This week was a celebration of the contemporary – with vivid reminders of the past. This week’s Parsha is an echo of antiquity -- with a distinctly contemporary ring.
I stood in a cemetery in Queens, New York, awaiting my allotted 120 seconds at the Rebbe’s resting place on the yartzeit. The line stretched down the narrow road between the tombstones as far as the eye could see. Every thirty feet or so, mounted screens played videos of the Rebbe speaking thirty years earlier: himself evoking Biblical persona. The men in line – and I saw only men, the women being in a line of their own – prayed and studied silently, contemplatively, either from booklets or iPhones, breaking to text and whatsapp or quietly take a phone call. One man, pressed to catch his flight out of nearby JFK wordlessly excused himself for jumping the queue by waving his iPhone flashing a boarding pass, as everyone smiled and let him through.
Across the nearby Atlantic three young murdered boys were buried.
Jonathan Saks says that the Rebbe is the perfect answer to Hitler: just as the Jews were chased down in hate, so the Rebbe chased them down in love. But it was more than that; the Rebbe was the answer to Modernity. Not contemporariness: not the “being with it”, “hip”, fun, urbanely fluent in multiple languages and tech-savvy, that people benignly think of when they hear the word modern. But modern: as in the movement that gave rise to National Socialism.
Modernity questioned: what is a Jew? If he is neither religion nor nation, never dies and nor is he contained, then he must be a . . .a germ. . .and must be. . . let’s not go there. . . Modernity did not start out with that threat and many are aghast to consider Nazis as a modern society, but it was, nonetheless. A disquiet, a discomfort with this, the discomfiting Jew.
What did modernity threaten the Jew? That the Jew is nothing special. This was a new threat, for until then the church (and mosque) recognized that the Jews were the People of the Book. They may have discredited and claimed supersession of people and book, claiming new and improved versions, but they did not see the Jew as inconsequential or accidental.
Modernity did. Religion is an opiate, the Bible is man-made and G-d is dead. Without a Creator there could be no creation and in lieu of Purpose -- the Jewish gift to Mankind – there was now randomness, and chaos, a throwback to the pantheon of pagan worships. Balaam, then, the soothsayer of antiquity, and more so Balak, his patron, was the consummate modern anti-Semite. And in a twist of fate, instead of curses issuing forth from this Goebbels, the majestic tapestry of Jewish destiny flows poetically, movingly, powerfully from his mouth.
This was the crux of Balak’s ethos and the ethos of his hire. There is a delightful nuance in Hebrew that is utterly lost in translation. Vayikra and Vayikar both refer to a calling: Vayikra is a term of endearment, Vayikar is a cold nonchalance, with a good measure of hold-your-nose as well. And G-d called unto Moses with Vayikra, and He called to Balaam with Vayikar. His speech reflected their ethos, their way of seeing things their being. As they call to Him so He responds. Happenstance will echo nonchalance; purpose evokes love.
Nowhere in the Torah, to my knowledge, does metaphor serve so public and central a role as this parsha. Parable is offered and the virtually audible subtext is there as well. And as Balak brings his soothsayer to the mountaintop to gaze upon the Jews and bid them ill, as Balak provides the setting and perspective with which to see the Jews in a bad light, as the Jew is highlighted for wrongs perceived and real, as these shortcomings are exhibited in the heat of condemnation and the condemned stand to be damned and condemned by the eloquence of the prosecutor. . . . their evil is shifted to good. The Minister of Propaganda with his guile, gall, technology and rhetoric, as he stands to curse the Jew, his curses turn to blessings.
And Balak is mocked, “You claim the Jews left Egypt? They didn’t leave Egypt, they were taken out of Egypt!” And Balak seeks to silence his prophet-of-doom turned prophet-of-hope, but the prophet mocks him. “You think you can stop the destiny of the Jew from unfolding?!?”
But what of their sins? Their sins are many, varied and consistent. Even their prophets say so. No no no, insists Balaam. That is not how G-d sees them. He sees them as pure: tainted, sullied, but pure. Remove the dirt, remove them from ugliness and they, the Jews, will shine. They might wallow in filth of their own making, but only because the world conspired to make them forget who they are. Once reminded of who they are, they can do nothing but sparkle. Like diamonds.
Which brings us back to the Yartzeit. No one in all of history proved and proclaimed the (begrudged) blessings of Balak like the Rebbe. He had faith in Jews that they denied in themselves. And if their denial got heated and personal the Rebbe grew ever more loving and devoted to the diamonds. His diamonds. The Rebbe saw the Jew as a spark of the Infinite Himself, on a journey ordained by the Infinite One Himself, towards a destiny above rubies and pearls.
And yea, though they walk through the valley of the shadow of death:
How the Rebbe wept for Jews in Russia denied a Shabbos.
How the Rebbe wept for a child in the Midwest who does not know an Aleph.
How the Rebbe wept for a soldier in the Mideast who lost his arm.
No matter which valley of the shadow of that which drains the Jew of their life force, the Rebbe did not fear --
How that weeping galvanized into a cri-du-guerre to bring Shabbos to Russia, teach Aleph Bais to Brandon, Eyal has much to offer you, he is not handicapped, he is exceptional –
For the Rebbe reminded us that Thou art with me, and so our fear (and our shame) became more manageable.
Where the naked eye perceived disinterest, the Rebbe saw deep interest.
Where the soothsayer spoke of the undeniable slope of assimilation, the Rebbe spoke of lighting candles.
Where the critic saw inequity, the Rebbe saw. . . I don’t know. Diamonds, I guess.
And in an ending that the Rebbe could have written himself: who is the progeny of this hateful, evil, dyed-in-the-wool hater of Jews? Who issues forth from his loins? David, King of Israel, descendant of the convert Ruth, progenitor of the righteous Moshiach. Whaddaya know?
Because, in this magnificent creation in the hands of Omnipotent Creator nothing is by chance and random, and at its core, the greatest evil is only there to call forth the deepest good, so then, in this logic, of course, Balak gives rise to Moshiach. Of course.
The evil is not spent. Three boys. Three brave and wonderful mothers who echo this all. I grieve. We grieve. For them. For us. For too long. We see no good in horror, nor should we. G-d should remove evil from its charade, that a long-suffering people should rejoice in their destiny, nothing but rejoice in their destiny. That mothers should be allowed to let their diamonds sparkle, and bask in their luminance.
I can’t think of anything that would have made the Rebbe happier.