Balaq 5772 - Talking Donkeys and Cursing Rabbis: The Importance of Being Civil

Shabbat shalom. It’s good to be home. (I was in Israel for eight days.)

Woody Allen once quipped that the Jewish history of persecution armed our people with the ability to talk their way out of a tight spot. I like to see Jewish history as somewhat more positive: the rabbinic tradition of learning and commentary, arguing and revisiting and re-commenting has, if nothing else, endowed us with an appreciation for the power of words and speech.

Parashat Balaq could be either the world's oldest known satire, or the silliest piece of cheap fiction ever written. A talking donkey? Try selling THAT in Hollywood. Here's the elevator pitch:

“A goyish prophet is hired to curse the Jews. While on his way, his donkey keeps seeing an angel, so he beats him, until the donkey talks back. That's right! Then the prophet opens his mouth and tries to curse, but blessings come out instead. Whaddaya think?”

But in all, this parashah may be the greatest commentary ever on the importance of words. In broad strokes:

1. Bil'am's donkey is given an opportunity rarely afforded to animals: to express what he or she is feeling. This is a miracle that we humans all enjoy daily, and we should never forget the value of such a commonplace miracle.

2. When Bil'am arrives to perform his task of cursing the Israelites, he opens his mouth, and words of hatred become words of love and admiration. Don't you wish that this happened more often?

A few weeks back, a video surfaced on YouTube that “went viral.” Last I checked, there were over 8 million views. It featured a 68-year-old grandmother, Karen Huff Klein, who works as a bus monitor for a school district in upstate New York. 

Ms. Klein is shown sitting on her bus, and for ten excruciating minutes is seen being verbally abused by seventh-grade boys. They taunt her with horrible, disgusting words, calling her fat, stupid, poor, smelly, and other mean insults coupled with the most colorful four-letter expletives imaginable, causing her to cry. The fact that these boys know and choose to use such words is disappointing; the fact that they are engaged in what amounts to torture is shocking.

Yes, the proliferation of cameras today has enabled us to see many things that may have always taken place. For sure I was teased when I rode the schoolbus, as I am sure that many of us were, although perhaps not with language as pungent as what may be heard in this video. But I have never seen such unrelenting torture. The good news is that people responded to the video by raising over $650,000 dollars so Ms. Klein can retire and never have to ride the bus again with such savages.

But here is a question we must ask ourselves: what have we done to create this? Yes, that's right. You and me and everybody else in this nation. How are we at fault?

If this incident had happened (has veshalom / God forbid) in Great Neck rather than the town of Greece, New York, would we acknowledge personal responsibility? That's not my kid, we would say. My child is not cruel. My child would never use language like this. That was somebody else's kid.

New York Times columnist Charles Blow, in his own commentary on this incident, suggests that we are all to blame.

“Those boys are us, or at least too many of us: America at its ugliest. It is that part of society that sees the weak and vulnerable as worthy of derision and animus. This kind of behavior is not isolated to children and school buses and suburban communities. It stretches to the upper reaches of society — our politics and our pulpits and our public squares.”

Think about it for a moment: we live in a society obsessed with youth, beauty, and success. We spend inordinate amounts of money on products that claim to make us look younger or more attractive, on dieting, on cosmetic surgery, on status symbols that suggest success or power or virility. It is only logical that the messages that we send to our children are that the opposite of these things are bad, that those of us who are old, not attractive, or not successful deserve scorn.

Some of us do this explicitly, and some implicitly. (And believe me, I have spent enough time around children in this community to know that we are not immune to the kinds of teasing to which Ms. Klein was subjected on that bus.) How many of us have found ourselves making any kind of generalizations, positive or negative about any group? Those of a different ethnicity, or color, or sexuality, or religion?

We hear politicians attack each other personally rather than argue relevant issues.  We hear religious leaders denigrate other groups. I know Rabbi Stecker spoke last week about how one of Israel’s Chief Rabbis, Rabbi Shlomo Amar sent a letter to all ofhis colleagues in the Israeli rabbinate (who are all Orthodox, because non-Orthodox rabbis are not recognized by the Israeli rabbinate as rabbis). In this letter, he called for attendance at a rabbinic protest rally in Jerusalem against the Israeli Supreme Court's recent decision that the Israeli government should pay 15 non-Orthodox rabbis for work in their communities, just like it pays Orthodox rabbis. In this letter, he let loose an invective in rabbinic Hebrew that gravely insulted me and every other non-Orthodox rabbi in the world: he called us "uprooters of Torah" who had "visited disaster upon the Diaspora” and “terrorists” who trample on our holy traditions.

His words are saddening at best, dangerous at worst. Part of the story here is that the Israeli Rabbinate feels that it is losing its hegemony over the spiritual lives of Israelis, and indeed as it has moved rightward and become more Haredi, it has managed to alienate not only secular Israel (which is nearly half of the country) and those who belong to Reform or Conservative congregations, but also much of Diaspora Jewry and swathes of Modern Orthodoxy as well. So the Rabbinate is lashing out, attempting to draw on whatever power it still holds.

What kind of spiritual leader can say such things about another? And what sort of message does that send to all of his followers? That it is OK to bash non-Orthodox Judaism.  That we are not just impostors, but actively working to destroy Judaism as they see it, and therefore we are dangerous and worthy only of derision.

One of my rabbinic colleagues and current president of the Rabbinical Assembly, Rabbi Gerald Skolnik of the Forest Hills Jewish Center, recently wrote in the Jewish Week, sees this statement as not merely insulting, but potentially dangerous:

“Did Rabbi Amar fail to learn anything from Yigal Amir's murder of Yitzchak Rabin?  Does he not know that the repeated references in extremist religious circles in Israel to the law of rodef [one who is chasing after you to kill you, about whom the ancient rabbis gave us permission to violently defend ourselves], essentially characterizing Rabin's willingness to sacrifice portions of the land of Israel as presenting an imminent danger to Israel's citizens, constituted in Amir's demented mind enough of a rationale to justify murdering him?”

Ladies and gentlemen, in Israel and here, civil discourse is broken. It's not civil. And these messages reverberate in the ears of our children. Every time that we denigrate another, every time we open our mouths even to curse the guy who just cut you off on the road, or to say something nasty about somebody else, in their presence or otherwise, the barriers to lashon hara, the evil tongue, get just a little lower. And we all lose.

And it's not just what we say. It's also what we don't say. Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky was convicted this week on 45 counts of child sexual abuse, despite the fact that bits evidence against him had appeared from time to time over the last few decades. Those around him were willing to excuse him because he was Jerry – well loved and trustworthy, right?

In discussing this trial, the NPR morning program The Takeaway featured Harvard business ethicist Max Bazerman, author of Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do About It, says that in polls, most people say that they would intervene if they heard somebody say something that denigrates others. But studies have shown that very few of us actually do so. How many of us in this room have heard friends and family members make racist remarks and let them pass? Even worse, how many of us have allowed our children to hear such things without correcting their impressions?

Ladies and gentlemen, the first step to fixing society is in fixing ourselves. Consider carefully what you say; if it isn't something that you'd like to see in print with your name attached to it, or in a viral video on YouTube, then don't say it, no matter who you're talking to. And when you hear somebody say something or see somebody do something that you know is wrong, don't let it go by.

God won't always be there to turn curses into blessings, or to prevent gangs of seventh-grade boys from teasing senior citizens or each other. Only you and I can make sure that our every single utterance is laced with holiness.

Shabbat shalom.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, July 7, 2012.)

Balaq 5771 - Lighten up!

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel, Shabbat morning, July 9, 2011.)

A story is told of three Jews who are comparing the holiness of their rabbis.

The first says, “My rabbi is so close to God, he trembles all the time.”
The second says, “My rabbi is so close to God that God trembles for fear of displeasing him.”
The third says, “Well, first my rabbi trembled. Then God trembled. Then my rabbi said to God, ‘Look, why should we both tremble?’”

OK, so maybe that’s not so funny. My wife Judy often reviews my sermons on Fridays, and she’s a tough critic. Some of you have told me that I should tell more jokes from the pulpit, that I am too serious. So I searched for a good joke to tell today, but none of them passed muster (i.e. the Wife-Laugh-O-Meter), and it occured to me that, there are no good jokes about the Torah that I have not already used. That’s right, I’m out of good jokes. Funny how Rabbi Stecker never seems to run out of material.

Another struggle that I have as a rabbi is the healthy tension regarding how I spend my time. This question is wrapped up in the larger question of what the role of a synagogue is. Is this building, this community center, primarily:

1. A place where people come to pray
2. A school for teaching children about Judaism
3. A learning institute where adults can discover their own path (perhaps not having found it as a child; refer back to number 2)
4. A place to celebrate benei mitzvah, weddings, and so forth
5. A community gathering place, where people come to meet others, to participate in social activities, etc.

Of course, it is a little of all of these, and many more as well. Given that Rabbi Stecker and Cantor Frieder and I only have a limited number of hours, how should we spend them?

And it's not just the clergy, of course. It's also how you, the active members of the laity, spend your time here as well. Participating with the Board of Trustees, the various arms and committees, the volunteer opportunities, helping those in need, and so forth. The tasks associated with community-building are effectively endless.

It is sometimes easy for the clergy, through various forms of work-based myopia, to miss the forest for the trees. So considering today's parashah, in particular, we might think about the message of Bil’am’s donkey. Or his apparent change of heart, turning curses into blessings. Or Balaq's foolishness.

And in doing so, we might miss the fact that THIS IS COMEDY! The aton, the she-donkey opens her mouth to speak! This was hysterical to our ancestors! And it might be to us as well, if only we did not take the Torah so seriously. Not only that, but Bil’am, who is a seer of some note, fails to see the angel by the side of the road, which even the dumb ass sees. The “seer” is blind, a witty trope that appears throughout Western literature.

Furthermore, Bil’am is supposedly so powerful that his mere pronouncements can change the course of history, but he is powerless in the face of his disobedient donkey! He needs a sword to kill it?! Ridiculous!

Bil’am is a comic figure; Balaq, who sent him, merely foolish, and the donkey comes off as the cleverest one of the bunch. Makes an ass out of all the others, you might say.

Not all of our commentators seem to be in on the joke; Pirqei Avot (5:8), from the first or second century CE, indicates that pi ha-aton, the “mouth of the ass,” was created on the sixth day of Creation just before Shabbat, grouping it with other very serious miracles.

Writing a millennium later, however, Rashi sees the irony. Here is his comment to Numbers 22:29 (לו יש חרב בידי; “If I had a sword in my hand, I would kill you right now.”):

גנות גדולה היה לו דבר זה בעיני השרים,
זה הולך להרוג אומה שלמה בפיו, ולאתון זו צריך לכלי זיין
“It is a great disgrace in the eyes of the Moabite dignitaries [with whom he is traveling] - Bil’am is going to kill an entire nation with his words, but for a donkey he needs weapons of war?!”

The authors and editors of the Torah intended it to be eclectic and entertaining. It contains a wide variety of material: history, folktales, law, poetry, songs, love stories, erotic material, and, yes, humor.

And yet, we read the passage with Bil’am's talking donkey about a half-hour ago, and I did not hear a single person laugh.

OK, so it's in an ancient language which is nearly impossible to understand, even if you speak Hebrew. OK, so te'amei ha-miqra, the cantillation melody, is not conducive to comedic timing.

We simply do not expect to read the Torah in a way that is allows us to laugh. We take it awfully seriously. And frankly, that’s how we approach much of Jewish practice - anytime we are in the sanctuary, for example.

Yes, of course we need to be serious during tefillah. We read in Mishnah Berakhot (5:1):

אין עומדין להתפלל אלא מתוך כובד ראש.
One must not stand up to pray without deep earnestness (literally, “heaviness of head”).

One cannot truly approach the Divine without being quite serious. Furthermore, says the Mishnah, some of our very pious ancestors used to sit in silence for one hour beforehand in order to prepare for prayer.

However, let me counter this with a quote from Voltaire:

"Dieu est un comédien, jouant devant un public trop effrayé pour rire."
“God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.”

We are taught that holiness means to tremble before God, to feel that this is serious, and not to laugh. And yet, sometimes the higher truths can be told with levity, speaking the truth in jest, you might say. We need not fear laughter and joy in the pursuit of holiness.

That is one of the primary lessons to be gleaned from Parashat Balaq: The Torah uses comedy to relay a very serious message. As Marc Zvi Brettler put it in his Jewish Study Bible:

“At times amusing, and somewhat mocking of the non-Israelite prophet [i.e. Bil’am], the message of this pericope is serious: The intent of the Lord reigns supreme and cannot be superseded. Even the powers of a well-known non-Israelite prophet are ultimately controlled by God.”

And hence the need to think about this in the context of this particular community. Rabbi Stecker, it’s true, is funny - far funnier than I am, as we have already established. But it’s not just us, the clergy. It’s all of us. We are the ones who make this place welcoming, a synagogue where all will want to gather and feel at home, where joy and levity are an integral part of the synagogue experience.

Services should be respectful, but not dour; we can find that sweet spot that incorporates levity and joy and yet still play by the rules.

To that end, I would like to offer a few suggestions for making this sanctuary and the rest of this building more welcoming to all:

Smile and greet people who you don’t know.

If somebody looks lost, find a gentle way to help him/her out.

If others are talking and it’s making it difficult for you to find your prayer space, please find a playful way to quiet them.

If a visitor is in “your” seat, use it as an opportunity to give a friendly smile and graciously sit somewhere else.

If somebody is speaking on a cell phone in the building on Shabbat or holidays, or texting, or taking photos, find a cheerful way to inform them that we discourage that. (Of course, if they’re reading my blog, let ‘em continue. Talmud Torah keneged kulam.)

Yes, we can have intellectual rigor and dignified worship and decorum. But let’s face it, folks: this community is about families! It’s about bringing people together for the sake of raising our stake in holiness. All of the things that we do, all of the ways that the clergy and everybody else devote their time, they contribute to this bottom line. And we need to go about this in an easygoing manner to do so effectively.

And yes, that’s just one more button that we have to hit as a community, one more task on an ever-growing stack - it’s not just the rabbi who can be light-hearted up here on the bimah; it’s all the rest of us as well. As we go about doing the work of building community in the pursuit of holiness, we have to do it with a smile.

Good spirits lead to a more serious understanding of what it is that we do as Jews, how we sanctify time. The donkey speaks the truth, and we only need to tremble so much.

Shabbat shalom!