Its stories are among the most timeless and beloved narratives ever written.

It has been called "the most influential series of books in human history."

It is Judaism's oldest work of sacred literature, dating, some say, all the way
back to the year 1230 Before The Common Era.

The real Torah is not merely the written text of the Five Books of Moses; (but) ... the meaning enshrined in that text.

Over three centuries ago the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Chasidism, put it just right:

The Talmud goes on to instruct:

And in Tractatate Hagigah of the Jerusalem Talmud, there is even this intriguing quotation, credited to God, who is supposed to have confided to the heavenly court:

In short, our Judaism places ultimate confidence in the positive difference which Torah can make in this often confusing world of ours.

The Book of Numbers clearly underscores that message. Its setting is the desert, hence its name, Bamidbar - in the wilderness. The book begins orderly enough with the Israelites assigned to their tribes, with the details of the taking up a census, and with the articulation of those still-familiar words with which the priests were to ask God's blessings upon the people: "May the Lord bless you and keep you."

Unfortunately, from there, things go quickly downhill. Wide-spread dissatisfaction ensues as our Hebrew predecessors belly ache to Moses, demanding whole wheat crusty manah, more and sweeter bottled water, organically grown veggies and prime cuts of Ruth's Chris steak. We come quickly to understand to what extent these former slaves have been both scared and scarred by their experience of hundreds of years of Egyptian slavery.

We read in Numbers how Moses, at God's command, ordered spies sent across the Jordan river to check out the Promised Land. On their return, ten of these twelve have the unmitigated chutzpah to counsel, "let's pass on it!" And with that, a series of rebellions led by Korach and far lesser men break out against Moses' leadership as everyone (including Moses' brother, Aaron and Sister, Miriam) suddenly seems to become an expert and a prophet - a second-guesser of Moses' authority.

But Moses stands above it all. Long-suffering, faithfully heroic: he remains God's steadfast servant, but at the same time unfailingly loyal to his foolish people as well!

I tell you, here in the book of Numbers we see clearly reflected hard times for heroes. But, coming to think of it, so are these times in which you and I now find ourselves. And, frankly, I find this a worrisome situation.

You see, I believe with all my heart that no people can afford to dispense with the notion of the heroic. Our heroes tell us about ourselves and what we genuinely hold dear and value. Yes we have heroes- I'm not saying we don't, but, as we look at our society on this Atonement Day, it's no mystery why we suffer such a serious dearth of would-be heroes? Let me just list a few reasons for your consideration, and you just think about them for a few minutes.

• Like those rebels and ingrates back in Moses' time, sometimes I think we are simply so inferior and jealous, and not at all unhappy when we discover that those we thought could be heroes, in fact, have feet of clay. Perhaps we are actually relieved to declare them so!

 
• Moreover, number two, it is commonly said that familiarity breeds contempt. As the old saying goes, "No man is a hero to his valet!" In a society where the camera literally never blinks, perhaps we do know too much about one another.

 
• There is also the mediocrity factor. To the mediocre, the sense of the heroic has absolutely no appeal, nor would they so much as recognize a hero. Like it or not, it may be that we in our times are not great enough to even recognize heroism, because of the mediocrity in ourselves.

 
• Fourth, in our society, with its inordinate emphasis upon equality, where everything is leveled downward to sameness, perhaps how naive of us then to even look for heroic leadership? Where one opinion is just as good as another, don't be searching for Prophets to lead us to higher ground or to grander visions of ourselves!

Admittedly, Frank Sinatra's famous song renders a nice tune, but it makes I think for a miserably flawed philosophy. Hitler and Stalin, and other evil ones through the ages could all belly up to the bar and sing with the utmost of sincerity, "I Did It My Way." So what? It was sinful and it was wicked!

Two devils are depicted in a cartoon in "The New Yorker" magazine, and one says to the other,

It gets harder and harder to distinguish between good and evil. All we have now is appropriate and inappropriate behavior.

Someone told me that "Shindler's List" was banned in Malaysia. Can you believe it, they wouldn't allow the film to be shown there because they thought that "the other side" should have been afforded equal time. Now what other side I ask needed to be seen and heard? The killers? Yes, ours is an inordinate emphasis upon equality, and hence a hard time for heroes.
 

• Number five, I think Academia is part of the problem. Our professors, and biographers, are often condescending of genius and greatness, and fully believe they can and should diminish the very people about whom they write. There are actually literary critics who think they can make nothing of Shakespeare. And musicologists, who mind you, cannot play a single note, but cruelly pan the performances of those who do have the courage to take to the stage and risk it all!

• Then there are the media, their pundits and commentators, who are so supreme today and in this election year. Who needs a President, after all, when we have Cal Thomas, Peggy Noonan, William Safire, Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson? Some write with insight and restraint, but too many know no limits and only diminish what they seek to describe. Imagine the hatchet job- just imagine it that the press would have done had they been there back in Moses' time.
• And what do you mean Mr. Moses, by 'Commandments' and why as many as ten?
• How do you know that the bush was actually burning? Might you have been mistaken?
• It's been reported that the sea only partially divided.
• Undisclosed sources report a peculiar closeness between yourself and Joshua, what's your response to rumors of your sharing a tent ...
• How do you account for your drop in the polls? Forty-five percent report an unfavorable opinion of you just since you brought the tablets down from Sinai. 60% question your ability to even find the Promised Land.
• And finally, number seven, there is the celebrity factor today. We come to expect our much-adored celebrities to behave like heroes and are then disappointed when they do not. Some are phenomenally talented individuals who amaze and excite us as they excel in doing their thing. They swim and jump and hit or bounce, or throw; they graciously skate upon the ice or paint or write or act or sing or dance on stage or screen. And there are some other celebrities who, as far as I can tell, just look either so very weird or so very good in the camera's eye as to make them sensations.

So what shall we do? Certainly, not give up on heroes or the heroic. For if there is a single urgent message to come before us from this fourth book of our Torah, it is that even in the wilderness of life, there is no human condition so pitiless and dark, that it cannot be embraced by a loving God. There is no wilderness so dense and deep that God's call to higher living cannot be heard. There is no human being alive who ought dare to forsake his or her unique potential to make a healthful difference in life, to take a risk or fail to sing the song which God has placed within us each.

What is required of us is nothing less than to heed the words of Torah spoken only minutes ago, "Uvacharta bachayim- And you shall choose life." Says the poet:

Death is strong, but life is stronger;
Stronger than the dark, the light;
Stronger than the wrong, the right.

Tell me ... tell me I'm a good man!

There are heroes among us right here and now. I confess it. I stand in awe of many of you! You are my heroes who look death in the eye; who are courageously engaged in fierce struggles and personal battles to regain your physical health and emotional strength. You are heroes who endure with integrity through cruel and unfair business reversals; who persevere to hold a troubled marriage together, who selflessly support your children and/or your parents through the trials they are facing and those who live all alone now with your memories to sustain you- yes many of you are heroic, and you deserve someone to say it out loud.

Heroism- its examples and lessons are all around us! For me Elie Wiesel is a certified hero. In his memoirs he shares how in 1970 he fully intended to end his compelling eyewitness testimony on the Holocaust, but silence turned out to be no option. While still in Buchenwald Concentration Camp, there was this understanding which he and his fellow inmates had come to embrace. Writes Wiesel:
 

The one among us who would survive would testify for all of us. He would speak and demand justice ... he would make certain that our memory would penetrate that of humanity.

Remember Wiesel standing before President Reagan chastising him for going to that cemetery at Bitburg, Germany. "Mr. President, your place is with the victims, not the killers." Yes, Wiesel's heroic tenacity and passionate efforts to tell the story and to keep faith with the victims provides an unequaled exercise of moral authority.

A month or so ago, one of you shared with me the obituary of Jan Karski, another certified hero, who, at 86 years of age, died only recently. Jan Karski, a non-Jew, was a liaison officer of the Polish underground in 1942 who at great risk managed to infiltrate both the Warsaw Ghetto and a Nazi Concentration Camp, and then personally carried the very first eyewitness accounts of the horrors to the leaders of a most disbelieving West.

Karski was charged by those Jews whose days were numbered to "Remember this" no matter what. And Jan Karski fulfilled his promise to those Jews and personally testified in great detail, face to face, with Britain's Anthony Eden and with FDR and with Polish and American Jewish leaders- none of whom could quite believe what they were hearing from him. Karski was heroic! Now listen, there's more.

Said author Peter Schneider in a recent "New York Times" article, the legacy of the little-acknowledged heroes who hid and saved Jews during the Second World War is certain proof that even isolated men and women, had life-saving roles they could have played without undue risk. Says Schneider:

... it isn't necessarily life-threatening to give bread or a bed or an address for the following night to a man on the run, an outcast; it may take only decency, some cunning and courage.

And to think. We have Jewish high school students today who imagine they cannot so much as miss a day of school even for Yom Kippur. And we know juvenile athletes who cannot see their way to so much as miss a team practice in order to participate in a Jewish activity or attend a sacred observance. I think we can all learn a lesson or two from these heroes. There is no need ever to be servile, submissive or indifferent to our faith and its traditions and its prophetic, moral impulse.

You know who we have to mention next, of course. Senator Joseph Lieberman. Win or not, next month, I am proud to live in this great nation at this unprecedented and historic high water mark of Jewish recognition and attainment.

Weren't you amazed when Lieberman's name was announced? Did you think you'd ever see the day? I melted in emotion on hearing Tipper Gore so movingly tell Hadassah Lieberman's story as a daughter of Holocaust survivors. And I only wished that my Dad, and my orthodox Rabbi grandfather could have been here to celebrate this remarkable development.

You may think it's no big deal. Four thousand years of history disagree with you!

You know, it occurs to me that life ought really be led by us all in a conscious search for those opportunities which are ours to lend the full force of our moral weight toward aiding and upholding the cause of the defenseless, even if they aren't fashionable or popular. My dear friends, that's the heroism of which everyone of us is well capable.

To open eyes where others close them
to hear when others do not want to listen
to look when others turn away
to seek to understand when others give up
to rouse oneself when others accept
to continue to struggle even when one isn't the strongest
to cry out when others are silent

To be a Jew is that. It is first of all that, and further, to live when others are dead, and to remember when others have forgotten.

Moses, despite it all, hung in there. He gave himself over to the heroic. Okay, so we're no Moses's, but remember this, we're not without our options either. So why not go out there into that great big world and
 

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.