Pride and Prejudice

By Rabbi Jillian R. Cameron

During June, designated as LGBT Pride Month, we often read Parashah Balak. It is a curious tale, replete with a talking donkey and the roundabout air of prophecy; a story of attempted curses that ultimately lead to blessings.

The Israelites have been saved from cruel Pharaoh, and for the past two and a half books – Exodus, Leviticus, and now Numbers – they have been wandering the desert, perhaps a little aimlessly, toward the hope of a Promised Land. We meet Balak, the King of Moab, who is a bit nervous about the group of Israelites who have settled near his kingdom. He states in Numbers 22, verse 5, “There is a people that came out of Egypt; it hides the earth from view.” This sounds all too familiar, but Balak, takes a different path than old Pharaoh. He attempts to enlist Balaam, a Moabite diviner saying, “Come then, put a curse upon this people for me, since they are too numerous for me; perhaps I can thus defeat them and drive them out of the land. For I know that he whom you bless is blessed indeed, and he whom you curse is cursed."

Balaam agrees to the task, but each time he attempts to curse the Israelites, the Divine interferes – and all three times Balaam blesses, rather than curses, Israel. “My message was to bless: When [God] blesses, I cannot reverse it.”

As a member of the gay Jewish community, I ask: Are we blessed?

All too often, the message of religion is used to exclude rather than include; to curse rather than bless. For so long, the LGBT community has been at odds with religion, feeling this exclusion, perhaps feeling cursed. But we learn from Balaam, the unlikely mouthpiece of God, that nothing that God has blessed can be cursed. We have all been blessed by God.

So why do we – why do I – sometimes still feel the linger of the curse?

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