Bemidbar 5771 Family Shared Values Rabbi Aaron Goldstein 28 May 2011

Ben Shack’s Bar Mitzvah
Scarlett McNab’s Baby Blessing

“Our relationship is special because of the values and beliefs that have united our people through the ages.”

Ben, this morning you read words that you quite rightly associated with the creation of units in an army. However, what bound these units together was not a bloodthirsty yearning to fight for its own sake but to defend two principles. These principles were even given their own personal bodyguards, the Levites.

The first principle was a belief in God. When one has a belief in a higher power, the humility that we are judged by our actions, then we are compelled to act in a way that is seen as just by others. This belief in, what we define as God, is cohesive, it is a glue that binds individuals into a sacred community. It defines ‘why’ individual behaviour matters.

The second principle is of the values that our ancient ancestors attributed to God. It was the Word of God enshrined in the Tabernacle, written on stone and then parchment, that defined ‘how’ the people should behave towards one another.

For the ancient Israelites, that was the treasure to be protected by a dedicated bodyguard of attendants and layers of defences represented by the carefully arranged tribes. It has sometimes been suggested that the formation of the tent encampment around the Tabernacle, mirrored the scene at Mt. Sinai at the time of matan Torah, the giving of the Torah, or more mystically, as the human body that surrounds the vital organs.

Whichever description works for you, the meaning is clear, at the heart of the special relationship of the tribes of Israel was a shared belief and shared values. “Our relationship is special because of the values and beliefs that have united our people through the ages.”

This week we have been reminded of the danger of that comes with breakdown of shared beliefs and values. The surprise capture of Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb army chief indicted for genocide, of the massacre of over 7,500 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica - the worst single atrocity in Europe since the Shoah, the Holocaust, is another wake-up call if we needed one, that we can never be complacent or too slow to identify the breakdown of cohesion in societies.

Each of the tribes were arranged under their own degel, their own ‘standard’ or as the Ivrit, modern Hebrew word is translated, ‘flag.’ Therein lies the challenge for mature communities and societies. Can we harmonise the differences, the pluralism of individuals into families, of families into communities and communities into society.

In an important article, Yehuda Kurtzer, the President of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, wrote in the Jerusalem Post:
“…The need for pluralism has shifted to a new realm. Pluralism is best tested - and for that matter, is only meaningful - when we seek it out in places of meaningful difference, in contexts defined by intransigent ideologies. Our current [Jewish] condition is that we lack a peoplehood pluralism. We lack the desire for and a set of tools to deal with competing national ideologies among people who take for granted that they belong to the same whole. "

If Jewishness is indeed an ethnic or kinship category, it is telling and surprising that our community persists in creating ideological and political boundaries and redlines around participating in communal life, and defines the legitimate discourse of Jewishness in such explicit ways. Aren’t these instincts fundamentally at odds with one another?”

The tribes of Israel are characterized in dramatically different ways, most honestly in the ‘blessing’ that Jacob gives to his sons. Within the order of the tent encampment that surrounded the shrine to their shared belief and values, I think that there was a messy marketplace of competing ideas. The constant grumbling and mini-revolutions that we will read in forthcoming weeks in Bemidbar, in the wilderness, the Book of Numbers, display the strength of a community. It may take 40 years to arrive at a new milestone in life, 40 years of diversions, u-turns and struggles, yet the goal is worth attaining. It is attained and strengthened by the pluralism that ultimately shares a belief and values.

In the Saying of our Sages, from which Ben quoted last night, we read:

“A vineyard surrounded by a fence is better than one without a fence. Do not, however, make the fence higher than what it is intended to protect; for then, if it should fall, it would crush the plants.”

Kurtzer states: “Meaningful pluralism comes from strength and sincerity, not weakness and not anxiety.” Our belief and values are to be shared.  In opening up our community, our Torah and our belief to as many who want to join themselves to us, we strengthen our sacred community. By sharing our belief and values with our neighbours with whose own beliefs and values we share a common universality, we strengthen our local society. By agitating together we contribute to the nation that we belong and to shape it for the betterment of all in society. Our particular becomes part of the universal whole.

“Our relationship is special because of the values and beliefs that have united our people through the ages.” With these words Barack Obama this week defined the relationship between our nation and the United States. “Through the struggle of slaves and immigrants, women and ethnic minorities, former colonies and persecuted religions, we have learned better than most that the longing for freedom and dignity is not English or American or western. It is universal and it beats in every heart. Perhaps that is why there are few nations that stand firmer, speak louder, and fight harder to defend democratic values around the world than the United States and the United Kingdom.”

May we treasure the sacred relationships that we have created or been born into be strengthened by the knowledge, that we have been blessed as our ancestors were for millennia, with values and belief that unite us in love, a love that is stronger than the day-to-day struggles of our existence. May our families continue to open their hearts to others to form sacred community, ever being aware of the desire of those to identify with us. May our sacred community recognize the universal truths that we share with others so that we strengthen our nation and the bonds it forms with others in the pursuit of love and harmony, peace and friendship.

Mi sheshikayn et shmo baolam, hu yashkeen baynaychem, ahava v’achave, v’shalom, v’rayut.
Amen.