Of course, the justices of the Supreme Court did not decide whether ObamaCare is good policy or whether it addresses an important moral issue. That is not their job. As Jews, though, it is our job to grapple with moral issues. It is our job to understand what Jewish tradition says about society's duty to provide healthcare for everyone.

It is, somehow, appropriate to the national debate about healthcare that the classical rabbis’ discussion of the topic begins with a passage in the Torah about people fighting. In the book of Exodus there is a case that involves an altercation between two people. The Torah states, “When people quarrel, and one of them strikes the other with a weapon or with a fist, and the stricken person does not die, but falls ill and must take to bed—if the stricken person eventually rises and is able to go about outdoors on a staff, the assailant shall be cleared, except that the assailant must pay for the stricken person’s loss of time and he must surely heal him” (Exodus 21:18-19).

In context, it is clear that the Torah means that the assailant must pay the medical expenses of the person he has injured. The classical rabbis interpreted the verse in this way, but they also expanded its meaning. In the Talmud, the verse is taken as proof that we have not only the right to  treat injury and disease, we are commanded to do so (B. Berakhot 60a, B. Bava Kama 85a).

Most Jewish authorities accept and extend this obligation. In most circumstances, physicians are required to do everything in their power to heal people in need, regardless of the financial means of their patients. Maimonides, the great medieval philosopher, who was also a physician, stated it this way: “The doctor is obligated by law to heal” (Sefer Ha-Ma’or, Nedarim 4:4).  

What is more, Jewish tradition does not see the obligation to heal as being solely the responsibility of physicians. The Talmud states that a person is forbidden to live in a place where there is no doctor (B. Sanhedrin 17b), and that the obligation to provide medical care for the members of ones family is of the same degree and kind as the obligation to provide food (B. Ketubot 52b).

The passage in Exodus that requires an assailant to pay the medical expenses of his victim is also used by the rabbis as evidence that doctors should charge for their services. However, given the importance of making medical care available to all, the rabbis do place restrictions on how much health providers may charge. The Shulchan Aruch, the most important medieval collection of Jewish law, states, “If one has medications, and another is sick and needs them, it is forbidden to raise their prices beyond what is appropriate” (Yoreh De’ah 336:3).  

However, the rabbis state that the ideal situation is one in which the community creates a fund of voluntary donations that are used to provide medical care for those who are too poor to pay for it themselves. The Talmud praises the model of a physician named Abba who set up a box for communal donations outside of his office door: “He had a spot outside to put coins. Those who had put some in, but those who did not have could come in and sit without being ashamed” (B. Ta’anit 21b).

The emphasis on avoiding shame is a telling and a typical concern of the rabbis. One of the central principles of Jewish tradition is respecting the dignity of each human being. The rabbis equate shaming people with shedding their blood. We must do more than merely provide for people's material needs, we must do so in a way that honors them as beings created in the image of God.

It is not difficult to recognize how the healthcare system in the United States today fails to uphold the principles of the Talmud. Our society has not taken upon itself the obligation to heal those who are in need. Every day, untold thousands of Americans must choose between paying for healthcare or meeting other basic needs for themselves and members of their families. 

Also, the American system does not put any checks on the cost of healthcare. Hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and doctors charge exorbitant amounts for even routine medical services to the uninsured. 

Most troublingly, the American system of providing healthcare does little to respect individual dignity. Anyone who has ever spent hours on the phone trying to resolve a dispute with a health insurance company (I can't be the only one) knows this. Anyone who has had to suffer the indignity of pleading with an insurer, a hospital or a medical professional for services they cannot afford knows it even better. 

I cannot argue that the Affordable Care Act is the best way to answer these ills, that it is what the Talmud mandates, or even that it will be effective. I can say, though, that Jewish tradition says that we have an obligation as a society to try to do a better job than we are doing now. The Supreme Court today said that the federal government has the authority to fix a broken system by creating a mandate for every citizen to do their part to provide healthcare for all. I believe that that mandate is entirely consistent with what Jewish tradition expects of us. 

Fixing our broken healthcare system is not just a matter of helping the needy—although, that is an important aspect of it. Providing healthcare is a moral necessity that we all owe to each other. We all deserve to be treated with dignity and compassion. All of us are mortal. We all grow sick and we all, someday, will die. Part of what makes us truly human is our commitment as individuals and as a society to make sure that, when that happens, the care and comfort we need will be there for each of us, regardless of how wealthy or poor we may be. 


Other Posts on This Topic:
The Joyful Imperative to Interpret
Tazria-Metzora: The Torah of Reproductive Health Care
On Contraception, Religious Freedom and Joy

The first thing to notice is the timing of the story. Moses' sister, Miriam, had just died (Numbers 20:1). Also, the story took place after God decreed that the Israelites would have to wander through the wilderness for forty years, and soon after the rebellion against Moses by Korach's followers. Moses cannot be in a good mood. 

Yet, the people complained to Moses even at this low-point in his life. They told him:

If only we had died when our fellows died before Adonai! Why did you bring the community of Adonai to this wilderness for us and our animals to die here? Why did you take us up out of Egypt to bring us to this evil place? This is no place of grain, figs, vines or pomegranates! There is no water to drink! (Numbers 20:3-5)

It sounds very much like the complaints Moses had heard before from the Israelites (Exodus 16:3; 17:3; Numbers 11:4-6; 14:2-4). By now, Moses was probably used to listening to them say that they longed for the days when they were slaves in Egypt. This time, though, the people went further. They said they wished they had died along with the followers of Korach. They identified with the people who were swallowed up by the earth as punishment for rebellion. 

Moses' life work had been to rescue these people from slavery in Egypt and to bring them back to the God of their ancestors. Despite the miracles they had witnessed and despite the horrible punishments they had seen for those who went against God, the people still rebelled and still wished to go back. Who could blame Moses for being angry with them?

God instructed Moses to take his staff and gather the people. He was told to speak to "the rock," which would then give its water to satisfy the people's thirst. 

We imagine that this rock must be the same one from which Moses drew water in the past, the one mentioned in Exodus, chapter 17. At that time, God had instructed Moses, "Take…your staff with which you struck the Nile…and strike the rock and water will come out of it and the people shall drink" (Exodus 17:5-6). It should be no great surprise, then, that on this second occasion, Moses again struck the rock with his staff to produce the water.

Moses gathered the people, as God had asked:

Moses then took the staff from before Adonai, as God had commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the community to the face of the rock and said to them, "Listen, please, you rebels! Shall we bring out water for you from this rock?" Moses raised his arm and struck the rock with his staff twice and abundant water came out and the community and their animals drank. (Numbers 20:9-11). 

Sounds great, right? Sounds like Moses, once again, had saved the day. Not so fast. Immediately after the people drank, Moses got the bad news. God told him, "You did not have faith in Me to sanctify Me in the sight of the Israelites. Therefore, you shall not bring this community to the land that I have given them” (Numbers 20:13). Ouch. For what? That's heavy punishment for hitting a rock.

There is disagreement among traditional commentators about the reason for Moses' punishment. Rashi says that Moses sinned by striking the rock instead of speaking to it, as God had asked. Rambam (Maimonides) says that Moses sinned by becoming angry with the Israelites, calling them "rebels." Ramban (Nachmanides) thinks Moses sinned by asking, "Shall we bring water for you from this rock?" Moses, says the Ramban, failed to acknowledge that it was God, not he and Aaron, who produced the miracle.

Just to make the story even more baffling, it ends with a mysterious verse: "These were the waters of Merivah (strife), for the Israelites quarreled with Adonai, and God was sanctified by them." (Numbers 20:13) What does that mean? How is God sanctified by these bitter waters?

No matter what interpretation one brings to the story, one thing is clear—the story shifts the focus of leadership away from Moses and toward God. Following this story, in the second half of the book of Numbers, Moses never again appears to be a great leader. He becomes just a spokesperson for God—never again performing a miracle or rendering a judgment. 

Human leadership eventually fails. Every leader eventually comes to a time when he or she has served his or her purpose and must fade into the background. The Israelites needed Moses to get them out of Egypt, to give them the Torah, and to create order out of the rabble in the wilderness. Now that all this has been accomplished, Moses is just an old man, bitter from the disappointments life has dealt him, who lacks the energy take the people into the Promised Land. He has relied for too long on the same old bag of tricks and they just don't work the way they used to work. His time has come and gone.

Maybe Moses did not sin at all. Maybe, his punishment is not a punishment. It is, rather, just the way of all human beings. We grow older. We become set in our ways. We become unwilling to or incapable of adapting to new situations. We grow so accustomed to doing things in the ways that have worked in the past that we fail to notice new challenges or fail to rise to meet them. There is a sadness and a tragedy to that, but it also has a bright side.

Each generation has the ability to create its own models for leadership. The way things have been done in the past does not have to be the way they are done forever. Human mortality is also the key to human resilience and adaptability. Yesterday's leaders give way to tomorrow's leaders and, with each generation, we can look at the world with new eyes and to innovate new approaches.

The passing of leadership from one generation to the next might be seen as a tragedy for an individual, but it is not a tragedy for society as a whole. We are sanctified in moments of transition just as God and Israel were sanctified by the waters of Merivah. 


Other Posts on This Topic:
Chukat: The Reason for the Red Cow
Ki Tisa: Moses, Anger and Parenting
Steve Jobs and Yom Kippur

In some sense, being an "adult bar or bat mitzvah" is an oxymoron. Every Jew automatically becomes a bar or bat mitzvah upon reaching the age of Jewish maturity, regardless of whether there was a celebration of their changed Jewish legal status at the beginning of adolescence. Technically speaking, all "adult b'nei mitzvah" are just celebrating something that actually occurred long before the day they read from Torah at the synagogue—usually decades before.

However, since the "bar/bat mitzvah ceremony" has become such a mainstay of the Jewish lifecycle, adult Jews who did not get bar or bat mitzvah celebrations as kids feel that there is something missing from their Jewish identity. They want to turn back the clock and have some kind of ritual in which they can declare, finally, "Today I am recognized as an adult member of the Jewish community." In almost every case, they really are declaring that they see themselves as adult Jews. 

Yet, as much as these Jewish adults wish to capture the experience they missed when they were kids, the ceremonies they create as adults, to me, have a totally different feeling from the thirteen-year-old version of the ritual. You never think at an adult b'nei mitzvah celebration about the possibility that the participants are just doing it because their parents forced them into it. You never feel that the ritual is just an excuse for a party. You never worry that these b'nei mitzvah are going to drop out of Jewish communal life as soon as the celebration is over. How could they?

Adult b'nei mitzvah clearly are looking for an opportunity to embrace something important in their lives. The statements they make in front of their congregations are unimpeachably sincere. They want to declare how important it is for them to be Jews. They want to shout out to the universe how much they are committed to being part of the Jewish people for the rest of their lives. Of course, there also are thirteen-year-old boys and girls who make similar, earnest declarations at their bar and bat mitzvah celebrations, but we can never be certain that they will keep those convictions into adulthood. With "adult b'nei mitzvah," we see with certainty that they are in it for life.

In some way, "Adult B'nei Mitzvah" is an entirely different kind of ritual from the celebration of a thirteen-year-old Jewish boy or girl. Maybe, it is a ritual that should not be limited to those adults who did not have the childhood version of the bar or bat mitzvah experience. Maybe it is something we should consider for all adult Jews who wish to make a renewed commitment to Jewish identity and Jewish living at later stages of their lives. 

I am planning on offering an "Adult B'nei Mitzvah" class at my congregation this coming year. As I think about my mother-in-law and the nine other adult b'nei mitzvah this morning at Temple Isaiah of Lexington, Massachusetts, I think about the ways I can help other Jewish adults create a ritual for themselves that will reflect their need to declare themselves committed, adult Jews. It does not have to be the same kind of ritual we make for our thirteen-year-olds. It has to be a moment that allows all Jewish adults who are willing to step beyond the religious experiences (or non-experiences) of their childhoods and discover an authentic way of being fully Jewish as they are right now.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Acharei Mot-Kedoshim: Holy Bar Mitzvah
Writing a Word of Torah

I've studied and taught Esther dozens of times before. I don't think I said anything very different about the book tonight than what I have said in the past. I focused on the way the book portrays God's presence hiding in the shadows of our lives, sometimes barely noticeable, but always there. I talked about the two competing visions of reality portrayed in the book—a world that is random and meaningless versus a world that is purposeful and ruled by a moral order. I presented the book as a lesson about how the world is the opposite of how it sometimes appears to us.

The thing that was different about tonight's study was not the teacher. It was the class. I was humbled by the way the participants so warmly and openly embraced a stranger, someone from outside of their faith, who came to teach a text that they consider to be part of their own sacred canon. 

In fact, they did more than that. They gleefully used the groggers I brought to class. They had as much fun twirling them as any group of Hebrew school children I have ever seen. They pored over the Hebrew scroll of Esther I brought and treated it as an object of great sanctity.

Yes, I can imagine a synagogue welcoming a Christian teacher with as much enthusiasm as I received tonight. Yet, there is something special in the experience of being the one who is so  welcomed. I am grateful for the kindness of my new friends at St. Joseph Catholic Church of Stuart. 

The book of Esther, after all, does teach us that appearances can be deceiving. Sometimes, we discover that there is a deeper truth that underlies the masks we wear through life. Tonight, I learned again that where people expect to see only differences, there can be great commonality. Conventional expectations were inverted tonight in a way that reminds me of the way the terror of destruction in the book of Esther was transformed for the Jews of Shushan into "light, gladness and honor" (Esther 8:16).

It is an honor, indeed, to witness the shining of that light.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Tetzaveh: Games of Chance
Purim: Who Knows?
Nine Students, a Baby and a Wedding

There’s no denying that it is a question that resonates with our own skepticism about authority. The only trouble for Korach is that, in the story, God, in effect, says, “I am what gives Moses and Aaron the right. So there!” And then God opens the earth to swallow up Korach and his followers.  

That’s the end of that argument.

But there is a kind of postscript at the end of the story of Korach’s rebellion. After the revolt ends, God instructs the leaders of the twelve tribes to each place their staffs—dead pieces of wood, really—into the sanctuary where God’s presence rests. One of the twelve staffs, the one that belongs to Moses’ brother Aaron, sprouts blossoms and even grows flowers and almonds as a sign that he has been divinely chosen to carry God’s authority. 

What Aaron says, goes. Why? Because God says so.

What does that have to say to us in our struggles with the idea of authority? God isn’t sending us any miracles today to tell us whom we have to obey. (It probably wouldn’t work, anyway. We still wouldn’t obey.) What should this story mean to us?

The reality is that we do need authority, much as we try to escape or avoid it. Society just could not function if each of us was completely free to decide how to behave. Taxes would never be collected, crimes would never be challenged, rules would never be adopted, and communities would never be formed if no one would submit to the authority of anything outside of themselves. As the philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it, life without authority would be, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

What I like about the story with the sprouting staff—especially after the wrathful story of the earth swallowing Korach whole—is that it affirms that authority equals life. Authority is symbolized by a dead piece of wood bearing fruit, reminding us that without submitting ourselves to the authority of something outside of ourselves, we’re all dead meat.

Reform Judaism is built on the idea of autonomy. Each Jew, in the thinking of Reform Judaism, has the autonomy to choose the forms of observance that are most meaningful to him or her. Reform Judaism says: “You find the symbolism of wearing a tallit on Shabbat to be meaningful and spiritually fulfilling? Great! Wear a tallit. If a tallit doesn’t do much for you, though, don’t wear it. It’s up to you.”  Each of us, according to this ideal, has the power to create our own Judaism.

But, wait just a second…If each of us can create “our own Judaism,” then what is Judaism? Is Judaism just what any Jew decides Judaism should be? What if someone wants Judaism to be Buddism? What if someone wants Judaism to just be eating bagels on Sunday morning? What if someone wants Judaism to be nothing? Can Judaism be nothing?

Reform Judaism does have limits. Judaism requires some authority to maintain its distinctiveness, its boundaries, its ethics and ideals. Reform responds to that need, not by knocking people over the head with a set of dead rules, but with the sweet taste of the almond and the fragrance of its flowers.  

Authority does not have to be punitive. Reform Judaism, in general, prefers to maintain its boundaries by accentuating that which is attractive and distinctive about Judaism. Reform Judaism emphasizes the beauty of Judaism’s language, rituals, and culture; the intellectual appeal of its ideals and values; the warmth and openness of its communities; and, most of all, its pathways to meaningful encounter with God.

The story of the sprouting staff challenges us, as Jews and as human beings, to ask what authority we place over us in our lives. Whom do we serve? Our own desires? Our fears? Our jobs? Money? Or, do we accept the authority of something higher—values, ethics, devotion to family and community, God? Are we ruled by the stick that threatens to chase us, or are we ruled by our own pursuit of the sweet scent of values that affirm life?

Other Posts on This Topic:
Korach: Walking into Trouble's Tent
Nitzavim-Vayeilech: Is There Such a Thing as a Religious Reform Jew?
Beha'alotecha: Eldad and Medad

May our fathers and grandfathers have the strength to love more than they thought they could, to withstand another tantrum, and to enjoy every moment with their children, even when they think they have more important things to do. 

May their experiences as fathers and grandfathers fill their hearts with a deep sense of fulfillment and meaning. May their children and grandchildren recognize the ways that they offer guidance, instruction, commitment, forgiveness, love and acceptance. 

May all our fathers and grandfathers be a blessing. And we say together, Amein.

Only about half of these local, food-insecure children qualify for federal food assistance programs. For the rest—and for the hungry adults, too—there are only privately funded programs to help them get enough food on the days when they otherwise must go without. That is the reason for the Souper Sunday program at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Palm City. Every Sunday, the program serves nutritious meals for as many as a hundred local people who have nowhere else to turn. 

Similar programs exist at other churches in the county. Three hundred and sixty-five days a year, there are free meals available somewhere in Martin County for those who need them. These programs help hungry families come out of hiding and get the help they need.

On the second Sunday of each month, it is the turn of volunteers from Temple Beit HaYam to prepare, serve and clean up the meals at Immanuel Lutheran. Last Sunday, yours truly was rinsing and drying the pots and pans. I was one of about a dozen members of Martin County's Jewish community staffing Souper Sunday that day.

And that is where the other hidden people enter the story. 

Martin County does not have the large Jewish population that most people associate with southern Florida. We're north of those large Jewish areas in Miami, Boca Raton, Boynton Beach, and Palm Beach Gardens. Here in Martin County, most kids can count the Jewish students in their grade at their school on one hand. There are Protestant ministers here who look surprised when they hear there is a synagogue in Martin County. Some of them need an explanation about what Judaism is. That doesn't happen in Boca.

One of the reasons why the Jews of Martin County founded Temple Beit HaYam nineteen years ago was to lift themselves out of invisibility. They were tired of hearing that the schools would not close on Yom Kippur because, "There are no Jews in Martin County." They didn't want to bite their tongues anymore when the downtown holiday event in December had a lot of Christmas trees, but no Chanukah menorahs.

The best way we have found, though, to take the Jewish community out of hiding, is to help others whose presence is also hidden. When the Jewish community comes together to feed the hungry, people notice us. It puts us on the map as a community that cares about community, and makes a difference. 

Of course, raising the profile of the Jewish community is not the main reason why we help feed people who are hungry. We do it because it is the right thing to do. We do it because we are responding to the call of the prophet Isaiah to "share your bread with the hungry, to take the wretched poor into your home,… to clothe the naked, and not to ignore your own kin" (Isaiah 58:7). 

Yet, just as individuals act on their principles to let others know what kind of people they are, so does a community. It is not enough for Jews to talk about our values and ideals. In order to make the truth of who we are known, we must act. 

There is poetry and a great justice in the way that the Jewish community comes out of its hiding by uncovering the hidden tragedy of hunger amid wealth. Is there any better way to make a name for ourselves?

There is also poetry and justice in this fact: It is a pleasure. The people from our congregation who volunteer every month at Immanuel Lutheran have a blast. We cook up a storm, offer our creations with love, and receive the gratitude of the people we feed with joy. 

We reveal ourselves.  We reveal those who suffer in silence. We reveal the presence of God.

These days, there are hundreds of colorful and creative tallitot from which to choose. However, the only really important parts of the tallit, from the perspective of Jewish law, are the long knotted fringes, called tzitzit, on the four corners. This week's Torah portion (Shelach Lecha) includes the mitzvah of wearing tzitzit. That passage is also the third paragraph of the Shema, traditionally recited twice each day during morning and evening worship.

(For many years, Reform prayerbooks omitted the verses that refer to tzitzit, ostensibly because most Reform Jews did not wear a tallit. In recent decades, wearing the tallit has become common in Reform congregations and the most recent Reform prayerbook, Mishkan T'filah, restores the passage as an option in the morning service.)

I never paid much attention to the actual method for wrapping and knotting the strands of the tzitzit until, about three years ago, when one of the tzitzit broke on my favorite tallit. I purchased a set of tzitzit strings (available from most Jewish book stores) and taught myself how to tie them. 

According to the tradition followed by most Ashkenazic Jews, there are four sets of wrappings separated by five pairs of knots on each tzitzit. There are seven wrappings between the first set of knots, eight wrappings between the next set, eleven between the next set, and thirteen between the last. It looks like this:

There are many interpretations of the number of windings between the knots. All depend on gematria, interpretations that are based on the numeric values of the Hebrew letters. The seven and eight windings in the first two sets add up to fifteen, which is the numeric value of yud-hey, the first two letters of God's holiest name. The second two letters are vav-hey, which have the combined value of eleven. The first three sets of windings are said to spell out God's name: yud-hey-vav-hey. The fourth set, of 13 windings, has the value of the word echad, which means "one." Each of the four tzitzit spells out "Adonai Echad," "The Lord is One."

There is also gematria that shows how the tzitzit correspond to the mitzvot, the 613 commandments given in the Torah. The word "tzitzit" itself has the numeric value of 600 (when spelled with two yuds). Add to that, the eight strands and the five knots on each tzitzit and, presto, you have the number 613. Wearing a tallit symbolizes acceptance of the obligation to do mitzvot. 

The connection between the tzitzit and the mitzvot is not incidental. In a passage from this week's Torah portion, we read, "Adonai told Moses, 'Tell the Israelites to make tzitzit on the corners of their garments in every generation…They shall look at it and remember all of Adonai's mitzvot and do them'" (Numbers 15:38-39).  

When a Jew puts on a tallit to pray in the morning, he or she recites a blessing that acknowledges the commandment "to wrap oneself in tzitzit." Metaphorically, we wrap ourselves  in the mitzvot. The mitzvot are not just orders issued to us from above. Rather, they are the spiritual clothes that we wear. They protect us, adorn us, and reflect the inner beauty of our souls with the outer beauty of our actions.

We also recite a verse before putting on the tallit that declares that "God…is clothed in splendor and majesty, wrapped in light as a garment, unfolding the heavens like a curtain" (Psalm 104:1-2). God also wears a tallit, a garment of light that represents the heavens. 

Today, when I put on my tallit, I think about my grandfather. I also remember how the tallit recalls a partnership with God that makes us and our actions central to the order of the cosmos. I think about how, when we perform mitzvot, we are doing our joyful part in creating the world of our dreams—a dream that we dream together with God.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Shelach Lecha: Getting Up Close and Personal
Yoga and Judaism: The Yoke's on You
Joy and Obligation

Its hard to say anything about the Six Day War without offending somebody. Even the name, "Six Day War," is loaded. That is the name that the Israeli general, Yitzhak Rabin, gave the war to evoke "The Six Days of Creation." To the Arab world, the war is called, an-Naksah, "The Setback." To say that the war began as a pre-emptive strike garners criticism, too. To Arabs, Israel was an unjustified aggressor. 

There is, however, one thing on which everyone agrees: The Six Day War changed the entire power relationship among the nations of the Middle East. The war made Israel a major military power. It gave Israel control of the most sacred site in Jewish tradition. Israel's leaders allowed Moslem religious authorities to retain control of the top of the Temple Mount with its venerated Al-Aqsa Mosque, but they swore that they would never give up Jerusalem again. The Six Day War gave Israel control, also, of the Golan Heights and the West Bank of the Jordan River, enhancing the nation's security and its ability to defend itself. 

On the other hand, the Six Day War also gave Israel its greatest problems to this day—an Arab population that regards Israel as a conquerer and occupier. It gave the Arab and Islamic world a cause  to inflame their rage. The liberation of Jerusalem, or al-Quds, became a rallying cry from Morocco to Tehran. Israel's enemies have been skillful in using the occupation as a tool to turn world opinion against the Jewish State.

As Jews in the contemporary world, it is difficult for us not to have some mixed feelings about the Six Day War. It was Israel's most brilliant military moment, one that transported the Jewish State, in the blink of an eye, from the threat of extinction to unimagined victory. It also was the moment that created the uncomfortable world in which Israel has had to live ever since. For forty-five years, Israel has battled internally and with the rest of the world over what to do with the lands it won in the Six Day War, and what to do with the Arab population in those territories.

People will argue—and it's true—that the world already was difficult enough for Israel before the war. Israel's neighbors did not need a humiliating defeat to hate Israel and seek its destruction. That hatred was, of course, the reason why the war happened in the first place.

However we choose to understand the events of the Six Day War, and all that has followed, the real challenge now is to respond to the situation as it is today. The overwhelming opinion of Israelis and of successive American governments, Republican and Democratic, is that the only longterm solution is to have two states—Israel as a Jewish state and Palestine for the Arabs.

Israel and Palestinians need a divorce—one that will divide Israel from most of the territories it captured in the Six Day War and the Arab population it contains. Like any divorce, it needs to be negotiated with terms that will satisfy the most important needs of both sides, but which probably won't make either side happy. The hard part, of course, is how to do it. How does Israel allow a state on its border that will include people who still are pledged to its destruction? How will the Palestinians accept a state that is less than half of what they claim as their rightful possession?

The practical and political solutions to the conundrum far exceed the scope of this blog. I am not going to draw lines on maps, plan evacuation of Jewish settlements, or explain how Jerusalem could be the capital of two countries. I'll leave that to others. What I will say, though, is that the puzzle created by the Six Day War has to be solved according to the values that make Israel, first and foremost, a Jewish state. 

There is no point in solving Israel's greatest challenge in ways that defy the teachings of our tradition. If it were to be done that way, what would we be fighting for? A country that happens to have a lot of Jews in it, but which exchanges "Love your neighbor" for "Might makes right"? That cannot be.

We would not be Jews if we did not insist on justice for the Palestinian people at the same time that we take steps to ensure the safety of our own people. We would not be lovers of Torah if we did not give the Palestinians a chance to create a viable state while we defend the borders of our own state. We are still commanded, "Justice, justice shall you pursue" (Deuteronomy 16:20).

The Torah, as has been said, is not a suicide pact. It does not require us to defend people who seek to kill us. On the other hand, Torah also does not permit us to assume that we can never live in peace with people who were once our enemies. We have a sacred obligation to pursue peace, even when it appears unlikely. We are obliged to see all human beings as we see ourselves, created in the image of God.

Forty-five years is a long time to wait. It is too long to remain prisoners of our own fear. It is too long for both sides in this conflict to continue to spill blood and to say "no." It is too long to continue to hide behind the excuse that the other side is more at fault. 

We are commanded to pursue justice. If we are serious about that, we will demand an end to the untenable status quo of the world after the Six Day War. Arabs will say "enough" to leaders who make empty promises to destroy Israel, and leaders who would rather play the innocent victim than negotiate. Israelis will say "enough" to leaders who are too cowardly to confront the settler movement and too stubborn to face the reality that Israel cannot be both a democracy and an occupier. 

Forty-five years is long enough for war and destruction. It is time that both sides worked instead toward creation.

So, it is poetically just that this week's Torah portion (Beha'alotecha) takes on the issue of religious authority. Eldad and Medad are two men who receive the power of prophecy outside of the formal “chain of command” established by Moses. Curiously, Moses is the first to give legitimacy to the way they speak for God.

Adonai told Moses, “Gather for Me seventy of Israel’s elders of whom you know to be elders and officers of the people, and bring them to the Tent of Meeting and let them take their place there with you. I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it upon them. They shall share the burden of the people with you, and you shall not bear it alone… Then Adonai came down in a cloud and spoke to him. God drew upon the spirit that was on him and put it upon the seventy elders. And when the spirit rested upon them, they spoke in ecstasy, but did not continue. 

Two men, one named Eldad and the other Medad, had remained in camp. Yet the spirit rested upon them—they were among those recorded, but they had not gone out to the Tent—and they spoke in ecstasy in the camp. A youth ran out and told Moses, saying, “Eldad and Medad are playing the prophet in the camp!” Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ attendant from his youth, spoke up and said, “My lord Moses, restrain them!” But Moses said to him, “Are you upset on my behalf? Who has the power to make all of Adonai’s people into prophets? It is Adonai who has placed God’s spirit upon them!” (Numbers 11:16-17; 25-29)

Moses makes it clear that the authority to speak for God does not necessarily flow from him or from any human authority. If we believe that God has the power to make the divine will known through human beings, God has the power to choose the agents of prophecy without regard to human institutions. 

You may notice that there is an interesting ambiguity in the story. Why did Eldad and Medad not come to the Tent of Meeting if they were among the elders chosen by Moses? Why does the text say that God took some of Moses’ spirit and “put it upon the seventy elders”? If Eldad and Medad were missing, should the text not have said only sixty-eight?

There is a beautiful midrash on this story that explains the seeming inconsistency and, also, explains the merit by which Eldad and Medad were considered true prophets (Midrash Bamidbar Rabbah 15:19). According to the midrash, Moses had a problem with the number of elders that God had specified. There were twelve tribes and each tribe would want to have equal representation among the elders, but seventy is not equally divisible by twelve. Two tribes would only have five representative and the other ten would have six. 

In attempting to solve the numerical problem, Moses instituted a lottery. Seventy-two pieces of paper were placed in a jar. Seventy pieces had the word “elder” written on them; two pieces were left blank. Moses chose six representatives from each of the twelve tribes and asked each of the seventy-two to draw a piece of paper from the jar. Only those who drew the word “elder” would be invited to join Moses in the Tent of Meeting.

Eldad and Medad were two of the seventy-two representatives chosen by Moses, but they withdrew from the lottery because they did not believe themselves to be worthy of the honor. The midrash says that, because of their modesty, they were deemed to be the most worthy of all the elders. God rewarded them with the greatest prophetic gift, allowing them to see events forty years into the future. 

According to the Midrash, this is the reason why Joshua asked Moses to silence them. Eldad and Medad were the first to prophesy that Moses would die in the wilderness and that Joshua would be the one to bring the Israelites into the Land of Israel. It would not be the last time that someone tried to silence a prophet for telling the truth.

Who gets to speak for God? Who gets to play the prophet? 

According to our tradition, it is not only the ones who have been elected and chosen by human beings. Sometimes, the voice of God has to come to us from outside of the chain of command. Sometimes, prophets need to be able to say things that are not so welcome by the powers that be. It takes leaders of true wisdom to listen to God’s voice coming from outside official channels. It takes leaders of true modesty to overcome the tendency to hear those words as a threat to their authority. 

In Israel today, there is an Orthodox Rabbinate that is not listening. The challenge for them is to step back from the tendency to hear liberal Jewish voices as a threat. It is to recognize that, for a portion of the Jewish people, Reform and Conservative Judaism speaks with the ecstasy of Eldad and Medad. It is their challenge to remember that it is God, not human beings, who has the power to make each one of us into a prophet.

There is, of course, also a message for liberal Jews in this lesson. Our legitimacy depends upon our willingness to act with humility. It is too easy to see the struggle with the Orthodox Rabbinate only in political terms—a struggle that can only have winners and losers in a test of power. Like Eldad and Medad, we should find our greatest struggle in wrestling with ourselves and questioning our own worthiness. 

It is through that struggle that we may find ourselves able to hear the voice of God, not from some human-appointed authority, but as a growing presence within our own lives.


Other Posts on This Topic:
A Victory for Freedom of Religion in Israel
Beha'alotcha: The Light of the Menorah