Va'era 5774

God has many names.  One is “El Shaddai,” the name of peak power, by which God was known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exodus 6:3).  Another name is spelled “Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey.”  It is the unpronounceable Ultimate name that the patriarchs did not know.  God is so complex and unfathomable that no single Name can express all that God is, just as no bottle can contain the sea.  In our tradition, God uses a range of names, each of which conveys a different aspect of the Divine Being. 
The idea that God is known by these two names appears not only in this week’s parsha, Va’era, but also last week’s.  How appropriate that is, since these are the first and second parashiot of the Book of Exodus – in Hebrew, “Shemot/Names.”
Names are central to how we see ourselves, and we, like God, have multiple names:  “Dean,” “daddy,” “rabbi,” “son,” “uncle,” “scuba diver,” “hopeful,” “listener,” “celebrant,” and many others.  Names convey our identity, our relationships, our professions and hobbies, our moods, attitudes, and beliefs.  They describe the different parts of ourselves.
This year’s early calendar means that we read Va’era beginning on Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year.  This is a time of hibernation and introspection.  It is no coincidence that Hanukkah, the festival that celebrates the growing of the light, usually takes place around the Winter Solstice!  Long nights can rob us of hope.  Human beings need a reminder that light, warmth, and joy will return.
In these longest nights of the year, take some time to look inside yourself.  Is there darkness within?  Is there cold, or loss, or quiet?  Some other feeling?  What name can you find that expresses where you are and what you need?  What name can you call yourself in these Darkest Days?
Project forward to springtime.  Imagine the person you will be when evenings are long and the living is easy, when summer’s heat scratches threateningly at the screen door.  What name do you give that version of yourself who will live in sunlight and hope once more?
We have many names, just as God does.  Name yourself, and know yourself.

Shemot 5774

Moses, brought up behind palace gates and shielded from the misery outside, grows up and ventures into the great wide world.  There, he sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave.  “Turning this way and that and seeing no one about,” Moses slays the perpetrator (Exodus 2:12).

Moses sees no one?  How could this be, when the Hebrew slave was right in front of him?  Although Prince Moses is able to see the injustice, he is unable,; it seems, to see his fellow man.  He wears the glasses of privilege, which render another human being into an object – a vehicle, an ornament, a cause, perhaps, but not a real person.  The slave is invisible to Moses.

Our society works the same way.  It is structured to make people in service professions invisible.  The housekeeper who cleans the hotel room while the guest is out, and the busboy who clears a table silently and without eye contact both learn to work unnoticed.

If we do not see them at work, neither do we see them in in the rest of their lives.  We do not see how they soak their tired feet when they get home, or how empty their refrigerator – and stomachs are – at the end of the month.  We do not see the strain caused by the choice between a child finishing her homework and turning off the light to save electricity and money.  We don’t see the lucky break that never comes.

Temple Emanuel is an economically diverse community.  Some of us eat in restaurants and some of us work in them.  Some of us trade stock and some of us stock the shelves.  Others of us exist in both worlds.  We do not know each other’s economic reality.

It is incumbent upon us, as members of one community, as Jewish families who sit and pray on the same benches, to notice each other.  Out in the busy world, we might fail to see each other.  In synagogue, we recognize each other, appreciate each other, connect with each other.  We see what Moses, in his first foray into the world, could not:  each person’s worth.  Within the gates of the synagogue and, hopefully, in the great wide world beyond, let us pause and look deeply into each other’s eyes and there see the spark of the Divine that is our shared humanity.  Let us see each other.

Vayechi -- 5774

The world listened enraptured as Nelson Mandela was eulogized in recent days.  His life was lauded and, even as he was mourned, his nation looked towards the future.  The South African people rededicated themselves to the vision of a “Rainbow Nation.”

Something similar happens in the Torah this week.  The patriarch Jacob sits on his deathbed and speaks of the future.  Then he dies and is buried, his quarrelsome sons gathered uneasily for the rites.  When the Book of Genesis closes, favorite son Joseph, too, will have met his Maker.

Mandela reminds me of Joseph.  Each was a chieftain’s son.  Each dreamt of a bright future.  Each spent long years languishing in prison, and each was released to ascend the heights of power.  Each managed to put aside bitterness and pursue reconciliation.  Each accepted the supreme challenge of transforming a nation, and each succeeded.  Each combined great leadership with profound humility.

How does it happen that the Torah speaks of the burial of a great leader on just the week that a great leader is laid to rest?  Is it cosmic coincidence or the hand of God that two men teach us anew how to dream?  Who can explain the mystery of being reminded again and again of the power of forgiveness?  The Torah never ceases to astound me.

Lest we forget:  every single person has been in prison – perhaps not prisons of bars and barbed wire, but certainly prisons of resentment, of harmful patterns, or of inability to see a better way.  People can make their own prisons.  Let Joseph and Mandela both remind us that the doors of every jail can swing open, and that one day we, too, can be wholly free.

From now on, Joseph’s rainbow-colored coat will evoke for me the promise of Mandela’s Rainbow Nation, and a better day for all.  Zichronam l’vracha – their memories are a blessing.

Vayeishev 5774

Of all Joseph’s brothers, the most hateful, surely, is Judah.  “How will it profit [us] if we kill our brother and cover up his blood?  Let us [rather] sell him to the Ishmaelites; then our hand will not be on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh” (Genesis 37:26-27).  Judah has no moral objection to the murder.  Sneeringly, he wants both to profit and also to avoid guilt.  While Reuben plots Joseph’s redemption and the other brothers speak as a malevolent chorus, Judah goads and achieves.

How surprising, then, that it is Judah who, decades hence, effects the reconciliation between Joseph and his brothers.  “For [I] made [my]self responsible [for our brother] to my father, saying ‘if I don’t bring him back to you, I will stand guilty before my father for all time” (Genesis 44:32).  How does Judah evolve from chief villain to chief reconciler?  How does the cruel youth become a compassionate man?

He grows up.  Genesis 38 interrupts the primary narrative of the Joseph saga with the story of Judah’s adult life:  two sons die, and daughter-in-law Tamar shames him into acknowledging the impact his selfishness has on others.  He tastes life’s cruelty.

No one, not a single one of us, skates through life without tasting loss, pain, or heartbreak.  Whether it’s a loved one’s death, our own illnesses and incapacity, broken relationships or shattered dreams, each of us eventually learns that life’s cup is bitter as well as sweet.  We cannot help but drink.

When people who are suffering ask me “why did this happen to me?” the only honest answer I can give is “I don’t know.”  We cannot know the cause of suffering except that it is cannot be divine retribution.  Human beings are not God’s children sent to bed without supper when we misbehave.  We do not suffer because we’ve “been bad.”  We suffer because we are living beings.

Once the shock and insult of suffering have worn off, we can begin to ask the richer questions:  what can I learn from this?  How have I grown?  What meaning can I make from this?  How can I return to the world transformed and improved? 

While we cannot know the cause of suffering, we can control the effect.  We can make meaning of it.  We can emerge from our pain, like Judah, more fully human than before.

Vayetzei -- 5774

Jacob our father is alone in the wilderness and he is offered a choice.

Stopped for the night, the sun suddenly set, he makes his bed and envisions a ladder stretching from the ground to the sky.  Angels flit up and down it.  Surely, Jacob is invited to climb the ladder, to take hold of a rung and soar to the heights – to dance with the angels and achieve the ultimate bird’s eye view: the entire land and his entire life stretched out before him.  Jacob is granted the most awesome, complete vision of all.

He doesn’t climb the ladder.

We cannot know why Jacob doesn’t move from his spot.  Perhaps it’s because the ultimate big picture is beyond our ken.  As human beings, our scope is inherently limited.  The master plan is not for us to know.

People regularly ask me why.  “Why did I get hit by a car?”  “Why did I get sick?”  “I’ve been a good person -- why is God doing this to me?”  (We rarely ask why we got the job of our dreams, why we are healthy, why our lives are bubbling with goodness and blessing.)  The simple, sometimes painful truth is that we cannot know why.  Human beings are finite, and we are denied the bird’s eye view of our lives.  We are confined to living them moment by moment.  Travelers through life as Jacob was, we travel with a compass, but not a map.

In fact, I think there’s rarely a why, only a what – as in, “what will I do with this knowledge?  How am I to live knowing that the world isn’t fair, that pain is very real, that life is brief, that I am not unique?”  This is the true challenge and, simultaneously, opportunity for growth.

The story of Jacob’s ladder has a fascinating twist.  Even though Jacob doesn’t ascend the ladder to heaven, he realizes nonetheless that “God is in this place” (Genesis 28:16).

God, “standing up above it,” is the bird’s eye view (Genesis 28:13).  God is the master plan.  And at the same time, God is right beside us, allowing us glimpse the totality of life through this present moment, and also to know that we are not alone.

God is both places, here and there.

Jacob, born immediately after his twin, Esau, grabs onto the elder’s heel in an apparent claim for primacy.  His parents name him “Ya’akov,” from the Hebrew for “heel” – “akev.”

Jacob is not alone.  We all grab on to things – objects, ideas, stories – and hold on to them for dear life.  They become part of our self-image, even though they may no longer serve us.

Parents, for example, sometimes hold on to a vision of their child as she used to be, not as she is now.  We are imprinted with a sense of them at a younger age when they needed certain things from us – whether cutting their food, driving them to school, or giving them advise.  Even though our image of them gets updated from time to time, it remains nonetheless out of date.  It’s hard, as parents, to stay current with such ever-evolving creatures.  Still, our highest quest is to be the people they need us to be today, not give them what they needed earlier.

To do that, we have to let go of the image we carry of them.  We all know it’s true, but it remains difficult to accomplish.

Some thoughts:

·         Can you observe yourself interacting with your child?  What do you notice?  (Watching videos of myself with my son helped me spot patterns in the way I talk to him.)

·         Can you observe your child during your interactions?  What are his non-verbal messages to you? 

·         Can you ask your child (whether young or adult) what they need from you that they are not getting?  Do they feel there are ways you are treating them that are not age appropriate?  Can you listen to their words and, simultaneously, clue in to what’s behind the words?  Will you take what they say to heart?

·         Can you inventory your behaviors, and see which need discarding?  Just as parents regularly move through a child’s room and purge outdated toys and books, so can we discard outmoded actions.

·         Can you anticipate your child’s next stage, and help them transition into it?  Human beings of all ages need to be challenged and encouraged to develop.  “Scaffolding” is the practice of providing support so that the child can reach a little further than s/he could alone.

Sometimes, holding on can be as comforting as a much-loved teddy bear.  Sometimes it can hold us back.

Chayyei Sarah 5774

Isaac “went out toward evening to stroll in the field” (Genesis 24:63).

The out-of-doors beckons, especially to those of us who spend our time inside.  Underneath the expanse of sky, our minds open and our souls can breathe again. 
 

Now that the weather is fine, go for a walk.  What sights and smells can you discover when you amble around the block or hike through the desert?  Whom can you meet?  Of course, exercise is good for us any day.  But a stroll is especially soulful on Shabbat, the Day of Delight.  Consider making a Shabbat “constitutional” part of your spiritual practice.  It’s a way to admire God’s handiwork, care for your body, breath, and nourish your soul all at the same time.

It is no coincidence that Isaac, during his stroll, “looked up and saw – camels coming!  And Rebekah looked up” at him from her camel and the two fell in love (Genesis 24:63-64).

When we go outside, we open ourselves to all sorts of possibilities – new sensations, new ideas, new experiences, and maybe even love.  Getting outside the walls of our lives makes us free.

Vayera 5774

An anomaly is an opportunity.

“The Eternal appeared to [Abraham] by the oaks of Mamre,” opens Parashat Vayera (Genesis 18:1). In the very next verse, however, “[Abraham] saw – lo!  Three men standing opposite him!”  Did Abraham see one God, or did he see three beings?  Was it first God, and then the three?  Or were God and the three one and the same?  How can we explain the variation?  Great rabbis have debated the point over the centuries.

Abraham and Sarah famously welcome the travelers to their tent, washing their feet and serving them a meal.  Abraham and Sarah see that their needs are met.

This passage reminds me to see God within other people.  God need not be some distant, celestial Being.  Nor need God be some abstract force in the Universe.  Rather, God can be embodied in human beings, a traveler through experience as each of us is.  I believe that God perceives existence through our perceptions.  We serve God when we serve each other.

When I hear your stories and what’s happening in your lives, whether after services or in my office, I feel I’m hearing God. When I hold your hands in hospital rooms, I feel I’m holding God’s hand.

A young child recently told me that he loved “the whole entire world,” and asked me how he could give the world a hug.  I told him that the world has lots of parts, and that when we hug – or help – any one of them, we are hugging the whole world.

When we serve each other, we serve God.

Lech L'cha 5774

“Lech-l’cha – get going,” God says to Abram.   “You’ve been resting long enough, and there is important work to do.  It will not wait.  Leave the past behind.  It is over and done and no longer serves you.  Set out on the path that all have walked – the one that leads to the future.  You cannot know what awaits you, what you will encounter or whom you will become, but you cannot stay here, in this present moment, any longer.  See?  The moment is passed already.  Now get moving.”
With the simple words “lech l’cha,” God moves Abram our father from the safety of what he knows to the danger of what he does not.  God moves Abram from the complacency of what is to the wonder of what could be.  In so doing, God requires of Abram that he become more than a man.  God requires a hero, one who accepts and fulfills his quest, showing humanity what’s possible.
In launching out, Abram becomes a model for each of us who have followed in his sandy steps.  He inspires us to find what the future has in store, create our own possibilities, and live the lives we wish to live. We can become the greatest possible versions of ourselves.
Abram is our father and our role model, and we are his sons and daughters, when we become aware that we are perpetually in the process of becoming, and that we can go anywhere and become anyone at all. 
Step off the curb.  Step into uncertainty.  Step out of your comfort zone.  Start becoming your fullest self.
It all begins with a single step.  What’s yours?

Noach 5774

The Torah explains why human beings speak different languages:  after they built a great tower to “make a name” for themselves, God frustrates their scheme by “confusing their speech so that no one understands thwart the other is saying” (Genesis 11:4, 7).  Humanity is then scattered all over the earth.

The Tower of Babel passage repeatedly uses the Hebrew word “safah” for language.  The word is derived from the Hebrew for “lips” – “safot.”  It’s similar to the English use of “tongue.”  Perhaps that is why we struggle to understand each other.

Human beings emphasize the speaking component of language.  But listening well is equally important.  Thoughtful listeners seek to understand what words mean to the speaker, not just to him or herself.  They strive to empathize with how the speaker is feeling, and what motivates him or her to speak.  They stop doing other things, and don’t interrupt or demonstrate boredom.  Instead, they indicate their interest through eye contact and nods of the head.  They consider what they’ve heard.  All these signal that we are dialed in to what the speaker is saying.

Listening is a major component of communication, and Americans don’t do it particularly well.  We talk at and past each other, and rarely listen closely.  We assume we know what other people are thinking.

Perhaps this is why the quintessential Jewish statement is the Shema.  It reminds us to listen.  It requires us to listen.

In the next two months, our congregation will engage in Shma Emanuel – a program of listening to each other about what we want from our synagogue.  Some events will take place in living rooms.  They’ll be facilitated salons where we can share ideas, frustrations, and hopes with an eye towards the future.  Some will take place at the synagogue, presenting the reality of Temple Emanuel:  the finances, the organization, the results of our resent congregational survey.  Watch this space for details.  This project is vitally important, and we truly need your input.  Through Shma Emanuel, the community will listen to you, and you will be able to listen to your fellows.  By listening, we are strengthened.

Ki Tavo 5773

In this parsha, Moses enacts a ritual that involves the entire community.  He divides all the people into two camps.  As he recites a litany of blessings and curses, half the tribes embody the former, and half embody the latter.  Some stand for positivity, and some negativity.

As Moses did with the people, so do we do with individuals.  We type them and label them:  “detractors, naysayers, and complainers,” “helpers, optimists, and achievers.”   Some people, we decide, have a positive influence in our lives, and some a negative.

But human beings are far more complex than that.  The way someone relates to me is not the way s/he relates to everyone else.  The sliver of a person’s being I get to see likely does not represent their entire humanity.  Further, people change over time—the sense I got from someone years ago may not be who they are today; my encounter with someone who was upset this morning may have more to do with what they just experienced than who they are.

Still, it can be frustrating when the only aspect we see of an individual is negativity and complaint.  It’s helpful to remember that that’s not the whole person.

More powerful still is to invert their negative energy.  Can you see past their bitterness and consider whether their observations have merit?  Can you share their passion but decline their negativity?  Can you turn their “curse” into a “blessing”?

Ki Titzei 5773

As a very young man, I sat at a plaza eating my lunch.  I noticed a toddler crawling on the ledge of a fountain several yards away.  He tottered, and I reached out to steady him – even though there was no possible way I could catch him.  In fact, dozens of arms stretched out to him simultaneously.  It is human instinct to protect people in danger.

“When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, so that you do not bring bloodguilt on your house if anyone should fall from it” (Deuteronomy 22:8).  A parapet is an extension of a wall that serves as a barrier on a balcony, roof, or terrace.  In ancient times, people would sleep and work on the roof, and were liable to fall off if there were no fence.  More broadly, we have an affirmative obligation to construct buildings that protect others from injury.  We must add railings, fence pools, and post proper signage to help prevent injury.  That fountain in Santa Monica was an injury waiting to happen, and the city ought to have installed it more safely.

What of the individual’s obligations?  Surely, no child can weigh the risks of crawling on a ledge.  But most adults can be expected to consider the range of possibilities that might result from our actions.  Take, for example, texting while driving.

It seems so innocuous – just a quick flick of the eyes, no more impactful than changing the radio station.  Or we start a text while stopped at a red light, and finish it as we roll through the intersection.  We’ve all done it a hundred times.  What could happen? 

I recently watched a 35 minute movie called “From One Second to the Next,” about four lives altered beyond recognition by texting while driving.  It was made by acclaimed director Walter Herzog and funded by AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile.  It will put the fear of God into you – not only for your own life and the lives of your loved ones, but also for the pain you may cause inadvertently and easily. 

Until watching that movie, I’ve been troubled by the Torah’s formulation – “so that you do not bring bloodguilt on your house if anyone should fall from it.” Surely, we should construct the proverbial parapet to safeguard life and limb.  But after watching “From One Second to the Next,” and witnessing the pain of those whose haste and disregard destroyed lives, I understand it a bit better.  “Take precautions not to harm others and also not to wrack yourself with unbearable guilt—legal AND emotional.”

Watch the movie at ItCanWait.com.  There’s a “texting while driving simulator,” and also a “no texting while driving” pledge to sign.  We no longer sleep on our roofs.  But whenever we drive, we hold other people’s lives in our hands.

Eikev -- 5773

“Every spot on which your foot treads will be yours” (Deuteronomy 11:24).

Moses, spurring his people on, is speaking about the land from “the wilderness to the Lebanon and from the River – the Euphrates – to the Western Sea” (11:24).  He’s claiming a wide swath of territory for them, asserting their dominion.  It’s a bold statement with implications that echo until our own day.

I read it differently this week, out of context.  I think not of geopolitical space, but of personal space.

I learned as a high school drama student to “claim my space” on stage.  Mr. Ingle taught us to stand strong, even in the ensemble; Ms. Roston taught us to send our energy into the earth, “down to go up.”  Mr. Grenier tried to push us over during a scene.  Claiming one’s space means knowing that you belong where you are and that wherever you are belongs to you.  Being grounded in that way allows you to be both rooted and free.

People who claim the place where they stand have “presence.”  Great performers own the stage and deny you to look away.  Fine teachers hold their students’ focus without a word.  A capable police officer can control a chaotic situation singlehandedly.

In Everyday Holiness, Alan Morinis offers a brilliant description of humility:  taking up the right amount of space on the bench (52).  Some people, with overinflated egos, puff themselves up like chametz and demand energy they don’t deserve.  Others shrink from attention, making themselves invisible and thereby denying all they have to offer.  They take up the wrong amount of space on the civic bench.  They misunderstand their value.  They aren’t claiming their space. Both are acts of ego.

It is so important to have a place where you belong.  Feeling simultaneously special and part of the whole allows you to enter the wider world with a clear and appropriate sense of self.  It occurs to me that troubled youth may have no such place to call their own.

If you have the sense that you belong somewhere—anywhere--you can carry it with you wherever you go.  It becomes an inner attitude of appropriate humility, of knowing your inherent value AND the true contribution you can make in a particular situation.  Then, “every spot on which your foot treads will be yours.”

Where is your spot?

Dvarim 5773

Standing on the edge – it’s exhilarating and terrifying. 

Moses stands on several edges at once in this week’s parsha, Dvarim.  It’s the first in the book of Deuteronomy.  He stands on Mount Pisgah, the Promised Land arrayed at his feet.  He stands on the river bank, preparing to cross over.  He stands “in the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month,” the generation-long wandering about to conclude (1:3).  He stands, therefore, a month away from death.

The edge is a place of both opportunity and danger, since one thing must end so that another can begin.  It is a place of great energy:  recall the flush of new love, waves crashing at the sea shore, a hang glider poised on a cliff, the first day of school.  These moments, along with life cycle events like b’nei mitzvah, weddings, conversions, and funerals are called “liminal.”  The word comes from the Latin for “threshold” – that place of transition from inside to outside, from single to married life.  When you cross over the edge, anything can happen.

As a closing thought, this poem by Guillaume Appolinaire.  My boss at my first real job kept it pinned over her desk, and I’ve never forgotten it:

Come to the edge, He said.
They said, We are afraid.
Come to the edge, He said.
They came. He pushed them... and they flew.
 

When have you stood on the edge?  Were you exhilarated or terrified?  How did it work out?

Pinchas 5773

Zelophechad fathered five daughters and no sons.  Since he died without male heir, his property would pass outside the clan.  The daughters, Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milchan, and Tirzah protest their exclusion and bring their case before Moses.  They plead their suit front of the High Priest, chieftains, and entire community (Numbers 27:2).   What chutzpah to think they had standing!  What chutzpah to think they were entitled to anything!  What chutzpah to speak to Moses!  What chutzpah to think they could change the system!

Moses, uncertain of the correct response, “brought their case before God” (27:5).  God agrees with the women, and the law is changed. 

Thus begins a long and noble tradition of appealing injustice.

This week, five brave plaintiffs’ suits were heard at the highest court of the land.  One of them was Edith “Edie” Windsor, widow of Thea Spyer.  Because the Federal government did not recognize their marriage, Edie was required to pay federal estate taxes upon Thea’s death.  What chutzpah to think she had standing!  What chutzpah to think she was entitled to anything!  What chutzpah to sue the United States government!  What chutzpah to think an act of Congress could be overturned!

And yet, this week, it was.

When we see or an experience an injustice, we must work to fix it.  There will no doubt be obstacles.  Nonetheless, we are obliged to work and appeal and protest and try and laugh and scream and appeal and learn and appeal again and again until the wrong is made right.  It’s chutzpah, and it is also tzedek.

A Bit of Torah -- Balak

As any reader of children’s books knows, profound truths spring from the mouths of talking animals.  (See Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment).  The reader of the Torah knows the same.

King Balak of Moab orders the prophet Balaam to curse the Israelites.  Against his better judgment, Balaam makes his way to the Israelite camp.  But his donkey refuses to carry him, stopping in her tracks and chastising her master for agreeing to the mission.

Rabbi Andy Shapiro Katz offers a unique reading of the story:  Balaam and the donkey are two aspects of the same being.  Balaam represents the intellect, that part of ourselves that’s capable of convincing us that we are on the right path.  It’s the piece of us that can’t see when we are going wrong.  The animal, on the other hand, represents the gut instinct, the innate knowing of what’s right for us.   The intellect may be distracted by power, money, or flattery.  Our inner self, however, knows these to be dross.  It points us instead to our greatest good, our better angel, the highest expression of our Self.

Chukkat 5773

The Israelites, on their way from Egypt to Canaan, seek to pass through the land of Edom.  The king refuses entry.

The Hebrews pledge to “keep to the beaten track, and if we or our cattle drink your water, we will pay for it.  We ask only for passage on foot – it is but a small matter” (Numbers 20:19).  Edom refuses again, this time “strongly armed.”  He will not give; he will not share.

Some people have a deficit mentality.  They live in a state of deprivation, assuming that there won’t be enough.  For whatever sound reasons, they perpetually fear running out, being left without.  The glass is half-empty and the pitcher cracked.  When asked, they invariably lead with ‘no.’

In the Torah, Moses counters Edom’s refusal with logic, saying, in essence, “Don’t worry -- we will not take from you.”  But this is rarely effective when dealing with someone with a deficit mentality.  Since their perception of the situation is based in fear, they can always come up with a counter-argument.  Such people trust best in the context of relationship, when they know their needs are known and respected.

When Moses tells the King of Edom “it is but a small matter,” he signals that he doesn’t take the King’s fears seriously.  Why would I trust someone who diminishes my feelings?  What if Moses had instead said “I can imagine that you’re nervous about having so many people walk through your land.  You have a lot of people to protect and, after all, resources are scarce.  I am hoping you can help us in our plight.  What do you need from us to allow us to pass through your lands?”

If Moses had spoken in such a respectful way, and within the context of a relationship, perhaps Edom wouldn’t have felt all walked over.

Korach 5773

Korach son of Izhar rebels against Moses, saying “The entire community is holy -- all of them -- and God is in their midst.  Why then do you raise yourselves above God’s congregation?”  (Numbers 16:3)  Korach appears to challenge Moses’ leadership on theological grounds.  Perhaps the struggle is interpersonal instead.  Is the issue one of good governance, or of ego?

The Vilna Gaon, the great Litvak scholar of the 1700s, wrote: "If the people are friends after the argument -- that is a sign that the argument was over the issue and not personal. If they are not friendly after the argument -- then something else was going on."

Arguments are inevitable.  We bump up against each other in the course of daily life.  Our perspectives clash with those held by others – even people we love.  We cannot always control our anger.  Rather than submit to it, however, we are well served by maintaining some distance from it.  We can reframe our experience of the emotion from “being angry” to “feeling anger.”  In the former, we are consumed by our emotions.  In the latter, they move through us:  here now, gone shortly.

It pays to be certain that our anger is serving us rather than the other way around.  That way, our relationships can stay healthy, and anger won’t swallow us whole.

Bamidbar 5773

A Tibetan Buddhist monk once gave a foreigner a tour of his monastery, or so I was told.  The visitor recognized a vase, sitting empty and ignored in a corner, as being some eight centuries old, and priceless.  “Oh this thing?” asked the monk, as he picked it up and smashed it.  “It is just a thing.”

As the Book of Numbers opens, God gives directions for the packing and transportation of the sacred objects (“klei kodesh”) of the Tabernacle.  “Over the table of display they shall spread a blue cloth; they shall place upon it the bowls, the ladles, the jars, and the libation jugs; and the regular bread shall rest upon it.  They shall spread over these a crimson cloth which they shall cover with a covering of dolphin skin; and they shall put the poles in place.”  (Numbers 4:7-8)

The monk would say “How odd.  How can things be sacred?”    And surely he has a point – so many of us enslave ourselves to acquiring and maintaining objects that are destined to break and dissolve.  Some people mistake objects for God, and some objects are prized above life.  Surely this is sacrilegious and wrong.

Nonetheless, Judaism certainly believes that objects can be holy.  Objects can connect us with our past.  Objects can remind us of our obligations.  Objects can elevate our spirits and actions.   Objects can be tools of learning.  Objects can save lives.

I have a pair of candlesticks that my great, great grandparents used.  They are beautiful, and their grace inspires me to slow down as Shabbat arrives.  They remind me of my ancestors, including the brave woman for whom I am named and the loving grandmother who labeled them with my name, and my commitment to raise my son in a Jewish home.  The flames dance and delight as we teach Jacob about Shabbat and his people.  Those candlesticks are sacred to me.  Jacob’s blankie helps him feel warm and secure, and is sacred to him.

What objects, if any, are holy to you?

Sephirat HaOmer -- 39th Day -- Netzach sh'b'Yesod

Seven is the number of perfection, according to the Torah.  The six days of creation culminate in the seventh day of rest.  Six years of working the land are completed by a seventh year of lying fallow.  There are seven mothers and fathers who founded the Jewish people.  In the Land of Israel, Passover and Sukkot last seven days.

When we are told to count off seven weeks of seven days, we know something important is afoot.  With the counting of the forty-nine omer (bundles of grain or corn), the nation progresses day by day from Passover to Shavuot.  Fittingly, that pinnacle moment later comes to represent the giving and receiving of the Torah.  The seven weeks of seven days represents the transformation from redemption to revelation.  It is a time of development from lowly to lofty.

How can we be in a period of both perfection AND growth?  The Kabbalists assigned a different Divine quality to each of the seven days, and overlaid those qualities with each of the seven weeks.  Each day presents a juxtaposition of two Godly characteristics.  The counting of the omer becomes a journey through the matrix of God’s qualities – all perfect, and yet still transforming.

This Shabbat will be 39^th day between Passover and Shavuot; that is, five weeks and four days.  The qualities of Netzah sh’b’Yesod represent an enduring foundation.  On this Shabbat, meditate on the ways you are grounded in your life.  How are you “like a tree planted near water, sinking [your] roots by a watercourse” (Jeremiah 16:8, from this week’s haftarah)?  In what ways are you absolutely centered and secure?  How did you get there, and what keeps you there?  From the strength of being grounded, all things are possible.

Acharei Mot/Kiddushin 5773

We are called to holiness, just as God is holy.

How are we to perform this act of imitatio Dei/Imitation of God?  Not, as we might suppose, through elevation of the spirit by prayer or contemplation. Not through denial of the flesh by fasting or abstinence.  The Holiness Code of Parashat K’doshim makes it clear that we, human beings made in the image of God, imitate God through the performance of mitzvot:

“You shall each revere your mother and your father, and keep My Sabbaths.”  (Leviticus 19:3)

“You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger.”  (Leviticus 19:10)

“You shall not defraud your fellow.  You shall not commit robbery.  ...  The wages of a laborer shall not remain with you until morning.”  (Leviticus 19:13)

“You shall not insult the deaf, or place a stumbling block before the blind.”  (Leviticus 19:14)

             “Do not profit by the blood of your fellow.”  (Leviticus 19:14)

Our tradition instructs us to become godly through engaging in the world – and by treating others justly. 

In a world that seems crazy, dirty, and broken, this is how we make our lives made holy.  This is how we bring holiness into the world.

Tazria/Metzorah 5773

Skin eruptions, rashes, burns, and scaly afflictions:  this week’s double portion has it all.  Tazriah/M’tzorah is yucky, uncomfortable, and sometimes downright bizarre.  It outlines the priest’s role when a person (or a house) comes down with a skin condition, but is entirely out of step with our modern sensibilities of infection, contagion, and medicine.  Tazriah/M’tzorah describes what to do when there is an outbreak, when our orderly existences are upended.

We are, from childhood, pitched an illusion of life as half-hour sit-com:  troubles may befall us, but they are always wrapped up neatly with a chuckle and a lesson.  We delude ourselves that life is neat – not perfect, but at least predictable, rational, organized.  While we can function within this mindset most of the time, it will eventually break down. 

Sometimes, the gapping maw of the uncontrollable, the ugly, or the painful tears into our lives and darkens our tidy worlds.  Sometimes, there’s an outbreak.

When the unpredictable befalls us, do we reject, accept, or embrace it?  Do we toss about, unable to find a foothold in a stormy, unrecognizable place?  Do we insist on the previous paradigm of order – seeking to make sense of the outbreak as punishment for some previous violation of order?  Do we retooling ourselves for a brave new world?  Or do we shift our understanding, allow it to grow, acknowledging and even embracing unpredictability, letting go of control?

"It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.  Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.  The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for."  –Joseph Campbell

Judaism offers rituals to acknowledge our visits to the abyss, and our return to “normalcy,” changed though we are.  When we bury a loved one, we a rip a kriyah ribbon, symbol of the irreparably torn fabric of our lives.  When we survive an accident, we bench gomel, acknowledging the precariousness of our lives.  When we survive illness or attack, we may visit the mikveh to experience our own re-birth.  These mark our return, changed, but whole once again.

Shemini 5773

“And Aaron was silent.”

In a blinding flash, Aaron’s sons are obliterated by God.  When he is then prevented from mourning their deaths, Aaron is dumbstruck.

What words can convey the depths of despair?  How are we to name emotions that bombard us like a hurricane?  In the face of tragedy, silence is sometimes the only response.

When speaking with someone in mourning, we are tempted to fill the air.  “Everything’s going to be OK.”  “He’s in a better place now.”  “Did you catch the game?”  These comments are sometimes soothing.  Sometimes they are not.

Our tradition teaches that when visiting a house of mourning, the mourners set the tone.  If they want to share memories, we share memories.  If they want to want to talk philosophy, we talk philosophy.  If they want to discuss baseball, we discuss baseball.   And if they want to sob, we let them. 

When you don’t know what to say in the face of death, consider this:  “I am sorry for your loss.” Then, be silent.

Passover 5773

We are a hopeful people.  We have suffered unspeakable horrors, but we have survived them, always looking towards a brighter day and a place of our own.  Not for nothing is “HaTikvah—The Hope” the anthem of the State of Israel.  And not for nothing is Passover the most-celebrated Jewish holiday.

At Passover, we eat the story of our journey from misery to exaltation.  From the symbols of rebirth—the sprig of parsley and hard-boiled egg—to the chirping voices of children chanting the Four Questions, Passover looks to the future.  It reminds us that seasons change and pain ends.  As our ancestors left the dire straits of Egypt, so can we free ourselves today.

This optimism isn’t in-born; it is taught.  The middle matzah—the afikoman—is broken and hidden for children to find.  As Rebecca Newberger Goldstein observes in The New American Haggadah, “we make a game of it, for the sake of our children, knowing that we enact in the ritual our deepest faith in their future.”  We signal to them that what’s lost can be found and what’s broken can be mended.

There is much in this world that is broken—bodies, promises, families, economies.  There is much in this world that is concealed—justice, truth, love, God.  When children find the hidden afikoman and reunite it with its other half, they learn that despite all fractured, cloaked appearances, the world can be made whole and revealed.  They learn to hope.

Parashat Vayikra 5773

The Conference of Cardinals has named a new pope, and the entire world prays that his reign will be one of peace and reconciliation.  Francis I inherits the Throne and Keys of St. Peter through apostolic succession, and becomes first among priests.  How interesting that he’s appointed this week, just as Jews begin to read the Book of Leviticus—that is, the Priestly book.

For the next seven weeks, the Jewish world will concern itself with the duties of the priests of old and the ancient rules for offering sacrifices.  It is detailed stuff, and quite dry … at least when not gory.

A priest is a clergy person who acts on another’s behalf, one who intercedes between humanity and God.  In the Book of Leviticus, the Hebrew priests offer the people’s sacrifices to God so that the people could atone.  In churches around the world, Catholic priests receive the people’s confession for the same reason.  In both cases, people are cleansed, forgiven, and rendered whole thanks to the priest’s proper performance of his function.  The priest, it is believed, has privileged access to God.

Jews no longer have priests because we believe that all people have access to God.  This access is achieved through prayer to the One called “Shomeah t’filah,” or “Hearer of Prayer.”  No one’s prayers are louder than any other’s—not those of the rabbi, not those of the rich, and not those of the pious.  We stand, each one of us, equal before God.  Atonement, cleansing, forgiveness, wholeness:  these are in our own hands.

This is both a freedom and an obligation.  We are free of the hierarchy that separates us from our Maker.  At the same time, we are obligated to take responsibility for ourselves.  No one tells us exactly what we must do.  No one performs rituals on our behalves.  No one can forgive us but the people we have hurt.

Rather than allow another to speak for us, we speak for ourselves.  “You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” God tells us (Exodus 19:6).  We function as our own priests, atoning, cleansing, forgiving, and crafting wholeness on our own behalf.

פתחו־לי שערי־צדק אבא־בם אודה יה

Pitchu li sha’arei tzedek avo-vam ode-Ya.

Open for me the Gates of Righteousness that I may enter them and praise God.  (Psalms 118:19)

 No one holds the key to your life but you.

Bit of Torah -- Parashat Ki Tissa, 5773

The great leader ascends the mountain.  He speaks with God and receives the Law before descending to the people.  After smashing the tablets, he returns to the summit.  He speaks with God once more.  Then,

“Moses came down from Mount Sinai.  And as Moses came down from the mountain bearing the two tablets of the Pact, Moses was not aware that the skin of his face was radiant, since he had spoken with God” (Exodus 34:29).

Even in a book of the unexpected (speaking animals, parting seas, celestial ladders), a man that glows is astonishing.

But we should not be surprised.  All great encounters change us.  Whether with another person or with the Divine, when we meet somebody—really meet them—we are transformed.

Martin Buber calls this “I/Thou”—the honest, appreciative, open encounter we have when we see others as unique and precious entitles with their own realities, experiences, needs, emotions.   Buber contrasts such respectful encounters with ones he calls “I/It,” in which we treat others as objects that exist merely to fulfill our needs.

Experiencing someone else as a full being involves getting to know him or her.  Not in the superficial ways, but deeply—what makes him tick, what are her dreams and flaws.  Such intimate knowledge of another is a form of love.  When we are radically open to another’s truth, our world expands and we cannot help but change.

The Torah expresses Moses’ transformation by saying that he glows.  Now that’s enlightenment.

Terumah 5773

Creation takes work, whether constructing a building or fortifying a community.  Parashat Terumah, Exodus 25:1-27:19, outlines what’s needed to construct the mishkan, God’s dwelling place on earth.  Through physical gifts (precious metals and stones, colored yarns, animal skins, oil, and wood) and physical effort (hammering, washing, marking, cutting, and carrying) the Israelites construct an edifice and weave themselves into a single people.  The work is hard.  It is also holy.

Interestingly, the rabbis of the Talmud (Shabbat 7:2) refer to the labor required to build the mishkan to describe the work prohibited on Shabbat.  Work that is holy in one context is profane in another; work that is encouraged some times is prohibited others.

And so it is at synagogue.  So much of the “work” that makes the synagogue function—setting up, taking down, teaching,  cleaning, answering phones, working in the gift shop, building, organizing, calling, and writing—is performed by congregants who give their time and skill to build our community.  Temple Emanuel bursts with the energy and effort of our volunteers!  These actions, which might be mundane elsewhere, become holy here.

Just as our ancestors brought disparate gifts and wove themselves into a single people, so do we in our own day form community through our shared dedication, contribution, and service.

Bo -- 5773

It’s the longest night in history:  the tenth plague, death of the first born.  “Thus says God:  ‘Toward midnight I will go forth among the Egyptians, and every male first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the first-born of the slave girl who is behind the millstones’ and all the first-born of the cattle.’ (Exodus 11:4-5)”

The anguish is palpable, and the questions demand to be answered:  Why did they have to die?  Why the innocent along with the guilty, the high born and the low?  Surely the children and the cattle had done no wrong.

All those who benefit from injustice are implicated in the system.  The little children, though blameless, nursed on slave women’s bodies—usurping the place of those nurses’ drowned babies.  The slave girls, though blameless, labored on millstones quarried and carried by strong Hebrew backs.  The cattle, though blameless, grazed in pens fenced by slave labor.  Although they did not create the system, those blameless Egyptians benefited from it.

Could they have pushed back against the paradigm of oppression?  The Torah recounts the civil disobedience of some—the midwives who refused Pharaoh’s order and who were rewarded.  In the face of brutality, inaction is collusion.  Silence is complicity.

This weekend, Americans celebrate the birth of a great champion of justice and equality.  Martin Luther King dedicated his life to overthrowing multiple systems of oppression.  Let us remember the words of one who walked arm in arm with him, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: “Few are guity.  All are responsible.”

Vaeira 5773

God charges Moses with an historic task—liberating his people and changing history.  Moses demurs.

“’Go and tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to let the Israelites depart from his land.’  But Moses appeared to God, saying ‘The Israelites would not listen to me; how then should Pharaoh heed me, me—who gets tongue-tied!’”  (Exodus 6:10-12).

Moses does what so many of us do:  he assumes his own incapacity.

We tell ourselves stories of our own incompetence:

o   An earlier failure was my fault.
o   My earlier failure is bound to happen again.
o   I’m not capable.

Somehow recordings tell us we’re not good enough, that we’re not smart or likeable enough get placed in our heads.  We psych ourselves out of doing great things by thinking that failure stems from our own inabilities, rather than from the wider environment.  We see failures as proof of our incapacity rather than as opportunities to learn, and weave these into the stories of our lives.

But in fact we have extraordinary capacity.  Each one of us is capable of doing miracles in our own lives and in the wider world.  Each one of us is so special, so miraculous that the Universe summoned us into existence at this very moment, just as we are.  We are needed.  Our sacred task, both simple and profound, is to accept that truth.

When we know we can, all things are possible.

Watch this:  https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=535184355831

Shemot 5773

It must be the most agonizing scene of the entire Torah: 

A baby is born in a time of genocide.  His kind is to be killed; he is marked from the moment of his birth.  But when his mother “saw how beautiful he was, she hid him for three months,” until she could hide him no longer (Exodus 2:2).  Then, for a second time in three verses, the woman conceives – this time a plan to prolong her son’s life.  She will waterproof a basket and place him in the river.

Can you imagine her, standing on the riverbank, readying and steadying the small life raft?  What does she put in it along with him?  A child so young can’t feed himself, so nutrition would be pointless.  A child so young can’t hold anything, so toys would be pointless.  Perhaps some reminder of her, some clue to his origins?  Or perhaps she didn’t expect him to survive—she just didn’t want to watch him killed.

She holds her boy close, thinking “no no no.”  Then, subject to a silent sign, she kisses him on the forehead, tugs his big toe, and places him into the basket and the water.  With a wrenching but imperceptible push, she lets him go.  All alone, he ventures into a place no child ought to go, a place with crocodiles and hippopotami and rapids and heat, into a place for which he is completely unprepared, into a fate entirely uncertain.

This is what it means to be a parent, isn’t it?  We protect and guard, and prepare them as best as we can.  Then, with the knowledge that whatever time we’ve shared hasn’t been nearly enough, we release that baby to an unknown fate.  With a prayer and a push, we send them into the wide and wild world, to become the people they will become.