23 July 2011 | 21 Tammuz 5771 | Numbers 30:2-32:42

When it all goes right, vacation is not only relaxing. It is also reorienting. Vacation not only brings an opportunity to pause.  It may also enable one to refresh.  I’m not entirely certain that, as a result of my recent vacation, I was able to totally refresh and reorient but there were moments.  For example, as I read the book, I’m God You’re Not – Observations on Organized Religion & Other Disguises of the Ego by Rabbi Laurence Kushner, a number of new perspectives crossed my mind.  Then, on Wednesday morning after I had offered a D’var Torah at Morning Minyan on the need to sit, reflect in order to refresh and reorient, I opened the mail the mail that had arrived for me in the intervening week.  I was sorely disappointed as I glanced at a thick piece of mail someone had sent me that reflected the exact opposite of what I have said in this paragraph.  

Someone from outside our Atlanta community thought I needed to know about the Palestinians and their leadership’s ultimate intentions with regard to Israel.  Of course, good people can disagree about such things, but as I briefly glanced at the material the person had sent me I couldn’t help but wonder, “Is this harsh perspective a helpful one?  Could this person imagine any truth in a perspective different from his own?  Could this person possibly “take a vacation” from his perspective, consider views and perhaps discover a more productive perspective?”

The medieval commentator, Rashi, often shares pearls of wisdom with us. But I am struck as I read one of Rashi’s comments in this week’s Torah Portion. It sounds a lot like the perspective of the individual who sent me that thick mailing and who was certain that he possessed undeniable Truth.

Moses spoke to the people, saying, “Let men be picked out from among you for a campaign, and let them fall upon Midian to wreak the Lord’s vengeance on Midian.” (Numbers 31:3)

Immediately prior to this verse, the subject of the vengeance the Israelites were to wreak appears to be different; it is for the sake of the people, not God, that the Israelites are to take revenge against the Midianites.

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Avenge the Israelite people on the Midianites…” (Nu. 31:1 – 2)

For whose sake was vengeance to be taken…for the Israelites or for God? Listen to Rashi’s answer as he clears up what appears to be a lack of clarity that flows from the juxtaposition of the verses.

“One who fights Israel is as if he is fighting against the Blessed Holy One.”

For Rashi, that answer is a simple solution to a textual problem.  For whom was vengeance to be taken?  For both the sake of God and the Israelites…for whatever one does to the one (in this case, wages war) one ipso facto does to the other!  In other words, whatever is the Jewish people’s cause is God’s cause.  They are one and the same.

Sometimes I find that people’s perspectives on the Middle East effectively reflect such a view.  No, few of them will ever say it.  But to them, Israel is always right and the Palestinians are always wrong…as if God is undeniably on the side of Israel.  I know and you know Jews who actually believe such things.  

All of us are lovers of Zion and support the State of Israel, some more passionately, some less so.  But when we recognize misguided triumphalism in our midst (as reflected in Rashi’s comment, “One who fights Israel is as if he is fighting against the Blessed Holy One”) we must reject it without rejecting the justice of the cause (here, the State of Israel).  Do I believe there are Palestinians and Palestinian leaders who seek only Israel’s destruction?  I would call myself naïve if I believed otherwise.  But do I believe that God is on Israel’s side and that God has rejected the Palestinian cause?  To me, such a suggestion is patently absurd and a profanation of God’s Name.  

I don’t find God on the battlefield favoring one side or the other.  I find God among those who, like Aaron, seek and pursue peace.

How about you?

Shabbat Shalom.