TORAH FROM JTS
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‫ | דבר אחר‬A Different Perspective
The Good Ol’ Days
Rabbi Danielle Upbin, Kollot Rabbinic Fellow,
Florida Region, JTS
When the going gets tough, who doesn’t pine for the “good ol’ days”? Even
when those past realities had challenges of their own, we tend not to
remember them that way. It is human nature to favor selective memory.
Consider our ancestors in this week’s parashah, crying for the fleshpots
they enjoyed in Egypt, the cucumbers, garlic, and leeks (Num. 11:5). Did
they forget about the slaughter of their firstborn, the harsh labor, the
separation of families? In a moment of hunger and thirst for something
they didn’t have, they forgot that they had actually been slaves in Egypt.
Luckily for us, even God has selective memory. How does He recall what
His beloved people were like during the wilderness experience? What of
our apostasy, cowardice, and subversion of authority, on top of this week’s
complaining? “The people took to complaining bitterly before the Lord. The
Lord heard and was incensed.” (Num. 11:1)— and He killed us off by the
thousands.
Give God a few centuries and He remembers that honeymoon a little
differently. “Thus says the Lord, ‘I remember the devotion of your youth,
your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not
sown’” (Jer. 2:2). In the moment of exile, God feels a little homesick too,
and remembers only the faithful remnant who finally crossed the threshold
and entered the huppah with God, filled with hope and faith in one another.
It is this sentiment that we recall when standing before the Holy Ark as the
Torah is returned in our prayer service. “Return us to You and we shall
return, renew our lives as in days of old” (“Hashivenu Adonai elekha
venashuvah, hadesh yamenu kekedem”) (Lam. 5:21). My recording of this
prayer offers a vocal midrash—layering voice upon voice, generation upon
generation, in a setting of universalistic percussion, to remind us that
memory-making is up to us now, to help us embrace hope, have faith in
the human spirit, and trust in God.
To hear Rabbi Upbin’s recording, visit learn.jtsa.edu.
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Parashat Beha-alotekha 5775
‫פרשת בהעלתך תשע"ה‬
Humility
Rabbi Judith Greenberg, Kollot Rabbinic Fellow,
Midwest Region, JTS
While wandering in the wilderness, when God’s cloud of glory rests on
the Tabernacle, Israel dwells in their camp. When the cloud lifts, they
journey onward. In the first half of this week’s parashah,
Beha’alotekha, life is orderly and peaceful, with each tribe and each
leader in their place in the procession.
Suddenly, in chapter 11 of Numbers, we return to real life, where
nothing is quite so clear. The people complain bitterly, beginning a
cascade of negativity. The people beg for meat and long to return to
Egypt. God lashes out, threatening to fill them with meat until it comes
out of their nostrils. As the people gorge on the meat, God, in a fit of
fury, strikes them with a plague. Moses declares that he’d rather be
dead than carry around this infantile nation like their nanny. Miriam and
Aaron impugn both Moses’s wife and the singularity of Moses’s
relationship with God. There is no peace and no one is in their place.
The narrative pauses and we read a rare verse of character
description: “Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all the
men that were upon the face of the earth” (Num. 12:3).
Why does Moses merit this description of such outstanding humility,
and why is it revealed here? Moses is responsible for communicating
and enacting the countless strictures and guidelines set forth by God
for the Children of Israel. But Moses’s character—and indeed the
character of each of us—are formed by our decisions and interactions
when the rules don’t apply. There is no legal section of Torah for when
the people complain or when your siblings question your authority or
when God is uncontrollably angry. There are no clear rules for the
messiest parts of our lives: our relationships with others.
TORAH FROM JTS
Humility is crucial. But it is not simply the “humility” of smallness
and deference that we find in the dictionary, but a more complex
virtue conceived in rabbinic tradition. With my Kollot groups in the
Chicago area and the Twin Cities, we have explored the middah or
trait of humility (anavut) through the lens of Mussar, the Jewish
discipline of self-growth, using Alan Morinis’s Everday Holiness as
a guide.
One instructive text that uses an antonym to humility—gasut ruach
or haughtiness of spirit—is found in the Talmud (Sotah 5a).
“Anyone possessing haughtiness of spirit ought to be
excommunicated. Anyone who does not possess this haughtiness
of spirit should be excommunicated.” This teaching is striking in
both its severity and contradiction. The problem of arrogance needs
little explanation, but what is wrong with a lack of arrogance? What
is so destructive to a community that someone lacking this gasut
ruah ought to be cut off? Perhaps such a person lacks a healthy
sense of their own value. Perhaps the problem is that this person is
easily bowled over, taken advantage of. But that is no reason to
send them off—that is reason to help them.
Or perhaps the real problem is that, if a person lacks any
haughtiness at all, they are unable to see their own potential, their
own power. They are unable to contribute to the community, to
speak up when their voice is needed, to act when they are uniquely
fit to make a difference.
We turn to a story from the Talmud to understand the destructive
power of such excessive humility (Gittin 55b-56a):
A man named Bar Kamtza is accidentally invited to his foe’s party.
When he arrives, the host is furious and demands that his guest
leave. Bar Kamtza, mortified, offers to pay for whatever he eats and
drinks. This offer is rejected and he offers to pay for half the party,
then the whole party. The host angrily rejects both offers and ejects
Bar Kamtza from the party. Bar Kamtza muses: the rabbis were
sitting there and did not stop the host; this shows that they agreed
with his actions.
The rabbis, lacking any haughtiness— or perhaps even selfconfidence—failed to intercede at an uncomfortable moment to
prevent a person’s humiliation. This was not a legal question
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brought before them to adjudicate. This was a moment of real human
interaction unfolding messily before them. The rabbis merited
excommunication, not because they ruled incorrectly or violated a
commandment, but because they were silent. Moses is praised for
his humility because, never silent, he did not efface himself when his
presence was necessary.
The guest, Bar Kamtza, possessing his own too generous share of
haughtiness, decides he will inform the Roman government against
the Jews. He takes an offering from the Romans to the Jewish
Temple. But he blemishes the animal, unbeknownst to the Romans.
Rabbi Zekhariah ben Avkulas rejects the two possibilities suggested:
offer the sacrifice to avoid offending the Romans, or reject the
offering but kill Bar Kamtza so that the Romans will not find out.
Rabbi Zekhariah, the one with the power to reject both possibilities,
also had the power to offer an acceptable solution. Instead, he
demurred, failed to accept the mantle of power on his shoulders. The
animal was not sacrificed, the Romans were offended, and the story
concludes: “Through the humility of Rabbi Zekhariah ben Avkulas,
our House has been destroyed, our Temple burnt and we ourselves
exiled from our land.”
Moses’s humility was remarkable not because he held himself in
such low esteem, but because he was so aware of his own power
and not afraid to act. His humility is lauded at a most poignant
moment of Moses interceding when it would have been easier to
remain silent. After Miriam and Aaron question Moses’s unique role
as prophet, God rebukes them and strikes Miriam with a plague.
While he has good reason to remain silent as his sister is punished
for criticizing him, Moses cries out to God, “El na refa na la.”
(“Please, God, heal her.”) (Num. 12:13).
This is our challenge: to not remain silent as the rabbis did before
Bar Kamtza, but to have Moses’s self-awareness and courage to
know when having humility requires that we act.
The publication and distribution of the JTS Parashah Commentary are made possible by a
generous grant from Rita Dee (z”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (z”l).