June 28, 2024
D’var by Bruce Koff
Good evening and Shabbat Sholom!
Thank-you for this opportunity to celebrate Pride with my JRC community, and to find in tonight’s parshat what I hope is a bit of wisdom for our times, times in which the queer community is under relentless assault worldwide and where transpeople in particular bear the brunt of it.
The parshat for this Pride Shabbat, Sh’lach Lecha ( “Send” or “Send for yourself” Numbers 13:1 – 15:41), tells a story about our ancestors who, in the face of adversity and the perceived strength of others, come to doubt their own capacities and faith. It holds within it lessons for us about faith, confidence, and the capacity to hold fast to truth.
The parshat begins with God telling Moses to send notable individuals from the various tribes to scout out Canaan and report back on the conditions they find. God instructs, “You shall see what [kind of] land it is, and the people who inhabit it; are they strong or weak? Are there few or many? And what of the land they inhabit? Is it good or bad? And what of the cities in which they reside are they in camps or in fortresses? What is the soil like is it fat or lean? Are there any trees in it or not? You shall be courageous and take from the fruit of the land.”
The scouts indeed find a land full of milk and honey, but all but a few return in fear, for they have seen a land of giants that made them feel no bigger than grasshoppers. They report, “the people who inhabit the land are mighty, and the cities are extremely huge and fortified, and there we saw even the offspring of the giant.”
Only one of the scouts, Caleb, expresses confidence in God’s promise, but the others are overcome with doubt, saying: “”If only we had died in the land of Egypt, or if only we had died in this desert. Why does the Lord bring us to this land to fall by the sword; our wives and children will be as spoils. Is it not better for us to return to Egypt?”
God, outraged by this lack of faith, prepares to destroy them. Moses, as any good prophet would do, argues with God. He implores God not to smite his own people, arguing that it will cause other nations to doubt this Hebrew God who could not fulfill a promise. Moses pleads “Please forgive the iniquity of this nation in accordance with your abounding kindness as you have borne this people from Egypt until now.”
In response, God relents and forgives, but like a good parent, administers a wise consequence. God determines that the ancient tribes will wander the desert for 40 years, until the generations now age 20 or older die in the desert. Only a generation that will not have lived substantially in slavery will enter the Promised Land.
Many of those who had originally succumbed to fear and spread that fear to others then seek to undo God’s decree by going up against the residents of Canaan. Moses warns them, “the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you, and you will fall by the sword. For you have turned away from the Lord, and the Lord will not be with you.” They proceed anyway and, as Moses predicted, are defeated and killed.
The remainder of the parshat outlines the rules for renewal once the people enter Canaan. God insists that these rules shall be applied equally and fairly to all the inhabitants including strangers, and makes certain distinctions for sins that are “inadvertent’ versus those that are committed “highhandedly.”
Though we may think of this parshat as just one more story of a rebellious people and an angry God, we can find inspiration for the times in which we live and in particular, the journey of our LGBTQI+ community. Like our ancestors, we too have been enslaved, perhaps not so much by a living Pharoah, but by the pharoahs of shame, of stigma, and all the cruelties and damage that have historically resulted from them. We have been rendered powerless, forced to hide, and many of us have experienced our own exile from our communities, our friends, and even our families. Indeed, we would be remiss not to note that now, in approximately 60 countries around the world, LGBTQI+ people continue to be criminalized. In these and other countries where the stigma persists, we are subject to harassment, violence, arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution simply for who we are or who we love. Slavery and persecution come in many forms that are all too familiar to us.
And like in Parshat Shlach L’cha, we have had more than our share of scouts who assessed the challenges, and prophets who confronted the cruel pharoahs in our midst. Our prophets include those well-known like Harvey Milk, Barbara Gittings, and Bayard Rustin, and others equally remarkable but less known like Frank Kameny who, after being fired by the federal government in 1956 for being gay, devoted the remaining 55 years of his life to a profound, persistent and determined queer activism that led to major victories in psychiatry and law, the benefits of which we experience to this day.
All of them, like the scouts that Moses sent, saw the strength of the forces arrayed against them but, like Caleb, did not succumb to fear. Rather, they remained faithful to a cause and a vision of what could be.
Bayard Rustin once said, “To be afraid is to behave as if the truth were not true.” Rustin, Kameny, Gittings, Milk, and so many others concluded that the only way to act is to act in accordance with truth. They placed their faith in a higher morality rooted not in what is, but in what could and should be. Rustin’s call for fearlessness echoes the essence of God’s call to us in Parshat Shlach L’cha, to hold fast to a truth.
For us, this is not about taking possession of a land. Rather, it is about taking possession of a future rooted in justice and equality, rooted in respect, and rooted in love for ourselves and for each other. Those who came before us who clung to this truth freed themselves from shame and, like Caleb, shed the habits of enslavement. Like Kameny and Rustin, Gittings and Milk, they changed our world because they behaved as if the truth were true even when the world behaved as if it were not. Like Moses, they reveal to us that dreams are born not of the possible, but of the seeming impossible. As Harvey Milk proclaimed, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all the darkness.”
God reveals to us where that light can be found. It lies in the miracles that brought us to this place. An exasperated God exclaims, “How long will this people despise Me? And how long will they not believe Me, for all the signs which I have wrought among them?”
Let us ourselves not lose sight of the miracles that have been wrought for us. In the 1950s when I was born, it would have been a miracle to not be seen as criminal, sinful, or mentally ill. It would have been a miracle to have legal protection from discrimination. It would have been a miracle to live openly as a gay man. It would have been a miracle to love another man. It would have been a miracle to marry the man I love, to have our two families join together to support us, to witness the growth of strong queer communities and institutions, to see our history taught in schools and universities, to have a lesbian rabbi and for me to stand here today. I have seen miracles, and so have you.
In the face of a growing darkness in the world, a darkness that would deny the truth of our lives, deny the history of our movement, deny our right to love fully and live freely, Sh’lach Lecha compels us to remember the miracles that have already unfolded and to recall our more recent prophets who parted the waters for us. They showed us that we are not grasshoppers and those who would do us harm are not giants.
God’s charge to us is simple yet profound: “You shall be courageous.” Therefore, like Caleb, let us hold fast to our vision of what can and should be and, with courage and faith, act. For despite the darkness, there is light, and the truth is always true.
Shabbat sholom!