Balak: In search of control

 We all would like to feel a sense of control, of knowing what will happen to us.

 

We design elaborate plans when we’re working on a project, or say, for example, writing a Dvar Torah, and we may feel we’ve covered all the points, all the concerns, all the possibilities for the project we’re developing or the message we’re writing, and still they go off in directions we did not expect and by the end what we envisioned is no longer what originally planned.

 

As an example, when I was in college and started singing a capella music with the Jewish group on my campus my voice teacher told me that even with good technique, and breathing, and knowing the music, occasionally a sound will come out like a voice breaking, and he said, go with it, don’t judge yourself by that result, maybe someone who heard it thought it sounded interesting!

 

The bottom line is however much we try to control outcomes, we may often find the facts of the matter may have changed or our perspective may have been too narrow or ill-defined in the first place.  

 

My teacher for Tai Chi Chih explained it to me this way.  He said, don’t try to do the moves, just let the happen.  

 

In this week’s parsha, Balak, the King of Mo’av, seeks to curse the Israelites after hearing about how they defeated the Amorites.  In order to take hold of his fate, he summons Balaam the magician to act on his behalf.  Balaam turns down the offer to curse the people after God tells him not to do it, but then Balaam goes along with Balak and his people, ostensibly to perform the curses against the Israelites.

 

Now Balaam gets himself in trouble for the same reason.  As Balaam rides his donkey on the way, the donkey sees an angel of God with sword in hand and so walks off the road.  Frustrated when the donkey lies down in front of the angel that Balaam himself cannot see, Balaam beats the donkey three times until the donkey speaks to him and  God opens Balaam’s eyes to see the angel in front of them.

 

Balak here wants to control the outcome and steer his fate, but he only has one way in mind to do so.

 

Balaam similarly wants to take control of the donkey who has seemed to get out of hand.

 

In the end, God frustrates both Balak and Balaam.

 

Instead of cursing the people, Balak stands on the heights and proclaims blessings instead of curses, among the blessings he says the familiar words we heard at the start of the service this morning, “Ma tovu ohalecha Ya’akov mishkenotecha Yisrael…” How good are your tents O Jacob, your dwelling places, Israel.”

 

In both situations Balak and Balaam try to direct the flow of action and outcome and the more they strain, the tighter their grip on their vision and expectations, the further they get away from their goals.

 

God humbles them both.

 

Balak and Balaam are well-spoken and clever, but Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch explains they both become unhinged by passion and greed, so they become unworthy of their gifts, and God then intervenes…

 

The lesson then of the story of Balak and Balaam is the only way to achieve righteous goals is with sincerity, purity of purpose, and the humility to continually re-evaluate all these elements to make sure we’re pursuing more than what feels right or good for us in the moment.

 

When we are watching the search and rescue effort after the collapse of a building, or a tide of evil pushing back when an army re-deploys from a conflict zone, or when we leave extra early but end up sitting in traffic anyway, we may begin to ask whether any effort is worthwhile when forces beyond our control appear to stifle us at every turn.

 

The faith we pray and practice here can help us navigate the jagged, unpredictable, and undulating surface of our lives.  For thousands of years, these prayers, that have changed but a little, remind us there is so much more to know than we can possibly register with our senses.  They remind us the goal for us as individuals, and as a people, is to move beyond the animal spirit of survival and to enable us all to feel God’s Presence within and around us.  All the prayers, all the Torah learning, all the art and symbolism point toward this goal, and no other.  There is no higher goal than living a life that transforms, the lesson of a story like Balak and Balaam into a goal in and of itself, the goal that more control, more knowledge, may give us a feeling of comfort and stability, but the message that ties all Torah stories together is that God does not want us to always feel safe, comfortable, and reassured that we can direct the course of events, because that is God’s job!

 

No, instead, the Rabbis of the Talmud teach us the most important lesson of humility, an’ve’tanut, that we must lamed leshoncha lomar ani lo yo’de’ah, we must teach ourselves to day I don’t know, or like Rashi, and other great explainers of Torah and Talmud write in their commentaries, Lo yadati peyrrusho, I don’t know what this means.

 

These thoughts are helpful to us since we will strive to fulfill our visions, even if we’re jousting at windmills, God appreciates our efforts as long as we remember that we’re mortal, and fallible, and and the better striving, the real striving for us, is contributing to the sanctification of life and community and love which are ongoing projects for the Jewish people and so by definition open to our efforts but beyond our complete control because they’re really God’s projects!

 

And how sweet, and wonderful, and challenging and compelling it is for us to be a part of these projects that don’t result in skyscrapers, longer lasting lightbulbs, or better public transit but rather result in a sense that we are family, one family, one people, dreaming together. 

The Red Heifer Ritual, Juneteenth, and Shabbat: Journeys of Liberation

 Shabbat Shalom!

 

This Shabbat is the first official Shabbat we’re back in the sanctuary, an open door to everyone, we’re back to reading seven Torah aliyot, so many of us have received the vaccination that the average number of new cases per 100,000 residents in Montgomery county over the past week is under 1.

 

During these times, we are hearing, we’re getting back to normal.  But we could only be returning to normal if we are the same today as we were fifteen months ago.  The past months and it’s impact on us cannot be undone so that we re-enter life picking up from the spot we exited our timeline back then.  

 

We cannot go back.

 

To illustrate this point, some of us may remember the film version of Tom Clancy’s gripping story The Hunt for Red October, about Ramius, a Russian submarine commander, who as captain of an advanced new nuclear submarine, conspires with his officers to defect to the United States and hand over the apocalypse machine  The key scene in this film is a private meal Ramius takes with his officers, who, feeling nervous about their plan, begins to say we should go back, and then Ramius interrupts them saying, there is no going back, because Ramius informed a Russian admiral of their plans.

 

I will try to say it as he did, “There will be no going back.”

 

The wisdom of today’s Torah reading corroborates this point of view.  The ritual of the parah adumah, the red heifer, underlines the way the Torah, and our entire tradition, teaches us that moving from impurity to purity is a visible and tangible.  

 

The effort to find an appropriate red heifer, to prepare all the materials necessary, expresses how monumental and fundamental is this transformation.  When it is complete, the person who undergoes these rites is no longer the person who came forward to receive them in the first place.

 

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch emphasizes the ritual of the red heifer is, quote, the “clearest public proclamation of ritual purity, and [this ritual, which is referred to as a ‘fundamental statute of the Torah’] is indeed the fundamental concept of moral freedom of will on which the entire Torah is based.”(Commentary p. 584)

 

The red heifer ritual is public, it is visible to all, and it is tangible, full of color and solemn pageantry.

 

In our own way, we’ve been living through an extended modern-day version of the red heifer ritual during the pandemic.  Many of us have had to alter the basic contours of our lives, our families, our work, our socializing, our communicating and gathering with others, nearly everything.  Our keeping with the needed rules and regulations, doing things in ways that are so different from what we knew, mirrors the mysterious spectacle of the red heifer, since in both cases, the pathogen, whether a spiritual one or a biological one, is itself invisible.

 

But what does Hirsch mean when he argues this ritual that we read in detail today is the fundamental concept of moral freedom of will on which the entire Torah is based.  

 

He argues, if we cannot purify ourselves from contact with a dead body, which is the purpose of the ritual, something that cannot be avoided, then he says it would be impossible for us to observe the Torah as such.  

 

In other words, there has to be a clear, structured way for us to transform ourselves and restore ourselves to being able to gather together with the rest of the community, with the rest of our people.

 

But what the ritual of the red heifer does not do is remove the mixed emotions that are likely to fill the hearts of those who go through it.  The ritual purifies a soul, but it cannot purge the sense of grief of loss the individual feels over the death of the loved one for whom the individual impurified themselves to tend with love and gentleness to their final arrangements. 

 

Stepping forward into this new world, it is important for us to keep in mind not only the people who we’ve lost to Covid19 but also other losses we’ve experienced, at minimum, the dislocation we feel from the changes we’ve had to make to our lives.

 

But the point of Rabbi Hirsch’s observation goes beyond the ongoing conversation we have about what we’ve lost, what we’ve learned and what we now hope for.

 

He is explaining to us that our spiritual journey is about a choice we have to make.  The people must choose to perform the red heifer ritual or face living in a world in which they can neither participate in nor appreciate the blessings the Torah offers.  That decision is in our hands as much then as it is today.

 

No doubt, God is gracious and compassionate, but as Rabbi Hanina teaches in the Talmud, everything is in the hands of heaven except the fear of heaven.  The relationship must involve both parties meeting each other at a common border. 

 

Joining in with the community in prayer, to make the minyan as we’re doing today, is a critical step in creating the moral universe the Torah and our later tradition challenges us to create.  Gathering for prayer re-emphasizes for all of us the values we strive to live by, the hopes of peace we reach for, and helps wake us up from our lives that especially over the past year I’ve heard described many times as a blurry hamster wheel of time best represented not by the Hunt for Red October but by another film, Groundhog Day.

 

And what better symbolic example of making real our hopes for creating a world of justice and tolerance today than the adoption of Juneteenth just a few days ago as a federal holiday.  Today, the 155^th anniversary of the time slavery was abolished in Texas, is a similar experience to the mysterious ritual of the red heifer, one that makes official a moment of recognition and transformation, like Passover, the holiday for which we read the red heifer ritual as a preparation every year, like Passover Juneteenth is a reminder of avdut l’cherut, the transformation from slavery to freedom, physical and spiritual liberation from the shackles of the past, and an expanding lens of hope for the future.

 

I cannot think of a time when on one Shabbat I’ve felt blessed to stand at the intersection of so many spiritual pathways from restriction to freedom, from despair to hope.  The ritual of the red heifer releases the impure to rejoin the community and fully participate again.  Juneteenth tells a story of celebration and liberation that rings through the years from aftermath of the Civil War and through the 400 years since the first slaves were brought to our shores.  And then there is Shabbat itself, an oasis of time when we let go of the week that’s passed, permit ourselves not to think of the week to come, and glory in this present, holy day, a day that is for deep breaths, for appreciating what we often take for granted, a day that is celebrated zecher litziat Mitzrayim, in memory of our own liberation from slavery in Egypt.

 

May these stories and these transformations renew our hearts, strengthen us, challenge us, and enable us to envision not a return to normal, but a journey toward an amazing, meaningful, and holy new reality that God has asked us to help create.