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Jewish Recovery Thought - Balak

"And the people began to go astray after the daughters of Moab.”

Numbers 25:1

The name of this week's reading, Balak, refers to the name of the Moabite king who battled the Israelites prior to their entry into the Land of Israel. Daunted by the divine protection enjoyed by the nation of Israel, Balak sought the advice of the wicked prophet, Bilaam. Bilaam explained that no strategy would be effective against the Israelites so long as they were connected to G-d, but that if one could lure them to turn away from G-d, they would then become vulnerable to their enemies.

Balak and Bilaam thus devised an elaborate scheme to entice the Israelites with harlots. The harlots successfully seduced many Israelite men and even led them to worship idols. It seems that Bilaam understood what many of us have learned in recovery -- that it is the pursuit of gratifying our most basic instincts that disrupts our natural connectedness with G-d.

It is particularly interesting that Bilaam specifically chose the desire for sex as the lure. It is instinct that draws us into self-will and away from the will of G-d and no instinct is more powerful or more deeply rooted than our physical, emotional, and mental drive for sexual gratification. Our sexuality touches upon almost every part of our ego -- self-esteem, the desire to be accepted, emotional security and so on.

One ought not derive a puritanical message from this story -- that sex is evil and provokes divine wrath. To do so would be to miss the point entirely. The point is that whenever we choose to selfishly pursue any kind of instinctive drive, we separate ourselves from G-d. Sex, as it were, just happens to be one of those things –- or perhaps the thing –- that most exploits our powerlessness over our own will.

Giving our life and our will over to the care of G-d, as our program suggests, can be frightening. We worry that perhaps G-d won’t take care of us and we’ll be left to fend for ourselves. In building our case, we point to all the problems we have even in sobriety. Many of us may even feel that G-d has ‘turned His back’ on us.

But our reading this week tells us that precisely the opposite is true. If we are facing an absence of G-d in our lives, we should ask ourselves where it was that we turned our back on Him and not the other way around. Did we make decision somewhere along the line to take care of ourselves rather than to let G-d do the job? Did we feel that if we left things up to G-d, he wouldn't cater to our desires as we would wish? If we look honestly at ourselves and the choices we have made, we will see that it is we who rashly chose to part ways with Him if only to be free for a while to run after more of what we want.

Fortunately, however, it is our very problem that holds for us a solution. Nothing but our own will can upset the natural state of G-d’s constant care for us and it is the surrender of our will to His that restores the natural order, allowing G-d to determine what is best for us so that we we may always receive the help and care that we need.

Jewish Recovery Thought - Chukas

"This is the decree of the Torah….”

Numbers 19:2

The name of the portion this week, “Chukat,” means a suprarational decree – a law without logical explanation. The particular decree of which the reading speaks is the procedure for ritual purification from contact with a dead body. The process involves the burning of a red-haired cow, a piece of cedar wood, a bundle of hyssop and a scarlet thread, mixing these ashes in water and sprinkling them upon the person or object that has become defiled.

While there are many commandments that appeal directly to our sense of logic, and still others that after having been commanded make sense to us, there are other laws that entirely defy human understanding. Such a law is the curious procedure for purification from contact with a corpse.

It has been said that the Twelve Steps work but that no one is really sure how or why they do. It can be unsettling to give oneself over to a process that you cannot understand. Pride doesn’t seem to want to let us. But we alcoholics have been forced to accept that the solution for our alcoholism is not something we need to understand.

Uncomfortable with the spiritual nature of the program, some alcoholics have sought to devise other systems for curing alcoholism that appeal more to reason. They would rather approach the problem from a rational perspective. If people can find sobriety that way, more power to them. If not, however, one would think it less important that the treatment make sense than the fact that it works.

There is yet another lesson to be learned from the above-mentioned law. One may understand the opening verse of this portion -– “This is the decree of the Torah” –- to not only mean that this particular commandment is a suprarational decree, but that really the entire Torah transcends logic and that while some commandments may make more sense to us than others, all of G-d’s laws are ultimately beyond the pale of mortal comprehension.

This, too, is a concept with which we in recovery may already be intuitively aware. Much of our program does strike us as sound thinking. But that is not why we stick to it. The foundation of our recovery is to be of service to G-d and to allow Him to make full use of us. We no longer ask to know why G-d wants something, but rather, to know what it is that He wants so that -– whatever it may be –- we may do it. Such kind of living may not always satisfy the intellect, but it is a G-dly way of living, and G-d, we think, need not justify Himself to our sensibilities. It is we who must conform to His will and understanding, not the other way around.

12 & 12 Step Two - Audio Class

From our series Judaism & Recovery - Thursday, June 26 2008

Twelve & Twelve Study - Step Two Part I

12 & 12 Step One - Audio Class

From our series Judaism & Recovery - Thursday, June 12 2008

Twelve & Twelve Study - Step One

Jewish Recovery Thought - Korach

"The entire community is holy and G-d is amongst them; so why do you raise yourselves above the congregation of G-d?"

Numbers 16:3

This week we read of Korach, a cousin of Moses, who led a rebellion against Moses and his brother, Aaron, the High Priest, charging them with unduly taking high offices for themselves. Although both Moses and Aaron were divinely appointed to their posts, Korach suspected that they were merely grabbing power for themselves and trying to assert their superiority over the rest of the nation. "The entire community is holy and G-d is amongst them," said Korach, "So why do you raise yourselves above the congregation of G-d?"

Moses and Aaron had held their positions long before Korach's rebellion in the second year in the wilderness. What prompted Korach to challenge them at that time?

In last week’s reading, we read of the scouts sent by Moses and how they feared entering the Land. The scouts enjoyed the nomadic life in the wilderness where they were free to study, pray and meditate all day. They were thus reluctant to establish a homeland for fear of being distracted from their spiritual pursuits. Their grave error lied in failing to appreciate the importance of serving G-d not just in speech and thought but in action.

Korach took this episode to heart and drew his own conclusion. Since action is of paramount importance and since everyone performs the same commandments, there is apparently no difference between one person and the next. The fact that people like Moses and Aaron have a heightened sense of understanding and appreciation for the commandments should be irrelevant. Action is action and we all follow the same code, reasoned Korach.

As such, Korach resented the very notion that Moses and Aaron should be recognized on the basis of their greater spiritual sensitivity.

But Korach was wrong. Granted, right action is more crucial than right thinking or feeling. But that does not mean that thoughts and feelings are insignificant. The same deed may be done with various degrees of awareness and feeling. Those who perform the commandments with greater intellectual and emotional depth are rightly placed in their positions as mentors, teachers and guides.

There is a direct application of this lesson to our experience in recovery. We all work the same Steps. We all take the same basic actions: admitting our powerlessness, turning our life over to a Higher Power, taking moral inventory, making amends, etc. In this regard, everyone who works the program is the same as everybody else. But we must not make the same mistake as Korach by thinking that technical execution of the deed is all there is and that everybody is on the same level. There is such a thing as “quality of sobriety,” and we should humbly recognize that in this regard there are those who surpass us.

We all know what it means when we hear that “so-and-so works a good program.” It’s not just about action. It’s about internal growth -- intangibles such as serenity, courage and wisdom. It can be a hard pill for such an insecure lot as us to swallow, but if we know people who have real quality sobriety, we should admit it and aspire to be like them. In order to "stick with the winners" we have to give the winners their due.

Jewish Recovery Thought - Shlach

“It is a land that consumes those who settle it.”
Numbers 13:32

In this week's reading, Moses sends scouts to tour the Land of Israel and report back with the best strategy for conquering the Land. Instead of fulfilling their mission, the scouts return with a bleak report and insist that the nation remain in the desert.

There are two questions. 1. Why did the scouts disparage the prospect of entering the Land that G-d had promised them? 2. The scouts were handpicked by Moses because of their high spiritual standing – “all of them men of distinction” (Bamidbar 13:3). How then could they have failed so dismally to carry out their charge?

On a simple level, we may answer that the scouts were afraid of battle. But this only answers our first question and not our second. G-d had already promised them that they would easily conquer their enemies. If the scouts were spiritual men, they certainly had faith in G-d’s promise to grant them victory.

A deeper explanation is given which answers both questions. The scouts were not afraid that they could not conquer the land. They were afraid of what their lives would be like after they did. Being spiritual people, they had a profound fear of becoming involved in the kind of worldly affairs that would arise in the course of settling the Land – agriculture, city-building, commerce, government, etc. In the desert, they had no work, no homes, no responsibilities. They were happy to be nomads, for such living left them free to inhabit what the kabbalists refer to as the “plane of thought and speech,” rather than “the plane of action.”

What these misguided spiritualists forgot, however, is that G-d's purpose for them was not in the modified reality of the desert, but in tackling the holy task of settling the Land and dealing with the world.

It seems we alcoholics may have a lot in common with these men. They say that we are more sensitive and idealistic than most people and, for that reason, have found great pain in confronting the realities of this world. Whether this is true or not would be hard to say. What we can say with a fair amount of certainty, however, is that no group has ever more clearly displayed an obsession for buffering themselves from reality. No bunch has more feared facing the rigors of mundane existence and “settling the Land.” We felt ourselves more at peace in “the planes of thought and speech” than that of action. Indeed, philosophizing and debating were more readily agreeable to us than tending to everyday affairs. We wanted to live in our own heads, not in the real world. Alcohol helped us do that and, in a strange way, some of us may have even thought it helped us get closer to G-d.

But, also like the scouts, we were tragically mistaken. G-d desires that He be found in reality. Whether or not we are up to the task is irrelevant. It is not on our power that we rely, but on His. What we thought to be merely an admission of our own inability to handle unmodified existence, we later came to realize was actually a most brazen accusation against G-d – that He could not help us to deal with reality nearly as well as alcohol could. Thus, we told G-d in so many words that we did not trust Him to help us carry out our G-d-given mission that awaited us in the daunting Promised Land of sober reality.

Recovery has helped us correct this grave error in our thinking. We do not fear the world quite as much today as we once did. We are ready to enter and settle the Land, to “live life on life's terms” and – with G-d's ever abundant help and mercy – to face head on whatever may await us there.

Jewish Recovery Thought - Behaalosecha

“If any man of you or of your future generations shall be unclean... or be on a journey afar off, he shall observe the Passover offering to G-d on the fourteenth day of the second month...”

Numbers 9:10-11

There is a commandment to celebrate Passover, the anniversary of the exodus from Egypt, by bringing a special sacrifice -- the Pascal lamb.

This week's reading relates the story of a group of men who were unable to participate in the rite of the Pascal lamb because they were ritually impure and would not be able to complete the requisite purification process in time for Passover. Distraught over this missed opportunity, these men approached Moses and asked that he somehow make an exception for them. Moses asked G-d and G-d told him to establish a make-up date one month later for all who had missed the first Passover. The "Second Passover" was thus issued as a divine commandment for all time.

But if the Second Passover was destined to become a commandment, why didn't G-d simply relate this commandment to Moses when He told him about the regular Passover offering? Why did G-d not reveal this "back-up plan" until asked?

The answer is that the possibility for a Second Passover derives from the power of teshuvah - (literally: "return"). When one returns to G-d, spiritual deficits are transformed into spiritual assets, for it is the penitent's prior distance from G-d that serves as the very springboard for his current heightened desire to cleave to Him now. Ironically, had he not once been estranged from G-d, he would never have come to feel the kind of yearning for Him that he does now. Thus, the darkest moments of his past, what were once his greatest liabilities, become the source for an intense motivation for closeness with G-d.

Such a condition, however -- where the darkness of the past is converted to light -- cannot be premeditated. G-d's rule book could never prescribe the failure to serve G-d properly as a way of later becoming closer to Him. The opportunity to transform the past must come from the penitent himself. He must ask for it.

In recovery, we've found a new relationship with G-d. We have an appreciation for His wisdom, love and guidance that we are quite sure could never have been possible had we not been forced to turn our lives over to Him as the only known treatment for a disease which is progressive, incurable and fatal. But we did not become alcoholics so that we could later discover G-d in recovery. Nor is that something that we could ever have planned. It isn't even something G-d would have told us to do. But once it did happened, and we reached out to G-d, the possibility for transformation was granted.

A certain Hasid was once chided about the fact that the Hasidic Jews tend to make a big to do about the Second Passover. "You celebrate a holiday established for impure people," his detractor laughed. "No," he answered, "Not a holiday for impure people. A holiday for impure people who became pure."

Some might think it odd when they hear an alcoholic in recovery say something like: "Being an alcoholic is the greatest thing that every happened to me." Perhaps they think that recovery is meant to only make us more like normal people, to catch us up. But we do not have the dubious luxury of being “normal people” who may decide how and when to let G-d into their lives. Such is our fortune: that we are among that happy lot for whom their very survival requires giving themselves over entirely to G-d.

We could never have planned it. G-d would never have advised it. But this is how things worked out. And this is what has made us closer to Him today.