If you're coming to Shabbat morning services (and to the Torah study which follows) this week, you might want to skip this post -- or else, read and begin contemplating it now, so you'll have fully-formed thoughts to offer in our discussion! This is the Kedushat Levi text which David and I translated together this week; it arises out of part of the Torah portion which we'll be reading during services, specifically Numbers 27:15-23.

Kedushat Levi (Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev) on parashat Pinchas

Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev (1740-1809) was one of the main disciples of the Maggid of Mezritch. He was known as “the defense attorney” for the Jewish people, because people believed that he could intercede for us before God.

Moshe spoke to Adonai, saying, "Let Adonai, source of the breath of all flesh [or: God of the spirits of all flesh] appoint a leader for the community who shall go out before them and come in before them, and who shall take them out and bring them in, so that Adonai's community may not be like sheep that have no shepherd." (Numbers 27:15-17)

The Blessed Creator causes shefa (abundance) to flow into the world of the serafim (angels) and into the realm of the cosmic creatures of the zodiac, and from there the shefa flows to us. The Blesed Creator sends that flow into the higher realms so that it can be received by us. It's as though the Blessed Creator were constricting God's-self into this stream of abundance, and sending forth this abundance so that we can receive it. And in receiving it, we find God. All of the chesed (lovingkindness) which flows into those higher realms is like a teaching or lesson which flows into the lower worlds to be received.

Longtime readers may recall that during my last year of rabbinic school I took a two-semester class called Moadim l'Simcha, "Seasons of our Rejoicing," in which Rabbi Elliot Ginsburg led us through studying a variety of Hasidic texts about the festivals and the ebb and flow of the spiritual year. At the end of the first semester of that class, my final project was the creation of a brief collection of poems, each of which arose out of my own translation of a particular Hasidic text.

In anticipation of Shavuot, I wanted to offer one of those poems here. The poem comes out of a Sfat Emet teaching on parashat Emor (my notes tell me it was given over in the year 1872 and can be found on page 3:167a -- sorry I can't offer a more precise citation than that.) Hopefully this poem, like the text which inspired it, speaks to the ways in which counting the Omer gives us opportunities to refine our spiritual qualities in preparation to receive revelation again.

REFINING (SFAT EMET / EMOR)

the words of God
are refined silver

living embodied
we purify what we're given

my mouth is a kiln
for smelting Torah

Egypt was a place
for forging iron

base and heavy
like our speech

throats constrained
by Pharaoh's chains

but at Sinai
everything changed

Torah is coming,
make yourself ready

make your words
count

This week's Torah portion, Bamidbar, speaks of a census taken by Moshe, a counting of the children of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai at God's command.

The Hasidic rabbi known as the Kedushat Levi (Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev) has a beautiful teaching which has changed the way I view this census recounted in Torah. He writes:

The souls of Israel are the body of the Torah, because the community of Israel make up the six hundred thousand letters in the Torah. We find that Israel is the Torah, for the soul of each person in Israel is like a letter in the Torah.

We find that when Moshe took an accounting, he was studying the Torah [which is embodied in the community itself]: that is the real meaning of God's command.

This week in our lectionary we begin a new book of the Torah. In Hebrew this book is called Bamidbar, "In the Wilderness," but in English this book's name is "Numbers." And yes, there are a lot of numbers here. Reading the census which begins the book, one could be forgiven for finding the material somewhat dry, a counting of distant ancestors who -- if they ever had historical life at all -- lived ages ago.

But Kedushat Levi teaches us to see otherwise. The soul of each of us is a letter in the Torah. When we look out at our assembled community, we can read the Torah which is embodied in who we are. In us, Torah takes living form. And, it stands to reason, if we want the whole Torah (which we do), then we need to ensure that the whole community "counts" -- all of us, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, regardless of our politics, regardless of which denomination we call home.

The census wasn't just a matter of counting heads in order to form an army. It was Torah study of the deepest kind: reading the divine letter which is at the spark of each of person's soul, knowing that together they are something transcendent, more than the sum of their parts.

In our coffee shop Torah study circle this week, we studied the commentary of the Ishbitzer Rebbe (Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Isbitza) on this week's portion, Bechukkotai. The Torah portion begins, "If you walk in the ways of My chukot (statutes), and you keep My mitzvot, and you do them..."

In one of his teachings on this verse, the Ishbitzer notes that the way of God is not like the way of humanity. A person first prepares the pot on the fire, and then pours water into it. If I am planning to do a thing, I imagine it and plan out my actions -- that's "preparing the pot." And then when I actually do the action, I "receive the water." Not so, says the Ishbitzer, with God... and not so with God's ways. God first pours the water, and then prepares the pot. And we're meant to do the same.

When it comes to mitzvot, we're meant to open ourselves to them and to do them: not according to our own understanding or our own plans but according to God's. Pour the water -- do the mitzvot -- and then God will "prepare the pot," e.g. give us the spiritual benefit of having done the action. If we take the leap of doing the mitzvot, then God will make us ready to do them. It's an inversion of how we usually think about things.

A chok is a commandment which doesn't necessarily make intellectual sense, a mitzvah which we do not because the reason resonates for us but because the discipline of doing the mitzvah shapes us. Reading the Ishbitzer, this morning, I found myself thinking about mitzvot and discipline in terms of parenthood.

Right now my most constant daily practice is parenting my toddler. And unlike the other practices in my life -- my aspirations of daily prayer, e.g. -- this one is non-negotiable. I can't wake up in the morning and think, "hmm, I'm not sure I feel like getting out of bed now; I'll be a mother later." I took on the practice of parenting; I don't get to choose now to do it or not to do it.

I took on parenting without full knowledge of what it was going to be like or how it would change me. Sure, Ethan and I did our best to anticipate parenthood; to make plans, to purchase a crib, to dream about who our son might become. But at a certain point, we had to take the leap of entering into the experience, even though we couldn't predict all that it would entail. We couldn't predict how it would shape our lives, how it might change us, or what it would mean. In the Ishbitzer's terms, we poured the water, trusting that God would "prepare the pot" and create a container to hold us in this new adventure.

Some of the things I do as a parent bring me immediate joy. Some of them make sense to me. I knew I would enjoy them, and I do. And some of the things I do as a parent are difficult; they challenge my autonomy; they aren't always fun... but I've committed to doing them, and that commitment changes me, and it brings me gifts I couldn't have imagined.

Mitzvot work that way too. They're a discipline. Some of them are enjoyable in and of themselves; some of them challenge me. But I have to commit to doing them in order to find out who they're going to help me become.

In preparation for Pesach, my chevruta and I decided to study a Hasidic text I had learned a few years ago but hadn't looked back at since. This is Reb Nachman of Bratzlav (or Breslov) as interpreted / filtered through the words of his closest disciple, Reb Nosson, and this is a really beautiful -- and timely! -- teaching. My translation appears below (indented), with explanations interspersed.

One needs to leave Mitzrayim with great haste. This is the essence of the quote from Torah, "For they left Mitzrayim and couldn't tarry, and also they didn't make provisions [for the journey]." (Exodus 12:39) This truth is recapitulated in each person and in each era. In each person and in each time, there can be found a residue [of Mitzrayim], the cravings and woes of this world, and this is the essence of the exile in Mitzrayim.

In the traditional haggadah for Pesach (and in mine!) we read that in every generation, each of us is commanded to experience Pesach as though we ourselves had been liberated from Mitzrayim (literally "Egypt," though the name's meaning speaks of constriction and can therefore be understood in a broader way as that which constrains or enslaves us.)

Reb Nachman and Reb Nosson expand this teaching to say that in each of our lives, and in each historical moment in time, the exile of Mitzrayim is present: in our cravings, in our cravenness, in our sorrows. Each of us knows exile, and each of us needs to be ready to get out of there -- fast, without second-guessing ourselves. The text continues:

This is the essence of Pesach. At the moment of the Exodus from Mitzrayim, a great light from on high was revealed, as is known; and at that time, promptly, Israel went out in great haste and they couldn't tarry. For even if they had remained there even one more instant, they would have remained a remnant there, as is known.

Rebs Nachman and Nosson are playing with a Hebrew pun here: the word for "exile" is גלות, galut, and the word for "revealed" is גלוי, galui. There's a sense in which at the moment of the Exodus, we traded galut for galui, exile for a glimpse of God.

And there was danger. Had the Israelites lingered even a little bit longer, they might have become unable to depart at all. We too are in perennial danger of becoming so stuck in our spiritual distance from God that we forget that we even wanted to lift ourselves out.

In the moment of making this kind of exodus, it's forbidden to worry about parnassah, to worry "But if I do this, how will I make a living?" Rather one must trust in God and hope in the Blessed One and God will provide.

Parnassah means income, making a living, sustenance and livelihood: a perfectly normal thing to worry about, especially if one is about to make a major leap. But that's exactly what this text says we mustn't do. Instead, we're called to have trust and hope in God, Who will provide what we most need.

This is the essence of (that Torah reference again) "And also they didn't make provisions." If someone needed to flee from a dangerous situation, such as being trapped in a snare, one wouldn't think about parnassah or preparations, lest one be set-upon by thieves or robbers or wild beasts from which one would further need to be freed. One wouldn't pause in that moment of self-extrication to worry about making a living.

The same is true if a person needs to flee from She'ol around and beneath him, or from the tribulations of the world, turning instead toward what enlivens this world. One wouldn't look behind oneself at all. For one must not tarry, nor worry about parnassah, but trust in God and rely on God who never leaves us.

The state of spiritual exile in which each of us finds ourselves (at least sometimes; every person in every era) is, say Reb Nachman and Reb Nosson, like being caught in a snare in the dangerous desert with thieves and robbers and hungry wild beasts all about. If I were caught in a trap and needed to extricate myself before even greater danger came upon me, would I stop and worry about where my next meal was coming from? Of course not.

Just so, say these teachers, should we not worry about parnassah when the time comes to make a spiritual leap away from the sufferings of this world and toward connection with God. God never leaves us. At this season of Pesach, when we read the story of the Exodus from Egypt as though it were our own story of liberation, we're called to plunge into spiritual growth -- to choose to leap away from the spiritual mire of complacency and into the possibility of transformation.

Where in your life are you called to leap, right now, on the cusp of Pesach?

What would it take for you to be able to make that leap without tarrying and without looking back?

Here's a teaching from Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev about Passover, becoming, understanding God and understanding Torah, all sparked by the verse (Exodus 3:14) "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh / I will be what I will be."

God, he writes, led us forth from Mitzrayim for two reasons: in order that we might serve God and in order that we might receive Torah. Given this, we might imagine it fitting that right after the Exodus, we would immediately have received the Torah -- but the Holy One of Blessing "passed over" or skipped the receiving of the Torah, presumably because in the immediate aftermath of the Exodus, the Israelites weren't ready to receive Torah yet, and wouldn't become so until they'd undergone all of the experiences of the wilderness which helped transform them from slaves into people who were capable of holy service. (We recapitulate this in our practice today, as we spend the seven weeks after Pesach moving through the Counting of the Omer and spiritually preparing ourselves to receive Torah at Shavuot -- we're not ready to re-experience the revelation of Torah at Sinai until we've done some spiritual work, ourselves.)

Kedushat Levi suggests that because God "passed over" the revelation of the Torah, choosing to skip it and come back to it later when we were ready, that's why this holiday is called Pesach, Pass-Over. (That's not the traditional explanation for the name, but I like it.) Anyway: he says that the first Ehyeh ("I Will Be") in God's name speaks in terms of the future, in terms of becoming: that which has not yet come to pass.

Here's a taste of Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev's commentary on this week's Torah portion, Vayekhel. My translation is indented; explanations and commentary are interspersed. He says some lovely things about the interplay of work and speech, weekday and Shabbat -- and then says something very powerful about the study of Torah, the building of the tabernacle, and the creation of new worlds. Read on!

"These are the things (דברים) which God commanded that you should do them, six days you shall do [work], etc..." (Exodus 35:1-2.)

The sages interpreted this (in the Talmud, tractate Shabbat) to refer to the 39 forms of labor. As it is said, "these [are the things]" -- this hints at externals [external forms of labor rather than internal ones], as the Ari (of blessed memory) expounded on the verse (Lamentations 1:16) "For these things I weep, etc," arguing that we need to heal them by means of work. When we say "to do," [as in: "these are the things which God commanded that you should do them,"] we're speaking in terms of healing.

Reb Levi Yitzchak is arguing that what God was really saying was not merely "these are the things you should do -- do all your work on six days, but on the 7th day, you should rest," but also "these are the things which God commanded we should heal / repair." In his reading, God is giving us an encoded instruction about the need to make a cosmic repair.

It is said with regard to Shabbat "God commanded to do," and with regard to the [building of the] mishkan it is written "which God commanded, saying." The Tur raises a question [about why one verse uses language of "doing" and the other verse uses the word "saying"], and notes that although creating the mishkan involved the mitzvot of making/doing, by means of the the work of the mishkan they repaired the world of speech. That's what Torah means when it says "which God had commanded, saying."

This week's Torah portion begins with the instruction about working during the week and resting on Shabbat, and then moves into language about the building of the mishkan, the portable tabernacle the Israelites built as a dwelling-place for God. (The word mishkan shares a root with Shekhinah, the indwelling and immanent Presence of God.) It's this juxtaposition -- instructions about work/rest followed by instructions about the mishkan -- which catches the eye of the Tur, and later of Reb Levi Yitzchak...and on that juxtaposition, they're going to hang a fascinating new interpretation.

Reb Levi Yitzchak cites the Tur (a.k.a Jacob ben Asher) who noted that the first verse uses the language of "doing" (God commanded us to do something), and the other verse uses the language of "saying" (God commanded us, saying...) He tells us that although building the mishkan involved physical making and doing, as the Israelites built that tabernacle they were actually in some cosmic sense repairing the brokenness of human speech.

Sometimes it's hard to say exactly what we mean. Sometimes our words hurt one another. Sometimes we say the wrong thing, or we speak in a way we regret. Human speech is a flawed and often broken thing. When our ancestors built the mishkan, says Levi Yitzchak (following the Tur), as they attached wood and cloth and pegs together they were also cosmically repairing the brokenness of human language. In his reading, the Torah hints at this when it uses the word לאמר, "saying..."

In a leap year, as previously noted, there are two months of Adar. Each month of Adar has a 14th. On the 14th of the second Adar, we'll celebrate Purim. On the 14th of the first Adar, we celebrate "Purim Katan," "Little Purim." Because leap years arise only seven times in every nineteen-year cycle, Purim Katan is a relatively rare occurrence. So what does one do on Purim Katan? The rabbis of the Mishna tell us the following:

There is no difference between the fourteenth of the first Adar and the fourteenth of the second Adar save in the matter of reading the Megillah, sending mishloach manot (reciprocal gifts of food), and gifts to the poor. (Megillah, 6b)

Let's unpack that. The Mishna is telling us that there is no difference whatsoever between the two Purims -- except the actual acts whose performance signifies Purim! On Little Purim, we don't read from the scroll of Esther, we don't send mishloach manot, and we don't give charity to the poor. So what can it mean to say that there is no difference between them, when at first glance it appears that they have nothing in common save their name? (I can't help thinking of the quote from The Muppets Take Manhattan: "It's just like taking an ocean cruise, only there's no boat and you don't actually go anywhere.")

But I think we can find, in the koan of this invisible festival, a deep teaching.

Sometimes our celebrations take visible forms. Reading the megillah, dressing in costume, making noise to drown out the name of Haman -- sending mishloach manot, and feeding the poor -- these are the visible external signs of Purim, just as eating matzah and telling the tale of the Exodus are the visible external signs of Pesach, and eating dairy and studying all night are the external signs of Shavuot, and so on. The external manifestation of each holiday does matter! The physical acts which embody the observance of a festival help us experience that festival wholly.

But sometimes we can evoke the emotional and spiritual valance of a celebration without actually doing the acts we associate with the holiday at hand. Imagine if, a month before Thanksgiving, you had the opportunity to spend a day meditating on gratitude and family, thinking about the festive meal you were going to prepare and enjoy, imagining your dinner table and the people who will join you there. You wouldn't actually make the turkey or the cranberry sauce, but you'd think about them, and you'd contemplate gratitude and thankfulness and what role those spiritual states play in your life. How might that change your experience of Thanksgiving a month later?

That's the invitation of Purim Katan: to spend the 14th of Adar I meditating on the deep mysteries of Purim (the God Who is hidden from the simple text of the megillah, but plainly manifest all over the story; the queen who pretends to be something she isn't in order to preserve and celebrate who she truly is; the need, once a year, to ascend to a place where binary distinctions, like those between Haman and Mordechai, are no longer relevant) in order to begin to prepare ourselves for the festival that's coming, so that when the festival gets here, it's different for us than it otherwise might have been.

There are a couple of tiny ways in which Purim Katan is traditionally marked. We don't say tachanun, the (weekday) prayers of repentance, on Purim Katan. The tradition also prohibits fasting on this day. And many sources argue that there is an obligation to celebrate and rejoice. One d'var Torah I found online, written by Greg Killian, makes the point that "Purim Katan has no halachic requirements. Whatever we do to increase our joy on Purim Katan, we do because we want to, not because we have to."

Here's a teaching from Rabbi Moshe Isserles, known as the Rema. (This teaching is based on a talk given by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson; I found it online here.) The Rema begins his commentary on Orach Chayim, one of the sections of the Shulchan Aruch (a central text of Jewish law), with a quote from Psalm 16:8 -- "I place God before me constantly." Later in his commentary, on the subject of Purim Katan, the Rema writes that in his opinion, it is not obligatory to feast on Purim Katan, but one should still eat somewhat more than usual, quoting Proverbs 15:15 "And he who is glad of heart feasts constantly." Note the two usages of the word "constantly."

The sages tell us that his first use of the word "constantly" (in the quote "I place God before me constantly," shviti Hashem l'negdi tamid, which I've written about before) is understood to suggest reverence for God; his second use of the word "constantly" (in the quote "he who is glad of heart feasts constantly") is understood to suggest joy. He mentions reverence first because it's a necessary precursor to doing mitzvot; he mentions joy second because joy is the natural outgrowth of doing mitzvot. What strikes me, reading this, is that there are no active mitzvot associated with Purim Katan. This holiday challenges us to experience the shift from reverence to joy without actually "doing anything."

Purim Katan begins this Thursday evening. How might you choose to mark this rare minor festival -- how might you reflect on the Purim story's teachings, and increase your sense of joy, so that in thirty days' time the observance of Purim itself can be more meaningful and more sweet, and so that your reverence can transmute directly into joy?

Reb Zalman tells a wonderful story about a rabbi serving his first pulpit. The president of the board catches sight of him studying a text in his office, and says to a colleague with some consternation, "I thought we got a finished one!"

The anecdote never fails to draw laughs in our community, because we know that the work of studying Jewish texts is never "finished." In that spirit, I've started studying the writings of Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, one of the great Hasidic masters of the late 1700s, along with my hevruta David. We're going to try to meet each week to translate and discuss some Kedushat Levi. This week we studied two teachings, one short and one long. Here's the short one.

"And you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory [or: gravitas] and for splendor. And you shall say to all who are wise of heart, 'Y'all shall make garments for Aaron to sanctify him,' etc." (Exodus 28:2-3)

We will see that Moshe sanctified Aaron (in ensuring) that Aaron should be clothed in the Holy Blessed One (Kudsha Brich Hu.) For the souls of the righteous are vessels for the highest divine qualities. That's what it means when the Torah says "You shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother" -- that there should be, fashioned out of Aaron's very soul, holy garments.

An explanation of "for glory and for splendor": these are the Holy Blessed One and the Shekhinah. Those who were wise of heart made garments for Aaron out of his very self-ness. That's why in the first text it's written "for Aaron" and when it comes to those who are wise of heart, the text reads simply "Aaron."

- R' Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev

The Torah text tells us that Moshe was commanded to make holy garments for Aaron, and then it tells us that Moshe was instructed to tell those who are "wise of heart" (the same description given to those who contributed to the building of the Tabernacle) to make Aaron's garments to sanctify him. Reb Levi Yitzchak reinterprets this. For him, this text isn't just about stitching some  of linen together. This text is about Moshe ensuring that his brother would be garbed on behalf of God in a deep way. The souls of the righteous, Levi Yitzchak tells us, are vessels for divine middot or qualities; Aaron's very soul becomes his garment.

In the Torah text, God tells Moshe that the garments should be made for Aaron "for glory and for splendor." On the surface, this appears to be a statement about priestly dress: the priest should be dressed in a splendid and glorious fashion. But for Levi Yitzchak, those two words connote aspects of divinity -- specifically, the Kudsha Brich Hu ("The Holy One Blessed Be He," or in my preferred locution, "Holy Blessed One" -- that's God's transcendent side) and the Shekhinah (God's immanent presence.) Aaron's garments should be made of his very soul, for the sake of God's immanence and God's transcendence, for the sake of the divine masculine and the divine feminine, for the sake of God Who is inconceivable and God Who is as near to us as our own heartbeats.

Aaron's holy garments, fashioned out of his soul, enable him to be clothed for the sake of divine transcendence and divine immanence. Those who are wise of heart, says Levi Yitzchak, fashioned garments for Aaron out of who he most quintessentially was in the world. He hangs this interpretation, in part, on a tiny inconsistency in phrasing: first the text says לאהרן ("for" or "to" Aaron) and then says אהרן ("Aaron" without a preposition in front.) To those who have ordinary minds/hearts, the situation was simply that skilled craftspeople were making clothes for Aaron. For those who are wise, however, it's clear that the clothes are made out of Aaron himself, out of his quintessence, for the sake of God.

In that sense, this passage can be understood in a new light. It's not just about stitching some clothing for a long-ago high priest, but rather, it teaches us that those who serve God can be garbed in the purity of their own souls in the service of the divine.

Shabbat shalom!

In 2009 I took a two-semester class called Moadim l'Simcha, "Seasons of Our Rejoicing," which looked at the round of the spiritual year through the lens of Hasidic texts. It is one of my favorite classes I've taken during this whole rabbinic school adventure. (Here's the series of three posts I made at the end of that class: The shape of the spiritual year, The year as spiritual practice, Hasidut and paradigm shifting.)

The group met once after our formal learning was over, during Chanukah, in order to study Hasidic texts about Chanukah. I wasn't able to make the class -- Drew was only a few weeks old -- but I downloaded the recording, and listened to part of it late one night as Drew nursed. But I didn't have the Hasidic texts in front of me, and it was hard for me to internalize the learning without the printed material to look at. Also I was exhausted and overwhelmed and it was the middle of the night! So I saved the mp3 for another day.

Chanukah approaches again, which makes this the perfect time to listen to this recording and take in some wisdom from the Hasidic masters, from my classmates, and from my dear teacher R' Elliot Ginsburg. Here are some gleanings from the first part of that extra class, taught around this time on the Jewish calendar last year. This text comes from the Sfat Emet, Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger.

"The candle of God is the soul of man, searching all of one's deepest places." (Proverbs 20:27) In the Gemara we read about searching for leaven with a candle -- about searching our internal places as though we were searching the deepest cavities of our bodies.

(He's suggesting that there's a connection between our Chanukah candles, and the candle which we use to search for leaven before Pesach, and this idea that our souls are divine candles.)

The mishkan (sanctuary / dwelling-place for God) and the beit hamikdash (the Holy Temple) dwell in the hearts of every person in Israel. This is the meaning of the verse "Build Me a sanctuary and I will dwell within them" (Exodus 25:8) -- e.g., within the hearts of the people. When one understands that one's life-force is in one's soul, one is doing a kind of personal refinement or spiritual clarification. Every day when we say elohai neshama [in the daily liturgy, we recite "My God, the soul that you have placed within me is pure"] we're doing that spiritual work. There is a single point of purity in each person of Israel -- though this point is hidden, secreted away. But in the days when the Temple stood, it was revealed and known that our life-force was in/from God.

Once upon a time, there was an externalization of divinity. God's presence in the world was manifest through the Temple, which helped us recognize that God was the source of all life. Today, when that architecture no longer stands, the reality that we burn with divine life-force is hidden to us, and needs to be revealed through doing internal spiritual work.

Now that the mishkan is hidden, divinity can nevertheless be found by searching with candles [as we do on the night before Pesach, and as we do when we kindle festival lights.]

In other words: even without the Temple, divinity can still be found. We just have to search for it. And there may be something about the act of kindling lights which helps us do that internal seeking.

The candles [which we use in our spiritual seeking] are the mitzvot. We search for God by doing mitzvot. The way that we search, with all of our hearts, is to perform the mitzvot with all of our heart, soul, life-force.

We can see the mitzvot as tools of searching. He's not just talking about literal candles and the lighting thereof; he's talking about how each time we do mitzvot, we are kindling a kind of light. Through the mitzvot, we go inward. When we do mitzvot, they act as candles, illumining us. This is not how we usually think about mitzvot, but it may have extra resonance for us this week as we literally illumine the lights of Chanukah.

In our PO box recently I found a copy of the new Jewish Review of Books, a tabloid-sized quarterly chock-full of exactly what you'd expect. Two articles in the current issue are especially relevant to my interests, and while not all of the JRB's content is available online, these two articles happen to be online in full.

I turned first to The Chabad Paradox, Abraham Socher's article about Chabad Hasidism which doubles as a review of two recent books. "While mainstream Orthodox Judaism has seen extraordinary growth through the ba'al teshuvah movement of 'returners' to religious observance, the foundations were laid by Chabad," Socher writes. "And while Orthodox Jews often express disdain for Chabad and its fervent shluchim (emissaries), they also rely on them for prayer services, Torah study, and kosher accommodations in out-of-the-way places from Jackson, Wyoming to Bangkok, Thailand, not to speak of college campuses around the world."

(Indeed, on a recent visit to Litchfield, Connecticut, I saw a clapboard house with a sign on the front which said "Future home of Chabad of Litchfield," which led me to quip to my friends "Chabad is here, Chabad is there, Chabad is truly everywhere!" That said, a bit of digging led me to discover that the story may be a bit more complex. But I digress...)

Socher notes, too, that "the charismatic founders of the groovy Judaism that arose in the 1960s, from the liberal Renewal movement to Neo-Hasidic Orthodoxy, were Rabbis Shlomo Carlebach and Zalman Schachter-Shalomi," both of whom were originally shluchim of the Lubavitcher rebbe. After offering a fairly comprehensive introduction to Chabad, Socher delves deep into two recent books about Chabad and messianism, exploring the question of whether the messianism at Chabad's heart is responsible for its success -- and yet might eventually be its undoing.

Behold, I take upon myself the mitzvah of the Creator...

The Mishna teaches that "for transgressions between one person and another, Yom Kippur does not atone until you appease your fellow-person." If we have hurt one another, we have to reach out to each other, or else Yom Kippur won't work. The Sfat Emet turns that teaching into something even more radical: on the day of Yom Kippur, he says, all Israel -- the whole community of God-wrestlers -- is meant to become one.

We are naturally close (the Sfat Emet continues) to one another and to God. Our sins -- the places where we miss the mark -- create separations between us and God, between us and each other, and between us and our deepest selves. Yom Kippur is a chance to repair those separations. To choose unity over division. To become one with my whole self, with my God, and with my fellow human beings.

Jewish tradition teaches that after the people sinned by worshipping the Golden Calf, Moshe smashed the tablets he had just brought down from his mountaintop encounter with God. And then Moshe went back up the mountain and spent another forty days with God, and when Moshe returned, he was holding the second set of tablets. Yom Kippur is the anniversary of the day when he came back down the mountain -- when the whole community of Israel was assembled to hear God's words. The tablets were given on the day when the community assembled as one, when the community became unified in love.

On this teaching from the Sfat Emet, Rabbi Art Green writes:

Torah could not have been given without unity among Jews; it cannot exist in the absence of its most basic principle: "Love your neighbor as yourself." How, then, does Torah exist in our day? Perhaps it does not exist at all. New and convincing readings of the texts elude us because we do not love enough. Until we can all open our hearts to one another, crossing all the lines defined by "Orthodox," "Secular," "Reform," "Zionist," and all the rest, there will be no revelation for us; we are not yet singularly "encamped" at the mountain.

Responsibility for this division falls heavily on the heads of "leaders," each of them so committed to an intractable position that nothing is allowed to change, no new Torah can be received. But for how long can Jewish souls be nourished by mere repetitions of teachings or translations (even one such as this) of old sources? God will bring about the real renewal of Judaism only when we put down our loudspeakers of division and hatred long enough to listen.

(That's from The Langage of Truth, R' Art Green's translation of and commentary upon the teachings of the Sfat Emet -- several of the Sfat Emet's teachings about the festival of Yom Kippur are included in this book, and this is one of them.)

This Saturday, during the afternoon service on Yom Kippur, I'll be reading Leviticus 19:9-18, a reading which culminates in the verse which is most central (both literally and figuratively!) to Torah: ואהבת לרעך כמוך, "And you shall love your neighbor / your Other as yourself." Before and after that service I'll sing a round which I love -- hareini m'kabel alai, et mitzvat ha-Borei: v'ahavta l'reakha camocha, l'reakha camocha. "Behold, I take upon myself the mitzvah of the Creator: to love my Other as myself."

The Sfat Emet says that Moshe returned with the tablets on the day when all Israel was connected in love. Rabbi Art Green adds that the new revelation we need in our day won't arise until we can love one another across all of the various boundaries which divide the Jewish community. I want to take the teaching even further. Not only do Reform Jews and ultra-Orthodox Jews, Zionist Jews and anti-Zionist Jews, secular humanist Jews and Hasidic Jews need to find a way to love one another: we also need to find a way to love our "Others" across religious and cultural lines. Jews and Muslims, Christians and Jews, theists and atheists, Democrats and Republicans, those who staunchly support Park 51 and those who strongly oppose it -- when all of us can embody the "mitzvah of the Creator," that's when the Torah we need in our day will emerge.

May it happen speedily and soon. And may this Yom Kippur open our hearts to deeper and broader love.

When I entered the sanctuary at Isabella Freedman at the very beginning of Yom Kippur, 2005 / 5766, a group of people were already seated in a rough circle on the carpet. Someone was playing a hand-drum. As I picked up the melody, I started to sing along. We were singing a little snippet of the Selichot liturgy (which is traditionally prayed starting on the Saturday night before the Days of Awe and continuing through Yom Kippur.) Here's the line we were chanting:

רחמנא דעני לעניי ענינא!
רחמנא דעני לתבירי לבא ענינא, ענינא!

O Merciful One who answers those in need, answer us!
O Merciful One who answers the broken-hearted, answer us!

The words are Aramaic. The tune we used was Hasidic in origin, though I don't know anything beyond that about its provenance.

Here's the tune we used: Rachamana D'aney on YouTube, courtesy of the folks at Ner Shalom.

That year on retreat, we returned to this chant periodically over the course of Yom Kippur; it became one of the musical and spiritual refrains of our day. We won't be singing "Rachamana d'aney" at selichot services at my shul this coming Saturday evening, but I find that it's often running through my head at this time of year, and alongside it, two Hasidic teachings which it calls to mind.

The Kotzker rebbe (Reb Menachem Mendel of Kotzk) is reported to have taught that "There is nothing so whole as the broken heart." It's a powerful paradox, to think that we can find wholeness not despite our brokenness but through it. Everyone who's lived in the world is a little bit broken. We hurt one another; we experience loss; we miss the mark; we grieve. But this doesn't have to distance us from God, especially not at this holy time of year. God, our tradition teaches, answers us when we call out from the place of our broken hearts.

The Baal Shem Tov tells a story about Rabbi Zev Kitzes and how his broken heart enabled him to call out the blasts of the shofar with perfect holy intention. (I wrote about that story a few years back: the master key is the broken heart.) Jewish tradition contains many teachings about the holiness we can find in what is broken. Our broken hearts offer God a way in. Or, in the words of the great Reb Leonard Cohen, "there is a crack in everything -- that's how the light gets in."

Leonard Cohen performing "Anthem."

Historically I've been more comfortable with the idea of coming to God through joy than with the idea of coming to God through sorrow. I don't want to dwell on what hurts; who does? But this year, maybe because I've recently been through the valley of the shadow of depression and emerged into the sunlight on the other side, I'm keenly aware that even in the sweetest life there is some heartbreak. This year my question is, can we draw on our experiences of heartbreak as we strive to become more compassionate and more kind, to others and to ourselves? Do we have the courage to sit with what hurts, and to trust that God will answer our brokenness with the compassion we need?

What in you is broken, this year, as we approach the Days of Awe? What would it feel like to cry out and to know that God hears you, not despite your aches but in them and through them?

There's a group of Jewish clergy who meet on Wednesday mornings to study Torah at one of the local coffee shops. It began as a hevruta of two; then I was invited to join; and over time the circle continued to expand until it reached its current configuration. The last time I attended the group was sometime shortly before Thanksgiving and before Drew was born. This week, for the first time in more than six months, I made it back.

We had some catching up to do, and of course I enjoyed introducing Drew to the members of the group who hadn't met him or hadn't seen him since he was tiny. We talked for a while about the flotilla incident and how to approach it pastorally in our communities. And then we moved into studying our text -- the first couple of commentaries on this week's Torah portion in The Language of Truth, R' Art Green's compilation of teachings by the Sfat Emet.

The first teaching talks about how the mitzvot (commandments) shine light into everything we do. "There is no deed that does not contain some mitsvah," writes the Sfat Emet (in Green's translation.) "But before doing anything, you have to offer up your soul as an emissary, gathering together all of your own desires in order to negate them, so that you can fulfill only the will of God." That sparked a great conversation about bittul ha-yesh (the annihilation of self or ego) in the service of others.

I talked a little bit about how parenting an infant is a perennial practice in bittul ha-yesh. As parents of a baby, we're called to put our own needs and desires aside in order to tend to the needs of another; surely that is a rich and deep spiritual practice, or at least it can be. It's one way of understanding what it might mean to set my own will aside in order to serve God -- or, to frame it differently, to attempt to align my will with the will of another, finding value in the practice of service.

It also strikes me that historically women have been expected to set aside their own desires in order to serve their children, and men (in this religious paradigm) have been expected to set aside their own desires in order to serve God. But in a world where women too want to serve God, and men too want to be present to their families, we need new ways of thinking about all of this. And yes, of course working in the world to make the money to keep a roof over one's head is a way of serving the family -- and changing diapers and doing laundry can be a way of serving God -- but too often, I think, we buy into a binarism which suggests that these two modes of service are separate, and that one partner (or one gender) inevitably has to be locked in to one or the other.

Anyway. It felt fantastic to return to the coffee shop and to the Wednesday morning learning, now with Drew on my lap. I love that he's going to grow up thinking that learning Torah is a perfectly ordinary thing for his mama to do with her time -- and that it needn't be rarefied, but can happen anywhere, even in a busy coffee shop on a weekday morning.

Last year I didn't manage to count the Omer (that's the process of marking, and sanctifying, the 49 days between Pesach and Shavuot, between liberation and revelation.) I had a good excuse for my distraction, but this year I'd like to do a better job of noticing the passage of time during this spiritually-rich season. 

Because counting the Omer is considered one long mitzvah which lasts for 49 days, most halakhists argue that if one goes a whole night and day without counting, one can no longer say the blessing. So in years past, I've followed the practice of only making the bracha when I've managed an unbroken streak of Omer-counting. But I've known rabbis who teach otherwise, and this year I'm going to try a different practice.

One of the biggest lessons I'm learning from parenthood thus far is not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Our sleep schedule still isn't what I might wish for, and I can almost guarantee that at some point in these next 7 weeks, I will forget what day of the week it is! I'm living by the baby's rhythms, not so much by calendrical time. If I only offer the blessing when I have a perfect track record of remembering to do so, my Omer count is liable to be truncated and I run the risk of missing the spiritual gifts that even a partial Omer experience might bring.

I know that this is part of the argument given for why women have historically been considered exempt from positive time-bound mitzvot: our lives can't be strictly-regimented in the way that the classical understanding of the mitzvot requires, because we have to take the needs of our children into account. But I come from a paradigm in which women and men both choose the mindfulness practice of the mitzvot. (For that matter, I also come from a paradigm in which men and women share the workload of parenting.) I need to find a way to experience the holiness of the Omer count from where I'm at.

A popular kabbalistic teaching holds that during each of these seven weeks, we move through one of the seven lower sefirot (emanations or faces of God, each associated with a particular divine quality.) Each week, a different sefirah comes into focus, and each day of the week likewise. Because we are created in the image of God, each of these combinations of qualities exists in us, too. I think of the sefirot as a multi-sided prism refracting divine light; as white light contains all colors within it, so divinity contains all of these qualities, and the prism of counting the Omer allows us to isolate these subtle gradations across the spectrum.

I may not manage to bless each day, but I don't want that to be a reason not to count at all. Maybe there's a way to turn the "imperfection" of missing a night or two of counting into something positive. Each time I bring myself back to mindfulness of the Omer count again, I can ask myself: what is it about today's special combination of qualities that resonates with me? Is there something in today's combination of qualities which called me back to awareness? What can I learn from the experience of reawakening to the Omer count today?

One of my favorite texts from the first semester of Moadim l'Simcha ("Festivals of Our Rejoicing," a class I took last spring and this past fall) comes from the Netivot Shalom, Rabbi Shalom Noach Barzofsky. He offers the following parable:

The path of serving God is like a person being elevated to the summit of a high mountain, where one is shown all of the beautiful and splendor which is around one, and one can see what good is to be found there. After that, one descends down to the bottom, and from there one works to ascend to the summit again through one's own strength, because after one has seen how good and beautiful it is to be up there, one would certainly make an effort through one's own strength to ascend! Just so, the service of God on high: initially one experiences "arousal from above" [God reaches down to us and arouses our desire for God], so that one can see how good it is, one can get a taste for that goodness, and after that one is returned to one's place [e.g. the bottom of the mountain] in order to climb to the top again.

On the first night of Pesach, we're elevated to great spiritual heights -- like being whisked by God to the very top of a mountain. Then the next morning we waken and we're at the bottom again -- but because we've seen the amazing views from on high, we're motivated to do the work of slowly working toward the summit. Having seen the splendor at the top gives us the impetus to keep climbing, step by step.

It seems to me that making myself mindful of the qualities which God and we share -- lovingkindness, boundaried strength, harmony, and so on -- is worth doing even if I'm not able to live in the constant state of devekut (cleaving-to-God) to which I might aspire. And what's more: cultivating that mindfulness is one way my tradition offers me to climb toward connection with God.

My Omer count this year won't be perfect. But I'm still on a journey toward Shavuot, toward the spiritual high of receiving Torah at Sinai. I'm still climbing that mountain, even if I pause to nurse the baby along the way.

On a tachlis (nuts-and-bolts) level, I'm trying a couple of new things this year. I downloaded the Omer Counter iPhone app (find it, along with other resources, here at NeoHasid.org.) I'm also reading Counting the Omer, daily blog posts by my friend Rabbi Min Kantrowitz who recently wrote a book about the Omer count. We'll see whether these keep me on track.

A Heart Afire is a book about early Hasidism, coauthored by Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Natanel Miles-Ypez. I read it last summer and knew I wanted to review it somewhere; and back in the fall, before the baby was born, I also had the chance to interview Reb Zalman for a sidebar piece intended to accompany the book review.

The review and the interview are now both online at Religion Dispatches. Here's a taste, first of the review:

The book presents “diverse stories and teachings from across the spectrum of Hasidic spirituality” and the authors’ desire is to “lead the reader up to [these stories], like an attendant at a mikveh (ritual bath)—waiting while one dips—then providing them with a towel as they are led out.” This isn’t an academic exploration of Hasidism; these stories are meant to be an immersive experience.

...Schachter-Shalomi’s ecumenism peppers these pages despite their intensely Jewish focus. In a digression from an early chapter about the Baal Shem Tov’s life and “enlightenment,” Schachter-Shalomi writes that people often ask him about his own theophanies and he always wants to answer, “I’m not Rinzai, I’m Soto!” (In Zen Buddhism, he goes on to clarify, “the Rinzai school talks about ‘sudden enlightenment,’ whereas the Soto school recognizes gradual enlightenment[.]”) The Hasid who uses Zen parables to make a point about his own spiritual life: that’s Reb Zalman in a nutshell.

And here's a related tidbit of the interview:

I’m struck by the “deep ecumenism” here — how you draw on Buddhist, Christian, Sufi, Hindu teachings in order to illuminate Hasidic thought. Do you think that risks alienating more traditional readers?

It was a conscious choice. We could have eliminated these things and gotten more kudos from the frum [Orthodox] world. But the frum world has this material available! Along with exhortations for switching back to an older paradigm, to more halakhic behavior and so on. I was not interested in that.

When I was reading things like Aldous Huxley’s perennial philosophy or William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience, I noticed that those people have good material from Buddism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, but nothing Jewish...

Read the whole thing here: Better Hasidism Through Zen Buddhism (And Sufism and Science Fiction...) And once you've read it, feel free to leave a comment either there or here!

In the Halakha and Paradigm Shift class I'm taking this spring, we were asked to choose among a list of texts to translate and teach. The central question we were asked was, how might this text inform an understanding of the halakhic process, the study of halakha and the creation of halakha? I wound up working with a short piece by the Hasidic master Reb Nachman of Breslov, from his work Likkutei Moharan. It's a fairly mystical text -- not something I would have associated with halakha, which I suspect is part of the point. Reb Nachman writes (what's in parentheses below is my attempt to contextualize/explain; the translation is my own):

Know that the world was created through opposition. In order for the world to be created, there needed to be a vacant space; without that space, all that could exist was the Ein Sof (Without End, e.g. God's limitless infinity) and there was no place in which the world could be created. So divine light withdrew itself to the side, and God said "Let us create a vacant space," and within that space God made all of creation, the days and the middot (divine qualities), by means of God's speech, as is known: "In the words of God, 'Let us make the heavens and the earth,' etc."

This is the essence of our disputes too: were all the wise scholars of one opinion, there would be no place for creating the world! Only by means of the opposition between them, as they disagree with one another and pull toward one side or the other: by means of this, they create a vacant space (which is like the vacant space within God which was a prerequisite for creation), a withdrawing of light to one side, and within that space is the creation of a world by means of speech.

All the words which they speak are for the sake of the creation of a world within the space between them. Wise scholars create all things by means of their words, as is written (Isaiah 51:16), "And say to Zion, you are my people." Don't read "my people (עַמִי)," read rather "with me (עִמִי)" -- (imagine God saying) just as I formed heavens and land with My words, so you have done the same.

As is written in the introduction of the Zohar: one needs to bring light, but not to speak too much, only as much as is required for the creation of the world. Remember, when divine light flowed into creation, the vessel of creation couldn't tolerate that increase of light, and the vessels shattered, and in the breaking of the vessels the klipot (shells or shards) came into being. So if one speaks too many words (it's like the excess of light at the beginning of creation), and through this one may cause a kind of cosmic breakage. This is what happens when light increases too much: the vessels break, and the klipot come into being.

Reb Nachman opens with the assertion that creation required opposition. Before God withdrew God's-self and created an empty space within God's-self (in the Lurianic cosmogony -- Rabbi Isaac Luria's narrative about the creation of the universe -- this is called tzimtzum, which one of my college professors called the "bagelization" of God) there was only undifferentiated divinity. In order for the cosmos to come into being, there needed to be differentiation and duality.

Torah tells us that God created the universe with divine speech: "'Let there be light,' and there was light." Just so, Reb Nachman teaches, we too create universes with our speech. When Torah scholars disagree with one another, a space is created between them, and in that space, the world of halakha comes into being. Like God, we too create worlds with our words.

In the classical kabbalistic conception, tzimtzum was followed by an influx of divine light which was followed by the breaking of the vessels. God's light was too powerful for the vessels to hold, and creation shattered; our task is to find the sparks of holiness which remain in the shards of our world and to lift them up. Here, too, Reb Nachman draws a parallel between God's actions and ours. Our words can be like divine light in the good way -- we can illuminate and create -- but they can also be like divine light in a destructive way. If we speak injudiciously, we may cause breakage.

How can this text inform an understanding of the halakhic process? I understand Reb Nachman to be saying that differences of opinion are a holy and necessary part of what we do. If we are all in accord, then there's no movement and no change. If we disagree (in a respectful and productive way), then the tension of our disagreements makes space for creativity. It's only when we pull in different directions that we're mirroring God's divine act of creating the world. It's almost Hegelian: we need thesis and antithesis in order to move forward.

I also understand Reb Nachman to be offering a word of caution. We need to speak and to disagree, but not too much, lest the force of our disagreement cause destruction. We need the tension between one viewpoint and another, but if we become too strident, the vessel of the system we're co-creating may shatter.

For Reb Nachman, halakha isn't just a system of legal opinions and interpretations; it's also a means by which we mirror God's very creation of the cosmos. Pretty cool, eh? I'll be teaching this text to my class in a week or two, but would love to talk about it before then (Drew permitting, of course -- my online time still isn't what it used to be :-) so if you have thoughts in response, please chime in!

Part 3 of a series of blog posts arising out of final reflections on the class Moadim l'Simcha, "Seasons of Our Rejoicing," which I recently completed. Part 1 can be found here and part 2 can be found here.

Paradigm shifting: How might we/you draw on these sources for our own spiritual path? For the world of Jewish Renewal? What teachings/practices might be adapted/surrendered to? What might be creatively recast? Are there elements that can’t be (easily) absorbed? What do we learn from these "unassimilable" elements (or roughage)? Why study them nonetheless?

There's much in the sources we've studied which speaks to me. There's also some material here which doesn't speak to me (yet), or which requires the kind of reading that Wendy Doniger describes in her convocation address [.pdf] -- a "hermeneutics of retrieval, or even of reconciliation."

What speaks to me most plainly is the passion for God, the yearning for devequt (cleaving-to-God), the often intricate pathways toward sanctifying holidays which might otherwise slip by unheralded. I know that having studied these texts will change my relationship with Purim next year, with Pesach, with Shavuot, with the Three Weeks and Tisha b'Av, with the Days of Awe and Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret. As my relationship with the wheel of the year is deepened, I am more invested in learning, and in teaching what I've learned.

What challenge me most strongly are these texts' occasional assumptions about non-Jews and about women. (They were clearly written by, and for, Jewish men whose views on women and outsiders don't match mine.) But this challenges me in almost all of my immersion in Jewish texts, from Tanakh through Talmud straight through the Hasidic masters. I'm with Wendy on this one: we owe it to our texts to read them first with an eye to what they are, then we owe it to our political and personal sensibilities to wrestle with the texts, and then we owe it to the texts to find a way to return to them and read them not blindly, but still with love. That I read these texts with love is always a given.

What I see as the essential truths in these texts are truths that I desperately need. I believe they are truths that the people I teach desperately need, too, whether or not that need is clear to them. (It's my job to make that need clear even as I work to fill it.) We need to enliven our holiday practices, to access these deep meanings which are hidden in plain sight. Jewish Renewal is experiential; we can offer profound encounters with the tradition and with God, but in order to do that, we need to know (to borrow a classic Hasidic metaphor) the keys to the doors of God's palace. These texts can be some of those keys, and to discard the keyring because some of what it holds doesn't accord with contemporary post-triumphalist or gender/sexuality sensibilities would be short-sighted.

My challenge as a Jewish Renewal rabbi is to continue to plumb these wells for the profound spiritual sustenance they can offer, and then to give over these teachings in a way which neither does violence to the original texts nor to the audience before whom I place the words. One way I hope to do that is by studying the texts myself, generating my own translations, and teaching them in my congregation at appropriate moments. Another method of integrating these texts into my spiritual life and my teaching is the process of turning them into poems, and sharing those with as wide an audience as my poems can reach.

Ultimately, the process of wrestling with complicated texts can also yield its own rewards. As the Me'or Eynayim has written, "You struggle and find the light that God has hidden in God's Torah. After a person has truly worked at such searching, it comes to be called her Torah." (Okay, he didn't phrase it in quite those words. But I'm pretty sure it's what he was saying.) That's a life's work, and it's work I'm grateful to be beginning to do.

How would you integrate the teachings of the Ba'al Shem Tov into your thought, your life, and into your work as a rabbi?

One answer is that I hope to continue studying the Besht's teachings. Despite their relative textual simplicity, there's a depth to them, and they speak to me deeply. Another answer is that I hope to continue teaching the Besht's teachings, on the theory that the best way to learn something is to give it over to someone else in turn.

I've found great value in [what my teacher Reb Burt calls] the Sacred Study Process. I've found the practice of asking "what is my immediate personal response to the teaching?" and "what underlying question do I think the teaching seeks to answer?" to be incredibly helpful, and I'd like to share those with others.

Still a third answer is that I know I will have to take a step back from active text study and teaching in the coming year, as I allow myself to immerse in parenthood. So then how will I integrate the Baal Shem Tov's teachings into my life as a new mother? My hope is that the learning we've done will germinate in me, yielding new insights.

Perhaps when I find myself frustrated with changing diapers, I'll remember the Besht's injunction to create a dwelling-place for God by doing whatever work is at hand with holy consciousness and full attention.

Perhaps when I am feeling overwhelmed with love for my son -- or when I am feeling overwhelmed and unable access that overflow of emotion -- I will remember the Besht's teaching that when we love our fellow human beings we are loving the spark of God which enlivens each of us, and in that way loving my son will become a path to (or a manner of) loving God.

It may be that I won't know how the Besht's teachings will ripen and bear fruit in me until a year has gone by, or two, or ten. But I'm committed to continuing to delve into them. I see myself (and my chevre / classmates) as new buds on the tree which he planted, and I aspire to live up to his teaching as my rabbinate unfolds.

Part 2 of a series of blog posts arising out of final reflections on the class Moadim l'Simcha, "Seasons of Our Rejoicing," which I recently completed. Part 1 can be found here.

It might be argued that the spiritual year is the “spiritual practice” par excellence of Judaism. Assess this statement. What does it mean 'tzu loyfn mit der tzeit,' to "run" (or live) with the times?

Each year is one long spiritual practice, with inevitable energetic ebbs and flows. We have times of great activity and energy: preparing for Pesach in our homes, preparing for the Days of Awe in our hearts and in our congregations. And we have times of stillness: the mountain-peak of Shavuot, the holy pausing of Shemini Atzeret, the fallow month of Cheshvan. This is the ratzo v'shov (ebb and flow, cf. Ezekiel 1:14) of spiritual life, built in to our seasonal-liturgical cycle.

As the sage Mary Oliver has written, in her poem "Five A.M. in the pinewoods," "So this is how you swim inward. / So this is how you flow outwards. / So this is how you pray." For every inhalation, an exhalation. Lather, rinse, repeat. Spiritual life has peaks and valleys, and we need to be conscious of the everyday practices which will sustain us when we're not riding the rollercoaster of the moadim (festivals.)

To live with the times means being aware of the flow of the year, the way one holiday leads to the next. Our festivals aren't discrete gems studding a crown or individual raisins peeking forth from a loaf of challah; they need to be understood as part of a whole. I experience the moadim (even the sad ones) as high points, extraordinary time, set in the framework of chol (everyday). And we need chol in order to integrate the moadim. Each of the moadim takes us somewhere, and then points us toward our next destination.