(א) וַתְּדַבֵּ֨ר מִרְיָ֤ם וְאַהֲרֹן֙ בְּמֹשֶׁ֔ה עַל־אֹד֛וֹת הָאִשָּׁ֥ה הַכֻּשִׁ֖ית אֲשֶׁ֣ר לָקָ֑ח כִּֽי־אִשָּׁ֥ה כֻשִׁ֖ית לָקָֽח׃ (ב) וַיֹּאמְר֗וּ הֲרַ֤ק אַךְ־בְּמֹשֶׁה֙ דִּבֶּ֣ר יְהֹוָ֔ה הֲלֹ֖א גַּם־בָּ֣נוּ דִבֵּ֑ר וַיִּשְׁמַ֖ע יְהֹוָֽה׃ (ג) וְהָאִ֥ישׁ מֹשֶׁ֖ה עָנָ֣ו מְאֹ֑ד מִכֹּל֙ הָֽאָדָ֔ם אֲשֶׁ֖ר עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הָאֲדָמָֽה׃ {ס} (ד) וַיֹּ֨אמֶר יְהֹוָ֜ה פִּתְאֹ֗ם אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֤ה וְאֶֽל־אַהֲרֹן֙ וְאֶל־מִרְיָ֔ם צְא֥וּ שְׁלׇשְׁתְּכֶ֖ם אֶל־אֹ֣הֶל מוֹעֵ֑ד וַיֵּצְא֖וּ שְׁלׇשְׁתָּֽם׃ (ה) וַיֵּ֤רֶד יְהֹוָה֙ בְּעַמּ֣וּד עָנָ֔ן וַֽיַּעֲמֹ֖ד פֶּ֣תַח הָאֹ֑הֶל וַיִּקְרָא֙ אַהֲרֹ֣ן וּמִרְיָ֔ם וַיֵּצְא֖וּ שְׁנֵיהֶֽם׃ (ו) וַיֹּ֖אמֶר שִׁמְעוּ־נָ֣א דְבָרָ֑י אִם־יִֽהְיֶה֙ נְבִ֣יאֲכֶ֔ם יְהֹוָ֗ה בַּמַּרְאָה֙ אֵלָ֣יו אֶתְוַדָּ֔ע בַּחֲל֖וֹם אֲדַבֶּר־בּֽוֹ׃ (ז) לֹא־כֵ֖ן עַבְדִּ֣י מֹשֶׁ֑ה בְּכׇל־בֵּיתִ֖י נֶאֱמָ֥ן הֽוּא׃ (ח) פֶּ֣ה אֶל־פֶּ֞ה אֲדַבֶּר־בּ֗וֹ וּמַרְאֶה֙ וְלֹ֣א בְחִידֹ֔ת וּתְמֻנַ֥ת יְהֹוָ֖ה יַבִּ֑יט וּמַדּ֙וּעַ֙ לֹ֣א יְרֵאתֶ֔ם לְדַבֵּ֖ר בְּעַבְדִּ֥י בְמֹשֶֽׁה׃ (ט) וַיִּֽחַר־אַ֧ף יְהֹוָ֛ה בָּ֖ם וַיֵּלַֽךְ׃ (י) וְהֶעָנָ֗ן סָ֚ר מֵעַ֣ל הָאֹ֔הֶל וְהִנֵּ֥ה מִרְיָ֖ם מְצֹרַ֣עַת כַּשָּׁ֑לֶג וַיִּ֧פֶן אַהֲרֹ֛ן אֶל־מִרְיָ֖ם וְהִנֵּ֥ה מְצֹרָֽעַת׃ (יא) וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אַהֲרֹ֖ן אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֑ה בִּ֣י אֲדֹנִ֔י אַל־נָ֨א תָשֵׁ֤ת עָלֵ֙ינוּ֙ חַטָּ֔את אֲשֶׁ֥ר נוֹאַ֖לְנוּ וַאֲשֶׁ֥ר חָטָֽאנוּ׃ (יב) אַל־נָ֥א תְהִ֖י כַּמֵּ֑ת אֲשֶׁ֤ר בְּצֵאתוֹ֙ מֵרֶ֣חֶם אִמּ֔וֹ וַיֵּאָכֵ֖ל חֲצִ֥י בְשָׂרֽוֹ׃ (יג) וַיִּצְעַ֣ק מֹשֶׁ֔ה אֶל־יְהֹוָ֖ה לֵאמֹ֑ר אֵ֕ל נָ֛א רְפָ֥א נָ֖א לָֽהּ׃ {פ}
(יד) וַיֹּ֨אמֶר יְהֹוָ֜ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֗ה וְאָבִ֙יהָ֙ יָרֹ֤ק יָרַק֙ בְּפָנֶ֔יהָ הֲלֹ֥א תִכָּלֵ֖ם שִׁבְעַ֣ת יָמִ֑ים תִּסָּגֵ֞ר שִׁבְעַ֤ת יָמִים֙ מִח֣וּץ לַֽמַּחֲנֶ֔ה וְאַחַ֖ר תֵּאָסֵֽף׃ (טו) וַתִּסָּגֵ֥ר מִרְיָ֛ם מִח֥וּץ לַֽמַּחֲנֶ֖ה שִׁבְעַ֣ת יָמִ֑ים וְהָעָם֙ לֹ֣א נָסַ֔ע עַד־הֵאָסֵ֖ף מִרְיָֽם׃ (טז) וְאַחַ֛ר נָסְע֥וּ הָעָ֖ם מֵחֲצֵר֑וֹת וַֽיַּחֲנ֖וּ בְּמִדְבַּ֥ר פָּארָֽן׃ {פ}
(יד) וַיֹּ֨אמֶר יְהֹוָ֜ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֗ה וְאָבִ֙יהָ֙ יָרֹ֤ק יָרַק֙ בְּפָנֶ֔יהָ הֲלֹ֥א תִכָּלֵ֖ם שִׁבְעַ֣ת יָמִ֑ים תִּסָּגֵ֞ר שִׁבְעַ֤ת יָמִים֙ מִח֣וּץ לַֽמַּחֲנֶ֔ה וְאַחַ֖ר תֵּאָסֵֽף׃ (טו) וַתִּסָּגֵ֥ר מִרְיָ֛ם מִח֥וּץ לַֽמַּחֲנֶ֖ה שִׁבְעַ֣ת יָמִ֑ים וְהָעָם֙ לֹ֣א נָסַ֔ע עַד־הֵאָסֵ֖ף מִרְיָֽם׃ (טז) וְאַחַ֛ר נָסְע֥וּ הָעָ֖ם מֵחֲצֵר֑וֹת וַֽיַּחֲנ֖וּ בְּמִדְבַּ֥ר פָּארָֽן׃ {פ}
(1) Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had taken [into his household as his wife]: “He took a Cushite woman!” (2) They said, “Has יהוה spoken only through Moses? Has [God] not spoken through us as well?” יהוה heard it. (3) Now Moses himself was very humble, more so than any other human being on earth. (4) Suddenly יהוה called to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, “Come out, you three, to the Tent of Meeting.” So the three of them went out. (5) יהוה came down in a pillar of cloud, stopped at the entrance of the Tent, and called out, “Aaron and Miriam!” The two of them came forward; (6) and [God] said, “Hear these My words: When prophets of יהוה arise among you, I make Myself known to them in a vision, I speak with them in a dream. (7) Not so with My servant Moses; he is trusted throughout My household. (8) With him I speak mouth to mouth, plainly and not in riddles, and he beholds the likeness of יהוה. How then did you not shrink from speaking against My servant Moses!” (9) Still incensed with them, יהוה departed. (10) As the cloud withdrew from the Tent, there was Miriam stricken with snow-white scales! When Aaron turned toward Miriam, he saw that she was stricken with scales. (11) And Aaron said to Moses, “O my lord, account not to us the sin which we committed in our folly. (12) Let her not be like a stillbirth which emerges from its mother’s womb with half its flesh eaten away!” (13) So Moses cried out to יהוה, saying, “O God, pray heal her!” (14) But יהוה said to Moses, “If her father spat in her face, would she not bear her shame for seven days? Let her be shut out of camp for seven days, and then let her be readmitted.” (15) So Miriam was shut out of camp seven days; and the people did not march on until Miriam was readmitted. (16) After that the people set out from Hazeroth and encamped in the wilderness of Paran.
Eskenazi, Dr. Tamara Cohn. The Torah: A Women's Commentary (pp. 2138-2140). CCAR Press. Kindle Edition.
Contemporary Reflection —Patricia Karlin-Neumann
B’HAALOT’CHA IS OVERFLOWING with complex ritual and detail: the lighting of the lamps; the purification and consecration of the Levites; the elaboration of the pesach sacrifice; the carefully choreographed journey through the wilderness; the mutiny of meat, manna, and quail precipitating a plague for those who were led by their appetites; the challenge of Moses’ siblings to his leadership; and finally, the sudden onset of his sister Miriam’s disease. Yet amidst these richly detailed stories, we find one contrasting, stark, parsimonious prayer: “El na r’fa na lah” (“ O God, pray heal her!”).
Five words— eleven Hebrew letters— are all that Moses speaks (12: 13). Except for God’s name, each word ends in a vowel, as if each word were an unending cry. It is as if each word is punctuated with an exclamation point, the brevity of the syllables giving voice to the tortured helplessness of the supplicant: “God! Please! Heal! Please! Her!” In the midst of catastrophe, the verb of consequence— the bull’s-eye of the prayer— is the central plea: heal! Indeed, the prayer is nearly a palindrome— reading the same forwards as it does backwards— homing in with laser precision on that most urgent desire: heal! This prayer has few words but much resonance. It is a primal cry, capturing fear, powerlessness, and incomprehensibility in the face of sudden illness, accident, or injury. It is not the entreaty of the one beset by the catastrophe, but rather that of the witness, the powerless onlooker, the potential caregiver absorbing the shock, the one who is overwhelmed and stymied about how to help.
When illness, accident, or injury comes to those we love, it is up to us— those who are comparatively healthy and able— not only to beseech but also to provide hope and healing. For the caregiver, there is time only for truncated and hurried prayer, time only for stolen moments of naked cries and yearnings of hope. For the caregiver shouldering the burdens of action— making the loved one comfortable, researching treatment, running interference with physicians, reporting news, calming fears— prayer is a blessed moment of calm in an otherwise turbulent time. The essence of what we seek is still found in Moses’ direct and eternal prayer.
When one whom we love is in danger, not only our loved one but also we ourselves face darkness. According to Jewish tradition, the first person who prayed in darkness was young Jacob, on the eve of his exile from home. The Midrash describes the confluence of physical and metaphorical darkness this way: “In order to speak to Jacob in private, God caused the sun to go down— like a king who calls for the light to be extinguished, as he wishes to speak to his friend in private” (B’reishit Rabbah 68.10). So, too, the prayer of the caregiver is private, conspiratorial, hidden from the one who is the object of supplication, yet revealed to the One who can respond. We want to protect the one who is suffering from the compounded weight of the caregiver’s distress. But in the darkness, it is safe to give voice to our fear of dreadful scenarios and of the unknown. In the darkness, it is a relief to relinquish the weight of trying to hold up another’s spirits, and to acknowledge that Someone with far more power than we possess is the ultimate caregiver. In the darkness, it is possible to renew courage, to find new paths, to discover the equanimity essential to living with the terror of catastrophe.
Medical sociologist Alexandra Dundas Todd begins Double Vision, a memoir of her son’s treatment and recovery from brain cancer, with this reflection:
“The Chinese word for crisis consists of two characters: danger and opportunity. When my son, Drew, a senior in college, was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer bordering his brain, the danger was clear; the opportunity was less apparent. Danger flashed through our lives daily, while opportunities lay waiting in murky waters, to emerge only tentatively. Family closeness, the ability to savor each moment, to find strength and courage where we didn’t know they existed, to discover new methods of treatment that complemented all the surgeries and radiation and eased both body and mind, all contributed to making the unbearable bearable, turning an assault into a challenge” (Double Vision: An East-West Collaboration for Coping with Cancer, 1994, p. xiii).
It does, indeed, take “double vision” to see both blessing and curse, to picture opportunity amidst danger. Courage grows through hope, through the willingness to look for unknown possibilities and to grasp them, through refusing to see only danger in darkness when its counterpart, opportunity, may be waiting in the shadows. The prayer of the caregiver, the cry of the distraught parent, the reassuring whisper of the loving spouse, can help to wrest some measure of opportunity out of danger.
El na r’fa na la. In its simplicity and raw clarity, this prayer of healing recognizes that more than double vision, the vision of the Divine is immeasurable, and the capacity of the Healer is limitless. In response to Moses’ prayer, God reveals the duration of Miriam’s exile to the wilderness of disease. Her fortunate loved ones have only to wait out a time of disequilibrium and uncertainty; they have received Sacred reassurance that all will be well. Yet in anticipating her return, the Torah conveys a truth well known to the loved ones of someone contending with affliction and crisis— v’haam lo nasa ad heasef miryam (“and the people did not march on until Miriam was readmitted,” 12: 15). Life does not go on with any sense of normalcy or progression while one whom we love is endangered; the caregiver’s attention and effort revolves around the one who is stricken. Time and space are altered. The yearning for healing expands to fill both.
Our present rituals may not be as formulaic as those described in B’haalot’cha; our contemporary prayers of healing may have become longer and more specific; our modern understanding of treatment may be more nuanced and comprehensive; but Moses’ wisdom abides. The essence of what we seek is still found in his direct and eternal prayer. El na r’fa na la: God! Please! Heal! Please! Her!
Contemporary Reflection —Patricia Karlin-Neumann
B’HAALOT’CHA IS OVERFLOWING with complex ritual and detail: the lighting of the lamps; the purification and consecration of the Levites; the elaboration of the pesach sacrifice; the carefully choreographed journey through the wilderness; the mutiny of meat, manna, and quail precipitating a plague for those who were led by their appetites; the challenge of Moses’ siblings to his leadership; and finally, the sudden onset of his sister Miriam’s disease. Yet amidst these richly detailed stories, we find one contrasting, stark, parsimonious prayer: “El na r’fa na lah” (“ O God, pray heal her!”).
Five words— eleven Hebrew letters— are all that Moses speaks (12: 13). Except for God’s name, each word ends in a vowel, as if each word were an unending cry. It is as if each word is punctuated with an exclamation point, the brevity of the syllables giving voice to the tortured helplessness of the supplicant: “God! Please! Heal! Please! Her!” In the midst of catastrophe, the verb of consequence— the bull’s-eye of the prayer— is the central plea: heal! Indeed, the prayer is nearly a palindrome— reading the same forwards as it does backwards— homing in with laser precision on that most urgent desire: heal! This prayer has few words but much resonance. It is a primal cry, capturing fear, powerlessness, and incomprehensibility in the face of sudden illness, accident, or injury. It is not the entreaty of the one beset by the catastrophe, but rather that of the witness, the powerless onlooker, the potential caregiver absorbing the shock, the one who is overwhelmed and stymied about how to help.
When illness, accident, or injury comes to those we love, it is up to us— those who are comparatively healthy and able— not only to beseech but also to provide hope and healing. For the caregiver, there is time only for truncated and hurried prayer, time only for stolen moments of naked cries and yearnings of hope. For the caregiver shouldering the burdens of action— making the loved one comfortable, researching treatment, running interference with physicians, reporting news, calming fears— prayer is a blessed moment of calm in an otherwise turbulent time. The essence of what we seek is still found in Moses’ direct and eternal prayer.
When one whom we love is in danger, not only our loved one but also we ourselves face darkness. According to Jewish tradition, the first person who prayed in darkness was young Jacob, on the eve of his exile from home. The Midrash describes the confluence of physical and metaphorical darkness this way: “In order to speak to Jacob in private, God caused the sun to go down— like a king who calls for the light to be extinguished, as he wishes to speak to his friend in private” (B’reishit Rabbah 68.10). So, too, the prayer of the caregiver is private, conspiratorial, hidden from the one who is the object of supplication, yet revealed to the One who can respond. We want to protect the one who is suffering from the compounded weight of the caregiver’s distress. But in the darkness, it is safe to give voice to our fear of dreadful scenarios and of the unknown. In the darkness, it is a relief to relinquish the weight of trying to hold up another’s spirits, and to acknowledge that Someone with far more power than we possess is the ultimate caregiver. In the darkness, it is possible to renew courage, to find new paths, to discover the equanimity essential to living with the terror of catastrophe.
Medical sociologist Alexandra Dundas Todd begins Double Vision, a memoir of her son’s treatment and recovery from brain cancer, with this reflection:
“The Chinese word for crisis consists of two characters: danger and opportunity. When my son, Drew, a senior in college, was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer bordering his brain, the danger was clear; the opportunity was less apparent. Danger flashed through our lives daily, while opportunities lay waiting in murky waters, to emerge only tentatively. Family closeness, the ability to savor each moment, to find strength and courage where we didn’t know they existed, to discover new methods of treatment that complemented all the surgeries and radiation and eased both body and mind, all contributed to making the unbearable bearable, turning an assault into a challenge” (Double Vision: An East-West Collaboration for Coping with Cancer, 1994, p. xiii).
It does, indeed, take “double vision” to see both blessing and curse, to picture opportunity amidst danger. Courage grows through hope, through the willingness to look for unknown possibilities and to grasp them, through refusing to see only danger in darkness when its counterpart, opportunity, may be waiting in the shadows. The prayer of the caregiver, the cry of the distraught parent, the reassuring whisper of the loving spouse, can help to wrest some measure of opportunity out of danger.
El na r’fa na la. In its simplicity and raw clarity, this prayer of healing recognizes that more than double vision, the vision of the Divine is immeasurable, and the capacity of the Healer is limitless. In response to Moses’ prayer, God reveals the duration of Miriam’s exile to the wilderness of disease. Her fortunate loved ones have only to wait out a time of disequilibrium and uncertainty; they have received Sacred reassurance that all will be well. Yet in anticipating her return, the Torah conveys a truth well known to the loved ones of someone contending with affliction and crisis— v’haam lo nasa ad heasef miryam (“and the people did not march on until Miriam was readmitted,” 12: 15). Life does not go on with any sense of normalcy or progression while one whom we love is endangered; the caregiver’s attention and effort revolves around the one who is stricken. Time and space are altered. The yearning for healing expands to fill both.
Our present rituals may not be as formulaic as those described in B’haalot’cha; our contemporary prayers of healing may have become longer and more specific; our modern understanding of treatment may be more nuanced and comprehensive; but Moses’ wisdom abides. The essence of what we seek is still found in his direct and eternal prayer. El na r’fa na la: God! Please! Heal! Please! Her!
Reuben, Steven Carr. A Year with Mordecai Kaplan: Wisdom on the Weekly Torah Portion (JPS Daily Inspiration) (p. 142). The Jewish Publication Society. Kindle Edition.
Be-ha’alotekha
Numbers 8:1–12:16
Humility
Now Moses was a very humble man, more so than any other man on earth. —Numbers 12:3
P’shat: Explanation
We call him Moshe Rabeynu, “Moses our teacher,” because he brought us the Ten Commandments and the 613 mitzvot found in the Torah. We call him Moses, Prince of Egypt, because he stood up to Pharaoh, king of the most powerful nation on Earth, and became the greatest liberator in Jewish history. Moses was also our protector, standing up to God to protect the Israelites from God’s wrath. And we speak of Moses the warrior: Time and time again he successfully led the Israelites in battle during the forty years of our wanderings from Egypt to the Promised Land.
Yet beyond all these attributes ascribed to Moses, in this passage he demonstrates another quality—one for which, more than any other trait, he has been esteemed throughout thousands of years in Jewish history: humility.
The Midrash in Derekh Eretz Rabbah 7 teaches, “Three things are of equal importance: wisdom, fear of God, and humility.” The Mishnah in Avot 4:4 counsels, “Rabbi Levitas of Yavneh said: Be exceedingly humble of spirit, for the end of every person is worms.” Furthermore, the Sages held the humility of Moses in such high regard, and so wanted all of us to be similarly humble, that in the Talmud, Sotah 5a, they taught, “Anyone who is arrogant should be excommunicated.” Moses’ humility is evident at many crucial moments in his life. He is content to leave the palace in Egypt where he had grown up with all the trappings of a prince and henceforth live the life of a simple shepherd. He attempts to decline God’s command that he become the liberator of the Israelites. He constantly questions by what merit he deserves to be their leader in the first place. From biblical times through today, Moses is held up as the quintessential Jewish role model because he embodies a multiplicity of moral traits: strength, courage, faith, and, above all, humility.
D’rash: Kaplan’s Insight
The sum of all teaching is that the essence of all knowledge is the awareness of our ignorance. Kaplan asserts that the most important quality necessary for one who seeks to learn the important lessons of life is the humility that allows us to be aware of our own ignorance. He echoes the lesson taught in the book of Proverbs 9:10, “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God.” Kaplan believed that each of us should strive to realize the quality of knowing what we don’t know and recognize that, in order to open ourselves to learning truly important life lessons, we must first stand in awe of the wonder and majesty of Creation itself. True humility of spirit grows out of this recognition of our own smallness in the universe—that knowledge is endless, we cannot understand it all, and the best we can do is humbly open ourselves to learning a small aspect of its totality.
Humility in the face of the vastness of the cosmos is a key attribute for anyone who seeks to understand the momentous lessons of life. Indeed, it was Moses’ humility—growing out of his yirat Adonai, his sense of awe before God—that allowed him to stand face-to-face with God on Mount Sinai and become the vessel for conveying the ethical and moral foundation of Jewish civilization.
Of the many prayers Kaplan wrote, this is one of my favorites, ironic and poignant:
From the cowardice that shrinks from new truths,
From the laziness that is content with half-truths,
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth, O God of truth, deliver us.
(Kol Haneshamah, p. 173)
In this prayer, Kaplan comments on those who act and preach as if they speak for God and represent the ultimate truths of the universe. He often spoke out against political and religious leaders whose sense of self-importance and alleged certainty about what God wants us all to do led many people to see all religions as bastions of fundamentalism and intolerance and religious leaders as symbols of hypocrisy. “Humankind should thank God for its prophets and sages,” he once wrote, “but pray to be saved from its saviors and messiahs.” (Not So Random Thoughts, p 38)
Be-ha’alotekha
Numbers 8:1–12:16
Humility
Now Moses was a very humble man, more so than any other man on earth. —Numbers 12:3
P’shat: Explanation
We call him Moshe Rabeynu, “Moses our teacher,” because he brought us the Ten Commandments and the 613 mitzvot found in the Torah. We call him Moses, Prince of Egypt, because he stood up to Pharaoh, king of the most powerful nation on Earth, and became the greatest liberator in Jewish history. Moses was also our protector, standing up to God to protect the Israelites from God’s wrath. And we speak of Moses the warrior: Time and time again he successfully led the Israelites in battle during the forty years of our wanderings from Egypt to the Promised Land.
Yet beyond all these attributes ascribed to Moses, in this passage he demonstrates another quality—one for which, more than any other trait, he has been esteemed throughout thousands of years in Jewish history: humility.
The Midrash in Derekh Eretz Rabbah 7 teaches, “Three things are of equal importance: wisdom, fear of God, and humility.” The Mishnah in Avot 4:4 counsels, “Rabbi Levitas of Yavneh said: Be exceedingly humble of spirit, for the end of every person is worms.” Furthermore, the Sages held the humility of Moses in such high regard, and so wanted all of us to be similarly humble, that in the Talmud, Sotah 5a, they taught, “Anyone who is arrogant should be excommunicated.” Moses’ humility is evident at many crucial moments in his life. He is content to leave the palace in Egypt where he had grown up with all the trappings of a prince and henceforth live the life of a simple shepherd. He attempts to decline God’s command that he become the liberator of the Israelites. He constantly questions by what merit he deserves to be their leader in the first place. From biblical times through today, Moses is held up as the quintessential Jewish role model because he embodies a multiplicity of moral traits: strength, courage, faith, and, above all, humility.
D’rash: Kaplan’s Insight
The sum of all teaching is that the essence of all knowledge is the awareness of our ignorance. Kaplan asserts that the most important quality necessary for one who seeks to learn the important lessons of life is the humility that allows us to be aware of our own ignorance. He echoes the lesson taught in the book of Proverbs 9:10, “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God.” Kaplan believed that each of us should strive to realize the quality of knowing what we don’t know and recognize that, in order to open ourselves to learning truly important life lessons, we must first stand in awe of the wonder and majesty of Creation itself. True humility of spirit grows out of this recognition of our own smallness in the universe—that knowledge is endless, we cannot understand it all, and the best we can do is humbly open ourselves to learning a small aspect of its totality.
Humility in the face of the vastness of the cosmos is a key attribute for anyone who seeks to understand the momentous lessons of life. Indeed, it was Moses’ humility—growing out of his yirat Adonai, his sense of awe before God—that allowed him to stand face-to-face with God on Mount Sinai and become the vessel for conveying the ethical and moral foundation of Jewish civilization.
Of the many prayers Kaplan wrote, this is one of my favorites, ironic and poignant:
From the cowardice that shrinks from new truths,
From the laziness that is content with half-truths,
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth, O God of truth, deliver us.
(Kol Haneshamah, p. 173)
In this prayer, Kaplan comments on those who act and preach as if they speak for God and represent the ultimate truths of the universe. He often spoke out against political and religious leaders whose sense of self-importance and alleged certainty about what God wants us all to do led many people to see all religions as bastions of fundamentalism and intolerance and religious leaders as symbols of hypocrisy. “Humankind should thank God for its prophets and sages,” he once wrote, “but pray to be saved from its saviors and messiahs.” (Not So Random Thoughts, p 38)