We enter this new Hebrew month of Nisan––the month of spring, the month in which Jews the world over recall our liberation from the constriction of the "narrow spaces" of enslavement––in a state that, for many of us, seems to be mightily constricted. Some of us are quarantined at home. Some of us are sick; some very sick. Others of us are constrained to move into the public sphere, to risk our own well-being as we perform jobs deemed essential to the continued functioning of society and to the well-being of the rest of us: farm workers and those involved in food production, grocery store workers, bus operators, communications workers, and most crucially, health care workers. How can a time of such restriction, fear, grief, and constraint be perceived and known in any way as a liberatory passage? as a birthing, hedged all around by the possibility--and the reality--of dying? At Passover seders, as we retell the ancient story of slavery and liberation, we often ask, who are the Pharaoh's of our time? How does Pharaoh live within each of us? What are the plagues of our time? How do we perpetuate or participate in them? What transformation is called for, and how do we open to receive its energies and help manifest new structures in the world?
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[This piece was part of a communication written today for my Embodying Spirit alumni]
My friends, we find ourselves time of grave peril and of hidden opportunities. The peril is most evident and becoming more so daily, as more is learned about the novo coronavirus. Many of us are in the so-called “high risk” group for developing complications. And…. we are among the privileged—people with safe, comfortable homes, networks of supportive friends and community members, health care teams in place, perhaps some savings to tide us over through a time of financial uncertainty. Millions of people in this country and across the world are not so fortunate. Our hearts know this, and our prayers for the collective take on extra force and urgency, as we face the magnitude of what is before us. But what of the opportunities? How can we imagine them, uncover them, and begin to take action, even when we’re not gathering face to face? I had the blessing to be on a zoom call today with some amazing leaders in the Jewish community, deep thinkers and dreamers, convened by the Nathan Cummings Foundation, which supports some of the most innovative programs and forward thinking in the Jewish world today. We shared our perceptions and began to look at how growth and even positive change might come out of this crisis. Among many insightful words that were spoken, several folks (including me, as you might imagine) spoke to the fact that the pandemic is waking us up to the importance of living more fully in our bodies, the need to listen more deeply to the body’s needs. And not just our personal bodies, but the bodies of our neighbors, of our communities, the bodies of animals and plants, the great body of the Earth. This requires slowing down—slowing down the electric speed of our brains to listen more deeply to the quieter voices of wisdom flowing toward us from every created thing, including from deep within our own physicality. Staying home, cultivating more local fields of concern—attending to ourselves, our family members, our neighbors, our pets, our gardens—as best we can, brings us more into the here-and-now, into this moment, this breath, this piece of ground—the only time-space in which we can truly act. This week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa, chronicles the disastrous effects of the newly freed Israelites' panic when their leader, Moses, is gone too long, receiving instruction from The Divine Oneness atop Mt. Sinai. Their fear leads them to act in ways that are ultimately against their own interests—to place their faith in a false god, a golden statue. Of course, there’s much to be learned there, but even before that, the parshah begins with the words, “Vay’daber YHVH el-Moshe leymor: ‘ki-tisa et-rosh b’nei Yisrael….’ “The Divine spoke through Moses saying, ‘When you take a census of the people of Israel….’ ” In Hebrew, the phrase that translates “take a census” literally means, “lift up the head” of each Israelite. To count the people is to “lift up their heads,” to make them feel counted, to make them count. How significant is it that we, here in the U.S., are in the midst of census-taking right now? How ironic is it that our national leaders have done everything they could to suppress the true census count, putting obstacles in the way of people’s even feeling safe to be counted, tricking them into filling out fake census forms? And how much in this current crisis will we see—are we seeing—the dire effects of dis-counting people? Of leaving so many people behind, uncounted, uncared for? The poor, refugees, immigrants, tribal people? Perhaps part of the opportunity embedded in this time of grave trouble is the opportunity to see and know, more clearly than ever, how inter-connected we truly are, to come to truly understand how much we depend on everyone’s presence, every people's wisdom, every community’s resources and resourcefulness? Perhaps, if we can stay present and loving in the face of fear and real danger, together, we will begin to dream systems and ways of being that will include everyone, lift up every head. Perhaps we can begin to learn from those who live close to the earth, that only in truly caring for one another and the earth, can we begin to birth the ways of being that will allow us to survive and humbly steward our earthly home. During the zoom call today, it was suggested that we reframe “social isolation” as “physical distancing,” an opportunity to be with ourselves, to look inward and catch up with our lives, and to begin to imagine and implement ways to stay lovingly connected and socially active, even when we can’t be in the same room together. I bless you with all my blessing power to keep an open heart, to stay well and safe, and to be in touch when you can. Shabbat shalom and much love, Diane Here in northern California, winter has chewed us up a bit, wetted us down slightly, and spit us out its other side, into the beginnings of a prematurely green and flowering spring. In the Jewish world, we've entered the Hebrew month of Adar, z'man simkhateynu, a period of weeks meant to be entirely given over to joy. How, you may ask, can we release ourselves into raucous and bawdy celebration, when so much is topsy turvy in the world? Read on to get a sense of how the spiritual technology of joking, joy, and upsidedownness might be just what the doctor ordered, building the spiritual muscle needed to survive and thrive in these hair-raising times.
The Ikar* of Purim: Going Beyond Either/Or Notes for a Teaching on Purim 5780 ~ 2020 *ikar means “the essence” or “the main point” “This realization of Oneness is the ultimate experience of love.” ––R. David Aaron, Inviting God In, p. 174 Guiding Questions: What ties the mitzvot of Purim together? Why is Purim the only holy day that the Sages declared would still be observed in y’mot ha-mashiakh, the time of a healed world? Five days ago, we entered the month of Adar on the Jewish calendar. The is last month of the year, since the most significant of the Jewish calendar’s four new years begins in the spring, on the 1st of Nisan (next month), the month in which the celebration of Passover and the Exodus from Egypt take place. The Talmud teaches: “Joy is increased in the month of Adar.” Kabbalistically its energy is said to be “the joy of Oneness,” and the whole month is called z’man simkhateynu, the season of our joy. The holy day of the month is Purim, celebrated on the 14th of the month, and in some places on the 15th. So what do you know about Purim? What associations do you have with the holiday? What are your curiosities? The story of Purim, told in Megillat Esther (the Scroll of Esther), takes place at an unspecified time in the city of Shushan, a great city in ancient Persia. The word “purim” means “lots” and refers to the lots cast by Haman to determine the day on which he planned to have his men attack and destroy all the Jews of Persia. Yom Kippur, on the other side of the Jewish calendar, is sometimes called Yom HaKippurim, the Day of Atonements or Coverings, which can be parsed “Yom Haki-Purim,” “a day like Purim,” because on it, lots were also drawn—by the High Priest in the Jerusalem Temple to determine which of two goats would be sacrificed to atone for the entire people and which would be the proverbial scapegoat, sent into the wilderness, symbolically bearing the sins of the people on its head. Of course, the spiritual technologies of these two days are very different. Yom Kippur is a solemn, awesome day of fasting and prayer; a day on which people wear white garments reminiscent of the kittel, the white linen garment in which they’ll be buried; a day when we aspire to be wiped clean of past errors and reborn, freed from constricting and wrongheaded ideas and behaviors. Purim, on the other hand is a bawdy holiday of raucous play, dressing up in costume, feasting, getting drunk, joking and satirizing one’s enemies and the direst of situations. What could possibly be the relationship between these two very different holy days? In her excellent booklet on the kabbalistic roots of the Tu BiShvat Seder (you can order it at https://astillsmallvoice.org/product/ssv-tu-b-shvat-hagada-2/), which is the holiday we celebrated last month, on the full moon of Shvat, Sarah Yehudit Schneider writes this: If life is a spiritual path, our primary task is not the accumulation of facts, but the integration of truth so deeply into our flesh, that our instinctive and reflexive response to the world shifts accordingly. This is the Jewish definition of enlightenment. (p. 33, my emphasis) So we might ask, how do our khagim, our holidays, contribute to this great spiritual project? For one thing, every Jewish khag has its origins, either in an earth-based ritual, a historical event, or both, and involves mitzvot or minhagim—specific physical actions and symbols designed to help us inscribe the message of the holy day in our body-minds. And on the mystical level, every khagbrings a particular flavor of tikkun (repair). Here’s what Schneider says about tikkunim in general: Every tikkun has two parts. First, is that it always includes some actualization of potential, meaning that some undeveloped capacity of soul becomes visible to the world. Second, is to gradually refine the consciousness one brings to that effort. (p. 28) The mitzvot and customs of Purim include the reading or hearing of the Megillat Esther, Esther’s Scroll; creating satirical and raucous plays that reenact or embroider upon the story; dressing in outrageous costumes; making music and dancing; giving tzedakah and caring for the poor; delivering sh’lakh manot (gifts of at least two different kinds of food to at least one neighbor; many people make up little goody bags they distribute at Purim parties); and feasting and becoming so intoxicated that you can’t tell the difference between the phrases “arur Haman” and “borukh Mordecai,” “cursed Haman” and “blessed Mordecai.” This last teaching actually appears in the Talmud (Megillah 7b): “khayav inish liv’sumei b’Puraya ad d’lo yada ben arur Haman l’borukh Mordekhai, a person is required to become intoxicated on Purim, to the point that they can’t distinguish between ‘cursed is Haman’ and ‘blessed is Mordecai.’ What, then, is the particular tikkun or fixing effected by the mitzvot of Purim and how do they reveal our soul capacities and refine our consciousness? If as the Kabbalists teach, the healing of this month is through joy and laughter, what is being revealed and repaired? What do you imagine these observances have to do with one another and why did the Sages teach that Purim would be the only remaining holiday and Megillat Esther the only text still read, along with the Five Books of Moses, in y’mei ha-mashiakh, the world that is coming, that time of universal radical sacred hospitality? (to learn more about “sacred hospitality,” read Adam Horowitz’s recent wonderful blog on the subject at medium.com: https://medium.com/@adamhorowitz/toward-an-infrastructure-of-sacred-hospitality-5657611e79df) “Megillat Esther” literally means “the revelation (gilui) of hiddenness (hastair).” It’s taught that, on the deepest level, the Hiddenness revealed through Purim is the encompassing Oneness that takes us beyond either/or, good/evil, friend/enemy—beyond dualistic thinking. The phrases arur Haman and borukh Mordecai have the same numerical value in Hebrew, 502, which in itself adds up to 7 (5 + 0 + 2), the number symbolic of Creation. On this day, through joy and revelry, we’re encouraged to elevate our consciousness to a level beyond the everyday, to take a magical mystery tour back to the Garden of Eden, which had the undivided Tree of Life at its center (the Tree that later splits into the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil). We dress in costume, making fun of our limited identities, shattering set ways of thinking with laughter, bearing witness to the fact that this whole, crazy world, as the Baal Shem Tov taught, is actually God in drag, the Divine Oneness cloaked in variety and multiplicity. “This realization of Oneness is the ultimate experience of love.” (Aaron, Inviting God In, p. 174) And the agent of this revelation, in the Purim story, is none other than the Divine Feminine, the Shekhinah herself in disguise—Esther. The story itself couches its potent political message in humorous stereotypes and satire, mocking and defying the powers that be. Mordecai refuses to kowtow to Haman, the hubristic minister; Esther turns the tables on a dunderhead king, Achashverosh, who has banished his previous queen, Vashti, when she refused to dance naked before his drunken party guests. In the Passover story, God must intercede directly, performing miracles that controvert nature—the plagues, the splitting of the sea, the drowning of the Egyptian armies. The God of Nisan, of the Exodus, acts violently to extract the Israelites from Egypt and set them free to serve the Divine. But in the Purim story, nothing supernatural happens—the miracles are hidden, God’s name is never mentioned, and the Divine plan is implemented solely through the courageous choices of human beings who speak truth to power. Of course, there’s a dark side to this story—the death of Haman and his sons, the mandate for the Jews to take revenge upon Haman’s gangs. Even if we accept the tale as a kind of canonical superhero comic book, a revenge fantasy on the order of Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 film, Inglourious Bastards, it’s still challenging to cut through the carnage to the ikar (essence) of the khag—the deep knowing that we can never fall out of God, that love is woven into every occurrence and challenge of life. The mitzvoth of caring for the poor, gifting of food to friends, feasting and rejoicing, are all intended to liberate that love energy, to remind us that beneath all our differences, we are each a unique expression of the One. It’s for this reason that the Sages asserted that Purim would be the only holiday celebrated in mashiakhvelt, a holy day that elevates us even beyond Yom Kippur’s wiping away of sin—into a state of consciousness, of wholeness of being, in which Oneness is universally perceived and, in the absence of the good/evil dichotomy, joyful celebration is eternally possible. How might you celebrate Purim this year? © Rabbi Diane Elliot 2020 I had the joy and privilege of taking a short retreat at the Vedanta Retreat in Olema last week, about an hour and a half from my home in the East Bay. Each time I visit the women's retreat house, I'm overcome by gratitude for the deep silence, broken only by the wind, the rustling of leaves, and the bellowing of cattle in the nearby pasturelands. Deer grazed just beyond my window, oblivious to my presence behind glass. The unseasonably beautiful, warm, dry weather warmed my bones. And I could feel in my bones how thirsty the land is. Grasses dried brown, trees still leafed out but definitely showing signs of dehydration. My body resonates with the body of Earth, how she is changing, how dampened is the once-rich buzz of insects and bird chatter. Yes, it's autumn, heading toward winter, and yet.... This poem surfaced yesterday.
Gravity …the force of attraction, the irresistible magnetism that, in our cosmos brings things together. Some call it by the name of love, the hidden and mysterious pull that draws two bodies toward one another, holds one in another’s orbit, so that together, they may circle some larger star. This being so, then it’s love that binds us, molds us, shapes our dreams—love against which we chafe and struggle, love to which we submit, love that sustains, fulfills, and sometimes empties us. When, at the end of the film Gravity, the woman astronaut who has been stranded alone in space, having made it back into Earth’s atmosphere, splash lands in the ocean, drags herself onto a beach, hugging the wet sand as if it were her dearest, only child, we know with her, for a certainty, that we all are wedded to this Earth, and we are her children. We aspire and shine only in her orbit, in deep and abiding connection with her, she is the mother, drawing us to her wet and shining breast, and she is our spaceship, lonely and untethered in the black infinity of an eternal night, our only lifeline, our only hope, our cherished garden, our only and so temporary home. © Diane Elliot 2019 [On Sunday, October 20, the last day of Sukkot, I participated in a beautiful and poignant Hoshana Rabba ritual with the Wilderness Torah community. "Hoshana Rabba" means "the great pleading," or more colloquially, "the big ask." A group of about 50 folks of all ages, from babes-in-arms to white-haired elders, gathered mid-afternoon in a sun-dappled meadow in Tilden Park, flanked by great eucalyptus trees, around an altar covered with colorful fabric, green branches, flowers, and vessels filled with water, to offer fervent prayers for rain and for the Earth. What follows is the kavannah, the intention, that I offered, at the beginning of the ritual.]
In the Talmud it is taught: “Rabbi Assi pointed out a contradiction [between verses]. One verse says: ‘And the earth brought forth grass,’ referring to the third day [of Creation], whereas another verse, when speaking of the sixth day [of Creation] says: ‘No shrub of the field was yet in the earth.’ This teaches us that the plants commenced to grow but stopped just as they were about to break through the soil, until Adam came and prayed for rain for them; and when rain fell they sprouted forth. This teaches you that the Holy One, blessed be the Name, longs for the prayers of the righteous.” * (Talmud Chulin 60B) All through the days of Sukkot, in the chanting of Hallel, we weave our words of praise and gratitude together with our pleas—please, please!--Hosha-na! Save us! Save our fields and trees, earth and sky, our animals and crops—please, please! And now, at this moment of Hoshana Raba--the Great Hoshana, the Last-Chance Hoshana, it’s time to up the ante, to focus our bodies, minds, and hearts like lasers and to open the floodgates of our souls as never before, to pray with our arms and legs, bellies and throats, to let our tears of gratitude and longing, bitterness and regret, shame and longing, water the Earth that we have failed to protect. And what are we praying for? We’re praying for everything and everyone we know and love! For “the Aura of life”** and “the Illumination of Light,” for “the Majesty of Sky” and the “Variety of the plants,” for “the Infinity of Space,” for the fish, birds, insects-- for all life on this planet and for the Earth itself! We pray for Earth’s beauty and aliveness! We pray that we not go extinct! We pray to stem the tide of eco-breakdown! We pray for the wisdom to cleanse our air, cool our waters. We are praying for “Bears and Babies, Fawns and Families,” for all “Instinctual and Intelligent Life.” Hosha-na, PLEASE, we are pleading Because we don’t know what to do! Help us see! Help us know! Help us act, so that our children and our children’s children have a chance at life and breath, joy and creativity and holy service on this, our “rising, exuberant”*** Earth. * translation by Rabbi Yoel Glick ** All the quotes are from original Hoshanot, prayers of pleading, written in 1998 by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi for a “subversive prayer action” organized by The Shalom Center and Elat Chayyim, on the banks of the polluted Hudson River. ** Lewis Thomas I had the honor this past December of being part of the stewardship team for the second Taproot Gathering at Commonweal in Bolinas, California. Now in its second year, Taproot is a coming together of artists, activists, and changemakers who wish to enter into deeper connection with Jewish tradition and practice and with one another. In the mornings I and my rabbinic colleagues offered a variety of approaches to Torah text, including close reading and conversation, movement, and engagement with nature. In the afternoons, Taproot participants were invited to lead impromptu sessions in which they could share their interests and concerns with one another. I was fortunate to be able to spend some time in a writing khevruta, responding to poetic prompts chosen by my partner. This poem is one result of that dedicated, creative time.
“Let us sleep hand in hand…” …the way I sometimes reach out for your hand in the middle of the night or very early in the morning not wanting to wake you, to disturb the fragile hard-won sleep of your fractured nights, yet knowing that we are deeply and inexorably held, and so, in the most essential space everything is whole no brokenness, no unmet longing and so, I reach for your hand, and it is always smooth and dry, warm to the touch, soothing to the buzz in my 4 a.m. brain and you, in your sleep, clasp it and draw it close to you and we are touching in the night, one asleep one wakeful, and this is poetry, this is the poem, already written, carved in the lines of your palm, calligraphed by a hand more ancient and vast than any one might imagine-- and yet also right here, and right here, the poetry of the rightness of our curled togetherness and our longing and our astonished delight at having found one another at such a late hour in such an early morning, in the dark, the unquiet yet nevertheless dark. Oh oh oh so we are the poem and we are the work of God and God is our work, our play, our bread and our soup, our simplicity and our confusion, our fear and our love. And we move on together, sailing in our dreams for awhile until you turn over in a semi-conscious harrumph, like a lion or a bear stirring in its winter cave-- or until the long sciatic ache spindles down my leg and causes me to shift and turn and rearrange—and then we lie, back to back the unfinished poem lying between us like a cranky baby, hungry, whimpering, waiting until waking fully happens and we become lost in our day. © Rabbi Diane Elliot 2019 The Days of Awe are fast approaching. On Saturday night, you may have attended a S’likhot service, a late-night ritual introducing the prayers and melodies of the High Holy Days. Hearing the strains of the familiar niggunim—Hashiveynu, the Thirteen Attributes of Lovingkindness—the heart softens and settles, preparing for the spiritual work of clearing the dead wood from our lives, making amends, asking for and offering forgiveness, and opening up internal space to receive the vital energies of this new year.
Mystics taught that, with the advent of Rosh Hashanah, the energies of the old year whoosh upward and out through the tops of our heads, leaving our bodies feeling empty and vulnerable. When the shofar sounds on Rosh Hashanah day, the new year's energies begin to flow in through that same opening and down into our bodies. This process takes time—ten days, to be exact!—during which we remain in a vulnerable state, as shaky on our spiritual feet as a newborn calf. On Yom Kippur, the day of At-one-ment, if we’ve done the spiritual work of the season, we are able to rejoice in the purification of our beings and a sense of renewed connection with Life. And the inflow will continue through Sukkot and, some say, all the way until Hanukah! In preparation for the days ahead, I invite you to consider the impetus for your own teshuvah—literally, your “turning” or “ returning”—this year. Is there something or someone valuable that you've left behind or forgotten? What or whom are you returning to? Rabbi Naomi Levy, in her inspiring book Einstein and the Rabbi, Searching for the Soul, writes about the yearnings and questions that people often bring to her: What should I do with my life? Is this the right person for me? How do I find my true calling? She sees these as “soul questions.” “We have a gnawing sense,” she writes, “that the life we are living is not the life we are meant to be living…. We experience these longings because at some point we became separated from our own souls, from a voice within that is here to guide us to the very purpose of our existence…. We fall into predictable patterns, we get through our days without reaching and stretching and listening. And then you wake up one day and you realize you have drifted far afield from your own essence. You lost yourself while trying to please others. Your work no longer resonates with you. Your relationships feel superficial. With all your obligations and pressures you’ve stopped doing the things you love. We wander in exile hoping for a way to return to our essence.” Perhaps you resonate with some of what Rabbi Levy is speaking about. Perhaps you have some longing, some vague inner tugging, that alerts you to a space, a gap that’s opened up between your soul essence and the daily unfolding of your life. Or perhaps you recognizes subtle spaces, ruptures in relationships, that you would love to heal, or to simply release. These spaces, these gaps, these vague yearnings that draw your attention, may be points of initiation for your own teshuvah work this year. During these next two weeks, you might want to spend some time feeling into these spaces, touching them gently, with compassion and curiosity, so that when you join in community for the chanting of Kol Nidre on the eve of Yom Kippur, in whatever sacred space you gather, you’ll be able to give voice to the nature of the longing that draws you forward this year, a sense of what you hope to release (forgive!), along with a vision of what might be birthing or strengthening for you in the months ahead. A poem to inspire your practice: Teach Me to Forgive Adon Ha-S’likhot Master of Pardonings, teach me to forgive-- to forgive myself, to forgive You, to forgive those who have hurt me in the name of ignorance, mindlessness, certainty, rigidity, even righteousness and justice, even love; to forgive the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, to forgive nature, human and otherwise, personal and impersonal, majestic and petty; to forgive death, to forgive You, to forgive myself-- to forgive it all, so that I may open to life, living-and-dying as it is, flowing through me carrying it all along, a great river of living-and-dying, a mighty stream of birthing-and-dying, a towering wave of living-and-dying. Holy Merciful one Ba’al Ha-Rakhamim, teach me to forgive. –R. Diane Elliot, 2015 / 5776 This Torah commentary was written for the weekly Torah blog of the Academy of Jewish Religion, California, the Los Angeles seminary that ordained me in 2006. Let me know your thoughts
Parshat Naso Torah Reading for Week of May 20-26, 2018 "Lessons of the Midbar" We Jews have often been called “people of the book,” but perhaps a better appellation would be “people of words.” A people forged in the wilderness, the midbar—a Hebrew word whose root, l’daber, means “to speak,”—a people defined by Aseret ha-Dibrot, The Ten Speakings of an invisible and awesome Divine mouth, our Torah unfolds as a saga of the spoken word: “va-yidaber YHVH el moshe leymor…,” “and the Infinite spoke to/through Moses, saying…,” “va-yidaber moshe el b’nai yisrael…,” “and Moses spoke to the children of Israel….” In my rare and precious times in desert wilderness—in Ein Gedi near the Dead Sea, in the high desert of New Mexico, in the Anza-Borrego desert east of San Diego, in the Panamint Valley just outside of Death Valley—what’s been palpable and deeply healing for me has been the silence. A rich, thick silence that lies upon the land like a cloak, in which any minute sound seems to echo for miles; a silence shattered at times by the wailing of wind and storm, inchoate, like wild beasts rampaging through the valleys and dry river beds. So how, in our tradition, does midbar, this wild place of palpable silence and nature’s unpredictable blasts, become transmuted into m’daber, a mishkan built from the sayings, speakings, pronouncements of Divine Presence, channeled through the throat of Moses? And how, over the course of the Israelites’ wilderness sojourn, does this pristine space fill to overflowing with so many words of confusion, doubt, complaint, conflict, pleading, punishment, forgiveness, and threat of further punishment? In her recent book, Moses, A Human Life, the great contemporary darshan, Dr. Avivah Zornberg, presents the voice of Moses—that great transmitter of God’s words, whose own speech was deficient, impaired in some way—as a harking back to “tehom,” “the murmuring deep,” the rumbling, inchoate flood of sound that precedes Creation, a buzzing, vibrating ocean of sound that contains all possible human vocalizations. Inarticulate, at times requiring translation by his brother Aaron, the voice of Moses, holds the full, raw range of pre-verbal feeling. And it is precisely this voice, the voice beneath words, beyond even silence, that God needs to convey Godself to this ragtag bunch of erstwhile slaves, these descendants of Jacob the trickster, of Yisrael, the angel-wrestler. For, in the human mouth, well-formed words are often not trustworthy. Some blockage, some distortion often intervenes between the true intent and its expression, between the raw emotion, the deep intuition, and its verbal shaping. We see this in the current travesty of our public discourse. Misunderstanding blossoms, explodes into anger and hurt, and freezes into intransigent opposition. This week’s parshah, Naso, which unfolds fairly close to the beginning of what, yet unbeknownst to them, will become the Israelites’ forty-year sojourn bamidbar, in the wilderness, includes the extremely troubling description of a “trial by water” imposed upon a wife suspected by her husband of infidelity, the sotah. The scenario described here is clearly one of broken communication, something sensed but not spoken, for, without concrete evidence, the jealousy of the husband is aroused against his mate: “…a man could have lain with her carnally, but it was hidden from the eyes of her husband, and she became secluded and could have been defiled, but there was no witness against her, and she had not been forced, and a spirit of jealousy had passed over him…” (Numbers 5:13-14, my italics). The unlucky woman is to be brought to the Tabernacle and made to stand, her head uncovered, before the High Priest and before God. A “meal offering of jealousies” (minkhat k’na’ot) is brought by her husband, and she is made to drink from a vessel of holy water, mixed with earth from the floor of the Tabernacle and seasoned with curses, inscribed on a scroll and then scraped into the water. If, upon drinking the cursed water, her “belly distends and thigh collapses,” she is proven guilty and cursed; if not she is exonerated. Of course, being forced to submit to this low-tech lie detector test would’ve been extremely humiliating for any woman. And though the “bitter waters” contained only a little earth and ink, the destructive power of her husband’s mistrust, or of her own guilt, if she had, in fact, slept with another, intensified by the pressure of this very public shaming, might well have caused the woman so accused to physically collapse, to become, in Torah’s words, “a curse amid her people.” As disturbing as this description of the sotah is, can we not in some way see foreshadowed here, in microcosm, the distortions, the hiddennesses, the half-truths, untruths, and unkept promises—the repeated failures of words—that will plague the Israelite people throughout their desert sojourn, evinced both in the evolving relationship between HaShem, the Divine husband, and Israel, his reluctant, often terrified bride, and also in the people’s relationships with Moses, their leader, and with one another? Perhaps the truth of any relationship rests not in the multitudes of words that will inevitably be shared, but in the attentive stratum of silence underlying those words, and in the tehom—the murmuring, groaning, cooing, crying, burbling resonance of shared souls—beneath the silence. Perhaps the word “midbar” points us not to a place of everyday speech, but to all that underlies and surrounds our speaking—to the great, cosmic hum that births Creation and to the matrix of silence out of which words arise. As Avivah Zornberg so eloquently puts it, “In our deepest aloneness, we listen for the elemental in each other’s voice—which, strangely, is also the particular sound of the other. He is unknown to me, it is her unknownness that I draw on, to help me be at home in the alien elements of my own world.” (Moses, A Human Life; p. 55) As rabbis, cantors, chaplains, spiritual directors, and spiritual friends to one another, we are charged with the challenging task of conveying wisdom, comfort, remembrance, and sometimes challenge and rebuke through the tricky medium of words. How essential then that we steep ourselves in the matrix of silence and the unformed sounds of the human heart that prefigure language—that we privilege listening and the expectant space between breaths, not jumping reflexively to speech, which can so polarize, so alienate. Truth, ever elusive in our speaking, sometimes shines through most radiantly in our silences, in the simple loving act of our listening. mdMomdaDwEb@192024aDwEb@192024 As the sun sets, this Friday evening, we move into the final day of this year's Omer counting practice. Here in the Bay Area, these seven weeks have taken us from the first buddings of early spring into full-blown fecundity--blossoming fruit trees, rose bushes burgeoning, lush green hills beginning to brown. We Jews are approaching the mountain. Clustered at its foot, we gaze upward toward the revelatory heights, shrouded in smoke, cloud, mist. Like the ancient mountain, these times are raw, jagged, heart-rending, and perilous. So much is now torn. I pray that we will opened, not be torn apart, by the Word.
A new poem for this day that is passing.... Day 48, Yesod sheh’b’malkhut Is it the foundation of the world that's crumbling or merely a façade, being chipped away like the once-vividly painted Buddhist temples, sand blasted by time into softened shapes of grey moss-covered stone, overgrown with vines and brush? Is there a Foundation that never crumbles? some summer raft bobbing far out in the frigid water, a float toward which I can swim, braving the battering waves, grabbing onto its flimsy rusted ladder, hauling myself up onto it gasping, to sit and warm my gooseflesh in the sun, postponing that inevitable moment when I’ll have to dive back in and stroke my way to shore? Or is it sun or wind or whoever I think I can count on but can’t really? Perhaps some space between, gravity, deep listening, surrender, relief, joy-- the Unmoored Mooring that with us counts our days? 5-18-18 This season dedicated to freedom in the Jewish calendar is washing over me this year like a great, toppling wave. What is freedom, and how is it cultivated, sustained? In the ancient story, the people groan in bondage, but are too caught up in suffering to respond to freedom's call, to touch the open spaces in themselves, however minute or hidden, that can never be completely bound.
This freedom story seems to me among our core narratives as human beings. How do boundaries and flow, fences and open fields, consonants and vowels, synergize to produce meaning and the possibility of agency? How does the way we hold ourselves within connect with the ways we are held, with the ways our ancestors have been held, and with how we and our children hold and flow into the future? Preparing for the seder, the ritual meal that marks the beginning of our yearly Jewish freedom journey, a poem emerged. It was 4 AM Monday morning, the Monday after the great day of marches, in which young people's voices surged forth from their hearts like a mighty stream, declaring their commitment to sanity, to securing a future of freedom to live and work and grow, for themselves and for future generations. The objects on the seder plate, symbolic of burgeoning life and the possibility of freedom to know, to love, to serve, began to speak to me in new and surprising voices. May your Passover observances open a new road, a clear path, an open space that holds in each day, through each breath, the possibility of healing, of rebirth, and of joy. Seder Plate…. Pesach’s blue plate special, a strange and yet familiar gathering of ingredients, recipe for remembrance, symbols of celebration, subject of cerebration, centerpiece of our meal of liberation…. Haroset (apples, dates, spices, and wine) Our taste buds are confused. Spiced and wine-soaked, the sweet fruit, riches of the earthly garden with which we have been entrusted, chopped and crushed, cements the bricks of our forgetfulness. Betraying nature, we betray our own true natures—build Pharaoh’s palaces and storehouses, prisons for Earth’s bounty, monuments to greed, mortared with forgetfulness and ignorance. How did we agreed to this betrayal? How are we complicit in this intolerable injustice? Karpas, Hazeret (sweet and bitter greens) Spring greens tantalize with new life yet taste bitter when we have forgotten how to love, how to nourish, how to protect the birth and growth given us to nurture. Then newness, joy and bitterness, mingle in one mouthful, blessed and rueful, chewed and seasoned with remorseful tears. Maror (bitter herbs) Fiery root sears the knowing of how far we have strayed from Truth into our very breath, like a dry khamsin, hot desert wind filling nostrils, throats with dust and despair. How many years, how many incarnations before we recognize the thrall that binds us all, master and slave, in the tight fist of bondage? How many millennia before we will perceive why we came and what it means to serve? Zeroa (roasted lamb shank) It begins in the bones, a glimmer of freedom, a deep groan-- where have we been? In what dark cave immured? Only when the darkest of darks descends do we begin to know our own souls’ blindness. Only then, forced at last to kill and burn and gnaw to the bone the false gods we have worshipped do we begin to taste the savor of truth, lost long ago-- if ever known. Only when we have eaten the flesh of the outstretched forearm, God’s shank, does the journey home begin. Betzah (roasted egg) Egg, round, white, like the pregnant moon of spring, swelling full before our delighted eyes, pointing us toward the possible, the dreamed-for, prayed- for newness, always present, just behind the veil, just beneath the shell. Is it greed or fear or soul’s deep grief that compels us to roast this seed, to cook the unborn, before its growth and birthing can occur? Orange Another round of possibility, this time not gestation, but the fruit, juicy, sweet and tart, inviting all: Let all who are hungry come and eat! All who seek life’s fullness, all who long for the circle’s wholeness! Together let’s circumambulate the periphery of this pregnant space, upwelling with the holiness of “between,” Oneness arising from the midst of our colorful assemblage, ever expanding to include another and another. We celebrate this seventh ingredient in our seder soup—the flavor that at last completes Creation. –Diane Elliot, Passover 5778/2018 |
Rabbi Diane Elliot resides in the hills of El Sobrante, California, an East Bay suburb of San Francisco whose name means "leftovers," but might also be translated "more than enough" or "abundance." She enjoys the peace of its softly contoured hills, the sunlight filtered through the small grove of redwoods on the hillside next to her home, and the dazzling, ever-changing beauty of the sky.Archives
March 2020
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