As If / For Real

From Your "as if" light,
  Emerge our "for real" souls.

From Your "as if" body,
  Emerge our "for real" bodies.

From Your "as if" eyes,
  Emerge our "for real" eyes.

From Your "as if" ears,
  Emerge our "for real" ears.

What’s our whole "for real"?
  Merely Your "as if", of "as if", of...

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Dybbuk!

Recently, I was reminded of a story which happened in 1999.

In spring of 1999, the news of an exorcism rite dominated Israeli television. During that year I facilitated a monthly book review club for Jewish books in the Barnes and Noble of Aventura, Florida.

Being personally interested in the topic, I arranged to do a book review of Gershom Winkler's "Dybbuk".  To add on nice effects, I played a tape of the recent exorcism.  While it played out for the audience, a few Israeli youths cried on each other, "Oh no...the Torah is real! We need to change our ways!"

Truthfully, not being a native Hebrew speaker, it’s difficult enough for me to understand Modern Hebrew when calmly spoken. So, among the shrieks, wails and howls, I certainly couldn't clearly decipher the dybbuk’s utterances. However, one thing stuck with me. To my ears, the tone of the dybbuk's voice sounded eerily electric. Spooky!

A mere two months later, my life had changed very drastically. I found myself living in Brooklyn, NY and was commuting via the F Train to Manhattan for a writing course. One evening on my way home, I sat next to a fellow student on a fairly crowded train. A homeless man ambled his way down the car in plain view of all the passengers. As he was muttered away unintelligibly, he quickly gained an unintended audience. While he passed by me, I heard the same eerily electric voice I heard on the dybbuk tape.

My fellow student blurted something like, "Oh what a deranged character!"

I am sure that most people on the train felt the same way. Maybe, they were right. However, I was left wondering whether we had just witnessed a victim of spirit possession. And yet, because of our modern cultural conditioning we weren't able to notice.

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Happy Month of Iyar!

The Ari z"l lines up the twelve months with the twelve tribes. Today is Rosh Chodesh Iyar, which means the beginning of the Jewish month  of Iyar. The month of Iyar lines up with the tribe Issachar. The tribal energy of this month is one of Torah, as it states, "Rejoice...Issachar in your tents" (Deut. 33:18); which the Medieval Biblical commentator Rashi notes means the "tents of Torah study".

Why is the imagery of "tents" used to depict the places of Torah study. The Torah has two aspects that which the mind can grasp and that which is beyond the mind. The aspect beyond the mind, requires "Emunah" to process.

“Emunah” is loosely translated as "faith", but really it's the phenomena of the soul sending signals that it knows what can't be logically explained to the mind. Unlike the conventional understanding of the word “faith”, “Emunah” tends to be aroused from within and not imposed from without.

This mix of “Emunah” and logical cognition is tent-like. Tents are temporary. They're something temporarily "above one's head". Eventually, either through vigorous intellectual work or by moving into more spiritually enlightened times, what was once "above one's head" can be grasped; demonstrating that the whole experience was temporary.

Of course every answer leads to new questions. So, once the old questions are answered there will be fresh layers of mysteries spread out like tents over our heads. However, the main lesson is to identify the repeating pattern pointing to that "Emunah" is as much a part of the Torah study process as cognition is.

Therefore,  Rebbe Nachman of Breslov emphasizes the value of balancing "Emunah" and cognition when we approach life's big questions. He advises that what the mind can grasp, it must work towards grasping. What the mind cannot grasp, it must accept with "Emunah". (see LM I 62)

Happy Chodesh Iyar!

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Interpretation!

  In Torah study,

  Perhaps you can,

Interpret this way,

 Or interpret that way.

Just please don’t

 Interpret it away!

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Envision !

The other evening, at “Moshiach Seudah”, I had the pleasure of hearing words from Rabbi Shalom Mordechai Rubashkin. He was reluctant to offer a public delivery.  Only after his esteemed brother in law, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Rosenfeld, spoke followed by melodies and L'Chaims did he finally open up and closed the holiday with some of the most meaningful words I heard all holiday.

He explained that there are three dimensions in space. There's a line, which is one dimensional. Then there's a plane, which is two dimensional. Finally, there’s a cube, which is three dimensional.

Part of the condition of the “divine state of exile”, and its attendant darkness, is that human minds are also in exile. They experience difficulty seeing beyond their  conditioned limits. This could be compared  a one dimensional being groping to imagine what it's like to live in two dimensions. All he knows is movement along a line, variations on a repetitive back and forth. Imagining side to side movement is very challenging; perhaps a paradigm shift best groped for in academic abstractions. But, it doesn't end there. Then same can be said for a two dimensional being groping to grasp three-dimensional reality. It's just the next level of the exact same struggle.

Then Rabbi Shalom Rubashkin continued his address by recounting some of the conditions under which he observed Passover in prison. He explained that he had matzah, wine and no shortage of bitter herbs. Besides a child to ask the questions, everything technically necessary to properly observe the holiday was present. Yet for all his freedom to celebrate the holiday of freedom, he cannot compare a Passover in prison to one with family and community in Borough Park. The stark contrast can be compared to a one dimensional being going suddenly going two dimensional!

Someone who only had the experience of Passover in prison cannot even begin to imagine what it's like to have it in Borough Park. Similarly, people today are challenged imagining what Passover in Jerusalem will be like after the Messiah arrives. We're like that two dimensional being groping to grasp at the third dimension.

We imagine that what we already have is utterly fantastic, a wow! But, that's only because of how the limitations of exile have conditioned our thinking. However, if we accept that our mental scope of vision has been narrowed by the darkness, then we can begin to open ourselves to seek and yearn for more. Then our capacities to envision will expand, expanding the scope our holy yearnings as well.

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He Seeks, She Seeks, I Seek, You Seek

I was once taught that all the universes, spiritual and earthly, emerge into being because some ultimate cosmic male seeks out his missing cosmic female; that all the universes, with their happenings, are designed to bridge these longing lovers.

But this story is not just about the universes. It is also about me and you.

Deep down, in some intangible space of self, we all seek one ultimate spiritual connection.  Most of us don't even know what it is. It could be too deeply lodged to see. Yet, the whole drama of our lives emerges from this singular seeking.

   

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Pour Out Thy...

At the Passover Seder there’s a traditional prayer which begins with the words, “Pour out Thy wrath upon the nations who do not know You and upon the regimes which do not call out to Your name. For they have consumed [the descendants of] Jacob...”

In recent times there are people who express feelings that this prayer is anachronistic and not properly aligned with progressive humanistic values. However, I think they innocently misunderstand.

The prayer is not talking about “people” at all. A proper reading of the Hebrew demonstrates that it's strictly addressing "political entities". Nations and regimes are “political entities” in the way modern corporations are “legal entities”. Yes, people play roles in corporations, but, they aren't the corporations themselves. The same can be said for nations and regimes.

I don't think that there's a single progressive liberal who would not want to see “political entities”, with terrifying human rights records, dissolve away instantly; hopefully in peace.

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