From the Rabbi’s Desk

Shemot

December 23, 2018 by • Tags: •

This week, we have shifted from the first to the second book in the Five Books of Moses, or our Written Torah. We have left Bereshit, Genesis and are now in the book of Shemot, or Exodus. We have also shifted from the stories of our Avot and Imahot, our patriarchs and matriarchs, – Avraham, Yitzhak and Yaakov, Sarah, Rivka, Rachel and Leah – into the story where the two main protagonists are God and Moses. We will follow these two “actors” throughout the rest of Torah.

In Shemot, Moses meets God for the first time. In a fascinating tension of introduction, Moses asks first, “Who am I,” Mianokhi – as a prelude to the idea of, “Who am I – that I should go to Pharaoh?” Such a question hangs in the air, in self-doubt perhaps, but maybe even of fear. Moses, left Egypt after killing an Egyptian overseer, and even growing up in the Egyptian palace may not save him from such an act.

Later Moses asks of God, “Who are You?” This question is asked, as Moses attempts to deflect God’s seconding of Moses. God waits Moses out, choosing him to go from being a shepherd in the hills of Midian to becoming a great teacher, Moshe Rabbeinu, leading the Children of Israel out of enslavement to freedom. Moses says to God that the Children of Israel will ask him who has sent him to them, “What is His Name” – they will ask. What is His Name? We too may ask the same question of God, Who we name by many names: Judge and Source, Rock and our Redeemer.

In Shemot, which more correctly is the Book of Names, and not Exodus as it has come to be known in English, such questions are significant. Last week we talked about ethical wills, about leaving a written legacy of values, ethics and ideals to our children, and our children’s children. What is our legacy? In order to leave a legacy we need to know who we are: how and why we are named and how we are to be remembered through that name.

God reveals a Name that is poetic and enigmatic, “I Shall Be What I Shall Be – or in just a few words later, “I Shall Be.”  Ehey Asher Eheh. אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה. A Name that is pure breath in it’s very enunciation. A Name that reveals an essential ‘verb-ness – a process of a God that is always in a state of Becoming! In this Name God reveals our own capacity for our own be-coming. We grow into our own name-selves and in doing so, we too learn to live in our own becoming truth.

And just a little bit further in the text (3:13-15), God makes it even easier for the Children of Israel, by declaring that He is the “God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob” – a phrase we repeat in the Amidah prayer. “This is My Name forever and this is My remembrance from generation to generation.” God will be remembered in each generation and we will be remembered by God in each generation – we are in a Remembering-relationship with God and God is with us for all time.

We don’t generally think of God as a protagonist in a story – and yet, what is Torah but our story of our becoming a people, our becoming the people Israel, choosing to accept the quid-pro-quo that God offers us not just at Sinai, but throughout Torah. We will see this relationship be informed by an ‘if-then’ modality, a covenant which informs much of our Biblical relationship with God.

As modern people, many of us are skeptical about such a seemingly conditional relationship with God. How do we change and challenge the ‘if-then’formula of that early stage of our relationship, into a relationship that allows for more human agency in this world? Should we think of ourselves as agents who hold power in our own hands? Is this what the rabbis of Talmud teach in the oven of Ahknai?We will learn this story at our Shabbat service this week. Come and join us this Shabbat morning at the JCC at 10 am for a fascinating story about how a seemingly simple oven challenges our rabbis!

 

 

 

Vayechi

December 16, 2018 by • ,

Shalom Aleichem.

And he lived, Vayechi, in the land of Egypt, Mitzrayim. The story of Jacob is coming to an end. His years were 147, and “the time approached for Israel to die…”

Rashi

Rashi, our beloved French medieval commentator, notes an unusual pattern in the Sefer Torah. Usually, in the Sefer Torah each new parashah opens after a division of a certain number of blank spaces. Vayechiopens after the space of only one letter. Rashi asks why this passage is “closed.” He states that when Jacob closed his eyes in death, so too were the heart and eyes of all Israel closed. Alternatively, he suggests (in BereshitRabbah, a book of Midrash written between 300-500 CE), that Jacob wanted to reveal “the end” to his sons (the ultimate end of exile for all the people Israel, (according to Gur Aryeh, the16th century Maharal of Prague, in his commentary on Rashi’s commentary!!), but that vision was closed to his eyes.

Jacob makes his desire to be buried in his homeland known and then he proceeds to call his sons and grandsons to him for his final words. Here we have the template for some of our rituals as we prepare for death today.

In Jacob’s last words to his sons and grandsons we find our first ethical will, a tradition of millennia within Judaism, yet now, somewhat lost in our modern world. In 1991 Jack Reimer wrote a book (So That Your Values Live On: Ethical Wills and How to Prepare Them) which details examples of ethical wills. Reimer advocates for why such documents should continue to hold a solid place in our tradition. Sometimes short, sometimes lengthy, sometimes pithy, sometimes convoluted, these wills belie the import of only concerning ourselves with preparing our financial arrangements.

As Jacob prepares to meet his sons, Chapter 47, verse 29, he utters this phrase; “do kindness and truth,chesedv’emet with me.” Chesedv’emet are words which are the defining motto, if you will, of every ChevraKadisha, Jewish burial society. Members of every ChevraKadisha hold a deeply held commitment to performing their work with chesedv’emet, even apologizing to the deceased at the end of their task, for any indignity they may have caused the deceased to suffer.

Jacob’s example of how he speaks to his sons also teaches us to speak words of eulogy, of hesped, with truth and with kindness – to never disparage the dead– but to also not embellish the hesped with pretty and false words. We are called to speak honestly.

Jacob speaks the plain truth, and so should we. Over the past 18 years, I have conducted many funerals and eulogized many souls, some of whom I knew, but many of whom I only “met” through the words of their family members. Our job, in this position, is to find that core truth of their life, and speak to that truth – not to recite a chronology of their accomplishments. I try to listen between the lines of what I have heard from family members, and  I find that when I write down a turn of phrase that causes me to shiver, causes me to ask myself if I can really say these words out loud, these are the exact words that need to be said and heard. I always speak these words with kindness – and when I see the tears of sons and daughters, I know I was correct in bringing this particular truth to light. That moment is always a moment when healing begins, that and the sound of dirt hitting the aron, the coffin. Stark truth is what we need to face into the starkness of death.

I differ from those who advocate for “celebrations of life” instead of a funeral. I think grief is grief and must be given adequate room. Our eyes too must close. Just as we saw in Chaye Sarah, we see in Vayechithe imminence of death in the word of life, chaye. We are dying each moment we live. This truth does not in any way diminish our capacity for joy, for immersing ourselves in new challenges, for welcoming new family members – in fact, it does the opposite. Facing into our deaths, we celebrate life in our living – I suggest this is our true celebration of life.

At the end of Vayechi Joseph too dies, after the blessing of seeing three generations raised up through Ephraim. His grandchildren were “raised on his knee.” What an exquisite phrase depicting a loving and present grandparent. Before he died he assured his family that they too would be brought up out of this land. But that is another story, kinderlach. For now, l’chayim.

Aleichem shalom.

Vayigash

December 9, 2018 by •

Shalom Aleichem,


Vayigash takes its name from the “approach” of Judah to Joseph– as he pleads with the Egyptian governor for mercy. To approach someone when there is such a power differential is an approach that demands careful consideration. Too hasty, too obsequious, too brash, too cautious – any of these may cause the person who is the power-that-be to consider negatively that which is being asked. Just where to pitch the “ask” is the stuff of many an ad agencies nightmares – and many an educator’s planning of class materials. What is too much – and what is too little?! When is it “just right?” Perhaps Goldilocks was taking her cue from Judah.

Sometimes even rabbis and religious leaders are assumed to be in the “ask” business. We are selling a product. Bums in the seat = dollars in the kitty – all of which enable programming and purchasing which is deemed necessary to the continuity of the shul. But it is a tough sell sometimes. One cannot be seen as selling a product – Judaism seeps well beyond those lines, and one cannot be assumed to be selling with guilt – guilt was never a great motivator. One needs to consider all circumstances – all the time.  So when Judah asks a favour of the grand ruler in front of him, his language is peppered with phrases beseeching Joseph’s understanding of his familial circumstance.

The twist, of course, is that when Judah makes his ask of Joseph, he is not yet aware that his brother Joseph has recognized him and his brothers. Joseph’s questions and responses are all carefully calibrated – perhaps even calculated – to allow for an opening of Judah’s heart, a reckoning of shame as the brothers might acknowledge their nefarious behaviour from what is now decades ago. But instead Judah uses passive language, “We have an old father and a young child of his old age; his brother is dead.”

At this point Joseph cannot restrain his tears. I mentioned last week that there are seven instances of Joseph weeping in this saga of teshuvah, of return and forgiveness. Here in chapter 45 verse 2 the text reads, “He gave forth his voice in weeping, Egypt heard and Pharaoh’s household heard.” As Joseph reveals his identity to Judah and then to all his brothers, they are overcome. Who was once left for dead, is now not only alive, but holds real power over life and death, over all the world they know, which at this point is degraded by drought and starvation. Joseph’s first question, once his identity is revealed, is to immediately inquire after the life of his father. “Is my father alive?” he begs of his brother. Not our father. My father. In that claim, Joseph states both the totality of his absence from his father and his faith that has kept him alive.

Later in Vayigash, Pharaoh and Ya’kov meet. One can picture them together, two old men, reflecting on their aged bones, and the imminence of the end of their days. Pharaoh asks of Ya’akov, “How many are the days of the years of your life?” and Ya’akov answers with bluntness. “…few and bad have been the days of the years of my life,” and then he continues to further embellish this limitation, as his days do not number those of his forefathers. Their conversation ends with Pharaoh being blessed by Ya’akov. Much as Ya’akov had experienced abundance, much as he holds his capacity to give blessing, he seems unable to know the blessing of his own life. The shadow of death has coloured the story of his life. “Few and bad.” Such sadness in this summation of his life.

This week, as we learn about some of the practices around shiva, the seven days of mourning, we might bear these words “few and bad” in mind. Would that we never have to sum up a life so tersely and so negatively. One of the practices when we sit shiva is to learn Mishnah – the letters of Mishnah recalling the neshamah, the soul, of the deceased. We try to bring a small aspect of this soul back into the room of mourners. Shiva takes us from the rawness of the gravesite back into a home, back into comfort, even as that home is minimized by loss. Shiva allows our hearts to heal, story by story, as we shift from tears perhaps to rueful quiet laughter. As the taut, hard legal text of Mishnah opens, it opens us, and allows us to well-consider the life of the deceased.

When Joseph asked if his father was still alive, we can only imagine his feelings. This person, who as a young man was left for dead in a pit, and then sold, was only alive through his capacity for understanding dreams. Jacob might have thought his days were few and bad, but the days of Joseph were many and good. Perhaps his seven weepings were like the seven days of shiva; day by day, handful by handful, just as grain was gathered for the seven lean years, he was able to finally forgive his brothers, and now was consoled and restored.  His dreams came true. His father was alive. All was just right.
Aleichem shalom.

 

 

Miketz

December 2, 2018 by •

Shalom Aleichem,

Today we are discussing elements of the Jewish uniform of prayer – wearing prayer shawls, phylacteries and head coveringstallitot, tefillin, and kippot – all signifiers, until very recently, and still for many women, of male cohesion and belonging.

One of the most beautiful blessings of belonging in Judaism comes from the prophet Hosea. Most of his writing is difficult, it chronicles travail after travail as he tries to meet God’s demands of him.  Yet, as we wrap tefillin, we recite his words from chapter 2:21-22. As the strap is wrapped around the middle finger, we say:וארשתיך לי לעולם, וארשתיך לי בצדק ובמשפט ובחסד וברחמים, וארשתיך לי באמונה וידעת את ה’.

Transliteration: V’erastikh li l’olam, v’erastikh li b’tzedeku’v’mishpatu’v’hesedu’v’rachamim. V’erastikh li b’emunav’yadatet Adonai.

Thus says the Lord: I will betroth you to Me forever.
And I will betroth you to Me with righteousness, with justice, with kindness, and with compassion.
I will betroth you to Me with fidelity, and you shall know/love God.

These words of promise and love, fidelity and future are astoundingly beautiful. If Hosea said nothing else, these words would be enough. While some of our more traditionally minded teachers suggest that for women the domain of their homesis the “box” where they more properly connect with God, some of us choose to feel ourselves betrothed to God more directly, even as we may also wash floors and ensure the laundry is done.

But how does this notion of betrothal tie us to Miketz? Miketz continues the saga of Joseph, a saga where the many dreams that he has both dreamt and interpreted, culminate in a succession of weepings, an outpouring of memory, reconciliation and love. Is there a more touching set of emotional sequences in all of Torah? Torah documents Joseph weeping, sometimes quietly, but sometimes he needs to leave the room, sometimes he weeps and wails so that the entire city must hear him. If any of us have had weeping burst from within us, as uncontrollable a feeling as that moment of sexual climax, we know that our bodies are vessels holding depths of emotion at bay, tidal waves of which can cause shuddering wails to literally propel us across a room.

Wrapping leather straps and boxes on our head and arm, as we do when laying tefillin, is an act far more intentional, far less emotionally dramatic, than such weepings, but the words of Hosea bespeak a love that, if gone, might cause us, too, to weep without end. I remember back about ten years to a very bleak time in my life. I was acutely sad, and felt utterly disconnected from my God, from my source of fidelity and stability and joy and hope. I moved through my days like a stick, empty of feeling. My rabbi appeared at my front door; somehow he had heard of my sadness and he brought me words of comfort, and he gave me my words back, words that actually helped me begin to envision ways to get help to recover my sensibility. We all need affirmations of hope. It is a hard world.

Joseph too was that fish out of water. His entire life, political, professional – even his intimate life was with a people other than his own. I cannot imagine the stages of reunion when he first saw and recognized his brothers. We see, in what will be  a further succession of weepings,perhaps a new Creation story, a distinction of his physical body from his liquidity, his body of tears. Maybe our salty oceans were formed from God’s tears as He separated earth from waters, to make room for us, His human companions. Although the word Miketz means “an end”, perhaps Miketz is more a beginning, a re-Creation of hope for Joseph. His weepings are like a watering of his heart that, like hydra-phobic soil, was so hardened from emotional drought that his first tears bounced off the surface of his heart. Only the succession of his weepings – seven in total, could soften him to his brothers.

As we wrap the straps oftefillin 7 times down our arm, we create a tension that binds and holds and affirms love. Our bodies need to feel hope as well as our souls. I wear a wedding ring. Having bound myself to my human partner, how could I not bind myself daily to a God who has lifted me from despair over and over again, to a God who named me into being, to a God who called me from whence I came, to show me that my people and place was indeed all that I had longed for since I was a child.

I heard a phrase on a TV show recently, that moved me deeply. When a child was asked about his future he said, “We have a future we are born into and we have a future we choose.” Winding the straps of tefillin reminds me every day that I am a choosing Jew. Remembering Joseph’s succession of tears reminds me that God is with us, even in our weeping. And I remember that God has chosen me. Forever.

This Shabbat we also celebrate the new moon with Rosh ChodeshTevet and Hannukah – a conjunction of light of moon and of earthly candles, of miracles, memory and hope. So, Chodeshtov, Shabbat shalom, ChagHannukahsameach.

Aleichem shalom

Vayeshev, No Means No

November 25, 2018 by •

In 2002 at the end of our first International Chevra Kadishaconference in Rockland Maryland, I was given a copy of a tome I had, dare I say, long coveted. One of my fellow organizers gave me Joshua Jacobson’s book: Chanting the Hebrew Bible: The Complete Guide to the Art of Cantillation, all 965 pages. I cracked it open and saw this sub-heading on page 108: Rabbinic Exegesis of Shalshelet. I was smitten!

Image result for Jacobson the complete guide to cantillation

The shalshelet is one of 4 rare ta’amim – and it occurs four times in Torah, 3 times in Bereshit. One of those times is this week, in Vayeshev, when Potiphar’s wife is attempting to seduce Joseph and he refuses her invitations. Hit the shlashelet.

Shalshelet means chain; this ta’am is a three-part chain both in appearance and sound. Our Sages suggest that its placement over the word “refused” implies that the chain of tradition (shalshelet mesorah) allowed Joseph to envisage his father’s face, which then enabled him to resist the charms of Mrs. Potiphar and to not break that chain of generations. That said, Joseph did marry an Egyptian woman later on and there was nary a ta’am reminding or rebuking him then.  Jacobson is slightly dismissive of such metaphorical readings. As he notes, the shalshelet – as with other ta’amim – holds a much more functional and grammatical aspect.

Related imagehttps://www.shamaileibowitz.org/2014/11/is-shalshelet-sound-of-wavering.html

In traditional Judaism the previously mentioned shalshelet mesorah is a chain of tradition understood to be unbroken – and references the rituals, traditions, and texts that have informed the Judaism of generations past, present and future.

In our sidra this week, Joseph sees himself in the eyes of Potiphar’s wife and he refuses to break this chain. It is one of those “no means no” moments in Torah.  The shalshelet over the word “refused” adds an emphatic and elongated aspect to his refusal. With apologies to Jacobson, did Joseph refuse three times? Does the ba’al or ba’alat kriah chant the shalsheletdifferently at each third of the note, perhaps increasing the volume sequentially within the ta’am? The brilliance of the cantillation system is that it not only allows the reader some degree of interpretation, it demands that act of interpretation from the reader.

Joseph’s refusal evokes our sympathy. He is young, but nevertheless, the delectable advances of his mistress are such that a question hangs in the air – how could he refuse? He must have been aware of his setting – the sumptuousness of which implied power. Joseph was sold by his brothers to Potiphar, who was a captain of the Egyptian guard, ominously, he was named Chancellor of the Butchers. Eventually Potiphar put Joseph in charge of his personal household. Temptations must have been many. But Joseph’s no meant no, however tempted he might have been. Mrs. Potiphar’s claims, though false, were taken for truth, and he was imprisoned.

The years he spent in the dungeon bespeaks a kindness in many ways – one could easily imagine rulers of that age not thinking twice about beheading such young men. But, in Biblical fashion, there is an ironic resolution that will play itself out as Joseph comes into his own power. 

After Joseph’s interpretation of Pharaoh’s dreams, and his subsequent appointment as overlord of Egypt, he is said to have married a woman named Asenath, who was the daughter of one Poti-Pherah. Poti-Pherah may have been the same person as Potiphar – and/or of his wife. Joseph thus married the daughter of the woman who had accused him of rape. But if, at any point, if Joseph had not refused, if he had not spent time in prison with the Chancellor of the Cup Bearer and Chancellor of the Bakers, if they had not heard his wondrous interpretations of their dreams, if he did not live to interpret Pharaohs dreams – this shalshelet of events would have been broken. The unbroken chain enables our story to gallop forward. Chad Gadya, chad gadya…

The ta’am shalshelet marking Joseph’s refusal might also indicate a memory of his own dreams – one does not forget such significant dreams. He knew that God would bring the sheaves to bow before him. His time was not yet. Franz 
Rosenzweig*and Joseph thus become linked by a phrase – not yet – that brings them into my modern day shalshelet:  Chevra Kadisha linking “not yet” (perhaps an early version of the marshmallow test), and dreams with our ongoing exegesis of Torah. So too may we all be wondrous and innovative links in this chain of shalshelet mesorah.

Shabbat shalom

*When German Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig was asked whether he performed a particular mitzvah, he often replied, “Not yet.” He recognized Judaism as a process, something living and capable of change. He also taught that it was in the doing of a mitzvah that one understood the significance of that mitzvah. What is that space between not ready, not yet, and maybe, now?  It will be different for each of us.

Vayishlach

November 18, 2018 by • Tags: •

Shabbat shalom, everyone!

This week our parahsah is Vayishlach. Ya’akov is returning to the Land after twenty years in Haran, where he has acquired wives, children, sheep, goats and considerable wealth. Before crossing the river Yabbok, night falls, and again, in a famous sequence, Yaakov has a dream/vision/encounter with – whom? A man? An angel? His conscience? The text can be confusing:

“Now Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the rise of dawn. When [he] saw that he could not overcome him, he struck his hip-socket, so that Jacob’s hip-socket was wrenched as [he] wrestled with him. Then he said, ‘Let me go; dawn is breaking!’ But [he] said, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me!’ The other said to him, ‘What is your name?’ and he said: ‘Jacob.’ [He said,] ‘No more shall you be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with God and with human beings, and you have prevailed'” (32:25-29).

We can get lost in the “he’s” in this paragraph – but clearly Yaakov was engaged in a lengthy and life-changing struggle. How do we bring this wrestling into our lives?

There are many ways to “read” text – sometimes we may even absorb text into our bodies. This week I was helping my mother at the dentist. Mum is less able to follow instructions these days about how to move her body, so getting her into the dental chair involved me guiding her and then lifting her – and then it happened. I felt a searing pain in my own hip-joint! So this week, as I have considered the implications of Yaakov and his actions, I have also had pain in my own tuchus!

Pain can slow us down. Pain can make us consider our moves more carefully, it can even allow us to see the world from a different vantage point. This week in my Rabbinics class, one of my classmates introduced us to the work of Rabbi Kula – a 7th generation rabbi who sees himself as an innovator within the Jewish world. Pain met innovation!!

Rabbi Kula wants us to consider using the tools and instruments of Judaism in new and innovative ways – otherwise, he warns, our Jewish institutions will wither from neglect. He suggests, I would venture, that like Ya’akov, Judaism is injured, and to heal, needs to innovate from within – we need a vision, a dream.

Our very name, Israel, comes from this night of wrestling and of demanding questions, and like Ya’akov/Yisroel, many of us continue to wrestle. R. Kula suggests, I believe, that such wrestling must continue and is an essential element of innovation from within. We need to use the tools and technologies within Judaism to build stronger connection and community– in ways that will be meaningful to people who have stepped out of Judaism.

It can be difficult to formulate specific strategies from a generalized ideology, but I think we need to try. We need to ask more questions – and we need to develop some answers. And to help us, we turn to that timeless technology, Torah.

Let’s come back to Vaysihlach. Rachel, Leah, Ya’akov, Esau – what were the building blocks of their flourishing and their connection? As Ya’akov became Ya’akov/Yisroel what happened to his nature, his inclinations, his desires? Text is a technology – our Sages taught us often about the power of the words on our tongues. What can we learn today from these ancient teachings?

When we take Torah and absorb these stories into our own bodies, when we wrestle with these teachings, we build connection. Let’s build community together. Shabbat shalom.

Rosh Chodesh, Vayetze

November 11, 2018 by • Tags: •

Shalom Aleichem. There was a chassid who used to travel a great distance to be with his Rebbe, chassidic master Rabbi Aaron of Karlin. Once, while making his journey, he was asked why he couldn’t find a Rebbe who lived closer to his own town.

“Going to the Karliner gives me special powers,” the chassid replied. “I can read everyone’s thoughts.”

“In that case,” one man challenged, “can you tell me what I’m thinking of right now?”

“You’re thinking about God,” said the chassid.

“You’re wrong.” said the man. “I wasn’t thinking of Him at all.”

“You see?” said the chassid. “That’s why I travel to Karlin…”

In Vayetze, Ya’akov is also making a journey. He has left his home, and is returning to Haran – the same land his grandfather Avraham was called to leave. The sun had set and Ya’akovpiled some stones to make a pillow of sorts, closed his eyes, and while sleeping, he had a dream about a sulam, a ladder connecting this world with the beyond, with angels ascending and descending. Every year Vayetze and the Karliner’s teaching awaken me to my own journey, my angels, and my sulam.

My journey began with a teaching decades ago, with my-then Rabbi Victor Reinstein. Today we often exchange Vayetze letters, exchanging news of our lives and still noting our latest thoughts on this mysterious sidra.

The second pasuk in Vayetze says, “Vayifgah bamakom,” which means, ‘And he met up with that place.’ But Rashi, elaborating on the term vayifgah, teaches us that pegia (the root of the word), also means to entreat.Ya’akov met up with, encountered, and entreated with God (HaMakom) – or was he encountering his own place of separation, of wound, within himself?

In his book, Beit Aharon,the Karliner, Rebbe Aharon, suggests the word vayifgah also means wound or injury; he suggests we are all on a journey of healing, not just Ya’akov. Ya’akov was fleeing from his brother, but also leaving his family.

His heart must have felt wrenched, not just by leaving, but by his actions that had precipitated his flight. He was wounded, and separated within and without. The Karliner teaches that part of our life-work is to repair our separated and wounded heart-selves, so that our hearts will not be divided against our place, our God, Ha Makom.  Shelo yihiyeh libcha chaluk al HaMakom

The Karliner taught that healing our separations from God is linked to healing our inner woundedness, and the only way to effectively heal is through deep encounter, through entering deep prayer, vayifgah bamakom. Yet how do we pray when we feel separated from our Source?  This dilemma is our journey. This is our sulam. We are all ascending and descending from HaMakom.

For nearly 25 years this phrase Vayifgah bamakom has taken me on a journey. To New York City, from Eichler’sto Levines, and to Der Arbeter Ring, the Workman’s Circle;all stops in search of information about the Karliner. It has taken me through a friend and emissary to Israel and to JFK airport. But to shorten a long story, we will begin at my first stop, at Eichler’s Bookstore. I wandered around, finding nothing, and finally asked one of the frum young man, who was busy sorting kippot, if he knew anything about the Karliner. He startled, abruptly and then he asked me, “Who are you? Where are you from?” I stuttered a bit, taken aback by his brusque tone, and mumbled something about Victoria, finding out later he barely knew where Canada was. He ran to the phone and called his Rebbe – he was a Karliner, he called back to me, over his shoulder, in fervent excitement. He said you could ask a thousand New Yorkers they could never tell you about the Karliner. “Who are you”?

He then invited me for a Karliner Shabbos, to celebrate Shabbos with a joyous abandon I would never experience anywhere else, but I shyly declined. I had played enough Jewish geography by then to know that within one minute I would be deemed treif. The joy, the exuberance of the Karliners would not, I knew, extend to a lesbian convert.  But then I continued to meet that same Karliner, year after year. He would leave one job and then appear at my next destination – a year, even two years later. He sent me to learn Vayetze with the Karliner rabbi who ran the Bialystoker Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation which was still standing in the Lower East Side – and then I was invited to a wedding downstairs, where the hassen, the groom, and kallah, the bride, were surrounded by angels in wheelchairs.

I think of Vayetze as the original encounter therapy. We need to follow the Mystery that is core to our journey, follow the clues we are given, face into our absences and separations, and let those absences and empty spaces guide us back to prayer, back to God.  Angels will guide us, a bit like my elusive, impish Karlinerboychik – and one day we will surprise ourselves with the question that has dared not yet pass our lips.

This year, as I thought of “my” Karliner, and how he followed me/I followed him around the Jewish bookstores of NYC, I thought maybe I was one of his angels? Maybe he wanted to peer beyond his world, just as I longed to peer beyond my own. I know we each have a coterie of angels guiding us forward to face into our own vayifgah bamakom. Maybe he was one of my angels. Maybe, maybe, I was one of his.

Today, when we read Vayetze, I still travel to Karlin. I still ask my angels to help me heal, as I know the healing is never done. I wonder where my Karlinerboychik is these days – I know there was something he was yearning for and I wonder about his journey. And I am filled with yirah and rachmanes, awe and compassion, for the pain, the separation and the healing of this journey we are on. I know we each have a sulam, we each have our angels, who come to us in the stillness of the night, and in that stillness, we being to heal. Aleichem shalom.

Toldot: Deception – or love?

November 4, 2018 by • Tags: •

In the early twentieth century a man was brought to Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook. This father had given his son a good Jewish education, he tried to set a good example, and he kept the mitzvot. Now, however, his son had drifted away from Judaism; he no longer kept mitzvot, he did not even identify as a Jew any more. What should he do? Rav Kook asked the father, “Did you love him when he was religious?” “Of course.” “Now,” Rav Kook replied, “love him even more.”

But what is even more? And from whose vantage point – that of the father or the son? The Sefat Emet, taught from his grandfather, “Everywhere there is a hidden point of God. We only have to remove the external covering in order to reveal that innermost point, which is called a “well of living waters.” What did the father need to uncover in himself to reach out and love that inner well of his son?

Toldot is a story of such a dilemma. Our text polarizes the natures of two twin brothers. Esau, the elder, is an am ha’aretz, a simple man, a hunter, a ruddy-faced outdoorsman. He is emotional and hearty, but, as commentators note, not a scholar. His brother Ya’akov however, is understood to be a scholar of Torah, one who stayed in tents to learn. We see in Rashi that our Sages say that he went to the Yeshiva of Shem and Ever, where he studied for 14 years. Eventually, one brother wins, one brother loses. Love and deception are at the core of this story.

We will see, to paraphrase Rashi again, that deception begets deception. Ya’akov will find this out when he finally weds and beds his beloved Rachel, only to find the not-so-beguiling Leah lying in his bed. As we learned last week, kinyan (acquisition in marriage) is kinyan by any other name. We can certainly hear by the shock in his voice, that Ya’kov has indeed consummated this marriage. Sex trumps deception; and, as Leah wryly notes, comeuppance was Ya’akov’s due.

But is Toldot really a story of deception, of what will be eventual retribution? Or is Toldot more a story of listening to God, and following through, even as one son will clearly be hurt, enraged and walk away? God spoke to, and provided very clear instructions to Rivka, about who should serve the other. Rivka’s interventions – which were considerable, and made over the somewhat querulous concerns voiced by her son Yaa’kov – were entirely in order with the prophetic instructions she heard from God while she was still pregnant.

Over the years I have given much thought to this sidra, especially to the nature of Yitzhak. In this sidra Yitzhak is now the father. What did he see? What did he know? Was he deceived – or was he a deceiver himself? When does deceit merge with the demands of love? When does love conflict with the demands of God?

As Sefat Emet taught, sometimes what is hidden, holds truth. Yitzhak is at his most enigmatic in this sidra. He reaches into his innermost truth, and while externally he feels the rough, smelly, hides of goat, we know he knows we know. There is cosmic laughter at this point, reflecting the very core of his being. Yitzhak is a man who has held goats in his arms. In touching his son Ya’akov, I think Yitzhak is uncovering his son, finding his own pintele Yid, that inner well of God’s Presence.

Last week I spoke about how Yitzhak found healing through the redemptive quality of his love for Rivka. This week I suggest that love was the primary emotional verb in Yitzhak’s tent – and not deception. Toldot is about tough love.

Toldot is acted out to afford the players a stage to actualize God’s command. The first born must be supplanted, even as he was also beloved. Rivka and Yitzhak needed a strategy to allow them as parents to bank their love in a trust fund, an account that reached to a future beyond that of their sons. Their future was the future of the people Israel – a people barely conceived of at this point – and that future covenant was at stake with the granting of the Blessing.

In this sidra we sit at a crossroads – pagans to the left, Israel to the right. Yitzhak may have had diminished sight but I believe he could see well beyond any immediate physical limitation. Even as Yitzhak became increasingly tent-bound, he understood and loved both of his boys, and he knew what he must do. He also knew from his earliest years he must stay in the Land. Unlike his father, unlike his son, he stayed. Perhaps Yitzhak knew, even then, that possession was 9/10 of the law. And so, he stayed. In that staying he gave us our future. The ohel, the tent, that once filled with love’s light became a light that enabled both Rivka and Yitzhak to see how to make hard decisions – the hardest decision – choosing one son over another. One son only would carry the Blessing, the Covenant forward.

Before my father died, he chose me from his four living children, to be his executrix. After his death, there was some degree of contention that came from one of my siblings, and in support of my decision in the matter, my youngest brother turned to me and said, “You have all the power.” He said that with love.

Blessing, Covenant is power. Let us never underestimate the power of this Blessing. This Blessing is our heritage, our obligation to pass forward.  In the words of my beloved father’s favourite song, “I once was lost, but now am found, T’was blind but now I see.”

Rivka heard and Yitzhak saw. They did what needed to be done.

 

 

Chaye Sarah

October 28, 2018 by • Tags: •

The life of Sarah begins with her death. And from death, new life begins.

Eliezer – Abraham’s servant – was sent to find a wife for a now ageing Yitz. Yitz is alone. He is alone like the silence around him. He is bereft of a father he can trust, and with her death, he is now bereft of his mother. And, increasingly, with his sight diminishing, Yitzhak has a smaller and smaller mah, a perimeter beyond which he does not let himself step. He is alone.

He is lonely in his emptiness. He only leaves his rough flap of a make-shift tent to wander into the fields at even time. He stands in the late drooping light, listening to birds sing their praises of light and of worms, and he feels the meadow grasses brushing against him softly, the only touch he can abide.

He silently yearns for something – someone – perhaps the nameless One? Not yet. He is still burning with betrayal, even as he knows somewhere in his being that his father Abraham was just trying to meet some testy demand of the One. Whenever he drifts towards that last journey with his father, all Yitz can think of are words like appeasement, malicious, betrayal in a rushing thicket of words that hobble his mind. The grasses stroke against him quietly, and then a teasle thorn caught against his miel, his tunic and the loosened miel slipped back from his shoulders. As he first held, then readjusted the tangle of rough wool in his hands, he stopped. He listened. He looked up.  Yes, there, in the distance. He hears a caravan approaching, but who is drawing near? He tightens his miel closer against the chilling air, and waits, standing, frozen in his fear of other. The air is quiet now. Still.

All he can feel is the plodding gait of the camels, the g’malim – and he thinks back to that other walk, uphill, the branches for the offering strapped to his back. He feels their weight, their hard dry shove against his backbone, his insistent question, his not-yet-dread beginning to calcify those same bones. His questions deflected, he continued to walk. And now, he stands very still, barely touching the sprouting grasses that surround him. The light is dimmer, the camels approach.

He knows within those same bones – how does his know this? – he knows this approaching caravan will change his life-course. He can feel again a pin-prick of a question defiantly opening what had been battened down. He felt that question that moves us all from the ground we once knew to the ground we know not yet, almost bypassing present time and space. Yitzhak wants to avert his eyes – he wants to look away, he wants to step out of this magnetic field that surrounds him, weaving its web tighter and tighter around his feet, so that he cannot step away or closer. He is held by a grip tighter than the hands of his father. He peers into vagueness.

A figure reaches up against the gloaming sky and adjusts what was light into darkness – all he can see is movement, this figure slipping to the ground, near but far, close but distant. He is cold. He cannot move. The figure approaches. Her eyes search his own and she holds his question, and then they both weep with tears of recognition. They begin to stroll through the grasses, their hands stopping occasionally to caress the golden plump seed heads, and too soon they reach the pounded ground outside her tent, the ohel that held the life of his beloved mother, Sarah. Tired canvas sags against the poles, fraying carpets less a welcome than a warning, the entrance laced tightly against the winds.

Slowly, Yitz worries the knots and then unties the laces. He tugs against the ropes pulling them taut, tightening each knot securely to each tent peg. He opens the tent-flap and invites these eyes to enter. He feels his muscles, his ligaments, his bones begin to dissolve into a light familiar, a light that seems to defy the now-night time darkness. יוֹצֵר אוֹר וּבוֹרֵא חשֶׁךְhis father used to say as they walked that walk. Light and darkness are One, he used to say, as fractals of light fractured windows from the darkness of night. 

Yitz turned, and faced her eyes again, and he saw that her veil was now unhooked, her layers of shawls loosened. Ani Rivkah, she whispered. I have come, he’neini. And she took her palms and rested them against his brow. Then slowly, sliding down the planes of his loneliness, her hands came to rest, strongly, against his heart. Ani Yitzhak, he whispered into the retreating silence.

In that moment, as golden light filtered into this tent of his mother, his heart cracked. He almost keeled over. He couldn’t breathe. His knees buckled and then her hands caught his arms and she held him. Her strength held him and all the fear in his bones flowed into and through her hands and he looked up into her face. And through her eyes he saw he was whole, a seam of love glinting along his jagged edges, mending what once was broken. Ani Yitzhak.

And it was evening, and it was morning, the first day.

Vayeira or the Many Shades of Shylock

October 21, 2018 by • Tags: •

Last week I noted that there is a Midrashic tradition that Torah existed before Torah (as we know it).  In Midrash Bereshit Rabbah we see an elucidation of this idea. Referencing Mashal, or the Book of Proverbs, our Sages discuss how Wisdom existed before Creation. “The Lord made me as the beginning of His way, the first of His works of old” [Prov. 8:22]. Our Rabbis loved back-dating – “the older, the better”, and this pre-history certainly grounds that maxim.

If we hold Wisdom as an entity apart, however metaphorically, then Wisdom-as Torah existed prior to Creation. Wisdom is viewed almost as an architectural plan, which God then used as a blueprint.  Our Sages understood Wisdom-as-Torah as a foreshadowing, a device that preceded Torah-as-historical document which by nature, entails looking back, giving the reader a history.

Within Wisdom, there was a glimpse, perhaps the briefest of appearances, of what was to come. We see this apparitional collapsing of physical entity into belief much later in the precise architectural plans for the Temple found in the Books of Kings. These plans were written from memory into word, which then functioned as a fulcrum of both memory and hope, as necessity required. In this way, Torahfunctions within tenses almost as God’s description of Self: I was, I am, and I will be.אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה, Torah, becomes that liminal opening, a poteach.

All this is a bit like opening a compressed file on our computers – which this week opens to Vayeira. And Vayeira opens, with just such a liminal appearance, at the very threshold of Abraham’s tent. A question arises of just what, or whom, Avraham saw. The “text” describes a visit by God and/or three men/angels. Abraham was initially head-bent-down whilst recovering in his tent, yet he immediately lifts his eyes and arises. “They” are present in front of Abraham, and yet distant enough that he must run towards them. So too do we experience both the imminence and transcendence of a personal, yet distant God.

We know when we feel the Presence of God –if only for the merest of moments, (with credit to Anaxagoras).  Anaxagoras lived in Greece prior to Socrates, and he was also a philosopher. He noted that, “Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen.” Unseen? Who appeared to Abraham? What did he glimpse?

Further into Vayeira, on the way to Sodom, we encounter Abraham in a verbal duel with God: Who shall live and who shall die?I can’t help but cite Ann Coulter here, who stated that she…”gets a little belligerent when not enough protesters show up at my appearances.” I would like to suggest that perhaps God feels a bit like Coulter. God needs many more of us to show up, challenging and arguing, as did Abraham. Maybe God is saying to us here, “Welcome Me, yes, but argue with Me, challenge Me,be My ezer knegdo, be strength-against-Me.”

I recently watched a documentary about “The Merchant of Venice.” The focus of the presentation was Shylock and the question was Shakespeare’s intention; was it to make Shylock an object of derision? Or was Shakespeare’s intention to plead for the humanity of this man, a Jew? Was this play trying to make what was unseen, seen? His characters are like Matryoshka dolls, nestling within themselves, providing glimpses of tragedy within what was ostensibly a comedy.

“Am I not man like any other, do I not bleed”? Shylock demands. And Avraham asks of God – “are these people of Sodom not Yours?… Will you even obliterate righteous with wicked?” Shylock and Abraham become one with their questions. The courts convene. One court consists of Avraham trudging beside his God. He and God have both chosen each other – in love. But Abraham is dogged – he is not letting God off on any hook. And God too is resolute. There is no happy ending. Not for Sodom.

Shakespeare’s play also ends unhappily, with Portia demanding that Shylock not only be denied his pound of flesh, but that he be punished. Shylock, for his very asking that his bond against a Venetian be redeemed, must now convert to Christianity – a fate so false to Shylocks soul that it is painful to look up. We feel a blade slice through our soul, and we sit like Avraham, our heads bent down.Aach. What will we see when we look up?

Appearances. We think we know what we see. And yet even God wonders what to reveal, what to conceal. God asks, “Should I conceal from Abraham what I do?” Glimpsing what seems concealed, glimpsing that moment where we become Thou, in Buber’s language –this is our journey. God and Shakespeare, Abraham and even Ann Coulter – we all want what is unseen to become seen. Perhaps, with chochmah, with Wisdom guiding us, that holy blueprint can live within us, and guide us towards such a glimpse. An appearance. Vayeira. Shabbat shalom.

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