From the Ashes of our Broken Houses

[For the Ner Shalom Malakh, August 1, 2009]

We are now sitting squarely in the month of Av, a mournful month that launches our trajectory through the High Holy Days. On the ninth day of Av, which fell this week, we mourn the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians. And the Second Temple by the Romans. And scores of other calamities that have befallen the Jews and which occurred -- or which had such heft that they feel as if they occurred -- on that same day of the year.

Our Days of Awe begin right here, with the destruction of Beyt Hamikdash -- the House of Holiness, our house. We bring our awareness to the ways that our own houses are always in the process of crumbling. We live lives full of inevitable change. We lose jobs, homes, loved ones. Our bodies change. Our health comes into question. Many of our deepest hopes go unfulfilled. Every moment is, in some part, a loss, a leave-taking of the previous moment's expectations. Every moment sends us into a new exile, if we dare to look at it. Tisha B'Av is an invitation to look.

But we are not defined solely by our tragedies. Every moment provides opportunity for rebirth and rebuilding. The Jewish calendar offers this model to us. In Av we experience loss and we grieve. In Elul we run our fingers through the ashes of our crumbled houses, searching for a new understanding of who we are when the externals are taken away. At Rosh Hashanah we see the possibility of new life out of the ashes. For ten more days we do the hard spiritual work of teshuvah -- the process of penitence and forgiveness. We gain insight, depth, dignity. And, at last, on Sukkot we build our first new shelters, shaky perhaps, but green and beautiful.

In our earthly lives, loss, grief, introspection and rebirth do not occur on a schedule; they do not roll out in a linear fashion. We are, in some way, engaged in all points of this process at every moment. Every day is Tisha B'Av, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot. The Jewish calendar simply uses those landmarks to draw our attention to the process we all go through and to sketch us a path of healing.

We are born into a Creation that is still unfolding, and we only have a finite chance to live in it. Loss and rebirth are cyclical, natural, inevitable. In fact, these are all Days of Awe.

Shabbat: Mid-week, Mid-moment

[For the Ner Shalom Malakh, July 2009]

I'm not certain I have yet been as much at a loss as I am this month in deciding what to write for the Malakh. It's not that I don't have things on my mind - there is always quite a racket in there. And it all seems to be rattling at equal volume. Not just the "expansive" thoughts I like to try to put down here, but the mundane ones - the car repairs, the airport pickups, the bill paying, the stolen moment for a ukulele lesson, the simchas, the worries, all of it.

How does any one of us ever make sense of it all? How do we ever arrive at or maintain an expansive moment under the crushing pressure of daily, monthly, yearly life?

I think there's an obvious Jewish answer to this and a less obvious Jewish answer to this. Both answers are: Shabbat.

Shabbat has, all our lives, been offered to us as a model of balance - separating the melody from the noise, the bigness from the smallness, the breath from the breathlessness. But we've come to abandon Shabbat, conceiving of it as a day ripped out of the calendar, in which work-like activity is banned. And this often doesn't fit the lives we lead.

But we might think of Shabbat differently. My teacher, Rabbi Elliot Ginsburg, once described Shabbat as a great, powerful flow of holiness. The seventh day is merely a vessel to catch and hold some of that holiness. In his words, "If you are standing at Niagara Falls and you are thirsty, it helps to have a cup."

So perhaps where we get snagged is in conceiving of Shabbat as being an absence of something, instead of a fullness of something else. There is a hum of holiness underlying everything we do. The trick is, from time to time, to be aware of it. The seventh day is one invitation to do that. But it needn't be the only one. What if we became aware of Shabbat in the middle of a busy weekday, and let it fill us? Just for an instant? The word shabbat, coming from lishbot - to cease - is also related to lashevet - to sit. What if, at a random moment in a jam-packed day like the ones I've been having, we took a moment just to sit? Sit. Breathe. Be aware of the elegant largeness of all of this and that hum of holiness coursing through you.

It could be (as it is at this moment for me) a Wednesday afternoon, and it would be Shabbat. Take a moment like that now. Whatever day of the week it is: Shabbat shalom.

Parashat Balak: Testing Your Moral Mettle

[For Congregation Ner Shalom, July 3, 2009.]

Ah, to open your mouth and have words of blessing pour out!

Ah, to have angels bar your way when you are heading out to do something rotten.

Ah, to have your pets and beasts of burden pull you aside when seem up to no good.

These are the incredible gifts given to a soothsayer named Bil’am, who is the protagonist of this week’s parashah. His story is one of the most fanciful in Torah. It doesn’t further the storyline of the Israelites’ wandering in the desert. It doesn’t aid in the character development of Moses or Aaron or Miriam.

Instead it is its own self-contained fable, full of poetry -- perhaps very ancient poetry, talking donkeys and foiled plans of bloodthirsty kings. And it is plopped down in the Book of Numbers as if it belongs there.

As K. (tomorrow's Bar Mitzvah) pointed out to me some time ago, this portion could have started with, “Meanwhile in Moab,” and could have concluded with, “But back at the Israelite encampment...” The whole story is a time out. A digression. But a beautiful, curious and revealing one.

K. will be telling and discussing much of this story tomorrow. But as a refresher or preview for you, the king of Moab, fearful of the mass of Israelites encamped at his borders, afraid they will devour his subjects like an ox eats grass, calls upon a famous deliverer of curses named Bil’am. He tries to persuade and then bribe Bil’am to place a curse on the Israelites.

Bil’am, though not an Israelite, is in direct communication with YHWH – not just a deity, but our deity. This is one of those infrequent moments in Torah where God’s universality is attested, where God is not confined to being a celestial echo of the Israelites’ earthly identity and adventures. There are others in the world who know YHWH by name. And this is also an invitation for us to take a plunge and identify with Bil’am.

So God, early on in the story, communicates to Bil’am that he may not curse the Israelites, for they are worthy of blessing. Bil’am dutifully tells the King, “I can only do and say what YHWH permits. I cannot transgress against YHWH’s will in matters either great or small."

But Bil’am proves to be a puzzle. He finagles God’s buy-in for him to take the journey the King of Moab proposes. He sets out on his she-ass toward the Israelite encampment -- rather eagerly, the rabbis point out, as is evidenced by his saddling his own donkey and not waiting for a servant to do it.

Then, in an exciting action sequence, God sends an angel with an outstretched sword to block the path. Bil’am doesn’t see the angel but his donkey does, and swerves aside. Bil’am beats the donkey to get it back onto the path. God “opens the mouth” of the donkey and allows it to speak directly to Bil’am to tell him to knock it off. And only then does Bil’am see the angel. Bil’am falls to the ground and begs forgiveness, not for his errand, but for beating the donkey.

Then, oddly, Bil’am is allowed to continue. Bil’am meets up with the king, and eventually catches sight of the encampment of the Israelites. God then “opens his mouth” – the same language that had just been used for the she-ass – and out pour words of blessing.

מה טובו אהליך יעקב משכנתיך ישראל
Mah tovu ohalecha Ya’akov, mishkenoteycha Yisrael.

How fine are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings Israel. And the blessings continue to pour out.

K. will talk to us in depth tomorrow about those famous words, so I leave that to him.

I, instead, got curious this week about the crazy ups and backs in this story, this dance of refusal and permission that God and Bil’am engage in.

1. God says you may not curse them.
2. God says, okay, go on the journey.
3. God tries to stop him.
4. God lets him go anyway.
5. God opens Bil'am's mouth.
6. Bil'am utters words of blessing.

This is a theological mess. If God had wanted to stop him, couldn’t God have? And if God didn’t want to stop him, then why all the theatrics? Or, as my fellow householder S. said to me: "When God says, 'don’t go,' is He just talking out of His ass?"

I think one possible lesson here is about blessing and curse and the need to test your own mettle.

You see, cursing is easy. Dismissing or accusing or speaking ill of those who annoy or threaten or frighten you comes so naturally, so easily.

Bil’am could have simply refused the whole Israelite gig. In doing so, he would overcome the desire to curse, and would have succeeded in carrying out God’s will.

But in a certain way, that also would have been too easy. We have all been told to play nice, to be nice, not to speak ill of others. What’s more, we even know how to articulate words of compassion – at least formulaic words of compassion – about our enemies, or those we’ve been told are our enemies.

But doing such a thing from the heart. And doing it in the physical presence of the other, of the one who frightens you, or who you are told threatens to devour you, that isn’t easy.

In the play Angels in America, the character Louis is called upon to recite Kaddish for Roy Cohn, in the hospital room where Cohn had just died. Louis refuses, but Belize, friend and night-nurse at the hospital, says to him, about giving a foe the blessing of forgiveness: “It isn’t easy, it doesn’t count if it’s easy.”

Did Bil’am go with the intention of blessing? Or did he go with the intention of cursing? I think the answer is neither. He went with the intention of finding out what he would do.

Bil’am knew what God demanded of him. It came to him in visions and in dreams and in the words of angels and the actions of rogue donkeys. Or maybe these were all his inner voices, and they happened to all be saying the same thing. But still, Bil’am needed to know what he would do not in the safe, comfortable distance of his home, but on the spot and in the moment. He had to refuse the voices of “should” and “should not” and find out the strength of his own moral fiber.

Or, in the words of poet Theodore Roethke, as brought to my attention by A. (K.'s father): I learn by going where I have to go.

I think this ends up being kind of a heroic tale. A lone prophet overcoming impediments. The irony, of course, is that we happen to agree with the impediments. And so might have Bil’am. And yet he shut his eyes and ears to them in order to find out what he was about.

Condemning others at a distance is easy. Blessing your enemy at a safe distance is easy too.

But being up close, and allowing your mouth to be opened and blessing to pour out. That takes some courage at least. A willingness to unlearn what you’ve assumed, and possibly to face consequences for it. Isn’t that heroism?

May we all be blessed with visions – may angels try to keep us from doing wrong, may kindly beasts try to keep us from evil paths. But when they fail to stop us, may each of us have the strength to turn our hard-hearted curses into outpourings of blessing.

Facing the Wilderness

[For the Ner Shalom Malakh, June 2009]

As I write this, it is May 26 and I am, it seems, still married in the State of California, a member of one of 18,000 clever, or lucky, or merely bewildered same-sex couples. This is a fascinating turn of events, in which an important civil right (marriage), once inconceivable, became conceivable, then statutorily withheld, then constitutionally interpreted into reality, then snuffed out again by vote of a simple majority.

California will come around, I think; it probably already has since last year's Prop 8 vote. Same-sex couples who have just met, or who haven't met yet, or who are still nervous abotu commitment will someday reasonably soon, I suspect, be able to marry (for better or for worse).

But there's another scary element of this week's California Supreme Court decision that we should note. For the first time in California history, a simple majority of voters was allowed to explicitly take away a constitutional right (even if newly recognized) from an unpopular minority. As Jews this should worry us plenty.

As Americans, we take for granted our Constitutional rights despite seeing them get chipped away as quickly as they are articulated. We take comfort that here minorities are protected from the tyranny of the majority through our federal and state constitutions. But in California, as of this week, anyone is fair game. Jews of course have long experience with such vagaries. In every country we've wandered into we've had Golden Ages and we've had our rights removed by whim. It shouldn't surprise us.

So how do we handle new situations like this? How do we remain calm but poised? I think there is a nice hint in the first parashah of Bamidbar - the Book of Numbers, that we began reading last week. Bamidbar means "in the wilderness" and that's where the book opens. The Children of Israel are in the wilderness - a landscape without landmarks - and God commands them to take a census, by tribe and clan, of all the battle-ready men. This always struck me as an odd story - census taking in an unknown and potentially dangerous setting.

But now I look at it this way. Every moment is wilderness. The future carries no landmarks. We don't know what it will bring, but it keeps arriving at our doorsteps without pause. So when facing the new and unknown, take a census. Count your strengths. What are your special skills? Your talents? Your gifts? What have you gotten from your ancestral house? Does your DNA permit you to do some things others can't? What have you learned from your non-biological ancestors - the people who taught you and loved you and do so still? Do you make music or poetry? Are you good with numbers or with your hands or with children? Are you a good talker? Are you a good listener? Are you a good organizer?

So when facing the unknown, figure out what you do know. In a landscape without landmarks, become the landmark. Remember your strengths. Count them, so that you can count on them, and so that we can count on each other. Sure, every new moment carries risk. But let us approach the wilderness with our banners high, like the Children of Israel in the Sinai Desert or the Plains of Moab. May we know who we are, and let no one tell us otherwise.

Parashat Kedoshim: The Mirror

[For Congregation Ner Shalom, May 1, 2009.]

What do you see when you look in a mirror? What do you see when you think about seeing your “self”?

This week’s Torah portion poses, without answering, some challenging questions of how we see ourselves. “You are like God,” Torah says. But before you get too excited about that, you are also like the person in your life who bugs you the most. Torah says that too.

Both these identifications are uncomfortable; both unnatural. Like looking in a three-way mirror at a clothing store and seeing the back of your head. You know it’s yours, but you don’t feel it.

The parashah is Kedoshim, which means, of course, “holy.” Typically in Judaism we apply the quality of holiness with some restraint. God is holy (“holy holy holy,” in fact). And time – Shabbat, for instance. But we rarely ascribe holiness to a person, no matter how righteous they seem.

But this week’s bit of Torah does just that. It opens holiness up to the masses, democratizing it. It presents a series of mitzvot, and implies that by following them, we can all be holy.

The commandments? You’ve heard them before. No placing stumbling blocks before the blind. No insulting the deaf. Leave some of your harvest for the poor. Deal fairly with disputants when passing judgment. Rise before the aged. No cheating in business. No false measures. Be kind to the stranger.

These are good commandments. Signature ones. Commandments that have become axiomatic and which speak to values that we, as moderns, as progressives, as Jews, can be proud of.

But it’s not 100% clear that the relationship between following these mitzvot and “holiness” is causal; i.e. that one's holiness results from engaging in these good acts. At the opening of the parashah (Leviticus 19:2), right before launching into these commandments, God says:

קדושים תהיו כי קדוש אני

Kedoshim tihyu ki kadosh ani.

This might be a future tense: “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

Or it might be imperative: “Be holy! (I am.)”

Or it could be a statement of present fact: “You are holy, because I am.”

If this last, then the association of humankind with holiness is not the product of following these particular commandments, but grows independently out of some identification with God. This is not an unreasonable reading. It hearkens back to Genesis where it says we were created in God’s image. If we follow that reasoning, and indeed holiness is part of God’s image, then we are hardwired for holiness, engineered to be Godlike.

-Nu? How are you today?
-Godlike, thank you. You?
-Same. Like always. Thanks.

Take a moment and close your eyes and imagine being like God, whatever you imagine that might be like.

No really, do it.

Did it feel good? Scary? Weird? I would guess it depends on how you imagine God, if you imagine God. If you are working with an idea of God as separate from you, big, powerful, perhaps benevolent, it might be hard to maintain the identification. We often feel powerless. And we all sometimes feel, well, less than benevolent. Or if you do for a moment feel “like God” in some way, you might then feel vain or embarrassed, and end up wondering how an emotion like vanity (or embarrassment) squares with being Godlike.

It might be easier to hold the identification if your idea of God is less personality-based and more of, say, God as the Universal Xi – the energy that flows through and fuels the Cosmos. But even then, if I were to look in the mirror, searching for the Holiness of God, I don’t know if I would see it.

And yet Torah tells me to see it. You are holy, because I am.

Imagining our likeness to God through the quality of holiness is awkward and uncomfortable and riddled with doubt for most of us. Maybe we just don’t want to look in that mirror; we don’t want to be measured against godly standards.

Perhaps we are, in fact, better off understanding this phrase kifshuto, i.e. in the simple way in which it’s commonly interpreted. The commandments here are instructions to help us achieve holiness, and God’s utterance, “kedoshim tihyu,” is, in fact, a challenge, not an observation. “Do these things in order to be holy; do these things to be like me.”

Maybe holiness is merely an embodiment of the kindnesses and justice that these laws set in motion. And maybe that is what God is – the sum total of kindness and justice unleashed upon a world that doesn’t clearly require it for survival.

Kedoshim tihyu ki kadosh ani.

Be holy and by those acts I, holy, am.

The parashah calls upon us to make one other important identification. In Verse 18 we have a famous commandment:

ואהבת לרעך כמוך

V’ahavta l’re’acha kamocha.

Love your fellow as yourself.

This is a very odd commandment, a commandment to love someone. Not just someone, but everyone. Our sages did not understand this mitzvah as being meant literally. Their view was that it is impossible actually to love anyone else as much as you love yourself; in fact, under Jewish law, your life takes precedence over another person’s. And how could you love another in the particular way, with the depth and specificity, that you love yourself?

Instead, some suggested that kamocha – as yourself – might best be read not as an adverb describing how you should love, but rather as an adjective, describing your fellow. In other words: “love your neighbor who is like yourself.”

Seeing similarities between one’s self and other people can be fun in a limited way. Think of being in a new relationship. “We have so much in common! We finish each other’s sentences.”

But seeing similarities between you and those you love is natural. It hardly needs to be commanded. It’s seeing the similarities to those you don’t love that is growthful and difficult and holy and that is commanded here.

Close your eyes again. Imagine someone in your life who makes you uncomfortable.

Really, do it.

Imagine someone who bugs you. It should be easy to think of who that is. Breathe deep and see the ways in which you’re alike. You’re both stuck inside bodies that work sometimes and not other times. You both get hungry. You both worry. You both want appreciation. You both want love. You may have different tools and skills and talents to get what you want and need, for sure. But you both want and need.

So take a moment, in your heart, and love that person. Because that person is so much more like you than you’d like to admit.

V’ahavta l’re’acha kamocha. Love your fellow, because your fellow is like you.

And if this person is like you, and you are like God, isn’t this person Godlike too? That’s a hard one. Take a moment and set aside your grievances and your annoyance. Look at that person with love. Can you see their holinesss? Can you see God in them too?

So there you are, back in the three-way mirror. Look at your face in the mirror on the left. It is God’s face. Be brave and look. Then look at your face in the mirror on the right. It is the person who is so hard for you. Go ahead and cut them – and yourself – some slack. And look at your face straight ahead, and feel them both in you.

Kedoshim tihyu. You are holy.

The Omer: From Bondage to Bonding

[for the Ner Shalom Malakh, May 2009)

Welcome to the in-between days, the days of the Omer, which run from Pesach to Shavuot. These are our days of historic (and spiritual) wandering, with miraculous escape from bondage in Egypt behind us, and the receiving of Torah at Sinai still ahead. These are our days of anticipation.

The vocabulary of Pesach is basic for many of us. Our tongues speak words of liberation in many of our politics and theologies and life stories. But these forty-nine days remind us that it is not enough to achieve freedom “from.” Freedom is also “for.” But for what?

In our tribal imagination, we were freed from Pharaoh in order to enter into relationship with God. In our modern imagination, you might say we free ourselves from our biases, our weaknesses, our “narrow places” so that we can make better commitments to the world around us – to our families, our community, our planet; to justice, to peace, to right action.

It’s kind of like this: you get out of a bad relationship, and at first freedom from it is enough, and your freedom is all you can think about. But eventually, if you truly honor your wandering, that freedom prepares you for your next relationship or your next life commitment. And looking back, it seems like that was its purpose all along.

Are you free to commit? Do you feel bound in a way that is of your own choosing? I urge you to use these days of the Omer, the days between the planting and the first fruits, between Redemption and Revelation, between the Parting of the Sea and the Opening of the Heavens, to consider your freedom and what it is for. When is the next time that you, like Ruth, whose story we read on Shavuot, will say, “Whither thou goest, I will go,” and to what person, community or cause will you be saying it?

Parashat Tzav: Peace Porridge

(For Congregation Ner Shalom)

Anyone hungry? This week’s Torah portion, Tzav, gives us a very valuable recipe: a recipe for healing and peace.

That sounds like a tall order, I know. And it’s not exactly a recipe. And like my great grandmother's best recipes, there are no quantities listed, and like my recipes, the results are not guaranteed. But Torah’s suggestion of what some essential ingredients of peace might be – peace both personal and political – cannot be disregarded.

The recipe comes in the course of instructions for, yes, ritual sacrifices. This is the kind of detailed and grisly subject matter that typically keeps the book of Leviticus far away from our pile of bedside reading.

But in this parashah, we get special instructions for “Peace Offerings.”

Now understand that at the time of the Temple, we didn’t have a system of communal prayer, and if there was any tradition of personal prayer or meditation, its neither mandated in Torah nor documented there. So making offerings of livestock and food was the primary ritual way that Jews made supplication to God – for forgiveness, for permission, for healing. In our generation we are used to contemplative practices that are private and quiet. Or communal prayer and song which, even if rowdy, take place in enclosed, orderly spaces. To us the idea of thousands of people hauling their livestock to a Temple, in the heat, with the smells and the flies and the noise, seems, well, less than conducive to a spiritual experience. Can you imagine any of us there? “Excuse me, could you keep that cow quiet? I’m having a personal breakthrough. Thanks. Catch you at oneg.” But even though it feels alien to us, this was a profound personal experience for the Jews at the time and is the parallel of so much of the soul-searching work that we now do internally or in community.

So, the section begins:

וזאת תורת זבח השלמים אשר יקריבו ל־ה

"This is the teaching about the shlamim offering which shall be offered up to Adonai." Shlamim is a beautifully ambiguous word. It is wither a form of shalom, meaning "peace", or shalem, meaning "wholeness" or "completeness" or "health" or maybe "integrity." So these are the Peace - or Wholeness - Offerings. Or as a recipe, this might be called the Peace Porridge.

Torah then gives ingredients. Three types of offerings that fall into the Peace offering rubric. They are: neder, nedavah, and todah.

Neder means "vow" - we recognize this word from our Yom Kippur evening prayer, Kol Nidre - All our Vows. The second type is nedavah, meaning something like "willingness" or "generosity", from the same root as the word nadiv in the chant we sang tonight. And the third, and trickiest type is todah, meaning gratitude.

These are three main ingredients for making peace, or for achieving personal or even global healing or integration. Not the only ingredients. But perhaps the ones that require a reminder.

Let's start with neder: vow. What is a vow? I think a vow has two elements. One is the desire to change some circumstance in the world ("I'll never be hungry again!"). The other element is accountability to a powerful witness ("As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again."). If there was no circumstance you wanted changed, there would be no reason to make a vow. And by making a vow instead of merely intending to do something, you are accepting responsibility for the change actually taking place. So intead of "vow", let's call this element something more in our vocabulary, like "commitment". So one piece of making peace in the world involves identifying that peace would be a desirable change, and committing to it. Becoming personally responsible for it. You cannot be like Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's new Defense Minister, who said yesterday that the last year of peace negotiations have no relevance because they were not adopted by Knesset. You have to do the opposite of Lieberman. Even though the efforts haven't been ratified, nonetheless we are committed. Commitment is different than and precedes method. That is the element of neder that builds peace. Your personal healing also requires your commitment even if you don't yet know the means.

The second ingredient of Peace Porridge is nedavah: I will translate this as generosity. Not generosity as a character trait, but generosity as a practice. If you want peace - in a personal relationship or on a global scale, you must be willing to give, to give more than you wanted to give. To surrender sometimes - not in the military sense, but to let go of your need not to budge. Nedavah says "act generously, give more than you thought you would." And in your personal healing, try being generous toward, instead of angry at, what stands in your way, even (and especially) if what stands in your way is you.

So ingredient #1 is neder, commitment. Ingredient #2 is nedavah, generosity. And finally, the most difficult ingredient, of unreliable consistency and highly perishable - is todah: gratitude. Why might gratitude be an essential ingredient in creating peace?

Gratitude is a kind of breath or breeze that clears the mist from your eyes and lets you look at things differently. When we're in conflict with others - friends, lovers, bosses or nations - and in general in much of how we live our lives, we are very aware of what we don't have. We act so often out of a place of need. "If only I had..." "I'm going to get..." "I need a better house, job, lover." "I need more affection from you." "I need appreciation." "I need your resources, your power, your land." "I need more respect."

Gratitude doesn't change any of the facts. But it fundamentally changes how we look at those facts and the value we assign to them. I, for instance, have a lot. We all do. And I know that all of what I have is an accident of birth, and a gift of privilege, and the consequence of a series of coincidences too numerous to count. I don't deserve what I have, and if I earned it, I did so only in the most superficial of ways. So when I feel gratitude I feel how precious and how precarious all of what I have is. My focus moves from "need" to "have"; from desire to dayenu - it is enough. Or if it's not enough, it's still a lot. Or, in Jewish terms, things could always be worse.

So how does gratitude make peace? If you approach peace from a place that isn't just unmitigated need, then there is a chance that an option will arise that might actually satisfy you. Or satisfy you well enough. Gratitude paves the way for compromise.

Interestingly, in the parashah, the gratitude offering is handled differently from the other two kinds of Peace Offerings. There is special fuss involved - including an elaborate bread hors d'oeuvre that must be prepared, with a recipe rivaling anything in Martha Stewart. And then the entire gratitude offering must be eaten - by the priests together with the person offering gratitude - that night. You can eat the neder offering and the nedavah offering the next day and even the next. But not todah. Not gratitude.

Why is this? In Torah it's never explained. But I think gratitude is different than commitment and generosity. You can make a commitment and can carry it out even if your heart isn't always in it. If you decide to act generously, you can do so, even if it's not making you happy at that moment when you have to act. (We all know that it sometimes feels different to make your pledge to tzedakah than it does to actually write the check a couple weeks later.) Commitment and generosity are like brisket. Frankly, the leftovers serve just as well.

But while commitment and generosity focus on our actions. gratitude is an emotion and comes from the heart. If it is indeed gratitude, and not pretend, then it must be sincere in the moment in which it is experienced or expressed. Gratitude is a dish that must be served hot. It is not brisket. It is a souffle. When you feel gratitude you must down it and digest it right then, because tomorrow it might be gone.

So healing the world, healing our relationships, healing ourselves. Like all healing, it's better with soup. And as the parashah teaches us, Peace Porridge needs these ingredients, so offer them up! Commitment, generosity, and gratitude. The quantities are up to you. The results? Not guaranteed. But oh, it would taste so good, how can you not try?

Bon appetit.

After 28 Years: It is Again Evening, It is Again Morning, the Fourth Day

(For Ner Shalom Malakh, April 2009)

By now, most of you have heard about our impending ritual oddity - Birkat HaChamah, the Blessing of the Sun. This is the most infrequent blessing in all of Jewish tradition. We recite it only every 28 years, when the Sun is said to return to the very spot in the Heavens where it was created. We wait for this event with an anticipation usually reserved for rare astronomical occurrences like eclipses and comets. And while this is a celestial event, it is not exactly astronomical. Where the Sun sits today in the Universe (as we understand it) is not where it was in 1981, and certainly not where it was at its birth 4.5 billion years ago. The timing of this event defies our usual Jewish calendrics. We are a thoroughly lunar people, yet the calculation of the date of Birkat HaChamah is based on a 365.25-day year with the specific placement tethered to the Spring Equinox. Very solar, eh? Yet the number of solar years involved -- 28 -- sounds awfully like the number of days in a lunar month, making the span between blessings kind of a lunar month of solar years. And (I find this part chilling) since the Sun was created on the fourth day of this world, Birkat HaChamah always takes place on the fourth day: a Wednesday.

Like an eclipse or a comet, Birkat HaChamah makes me feel both big and small. Certainly tiny in relation to the Heavens; but somehow large in knowing that I, too, am a naturally-occurring part of all this vastness. The blessing we make is purposely vast. Instead of using our usual morning liturgy in which we bless God for creating the heavenly lights, in this instance we bless God as Oseh Ma'aseh V'reishit -- the catalyst of all Creation. My knees weaken when I think of trying to utter a blessing for this vastness. Perhaps that is the reason we only do it every 28 years: how could we, on a daily or weekly basis, hold the magnitude of that intention? Maybe it takes 28 years just to rev up.

The idea of the Sun returning to the place of its creation is beautiful. What if we could all do that? If we could really return, start again, try it differently. If we could be placed into our lives all over again by the same divine hand (or non-hand) that set the Sun in the sky like a painting on a picture hook. To return to the conditions of our creation and do it all differently. Or even do it all the same.

But of course we can't go back, and measuring our lives in 28-year intervals makes that painfully obvious. Twenty-eight years ago I was in college and somehow missed Birkat HaChamah. Twenty-eight years before that I wasn't on the planet. Whether I am on the planet 28 years from now is not in my hands. No, I can't go back. None of us can. Nor can the planet, which ages every moment and chafes under the mounting pressures we place on it. Nor can the Sun itself, so long-lived, but destined, like us, ultimately to fail.

And yet: this is our moment, our generation's moment. Our chance to grab the Sun by its rays and say, This is our piece of the Infinite. We may look longingly up and down the highways of space and time, but this is us, standing at the intersection of here and now. We hold this spot with joy, knowing we will never be here again, and we commit to making of this intersection what we can, for as long as we can. This is still Creation. We are the seed, and the soil, and the watering-can, and the hand (or non-hand) that holds it.

I'll see you early morning on April 8 (a Wednesday of course) so we may commit to this moment together.