Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 133

Love, Leviticus, and embracing the middle

Here's the d'var Torah I offered yesterday at my shul for parashat Vayikra.

In cheder, the Hebrew elementary school of late 19th and early 20th-century eastern Europe, boys began learning Torah at the age of five. They began with Vayikra, which we call in English "Leviticus." (They'd go on to learn mishna at the age of seven, and Talmud once they had mastered the mishna.)

We have a five year old. And I cannot for the life of me imagine him reading Torah fluently at this age. But setting that aside, I am perennially fascinated by the fact that the cheders of old -- and contemporary schools which follow the cheder model, mostly in the Hareidi / ultra-Orthodox world -- begin their studies of Torah not with בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, "as God was beginning to create the heavens and the earth..."

They begin with  וַיִּקְרא אֶל-מֹשֶׁה , "and God called to Moses" -- which is to say, with Leviticus, the book of the Torah which I suspect most modern Jewish adults like the least. Sprinkled blood and burnt kidneys and laws about nakedness -- it couldn't be further from the post-sacrificial Judaism we know and cherish.

Many scholars and rabbis and literary critics make the case that Torah has a chiastic structure. In a book with a chiastic structure, the most important part is not the beginning or the end, but what's in the middle. Leviticus is in the middle of the Torah: ergo it's the most important part.

The scholar Mary Douglas argued that Leviticus too has a chiastic structure, which tells us that the most important material in Leviticus is in the middle: the holiness code, which exhorts us to be holy as Adonai our God is holy. Leviticus is the heart of Torah, and holiness is the heart of Leviticus.

And what is at the heart of the quest for holiness? וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ:  אֲנִי ה׳: "and you shall love your neighbor, your 'other,' as yourself: I am Adonai." (Leviticus 19:18.) It may not be exactly the verse in the dead-center middle of the Torah, but it's close.

Here's Martin Buber on that verse:

"Love your neighbor as yourself; I am Adonai" (Leviticus 19:18). There is a Chasidic interpretation of the last words of this verse: "I am Adonai." – "You think that I am far away from you, but in your love for your neighbor you will find Me; not in his love for you but in your love for him."

He who loves brings God and the world together. The meaning of this teaching is: You yourself must begin. Existence will remain meaningless for you if you yourself do not penetrate into it with active love and if you do not in this way discover its meaning for yourself. Everything is waiting to be hallowed by you; it is waiting to be disclosed and to be realized by you.

For the sake of this, your beginning, God created the world.

This seems a far cry from dismembering animals and burning them on the altar. But for Torah, there's no disjunction between bringing a calf to the Temple to make up for having committed a wrong, and this lofty injunction to love each other and to be holy like Adonai. Our deepest values aren't separate from the messiness of everyday living: they're expressed in and through that messiness.

Today we're beginning a new book of Torah, the one in the very middle. And today I'm beginning a new "book" in the unfolding Torah of my life -- the book of being forty.

Forty's a big number in Jewish tradition. The flood lasted forty days and nights; Moshe spent forty days and nights atop Sinai; the Israelites spent forty years wandering in the wilderness. In the rabbinic imagination, forty was a number of fruition and completion: for instance, the number of weeks between conception and birth. Forty is an ending and a beginning. 

In antiquity, someone who was forty was getting on in years. Today, not so much. Perhaps I'm entering the Leviticus of my own life: I've lived for twoscore years, and I can hope for at least twoscore more. I'm at the beginning of the middle. Birth is a new beginning, and its holiness is obvious. Death is an ending, and its holiness too is clear. But where is the holiness of the great grey middle?

The holiness of the middle may be hidden, disguised beneath logistics and details. In Leviticus, those details are sacrificial, calves and turtledoves and grain offerings going up in the smoke. In my life, those details are committee meetings and playdates, preparing for Passover and teaching Hebrew school. But Leviticus comes to teach us that there is holiness, and there is love, even here in the middle of things.

Maybe especially here in the middle of things.

Today is the vernal equinox: another kind of middle, the mid-point between the shortest day of the year and the longest day of the year. Here in the Berkshires winter hasn't quite let go, and warmth hasn't quite begun; we're balanced, like the planet, between one season and the next. A perfect time to look back on the winter now ending, to cherish its sweetness and let go of its bitterness, as we ready ourselves for Pesach and the coming spring. A perfect time for me to look back on the forty years now ending, to cherish their sweetness and let go of their bitterness, as I ready myself for whatever comes next.   

May the Holy One of Blessing open our hearts to the continuing journey which is no longer beginning, and not yet ending, but contains beautiful twists and turns along the way. May we be enlivened as we begin this new chapter of Torah -- and this new season. May we rejoice in finding the holiness hidden right here, in the middle.

 

Forty. New beginnings. Also, blogExodus!

Today I will have the inestimable joy of leading davenen at my shul alongside my friend (and ALEPH partner) Rabbi David Markus. I can't think of a sweeter way to begin my 40th birthday.

Perhaps this is a good day to reread the poem I wrote a few years ago -- Forty Lines About 40 -- which is full of rabbinic teachings about the deep symbolism of this number.

According to an oft-quoted (and rarely-sourced) teaching, being now 40 and married I am finally qualified to study kabbalah. I've been at it for more than 20 years, but I hope my studies will deepen.

I like to think of turning 40 as a time to pause and honor the harvest of these first four decades -- and perhaps also a launching pad for whatever the next four decades (God willing) might hold.

Of course, I also regard today as the first day of spring. (At least in this hemisphere.) Even if there's still snow on the ground (which there is, where I live), today marks a new season, a new beginning.

And we're also beginning the lunar month of Nisan. Pesach (Passover) begins at the full moon of Nisan. That's only two weeks away. Our people's central journey of liberation is about to begin.

New moon, new season -- both feel like seeds, packed with potential still curled tight. Where will that potential take us as the coming weeks unfold? Today is the start of a story. "In the beginning..."

 

This post is part of #blogExodus, a daily carnival of posts / tweets / status updates relating to themes of Passover and Exodus, created by ImaBima. Find other posts via the #blogExodus hashtag.

 

Poetry of sacred time - a reading in Pittsfield on 3/26

At 1pm on Thursday, March 26, I'll be sharing some poetry at Knesset Israel synagogue (16 Colt Road) in Pittsfield. (Some of you may remember that I was supposed to give this reading back in the fall; it was postponed because I had to turn my attention instead to a funeral.) The reading is presented by Jewish Federation of the Berkshires:

The Jewish Federation of the Berkshires will present a reading of poetry by author Rabbi Rachel Barenblat of Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams.  The reading will dip into the wellsprings of Jewish sacred time.  Rabbi Barenblat will share Torah poems, motherhood poems, and poems which engage with Jewish liturgy and with the unfolding of our festival year.  Q & A and book signing to follow. Cost $3.

I will have copies of 70 faces and Waiting to Unfold (my two Phoenicia Publishing titles) available for sale, as well as a few copies of Keeping Faith in Rabbis (in which I have an essay) and perhaps a chapbook or two.

And for those who are interested in these kinds of things -- don't forget that my next book-length collection of poems, Open My Lips, is due from Ben Yehuda Press later this year. That whole collection is themed around Jewish sacred time.

All are welcome; I hope to see y'all there!

In the Begining Was the Word

I had a lovely time teaching psalm-writing a few days ago. Eight people participated in the class, including some of my former students from the Inkberry days!

Now I'm gearing up for the other Berkshire Festival of Women Writers event in which I'm participating -- In the Beginning Was the Word: Reading and Panel Discussion by Women Writers of Faith -- which will be tomorrow (Monday) evening at 7pm at the First Congregational Church in Stockbridge.

In her book The Nakedness of the Fathers, poet Alicia Ostriker writes, “By the time the spiritual imagination of women has expressed itself as fully and variously as that of men, to be sure, whatever humanity means by God, religion, holiness, and truth will be completely transformed.” This multigenre reading and panel discussion will feature four Berkshire women writers—with backgrounds in Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism—whose work is influenced by their faith, either overtly or just beneath the surface. The participants will each give a short reading and speak about the intertwining of their life in writing and their life in faith.

Rachel Barenblat holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and rabbinic ordination from ALEPH: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal. She was cofounder and executive director of Inkberry, a literary arts center that served the Berkshires from 2000 to 2009. She is author of three poetry collections: 70 faces: Torah poems, Waiting to Unfold, and the forthcoming Open My Lips. Since 2003 she has blogged as The Velveteen Rabbi, and in 2008 her blog was named one of the top 25 on the Internet by Time. She serves Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams.

Hannah Fries is an editor at Storey Publishing in North Adams and assistant poetry editor at Terrain.org. Her writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in American Poetry Review, the Massachusetts Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and other journals. She holds an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College.

Liz Goodman is the pastor of the UCC congregation in Monterey. She has a M.Div. from Harvard and a B.A. in creative writing from Colby College. Her publishing has mainly been professional, and her writing projects are most often in service of her ministry, but the short story still haunts her and is something she gets to from time to time.

Sokunthary Svay is a writer and musician from New York City. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge, her family fled Cambodia to a Thai refugee camp, where she was born. Her writing has been anthologized in Homelands: Women’s Journeys Across Race, Place and Time, and she has also contributed articles to Hyphen, a San Francisco–based Asian American arts and culture magazine.

For a map and venue contact information, you can click through to the event description on the BFWW website. I hope to see some of y'all there!

Praise psalm for spring sunrise

 

 

For the sunrise at seven this morning
for our son bounding into the bedroom

for Mommy look at the sunrise
come see the beautiful sunrise

for the sleep I rubbed from my eyes
and the slumber from my eyelids

for my dry throat croaking of course I do
for the pastel sweep of pink and orange

every bougainvillea bloom in the world
piled up across the horizon

for it's pink! it's orange and pink!
although a few minutes later

he said aww, now the orange is all gone
and I said that's why I'm so glad

you woke me at exactly this moment --
Halleluyah.

 

Earlier this week I taught a short psalm-writing workshop at Congregation Beth Israel as part of the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers. One of the things we did during that workshop was cultivate material we could use in writing our own psalms of gratitude and thanksgiving. Then we took some time to write together. Here's what I wrote.

The seder as time machine

The Passover Haggadah -- with which I have spent a fair amount of time, in its variety of forms -- teaches us that the Exodus from Egypt is not something which happened "once upon a time" to "them" back "then," but something which continues to happen right now for us.

עֲבָדִים הָיִינוּ לְפַרְעֹה בְּמִצְריִם -- "We were slaves to a Pharaoh in Egypt," the Haggadah teaches. Not "Our ancestors were slaves." Not "maybe our ancestors might have been slaves, though we're not sure, because the historical record doesn't entirely support the claim..." We were slaves. We ourselves.

In the text which describes the Four Children (one who is wise, one who is wicked, one who is simple, and one who does not know enough to ask), we are instructed to tell our children that we do this because of what God did for us when God brought us out of Egypt. Not for our ancestors. For us.

The seder is a time machine. It moves us through time and space (both of which, intriguingly, can be described with the Hebrew word עולם.) As we enter into the ritual of the seder, we re-experience that journey from constriction to liberation which is core to our sense of ourselves as the Jewish people.

As the traditional text teaches:

בְּכָל־דּוֹר וָדוֹר חַיָּב אָדָם לִרְאוֹת אֶת־עַצְמוֹ, כְּאִלּוּ הוּא יָצָא מִמִּצְרָיִם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: וְהִגַּדְתָּ לְבִנְךָ בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא לֵאמֹר: בַּעֲבוּר זֶה עָשָׂה יְיָ לִי, בְּצֵאתִי מִמִּצְרָיִם. לֹא אֶת־אֲבוֹתֵינוּ בִּלְבָד, גָּאַל הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא, אֶלָּא אַף אוֹתָנוּ גָּאַל עִמָּהֶם...

In every generation one must see oneself as if one had personally experienced the Exodus from Egypt. As it is written: "You shall speak to your children on that day, saying, this is how the Holy Blessed One redeemed me from Egypt. It wasn't merely my ancestors who were redeemed, but the Holy Blessed One also redeemed us with them..."

It was not merely my ancestors who were redeemed, but the Holy One of Blessing also redeemed us. The Exodus isn't something that happened (or didn't happen) there-and-then: it's something which we can experience now in our own spiritual lives as we move from constriction toward freedom.

In Rabbi Dan Fink's words, "Pesach is not about remembering the distant past; it is about re-experiencing that past in the present time. It is not the story of our ancestors long ago; it is our story." We don't just retell; we re-experience. We make the experience present for ourselves again.

When we celebrate the seder together, we're connecting ourselves with everyone who has ever celebrated seder and everyone who will ever celebrate seder. Our ancestors and our descendants, and our fellow-travelers around the globe at this holy moment of interconnection. Seder links us all.

Sitting down at the seder table is a little bit like stepping into the TARDIS. (Keen eyes will have spotted the familiar blue box among the haggadot depicted at the top of this page.) If we throw ourselves into the experience, it will whisk us away into mythic time. It places us right in the story.

Liberation is still happening. Our hearts are still crying out from our narrow places, and God still hears those cries and answers them with expansiveness. We are always setting forth on a journey with an unknown destination. We are always being called to trust; to step into the waters before they part.

Where will the TARDIS take you this year? How will it feel to re-live the Exodus now, as the person you are becoming, with the experiences the last year have brought you? The haggadah may look like a plain bound book, but it's bigger on the inside -- and if you let it, it will carry you somewhere amazing.

 

Step into the TARDIS three weeks from tonight -- the first seder this year falls on the evening of Friday, April 3.

A new chapter in my life with Jewish Renewal

In some ways I first encountered Jewish Renewal in 1994, when I read Rodger Kamenetz's The Jew in the Lotus. In other ways, my first encounter with Jewish Renewal came in 2002 when I gathered up my courage and went to my first week-long retreat at Elat Chayyim to learn with Jewish Renewal teachers. That was the year before I started blogging, so those of you who've been following this blog since 2003 have followed my Jewish Renewal journey through a lot of twists and turns.

I wrote here about my first week-long learning adventure with Reb Zalman of blessed memory. I wrote here when I interviewed for the rabbinic program on a Pesach retreat at the old Elat Chayyim with Rabbi Marcia Prager, the dean of the ALEPH rabbinic program (and her husband Hazzan Jack Kessler, head of the ALEPH cantorial program). I wrote here when I mailed in my application and was accepted into the program -- and when I took my last class -- and when I received smicha.

A new chapter in my life with Jewish Renewal is beginning. Some of you may remember that I spent a week in Colorado in January. I was there for an ALEPH Board meeting and for the OHALAH conference (the annual gathering of Jewish Renewal clergy.) It was a marvelous week, for so many reasons. There were also interesting things happening that week about which I didn't write at the time -- including some big-picture conversations about the future of ALEPH and of Jewish Renewal.

The big question was how ALEPH and Jewish Renewal should move through and beyond this first year after the death of Reb Zalman (z"l).  Whom could we ask to steward the ALEPH Board and Jewish Renewal through these transitions, deeper into a future in which Renewal's unique gifts can be better-shared with the world? This would be an organizational transition, in a sense, from first generation to second generation. Both our choice, and our process, needed to reflect our values. The ALEPH Board wanted to select its next leadership thoughtfully and with intention.

The idea arose that ALEPH should have two co-chairs. Two people could bring different strengths to the work at hand, and different skillsets, and different energies. Just as Torah study unfolds best in hevruta, not alone but between a pair of study-partners, the work of leading ALEPH forward could also benefit from two perspectives. Two can be wiser together -- more than the sum of their parts. The co-chairs would need to be not only passionate about Jewish Renewal, but also able to work well together. To my great delight, everyone seemed to agree on who the two co-chairs should be.

With Rabbi David Markus in Boulder, August 2014.

I am humbled, honored, and overjoyed to be able to tell y'all that starting later this year, I will become one of the co-chairs of ALEPH: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal, along with my longtime hevruta partner Rabbi David Markus.

Jewish Renewal has changed my life. I know that sounds corny, but it's true. This is where I've found spiritual sustenance. This is where I've found community. This is where I've found teachers who opened up for me the incredible well of Jewish text and tradition. This is where I've found models who show me how to live with prayerful consciousness; who teach me how to balance a love of what came before with a fearless embrace of how Judaism continues to evolve and unfold in today's world.

Jewish Renewal gave me a way of thinking about how different religious traditions relate to one another and to ultimate truth. Jewish Renewal gave me access to the many meditative practices which had been relegated to the dusty attic of Jewish tradition, returning them to their rightful place as central Jewish spiritual technologies. It's thanks to Jewish Renewal that I know how to pray -- not just how to fluently navigate the words of our classical prayers, but to actually inhabit them.

It's also thanks to ALEPH that I have my rabbinate. In that sense, ALEPH is responsible for every moment in the life of my community over which I've been blessed to preside, from ordinary Shabbat mornings to extraordinary Yom Kippurim, from babynamings to funerals and everything in between.

Pesach is just over the horizon. One of the things I love about Pesach is the call "let all who are hungry come and eat; let all who are needy come and celebrate the Passover with us." I think a lot of people are spiritually hungry, and may have grown so accustomed to that hunger that they don't even notice it's there anymore. I think Jewish Renewal has sustenance to offer. And I am incredibly excited about getting to help share those gifts with the world. Let all who are hungry come and eat, indeed.

Better yet, I get to do that hand-in-hand with my hevruta partner of the last 20 years. What could possibly be sweeter?

 

 You can read the official release about this news here on Kol ALEPH:

Ki Tisa: Inspiration

Here's the short d'var Torah I offered at my shul yesterday for parashat Ki Tisa.

 

In the verses we just read, Torah tells us God has filled the craftsman Bezalel son of Uri with ruach elohim, "spirit of God" or "breath of God." In the very beginning of Torah, we read that ruach elohim m'rachefet al pnei ha-mayim, "the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters." God has instilled in Bezalel that same divine spirit which was manifest at the first moments of creation.

The craftsman Bezalel, it appears, was truly inspired. In / spired -- literally it means that someone (or some One) had breathed into him. God breathed inspiration into Bezalel, and in return Bezalel led the team of artisans who made the mishkan, the tabernacle which the Israelites are instructed to build so that Shekhinah, God's presence, can dwell within and among them.

So is inspiration something you either have, or don't have? Either God gives it to you, or you're outta luck? As a writer, my answer is no. Or at least -- not exactly. In my experience, inspiration comes and goes, but it can be cultivated. I have learned over the years that there are practices which will help to ready me to receive inspiration when it comes. As it turns out, Jewish tradition agrees with me.

The tradition prescribes a variety of steps which we should take if we seek divine inspiration. They include deep study of Torah, diligence in fulfilling mitzvot, cultivating piousness, and cultivating humility. Doing these things is no guarantee of divine inspiration, of course... but not-doing them is probably a guarantee that if God is offering inspiration, we won't be primed to receive.

I used to have a quote from the author Jeanette Winterson hanging over my desk. It read:

I do not write every day. I read every day, think every day, work in the garden every day, and recognize in nature the same slow complicity. The same inevitability. The moment will arrive, always it does, it can be predicted but it cannot be demanded. I do not think of this as inspiration. I think of it as readiness. A writer lives in a constant state of readiness.

I think spiritual life too asks us to live in readiness. Readiness to receive whatever comes. Readiness to experience connection with something greater than ourselves. If we keep our hearts open; if we keep our spiritual selves open; then maybe that wind from Beyond will blow into us and through us, bringing us gifts to share with our community, and gifts to share with the world.

 

Shmita and interconnection at Purim to Pesach

My short meditation for the Shalom Center's Purim to Pesach project is now on their website. It's called Shmita and interconnection. (Shmita is the Hebrew word usually rendered in English as "Sabbatical" -- it means the year of rest which Torah mandates we provide the earth after every six years of working the land, and on the Jewish calendar this year is a shmita year.)

Here's how my piece begins:

Our sages took some pains to ensure a Jewish calendar in which Pesach would always fall in the spring. (They were operating in a northern hemisphere context; I don’t think the challenges of antipodean Judaism ever occurred to them.) In the northern hemisphere, Pesach is inextricably connected with spring.

As the earth shakes off the constrictions of winter, her frozen places thawing, so we remember our shaking-off the yoke of slavery to Pharaoh. As plant life and trees are “reborn” into the warming air, we tell the story of our renewal and rebirth out of the constriction of slavery and into freedom...

Read the whole thing at Purim to Pesach: Shmita and interconnection. (And to receive further daily teachings on how we can connect Passover with caring for the earth, you can sign up for the Shalom Center's email list.)

From Purim to Pesach

 

Today is Purim -- the full moon of the lunar month of Adar. Pesach (Passover) begins in one month, at the full moon of Nissan. There's a traditional teaching (Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim 429:1) which holds that "One must begin studying the laws of Passover thirty days before the holiday." In the Mishnah Berurah (note 2, Biur HaGra) we are told to begin studying Pesach specifically on Purim itself. That's the impetus behind "Purim to Pesach," a new project of the Shalom Center.

 

The Shalom Center is sending out a new series of daily emails between now and Passover. The goal, as Rabbi Arthur Waskow explained it to me, is "to make broadly available powerful short kavanot (intentions) that reawaken and revitalize the meaning of Pesach, especially in a Shmita (sabbatical) year devoted to healing Earth and renewing social justice." Each day's post is by someone different who was solicited to share their words as part of this project: rabbis, activists, poets, writers & more.

This is a new twist on the idea of studying the halakhot (laws/ways-of-walking) of Pesach for a month before the holiday begins. Instead of focusing us on matters of ritual and praxis, these emails aim to focus our attention on what Pesach might come to teach us about our relationship with the earth, especially during this Shmita year when many of us are paying renewed attention to our relationship with consumption and with the planet. And they link Purim with Pesach, which I think is really neat.

I'm honored to be one of the writers whose words will be going out as part of this series, and I'll let y'all know when my post goes out. That said, I'm only one of 30 voices taking part in this project, and I'm excited about reading what the other participants have to say, too. If you want to receive these writings in your inbox, sign up for The Shalom Center's email list; alternatively, you can visit the Purim to Pesach website daily and see what new earth-oriented Passover wisdom has been shared.

Chag sameach -- happy Purim! And here's to Pesach, only one month away.