What’s in Your Head? (Sukkot & V’Zot Habrakha)

I know…there’s been so much build-up to the end of the Torah. Week after week, Moses is saying goodbye. I guess there’s so much to say, and it’s hard to take one’s leave. Maybe that’s where the Jewish tradition of not being able to walk out the door comes from! Ha!

Well, we did it! We finished it—again. For this, we say thank you for having arrived at this time again, for having made it through another year, for arriving at this season, this holiday of harvest, again. For still being alive!

I did it. I went through an entire cycle of Torah and had something to say and write about each parsha. Who knew I could do that? I wondered, honestly. It was a challenge I set myself last year, and I’ve accomplished it.

This week’s parsha is named for all the blessings Moses gives each tribe just before he dies. They are blessings of bounty and security going forward. (You can read my last year’s commentary here, just for nostalgia’s sake pershaps: This, you say, is a blessing?).

Are we supposed to all feel blessed?

I can say that I wasn’t feeling blessed at all on Sunday when I returned to rabbinical school classes. In fact, I was freaking out. It’s my last stretch, and it was a very difficult transition. There were a bunch of new students, young whipper-snappers that entered the program while I was on leave, coming in with lots of background knowledge I did not come in with, for one. On top of that, the two classes I attended are probably going to be the most difficult classes I’ve taken yet. At least that was my perception.

But how often is our perception based in reality? Our minds play all kinds of tricks on us, don’t they? Our insecurities—okay, I’ll speak for myself—my insecurities took over, and I was totally intimidated—to the point of tears!

Also, I was actually cursed by a stranger the other day in Central Park!

She was obviously mentally ill, and I had gone to the park with my lulav and esrog (palm frond and lemony fruit) to observe the Jewish holiday of Sukkos, the “Holiday of the Booths,” which commemorates our 40-year sojourn through the desert, the instability of living out in the open (just as we are leaving the desert in Torah! Ha!), and the fall harvest festival, one which was observed by bringing the first fruits of the season as an offering to the Temple many eons ago.

Now we observe Sukkos as an “earthy” holiday, with (dare I say) some very pagan-like rituals that the Rabbis gave some beautiful mystical meaning to. Who doesn’t love shaking a palm frond around and singing, huh? And the lemony fruit! Yum.

Anyway, I had gone to connect with the earth, and to do my earth/heaven/energy practices of Qi Gong.

I had taken off my shoes and placed my lulav and esrog against one tree, my bag and shoes against another, as I stood under a beautiful canopy of trees, my “sukkah.” I had a view of the Harlem Meer, the water looked beautiful, and it all felt perfect (aside from what feels like endless summer heat and humidity).

Suddenly, from a distance I saw a woman picking and gathering brush along the side of the lake. Then she was suddenly closer to me, right under my trees, just a few feet away, looking straight at me, breaking off low-hanging branches.

“Excuse me, I hope you don’t mind. God says it’s okay. This is for the children I’m teaching,” she stated frenetically.

(Do I continue on? Okay, wait and see, I decide.) I gave some indication that I didn’t mind (I knew better), and continued doing my Qi Gong, assessing how dangerous this situation might get and strategically planning my escape if needed.

“Do you know how close to God you are?” she said aggressively, continuing to tear branches. Luckily, she didn’t wait for an answer: “Very close.” (Oh, cool!)

My go-to when someone starts ranting about God is to bless the person, hoping to disarm them, which I did, and it worked for a moment; she quietly blessed me back.

Then she started in on Jesus and the miracles he performed, even on the Sabbath, she wanted me to know.

Suddenly she stopped short, looked down at my bag and said, “Can I have a dollar? (in an annoyed voice.) I said I was sorry not to have any cash on me.

After calling me a name usually directed at women, she pointed to my palm frond. “Can I have that?”

I carefully moved towards my bag, which meant very close to her, and started gathering my things.“Can I have your shoes?”

As I started walking away barefoot, shoes under my arm, she followed me, hurling more insults and curses at me.

I was completely rattled and it took me a long time to calm down.

Ironically, we had exchanged both blessings and curses, but in thinking about it, I was probably no more rattled by this interaction than by my return to classes.

The stuff in her head was very real to her, and the stuff in my head about the challenging classwork and my intimidating classmates who know way more that I do, was all very real to me, but in the end, none of it was real. And all of it was real at the same time.

As I walked away thinking about the police being the only recourse for a mentally ill person and the tragedy of the terribly underfunded and almost non-existent mental health system in our country, I was not only rattled, feeling unsafe and exposed, I was saddened. Just saddened at the tragedy of the world we live in. Some of it is in our heads, some of it is real. And sometimes it’s hard to know the difference. One thing I know is real is that that woman lives on the street with a lot of insecurity on many levels.

Speech can be as powerful as action, as we know, especially since the years we’ve just gone through with Trump as president.

At the end of the yearly cycle of Torah, we recite a couple of phrases for strength and peace before beginning again.

May we have strength and peace and put out lots of blessings for the year to come, for the miracle of being able to create a new kind of world where everyone lives in security, safety and peace, and where mental illness is treated as an illness and not a crime.

And let us say Amen.