Standing Alone: A Father's Lesson (Parshat Chukat) | The Land of Israel Fellowship

I found myself thinking more and more not only about my father in heaven, but also about my father that I was a blessed to have with here on earth who's now in heaven as well. Zichrono livracha, may his memory be a blessing. I've been thinking a lot about him because as some of you may remember from the many stories I've shared about my father, he wasn't a particularly learned man at no fault of his own. He never had a Jewish education. He was no scholar. He never received any sort of Jewish formal chinuch teachings and even his Hebrew was rudimentary at best. And that's exactly why he was so unwaveringly committed and dedicated beyond anything else to giving us his children the education that he never got. I'll never forget the look on his face when he would hear us speaking Hebrew, his children. You know, we would speak fluently and easily because of the education he needed and he ensured we had we would have. He didn't understand most of the words. He didn't need to. He looked at us the way a man looks at something taken from his family for generations and at last in his own living room it's handed back. He was just so full that he could barely speak. You know, as if his children had walked through a door locked to him locked to him for his entire life and he was content, more than content. He was shalom, he was whole just to stand in the doorway and watch us go through. And he was with us, vicariously with us and through us. And there was there was one more thing that he gave us and they were really connected. You know, without having any ancient text opened up before him, he understood what was at the root of what it is to be a Jew that many scholars never reach. He understood that you cannot build your sense of who you are based on what anyone else thinks. On whether you're loved by the world or loved by anyone else. He used to engineer situations to teach us this. I've shared a lot of them before. You know, he would do it deliberately. Many times it would be any embarrassing situation that we'd just find ourselves in that would make us want to sink into the floor, whether singing Israel's national anthem with his arms around us on the top of his lungs through the Houston International Airport or whatever. There were a thousand things. The point is that if we were able to survive being looked at and being different and standing out as completely different from anyone else, then we are ready for what it is to truly be a Jew. That was his philosophy. And so we walked around in Houston. I grew up in my in my kippah and he would wear his kippah. And I understood now that for him this was never really about halakha. It wasn't about Jewish law. For people that it's about Jewish law, they'll put on a baseball cap and their head is covered and No, he didn't care about the baseball cap. He wanted to have a kippah on. We should be wearing it so we'd be feeling it. So we would stand out. So we were willing to be standing alone. And I've been thinking about him because my own reaction to this moment hasn't matched many of the voices that I'm hearing, especially from my brothers and sisters in America, dear friends, so many people that I love are feeling betrayed and angry. And I understand it completely. Most of that anger, I can't help but to feel is rooted in fear of what is happening all around us. But what I have felt is something closer to relief. Because for the first time since that dark Simchat Torah, since October 7th, 2023, it actually feels true. We are alone. There is no great nation standing with us. We're arriving at the place where there is nowhere left to put our hope and our trust than above. We're different. We are resented. We are despised. We feel alone. And it's only going to get more and more and on some level I feel like my father spent my entire childhood preparing me for exactly this. And I really believe that on some level this is where Parshat Chukat, our Torah portion, wants to take us, where it's it's showing us. Right, The portion opens up with one of the stranger laws stranger laws. It feels like a strange law in the Torah. The world receives it as such. Chapter 19, verse two. Zot chukat haTorah asher tziva Hashem. This is the statute of the Torah that Hashem commanded. The word here chukat from chok is a decree with no reason that we can really understand. Right? The red heifer purifies the impure and defiles the one who prepares it. Right? A law that baffles the mind that tries to solve it. Right? We learn that the nations of ancient times used to taunt Israel saying, "What sense is there in that? It doesn't make any sense." And the Torah answers only, "It is a decree from me." God is saying it's from me and you're asked to trust me. You don't need to understand it all. And I really think that that is a key to understanding everything that's happening this week. Because the survival of the Jewish people itself is a chok. Right? Empires that should have erased us are dust, and we, who often it seems like we're lacking our own basic survival mechanisms that any creature has, we lack it ourselves, we're still here. We're still planting in these hills. We're still reading these words across 35 different countries on this Sunday night. Right? We are a statute that the world cannot explain, cannot stop hating, and cannot make disappear. Right? It's confusion over these statutes is not a sign something has gone wrong, it's just the oldest pattern that there is. Then, the parsha of the Torah portion makes it personal. Right? Israel, [clears throat] it feels personal at least. Israel, on the edge of the land, sends a message to to our ancient kinsman, the descendants of Esau. Chapter 20, verse 14. Ko amar achicha Yisrael, thus says your brother Israel. Achicha, your brother. We come to Edom not as strangers but as family, asking only for passage, promising not to touch anything, to keep to the king's road. And the answer comes back, "Lo ta'avor bi, you shall not pass through me." And more than a refusal, Edom comes out against us ba'am kaved uviyad chazakah with a heavy nation, right, and a strong hand, brother meeting brother with a sword. And what does Israel do? We don't force it. Vayetzei Yisrael me'alav, Israel turned away and took the long lonely road. Now, how can we read these words without experiencing them in our bones? Right, the one who called you brother bars the road and comes out armed and you are uh left to go the long way, all alone. You know, I want to play something for you that I heard this week. There's so many sound bites out there, but the Vice President of the United States speaking about Israel. >> Number one, Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time. >> Listen to what that actually means. Even offered as friendship, maybe especially in the guise of friendship, it's a description of how alone we've become. To be told that one nation is nearly the last that still feels anything warm towards us is not reassurance, it's the measure of our isolation. It even, and I think we all feel this, it even creates and solidifies that isolation. Said from the mouth of the Vice President of the United States, it creates that reality, too. Spoken plainly, right, by the very last friend who remains. And that is the brother at the edge of Edom telling us that there's no other road. And the prophets told us that this would come, that the nations would draw away and we would stand with no human power left to lean on. We're not watching something go wrong. We're watching something foretold playing out exactly as it needs to. But L'cha the Torah portion doesn't leave us with the bitterness of a brother's refusal. It hands us the cure in the same Torah portion. Further down the road, the people speak against God and a plague of serpents comes and the remedy God gives uh us this remedy that seems very strange and counterintuitive. Right? Moshe fashions a serpent of copper and raises it on a pole. Vaya'al Nachash Nechoshet Vayar V'Chai. And it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he shall live. A copper snake on a stick heals a snakebite? Right, the obvious question that is asked is does a serpent kill or give life? And the answer is of course not. Rather, when Israel turned their eyes upward and surrendered our hearts to our Father in Heaven, we were healed. The copper itself obviously had no power. The looking up had all the power. The cure for the venom was the lifting of the eyes. And here is what I guess really sort of touched my heart this week. My father who was never blessed to have learned these Torah portions, learned these Torah teachings, taught it to his children anyways. He understood the whole thing without a verse, that the cure was never the brother's approval, never the room's comfort, never the great power's friendship. The cure was always looking up. When the when the well runs dry and the road is blocked by those whose friendship you seek, the healing was never by looking out at them and hoping in them and putting your faith in them. It was only ever a matter of where we point our eyes klap ayin l'ma'alah, upwards, upwards. There's an ancient Jewish teaching that describes the generation just before the redemption and it ends with a question and answer that could have been written for the exact week that we're in right now. Upon what do we have to lean? Upon our Father in Heaven. That is for the generation approaching the redemption. The sages place that deliberately at the threshold of redemption because the painful stripping away of every borrowed strength is itself the labor pains of the Geulah, the labor pains of redemption. The isolation is not the absence of the plan. The isolation is the plan. God clearing the field of every false support, every alliance that we secretly trusted more than him until the only support we have left is to look up to the only one who is ever really supporting us and holding us up. So maybe the relief I've been feeling isn't like so crazy. Maybe it's just my father's voice finally resonating during the very moment he was always preparing me for. And maybe that's why I wanted to watch the turning point land in person today and I hope it lands beautifully. Because I no longer feel I don't feel like what's happening right now is really a tragedy. I read it the way next week's Torah portion reads it. Which this year sounds less like a description and more like a promise. Right, chapter 23 verse 9 from next week's Torah portion. Behold, a people that dwells alone and is not reckoned among the nations. That was never a curse. It was always just who we are. To dwell alone means there are no illusions, no idols, nothing left between us and Hashem. So in this moment, may we not panic when the world pulls away. May we not mistake loneliness for abandonment. May we lift our eyes and steady our hearts and remember that we were never meant to be defined by the approval of the nations, only by our covenant with Hashem. And [clears throat] when the roads are blocked and when the wells feel dry, when even brothers stand at a distance, we will keep walking with the knowledge that when we are tired and we must lean upon whom are we leaning? Only upon our Father in heaven. My name is Ari.