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Sometimes I think of Jewish textual tradition as a series of love letters our ancestors wrote to us, their future descendants and spiritual offspring. As I sit with a text of some kind – Torah, Talmud, midrash, etc – I’ll ask myself: In what way might this be a love letter to future generations? And thinking, puzzling, exploring toward an answer is how I build my own relationship to our tradition.
This time of year, I don’t have to puzzle quite so hard. We’ve entered the month of Nisan, with Passover right around the corner. This week is Shabbat HaGadol, the great Shabbat that precedes Pesach, marking the final preparations before the holiday. The main text we spend ample time with come Passover is, of course, the Haggadah. But there are other texts special to this time of year as well, including Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs. Shir Hashirim, one of the books of Tanakh, is an epic love poem in two voices, and it’s traditional across the diaspora to recite it on the shabbat of Passover. This text really is a love letter, not in a figurative sense. There is a maiden, a ra’aya, and a beloved, a dod. They long for one another, intensely and sensuously: Oh, give me of the kisses of your mouth, For your love is more delightful than wine. (1:1) Sustain me with raisin cakes, Refresh me with apples, For I am faint with love. (2:5) It’s steamy! And beautiful. This book is a love poem and a series of love songs, both. I adore the lush imagery and lyricism of Shir Hashirim, and I love how the lovers in the text yearn for one another while also yearning for a better world. All this eros and desire… it's basically the biblical version of Heated Rivalry ;) So why do we read this epic love letter during Passover? What does this text have to do with z’man ḥeiruteinu, the season of our freedom? Commentators over the centuries have posited: there’s allusions to the Exodus story in Shir Hashirim; it’s a springtime text just like the holiday; the whole arc of the love song is like the 4 stages of redemption for the Israelites in their journey to freedom. And I wonder if there’s something more. In her book All About Love, feminist scholar bell hooks describes love as a verb rather than a feeling, a series of actions compelled by care, commitment, trust, and responsibility. “There can be no love without justice,” hooks wrote. “Love has the power to transform us, giving us the strength to oppose domination.” In these aching times, abundant with war, violence, inequity and injustice, so many of our problems seem to stem from a breakdown of the belief that all human beings are beloved, sacred, made in the image of Gd, and that each and every life is as worthy of safety, dignity, and wholeness as one’s own. All too often we end up like Pharaoh— heart-hardened, closed off to one another’s humanity, guarded from the pain of the world. Passover comes to shake us out of it. Perhaps we read Shir Hashirim in this season of our freedom in order to, as hooks says, cultivate the strength to oppose domination. To remember what it feels like to love another, as wildly and unreservedly as in the Song of Songs, and to expand from there, opening and widening the heart toward an ethic of love whose inevitable outcome mustbe justice: If we are beloved to the Divine, then all people are beloved to the Divine. If we are worthy of freedom, then all people are worthy of freedom. If, as Cornell West taught, “justice is what love looks like in public,” then this season is both our season of freedom, and our season of love. Two sides of the same coin. What would it mean to read the haggadah as a love letter this year? Or to bring the text of Shir Hashirim into your Passover observance? To cultivate love as action, love as a verb? As we gather around our seder tables to reflect on freedom and recommit to liberation, may the crocus of the heart bloom and open to let in all life, to know our interconnection and our responsibility to each other as an ahavah rabbah, an abundance of love that expands our capacity to do care and seek justice. אִכְלוּ רֵעִים שְׁתוּ וְשִׁכְרוּ דּוֹדִים Eat, lovers, and drink: Drink deep of love! (Shir Hashirim 5:1) I so look forward to singing songs of love and liberation with you all in the days to come. As of a few months ago, we are officially a house with a landline (albeit one that runs through the internet). It feels retro, almost old fashioned, in the most delightful of ways. I opted for a pink 80s style phone and delighted in teaching my kids how to use speed-dial. What a relief to be able to make an analog phone call, without the risk of getting lost in 10 different apps I didn’t mean to open. The motivation was largely safety related. We wanted our kids to be able to call 911 when they are home alone.
What I did not realize was how novel it would be to learn how to answer a call. The etiquette is shockingly different from a cell phone, in large part because you don’t know who is calling. It feels awkward and a bit formal, but I often say, “Ruskin Fornari residence, Ari Lev speaking, who may I ask is calling?” Truly, I can’t remember what hip and concise things my teenage self must have said, without being rude. Meanwhile my kids just say, “Hi,” Uncertain how to initiate the conversation or ask who is calling, nevermind share their own name. This week we begin the book of Vayikra, which itself begins with a mysterious call from an unknown caller. In her newest book, The Hidden Order of Intimacy, Dr. Avivah Zornberg asks, “The opening word of Leviticus: “Vayikra – And He called to Moses” (Lev 1:1). Who is the one who calls? Presumably, it is God who calls Moses’ name. But He is unnamed. … “ (3). In just the moment when God attempts to make a grand entrance, to settle into the newly constructed mishkan, why the anonymous call? Ramban suggests the answer lies in the very end of Exodus. Exodus 40:35 reads, “Moses was unable to enter the Tent of Assembly…” About this verse Zornberg notes, “Exodus ends with Moses excluded from the sacred space he has so faithfully constructed… “The Cloud and the fire that represent God’s presence in the Tabernacle make it impossible for him to enter that space. Until, that is, God calls his name, inviting him, as it were, to enter into the Cloud. Only with this is call is a human path opened up for him into the mysterium trememdum.” As I was studying these words, I couldn’t help but imagine Moses as a vampire in Sinners (Best Picture imho), needing a formal invitation to enter the juke. But presumably Mose – liberation leader, teacher and prophet – was not in fact a vampire. So why couldn’t he enter the Mishkan until he got the call? All of this leads Rashi to wonder, what really is the purpose of calling? His gloss on the opening word Vayikra reads, “Every time God spoke or said or commanded, He prefaced the terms by calling, in a tone of affection – chibah – and encouragement – in the tone that the ministering angels us, as it is said, “They call to one another, saying Holy, Holy, Holy is the God of Hosts” (Isa. 6:3). Here the Hebrew in Isaiah, which we sing in the kedusha, reads: kara zeh el zeh / they call to one another. The image of angels on high calling out with affection, encouraging their song, their spirits, their faith. Vayikra is about divine etiquette but also more: it's about intimacy. What allows us to draw close, to ourselves, to one another and to the Divine? What allows us to answer the call at all? (Who even picks up a call from an unknown caller these days!?) This Shabbat, under the new moon of Nisan, may you find a moment to call out like the heavenly choir – in any place you find sanctuary – to feel the affectionate embrace of the universe encouraging your song, your spirit and your faith. And perhaps even more so (as I have been explaining to my kids), to listen for the call and have the courage to pick up the phone when you hear it, unsure as you may be. Yesterday being the 23rd day of Adar was a significant day for my family, as it marked the first yahrzeit of Shosh’s grandmother Harriet Colman, of blessed memory. To honor the occasion everyone went out for dinner to a neighborhood spot that she frequented even at 101.
But yesterday was also a terrifying day for the Jews of Metro Detroit, where Harriet lived almost all of her first 98 years of life (before her final four years in West Philly). Hearing the horrific news I was immediately transported back to last March, when on a cold and sunny spring day we buried her in West Bloomfield, Michigan. A young rabbi from Temple Israel gracefully helped us bury our beloved matriarch. The same synagogue that was attacked yesterday. I myself also have two adorable nephews who go to preschool in a large reform synagogue very much like Temple Israel. As different as Temple Israel and Kol Tzedek may appear, we are but one degree of separation, and I feel tremendous grief for the entire community terrorized by such a violent act. And also infinite gratitude for the fact that everyone, especially all of the children, are safe. Thank G!D. I also feel deeply for the family and community of Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, the 41 year old Lebanese American who lost his family in this cruel and unjust war in Lebanon. A man my age, I can only imagine, devastated by grief and powerlessness, who went out seeking revenge and retribution, and did something monstrous. What a horror we are all living through. To adapt the words of Dr. King, a threat to safety anywhere is a threat to our safety everywhere. Of all the news I have read in the past 24 hours, the words that have rung most true were that of a rabbi in Omaha, Nebraska, who said, “We are synagogues — we are houses of worship,” one rabbi said. “We are not Fort Knox.” For this reason all of our liturgy is designed to fortify us against the fears of our time. Whether it is God or song itself, the community that singing creates or the human will to connect, Jewish prayer and sacred practices make us feel safer. They are themselves a kind of spiritual armor. Our longing for safety is so reasonable, so relatable, and so ancient. We sing in the closing words of Adon Olam, בְּעֵת אִישַׁן וְאָעִֽירָה: וְעִם רוּחִי גְּוִיָּתִי, יְהֹוָה לִי וְלֹא אִירָא: When we wake and when we sleep In my spirit and in my body The Source is with me, I shall not fear. As I shared on Rosh Hashanah, Rebbe Nachman is famous for having said that the whole entire world is a very narrow bridge. And the important thing is not to be afraid, lo l’fached clal. The saying is iconic. But it is not entirely accurate. It is true that he conceived of the world in tenuous terms. But what Rebbe Nachman actually said was, “Kol HaOlam Kulo, The whole entire world, gesher tzar me’od, is a very narrow bridge…And the most important thing is not to make ourselves afraid - lo l’hitpached clal - to not cultivate fear in our hearts. – Each and every time we gather we pray for a world that is just and peaceful, safe for all who dwell on earth. This week in particular, I pray there is a swift end to this horrible war in Iran, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine and the U.S. provocation of violence everywhere. I pray that everyone who gathers in prayer this week, at masjids, synagogues, churches and temples, be sheltered under the protecting wings of the shechina. And I pray that we may have the courage to respond with compassion, to honor our vulnerability and not make ourselves even more afraid. Sometimes I imagine my heart as an absorbent sponge, soaking in the joy and sorrow of the week. And my tears like the overflow, a release valve to soothe and purify.
Sometimes I imagine my heart like a muscle in training, learning to expand and contract more fully, to feel both the joy and the grief more deeply. At my installation almost exactly 10 years ago, I offered you my heart of many rooms, with enough space, I pray, to contain our disagreements, differences and contradictions. What if this week, we imagine the human heart as the Ark that traveled with the Israelites in the wilderness? We read in parashat Ki Tisa, one of the most infamous stories in all of Torah, a moment that reminds us that Torah is not linear. Despite having already received Torah in Yitro, some 12 chapters ago, we are transported back to the top of Mt. Sinai. Moses is receiving the tablets from the Holy One while the anxious, arguably impatient, Israelites are waiting down below, scheming to melt all of their precious gold into a molten idol,the golden calf. . Exodus 32:19reads, “As soon as Moses came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, he became enraged; and he hurled the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain.” About this moment, one midrash imagines that Moses descended the mountain with the tablets in hand. But when they (both Moses and the tablets) “beheld the calf and the dances, the writing fled from off the tablets, and the stone became heavy in his hands, and Moses was not able to carry himself and the tablets, and he cast them from his hand, and they were broken beneath the mount … “ As if the writing on the tablets, the letters themselves were sent back to their Source before Moses broke the tablets. Lest Moses actually smash the holy words. Eventually Moses returns to the top of the mountain, pleads for forgiveness, and the Holy One inscribes a second set of tablets with the words that were on the first set of tablets. Rather than forget the incident ever happened, the rabbis record the teaching of Rav Yosef who says, “the tablets of the Covenant and the pieces of the broken tablets are placed in the Ark” (B.T. Menachot 99a). One mystical text takes it a step further: “The Zohar teaches that the human heart is the Ark. And it is known that in the Ark were stored both the Tablets and the Broken Tablets. Similarly ... a person's heart must be a broken heart, a beaten heart, so that it can serve as a home for the Shechinah [divine presence]. For the Shechinah only dwells within broken vessels” (Reshit Hochma, R. Eliyahu deVidash, Gate of Holiness 7; 16th C.) Remember this always and especially this week, your broken heart, your beaten heart, it is a home for holiness in this world. It is the source of your compassion and a vessel for the Divine. In the words of Psalm 147, קָרוֹב ה' לְנִשְׁבְּרֵי לֵב “The Holy One draws close to the broken-hearted.” Ufros aleinu sukkat shlomecha – May there be a canopy of protection for everyone in Iran and Lebanon, Israel/Palestine and all who dwell on earth. Oseh shalom bimromav – May the Source of peace on High, come here on earth, urgently and in our days. |
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General Questions: (267) 702-6187 or [email protected]
Shabbat Services: 5300 Whitby Ave, Commercial #1, Philadelphia, PA 19143