Parashat Hukkat-Balak | Rabbi Shirley Idelson, PhD | June 27, 2026

Just going to ask it to quiet down a little bit as we move

into, hearing a diviners haram by Rabbi Shirley.

I don't sin.

Rabbi Shirley Anderson is idols and, has devoted her rabbinate

to training the next generation of Jewish leaders and as a historian,

to unearthing important stories of our past.

She is the director of the Zelikow School of Jewish Nonprofit

Management called the Z school, based at Hebrew Union College.

Jewish Institute of Religion, where she served

for over a decade as the dean of the New York campus.

Earlier in her career, she directed the Hornstein Jewish

Professional Leadership Program at Brandeis University,

was a producer and newscaster for Minnesota Public Radio,

directed arts and religion in the Twin Cities, and served as chaplain

at Vassar, Carleton, and McAllister colleges.

Eielson is the author of We Shall Build a New Stephen as Wise, The Jewish

Institute of Religion and the Reinvention of American Liberal Judaism.

Stephen Rise is a rabbi here for a year.

And, coeditor, along with Sue Levy Elwell

and Rebecca Alpert, of Lesbian Rabbis, The First Generation.

We're honored that Shirley is a member here at BJ.

And, we're honored that she'll speak the Shabbat and gay pride.

Shabbat shalom.

So in this

week's parsha, who cut by luck, we find ourselves nearing

the end of Israel's 40 years wandering in the desert.

The old generation is passing.

The focus shifts to their children, and we learn the fate of their leaders.

The first to pass is Miriam, who died at Kadesh.

But to watch on Miriam but to cover some.

And she died there and was buried there.

Strikingly, the Torah reports no mourning for Miriam.

So I thought in this moment of her passing,

at least we would do well to recall her extraordinary life.

Who was Miriam, and what do we know about her?

One of the great prophets of the Torah, sister of Moses and Aaron.

Daughter of you have it as a child.

Miriam watched over her baby brother

as he floated on the Nile, then boldly spoke to Pharaoh's daughter,

who had rescued him and arranged for it to nurse him.

The rabbis identify Miriam with Puia, one of the Hebrew midwives

who defied Pharaoh and helped save Israel's children.

After the crossing of the sea following stratagem, Miriam

led the women, taking up her off her hand drum

and dancing with the mixed multitude in celebration.

Later with Aaron, she challenged Moses

in connection with Zipporah and was stricken with sorrow

at the entire people, waited for her healing before continuing their journey.

We remember her as a

prophet who galvanized women's power and protected

children in numerous ways, elicit her of song drummer,

courageous, defiant, and sometimes joyful agents of change.

Her leadership provided sustenance for Kol, her aid to the whole community.

Indeed, we learned following her death the William I am leader,

the community was without water.

From here, the rabbis created the legend of Miriam's well, an abundant

source of fresh water that followed Miriam during the desert wandering.

So long as she lived, the well's living

waters provided strength and sustenance for the people.

Upon her death, however, it dried up,

and it seems only with Miriam's death did the people realize the degree

to which she had sustained them during her lifetime.

I get that sometimes, even when we don't take a person

for granted in the slightest, still we don't recognize

the precise role they played in our life until they're gone.

Well, no expert on this.

I learned something about it through my own experience of loss.

When my own partner of 31 years died

on Hassan Araba 5784 October 6th, 2023.

On this Pride Shabbat,

I thought I'd share just a bit about what brought us together.

A lesbian couple in the 19.

In the early 90s,

Alexis was a little older

than me and came out in the late 70s in California.

When and where lesbian feminism was a movement

overlapping with broader feminism, as well as numerous numerous

other movements on the left in Santa Cruz where she lived.

Whereas I came out here in New York City in the 80s, when and where

lesbian feminism was also a movement now overlapping with Aids activism,

the battle for gay rights, especially gay marriage and queer politics.

All of these various movements at their best, multiracial,

class conscious, justice and peace oriented.

Though to be sure, they were not always at their best, I think for each of us.

But I'm only going to speak for myself.

Coming out stemmed less from a sexual awakening than a political one.

I'll spare you the details of how a West Bank settler Talmud

teacher in Jerusalem galvanized my path toward lesbian feminism.

I've often thought I should send him a thank you note.

Suffice it to say, a few months after leaving the yeshiva,

I realized it was time to make two seemingly small,

ultimately ground shifting changes in my life.

One first, I would do whatever it took

to be able to look a lesbian in the eye

and hold the gaze without fear.

And two, I would cease

seeking male approval.

It was a solitary quest at first,

which took me to feminist and gay bookstores,

where once I mustered the courage to cross the threshold, the writings of Adrienne

Rich, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and others

helped me move from fear to embrace

of my own and women's collective strength and power,

gentleness and love, sense of justice and compassion.

Ever since lesbian feminism

with a healthy dose of Jewish feminism has been my ideological, spiritual,

and political home, grounding me everywhere from my intimate

relationships to my engagement with the broader world.

That's how I came out.

And at the time, many women took a similar path.

I met Alexis six years later and in 1993

at Vassar College, where I was chaplain, and she taught painting and drawing.

To give you a sense of the times.

By then, the pride parades we marched in had huge act up contingents alongside

lesbian Avengers, dikes on bikes, of course, Queer Nation, a small number

but growing of synagogues and Jewish organizations and many others.

Alexis and I had a wonderful relationship for which I'm grateful.

When her death hit hard.

A friend wrote, it is only because our love goes so deep

that the losses can feel like mountain avalanches.

The day after she died was

October 7th, and we know.

And we know all that has ensued from there

today.

Suffice it to say, in this broken world, we have all experienced loss and grief.

Loss and grief are in this room with us

now, whether we've lost family or friends,

a sense of safety for ourselves or people we care about.

Loss of a worldview of certitude,

possibly of dreams that once sustained us.

We are thirsting in a sense, like the Israelites in our parsha,

experiencing communal crisis after Miriam's death.

What might we learn from them?

Not exactly good modeling, unfortunately for Moses, reacts

in anger, hitting the rock and the people panic.

Things get worse for everyone.

Today, it seems we're seeing

the same sort of panic and anger all around us.

Reactive responses to loss and grief.

While understandable, our tradition teaches there's another way

which I have come to understand first, from a teaching Alexis would share

in the classroom when a student struggling with a painting hit an impasse,

she would have them cover a section of it.

Only now am I beginning to understand what this was about.

Eliminating part of the painting makes

the rest less recognizable by your brain.

The patterns and forms you've become attached to

are disrupted, enabling you to see abstract.

Nate.

The abstract nature of what's going on on the canvas, even if it's figurative.

Light and darkness.

Texture, color and shape loss.

The removal of something from our field of vision

allows us to perceive what remains differently.

In this sense, loss is not just part of the creative process.

It drives it.

Think of the notion of zoom.

Zoom.

God contracts in order to enable the creation of the world.

We know this too, from Jewish experience when we've experienced collective loss.

It has remained part of us and yielded new possibility.

What did the rabbis teach after the destruction of the temple?

As we went into exile, the Shekinah went with us.

A radical new teaching about God's accessibility

in drastically changed circumstances, and Hasidic teaching on Miriam's well.

Similarly emphasizes that the healing waters are not gone,

but available now from our inner wells for each of us to draw from when needed.

In all of these teachings, we learn absence.

That which we've lost has powerful presence

that is not only sustaining, but creatively generative.

I try to wake up every day grateful

and thirsty to figure out the new and different painting.

My life is becoming.

I understand I'm privileged to wake up at all, to have a home, a job.

I'm not in this moment threatened with deportation or

loss of medical treatment or war at my doorstep.

I can freely celebrate my Judaism

and pride in this beautiful space with all of you.

Madani.

For I am grateful for all of this we know can change on a dime.

Which leads to the communal peace.

For just as on a personal level, I work not to let some fixed sense

of loss define me on a communal level.

I don't think we, whoever we are, BJ

Jews, feminists, the queer community,

liberals, Zionists, anti-Zionist, non Zionists.

I don't think any of us want to let a fixed sense of loss define us.

So what do we do with it?

Leading with anger or panic?

We've seen not a good idea.

We also can't call it quits.

When our ancestors, who had plenty of reason to do so, did not quit instead.

And I ask this not in a challenging way, but a gentle, wondering way.

Can we allow our loss to become

an impetus for seeing the world differently?

Breaking patterns of thought for creating,

reinventing, and seeing a new.

Last week on Juneteenth, I was moved by a teaching

from African American experience.

I learned that dates back to the Stono Rebellion, not the Stonewall Rebellion.

The Stono Rebellion of 1739,

the largest slave uprising in British North America.

When enslaved people in South Carolina marched and beat drums

to gather recruits and incite rebellion.

In response, the South Carolina Assembly passed

a slave code barring the enslaved Africans

from using drums, horns, or other loud instruments at all.

Ever and other colonies quickly followed suit.

In response, of course, enslaved communities found new ways

to create percussive instruments and preserve their cultural rhythms.

They could take our drums was the learning, but they could not take the beat

differently.

We see this phenomenon happening today.

A few examples from recent LGBTQ experience.

After the pulse nightclub massacre in 2016, activists

created a rainbow crosswalk at the site to serve as a memorial.

When Governor DeSantis, his administration painted over it,

survivors, neighbors, faith leaders and advocates

united to reclaim the space and demand a permanent memorial.

Today, that memorial is rising.

On the original site, projected to open in 2017.

A testament to communal resilience and care

in 25 Montana,

when Governor John Forte banned pride flags on government property, elected

officials, teachers, clergy, veterans and residents created a workaround.

Cities like Missoula and Bozeman made the pride flag an official city flag.

Turning a ban into a public act of local democracy

and further afield geographically in 2025.

In Hungary, after Viktor Orban's government tried to ban Budapest Pride,

LGBT organizers were joined

by the city's mayor, civil society groups, family, students

and tens of thousands of allies in the largest march in Hungary's history.

What began as a pride parade

became a broad call for freedom of assembly and democracy.

Importantly, in each case, destruction

not only generated creative response but also galvanized

a large mixed multitude response, not unlike the women singing and dancing

at the shores of the sea, with Miriam driving the rhythm drum in hand.

And here is a moment for me that when it's good

to acknowledge the shame on road credit where credit is due.

It's something about my own creative process.

For one of my sources of sustenance, this year has been working on my writing

with the wonderful poet Joy Layton, who has really helped me with my process

and my thinking, including identifying these stories as evidence

of how in our collective grief and loss, there is such great potential

for collective action and change,

and how the last decade of attacks on women's rights, trans rights,

immigrant rights, black and brown communities, the poor and the middle class

have created, albeit unintentionally, a broadening coalition of people

who recognize no one is safe under authoritarianism.

And in this context, in this context, the fight for LGBTQ rights

is the fight for reproductive rights, is the fight

for immigrant rights, is the fight for environmental protection.

Affordable housing and health care, prison reform, and so much more.

I get right now

the the Israel Palestine crisis and growing

antisemitic Semitism are making it tough for many in the Jewish community.

Not all, but many to work in broad based coalition.

But they did it in Minneapolis.

I saw that firsthand. And we can do it, too.

And I truly believe joining together is the path breaking

the barriers that keep us from marching, even dancing together,

celebrating glimpses of liberation and the journey toward true liberation.

This weekend, pride and the parade

especially offer a unique opportunity.

Really, you are all invited.

It is always fun.

The beat will play and showing up matters.

And here's the thing.

Whether you're straight or gay, trans,

bisexual, parent of a non-binary kid, no matter who you are,

you can go as a spectator.

And that would be great.

You can march as an ally.

Allies are crucial, but better yet, better yet.

In remembrance of Miriam.

And I mean this literally and figuratively too,

because clearly it's not just about one day.

Consider allowing a shift in your perspective that will enable you to march.

And I will do this too.

Seeing myself not as a spectator,

not even as an ally, but as part of a new

growing mixed multitude of we,

we the people thirsting for liberation.

Shabbat Shalom.