Stuck In the “Muscular” Middle With You
- Rabbi David Baum
- 9 hours ago
- 8 min read
Parashat BaMidbar 2026
Video Sermon - Click on the Image Above to Watch
If you consider yourself a Conservative/Masorti Jew, why?
I ask you this question to acknowledge something right away: even though we are one people as Jews, we still have very distinct differences between other Jews, like we are in tribes.
The things change, the more they stay the same. Although Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Judaisms have only been around for 200 years, Jews sitting in different camps have been with us since our very beginning, and it’s a big part of our parashah this week, especially chapter 2.
Going back to Conservative Judaism, for many, it’s what it is not. It’s not the right or the left. The problem is, many of us think that’s a bad thing. To be in the center is parve; it’s not standing for anything.
And honestly, it hasn’t been a compelling message for Jewish America over the last 50 years. Since we are in the book of Numbers, and we will have a lot of census that we’ll be reading, let me add some statistics to the mix:
In 1971, 41% of Jews in America said they were Conservative Jews. Today, that number is 17%. A 24 percentage-point loss in just 50 years, and now we are a distant second to the Reform movement.
It’s not just religiously either. Many of us in America feel politically homeless. The political parties we belonged to, which were central to our Jewish American identity because we were accepted and recognized as our full selves within them, are becoming increasingly uncomfortable for Jews.
Today, the center is a lonely place, but honestly, in today’s age, I don’t want to be anywhere else. Life today is akin to the lyrics to a well-known song:
Trying to make some sense of it all,
But I can see it makes no sense at all.
Is it cool to go to sleep on the floor?'
Cause I don't think that I can take anymore.
Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right,
Here I am stuck in the middle with you.
There is seemingly no sane center anymore. But that doesn’t have to be this way in Judaism.
I think in a world where people say labels don’t matter, I say, holding a flag representing something does matter. It’s why I am still a Conservative Jew.
In chapter 2 of the book of Numbers. It is a seemingly boring chapter, with the list of the tribal names, the number of people, and where they stand. But if we saw it visually, it would look much different.
Here’s the picture we see of the camp as described in Chapter 2
It turns out the Israelites weren't the only ones in the ancient Near East who organized their camp this way.
When archaeologists and historians examined the military records of Ramesses II — the Pharaoh most scholars believe was the Pharaoh of the Exodus — they found something remarkable. His battle camp at Kadesh, carved into the walls of temples across Egypt, shows a square camp with the Pharaoh's tent at the very center. Sound familiar?
And it wasn't just the shape. Ramesses' tent was thick-walled and heavily fortified — extraordinary for a temporary military camp. Why? Because Pharaoh was considered a god. His tent wasn't just a command center — it was a sanctuary. You can even see tiny figures kneeling before the Pharaoh's sacred symbols in the reliefs inside that tent. It had to be protected from both human and spiritual defilement.
Now here's where it gets theologically interesting.
Israel takes that same architectural instinct, the sacred center, the protected dwelling of the divine, and does something radical with it. It’s the same structure, but with a completely different theology. Whereas Pharaoh must be protected from demonic forces, God must be separated from human impurity.
The center isn't where the tyrant Pharaoh lives, a figure who is constantly under attack. The center of the Israelite camp is where God is constantly worshipped.
And all of us camp around it because we want to be in relationship with the center. Not out of fear; but out of love.
What's in the middle of the Israelite camp is, essentially, empty space. The very center of the Mishkan, the center of the center, the holy of holies, was, in essence, an empty space for one person to be in, the high priest, and only once a year on Yom Kippur. No person ever inhabits that space for longer than a day.
So what fills up that center space? Holy words.
In my eyes, the center of our Batei Knesset, our holy dwelling places, must be holy dialogue and sacred argument. The center is where arguments for the sake of heaven happen; where we can hold two opposing views that can exist in the same tent and say, these words and these words are the voice of the living God, but one voice is more correct than the other.
We do not erase minority opinions in the Talmud, the oral Torah; rather, we record them so that future generations can use their arguments. And sometimes, the Talmud ends with no winner - Teiku it’s called.
Unfortunately, if that space isn’t filled up with holy dialogue, something else fills it up. I was thinking back to that picture from ancient Egypt - the godlike figure standing in the middle, wanting the entire world to worship them.
Sounds like every influencer on the internet, doesn’t it? The people our children look up to usually aren’t level-headed; that’s not how you crack the algorithm. To crack the algorithm, you have to be extreme. You must stand for something, and against something; always.
And this is my concern: that our camps will be filled with people who want the world to change for them, rather than making space for others who may challenge them to look at the world differently.
As some of you may have heard, there was a recent controversy at the Jewish Theological Seminary. President Isaac Herzog of the state of Israel was scheduled to give the commencement address this year. Six seniors in JTS's undergraduate dual-degree programs with Barnard and Columbia wrote a letter raising objections; it was then signed by four rabbinical students, three of whom were first-year students, as well as some alumni. The letter was intended to be hand-delivered privately to Chancellor Schwartz, but it was shared more widely without the students' knowledge or consent, and what was meant to be an internal conversation became a public controversy.
I want to be clear about something: Chancellor Schwartz herself, after meeting with these students, wrote that their concerns focused on the policies of the Israeli government, and that anyone who labeled them as anti-Zionist was misguided. I think it's important to say that clearly, and to extend to these students the same benefit of the doubt, dan l'chaf zchut, that we would want extended to us. You can read her op ed here.
The letter outlined several charges against President Herzog, who is known as a moderating voice in Israel. Some have merit, some do not. But in my eyes, none rose to the level of their ultimate demand:
"In this vein, we ask that President Herzog no longer be invited to speak at JTS's 2026 commencement."
When I read this, I thought, "This was not the JTS that I remembered, and I’ve only been gone for sixteen years.” In those times, we had disagreements and debates, but we didn’t make demands that the other side not be in the room with us.
This is not the first time JTS has been in a controversial position because of the speakers it has brought in.
For instance, can you imagine JTS inviting the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson? Well, that’s precisely what JTS did in 1995.
Chancellor Ismar Schorsch invited then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich to serve as the keynote speaker at JTS's annual Louis Marshall dinner.
As you can imagine, with a mostly liberal student body, many students were furious with the administration.
And they protested. The students cited the impact of Representative Gingrich's political agenda on the poor and vulnerable, which they believed was antithetical to Jewish values and law. But instead of disinviting him, the school held a lottery with Rep. Gingrich's agreement: two representatives from each of the Seminary's schools were chosen to meet with the Speaker prior to the dinner. One of the then-students, now-retired Rabbi David Kaye, wrote about the experience in a recent email. He shared that the students taught Speaker Gingrich some Torah and presented him with a hand-crocheted JTS logo kippah, which he immediately placed on his head.
Underneath the kippah, in the box in which we presented it, was a description of the kippah's origin: a destitute woman from whom students would buy the crocheted kippot, who had subsequently died as a result of cuts to public funding for access to health care and social services.
And so the students and the majority leader spoke; sometimes with each other, sometimes past each other.
They didn’t walk away with their minds changed about anything, but they had a dialogue and heard each other out. And then he spoke at the dinner, and across the street from it, there was an organized protest with about 300 people, many from JTS. But the speech went on.
This was the JTS I remembered, a place in the center that could hold opposing voices with respect and dialogue. It was a place where Israel was always at its center, even if it wrestled with the modern state. Since 1948, JTS has been unequivocally Zionist.
And I think we can be that place in Jewish America again. We must reclaim the center because the center is not only vital but also holy.
And I don't think I'm alone in feeling this way.
Just last week, the incoming Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Mike Uram, gave an interview in which he described his vision for Conservative Judaism in this moment.
He called it "the muscular middle" — a movement that can offer genuine common ground for all types of Jews.
In today’s time, with the loudest voices screaming, we need a muscular middle to be the sane voice in the room. The center cannot afford to be weak because without it, there is no camp and no people.
Rabbi Uram pointed out that, according to social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, 85% of Americans are in the middle, but a small fraction at the extremes has come to dictate the conversation on nearly every issue, leaving three-quarters of us feeling hopeless and unrepresented.
Sound familiar? Clowns to the left, jokers to the right.
But here's what that statistic tells me: the majority didn't disappear; we just got quiet. It’s time to start getting loud again and to start using our voices.
We’re still here, but we need someone to say out loud what we already know — that the center is not a compromise. It is a conviction.
That is who we have always been. A movement that holds tradition and change in sacred tension. That preserves the minority opinion even when it rules against it. That invites the difficult guest and the protesters across the street, because both of them belong in the conversation.
The camp of Israel didn't move through the wilderness because everyone agreed. It moved because everyone knew where they stood — and what they were moving toward.
That's still us. That's still the call. It's why I am still here, still holding this flag, still proud to be stuck in the middle…with you.
Shabbat Shalom.
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