Naso: Honoring our Faithfulness to God's Love

Let's reflect on the passages of this portion regarding the faithfulness between a married couple (Numbers 5:12-15).

Faithfulness is actually the foundation of any relationship, and also the foundation of the social establishment in which one lives. If there is no trust and reliability among people and their institutions, there is corruption, unrest and conflict.                                                   

No wonder the hefty budget devoted to law enforcement in most civilized countries. Faithfulness indeed has a price that we are willing to pay because from it depends what we trust, cherish, appreciate, value and love the most.

We pay to be safe and to receive goods and services we need in order to have peace and tranquility in our individual and collective environment. If we compel ourselves to pay for trust, confidence, faithfulness, loyalty and reliability in order to feel safe and secure in the material world, how much would we be willing to do in order to secure our relationship with God? How much does it cost to have Him close to us always in our lives? The price is faithfulness.

It takes something more to be close to God than paying taxes to rely on government services such as law enforcement and social security, because our relationship with Him is priceless, and beyond any social contracts. However, either we want it or not, our relationship with Him is bound to our relationship with each other in our surroundings.

“Tell the children of Israel: When a man or woman commits any of the sins against man to act treacherously against God (...)” (5:6).

We love each other because we love God. God's Love is our Essence and common bond with Him and with each other here in the material world. In this context Love is the faithfulness we have for each other because we know that if the ways and attributes of Love are not present, we are not safe, secured, protected or cared for.

Love is the foundation of our faithfulness in anything we want to be, to have, and to do. We are faithful to Love because we must have to be faithful with the Essence of who we are.

Under the consumer society we live in we have to pay for anything that makes us feel safe, secured and protected. We humans have created such darkness that we have to pay in order to stay away from the harm, perils and dangers that we have created! It's an irony that we create negative conditions and pay to stay away from them, and we do it for the sake of money.

We create addictions, distractions and unhealthy conditions and later pay to free ourselves from them. It's outrageous what ego's fantasies and illusions can create in order to keep us in darkness and negativity. Yet we seem to be more faithful to ego's materialistic desires than to Love's ways and attributes. We rather allow the negative current state of affairs and the consumer society's establishment to rule over us than allowing the positive qualities of Love as our Essence and true identity.

Let's reflect on the meanings of faithfulness the Torah points out when it mentions the respect and loyalty man owes to woman, and woman to man. As we already said, we owe faithfulness to each other as we owe faithfulness to our God. He commands us to be faithful with each other because it is about the same faithfulness He wants from us to Him.

In this context we must be faithful and loyal to the principles that define our Jewish identity. Otherwise, we cheat, deceit and betray ourselves. We most be aware that when one is unfaithful to his values and to whom he commits his loyalty, he is unfaithful to himself.

God wants us to be faithful for our own sake, not His. God's Love for us is our true reference, the real foundation of our consciousness. This means that as long as we are faithful to His ways and attributes as the guidelines and ground rules for what we are, have and do, we are faithful to ourselves. Faithfulness is really about us as individuals because that's the only way that we can commit to faithfulness, truthfulness and loyalty to others.

We cheat or betray others' trust and faithfulness when we change the “rules of the game” in our relationship with them. If our rules are solid and strong as the true foundation of our consciousness, they will remain solid and strong regardless the change of others' rules.

This is a practical way to say that Love does not cohabit with anything different than its ways and attributes. As long as we remain faithful, loyal and committed to Love's ways in what we are and do, we are faithful to our identity as the Torah defines it for us (see our commentaries on Parshat Naso: “Unity in Diversity” of May 15, 2010 and “Living in the Blessings of Divine love” of May 29, 2011).

In a higher level, in terms of man-woman relationship, let's be aware that both male and female contain polarities inherent to each other, and they form a unity. We have to evolve to the higher awareness that we are materially separated as male and female in order to be united for the sacred purpose called life and its multiple facets and dimensions.

Mystic Sages conceive the harmonic union of both polarities as the whole purpose of God's Creation for us to fulfill.

For centuries we have fought against such purpose by generating confrontation and conflict among our two polarities. We have been blind to the clear evidence that in the union of both life is conceived, and with the constructive cooperation of both we elevate, enhance and consecrate life for a higher purpose than those of ego's negative fantasies and illusions. 

We are here in the material world to harmonize our male and female aspects of consciousness in order to consecrate life for the higher purpose of Love's ways and attributes. We accomplish this by being and doing such ways and attributes. There is no other way and there is no other purpose.

What we label as negative, harmful or destructive among our male and female polarities comes from our own negative approach. There is nothing negative in being a man or a woman, because we all share traits and qualities from both polarities. It does not make sense to stigmatize or undermine something that is part of us. Our dilemma is that so far we have not been able to harmonize them. 

We all are born with different proportions of both polarities, and it is our individual and collective duty to balance and harmonize them with the purpose of recreating life as the product of the male and female union. Since we are born we are destined to be united in order to maintain and expand life.

We do that by honoring, respecting and committing to each other's well being through Love's ways and attributes. Let's get truly acquainted with the male and female aspects of our human consciousness, by appreciating, respecting and honoring their traits and qualities as positive means to rectify the negative direction we have given them in the past. 

We need to know what we were made as men and women from the positive perspective that God's Love gives us as our true Essence and identity: Love. Let's be faithful to Love as the Essence that get us closer to each other with the purpose of being happy and content with each other, because God's Love created us to discover such purpose.

Once we clear the darkness we have created in the world with the Light of Love's ways and attributes, we realize the purpose of our true identity in the material world.

Judah Macabee: Homophobe

In view of the recent stirred debates on gay marriages in the United States, I want to share an article by a dear friend of mine, Philip Lefkowitz, Rabbi of the congregation Agudat Achim in Chicago.

Dear haverim,

I am not trying to preach or impress you by my writing skills. I share the following as I believe that gay marriage is a "blessing and a curse" placed before us. A blessing because it affords us the opportunity to make American Jewry look at their own reflection in the mirror. A curse as, if we don't deal with it in a manner to change the mindset of American Jewry, it marks yet another step toward its collective demise.

Phil Lefkowitz

Judah Macabee: Homophobe

Plato said, “Homosexuality is regarded as shameful by Barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love; all of which homosexuality is particularly apt to produce.” and Plutarch said, “The noble lover of beauty engages in love wherever he sees excellence and splendid natural endowment without regard for any difference in physiological detail.”

Statistics evaluating American Jewish religious expression show that the Jewish observance most practiced in the United States is the lighting of Hanukkah candles. Hanukkah commemorates and celebrates the miraculous victory of Judah Macabee, his family and small group of followers who, repulsed by the decree from Antiochus IV to place a statue of Zeus in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem – the center of Monotheism –, mounted a guerrilla war against the Hellenized Syrian-Mesopotamian Empire then in control of ancient Israel.

Considering the support of so many Jews for gay marriage in America, one wonders how they can celebrate Hanukkah. For today many would label Judah, his family, the Hasmoneans, and their followers as homophobes. Yes, homophobes. Let me explain. The Jewish world of the Macabees was completely swallowed up by Hellenism. Assimilated by the Greek philosophy of life and its emphasis upon the worship of the physical, as opposed to spiritual development, young Jewish men began to work out in the nude on the courtyards of the Temple Mount. In an attempt to hide the “deformity” inflicted upon their well-toned “Grecian” physiques by their parents through the rite of circumcision, they would employ various techniques to disguise this Jewish “mutilation”. Of course, Greek names and life style had become the norm for the Jews of that time. Now there are those, in discussing the contemporary challenge presented by assimilation, who compare American Jewry to the Hellenized Jewish world of the Macabees.

As the quotes from Plato and Plutarch demonstrate, not only was homosexuality widely engaged in by Hellenistic societies, but aslo embraced by the Hellenized Jews in the time of the Macabees, and it was lauded as a valuable element in the development of a “sophisticated” society. As Plato states, it is the Barbarian and the dictator that seek to stifle homosexual expression. Plutarch reminds us all of the fascination the Hellenists had for the physical body, arbitrarily equating love with sexual expression, by engaging with individuals of “special natural endowment”, either male or female, in stark contrast to Judaism which views love as a manifestation far more transcending than a temporary physical encounter.

The Macabees, the Hassidim of their age, were those who as a minority maintained Jewish observance and values in the face of a Jewish world possessed by an alien culture and pagan beliefs. The Macabees, unlike Plato, were repulsed by the rampant and open sexual promiscuity among the Jewry of their days, which included homosexuality, seeing it as leading to the destruction of the great Temple of Jewish thought and spiritual purity exemplified by the observance of the Torah and its Commandments. And when the fortress of Judaism was breached, when the Temple was defiled and rededicated as a pagan shrine to Zeus, in spite of their small numbers the Macabees realized that there was no alternative but to take to the hills and fight to the death for their Jewish beliefs with the call to arms: “Whoever is for the L-rd follow me!”

We live in a confused Jewish world where that which is rejected by Judaism is now an expression of Jewish values, as represented by the recent remark of the President of the National Jewish Democratic Council that gay marriage is a step forward in the important endeavor of Tikun Olam, the bringing of balance and perfection to the physical world through G-d’s Commandments. How could this have happened? May I suggest that we live with faulty Jewish mathematics? One of the major equations used in Jewish life today states: A Jewish position on a given issue equals the opinion of the majority of Jews. 

If we truly believe this equation, if we believe that Jewish views are determined by the majority of Jews, then as the title of this article states, there is no doubt that Judah Macabee was a homophobe. For, was he not battling and risking his life and the life of his followers against a superior and well armed force to reinstate the values of Judaism in Jewish society? Unlike the majority of the Jews of his day who echoed the sentiments of Plato and Plutarch, he saw in the expression of sexuality beyond the sacred bond of marriage between man and woman, a violation of G-d’s Divine law. He would give no quarter to such immoral behavior. He was what nowadays some would call a fanatic, a veritable “Bible thumper” in his day. And yet, we Jews embrace the victory of the Macabees, their rise to both Kingship and Priesthood, their restoring the values of G-d, as something to celebrate: Hanukkah as the Jewish celebration embraced by more Jews than any other in our religious lexicon.

In 1885 the leaders of the Reform Movement met in Pittsburgh to define their sense of Judaism. They issued the “Pittsburgh Platform” now understood as the encapsulation of classical Reform Judaism. In part it states: “Second- We recognize in the Bible the record of the consecration of the Jewish people to its mission as priests of the one true God, and value it as the most potent instrument of religious and moral instruction. Third- (…) today we accept as binding only the moral laws, and maintain only such ceremonies as to elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such as not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization.” By endorsing gay marriage most American Jews have parted company with this liberal expression of Judaism.

As classical Reform Judaism declares that “record of the consecration of the Jewish people to its mission as priests of the one true God”, that “most potent instrument of religious and moral instruction”, in today’s terms that ancient yet eternal Jewish “Rules for Radicals”, the Bible teaches us in the book of Leviticus that, “If a man lies with a man as with a woman both of them have committed an abomination.”, “You must not live according to the customs of the nations I am going to drive out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them.” 

In the book of Isaiah we read, “It is too light a thing for you [Jews] to be My servants, to establish the Tribes of Jacob, and to restore the scions of Israel; and I shall submit you as a light unto the nations, to be My redemption until the end of the Earth. (...) I the L-ord have called unto you in righteousness, and have taken hold of your hand, and submitted you as the people's Covenant, as a light unto the nations. (...) And unto your light, nations shall walk, and kings unto the brightness of your rising”.

Something to think about.

Rabbi Philip Lefkowitz - Congregation Agudat Achim of Chicago.