There Shall Be No Needy, part 2: Righteous Rulers and Prophetic Voices

 Along with tikkun olam, another oft-repeated motto of Jewish progressives is "Tzedek, Tzedek Tirdof." I remember it on a banner that fellow New Jewish Agenda members marched with in the 1980's. The slogan has often been translated as "Justice, Justice You Shall Pursue." But what does tzedek really mean?

According to Rabbi Jill Jacobs, tzedek is not an abstract notion of justice: it is a relational one. She cites Moshe Weinfeld of Hebrew University:

...the concept refers primarily to the improvement of the conditions of the poor, which is undoubtedly accomplished through regulations issued by the king and his officials, and not by offering legal assistance to the poor man in his [sic] litigation with the oppressor.

 Jacobs herself concludes, "The task of the just sovereign, whether human or divine, is to establish a system of government that protects the vulnerable." (42)

Now, we may remember that in biblical times, many Jewish sovereigns did not establish that kind of government. Prophetic voices called them to task. "The prophetic quality consists of an ability to imagine the world as God might see it and to measure the existing world against the divine ideal of a world without oppression or inequality." (47) 

Sometimes, prophets call on God to do justice; more often, they call on human rulers to be righteous. Sometimes, they inveigh against empty rituals, but nearly always, they point to the potential of ritual to sharpen our sense of what it means to do tikkun olam.

How do these concepts help us shape modern-day institutions and make policy? That is what the rest of the book is all about.

Building Rebellion In

I really enjoyed David Matthews’ reading of Korach that I told you about on Saturday.  David pointed out that when Korach and company challenged the authority of Moses and Aaron, and a jealous God struck out at the rebels, Aaron’s reaction was to bring healing and peace.  

It would be way too simple to stop there, however.  Aaron’s response still leaves Moses and Aaron’s authority intact, not dispersed or devolved to any of their followers.  And Korach’s folk have a good point when they say (in the Etz Hayim translation):

You have gone too far!  For all the community are holy, all of them, and the Lord is in their midst.  Why then do you raise yourselves above the Lord’s congregation?  (Numbers 16:3)

This is a point that Moses should recognize.  Only a few chapters earlier, when Moses appoints seventy elders, two of them refuse to be called, but then they are touched by the divine spirit despite themselves and start prophesying from their own tents, Moses’ aide, Joshua, says, “My lord Moses, restrain them!” But Moses wisely answers, “Are you wrought up on my account?  Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets!” (Numbers 11:28-29).  Furthermore, back at Sinai, Moses, Aaron, and all Israel heard God say, “And you will be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”  (Exodus 19:6)  

It seems on the face of it that Korach and company are reminding Moses and Aaron of a basic principle.  Their contribution should be accepted, not dismissed and punished.  Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook, the 19^th-century teacher who was the first Chief Rabbi of Palestine, goes even further: their contribution should be celebrated.  As the notes to Numbers 17:2-3 in Etz Hayim point out:

The firepans used by the rebels to offer incense have become sacred and are to be used as plating for the altar…Kook taught that the holiness of the firepans symbolizes the necessary roled played by skeptics and agnostics in keeping religion honest and healthy.  Challenges to tradition, he taught, are necessary because they stand as perpetual reminders of the danger that religion can sink into corruption and complacency…. 

David’s interpretation celebrated nonviolent resistance but quickly brushed by the fact that the rebels were really rebelling.  Rav Kook looks rebellion squarely in the eye and welcomes it.  His interpretation is part of the Judaism I love, which sees challenges to authority as part of our tradition, and a sacred duty.

And yet, and still: the firepans that the rebels used survive.  The rebels themselves do not.  Is this as far as we can go in questioning authority (not to mention sharing it?)  I think not.  There’s more to think about here.

A Day to Remember

On the first day of the second month, in the second year following the exodus from the land of Egypt, the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting, saying: Take a census of the whole Israelite community.... (Numbers 1:2, Etz Hayim translation)

The midrash on the Torah portion Bamidbar takes each clause of this exceedingly formal sentence and turns it into a passionate declaration of the love of God for the people Israel--starting with the date!

Look how carefully the date of the census is spelled out at the beginning of the Torah portion. According to the Soncino edition of the Midrash Rabbah, this shows that the census was a special recognition by God toward the Jews, a kind of divine thumbs-up.

How does it show that? By contrast. When God announced to the prophet Ezekiel that the Temple would be destroyed, God made the date of the disaster obscure. Ezekiel (according to one interpretation) thought the destruction would occur on the 20th of Av or (according to another interpretation) on the 1st, but the rabbis say it actually took place on the 9th of Av. This confusion, they say, was a punishment in itself: a further proof that Israel's sinfulness deserved the catastrophe that was about to befall.

It is not surprising that the midrash-makers would connect these two apparently disconnected events. The destruction of the Temple and the subsequent exile was much more recent than the census. The 9th of Av weighed heavily on the authors of the midrash than the second of Nisan at the time they were interpreting this text about the census.

By contrast, however, in Bamidbar we read in detail,"On the first day of the second month, in the second year following the exodus from the land of Egypt...." Instead of hiding or confusing the date of the census, the text specifies it and insists upon it. It is as if God were saying, "Pay attention to this date. The day when every one of you counted, when the people were unified and whole and headed toward their homeland--not into exile--the day when I lifted up your heads." (For lift up the head is a Hebrew expression that can mean "take a head count," but also, "make you proud and whole again.")

By remembering the census this way, the midrash-makers reminded themselves of the pride God took in the Jewish people back in the days of the wilderness, centuries ago. By remembering it this way, they gave themselves the hope that those happy days of being God's pride and joy would return.

What a romantic longing, that find signs of the lover's favor in the mere mention of a date! But I know I smile every time Rona mentions that we are about to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary on June 25th--and we see each other every day. How much more the Jews pined for God after years of Babylonian exile. How much more it must have meant to them to have a date that reminded them that they all counted in the eyes of God!

It Takes My Breath Away

^{What is the distance between a charismatic leader and his followers? What does it take to close the gap between them? These are questions that come up when we read the Torah portion Va'era, as Jews all over the world did last Saturday.}

⁶ Say, therefore, to the Israelite people: I am the Lord. I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and through extraordinary chastisements. ⁷ And I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God. And you shall know that I, the Lord, am your God who freed you from the labors of the Egyptians. ⁸ I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you for a possession, I the Lord." ⁹ But when Moses told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage.

My friend Phil Weiss, the darshan at Temple B'nai Brith in Somerville, calls our attention to the last line of this passage. Moses has one experience. He grows up in Pharaoh's court, a pampered prince, dimly aware of his Israelite heritage. Even when he has to flee the country, he marries the daughter of a local religious leader and chieftain in Midian. Moses sometimes doubts his own abilities--he has a temper, and he stutters--but once he gets his prophetic mission, he never doubts that God is behind him. How can he? He heard a divine voice speaking from a bush that burned and burned and was not consumed. What a tremendous privilege, to know for sure that your cause is just!

Contrast this with the condition of the people Moses returns to liberate. They came to Egypt hundreds of years ago, escaping a famine. Initially welcomed, they were later enslaved. Their rulers tried gradually to wipe them out, commanding that every Israelite boy baby be thrown into the Nile (a command that two clever midwives figured out how to circumvent). They survived, but they did backbreaking manual labor for hundreds of years, building whole cities at Pharaoh's behest. This is "cruel bondage," or as the Hebrew says more literally, "hard work" indeed. And the expression for "their spirits crushed," b'kotzer ruach, can refer to the narrowing and truncating of their outlook on life--or it can mean "shortness of breath." What a definition of oppression: working so hard you don't have room to breathe, much less hope for the future.

Is it any wonder that it took someone from a different class entirely to hear God's project of liberation? Is it any wonder that the enslaved people have trouble believing that things can ever be better than they are?

I've been rehearsing Phil's interpretation in my own words, and it is not putting words in his mouth to say that we can look at the new American president in the same light. He is quite literally the son of a stranger in the land. He is in some senses an outsider to the African American community. He has enough distance from both white and black and all other shades of America to get a perspective on what we need to liberate this country from the "shortness of breath" we have experienced at least for the last eight years. But how will he be received? Will we (as I have suggested in previous posts) welcome him and push him to be a more transformational leader than even he knows he can be? Or will we refuse to listen to the word of liberation that comes, not from Obama, but through him, from beyond him?

All Moses' life, I said to Phil, he had trouble making people listen to him--and trouble listening to them, too. Let's hope that a community organizer has better skills in this area than a prophet!