Chukath: Boundries

Chok is taken to mean a law that does not  come with a justification, a law that need  not stem from logical considerations.  The parsha outlines the chok of Gd, the red heifer ritual.  This  ritual ultimately leads to the purification of those contaminated  by the granddaddy of contaminants - death.

Death is the decisive  chok, the invariant arbitrary rule. It comes to the living  at the time of its own choosing and by any of thousands of  ways.  Its caprice is usually biting.  Death screams injustice, the need for purification from it  is palpable.

A more fundamental meaning of chok is measurement. or allotment.  In Vayigash, allotments of food are called chok (Genesis 46:22)  The chok is the measured amount granted to the recipient.  In that sense all of this  parsha deals with chukim.

After the death of Miriam, there is no water.  The allotment has dried up.  Moshe and Aaron then interact with the rock.    There is much controversy about the exact nature of the violation, but the text is clear that a line had been crossed, an allotment exceeded.  Moshe and Aaron gave the impression of power.  It should have been clearer that their roles were incidental, not causative.


The parsha ends with the road to the Promised land, the land that Gd  had commanded the people to conquer. They approach the Edomites and respect their refusal for crossing.  Likewise, the Moabites  deny the request of the Israelites and they are bypassed.  But the Amorites territories of Sichon and Og become the foothold in the land.  The Edomites and Moabites are protected by prior recorded allocation.  They are living on their allotments.  Og and Sichon are usurpers.

Know your limits, but don't create false boundries

Korach: Ambition

 How does the story of this parsha play in contemprorary America?  Korach has a lot going for him.  He is challenging the authority of the Old Guard.  He is trying to advance himself and others with him.  He is breaking down a hereditary system in favor of a democracy.  We all know that the message we should take away from the story is that those chosen by Gd prevail and it is wrong to challenge them.  That does not feel right to me as an  American.

My thinking about ambition has been molded by  biographies. Ambition is glorified in  our culture because it has been an element of such successful and beneficial  enterprises: Microsoft, Apple, polio vaccine, immnotherapy. Ambition has been glorified as the crucial quality that allowed these innovations and disseminated them.  But ambition, per se, is a belligerence, it is a warrior that is blind to its opponent.  In the story of Korach, we need to recognize the power and divinity of the opponent.

There is a reworking of the story of Cain and Abel here.  The sacred service is the source of deadly envy.  I Korach,  the risk of the service is underestimated by the upstarts.  The priestly rewards are hazard pay for confronting the poison gas of the incense and the nuclear power of the ark.  These activities cannot be undertaken without training and the protection of proper heredity.

The firepans of the rebels, the instruments of their ill-fated, attempted service are beaten into  a covering for the altar. This error leads to an innovation, a new sacred article that functions with the ongoing, established rite and memorializes the efforts of the misguided.

Great discoveries are built on past failures.

Shelach: Seeing and Believing

 The parsha can be seen as dealing with perceptions/  Moshe believes that intelligence, an improved picture, of the land will help in the Israelites entry.  He sends scouts, people who are perceived as the heads of Israel, men who are beyond petty motives, leaders who are not insecure. 

These scouts return with a report: Any  attempt to enter the land will be met by an overwhelmingly superior force.  It is hopeless to attempt such a resettlement.  Ordinary people look like grasshoppers to the giants that inhabit this land.  The scouts  purport to see through the eyes of the adversary

What did the scouts gain by this picture of hopelessness?  I see doctors emphasize the hopeless situation of patients. In that circumstance, I see the gain more clearly.  If you convince a person that her situation is hopeless, you have a better chance of getting her to agree to anything, any study, any desperate therapy- no matter how risky, expensive and uncomfortable.  Despair is a retailing tool.  You can sell the  desperate person anything: return to slavery, bring back coal, etc. 

Gd is angered by the lack of faith in Gd's ability to perform the seemingly impossible. It was bad enough that Moshe doubted Gd's ability to provide 40 days of meat for the people in last week's parsha  Now the people are doubting that Gd can deliver on the promise made to Abraham Isaac and Jacob, the basis of the exodus from Egypt. 

At the end of the parsha we have the commandment for Tzitzith, the fringes.  The operant word for the commandment of tzitzith, thothuru, is the same as the charge given to (the mostly ignoble )scouts: lathur.    The tzitzith commandment tells us not to follow our eyes, not to take the advice of our inclination.  To look more deeply, consider the extraordinary.  The Gd that took our ancestors out of Egypt is capable of wondrous solutions that we cannot see in advance.  

Don't settle for the solutions of the demoralized.

My friend, A. Mansfield told me that the Vilna Gaon was asked: What is the  greatest  sin?  He answered, "the greatest sin is no sin at all, it is ...."  ( and here the answer , in typical talmudic fashion, becomes somewhat unclear)  either 'atzvuth '( depression)  or ' atzluth' ( laziness) ..."because it does not allow for repentance."    The spies generated some mixture of depression ( hopelessness and helplessness about entry into the land) and laziness ( why bother, it is not by our might that we can enter the land).

The depression answer is more appealing to me.  Gd is the antithesis of hopelessness.  Acquiring hopelessness is rejecting Gd.

Don't mess with Gd. 

Bahaalothecha: Limited resources

One of the climactic moments in the parsha is when Moshe reacts to the people's demand for meat and Gd's promise that the people will eat meat  for a month.  Moshe doubts that the resources are available.  Gd seems to bristle at Moshe's doubt of Gd's power.  Then the slav, the quail, arrive, accompanied by the plague ( which probably limited the consumption) . 

This story is the explicit statement of Gd's power.  But it seems to come short of omnipotence.  Even Moshe needed to be convinced  that Gd could fulfill the promise.  What are the limits to Gd's power?  Is it OK to question that power? Why does the all-powerful allow this situation to arise?  Why do we live in a world of deprivation?

 This story touches upon the question of what kind of world we live in.  What does Gd's intervention mean?  What does an answered prayer look like?

I was trained to consider questioning Gd's omnipotence as a terrible sacrilege, a dangerous thought that should be banished.  Perhaps I could allow the question of the creation of an immovable stone to enter my consciousness, but that ancient Gd paradox was the limit of tolerance.  Any deeper thought  in the matter of a  Gd  with boundaries was too apikorsish for me.

But the story in the parsha raises these, exact questions.  And the doubts are expressed by none other than Moshe!

The story of the slav tells us that the Gd can find a way to fulfill a promise that even Moshe found incredible.  Gd comes through.  Therefore, prayers can be  answered, even for requests that we may believe are hopeless.  Gd is the antithesis of hopeless.

The fulfillment of those (doubt-filled)  prayers may take an unexpected,  surprising form.  And the miracle may have a hidden penalty.  We should be used to this mixture of wonder and curse.  We live in a world  in which darkness can be instantly banished by the flip of a switch.  We pay for that with money ( some which went to publish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion), we lose the ability to see most of the stars ( through light pollution), we destroy the atmosphere with the discharges from  the power plants.  One stumbling is replaced by another.  Omnipotence maintains the orbits and eddies set in motion at The Creation. 

Behaalothecha:democracy

This chapter contains the Magna Carta of the Torah.  Moshe says, in a moment of  near suicidal depression, that he cannot alone bear the burden of caring for this people.  Gd's solution is to spread the burden over a council of  70 elders  who will each receive a modicum of prophecy.  That prophecy will devolve from an enhancement of the prophetic abilities of Moshe.  Moshe will no longer be the sole leader. 

This step toward democracy is motivated by the threat of popular revolution.  The people developed an overwhelming desire for meat. Their need for nourishment had been satisfied by the manns, but the desire for flesh was stoked and grew,  It was  a revolution of rising expectations

This solution of distributed leadership has been presented before.  When Moshe brought the Israelites  to Sinai, he met with his father-in-law, Jethro. Jethro told Moshe that he could not alone judge all of the disputes and questions of  the people.  He needed to make a hierarchy  of judges.  The proximity of this recommendation to the giving of the Law on Sinai suggests that The Law would be the basis for this hierarchical judicial system.  The origin of the constitution. 

Moshe's father-in-law appears in this week's parsha, as well.  Moshe invites him to join the Israelites in their travels.  Hobab decides against it.  Moshe tries to convince him to join, saying that he would have a key role. He would be the eyes of the people in the desert.  Once Hobab returns to his ancestral home, the guidance of the heavenly clouds begins,  No need to know what is ahead.  Just follow.  Faith over science.

Bamidbar is a book of envy.  Miriam asserts her equality to Moshe; she, too, is a prophet, she says.  Gd corrects her.  She is a prophet, but Moshe,  the most humble of men,  is the greatest of prophets  Presumably these qualities are connected.  Moshe has been the instrument of the dissemination of prophecy, he has shared power and responsibility.  He has founded democracy. 

Naso: ascent

In the middle of this weeks parsha we have the Blessing  that is to be used by Aaron and his descendants:  The last bracha: Yisa Hashem panav eilecha: This word, yisa,  evokes the begining of the parsha, the parsha's name: Naso, and the actors at the  end pf the parsha: the nesiim.

The word evokes one of the earliest stories in the Torah: the first attempts to bring offerings to HAshem, Cain and Hevel.    Gd tells Cain that :אִם־תֵּיטִיב֙ שְׂאֵ֔ת if he improves he will be uplifted.  Is this the goal of the service? Or is it a recovery from the fallen state, the depressed state of being outdone by his brother.

The word is used again by Yoseph when he interprets the dreams of the wine steward and the baker.   In both cases, Yoseph says: יִשָּׂ֨א פַרְעֹ֤ה אֶת־רֹֽאשְׁ    Pharaoh  will lift your head.  For the wine steward it means that he will be elevated back to his former high station.  For the baker , it means that he will be hung

The parsha begins at a strange point. The last parsha ended  with the counting of the Kahath Levite clan.  These  descendants of the second son of Levi  were given the most sacred work of the temple, moving  the ark, menorah, table, alter and their accouterments. .  Parshath Bamidbar ends with the census of this family. 

Naso begins with the counting of  Gershon, the descendants of the first born.  Clan Gershon  transported somewhat less sacred objects.  Moshe is told to count them, as well....Naso gam hem.  The word Naso does not exactly mean count.  It means to lift  This uplift  is what is done for this elder son who takes a place behind the younger.  The conflict  of Cain and Hevel is avoided.  Everyone has a role; and the job well done is uplifting.

The end of the parsha is a contrast to the beginning.  Here every Nasi, every (uplifted) Prince brings an identical gift to the temple.  Each prince brings the same gift.   Midrash Rabbah, quoted by the Mei Shiloach say that the repetition reflects that each prince had a distinct set of intentions when he brought the gift.  I would add that, although the monetary value was the same, the identical quantity of silver, gold and animals, it  meant different levels of sacrifice for the various princes.. The identical sacrifice means different things to the various donors.

I must try my best , that is my uplifting.  That bar is the same for everyone

May we improve -  and thus be uplifted