“Ki-yitron ha-or min ha hoshekh – the most preferred light comes from the darkness.” (Ecclesiastes / Kohelet 2:13)…as translated by my teacher, Rabbi Moshe Aharon Krassen:“the light from darkness is a superior light”.
Not only are we approaching the Winter Solstice, but this week is the new moon of Tevet – the time of the darkest nights of the year.Into this darkness we light our Hanukkah candles.This light is more than symbolic, we truly draw hope and optimism and a new way of seeing into our souls and from our souls into the world.
We are enjoined to place our illuminated Hanukkah menorahs in a window so that the light shines out into the street.In a posthumously published book of teachings by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, we are reminded that what is most special about the light of these candles is that they light up the exterior with light from the inside.On Hanukkah, those interior soul-places, which are often dark and poorly-illuminated, become candles which radiate light and good will toward the outside.
Let’s send blessing for candles that are set aflame on the darkest nights of the year, and for those places inside ourselves that yearn to become sources of healing, warmth and light.
May we all experience the wonder of children as we gaze at our candles this week – and with this intention begin to contemplate the soul-trait of delight.
“We bless you, Source of Life, who made miracles in those days, at this season – bazman hazeh. Thank you for giving us life to enable us to reach this moment – lazman hazeh.”
These are the words we recite after lighting our Hanukkah candles. The rabbis have long taught that hidden in these words are the understanding that the miracle of light did not just happen once a long time ago, but is renewed each and every year during this Solstice season.
As we kindle the candles of the hanukkiah, our eyes are bathed in light from another dimension, from the timeless place where miracles happen.This is healing for our sense of sight so that we can truly see beyond the trivial and the ordinary into the essential.Just as the olive oil for the menorah in the temple represented the distillation of the essence of the olives, so the light of theHanukkah candles brings the essence of our souls to awareness.
Our spiritual sight is renewed as we gaze into the candlelight.We see our life as it is fundamentally a – miraculous, mysterious, sometimes challenging, but often joyful – gift from the Divine.So, this Hanukkah, let our intention be to look at each other and at our universe with renewed wonder – to see the soul and not the garment.
I hope to see you Saturday night at our communityHanukkah party (if not in body, please be with us in spirit).
This week is the new moon – Rosh Hodesh – of Kislev, a month in which both the Hebrew and secular calendars converge in calling us to gratitude.
The holiday of Thanksgiving, this year on the 9th day of Kislev at the time of the waxing moon, overtly asks us to pause, share a festive meal with family and friends, and consciously acknowledge our appreciation of the natural world for its sustenance. On this Hag HaHodayah, the day of giving thanks, we recognize our indebtedness to the Source of All.
Then, on the 25th of Kislev, with the waning moon, the holydays of Hanukah arrive, a time of gratefulness for the miraculous, a time of consciously bringing more light into our world. The daily blessing for gratitude – Birkat Hoda-ah recited thrice daily in the Amidah, is expanded to explicitly express thankfulness for past wonders, and implicitly to acknowledge the ongoing miracles in our lives.
Two levels of gratitude: for the ordinary and for the extraordinary. Both are especially recalled during Kislev: Thanksgiving Day rituals emphasize honor for our natural world; Hanukah memorializes the miraculous order of Existence. Both are essential to a sense of grateful awe.
With blessing for generosity and wisdom of heart as we deepen our communal practice of gratitude,
“V’Avraham zakein, ba bayamim, va-Adonai beirakh et Avraham bakol – and Abraham was old, advanced in days, and Hashem blessed Abraham with all.” (B’reisheit 24:1)
The late Slonimer Rebbe, in his opus, Netivot Shalom, reminds us that each day uniquely illuminates a specific spark, showing us a tiny piece of what we must accomplish during our lifetime. Each day is a special creation, unique unto itself. Each day has its own integrity. When we bring intentionality to our living of every day, the sparks coalesce to create a vessel that receives Divine love and bounty, enabling us to share this richness with the world.
We hope, then, to receive the blessing of Abraham in this parasha – to be blessed with all that we need for our purpose to be fulfilled. As we advance in days and years, we pray for the strength and integrity to be present to life’s vicissitudes with equanimity. In this way, we can, b’ezrat Hashem (with Heaven’s help), each become a source of blessing to our world.
At the start of Parashat Vayera, Abraham is sitting in the opening of his tent, in the heat of the day: “YHVH appeared to him….and [Abraham]…lifted up his eyes and saw 3 men standing before him”. (B’reisheit 18:1-5).
Presumably Abraham is resting, recovering from the pain of his circumcision at age 99, and from the miraculous recent events including new names for himself and his wife, the news that 90 year old Sarah will birth a son, the promise of a covenantal relationship throughout the generations, and that Yishmael, his first son, will also become the father of a great nation. [Incidentally, later, v 18:19 – we receive the first hint that our covenant with Divinity will involve walking the spiritual path and of righteousness and justice.]
How does one maintain equanimity in the midst of the turmoil of such events? The mystical tradition teaches that Abraham is sitting in deep meditation. Through meditation, we experience an opening into worlds not otherwise accessible. As we continually re-focus our awareness on the present moment – yeshuv ha-da’at, the return to consciousness (a Hebrew translation of equanimity as we have discussed previously) – we experience the connection with Consciousness. As our verse teaches us, by sitting in the opening, Infinity can be manifest to us.
Of course, then, when we open our eyes, the verse continues, we see each other and our world, reaffirming our knowing – da’at – that it is through the manifest world we know and experience Infinity. And this knowing leads to actions of hesed, of loving-kindness.
The blessing of this practice is that the ability to re-center and re-connect with the godplace within, will, over time, bring less reactivity and more equanimity to our moment-to-moment interactions.
Parashat Lekh Lekha ∙ Genesis 12:1-17:27 Middah for the Month of Heshvan: Equanimity
I write to you this week from Jerusalem.
The saga of the foremothers and forefathers begins in this week’s Torah portion with Avram (later to become Abraham) hearing – and acting upon – the Divine imperative to leave his ancestral home – he hears the words “lekh lekha” – get up and go! – and he responds.
This week, the Bay Area Jewish Community publicly reminds itself that we are not immune to situations of domestic abuse. Shalom Bayit, our non-profit agency that supports battered partners in creating a life of safety, has asked spiritual leaders to speak about this issue in the context of this week’s Torah portion. How hard it is to leave a difficult – often dangerous – situation without the support of community. Shalom Bayit reminds us that we must say “hineni- here I am” in order that an abused partner will have the courage to heed the voice of “lekh lekha”.
Particularly in this context, we are reminded that our middah (the ethical soul trait we are exploring this month) of equanimity does not mean passivity.
For the victim of domestic abuse, cultivating equanimity might involve learning to center and to hear the inner voice of truth, reaffirming ones self-worth and not accepting the voice of the abuser as ones own. For the abuser, equanimity may be learning to be less reactive and to modulate feelings of anger and jealousy, looking inward for the source of the feelings, and not projecting violence (physical or emotional) onto one’s partner.
Certainly, the stories of Abraham and Sarah’s family are not stories of mythically-perfect relationships without reactivity and anger. Often we learn about the way we would like to be by seeing examples of how we prefer not to be. As we read the book of Genesis this year, I invite us to allow the narrative to shine a mirror into our own souls.
With blessing for the path of cultivating hokhmat ha-lev, wisdom of heart,
Once again we begin the cycle of studying our holy Torah, plumbing her text for meaning and insight. Genesis’ weekly readings are fast paced. This week the narrative encompasses not only the creation of the world but the archetypal stories of the first family – Adam, Eve and their children.
Last week, as we gathered in the sukkah, Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man brought us a very deep teaching (from a contemporary Jerusalem text called Bilvavi Mishkan Evneh) about the names Cain and Abel – in Hebrew, Kayin and Hevel.
The root of the Kayin is related to acquisition, possessions – our very way of being in the material world: kinyan is the process of ownership. Hevel, on the other hand, is a word connoting insubstantiality; it means vapor, breath, emptiness, worthlessness. The book Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), read in its entirely during Sukkot, uses the word hevel repeatedly to describe the difficulty the author has in making sense of human existence.
The story of Cain and Abel, then, is not just a story about sibling rivalry that highlights the unintended outcome of jealous, angry, and violent action. The brothers’ names bring us the opportunity to meditate on how a name can affect one’s way of being in the world: perhaps we are asked to contrast attachment with non-attachment. How does attributing these meanings to their names affect understanding of the story?
I invite us to consider this extra layer of meaning to a very old story and to gather together this Shabbat for an even deeper exploration of these ideas.
With blessing for wisdom of heart in our ongoing process of learning and study,
So we have traveled through the ups and downs of Rosh HaShanna and Yom Kippur, and we now find ourselves in the holiday of Sukkot, where it is customary to eat and sleep in small huts or booths, fragile structures with roofs made oftree branches, corn stalks, or other organic material.One should be able to see the stars through the roof material; this is a time when we are living in a temporary dwelling and the separation between us and the heavens is reduced.The sukkah reminds us of the temporary shelters in which the Israelites lived during their years of wandering in the wilderness, and at the same time it brings us a visceral, embodied experience our vulnerability to the elements, to the passage of time, and to the viscisitudes ofcircumstance.
On Sukkot we read Ecclesiastes, or Kohelet in Hebrew.You may be familiar with a traditional, and rather bleak translation of the beginning of Kohelet:
Vanity of vanities; all is vanity…
But in a more contemporary translation of the text, Rami Shapiro gives us an alternative perspective on these words and on the deep meaning of Sukkot.His translation, THE WAY OF SOLOMON, Finding Joy and Contentment in the Wisdom of Ecclesiastes, begins:
Emptiness!Emptiness upon emptiness!
The world is fleeting of form, empty of permanence, void of surety,
Without certainty.
Like a breath breathed once and gone,
All things rise and fall.
Understand emptiness, and tranquility replaces anxiety.
Understand emptiness, and compassion replaces jealousy.
Understand emptiness, and you will cease to excuse suffering
And begin to alleviateit.
Solomon, the presumed author of the original text, is passing on his own hard-won wisdom to us, his heirs, on Sukkot.He is telling us that we all fall into the same traps that have captured us for millennia.He is saying that we are constantly trying to get somewhere, accomplish something, all ultimately in a vain attempt to ward off our awareness of life’s impermanence.He repeatedly asserts that we suffer because of our illusions of permanence, separateness, and control.
And just when we feel overwhelmed by the harsh reality which he insists we confront, he offers us his prescription for peace:
Life is fleeting, the passing of moments upon moments.
Embrace them as they come;do not cling to them as they go.
In this alone is there tranquility.
So, this year as we spend time with community in the sukkah, may we be blessed with the wisdom to be present with What Is, savoring the sweetness as it lands on our tongues,
Opening to whatever is in front of us, with trust and faith.
This week we come together to celebrate both Rosh HaShannah and Shabbat as we fully immerse in the practice of Teshuvah – a process of returning and turning, of self-examination and re-connecting with our Divine center.
But, sometimes we might feel blocked and not know even where or how to start. Teshuvah can seem like just another meaningless word, one with no relevance to our own lives. When we see others immersed in communal prayer, dancing and singing, our own sense of inadequacy can be magnified and we might be tempted to give up.
Rebbe Nahman of Breslov has advice for us. He reminds us that we each have a place of divinity inside, what he calls the nekudah tovah, the point of essential goodness, our holy, never-besmirched soul-place. It is impossible, he continues, that we have not done at least one good thing this year and we must dig deeply to find and recognize it – the smile, the helping hand, the selfless act. The first point is always the hardest to find – trust that the next will flow more easily. For Rebbe Nahman, this acknowledgement cannot help but to bring us to the beginning of joy and, thus, to teshuvah, to a reconnection with our soul’s essence.
In community, we are able to help each other to find and see these places of wholeness. Together we raise up these points of goodness to create the niggun of our collective soul, the melody we will, with help of Heaven, sing and dance together during the coming Days of Awe.
I so look forward to sharing this time with you all.
With soul-blessing and heart-wisdom, Rabbi Saraleya
Parashat Eikev—Deuteronomy 7:12-11:25 2nd Haftora of Consolation—Isaiah 49:14-51:3
What an honor last Shabbat for our community to host the East Bay renewal communities’ GLBT annual Friday night service! Song, dance, prayer and profound teaching left a lasting imprint on our sanctuary’s walls. And so it is all the more poignant that we mourn with our brothers and sisters in Tel Aviv the senseless murder of two young gay people there on Saturday night (and the violent injury of 15 others).
Our Torah portion begins with a profound statement: “eikev tishm’un eit hamishpatim haeila u’sh’marem v’asitem otam…the consequence of your listening to and fulfilling these laws will be the ongoing covenantal love relationship between you and your God. You will be loved and blessed - you and your land will be fruitful.” (Devarim 7:12-13).
Soon thereafter, however, our text continues with a painful recounting of the destruction to be wrought by the Israelites on the Canaanite tribes.
How deep is the worldview of self and Other seared into our communal psyche!
Isaiah, in the section from the prophets we chant week, promises that Zion will never be forgotten by the Holy One, that she is engraved on the palms of the Divine hands....and that the children she thought she had lost will be returned (49:14-22).
We pray together this week that this promise to Zion be a promise we make to every child. Let each child receive the assurance of a brit— covenant—we make with each other and with All of Existence not to rest until each is loved, accepted, honored and celebrated as an essential and unique incarnation of Divinity.
With blessing to always see and act from a place of hokhmat ha lev—wise heartedness,
“Ata hareita la’da’at ki Hashem hu haElohim, ein ode milvado –you have been shown (by your own seeing) an intimate knowing that YHVH is Divinity, and there is nothing else.”(D’varim 4:35).
In our parasha, Moses recapitulated the Sinai theophany including a second recounting of the 10 Commandments.Just before that, he explained to the Israelites the importance of their actually having seen and experienced the Reality of Divinity.
The traditional translation of “ein ode milvado”is that there is no other god than YHVH: ‘the Lord is God and there is none other’. However, for the Ba’al Shem Tov, these words confirm the non-dual theology that infuses his teachings: there is nothing other than the One. We experience YHVH as Elohim, the All as manifest via time and space, but Reality is that all is God.In the words of the much earlier mystics of the Tikkunei Zohar, “leit atar panui minei- there is no place devoid of the One”
As we travel this week through the mourning and destruction of Tisha B’Av to the comfort and optimism of this coming Shabbat of Consolation, we acknowledge that our brokenness, grief, shortcomings and illnesses, as well as our wonder, dancing and joy are all integral to the Oneness.
We suffer each others’ pain; we are made whole by each other’s healing.
With blessing for hearts of wisdom that truly know and understand the deep truth of our Unity,
In this week's parsha, Mase’ei or “Journeys,” we recount the forty-two stages of our epic journey through the wilderness from the narrows of Egypt to the Promised Land. Then, G-d describes the perimeter of our physical land, and gives us our very first rule for how to relate to our land.G-d tells Moses: “open space all around the cities shall you give to the Levites. The cities shall be theirs for dwelling, and their open space shall be for their animals, for their possessions, and for all the amenities of life.” (Numbers 35:2-3).Later, the Talmud applied this rule to the land of all Israelites.
The Torah uses the Hebrew term ‘migrash’ to describe this “open space.” What is a ‘migrash’? Some define it as pasture, or functional agricultural land, while other sages, such as Onkelos translate it as ‘revah,’ simple, natural space.Either way, it is notable that the first requirement for how we are to settle our land is to carve out a part of the land and preserve it without building or planting on it.
Why did G-d require a migrash? Some argue that it was simply smart urban planning.Rashi dispells this notion, emphasizing that a migrash refers to an area consisting of a permanent open space serving as a place of beauty and respite from the city. Maimonides further expounds on this idea, stating that one may not make a migrash into a city, nor into a cultivated field (Mishna Torah, Zeraim, Laws of Shmita and Yovel 13:4-5).
So, even as we end the long journey through the wilderness, and prepare to build our cities, we understand the need to carve out untrammeled space to connect with nature, for there we can find the source of ourselves.As A.D. Gordon, the early labor Zionist explained, “Teshuvah, ‘return’ back to God,’ really means human’s return to nature.This is because teshuvah means going back to one’s point of origin, one’s source, coming back home after a period of absence.”
In our modern world of today, how shall we understand the law of migrash?Considering a historical perspective, we were literally exiled from ‘our’ land and repeatedly displaced from lands for almost two thousand years.Thus we were unable to practice migrash because we were alien people in other people’s lands.Even upon our literal return to ‘our’ land with the return to Israel, we have yet to implement migrash again.Some would say this is because of political and economic realities, which may be true, but on a deeper level I believe that we are currently unable to practice migrash because the mode of exile has become so deeply engrained in each one of us, as Gordon explained, “exile reflects the rift between the Jew and nature.”
Gordon’s perspective resonates with my own, that our inability to practice migrash, and our other land-based covenants such as schmita, is as much a symptom of our physical reality as it is a metaphysical one: “The Jews’ return to their land symbolizes human’s return to nature and cosmos, which is a necessary precondition for one’s regeneration and a Jew’s regeneration in particular and humankind’s regeneration as a whole.”Thus, it is my prayers that on whatever land we reside, may each of us end the journey of exile and begin to repair the rift between nature and us so that we may fully return to ourselves.
In the parsha for this week, we confront the core obstacle of becoming who we are: fear.After a long journey, Moses and the recently liberated people of Israel stand just outside of the Promised Land.Hashem tells Moses, “Shelach Lekha” – ‘Send for Yourself’ by sending scouts to investigate the land, its resources and the people who reside there.One member from each of our twelve tribes goes forth to explore.
Upon their return, one by one the scouts recount the magic of the land – the land indeed flows with milk and honey and the fruit hangs heavy on the vine.Yet ten of the scouts declare that entering the land is impossible – describing the people of the land as giants that make us look and feel like grasshoppers – “the land eats up its inhabitants,” they told.Based on these reports, the Israelites break out into shrieks of grief and despair, calling for a return back to the narrows of Egypt.
Only two scouts, Joshua and Caleb, pleaded with the Israelites: “The land we traversed and scouted is an exceedingly good land.If Hashem is pleased with us, Hashem will bring us into that land . . . have no fear….”But the Israelites respond with threats of stoning Joshua and Caleb.In the end, only Joshua and Caleb will enter the Promised Land.The scouts who spread fear die of plague, and the rest of the Israelites must wander the desert another forty years, until they are prepared to enter the land.
This story tells of an invariable spiritual truth – it is profoundly difficult to escape the slavery of our conditioning and fear.Even when we glimpse the Promised Land, the place of freedom, and land of milk and honey, we must return to the wilderness of our lives to continue the journey of self-discovery, healing, and knowing the One. As Rabbi Shefa Gold teaches, “over a lifetime we are given glimpses, flashes, and hints that open our awareness to the Reality of paradise and unity that underlies this world.”Our journey is long, yet like the seed of a tree, each glimpse of freedom is the fuel for our journey through the wilderness of our growth.
Yet we also learn from Caleb and Joshua that with faith we can muster the courage to enter the Promised Land whenever we choose. To move us closer to this faith, this parsha ends with a blessing.We are instructed to remember the path of Hashem –by following the mitzvot and connecting with the divine, we can transcend our fears.We are also given a physical tool for remembering – we are told to put tzitzit (fringes) on the corners of our garments with a thread of ocean blue.When we look upon this blue, we recall the ocean, which reflects the sky, and reminds us of the Throne of Glory that we glimpse in each moment of clear awareness.(Talmud Menachot 43b).
Naso is the longest weekly portion – a complex tapestry describing portage duties of the Levites, a ritual for suspected adultery, a way for self-dedication to a path of rigor, and a repetitive list of gifts by each of the tribes at the dedication of the Tabernacle.The central gem is the text of the Priestly Blessing.
“Eish o-eisha ki ya’asu mi kol heit ha’adam lim’ol ma’al ba-donai v’ashma hanefesh hahi. When a man or woman commits any transgression that a human might do, the Holy is defrauded and the person’s soul bears responsibility (Numbers 5:5-6)”. When we veer off the path, we are also breaking faith with Reality. Our deception and harm have cosmic repercussions. A deep tenant of Jewish mysticism is that our actions actually affect the Mystery itself; our misdeeds shred the fabric of Existence. We are held to the highest ethical standards.
Similarly, when we do what is right and just and holy, we mend those holes in the structure of our world- this is mystical meaning of Tikkun Olam.It is also a deep meaning of Teshuva, the act of returning and repentance: we can repair the damage our inattention and carelessness may have caused, and, even more importatnly, rectify intentional wrongs we may have perpetrated.
Thus, we are fully interconnected with each other and responsible to each other and to the All.This interconnectedness is essential to the act of blessing, and the Priestly Blessing – Birkat Kohanim – is at the center of Parashat Naso. “Yevarekh’kha Hashem v’ yishmerekha. Beloved, please hold us and bless us. Yaeir Hashem panav eleikha vihuneka. Let the light of Your Face shine toward each and everyone of us and bring grace to our lives. Yisa Hashem panav eleikha v’yaseim l’kha shalom. Lift us up, accept us as we are, and make us whole (Numbers 6:24-26).”
In the Holy Zohar (3:147b), we are told a story of a priest who raised his hands to offer the Priestly Blessing, but since he and the people were not connected by love, he crumbled into a heap of bones!Without the ground of love and connection, blessing is ineffective, and even potentially harmful.Without love there can be no shalom - no peace and wholeness. And, according to the midrash (Bemidbar Rabba 21:1), without shalom, there is no vessel to contain blessing.
The section of the Priestly Blessing ends: “v’samu et Sh’mi al B’nei Yisrael va-Ani avarkheim. Place My Name upon the Children of Israel and I will bless them (6:27)”. Torah is clear that the priest is merely the channel through which Divine blessing flows.
Let us share the intention to always manifest our Heart-Wisdom in our choices, our actions, our loving and our blessing.Let us each be conduits for Your blessing to flow to each other.Let us together form a vessel of wholeness that can hold blessing for our world.
If you walk in my ways - specifically those that are impossible to understand - and if you observe those commands which actually do make sense to you... and..... you actually do it....I will give you rains at the right times and a land full of produce and fruitful trees... you will be satisfied when you eat your bread and you will dwell in security with your land.I will grant shalom in the land and you will lie down without trembling and no frightening beasts will disturb you and there will be no destruction by drought or sword.
ופניתי אליכם .... והקימתי אתבריתי אתכם
ונתתי משכני בתוככם ... והתהלכתי בתוככם...
... ואולך אתכם קוממיות
I will turn to face you and live in covenantal relationship with you.
My Mishkan, my dwelling place, Shekhina, will be among you and inside each of you.I will walk amidst you.... with Me, you will walk upright...
As beautiful are these promises, the next sections of this parasha are troubling. A list of dire consequences for abrogating the covenant is described,in much excruciating detail.... so much so that this section is read very quickly in a quiet voice...
Let’s examine the language of “If...... then....”
Are we speaking here about reward and punishment,and thus bristling at a Deity who gives incentives and takes retribution, who can be punitive and mean? Or, is this a language of consequence, resonance, mida q neged mida,מדה כנגד מדה,measure for measure -good brings more good, destructionmore destruction.... blessing and reproach flow from the natural order.
Our text told us earlier that the land is G!d’s and she resonates, reverberates with what is right and true....
This places us, and our conduct at the center of the cosmos... when we are in right relationship, the earth responds.
We are to be in right relationship with the earth, with our selves, with each other, and then with Gd, too -- a relationship of mutual regard, and mutual caring.A relationship that recognizes the essential sameness of the spark of Divinity within us, within the other, and within the land.
The land has a soul and she responds to our behavior -- importantly, not just the way we treat her, and her creatures, but to how we treat each other.This is a recurrent theme in the Priestly text of Leviticus and a fitting way for the book to end.
When we bring kedusha to our behaviors, the cosmos reverberates with blessing and we are in covenental relationship with the Mystery.We shine the light of awareness on our inter-dependence and we refuse to be separated from the aliveness the hayut,חיות which is our essence and the essence of the entire created universe.
My ברכה, b’rakha, blessing, is that we deeply discern what it means to walk in the path of the Divine Order-the walking, halikha,הליכה, the Tao,and the halakha, הלכה , the guiding principles.
Our tradition gives us Torah and mitzvot - teaching and instructions.Our task is to discern how to live in relationship to this tradition, especially when it is not always so beautiful and easy.
We are called to be sources of blessing....Abraham was told וֶהיֵה ברכה -veh’yei brakha- be a blessing.We are called to be blessing itself.Walking in the Mystery is to transform our daily routines into a path toward sanctified living.
When we are שומרי הברית shomrei ha-brit, covenant keepers, we are pledged to Higher Service, in covenantal relationship with the Holy Blessed One as She manifests as self, relationship and the natural world....and, we pray that goodness will flow as a natural consequence of right relationship.
You will be holy because I, Infinity manifest, am holy - you will manifest My best traits - just as I separate out the gold from the dross, so you will, with intention, shine the light of awareness on your hearts and actions. I YHVH - all of existence, HaVaYaH, am the godliness that manifests in your lives.
Our parasha gives us many “thou shalt not’s”...
nevertheless, a very high standard:
לא־תעשו עול במשפט
bring no wrong/ injustice to your justice
בצדק תשפט עמיתך:
judge your companions righteously
לא־תלך רכיל בעמיך
don’t walk about bearing tales
לא תעמד על־דם רעך אני יהוה:
don’t just stand around while your friend’s blood is being shed(literal physical harm or metaphorically being shamed)
לא־תשנא את־אחיך בלבבך
don’t hate your brother or sister in your heart
הוכח תוכיח את־עמיתך ולא־תשא עליו חטא
reprove your companion so she does not take on further negative karma
לא־תקם ולא־תטר את־בני עמך
no revenge and no grudges
Finally the one positive mitzvah - “thou shalt” :
ואהבת לרעך כמוך אני יהוה:
love your neighbor as yourself....
This is seemingly an impossible list... particularly when it comes to my innerness, my פנמיות -to know that I am being called to scrub my insides clean of hatred, resentment, grudges,judgments about others, and yet to be given responsibility not to watch idly by as my sister is going down the wrong path, to not stand by while my brother is being harmed.
I need to manifest in the world,the highest values - this is holiness, this is acting with godliness.
Dovid haMelekh King David said to Shlomo (Chronicles 1 28:9),Solomon.... my son,, know - be intimate - with the Holy One, serve G!d בלב שלםwith a perfect heart ובנפש חפצה and with a willing soul,for YHVH searches all hearts, and understands all the machinations of your thoughts, you have but to seek The Holy you and you will find the Divinity that is the lifeforce (חיות) of all...
Last week, I met a man of faith and action who perhaps comes closer than any other person in my experience to truly achieving
לא־תשנא את־אחיך בלבבך a lack of hate in his heart.Some of us may have heard Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish speak last week.He is a Gazan physician, who practices in Tel Shomeir hospital in Tel Aviv, who lost 3 daughters and a niece at one moment in the recent war in Gaza, and yet refuses to hate.He teaches us that the path of reconciliation, of faith in the meaning of tragedy and life circumstances, of seeing and supporting the essential humanity in each other is the way to shift reality.To feel pain and grief and sorry and loss - and yet not to take on the mantle of victimhood - not to hate the Other - is his mantra.
So I bless him and I bless all of us with the essence of this parasha:it our Divine nature to be, Holy, Sanctified, Consecrated, Kadosh.
Let us all be a Searcher of Hearts, calling ourselves to this highest of all the mitzvot - not just manifesting good deeds in the world - that is assumed, the minimum that is asked of us - but to truly to be love in our innermost places and radiate that love out into the world.
