Chanukah: Let Go

There is a strange Chanukah halakhah that we have been exploring in my high school Gemara class this week -- If your Chanukah candle goes out, even right after you lit it, you are not required to relight it. This is not to say that you can’t relight it or are not encouraged to do so. It’s great to keep the flame going. But you are not required to. You have fulfilled your mitzvah by the mere act of putting light to the candle or oil. That is enough.

This feels deeply significant to me. The miracle of Chanukah that we are commemorating is similar; they found enough oil only to last one day, even though they needed it to last eight. What did they do? They did their part -- only the initial lighting; the result -- the continuance of the flame for all 8 days-- was not their doing or their responsibility.

We are so controlling. We hold on tight to make sure things work out just so, to ensure the proper result. We want things to be perfect, to last just the right amount of time. But the halakhah teaches here to LET GO. Or as someone once said to me -- Let go and let God. Sometimes we hold on so tight, controlling every moment and watching carefully how things turn out, that we don’t allow the flow of God’s rhythm and goodness to enter; we don’t surrender. We hold on for dear life and try to make it all fit.

On Chanukah, we turn away from our this-worldly affairs and enter the world of the miraculous, the supernatural. This light of Chanukah is different from shabbos; on shabbos we are meant to use and enjoy it; it is ordinary light for our ordinary purposes of eating and reading. But on Chanukah we aren’t allowed to use the light; the light is of another order, from another realm; it has sanctity and miraculousness to it; it flickers with wonder, drawing us into another world. This other world only exists if we allow it to, if we make room for it, if we stop holding on so tight and forcing things to go exactly how we want and expect them to, if we make room for surprises, if we make room for the divine.

One other thing -- that same gemara (Shabbat 21a) talks about whether you can use wicks and oils on Chanukah that don’t burn so well. One is not allowed to use these on shabbos, but it turns out that on Chanukah you ARE allowed to use such imperfect materials. Although we mostly try to use the best on Chanukah and there is a minhag to use pure olive oil -- this is again not a requirement. The requirement is just the bare minimum -- some kind of oil and wick or candle, something at all to light with. We are not looking for perfection or even striving here. It is as if we are saying -- don’t think it’s all in your hands. Don’t think that if I do it perfectly --my life, my job, my relationships -- if I do it with the very best oils and I never allow for imperfection and substandard performance, if I hold on super tight and make sure everything is just right -- then, and only then, will it all work out. NO. The message of Chanukah is again one of letting go -- letting go of control, letting go of perfection, of the need to hold on tight and do things just so. You think it only works out because you are making it all work? No. There is a larger much more powerful force at work here.

Sometimes we feel like the world depends on us, that the earth won’t keep turning unless we do things right, that the class won’t learn unless we teach it just so, that our children won’t grow up happily unless we parent perfectly. This type of thinking does not allow room for God, for the flow of goodness that pours down continuously, with or without us. Yes, we need to participate, to take the first step, to light the light. But after that, even if we have done a substandard job, even if we are not perfect and our oil is smoky and impure, even so, the light will shine bright and clear because this is the light of another world. May we know how to let go and allow it into our lives.

Parashat Vayetze: You Matter!

Yaakov dreams of a ladder with angels going up and down on it to heaven, and God standing above, protecting him and caring for him.

What strikes me about this image is how individual it is. Avraham dealt with grand visions of a future people as numerous as the stars. He is av hamon goyim, the father of many nations. Yaakov, though, Yaakov, at least here, is just a little guy trying to survive and find a place for himself in this rough and tumble world. His vision is personal, intimate, exactly what he needs to hear -- that God cares about one little guy and what happens to him.

Yaakov has reason to believe that he doesn’t deserve God’s care. He has not been a very upstanding character, cheating his brother and running away from the anger he caused. We can imagine what he feels -- that he is a castout, a reject, a nothing, that he doesn’t deserve either kindness or protection.

We are sometimes in this place. We are disappointed in ourselves; we are running away from our mistakes; we have messed things up and are trying to escape. And in those moments, we may wonder whether we even deserve this life, whether we may have forfeited our right to God’s love and care, whether it even makes sense for God to care about one little person like us, with all our problems. In the larger scheme of things, it seems to us that we do not really matter. There is a world full of such individuals, many more talented and worthwhile than we are. Really, why should God care? Why should we matter at all to Him? Do we really matter?

There is something in this text that answers a resounding yes to this question of individual mattering: Yes! You, as an individual, do matter! The Torah portrays a world in which God does care about a single person, no matter how messed up. Yaakov does not need to DESERVE this care. He may feel that he should, that he does need to earn it; indeed, he seems a little insecure about it, making a deal -- if You protect me, God, then I will do such and such in return, as if God would only do it for the sake of such a vow. But God doesn’t make such deals. He offers the care for FREE, no strings attached. There is no earning it or deserving it. God is just standing there, breathing life into us, in and out, in and out, like the angels going up and down on the ladder. God is steadfast with Yaakov, and steadfast with us. We feel insecure, but He is always there. We can’t lose Him or become unworthy of this care.

This feels like an essential message, one we can’t hear often enough and one that needs to really sink in for us to live fully, for us to be lifted optimistically and securely into action, as Yaakov was after this encounter (Vayisa Yaakov et raglav). The message is: God is standing above you right now, looking out for you, protecting you, standing by you, sending His angels of love in the form of the exhale and inhale, the in and out and the up and down of the divine breath of life that pulses through you. We have not earned this breath; we do not deserve this life or this love. They are free gifts, and importantly, they are given to each one of us as an individual.

At this moment, God deems it good that you in particular should live and breathe and be taken care of. You in particular, not just general humanity. God is looking down on you -- just you in all your craziness and specialness -- and smiling and sending you life and love and care. Soak it in.

Parashat Toldot: On Anxiety, Control, and Expansiveness

I am missing Avraham these days.

Think of how he went through trial after trial with faith and trust in the divine process, and a long range perspective. There was no worry or hurry or attempt to control the future; if the land had a famine, he simply went abroad. If his wife was not having children, he trusted that somehow God’s promise of great progeny would still work out. He beheld the vastness of the sky and the sea and kept those in his sights at all times. Sent to sacrifice his promised son? No worries. HaElokim yireh lo haseh le’olah. The Lord will see to the sheep for the sacrifice. The Lord will provide. Avraham merely follows the path the Lord has set out for him, and trusts in all its twists and turns.

Not so the next generations. Underneath all the squabbling and fighting and extreme manipulation over lentils and blessings and birthrights is a deep sense of anxiety. There is no trust that things will simply work out according to God’s plan, no going with the flow. Yaakov is a reacher, a striver, a manipulator. He does not feel that blessings flow down to him by divine grace; he feels he has to micromanage the situation (with the aid of his mother) and connive his way into such blessings. Food is not pictured, as in Avraham’s household, as an abundant cornucopia that flows freely even toward the stranger, but on the contrary, becomes an instrument of barter in a constant negotiation over scarce resources. As Esav comments when Yitzhak seems unable to find him a second blessing -- habrachah ahat likha, avi? Do you really only have one blessing, my father? Is the divine blessing really so limited and scarce that we have to fight over it like this? How can that be what it means to be blessed?

Yitzhak’s well experiences mirror this sense of scarcity. Fights erupt between his shepherds and the neighboring shepherds over fresh water resources, each claiming ownership of the same wells, so that the wells are named “Contention” and “Harassment.” The feeling is that there is simply not enough to go around. Think back on Avraham and Lot. What was Avraham’s attitude when there was fighting? There is plenty of space. The land is vast and expansive; you go one way and i will go another. There is plenty to go around. Avraham seems to keep this sense of expansiveness -- the image of the stars of the sky and the sand of the sea that God has shown him --- with him at all times, and he is guided by it, trusts in it, is patient and generous because of its calming influence

Thankfully, hints of this perspective do remain in the family. After “Contention” and “Harassment” there is a third well which is named Rehovot, or “Expanses,” with the explanation: “Now at last the Lord has granted us ample space.” Ah. There is that sense of openness and vastness once again; trust comes back, and generosity, too, in place of competitiveness. We can relax into the expansiveness.

That Rehovot perspective feels messianic. It is what we aim for, not where we are. The world is generally in a place of squabble, scarcity and anxiety over how things will work out. We are more often in the place of controlling things like Rivka and Yaakov do than we are in the place of trusting and going with the flow and simply waiting it out, like Avraham.

Our anxiety is not without good reason. I suspect that Yitzhak passes on a basic anxiety caused by the trauma of the akedah, the experience that life might at any moment be cut short in a cruel merciless way. Yitzhak does not experience the vastness of the sky but instead the tightness of the bonds of the lamb bound up for sacrifice -- the narrowness of its horizons and the shortness of its life span. He is old before his time, and talks and worries about dying (as does Esav) in a way that Avraham never does.

And so anxiety is born and brought into the family, passed along subtly to his children, this sense of scarcity and uncertainty, leading not to trust and faith but to an attempt to control the future -- a ceaseless backfiring attempt -- that will never succeed and never rest.

We, as a people, have inherited Yitzhak’s trauma. Not just that one trauma, but the many that have transpired since then. And so we are not really only the children of the pure simple trusting faith of Avraham, but always also the children of the restless controlling anxiety of Yaakov.

Still, we hold on to those hints of expansiveness, the places that can feel like Rehovot, where we can see the entire sky and the entire sea, and feel how divine blessings are not scarce, but unlimited and regenerating, and how our paths, though seemingly crooked, are divinely guided, and not to be fought, but to be trusted with patience and faith. Ours is a harder task than Avraham’s, but ultimately what the world needs -- to bring trust and expansiveness into our way of being, not just before the trauma, but also after it -- to see and understand the anxiety and the resulting impulse to control, and to integrate those, too, into the vast sky of divine trust.

A Prayer for Yom Kippur

O Lord of Forgiveness, Forgive Us!

Forgive us for our imperfections, for all the times we wanted to do something well and it came out poorly, and for all the ways we constantly fall short of our own intentions and values.

Forgive us, and teach us to forgive ourselves.

Forgive us for not remembering what is important, and for getting lost in what is not.

Forgive us for not being fully present to Your Presence in the world at each moment, for all the times we did not see the beauty and the preciousness all around us and for all the times we did not appreciate Your gifts or feel the overflow of Your love.

Forgive us and let us feel Your love now; let us know that You love us even with our imperfections, so that we may learn to love ourselves and others in the same way, with infinite compassion and forgiveness.

O Lord of Forgiveness, Forgive Us and Heal Us!

A Shofar Meditation in Three Parts

The shofar is a cry inside each of us that needs to be let out.


It is a cry of overwhelm and sometimes despair. O God, this life you gave us, it feels impossible to live, impossible to get done what needs to get done, impossible to really do it well and right, impossible to please everyone. We try so hard to succeed, to function, to thrive and survive, but in the end, something is amiss; we are incompetent, deficient, not enough. It is all too hard. O God, You are in charge. You are king. In the end, there is only surrender to You. We have tried, but not fully succeeded. We cry out to You to hold us in our imperfection, to hear us and see us and bear with us, to help us know that it is You who rules the world. We have not fully succeeded, but it’s ok; we are not in charge. (Malkhuyot)

It is a cry of loneliness. We are busy with people; we talk and interact and love and give and receive all day. But there is still loneliness. Deep in our hearts, there is still loneliness. It remembers something, this loneliness; it remembers a distant time of perfect union, and it yearns with all its might for return to its source. Usually we forget. But sometimes, when we sit near a river and see the flow of the water, we remember; we remember the feeling of being a drop of water in a mighty flow, a part of something alive and moving and eternal; we remember and we long for the connection, for the sense of belonging and peace and completeness. We cry out to You, O God, to remember us, too, to return to us, too, to heal our loneliness through an awareness of Your constant Presence, to help us know that it is with You that we belong. (Zichronot)

It is also a cry of hope. In the end of the day, we do not succeed; much is left undone and our yearning for connection is never completely satisfied. And yet, we feel better for having cried. The cry itself is an expression of hope. In You we have hope; we have cried and You have heard us, and even if our problems remain, we feel different; we are lighter in Your light. We feel the possibility amidst the impossible, the perfect within the imperfect, and most of all, we feel Your deep abiding Presence. Redemption is possible, and so life itself is possible; we have faith that we can live in Your light. (Shofarot)

אשרי העם יודעי תרועה, ה' באור פניך יהלכון

Fortunate is the people who know how to cry; O God, in the light of Your face will they walk.

Parashat Bekhukotai: Walking with God, Not Hiding

Vehithalakhti betokhakhem. “And I, God, will walk amongst you (Lev. 26:12).” This is one of the blessings described in our parsha of a life of following God and His mitzvot. That God will walk amongst us.

Rashi says this means that God will wander about among you in the Garden of Eden. I think the reason Rashi points to the Garden of Eden here is that the verb vehithalakhti, the reflexive form of halakh, “walk,” is used in reference to God in one other place – in Breishit, in reference to God’s voice wandering the Garden just after the first humans eat the forbidden fruit. What happens there? The people hear God walking and hide from Him among the trees; He calls out: Ayeka? Where are you? And they respond that they are fearful and hiding because they are naked.

This is the normal state of humanity – one of hiding and shame. We act in ways that we judge wrong (and often are wrong), but that is not really what removes us from God’s presence. What removes us from God’s presence, and in many ways, from our own presence, is the secondary aftereffect of our own judgment of ourselves – the hiding and the shame, our own assessment of our shameful “nakedness,” our own sense of unworthiness before God and humanity, and the hiding from truth and God that immediately ensues.

The blessing promised here for walking in God’s ways, for walking with a sense of His presence at all times, is in a way its own reward. What is the reward for walking in God’s ways? It brings a return to a pre-sin state, a return to the moment in the Garden of Eden when we could sense palpably God’s Presence walking about amongst us. But this time, instead of hiding and feeling shame, if we are really walking with God, then we learn not to hide, even if we are at times unworthy, not to hide, but to trust in the relationship, to trust that we are still worthy of God’s presence.

Tara Brach, a meditation teacher, likens our human situation of self-judgment to two arrows. There is the initial arrow of hurt, pain, anger, wrongful action, whatever, and then there is the second arrow, which digs us in so much deeper, the second arrow of self-condemnation and shame. When this second arrow hits, we are no longer walking with God; we no longer feel worthy of God’s presence. We hide from God and from ourselves and punish ourselves for our sins by distancing ourselves from God.

But God is still walking about the Garden looking for us. The key is to be steadfast with ourselves and with our relationship with God, not to quit on ourselves and hide and decide it is over and we are unworthy. That would be to walk with God bekeri, with a certain happenstance quality, sometimes on and sometimes off, depending on whether we feel worthy. No, we need to know that at all times God walks with us. To know this is in and of itself to return to the Garden of Eden, to return to the sense of peace and trust of that relationship. It was not the sin that destroyed it – God still wants us after we sin, is still walking the garden; He knows we are imperfect – it was the hiding, the distancing of our own selves from Him. It is the shaming that turns us away from Presence, convinces us that we do not deserve God and therefore do not seek or sense Him.

To walk with God, not bekeri, not with a sense of randomness or unsureness, but with a sense of sure-footed steadfastness, is to trust that God is walking with us, too, at all times, no matter what; it means never to give up on ourselves or shut down and hide, but to have the courage to face Presence at all times.

For Bedikat Chametz

The Sefat Emet explains that when we say that matzah is lehem oni, poor person’s bread, what we mean is that matzah is the very core of bread, the bare bones dough; spiritually, it represents the essence of our inner selves, our most basic inner divine point.

On Pesach we peel away all the extra layers and remind ourselves that this simple core of ours is enough. All year we work to develop this core, to spread it and make it do fantastic feats. This is good, but we need to know that these extra developments are not essential to who we are, that our worth does not depend on this striving in the world, on how puffy our bread is, how productive or successful we are. No, that is all extra.

On Pesach, we remember that our core is enough, that even if we strip away all this work and striving and success, the essence, what matters, is still there; it is still bread, very very simple bread, but still bread; we are still complete without the puff.

This year when I look for chametz, I will be looking for the places inside me that don’t know this truth, for the places that work feverishly because they think they have to prove my worth, that without them I would be nothing. I will be looking for those parts of me that say, like chametz – I only matter if I rise; I am only complete if I spend time and effort and work at being something great.

I will be searching for these places and then I will burn them. They are not the truth. I will watch as the ashes swallow up all that striving and underneath all that striving, that feeling of not-enoughness.

I will watch the flames burn up the chametz and then I will turn to the matzah and know that, like matzah, my essence is enough. It is great to be risen bread, but it is not essential. I am enough, worthwhile, whole, with a pure divine spark, just as I am, in my most stripped down basic form. To know this is peace and to know this is freedom.