Portion of the Week; Bo 5-6, Rabbi Levine

[singing in Hebrew] [music] [music] [Host] Portion of the Week, the Bible as read in the synagogue with Rabbinic commentary. Here is Rabbi Joseph H. Levine, assistant spiritual leader of the reform congregation, Central Synagogue of Nassau County, Rockville Center, New York. [Rabbi Levine] This week's Torah reading, we come across the description of the land of Israel that the Jewish people would one day inhabit. God's promise is to bring them to a beautiful and splendorous land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Yet we know from our study of that time that part of this land was not overflowing with milk and honey. Certainly it was not a

sizable land, a splendorous empire that the people would be inhabiting. And yet somehow spiritually this promise had great meaning. The land would overflow with milk and honey because it would be a home place where great ideas to be born, educationally and spiritually it would be a land where consecrated people would dedicate their lives to spiritual causes. This raises the whole question, "when does a land flow with milk and honey? Is a kingdom rich when it is rich in natural resources, when it has powerful armies, when its treasuries and coffers are filled? When does a human life become joyous? When a person has all of the comforts and luxuries and contrivances of life? I would recall with you the very famous and touching (inaudible)

in the Book of Numbers. There we have that story where Balaam the magician had been sent by Balak King of Moab to place a curse on the Israelites. And yet he astounded everyone by saying "how goodly are thy tents, oh Jacob, thy dwelling places oh Israel." The Rabbis noticed that Balaam's utterance was inconsistent with the actual physical condition of the people of Israel. Certainly the tents that were stretched before him were not glorious. Actually the people must have presented a rather sorry sight of a destitute, nomadic, and rather chaotic people encamped there before him. Why then did he say "how goodly are thy tents, oh Jacob"? The answer the Rabbis give is that he could foresee the future. He was referring not to what was there before him at that time, but he was visualizing what the people would be destined to achieve. He saw the people of

Israel romanticized in terms of their ideal potentialities, that one day this vision of a semi-barbaric people would be turned into a priest people, God's emissaries of justice and righteousness and goodness on Earth. And so the goodness that he referred to has a spiritual goodness. Now we all know many people in life who take life just for what it is. Who see people just for what they are, and no more. And yet there are other people who somehow go through life seeing the hidden possibilities in other people and in life around them. There are gifted teachers, social workers, doctors, people in every field of life who see their clients, their patients, their students, not simply as people with problems, but people with potentialities, people with promise.

They see the inner element in a person, the deeper beneath-the-surface characteristic of goodness. And so they're not hurt nor rebuffed, but somehow have the patience of seeing even beneath a facade of arrogance, of anxiety, of difficulty, the inner-beauty of a human personality. I'm reminded of a very touching experience that is recounted by-- was recounted rather by the noted psychoanalyst Karen Horney. She tells the experience that one time there was a patient in a mental hospital who was so far regressed that she had no contact with reality. For a year, day in and day out, when Karen Horney walked through that ward, she went out of her way to say good morning and to say a kind word to that patient. For a year the patient never

answered or spoke a word, but simply looked out stunned in the distance as if she could not hear, was not hearing. One day that patient somehow found a glimmer of renewed health, a glimmer came into her eye, her face lit up, and she answered Karen Horney and engaged her in conversation and this was the beginning of her recovery. And she said to her, to Dr. Horney afterwards, that "had it not been that day in and day out you had faith in me, you could visualize that someday I might recover, I would never have recovered. Even though you thought I did not hear you, I did hear you and I was trying to see whether you would reject me like everyone I had known my life or even if I rebuffed you, you would continue to say good morning to me and finally you persevered until it reached the point where you reassured me that there was one person on

this world that loved me, that had faith in me, and that was enough of a beginning." Sometimes if we can assure another human being that we are one person in their life who loves them just for who they are, it may be the beginning of great things in that person's life. And somehow this experience of Karen Horney, though is an extreme example, suggests to me something that we all ought to be conscious of, that somehow we can see the possibility within other human beings, the joy that is there that beneath the surface the creative possibilities that are there, we may somehow turn even the tents of arrogance, of cruelty in life, of misfortune, into the goodly tents, into the land, the spiritual landscape that overflows with milk and honey. We Rabbis and ministers often have occasion on situations of sorrow to read the 23rd Psalm and it

has almost become associated in our minds as a psalm of sorrow, as a psalm of despair. And yet if we read the words of the psalm it is not that at all. It contains that magnificent and joyous phrase "my cup runneth over." We have to realize that that psalm is essentially a psalm of joyous triumphant faith, even though "I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I know that thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff, they comfortest me." And it is the psalm that is to experienced tragedy in sorrow who said that "I will know when thy visitation is past, that thou comfortest me and I draw waters of joy from the wellsprings of salvation." These were men of tragedy, of sorrow, the men who wrote psalms like that and yet somehow realized that beyond the sorrow was the joy. This is significant in terms of the whole approach to death and life in Judaism.

The Kaddish memorial prayer which we recite in tribute, in commemoration of our dear departed at the close of our morning and evening services is not a prayer which deals with grief and sorrow at all, it is rather a doxology, it is a hymn of praise to the living God. Judaism emphasizes that life rises above death, that love is stronger than hate, and conquers death as it is expressed in the Song of Songs. The faith of this statement in our Torah portion "I will give you a land overflowing with milk and honey" is expressed in a beautiful prayer in our prayer book "oh thou who givest meaning to the strivings of men, attune our hearts for communion with thee. How often when everything else fails us do we yearn for thee. In the stillness of the night, in the press of the crowd, in the agony of inner conflict, we bow our heads and lo, thou art in our hearts

and we are at peace. We know not, oh Lord, whether the gifts for which we ask are for our good, whether our trials and tribulations are not blessings in disguise, whether even the fragment of our shattered hopes and love we not ministered the up-building of other lives in the fulfillment of thine unfathomable plan. So we do not pray unto thee to make our lives easier, to give us happiness without alloy, rather we pray thee to aid us to be uncomplaining and unafraid. Teach us to face life with faith and courage that we may see the blessings hidden away even in its discords and struggles. Help us to wrest victory from the discipline of pain, may we realize that life calls us not merely to enjoy the fatness of the earth, but to exult in height attained after the toil of climbing. Thus will our darkness be illumined by thy light and our weakness made strong by thy strength, lifting us above fear and defeat and

sustaining our steps with an immortal hope. Praise be thou Lord, the stay and trust of the righteous." This has always been one of my favorite prayers because I believe it summarizes the believing faith of the Jew. One may see life in two ways really. One may see life, often I have occasion to refer to as a cry or as a song, and the basis for that observation comes from these stories of the Exodus we read on these weeks. It is interesting that when the people of Israel was freed from Egyptian slavery, that the Bible reads "then did the people sing a song unto God." What occasion was there for singing? Certainly a perilous, torturesome road was behind them and an equally difficult road before them. But yet the people could sing unto God, they could sing because of the possibilities of the future, because of the belief that

some day after years of struggle they would reach this land overflowing with milk and honey. And it is striking because often when the people of Israel call upon God in the Bible this word, "and they sung unto God" is not used but rather "they cried unto God." But yet in this moment of exultant joy when they embark upon a path which may be difficult and treacherous but will bring them to this land flowing with milk and honey, no longer do they cry but they sing. There are those people in life that remain living their life on the level of a cry, of a whimper of despair. There others that regardless of treacherous misfortunes and sorrow raise their life to the level of a song, struggle through the darkness to the light, realizing that the discords and struggles of life helped them wrest victory from the discipline of pain. May it then be our prayerful hope,

as we re-read these words, the perennial tradition of a land overflowing with milk and honey that our own personal lives we reach that kind of a landscape. Amen [Host] You have been listening to Portion of the Week, the Bible as read in the synagogue with Rabbinic commentary, this evening by Rabbi Joseph H. Levine, assistant spiritual leader of the Central Synagogue of Nassau County in Rockville Center, New York. The cantor for Portion of the Week is Eliezer Krumbein of the congregation Beth Shalom of Kings Bay, Brooklyn, New York. [Singing in Hebrew] [singing] [singing] [singing]

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