Embodied Torah

Psalm 65

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You take care of the earth and irrigate it; You enrich it greatly, with the channel of God full of water; You provide grain for men; for so do You prepare it. Saturating its furrows, leveling its ridges, You soften it with showers, You bless its growth. You crown the year with Your bounty; fatness is distilled in Your paths; the pasturelands distill it; the hills are girded with joy. The meadows are clothed with flocks, the valleys mantled with grain; they raise a shout, they break into song. (65:10-14)

Shopping at a large supermarket may not always feel like a joyful experience, beginning with finding a parking place, walking to the store, slogging through crowds of people to get a cart and negotiate the aisles, finding in which aisle the produce you are seeking is located, and waiting in line at the checkout. The hassle of shopping might in fact mask the absolute miracle of what you are able to buy. How many people’s livelihood depends on the produce that you are buying? How many hours, how much sweat and worry did they invest into growing it? So much of their living depends on factors out of their control, such as the quality and quantity of rain, the sun, the temperature.

In the mid-1940’s, Florida frozen orange juice concentrate began to be marketed as “liquid sunshine.” It takes a partnership of effort to transform the energy of the sun and a handful of materials and minerals into an orange, a sweet pepper, or a banana. And to take this one step further, walk down the bread aisle and imagine the additional set of people who took the raw grain and processed it into various flavors in a variety of shapes. The traditional berakha is “… who brings forth bread from the earth,” but we know that this, too, only happens in partnership with farmers and bakers (along with those who manage the transportation issues of getting the raw ingredients to the bakery and the finished produce to the store).

So next time you go to the supermarket, keep the Psalmist’s words in mind and think about the joyful pastures and hills singing their produce to life, and think about all of the people whose lives are dedicated to bringing you the song of the meadows and valleys.

Psalm 64

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Hide me from a band of evil men, from a crowd of evildoers, who whet their tongues like swords; they aim their arrows — cruel words — to shoot from hiding at the blameless man … They arm themselves with an evil word … (64:3-6)

These verses have a very first world flavor to them. Many times, the Psalmist writes of being under physical attack. There are many people in this world who suffer the very real fear of physical danger. For many of us in the US and other Western, developed countries, our physical safety is not the primary question. Although we are aware of school shootings and violence in our cities, for many people, myself included, such incidents feel far away. There is no question that they are real problems, but the fear that feels most real to those who lives their lives in relative safety are from those who use words, not weapons, as threats.

It is not true that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” Aggressive words do hurt. The modern workplace and modern politics may have no place for duels, or stepping outside and settling our disputes like gentlemen by beating each other up, or a good old fashioned sword fight. Rather, we see verbal attacks, condescension and ridiculing comments. We see people working (or playing?) on their devices during meetings, pointedly ignoring the person making a presentation. In schools, despite workshops and assemblies on bullying, we see closed cliques of teens deliberately shutting out those who don’t dress or speak or fit in the right way.

Email, texting, social media posts, all provide a forum to attack. We might even long for the simpler days of the Psalmist when the evildoers had to put quill on parchment to pen an insulting letter, or at least go out into the public square and show their faces if they wanted to engage in a verbal assault. There were no anonymous comment streams at the end of newspaper columns, behind which the cowards could spew their venom.

All who have been in the crosshairs of a barrage of hostile, violent, words have uttered words to whatever Higher Power we appeal to, “Protect me from this cruel assault!”

The Beginning of a Sabbatical

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Beginning a Sabbatical is like rebooting a computer and running software to clean out all of the caches and shut down all of the programs that automatically launch and run in the background.

The first weekend and most of the first week is dedicated to paying attention to all of the habitual behaviors I engage in. I like to work. I like to be busy. When I am not working, I like to be thinking of working, planning what I need to do next, sometimes making lists of things to do. I look forward to getting back to the office on Monday morning. Shutting down the mental processes that drive me takes time, but without it, I won’t be able to explore a different set of mental processes.

To some extent, and to no great surprise, the practice of Shabbat prepares one for the larger practice of Sabbatical. On Shabbat, I shut down a portion of my weekday life. Computer, tablet, phone; no internet, no email, no electronic news. Actually, given that there is no newspaper delivery on Saturday, I really disconnect myself from a portion of the world around me. So far, the world has handled itself for better or for worse without my help … and had I been paying more attention, the world would still have handled itself for better or for worse!

Shabbat teaches me that I am not that important in the grand scheme of things; and a Sabbatical teaches me a similar lesson, that my synagogue can get along without me for a few months. Granted, I don’t have to prepare the world for my one-day-a-week absence, but I have spent most of the past two weeks and a significant part of the past month preparing the synagogue for my absence. However, this was my third Sabbatical, and we’ve gotten pretty good at knowing what needs to be done, and who needs to do it.

My job this weekend and this week is not to let myself get caught up in synagogue thoughts. I have to be confident that as problems arise, the president, the cantor, the chair of the ritual committee, along with the wisdom of a cadre of past presidents and board members and committee chairs can handle them.

Psalm 63

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God, … I search for You, my soul thirsts for You, my body yearns for You, as a parched and thirsty land that has no water. (63:2)

Sometimes God’s presence is front and center, and sometimes it is like (as this Psalmist writes) we are in a dry wilderness and God is nowhere to be seen.

I don’t expect the Presence of God to be visible at all times. I expect that I am pretty much on my own most of the time. The brief moments when I sense the Presence are comforting and gratifying, all the more so for their rarity. My sense is this is the way things are supposed to be.

Years ago, I read in Rabbi David Wolpe’s “Healer of Shattered Hearts” an explanation of theodicy and goodness that has remained with me ever since. If you knew God was constantly at your side, rewarding you and punishing you at appropriate moments, wouldn’t you be on your best behavior? How many people break traffic laws when they know that a police car is right behind them? Are you being good at those moments, or are you just being smart? Rabbi Wolpe suggests that you are not being good when you are behaving well at moments when you know you are being monitored; you are just being smart.

The fact is that we know good people who suffer and nasty people who prosper. We know both good and evil people are hurt by tornadoes, earthquakes, and tsunami. We know that God does not immediately reward and punish. God is not a police officer trailing us night and day. Thus, when we choose to be good rather than bad, we are truly being good, not just smart.

We may long for a more visible and constant and nourishing sign of the Presence of God. At the same time, we need to remember that we are mature, adult, human beings, able to function without constant “parental” supervision.

Psalm 62

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Truly, wait quietly for God, O my soul, for my hope comes from Him. (62:6)

Pure silence can be a beautiful thing, although there are various qualities of silence. There is the awkward silence of two people who don’t know each other well and are fumbling for ways to make conversation. There is the uncomfortable silence of walking into a room full of people you don’t know and watching as conversation stops and all heads turn your way. There is the painful silence of encountering someone who is angry with you and isn’t speaking to you. There is the comfortable silence of taking a walk with someone you know well; you can walk together and enjoy the walking and the silence. There is the inviting silence of a good teacher who offers a questions for discussion and waits until someone is ready to offer a contribution. There is the warm silence of a room full of people in silent prayer or meditation together.

Sitting in silence is a practice. Having the patience to wait does not come naturally. We fidget, we look around for something to do, something to distract us from the silence. Some perceive silence as lonely. To this, I offer – you are never truly alone. You are with yourself, and you are with God. If being alone makes you uncomfortable, ask yourself what is it about you that makes it hard for you to be alone with yourself? That’s not to say that one should seek to be alone as much as possible as a primary activity. I only offer that the times that you are alone can be times when you can most clearly hear the voice of God providing direction in your life. Are you alone too much? Pay attention to the Divine voice and embrace the silence. Then seek out a community that can support you in traveling the road that your inner voice tells you to walk along.