In this week's Torah portion, Shlach-Lecha, we find the story of the scouts. Maybe you remember it. Here's the thumbnail sketch: Moshe sends twelve scouts to check out the Land of Promise. They come back bearing a giant bunch of grapes, so big they require two men to carry.

They agree that the land indeed flows with milk and honey. But ten of the men say that the inhabitants of the land were giants, and that they felt like grasshoppers in comparison. The people rebel, demanding to know why God would bring them into a land only in order to be slaughtered by its giant inhabitants. "If only we had stayed in Egypt," they wail. "Let's go back!"

And for a moment there, God is really angry. Moshe convinces God to calm down. And Torah says, ויומר ה׳ סלחתי כדברך / vayomer Adonai salachti kidvarecha. "And God said, 'I pardon, as you have asked.'" And, God adds, none of you will make it into the Land of Promise. None of you are ready for freedom. Your outburst just now made that clear. So you won't be going.

I've written before about how Moshe, in the wilderness, seems like an overtired parent. This time it's God who seems to me like the exasperated parent. God and Moshe are the two-parent duo: when one of them gets angry, the other acts as the balance. Ultimately God is forgiving, and affirming love, even while drawing boundaries around what's appropriate and what's not.

We can quibble with God's parenting choices here -- was that a proportional response? -- but what God is doing here feels entirely familiar to me. Appropriate. Even necessary.

Drawing a boundary isn't a sign of lack of love. On the contrary: it can be precisely a sign of love, love for the other and love for oneself. It's precisely because I love my child that I set boundaries around appropriate behavior.

And if my child were to do something that goes counter to the rules and expectations of our household, I would hope to respond as God does here: I love you; I forgive you; and, here's the consequence for the poor choice that you made.

Earlier this week I had my second voice lesson, as I work on preparing for the Days of Awe. My voice teacher asked me what piece of music most intimidates me, and I said "Kol Nidre," whereupon she brightly said, "Great, let's start there!" So I've spent part of this week singing Kol Nidre.

And I couldn't help noticing, looking at my machzor -- my high holiday prayerbook -- that there's a line from this week's Torah portion immediately following Kol Nidre. ויומר ה׳ סלחתי כדברך are the words that are sung immediately after Kol Nidre.

These are the words our liturgy gives us, from God, in that tender moment of confronting our own failings. And they come from this week's parsha, from this moment in the unfolding of Torah's story. "And God said, I pardon, as you have asked."

The pardon still comes with a consequence. Sometimes a loving parent has to say, "I love you, and the answer is no." If a child does something wrong, and the parent doesn't draw a boundary, the child won't learn about consequences. But the consequences should come hand-in-hand with forgiveness and love.

Sometimes the answer we get -- from God, from each other, from the universe, from our lives -- is "you screwed up, so the answer is no." Mature spiritual life asks us to receive that answer when it comes, and to learn from it.

Ideally that doesn't mean self-flagellation. Ideally we remember that even when we've screwed up, we are loved. Ideally we remember that God forgives. (Which doesn't necessarily mean that someone we've wronged will forgive. Forgiveness from human beings isn't guaranteed. Apologizing and doing our inner work and making teshuvah and becoming better people is worth doing even so.)

Life comes with boundaries. We don't get to ignore the rules or what's ethical. We don't get to blithely make bad choices without consequence. But if we can hold on to the knowledge that love and boundaries are two sides of the divine coin -- that God balances chesed and gevurah, and so can we -- we can learn to take comfort both in the tochecha of being told where we've mis-stepped, and the sweetness of being reminded that we are loved.

This is the d'var Torah I offered at Kabbalat Shabbat services at my shul. (Cross-posted to my From the Rabbi blog.)

The mishkan (the dwelling place for God) wasn't just an external thing our ancestors built in the wilderness way back when. It's also something we're each called to build and maintain in our own hearts. And just as the mishkan was covered with cloud by day and fire by night, our hearts have times of feeling covered with cloud, and times of burning bright. When the cloud lifted, we journeyed, and when the cloud rested, we stayed put. (Numbers 9: 17-19) As for our spiritual ancestors then, so too for us now.

Every life contains times of darkness, times of feeling tested. Authentic spiritual life asks us to serve from that place -- to do our spiritual work from the place where we are, even when that place is darkness or fog. (And when we're in the fog, it's our job to stay where we are -- to be where we are -- not to try to race on to the next thing, but to give ourselves permission to stand still and be with what's happening.) And when the cloud lifts and we can ascend, then moving on and ascending becomes our work.

The thing I really love here is: God is also there in the cloud with us -- heck, God speaks from within the cloud, Torah says so! Life's dark times might feel devoid of God's presence, but they're not. God is there with us in the dark times, and in those dark times, we have work to do even from that fogged-in place. Wherever life's journey takes us, it's from that place (not some other place; not the place where we imagine we "ought" to be; but the place where we actually are) that we are called to serve in love.

With thanks to Rabbi Megan Doherty for studying the Slonimer with me. (This teaching is an encapsulation of the teaching titled על פי ה׳ יחנו ועל פי ה׳ יסעו, on pages מז–מח of Sefer Netivot Shalom.)

I don't know when the doll collecting started. One of the standing dolls has a note on the base that reads "from Brad,  Japan, 1975," which tells me it was a gift from one of my brothers the year I was born. Another bears a piece of tape on her foot reading "Lali and Eppie, Norway, 1988" -- a gift from my grandparents when I was thirteen. Some are porcelain dolls, some are plastic. One is a carved wooden man in a garment of rabbit fur -- I think he is Inuit in origin, and must have come from a parental trip to Alaska -- but the rabbit fur disintegrates in my hands when I pick him up.

There is the big porcelain doll in an off-white muslin dress whom I remember naming "Suzette" when I was a child, because I thought that sounded French; did my parents get her for me on a trip to France, or did I just think the name sounded sophisticated? There are two cloth dolls that my parents got for me when visiting China in the mid 1980s.  There are two cloth dolls that we bought in Amish country when I was nine, as we were driving to New York for our big year in the city -- they wear simple garb, and their faces are blank because of the Scriptural prohibition on graven images.

Four of the dolls, in varying sizes, are wearing Czech traditional dress. My mother was born in Prague, and returned there several times. Did she bring these dolls in hopes of giving me some kind of connection with the folklore and heritage of the place where she was born? When I was 18, we went to the Czech Republic (by then no longer called Czechoslovakia) with my grandparents. It was their final trip abroad. Their memories were already beginning to fail, but we visited the street where their apartment had been when Mom was born, and my grandfather's medical school alma mater. 

Both of my parents were collectors. My father collected matchsafes, and my mother collected silver napkin rings. I suspect this doll collection was started for me when I was born, though my father won't remember, and I can't ask Mom now. I know that everyplace where they went, and everyplace where my grandparents went, they would bring back a doll for me -- ideally in local folkloric costume -- and sometimes a children's book. I still have some of the children's books on my bookshelves: fairy tales in French, The Little Prince in Polish, a bright sturdy pop-up book in Czech.

Some of these are dolls that seem intended to be played-with. They are made of fabric and stuffed, or made of plastic that is soft to the touch. Some have fragile, breakable porcelain faces and hands and feet: dolls meant to be admired rather than cradled or dragged around by a child. Seeing them all assembled together, I'm struck by their assortment of faces, by their eyes and expressions. They represent probably twenty years' worth of my parents and grandparents thinking of me when they were far away, choosing something to bring home to show me where they had been. 

My parents shipped me the dolls shortly after I married. It didn't feel right to display them in my marital home, so they were relegated to the basement. They've been boxed up for more than twenty years. I wish I could look through them with Mom again now. I wish I could ask her where each one came from, what she was thinking when she chose them, what she wanted them to teach me or to say to me: about the richness and diversity of world cultures, or about the fact that even when my parents were traveling the globe, they were thinking of me at home. But that time has passed. 

We never know what questions we will wish we had thought to ask until it is too late to ask them. 

Title borrowed from John Berger.

1. Digital ghosts

Modern life is full of digital ghosts. Like the google cal popup that appears on my laptop screen to helpfully remind me of "our anniversary!" My ex-husband or I must have input that into google, and for reasons I don't understand, I can't make it go away. As though I could ever forget the date, what it was, what it meant. I didn't need my calendar to poke me in that bruise.

Or the first time I shared a photo of my mother on Facebook after she died. The algorithm startled me by recognizing her face and tagging her in the post. "With Liana Barenblat," the post proclaimed, and the words took my breath away. Facebook thought I was "with" my mother. I will never be "with" my mother again -- not in body, not in life. That preposition made me cry.

2. With and without you

I try to experience these automated algorithmic responses as a gift from the universe, a reminder of connections that have shaped me, even when relationships or lives are over. Still, sometimes being surprised by these reminders feels like a gift, and sometimes it feels like a wound is re-opened. Grief is a scar that sometimes unexpectedly becomes an open wound again.

Our online spaces can connect us in profound ways, but they can also isolate us, or activate us, or evoke our grief. So often we perform happiness in digital / social media spaces: look how beautiful my life is! As a result, we're sharing a skewed vision of who we really are. We're erasing or eliding the people who are missing. The aches of divorces and deaths and endings.

3. Making waves

I understand the appeal of the carefully-curated digital footprint. It allows us to share the life we wish we had, a life of only sweetness. I try hard to cultivate gratitude, for this recipe or that sunset, that moment or this friend. I like sharing glimpses of those kinds of things, in part because doing so helps me cultivate mindfulness and a heightened capacity for gratitude.

But I also want to be real. I don't want to pretend that life is picture-perfect, and I don't want to use spiritual practices as a crutch to help me in that pretense (or any pretense). Life is beautiful, and life is painful -- both of those are always simultaneously true. And grief is not a linear journey. Sometimes a stone gets tossed into the heart's pond, and makes waves.

4. Its own reward

So how can I react to these digital ghosts and the griefs they awaken: online reminders of my wedding, or of my mother who has died, or of friendships that evaporated or hopes that didn't come to pass? The only answer I have is to feel whatever I feel -- the sorrow, the wistfulness, the regret -- and to thank my heart for its capacity to feel both the bitter and the sweet.

And I can choose to be real, even in digital spaces. Even when what's real is a hurt or an ache, a memory or a sorrow. Because I think being real with ourselves and one another is what we're here for in this life. Because I think spiritual life asks our authenticity. Because life is too short for pretense. Because being real comes with its own blessings, its own reward.

"See you at Sinai!"

That's how I end a lot of my emails to friends and colleagues right now. Because Shavuot is coming, and at Shavuot we all stand again at Sinai to receive.

We've been counting down the 49 days to Shavuot ever since the second night of Pesach. In a few short days that Omer journey will be complete. We will again have made the inner trek from freedom to revelation, from Pesach's new beginning to the relationship-with-the-Holy that we took on at Sinai.

It's a relationship that we continue to take on. No relationship can be sustained with one moment of agreement. Our covenant with God is evolving and ongoing, as our relationship with God needs to be evolving and ongoing.

(If the G-word doesn't work for you, substitute something else: truth, meaning, love, justice, hope, transformation. "God" represents all of these and more.)

And our relationship with Torah is ongoing. Shavuot is called zman mattan Torateinu, "The time of the giving of our Torah." Not the time when it was given, but the time when it is given.

Torah is still being given. Revelation is ongoing -- as Reb Zalman z"l taught, the divine broadcast is perennial, and we receive on the channels where our inner spiritual radios are attuned.

Torah is still being given. Shavuot is a time of opening ourselves to receive what's coming through.

Midrash teaches that we were all present at Sinai. All of our souls were at Sinai for that experience of connection with our Source: every Jew who has ever been and will ever be. (Yes, including those who choose Judaism! If you join yourself with the Jewish people, then your soul was at Sinai too.) We were all there at Sinai in that moment of mythic time.

And we'll all stand together at Sinai again on Shavuot. On Shavuot we can seek to open ourselves to this year's revelation, to the wisdom that this moment asks of us. And when I close my eyes in meditation on Saturday night or Sunday morning, I will imagine all of us together bamidbar, in the Wilderness, at the foot of the mountain: "and you were there, and you, and you..." 

So I'll see you in three days, as the holy time of Shabbes gives way to the holy time of festival.

As our Omer journey ends, and our covenant with the Holy is renewed.

As we open ourselves to the Torah that needs to come through this year. As we open ourselves to transformation, and encounter, and awe. As we open to revelation, sweet and sustaining like milk and honey.

See you at Sinai.

Art by Jordana Klein.

The book of Bamidbar (“In the Wilderness”) begins with instruction to take a census. Literally, the Hebrew instructs Moses to “Lift up the heads” of the whole community. (Well, sort of: the original instruction was to lift up the heads of men capable of bearing arms. Today we have different understandings of gender and who counts.)

“Lift up the heads” colloquially means to count people numerically, and also implies uplifting heart and spirit so that everyone counts and knows that they count. This twin meaning has profound implications for building the Jewish future.

In a physical building context, a general contractor must know how many people are on the build team. Even more, she needs to know each individual builder’s talents, and how to uplift each person to best deploy the skills most needed for each building task. It’s a simple pair of instructions that asks heart, care, and curiosity.  Who are our potential collaborators? What are their skills and gifts, their passions, the unique contributions to the work that each of these people is uniquely well-suited to make? How can we, in our build teams, “lift up each head?” ...

That's the start of my latest d'var Torah for Builders Blog at Bayit: Building Jewish -- with sketchnotes by Steve Silbert:

The post goes into questions of leadership and service, the story of Reb Zalman z"l and the rotating "rebbe chair" (and how that inspired Bayit's leadership structure), and implications for the Jewish future. Read the whole thing at Builders Blog: Making Everyone Count.

These are the opening lines of this week's Torah portion, Bechukotai. If we walk in God's paths and keep God's mitzvot, then we will receive rains in their season. If we walk in God's paths and keep God's mitzvot, then kinds of blessing and abundance will flow. And if we don't listen, and we don't keep the mitzvot, then all kinds of curses will ensue. (Torah goes into some detail here.)

This is the kind of problematic theology that caused the early Reform movement to remove the second paragraph of the Shema from our siddurim. Because we all know that following mitzvot is not a guarantee of prosperity and blessing, and that scarcity and tragedy are not signs of someone's wickedness. We all know that bad things can happen to good people and vice versa.

But I want to look more closely at the parsha's opening words. "If you walk in My paths..."

The Hebrew word for "My paths," chukotai, shares a root with one of our words for mitzvot, chukim. That root means engraved or carved, which is why chukim is sometimes translated as engraved-mitzvot, or "commandments that engrave themselves on us." So "if you walk in My paths" can also be rendered as "if you walk in My pathways that engrave themselves on you."

My friend Rabbi Bella Bogart understands this verse to mean that if we walk in God's pathways and let those pathways engrave themselves on us, then we will necessarily follow the mitzvot, the connective-commandments. It's not that we walk in God's ways and follow mitzvot and then blessings come; it's that when we walk in God's ways, we can't help following the mitzvot.

And when we can't help following the mitzvot, we receive blessing, because we will experience blessing in whatever unfolds. If we walk in God's chukim, if we let God's chukim engrave themselves on us, then we will experience blessing no matter what happens in our lives. It's a matter of epistemology rather than ontology, how we feel rather than "what measurably is."

Every week I study the writings of the Hasidic master known as the Sfat Emet with my Bayit colleagues, and this week I was struck by a riff on this verse. The Sfat Emet cites a midrash about King David, that wherever he intended to go -- be it to somebody's house, or off to war -- his feet would carry him to the synagogue or the beit midrash, the house of study.

Now, on first blush this might look a little bit ridiculous. Because know that there were no synagogues or houses of study -- at least not as we now understand them -- in King David's day! It's as though the rabbis, who cherished the shul and the beit midrash, were trying to impose their own frame on a Biblical figure who didn't know what either of those things were.

But the Sfat Emet quotes our daily liturgy to argue that God's greatness and goodness fill the world. He says that God's "greatness" refers to the ten utterances with which Creation began, and God's "goodness" refers to the ten utterances we received at Sinai. To say, then, that "God's greatness and goodness fill the world" is to reference both creation and revelation.

And Rabbi Art Green notes, in his translators' notes, that there's an unspoken conclusion to the Sfat Emet's teaching. If the whole world is full of God's glory, then every place we go can become a place of holy encounter with Torah and with God. King David, in this midrash, becomes our model for recognizing God's greatness and God's goodness wherever our paths may lead.

We can find God everywhere our paths take us. What a radically transformative idea that is. Every place we go -- to work, to the grocery store, running errands, karate class, dance rehearsals, you name it -- can become a place of holy encounter with Torah and with God. That's what it means to walk in God's engraved paths, and to let God's paths engrave themselves on us.

When we let God's paths engrave themselves on us, that changes how we experience the world around us. Then suddenly the gas station and the hardware store and our workplaces and our homes become the synagogue and the beit midrash, places of learning and places of prayer. Because we carry that lens of learning and prayer with us, wherever we go.

And when we carry learning and prayer with us wherever we go, then all the world is our beit midrash where we can marvel in awe and wonder at how much there is to learn -- in Richard Levy's words that we prayed this morning, "how much Torah unfolds from each new flower!" And all the world is our synagogue, where we can pour forth our hearts in prayer.

And that's how the blessings promised in this week's parsha come to pass. When we walk in God's engraved pathways, when we let God's engraved-pathways carve grooves of gratitude and wonder on our hearts, then all the world becomes our house of prayer and study, and everywhere we go becomes a place where we can encounter the Holy. Kein yehi ratzon.

This is the d'varling I offered this morning at Shabbat services at my shul (cross-posted to my From the Rabbi blog.) Offered with gratitude to my Bayit study buddies, especially (this week) R' Bella and R' David!