Some months ago I wrote a piece about privilege and needs (part 1 and part 2) where I explored what I see as the root causes of attachment to privilege. Here I want to look again at privilege with a different aim. I want to shed some light on the way privilege operates on a societal level, and how it comes to be so invisible. I also want to speak about the challenges of invisible power relations as they play out within groups.

Understanding Privilege
Privilege is a form of invisible power. Sometimes privilege also provides us with structural power in direct relationship with another. In the past, this form of privilege was legalized and prevalent. For example, until not that long ago, men had the legal right to have sex with their wives, and consent was not necessary. Such forms of formal privilege have largely been removed, because the official sanctioning of privilege is no longer socially acceptable.

As a result, in recent decades the structural nature of privilege is much more invisible and indirect. As a person with fairly light skin, for example, I have access to untold number of privileges that are mine to enjoy and which are not available to people with darker skin. I can, as a very simple example, go in and out of stores without having security officers look at my movements. If I stand in the street and wave a taxi, it’s likely to stop for me. If I break the law, I am likely to get a lighter sentence than a person who belongs to other groups.

Those of us with privilege are often unaware of the legal or social norms that give us access to such resources simply by virtue of being members of a certain group, without any particular action or even awareness on our part. It’s easy to assume that everyone would have the same access, or to not even think about it at all. Even when our privilege provides us direct individual advantage at the direct expense of another individual, the direct relationship may be hidden under socially sanctioned norms such as individual merit which replace the more explicit forms of the past. A particularly acute example of such relationships occurs both in the educational system and in the workplace.

And so it is that these forms of privilege are largely invisible to those of us who have them unless we take proactive action to learn about them. Those without such access, on the other hand, are usually acutely aware of their lack of access. This creates a gap in experience which is usually excruciating for members of both groups.

by Alan Briskin

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (Creative Commons)

In the Jewish tradition, there is a song beloved on Passover. It’s called Dayenu (pronounced DI A NU) and its meaning is that even in the most difficult of times, it is critical that we appreciate what we have–that what has been done for us is sufficient. Loosely translated, dayenu means “it would have been enough.” It is a song sung to God and I remember this song more than others because on Passover, as a child, I sung it with such exuberance, banging my fist on the table and screaming at the top of my lungs, I was asked to leave.

These memories come back to me as I read Bernie Sanders, the son of Jewish immigrants, who also happens to be Vermont’s U.S. Senator. He is an independent and socialist and I suspect others things outside the normal way business is done. If the Senate could ask him to leave, I’m sure they would, because he deals in solutions that nobody wants to hear.

Make July 4 INTER-DEPENDENCE DAY! Do July 4 with a community of people who are not into the reactionary nationalist rah-rah, but into seriously thinking about and celebrating what is good in America! If you happen to be in the Bay Area July 4, come to the Tikkun, NSP, Beyt Tikkun picnic! If not, you can read and utilize in any way you can our guide to ideas to share at a picnic or July 4th celebration of your own, no matter how small! Just go to: http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/an-interdependence-day-celebration-for-july-4.

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2 p.m. Strawberry Creek, Berkeley 1260 Allston Way, Between Bancroft Way and Addison Street at West Street – Southwest Berkeley

The Supreme Court’s June 27 narrow 5-4 decision called McComish v. Bennett continues the Roberts Court’s retreat on fairness in elections, striking down trigger provisions that allowed publicly financed candidates in Arizona to receive additional funds for their campaigns when their spending was outstripped by their privately financed opponents.

Brenda Wright, Director of Demos’ Democracy Program, commented, “The Court’s ruling distorts the First Amendment into a caricature that would be unrecognizable to its creators. The very purpose of the First Amendment is to encourage public debate and dialogue in the political sphere. The Roberts Court has turned this tradition on its head by ruling that the First Amendment should shield privately financed candidates against any response by their opponents.”

This is why state actions are not sufficient–anything re-empowering ordinary citizens by a state legislature will be declared unconstitutional. And the Supreme Court’s decision also shows that merely overturning Citizens’ United will not stop the Supreme Court–only a Constitutional Amendment which explicitly mandates public funding of elections, forbids any other form of money in elections, requires equal and free time for major candidates in major media, and imposes environmental and social responsibility requirements on corporations would actually make a difference. Everything less is futile.

The White House and congressional leaders are in final negotiations to raise the debt ceiling. Congress must raise the debt ceiling so the U.S. government can pay its current obligations. Yet in order to secure enough votes to raise the debt ceiling, some members of Congress are withholding their vote unless dramatic cuts are made to federal spending–including devastating and long-term cuts to programs for hungry and poor people.

Every deficit-reduction package of the last 30 years–under Republican and Democratic leaders–has exempted key programs for hungry and poor people from cuts. We must protect these programs now.

Final negotiations between President Obama and leaders in Congress are happening now. Call your senators through our special toll-free number (1-800-826-3688) and ask them to urge Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to create a circle of protection around funding for programs for hungry and poor people in the United States and abroad in the bill to raise the debt ceiling.

I’ve come a long way from the moment on a New York City bus in 1969 or ’70, when a junior member of the sociology faculty at the City College of New York (CCNY), whom I was friendly with, told me (a student) that he was active in the “GLF” (the Gay Liberation Front). I vividly recall physically shaking as I realized that he was gay.

This had to have been shortly after the Stonewall riot or rebellion, at which gay people famously resisted police harassment. It was this event on June 28, 1969 that gave birth to what is annually celebrated around that date, in the name of “Gay Pride.”

For the last couple of years, I’ve been spending part of my High Holy Day observances at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah (CBST), the mostly LGBT synagogue in Manhattan, with friends of various sexual orientations. CBST happens to host awesomely beautiful and inspiring services on these solemn and festive days, for which it rents large public venues to accommodate several thousand people, free of charge, most of whom are not members and not gay or otherwise “Queer.”

On the historic night of Friday, June 24, I attended a “Pride Shabbat” service at CBST, drawn especially by the prospect of seeing Cynthia Nixon (of “Sex and the City” fame) speak about her tireless efforts to lobby the New York State Senate for passage of the same-sex marriage law. It was from her that I heard that enough Republican senators had declared their support to finally guarantee its passage that very night; and lo, this came to pass.

by Jim Knapton

Fourteen trillion dollars is a lot of money. That is the size of our national debt. Someone said recently that if it were in five-dollar bills placed end to end, they would almost reach the moon. That’s what the USA owes the world, from the newest born to the oldest still with us: $40,000 each! Yet we’re at war in Afghanistan wasting billions on what? Fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda apparently. If we are the greatest military machine the world has ever known and they are a bunch of “desert derelicts” (quoting Mark Steyn’s delicate words in America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It), after a hundred months of conflict, why is President Obama “winding it down”? Isn’t it because we can’t afford it? In other words, thirty-six years since the end of the Vietnam War, haven’t we lost again?

I am sure President Obama doesn’t wish to see it that way. Motivated by pressure from the military-industrial complex, whose only interest is its own profit and expansion, “benign imperialism” – or what George W. Bush proclaimed as “ensuring democracy” – is the fool’s gold of our foreign policy. Worse still, it is the cornerstone of our self-made slide into an unimaginable economic black hole, brought on by our shameless waste of resources and feigned ignorance of our own internal corruption. Come to think of it, hasn’t weaponry become the only substantial export we have left?

As we sat in the “story time” area of our shop yesterday, working on a curriculum about service learning, a neighbor stopped in and thrust a news article into our hands. She was distraught about the news that Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst / presidential daily briefer and now anti-war activist, was getting ready to board a ship sailing to Gaza. This ship, named The Audacity of Hope, is one of a group of ships forming a flotilla to bring attention to and potentially break the blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip. Today the White House issued a warning to the nearly 40 Americans planning to sail on that ship that the U.S. would not only do nothing to protect them, but might prosecute them if they do break the blockade and survive to return to the United States. This won’t be the first time people risk harm, prosecution, or death for something they really believe in. Nor, thank goodness will it be the last.

I. The Politics of the Spies

The Israelites are nearing their destination, and the decision is made (by whom? there are two alternatives given–in Devarim the people demand it, but here, it seems to be an ambivalent command from Gd) to send spies to check out the new land, Canaan. The spies secretly enter Canaan for forty days, and return with large fruits and sordid tales of unconquerable giants. Calev and Yehoshua take the minority position up against the other ten spies, but it is too late- the people’s spirit is broken, and a punishment, forty more years of desert time, is immediately meted out.

What went wrong? Why did the spies, all leaders of the community, show such a remarkable failure of nerve (wags might argue that this is an archetype of leadership throughout the generations)? On the other hand, the Yismach Yisrael asks: What is so tragic about fear? So the people were a bit afraid. Why such an extreme punishment? After all, we have several narratives surrounding loss of nerve, most famously the patriarch Yaakov being “afraid”, and no one there received any punishment!

Thus, there must be more to the story than the linear outline in the text; something deeper than simple fear was operative in the spies’ story. The Zohar suggests that underlying their distorted report was a realpolitik intention of prolonging the desert stay, that is, maintaining the “status quo”. The spies, currently the political leadership of the desert people, sensed that settling the land would require an entirely different type of leadership, and as is usually the case with politicians, they were not interested in early retirement. R. Tzadok Hacohen of Lublin, the Avodat Yisrael, and the Mei Hashiloach, follow this line, with some interesting alterations. The Avodat Yisrael and the Mei Shiloach attempt to temper the Zohar’s more cynical approach, by suggesting that the attempt to prolong the journey, and maintain the current leadership, was out of a concern for Moshe; they wanted to “save” Moshe, who they knew, apparently, would not enter the land. The Avodat Yisrael, states that the blessing that Moshe gives Yehoshua, in order to protect him from sinning, was due to Moshe suspecting that Yehoshua might fall into this conspiracy, beings so loyal to Moshe’s tenure that he would lie in order to keep the people in the desert and prolong Moshe’s leadership. The Mei Hashiloach (who extends this position of desiring a prolongation of Moshe’s rule to all the spies) uses an interesting phrase, calling this an “averah l’shma”, a well intentioned sin, (a phrase with an interesting history).

II. The Ethics of the Spies

R. Tzadok has a very surprising reading of this Zoharic approach, a position which, at least the first half would have been cited with approval in the desert version of “Tikkun” four thousand years ago. He explains that the spies sensed they were not the leadership fit to lead the conquest of Canaan- not because they were looking for job security, rather, the spies sensed that the inhabitants of Canaan at this time were not guilty enough to merit genocide; they didn’t feel that they as the leadership, or the people of Israel as a totality, had any right to supplant the native inhabitants of the land. This is what is meant by the Zohar’s teaching–the spies felt that there must be some other leadership pending that might attain some other kind of spiritual situation which could in some way justify the extermination and replacement of the Canaanites. In the end, though, R. Zadok argues that they should have simply followed orders, which is a disturbing denouement to an otherwise progressive teaching.

The Tiferet Shelomo of Radomsk presents a reading that also stands as a proper critique of ideologies that claim to know best what is good for the “people”. He argues, a la Rousseau, that the spies decided that they knew better what was for the good of the people than did the people themselves, or Gd for that matter. The spies noted how bountiful the land was, and what the native cultures were like, so the spies concluded that the minute the Israelites would settle there, they would become ensnared in the temptations of materiality and “the good life”. This would lead the people to become wicked, and similar to the native inhabitants. This is what they meant in the verse “a land that consumes its inhabitants”- in the spies’ view the glory of the land would making the people earthy and desirous of material comforts. This was message lurking behind the big fruit they brought, to show the people that this beautiful fruit will be the cause of their spiritual downfall. Calev’s reply, (which is essentially the Radomsker’s message), is that if the people’s will is turned to Gd, (a rereading of im hafets banu hashem as “if our will is Gd”) material success will not be a corrupting influence, and yachol nuchal lah, it can be overcome and sublated. The spies had no right to decide that the nation was not ready for a better life. The approach must be, if it is possible to overcome desire and live correctly in the land, then the challenge should be accepted (would more lives have been saved before WWII if the leadership had thought this way about leaving Europe?). This willingness to face the challenge is also contained in the Yismach Yisrael’s answer to the question with which we started: why is this episode read as a sin worthy of punishment as opposed to other narratives of fear. His answer: the fear mentioned of Yaakov did not interfere with his actions. Despite his fear, he strode forward. Fear is real, but refusing to act properly as a result of fear is a behavioural aberration that must be confronted and cured.

II. The Gaze of the Spies

After presenting several approaches as to what motivated the spies, it remains unclear as to what it was that Moshe wanted to achieve in sending the spies. A “transformative” approach seen in the Hassidic writers implies that Moshe sent the spies because he wanted them to purify the land prior to the arrival of the entire people. A textual support comes from the odd phrase “la-tur et haaretz”, to spy out the land, which they read as coming from the root “Torah”; as if Moshe (here I borrow from hip-hop English) wanted the spies to “Torah- up” the land, to transform the land via Torah prior to the arrival of people, a view also presented regarding the mission of the sons of Yaakov to the land of Egypt. This approach is found already in the Ar”i and Ramchal; in the former the twelve spies represented the accumulated will of the twelve tribes (a reading consistent with the narrative in Devarim in which the people initiate this mission). In the Ramchal, Moshe rounds up the representatives of the tribes in order to transform the people through the spies and their mission. Either way, the idea is not to discover anything about the land, but to act upon the land, in their spying it out. Their gaze was to transform the land in a positive manner. At the beginning of the narrative, Moshe gives a rather detailed set of instructions as to what the spies were to investigate: go up through the south, climb the mountains, and check out the land- is the land fertile or sparse- are there trees or not- what are the people like, are they strong? Along the lines of this transformative approach, the Noam Elimelech explains that these instructions were not, as we think, things to passively observe about the land, but rather, ways to intentionally look upon the land.

Before we getting into the specifics of this approach, the underlying concept needs some clarification. What does it mean to transform by looking? Isn’t vision always a passive phenomenon, a sensory datum, an outside to inside transmission? How can we act and effect by merely looking?

This matter has become central in several strands of contemporary thought, particularly developed within the new field of “cinema studies”. The discussion goes back to Sartre, who argued that “the look” is a critical component of human interrelationships, which he felt cycled through a sadism-masochism polarity (his version of Hegel’s lordship and bondage), and axis of freedom versus subjugation and shame. The look is generated by the freedom of the for-itself, but when the looker becomes himself objectified, as in his rather sordid example of the voyeur-caught-looking-through-the-keyhole, then there is the shame of becoming himself subject to the look of the other. To Sartre, the only possible relationship between people is one of subjugation, “my being-an-object is the only possible relation between me and the Other”(Being and Nothingness 364), and the thus the recognition of being objectified by another’s glance can be learned from as a means by which to subjugate in return- “I grasp the other’s look at the very center of my act as the solidification and alienation of my own possibilities”(B&N 263).

Lacan argues that Sartre has it backwards. Without getting too detailed here, the argument is that all looking is part of the “scopic drive”, a look driven by lack (in simplest terms, the look comes the baby’s seeking out “where did Mother go?”). The “gaze” does not merely emerge out of pleasure seeking, as in Sartre, but is a critical part of the signifying and socializing system in which the child learns that it is an individual, separate from the mother. On the one hand, this derives from the recognition that the mother is not part of the child, and on the other hand, gaze is a function of the mirror stage, in which self-identity is learned by seeing oneself reflected in the responses of others (what sounds and actions makes onlooking people smile, etc). Thus, the gaze is a search for the missing ideal, always outside the self, “what I look at is never what I want to see” and at the same time, “you never look at me from the place from which I see you” (Four Fundamental Concepts pp 103). The gaze is the way in which we construct our self image, to put it simply. Zizek , Lacan’s popularizer, parallels this infant activity with the need of teenagers to emulate pop stars, the concern to appear fashionable, etc. We look in order to know how we should appear. The look derives from a lack, from the lack built in at the outset of our self identity, because our individuality from the start was derived from the gaze of others. This gaze, then, is a social construction, in which we ourselves are constructed, that is, in Lacan’s terminology, it is also a “showing” (in French this works better–le donner a voir, which means also to “give a look”) and at the same time it reflects an innate deficiency; we look to fulfill that which we are missing, that is, the place of that lost object, that lost fantasy. This approach was read into film theory, influentially by Mulvey, as background for an argument that the gaze of the camera in cinema is a male gaze, supplementing the male fantasy, and that male lack is fulfilled by the image of the woman in film.

Perhaps, within our commentators, there is a response to a challenge mentioned by Lacan. In an aside, Lacan muses that since all gaze is appetitive and related to a lack, thus it makes sense “when one thinks of the universality of the function of the evil eye, that there is no trace anywhere of a good eye, of an eye that blesses”. The Noam Elimelech “responds” that the detailed instructions given by Moshe are meant to offer a context from which to gaze out at the land, a restructuring of their outlook, a means to a “good eye, an eye that blesses”, as it were. “Go to the Negev”, which in Kabbalistic symbolism refers to supernal wisdom, and “climb the mountain”, the mountain being a Talmudic metaphor for the evil inclination, and from that vantage point the look will positively transform the land. His disciple, the Bat Ayin, offers that the verse stating, hechazak hu harafeh, is lacking the word “im”, meaning “or”, which literally translates: “they who are strong they are weak”. Thus, he explains, the phrase is actually a command: make the letter Heh, that is, the Shekhina, that is in a state of “strength”, of judgement, into a Heh rafeh, the divine attribute of love and mercy. Thus, with their gaze, the spies were meant to transform the spaces into which they entered. How you look at something determines how it will be for you.

In fact, the inability to rise to this challenge (oh, how achieving a positive outlook is such a difficult challenge) was the root of the mission’s failure. The Kotzker asks why the spies deserved such punishment if after all, they only reported what they saw. Did they fabricate anything? They merely related the harsh reality, after all, no different than any political columnist. The key to their failure is determined by the Kotzker as being contained in one verse: 13:33- “There we saw giants, and compared to them we were like insects- and so we were in their eyes”. The Kotzker pinpoints their failure within this final clause. You were vermin in their eyes? How could you possibly know that? Perhaps they thought you were the most frightening warriors they ever saw? Thus, they revealed their underlying subtext, which was one of cowardice and weakness, one which supports a reading in which the goal from the outset was to demoralize the people. They revealed, following Lacan, what the deficiency was in their gaze, thus also revealing why they were not the right leadership or people for entering the land. “How” you see determines the kind of society you will construct; it is worth noting the stress that the Baal Shem Tov placed on an active “looking” in which even apparent sins and flaws of those around you must be read and interpreted in a positive manner. The “judgements” and “conclusions” you derive from the way you look upon the world are more determinative of what the world you inhabit consists of, and if it appears all bad, it will “be” all bad. If your world and all in it are beautiful, the world you inhabit will, perhaps, be so, in a corresponding manner.

In closing, I would just suggest that perhaps this is why the perasha ends with the commandment relating to tzitzith, the ritual fringes, in which we are informed that “you shall see them and you shall the remember all the mitzvoth and do them”- the BT Menachot 43: explains- gaze leads to memory, and memory to action. I would suggest that “memory” here is the phenomenological starting point from which we structure our outlook, and thus, this realignment can bring us to transformative praxis.

How did the Earth Get Involved in Politics?

Just as the creator seeks solitude, the destroyer must be constantly surrounded by people, witnesses to his efficacy –Walter Benjamin, The Destructive Character

This week’s perasha is concerned with the revolt of Korach, a leading Levite, against the desert leadership of Moshe and Aharon. The story is a bit complicated; there seems to be more than one revolt, with more than one ensuing outcome–Korach and his crew are swallowed up by a gaping crater that opens in the ground, while the 250 would be usurpers of the high priesthood are consumed by an incense driven conflagration. I will not attempt to unravel all the difficulties in this text; I am concerned with essentially two pivotal matters, as we will see. At any rate, I believe there is more here than merely post-revolution factional rivalries, as those of the Mensheviks versus Bolsheviks, that Michael Walzer reads into the Korach narrative.

The text itself , in verse 16:3, states that Korach and his crew gathered before Moshe and Aharon, arguing:

You have taken upon yourselves too much; for the masses are all holy and within them is the Lord, (and if I may paraphrase into New Yorkese) Who made you such a big shot over Gd’s congregation?

The Midrash and Zohar add an entire series of issues into what appears to be a dynastic battle between Moshe and Aharon’s clan versus that of Korach’s for tribal and national domination. The Midrash Rabba states that Korach took a talit made entirely of blue material and claimed ‘should this all blue talit require an additional blue fringe to be proper? Does a study hall full of books require a further small supplementary text on the door (a mezuzah) to be acceptable?’ The Zohar adds that Korach had problems with the Sabbath and Torah as well. Why do the midrashim need to amplify Korach’s dissension from Moshe and Aharon? Why turn a political disagreement into a heretical faction?

Furthermore, perhaps Cecil B. DeMille was on to something? In his epic film, “The Ten Commandments,” DeMille decided that a better use of the punishment involving swallowing sinners into the ground would be as a consequence of the golden calf, where the people regressed back into frank idolatry. Is there a reason that this supernatural type of punishment should have been invoked after what appears to be a mere political battle, rather than after a much worse situation such as the golden calf? Our survey of the literature first, followed by my own ‘contemporary’ attempt at reading this episode, will need to answer these two questions:

1. Why the transformation of Korach’s revolt into a religious heresy, and 2. why did there need to be such a dramatic Divine intervention in specifically this episode?

First of all, let us examine the argument of Korach that the text cites. Two common approaches are found in the Hassidic commentators about Korach’s argument. One, that what he said, about all the congregation being holy, is a true statement. As R. Tzadok Hacohen puts it: if it wasn’t in some way true (that the people are all holy), it wouldn’t have been cited in the Torah. Two, Despite the objective veracity of the comment he made, Korach himself didn’t actually believe it.

So what is the true component of Korach’s statement? According to the Tiferet Shemuel, once the people received the Torah, then all had equal access to the text, thus seemingly, in the ideal situation, there would be no need for a ‘ spiritual leader’, a ‘rav’. The Tiferet Shelomo reads Moshe’s answer, in 16:9, where Moshe opens with ‘a small thing to you’, with the ‘to you’ meaning that the reply to them was in their own message (which begins “rav lachem”): this is proof that if anyone needs a rav, a spiritual leadership, it is you folks’. But in theory in an ideal future the people could reach such a high level that they wouldn’t need Moshe and Aharon.

The Yismach Yisrael reads in a similar fashion. He argues that once the Torah was given, it was the responsibility of the people to interpret, to bring Torah to daily human life, and was not given to angels or supermen. Korach was arguing, from the BT Bava Metzia 49:, that Moshe was more like an angel than a man, he was not the appropriate ‘interpretive’ leader for the people, rather, Korach, with his “common sense arguments”, was the proper leader. What were his common sense arguments? His “common sense” arguments are those cited by the Midrash, that an all blue talit shouldn’t need a blue supplemental fringe, nor a house full of books a mezuzah, which are more subversions than “common sense”. Like the Tiferet Shelomo, the Yismach Yisrael finds the response in 16:9- The term used, “michem”, from your status, O Levites, you know the answer: Just as your chosen situation is not the result of your innate qualities or gifts, but rather was a gift through divine decision, so too Gd wanted Moshe to serve as conduit by which the people receive the Torah at that time. A similar idea is found in the Bet Yaakov, who explains Korach’s argument as not being in the sphere of hermeneutics, of interpretation as per the Yismach Yisrael, but in the realm of praxis. If everyone is perfected by receiving the Torah, just like the talit that already is all blue, then what good is served by further work, such as adding a fringe, or doing any mitzvah as an activity? All praxis, to Korach, is superfluous, once the ‘idea’ is understood. Hence Moshe’s challenge to the rebels: what is greater, personal holiness or praxis, as exemplified by the ketoret, the ritual incense. The ketoret episode teaches that practice is not abandoned when some ideas are grasped, the vehicle is not abandoned, as it were, the act encodes more than any one reading.

The Mei Hashiloach, and his disciple, R. Tzadok Hacohen of Lublin, as we noted earlier, take Korach’s statement about the holiness of the congregation very seriously. To them, Korach’s statement is absolutely correct. “The people are holy and within them are Gd”. R. Tzadok feels that ultimately, Korach will ultimately be redeemed as a result of is statement. His statement is true, but not yet! At the end of days, when the world is rectified, as the BT Taanit 31. states, Gd will form a machol, a circle-dance, as it were, with the righteous. Why a circle, asks the Mei Hashiloach? Because a circle is made up of an equal set of radii to all points on its perimeter; that is, all will have identical and equal access to Gd. In fact, points out R. Tzadok (in Tzidkat Hatzadik 65), the 250 who sacrificed the incense at the cost of their lives, did so because they were so committed to the goal of universal spiritual perfection that they were not willing to live in a world in which this was no longer the case (for a brief moment, after Sinai and before the golden calf, it was the case… ) and because of their dedication to the ideal state of human perfection, their censers were used to make the copperplate covering of the incense altar in the Mishkan.

But if the statement and the ideal were correct, where was the sin of Korach? The sin of Korach was that as true as the isolated statement may be, Korach himself did not believe it. Virtually every textual reference to Korach has been used to prove that Korach was disingenuous, saying positive things to gain the admiration of the crowd, while at heart after something different entirely, as in the Benjamin quote above. The Kedushat Levi notes the the initial verb used of Korach, ‘Vayikach’, that he took, illustrates the problem. The Kedushat Levi explains that there are two types of tzadikkim in the world- those who only care that Gd’s purposes be accomplished, not caring who it is that gets the credit, and the other kind being those who want the credit. Thus the language used here is of ‘taking’, as in ‘taking credit’: Korach wanted recognition more than he wanted truth; had he only wanted Gd’s will to be done he wouldn’t have cared if Moshe was in charge as long as the holy work was done. The Kol Simcha also catches this note from the word vayikach, which he sees (following the Midrash Rabba) as ‘fighting words’- and when Korach appends to his statement regarding the people’s holiness that ‘why should Moshe be such a big shot’, he revealed that in fact, what Korach really wanted was for himself to be the big shot as opposed to Moshe.

The Shem M’Shemuel, who also argues that Korach’s statement is true, and should have been actualized at Sinai, had the people not sinned shortly afterwards with the golden calf, argues that Korach was positioning himself as the “populist” candidate, the man of the people, as opposed to Aaron. Thus the trial by incense. The root word Ketoret, incense, in Aramaic is also the word for binding together (similar to the , much like the root of the word for religion (religio, from the same root as the word ligate, to tie together), thus, successful offering of the incense would reveal who truly has the ability to bring the people together (and as we know from multiple texts, Aaron was an individual with great love for the people). Furthermore, the ketoret itself is representative of the people as a variegated totality, with its inclusion of the helbonah, which traditionally is held to not be very fragrant, and thus symbolic of the sinners within the community, yet, it is a crucial component of the incense when used in combination. Thus, the one who is appropriate to offer the ketoret is the one who has the capacity to bring all the disparate elements of the community together. Critical to our later argument is the difference between bringing together different types of individuals and looking at ‘the people’ as the ‘masses’.

Thus, in our review of the sources, we have touched upon several themes regarding the revolt of Korach, as reflected in the Hasidic commentators. We have seen a defense of the core argument regarding the holiness of the people, problems with the way in which the argument is actually used, and the appropriateness of the trial by incense. However, we have not touched upon the reasons why the Midrash chose to amplify Korach’s battle for Levite succession meaning of the denouement, the rather violent miracle in which the earth opens up and swallows the rebels. As we asked above, why here, and not, say, after the golden calf, where divine intervention would seem to make more sense?

Before embarking upon my own reading of this, there is a poetic reading of interest, in the weekly krovoth of Yannai, the sixth century poet of Byzantine Eretz Yisrael, worthy of note. He attributes the choice of punishment to a literary tit for tat:

Ya’an gevoha gevoha paku

Mata Mata ha’amaku

(As higher for position did they strive,

deeper into the earth did they dive)

Literary resolutions not withstanding, in order to gain an understanding of this matter, I propose that we review the way ideas take hold in societies, the way in which societies themselves are constructed and legitimated. Peter Berger’s book, The Sacred Canopy, is an adaptation of the early Marxian concepts regarding commodification into a sociology of religion. Societies, he argues, are the result of a dialectical interaction between the people and their activities in the world:

The fundamental dialectic process of society consists of three moments, or steps. These are externalization, objectivation, and internalization. Only if these three moments are understood together can an empirically adequate view of society be maintained. Externalization is the ongoing outpouring of human being into the world, both in the physical and the mental activity of men. Objectivation is the attainment by the products of this activity (again both physical and mental) of a reality that confronts its original producers as a facticity external to and other than themselves . Internalization is the reappropriation by men of this same reality, transforming it once again from structures of the objective world into structures of the subjective consciousness. It is through externalization that society is a human product. It is through objectivation that society becomes a reality sui generis. It is through internalization that man is a product of society.

In other words, certain historical, economic, and sociological factors cause a certain type of person to become, say, a bus driver for Egged. Over time, the stereotype of what an ‘Egged bus driver’ is supposed to be takes on a life of its own, and then, future potential Egged bus drivers train themselves to behave a certain way in order to fit in and truly play the role they have chosen for themselves; a stereotype becomes an archetype.

These stereotypes are, of course, subject to alteration. Economic, political, and other changes can lead to alternative approaches to the description which then enter the cycle of reification as described by Berger above. This is natural, and the way that human culture evolves. However, there are certain institutions to whom changes of this sort could lead to an undermining of the entire enterprise. The royal houses of Europe, in order to maintain the facticity of their rule, needed to invent the divine rule of kings in order to suppress the opposition from asking uncomfortable questions about their eligibility for rule (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xd_zkMEgkI).

This then, is a potential explanation of the choice of punishment in the Korach episode. Whereas the golden calf episode was at the core a theological controversy, theological argument was the appropriate response. However, in this seeming political controversy, no amount of argument could ever entirely justify and legitimate the rule of one man over another. Certainly were there newspapers at the time, they would have presented their reasons for support of one candidate over another, and perhaps some would have sided with one party or the other. Thus, here, more than in any other case, there would be a need for divine intervention in order to legitimate the political order. And not just the political order. For the entire mission of the exodus was at stake, and this is what the Midrashists properly sensed. If doubt could be assigned regarding Moshe and Aharon’s legitimacy as leaders, then doubt could be assigned to all aspects of the new law, the Torah.And there was no way that Moshe could have proved this by rational argument, or any type of argument, as opposed to idolatry, which is subject to theological debate, at least. Legitimation of the leadership system had to come from without, dramatically, or it would be eternally controversial (i.e., certain elections decided in Florida…)

Oy, the war makers are now pretending to be ending the war. But they are not doing so.

Credit: Truthout.org.

How long will we tolerate these deceptions? Our tax money is paying for the continued use of drones against the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Osama bin Laden is dead. Al-Qaida is relatively crippled. We don’t need to continue fighting in Afghanistan.

Last night, President Obama announced a plan for Afghanistan that will leave nearly 70,000 troops on the ground at the end of his first term. That’s still almost double the number of troops President Bush had in Afghanistan.

Call the White House now at 1-202-456-1111 and tell them you’re disappointed in President Obama’s plan and want to see the war end sooner.

Then, write to me to tell me how your call went.

While the press is portraying this plan as a large withdrawal from Afghanistan, the fact is that the administration is still investing billions of dollars and risking thousands of lives for a failed strategy. And risking the lives of so many civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And we still don’t know when those 70,000 soldiers will come home to their families, because under the guise of withdrawing troops, this latest plan keeps the longest war in American history going indefinitely.

That’s why the NSP (Network of Spiritual Progressives) is teaming with Peace Action West to urge that President Obama bring all the troops home by September 2012, not just a symbolic fraction of the troops who are there.

Prominent atheist and scientist PZ Myers has written a rebuttal called “Myth-bustin’ bad arguments about atheism” to my article “5 Myths Atheists Believe About Religion.” I respond to his criticism below but I must say it seems he largely misunderstood the points I was making. I’m not saying this just to try and prime my audience, but I found myself mostly answering to claims that I’ve never made.

I do appreciate the discussion and hope that it spurs healthy debate. We need more dialogue and engagement with these very important issues. His comments are in blue.

Liberal and Moderate Religion Justifies Religious Extremism. Scofield has completely missed the point. Liberal religion isn’t blamed for promoting illiberalism, it’s guilty of promoting religion. Nobody is arguing that the antithesis is responsible for the thesis, but that liberal religion and extremist religion hold something in common: the abdication of reason in favor of faith. They are both philosophies that undermine critical thinking. And without that safeguard of demanding reasonable evidence for propositions, they’re left vulnerable to bad ideas.

PZ Myers proves my point exactly and simultaneously points out his own hypocrisy.

This week’s spiritual wisdom comes from Rev. Sarah S. Ray:

The Divine Glance

Rumi wrote of it. Christ Yahshua (Jesus) certainly experienced and shared it, when he spoke of “letting your eye be single,” and “full of light.” The Hindus and Sikhs call it Darshan.

And yet, with millions of Christians in this country, it seems virtually unheard of. Even feared.

I experienced it for the first time at the Healing Center in Columbia, SC, sometime in late 2001 or early 2002, if I recall. It was a group that focused on “A Course in Miracles” and they had a leader from “The Academy” as it was referred to.

I came in a little late and the group had already started. The leader, Peter, was standing with his arms up in the middle of the room. I think someone told me later that what he was doing was called, “creating the space,” but I can’t be sure. Peter was a tall, thin man with a fascinating accent (Australian, maybe?) and medium brown close-cropped hair. He looked at me with this loving smile of joy on his face as I came into the room. I felt instantly connected to him even though I had never met him before and then I felt a force come from him that touched me all around my head and shoulders.

I didn’t recognize what it was at the time and Peter himself did not seem to know what he had done. When I told him after the meeting what had happened, he said, “That wasn’t me, that was you!” Actually, I think it was both of us. I was ready to receive it and he was ready to give it.

The City of Orlando has made over 20 arrests for sharing meals with the hungry at Lake Eola Park. The city limits the group to sharing twice a year per park.

Food Not Bombs has been sharing free vegetarian meals and literature in public for over 30 years. While many believe that hunger and poverty is the result of personal failing and the solution can be found by getting closer to God, Food Not Bombs thought the solution could be found in changing public policy, economics and society.

Risking arrest sharing food in Orlando (courtesy FNB website)

With fifty cents of every federal tax dollar going towards the military, no one in the world’s wealthiest country should have to stand in line to eat at a soup kitchen. It was clear that fliers and banners were not enough to motivate the public to take action to redirect military spending towards the real security of education, healthcare and other social services so the eight co-founders started to share meals at their literature table. People of all walks of life visited Food Not Bombs at Harvard Square and the Boston Commons. Visitors engaged one another in dialog. People new to the ideas of peace and social justice were introduced to groups organizing to end the war in Central America, the Nuclear Arms Race and the virtues of vegetarian meals.

The corporate machine’s drive for profit has resulted in a race to the bottom. The bottom line is profit at the expense of people, social justice, and the environment. In the United States, wages are stagnant, unemployment and homelessness grow, and more families are finding themselves unable to afford food.

Food Not Bombs is doing something about hunger. A worldwide all-volunteer organization that has existed for 30 years, Food Not Bombs feeds people vegetarian meals and protests war and poverty. Around the world, nearly one billion people go without food every day, and more than 25,000 die each day as a result. Hunger is growing in the United States, where more than 44 million people rely on food stamps and food pantries and kitchens are so overwhelmed that they are turning people away. This is unacceptable, especially in one of the richest nations of the world.

It is even more unacceptable that people are being arrested for sharing meals with the hungry. Volunteers with Food Not Bombs were first arrested in Orlando, FL, on June 1. They continue to return to feed the hungry and undergo arrest. Cities throughout Florida are introducing laws that could restrict Food Not Bombs to sharing food only twice a year per park. Can you imagine that now it is a crime to give food to hungry people?

One of the common misconceptions about the practice of Nonviolent Communication is that it’s about being “nice.” It’s probably a similar misconception to that of thinking of nonviolence as passivity. I believe both misconceptions derive from our habit of either/or thinking. Most of us don’t have models for a path that’s neither aggressive nor passive. Within this either/or thinking, if the only two models are imposing on others or giving up on our own needs, many of us will interpret nonviolence as the latter.

What does this look like? In our relationship to authority, I already wrote about how we can move beyond submission and rebellion. When parenting, as my sister Inbal described in Compassionate Connection: Nonviolent Communication with Children, we can find a path that’s neither coercive nor permissive. And in our relationships, we can find that sweet spot between pushing for what we want and giving up on what we want.

The either/or paradigm as it applies to human relationships rests on two assumptions. One is that we are separate form each other. The other is that there isn’t enough to go around. It is the combination of these two assumptions that pits us against each other fighting for our needs. It is this legacy that prevents us from having satisfying relationships of authenticity and care. As soon as any difference arises between what we want and what someone else wants, our habits direct us to push or give up. How can we transform this legacy?

From Demands to Requests
If we are habituated to pushing for what we want, the message we convey to everyone around us is that their needs don’t matter. If we are the boss or the parent, our employee or child, as the case may be, is put in a position of doing what we want or suffering consequences. While we may get what we want on some superficial level, the cost is high. Every time someone does something just because we have the power to deliver unpleasant consequences, we lose respect, or love, or both.

As you may have noticed, superstar academic Cornel West has been in some public hot water for a recent web interview in which he made some, well, not very nice comments about president Obama. West, who writes on culture, politics, religion, and race, and who tends to shuttle between Princeton and Harvard, accused the nation’s first African-American president of being the puppet of Wall Street interests, uncomfortable in his own black identity, and more likely to be hanging out with “white and Jewish men,” then the brothers and the sisters. West was bitter about not getting an invitation to the inauguration, and that Obama was no longer returning his phone calls. And this despite his own hard work in getting Obama elected.

Comments on West were predictable. Most of them were wholesale attacks on his intelligence, character, or even sanity (A Boston Globe article credited some observers with suggesting that he was both a blowhard and “unhinged.”) Of West’s few defenders, the most striking was radical journalist Chris Hedges, who believes that West is a major social prophet and that West’s critics can’t even carry West’s computer paper.

Look around the web and you’re sure to find lots more about this encounter, and here are my few cents.

Born in Lebanon in 1963, Hussein Ibish has long been an activist in, and a spokesperson for, the Arab-American community–including six years as communications director for the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee. Currently a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, he blogs independently at Ibishblog.com. He is the author of numerous articles and studies, including What’s Wrong with the One-State Agenda?: Why Ending the Occupation and Peace with Israel is Still the Palestinian National Goal.

The following is part of a larger conversation I had with Mr. Ibish, much of which was published last year at the In These Times website. But since In These Times required a 2,500-word limit, I particularly regret having excluded this insightful response to my question on Israel as a “Jewish state”:

… it’s perfectly reasonable and morally appropriate for everybody to be concerned about the rights of the Palestinian minority of Israeli citizens in Israel proper. But I don’t think this is an appropriate subject for negotiations between Israel and the PLO. It introduces another complication in an already overburdened negotiation agenda and blurs the crucial distinction between Israel and the occupation that should be the basis for all Palestinian diplomacy.

Robert Kessler (photo by Janet Lincoln)

Three generations of us sat at the Café Figaro on Bleecker Street in New York City. My grandfather sat there with his son. My father sat there with me. I sat there with friends, boyfriends, girlfriends. All of us drank cappuccinos and ate pastries and fixed the world, in our conversations at least.

This Father’s Day I remember those coffee drinks and pastries but mostly I remember those conversations. And this Father’s Day I want to honor both my father and his father for making me the left-leaning progressive I am today.