In the camp

There is an affliction in the camp.

Jews today are facing threats from anti-Semites across the political spectrum—left and right alike. But just as troubling is a rift within our own people. Factions are demanding ideological purity, casting out those who do not conform. The rhetoric may be different, but the result feels the same: exclusion. We may not physically eject one another, but zealotry and cancel culture amount to a symbolic expulsion—placing fellow Jews outside the camp.

In conversations with colleagues, I hear the strain. Rabbis are navigating polarized opinions surrounding Israel’s war. Some have built communities rooted in unwavering Zionism or firm anti-Zionism. Others lead congregations deeply divided. They walk a tightrope, trying to hold their communities together—sometimes just to hold on to their jobs.

These divisions defy easy explanation. They are not strictly generational. They do not follow lines of wealth or geography. Sometimes, they tear families apart.

In the Torah, at Numbers 5, those sent outside the camp are the ones with visible eruptions, discharges, or who have had contact with a corpse. Yet Torah also implies reintegration: when the affliction ends, the person returns. There is no ceremony of return, no formal acceptance—just the assumption that healing invites welcome.

Rashi, the medieval commentator, saw in this structure a hierarchy of camps: the Israelite camp, the camp of the Levites, and the innermost camp of the Shekhina—the Divine Presence. The one with a visible illness, like leprosy, was sent away from all three. The one with a less contagious condition, only from the Levite and divine spaces. And the one who merely came into contact with the dead was excluded only from the sacred center.

Rashi offers us a model of proportionate response. Not every form of impurity results in total exile. Only those whose presence poses real danger are fully removed. Others—those less threatening—are kept close, excluded only from the holiest spaces, not from community.

This ancient wisdom should guide us now. Despite our passionate disagreements over Israel, we must strive to remain in the same camp. We should exclude only those ideologies—or actions—that incite violence or endanger lives. But those who disagree, even strongly, should not be cast out. We should ask them only to express their views with the dignity and integrity befitting a people of Torah.

Judaism teaches two powerful values here. First, that community—remaining in the camp—is paramount. And second, that we must doubt our own certainty. The belief in one’s own ideological purity is its own danger. It leads to the exclusion of others who might, in truth, be equally striving toward holiness—just on a different path.

Let us stay together. Whether in disagreement, in pain, or in uncertainty. The camp is sacred not because we all agree, but because we all belong.

Rabbi Evan Krame