Parshat Bamidbar - Memorial: Counting the Fallen Soldiers, Counting Blessings

Parshat Bamidbar 2011/5771

Remembering the Fallen Soldiers, Each and Every One

Rabbi Neil A. Tow©

We approach Memorial Day, the day for remembering our fallen soldiers.  Each soldier fell serving our country.  As the Israeli poet Zelda wrote, “Lechol ish yesh shem…” Every person has a name.  Every soldier has a name.

We remember the 116, 516 who fell in World War I.

405,399 in World War II.

36,574 in Korea.

58,200 in Vietnam.

383 in the first Gulf War.

Nearly 6,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And these numbers do not tell the whole story.  They do not tell the story of many other conflicts and operations in which American personnel were involved.

They do not tell the story of the wounded, with wounds physical and emotional.

But as this Memorial Day approaches, we focus on those who went out and did not come back.  We focus on their sacrifice.

We begin tomorrow the fourth book of the Torah, and we see with a mysterious clarity the way that the parsha describes the counting of the men of Israel for battle, all those 20 and above, kol yotzei tzavah, all who are able to bear arms, “to go out to war”.

46,500 of the descendants of Reuben.

59,300 of the descendandts of Shimon.

All together 603,550.

The size of about 40 army infantry divisions.

While the mustering in Bamidbar appears to be with military organization and deployment in mind, the great Rashi shares a view that seems to be at odds with the text on this point.

Rashi teaches, “God counts them all the time out of love.  When they left Egypt, God counted them.  When they brought themselves low in the sin of the Golden Calf God counted them to find out how many survived.  When God comes to cause the Presence to dwell among them God counted them…”(Rashi to Bamidbar 1:1)

While Rashi’s interpretation does not necessarily conflict with counting the troops for war, it does lead us into the realm of the gentle love of a parent counting her children, a teacher counting his students, a child counting her toys to make sure everything is there.

The message here for us as we approach Memorial Day is that God counts the soldiers who will fight for Israel in order to express a sense of connection to each one, to let them all know that they are fighting for their people, that they are not alone as they go off to war. 

God may only order the counting of the males, but the males do not walk separately from everyone else – they are one, just as we are one with our servicemen and women who fight for us.  We may not know them all personally but we are connected to them.

We will see many of them Monday morning.  We will pray with them and remember with them.

May the example of the lives of all those who sacrificed for us inspire us to count, to “count our blessings”, to not take freedom for granted, to strengthen our faith and community in a world where natural disaster and conflict threaten, to serve our families, our towns, our religious communities so that we might build up a stronger sense of who we are and what our mission is in this world.

Please rise for a special memorial prayer in memory of fallen soldiers…

Heading toward Sinai to receive the Torah - The "Backstory", a midrash

Heading Toward Sinai – A Modern Midrash

The story of how God gave us the Torah.  It started after the miracles of Passover…

The Israelites walked through the sea on dry land and came up on the other side.  Then they had a big party!  Hooray!

They started walking again.  A few miles down the road Aron, Moses’ brother, raised his hand.

“Yes Aron,” Moses said, “What is your question?”

“Where are we going next?”

Another Israelite heard Aron’s question and decided to ask one of his own, “How much longer until we get to the next stop?”

Then a whole chorus of voices started saying:  “I’m hungry, is there any fast food around here?”  “My feet are tired, is there a shoe store around here?”  “My donkey won’t move, can we take a 5 minute break!” 

The voices kept getting louder and louder.  Wagon wheels broke.  People raised their hands and started to argue with one another.  Animals mooed and clucked at each other.  The people who kept walking started drifting in all different directions.

Just when the noise and arguments and mooing and clucking couldn’t get any worse, a voice echoed from all sides.  The voice came from the ground and from the mountains.  It came from the wind and the light.

“Stop!  Everyone calm down!”  Everyone heard the voice and realized that no one standing nearby could have spoken since everyone was silent.  Everyone took a deep breath, stretched, and waited.

Only Moses, Aron, and sister Miriam recognized the voice.  It was the voice of….God, the One we cannot see speaking to all the people, to every last person from the oldest to the youngest in the same moment, in the same breath, the same message.

“I have to apologize,” God added, in a gentle tone, “After you went free, and crossed the sea on dry land, Miriam and Moses led the people in beautiful songs and dances.  There were drums and tambourines.  I loved listening to the songs and prayers so much that I started dancing and singing myself.”

Moses asked quietly, “You were dancing too? 

“I was!  I danced so fast that the Earth turned even faster and it became night time two hours early.  But that’s not why I spoke to everyone just now.  I spoke to everyone just now to let everyone know that I will show you the way towards the holy mountain to give you a guidebook that will help you travel from here to the Promised Land.”

“Hooray!” everyone shouted, “Hooray for the book that will help us travel to the Promised Land!”

Everyone was relieved and happy, or so it seemed…a few minutes later everyone got ready to move again and suddenly everything fell apart just like before.  One said to the other, “You went ahead of us while God was talking, we were first…”  “Move your donkey off my blanket.”  “Why should my kids quiet down when your ducks are making a racket over there!”  Fingers pointed, hands were raised in the air, and Moses, Aron, and Miriam sat on a big rock and threw up their own hands. 

And then the voice came a second time.

“Stop!  Everyone calm down!”

Everyone stopped and listened again to the voice that came from all directions.

“The book I’m going to give you is called the Torah.  It will show you how to get to the Promised Land, and now I’m adding a lot more to the book than just directions for traveling.  I’m adding directions about how you should treat one another.  You’ll have to wait until we get to the holy mountain first to receive the whole book, but I’ll give you something that will help you get there, just a taste…”

Everyone listened carefully to hear the important lesson from God.  The animals seemed to be listening too as though God had spoken to them in a language they could understand.

“Love your fellow human being as you love yourself.”

And the animals heard, “Love your fellow animal as you love yourself.”

A collective, “Ahhhh!” soared over the desert, a sound of relief, a sound of understanding, a to sound of hope.  God’s secretary angels – the angels who were charged with writing up God’s holy book --  happened to be listening to the conversation between God and Israel at that moment too and they said to one another, “God gave away the best idea in the whole book!  Now when the Israelites receive the Torah book they’ll just turn to the page with that lesson on it and skip the whole beginning part of the story!”

The secretary angels decided to put God’s special lesson right in the middle of the Torah.

Once every person had thought about God’s lesson, each man, woman, and child helped one another to pick up their wagons and belongings and continue to walk.  God gave Moses, Aron, and Miriam directions to the holy mountain.  Moses pointed his special staff in the right direction and even the animals cooperated with one another to begin the journey once again.

Each and every person couldn’t wait to hear the rest of the Torah and learn more about what God wrote inside the special book.

And as they walked on under the warm desert sun, and as the clouds moved with them and sheltered them from the bright light, the small hills around them started to pop up and down, and the breeze swirled and hopped over stones and sand.

Moses, Aron, and Miriam noticed these strange sights, looked at one another and smiled.  They laughed and walked forward together with the rest of the Israelites.

God was singing and dancing again!

Walking with Israel

Parshat Bechukotai

Walking With Israel

© Rabbi Neil A. Tow, 2011

This past week the President gave a foreign policy speech and said that post-negotiation, final status Israel will move back to the lines at the end of the 1967, Six Day war.

This past week Mahmoud Abbas wrote an op ed for the New York Times full of revisionist history and other misinformation.

Neither of these two offerings change the fact that the Arab world adopted anti-Semitism, anti-Israel, and anti-Western feelings as a core part of its way of thinking about the world.

In this Arab Spring, the people on the street have shown that they want an alternative to dictatorships and oppression.  We don’t yet know what that alternative will be – we’ve seen how difficult the concept of democracy is in the Middle East, to date, to my knowledge, Israel is the only stable democratic state in the middle east, except perhaps for Turkey on Syria and Iraq’s northern borders.

Neither of the two offerings from this past week change the fact that Israel has successfully fought four wars, and countless more battles to maintain the legitimacy it earned in the November 1947 vote in the United Nations, nor the fact that the Arab side rejected the 1947 vote for partition, a partition that would have left Israel and the other side each with 3 chunks of sovereign land.

The early Israelis accepted it.  The Arab side rejected it, and since then has never stop saying to itself or to the world that it does not recognize Israel, is at war with Israel, wants to eliminate Israel as a sovereign country.

As David Harris, AJC executive director, points out that between 1948 and 1967 the Palestinians did not seek their own sovereign state.  Why didn’t they?  For that matter, why didn’t they fight for their land in World War 1?  Why does the world not talk about how the Arabs and Germans agreed to wipe out the Jews in the area when they planned to march in?  Why doesn’t anyone talk about the Arab countries that expelled their Jewish people and held onto their assets? 

22,000 soldiers have lost their lives in defense of Israel.  50,000 wounded.  There are MIAs for whom we still pray.

I have hope that just as civilizations of the past deteriorated and disappeared, just as Arab countries surrounding Israel flail and struggle in response to their own people seeking justice, somehow Israel will make it through and continue to shine a light in the region.  Somehow, our participation in the Israel Day parade on June 5^th, and buying Israeli products, and interacting with Israelis here and abroad, will have an impact, at least on some people.

Let’s agree to make it a priority in the next several months to talk about Israel, to check the current news from both American and Israeli news services, to support a good cause in Israel like the Masorti movement or other gemilut chasadim projects there, to buy Israeli foods and other products, to contact our congressmen and women to let them know that we need a pro-American, stable democracy in the middle east more than ever, to travel to Israel – come with me and the group on the mission in April of 2012.

With our hope, with our efforts, we can help assure that according to the words of this week’s parsha, Bechukotai, that the people will have security in the Holy Land and that there will be peace and wholeness there, we pray that this comes, bimherah beyamenu, quickly in our days.  Amen.

Parshat Behar - The Value and Pursuit of Unity

Parshat Behar 5771/2011

The Value of Unity

©Rabbi Neil A. Tow

In 1896, the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson upheld “separate but equal”.

In 1954, Brown vs. Board of Education, Chief Justice Earl Warren wisely ruled that “separate is…inherently unequal.”

We live in a world that struggles in areas of civil rights, religious identity, political viewpoints to foster unity while also setting boundaries, however gray those boundaries may sometimes be.

Judaism is a faith system that seeks to balance a world of unity with the distinctions/boundaries/separations that shape the world in which we live.  All days are holy, but Shabbat is a more holy and special day than the others.  All holidays are opportunities to be closer to God and our people but Yom Kippur is a more holy day than the others.

The rough and bitter separations that occur between one person and another, between people and the earth, between people and God are not the ones that shape and give definition to ourselves and to the world, institutions, and ideas. 

These types of coarse and painful separations cause conflict, suffering, disillusionment, depression and oppression. 

Twice in this week’s parasha the Torah teaches us not to wrong our fellow Jews, and earlier in Leviticus the Torah teaches us not to wrong a stranger.

Why these commandments in Leviticus?  Why not in Genesis, as part of the fabric of creation?  Why not in Exodus where God offers the fundamental legislation that is meant to organize our world?

These three teachings appear in Leviticus since Leviticus is a book about distinctions separations, pure and impure, holy and not holy, permitted and not permitted.  It is a book that is about distilling, sifting the ritual and behavior of human beings and showing us how to worship and how to live.

These laws appear in Leviticus in order to remind us that the distinctions are only meant to increase holiness, to give positive and constructive definition to God’s creation.  Otherwise, we risk sinking into the sticky mud of conflict.

With the internet, with electronic communications in general, there are many more ways than ever before that human beings can wrong one another.  We can easily wrong one another in business by posting negative reviews of an establishment.  We can wrong a stranger because the internet has the ability to provide a cloak of anonymity.  We can wrong a friend with hateful messages, computer viruses, hurtful online posts.

The closer together that the digital world has brought us, the more potential there is both for positive networking and for abuse of the system itself.

God’s teachings in the Torah recognize that there will be conflict among people.  There is no illusion that we will have disagreements and that we even must give criticism to others when it’s necessary.  But instead of sharing our feelings indirectly via the internet or through other means, we should look in the eyes of those with whom we’re in conflict, affirm their humanity, affirm the value of their existence – even we cannot do that, then we’re like animals knocking heads over territory.  And all we can expect from that is a chronic headache.

I believe one day the pendulum of human thought will swing back and we’ll discover that our digital selves and that the digital world, are insufficient to make us spiritually, physically, and emotionally whole -- we’ll realize the value of community and engagement with the other that comes right from the teachings of parshat Behar.  Don’t wrong one another, don’t wrong a stranger, because in the end we are all one, in the end each of us is at some level a stranger from the other and from ourselves, in the end, the distinctions, separations, even disagreements among us, we pray, could actually be cosmic links that make us stronger, more whole, and more aware of our shared humanity. 

Shabbat Shalom.

Israel: Remembrance to Independence

In a space of 48 hours, the State of Israel moves from Yom haZikaron to Yom haAtzmaut, from the memory of the fallen soldiers who sacrificed their lives in service to their country to the celebration of independence.  There are tragic linkages between these two observances.  Many soldiers gave their lives in order that the newly declared State could come into being in the War of Independence.  Many more soldiers gave their lives so that the State could continue to exist for the past 63 years. 

In the transition from one observance to the next we feel overtones of the Passover Exodus story.  Generations of Israelites suffered and persevered oppression in Egypt until the generation that went free.  The Passover holiday was to be the celebration of that freedom, a freedom that came with the accumulation of millions of drops of salty tears over time.  Israel moves from "yagon" to "simcha", from sadness to celebration, just as the Jewish people tell the Passover story that moves from suffering to peace, from oppression to freedom, and, as we have it in the Haggadah, stories of great sadness to messages of hope, happiness, and redemption.

Although we will not march in recognition of Israel until June 5th, the day of the annual Israel Day Parade, we can today recognize the miracle and amazing achievement of the modern State of Israel:  the revival and flourishing of Hebrew language, the ingathering of Jews from so many countries where they lost their freedom or identity, the high level of entrepeneurship and inventiveness of Israeli thinkers and businesspeople, the humanitarian outreach that Israel has extended to areas around the world in crisis, the existence of a viable democratic government in a region where authoritarianism and theocracy are common, the tenacity of the Israel Defense Forces in their ongoing missions, the building up and revitalizing of the Holy Land from the Negev to the forests and beyond...

On Israel's Independence Day, what brings each of us pride in Israel?  How can we share that pride?  What are our hopes for Israel's future? 

May it be a future that is blessed and that brings blessings to all of us and to the world.  Amen.

Downfall of Osama Bin Laden

Nearly ten years ago I sat in a classroom studying Bible at the Jewish Theological Seminary when a student poked his head in the room and said, "The Twin Towers are gone."  My friends and I walked up to one of our apartments and turned on the TV.  We watched as the Towers burned just a few miles away.  I went into another room to call home.  I spoke to my father who was at work, and he was almost unable to speak.  At the time, he was still working for the department of defense and had occasional meetings at the Pentagon.  Days later we began to smell the gray and bitter aftermath of the attacks wafting up north.  Still later, I looked out from a high window in the Seminary tower to see two beams of light rising up into the sky from Ground Zero. 

The question of "Where was I" was the first thing that came to mind as I begin to reflect on the recent news that United States personnel entered Bin Laden's compound in Pakistan and killed him in the course of a firefight.  However, the question, as I look backwards in time, is less about geography and more about perspective and worldview.  In 2001, I was still a young seminarian who was still at the beginning of advanced Jewish and theological studies.  I was still a student and mostly focused on my studies.  There was shelter within the walls of my school.  Now I ask, "Where am I", and as I process the news that the mastermind of 9/11 is gone, I want to feel good about the fact that a dangerous person is gone, but I also recognize that the threat of terror has not gone away.  Religious fanaticism is like a disease.  It spreads through individuals and societies.  We can  cure individual cases of the "sickness", but we cannot cure fanaticism and terror only by rooting out terrorists. 

A friend of mine who wrote about the Bin Laden story quoted the Book of Proverbs, Chapter 24, "If your enemy falls, do not exult..."  For me, the more compelling piece of wisdom comes from the prayer "Alenu" that originated as a High Holiday prayer and came to be a concluding prayer for every service, "Al ken nekaveh lecha Ado--nai Elo--henu...letaken olam bemalchut Shadai...lehafnot Elecha kol rishay aretz..."  "And so we hope in You, Ado--nai, Our God...to repair the world through your Sovereignty...and to turn toward You all the wicked of the world..."  This prayer expresses a hope that one day there could be a constant striving toward unity instead of division and conflict, that those who have dedicated themselves to evil might wake up from the nightmare of pain, suffering, and death to a dream of building, hoping, dreaming, and restoration, that we might be better able to distribute the resources and riches of the world so that more people can benefit from its bounty.

At the same time as we express these prayers for the present and future, it is important that we thank our men and women in uniform, as well as the support staff that guides them from home, for their courage and sacrifice in the pursuit of justice and in the pursuit of those who seek to do evil to the peoples of the world.  May God grant continuing strength, perseverance, and courage to all the men and women in uniform who serve our country and protect us across the globe and here at home.