|
Last week I was corresponding with a member of our community, and she wrote, “I will be 80 on my next birthday, and honestly, I have no idea how I made it this far. What I am especially thankful for is that I have lived long enough to feel this level of gratitude. I have also come, in my elder years, to believe that everything that exists is a miracle.”
I have been savoring her wisdom all week. The idea of being grateful to feel so grateful is precious. One of my teachers, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, would often say from the bima that gratitude is the beginning of a spiritual life. When her congregation CBST was designing their new sanctuary they placed the words of psalm 92 above the Torah Ark: “Tov l’hodot l’Adonai / It is good to be grateful.” For many years I understood this to mean, It is good to thank God, to praise the Divine. Which never quite resonated. But in recent years I have realized that this verse is a reminder that it is a good thing to express gratitude. As in, it does wonders for us, for our souls, our blood pressure, our relationships. Gratitude is water. It softens everything it touches. This week Rabbi Mó pointed out to me that gratitude is in fact the root of our spiritual lineage. In this week’s parsha, Vayetzei, Leah births the first four of Jacob’s 12 sons. For each of them, she imparts a name with deep spiritual significance. Reuben, Simon, Levi and finally Judah. For her first three sons, she is longing to feel love and connection with Jacob. And names them each accordingly. But with Judah she shifts her tone, saying, וַתַּהַר עוֹד וַתֵּלֶד בֵּן וַתֹּאמֶר הַפַּעַם אוֹדֶה אֶת־יְהֹוָה עַל־כֵּן קָרְאָה שְׁמוֹ יְהוּדָה וַתַּעֲמֹד מִלֶּדֶת׃ “She conceived again and bore a son, and declared, “This time I will thank The Holy One.” Therefore she named him Yehudah. Then she stopped bearing.” The hebrew word Yehudah comes from the root ידי, meaning to acknowledge. It comes from the word yad, as in hand, as in literally to point to a thing, to take notice. It is the root of the Hebrew word hoda’ah, meaning gratitude, which connects us to the phrase we sing each shabbat in psalm 92, Tov L’hodot. Gratitude is about taking notice, saying Thank you for the good in our lives. And it is not just the name of one of Leah’s sons, it is our namesake too. We are Yehudim, the descendants of the tribe of Yehudah. We are born of gratitude and we are called to express it routinely, even religiously. We have so many Jewish practices of giving thanks. Not confined to a day a year. But rather woven throughout every day and every week. We rise and say Modeh Ani. We bow in the Amidah and say Modim Anachnu Lach. We sing on Shabbat Tov L’hodot. Science now confirms what Judaism has long prescribed: say thank you as often as possible, and at least 3 times a day. I can still hear the voice of my nana, of blessed memory. When I would ask her “How are you?” she would say, “Thank god.” She was not a religious person. It would land like a milk placed in a bag of groceries. Routine and necessary. Gratitude does not need to be deeply felt to be expressed. Which is why it made so much sense to me that this dear octogenarian felt so grateful to feel so grateful. This morning in our Parsha and Poetry class, Rabbi Mó invited us to read a series of poems about gratitude. Then we wrote our own on the whiteboard tables, beginning with the prompt “We are saying thank you,” modeled after a poem by W.S. Merwin. With her permission, I will share Rabbi Mó’s ephemeral creation: “We are saying thank you, thick with loss and hope and terror, spangled and bedecked in beautiful frustration, sudden grief and long unfolding grief. We are saying thank you is impossible and required, is our vessel and our wound and our medicine, our intravenous drip, is our dance party and apocalypse and disco ball and thank you thank you is the salted coffee, postcard to the dead, the blessing blundered beside the bedside morning news today, and thank you, waging its weaponless war again.” I invite you to consider pausing and writing your own and seeing where it takes you. We are saying thank you… In the words of Psalm 115, לֹ֣א הַ֭מֵּתִים יְהַֽלְלוּ־יָ֑הּ׃ “The dead cannot say thank you.” Thank you is a sign of our aliveness. So thank you. Thank you. On Wednesday night I woke up to the sound of thunder and blurted out from my slumber, “It’s raining!” I was truly excited, even while barely conscious. The last measurable rainfall in Philadelphia was on September 28, 2024, which was 30 days before the city broke a 150-year record for dry days.
My excitement is both agriculturally and spiritually warranted. According to Rava (a fourth generation rabbi in Babylonia), A day of rain is greater than the day on which the Torah was given! (B.T. Taanit 7a). Rabbinic prayers for rain are about the need for water and the harvest it makes possible, but they also become a paradigm for praying for what we most need and want in this world. This week I noticed in myself a raw desire for the world to be different than it is and for the trajectory to be drastically different. My inner voice laments, “This is not how I want things to be. This is not the way the world should be. This is not the world I want my kids to grow up in.” I know this to be a stage of grief. I am so sad that I am willing to bargain for a better world. I have come to appreciate this as one of the core purposes of prayer. Prayer is a place we can bargain with God, a space to envision the world we wish was. In this week’s parsha, Chayei Sarah, Isaac takes a verse to regroup after his betrothal to Rebekkah. Genesis 24:63 reads, וַיֵּצֵא יִצְחָק לָשׂוּחַ בַּשָּׂדֶה לִפְנוֹת עָרֶב “As evening nears, Isaac goes out into the field to talk.” Who is he talking to? For the rabbis, Isaac is talking to the Divine. They teach, ain sicha ela tefilah – the mention of a conversation is a way to describe prayer (B.T. Brachot 26b). In fact, Isaac is teaching us one important way to pray. We need only begin a conversation. Be it aloud or in our hearts. Be it in the city or in the field. And most importantly, let it be in the middle of your day, in the middle of everything. This echoes the teachings of Rebbe Nachman who described prayer as a practice of hitbodedut - of being alone and in conversation with yourself. I know so many of us feel like we don’t know how to pray. Maybe we don’t know the words or the melodies or the choreography. Maybe we don’t know who or what we are speaking to or what the point is, what to make of the Divine. In her poem Ordinary Immanence, Jessica Jacobs writes, “…Many years, many states away, in a far more spacious place, at the braking of a garbage truck, at the creak and hoist of its mechanical arm pinioning a block’s-length of bins to hoist and dump, I look up from a book and know (the truck outside rumbling away, my waste fraternizing with the waste of my neighbors) that I want to believe in God. Just like that—a new door in a room I thought I knew by heart…” There was a point in my life when I actively chose to believe in God and to learn to pray. And it has been a huge resource and source of resilience. In the rhythm of the ancient words is a chance to pray for shalom, for my own livelihood, for goodness and blessings and healing. Which also creates a chance for me to imagine them, to place my attention on them. While I cannot control or change many external circumstances, I do have agency in what I pay attention to internally. In this broken world, paying attention to beauty, gratitude, and goodness improves the quality of my days. And that makes me better able to access compassion, patience and hope as a parent, a partner, an activist and a rabbi. The poem concludes, “How do you listen for a sound you’ve never heard? Or, more precisely, for a sound you know so well you’ve never heard it?” As the days get shorter, the inauguration closer, and a need for a ceasefire persists, may you too feel able to take a walk and pray for what you need most and what you feel the world needs most. May sounds of the city be a container in which to express your grief and your fears. And may the spacious sky invite your gratitude and your courage. Take a moment to imagine our ancestor Abraham sitting down beside a large oak tree in the heat of the day (Genesis 18:1). He plants his tired feed between the knobby roots, leans back against the wide trunk and slides his body down, taking a seat in the crook of the tree, resting his back against its thick bark and closing his eyes.
Who knows how much time elapses before the story resumes. I am not yet interested in what comes next. I am interested in what happens to our ancestors when they sit down beside a big old tree, and what happens to us when we do. A story is told of Honi the Circlemaker, who sat down beside a carob tree to eat some bread. Sleep overcame him and he slept. A cliff formed around him, and he disappeared from sight and slept for seventy years. When he awoke, he saw a certain man gathering carobs from that same tree. Ḥoni said to him: Are you the one who planted this tree? The man said to him: I am his son’s son, meaning his own grandson (B.T. Taanit 23a). The motif of sitting by an old tree is an invitation into deep time, to enduring inter-generational wisdom. Deep time is one of the gifts of ancient spiritual practices that come to us across generations and continents. Every week we sing prayers that have been recited for thousands of years, on nearly every continent and in every political context. It is why beloved melodies are referred to as “Mi Sinai” from Sinai. It's code for, really, really old. And not in a bad way. In a tried and true ever-lasting way. This week, I too found myself taking a nap under a large old London Planetree, absorbing the vibrations of its toad-like trunk. It was planted more than 100 years ago. I wonder who planted its seeds and who else had rested against its speckled bark. Leaning against an old tree helps me to feel a part of the vastness of creation. Did you know that the universe exploded into existence about 14,000,000,000 years ago? I can’t even conceive of time on that scale. If all of geologic time on earth was depicted in a 24-hour clock, the moon emerged at 15 minutes, the earth at 12 noon, dinosaurs at 11 pm and us humans in the final minute, at roughly 11:58:43 PM. We are the last blip of creation, negligible in the history of the universe. This week, as the news comes so fast, with the explicit intention of overwhelming and demoralizing us, I am finding this awfully comforting. These fun facts come from one of my favorite books called “Older Than Dirt,” gifted to me and my kids by a beloved cousin. I returned to its comical (both funny and illustrated) approach to human history, taking refuge in its scientific rendering of “deep time.” It is a way to remind myself that humans are making a guest appearance on the clock of the earth. Sometimes the best antidote to anticipatory anxiety is staying close to the present moment. But for those who don’t relate to meditation and mindfulness, here is another approach. This week, I have been zooming out as far as possible to gain some much needed perspective, some geologic breathing space from our current political horizon. Right now four years feels like a long time. It's been helpful to remember that it won’t even register on the earth’s clock! When the rabbis imagine the world to come, they describe it as yom sh’kulo shabbat - a time that is entirely shabbat. And therefore the inverse is true as well. That shabbat is a taste of the world to come, summoning our souls to enter time that is otherworldly; to exit the daily details of our calendars and rest our weary souls against the tree of life. Shabbat is our weekly invitation into deep time. A return to primordial time, to creation itself. Let yourself taste the pleasure of simcha and menucha, joy and rest. Take a break from your devices and the newscycle, play a board game, gather with friends for a meal, linger at the table, and sing your way through services. May you emerge refreshed and resouled, and ready for a new week. My father is conditioned to bless the good and the bad. His capacity to do so always amazes me. Growing up, when something would break, he would instinctively shout out, “Mazel Tov!” It didn’t matter if it was a mechanical pencil or something of great value, even a family heirloom. According to him, according to his ancestors, it was inherently good luck. This became even more true when I married into a family with a resident mosaic artist. My father now has a dedicated purpose for his broken treasures.
There is something whole to be made of everything broken, even the shattered pieces, even our broken hearts. I, for one, felt shattered on Wednesday morning. And so I called my father. We shared a deep cry. I am not yet ready to make something whole out of the election results. I am not done remembering what fascism has done to my people on other continents and fearing what it could do here. We are each entitled to our own response in our own time. I am, however, ready to remember that I have tremendous faith in us as a community, in the wisdom fo Jewish tradition, in the knowing that through us courses the blood of survivors, rebels, caregivers, and righteous souls. To remember that we are more powerful than we might feel this week. To remember that we cannot relinquish our dignity, our joy, our interdependence. Today I offer you each my heart, my practice, my reaching words as refuge. This week’s Torah portion contains one of the most formative moments in our spiritual legacy. Genesis 12 begins with God’s instruction to Abram to leave everything he knows, and journey to a place that will be revealed to him. How could he not have been afraid? In merely three verses, the call of Lech Lecha invites all of us to imagine our spiritual journey begins with the unknown, with loss, with letting go, maybe even with breaking. The call is deeply personal. Written in the second person singular, Lech-Lecha. As if to emphasize, this is your journey, on your terms. And while the description is undoubtedly external, to physically go from one geographical place to another, the grammar suggests that every physical exodus is supported by and necessitates a spiritual journey inward. The story of Abram comes just in time to remind us that the future was always unknown. We are the descendants of brave spiritual ancestors who risked everything in search of purpose, connection and survival. On the other side of this consequential election, the unknowns of the next 4 years are terrifying to consider. I am noticing that my anticipatory anxiety is surging. Trump's campaign promises threaten real, physical danger that will target many of us directly and all of us indirectly. So it has been very necessary for me to remember that those particular threats are not present this week. You can still prepare - see my PS below - but everything I have learned on my own spiritual journey has taught me that in the face of the unknown we are well served to stay close to the moment, to limit the stories we tell about what’s to come and to instead focus that energy on extending deep care to ourselves and others. Yesterday that inspired me to sit in Cedar park for lunch, to feel the warm breeze and notice the crimson leaves crunching beneath my feet. When my anxiety is high it is an important cue for me to return to my practices that ground me in the present tense. In my body and my breath. The beginning of this parsha contains not just the call of Lech-Lecha, but also the promise that we will be blessed, that when we have the courage to let go and brave the unknown, there will be blessings we can’t yet imagine. In her poem Mazel Tov, the poet Jessica Jacobs writes, “…Mazel tov! we say at births and other joyous occasions, the Jewish go-to for Congratulations! Yet טוֹב tov means “good” and מַזָּל mazel, “constellation” or “destiny,” and sometimes, like Abraham, you must leave the place that grew you to grow toward better stars…So, if I wish you, mazel tov, know what I mean is, May you find a reason to open your door to the dark. I’ll mean, May you live beneath good stars, and take the time to notice.” More than an affirmation on what has happened, Mazel Tov is an amulet for the unknown future. That you are able to orient yourself in time and space, and not lose your way in the darkness. That your stars may align. That your destiny contains goodness, sweetness, silliness, connection and joy. That you feel surrounded, supported, guided on your journeys. In honor of my father and in honor of broken things, I wish you a Shabbat Shalom and a Mazel Tov! May you live beneath good stars and find blessings in the dark. A friend recently introduced me to a story that Reb Zalman, z”l, tells about his rebbe when he was imprisoned by the secret police in Soviet Russia. The police officer was threatening him with a gun and the rebbe said to him, “I am not afraid of you. You see, if I had many Gods to serve and only one world to serve them in, I would be afraid. But I have only one God to serve and many worlds to serve him in so I am not afraid.”
Hearing this story reminded me of the Buddhist story I shared on the second day of Rosh Hashanah when I spoke about the quality of menuchat nefesh - equanimity and the need to cultivate a settled spirit. When the political flood waters are rising, as they are this week, there's reason for hope and there's reason for deep anxiety. The question is how do we settle our spirits? In what can we take refuge? As the Buddha tells it, “A fierce and terrifying band of samurai was riding through the countryside, bringing fear and harm wherever they went. As they were approaching one particular town, all the monks in the town’s monastery fled, except for the abbot. When the band of warriors entered the monastery, they found the abbot sitting at the front of the shrine room in perfect posture. The fierce leader took out his sword and said, “Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know that I’m the sort of person who could run you through with my sword without batting an eye?” The Zen master responded, “And I, sir, am the sort of man who could be run through by a sword without batting an eye.” About this story the great teacher Sylvia Boorstein writes, “Our own benevolence is actually the protection that renders enemies impotent. In [depictions of this story], as the spears and arrows come to touch the shield around the Buddha, they fall to the ground as flowers all around him. I like to think of those flowers as an illustration of how each of us, by cultivating steadfast goodwill, can dissolve the forces of confusion and fear in the world.” This week’s parsha, Noach, offers insight into how our own benevolence can be a source of refuge. Genesis 6:9 begins, “These are the generations of Noah; Noah was a righteous man, and wholehearted in his generations.” In the Hebrew, Noah is identified as tzadik (righteous) and tamim (wholehearted), but these qualities are contextualized by the simple words that follow, בְּדֹרֹתָיו - in his generations. Which has led all subsequent generations to ask, Would Noah have been considered righteous in our time? Was Noah righteous relative to his not-so-good generation (low bar) or in spite of it (high bar)? One can make the argument either way. But I am most compelled by the argument of Reish Lakish, who taught that if Noah was righteous in his generation, surrounded by corruption, imagine how righteous and good-natured he would have been in other generations when he was surrounded by goodness (B.T. Sanhedrin 108a). Rabbi Oshaya imagines Noah, in his righteousness, to be like a flask of perfume or even the best essential oils, in the presence of a stench - it can actually purify the air. Which is to say, our goodness serves us, it protects us, and it also transforms the experience of those around us. This parsha gives us a second insight. In the face of doom and chaos, the Holy One tells Noah, ’bo el hateva - go into the teva”. The word teva is most often translated as ark, but it can also mean the word or even a bar of music. A teva is a place of refuge. It is the basket that saves Moses in the Nile. It is music and poetry. It is something we can enter and also an indestructible place deep within us. This shabbat, I invite you to hear the words of the Holy One. To build your refuge and enter it. To exit the noise of the news, the endless alerts, to invite in the quiet. And to emerge with a renewed commitment to wholehearted righteousness. To generosity, to kindness, to giving others and yourself the benefit of the doubt. And to trust that your benevolence will protect you in these times. Be equanimous.
Those were the opening words of a 10 day course I just completed with Sharon Salzberg, a world renowned teacher of mindfulness and Buddhist meditation. In Pali, the word for equanimity is Upekkha. In Jewish terms, this is called Menuchat Nefesh - a settled soul, or a rested spirit. It describes a kind of internal balance that is liberating. Equanimity is not the result of avoiding pain and stress, or pretending it doesn't exist. Equanimity is what emerges when we cultivate the spaciousness and wisdom that allows us to relate to any experience and still be free. Which is to say, we can be fully present and without being burdened or broken by life. This is not easy, for me. And apparently not easy for 10 of the 12 spies Moses sends to scout the promised land in this week’s parsha, Sh’lach. They return reactive and afraid, warning the people, וַנְּהִי בְעֵינֵינוּ כַּחֲגָבִים וְכֵן הָיִינוּ בְּעֵינֵיהֶם׃ “...We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.” This line is so vivid and has always captured my attention. For today, let’s set aside the colonial context it is describing. And instead notice how it closely echoes the teachings on equanimity. Sharon Salzberg explained, “Our reactivity causes us to wither in self-confidence and avoid our own purpose.” We become grasshoppers in our own eyes. This is perhaps the greatest risk we take when we allow ourselves to be consumed by anxiety and fear. We wither in self-confidence and avoid our own purpose. From this place we are not able to easily access clarity and calm, and this negatively impacts our thinking. However, if we can cultivate enough spacious attention around our feelings, wisdom can naturally arise. Confidence can take root. And we can lean into our purpose and power. All of this takes practice. And all of this is possible. In the moment when we learn how much we cannot control, we let go. And there is freedom in letting go. And there is a sense of security in knowing we can meet whatever is actually happening. It is one of my summer goals to keep learning about equanimity, to cultivate menuchat nefesh. So that as we together scout the landscape of our own lives and of the world in the coming months, we can greet it with more courage and confidence, rather than fear and overwhelm. I am excited to share that I will be teaching a series next year called Selah: Sunday Morning Mindfulness. I hope you will join me. This will be my final Friday email for a while. I offer you one more poem to take you into summer. Wu Men Hui-k'ai, a 12th century Chinese Buddhist teacher, wrote: “Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter — If your mind is not clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life. To see things as they are, to see the changing nature, to see the impermanence, to see that constant flow of pleasant and painful events outside our control — that is freedom.” Whatever your summer brings, I hope this is the best season of your life. As I write to you, the city of Philadelphia is sweltering. Today is the longest, and I hope, the hottest day of the year. Apparently 100 Million people in the U.S. are currently experiencing a heatwave on its fifth consecutive day. Nearly a third of the entire country! (Please stay hydrated and out of the sun as much as possible.)
Needless to say, summer is officially here and has made herself known. I could not be more grateful that we now have air conditioning at Kol Tzedek. I can now safely imagine our summer shabbat services without fear of heatstroke. And I am doubly excited for popsicles at oneg. Summer for me is marked by extended time off, mostly spent camping with my family and a few of our Boston friends we see but once a year. Each day is marked by a combination of the following five things: swimming, biking, eating ice cream, playing baseball and reading, in every possible order and varying ratios. I am very grateful to my kids who have taught me how to spend many hours reading. This has been a revelation for me. We read in hammocks, in sleeping bags, by the campfire, by the lake. As someone who spends many hours a week writing, taking this extended time to close my computer and read is the best way I know how to restore myself. And so on this second to last Friday email of the year, I wanted to make space to share with you some of my summer reading list, with the hopes that you might want to read along with me. Below you will find my first three picks for this summer, from three different genres. The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a distance by Shaul Magid The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBridge World of Wonders: In praise of fireflies, whale sharks and other astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Fumi Nakamura (Illustrator) These three books speak to places of wonder that I want to encourage for us as a community. And so I invite you to join me in reading or listening to any and all of them this summer. Perhaps we can have a book discussion upon my return in August or the Fall. No doubt I will likely also read some celebrity memoirs and queer graphic novels, and I hope you do too. What is on your summer reading list? Last Sunday morning, 70 of us gathered for our annual congregational meeting which was full of small group discussions and yummy treats. I want to share one highlight which came from a conversation about the design of the stained glass that would be in the sanctuary and above the entrance doors. Carly Freedman, a very talented and generous KT member and artist, generated a series of designs that integrated the geometric motifs of sephardic synagogues with the floral motifs of ashkenazi design. The group was tasked with discussing the spectrum of colors in the design. There was relative consensus that people preferred oranges and turquoises, and other mediterranean colors. But everyone also ended their comment with a general shout out for rainbows. At one point someone said, “But also, yay rainbows” and the group actually cheered and clapped. It was a joyful and spontaneous moment, which contained more consensus than the average KT process.
The instinct to adorn our sanctuary in rainbows is timely given June is Pride month. But it is also ancient. We learn in this week’s parsha, Naso, that as the Levites cared for and deconstructed the traveling mishkan, they covered it in the skin of a tachash (Numbers 4:6). We don’t quite know what animal the Torah is describing. Most often its translated as dolphin skins, but that seems incredibly unlikely given the desert. Some suggest it was a special type of weasel called an ermine. Others think maybe a wild ram or even a zebra. Since we know it has a single horn, maybe it was a narwhal or a unicorn. But those animals aren’t kosher and the tachash was. I think the most likely species is the dugong, which in Arabic is tukhush, a large aquatic mammal which has been seen swimming up the Red Sea. (Thank you Zeev and Naim for teaching me about dugong). But the thing that stumps all of these possibilities is the fact that its skin was multi-colored. Such a magical being perhaps created for just this purpose. Imagine the beauty of an iridescent rainbow skin covering the tent. Turns our we share the queer biblical instinct to want rainbows in our sanctuary! In Aramaic the tachash was referred to as sasgavna / ססגונה, meaning “rejoicing in its many colors” or “joyful (שָׂשׂ) and proud (גונא) .” (Shabbat 28; Midrash Tanchuma, Terumah 6). I hope the many colors of our stained glass windows will reflect what we strive for as a community, to be joyful and proud. In addition to dugong skins, this week’s parsha contains the Priestly Blessing, an ancient tripart amulet for protection which concludes, וישם לך שלום // place within you shalom. About this final phrase, The Ba‘al Shem Tov reads an old rabbinic tradition to say that "shalom is the vessel we need to place within each of us which can contain God’s blessing. It is not enough to pray for blessing; divine blessing is pouring forth upon us in every moment that we exist. But without a proper vessel in which to hold it, that blessing just washes over us and vanishes." Here shalom means “wholeness” as well as “peace. It means being whole with ourselves…This is not an easy challenge, but without it our vessel is not whole and cannot contain blessing.” Our ability to carve out wholeness within ourselves, makes it possible for wholeness to exist in our world. May we find our way into this shabbat, joyful and proud. And may the magic of Shabbat enable us to emerge more whole. May it be so. This week marks 10 years since I was ordained as a rabbi. The hum of nigun Rosh Hodesh Sivan has been in my head all week. It was the melody we sang as we processed during our smicha ceremony. The same melody Rabbi Mó and I chose to sing as we entered our new sanctuary for the first time. And given that today is actually Rosh Hodesh Sivan, I encourage you to listen to Rabbi Mo’s three-part harmonies and let it soften you. Summer is coming.
That year, as is true this year, it was just a few days before Shavuot, a holiday known to the rabbis as zman matan torahteinu /the time of the giving of Torah. And since the festival of Shavuot is always preceded by the reading of parshat Bamidbar, the very beginning of the book of Numbers, this parsha always marks my ordination-versary. Believe it or not I still remember the dvar Torah my classmate and beloved friend Rabbi Jordan Braunig shared. And today, I want to share some of those words with you, with his permission. Some of you may already be familiar with his wit and wisdom from the Elul Prompts. Rabbi Jordan began by asking, “What is it, after all, that we are supposed to learn from our tradition's mythic story of a Torah revealed to us on a long lost mountaintop? Believe it or not, I am not the first to ask this question. In a midrash on the first words of the book of Bamidbar or Numbers the rabbis ask this exact question, lamah b'midbar Sinai? Why in the wilderness of Sinai? You might have thought that Torah would be given in the land itself, in one of the holy cities or at the site of the Temple, but no – it's given in the sticks. So why is it given in the wilderness? The midrash answers its own question, stating: By three things was the Torah given, ba’eish, ba’mayim u'vamidbar – by fire, by water and by wilderness. The first two are easy enough to understand. Fire and water are each essential for life – fire warms, it illumines, it sustains – water, renews, hydrates, transforms. Wilderness on the other hand... But, it is the Torah that comes by way of wilderness, that confounding and compelling image, that speaks to the experience of studying Torah… To find your way into a text, to really wiggle your way in, is to experience the vastness, the unknowability of the wilderness.” I am personally forever grateful to my teachers allowed us the freedom to see where the study would take us. Where would we emerge? Who would we be? In a world full of push notifications, Torah study is so compelling because we can get lost in it and because we can find ourselves in it. And this parsha always reconnects me to those possibilities. Rabbi Jordan continues, “The midrash goes on, elucidating just what it means to receive Torah by wilderness. It teaches that in order to acquire words of Torah a person must make herself as unclaimed, unbounded, ownerless as the wilderness…” Given the many demands on my time and heart, this reminder is precious. Torah study is an invitation to not know, to be open to what could be. The midrash then goes on to ask the same question and answer it differently. Lamah b'midbar sinai? Why in the wilderness of Sinai? So that no one people can say it was given to them on their land and therefore belongs to them. Torah is itself ownerless, it is all of ours. In this moment of political and religious conflict, remember that. Rabbi Jordan concluded, “A version of this same midrash appears in the Pesikta d'rav Kahana, but it includes one additional line. Posing the question there. Lamah b'midbar sinai? Why in the wilderness of Sinai? It answers, “just as the wilderness has no end, so too Torah has no end.” In this heartbreaking and blooming world, it feels helpful to connect to the sense of wonder I felt at this time in years past. I offer each of you the very beautiful blessing Rabbi Jordan offered me some 10 years ago. May your experience of Torah be limitless. May you find wisdom at each juncture of your journey. May you be blessed to study Torah that illuminates and Torah that refreshes. Torah that is wild and boundless and teeming with possibility. The final chapters in the book of Leviticus turn our focus to our relationship to Ha’aretz, The Land or the Holy Land. In the Torah, this refers to the Land of Israel, which is certainly related to but distinct from the State of Israel.
The previous parsha, Behar, which on a typical year is read along with Bechukotai, asserts a vision for how to live in alignment to the land so that it yields produce and rain, necessities for a thriving civilization. This week’s parsha, Bechukotai, is a painful read. This is generally true any year, but it burns today. And I do not use the word burns lightly. It burns because of what is happening in Rafah. And because it contains an impossible premise. Leviticus 26 begins, “If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments, I will grant your rains in their season, so that the earth shall yield its produce and the trees of the field their fruit…” God’s promise peaks in verse six, וְנָתַתִּי שָׁלוֹם בָּאָרֶץ “And I will give you peace in the land…” If only this was a thing that the Holy One could grant. If only this was a thing that a life full of mitzvot could facilitate. What follows is the flipside. Known as the tochechot, and chanted in a whisper (if chanted at all). 35 verses of terrifying rebuke, outlining the consequences for spiritual disobedience. “But if you do not obey Me and do not observe all these commandments…I will wreak misery on you” and everything bad will happen sevenfold to you and your people in The Land. The rebuke is not just threatening, it is mean. Needless to say, we have chosen to omit this section from tomorrow’s Bat Mitzvah service. This year this text feels descriptive more than proscriptive. Watching the news, my eyes are sick and my soul is full of sorrow. .(26:16) מְכַלּוֹת עֵינַיִם וּמְדִיבֹת נָפֶשׁ The suffering of the people of Gaza is incomprehensible. And yet I feel called back to verse six, to the idea that there can be peace in the land, wholeness, return, healing. It must be possible. Over and over again, Palestinians in my life remind me, lovingly rebuke me, despair is a privilege. I am so inspired by the growing number of students and teachers, organizers and educators, bringing us closer to this vision. So this shabbat, I invite you to choose hope, to let yourself imagine the promise of this parsha is a just peace, in which everyone who dwells in the land will know within themselves peace. Palestinians and Israelis, Bedouins, immigrants, and refugees, “shall lie down to sleep untroubled by anyone.” May it be so. |
Rabbi's Blog
|
RSS Feed
Office & Mailing Address: 5300 Whitby Ave, Commercial #2, Philadelphia, PA 19143
General Questions: (267) 702-6187 or [email protected]
Shabbat Services: 5300 Whitby Ave, Commercial #1, Philadelphia, PA 19143
General Questions: (267) 702-6187 or [email protected]
Shabbat Services: 5300 Whitby Ave, Commercial #1, Philadelphia, PA 19143