At
the start of this parsha, the Hebrews are passing through Moab on the way to
Canaan and the king of Moab, Balak, sees them and is afraid. He sends messengers to the pagan priest,
Balaam, and they say on behalf of Balak,
There is a people that came out of Egypt; it hides the
earth from view, and it is settled next to me.
Come then, put a curse upon this people for me, since they are too
numerous for me; perhaps I can thus defeat them and drive them out of the land.
For I know that he whom you bless is blessed indeed, and he whom you curse is
cursed.”
This
parsha is unusual, it reads more like a self-contained story than a logical
continuation of the story of the hebrews in the desert that we have been
following thus far. Balak commissions a
curse, God tells Balaam to turn it down and he does, Balak insists, Balaam says
yes and journeys to the capitol on a donkey, God sends an angel that only the
talking donkey can see to block his way, the donkey stops, Balaam beats the
donkey, long story short, Balaam gets to the city and prepares to make the big
curse but God invades his heart and instead Balaam blesses the Hebrews, Ma Tovu, how good are your tents, the basis
for our morning blessing.
It's
a real full on story with an inciting incident, a recalcitrant hero, an epic journey, a talking animal sidekick
(it's a Disney movie!), an invisible but violent angel, an angry king and the
fate of two great peoples at stake.
Great story, but sorry, I'm mostly interested this year in the curse and
the blessing, or rather, the need for the curse and the blessing and the belief
that a curse or a blessing will make a difference.
Balak
believes in the importance and effect of public prayer utterly. We're here, gathered on a Saturrday morning
for services, so we must as well, right?
Well, maybe. Sort of. Not at all? But here we are, Shabbat morning,
praising, blessing, asking for help, praying for the health of ourselves or
others, praying for the dead and their survivors, praying for our country, our
world, praying for light, praying for creation, praying in gratitude, praying
in fear.
This
congregation exists for many reasons: to
find friends and people with whom we share values, to take care of each other,
to express the values that we call Jewish to work for social justice and,
because we are a shul and not a social justice org, to celebrate life passages
and to pray together. Together we curse our enemies and praise our friends. We work our way through the siddur praying these
prayers to a male heirarchical God in a language that we may or may not
understand, for goals that May no longer mean anything to us in our modern regular
lives or even, if we think about them, we May violently disagree with. And yet here we are, praying, blessing,
cursing.
And
the rabbis of the Talmud? The halakhic schedule
of prayer, morning afternoon and evening, substitutes for the schedule of
sacrifice in the temple, which was necessary to placate God and expiate the
people's sins. For many Jews, these prayers
are, among other things, both an obligation and a constant reminder of who we
are and our relationship to God and for them it really matters to us and to God
if we do this specific liturgy in the correct way.
But
do we, us Jews sitting her this morning, believe that our prayer has any
effect? If I curse you will you be
cursed? If I pray a mishebeirach for
you, will you be healed? If I bless you will you flourish? I don't know.
Rationally, I have to say no, of course not. Balak's request of Balaam was just a morale
booster, nothing more. I feel better
when I pray to heal the sick, it gives me the illusion that I matter. But in the story, everybody takes this very
seriously, as something that can really affect the outcome of the Hebrew
people, and no one takes it more seriously than God, who bothers to send down
an angel only a donkey can see. So, are
we the perceptive donkey or the stubborn Balaam?
I'm
going to now use a word that I never use, don't believe in, disdain utterly... Faith.
Why do I pray? I think it's faith.
Belief in something without any proof.
Faith. Creeps me out, faith. So
let me see if I can make it a little more palatable. Faith is perhaps holding more than one thought
in my head at the same time: God
doesn't exist and I am in God's presence.
Both true, Ta daa! So when I
pray, I am in conversation with the divine, or maybe just myself, or maybe with
the act of praying itself. It's not
about dogma or antiquated ritual or halakhic laws for me.
Maybe
the word isn't even faith. Maybe it's
just something I know, a knowingness. I
have a knowingness sometimes that when I pray there is connection, that I am
being listened to. I fully accept that
this is probably wishful thinking or neurological damage, or childhood
indoctrination, but still, nevertheless, at the same time I feel a knowledge of
being listened to. Maybe I'm the only
one doing the listening and hey if that's true, that's still pretty good, cause
most of the time I'm on Facebook or Netflix or NPR and I wouldn't know myself if I fell over me. So it's good to take a few minutes out of my
day to really listen to what there is to hear.
And
when I'm listening, to myself or God or the sound of the lovely people of my
community praying, and when I feel heard
and connected I feel loved, and I love.
And that is powerful and then I
think that a prayer might really be able to heal or to ask, with true
sincereity and expectation, for good things to happen. Because why not? Really, why not?
My
brother-in-law, Zdenek, died last September of cancer. He and my sister fought it off a long time,
and in the first year or so of that, the two of them came over to my house for
dinner. I waited until my sister went
off to the bathroom and I told Zdenek, an atheist brought up in Communist
Czechoslovakia, that I prayed for him at shul every week and that my
congregation prayed with me and that we all prayed for his healing
together. I was embarrassed, but I
wanted him to know even though I thought he'd sneer or smirk. But he didn't. He cried.
And thanked me deeply. Do I think
I helped his health with those prayers?
I don't know. Probably not. But I loved him with my prayer. We all
did. And I loved him when I said Kaddish
for him.
And
in my best self, as much as I would love to curse our enemies, my prayers are
not curses, God won't let me. In
this parsha, Balak and Balaam and the donkey and God believe that prayer
works. He who you bless is blessed indeed, and
he whom you curse is cursed.
And in that spirit, I want to read you a selection from something beautifully
written by Rabbi Shai Held of Mechon
Hadar that he posted on Facebook:
Religious thinkers and leaders worth their salt live
their lives in constant cognizance of the yawning chasm between what religion
could be and what it all too often is.
This awareness is always painful and often excruciating…. Religious
thinkers also know that if *they* are disillusioned by religion, it is hard to
fathom what God must feel. But resentment is not the way. Here is
how lives can become truly holy: you take the energy generated by frustration
and disappointment and you turn it to a deeper form of Avodat Hashem, service
of God. You see that religion is just as broken as the world in which it
finds itself in, and you commit to loving more, not less. This is
hard, the task of a lifetime. ...Give your heart and your mind, give your soul
and your life to building something different. And remember:
without love-- passionate, defiant, compassionate, justice-seeking love--
nothing is possible. With it? Well, that's what our lives ought to be
about finding out.
Ma
Tovu, how good.
Shabbat
Shalom
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