it is, and move through it as a core commitment of Judaism.

This week we learn why the Children of Israel wandered 40 years in the desert: they were too afraid to enter the Land of Promise. Arriving at its doorstep after crossing the desert from Egypt, Moses sent scouts to survey the Land. The scouts returned with a tale of woe: compared to the Land’s inhabitants, “We were as grasshoppers in our own eyes, and so we were in their eyes” (Num. 13:33).

As they were to themselves, so they felt to others. As they felt themselves too small and feeble, so they became.  

Despite countless miracles of liberation, the generation of Egyptian slavery freed from physical shackles still remained spiritually shackled by clutching fear like chains. Too afraid and thus too small, they were returned to the desert to wander 40 years until a new generation came of age to try again. Fear became fatal.

* 

The call to cultivate courage amidst fear – not to pretend fear away but to transcend fear – is a core value of human flourishing. It’s human to fear, and it’s spiritual to cultivate a self-concept of faith and inner strength able to manifest courage amidst fear. Courage is a Jewish secret to survive and even thrive amidst the outer and inner perils of life.

Of course, a universal truth isn’t Jewish alone. Plato said, “We can easily forgive a child afraid of the dark: the real tragedy of life is when we are afraid of the light.” Buddhist sage Thich Nhat Hanh said, “Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive….  Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously put it more pithily: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

The question is not whether we will fear: of course we will fear! Rather, the question is how we face fear so that fright can make right. Torah offers this story of the scouts to help call existential fear by name. Torah also offers, on this story’s heels, the practice of tzitzit (Num. 15:37-41) — ancient fringes of holy blue on our outer garments — so that their sight can rivet our focus when fear and distraction shrink us from our highest selves.

Courage isn’t the absence of fear but an inner and then outer response to fear. Find those places within where you feel most scared and small. Don’t shrink from them, and don’t let them shrink you.

R’ David Evan Markus

Age is more than a number if it identifies your role in society. If you are in between 30 and 50, then Torah says you are of an age to be entrusted with the greatest priestly responsibilities. In this case I believe that the stated age, just like a suggested food expiration date, is probably not a strict limitation but rather a suggestion made. The suggestion is that spiritual work requires maturity and an appreciation for schlepping as holy work.

In Torah portion Naso we learn that those Levite (males only) between 30 and 50 are given duties to care for, set up and maintain the portable tabernacle where God’s presence is most potent among the people. The mishkan has to be reassembled each time the Israelite camp moves through the wilderness. To be efficient, the Levite families are divided up according to responsibilities, some as porters of pillars, and some toting the tent and others as hangers of curtains. This hardly seems like priestly work. Yet, when you put the pieces together, the result is a communal structure of paramount importance. The result of these handyman tasks is to enable both actual and spiritual journeying. Similarly, the mature person appreciates that it takes years of effort to construct a full spiritual life.

In my 50s I anticipated my “Levitical role” as a rabbinic career. Certainly, I could have read Torah and concluded that I was past my prime for sacerdotal duties. What I take away from this Torah portion is that, like the Levitical priests, today’s spiritual leaders are called to set up the tabernacle — which we do now through the rearranging of chairs and the transporting of prayerbooks. What draws most of us to rabbinic work is the inspirational part, not the schlepping and prepping. But the schlepping and prepping are an essential part of the spiritual journey. With maturity there is acceptance that some assemblage is required before enjoying the purposefulness of a spiritual life.  Focus shifts to the end result of the work and not the demands of the process.

I’m beyond the prime age of Levitical service according to the text. Yet, I believe that I am in the most desirable religious demographic, one whose spiritual reaching moves beyond limitations of age and agility. I am prepared to serve my community, toting the furnishings for assembly along the spiritual way. 

And my peers are figuring out life as AARP members with more mature discernment, greater financial means, and the flexible schedules of empty nesters. They are an ideal demographic for Levitical duties or greater community responsibility or spiritual journeys, precisely because they understand that the fulfillment of a spiritual life requires some heavy lifting and assemblage first.  Sometimes we are the porters, carrying the planks that serve as the floorboards of a spiritual wakening. Later, we stand on the platform erected to reach beyond ourselves to become aware and discover meaning.

Torah suggests that the actual spiritual work might not start until one reaches the age of 30, and it begins with some heavy lifting. What are you willing to tote or assemble on your life’s spiritual journey? The best is yet to be, when you accept that first we have to be porters and assemblers; knowing that the spiritual life we want is one we have to work at to construct.   

 Rabbi Evan J. Krame

The Tokheha (Admonishment) refers to the passage of curses that Moses relayed to the Israelites by way of moral lesson and warning. These curses are repeated twice in the Torah, in this week’s portion, Parashat Be-Hukotai (Lev. 26:14-46) and in Parashat Ki-Tavo (Deut. 28:15-69).

In the Mishnah these verses are called curses (kelalot). They were customarily read on public fast days, as the Mishnah (Megillah 3,6) informs us: “On fast days, [one reads] blessings and curses,” and on other set occasions, as stated in the baraitha (Megillah 31b): but in the midrash (Kohelet Rabbah, 8) they are called admonishments (tokheha), not curses, as it says there: “for they are not curses, rather they are admonishments.”

Today, many of us observe only a few of the fast days that our ancestors did. If we keep in mind that fasting was thought of a way to change both oneself and a decree, it makes a great deal of sense to see these admonishments linked to fast days reminding us why we need to change.

In several Hassidic courts the admonishments were viewed as curses which embedded in them great blessings. This notion was apparently derived from the Zohar, which held that all admonishments are actually blessings, even if on the surface they appear to be curses.   

It is told of Rabbi Nahum of Tchernobil, a sickly man afflicted with all sorts of ailments, in his youth spent the Sabbath on which the Admonishment was read with the Ba’al Shem Tov. When he was especially selected to come up to the Torah for the passage containing the Admonishment, at first he became somewhat faint. But then, as the Ba’al Shem Tov began reading from the Torah scroll, Rabbi Nahum felt all his pains gradually dissipating, limb by limb, and by the time the reading was through, his body had become entirely healed.

And another story told in Mo’ed Katan 9b, that Rabbi Eleazar was sent by his father, Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai, to receive a blessing from Rabbi Jonathan ben Amasai and Rabbi Judah ben Gerim. In their blessing they said to him: “May it be [the Lord’s] will that you sow and not reap, that you take in and not put out, that you put out and not take in.” When he returned to his father and said to him, “Not only did they not bless me, they even distressed me, saying bad things to me,” his father answered him: “All those things are blessings,” that he sow and not reap meaning that he have children and they not die; that he take in and not put out meaning that he take in brides for his sons and his sons not die, leading him to put the brides out; and so on and so forth.

If we change our perspective – as Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai did, and thus our interpretation of these statements, we can see that rather than just eliciting fear, they are expressions of caring. We may not be able to see the same silver-lining that the ancient rabbis or the Hassidic masters were able to see, yet it is when we care about people that we encourage them to do the right thing and we help them see both the positive and negative possibilities of their actions. Of course, choosing the right way to do that is critical. Some people may be motivated by fear, others by love, and others by logic.

How does one come to see these curses or admonishments as blessings in our time? Is it enough to understand that the language of the admonishments reflects familiar language structure that was common in the ancient near east and the blessing is that 2000 years later we are still reading this text? Perhaps you can look at these admonishments as a list of possible consequences, not punishments. Or try to read the admonishments as reminders to do the work, whether it is emotional or physical, to turn what we think of as curses into blessings. You may change what may have seemed to be curses by changing yourself. 

JoHanna Potts

One of the greatest blemishes on Biblical tradition is how it treats the so-called “blemish” of those who might be called into spiritual service. This week’s Torah portion (Emor) shines this challenge directly in our eyes, dares us to flinch and calls us to make a repair.

In ancient days, a “blemish” (Hebrew, mum) disqualified a priest from serving (Lev. 21:17).  Also on this spiritual no-fly list was anyone “blind” or “lame,” or having a body part “maimed” or “too long” (Lev. 21:18); or anyone with a broken limb (Lev.21:19), or scoliosis or dwarfism (Lev. 21:20).  Ancient spiritual service was shut to anyone that moderns might call physically “disabled” or “differently abled.”  This sacred tradition, which regarded everyone to reflect the divine image (b’tzelem Elohim) (Gen. 1:27), also held some people – by dint of birth condition, illness or accident – too ugly or maimed to channel divinity for others.

If this idea offends – and it should – consider that it took the U.S. until 1990 to enact the Americans with Disabilities Act.  For thousands of years, society legitimately discriminated against persons whose innate ability or appearance significantly varied from the popular image of normative.  Even today a fully inclusive society remains a distant hope, but we’ve come a long way from ancient days.

In pre-scientific days when the physical was held to manifest the metaphysical, perhaps a “blemished” priest was imagined to taint a spiritual offering.  Later our ancestors wrestled this idea – maybe they sensed that Torah’s words concealed a deeper truth – but still they tried to justify it.  Some took a psychological approach: perceptible deformities would distract the public from the “holy” business at hand.  (For those of us quick to reject this idea, look at Joseph Merrick, a.k.a. the “Elephant Man” of the 19th century, and see if you’re distracted.) Others confessed confusion: medieval rabbis shrugged their shoulders and wrote that “This matter requires further study” – a signal that the Torah they knew no longer made sense.

What didn’t make sense then makes no sense now, but the more important questions are ones that Torah only implies but doesn’t ask outright.  Why would God allow a “blemish”? Why does God allow disability and illness, sometimes profound and catastrophic?  And why do we imagine that spiritual service requires perfection?  Is any human perfect?

If our ancient ancestors were unready for those theological wrestle, today we needn’t shirk from that challenge.  Perhaps this challenge is exactly the modern meaning of the “blemish” that once disqualified.  Maybe we learn that our pediatric image of God is just that – an image, no more fully accurate a rendition of reality than any physical “blemish” that distracts from the truth that all of us, however we appear, are made in the divine image.  Maybe we learn that at the level of appearance, there is no perfection to be found – so we shouldn’t try.  Maybe we learn that in matters of the heart, all of us have a “blemish” and therefore none of us alone can fulfill the ancient priest’s role of linking humanity with divinity.  Lacking a perfect priest without blemish, maybe today that role falls to all of us together, blemishes and all.

R’ David Evan Markus