Just give me a break! (B’shalach)

I felt a little guilty about my posting last week the day after Inauguration Day--did I put a damper on others’ joy? Can I just take a day to feel pure, unadulterated joy and relief at the fact that this wonderful thing happened and Trump is gone from office? 

Should I just drink the Kool-Aid sometimes? What’s everyone else doing? Are they drinking the Kool-Aid, or am I just voicing what others are thinking also?

No, if I really think about it, they’re not, and I’m not ruining their day by speaking the truth.

I realized that Torah doesn’t take a break, either.

No sooner does Pharaoh let the Israelites go, no sooner do they walk to freedom, through the Sea of Reeds over dry land, with a magical wall of water on each side, than reality hits them in the face again. 

They take a break of about one sentence (okay, a few paragraphs) when they awaken to the glory of God, finally realizing that God is capable of performing immeasurable wonders. They sing the famous Song of the Sea (Who is like You…?), Miriam takes out her timbrel and leads the women in dance and song, and it’s all very merry and wonderful. 

For a second. 

Then: wham! Scene change: the Israelites are in the desert, and they start complaining to Moses immediately: “How could you take us out of bondage only to bring us into this (God-forsaken?) place where we will starve? What, they didn’t have enough graves in Egypt? Better to have stayed and died there! What exactly is the point of this? Woohoo! We’ll get an unlimited supply of fluffy white stuff to eat instead of real food, maybe like freeze-dried military/space food, and we have to learn these rules, like only gathering enough for the day, because if we gather too much, it will get maggots, except for Shabbat, in which case if we don’t gather enough, we’ll go hungry for the day. 

Oy! So much to learn! And this really sucks. You didn’t tell us, Moses, that things would continue to be so hard! We didn’t sign up for this! Not even a little break after our trauma of escaping slavery before things are hard again!

It’s enough to make the Israelites think that things in Egypt had been a beautiful dream (were they thinking, “We have to make Egypt beautiful again”? Aaah, that willful forgetfulness I talked about in last week’s blog).

I heard a podcast with Krista Tippett interviewing Katherine May on her book called “Wintering” (are you getting tired of my mentioning On Being?). The author loves winter and snow and darkness (so do I!), and talks and writes about how “wintering” replenishes us and the earth; we all need to take a break. 

She points out that we have lost touch with our bodies and the earth in our modern lives and we often can’t even allow ourselves to be sick and to rest without needing a doctor’s confirmation; we don’t know how to rest just because; we don’t know how to take a break without planning a grand vacation (because it’s not like everything’s going to magically get better if we just go to a spa!). 

In the interview, Tippett and May also discussed the pandemic and the talk at the outset of how people were getting to be at home with their children and bake bread and do homey things again, getting back in touch with what’s important. 

In fact, this was more of a hopeful Christmas miracle movie, like the Israelites dreaming of the good ol’ days in Egypt than any kind of reality for most people. 

Nonetheless, the pandemic has offered a kind of pause to look at the ugly reality that our society has become and to re-evaluate our value system---to give some real thought to how we’ve gone wrong and how we want to live our lives going forward as a whole, not just individually.

Yes, we have a ton of rethinking to do. 

The Israelites, also, have a ton of thinking to do. They start with the ugly reality of leaving behind a lot of destruction: all the dead Egyptians, drowned when God allows the waters to fill in the dry land again--and Torah tells us that they see it! I wonder what that clean-up looked like, and what impact it had to know that their survival depended on the death of others.

If God made the Israelites wait forty years--yes, forty years--in the desert before entering the Promised land, why do we think we’re so special? 

Why should we think that we can just wish away the pandemic and the bad Trump years, and imagine that they will all go away as quickly as they came---because they didn’t come quickly, as I pointed out last week--nor will they go away quickly. 

Walking through the split sea, as grand as it seems, is only a first baby step for the Israelites, like Inauguration Day, with all its pomp and circumstance, was for us. 

There’s a lot of clean-up to do, both spiritually and physically, and it’s on us to do it, not just on our new administration, any more than it was for the Israelites to simply rely on God to do all their work.

I guess this week’s blog, like this week’s Torah reading, is just one more reminder that we know there’s a lot of clean-up to do, we have no choice but to do it, but maybe we can take a momentary pause to regain our strength--and just take a little break to replenish ourselves, get back in touch with what really matters, and be ready for the blooming of spring. 

(Post)-Inauguration Special on Remembering: Still “Bo”

So much relief.  So much emotion. So much to celebrate; the ability to breathe again.

Yes, “We stopped the neo-fascist threat,” in the words of Dr. Cornel West. 

“A day of hope, renewal, resolve: a day for Democracy--the cause of democracy,” in the words of our new president on his inauguration yesterday. 

Like I said in yesterday’s blog post, we are commanded in this week’s Torah portion to remember--even before we have walked to freedom!

Yet! “America is that country that forgets--willingly...we were all there,” in the words of journalist Maria Hinojosa this morning on Democracy Now! 

Just as we are to remember the bondage and the suffering and the locusts and fire and hail and lice and blood and death of the firstborn; just as we are to remember the Holocaust, let us remember that the three men who stood together and made a video for Joe Biden’s inauguration yesterday are responsible for crimes against humanity, along with the Old Biden himself. They started the machine that Donald Trump continued.

So, let us remember that it was, collectively, Clinton and G.W. Bush and Obama who are responsible for Afghanistan and Iraq and Iran, for the so-called Welfare Reform Bill that led to the intensification of poverty in this nation, for mass incarceration of Black and Brown people, for the beginning of the building of a border wall, for the greatest deportation of immigrants in the history of our country, for bailing out Wall Street instead of common Americans, for increased militarism,...We were all there. Did we forget already?

Yes, let us give the New Biden a chance, but if we keep talking about “returning to normalcy,” then we are talking about continuing an old system, a system not so different from Pharaoh’s, with continued bondage and suffering and hail and fire and blood—things we know exist in our country and world today!

I end with Amanda Gorman’s words from her poem yesterday:

“While once we asked, how can we possibly prevail over catastrophe?

We now assert

How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?”

“We will not march back to what was but move to what shall be.”

“If we merge mercy with might,

and might with right,

then love becomes our legacy

and change our children's birthright.”

“When day comes we step out of the shade,

aflame and unafraid

The new dawn blooms as we free it

For there is always light,

if only we're brave enough to see it

If only we're brave enough to be it.”

Darkness and Laughter: Bo

A darkness so heavy, the thickness hangs in the air and you can’t see a person standing right next to you.

A not-knowing so vast, it stretches out before you.

And a sadness so deep...you know you will have to laugh again. 

This is how it feels to so many of us today, with all that has happened over the past year and weeks, as we await the transition to a new president, and also commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King and his legacy.

And so it was for the Egyptians and the Israelites in this week’s Torah portion.

Added to last week’s plagues that God brought down on Pharaoh are locusts that eat whatever crops remain after the hail, a heavy darkness so frightening, I imagine it could take your breath away, and, finally, perhaps worst of all, the death of every first born baby Egyptian boy and animal. 

It is from here that we get the famous story of Passover, which is laid out as a festival to be followed down through the generations--matzoh and lamb’s blood and all--to remember...

Remember the bondage and the suffering, the babies and the midwives that saved them; the cruelty of a Pharaoh whose heart was hard and wouldn’t be humbled; boils and locusts and lice and hail and fire--all sorts of things that reflect an imbalance in the physical world, all not so different from today. 

We are commanded to remember and observe this festival even before the Sea of Reeds has parted and we have walked to freedom. 

To remember--even before we’ve left. 

It is in this parsha that Moses says, “We won’t know how we will worship God until we get there.” For the Israelites, this means they don’t know what animals they will need for the sacrifice once Pharaoh lets them go up to the mountain to which their God has commanded them to go and worship. I guess for them, this was a big deal. 

For us, too, there is a big question. We don’t know what the transition will be like in the White House today or around the country, and we really don’t know what will happen in the next weeks, months or years.

We don’t know how much violence there will be going forward from the right wing militias that have developed in this country, we don’t know how much Trump will continue to play a role in this, we don’t know how strong Biden and Harris will be, how much real change will happen, we don’t know when and how the vaccine will work and be distributed, we don’t know when the pandemic will end.

The not knowing always seems the hardest part, as I’ve said before.

We don’t know, we don’t know, we don’t know. 

I heard an interview the other day from my favorite spiritual podcaster, Krista Tippett, with Nicki Giovanni, African-American poet and professor at Virginia Tech.

On slavery, she noted: it didn’t start with Europeans. (Duh.)

When speaking on her campus at Virginia Tech after the shooting over ten years ago, she said: 

We are sad today and we will be sad for quite a while.

We are not moving on. 

We are embracing our mourning. 

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly.

We are brave enough to bend to cry.

And we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again. 

Nicki Giovanni said of rape (specifically on the Virginia Tech campus): (sadly) there is no (true) justice that can come from it: only revenge. 

What we have seen from these right wing militias is lots of hatred and the intent of revenge for what they have been made to believe was an unjust election. 

There are many things we don’t know, but there is one thing we do know: taking revenge does not bring justice: only violence and more suffering. 

I’m not sure the Torah sets a good example here when God takes every firstborn Egyptian’s life. It seems a lot like revenge that can lead to more violence and suffering. 

The last thing we want to do is mirror the hatred, anger and violence coming from the carriers of Confederate and Nazi flags.

It is a spiritual practice to not hate one’s enemy.

It is also a spiritual practice to accept and live with the not-knowing.

I’m failing pretty miserably at both these days. The only thing that seems to help is not listening to the news, which doesn’t feel like an option at a time like this.

I guess all I can do is keep practicing.

And keep remembering that we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.

The Stench of Rot: Va’era

Well, the shit has finally hit the fan.

Or more like: fire and smoke rained down on Washington. 

In my own personal life, last week rained down a few, smaller, stressful things, including some sad and slightly traumatic news that came my way, followed by injuring my lower back, and culminating in the insanity of an attempted coup on Washington, all three of which happened on the same day! So, yes, fire and smoke rained down. 

What happened in U.S. politics last week and in Pharaoh’s Egypt of the Torah this week are one and the same. 

In Torah, the conversation God had with Moses in the previous parsha is put into motion; Moses does what God tells him to do, performing all the “signs” in order to prove God’s existence, strength and greatness so that Pharaoh will let the Hebrews, as they’re called, go and worship in the desert.

There is a rod turned into a snake; it’s the same rod that then strikes the Nile and turns it to blood, killing all the fish, causing a stench that makes the water too putrid to drink; there’s a second rod that turns all other Egyptian rivers and bodies of water into blood, blood that fills all vessels used anywhere; there are swarms of frogs that come out of the river and fill Pharaoh’s bedchamber and bed, all Egyptian ovens and kneading bowls; after they die, they are piled in heaps, and the stench fills the air. Next come the lice which cover “man and beast,” followed by swarms of insects and then a pestilence that kills all Egyptian animals, and finally all humans and beasts are covered in boils. 

It all culminates with fire and a very destructive hail raining down from the sky, ruining most of the crops, but none of this touches the Hebrews.

For a while, Pharaoh’s magicians are able to match and perform every single sign Moses performs, but eventually they can’t. And he keeps promising he will let the people go and worship their god, but immediately goes back to his old ways each time the present situation is solved. 

Pharaoh’s deceit continues until he must finally concede that he stands guilty-—yes, guilty: “Your God is right and I and my people are in the wrong.” 

You get a little jolt when you read this: Wow! Pharaoh admits he’s done wrong! 

But Moses is wiser than this. He says, “I know that you and your people are still not afraid/in awe of our God.”

And Moses is right not to trust Pharaoh’s words. Over and over, he has lied to Moses and to his own people as well. True to form, in the next moment, Pharaoh goes back on his promise to let the Hebrews go. 

This, my friends, is where the parsha ends.

The parallels between this story and our present day situation are eerie. The lies have been spewing out of Washington for years, and too many people have been fooled and manipulated. 

The stench from the dead fish is the stench of hatred in our country resulting in neglect, abuse, imprisonment, and disenfranchisement of certain populations, deportation of others and the long lasting repercussions that such policies have on generations of people---all of which has been hidden under the surface, swept under the rug, and has now been forced above ground like the swarms of frogs in Pharaoh’s Egypt. 

The blood is the blood on the hands of our president and his supporters: of hundreds of thousands dead from Covid, so many bodies that they had to set up outdoor morgues in L.A., no longer able to be tucked neatly from sight; it is the blood on the hands of police who have continued the legacy of racist ancestors, and of lawmakers who refuse to change their policies. 

And the fire and hail are what rained down in Washington last week. A final warning. 

Though I didn’t like his policies as governor of California, I have to admit that Arnold Schwarzenegger got it right, if you saw his Tweeted video. Here, he talks about growing up in post-war Austria with a father and neighbors who had quietly colluded with the Nazis and later couldn’t live with their guilt, becoming violent, drunk men. He made a warning to our nation that telling lies, the type that Hitler told and like those of Trump and his supporters, will destroy a country like they did Germany.

Like Moses with Pharaoh, we must be careful about believing that politicians who are abandoning their posts at the last minute are in any way repentant. We must be careful with a man like Pence and not hold him up as a hero just because of his actions last week. 

And we must remember that part of the lie is that we’re supposed to be “shaking hands across the aisle,” and negotiating. 

There was no negotiating with Hitler any more than there was with the KKK, and there is no negotiating with white supremacists today any more than in previous generations. There is no “agreeing to disagree.” 

Civil Rights advocates stood their ground, using Moses as an example, and calmly but forcefully kept repeating: Let my people go.

So must we.

Fire and Blood. Scales, too.

Unbelievable!!! But NOT! Because we knew this was going to happen. And to pretend otherwise would be like putting our heads in the sand, like Moses burying the Egyptian he’s just killed—although this is the opposite situation, of course.

Anyway, I feel compelled to re-blog this morning, as what I posted yesterday at mid-day did not address the alarming—and not unexpected!!—events that occurred later in the day and into the night in our “Great American Democracy’s” capital.

What Trump, our own Pharaoh, caused to happen is no more surprising than what we’ve been seeing over the past five years, or in light of the history of this country, and as much as law enforcement officials want us to believe that they were caught unprepared, we know that they were complicit in the attempts to incite a coup: A small taste of our own medicine—a reflection of what our government has been carrying out in other countries for decades and decades (watch/listen to today’s show on Democracy Now! for a non-mainstream analysis of the current events). As Cory Booker said, “We brought this hell upon ourselves!”

Our own Pharaoh may be on his way out, while the Torah’s Pharaoh has just been introduced to us in this week’s parsha, but he has shown that he is very capable of doing so much more damage, spilling much more blood, before leaving office in a little under two weeks. Invoking the 25th Amendment for the first time in American history would be totally appropriate in this case—and there should be no shaking of hands across any aisles!! When will that stop??

I still stand by my statement yesterday at the end of my blog post, and add to it:

We may be transitioning from a wannabe-dictator, but we are not out of danger, and we have not yet created a new kind of society. Not only are the problems of the world not solved through a vaccine, our problems are so much bigger than Coronavirus, because the inequity that exists—highlighted by the lack of police arrests yesterday of those attempting a coup, with the police literally moving the barriers back to allow violent people carrying Confederate flags into the Capitol in contrast to all past responses to protesters demanding a more equitable society (you know what would have happened had they been Black)—well, we have a long, long way ahead of us.

Again, our hearts don’t have to be pure to speak up for ourselves nor to speak up for those who need speaking for, any more than Moses’ heart was when being assigned the role of Great Liberator.

And again, we do need to reach into our hearts, scaly or not, and have more faith in ourselves and in each other as vehicles of the Divine, capable of bringing about liberation, not only for our country, but also the world.  

It is this that is required of us, whether it be loudly clambering, or quietly resisting, like the midwives Shifra and Puah.

All are valid. All are necessary.

Earth, Water, Fire; Hands, Hearts, Blood, and Snowy Scales; Sh’mot

What is left to say about one of the most famous Bible readings? So much pressure…

Because so much has already been said and written about this parsha: Moses being rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter, set in a basket on the Nile; the two famous midwives, Shifra and Puah, who go against Pharaoh’s command and rescue Hebrew babies; Moses and his problem with speech; the burning bush; Moses turning away from the bush, afraid to look at God; Moses protesting his assigned role as liberator; God’s naming himself “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh,” or “I am what I am; I will be what I will be.” Not to mention Moses as another in-between Egyptian/Hebrew like Joseph (Is there something significant about this under the surface?).

Here’s what struck me: 

The elements of nature (water, fire, air and earth) seem to play a really big role throughout this Torah reading.

1. Moses is named for being drawn out of the water (element #1).

2. Later, when fleeing for his life after killing an Egyptian slave driver, Moses sits by a well (water, again) where he meets his future wife (yes, I know, several romantic connections result from wells in Torah).

3. There is fire in the famous, unconsumed burning bush, from which an Angel of God emanates, and then God’s voice--into the air, of course (second and third elements).

4. In the burning-bush scene, God tells Moses to take off his sandals because this is “holy ground” he is standing on (earth!).

In addition, speech and the senses are very significant in this parsha:

1. Moses protests to God that he cannot be God’s messenger because the speech that comes from his mouth is “heavy.” He needs to use his tongue and voice, which must be expressed and heard.

2. Moses wants to know what to do if people doubt that this god made himself seen to Moses.

3. God becomes angry and points out that, isn’t God the one who gives and takes away speech, gives and takes away sight?

4. The speech is heard and miracles seen by the Israelites, but his speech falls on deaf ears, too, because Pharaoh refuses to heed Moses’ demands or requests, for which God prepares Moses.

5. And God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, numbing his feelings.

But let’s talk about Moses’ heart and hand. 

Moses worries that the Israelites will not believe him when he says he’s gotten a command from God’s own self. Will they have “emunah,”—faith in him? Will they trust him? And if they ask who this god is, what shall Moses tell them? 

This is where God gives him “signs,” and names himself; Tell them I am “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh,” or simply, “I will be what I will be”—not terribly reassuring, to say the least, to those who want to know, “Who is this guy??”

For the first “sign” to prove God’s power, God turns Moses’ staff into a snake. The third is the water of the Nile turning to blood (which we also understand to be a foreshadowing of what’s to come).

For the middle sign, God tells Moses to put his hand in his bosom. When he pulls it out, it’s all scaly and white like snow.

Did Moses touch his heart?

Moses is a vehicle for God; he speaks for God and represents what God wants for the world. Moses states that it is his speech that gets in the way of his ability to lead, but speech is often a reflection of what’s in the heart. Is this scaliness an indication of the state of Moses’ heart? Is Moses’ heart muddied like the waters of the Nile will be with blood later on, when push comes to shove?

Most importantly, does Moses’ heart need to be pure in order to serve God in this capacity as Great Liberator? Moses has killed an Egyptian, so the water/blood is already symbolic of what’s to come. Could Moses be questioning his ability to “speak” for God because of this?

Anyway, Moses protests and protests that he can not do this job, and God gets angry, but finally God says, okay, okay, I’ll let Aaron speak for you. But you’re still the leader!

God knows that Moses’ heart is not pure—whose heart is? But maybe it doesn’t have to be, any more than his speech. Moses is human, after all.

God can’t do it without Moses, nor can Moses do it without Aaron. Moses may be God’s chosen “leader,” but God also can’t do it without the smaller, quieter protesters, like the midwives, who have a huge impact by saving babies—look who they save, after all, but little baby Moses!! (And, speaking of the smaller, quieter protesters, the midwives’ hearts seem pretty pure—they know what they have to do—and their voices are strong when they speak to Pharaoh and slyly defend their actions.)

Maybe the focus on the elements of nature and Moses’ heart and speech are a reminder that God is all around us, found within everything and in every one of us: the fire, the water, the ground beneath our feet; our hearts, our voices.

“I will be what I will be” is a reflection of the constantly changing and developing world, and God will be whatever we need God to be in any given moment, constantly in flux, always available, through others, their hearts, speech, actions—and in the earth that is there to support us all.

There are people who say that physical illness is a reflection of what’s going on deep inside a body, and that this pandemic is a symptom of the sickness of our society.

Many people thought Covid-19 would be a thing of the past within a matter of months.

We may be transitioning from a wannabe-dictator, but we have not yet created a new kind of society, and the problems of the world are not solved through a vaccine.

Our hearts don’t have to be pure to speak up for ourselves nor to speak up for those who need speaking for.

But we do need to reach into our hearts, and have more faith in ourselves and in each other as vehicles of the Divine, capable of bringing about liberation for the world.  

Composing Your Life: Vayechi

“It was supposed to be this way.”

It may sound absurd, but that was my thought when I realized I had Coronavirus back in March. I was standing at the kitchen sink, and I had this thought, “I guess I was supposed to get Coronavirus.” 

It was so weird, because all the days prior to the shutdown of New York City, I kept going back and forth: we’re going to get sick; we’re not going to get sick. 

And then we did. And that’s the thought that came to me, like a flash. And I thought, what a strange thought. 

I wasn’t too public about this thought because, I thought, “What does this say about my theology?” 

It’s a dangerous thought, because, isn’t it this kind of thinking that leads to the attitude that poor people are supposed to be poor and the rich are supposed to be rich, therefore we don’t need to do anything to change the social structure”? 

You see, I don’t believe that. I love Liberation Theology for that reason, which counters the Catholic Church’s traditional teaching that we are here on earth to suffer and our reward will come in the afterlife. 

No! That kind of thinking is one of acceptance of oppression as the natural order of things--and no one can deny that the Catholic Church has been very oppressive and controlling throughout millennia, try as they might. 

So how does my thinking about myself fit in with the wider picture? 

I’ll be honest: I don’t know. 

I just know it felt true for me. 

Don’t get me wrong: I was terrified the entire time, for myself and my husband, especially when he was in the hospital; I was having panic attacks and calling for support at 2 a.m.

The spiritual growth that came from that time, though, for all in my household, was immense, and I am grateful for it, and grateful beyond expression for our survival. 

But I was struck when I heard the same words, “supposed to,” come out of musician, songwriter, speaker Gaelynn Lea’s mouth in an interview with Krista Tippett this past Sunday. Here is a tiny woman in a wheelchair, born with Brittle Bone Disease, has literally never walked on her own two feet, has lived unable to do things most people can do, who said, “This was supposed to happen to me.” 

She and I not the only ones; Joseph, too, says so yet again in this week’s Torah reading. His father has died after living 17 years in Egypt, and now his brothers worry again that Joseph will take revenge on them for what they did to him as a boy. 

And Joseph repeats, in so many words, “Don’t worry. Though you meant me harm, God intended it for good, because it was my life that saved a whole lot of others.” 

Basically: “It was supposed to be this way.”

I asked the question last week again, about whether Joseph had been transformed, or grown spiritually, through his suffering. My answer was finally, yes. Joseph is at peace now. He has found deeper meaning in all his suffering. 

The thing is, we can never see the reasons for our experiences, good or bad, except in hindsight. Which is why we can never say to someone else in the midst of their suffering, “You’ll understand one day; it’s part of your spiritual growth.”

You do that, and they’ll spit in your face--or worse--and for good reason; we should never diminish another’s suffering. 

Which is why I was fascinated by what Gaelynn Lea had to say. 

She said that she had learned that she had a kind of freedom that people without disabilities don’t have (and 29% of the general population does have some kind of disability, many invisible to others; you should watch the movie Crip Camp on Netflix if you haven’t seen it!! It will give you a deeper understanding of the nuances of living with disabilities and the people who live with them—and it’s a beautiful movie all around).

Lea said that everybody has some kind of disability, meaning we all don’t fit in somehow. 

She said that Herbert Marcuse, political theorist, philosopher and sociologist, opened her eyes to the idea that capitalism controls the very images of ourselves and is designed to make us all feel inadequate; as we know, we are taught every day by the media, what we are supposed to look like, and we place people in categories that are so hard to free ourselves from: “too” this or “too” that---

And because the regular rules of how Gaelynn Lea was “supposed” to look were so far off from her reality, she was free from the unattainable standards set by the capitalist system. She was free to “compose her life” and become herself entirely. And she has (with undeniable privilege, as she says)!

The point is, we limit ourselves and others by our beliefs of what is “supposed to” be. 

On his deathbed, Jacob gives blessings to each of his children, according to his knowledge of who they are. Some of what he knows may be astute, but by doing so, he limits them through his blessings.

Something similar happens with Joseph’s two sons, Menasseh and Ephraim (remember them? “Make Me Forget” and “Double Fruit”?). 

Joseph brings them for grandpa’s blessing in the proper order of their birth, on the right and on the left, and Jacob crosses his arms to give them their blessings the other way around. 

Joseph protests (after the fact, I must point out!), saying, “No, father, that’s not the way it’s supposed to be,” to which Jacob answers, “Yes, it is.” 

One wonders, how was Jacob “supposed” to be buried? He makes Joseph swear to take his body back and bury him with his family. Joseph fulfills his promise, but not before embalming and mourning him in the Egyptian manner, only to “sit shiva” for him months later, after burying him—not the “Jewish way,” to say the least.

And Joseph? He himself is embalmed and mourned as an Egyptian, yet his sons become the leaders of Jewish tribes. 

Both Jacob and Joseph remain in a kind of liminal space of Jewish vs. Egyptian, unchanged and yet transformed, Jacob/Israel, Joseph the Jew/Joseph the Egyptian, in both life and in death.  

What is “supposed to be?” 

I don’t know what’s “supposed to be,” for other people or for the world. And we should never stop demanding that the world should be a place of more equity, greater justice, and less suffering. 

But--to end with Gaelynn Lea’s lyrics: 

Where to turn? 

There’s so many opinions and the outlook’s getting dim.

What makes you think you’ll ever get there?

What makes you think you deserve to know?

Who are you really? 

Are you really so important?

Take a look around and watch the world unfold.

Take a look around and watch the world unfold.

Because, maybe it’s somewhere in the liminal space between “Supposed to be” and “Is.” 

With this way of thinking, perhaps we, too, can compose our lives.

Dark Knight of the Soul: Va’Yigash

I’ve been thinking a lot about suicide this week--NO, don’t worry--NOT MY OWN!

It’s just that I’ve been hearing about it--on a podcast called Last Day (I highly recommend it if you want to learn about addiction as well), and then in an interview with Jennifer Michael Hecht with Krista Tippet on On Being: an historian, writer, poet, philosopher who writes and speaks on the subject of suicide and its prevention, among other things.

Hecht says that suicide is often thought of in a very individualistic way, reflecting our culture; people will often say suicide is a “right.”

To which Hecht asks, “A right to what?” 

She presses further: “Would you say a parent of young children has a right to kill themselves? What about a teenager?” 

Inevitably, the answer is, “No.”

So who are these people who are supposedly of sound mind and should be allowed to choose suicide? 

Besides experiencing complete despair, many severely depressed or sick people often worry about being a burden to those who love them and think that killing themselves will relieve those around them (and to be clear, we are not talking about medically assisted suicide). 

But both Hecht and the podcaster for Last Day want people to know that a person’s suicide will be exponentially more of a burden to those left behind than their staying; anger, disbelief, and guilt are just a few of the emotions that proceed a suicide. 

This is part of a communitarian, as opposed to individualistic, argument, which says that we are all in this strange and absurd thing called Life together; each of us is of more value than we can ever imagine, and the effect on those left behind--not just family and friends, but even those at a distance, is devastating and among the worst possible things that could happen to them.

Says Hecht: Staying alive means so much more than any of us can ever know. 

Hecht also says that our culture needs to put more value on suffering and survival than we do; we need to honor perseverance. 

Don’t say, “Everything’s going to be alright,” because it’s not true. 

Rather, since there is no avoiding pain, we need to have the attitude that we learn and grow through pain, she says. Our culture teaches the exact opposite; taking away pain is our cultural m.o.—avoid at all cost! 

Not only is there an entire pharmaceutical industry built around masking pain, we have lots of gadgets and “things” to distract us from it and help us avoid it. 

But! Hecht points out that many leaders highlight humbling experiences--their own suffering--and the fact that they made it through, as the thing that allowed them to become leaders; it is our suffering that makes us wise, and gives us the strength to lead, carry and hold each other.

Life is absurd and strange and difficult, as the ancient Roman philosopher, Seneca, said, but we have to stay for each other. 

Now I ask: What if it had been our forefather, Joseph, who, in his misery, had decided his life was not worth living? 

Last week we saw the pain Joseph had been carrying his entire life, trying to forget his misery and loss at being separated from his family, sold and shipped off by the cruelty of his brothers. 

Joseph has been in pits and dungeons: literally, in the depths of darkness. 

Joseph has been through the Dark Night of the Soul, and he wanted to make his brothers feel just a little bit of his pain. 

Last week I asked the question about whether Joseph had been transformed by his suffering in all the time he’d had to think. My answer was that it wasn’t clear.

But this week’s reading makes it clear: he has been transformed. Even though he is still angry, his perception of what happened to him shows immense growth;

...after revealing his true identity, Joseph says to his trembling brothers who had long ago wanted him dead: “Don’t be distressed. This was not your doing, but God’s. If God had not sent me here, I would not have been able to help with the famine, and we would all be dead.”

Living through the Dark Night of the Soul is an act of courage---the courage of a knight, perhaps, who throws himself into battle despite his overwhelming fear---that can have an effect with exponential reverberations that we will never know unless we stick around. As Hecht says, “You don’t know what your future self will be.” 

Joseph’s future self is a rise to power that helps an entire nation and surrounding lands survive a severe famine. Having been humbled more than once, Joseph ultimately becomes a great leader.

The effects of our lives may not be as dramatic as Joseph’s, but the fact is, we really don’t know--again, like the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life! (Merry Christmas?)

Maybe, in the end, this blog post isn’t really about suicide (it’s definitely not about the societal causes of it, or the society we need, which would truly take care of its people), but about ordinary suffering and the fact that, as a culture, we think that if each of us individually just did things right, we would no longer have to suffer—which is, again, a (messed up) individualistic idea that comes from the culture of blame that we are the products of (because it serves certain interests).

Instead, this blog post is really about how much more important each of our little lives is than we think, and that the little things we do and the little ways we are matter way more than we think.

May we continue to hold each other up in our struggle and suffering, because the fact is, we’re in this strange and absurd thing called Life---together. 

Dreaming of Forgetting, and Fruit in the Dark: Miketz

This week’s parsha starts with Joseph being let out of the dungeon. Like the time of year we are in and the very year we are ending, he has been in the darkest of places.

Joseph is remembered by the chief cup bearer to Pharaoh who needs his dreams interpreted. As a result of Joseph’s interpretation, Egypt is able to prepare for a severe famine, and he is elevated to an even higher position than before, entrusted with all the food stores of the land and their distribution-- all this, and he’s only 30 years old! He’s also given a new name, like his father before him, and to show even more appreciation, Pharaoh gives him an Egyptian wife of high standing. 

And guess who shows up in the midst of the famine? Joseph’s brothers--looking to procure food!! 

Remember the dream about them one day bowing down to him? Well, that’s what happens.

Joseph is now a powerful man, dressed in the finest Egyptian garments, I suppose with a different hairstyle, too, and they bow low without even recognizing him. 

His dream has come true, but I imagine not in the way he would have wanted, for it is in this parsha that we learn of Joseph’s pain. 

Joseph is no longer the cocky youth who smugly told his brothers his dreams. He is now the man who not only humbles his brothers, but who has himself been humbled by life.

Joseph has been on a roller coaster. He has gone from being his father’s favorite to being thrown into a pit, sold and shipped off to Egypt, become the favorite of a king, been framed by Pharaoh’s wife, thrown into a dungeon, forgotten, and now elevated almost to Pharaoh’s level. 

Like his uncle Esau before him, he’s had time to think and reflect in the darkness, and like his father Jacob, he’s had time to be transformed.

But was he transformed? 

What kinds of thoughts does one have when in a pit--or a dungeon?  

It’s not entirely clear what lessons he’s taken from this time, except that forgiveness and contentment are not among them like they were for Esau. 

One thing we do know for sure is that he wants to forget. One of the two children he has by his Egyptian wife is named Menasheh, or “God has made me forget my hardship and my parental home.” 

But just because he wants to forget doesn’t mean he does. 

In fact, he remembers so clearly what his brothers did to him that he puts them through the ringer. It’s like he’s been planning his revenge for years: he accuses them of being spies, sneaks their payment for the foodstores back into their bags, demands that they bring their youngest brother, Benjamin, back with them next time on pain of death, keeps one brother in prison until they return, and places a silver goblet in Benjamin’s bag---all to scare the *#@%& out of them.

The result is the brothers living in terror. They suspect that God is punishing them for what they did to Joseph all those years ago.

Better yet, Joseph is punishing them for the pain they’ve caused him—they just don’t know it yet.

Joseph might have also been thinking, “How is it that I’m special, but I keep getting thrown into dark places?” 

Yes, his brothers technically messed up his life the moment they threw him into the pit. He’s experienced tremendous loss as a result.

We, too, have been thrown into a pit. For those younger than a certain age, we’ve collectively had the worst year in our lifetime. We have experienced terror and hopelessness, and tremendous loss. Many want revenge. 

Joseph can point fingers at his brothers, and we can point fingers too, at those who have caused our suffering and that of the world.

In the end, Joseph doesn’t get satisfaction from torturing his brothers.

Having the power to inflict pain on them now doesn’t take away his own.

As we see, underneath his rage is just plain raw grief; when his brothers can’t see, and when he can no longer contain himself, Joseph runs from the room and cries the tears he’s been holding in. 

His leaving the room might be symbolic of his taking a different direction, releasing grief that’s been bottled up inside for so long.

Our goal should be to do things differently this time, too: to see the humanity in others, as Joseph sees the humanity in his brothers; as angry as he is, he always intended to provide for them. It’s unconscionable what they did to him, yet he does not forget that they are human.

Yes, Joseph is still in the pit in this part of the story, but maybe the release of his tears allows him to move forward in some way.

We, too, are still in the pit in so many ways; we, too, have a lot of tears to release; we, too, ask, “Why does this keep happening?” (the answer for which is not the subject of this blog post.)

But Joseph names his second child Ephraim, meaning “double fruit,” because God has made him bear fruit in the land of his affliction. 

Joseph doesn’t forget, but he also doesn’t stay in the pit. He just cries. And he bears the fruit of a new life in many ways.

We also will not forget, nor will we stay in the pit. We need to release our grief so we can move forward as well.

And just like Joseph, we will continue to bear fruit.

May the light and miracles of Chanukah be a reminder of the possibility of bearing the fruit of a new way of living and a new kind of society. 

Wrestling with Ego: Va-yeishev

Last week we witnessed Jacob’s transformation and the pain involved in that. 

This week, we have Joseph, Jacob/Yisrael’s favorite of all his sons. 

The first thing I wondered was, how exactly was Jacob transformed? 

I guess not in the way we moderns would have hoped, because he doesn’t change his father’s pattern of choosing favorites, even after his own trauma with his brother, Esau. He doesn’t decide, ooh, I’m not repeating that pattern. 

The results of having a favorite are, as we’ve seen, not good. 

Joseph is Jacob’s baby, and more than a little bit spoiled. Papa gives him a special tunic that his brothers don’t get (you know, the multicolored coat made famous by children’s storybooks and Broadway).

And he’s a dreamer--but not a dreamer with his head in the clouds. Rather, in the prophetic sense. His dreams come true, and he’s also able to correctly interpret the dreams of others. 

So he’s a prophet, he thinks he’s really special, and on top of that, he flaunts it. 

Really bad combo. 

Which makes his brothers even more angry and jealous than they already were. 

So the brothers devise a plan to kill him, finally agreeing not to kill their own flesh and blood and, instead, selling him to some passing Midianite merchants.

These merchants bring him down to Egypt where he ends up in Pharaoh’s court, and becomes a favorite there, too! 

Things are going really well, but then Joseph is framed by Pharaoh’s wife because he rejects her sexual overtures, and he is thrown into the dungeon. 

There, he meets Pharaoh’s chief cupbearer and chief baker who are also in trouble, and predicts their dreams as well. 

If we could, would we choose to know the future?

How much should we know? 

Does it matter who the deliverer of the news is? 

Does it matter if it’s in our favor or not?

Last but not least, do we really want to know? 

Wouldn’t we love to know that we’re going to survive Global Warming, that the earth will regain its balance, when this pandemic will end, whether the vaccine we are offered for Covid will be safe, and that one day we will live in peace on earth?

For real. It would offer us so much comfort.

A woman who attends my morning minyan said the other day, “If I knew what was going to happen to me, my life would be a mess.” 

I loved that she said that, because she’s so right. 

Her argument was, if it’s good news, then I might become too complacent and not value the time I have left; if it’s bad news, I might lose all hope and think it’s futile to try and change things. 

Or I might live in so much fear that it paralyzes me.

Movies have been made about this subject. It’s a rosy picture if you know you get to make different choices (remember It’s a Wonderful Life?). But most of the time the characters are depicted as not having the awareness that they are getting a second chance, so it doesn’t leave us satisfied and happy. That’s real. 

Back to Joseph. 

There’s something else going on with him that adds a certain angle.

His brothers and father get pissed off with him for more than just knowing and sharing what he knows. Sure; it would make anyone angry if you told them in so many words that you, the youngest, will one day have power over them. 

But they get pissed off also because of Joseph’s attitude; he’s superior, privileged and insensitive to the impact of his words. He talks as if they’re just facts, with no feelings involved.

Even after his brothers try to kill him, he doesn’t stop to think why, and repeats the pattern with Pharaoh’s chief cup bearer and baker. Without a moment of hesitation, he tells the baker that he will soon be impaled. This is no harder for Joseph than telling the chief cup bearer that he will be restored to his post, or than it was to tell his brothers and father that they would one day bow down to him.

Prophets have always been outcasts of society because they rail against the rich and against empty offerings, and for society not taking care of the poor and vulnerable. They care. We get angry because we don’t want to hear these difficult truths. It’s too hard to do things differently--to change the status quo. We’d rather not hear. 

But with Joseph, he doesn’t seem to care; he just keeps doing it over and over again. He has no humility or sensitivity. And the news he shares with his fellow prisoners is not in any way helpful and might be harmful; one finds out he will be saved while the other finds out he will die. They can’t change the outcome, so how does it help to know?

Knowing the future doesn’t solve any problems. It’s not a magic bullet.

Maybe we need a reminder to meet the future with much more humility. Knowing is neither an answer nor a solution to any situation. It doesn’t take away the fact that we still have work to do.

Maybe it’s also about being able to relax with the not-knowing, to value the time we have, and to be sensitive to how our words and actions impact others and the future. 

And maybe, when someone tells us we’re not doing these things, that our patterns are not helpful and may even be harmful, we need to listen.

Wrestling with Demons: Va-yishlach

I’ve noticed that I’ve gotten in the habit of observing my thoughts in preparation for writing my blogs. Like this thought I just wrote down. 

In When Things Fall Apart, by Pima Chodron, I read that the purpose of meditation is not to quiet the mind, but rather to observe the thoughts. Thank God, because I can never seem to quiet my mind. 

Where do my mind and thoughts go? What do the voices inside say? 

I don’t know about you, but usually for me--not such a good place.

I also know that by noticing my thoughts, I can have just a little bit of control over them, and at least try and redirect them. But it takes an inner struggle to do that--a kind of wrestling. In the process, I am transforming the way I view and interact with the world. 

Jacob’s mind, as we can see in this week’s parsha, has been in a terrible state for the past decades. He’s heading back “home”, a successful man with wives, concubines, many children and livestock. He’s meeting his brother, Esau, on the way. 

And he’s absolutely terrified. (Remember Jacob ran away after impersonating Esau so he could steal his father’s blessing, and then Esau was so hurt and angry that he wanted to kill Jacob? Yeah, things were bad.)

Jacob is prepared for the worst possible meeting. He imagines that Esau might attack him, so he devises an intricate plan with servants leading the way, sending them ahead (thus the title of the parsha), dividing his entourage into two camps just in case, announcing gifts to appease Esau, and presenting himself in the most humble fashion. 

When the encounter finally happens, what he imagined would happen never comes true. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Esau hugs him, they fall onto each other and they sob. 

Esau refuses the gifts, stating that he has plenty of his own acquisitions, and only accepts at Yaakov’s pressing. 

I mean! The years of inner torture. How Yaakov’s imagination ran wild, while all the while, the “wild one”, Esau, has come to a place of forgiveness and apparent contentment. 

Esau has apparently done the inner work he needed to do, whereas Jacob, well...not so much. 

In fact, the night Jacob spends alone by the river, he wrestles with an angel, we’re told. 

Or was it his own self? 

It’s curious that it seems to be the angel who begs him to stop, and Jacob answers, “Only if you give me a blessing.” So the angel does. His blessing is a change of name, from Jacob to Israel, Yaakov to Yisrael, which means God-wrestler, according to one translation. It’s a kind of transformation from being the one who comes on the heel of his brother, taking advantage, to someone who faces and wrestles with the demons he himself created.

The wrestling stops, but not without serious injury to Jacob, who goes limping off. 

Esau, meanwhile, seems unscathed and at peace. We are not told of his own transformation and how he came to be the man he is and to forgive Jacob. 

Either way, there’s a process. And there has to be some introspection, whether conscious or not. Maybe Esau had someone to talk to. Or maybe out in the wilderness, he had plenty of quiet time to be alone, think, and observe his thoughts. 

Maybe Jacob was too busy running from the past instead of facing it. 

How many of us torture ourselves with our own thoughts? 

Just thinking about the conversations I’ve had over the past months of this pandemic and the years of having Trump as president, I am reminded of all the fear. (Well, more like terror.)

Like Jacob, we anticipated and planned for the worst: What if the incumbent got re-elected? What if this pandemic never stops? 

But Esau did not attack Jacob; the incumbent did not get re-elected; the pandemic is not over, but it will stop. 

This is not to say that we shouldn’t be prepared for the worst. The worst can happen, and we can sometimes prevent it--with our hard work. In the last years and months, we have seen both what happens when you let things go unchecked, and what happens when you work towards change. 

But here’s the other part I’m getting at: Isn’t it possible to prepare for the worst while also expecting the best? To do the work required while also not predicting doom? 

After all--if we ask how much work it takes to transform the world, we must first ask how much work it takes to transform ourselves. How much wrestling with ourselves and our own thoughts? 

Yes, it takes a lot, and we may feel like we’re being injured in the process, but in fact, maybe we’re just allowing old wounds to come to the surface--whether they’re wounds we personally carry inside, or old wounds in our country that are coming out of the woodwork. 

Scary as it is facing our demons, the outcome of freedom and transformation is worth the effort.

The Presents of Presence: Va-Yetzei

Yesterday: I’m standing at the sink washing and cleaning the kitchen, and suddenly I become acutely aware of the water. How amazing that I can open the faucet and clean water just pours out. I have a flash in my mind of people in places where this is still not the case. 

I think, also, of the fact that I have no idea what it feels like to actually be starving. 

This week’s Torah reading starts with Jacob on the run, sleeping in the open with a rock as a pillow, and his famous dream of the ladder with angels going up and down. He wakes up and states: “Surely, God is present in this place and I did not know it!”

He then makes a vow that if God stays with him, protects him, gives him food and clothing, and gets him home safe, he will accept this God.  

Later in the parsha, following the beautiful story of love-at-first-sight between Jacob and Rachel, is the heartbreaking story of Leah. 

Rachel is barren while Leah keeps giving birth to Jacob’s children, hoping each time that this will be the time when Jacob finally loves her. 

Before the birth of her last child, she states, “Now God has taken away my disgrace,” and names this son Joseph. 

The Hebrew word for “take away” is asaf, while Joseph, or Yosef, means “add”. The root of each word is the same, while the meaning of each is opposite. 

Is God’s presence measured by how much abundance is in our life? If we don’t know God is there, does that mean God isn’t there? 

Jacob will only accept God if he makes his life safe and abundant. 

Leah’s life feels empty without the love of her husband, yet she is abundant with children. Rachel’s life feels empty without children, yet she is abundant with the love of Jacob. 

This Thanksgiving many of us are mourning the fact that “it won’t be the same this year.” We can’t gather with family and friends in large groups. Some will even be completely alone. 

At the same time, over the past nine months, I’ve heard over and over about the blessings that have come out of the pandemic--always in a hushed way; it’s too awful to admit that anything good could come out of so many people suffering, dying and losing loved ones. Many can’t pay rent, buy food, or have become homeless. 

Without dishonoring the horrors of the past months that are continuing in much of the country, much of which could be and could have been prevented, what this pandemic is teaching us is a new way of being. There are things that have been taken away, but also things that have been added. 

As we all know, material abundance does not translate into happiness or gratitude. It’s so easy to be grateful when everything is going well, and much more difficult when times are tough. 

Yet, people who live with the least are often the most grateful. A person living with chronic pain might be grateful simply for a good night’s sleep. A starving person might be grateful just for a morsel of bread. I spoke with an 88-year-old woman yesterday who lives alone and who, instead of complaining about not having contact with others, is incredibly grateful for Zoom--unlike so many of us who complain we’ve had enough of it.

Our losses are real, and we need to mourn what’s been taken away, but that doesn’t take away  what’s been added.  

As human beings, like Rachel and Leah, we have the well-known tendency to look for and notice what’s lacking. It’s a literal survival mechanism. Perhaps Rachel wouldn’t have had a baby if she hadn’t cried out to God. 

Some people call God “Presence”. 

Let’s continue to find creative ways to offer the presents of our presence to each other until we have figured out a new way of being and living with each other in the world. 

Because maybe that’s where God is: in our presence. 

This Thanksgiving, let’s be like Jacob in the moment he wakes up from his dream and says, frightened as he was: “God was present in this place and I did not know it.” 

Truth or Blind? Toldot

Doctors can be so arrogant: “Oh, so you just ignored it?” 

And flippant about dangerous “side effects” of medications they prescribe: “Just keep taking it,” a doctor said to me the other day. 

No, I didn’t “decide to ignore it!” I want to scream. “I was trying to avoid invasive procedures.” And I was scared. But I don’t say anything. I just shrug sheepishly. I should have taken care of it sooner. Now look. 

There are many reasons to “ignore” something. Maybe it means letting go of the image of myself as young and healthy and the “I can take care of it myself through a good diet, yoga and Qi Gong, meditation, exercise,” attitude. 

The truth can be scary. 

In the Torah, Isaac doesn’t want to see the truth either, and it’s really easy to do what my doctor did to me: judge him for it.

In this week’s parsha, Isaac and Rebecca finally have babies after at least twenty years: twins, defined by God as warring nations within Rebecca’s womb; Jacob manipulates his twin brother Esau into giving up his birthright, which Esau does flippantly in a moment of extreme hunger and weakness after a long day of hunting.

Later, Isaac, old and getting to the end of his life, asks Esau to go out and hunt and make him his favorite stew in preparation for the special blessing he will give his favorite son (did the boys not tell their parents they’d traded birth places? Or did it even matter in the end, because your favorite is your favorite?).

Rebecca overhears and devises a plan that will make sure that Jacob gets the blessing instead. She helps Esau clothe himself in Jacob’s best, and prepares the hairy skin of a baby goat to cover Jacob’s arms and personify the hairy Esau. 

We come to the moment of truth, and Isaac is blind to it. 

Yes, Isaac is in fact pretty blind, but he’s still got his hearing, and he knows right away that Jacob’s voice is not Esau’s. When questioned, Jacob denies his true identity, but Isaac’s suspicions are strong enough that he touches Jacob’s arm and smells his clothing. 

And he allows himself to be fooled just because a couple of things add up, even though in his heart, he knows it can’t be true.

In other words, with his hearing in tact, plus his intelligent brain that tells him that Esau couldn’t possibly be back from the hunt and have prepared the stew for him in the given time frame, he allows the wool to be pulled over his eyes, so to speak, gives his special blessing to Jacob, and breaks Esau’s heart. Esau is so hurt that he wants to kill Jacob, a foreshadowing of the two warring nations. 

Don’t we want to say to Isaac in great frustration, “Really?? You knew! The signs were all there!”

If we knew an Isaac today, we would probably call him an idiot.

But what was it? Did he not trust himself? Or did he not want to believe that one of his children would do such a thing? Or?

People are complicated, and whatever the reasons, we find ourselves saying the same thing we would like to say to Isaac when we hear or watch the news about our present day political situation: “How could this be?? How can people be so blind??” We shake our heads in disgust and disbelief. 

But are we really that different from Isaac and all those people out there that we each feel so superior to? Whatever our opinions may be, our mantra is the same, even if we don’t use these exact words: “They’re idiots.”

I’m reading a book, You Should Talk to Someone, by Lori Gottlieb.  It’s a fun autobiography of a therapist talking to her therapist. She cries for weeks, months maybe, about her boyfriend who broke up just before they were supposed to get married. The same day he buys tickets to the movies with her for the coming week he springs this on her--out of nowhere! What an asshole! 

There’s another character, her patient, for whom everyone in his life is an idiot. You just keep hearing, “What an idiot,” from him, which is really annoying because, of course, this guy doesn’t want to take responsibility for anything in his life so he blames it on everyone else.

After weeks, maybe months, of crying and retelling the story of this injustice done to her, Gottlieb is finally able to recognize that the signs that her boyfriend would not go through with the marriage were there all along. She just didn’t want to see them. And her patient, well, I’m at the point in the book where she finally starts to make progress with this guy and reach his heart, the place where he’s scared and hurt.

I don’t really want to face the fact that my body is getting older, that my blood pressure is high, that I may have other health issues and that I may need to take those prescription meds with side effects. 

And I can point to my doctor and say, “How arrogant!” But when it comes down to it, secretly I’m probably just as arrogant and self-righteous, and sometimes even flippant. Though I try not to be, I know that deep down (or maybe not so deep), I think I’m right. 

I’m not denying the political mess we’re in the midst of, and that there is real truth out there, and that there are really racist people out there. That right there is a truth in itself. And we are rightly worried about the fact that we have two warring nations within one.

But it’s too easy to judge others when we “hold the truth.” And there are many reasons other may not see.

Isaac is a reminder to all of us that we can be just as blind to the truth and that there are always signs. We just have to take the time to notice them. 

Isaac is also a reminder to work on our superiority complex. Because, do we really see any more clearly than other people, or do we mostly see what we want to see. (Yeah, that’s not a question. It’s a statement.)

In the end, I’m just scared. We’re all just scared. And maybe Isaac is too.

Election Special: Sandwiches and Caves; Chayei Sarah

I’m sure each of us has our story, like from 9/11: “Where were you when…?”

But this time it was about what felt to us like the most significant election in U.S. history. 

Many of us heaved a sigh of relief, shouted for joy, banged pots, jumped up and down, danced in the streets. 

And shed a lot of tears.

I know I did. I didn’t even know how much grief I was holding in while I was holding it together. 

This week’s Torah reading begins with grief. Sarah has just died, and Abraham, his life partner, must bury her. They’re not home for some reason, and I guess it’s too far to ship her body (no modern amenities). 

After much negotiation with the locals, Abraham settles on a cave for her burial site, and when the mourning period is over, he sends his servant to find a wife for his son Isaac “back home”. 

The terms are very specific: Isaac is not allowed, under any circumstances, to go back and live with the girl if she does not agree to come. The servant swears under oath and with the threat of a curse (hand under master’s thigh--a serious vow indeed) to bring a woman back with him. 

Naturally, the servant worries that he will not be successful. Abraham promises that an angel of God will lead the way and make his quest successful. 

We could easily read this injunction as Abraham saying, “My family and my people are superior to these locals; we need to keep our bloodline pure.” 

This would be a normal and correct reading.

Yet, there’s another way of looking at it. Abraham is the beginning of our people’s making its way away from many gods, towards the Oneness of God, away from separation, towards Unification. 

With this comes the understanding that we are all equal. That humanity is One. And though he is just getting this message and barely beginning to understand what this means, he will not allow his family to go back there. Whatever good comes from his place of birth must come to a new land. 

Abraham represents our continued struggle with separation vs. Unity. 

We have just come through---wait a minute, have we yet??---a very trying period. I’m going to venture and guess that the past weeks, months, and years, have involved the highest stress we’ve experienced as a race---the human race---globally since the beginning of time. 

Between a pandemic and a leader who---oh, there’s no need for me to repeat what everyone hears and repeats constantly...

So, yes, many of us collectively heaved a sigh of relief this past Saturday. 

But many of us did not.

And the grief is not gone. 

These past four years, and the pandemic, have exposed the sickness that is in our country and our world.  

And it didn’t take long after the initial celebration for me to realize that I want to start saying that the incumbent lost, not that Biden won. 

Because what does that winning mean? So many votes that went to Biden were protest votes--against something we don’t want, like Abraham not wanting Isaac to go back. The not-going-back doesn’t really represent a change from the (previous) status quo, in Abraham’s case or our present situation.  

There’s been so much talk of our “divided country” and the need to come together, to “unify” us. 

But is unification of our country really what we’re looking for at the present moment? 

Sure--if unification means that racism and bigotry disappear and everyone wakes up to the fact that we are all equal, then yes, we don’t want a “divided country”. 

But if unification means working together with those who have no interest in your welfare and literally want you dead, well, that’s not the kind of unification we’re after. 

As I heard a political analyst and writer on the NPR show, On the Media, this past Sunday say, why would you work together with someone who wants to destroy you? This is not to say we shouldn’t be hopeful, but it doesn’t bode well for the kind of change we’re after.  

It’s an age-old problem, this thing that Abraham teaches us about: those people are different and they’re not good enough for my son. 

But there’s something positive there as well. In sending for a wife from “back home,” Abraham shows a willingness to find something of his past to bring into the future. Rebecca, Isaac’s future wife, knows this instinctively when she agrees without hesitation to leave her home and go forth to a new place and a new life; the servant’s quest is successful.

We, too, must find and bring forward what’s good from the past, like the age-old wisdom of ancient cultures that’s been lost.

I find it interesting that the Torah reading of the week is sandwiched with a cave; Sarah is buried in a cave at the beginning, and Abraham is buried with her there at the end of the parsha. 

We also are not out of the cave yet. We can’t fool ourselves. We definitely can’t go back to where we were--there’s really no going back---and too many people have come out for change, real change, during these past four years. But there are still so many people who aren’t getting the message of Unification with a big “u”. We’re still in the dark. 

After Sarah’s death and after Isaac is married off, Abraham marries again and has five more children. We also learn of Ishmael’s future generations. These children are named, and the line continues with grandchildren into the future. 

Life goes on and we keep moving forward, on the path to Oneness that Abraham set us on when he smashed the idols. 

And in the same way we prayed during this trying period, whether out of habit or really believing the Universe could hear us, perhaps we can stretch ourselves and believe there are angels accompanying us along the way, just as they did for Abraham’s servant, toward success on our quest. 

Abandon Hope: Va-Yera

I wanted to get this out before the results of the elections come out, which we know will take some time, while everyone is on edge, holding their breath. 

Following is a summary of all the insane things that happen in this week’s Torah reading. It would be an interesting exercise to find a parallel in today’s world for much of the story line (and I invite anyone out there reading this to do so if it strikes your fancy). 

Warning: the following contains disturbing images and a fair amount of violence.

1. Soon after Abraham has circumcised himself at 100 years old, he runs around (ouch) preparing a feast for some visitors in the heat of the day along with Sarah. The three men/angels that Abraham and Sarah are serving bring news that Sarah will give birth at 90. (How can that be a pretty picture?)

2. God decides that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are too evil and need to be destroyed. Abraham argues on their behalf, God sort of agrees, and destroys them anyway.  

3. Two men/messengers from God come to Lot’s house at his invitation and the townspeople attack the house with a threat of rape against the strangers.

4. Lot offers his daughters instead. (Nice move.)

5. The messengers tell Lot he must leave Sodom with his family because they are about to destroy the (twin?) cities. He informs his family, and they think he’s lost it and seem to ignore him. 

6. After stalling for a while, Lot flees with his family at the last moment before the destruction, and sees the cities consumed by fire. 

7. Lot’s wife looks back and turns into a pillar of salt. (A little traumatic.)

8. Lot’s daughters, bereft of all hope and believing their father is the only man left on earth, get him drunk so they can sleep with him and continue the family line and humanity.

9. Abraham pretends a second time that Sarah is not his wife, this time with King Abimelech.

10. Sarah casts Hagar out, also a second time, but this time with her baby Ishmael to die in the desert because she is afraid her son Isaac will have to share his inheritance. 

11. And the grand finale: Abraham almost sacrifices his son on an altar. 

This parsha reads like a terrible nightmare that you can’t wake up from. 

Maybe like the one we’ve been in, just a different version. 

Fear, it can be argued, fuels so much of what takes place, both in the biblical world and in ours. 

Hope, also, is figured into the lives of the biblical characters, as we are obsessively talking about our own hopes for the near and far future. 

According to Buddhist nun Pema Chodron in When Things Fall Apart, hope and fear are two sides of the same coin. 

Hope is described as robbing us of the present moment. It means we are thinking about the future and all that is wrong that needs to change. 

Whenever we start thinking about the future, we become afraid. 

And things definitely feel like they’re falling apart. 

We are pinned to the news, looking at election results moment by moment, even though we know it’s useless to do so. 

We are panicked and holding our breath, wondering what kind of plan we should have in place, just in case. Just like the messengers of God who pull Lot by the hand and force him to leave before Sodom and Gomorrah go up in smoke, should we be planning an exit strategy and pulling each other along...before it’s too late?

But there’s one particular detail that caught my eye in the parsha, aside from all the destruction, which occurs twice; Hagar and Abraham, in the worst possible moment, lift their eyes and open them to see something they hadn’t before: Hagar sees a well of water in the desert; Abraham sees an animal for sacrifice in place of his son. 

I was talking to my friend (and rabbi), Esther Azar, about this, trying to put into words what she was able to for me. 

The question: What is the significance of this looking up, having their eyes lifted and opened, amidst all this violence and violation? What’s the connection between the two? 

The answer: In their looking up, Hagar and Abraham are taken out of the cycle they are swept up in. 

To take that a step further, they are taken out of their story, and suddenly they see something they couldn’t before. 

In this time of upheaval, as we are swept up in American presidential politics and everything else that’s wrong in the world, holding our breath, afraid of what we will see going forward, frozen in time, like Lot’s wife, consumed by fear, we need to step out of this cycle and this story, and allow ourselves to see something we perhaps couldn’t see before. 

We don’t know what we’ll find if we do, but it might get us out of our cycle of hope and fear for just a moment. 

Go Forth and Multiply, Octopi! Lech Lecha

I’ve been thinking a lot about silence. And faith.

During this pandemic, it feels like we’ve been shut indoors, deemed helpless, unable to express ourselves in the usual ways. Silenced.

I got to thinking about the different kinds of silence. 

Silence can save or condemn. It can be active or passive.

There’s silence that’s complicit or self-serving or judgmental or controlling or disapproving or impatient.

Then there’s silence that’s contemplative, mindful, meditative, sacred, prayerful, and thoughtful. This kind of silence allows space to open up. It’s a patient kind of silence.

Silence can be stubborn. It can mean standing your ground. 

Silence can be a demonstration of faith. 

Last week we saw that God was concerned with the survival of the human species, figuring he would give humans one more shot at it through Noah.  

But Noah is silent when God says he will destroy the world. He has faith that God will save him. But in his silence, he also becomes complicit when following God’s commandment and he puts the survival of his family, his personal gain, above all else. He is not concerned with the rest of humanity. 

This week, Abram, like Noah, silently obeys God when he tells him to leave his ancestral home and go out into the world. He, like Noah, has faith that God will take care of him. 

Abram again chooses silence when dealing with Hagar and Sarai, allowing Sarai to treat Hagar with cruelty. 

But he’s not silent when asking Sarai to pretend to be his sister so he can live and profit handsomely in Egypt. 

He is silent when Pharaoh takes Sarai to live in the palace with him as a wife, and when Pharoah discovers the truth and questions him: Why did you tell me she was your sister?? Why did you let me take her as a wife? 

Abram silently leaves with all his newly acquired wealth when Pharoah throws him out. 

Yet he is not at all silent when his nephew Lot is captured in war. He quickly gathers his legions to rescue him.

Back in the spring, during one of many sleepless nights,  I heard a podcast on RadioLab about a momma octopus found deep in the ocean, three or four Empire State Buildings down, so far down that no light comes through. The deep diver scientists discovered her and kept visiting her as years passed. 

They named her Octo-Mom. 

Her head the size of a cantaloupe, she sat there silently in the darkness, her tentacles wrapped around her hundred and fifty or so eggs, warding off all kinds of predators, never moving from her spot--for four and a half years. 

She never ate, and she turned more and more pale as she wasted away, until her babies were born. And then she died. 

Talk about faith!

And her silence was patient and stubborn and steadfast. She was committed to the survival of her species and future generations. She was not self-serving. She knew she wouldn’t be able to see her babies grow up. 

We are at a turning point in American history. People are standing in long lines, waiting silently for hours and hours, in order to vote. For the future generations. Whether they’re here to enjoy them or not. 

It feels like there’s not much we can do right now. This, we can. Silently and steadfastly. It shows that we haven’t lost all faith. 

But this turning point is so much bigger than just the U.S. election. This is a global time of darkness, and we’re going into the darkest time of year. 

We must have faith, like Octo-Mom, that in this time of darkness something new is waiting to be born, whatever the outcome of the election. 

Because even in the depths of darkness, there is life waiting to be born. 

Floody-Floody

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that our cultural associations with Noah are happy ones of cheerful camp songs and cartoons: a quaint wooden ark, an old  (white) man with a long, bushy white beard, animals with their heads sticking out of windows, and a colorful rainbow arching across the sky. 

We never talk or think about what the earth must have looked like after the floodwaters receded. 

Whether we’ve lived through it and experienced it first-hand or seen images, we know what floods can do. It’s a shocking sight, unfathomable to our human brains, forgotten and skipped over as soon as we can tuck it away. It’s just too horrible. 

I’m not sure why God thinks he has to drown absolutely everything just because of his disappointment in human beings. But a fresh start is clearly what he’s after, with a man and his family that he deems righteous and good enough to be the ancestors of the future of humanity. 

Clearly, God’s first creations were not up to the job. Maybe with some good genes, the future will be more promising. 

Just as clearly, God did not foresee what this destruction would look like after the floodwaters receded. There must have been a moment when God realizes that this was a mistake. A huge mistake. We can imagine God’s shock at what was left behind: the regrowth that needed to happen, the rebuilding required. On a global level! 

Not only has he brought unnecessary pain upon the earth, he awakens to the fact that humans are humans, imperfectly made in the image of Godself, imperfect just as God is, with evil in their hearts. 

God is not the all-knowing, all-seeing God we were sold on. 

How do we know this? 

Because there is a turning point. Noah makes a sacrifice (I suppose thanking God for having made it through this terrible time, stuck in a boat with just his family--and all these animals for months and months). God smells the pleasing odor, and just then, promises himself—in his heart, literally, as the Hebrew says—and later Noah, that he will never again bring such destruction upon the earth. The pain of it must have really hit him.

This is when God awakens to the sacredness of creation--all of creation; God’s promise comes with a warning that there will be a reckoning for every human life taken by another. 

And to be sure that we don’t forget just how sacred life is, God tells Noah and his sons to never eat meat that still contains the lifeblood of the animal; life is sacred, no matter how much evil resides in the heart.

I guess this is when God realizes that you can’t skip steps and get to perfection. You can’t just wipe everything out and jump ahead. 

What God has done seems a lot like what we might call “spiritual bypassing”; we want to skip over the hard stuff; let’s jump over our pain and anger and skip to forgiveness and love. If we pretend it’s not there, maybe it will simply go away. Let’s just go to a mountain top and sit and meditate and we will find enlightenment. If we don’t have to see it, we can pretend it’s not there.

But looking down from that mountain, even if you’ve avoided direct assault, you can still see the destruction. There’s no escaping it. You still have to clean up the mess. 

There’s one last interesting detail in the story of Noah; God knows that he doesn’t have to tell Noah to take two of each species of plant life. The plants will take care of themselves. With their seeds and roots buried in the soil, the plants are safe. 

Deep down in the darkness, the seeds are waiting to sprout as they always do, when the time is right. They are pure and good and nothing about them needs to be fixed, and they don’t need anyone to do it for them. 

We must continue to plant the seeds that will sprout into our future, and we can’t skip any steps. We have to go through it all. We live in a global community now and we’re living in a time of reckoning. There’s no escaping Global Warming, no matter where you go, and we can’t lay the blame on one group the way God blames humans for their humanity. It obviously gets us nowhere—or it leads us to greater destruction.

The seeds that are buried are the seeds of awakening for the entire human race. They’re still buried, but little by little, they are sprouting, no matter what. All we need to do is water them. 

Earthy-Boy, Breathy/Life-y Girl and Beginnings: Breishit

I feel like I should have something really profound to say. After all, we’ve completed an entire cycle and we are starting the reading of the Torah from the beginning again! And we’re reading about beginnings. 

Also, we’re heading into a profoundly important period in American history. Unprecedented, in fact. It’s a beginning of sorts in itself. We are in the process of creating what will be our future as a nation. What will election week bring? And how many chances do we have to get it right? Is this “the end” if we don’t get it this time?

How many chances.

It’s an interesting question because, according to the Torah, there are at least two ways that human beings came about--two Creation Stories.

In the first story, we get all the details of the beginning of the world and the universe: the heavens and the earth, the skies and the waters, the animals and the birds--and earthlings. We are presented with--let’s call him Earthy-Boy (I know it’s cute, and I can’t take credit for it), as the Torah does: “adam,” meaning “earth.” God is super-organized and orderly. God has it all planned out, day by day. 

Except for one detail: the creation of--let’s call her Breathy/Lifey-Girl, Chava/Eve, who is Earthy-Boy’s woman or “wife”. In this story, Breathy/Lifey-Girl only comes about when God realizes that Earthy-Boy shouldn’t be alone, and no other creature can meet his needs as a partner. 

In other words, The Omnipotent God we all know and love (or not) didn’t predict this! (I mean! How did God think Earthy/Breathy-Babies (I did make this one up) would come about??)

Anyway, together, between Earthy-Boy and Breathy/Lifey-Girl, things happen. They’re in a beautiful garden, there’s a cool tree that offers wisdom and everlasting life, God lies and tells the couple that they will die if they eat of its fruit, but there’s a serpent that knows otherwise and tells Breathy-Girl the truth. The serpent wants to get these humans in trouble (we don’t know why), and figures it can do it best through Breathy-Girl, and Serpent is right. 

Curiosity causes the couple to go against God’s rules, they eat the fruit of the forbidden tree, their eyes are opened by eating said fruit, they become aware of their nakedness and experience shame for the first time, they hide, God kindly dresses them, but they’re banished from the garden forever, which is now guarded by fiery cherubim (interesting beings that also later guard the Temple), and they are cursed.

They have children, the famous Cain and Abel, and jealousy and competition rear their ugly heads between them, leading to murder, followed by fear and emotional pain, and banishment and disconnection from God’s Presence and the land forevermore--at least for Cain, the murderous brother. 

A lot of emotions are identified in the story. 

Then there’s a second story, one with much less detail: Earthy-Boy and Wife or Woman (not named here) are created simultaneously. There is no Cain or Abel mentioned here, only Baby-Seth. Is there even a garden? There’s no mention of it, or a tree or a serpent. Adam goes on to have other children after 800 years (with Breathy-Girl?) and we learn of all the generations until finally God is fed up with his creation and wants to start over again by destroying everything and everyone (which he doesn’t in the end---remember Noah?).

The question is, which story is the “true” story? And why have we as a culture focused on the first story more and basically ignored the second? Who is responsible for our thinking that there was only one way of thinking of the creation of humans even though there are two stories here, and that that way was a girl named Eve coming from the body of a guy named Adam, with him being given dominion over her, rather than the two of them being created together, as equals? Whose purpose did it serve for us to believe this?

Not only that; if there are two stories, God had at least two chances. In fact, all through the Torah, as we see going through the year, God keeps wanting to destroy everything and everyone and start all over again. 

For us today, it definitely feels like we are on the brink of destruction--and extinction--at this moment.

Maybe we also feel banished from God’s Presence. Maybe we feel exposed and naked and vulnerable. Maybe we feel jealous and competitive and ashamed of ourselves and afraid and disconnected from the earth. Maybe we want to hide or deny that we are our brothers’ keepers because sometimes it’s just so overwhelming. Maybe we feel cursed with thorns and thistles sprouting before us daily the way God curses the earth. Maybe we feel lied to and unnoticed and ignored. Maybe we need our eyes opened. 

There is a moment of intimacy between God and Cain. Cain has tried again and again to get God’s attention with his grain offering, but only his brother Abel’s offering is noticed; thus the jealousy. Cain’s face “falls”. God wants to know why. He cares. And he reminds Cain that his actions count no matter what, whether God takes note or not: doing good counts and matters. God tells Cain that he is the master of his emotions and any tendency he might have to do bad; he has “free will”.

To master our emotions is a tall order for us earthlings. Whatever we are feeling seems true in the moment. Our emotions often create our stories, as we know. It also matters which story we focus our attention on; one might be a useless distraction—or even a deliberate one. And our actions really do matter. 

Luckily, like God, we get more than one chance to create our story. I like the idea of using curiosity, the first emotion in the bible, as opposed to competition and anger and fear, as an approach to the creation of our story going forward and its outcome. And we can use the '‘free will” God gave us to choose where to place our attention.

Whatever the results in November, this story is not over. 

Release, Reset, Rejoice...in Small things with Great Love

Tell the truth; there was just a little bit of rejoicing in your heart, maybe that little fluttery feeling in your stomach, when you heard the news; after all these months, finally he got Covid. What you’ve been wishing for all along. 

Okay, let me speak for myself. It’s what happened to me. But maybe it happened to you, too.

Either way--perish the thought!!

As an observant Jew (I do “observe” and I am Jewish)---and one who’s becoming a rabbi no less---I shouldn’t admit to such an awful thing. I should wish only good for everyone, even my worst enemies. Turn my worries (and my rage) into blessings, as Rabbi Shefa Gold says. Like in Fiddler on the Roof, the question to the rabbi: “Is there a proper blessing for the Tzar?” 

What would be a proper blessing for this one? Keeping him far away from us doesn’t seem sufficient. 

Anyway, truth be told, it was a mistake to be happy even for a moment; it didn’t take long for this bit of news to get thrown onto the heap of the nightmare we’ve been living through: over 200,000 deaths in the U.S. alone (remember when we didn’t believe it would get to that number?); the manipulation of the CDC; the rush to push a vaccine through and to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s position in the Supreme Court; voter suppression….Oh, did I mention the fires?  

Still, didn’t you get more than a little bit of joy hearing about the fly that landed on Pence’s head during the debate and wouldn’t leave--the fly there’s been much talk of, just as Pence was denying the existence of systemic racism. It stayed there for a full two minutes!!! What was that about?? On justthenews.com, in an article by Joseph Curl, he wrote, “Throughout the history of Western painting, imagery of flies can symbolize death, rot, decay, corruption and “‘painting’s power to deceive the eye.’”

If you’ve read my blog before, you know how I like symbols. Talk about gifts from God! (Unlike the experimental drug they gave the president in the hospital! You did hear him say that, right?)

But it still feels terribly overwhelming and insurmountable. We should be doing so much more than we are--we should be doing great things! To change the world!

Mother Teresa says we can do no great things, only small things with great love. I like her. Did she also talk about joy? 

In Judaism, we are, in fact, “commanded” to be joyful, especially in this season--even when our hearts lie panting on the floor (Fiddler on the Roof again). Even as we ask, “Do we even have the right to be joyful at such a time?” 

But I agree that it is our duty. We can’t go on when our hearts lie panting on the floor. We affect those around us. Like the wave and smile my friend gets from her child’s school bus driver years after her daughter has grown up. Small things, great love.

How do we find joy (re-joyce) again?

Here’s my formula: Release, Reset, Rejoice. (I probably didn’t make it up.)

In order to find joy again, we must release something, which is like hitting a reset button. 

Yom Kippur is supposed to be a joyful holiday, as well as Sukkot, because we know ahead of time that we will be released from our vows and “sins” by the end and we get a fresh start. We may think about death a lot, but that’s only a way of getting us to appreciate life.

But I didn’t start out joyful at all this Yom Kippur. I don’t think many of us did, given the circumstances. 

I woke up at 7:30, with three hours---three hours!!--before services would begin, and no place to go! Just from my bedroom to my living room. No rushing around getting dressed, leaving early for a long walk to shul, which always brought me joy.  

I felt sad, just like I do every Shabbos these days, and I started to do what I’ve been doing many Shabboses since Covid hit, things traditionally thought of as forbidden because they are work. 

I went to my kitchen and started cleaning. First, the dishes, then I took apart the stove and scrubbed all its pieces. Next, I went to the bathroom and did some deep cleaning there. 

I did this because I was sad and I needed something productive to do in order to feel better. As soon as I started, I wondered how I could make this work holy on one of the holiest of Jewish holidays. 

So I started to talk---to myself? To “God?” 

I knew that I needed to find a way into prayer for the day, and I had rage and loss and sorrow and helplessness and doubt to release. I needed to cry and no one was around to hear me, and I needed someone to talk to and hear me. 

I admitted that I felt like a fraud--what did cleaning my house have to do with prayer? What if I couldn’t connect to prayer today? I asked for help, for me and for my fellow earthlings. To fix what we’ve messed up. To not give up hope. 

As I was cleaning the physical space around me, and my tears were pouring out, it started to feel like I was cleaning my inner space as well. Finally, I was ready to set the table and make it look beautiful for the evening. If home was the focus here, I needed to make it look and feel purified. 

Then I was ready to davven. 

I made a commitment in that moment, to throw myself into the davvening and really pray on this day.

And I did. In whatever position I wanted: in a chair, on the floor, on my back, on my stomach, sprawled out, singing as loudly as I could along with the voices on the internet, not worrying about it if it was the right time, or what others would think, for six hours straight. 

By the end, I felt purified. I had done the work required of the day. And it had been cleansing and joyful. I had released, reset and rejoiced. It had been a small thing, perhaps, but I did it with great love.

The joy continued then and through the first days of Sukkot, and then “the news” came into my life again. That news that got piled on to the heap of the nightmare we’re living now. And my blood boiled. 

I need another Release, Reset, Rejoice now.

Good thing I get to sing again tomorrow. It’s a small thing I can do with great love.

Rosh Hashanah Special: New Year, New Page; Old Rage, New Stage

Just when I thought I was done. Just when I thought I’d moved on, feeling powerful and independent, having done “the work,” this person steps back into my life. Just before the new year, as I’m preparing to lead my first ever Rosh Hashanah service. As informal as it is, it’s mine. Finally. I’m in a good place. 

And suddenly I’m not. The worst timing. 

At first it feels like a benign message. But I’ve done enough work that, this time, I see the flashing lights. Warning warning warning! 

When I don’t respond as expected, from my old, sweet, scared self, but rather from a place of centeredness and self-assurance, they lunge for the attack: a long, screaming text dripping with condescension, arrogance. They are the victim. Again.

I’m thrown off. Confused. My fear comes back. My self-doubt. I’m on the defensive again.

I guess I have more work to do.

It’s actually perfect timing. Just in time for Rosh Hashanah! 

I get through the holiday successfully, pushing it away. Then I get a migraine. And I realize it’s suppressed rage. And finally I see the connection between this person and the voices of my childhood. Voices that said, “If you just said it in a way that I could hear it...” And, “Such and such would have shown more good will.” 

Same voice, different vehicle. 

Old rage, new stage. 

Because here’s the thing: I tried so many times to “say it in a way they could hear it,” and I showed incredible amounts of good will, well beyond what they deserved. Why was I surprised? Again? What indication had there been that they’d done “the work”?

And why had I taken it? Because I’m trained to take it. I’m a woman. I must be kind and gracious and patient. Even if I’m raging on the inside.

But here’s another thing that took so much work to learn: It’s not my responsibility to say it in a way they can hear it. Let me say that again: It’s not my responsibility.

And the phrase that kept coming up was: “Do the work. Just do the damn work. I’ve done mine.” 

Old rage, new stage. 

As part of my own work, questions came to me: 

Do I need to let my rage loose toward this one person? 

Would it be satisfying? 

Would it release it once and for all? 

Or would I just end up with the same old frustration?

Just as I was pondering these questions, I heard the verdict on Breonna Taylor’s case. 

It brought further questions that went deeper still, beyond me personally: 

What happens when you literally can’t express the rage you feel toward your perpetrator?

What if they’re dead or inaccessible? 

Worse, what if it’s not just one person? 

Worser still: What if it’s an entire system?!

Herein lay my answer; for generations upon generations, Black people have been asked---no, expected and forced---to repress rage---to show “good will” and act “properly,” which means act humbly, tamping down the rage screaming to be released. In other words, add to your rage by living in fear and on the defensive. Always.

I know this is going to sound funny, but just as I was sharing these ideas with a friend, I segued suddenly to my hair. I was standing in front of the mirror snipping away at stray hairs that seem to be flying in my face constantly these days. No matter how much I snip snip snip, there seem to be more. Hairs that refuse to conform to the curls on the rest of my head ever since I began recovering from Coronavirus. They felt symbolic of the out-of-control feeling we are all experiencing right now. They seemed rageful. 

There was a horrible presidential debate the other day. It’s easy to focus our attention and rage on the lies, attacks, viciousness and the endless analyses of the debates from which we learn absolutely nothing new. They are a distraction, like the stray hairs on my head. Those trying desperately to hold on to power want to dangle them in front of our faces, making us crazy as we keep snipping away at each one, as if revealing each lie will save us. 

The rage itself can be a good thing. It’s an indicator that something needs to change. 

Not only that---sometimes it’s actually the rage that gives us the power and strength to act in ways that we would otherwise not be able to. 

But rage needs to be focused in a way that brings about the change needed. We need to find productive avenues to channel it. Living in fear and on the defensive is not productive. 

Overall, I still have a good head of hair, though I lost a lot due to Coronavirus. 

And overall, We The People actually have the power. 

This is a powerful and crucial time. We need to use it wisely. We have work to do. Part of it is inner work, and this will guide and inform the outer work. Awareness is a very powerful thing. It helps us focus.

Let’s all commit to “doing the work” in the coming months, and channel our rage in productive ways. 

New Year, new page; old rage, new stage.