Some modern scholars of biblical history and criticism see this as an example of the piecemeal fashion in which our Scripture was assembled over time from a variety of traditions and authors. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik offers a compelling alternative interpretation to these scholars in his seminal and beautiful essay, “The Lonely Man of Faith”.

Soloveitchik posits that the two accounts of Adam’s creation, far from being an editorial accident or a mini-anthology of competing myths, represent a deliberate articulation a dichotomy in human nature.

In Genesis 1, God creates man (whom Soloveitchik calls Adam the First) seemingly ex nihilo in the divine image and tells him to procreate, proliferate, and dominate the natural world.

In Genesis 2, God forms Adam the Second from the dust of the earth, places him in the Garden, and tells him to get to work tending to the natural world.

Adam the Second plays the title role — “The Lonely Man” — of the essay, illustrating Soloveitchik’s feeling of vast, existential loneliness shared by people of faith, or stewards of nature and humanity per God’s instruction, in the modern world, an era defined by our regard and respect for humanity’s capacity for creativity and domination.

If you can find a copy of this essay — I got mine at the local library — I highly recommend it as a complement to your study of Bereshit. Whether or not you agree with Soloveitchik’s Orthodox reading of Scripture, I’ll bet you can relate to this intensely personal articulation of the difficulty of remaining driven by faith in the age of reason. Modernity aside, this is a struggle within the human soul that Bereshit shows has been with us from the beginning.

For many Jews taking the steps toward a more observant life, steps like keeping kosher or even skipping a secular workday for a Jewish holiday*, can seem so challenging that one wonders whether these laws are really meant for us.  Can human beings really follow all these rules?  Even with the encouragement of tremendous blessings and fearsome curses, perhaps the prescriptions and prohibitions of the Torah are more of an ideal, a path to sainthood, but not for everyday people.

Nitzavim reminds us that we all have the ability to hold up our end of the covenant.  We have the strength, the intelligence, the will, and most importantly, the proximity:

Surely, this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach.  It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us?”  Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?”  No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it. (Deuteronomy 30:11-14, Etz Hayim Humash)

The Torah is not for angels; it is for us diverse and flawed humans.  It is not inaccessibly distant; it is in our mouths and in our hearts.  Some mitzvot are readily easy.  Others take study and practice.  Many require a Temple and perhaps a messiah.  But there is nothing in our part of the covenant that we are permanently incapable of handling.

When you consider the overwhelming task of being one of God’s people, don’t look to heaven and despair.  Don’t consider the vast distance of foreign shores or the distance in time from Sinai our modern age and give up.  Look into your heart, and get started.

* I’m talking to you, mid-week Sukkot.

Shof’tim contains one of the more oft-quoted examples of this:

“Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” (Etz Hayim Humash, Deut. 16:20)

I think the first explanation I ever heard for this repetition pertained to emphasis.  The Israelites pursuit of justice is so critical to God’s plan — or maybe to the proper fulfillment of the covenant — that Moses repeated it in his exhortation.  In other words, justice is so nice he said it twice.

I think I found an explanation I like better.  Last night I attended a class at my shul for adults who want to improve their prayerbook Hebrew.  Our first lesson was on noun pairs.  Hebrew uses a lot of compound nouns or noun pairs; in English we have campground and backpack, but in Hebrew they might be written as “camp ground” and “back pack”.  I learned that Psalm 23, often considered one of the most vividly descriptive of the Psalms, contains no adjectives per se, only lots of noun pairs.  “Green pastures” is more directly translated as “pastures of greenness” and “still waters” as “waters of restfulness” but actually written as “pastures greenness” and “waters restfulness”.  Or something like that.

The orgininal text has no comma or other markings to guide us in the relationship between the two instances of the word for justice.  It just says “tzedek tzedek”.  It would be as easy to understand this as “justice of justice” as “justice, justice”.

In fact most of Shof’tim describes not what is just, but how we are to conduct ourselves in investigations, trials, and sentencing.  It’s clearly not enough that we pursue justice.  In order to properly fulfill the covenant and prosper and possess the land, we must even pursue justice in how we go about pursuing justice.

So much for 24.  So much for Guantanamo and rendition of terror suspects.  We are better than the doctine of “any means necessary”, and more is expected of us.

A riddle:

In Deuteronomy 15:4-5, God tells us, through Moses, that if we follow God’s laws, there will be no needy people among us.

Later, in Deuteronomy 15:11, He says that the the poor will never cease out of the land.

What gives?

At first I thought this was a rebuke.  If someone says to you, if you do X, I will give you Y, but you will never get Y, what does that mean?  That we can’t be trusted to do X?

It’s as if God is telling us straight up that He doesn’t believe we will do as we are told, or even as we have agreed to do by joining the convenant.  And would it be the first time we’ve heard this sentiment?

Thanks, Dad.

A closer reading perhaps redeems this apparent dearth of trust.  Verse 4 talks about the lack of needy “among you”, whereas verse 11 says that there will always be poor and needy “in the land”.

What this says to me is that even if we keep all the laws, and even if as a result there are no needy among us, that is to say, no needy Jews, or no needy among whatever group of with whom we identify, there will always be people who need help or compassion in the land in which we dwell, whether in ISrael or abroad.  If all of our family or community or political party or religion are prosperous, well fed, and well cared for, can we be satisfied that we’ve abided by the laws of the covenant?  I think not.  God makes it clear here that there will always be those in our land who need our help, and we will always be obliged to help them.

This week I heard a stirring editorial on the radio.  A woman was talking about visiting New Orleans and encountering a young couple in a bar in the French Quarter.  When she asked the young man what he thought of the fact that so much outside of the tourist area had not been rebuilt, the young man said, those people chose to live in a flood plain, in substandard housing, with inadequate insurance.  How much can we be expected to do for people who make bad choices?  What is the value of personal responsiblity if people aren’t held accountable for those choices?

God is not telling us that He doesn’t trust us to do His will.  He is telling us that even if we follow the law to the letter, and our own communities prosper thereby, we are not done.  We are still on the hook to help even those who don’t follow all the rules.  Wherever there is suffering that can benefit from compassion, “Thou shalt surely open thy hand unto thy poor and needy brother, in thy land.” (D 15:11)

In the beginning of my quest to become a rabbi, I was introduced to the term “binding” as a feature of Jewish law, by way of a question: Do I feel bound by the law?  Do I feel personally obligated, and if so, is this obligation solely personal, or do I think all Jews have the same obligation?  In other words, is the law “binding” on all Jews?

A rabbi asked me this question about six months ago.  Not only do I still feel unqualified to answer it, especially on behalf of all Jews; I’m also still grappling with a broader question:

What does “binding” mean?

When I think about this question, I think about the book “How to Read the Jewish Bible” by Mark Zvi Brettler.  This book turned me on to the idea that book of Deuteronomy / Devarim is written in a form similar to that of political treaties or business arrangements of its day.  It has a preamble (recapping the journey of Israel, Moses, and God) which establishes the authority of the counterparties to enter into such an agreement.  It spells out the duties to be performed (loving the Lord, teaching the children, keeping the commandments, etc.), and then it describes the remuneration for fulfilling the duties (crops, children, personal and communal longevity) and the penalties for breach of contract (eviction, starvation, personal and communal short-evity).

So I asked the rabbi, is this what “binding” means?  Abiding by a contract/covenant, with expectation of reward or punishment tied to our performance?

“It’s not that simple.”

The universe is not a simple performance/reward system.  Push one button, you get a food pellet.  Push another, electric shock.  Feeding the hungry today means good harvest tomorrow.  Gossip over dinner, and read gossip about yourself in the morning paper.  Even a contract as comprehensive and explicit as Devarim is not as simple as it sounds, or its ramifications as direct.

Even as last week’s reading (Va’etchanan) told us about intergenerational responsibility and transgenerational justice, Eikev tells us about the complexity of God’s scales.

“Speak not thou in thy heart, after that the LORD thy God hath thrust them out from before thee, saying: ‘For my righteousness the LORD hath brought me in to possess this land’; whereas for the wickedness of these nations the LORD doth drive them out from before thee.  Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thy heart, dost thou go in to possess their land; but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and that He may establish the word which the LORD swore unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”  (D. 9:4-5)

We do not inherit the land by our own virtue; God made a deal with our ancestors, and we’re collecting on a prior arrangement.  The nations do not whither before us because of our strength, but rather, because of their weakness, and because of the strength of those who walked before us, and because the strength of the One who walks with us.  When we deserve it.  And sometimes when we don’t.

As Va’etchanan said, those who love God are blessed to the thousandth generation.  Are we blessed for our love of God, or because we’re somewhere within that thousand generations?

For me this idea begs credulity for the case of the “binding” nature of the law.  Whether we are blessed or cursed for the actions of our fathers, our lot appears disconnected from our performance.  Does Eikev make a case for a bit of randomness in the process, a Skinner box of unconnected cause and effect that can only reinforce skeptics’ attachement to the problem of the existence of evil?

I think one answer can be found in taking a longer view of time, in returning to the transgenerational nature of justice.  This may be a story about God’s bringing a stiff-necked people into a land they don’t deserve.  It is also a story of God’s honoring a covenent with our ancestors, regardless of the behavior of their progeny. 

The One whose justice is not always transparent is also the One whose mercy is not always transparent.  And though neither are transparent, both are evident.  When we dwell in homes that we didn’t build, drinking from vineyards we did not plant, let us not only bless God, as Va’etchanan says, but follow the lesson of Eikev and consider:

What reward or punishment will our children inherit because of what we do today?  If it happens that we are in the thousandth generation, what have we done, or can we do, to secure blessing for the thousand and first?  And if we can’t be bothered with that, who will live in the houses we build, and drink from the vineyards we plant?

Foremost is the assertion of one generation’s responsibility for the next.  These words which God has given you this day you shall teach to your children.  We are responsible for the Talmud Torah of our children, as our parents were responsible for our Talmud Torah.

Second, we learn of transgenerational accountability.  For our sins God promises justice to be delivered to the third or fourth generation after the sin.  What human standard of justice is conceived or worded so, or is even capable of such enforcement?  On the other hand, one theme we see time and again in the Torah is that the certainty and ferocity of God’s justice is exceeded only by the depth and breadth of his mercy, and this parsha even quantifies (if metaphorically) this beautiful inequality.  While God’s justice extends to the third and fourth generations, His mercy extends to the thousandth generation of those who love Him. 

For those keep keeping score at home, the winner is mercy, 1000 to 4.

Or if you’re a geek like me, 250:1.

Finally is the exortation that once we enter the promised land, and we dwell in houses and cities not built by us, and we eat to satiey from groves and vinyards not planted by us, that we be careful not to forget the Lord that brought us there.  Commentaries in the Etz Chaim chumash interpret this as another message of transgenerational responsibility.  We all dwell in houses that were built before we got there, and we all exist by the grace of the work that came before we got here.  To me this makes a nice book-end to the idea of parental responsibility to teach…the responsibility of children to remember what we are taught, that we may carry the lessons forward to our children.

Just as a fundamental block of Jewish identity is the family, a fundamental block of Jewish time is the generation.  In the enumeration of the covenant that is central to this parsha, we are taught that God’s role in the bargain is to render justice and grant mercy from one generation to the next, and ours is to transmit (both send and receive) His instruction, blessing, and praise from one generation to the next.  And while it is within our power to bridge just one generation at a time, we can count on His love for a thousand generations.

“Mah tovu ohaleicha Ya’akov, mish’k’notecha Yisrael.”

Don’t worry.  That’s my only Hebrew for this d’var Torah.  I know to some, these words sound alien.  To others, my poor pronunciation must be agonizing.  But to many of you they will sound familiar.

“Mah tovu ohaleicha Ya’akov, mish’k’notecha Yisrael.”

We are invited to say this blessing each time we enter a synagogue.  The Siddur Sim Shalom translates it, “How beautiful are your sanctuaries, O Jacob, your houses of worship, O Israel.”  A more literal translation of these same Hebrew words is, “How fair are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings, O Israel.”

When I have read this blessing before, with its poetry and its clear admiration of the subject, I always assumed it was from the Psalms, or from the Proverbs, or from the one of the prophets on one of his better days.  I assumed it came from one of us, from a Jew. 

Today I know that it did not.  It came from the mouth of Balaam, and discovering my error, my false assumption, has been part of a greater journey of discovery, one which has been profoundly moving and gratifying for me, and hope that sharing this part of my journey will be pleasant for you as well.

My journey of discovery, though decades in the making, really began in earnest a few months ago when I decided to apply to rabbinical school.  I have spent just over ten years in the corporate world, mostly as a consultant, crunching numbers, making risk assessments and action plans for senior management, then moving on to the next client, and the next.  I decided that I wanted to bring my ongoing dialog with God from the periphery of my life to its center.  I wanted to upgrade my connection to the Jewish community from one attribute among many to the overarching algorithm of my life.  I wanted to go from dial-up to broadband, and take my spirituality to eleven.  And as a rabbi, I sincerely hope to show others the joy and meaning that seeking God and seeking community can bring to their own lives. 

So I talked to Rabbi Davis.  He gave me a list of rabbinical schools to consider, a list of questions to ask myself, and a warning, “Start slow.”

A couple of months later, I’m back in the rabbi’s office, totally overwhelmed.  I had started out knowing I had a lot to learn, but now I was beginning to understand exactly how much, and it was terrifying.  Of course, Rabbi Davis said, “Slow down.  Why don’t you start with a d’var Torah this summer, and see how you like it.”

Rabbi Davis knows I love to talk.  He knows about my ecclesiastical heritage.  My father, his father, and his father’s father had all been Christian preachers.  That is another story for another time.

What Rabbi Davis did not know when he emailed me this message – “I have you down for July 12 – parashat Balak. You’ll love it.” – he did not know that this passage is the subject of my father’s favorite “Old Testament” sermon, one that he’d written decades ago and still uses from time to time.  He calls it “The Story of Balaam’s Ass.”  From the talking donkey he derives a timeless theme:  The truth, God’s truth, sometimes comes to us from the most unexpected sources.

Some parshiyot really challenge us to find something in them to illuminate our modern existence. 

Leprosy?  Really?

Balak, on the other hand, challenges us to choose something from among many attractive possibilities.  There is so much here to talk about!  First, it’s about a consultant.  I can dig that.  A consultant torn between telling the client what he wants to hear and what he needs to hear, especially when there’s treasure on the line.  There’s talking livestock, a sword-wielding angel, and that unpleasant bit at the end of the parasha about consorting with the locals, bringing on plagues and impalement.  Among all this a couple of interrelated themes really struck me as personally meaningful, and I hope, collectively helpful.

First, there is a political lesson here that I would be irresponsible to skip in an election year.  Balak tells his advisers that he wants to hire Balaam.  “Whoever this guy blesses,” he says, “is surely blessed, and whoever he curses, they stay cursed.  How about I hire Balaam to curse Israel?  Then they’ll be weaker, and we can beat them in battle and not wind up like those poor Amorites.”

Not one of his advisers said, “Hey Balak, have you considered hiring Balaam, not to curse Israel, but to bless Moab, that we might be victorious against Israel?  Better yet, maybe he can bless both Israel and Moab, so that the traveling mob finds all it needs to eat without consuming Moab’s resources.  That way, we don’t have to waste treasure or blood on a war in the first place!”

I promised Rabbi Davis I wouldn’t make this a political appeal, but I do appeal to your thoughtful and inquisitive natures.  Between now and Election Day, please ask yourself, “Am I voting for this candidate because he gives me hope for the future of my town, my country, my people?  Or am I voting for him because he inspires fear of a boogeyman, either foreign or domestic?  In other words, is he going to spend our treasure on a blessing, or on a curse?”

And that’s enough of secular politics.  Instead, consider what this lesson means for us as Jews in the Conservative Movement.

The Conservative Movement has evolved over the last century and a half as an exercise in negative definition.  Within K’lal Israel, which is Solomon Schechter’s concept of the collective body of all Jews everywhere, we tend to see ourselves as simply the absence of what we are not.  We occupy the middle ground by virtue of not being attracted to the extremes.  First, we start with K’lal Israel.  Then we remove everyone to the right of our bubbes, and finally, we subtract everyone to the left of what we want our children to be.  Here we are, Conservative Jews.  Or perhaps I should say, the United Synagogue of Non-Reform, Non-Orthodox Judaism.

Now, I know this portrait is neither complete nor accurate nor entirely fair.  It is merely personal.  I know that we now have a rich literature of positive statements of principles for the Conservative Movement.  Rabbis Elliot Dorff, Robert Gordis, Neil Gillman, Mordecai Waxman and others have illuminated our path toward a positive definition of Conservative Judaism; however, as a layperson who has only begun to scratch the surface of that literature, I know that I am still struggling to internalize such a positive definition.  If someone – a coworker, my child, my neighbor from another denomination or another faith – asks me what it means to be a Conservative Jew, I have to admit that my default answer is, “Well, I read this part of the Bible, but not that part.  I follow more rules that this guy over here with the cheeseburger, but fewer rules than that guy over there with the hat.”  I am still afflicted with negative definition.  But I’ve come up with a challenge for myself and a challenge for you, if you are likewise afflicted. 

First, clear your mind of all the qualities of other Jews that you are not.  Then, come up with some ideal you hold or action you take that defines your particular approach to Judaism, and finally, try to describe that ideal or action using only positive terms. 

For example:  I keep kosher.  I eat certain kinds of meat that come from certain kinds of animals that have been prepared in certain ways.  I eat this way because I believe God wants me to eat this way in order to improve my spiritual awareness and more fully realize my potential as a human being with free will.  That is what kashrut means to me, and I feel supported to keep kosher as a member of the Conservative Movement.

Did you see what I just did there?  I described kashrut and my observance of it without a single mention of the words: no, don’t, prohibited, unclean, or abomination.  Instead of saying, “Keeping kosher means I don’t eat at this restaurant or at that person’s house,” I could say, “Keeping kosher means I eat different things at different peoples houses, and I’d like to invite everyone to my house to sample how delicious keeping kosher can be.”  To my dear wife, I apologize.  I know I’m not supposed to invite the entire congregation over for dinner without asking; in my defense, it’s a chapel day, not a sanctuary day.

“Mah tovu ohaleicha Ya’akov, mish’k’notecha Yisrael.”

Another theme in Balak builds upon this idea of focusing on blessings rather than curses.  When Balaam arrives in the court of Balak, Balak takes him to a particular vantage point from where Balaam can see a part of the Israelite encampment.  This is important. 

The commentators surmise that Balak has risen to power recently and suddenly by some kind of clever, Machiavellian scheme.  Indeed, Niccolo Machiavelli would have been proud of Balak’s example that it is often more expedient to rule by curses and fear than by blessings and hope. 

So Balak shows Balaam only part of the camp, and presumably a part hand-picked for its worthiness of a curse, perhaps an infirmary, or perhaps a stockade.  Balak knows that revealing the worst of a population makes it easier to curse the whole population.

When Balaam looks on this part, and God instead puts blessings in his mouth, Balak is – let us say – nonplussed.  Balaam is not a cheap, and so far, he’s a dud.  Balak tries again.  He takes Balaam to another vantage point, maybe to see the quarantine of the lepers, maybe to see the consorting, plagues, and impalement. 

Once more, Balaam looks upon the worst of us, and he cannot help but bless.

“Fine!” says Balak, now furious.  He hauls Balaam up a mountain where he can see the whole of the encampment.  Twice so far, Balaam looked upon the chosen vista, and then he slept on it, and sought an omen from God in his dreams. 

Not this time.  The Torah says Balaam immediately cast his eyes upon the wilderness, upon the whole of Israel, and he said, unprompted, “Mah tovu ohaleicha Ya’akov, mish’k’notecha Yisrael.”

How fair are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings, O Israel.

Note here the use of two names, Jacob and Israel.  In effect, Balaam blesses both our “before” and our “after”, our potential and our fruition, equally blessed.  How fair indeed.

What Balak presumes about human nature is that it is easy to reveal the worst part of something and inspire a curse of the whole.  It is easy to look at the recent shame of a certain kosher meat packing operation, degrading to all God’s creatures, human and animal, who came in contact with it, and say, there are the Jews for you.  Curse them.  It is equally easy for a Jew not inspired to follow the kashrut to look at the same shanda and say, if that is what keeping kosher is all about, then you keep it.

It is easy for me, as one who converted to Judaism with a Conservative Beit Din to look upon religious authorities in Israel, who would reject my identity as a Jew, and for me to become angry, or to succumb to despair.

It is easy, it is tempting, but it is incomplete and ultimately wrong. 

What Balaam shows us about human nature is this:  When we scale the mountain, when we look upon the whole of Israel, when we get what consultants call the view from thirty thousand feet, it is easy to say, “Mah tovu ohaleicha Ya’akov, mish’k’notecha Yisrael.”

From the top of the mountain, I can see Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching arm-in-arm with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

I can see leaders in my own community promoting the use of the Heksher Tzedek to keep the recent perversion of kashrut in Iowa from happening again. 

I can see our community, locally and globally, respond to humanitarian crises from New Orleans to Darfur with swiftness, with compassion, and with results. 

I can see Jews in St. Louis Park and Jews in Jerusalem in the Masorti movement fighting for the rights of all Jews, even me, in Israel, the homeland of every Jew, even me.

It is easy to curse the worst of our extremes, but our longevity, our presence, and our impact as a people will be an inspiration of blessing for all time. 

If you take nothing else from my talk today, please take a moment to consider the positive attributes of your commitment to Jewish life, already in evidence by your presence here today.  Consider the positive aspects of our whole community, comprised, as it is, of flawed and occasionally weak human beings.  Please give any negative definitions of yourself and your movement a well-deserved Shabbat.  Please give your curses of the whole for the sins of the few a permanent rest.

Because as I stand here this Shabbat, in this tabernacle of Israel, in this tent of Jacob, I see in the microcosmic lens of all those gathered here, distinguished local families and citizens of the world, the successful, the struggling, the young, the experienced, I see in us the whole of Schecter’s K’lal Israel, I see much that is worthy of blessing, and I say, “Mah tovu ohaleicha Ya’akov, mish’k’notecha Yisrael.”

Shabbat shalom.