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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. |
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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