Parashat B’ha’alotecha (Numbers 8:1 – 12:16)

Reflections on Torah portion – Rabbi Andy Vogel

A Hasidic teaching has the Ba’al Shem Tov remarking, “How full of wonders is the world!  And yet, we take our little hand, cover our eyes, and see nothing!”  When the Israelites complain in this week’s Torah portion that they miss the delicacies they enjoyed in Egypt, the “fish we ate freely, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic” (Num. 11:5-6), they are living examples of how we can choose to misremember the past and block our vision of the world.  In Egypt, of course, they did not eat fish for free; the Midrash (Sifre B’midbar #87) reminds us that they were not given even free straw to make their quota of bricks, so harsh was their treatment in slavery.

But the Israelites have chosen to block their vision by closing off miraculous possibilities.  “We have nothing at all!  Nothing but this manna to look to!” (Numbers 11:6)  Manna, as Jewish tradition has seen it, could taste like whatever food its consumer had an appetite for.  All the Israelites had to do was imagine, and the manna they would eat would satisfy them.  Imagination can provide vision where, instead, we are blinded by complaining.

At this Torah portion, which begins weeks of stories of the Israelites’ complaining, we ask ourselves:  What blocks us from seeing the many possibilities of a better world?  If we were to have those obstacles removed, how could we envision a community of holy living, and a society that is just?

            - Rabbi Andy Vogel

Sinai Update, June 4 – June 10, 2006

Parashat Naso (Numbers, 4:21-7:89)

Reflections on Torah portion – Rabbi Andy Vogel

My young cousin, age 14, sat in the barber's chair about a year ago to cut off more than 11 inches of her long beautiful hair with one swipe of the scissors.  In doing so, she was fulfilling a vow of hers:  to grow her hair out long enough so her own hair could be made into a wig which could be given to a child cancer patient balding from treatment.  The organization that facilitates this, "Locks of Love," which takes real, human hair of 11 inches or more and creates wigs specifically for young people dealing with cancer, is providing a great mitzvah opportunity that changes the quality of life for kids on chemotherapy.

"Locks of Love" echoes the spirit of this week's Torah portion, Naso, which discusses the Nazirite, a person (man or woman) who makes a vow, and, in so doing, takes it upon him/herself to grow out his or her hair until the period of the vow is completed -- which could be as long as seven years.  Then, at the end of the vow, she "is to shave her consecrated head, and to take the hair of her consecrated head, and put it on the fire" of the altar in the Temple (Numbers 6:18).  Her hair is holy, a by-product of the Nazirite's vow.  Today, with their own vows to grow out their hair for the holy purpose of easing the ordeal of cancer treatments, my young cousin and her teenage peers are living out their own modern interpretation of the Nazirite, with their own "holy hair," elevating their lives to connection with the God Who comforts those in need.