Numbers Cycle Five Mattot/Massey

Mattot/Massey

This week’s Torah portion (Mattot/Massey) brings us to the end of Numbers but not without some difficult questions. A very real challenge is posed in Mattot. And I want to deal with it head on because I think we need to as a people.

Before I replay the grizzly scene I want to review quickly, who are we anyway? Who are we today? What is the natural process of our analysis when we look at Torah? What has been engrained in our heads from childbirth?

Well, needless to say, we are a fast moving progressive society bringing forth one technological advancement after another. We live in a capitalist survival-of-the-fittest environment. There’s war, poverty, and street violence. There’s beauty, great art, and for many of us, great love. Many decisions therefore are based on how we can protect our love in a harsh and unwelcoming place. Like animals in the forest, we try to be aware of each detail, sound, every physical hurdle. Often, this world does not encourage imagination. Look away or dream for a second, and you are vulnerable to danger. And I don’t mean emotional. I mean physical. So, many of us for good reason are determined and programmed to see this reality…and therefore Torah…with a vision of only the literal. There’s a belief that if we deal with it and it alone, we will therefore be more adept at dealing with not only our present existence but with our heightened one as well; with God.  We grope for a way to apologize for our prophets and priests, embarrassed before the rest of the world, uncomfortable, unable to come to some moral/ethical conclusion. Finally, we distance ourselves spiritually.

This is my word this week however: We don’t have to do that.

Judaism is a rabbinic culture, not biblical. In other words we learn from our teachers and transmit those teachings and those before. We build our closeness to God on the shoulders of sages. If we deal with Torah directly we have the humility to weave in the brilliant light of Rabbi Akiba for example or Rabbi Johanon Ben Zakkai. It isn’t that we aren’t holy enough to go straight to Torah. It’s just that we are defined not only by these bodies here and now but by who we once were. As my rabbinic teachers emphasize, there isn’t any comprehension of Torah or of God without honoring our ancestors.

And if we look at the history of our ancestors and their analysis of Torah, there is only one notable instance of literal interpretation. It came about after a powerful collection of teachings by our midrashic rabbis…teachings based on metaphor and fantasy…teachings that move beyond the letters of Torah. This literal movement happened around the time of Rashi (in the 11^th  century) who, by the way,  might be noted for his significant rational analysis,  but has never been crowned as a literal commentator. This movement came about before the mystical interpretation, the kabbalah, the Zohar, but not before the Bahir, the writing that contained the seeds of the Zohar. It was the Karaite movement of the twelfth century, a following highly influenced by the Islamic rational analysis of the day, and though there are certainly Karaites now, they do not dominate Jewish thought by any means.

So, when God tells Moses to fight against the Midianites and when Moses actually gets angry that his soldiers do not kill the women and children, we can read it literally if we so choose.  We can fight for the complete annihilation of the Palestinians, woman and children included. We can demand a scorched earth policy for our neighbors; bring in the United States government. Or, we can attack the scene ourselves by going after Moses. After all, we have to understand that he’s human and humans make mistakes. That interpretation would be just as literal. Whether we apologize for it, excuse it or support it, if we are responding to the literal facts we are emphasizing the literal at the expense of the spiritual.

This makes me think of a short story by Langston Hughes. It’s called Salvation. In it, we have the narration of a mature man recounting the day (in his childhood) when he was saved or not saved at his Baptist Church. This is what happens. For weeks his aunt tells him he will soon be seeing Jesus. Then the big day comes and all the 13 year olds collect on the bench and the preacher starts calling to them to come and admit to having seen the savior. The description is filled with vivid imagery and movement. You really feel for this child. Finally, after all the other children have approached the preacher, Langston is the only one left. He has not honestly seen Jesus.  But everyone is surrounding him and chanting.  Everyone is waiting for him. Compassionately, they call to him. Please come, they call. Please come and see Jesus. So he doesn’t see Jesus but he goes up anyway and claims to have seen Him to make everyone happy. That night he cries.

A short analysis here. Langston believes that the only way to see Jesus is literally.  When he does get up and walks to the preacher therefore it is a literal lie. And in supporting the lie he instigates it. He therefore feels farther from his spiritual core than ever. Belief, Hughes is saying, is spiritual more than literal.

As Jews therefore we have a choice.  We are also, like Langston, sitting on that same bench. We can be saved  and believe it is our responsibility as Jews to know Torah only literally. In this way, when we know the literal facts and deal with the literal facts we can believe we will then be closer to God. And in this way we can (like Langston) be closer to our community because (as we know and as I’ve explained) most of us depend on the literal in real life. Or, we can decide to see Torah in our minds rather than with our eyes, with our hearts rather than with our brains, with our souls rather than with our skin. We can see Torah spiritually.

I could end this teaching here but I want to continue. That’s because my favorite line in Torah deals with how we can transform our vision from skin-vision to soul-vision.

And it’s in Mattot, line 31:23-24. Anything that can get purified by fire, we read, must be purified by fire and sprinkled with water. And anything that can’t be purified with fire, must be purified with water.  The reference is spoils of war. However, we are all, metaphorically spoils of war. We all have our inner battles, our outer battles and we all have somehow survived. So then, how do we purify ourselves so that our vision as well can be cleansed? So that we can see from the soul and not from a self defensive (and literal) position?

By fire if we can. The fiery chariot of mysticism. The fire of Torah. The fire of prayer. The fire of yoga (for those of us who dare). There’s the fire of fasting. The fire of love. The fire of sex if there is love. There’s the fire of the most heightened mind states.  There’s the fire of a long run, of hours of meditation, of thirst.  Water can help soothe the speed and is often necessary to calm our immediate reaction to such fast transformation. I have (personally) made the mistake of bringing too much fire into my life and/or not enough water. In any case, the fire of these actions helps to peel off our layers so that we can see beyond the literal truth into something deeper.

Now, getting back to the killing of the Midianites, what if I said that Torah is not even about story or even characters but movements of energy? What if I quoted the mystical book the Bahir and emphasized that the forefront of Torah is not the practical but rather the unseen interconnections between all living beings? In this case, the Midianite tragedy in symbolic terms becomes an act of the utmost loving-kindness. Here our prophet is going through absolute physical pain…the pain of symbolic killing on the earth-plane…in order to unblock the symbolic inter-connections, to let the love flow.

What do we do with this? Well, we don’t do war. We don’t kill. We treat each other like equals. We have compassion and gentleness.  As often as we can we purify ourselves. We do what we can to unblock the plugging of our deep connection to the universe and to God. This is what we do all the time. Not in literal terms though. In spiritual terms. There is a difference. And we’d be wise not to confuse the two. Confuse the two and we have even more murder and violence and war.  It’s just like the statement of Nachmanides that we are not to confuse the oath with the vow.  The literal can be seen as an oath of our existence. It’s temporal. But the spiritual understanding goes far deeper. The spiritual is our vow. The spiritual is how we can really protect ourselves here and now and be at one with God. It is the truth beyond all truth and lies, the one heart, the one core of our being. It is pure sight.