This week's Torah portion contains the phrase "...You shall be clear before the Lord and before Israel..." (Numbers 32:22). This becomes a well-known principle: "meriyat ayin," encouraging Jews to be free from even appearing to have committed a sin. In Mishnah Shekalim 3:2 there is the remembrance of monetary offerings that were collected in the Temple, and how they were handled to avoid the appearance of wrong doing. "He that went in to take up Terumah (donations) did not wear a sleeved cloak or shoes or sandals or phylacteries or an amulet, lest if he ... became rich they should say that he became rich from the Terumah (donations) taken up out of the Shekel-chamber; for a man must satisfy mankind even as he must satisfy God, for it says, 'and be guiltless towards the Lord and towards Israel...'" We should avoid the appearance of impropriety. So the person who transports the charity funds should not wear clothing in which money could be hidden, and the operator of the community soup kitchen may not sell left-over soup to himself, lest people become suspicious that he did not pay the proper price for food intended for the poor. (Babylonian Talmud, Pesahim 13a).
In the current war in Gaza many have been suspicious of the motives of the Israeli government. Many articles have been written, including that Israel simply wants to kill Arabs, that this is revenge against Hamas for murdering the Israeli teens, that Israel is attempting to replace the Hamas government, and that Hamas is hurting for money and support so they needed to start a war (see earlier post below).  I will not be a naif and claim that governments must always be straightforward, although that would be wonderful. But when lives and the destiny of nations are on the line, it behooves a democracy to be straightforward with its people. I am not a fan of the current Israeli government. But I am hopeful that, with all of the hate for Hamas harbored by the political right in Israel, the true motive for this war is to remove the threat to the Israeli civilian population. Without such honesty, a nation cannot pull together. The reason for the Rabbis' elaboration on the principle of "meriyat ayin," is so that the authorities will earn a history of candor in order to obtain the backing of the nation when tough calls are required. That did not occur in the American war in Iraq, and we are witnessing the disaffection and abandonment of involvement in government that results, a great danger for a democracy. May Israel's leadership be governed by belief in her people worldwide, so that, earning our trust, Israel may lead us forward toward peace. Ken yehi ratzon.

I Kings 19: 11, this week's haftarah, we read first of God not appearing in the loud, awesome, natural events: wind, earthquake and fire. These 3, as Hirsch pointed out, are destructive, as we see the events of this week are loud and destructive. Where does God appear? God is in the inaudible sound emerging from silence with great focus and concentration. Often this "still, small voice" is thought to emerge from within, as many have experienced the God who emerges from the inner recesses. But I am enamored of the sound that emerges and yet is not quite heard, for which we lean forward and strain to hear, the auditory expressed in "Hear, O Israel." One never quite knows if it's there, and yet we seem to hear in the midst of silence. Sound flows. It's never absorbed all at once. A musical score, unlike a static picture, unfolds and develops. It's serial, as God's existence comes into our lives over time, if we listen and respond, the meaning of "shema." Elijah, the eternal prophet, flees to Sinai, and there encounters the True Presence. After great travail, and in the midst of stillness, Elijah feels the the auditory Presence, an emerging God that cannot be seen, but he feels the commands within, the voice that urges us to our mission. May your shabbat enable you to share Elijah's Sinai.

Suddenly this week I gained a new understanding of Genesis 2, the Garden of Eden  with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. For me it has long been an etiological allegory, giving contextual meaning to the origins of good and evil while explaining our failure to achieve eternal life. Now I see the story differently.
We ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which, like the infusion of a new gene into the human genome, altered every human decision by endowing it with moral valence. The Bible would urge us toward the positive moral choice in every instance, but freedom is nonetheless given and humans become independent moral agents.
We are expelled from the Garden due to our choice to achieve moral knowledge and our resultant devisings and their actions, not because humanity disobeyed God. Now the Tree of Life becomes reserved for the sum total of our life actions, not some instantaneous condition thrust upon us by our Creator. Had we eaten of Eternal Life without morality we would never have known the nature of death or tragedy. Immortality would be meaningless without moral choice and the knowledge of alternatives. But having eaten of The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil the way to The Tree of Life is barred until the sum of our individual actions are totaled and God knows whether we chose life or death.
Those who murdered the Israeli and Arab boys choose death for all of us, Jew and Arab, humanity in general; and most particularly the inevitable future victims. God created an ambivalent world: of death of life. It's ultimate disposition will be determined by the sum of individual choices that actually, in virtually every instance, have universal implications and impacts. This week, the centennial of the events leading to World War I, it was reported that the assassins of Archduke Ferdinand stated that had they known the outcome of their actions they would not have done what they did. But that statement exemplifies every deed performed every single day, because the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil pervades each thought and manifests itself in every deed. Final results can never be known for certain at the moment of action.
These deaths, so tragic that nations weep for the losses, are mere manifestations of actions taken over years on both sides, ignoring their final outcome as though it would never be; or hoping that either side could triumph and ignore the other's reality. But the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil will take its toll on us all, and whether we create the path to the Tree of Life with each decision will determine future events in specific ways we cannot know at this moment except that they will most assuredly occur.

Last week's Torah portion, Hukat, opens with discussion of the Parah Adumah, the Red Heifer, used ritually to reverse the impurity imposed by touching a dead body. The parashah continues on to discuss the death of the prophetess Miriam, the loss of the water supply for the Hebrew people, and the death of Miriam's brother, Aaron.  Aaron is mourned for 30 days in the wilderness. All of this reminds us, indeed instructs us, of the mysterious power inherent in the life force.

Encountering both life and death, and the transition between the two, we are awestruck, like a bolt of lightning electrifying and transforming our lives.
We ignore this force at our peril. Traditionally we celebrate births and commemorate deaths with ceremonies. When Israel ignores Miriam's death, tradition tells us they are punished in the wilderness with the loss of water. But I think the punishment of ignoring the power in life and death penetrates to a deeper, spiritual place. We attempt to avoid its profundity, but at our peril. For it is the confrontation with the life force that makes us most fully human. Therefore we should embrace it.

People speak of looking into someone's eyes and seeing their soul. We encapsulate our physical selves in skin and our emotional selves in psychological escapes. Tearing away the emotional barriers and "I-Thou"ing another soul vitalizes and grounds our existence. The exchange injects meaning into otherwise time-bound, secular moments -- without the holy to give those moments dimension and meaning. This is the reason socializing on social media is so dangerous to society. The encounter is too literal. There is no opportunity for soulful encounter, in a society already spiritually impoverished.

Israel is not merely traveling to a Promised Land. Their divine embrace gives them direction and potential meaning. But the fulfillment of God's intent for them, as for us, comes in the inter-workings of God's creatures as we labor together to mutually fulfill God's plan. That eye to eye, soul to soul, awesome exchange of selves infuses the divine into the momentary. The ordinary is transformed into eternality. The mortal experiences the eternal. The Red Heifer laws mark the internal awe that drives us to examine the mystery of the life force, using it more effectively to transform mere existence into holiness.

The Purpose of our Enterprise
Psalm 8
When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and stars that You set in place,
What is man that You have been mindful of him,
Mortal man that you have taken account of him,
That you have made him little less than divine
And adorned him with glory and majesty?
The psalmist captures the religious enterprise, my work for these last 4 decades and more.
As far as we know, we homo sapiens, the upright mammal, are the only beings that ask the questions, "Why am I here and why do I die?"
In investigating our surroundings, starting with ourselves and moving outward, like an infant child who discovers there is a world beyond his hands, we humans experience the emotion of holiness: awe at a Presence more worthy than and beyond ourselves. The emotion is akin to fear; but is so much more, because unlike fear, awe does not threaten but is a salve for the earthbound soul.  Its trembling is the shudders of encompassing love, and a longing for the eternal home.  Awe overwhelms and uproots the moorings of place and time, transporting us for just moments into the midst of eternity, among the stars as our psalmist might opine. Awe grants perspective, and we find ourselves and our place in the universe in its embrace; like a child set free of his mother's hug yet knowing that mother's breath is ever so near.
Awe alerts humans to the presence of the holy, but does not define what is holy. That God left as a human task. Holiness may be easily discerned at a baby naming or a wedding.  But throughout the centuries holiness has donned different costumes. Our Torah portion this week, Naso, contains episodic encounters with events our ancestors felt to contain holy awe.
Our biblical ancestors often experienced disease as God’s absence or curse, and so disease indicated impurity and God’s disapproval, the opposite of holiness. The entire Book of Job consciously dispels the equation of disease with sin, so present in the Torah. Yet, people ask all the time, “What did I do wrong to deserve this disease?”
On the other hand, some of our biblical ancestors, called Nazirites, chose to declare themselves holy. Nazir today means hermit, or abstinent, or even a nun in modern Hebrew. These people temporarily or permanently chose holiness as their preoccupation. To achieve a holy state of being, they refrained from grapes in any form, including wine, or any strong intoxicants. They didn’t cut their hair. And they were particularly forbidden to approach a dead body, a strong contaminant because death absolutely defiles; it’s the polar opposite of holiness.
How they arrived at these particular stringencies, like wine and grapes, is anyone’s guess, and many have. Rather than analyze the holiness in such laws, some of which we understand and some is beyond us, let us state the obvious: that humans search for experiences revealing God’s inexhaustible presence.
Perhaps Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was correct and God is in search of humanity; that it is not God who moves away but we humans. We witness the same phenomenon concerning love: many people will declare that they were once in love but no longer are. Who moved away, ourselves or the beloved? Perhaps in the divine/human encounter we know who moved, as God is a constant without change. Perhaps we move away from God. But the emotion of awe demonstrates God’s existence and presence in our lives.
We, like our ancestors, encounter God’s presence in the awe of life and death. We feel it viscerally at births, brises, baby-namings, deaths and funerals. We may feel it when a youth breaks through the childhood chrysalis to become a butterfly at bar/bat mitzvah or Confirmation, when we see our children glow in a new light and it brings perhaps inexplicable tears of joy. So often we make a joke, or become sarcastic, in this world that avoids and even rejects the holy as though it were unreal. How often I have wished that celebrants would simply live the moment as is, and fully imbibe, taste and swallow the overflowing joy and awe of the spiritual moment. Instead, so often we escape into humor, banishing the uncomfortably awesome Presence,  the momentary flash of lighting, the incursion of the divine into our small, time-bound world. How sad for us that we have been trained to not tolerate God’s presence and experience the eternal present in the moment.
But awe is not limited to a single set of experiences. We, like our ancestors, encounter God when we altruistically reach out beyond ourselves, connecting in Martin Buber’s I-Thou awe, losing the sense of isolated selves in that moment and gaining oneness with the world.  Anyone who has been there knows the fleeting energy and sheer joy of intense camaraderie.  It’s the reason soldiers give their lives for their buddy. It’s the unio mystica of the mystic. It’s eternity lived in a moment as clock hands merge into a single, seamless and timeless reality. You’ll hear soldiers talk about never having lived as meaningful a life as when they feared for their lives on the battlefield and suffered. Why? Because they were prepared to give up everything for a friend, or a cause so deep they’d sacrifice life itself. Here we find awe, just as in our people’s past.
And finally, there is the awe of community, being part of something greater than ourselves. You and I together comprise a community, stretching back 3000 years and across every continent and country on this globe. We are the spiritual inheritors of Moses and Zipporah, of Akiva and Rachel, of Emma Lazarus, and Albert Einstein and Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin and Theodor Herzl and David ben Gurion and millions of others. When people enter this building, even strangers tell me how accepted they feel because of the heartfelt reception. In this congregation everyone sings out, everyone prays together. You should be up on the bima sometime and hear this congregation sing Shema, or Avot v’Imahot, or Chatzi Kaddish. It takes my breath away for its beauty: one voice and one people. Together we have achieved a modern American Judaism in southern Johnson County, and I hope and pray there will be moments in your lives, as there are constantly in mine, when you feel the awe and God’s presence among God’s people.  We bring the Shekinah down to earth with our prayers, and everyone feels it each time we gather in large community.  When we welcome strangers; and when we collect tons of food to feed the hungry; and when we serve meals at reStart, God’s awesome presence abides. I can close my eyes and feel God’s awe, and I pray that you do as well.
The relationship continues through the millennia.  Like the psalmist, we know God’s presence when we gaze on the beauty of creation. But each generation also finds its own way. I pray that just as Numbers 6 concludes, so will we conclude each awesome encounter with God’s face:  May the Lord bless you and keep you; May the Lord’s face shine upon you and be gracious to you; May the Lord lift the light of his Presence to you, and give you peace.

To whom do you ascribe your character?

Rabbi Samuel bar Nahmani said in Rabbi Jonathan's name: He who teaches his neighbor the Torah, scripture ascribes it to him as though he had begotten him. (Babylonia Talmud Sanhedrin 19b) Resh Lakish said: He who teaches Torah to his neighbor's son is regarded by scripture as though he had fashioned him. (Sanhedrin 99b) "And you shall teach them to your children." Deuteronomy 6:7: "This refers to your disciples, for you find that disciples are always referred to as children..." (Sifrei to Deuteronomy 6:7) Those who teach children Torah are like parents, because they create them anew. Isn't this true: that teachers mold children, fashioning who they will be in life? Torah Temima says that before Torah came into the world people were crude and simple, and with Torah we are like a new creation.

As we conclude the school year, I am wondering at the role of teachers in our lives, particularly teachers of Torah. Rabbi Abe Shusterman helped me to become a better man because he taught by example that it's our job to improve the world, helping to integrate Baltimore, and bringing better relations among the religions. Rabbi Eugene Lipman demonstrated that there is no substitute for learning, and that social justice may require us to put ourselves on the line, to risk something in our lives to bring about a better world. They were not more important than my parents, but without them I would not have become the man I came to be.

Today marks sheloshim, 30 days, since the murder of 3 dearly loved Christian souls, martyrs of our Jewish community. Looking in the rear view mirror on April 14th, we could view only the shocking tragedy  of the previous day and vainly attempt to comprehend what it all meant. By Thursday, April 17th, unity through interfaith worship lifted our spirits and enabled us to dream of a better tomorrow, freed of the plague of enmity and the scourge of anti-Semitism.

Now the murders recede in the mirror, but with what change other than increased security at our agencies and synagogues?

At that communal worship we were brought together in common humanity with neighbors we had never met, all touched in the same way by the tragic events.  What did we learn; and what, if anything, will result from our losses? The ironic murder of Christians in two Jewish locales brought home the indisputable truth that when bullets guided by hatred fly, no one can be sure whom they will kill. At what point do we change our lives to avoid the repetition of these deaths? And how might we change? Did we learn from the outpouring of grief that united us all?

When Marion, Missouri's mayor, Don Clevenger, was caused to resign for his anti-Semitism and approval of the murderer's motives, we saw the vision of what might be:  citizens who will stand up without being asked to say "no" to religious bigotry. We saw decent people demand, "We will not accept sympathy with bigotry from our political leaders." One friend of mine called the City Hall of Marion, Missouri, to offer thanks. I wonder how many others did the same.

Where do we go from here? Does a longer term solution suggest itself?  These deaths offer us an opportunity, if we are willing to follow the lead of the Marion, Missouri, City Council. Each and every synagogue and church ought to have a standing, interfaith committee that examines the evil we tolerate in our midst and furthers interfaith understanding.  What might we have stood up to oppose this month out of our common and core belief that God has created us all equally? What baseless enmity should have outraged us and why did we miss it?  How do we teach our children to think of others as different, rather than the image of God?  Where do we allow religious bias in our schools? Where, in our own community, did bigotry raise its head and we did not notice or call it out? Not something foreign, or even several states distant. But right here, in our midst.

We hear around us comments about aliens, the disenfranchisement of the poor, comments about Muslims, and rationalizing racism. Our own Jewish children are sometimes told they are unsaved and will go to hell because of our beliefs. We need not go far to see how misunderstandings of others, ignorance of the reality of others' lives, affect all of us. Might this be an opportunity to investigate the implications of the biblical insistence that we are all created in God's image?

The shock of these murders touched many of us personally, and we have had to examine how we might move forward. But have they challenged us to improve our world to avoid the wickedness that brought all of this upon us? Only we can determine the best road forward.