Hayom Harat Olam - the Birth of All the Worlds

[Rosh Hashanah Eve teaching for Congregation Ner Shalom.]

Hayom harat olam. Today the world is born.

This is Rosh Hashanah’s motto, its advertising catch phrase. Rosh Hashanah could have had other marketing slogans: “The World: Just Do It.” Or “The Cosmos: I’m Lovin’ It!” Or “The Universe: Can You Hear Me Now?”

But no: Hayom harat olam. Today the world is born.

What does it mean to say that today is the birth of something that is old beyond reckoning? How do we hold the idea that this world is ageless because it’s so old, but also ageless because it’s so new?

We are a people and a species who live in constant contradiction. And I think this is a fine place, a beautiful place, to be.

A couple weeks ago, while preparing for the Holy Days, I drove out to Samuel Taylor Park and found a quiet spot up on the Pioneer Tree Trail to sit and write. It was a high spot with a backless bench. I’d brought a cushion and I sat on the ground, turning the bench into my writing desk, and leaning my back against a redwood easily four stories tall.

I could vaguely hear the cars way out on Sir Francis Drake, but they were mostly drowned out by the silence of the woods. Way above my head was a broken ceiling of branches and redwood needles and the light filtered through and hit the green undergrowth in messy splotches. I was reminded of Virginia Woolf, who wrote in her novel The Waves, “Islands of light are swimming on the grass. They have fallen through the trees.”

So much magic. So much majesty. Such deep joy to be part of this world.

Now, about this tree at my back. I haven’t a clue how a tree operates. Somewhere in school I learned something about it. There’s a tube or a fluid or something called xylem. And there’s something else called phloem, which I can’t even spell let alone explain. I learned somewhere that the outside of the tree is alive, and the inside is dead wood. Oh, and photosynthesis. Got something to do with light and sugar.

While I have some appreciation for these subtleties of plant biology, to me, that day, the trees were pillars holding up the heavens. The canopy, as we call it in English, was just that. A chupah. I could have gotten married under those trees and stilled fulfilled the requirements of our tradition. I was out in the open, but I was also within a shelter, a sukkah, that was brought about not through eons of evolution but placed by God in that spot just for me, and for that moment.

Now you might reasonably ask, “Irwin, you don’t really believe that, do you? That God placed trees there just for you?”

For which I have two answers: “Of course I don’t.” And: “Of course I do.” A contradiction? Sure. A problem? I don’t think so.

The same question applies to the creation of the world. In one of our classrooms here at Ner Shalom, we have a timeline up on the wall, a timeline of Jewish history. The year 3761 BCE is marked as Year Zero in the Jewish reckoning, and that hashmark on the timeline is identified as “Creation of the World.” Back in the spring, a member of our community happened to see the timeline, and challenged me about it. “Is that what you actually believe?" this person asked. "Is that what you teach? And if not, why don’t you take it down?” Legitimate questions.

In the moment, I’m sure I gave some stammering and unsatisfying response. But the question stuck with me, and I realized that the problem was that the two of us (and the timeline) were conflating two different worlds.

Is the world only the physical, which we study and try to size up empirically? The one made of matter and energy that burst into existence 14 billion years ago? The one whose secrets will inevitably be unlocked, we trust, by observation and theory and, ultimately, proof?

Or is the world how I experience it, the feelings it invokes and the stories my mind and heart use to explain it all? Or is it our collective dreams, fears and imaginings? Passed on to us, and by us to our children, through ink on animal skin, through murmured lullabies, through salt thrown surreptitiously over a left shoulder. Are those nothing?

Ultimately we, as Jews, as moderns, as humans, are inheritors and holders of multiple cosmologies, and we live in them all, all the time. Is it possible to see the cosmos as occurring naturally through processes that might be governed by Guiding Principles but not by a Guiding Intelligence, and at the same time to feel magic, or feel Divinity, in all things? Yes, of course it is. Many of us do that all the time.

The problem, perhaps, is that we’re guilted into feeling like we ought not feel both. The Empty Universe and the God-filled Universe, like so many ideas and phenomena in our culture, get unnecessarily poised as opposites, and then we are forced to choose one view or the other. As the old Benny Goodman song goes, or sort of goes:

If it ain't wrong, it's right
If it ain't day, it's night
Godless or Yiddishkeit --
It's gotta be this or that!

So we live in the gray area and feel pressured by the imperative of “gotta be this or that.” On one side we feel a need to be modern and scientific which ends up inexplicably meaning secular. And on the other side, despite none of us actually being religious fundamentalists, we’ve somehow unquestioningly adopted from fundamentalism a belief that accepting the literal word of Scripture is the defining trait of a religious person. How many of us think of ourselves as bad Jews because we don’t believe in all of it? How many of us tell people, “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual,” because on some level we’ve bought into the idea that we have no right to lay claim to our religion unless we believe specific literal things. That Judaism is a strictly delineated and guarded territory and we are effectively trespassers.

So here’s the reminder for all of us: our tradition does not now, and has almost never, demanded literalism. Last year, I told a story, and I will tell it again now, because it bears repeating. My teacher, Rabbi Marcia Prager, was once in a panel discussion with a fundamentalist preacher, who wagged his finger at her and asked, “But do you believe that the Bible is true?” And she responded, “Yes, I do. But I don’t think that’s what you’re asking. You want to know if I think the Bible is factual.”

We have so much room, and such good models, for multiplicity in our tradition, for the holding and embracing of multiple understandings, conflicting and sometimes interconnecting narratives of reality!

To start with the basic one: tomorrow morning we will read in Torah the first chapter of Breishit, of Genesis, telling the 6-day creation story we all know practically by heart. But Torah itself provides alternative creation narratives as well. The second chapter of Genesis tells the story differently. The Book of Psalms hints that the world began with great battles, in which God subdued other deities, and forced the Sea to submit to His will and subside to form land.

Jews who came later held the 6-day story as something holy, yet articulated other beliefs as well. Maimonides, our great rationalist of the Middle Ages, believed that the world was arranged and functioned in the way that Aristotle described. But he simultaneously would have upheld the truth of Torah’s creation story.

The mystics similarly held more than one worldview, not limited by a long shot to the first chapter of Genesis. They saw creation as having a prologue – God retracting from complete fullness in order to provide the quasi-physical space in which the world would be created. The Zohar, our most famous book of mysticism, describes the creation and ongoing operation of the world as the interaction of the processes of Ten Spheres, called Sefirot.

I imagine to myself that for those Kabbalists, the 6-day creation story might have been what they thought factual, but the story of the spheres might have felt true. Or maybe the other way around. But in any event, they would have believed both, on different levels, and both would have been Torah to them. Contradiction? Yes. Problem? No.

Our mystical tradition offers us a particularly lovely and deep way of understanding the multiplicity of cosmologies in which we sit: the Four Worlds. These are four layers of reality that exist everywhere simultaneously. Asiyah, Yetzirah, B’riah, and Atzilut. These are described as stacked tiers, like a layer cake. Our physical world is at the bottom, dominated by Asiyah – the world of action and thought. Next up is Yetzirah, an angelic realm, where angels are used to describe what we might call our emotions, our motivations, our impulses. Moving up is B’riah, a realm of visionary experience, where we can sometimes make contact with something that feels Divine through prophetic or ecstatic experience. And on top, although even the bottom-to-top is just a metaphor, is Atzilut, the divine inner realm, hidden from us, beyond our ability to know. Mystery.

• Atziliut – divine
• Beriah – visionary
• Yetzirah – emotional
• Asiyah – physical

In the Kabbalistic view, the same ten sefirot are mapped through all four of the worlds. All experience, all action, all processes, occur in all the worlds at once. Every moment is a bite clean through the layer cake.

The idea that there are multiple levels of reality captures something that we sense but have a hard time putting into words. The notion that what happens in one world happens in all is poetic and stimulating and not unique to Judaism. Especially appealing is the idea that what happens in the physical world has effect upon the internality of God, and not just the other way around. For instance, the belief that engaging in a mitzvah not only produces effect in this world, but also causes a spiritual shift in the other dimensions of reality. It is a profound idea. And isn’t it in fact what we mean when we loosely talk about karma? That our deeds have not only physical effect but spiritual ripples as well? Of course, it’s often easier and safer to say it in Buddhist than in Jewish, since our experience as trespassers in the terrain of Judaism has made us into dispossessed wanderers as well.

So back to the timeline. How old is the universe?

Fourteen billion years sounds like a good answer in the world of Asiyah. The world of action and thought and radio telescopes.

And maybe 5770 years is the right answer in the world of Yetzirah – it captures an emotional truth about a world that seems ancient compared to our own lives, but also feels very young, intimate, not so much older than us as to make our lives seem irrelevant. Or perhaps it captures a collective emotional truth about our peoplehood. The Universe might be billions of years old, but for us it started when we, collectively, woke up. Sort of the difference between measuring your own life from your birth versus from your first memory.

And maybe the answer in Beriah – the place of vision – is hayom harat olam. The world is only coming into existence at this very moment. The world is only now. The future is a speculation and the past a supposition. The world recreates itself at every moment, and we are recreated with it.

Isn’t that what the Yamim HaNora’im are about? The possibility of transformation, of change, of rebirth, no matter how old we are? An infinite abundance of newness and potential. Sure, the dust that makes up our bodies is as ancient as the Universe. But it doesn’t feel that way. We are not bound by our clay. Our bodies may be made of earth but our breath is pure possibility.

So, was the world created 5,770 years ago? Two answers: “Of course it wasn’t.” And: “Of course it was.” A contradiction? Yes. A problem. No.

And who or where is God in all of this? The trigger? The overseer? The baker of the layer cake or just a fancy name for the layer cake itself? Maybe it doesn’t strictly matter. It is all true. It is all true. The Godlessness of the Universe, and the Godfulness of it as well. And so, to the underlying question, “Is there a God?” Two answers: “Of course there isn’t.” And: “Of course there is.” A contradiction? Maybe. A problem? I hope not.

I have a new favorite term for God, a traditional one, that we sing in our waking-up blessings. It is Chey Ha-olamim. Life of the Worlds. Not life of the singular world, but life of the plural worlds. If God is anything, God is the totality of all the realms of existence we could ever touch or dream of. Baruch Atah YHWH, chey ha-olamim. Blessed are You, the great IS, the breath of life in all the worlds.

And so, friends. People. Jews. Do not be afraid of contradiction. Do not be afraid of complexity, or multiplicity, or subtlety. Reject enforced oppositions. Black and white. Right and wrong. Man and woman. Science and religion. Gray area is what gives our lives true richness.

Hayom harat olam. Today is – everyday is - the birthday, the birthing day – of the world. Of all the worlds. In celebration we have a layer cake.

Bon appetit.

Check, Please!

[For the Ner Shalom Malakh, September 2009]

These are the oft-dreaded words at the end of a restaurant meal. The time of settling up. In the context of dining, it almost never results in a completely happy moment. The food might have been subtle and surprising and presented in fashionable cairn-like stacks. But the check at the end undoes some part of the joy. As much as we might believe that the quality of the meal was high or that we deserved the indulgence, there is still nagging doubt. Our wallets are finite. We could have prepared something at home, not as fancy but still special, for a fraction of the damage.

In Hebrew, the check is called the cheshbon - the accounting, or reckoning. In this month of Elul that leads up to the High Holy Days, our tradition asks us to engage in cheshbon hanefesh - a reckoning of the spirit. We are asked, plain and simple, to account for ourselves. What have been our deeds? What have been our misdeeds? We might feel like we've mostly been well behaved, kind, somewhat patient. Yet there's still nagging doubt. I could've been more generous. I could've been more grateful. More loving. More patient. More honest. I could have acted more for the benefit of my community. I could have acted more for the benefit of the world.

Quite simply, our tendency is to dread cheshbon hanefesh in the reflexive way that we hate paying the check at the restaurant. We put it off because we suspect the accounting might not be so favorable. At least I do.

But there is a difference here. The currency with which we pay off our soul's debt is teshuvah - a returning to who we know we are or can be. Teshuvah involves focusing on what we know deep down, and acting in accordance with that. The marvelous thing about teshuvah is that it is limitless. Our wallet is always full.

A month-long period of cheshbon hanefesh seems like a tall order. But perhaps the intent is for teshuvah to be habit-forming. One does not need to wait until the beginning of Elul or the end of Elul or the last hour of daylight on Yom Kippur to look at oneself honestly and to choose the next steps accordingly. We can do that every day. Every minute. It only sounds painful because we don't know how to start.

So here's how you might start. If you are someone who prays, then pray. Pray in a way that helps you see yourself more clearly. If you meditate, meditate. If prayer and meditation are not part of your personal toolbox, then choose one single aspect of your life to look at more closely. How you eat. How you do business. How you spend your free time. Is there something nagging at you in one of those areas? Something you know, when you become really mindful about it, that you should be doing differently? This is cheshbon hanefesh.

Set aside some time for it before the High Holy Days. See if you can arrive at Selichot or at Rosh Hashanah already tenderized, already more self-aware. And on the way, notice what it is like to make cheshbon hanefesh - accountability for the integrity of our spirits - as regular a part of our lives as food.

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?