D'var Torah for Pride Shabbat 2026

Some years ago, I had the great opportunity to take a class taught by Rabbi Benay Lappe. Rabbi Lappe is the founder and leader of SVARA, a school whose mission "is to empower queer and trans people to expand Torah and tradition through the spiritual practice of Talmud study."

At that class, Rabbi Lappe joked that the Jewish religion may always be what she called "a boutique faith" because we so seldomly give solid, concrete answers to some of life's most complex questions. It's common to want answers. Judaism seldom gives many answers with lots of confidence, preferring instead to invite and encourage conversation. Elsewhere, Rabbi Lappe writes that Jewish tradition "resists certainty at every turn" — that the most significant stories that belong to the Jewish people are stories of not-knowing.   That’s true of the story of Abraham who is told to leave behind his home and go to a place that the Torah describes as "a Land that I will show you," to the Exodus, where the Hebrew slaves leave Egypt to depart for a place they’ve never been to,  to the rabbis rebuilding Jewish life after the destruction of the Temple thousands of years ago.  Those are the stories she refers to as stories of not-knowing, but of moving forward anyway. Of trusting that something holy, that a Promised Land, is on the other side even when you can't see it from where you're standing.  Not-knowing, according to Rabbi Lappe, is not just fine, it’s part of holiness.

This week’s Torah portion, Chukat, also includes a story, or at least a ritual, of not-knowing.  It’s a ritual that doesn’t make any sense, that can’t be explained, but we’re told to do it anyway.  God instructs Moses and Aaron to take a perfectly red cow — unblemished, never yoked — and to sacrifice it outside the camp. After it is burned, its ashes are mixed with water, and that mixture is used to purify someone who has become ritually impure through contact with death.

It gets even stranger: the ash-water made from the red cow purifies the impure — but the priest who makes the ash-water potion then becomes impure by virtue of making it. The priest who performs the ritual, who is himself pure, becomes impure through the very act of making someone else pure. The same substance, the same moment, producing opposite effects.

The rabbis wrestled with this for centuries and ultimately concluded: we cannot explain it. The midrash in Kohelet Rabbah (8:1:5) tells us that even Moses — who received the Torah directly from God — was left without an answer on this one. Moses did ask, saying: "Master of the universe — that's the purification?" And God replied: "It is a statute, and I issued a decree, and no creature can comprehend my decree." Not even Moses. And so the Torah gives it a category: a chok — a divine decree that we follow not because we understand it, but because we recognize it as holy. The Torah doesn't apologize for the mystery. It just says: this is sacred. Trust that. It’s a ritual where “not-knowing” is a built-in part of it.

Now. Why am I telling you this on Pride Shabbat?

Because I think there is a long and painful history of demanding that people explain themselves before they are accepted as holy. Asking people to justify their existence. Asking people to make it make sense to others. Asking people to fit into a category that is already understood. And only then, maybe, be welcomed in.

What this portion says to me, this week of all weeks, is: not everything-or everyone- needs to be explained to everyone. Holiness doesn't require everyone to agree, or even understand.  

The red cow cannot be explained. Its power cannot be reduced to logic. And yet it is holy and to be accepted. In fact, the midrash in Bamidbar Rabbah teaches: "Chukim she-chatavti lecha — the statutes I have inscribed for you — ein lecha reshut l'harher achareihem — you have no right to question them."  The point isn't blind obedience, that’s seldom the lesson in Judaism,  it's that the chukim, the unexplainable laws, occupy a category where their worth is intrinsic and not reliant on someone else to understand. And elsewhere the rabbis go further, teaching that these laws are actually more precious than the ones that everyone can easily explain — because following a law that is easily understood gives people the power to judge.   But following a law that can’t be understood reframes the roles - it’s not about judging laws, or others, it’s about accepting.

That, to me, is the spiritual invitation of Pride Shabbat — especially for those of us who are allies. Not just tolerance. Tolerance still puts us in the position of judge. What the Torah asks us to do is deeper, to accept, and beyond accept, to love.

And for those in this room who have spent years — sometimes a whole lifetime — being asked to explain yourselves. To justify your love, your identity, your sense of self, to people who held the power to include or exclude you, to people who thought they had the right to judge. I want to say this directly: this is your community. I don't even know that I can say "we accept you," or “we love you,” because "we" includes you. You are a part of us.  This is your home.

And it's not just the red heifer in this week's Torah portion that leads us here.

The Mishnah in Sanhedrin (4:5) offers one of the most remarkable theological statements in all of rabbinic literature. It asks: why did God create only one human being at the beginning — one Adam — from whom all humanity descends? And it answers with this image: a human Ruler stamps many coins with a single seal, and they all come out identical. But the Ruler of rulers stamped every single person with the seal of Adam — and not one of them resembles another. Difference is not a flaw in the process. Difference comes from Divine design. God could have made us identical and chose not to.

And then there is the commandment that appears more times in the Torah than any other — thirty-six times, the rabbis count — more than the command to love God, more than Shabbat, more than almost anything else. V'ahavtem et hager — love the one who is different from you. Not tolerate. Not accommodate. Love. The Torah repeats it so many times, I think, because it knows how hard it is. Because the person who is different from us — whose life, whose love, whose way of being in the world we cannot fully map onto our own experience — that person is not a problem to be solved before they can be loved. And we don’t even need to understand, as a prerequisite, in order to love.  The Torah says: love them because they are different.  Love the human diversity that God created.

I know that for some in this room, and for many in our broader community, that being anything other than straight and cisgender has brought pain because of violence, because of cruelty, and because of policy.  That celebrating love and diversity may be hard, understandably so, because pain can be all-consuming.  I see that, and I hope that Rabbi Lappe’s teaching, that beyond the wilderness lies the Promised Land, is one that we can all live to see realized.

The Torah never tells us why the red cow works. It just tells us: do this, and the one who was outside the camp can come back in. Do this, and wholeness is restored. Do this, and the community is complete again.

On this Pride Shabbat, that feels like enough of an instruction for us— love, accept, and make our community whole.