Tag: There’s a God in My Soup

Religious experience, or at least the experience of religion.

Time Clock

WHY IS A calendar important? (Aside from telling us when to spring forward and fall back, that is.)

One answer comes from our Torah, where G?d tells Moses and Aaron that “this month shall be for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you” (Exodus 12:2). The context: Nine plagues have been sent against Pharaoh and his country. Following a hint of the final and most terrible plague – the slaying of the Egyptian firstborn, in direct consequence of Pharaoh’s identical edict against Jewish infants – G?d wants the Jews to mark forever afterward our going-forth from slavery.

But to do that, we first require a calendar – the first mitzvah given to us as a nation.

Slaves don’t need a calendar. They work when ordered to, until commanded to stop. Free people, on the other hand, can organize their time however they wish, so our ancient sages organized the Jewish calendar to be both lunar and solar. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out, its months follow the phases of the moon, with seasons following the position of the sun. In seven years out of nineteen, we add an extra month so as not to, for example, eventually celebrate Pesach (Passover) in the wintertime.

The communal Pesach lamb-feast is the second mitzvah given to us as a nation. So important is this event to our identity that this week’s Torah portion also includes four different directives commanding us to tell our children just what happened on this most momentous of dates.

Perhaps that’s why Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel calls Judaism “a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time.” And that’s the perfect kavvanah (intention) to hold as we enter into Shabbat!

More Better

A KEY PHRASE in this week’s Torah portion of Va’eira (Exodus 6:2-9:35) reveals much about the state of mind of our centuries-long Egyptian slavery. It happens after G?d tells Moses to proclaim that G?d will liberate our ancestors and bring them home to the Land of Promise.

However, nobody pays attention: “Moshe spoke to the B’nei Yisrael, but they would not listen to Moshe because of [their] shortness of wind and hard labor” (Exodus 6:9; Metsudah Publications translation).

The Hebrew word translated by Metsudah as “wind” is “ruach,” which can also mean “breath” or “spirit;” Jewish mystical tradition teaches that ruach is the spiritual element connecting our physicality (“nefesh”) to our inner spark of G?dliness (“neshama”). Rabbi Jonathan Sacks translates our verse’s second half as “…but in the brokenness of their spirit and brutal labor they did not listen to him.”

It’s very hard for the continually (and generationally) traumatized to work toward, or even hope for, better days. Rabbi Sacks puts it like this: “If you want to improve people’s spiritual situation, you must first improve their physical situation. … Alleviating poverty, curing disease, ensuring the rule of law, and respecting human rights: these are spiritual tasks no less than prayer and Torah study. To be sure, the latter are higher, but the former are prior. People cannot hear G?d’s message if their spirit is broken and their labor harsh.”

Words to ponder as we all continue to hope for, and work toward, a better world.

Home (not) Alone

A d’var Torah – sermon – I delivered at our synagogue yesterday morning. If you’re not into hortatory Jewish fuzzies, better skip it.)

My dad was born and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, long enough ago for him to have cheered on the Dodgers at the legendary Ebbets Field. My dad’s also the world’s greatest baseball fan – at least the greatest I’ve ever met. He can quote statistics, games, and players like a seasoned sportswriter. I once asked him why the Brooklyn Dodgers’ native stadium had such allure for his ten-year-old self.

He thought for a moment, smiled, and said, “It’s holy ground … and it was my second home.”

The concept of home is important to us. Be it ever so humble, it’s where the heart is, where you hang your hat, and there’s no place like it. A real home is wherever we feel safe to be our best, and even sometimes worst, selves.

Our Torah portion, Shemot, the beginning of Exodus, describes a similar-but-different kind of safety. We find the baby Moses tucked into a basket among the bulrushes of the Nile, escaping Pharaoh’s cruel edict of death for all Jewish first-born males.

The Hebrew word translated here as “basket” is “teivah.” There’s only one other teivah in Torah. It’s found in Genesis, in parashat Noach. There, teivah is translated as “ark” – yes, the one with Noah’s family and all the paired animals. The Talmud calls this juxtaposition – an identical word or phrase occurring in different verses – “gezeirah shava,” Aramaic for “similar verdicts.” A gezeirah shava exists to reveal the word or phrase’s deeper meaning.

So let’s explore this puzzling and holy ark-basket.

Both teivahs are containers. That one is large and one small isn’t as important as their function. For Noah, his pitch-caulked ark carried the world’s wildlife population. In Moses’ case, his pitch-caulked basket carried the leader of a spiritual revolution. Two boxes of life, each floating amidst swirling chaos, each protecting the seeds of new beginnings.

Our world at present can be fairly described as a swirling chaos. Politics, economics, technology, civility, culture, climate – everything seems to be spiraling into some very strange and very scary places. But a teivah can protect us long enough to gather our strength, cope, and continue.

Sonoma has a long-established and vital teivah that does just that. And though small, it contains multitudes.

There’s a Hebrew school. Sisterhood. Men’s club. Book clubs. Adult education. Social action. Care for our physically and spiritually beset. Annual and life-cycle celebrations. Study groups devoted to our most sacred texts. Occasional cooking classes. The welcoming warmth of authentic, heimishe Yiddishkeit. And worship services like these, where we can come together twice-monthly to ritually affirm our religious peoplehood.

Our little Anatevka-among-the-vines offers each of us a little hard-won and welcome shelter from the surrounding storm. So my questions to you today, especially as we enter our 30th year, are, “What’s your Shir Shalom shelter story? How does our do-it-yourself teivah give you strength and support?”

[pass microphone]

Thank you everyone. And thank you for helping each other keep our heads above choppy water – as our people have done for the past 4,000 years and counting. Shabbat shalom.

Rear Window

“Your spirituality is none of my business.” –Anon

How do we understand the Divine in our lives?

That’s the question answered by this week’s Torah portion, Vayigash (Genesis.44.18-47.27). Joseph is reunited with his brothers, and informs them that indirectly selling him into slavery was actually part of G?d’s plan. Without that act, he would not have risen to second-in-command of Egypt and been able to save his family from the seven years’ famine predicted by Pharaoh’s dream.

Torah is teaching us an important point: that spiritual hindsight is 20/20 vision. Only by seeing how events have unfolded can we discern the G?d of our understanding; as G?d is later to tell Moses, “You may see My back … [but] you cannot see My face, for no one may see Me and live.” It was up to Joseph to see G?d’s hand in matters, but as the Torah later tells us, his brothers never accepted that explanation.

When someone in our lives is struggling in any way, it may seem like a kindness to tell them that what they’re going through is “all part of G?d’s plan.” But we know that’s not appropriate. Pirkei Avot tells us not to comfort someone when their dead lies before them; comfort is in the heart of the beholder. Whatever we experience is not for others to interpret as to cause and effect.

After all, all we really know is the G?d of our understanding. And who’s to say we got It right?

Reading Assignment

WHATEVER YOU’RE DOING RIGHT NOW, stop – and order from your favorite bookseller Liel Leibovitz’ How the Talmud Can Change Your Life (Surprisingly Modern Advice from a Very Old Book). It’s a breakneck-speed, 272-page survey of Jewish history, bringing to life the key sages and lively times of the Talmud like never before, with illustrations drawn from Aldrich Ames and Billie Holiday and Weight Watchers and the Dewey Decimal System. I read it in three days, only grudgingly taking time for sleep and meals; it’s mildly profane and very learned and joyful and engaging and funny and sweeping and heartbreaking and really, really, real. You owe it to yourself, and to your understanding of Judaism, to read this book.

Seriously. Do it now.

The Handshake

THE UBER DRIVER’S HAND was warm and calloused, but its electric charge was unexpected.

It shouldn’t have been, though, since for the past forty-five minutes we had free-associated on topics that don’t lend themselves to easy or uncomplicated conversation: God, mind, the uselessness of AI, Self-realization (not a typo) and ego-death, gurus, the constancy of change, the Indian fashion-industry, meditation, capitalism, health and healing, life’s unpredictability, Hindu holyman Ramana Maharshi.

His car was a late-model Tesla – ironically, since we also agreed we shouldn’t colonize Mars – enroute to a faraway hospital, where my copilot was undergoing heart surgery. I told him this toward the end of the ride, and he reached back a ringed and metal-braceleted hand to take one of mine.

“Aw, man,” he said. “Blessings come from God.”

That was when something unexpected passed between us.

“For her,” he said with earnest intensity.

We conversed a bit more before pulling up to the hospital.

“Thank you,” I told him as I got out. “And thank you for your blessing.”

“Aw, man,” he said. “Blessings come from God.”

“Yes,” I replied. “But thank you for being the conduit.”

A few minutes later I stood next to my copilot’s bed. She had just come out of surgery, pale and weak-voiced and pained of expression. Her escape from the Beyond had been a close one, but her doctors were skilled. With a why-not-it-couldn’t-hurt shrug, I touched her leg with the hand the driver had grasped. Nothing unexpected this time, just a loving gesture of comfort.

Mind you, I am a skeptic in the original sense of the word: an open-minded soul who doesn’t chase after explanations of the inexplicable. And really, earnest handshakes are common enough. But over the next few hours, as she went from colorless and tentative to walking with me about the cardio unit, beaming a delighted smile at everything we passed, I wondered.

Perhaps that’s the way her sort of surgery is supposed to work. I like to think it does.

But on the other hand, every little bit helps.

New & Then

(A recent sermon. Skip it if you like – you won’t hurt my feelings.)

THERE IS AN OLD STORY about a rabbi who was so engrossed in his Talmudic studies that he didn’t pay attention to the weekly Torah reading. When he was asked by his congregation to deliver a sermon, he ascended the bimah and said: “A good sermon should be about the week’s Torah portion. It should also be true and concise. I do not know what this week’s Torah portion is. That is the truth, and it is concise. Shabbat shalom.”

Not yesterday or tomorrow – but today.

Moshe Rabbeinu – Moses our Teacher – has a similar concise moment in this week’s Torah portion from Deuteronomy. The book is Moses’ recounting and personal perspective of the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. According to the 13th-century Torah commentator Nachmanides, our portion finds Moses wrapping-up the mitzvot – the 613 commandments incumbent on all Jews. Nachmanides says that Moses finishes this long and winding list with Deuteronomy 26:16-17, which reads: “Your G?d Adonai commands you this day to observe these decrees and laws; observe them faithfully with all your heart and soul. You have affirmed this day that Adonai is your G?d, in whose ways you will walk, whose decrees and commandments and laws you will observe, and to hear [G?d’s] voice.”

Notice the repetition of the phrase “this day” – “hayom hazeh.” In verse 16, G?d commands us to keep the mitzvot. In the very next verse, we affirm our willingness to do just that. And what is the upshot, the payoff? That we will hear – “shema” – G?d’s voice. Not yesterday or tomorrow – but today.

One understanding of this could be that doing the mitzvot will add a perception of the Divine to our lives. Keeping Shabbat, welcoming the stranger, paying our employees on time, and observing the festivals – including the upcoming High Holidays – might not bring us material success. But the mitzvot might benefit us in other, more subtle and transcendent ways. They help us become better people by keeping us mindful of the fragile interconnectedness of all things – and in turn, by making us more appreciative of life’s great and small miracles.

But that’s harder than it sounds. After all, keeping hundreds of commandments is a heavy responsibility. And having to keep them every day for the rest of our lives? Help!

However, one of our most famous Torah commentators proposes a solution. Rashi – wine merchant by day, devoted scholar by night – speaks to us from 11th-century France. He says: “The mitzvot should always seem as new to you as on the day you were first commanded to observe them” – this day!

Time can be experienced in two different ways. Sometimes, it’s linear – each day slipping from the future into the past. Sometimes, it’s cyclical – with different seasons bringing their own special blessing, including birth, life, death, rebirth. Jewish time is both linear and cyclical. For example, we celebrate the holidays in the same way every year. But each year finds us in a different physical, intellectual and spiritual place. We grow more mature and – we hope! – more wise, or at least more experienced.

But all we really have is “hayom hazeh” – this day, which has never been before, and will never be again. So my question today is, “How do you make your observances fresh and new, and meaningful to you?“

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