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Last weekend, we celebrated Pride Shabbat in an explosion of color and beauty and joy as we affirmed our values-based commitment to inclusivity, representation, and love. We assembled a gorgeous, rainbow chuppah on our bimah – a wedding canopy that symbolizes our promise to our community that our Judaism affirms and sanctifies love between partners regardless of gender-identity and sexual orientation. And together we prayed that one day, love will win and that the Torah’s directive to v’ahavta l’reicha kamocha, to love your neighbor as yourself, will be as natural as breathing. 

The next morning, we gathered together downtown to participate in the Heartland Pride Parade. We came together as Jewish Omaha with partners from Beth El and the Jewish Community Relations Council. We marched with our rainbow-colored chuppah, reminding our friends and neighbors that while religion can be weaponized against LGBTQ folks, that our Jewish community will not stand for it, and that we strive to be open, affirming, and welcoming to all people.

All week long, I have been thinking about Pride and the gratitude that I feel that Pride Shabbat has become a core piece of who we are as a community. That from the first time we decided to participate in Pride in 2018 by creating spaces to celebrate both here at Temple and with our wider community, it has never been a question about whether to continue it, and it has become a cherished tradition within our Jewish community.

The liberal Jewish community’s commitment to LGBTQ inclusivity has become synonymous with participation in Pride all throughout the country. And yet, it has not come without challenges. In many spaces, liberal Jews have found it difficult to navigate our presence in such spaces, not because we, ourselves, are conflicted by holding both truths, but because antisemitism creeps in.  Sometimes, Jewish people are passively or actively unwelcome in LGBTQ advocacy and coalitions because of our Judaism and a presumed relationship with Israel – without pausing to understand the nuance or complexities of what that relationship may or may not be for each individual Jewish person. 

This challenge is not new, and has only been exacerbated by the growing antisemitism that we have faced in recent months. But tonight, I am not going to talk or debate about the whys or hows or whats of the growing antisemitism. Instead, I want to talk about us. I want to talk about what we do with the challenges that we may face when we want to be part of communities whose values we largely share, and how we respond to them. 

A couple of years ago, I taught a class on Feminism and Judaism to our high school students. One of the things we talked about was intersecting identities and how we hold space for multiple pieces of ourselves, and what to do when external forces tell us that we can’t, or shouldn’t, hold both. We talked about generalities and also specific examples, like the 2017 Chicago Dyke March, whose organizers prohibited participants from marching with a Rainbow Pride flag with a Jewish star in the middle, citing the Jewish star’s association with Israel instead of recognizing it as historic, symbolic significance to all Jews predating the modern state of Israel by hundreds of years.

So, what do we do in those instances? How do we continue to be present and positive representatives in spaces that ask us to choose one value or identity over the other?  Do we cede the space to people who do not want to recognize both, or do we stay in it, working through and navigating the discomfort and the challenges? Please note though, that I am talking about how we make decisions when we find ourselves uncomfortable or unwelcome; not when we have real reasons to fear for our safety, and it is important to know the difference.

But it’s sometimes hard to know what decision is the right one. Who wants to be part of a space that doesn’t welcome them in the fullness of their identities, including their Judaism? And yet, who wants to lose that piece of themselves by ceding the space to others who claim that Jews don’t belong?
 
I want to suggest that this week’s Torah portion can lend itself to helping us understand how to navigate these challenging spaces. In Parshat Balak, we deal with questions of how we interact with our neighbors. Here, we meet a king named Balak, who asks a local prophet-for-hire, Bilaam, to curse the Israelites, who are trespassers on his land. The king had seen what the Israelites had done to the Amonites, and he was frightened for his people. And so, when the Israelites started marching toward his land, he decided that he needed Bilaam to curse the Israelites. And so God tells Bilaam to go with the messengers to Balak. He encounters lots of challenges along the way – there’s a talking donkey involved, but that’s a story for another time – but ultimately arrives and greets Balak. 

Balak then takes him to different vantage points where he can see the Jews, to find where the best place for cursing them would be. But when Bilaam sees the Israelites, he says “From their beginning, I see them as mountain peaks and I behold them as hills; it is a nation that will dwell alone…” (Num. 23:9).

It is a nation that will dwell alone.  Now that is a scary thing to behold, to be a nation that is destined to dwell alone.  But sadly, there is truth to this prophecy. Historically, the Jews have been a People who have dwelled alone. We have lived isolated, apart, forced to wander from country to country, never citizens, just mere passersby on the road toward an unknown future. From the Crusades, to pogroms to the Holocaust, to hate crimes, we have often felt alone.
 
And yet, our story is not so straightforward. As I spoke about a couple of weeks ago from the bimah, we have been part of the fabric of America since the 1600s, predating the establishment of this great country of ours. We are not a nation that dwells alone here, but part of this great American experiment. At times we feel alone. But we are not. To describe ourselves as alone would diminish our story.
 
And at the times we feel most alone, those, I believe, are the times that we need to double down on our commitment to growing our partnerships and connections to communities. Those are the times when we need to be more present, more vocal, more committed to building relationships with others whose values align with ours, even and maybe especially when, its challenging. Because we do not have to agree on everything to agree on something.
 
When we find ourselves in challenging situations, when intersecting identities or values are clashing, and external forces say we have to choose, we do not have to cede the space. We don’t have to buy into a narrowing of values and lean into the expansiveness of values and interpretations and questions that Judaism not only allows, but encourages.  We can choose to be present in spite of our discomfort and help our communities and partners and neighbors see that Judaism is a both/and religion. And we can choose to stand for something, together, rather than each of us standing apart and alone. Because when we stand together, we also grow together.

Shabbat last week was a beautiful example of that. Of a time where we chose to be fully engaged and aligned with the values we believe in as a community and to stand publicly and proudly as Jews who are open, affirming, and inclusive of all people, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation.
 
To me, this is the aspirational challenge of the blessing of this Torah portion, a blessing that we say each and every morning uttered from the would-be prophet for hire, Bilaam himself – mah tovu ohalecha Ya’akov, mishkenotecha Yisrael, “How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel.” (Num. 24:5).
 
Rashi teaches that what Bilaam saw that the Israelites were modeling how to live respectfully with their neighbors. Not next to them – with them. And to be clear – this is a work in progress for the Jewish community –  figuring out how to see each other as one Jewish community even when we disagree among ourselves on core pieces of our faith.
 
But I believe that there is yet another challenge embedded here – pushing us to find ways to live in harmony, in partnership, in community, with all of our neighbors. Sometimes we will align, sometimes we won’t. But part of being Jewish is working towards a better world and better future for all people – and we cannot and will not achieve that by holding onto the narrative that we are or should be a nation who dwells alone.
 
This Shabbat, I pray that we can continue to aspire towards being a community that shows up for each other – to celebrate; to bear witness; to affirm each other in the fullness of our values and identities, even when we disagree. To be a community that loudly, and proudly, and courageously works towards a better world, together. 

Shabbat Shalom.

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Watch the entirety of Friday’s service here.

Temple Talk is a recap of sermons given from the Bimah for those who missed a Sermon or who wanted to revisit the words spoken at a previous sermon.