Author Archives: Rabbi Brant Rosen

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About Rabbi Brant Rosen

I'm a rabbi, blogger, and activist with a special interest in Israel/Palestine justice work.

Inner Jacob, Inner Israel

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How fair are your tents, O Jacob/Your dwellings, O Israel! (Numbers 24:5)

These words, uttered by the ersatz prophet Balaam in praise of the Israelites, come from this week’s Torah portion, Balak, but are best known as the opening line of the well-known morning prayer, “Mah Tovu.”

If you read this verse carefully, you’ll notice that it essentially expresses the same idea twice, using different words and images. Literarily speaking, this is known as “a couplet,” and is considered a defining feature of Biblical poetry. Commenting on this phenomenon, Biblical literary scholar Robert Alter has observed that “there is a characteristic movement of meaning” from first half of the couplet to the second. (“The Art of Biblical Poetry,” p. 19)

Indeed, over the centuries Biblical commentators have parsed poetic verses by comparing the subtle differences between the first and second halves of a given couplet. In the case of this famous verse, the juxtaposition of Jacob with his “alter ego” Israel has given rise to some rich homiletical interpretation.

Reb Rachel Barenblat, for instance, offers this wonderful insight:

In this synechdoche, the patriarch symbolizes the whole. Jacob is the earthly, embodied side of the patriarch, the aspect that inhabits physical spaces. Israel is the other side of the coin, the part of the patriarch which wrestled with the angel of God and came away blessed. Where Jacob has tents, Israel has dwellings — in Hebrew, Israel has mishkanot, like the holy dwelling-place of the indwelling Shekhinah.

Each of us is both Jacob and Israel; we have Jacob-ness and Israel-ness in ourselves. And each of us can make the leap from inhabiting a tent to inhabiting a dwelling-place. When we wrestle and dance and dream with Torah, we transform ourselves from worldly Jacob to engaged Israel, and we embody Balaam’s blessing.

For my part, I find myself returning to the image of Jacob as “wanderer.” In his childhood, he is described as “ish tam yoshev ohalim” – “a simple man who dwelt in tents.” (Genesis 25:27) Tents are by their nature temporary dwellings; and indeed Jacob will eventually spend most of his life wandering/fleeing/returning/departing.

The name Israel, on the other hand, represents “home.” Even in the midst of his wanderings, Jacob/Israel will experience reconciliation (with his brother Esau), reunion (with his son Joseph) and at the end of his life, homecoming, when he is taken from Egypt and buried in the cave of his ancestors: “he drew his feet into the bed and, breathing his last, he was gathered to his people.” (Genesis 49:33)

As Reb Rachel points out, both Jacob and Israel are indelibly imprinted upon our spiritual psyches. We are forever setting out and we are forever coming home – life is an endless cycle of wandering and homecoming. And so it must be: if it were exclusively the former, we’d be eternally lost; if only the latter, our spiritual lives would become complacent and stagnant.

Here, then, is yet another way to understand Balaam’s blessing: that we may experience the divine presence in our going forth and in our coming home.

How to Pray, 21st Century Style

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I’m sorting through tons of poems to include in our High Holiday supplements and discovering some really wonderful stuff. Can’t resist sharing this one:

Pray for Peace

by Ellen Bass

Pray to whomever you kneel down to:
Jesus nailed to his wooden or plastic cross,
his suffering face bent to kiss you,
Buddha still under the bo tree in scorching heat,
Adonai, Allah. Raise your arms to Mary
that she may lay her palm on our brows,
to Shekhina, Queen of Heaven and Earth,
to Inanna in her stripped descent.

Then pray to the bus driver who takes you to work.
On the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus,
for everyone riding buses all over the world.
Drop some silver and pray.

Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM,
for your latte and croissant, offer your plea.
Make your eating and drinking a supplication.
Make your slicing of carrots a holy act,
each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.

To Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, pray.
Bow down to terriers and shepherds and Siamese cats.
Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.

Make the brushing of your hair
a prayer, every strand its own voice,
singing in the choir on your head.
As you wash your face, the water slipping
through your fingers, a prayer: Water,
softest thing on earth, gentleness
that wears away rock.

Making love, of course, is already prayer.
Skin, and open mouths worshipping that skin,
the fragile cases we are poured into.

If you’re hungry, pray. If you’re tired.
Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day.
Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth.

When you walk to your car, to the mailbox,
to the video store, let each step
be a prayer that we all keep our legs,
that we do not blow off anyone else’s legs.
Or crush their skulls.
And if you are riding on a bicycle
or a skateboard, in a wheelchair, each revolution
of the wheels a prayer as the earth revolves:
less harm, less harm, less harm.

And as you work, typing with a new manicure,
a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail
or delivering soda or drawing good blood
into rubber-capped vials, writing on a blackboard
with yellow chalk, twirling pizzas–

With each breath in, take in the faith of those
who have believed when belief seemed foolish,
who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.

Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace,
feed the birds, each shiny seed
that spills onto the earth, another second of peace.
Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.

Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk.
Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child
around your VISA card. Scoop your holy water
from the gutter. Gnaw your crust.
Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling
your prayer through the streets.

Ashes to Ashes: Red Heifer as “Spiritual Equilibirum”

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This week’s Torah portion begins with a description of the infamous red heifer – that most inscrutable of all ancient Israelite sacrifices. Generation after generation of commentators have puzzled over the meaning of this mysterious ritual, which seems to defy rational explanation at every turn.

According to our portion, a “red cow without blemish” must be burned together with cedar wood, hyssop, and crimson stuff to purify anyone who comes into contact with a corpse. (Numbers 19:11-19)  While this essentially is a sacrifice prescribed for those who have become ritually impure, we also read that the priests who facilitate the sacrifice actually become impure themselves through their contact with the heifer’s ashes – and must then undergo their own rituals of purification. (Numbers 19:7-10, 19:21-22)

What on earth do we make of sacrifice that makes the impure pure, but in so doing renders the pure impure?

Let’s look first at the ingredients of the sacrifice. Symbolically speaking, it’s noteworthy that both hyssop and cedar are used – as both have been historically connected with healing, cleansing and protection. Among their Biblical associations, hyssop was famously used to mark the Israelites’ doorposts with blood in Egypt, and cedar wood was a central material used in the building of the Temple in Jerusalem.

At the same time, however, these plants are polar opposites: the hyssop is a lowly shrub associated with humility while the cedar is a massive, towering tree that commonly represents majesty and pride.

The color red, of course, has many popular associations. Generally speaking, red symbolizes love, sensuality, emotion and passion. Red is also the color of blood and fire, both of which are central to life itself.  As the primary color of the sun, it is associated with the life-giving energy that animates our world.

The 16th century Italian Torah commentator Sforno famously interpreted the red of the red heifer to represent emotion or passion taken to an unhealthy extreme – and that the symbols of hyssop and cedar indicate that one can engage in unhealthy extremes in either direction: humility/self-abnegation or pride/ego.

To further paraphrase Sforno, the ashes of the red heifer serve as a kind of “extreme ritual therapy” designed to help someone who dwells in the extremes to attain the “golden mean” – or a place of spiritual equilibrium.  However, in order to facilitate this ritual, the priest must themselves go into those extreme places himself – and in so doing, his own equilibrium will be affected. That is why the Torah prescribes a rite of “purification” for the “purifier” as well.

In answering the puzzling question of the red heifer ritual, then, we’ve given rise to yet deeper questions:

–  In what ways do we find ourselves charting more extreme terrain – and to what extremes must we go to return to balance and equilibrium?

– What must we do to help others who might inhabit this territory – and what must we do for ourselves to find our way back?

God Has Anger Management Issues

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Angry God (courtesy of Monty Python)

In this week’s Torah portion, Korach ben Yitzhar foments a rebellion against Moses and Aaron. At the height of the mutiny, Korach gathers “the whole community against them at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting.” (Numbers 16:19)

The text continues:

Then the Presence of the Lord appeared to the whole community, and the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, “Stand back from this community that I may annihilate them in an instant!” But they fell on their faces and said, “O God, Source of the breath of all flesh! When one man sins, will You be wrathful with the entire community?” (16:19-22)

I’m struck by a few things here:

This passage is, of course, powerfully reminiscent of another famous episode – namely, when Abraham challenges God not to engage in collateral damage during the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah:

Will You sweep away the innocent along with the guilty? What if there should be fifty innocent within the city; will You then wipe out the place and not forgive it for the sake of the innocent fifty who are in it? Far be it for you to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty, so that the innocent and the guilty fare alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” (Genesis 18:22-25)

And this isn’t even the first time God angrily threatens to completely wipe out the Israelites themselves (see, for instance, Exodus 32:9-10 and Numbers 14: 11-12). Then, as well as here, Moses has to talk God off the ledge, so to speak.

It’s certainly more than a bit curious that God, who is elsewhere described as “a God compassionate and gracious; slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6) is repeatedly portrayed with an exceedingly explosive temper and serious anger management issues. It’s also a curious role reversal: a mere mortal is put in the position of reminding God to behave (and God repeatedly relents!)

What should we make of all this? As for me, as I’ve indicated before, I prefer not to read Biblical descriptions of God as theological treatises, but rather as powerful projections of our human struggles onto the image of God. (So you mean to tell me that you’re confused that God appears alternatively “compassionate” and “jealous,” “forgiving” and “vengeful?” Well, duh – God is only human after all…)

When I read these human – divine interactions, I can’t help but think about the ways in which we struggle internally with our ever-present penchant for all-consuming anger and destructiveness. Sometimes, à la Abraham, it means grappling with the inherent justice of our actions. Other times, as in the aftermath of the Golden Calf episode, our anger might back down in the face of our inner pride and shame.

I find this week’s struggle particularly powerful. By addressing God as “Source of breath of all flesh,” Moses and Aaron remind God/us that the very breath we breathe is a sacred essence that we share with all that lives. Whenever we allow ourselves to become consumed by our anger, our sense of this divine unity becomes fundamentally disrupted.  But if we understand that our breath is not ours to breathe alone, we experience our connection to the “Source of the Breath of All Flesh” – and we may well regain our physical/spiritual equilibrium.

(Could this be why breathing exercises have long been considered a time-honored method for dealing with anger management? Just sayin’…)

Alt-Country Theology: A Tutorial

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Check out two very divergent takes on grief and loss by two wonderful alt-country singers: “The Duel,” by Allison Moorer and  “God is in the Roses” by Roseanne Cash (from her brilliant album “Black Cadillac,” one of my favorites.)

Both are profoundly personal reflections on God after the death of a loved one. I’m deeply moved by both, even if they express bereavement with radically different emotions and points of view.

I’d love to hear reactions.

“The Duel”
by Allison Moorer

In this cemetery mist
Stands a newborn atheist
Even if you do exist
You’re far from almighty
Flesh and blood’s a sissy fist
Death’s a gold glove pugilist
And everyday it’s hit or miss
That’s what I believe

I stared at my polished shoes
In front of your wooden pews
Prayed and prayed don’t let me lose
What my heart adores
Are miracles old-fashioned news
No healing hands were ever used
Faithfulness was my excuse
Tell me what was yours

I don’t know how many rounds
Are left in me ‘til I stay down
And there’s no telling where I’m bound
But one thing I’m sure of
The king of kings has lost his crown
It’s buried here in marble town
In the god forsaken ground
With my only love

“God is in the Roses”
by Rosanne Cash

God is in the roses
The petals and the thorns
Storms out on the oceans
The souls who will be born
And every drop of rain that falls
Falls for those who mourn
God is in the roses and the thorns

The sun is on the cemetery
Leaves are on the stones
There never was a place on earth
That felt so much like home
We’re falling like the velvet petals
We’re bleeding and we’re torn
But God is in the roses and the thorns

I love you like a brother
A father and a son
It may not last forever and ever
But it never will be done
My whole world fits inside the moment
I saw you be reborn
God is in the roses
And that day was filled with roses
God is in the roses and the thorns

On Sticks and Stones

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From this week’s Torah portion, Shelach Lecha:

Once, when the Israelites were in the wilderness, they came upon a man gathering wood on the sabbath day. Those who found him, as he was gathering wood brought him before Moses, Aaron and the whole community. He was placed in custody, for it had not been speculated what should be done to him. Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man shall be put to death: the whole community shall pelt him with stones outside the camp.” So the whole community took him outside the camp and stoned him to death – as the Eternal had commanded Moses. (Numbers 15:32-36)

Yeah, this is a tough one.

So here’s my take: it isn’t God who hands down the death sentence upon this poor guy at all.

How can I say this? I say this because I believe the Torah to be a document written wholly by human authors – many different authors over a very long period of time. And as a composite document primarily concerned with God’s role in history and human society, it reflects many different voices that run a spectrum from our loftiest spiritual/ethical yearnings to our darkest and basest human impulses.

For those who are aghast that God could command such a heinous punishment for such a mild offense, here is the only answer I know to offer: this ain’t God. This is a description of an act of collective religious zealotry attributed to God by the Biblical author. A classic example of mob mentality in action.

Having said that, it’s not as if we don’t learn important lessons from this episode.  I’m struck by a few things in particular:

I’m struck that the community isn’t all that sure what to do with the wood-gatherer after they capture him. It is notable that God had not previously specified gathering sticks as a Shabbat prohibition. Perhaps they were concerned that his actions fell into a grey area – that he was gathering sticks with the intention of kindling a fire (which is explicitly prohibited by Torah.)  In any case, this is certainly a moment of collective legal confusion for the Israelite community.

I’m also struck that this episode follows upon God’s pronouncement that as punishment for its faithlessness, this generation of Israelites will not be allowed to enter the land of Israel (“your carcasses will drop in this wilderness, while your children roam in the wilderness for forty years…” 14:32-33.) In other words, the stick-gathering incident occurs during a desperate and terrifying moment for the Israelite people.

And I’m also struck that while the question is brought before “Moses, Aaron and the whole community,” it is God who renders the final verdict.  In my reading of this passage, however it is not God handing down the heinous sentence – God is merely a literary “stand-in” for a fearful and confused people who have resorted to mob behavior for unacceptable (if perhaps understandable) reasons.

While this episode has nothing to teach us about Shabbat observance, it still teaches us plenty about the dynamics of collective fear – and the cruelty with which we too often inflict our fear upon others…

…and maybe, just maybe, it is also a lesson about the ways we too often project our fear and cruelty onto God.

Do Atheists Belong in the Interfaith Tent?

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Really interesting piece in Religion Dispatches by Christopher Stedman, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University, who argues for the inclusion of atheists in the Interfaith Movement:

To atheists concerned about being seen as “just another faith” and worried that interfaith isn’t an avenue for substantive discourse: I encourage you to give it a shot anyway, and be vocal about where you stand. I cannot begin to recount all of the times interfaith work has opened up a space for robust conversations on problematic religious practices and beliefs—in fact, it has been a hallmark of my experience working in the interfaith movement. All the more, it has allowed me to engage religious people about atheist identity and eradicate significant misconceptions about what atheism is and what it isn’t…

In my experience, interfaith work doesn’t require that people check their convictions at the door—it invites people to try to understand and humanize the other. It’s a worthy goal, and if the only thing keeping some atheists from participating is a semantic disagreement with the word “faith,” I think that is a missed opportunity.

Race and Infection

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In this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Beha’alotecha, Aaron and Miriam unexpectedly disparage their brother Moses:

When they were in Hatzerot, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married: “He married a Cushite woman!” (Numbers 12:1)

Moses’ siblings’ slur is confusing on a number of levels. In the first place, it’s not quite clear who this “Cushite woman” actually is. Cush is commonly understood to refer to ancient Ethiopia (in Genesis 10:6 we read that the Cushites descended from Ham, the son of Noah.) However, Moses’ wife Zipporah is a Midianite, not a Cushite.

Commentators have handled this discrepancy in different ways. Some suggest that Zipporah and the Cushite woman are the same person. (Pointing out that Habbakuk 3:7 refers to a Midianite tribe called Cushan). Other Biblical scholars posit that the reference to the Cushite wife is a fragment of a larger literary tradition that has since gone the way of history.

These theories are interesting as far as they go, but in the end they fail to address the most troubling dimension to this episode: namely, the patently racist nature of Miriam and Aaron’s words.

Indeed, whatever else might be going on in this cryptic Biblical narrative, it might be, at least in part, an anti-racist polemic. After her unabashedly xenophobic exclamation “He married a Cushite woman!” it is more than a bit ironic that Miriam is stricken with tzara’at – a skin affliction that manifests itself with “snow-white scales.” (12:10) In a sense, God seems to be saying to Miriam: “You like white so much, I’ll show you white!”

Classical Jewish commentators famously understand tzara’at to be a physical manifestation of the sin of lashon harah – negative speech, or gossip. For myself, I’ve always found this interpretation to be less compelling as theology (i.e. illness is a result of divine punishment) than as a metaphor for the virulent nature of hate speech. I would prefer to say it this way: Miriam’s malady is not literally caused by her words; rather, her infectious tzara’at mirrors the inner properties of her racist words themselves.

Alas, we know this to be all too true: hate speech can be fatally infectious. Left unchecked, racism almost invariably spreads virally through society. Centuries after these Biblical words were written, hateful words continue to mutate into racist attitudes and actions in new and frightening ways.

Life at the Margins: Shavuot and the Queer Experience

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A lovely Shavuot drash by my friend and colleague Rabbi Josh Lesser, of Congregation Bet Haverim in Atlanta – a Reconstructionist community founded by gays and lesbians:

What queer person cannot relate to Naomi’s fate at one time or another? Feeling lonely, without family, without support and without a clear picture of the future – surely many of us remember a time like that. If we are lucky like Naomi, that reality changes. When she encourages her daughters-in-law to return to a more certain future with security and promise one daughter-in-law, Ruth, stays and pledges an oath of fidelity inextricably binding her life to Naomi’s forever, giving us one of the Torah’s most poignant examples of a family of choice. Her pledge is so complete that some people question if there was more than a mother-daughter bond, but rather that of a life partner. Indeed many people, lesbians and straight folk alike, use Ruth’s pledge as part of their life-long commitment to each other. The text does not answer what their relationship is, but the question itself is important and allows us to wonder. To me, the even more powerful message is that through this pledge, the future changes, a future that will eventually lead to the messianic age.

This transformation is the most queer part of the text. It is this pledge of mutuality and shared destiny in the face of the unknown that enables what is clearly a path of despair and hopelessness to be transformed so powerfully that it produces the seed of the messianic line. Through a series of events, some even say through God’s hand, Ruth meets Boaz, a kinsman of Naomi. He admires her dedication to Naomi and offers them support and comfort. Eventually, Boaz decides to join their family of choice from which an offspring emerges beginning the Davidic messianic line. Here we see that God can be powerfully known and experienced through a relationship. If that is not a revelation as profound as Torah, I do not know what is. It is often through selfless giving that God is known as powerfully as if the earth was shaking and thundering. Even more revealing for queer folks is that this relationship occurred in the margins. The central elements of this story take place in Moab, a questionable place at the time, and in the fields – a place of danger and transition. The central players are likewise marginal: widows, older people and strangers. And yet, here in the margins, godliness manifests. Ruth is a testament to everyone that God’s presence resides in those places society shuns or pities.

Facing God, Facing One Another

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This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Naso, contains what is possibly the most well-known extant blessing in Biblical tradition: the Birkat Cohenim or “Priestly Blessing:”

May ADONAI bless and protect you. May ADONAI shine (God’s) face upon you show favor to you. May ADONAI turn (God’s) face to you and grant you peace. (Numbers 6:23-26)

One of the most notable aspects of this blessing is its metaphorical use of “God’s face.” The final two blessings utilize this image in two different ways: in the second blessing, the “light” of God’s countenance bestows acceptance or grace (in Hebrew, chen); in the third and final blessing, the “turning” of God’s face expresses Shalom – peace, wholeness, fulfillment.

The metaphor of God’s face is used throughout the Bible, often to convey the powerful and immediate experience of the Divine Presence. In the closing verses of the Torah, for instance, Moses’ unique relationship with God underscored when we read that “God singled him out face to face” (Deuteronomy 34:10). On the other hand, the concept of hester panim (the “hiding of God’s face”) is often invoked to convey divine anger and punishment (see, for instance, Deuteronomy 31:18).

As poetic as these images may be, I personally struggle with their overly supernatural/anthropomorphic usages. I’m much more drawn to poignantly humanistic way “God’s face” is invoked during the reconciliation of the estranged twin brothers Jacob and Esau.

Upon their reunion, Jacob says to his older brother:

Please, if you would do me this favor, accept from me this gift; for to see your face is like seeing the face of God… (Genesis 33:10)

This use of the metaphor suggests that Godliness is particularly manifest in the act of conflict resolution – when former enemies find the wherewithal to “turn their faces” to one another. In this regard, we might well view the Birkat Cohenim not merely as a blessing of well-being but as a spiritual imperative to all who receive it.

When does God’s face shine upon us or turn to greet us? When we turn our faces to one another in acceptance and peace.