Tag Archives for splendor

haYom echad u’sh’loshim yom, sh’heim arba’a shavuot, u’sh’losha yomim, laOmer: tiferet she b’hod

“before you ask G’d for something, first thank G’d for what you already have”

simple, quiet wisdom from Talmud, Brachot 30b. when you pile on compassion on top of empathy, something may well be prone to go all mavericky, and well-intentioned unwisely. all empathy and compassion of tiferet (compassion) in hod (empathy) may turn out a bit like Aharon’s disastrous effort to keep the erev rav (‘mixed multitude’ that wanted the golden calf) from going ballistic and leading to a bloodbath.

and if you pile beauty (tiferet) into splendor (hod) you may well find again that you will be prone to error like Shimshon’s, turning his nazirite status into a matter of outlandish shows of the strength he derived from the restraints of the nazirite way. of course, it turned out that he had an achilles hair…..

but bring truth and compassion (tiferet) into gratitude (hod) and you have a harmonious winning combination…and a sense of how much gratitude is right in any given situation. a sense that simply reminds you of a duty (thanks for what you have) before you go off extending that compassion further still. a making sure that you see the trees and not just the forest. going in and then out.

“praise G’d in his sanctuary; praise G’d in the firmament of G’d’s power”

from the small detail to the greater, from the concealed interior to the exposed exterior, as here in Psalm 150 is instructive, moving from the private to the universal. when G’d was in the Holy of Holies, only Aharon could encounter his force directly, and then only to give thanks and praise in the light and the incense. but in the firmament….loose in Creation….G’d’s power is available to all to sense and respond to. quiet beauty; public splendor….hod and tiferet spinning around each other.

and the psalm continues with a review of many different instruments and musical forms that can be used and harmonized for praise (hod), yet in the end, the universal comes to rule:

“let the voice of every neshamah (‘breathing soul’) praise G’d”

when tiferet interincludes in hod we see that everything contributes to the sustenance of each individual Creation. the whole is diminished with the loss of any one. and no one can survive without the life of the whole. once you understand this harmonious truth, is it really so difficult to love all neighbors? or to respect habitat for the sake of a small minnow living within it?

we are all quiet, more harmonious ‘musketeers’ it seems:

all for one and one for all

who knew?

mussar for tiferet she b’hod

with another….bein adam l’chaveiro    this would be a really good day to celebrate some other person’s simcha. reminding yourself of the gratitude you feel for all your own accumulated simchas should put you in a good frame of mind to celebrate another’s.

with oneself….bein adam l’atzmo    is your home–inside and out–a suitable place for G’d’s Presence? spruce it up with THAT special guest in mind. and resolve to have the parchments in your mezuzot checked THIS spring…they mediate between the inside and the outside, after all, brining Torah to comings and goings.

kabbalah for tiferet she b’hod

in assiyah….the world of doing/completion    sing out Psalm 150 today, then do a harmony to the melody line. consider how your mood changes. can you pull some nefesh and ruach into the hallelujah to join your neshamah?

in yetzirah….the world of feeling/formation    “all for one and one for all” can operate in time as well. contemplate your personal history. which details have contributed most to making you as you see yourself to be. how many are way old? how many are recent?  can you find a way to add more recents?

in b’riyah….the world of thought/creation    catalog your most beautiful, creative thoughts. now, do you feel humble? do you feel beautiful?

in atzilut….the world of nearness to G’d/intuition    Heschel speaks clearly of tiferet in hod often. where do you hear it herein:

“only grant me strong bright senses to bring happiness, to help, to hear the needs of even a pulse-beat. the call of any person!”

kinyan 31 of 48 ways to acquire Torah

Ohev et haTzedakot o haMeisharim…..Loving the Righteous Way.   a teacher of mine once urged that every rabbi should learn brevity.  divrei Torah should be only a few minutes….maybe 7 minutes for natural teachings and an additional minute for a more difficult supernatural idea. any longer is a meandering path, some will follow you into the woods, over streams, up and down hills, but most would prefer that the path be simple, more-or-less straight, and on a level plain. truth and righteousness are their own beauty….the simple explication is the splendor of Torah.

haYom shisha v’esrim yom, sh’heim sh’losha shavuot v’chamisha yomim, laOmer: hod she b’netzach

“if a ruler’s anger rises against you, don’t leave your place;

for calmness lays great offences to rest”

this enigmatic verse from Kohelet (Ecclesiastes 10:4) really gets at the idea of hod she b’netzach, for it suggests a blend of standing pat while also laying low, and most importantly, practicing ‘calmness’ because it works! hod is an odd sefirah (we will study it in greater detail next week) in that it comprises things that we don’t often hold together in the west: passivity, deference, humility…and SPLENDOR, as in brilliance, majesty and grandeur!

certainly kazan’s “splendor in the grass” doesn’t strike us as having to do with victory through restraint! or does it?

but the kabbalists are thinking very differently…. hod and the female  (left side of the sefirotic tree) are indeed associated….and they are thinking of Aharon–second fiddle and a sort of help-meet to Moshe–who ends up in the fanciest duds of all as High Priest. vast stretches of Zohar are devoted to the deep meaning of the splendorous clothing of the High Priest. and it is only Aharon who can actuate atonement, via the way laid out by G’d, for the People. he is the master of ketoret (‘incense’ perhaps even perfume) that heals the plague and brings back joy.  (think about this, ladies: how many of you have beloveds who are masters of scent? not every dude is a spice merchant….)

Aharon’s face is never veiled like Moshe’s, even though Aharon spends lots of time in proximity to the Divine Presence. and he attains his high stature even though he once gave in to the vile urges of the mixed multitude and takes part in the “shaping” of the golden calf. most amazing indeed.

Aharon is the central figure in repentance. he both needs to do it in a way that Moshe is not called on the carpet for, and is the pleader  with Moshe to pray for healing for Miriam when she is afflicted with t’zara’at (‘spriritual skin affliction’), and he  is the  key figure in the Mishkan (‘temple in the desert’) and the rites of returning to G’d through offerings. it is Aharon who becomes the keeper of the fiery snake (the antisnakebite snake that later was kept in proximity to the Temple) just as he was the one who laid down the staff before pharaoh for it to become the flexible staff that is a snake….the wavy manipulation of the serpent in Eden spoke to Chava, so we know how powerful it can quite calmly, unassumingly be…

hod in netzach is simple really. it is to recognize that you don’t achieve the greatest ends alone, but rather with the help of others. with the help of G’d; with the help of humans. it takes the wisdom of Aharon to be joyous at the news that his brother would be G’d’s designee to free the People, and that he would be, at least at first, Moshe’s assistant. Aharon shows us the power of the team–Moshe, the captain does not–and quietly, calmly, as attends to so very much business behind the scenes…as do the masters of hod in our world, women…the more flexible, yielding, yet healing, watery set. we should all remember that the path of shefa (‘divine flow’) to foundation (yesod)…to the penis, if you will…goes by the water way of women…and men like Aharon who can muster the water way as well.  is calmness and magnifence making a little more sense now?  splendor in the bending, wavy water way of the grass……

mussar for hod she b’netzach

with another….bein adam l’chaveiro   you will find in this interinclusion that (once again) your mother was right…..you should always say thank you. the harder part can sometimes be to recognize the help of all those who get you to where you are, and where you need to be. indeed, none of us is an island….so say thanks to everyone you meet today who might even remotely be helping you in your walk with G’d today…even say thanks to those whose help you only begrudgingly acknowledge…whose approach you mostly have to endure!

with yourself….bein adam l’atzmo   for many folks, the hardest part of teshuvah is confessing your wrongs. but careful cheshbon nefesh (‘accounting of the soul’) is the necessary base on which teshuvah is built thereafter. admit your errors, and admit also that you still have the power to work at the tikkun olam (‘repair of the world’) in spite of your errors. face it and thank G’d for this splendor in your persistence.

kabbalah for hod she b’netzach

in assiyah….the world of doing/completion    ther is splendor in the constant power of a waterfall; and it was the enduring drip of water on the stone that convinced Akiva that even unlearned he could become a rabbi (and such a one!). consider how water over eons can carve a grand canyon in stone…how water as ice can flatten the landscape over which it drags…..think on the power of water as you wash your hands today. purity and power in one.

in yetzirah….the world of feeling/formation    emotions are often said to run like water. but we are directed in the words of Amos (5:24) to “let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like an ever-flowing stream”.  contemplate the fluidity called for here. do your judgements have either the easy altering course of water or the ever-flowing quality of steadiness?

in b’riyah….the world of thought/creation    think of how fluid scientific discovery is…splashing information from very different starting points into a coherent stream of thought. halacha means ‘walk’ or ‘way’, and hold within it the same quality of meander….while it is a a cohesive legal voice, it is nonetheless made up of the interpretations of thousands over many, many generations. meditate on constancy in judaism in spite of the absence of central authority.

in atzilut….the world of nearness to G’d/intuition    opinion is the enemy of righteousness, for it is formed and no longer plastic. righteousness is not a chiseled monolith of practice gleaming in the sunlight. we see justice and righteousness instead as flowing water, glinting with splendor as light strikes its unendingly changing facets. still water, however, runs deep…..contemplate how G’d’s light can nonetheless reach it….unfailingly.

kinyan 26 of 48 ways to acquire Torah

Siyag l’Dvarav….Fencing Ourselves Away from Distraction.   in order to study productively, you have to get away from everyday distractions. yeshivot are designed to help you do that, but most folk are not able to get that far away. but each of us can make a time or place temporarily away from the rush of everyday life. even if it is just 30 minutes over a quiet cup of coffee, or before bed, or on the train commuting. if you can do something more substantial, all the better. but you must be as removed from temptation as possible in order to achieve real concentration on Torah and not on your feelings of deprivation.  but remember that teaching is also study…..

“teach them repeatedly to your children, speaking of them when you sit at home,

and when you travel on the way, when you lie down and when you rise”

haYom tish’a asar yom, sh’heim sh’nei shavuot vachamisha yomim, laOmer: hod she b’tiferet

“her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace”

many of you will recognize this as the next to last line in the “etz chaim hi”, said as the Torah is returned to the ark. i read it as a proof text for permission to relax now and then in my errors of interpretation and understanding….or just the many errors of explication that i’ve made already (and will no doubt make more of) in this effort to share the sefirat haOmer. for even when the explanation doesn’t work, the study nonetheless happens…and that is Torah lishmah (‘study for its own sake’, understood to mean ‘for the sake of Heaven’) even without our intention when we err!

if yesterday was devoted to the force of netzach in breaking down barriers to compassion/balance/beauty, today, in hod, associated with humility/gratitude/splendor, we grow quiet in the face of compassion, balance, beauty and harmony that already surrounds us. it is always there; there is no place without it because all of Creation is a manifestation of G’d’s glory, and there is no where where that glory is not. G’d’s glory fills the earth.

but to understand hod in tiferet, splendor in beauty, we have to put away so much of our self. we are called “m’daber” in the rabbinic literature, ‘the talker’ for our proclivity to name and classify and analyze with exquisite subtlety in words all that catches our attention. we erect barriers in our efforts to understand more deeply. we are all-in-one machines that erect new barriers even in our process of stripping down to get closer to seeing another glimpse of G’d in nature….nature being the only aspect of G’d’s wonder that we can always grasp (if we are only awake). nature is the G’dstuff in which we live, the stuff of which we are….that we bluster through… over… around and beyond daily, every waking hour.

all the paths of Torah are pleasantness; all of them….even the broken, breaking, dissecting errant ways we sometimes derive are ultimately paths of peace. why? well, can you think of any self-understanding that comes without making mistakes? even pharaoh’s path was Torah, right? he quite literally descends to G’d, and with that descent comes freedom and peace, precisely as G’d intended all along.

but Chazal (rabbis of the talmuds) point out an even easier way. they teach that G’d created all with Torah….so everywhere you look is another path of Torah. and r’ nachman made the fields his place for Torah and prayer and meditation on G’d. everywhere.  just look and see. and he also made clear that his every step was itself a step toward the Land of Israel, that is, the place of rectification and cleaving to G’d. every step is on a derech noam, on a ‘pleasant path’ toward the great good. just look and see.

it is hard to think of anything more beautiful than beauty…until you traverse the tree of life a little further and come to the splendor of beauty in quiet hod, beauty in thanks, in a smile without a word and without even the sound of a laugh. “hinei,” people….’behold’ all around you. it is all in hod. silent, eloquent, all a testament to the splendor and wonder of a G’d that gives us simple splendor in the grass…

why am i not a flower, a person-flower?

bless me, my spirit with tenderness instead of might.

to own smiles instead of words, and always bring light to the world.

to be able to give love, good fortune with my hair, like orchids.

and may my way through rooms be like finger-touches on piano keys.

tenderness, you ineffable name of G’d, be my image of G’d!

mussar for hod she b’tiferet

hod-tiferet with another….bein adam l’chaveiro    i’ll bet that a lot of you welcome folks home from school and work with a pleasant “how was your day?”  there is a little everyday compassion in that. but it might well be answered with the grumbles of daily disappointments and disaffections….or the disconnected minimalist “fine.”  so get a little rad and reset the routine gently…..ask “what were the beauties, the wonders of your day?” if they can’t tell you, send them outside immediately to lay in the grass and look up, or down, or all aroun. at’ll fixem.

hod-tiferet with yourself….bein adam l’atzmo    smile when you make a blessing today….no quick-get-it-out-of-the-way utterances, please.

kabbalah for hod she b’tiferet

in assiyah….the world of doing/completion   baruch haShem, we are not only given to using words to make or find beauty.  we decorate our living spaces. we spend lots of time getting just the right paint for a room’s walls, yes?  and then what? we let our own creative work, our own engagement, recede into, well, wallpaper as we direct our attention to the television, the radio, the internet (well, yes, even this blog), hanging on the distracting and novel and noisy and sparkly. we consume without a lick of appreciation. go back to your own spark of creation in your place and remember why you so loved a particular paint for a wall, or a painting or a vase, or even the order that you impose in your cabinets in how you put your dishes away, or how you insist the dishwasher should be stacked…..it is all your sense of beauty and order at work. pleasant ways are found therein. don’t be unmindful of it!

in yetzirah….the world of feeling/formation    every year the garden brings forth changes. changes in what you planted…changes in the volunteers that have taken root….changes in expression of abundance. remember the blooms of a previous year. compare them to this year’s early arrival of almost everything. be grateful for the variety that continues to enrich the order of your garden. and let your ruach flit with joy.

in b’riyah….the world of thought/creation    pray from a siddur today (if you can read this, you can find one online if need be) and try to be mindful of the ‘order’ (“seder”) of the prayers. compose a brief transitional explanation or 2 for yourself. or read this week’s parshah for shabbat, mindful of the fact that the selection that is the week’s ‘portion’ is itself an ordering of words. be grateful for the words and for those who took great care in ordering their use for the betterment of your spirit.

in atzilut….the world of nearness to G’d/intuituition    get out in the fields and forests like r’ nachman and the Besht. listen. pray. try to return the birds’ calls. see if you can see the Presence of G’d in the hiddenness of his nonCreation nature….G’d is not made of Creation stuff….but all of Creation is of made of G’dstuff. as you are looking, remember that every move you make, every breath you take, G’d will be watching you….

kinyan 19 of 48 ways to acquire Torah

Miyut S’chok….Moderation in Levity.    Ben Sira 21:20–“a fool raises his voice in laughter; the wise smiles in silence”