Some of us have bodies that can’t keep pace with the activity of our minds or the desires of our hearts. Some of us have thoughts bursting like fireworks in our heads but which cannot find their way out of our mouths in the form of comprehensible speech. Some of our bodies pose staggering challenges for ourselves or for our loved ones. And still, our very existence is a song of praise to God, a Psalm to this Universe.
Read moreParashat Vayechi: Dancing in the Present
Many of us here in Northern California are also, like Jacob, transplants. We left the droughts of our youth, thirsting maybe not for water, but for acceptance, for adventure, for love, for freedom. We sought our redemption in the farthest end of this country.
Read moreThe Torah of Nature
As Diaspora Jews, we've been forcibly separated from Nature through our history of confinement to shtetlach and laws prohibiting us from working the land. We conceive of Jewish life and Jewish culture as being urban. Our prayers, after all, happen indoors. But our texts do not require this, and those who go outdoors to pray find new life breathed right into them. Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav used to require his Chasidim to take walks in the woods, and to pray their hearts not in Hebrew, but in whatever words naturally came to them as they walked under the branches and leaves.
Read moreToldot: Visualize and Act
But Rebecca is a remarkable character. Isaac, let's face it, does not add much to the story of our people. He is the creme filling in the Abraham-Jacob sandwich. It is really Rebecca, not Isaac, who is the key player of that generation. She takes up the matter of our People's destiny and acts on it, just as Abraham did by leaving home, and as Jacob did by returning home.
Read moreVayera: Open Your Eyes. Oy, Open Your Eyes.
God, perhaps through the angel, opens Hagar's eyes and she sees the well. There is no indication that this is a miraculous well. It is not Miriam's well that legend tells us appeared in times of need. In fact, there is no indication that the well "appears" at all. It is already there, and Hagar simply "sees" it. Much as Abraham, one chapter later, holding a knife over the bound body of his second son, "sees" a ram caught in a thicket, that he hadn't seen a moment earlier, and offers it as a sacrifice instead. Two children, each saved by sudden sight. In each case, no new thing appeared, unless that new thing was openness to a new possibility.