Parsha Beha’alotecha (Numbers 8:1 – 12:16)
By Barrett Holman Leak
SAN DIEGO — “Where’s the meat?!” This and other complaints were on the hearts and minds of the Israelites as they set out on their journey from the Sinai Desert and prepared for The Promised Land, carrying the portable Tabernacle or Mishkan.
Parsha Beha’alotecha begins with the Israelites on the cusp of a great journey. We hear instructions for Aaron, the High Priest, to tend the light and for consecrating the Levites to their sacred roles. There are provisions for observing Pesach, a year after their liberation, and details about the guiding cloud and the silver trumpets that signal when to move and when to rest.
The story unfolds, and the tone changes. As the Israelites set out, almost immediately, problems, protests, and complaints erupted. Moses, who it can be argued suffered from depression in addition to having to lead such an unruly bunch of people by himself, prayed for God to just let him die. God responds by commanding him to gather 70 elders to share the immense burdens of leadership.
In the final, stark scene of the parsha, Moses’ sister and brother, Miriam and Aaron, speak against him and not only him, but his wife. Their words target Moses “because of the Cushite woman whom he had married.” Remember that the people of Cush were known as sub-Saharan African people, depicted with a lot of melanin or dark skin pigmentation.
Jeremiah 13:23 alludes to their melanin asking: “Can the Cushite change his skin, or the leopard its spots?” Moses’ well-known wife was Zipporah, a Midianite woman, generally not associated with Cush. This has led to interpretations that “Cushite” was either a descriptive term, or more pointedly, a derogatory slight. Given the context of Miriam and Aaron’s challenge to Moses’ authority (“Has Adonai spoken only through Moses? Has God not spoken through us as well?”), describing his wife as a “Cushite woman” instead of calling her by her name, could be read as a thinly veiled criticism related to her status or ethnicity, a way to undermine Moses’ standing due to the perceived “otherness” or skin color of his wife.
The punishment that follows is striking: God’s response to Miriam’s spoken outrage and disdain is to afflict her with what we know as leprosy, turning her skin “white as snow”—a chilling, and perhaps ironic direct contrast to the Cushite woman’s dark skin, strongly suggesting that Miriam’s complaint was indeed rooted in prejudice related to appearance or origin. Miriam and Aaron’s use of the term “Cushite” in this specific context was loaded with disdain or judgment, an ancient-day form of saying the n-word, a word used to demean.
The consequences extended beyond Miriam. The entire community was punished because of what she said. They could not move forward; they had to sit and wait seven days for her to be healed. This collective halt, this forced pause in their journey, was a direct consequence of a derogatory comment. They could have been punished for even longer but Moses, though he and his wife had been disrespected, humbly begged God to limit the number of days of his sister’s affliction, showing compassion in the face of indignity.
What does this ancient narrative demand of us today? We are witnessing an onslaught of ICE raids, arrests, and deportations, largely targeting Black and Brown people, often done without due process or democratic oversight.
Consider the recent events in Los Angeles: first ICE raids on a mass scale then against the wishes of the state’s governor, the President has The National Guard occupy the city, with U.S. Marines being brought into the city to control people protesting the raids and the military parade being held on Washington DC on June 14.
This militarization of immigration enforcement, often against communities of color, creates a chilling atmosphere. Just yesterday, we saw the shocking reports of California Senator Alex Padilla, a Latino Congressman, being violently assaulted, shoved to the ground, and handcuffed by federal agents even after identifying himself, while attempting to question Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security at a public briefing in Los Angeles.
If a duly elected U.S. Senator can be treated with such aggression for simply seeking answers, imagine what happens to the voiceless, the undocumented, when no cameras are present.
This is made even more stark when we consider the selective enforcement. While images of southern border crossings dominate the headlines, a significant portion of immigrants in the U.S. without legal status are individuals who overstayed their visas after flying into the country.
For example, there are an estimated 15,000 to 30,000 undocumented Irish immigrants in cities like Boston, New York City and Washington, DC, many of whom overstayed their visas. We also know that many individuals from Europe, including those from Poland, who may come as nannies, bartenders or in similar domestic roles, overstay their visas and intentionally do not leave. The Polish community in places like Chicago has expressed significant concern about deportation plans, and some estimate there are as many as 30,000 Poles in the Chicago area who could be deported, many of whom have lived there for years. Overall in the United States of America, there are as many as 70,000 undocumented Poles overstaying visas.
Yet, these individuals, often white-skinned Europeans, are not being pursued with the same visible, aggressive, and widespread tactics that we see targeting communities of Black- and Brown-skinned people. Clearly, there is a problem.
This stark contrast in enforcement speaks volumes. If we, as a local community and as a nation, support disparate treatment against Black and Brown-skinned people – whether with our words or our silence – if we support the targeting of people based on their appearance, we risk a spiritual paralysis, a collective halt to our moral progress. What good then are we? How do we dare to call for justice for ourselves?
Like the Israelites, we may find ourselves unable to move forward, facing unforeseen consequences for allowing prejudice and injustice to define our actions. Our very soul, our ability to truly live out our ideals of liberty and justice for all, is at stake. We must examine what we are letting ruminate in our heads, be spoken through our mouths and what done through our actions.
We must choose justice and compassion. We must stand for making room for the stranger or someone who does not resemble us and to treat them with dignity. There is no such thing as an illegal human being. We must stand up for not only ourselves, but for others who may not be like us but who are every bit as God-created a human being as we are.
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Barrett Holman Leak is a freelance writer based in San Diego.