This parsha deals with the detailed instructions G-d has established for the construction of the Tabernacle. G-d instructs Moses to gather the specific materials and intones, “They shall make a Sanctuary for me—so that I may dwell among them…Exactly as I show you, so shall you make it.”

The parsha is divided into three sections. The first outlines the materials and the measurements to construct the ark; the second describes the materials and measurements for the Tabernacle; and the third describes the materials and measurements for the altar and the enclosure of the Tabernacle.

Typically, the enclosure for a building is designed and erected first, and the interior items designed and installed last; this parsha reverses the standard order for design. As an architect named Bezalel, I find this order compelling to contemplate. (Bezalel is the chief artisan of the Tabernacle; he appears in Exodus 31:1and the name means “in the shadow of G-d”).

Another interesting aspect of the parsha is that it states that the Israelites “shall make a sanctuary so that I may dwell among them” rather than dwell in it—I take this to mean that G-d is dwelling within every person, not the Tabernacle itself, nor is G-d tied to a particular place. Therefore, G-d has set an example for us to create a sacred space and it is our responsibility to develop a personal set of instructions for the sacred space of our own lives, beginning from within.

Think of a time when you were truly at peace, when you were relaxed, refreshed and felt G-d dwelling within you. Building from that, what elements were most present that you can learn from to reinforce that space for yourself?

My kavannah for this week is to imagine how easy it might be to create a set of instructions and materials required for your inner sacred space. At times when we are feeling overwhelmed, overworked or underappreciated, we can remind ourselves how to put this ‘place’ together for ourselves. This contemplation could serve as a reminder that this sacred space is within reach and that each of us can be a “living tabernacle.”

This week’s parsha, or weekly Torah portion, Va’era, is the second parsha in Exodus, the book detailing the Israelites’ exodus from slavery under Pharaoh to freedom. “Va’era” means “I appeared” or “I let Myself be seen.”  God says “Va’era” to Moses, as in, “I let Myself be seen by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” and by this, God means something along the lines of: “I revealed Myself to them so they know I am the real deal.” God explains that the distress of the Israelites who are living in bondage under Pharaoh led God to remember the covenant God had made with the patriarchs to give their descendants the land of Canaan.  According to God, it is now also time for the Israelites to fully understand the limitlessness of God’s power.

God tells Moses, the recently-appointed leader of the Israelites (who has a speech impediment), that he and his brother Aaron, who has been speaking to the Israelites on Moses’s and therefore God’s behalf, should get ready for a hard fight with Pharaoh regarding the Israelites’ freedom.  God also decides to “harden Pharaoh’s heart” so that God will get to have several opportunities to show off divine strength and power.  God decides that if Pharaoh doesn’t relent, the best plan of action will be plagues that afflict the Egyptians and not the Israelites.  Of course, Pharaoh puts up a fight, and the plagues of the Passover story begin.  Then Pharaoh tells Moses that the Israelites can at the very least go on a brief journey to sacrifice to God, but quickly changes his mind.  More plagues to come next week.

So much happens in this parsha, and I felt overwhelmed as I read it.  But ultimately I found myself coming back to the age-old question of why not just select Aaron instead of Moses?  Why this game of telephone?  What could be the benefit of a leader with a speech impediment?

Thinking about this reminded me of completely losing my voice.  This would not have been such a problem except that I am a high school teacher, and 99% of my job, or so I thought, involves talking.  At school, all I could was whisper. I whispered my instructions to a student who would repeat them to the class.  “Please take out your homework,” translated to “Yo!  Homework out now or Ms. Cohen won’t be happy.”  I did my best to say as few words as possible, and this meant that I had to keep instructions clear and to the point.  Minor infractions had to be ignored or handled using the infamous teacher look. I had to pick my words, and battles, carefully, because someone else was going to repeat them and I didn’t want to be misinterpreted, and because I had a limited capacity for speech and needed to conserve energy.  Amazingly, my classes ran smoothly.

According to one commentator, Moses’ “slow tongue” was his strength. Because speaking was a challenge, he would mindfully select his words, and what Aaron was told to repeat to the Israelites would be the true essence of what God wanted conveyed.

What would it mean if we could only say one-fourth or one-fifth of the words we say daily? What would we decide was superfluous?  Would we become better listeners?  How often have I thought to myself, I wish I had not said that, right after speaking quickly and mindlessly?  In an era of fast-talking and multi-tasking, how would our interactions change if we said less and, in doing so, said more?

Though I was thrilled to get my voice back, I realized that losing it had been a kind of blessing.  If you had no choice but to cut out a chunk of your daily words, phrases, or communication, what would you select to let go of and why?  These could be words you say to yourself or to others.  On the other hand, which speech would you come to view as essential? My kavanah, or intention, for this week is to ask ourselves how mindful awareness of our speech can help us improve the quality of our lives and the lives of others.

This week’s parsha, Shemot (“Names”), might be a familiar one, as it’s the beginning not only of the book of Exodus but of the story we tell every year at Passover. A lot happens in this parsha; the Israelites are enslaved in Egypt by a fearful Pharaoh who orders all newborn Hebrew boys thrown into the Nile. One mother, defying these orders, instead sets her son adrift in a papyrus box on the river; he’s discovered and later raised by the Pharaoh’s own daughter. This boy, once grown, sees an Egyptian slavemaster kill an Israelite and, in anger, kills the slavemaster. He then flees to the land of Midian, where he marries, has a son, and becomes a shepherd. One day, while tending his flock, he comes upon a bush that burns without burning up, through which G-d speaks to him and instructs him to return to Egypt and bring the Israelites, G-d’s people, out of Egypt.

This man is Moses, who is one of the most revered figures in Jewish history. Since most of this parsha is about him, I assumed that’s who I’d base my kavanah (or intention) on. But the more I thought about it, the more I noticed how fascinated I was by a completely different person: the Pharaoh.

The Torah says, “[The Pharaoh] announced to his people, ‘The Israelites are becoming too numerous and strong for us. We must deal wisely with them. Otherwise, they may increase so much, that if there is war, they will join our enemies and fight against us, driving us from the land.’ ”

What leapt out at me when I read this passage was the line: We must deal wisely with them, because it strikes me that, if you want to instill loyalty in a group of people, turning them into slaves is perhaps not the wisest way to achieve that goal.

But the Pharaoh was afraid. Afraid there were too many Israelites, afraid they’d turn against him. He was so afraid he couldn’t see any future aside from the one he feared. And this fear led him to treat the Israelites harshly, to oppress and control them. But they continued to flourish nonetheless – and eventually the misery he inflicted caused them to call out for relief from G-d, who heeded their cries and sent Moses to free them. So the Pharaoh lost his control over them all the same.

And so I wondered, what if the Pharaoh had been less afraid? What if that absence of fear had allowed him to treat these people with kindness and compassion instead? Could it have been possible that, instead of giving them the power to overthrow him, as the Pharaoh feared, he would have instilled in them a sense of gratitude and, in turn, loyalty – thereby giving him what he’d been seeking in the first place?

For me, it’s much easier to envision negative outcomes to situations than positive ones, because fear and self-doubt can create such loud and convincing voices within me sometimes. But I know that meditation can help me quiet those voices, so that I can picture positive outcomes instead. And sometimes that makes all the difference in terms of the decisions I make and the ways I interact with others: I’m more open, kinder, and friendlier, and I believe that I can actually make my life more the way I want it to be.

So my kavanah is that we use our meditation practice to help drive out our own fears and self-doubt, so that we have more space for kindness and compassion, both for others and for ourselves.

Parsha Vayera describes perhaps one of the most renowned narratives in the Torah – the “Akedah,” the binding of Isaac by his father Abraham, as its conclusion. Vayera also contains many important and valuable stories – the birth of Isaac, the casting out of Hagar and Ishmael, Abraham attempting to convince G-d not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the saving of Lot and his family. While preparing this kavanah, I decided to focus on the Akedah.  I came across a poem by Rabbi Steven Pik-Nathan that spoke me, and I want to share some of its perspective on this story. Drawing from this poem, I was inspired to focus my kavanah on the journey that meditation provides and how my practice brings more joy to the world and myself.

Isaac’s name, in Hebrew, is a verb – he shall laugh, a cruel thought when I think that Isaac was to be sacrificed by his father, Abraham. While his name expresses action, Isaac chooses inaction and consents to his father sacrificing his life for G-d.

When Isaac acceded not to act, this was in fact, action, and he faced his own mortality. The poem linked above suggests that with this decision, he truly became a verb, realized that he must use his time on this earth to make a difference, and live fully without knowledge of how long his life in this world will last. Isaac learns that he must seek joy for himself and the world by doing good with his life and therefore. Because of this experience, he shall express the beauty of life with joy which he can express through laughter, his namesake.

Fundamentally, Isaac realized that life is tenuous and uncertain and he must begin his journey, on his own, without the guidance of his father and not knowing where it will lead him and how long it will be, to value each moment for what it is. I see this awakening as the paramount emphasis of the journey, not a destination. My practice of meditation is mindful of the journey, as I will never know where it will take me nor how it will end. This knowledge frees me to appreciate each step I take, because it is where I am meant to be. Each thought that appears is the place I am delivered to in that moment; one thought leads to another, the end of one is the beginning of another, and I need to simply observe the process. The opportunity to bind myself to G-d and others is present within each place I am delivered. This is the essence of the sacrifice of the journey of being alive: not knowing where I will be led nor when and how it will end, but simply, to savor the moment.

How does your contemplative practice allow you to appreciate the journey, devoid of a destination, to be one with this moment and each moment daily?

The last few paragrahs of this week’s parsha, “Ki Tavo” (in English: “when you enter”) are rather off-putting. Following a discussion of four rituals that the Israelites must obey upon entry into Promised Land, Moses reviews a litany of horrible, horrible curses that the Israelites face if they fail to comply. Numbering in the dozens, the curses include drought, infertility, infidelity, and madness. Further, in the final paragraph, Moses reminds the Israelites that the God issuing these threats is the same God who brought them and their ancestors out of Egypt, slavery, and guided them through the desert. Could it really be that Moses is using the heavy hands of fear and guilt to coerce the Israelites into obeying God?

Maybe at first blush…  but remember that Deuteronomy consists mainly of Moses’ instructions to the Israelites on the laws that will bind the nation once they reach the Promised Land. With this understanding, we can read the final paragraphs not as threats, but as warnings: if the Israelites do not act as a nation, a community – do not accept that their lives are inextricably interconnected – then they will cease to be a nation.  The horrifying curses are the disasters that befall a people who abandon each other. At its core, Ki Tavo is about the Israelites learning to become and to maintain a Jewish community.

Joining and maintaining community is difficult, and one must always work to find the community that suits them. I remember as a college senior, I really started to question the meaning, rituals, and values of Conservative Judaism, which was the only Judaism that I had known for my entire life. During Yom Kippur that year, I hopped from service to service, seeking a place where I could feel that the meaningfulness of the practice matched the meaningfulness of the holiday. Just last year, when I went home for Yom Kippur, the service that I had literally grown up with felt empty to me. It felt like I had grown out of my old spiritual community, and I needed something that was a better fit.  Now, as part of the Jewish Meditation Center (JMC) community, I am able to explore parts of Judaism and of myself that is just not possible at other venues. And once I found a community that suited me – once I realized that the JMC’s prosperity would impact my own prosperity – I began to take on obligations to ensure its continued success… like leading sits and writing this very blog.

This point extends beyond spiritual community. We are all members of myriad groups and organizations, both formal and informal, in our professional, personal, and social lives. We have all, consciously or unconsciously, been enriched by our membership in these communities, and we have all served to enrich others. Ki Tavo reminds us that our communities do not exist independently of us, the participants. The communities require our dedication and our commitment. Ki Tavo helps us remember why we need communities in the first place – because they offer us strength and identity.

For this week’s kavanah (intention), let us all be reminded of the alchemic interconnectedness that occurs when we participate in our communities. Let us feel what it means to derive strength and meaning from one another. Let us equally feel the powerful joy that flows from giving ourselves to that community, and let us prepare for the New Year by remembering that it is our New Year, and that it will be meaningful as long as we give it meaning.

I am looking forward to my visit next week at Isabella Freedman (IF) where I’ll be giving a course and practicing meditation and davenning with everyone. This was to have been Rabbi Lew’s course, but Lee Moore at IF asked me if I would fill in for him and of course I was happy to.

So I’ve been reading and thinking. Yehuda Amichai’s great last book “Open Closed Open.” And essays by Emmanuel Levinas. Both present what to me are deep and deeply true views of Judaism, yet both are – each in his own way – outside the pale of normative Jewish practice and thinking, Amichai as a basically secular Jewish poet, Levinas as a Western philosopher. (I suppose I am attracted to this odd phenomenon – of important views of Judaism that come both from within and without the tradition – because I am myself involved in this same process/paradox).

Amichai:

I want a god who is like a window I can open/ so I’ll see the sky even when I’m inside. / I want a god who is like a door that opens out, not in,/ but God is like a revolving door, which turns, turns on its hinges/ in and out, whirling and turning/ without a beginning, without an end.
(“God Changes, Prayers Are Here To Stay #2)

And Levinas:

Monotheism is not an arithmetics of the divine. It is the perhaps supernatural gift of seeing that one man (sic) is absolutely like another man (sic) beneath the variety of historical traditions kept alive in each case. It is a school of xenophilia and anti-racism.
(“Monotheism and Language in “Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism”)

I suppose our mission in Jewish meditation is to find our way to this revolving door God, this God of xenophilia, through our time on the meditation cushion; to feel rather than to believe or not believe God’s reality for a practical ethical inspired Jewish life that doesn’t exclude, but rather encourages and illuminates, normative Jewish practice and observance.