I noticed the other day, as I was making a personal petition to God, that what I was praying for was that God should help me accomplish my goals. Suddenly such prayer seemed very wrong, almost idolatrous, as if instead of worshipping God, I was worshipping my own ambitions/desires, and subordinating God, too, to this foreign god. Please help me accomplish this, help me succeed, . . .
The realization came as a tremendous relief. Instead of asking God to do my will, I thought, I should be asking myself to do His will. Of course, there is the problem of knowing what His will is, and to some extent, some of my personal goals do involve things related to what I perceive to be His will – Help me to spread your Torah, for instance. Nonetheless, the emphasis is different. The question is – whose will is at the center of the enterprise, God’s or mine? And I find it a tremendous relief to remember to bend to His, to remember to place my own little life and its little obstacles and goals and successes in the cosmic scheme of service to the Holy One. Instead of bending God down to me, I feel myself being elevated by the thought – love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Give yourself completely over to Him.
The thought reminded me of a famous rabbinic expression – aseh retzono kiretzonkha kide sheya’aseh retzonkha kiretzono – make His will like your will so that He will make your will like His will. Align yourself to His plan and He will indeed help you succeed. You will be on the same team.
Looking at the parsha with this thought in my mind, I was struck by the end of Yaakov’s prayer for help upon hearing of Esav’s threatening approach with 400 men. Yaakov says – please help me for I fear he will kill me and my whole family, and You, God, told me that my offspring would be many. Normally, I read this cynically enough – Yaakov is trying to remind God to keep his promises. This year, though, it struck me that Yaakov is telling us something about the place from which this prayer emerges inside him – He is not just praying to God to help him accomplish his own, tiny Yaakov’s personal goals – the continuation of his family line – no, no – Yaakov has aligned himself with God’s plans for him, with the destiny that God has ordained for him, and it is out of this alignment of will that he cries out. He cries out because there seems to be a possible disruption not to his own personal plans, but to Yaakov’s understanding of his own role in God’s plan for history, in his divine destiny.
The difference is subtle but essential – Yaakov understood his place in God’s world, understood himself as a servant of God, one with a role to play in the divine plan, and it is out of this understanding that he cries out.
May we know how to turn to God with a heart of service.
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Friday, November 14, 2014
Parashat Hayei Sarah and the Eternity of Hesed: In Honor of My Father's First Yahrtzeit
Avraham’s central trait – what he brings into the world that helps begin the process of fixing it – is hesed, loving kindness. We have already seen other acts of his hesed -- reaching out to others to invite them into his home and interceding on their behalf in war and in prayer – but in this week’s parsha we catch a glimpse of the ultimate act of hesed, one that can never be reciprocated --- burial, the final kindness shown to the dead.
Burial teaches us something important about the nature of hesed – hesed keeps going; it has no end. A person dies and you think – that’s it. The love, the connection, the relationship is over. But no – the fact that you can still do an act of hesed for the dead, the fact that this act is considered the purest form of hesed there is teaches us that hesed does not die, that something of a connection of love always remains in the world.
Of God’s hesed, we say ki le’olam hasdo – it is forever, and I think this is inherent in the nature of hesed. It is not just love, but a loyal love that says – I will stick with you through thick and thin and never leave. That’s why God praises our ability to follow Him in the desert as hesed -- zakharti lakh hesed ne’urayikh -- I have remembered the hesed of your youth – how you followed Me – were steadfast and loyal to Me through the difficult period of the desert. That is what hesed is – a love that continues, keeps going, even, it turns out, after death. That is also why Ruth’s actions are called hesed -- she is said to have acted with hesed toward both “the living and the dead.”
Hesed is love that never ends. It is love that has an overflowing quality to it – like Rivkah’s pronouncement that she will draw water not just for Eliezer, but also for his camels – that is how hesed works. It doesn’t stop at Eliezer, just as it doesn’t stop in time – it overflows, keeps giving.
It keeps giving because it sets into motion a never-ending chain of hesed. The parsha’s two big deaths – that of Sarah at one end and that of Avaham at the other end – frame for us the continuing life that emerges in the middle – how Rivkah continues this hesed and a new couple, a new generation of hesed, is begun, born out of the hesed of the last generation. Love breeds more love. They continue, we continue the legacy of hesed -- hesed does not die, but is constantly growing and building more hesed in the world.
Olam Hesed Yivbaneh (Psalms 89:3)-- the world is built out of love. God created the universe out of the stuff of love, and He and we continue constantly to build it out of love. Love is what makes the world go round. It is the past, the present as well as the future, the ground we walk on.
I ask myself two questions, now, after a year of my father’s absence: 1) what is missing for me, and 2) what remains of the relationship – and the answer to both is the same – love. What is missing is the love, and also what remains is the love.
I miss his special way of zero-ing in on me and supporting me and loving me like no one else can.
At the same time, I carry that love with me. Lying next to my youngest son, Asher, at bedtime one night, I feel the intensity of my love for him and think – what good does such love do? What does he get from it? And then I feel what my own parents gave me, and know the answer – love is a protective shield, an aura, an angel, we carry with us. Does it protect us? Not outwardly. We can still get sick, we can still have troubles. But in some deep way, it surrounds us and buoys us and carries us through life and helps us stand and withstand.
We say that God is magen Avraham -- a shield for Avraham, and therefore, in some sense, a shield for us all. There is a Hasidic notion that every act of hesed a person does draws down God’s hesed from above. Avraham created a shield of love through his acts of hesed in the world.
What remains after someone dies? Love remains because it is eternal. Through his love, my father brought down for me God’s love, and I will always carry this love with me, like a protective cloud, wherever I go.
Burial teaches us something important about the nature of hesed – hesed keeps going; it has no end. A person dies and you think – that’s it. The love, the connection, the relationship is over. But no – the fact that you can still do an act of hesed for the dead, the fact that this act is considered the purest form of hesed there is teaches us that hesed does not die, that something of a connection of love always remains in the world.
Of God’s hesed, we say ki le’olam hasdo – it is forever, and I think this is inherent in the nature of hesed. It is not just love, but a loyal love that says – I will stick with you through thick and thin and never leave. That’s why God praises our ability to follow Him in the desert as hesed -- zakharti lakh hesed ne’urayikh -- I have remembered the hesed of your youth – how you followed Me – were steadfast and loyal to Me through the difficult period of the desert. That is what hesed is – a love that continues, keeps going, even, it turns out, after death. That is also why Ruth’s actions are called hesed -- she is said to have acted with hesed toward both “the living and the dead.”
Hesed is love that never ends. It is love that has an overflowing quality to it – like Rivkah’s pronouncement that she will draw water not just for Eliezer, but also for his camels – that is how hesed works. It doesn’t stop at Eliezer, just as it doesn’t stop in time – it overflows, keeps giving.
It keeps giving because it sets into motion a never-ending chain of hesed. The parsha’s two big deaths – that of Sarah at one end and that of Avaham at the other end – frame for us the continuing life that emerges in the middle – how Rivkah continues this hesed and a new couple, a new generation of hesed, is begun, born out of the hesed of the last generation. Love breeds more love. They continue, we continue the legacy of hesed -- hesed does not die, but is constantly growing and building more hesed in the world.
Olam Hesed Yivbaneh (Psalms 89:3)-- the world is built out of love. God created the universe out of the stuff of love, and He and we continue constantly to build it out of love. Love is what makes the world go round. It is the past, the present as well as the future, the ground we walk on.
I ask myself two questions, now, after a year of my father’s absence: 1) what is missing for me, and 2) what remains of the relationship – and the answer to both is the same – love. What is missing is the love, and also what remains is the love.
I miss his special way of zero-ing in on me and supporting me and loving me like no one else can.
At the same time, I carry that love with me. Lying next to my youngest son, Asher, at bedtime one night, I feel the intensity of my love for him and think – what good does such love do? What does he get from it? And then I feel what my own parents gave me, and know the answer – love is a protective shield, an aura, an angel, we carry with us. Does it protect us? Not outwardly. We can still get sick, we can still have troubles. But in some deep way, it surrounds us and buoys us and carries us through life and helps us stand and withstand.
We say that God is magen Avraham -- a shield for Avraham, and therefore, in some sense, a shield for us all. There is a Hasidic notion that every act of hesed a person does draws down God’s hesed from above. Avraham created a shield of love through his acts of hesed in the world.
What remains after someone dies? Love remains because it is eternal. Through his love, my father brought down for me God’s love, and I will always carry this love with me, like a protective cloud, wherever I go.
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
You Built Your Sukkah: Now Live in It!
In the desert, God built us sukkot to protect us from the elements. In Ledavid Hashem Ori Veyishi, the Psalm we have been reciting since the beginning of Elul, we say that God hides us in a sukkah on a bad day. The sukkah is the feeling we have of having God around us to protect us and guide us and weather the weather with us.
In the desert, God built our sukkah, but today we build our own sukkah. Indeed, we have spent the past month and a half building it. It is made of our prayers and repentance; it is woven out of our desire to be close to God – our statement of ahat sha’alti – one thing I desire and it is to dwell in God’s house. Out of these words, this song of the soul, this yearning, is indeed built a kind of sukkah, a place for us to dwell where we may feel God’s presence and protection.
The sukkah does not come out of thin air. People often complain – I would pray, but I don’t believe in God. The order is the opposite – one comes to believe in God through the very act of praying. You have to construct your own sukkah in this life, your own sacred space where you help yourself feel the divine. It is just as much work as the physical act of building that hut. And that is the work we have been doing these past weeks.
Sukkot is the holiday where we say – You built your sukkah; now live in it! In other words – you have worked so hard on this relationship; now enjoy it and live in it. Live in it now and carry it with you through the year. Reap the harvest.
In the desert, God built our sukkah, but today we build our own sukkah. Indeed, we have spent the past month and a half building it. It is made of our prayers and repentance; it is woven out of our desire to be close to God – our statement of ahat sha’alti – one thing I desire and it is to dwell in God’s house. Out of these words, this song of the soul, this yearning, is indeed built a kind of sukkah, a place for us to dwell where we may feel God’s presence and protection.
The sukkah does not come out of thin air. People often complain – I would pray, but I don’t believe in God. The order is the opposite – one comes to believe in God through the very act of praying. You have to construct your own sukkah in this life, your own sacred space where you help yourself feel the divine. It is just as much work as the physical act of building that hut. And that is the work we have been doing these past weeks.
Sukkot is the holiday where we say – You built your sukkah; now live in it! In other words – you have worked so hard on this relationship; now enjoy it and live in it. Live in it now and carry it with you through the year. Reap the harvest.
Friday, September 12, 2014
On Teshuva (Returning)
Teshuvah. Returning. The return is a constant one we need to do every day and every hour in our minds. To remember what matters. To remember what our purpose is. Not to give in to despair, but to feel God’s presence amidst all that swirls around us.
Ahat sha’alti. One thing I really desire, and that is to sit in God’s house, to feel that I am not alone, that I am surrounded and buoyed by His loving presence. Though I am surrounded by a military camp, goes the Psalm, still I feel secure. Whatever craziness happens around me, I am at peace in God’s light.
But only if I remember that there is really only one thing that I desire, only if I keep track of what is important amidst the bustle, not allowing myself to get side-tracked (lo taturu) by what seems urgent and disturbing in the moment.
It is a little like meditiation. The basic instruction for meditators is simple enough – to focus on the breath. Oh, but the distractions –the thoughts and worries – that come our way when we try to maintain such focus. The goal then is a constant teshuvah, a constant feeling of return. Yes, we notice the movement away, how our minds climb like monkeys, but each time we return, we come back to that breath, we are reminded that there is a center. We are grounded and focused, and come what may, we have the power to return.
I notice my own mind’s insanities, its moods and preoccupations. We are slaves to these, and through them create our own suffering. But to break through it all, to feel that yes, there is a Oneness behind it all, that we are held in love by that One --- to be able to constantly return to this grounding notion, that is teshuvah (and that is freedom). Ahat sha’alti -- I really only want one thing, and come what may, I will return to that one thing with all my heart and with all my soul.
Ahat sha’alti. One thing I really desire, and that is to sit in God’s house, to feel that I am not alone, that I am surrounded and buoyed by His loving presence. Though I am surrounded by a military camp, goes the Psalm, still I feel secure. Whatever craziness happens around me, I am at peace in God’s light.
But only if I remember that there is really only one thing that I desire, only if I keep track of what is important amidst the bustle, not allowing myself to get side-tracked (lo taturu) by what seems urgent and disturbing in the moment.
It is a little like meditiation. The basic instruction for meditators is simple enough – to focus on the breath. Oh, but the distractions –the thoughts and worries – that come our way when we try to maintain such focus. The goal then is a constant teshuvah, a constant feeling of return. Yes, we notice the movement away, how our minds climb like monkeys, but each time we return, we come back to that breath, we are reminded that there is a center. We are grounded and focused, and come what may, we have the power to return.
I notice my own mind’s insanities, its moods and preoccupations. We are slaves to these, and through them create our own suffering. But to break through it all, to feel that yes, there is a Oneness behind it all, that we are held in love by that One --- to be able to constantly return to this grounding notion, that is teshuvah (and that is freedom). Ahat sha’alti -- I really only want one thing, and come what may, I will return to that one thing with all my heart and with all my soul.
Friday, August 29, 2014
On Ending Kaddish
Another end. No longer will there be something that I do every single day to mark this loss, something that I do every day to say – Abba, I still love you and am doing something to take care of you. It is hard. At each other stage --- shiva, shloshim, kaddish each morning – there was something ahead that marked it as still raw and new. Now there is just a huge never-ending span of nothingness and loss. No marks. I am set loose in my pain to confront the reality, the permanent reality that this person whom I loved and who loved me is not just not here right now, but never will be. It’s like the kid in preschool who doesn’t cry the first or second day at being left by his parents, but on the third week – that’s when it sinks in that this is not just some passing thing, but that every day on and on, he will be abandoned by his parents. It seems we are born to loss and separation.
I want to say good-bye again. But this time I have to figure out a way to make the good-bye an ongoing conversation, to stand in the doorway and talk a bit longer. I know there are other ways to continue the conversation – we carry our parents’ voices around in our heads. But something about Kaddish – the repetitiveness of it, the sanctity, the way it moves up and up, connecting two worlds. It places the conversation between me and my father into a religious realm, raises it up to include a third partner, Who is now, I pray, taking care of my father.
Good-bye, Abba. Stay with me even as you move upward. Smile at me and encourage me when I am down. Believe in me. Understand me. Love me. Help me feel our connection. Oh, stay with me. And to God, take care of him. Accept him in to Your warm embrace, and comfort him for the loss of his connection to us. You are the link between us. Stay with me. Le’alam, ule’almei almaya.
Friday, August 8, 2014
Post Tisha B'Av Reflections on Mourning and Connection
What do we mourn for on Tisha B’av? A story is told in the Talmud about Rabban Gamliel. Every night he would be awakened by a neighboring woman crying for her lost son. Rabban Gamliel, hearing her, would also cry, crying with her for her loss but also for the lost Temple. The story depicts how personal and communal tragedies become intertwined. They are not separate things, this mourning for one’s son (or father) and this mourning for the Temple, but all part of the basic human yearning for connection. That open wound inside is our opening to all open wounds.
What do we mourn for on Tisha B’av? We mourn for the loss of a once more intimate feeling of God’s presence in the world. We take time to feel the pain of distance and yearning for divine connection.
This week I had a few moments of self-consciously enjoying my summer time with my children. No great shakes – just sitting out on our porch eating a snack, walking around the pond as a storm brews, holding hands, but somehow, in the sweet fleeting moments of a waning summer, these moments felt peculiarly special and intense. This is all I want in life, I thought, to be together, to be connected, to be in loving relationship.
Maybe these personal relationships are an inkling of the possibility of our connection to God – a little taste of the soul’s capacity for outreach. Ahat sha’alti, we will soon say, come the month of Elul – One thing I desire in this world, and that is “that I sit in the house of God all the days of my life.” That’s the one thing we really yearn for, and to know it, is to understand the emptiness inside us, and not to confuse it with hunger for food or recognition, but simply the basic yearning of the human soul for divine connection.
As we move from Tisha B’av toward Rosh HaShanah, may our mourning and our yearning become returning, returning to that place of connection we have somehow always known.
What do we mourn for on Tisha B’av? We mourn for the loss of a once more intimate feeling of God’s presence in the world. We take time to feel the pain of distance and yearning for divine connection.
This week I had a few moments of self-consciously enjoying my summer time with my children. No great shakes – just sitting out on our porch eating a snack, walking around the pond as a storm brews, holding hands, but somehow, in the sweet fleeting moments of a waning summer, these moments felt peculiarly special and intense. This is all I want in life, I thought, to be together, to be connected, to be in loving relationship.
Maybe these personal relationships are an inkling of the possibility of our connection to God – a little taste of the soul’s capacity for outreach. Ahat sha’alti, we will soon say, come the month of Elul – One thing I desire in this world, and that is “that I sit in the house of God all the days of my life.” That’s the one thing we really yearn for, and to know it, is to understand the emptiness inside us, and not to confuse it with hunger for food or recognition, but simply the basic yearning of the human soul for divine connection.
As we move from Tisha B’av toward Rosh HaShanah, may our mourning and our yearning become returning, returning to that place of connection we have somehow always known.
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Parashat Balak: Becoming Like a Donkey
Something happens to Balaam in the course of delivering blessings to the Israelites against his will. Something good happens inside him – though at first, he is resistant, merely a vehicle into which God places His words, by the end, Balaam has blossomed into a genuine seer and speaker, wholly embracing his role.
As my father, z”l, first pointed out to me, the Torah’s language changes through the course of Balaam’s various oracles. While in the first two, the Torah says Vayasem davar befiv, that God placed a word (or “thing”) in his mouth, by the third time, God’s spirit actually rests upon him, a term used for genuine prophecy.
Something breaks for Balaam in the course of the second oracle. Rashi comments on this Vayasem davar pefiv, “And He placed a thing in his mouth,” explaining that this time Balaam did not want to go back and report his blessing to King Balak. And so, Rashi says, God had to physically force him to do so by putting a “thing,” a bridle or a fish hook in his mouth, to lead him like an animal to the place God wanted.
What is the result of this experience of being treated like an animal – controlled and manipulated to do God’s will? Somehow, Balaam emerges from this experience to embrace his destiny. The Torah tells us next that he “saw” – something he was unable to do as well as his donkey earlier in the story – that it was good in God’s eyes to bless the people, and so did not go in search of magic, as before, but instead lifted up his eyes and again “saw” the people, at which point, “the spirit of God came upon him.”
The oracle which follows is arguably the most beautiful of the bunch, containing the phrase we adopted into our prayerbooks, mah tovu ohalekha. It is also the only one in which Balaam mentions himself as a positive player in his environment. In the first oracle, he refers to himself only as the one invited by King Balak, and in the second not at all. Here he begins: “Word of Balaam, son of Beor, word of the man whose eye is true. Word of him who hears God’s speech, who beholds visions from the Almighty.” Balaam seems to have hit his stride now, as oracle follow oracle after this one, as if some new spout of creativity has suddenly been opened inside him.
Balaam seems to me be an example of what can happen to a person when he stop resisting his destiny and begins to embrace whatever role God has set out for him. The process in Balaam’s case involves some letting go of ego. God has to remind him clearly who is in charge here, leading him like an animal, to do his job. Balaam needs to learn to be more like his faithful donkey.
The Hasidic masters talk often, in a positive way, of learning to do just this – negating one’s ego enough to be able to feel that God is one’s master, learning to follow and be obedient like an animal, while also not losing one’s human capacities for intelligence, creativity and freedom. Somehow, ironically, as in Balaam’s case, it is in the very negation of self that the self begins to blossom, to see and to speak of its own volition, through the freely acquired spirit of God. Balaam moves from God’s slave to God’s partner, but only by first going through some process of self-abnegation, of learning to understand himself as a vehicle or vessel for the divine. It is only when he can fully sublimate himself to God’s will that his own creativity and personhood can really grow and blossom through an attachment to God.
There is here, I think, the lost art of emptying oneself to be filled from above. Balaam began with a large ego, according to tradition, but ironically, this ego blocked him from greatness. Only once he could let it go in the manner of an animal simply following his master, only once he attached that self to its Source, only then could he be fully fulfilled.
As my father, z”l, first pointed out to me, the Torah’s language changes through the course of Balaam’s various oracles. While in the first two, the Torah says Vayasem davar befiv, that God placed a word (or “thing”) in his mouth, by the third time, God’s spirit actually rests upon him, a term used for genuine prophecy.
Something breaks for Balaam in the course of the second oracle. Rashi comments on this Vayasem davar pefiv, “And He placed a thing in his mouth,” explaining that this time Balaam did not want to go back and report his blessing to King Balak. And so, Rashi says, God had to physically force him to do so by putting a “thing,” a bridle or a fish hook in his mouth, to lead him like an animal to the place God wanted.
What is the result of this experience of being treated like an animal – controlled and manipulated to do God’s will? Somehow, Balaam emerges from this experience to embrace his destiny. The Torah tells us next that he “saw” – something he was unable to do as well as his donkey earlier in the story – that it was good in God’s eyes to bless the people, and so did not go in search of magic, as before, but instead lifted up his eyes and again “saw” the people, at which point, “the spirit of God came upon him.”
The oracle which follows is arguably the most beautiful of the bunch, containing the phrase we adopted into our prayerbooks, mah tovu ohalekha. It is also the only one in which Balaam mentions himself as a positive player in his environment. In the first oracle, he refers to himself only as the one invited by King Balak, and in the second not at all. Here he begins: “Word of Balaam, son of Beor, word of the man whose eye is true. Word of him who hears God’s speech, who beholds visions from the Almighty.” Balaam seems to have hit his stride now, as oracle follow oracle after this one, as if some new spout of creativity has suddenly been opened inside him.
Balaam seems to me be an example of what can happen to a person when he stop resisting his destiny and begins to embrace whatever role God has set out for him. The process in Balaam’s case involves some letting go of ego. God has to remind him clearly who is in charge here, leading him like an animal, to do his job. Balaam needs to learn to be more like his faithful donkey.
The Hasidic masters talk often, in a positive way, of learning to do just this – negating one’s ego enough to be able to feel that God is one’s master, learning to follow and be obedient like an animal, while also not losing one’s human capacities for intelligence, creativity and freedom. Somehow, ironically, as in Balaam’s case, it is in the very negation of self that the self begins to blossom, to see and to speak of its own volition, through the freely acquired spirit of God. Balaam moves from God’s slave to God’s partner, but only by first going through some process of self-abnegation, of learning to understand himself as a vehicle or vessel for the divine. It is only when he can fully sublimate himself to God’s will that his own creativity and personhood can really grow and blossom through an attachment to God.
There is here, I think, the lost art of emptying oneself to be filled from above. Balaam began with a large ego, according to tradition, but ironically, this ego blocked him from greatness. Only once he could let it go in the manner of an animal simply following his master, only once he attached that self to its Source, only then could he be fully fulfilled.
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