____
These are the cities where accidental murderers can run to and hide from avenging families.
Before we have Law, we must have mercy.
____
Shabbat Shalom,
i
Bilam’s donkey sees the angel of God.
Frightened animal,
she crouches to keep distance.
Then God opened the donkey’s mouth
and the donkey speaks.
Then Bilam, too, sees the angel.
ii
It is someone unquestioning in her vision
a scared animal
with a strong back
who knows only how to carry a load
and how to act on what she sees—
who can do such precise work,
such lifting,
as to carry a holy vision to the world.
It is she
who can truly speak.
____
Shabbat Shalom,
Abe
for Parshat Korach
i
Korach leads a rebellion against Moses
and against Aaron.
God tells Moses and Aaron:
Separate from these rebels
and I will devour them.
But Moses and Aaron pray
that God have mercy.
*
And when rebellion fans out
across the nation
God sends His plague.
Moses tells Aaron:
take incense,
stand between the dead
and the living;
and where Aaron stands
the plague stops.
ii
God made the world
separating Light from Darkness,
dividing the universe
along clear lines of Truth.
Now, God will separate
Moses and Aaron
—the very righteous—
from the rebels,
from the wicked ones.
*
But Moses and Aaron
will not be separated out.
Moses even sends Aaron
to stand amidst the sinners.
iii
Which is to say:
God rules the world
through the clear divisions of Truth
but Moses and Aaron lead
as heads of a nation
as leaders of a people
good people
wicked people
and everyone in between.
iv
We are led by God.
We are led, also, by Moses,
whom God has chosen to lead us.
Led by God
led by Moses
we are defined by their conversation
between Divine Truth
and human truth.
___
Shabbat Shalom,
Abe
___
for Parshat Shelach
i
God tells Moses:
send spies into the Land.
Moses tells them:
Be strong
be brave
take from the Land’s fruits.
This, in the time
of the year’s first grapes.
*
When the spies report back
holding up the Land’s fruit,
fear overtakes them.
They sow panic.
They are not strong
or brave:
they forget
that God is their strength.
ii
Later, God says:
In the Land,
on your farms,
take from the first fruits of your field,
bring that fruit to the Temple,
declare how God has taken you
from Egypt
to this Land,
to your crop.
*
Recognizing God’s Hand like this,
each farmer reverses the work of the spies
who feared to truly possess
the first fruits they held.
iii
Of course this equates the spies
terrified at a strange new place
with a farmer tending his own soil
every year.
*
Perhaps to say this:
There is the fear of what is new
and there is the fear of the life you know.
In either fear,
all is possible
with God’s help.
_______
Shabbat Shalom,
Abe
_______
Numbers 13-14:10; Deuteronomy 26:1-12
_______
for Parshat B'Haalotcha
i
The cloud of God rests upon the Tent of God.
The people encamp around the Tent, around the cloud.
When the cloud lifts up, the people follow it.
They follow the cloud until it rests down to the ground again,
and the people reunite with it again.
ii
The cloud rests and rises up,
rests and rises up,
throughout the forty years in the Desert.
And the people follow the cloud all the way to the Land.
iii
The people do not come to the Land by encamping steadily around the cloud.
They do not come to the Land by resting steadily with God.
They come to the Land in the continual process
of being apart from God’s cloud
and reuniting with it,
of parting and reuniting,
over and over for forty years.
In this cycle, they arrive.
*
They come to the Land in the continual process
of being apart from God
and reuniting with Him,
of parting from Him and reuniting,
over and over for forty years.
In this cycle, they arrive.
___
Shabbat Shalom,
Abe
___
Numbers 9:15-23
___
for Parshat Naso
i
It is just before Moses finishes
building God’s Tent,
God’s home among the people.
*
God tells Moes:
let the ones who are sick
with the sickness of impurity
leave the camp.
(When they are pure again
they will return
and bring sacrifices
in God’s Tent.)
*
God tells Moses:
a jealous husband
can come with his wife
to God’s Tent
to face her.
*
God tells Moses:
a person may become a nazir,
a holy monastic—
not a priest
not a prophet,
but one set apart.
And the nazir must comes to God’s Tent
when his time as a nazir ends.
ii
Before Moses finishes building
God’s Tent,
God mentions these lonely ones
—the sick and alone
—the jealous, alone from their spouses
—the seeker, alone with God—
who all come to the Tent.
*
You might think:
this Tent,
this nation’s home for God,
has no place in it
for people who do not fit in the nation.
Before the Tent is finished,
God says:
even these outsiders
have a place in My Home,
even they
have a home with Me.
___
Shabbat Shalom,
Abe
Numbers 5:1-6:21
___
Buy The House at the Center of the World from Ben Yehuda Press
Both the people of Babel and Israel in the Desert stop at a particular place along a journey. They encounter their pinnacle there – the Tower of Babel; Mount Sinai. In both instances, God descends to see. In both instances, a great building project: the Tower; the Mishkan – the Dwelling Place of God. As they move on, both people break into groups: into separate nations from Babel; into separate tribes from Sinai.
Why would God orchestrate Sinai after Babel?
___
Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach,
Abe
for Parshat B'chukotai
The book of Leviticus, the book of God’s presence in the Mishkan, closes with the tithing of animals to offer to God.
Specifically, Leviticus closes with this law: Whether the animal of the flock you have tithed is desirable or undesirable, is fair or not, it does not matter. Either way, you have selected it. Either way, you may not replace it with another. If you do replace it with another, that other, too, becomes holy.
To say: You have begun a process that will not accept your rejection of what you have achieved.
Perhaps a life of God bears impossible expectations. But the closing point of Leviticus—the book of God’s presence—says something different. That point says this: if you dwell in God’s system, even if you fall short (and who does not fall short?)—still you arrive at holiness.
____
Shabbat Shalom,
Abe
for Parshat B'har
i
I see the world from my own vantage-point.
But I hear your voice
from any direction;
sound calls me to you.
*
Consider:
Eve finds the Fruit
a pleasure to the eyes;
but she and Adam hear
the voice of God in the Garden,
and they know they have wronged Him.
Eyes are a gateway to your pleasure;
sound startles you
from yourself
toward another.
ii
We count out forty-nine years.
On the fiftieth
we blow the shofar,
the trumpet.
Debts are forgiven,
land reverts to ancestral families,
land goes fallow;
slaves go free.
To say:
your borrower
your land
your slave
have their own existence
apart from yours.
*
We come to this understanding
through the trumpet:
through listening.
iii
Of the slave who shall go free
in the fiftieth year,
God says:
he is owed freedom,
you shall not see him worked brutally
before your eyes.
To say:
train your eyes
to find brutality
to root it out.
*
For forty-nine years
you ready yourself to hear the shofar:
to listen,
to hear around you.
Learning to listen,
you learn to use your eyes.
Learning to listen,
you learn to see.
Genesis 3:6,8; Leviticus 25:8-28,53
Shabbat Shalom,
Abe
for Parshat Emor
God says: Count out seven weeks in the season of harvesting grain. At the end of seven weeks, on Shavuot, sacrifice bread.
And God says: As you harvest your crop, leave grain aside for the poor.
Counting the days of your harvest, you realize the plenty that you have.
And you realize, too, that this plenty is not yours.
___
Shabbat Shalom,
Abe