The Temple is gone, but through our observance of shabbat, we continue to engineer this yichud, this conjugal visit between God and the Shechinah, although I couldn't say for certain who is the prisoner and who the visitor. But while Kabbalists imagine this reunion as a day-long bliss-filled sexual liaison, I can't quite. How could the fact of separation, the pain of separation, not come with them into the bedchamber? I imagine God and the Shechinah, instead, sitting in the Holy of Holies, maybe at a card table dealing out a game of gin. "So," one of them asks the other, "how's this separation thing working for you?" And it turns out they both hate it. But they know that longing is key to the world they birthed and now they are trapped by their Creation. It is too late or maybe just too early to go back to the great undifferentiated Infinite.

Like an eclipse or a comet, Birkat HaChamah makes me feel both big and small. Certainly tiny in relation to the Heavens; but somehow large in knowing that I, too, am a naturally-occurring part of all this vastness. The blessing we make is purposely vast. Instead of using our usual morning liturgy in which we bless God for creating the heavenly lights, in this instance we bless God as Oseh Ma'aseh V'reishit -- the catalyst of all Creation.