Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 130

From trauma to healing: Shemini

Here's the d'var Torah I offered at my shul yesterday morning.

 

Every year I struggle with the story of Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aaron who brought forth "strange fire" and who were immediately consumed by a fire which came from God. On its surface, this is a story in which deviation from the established way of approaching the divine results in death.

This story does not sit well with me. But our sages taught us that entering into Torah can be an experience of entering into pardes. The word means "orchard" (and is the origin of the English word "paradise") but is also an acronym for four layers or levels of entering into the text. Let's go deeper, from pshat (surface meaning) to remez (what's alluded-to or hinted-at.)

When I look at the story's allusions, I see a story about the power our ancestors ascribed to the sacred. God is so powerful that an unmediated encounter has the capacity to be dangerous, to fry out our circuits, as it were.  It is as though God were a power plant, and Nadav and Avihu plugged in a device which wasn't correctly calibrated. The power tore right through them and burned them up.

Many religions have regarded the sacred as dangerous. Intellectually I can place this story in that context. But when I place myself in Aaron's shoes -- and even more when I place myself in the shoes of his wife Elisheva -- I am horrified. So too was Aaron. Torah tells us: וידם אהרן –– "And Aaron was silent." The word used for "silent" connotes not only lack of speech, but a kind of existential silence.

Sometimes in the face of tragedy there are no words. Aaron's silence hints at his grief: this is an explanation on the level of drash, telling an interpretive story around the scaffolding of the text. Torah doesn't tell us that he felt sorrow, but we can read that between the lines; it is in the white fire around the black fire of the words, in the human context we bring to the bare outlines of the story on the page.

Later in this week's portion we read that if a small dead animal, a mouse or a lizard, falls into an earthen pot, that pot becomes tamei -- which is usually translated as "ritually impure," though I understand it as meaning "electrified." We vibrate at a different frequency for a while as a result of contact with blood or with the body of a creature which has died, contact with tangible life or death.

The way to make the pot pure again is to break it and glue its pieces back together. Here's what I take away from that: contact with death can change us, but through our brokenness we can find a new kind of wholeness. In fact, in order to stay tahor, to stay pure, we need to break sometimes and then be repaired. Everybody breaks. This is the path to wholeness: not despite breaking, but through it.

The death of a child is an almost unthinkable horror. I pray that the trauma in each of our lives will be less than that. But there is no life without some sorrow. Maybe the answer is to try not to fight the brokenness, but to allow it to happen, and to cultivate trust that when we are put back together again we will be able to access the purity of heart and soul which our liturgy teaches belongs to each of us.

I don't mean to suggest that our breaking is "good," or that tragedy and trauma are "worth it" because we grow thereby. I couldn't say that to Aaron and Elisheva, and I can't say it to you. But I do think that breaking and healing are quintessential human experiences -- and I pray that for every shattering, there can be tikkun, there can be healing. For me, that is the sod (the secret meaning) of the juxtaposition of these two texts: one shows us trauma, and another shows us a path toward repair.

Our tradition holds that a person who has made mistakes and then made teshuvah -- has repented and re/turned themselves in the right direction again -- is closer to God than one who has never sinned. Maybe a person who has experienced some brokenness and then been mended is more whole than one who has never been broken. This is the journey of being human. We grieve, and then we heal.

In the Japanese art of kintsugi, "golden joinery," pottery is broken and then glued back together with powdered gold. The seams aren't disguised; they're magnified, made to sparkle. The beauty is found not despite the patched places, but in them.What would it feel like to stop trying to hide our brokenness, and instead to illuminate our beauty -- not despite our scars, but in them; not despite our sorrows, but through them; not despite our seams, but celebrating our own patchwork hearts?

 

 

 

Day 11 of the Omer

 

DAY 11: TREE POSE


The way to hold tree pose:
focus on a still point
and let your eyes go soft.
Slow your breathing.
Grow roots from heel and toe.

The redwoods endure.
Imagine the cross-section:
here's the fall of the Temple,
the writing of the mishna,
the 20th century's wars.

What's in your rings?
Years of spiritual thirst,
years of plenty...
And how did your roots reach
the living well?

Draw water up from your depths.
Torah percolating
in the xylem and the phloem
just beneath the skin.
What flowers will you bloom?

 

 

Today is the 11th day of the Omer, which makes one week and four days of the Omer.  This is the eleventh day of our 49-day journey from Pesach to Shavuot, from liberation to revelation.

In the kabbalistic paradigm, today is the day of netzach she'b'gevurah, the day of endurance within the week of boundaried strength. Endurance made me think of redwoods; and trees plus boundaries made me think of the xylem and phloem through which water brings nutrients from a tree's roots to its crown.

Day 9 of the Omer

 

DAY 9: SONG AT THE SEA

a psalm of transformation.

Can you still hear the song at the sea?
Remember the melody, soaring.
We all walked together, my hand on your shoulder.
You gained a new name in the journey.

Remember the melody, soaring?
You carried your ancestors' bones
and gained a new name in the journey.
Sing now the song of your wholeness.

You carried your ancestors' bones.
Sing peace for the cousins who bicker,
sing them the song of your wholeness.
Reveal your yearning without fear.

Sing peace for the cousins who bicker.
This is the gift: a channel with walls.
Reveal your yearning without fear.
Pour out your love. The container will hold.

This is the gift: a channel with walls.
Don't let the wonder recede.
Pour out your love. The container will hold.
How did you feel when your waters parted?

Don't let the wonder recede.
We all walked together, my hand on your shoulder...
How did you feel when your waters parted?
Can you still hear the song at the sea?

 

 

Today is the ninth day of the Omer, making one week and two days of the Omer. Today is the ninth day of our journey from Pesach to Shavuot, liberation to revelation.

As I wrote this, I was thinking about how it feels to be after the seder, trying to hold on to the spiritual high even as time keeps pulling us away. Also about the Song at the Sea. This went through a few revisions, and around draft 3 I realized that it wanted to be a pantoum and it all came together.

 

Day 8 of the Omer

 

DAY 8: WHAT IT MEANS TO PRAY

The judge sees through you like an X-ray.
Let your heart give up its secrets.
This is what it means to pray:

to discern the subtle workings of
—let's call it soul, although the word
is imprecise, and may evoke

incense and crystals. I gravitate
toward this old-fashioned leather strap
twined ten times around my arm

but use the tools
that help you pry your ribs apart
and offer up what beats inside.

Listen: everyone's reciting
through time and space
Your glory shines, Majestic One.

 

 

Today is the eighth day of the Omer, making one week and one day of the Omer. This is the 8th day of our 49-day journey between Pesach and Shavuot, liberation and revelation.

In working on today's poem, I found myself paying particular attention to rhythm. This is a good one to read aloud.

This second week of the Omer, in the kabbalistic paradigm, is the week of gevurah -- boundaried strength or discipline. That drew me to the image of God as Judge, which in turn reminded me that the Hebrew word which means to pray, להתפלל / l'hitpallel, literally means to judge oneself or to discern oneself.

The final two lines are Reb Zalman z"l's rendering of the Hebrew words which follow the shema, baruch shem k'vod malchuto l'olam va'ed, which we recite aloud only on Yom Kippur. Though we do sing them aloud in the prayer Ana B'Koach, which some have the tradition of reciting after counting the Omer each day.

Re: "I gravitate / toward this old-fashioned leather strap..." -- that's a reference to tefillin, about which I have blogged many times before.

Day 7 of the Omer

 

DAY 7 - BLESSING


When I say that we're blessed --
I mean we're loved the way we are,
but what do those words mean to you?
(How do you feel when I say Adonai?)
Do the prayers actually describe our
relationship with the One we call God,
whether source or force, wellspring or ruler?
The terms are imprecise. None of
them could part the Sea of Reeds. The
only thing I know is, the universe
is expanding and my heart with it. You
know the song that says we're enough? Make
a habit, sing it every day. Each of us
is a reflection of the holy:
not despite our differences but with
them. Love the One with all your
heart, with all you are. All the mitzvot
add up to this: every sinew in the body and
every day of the year, hear the command
to love. The obligation's on us
to ready ourselves for the download, to
make these forty-nine days count.
Can you see Sinai from here? The
mountain awaits. Bring the Omer.

 

 

Today is the seventh day of the Omer, making one week of our journey from Pesach to Shavuot, from liberation to revelation.

Today's poem takes the form called a golden shovel. If you read the last word of every line, you get "Blessed are You, Adonai our God, ruler of the universe; You make us holy with Your mitzvot, and command us to count the Omer" -- the traditional blessing recited alongside the actual counting of each day.

"All the mitzvot / add up to this: every sinew in the body and / every day of the year" -- in Jewish tradition, it is taught that there are 613 mitzvot (connective-commandments) in the Torah. Tradition further says that there are 248 positive mitzvot, one for each of the bones and sinews in the body, and 365 negative ones, one for each day of the year. Whether or not there are actually 248 parts of the human body, I love the idea that the mitzvot can be related to every day of our lives and to all that we are.

Seder for the seventh day

The seventh day of Pesach is considered to be the day when our ancestors passed through the Sea of Reeds. Each of us is called to experience the Exodus from Egypt in our own lives, and this is the day when we too experience the sea parting and our arrival on the other side. Some have the custom of celebrating a special seder on the seventh day of Pesach, commemorating the journey.

A seventh day seder isn't a chovah, a religious obligation. The whole idea of a seventh-day seder falls into the category of hiddur mitzvah, "beautifying the mitzvah" -- in this case, the mitzvah of retelling and reliving the story of the Exodus from Egypt. Unlike the seder for the first and second nights of Pesach, this ritual retelling does not come with an inherited form.

On the seventh day of Pesach, after leading festival morning services, I sit down at my computer with my lunch, some grape juice, and some matzah. I have a date for a seventh day seder! David and I have decided to celebrate together remotely via videoconferencing. It is the first time I've ever celebrated the seventh day of Pesach in this way, and I've been excited about it all week.

We have an abbreviation and adaptation of Rabbi Evan Krame's seder for the seventh day of Pesach. We move through its seven steps, from kol / voice (beginning) to n'tilat yadayim (washing) to raglayim / feet (leaping) to eynayim / eyes (receiving) to oznayim / ears (believing) to peh / mouth (satisfying) to lev / heart (loving). I love that R' Evan has chosen gerunds. Everything is continuing.

We drink four swigs of the fruit of the vine, one for each of the four elements, one for each step of our ancestors' journey "which spanned treading the earth, passing through the water, reaching the rarefied air at Sinai, and receiving Torah from the fire." We read one of my favorite Hasidic texts about elemental trust, and a teaching from R' Evan about the brickwork of the song at the Sea.

We preface each swig of juice with the kabbalistic intention of unifying the Holy Blessed One and Shekhinah, divine immanence and divine transcendence, God far above and God deep within. We sing the psalms of Hallel, read Reb Zalman's translation of psalm 100 ("This is how you sing to God a thank-You song..."), and count the Omer. We close with a bissel of Yiddish and some laughter.

A few of our preparations didn't yield exactly the fruits we intended. Half of the lunch I meant to eat didn't make it with me to shul today. David couldn't find grape juice, and had to settle for Nantucket Nectars "grape-ade." In lieu of a pitcher of water for hand-washing, we each have hand sanitizer. In lieu of gluten-free matzah, he has a gluten-free kosher-for-Pesach black-and-white cookie.

But we find holiness even in the mishaps. The Nantucket Nectars bottle's label depicts the sea -- it could be the very sea which we experience ourselves crossing on this auspicious day! The black-and-white cookie hints at the Torah -- as midrash has it, the Torah is "black fire on white fire," and both of them holy! It reminds me of our undergraduate days, sanctifying whatever we had on hand.

We manage to drash (make or find meaning in) even the items on our lunch plates. David's eating sushi, which is obviously a representation of the Sea. I'm eating eggplant, which is purple, the color of royalty, hinting at the Sovereign Who redeemed us from slavery. When it comes time for the R'Evan sandwich -- a slice of onion atop a piece of fruit, reminding us that even bitterness or pain can be a catalyst for growth and enhancement -- we have no onion, so we make do with wasabi.

We're laughing as we make these substitutions on the fly, but we're also feeling something real. All of this is performative midrash happening in realtime. It's part of the never-ending work of adding to tradition's story that is in some ways the core mission of Jewish Renewal -- as the Haggadah says, whoever enlarges the retelling of the Exodus is praiseworthy. Jewish tradition isn't something fixed, unchangeable. Our task is always bringing it to life in a way that speaks to who we are here and now.

This is the work of spiritual life: working with what we have, instead of what we thought we might have. Sanctifying what is, even if it isn't exactly what we expected. Resisting the impulse which says "I'm not ready for transformation because I don't have all the items on my list" -- if we wait until we feel fully ready, we might never leap at all. The seventh day of Pesach is about leaping even when we don't feel ready, trusting that loving arms will catch us; that the sea will part for us.

Look up from the muddy sea floor. Notice the miracle. It's the seventh day of Pesach. What song of rejoicing will you sing now that we have come through these narrow straits, these walls of water, and emerged on the other side?

Day 6 of the Omer

DAY 6 - ROOTS


Plant your feet and burrow rootlets down
through the carpet. Find reservoirs,
water permeating the bed of an ancient sea.

Plant your flag in this moment, claiming here
and now: they are yours to clutch in your fist.
And who planted you? Who shaped the seed, who

guarded its growing? These too are roots:
grandmother who tasted the home she remembered
in sticky apricot kolaches at the county fair,

grandfather who hid his ornate Latin diploma
inside the lining of an overnight bag.
And if your seder bears little resemblance

to the one your father remembers, all Yiddish
and chanted pell-mell, that's okay.
Old rootstock can bear bright new branches

can flower forth in wild profusion
with the etrog fragrance of Eden,
the spicebox scent of Shekhinah.

 

 

Today (Friday, until sundown this evening) is the sixth day of the Omer, the sixth day of our forty-nine day journey between Pesach and Shavuot, between liberation and revelation.

According to the kabbalistic way of marking the days, this is the day of yesod she'b'chesed, the day of rootedness or foundation within the week of lovingkindness.

Today is also the seventh day of Pesach -- the day, according to tradition, when our ancestors crossed through the sea. For more on that, here's a post from a few years ago.

Day 5 of the Omer

 

DAY 5 - MEASURE


1.  עמר (omer), noun, masc.: ancient Israelite unit of dry measure


A harvested sheaf large enough
to bundle with rope.

The amount of manna
a person could eat in a day.

What an Israelite man owed to God,
gratitude measured in grain...

But how can we measure
things which have no limit?

What we owe our teachers.
Torah, bigger on the inside.

The tumblers clicking open
revealing the path to my heart.

Obligation to the stranger.
The love I feel for you.



2.  מדה (middah), noun, fem.: measure; virtue or quality


We measure the time between
spring barley and summer wheat.

To each day, we map a measure
of man, a quality we share

with God. Now there's chutzpah!
To imagine that the creator

of gamma rays and supernovas
can be called loving or kind--

--but we do. Holiness is here
in the space between you and me.

The measure of who we mean
to be: cultivating Torah

in the furrows of our hearts,
a harvest beyond measure.

Today (Thursday, until sundown tonight) is the fifth day of the Omer, the fifth day on our 49-day journey between Pesach and Shavuot, between liberation and revelation.

The Hebrew word עמר‎ (omer) means measure. A sheaf of grain, bundled, was called an omer. And an omer of barley was the sacrifice offered after the celebration of Pesach (Passover.) This is the origin of the Counting of the Omer; on the night after the seder, an omer of barley was offered to God, and then we counted 49 days until the summer grain could be harvested and brought to the Temple for Shavuot.

Another Hebrew word for measure is מדה (middah). Middah can also mean a quality or virtue, and a number of different systems for adding meaning to the counting of the Omer link each day of the Omer with a different personal middah. 

(In the world of Mussar, each day of the Omer is linked with a middah listed in Pirkei Avot chapter 6, which lists 48 qualities which are necessary for the cultivation of Torah; see this exploration of the middot outlined in Pirkei Avot. In Hasidic practice, each day of the Omer is linked with a different combination of divine qualities as manifested in the sefirot; see Rabbi Simon Jacobson's A Spiritual Guide to the Counting of the Omer.)

This poem was inspired by one of Luisa A. Igloria's poetry prompts from last April:

Choose a word or bit of language that is dexterous in its grammatical uses, that might be applied as verb, as noun, as adjective, or adverb in its various perambulations; that is rich with a history of usage, emotional inflection, colloquial drama, etc.—and write a series of connected poems or write a long poem sequence that is a meditation on this word.

When I cast about to find a word which might be rich enough to hold up a whole poem, the one which came to mind was "measure." This poem arose out of the conjunction of these two kinds of measures, omer and middah.

Day 4 of the Omer

 

DAY 4 - WHERE AND WHEN



Where are we going now?
    To Sinai: not a place
        but a moment. Yank the lever

and whoop as we take off.
    You'll know we've arrived
        when you see a symphony

splashed across desert sky,
    clarion trumpets blazing.
        You've been there before.

It's okay if you've forgotten.
    It's not easy to tell a true story
        about who we've been together

much less parse a download
    that's so tightly compressed
        into a single silent letter.

All of time and space
    hiding in the white spaces
        of the parchment, the pause

between forever and ever.
    You were there. You saw
        the Voice, heard the invisible

and indivisible, tasted
    the scent of dust after rain.
        Walk through the open door.

The broadcast is still on,
    waiting for you to hear,
        O Israel, and remember.

 

Today (the day ending Wednesday at sundown) is the fourth day of the Omer, the fourth day of our journey from Pesach to Shavuot, from liberation to revelation.

The endpoint of the Omer journey is Shavuot, when we stand once again at Sinai. In my favorite understanding, we not only commemorate the revelation of Torah on that day: we re-experience it. Revelation is ongoing. We can still receive that broadcast, if only we attune ourselves to hear.

There's a midrash which holds that all of us were there at Sinai at the moment of revelation -- that every Jewish neshama (soul) which has ever been or will ever be was present together at that moment of connection and covenant.

What might it feel like to reach Shavuot and actually feel as though we had traveled through space and time to re-position ourselves in that holy place at that holy moment among this holy community?

In another 45 days when we make it all the way there, what revelation do you hope you might hear?

Day 3 of the Omer

 

DAY 3 - THIRD GENERATION


I.

Abraham was a softie:
tent open on all sides,
offering kisses on both cheeks.
Always handing out thimbles
of cardamom-scented coffee.

He listened to everyone
including his wife who said
get that woman's son out of here
including that Voice which said
take your son, your only son

whom you love. Anything
worth doing was worth overdoing.
The line between unchanneled love
and zealotry is thinner
than a hair resting on milk.


II.

Isaac didn't overflow
like his father. He withdrew.
Bound to obedience, bound
to the sticks of wood he himself
had carried, bound to become

an entirely different man --
Isaac dug wells with precision,
rigid passages through which
life-giving waters might flow.
Isaac closed his eyes.

When his wife persuaded
their son to dress in sheepskin
and pretend, Isaac knew his role.
He stayed in-character.
He blessed and he wept.


III.

Third generation integrates
old country and new,
Grandpa's ebullience
and Dad's severity.
Jacob balanced with angels

on the head of a pin.
He watched them climb
and descend, climb and descend
like the prayers we loft,
the answers we rarely hear.

He met his brother again
with trepidation.
He didn't expect to say
seeing your face
is like seeing the face of God.


IV.

Let your cup run over,
compassion spilling
like an endless fountain.
Trust the kindness of strangers.
Open the tent of your heart.

Know when to pull back,
how to accept the things
you cannot change.
How to yield with grace.
When to close your eyes.

Rest your head on the stones
and dream. When you wake, sing
God was in this place, and I --
I did not know. Receive the name
of who you will become.

 

Today (the day ending at sundown on Tuesday) is the third day of the Omer, the 49-day journey between Pesach and Shavuot, liberation and revelation.

One way of understanding the Omer journey is through the lens of the kabbalistic teaching that each week of the Omer, and each day within each week, correlates with a different divine quality. The first quality is chesed, lovingkindness. The second is gevurah, boundaried strength. The third is tiferet, harmony or balance. The tradition maps these qualities to the first three Biblical patriarchs, so Abraham manifested chesed; Isaac manifested gevurah; Jacob manifested tiferet.

According to that kabbalistic lens, today is the day of tiferet she'b'chesed, the day of balance within the week of lovingkindness.

What draws you, in these evocations of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Where do you see yourself? What's familiar, and what's foreign to you? On this third day of the Omer, how can you manifest balance within abundant love?