Moving is hard. Moving the Israelites, well, even harder. Just ask Moses. This week’s portion details some of the challenges and frustrations of Moses and even includes his own brother and sister complaining (chapter 12). Interesting also is the fact that as Moses despairs as to his role, he again seeks the council of “seventy elders”.
I want to look at the beginning of Numbers 11. A usual translation of the beginning words has that “The people took to complaining bitterly before God”. The Hebrew word “c’mit’on’ninim” is rendered at complaining. Now in his “Living Each Week”, Rabbi Abraham Twerski (z’l) makes the assertion that this can be translated as “But the people were as if in mourning”. Now Twerski goes off in another direction, but when reading this it struck me as relevant to what many of us may be feeling now. We are living through times that many of us never considered. Jews are being killed in the streets of Washington, burned at a mall in Boulder, Marines are patrolling the streets of Los Angeles and Israel’s war with Gaza/Hamas is creating untold challenges for our community. Do we mourn for this? How, as many have asked, did we get here? Do many of us “mourn” for all that we seemed to have lost?
On Monday the 9th we co-facilitated a monthly webinar for our generation on issues that are impacting us as we grow older. The current situation was a main topic of conversation. For ninety minutes a rather diverse conversation took place, and, in the end a theme did arise. That theme was hope! What a profoundly Jewish idea, for even in moments of great despair, Jews hope. This really is the messianic message of our tradition, we never lose hope, hope that someday things will be better. So, let me suggest that as we all try to make some sense of the upside-down world in which we live, that we not forget our tradition’s foundational belief in hope. Hope can be translated into action, as many have and will do.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Richard F. Address
Rabbi Richard F. Address, D.Min, is the Founder and Director of www.jewishsacredaging.com. Rabbi Address served for over three decades on staff of the Union for Reform Judaism; first as a Regional Director and then, beginning in 1997, as Founder and Director of the URJ’s Department of Jewish Family Concerns and served as a specialist and consultant for the North American Reform Movement in the areas of family related programming. Rabbi Address was ordained from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1972 and began his rabbinic career in Los Angeles congregations. He also served as a part time rabbi for Beth Hillel in Carmel, NJ while regional director and, after his URJ tenure, served as senior rabbi of Congregation M’kor Shalom in Cherry Hill, NJ from 2011-2014.
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