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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. |
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General Questions: (267) 702-6187 or [email protected]
Shabbat Services: 5300 Whitby Ave, Commercial #1, Philadelphia, PA 19143