Numbers Cycle Five Behalotecha

 Behalotecha

The other day…Tuesday…I went to the temple. Objective: to study Behalotecha from the scroll. I do this weekly. It’s like yoga or brushing your teeth.  Artists paint. Musicians practice. Some of us study from the scroll.

 

On this day a friend called. I was holding the tikkun, heading for the sanctuary.

“Hey Chava,” he said, “There’s a kirtan tonight.”

“A what?”

“A kirtan. A healing ceremony.  Buddhist.”

For those of you who don’t know, Ashland is a town of 20,000 with more sacred ceremonies in one year then there are Shakespearean actors at our theater festival. There’s a whole buffet. Pick what you want.  Sufi. Buddhist. Hindi. Jewish. Unitarian. Unity. Wick an. Celtic.

“You’d probably like it,” he continued, “You’re so spiritual.”

I’m sure I turned white, almost tripped, almost choked, felt sick.

“Thank you,” I managed. He was being kind in his way.  I wanted to be kind back. For some reason, that comment really bothered me. But the kirtan sounded interesting.

So after studying BeHalotecha  I drove to A street, climbed the stairs, and sat on a pillow on the floor. The place was filled. Imagine flowing hair, flowing clothes, bright colors, bare feet, incense, candles, flowers,  paisley, babies, teens, many young adults, bone ornaments,  piercings, smiles. Everyone was in high spirits. This was not a traditional Buddhist ceremony, mind you. There wasn’t a Lama in sight. I imagine it could be compared to a Shabbat Shirah without a rabbi.

In any case, this was an inoculation, a round-trip ticket to fast vibrations, to the great Goddess of Compassion, to God or Allah or the Universe. It was the chocolate cake and whipped cream after the nutritious meal of Torah-iron and protein.  And I admit as soon as the sound began I was flying. This was great. This wasn’t just your average sugar buzz.

At some point my friend leaned over to give instructions.  Reflect the light of the universe and direct it out through your third eye, he said.  Now (I decided) if the third eye can be seen as the center of God-transmission, then fine. Let’s call it that. And I smiled thinking this: This is what Moses does in BeHalotecha. He takes the joy/pain handed to him… whatever level….in this case the leprosy of his sister Miriam…and reflects it with focus to God for healing.  He cuts through the sadness, the horror,  Miriam’s  words regarding his Cushite wife, the wrath of God, the possible doubt and jealousy of his siblings, the chaos of the quail, the tragedy of the plague, the fact that just a short time ago his Midianite father-in-law (Yitro) and teacher…despite his own pleading…decided to return to his birth place.

 And this ability to focus with razor-sharp concision as if from a third eye, this reflection of light to God..  this is the action of prayer.  There’s more though. We see in Behalotecha that the strength of prayer is directly related to non-linear exterior and inner struggle.  The word non-linear refers to time. Torah, for example, is non-linear. In any case,  the energy to create God-connection comes from the rock-hard bottom of consciousness.  The going up is faster, in other words, if we have gathered momentum on the downward spin. As the Buddah said, life is struggle. Life is pain. And in Judaism (and maybe in Buddhism…I don’t know) we use the pain.  No need for lecturing. No need for excess in body movement, words or music. We cut straight through with the heart-light of few words and much intention. As Ibn Ezra specifies, we take on power now.

And Moses exemplifies this with his prayer for Miriam. El na refa na la.

Please understand the immediate lead-up as well. Aaron begs Moses to heal Miriam and brings up a gruesome image. He asks Moses if she should always be like a newborn with half its skin eaten away. As Rashi points out, this would mean that Miriam is as if dead. And dead from the same womb from which Aaron and Moses were born!  Therefore, it would be as if they are dead as well. And as if we…we who study…. are also dead.  Because who are we to be more alive than  Aaron and Moses? Therefore this intimate image causes us to crash hard. And when Moses transmits this message …the necessity of healing for Miriam… he uses the downward spiral to bring the core of the problem to God. Heal her.

What does she do, we now wonder, that gets her into this situation? What sin, what catastrophe of consciousness, what  twisted comment, what rank creation, what mess does she create? What does she do for our compassionate God to come after her like that? Or does she do anything at all?  As the  Christian mystic-poet Blake writes in Tiger Tiger…What the shoulder and what art could twist the sinews of thine heart? And when thy heart began to beat, what dread hands and what dread feet?

Well, in Numbers  12:1 we read this:  Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married; for he had married a Cushite woman.

 Now let’s look to Job and Talmud for a moment. Job (for a quick reminder)  loses his children and his health even though he is a pious man. His friends tell him he must have done something terrible to receive such punishment. But in Talmud we read:  do not be like the friends of Job. Do not say that bad things only happen to bad people. Because sure enough, the friend next door does not get cancer because he tells his co-worker that the boss doesn’t sleep with his wife anymore. He gets cancer because he gets cancer.  And as nasty as it is to speak poorly of others, the radiation from Fukoshima isn’t hitting the western United States because we’re all a bunch of jealous nasty gossips.

As I have emphasized, there’s something else happening here. So, with all respect to some commentators, let’s move on to a way-of-seeing that can help us now.

Well, Miriam could have been referring to Moses in a positive manner. Ibn Ezra points this out by focusing on the pronoun b.  The word Behar, for example,  uses the pronoun b.  Moses speaks to God in/on the mountain. So Miriam could be referring to Moses as her Mt Sinai…her place of connection.  Bringing in the Cushite woman…or the Midianite (the daughter of Yitro)…further shows that’s there is much to be learned from Moses. We can’t forget that Yitro teaches Moses the importance of the hierarchy as well as the designation of sacred duties. And even though Yitro is now gone, Moses is still married to his daughter.

Moving along those lines it’s possible  that Miriam gets punished in such an extreme way not for speaking about Moses but for relating to the power of Moses-prophecy. Of course, God made Miriam a prophetess to begin with (see Exodus 15:20).  But still, she is hurting her God-connection by using it. So as open as she is, she is punished, in other words, for being spiritual, for publicly attaching herself to Moses, rather than just having the humility to submit.  The lesson? We see that when we display the persona of prophetess or of any kind of high power-profile, it turns on itself, becomes an act, a charade, and a living-death. The radiation from Fukoshima (it can be argued) dates back to our need to be God-like, to create and destroy with nuclear power….and to take it sort of casually in that we allow it to be regulated and owned by entrepreneurs. In any case, when we are showing God-power rather than walking in God’s ways, our deadliness becomes real and visible. Universal/scientific understanding, if controled by ego, becomes false and deadly.  Spirituality, if expressed even a tiny bit by ego, also becomes false and deadly. As the Sufi poet Rumi says: Love cannot be said.

Therefore no wonder Moses reaches for authenticity in order to heal Miriam. El na refa na la. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that you don’t clean-up show with more show. You do so with the sincerity and humility of pure clarity.

       

Back at the new age kirtan I made a conscious decision to stay seated with my stillness. In other words, with the rising rhythm, the people swaying and clapping in ecstatic fervor, I felt the need to focus  through the maelstrom to God.

Healing, I have learned from both experience and study, doesn’t come from being spiritual or embracing yourself as such... even if it comes from others.  It  happens when we cut through the layers. Sometime it takes action. Sometimes words. Sometimes visuals.  Sometimes days alone. All of this is prayer.  And the more we focus direct light from the temple of our heart/mind through the masks of our world, the masks of ourselves,  our emotions, our fears, our most frightening images and those of others the greater the prayer. And…lest we forget…. the moment we find the echo of the voice of the prophet…the bat kol… within ourselves is when we submit to intelligent kindness… when we open our hearts rather than our mouths.

   

As the Sfat Emet says: The only reason God’s glory and holiness are hidden in this world is for the sake of humans’ service.

 

As the Dalai Lama says:  Your own mind, your own heart is the temple. The philosophy is simple kindness.