Matot-Masei: On Vows and Vowing

Oh, how we try to wriggle out of vows.

I do it as a parent: "If you don't stop, I'm going to take away x." And then I feel guilty, or like it was a harsh punishment, and I find myself backing off. Another parent recently reminded me, "the trick is never to promise or threaten anything you don't intend to follow through on."

I do it as a partner: "I promise I will be better about a." And then I try to narrow the circumstances where a actually applies.

I do it to myself: "I promise to give my body the chance at a full night's sleep." And here I am staying up past my bedtime to write a blog post.

This week's Parashah, the combined Matot-Masei, opens with "If a man makes a vow to God...he shall not break his pledge." (Never mind that it then diminishes a woman's vow, saying her father or husband can negate it, or allow it to stand. I'm going to assume we all agree that men and women are equal, and thus nobody owns the vow of another.)

Torah has plenty to say about vows. Indeed, it is pretty serious about them, especially those in which we obligate ourselves to actions directed at God or in God's name, but also those in which we obligate ourselves to our neighbors, our planet, even ourselves.

Later Jewish custom wriggles, just like we (I) do in everyday life.

Kol nidre (All Vows) - the title prayer of the service that kicks off Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) - asks that our vows be annulled, that every serious oath we have taken be wiped out, that we not be held accountable.

No, Judaism doesn't say we can get out of our obligations so simply. Indeed, there were early concerns about the notion of annulling vows. The Jewish Encyclopedia discusses a medieval change in the prayer:

"An important alteration in the wording of the "Kol Nidre" was made by Rashi's son-in-law, Meïr ben Samuel, who changed the original phrase "from the last Day of Atonement until this one" to "from this Day of Atonement until the next." 

The implication in this change is that we shouldn't be making vows to God in the first place, because we are sure to falter. But while this might be a relief (since we might make vows in the heat of a situation), it does effectively wriggle us out ahead of any actual vow-making. And we might therefore think that we can go ahead and make those heat-of-the-moment vows, and other vows, and not really worry about the consequences.

What I fear (and I am not alone in this fear) is that we lose the meaning of vows, and even smaller promises - to God and to people - when we assume we are free because of a prayer recited months ago.

I see this diminishing vow-lue -- in the person who goes into a marriage saying, "well, if it doesn't work out, we can always get a divorce," and in my own practices of self-care, be it what I feed myself or my lack of exercise. 

The Kol Nidre prayer does not, in fact, ensure us freedom from our vows. Even with the prayer, we must still be careful with our promises, and we must nonetheless atone for our failures before we can expect forgiveness.

A vow is a weighty thing - and it should be. Whether we are promising something to a friend or to God, we should feel the obligation of the relationship. We should not enter in expecting that we can simply wriggle out from under that weight easily, lightly. Still, it's nice to know that, if we make a promise and cannot fulfill it, we can be forgiven, even if it takes some emotional, spiritual, even physical work on our part to get there.

New Beginnings, Fresh or Rotten - Your Choice

You know that one moldy strawberry in the box? The one that's touching at least five others? What is your first thought - past the ICK - when you see that mold? Contamination!

Torah speaks of the first days of the world - of the separating of light from darkness and of water from land and air - as a time of completion. Things come into being whole and ready. The herbs and fruits are ready to eat right away, "in the beginning." Adam and Eve are not brought into this world as infants, but as wholly formed adults, walking and speaking and thinking.

Rosh Hashanah celebrates this whole world, the anniversary of that beginning. And that's where we stand now, in the autumn - with a world of abundance, beginning and approaching the harvest season.

Ripe apples and pomegranates for our Rosh Hashanah dinner tables mean that the trees - and the herbs of the field - are about to go dormant, to die their autumnal death. We are entering darkness, brought by the autumnal equinox and the hibernation of plants and animals.

Now, as we leave the light of summer and the growing season behind, we celebrate the abundance of the world Created whole, trees and fields offering up sustenance that we seek to preserve to carry us through the winter.

Now, we want to carry the best of our foods into storage - and we want to carry the best of ourselves into the new year. One moldy strawberry will contaminate the whole container; molds and rot spread. We don't want that - in our food supply, or in our selves.

So we clean out the old - we take inventory of our fruits and herbs, and we take inventory of our souls. We choose what goes into our containers carefully.

We have the opportunity to put an end to behaviors that cause rot, that fester in our relationships. We ask forgiveness, and we search our souls for ways to change our behavior, to be better people in the coming year.

If we choose our fruits well, we can make it through the darkness of winter. We will have healthy food for our bodies -- and we will have clean souls and strong relationships that will carry us through the coming year, whatever it holds for us.

Wishing you good choices, solid forgiveness, and a healthy and sweet new year.

Setting the Table for Rosh Hashanah

My new job requires me to blog periodically about what is going on my the classroom, as part of keeping communication open with the parents.  The blog is behind password protection, so I cannot link directly to it, but my current post does not include any private information, and I'd like to share it here, without the original photos:

There are many ways we “set the table,” from the special dinner table for Rosh Hashanah to the preparation for the “meal” that is all of the learning this year.  In these first weeks of school, we have been preparing the students as if they are a table – going over rules and routines to ensure good learning and a safe and warm classroom community.  That is true in General Studies and in Jewish Studies, and also on the playground and during lunch.

Art by yours truly - the same thing my students were assigned.
They will cut out the many pictures they have drawn, and set
their own family's "Rosh Hashanah dinner table" with every-
thing from apples & honey and pomegranates for a sweet and
abundant new year to flowers for hiddur mitzvah (making our tradition beautiful).

In the afternoon, we have been studying special holiday sounds (Shofar), special blessings and prayers, the different things involved in Teshuvah (recognizing we have done something wrong, saying we are sorry, and trying not to repeat the behavior) — all setting the table for a meaningful holiday celebration.  We are also learning what actually goes on that special dinner table, including sweet foods, round foods, and even strange things like a fish head (so that we should be like the head, always going forward, and not like the tail; and so that Israel may be as abundant as the fish in the sea).

We also worked this week with 1st graders, being role models and partners, thinking about how G-d is like a “parent,” as we learned to chant the Avinu Malkeinu prayer.

With the new school year now fully underway, and the new year arriving next week, wishing you and yours a sweet and healthy year.

שנה טובה ומתוקה

Counting the Omer - Leaving Mitzrayim, a Starting Point

בכל דור ודור חייב אדם לראות את עצמו כאילו הוא יצא ממצרים
In every generation, every person is obligated to see him/herself as if s/he came out of mitzrayim.
(Passover Haggadah)

From whence do we come, and whither do we go?

Mitzrayim evokes both the literal narrowness of Egypt's fertile strip on either side of the Nile, and the emotional/spiritual narrowness of slavery.  It is the latter that each of us is obligated to search for in our own lives.  But the "coming out" from narrow places is only the beginning, what we read starting on the first night of Passover.  On the second night of Passover, we begin to count the Omer - for seven weeks we will count days and weeks, until we arrive at our next holiday, Shavuot.

The Omer reminds us that leaving mitzrayim is only the beginning.  It is like Abraham's Lech Lecha moment.  "Get up and go...to a land that I will show you" (Genesis).

In the moment we leave the narrowness - whether it is a way of thinking, or a job that binds us, or a relationship that restricts us - we do not land immediately in a place of certainty and strength.

Wandering in Haifa (c. 2005, RSR)

Rather, we begin a journey into the unknown, into openness.  It takes time to shake off old habits. We might, like the Israelites, sometimes question why we ever left, wonder if we really had to leave the security of what we knew (was it really so bad? "were there not enough graves in Egypt?").  Wherever we think we are going, like Abraham and like Moses and the Israelites, we really have no idea.  And that uncertainty can be disorienting and disturbing.he begin the journey - not expect that just because we have begun the journey we must have arrived somewhere special.

The Omer, the counting of days, helps to ground us on the journey. It grounds us with the simple act of counting, but also with Kabbalistic spiritual teachings, and a custom of self-reflection as we count, as we mark the journey. 

ארמי אבד אבי
"My father was a wandering Aramean" (Deuteronomy 26:5; Passover Haggadah)

I love the closeness in English of the words wander and wonder.  The journey is about openness - about being able to wonder at what we encounter, to find awe.

As we begin this wandering period, this counting of the Omer, I invite awe and wonder.  I also invoke compassion in response to the desire to shelter in the known narrowness, and for the desire to know "are we there, yet?!"  May the journey be the "there." May we not become stuck in the places where we sojourn.

Olfactory Memory and Temple Sacrifices

The inner doors to my son’s school opened to let through the onslaught of parents picking up our children, and we were instantly surrounded by a moist, bready smell.  “Why are they baking bread?” another parent asked, “it’s not Friday!”  And I remembered - they were going to bake hamentashen this morning - at least in my son’s class, and probably others.

In the Torah reading cycle, we are in Leviticus, full of bloody, gut-flaying animal sacrifices - and a few somewhat cleaner bread and grain and incense sacrifices.  But in the holiday cycle, we are at Purim, that joyous holiday on which we eat (depending on Ashkenazi/Sephardi background) yummy pastries designed like a man’s hat, or the slightly more disgusting version of his ears.  

In a post-sacrificial Judaism, the holiday yummies are probably more likely to conjure some level of religious connection than the sacrifices.  But where the Mishnah makes the transition from sacrifice to prayer, I would like to suggest that our own experiences of holidays through food, tasted but especially smelled, may in fact hold a more direct connection for us.

The phrase ריח ניחח - re’ach nicho’ach - a fragrant (pleasing) scent, appears numerous times in Torah, all in direct relation to various sacrifices - four times in this week’s reading.  Whether grain or beast or fowl, a fire offering provides a pleasing scent, often specifically described as “for G-d.”  The fact that these sacrifices were commonly consumed by the priests (and, in the case of the Passover sacrifice, by the masses), we can begin to see the connection between the altar that stood before the Holy of Holies and our grandparents’ (for example) kitchens.  

For me, the smell of latkes frying or chicken soup cooking on the stove can bring me home to my mother’s kitchen.  Fresh baking challah, tzimmes, brisket, roasting chicken, cholent, and yes, hamentashen, may be among foods that bring you to various kitchens of your memory.  

And not just any memories, but memories of Jewish time, exactly the kind of time that the sacrifices helped to mark.  The everyday, the Sabbath, various holidays and seasons.  

The association Jews have with food (there’s some idea that you can’t attract Jews to a program without it) is, therefore, not just about putting something in the belly.  It has the potential to be so very deeply spiritual -- in the sense that our kitchens are our altars, filled at their best with ריח ניחח, re’ach nicho’ach, pleasing odors that permeate our very souls and bring us into relationship with each other. It is an inherently spiritual relationship, in the sense that neshamah, soul, is related to breathing (as is smelling), and ru’ach, wind, another word for soul, is directly related to the word re’ach, odor.

Chag Purim sameach - a very happy and joyous Purim to all.  May your olfactory memories tingle, this week and always, with your own efforts or the efforts of someone you love.