Transcendence in the Mundane
Tonight, my wife Sarah and I will bathe our kids, light candles, make kiddush and motzi, read one more book (and then a bonus book, and then a bonus-bonus book), sing the Shema, and put them to bed. On this night, like every night, we transcend closer to God through the miracle of the Regular Everyday.
But not so long ago, this image—a queer family living a life so blissfully ordinary, so deeply rooted in tradition—would have seemed an unthinkable dream.
This week’s parashah is about Korah, who leads a rebellion against Moses’ leadership and the special role of the priesthood.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe notes that “Korah disagreed with Moses’ and Aaron’s definition of the relationship between the layman and the priest… In Korah’s view, the man on the street who spends the majority of his day in the mundane activities of life is just as holy as the priest whose entire day is spent in the Holy Temple.
Korah yearned to be the high priest himself, to experience transcendence and the feeling of closeness to God. In this we must emulate Korah. Indeed, this is the central message of the parashah—to yearn for transcendence even while immersed in the mundane.”
This connection between the mundane and holy jumped out at me. I think back to last week’s parashah, Shelah, when the Israelites were condemned to wander in the desert for 40 years before entering the land of Israel.
I think about how long 40 years is.
How short.
Forty years ago, “We Are the World,” Back to the Future, and the Nintendo NES were released.
Forty years ago, there were virtually no LGBTQ+ rights. The queer community was stigmatized and marginalized in the wake of the AIDS crisis.
Look how far we’ve come.
Shelah, which means “to send” is an action. A verb. Twelve spies were sent into the land of Israel, sent to stake a claim to the future: one that seemed impossible and insurmountable, but had to begin somewhere.
The tension between Shelah and Korah strikes me as interesting.
In the US, queer people, like other marginalized groups, fought for the right to live mundane lives. To marry. To divorce. To file joint taxes. To have families. To have the legal recognition of not being special. For the right to be different, but treated the same.
Living a queer life, just as a straight one, is to elevate every day. This is a viewpoint we can appreciate from Korah—the belief that it doesn’t take something special or separate to be close to God. Just like Korah fought for the recognition of the holy, the everyday, the layman, the queer community does the same.
We wake up tired and want caffeine; make endless decisions about what to cook for dinner; wonder how it takes over an hour to get the kids to school in the morning; wash dishes; go to sleep; and do it all over again. This is a beautiful mindset we can learn from Korah.
But Korah’s moral failing was that of ego—even while fighting for equality, he felt superior, as though he had more legitimacy than others. And this is another valuable lesson Korah teaches us: we must be wary of hypocrisy. To remember that once we have rights, we should not wield those rights as a weapon to deny the same to others.
Shelah: to send, to hope for more. Korah: to have and not be satisfied.
A balance, then, between the two.
Forty years ago, the life of an LGBTQ+ person today was an unthinkable dream—and today we bask in it. Because of the work done by others over the last few decades—many BJ members included (thank you!)—Sarah and I can bring Allie and JD into shul and have it be blissfully mundane.
There’s privilege in that. There’s holiness in that; in this community. In the programs and work that BJ does in fighting for social justice, there’s a clear message about walking the values of inclusion and not merely empty words and ego—both sides of Korah.
And so, as we move through another Shabbat—lighting candles, wrangling kids, humming lullabies—we hold the tension of Korah and Shelah within us: the sacredness of striving, and the quiet power of simply being. We remember that holiness doesn’t only descend through the hands of priests or within the walls of the Sanctuary; it bubbles up in bath time and bedtime, in justice and in joy. And we carry with us the responsibility to build a world where everyone has the privilege of living a life where they can find God in the Regular Everyday.
Shabbat shalom,
Rachel Sietz