My father always bought quality products – things that would last and do the job properly. This week, in the extremely cold weather, I have been wearing my father’s down coat. It is long and well-made, with thick down stuffing and pockets and zippers and flaps in all the right places. You put it on and, no matter how cold you were a second before, you are immediately wrapped in a toasty blanket of warmth.
Each time I put on that coat this week and felt that immediate surge of warmth, I felt not just physically warmer, but emotionally buoyed. My father’s love was reaching out from beyond and continuing to nourish and warm me. No matter what happens around me, I can walk around the world wrapped in its warmth and protection.
I wonder whether this isn’t also how we are meant to experience God – we say that God spreads a sukkah, a shelter over us, that we dwell in His shadow, that He is mahsi umetzudati, “my shelter and my refuge” (Psalm 91). To walk with God -- to keep God’s presence constantly in one’s consciousness -- is to live with a great warm overcoat of love and protection and to walk through the world enwrapped by this feeling.
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Hanukah: Learning to See the Miraculous
A story is told about R. Hanina ben Dosa (Talmud Taanit 25a). One Shabbat afternoon, seeing that his daughter was sad, he asked her what was the matter. She answered that she had mistakenly put vinegar instead of oil into the Shabbat lamp and was worried there would be no light for Shabbos. R. Hanina said to her: What do you care? Don’t worry. The One who told the oil to burn can also tell the vinegar to burn. (And so it was – the vinegar burned all through that Shabbat).
Rabbi Hanina has an interesting perspective on life. For him there is no difference between oil burning and vinegar burning. They are both acts of God. They are both miracles. It is with the same sense of awe and gratitude and amazement that he approaches the everyday miracle of oil light as the extraordinary miracle of vinegar light.
Maybe this is the message of Hanukah. The word we keep using for miracle on Hanukah is nes, a word that also means “banner” or “sign.” What are the miracles of Hanukah, the military victory and the oil miracle of 8 days? They are signs – messages to us about the miraculous nature of life in general. In their very extraordinariness, we see clearly the hand of God in the world, and with this light shining, we start to see it in the ordinary as well. That light we just lit to remember the oil miracle – that light we lit is itself miraculous with its sparkling flame born out of nothing and filled with a magical energy. God is in light, in the flame all the time, yet we don’t see it. It takes the miracle of Hanukah to point us back to the miracle of light and of life in general.
Oh, to be like R. Hanina ben Dosa! To see clearly the hand of God in the ordinary. To see the flicker of divine light in the child before us and the husband beside us and the snow on the ground. This Hanukah that is what I pray for – that we can understand the signposts as witnesses to the divine not just in the extraordinary but also in the ordinary. We thank you God not just al hanisim ve’al hapurkan . . . , for the special miracles of Haunkah, but also al nisekha shebekhol yom imanu, also for the miracles that are with us daily.
Rabbi Hanina has an interesting perspective on life. For him there is no difference between oil burning and vinegar burning. They are both acts of God. They are both miracles. It is with the same sense of awe and gratitude and amazement that he approaches the everyday miracle of oil light as the extraordinary miracle of vinegar light.
Maybe this is the message of Hanukah. The word we keep using for miracle on Hanukah is nes, a word that also means “banner” or “sign.” What are the miracles of Hanukah, the military victory and the oil miracle of 8 days? They are signs – messages to us about the miraculous nature of life in general. In their very extraordinariness, we see clearly the hand of God in the world, and with this light shining, we start to see it in the ordinary as well. That light we just lit to remember the oil miracle – that light we lit is itself miraculous with its sparkling flame born out of nothing and filled with a magical energy. God is in light, in the flame all the time, yet we don’t see it. It takes the miracle of Hanukah to point us back to the miracle of light and of life in general.
Oh, to be like R. Hanina ben Dosa! To see clearly the hand of God in the ordinary. To see the flicker of divine light in the child before us and the husband beside us and the snow on the ground. This Hanukah that is what I pray for – that we can understand the signposts as witnesses to the divine not just in the extraordinary but also in the ordinary. We thank you God not just al hanisim ve’al hapurkan . . . , for the special miracles of Haunkah, but also al nisekha shebekhol yom imanu, also for the miracles that are with us daily.
Friday, December 12, 2014
Parsaht Vayeshev: To be Like A Rock in Times of Trouble
Steadfast. To be like a rock through trouble, through the ups and downs of life, of our own changing moods and the constantly changing environment around us.
Sometimes we have the urge to run away when we are feeling down, to quit, to turn away from trouble, even to jump out the window and end it all, just to escape.
But what makes us strong is the ability to simply survive through it, to be like a rock that cannot run or be washed away, but simply sits and witnesses.
In the Torah this week, we are entering a period of great trouble for Yaakov and his family. The midrash says on the first verse of the parsha that Yaakov wanted, after all his earlier troubles, now to simply live in tranquility and it was this desire that brought the face of trouble back – there is no rest in this world; only in the next one.
And so begins the painful saga of the brothers’ cruel treatment of Yosef and his slavery, and Yaakov’s great suffering over the loss of his favorite son.
How do Yaakov and Yosef and all of us reading along get through it? Yaakov is associated with rocks. When he leaves his parental home, he sleeps on a rock, then lifts a rock off a well and finally makes a treaty with Lavan with rocks. I have always understood these rocks as a metaphor for the hardness of Yaakov’s life, for the troubles themselves, but now I think perhaps the rock is also a metaphor for the ability to get through those troubles. He is like a rock, surviving the rushing waters around him.
This week we talked in my middle school class about the phrase tzur hayenu, that God is “the rock of our lives.” One student came up to the board and drew a picture of a waterfall with some stepping stones along the way to hold on to. That’s what God is – the stones that we hold on to along the way that keep us from falling headfirst into the raging waters.
Later in life, Yaakov continues to speak of the harshness of his life, but he also speaks about a sense of protectedness, of the angel that protected him from all evil wherever he went.
How did Yaakov survive? He lay on a rock, on the hardness of life, and in the rock he found God standing above him, helping him to be, like the rock, steadfast through the difficulties.
Sometimes we have the urge to run away when we are feeling down, to quit, to turn away from trouble, even to jump out the window and end it all, just to escape.
But what makes us strong is the ability to simply survive through it, to be like a rock that cannot run or be washed away, but simply sits and witnesses.
In the Torah this week, we are entering a period of great trouble for Yaakov and his family. The midrash says on the first verse of the parsha that Yaakov wanted, after all his earlier troubles, now to simply live in tranquility and it was this desire that brought the face of trouble back – there is no rest in this world; only in the next one.
And so begins the painful saga of the brothers’ cruel treatment of Yosef and his slavery, and Yaakov’s great suffering over the loss of his favorite son.
How do Yaakov and Yosef and all of us reading along get through it? Yaakov is associated with rocks. When he leaves his parental home, he sleeps on a rock, then lifts a rock off a well and finally makes a treaty with Lavan with rocks. I have always understood these rocks as a metaphor for the hardness of Yaakov’s life, for the troubles themselves, but now I think perhaps the rock is also a metaphor for the ability to get through those troubles. He is like a rock, surviving the rushing waters around him.
This week we talked in my middle school class about the phrase tzur hayenu, that God is “the rock of our lives.” One student came up to the board and drew a picture of a waterfall with some stepping stones along the way to hold on to. That’s what God is – the stones that we hold on to along the way that keep us from falling headfirst into the raging waters.
Later in life, Yaakov continues to speak of the harshness of his life, but he also speaks about a sense of protectedness, of the angel that protected him from all evil wherever he went.
How did Yaakov survive? He lay on a rock, on the hardness of life, and in the rock he found God standing above him, helping him to be, like the rock, steadfast through the difficulties.
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Parashat Vayishlach: On Prayer
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.
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.
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.
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