Rabbi Meredith Cahn

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The Story of the Son of Shlomit, Daughter of Dibri… Emor 5772

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Shabbat shalom…

 

THE book of Leviticus or Vayikra, the middle book of the torah relays laws primarily, and very few stories… and none of them is a particularly happy story…

 

Once upon a time, while we were wandering in the wilderness, between Egypt and Israel, a man, an unnamed man, the son of an Israelite mother and Egyptian father, gets into a fight with an Israelite man, and as a result, the man curses God’s holy name in front of a whole lot of people. Everyone is shocked, they don’t know what to do, so they drag the man to Moses, who tells them to keep him confined while he consults God. God’s decree is death. And everyone who heard the curse is called upon to participate.

 

It’s a pretty gruesome story.

 

And it raises all sorts of questions. Through the centuries, our best minds have looked at this story, and tried to fill in the holes.

For example,

 

While we don’t know the men’s names, we learn the man’s Jewish mother’s name was Sh’lomit, the daughter of Dibri, from the tribe of Dan. Why do we get this detail and what does it mean?

 

Who was the man’s Egyptian father and should we care?

 

What were the two men fighting about?

 

How did the man curse God?

 

And of course, what is so bad about cursing God that you would deserve the death sentence and why would everyone who heard it have to participate?

 

Right before we read this little story, we learn about the showbread, the 12 loaves of challah baked for the sanctuary. Keep that little detail in mind…

 

What do we learn from the mom’s name? According to Rashi, the great medieval French commentator, her name which means Shalom, the daughter of “I speak”, was an incessant talker, who constantly greeted people with the word, Shalom, and kept going. And clearly, her father was also a talker. And the tribe of Dan was known for being an argumentative group…

 

What do we learn from the fact that his father was an Egyptian? According to one midrash, his father was the Egyptian taskmaster that Moses had killed before he escaped to Midian, long before he returned to lead us to freedom. Imagine the kind of grudge this might have caused in the son. Another midrash, told by Rashbam, Rashi’s grandson, teaches us that the Eygptian had left when we left and converted to Judaism. But he did not have a tribe. So two opposing ideas. Which one works for you?

 

The not having a tribe was a big deal, because those were the beginnings of our neighborhoods. We camped according to our tribe, but only according to our father’s tribes. We followed a patrilineal line then, and so this man had no place to be. Imagine what that must have felt like… Always the odd man out, the only one, the other, the one who probably got teased, picked on, maybe bullied. In those days, who your daddy was mattered mightily.

 

What were the two men fighting about? The rabbis have a number of answers. Including the showbread, the 12 beautiful loaves of challah. One said the unnamed man was upset that the challah were all made on one day, to be used throughout the week: he thought it was a sin that God’s bread should get stale, while another noted that one of the many miracles of life in the wilderness was that the bread did NOT go stale…

 

But I think, especially since the Torah didn’t tell us about the fight, it could have been about anything: what they were wearing, who said what to whom, who got to play with what toy when, or who got to go first in some game, or who got to decide what to eat that night. Or who controls the remote? Or who cleans up after dinner? Or how you fold the laundry? Do you ever have fights like that?  Later on, you think they don’t really matter that much, but boy, did you get worked up over it! In the scheme of things — not so important, but at the moment – it seemed vital to your very being…

 

So they fought. Over the sanctity of the bread, or over the miracles or over something really unimportant.

 

I imagine the son of Shlomit to be someone who was always harrassed, never fit in, never felt accepted. And one day, this day, something just snapped. He thought life was horrible, all of existence conspired to make him miserable.

 

Now the curse… The rabbis discuss this — in the 10 commandments we are told not to take God’s name in vain. So we’re not supposed to say what everyone nowadays seems to say, or even write as an abbreviation – OMG – oh my… gosh… but God has a lot of names in the Torah – some of them are Elohim, El Shaddai, Av Harachamim… And then there’s the one we pronounce Adonai, from the letters yud hay vav hay. It’s called a fancy name, the tetragrammaton – which is Greek for 4 letter word. It’s a word that is a form of the word “to be” – which means he will be, he will become, he is, he has been. All of existence is wrapped up in that word and that name. We don’t even know how to pronounce it anymore – that’s part of why we say Adonai, which means literally, my lord or my master… It was thought to be very dangerous to say this. Also, one’s name, especially God’s name, was thought to be about your essence: and God’s name, God’s – about being and becoming, is about existence itself…

 

So imagine that the unnamed man cursed this holy name that holds all of existence in it. It’s even worse than telling your mom you hate her, especially right before mother’s day. It’s even worse than gossiping: it’s like saying you want the whole world to be destroyed…

 

So imagine you are Moses in charge of this whole large group of people who already complain a lot. Here is this guy – whose father you may or may not have killed, who hasn’t found a place in your community, this holy community you are working so hard to form, and build… and now this guy threatens existence itself… and everyone’s heard him! You don’t want everyone to think this is a way to behave… so everyone has to deal with it…

 

I’m going to say that death is a pretty harsh punishment. Period. but I can see the importance of us all recognizing how important our words are. How words probably made this man feel hopeless and small and angry. And how words bring worlds into creation and how they can bring worlds into disaster… How words can bully, words can hurt, words can heal.

 

So always think before we speak… so that we choose our words wisely and well, and strengthen our community rather than harm it.

A Rose by Any Other Name…Vaera 5772

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In one of my favorite plays, two young people meet at a party and fall in love at first glance. But it turns out their parents have been enemies for years, and her parents would have him killed if they knew he was even present in the room, let alone courting their precious daughter…

 

Neither of them knows the other’s name for awhile, and when they learn it, both realize the challenges they are up against… Anyone know the play?

 

That night, she climbs out on her balcony and utters some of The most famous words in the English language…

 

Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo…

 

And then she says,

O! be some other name:

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;

So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,

Retain that dear perfection which he owes

Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name;

And for that name, which is no part of thee,

Take all myself.[1]

 

What do you think? Does it make sense?

 

So when I was growing up, I had many names. My “official” nickname was Merry, like in Christmas. My mother called me Digitalis – which I later learned was a heart medicine – she was telling me I was good for her heart.

 

Making the change from Merry to Meredith when I was 19 was a very big change, and indeed, my family still struggles with it, decades later… It’s more grown-up. More cultured – indeed Meredith means “goddess of the sea” – not a particularly Jewish name, but one I liked, as a lover of the sea…

 

My daughter, Olya, has been called by 3 names – well, way more, but just based on her birth name… Each one is just enough different to describe a different person, almost. Her name means “holy” in Russian. For someone with her beautiful soul, that makes sense to me.

 

What about you? Do you know who you were named for? Do you know what your name means? Have you changed what people call you? If so, why?

 

This week, Sam and I watched The King’s Speech again on TV. I’m an Anglophile, and I love Colin Firth, and I love movies about people overcoming adversity… so a perfect movie for me… I was struck this time by the moment when Winston Churchill, who became Prime Minister of England during the second World War, asked the Duke of York what he would be called when he became king – certainly not Albert (the name his parents gave him)… Maybe George, like his father…

 

Juliet was wrong: What’s in a name matters.

 

Which brings me to the Torah portion. We are in Vaera, the second parasha of the second book, the book Shemot, or Exodus. We are already slaves to Pharaoh, Moses has already met God at the burning bush, and now they are discussing Moses’ new job as redeemer. Moses is scared, for oh, so many reasons. He has a speech impediment, or blockage of the tongue. He fled Egypt 40 years before, after accidentally killing one of his grandfather’s slavemasters. He doesn’t think anyone will believe him. How is he, a shepherd, to stand up to the Pharaoh?

 

So one of his questions to God is basically, “Who shall I say sent me?” Who will vouch for me? Who has enough credibility to make them believe redemption is at hand? Who will make Pharaoh tremble in his sandals?

 

And God offers a perplexing response:

 

“I am Adonai” – YHWH – the tetragrammaton, the Holy Name that is so holy we don’t even know how to pronounce it anymore, so we use a word that means My Lord and Master.

 

The Holy One continued and said, “I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai, and made the covenant to them that I mean to honor now. But now I want everyone to call me YHWH.”

 

We have many names for God in Hebrew:

  • El Shaddai – God almighty in some translations – god of breasts in others
  • El Elyon – the god of gods
  • HaKodesh Baruch Hu –the holy blessed one
  • Adonai Tz’va’ot – Lord of Hosts
  • Elohim – A generic name for God that speaks to the judgment aspect
  • Eloheinu – Our God
  • Melech M’lakim – King of Kings
  • Av Harachamim – Father of Mercy.

 

And more…

 

Why so many names?

 

There is a teaching in the Talmud, that compendium of rabbinic wisdom through 600 CE, that there are 70 faces of God. Because each of us sees holiness, sees divinity, sees the sacred in a different way. If we went around the room and told each other what we see when we look at the face of God, I bet we’d get multiple answers, and maybe more than one from each person, and if we asked again next week, there might be yet another answer or three from each of us.

 

Throughout our sacred literature, we see over and over that one’s name matters. Leah named each of her children with a specific purpose for them. People’s names changed regularly – Avram and Sarai became Abraham and Sarah. Jacob became Yisrael.

 

We believe that names matter so much that when we are either very sick or have escaped a calamity, or achieve something, we change or add to our names. Because we think names are a window to our souls, to our very essence.

 

And so with God.

 

Rashi, the 11th Century French sage, interpreted this verse by saying that God’s name YHWH, represents God’s attribute of faithfulness, of keeping promises. And the Redeemer wanted to announce the keeping of the promise finally – or at least soon.

 

Rabbi Harold Schulweis, a noted contemporary rabbi, teaches that Adonai is the God of transformation: the name first appears in Chapter 2 of Genesis (2:4-5), together with Elohim, to describe the transformative acts that required our partnership:

 

When Adonai Elohim made earth and heaven—when no shrub of the field was yet on earth and no grasses of the field had yet sprouted, because Adonai Elohim had not sent rain upon the earth and there was no human to till the soil.

 

This is the God that we work together with to make things grow – this is the God of transformation, the God whom we acknowledge at hamotzi – a blessing that is not said over raw grain, but over the finished product of bread, that required the partnership of human and divine. The energy that transforms.

 

As God uses the four letter unpronounced name, God is expressing the change about to happen, hoping to spark our memories and encourage us to join together in the movement from slavery to freedom, from holding onto our hurts, the chains that bind us, the old patterns of behavior that no longer work for us, from waiting for someone else to liberate us to joining together. We may not be able to do it by ourselves alone, but we can’t expect to do it without exerting ourselves as well… We need that partnership, the energy that transforms.

 

And so, I pray that we might find that energy together, and redeem ourselves together.

 

Shabbat shalom.

 

 


[1] Romeo and Juliet II, 1:35, 44-51.

O Chanukah… Don’t Just Sit There

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Vayeishev/Chanukah 5772/2011

Shabbat Shalom

And almost Happy Chanukah!

One of my favorite versions of the Chanukah story comes from an old Saturday Night Live episode. A bunch of soldiers are sitting around the Temple, and ready to light the Ner Tamid, the eternal light and note that they have just enough oil to last one day…

It lasted two days. One soldier asked, “Is this a miracle yet?”

Someone responded, “No not yet…”

This goes on every day, “Is this a miracle yet? No, not yet” for six more days, until they reach the eighth day.

Someone asks again, “Is it FINALLY a miracle?” and a brave soul responds, “Yes, NOW it’s a miracle…” They all rejoice and celebrate his pronouncement.

And then someone suggests, “We should celebrate every year. What should we call the new holiday?”

They all scratch their heads, and finally someone looks over at the soldier played by Dan Akroyd, and offered, “Hey, Chanukah, why don’t you name it?”

And that, according to the writers of SNL, is how Chanukah came to be…

But really, not so much.

I noticed in religious school on Tuesday, that the story of the oil is the only one our kids know. So let’s try the story again here, and relate it to this week’s torah portion… But first the story…

Some context: the first temple was destroyed in 586 BCE — more than 2,500 years ago, by the Babylonians – what is now Iraq.

70 years later, the Persians (from what is now Iran) conquered Babylonia, and encouraged us to return to Judah and rebuild the temple.

In the 4th century BCE – about 150-200 years later, Alexander the Great conquered Persia and much of the known world at that time. And he and his armies spread Greek culture, with its theatre, and poetry, and philosophy, and sports. Many people thought Greek culture was the height of cool, brilliance, intelligence, and just the best. Some of the people of Judah began to incorporate some of the practices into their lives. Sort of like eating McDonald’s in Paris.

When Alexander died at a young age, his empire was divided into three parts – the Greek part, the Syrian part, and the Egyptian part. Judah was buffeted between Syria and Egypt, as the wars continued.

Eventually, in 175 BCE, King Antiochus IV took over in Syria and had dreams of reuniting Alexander’s empire. Initially, he let the Jews keep our practices and he, like King George III after him, just wanted money from us to support his war efforts. Then something happened to really irritate him, and he decided to “purify” Jewish culture, requiring us to give up kosher food and eat pig, give up Shabbat and other Jewish laws and practices.

Some people refused, and many of them were killed for their refusal. They were called the Hasidim, the Pious Ones. They also refused to defend themselves on Shabbat or try to rid Judah of the king, because it says in the Torah not to do those things. They were also the first religious martyrs.

Then, in the town of Modi’in, the local priest, Mattathias, refused to obey and started an open rebellion. He and his five sons, including Judah, formed a guerilla band (called the Maccabees, meaning the Hammer, so Judah Maccabee was Judah the Hammer)… The Maccabees included supporters from the range of Jewish belief and practice at the time: both militant Hasidim and Jews who liked and participated in the Greek culture, but objected to the ban on Jewish practices. The Maccabees fled to the hills, coming down to fight the large Syrian army. They knew the territory, the best places to attack and the best escape routes.

After three years, the Maccabees recaptured Jerusalem and the Temple from the Syrian Army. Then, they waited for the Messiah to come. They didn’t recognize the military victory as a miracle and waited three months for a sign from heaven, every day that went by being a crushing disappointment to the Hasidim… While waiting three months for the dedication (that’s what Chanukah really means), the Maccabees proceeded to purify the temple again, removing the Greek statues, and the altar that had been the site of pig sacrifice, and preparing to relight the Ner Tamid…

The military victory is only a part of what we celebrate during Chanukah. Just as important are other contributions made by the Maccabees: Mattathias and his sons challenged the Hasidic thought that put each halakha on equal footing with each other. They established the concept of setting priorities within the halakhic (legal) principles when they are in conflict. So when trying to decide between the halakhot (plural) of accepting the God-appointed king, or observing shabbat, or choosing life when you can’t do all three, they selected choosing life as the most important of these precepts. They also claimed, just as Thomas Jefferson did later, that a king who asks people to do things that are against the Torah – or laws of nature – has relinquished his authority or right to govern. The Maccabees incorporated Greek philosophical thinking to arrive at their halakhic decisions, employing what would become the hallmark of Jewish survival – taking the best of the surrounding culture to weave into Jewish life, so that Judaism keeps growing and thriving, or surviving in the  worst times… At the same time,  they maintained the principles and practices that are vital to being Jewish, and rejected those parts of the dominant culture that diminish being Jewish.

The Maccabees, or the family of Mattathias and Judah, called the Hasmoneans, came to power after the war ended. After the five brothers were dead, their children and grandchildren were priests and kings. However, the family became corrupt, so corrupt that initially people were happy to have the Romans come in and take over. (After the destruction of the Temple, they probably changed their thinking.)

The rabbis of the Talmud, our sages, had a big disagreement with the Hasmonean family, for a number of reasons, including the corruption. As a result, the Books of the Maccabees, which tells the Chanukah story, were not admitted into our sacred canon, our accepted holy books. The only mentions of Chanukah in the Talmud concern the miracle of the oil, and even there, the details are sketchy and the halakhot around candle lighting. There is no mention of a military victory. Later sages, such as Maimonides, brought the military victory back into our thinking, however.

So when we think about Christmas trees and lights, and caroling, and midnight mass, I think the best way we honor the Maccabees is to notice and maybe even enjoy those things with our Christian friends, but to consider what about being Jewish is important to us now, what is valuable both to ourselves, our families and the world at large, and then think carefully about preserving the best and dedicating ourselves to that vision.

And finally – how does this relate to the Torah portion…? This week we read Vayeishev, near the end of Breisheit or Genesis. We meet Joseph, and unparalleled sibling rivalry, when his brothers sell him in slavery. He becomes known as a dreamer and interpreter of dreams. We watch his maturation… The connection to Chanukah, however, is the very first line of the portion: Vayeishev Yaakov b’eretz m’guray aviv, b’eretz cana’an: And Jacob settled in the land where his father had sojourned, the land of Canaan… he settled.

The rabbis and Rashi and Avivah Zornberg – sages spanning millennia, discuss at length this one sentence. Jacob settled. They ask – who is a righteous person that he – or she – thinks they can just settle for a quiet life in this world? They will get that in the world to come; why should they expect it – or settle for it here in the physical, in the real world of today? It is our job not to settle, they argue, but to do the task for which we were born. Each of us has a piece of the world to repair, a part in tikkun olam, and rather than just sit there, dwelling in our parents’ house, we need to stand up and be counted. If you see injustice, don’t let it continue. If you hear someone’s pain, don’t let it fester. If there is something you CAN fix, then do not sit there – do something. And the rabbis tell us in Pirkei Avot, in the Mishnah, you are not required to finish the task, but you must start it. Had Mattathias settled for being able to live quietly in the land, and hadn’t stood up for what he knew to be right, if his followers from ALL beliefs of Judaism hadn’t stood up to join the Maccabees, we might not be sitting here tonight.

And so, when we start lighting our candles on Tuesday, let’s recount why being Jewish is important and how we can stand up for what we believe in.

Shabbat shalom!

Lech Lecha: Go and find yourself

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I woke up this morning thinking I surely wasn’t in Marin County anymore. The winter wonderland outside my window was beautiful, silent, and so different from the land I knew. And these thoughts immediately drew me to this week’s torah portion, Lech Lecha. It opens with a very powerful couple of verses (Genesis 12:1):

Vayomer Adonai el Avram lech lecha may artzecha, u’me’moledecha, u’me’beit avicha el ha’aretz asher areka.

And God said to Avram (not yet Avraham), Go [for yourself, to yourself, by yourself, into yourself] from your land, from the place you were born, from your parents’ house to the land I will show you.

Both parts of this verse intrigue me on a psychospiritual level. First, that word Lech lecha… lech means GO in the command or imperative form. The Lecha: cha means you or yourself, but it’s the le in front of it that makes in lecha… it’s a preposition (can you tell I was an English major?) – that means in various places for, by, with, into (among others).

How many different interpretations of lech lecha therefore can we come up with – “go for yourself” is how Rashi, the great French medieval commentator, translated it. Go, because it’s going to be good for you, because the Eternal will give you a blessing, make a covenant with you and your (currently non existent) children. Go because the Holy One will reward you with children, wealth, a fine reputation, and you shall become a blessing…

Because you shall be a blessing. Would you leave your land, your family, everything you know – for wealth? For children? For a fine reputation? To become a blessing? Apparently I would… Would you?

“Go into yourself”: this resonates for me – go from everything you know into yourself. Find yourself, go deep within yourself, to a sacred place that will be revealed – if you are willing to take the journey. Twice more in this very parasha (torah portion), God again tells Avram to go to himself – but in those instances – to go with the Cause of All Being, with the gifts that he has been given. And while God does grant Avram wealth (thanks to Pharaoh), a fine reputation, and a son (Ishmael) [Isaac is not born until the next parasha), the true gift is the one we each have – the gift of being created with the divine image, the tzelem Elohim, deep within us. Accessing it requires effort, and self awareness. And I believe that is part of what God is telling Avram (and each of us): Go into yourself, you who already have faith, let’s begin the journey so that you can truly become a blessing.

“Go by yourself”: I think there are some of us who need to find ourselves on our own, whereas others of us need our crew to help us. R. Ed Feinstein makes the point that it is our face that most displays our soul and yet we are unable to see it. We can’t see how our souls manifest in the world – without the aid of a mirror – or our reflection in others’ reactions to us.

Then the second part of the verse: go forth from your land, the place you were born, your parent’s house…It’s not about forgetting about those places: how could we? Our first five years are now known to influence us profoundly,  they are embedded in us. Before my mother died, I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up – and I was already 26… it was only after her death that the path I was supposed to take opened up. I had to separate myself from her emotionally and recognize myself as an independent human being, certainly influenced deeply by her, but separate. How many of us have to DO something to make that separation real? Some of us move cross country, some of us take other journeys. How do we leave the lessons we learned from them? And indeed, should we? After all, we are a people that believes it is the parent’s responsibility to teach their children. V’shinantam levanecha – teach them to your children – we say this twice a day, every day in the v’ahavta… But after a point, our parents have taught us, and hopefully, taught us well, and it’s time to become a blessing on our own, find our own inner spark of the divine, find our own path. And to do it while we walk in God’s way…

R. Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of Great Britain, comments that the command to leave comes at an interesting moment. After all, Avram’s father Terach had already taken the family part way to Canaan – they had left their ancestral home, left their ways behind them and reached Haran already, father and son together. The journey had begun together. Only after his father had died, was Avram ready to complete the journey. The journey into the unknown. It required a leap of faith, to create something brand new – in Abraham’s case, a whole new nation – based on the behavior of our ancestor, and his ability to take personal, moral and communal responsibility…

What would it be in yours? To take that leap of faith?

I pray that each of us, as we face new challenges, or just the challenges of every day, can find the courage of Abraham, the kindness of Abraham, and responsibility of Abraham, and the faith of Abraham…

God Remembered Noach and All Living Things

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At minyan at religious school this week, we sang Rise and Shine and Give God your glory glory… after all this week we read the story of Noach/Noah and what would be more appropriate?

God said to Noach there’s gonna be a floody floody

So Noach he built them he built them an arky arky

The animals they came on, they came on by twosie twosies

It rained and poured for 40 daysie daysies

The sun came out and dried up the landy landy and

Everything was fine and dandy…

 

The whole story in 6 verses and a chorus.

 

I want to talk about two moments in the story that the song doesn’t touch on.

The first – after it rained those forty days, the Torah tells us,

7:24 And when the waters had swelled on the earth one hundred and fifty days, 8:1 God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark, and God caused a wind to blow across the earth, and the waters subsided. 2 The fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the sky were stopped up, and the rain from the sky was held back;

Notice two things about these verses. First, this is the first time we hear the words, “God remembered.” Later the Eternal will remember Rachel and Hannah and cure their infertility, and will remember the covenant made with our ancestors and begin the process of our liberation from slavery. Here, God remembers Noach and ALL living things.

The act of remembering on God’s part seems to be connected with action, just as the commandment to Remember the Sabbath requires more than thinking, “Wow it’s shabbat,” but the actions of doing something – lighting candles, coming here, resting, not creating.

Rashi, the French medieval commentator, explained that God’s remembering was tied to the movement from the middah hadin to the middah harachamim – from the quality of judgment to the quality of mercy. (Din means judgment, as in a beit din, a court, and rachamim is mercy or compassion.) God’s decision to destroy the world so recently created was seen as an act of judgment–or exasperation. Any of you ever felt that way with your kids? Or your spouse? And sometimes, I know I myself, need to remember that I love them or that they have good qualities or that I need to behave better myself… That ever happen to you?

So, after 40 days of rain and 150 days of the waters swelling, God remembered Noach and every living thing. And what did God do? While the Jewish Publication Society translation I read above says that God caused a wind to blow upon the earth, Rashi instead translates va’ya’a’vair Elohim ruach as And God sent a spirit, a spirit of consolation. Ruach Elohim is usually translated as the Spirit of God… and as Rashi notes, if God had sent a wind, well, we all know what wind does to water: it does NOT calm it, that’s for sure, and the next verse says that the waters stopped. So, to Rashi, this means that God sent a spirit of consolation upon the desolate earth, and to every still living thing…

Because after the devastation, we were going to need it, don’t you think? Imagine being pent up for a year in an Ark with your spouse, your kids and their partners, and two of every animal (in sex segregated quarters), with the rain, and the storming, and the rolling of the boat, the cries of death outside, and no books, videos, iPods… a spirit of consolation would be useful, and maybe even a wake up call to be ready to move on…

Because this story is also about how we pick up and start again. According to the Torah, it took ten days short of a year from the day the rains began to the day Noach and the family of living things left the Ark. And indeed, a amazing dance takes place before Noach is ready to leave. He sends first the raven, then a dove, then another dove, and still he waits. Noach keeps taking baby steps, and keeps hesitating, until finally, God has to tell him, “Leave the Ark” already!

Can’t you imagine being afraid of what you would find when you walked out of the Ark? I remember the trepidation I felt when we walked up the stairs to the clinic I ran after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake… And the first time I walked into my mother’s apartment after she died: what would that be like? A spirit of consolation would have been nice. And indeed facing it together with my sisters, in the second case, and my sister coworkers in the first, provided that consolation.

Noach didn’t fare so well: after he made his offerings to God, he planted a vineyard, got drunk and had an unsavory experience with his son. We learn that even a person who was completely righteous can really fumble after trauma.

I am helping an amazing organization in San Francisco develop a Center for Youth Wellness – that is based on new research that shows that adverse childhood experiences: exposure to violence, neglect, abuse, abandonment – the trials of poverty – have a molecular effect on our bodies, so that it’s not just the social context, but a cellular event that shortens life, leads to chronic health problems, academic challenges and is generally not good. I think Noach is a perfect example of this impact: here was a righteous man who did as he was told, saved humanity to start again; but after the trauma of the flood, he slipped. Who wouldn’t?

I suspect the people who have a better chance are those who know how to be mindful, who know how to remember, who know how to get in touch with their middah harachamim, their quality of mercy and compassion. and indeed that’s part of what this Center for Youth Wellness will be doing. And it is indeed what we will be studying in the three week series on Mussar that we are starting next Wednesday, November 2 at 7 pm. Please join me.

Shabbat shalom!

Priestly Blessing: What it gives us and what it teaches us.

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This past spring, part of my internship has been a clinical pastoral education training. I trained in a peer group with Presbyterian and United Church of Christ ministers and ministers to be. When we prayed together, we found the one set prayer we had in common is the Priestly Blessing, found in the torah portion, Naso.

During my ordination weekend in LA at the end of May, I repeatedly received the blessing myself. It’s a powerful, succinct three verses, and fifteen words. I began to wonder what gives it such power, so I went to the medieval commentators to see what they had to say.

Rashi, the 11th century French commentator, had a lot to say. In general, he believed that grammar opened a door to deeper meaning in the text. So, within the instructions to Aaron that precede the blessing, he found that the particular grammatical construction to say these words to us, the children of Israel, meant that the blessing must not be bestowed in haste or distraction, but with concentration and a full heart. Once you decide to offer the blessing, you better mean it. A good lesson for anyone.

Let’s look at the first verse: Y’varechecha Adonai v’yishm’recha. According to Rashi this pasuk (verse) – may the Holy One bless you and keep you, is about having enough. Often when God blessed people in the Bible, they received material well-being. Yish’m’recha is a form of the same word as Shomrei – as in Shomrei Torah – the guardians or keepers of the Torah. In this case, it is about keeping us safe from theft or robbery or violence. The metaphorical interpretation can be about keeping our faculties, or guarding our relationships, or even our health. As I heard it last week, it spoke to my prayer that I will be able to use my education, skills and passion in a way that both serves the Jewish people and contributes to my family’s material well-being.

The second verse: Y’air Adonai panav eylecha v’chunecha — may the Holy One shine the divine countenance on you and be gracious to you. Nachmanides, the 13th century commentator, noted the “singular beauty” of the idea of the light of the divine presence shining on the recipient: to feel the power, the heat, the mystery internally, within our souls. The image I see is the one when sunlight filters through dense clouds, coming from the heavens: I have always envisioned God’s presence at those moments: a physical manifestation of the metaphor of God’s panim, God’s face.

While the first verse speaks to our material needs, this one speaks to our spiritual needs. We seek divine light and grace – another way of saying happiness and favor — which Rashi believes (and I tend to agree with him) we can best achieve through living a life dedicated to truth, beauty, justice and kindness. This verse introduces the importance of balance between material and spiritual well-being. Let’s not sacrifice one for the other.

And the final verse: Yisa Adonai panav eylecha v’y’semlicha shalom –– May God lift up God’s countenance to you and grant you peace. Rashi tells us that the first phrase is about wanting God not to be angry with us. We know this because when God is angry—whenever most of us are angry—we look down…our noses, so to speak. Therefore, we are calling on the Holy One to accept our failings, our imperfections, with understanding. To recognize that even when we make mistakes or hurt others, we are still made b’tzelem Elohim, in the divine image. And just as we pray to temper divine anger with mercy, so do we sometimes need such balance in our own emotions.

The last phrase – v’yesemlecha shalom —May the Holy One grant you shalom. It is a call for peace or wholeness. Marcia Falk, the modern liturgist, notes that “the desire for peace is as acute as any human desire – and as urgent today as it has ever been,”[1] but more than any other single virtue or gift, it is one that most depends on our own actions. The Rabbis describe shalom in the verse as the “vessel containing and preserving all blessings”[2] for surely no peace is possible without people working together to make a better world, and that is hard to achieve when people do not feel whole.

The priestly blessing teaches us a great deal about blessing in general:

  • don’t say it unless you mean it with a full heart
  • make sure your blessings are a balance of your material and your spiritual well-being
  • recognize that to be a source of blessing, you need to control your emotions and even give people the benefit of the doubt.

May you be blessed as Shabbat approaches.

 

[1] My People’s Prayer Book: The Amidah.

[2] R. Eli Munk, World of Prayer.