al heyt she-hatanu l’faneykha
We recite our viduii – our admission of all the ways we have fallen off the path – " 'fessing up" before the Unity and, as importantly, to ourselves.  We strip off our illusions of perfection, come face to face with our limitations – not to wallow or get stuck further, but because we have the responsibility to ourselves (Doniel Hartman) and to our world to change!

v’al kulam Eloah s’lihot, s’lah lanu, m’hal lanu, kaper lanu
and for all of these, Forgiving Mystery, forgive us, pardon us, atone for us.

Let’s look deeply at these three words:  Forgiveness,  Pardon,  Atonement.
Forgiveness:
Estelle [Frankel, teacher @ CHL], two years ago and again this year has brought us to tears with stories of radical forgiveness.  As you have heard in previous sermons, my heart engages with forgiveness while my mind struggles with it.  I use the model of human forgiveness to imagine what Divine Forgiveness might be. I speak in terms of what I must do to forgive and I ask the same of the Holy One Blessed Be She.

My 5772 way of understanding forgiveness is as a conscious choice to be freed from the hurts of the past and a a willingness to reengage in relationship (with another human being, with myself, with the Unity) despite harm inflicted, regardless of my view of their Consequences and Teshuvah.  A relationship has been breached and ruptured and I choose to respond, not from my pain, suffering and righteous anger, but, rather, I respond to the core of humanity in The Other.  Once again, as we spoke about on RH, the breach/the crack/ the damage becomes the opening for light to flow back in.

I make this choice because my heart tells me I must.  Healing flows from the place higher-and-higher, l’eyla  u’leyla – the place of pure Rahamim/compassion.   It is not pardon or forgetting or excusing but a willingness to acknowledge the pain and humanity of the other who harmed me or harmed something or someone I love.

I believe, too that this is the essence of the words in Leviticus we will read tomorrow morning:  “do not hate one another in your heart.”

The essence of Yom Kippur is to both complete and to help make this process possible.  Through my Turning and Returning, my Teshuvah, I  recognize my part in the drama and my willingness to make amends.   I reconnect with my Divine Core and see how, on that level, I and The Other are the same.

I forgive you without asking for anything in return.  I am present and I express my desire to be in relationship with you.  When I move to the Seat of Compassion, to Gods-Eye View – the place that sees all – the place beyond duality, beyond you-me, I can try to understand why you did what you did.  Your reply is your Teshuvah work.   My task is to let go of my own hurt and open to reconnecting with you human-to-human.   

I am offering myself in service of healing the whole.  It is not easy work.  I am on the path of trying to live a good life, a life of tzedekah, of righteousness and rightness.   In speaking words of forgiveness to The Other, I image each of us as incarnate Divine Sparks, I acknowledge that you had your reasons for doing what harmed me, I offer an opening for us to be able to approach each other without anger or recrimination and to, perhaps, one day share our experiences with each other.

Pardon:
[An aside about language:  trying to define each of these three words independent of each other is challenging – the dictionary defines forgiveness in terms of pardon and vice versa.  Here, we speak semantically, trying to refine a difference that helps us understand the nuances of the process.   This so recalls to me my father, alav hashalom, who was certain that he had the right way of distinguishing among words – he was obsessed with semantics and his way of defining words.  May his memory be for a blessing!]

Mehilah, pardon, is perhaps mine to offer you, and perhaps not.  When I think of pardon, I think of fulfilling consequences to ones actions from a societal or spiritual perspective, to be released from the sentence of the court  What will balance the scales of justice?  When I forgive you, I am not necessarily pardoning– releasing from further punishment or adjudicating that you have paid back enough. Conceivably pardon is the purview of the courts – whether earthly (the Yeshiva shel mata) or Divine (the Yeshiva shel ma’ala) – we invoked at Kol Nidre.  And so we ask, m’hal lanu, let it be that my pay back is done and that I suffer no more for what I have done in the past; help me to know what it is that I still must do to complete a just compensation.  When we ask for Divine pardon, we are (as one stuck in our criminal justice system might beg the president or governor to do) asking to be let off the hook, so that the karmic slate can be wiped clean. 

Atonement:
Kaparah is unique to Yom Kippur (perhaps also to the time of the new moons, Rosh Hodesh).   We have done our best in our Teshuvah, we have forgiven where we can and asked for forgiveness when we can, we take seriously what is involved in receiving pardon, and now we are here today so that we might be scrubbed clean of the residue, dross and blemishes that have stuck to our innerness because of what we have done.  

We learn from the service of the High Priest on this holy day, that we must bring our issues to consciousness and confess before Yodeia Ta’alumot,  The One Who Knows Secrets, saying the words with our mouths, not just silently in our heads.  This is the viduii we will soon perform together. We no longer have a scapegoat to send into the wilderness.  But we do have the power of Yom Kippur’s potential to shine the light of Shekhinah, the Divine Presence into all our inner spaces.  This Divine agency makes us new, bringing us back into alignment, shiny and bright, so that our Inner Divinity shines out and joins with that light that cleansed and healed us.  We have fewer barriers to deveikut, to truly cleaving to the Divine.   

We come together today because we know intuitively that indeed the holiness of this day is awesome and something special can happen.  We all want to feel the illumination vaporizing the residue of the errors and misdeeds of this past year.

The gift of the day is the fresh start – “ki va-yom ha-zeh y’khapeir aleikhem, l’taheir etchem mi kol hatoteikhem, lifenei Hashed titharu – because this day is for your realignment and purification from all that has transpired this past year, you are cleansed before the One.”  This is the essence of Yom Kippur – itzumo shel hayom – and why we all show up year after year. 

And so our prayer tonight:

S’lah lanu - Please O Forgiving One, care about me, see me, know me. Don’t discount me. Despite my faults – let me know You.

M’hal lanu - Please O Pardoning One, release me so I don’t have to keep repeating these entrapping patterns over and over . Help me to do what I need to do so the slate can be wiped clean and I can begin again without having to endlessly suffer the consequence of past actions and choice

Kaper lanu - Please O Agent of Atonement – allow this unique day to truly be a day of cleansing, refinement, purification, so that my body and soul are shiny and new. 

Tonight we receive the forgiveness and the pardon, and over the next 24 hours, the scrubbing takes place.

We pray later in this S’lihot service:  Lev Tahor b’rah li Elohim- Dear One please create for me a Heart of Purity. 

5 times over the next 25 hours, our liturgy asks us to recite the confessional and the forgiveness prayers, viduii and s’lihot, each time allowing Shekhinah’s light to penetrate deeper.  Our lack of food helps to stretch open the empty spaces to receive this light.

Tomorrow as we enter the Holy of Holies, we experience the final pronouncement of our cleansing – “titharu – you are cleansed!”  We experience how this purification comes from beyond ourselves, from the place of Divine Rahamim, Unconditional Compassion.   This is kaparah, a Supernal Gift the taharah ila’it – a cleansing-from-above.  We have immersed in the healing living waters of Love, a Divine Mikveh,  and emerge with new potential to be agents of change and healing.  Kein yhi ratzon. So may it be!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair… (Charles Dickens 1859).  

I think not much has changed.  This has not been my easiest year – a time of grief and loss, a time of relationship transitions, a year of self-doubt, a time of unrest internationally and uncertainty at home financially and politically.

And…. it has been a year of blessing – a year of celebrating major birthdays, a year of feeling that I am in fullness of my soul-mission work,  a year of deepening my relationship with you, Chochmat HaLev - a community that is growing in interconnectedness and mutual support.   

2 millennia ago our Sages acknowledged that life is at essence a contradiction – both full of wonders and challenges.  They told us that there are times, in our current world of limited refraction of Consciousness, when life seems hard and unfair and unjust – at these times we say Barukh Dayan HaEmet – blessed is the True Judge. So akin to the theme of this day of Rosh HaShana; we feel judged.  And there are times when we feel in the flow and our lives seem easy and right – at theses times we offer the blessing Barukh HaTov v’Ha-Meitiv – blessed is the One who is Good and who does good.  Good is when life is smooth and stress free; feeling judged and punished is identified with more difficult times of illness or loss. The Sages then tell us that as we move to the level of redemptive consciousness – the World that is Coming, as we move along the path of Conscious Evolution together – one day we will be able to bless all that happens to us as coming from the One who is Good, doing good.   

That has been much of my lesson this year.  With all the tenderness and vulnerability I have felt, I am moving along that path of accepting and understanding that all that has happened can only be for the good.   I have been moving toward letting go of feelings of feeling abandoned, judged, and unseen when Life does not pour out exactly what I expected to have happen.  Faith and trust, too, are part of this blessing.  

I breathe in deeply all that has transpired, and breathe out love and acceptance. 

Yet, these places of brokenness and pain are the very essence of life – and the places of greatest healing.  All of the Perennial Wisdom traditions teach this.  I guess this means not just that this is a universal Truth but that we are perennially learning it over and over, struggling to accept the terms of life

The only whole heart is a broken heart – the Kotzker Rebbe.  Our dear Estelle Frankel quotes this teaching in her chapter about brokenness and healing. David Wolpe: “No awake spirit can move through this world without enduring a broken heart. There is nothing real that makes life painless. Accepting the pain of living, knowing one's heart will - and should - be broken, is the beginning of wisdom.  Rami Shapiro reminds us that Gd does not cause our suffering, S/He just doesn’t prevent it – brokenness is a condition of being human.  Leonard Cohen (Anthem): “Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering.  There is a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in”

This year I have experienced the miraculous and mysterious healing capacity of the heart.  And I am so blessed to be with you all in this as our community has taken on this practice of allowing expanding our collective heart to open to all that life has for us.

And, most important to this time of year, my grief and my failures create an opening for the holy avoda – the service, the work – of this season – Teshuvah. 

And Teshuvah, I have learned has two sides: (1) a deep personal accounting – heshbon ha nefesh – the turning aspect of Teshuvah (Teshuvah mei Yira, The Returning by means of Awe and Trembling), and  (2) a return to the core of our Essential; Self, to our Divine Essence (Teshuvah Mei Ahava –the Returning through Love and Acceptance).

The Return to Aliveness Itself is the unique work of this season.  Choosing life, reconnect with the Oneness, to return and dwell in the House of the Beloved (Psalm 27).  The soul of the universe is Aliveness and Mystery.    And our job is to take the first baby step and then to be scooped up into the loving Embrace of the Beloved.  Our One Heart is that love that expands to receive us in all of our imperfections. 

I remind us about the oft-told story of the king who searched his whole life for the most perfect diamond and finally was given one as a gift –large enough to fill his cupped hands, and so perfectly carved with a multitude of facets refracting light from below to its perfectly smooth surface.   He showed it off to all who would see –it was grand, clear, brilliant. [I think perhaps he began to identify with this diamond – it became more than a diamond to him but an image of his very essence.]  Then one day, the King noticed a crack down the middle, a flaw and he was devastated.  He sent for all the gem experts and jewelers in the kingdom and in all the surrounding kingdoms, but no one could explain it or fix it.  They recommended breaking it and having two smaller diamonds carved and the king despaired.  Then one day a young apprentice diamond carver told the king that it could be fixed and made better than before! And the king was overjoyed.  A few days later, he brought it back – and with a gasp the king could not have been happier.  The carver created a rose in the center of diamond the crack, the flaw was now a stem!

This, I believe is what Teshuvah does for us:  it takes all of our cracks and blemishes, and makes roses of them.   The cracks are still there but the intentionality of recognizing our mistakes and doing our best to repair them is like the rose that was carved into the diamond.  We cannot make our past go away, but we can learn from it and we allow our less-than-perfection be our way back to our Path and our Practice and to the embrace of Shekhinah the Divine Presence.   We are more beautiful than we would have been had we never developed the flaw.  Indeed, as the Talmud tells us, one who has never fallen off the path cannot stand in the place of one who has fallen off the path and who has returned.

I bless us with choosing Life and learning how to make roses from all our troubles that refine and refract even more light through the cracks in our souls.  Let us all be a little closer to seeing the good in life’s challenges and to have the faith that our suffering is not in vain. 

And I bless us with the words from the new moon service brought tears to my eyes as I said Kaddish for my:  may this new year be the final end of all our sorrows and may it be the beginning of the flowering of our souls.  

Shana Tova u-metuka,
Rabbi SaraLeya
1 Tishrei 5772
September 28, 2011

Our sages taught that if the Torah had not been given at Mt. Sinai we would be able to learn its wisdom teachings from nature and from the animal kingdom.  A famous saying from Pirkei Avot, alludes to this:  Pirkei Avot 5:23  “Be bold as a leopard, light as an eagle, swift as a deer, and mighty as a lion to fulfill the will of your Creator.” As I began seeking an animal teaching to inspire my teshuvah process this year, I came upon an interesting article describing the migration behavior of a particular species of sea gull known as the arctic tern.  I want to offer this teachings from the animal kingdom as an image we might hold on to during these coming days of asseret y’mai teshuvah leading up to Yom Kippur, when we Jews begin our own unique kind of migration, the annual journey of homecoming we call teshuvah—when we return to our essential selves and find a home for our souls in the divine embrace. 

So here are a few facts I learned about the arctic tern.  Put on your metaphoric ears and listen up. The Arctic Tern Migration Project recently discovered that this bird flies over 70, 000 km annually when it migrates from its breeding grounds in the Arctic to its winter quarters in the Antarctic. This is the longest migration of any animal in the world! Over the course of its lifespan, this petite bird, weighing only 3.5 ounces, travels approximately 2.4 million kilometers  (the equivalent of three trips to the moon and back!)

The famous animal biologist, Hugh Dingle, observed that animals in migration tend to be totally focused, heading straight for their target. Most importantly, he writes, “they maintain a fervid attentiveness to the greater mission, which keeps them undistracted by temptations and undeterred by challenges that would turn other animals aside.  For instance, an arctic tern will ignore a nice smelly herring offered from a bird-watcher’s boat in Monterey Bay.  While local sea gulls will dive voraciously for such handouts, the tern flies on.  Why?  “Animal migrants do not respond to sensory inputs from resources that would readily elicit responses in other circumstances.  In plain words—These critters are hell bent on just getting there!.  They resist distraction because they are driven by an instinctive sense of something we humans find admirable:  LARGER PURPOSE!  The tern recognizes that it can eat later, it can rest later, it can mate later.  Right now its implacable focus is the journey; its undivided intent is arrival.”

As a person who is easily distracted and has difficulty with focus I found the arctic tern’s behavior very inspiring, especially at this time of year when focus on the larger purpose is so critical  The process of Teshuvah we embark upon each year around the time of the high holidays, is a time when we need the focus of the tern so that we might actually arrive at our destination…that we might complete the journey and remember, on this holiday of remembrance, why we are here and what our larger purpose is.

We Jews do this annual migration known as teshuvah not as isolated individuals but as a spiritual community.  So often, though, we Jews tend to feel like perennial outsiders, that we never belong.  I hope it’s not the case here at Chochmat, but to the extent that any of you still feel like outsiders, listen up, as I add one more piece of animal wisdom to inspire us on the journey we are about to embark upon tonight.  And this teaching comes from our good friends, the GEESE! 

Many of you may be familiar with the famous “lessons from geese”--but I believe it’s worth repeating a few of them, as these geese facts are especially relevant to the experience of communal worship.

1.    FACT #1--geese flying in formation fly 71% faster than the lone goose.  Somehow, as each goose flaps its wings it creates an uplift for the birds that follow.  By flying in a V formation the whole flock adds 71% greater flying range than if each bird flew alone. …(.As a community we gather to pray as a collective on these holydays so that we might propel one another, spiritually, to reach our destination.  In sharing a common spiritual direction, people in a community can get where they are traveling quicker and easier.

2.    FACT 2--Geese flying in formation honk to encourage those up front to keep up their speed.  In groups where there is encouragement, production is much greater, however, we need to make sure our “honking” is encouraging.  BLOWING THE SHOFAR on RH is our unique form of HONKING to awaken and encourage one another!

3.    FACT 3—THIS One IS FOR THOSE OF YOU on the BIMAH:  When a lead goose tires, it rotates back into the formation and another goose flies to the point position—(It pays to take turns doing the hard tasks and sharing leadership!)

4.    FACT 4--When a goose gets sick, wounded or shot down, two geese drop out of formation and follow it down to help and protect it.  They stay with it until it dies or is able to fly again.  Then they launch out with another formation or catch up with the flock.  If we had as much sense as geese we would stand by one another in difficult times.

 Let us join together as a community, agudah achat, unified in the divine oneness…and let us say—Hareini mekabel alai et mitzvat ha’boreh, ve’ahavta le’reacha kamocha….I hereby take upon myself the mitzvah to love every other person as myself.

Dedicated to aliyat ha- neshama of Yosef Hayim ben Simhah ha-Levi v’SaraLeya

A blessing from the morning Amida prayer for this time of year:
בָּרְכֵֽנוּ, יְיָ אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ, בְּכָל מעֲשֶׁה יָדֵינוּ, וּבָרֵךְ שְׁנָתֵֽנוּ בְּטַלְלֵי רָצוֹן בְּרָכָה וּנְדָבָה. וּתְהי אַחֲרִיתָהּ חַיִּים וְשֹׁבַע וְשָׁלוֹם כַּשָּׁנִים הַטּוֹבוֹת לִבְרָכָה. כִּי אֵל טוֹב וּמֵטִיב אָֽתָּה, וּמְבָרֵךְ הַשָּׁנִים. בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ, מְבָרֵךְ הַשָּׁנִים.
Bless us, Divine One, in all the works of our hands, and bless our years with the dews of favor (desire/will), blessing and generosity.  May the remainder of our time here on this earth plane exude blessing, be of true aliveness, sufficiency, and wholeness, may each year be the best of years.  For You are Good and are always doing good, Blessor of the Years.  Blessed are you Havayah, who blesses our years.  

Growing older, celebrating a birthday of 6 decades lived, one yearns to step into the wisdom of truly counting and noticing and living fully each day as a unique gift.  And, when such a birthday comes just after one’s parent chooses to transition to the Next world, the focus on the immanence of mortality and the preciousness of life is even sharper.

Until recently, I assumed that I would always have vibrant health and unlimited energy - I find now that as I complete the walking through the samekh (the circular Hebrew letter which has the numerical value of 60),  I am learning the deep lessons of self-care and healthy boundaries as I confront my limits. 

This weekend’s celebration is called a Simhat Hokhmah -  rejoicing in the path of attaining wisdom. It is a ritual first designed by Biblical Scholar and Ritual Innovator Savina J. Teubal in 1986.  And Debbie Friedman composed the song we just offered -L’khi lakh -  for that occasion.  Sadly, neither Debbie nor Savina are any longer alive, but the ritual and the music live on.  It is hard not to ask the question:  what will be my contribution that lives on past my incarnate life.

L’khi lakh, is the feminine conjugation of the imperative to Abraham, lekh l’kha - get up and take a journey to the land I will show you.  What courage and trust Abraham showed - or, from a more skeptical perspective, one might say foolheartedness - to listen to the Inner God speaking to him, to get up and leave his birthplace and his parents’ home to go to a new place he knew not.  And later in his life the same words, lekh lekha, when Abraham was told to go to the Mountain of Awe and Vision, Har HaMoriah, to offer Isaac is beloved son on the altar.  Our Hasidic rebbes teach that Abraham was called, not just to the external journey into the world, but a journey lekha, into the self: the journey of self- knowledge and discovery, the voyage to the interiority of one’s self, the excursion one can take to deep and high places by not even leaving the meditation cushion.

How this contrasts to the words of this week’s parasha, sh’lah l’kha.  This is my birth parsha, the section of Torah that was being read on the day of my birth. It is my oracle, the section of Torah where I look for divination of my deepest life lessons.  The Israelites were in their second year since leaving Egypt and were preparing to cross the Jordan into the Promised Land.  The parasha begins as The Holy One spoke to Moses and said “sh’lah: send emissaries/scouts/ spies l’kha: for yourself  - send, for your own reasons, men to scout out the land, to check out its crops and cities and inhabitants.”.  The retelling of the in Deuteronomy fills in the back story.   Moses explained there that the people approached him with the idea of wanting to send scouts into the Land to check it out.  Only then did God reply with the words that begins this week’s reading, I imagine God saying, “well ok, sh’lah l’kha send scouts for your own reasons …” And also to the inner journey, sh’lah l’kha send scouts to yourself – “ I will let you send men to check out the land, but only so you will then examine the motivations and fears the journey inspires internally.”

How different this story is from Abraham who heard, lekh l’kha, who trusted, and left on his journey, apparently secure in his faith.  In sh’lah l’kha the people want to know more about the risks involved; they want more preparation and control.  They want to know more about this land, for they have been told that this not just an ordinary place, but a promised land and the culmination of spiritual realization.

When the emissaries returned – 2 saying “yes we can” and 10 saying “no we can’t” –to whom do you think the people listened?  Of course to the nay-sayers:  “This is too hard, to scary, too risky, the people there are too strong,  we feel like a grasshoppers and we are sure they think we are grasshoppers”.

Thus, tonight brings together two paradigms of the spiritual voyage which is life.  L’khi lakh / lekh l’kha:  the first, to listen to the inner voice and follow one’s bliss, to pursue one’s soul-mission no matter what the risk or how crazy it might seem.  The second, sh’lah l’kha: to want to test the waters first and only to cross over the river when success is assured.  Torah tells us that the reason the people listened to the nay-sayers is because they weren’t able to leave the conditioning of Egypt behind.  A midrash, rabbinic story, tells us that the Holy One of Blessing was distressed when he heard the words of the 10 men:  “How could you know how you appeared like grasshoppers in their sight?  Who can say that you did not appear in their sight as angels? What have you brought upon yourselves?”  Another anonymous spiritual teacher tells us:  we don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.

And so it has been in my life.  I have taken many risks and followed some “L’khi lakh / lekh l’kha” inspirations - moving with my car packed in 1981 to Bishop, moving with a large U-Haul packed in 2001 to Berkeley, raising children, loving and loosing relationships.  But there remains a large millstone of “sh’lah l’kha” - wanting to cling to the illusion of security and stability, wanting to be sure before making a move, avoiding risks,  listening to the “no you can’t” voice.

How can I go on the journey if I don’t know what the Promised Land is?  Is there a there ?  I believe my teachers to tell me that the Promised Land is the journey itself,  the wandering in the wilderness, the not knowing, finding the trust and faith in that Inner Voice.

A special birthday and the death of a parent, guide me to ask the difficult questions.  Using the words from Coelho’s The Alchemist, what is the legend of my life?  In Hasidic parlance, what is the mission that only my soul can fulfill?   Can I trust the voice saying l’khi lakh / lekh l’kha? Or do I wait to hear the sh’lah l’kha – it’s OK to check it out first and try to be a bit more certain.   Please don’t wait until 60 to ask these questions.

Abraham, after his lekh l’kha journeys, finally became a spiritual elder:

Genesis 24:1 And Abraham was old, he had come into days; and YHVH blessed him with all.

וְאַבְרָהָם זָקֵן בָּא בַּיָּמִים וַיי בֵּרַךְ אֶת־אַבְרָהָם בַּכֹּל:

The Zohar teaches us that Abraham came into the fullness of his maturity by bringing ever greater consciousness and awareness into his living of each of his day –-in the language of the Zohar - he ascended the madreigot /levels until he reached the mystery of faith the raza d’m’heim’nuta- רזא דמהימנות.  Through the spiritual work of living, he was blessed with greater understanding, acceptance and embodiment of the mysteries of the Universe, walking his unique path to finding the secret of faith and trust in knowing the Oneness and Unity of all.

In conclusion, there are times when we must learn the lesson of sh’lah l’kha - send out scouts to yourself.  -  we need to spy out the outer and inner reality to know the state of things before we act.  Sometimes it is appropriate to take it slow, assess risks, and even attend to the voice of doubt.  However, let this be the discernment and preparation that enables us to respond do the Voice of l’khi lakh / lekh l’kha.  “on your journey I will bless you… l’simhat hayim, l’simhat hokhmah… for the joy of life, for the joy of wisdom. 

בָּרְכֵֽנוּ, יְיָ אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ, בְּכָל מעֲשֶׁה יָדֵינוּ, וּבָרֵךְ שְׁנָתֵֽנוּ בְּטַלְלֵי רָצוֹן בְּרָכָה וּנְדָבָה. וּתְהי אַחֲרִיתָהּ חַיִּים וְשֹׁבַע וְשָׁלוֹם כַּשָּׁנִים הַטּוֹבוֹת לִבְרָכָה. כִּי אֵל טוֹב וּמֵטִיב אָֽתָּה, וּמְבָרֵךְ הַשָּׁנִים.

Bless us, Divine One, in all the works of our hands, and bless our years with the dews of favor, blessing and generosity.  May the remainder of our time here on this earth plane be a blessing of true aliveness, sufficiency, and wholeness.  Let us honor our hearts as the seat of our wisdom and creativity as we fulfill our true purpose.  Let us know how wisdom comes from the integration of all who we are. Let us use our days as Abraham in the dance of spiritual growth. For You are truly the One who is Goodness and does good and blesses our years.   Amen. 

Tomorrow night is Shavuot, the holyday in our calendar when we consciously open ourselves to Revelation. Revelation is, actually, always available, but on the 6th of Sivan the portal is held open a bit wider through our ritual and intention.  This year we are also reading Parashah B'ha'alotkha this week. I want to share with you the d'var Torah I wrote for our communal Covenant of Light - our Brit Or - that we celebrated during the week of this parashah 2 years ago.  By the re-reading of this teaching, perhaps we can all re-commit ourselves to the holy work of building conscious, open-hearted community.

Holy Community Reflecting Light
D’var Torah for Chochmat HaLev’s Brit Or
Rabbi SaraLeya Schley  June 7, 2009 -  15 Sivan 5769

This week’s Torah portion, B’ha’alotkha  בהעלתך, begins with Aaron’s lighting of the menorah now that the Tabernacle is fully erected and  anointed.  We recall the teaching of the Sages that when the lamps of the  golden menorah, filled with pure, pressed olive oil, did not shine ordinary light, but rather menorah was illuminated by the celestial light that was created from darkness and chaos at the very beginning, even before there was a sun and moon.  This is the light of spiritual sight that allows us to see through veils, from one end of the universe to the other.  And, this is the light we envision as we contemplate the lighting of the menorah.

Let us look closely at the words at the beginning of our parasha  (Numbers 5:2:   When you raise up ((בהעלתך – from the Hebrew, להעלות to raise up -the lamps (את הנרת), the 7 oil lamps  (שבעת הנרות) will illuminate ( יאירו) the face of the menorah (פני המנורה). As you light the lamps, you raise them up and the 7 flames will shine their light towards the front of the menorah.

When you raise up the candles in the act of lighting the menorah, you yourself are raised up.  In imagining the kindling of these lamps with our hearts’ eyes, we ourselves are elevated ... and we add light to the world. 

When our text speaks of the light shining toward the face of the menorah, אל מול פני המנורה , toward its panim פנים, it hints that our faces, our panim פנים , too, are illuminated by this light.  Further, the word panim פנים  recalls another sense of this word-root in Hebrew, penimiut פנימיות interiority - the inner light of our soul is also kindled.

We are elevated and illuminated as we raise up the lamps.  Mystically, in the mysterious imagery of the Holy Zohar, when through our service and study, we light the lamps, we lift the lamps to the place beyond ordinary awareness to, to the called the palace of the understanding heart, to the place of transformation where the 7 lights receive a higher consciousness.  Then all  7 spheres of the menorah - the spheres of the Tree of Life herself - will sparkle and shine with their unique colors, bringing new possibility to our ordinary world.   In the reflection of these 7 lights, (now activated by their having been raised by us,) the Divine qualities become visible to us.  We light the lights by which the Holy One becomes visible!!!!

And so it is in spiritual community.  We are like the lights of the menorah, raising each other up to reflect different colors of the infinite light back to each other.   We shine our light toward each other’s panim פנים faces, and we shine our light into each other’s hearts, our penimiut פנימיות, our insides.   

The late Slonimer rebbe, may his memory bless and sustain us, teaches about holy community.   When love flows between us, our lights are fused together, illuminating even more brightly.  And our fused lights become a torch, making Divinity visible in our world, and providing the Divine  with a portal to see into our inner spaces.  [Proverbs (20:27) teaches us, “נר ה' נשמת אדם : the human soul is G!d’s candle  - thus our inner recesses are searched”.]

In such a holy community,   קהילה קדושהkehilla kedosha,, we raise each other up so that the lights of our menorah sparkle.  We become a community connected by heart, a tzibur penimi ציבור פנימי, a community connected from the inside, from our core of goodness. We are connected by ease, admiration and love.  Thus we enable שכינה  shekhina, the Divine Presence, to shine among us, to see and be seen.  We become a vessel, a כלי kli, for peace and wholeness - שלום shalom - and blessing, a community of beloveds who together strive to make our world a better and more holy place!

May I be worthy of your trust.  May I be worthy of your promise to participate fully in the ongoing work of building sacred community.  Together we become a vessel that will hold the multiplicity of all our lights, raising each other up, reflecting the light of Spirit to each other. We are each essential.  I pray that we collectively open ourselves to the wisdom of heart חכמת הלב chochmat ha lev that will guide us to manifest our highest collective purpose.

Initially, what arose in my mind was to offer an overview of the book of Leviticus – something of an update.  We have no temple, no high priest, and no longer offer animal sacrifices as a way of connecting with the Divine.

For millennia now, the understanding of Rabbinical Judaism has been that prayer is the way given to us to come close to Holiness. 

I was thinking of prayer in the broadest and deepest senses, as whatever feeds and increases the natural radiance of our souls…thinking too of the great diversity of prayer:  communal and individual, liturgical and innovative and silent…prayer in tears, in study, in artistry – in dance and music and in the careful attention to everyday life…prayer as kindness, as simply listening to someone in need, prayer as giving tzedakah, as attending to the needs of the orphan and the widow, the jobless and the homeless, and the bereaved in our midst. 

And I thought of the High Priest as a guiding image of how we are to enter into prayer – mindful of Holiness – think of the reminding headdress the High Priest wore, with ‘Kodesh l’Adonai’ (Holy to Adonai) written upon it.  And how the High Priest came before HaShem wearing the chosen over his heart – with the name of the all the tribes inscribed upon it, meaning that we are to come close to HaShem carrying not only our own gratitude and praise and needs before the Divine – but also the prayers and the concerns of all people and all peoples – carrying all that within the heart.

I was also thinking of how we have to come close to ourselves, how we have to show up in order to engage in any kind of prayerful activity…Adin Steinsaltz makes a striking analogy in his book, ‘Jewish Prayer.’  He observes that praying is like eating:  you can be in a room full of people who are eating, but unless you yourself eat, you take in no nourishment.  Likewise with prayer:  you can be in a room or community of people praying, but unless you come close to yourself and enter into prayer, you don’t take in any of the spiritual nourishment that’s available all around.  And  with prayer we have to show up not just physically, but with our intention and attention…with our hearts.

But…as I was holding all this in my heart, praying to offer what would be most beneficial to the community – I started to see…Billboards!  I started to hear more and more media blurbs regarding Judgment Day.  Perhaps you all know about this…a preacher based nearby in Alameda, someone who seems to have something of a worldwide following, has calculated that Judgment Day is coming soon – very soon – May 21st, 2011 – which is tomorrow!!!

Somehow I felt drawn to make a sort of anthropological expedition to the holy isle of Alameda, so I attended one of his services just a couple of weeks ago.  To tell you the truth I was shocked – I’d been expecting something glitzy and high energy and super-seductive.  Instead, what I found was drab and sad – in a rented hall in a library administrative building filled with creaky old folding chairs: a collection of pretty dejected looking folks, many of them wearing t-shirts proclaiming May 21st as the date of Judgment Day… people who were really quite friendly to me, but who seemed so vulnerable – like the orphan and the widow – disenfranchised and disempowered people, somehow lacking in natural radiance and hope…

So I want to offer a Jewish perspective on Judgment Day.  I’ll open by quoting from the notebooks of Franz Kafka, one of my favourite writers, author of ‘the Metamorphosis’ and ‘the Trial’ among other works.  What Kafka says regarding Judgment Day is this:  ‘the court of the Day of Last Judgment is in perpetual session.’  Think of it.  It’s not tomorrow, no it’s sooner, much sooner, it’s today, tonight, it’s right now…And how is this so?  By the way that we use our precious time and energy and attention and money, by how we use all our precious resources, by what we do and what don’t do, we ourselves are continuously bringing either blessings or curses into our lives and into our world…and in this way, Judgment is understood to be an ongoing process.  NOW.

I want to put this understanding together with the Torah portion for this Shabbat, b’Hukotai, the last portion in the book of Leviticus. This is where we find the first complete exposition of the blessings and the curses – which occur a few more times later in the Torah. 

So how do we bring blessing into the world?  The Torah says it’s by listening, by paying attention, (t’sumat lev), by honouring Holiness – in ourselves, between ourselves, and beyond ourselves…by listening and doing – that’s essential to bring forth blessings, listening and doing – by creating and sustaining beneficial connections on every level in all that we do…

And what are the blessings? They’re described in agrarian imagery:  rain in good measure and at the right time…bounty of the earth, fertility, children, family harmony and health, and peace…above all, peace…all the blessings culminate in peace…not simply inner, personal peace…not just truce between wars, but enduring peace, peace between people and between peoples, peace on earth…This is what each and every person longs for in this world:  the  MahaShalom.

And how, alternatively, do we bring curses into the world?  The Torah is very clear about this:  we bring forth curses by not listening, by not caring, by acting b’keri – by treating the incredible gift of life as if it were meaningless, accidental, something that just happened and has no particular value, by getting lost and distracted, and collapsing into despair and cynicism…

What are the curses?  These are described in excruciating detail:  drought, disease, terrible fear and perpetual anxiety without any apparent source, war and occupation and exile and famine and…just as all of the blessings culminate in peace, so all of the curses tend toward the horrifying curse of eating your own children – as in a city under siege.  Which sounds so bizarre and over-the-top, like something from another world…But I wonder:  have any of you seen those bumper stickers on mega RV’s that proudly announce:  ‘I am spending my grandchildren’s inheritance?’   

Now I’m sure most everyone here tonight is makes a conscious effort not to destroy the earth, yet collectively we are doing just that…so, like it or not, we are all involved in a massive curse:  the lovely surface of this garden planet is being despoiled and destroyed for future generations.  As Jews, we know it is our obligation, it is aleynu, to care for the disempowered:  to care for the widow and the orphan, the homeless and the jobless – yet who is more powerless than the unborn?  Think of it:  they have no hands and no voice with which to protect themselves.  They have only us, and it is our obligation to attend to their interests and their needs.

So we are called, each and every one of us to turn terrible curses to blessings.  We find ourselves in the midst of such a massive mess, it’s something we’ve inherited and are perpetuating, something we didn’t create all on our own, and can by no means easily resolve.  It’s huge, truly beyond us…and yet – as Pirkei Avot says:  ‘You are not required to finish the work, but you are not permitted to refrain from trying.’

Like little prophets, each of us is called in a different way.  We don’t have to be like Moses or even like Zusia – we just have to be ourselves and bring forth the particular gifts and tikkunim, the healings and fixings and repairs that we are given to offer.  How do we know what these are? what we are called to do?  We have to make space in ourselves to listen, to listen deeply – and then we have to take the leap, and risk ourselves to do what we feel prompted to do…Listen and do, do and listen, listen and do, do and listen.  Transformation is a journey into the unknown…and the only certainty is that we will ourselves be changed in the process.

So I want to bless everyone here tonight – and also those who are not here tonight – to listen…more deeply and more often…to listen more carefully.  Shema Israel!  Shema Israel!!  Shema Israel!!!  And I want to bless us all with the courage to act, and the resources needed for us to become great sources of blessing in this world.

I would like to close with a poem from Rumi encouraging us to prayer:

THE BREEZES AT DAWN HAVE SECRETS TO TELL        
YOU MUST ASK FOR WHAT YOU REALLY WANT
DON’T GO BACK TO SLEEP
PEOPLE ARE GOING BACK AND FORTH THROUGH THE DOOR
WHERE THE TWO WORLDS MEET
THE DOOR IS ROUND, THE DOOR IS OPEN
DON’T GO BACK TO SLEEP

SHABBAT SHALOM!

A drosh by Rabbi SaraLeya Schley
I dedicate the merit of this teaching to the aliyat ha-n’shama of my father and of all our loved ones who have recently passed. 

Welcome home.  I missed being with you three weeks ago, if we can remember back that far.  Your last Friday night Celebratory Service was just before Passover, as we were all awaiting the Nissan full moon.  And now the new moon of Iyyar is just begun.  If we allow ourselves to be carried on the magic carpet ride of the Jewish calendar, we just left Egypt and crossed the Sea of Reeds, and experienced a taste of freedom.  I want to explore that magic carpet a bit tonight and bring to it the intersection of the not-so-magic carpet ride of mourning.
   
Hopefully at our seder meals, we explored the nuances of freedom and of questioning and were over-immersed in ritual.   Eating matzah for 7 days, we had the spiritual intent of removing any impediments to the experience of freedom, the practice of getting down to our essential selves, bitul – void of ego or puffed-up-ness - just myself and my Divinity, unencumbered by agendas, desires, fully able to feel the expansiveness of my smallness.  

From this place of emptied out-ness which is the ultimate freedom we have embarked on a path – that it is not too late to join this year – of counting 7 cycles of 7 days, a practice of noticing and numbering and naming the days as a way, now that I have done the work of emptying, to further refine myself as a conduit for Divinity to shine into the world.  A practice called Sefirat ha-Omer – counting the omer.  All of my channels of blessing are being scrubbed clean…. First week - the love channel, then the boundary channel, currently the channel of truth and balance, and in the next weeks – endurance and commitment; inward focus and appreciation; foundational structure and relationship; finally – the channel of grounding and being a container for the all.  

I do this so that on the 50th day – the holyday of Shavuot – (Monday night June 6) I will be ready to stand deep communion with the Mystery amidst the cloud and thunder and smoke and shofar blasts of Sinai to receive my insights and marching orders for the coming year.  This should be enough – but there we remain – our Moses soul - for 40 days and 40 nights, continually downloading Torah, while our Israelite soul is back down at the bottom of the mountain beginning to worry and become fearful as doubt creeps in and we – along with our priestly leader – look for a new shiny more-concrete god to worship.  In the heat of the summer, we inevitably crash, falling from the heights of Sinai and Oneness, to the place of dissolution and brokenness, which in our calendar is called the Three Weeks – again aback in the narrow places – Bein Ha-Metzarim (the same letters as Mitzraim).  

The tablets of the 10 Commandments are smashed at the beginning of the Three Weeks (17th of Tamuz) when Moses descended from the mountain and saw the reveling around the Golden Calf. During this period, we experience a different kind of dissolution of ego, one of communal grieving over the destruction of our ideals and dreams of a perfect society – what the destruction of the Jerusalem temples means to us in our contemporary lives.  This culminates with the Fast of Tisha B’av -the 9th of Av - when a spark of messianic consciousness is born.

Having just been on Sinai, our brokenness in the summer is part of our soul path for the year readying us for the High Holy Days, in the fall, when the spiritual task will be to be reborn into our next evolution and to birth the new Name of the Divine that will serve us as Consciousness progressively evolves.  And this cycle repeats year after year.  As observing the Jewish calendar becomes our adopted spiritual practice, our lives are enriched.  Our consciousnesses truly can become the intersection between heaven and earth.

Simultaneous with this – like layered transparencies – are our personal lives.  And so, for me, this year – and now for all the rest of my years – Pesah is not just about freedom and matzah, but it is about my father’s death.  I am approaching the 30 day mark – the Shloshim – after he died.  Jewish mourning begins with the period called shiva – 7 days after the funeral – when one stays at home being cared for by the community and remembering and fully grieving.   The next marker is at 30 days when I am supposed to start getting out into the world and integrating this new fatherless person I have become. I am finding it more difficult, not easier.  I am less sure of who I am. I have lost my grounding and certainty. 

Because my father was buried just before Shabbat and Passover came 2 days after that, we really didn’t get to sit shiva.  Rather, we gathered as a family and had our seders, very conscious of Grandpa Joe’s absence from the table.   Instead of tears and circles of remembrance during shiva, I sang Hallel in synagogue – psalms about the miraculous, about the temple worship, prayers for intersession.  Over and over we repeated – hodo ladonai ki tov – ki l’olam hasdo –  we thank the Holy One because She is good, her lovingkindness endures throughout all the worlds and all eternity.  A hard lesson when I am missing my father. This year, I count the omer with less mystical intensity, but with more sadness and more intense personal reflection. The blessing of my father’s passing, though, is the counting and the noticing of each day.  I am grateful to once again have the discipline of a daily structured prayer practice as I say kaddish.   

Rebbe Nahman teaches us that we are all interconnected – we are all borrowing energy from the beings (in his hierarchical language) just a little  higher than we are, a little closer to the Ultimate Mystery – we are all lending and borrowing continuously.  The blades of grass get their life force via the stars and the constellations, the worlds of angels are above these, lending vitality to each other, until we finally get to the Mother of all, our Root, the Throne of Glory, the Word of the Divine.  We all borrow life force from what Rebbe Nahman calls the Melaveh haGadol – the Great lender.  

Of course that life is on loan is the essential lesson of death and dying.  And if life is just a loan, then we are responsible for caretaking that loan, nurturing it, shining it, making it more conscious.   If I can only hold on to this deep remembering and consciously infuse each hour and each decision with gratitude and a sense of beholdenness, how richer will my life be - I pray.   Let my awareness of the Divine as the Great Lender, my openness to the voice supporting my prayers and healing me infuse this season of preparation for Revelation.  Let's us all pray this together:  “Let me be aware of the Divine as the Great Lender.  Let me be open to the voice that supports my prayers and heals me. May gratitude and intentionality infuse this season of preparation for Revelation.”  

(Guest drosh by Chochmat HaLev Treasurer, Kevin Morgan)

Shabbat Shalom!
Many of the Shabbats before or during a Holiday have special designations and special meanings.  This Shabbat before Passover is called Shabbat Hagadol, or “the Great Shabbat”.  There are lots of reasons why it might be called “great”, but one thing is clear.  On the Great Shabbat the European Rabbis used the occasion to make great speeches. Great, long, speeches.  Droshot for hours.  And Hours.  Great, tedious, tuches-numbing speeches. But I won’t be doing that.  If you promise to be nice.

I want to ask you to take a moment and reflect on experiences that you may have had in your life that seem to defy quote unquote, “rational” explanation.

• So maybe you had the experience of a sudden insight that came out of nowhere
• Maybe it really did seem like a still small voice spoke to you.
• There may have been a time when you simply seemed to be compelled to do something or to NOT do something that turned out for the best.
• Perhaps you were deeply moved at the lip of the Grand Canyon or in the center of a redwood grove.
• Sometimes people report a profound sense of awe when they are at the presence of the passing of a soul, or in the room at the birth of a baby.
• Maybe you often have dreams that are clarifying, or maybe prescient?
• Have you ever had an Out-of-body experience, experienced “remote viewing”, known the future?
• Maybe you have even been one of the people who can report an experience of feeling a tremendous “one-ness” with consciousness, with everything around you.
• Maybe it was a feeling of great peace. Or great joy.  Or great love.  For no reason.
• Sometimes these experiences last for a few minutes, a few hours or a few days.  They can come when we are sitting on a cushion at Spirit Rock, saying our prayers, or at a Concert, or at a bonfire, in nature or maybe at a seminar.  They may come from working with a therapist, a shaman or a guide, or they may come unbidden and unexpected.  They are often profoundly transformative.

I would like to ask all of you to bring those experiences into the room.  Acknowledge them for the mystery and influence they had in your life.  Do your best to re-create them, even slightly.

Now I know it is easy to get cynical about these experiences, and what people say about them.  That’s why I want you to bring your experiences into the room.  I would like us individually and collectively to claim these moments as our experience with Mystery, and make them real.

Why?  These experiences are part of being human, they are part of being alive.  And, touching the unknowable, despite anything that you may have heard to the contrary, these moments of Mystery are MOST DEFINTIELY part of being Jewish.

• Look what is in our Torah:  G-d appeared to Abraham while he was sitting at his tent probably in a grove of sacred trees in Mamre.
• Elohim hithalech Noach.  Elohim walked with Noah.
• Jacob had a vision in a dream of angels on ladders.  He later wrestled with an invisible demon all night.  His son Joseph had dreams as well, and interpreted them for others.
• A burning bush in the desert. 
• And so many of our Torah portions begin with “Vayomer Elohim el-Moshe”.  Elohim spoke to Moses

And on and on it goes for pages and pages and generations and centuries.

The Torah never says, “and Moses had a good idea in the shower one day,” or, “Miriam helped Aaron design a nice priest outfit.”  Always there is the Presence, the experience of the Mystery. 

Leo Baeck, a Berlin Rabbi and thinker of the early and middle 20th century said that the core of Judaism beyond monotheism consists of two poles.  And he said that the tension between those two poles is the conversation that is Judaism.  He talked about Mystery and Ethical Behavior.  (HOLD UP INDEX AND MIDDLE FINGER)

Now Mystery without Ethical Behavior doesn’t help anyone.  It can become self-indulgent and remote and anti-social.  So called “Ethical” Behavior without the connection to Mystery can become egotistic, self-righteous, and ultimately destructive.  So in Judaism, they go together.  Always.

So to remind ourselves how they go together, we do this.  OK, everyone hold up your Mystery and Ethical fingers.  (CROSS FINGERS).  So, if anyone ever asks you what it means to be Jewish, or you forget yourself, just cross your fingers and say “Mystery and Ethical Behavior”.

I want to talk to you tonight about one kind of ethical behavior.  Although theoretically, I do have 613 Mitzvot that I could discuss as a celebration of Shabbat Hagadol, I just want to talk about one.

And I want to invite you all to delve into the holy conversation of Mystery and Ethical Behavior in a way that will enhance your own spiritual journey.  Our community is called “Chochmat HaLev”  Wisdom of the Heart, and our practice together is to try and cultivate that Hokmah, that Wisdom.

The ethical behavior that I want to talk about is Generosity. The invitation I offer is for you to practice Generosity every day, three times a day, for the 50 days between the 2nd night of Passover and Shavuot at sundown on June 7th.  As many of you know, the 50 days between the second night of Passover and Shavuot are referred to as the “Counting of the Omer”.  And I know that many of you will be following some of the traditional ways to mark the Counting.

But this invitation to cultivate Generosity during the Counting of the Omer is intended to be a NEW tradition for us as a community that is working on manifesting Chochmat HaLev into the world. Originally the 50 day Counting of the Omer had to do with the start of the barley harvest and the start of the wheat harvest, and was important as part of the tithes offered to the Temple in Jerusalem. But over the centuries after the destruction of the Temple, the Rabbis wove new meaning into the Counting of the Omer based on the Exodus story, creating powerful new metaphors that are intended to shift our consciousness through Jewish practice at this time of year.

When the slaves left Mitzraim, Egypt, they were joyful to be free, certainly, but their consciousness was about survival.  Through the journey in the desert, through the confrontations with a new and uncharted, unpredictable life, a new kind of consciousness became possible.  A consciousness that embraced all of life, that cleaved to the Divine life-force, that in fact merged with it.

The stories of the revelation at Mt Sinai, truly the heart of all Mystery in Judaism, are really astounding, overwhelming, and ungraspable. The mountain was on fire and quaking, no one could come near it.  Maybe a million people, men, women and children, were standing in shocked silence, having a common experience of mind-altering one-ness.  Moses spoke to G-d and G-d answered in thunder it says in Torah.  The people SAW the thunder and HEARD the lightning.

Imagine the power of those Mystery experiences that we all brought into the room earlier multiplied thousands and thousands of times, and maybe that approaches the transformative power of the Great Mystery at the center of our tradition. What would it be like if we could bring even some of that kind of power and majesty to the Shema prayer tonight?

Imagine what even a little bit, a bissele, of that could do in your life. I don’t know what needs healing in your life, or what possibilities may be opened up if only a little bit of the Great Mystery came into your life.  But I think that cultivating Generosity and focusing on preparing yourself for the Divine Mystery of Shavuot could be a pretty interesting spiritual experiment for each of us individually and as a community.  Perhaps we CAN change our lives by changing our practice, as many wise ones tell us.

So why Generosity?  Well first, Generosity requires a lot of other things.

• Presence in the world
• Paying attention to others
• An open heart
• A willingness to take action

Generosity is what the slaves are given by G-d throughout the Exodus story—miracle freedom, parting seas, a pillar of fire to follow, bread falling from heaven, water coming from rocks.  HaShem’s Generosity is what WE are given with every breath in every moment of our lives.  Being with each other as G-d is with us—therefore, being G-d-like in our simple human form on earth, that is co-creating with G-d. There is no better preparation for bringing the Divine Mystery into our lives than creating that sense of love and compassion for others around us.  If you want to touch Mystery, act in the world as if you yourself are the Mystery.

Now what would practicing Generosity look like for these 50 days?  For instance, I consider myself a very generous person.  Extremely generous, in fact.  For example, I freely hand out complaints on a daily basis.  I am known to generously roll my eyes while waiting at the post office.  And, without undue modesty, I truly am a veritable philanthropist when it comes to sharing judgment.

But I would like to be Generous during the 50 days in other ways.  Every day, three times a day, I will do something generous. I will even keep track in a diary.  I will notice the Generosity of HaShem and of others in my life—beloveds and strangers alike.  I will talk about Generosity with others.  I will think and meditate about it.  I might even google it.

Are you with me?

Here is what we might try:

Generosity of excuses—for other people besides ourselves.  You know how you always have a lot of perfectly logical explanations for why you did something that others might perceive as a not so nice?  But if someone else does the same thing, they clearly have evil intent?  The Baal Shem Tov taught us that we should make it a practice to make up excuse for others with the same conviction and frequency that we make up excuses for ourselves.

Generosity through silence.  Not saying something that is harsh or critical or humiliating just because you can.  You may be right, but so what.  If you really do need to say something, find a way to say it that is generous.  Let other people win the argument.  To really push it, listen deeply to another in silence.  To a child.  Or a cranky person.  Or someone who is sad.

Generosity of time.  Could you find a way to spend more time with someone that needs it right now?  A child, your partner or spouse, a friend, a parent.  Volunteering.

Generosity of little things.  Send people in your life, whether close or distant, blessings while you wait for the bus.  Send a greeting card to a relative or friend who would appreciate getting something in the snail mail.  Bring treats to work for no reason, let people go in front of you in line, pay for the toll of someone behind you at the Bridge.  Let someone go in front of you in traffic.  Even if they don’t deserve it.

Generosity of means.  And yes, generosity includes how you spend your money and where you spend it.  Spending money is a form of self-expression in action.  From dropping an extra dollar or two into the tip jar to writing a donation check that may feel like a stretch.  Take a look at the causes that you support, and how you support them.

Remind yourself of Generosity and the invitation to change your life through Generosity.  50 days is a long time.  Put a sticky note in your desk drawer.  Write something that pops up on your calendar every day.  Tell someone else in the room tonight, a close friend or your partner that you will be working on Generosity. 

By the way, during the Counting of the Omer, you can follow Chochmat HaLev on Twitter.  We will be tweeting something to think about every day that might help you in this practice.

I am inviting you to do something that is not easy.  As we have come to know, being a spiritual person takes a lot more than a “Co-Exist” bumper sticker and a Buddha tattoo. Three generous acts a day for the 50 days between the second night of Pesach and Shavuot will move you squarely into the pathway of Mystery.  You may even be looking at transformation.  Certainly your life and your practice will change.  You will be living the conversation of the Torah. 

Mystery and Ethical Behavior.  (CROSS FINGERS)  That’s what it means to be Jew.

Chag Sameach.

Friday Night Sermon with questions for contemplation and sharing:
This Shabbat, we end the reading of Exodus for this year and we bless the month of Purim, the month of Joy and Light. This week’s parasha is bookended with the accounting of the donations to the Tabernacle and the miraculous appearance of Sh’khiniah, the Divine Presence just as Moses completed assembling the portable Tabernacle. 

 As we discussed in the weekly email, the Hebrew word p’kidah connotes counting, being noted, being remembered.  Each and every donation toward the creation of the portable sacred space was specifically appreciated.  Similarly, the Zohar, our core medieval mystical text, describes that we are each individually taken note of as the Divine calls us by name to embrace our special tafkid, purpose/mission (same Hebrew letters as p’kidah - p and f are the same letter in Hebrew.) 

Significantly, the text specifies that the mishkan is the mishkan ha-eidut, the place where Witness dwells, in creative translation (the Eidut usually refers to the Tablet which were placed in the ark containing the instructions Moses received on Sinai).   The Netivot Shalom invites us to rearrange the letters in the word eidut to make the word da’at, consciousness/ knowing.  Cultivating witness consciousness is such an important part of spiritual practice and meditation,  helping us make ourselves into a worthy mishkan,  a abode of sacredness.

The closing scene in the book of Exodus is the final assembly of the Tabernacle prior to its dedication. Just as the last piece was put in place, the Presence filled the mishkan - the Divine Immanence was fully perceptible! The people witnessed that the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts.

Questions for contemplation, sharing and witnessing each other: mishk

• For what are you being counted / what is your tafkid, your mission, your purpose?
• What might it mean to consider cultivating generosity a gift to yourself (as well as to others)? – nedivat lev means generosity or willingness of heart
• What is the importance of completion?   When the last piece is in place and the Presence appears, how is this about your own path, too?    What is that critical piece – it may not be the last piece forever –what is that final curtain I need to hang, for the Presence to fill my mishkan? 
• The mishkan is the dwelling place of the Divine, but also mishkan ha-eidut the place where we are witnessed.  How does sacred space allow us to see ourselves reflected back to ourselves?  How does witnessing create community?  Can we create a mishkan ha-dedut for each other?