Water and the Better Angels of Our Nature: Khukat

Last week I wrote about guilt and responsibility—not exactly subject matter that leaves you feeling happy or with a whole lot of faith in humanity. I mean, come on. I wrote about Nazis.

So this week I wanted to bring in the opposite: faith in humanity. It may be like drawing water from a rock, but hey, that’s what this Torah portion is about anyway, so let me draw!

Indeed, Moses strikes a rock with his staff to get water from it. The people have been complaining again, tired of the bland food, mostly fearful (still) of dying in the desert, and for good reason; there’s no water. God tells Moses to talk to a rock, and water will come from it.

Even though he doesn’t exactly follow God’s directions (instead of talking, Moses strikes the rock), water still comes gushing out—enough for the myriads of people and their animals.

But since Moses has disobeyed God’s command and he’s made it look like he and Aaron made this miracle happen and not God, Moses and Aaron are punished; they will not be allowed to enter the Promised Land with the people because of the lack of faith shown by their words. Also, Aaron will die later in the parsha, as punishment for his disobedience.

According to God, Moses shows a lack of faith that God will provide the water by taking credit for it himself.

Many of us struggle not only with faith in God, but also faith in humanity. The way the world is going, even with bits of positive things happening, they still feel like just drops in the grand ocean of the negative. And perhaps lack of faith in humanity is not so different from lack of faith in God.

Let’s take this a step farther; if humans are made in the image of God, as they say, then our emotions and actions reflect God-like emotions and actions, and as we see in the Torah, God isn’t always so nice, kind of like human beings. (Case in point: God flies into another one of his rages over the people’s complaints and sends serpents to bite the people, and Moses must intervene on their behalf—again.)

We could look for a male propensity for violence in Moses in this moment at striking the rock, or his hubris, or we could tell a different story and decide that his actions reflect his current emotional state. You see, I failed to mention that right before the rock incident, Miriam has died. There’s no mention of a mourning period (unlike for Aaron, who gets a full 30 days, not the normal seven days—maybe because she’s a woman?)

The story we could tell might go something like this: Moses must be in shock and grieving. Maybe he’s angry about Miriam’s sudden death. Maybe he feels abandoned by God. This might explain his striking the rock instead of being in a conversational mood. Also, as Miriam is famous for her connection to water, perhaps her spirit helps the water come gushing from the rock after Moses strikes it. This might be Miriam’s response to Moses, saying, “I’m still here. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be alright.” But in his grief, Moses can’t see or feel or hear this message.

I heard Nicholas Christakis, author and professor at Yale University, on the On Being podcast last Sunday with Krista Tippett: How We’re Wired for Goodness. Christakis’ work is about re-narrating what we believe about humanity. He says science has focused way too much and for far too long “on the dark side of humanity and our propensity for selfishness, tribalism, mendacity, cruelty, violence—as if this were a normal and primary state of affairs.”

Christakis says that the bright side has been denied the attention it deserves. He’s more interested in focusing on the qualities that make, not an individual, but a collective “good.” He wants to know how a group of humans comes together and cooperates.

Moreover, his work looks at the human qualities that have evolved over millions of years—qualities like love, friendship, cooperation, and teaching. He points out how unusual these are in the animal kingdom, like teaching others, but also to teach and love those not connected to us genetically. He argues that these qualities are more powerful than the negative ones and in some ways much more important because they outweigh the cultural aspects that separate us because we are hardwired for them.

Tippett and Christakis talk about Theodicy and a term he coined called Sociodicy.

Theodicy questions how we can believe in and justify a beneficent, omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving God given the amount of suffering in the world. How do we explain the origins of evil?

Sociodicy takes a different angle by asking, how can we vindicate a confidence in the goodness of society despite the manifest evil in society? It is not to deny that every century has been replete with horrors, venal actions of all kinds, but rather to draw attention to the equal propensity we have for goodness—despite these horrors.

Sociodicy recognizes that even our evil qualities are features of our humanity and the good qualities we’ve evolved are in response to those evil qualities. As humans, we have few natural predators, and we in fact are our own predators, so we’ve had to evolve to cope with the evil qualities for our own survival.

Christakis says that we don’t really have what’s called Free Will in the denigrated way we have been taught; we’re wired for certain feelings and behaviors, evolved over time, and part of that behavior is copying each other; just like with mob mentality, “social contagion” has its positive side. And when we act in ways that show cooperation, love, concern, and teaching, the effects are magnified dozens, maybe thousands of times. This raises Free Will to a different level, because we have the option of working with what he calls, “The better angels of our nature.”

Water shows up again and again in this week’s Torah reading, whether it comes gushing from a rock for drinking or it’s to wash infected clothes or it’s sprinkled on a person exposed to death, or it’s a reference to countless wells in the desert, including one the Israelites sing to in order to help water spring up from it.

God wants Moses to give credit where credit is due: he wants Moses to remember that he can not possibly lead the people to freedom without God’s assistance. God is saying, “Remember the Source of All Life; you are not it.”

As with the water springing from the rock, human agency seems to be involved here. But maybe Moses, or Miriam, having some agency in drawing water from the rock reflects the faith that we need to have in humans as much as God since, as it is said, we are made in the Image of God. Again, if we have faith in humanity, we are showing faith in God, and vice versa.

So how do we use our agency? Christakis recommends going through our day looking for opportunities to see the goodness in others: imagining reasons for their actions, like we did with Moses above, constantly re-narrating anything negative we encounter.

The word for messenger in the Torah is interchangeable with the word for angel. Often messengers are sent ahead to assist on any journey.

Sometimes re-narrating may feel like drawing water from a rock.

May the waters we encounter cleanse us of our negativity, allowing the better angels of our nature to guide us.

Guilty (Korakh)

My mother has been dead for three years, and I think I just forgave her for the ways she hurt me. I say, “I think,” because, you know how these things are; you had an opening, you feel like you’re over it, but then angry feelings come up again.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved my mother very much, and I appreciated a lot of things about her, as a person and a mother, and about our relationship. She was a really good mother in so many ways, and I give her credit for teaching me good mothering skills. But she also held me back in many ways, and caused extra friction in my marriage for some thirty years as I was trying to figure things out for myself.

Here’s how angry I was: After trying and trying, I ultimately didn’t see or speak to her during the last year of her life. I don’t advertise this. It was very hard for me; I’d always prided myself on being a really good daughter and I’ve felt very, very guilty about withdrawing from her.

I know that whatever she did, she did out of fear, but knowing something intellectually is not the same as forgiving someone in your heart, especially when they’ve caused you so much pain. Also, forgiveness is a process.

I’ve been reading a book called The Sunflower, by Simon Wiesenthal. Perhaps you know it. It’s a true story by a Holocaust survivor who tells how, while still a prisoner, he was put into a situation with a very young, dying SS soldier, maybe 20 years old, who has asked to speak with a Jew—any Jew—to unload the burden of a crime before he dies.

The young man tells of throwing grenades into a building and killing entire families that have been stuffed and locked inside with hundreds of others. He remembers one particular couple who jumps from a window with their young child. This memory haunts him, and he wants absolution for his crime. Wiesenthal is forced to sit and listen for hours as this bandaged man talks. After hours of sitting at the edge of this young man’s bed silently, Simon walks away without offering any words of consolation.

After the war, Wiesenthal goes to find the mother of this young man and, like in a movie, she’s living alone in the rubble that has become her house and surrounding neighborhood in Stuttgart. She confirms that she and her husband had not been Nazi supporters, and they were ashamed of their son becoming a Nazi Youth. She seems to need some absolution as well.

Though Wiesenthal challenges her thinking somewhat about individual guilt and responsibility, he still chooses not to tarnish her memory of her son as a “good boy,” the one last possession she has. He feels compassion for her and the challenges she’d had in the choices she’d made; she’d had to protect her family.

Wiesenthal is haunted by his decisions for years afterwards. Should he have absolved the dying young man, in spite of his rage and disgust? Was he too harsh with the boy’s mother about her responsibility? Was it wrong that he had even an ounce of compassion for the man after all the sadistic acts he had experienced and witnessed in the camps and on the street—a lifetime of open, violent, sanctioned antisemitism and hatred?

Also, does he, a random Jew, have the right to absolve someone of a crime that was not directly committed against him? And how are murderers made? How does one get to forgiveness, and should he be pressured to it as quickly as he was? Will we forget if we forgive?

Finally, he ponders the question of collective vs. individual guilt.

In this week’s Torah reading, Korakh, such a question came up for me. Korakh leads a rebellion against Moses and things do not end up well for him and his followers. Though Moses is our hero, I was able to find compassion for Korakh when I read his chief complaint: How come you get all the credit? What about the rest of us? Aren’t we holy, too?

Obviously, Korakh was feeling left out, unnoticed, neglected. And his followers were scared; they keep repeating their fear of dying in the desert, which is so great that their memory of Egypt is warped and they call it “The Land of Milk and Honey.”

But what resulted was a mob mentality. God punishes the mob. He holds everyone accountable, not just Hitler—I mean, Korakh; each is responsible for their own decisions and participation.

A similar mentality is true for violent Trump supporters: neglected and ignored for decades by our government, they are scared. And they were enveloped and influenced by a mob mentality: a feeling of safety in the mob.

Another example of mob mentality is what happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921, as you can hear in fascinating detail on the podcast Blind Spot: Tulsa, Burning: government-sanctioned racism, hatred, destruction, massacre—and then kept a secret, by both victims and the offspring of the perpetrators, some of whom felt guilty, all of whom were too afraid to speak out or speak up, thinking only to protect their own families.

It’s one thing to hold hatred in your heart against those one deems inferior to oneself. It’s another to keep silent in the face of what you know is wrong—yet we know that everyone does it when it comes to staying alive and keeping our loved ones alive, even if we want to be on the “right” side of history.

My father used to say that guilt is a useless emotion. His therapist had told him that.

I disagree. I think guilt one of the best human emotions out there. It’s a feeling of guilt that keeps us in check; it’s what makes us at least try not to continue to hurt others.

Collective guilt; collective responsibility. None of us is innocent. We’ve all done things we need forgiveness for, and if we forgive too quickly, then we’re letting others and ourselves off the hook.

I have compassion for my mother’s fear. She inherited it. She learned it. And I can forgive her for it. And it was a huge release and relief to finally feel able to write her a letter telling her I forgive her, and how much I loved her and missed her for the good she gave me in my life. I miss the good parts more and more, which I think is a good sign. It means the pain is receding.

It’s supposed to be freeing to forgive someone, which is why we are encouraged to jump to it. Wiesenthal talks about how Holocaust survivors were pressured to put it all behind them quickly—to forgive and forget—for their own sake.

But I don’t want to forget the pain my mother caused me altogether, and the pain of all the massacres in history should not be forgotten, because every “good boy” is capable of joining in the “mob mentality” or becoming a murderer.

I have inherited my mother’s patterns, and they challenge me, but it’s the memory of the pain and the guilt I feel when I inflict it on those I love that helps me strive not to repeat it.

Oh, Say Can You See? (Shlach Lecha)

My older daughter graduated from law school yesterday. And in person!!

I, know, right? Amazing!

Especially for my husband, first generation Latino immigrant. It was his biggest dream fulfilled, and if he hadn’t made it through Covid, as was a real possibility…how different the day would have been for us. I was reminded of the sacredness of life and how quickly that can change. I was reminded not to take it for granted.

In any event, I couldn’t stop crying, and I was grateful for the mask. Just the hint of my tears was a little too much for my daughter: “Mommy, you’re killin’ me.”

Yet, it was all so perfect, beyond our wildest dreams, in every way: the weather, our joy at being together, the party afterwards.

The speeches were quite inspiring as well, especially after such a year. They made me proud, prouder than I ever thought I could or would be; I’d never particularly aspired to have a lawyer in the family. Too many bad lawyer jokes, you know what I mean?

But the speeches referred to and reminded me of people like Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the power of the law in a good way and the power of a single lawyer or judge to effect change or to at least have an influence. We know that it matters which justices fill our Supreme Court—very much!

Of course, first in the order of things in a graduation is hearing the national anthem.

Now, I’ve always been the kind of person who wasn’t so sure about standing for the national anthem, and I definitely don’t put my hand on my chest.

It’s not that I don’t love my country. I just have a hard time with nationalism.

Every morning over the past week, the school behind my apartment building has been preparing the children for their graduation. I can see them and hear the music blasting. First, it’s America the Beautiful, followed by the Black National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing, and then a song from The Greatest Showman, which I’d never heard before, but which my younger daughter “hates” (because some people she knows are “obsessed” with it).

All this seems very much aligned with the Torah reading this week, though. (I was actually wondering if I should name this blog post “Canaan the Beautiful,” but settled on “Oh, Say Can You See.”)

On to the Torah portion, Shlach Lecha, where twelve spies are sent into the land of Canaan, the Promised Land, to scout it out and bring back the news of what kind of place it is; is it indeed a land flowing with milk and honey? What are the people like? What are the cities and towns like? What about the trees? How’s the fruit? Bring some back so we can see!

Upon the scouts’ return, everything’s going great until a couple of them start to spread rumors—wait: are they rumors, or did they start to wonder if what they’d seen was truly as wonderful as they’d thought, or were they imagining things? Was it too good to be true? Did they get scared and start to question the ability of their own people to overcome the people of this other land? (Ah, that good old nationalism: the thing that inspires people to cross oceans, barge in, go to war and take over other lands. This is where it gets sticky for me.)

Whatever it was, their reports of giants in the land that are way too big to confront is taken as blasphemy. God is furious (again); How dare they doubt “Him?” They will be punished; their generation will not be allowed to see or enter the Promised Land!

These are, one could say, the dissenting voices. Should they be allowed to speak? This is what America the Beautiful is based on, right?—Oh, wait, I forgot—we’re not talking about America, we’re talking about the Bible!

Yet the question remains. When does it become dangerous to allow “Free Speech,” and when is it important for a healthy society? We all know what hate speech has done over the past years, causing people to question not only the idea of quarantining and mask-wearing, but even our elections.

This week, we are also remembering the Tulsa Race Massacre, a crime that was not only supported by local law enforcement at the time, but kept secret for many years. Which voices won out there?

It turns out that “saying anything you want” was actually not the original idea behind Free speech after all, which referred to not having to get a permit or pay a government fee in order to print your ideas.

In fact, speaking of the law and judges, the way we talk and think about Free Speech and the First Amendment today comes from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Holmes, with roots in the Civil War, was very much in favor of shutting dissenting voices down in favor of a good cause—like ending slavery. He believed very much in pumping people up with nationalism for the sake of the “right” ideas winning out and shutting down the voices that could threaten that, kind of like what we think of when we talk about World War II and the need to overcome the Nazis.

But all that changed for him in the 1920’s, when he was willing to admit that, “We’ve been wrong before and we’ll likely be wrong again.”

Justice Holmes coined the phrase, “Marketplace of Ideas,” imagining, like a “Free Market,” that the Truth would win out. But both a Free Market and a Marketplace of Ideas assume that everyone has the same resources and that everyone’s microphone is the same size.

Holmes also said, “Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based on imperfect knowledge.” Was Holmes talking about the American justice system, or was he talking about the prophecy in the Torah and this week’s reading?

Either way, I love the words of the song “A Million Dreams,” from The Greatest Showman, whatever my daughter says:

I close my eyes and I can see
The world that's waiting up for me
That I call my own
Through the dark, through the door
Through where no one's been before
But it feels like home

They can say, they can say it all sounds crazy
They can say, they can say I've lost my mind
I don't care, I don't care, so call me crazy
We can live in a world that we design

'Cause every night I lie in bed
The brightest colors fill my head
A million dreams are keeping me awake
I think of what the world could be
A vision of the one I see
A million dreams is all it's gonna take
Oh a million dreams for the world we're gonna make

We can keep dreaming of fulfilling the prophecy—but for all the world: a world where nationalism and national anthems are not necessary in order to reach the Promised Land. (Can you see it?)

Because we have the power to design the world we want, through our speech and our actions—as long as we keep what is sacred in sight.

And if there’s anything we’ve learned this year, I hope it’s that we know what’s sacred. I certainly felt it on graduation day.

Little Boxes; B’ha’alot’cha

Recently I was sitting in the park and there was a father and three children. One of them was severely disabled and he sat there feeding her and making sure her headphones were playing as she moved and “sang” along to the music in her head.

There was an older brother who went to throw ball with his younger sister. The boy told his sister to stand farther back, but the father immediately called out, “You gotta stand closer to her; she’s a girl!”

Neither child challenged his statement.

I was upset; “Still putting each other, and ourselves, in little boxes,” I thought. What can this man imagine for his children and what boxes is he keeping them in? Will they be able to break out of them?

True to boxes, this week the Torah clearly states that both Miriam and Aaron make racist comments about their brother Moses’ wife, but then God only punishes Miriam—with a really bad skin affliction—to the point where they fear for her life and Moses prays for her (the famous prayer: el na refana la; please, God, heal her).

God also clarifies that Moses has been singled out as the only prophet who gets to talk to God face to face and that Moses is the most humble of all men on earth (Great example: two men are accused of acting like prophets and Moses defends them: “Are you really that upset on my account? Don’t worry about me! I don’t need to be the only one. In fact, everyone should have the spirit of God upon them.” Nice, Moses! Breaking out of those boxes God has made!)

Yes, it’s great to have a leader who knows how to ask for help (as he does this week again) and doesn’t need to be special (in other words, not a narcissist like so many), but it seems obvious that Moses is chosen for his special role at least partly because he’s a man, like God in the Bible, and that Aaron goes unpunished because he’s also a man.

Historically, we earthlings have also put God in a little box, not being able to imagine that “He” might not be male at all, or what non-gendered would even mean—for God or anyone else.

Back to God, though, who lacks imagination in other ways; though often described as all-compassionate, unending in forgiveness, how often does he have to be talked down by Moses? It happens again here when the people begin to complain about the limited variety of food available to them in the dessert (only manna), as they reminisce about the meat and fish, yes fish! and melons and all kinds of goodies they supposedly enjoyed in Egypt as slaves (I guess their imaginations were not limited here!).

God becomes incensed a couple of times in this particular story and says, “You want meat!? I’ll give you meat! I’ll give you so much meat, it’ll be coming out of your ears and you’ll be sick from it. (And to think that God predicted that some people in the world would have access to so much food one day, it would make them sick! This, indeed, was not lacking in imagination.)

Now it’s Moses’ turn to be limited in imagination. Here he panics and says to God, “There are 600,000 people to feed! There’s no way we can have enough for everybody by tomorrow!” To which God responds, “Are you kidding me? Nothing is too big for me. Do you forget that I am the all-powerful, unlimited in capacity?” (And God delivers. No problem.)

Scene change: The Pentagon finally, sort of, acknowledged this week that UFO’s might be a real thing. This is part of the same problem: it’s so hard for our earthling brains to imagine that there might be other intelligent life on planets that don’t look like ours or have the same biologic make-up.

I heard Jill Tarter, a female space scientist who went to Cornell at a time when the female students were literally locked in their own little boxes (their dorms) every evening because it was believed the university should be their parent (in loco parentis). Tarter was interviewed by Krista Tippett for the On Being Project.

Her words and the title of the interview: “It Takes a Cosmos to Make a Human,” by which she means, every single cell in our bodies and everything on earth contains the same exact material—of the cosmos!

Translation: there’s no such thing as Me and You/Us and Them. In fact, Tarter wants us to call ourselves Earthlings as opposed to humans because that would help us realize that we have so much more that links us than separates us.

But I hated it when she said, “Oh, organized religion is not my thing.” (Tippett always asks about an interviewee’s spiritual or religious upbringing).

It’s become so popular to reject religion. But I say, Tarter, like others, was putting “religion” in the boxes she herself wants us to reject.

I mean, I get it. “Organized Religion” has done a lot of harm in the world. A lot of people have been slaughtered in the name of it. And so much of the story of earthlings as told in the Bible is what she/we reject, right? The Torah seems to be all about separation: between God and God’s creations, between Moses and his people, the Israelites and Other people, even between the different tribes. There’s us, the special ones, over here; those inferior people over there, us driving them out, them driving us out.

It seems to give license to separation, hierarchy and slaughter.

Yet, there’s that message of awe that Tarter is talking about, and that Einstein and other scientists have talked about, that we’ve lost touch with. And there is a constant reminder in the Torah that we must live with awe.

Towards the end of her interview, Tippett asks Tarter if she ever gets frustrated at not finding intelligent life out in the universe. To this Tarter responds, “Absolutely not. We’re just at the very beginning of our space exploration and our use of computers to aid us in that.”

She adds: “It would be like scooping water with a bucket to see if there are any fish in the ocean, and seeing it come up empty, we assume there are no fish.”

Maybe the problem is not religion vs. spirituality/you vs. me/us vs. them (and, yes, I'm thinking of present-day Israel as well). Maybe it’s our little earthling brains that divide us from each other because of lack of imagination and the little boxes we live in, even inside our brains.

The weather has been swinging back and forth over the past week in many places, including in New York: 90 degrees for several days (and it’s not even June!) and then dropping to 60 for a couple of days, then 90 again. It’s frustrating and scary. What’s our future? I’m having a hard time imagining the healing of the earth.

And yet I know I must expand my little earthling brain because, well, there’s the awe factor.

Should we be frustrated? Maybe not.

Maybe we should try our best to remember that we are just at the very beginning of our earthling civilization becoming civilized, stretch our imaginations out of the little boxes we’ve been living in for so, so long, and try our best to live with awe and in awe, every day, as much as possible.

That’s what Organized Religion does for me. Because I don’t get to look through a microscope or a telescope very often.

But when I address or bow to “God,” I am placing imagination in a place far up in the sky, remembering how very vast the universe is, and how very endless the possibilities, even if I can’t imagine them right now.

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True Story: Naso

True story: It was Shavuot and I was praying for a revelation, like I always do. Last week, when the world started to blow up across the world (from where I am), I wasn’t yet ready to say anything. Instead I talked about sexual harassment and cleaning out our internal closets, which also need a voice.

But now I’m ready, and it turns out these two things are kind of connected; it was scary to bring up the subject of sexual harassment, especially when you’re involved in a case, and it’s more than a little scary to take a clear and public stance as a Jew against the status quo in the Jewish world. 

On principal, I believe in joining those who are forced to take a difficult stance on various issues, and it’s certainly no scarier than to become the first openly transgender bishop in the Evangelical Lutheran Church---or any religious institution, for that matter---which happened recently for Rev. Megan Rohrer. 

I know you understand. There’s so much vitriol. With Israel, it’s so old, but it also feels like more of the same, hostile divide we’ve been experiencing in the U.S. over the past 4-plus years; the talk is toxic and so are the actions. 

For one, I don’t want anyone calling me a self-hating Jew if I defend the rights of Palestinians. The Palestinian government is corrupt, but so is the Israeli Prime Minister, but Jews don’t have any trouble defending the rights of other Jews. Also, the whole world is watching, and there’s already enough anti-semitism to go around; we certainly don’t need more. 

I recently started using Instagram as a way to connect with other Jewish people. There’s one person I started following, but soon found their stuff to be really toxic.

I should have known, and I admit I suspected by the name on their account: “IsraelTrueStory.”

In my view, anyone who claims to hold “The Truth” about anything is dangerous, especially when it comes to complicated politics. While I don’t defend the actions or politics of Hamas, I also believe in humility. In fact, the posts on this Instagram account were full of arrogance, ridicule and condescension. Toxic. So I quickly “unfollowed.”

The thing is, we have a problem in our Holy Book, which repeats again and again that God promised us this land and that we could drive anyone out, and God would back us up. 

Such a message may feel comforting to a people who have never had a home where they could feel completely safe, from the beginnings of Christianity, through the Middle Ages and the Holocaust.

But such a message of promise and inheritance is also a toxic message. 

Of course, we don’t need the Bible to remind us that people have been taking each other’s land and homes since time immemorial. As we all know, the U.S. government did it to Native Americans in very recent history. I heard Joy Harjo, the first Native American to hold the title Poet Laureate, talking about this on Sunday.

Harjo not only talked about stolen land but also about the self-hatred that she internalized growing up with the “True Story” about Native Americans as told in the U.S. school system. 

I would venture to say that all people who come from a minority or oppressed group have at least some self-hatred, and this needs to be examined; it’s toxic to hold on to such feelings and it skews our worldviews. In an effort to be “proud,” arrogance and condescension may take over.

The Torah is pretty toxic this week, too. Maybe it always is. There’s the story of the woman, any woman, accused of cheating on her husband, who must submit to an awful, demeaning test with a Temple priest who uses a kind of crazy magic to find out if she is guilty or not. There is a terrible punishment for her if she is guilty. 

On the other hand, if the husband wrongly accused her due to a fit of jealousy, he goes unpunished. It’s like the Torah is saying he’s entitled to his arrogance—at the woman’s expense—and it’s okay to demean her.

It would be hard to deny that the disdain shown towards women in the Bible, throughout history and into the present, has led to great insecurity and a self-doubt many women hold when it comes to trusting our instincts in social situations that involve or may lead to sexual abuse or harassment. And as a woman, I have to say that I often don’t trust my instincts and often feel unsafe. 

True story: Everyone deserves to feel safe. 

The first time I visited Israel, only two years ago (and I’m in my late 50’s), I understood for the first time in my life what it meant to feel completely safe somewhere as a Jewish person, where I didn’t have to weigh whether I should reveal my Jewish identity or not. I suddenly “got this whole Israel thing.” 

(As I write these thoughts, I am also aware that Black Americans have never had the privilege of  feeling completely safe and accepted anywhere, and they don’t have the choice, like I do, to hide their identity, though there have been plenty of times when people told me I “look Jewish,” even though that doesn’t really work overall, and that’s a subject for another time.) 

I think I can safely say that Muslims and Arabs feel unsafe in Israel and in the Occupied Territories most of the time, not counting current events. Whoever started it or is continuing it, the numbers of civilian deaths on each side make it clear who has the power here.

My point is, everyone should have a home and feel safe in that home (or “house” of worship), and anyone who takes that away is violating a basic human right of another person (which is a separate issue from sending rockets or bombing).

And anyone who has ever understood what it feels like to be singled out, shunned, looked-at askew, feared or disdained for just being, should not be arrogant or condescending towards others, and these attitudes should never enter the political realm. 

But it seems to be human nature to cover up our own hurt, fear and insecurity by displaying arrogance and self-righteousness. The truth is important, don’t get me wrong, but truth is multi-layered; there is layer upon layer of hurt, fear, trauma, and insecurity that informs our way of seeing and acting in the world.

And, True Story; we need to find our way from “This Land is My Land” to “This Land is Our Land.” I’m not sure how to get there, but I think what is revealed again and again is the need to be as humble as possible, to examine the parts of ourselves that come from insecurity and pain, and to strive to let go of the arrogance of “knowing The Truth.”

In the meantime, as it says in this week’s parsha, May God bless you and protect you; May God deal kindly and graciously with you; May God lift God’s face towards you and grant you peace.”

Whoever you are.

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Closets and the Desert: B’midbar

Last week, after recovering from that terrible post-vaccine week, I had a burst of energy and did a lot of cleaning out, both physical and emotional. 

I had treated myself to some new summer blouses (first time in over five years--on sale, mind you), and took the opportunity to weed out the clutter of old clothes I don’t feel good in anymore, and make room for the new. 

I started with my dresser and soon got caught up in the cleaning frenzy, finding myself not in one closet, but two, removing all that blocked my path, an accumulation of years, out of breath, sweating despite the cool weather, throwing things out onto the floor, making a huge mess that I then needed to sift through.

My husband came in at one point and said, “You know you’re crazy, right?” I said I knew how it must look—like a cartoon character throwing things up and behind a hunched body in rapid fire.

But it got the job done. By the end, I had filled five large bags that I took to the thrift shop the very next day—I just had to get them out of the house, and finish by vacuuming. The clearing I felt afterwards was incredible, like my refrigerator before Passover (which is still beautiful, if you wanna know). You could say I got swallowed up by the task—and it was exhausting. The work was so intense, it took a few days to recover afterwards.

This week we begin the Book of Numbers, B’midbar in Hebrew, meaning in the desert. 

It’s a very repetitive reading: a census of the twelve tribes, males above a certain age capable of fighting, and with instructions on where each tribe is to encamp in relation to the Sanctuary, as the Israelites make their way through the desert.

There is one group, the Levites, that is excluded from this. They are responsible for dismantling, transporting and reassembling the Sanctuary at the center of the next encampment.

Among the Levites is a special sub-group, the Kohathites, that is responsible for carrying the Sanctuary’s vessels, things like the Ark and the menorah. They are carefully instructed, more than once, not to be allowed to look at or touch the vessels, or they will die—and they must not die or be cut off from their people. There are special coverings for the vessels to protect the Kohathites from the power of the vessels, to be placed by the Levites.

The verb used to describe the covering of sacred objects and dismantling the Sanctuary is a word that means “swallow,” as in, the objects will be swallowed up by the coverings. There is an element of destructiveness to this word, since the sanctuary is dismantled in preparation for moving forward on the journey through the desert. So while there is destruction, there is also protection of both the objects and those carrying them, and the idea of forward movement; the people are moving towards something, though it’s not explicit what.

While one wonders at this, one must also wonder at the power of the sacred objects, the energy they carry, to the point that it can kill the Kohathites, but not the other Levites. Is there a certain level of purity of soul and devotion needed to be able to handle, literally and figuratively, these powerful vessels? What makes a person capable of handling such energy? And how does it connect with forward movement?

I’m just an ordinary person, and I’m constantly looking for ways to improve myself and deepen my spiritual practice and connection. I could look at my cleaning and clearing out last week as simply psychological. On the physical level, I literally cleaned out my closets, allowing for space in my home for energy to flow.

On the psycho-emotional level, it was also my mother’s birthday, three years since her death, and I dealt with lingering feelings of anger and regret. I found pictures in my closet in old boxes. I cried a lot.

I’m also involved in a case of sexual harassment and other abuse.

For me, personally, it’s bringing up other past traumas in my life and setting endless conversations in motion—all of it exhausting. But I agreed to do it because I’m hoping to be among those who help effect societal changes for future generations.

No community is immune. Inappropriate behavior and sexual harassment is coming out of closets all over the place, including in the Jewish world (great article this week in the Jewish/Yiddish paper, the Forward), which is a good thing, but it’s also painful.

Cleaning and clearing out, being swallowed up in the process, is painful, exhausting, but ultimately cleansing. Old things have to be dismantled in order for new things to be birthed.

We are now approaching Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks, seven weeks since Passover, when we harvest the first fruits and bring them as an offering to God. The harvest is a destruction and dismantling of the fields that hold the fruits, and the bounty of our work is presented in a different form, on an altar or in our kitchens.

Part of the practice of this time is in the daily “Counting of the Omer” (an “omer” refers to an ancient measure of dry grain). This practice involves working on personal qualities, getting ourselves ready for that moment to receive Torah as if we had each personally been present at Mt. Sinai with Moses and the rest of the Israelite population.

It’s scary to face cluttered closets, open old boxes that may contain memories and bring up painful feelings that it may be easier not to feel, but if we are to move forward and get to a place of pure heart and soul, we must go through the process, and make sure that we protect each other as we dismantle, so that maybe, one day, we might be both capable and worthy of touching the sacred vessels that hold something new for the future.

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Can we walk through the gates? B’har/Bkhukotai

I have three little stories to tell.

1. Last week was a really rough one. A week ago Friday was my first Covid vaccine (Pfizer--I know you wanna know), followed by aches and pains, sleepless nights, four days of headaches. The weird, hot and humid, then extremely windy and cold weather didn’t help. 

   As a result, I had to cancel my Saturday morning launch of leading services in the park.

   Just as bad as the pain and discomfort I was in was the mental torture I put myself through--the catastrophizing: “What if I make the commitment and then I can’t follow through due to my unpredictable health? Am I still a Covid-long-hauler? Do I tell people that? Will they judge me? What if I never, ever get to do this, after all my preparation...making my own prayer books, etc., etc.”  

2. Today I finally took a walk in the park after almost a week (and if you know me well, I’m in the park every chance I get), and I saw a man I often see. He’s a small, middle-aged, Latino guy who apparently had a stroke. I’ve been seeing for years in my neighborhood with his walker, slowly and deliberately moving along.

   He comes to the steps of the pergola in the Conservatory garden and, up and down he goes, slowly, slowly. He’s shy and rarely makes eye contact. I imagine everything he does takes at least twice as long as it takes me. 

   Today another man stopped: “Good for you!” he called out to the Latino man in a thick Asian accent; “I’ve been watching you for four years! Four years! You never stop! Good for you! You never stop!” The shy Latino man was beaming. 

   And it felt like one of those moments when people from all walks of life, of different ethnic groups, meet in their humanity, one of the things I love about New York City.

3. I’ve been watching a British series on Netflix that at first seemed very depressing, but I decided to give it a chance. It’s about a man who is having a really hard time regaining meaning in his life since losing his wife to breast cancer. He’s angry at the world, continually thinks of killing himself, barely functions, and lashes out at everyone. 

   A series of things happen that begin to slowly bring him back to appreciating life. He begins to realize that he is not only hurting himself, but also harming others. Though it’s a process and not a Hollywood miracle of overnight transformation, he decides that at least he’s going to try--which he does. He begins to do little things to make other people smile and feel appreciated. His new thing is: “I can’t control the world, but I can try to make a positive difference in my little corner of it.” 

   This week’s readings, the last of the Book of Leviticus, have more laws passed from God to the Israelites on Mt. Sinai, and new (horrible) punishments doled out for failing to follow them and for breaking our covenant with God--our part of the deal.  

   It includes letting the land lie fallow so it may renew itself every seven years (the “Shmita” year), and also the year of the Jubilee, every fifty years, when, in a nutshell, all property is returned to its original owners and indentured servants go free. 

There were three little things that stood out to me: 

1. One exception to the redemption of property is within a walled city, where houses can never be redeemed, but remain forever in the hands of the new(er) owners (except in the case of the Levites). In towns not walled in, they can be redeemed.

2. Among the punishments for not trusting their new God is that they will run though no one pursues them, die by each other’s hand though there are no swords, and the earth will be forced to rest even if the people did not let it because it will eventually stop being able to produce, leading them to eat the flesh of their own children.

3. No matter what, God will still remember “His People” and will walk among them.

Though the Bible was written during a time when slavery was a given, somebody had some wisdom back then. 

Along with not showing proper respect for the earth as the Torah commands us to do, this year, this pandemic, certainly feels man-made in so many ways, we are fleeing even when no one is pursuing us and maybe eating ourselves alive. We are walled in, both physically and spiritually. 

But “God” promised to walk among us. 

If I were fulfilling my part of the Covenant, of having true faith, would I be torturing myself with my catastrophizing thoughts? 

Maybe that man I see doing his exercises, never giving up, despite the challenges life poses him, has real faith. 

And the man in the British TV show? He’s like most of us; with his personal pain and tragedy, he has to work at his faith, even if it doesn’t mean believing in “God.” He has to find reasons for living and loving life, despite not having the answers, and he does.

We end each book of the Torah by reciting, “Khazak khazak v’nitkhazeyk,” meaning “Strong, strong, we will be strong.” 

As we get closer to Shavuot, the holiday when we traditionally see ourselves receiving the Torah on Mt. Sinai as if we ourselves were personally there, we have another opportunity to redeem ourselves. 

Individually, we can’t control the entire world (though we can influence it when we gather together as a whole), but we can make a difference in our own little corner of it. We can still choose to “walk with God,” to fulfill our part of the covenant by continuing to have faith in life, to find reasons to love life, to get in touch with our inner strength and continue to find more ways to support each other, and to discern when it’s time to go through the gates of our own walled cities into the freedom of redemption.

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It’s All About the Ceremony: Emor

We all want to live--well, most of us do. 

I went for my first Covid vaccine on Friday. The whole time I was there, I couldn’t help thinking about the fact that I survived Covid, the current crisis in India and around the world, and my simple privilege of having access to the vaccine. 

I was also at a facility that looked much older and more run-down than the facilities I usually have access to. I left remembering again that I have nothing to complain about. 

Then I spent Saturday in bed, feeling sick and achy, reminded of my personal trauma of getting sick and the fear of losing my husband last March. 

I did feel like complaining. 

As a whole over this past year, we’ve thought a lot about and been relentlessly exposed to the closeness of death, which has taken a terrible toll on our hearts and bodies.

We have struggled to stay alive, and if we don’t take it for granted, we are grateful to be alive as we have been reminded of how quickly being alive can change, whether by way of a dangerous virus---or murder by a cop (for example).

We’ve become more keenly aware and outraged, again as a whole, by abuse and murder by police of people of color in the U.S. and are grateful that the jury voted in favor of the lives of Black people and against abuse, specifically in the case of George Floyd last week--even if it’s truly only a start. 

We have again commemorated the Holocaust, and the Armenian Genocide was named by President Biden yesterday, though the latter remains unrecognized by many governments, and the former still has “deniers.” 

I was listening to Krista Tippett this morning talking to Layli Long Soldier, renowned poet, member and citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation and the U.S. 

Layli Long Soldier published Whereas, in “response to the U.S. government’s official apology to Native peoples in 2009, which was done so quietly, with no ceremony, that it was practically a secret.” 

They didn’t invite any leaders from the Nations to the White House, and referred to it as “conflict” between settlers and Native Americans, not genocide---the ultimate insult.

Long Soldier pointed out that ceremonies, as far as she could see, are happening in the White House all the time, and she and Tippett laughed together: how vapid, this “apology.” 

Tippett and Long Soldier also talked about how prayer, in the Lakota Nation and during Standing Rock, set those protests apart from others and made it an especially meaningful, powerful experience for those in attendance. Ceremony is and was important. 

This week’s Torah portion begins by focusing on the obligation of priests to stay pure for their ceremonies for their service in the Temple, starting with avoiding contact with the dead (except when it comes to close family members). 

For the priest, being exposed to death apparently muddies the priest’s ability to serve the people and communicate with God effectively. 

Why all the focus on exposure to death and the repetition of the need for this type of ceremonial purity over and over in the Torah? 

In Judaism, there’s a lot about separation between the holy and the unholy and the recognition of life as sacred, and we are actually told to choose life. 

So maybe it’s pointing again to the importance of being intentional about life, so a separation between life and death must be made.

And though life and death are intertwined, being exposed too much can muddy and weigh down our hearts—and our bodies as well.

I think we can all speak to that. 

I just finished reading a novel called Eternal Life, by Dara Horn, historical fiction that makes you think about what it would be like to live forever, because we always seem to want more time.

It’s the story of a woman, Rachel, born in Temple times in Jerusalem, who makes a vow with the High Priest in the heat of the moment, accepting everlasting life for herself in exchange for the life of her dying child--having no idea what this really means---though the priest warns her to think carefully about it (which she doesn’t).

We follow Rachel through two millennia: her suffering, her sorrow, her loss and trauma---and her desire to die so that she can see and experience this no more. 

But the conclusion is that life is worth it in the end---for the moments of love and beauty and peace that we experience, despite the tragedy and pain. And the value of life is derived from the brevity of it as well.

I think most of us can also speak to the awareness of that.

The ultimate question that I struggle with daily is how to balance my concerns for the world, the pursuit of justice, the frustration I have that so many people still don’t see all life as sacred, only some life, and how to appreciate my life and live in joy and gratitude for being alive--humbled by the gift I am given of a new day, each day, and for all my privilege--because I have nothing to complain about, right? 

Towards the end of this parsha, there’s a review of the festivals, with their ceremonies, including Yom Kippur, a Day of Atonement, on which we are to practice self-denial. 

The word used to describe such self-denial means all of the following: to afflict, oppress, humble, bow down---translated into denying ourselves food and water. 

In so doing, we appreciate the preciousness of what gives us life. We are humbled by the importance of food and water as the Source of Life. And we bow down to that Source of Life, in a symbolic way, just as the protests at Standing Rock and the Dakota Access Pipeline are very much about the purity of water as the source of life.

It’s all about the ceremony. And choosing life for all.

We need to choose life for everyone, every day, including ourselves. 

It’s all about the ceremony--whether alone or in gathering together to sing and pray, or just to be together---whatever gives life meaning---and finding ways to live in a state of purity of heart and body, and finding the love and beauty and peace in the brief time we are given on earth.

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For the Love of Jesus: Akharey Mot-K’doshim

I don’t have any cute, funny stories to tell this week, just plain trauma. 

And there’s plenty of that, without even counting a pandemic and the latest police brutality and killings just this past week. 

Let’s throw in the condemnation and brutality experienced by the LGBTQ community, along with the misuse of scripture, and we’ve got more than enough to go around.

I wondered out loud this morning with the minyan I lead every Monday; what is the spiritual message to derive from this week’s reading? 

It starts with Aaron being told to continue on as if he hasn’t just lost two sons to a consuming fire, with instructions on how to go about cleansing the community of guilt, and goes on with all kinds of laws on how Israel will set itself apart from the surrounding pagan communities, like whose nakedness you’re not allowed to uncover (incest, bestiality), dietary laws, the privations of Yom Kippur, and leaving a new fruit tree for three years without picking its fruit. 

Aaron’s trauma of suddenly losing two sons is not addressed in the least. 

In the same way, it would be very convenient to ignore the two verses in Leviticus that show up this week---two little obscure verses that have been used over millennia to condemn homosexuality. It happens all the time in synagogues and churches, and probably in mosques as well (“Let’s not open that can of worms”).

And curiously, these two verses point to the one thing, it seems, that people like to be inflexible about in religion (“Well, it says it right there in the bible, clear as day, so I can’t help it”).

No, actually, it’s not so clear at all. And you can help it. 

So, I was searching around on the internet, and I found this really interesting blog post called “The Perversion of Two Verses” (if you’re interested in developing your own knowledge on this subject, I highly recommend this. It’s not long, it’s very well written and easy reading). 

So I’ll leave you with this, since I’ve given you homework (the reading??!!); don’t we always want to avoid talking about trauma? It’s so hard to deal with and so easy to pretend it’s not there, like God expecting Aaron to move on after his personal trauma of losing his sons in one big poof. 

Opportunities to deal with it abound, and we really need to--especially in our houses of worship. 

As the author of that blog post wrote, if you’re going to take a verse (or two) out of context, decide that this is what’s important to humanity in the book of Leviticus, and ignore the rest, like the dietary laws of the Jews, for example, then why couldn’t it be something similar to the universal love and acceptance that came from Jesus? Like when it says to leave some of the yield of your harvest for the poor and the stranger? OR, don’t insult people with disabilities, or bully them by placing stumbling blocks in front of them, and make sure you pay your workers the same day. This, too, appears in Leviticus’ reading this week.

To say that the love of Jesus encompasses all of Christianity would be as dishonest as taking these two obscure verses to condemn an entire sector of the population, and it neither condemns nor cleanses Judaism or Christianity as a whole, but expiation of guilt does need to happen. 

It’s called t'shuvah in Jewish. 

It’s called facing your guilt and taking responsibility for the pain you’ve caused. 

As Jews, we are supposed to do this every day, not just on Yom Kippur. 

Because it’s universal love and acceptance we need, as we are, with no conditions, not condemnation and more trauma in the world.

So let’s try that on for a while, leave that tree of love to develop, and see what beauty blooms and what fruits develop from our work toward the world we want. 

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How Deep is Your Wound? Tazri’a/Metzora

I was talking to a healer the other day who told me that the source of my migraines is heavy metals in my brain/body (something for which there is no technology to prove--not until after you’re dead, anyway!). 

I’ve heard this before; everyone has heavy metals in their bodies to varying degrees. It makes sense, because we live in a polluted world, and it especially makes sense for a person like me who grew up in New York City breathing very polluted air on a heavily-trafficked avenue over 50 years ago when it was worse than now. And it builds up over time.

Of course, all bodies are different, and we are able to process and remove toxins to varying degrees (and, yes, she told me how certain foods can help eliminate them and cleanse me of them over time, in case you’re ready to jump in and give me suggestions). 

The question is always, how much and how deep in the tissues are the toxins that we carry? 

This week’s Torah reading is mostly about purity vs. impurity with regard to skin afflictions. The priest in the Temple is designated doctor/diagnostician, and he decides whether a person is pure or impure, and if they need to be quarantined or not (we can relate to quarantine, can’t we?--but the priest and the Temple...not so much).  

The question again is, how deep is the wound? How deep is the problem? 

Is it simply and literally skin-deep, or is it a deeper problem that needs to be addressed with greater measures? The Torah repeats this consideration for the priests over and over again--to make sure the rest of the population stays safe, mostly, I assume.  

I find it interesting that this idea can be applied to a person’s body or an entire society, as in: is it systemic or is it a surface problem that can be easily taken care of?

We have lots of societal issues that go much deeper than the surface, problems that became apparent, bubbling up like a skin affliction, as this pandemic began to rage. We need to remain cognizant to the fact that the vaccine itself will not solve the societal problems; those who have access to it in the U.S. and around the world continue to be those of privilege, just as those who have suffered more from coronavirus are the underprivileged.

And we mustn't forget that while we celebrate the fact that many of us are getting access to the vaccine, many people and countries are being left out. And the virus rages on...

While most of this double parsha may be about skin afflictions, it interestingly starts out talking about women’s impurity as it relates to childbirth, and ends again with sexual emissions for the male, and a woman’s monthly period. 

The first parsha, Tazria, is actually named for sowing seed, as in getting pregnant.

It goes on to name the m’kor, or “flow,” of a woman’s blood after giving birth, and how long she is considered impure depending on if she gives birth to a female or male child. It explains the kind of offering she is to bring to the priest who will then make the sacrifice for her and render her pure again. 

Let’s name it for what it is, classic misogynistic talk: why is she considered impure twice as long  after giving birth to a female as to a male child. 

While we can understand the idea of cleaning out stuff/purification after birth, there is no explanation, as far as I’m concerned, for the male vs. female child thing other than misogyny—a systemic problem in society. It goes as deep and as old as the Torah. So--no surprises there. 

But I loved noticing that the word for a woman’s period, “m’kor,” which means “flow,” also means “source,” as in “M’kor hayyim,” or “Source of Life.” (It shows up in psalm 36: For with you is the source of life; in your light we see light.) Such a beautiful way of talking about a woman’s “period.”

So, what do we do with this? And how is it connected with the deeper-than-skin problems, the systemic problems, both in our bodies and society?

Every time I see the word for skin in Hebrew, I’m fascinated that it changes meaning simply with the change of one letter: “or” in Hebrew is both skin and light when spoken. 

I always think; there has to be some deeper meaning in this, speaking of “deep.” 

One of the things this healer I spoke to about the migraines told me (and I’ve been told before, duh) is that the way I approach them will have a big effect on how quickly I heal. If I resist and push them away, it will take longer and be more painful. The more I surrender, well, you know…way easier said than done. 

What she said is that, along with a certain diet, I need to allow darkness to be integrated into light---and healing will come.

We all have “stuff” to clean out. We all need to be purified of things we carry deep within, and the way we approach our “stuff” has an effect on how it gets cleaned out. 

What we carry within us, beneath the skin, and how we approach it, is reflected in the way we carry ourselves in the world and treat others; it is reflected on the surface, in and on our skin. 

One thing is for sure: what’s on the inside comes out eventually. It is the light (or darkness) we carry out into the world. 

We all come from the Source of Life and we all carry the source of life within us. 

In continuing our work of purification, sometimes we need to stay away from others, in quarantine, to keep others safe.

Then, as microcosms of the Source of Life, we increase the possibility of bringing the flow of light to the surface and out into the world.

For in you, as in all of us, is the Source of Life; in your light we see light.  

What’s with the fire? (Shemini)

Another Passover has passed, we burned and placed a lamb shank (or chicken bone) on our seder plates to represent the Pesach offering, and now we are faced with the burning of The Brothers Nadav and Avihu in this week’s Torah reading,...

Yes, Moses’ nephews are burned up, consumed by fire, in one big POOF, for having made an offering to God without God’s approval--a rather harsh punishment, wouldn’t you say?

The question is: what were they doing? Were they jumping the gun? Getting ahead of themselves? Being too ambitious before their time? 

If you’ve been watching the latest season of Shtisel on Netflix (spoiler alert, I’m sorry, but I can’t help it), you saw Kive’s nightmare of his father burning his beloved paintings of Kive’s dead wife. Kive is unable to move forward and let go of his wife--or the paintings that represent her, even though he has met a new woman who seems very promising. 

Then, in a final acceptance, Kive is able to paint his new love, but in the painting, he engulfs her in flames. 

It’s a really strange scene. You’re not sure exactly what it means, confusing in the same way that they never tell us--in the whole season!--how his wife died! (Infuriating, not to mention really weird!)

The new woman seems pleased with the painting and its imagery, not disturbed and confused like I was. 

Thus, we must conclude that it’s a good sign--a sign of burning up the old, and perhaps a new kind of burning passion for her. 

As we know, fire and burning things up can be good or bad, if you want to qualify it. 

Fire can be destructive when out of control, becoming over-ambitious itself. We talk about symbolically burning bridges. 

Or it offers warmth, pleasing odors, digestible food, and healing.

Fire transforms things from one state to another. 

There’s the middle ground, too: a tiny flame that never goes out, like the pilot light on an old stove, there to ignite things as needed, always available in small doses. 

A few chapters ago in Torah, the commandment was given to keep the fire on the altar burning; an eternal flame that we, today, symbolically place above our Torah ark in the synagogue. 

I’ve been thinking about what I have burned up and how I have possibly been transformed during this Passover season. 

I’m also asking, have I been overly ambitious, pushed too hard, in a race against time to “accomplish” things in an effort to be “successful” according to society’s standards? 

The fact is, I really crashed at the end of Passover, and I’m still recovering, four days in; it’s given me time to contemplate the above questions: what can I realistically do at this point in my life, with the amount of energy I have, in this time in history? 

I’m still learning the lesson of how to find my balance, in a world totally out of balance, and to find what people like to call a “new normal.” I struggled with it before, and now it’s even harder, to know how far I can push myself and when I need to stop and say no. 

Passover this year was a lot for me. I mean, A LOT. Like I said, I’m still feeling the effects of it, and it’s frustrating.

But then I went out for a walk today, a beautiful day in New York. A lot of the blossoms are early, and I wanted to see what had bloomed, and what might have been messed up by the extreme heat a week ago (80 degrees!) and the extreme cold that followed (below 30). 

I was sure that the crab apples, which I look forward to every year, were not going to come.

Yes, I was worried: another sign of the imbalance in the world that gets me down. 

To my shock, I found the flowers, especially the magnolias (click to see them!!) to be more perfect than I’ve ever seen them in previous years. Somehow, they came through it all. A gift in the midst of chaos.

So the question that remains is, how do I/we find the balance?

And speaking of fire: How do we find balance between the destructive aspects of it--the over-ambition, over-passionate kind, the personal kind--and also the passion driven by the anxiety to fix everything, NOW, in the world, because it’s all so urgent---and the soothing, constant, transformative kind that helps us move forward slowly by an eternal flame?

After a conversation with an old teacher and friend, the word emunah, or faith, comes to mind. Not hope, as she said, which points to a lack of faith, but a pure and complete faith. 

A faith that, despite the pain in the world, everything is for a higher purpose, and that, despite the urgency of the problems, the fire we have to put out might lead us to rush, which can become destructive in itself.  

As many have repeated, slowing down is one of the lessons we are supposed to be learning from this pandemic. 

So, to help the healing along, we each have to keep our personal fire burning, at just the right level, on our own altars. We need to each find our personal glow that offers a good balance of an energy waiting to catch and grow slowly: an eternal flame that has the potential to transform our lives and the world.

My Pesach Special

A number of years ago, as an experiment, I decided it was time to see what it would be like to have a kosher kitchen. I asked a rabbi friend for help, and she came over (Thank you, Jill Hammer! You are permanently tied to my kosher kitchen story).

Since then, ironically, I always enter into the preparations for Passover with more than a tiny bit of resentment, and these days, I have so much fun blaming my 20-year-old daughter (21 in a couple of days!!) who’s a real stickler for this “religious” stuff. 

I watch this daughter with a sharp knife getting the built-up grit out of the bolts on the outside of my pots and I sneer in my cynical way; “Am I licking those bolts?”

And when I’m cleaning my house, all the while I’m thinking, “Does it make any sense? I’m not eating chametz (leavened food) off the floor or from the corners of my couch! It’s all symbolic, so does it really matter?”

The above-mentioned daughter bought me some contact paper this year to put on the counter top (because you really can’t kasher a plastic counter top, let’s be real, Mommy), and I really hope I can use it again next year, because I hate the waste involved.

And each day, even if I spread it out, the hours of vacuuming and standing in the kitchen leave me completely drained and my feet aching as I fall asleep at night.

People say, “Well, you gotta tell her, this is your house, and she’s gotta deal with it.”

But the truth is, in the end, I really love it. I just don’t like to admit it. 

Because when else would I actually clean out my disgusting refrigerator---I mean, really clean it--not to mention the rest of my house, all at the same time?

Yes, it’s all very overwhelming: the cleaning and the shopping and the cooking, and having to time it just right, all in the right order (like, what about the days right after you’ve cleaned the kitchen of chametz and before you can have matzoh?? What can you eat?? I know I’m being dramatic, but that’s how the mind works; you’re in a certain space, and you need to transition to a new one--oh! Just like the Israelites as they left Egypt and entered the desert--all that space in the desert!!!) 

But I actually liked that stupid fake marble contact paper on my counter once I’d struggled with cutting it and succeeded in putting it down and getting it just right; it’s so white and clean and easy to wash.

And the satisfaction---no, the beauty---of looking into my clean refrigerator with lots of space around the pots and casseroles of cooked food is...well, it’s just beautiful. 

It gives me such a feeling of...spaciousness.

Which is what I talked about last week: making space---for other choices, which means for other things to happen.  

This year, more than any other year, because of the pandemic, getting invested in Passover meant really sinking into the physical aspects of it because there was no family drama to distract or consume me.  

I had the space to slow down, take a breath, and methodically go through the cleaning and the cooking for the sheer joy of clearing away stuff. 

I got to stand at the sink with only 5 dishes to wash, not 15 or 20, and feel thankful for the simplicity of it---and, of course, for my beautiful refrigerator each time I opened it (more than once, I opened it just to look inside and see all the space!!)

And when we sat down to eat, just five of us, there was so much real joy at having made it through a very narrow place (our own Mitzraim, or “narrow place” in Hebrew)---for having physically survived the year. 

There were memories of me and my husband barely having the strength to sit at the table last year, so weak as we began to recover from Covid. 

When we sang, “Dayenu,” our older daughter, who in the past rejected all this “religious stuff,” chanted out, “Had we just survived this pandemic, it would have been enough; not only did we survive, but we’re sitting here with delicious, abundant food in front of us!” 

Yes. Passover is one of those times when I really get to see and, more importantly, feel the meaning of a mitzvah (an obligated act or commandment according to Jewish Law). 

And symbolism really is the point, isn’t it? Because transformation starts with symbolism. 

I often wonder what it would be like if I truly felt “obligated” to do all the things Jews are “supposed to” do according to Jewish law. (Again, cynically, I always say, “Who exactly ‘commanded’ us, anyway? Was it really God?? No, it was a bunch of men, a small, elite group, a very long time ago, who made up these rules for all of us, so why should I care?)

But what if, just for funzies, as my daughter would say, with the kind of commitment that comes from feeling obligated, I tried out more of those mitzvahs?

What other little joys might I discover in the space I’d create if I decided to suspend disbelief and cynicism, and did things “just because” and not because they make any sense?

Who knows? I guess I’ll have to do them and see what happens.

Still? Tsav

You know how when you’ve been watching a certain Netflix series and you stop for a while, and they send you this message: “Are you still watching this?” 

Or you’ve been watching for so long in one sitting that they finally interrupt you and say, “Are you sure you want to keep watching?”

This always seemed like an ordinary marketing ploy to me, but clinical psychologist and mindfulness teacher, Christine Runyan, heard it as a judgment: Are you still watching…? (which I thought was quite funny).

Yes, most of us have struggled with numbing devices/activities/addictions of some sort during this year, unless we’re subhuman (no judgment if you are).

It’s also been documented that depression, suicide rates, suicidal thoughts, panic/anxiety, etc. have increased exponentially during this time. 

And I wonder: how many of us have been feeling like we should somehow be feeling better by now if we’re not--less tired, more productive, able to think more clearly, whether we got sick with Covid or not, and perhaps especially if we’re not among those on the “front lines.” 

Some have actually made the choice not to slow down, which can be a kind of addiction in itself: the insistence that we must go on at the same pace no matter what. 

Runyan thinks that the statistical analysis of depression and suicide is a dangerous thing; she says that if we think in terms of numbers, and 30% are suffering in this way, there are still 70% that are not, so if you’re among the 30%, you still end up wondering, “What’s wrong with me?” 

Runyan talks about fight or flight or freeze, and the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, and how living with so much uncertainty and unpredictability for so long takes its toll on the body as well as the psyche. 

So--whatever you’re feeling, emotionally or physically…”Of course you are,” says Runyan.

It’s funny, but several weeks ago, I shared some physical struggles I’ve been having and I got several responses of sympathy. 

As much as I appreciated the gesture and knew it was coming from the heart, I have been more loath to talk about such personal things since then in my blogs. 

Because my purpose was not/is not to get sympathy. My purpose is to let everyone out there know that I, like everyone else in their own particular way, am struggling.

I was hoping to evoke a more universal feeling of solidarity. I wanted to let everyone know: we’re in this together, and I’m willing to show my vulnerability, and I hope you are as well. 

Because we are all in this together, as humans, and what links us as humans, as Runyan said in the podcast, is love; to love each other, allow ourselves to be loved, and take the risk of sharing our vulnerability as an act of love. 

Runyan presented some mindfulness practices for us as individuals, and it reminded me of the Torah reading of the week, Tsav.

In this parsha, after all the preparations of the Mishkan, the mobile dwelling place for God in the desert, where animal and grain offerings will be made according to ancient sacrificial laws, it is finally time to bring Aaron, Moses’ brother, and his two sons, and anoint them as priests to carry out the sacrificial rites. 

The ritual engages the senses; there is the washing of feet, the placing of hands on the head of an animal, the subsequent slaughter, the handling of animal parts, the dipping of thumbs and fingers into the blood, the smearing of blood on the edges of ears, the splashing of blood all around the altar; fire, ashes, the sizzle of fat and turning it into smoke to send up a pleasing odor, and then the eating of the permitted parts. 

Such an act, which engages the senses, requires real presence: a slowing down and a focus. It’s as if a pause button is pressed; a pause from the daily fight or flight or freeze that our ancestors lived with in their daily struggle to survive.  

People may have lived slower lives back then, but they lived with daily uncertainty and constant threats in ways we do not know. 

It’s hard to compare, but I imagine similarities to what we are living through now; we are so activated, it’s been hard to pause and take a breath.

But to make the choice to do so, to engage our senses in ways that release dopamine---to find ways to calm our system---is the power of humanity.

The thinking-brain is our power, says Runyan, but we have to make the space and make the choice, moment by moment, to engage it, even if we go right back down the rabbit hole. 

Victor Frankel, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, famously wrote, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space; and in that space lies our power to choose, and in our choice, lies our growth and our freedom.”

Whatever we’re feeling---of course we are. It’s all normal. This year has taken a toll on us, and we’re still in it, so we can’t even properly mourn, and we’re showing it as a society with the increase in violence we’ve been seeing lately.

Despite all of this, we have the option to use our human brain power and human love power, press the pause button when we remember, slow down, take a breath, engage the senses, and perhaps find our way to a measure of freedom during this Passover season. 

Until we can “not anymore” instead of “still.”

Not a Laughing Matter: VaYikra

I just finished reading comedian Trevor Noah’s book, Born a Crime. 

From the first page, you’re waiting to hear whether and how his mother survived a gunshot to the back of her head by his stepfather, and you don’t find out until the last page (spoiler alert: I’m going to tell you, but the book is still really good). 

Even though this is a story of Trevor’s life growing up in South Africa and the intricacies of Apartheid from his own experiences, his mother is central to his life and his book. 

Through the systemic racism, poverty, years of hunger and physical and emotional abuse by a husband she can’t get away from because the police are complicit, his mother insists that Jesus is all she needs. 

This is a woman who drags Trevor to church every Sunday---correction: churches--three, to be exact; “the White Church, the Black Church, and the Mixed Church,” for the different experiences and needs they fulfill in her. 

Her story of survival is one of those crazy ones of a woman pinned to the ground, a gun pointed at her head, a gun so powerful and reliable it never backfires, yet it spits the bullets out the back, one after another, giving her time to get up and run for her life with her son (not Trevor).

She runs to her car and, once in the driver’s seat, her husband shoots again, this time hitting her in the back of her head through the rear window.

The bullet goes clear through her head, she collapses, and blood is strewn everywhere.

Her son climbs into the driver’s seat and gets her to the hospital.

Trevor, now a grown man making a living as a comedian in South Africa, gets a phone call from his brother, races to the hospital, finds his mother alive but bleeding profusely, and learns that she had canceled her health insurance (“because it’s a scam!”).

He is faced with a decision about giving his credit card to the nurse and getting into debt for the rest of his life, or letting her die, which she probably will anyway. She is expected to be in the ICU for weeks if she survives (he gives the nurse the credit card).

But it turns out that the bullet through her head does one of those ricochet things where it just barely misses her skull, her spinal cord, and her brain, any major arteries, and her eye, making a hole through the side of her nose instead, and leaving all else intact.

The only thing the doctors have to do is stop the bleeding, and she’s miraculously awake in a few hours and out of the hospital in a few days. 

When she wakes up, she jokes that Trevor is now officially the most good-looking person in the family. 

And when Trevor chides her for having canceled her health insurance, she says, “But I have insurance, Trevor. I have Jesus. And God has blessed me with a son who could pay my bill.”

Talk about complete faith!

The Torah portion this week, as we begin the Book of Leviticus, Vayikra, starts with God calling out to Moses, letting him know there is more work to be done; after the Exodus, now “free,” the Israelites need to learn what it means to know God, to get close to God. 

The way they will do this is through animal and grain sacrifices, prepared in a special way and burnt on an altar, by way of the priests, the kohanim. 

The “sacrifice” is not actually called a sacrifice in Hebrew, but rather, a “Korban,” a coming near, or an approaching of God. 

In other words, God is calling out to Moses and the people, and instructing them on how to approach God: how to come close.

Over and over, the parsha’s description of how to properly make an animal offering includes taking the blood of the animal and dashing it all around the sides of the altar.

It also includes a repeated commandment to make the offering a “re’ach nichoach,” or a pleasing odor.

One type of offering is of shalom, peace, also translated as wholeness. 

Trevor Noah’s mother has learned this lesson already, of how to approach, or get close to God and how to believe with the wholeness of her being. And despite the blood, her own blood, that is dashed around her car, she carries peace: a peace that comes from deep faith. 

She believes wholly that despite human imperfection, misbehavior, abuse and tragedy, God is there for her. She knows that believing and praying doesn’t necessarily mean that God can prevent humans from being hurt or from hurting each other, but she uses her deep belief, and the Bible, as her guide to living a truthful and honest life. 

Her “pleasing odor” for God are her constant prayers. 

I don’t know about you, but I look to people like her, who have suffered greatly and seen and experienced terrible human tragedy, yet manage to maintain a sense of well-being and wholeness, not to mention humor, never giving up on themselves or humanity.

Such deep faith in God translates into a deep faith in humanity and the possibility of redemption, if only we keep working at it, despite, or perhaps because of, the blood we keep spilling.

PPE + PPK; Vayakhel/Pekudei

Personal Protective Equipment + Puzzles, Poetry & Kindness.

I’m suddenly into poetry, and now puzzles--two things I never liked or understood as a child.

Kindness is something I’ve always been into, though I don’t always manage it. 

If I were 20, I’d say about this pandemic: “I am soooo over it.” (Okay, I do say that, even though I’m way older). Which means I’m not. But I want to be. Or I want it to be. And though we can begin to glimpse the horizon of over-ness, it’s not.

A few days ago, in my determination to “feel better” (which, I know, according to Buddhism, I’m not supposed to be trying), and to avoid ordering from Amazon (yes, they should be avoided!) and to do something different than going for a walk in the park, I set out for a walk across town to a small bookstore I love--to buy poetry: a cool place called Book Culture. (I mean, how can you not want to buy a book there?)

There, at the cool bookstore, I saw puzzles for sale. I was suddenly seized with the urge to buy one. A cute one: 500 pieces, with little pictures of New York scenes (what can I say? I’m a devoted New Yorker).

As I was browsing, this person came along who wanted to browse in the same spot where I was. In her anxiety over Covid, and her impatience at my occupying the space she wanted, she was unkind and short-tempered. She shoo-ed me away and said in an authoritative voice, “I’m going to have to ask you to move.”

My blood pressure rose, I grumbled an incoherent protest, but moved away. It pissed me off. 

I wasn’t happy with myself for reacting the way I did. I met unkindness with unkindness. 

Then I got home and discovered for the first time how meditative and peaceful doing puzzles is.

You’re hyper-focused, you look at the detail of the tiny pieces, then the big picture, then the detail again, and so it goes, slowly, until you have the satisfaction of placing each individual piece in its place. 

And you sigh and smile with each little piece placed correctly. Aaaah. The beauty of it, seeing how all the pieces fit together into the one big Whole. 

Like the words and images of a poem. Focusing on the minutiae of life. The mundane. Because what else is there, really, as poet Naomi Shihab Nye says? We’re not living in Star Wars; we’re living in our own little lives, filled with tiny details, many of them beautiful, if only we take the time to look. 

That’s the kind of thing the double parsha this week presents to us: detail after detail, repeated again and again, of who and what and how the Dwelling Place for God, the Mishkan, will be constructed and decorated to make One Beautiful Whole to be carried through the desert. 

Once again, the Israelites are asked to bring their special gifts from the heart (so much repetition) and now also their special skills, until it’s too much and they are told to stop. 

Their offerings, of a generosity that comes from the heart, are a practice in kindness and the way we should be treating each other, our fellow earthlings. They carry beauty, like puzzles and poetry (not like that woman in the bookstore or my reaction to her).

The following excerpt from a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye was written years before this pandemic--more than a half century, in fact! But it holds an experience and also an intention for how to live. 

It’s called “Kindness:”

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things, 

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved.

All this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness…

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing

You must know sorrow as the deepest thing

You must wake up with sorrow

You must speak to it 

Till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows

And you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore...

Only kindness that raises its head

From the crowd of the world to say,

It is you I have been looking for,

And then goes with you everywhere

Like a shadow or a friend.  

Hmmm. Until we see the size of the cloth. 

While we’re figuring out the puzzle of life and how we fit into the Whole, let’s remember: look for beauty in the details, look for kindness; Bring beauty, bring kindness—as offerings of the heart.

Maybe that’s how we will get through the rest of this when it feels like we’ve lost everything. 

The Whole is still there. We just forget to look at it. 

PPE can protect us from Covid, but let’s not allow it to separate us from the cloth—and the beauty of PPK.

A Golden Trump; Ki Tissa

It’s been almost exactly one year since I fell ill with Coronavirus, nine months since I published my first blog about lessons I’d learned from it. I don’t know if I’ve retained them. Maybe the lessons are meant to be learned over and over again. 

I keep feeling all this rage and grief, and not just from the world, but also from things that have come to light recently in my own circles. I keep asking myself if my feelings are normal. I continually need people to remind me that it is. 

If I were to sum up the themes of the year, it would be fear, rage, grief, heartbreak, betrayal, truth--on a national and worldwide basis over this year, as well as in personal experiences.

And it makes sense that it should all happen at this very time; the world is at a reckoning point, and society and its institutions are being turned on their head. 

It makes just as much sense as it makes for the Israelites to doubt, in their fear and anxiety, that this man Moses is ever coming down from the mountain where he’s hanging out with this supposed “God;”  as much sense that they would demand a solid substitute god in exchange; as much sense that Aaron would panic and quell their anger by rushing to construct said substitute; as much sense for God to want to unleash all his rage at their betrayal ; as much sense as Moses unleashing all his rage after all the sacrifices he’s made and forcing the people to “drink” their Golden Calf now in the form of dust (can you picture it?).

And as much sense as Aaron stretching the truth, like a child; “I did it. Don’t be angry. Please. I threw the gold into the fire and a calf came out. I didn’t mold it.”

To be fair, we have to give Aaron some credit and compassion. He’s left alone and in charge of thousands of people while Moses has disappeared with no sign of imminent return. The people are getting anxious, and anger is welling up. Aaron must be terrified. The need to placate, with all the unknowns, is urgent. And he’s afraid of Moses’ anger. He stretches the truth.

But sometimes there’s no place for compassion in our heart. 

Like when we’re talking about outright lies and neglect that lead to so many unnecessary deaths. 

Or there’s an abusive coach or politician or teacher or spiritual leader--and you play a part in covering it up, year after year after year, and pretend you didn’t know about it!

Betrayal, heartbreak, rage. 

We live in a culture of denial: “I didn’t do it. I didn’t know about it.” 

Maybe it’s the culture of blame and punishment that’s at the root of the problem; a punitive God? Corporal punishment? Blame and shame? Punitive prisons? The death penalty?

And a culture of reverence. The need to make some superior to others. 

There are photos of people posing with a golden statue of Donald Trump at the CPAC conference. 

Golden Calf; Golden Trump. In the same week. (Who says the Bible is irrelevant??) 

The people are afraid. And they’ve been seduced by lies. But fear doesn’t trump the need for truth.

This story is a warning about something very real. 

A warning against arrogance.

A warning to be humble. 

A warning about how important truth is.

We can’t point fingers at others in places of greater power and shake our heads like we don’t know how it could happen. Because we do it to each other each and every day. 

Better to admit you did it or allowed it to happen.

Because in the end, truth comes out and grief and rage have increased astronomically (and unnecessarily) by then.

It starts with us--in our houses, with our family and friends, in our organizations and workplaces. We have to admit we did wrong, not after months of hounding, but right away. The sooner we admit it, the sooner we can get on with the healing. 

Whatever is stopping us, we have to get over it. It’s part of creating a new and equitable society: part of building a world where we take away the punitive attitude and simultaneously hold each other accountable. 

Just say it: I messed up. And I’m sorry. And I hold myself accountable. I hold my politicians accountable, and I hold myself accountable. 

And whatever we’re feeling, it’s normal. We need to remind each other, and we need to soften each other’s anger, like Moses does for God, soothing his face, reminding him that these are his peeps: that love is real.  

And then set about the work of fixing it.

For the sake of love and a new and equitable society. Tell the truth. 

How can we laugh? How can we not? (Purim)

Between Texas freezing over (like hell it is!) and---well, just everything else, I wondered how we can laugh on Purim. 

But then I read the Purim story in detail again and I realized, how can we even laugh about Purim at all, let alone when people are freezing to death in Texas and---well, just everything else. 

Yesterday I was walking in the cold and the snow in Central Park and from afar I could hear some very loud dance music blasting from the ice skating rink. Disturbing the peace of the North Woods (I grumbled) were some 50 people dancing in unison to bachata (Dominican dance music), legs lifting, arms pushing out, to the left, then the right (I do hope they were masked). They were having so much fun, I almost wished I could join them. 

It’s the season of fun. Or it’s supposed to be. Mardi Gras, Purim.

But if you read the Book of Esther you find the humiliation of women (girls?) paraded in front of a king in a beauty contest for his choosing, our hero Esther who saves the Jewish people through her bravery, and the revenge of a joyfully saved people attacking and killing thousands of their enemies. 

For this, we distribute “mishloach manot,” a little care package to our friends and neighbors and the poor, in celebration, and we dress up and get drunk.

Maybe the custom started in difficult times for the Jews; things suck, so find a reason to have fun! 

But I ask, how can we laugh? 

And yet. 

How can we not? 

I heard an interview with Rabbi Ariel Burger, student of Elie Wiesel (who would say, “and yet,” instead of “yes, and”), and author of Witness, Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom. 

Burger tells of a moment with a group that meets regularly in a “cafe” for discussion and suddenly found they didn’t agree when it came to January 6th and the attack on the Capitol. There was a heated discussion, the hour was almost up, and they turned to their leader looking for a solution. 

Knowing that there would be none, he led the group in niggun (wordless melody) for the last minutes of their time together, they sang, and the tension dissipated immediately. 

A chapter in Burger’s book is called, “How can you sing? How can you not?”

Burger quotes Rebbe Nachman as saying, “When two people talk at the same time, it’s dissonant, it’s cacophony, but when two people sing together, it can be harmony.” 

There’s a mystical teaching in Judaism about the white space around the letters of the Torah; it’s also the white empty space we sometimes look for during meditation. 

Burger asks us to consider, what do we want to create in that space? 

The white space allows us to expand our repertoire: what got us into our present mess is not what’s going to get us out of it. The white space takes us beyond the limitations of words. 

Burger continues: We can’t absorb everyone else’s suffering, or we will be driven to depression, as many great spiritual leaders have done, yet we need to sensitize ourselves enough so we feel implicated enough to have that feeling of responsibility--but without allowing despair to creep in. 

...The more hope we have and the more capacity to choose hope, the more we can take responsibility for the world around us...this is why hope is the first moral choice; it allows us to stay in the game, which is a lifetime’s work, or even more than one lifetime…

...If we give up, it’s over. We’re just choosing to allow people to be humiliated (like the girls in the king’s harem) over and over again in our presence.

Since talking and arguing isn’t solving our problems, what creativity can we find flowing through the white spaces beyond the limitations of words? What harmonies?

While we might ask, how can we sing when so many are suffering?

Well, how can we not? 

How can we laugh?

And yet, how can we not?

Peaches, Cynicism and Offerings of the Heart: T’rumah

Was I shocked and appalled by last week’s Torah reading? The slave and the ear and the awl and the doorway and the impossible choices?

Not really. The Torah has all kinds of crazy stuff that doesn’t apply to our world today.

Am I shocked and appalled at the acquittal of former president Trump at his impeachment trial? 

Appalled, yes. Shocked, no. 

It’s easy to say that, depressingly, things haven’t changed that much since ancient times.

Like: we’re still learning how to love, after all these millennia. 

But maybe, yet again, the problem is our expectations. 

Writer Alain de Botton, interviewed on (yes, again) Krista Tippett last week (and why exactly am I feeling apologetic about this?) talks about sentimental optimism.

He defines sentimental optimism (so American) as the unrealistic expectations we have that set us up for disappointment and cynicism. It’s an idea put out by our culture of what things are “supposed to be” like, especially concerning love; we prepare for the “Big Day,” as if it were the culmination of our love when it’s really just the beginning. 

He says that as the human race, we’re also really just at the beginning of learning to love (hard to deny, if you really think about it; we’re not that good at it). 

And true love is rocky; it’s hard work because we’re human. 

The opposite of “sentimental optimism” is “pessimistic realism,” which De Botton defines as the way things are, and he says it’s a much better way to live. 

You say, A better way to live?? I don’t want to be pessimistic! I want to be hopeful! That’s the American Way!

But! When we are pessimistically realistic, we know that difficulties are going to occur, so we prepare for them. 

When we’re not realistic, we get angry when things are difficult--specifically because we haven’t prepared (says the source), especially when they're things we think of as mundane. We don’t give legitimacy and prestige to these mundane difficulties; our narrative is that we’re arguing over “stupid” things like the laundry.

On the societal level, it’s a common thing for people to say, with shock and appal, “How can (fill in the blank) have happened? It’s/they’re so stupid!” 

But it’s precisely the little things we have to pay attention to; airing our dirty laundry is exactly what’s happening now in American politics. It’s become obvious that we can’t ignore the little things and think they will just take care of themselves--leave the “bad apple” in the bushel and say “It’s only one.”

No! It will spoil the entire bushel! We have to prepare for the inevitability of the rotten bushel and remove the bad apples in order to change our culture.

The Trump administration didn’t appear in a vacuum. It took years--no decades and decades--of preparation on the part of the Republican party to set this up.

Just as there has been preparation for greed and hatred, there must be preparation for love. 

Even Torah tells us to prepare!

This week’s parsha begins with this idea presented to the Jewish people: “You’re starting on a difficult journey, so…make for Me a dwelling place that I may dwell amongst you... 

“And this is how you are to prepare it: with gifts that people feel impelled to bring--from the heart--to decorate this portable dwelling place for My Presence to travel among the people through their difficulties.” 

God is very precise about how to prepare this sanctuary. He doesn’t just say, let the people bring whatever they want...their old rags (dirty laundry isn’t an option) and whatever garbage they can manage to find. 

No! It’s with beautiful things of value: gold, silver, copper, special stones, skins, yarns, incense, oils, acacia wood—real sacrifices for people living with practically nothing.

And there are instructions to tie together curtains with clasps, “to make it one.” It says this twice: to make the dwelling place One.

How do we make ourselves, humanity, as One? How to learn to love one another? How to prepare for a world of love that we haven’t accomplished yet. 

A functional society, says De Botton (just like a functional family), requires love and politeness and the capacity to look for charitable reasons for others’ behavior (without making excuses or excusing). 

So, first, be careful what we expose ourselves to, De Botton says; as social beings who are very sensitive to outside influences, when we listen to angry voices, we become angry—and there’s an overabundance of angry voices out there to listen to.

Yes, let’s take some advice from Torah: to carry us through these difficult times, prepare beautiful sanctuaries for ourselves, carry them within us so that “God” may dwell among us—and make offerings from the heart (perhaps some peaches with cream?) a central, daily practice.

Ears and Awls: Mishpatim

I have to admit that last week I fell into a few moments of questioning and regret that I’d left my job five years ago to go to rabbinical school; even though I’m close to being finished, what’s ahead feels especially hard at the moment for a variety of reasons.

It was a scary thing to leave, and it’s still scary. I left behind people and things I loved, and jumped into this vast unknown.

In this week’s Torah reading we get a bunch more laws given by God to the Israelites on how to live an ethical life—good for ancient times, I might add, not so practical for today. 

The first is what is to happen with a slave who is set free by his master, but chooses to stay back; his master must take an awl, pierce the slave’s ear to the doorway and the slave is his forevermore. 

So much has been said about this: Why the awl? Why the ear? Why the doorway? (and, um, how long does he have to stand there? Is he standing or sitting? Which way is he facing: inside or out? I wonder…)

One commentary is that it punishes the inability of the slave to move on and be free. He is given a chance at freedom but doesn’t take it. 

But the slave in question stays back because he loves his wife and children and doesn’t want to leave them. It seems more like Sophie’s Choice than a real choice (in the movie, she is literally forced to choose between sacrificing her son or her daughter to the nazis or she will lose both—and she chooses “wrong”).

The parsha ends with God telling Moses that he must ascend the mountain-—Mt. Sinai-—again, this time to receive the tablets of the commandments he had told him about before. There, God appears in a cloud again, though the people below see God as fire. There, Moses will remain for forty days.

Sometimes we are forced to make choices that don’t seem clear; we must leave behind people and things we love, and we don’t know what lies ahead. And there is a transition time that might seem very long, with lots of waiting. 

Still, the push is there to walk out the door, to the unknown, into what feels like a cloud, or from afar it might even look like fire. 

But walk through the door, we must, as a nation and as individuals; we might make the wrong choices along the way, but there has to be something better that urges us on, even if it takes a long time.

Clouds, Smoke, Fire, Blasts, Trembling and Truth: Yitro

Sometimes Truth comes in a cloud, sometimes in smoke and fire, sometimes in a great trembling, and sometimes in loud blasts. 

Maybe our sight is blurred or misty, so it must come through other senses.

We might have to hear and listen to a gentle calling.

Or it’s so loud, our instinct is to cover our ears. 

Sometimes Truth’s wake-up call comes in a burning sensation and flames.

Maybe we feel it under our feet and through our whole body. 

The way to Truth is by various means, but it will come through in the end.

In this week’s Torah reading, Yitro, Jethro in English, Moses’ father-in-law passes wisdom to him about how to accept help from his community as opposed to taking it all on himself. 

God talks to the people through Moses and shows God’s self through the above-mentioned ways: in a cloud, fire and smoke, a loud blast, or a deep trembling.

It’s not the first, and it won’t be the last effort to get the people to have complete faith in Moses and in God.

And Moses reassures the people; Don’t worry, don’t be afraid—that’s just God trying to get you to listen. 

The Ten Commandments, as they are popularly known, are first stated here in this reading. 

For me, in this moment, this parsha, and God, are just trying to get the people to understand a basic message: Don’t bow down to falsities, have respect for the inter-connectedness of all, and try to be a good person. 

In whatever form it comes, when we mess up, the Truth comes out, and we often need others to point it out to us; we can’t do it alone.

Alone or with the help of others, Truth will find us, whether in a small, still voice, a loud blast, fire and smoke, or in a deep trembling.

It will find us. And it will come out.