One evening last week, while I was at home dining with friends, the earth beneath us trembled, sharply, and I knew then the Terror and the Dread.  I died a little death. Though I did say yes, yes to your Strength and your Power,  I was not ready, H’, to stand naked before your Presence..

Within two or three seconds it was all over. “An earthquake,” we said nervously, “a small one, but very close.” We had a drink, and ended the evening together in closer companionship.

Praise be to H’, overturner of mountains, whose dread finger touched me!

Praise be to H’, raiser of the dead, whose sweet breath revived me!

Praise be to H’!

let us tell no stories of personal griefs or tribal nightmares,

let us greet this day unencumbered by past burdens and future plans, remembering only:
This very day did Yah create, rejoice in it!

and let us eradicate from our Haggadah the passage, “In every generation they rise up to destroy us.”

HAPPY PESACH

!חג שמח

If you do not have time or patience to spend an hour looking at the whole program, here are some interesting clips: Illusory God; Questioning the Mystical Experience; and The Mystical Experience & the Sacred Use of Drugs.

After viewing, you are invited to share your thoughts and observations under “Leave a comment” below.

I can easily visualize the scene.

Fifty-four years ago, at the end of October 1956, during the Suez campaign, I was lying in a shallow dugout at the perimeter of our position just west of the Jordan river, facing the Golan Heights. We were on guard against a possible attack by Syrian commandos. At two or three in the morning, after hours of boredom, I froze, sensing a rustling in the nearby thickets. I reached out to my sergeant to alert him. After a moment he chuckled. “It’s only a wildcat,” he said. “Welcome to the Holy Land.”

No war broke out in the North that year, and we sang victory songs on the way home; but we fell silent when we learned that a couple of friends had been killed in the battles in the South.

Are we a military family? I don’t think so. But my father spent four years in the British army in WWII. (I only served a couple of weeks, and contracted polio immediately afterwards.) Two of my older children have served in the IDF, one during the first Lebanese war. And now my granddaughter Enya has just begun a period of voluntary national service before her formal enlistment in the army.

When will this ever end?

Shall I list the names of friends who died in Israel’s wars? Shall I mention the sons and daughters who also lie in the dust of our military cemeteries? Can I talk of our apprehension as the next generation, our beautiful young grandchildren, prepare to do battle?

O God, when will this ever end?

2. It’s June, and our regular summer guests have arrived, a pair of albino ferruginous hawks. First we hear the harsh kaa-kaa of their rasping calls, and then spot them, perched, side-by-side, on a high branch of the 50-foot eucalyptus tree in our neighbor’s yard. They spend hours circling and hovering over the meadow beneath us, occasionally swooping down and immediately soaring up again, grasping in their bloody talons some wriggling prey, usually a small mammal; last year one of them caught a snake.

3. A Midrash: After Adam/Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden the Holy One of Being prepared for them garments of rawhide. Now these are understood as representing the leather straps of the tefillin, the phylacteries, those instruments of ritual that bind us and direct us with good laws and rules of right living. This is the way we Jews are to worship on this mundane plane of exile. But before the Expulsion, while still in that place of wondrous innocence, how were Adam/Eve garbed? In cloaks of light, we are told.

Oh that I may offer my orisons wrapped in that white light from Eden! It beckons me, but today I cannot reach it. Meanwhile, those leather ribbon-straps lie before me on my desk, demanding, summoning.
Jonathan Omer-Man ©2010

August 26: Prayer before going to sleep

בְּיָדוֹ אַפְקִיד רוּחִי, בְּעֵת אִישַׁן וְאָעִֽירָה.
וְעִם רוּחִי גְּוִיָּתִי, יְיָ לִי וְלֹא אִירָא.

The Sh’ma al ha-Mittah (the Jewish bed-time prayer service) demands of us that we not slip mindlessly into slumber, but rather make conscious the transition from the active, daytime world, of business, of relationship, in which we have relative control over our lives, to the realm of sleep, in which we have none, are powerless.

It opens with a dramatic statement, of intention to forgive anyone who may have harmed us, whether intentionally or not, in any way, physically, spiritually, or economically. Of course it is impossible to do this completely and irrevocably, and we are cognizant that many of those old angers and resentments will return, at least in part, on the morrow. Nevertheless, this is an essential accounting, a preparation for the journey into the unknown, into night, as we put behind us the dying day’s unfinished business.

The entire service is marked by a developing sense of humility, of progressively relinquishing autonomy, of faith in divine benevolence, and it concludes with the words from the Adon Olam, printed above, “and into Your hand I commit my soul, when I sleep or awaken, and with my soul, my body too. H’ is with me, I shall not fear.”

The next prayer we utter, on awakening in the morning, is an expression of gratitude for the restoration of soul, of consciousness, of aliveness, Modah (Modeh) Ani.

August 21: The Faithful Servant

יִשְׂמַח מֹשֶׁה בְּמַתְּנַת חֶלְקוֹ, כִּי עֶֽבֶד נֶאֱמָן קָרָֽאתָ לּוֹ

“Moses rejoiced in the gift of his portion, for You called him faithful servant.”

This passage, which we read immediately after the Sanctification (Qedushah) in the Shabbat morning services, slows the pace of the prayer and mutes its language, offering us an opportunity to pause, to contemplate our own spiritual lives. To what extent do we share the characteristics of Moses described in these words? The exercise is of course not to identify with him, but to find, as it were, the Moses within us.

The first of the two clauses depicts an ability to rejoice in one’s lot, accepting one’s life, with all its delights and difficulties, achievements and losses, with no reservations, with no qualifying “if only’s,” as a gift. This is not a unique teaching, and in our times it is commonly regarded as essential to a balanced existence. However, there is a constant peril that such an attitude can lead to the solipsistic sin of self-congratulation. To be “gifted” does not mean that one is a special person; but rather is the recipient of benevolence. So we have the second clause, that we strive to attain the status of faithful servant, not regarding oneself as a “self-made” person, but as an instrument of the Divine will. Our spiritual work is to combine the two.

August 5: Who’s Afraid of the Inquisition?

In the Shabbat morning Torah service there is a short interpolated reading from the Zohar that includes the following phrase:

לָא עַל אֱנָשׁ רָחִֽיצְנָא, וְלָא עַל בַּר אֱלָהִין סָמִֽיכְנָא, אֶלָּא בֶּאֱלָהָא דִשְׁמַיָּא

Now in all the bilingual prayer books that I have encountered, Hasidic, Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Reform, Renewal, this is translated as “not on mortals do we rely, nor on angels do we depend, but on God who is in Heaven” (with minor denominational variations). Now the Aramaic term “bar elahin” can indeed mean “angel,” but its plain, simple meaning is “son of God.” Now is it possible that a Jew writing in 13th century Spain, an epoch characterized by a ferocious Christian assault on his tradition, would not be aware of his own double entendre, and that he was in fact deliberately penning a not-so-subtle anti-Christological barb?

The Inquisition has been disbanded. No one is looking over our shoulders. Let us admit that this passage actually means “we don’t place our trust in a Son of God,” and emend our (translated) liturgy accordingly.

[Daniel Matt informs me that his translation of the Zohar concurs with this reading.]

July 29: Chosen People, Chosen Peoples?

The blessing recited on being called to the Torah, אֲשֶׁר בָּֽחַר בָּֽנוּ מִכָּל הָעַמִּים
“who chose us from among all the nations,” is too narrow in its scope, and can become a bland assertion of Jewish exceptionalism.

There is a simple fix for this, the addition of a single letter, the ע, in which case the phrase becomes:
אֲשֶׁר בָּֽחַר בָּֽנוּ עם כָּל הָעַמִּים
“who chose us together with all the nations.”

But the significance of this minor liturgical redaction extends beyond the history of a single people and its covenant. It is the cosmic story of the restoration of the primordial ע, and its reunion with the mundane מ

The letter ע is the source, the spring, the beginning, Eden, from which all emerges; whereas מ is the end, מוות, death, telos, completion.

And when the two , the ע and the מ , are joined, all that exists between them, or ever has, or ever will — Jews, gentiles, horses, sparrows, cabbages, daisies, herons, comets, eels, Democrats and Republicans — are one, and creation itself is chosen.

July 22: בָּרְכוּ, the Invocation to prayer

בָּרְכוּ אֶת יְיָ הַמְבֹרָךְ
Bless H’ the Blessed One

The call to prayer: Go, finite individuals, go, bless the Infinite, the Holy One of Blessing! Barekhu, the syllables are open, eager, leaning towards Hamevorakh. But that word is closed, separate, sealed, Other. Go, bless the Unblessable, and be blessed.

July 15: Becoming a Lover of H’

ואהבת Ve-Ahavta.

Often translated as the grammatical imperative, “Thou Shalt love H’.” In truth, it is the imperfect continuous, “Become a lover of H’,” embark (or remain on course) on a life-long endeavor of reorientation, purification, to be ever ready for the Encounter.

July 8: Shma Yisrael

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְיָ אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ יְיָ אֶחָד

Shma Yisrael: Call to the other; I and Thou.
H’ Eloheinu: Sacred community; We.
H’ Ehad: Unity; No I, no Thou, no We. Just H’.

July 1: Kingdom

ועינינו תראינה מלכותך
“And our eyes will behold your kingdom.”

This is not a vision of a different future but rather an unveiling of our eyes that we may see the Kingdom as it exists now. Very difficult while chanting it in shul.