We each have had the desire at times to confront our leaders, be they religious or political, and question their actions.  The skill of questioning authority can mean the difference between holiness and sacrilege.

The weekly Torah reading is named for Korach, a prince among the people who stood as an accuser against leaders Moses and Aharon. Korach reproaches Moses of taking on too much, arguing that everyone is holy, and offering that God dwells among all of the people. Up to this point, Korach has made valid observations. Korach’s next question is his undoing. He asks Moses and Aharon, “why do you lift yourselves above the rest of God’s people?” He insinuates that they are pursuing excessive power. Korach is not merely wrong, but will ultimately found to be blasphemous.

Moses’ reaction is to fall upon his face, perhaps a demonstration of his well-known humility. Yet, Moses’ verbal response is not that Korach has wrongly accused Moses but rather that Korach has gathered his minions against God. In a dramatic trial by fire pan, not only incense but Korach’s entire band are consumed.

Were this not the Torah, and were the actor not Moses, would we feel some discomfort with a claim that a leadership challenge is actually an affront to God?  In our times, we’ve been witness to political advocacy claiming legitimacy from religious belief and errant religious leaders hiding behind ecclesiastical authority. So, we might recoil at hearing Moses protect his leadership by painting the accusation as an affront to God. Rather than reject Moses’ rejoinder on this basis, we can find another lesson.

Korach’s story is not a warning to refrain from challenging leadership. The story contains too much nuance to be mistaken for a simple admonition. Rather, this is a cautionary tale about how one speaks to authority. We are reminded of Leviticus 19:17, rebuke your neighbor but do not bear any sin thereby. Questioning authority is a very Jewish impulse. The issue is how we speak. If all are holy, and all can be a container for God’s presence, then we have the responsibility to speak in a lashon kodesh, holy language, and speak as if we truly are worthy of God dwelling among us.

The accusation of Moses lifting himself above the rest becomes blasphemous when understood as an accusation not worthy of the holiness we are given or of God’s dwelling among us.  The upshot is that a would-be accuser should consider that a wrongheaded public accusation against a leader could be as fallacious as denying God. Torah has some suggestions to follow.  First, stay close to the facts.  Second, a public rebuke demands a higher level of scrutiny.  Third, don’t debase anyone with unfounded accusations because that is akin to un-Godly behavior.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame

The parsha baha’alotecha is “my family parsha”. My uncle read it when he became a bar mitzvah eighty-nine years ago, my son read it nineteen years ago and my cousin read it for her bat mitzvah just six years ago. Additionally, the prophetic portion, the haftarah, from Zechariah is also read at Hanukkah and two more of us in the family read that haftarah thirty eight and forty three years ago at Hanukkah for our b’nai mitzvah. The linkage with the haftarah and Hannukah is the instruction in the Torah portion regarding the lighting of the menorah in the Temple.  My family views our “sharing” of this portion over three generations as our way of keeping the menorah lit.

Handing traditions down from one generation to another is a way we can feel connected to ancestors we may have never gotten to know. The different ways family observe Pesach – do you eat “kitniyot” like the Sefardim or stay away from them like the Ashkenazim – connects us to relatives who lived across the world from us. But what happens when those inherited traditions no longer resonate? Should we continue something when its only value is the “tradition” or should it be dropped for something more compelling? How can we feel connected and not constrained by tradition?

There is a wonderful short film which shows the grandmother making gefilte fish from scratch, grinding the fish, mixing it, seasoning it and cooking it. The daughter buys a pre-made gefilte fish loaf, seasons it and cooks it. The granddaughter buys pre-cooked gefilte fish in a jar.

We can apply our creativity to work with the tradition to reshape it and restore meaning as well as begin new traditions. Shavuot, the holiday seven weeks after Passover, recalls the receiving of the Ten Commandments. For many of us it is about cheesecake and studying, maybe even confirmation. I propose a reframing and that it become the time when we think about what we want to hand down in the next year and what we want to receive. We can be more intentional about sharing what is important to us if we have a particular time each year that calls us to pay attention to what we have received that we can pass on as well as what we have yet to receive.

What will you pass on to others this year?
JoHanna Potts

If you’re reading this blogpost, your ancestors probably hailed from another continent.  Most of us focus more on where we are than from where we’ve come.  Today we might know little of our ancestral history: memories fade, wars ravage, families scatter and interest wanes.  Yet, there are many advantages to recalling the names of those who made possible our lives.

Into our complex relationship with ancestry comes this week’s Torah portion (Bamidbar), opening the Book of Numbers. Picking up where we left off at the end of the Book of Exodus, the Israelites take a census to record tribal numbers, names and places.  This census, at the start of our ancestors’ next phase of journeying, reminds us that who and where we are depends on who and where we’ve been.  History lives through us, and we and our children will live more fully if we know how we got here – the stories, the struggles and the sacrifices.

This truth takes on even more poignant meaning when we parse Torah’s words.  The Israelite census was to count all males over age 20 – then the age of adulthood.  How Torah (Num. 1:2-3) described those adults and the task of counting them brings powerful spiritual focus to our own remembering and counting:

· Lift up – שאו את ראש כל עדת בני ישראל למשפחתם לבית אבתם במספר שמות / “Count (literally lift up) every head among the community of the children of Israel by family, by their ancestral homes, by their number of names.”  Today many Jews avoid “counting” people (a reaction to Holocaust branding of numbered tattoos on forearms), but in ancient days counting meant uplifting – not just to numerically count take cognizance, but to identify, to really see. What if we all counted and encountered each other that way?

· Your entire history – כל זכר לגלגלתם מבן עשרים שנה ומעלה  / “All males by their polls from age 20 and above.”  These words have military significance, but also a secret mystical meaning: all to remember their reincarnations, from age 20 and above , or for the less mystically bent, all to remember their cycles.  Counting means remembering everything in our lives that came before, how we got to adulthood, our life patterns that make us who we are.  What if we really inhabited our emotional and spiritual history this way?

· To empower your Godwrestle – כל יצא צבא ישראל / “All able to do battle for Israel.”  These words confirm that the census had a military purpose, but we can understand it spiritually as All able to go out among the hosts of Godwrestlers, because “Israel” means to wrestle with God (Gen. 32:29).

Lift up your entire history to empower your Godwrestle.” – Rediscover who we’ve been to empower whom we might become. Harness your cycles and totality of strength for your spiritual struggles. Leave nothing and no one behind on your way.  We have this opportunity because our ancestors journeyed to bequeath us this gift.  Let’s remember, to help make it count.

The legacy of the Jewish people includes a striving for perfection in ourselves, in our children and in the world. The quest for perfection inherently acknowledges that each of us is imperfect in some ways. In Parashat Emor, such defects are presented as a barrier. If taken on its face, this barrier could be confused for a defect in the Torah.

We read in Parashat Emor at Leviticus 21:21 about the ritual of offerings to the Lord by the priests where it says “no man among the offspring of Aaron the priest who has a defect shall be qualified to offer the Lord’s offering.” The defects noted range from a broken arm to a short leg to crushed testes.  One can only suppose that this passage suggests that the priests’ physical imperfections would detract from the holiness or sanctity of the offering.

In our modern religious practices, having abandoned tangible sacrifices at an altar, we strive for perfection in the observance. Why else would we have so many rules about when and where rituals are observed? Take a common example such as lighting Shabbat candles. The exact time of lighting is announced in emails and the methodology of lighting the candles is passed down through the generations. With all of our myriad Jewish rituals, our physical attributes are not the issue. Every Jew, with frailties or abilities, is bound to the laws and traditions. 

Yet, in this instance, Torah exhibits a bias against persons whose bodies are less able or less well designed. It is a bias exhibited and limited to the time of making offerings to God and at the altar before the mishkan which is described as God’s dwelling. This exclusion is painful for me to read. After dozens of years of working with persons who are less abled, I’ve known that holiness is often best found in the interaction where abilities and disabilities complement one another.  The doctors who heal. The therapists who restore motion. The teachers who educate. They may be the Priests of today. And each one of those professionals have their own defects of some sort. We all do.

If in Torah even a priest with a broken leg that can mend or a growth in his eye that can be healed is not eligible to offer a sacrifice, aren’t we really being told that none of us are eligible? Or perhaps the best explanation is that no one should think of themselves as eligible to make offerings to God if they think of themselves as better than anyone else. We bring our whole selves with our defects to the rituals we perform and in pursuit of perfecting a damaged world. In fact it is our desire to surmount imperfections that fuels the engine of making the world a better place.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame

This week we have a double portion, Tazria and Metzora. They both deal with the reasons for creating boundaries of time and space, and fixes due to being tamae, ritually unsure, or tahor, ritually, pure. For many who look at these two portions, they seem confusing, unsophisticated, and sexist. These are two of my favorite parshiot for those reasons – they cause me to look harder at them to find something relevant for this time and place. 

Even though we don’t participate in the sacrificial cult at the Temple any longer, we do begin morning prayers with “My God, the soul You have given me is pure” and in my head I hear Debbie Friedman’s  z”l voice singing those words. Therefore, the questions about which I want to seek possible answers are these. What might change this soul from its state of purity?  Is that what tamae and tahor are describing?

I lean toward the understanding that when humans come in contact with a particular point on the life-death continuum, they become tamae. Even doing important mitzvot, such as giving birth and burying the dead, cause one to become tamae. In order to return to tahor requires time, water, and sometimes blood. The original elements present at birth – the infant isn’t considered tamae, only the mother. It seems to be a remarkable system that says, “You have just experienced something powerful or potentially life-giving or perhaps the opposite, death. Take some time to appreciate that experience, then you can return to your normal routine.” Or in ritual language, you can return to being tahor. 

 We have constructed our lives wanting full control over our time, so we see this “time out” as a punishment, rather than permission to not do something.  We like being able to fill our time with work, entertainment, family, exercise, etc. We have leisure time (even if it doesn’t feel that way), so perhaps we don’t appreciate the requirement to take time. But have you heard some say they need a “sick day?” Isn’t that asking permission to be prohibited from working? Physical ailments may force us to take some time.  Turning from the physical to the spiritual, how do we know if our souls are healthy? Maybe we all need to take some time to think about that.