{"id":49191,"date":"2019-02-11T12:22:51","date_gmt":"2019-02-11T10:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=49191"},"modified":"2022-09-05T09:07:08","modified_gmt":"2022-09-05T06:07:08","slug":"from-being-to-belonging-to-becoming-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/from-being-to-belonging-to-becoming-better\/","title":{"rendered":"From Being To Belonging To Becoming Better"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[426,413,414],"acf":{"old_id":"49191","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":46249,"related_cahpter":"153","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Practical road signs and guideposts for real life and real places","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Try an experiment. Put eighteen kids on a field and see how long they play well together. But take those same eighteen kids, give them a bat, a ball, and what some estimate to be 71 basic rules \u2013 and voila, they can play constructively for hours, \u00a0create a ten-billion-dollar-a-year business, while generating countless hours of entertainment, inspiration, and mythmaking on what now become \u201cFields of Dreams.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s the message we learn in The Book of Numbers\u2019 grand finale, proclaiming: \u201cThese are the commandments and the ordinances, which the LORD commanded by the hand of Moses unto the children of Israel in the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho.\u201d Juxtaposed with the opening of Numbers, when Moses takes a census of the people, we are given a profound lesson in child-rearing, baseball, peoplehood and dare I say it in this polarized age, nationalism.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The census, the count, the Book of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Numbers<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, a people, begins with belonging, with taking responsibility. That, in itself, is a profound move, choosing not just to be, but to belong. But that\u2019s still luck of the draw, accident of birth, the start of the journey. The final verse 36:13 gets into the real work, \u201cthe commandments and the ordinances.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now, we\u2019re talking. We\u2019ve gone from being to belonging to becoming \u2013 becoming a better person, becoming better people, becoming a better people. The essential lesson here is that we started with \u201chardware\u201d now we\u2019re into \u201csoftware,\u201d we join the group, the group has norms &#8211; -the content, the programming &#8212; and those norms stretch us, improve us and root us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That explains the second half of the verse. By specifying the location where the rules were given, the Torah is teaching us that these aren\u2019t just laws to list or learn and file away, but practical road signs, guideposts, and traffic signals for real life and real places.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These Bs essential to healthy constructive liberal nationalism, Jewish nationalism \u2013 of being, belonging, and becoming better&#8211; are best explained by two other favorite \u201cBs\u201d of mine: Baseball and Isaiah Berlin. Our baseball experiment illustrates Isaiah Berlin\u2019s classic distinction between \u201cFreedom From\u201d \u2013 a negative freedom emphasizing liberation from oppression \u2013 and \u201cFreedom To\u201d \u2013 our positive freedom to build, to work together, to flourish, understanding that for all our individual potential and power, when we tap into one another\u2019s shared power constructively, productively, morally, our potential \u2013 to make order, to do good &#8212; grows exponentially. <\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":49198,"id":49198,"title":"Num36-road sign","filename":"Num36-road-sign.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Num36-road-sign.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/from-being-to-belonging-to-becoming-better\/num36-road-sign\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"num36-road-sign","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":49191,"date":"2019-02-11 10:22:25","modified":"2019-02-11 10:22:47","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1920,"height":987,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Num36-road-sign-150x150.jpg","thumbnail-width":150,"thumbnail-height":150,"medium":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Num36-road-sign-300x154.jpg","medium-width":300,"medium-height":154,"medium_large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Num36-road-sign-768x395.jpg","medium_large-width":768,"medium_large-height":395,"large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Num36-road-sign-1024x526.jpg","large-width":1024,"large-height":526,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Num36-road-sign.jpg","1536x1536-width":1536,"1536x1536-height":790,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Num36-road-sign.jpg","2048x2048-width":1920,"2048x2048-height":987,"post_full_size":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Num36-road-sign-1200x617.jpg","post_full_size-width":1200,"post_full_size-height":617,"home_baner":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Num36-road-sign-817x420.jpg","home_baner-width":817,"home_baner-height":420}},"embedded_video":"","video_duration":"","show_fb_comments":true,"credit_media":""},"tile":{"top_caption":"","main_caption":"From 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