Rabbi ari lev: Deep calls unto Deep
Rosh Hashanah Day 1 5780
September 30, 2019
Shana Tova!
It feels poignant to be gathered--some might say smushed--together in this room this morning. The last time this sanctuary had this many people in it was the Friday night following the shooting at The Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. It has been almost a year since that tragic event destabilized us, a year that has contained so much for each of us individually and collectively. I am so grateful for the pull of the tides and the cycles of the moon that have brought us together this morning. Because of our varied life experiences, we each arrive to this moment differently. But surely there is no Jewish community in the world that does not arrive today to synagogue without a heightened awareness of our vulnerability. I am struck by the courage of our gathering, as Jewish communities have done for millennia, through exile and inquisition, every year reconstituting ourselves in the face of violence. It is at once an act of defiance and resilience. It has been hard to find sufficient and appropriate company with which to share the heartbreak and chaos of these political times. So I invite you now, to consider closing your eyes and taking a few breaths. Absorb the vibrations of 500 breathing bodies, 500 yearning beings all gathered to affirm our lives and our purpose. Together. Singing and joyful and mournful and alive.
Deep breaths.
The book of psalms teaches, תְּהֽוֹם־אֶל־תְּה֣וֹם ק֭וֹרֵא - Deep calls unto Deep [1], and it has called you to this very moment. Each of us contains a great depth, calling out to the depth in one another. Thank you for being here.
---
Some of you may remember, the early summer morning of June 4 when at 7:46 am, just before rush hour, SEPTA tweeted "Rte 34: Shuttle buses will operate in both directions between 40th Street Portal and 61st and Baltimore Ave due to a sinkhole. Expect delays until further notice."
And then tweeted again at 9:53 am: "A large sinkhole has opened up at the intersection of 43rd Street and Baltimore Avenue, right in the middle of the Route 34 trolley line. The intersection is currently closed to traffic while construction crews are preparing to dig up the street."
And then the next morning, "The sinkhole at 43rd and Baltimore was caused by a major sewer line break. Although the hole is only about 3 feet long on the surface, it extends approximately 20 feet across below the surface."
As the crew began to excavate the scene, the West Philly sinkhole became both a transit delay and a childcare destination. So many of us came out to see it for ourselves, bringing our children, texting our friends and family to be sure they had seen the sight. We felt compelled to experience the cognitive dissonance of seeing what both our brains and our bodies imagine to be solid rock, now vacant, sunken in on itself, revealing a seemingly bottomless pit.
It inspired in me just the right combination of fear and awe known in Jewish tradition as Yirat Shammayim. Or as the medieval commentator Rashi puts it: both "astonishment and desolation." And not just in me - it didn't take long for Facebook posts to allude to its mystical presence. One of my favorites read, "There's another sinkhole! The underground river gods are either angry or busy or something. Many offerings are needed."
And then in true West Philly fashion, a formal Facebook event was created for Monday, June 10 - as people gathered to appease the sinkhole gods by throwing offerings into it. This was, I imagine, mostly irreverent and probably cathartic, throwing who knows what into the depths. And yet, this playful ritual points to a deeper mystical curiosity. Maybe it takes a sinkhole for a community of punk rock anarchists to wonder what really lies beneath the bedrock of existence?
The truth is that Jewish tradition has long been fascinated with what feminist scholar Avivah Zornberg calls, "the murmuring deep." Holes, pits, and deep dark places recur throughout our mythic texts like a game of Where's Waldo? Let's think of a few together.
Joseph in the pit:
וַיִּ֨קָּחֻ֔הוּ וַיַּשְׁלִ֥כוּ אֹת֖וֹ הַבֹּ֑רָה
"And they took him and cast him into the pit." [2]
Jonah cries out from the belly of the whale:
תְּה֖וֹם יְסֹבְבֵ֑נִי
"The deep engulfed me." [3]
The Israelites crossing the sea:
וְיָבֹ֧אוּ בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֛ל בְּת֥וֹךְ הַיָּ֖ם בַּיַּבָּשָֽׁה׃
"And the Israelites marched down into the sea on dry ground." [4]
And for sure we see it throughout the book of psalms:
שִׁ֥יר הַֽמַּעֲל֑וֹת מִמַּעֲמַקִּ֖ים קְרָאתִ֣יךָ יְהוָֽה
"Out of the depths I call to you." [5]
The prominent presence of the deep is begging for our attention.
What is the deep and what does it do to us?
In truth, the deep existed long before any of these stories, long before human beings. Embedded in our creation myth, the presence of the deep is made known in the opening verses of Torah.
בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ
At the beginning of the Creation of heaven and earth...
וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ
וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם
וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃
the earth being unformed and void,
with darkness over the surface of the deep
and a sacred spirit hovering over the waters--
וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֖ים יְהִ֣י א֑וֹר וַֽיְהִי־אֽוֹר׃
God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
According to the Torah, all life emerges from tohu vaVohu, a howling, empty chaos. [6]
Chaos is internal to our world and not just in the beginning.
Over the past three years we have witnessed the rise of government power whose primary strategy is to wreak havoc on people's lives and the planet itself.
The Amazon, for example, is burning, literally the lungs of our planet ablaze. We bear witness to the outrage and protest of Indigenous communities who know those trees and forests as home, and who understand that our entire existence depends on them.
And across the globe, the Arctic is melting. As a result, water levels are rising, trade routes are opening, and there is a new Cold War race to drill into the Arctic, to unearth and privatize its natural resources. The powers that be are literally daring to extract the earth's core. There is apparently no limit to their greed and the chaos it creates.
In the words of Greta Thunberg, "People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction."
According to a recent article, "If we lived in an ordinary time--time here being understood in the long, unhurried sense of geologic epoch--it would be nearly impossible to watch a species vanish. Such an event would occur too infrequently for a person to witness." [7] It typically takes millennia for a species to die out. The last mass extinction, which included the dinosaurs, was some 66 million years ago, caused by an asteroid impact. This time it seems, we humans are the asteroid.
And it is not just an environmental catastrophe. Creating chaos is the express tactic of the Trump administration, whose policies and actions erode and undermine our sense of stability, literally questioning the nature of truth, separating families, interfering in foreign affairs, and undermining the media. We are meant to feel unmoored, uncertain, fearful - that perhaps at any moment the ground may drop out from under us.
So it didn't help much with this feeling of deep uncertainty when the ground actually did drop out from under us!
My hevruta Rabbi Avi Killip writes in a poem,
"There is a sinkhole in my neighborhood
and in my country
they have patched it multiple times
but it always re-opens"
The second verse of Torah continues,
וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם
And darkness was upon the Tehom, the deep subterranean waters.
Not long after the sinkhole appeared in June, a local carpenter doing some repairs at my house shared with me some pictures he had printed from the last time that very sinkhole opened up 107 years ago on June 18, 1912. A horse and buggy rests where our cars are now parked. And a butchery once stood in the place of Clarkville. These sinkholes are not new to West Philly.
September 30, 2019
Shana Tova!
It feels poignant to be gathered--some might say smushed--together in this room this morning. The last time this sanctuary had this many people in it was the Friday night following the shooting at The Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. It has been almost a year since that tragic event destabilized us, a year that has contained so much for each of us individually and collectively. I am so grateful for the pull of the tides and the cycles of the moon that have brought us together this morning. Because of our varied life experiences, we each arrive to this moment differently. But surely there is no Jewish community in the world that does not arrive today to synagogue without a heightened awareness of our vulnerability. I am struck by the courage of our gathering, as Jewish communities have done for millennia, through exile and inquisition, every year reconstituting ourselves in the face of violence. It is at once an act of defiance and resilience. It has been hard to find sufficient and appropriate company with which to share the heartbreak and chaos of these political times. So I invite you now, to consider closing your eyes and taking a few breaths. Absorb the vibrations of 500 breathing bodies, 500 yearning beings all gathered to affirm our lives and our purpose. Together. Singing and joyful and mournful and alive.
Deep breaths.
The book of psalms teaches, תְּהֽוֹם־אֶל־תְּה֣וֹם ק֭וֹרֵא - Deep calls unto Deep [1], and it has called you to this very moment. Each of us contains a great depth, calling out to the depth in one another. Thank you for being here.
---
Some of you may remember, the early summer morning of June 4 when at 7:46 am, just before rush hour, SEPTA tweeted "Rte 34: Shuttle buses will operate in both directions between 40th Street Portal and 61st and Baltimore Ave due to a sinkhole. Expect delays until further notice."
And then tweeted again at 9:53 am: "A large sinkhole has opened up at the intersection of 43rd Street and Baltimore Avenue, right in the middle of the Route 34 trolley line. The intersection is currently closed to traffic while construction crews are preparing to dig up the street."
And then the next morning, "The sinkhole at 43rd and Baltimore was caused by a major sewer line break. Although the hole is only about 3 feet long on the surface, it extends approximately 20 feet across below the surface."
As the crew began to excavate the scene, the West Philly sinkhole became both a transit delay and a childcare destination. So many of us came out to see it for ourselves, bringing our children, texting our friends and family to be sure they had seen the sight. We felt compelled to experience the cognitive dissonance of seeing what both our brains and our bodies imagine to be solid rock, now vacant, sunken in on itself, revealing a seemingly bottomless pit.
It inspired in me just the right combination of fear and awe known in Jewish tradition as Yirat Shammayim. Or as the medieval commentator Rashi puts it: both "astonishment and desolation." And not just in me - it didn't take long for Facebook posts to allude to its mystical presence. One of my favorites read, "There's another sinkhole! The underground river gods are either angry or busy or something. Many offerings are needed."
And then in true West Philly fashion, a formal Facebook event was created for Monday, June 10 - as people gathered to appease the sinkhole gods by throwing offerings into it. This was, I imagine, mostly irreverent and probably cathartic, throwing who knows what into the depths. And yet, this playful ritual points to a deeper mystical curiosity. Maybe it takes a sinkhole for a community of punk rock anarchists to wonder what really lies beneath the bedrock of existence?
The truth is that Jewish tradition has long been fascinated with what feminist scholar Avivah Zornberg calls, "the murmuring deep." Holes, pits, and deep dark places recur throughout our mythic texts like a game of Where's Waldo? Let's think of a few together.
Joseph in the pit:
וַיִּ֨קָּחֻ֔הוּ וַיַּשְׁלִ֥כוּ אֹת֖וֹ הַבֹּ֑רָה
"And they took him and cast him into the pit." [2]
Jonah cries out from the belly of the whale:
תְּה֖וֹם יְסֹבְבֵ֑נִי
"The deep engulfed me." [3]
The Israelites crossing the sea:
וְיָבֹ֧אוּ בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֛ל בְּת֥וֹךְ הַיָּ֖ם בַּיַּבָּשָֽׁה׃
"And the Israelites marched down into the sea on dry ground." [4]
And for sure we see it throughout the book of psalms:
שִׁ֥יר הַֽמַּעֲל֑וֹת מִמַּעֲמַקִּ֖ים קְרָאתִ֣יךָ יְהוָֽה
"Out of the depths I call to you." [5]
The prominent presence of the deep is begging for our attention.
What is the deep and what does it do to us?
In truth, the deep existed long before any of these stories, long before human beings. Embedded in our creation myth, the presence of the deep is made known in the opening verses of Torah.
בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ
At the beginning of the Creation of heaven and earth...
וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ
וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם
וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃
the earth being unformed and void,
with darkness over the surface of the deep
and a sacred spirit hovering over the waters--
וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֖ים יְהִ֣י א֑וֹר וַֽיְהִי־אֽוֹר׃
God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
According to the Torah, all life emerges from tohu vaVohu, a howling, empty chaos. [6]
Chaos is internal to our world and not just in the beginning.
Over the past three years we have witnessed the rise of government power whose primary strategy is to wreak havoc on people's lives and the planet itself.
The Amazon, for example, is burning, literally the lungs of our planet ablaze. We bear witness to the outrage and protest of Indigenous communities who know those trees and forests as home, and who understand that our entire existence depends on them.
And across the globe, the Arctic is melting. As a result, water levels are rising, trade routes are opening, and there is a new Cold War race to drill into the Arctic, to unearth and privatize its natural resources. The powers that be are literally daring to extract the earth's core. There is apparently no limit to their greed and the chaos it creates.
In the words of Greta Thunberg, "People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction."
According to a recent article, "If we lived in an ordinary time--time here being understood in the long, unhurried sense of geologic epoch--it would be nearly impossible to watch a species vanish. Such an event would occur too infrequently for a person to witness." [7] It typically takes millennia for a species to die out. The last mass extinction, which included the dinosaurs, was some 66 million years ago, caused by an asteroid impact. This time it seems, we humans are the asteroid.
And it is not just an environmental catastrophe. Creating chaos is the express tactic of the Trump administration, whose policies and actions erode and undermine our sense of stability, literally questioning the nature of truth, separating families, interfering in foreign affairs, and undermining the media. We are meant to feel unmoored, uncertain, fearful - that perhaps at any moment the ground may drop out from under us.
So it didn't help much with this feeling of deep uncertainty when the ground actually did drop out from under us!
My hevruta Rabbi Avi Killip writes in a poem,
"There is a sinkhole in my neighborhood
and in my country
they have patched it multiple times
but it always re-opens"
The second verse of Torah continues,
וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם
And darkness was upon the Tehom, the deep subterranean waters.
Not long after the sinkhole appeared in June, a local carpenter doing some repairs at my house shared with me some pictures he had printed from the last time that very sinkhole opened up 107 years ago on June 18, 1912. A horse and buggy rests where our cars are now parked. And a butchery once stood in the place of Clarkville. These sinkholes are not new to West Philly.
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As it turns out, much of West Philly is built upon the floodplains of the old Mill Creek River. Landscape historian Anne Whiston Spirn reflects on this realization when describing another sinkhole in the neighborhood:
"I looked down into this huge hole and saw a big brown rushing river. It was 1971. I was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania and I was on my way to the supermarket and there at the entrance was this hole. It turns out there had been a cave-in over the old Mill Creek sewer...I had no idea that the Mill Creek really was a river, not just a sewer...It brought home for me the force of that water that was [all the time] coursing underground and invisible." [8]
וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם
And the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.
Feminist theologian Catherine Heller writes, "A churning, complicating darkness was wedged right between the two verses which everyone knows with indelible certainty: between 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth' and 'God said: let there be light...'
"This interstitial darkness refuses to disappear...It gapes open in the text: 'and the earth was Tohu vaVohu, and darkness was upon the face of tehom and the ruach elohim was vibrating upon the face of the mayim...' ...So densely packed with its terse triune chaos, the second verse sends a mysterious tremor through the whole narrative of creation." [9]
The Jerusalem Talmud relates the following fantastical story about human beings discovering primordial chaos--the tehom--of the world.
When King David was digging the foundations of what he hoped would one day become the Beit HaMikdash, the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, he dug down fifteen hundred cubits. Alas, he didn't find the tehom, the primordial waters, but instead, to his great surprise, he found a single teapot. Disappointed and perhaps frustrated, he wanted to throw it.
But it said to him, "You can't throw me."
"Oh yeah, why not?" he replied.
[Yes, we are witnessing an imagined conversation between King David and a teapot.]
The teapot said, "I'm here to hold down the tehom."
David replied, "And since when have you been here?"
[He's a bit snarky, don’t you think?]
The teapot responds, "From the moment that the Compassionate One's voice was heard at Sinai proclaiming, 'I am YHVH your God,' the land trembled and sank and I was put here to restrain the tehom."
Even so, David didn't listen to the teapot. He threw it away and the tehom started rising and threatened to flood the world.
So David started to sing songs--the 15 Shir HaMa'alot--songs of ascent found in the Book of Psalms, and for each song he sang, the tehom receded back to its original position. [10]
Oh, was King David caught off guard! He had arrogantly ignored the warnings of a teapot, and he discovered that the tehom of the world was in fact much stronger than he was.
Oh, how delicate and determined are the deep recesses of our world and our souls. When we are out of touch with our own inner depths, we can do great harm to the deep of the earth. King David is a driller in this story, he's Trump, trying to extract resources and build infrastructure with reckless disregard. He thinks he can outsmart, disrespect, and override the natural structure of things that preserves a balance of chaos and order in the world. But he can't. And when he throws away the teapot, the earth starts to rebel. When he starts singing, he reconnects with a deep inner core, a tehom, a spiritual practice, and that's what allows him to re-enter right-relationship with the natural world, and to quell the waters.
When we cultivate our own internal depths, we can hear the calling of the world's depths, תְּהֽוֹם־אֶל־תְּה֣וֹם ק֭וֹרֵא. Without that kind of grounding we cannot cultivate enough compassion to take care of the world or each other. In the chaos of our daily lives, most of us lack time and attention to investigate our own murmuring deep, all the more so, the tehom of the earth.
Which is precisely why we are here, why it takes courage to be here. To stare into the great sinkhole of existence, the seemingly endless sinkhole of this political, historical, and planetary moment, and to offer our prayers with the hopes of reconnecting to our center.
תְּהֽוֹם־אֶל־תְּה֣וֹם ק֭וֹרֵא
Deep calls unto deep.
These Days of Awe are all about slowing down, zooming in and going deeper.
To prepare ourselves for a new year and to find deep ground to steady us in the face of rising chaos.
בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃
When God began to create heaven and earth--
וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ
The earth was, is, and perhaps always will be, awesome and chaotic.
וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם
But there is a flowing river deep within us, calling to us.
וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃
A spirit pulsing right here with us.
Perhaps one of the most profound images in our tradition is that of the Israelites crossing the sea on dry land, בתוך הים ביבשה. I know many of you have sat in my office and meditated on the mosaic of this moment.
About this moment, the rabbis ask, if they were in the sea, how could they be on dry land? And if they were on dry land, how could they be in the sea?
The question lies not only in the past, but in our times too.
To find ourselves at once surrounded by the rising waters and on solid ground.
This midrash goes on to paint a powerful image of the women crossing carrying their children. When a child would cry, she would reach out her hand and pull from the sea walls an apple or a pomegranate.
As it says in Psalms, וַיּוֹלִיכֵ֥ם בַּ֝תְּהֹמ֗וֹת כַּמִּדְבָּֽר
The Holy one led them through the deep as through the wilderness.
מה במדבר לא חסרו כלום אף בתהומות לא חסרו כלום.
Just as they lacked nothing in the desert, so too they lacked nothing in the deep. [11]
אף על פי כן, af al pi chen, so too with us, may we trust in the spirit that pulses over the waters, that we will lack nothing in the deep.
As we begin this 10-day journey, let us heed the call of the tehom - in our world and in our hearts. It is our source and our sustenance, and it is calling us home.
Let the calls of the shofar summon you to look deeper.
Let these 10 days be a sinkhole into your own soul, a journey to your own tehom, to find the steady waters in the face of a world that is once again and maybe always tohu vaVohu. Because chaos is internal to this world.
In a few minutes we will rise for the Unetane Tokef and we will ask:
Who shall live and who shall die?
But more so, who shall we be and how shall we live?
In this great turning, with the water levels rising, we are witnessing the brilliance and courage of young people rising up to quell the waters, and we must join them.
The only way we will get through this great turning is through massive spiritual, cultural, and ultimately political transformation. We must be willing to turn towards the face of the tehom. This is the work of teshuva. To connect more deeply to ourselves and to each other, and ultimately to the earth.
"It is time now, it is time now that we thrive, it is time to lead ourselves into the well." [12]
May this be the year...
G'mar Hatimah Tova!
[1] Psalm 42:8a.
[2] Genesis 37:24a.
[3] Jonah 2:6.
[4] Exodus 14:16b.
[5] Psalm 130:1.
[6] Translation inspired by Rabbi Alan Lew. See This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, p. 118.
[7] Kolbert, Elizabeth. "Vanishing" in October 2019 issue of National Geographic, p. 47.
[8] Quote excerpted from the documentary The Buried River. https://vimeo.com/105794704.
[9] Keller, Catherine. The Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming, p. 8.
[10] Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 52b.
[11] Shemot Rabbah 21.
[12] "We Shall Be Known" by MaMuse.
"I looked down into this huge hole and saw a big brown rushing river. It was 1971. I was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania and I was on my way to the supermarket and there at the entrance was this hole. It turns out there had been a cave-in over the old Mill Creek sewer...I had no idea that the Mill Creek really was a river, not just a sewer...It brought home for me the force of that water that was [all the time] coursing underground and invisible." [8]
וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם
And the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.
Feminist theologian Catherine Heller writes, "A churning, complicating darkness was wedged right between the two verses which everyone knows with indelible certainty: between 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth' and 'God said: let there be light...'
"This interstitial darkness refuses to disappear...It gapes open in the text: 'and the earth was Tohu vaVohu, and darkness was upon the face of tehom and the ruach elohim was vibrating upon the face of the mayim...' ...So densely packed with its terse triune chaos, the second verse sends a mysterious tremor through the whole narrative of creation." [9]
The Jerusalem Talmud relates the following fantastical story about human beings discovering primordial chaos--the tehom--of the world.
When King David was digging the foundations of what he hoped would one day become the Beit HaMikdash, the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, he dug down fifteen hundred cubits. Alas, he didn't find the tehom, the primordial waters, but instead, to his great surprise, he found a single teapot. Disappointed and perhaps frustrated, he wanted to throw it.
But it said to him, "You can't throw me."
"Oh yeah, why not?" he replied.
[Yes, we are witnessing an imagined conversation between King David and a teapot.]
The teapot said, "I'm here to hold down the tehom."
David replied, "And since when have you been here?"
[He's a bit snarky, don’t you think?]
The teapot responds, "From the moment that the Compassionate One's voice was heard at Sinai proclaiming, 'I am YHVH your God,' the land trembled and sank and I was put here to restrain the tehom."
Even so, David didn't listen to the teapot. He threw it away and the tehom started rising and threatened to flood the world.
So David started to sing songs--the 15 Shir HaMa'alot--songs of ascent found in the Book of Psalms, and for each song he sang, the tehom receded back to its original position. [10]
Oh, was King David caught off guard! He had arrogantly ignored the warnings of a teapot, and he discovered that the tehom of the world was in fact much stronger than he was.
Oh, how delicate and determined are the deep recesses of our world and our souls. When we are out of touch with our own inner depths, we can do great harm to the deep of the earth. King David is a driller in this story, he's Trump, trying to extract resources and build infrastructure with reckless disregard. He thinks he can outsmart, disrespect, and override the natural structure of things that preserves a balance of chaos and order in the world. But he can't. And when he throws away the teapot, the earth starts to rebel. When he starts singing, he reconnects with a deep inner core, a tehom, a spiritual practice, and that's what allows him to re-enter right-relationship with the natural world, and to quell the waters.
When we cultivate our own internal depths, we can hear the calling of the world's depths, תְּהֽוֹם־אֶל־תְּה֣וֹם ק֭וֹרֵא. Without that kind of grounding we cannot cultivate enough compassion to take care of the world or each other. In the chaos of our daily lives, most of us lack time and attention to investigate our own murmuring deep, all the more so, the tehom of the earth.
Which is precisely why we are here, why it takes courage to be here. To stare into the great sinkhole of existence, the seemingly endless sinkhole of this political, historical, and planetary moment, and to offer our prayers with the hopes of reconnecting to our center.
תְּהֽוֹם־אֶל־תְּה֣וֹם ק֭וֹרֵא
Deep calls unto deep.
These Days of Awe are all about slowing down, zooming in and going deeper.
To prepare ourselves for a new year and to find deep ground to steady us in the face of rising chaos.
בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃
When God began to create heaven and earth--
וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ
The earth was, is, and perhaps always will be, awesome and chaotic.
וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם
But there is a flowing river deep within us, calling to us.
וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃
A spirit pulsing right here with us.
Perhaps one of the most profound images in our tradition is that of the Israelites crossing the sea on dry land, בתוך הים ביבשה. I know many of you have sat in my office and meditated on the mosaic of this moment.
About this moment, the rabbis ask, if they were in the sea, how could they be on dry land? And if they were on dry land, how could they be in the sea?
The question lies not only in the past, but in our times too.
To find ourselves at once surrounded by the rising waters and on solid ground.
This midrash goes on to paint a powerful image of the women crossing carrying their children. When a child would cry, she would reach out her hand and pull from the sea walls an apple or a pomegranate.
As it says in Psalms, וַיּוֹלִיכֵ֥ם בַּ֝תְּהֹמ֗וֹת כַּמִּדְבָּֽר
The Holy one led them through the deep as through the wilderness.
מה במדבר לא חסרו כלום אף בתהומות לא חסרו כלום.
Just as they lacked nothing in the desert, so too they lacked nothing in the deep. [11]
אף על פי כן, af al pi chen, so too with us, may we trust in the spirit that pulses over the waters, that we will lack nothing in the deep.
As we begin this 10-day journey, let us heed the call of the tehom - in our world and in our hearts. It is our source and our sustenance, and it is calling us home.
Let the calls of the shofar summon you to look deeper.
Let these 10 days be a sinkhole into your own soul, a journey to your own tehom, to find the steady waters in the face of a world that is once again and maybe always tohu vaVohu. Because chaos is internal to this world.
In a few minutes we will rise for the Unetane Tokef and we will ask:
Who shall live and who shall die?
But more so, who shall we be and how shall we live?
In this great turning, with the water levels rising, we are witnessing the brilliance and courage of young people rising up to quell the waters, and we must join them.
The only way we will get through this great turning is through massive spiritual, cultural, and ultimately political transformation. We must be willing to turn towards the face of the tehom. This is the work of teshuva. To connect more deeply to ourselves and to each other, and ultimately to the earth.
"It is time now, it is time now that we thrive, it is time to lead ourselves into the well." [12]
May this be the year...
G'mar Hatimah Tova!
[1] Psalm 42:8a.
[2] Genesis 37:24a.
[3] Jonah 2:6.
[4] Exodus 14:16b.
[5] Psalm 130:1.
[6] Translation inspired by Rabbi Alan Lew. See This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, p. 118.
[7] Kolbert, Elizabeth. "Vanishing" in October 2019 issue of National Geographic, p. 47.
[8] Quote excerpted from the documentary The Buried River. https://vimeo.com/105794704.
[9] Keller, Catherine. The Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming, p. 8.
[10] Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 52b.
[11] Shemot Rabbah 21.
[12] "We Shall Be Known" by MaMuse.