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.

Skin Lesions and Life to the Dead

Unlike my other blog posts, this is a more "traditional" D'var Torah, or sermon, on the reading of the week, Parashat Tazria, Leviticus 12:1-13:59. I offer this in part for those who missed my service this past weekend. To all reading, especially if you actually did hear my words: I typically write out what I want to say as a way of helping to congeal the ideas in my head, but it's still a little like jelly, fluid, so this isn't exactly what I said on Saturday. Thanks for the supportive readership.

This week’s Parasha, Tazria, contains sometimes vivid descriptions of bodily functions and malfunctions, skin lesions, and other physical “impurities.”  While it fits well with the rest of the Levitical blood and guts experience, this can easily be the most difficult, even embarrassing, portion for bar or bat mitzvah kids to work with, and quite disturbing even for an adult audience, trying to read it from a spiritual perspective.  

Even the ancient rabbis had difficulty with it.  What were these physical illnesses and what did they have to do with the spiritual work of the priests?  Surely there were plenty of lesions and illnesses that didn’t have to be proven pure or impure by a priest’s eye or through sacred ritual?

Leaving aside the issue of childbirth, where the parashah opens, the rabbis asserted that the skin diseases weren’t just any physical lesions - these were spiritual afflictions, resulting from actions, things a person did (or didn’t do).  Torah teaches that Miriam contracts one of these skin lesion diseases as a direct result of speaking ill of, or doubting, her brother Moses.  And so the most direct link between lesions and actions is said to be lashon hara, speaking ill of another.  

We could simply leave it at that, as the rabbis do - not try to find any explanation for how action might lead to physical ailment.  And indeed, the rabbis more or less do leave it untouched.

But they do offer some clues, in their discussion of this parashah, and in various other biblical texts and rabbinic interpretations.

The lesions at issue here are white.  Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Epstein, an 18th century Chassidic leader known as the Maor VaShemesh, taught that this is the clue -

“Now, actually, the reason for this is simple. The key locus of life’s vitality is in the blood, ‘for the blood is the life’ (Deut. 12:23); the human soul (nephesh) is in the blood.”

Essentially, we pale when our life goes out of us.  And white skin lesions are evidence of life leaving one or another part of our body, usually, he suggests, because we have embarrassed ourselves or another through our actions or words.  Anger, he suggests, is one of the worst offenders, and Rabbi Jonathan Slater interprets this to mean anger is “a small death.”

First, we need to be careful in a reading like this not to think that because a person has an illness of any kind that they have somehow brought it upon themselves by action.  Even the rabbis suggested that this was something that used to happen.  

Still, the notion of anger as being a portion of death is intriguing.  The Talmud also suggests that “sleep is 1/60th of death,” a little like death.

And this carries us to one of my favorite lines in our prayers - mechayei hameitim.  That God gives life to the dead need not be read as a direct assertion of reincarnation.  It can be easily understood in this way of restoring spiritual life.

In the Reconstructionist and Reform liturgies, mechayei hameitim has been replaced by either mechayei hakol or mechayei kol chai - both essentially meaning that the life we have and know is the life God has given us.

To me, this change in the liturgy is unnecessary.  Indeed, it denies the notion that we can be spiritually, or even physically, revived.  

One of my colleagues, Rabbi Megan Doherty, once argued that mechayei hameitim was the perfect blessing to recite over the first cup of coffee in the morning.  This may be a little tongue in cheek, but I think that the idea isn’t far off base.  Indeed, some hold a tradition of reciting these words as a short blessing when seeing someone they haven’t seen in a full year or more.

And what of the Yiddish “mechaya”?  Something good happens, even something as simple as a warm day after the winter, or a cup of icy cold water on a hot day - that’s a mechaya.  It’s a relief, a little bit of life-reminder.

The Reform siddur has returned mechayei hameitim as an alternative in its new siddur.  The siddur you use here is great about giving the options.  Reading with alternatives in place is an opportunity for us to rethink how we are reading: is it too literal?  Is tzara’at really leprosy, or is it a psychosomatic / or spirituo-somatic symptom, a result of something being not quite right in our inner life force?  Is mechayei hameitim only (or even at all) about reincarnation or resurrection, or is it closer to the Yiddish derivation, a mechaya, a little bit of life returning where we have felt a little weary or lost or some such?

Baruch ata Adonay - mechayei hameitim.  Blessed are You, our God, who provides sustenance and renewal, raising life up where it has drooped, offering solace and support and nourishment - to the individual, and to our whole world.  May we be aware of this renewal as the earth brings forth new greens, as the coming month of Nissan and our season of spring and Passover heralds rebirth and new beginnings, emerging from the deathly constrictions of winter and mitzrayim.

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.  

Rewriting What is Written in Stone

Fire in Stone
original sketch by the blogger ;)

The image of the ten commandments - a few dozen words etched directly by G-d into two tablets of stone - epitomizes the notion of immutability of not just these few words, but the whole of Torah, perhaps the whole bible.  

All of the progressive movements of Judaism have made gender-balancing changes to the siddur (prayer book), at least as an option, thus literally changing the words of our texts.  

But no Jewish community has, to my knowledge, rewritten the text of Torah. Torah is sacred and, for all intents and purposes, written in stone.

One of my two year old’s favorite TV shows, Super Why!, focuses on reading as a superpower. The show opens with song: “Who’s got the power / The power to read / Who answers the call / For friends in need / … / Who looks into books / For the answers we need / It’s SUPER WHY and the Super Readers.”  

Little boy Whyatt and his friends transform into superheroes. As Super Why, he says, “with the power to read, I can change this story and save the day!”

What a radical concept! Not only does reading provide knowledge, but the opportunity to change the very thing we are reading.

The stories the Super Readers enter and make to are often well known, like Jack and the Beanstock or Goldilocks, stories I would have thought nearly as sacred, immutable, as Torah.  

But the Super Readers come in and “save the day” by challenging the very text.  An angry giant takes a nap on his “huge bed” rather than having a “huge tantrum” (Season 1, Episode 1); moonlight suddenly brightens the room of a bear who is afraid of the dark by changing the last word of the sentence, “Charlie’s room is dark,” to “light.”

They transform the story by changing the words.  

But we can’t do that with Torah.  And there are times Torah seems to, I’ll be honest, contain things we would rather not read, let alone teach our children. So what do we do?

Essentially since the moment Torah was written, there have been ways to transform meaning. Consider, for example, the understanding of the word שמע shema (as in the credal, “Hear, O Israel,” (Deuteronomy 6:4)) as שאו מרום עיניכם - “lift high your eyes” - not only emphasizing the notion of “pay attention” but linking it to another text (Isaiah 40:26).  

In this week’s Torah reading, Parashat Vayikra, we find the following (Leviticus 1:2):  אָדָם כִּי-יַקְרִיב מִכֶּם קָרְבָּן

Just to give you a sense of how translation is inherently interpretation, I offer the following:

• 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation, “When any man of you bringeth an offering...”
• 1999 Jewish Publication Society translation, “When any of you presents an offering…”

The main difference between the two translations is a problem, as it were, with the first word, ADAM - אדם. The first translation is as a generic “man,” and the second translation avoids to word entirely.  

Some ask the question, why ADAM (אדם) instead of ISH (איש), which is the more common word for “a person”? Our second translation opens up the possibility that אדם is a more gender neutral term, something more compatible with contemporary egalitarian thinking.  I would imagine they might justify that based on the verse “And G-d created אדם...male and female” (Genesis 1:27), such that Adam is a word not subject to the gender binary, whereas Eesh (איש) is explicitly gendered.

Another nice twist is the acronym given for אדם by Rabbi Yochanan in a discussion on what a person does/is when they are haughty (Talmud Bavli, Sotah 5b) - aleph (א) for אפר aphar, meaning dust; dalet (ד) for דם dam, meaning blood; and mem (מ . ם) for מרה marah, meaning bile. An act of repentance or turning from haughtiness - a base, physical act - could be an offering, an attempt to turn away from the physical ADAM and to “draw near” to one’s spiritual self through an act of קרבן korban, the type of offering here, which is connected in its root to קרב karov, literally to draw near.

Those who read Torah, who are knowledgable in the Hebrew especially, have the power to be, as all Torah commentators throughout the centuries have been, nothing less than Super Readers, with the power to transform the meaning of our text for our own and future generations.

New Respect for Writer's Block

All that white space in Torah, the spaces between the words, the information left out… I wonder, was it left out intentionally?  Or did the “author(s)” of Torah know that they just needed to “finish” the work and put it out there even if it wasn’t “perfect”?  

Apparently, I have writer’s block.  I was sure I posted in January, but apparently not.  Believe me, I’ve been writing up a storm!  I’ve even drafted a few blog entries, on “paper” and in my head.  I have plenty to say.

But I’m (re)discovering that writer’s block isn’t always about not writing.  Sometimes, yes, it’s the stare-at-the-page-can’t-find-a-single-word block.  Sometimes I have a lot to say, and I really want to share it, and I’ve even written it out.  But I make excuses: I don’t know if this is right for the blog, I’m not sure it’s a “finished” product, I don’t know if anyone is actually reading, or I don’t know if the “wrong” people are reading, or I do want feedback or I don’t want feedback, I’m sick, my son is on school break, I don’t have time.

At My Writing Space, created by prompt from The Artist's Way

In December, shortly before this unconscious hiatus from blogging, a rabbinic colleague recommended a book called The Artist’s Way (Julia Cameron) - a workbook aimed at moving one past various creative blocks, recognizing that the creative energy in us is the way in which we created in the image of the Creator.  This is a very compelling answer to me about what Torah means that humans are created “in the image of G-d” (Genesis 1:27).

In the process of engaging with this book, I have written hundreds of pages - mostly journaling, but also drafts of two children’s books and some unpublished blog posts.  When the book asks each week if I see where I am blocked, I scoff.  “I’m not blocked,” I say, “I’m writing - I’m blogging.”  Whoops.  The only writing I have shared, however, has been work-related sermons and such.  I’ve shared the writing I had to write, not the writing that I have created as part of my personal creative energy.

I’ve used every excuse, until I became aware this week how bad the excuses really are.  And I see, after weeks of working through the book and claiming NOT to be blocked, that I actually am blocked.  Yes, I’m writing.  But I’m not sharing.

Can there be “wrong readers” on a blog, since anyone who reads the blog is self-selecting to do so?  And since I can find changes to make in any sermon, blog entry, short story, etc. that I’ve already been put out into the world, I know a finished project isn’t necessarily a perfected one.  I need to unblock, to put my work (and yes, sometimes my process) out there - blog or otherwise.  It won’t always be good, and it will have white space (intentional and not).  Let the readers read into it as they will.

More soon.  Um...I hope!

Happy Ritual Change of Year

“I’m looking forward to 2014...I’m so ready to move on.” (Anonymous) 

Yes, me too.  2013 has been a strange year, in some ways painful and in some ways freeing, definitely filled with unexpected transitions.  

But isn’t a calendar change arbitrary?  If we are so ready to move on, can’t we do it without the new year’s arrival?  Shouldn’t a new day be enough?

Sure!  Every day is a new beginning.  “Every day Creation is renewed.”  

One of the reasons I think the New Year holiday is so profound - even if our resolutions don’t last - is that it is so highly ritualized.  We prepare for (at least) a week: Facebook friends, organizations, newscasters and more count down what they see as important music, movies, events, and so forth from the past year.  We are encouraged thus to reflect on our own year, on its ups and downs, on our own successes and “failures,” and ultimately on what we would like to change in the coming year.  And then we all come together - in person or via technology - to count down the last minutes and seconds to the new year.  (But even as I write this it is already 2014 in parts of the world; I understood this early, growing up on the west coast, when the clock struck midnight in the “heart” of our country (Times Square) at 9pm.  See how arbitrary it is?)

Ritual is powerful.  Ritual awakens us - “wake up and see”! - urges us into awareness.  

We don’t have to wait for a new year.  We can ritualize our mornings.  We can wake up to a practice of prayer, reflection, renewal.  If we don’t already do something like this, we can resolve right now that in the new year we will.  Take note - it’s not just tonight as the clock strikes midnight, but:

Every day Creation is renewed: wake up and see

In the spreading light of dawn

The world and all it contains

Coming into being new and fresh,

Filled with divine goodness and love.

Every day, Creation is renewed: wake up and see.   

Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg

(Kol Haneshamah: Shabbat VeHagim)

So my resolution for 2014 is, when I feel like I am ready to move on, to leave something behind, I’m not going to look for an upcoming transition - a year or even a day.  As the saying goes, “never put off until tomorrow what can wait until the next day.”  Oh, wait - that’s the procrastinator in me.  “Never put off until tomorrow what can be done right now.”  This breath, this moment - now is the time!

Wishing you and yours many blessings in the year to come, moment by moment and day by day.  Happy New Year!

Encountering the Divine

Last night I watched an old episode of 7th Heaven, a 90s tv show focused on the family of Reverend Camden, a suburban minister, in which the middle school leadership is concerned that the custodian is crazy and needs to be forced into retirement.  Why?  Because he hears the voice of God.  God tells him to go speak to Reverend Camden, who becomes his advocate, announcing to the school board, "I speak to God every day, [don't you?]....  Do you not even expect an answer?"

How do we listen for answers or connection from the Divine?  The biblical prophets experienced visions, dreams, even the voice of God directly or through Mal'achim - angels (literally messengers).  Were the prophets crazy?

This week the Torah reading cycle enters the Moses story and his first encounters with the Divine.   Song and lore tells us that "none has yet risen in Israel like Moses," no other prophet has, to jump ahead in the story, seen God face-to-face (Exod. 33:11) and lived to tell about it.

When God recruits Moses for the work of bringing the people to freedom, Moses asks a valuable question, "What shall I tell them is Your name?"  God's cryptic answer, Ehyeh asher ehyeh - I will be that which I will be (some translate present tense, "I'm am what I am").

The openness of the answer is brilliant - each encounter may be different.  Not only is each individual's relationship to the Divine unique, but one individual may experience God in myriads of ways.

Admittedly, when someone says they hear God speaking to them I get nervous.  This is not necessarily a bad response.  I think of such God-voices as those described in Under the Banner of Heaven, contemporary prophecy that leads one to take the life of another.

So how do I describe my own encounters with the Divine?  I have said that I believe in the God of coincidences - that there are times that I should have been one place or done one thing and instead have chosen another, and as a result I am saved some horrific experience.  An example?  When I was sixteen I was supposed to meet a girlfriend after school to bring her something of hers.  Instead, I went home, and that is where my mother, who was supposed to be at work but came home because she thought she had left the oven on, answered the phone call with the news that my friend had shot herself.  I cannot be sure what I might have done had I gone to meet my friend as planned and found her lying there with the still-loaded gun - but through what might seem like chance I had my mother's support.

No, I didn't hear a voice telling me to go home instead of meeting my friend - not in the conventional sense of spoken words anyway.  Call it more gut instinct.  And it's not that the outcome of such moments is joyful, as I sometimes imagine all Divine encounter ought to be.  Sometimes it's downright miserable - involving things like losing a friend to suicide.

But this is the marvelous thing about Ehyeh - God can be the connector in the moment when one needs support from family, friends, colleagues; but God can be other things in other moments, like the indescribable moment when the world simply seems beautiful, right, amazing, awesome, or the flame that doesn't consume but catches our attention, or the invisible but tangible outstretched arm guiding us away from narrow places and into freedom.  And maybe sometimes it is the still, small voice - a voice from within and beyond, that calls us by name and tells us:

"Ehyeh asher ehyeh - I will be that which I will be." (Exodus 3:14)

Ehyeh - I will be
I will be with you
I will be what you need
Don't look
   I am not what you think you need
Don't expect me
   I am already here
I will breathe you
I will carry you
I will dance you
I will sing you
I will hold you
I will nudge you
I will guide you
I will support you
Ehyeh - I am