A few weeks ago, right after Purim, we had the parsha of Ki Tisa, which I particularly enjoy. This parsha was supposed to be my oldest daughter’s since this is the weekend that we originally scheduled for her Bat Mitzvah. However, deployment came, we changed plans, extension came, we changed plans again, and here we still are. In a sense, life parallels the parsha: while I have the orders, everyone has to pay a price, some price, as a result. And it isn’t fair to say I or any of my family bears the burden heavier, since in the end we all pay the same price of separation, daily difficulties, and interruption of our lives. We get a subtle reminder of that with the prohibition with directly counting the members of the tribe: to start with one point or another might lead to the mistake of thinking that one is more important than another. That is simply not the case, all are equal in merit and all will be noted in time.

Similarly, there are just some things in life that we all have to pay on. We can’t get others to pay it for us, nor can we pay for others. I would like to take on the burdens that my wife has, to be there to help, but that isn’t possible over a distance of nine thousand miles. Similarly, she would like to alleviate whatever I have here, to make sure I am eating right or whatever, but again, it isn’t possible. While email and IM might ease it, there is some portion that each of us has to pay on our own.

This is not to say that we casually cast aside our fellows’ needs. So, we balance what we can do for others with the knowledge that we can’t do everything, nor have everything done for us. Happens all the time here in a military setting. Among soldiers, there are conversations that run along the lines of “married guys shouldn’t do X because they have families to consider” immediately countered with “single guys shouldn’t have to do X since they have yet to marry/have children/lived their lives.” To be sure, there is “I don’t want to since that puts me at risk” but in a tight team, most would willingly absorb damage meant for his. Moshe Rabbenu demonstrates this later when he talks G-d down from the water-tower after the Golden Calf for the benefit of the Israelites. Moshe takes on an additional personal expense or risk to intervene. He didn’t have to, but he did. If he hadn’t, he personally would have been successful in life, but at the cost of the nation. Like we will see with the Red Heifer in a moment, for others he is willing to take on the possibility of personal diminution so that others have the benefit.

Honestly, it’s a lesson that some of the local Iraqis could use also. There are many times when it is “You Americans need to (give us)…” As long as there is that ultra-dependency, they will have nothing larger of their own, like a nation, only what crumbs someone feels they should get. The Kurds and radical fringes (Jesh al-Mahdi, Badr Brigade, Soldiers of Heaven come to mind) know that lesson all too well, and are more than willing to pony up individually for their collective good. And that’s why there will be a Kurdistan, and eventually I think a fractured “Shi’a-stan” with the broad middle driven out with increasing polarization (in my humble opinion).

Also, this was Shabbat Parah, so we have the Haftarah portion from Ezekiel the promise that “I will take you from among the nations and gather you from all the countries, and I will bring you back to your own land.” While not actually in the promised land of Israel (beaches are better than oil fields anyway), we are here in cradle of civilization, the Garden of Eden, bounded between the Tigris and Euphrates. We are about 45 minutes to an hour south of Sammara, both historically and presently blood soaked. A Byzantine Emperor was killed in battle there, and another barely escaped with his life from a rout by the Saracens. Assyrian armies marched through here, systematically defeating the Babylonian armies that had preceded them a few generations previously under Sargon. Moshe Rabbenu would have led the tribes to the west of here, positioning everyone for Joshua to cross the Jordan. Where arrows and javelins had flown through the air, tracers and RPGs now do. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I have returned to the origin of civilization, where we devised the division of the day into 24 hours, hours into 60 minutes, weeks into 7 days, the circle in segments, grain into beer. While the first writings were creation myths and receipts for debts, this was closely followed by writings that the neighbors hadn’t paid said debts, were in general deadbeats and drunks to boot, so let’s get together an army and invade them. And I find the place pretty much unchanged.

But we see in Ki Tisa a condensation of life, a pattern: revelation, rebellion, and restoration. The revelation of the tablets of stone with the Ten Commandments is followed immediately with the rebellion of the Golden Calf. Restoration comes with the second set of tablets. We have that same thing today, here writ large. In the Garden that once held the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we found revelation. Writing, time, ethos, mythos. But, then came rebellion. We ate of that fruit, and nothing has been the same since. Like a fire, it could warm, illuminate, keep predatory animals at bay in the night, burn horribly, or destroy. Sins of the Golden Calf continue, with the propagation of ideas contrary to sense and sensibility. Firebrands preach their particular flavor of the weak.

But the next step is restoration. At some point we have to get our act together and bring this silliness to an end. How, I have no idea. But the clues are in the Haftarah where the Red Heifer is used to purify. While the ashes purify, those involved with the preparation are made impure until the evening. There will be some dirtiness to whatever solution we come up with, the inclination to look out for the self interest and avoid the personal diminution by being involved with the preparation. But we are told “and I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit into you: I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh,” so we know that for the sake of what makes us human, we have to sometimes rush into the figurative burning building.

John Agresto, who was the American Adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education made and interesting observation in his book Mugged By Reality. Every time there was an explosion, whether he saw it in the papers, on television, or witnessed it, Iraqis ran away from the blast. Americans always ran towards it. Despite the highly individual nature of Americans, the low Power Distance towards authority, the laissez faire attitudes, the seeming divisiveness of Americans, we always gelled together in times of need, especially the needs of others, despite personal risk. We are more than willing to undertake the reduction of personal levels of “purity” in the preparation of the figurative Red Heifers of today, be it nation building, putting on bandages, whatever.

And so we return to the individual price that each of has to pay in the collection of silver shown to us in the opening verses of Ki Tisa. Each has to pay some price, some common price. There is no escaping or evading it. In some form or fashion, we have to undertake a loss of sorts, the same loss no matter how it is counted, to make the silver sockets for the Tent of Meeting. We get something in return: a solid foundation for the tent. But, we also need to be mindful that sometimes we have to balance the needs of others and the whole group with our individual preferences. Someone needs to prepare the Red Heifer at personal expense so that everyone else can benefit from it.