God moves slowly

In transitional moments, we all want to know what will happen next. When I went off to college, my expectations were shaped by the reminiscences of my parents and grandparents, who had attended college in an earlier, languid era of card playing and effortless drifting toward the career of one’s dreams. The picture they painted was utterly unlike the frantic competitiveness of campus life in my generation. The oracle was mistaken. The same at each subsequent pivot in my journey. Whenever I changed jobs or addresses or relationships, someone tried to predict my new reality. They were miles off. What can you do about a thing like that?

At this point in history, a time of division at home and challenges abroad, Americans are apprehensively wondering what is about to unfold. Likewise in Israel: Domestic turmoil and foreign peril prompt fevered speculation about the future. A thousand pundits offer sophisticated guesses, but they’ve all been wrong before.

This week’s Torah portion describes a clairvoyant device called the Urim and Thummim, apparently kept inside the high priest’s 12-jeweled breastpiece, or else synonymous with the breastpiece (Exodus 28:15-30). How does it work? The Talmud (Yoma 73b) imagines that it bears the names of the 12 tribes, and the letters in the names stand out somehow, one by one, to spell God’s message. It is a kind of divine Ouija board.

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Alas, we no longer have the Urim and Thummim. But on Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat before Purim, we might recall another fortune-telling technique practiced by Esther’s uncle Mordecai. When Mordecai hears Haman has picked a date to kill the Jews, he finds three pupils emerging from the schoolhouse and anxiously asks what they studied today. Each youngster quotes a different Biblical verse promising deliverance from danger, and Mordecai takes heart (Esther Rabba 7:13).

“Out of the mouths of babes” comes God’s decree. Jimmy Carter, who died a few weeks ago, was once ridiculed for asking his small daughter to name America’s most pressing issue; but really, who better to ask? Children haven’t learned to dissemble, at least not as effectively as adults. They speak an uncomplicated kind of wisdom.

On Shabbat Zachor, the maftir (final Torah verses) is Deuteronomy 25:17-19: “Blot out the memory of Amalek… Do not forget!” Amalek is the cruel tribe of Haman’s ancestors (I Samuel 15:8, Esther 3:1). Remembering to forget is a marvelous paradox, although modern readers are often troubled by the curse on an entire nation. As Abraham might say, what if there were 10 righteous persons in Amalek?

We have been oppressed in Spain, in Russia, in Germany — but all Spaniards or Russians or Germans are not our enemies. All Palestinians are not our enemies. All immigrants are not our enemies, and all who urge stricter border controls are not our enemies. All who decry racism are not our enemies, and all who think racism is licked are not our enemies. All transgender people are not our enemies, and all who see gender as an immutable biological trait are not our enemies. We’d better get used to complexity and ambiguity.

In Hebrew, Amalek has the same numerical value as safek, “doubt.” Perhaps our only perpetual enemy is doubt: It was doubt that surprised us on the march, when we were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in our rear. Perhaps that is the lesson of Shabbat Zachor: Amalek is our own insecurity. Quash it, and keep quashing it!

When my Morgantown congregation hired me from California in 2012, I moved to West Virginia with much trepidation. What did I know about West Virginia? My old friend Michael Kelley was raised in Kenova, near Huntington — but of course, he was someone who’d chosen to leave West Virginia. Nothing Michael told me accurately forecast my own largely happy experience here. I’m glad I didn’t treat him as my oracle.

You are nervous about tomorrow. People have always worried about destiny — what could be more human! That’s what God is for: to reassure us that there’s a plan, even if we can’t discern its outlines at this instant. God moves gradually, with calm deliberation, sometimes too slowly for our taste. A thousand years is like one day in the sight of God (Psalms 90:4). But never doubt that God is in charge, that God will have the last word, that truth and justice will prevail in the end. PJC

Rabbi Joe Hample is the spiritual leader of the Tree of Life Congregation in Morgantown, West Virginia. This column is a service of the Greater Pittsburgh Jewish Clergy Association.