Uncovering Torah's Messages
What it's like to uncover messages from an ancient source
I get a chance every week to be a detective. I’m not sleuthing around looking for perpetrators of crimes, analyzing new ways of scamming people, or solving any crimes. What I do every week is delve into the Torah’s parsha (portion of the week) to see if I can uncover a message that has relevance for my life, or even the world at this time.
But the clues for this don’t announce themselves—-that would be easy. In fact, often, unless I read commentaries, I miss things entirely. But sometimes I get lucky. Deep into the reading of a few chapters, something grabs me and I can’t miss it. A message shines a light on my life and what I’m experiencing right now. That might seem pretty ridiculous, considering some of the portions that just seem so, well, fantastical (a red cow, a talking donkey, just to name two examples), but after all, there’s many verses to choose from so I’m likely to find something. A verse or two, a word or even the placement of a letter, reveal a message that has a deeper meaning for me.
So, you can ask why I do this1? The short answer is that we’re supposed to. The Torah is eternal, timeless—-and is not bound by a certain time, a certain place, a certain space. So our tradition tells me that I will find meaning, and if I fail to….well, that’s on me, not the text.
But that’s only part of it. I also believe that time is not linear, but instead configured in a spiral (I’ll save that idea for another time) which means that there are deeper meanings in the Torah that hold true for all time.
An example would be this week’s portion coming up, Balak (ironically, it contains a talking donkey). You can easily discover what the parsha is about elsewhere, so I won’t get into that. But I’ll give you the verses that spoke to me this week, but first, with their context:
Balak, a Moabite king, despises the Jewish people for no logical reason (already this seems relevant, doesn’t it?) other than his fear that they are encroaching on his land (even more relevant, wouldn’t you say?). So, rather than initiate a war (if only our enemies decided to do this…), He hires Bilaam, a professional ‘seer’ to curse them from seven places. Instead, Bilaam is compelled to give blessings, much to the outrage of Balak. But Bilaam says that he is not able to change it, since God put the words in his mouth. One of the descriptions of Am Yisrael / The Nation of Israel, in one of the blessings, is this:
There is a people that dwells apart,
Not reckoned among the nations…Numbers / Bamidbar 23:9
Wow. Here it is, right in the Torah. We are a people, a nation that will be apart (the translation of the Hebrew word is alone [הֶן־עָם֙ לְבָדָ֣ד יִשְׁכֹּ֔ן וּבַגּוֹיִ֖ם לֹ֥א יִתְחַשָּֽׁב]. A contemporary translation by Everett Fox is this: here, a people, alone-in-security it dwells, among the nations it does not need to come-to-reckoning.
So, we are to be a nation that is separate, unique, different from others. And we do not have to be accepted, liked, or ‘reckoned with’ by other nations. But let’s go back a bit. The war that Balak chooses to wage is one of ideas, not one of might or strength. It is a spiritual war fought with words, with curses. There is an understanding by him that our people is a people of words, who have seen and experienced the miraculous…and received words as a nation…so we need to be fought on that level.
And is this not what we’re seeing today? Yes, Israel is fighting a real war, with real losses and destruction…but at its heart it is a spiritual war as all the protests around the entire world are making us aware. The fight is not as we originally thought. There’s no talk by those who have brought on and continue to bring on destruction an outcome where we live side by side in two nations.
This fight, repeated over and over by our enemies, is not over sharing land, but over a people’s right to be in the land at all. What is desired is a destruction of a people. The other side’s rhetoric is about a revolution that will upturn democratic ideals. An Islamic state will offer no room for those who do not believe similarly. They have said so, many many times.
Yes, when we look at the entirety of our history, it seems undeniable that we are a people who have not been like others and it has caused others to hate. When faced with antisemitism of a certain type we either fought, fled, or assimilated. Whether we like those facts or not, our people stand apart and have stood apart for thousands of years. Though often we’ve wanted to be a part…a part of the greater culture, accepted and liked by others, those concessions never took hold—at least not for long.
But the second part of the verse’s blessing (you could argue this point, I’m sure) is that we will not be held in other nations’ esteem. We have to resist the desire to be like other nations. We don’t need to make excuses for who we are. Fitting in hasn’t worked. It doesn’t mean either that we have to close ourselves off, like hermits in a cave (our tradition has an example of that also, and why that didn’t work). We can participate in what the world has to offer. But we don’t have to concede our very identity. We can hold onto all those values, rituals and traditions that make us who we are. And we can actually work at bringing ethical teachings forward.
Our mission is to be a people, a nation, who are on a different path, bringing a unique light into the world which allows every soul to shine.
I facilitate weekly online classes in real-time called “Making Torah Personal” . In that class, we discuss what I described {discovering how Torah relevant} in a small group setting. Should you be interested in anything like this, please email me: innerjudaism@gmail.com