Chukath: immortal

Chukath: immortal

The parsha is introduced by a pronouncement:" This is the statute (chok)  of the Torah"   The Torah goes on to describe the ritual of the red heifer. What about all the rest: the ten commandments, Pesach, shatnez?  What is special about the ed heifer? 

The Yeshiva answer  is that the ashes of the red heifer are inscrutable, paradoxical.   A chok: a statute that  cannot be understood by reason ( the proof text of Goedel's theorem).  The ashes  purify the polluted and pollute the purifier. 

I think that the real chok is the underpinning of the ritual,  The purpose of the red heifer ritual is the  purification  of people and objects that have bee in contact  with human death.  That is the invariant rule, the chok: death.  And the ritual is a way to deal with it.  That is why the ritual is mysterious, it deals with the the ultimate mystery, the release from reason and time, the loss of impact in the world except through the memory of others, except for that which you have etched and cut.  Death cannot be understood, so it is confronted with mystery and ashes and water  

To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.

Jorge Luis Borges

Korach:the distribution of gifts

Korach: the distribution of gifts

The beginning of Prashath Korah repeats the phrase: Rav licha, you have  more than an equitable amount.  There has been a maldistribution in your favor.  A redistribution is justified.  The situation is unfair.

We live in an unfair world.  In the US, the land of opportunity,  we celebrate that inequality, we call it motivational.  Striving  ( note the relationship to strife) to have more  is the American way.  The strikings of Korach  and his group comes to a bad end. 

Economists ( Marx, Piketty) claim that inequality of wealth  leads to rebellion.  The downtrodden rise up against the oppressive overlords and wrest political and economic power from them.  Was this what Korach's band was trying to do?  The currency of the time was  priestly privilege  which brought both social status and economic benefits. There is a sense of demagoguery here. A sense that Korach wanted to get something for himself and his descendants; and that the followers were fooled into joining him. Korach is the model for Stalin, Hitler, Clinton(?)

Korach's message was populist. After  the earth swallows him and the fires consume his followers, the people complain (17;6) " You have killed the people of Gd"  Korach had a message that resonated with the people: equal opportunity, meritocracy, democracy.  And the story of Korach and his minions is cautionary about these concepts.  Gd intervenes to demonstrate whom Gd favors.

There are two demonstrations of Gd's will in the parsha.  There is the bake off: the contenders ( Korach and his gang vs Aaron)  with the incense.   This is a lethal expression of whom Gd favors.  This idea comes from Moshe.  Then there is the blossoming staff, Gd's idea: less dramatic but somehow definitive.

Is equality the goal? Gd did not make a world that is fair along every axis.
 If I don't use my talents to the fullest, I have cheated the world.
The same goes for you.
Don't be misguided.
 Bloom!

"Everybody has her own talent. Some people can sing. Others can walk around the house" ( Esther Goldberg at age 7,  The Rockstar Girls, 2005)

Shelach: loyalty

Shelach: loyalty

In the other lecha parsha, Lech Lecha, Avram is told to go forth for  his own sake, for the sake of the ultimate reward ( which includes the acquisition of the Promised Land by his offspring).  In Shelach lecha, Moshe is also told to send the scouts ( to that Promised Land)  for his own sake. But this time it means something different.  Initially , I understood that to mean that Moshe wanted to assure the conquest of the land without relying on miracles.  He ( and the tribal elders) wanted to plan the campaign of conquest.  For this they needed information,.  But there is no mention of such planning.  I think that Moshe sent the scouts for different reasons. 

The 12  men sent by Moshe contrast with the 2 men sent by Joshua in the haftora.   Joshua's agents are anonymous. Moshe's are all "heads of the Children of Israel" At least part of Moshe's motivation was political.  The spirit of strife, challenge to the (aging) leadership was already manifest.  The techniques of broadening involvement ( the 70 elders) had already been used successfully.  The spies were another opportunity for bonding the people together.  But it did not work.  The tribes that spawn kings and kingdoms believed in the vision presented: miraculous conquest of the land.  The other 10 tribes saw only asymmetric battle and loss. 

Victory requires faith in the cause. In every big endeavor there is always terrifying doubt: a combination of the automatic neuro-psychological loss aversion mechanisms and the rational recognition that there are only a limited number of obstacle strewn paths to success, but a far larger number of  hidden paths to defeat. Success requires conquering this mountain of doubt. 

But that faith, in turn, asks me to accept a package of belief, asks me to join the Party, the collective Good. Communism, Zionism, Liberalism, Judaism,Stalin, Hitler  And there are elements of the system that are distasteful  They test my loyalty.

We answer to history 

Behälothecha: Who and what to follow

Behälothecha: Who and what to follow

The root of Behälothecha.  is äl, rise up, as in äliya, the ascent to the Promised land.  The word is first  used to describe the lighting of the menorah, the Promthian act of illumination,  the cooperation between human effort and the miracle of fire, that allows vision and hence direction.

Much of the parsha is about direction.  The movement of the  cloud covering  the Mishkan determined whether the people stayed put or moved on.. The camp was organized in terms of the positions of the tribes and parts of the Mishkan,  and their order of advance.  Trumpets that communicate a direction  are described.

But there is ambiguity about the decision process.  When Moshe tries  to convince Jethro, the Gentile, to join the Hebrews, as a final argument, after  Jethro  declares that he will return to his people,Moshe says:
And he said: ‘Leave us not, I pray thee; forasmuch as thou knowest how we are to encamp in the wilderness, and thou shalt be to us instead of eyes.וַיֹּ֕אמֶר אַל־נָ֖א תַּעֲזֹ֣ב אֹתָ֑נוּ כִּ֣י ׀ עַל־כֵּ֣ן יָדַ֗עְתָּ חֲנֹתֵ֙נוּ֙ בַּמִּדְבָּ֔ר וְהָיִ֥יתָ לָּ֖נוּ לְעֵינָֽיִם










Moshe offered Jethro the job of piloting the people through the desert. Jethro, who lived in the desert had experience in the matter.  But this is also the Jethro who counselled Moshe to create a judicial hierarchy.
In this parsha we have the creation of a council of Elders when Moshe despairs of leading this demanding, rebellious nation.  Perhaps this is Jethro's insight about direction.  He understands how hard leadership is for both the leader and the led.

What should  I follow? My heart- with its wispy, risky  visions? My head- filled with reasons  that become justifications for any action or inaction?  My tradition - no better or worse than any other tradition, spiced with nonsense and corruption?  Science- the ambient religion of shifting models?  My self - its all I've got, but when I take away all these other factors, what is left?