1. Names --
The parsha is called Shmot, “names,” and begins by listing individually each name of the children of Yaakov, even though, as Rashi points out, we have heard this list recently, at the end of Breishit. But names are important; they show that we give each person kavod, honor. In our Mussar group last week, when we talked about working on the soul-trait of kavod, one woman, Tracey Grant, suggested that we take on the practice of using people’s names in conversation with them as a way to show them honor. Try it – notice how it feels when someone else uses your name, how honored and loved you feel by this simple gesture – and notice how easy it is to do this for someone else.
2. Seeing--
One of the roots that appears frequently in this parsha is ra’ah, “to see.” Pharaoh tells the midwives to “see” whether it is a boy or girl and kill the boys. But instead, they do a slightly different kind of seeing – vatirena et Haelokim , “they fear God,” fear being a root that in the feminine plural looks almost exactly like “seeing.” They see God -- they fear God and not Pharaoh -- and therefore save the children. You have to know what to see/fear in life.
Moshe’s mother, when he is born, “sees that he is good.” Maybe this is the best job description of a parent --- seeing that a child is good or seeing the good in a child. How can we see and focus on the good in our children in order to make this good potential grow?
The daughter of Pharaoh “sees” the little basket in the water with a baby crying in it and stretches out her arm to bring it to her and see what is there. She sees and hears the pain of others.
Her adopted son, Moshe, learns from her to see the suffering of others. He goes out and “sees the suffering of his brothers.” God, too, sees this suffering, but it is Moshe who sees it first, according to the Torah, and, as it were, brings it to the attention of God through his own noticing and caring. The first step to redemption is to see the suffering of others, not to be so immersed in one’s own affairs as to become indifferent and unseeing. In our Mussar group this week, we are working on chesed, and according to Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, the first step in chesed is to train oneself to really see and notice what it is the other person is lacking and in need of, where the suffering of the other lies.
3. Eheyeh – Being with someone in pain
God reveals His name to us in this week’s parsha – it is Eheyeh, “I will be.” Rashi explains: “I will be with you in this trouble (and also in all future troubles, but they can’t hear that right now).” I will be with you. What greater chesed is there than this simple statement of accompaniment and presence in time of trouble? This characteristic of God surely we can always emulate – to simply promise that we will be with people in their times of trouble. We may not be able to fix it, but we can always ride with them.
The word eheyeh actually comes up numerous times in God’s conversation with Moshe – it is how God convinces Moshe to do the job – you say you can’t do it, that’s ok – I will be with you, I will be with your mouth, I will accompany you as you take on this difficult task. Do we feel that divine accompaniment in our own lives – do we remember that, if we are doing God’s work, God will be with us, we are not doing it alone, no matter how hard it seems?
4. Relieving God’s pain – Moshe Moshe!
When God calls to Moshe at the burning bush, he says, Moshe Moshe! And there is no punctuation between those two calls. The midrash explains that God is like a person carrying a very heavy burden – impatient and desperate to unload it – come, quick – Moshe Moshe, quickly, come on ---help me unload this burden.
God is suffering over the suffering of human beings in this world – it is like a burden He carries – and He is calling to us to help Him unload the burden, to share in carrying the suffering of others.
5. Aharon’s joy – being with someone in joy
According to tradition, Aharon merited the priesthood because of the way he reacted to Moshe’s appointment by God as leader – vera’akha vesamakh belibo, “he will see you and be happy in his heart.” There is the “seeing” verb again -- it is not enough to be able to see another person’s suffering; one also needs to be able to see another person’s joy – and be happy in one’s own heart over their joy. This may be especially hard for a brother because of competitiveness but Aharon breaks that Breshit model of sibling rivalry and gives us a different model –one of joy at another’s success. This, too, is a kind of chesed, to know how to be joyful with another person.
6. Sometimes things get worse before they get better
The parsha ends on a depressing note. After Moshe and Aharon go to Pharaoh to ask for the Israelites to leave for 3 days, Pharaoh, in anger, makes things worse for the Israelites – now they have to collect their own straw and still make the same number of bricks as before! Things are indeed about to turn around for the Israelites, but it sure doesn’t look like it right now! Haven’t we been in situations like this, where just when we are trying to fix things, they suddenly get worse? It makes us feel hopeless and despairing, and indeed, Moshe feels this way, but we as readers know the end of the story. If only we could have faith in our own lives and there, too, know that – despite appearances and temporary setbacks -- the end of the story will be good!
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Thursday, January 12, 2017
Parashat Vayehi: To Be Alive in Egypt
Vayehi Yaakov be’eretz Mitzrayim . The Torah says that Yaakkov lived, vayehi , in Egypt. He didn’t just stay there or sojourn there. Even in the land of Egypt Yaakov managed to have a little bit of true hayut, aliveness; even amidst a world of hiddenness and falsehood, Yaakov managed to keep his connection to the true Source of all Life.
That is the challenge, isn’t it? Not just to survive, but to live, to live with clarity and purpose and a constant sense of connection to the divine. Shiviti Hashem lenegdi tamid. I place God before me always. To remember, in our daily land of Egypt -- while we are hurrying our children out the door in the morning, while we are in the traffic jam, while we are waiting in line or doing dishes or seeing clients -- to remember at all these points our connection to the Source of Life.
Because that feeling, that connection, that sense of dignity and divine purpose, is so easily covered over in our daily existence. We may begin the day saying Elokai Neshama shenatata bi tehora hi, O God, the soul you placed inside me is pure – we may begin up in that lofty space of acknowledging that we have this pure divine soul inside us -- but how soon we are trodden down by the nitty gritty of this world, by the obstacles and challenges and daily hassle, how soon we forget that pure divine soul.
The goal is to be, like Yaakov, hay, truly alive and connected to our aliveness and the One who gave us life, even while we are in the land of Egypt, even while we are in the dirty mess of this world existence, not to leave Egypt, but to elevate Egypt, to elevate that daily mess with our consciousness of hayut, aliveness.
Maybe that’s why they say that our father Yaakov, he never really died. Yaakov lived in this Egypt existence of ours with a real sense of aliveness, an attachment to something beyond this world, something eternal. To become attached to that Eternal Source in this life is to never die, but to become part of eternity.
That is the challenge, isn’t it? Not just to survive, but to live, to live with clarity and purpose and a constant sense of connection to the divine. Shiviti Hashem lenegdi tamid. I place God before me always. To remember, in our daily land of Egypt -- while we are hurrying our children out the door in the morning, while we are in the traffic jam, while we are waiting in line or doing dishes or seeing clients -- to remember at all these points our connection to the Source of Life.
Because that feeling, that connection, that sense of dignity and divine purpose, is so easily covered over in our daily existence. We may begin the day saying Elokai Neshama shenatata bi tehora hi, O God, the soul you placed inside me is pure – we may begin up in that lofty space of acknowledging that we have this pure divine soul inside us -- but how soon we are trodden down by the nitty gritty of this world, by the obstacles and challenges and daily hassle, how soon we forget that pure divine soul.
The goal is to be, like Yaakov, hay, truly alive and connected to our aliveness and the One who gave us life, even while we are in the land of Egypt, even while we are in the dirty mess of this world existence, not to leave Egypt, but to elevate Egypt, to elevate that daily mess with our consciousness of hayut, aliveness.
Maybe that’s why they say that our father Yaakov, he never really died. Yaakov lived in this Egypt existence of ours with a real sense of aliveness, an attachment to something beyond this world, something eternal. To become attached to that Eternal Source in this life is to never die, but to become part of eternity.
Thursday, January 5, 2017
Parashat Vayigash: Revelations
Maybe there is always some deep unknown truth lying just beneath the surface of our daily lives.
Yosef’s brothers spent months (years?) now living in this weird covered up reality of not knowing that the powerful man who was treating them so harshly and at the same time so kindly was in fact their long lost brother.
There was this cloud of untruth and confusion whirling around them. What did it take to finally break the silence and the mystery – to force the truth to be revealed?
Yehudah’s forthrightness and courage. As the Sefat Emet points out, Yehudah had no real claim as to why this vizier shouldn’t take his brother Binyomin as a slave. Yehudah acted from the heart, speaking from a place of desperation and genuineness that was so powerful it forced the truth to uncover itself. Yosef could no longer hold back.
We are familiar with this scenario. In relationships and in Torah and in education and in other areas of life, we go through long periods of confusion and cloudiness until finally something breaks and we have a sudden vision of truth and clarity and connection.
These are moments of revelation, moments when we are offered a glimpse of the divine undercurrent in every aspect of our lives. We do all live in a haze most of the time, like the brothers, not really seeing the truth. And what finally uncovers the truth for us is our own true heart seeking desperately to see the light, not always directly – like Yehudah, we don’t know what it is we don’t know – but instinctively searching, pleading, yearning until finally the very search itself with all its heartfelt urgency breaks down the barriers and we understand that the vizier is our brother and that God Himself lies behind it all.
Yosef’s brothers spent months (years?) now living in this weird covered up reality of not knowing that the powerful man who was treating them so harshly and at the same time so kindly was in fact their long lost brother.
There was this cloud of untruth and confusion whirling around them. What did it take to finally break the silence and the mystery – to force the truth to be revealed?
Yehudah’s forthrightness and courage. As the Sefat Emet points out, Yehudah had no real claim as to why this vizier shouldn’t take his brother Binyomin as a slave. Yehudah acted from the heart, speaking from a place of desperation and genuineness that was so powerful it forced the truth to uncover itself. Yosef could no longer hold back.
We are familiar with this scenario. In relationships and in Torah and in education and in other areas of life, we go through long periods of confusion and cloudiness until finally something breaks and we have a sudden vision of truth and clarity and connection.
These are moments of revelation, moments when we are offered a glimpse of the divine undercurrent in every aspect of our lives. We do all live in a haze most of the time, like the brothers, not really seeing the truth. And what finally uncovers the truth for us is our own true heart seeking desperately to see the light, not always directly – like Yehudah, we don’t know what it is we don’t know – but instinctively searching, pleading, yearning until finally the very search itself with all its heartfelt urgency breaks down the barriers and we understand that the vizier is our brother and that God Himself lies behind it all.
Friday, December 23, 2016
For Chanukah: A Little Bit of Light Goes a Long Way
Sometimes it feels like there is more evil in the world than good. At this time of year, there is certainly more dark than light. And some days the problems and the tasks – our own and the world’s – seem like they are more immense and numerous than our energy to deal with them.
Chanukah teaches that a little light can go a long way to dispel a world of darkness. Rabim beyad me’atim. The many [were given over] into the hand of the few. Maybe it’s true that there are more hours of darkness than light this time of year and maybe it’s true that there were more Greeks than Jews. But the few – the good, the light – nonetheless win.
Sometimes all it does take is a little bit of oil, a little bit of light, and the immense sense of darkness inside is gone. A small gesture of kindness, one tiny moment of connection with someone, a glimpse of a child’s joyful play – these little things can change our perspective so completely that the very same life which a moment ago felt impossible, now somehow seems manageable; bathed in light, our hope is reborn.
Maybe that is what it means to have faith, to believe that in spite of the odds, the many will be defeated and the light will always return. To have faith is to take steps to dispel the darkness even when it seems like all is lost, that there really isn’t enough oil to make it through all those days, to take those little steps anyway in the faith that one small jug of oil can dispel a whole world of darkness.
Chanukah teaches that a little light can go a long way to dispel a world of darkness. Rabim beyad me’atim. The many [were given over] into the hand of the few. Maybe it’s true that there are more hours of darkness than light this time of year and maybe it’s true that there were more Greeks than Jews. But the few – the good, the light – nonetheless win.
Sometimes all it does take is a little bit of oil, a little bit of light, and the immense sense of darkness inside is gone. A small gesture of kindness, one tiny moment of connection with someone, a glimpse of a child’s joyful play – these little things can change our perspective so completely that the very same life which a moment ago felt impossible, now somehow seems manageable; bathed in light, our hope is reborn.
Maybe that is what it means to have faith, to believe that in spite of the odds, the many will be defeated and the light will always return. To have faith is to take steps to dispel the darkness even when it seems like all is lost, that there really isn’t enough oil to make it through all those days, to take those little steps anyway in the faith that one small jug of oil can dispel a whole world of darkness.
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Parashat Vayishlah: Our Enemies are our Angels
God takes different forms on this earth. When Avraham interacts with God’s messengers in the world, they are visitors, wandering strangers who are in need of hospitality. The face of God in the world for Avraham is the face of hospitality, of hesed, of people in need of help.
For Yaakov, on the other hand, God’s face is the face of his enemy, his brother Esav, with whom he has struggled all his life. Yaakov struggles with an angel on the night before he meets Esav, and the next day, when he meets Esav, Yaakov says: “seeing your face is like seeing the face of God” (33:10). Avraham sees God in the face of his guests, while Yaakov sees God in the face of those he struggles and fights with.
We have different opportunities for seeing God every day. Is God in the face of the person on the street corner looking for some help? Can we also see God in our competitors, in those with whom we have trouble, who irritate us, those with whom we struggle and have conflict? Yaakov could not have finished growing up without this confrontation with Esav. Those we fight with help us in some way; they, too – no, they, especially – are angels sent from God to help refine us, to teach us where we are wrong, where we have work to do. Our enemies are our angels.
We have a tendency to think that God resides only in the pretty places in life, in the flowers and the trees and in the moments of peace and love. But Yaakov, the scrappy third in line, is a struggler, and for him, God appears also in the struggles and the fights, also in the face of the brother who swore to kill him.
For Yaakov, on the other hand, God’s face is the face of his enemy, his brother Esav, with whom he has struggled all his life. Yaakov struggles with an angel on the night before he meets Esav, and the next day, when he meets Esav, Yaakov says: “seeing your face is like seeing the face of God” (33:10). Avraham sees God in the face of his guests, while Yaakov sees God in the face of those he struggles and fights with.
We have different opportunities for seeing God every day. Is God in the face of the person on the street corner looking for some help? Can we also see God in our competitors, in those with whom we have trouble, who irritate us, those with whom we struggle and have conflict? Yaakov could not have finished growing up without this confrontation with Esav. Those we fight with help us in some way; they, too – no, they, especially – are angels sent from God to help refine us, to teach us where we are wrong, where we have work to do. Our enemies are our angels.
We have a tendency to think that God resides only in the pretty places in life, in the flowers and the trees and in the moments of peace and love. But Yaakov, the scrappy third in line, is a struggler, and for him, God appears also in the struggles and the fights, also in the face of the brother who swore to kill him.
Thursday, December 8, 2016
Parashat Vayetze: On Restlessness and Yaakov's Dream
We are restless. Whatever we are doing is not enough. Where we are is not good enough. We think we should also be somewhere else, doing something more.
I think that Yaakov’s ladder dream is an answer to this restlessness. He, too, had a restless spirit, a need to grab and try to be where he was not even invited to be, and now he is running, fleeing from an angry brother.
The dream has these angels moving up and down the ladder. They aren’t getting anywhere. They are just going up and down in place. They are like our breath, in and out, in and out, no matter where we are.
The root yatzav, which means “stand” in a very solid, stable way is used here a few times. The ladder is mutzav and God is nitzav and then later, Yaakov builds a matzevah (statue) Even as he starts on his journey, he is learning something about standing and staying put.
What he learns is that “Behold God is in this place and I was not aware of it.” What he learns is that God is right here. You don’t have to run around all the time, running after your brother or running after the next professional or personal opportunity. God is right here, where you are. In fact, the only way to reach God is to stop for a moment and be present here. All that running is just running away.
And if you do stop and stand as still as a matzevah, a statue, and notice the angels of breath that connect you to heaven at each moment, in and out, in and out, the miracle of being alive, if you do stop, then what you realize is not just that God is in this place, but that actually everything -- all of time and all of space – are also in this place. Right here and right now contains inside it all of the world.
There is a beautiful midrash that God folded up all of the land of Israel underneath Yaakov’s still, sleeping body. The whole land is literally right here. We don’t need to go anywhere; just stop and notice and be present; the whole world is contained in any place that we are truly present . All of space is contained – vertically, the angels go up and down, and horizontally, God promises Yaakov the east, the west, the south and the north.
In such a moment of presence is also contained all of time. To be present in the present strangely also means to become part of an eternal time that includes the past and the future as well. Yaakov stopped in this place and felt God’s presence and so entered into God’s time, across time. God says to him – I am the God of your ancestors – the past – and your descendants will be numerous and inherit this land – the future. Standing still in the present means entering a time that is beyond time and connects you to all of space and to all of history.
Yaakov is understood to be the original inheritor of Shabbat and I think it is related to this dream, to this sense of perfect stillness that contains all. On Shabbat we inhabit a time and a place that are somehow beyond time and place, because we are connected to “The Place,” hamokom, God.
We get glimpses of this feeling – of a stillness that opens up into everything, where we can feel all of time and space collapsing and uniting and it is perfectly clear to us that it is all intimately interwoven into oneness. We probably do still need to run around most of the time. I assume the restlessness, too, has some purpose in goading us to action. But it is nonetheless helpful to remind ourselves as we set out on our journeys, like Yaakov, that if we are really present right here and right now, the whole world is here and we need run nowhere else to seek it.
I think that Yaakov’s ladder dream is an answer to this restlessness. He, too, had a restless spirit, a need to grab and try to be where he was not even invited to be, and now he is running, fleeing from an angry brother.
The dream has these angels moving up and down the ladder. They aren’t getting anywhere. They are just going up and down in place. They are like our breath, in and out, in and out, no matter where we are.
The root yatzav, which means “stand” in a very solid, stable way is used here a few times. The ladder is mutzav and God is nitzav and then later, Yaakov builds a matzevah (statue) Even as he starts on his journey, he is learning something about standing and staying put.
What he learns is that “Behold God is in this place and I was not aware of it.” What he learns is that God is right here. You don’t have to run around all the time, running after your brother or running after the next professional or personal opportunity. God is right here, where you are. In fact, the only way to reach God is to stop for a moment and be present here. All that running is just running away.
And if you do stop and stand as still as a matzevah, a statue, and notice the angels of breath that connect you to heaven at each moment, in and out, in and out, the miracle of being alive, if you do stop, then what you realize is not just that God is in this place, but that actually everything -- all of time and all of space – are also in this place. Right here and right now contains inside it all of the world.
There is a beautiful midrash that God folded up all of the land of Israel underneath Yaakov’s still, sleeping body. The whole land is literally right here. We don’t need to go anywhere; just stop and notice and be present; the whole world is contained in any place that we are truly present . All of space is contained – vertically, the angels go up and down, and horizontally, God promises Yaakov the east, the west, the south and the north.
In such a moment of presence is also contained all of time. To be present in the present strangely also means to become part of an eternal time that includes the past and the future as well. Yaakov stopped in this place and felt God’s presence and so entered into God’s time, across time. God says to him – I am the God of your ancestors – the past – and your descendants will be numerous and inherit this land – the future. Standing still in the present means entering a time that is beyond time and connects you to all of space and to all of history.
Yaakov is understood to be the original inheritor of Shabbat and I think it is related to this dream, to this sense of perfect stillness that contains all. On Shabbat we inhabit a time and a place that are somehow beyond time and place, because we are connected to “The Place,” hamokom, God.
We get glimpses of this feeling – of a stillness that opens up into everything, where we can feel all of time and space collapsing and uniting and it is perfectly clear to us that it is all intimately interwoven into oneness. We probably do still need to run around most of the time. I assume the restlessness, too, has some purpose in goading us to action. But it is nonetheless helpful to remind ourselves as we set out on our journeys, like Yaakov, that if we are really present right here and right now, the whole world is here and we need run nowhere else to seek it.
Thursday, December 1, 2016
Parashat Toldot: What Would You Do To Get a Blessing?
Sometimes I think that the Torah, in these early stories, presents us not with an ideal to follow, but more of a mirror to see more clearly our daily insanity.
I think that is the case with the fight over the blessings in this week’s parsha. The phrase that comes to mind here is the modern Israeli phrase, ad kedei kakh? “To that extent?” Really? Is being the first born so important that we would fight in the womb over it, holding on to the ankle of our brother? Is it so important that we would dress or dress our child up in his sibling’s clothing in an elaborate scheme to fool the father? Really?
To what end all this manipulating? What is it that they -- and we -- are out there fighting for all the time anyway? What is it we are climbing over each other to get? A blessing? Is that how one receives blessings? By fighting tooth and nail and furry skin over it? What are we in this rat race in the first place for? And is it getting us there? Or is it rather, as Yaakov suspects, bringing a curse down on us instead of a blessing, all this heel-chasing?
These parshiyyot do present a few glimpses of real blessing, and they do not come as a result of these schemes but from quiet moments of peace with God.
One occurs when Yitzhak, after being involved in his own contentious fights over the ownership of a well [itself a symbol of blessing], finally sees that “God has made things expansive for us,” naming this new well Rehovot, “Expansiveness.” This feeling of expansiveness -- that there is plenty of water for all to share – is the opposite mode of the heel-chasing fight over the blessing in the rest of the parsha. And it leads to a real sense of blessing and peace – following this event, God appears to Yitzhak and blesses him that He, God will be with him and always bless him, and then Avimelekh appears again to make a treaty and they all break a meal bshalom, in peace.
True blessing does not come from the fight.
For Yaakov, true blessing comes to him in the beginning of next week’s parsha. Running away from home with nothing but the clothes on his back, he lies down with a rock for a pillow and finally does get a real blessing, not from his father, but from God Himself, who stands over him with His ladder of angels and promises him to be with him and protect him on his way.
We chase blessing constantly through all kinds of manipulations. We worry that we will not get what we need unless we hold on tight to the ankle in front of us and sometimes we even betray our own true identity in search of this ostensible external blessing. This parsha makes me wonder whether such seeking is helpful or whether perhaps true blessing comes from those moments of internal peace, when we are calm enough and expansive enough to feel God's presence and simply know that we are always blessed.
I think that is the case with the fight over the blessings in this week’s parsha. The phrase that comes to mind here is the modern Israeli phrase, ad kedei kakh? “To that extent?” Really? Is being the first born so important that we would fight in the womb over it, holding on to the ankle of our brother? Is it so important that we would dress or dress our child up in his sibling’s clothing in an elaborate scheme to fool the father? Really?
To what end all this manipulating? What is it that they -- and we -- are out there fighting for all the time anyway? What is it we are climbing over each other to get? A blessing? Is that how one receives blessings? By fighting tooth and nail and furry skin over it? What are we in this rat race in the first place for? And is it getting us there? Or is it rather, as Yaakov suspects, bringing a curse down on us instead of a blessing, all this heel-chasing?
These parshiyyot do present a few glimpses of real blessing, and they do not come as a result of these schemes but from quiet moments of peace with God.
One occurs when Yitzhak, after being involved in his own contentious fights over the ownership of a well [itself a symbol of blessing], finally sees that “God has made things expansive for us,” naming this new well Rehovot, “Expansiveness.” This feeling of expansiveness -- that there is plenty of water for all to share – is the opposite mode of the heel-chasing fight over the blessing in the rest of the parsha. And it leads to a real sense of blessing and peace – following this event, God appears to Yitzhak and blesses him that He, God will be with him and always bless him, and then Avimelekh appears again to make a treaty and they all break a meal bshalom, in peace.
True blessing does not come from the fight.
For Yaakov, true blessing comes to him in the beginning of next week’s parsha. Running away from home with nothing but the clothes on his back, he lies down with a rock for a pillow and finally does get a real blessing, not from his father, but from God Himself, who stands over him with His ladder of angels and promises him to be with him and protect him on his way.
We chase blessing constantly through all kinds of manipulations. We worry that we will not get what we need unless we hold on tight to the ankle in front of us and sometimes we even betray our own true identity in search of this ostensible external blessing. This parsha makes me wonder whether such seeking is helpful or whether perhaps true blessing comes from those moments of internal peace, when we are calm enough and expansive enough to feel God's presence and simply know that we are always blessed.
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