Parashat Chukat

            Shabbat Shalom! This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Chukat, focuses a lot on water: how it nourishes, how it purifies, how it can be monetized, how it can be withheld. It starts out with ritual laws commanding a cleansing done with “living waters” after a person has come into contact with a corpse. It continues with the narrative of the wells drying up after Miriam’s death, and the plight of a thirsty people wandering through a desert. The arguable climax of this part of the narrative is the infamous tale of God telling Moses to speak to a rock that water may spring forth, but instead he strikes the rock – twice – and speaks condescendingly to the thirsty Children of Israel as he does so. As a result, he is forbidden from entering the Holy Land. The parasha continues on from there about the attempts to enter the Land, and finding barriers from the people already living there. Moses promises them that they will not drink from the wells (which may mean, “we will not take your resources”, or some rabbis argue may mean “we will not drink from our own well, but promise to buy sustenance from you and support your local economy”). Yet, they are denied and forced into violent conflict and more wandering as they seek to enter into their Promised Land. 

            On the matter of the “living waters,” the Chassidic Masters say, “In other words, a spring which runs dry once in seven years is considered ‘false’ even when there is water flowing in it. This is lesson in the meaning of truth: something which exists under certain circumstances but ceases under other circumstances is not ‘true,’ even when it does exist.” The flip side of this also is that some things are still true even when we cannot see them, or try to ignore their reality. In reading this this commentary, I was reminding of the anonymous Holocaust-adjacent poem, “I believe in the sun even when it is not shining, I believe in love even when feeling it not, I believe in God even when God is silent.” Goodness, light, love, and the Divine spirit are present even when we feel at our lowest, and unfortunately, injustice, darkness, and brokenness are present in the world even when we try to look away from it. 

            On the matter of the attempts to enter the Holy Land and being met with resistance, Rabbi Shai Held reminds us that the main lesson of the Torah is, “Be kind to the stranger for you were strangers.” Although we most often hear this in connection with the experiences of Egypt, it is true here too as our people seek to resettle in the land that has been always been their Promised Land, a piece of their familial tales. We remember to be kind to travelers, for as travelers our lives were made even more difficult than need be. 

            Our country is currently facing a crisis with immigration. Due to many instabilities throughout the world, some of which our own foreign policies have contributed to, we have seen an increase in refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, people seeking safety in these lands sometimes without the access to the proper channels of legal resettlement. As Jews with a long history and varied cultural memory of being wanderers, refugees, exiles, outsiders in lands we thought of as part of our own, it is our responsibility to acknowledge the injustices happening now. In some of the detention centers, which primarily and racially target Central and South American immigrants, people are being denied, among other basic human necessities, fresh waters. There are no “living waters” with which to cleanse, and in some cases, people have reported being told to drink out of the toilet as drinking water is withheld. These camps are just one aspect of the wider concerns of American hospitality to immigrants and Jewish values of justice and truth-telling. They happen to be very distressing to me, but there are so many areas to get involved with these wider issues. We must use our cultural memories as Jews to be a teaching tool, to learn from history, face the dark truths we’d rather pretend don’t exist, and do what we can to change the situation going forward. 

            Thankfully, at Ner Shalom, we are already doing this as a community. We have signed our Good Neighbor partnership, and just this week had a training with the staff liaison at Lutheran Social Services. We will be settling a refugee family from Afghanistan, showing the hospitality that is denied to the Israelites in this week’s Torah portion, and bringing the Divine light and love of Judaism into the holy work of welcoming the strangers. If you weren’t able to attend the training, I hope you will still find ways to plug in and help. It is a big task we as a community have taken on, but with the help of our own Good Neighbors at Dar al Noor, and with all hands on deck from within Ner Shalom, it won’t be too much work for any of us to accomplish. 

            This Shabbat, may you feel the sunshine on your skin, have plenty of water to cool you down and slake your thirst in the hot sun, may you feel the love of community, the friendliness of strangers, and may you share your Divine Spark with the world. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.