Parsha Behar-Bechukotai has two sections. The first, Behar, deals primarily with the rules and regulations pertaining to the land of Israel. We read of the sabbatical (Shmitta) years, in which the land was to lie fallow one out of every seven years, and relate this to observing Shabbat each week. We also read that there was a Jubilee year every fifty years, which offered the opportunity for anyone who sold himself or herself into servitude, to redeem himself or herself. Leviticus concludes with a graphic vision of the desolation of the land of Israel and the dispersal of the people if, after entering the land, they failed to fulfill the Covenant obligations of the Torah. The land belongs to G-d, and must be respected in order to reap its bounty—though we own nothing, we must steward the gifts bequeathed to us.

The second section, Bechukotai, deals with the ways that we are required to treat other Jews and other people: we are commanded not to wrong each other, especially in financial transactions. Failure to abide these commands would result in exile and oppression, and are couched as a warning, where they are described in terrifying terms of suffering.

I often consider how I’d define Judaism. I’ve come to believe that our religion can be defined in one word: Shabbat. G-d commanded that we observe Shabbat above all other ‘holidays,’ and to remember and sanctify this day as a reminder that G-d rested after creating the heavens and the earth. Our labors are rewarded with rest in order to enjoy the fruits of our efforts and prepare ourselves to begin the cycle again.

The concept of a day of rest, where one is not required to perform the obligations of the other six days of the week, I see as a gift rather than a series of restrictions. We perform daily tasks and rituals to survive and we are blessed with a day of rest; similarly, we are commanded to allow the land bequeathed to us to also rest, so as to be nourished and re-fertilized before it must provide the bounty of grains, vegetables, and fruits that sustain us and all other beings on this planet.

My kavanah for this week is an invitation to look at our meditation practice as a little taste of Shabbat that we perform to center and restore ourselves in small measure before we enjoy Shabbat at weeks end. How will you use this opportunity to center and reflect on this day as you prepare for the next? What gifts come from this practice and ultimately, from the observance of a full day to enjoy the fruits of our labors?

This week’s Torah portion, Bamidbar, literally translating to “in the desert” begins the book of Numbers, a collection of stories pertaining to the children of Israel during their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. The book gets it’s name from the events that open the book a little over two years after the events of the exodus from Egypt.

God says to Moses  “Take a census of the whole Israelite community by their clans and families, listing every man by name, one by one.”  The Torah portion for the most part relays the outcome of this census and deals with various number counts. The text states that the reason for this census is for military purposes. God says, “You and Aaron are to count according to their divisions all the men in Israel who are twenty years old or more and able to serve in the army.”  The text goes on to describe leaders of each tribe,  the arrangement of encampments under military to banners, and a separate Levite census which continues into the next portion of Naso.

But the rabbis saw a different message in the counting: they said that God’s children being counted is similar to someone counting a valued possession. The rabbi’s saw the census as a symbol of God’s possessive love for the people.

I decided to look at the Haftorah for a deeper insight into this idea. [The practice of reading Haftora came about during a time when Jews were under persecution, and they weren't able to read Torah publicly. The  rabbis chose chapters from the books of the prophets and the writings which related in some way to the weekly Torah portion.] This week’s Haftorah comes from the book of Hosea and the seeming connection is that when Hosea speaks of God redeeming the nation of Israel from exile (“the number of the children of Israel will be like the sand of the sea, which can be neither measured nor counted”) there’s an obvious parallel between the census being taken in Bamidbar and the inability to count Israel in a future time due to it’s vast growth.

I saw a deeper message of God’s love in the complicated story of Hosea’s life. According to the text, Hosea is commanded by God to take a woman, who is referred to as a “harlot,” as a wife and to have children with her. The typical interpretation is that this woman wasn’t a prostitute, but she was a woman whose ways would lead to promiscuity. Hosea took her as a wife and had children with her. He loved her very deeply but she inevitably strayed from him on many occasions. Each time she had no
choice but to return to him, and each time he took her back out of the love and deep commitment he had for her. From this experience, Hosea began to feel a sympathy towards the God of Israel. He saw a parallel of his own experiences with his wife to the relationship of God to the Jewish people.

This people, in relationship with God, were asked to be faithful to God. At times they were, but on many occasions they were not. The people would stray and fail at the charge they were given as a nation. Eventually they would ask forgiveness, and God
would take them back, just like Hosea and his wife.

The text actually says that God commanded Hosea to marry this woman but many commentators, including Abraham Joshua Heschel, don’t believe that was the sequence of events. They believe that Hosea married a woman that he truly loved,  and through this experience of love, commitment and subsequent betrayel he developed an understanding of God’s relationship to Israel. Through this relationship, he was inspired to bring this message to the world. Hosea became a great proponent of spreading the word of God’s continuing love for his people, despite their inconsistent reciprocation. I think this is a beautiful
story that shows us just why God wants to count and recount the nation of Israel.

It’s my kavanah that we can sit with awareness and realize when we’re loved and when we should give love back. We have loved ones who ask of us and expect of us. Are we there for them? Do we give to them when they need us?

We each have a relationship with God. God calls to us and charges us with Torah. Do we listen? Do we act?

We each have a soul that asks for feeding, a body that asks for support. Do we sustain them? Do we support them?

Let us have intention to those who ask of us and to that which is asked of us.
Let us have compassion and patience to those who we ask of and to that which we ask of ourselves.

The Haftora (and this blog) ends with a beautiful verse speaking of this undying love that is recited daily at the wrapping of the tefilin: “I will betroth you to me forever. And I will betroth you to me with righteousness, with justice, with kindness and with mercy.  And I will betroth you to me with fidelity. And you will know God.”

Shabbat Shalom

Parsha Re’eh – ראה – Deuteronomy 11:26-16:17

This week’s parsha, Re’eh, begins with the line “See (re’eh), I place before you today a blessing and a curse.” Basically, Moses is offering the Israelites two options: follow the rules and be blessed; abandon God and be cursed. Moses instructs the people on the laws of the Temple, Kashrut, tithing, the Sabbatical year, and the three pilgrim festivals of Sukkot, Pesach, and Shavuot.

I love the idea of holding blessings and curses together. There’s a not so subtle directive that in order to discern between the two and choose a direction, we have to truly see what is placed before us. Through meditation we allow ourselves to create space in our lives to check in with our mind and heart. Sitting with and holding our deepest truths, fears, desires, we often find that it’s complicated. Blessings and curses, good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant- the longer we sit with something, the more our judgments and preconceptions shift and blend. We all know of someone who got exactly what they wished for and they still weren’t happy. Many times, we sit with physical pain and find that it’s a gateway to insight.

For most of my childhood, I took painting classes. One of the most important lessons was that if you were going to paint an apple (for example), you have to erase the idea of an apple from your brain and simply paint what you see. Painting an apple based on an established or even subconscious image of what an apple is supposed to look like will hold back your creative process and your resulting work won’t be very good. The art teachers who impacted me the most taught me to draw the space between objects, paint things upside down, and train my brain to see things as they are and not how I remember them or want them to be. When reading this week’s parsha, which starts with the instruction to “see,” these lessons came immediately to mind.

Meditation practice is a way to retrain our minds to see our thoughts, our lives, our histories, as they really are. Following Moshe’s instruction to see before us a blessing and a curse, we see that it’s rarely either/or and often both at the same time. We can mindfully use our Jewish practices, that Moses expounds upon in Re’eh, to know that our seeing and our understanding allows us to find our own path to blessings. As we sit in meditation, we may also find that the path itself is blessed.

A quick kavanah, intention, to guide practice: As you sit, follow your breath. Whenever you find that your mind has wandered, gently return to the present moment. Check in with your breath, your posture, and see what has drawn your attention from your intended focus. Allow yourself to see what you identify as a blessing and a curse and whether these designations shift as you watch them. Remind yourself that this is your task: to see before you blessings and curses and to learn to see them clearly.

I was looking up some mystical interpretations for Shabbat, and I started thinking about how you are supposed to get a new soul (or vayinafash, get re-souled), and found the phrase for that special extra shabbat soul- “neshama yesairah.” Apparently Rashi defined this phrase as a “widened heart for resting and happiness,” which for some reason made my mind leap to Chogyam Trungpa’s explanation of the spiritual warrior’s heart:

“When you awaken your heart, you find to your surprise that your heart is empty. You find that you are looking into outer space. What are you, who are you, where is your heart? If you really look, you won’t find anything tangible or solid… If you search for the awakened heart, if you put your hand through your rib cage and feel for it, there is nothing there but tenderness. You feel sore and soft, and if you open your eyes to the rest of hte world, you feel tremendous sadness. This sadness doesn’t come from being mistreated. You don’t feel sad because someone has insulted you or because you feel impoverished. Rather, this experience of sadness is unconditioned. It occurs because your heart is completely open, exposed. It is the pure raw heart. Even if a mosquito lands on it, you feel so touched… It is this tender heart of a warrior that has the power to heal the world.”

It’s a sort of graphic description of the power and importance of softening your heart- that opening our hearts is sometimes painful, but through that pain and messiness is the only way to be touched by the world and, in that exchange, heal.

It bothers me that sometimes worship on Shabbat is so happy happy happy- that there’s no space in some circles for feeling the weight of the past week, the past lifetime, and holding that along with the lightness and bliss of Shabbat. What I mean is that I am really interested in transforming that “unconditioned sadness” into compassion and peace and joy through Shabbat, not try to set all of that aside for Shabbat.

Also, while I’m pondering this new soul business, I love the concept of getting re-ensouled for Shabbat, but it doesn’t make that much sense to me that the new Shabbat soul completely disappears after Havdalah- I’m wondering what remnants of that new soul, what residual joy and peace and lovingkindness gets mixed up with your regular soul and is incorporated more and more each week. My hope is that, like Trungpa’s idea of an empty heart, each time I am resouled through Shabbat, there is more tenderness and less tangibility, a waking up of my soul, an opening of my heart, and a chance to practice making everything holy, at least one day a week.

Shabbat shalom! I’ve been thinking about the idea that all of this Jewish meditation stuff is nice, but who has time? The truth is that sometimes we just don’t have time to do everything we would like to do. It’s a good practice to see what usually falls away, what doesn’t actually have a high priority, even if we think it does. I love the idea of Shabbat- even if I don’t usually celebrate it in the most traditional of ways. I like that it’s a reminder. It’s every week. Without fail. Very reliable. Shabbat is when the week takes a breath. When we can take a short break from the whirlwind of the every day. In whatever way makes sense to us. It’s sort of like when I ask my parents for advice. It doesn’t mean I’m going to follow it, but I like knowing it’s there.

From Heschel’s The Sabbath:

To set apart one day a week for freedom, a day on which we would not use the instruments which have been so easily turned into weapons of destruction, a day for being with ourselves, a day of detachment from the vulgar, of independence of external obligations, a day on which we stop worshipping the idols of technical civilization, a day on which we use no money, a day of armistice in the economic struggle with our fellow men and the forces of nature– is there any institution that holds out a greater hope for man’s progress than the Sabbath?

Lovely, huh? Here’s some more:

In the tempestuous ocean of time and toil there are islands of stillness where man may enter a harbor and reclaim his dignity. The island is the seventh day, the Sabbath, a day of detachment from things, instruments and practical affairs as well as of attachment to the spirit

And, one last thing, from E.Ginsburg:

Shabbat is divinity in the modality of time.