Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 235

Kedushat Levi on embodying the qualities of our ancestors

This is the text I'll be teaching at our Torah study at my shul this coming Shabbat morning -- an extended riff on the first sentence of this week's portion. This is a short text from R' Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev (1740-1809) one of the main disciples of the Maggid of Mezritch; he was known as the "defense attorney" for the Jewish people, because it was believed that he could intercede on their behalf before God. The text comes from ספר קעשת–לוי, page פג–פד. The translation is my own.

On embodying the qualities of our ancestors

"And Jacob dwelt in the land where his father had sojourned (or: where his father had been a stranger), the land of Canaan." (Genesis 37:1)

One way to understand this comes from Ramban in his book Faith and Trust. He writes that the Holy One of Blessing made a promise to Jacob our father, and Jacob's side of the bargain was to live in a state of יראה (yir'ah), awe/fear, fearing that which causes one to sin and therefore to stop serving one's Creator.

Each of us should strive to serve God in every moment. We are called to live in joy when we sees that our fellows have goodness in this world; but if, God forbid, things are turned around (and our fellows suffer), we need to share in their sorrows. And we should always be concerned about that which causes sin and thereby causes us not to be able to serve the Creator.

Jacob lived at this high spiritual level, in a state of yir'ah of that which causes sin and which would then make him unable to turn his hands to his obligation to his Creator. And this is what is meant when it is written: "Jacob dwelled in the land where his father had sojourned" (or "where his father had been a stranger") -- which is to say, he always had fear. The word "sojourned" / " been a stranger" implies a kind of fear. In what way was Jacob fearful? He was afraid of not being able to serve his Creator.

The land where "his father" had sojourned -- this is to say, he had the qualities of his father, e.g. the fear which characterized Isaac, as Isaac served his Creator through the quality of awe/fear, as it says, "the Fear of Isaac." (Genesis 31:42 -- "If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, hadn't been on my side...")

 

Questions for consideration:

1. What does it mean to us to live in the land where our parents sojourned? In what ways is this true for you, or not true for you?

2. How do you respond to the idea that we are called to live in yir'ah of God? That we are called to live in yir'ah lest we sin and therefore become unable to serve?

3. How is the condition of "sojourning" or "being a stranger" connected with fear?

4. What brings forth yir'ah in you?

Oasis of Peace - Israel/Palestine summer workshop in Vermont

This morning I posted Israel/Palestine: hoping for hope, in which I articulated my prayer that God might help me find hope for the Middle East again.

About an hour later, an email came into my inbox about a new summer program for Jewish and Arab adults in their 20's, sponsored by Friends of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. The goal is to faciliate better relations and on-going dialogue about the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam -- "Oasis of Peace" -- is a cooperative village of Jews and Palestinian Arabs of Israeli citizenship, located midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv-Jaffa. They do a lot of educational work for peace, equality, and understanding between the two peoples. Now the US-based Friends of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam is putting together a retreat for Jewish and Arab twentysomethings, to be held at Oscars Farm retreat center in West Burke,Vermont in August 2012.

The retreat will be facilitated by two people from the School for Peace, "a unique educational institution offering Jewish-Arab encounter programs." Here's how the School for Peace folks describe their work:

Our intention is to enable participants to enrich their perspectives, to critically examine things ordinarily taken for granted, and to try to comprehend the turbulent and violent processes taking place all around us. We have found that a unique learning experience can be offered by relating directly to events, in a safe space that permits people to examine their feelings and thoughts in the group setting. Facts and information alone are inadequate to create social awareness and prompt a renewed examination of things as they are: We must pose new possibilities and challenge the existing reality. Our team of facilitators brings a critical approach to current reality and emphasizes the implications of majority-minority relations and the asymmetry in the existing power relationships.

This sounds pretty awesome. And I can't help being wryly amused that God apparently answered my plea -- with an email from a PR firm! Hey, the Lord works in mysterious ways.

If you're college-aged, Jewish and/or Arab, and interested in the Middle East, or if you know someone who is, contact 2012workshops (at) oasisofpeace (dot) org.

Israel / Palestine: hoping for hope

Israeli-American Emily L. Hauser recently posted A snapshot of despair: one week in Israel/Palestine, which chronicles one week's worth of depressing happenings in the contentious Middle East. Soon thereafter, Rabbi Brant Rosen shared a guest post called Sam Bahour: Where's My Friend? Here is a small excerpt:

My friend is Walid Abu Rass. He is the Finance and Administration Manager for the Health Work Committees, one of the largest community health service providers in the occupied Palestinian territory. HWC serves over 500,000 patients/beneficiaries per year...

On November 22nd, Israeli occupation soldiers arrived at his home at 1:30 A.M. Walid lives in Ramallah with his wife, Bayan, and two daughters, Mais, 13 years old, and Malak, 4 years old, who were all frighteningly awakened during his arrest. Walid was taken into custody and transported in the bone chilling cold of the night to Israel's Ofer Military Detention Center where hundreds of Palestinians are detained, the vast majority with absolutely no knowledge of why.

Not long after that, Palestinian Mustafa Tamimi was killed -- shot by an IDF soldier at point-blank range with a teargas cannister -- at the weekly protest in Nabi Saleh. (For more on this incident, The New York Times' The Lede blog has a good piece: After Fatal Shooting of Palestinian, Israeli Soldiers Defended Use of Force Online.) Then at his funeral procession, in an act of painful irony, the IDF fired teargas at angry mourners. I tweeted about this: "God, help us hope 4 better" -- and my tweet included a link to the Guardian article Israeli soldiers clash with mourners at funeral of Palestinian protester. (For more on Nabi Saleh in general, I recommend B'tselem's recent report Show of Force: Israeli Military Conduct in Weekly Demonstrations at Nabi Saleh, which came to me in print form here at my office but is also available online.)

I don't know how to respond to stories like these except with sorrow and grief. I try to hope and pray for better things: for a better future for the peoples of Israel and Palestine, for harmony and mutual respect in the Middle East. It is an article of faith for me that things can always get better. That we, with God's help, can heal and transform the world.

But sometimes, looking at the steady stream of suffering and violence in Israel and Palestine -- not to mention the many other places where suffering and violence are everyday happenings: Afghanistan, the Mexican Drug War, Yemen, Syria, so many others around the world -- hope can be difficult to sustain. Everyone I know in Israel yearns for a better future; I know that Palestinians do too. And yet how is it possible to reach that future when the situation there seems to just keep getting worse and worse?

Rabbi Jeff Roth taught me, years ago, that when reciting the modah ani (the morning prayer for gratitude), it is good to focus on my own gratitude, to cultivate that gratitude and let it well up in me to inform my singing of the prayer. And if I can't access gratitude? If for some reason I am too far from thankfulness to be able to call it up? Then I can use the prayer, he said, as a time to pray that gratitude may someday rise up in me again.

For now, I may need to pray for the upwelling of my ability to hope. To hope for a better future for the Middle East; to hope for a safer and kinder world; to hope that we, with God's help, can heal and transform what is broken. Please, God, help me to hope...and then help us get there, speedily and soon.

Poem: havdalah in the toddler house

 

Toddlerhavdalah

 

HAVDALAH IN THE TODDLER HOUSE

 

When we light the candle
you begin to wail

frightened by the unruly flame
spreading from wick to wick

(or maybe you aren't ready
for the Bride to leave us)

you refuse the strange silver tower
of cracked cinnamon curls

(at two, the extra soul
doesn't yet depart)

during the redemption song
we whirl and your face shines

This poem is the second in a small budding series (the first being Early maariv in the toddler house, written and posted at the tail-end of November.)

Havdalah means "separation;" it is this ritual which formally separates between Shabbat and workweek. It involves the lighting of a braided candle, blessing wine and blessing spices, blessing God Who creates separations, and then extinguishing the candle in the wine, after which one sings "Eliahu Hanavi" (and, in our house, "Miriam Ha-Neviah"), a song about prophets and redemption.

(At Jewish Women International there's a video of a havdalah ceremony, beginning with R' Shlomo Carlebach's melody for the prayer Hineh El Yeshuati and then moving into Debbie Friedman's melody for the havdalah blessings -- may both of their memories be for blessing. On that page you can also read my teacher R' Leila Gal-Berner's words for "Miriam Ha-Neviah.")

The scent of spice, associated with Shabbat and with Shekhinah (the immanent, indwelling Presence of God) is intended to revive one when Shabbat's extra soul departs. In our house we use a tall silver spicebox shaped like a tower.

Does Drew know what Shabbat is? He may know that sometimes he gets watered grape juice in his sippy cup instead of milk, and that on those nights, there are often candles on the table, and also challah, which is one of his favorite breads. At two, he's too young to intellectually understand concepts like Shabbat and work-week.

But in a certain way, I wonder whether babies and very young children experience life as a kind of perennial Shabbat. Shabbat is an opportunity to re-enter the garden of Eden; but before language is fully developed, I think our children may already be there, that "extra soul" and connection with the Infinite already part of who they are.

The river of attention

Fiona Robyn and Kaspalita, who edited the gorgeous "Worship" themed issue at qarrtsiluni, are inviting the world to join in the practice of writing a "small stone" -- a tiny bit of prose or poetry arising out of mindful noticing of the world -- each day during January of 2012. (Here's their post about it: Writing Our Way Home: The River, Jan '12.)

A lot of the writers and bloggers I admire have written small stones at one time or another. Dave Bonta recently shared an excellent post entitled Why you should join the river of stones.

I don't know if I can manage to write and post a small stone every day in January, but I'm game to try; if nothing else, it will strengthen my commitment to noticing the world around me, and to putting that mindfulness into words. That's good for my poetry, and good for my spiritual life, both.

I'll probably tweet my small stones, rather than posting them here. (I'm @velveteenrabbi on twitter.) Feel free to follow along -- and, if you're so inclined, to join the river too.

 

A chat with one of the editors of the Jewish Annotated New Testament

I just had the profound pleasure of spending half an hour on the phone with Marc Zvi Brettler, author of How to Read the Bible and co0editor of the Oxford Jewish Study Bible (both of which were essential rabbinic school textbooks for me.) Brettler and A.J. Levine recently edited The Jewish Annotated New Testament, also published by Oxford -- the first-ever edition of the Christian Scriptures, annotated and contextualized by Jewish scholars. (For more on that, read Focusing on the Jewish Story of the New Testament in the New York Times.)

The first printing sold out almost immediately; a second printing is in the works, but I'm extra-glad to have received a review copy from Oxford, since I was eager to get my hands on this!

Brettler and Levine will be speaking at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire on Saturday, December 17, at 6pm. My interview with him -- transformed into article form -- will run in the Berkshire Eagle sometime shortly before that. (I'll let y'all know when it's published.)

We had a delightful conversation about the Bible, academia, the mishna and the gospels, Judaism and Christianity, "holy envy" and stained glass windows, and more. It was definitely one of those "wow, my life is really fun" moments. Thanks for taking some time to chat with me, Marc! I'm so glad to have this volume on my bookshelf.

 

Unseasonable warmth, spiritual wills, Jacob's ladder

A grey and rainy day. "All wet," said Drew when I opened the door between the garage and the outdoors today. (And then, with mingled fear and delight, "Puddle!" The puddle at our door was so large I wound up carrying him through instead of letting him stomp in his police car boots.) The last few days have been unseasonably warm here, the low clouds of the sky mingling seamlessly with fog. The bare trees look reddish to me, the bushes faintly bright, and I wonder: after one solid snowfall, do they interpret this peculiar warmth as spring? Are they on the verge of leafing?

The forecasters say that the mercury will plummet tonight and that several inches of snow may fall by morning. Something in me is just the tiniest bit glad to hear it. Even though snow means the return of windshield scrapers, trying to wrangle mittens onto toddler fingers, shoveling a path to the car, it's what I've come to expect from December here. It's been strange to walk outside in this balminess as the Christmas lights go up, illuminating field fences and eaves on rural back roads, spangling bushes and windows all over town.

I browse pictures of size 3T pyjamas online: rocket ships or trucks or Thomas the Tank Engine? Questions it never occurred to me to ponder, before. The voices of Anonymous 4 sing an English ladymass in unknowing counterpoint with the sounds of laundry ricocheting around the dryer. Soon I'll plug in my headphones and connect with my fellow spiritual-directors-in-training. We've been reading one anothers' spiritual / ethical wills all day. I'm humbled by the beautiful things my chevre thought to write. I want to revise mine to reflect their wisdom.

It's the eleventh of Kislev. Two years ago today, in the lunisolar calendar of Jewish time, Drew entered the breathing world. We were in Parashat Vayetzei that week -- the story of Jacob who dreamed a ladder with angels moving up and down. Vayetzei, the parsha in which Jacob meets his kinswoman Rachel for the first time, and falls immediately in love. The parsha in which Jacob's complicated family story continues: Leah and Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah, jealousy and sons, Jacob's flight from Laban and Rachel's theft of her father's household idols. The parsha ends with angels once again: Jacob meets angels of God on the road.

I wonder whether my son will grow up to encounter angels everywhere he goes. Which deep family stories will he replicate, and which will he revise?

Reb Zalman on Chanukah, the third Temple, and God's broadcast

We're in the month of Kislev, which contains the festival of Chanukah. I recently received in my inbox A Mystical Message about Chanukah from Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi -- sent courtesy of Tikkun. (That teaching can also be found on Reb Zalman's blog, titled This is about HANUKKAH.) Here's how it begins:

Several times the Bible tells us that God wants to have a place "to make His name dwell therein." It's interesting that it says not that 'I will dwell there' but that my Name will dwell there. While everything is God, in God, the whole cosmos is not separate from God, the point that a Temple makes is, there is a concentrated, stronger focus of the quality of divinity for those who enter there. So while it is true that God is in everything there is, everything that is broadcasts its own quality, a Temple was a broadcasting tower from which a signal went out to the world...

In each human being there is a receiver for that broadcast –– because divine compassion broadcasts on human wavelengths. People who are open to God and want to be open to receive that beacon can in this way recalibrate their moral and ethical life.

Although the First and the Second Temples were destroyed, the teaching says that the Third Temple is already present on a higher and more subtle vibratory scale. The broadcast comes even now from that Temple and is received by some people and –– alas –– not by others. The beacon to us human beings also invites us to contribute to that broadcast, and in the way in which we invest energy we boost the signal strength in public worship and in private prayer, in meditation and then acts of justice and compassion. We beam these back to the source of the broadcast which we call the Name of God.

Reb Zalman goes on to offer a teaching about how the Second Temple's broadcast was denatured and damaged by its invasion and desecration, and how the miracle of the oil arose because the people were so desperate to begin receiving the blessing of divine transmission again that they lit the holy lamps even without enough oil. The yearning for relationship with God led to the miracle, or maybe to awareness of the miracle.

I've heard Reb Zalman teach before on the notion that God broadcasts on all wavelengths, and that we receive that broadcast depending on how and where we're "tuned in." But the idea that the Third Temple is not a physical structure (as were its two predecessors), but a kind of subtle vibration, a stream of blessing coming from God which is received by those who are attuned to the signal -- that's new to me. And I like the idea that through our prayer and meditation (both private and communal), and in our acts of justice and compassion, we strengthen the signal of God's broadcast.

This teaching might change the way I relate to Chanukah. It's easy for me to connect with the notion of light in a time of darkness, and with the sense that miracles can arise when we have faith in the redemption which I think the sanctified oil represents -- but because I've never related to God through the practice of Temple sacrifice, it's easy to feel a bit removed from the wonder of reconsecrating the Temple structure to divine purpose.

But if the Temple served as a kind of spiritual broadcast beacon, and that same broadcast is still flowing forth from God on the "higher and more subtle vibratory scale" which Reb Zalman describes, then Chanukah becomes a time to celebrate the story of how we once cleaned up our broadcast tower so that awareness of divine compassion could flow into creation again. And maybe it's also a time for rededicating ourselves to the work of receiving God's transmission, recalibrating our moral and ethical and spiritual lives, so that we reconsecrate the Third Temple which exists in spirit and metaphor though not in stone. Chanukah becomes a time for discerning the inner work we need to do so that we can open our own spiritual channels and "hear" God's presence more wholly.

End-of-year gifts

Many different December opportunities for gift-giving are on their way. Whether you celebrate Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Festivus, or simply enjoy the experience of giving and receiving at this time of year, you're probably doing some holiday shopping right about now.

If you are looking for a gift for someone in your life who enjoys poetry, and/or someone in your life who is interested in Torah / Bible / scripture, I hope you'll consider giving them a copy of 70 faces, my collection of Torah poems. Alicia Ostriker, author of For the Love of God: the Bible as an Open Book and The Book of Seventy, writes "These poems are so out there, so radical, and at the same time so gentle and inviting. Barenblat manages to do work that has passion and truth behind it, without ranting. I love the simple and confident way she deals with the akedah -- and I love the final poem in this collection -- gliding right past heartbreak into renewal, which is what her poems all seem to do." (And the akedah poems to which Alicia refers were recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.) The collection costs just $14, and in purchasing it, you support an independent press which puts out really beautiful work.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by the consumerism of the season, or if you want to give a gift to someone but don't want to burden them with more stuff, there's always the option of making a donation in someone's honor to a cause that they support. And as Jihadi Jew recently reminded me, the Baal Shem Tov wrote that "It is best to give a little bit of sadaqah /tzedakah every day to train your hand to give." For my part, I would be delighted if donations were made to Congregation Beth Israel (the community I serve), to ALEPH: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal (the body which ordained me), the Organization for Transformative Works (where I'm about to finish up a three-year Board term), or Rabbis for Human Rights (whose work I deeply admire.)

 

Pushcart nomination!

I'm delighted to be able to announce that "The Akedah Cycle," a series of poems exploring the Biblical story of the binding of Isaac -- published in 70 faces -- has been nominated for a 2011 Pushcart Prize.

Three others whose work is published by Phoenicia were also nominated; you can read more at the post Pushcart nominations for Phoenicia authors. As that post notes, "The Pushcart Awards honor the best work published by small presses each year, and while only a few are chosen for the published anthology by the Pushcart jury, it is a reward in itself to gain a nomination from the editors and publishers of the small journals and presses."

Thanks, Phoenicia!