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B’rukhah haTikvah
Blessed be my hope, which continues to live. May it be not fantasy but demand. A demand upon heaven and a demand upon earth. May hope be rewarded, speedily, in our time. Rewarded with peace. Rewarded with breath. Rewarded with ordinary, unremarkable coexistence. Rewarded with yet more hope.
Today is the 6th day of the 7 days of the 6th week of the 7 weeks of the Omer. And here we are in the 6th year of the 7-year shmitah cycle. What does it mean to be in the 6, anticipating the 7?
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai died and was buried on Mt. Meron, having instructed his disciples to visit his grave and celebrate his memory annually. Which is what was happening yesterday, because the number of his disciples has grown, no longer ten, but tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and includes all of those people who were there, just as it includes us as well.
Oh to be so impervious! To hold the weight of the hardship of the people and for it not to absorb through our skin and into our bones! But no, we are so porous. N’kavim n’kavim chalulim chalulim as we say in our morning prayers. We are porous and penetrable! We were made that way.
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This seventh day of Pesach is an intersection of Shabbat time, Passover time, mythic story, Divine names, the coming of dew, and the poetry of our medieval ancestors. It brings to mind obstacles, liberation, and love. (Or just scroll down for the treats.)
Read moreOn Shabbat HaGadol we read from the prophet Malachi, who envisions a time when the hearts of children turn toward parents and the hearts of parents toward children. How do we turn our hearts to all the ancestors and to the people who will follow us on this earth? What is the healing we need and the healing we can offer?
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Why don’t Jews count people? No sooner do we count ourselves than we notice our extreme vulnerability and ephemerality in this life and this world. And thus the inherent bravery implied in the phrase “stand up and be counted.”
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Unlike some depictions, Esther had no need to swoon when she entered Achashverosh's throne room. After all, she was garbed in Shechinah.
I explore this moment and its mysticism more deeply in an article in Evolve Magazine. Click here.
We are in a kind of oasis moment right now. A place of respite does not need to be the perfect place or the best place. It just needs to be enough. And the relief and rest we feel will be real.
The author as summer camp rabbi, Oconomowoc, WI, 1975. Photo by Dawn Weiner-Kaplow.
Tomorrow is the simcha of my smicha – my rabbinic ordination. It means so much to me after a wait of more than half a century. But history waits for no simcha, and we have to also look at this week’s insurrection in our capital.
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Despite the “good riddance 2020” memes, I actually feel that the last year, with all its challenges and surprises, needs to be seen and considered. I think about our forefather Jacob, who this week gives a farewell assessment of each of his twelve unruly sons. I know how much we want to say goodbye to these last twelve unruly months that brought us so much angst, but let’s take a look.
Making friends with Jesus, figuring out a handle for Christ, and managing Jewish Christmas guilt.
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Joseph, Overseer of Pharaoh’s Granaries. By Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1874. Source: Wikipedia.
One often-overlooked dimension of Joseph’s hiddenness has to do with his gender. Torah keeps pointing to something unusual about it. This includes references to his looks, his emotions, his social role, even his body.
Read moreI return from a 6-week leave of absence with questions , raised by an unfortunate meeting of home and car, about my own mind’s sudden leave of absence.
Read moreI am worried that our will to live is being depleted. Not that people are dying because they gave up. Although clearly the world has become less hospitable, and our assessment of what future we might look forward to has shifted. But I'm talking about something beyond that. There is something about the usual flow of life through us and through this Creation that feels to be at risk.
And here we are, wondering how to be part of this transformation, how to tend and cultivate it; how to keep it from becoming something dreadful and instead inch it toward something beautiful. I somehow picture it like that befuddling Olympic sport, curling. We can't force this rebirthing world to move forward the way we want. But we can skate alongside with brooms, and create the subtle conditions for it to gently incline toward blessing.
Read moreLet us not mistake this world of politics and rancor as the only world in which we exist. This is a saturated, hydro-charged Cosmos.
Read moreAnd there it was. My unspoken conviction that all fruition must come before age 60, while I'm still young in my own estimation. That if I didn't achieve whatever on some timeline, then I'd failed, and I might as well give it up. I sat there and laughed at myself, willing to deny my future self all sorts of fulfillment and joy, just because I thought 60 was too old.
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I have nothing to say about it. No way to beautify this extreme weather story. No silver lining to offer. Our species long ago stripped the planet of silver linings, using them as shiny decorations on the edifice of unsustainable living.
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The journey that we are on itself is a Divine Name. Each stop on it is a letter. This journey through stations of sorrow and hope, outrage and love, grief and fear and fatigue and coziness too. Each stop, each encampment wants to be noticed and counted, lest in retrospect it become a blur.
Reflections on Parashat Mas'ei during COVID times.