Parashat Beha'alotekha: On Healing

אל נא רפא נא לה

El na refa na lah. O Lord, please heal her, please.
(Numbers 12:13, in this week’s Torah portion)

These five Hebrew words are Moshe’s prayer to God to heal his sister, Miriam, after she has been afflicted with leprosy as a divine punishment for speaking slanderously. The text tells us little about her slander -- only that it concerned Moshe’s marrying a “Cushite” woman. Many identify Cush with Ethiopia, meaning that what Miriam objected to was Moshe’s having married an African woman.

Moshe -- who was slandered -- stands now in prayer for her healing. Let us take a minute to feel the full impact of his prayer for his sister.

El na refa na lah. Five Hebrew words. Literally, they mean: “Lord Please Heal Please Her.” Note the chiasm (A-B-C-B-A), how the word for heal, refa, is perfectly centered, sandwiched on either side by the force of the plea -- the word “please,” na, repeated twice, standing with urgency and intensity on either side of the healing, and then, framing the prayer as a whole are the two who need connecting in order for healing to happen -- the One who heals and the one who is is in need of healing. The healing sits at the heart of the matter. It happens through the channel of our intensity and our heartfelt pleading; through prayer, Moshe--the one who was wronged-- becomes a prophetic link between heaven and earth, between the Lord and his sister, so that the essential divine force of healing can come down through him, though us, into the world.

The prayer physically looks like an embrace. It reminds us that healing happens when arms are held out in love and pleading, when heaven and earth meet through the intensity of our desire for such healing.

That intensity is reflected in the word na, literally, “please,” which is repeated twice. Many commentators explain that the second na has a slightly different force; it doesn’t just mean “please”; it means “now.” Lord, please heal her please-- now! The desire for healing has become so intense at this moment, that it has shifted into urgency. The please becomes now; the plea becomes a demand, an insistence.

How does all of this relate to us? Note that Moshe does not actually name Miriam in this plea. It is as if he wanted to make this plea universal and eternal, as if perhaps to signal us to use it today.

It feels like Moshe meant for this prayer to be said again by others. Many of the commentators notice that the phrase the Torah uses to introduce this prayer uses the word lemor, “saying” or, literally “to say.” Vayitzak Moshe el Hashem lemor. Moshe cried out to God saying. That last word, lemor, is unnecessary, and implies that Moshe is asking for someone else to say something in response to his words. Perhaps demanding a response from God, some commentators suggest.

But perhaps the lemor is also an invitation for other people to repeat the prayer, like the lemor of Az Yashir, the Song at the Sea--they said it then in order for it to be said again and again, to be repeated by others for generations to come. Perhaps Moshe’s intention was similar: he said his prayer in the hope that it would catch on; he posted it on Facebook, as it were, so that others could “like” and repost it and the word would spread -- the prayer for healing would spread, the sense of urgency and the sincerity of the desire for some healing would go from one lip to the next and a popular swelling would arise. Waves of people would feel this ripple, this turn towards healing. Perhaps Moshe did not intend for his prayer for healing to stop with that generation but rather, in its simplicity and its sincerity, for it to have impact long past its time, for us to continue to yearn for healing through his words, and to understand that healing comes, not just when one person wants it, but when there is also the lemor aspect, the aspect of communal response and repetition and participation and expansion. He said it so it would be said again because he understood that that is how healing happens.

O Lord, please heal her now. This is our prayer, too, to heal “her,” to heal our broken, tired world, to heal those many who are physically sick, to heal those who suffer from systemic discrimination -- both those who suffer from being wrongly judged and those who suffer, like Miriam, from holding the judgment, and always also to heal ourselves in all our own suffering. We are, like Moshe and Miriam and Moshe’s wife, all one family; let us feel the embrace that joins us in healing.

Praying does not preclude action. What it does is to clarify and purify the earnestness of our seeking. Let us pray:

El na refa na lah. O Lord, please heal her now!

Please help us to be channels for divine healing in our world.

Parashat Naso: Shalom Is a Container

There is a lot of pain that is surfacing in our world, A lot of injustice and suffering and fear. There also continues to be a current of uncertainty and unease and even confusion.

How does a person hold steady amidst it all, without denying either the suffering -- of self and other -- or the general unease?

Above all, at all times, but especially in times like this, we need to hold some place of peace inside us. There can also be empathy and anger and hurt and suffering and fear and anxiety, but underneath it all -- holding it all -- there must always be some eternal, unbreakable steadiness, a place of imperturbable peace. Shalom.

This week we read Birkat Kohanim, the priestly blessing which ends with the blessing of Shalom. May God grant you peace.

Shalom is one of God’s names. We have access to this place by tapping into the point inside us that is always connected to our source above, to the panim (the face) that shines down on us in the priestly blessing, to the place inside us that is beyond this world, beyond what happens today or tomorrow or yesterday, but exists outside of time and place, in that other world, where there is only peace. Can you feel the steadiness, the calm, the clarity of that place inside you? We all have it, though it is covered up most of the time.

That place is the container that can hold all the rest. The rabbis, explaining why peace is an essential element of this and any blessing, say: eyn keli mahazik berachah ela shalom. “The only vessel that can really hold blessing is peace.”

Peace is a container. It holds the blessing, and maybe it also holds the difficulties. Shalom is related to the word shalem. It is complete -- it has seen it all and it holds it all, the good, the bad, the joy, the suffering. It is like an ancient tree in the woods; it stands still and steady -- while the world swirls around it -- witnessing it all.

Shalom stands as a steadying force for the restless act of seeking blessing. Seeking blessing is an acknowledgement that there is some lack in the world, something that needs to change, to be fixed. Shalom stands amidst that energy and holds it in the knowledge that, even in the face of lack and restlessness and a need for change, there is also always completeness; things are also already done, already perfect and immutable. And somehow, in that knowledge, it draws down the needed blessings and change to make this world we live in more perfect.

Shabbat is also called “Shalom.” This Shabbat, may we feel the Shalom inside us -- the knowledge of an already perfect place of unending peace and stability -- and allow it and ourselves to become the keli , the vessel, for all the blessing that this world so desperately needs.

For Shavuot: Approaching the Arafel

Ki shamah, ki shamah Elokim. For there -- there -- that is where God is.

So goes the chorus to Shuli Rand’s song “Arafel.” There, in the arafel , in the thick cloud, in the fog, in the darkness, there, that is where God is.

This line is based on the Torah’s description of the Har Sinai experience -- “The people stood at a distance, while Moshe approached the arafel asher sham Elokim” -- Moshe approached the thick cloud where God was.

The Har Sinai experience, the ultimate revelation of God, was an experience of thick clouds and smoke like “the smoke of a kiln.” The people stood back, but Moshe -- he approached the arafel.

I think most of us spend our lives, like the people of Israel here, standing back from the thick cloud. We prefer light and clarity and joy and certainty.

But sometimes life-- or maybe God -- hands us some darkness, some difficulty, some suffering, or maybe it is more a thickness and a cloudiness -- a sense of uncertainty, unease, doubt, confusion, total lack of clarity and with it that sinking uncomfortable fluttery feeling in our bellies of not knowing, of being unsure, of not standing on firm ground.

We can’t stand this restless uncertainty; it makes us anxious and we quickly try to escape it. We medicate and meditate and exercise and distract and keep busy in order to run away from it, in order not to feel that unease, that not knowing.

But what if God is actually in the arafel? What if God is in those moments of doubt and restlessness and uncertainty? What if God, or our access to God, is actually through those feelings? What if these feelings are actually an invitation not to stand back or run away but, like Moshe, to approach and come close?

Could it be that the flip side of uncertainty is mystery? That to be in a place of not knowing is actually to know God, to have some tiny experience of the mystery that is beyond us?

I think of the Israelites, freed from slavery, from the bounds of a difficult life, but also from the bounds of a known life of predictability and certainty. Here they stand in the empty, barren, unpredictable desert, facing an unknown and uncertain future; they must have felt unmoored, suddenly removed from all the structures that give a human being a sense of balance and groundedness. I think we know a little of what they must have felt.

So, standing in the desert, at Har Sinai, this Shavuot, do we approach or stand back? Can we see that it is precisely in this uncertainty that God resides, that sometimes the tug of unease -- the intense fear of not knowing and not controlling -- is a call to mystery, a call to connection to our divine source, to the ultimate Ground, a call to break open the narrowness of usual confines and experience something beyond ourselves? This, too, is a gift from above, here, too, here in the thickness of the cloud, here, too, is where God resides. In those desert moments, when we feel that there is fog around us and anxious uncertainty inside us, may God fill our hearts with the courage to approach, to know that He is there -- precisely there, in the Arafel -- waiting for us.

A Prayer While Sheltering in Place for COVID-19

The bright pink and white azaleas are stunning right now. 

Oh, Lord, I see Your glory all around me.

And yet I feel unease, 

Deep, relentless unease,

A sense of impending doom and

Uncertainty

certain only that the future will not be like the past.

Worries, fears, panic even, take me over, 

Especially at night when rest should come.

Oh, Lord, in You there is calm

And strength and resilience

And peace

And a sense of security, 

Though maybe not exactly the kind I thought i wanted

But some form of security and ground

That is eternal, so much bigger than this.

You are the Place that Peace always lives

No matter what happens here on earth

Help me find this Place inside me.

I try to manage things

To make them right

But it often comes from panic

And is not wise

Teach me to relax into Your embrace

To know that though all may not be well

All will be as it is meant to be

In Your infinitely Good universe

And that we are still loved at all moments

Teach me to know the peace of surrender

To allow things to unfold

Without panic

Only playing my part in wisdom and calm

And clarity

And great great love for myself 

And my fellow human beings 

For Pesach: Unclenching Our Fists

How much do we control our own destiny? Particularly at times of uncertainty and anxiety, we hold on very tight. We try so hard to make things just right so that all will be well for ourselves, our families, our community and the world.

Purim celebrates these efforts. On Purim we say what Mordecai said to Esther-- “who knows if it was for this precise moment that you got to be the queen?” You have some role to play in the unfolding of history, some designated role that you were born to play. The pressure is on to know what it is and to accomplish it. You need to make an effort, to fast and organize and approach the king and fight for your own survival.

That is Purim. But Pesach feels like it takes the very opposite approach. God alone saved us, says the Haggadah -- Ani, velo Shaliah --I, God says, I alone redeemed you, and no messenger. While on Purim, it is God’s name that is absent from the story, on Pesach, it is Moshe’s name that is absent from the Haggadah.

Indeed, all the descriptions of transformation in the Haggadah have God as the exclusive agent. Avadim Hayinu, we say. “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt and God brought us out. “ Not Moshe. Not our own organizing or protesting. God alone. And our spiritual transformation, too, happened exclusively through God; we say -- “our ancestors were idol worshippers but now God has brought us close.” God?! Isn’t it that we have been seeking Him, working on getting close? But no -- the Haggadah views even our religious attachments as a pure act of grace, a gift from above. It is not our own striving that brings us freedom or that brings us spiritual enlightenment. We are in the care of God.

Pesach night is a leyl shimurim, a night of divine protection. On this night the lesson is not about human effort, but about trust and surrender, learning to actually feel the care that comes to us at all moments from above. To stop all of our human efforting and feel it, feel the embrace, trust in it and relax into it.

This posture of trust and surrender is not a natural one for most of us, and ironically, is the thing that requires the most effort of all. So it is not really that the night of Pesach involves no effort. The Haggadah makes it clear what our role is -- sippur yetziat mitzrayim, telling the story of leaving Egypt. The Sefat Emet reads the word sippur as meaning not telling, but “clarifying,”. What we do on Pesach night is to clarify for ourselves -- through this particular telling -- that God is in control. We learn to let go, to know that we are not in charge, to go with the divine flow rather than resisting it. Indeed, the one person who is thrown out of our Seder is the rasha, who is unable to do this; he is unable to make himself a part of the flow. He resists and stands apart, excludes himself from the whole. The goal here is not resistance but surrender to the whole, to the flow, to the knowledge of divine control of the universe.

Learning to let go of control in this way, to acknowledge and trust the divine flow, to make ourselves a part of it, is in large measure the work of meditation. Rupert Spira, a meditation teacher, likens the situation to a person who has had her hands clenched her entire life (most of us). Although the clenching itself takes a lot of continuous effort, we are unaware of this effort since we have been doing it for so long. Theoretically, the natural effortless way should be for us to have our hands relaxed in an open position, but because we have spent our whole lives with our fists clenched, it is the clenching that feels natural and effortless, while learning to unclench feels difficult.

Pesach night is a night to learn to unclench our fists, to relax and open and trust in the divine flow. This won’t necessarily translate into passivity in our actions in the real world. On the contrary, relaxing in this way is deeply clarifying, as the Sefat Emet intuited; it clarifies when to act and how. It helps us with the Purim task of recognizing the exact moment we are meant to act, rather than being continually clenched in an effort to resist and control the universe. Learning to relax into God’s embrace, to trust in it, also gives us the confidence and courage to act when we need to, and to act, not on our own plan, but as part of the natural flowering and unfolding of God’s plan.

For Pesach: A New Read of Dayenu

Dayenu. It would have been enough for us. It would have been enough for us if You had only taken us out of Egypt but not also punished the Egyptians. It would have been enough for us if You had taken us out, but not also split the Sea for us. Dayenu. It would have been enough.

Dayenu. The word comes from dahy, meaning “enough” and anu or lanu, meaning “us” or “for us.”

What if we translate it differently this year? What if, instead of reading it as “It would have been enough for us,” we read it as -- “we are enough”?

We are enough. Dayenu.

We sit here looking at all the amazing things that God has done for us and what we conclude from all this love and attention, from all the gifts bestowed upon us for no apparent reason, is this simple idea -- that we are enough for God just as we are. We are enough. Yes, of course, we should improve and do better, and we will strive to.

But at the very basic level, the story of leaving Egypt is not about our deserving it. We most certainly did not deserve it. Tradition has it that we were on the very lowest of spiritual rungs at the time, the 49th step of impurity. We had sunk low, hit bottom, as it were, and the only way out was divine grace and compassion.

Why do it this way? Why didn’t God redeem us when we were worthy? Why didn’t He wait for us to earn it?

Why? So that we can sit at our seders right now and know that dayenu -- we are enough as we are. We don’t have to deserve redemption or God’s love or care. We can look at how He took us out of Egypt and also punished the Egyptians, and also their gods, and also split the sea and also gave us the gift of Shabbat -- we can look at all of that and we can know that we are still worthy of that, just as we are, sitting here right now in all our imperfections and wishing we were otherwise, we are enough just like this to deserve all those gifts. We can know that now because we can look back and see that back then they were enough, too, enough even at their lowest point. God looked at them, His precious people, and even in their dirtiest moment, in all the muck of Egypt, even then, He loved them and wanted them and took care of them.

We are enough. What does it feel like to say that to yourself? I am enough just as I am, right here, right now, in God’s eyes. Even now, however I am, midstream, midwork on myself, I am already enough to be redeemed. I do not have to wait.

This is an essential part of the process of the night. If we expect to have some kind of transformation in the course of one night, we cannot expect it to happen through our own efforts, or through some real work and change that we can make happen inside us. The only way it can happen is if we are already enough, just as we are, right now, to be redeemed, to be loved, to be set free. There is no journey to make other than a simple switch in our minds from unworthy to worthy, from needing work to enough, enough right now to be free and loved and redeemed by God. Dayenu. We are enough.

Some Pesach Thoughts -- via Video!

I created these videos on Pesach for my high school class, but I thought a wider audience might enjoy them.  Each one below has one main idea.  They are of varying length.  Note that the last 5 are all extremely short (1-2 mins). 

1. On Different Types of Slavery (In the gemara and haggadah) (7 minutes)

2. How and Why Hallel is Different at the Seder (5 mins)

3. From Shame to Praise (Take 2) (1-2 minutes):

4. Matzah (based on the Sefat Emet) (1-2 minutes):

5. Maror (based on the Sefat Emet) (1-2 minutes):

6. Afikomen (based on the Sefat Emet) (1-2 minutes):

7. Who Knows One?  (Based on the Sefat Emet) (1-2 minutes):