“S’molo tahat roshi vimino t’habheini – his left arm is under my head and his right arm embraces me”.So says a lover in the Song of Songs (8:3).Minimally the sukkah must have two walls and a hand-breadth length of a third wall:thus, the sukkah is compared to this embrace of lovers.Metaphorically, we are being held in the arms of the Holy One when we are in our sukkah.
As we spoke about over Yom Kippur, when we have fully engaged with wonder and trembling during the Days of Awe, we receive Divine love as a gift.This is the essence of Sukkot, z’man simhateinu, the time of our joy.Together we experience the sense of being held, being protected, being cared for.
Why else is Sukkot specifically called the season of our joy?Being joyous on every holyday is a mitzvah – a way for us to connect our lives with Divinity – but the mitzvah of joy is mentioned specifically about Sukkot.Joy is the essence of the holiday of Sukkot.Psalm 100:2 teaches us to “serve Hashem with joy – ivdu et Hashem b’ simhah” .If we are always to serve the Divine with joy, what is so special about Sukkot?
Our process of teshuvah begins with the 40 day journey from the beginning of the month of Elul to the release of Yom Kippur.During that time we experience remorse, sadness and, hopefully, forgiveness. We arrive at Sukkot having done serious spiritual work – avodah – and we can rest in the sukkah, in the shelter of the wings of Shekhinah, protected by the canopy of peace and wholeness – the SukkatShalom that we pray for during the evening service.As a community, Chochmat HaLev certainly experienced joy when danced together at Neila – but even that is not enough, we need Sukkot to complete the process of teshuvah, and thus to know true joy.The special joy of Sukkot is the certainty that we are accompanied on our journeys by the love and protection of the Holy Blessed One.And… the metaphoric Book of Life is not sealed until Shimini Atzeret, the 8th day of the Sukkot season when, traditionally, Jewish worshipers gather to say the blessings for the rainy season and again to recite Yizkor, the memorial prayer (this year Tuesday 10/21).
My blessing for Chochmat HaLev is that each of us will be able to sit in a sukkah this year and feel the Divine embrace, so that we can share this knowing of love, protection and containment with each other as the ground of our spiritual community.Through this experience my we experience the most profound joy ever!
With blessing for wisdom of heart and mo’adim l’simhah – for seasons of deepest joy!
This year as I read this parasha, I was struck by a linguistic theme in the latter chapters of Deuteronomy. The Hebrew word-root s-t-r –seter- secret/hidden is used in two different sections. There is that which is revealed to us – nigleh - and that which is hidden - nistar.
Last week we read:Ha nistarot Ladonai…v’ ha-niglot lanu- the hidden are Hashem’s and the revealed are ours (Deuteronomy 29: 28)Perhaps this means that what is not yet manifest in our lives, nonetheless lives in the infinite potentiality of the Divine Mind. Only when we exercise our power of choice does a specific possibility actually become manifest.We sometimes use “The Mystery” as a name for the Divine, which might imply that we live in awe of the hidden ways the Universe manifests in our lives. We delight in the uncovering of the sod, the mystical interpretations of Torah, in revealing hidden meanings.
In this week’s parasha, we read the prediction that, when the Children of Israel break their covenant with the Holy One by worshiping other gods, Divine anger will be manifest, the Divine Face will be hidden and tragedy and troubles will occur- v’hara api bo…v’histarti panai. When the Israelites acknowledge their role in this predicament, Hashem affirms, v’anohi hasteir asteir pani – I will surely (continue) to hide My Face… (Deuteronomy 31: 17-18).Because of our actions, God’s self is now hidden from us. When the Divine Face is hidden, we experience abandonment and disaster.God is concealed.In fact, Martin Buber wrote a book about Holocaust theology called “the Eclipse of God”.
I bring these two verses to your attention so, during these Days of Awe and Teshuva, we can meditate on what it means for there to be revealed and not-yet revealed realities.When we think of the Divine as The Mystery, we are thrilled at the hint of a deeper mystical dimension of life – the hidden potential to infuse life with light and meaning.But when the Divine is in hiding we may experience that same Mystery as alienation and abandonment.
I invite us to contemplate these sections of Deuteronomy.How are they both speaking about the Light of Divinity which, for those with faith, is always present? How does one come to such faith? What might it mean for the hidden mysteries to be so fascinating and meaningful, but the hidden face to be so dismal?
I ask your forgiveness for any ways which I may have slighted, offended, or otherwise been less-than-impeccable in our dealings with each other.Know that such errors have not been intentional.Please, let’s work with such challenging situations to advance our Conscious evolution. I look forward to our unfolding and deepening relationships.
With this parasha we return to the challenging theology of the book of Deuteronomy, the paradigm of covenantal promises.If children of Israel follow YHVH’s commandments, they will be blessed, and if they don’t, they will receive the opposite.There are several verses with very general blessings, but, oy!!! …there are several pages of tokheha, of admonition, listing all the specific and dire consequences of our failure to fulfill the covenant.(This tokheha is traditionally read rapidly and quietly during the Shabbat Torah reading so as not to give further spiritual reality to the very difficult and graphically-negative words.)We are asked to believe that if we behave correctly –according to the guidelines set out by Moses, blessing will flow; and if we mis-behave, we will be much less fortunate, even cursed.
The text is troubling, because we know that this world-view is too simplistic.We know that “bad things happen to good people” and the scoundrel often appears to win the prize.Yet, we also know that our choices do affect the quality of our lives.In fact, back in Genesis, Abraham is told (Deuteronomy 12:2) “vehyei brakha” – be a blessing!” We can walk the spiritual path so that we bring spaciousness and equanimity into our lives; or, we can live the unexamined life and allow reactivity or anger rule our moment-to-moment existence.Our actions are important in and of themselves, not just as means for being rewarded.
Once again we are asked to expand our heart and consciousness beyond this narrow reward -and- punishment view of Reality and seek the healing of such black-and-white thinking.We do our best to be a source of blessing and not of negativity even though we know that, despite our most sincere efforts, Existence will not always be fair to us. We do not deserve all the dire consequences enumerated in Ki Tavo, but we know that life is not always easy and painless.How we react to adversity defines our humanity.
Yet, there is something of the child in us, that still wishes Existence would be like a fairytale in which the wicked are punished and the righteous are rewarded.What we can hope for, I believe, is that the circumstances of our lives not be made worse by our choices and that Consciousness will evolve sufficiently that we can truly manifest grace and wholeness.
The Israelites wondered in the wilderness for 40 years before they were ready to receive “a heart that knows and eyes that see and ears that hear” (Deuteronomy 29:3). May these gifts of spiritual maturity be our reward for our commitment to teshuvathis year, for our choice to walk together on the ever-challenging path of righteousness.
“You shall appoint shoftim, judges and shotrim, officers, at all your gates... and they shall judge the people justly. Do not pervert judgment by showing favoritism or taking bribes... Tzedek, tzedek tirdof -justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may live, and inherit the land....” (Deuteronomy 16:18-20)
Our parasha begins with the injunction to set up a system of courts. In fact we are to actively pursue righteousness – tzedek (a word with the same Hebrew root as tzedaka which means far more than just charity) - in our judging of others. This is a higher standard than that of simply deciding guilt or innocence. I invite you to consider how justice and righteousness (two common translations for the word tzedek) might, in fact, differ…
Hasidic thought, however, directs these verses to the individual. The gates of the person are the 7 openings of the senses: 2 ears, 2 eyes, 2 nostrils, one mouth. Thus we are enjoined to judge and monitor the gates to the inner recesses of our selves. We can refuse to listen to slander. We can open our eyes to let in injustice, but not to witness the shame of another person. The sense of smell connects directly to the deepest, most primitive places in the brain. We can be scrupulous by taking in only ethically-raised food, savoring it with gratitude. We can be certain that only words of integrity leave our mouths. How else might guarding our senses be beneficial to our well-being?
“When you go out to war.... a man who is afraid and tender-hearted may return to his home lest he melt the hearts of his brothers…” (Deuteronomy 20:1, 8)
These are words I wrote 3 years ago for this parasha, as my son Carl prepared to follow his heart’s path to join the army in Israel:
We are certain that all of our sons and daughters who are soldiers are souldiers-- with a core place of rakhut-lev --tenderheartedness. We know our children and we know that they all have that place of deep inner goodness and vulnerability, that inner point of essence, that inner point of goodness of which the hassidic rebbes speak. And we pray that this place be protected from soul-injury when they go to battle. We pray that, when called upon, they act from this place of truth, that they always pursue righteousness and justice - tzedek tzedek tirdof. We know that the young men and women who go to war will be changed by what they experience. We can only pray that they heal from their time of soldiering.
Here is the blessing from this verse: we know that all of our souldiers have tender hearts, they all have families and homes they love. We bless them with strength and protection to follow their ideals, to fight for what gives their lives meaning and to come back from war with their core of goodness intact and unharmed.
