Here's an unbelievable piece that's not mine. I saw it last yr on the Aish site and held on. A good one for leaving Chanukah. May the light we just took in shine bright throughout the winter... EVEN within the blur.
SEEING WITHIN THE BLUR
by Mandel
I used to think that life was about acquiring and creating and keeping things whole. But now, when my arm still reaches for four chocolate pudding treats on the shelf of the supermarket even though one of my four children is dead, I see that life is about learning how to see in the darkness.
Chanukah is also about learning a new way of seeing. The Maccabee's war against the Hellenists was a fight not just for territory but also for a worldview. The Greeks believed in the grace of beauty, the redemptive powers of humanity. For the Hellenists, beauty was holiness. For the Maccabees, holiness wasn't always visible -- but was the manifestation of the justice and goodness of God. For the Hellenists, the body was perfection. For the Maccabees the body was an instrument to be used for serving God.
The Macabbees insisted on giving tribute to God and his laws, and his temple. When the Macabbees were victorious and reentered the temple, there was just a little oil left to light the menorah, enough for one day. Nevertheless they kindled the flame and the oil lasted for eight days. Many people believe that this is the miracle of Chanukah.
But maybe it wasn't a miracle at all. Perhaps one vial of oil can always be enough for eight nights if we look at our lives as a place for God to dwell. Because God is infinite, when we approach the Divine, we leave the world where numbers circumscribe reality. Once we make a sanctuary for God, then the infinite possibilities of God dwell within us as well. Numbers become guides, instead of rulers.
Chanukah teaches us that what we see in this world is a glimmer of the truth. Our measurements in this world are imprecise, our ways of knowing limited. The world of truth is not one where the numbers we ascribe to reality are sufficient. One vial of oil becomes eight.
Thus it is fitting that Chanukah begins during the month of Kislev, the month of dreams and sleep. As we near the winter solstice, we prefer more and more to stay in bed. Many of the Torah portions of this month speak of sleep and dreams -- Jacob has his dream of a ladder and God speaking to him; Pharaoh has dreams that need to be interpreted.
Chanukah itself has the logic of a dream. In sleep we have access to a different world -- a world where what is impossible during the day becomes possible. In sleep, the few can become many. The light at night is a deeper light with a greater capacity for revelation. This is the light of Chanukah; the light of holiness.
It's not easy to see in the dark, but you don't need that much oil to fill the darkness. A small measure can easily expand to light the largest cavern. Kaballah tells us that we are like flames, the spark of our souls reaching toward the candle of God.
To see God in my life, I have to see in the darkness -- to see beyond what appears to be, to stop counting with ordinary integers of ownership -- to see what is blurred, undefined, beyond my ordinary senses. Chanukah tells me that what matters is not how old Koby is now -- I can't count him anymore with my daytime logic. But I can create a sanctuary inside of me -- a place of holiness where his death matters, a place where I consecrate the light of his soul so that it shines within me.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Thursday, December 6, 2007
SHIFLeinu / SHVILeinu
This time the word play is from withIN the Holy Tongue (full version published on the blog Beyond BT - Torah Judaism for Growth Focused Jews). Truly, this is more than linguistic acrobatics:
בס"ד
An Innocent Mistake?
~ Chanuka 5768 ~
One of the most symbolic mistakes I've ever made as a newly religious Jew was the way I had been pronouncing – for YEARS! – a verse in the Hallel HaGadol. You see, I had always enjoyed flowing with this series of ki l'oilam chasdo praises for all those fabulous miracles done for our people throughout the expanse of history. From the time I began regular tfilla {praying}, I felt I could resonate with the meaning of these words, in contrast to many other tfillas which took quite awhile to identify with, let alone pronounce correctly.
Thus it was that one day, as I was learning about the deeper meaning of Chanukah, I did a double-take. The drasha {exposition} was explaining how the Chanukah miracle was associated with one of the concluding lines in that prayer:
b'SHIF'Leinu zachar lanu, ki l'oilam chasdo {in our lowliness He remembered us, since His kindness is forever}.
"Oh WOW," I exclaimed to myself, with an embarrassed chuckle. "I had always read this as b'SHVILeinu… {for our sakes …}!"
As I continued to learn, the depth behind this "mistake" became painfully clear. Our nation was t-o-t-a-l-l-y unworthy of the Chanukah miracle. We were so extremely shafel {in the spiritual pits}, that it was below what the Creator had designated for being within the purview of His planned interventions. In contrast to Pessach, for example, we weren't nationally hanging on to even that 1 / 50th level of purity that was the basis of meriting the Exodus. Rather, we had been forgoing circumcision, disusing our holy language and dress, forsaking Shabbos, making public declarations of atheism, etc., etc.
Similarly, I'd learn how the classic mashal {metaphor} about the nature of the feasting we do on the holy days must be modified to accommodate the two Rabbinic holydays, Purim and Chanukah. Whereas on the Sabbath our souls are said to be lifted up to the King's castle to dine with Him and on the holydays the experience is likened to His glory visiting our homes, on Chanukah and Purim the spiritual reality is comparable to a King who comes looking to visit His beloved son… and we're not there! So He starts searching, hears a faint moan, follows it until peering into a deep, dark pit – Oy! There we are.
"Gevalt," the King cries. "My son, my precious son. How did you get in there? I thought I told you to stay farrrr away from these pits!"
But we had no answer.
Then and there, the mashal continues, His royal Majesty jumps into the pit, to the utter consternation of His ministers. "Finally! We're together again," our Creator soothingly tells us. "Now let's work our way back up…" And so we proceed to climb out, slowly but surely. In the process, His holy garments get quite soiled and we expect to receive a giant umbrage from the royal ministers about this. Yet as we emerge, all we see is the awe they have for the King. Why? Because of the deepest love emanating from His Majesty's eternal eyes…
So that's the mashal (with a little embellishment). Now you tell me: Is this about shif'leinu or shvileinu?
Personally, besides my progressive exposure to the teachings of Tsadikkim {righteous individuals} which made it crystal clear that it's the former, my ultimate resolution came from within. I had to admit that the fact that I had been pronouncing that line as I did - for YEARS! - despite my relative Hebrew fluency, revealed a giant Freudian slip. Something within my subconscious, obviously based on my liberal, democratic education, was determined to deny any possibility of the existence of shiflus, spiritual worthlessness. Perhaps the intrapsychic term "cognitive dissonance" is more accurate. It means something like this: When the unique network of radio waves that are presently flying around within one's mind can't incorporate a particular broadcast of facts coming at it from without, it immediately scrambles them, as a kind of supremely self-sustaining defense mechanism.
B'shifleinu thus naturally blips into b'shvileinu.
Very nice. But surely we're talking here about more than a natural phenomenon. The words in question are part of a divinely endowed broadcast system! So shouldn't I assume that My Creator was communicating something through this "mistake?"
Indeed, as I thought more about it I realized that the immature religious side of me had been presuming that at LEAST Chanukah was a time when every Jew is fully appreciated for where he's holding; at LEAST these eight days were a time for unconditional, "democratic" celebrations.
'Tis the season to be jolly, right?
Ahem.
Talk about rude awakening. As much as the theory had worked nicely for the so-called Judeo-Xn value system, it simply was not authentic Judaism. That "the Shechina (Divine Presence) never dwells below ten tfachim (about 2 feet)," I'd soon learn, is a substantial principle in the Talmud (Succa 5B). It's referring to those who indulge in earthbound pleasures. And the fact that the Chanuka Menorah CAN be lit as low as three tfachim is merely an exception to the rule. An exception for the sake of encouraging us – but NOT a reprieve. The special Divine visit we gain at this time is meant to return us to the reality of being ABOVE ten tfachim and strengthen our resolve to NEVER go back to that deep, dark pit where sensualism and atheism call the shots (Nesivos Sholom throughout his Maamarei Chanukah ; see pp. 10, 14, 45-50 for starters).
As we sing in the Maoz Tzur Chanukah song:
naaseh nes l'shoshanim {a miracle was done for the roses}.
We're the roses; those lovely flowers embedded amongst awesome amounts of thorns. The thorns are not just our external enemies. They are the b'shvileinu-mindsets that try to confuse us into believing the reason our Maker helps us out of so many holes is in order to make our lives there more comfortable. But the truth is the opposite. It's ONLY in order to demonstrate the greatness of His love for bringing us back home…
ABOVE the allures of this world.
Halleluy`a!
בס"ד
An Innocent Mistake?
~ Chanuka 5768 ~
One of the most symbolic mistakes I've ever made as a newly religious Jew was the way I had been pronouncing – for YEARS! – a verse in the Hallel HaGadol. You see, I had always enjoyed flowing with this series of ki l'oilam chasdo praises for all those fabulous miracles done for our people throughout the expanse of history. From the time I began regular tfilla {praying}, I felt I could resonate with the meaning of these words, in contrast to many other tfillas which took quite awhile to identify with, let alone pronounce correctly.
Thus it was that one day, as I was learning about the deeper meaning of Chanukah, I did a double-take. The drasha {exposition} was explaining how the Chanukah miracle was associated with one of the concluding lines in that prayer:
b'SHIF'Leinu zachar lanu, ki l'oilam chasdo {in our lowliness He remembered us, since His kindness is forever}.
"Oh WOW," I exclaimed to myself, with an embarrassed chuckle. "I had always read this as b'SHVILeinu… {for our sakes …}!"
As I continued to learn, the depth behind this "mistake" became painfully clear. Our nation was t-o-t-a-l-l-y unworthy of the Chanukah miracle. We were so extremely shafel {in the spiritual pits}, that it was below what the Creator had designated for being within the purview of His planned interventions. In contrast to Pessach, for example, we weren't nationally hanging on to even that 1 / 50th level of purity that was the basis of meriting the Exodus. Rather, we had been forgoing circumcision, disusing our holy language and dress, forsaking Shabbos, making public declarations of atheism, etc., etc.
Similarly, I'd learn how the classic mashal {metaphor} about the nature of the feasting we do on the holy days must be modified to accommodate the two Rabbinic holydays, Purim and Chanukah. Whereas on the Sabbath our souls are said to be lifted up to the King's castle to dine with Him and on the holydays the experience is likened to His glory visiting our homes, on Chanukah and Purim the spiritual reality is comparable to a King who comes looking to visit His beloved son… and we're not there! So He starts searching, hears a faint moan, follows it until peering into a deep, dark pit – Oy! There we are.
"Gevalt," the King cries. "My son, my precious son. How did you get in there? I thought I told you to stay farrrr away from these pits!"
But we had no answer.
Then and there, the mashal continues, His royal Majesty jumps into the pit, to the utter consternation of His ministers. "Finally! We're together again," our Creator soothingly tells us. "Now let's work our way back up…" And so we proceed to climb out, slowly but surely. In the process, His holy garments get quite soiled and we expect to receive a giant umbrage from the royal ministers about this. Yet as we emerge, all we see is the awe they have for the King. Why? Because of the deepest love emanating from His Majesty's eternal eyes…
So that's the mashal (with a little embellishment). Now you tell me: Is this about shif'leinu or shvileinu?
Personally, besides my progressive exposure to the teachings of Tsadikkim {righteous individuals} which made it crystal clear that it's the former, my ultimate resolution came from within. I had to admit that the fact that I had been pronouncing that line as I did - for YEARS! - despite my relative Hebrew fluency, revealed a giant Freudian slip. Something within my subconscious, obviously based on my liberal, democratic education, was determined to deny any possibility of the existence of shiflus, spiritual worthlessness. Perhaps the intrapsychic term "cognitive dissonance" is more accurate. It means something like this: When the unique network of radio waves that are presently flying around within one's mind can't incorporate a particular broadcast of facts coming at it from without, it immediately scrambles them, as a kind of supremely self-sustaining defense mechanism.
B'shifleinu thus naturally blips into b'shvileinu.
Very nice. But surely we're talking here about more than a natural phenomenon. The words in question are part of a divinely endowed broadcast system! So shouldn't I assume that My Creator was communicating something through this "mistake?"
Indeed, as I thought more about it I realized that the immature religious side of me had been presuming that at LEAST Chanukah was a time when every Jew is fully appreciated for where he's holding; at LEAST these eight days were a time for unconditional, "democratic" celebrations.
'Tis the season to be jolly, right?
Ahem.
Talk about rude awakening. As much as the theory had worked nicely for the so-called Judeo-Xn value system, it simply was not authentic Judaism. That "the Shechina (Divine Presence) never dwells below ten tfachim (about 2 feet)," I'd soon learn, is a substantial principle in the Talmud (Succa 5B). It's referring to those who indulge in earthbound pleasures. And the fact that the Chanuka Menorah CAN be lit as low as three tfachim is merely an exception to the rule. An exception for the sake of encouraging us – but NOT a reprieve. The special Divine visit we gain at this time is meant to return us to the reality of being ABOVE ten tfachim and strengthen our resolve to NEVER go back to that deep, dark pit where sensualism and atheism call the shots (Nesivos Sholom throughout his Maamarei Chanukah ; see pp. 10, 14, 45-50 for starters).
As we sing in the Maoz Tzur Chanukah song:
naaseh nes l'shoshanim {a miracle was done for the roses}.
We're the roses; those lovely flowers embedded amongst awesome amounts of thorns. The thorns are not just our external enemies. They are the b'shvileinu-mindsets that try to confuse us into believing the reason our Maker helps us out of so many holes is in order to make our lives there more comfortable. But the truth is the opposite. It's ONLY in order to demonstrate the greatness of His love for bringing us back home…
ABOVE the allures of this world.
Halleluy`a!
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
D. (i) N.A.
According to a powerfully thorough video documentary on the history of science floating around the Net (http://video.google.com/videoplay), a fascinating three-tiered, heirarchical pattern has emerged:
1) Materialism: The agenda of the original Scientists was to establish concrete laws of nature. Most of these men started off as philosophers who sought to "bring down" the lofty Greek ideas and mythological speculations into the "real world." The mind was accordingly seen not as an end-all but a most powerful means for focusing the spirit onto the tangible. Seeing, for them, was believing.
2) Energy: Around the 18th and 19th centuries, the world of science began to metamorphize into an awareness of a whole new dimension of existence that is much more essential than materialism. No longer was seeing believing, but sensing a higher existence. Good ole, Jewish Einstein became known as its main discoverer of this new stage in science and his famous E=MC2 became its mantra.
3) Information: Up until this very day, a RADICAL revolution in science has been taking place since around the time of the Holocaust. It's been heralded in by a pair, called Watson and Crick, who discovered a cellular phenomena called D.N.A., which has since been characterized as an "irredicibly complex information unit." This age is respectively called the Information Age. It's all about "irreducibly reducing" the challenges of this world into self-contained units, that function as if they have minds of their own.
Now here's the spin. There's an UNbelievable parallel between this triad of material, energy & information… matter, light & DNA… and the Patriarchs: Avraham, Yitzchak & Yaacov!
Now please, just think about this for a moment. Starting with the last Patriarch, Yaacov, let us consider the fact that he did have two very distinct personas, was known for his extremely "informative" relationship with Torah, and did have a daughter named… DiNA !!!
Alright, go ahead and smile. But the way this pans out in Jewish history is truly eye-opening.
Now please, just think about this for a moment. Starting with the last Patriarch, Yaacov, let us consider the fact that he did have two very distinct personas, was known for his extremely "informative" relationship with Torah, and did have a daughter named… DiNA !!!
Alright, go ahead and smile. But the way this pans out in Jewish history is truly eye-opening.
First of all, the three Patriarchs were each given Promises about their progeny. By way of some very potent metaphors, Genesis tells us that they were assured that the Jewish people would be as innumerable as the stars, the sand and the dust. According to the Nesivos Shalom [Breishis, Par. VaYeitzei pp.202-207 ], the subtle distinctions bewtween these metaphors are very significant. Their meaning is as follows:
STARS – Those Jews who are highly spiritual, whose inner lives shine far above this world, are being assured of extraordinary personal success beyond even what they dreamed of achieving (like occurred with the Prophets and Sages).
SAND – Those spiritually bedraggled Jews whose only merits are their willingness to hold back their waves of lust which seek to drown out their basic purity, are being endowed with a unique capacity to unify. Like a sand particle has nothing by itself but everything when apart of an entire beach front, so too these Jews will have tremendous success if they work together in selfless communion.
DUST – The average Jew, who is very much involved in this world, in the positive sense of attempting to do Mitzvahs through it, is being imbued with tremendous potential for spiritual growth. As long as their relationship with water (symbolic of this-worldly passions), the lives of such "dusty Jews" will be blessed from on high to blossom straight towards the stars, as the name Israel, Yisra-e`l, literally means “striving straight towards G-d.”
Now let's develop this a bit more:
AVRAHAM – His life was not only a star of spiritual success in his becoming the greatest of G-d-lovers [Is. 41] but he excelled in an ability to translate whatever he learned into a language from which even the most spiritually pathetic, sand-people could gain. Hence we learn that even the Am HaAretz, the "people of the earth," were full of praise for Avraham as a "prince of G-d" [Gen.23: 6], and our tradition is full legends about how Avraham wooed even staunch idolaters to acknowledge Monotheism. Thus, in perfect synchronicity, he receives the blessing of his progeny being as numerous as both the stars and the sand.
YITZCHAK – His greatness was in focusing on Avraham's highest vision. The stars were his aspiration while he made no pretense about touching sand-people. Well, except for his wicked son Esaav, who forever seemed to be drowning within oceans of passion if not for the lifesavers his father kept sending him, until he decided on just one last swim....
YAACOV – His claim to fame was his recognition of the limitations of his strength. While his natural endowment was dusty, growth-determined strife from the crooked earth straight towards the stars, which was so much more balanced than his father's and grandfather's star focus that he was able to command the loyalty of each and every one of his children – still, he knew this path was vulnerable. For it was predicated on being above the sand; on being above the lure of tayvas, this-worldly passions, and therefore never needing to fight them. Hence if ever a member of his clan would give in to his tayvas, he'd lose all connection to Israel! Thus Yaacov pleads at the outset of this parsha for his seed to have immediate access to grandfather's "lowest" merits – the power of fighting back tayvas visa vie Jewish unity.
STARS – Those Jews who are highly spiritual, whose inner lives shine far above this world, are being assured of extraordinary personal success beyond even what they dreamed of achieving (like occurred with the Prophets and Sages).
SAND – Those spiritually bedraggled Jews whose only merits are their willingness to hold back their waves of lust which seek to drown out their basic purity, are being endowed with a unique capacity to unify. Like a sand particle has nothing by itself but everything when apart of an entire beach front, so too these Jews will have tremendous success if they work together in selfless communion.
DUST – The average Jew, who is very much involved in this world, in the positive sense of attempting to do Mitzvahs through it, is being imbued with tremendous potential for spiritual growth. As long as their relationship with water (symbolic of this-worldly passions), the lives of such "dusty Jews" will be blessed from on high to blossom straight towards the stars, as the name Israel, Yisra-e`l, literally means “striving straight towards G-d.”
Now let's develop this a bit more:
AVRAHAM – His life was not only a star of spiritual success in his becoming the greatest of G-d-lovers [Is. 41] but he excelled in an ability to translate whatever he learned into a language from which even the most spiritually pathetic, sand-people could gain. Hence we learn that even the Am HaAretz, the "people of the earth," were full of praise for Avraham as a "prince of G-d" [Gen.23: 6], and our tradition is full legends about how Avraham wooed even staunch idolaters to acknowledge Monotheism. Thus, in perfect synchronicity, he receives the blessing of his progeny being as numerous as both the stars and the sand.
YITZCHAK – His greatness was in focusing on Avraham's highest vision. The stars were his aspiration while he made no pretense about touching sand-people. Well, except for his wicked son Esaav, who forever seemed to be drowning within oceans of passion if not for the lifesavers his father kept sending him, until he decided on just one last swim....
YAACOV – His claim to fame was his recognition of the limitations of his strength. While his natural endowment was dusty, growth-determined strife from the crooked earth straight towards the stars, which was so much more balanced than his father's and grandfather's star focus that he was able to command the loyalty of each and every one of his children – still, he knew this path was vulnerable. For it was predicated on being above the sand; on being above the lure of tayvas, this-worldly passions, and therefore never needing to fight them. Hence if ever a member of his clan would give in to his tayvas, he'd lose all connection to Israel! Thus Yaacov pleads at the outset of this parsha for his seed to have immediate access to grandfather's "lowest" merits – the power of fighting back tayvas visa vie Jewish unity.
But let's not stop here. Consider the pattern of Jewish history from the time the Israelites began to settle the Holy Land:
THE FIRST TEMPLE – After a generation in the extremely anti-materialistic desert, the emphasis in this period was on uplifting, through sacrificial rites, all of material existence. To be sure, the chances of the vagabonding Israelite clan descending into Egyptian slavery and then returning to the holy land with such a trans-materialistic agenda defy all evolutionary odds!
THE SECOND TEMPLE – This period revolved around revealing the essential energy behind the Jewish enterprise: the recording of the Oral Torah (Talmud). Towards the end of this period, shortly after the original Chanuka, this "nuclear" Judaism exploded in Greece (starting with the translation of Tana"ch into the Septuagint, over which we fast on the 10th of Tevet)… and we've been living within the dust of its fall-out ever since!
THE THIRD (soon to come!) TEMPLE – This is the "Information Age;" the time about which our prophets have told us the Earth will be filled with knowledge of G-d, as clear throughout the Book of Isaiah. Not just mind-knowledge, but EARTH-filled knowledge! Something very, very deep will come alive from within our most sand-filled lives. Aye it's the power of father Yaacov's prayers taking root. And the power of his DiNA leading us back to Torah…
Now, one, last, truly unbelievable comparison. A major prayer we say on Chanukah, which always falls out around the time we read about Dina:
THE FIRST TEMPLE – After a generation in the extremely anti-materialistic desert, the emphasis in this period was on uplifting, through sacrificial rites, all of material existence. To be sure, the chances of the vagabonding Israelite clan descending into Egyptian slavery and then returning to the holy land with such a trans-materialistic agenda defy all evolutionary odds!
THE SECOND TEMPLE – This period revolved around revealing the essential energy behind the Jewish enterprise: the recording of the Oral Torah (Talmud). Towards the end of this period, shortly after the original Chanuka, this "nuclear" Judaism exploded in Greece (starting with the translation of Tana"ch into the Septuagint, over which we fast on the 10th of Tevet)… and we've been living within the dust of its fall-out ever since!
THE THIRD (soon to come!) TEMPLE – This is the "Information Age;" the time about which our prophets have told us the Earth will be filled with knowledge of G-d, as clear throughout the Book of Isaiah. Not just mind-knowledge, but EARTH-filled knowledge! Something very, very deep will come alive from within our most sand-filled lives. Aye it's the power of father Yaacov's prayers taking root. And the power of his DiNA leading us back to Torah…
Now, one, last, truly unbelievable comparison. A major prayer we say on Chanukah, which always falls out around the time we read about Dina:
You, in Your abundant compassion,
stood up for (the Makabees)
at the time of their distress,
You struggled their struggles,
You judged their judgments…
THEIR DISTRESS – over the ideological supremacy the Greeks sought through mastering “nature.”
THEIR STRUGGLES – against the Hellenistic belief that Judaism can be lived as a soulless culture, as a ceremonial religion without the crucial, life-transforming foundations of Circumcision, Torah learning, Shabbos and holydays.
THEIR JUDGMENTS – transliterally: Danta es DINAm.
Get it?
~
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
