Chukat 2014: Doubt, Powerlessness, and the Presbyterian vote to divest June 27, 2014

In this week’s Torah portion, Chukat, in the Book of Numbers, the Israelites are nearing the end of their 40 year trek through the wilderness. The community has arrived in a place named Kadesh, where Miriam dies.

Immediately after her death, the community is without water. They rise up against Moses and Aaron, saying, “Why have you brought the Lord’s congregation into this wilderness for us and our beasts to die there? Why did you make us leave Egypt to bring us to this wretched place, a place with no grain or figs or vines or pomegranates? There is not even water to drink!”[1]

From this rant you would never imagine that the Israelites are actually about to see the Promised Land that they will soon enter – a land with grain and figs and vines and pomegranates. They are so close! And yet, at this moment, they feel so powerless that they turn against Moses and Aaron and protest having ever been liberated from Egyptian slavery in the first place.
For forty years they have had enough water, and food in the form of manna has rained down from the sky every day. But the moment this difficulty arises, they don’t even consider turning towards Moses or towards God to ask for help. Instead, they strike out against their leaders with harsh accusations, doubting the entire enterprise of leaving Egypt for the Promised Land.

This powerlessness and doubt then takes hold of Moses. God gives him a solution: “Take the rod. . . . and before their very eyes order the rock to yield its water.” But Moses doubts God’s ability to follow through, and he turns on the people. “Listen you rebels, shall WE get water for you out of this rock?”, he demands. And Moses strikes the rock twice with the rod.[2]

God then informs Moses that because he did not have enough trust to affirm God’s sanctity in the midst of the people, Moses will die in the wilderness and will not be allowed to set foot in the Promised Land.

What an excruciatingly unfair punishment for Moses. But if we step out of the story for a moment, we might be able to see something going on here that is familiar.

The dynamics of doubt. We’ve all been there. Times in our lives when we feel so powerless in the face of a challenge that we doubt our original intention and consider turning back. Maybe we’re dealing with illness. Or long-term unemployment. Or we’re facing a huge task – perhaps preparing to become a Bat Mitzvah. And it gets hard. It gets painful. We can’t seem to make progress, or we’ve run into too many dead ends, and we being to doubt whether we are cut out for any of this.

This is all normal. For us, or Moses or the Israelites, feelings of powerlessness or doubt are not the problem. The question is – what do we do with these feelings? Can we even be aware that we’re having these feelings so that we can act mindfully?

At a recent Jewish Mindfulness retreat, one of my teachers, Rabbi Joanna Katz, brought us a great teaching about doubt. In mindfulness practice, doubt is one of the classic hindrances to an open heart. It is a mind state that gets in the way of acting skillfully in the world.
Joanna taught us, though, that the goal is not to get rid of the doubt. Hindrances are intrinsic to being born into this body. When we are in a state of great adversity and feel doubt, the first thing to do is simply to name it. “This is doubt.” Once we do this, we can then turn towards the hindrance – turn towards the feeling of doubt – and surround it with kind attention.

Once we can notice the feeling, we remember that it is temporary, and then we can choose to return to our original intention – whether that is to keep going for treatment for illness, or to keep looking for a job, or to keep practicing that Torah reading. Or, we might decide to change our intention – to get a second opinion, to take a break from the job search, to step away from the Hebrew for a bit. The key is to be aware of the doubt and then to act mindfully rather than slipping into the small mind that leads us to strike rocks or turn on our heels and rush back to Egypt.

We all have times of doubt, whether on a personal or a communal level. Ever since this Spring, when the Obama administration and Secretary of State John Kerry failed to bring the Israelis and Palestinians to a peace agreement, I have been filled with doubt. I have spent my whole adult life engaging with this issue – advocating for a negotiated 2-state solution, learning Arabic and getting to know Palestinians, working on human rights issues. Never have I felt as powerless as I do right now.

The tendency is for that powerlessness to devolve into doubt. Doubt that the whole pursuit of a negotiated peace agreement and a 2-state solution is worthwhile or that it is even the right answer. Unfortunately, when we allow that doubt to paralyze us or to move us backwards, other movements can gain power.

The BDS movement to Boycott, Divest and seek Sanctions against Israel is a movement on the very progressive end of the spectrum that is gaining power. And this week it took center stage as the Presbyterian church – USA, or PC-USA decided at its national assembly to divest from three American companies whom they perceive to be complicit in the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people. This resolution shows how the power of this mainline Protestant church is weakening in its resolve to fend off the pressure to join this BDS movement.

The church tried to hold on to their principles – their resolution does reaffirm Israel’s right to exist and confirms their commitment to a 2-state solution. The language of the resolution tries to distance their decision from the BDS movement as a whole. And the vote was very, very close. But for the American Jewish community, many of us who have good relationships with Presbyterian colleagues, this was a painful and humiliating move. The Presbyterian Church has opened the door to more pressure to get more involved with BDS in the future.

I am proud of the President of our Union for Reform Judaism, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, who courageously spoke out against this resolution at the Presbyterian convention[3]. Rabbi Jacobs made enormous efforts to reach out to the Church and even invited his Presbyterian counterparts to meet jointly with him and with Prime Minister Netanyahu to advocate for an end to settlement expansion, to end the occupation of the West Bank, and to come back to the negotiating table. His speech was probably a large factor in making the vote on this resolution so close.

Rabbi Jacob’s fortitude and our Reform movement’s strong response has helped me to keep breathing in the midst of my own doubt. Perhaps the Israelis and Palestinians are not yet ready to return to peace talks. But I have made a commitment to myself to lovingly hold my doubt while returning again and again to my intention and my prayer – that peace must come. I’m not ready to lose my love for Israel and strike the rock. And I’m not ready to turn on my heels and head to a place where 2 states – a Jewish state and a Palestinian state aren’t even on the horizon.

By the end of this week’s Torah portion, the Israelites rediscover Miriam’s well, and they are refreshed by its water. Perhaps here in the United States, we can tap our own wellsprings of hope as we continue to work towards a day when our Israeli and Palestinian brothers and sisters will finally make peace.

[1] Num. 20:2-5
[2] Num. 20: 8-12
[3] http://blogs.rj.org/blog/2014/06/19/rabbi-rick-jacobs-bds-letter-to-delegates-at-the-presbyterian-church-usa-general-assembly/
http://urj.org/about/union/leadership/rabbijacobs/?syspage=article&item_id=112783
http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/bestoftv/2014/06/22/exp-pcusa-israel.cnn&video_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Furj.org%2Fabout%2Funion%2Fleadership%2Frabbijacobs%2F