Drash: Kedoshim

By Brian Schachter-Brooks

In Bereishit, which contains the creation myth of the Torah, there is a strange line about the function of the first human beings who are created and placed in the Garden of Eden. The text says that God put them there l’avdah ul’shamra- “to work it and to guard it (2:15).” It is strange because the rest of the text does not paint a picture of gan eden as a place that needs to be worked. On the contrary, Adam and Havah seem to just walk around and eat the fruit which grows on the trees; there doesn’t seem to be any need for “gardening” the garden. Furthermore, the need to work the earth seems to arise as a curse for eating the forbidden fruit- “…b’zayat apeykha tokhal lekhem- by the sweat of your brow you will eat bread (3:19).” Living in the gan seems to mean harmony with nature, eating that which grows naturally. Living outside the gan means civilization; it means working the earth to grow grain and eat bread rather than fruit.

So what does it mean, then, that Adam and Havah worked and guarded the garden? In nature, there is nothing that exist only for itself. Although every life form is driven to preserve and perpetuate itself, the life process of each life form is integral to the life processes of many other life forms, tied together in a delicate web of give and take. We humans tend to impose our shortsighted morality onto nature, seeing nature as a brutal and amoral place. But this is due to our own lack of vision of the Whole. For example, we tend to cringe at the violence of a predator killing its prey, unaware that the suffering of being eaten is far more merciful then the slow starvation which would happen if the prey were to become overpopulated.

So in this sense, the situation of living in harmony with nature is the way one “works the garden.” Adam and Havah weren’t farmers; simply by living, by eating and breathing and excreting and reproducing, they were playing a role in the life of the whole planet.

This myth is probably a deep memory of prehistoric humanity- life before humans entered the stream of recorded time. When Adam and Havah are expelled from the garden, the hallmark quality is a sense of separation in three forms. First, they become separate from each other, as they realize they are naked and cloth themselves. Second, they become separate from God, as it says that they hid themselves from God out of shame. Third, they become separate from nature, as it says that the ground is cursed, and “…b’zayat apeykha tokhal lekhem- by the sweat of your brow you will eat bread (3:19).”

And what is the thing that creates this condition of separation? The eating from the eitz hada’at tov v’ra- the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad. What does it mean to eat? It means that the thing you eat becomes part of you; it becomes who you are. The Tree of knowledge represents division; it represents seeing the world as split into that which “I” want and that which “I” don’t want. It represents division. So when they eat from the forbidden fruit, they are making division part of themselves; they are becoming divided.

This is not to say that prior to eating the fruit they didn’t have preference or desire. On the contrary, it says that “vateireh ha’isha ki tov ha’eitz l’ma’akhal- and the woman saw that the tree was good to eat.” Havah wanted to eat from the tree, so desire must have existed before she ate. Of course, all animals have desire and preference. The difference is that after eating, preference becomes identity. And this is the beginning of history with its heroes and villains- no longer is the universe a unified garden, but humanity is pitted against a universe that must be controlled in order to bend to human preference. But since reality is fundamentally uncontrollable, we are forced to experience the meaninglessness of our efforts. We try to immortalize ourselves in various ways, just like the pharaohs of Egypt sought immortality through embalming their bodies in pyramids, but ultimately everything dies and decays. The answer is not winning the fight with nature, but consciously returning to the state of unity prior to becoming separate.

How is this to be accomplished? It cannot be accomplished; it cannot happen by doing something, but by learning how not to do something. That is, learning how not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. How do we eat from the Tree of Knowledge? By contracting around our own preference, by insisting on something from reality, by demanding something from God.

But to surrender our preference means first we have to be willing to see how we cling to our desire. We have to be willing to let our desire be there without clinging to it, and this implies separating ourselves from it. And this is the paradox- that by separating ourselves from the Tree of Knowledge, we actually fall back into Unity. By separating ourselves from our tendency to create separation, we recover the original Oneness of Eden.

The word for this kind of separation that actually reveals unity is kadosh. Kadosh means holy or sacred, in the sense of being special, set apart, or set aside. In our tradition we have so many examples of things that are holy- holy times such as Shabbat, holy books such as the Torah, holy words of prayer and so on. All of these things are set apart from ordinary life in order to point to the Unity, to point to God. but the ultimate kadosh is not in setting aside special times or rituals, but in setting aside yourself. That is, setting aside your false identity which divides the world according to your preferences.

Then you can realize the truth of the opening words of this parashah: “kedoshim tihyu ki kadosh ani HaShem Elokeihem- you shall be holy, for I am holy, HaShem your God.” Meaning, when you become holy by setting yourself aside, you realize that you are not separate from HaShem; the same Oneness that expresses Itself in all of nature is expressing Itself in you also- there is no separation. At that point, our actions lose that suffering quality of “…b’zayat apeykha tokhal lekhem- by the sweat of your brow you will eat bread,” and instead express the quality of simplicity, of “tending the garden.” Through the wholeness of all our relationships, we naturally play our role within creation, surrendered to the Order that effortlessly includes us within it.

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Kedoshim, the Holy Ones

By Zelig Golden and Kerrick Lucker

The parsha this week is Kedoshim, meaning “holy ones.” Kedoshim is how some people refer to the Jews killed in the Holocaust—appropriate for today, Holocaust Remembrance Day or Yom ha Shoah v'ha Gevurah. In Kedoshim, God tells Moses: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”(Lev. 9:2). This parsha then prescribes many of the mitzvot, or rules of conduct, that should lead to this holiness. For example, here we are told to honor our father and mother, observe Shabbat, and leave some crops in the field for the poor. This parsha, however, also offers rules that may no longer resonate with us—in particular the prohibition of intercourse between men as punishable by death (Lev. 20:13).

How can we follow the mitzvot when some resonate with us and others seem cruel or nonsensical? The famous story of Rabbi Hillel the Elder is instructive. When a student challenged Hillel to teach him all of the Torah while standing on one foot, Hillel taught, “That which is hateful to you do not do to your fellow. The rest is commentary—go and learn it.” Hillel’s legacy is a powerful one—and allows us to understand the Torah based on our time. We understand the intent of the mitzvot is to keep us from doing to another what is hateful to us; if a mitzvah seems to require us to do to another what is hateful, we must interpret it according to our heart’s truth.

We may also ask how, in face of genocide such as we remember today at Yom HaShoah, as we have seen in Rwanda, and as we see right now in Darfur, we can have faith in humanity and God. After so long, how is it that humans have not learned Hillel's fundamental truth? That we remember Yom HaShoah today of all days may help us. Passover has just ended; we stand in our liberation. Spring is bursting forth from the earth with green new life. We are also on the 12th day of the counting of the Omer—hod b’gevurah, which can be translated as “receiving the brokenness.” Thus we are taught that even as we recognize our rebirth, we also recognize our brokenness, and from this brokenness we move toward wholeness – the end is a beginning and the beginning is an end.

As we solemnly remember the fires of the Holocaust today, we also must recognize that we are singing, dancing, praying and following our Jewish practices in freedom and without fear. The message, then, is one of hope. Yes, we have experienced much tragedy that we must never forget and there is tragedy in the world today that we must not turn our back on. And we can have faith that from this brokenness will grow wholeness. As Holy Ones, our job is simple: to remember, to have hope and to love. While it is not our job to finish the work to bring wholeness to the world, we are instructed as Jews not to refrain from it.

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Drash: Tetzaveh

By Brian Schachter-Brooks

One of the great failures of the religious traditions is that in attempting to forge a vision of unity, they tend to reduce the richness of our multi-faceted experience into only one type of experience. An example of this can be seen in the different approaches to the duality of “personal” vs. “impersonal.”

Some teachings claim that everything that happens is totally personal. In this way of thinking, it is not merely our human relationships that are personal, but the meetings we have with nature, the seemingly random events that happen to us daily, and even the positions of the stars are totally personal. To embrace this kind of approach is to see meaning everywhere and to have a personal relationship with all of existence.

Other teachings claim that reality is essentially impersonal. In this approach, one is encouraged to see even human relationships as impersonal. The same impersonal laws of nature which govern the cosmos are also unfolding in how we interact with one another. We are encouraged to “take nothing personally” and to not project our own sense of meaning on the world. To embrace this kind of approach is to not be caught in the web of judgment and accept things as they are, without personal attachment.

Both of these views are born of an attempt to reconcile the confusion of our dualistic, complex experience. But the fact is, we experience reality as both impersonal and personal, and this is unsettling. We long for clarity, for a universe that makes sense, for a view that will give us a unified way of approaching life. And so we gravitate toward beliefs that are reductionist, that elevate part of our experience as real and label the other part as unreal.

But these reductionist approaches, whether they be the personal, faith-based leaning of Western religions or the impersonal, non-attachment leaning of Eastern religions, ultimately do not work- not just because they are not true, but because they fail to reach the heart of the problem. The heart of the problem is not the complexity of our experience, but the complexity of the “I” that is experiencing it. If we want to find real unity, we won’t find it by pretending that reality is simple when it’s not. Rather, we need to discover the aspect of ourselves that is unity; we need to find the root of our experience which is the deep source of thought, the totally simple and radiant root of our own being, which is also called Hokhmat HaLev- Wisdom of the Heart.


This parashah begins with the mitzvah of pressing olives for olive oil that is to be used to light the ner tamid- the constantly burning lamp in the portable sanctuary called the mishkan, and later in the Jerusalem temple. “V’atah t’tzaveh et b’nai Yisra’el- and you (Moses) shall command the children of Israel- v’yik’hu eilekha shemen zayit- they shall take for you olive oil- zakh, katit lama’or- pure, pressed for illumination- l’ha’alot ner tamid- to kindle a lamp continuously.”

When you press olives for oil, you are taking something that is complex- the olive fruit, with its skin, flesh and pit, and you are extracting from it something that is simple- the continuous, flowing substance of the oil. Then, when you burn the oil, it becomes the fuel for producing heat and light. This process is a precise metaphor for the inner work. First you must take that which is complex- your own infinitely branching tendrils of thought, and “press” it into its essence, which is a pure simplicity. How is this done? “L’ha’alot ner tamid- to kindle a lamp continuously.” The “kindling” of the “lamp” is a metaphor for awareness; just as you need light in the physical world to see, so you need awareness in your inner world to perceive. So to the degree that you can keep your inner lamp continuously burning, your ever branching streams of thought return to their root, which is awareness itself.

In this way, rather than pacifying the anxiety of living in a reality that is one moment intimately personal and the next moment vastly impersonal, we open to the all embracing unity which is our own attention. Because in the field of our attention, all opposites can coexist without tension; our awareness receives everything as it is, with all its contradiction.

There is a mystical idea in the Kabbalah and in Hassidism that God is the true reality, and that the phenomenal world we see around us is like a covering, hiding the reality of God. But the truth is actually the exact opposite. When we look around, we often don’t connect with the world, because there is the barrier of our own minds in the way. We feel disconnected, and we long for unity, so we invent the mental idea of “God” which is the true reality, as a Being separate from the world. But what we really need to do is find the world hidden in the word “God.” Because “God” is ultimately not something different from Reality Itself; if we want to find God, we need only to pay attention to reality around us in this moment.

This is also the message implied in the holiday of Purim which is coming in this month of Adar. On Purim we read the Megillat Ester- the Scroll of Esther- in which God is not even mentioned once. The idea is that God is the story itself; the synchronistic events in this redemptive story are the unfolding of God as reality; God and the world are not two separate things. Similarly, this parashat T’tzaveh is the only parashah in the book of Sh’mot in which Moses’ name is not mentioned, implying that the Torah, the Teaching, is not limited by the man Moses, but is the unfolding the story itself. And the “story” is happening Now; it is reality unfolding in this moment. From this we can begin to understand the Talmudic saying that “God, Israel and the Torah are One.”

There is another saying- “Misheh nikhnas Adar marbim simkha- when Adar enters, joy increases.” What greater joy could there be than realizing that the God we seek has been here all along and it could never be otherwise! As we approach the celebration of Purim with its concealing costumes and masks, may we remove the mask of our own judgmental minds, so that we may behold the Divine which is nothing but Reality Itself.

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Parsha: Tetsavveh & Ti Kissa: Hearing God’s Word

By Zelig Golden

In this week’s parsha, Tetsavveh, Moses stands alone on the Holy Mount Sinai – for forty days and forty nights – downloading from God the rituals that will become the roots of Jewish priestly practice. Moses’ solo journey on Mount Sinai continues into next week’s parasha, Ki Tissa, where Moses receives the Pact between God and the people carved into two tablets “by the finger of God.” (Exodus 31:18). Of course, we never know the contents of the first Pact, because Moses smashes them upon his return to the people, where he is enraged by the sight of the Golden Calf and the lack of faith it represents. (32:19).

Moses later returns to the Holy Mountain to once again receive the pact with God. But this time, God tells Moses to carve them himself (34:1). Ultimately, then, the commandments from God come to us through the conduit of Moses. From this story, I burn to know what it means to hear God’s instruction. How do we know what is truly God’s word?

In a rare Torah moment, we get some insight when Moses turns to God and asks God to show itself, to prove its existence to Moses. (33:12-13). God agrees, with the caveat that Moses cannot see God’s face, “for people may not see Me and live.” (Ex. 33:20). So, God places Moses in a cleft of rock, where he shields his face until God has passed so that Moses can get a glimpse of God passing. (33: 22-23).

In this passage, I am encouraged to embrace the mystery of life. To see God’s face, to see the complete truth of the universe, would mean the end of the mystery that drives our lives. As the people Israel – “God Wrestlers” – we are here to struggle, to yearn, and to live in awe of the vast beauty of God’s creation.

Even Moses, our greatest prophet, could not see the whole. The Jerusalem Talmud teaches that when Moses asked God to teach him the truth of Jewish law, God responded, “That is impossible, because the Torah requires us to interpret her many faces … for there are forty-nine way of interpreting the Torah.” (Sanhedrin 4:2).

To live is to embrace the mystery of life, and accept that there is no one truth. As individual sparks of the divine, our journey in finding God is to learn to hear the word of God with our own ears and our own hearts, and to interpret the faces of Torah from the place of our own faith; and ultimately, to share our insights with our unique voice. Then, in conversation with each other, we may come to more fully understand the whole of creation.

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Parsha: Mishpatim

By Kerrick Lucker

This is a shortened version of an essay I wrote for Jewish Mosaic's Torah Queeries. I included the shortened version in the Shabbat supplement on Friday, February 1, and reprint it here by request.

Revolution is the Easy Part

It's one thing to break down barriers of oppression. It’s quite another to build a community of shared liberation. This is what Moses and the People of Israel learn in this week's Torah portion, parashat Mishpatim.

A shared sense of community sometimes arises naturally out of shared oppression, but when liberation happens—and we start to experience the brisk wind of real freedom—that sense of community often quickly dissolves. Freedom is hard work. Self-governance is hardest of all.

Once you’re out in the desert and having to find your own food and make your own laws and mediate your own conflicts, there can be a strange yearning for the old days in mitzrayim, the narrow place.

At Chochmat HaLev, we engage with Jewish practice in many ways. There is room for different interpretations of Jewish law and tradition by those among us. Some of us observe Jewish laws very closely; still others don’t consider themselves Jewish at all. The standards to which we hold ourselves in our covenant with G-d are very different. So how much more important it is to create and keep common agreements about how we treat each other!

What does it mean to you to treat others justly? Much of Mishpatim deals with how one treats one’s neighbors. What does Mishpatim say about how we compensate each other for the hurts we cause? How do we, as members of one community, hurt each other? To whom do we owe recompense, and how much?

Considering these things—frustrating, but rewarding; political and complicated, but heartfelt if we do it right—is part of what it means to build a community. When we turn our attention from battering at the things that hold us back, we look forward, in trepidation and awe, at the task of moving into freedom. An essential part of that task is making community. Otherwise, there is no “we” to be free.

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Drash: Parasha Mishpatim with Karen Erlichman

By Karen Erlichman, Director of the San Francisco Office of Jewish Mosaic

Good Shabbas.

This week’s Torah portion is Parasha Mishpatim, which translates as “rules” or laws, and delineates some of the most central sacred teachings and commandments of Jewish life and practice.

This list of rules and laws was mind-boggling to me as I read it. The text starts out with guidelines for how Jews will treat their Hebrew slaves, and then goes on like this:

• You must not carry false rumors;
• You shall not join hands with the guilty to act as a malicious witness;
• You shall not oppress the stranger;
• Let the needy among your people eat;
• On the 7th day you shall cease from labor, in order that your farm animals may rest and that even the stranger and the bondsman will rest/replenish their souls.
• Observe the pilgrimage festivals 3 times a year;
• Do not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.

There is so much in this parasha that it was overwhelming to sift through. Just to absorb the fact that Jews kept slaves, let alone enslaved other Jews was difficult enough. As I read on, I thought the psychology of slavery and the impact of slavery on us as a people. What has become our slave mentality as Jews? How do we experience ourselves as oppressors and oppressed? And what does that teach us about how to treat the ger, the different one among us?

The word ger, or gerim in the plural, is usually translated as "stranger," although Everett Fox translates it as “sojourner,” and my Hebrew-English Dictionary defines ger as a “proselyte,” a disciple or convert.

The commandment that instructs us not to oppress the stranger is repeated twice in this parasha, and appears 36 times in the Torah, more often than any other.

The text first says:

V’ger lo toneh v’lo til’chatz’nu, ki gerim ha’yitem b’eretz mitzrayim.
You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (22:20)

Then about 20 lines later, it is re-emphasized with an important added reminder:

V’ger lo tilchatz ve'atem yedatem et-nefesh ha’ger ki-gerim he’yi’tem be'eretz Mitzrayim.
Do not oppress a stranger, because you know the soul, the nefesh, of the stranger, because you were strangers yourselves in the land of Egypt. (23:9)

In our contemporary Jewish community, the word ger is most often used to describe the non-Jew who has entered into our community in some way, perhaps through marriage or partnership. However, I would like to suggest that we engage with this particular text by defining the ger as "the different one."

Perhaps the ger is the non-Jewish partner among us, or the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer person in our community, or the Jew-by-choice, or the Jew of color, or the non-Zionist Jew, or the Jew who grew up secular and is now exploring Jewish spiritual practices.

Take a moment, and if you’re comfortable, please close your eyes, and recall a time in which you were the Other in your own community and someone reached out to you. Picture a moment in time when you were the only one in some way, and someone genuinely saw you or reached out to you. Take a deep breath and connect to that feeling.

Where were you? How did you feel? What happened when you connected with that other person? How did you experience the presence of God in that moment of connecting soul to soul with the other person? Take another deep breath and open your eyes.

In her book Torah Journeys, Rabbi Shefa Gold says,
“When I encounter the stranger, I am commanded to know her soul, to step inside her skin, to see that his pain, his joy, is not different than my own.” (p. 82)

Remembering our own enslavement in Mitzrayim as we encounter the Other is a spiritual practice, and a practice of tikkun olam. For those of us who are also lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex or genderqueer, we are simultaneously members of the tribe and gerim/the Other.

Personally I find tremendous comfort in the line of this parasha that says,

Hiney Anochi sholeyach mal’ach lifanecha lish’mar’cha ba’derech, v’la’ha’vi’acha el-hamakom asher ha’khino’ti.
I (God) am sending an angel before you (ahead of you) to guard you on your path, and to bring you to the place I have prepared for you.

Who are the angels that have been sent before you to guard you on your path? And what is the place that God has prepared for you?

May we be blessed in every moment to truly welcome every single person into our community, to know with compassion the soul of the stranger, and to remember our own experience of being enslaved in the land of Mitzrayim. May we remember to reach out to the Other, to become angels of compassion, and to see the face of God in every person.

Shabbat Shalom.


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Eco Tu b'Shevat Seder Post

Over at The Jew and the Carrot, Zelig wrote about the amazing and uplifting First Annual Eco Tu b'Shevat seder:

While the Seder followed the traditional trajectory of the four-worlds laid out by the 16th Century Kabbalists, this Seder had a distinctly unique flavor. Everyone brought their own plate and cup. Any disposable dishes were compostable. The Haggadah was printed on Hemp. We meditated on the first fruits. And for each world, we addressed how our environmental choices, particularly our choices around food, square with our tradition to “love your neighbor as you love yourself,” and how we relate to the “Good Land” that was our heritage (Deuteronomy 8:7-10).

Kol ha'Kavod all those who made this great event happen! I'm looking forward to next year's. Read the rest

Parsha: Be-Shallah - the Faith of Moses

By Zelig Golden

In this week’s parsha Be-Shallah, we celebrate Shabbat Shira – the Sabbath of Song – named for the song Moses sang to the children of Israel at the red sea. Moses sings his song of victory and faith in God after their passage through the parted waters of the Red Sea, the seminal birth moment of the Jewish people. (Exodus 15:1-18).

In parsha Be-Shallah (Ex 13:17-17:16), we witness what may be the greatest miracle in our story. God leads the people Israel out of Egypt as a pillar of cloud by day to guide us and a pillar of fire by night so we can see. God parts the waters of the Red Sea so that we may cross out of the land of our slavery and be born into the land of our freedom. Along the way, we witness miracles within miracles. For example, when the sea parted, God turned the sea into dry ground. (Ex. 14:21). One fantastical midrash teaches that upon this dry ground between the vertical sea walls, apple and pomegranate trees bloomed for the hungry children to pick as they walked to freedom. (Exodus Rabbah 21:10).

Yet, as the miracles of our Exodus unfolded, the children of Israel cried and complained. When Pharoah waged his last attack on Israel, camped by the red sea, we blamed Moses– “it is better to serve the Egyptians than to die in the Wilderness.” (Ex. 14:12). After the miracle of the red sea crossing, the people kvetched, “If only we had died in Egypt … for you have brought us out into this wilderness to starve to death.” (Ex. 16:3). And later encamped at Rephidim, we kvetched from fear of thirst, “Why did you bring us up from Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock from thirst.” (Ex. 17:3).

In The Book of Miracles, Lawrence Kushner describes two children, Ruven and Shimon, who can only see the mud on their feet as they cross through the great walls of the parted sea. “Their eyes were closed – they may as well have been asleep.” (quoting Exodus Rabbah 24:1). Kushner teaches, “People see only what they understand, not necessarily what lies in front of them . . . to be a Jew is to wake up and to keep your eyes open to the many beautiful, mysterious, and holy things that happen all round us every day.”

So how do we wake up to see the miracles around us? One answer to this is finding faith – faith in God and faith in our ourselves. In the Exodus story, Moses demonstrates this faith. He shows us too that faith is not something we inherently have, but something we cultivate. Early in the Exodus story, Moses rejects the notion that he is capable of leading us – “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and free the Israelites from Egypt?” (Ex. 3:11). “What if they do not believe me and do not listen to me…” (Ex. 4:1). Moses even doubts his ability to speak because he is “slow of speech and slow of tongue.” (Ex. 4:10.). By following God’s instructions, becoming a conduit for God’s miracles, and stepping into communal leadership, however, Moses gains faith in himself and God. His transformation is complete when, under attack by Pharoah and pinned by the sea, Moses proclaims without God’s instruction, “Have no fear! Stand by, and witness the deliverance which God will work for you today.” (Ex. 14:13). He then lifts his arms to part the sea and lead his people to freedom.

Moses shows us a universal truth. We doubt ourselves; we doubt God. But even with our doubts, we can learn to sing our own song and we can find faith – and when we do, our eyes are open and there is nothing we cannot accomplish.

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Va-Era – The Plagues of Exodus – A Call To Transformation

By Zelig Golden

In this week’s parsha Va-Era, Moses becomes the emissary of G-d in fomenting the Exodus from Egypt with the first seven natural disasters – blood, frogs, lice, insects, cattle disease, boils, and hail – that Egypt suffers because Pharaoh refuses to free the Jewish slaves. (Exodus 6-9). As each disaster takes its toll on Pharaoh’s people, he decides to free the Jews, but then G-d hardens his heart and Pharaoh changes his mind, eliciting yet more punishment on the people.

If G-d is so powerful and so clearly desires the freedom of Israel’s tribes, why does G-d make Pharaoh so stubborn? On one level, G-d may simply want to demonstrate her power to the faithless Jews so that they will heed the words later transmitted at Sinai. G-d may also be teaching the Egyptian task-masters a lesson for subjugating Israel’s people to slavery. On another level, the drama of the ten plagues speaks to a deeper truth about what it takes for us to grow, transform, and navigate through Mitzrayim (Hebrew for Egypt, also meaning the narrow places in our lives).

It seems to be a universal truth that people often must experience tragedy to catalyze change. Individually, personal growth often follows hard times – depression, loss of a relationship, feeling lost in life – some call this the dark night of the soul. We sometimes have to hit rock bottom before we begin our Tshuvah, or return to ourselves, through therapy, spiritual inquiry and awakening to our true nature. Societally, change may come at an even greater cost – consider global warming. As the polar ice cap is melting, and even though our communities and nations know that severe ecological disasters will result from our greenhouse gas emissions, we continue to drive our cars and burn coal for power because the effects have not yet hit us at home.

Like Pharaoh, we don’t change until we really hit rock bottom. It takes the physical death of Pharaoh’s own son – from the tenth plague, death of the first born – from him to finally release the enslaved. (Exodus 12: 29-32). In a similar manner, our mystical tradition teaches that to evolve as individuals, we may need to undergo spiritual deaths of ego and internal restrictions so that we may emerge from the narrow places of our own lives to more fully connect with ourselves and G-d. As the Ba’al Shem Tov prayed, “I desire to kill (or afflict) myself in order to serve G-d in truth and with a whole heart, in love and awe, that I acknowledge His Unity fully.” (Tzava’at Harivash, 43a).

The show of force that are G-d’s ten plagues teaches us of our own resistance to change, and what that resistance may bring. The violence of the Exodus story shows us one path – the heart and prayer of the Ba’al Shem Tov shows us another. Ultimately, the Exodus story calls on us to be proactive at this critical juncture in human history.

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