This week's Torah portion, B'Ha'alotcha, gives us our famous, terse prayer for healing that we sing together every week: el na r'fa na lah. It arises in the portion after there has been much dissatisfaction among the people and anger from Aharon and Miriam that Moses pulls all the strings – leadership, prophecy, everything. In response, in a dramatic and unsettling moment, God descends in cloud-form to call out the two. Then Torah says:
וְהֶעָנָ֗ן סָ֚ר מֵעַ֣ל הָאֹ֔הֶל וְהִנֵּ֥ה מִרְיָ֖ם מְצֹרַ֣עַת כַּשָּׁ֑לֶג וַיִּ֧פֶן אַהֲרֹ֛ן אֶל־מִרְיָ֖ם וְהִנֵּ֥ה מְצֹרָֽעַת׃
"As the cloud moved away from the tent, there was Miriam, scaly and white. And Aharon turned to her and behold she was scaly." (Numbers 12:10)
There's a lot of unfair here, and another year we'll talk about it. But what jumped out at me this year, in this moment, is that Torah first reveals that Miriam has turned white as snow. Then it adds that Aharon looks at her and behold, she's white as snow. Why do we need that detail? Why do we need to be told twice? Couldn't Torah have just said once that she was struck with leprosy, or whatever it was, and leave it there?
What I felt today re-reading this for the umpteenth time in my life was that there is something here about the power and importance of witnessing. Miriam was struck with the disease, but until Aharon witnessed it, until she was witnessed, it wasn't quite real.
How powerful is the act of witnessing – the way it draws something into manifestation!
We have all had these moments. We've received bad news, experienced a loss. For the minutes or hours or days that we're holding it alone, it's as if it hasn't fully happened. Maybe we're trying to keep it from fully happening.
But witnessing makes it real. It makes it part of the world and an undeniable part of our consciousness. So you lose a loved one. It is awful and other-worldly. But it becomes realer and realer as people see you, and as you see people seeing you. You see yourself through their eyes – "oh yes, I'm a mourner." And the death that was once surreal becomes manifestly real as you repeatedly tell customer service representatives that your loved one died – them witnessing you, you witnessing yourself being witnessed.
Of course it's true of happy stuff too. It is why weddings require witnesses. A proposal can happen in private. But whatever you say to your beloved at your wedding has to be witnessed for it to work. Witnessing is what draws your marriage into the realm of the real.
And so this scene in Torah jumped out at me this year because it seems to me we are, right now, in a moment where we are called, or reminded, to witness and to be witnessed.
Certainly during these last 87 days of shelter-in-place we've all had a chance to turn the camera inward. Witnessing who are we when we're not on duty, not on display, not in motion. Witnessing ourselves in states of uncertainty or anxiety. Witnessing maybe the secret relief at not being expected to be so productive. Witnessing maybe the secret pleasure of simply being left alone.
If we do not take the time to witness ourselves in this moment, will any of these feelings have happened? Will any of these self-discoveries stick?
And in the 21 days since the death of George Floyd we are being reminded of our unceasing duty to witness, to be witnessed, to bear witness.
And now I'm talking particularly to the people in this room who identify or read or live as white people. I know many of us have been struggling to figure out what to do, how to take action, how to show support, how to be part of making change. And there are many good answers.
And what I'm feeling today is that underneath all of it, we need to witness. Be active eyes and ears. Both o utward and inward.
We know what happened to George Floyd because it was witnessed. Someone turned on their camera. We can only guess at how much more of the iceberg doesn't get witnessed and is therefore, in the eyes of the media and the judicial system and any mechanisms of justice, as if it didn't happen.
But the call to witness extends beyond overt acts of harassment and violence. It includes the everyday. It demands that we notice. What is moving in the culture? What is being said? What is not being said? Who is being seen and heard? And who is not? Witnessing the everyday aggresssions people of color experience, and letting them know we see, even if we don't know how to solve.
We are also called to be actively witnessing ourselves. Noticing our outrage, our discomfort, our eagerness to act, our reluctance to get involved. Not so that we feel ashamed. Or smug. But to make these things real. If they remain invisible, they can't be addressed.
I think we are being strongly called right now to witness our whiteness. For some of us this could be difficult, because our whiteness is so often invisible to us. It takes the form of absences. Absence of certain kinds of adversity, absence of certain risks, absence of certain kinds of struggle. Obviously everyone in this room has struggled. We are intersectional beings; some of us have faced adversity for being queer, or being women, or having a disability, or for being Jews, or for any one of a number of reasons. But how would our struggles have gone down differently if we were black? What are some of the dimensions of struggle we haven't had to endure. Whatever all of that is, it deserves witnessing.
I look back. I see that in my life I have been able to count on renting apartments, getting jobs, being given the benefit of the doubt, getting second chances. I still notice how upset and nervous I get when pulled over by police. But I've never thought that those might be my last minutes on earth.
Those privileges are significant, and they're not bad things – everyone should have them. But it is time for me to witness that it's not just my brains or my sparkling personality that have secured this life that I am living. It's also my whiteness. Even my deep orientation toward hope is not unrelated to the sense of possibility that whiteness has given me.
And so I'm called in this moment to witness that, and to be witnessed in my sadness about it, as it slowly comes into focus.
Whiteness tells us that we don't have to notice our whiteness. But Torah this week is saying no. Witness. Make it real. You can't work with it until you see it. Miriam didn't have a prayer of being healed until her unexpected – and blessedly temporary – whiteness was witnessed.
One more bit to add.
A few chapters earlier in the Torah portion, we learn that the Children of Israel were being led through the Wilderness by the Divine presence in the form of a column of cloud by day and a pillar of flame by night. When the people weren't actively moving, the cloud or the fire would come to settle over the mishkan, the Tent of God's presence. Torah, in this passage (Numbers 9:15), calls the mishkan by an additional name, ohel ha'edut, the Tent of Witnessing. Edut – "witnessing" or "testimony" – here refers to the tablets, the testament, that Moses brought down from the Mountain. This tent is where they are lodged. But it's not called here ohel haluchot – Tent of the Tablets. It's not called ohel hatorah – Tent of the Torah. It is ohel ha'edut – the Tent of Witnessing.
So again I'm feeling a really strong invitation this week, in this time that sometimes feels like a Wilderness, to renew our witnessing: to broaden its scope, refine its quality, build its endurance. To be witness – not only, but always.
According to Torah, the Divine cloud or flame would lift when it was time for the people to move on. And according to midrash, the cloud would bend the letters of the Divine name and use them to point the direction toward the Promised Land.
So let us take on witnessing as a holy task. As an act of generosity, care, protection, self-awareness, and the beginning of transformation. Let us witness ourselves, see others and witness them, notice where people are not seen, and change it.
And trust that the Divine fire in us will tell us when it's time to break camp and march. And the letters of the Divine name will point the way.
I’m talking to so many people these days, it’s hard to know who got what swirling in my head. But I’m certain Jenny Levine-Smith was one of them.
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