In this week’s parsha (Torah portion), Shemini (Eighth), Aaron and his sons begin to officiate as kohanim (priests) for the people of Israel after 7 days of inaugural training.

According to the parsha, Aaron and his sons conduct various sacrifices on the altar, and these sacrifices are consumed in fire by G-d. Everything seems to be going according to plan and in accordance with the how-to-sacrifice instructions that they recently learned. Then, Nadav and Avihu, Aaron’s two eldest priestly sons, come to the altar and offer a “strange fire before G-d,” one which “[G-d] had not commanded them” to bring. So what happens next? There was again fire… but this time, it consumed Nadav and Avihu and they died.

Like many other instances in the Torah, there are varied explanations of why this happened. Interpretations span from their flaming deaths representing punishment for sacrificing while drunk (an S.U.I.?) to the reward of a “holy-kiss” from above (beware of “first-base” with G-d) for being so eager in their worship, with many explanations in between.

Despite this passage already being loaded with potential interpretive meaning, it is what comes next that stopped me in my tracks. In response to this event, the Torah tells us that Aaron, the High Priest, the father of these two taken in flame by the very One they are all honoring through sacrifices, is silent. A father watches his sons die in front of him and his response is silence?! This gave me pause.

How can a father witness his sons’ deaths, whether as punishment or reward, and not say or do anything? How can we understand this image that seems to go so counter to human emotions and reactions?

It was in this questioning that I considered how easily and often I react to things that happen during my day. Most of the time, I am reacting to stimuli in my environment, not being fully conscious of the thoughts, memories, and emotions that are all contributing to what I do next. My meditation practice is an avenue to become more aware of the various voices and impulses in my consciousness that lead me to take a certain course of action. By making the space to be with whatever comes up, I am practicing not reacting. I am practicing being mindful of what is happening in the moment so I can better choose how best to act next.  I am pausing, I am breathing, I am silently witnessing.

For me, Aaron’s silence after this tragedy is like the breath I take to bring me back to my focus when I become distracted during my meditation. It is like the moment I try to take to ground myself in the present moment before reacting to an overwhelming situation. It is the pause between the stilumus and my impulse. It is the space that can transform reacting to responding.

Reading this story, I have no doubt that Aaron must have felt many strong emotions when he watched his sons die, but he chose to remain silent, possibly breathing with the swell of thoughts and feelings that were kicked up by this event. And in this, I am inspired to strive towards Aaron’s example: when faced with difficulties, whether on or off the meditation cushion, let us have the kavanah (intention) to take a silent breath, pause for a moment before we react, and witness what is coming up. Maybe then, we will wisely choose our next move.

This week, we are stepping away from the weekly Torah portion to focus more closely on the Passover, or Pesach, holiday. As my connection to Judaism and spirituality has grown, changed, faded, and then evolved entirely, so has my understanding of Passover and how it relates to my modern day life. Such is a struggle with many seemingly outdated traditions and Jewish customs.

The story of Passover takes us to Egypt, where the Jews were enslaved by the Pharoah. After G-d inflicts ten horrific plagues on the people of Egypt, sparing the Jews in captivity, the Pharoah finally has no choice but to free the Jews, allowing them to return to their homeland. Naturally, the Jews were thrilled to be released from bondage, and they ran. Quickly. So quickly the dough they had prepared for bread didn’t have time to rise. Hence, matzah.

Passover is traditionally welcomed with a seder (or two for Jewish communities outside of Israel), which is the Hebrew word for “order.” The seder includes a very specific set of rituals performed in a very specific order, which all retell the story of the Jews’ struggle to free themselves from slavery in Egypt and return to the homeland. Personal liberation symbolism abounds.

One part of the seder mentions four children, all of whom, in one way or another, just want to know what’s going on and why they should care. There is the wise one, the wicked one, the simple one and the one who does not know how to ask. I want to focus on the simple child, as I have seen him described as simple and indifferent, implying that his simplicity is due to apathy.

However, I see it differently. I view this simplicity as a form of innocence and progress; a freedom from distraction. In our busy, hectic, hyper-stimulated lives, we tend to overanalyze, over think and over question everything.

Shortly after I graduated from college, I lived in Israel, where I spent some time in the Negev. This experience, years later, is still one I remember as pivotal. Prior to my first trip to the desert I was in Jerusalem, exploring Judaism with a closer eye than I ever had before. Almost everything in my life came into question: my relationship with and understanding of G-d, religion, the people around me, and myself.

Two days out of Jerusalem, I found myself sleeping in a tent in the middle of the Negev. No electricity, no city bustle, just pure silence. It was almost instantly that I felt myself at ease, free from the urban noise (both literal and metaphorical) that had so forcefully weighed down on me up until that point in my life. I was free from distraction. I was the simple one.

It was during this time that I connected deeply with people who would become very important to my personal growth during my journey through Israel. The connections were natural, as though they were just waiting to happen. Without the urban commotion I was used to, I was able to relate more honestly to my newfound friends and, perhaps most importantly, to myself. I began my personal work of finding out who I was and how I wanted to be in this world; doing so in a gentle and tolerant way. I was asking myself questions I had never asked before, and connecting with my surroundings in a way I had never experienced. The desert provided the perfect backdrop by which to simply exist.

So I offer up this kavanah, or intention, for this week of Passover. As we prepare to sit, may we focus on simplifying our thoughts, creating a more compassionate and tolerant self. How can this simplicity allow us to confront ourselves and others with the questions that we truly need to ask? How can these simple and unadorned thoughts bring us greater clarity and mindfulness in our meditation practice and in our daily lives? And how, despite the urban hustle and bustle by which we may be surrounded, can we use simplicity to bring us closer to ourselves?

I have to admit I’ve avoided writing this for a long time. Not because I didn’t want to write about it and not because I don’t love the topic – as a long-time meditator, longer-time Jew, Jewish Meditation Center Board member and sit leader in my local community, I’m pretty involved. It’s just that when it comes to my own process as a Jew, and (eek) writing as a Jew? Let’s say I’m pretty ambivalent.

But I’m also a mom and a birth doula, and when I was asked to write about Jewish meditation and birth, too many of my identities were wrapped up too neatly for me to say no.

So, why the ambivalence?  I’d trace it back to my beginnings; as the eldest daughter of a first generation New York Jew and a converted Presbyterian from the Midwest, identity was always a bit fuzzy for me.  My mother’s mother is a lifelong church-goer and card-carrying member of the Daughters of the American Revolution; my father’s mother is a Modern Orthodox Holocaust survivor.  We took the Christmas tree down and up at least three times one winter when both sets of grandparents happened to be visiting at the same time.  It’s not an unusual story these days.

When Jewishness is both of you and not of you, claiming it, speaking for it, is a strange process.  I began a meditation practice as a teenager, but have never felt as at home in it as I do in Jewish meditation sits.  Yet, even today as I lead JMC-style sits in my home town of Beacon, I don’t have a particularly great response to the persistent question: “So, what makes this meditation Jewish?”  Sylvia Boorstein has the best answer I’ve heard yet; at a retreat I attended she said folks would ask her, “Why Jewish meditation?  Why not just meditate?  Why complicate it with Jewishness?”  Her answer:  “Because I am complicated with Jewishness.”

So, I am complicated with Jewishness.  Complicated  being the operative word.  Jewishness, it seems, has that affect on many of us.

And what does this all have to do with birth?  Nothing?  Everything?  These are not rhetorical questions.  Some more thoughts:

When you’re as obsessed with birth as a person needs to be to work with laboring women, birth metaphors are everywhere.  And in many ways, the process of pregnancy, labor, and delivery are the ultimate metaphor, combining so many of humanity’s deepest tropes – the endless patience, sacrifice, and waiting of gestation, the utter lack of control and surrender of it all, the deep adventure into the unknown, the vulnerability.  The endurance, strength, power, and struggle of labor and the breakthrough of delivery.  The profound transformation of the woman as she becomes a mother, as her body, heart, and mind are changed forever, and the profound transformation of nothingness into everythingness: a new human life.

Because the Jewish calendar operates with the moon, many of our most important holidays fall on the full moon.  Many pregnant women also go into labor on the full moon.  At 37 weeks, I felt what I thought were my first labor pains on the second night of Passover.  As I drove to our community seder, I called my doula to let her know.  “Maybe I’ll name my child Moses,” I thought, as I sat through the seder, pretending nothing was happening.  I sat with the story of the final plague – the slaying of the first born – in a different way that night, and I giggled as we talked about freedom from mitzrayim: the narrow passage.

As it turned out, my daughter – who is not named Moses – waited for the NEXT full moon, and after a short labor and a long two hours pushing through our own little mitzrayim, she was born on the 31^st day of the Omer: Tiferet in Hod.  The simple translation of that day would be the inner balance in beauty and multiplicity.  Sound familiar?

And what does that have to do with meditation?  Nothing?  Everything?

At the last meditation sit I led, a participant asked, “What’s the goal here?”  We talked about the goals each of us bring to our practice, and I closed by reminding us that some meditation teachers would be horrified by the idea of having a goal at all.  I’m all about goals for pretty much everything, but it is incredibly important to have the right kind of goal.  This is the same advice I give to clients who are preparing for birth.  Don’t set yourself up for disappointment with a goal you very well might not achieve, whether it be enlightenment, forgiving a difficult person, or an epic vaginal delivery where all you feel is love in your heart.  One of the greatest lessons birth has taught me is that we are not in control of anything but the lens we use to see the world.  And one of the greatest lessons meditation has taught me is how to know and use that lens. I’ve always liked the idea of Passover as a birthing story: we labored, the water parted, we passed through, and were born as a people.

May we use this Passover as an invitation to bring the lens of birth and rebirth to the journey from mitzrayim and find liberation.

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, Chayei Sarah, begins with the death of Sarah, at age 127. Abraham, her husband, purchases a burial property for her, and later marries another woman, Keturah,  who bears him six more children. He also sends his most senior servant to his birth land to find a wife for his son Isaac, and most of the parsha details this servant’s journey and discovery of Isaac’s bride, Rebecca.

The servant travels to the city of Nachor and begins his search for a wife for Isaac among the women gathering water from the well. Feeling unsure of how he will recognize the right woman, he prays to G-d for help, saying, “If I say to a girl, ‘Tip over your jug and let me have a drink,’ and she  replies, ‘Drink, and I will also water your camels,’ she will be the one whom You have designated for Your servant Isaac.” The first woman he approaches is Rebecca; when she offers him and his camels a drink, he knows he has found Isaac’s bride.

In the servant’s journey and his prayer to G-d, I saw a reflection of something I often think about: when we’re searching for something – be it a romantic partner, a new job, a new house, a new community – we can put ourselves out there and look, but at the end of the day, there is a lot of luck involved in us finding what we’re seeking. Accepting this reality can often be a struggle for me, and at times I grow discouraged and think, If so much of life is random and out of my control, why bother trying? I risk shutting down and shutting myself off from new connections and new opportunities.

There was a second part of the parsha that seemed to offer some inspiration for this struggle: as the servant is bringing Rebecca to meet Isaac, the Torah reads that he “went out to meditate in the field toward evening. He raised his eyes, and  saw camels approaching.” With the camels came Rebecca, who he not only wed but loved. I love this image, of Isaac sitting still in a lush field as, unbeknownst to him, his bride and future love is riding toward him. In this picture I see what meditation does for me: it stills the fear inside of me – of being hurt and disappointed, of things being out of my control – and helps me live with the fact that much of life is uncertain, and see that sometimes uncertainty can lead to positive outcomes.

So my kavanah (or intention) for this week is the following: let our meditation practice help us open our eyes to whatever life is bringing our way, and let us recognize that sometimes those things might be just what we’ve been looking for.

The JMC has been named by Slingshot ’11-’12 as one of the 50 most inspiring Jewish nonprofits in North America!

This is super exciting news that we wanted to share with everyone. Slingshot was created by a team of young funders as a guidebook to the most innovative and effective organizations and programs in North America. The guide, now in its 7th edition, has proven to be a catalyst for next generation funding, and it’s an incredible honor (check out the other groups included in this year’s guide- so awesome!) to be included for a second year in a row.

Check out the JMC page in Slingshot here!

Here’s some of what Slingshot had to say about the JMC:

At JMC, participants meditate together and then have thoughtful discussions about the weekly parsha and upcoming holidays. JMC offers weekly sitting meditation and has also added guest teachers and holiday workshops. JMC programs span denominations by bringing together unaffiliated Jews who reconnect to Judaism through JMC, with ritually observant Jews who feel JMC adds a meaningful component to spirituality….

JMC also works with a variety of partners, including synagogues, to weave meditation into Jewish communal life. In addition to establishing itself as a Jewish community in New York and promoting the use of meditation in Jewish life, JMC seeks to inspire or seed the creation of Jewish meditation communities across the country. JMC has begun to train leaders to return to their communities to launch groups in a variety of settings. JMC is also creating a set of best practices and resources to share with emerging communities.

Evaluators are encouraged by the early waves JMC is making in the community. “No other organization is working to bring spirituality to young Jews in this way,” one evaluator says. A Slingshot Fund member who has attended a “Beginner Sit” reports, “I was impressed how the meditation infused Judaism and framed it in a Jewish context. It was a warm, inviting space.” Another evaluator shares, “The organization is definitely hip, and I have no problem imagining this work opening the door to a whole new cadre of Jews.”

Can you imagine a thriving, grassroots Jewish Meditation Center of Brooklyn that acts as a replicable model and can usher in the next generation of Jewish meditation, provide resources and training, and help to create a national network of Jewish meditation communities? We can. And that’s exactly what we’re building, with your practice and support.

Read about us in Slingshot and click on over to www.jmcbrooklyn.org/donate.html to invest in the JMC today!

In this week’s parsha Moses, for the second time in the Torah, describes the Ten Commandments to the Israelites, and he also introduces them to the Shema, a central prayer. But at the very beginning of the parsha, in just a few brief lines, Moses tells how he pleaded with G-d to let him cross the Jordan River and enter the Promised Land. G-d rejects Moses’ plea; as Moses tells the Israelites, “G-d was angry with me because of you, and G-d did not listen to me.”

When I read this parsha, that line really leapt out at me. I thought about how Moses must have felt, to have led his people to the Promised Land only to be denied entrance, and not even because of something that he himself had done. I thought that he must have been so angry, not just that his plea was rejected, but also because others were granted that which he was not. And I thought of all the times in life that we strive for something only to be denied it in the end, while others, whom in our anger and disappointment, we may feel are less deserving than us, achieve the very thing we were denied.

I flashed to a time in my own life, a few years ago, when I lost a job I had worked toward for many years. The position was downsized, and instead of laying me off, the company shifted me to another job that not only was unrelated to the work I had done for many years, but also was not challenging or very interesting to me. Since this new job was in a completely different part of the building from where I’d worked before, it felt as if I suddenly had my own Jordan River that I was not allowed to cross. In the months that followed, I was angry all the time, and all I could see were the others who had jobs that, unlike me, they found fulfilling and enjoyable. I could not see that I was lucky to still have a job; instead, I felt I was being punished, and unfairly so.

One of the interpretations I read of this parsha highlighted one word that G-d speaks to Moses, after his plea is denied: “Rav lakh,” or, “You have so much.” G-d instructs Moses to “go up to the top of the hill, and lift up your eyes westward and northward and southward and eastward, and see with your eyes.” See where you are, and how beautiful it is, and how it is so much bigger than it felt in that moment of denial. Let go of what you thought you needed, so that you can fully realize what it is you already have.

For me, I finally came to see that I, too, had so much: I had a job at a time when many others were losing theirs. It may have been less challenging, but, because it was also less demanding, I now had the time and mental energy to work on myself after years of neglect. And when I started to do this work, I could see that the job I had wanted so much was no longer the right job me. But I could only see this once I let go of my anger and cleared my perspective.

Our meditation practice can help us achieve this perspective shift by quieting the thoughts that make us cling to goals we may have outgrown without even realizing it. So my kavanah (intention) is this: Whether you are meditating at the weekly JMC sit, at home, or just thinking about it as you read this on your computer screen, you are making the choice to widen your view. Let us use this choice as an opportunity to climb to the top of the hill, look in all directions, and change our perspective. Let it allow us to see that, no matter where we are right now, we already have so much.

This week’s Torah portion, Tazria, explains that during specific periods in a person’s life,
she or he must spend time in physical seclusion, truly alone, in order to return physically and
spiritually to a balanced state of being; once a person returns to this place of balance, she is
then ready to return to the welcoming arms of the community. Tazria begins with a discussion
of the seclusion and purification period that women were required to go through after giving
birth. Yet the majority of the portion discusses the mandated period of isolation that had to be
undertaken by a person stricken with tzara’at, a disease usually translated as leprosy. People
who developed physical symptoms associated with this disease, such as patches of white hair and
scaly discolored skin, had to report to the Priest, Aaron, or to one of his sons, and if the diagnosis
of tzara’at was confirmed, the prescribed treatment was immediate isolation. Yet interestingly,
according to many commentators, tzara’at was not leprosy at all, but actually a kind of spiritual
disorder or confusion, and one of the ways in which this spiritual disordering manifested was as
physical symptoms.

When I first started reading Tazria, I initially felt disappointed- what did leprosy have to do
with my life in 2011 and the lives of the people I know? But the commentaries, in describing
tzara’at in spiritual terms, provided me with an entry point, a way to connect. Commentary after
commentary discussed spiritual affliction and the ways in which seclusion, silence, time alone,
can and do provide an essential part of the answer to healing oneself and one’s soul. I started
to think, what helps me when I feel confused, conflicted, in a state of imbalance? In our day-to-
day lives, we speak and interact constantly, and often, in auto-pilot mode, I immediately turn to
friends and family when I am in need of support. But then, at some point, I realize that it is time
once again to turn to myself for answers, or at least for more specific questions. Basically, it is
time to sit again, to do the inner work that only I can do for myself.

And why do I do it? When something is not quite right internally and I am not tending to
myself, I find that my interactions are often not quite right as well. Maybe this is why the Torah
mandated such periods of seclusion. A state of spiritual confusion that goes undiagnosed and
untended often harms more than just the afflicted person; members of the community may suffer
as well, a kind of spiritual second-hand smoke. So I attempt to return to my breath and see what
arises, because sitting here is about much more than I initially understood: it is about offering up
my own attempts at inner healing in an effort to bring more balance to my interactions and to the
lives with which my own life is intertwined.

Those afflicted with tzara’at were required to seclude themselves in order to heal themselves,
but those who meditate are, admirably, choosing to do so through meditation. When you are
about to meditate or during a meditation session, you might consider why have you chosen the
silence and internal seclusion of meditation at and in that moment. How does the seclusion heal
you or re-balance you?

This week’s Torah portion, Sh’mini, begins on the eighth day of the consecration of
the tabernacle (or mishkan) which is the traveling dwelling place for God’s presence.
Moses summons Aaron, his sons, and the elders of Israel and instructs them on the varied
offerings they will be bringing before God with the hope of God revealing him/herself.
Once the sacrifices were complete to the precise order of God, the people were then
bestowed with the sight of “God’s glory.” After the offering, God tells Moses and Aaron
to inform the children of Israel of the laws of kashrut or being kosher. The requirements
for edible mammals include having split hooves and being able to chew their own cud.
Animals who have just one of the two requirements are deemed non-kosher such as
the pig, which is clearly the one that gets the most non-kosher attention in the Jewish
community. The pig is also the only one indicated in the torah who has the split hooves
but does not chew its own cud. From the outside the pig can pass as a seemingly kosher
animal; however, its inner process does not match what is visible to the world. This
concept reminds me of discussions had around Purim and the concept of going through
life wearing masks or presenting a face to the world that may not match our own inner
being.

Perhaps you had a day at work that required you to put on a persona that you do not feel
matches who you really are. Or maybe you had to schmooze with people that required
a lot of external focus and you have yet to check in with yourself and your breath today.
Wherever you are, I invite you to center yourself by bringing your attention back to
the very thing that sustains you; your breath. For the first sit I would like to offer the
kavannah, or intention, of using your breath as a vehicle to leave the masks aside and
draw your attention to your inner self.

The parsha goes on to talk about the laws of ritual purity which include the purifying
power of the mikvah or pool of water. Rabbi David Cooper says in his book God is
a Verb, “Mastery in purity comes through contemplation.” Rabbi Cooper goes on
to describe the goal of purity within spiritual or contemplative practice as being “to
minimize or eliminate thoughts that cause inner conflict.”

Reduction in inner conflict has been one of the greatest benefits I have found for myself
within my own meditation practice. Friends of mine will often hear me talk about making
a big decision and say “I need to meditate on it”. Meditation has been a source of quiet
and calm in my own thinking and has helped purify my opinions, feelings and desires and
weed out external factors that can muddle my decision-making ability. There are many
factors we take into account when making decisions or determining our own feelings,
some of which are largely unimportant to the matter at hand. We often get swept away in
the “coulds”, “shoulds” and “woulds” of our mind’s dialogue which often contributes to
our impurity of thought thus bringing us distress.

I would like to invite you to take a step in bringing this “purity” to your own practice.

Bring your attention to your breath, and when your mind inevitably wanders, observe
your thoughts or feelings (however “pure” or “unpure”) without judging them. Gently
bring your attention back to your breath. In the first sit, I offered the intention of
using the breath to tune in to your inner self. In this next sit try and let the “coulds”
and “shoulds” be replaced with the practice of returning to the breath so as to breathe
purity into your inner process.