Being There (Mishpatim)

“Be here now.  Be somewhere else later.  Is that so difficult?”

                        (David Bader, Zen Judaisim)

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

                        (Henry David Thoreau, Walden)

I love the quote from David Bader’s very funny satirical little book, Zen Judaism.  With its Yiddish-inflected sensibility, it is both humorous and wise.  Be present where you are.  It shouldn’t really be so hard.

And yet, apparently, it is.  Henry David Thoreau famously left town and lived in a stripped down cabin on Walden Pond for two years in an effort to live mindfully.  He realized that this is very difficult, indeed.  All too often we are here, physically, without being fully present, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Our weekly Torah portion, Mishpatim, acknowledges this challenge of mindful living. 

In Exodus 24:12, God says to Moses: “Come up to Me on the mountain and be there, and I will give you the stone tablets with the teachings and commandments.”  Why does God add those words, “be there” (v’h’yeh sham)?  If Moses is on Mount Sinai, where else would he be?

Menahem Mendel of Kotzk  answers: “From this apparent redundancy we learn that even with one who strains himself to ascend to a high mountain top, and is indeed able to reach the summit—it is nevertheless possible that he is still not there.  Even though he may be standing on the very peak itself, his head may be elsewhere.”

If, as the Kotzker Rebe observes, it is this hard for Moses to be fully present on Mount Sinai, then, as the Rabbis would say, kal va’chomer—all the more so—for us, in our daily lives.  Indeed, since the time of Moshe Rabbeynu and, for that matter, Henry David Thoreau, distractions have multiplied exponentially.  Today, if you want to get off the constantly-demanding grid of email, Twitter and cell phones, you have to go a lot farther than Walden Pond. 

Or not.  

You can always just turn everything off.  A great deal of Jewish life is designed to help us focus on what really matters.  Saying blessings focuses our attention on our surroundings.  Prayer and meditation exercise our mental mindfulness muscles.  And Shabbat is all about turning off the external distractions and being fully present in the moment.

Start small.  Focus.  Pay full attention, to family and friends, here and now, even if just for a little while at first.

Be here now.  Be somewhere else later.  Is that so difficult?

Let the Mystery Be

After a week of intense fog and thick inversion, the scene at Mt. Sinai from this week's portion, Yitro, may seem unexpectedly familiar:

As morning dawned, there was thunder, and lightning, and a dense cloud settled upon the mountain. . . while Moses approached the thick cloud where God was.

Of course the Torah is speaking metaphorically here.  God does not actually live behind a cloud on a mountain somewhere on the Sinai Peninsula.  But God is, more often than not, hidden from us.  Veiled.  Shrouded.  A Mystery.

For those who seek absolute clarity, who like things black and white, this can be deeply frustrating.  But as many spiritual seekers have noted, it is precisely God's mysterious nature that allows for subtlety, complexity and paradox in human life.  If God was too obvious, in plain sight, then faith would be too simple.

So, too, with our rites and rituals that strive to bring us close to the Holy One of Mystery.

Sometimes, we lament that there are parts of our service that we do not understand.  We may be frustrated with the Hebrew, unfamiliar with the choreography of Jewish prayer, or just perplexed by certain traditions and practices.  Needless to say, much of this can be ameliorated with some simple explanation, translation, and a commitment to regular attendance and learning.

But not all of it.

Some of the experience will always be a little murky and unclear.  Beyond rationality.  In other words, a mystery.  Like the Mystery it attempts to approach.  We are not alone here.  In his blog post, "A Beginner's Guide to Becoming Episcopalian"(http://tertiumsquid.com/) Gordon Atkinson notes:

"Here's the deal: do you really want to go to a church for the first time and understand everything that's going on?  Do you really want to walk into the most sacred hour of the week for an ancient spiritual tradition and find no surprises and nothing to learn or strive for?  Do you really want a spiritual community to be so perfectly enmeshed with your cultural expectations that you can drop right into the mix with no effort at all. . . 

I do hope you'll give this a little more effort than that.  Because something wonderful can happen when you stop trying to figure out what you should be doing in a worship service.  When you admit to yourself that you don't know what's going on, you'll just sit and listen.  Because that's really all you can do.  And that's actually a very nice spiritual move for you to make."

God is behind the cloud--as She should be.

Sometimes the hiding is what makes for the joy of the finding.

And sometimes, as Iris Dement sings below, it is enough to just "let the mystery be."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlaoR5m4L80

Fear and Faith--A Long and Winding Road

Spiritual progress is rarely linear.  In life, unlike in the movies, there are no simple “happily-ever-after” endings or instant and enduring transformations.  Instead, we take a few hard-won steps forward, fail and fall back, and then, hopefully, regain the lost ground and continue to forge our way, intermittently, ahead.

Nowhere is this painstaking journey more clearly portrayed than in this week’s Torah portion, Beshallach.  We experience the ecstasy of the Exodus, the long-awaited liberation from Egyptian bondage, and the miraculous passage through the Sea of Reeds.  Then we grumble about the food and water.  Just one chapter after the exultant Song at the Sea, we are whining to God and Moses, “If only we had died by the hand of the Eternal in the land of Egypt, when we ate our fill of bread.”

The Israelites shuttle wildly between fear and faith, hope and despair, cowardice and courage.

Sometimes we do, too.

Life is like that. 

Our challenge is to remember that even the failures are part of the journey that will eventually take us toward the Promised Land.  There are no shortcuts.  As Torah teaches, “Now when Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the Philistines, although it was nearer.”  Instead, we walk a way that frequently winds back upon itself.  The path that God chooses for us leads us into daunting obstacles that test and sometimes even turn back our progress.  It is hard, confounding, and frustrating.

It is also sacred.

Rabbi Yael Levy reminds us of this in her poetic commentary, with which I will leave you:

How do we leave the narrow places?

            The hardened hearts? 

The constricted minds?

How do we go forth from habits

From behaviors, from beliefs

That are so old, so ingrained,

We think this is who we are?

The Israelites were led the long way around—

By way of the wilderness,

By way of the sea,

Because it is so difficult to leave what has been,

Even when what has been is painful,

Even when what has been is no longer of service,

Is no longer true.

Our ancestors stood at the shores of the sea.

Frightened and desperate,

They cried out.

They wanted to run, to hide, to turn back,

But they stepped forward

And the waters opened 

And together they walked across the sea on dry ground.

. . . And then, moments later,

Fear crept back.

Doubt, despair, desperation took hold,

And the Israelites raised their voices and cried.

Our ancestors sang with joy and wonder

And they stumbled in doubt, bitterness and fear.

Their journey brings us to the edge of the sea

Again and again and again.

Israel Reflections ("Loving and Liking")

I love Israel, madly, beyond all reason.

That’s the way it is with love. 

Love—the kind of love I feel for this land and its people—is not rational.  It’s visceral.

To love is to be in relationship, to feel a deep connection with the beloved.  To hurt when the beloved hurts.  To rejoice when the beloved rejoices. 

And so it is for me with eretz Yisrael. 

When Israel is in pain, I ache.  When Israel is in danger, I fear.  When Israel makes mistakes and shows poor judgment, I cringe.  And when Israel demonstrates extraordinary virtue and restraint, acting as a moral exemplar despite the lousy neighborhood in which she dwells (as she often does, though the world is loathe to acknowledge this), I kvell. 

I feel deeply the words of the medieval poet, Yehudah HaLevi, who was also in love with Israel: “My heart is in the east and I am in the uttermost west.”

Because I love Israel, I spend much of my life defending her against her fierce critics, some of whom are, otherwise, my friends and allies on the political left.  I advocate for her, with my money and my life.  I send my children to learn and live in Jerusalem.  And I have made Israel my own home, when I was a student myself, and when I have been on sabbatical.

This is what one does for a loved one. 

Every morning, I search the newspapers and websites for stories from Israel.  I want to know what is going on in this beloved place, where the Jewish smells and sounds and faces speak straight to my heart. 

I love the way, on Friday afternoons, the cashiers and passing strangers on the street wish me “Shabbat shalom” and then, on Saturday night, “Shavua tov.”

I love the falafel—vegetarian fast food, everywhere!—and I love the beautiful young men and women in uniform, risking their lives for me and for the Jewish people everywhere, to protect and defend our Jewish state.  Our beloved home.

This part of my relationship is simple.  It’s love.

But here’s where it gets complicated: one can love someone or something dearly without really liking it very much.

By way of example: most of us have family members who we love but don’t particularly like.  That crazy cousin or uncle or niece or grandparent or brother or sister. . . whoever. . .  .  You love them and would do almost anything for them.  You just don’t want to spend too much time with them. 

That’s how it is with Israel and me.  After seven visits, some for many weeks or months, I have come to realize that as much as I love Israel, I don’t really like it very much. 

There are, of course, some things Israeli that I like very much, indeed: the rural Galilee and Golan, falafel bars, Shabbat and holy days, Elite chocolate, paddle ball on the beach, the radio programming.

But mostly, I don’t like being in Israel, no matter how much I love it.  I feel a thrill when the plane lands in Tel Aviv and everyone on board—including me—applauds.  But I also feel a deep sense of relief when I get on my flight back to my home in Boise, Idaho, which I both love and like.

I don’t blame Israel for my lack of “like.”  I am not passing judgment on this beloved place.  I know that many people like it very much.  Indeed, I see my inability to like Israel as a personal shortcoming.

It’s just that Israel is, culturally, a terrible fit for me.  It’s too small, too crowded, too constricted.  I need more wildness, more privacy, more peace and quiet, and a lot more personal space than Israel and Israelis provide.  I don’t have the stomach for confrontation and competition.  I don’t like haggling and yelling and pushing and shoving—and if you don’t like these things in Israel, you don’t get very far.  I like courtesy and stillness and order and respect for process.  I like kindness to strangers.  I like being able to yield in traffic to someone else without being taken for a sucker.  I like being able to sit at a green light for a few seconds and having the person behind me wave politely instead of honking her horn.

I like America, and Boise, Idaho, in particular.

For most of my life, it has bothered me that, as much as I love Israel, I don’t really like it.  But after this trip, I am starting to make my peace with this relationship.  Israel is my family.  It’s my first love.  And if, as can be the case with family, you can love without really liking all that much—well, so be it.

Family will always be family, and blood is thicker than water.  So it is with me and my beloved Israel.  The fact that I do not like her very much does not in any way diminish my deep and abiding love for her.

Saying Goodbye (by Jonah)

This morning, we got in the car and drove to the airport, then went through security.  Then we got on the plane.  Our first flight that we are taking is twelve hours!

When we left Israel, it was very, very windy.  Trees were blowing over. 

Last night, before I went to bed, I said goodbye to everyone in my family.  I was very sad to say goodbye to them, and it is hard to say goodbye.  Tanya and Rosa came with us to the airport and they are going to Tel Aviv, so I said one last goodbye to them here at the airport.

On the plane, I’ve been watching Ice Age and The Avengers.  I’ve been really enjoying it.

After me and Dada play chess on the plane, I will play a game on the TV.

I’m looking forward to seeing Mom and Rachel very much.