BO : Embracing Pharodox

The opening of this week's Torah reading is God's command to Moses: “Bo el Paroh”. All too often this is translated (or rather mistranslated) as, “Go to Pharoah.” But in fact, “Bo” clearly means 'come', not go. A slight semantic difference, you might argue. But let's not be be anti-semantic, for any good semite knows that semantics are everything when you're talking Torah. What's more, this is the first word and title of the parsha itself and the title of the parsha is always taken to be an encapsulation of its essence.

So what does this title “bo'' reveal to the semantic-conscientious reader?

 First off, it is essential to note that this is the parsha where we witness the actual flight from Egypt. The entire book of Shmot has been building up to this crescendo of final release from the Egyptian strangle-hold. This is the parsha which relays no less than historie's quintessential narrative of 'Leaving'. This is the very GO of “Let my people Go.” The very 'exiting' of the Exodus! So why in the world is the title 'Come' and not 'Go'!?

What is the meaning behind this biblical riddle?

 One answer – Paradox. The Torah's subtle insert of 'come' in the place of 'go' can be taken as a hint about the important place paradox holds in all journeys towards freedom. Any seasoned spiritual journeyor can tell you that a hallfmark of the spiritual quest is the encounter with paradox. Physicist Neils Bohr said, “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.” When it comes to encountering the profounder truths of life, it is inevitable that we come face to face with paradox.

 Thus, in our parsha, one paradox is that coming and going are essentially joined. The Zohar, playing off of the word Bo, portrays God ushering Moses from chamber into innermost chamber, until he comes face to face with a mighty serpent, the inmost symbolic core of Egypt.1 The message is that in order to leave Egypt, Moses had to fully come to, enter and encounter Egypt's very heart of darkness. There is no leaving without first fully entering.

 But even more paradoxical than that is the very fact that God calls Moses to 'Come to Pharoah' as if God Himself was somehow there with Pharoah....sitting on Pharaoh's sleeve – nay, within his very skin. The implicit message of “Bo” is thus God's alluring promise that when you come to Pharoah, you are coming to Me.

 And so it is in our personal lives. When we face Pharoahs, then we find God. I see it daily in my own life and in my work as a psychotherapist. Our Pharoahs are more often than not, ruling our most intimate interactions with our partners, parents, children, friends. We are all in some way enslaved by poor communication and misunderstandings. When we avoid these conflict areas then resentments fester and love and intimacy are slowly bled out of our lives. But when we engage the conflict, finding ways to courageously talk through the misunderstandings, then our relationships flourish. When we face our fears, our foes, our fiends, we find their very opposite – freedom, release, God.

This is the model of paradox taught by Parshat Bo. The Moses in us is able to find the God in Pharoah. Divine grace is inherent even and especially in our greatest moments of pain.

And in the end, the great promise of paradox is that there is a truth that is bigger than what makes sense, a truth that accounts for life's most bewildering contradictions. And what's more – the next time you stumble upon a paradox, remember that it might just mean that you are on the verge of your next great leap into freedom.

 *
 Pharodox

 The Contradiction has come now
 cloaked in her finest clouds


 with her Book of Inversions
instructing and sound


Riddled with ridiculous
 read silently aloud:

 “To be spared the storm
 You must first flee the shelter
 You must shatter the vessel
 to best sip its nectar

You must face your worst
 To claim your better
 And as for your enemy,
 Tis your highest endeavor
 To seek out his speech
 For God bids from his lips
 To seek out his eyes
 For in them is God’s glimpse

 Your freedom only fits
 upon Pharaoh’s fine throne
 Your sovereignty sits
 Where he sits alone

 And take comfort in the fact
 that you're bidden here and not there
 - It's God alone who calls you
 to lure and to lair

 Come soft to your Satan
 your best friended fiend
 and taste the servitude dish
 that's reserved for the freed
 
So come as you leave
 and believe while in doubt
 for the truths best decreed
 by your enemies mouth

And all you risk will be repaired
 A thousand fold reward
 For in facing your fears
 is the face of your Lord

 So come, beckoned and blinking,
 to the dank serpent's den
 coil up with the snake
 who sheds light with his skin 

Further notes on paradox:

I just had to include these mind-bending examples of paradoxes. The following are statements that illustrate paradox:

1. "This statement is false." - the statement can not be false and true at the same time.
2. "Is the answer to this question no?" (In this case, if you replied no, you would be stating that the answer is not no. If you reply yes, you are stating that it is no, because you said yes.)

3. "The statement below is false."
"The statement above is true".

Other paradoxes involve false statements or half-truths and the resulting biased assumptions. For example, consider a situation in which a father and his son are driving down the road. The car collides with a tree and the father is killed. The boy is rushed to the nearest hospital where he is prepared for emergency surgery. On entering the surgery suite, the surgeon says, "I can't operate on this boy. He's my son."

The apparent paradox is caused by a hasty generalization; if the surgeon is the boy's father, the statement cannot be true. The paradox is resolved if it is revealed that the surgeon is a woman, the boy's mother.

Paradoxes which are not based on a hidden error generally happen at the fringes of context or language, and require extending the context or language to lose their paradoxical quality. Paradoxes that arise from apparently intelligible uses of language are often of interest to logicians and philosophers. This sentence is false is an example of the famous liar paradox: it is a sentence which cannot be consistently interpreted as true or false, because if it is known to be false then it is known that it must be true, and if it is known to be true then it is known that it must be false. Therefore, it can be concluded that it is unknowable. Russell's paradox, which shows that the notion of the set of all those sets that do not contain themselves leads to a contradiction, was instrumental in the development of modern logic and set theory.

Thought experiments can also yield interesting paradoxes. The grandfather paradox, for example, would arise if a time traveler were to kill his own grandfather before his mother or father was conceived, thereby preventing his own birth. This paradox can be resolved by postulating that time travel leads to parallel or bifurcating universes, or that only contradiction-free timelines are stable. An example in modern culture of this is The Legend of Zelda's Split Timeline argument.


- A paradox which is both true and false at the same time in the same sense is called a dialetheism. In Western logics it is often assumed, following Aristotle, that no dialetheia exist, but they are sometimes accepted in Eastern traditions and in paraconsistent logics. An example might be to affirm or deny the statement "John is in the room" when John is standing precisely halfway through the doorway. It is reasonable (by human thinking) to both affirm and deny it ("well, he is, but he isn't"), and it is also reasonable to say that he is neither ("he's halfway in the room, which is neither in nor out"), despite the fact that the statement is to be exclusively proven or disproven.

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1And G d said to Moses: "Come to Pharaoh; for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his servants in order that I might show My signs in their midst..." (Exodus 10:1

Why does it say, "Come to Pharaoh"? It should have said, "Go to Pharaoh" .... But G d brought Moses into a chamber within a chamber, to the... supernal and mighty serpent from which many levels evolve...which Moses feared to approach himself... (Zohar, part II, 34a)

This week we meet Shifra and Puah – the Hebrew midwives who stand in defiance of Pharoah. Pharoah demands that they kill every male child born. They realize that were they to refuse Pharoah to his face not only would they themselves lose their lives, but he would find someone else to do his murderous bidding. Thus, they pretend to follow order, all the while saving the babies lives. When Pharoah calls them back to ask why they have disobeyed him they plead powerless, saying that the Hebrew women are lively and deliver the children before their arrival. Pharoah - apparently - believes them. It seems that these plucky midwives have simply talked their way out of trouble.

 Perhaps its no coincidence then that Puah's name, according to Rashi, comes from her keen ability to speak – most specifically, to speak to and pacify crying babies. She is a baby whisperer – one able to speak to those who themselves are in-fant – unable to speak. Puah, with her inherent ability to communicate with and calm children, stands as an archetypal force of what creates a tranquil home. It is no wonder then that in reward for their defiance, the text tells us that God rewards the midwives with houses. These gift houses, as enigmatic as they may be, make perfect symbolic sense - for midwives work is that of birthing through and sustaining households full of new lives.

Midrash Hagadol tells an illustrative story of Pharoah sending guards to capture the delinquent midwives. It says that God saves the women by turning them into the beams of a home. The guards search the house to no avail, for Shifra and Puah have become embedded in the house itself. They are the beams, the fortifying forces that uphold the entire structure.

 The midwives thus embody the home and all that it symbolizes – family, communication, and internality. For our homes are the internal speres from which we impact the outer world. Indeed, in this episode, these internally-oriented women are called upon by Pharoah himself to become players in the external arena of power and politics. They rise to the task and become social activists on the national scene. They are the abolitionists that enable the redemption of an entire people and the righting of a massive social wrong.

 As Rabbi Jonathan Sachs points out so eloquently their story is “the first recorded instance of civil disobedience...(setting a precedent) that would eventually become the basis for the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Shifra and Puah, by refusing to obey an immoral order, redefined the moral imagination of the world.” Histories proud line of social activists and conscientious objectors can trace their source back to these righteous midwives stand against the powers that be.

 In the poem below, Puah herself calls for a redefinition of what it means to be a freedom fighter. She reframes agitating for social justice in more internal terms. She is an activist who does not so much take to the streets, as she takes to the kitchen sink, maintaining that all great battles for justice have their locus in the living room.

 Puah

 Like freedom fighters
 who pray with their feet
 I protest for inner-peace

Though paraplegic in comparison
 to prodigious heels
 of powerful men

My prayerful wheels
 spin tales of inner-freedom
 and intone hymns of mindful treatment
 of children and kin

 I commit to calm the din of crying infants
 with the easy clicking of my teeth
 I speak for those who do not yet know how to speak

My freedom fighting is not political
 that task is for a hardier class
 of Jewish girl

For me - the Egyptian fiend
 is personal
 for the Pharoahs I dethrone
 rule the halls of each of our homes

In the inner-alcoves of a private despair
 that petrifies the children
 and paralyzes the parents
 that imprisons our finest hours
 of family commitment and contentment

 I prefer to pedal wares
 of wars-well-avoided
 where everyone wins
 through carefully worded
 apologies and the timely
 airing of grievances
 between friends

for cowering beneath the pyramids
 of needs – my fiends
 are the menacing insecurities of adolescents
 and the lethal bickerings of parents
 - the noisome whines of needy toddlers
 and the all-too-common-household-hollers
 that oppress our most precious commodities
 of family

My enemies crouch quietly beneath
 the crumbs on the living room carpet
 a beast between the sheets
 of a cold-shouldered bedroom
 where partners sleep
 unconscious
 and deeply out of tune
 with the exquisite call
 of their common dreams

My task is to counter the
 armor-clad offensive
 against love and friendship
 - to incite a protest against
 the enslavement of a trillion
 inner prophets of tranquility
 whose gentle-tongued souls
 are daily buried beneath
 straw burdens of poor communication
 and tossed out with the trashed
 afternoons of a mother's
 epic impatience

I come to play the Moses of relational redemption
 in the face of a sink-full of grimy resentments

 And so I call forth all fellow
 freedom fighters for inner-transformation
 midwives with wise hands
 toting torahs, toting infants, toting pens
 all prayer-footed-protesters
 come & herald in
 emotional freedom from the pharonic foe
 and let us birth our children
 into peaceable homes

For when our houses enshrine tranquility
 then outer-world will follow inner-lead
 and rock-hard hearts
 will soften grips
 and all that's enslaved
 will lithely slip
 into the soft of freedom found
 and take our shoes your off
 to walk around
 for our houses are the
 hallowed ground
 from which God speaks

 So call me Puah,
 who quiets the cries
 of children, slaves
 and the Pharoah
 inside

In this week's reading we witness the famous death-bed scene of Jacob calling forth his sons to relay to them what will happen “b'aharit hayamim” in the final days. 

This is the first time in the Torah that we see any reference to the type of messianic visions that will eventually become such a major theme in the prophets and later Jewish thought. Jacob, though – unlike the prophets, never does give over the details of a messianic vision. His sons gather expectantly to hear the prophecy. And yet, it doesn't come. After his teasing preamble, he turns instead to the topic of blessings for each son. We are left on the edge of our eschatalogical seats. Just as in our present reality, the future remains a dark continent of invisible inevitability.

 And yet what is visible in the text that might be revelatory to us? One thing which stands out in Jacob's words is the stress he puts on his sons coming together. “He'asfu,” he says, “Gather together and I will tell you what will be”. And again in the next verse, he bids them, “Hee'kavtzu v'yishmau”. Make of yourselves a group – a kevutzah - and hear your father!

For Jacob, it seems that there is something intimately linked about the gathering and the telling, the grouping and the hearing. Indeed, messianic visions by their very nature gather us together, binding our hither-to splintered individual selves into one common narrative, one massive shared drama. Messianism at its best is about unifications, in-gatherings, national and eventually international oneness.

What's more, I would add that it is in our people's very gathering together that the prophecies of the end of time are themselves brought closer to their fulfillment. It is as if we have an inbuilt propensity for gathering, for grouping...some genetically predisposed sense of nationhood, tribe and shared destiny. The messianic promise I hear in Jacob's words is that when we as individuals make the move from separateness to togetherness, when each of us is able to access the depth and beauty of that sense of being gathered together, bonded in family and fraternity, then the prophetic vision is one person closer to being fulfilled.

I am daily moved by the members of my community who have gathered here in Jerusalem; individuals who are called with an imperative to the fulfillment of our national destiny. Individuals who have chosen to leave behind the comforts and allure of the West, compelled to disentangle from the familiarities of exile, to forge a shared destiny in this complex land. We who chose to dwell here, to gather here, are – in essence - living on a prophecy. None of us know the details of the end of days, and yet we are drawn together with a sense of its immanence.

The poem below is about that promising immanence of redemption. It is about the cultivation of a sense of shared destiny. Let us gather together, let us celebrate our familial bond, our commonalities. May we gaze in amazement at the ongoing ingathering of the exiles that is occurring before our very eyes and within our very limbs.

"Destiny we have danced"

Destiny we have danced
and with the wind of our will
we have wiped away the tears
that our destiny did spill

and with our hands upon the wheel
that holds our wheels upon the road
we have driven our desire
to our destiny's abode

and though the road stretches far
from creation's first flung light
to the far dark destination
of the future in the night
we will stop – and take a walk
beneath the sea of stars
catching constellations
in our net of dreams thrown far

for destiny is glimpsed in
and guided by our dreams
while in waking hours
our prayers mix with the reality it brings

 so let me recall a vision to you
of a prayer thrown to an open sky
how our people have watched up after it
with long-enduring yearning eyes

and suddenly it has come back down
and hit the ground before our feet
for fate has come to fulfill the wish
that our dreams had dared to seek

and we are thankful now not only
for the grant of G-d's permission
but for the gift of witnessing
the long path of prayers procession

and thus I come to you
offering this view of an in-gathering in an instant
of a people living on a prophecy
of community & commitment

and we gather here to witness
the long path of G-d's own dreams
We fulfill G-d’s very prayers
with the reality we bring

So let us wander
Yerushalayim together
and raise our thankful eyes
like dreamers our mouths are full of laughter
for the sight which fills the sky

above our heads there blows a vision
we had but beheld in dreams
framed by flickering constellations
a singular blue star beams

It is a prayer shawl upon the wind
for the spirit also prays
It is a sign that day begins
after we’ve dreamt the night away

it is our flag ~
as fixed as fate and raised on high
it dances with the willful wind
with prayers and dreams
and you
and I


1Like Isaiah spoke, “And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all the nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come and let us go up to the mountain of the lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Ziyyon shall go forth Torah, and the word of the Lord from Yerushalayim. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall decide among many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” (Isaiah 2: 2-4)

This week we read of the members of Jacob's family who went down to Egypt. There were 53 grandsons listed, but only a single granddaughter – Serach, the daughter of Asher. The commentators wonder, what was so exceptional about this girl that her name was recorded? The Midrash spills forth with stories portraying an image of a unique and endearing Biblical heroine. Serach stands as a trusted, beloved sage of the people. She possessed an uncommon gift of healing through poetry and music. Somewhat as Orpheus is to Greek myth, so is Serach to the Biblical myth – the archetypal poet and bard.

 The Midrash on this week's parsha tells of the brothers' concern that their father Jacob would die from shock upon hearing the astounding news that his son Joseph was alive and well in Egypt. Their solution – to appoint Serach to the task of sharing the news with him. In one version Serach masterfully waits until Jacob is praying and then relays the news to him through the poetic form of three rhyming lines.1 In another rendering she sings the news to him gently and wonderously with a harp.

 Both versions reveal a girl with psychological insight into just how to approach Jacob with the potentially lethal news. Serach intuits how to tend to Jacob's emotional wounds with song. Even though she was sharing a truth with him, sometimes the sharing of truth with someone can be even more shattering than a lie. Where the bald facts could have killed Jacob, Serach's simple almost child-like rhyme and song healed him, opening him to hope and possibility after decades of despair.

So what is it about song and rhyme which is able to impart such promise and soothe such wounds? Voltaire is famous for saying, “Anything too stupid to be spoken in words is sung.” And this might be true enough if one were to survey song lyrics for their intellectual content. But God forbid the purpose of music would be deliver intellectual points. No, the great gift of song rests in its stirring of sentiment, its arousal of spirit, its curative catharsis of emotions. Serach, with her ample emotional intelligence and creativity knew how to utilize song, rhyme & poetry for their subtle therapeutic properties. 

May all of our artistic endeavors likewise access healing and inspiration, offering hope and the possibillity of betterment in the face of any despair. The poem below is a prayer and request to Serach to instruct us in how to do just that.


Serach, teach us please
 your therapy of harmony
 - that exquisit technique
 that you work with your speech

Reveal to us, ancient sister
 your mesmeric tincture
 of lyric and meter
 
And mix us well a word elixir
 to soothe the wounds of
 injured listeners
 
Just the way
 you sung your way
 and stood in the way
 of the heart-halting parade
 of gold-laden wagons
 sent to stun an old man
 too fast from his depression

For even one's despair can be
 a precious thing
 to those who cling to their misery
 as if it were a love letter
 to the ones they've lost

But you with your harp
 loosened that knot
 on the yarn of a lie
 that had so long bound

Jacob's beguiled mind
 - as you applied
 the cautious remedy
 of a child's rhyme2

 Plucked hope back
 into a ruptured heart
 and strummed him
 through the sting and stun
 of loss

Suddenly reversed
 through your verse
 - with the touch of a song

 For is not the crowning goal
 of creative endeavor
 to heal the bereaved
 and herald in a better reality?

So teach us more-loudly your
 chemistry of composition
 to make what's written
 glisten from the page
 to release vast repositories of pain

To make space for
 the joyful reception of miracles
 of salvation and spiritual accumulation
 like wagons laden with bread
 and corn, and a child reborn
 in the midst of a famine

And a lie overturned
 and a family re-fashioned

 So teach us Serach
 your eternal talent
 of healing hearts with harps
 and the ancient art
 of rhyme

And let it start
 with these faltering lines
 - a prayer
 for the gentle unraveling
 of our long-held
 lies

*

1MidrashHaGadolon Gen. 45:26:
  "ויגדו לו לאמר 'עוד יוסף חי'" (בר' מה:כו)  רבנן אמרו אם אנו אומרים לו תחלה יוסף קים שמא תפרח נשמתו.  מה עשו?  אמרו לשרח בת אשר, "אמרי לאבינו יעקב שיוסף קים והוא במצרים.  מה עשתה? המתינה לא עד שהוא עומד בתפלה ואמרה בלשון תימה:יוסף במצרים/ יולדו לו על ברכים/ מנשה ואפרים.  פג לבו כשהוא עומד בתפלה. כיון שהשלים ראה העגלות, מיד "ותחי רוח יעקב אבינו" (שם).  [מדרש הגדול על בר' מה:כו]
  [The brothers said:]If we tell him right away, "Joseph is alive!" perhaps he will have a stroke [lit., his soul will fly away].  What did they do?  They said to Serah, daughter of Asher, "Tell our father Jacob that Joseph is alive, and he is in Egypt."  What did she do?  She waited till he was standing in prayer, and then said in a tone of wonder, "Joseph is in Egypt/ There have been born on his knees/ Menasseh and Ephraim" [three rhyming lines: Yosef be-mizrayim / Yuldu lo al birkayim / Menasheh ve-Ephrayim].  His heart failed, while he was standing in prayer.  When he finished his prayer, he saw the wagons: immediately the spirit of Jacob came back to life.(Translated by Avivah Zornberg in Genesis, the Beginning of Desire, p.281).

In last week's reading we witnessed the Biblical love-at-first-sight story of Jacob meeting Rachel. Heroically, Jacob rolls the massive stone from atop the well to water her flock. Romantically, he precedes to kiss her and then lifts up his voice in weeping.

  Though this is love at first sight, its consummation is vastly delayed. Jacob has to work 7 years for his deceptive Uncle Lavan before he is able to finally marry Rachel. A strenuous exercise in delayed gratification. And yet, their love is so great that the text tells us that the 7 years were but a few days for Jacob. Because of this morphing of time he was able to withstand the waiting period. And his commitment becomes a model for a love that transcends time and space.

  Indeed, this sense of time transcendence takes us back to the moment of Jacob's weeping at the well. For the Midrash shares that Jacob wept because he saw with prophetic foreknowledge that he and Rachel would not be buried together.1 In this week's parsha we see his premonition fulfilled. Rachel tragically dies in childbirth and is buried “along the road to Efrat” as opposed to in the family burial site. At that moment of the kiss, the bonds of time were transcended and he was able to have a prophetic vision of the future.

  Granted, it is a painful vision. But its not unlike the story of Rabbi Akiva who laughed when he beheld the tragic destruction of the Second Temple.2 He laughed because he realized that if the negative prophecy of destruction came true, then that would necessarily mean that all the positive prophecies of return and rebuilding would also come true for the Jewish people.

  Indeed, we in our own days have had the enormous gift of witnessing the fulfillment, partial thought it may be, of the myriad prophecies of return to the Land of Israel. We are the living recipients of that prophetic fruit.

  In the poem below Rachel weeps for the fulfillment of the prophecy of her children's return to this land. She reminds us that just as Jacob love for her transcended time and allowed him to make it through those 7 years of work, so too if we beleaguered builders of Jerusalem can but access the vastness of our love for this land, then we can also weather through whatever waiting periods time may hold.

May we merit to witness the fulfillment of a true and enduring peace in this holy land.

  The Wait

 You wept
  As wet as wells
  Having spilled
  The crowning ton of stone
  Onto the sand

With withered hands
  but high romance

 Made the skinny shepherds
  call the place
  - the wailing well -
  for generations to come
  
And seven years
  grown old
  between your gaze and mine
  - was like a day -
  held between the gates
  of withered hands
  and weathered
  wait

  And know that
  I weep as well
  when memories of
  the future spill
  into our tent
  and premonitions
  limp into our
  lamp-lit den

 For if this ominous
  prophecy
  must be then promise me
  to plant your stones
  on that baneful road
  where house my bones

And let memorial stand,
  a somber marker
  in a severed land

  To mark the promise
  of prophecy
  of transcendence
  of time and of distance
  with a mother's mad insistence
  that the exile of her children
  must end

  And when finally march
  our children by
  from their battered walk
  through genocide
  
I will be weeping3
  loud with pleading
  at that corner-side
  
- where Jerusalem
  meets Gush Etzion
  with her border guards
  and building zones

And I will lament with rage
  the historic parade
  through Europe, Arabia
  Aushchwitz, Asyria
  and back to my grave
  at Bethlehem's
  barricades

  And with the force of my weeping
  and the form of your rocks4
  will our children return
  to the road to Efrat

And nineteen hundred years
  - will be like a day -
  held between the gates
  of withered hands
  and our children's
  will to weather
  the wait.


1Bereshit Rabbah 70:11

2 Talmud Makkot 24B

3 Foreseeing that the Jews on the way to exile would pass by the site, the Patriarch Yaacov buried her on the road on the way to Ephrath and not within the city so that she would sense their anguish and pray for them (Bereishit Rabbah 82:10). Add to this the quote from Jeremiah, “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are not.” (Jeremiah 31:15) Thus, Rachel stands as the archetype for the mother weeping for her children.

4It is interesting to note that Jacob in both of these stories is engaged in the moving of rocks. First he makes a stone altar (a matzava) at the site of his famous dream of the ladder. Then he moves the massive stone from atop the well for Rachel. And finally, in the story of her death, he again creates a matzeva, a stone memorial, upon Rachel's roadside grave.

This weeks parsha is built upon the theme of House. After all, it is within this parsha that Jacob builds his home – replete with 4 wives, 12 children and a vast caravan of animals and servants. And then of course there is his astounding dream of the ladder ascending to heaven. He awakens from that revelation and names the place no less than Beit El, the House of God. The Midrash claims that the site of his dream is the locale of the future Temple – later to be called the Beit Hamikdash, again the 'house' of holiness.1

What does it mean that God’s place on earth is referred to as a house?

We turn to the oldest Kabbalistic work, the Sefer Yetzirah. It reads enigmatically:

“Two stones build two houses; three stones build six houses; four stones build twenty-four houses; five stones build one-hundred-and-twenty houses; six stones build 720 houses...(and on and on until) that which the mouth cannot speak and the ear cannot hear.”

What are these mystical mathematics all about? In the code of the Kabbalists, stones are letters and houses are words. Two stone letters thus can build 2 word houses; six letters can make 720 words. Each letter permutation becomes a house – for a house is essentially, a container which holds meaning.

Let's turn back to Jacob’s story with this stone/house imagery in mind. In a curious grammatical shift from plural to singular, we read that Jacob took stones as his pillow and when he awoke in the morning there was but a single stone. He anointed the stone with oil and named the place the House of God. When we read this with the Kabbalistic imagery of stones building houses it makes perfect symbolic sense that he would call the place the House of God – the multiple stones had miraculously became a single house. Just as disparate letters come together as one comprehensive word. 

Through the act of placing one's head – or one's intellect or consciousness, upon stone letters, they came together to form a house/a word, a cohesive vessel of meaning2. This is the divine gift of speech. We bring letters together to form words which somehow, almost magically, communicate meaning. And in this act is something divine. Words become the very house for God in the world.

But the Midrash adds another layer of meaning to this. They tell us that there were twelve stones, representing each of his sons. In the course of the night, these disparate stone/sons were merged into a single stone – representing a complete, unified, household.3 A divine sign that Jacob would indeed succeed in bringing together his fractured household into a completed whole.

And thus the lynchpin that unites all of these images of mystical mathematics and linguistic wonders. For it's when we are building our houses, our relationships of deepest meaning, that our every letter, our every word counts. It is the way we construct our words, the way we communicate, that builds, or wrecks, the fragile house of cards of our most intimate relationships. In Hebrew the root letters for children (banim) and for building (boneh) are identical. We build our children by how we speak to them. What's more - our words, chosen consciously, can house God.

Jacob's journey can thus be seen as a model for our own home-making. This week we are invited to look at how were using our speech to contruct our lives. How do we speak to our children, our partners, our parents? How well are we housing God in the world? Our words are the building blocks that make or break the homes in which we live. May we chose them with care.

  Twelve Stone

The path was punctured

through with pebbles

which Jacob pocketed

as he passed

  and come the darkness

laid upon them

for a pillow at his back

The twelve tone stones

forged through their skin

and sucked the distance

kin to kin

- a monolithic act

Each pebble personed

a perfect letter

smoothed together into word

Jacob with his head upon them

– heard harmony

and understood

 

A conscious

mansion worth

of meaning

sprouted fast

from speaking stones

 

Skipped his pebbles

'pon his breathing

built a sentence

worth of home




And now we follow in his footsteps

dream upon that hallowed ground

unify the rips & fractures

with our lips

in rites of sound




Each conversation

is our Temple

here, between our biting teeth

let us build it

strong and simple

with the words we speak




1 (as opposed to Abraham who called it a mountain, and Isaac a field) B. Pesahim 88a

2 Note that 12 stones can produce 47,900,160 words!

3Bereshit Rabbah 68:13

In this week's parsha we read that “lanochach eshto” – Isaac prayed for his barren wife Rivka and she conceived. It is notable that the term “lanochach eshto” - literally reads that he prayed 'standing before' or 'facing' his wife and she conceived. Midrash Rabbah picks up on this curious phrase and paints a picture of Isaac and Rivka standing together, facing eachother in sincere prayer for children. It's a poignant image of a couple working together in a striking face-to-face pose; an admirable Biblical model for partnership.

So one might ask, if this is such a partnership, why is it that it is Isaac's prayer that was recorded & heard by God. Most commentaries state that his prayers were heard because he was the son of a saint, whereas Rivka is the daughter of a rasha, an evil man. The poem I'm about to share ponders an additional possibility as to why it was necessarily Isaac's prayer that brought about the conception.

But first, let's look briefly at a little of what we know about Isaac's psychological makeup. Later in the parsha we read of how Isaac's eyes grew dim in his old age. The Midrash explicitely links Isaac's blindness to his experience of being bound upon the altar of Moriah. It records that angels witnessing the binding wept tears that dropped into Isaac's eyes and that these very tears caused his blindness in later life.

Aviva Zornberg likens his blindness to a type of psychological vertigo. She notes a remarkable phenomena where people who suffered through traumatic experiences earlier in life, are in later years found to suffer from actue problems with their vision. It is as if their suppressed vision expresses their years of repressed emotion. Manifesting a desire to unsee all the horrors that they had witness. According to this, their blindness is an indicator of trauma left unprocessed or unprocessable.

And so we return to the scene of Rivka and Isaac's prayer. In keeping with an honest face-to-face, Rivka in this poem urges her husband to do the laborious work of processing his own trauma and rising above his unconscious fears of parenting. She invites him to confront his resistance to generating his Toldot, his future generations. Indeed, the opening & title of the parsha, “Toldot Yitzchak”, the Generations of Isaac, could thus be seen as a testimony to his successfully stepping up to the task of continuity and childrearing in the face of and despite his all-too-traumatizing childhood.

Rivka's Request

You were broken like
porcelain

Dashed against a desert
Shattered neath a father's
dagger

and a flinty mirror streaked
with tears
dripped
not blood
but blindness
into your grey hairs

your pieces plastered
back together
hold me tender
a fragile tendon
- tiptoed to the next generation

you, the quiet casualty
of your father’s spiritual ambitions

perhaps you fear
that G-d demand
you do the same
if you were to father
your own ambitions

- would you?
Or would you rather
-pray-

pray for me
here where you were

born up
and tornup
on that unforgiving rock
beneath an angels eye
and ram’s horn
fortuitously caught

Would you pray a future
to fill this vacant womb?

Would you pray for continuity
would you – continue?

And tell me, husband dear,
can you eye your own
resistance
and defy your very fears

forgo the blindness
that has plagued you
and face your own
descendants

with a faith
that here
is holy
and life
is weighty
and no more waiting
for safety

but rather brave the gaze
of a world that is
crazy
beautiful
and full of grace

and shun the blade
that bids you to
accuse your father
or mourn your mother
or resent your God
or blame anyone other
than yourself
for your own debilitating
fears

for the hand that
you are dealt
is but yours to
commandeer

so let's move on
to making our own
glaring
parenting
mistakes

to risking inflicting
some untold & unending
trauma
onto our children

and with a
well-intentioned will
sacred and sincere
let us lift our prayers
to God's receiving ears

With the knowledge
that beyond old traumas
and emotions on the mend
there is meaning
to the riddle
of Moriah
though our tongues
are twisted
and our eyes are dimmed

Come, husband
to this field
and hunt down
one good prayer

For the fixing of your
childhood
is through fathering
your children
 …if you dare.

~ From Darkness to Enlightenment ~

 3-day Urban-Retreat in the Heart of Jerusalem.

DEC. 25th, 26th and 27th

  The mystical essence of Hannukah is that of encountering the darkness and finding within it the hidden light. One of the great gifts of meditation is the power to uncover your own inner light. This retreat invites you to take the next step in your personal and spiritual growth through an engagement with the deep and authentic practice of Jewish meditation.

  This retreat offers a mix of silent sitting, prayerful song, walking meditation, mindful eating, and personal processing plus profound Kabbalistic teachings and an array of practical Jewish meditation techniques. Whether you are a beginning or advanced meditator, come join together in community for a truly transformational experience of Hannukah....and of yourself.

  Facilitators:

Rabbi Hillel Lester, Facilitator
Chaya Lester, Teacher/Therapist
Rav Daniel Kohn, Guest Teacher

  Retreat Fee: 
  Individual: 850sh
  Students: 650sh
  Couples: 1300sh

 Register by Dec.11th and get an Early Registration    Discount of 10%: 
  Singles: 765...Students: 585...Couples: 1170

  We have a few spots available for work-trade. If you are interested, please contact us.

SPECIAL Family Track: 

We are excited to offer a fun, educational, and inspiring children's program from 8.45am-4.45pm daily. 

SCHEDULE: 
  Sunday:
  10am – 4.30pm: Meditation Program
  7:30pm– 10.30pm: Evening Program with guest speaker

  Monday & Tuesday: 
  6.30 – 8am: Morning Meditation & Prayer 
  9am – 4.30pm: Meditation Program
 7:30pm – 10.30pm: Evening Program with guest    speaker

- Sleeping accommodations not included. 
 
Healthy, kosher dairy mehadrin lunch provided (breakfast & dinner not provided).

Chairs are provided. Please brings your own cushion or mat if you prefer.


  LOCATION: The Jerusalem Soul Center, 
Next to Independence Park

#20 Rabbi Akiva, near Downtown Jerusalem

Directions: From King George Street, turn onto Hillel Street, then turn right onto Rabbi Akiva Street at the Aroma Café, and across from the Italian Synagogue. Proceed straight down Rabbi Akiva through a small parking lot all the way to the end. #20 Rabbi Akiva and the Jerusalem Soul Center are through the gate on your right. 

For a Google map:
http://jerusalemsoulcenter.com/directions/ 

This week we meet Noah. The literal translation of Noah's name, Noach, also means comfort. Thus, “Noah's Ark” can actually be read as “Comfort's Ark”. The ark of comfort stands as an archetype of all the varied walls of protection we construct around ourselves. 

It represents the havens of insulation to which we cling. It is fitting that we read this parsha just as we have left the sukkah – the epitome of a temporal structure. The sukkah is an embodied reminder that all the facades of comfort that we build in this world are but fleeting in comparison to the ultimate haven we must take in our connection to the Divine. 

This week's poem juxtaposes the comfortable numbness of an insulated existence with the dis-ease of the external world and her endless woes. The poem's narrative traces the path of one who rejects comfort & complacency and opts rather to plunge into the waiting deluge of the world’s pain. 

Our arks of comfort serve the crucial purpose of protecting and nurturing us. But perhaps their even greater purpose is to provoke us to transcend their very casing; to be the cage which awaits our necessary escape. 

 What is your arc of comfort and what are its limitations? What is the comfort zone you are being called to break-free from? And what is one step you can take towards that transcendence?


 Ark Angel

 The synagogue of my youth
 her sanctuary
 was my ark
 it arched above my bowing head
 its wood was rich and dark

 my eyes would rise up ceilings curve
 which like a wave's soft back
 bulged with the waters of our prayers
 which crashed on heavens black
 
 we sat in twos or family fours
 like creatures far from home
 while thirty feet into the air
 ark's belly was our dome

 our needs were met as sure as breath
 is given by G-d's wind
 our prayers were by attentive ear
 heard ere we need begin

 like flight of birds our voices rose
 within this vessel cage
 while just outside the sound was heard
 of a world in stormy rage

 and at the apex of the roof
 of our inverted ship
 a window round of painted glass
 let fall a single drip

 the dagger drip cut through the void
 of our sustaining womb
 sliced through the prayer that filled the air
 anointing me with doom

 for this small taste which wet my face
 with water of the world outside
 could penetrate and transform space
 like the tear of an angel's cry

 and all that was once safe and sure
 transformed before my eyes
 into an overbearing storm
 of sharp and fiery lies

 beneath the bonds of beams of wood
 my restless nature grew
 till i cursed the arc which suckled me
 with claustrophobic rue

 beyond the casing of the cradle
 beyond the arc's curved arms
 the sea called to my safe-sick soul
 with all her worldly charms

 and i cried back to G-d and fate
 like jonah in the fish
 a prayer so frantic for escape
 that G-d fulfilled my wish

 and spit me out with open mouth
 from within the whale cocoon
 delivered me to dark dread sea
 like one thrown from the womb

 and suddenly my mouth was filled
 with salt alien to my taste
 while sights and sounds of curse surround
 my fateful fall from grace

 i tremble tread among the dead
 beneath sky sore with rain
 and faced with earth's reality
 the flood became my pain

 so terror seized i tore through sea
 in search of semblance of ship
 and found its curve beneath my feet
 submerged to arc's round tip

 suspended calm and floating there
 with just its top revealed
 was island apexed synagogue
 which waters dare not conceal

 with weary want i climbed the curve
 which once had arched my head
 and from my mouth rained forth a song -
 a prayer for all the dead

 i peered into this hanging sphere
 through the window of painted glass
 and yearned for all that i had lost
 in the sanctuary of my past

 to be a bird caught in that cage
 or to be an angel on high
 i gazed as if into myself
 and silently i cried

 and at the apex of the roof
 of their inverted ship
 a window round of painted glass
 let fall a single
 drip
 .

It seems to me that a lot of people today are very uncomfortable with the idea of sin, partially because if we admit to sinning, well, then we view ourselves AS a sinner.  We believe that our actions or mis-actions DEFINE us and who we are, essentially.  Therefore, we steer clear from a willingness to really see our mis-deeds, let alone do anything significant about them.  We continue to walk around, living life running from our shadows and a broken self identity.

And herein lies the power of Tashlich, the New Year ritual of throwing crumbs representing our sins into a body of water.  The strength of tashlich is that it allows us to “externalize” our sins.  This crumb IS my sin and I am casting it away.  By externalizing the sin and making a distinction between myself and the sin, I disconnect my core self identity from being a sinner to one who has sinned.  In essence, I no longer = sin.  

By disconnecting my self identify from my actions, I can now re-connect to a fuller and richer idea of self, let’s call that soul, and then I can draw on that healthier self identity to now properly and soberly address my behavior.  I no longer have to worry that by really admitting my mis-actions that I am admitting a flawed self, but rather a flawed decision.  I am I and the sin is the sin.

We can only truly address teshuva and our brokenness from a place of higher perspective.  The reality that we are a chelek Elokah m’maal, a unique soul expression of G-d, is a solid foundation for clearly looking at our action and our decisions.  YES, what I did was wrong and that needs repairing, but I can’t see that or admit that or even have enough hope and strength to change it without an understanding that I am greater than what I did.

In the pasuk from Micha 7:19 which we read during tashlich it states, “yashuv yirachamainu yichbosh avonotainu”, “He (G-d) will again be merciful to us and He will conquer our sins”.

I would like to suggest a drash here, “Yashuv yirachameinu”, that teshuva from a place of G-d centered mercy and compassion, “yichbosh avonotainu” is what conquers our sins.

So this year’s tashlich can be an amazing opportunity to access this internal mercy, our internal light.  And then allow this light to be what illuminates our mis-deads.  Once we see our sins clearly illuminated by the depths of our soul, then and only then are we’re really ready to send them away.