If you’re a regular reader of these Friday reflections, you have probably noticed that, like a Law & Order episode, they follow a pretty predictable form: I start with an engaging personal story, pivot to a lesson drawn from the week’s Torah portion, and then bring it home with a message about how Jewish spiritual practice can help us lead a more meaningful life.
This week I feel a need to write differently. Even as I reach for the right story, I can’t find it, other than to tell you that I’ve found myself waking in the middle of the night thinking a lot about Israelis, Gazans, and Jews.
Now I’m not here to offer political commentary or analysis. Much as it’s tempting, that’s neither my expertise nor, frankly, my role. Even as I wade into this water, I’m clear that my purpose is to offer a personal spiritual reflection rooted in Torah which can, I hope, be of benefit to you in your own spiritual journey. As my rebbe, Avi Weiss, used to tell us in yeshiva: “I’m talking to myself and letting you listen.”
As I said, I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night. And I’ve found myself gripped with a series of questions that have been swirling in the writings and conversations of people around the world who I read and am regularly in conversation with: How is it that Hamas still hasn’t released all the hostages, and will they ever be able to come home? How is it that Israel, Egypt, and the international community, haven’t implemented a way for the people of Gaza to be fed and housed—whether in Gaza or somewhere else of their own choosing—without facing the prospect of a violent death while waiting for food? What does it mean, and what will it mean in the future, for the Israel Defense Forces and the democratically elected government of Israel to have been the instrument of so much devastation? What will it mean for Jews—in Israel, in America, and throughout the world? What will it mean for Judaism itself? The list goes on and on.
Before I go further, I want to pause and invite you to notice how you’re feeling after reading that paragraph. How’s your breathing? How’s your heart rate? Are there any thoughts coming up for you? Maybe you feel some judgment arising because of who I mentioned or didn’t mention, the order in which I mentioned them, or how I phrased something. Perhaps you’re feeling some aversion and don’t want to read further. And/or perhaps you’ve experienced some of these same questions and you’re feeling hopeful that I’ll offer some definitive, clear answer. (Don’t get your hopes up.) Just pause to notice and, I would ask, withhold any impulse to judge for the moment.
Every year I find that reading the double Torah portion of Matot-Masei brings up some very deep questions of home for me. This is, after all, the parashah that includes the story of the tribes of Reuben and Gad, who ask Moses for permission to live on the eastern side of the Jordan River—that is, outside the Promised Land proper. And so, every year at this time I find myself asking, “Why do I not live in Israel? Why am I still in America?”
My life experience conditions me to ask this question. I was raised in a Zionist home, by parents who lived in Israel with my older brothers for a year in the early 1970s (before I was born). We had books about Israel around our house, and I heard Israeli songs growing up. My oldest brother moved to Israel 35 years ago, married, raised a family, and built a life there. My own children have grown up with visits to Israel and, like so many kids who go to Jewish day schools and summer camps, have been educated with a sense that a relationship with Israel is a foundational element of contemporary Jewish life.
So I think it’s pretty natural that reading this Torah portion brings up this question: Where is home? Where should it be? And, especially given all that conditioning—not to mention the challenges we face in the United States today, as both Americans and Jews—what am I still doing on this side of the ocean?
At the same time, this Torah portion also contains one of the most challenging passages in our tradition: “And YHVH spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Avenge the Israelite people on the Midianites; then you shall be gathered to your kin” (Num. 31:1-2). What follows is the most organized military campaign the Israelites wage in the Torah, complete with officers and regular troops. This would seem to be precisely what the previous chapters were preparing them for: to become a nation capable of conquering, holding, settling, and successfully governing the land.
And yet, moral problems abound: What does it mean to engage in a war of vengeance? What does it do to a nation to slaughter so many? Is the Torah saying that this is the price of nationhood—and, if so, is that an answer we can or want to accept, either about ancient Israel or the modern state? What is the place of values like compassion, justice, forgiveness, and diplomacy in this scheme—in a life of Torah, and in our collective life?
Again, an invitation to check in. Pause for a moment if you feel the need. My aim is not to rile you up, but to offer some acknowledgement of questions that, certainly for me and perhaps for you, are often on a regular low simmer and, more recently, have been boiling to the surface.
Amidst the sharper edges of this Torah portion, there is one moment when some softer spiritual language appears: “You shall not defile the land in which you live, in which I Myself abide, for I YHVH abide among the Israelite people” (Num. 35:34). ‘Abide’ here is shokhen, as in Shekhinah, the Divine Presence. Rashi offers two comments. First: “Do not do anything defiling to the land so that you will make Me dwell amidst its uncleanness;” Second, “Even when the Israelites are impure, my Shekhinah remains amongst them.” As I read him, Rashi suggests that there is both a call to responsibility in the first comment, and, in the second, a reassurance of the abiding availability of the divine Presence, the ever-ready possibility of return, teshuva—even when we make mistakes, as we will inevitably do, individually and collectively.
This Shabbat begins the month of Av, leading us to the lowest point on the Jewish calendar, the 9th of Av, when we read Eicha, the Book of Lamentations, and are invited to experience our deepest sense of estrangement from the Divine Presence. Yet we conclude Eicha with the cry, “Return us, YHVH, to Yourself, and let us return; renew our days as of old.” At our most acute moment of feeling God’s absence, we move in the direction of return, the direction of presence.
What might that return look like? A return of the hostages to their homes and families. A return of the soldiers. A return of the hungry and homeless in Gaza to something better than the hellscape in which they live today. A return of all of us to a life, a community, a Judaism, and a world in which we can feel safe and strong enough to risk showing compassion, to turn toward one another in a peaceful, divine embrace of presence.