Balak: Ma Tovu at Camp Judaea

How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel!
And I, with Your great loving-kindness, shall enter Your House; I shall prostrate myself toward Your Holy Temple in the fear of You.
O Lord, I love the dwelling of Your house and the place of the residence of Your glory.
Come, let us prostrate ourselves and bow; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker.
But, as for me, may my prayer to You, O Lord, be in an acceptable time. O God, with Your abundant kindness, answer me with the truth of Your salvation. (Num. 24:5)

What else could you possibly choose to discuss in this week’s Parsha, Balak, except for this curveball of all curveballs in the Torah? Balaam is sent by Balak to curse the people of Israel, but is overcome by the beauty he finds at the end of his journey, and his blessing, the “Ma Tovu,” is recited. Whenever I sing “Ma Tovu,” I close my eyes and try to imagine the beauty that this man must have seen that caused him to betray Balak. I would then open my eyes and find that beauty: the lake at Camp Judaea, my childhood summertime home.

I went to Camp Judaea from 1993 to 1998 as a camper, and returned as staff the summer after graduating high school in 2002. Since Camp Judaea is one of five junior camps Young Judaea (the Zionist Youth Movement of America) sponsors throughout the country, the camp isn’t affiliated with any religious movement of Judaism in particular. However, Camp Judaea tends to resemble the Conservative movement in many of its practices, including maintaining a kosher dining facility, observing Shabbat, and holding minyan services every morning.

Services are held in a roofed, open-air structure with benches in a semi-circle surrounding the Bima, all of which facing our lake. We would open every morning service with “Ma Tovu.” I would always close my eyes upon the beginning of the prayer. I noticed my wet feet. The morning dew had collected during the trek from the cabins to flag pole to services, and it was more than noticeable. My stomach would grumble. There was at least an hour between when I wake and when I eat at camp, and my stomach was always at the midpoint of this period and letting me know about it. I'd listen to the ambient sounds around me: other campers singing, feet shuffling across rocks, birds singing their morning songs - all of these sounds flooded my auditory landscape. I would open my eyes and look out on the sun's reflections skipping across the lake, signaling the beginning of another wonderful summer day in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina.

This Shabbat, I will not be in services to hear this Parsha read. I’ll be with 30 of my friends, tubing down the Potomac River in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. I can think of no better way to recall my camp days than to be in nature, on a body of water. To me, that is truly “Ma Tovu.”

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Naso: A Benediction in Transition

Y'varech'cha Adonai v'yishm'recha
Ya'eir Adonai panav eleicha vi'huneka
Yisa Adonai panav elecha v'yaseim l'cha shalom

May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you.
May the Lord lift his countenance upon you and give you peace.

(Num. 6:24-26)

When I look back at my childhood, I have two distinct memories of the Priestly Benediction, the prayer given by God to Moses and Aaron in this week’s Parsha, Naso. The first such memory isn’t a specific instant, but a collective memory of being blessed by my parents every Friday night at the Shabbat dinner table prior to our meal. As the weekly ritual of my parents fighting over who would get the honor of blessing either my sister or I unfolded, I would watch in awe - I realized how seriously my parents took this blessing. As I grew older I realized its importance. It wasn’t just any blessing or prayer; it was an inheritance.

By my pubescence, the power and meaning of the Priestly Benediction became clear. It was the act of passing God and God’s teachings unto the next generation. Allowing our children to be engulfed and protected by God’s will, which brings me to a second memory: my Bar Mitzvah. I had watched each week as my classmates were called to the Torah to become B’nei Mitzvot, each being blessed with the Priestly Benediction by our Rabbi, which seemed common place at the time. Just another part of the Bar Mitzvah service, on par with the gift-giving arms of the synagogue family trudging up to the bima for their weekly 15 seconds or 15 minutes of fame, depending upon who was bestowing the gift that week.

Sept. 13, 1997 was my turn to shine. I was becoming a man. My family and friends had gathered, and I was a nervous wreck. As I woke on that Saturday morning, I felt all the knowledge of my Bar Mitzvah studies trying to escape from my subconscious. But once I got to the synagogue, it was game time, and I had my game face on. This was surely an intimidating sight, coming from a slightly overweight 13-year-old boy with a bowl haircut. The service ran smoothly, and I could see the pride gleaming in my parents’ eyes. Then it was time for the Priestly Benediction.

The Rabbi placed his hand over my head, hovering six inches above. There was a perceived power due to his differing hand placement from that of my parents, who had firmly and lovingly placed their hands on my head each week at the Shabbat dinner table. I felt as if electricity ran through my Rabbi’s hand, through the air and into my head. I knew at that moment that the Priestly Benediction was not only an inheritance from parent to child, but also one from the entire Jewish people to its newest full member. I felt the weight of 6,000 years of tradition bearing down on me vicariously through my Rabbi's outstretched hand. At that moment, I accepted the responsibility of carrying on that tradition by accepting the blessing.

Fast-forwarding to the present, almost a decade since my Bar Mitzvah, the priestly benediction has a different application in my life. Although I feel the power of God it prescribes every day, I no longer hear it said - and definitely not toward me - on a regular basis. I no longer have weekly Friday night dinner with my immediate family. My adopted DC family of 20-somethings is a suitable replacement, but no blessing for children is recited. I no longer attend regular Saturday morning services; a consistent hangover has replaced a few hours of Shabbat prayer. The opportunity to see a Rabbi greet a Bar Mitzvah into Jewish adulthood with the Benediction is a distant memory, but also approaches beyond the horizon. As I live through the transition from childhood to parenthood, the Priestly Benediction conjures great memories of my youth, and hopefully will do the same for my children.

Prayer Mosaic (Naso)

Welcome to The Watering Hole's official launch. Glad to have you with us. We intended to start at the beginning of Numbers, but someone (me) dropped the ball, and we're kicking things off with the book's second portion, Naso. My poem (below) focuses on the identical offerings given by the 12 chieftans of Israel prior to the first use of the Tabernacle in the wilderness (Num 7:1-89). Today's other commentaries will explore the priestly blessing (Num 6:22-27, Tar Heeb) and provide a broad overview of the Torah's longest portion (Num 4:21-7:89, Casseopia). Enjoy it, kids.

I face East, and pray;
6,000 years of tradition
escaping on autopilot
but uttered anew every time
as these fumbled phrases
are finding fresh pauses
and the focus is fading
from coordinated community baselines
to the syncopated search for harmonies
that my mind strives to wind
into a heartsong

that I've been unable to express.

We'll stand and sit together
united by every letter
identical measures masking individual aims;
no matching prayer the same -
passing through the vessel they change
until they couldn't be uttered
by any other wonder that God made.

Just like in Naso,
before the Hebrews could go
any further they needed to show
respect to the Tabernacle.
First, from Nahshon,
the incense would crackle:
10-shekel gold ladle burnt
bull, ram and lamb;
200 shekel silver
oil and flour rep land;
purfication goat;
then five more and five lambs,
two oxen, five rams
for well-being was planned;
11 chieftans followed,
offering it over and over and over again
'til God descended from heaven
and the portion comes to an end.

So I'm lost in my head
as I face east and pray,
traveling back to each of the days
when words wouldn't say
anything of substance
or just get in the way
at camp, at college,
at home or at shul;
those summer nights
by lake or by pool;
Subway Series, snow days
or kissed lips so cool.

And I find 6,000 years
always stays new.