Forgetting where the car is parked
means something important left undone.

The structure deflated like punched dough
means vulnerability and self-blame.

The taxi that makes stop after stop for hours
is the same as the airport with no signs:

what made you think you had any control
over where you're going or when you arrive?

The suitcase that won't hold everything
means the same as the one left behind.

The empty hot tub at the top of the house
is ambiguous, but skylights mean hope.

None of these statements accord with any school of dream (or poem) interpretation I know. I'm also not sure how I feel about placing any single interpretation on a dream or poem. But both are worth holding up to the kaleidoscope, turning them to see what we learn from how the shapes (re)align.

Pharaoh's dreams (artist unknown); an oil-lamp chanukiyah.

This week we continue the Joseph story. In this installment, Pharaoh has two disturbing dreams. In one dream, seven happy fat cows emerge from the Nile, followed by seven emaciated cows who eat the fat ones. In the other, the same thing happens with ripe ears of corn and shrunken ones.

No one in his court can interpret the dreams. And then the cupbearer pipes up: I was in your prison a while back, and there was a Hebrew prisoner who interpreted dreams! So Pharaoh sends for Joseph, who says, the dreams mean that seven good years are coming, followed by seven years of famine.

Joseph tells Pharaoh to set someone wise in charge of his storehouses, someone who can save during the years of plenty so there will be food to eat in the lean times. Pharaoh promptly promotes him, saying, "Could we ever possibly find another man like him, a man in whom is the spirit of God?"

(Or in the words of Lin-Manuel Miranda, "Hey yo, I'm gonna need a right-hand man.")

Pharaoh's dreams are about guarding our resources. When there is abundance, set some aside and save it for when there won't be. And this isn't just about individual households saving what they can; Joseph sets aside grain for the whole nation, so the government can make sure everyone makes it through. 

Every year, we read this at Chanukah. As my b-mitzvah students learned this week, there are different stories we can tell about Chanukah. One is the story of oppression and war in the books of Maccabees -- which were not canonized into the Hebrew Bible, though they are part of some Christian Bibles.

Another is the story of the sanctified oil that lasted for eight days. That narrative comes to us from Talmud, and it's the one our tradition chose to enshrine. That Chanukah story is a story about hope, and enough-ness, and the leap into faith when we don't feel like we have enough fuel to keep hope burning.

Sometimes we feel like we don't have enough. Maybe we feel that we ourselves aren't enough. Maybe life feels overwhelming, and in the words of the poet William Stafford, "The darkness around us is deep." The Chanukah story asks us to kindle light exactly then. That's when we need hope most.

This week Torah says: don't use everything up -- resources are finite! Save some of what you have so you can help everyone make it through the lean times! Meanwhile the Chanukah story says: kindle the eternal light, even if you're going to run out of oil! So which one is right? They both are.

The Torah teaching is about things we can touch: protecting our natural resources, not eating all the grain, making sure we can feed people when there's famine. The Chanukah teaching is metaphysical: it's not about oil, but about hope. It's about kindling hope in our hearts, and keeping hope burning.

Earth and water and air and trees and food are finite, and we need to steward them carefully and share them equitably -- that's a big one, we're working on that. But hope provides its own fuel. And like love, it doesn't diminish when we share it. Being a Jew -- for me -- means living up to both of these truths.

We need to be wise with our resources, and help people who live at sea level, and nations that don't yet have enough vaccines. That's never been more true than it is now. And we need to keep hope kindled in our hearts, even when the world seems hopeless, especially when the world seems hopeless. 

The Hasidic master Reb Nachman (b. 1772) struggled with depression. And yet he taught that despair is a sin. Because despair means the complete absence of hope. And that means we've given up on each other, and on ourselves, and on God. And if we've given up, we won't work to repair what's broken.

That's another thing it means to me to be a Jew: tikkun olam, repairing our broken world. We are God's hands in the world. It's aleinu, it's on us, to build a world of greater justice and love and hope -- and not to give up. 

This is the d'varling I offered at my shul on Shabbat Chanukah (cross-posted to my From the Rabbi blog.)

At the start of the dream
I float down the Guadalupe
but the current goes backwards.
I emerge into a house
from 1985, and inside

there you are: hair pulled back
into a casual ponytail,
white terrycloth coverup
as though you've just come
from a tennis game or a swim.

You've made dinner. I tell you
about my divorce, but
don't mention the pandemic:
why intrude on your afterlife
with something so terrible?

I wake to more headlines
(the world is dust and ashes) but
for a moment I almost felt
that loss isn't forever, that
the world was created for me.

A story tells of Rabbi Simcha Bunim who held two slips of paper in his pockets at all time, to remind him to balance two fundamental truths. In one pocket the paper said "I am dust and ashes," and in the other pocket the paper said "the world was created for me."

On the last day of Pesach we recite Yizkor / memorial prayers. Last year's Pesach Yizkor was the first time I said those prayers since Mom died. She had been gone for only a couple of months and the loss was raw. This year I am grateful for how the passage of time has smoothed over those rough places.

May comfort come to all who mourn.

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

Deep Waters

"Postpartum depression caused the Flood..."

That's the first line of the first poem in 70 faces (Phoenicia, 2011). It comes out of last week's Torah portion, Bereshit -- which begins with the creation of heavens and earth, and ends with God recognizing that humanity has become wicked, and vowing to wash us off the face of the earth. In this week's Torah portion, Noach, we encounter the flood itself.

Many of you have heard me speak about the "four worlds:" action, emotion, thought, and spirit. In Jewish Renewal we frequently use this idea as a lens for understanding our lives. Sometimes, as in our Tu BiShvat seder, we map each of the four worlds to one of the four seasons, or to one of the four elements. The world of yetzirah, emotion, is represented by water.

Jung wrote that water is a symbol for the unconscious. In Tarot, water represents emotion and intuition. Think of the language we use to speak about strong emotion: emotion poured through me, my heart overflowed with feelings, emotion welled up in me. And, when it gets to be too much: I was afraid my emotions would wash me away. I was flooded with emotion.

The first lines of Torah teach that before creation, God's spirit hovered over the face of the waters -- maybe the waters of the unconscious, the waters of chaos, the waters of what-existed-before. Then God divided between the waters above and the waters below. Our ancestors believed that primordial waters flowed below the earth, and above the heavens; that everything we know and experience is surrounded by cosmic waters which we cannot see.

Before each of us is born, we inhabit a space of living waters -- a mother's womb. Waters above, waters below, waters sustaining us. When we are born, most of our bodies consist of water. Waters run through us and sustain us. Maybe that's one of the deep truths reflected in Torah's metaphors.

And in this week's portion, God stops holding the waters back. The waters become too much. There is an excess of water. And everything that isn't held safely in that little wooden boat is washed away.

For those who struggle with depression, there is often fear of emotional flood. "If I let myself really feel the depth of my sorrow, I will wash away." Or: "If I let myself really feel the depth of my sorrow, I will wash away everyone I love."

We need to trust that we, and our loved ones, can weather our storms. Like Noah, who builds a floating home which can survive even the greatest deluge.

Many years ago at a Shabbat service at the old Elat Chayyim, Rabbi Jeff Roth recounted the following parable. Two waves are hanging out together in the sea, a big wave and a little wave. And the big wave is anxious and scared. The little wave says, "Why are you so afraid?" And the big wave says, "If you could see what I see, you'd be afraid too. Up ahead of us there are some cliffs, and I can see where we're going -- every wave in front of us goes up to those cliffs, and smashes into them, and disappears."

And the little wave smiles and says, "If you could see what I see, you wouldn't be afraid." And the big wave asks, what's that? And the little wave says, "We're not waves -- we're water."

We're not waves: we're water. The essence of who we are is greater than our stormy weather, greater than the rising and falling of any wave or any tide or any life. We aren't just our crests and troughs, our highs and lows. Even when an individual wave shatters on the shore, its water nature remains. Even when an individual life feels shattered -- or comes to its end -- what is eternal in us still flows.

INTEGRATION

When the floodgates open
build a boat with many spaces

here in these cubbyholes
stash your scales and feathers

pack provisions for the forty days
required for transformation

push off from the dock and set sail
for wherever the current carries you

don't be surprised if you wobble
back across the gangplank

when you raise the partitions
you'll run like new watercolor

offer yourself on the altar of stone
beneath the varicolored sky

(from 70 faces)

1.

In Reb Shlomo's parable
the rabbi stands at the edge
of a sea of tears
and refuses heaven
until all are shed.

You have drifted on that sea,
trailed your fingers
in its salt waters
wondering why no one on shore
notices you're gone.

2.

The fear says
if you open the porthole
Noah's own floods will pour through
towering like a ziggurat
and wash you away.

And others, innocent.
They might be caught
in the raging waters.
You can't warn them
to build an ark in time.

I am carrying my son
around a bus filled with scholars:
rifling through my carry-on
in search of cheese sticks
and bananas, exploring
the wooden deck and silk flowers.

Someone ushers in my rebbe
proclaiming He's just received
a clean bill of health!
His beard is trimmed
and there's spring
in his step.

I shake hands
with a young Madeleine L'Engle,
perhaps forty, blond ponytail
and kind smile. I read email
from a Sufi sheikh who's sorry
he isn't able to join us.

Reb Zalman kneels beside me
and confirms I'll transcribe
all of the teachings,
asks what he can pay me.
It's a freewill offering, I reply
and he suggests $84.

(Only in the morning
well after I've woken
when I look up the number
on my gematria app
do I discover it equals
the Hebrew for dream.)

He moves on and I whisper
to a nearby friend
how does one come to look
fifteen years younger?
He hears, across the distance,
and laughs.

(Image: Reb Zalman's last Accord visit, photo taken at the old Elat Chayyim by Jeri Berc, 2006.)

This poem arises out of a real dream I had a few nights ago. I wrote down everything I could remember of the dream once I was at my computer. The strange number chosen by the Reb Zalman in my dream piqued my curiosity, so I looked it up on iGematria; when I discovered that one of the words which matches with 84 is חלום, dream, I gave myself the shivers, a little bit.

I'm still not sure what to make of the dream. I remember thinking, during the dream, that I felt lucky to be able to move seamlessly between taking care of my son and learning from great teachers. (Madeleine L'Engle was one of the teachers on this mysterious Torah bus; another was Rabbi Shefa Gold.) I welcome responses both to the dream, and to the poem which the dream sparked!