days of repentance: 13 Elul

“you shall not see the ox of your brother or his sheep or goat cast off and hide yourself from them;

you shall surely return them to your brother . . . you will be unable to hide yourself”

R’ Avraham Shaag asks the obvious question of this phrase from this week’s parsha (Devarim 21:22-23): why the odd near repetition of the phrase about hiding yourself? he answers his question by explaining that even someone born with negative character traits (ie, laziness, tendency to complain, stubbornness, etc) can acquire good traits in their place. it is done by “answering a call, either from their heart, or from their knowledge” and behaving contrary to one’s natural tendencies. in this case, if your tendency is not to get involved–but you know in your heart you should, or you remember this mitzvah from Torah study, or your mother would be soooo disappointed in you–break it by going out of your way to do this mitzvah……repeatedly if necessary.

that last part, the repeatedly if necessary, is learned from Chazal. they learn from the phrase “you shall surely return them to your brother” that you must return a lost thing EVEN IF THE OWNER HAS LOST IT BEFORE AND YOU HAVE ALREADY RETURNED IT….100 TIMES BEFORE!

the mitzvah is alive in every moment, so too is the obligation to do it alive in every instance. there is no such thing as “habitual mitzvot”…though there certainly can be mechanical repetition in frequently repeated “everyday” mitzvot in those who do not yet live in the moment. but repetition serves to ingrain the doing in you. it will become as natural to you as breathing.

R’ Shaag uses this verse to point out that this is how you change your tendencies. what’s more, we should look for like opportunities to ingrain better behavior in ourselves during Elul. we should stop our indifference to others, remove all hatred from our hearts, put aside preening arrogance, stomp out lashon hara, and stop doing the errors for which we are atoning now. then maybe by the time Yom Kippur has passed, the new good behavior will have become second nature for us (D’rashot haRash, I, #25).

thus, you will be unable to hide yourself.

t’shuvah can also mean “response” or “answer”. there are many people who will turn toward G’d in moments of great crisis or fear, or in the face of enormous personal loss.they seek answers in response to hardship. their questions will often be deep seated and challenging, and they may not always be ready for the answers. no light is as bright as that which comes out of the darkness.

but it is always possible also to find opportunities around you in the most humdrum aspects of life and in the light, not the dark. and they also can exert a powerful call…and answers that will break your ways beyond what you would have thought possible. the opportunities will be deeply concealed in your habits, or in your everyday reactions to the people around you, or the world around you, or in your underlying assumptions. the problem is that you have to find it out. and it is hidden to you by its everyday nature…and yourself may now be hidden in it.

the parshah gives you a hint. what are the routine goods you do now? 100s or 1000s of times? and what are the things you know you should do, but shirk? you know your deeds…you know your “routines”. what is their to answer?

ketiva v’chatima tova

days of repentance:12 Elul

“and I was in the exile”

and so he was…Ezekiel was amongst the babylonian exiles, so this phrase can be read simply and literally. but the greater lesson for t’shuvah is gleaned when we read “I” as “ego”, or even self. read it as, “my consciousness was in the exile”, and you will see another aspect of t’shuvah. the reintegration within yourself and then also with haShem. R’ Kook phrases it as: “restoring the human being to being human”, which naturally means reintegration with G’d.

physical exile is dreadful….never to be undersestimated. but we are all of us more immediately acquainted with the exile that is estrangement from oneself, and from one’s community. so many jews these days are exiled from their home community, dispersed amongst the communities of nonjews without a hook to any jewish institution. and all of us to some degree seem to be exiled from ourselves…or at least from our better selves.

when we say that t’shuvah can also be understood/read as tashuv hei, or return of the lower hei of the Unpronounceable Name–the hei that extends into Creation following the vav–we probably should understand not only what the ba’al hatanya wanted us to understand…that we are to return the hei to haShem in Elul…but that the way we return the hei to G’d is to restore it to ourselves! it is, after all, clearly a spark of Divinity, and as every kabbalist knows, our very business on the planet is to restore Divine sparks to their Source, removing them from the klipot, the husks, that conceal their light.

“the soul of man is the candle of G’d, searching all the inward parts”

if we just let the Divine spark within burn radiantly, according to Proverbs 20:27, that spark is restored to being the tool with which G’d G’dself assists us in our self examination. t’shuvah movement toward G’d on our part returns us to our inward parts, and what do we find? well, if we are attuned to it, we will find the Presence of the Holy One bringing the search of ‘elul’ to our deepest recesses, our soul flickering against the walls of ourselves.

repentance doesn’t really cover the enormity of t’shuvah. not all of the work is a putting aside of chet and aveirah. it is also a removing the exile from within us….a reintegration of our parts and understandings. t’shuvah is a homecoming within us and to our soul’s Source. and that is why every person’s t’shuvah is unique. it must fit our ego. it must be born of the spark we each have been granted. and it must be focused on our personal calling and mission in the world.

we speak often of tikkun olam, the repair of the world, thinking of it as action in the larger world. and so it is. but let none of us forget that there is internal tikkun to be done….and please, please don’t forget that recognition and restoration of the Presence within ourselves is itself a tikkun for the rest of the world! restoration of the Presence anywhere in the world, including within us, is restoration throughout the world. how? consider Sanhedrin 23a (jerusalem talmud) or 37a (babylonian talmud)….

“whoever preserves a single soul, it is as if he had preserved a whole world”

QED. social action will never be enough. repair, return, revolution is individual. it is yours. your t’shuvah must be tailored to your walk with G’d. so what sort of practice hammers this home? practice hishtavut, “equanimity”, or evenness of heart, soul and ego. do not let the judgments, or urgings, or insistence, or criticism of others alter your t’shuvah except as you yourself understand the words of others as well directed for your path. and remember that you are the only one, save G’d of course, who can clearly evaluate your focus on your individual mission. you need no accolades from the peanut gallery of the world at large….it is YOUR work, with G’d’s help.

days of repentance: 11 Elul

“t’shuvah can be read as toshuv hei . the lower hei of G’d’s Name is manifest in our world. through t’shuvah we elevate and return the hei and everything it energizes to its true source”

so teaches R’ Schneur Zalman in Tanya (Iggeret haTeshuvah, ch4). if you remember your roots, you will recognize that toshuv hei is a returning hei, one that is leant us by G’d from G’d’s very name to energize us. this, of course, makes t’shuvah very personal, for who would not be eager to return a tool to the lender? particularly if the lending of part of a good name…indeed, the very best name…is part of the value in the borrowing? Elul is the month in which we strive to make right things between adam and adam. often that means nothing more complicated than taking stock of what you have and taking time to return what is borrowed, or to pay any outstanding debts, or simply to restore a relationship broken to a fixed state by taking time to apologise for wrongs and setting things aright.

it is all return….restoration….recompense…realization….and, well, revolution. revolution? yup. t’shuvah is nothing shy of spinning and also overturning of habits and paths and violations….we should end up reborn. at very least we should be revolting against what we have been, even if the revolution is more of a restoration. let’s consider a story related by R’ Menachem Mendel Futerfas, chabad mashpia (“person of influence’) in the former soviet union, who spent 14 years in the siberian gulags for the ‘crime’ of establishing cheders (‘jewish elementary schools’, essentially) for young jews in the USSR. upon leaving russia finally, he settled in as mashpia of the central lubavitch yeshiva in Kfar Chabad, Israel. he relates his own encounter with a former tightrope walker while they were in the gulag together….

the rabbi asked the tightrope walker about the secret to his art. “what does a person need to master to be a tight rope walker? balance? stamina? concentration?”

the tightrope walker’s answer surprised him: ” the secret is always keeping your destination in focus. you have to keep your eyes on the other end of the rope. but do you know what the hardest part is?”

“when you get to the middle?” the rabbi suggested.

“no,” said the tightrope walker, “it’s when you make the turn. because for a fraction of a second, you lose sight of your destination. when you don’t have sight of your destination, that is when you are most likely to fall.”

now is a time of turning for all of us (sharper for some than for others perhaps), and none of us is able to perfectly see where we are headed…so we must be tightly focused on the destination that we know in our soul is ultimately ahead, even though out of view. the ultimate return is redemption.

t’shuvah is to redemption as shabbat is to the world to come

but the path of redemption for our People, and for the world, is not a straight road that we can look down to its end. we can only glimpse glitters of the end by looking into our own souls as we work at our individual turning back to G’d. your focus in t’shuvah is a focus on personal mission….and not just your mission, but your shared mission….shared with haShem to whom you return. the stronger your sense of personal mission, the better off you will be when the going gets rough. every moment of Elul can be (should be) directed toward your mission of return, and because t’shuvah isn’t something you do just once a year, but rather a way of living in Creation, everything you do in Elul and after should be dedicated to your mission in life.

so here is the practicum: what is your mission in life? what do you think your calling in the world is?

if this is a difficult exercise for you, then try to focus on what steps you will have to take to FIND your mission in life!

days of repentance: 9 & 10 Elul

“G’d would speak to Moshe face to face

just as a person speaks with a close friend”

so we learn in Exodus 33:1. but we learn later in Deuteronomy that no other like Moshe ever rose….who knew G’d face to face (34:10). and there’s the rub. we ALL of us want to make like Moshe…no, no, that’s not it….we all EXPECT to be like Moshe Rabbeinu, speaking to G’d face to face….even though we also know from Torah, that even Moshe could only see G’d’s back when he asked to see G’d’s Glory (Exodus 33:18).

so, what is it, face to face, or face to back, or even

“you may not see my face. no one shall look upon me and live”

at Exodus 33:20ff, which is where we left off 8 Elul with G’d’s shadowing hand as G’d passed before Moshe, who was hidden in the cleft of the rock.

how many times have i heard someone say, “if only G’d would answer my prayer clearly”, or “if only i had a sign”…..then i would believe. well, of course, if G’d spoke to you directly, unambiguously, and face to face, you wouldn’t need faith, for you would only have observational science. humans are about observational science much of the time. G’d, and the faithful individual, is about intuitional science, to coin a phrase.

but the demand for observational data regarding haShem is the quintessential modern indicator of the presence of a belief in pirud (“separation”). so very many find it effortless to believe in pirud, but not in Presence. and it is the belief in separation from G’d that initiates the steps toward absence. it is the space created by belief in separation that gives breathing space to the ruach shtut, the spirit of folly, the temporary insanity that leads us to step away from the path and even accelerate toward aveirah, the crossing of internal boundaries into actions evincing disbelief. as the cynicism, the negativity builds, the tiniest of separations will seem to become overwhelmingly huge. it will be utterly real to the creating beholder. it is this possibility that leads someone, in bratslaver terms, to believe that you can destroy without believing the you can fix simultaneously.

it all starts with an unintentional error born of our own nature. but the important thing to know is that our true nature is NOT negating and not cynical. we all know that by spending time with children…it is abundantly clear that cynicism is taught/learned. not that you won’t hear a lot of “no”, but this “negativity” is born of human selfishness…….so let’s talk about the yetzer hara and the yetzer hatov and that popular modern derivative, the ego. the 2 yetzers are the “negative (hara) inclination” or selfish impulse and the “positive (hatov) inclination” or selfless impulse. the word yetzer itself is from the same root as yatzar, meaning “to form, or build, or construct”. so our “inclination” in jewish terms is an innate will or impulse to form, build, or construct desire, and then to actuate it.

before we go further, let’s make it quite clear that haShem finds both inclinations “very good” parts of Creation (B’reishit 1:31), so we aren’t looking to get rid of the yetzer hara. this is important for t’shuvah (and kabbalah).

so what’s so all-fired good about the selfish impulse? well, without a little lust, people don’t couple and marry, they don’t have babies, they don’t have the same drive to build a home and raise and support a family. the selfish is survival centric, and that is very good.

uncoupled from a counterbalancing selfless impulse, though, it becomes what all of us know these days as egocentric. ego counterbalanced is inclined toward survival, toward strength, toward plenty…all of which are part of the Promise of G’d in the Land and as the natural reaction to right behaviour. without counterbalance, though, ego becomes central and overwhelming, thinking nothing of the well being of any other, and thinking nothing of the effects likely to stem from any action constructed by greater selfishness. ego is not evil per se, but it can easily become a tool for evil. and the root of the potential for evil is in the ego’s definition of “the other”. there is me, and there is you. and i’m for me….the pirud, separation opens up. but

hear….G’d is One

human nature in Creation is to have a “working out” of things between 2 antipodes of inclination. and one can err on the “good” side too, mistaking the denial of desire as a greater good than a holy desire (eg, celibacy instead of kiddushin)….G’d is down with this be fruitful and multiply idea, after all.

but the yetzer hatov, the selfless inclination, gets at the central mitzvah

“love your neighbor as yourself”

the other is to be dear to you….recognize that her ego, his ego, is just like your ego. so we should all form, or build, or construct with others in mind as well as ourselves. it is the humble walk, which is not alone with G’d as we might prefer it. think about it, we are all equally required……the walk is crowded in its universal unity.

the ultimate expression of the worldview of separation is avodah zarah, literally “strange worship”, but usually rendered as idolatry. it is the error of thinking a bit of something is equivalent to the everything that is G’d. chassidut (chassidic theory and practice) sees the root of every evil act or negative construction as stemming from an idolatry. there is a substantial dollop of this sort of idolatry in the expectation that G’d answers to us to the degree that we be able to see his face and get a personal sign….if you want a material G’d, go build one….don’t expect haShem to do it for you.

and it is essential to t’shuvah that we get this idea of counterbalancing yetzers right because to live in the moment is very different from to live for the moment. for the moment is to limit the now to what is happening and what we desire. in the moment is to open yourself to the entirety of time that is in every moment…it is only on that scale, the comprising of past and future in the present, that one comes to dwell in the achdut, the unity of all things. the Presence is about the correspondences interconnecting all things, not their material distinctions.

“that evil confronts good gives man the possibility of victory”

which aphorism, attributed to R’ Yechiel Michael of Zlotshov, is very much in line with Zoharic teaching (2:163a) about the very purpose of our existence

all that the Holy One has made, both above and below, is for the purpose of manifesting His Glory and to make all things serve Him….indeed, the yetzer hara also serves the will of G’d

a practical way to get at this is to stop and ask at as many junctures as you can (you get good at it with time and practice): how does this thing i intend to do serve more than just my ego? then go further: how does this thing i intend to do serve others as much as it does me? then go further still: how does this thing that i intend to do serve the Holy One, blessed be? if you can’t answer these questions very well, then your path tends toward the idolatrous, toward constructing for you alone, which is not the way of the humble walk. it aint about the bit of something that is the focus of my desire, but rather about the EVERYTHING all together through my desire. egocentric practice is zarah, strange, in that it is not an expression of full-bodied human soul. generosity, with a healthy greed, is good. just plain greed is strange worship indeed.

you can ask the questions at many junctures every day, but you can also hold a kabbalistic mantra in mind to help you comprehend the reality of the Oneness of G’d which underlies all the rest of soulful practice, and also is the basis of t’shuvah:

ein od me’l’vado

(there is nothing else but haShem alone)

days of repentance: 8 Elul

“all the ways of man are straight in his eyes”

we learn this insight in Proverbs 21:2. but all the ways of humans are not straight in G’d’s eyes. some miss the mark, which is the root of the most common word for sin in Torah, namely, chet….as in the High Holy Day prayer, Al Chet (“for the sin..”). we recite this prayer, with its list of “sins we have committed before You [G’d]” by doing or being in many different ways out of step in our walk with haShem. we repeat it a minyan of times…10 times during the course of Yom Kippur. each way of sin is a descriptor of a missing the mark, eg, “by foolish talk”, “by improper thoughts”, “by running to do evil”, “by casting off the yoke of heaven, etc. there must be about 50 ways to step away from your G’d. some go beyond “mere” misalignment and describe a deliberate crossing over a boundary, an aveirah, which shares the root not only of avar (the past) but also of “overing” , crossing a boundary with deliberation.

to do a mitzvah is to align and connect with the intention of haShem. when a person in a military force accepts an order, that one aligns herself with a superior officer, but also with the rest of the forces working to achieve a mission. it is all about alignment and connection for more effective results. mitzvot in Torah are not fundamentally different. when we accept them, and understand them, we act in concert with the other doers of tikkun olam (repair of the world).

so in a fundamental sense, every chet, every misstep, is an anti-mitzvah.

chet is being out of step, or out of line…fundamentally to walk Torah crookedly or from a distance. aveirah is to deliberately set out on a wrong route, perhaps not recognizing that the route is wrong, but going off course and out of bounds deliberately. to disconnect from the corps is to stretch your spiritual supply lines, or to go off the grid entirely, and to get increasingly out of earshot of subsequent mitzvot….eventually, you will simply drop all calls.

the Midrash Rabbah relates that all levels of chet are expressions of a temporary state of heresy. chet is not an absence of G’d , but an internal failing of an assumption about G’d…perhaps that G’d is not intimately concerned with Creation, or that G’d has better, bigger things to do then to pay attention to some small peccadillo, or, more seriously, to believe that G’d does not exist. when these heretical attitudes take root, even temporarily, we are no longer in clear touch with our ultimate soul source….though we think our path is straight and well considered, we are operating with ever diverging gps data. and the way back becomes increasingly difficult to discern, even if we suddenly realize we are off course. eventually we all realize that we are lost. but up until that time, it is easier to ride the horse in the direction it is going. we can all harden our hearts in such a way.

“humans do not commit transgressions unless a ruach shtut (spirit of folly/nonsense) enters”

so teach Chazal in Sotah 3a. think for a second about your last kashrut violation…exactly what made the particular food item so much more important than walking humbly with G’d? what were you thinking? probably not about Torah, yes? probably that it wouldn’t matter to G’d, right? whatever would give a person such an idea? ruach shtut. the problem is that each bad decision draws others after it. and bad decisions settle into habit, tossing free will into the dustbin, replacing it with a preconditioned way of acting, thinking, and being. once you accept an error as being a precendent, you are trapped in your past and no longer in a free moment.

the aspect of t’shuvah practice that is directed to this is to control what you take in. if you spend hours listening to music about wobbling breasts and booty, well, you are likely to start seeing the world in similar terms. if you restict such shtuyot (foolishness) you are less likely to see the world so. we are touched by what we entertain ourselves with. the very high and difficult ideal is to always have words of Torah in mind, and heart and ear. we learned in the 4th haftarah of comfort just this shabbat past (Isaiah 51:16):

“and I have put My words in your mouth, and I have covered you in the shadow of My Hand”

days of repentance: 4 Elul

“it is I, I myself come to comfort you”

so we will learn from the prophet Isaiah (51:12) in the upcoming 4th haftarah of comfort this coming Shabbat. my own practice is to begin saying full slichot prayers daily beginning on 3 Elul, yesterday, rather than Rosh Chodesh Elul, as is traditional for most sephardim. it is because of the number of days that elapse between the 3rd day and Rosh haShanah: 26. 26 reminds me of G’d’s personal comfort in the time of t’shuvah, for it is the simple gematria for the Name haShem, ie, the tetragramaton to the secular: yud is 10, heh is 5, vav is 6 and heh again is 5….26. and the 4 letters of the name can teach us a fundamental practice for doing t’shuvah: to be completely in the moment. to do NOW…how do we know this from 26?

we learn that the 4 letters can permutated to create 3 words that cover the realm of time: ‘haya’ means “was”; ‘hoveh’ means “is”; ‘yihyeh’ means “will be”. the Infinite, logically, compromises past present future, but we learn that G’d has actually always expressed G’dself in the order of the letters in the Divine Name, ie, ‘yod-hoveh’ (sounds like jehovah, yes?), which is the “‘yod’ of the is”….of the present moment….of the eternal “NOW”.

consider the letter yod itself. it is the smallest character of the alphabet, always hanging in the air….barely there, really. it is the first letter that begins to form when a scribe begins to write a Torah scroll….the rest of the letter grows into the bet of bereishit, but the letter itself begins as a yod (that never gets its short tail). this is the point of Creation. the beginning of time, before which nothing Created was, and after which nothing is yet known in the Creation. the letter yod is the moment of Creation, which is repeated in each moment, each of which is Created in a moment. it is the eternal present. the moment we should always be living in–indeed, is there any choice?–especially when doing t’shuvah. t’shuvah is the getting behind you of the wrong, and the gaining of the hope of future good action, but it is gained ONLY in the moment. every mitzvah can only be done in the particular moment that it presents itself and is taken up by a doer.

there is another method of gematria, the “full measure” or “full value” method, in which the value of each letter is multiplied by itself, so the 4-letter Name tallies up as (10×10) + (5×5) + (6×6) + (5×5)….or 186. 186 is the simple gematria of the Name of G’d which is haMakom, ie, “the Place”, which takes care of the spatial aspect of the space-time continuum for us….haMakom, the Place, is wherever it is in the moment….the eternal “HERE”:

G’d is here and now

(always)

so the chant would be “where is G’d?” HERE ” and when is G’d here?” NOW….

to turn (return) to G’d, you turn where you are in order to face where you are. and when do you turn? in the moment you are in. the first lesson of t’shuvah is to

be in the moment

and there is a jewish way of getting yourself into the moment. most of you know something about it…kavanah. kavanah is ‘intention’. it is usually a set of words that say 2 things….’i am here ‘(make like Avraham avinu)….and ‘i am ready’

ready to do what? well, to walk with haShem. before you turn on your computer in the morning (or just wake it up), try a simple kavanah with the intention to insert the Divine into that moment…..”here i am, haShem, ready to do the mitzvah of my work by starting my machine, grateful for the opportunity, and mindful of Your Presence.”

not so hard, right. find your own moments of import in your day and bring a kavanah to the doing of each. make this an “established” habit and you are on your way to living more fully in every moment….cheek to jowl with where G’d is and just in time!

ketiva vachatima tova

days of repentance: 3 Elul

28 Iyyar 5664

28 Iyyar 5679

3 Elul 5695

today was 3 Elul, 77th anniversary of the death of Rav Kook z”l, on whose gravestone are found the 3 dates recorded herein. surely 77 is a significant number upon which to reflect. 77 is the simple gematria for ‘mazal’ (“luck”if you will), and certainly starting Elul with good fortune in the cards isn’t all bad, right? but we can do better if we think back to the 3rd haftarah of comfort, which we read/heard on Rosh Chodesh Elul just passed, and remember Proverbs 18:10:

“migdal-oz, shem haShem”

(a tower of strength is the Name of G’d)

the Name is a tower (gematria=77) of strength (gematria=77). and the haftarah teaches us that all the children will learn of G’d, ie, come to know the Name. and we will not need to fear the oppression of our wrongs in the past or the devastation of falling back into bad ways, for it will not come near (Isaiah 54:14). let’s expand the 77-77 further in Psalm 61:4:

“for you have been a refuge for me

a tower of strength in the face of the enemy

and back to our haftarah, in which we learn further (54:17) the power inherent in the Name:

“any weapon sharpened against you will not succeed;

any tongue that will rise against you in judgment

YOU will condemn”

“you will condemn” any accusing sharpened tongue” for that is the heritage of the servants of G’d; THAT is part and parcel their righteousness from G’d. the deeds of the baal t’shuvah will defeat the naysayers and the evil report and the cynical doubt and the tongue of any accuser. what you do now defends you from what you may have done in the past. now defeats then. NOW is “the heritage of those in awe of the Name” (Psalm 61:6). turn to haShem truly with full heart–real t’shuvah– and you gain the tools to defeat even your worst enemies, the great oppressors of your past. YOUR RIGHTEOUS ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS, nonetheless:

azamra shimcha la’ad

(i will sing praise to Your Name forever)

t’shuvah is to open to channeling of the tower of strength from G’d the Source to you yourself and through you to the world. and starting tomorrow, we will not begin to examine practices of t’shuvah, the way of the soul warrior.

oh, hey, what about those dates on Rav Kook’s stone? isn’t it usually just birthdate and deathdate? well, they reflect his own emulation of the walk of Avraham avinu with haShem. do we know much about Avraham’s birth and birthdate? nope. but we know that he was called by G’d to GO himself, for himself, to himself, leaving behind your birthplace, your land , and your parents home. 3 leavings for Avraham avinu represented 3 ascents that are paralleled in Rav Kook’s life: the parental home represents the pull of the familiar and comfortable origin, which R’ Kook put behind him when he left europe and ascended to the Land of Israel on 28 Iyyar 5664; your land represents peer pressure for the ways of galut, which R’ Kook put away when he ascended to Jerusalem to live while founding a new religious way that merged rich zionism (and association with the secular) with traditional teachings and practices on 28 Iyyar 5679; and last, but not least, your birthplace represents the pull of the place into which your soul is born–your body, which R’ Kook put behind him when he died and ascended to the wholly spiritual realm on 3 Elul 5695.

birthdate is past–aveirah in aver–but each ascent as you walk Torah is a moment of vividly living in a moment. not a record of history, but a piling of milestones. so it is for everyone doing t’shuvah…you ascend from strength to strength, leaving behind the pulls of what was, adding your own milestones to the walls of the Tower of Strength.

days of repentance: haftarah of comfort 3

“and all your children shall be taught of haShem; great shall be the peace of your children”

there’s comfort for us all herein. the promise of the future in the wholeness/peace of our children. not surprising, is it? as we’ve already discussed, these first 3 weeks of comfort have a parallel in the steps of the prayers said at graveside, and the third step of mourning corresponds to the movement from acceptance of loss to the reunderstanding of the goodness of G’d in the saying of kaddish. it is the first kaddish, to be followed thereafter by the daily kaddish yatom, the kaddish of the orphan. all of us are orphaned since the destruction of the easy access to G’d’s Presence that was in Jerusalem.

a parent lost is like a parent hidden, yes? not absent exactly, for still held in memory, still alive in the learning we have been given by that father or mother. but not as visible. hidden, like the Presence of haShem….but that we are still aware of haShem in the dark times is the beauty of kaddish.

exalted and sanctified be the Great Name

so we say. we know You. you are not wholly gone. and in this 3rd haftarah of comfort Isaiah points out that all the orphans will learn of the Great Name and that will itself be the beginning of the beginnings of wholeness.

this brief haftarah, on shabbat just passed, culminates the week that leads up to Rosh Chodesh Elul. comfort for the “storm tossed” Israel, and wholeness to come, by way of the knowledge of G’d–“all your children shall be taught of haShem”–all of your newborns. and who are the newborns of Elul, which is aramaic for “searching”?

the newborns are the reborns. each of us who does t’shuvah is reborn in tzedek, in righteousness.

“establish yourself through righteousness;

distance yourself from oppression”

so says the prophet on behalf of G’d in our haftarah (Isaiah 54:14). REmake yourself in righteousness, putting distance between yourself and the wrongs of your past. in righteousness make yourself whole, give yourself peace by distancing yourself from the MAlingering past….in which you have oppressed others, knowingly or not. the past in which you have oppressed yourself in the wrongs you have done. ”aveirah”, a key word for sin shares its root with “avar”, a word meaning past. t’shuvah is never about the past, chevrei, but only about what is to be now.

in this new month of Elul, we are all of us children again….if only we will learn of haShem….and everything we do from this point to Yom Kippur is designed to teach us of nothing else.

days of repentance: haftarah of comfort 2

“Zion says…haShem has forsaken me

haShem has forgotten me”

the curious thing about the first haftarah of comfort (consolation), called ‘nachamu’ (after the meaning of the repeated first word, ie, “comfort my people, comfort them, says your G’d”) is that after the first verse it is anything but comforting. it goes on to say that the People is but as grass blown about and withered by the wind and the sun….in the face of G’d’s displeasure, the withered blades of grass are carried away as stubble. the first haftarah is comforting ONLY in that it asserts strongly that G’d is, in fact, in charge–in spite of all appearances to the contrary.

small comfort when one is feeling freshly dead in the destruction of the Temple…when one has died at tisha b’av with the departure of the Shechina from out of Israel’s midst….forsaken, forgotten, with no Presence to which to turn…

sometimes i feel like a motherless child…a long ways from home

but in the second week, Isaiah (49:14-51:3) answers with G’d’s pointed reply…

“can a woman forget her baby…..

or not feel compassion for the child of her womb?”

well, you mothers out there? in spite of the sometimes mindnumbing, backbreaking routines of parenting, can you not still feel compassion for the child of your womb? is that not about as good a surety—in the face of all the effort, the exasperation, the worry, the discipline, the sometime rejection and insolence of adolescent children, the fear of being ignored as you age—as great a certainty as any love we know on earth? is there any better certainty then a mother’s love? even among the most secular, the “miracle of birth” is treasured, and is nearly never relinquished. severing the umbilicus severs only the physical.

but we are in a series of 7 haftarot of comforting us, comforting those who mourn loss of Shechina in the Temple. we are not yet comforted…..

the grief of a mourner has 3 prominent steps at internment: 1) the e’l-mole rachamim corresponds to acknowledgment of death and the request for protection of the deceased, 2) the tziduk hadin corresponds to the accepting of truth in G’d’s judgment (verses proclaim G’d’s greatness and the “wisplike” existence of humankind, and 3) the graveside kaddish corresponds to turning of acceptance of death into the “magnification” that comes with comprehension of the greater good in the power of G’d. this structure of the internment service corresponds to instruction from Talmud (Mo’ed Katan 27b): “3 days for weeping, in 7 for lamenting, and 30 [to not] cut the hair and [wear] pressed clothing.”

from tisha b’av to the 1st shabbat is step 1 (reflected in haftarah 1 of comfort); from that to the 2nd shabbat is the acceptance of the judgment and of the truth of G’d’s promise (reflected in haftarah 2 of comfort); from that to the 3rd shabbat, and rosh chodesh elul, is the beginning of kaddish, the eye toward the future promise through t’shuvah (repentance), leading through the remaining 4 of the 7 weeks to the Birthday of the World, the day of the greatness of haShem, Rosh Hashanah.

so the 2nd shabbat of comfort begins with the cry of the forsaken, but then pivots through the realization that the Promise to the People is as rock solid as the love of a mother for her child. and at the very end of the haftarah, there is mention of Avraham and Sarah, the first parents of the People Israel, to whom was given the promise not to be fulfilled in their own day, but in days to come–even after dark days of exile from the Land and slavery.

“look to Avraham your forefather and Sarah who birthed you”

and the haftarah closes with the assurance that haShem will comfort, comforting even the very ruins, the persistence of memories of the destruction, the evil, the despondency. we are all of us spiritual ruins to one degree or another after another year of selling our spirits short, yes? our failures to live up to our best hopes, our strongest intentions, our responsibilities to each other and to G’d pile up into ruined heaps about this time of year. but right here. at THIS point in time the promise is that G’d will comfort our ruins, making Eden of our wastelands, we have the Promise of the other side of t’shuvah. for on the other side of the Days of Awe, we are promised, if we do the work:

“joy and gladness will be found there, thanksgiving, and the sound of music”

this as we enter the third week, so start to look to the mountain of G’d in Jerusalem, and know that you will hear what you’ve heard before…your heart will be blessed with the sound of music, and you’ll sing once more.

PS-don’t forget, richard rodgers real family name was abrahams………now there’s the Promise in exile, eh?)

days of repentance: begin with love and comfort

no better days…than tu b’av and yom kippur

it was Rabban Gamliel who let us know that 6 days after the black fast of tisha b’av, coinciding with the full moon, was a very, very important day. in the Mishnah, Ta’anit 4, he is quoted, saying:

“there were no better (happier) days for the People of Israel than the 15th day of Av (tu b’av) and yom kippur, since on these days the daughters of Israel/Jerusalm go out dressed in white and dance in the vineyards….”

borrowed white dresses, by the way. just add a little something blue and you get the idea. the best day of the year to get married, they say, and the only day on which to get married without having to fast. that’s right, no fasting for bride and groom should they marry on to b’av….yom kippur doesn’t let us off so lightly, of course. but tu b’av comes with a full moon, mid month, and is as far away from the yom kippur katan that is every new moon for the People….a time of fullness of promise rather than the narrow sliver of rosh chodesh.

but look at that apposition: tu b’av and yom kippur. love and atonement to bookend the penitential season….indeed, it was custom to start preparing for the month of elul on tu b’av, the gematria for which totes up to that for:

ketiva vachatima tova

‘may your inscription and seal be for good’

sounds like the Days of Awe to me. but here’s the other thing: tu b’av was the beginning of the grape harvest in the Land. so those gals in the white dresses were dancing out in the vineyards harvesting those grapes with the boys….don’t bruise the fruit, now.

whence this idea of beginning atonement in love? well, the 7 weeks of consolation begin the shabbat after the black fast–in 2012 the first shabbat of consolation is cheek to jowl with tu b’av–and that set of 7 takes us right through the month of elul to the gate of tishrei (which begins the count up to the birthday of the world…Rosh haShanah). but what is the consolation for? well, for coming back from the great sins…the golden calf, the spies, the baseless hatred between brothers, etc, etc. tu b’av brings the consolation for the sin of the spies. consider the legend of how the People came to know that the 40-year time of wandering the desert til the generation of the sin of the spies had died out:

every year for 40 years of wandering, on tisha b’av night, the Israelites dug themselves graves, in which they would sleep for tisha b’av. by morning some 15, 000 of them would not wake up, and tisha became the black funereal fast. year after year after year. in the 40th year, all slept in the graves they had dug, but in the morning, none had died

it is taught that the People thought maybe they had the date wrong, so they kept sleeping in their graves until tu b’av, the middle of the month and the time of the full moon. at that point they knew that the sin of the spies, the sin that led to the wandering, was atoned for. and those giant grapes that the spies brought back from the Land–“now the time was the time of the first ripe grapes” (Numbers 13:20)–were not an omen of ill, but of joy. Rabbi Chanan said (Sanhedrin 70a):

wine was created to comfort mourners….

well, at least that first tu b’av must have made it seem so….so a day of wine and happy human hearts….a day of love between people born of G’d’s love for people, that they are given the chance to emerge from the wrongdoings and misunderstandings that lead them to wander in the desert. comfort ye, comfort ye, my people…..for every year the road of t’shuvah begins with love and comfort.

the mighty r’ Akiva truly understood tu b’av and yom kippur, for he centralized the concept of belovedness between people and between people and G’d by insisting on including the Song of Songs in the canon…..and then by making “love your neighbor as yourself” the central teaching of the jewish way. on tu b’av we crawl out of our self-dug graves for a day of wine and love….white dresses, white kittels…under the chuppah, whether on tu or on yom kippur. a day of wine on tu….and ultimately of roses on yom kippur. how so?

368 maneh of ketoret

1 measure for each day, plus 3 extra for yom kippur

for only on yom kippur, and only in the joyful fragrance of a ketoret cloud could the high priest enter the Holy of Holies and atone for the People. yom kippur, the day of love and roses. “marei kohen” is the piyyut we say in the avodah section of the yom kippur musaf prayers; it is a series of descriptions of the kohen gadol’s appearance upon emerging from the Holy of the Holies “in peace, without injury”:

like the garden’s rose among the thorns

was the appearance of the Kohen

and so we begin the season of t’shuvah, of return to G’d and to our best selves with love….comfort ye, comfort ye, my People…..with days of wine and roses.