Letting scripture read you

Both Christian and Jewish mystics throughout the centuries have urged us to not read scripture, but to let it read us. We can open ourselves up to hearing God's voice speaking to us as we meditatively read scripture. If we do this, we will find that the same passage will say different things to us at different times in our lives.

I experienced this recently. A few weeks ago I was listening to an interview with Robert Alter, who has produced a new translation of the book of Psalms. As he was discussing his translation of Psalm 23, I was taken back to a time many years ago where I had an incredible experience with reading it. It was during a prolonged period where God seemed so distant to me. It seemed like my prayers were just bouncing off of the ceiling. This had been going on for over a year when one night I sat down and read Psalm 23. As I read "Yea, though I walk through the valley of death, You are with me..." I suddenly had this tremendous insight that God was with me this whole time, even though He was "invisible" and that I needed to know that He was present and to trust Him. This brought me great solace.

As I was listening to Robert Alter read his version of Psalm 23, however, I had a very different experience. I realized that rather than God making Himself "invisible" to me, it was the other way around. Lately, I have been holding God at arm's length, not wanting to be too close to Him. I have been avoiding God. In essence, I was the one making Him "walk through a dark valley" through my inattention to His presence. Unlike years ago, where I was fervently seeking Him and He was no where to be found, now God was fervently seeking me and could not "find" me.

So this same passage, read at two different times, years apart, said something different to me. The first one brought me solace and comfort at a time when I really needed it. The second time brought me a challenge and a wake up call to see that I was ignoring God.

I encourage all of you to let scripture read you rather than simply reading scripture. If you do so, in time, you will hear the voice of God speaking to you where you are at right now in the present moment.

A Rare Privilege

Last week was the ending of Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles). I had ordered a book that contains all sorts of stories and anecdotes about the holiday but did not get it until afterwards. There was one story that I liked enough to send along even if the holiday is over. Here it is.


A Rare Privilege

Rabbi Mordechai was not very wealthy but each year he managed to save up enough money to buy a nice lulav and etrog set[1]. On his way to a nearby city to buy it though, he came across a man who was crying next to a cart and his dead horse.

Filled with compassion, he asked the man, “Why are you crying?”

“My horse was just killed in an accident and without him I am unable to earn a living” the man said.

Immediately Rabbi Mordechai gave his lulav & etrog money to the man so that he could buy a new horse. He said, “God commanded me to wave the lulav and etrog, but He also commanded me to take care of the needy.” So he returned home empty handed.

When the village folk asked to see his new set, he told them, “All Jews will say a blessing over the lulav and etrog during Sukkot. But this year, only I have the rare privilege of saying it over a horse.”

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[1]The lulav is a bundle of 3 plants; myrtle, palm, and willow. An etrog is a citrus fruit grown in Israel. These are waved in praise to God throughout the 7-day feast as commanded by God in the Torah.

We are all messed up

I was talking with a friend recently about a situation which revolves around a person who is a Christian and loves God but who is so completely caught up in their own issues that they are making life very difficult for themselves and those around them. This person is completely blind to the fact that much of their thoughts and behavior are driven by past hurts and present fears.

We tend to think that just because people are believers that they "have it all together". The reality is quite the opposite. We are a collection of fairly messed and sometimes downright dysfunctional people who happen to love God and seek to follow Him. We are in need of much healing. Like it or not we are more often than not driven by our past hurts, current desires, and fear of the future.

Quite often the message that we receive in our congregations is that since we have committed our hearts and lives to God, we don't need anything more; that we have somehow arrived. I think that such messages do all of us a great disservice. As followers of Yeshua, as people who desire to be holy and whole, we should be constantly striving to improve ourselves and freeing ourselves from these driving forces within us that lead to hurting ourselves and others. We need to be seeking God's face on a regular basis asking for Him to reveal to us where we need healing.

Quite often we are totally blind to the reality of this. We cannot see without careful self-awareness and introspection.

Where are you driven by past hurts? Do you react strongly to certain "triggers"? Are you harboring past resentments? Are you afraid of the future? Do you have inordinate desires for something?

These questions are difficult to face, but they must be on a regular basis if we are to grow into God's image. These things keep us from being unconditional love. We need to ruthlessly ferret them out of our lives through prayer, through reflection, and through talking with trusted friends or a spiritual leader.


peace,
izzy

Voice of Silence

Yom Kippur begins tomorrow night at sundown. We will end Yom Kippur on Saturday night by hearing a long piercing blast of the shofar (ram's horn).

Here is a brief meditation by Rabbi Stephan Parnes:

The ancient voice calls:
Awake- and know fear!
Choose! Decide!
Which road will you travel this year?
But today- Shabbat-
the Shofar's voice is not heard.

In this silence, in this stillness,
Where is God?
Is silence God's absence?
Or is it a call to respond?

Shema Israel- Hear now O Israel-
The sound of silence-
The sound that pierces the strongest armor.

The voice of the shofar
Helped bring down Jericho's walls,
But silence can shatter
the strongest walls
The walls we build around ourselves.

Shema Israel- Hear now O Israel-
the sound of silence
The crushing, deafening, sound of silence-
And choose life.

Choosing Life

Deut 30:15-20

In our Torah reading today we have the words, “See, I set before you today, life and death. Choose life.”

The Hebrew word for impurity in the Bible is “tumah”. The Torah defines for us various states that are considered impure. When a woman is in her menstrual cycle she is considered to be impure. She must go through a mikveh after it is over to purify herself. A man having an seminal emission is also impure. The Torah also has many laws around tzarat, sometimes translated as leprosy, but really more like dead patches of skin. These people are unclean and are not to live within the community of Israel until they have been rid of the disease and made atonement for it. Coming into contact with a dead body also makes one tumah. Cohens, priests, are not even allowed to enter a cemetery except under special conditions.

What all of these things have in common, is that they speak of death. Menstration is caused by the loss of an ovum that could have been a life. The same with a man with a seminal discharge, the seed that could have fertilized the egg is lost. Tzarat is a disease, and diseases lead to death.

So why this obsession with uncleanness in the Torah? The reason for this is that Israel, created by Hashem to be this place that is halfway between heaven and earth, is meant to be an archetype of life. God created Life. He created beautiful sunsets, soft warm rain, good friends, and cooing babies. Death is the antithesis of Life. Death is illness, disease, hatred, and violence. Nothing that represented death was to be in Israel, this “in-between” land. And so we have these commandments that seek to eradicate these things from the Holy Land. Death contaminates the land. Death requires expiation and atonement.

Life is so important, it is held in such high regard, that we are allowed to break all of the commandments to save one, with the exception of three; idolatry, murder, sexual immorality.

The Torah itself is called a “tree of life”. We sing this in our liturgy. Those who hold it fast are called happy.

When we think about life and death, we tend to think in terms of issues foremost in our minds today. Issues like abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty. We also question whether we should be doing genetic engineering to create modified forms of life.

While all of these issues are important and should be addressed, I think what the Torah has in mind is something much deeper. It is clear from the Scriptures that God created us to live life to the fullest. We are to live in peace and joy and gladness. It is only because things went awry that we have less than this.

Death and Life are not just referring to something physical. They can refer to something emotional, mental, or spiritual as well. We can think of things like anxiety, hatred, fear, and bitterness as little deaths. When we are consumed with these things we are cutting ourselves off from the Source of Life, and also from one another. I think that God is laying before us in our Parsha today, to choose life. Life being joy, compassion, peace, love, hope; these are the stuff of life.

The fact that life and death mean something more than just physical is borne out in the teachings of our Sages. They say that embarrassing someone publicly is tantamount to killing them.

This also is taught by Yeshua Rabbenu. He said that looking down on someone was like killing them and lusting in our hearts was like adultery. These are choices of death.

I would like to discuss three ways in which we can choose between life and death.

First of all, we can choose between life and death for ourselves.

We choose death when we succumb to low self-esteem, addictions, anger, bitterness, and the like. Recent studies have clearly shown that we not only do damage to ourselves psychically but also physically. If we have a lot of negative emotions and pack them down and don’t deal with them they will come out in our bodies. People sometimes develop ulcers from excessive worry. A few years ago I met a man who did healing prayer over people. He said that his experience has been that 80% of his clients’ illnesses were emotional and/or spiritual in nature. Even cancer can be brought on by extreme emotional duress. I had a co-worker some years ago who came down with and ultimately died of cancer. She told me that studies have shown that many people who develop cancer have had some major trauma in their lives about 5-7 years prior to the onset of symptoms. In her case it was her husband being unfaithful.

We all struggle with these things from time to time; some of us more, some less. I have had to accept the reality lately that I have bouts of depression, more often than I would like to admit. I get caught up in feeling like I am not doing anything significant or meaningful with my life. I just get sad and don’t feel like doing anything. When I do this, though, I am choosing death.

Rabbi Abraham Twerski is a psychiatrist who runs a clinic for addictions. He says in his book, The Spiritual Self, that “Many people are indeed incapable of tolerating themselves because they harbor self-directed feelings of negativity… this sorry state of affairs is the result of a distortion of the self-concept. In other words, these people who are in actuality fine, competent, and likable people. The problem is that they are unaware of this reality. Instead of seeing themselves as they really are, they somehow develop a distorted image of themselves, and it is this distorted image which they assume to be the real image…”

He goes on to say that because of this, many people use addictions as ways of not facing themselves. Addictions may be to drugs and alcohol, but also to gambling, sex, affirmation, power, prestige, etc… This ultimately leads to self-destruction.

The Torah says to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Our sages point out that you have to first love yourself in order to love others. Whether we choose death or life for ourselves, these choices have a rippling effect out into the lives of others. If we choose death, then we will spew forth death to others, but if we choose life then we will be, in the words of Yeshua, “founts of living water”. Which leads into my second point.

Secondly, we can choose between life and death for others.

Moving beyond the obvious that we don’t choose to murder someone, we can look at the deeper layers of meaning. We are moving from the p’shat to the remez and drash levels. We choose death for others when we act in ways that tear them down. We already mentioned that Yeshua taught that treating a person with contempt was like murder and the rabbis said that embarrassing someone was also like murder. We can also choose death for others when we are consumed with bitterness, hatred, bigotry, and the like. In addition, if we are some consumed with our own anxieties, fears, low self-esteem, we are less likely to be attentive to others needs, it makes us less gracious. This is that outflowing that I mentioned a moment ago. Oftentimes because of the death we deal ourselves, we bring death to others. We hold back out of fear of rejection, we tell people what they want to hear because we want to be liked. This is called enabling behavior by psychologists. We enable people to continue in their own dysfunction because we want them to accept us or continue to be with us. And we can also just simply ignore others’ needs.

You know, when you write a sermon, if you are attentive, it preaches to you too. I was working on this talk at lunch one day. I realized that I was not looking at my waitress because she was overweight, and to be honest, kinda ugly. I really felt bad. As I meditated on this I realized that I wasn’t looking at her because of my own issues with struggling with my own weight. (Quite often we don’t like in others what we don’t like in ourselves). I thought to myself, how many times does she experience that during a day? I would imagine that she gets a lot of it. And this subtle rejection feeds into her own self-esteem. Studies have shown, for example, that cute babies tend to grow up to feel better about themselves because of all the positive attention they received. I was dealing death to this waitress because of my own issues.

But we can choose life for others. We can act out of compassion, seek to understand others’ viewpoints and needs, we can be open to new ideas, and we can treat people with respect, even if we don’t like them.

Our tradition tells us that one of the greatest life giving acts is to provide charity to others. Its best we are told when it can be done in a way that preserves a person’s dignity.

There is a Hasidic story about a man who came to a village and asked to see the rebbe. People told him that he wasn’t around. When asked where he was, they said that they didn’t know. The rumor was that the holy man went up to heaven every Friday morning and came back for Shabbat. Skeptical of this explanation, the visitor resolved that next week he would watch and see what happened. So early the next Friday morning, before dawn, he got up and watched the rebbe’s house. Sure enough, the rebbe came out of his house, but he was dressed in rags! The man followed the rebbe out into the woods where the rebbe cut some wood and then took it to a widow’s cottage. The rebbe asked the widow if she would like to buy some wood for the old beggar. She said that she couldn’t afford it. He said, “That’s ok. You can pay some other time.” Then the woman said that she couldn’t make a fire anyway, she was too old. The rebbe said, “That’s ok. I will make it for you.” And he proceeded to make the stack the wood and make the fire for the woman.

After this, whenever people in the village would talk about the rebbe disappearing on Friday mornings and going up to heaven, the visitor would whisper to himself, “And maybe even higher.”

Yeshua Rabbenu (Jesus, Our Great Teacher) is our example par excellance of choosing life for others. He consistently treated the down and out, the oppressed, and the rejects of society with compassion and dignity. One of the most beautiful passages in the Besorah is where a leper says to Him, “Lord, if you are willing you can heal me.” Yeshua tenderly looks into his eyes and says, “I am willing” and reaches out and touches him.

I think that one of my greatest examples of someone who chooses life for others is our esteemed rabbi. He has been a model to me of someone who always treats others with respect and always wants the best for them. I have seen him handle many situations with calm and poise and truly want the best for all parties involved.

As Jews, we need to not only choose life for individuals, but for the Jewish people as a whole. We need to fight anti-Semitism, seek to improve Yiddishkeit amongst our people, encourage them to raise their children with a Jewish identity, and do what we can to encourage them to draw closer to Hashem.

As Messianic Jews, we need to choose life for our brothers and sisters in the Church, by seeking to bring peace and understanding between the Church and Israel and helping them to understand Israel and its God-ordained role in salvation history.

Thirdly, we can choose between life and death for God.

This is an aspect that we don’t normally think about. We tend to think of God as being above and beyond all of the stuff that happens and is unaffected. He is God after all, right? But we forget that God is also intimately close to and involved in His creation. The record of Scripture is very clear on this point. In the story of the flood, God is grieved that he made humanity because of its sinfulness. He is angry that Israel continues in its idolatry. He is joyful when Israel is faithful.

In our Haftorah reading today we have the verse, "In all [Israel's] afflictions, He, too, is afflicted, and the angel of His presence redeemed them..." God suffers when His people suffer.

When we choose life for ourselves and others, we also choose life for God, and vice versa. We bring blessing to Him.

This is reflected in the kabalistic notion of the releasing the divine sparks. These sparks are hidden in everyday things. When we say a barucha over wine and bread, we are not just doing a mitzvah, but we are returning the divine sparks hidden in the wine and bread back to God. In this view, grace flows down from Hashem, but it then requires humans to complete the circuit and return His grace back to Him. Our life-giving acts have their source in Hashem, and they give life to Hashem.

After being a parent for a while, I have developed a theory that one of the reasons that God gives us children is so that we can understand Him better. When my kids treat themselves and each other like animals, it grieves me. And when they treat themselves and others lovingly it makes me proud and happy. An example of this happened last spring. Samuel and Havah went thru several days of squabbling and tensions where high between them. They were yelling at each other things like “I can’t stand you.” “I wish you weren’t my brother / sister.” “I hate you”. But then Havah had her dance recital. When she came out on stage, I looked over at Samuel and he was positively beaming. He was so proud of his sister! It really warmed my heart, especially after the previous few days.

I think that it is this way with God. Have you ever asked what is in it for God? With all of this drama and suffering in our world? I think that Hashem is blessed when His children choose life for themselves and others. This blessing must be so great that it outweighs all the tsuris.

Intertwined

Jewish mysticism tells us that all three of these are intertwined. The tradition says that while each of has a unique component to our souls, our nefesh, we also all share that spark of divinity. Each of us has a share in the existence of God. This is the neshama, the soul. So when we treat ourselves and others well, we are treating God well too!

In the Talmud it says “If you slap a person’s face, it is like slapping the face of the Shekinah”, because we are all created in His image.

Hillel taught that caring for our bodies honors that image of God and likened it to a caretaker of a stature of the King. The Torah tells us to take care of ourselves because we are all a part of God.

So when we choose life for ourselves, we are choosing life for others because we are all interconnected. And God too is given life because we are all rooted in Him. And the same when we treat others well. Its all intertwined in a great circle of life and blessing.

Conclusion

We are entering into this season of the High Holy Days, a time when we evaluate ourselves, our behavior, and our relationship with others and God. As you take stock of yourself this year ask yourself:

• Am I choosing death or life for myself? Am I succumbing to distorted self-images of who I am that is then having negative impacts on those around me?
• Am I life giving in my relationships? Where can I improve in this area?
• How can I contribute to life of the Jewish people, our movement, and to the Body of Messiah?

Also take time to celebrate the successes that you have had in this past year. Look at:

What specific incidents this past year did I act in a life-giving way?

• Where was I tempted to react negatively but caught myself?
• Where did others give me life and blessing?

Then take time to thank God for these times and feel good that you were are part of these life-giving experiences. You have truly been a partner with God.

In this New Year, may we all choose life. For ourselves. For those around us. And for God. In doing so, we will give life to Hashem as well. And we will indeed become founts of living water. L’shana Tova. And may we all be inscribed in the Book of Life. Amen.

Personal Holiness vs. End of the World

Some years ago I heard an interview with Rabbi Harold Kushner on the radio. He is the author of books like “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” and “To Life”. During the interview he said, “Christianity is focused on getting to heaven, and if you happen to become a good person in the process, great! But Judaism is focused on being a good person, and if you happen to get to heaven, great!”

This statement is clearly an oversimplification for both groups. Yes, some streams of Christianity seem to be overly focused on the hereafter and they act as if life on this earth isn’t important. But there are also Christian traditions that emphasize spiritual growth and social justice. For example, the Methodist movement of the 1700s heavily emphasized personal holiness and devotion to God. The Salvation Army movement of the early 20^th century focused a lot of their attention and efforts on helping the poor and also helping people grow more deeply in their walk with God. And there are also streams within Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy that have emphasized becoming a good person and seeking to make the world a better place.

There is a story from the early church that says, “One of the brethren who possessed nothing but a copy of the Gospels, sold it, and distributed the price in food to the hungry, uttering this memorable saying—'I have sold the book which says, "Sell that you have and give to the poor."'

The Catholic group Opus Dei is founded on the idea that everyone is called to personal holiness and that ordinary everyday life here on earth is holy.

Eastern Christians talk about “Theosis- Divinization” becoming like God in attitude and behavior. It states, “As God became Man in all ways except sin, so God can make Man God in all ways except His divine essence”.

Likewise, it is a clear oversimplification to say that Judaism isn’t interested in the hereafter. While some liberal forms of Judaism (and some Christian too) may have given up looking for the Messiah and seeing God’s reign on earth, you only have to look at the whole breadth of Jewish tradition to see that it is infused with Messianic hope for the future.

In the Amidah, a set of prayers said three times a day, we say:

“Et tsemach david av-d’cha m’hey-rah tatz-mi-ach…”

“Speedily cause the offspring of David, your servant, to flourish, and lift up his glory by your divine help because we wait for your salvation all the day.”

The ending of the prayer service we chant the Aleynu. In it we say,

“We hope therefore, LORD our God, soon to behold Your majestic glory, when the world shall be perfected under the reign of the Almighty; when all human beings will call upon Your Name, and all the wicked will be turned to You; when all inhabitants of the earth will know and recognize, that to You every knee should bend and every tongue should swear.”

I just recently observed my father’s 4^th yahrzeit (anniversary of his death) and as I was saying Kaddish I was reminded of how this prayer which is in the very midst of mourning and grief, is not a prayer for my father or comfort to me; instead it is a prayer calling for God to bring an end to time, to establish His kingdom, and to bring peace to the whole world.

Maimonides’ thirteen principles of faith declare this faith that God will bring an end to the world. The twelfth principle states, “I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah; and, though he tarry, I will wait for his coming daily.”

These are just a few examples from many yearnings for olam ha-ba (the world to come) that can be found in the siddur.

So we have these two focuses which appear to be a dichotomy; a vision for a restored creation and becoming a good person. I would like to propose to you that these two are not a dichotomy; they are in fact, one and the same thing!

It all has to do with your view of salvation. Is salvation just not going to hell? Some would say so. But I think that it goes much beyond that. God says “Be holy as I am holy.” Salvation entails us becoming more and more like God. It is us growing into our destiny, our vocation. As human beings we are called to be like God.

In Genesis 1: 26 it says “And God said, “Let us make Man in our image, after Our likeness”. There are two words used here, image and likeness. The Hebrew word for image is “tselem” and for likeness is “demut”. The rabbis asked, “Why did God use two different words to describe His creation of Man to be like Him?”

The answer that they gave is that these two words denote two different aspects of being in God’s image. The word tselem refers to the reality that we are indeed created in the image of God. This is something that we cannot avoid. Like it or not, we are created in His image, we have no choice in the matter. By fiat God has given each human being characteristics that are consonant with His being. God has certain attributes; He is personal, he has a specific identity. He is social, He desires to live with others. He is emotional, God feels. He is Moral, He has the ability to make moral choices. He is rational, creative, and so on. So it is with us. Woven into the very fabric of our being is the fact that we too are personal, social, emotional, and moral beings.

But, the rabbis said, demut speaks of another aspect of God’s image. This word speaks of our potential to be like God in our holiness. Scripture describes God to us as One who is loving, compassionate, gracious, peaceful, good, and forgiving. The goal of our creation is for us to join Him in this, for us to achieve His image, His demut. Like God we can be loving towards others, compassionate, gracious, lovers of peace, holy, good and forgiving. But God gave us free will too. This is part of being a moral being. We have the right to choose that which is not of God. Because we are His children, we cannot avoid the fact that we are created in His tselem, His form, but we can choose to ignore His call to holiness and never achieve His demut, His likeness. We have the ability instead to be cruel, selfish, evil, hateful, and nasty. God created us in His image but He calls us to be in His likeness. This is our destiny, this is our vocation.

In Philippians, Rav Shaul (Rabbi Paul) says “…continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” He is writing to believers of Yeshua. So if your view of salvation is that it’s just getting to heaven, this statement makes no sense. However, if you understand that salvation encompasses becoming more like Yeshua and God then it does. The beginning of redemption is turning to God. The continuing of redemption is learning to become more like Him in character and behavior. The finalization of redemption, however, is when we are perfected at the end of time. All three of these are underneath the umbrella that we would call “Salvation”. They are stages in the process of us being conformed in His image.

This is a significant part of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchek’s thesis in his book, “Halachic Man”. Halacha (Jewish Law), which has a very practical and ethical focus, which seems to be focused on the here and now, must be seen as eschatological; it must be viewed through the eyes of eternity. We are not working just to be good people now but towards a future in which this move towards holiness will be completed in the world to come. He describes God as standing at the end of time, calling us forward into our vocation. Through halacha, we are moving towards this future reality by conforming ourselves into His image.

And we see both of these aspects coming together in a passage in Ephesians.

For he chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Messiah Yeshua, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Messiah, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even the Messiah. (Eph 1:4-10)

Our future hope is that God will bring Creation to its fullness, restoring God’s sovereignty over the Earth, through the coming of Mashiach. However, this is the very thing that we work towards when we strive for personal holiness, for being a good person! We are striving to overcome our evil inclination and to become more like God, to be restored in His likeness. Is this not what we will be in olam ha-ba (the world to come)? God’s restoration of Creation encompasses our being holy!

As we strive to make ourselves better people, we are also participating in the culmination of history. We are looking forward to; we are leaning into that future day when we will be completely holy and like God! The same Voice that calls us to hope and long for the end of time also calls us to be good and holy.

So, what does all of this mean for us today?

First, it calls us to take comfort that things will not always be the way that they currently are now. It is easy for us in this day and age to get despondent over all the troubles in the world; for us to wonder if it will never end. We need to take comfort that it will indeed come to a close. We don’t know exactly when but we know it will happen. There is a midrash on our haftorah reading today that asks, “Why is the word nachamu, comfort, repeated?” The answer is that it points to the fact that there were two Temples destroyed. But more than that, it points to the fact that there will be a Third Temple. Just as the second temple was more glorious than the first, we can look forward to that even more glorious Third Temple which will be built by Hashem Himself. Another Messianic midrash, given by that great rabbi, Chana, says that this repetition also points to the coming of Mashiach. The first coming was more humble and quiet. But we can look forward to that Day when Yeshua will return as a conquering King and Lord of History.

It also calls us to renew our vision for the future, for the world to come. It is easy for us to become caught up in the busyness of everyday life and forget that we are part of a much greater drama in salvation history. It is also easy for us to get complacent and to not take these prayers for redemption seriously; to give up that eschatological hope and not really pray for the coming of the Almighty. The call for us during this season is to renew our yearning for the coming of Olam ha-Ba, the world to come; and to pray for it daily with great kavannah (spiritual intent).

In our parsha (weekly Torah reading) this week, Moshe longed to enter the Promised Land but was unable to. He could only stand on the mountaintop and look out over the horizon, grasping a faint hint of the Land. Likewise, we are standing on the mountain, looking into eternity. We have the scriptures, and the traditions, and the holidays, which give us but a hint of the reality that God is in control of history and will some day, return to assume His rightful throne over Creation. Like Moshe, we should long to see that day come.

Second, it calls us to strive with ever more energy and commitment to make ourselves better people, and to contribute to making the world a better place. We need to see that our personal holiness is a part of God’s culmination of history. As we enter into the High Holidays, a time when we reflect on our actions and behaviors, and also a time when we think about the end of human history, let us carry with us this realization that our personal holiness is indeed intertwined with the great drama which is unfolding in the cosmos. And let us all look forward to that glorious Day when Mashiach Yeshua shall return!

Fluttering Wings

This is a short talk that I gave this past weekend. Enjoy.

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In Genesis 1:2 it says, "The earth was astonishingly empty, with darkness upon the surface of the deep, and the Divine Presence hovered upon the surface of the waters."

This word translated as "hovered" is "mi-rah-khefet" in Hebrew. It can mean hovered, or brooded. In Isaiah it is used to describe a mother eagle fluttering her wings as she feeds her young. It can take on the meaning of "tender care".

God is like the deep dark water. He is mystery. We cannot comprehend Him. In Isaiah 55, God declares, "My thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are your ways my ways."

But we are created in God's image and are also like the deep dark waters. We are mystery. All of us have struggled to understand our motivations, attitudes, and desires. We are complex beings. In Psalm 139 it says "I praise you Lord, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made."

But God knows us. We tend to think of God as being out there beyond the stars, which is indeed true. But He is also closer to us than we are to ourselves. God is also deep within us. He hovers over the deep dark waters of our soul. He broods over all of us like a mother eagle. He stirs these deep dark waters calling us to greater growth and healing.

We tend to think of God calling those who are far away from, those who don't know Him. But this is just the beginning. We are still in much need of healing and growth. He hovers over the deep dark waters of our soul, fluttering His wings, stirring us.

But have you ever heard a bird flutter its wings? It is a very soft sound. We have to strain our ears, we have to pay attention, to hear the soft fluttering of a bird's wings.

So, too, God's fluttering over the depths of our soul is the faintest of sounds. We have to train our ears to hear it. We do this through practicing silence, solitude, prayer, and meditation. We can also hear those faint flutterings in sermons, songs, friends, art, or nature. In all of these, we can hear God brooding over us if we but pay attention.

And just as God's hovering over the deep dark waters of primeval earth was the beginning of creation, so too can His hovering over us be the beginning of our re-creation each and every day! All too often, we blunder through life, making way to much noise to notice the soft flutterings of the Spirit's wings. I urge all of us to take up the practices that will allow us to hear them and thereby hear God's call to greater growth and healing.

I would like to end this today with a poem that I wrote:

Ah restless Spirit,
who hovers over
the deep dark waters
of my soul.

With the faintest stroke of Your wings,
You stir the waters.
Faint ripples radiate across
the surface of the deep.

I strain to hear
that faintest of sounds.
What are You calling me to,
O Holy Wings?

What is the next step of my creation?