Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 100

#blogElul 12: Forgive

The most difficult, of course, is myself.
No one else sees my failings half so clearly.
Every word I should have said and didn't, or
should have known better than to speak.
And my heart that flows in ways not wanted.
And the harsh decrees I ached so to sweeten
and wasn't strong enough, or wise enough...
Sometimes I skirt the edges of despair, but
you remind me that through the eyes of love
every flaw is softened, every misstep becomes
part of the path. Where I see weakness
you see strength. I see every missed mark:
you see the trajectory of my striving, and
call it good. Tell me again that when it comes
to my yearning, when it comes to every way
I've fallen short, I don't need your forgiveness
-- you've already granted it. All I have to do
is see myself through your irreplaceable eyes.

 

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) Read #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; you might also enjoy my collection of Elul poems which arose out of #blogElul a few years ago, now available in print and e-book form as See Me: Elul poems.

Words we can't un-say: a d'var Torah for parashat Ki Tetzei

In this week's Torah portion there is an intriguing passage (Deuteronomy 24: 1-4) about divorce. Torah says: when a man takes a wife and possesses her, and then finds something about her displeasing, he is to write her a bill of divorce and she is to leave his house. If she should marry a second time, and then divorce a second time -- or the second husband should die -- her first husband is forbidden from marrying her again.

The Sforno says that this is because to allow remarriage in this way would be a recipe for wife-swapping. Rabbenu Bahya says that this is because the woman in the story has been "known" by another man, so of course it would be inappropriate for her to be intimate with her first husband again. Unsurprisingly, these classical commentators and others take for granted the text's apparent assumptions about gender, marriage, and power. 

There's plenty that is problematic about this passage from a modern perspective. For starters, the idea that a woman "belongs" to anyone other than herself. The presumption that divorce is necessarily initiated by the husband because his wife is no longer pleasing in his eyes. The lack of agency granted to the woman. The notion that a woman who has been with another man becomes תמא / tamei, emotionally and spiritually charged in a way that would be damaging to her first partner if they got back together again.

Not to mention the fact that the text doesn't speak at all about how the woman in this situation feels: did she want to divorce in the first place? How about the second place? What kind of grief is she enduring, especially when the second marriage ends? Torah doesn't say, but we can begin to imagine.

That said, I think we can glean some wisdom from this passage despite its troubling dynamics.

First, let's remove the genderedness from it. Torah is teaching us that a marriage has to be consensual, and requires the active participation of both partners. When a marriage becomes irreparably broken for one partner, it's no longer a consensual whole, and the partnership is broken. A bill of divorce must be written so that the partners can release each other.

Anyone who is considering taking these steps needs to know that words ending a marriage, once said, can't be un-said. Once the marriage has been broken, even if one or both partners should later regret the breaking, it can't be glued back together into the configuration it had before. No one should go into divorce thinking "well, if this doesn't work out, we can go back to the way things were." There is no "going back." Only going forward. In our modern paradigm sometimes former partners do re-marry, but there is no re-creating the wholeness of the first marriage when it was new.

That significant words, once said, can't be un-said is a running theme in this week's Torah portion. The verses about divorce come shortly after verses instructing us to take care in vowing vows to God, because when we promise things to God, we have to live up to them or incur sin. It is better not to make vows, says Torah, than to make them and fail to live up to them.

Promises that we make to God and fail to sustain... we'll come back to those on Kol Nidre night. Once we've said them, we can't un-say them, but we can ask God to forgive us for our failure to live up to who we intended to be.

Promises that we make to each other and fail to sustain... once we've said them, we can't un-say them either. Neither can we un-say words that end a relationship. We should take care with our words, and not commit ourselves to promises we can't keep or to endings we aren't really ready to face. But maybe especially during this month of Elul, we can ask each others' forgiveness -- in all of our relationships -- for failure to live up to what we thought would be. 

 

 

[Image source.] This is the d'var Torah I offered at my synagogue yesterday morning. (Cross-posted to my From the Rabbi blog.)

#blogElul 11: Trust

With my life.
I place myself in your hands
without fear. I know that to you
I am precious cargo.

With my fragility.
You see my vulnerable places,
my most wrenching tears.
You would never shame me.

With my strength.
I don't have to hide my skill
or my fury: you want all of me,
without pretense.

With my heart.
I can love you
with infinite fierceness
and you won't turn away.

 

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) Read #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; you might also enjoy my collection of Elul poems which arose out of #blogElul a few years ago, now available in print and e-book form as See Me: Elul poems.

#blogElul 10: Count

Things that have no limit
in this world or any other:

how often I can think of you
and feel my sadness lessen

the comfort that I find in you
from eve to night to morning

how many times I turn to you
to see my best self reflected

the gratitude I feel for you
(how did I get so lucky?)

All of these are infinite --
my love for you is greater.

 

I've written this poem before -- or others very like it. As a poet, recognizing my own repetition is frustrating. But as someone who prays, I see the value in repetition and near-repetition, so I'm sharing this poem even though I have used the "things that have no limit" (אלו דברים שאין להם שיעור) reference / device before. 

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) Read #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; you might also enjoy my collection of Elul poems which arose out of #blogElul a few years ago, now available in print and e-book form as See Me: Elul poems.

#blogElul 9: Observe

The exterior's a little shabby,
could use a coat of paint.

A bit worn after a hard year:
not a lot of curb appeal.

Most people walk right by.
Not you: you see

the mezuzah in the doorway,
the light in the living room.

You see my heart, tender
and afraid no one will ever want --

Tell me again that I'm worthy
even when I feel most broken.

Tell me again that my strength
is beautiful, and makes me whole.

 

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) Read #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; you might also enjoy my collection of Elul poems which arose out of #blogElul a few years ago, now available in print and e-book form as See Me: Elul poems.

#blogElul 8: Hear

I want to hear your voice
every day of my life.
Murmur in my ear a reminder:
you knock on the door of my heart.

Every day of my life
you bring light to my eyes.
You knock on the door of my heart.
Sing me awake, don't stop.

You bring light to my eyes
and ease my tangled fears.
Sing me awake. Don't stop.
Your melody flows through me.

Ease my tangled fears.
There is no door, only love.
Your melody flows through me.
There is no distance.

There is no door, only love.
Murmur in my ear a reminder
there is no distance.
I want to hear your voice.

 

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) Read #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; you might also enjoy my collection of Elul poems which arose out of #blogElul a few years ago, now available in print and e-book form as See Me: Elul poems.

Balancing judgment with love

Have you ever been asked the question "if you knew you were going to be marooned on a desert island, what five books would you take with you?" One of mine would be Rabbi Alan Lew's This Is Real And You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation. I reread that book each year at this season.

Here's a short quote from that book, talking about this week's Torah portion:

Parashat Shoftim... begins with what seems like a simple prescription for the establishment of a judicial system: 'Judges and officers you shall appoint for yourselves in all your gates.' But the great Hasidic Torah commentary, the Iturey Torah, read this passage as an imperative of a very different sort -- an imperative for a kind of inner mindfulness. According to the Iturey Torah, there are seven gates -- seven windows -- to the soul: the two eyes, the two ears, the two nostrils, and the mouth. Everything that passes into our consciousness must enter through one of these gates.

On a deep level, says Rabbi Lew, this passage has nothing to do with establishing a system of judges and courts. Rather, it's about mindfulness and teshuvah, that existential turning that's at the heart of this season.

'Judges and officers you shall appoint for yourselves in all your gates.' We can't always control what we see. Sometimes we see things we wish we could un-see, or hear things we wish we could un-hear. But we can make choices about how we respond to what we see and hear. Maybe there's political rhetoric this election season that upsets me, or someone in my sphere who's acting unfairly or unkindly. I can't un-hear the offending words or un-see the offending deeds, but I can choose what qualities I want to cultivate in myself as I respond to what the world presents to me.

I can choose to cultivate lovingkindness. I can choose to cultivate good boundaries and to say "enough is enough." I can choose to cultivate the right balance between love and judgment. This Shabbat offers an opportunity to do precisely that.

Shabbat Shoftim -- "Shabbat of Judges" -- always falls during the first or second week of Elul. The moon of Elul is waxing now, and when it wanes we'll convene for Rosh Hashanah. The liturgy for that day describes God as the Judge before whom all living beings must appear. On that day the book of our lives will read from itself, reflecting the lines we've written over the last year with our words and our deeds, our actions and our inactions.

But before we get to Rosh Hashanah, we have three more weeks of Elul to go. Our sages read the name of this month as an acronym for אני לדודי ודודי לי, "I am my Beloved's and my Beloved is mine." Before we stand before God as Judge, we have the opportunity to experience God as Beloved. Tradition teaches that this month God isn't in the Palace on high, but "in the fields" with us. We get to with the Source of All in the beautiful late summer meadows, talking with God the way one might talk to one's most dearly beloved friend.

Because here's the thing about your most dearly beloved friend, the person who loves you most in all the world: that person notices your flaws, sure, but they see your flaws in the context of your good sides. Your best qualities. Imagine someone who loves you so dearly that they can't help seeing everything that's best about you, every time they look at you. During this month of Elul, that's how God sees each of us. That's the backdrop against which the judgments of Rosh Hashanah take place.

This week's Torah portion instructs us to pursue justice, and it doesn't seem to be speaking only to those who do the work of justice for a living. This work falls to all of us. Pursuing justice, and engaging in the work of judgement and discernment, is on all of us. Where are we living up to our highest selves, and where are we falling short of our ideals? As the Iturey Torah asks, what do we want to let in through the gates of the senses, and what words and deeds and facial expressions do we want to let out?

And it's also our task to remember that we emulate God not only when we judge ourselves and others, but also when we cultivate love for ourselves and others -- in fact we are most like God davka (precisely) when we do both. Shabbat Shoftim always falls during this month of Elul, during this month of loving and being loved. The challenge is finding the right balance of love and judgment in every moment. It can be tempting to lean toward one and neglect the other, but that's a temptation we need to resist.

Balancing love and judgment is not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. If I bring nothing but chesed, abundant lovingkindness, to myself and to the world around me I am liable to spoil my child, turn a blind eye to unfairness, and let myself or others off the hook when I should be expecting better. If I bring nothing but gevurah, boundaries and strength, I am liable to be overly strict, to cross the line from discerning to judgmental, and castigate myself and others when I should be responding with gentleness. 

May this Shabbat Shoftim, this Shabbat of Judges, inspire us to balance our lovingkindness with good judgment, and to infuse our discernment with love.

 

This is the d'var Torah I offered last night at my shul. (Cross-posted to my From the Rabbi blog.) 

#blogElul 7: Choose

To think of you when I wake
and as I close my eyes.

To orient myself toward you
like a flower toward the sun.

To steer by your promises
steadfast as the stars.

To trust that I bring you joy,
rejoice at your trust in me.

 

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) Read #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; you might also enjoy my collection of Elul poems which arose out of #blogElul a few years ago, now available in print and e-book form as See Me: Elul poems.

#blogElul 6: Believe

That you love me.
I could stop there:

that one short clause
fuels me day after day.

That you don't want me
to hide my heart.

That grief will end
and joy will flower.

That you are with me
even when I feel alone.

 

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) Read #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; you might also enjoy my collection of Elul poems which arose out of #blogElul a few years ago, now available in print and e-book form as See Me: Elul poems.

Pursue justice: a d'var Torah for T'ruah

This week's Torah portion contains one of the most famous justice-related verses in Torah: "צֶ֥דֶק צֶ֖דֶק תִּרְדֹּ֑ף, / tzedek tzedek tirdof" -- "Justice, justice shall you pursue!"   

Although the parsha begins with the injunction to establish judges, this instruction -- to pursue justice -- doesn't seem to be aimed solely at those whose job it is to judge. Even those who don't practice justice for a living do judge others, whether or not our judgements have legal standing. So what does it mean to judge justly -- not just for those who work in the justice system, but for the rest of us, too?

That's the beginning of the d'var Torah I wrote for this week's Torah portion, Shoftim, for T'ruah: the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. 

You can read the whole thing here: Pursue Justice So That You May Truly Live.