Sexually Speaking, Idols, Dreams, & Balak

The temptation for humans always seems to be to name all the horrible things that are happening.

We somehow think that’s what it means to be “real”: to name all that’s terrible. (Check out my new Homepage!).

(Speaking of keeping things real, how many of us secretly wished that gunman hadn’t missed?)

(Good thing I’m not a politician and I can just be real about it, even if I know it would have only have made things worse, as it already has).

But there are other real things happening that aren’t awful.

I mean, Dr. Ruth Westheimer died last week—the good part is that she lived to 96!

And made a real impact on how we talk about (and hopefully do) sex.

She kept things very real—and was kind of an idol to me.

My teenage years are full of memories of listening to her on the radio.

(Was it every day after school that I heard people calling in with questions for Dr. Ruth on her show Sexually Speaking?)

Dr. Ruth was full of positivity and hope.

Her determination to revolutionize how we talked about (and had) sex was how her role in Tikkun Olam (repairing the world) played out.

There had never been a show like it before, and there hasn’t been one since.

And all that hope and positivity came from someone who survived the Holocaust.

She could have given in to the horrors of what she’d experienced and all she’d lost, and just given up.

But she saw it as her duty to be part of the repair—because she had survived!

Right now we’re in a different place.

All we think about is that our Democratic presidential candidate is unable to keep his thoughts and sentences straight.

(Among other things.)

And that our Republican candidate is going to win—and bring ruin to even more lives than we thought was possible.

This week in Torah, we have a king, Balak, who wants a diviner, Balaam, to bring curses upon the people Israel.

Balaam has connections with God that Balak does not have.

Balaam repeatedly checks in with God.

He even dreams that God gives him the go-ahead to meet with Balak and talk things out.

God gets angry—because that was just a dream.

But God still says, okay, go, “but only do as I say, and only speak My words.”

Thus, Balaam repeatedly blesses the people, which really pisses Balak off.

But Balaam is none too perceptive either.

He doesn’t perceive the “adversary” (Satan, in Hebrew), with drawn sword and all, that God has put in front of Balaam to block his way.

(How connected to God is he after all?)

Balaam looks rather foolish, too, because his donkey sees the adversary while he, a “smart human,” does not.

This, my friends, is Torah humor.

Still, all is revealed in the end.

Ultimately, Balaam manages to bless the Israelites as opposed to cursing them.

(Does he apologize to his donkey for beating it? He really should.)

The Parsha ends with “whoring Israelites” (men) who have sex (speaking of sex) with Moabite women.

These Moabites are influencing are luring the Israelites away from their One True God to worship false idols.

There is a plague (always a punishment) that takes the lives of 24,000 Israelites.

Until Pinhas, son and grandson of a priest, follows a Moabite woman and her Israelite lover into a tent—

—and pierces them through the belly, killing them both.

Thus, the plague is checked.

Happy endings, the Torah is not known for.

What about our happy endings?

Even though the predictions for our presidential elections seem dire, do we have to believe them before they even happen?

If we give in to bad dreams that predict a living nightmare, do we make them come true just by giving up?

Who—what—is our True God?

And the false gods that we are believing?

Even though polls have been proven to be dead wrong time and again?

(Remember France last week—again!)

What does giving up do for all those out there on the ground working so hard to make the outcome different?

The lesson I take from this Torah reading is that being connected to God means bringing blessing, not curses.

Is it helpful to be lured by negative voices that bring dire predictions?

Or might it actually be harmful, and help those predictions come true?

Let’s not stab ourselves in the belly, ending it before it’s even over.

Instead, let’s work on being more connected to blessing, and support those working actively to change our future.

Dr. Ruth was a voice of hope coming out of a very dire situation.

Can we each be a voice of hope that does the same?

If you’d like to be a voice of hope and blessing, please say Amen.