Lessons of a Blue Lobster

Korach/2011
Lessons of a Blue Lobster

A few weeks ago, there was a headline making story about a fisherman named Blair Doucette who caught a blue lobster in the waters off of Prince Edward Island. Doucette had never caught a blue lobster before in his 35 year career. He had only seen one on television. There are actually 2-5 million blue lobsters in existence, but since there are a lot of lobsters in the world, only one in millions is blue. So, Doucette was very excited to catch one. And, instead of tossing it in with the other lobsters, he took it home, fed it in a little tank, and he eventually donated it to an acquarium. And, many of us have seen photos of Doucette’s blue friend on t.v. or on the Internet.

There is something very appealing about this story. Lobsters are kind of odd creatures to begin with and coloring them blue makes them seem even odder. I thought this catch had the makings of a good children’s story. How would the blue lobsters fit in with the other lobsters? Would the other lobsters play with him at recess? Would he be allowed to sit at the same lunch counter as the red lobsters? Would he be permitted to vote in lobster elections and live in the same neighborhoods as the other lobsters? Or, would the red lobsters conclude that his blueness disqualified him from being considered a lobster at all. After all, everyone knows that lobsters are red.

The blue lobster reminded me of something in today’s parasha. One of the things the rabbis always look at when they were studying Torah is context. Today’s parasha starts out with a rebellion by Korach against the authority of Moses. The very last thing we read in last week’s parasha is the commandment to wear tzitzit, fringes on the edge of our garment. Today we do that by wearing a tallit with fringes during prayer.

So, let’s remember, in the Torah scroll, there are no chapter headings and not even divisions between sentences. So, if you were reading straight from the scroll, you’d read the law of tzitzit/fringes, and then, suddenly there is this rebellion by Korach. It seems like an abrupt transition.

So, the rabbis came up with the idea that Korach’s argument against Moses actually had something to do with the laws of tzitzit. Now, there is one other thing we have to know about tzitzit in order to get what the rabbis were saying. Originally, the tzitzit consisted of 8 fringes on a corner, all white, except for one fringe of blue. Today, most of us wear purely white fringes. And, that’s because for years, the ancient formula for making the blue dye for the one fringe was lost. But, about twenty years ago, an Israeli scientist discovered a mollusk in the Mediterranean Sea that produced the Biblical color techelet, the required blue. Maybe this mollusk lived in the same neighborhood as the blue lobster. I don’t know. But, in any case, now, it’s possible to buy tzitzit that have one blue thread.

So, here was Korach’s challenge to Moses. He asked: “What if I make a tallit entirely of blue? Do I need to still add a fringe of blue? I shouldn’t have to. After all, the blue is supposed to remind me of Heaven and thus, of God. So, if one fringe reminds me of God, wouldn’t it be even better to have the whole tallit of blue?” Moses said, “No. Even a blue tallit has to have tzizit with a blue fringe.” And, Korach used Moses’ response to prove to the Jewish people how absurd the Torah’s laws were.

To get a better understanding of what Korach was thinking, let’s look carefully at what he says to Moses:
Ki chol ha’edah kulam kedoshim, u’vetocham adonai
All of the people are all holy, and God is in their midst
U’madua titnasu al kehal adonai
So, why should you, Moses and Aaron, exalt yourselves over the people of God.

The key word in this sentence is ‘kulam.’ The word kol in Hebrew can mean ‘all’ or ‘every.’ So, ‘kulam kedoshim’ can mean that each and every one of the people of Israel is equally holy. Or, it can mean that the people are completely holy.

Korach was driven by a need for completeness, for wholeness. And, anything that threatened the consistency of his life upset him. Anything that threatened the symmetry of his life offended him. That’s why the idea of one thread of blue amidst a sea of white drove him crazy. He needed the whole tallit to be blue.

And, that’s why Korach wanted to take the people back to Egyptian slavery. Because when they were all slaves, ironically, they were all equal to each other. No one stood out. The Egyptians suppressed any individual expression of personality. So, the Israelites were a nameless, faceless mass. But, at least they were together in their namelessness. They were miserable. They were blue. But, at least they were all blue.

But, now it was different. Now that they were free, it seems that all that the people of Israel were doing all the time was fighting with each other. That’s because for the first time, their individual personalities and opinions could emerge. And, Korach and his followers yearned for the peace and predictability of their earlier existence.

It’s easy to create a sense of community among people who are all exactly the same. Any one can do that. And, when your life is exactly the same every day, there is some comfort in that. If there is no hope, there is no disappointment.

In Egypt, there were no ups and downs. There was only one color. And, it wasn’t even blue. It was gray. Now that they were free, the Jewish people were living a more tumultuous existence. There was more drama. There were highs and lows. There were fevered arguments. There were moments of wisdom and moments of foolishness. There were moments of moral greatness and moments of moral failure. Emotionally, that required more work.

So, not surprisingly, some people yearned for the consistency of low expectations. But, God had something different in mind for the Jewish people. There is a famous story about Moses tending his sheep. And, one lamb escapes from the flock and travels a long way. It turns out it was thirsty and it found a stream. Moses doesn’t get angry at the sheep that has to go its own way. He follows her a long distance and he carries her gently back to the flock. It was more work for Moses. But, Moses wanted to create a community in which the blue fringe would be part of the group.

God created us as creatures whose socks don’t match. There are things that are quirky and odd about each of us. And, it can be challenging to try to find the thread of unity that connects our diverse lives---the different pieces of our selves, and the part of us that is attracted to a diverse and colorful world. But, it is worth the effort.

The most important line in Jewish prayer is the Shema. And, it declares that God is ‘echad’—One. But, One can mean unique. And, one can mean whole. And, if we look at the context of the shema in the prayer service, it’s clear that our Tradition wanted us to understand it both ways. That’s why Doucette’s catch off Prince Edward Island delighted us. It speaks to who we want to be. If you’ll pardon this metaphor, we want to be blue, but we still want to be considered a lobster. We crave connection. That means sacrificing some of our desire to go our own way. And, we crave uniqueness. And, that can mean being blue when everyone else is red.

Bringing these two sides of our makeup together is the challenge of being human. In Mishna Sanhedrin, we learn that God began the creation of the entire human race with one person, Adam,
L’hagid gedulato shel hakadosh baruch hu
To teach the greatness of the Holy One

She’adam tovea matbea b’chotam echad
V’chulan domin zeh lazeh
Because when a person creates a mold, everything comes out identical

V’melech malchei ha’melachim hu tovea kol adam b’chotam shel adam ha’rishon
But, God created all of us from one mold,
V’ein echad domeh la’chavero.
Yet not a single one of us is identical to each other.

If that genius is expressed even through a lobster, how much more is it true of us. Each of us is a blue fringe. When we create a tallit that embraces that difference, we become the community that God most wants us to be.