Parshat Hukkat
I want to begin by telling you about an experience I had at the recent Nehirim retreat. Nehirim is an independent national organization that creates spiritual and cultural community for Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgendered Jews. They run an annual spring retreat for queer Jews of all backgrounds and denominations.
During the opening icebreaker, I was asked to write down on a large piece of paper a verb to describe where I am currently at Jewishly. I stole a verb common in GLBT circles and shared that I am transitioning. I am transitioning from modern orthodox Jew to Medicine Woman.
Coming out as a Medicine Woman was my dramatic way of saying I am becoming more of an earth-based Jew. Becoming an earth-based Jew means more than refusing plastic bags at Fairway, or eating local organic food. It means looking at plants and animals as part of my living community. It means looking at myself as part of a physical and spiritual ecosystem that includes all life. Becoming an earth-based Jew means I am interested in things in the Torah and in the Talmud that I had once written off as irrelevant. It also means I am now open to believing in things I had once thought were not true.
This week's Torah portion, Parashat Hukkat, reads like Ripley's Believe it Or Not. In Hukkat, we are told that a potion made of Red Cow juice can beat back the gloom of death. That if you are thirsty you can ask a stone for water. And that Moses will never enter the Promised Land because he hit a rock.
Hukkat contains so much that is hard to believe. But then from my previous life as a modern orthodox Jew, my current queer lifestyle would be hard to believe and a challenge to tolerate. Hukkat is a parashah of potions healing body and spirit and of dowsing for water with words. Similarly, my journey to where I live now was an earthly journey of body and spirit, of flesh and impulse, imagination, humor, healing, community, celebration, advocacy, and love. My journey bears more resemblance to the earthy wisdom of Parashat Hukkat than might be apparent at first.
Parshat Hukkat is about trusting the physical and non-rational.
The law of the Red Heifer in Hukkat is in fact cited in Rabbinic tradition as the prime example of a chok, or biblical law for which there is no apparent logic, and is therefore of absolute Divine origin. We also read in Bamidbar Rabbah that Rabban Yochanan tells his disciples that we have neither the ability nor the need to uncover the mystery behind this ritual.
But I know something about physical mystery from my journey as a musician. It was here at BJ drumming one Simchas Torah that I realized I am powerfully connected to God through this physical event called rhythm that happens on the inside of me- the event of rhythm that is an ecstatic electrical charge that I dance and that dances me. This is a most intimate religious experience and I realized it is this that drew me to coming out as queer among other things. I have simply been learning over the past seven years to follow the earthly mystery. I run a drum circle based on the same faith- trust in the earthly energy.
I have become an earth-based, queer, percussionist, Jewish educator and emerging Medicine Woman. I now seek the tools and the support to get grounded in flesh and earth and limited natural resources. I want to connect to my real body and my real spirit. I want to live with what is inside the box and not pressure this box of life to be something it isn't. The most radical aspect of my spiritual transition is that I am beginning to view nature as a divine consciousness. I think people and nature participate in a rich open, vulnerable, interdependent shared system of energy or Chiut- life force. As the Hasidic master and mystic Rebbe Nachman of Breslov taught: "For every blade of grass there is a song which it speaks, and from the song of the grasses is made the niggun of the shepherd."
I think the whole human community must come out into its place within nature and not above it. This means acknowledging the truth about ourselves. Coming out into my own queer sexual mystery has taught me how specific every person is, how rich and varied nature is, and how we complete each other and play valuable roles in an incredibly complex universe. Spirituality is less about transcending the body than about fully living in it. All of life is a drum circle and we are the vibrating skins.
This new way of thinking is a very big paradigm shift for me. I was raised to be a good Maimonidean and Newtonian misnaged- an old school rationalist from the 1970's. If you are a modern yeshiva day school graduate you are not supposed to drink potions containing red cows and the four elements, nor are you supposed to speak to rocks in order to reveal their underground rivers. Miriam, Moshe and Aaron are supposed to do those things on the Biblical page. We are not. At the very least we are supposed to think of our ancestors as primitive or blessed with a totally different relationship to God and nature.
I am blessed to be in love with and married to one of the great earth-based rabbis of our time- my partner and spouse Rabbi Jill Hammer, author of The Jewish Book of Days. Jill's writings and experiential teachings have helped me and others relook at how Judaism is fully rooted in the soil, flora and fauna and in the rhythms of the seasons of the Northern Hemisphere. But Jill tells me I always thought in earthy ways about the Torah; I just could never admit it.
But living in nature has a downside. Nature is also terrible. Nature traumatizes us, challenges us, and gives us losses that break our hearts and finally destroys our bodies. As Rabbi Mike Commins writes in A Wild Faith, "In the backcountry, beauty is commanding and pervasive. But so is danger and risk. One cannot see wildflowers or moose calves without passing rotting tree trunks, the remains of fire, or unburied bones. The grandeur and fragility of our world, the immediacy of life and death, are all around.
Nature throws a lot of gevurah at us- a lot of severe limitation. Hukkat, a true earth-based parashah, teaches that we gain healing, trust and survival from animals, colors, plants, rocks, human community and leaders who help us integrate the whole so we can stay in the game even when nature's extremes threaten us.
Parashat Hukkat teaches us how we can integrate nature's gevurah-its extreme limitations. In chapter 19 we read the halakhic paradox of the red heifer - the Parah Adumah. A ritual mixture that includes ashes of an unblemished and never yoked purely red cow metaphysically cleanses those in need of ritual purification. Those who prepare these ashes of purification, themselves become impure in the process. Others who touch this substance will become pure, but its makers become impure.
The Torah says one who touches the dead, becomes tamei. Tamei is often translated as impure. Following my colleague and teacher Holly Taya Shere, I prefer the idea that one who comes into contact with human death goes into limbo. Their tumah or liminality, in-betweenness, happens because they have been in contact with the other world. Death dislocates us on the metaphysical plane. This is why the ashes of the red heifer change us from one state to another.
As the Ishbitzer Rebbe teaches in this week's parashah, death makes us angry. The Ishbitzer in Mei HaShiloach, says: The phrase "Kol Hanogeah B'mait"- "One who touches the dead" means a person who has experienced the attribute of severe judgment - gevurah - in this world and has become angry at God. That person is living in the past- overwhelmed by an old wound. The Ishbitzer goes on to say that the purifying waters of the four species in the ritual of the Red Heifer heal the one who has come into contact with death because they contain the four elements- the ashes of the Parah Adumah, the Red Heifer, hyssop, cedar and scarlet which are, he says, the root of everything. The four elements are symbolic of the larger world, the world that is greater than the loss. Integration means healing.
If you still believe the parah adumah ceremony is merely a primitive practice then look again at our own rabbinic Shabbat Havdallah service. Our Havdallah ceremony is also a reintegrative four elements ritual like the mysterious biblical ritual of the Red Heifer. On Saturday night when we face the loss of the Shabbat we perform the Havdallah ritual. In Havdallah we interact with fire, breathe in earthly spices, make the air in our bodies and around us into prayer, song and blessing, and drink a colorful cup of wine. The four elements of havdallah involve all of our senses and help us cross over from liminality, from in-betweeness to the world of the week. The four physical elements of Havdalah help us negotiate the loss of a God-given, sacred Shabbat and offer us a container for our passage to the potentially sacred moments of mundane time.
I think the Ishbitzer Rebbe teaches in Hukkat that if you can't accept that gevurah is part of the world, you can't live in the world. But you also must not believe that there is only gevurah in the world. The Ishbitzer is suggesting that the only way we can deal with gevurah — with the severe limits of nature — is not by denying it and not by utterly rejecting it but by putting it in the context of the greater whole. Notice in the ritual how the priests who heal the person who is tamei are themselves rendered tamei. In administering the Red Heifer elixir the priests cannot perceive themselves as separate from the darkness of the world. The healers are vulnerable along with those they are healing through the four elements.
And that's what queer people are asking for- that you see us as a part of the divine cabaret. That we be seen as faithful partners and fellow healers of humankind. That we are another kind of divine consciousness, another ingenious ingredient and color in God's world. With your help queer people may receive the dignity and benefits that nonqueer people are entitled to. Thank you for what you have done this day for those of us here who occupy a vulnerable minority status. You have taken the ancient container of the holy Shabbat and made it a vessel to celebrate GLBT people during zman simchateinu - Pride month. You are helping us to hold the gevurah in our own lives. You are helping us to re-integrate into the whole. You see, you are also Medicine men and women!
Life for the planet and for gays and lesbians bisexuals and transgendered people will improve when we again as a civilization think of ourselves as thoroughly part of nature. An earth-based consciousness will enable a humility and awe, a vulnerability and trust in the whole that will enhance all our efforts at creating Tikkun Olam and social justice . I believe this because I have faith that generosity and goodness are as much a part of us as envy and aggression.
The Torah tells us in the next chapter of Hukkat that Moshe did not speak to the stones of the desert in an effort to draw forth water for the thirsty people. Before their eyes Moshe struck the rock twice and uttered cynical words to the thirsty complainers of the next generation. Moshe failed to teach the new generation in Hukkat that the earth is not just the bearer of punishing plagues or magnificent miracles. Moshe needed to teach that the earth is also an empowered divine consciousness- a friend of God and man, as much as a servant of God and humankind. Using speech rather than the rod to dowse the desert for water could catapult the people towards the Promised Land because they would have learned that earth is not only in her essence about destruction, fear or survival. They could have learned that earth is a creature of connection, peace and collaborative energetic flow. Moshe did not teach the lesson that one can trust in the earth.
Moshe is a straw man for the human condition. But he shows us with his subsequent leadership, diplomacy, vision and poetry how to keep going with vigor even when we have gotten stuck in a nontrusting place.
But we can relate. There is so much gevurah- so much limitation surrounding the leaders Moshe and Aaron. The loss of their sister and their entire generation- every friend they had may be dead by now. The desert is arid. They are standing at the Hard Rock café without a drink in sight. It is especially at this moment in nature, in reality that leaders must teach us trust in the whole- that there is rock and there is water. There is death and there is life. In the end, Moshe himself shows us this. At the end of his life, when he is about to die, we hear him say: "O sky, listen, and I will speak. Let the earth hear the words I say." As he gives his final speech, Moses remembers that he is part of the whole.
We need leaders today who can integrate the death of things with how alive and blessed life is not leaders who constantly create the death of things through war and by telling us there is only one kind of sexuality.
Many leaders today have written out of reality homosexuality as a natural phenomenon or at least a physical energetic truth that millions simply trust in.
By the way a colleague of mine told me that the JTS library contains books from old Jewish Europe listing potions Jews obtained for casting spells on people of the opposite gender to fall in love with them, and spells for people of the same gender to fall in love with them. Even our history has been repressed by a monolithic way of thinking.
On the issue of homosexuality in Halakhic Judaism I think Jewish Halakhic culture can handle yet another rereading of the Torah. Not one legal verse of Torah is read in the Talmudic tradition in purely literal terms. Why must we remain literalist about one particular verse when we are not taking literally any of the laws of business or contracts or festivals or food in the Torah. The Torah SheBaal Peh, the legal tradition, if not queer, is well, not very straight in its interpretive methodology! It is hard for queers and their supporters to talk to the rock of traditional Jewish sentiment and homophobia but as we see from events this year rocks will crack and water will flow.
In conclusion, Hukkat teaches us that a community working together can deal with life's challenges. That community consists of people and plants, animals and politicians, fire and water. We are here to heal each other, to see the water beneath the dry stones when another person temporarily cannot. I feel this community and its leadership takes its role as healer very seriously. We are exhorted by our leaders here to roll up our sleeves and give up our taharah- our sense of entitlement and safety to help someone else out of a dark place. Thank you for seeing homosexuality and gender diversity as a force of nature deserving of support and holding. Thank you for making BJ a gay friendly and loving place.