Miryam's Space

Rachel Barenblat’s Velveteen Rabbi blog is a favorite, and she’s asked for bloggers to answer five questions. http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/

It’s my last day of  winter break, and she’ll nominate those who try for some small blogger award, so I’m giving it a try. But maybe answering these questions will answer a little about me and why I write.

To answer the first question honestly,  my favorite book is the Bible, which explains why I blog about it. To be less boring I’ll link it to another favorite, The LIttle Prince by Saint Exupery, which I’ve just reread.  I love Biblical text because of its mystery, its time machine element, its mix of profound ideals and details, its history of grappling, its passages that are beautiful and I love, and those I hate and scream out for wrestling with: its richness. It is  God-inspired ideals shared throughout the world and through the ages, with levels of meaning from the simple to the metaphorical to the mysterious. And because it’s grows richer as it’s shared, I share my thoughts. As its reread through my life’s times, it takes on different meanings each year.  For more on the strengthening power of Torah check out Dan Nichols’ Chazak   midway through this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3RUKmvD0bc

When I first read The LIttle Prince in my late teens it spoke to me about holding on to childhood wisdom and rejecting the busyness of grownups pursuing important matters, losing their insights that love and stars and beauty and “pressing your nose against the glass” to see outside the train window are the most important. Childhood should not be ephemeral, but eternal as the LIttle Prince is.  That the water the Prince and the narrator/pilot seek is spiritual nourishment is hinted at by the linking of the well to the pilot’s childhood Christmas memory. So the Little Prince is a book of spiritual and timeless ideals – how Biblical is that? The pilot meets the Prince, and their love is forged in the crucible of the desert:  just as Abraham journeys and the Israelite nation is born there. The wilderness is our place of spiritual encounter and forging our love affair with the Eternal.

From an adult rereading, I am convinced that the book is about parenthood. The star/asteroids are the places from which children’s souls originate and then return when they die. I think the Prince is the pilot’s child who was born, blazing this loving relationship  into his dad’s heart, leaving him heartbroken when his child died, and teaching his dad about love and eternal truths. What counts is what the fox teaches the Prince, who teaches the pilot: that which is invisible, what you waste time on, love itself gives the stars their meaning.  So this book for me is like Torah, taking on new meanings with rereading at different stages in my life, with various levels of meaning, mysterious and begging to be grappled with, beautiful. I wish I could know if others feel the same way, so please chime in! This link to the Little Prince http://home.pacific.net.hk/~rebylee/text/prince/contents.html

The second question asks about a fictional character I most identify with, so I’m totally going to go with the pilot from The Little Prince. Flying along, looking at the stars with wonder, hearing their laughter each time they twinkle -knowing there’s so much craziness holding them together and making them shine.  Like the pilot, I have learned to love most by falling in love with my children. They reached me from whatever asteroid they came from in the desert I didn’t even know I was isolated in and taught me about the roses from their particular star. They tamed me. But you have to let them go to find their own planet to tend in the end, they grow up and leave you, richer but sadder.

The third question is kind of fun, asking which five people, living or dead, fictional or real I’d invite to dinner. The first guest’s a gimme, Albert Einstein, of course: Einstein knew that feelings of wonder and awe was part of the fabric of the soul just as space and time are the fabric of the universe. He also struggled with his Judaism, but also famously said God doesn’t play dice with the universe in railing against the uncertainty of quantum theory, and sought a unifying field theory because of a deep attraction to unity in the universe – Adonai Echad!
What incredible conversations! What insights I’d leave the table with.

Next I’d totally invite Dr. Jane Goodall, whose forays into the wilderness have forged a connection to our closest relatives in the animal kingdom. Chimpanzees grieve, war, stand in awe before natural wonders, use tools, and are endangered by human activities. Jane has dedicated her life now to conservation. She’s a heroine of mine and also a fabulous story teller.

My  next two guests are who I’m named for. My Hebrew name’s Miriam, after my Grandma Bertie’s mom, a Russian immigrant who opened a grocery store in Jersey city, where chickens had to be plucked! I’d love for her to tell me of what life used to be in the old country, and gain insights to the person who partly raised me. Great Grandma  and I are namesakes of Miriam from the Bible, you know, the one who watched brother Moses in the Nile, was a prophetess and led the Israelites in music across the waters to freedom. I’d ask her about the music and the timbrels, about freedom, about sibling rivalry, about prophecy: what an opportunity. Maybe she’s where I get my passion for music.

That leaves me only one choice left for the dinner party, which is unfortunate. My top three candidates are: Jefferson Smith: Jimmy Stewart from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Anne McCaffrey, author of Dragonriders of Pern, and George Gershwin, who died so young, with so much music in him. I think I have to go with Anne McCaffrey,  because she’s the only one I actually did invite to dinner. She lived in Scotland, but in the fan letter I emailed her many years back, I said if she were ever in New Jersey….  I lived many a day in my dreams on the planet Pern, in the musician’s guild with Menolly, making friends with tiny fire breathing dragons while composing melodies. It would be an honor. Their memories are for blessing.

My favorite place to pray is either a synagogue filled with inspired music or my back deck. I know it’s not a mountaintop or anything, but it faces east, I can hear both natural and man made sounds and feel the breeze, and it’s so accessible!

The final question asks something I hope for in 2013. I’m not so young that I think change can happen overnight, but I also know what Margaret Mead said is true, not to doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, indeed it’s the only thing that ever has!  So I’m hoping for gun control legislation, and the start of serious change in conservation and climate change laws. If we will it it’s no dream? So why not dream big, it sets the stage. If not now, When? Now listen to the first song in the Dan Nichols link, because miracles do happen every now and then!

Write back, what are some of your hopes, your dinner invitees, your favorites? I’d love to hear!

Today, Shevat 4th in the Hebrew calendar, is the Yahrtzeit of Deborah Lynn Friedman, whose heartfelt approach to spiritual music has made so much wisdom and prayer accessible to our souls. She suffered much from illness in her life, yet her melodies emerge soaring and hopeful, and they helped birth spiritual awareness in many. A few words about Torah linked and dedicated to Debbie today, and then a song.

We read this week of awakening, the spiritual birth of a nation from the darkness of enslavement and inhumanity to the light of hope and freedom. We read of the last three of the plagues – three types of darkness. In the first, locusts darken the earth, hiding it from our view. I notice that today many of us live day to day nourished by the fruits of the earth, yet without awareness, or even the feel of the earth beneath our feet – and we don’t even have locusts to hide it,  just our routines! Next a thick darkness envelopes Egypt, a darkness that can be touched, in which a person cannot see their brother. Yet light existed in the dwellings of the Israelites, so this is no ordinary darkness, but an ethical and spiritual place. Finally the ultimate darkness, death of the firstborn of Egypt. Part of me knows that this is payback for the killing of the Israelite baby boys. Another part of me suspects that this is an assassination of the leadership (i.e. firstborn) of Egypt in a war for freedom, with credit given to God. But part of me cries. These Egyptian families were our friends, our neighbors. They freely gave us gifts, treasures for our journey into freedom. It is true that battles for liberation are bloody and sad. We are birthed as a nation through a womb marked with blood, symbolized perhaps by the markings on our doorposts. But in spite of the pain, and through it, we are birthed into light of  hope and freedom.
Debbie Friedman’s “Sow in Tears” is perfectly expresses this transformation from tragedy to joy.
Those who sow, who sow in tears, shall reap in joy!
It’s the song of the dreamer from the dark place it grows,

Like a flower in the desert, the oasis of the soul,

Come back, come back where we belong, You who hear our longing sighs,
Our lips our mouths are filled with song, you can see my tear filled eyes!

Hazorim, b’dimah, b’rinah yiktzoru

from Psalm 126
Here is a video of Debbie singing her Mi Sheberach, and then into Sow in Tears
May her memory be for blessing!

We need a hero today, as in the days of Moses. After snowstorm Athena dumped on us a week after Hurricane Sandy, one of my students joked if there are locusts next week, I give up!
But climate change and storms of this magnitude are no joke.

In the saga of Egyptian slavery we read of ancient plagues. These are no ordinary plagues, they are karma. Egypt does not honor laws of kindness and decency, does not choose life. An edict that newborn Hebrew boys shall be slaughtered is supported by arousing anxiety that these boys will grow to be soldiers and defeat Egypt. The midwives and moms know better, they fear God and disobey the man/god Pharaoh. In the first plague, the Nile. that life giving blast of fresh water, turns to blood: it is the blood of the baby boys.  The Hebrews are described as “swarming” and “multiplying”as if they were annoying insects rather than humans, and several plagues involve swarming: lice, locusts and frogs. I love it, nature is called to rebel against the inhumanity. The plague of darkness is described in next week’s reading as a thick darkness. Now if I were describing it, I might say it was so thick I couldn’t see my hand before my face. But this is no ordinary darkness,  rather it’s a blindness/ darkness of spirit, a darkness so thick that a person could not see their brother!  Egypt turned Hebrews into “others” rather than “brothers”.

What does this have to do with snowstorms and hurricanes, you ask? Well the climate is changing due to increases carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, global temperature has already increased. The temperature in the Atlantic that fueled Sandy was 4-5 degrees warmer than normal. It’s hard to wrap our heads around the magnitude of harm we are bringing upon ourselves,  so we don’t try, and we live as though nothing’s wrong. For a brief tutorial on climate change try this Ted lecture http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7ktYbVwr90

It’s scary. But as in ancient times, we ignore the danger, we grow used to it. Torah says that God “strengthens” Pharaoh’s heart  – the Hebrew y’chazek means to strengthen (not harden) and I believe God is the power which can strengthen our hearts – but that’s not always good! Sometimes we need a more vulnerable heart, which can fear and feel, perhaps that’s the heart of a hero – or some balance of the two. That’s why midwives Shifra and Puah, mom Yoheved, and sister Miriam are heroines, they act with a feeling heart. They are also subversive, defiantly choosing life, so that yet another hero, Moses can live. I met a hero this spring, Reb. Arthur Waskow, founder of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia http://theshalomcenter.org/  He, with his wife R. Phyllis Berman, works to subvert the status quo in support of what is decent and good and right in many ways. Reb. Arthur speaks of the changes happening in society and on this beautiful planet of ours as an “earthquake”. He says there are many ways people respond: by apathy because “there’s nothing I can do”; or by retreating, blindly clinging to ancient ways. Arthur proposes an alternative, to respond, to dance in this earthquake! Reb Arthur told of a Tub’shevat observance several years ago in the remnant of a forest in which  a company had clear cut old growth giant redwood stands. In defiance of local edicts, Arthur and others carried redwood saplings onto the muddy ground of the ruined forest. He danced in the earthquake! I was inspired to write a song, at the suggestion of Cantor Leon Sher, much of which is below. I changed the first verse written here after Sandy.

Dancing in the Earthquake, for Arthur

A perfect super storm bears down on New York City,

Charged up seas stretch out an angry hand.

Hearts will tear as images reveal  homes and lives swept to the raging tide.

Heroes rise; hear our anguished cries,

Kol han’shama t’hallel Yah, all souls with breath shall praise the breath of life,

Praying with our legs* we learn to dance!

Kol han’shama t’hallel Yah, all souls with breath shall praise the breath of life,

Dancing in the earthquake, what will be our dance?

Teeth of metal gash the ancient bark, mighty redwood you will fall.

Trembling earth receives your body’s every branch, broken hearted.

Eytz chayim hee, our Tree of Life!

Bridge:

Eyts chayim hee, we are your letters, each soul bound with ev’ry other ‘neath majestic boughs

Oh, Arthur stands upon scarred ground, cradles a seedling in his hands

Teaching us: this can be our dance!

Kol han’shama t’hallel Yah, all souls with breath shall praise the breath of life,

Praying with our legs* we learn to dance!

Kol han’shama t’hallel Yah, all souls with breath shall praise the breath of life,

Dancing in the earthquake, this will be our dance, this will be our dance!

* Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said this about marching with Dr. Martin Luther King: “I felt as though my legs were praying”

Names matter: I had a teacher that called me Frodo all term, because of a Hobbit shirt I wore on the first day. My name’s not Frodo, but at least it was a name.

I just saw Les Miserable, and I noticed that Jean Valjean is the only character with both a first and last name. His, pursuer, Javert, tries always to call him by his number (24601, I think), and is the only character with only a last name . This numbering may remind you of someone else too: there is a man at the market where I shop, with a number tattooed on his arm.

I’ll meet 130 new people in classes in a couple of weeks. To look them each in the eye and learn their names will be my mission, it shows them each cavod, honor, that there is the depth of history, identity to them, an acknowledgement that who I see before me is just the tip of an iceberg in time, space and soul.

The new book and portion of the Torah read this week means names in Hebrew, (shemot), and there’s an iceburg in here.  Running strongly through this drama are words of births and families, and the names of women who honor those tiny, beautiful lives, and so save us all. under circumstances where babies and adults were reduced by blindness of fear and prejudice to expendables, to numbers.

In this drama names are withheld from a baby, (and his mother, father and sister)  until the moment the princess withdraws him from the river and names him Mosheh, Moses. An unnamed man will beat a slave (named brother)  Moses will flee, and marry and name his son stranger there, Gershom.  And then it is God who chooses a new name, at the place where an ordinary bush is burning without being consumed by the fire: Ehye asher ehye – I will be what I will be.

A brief side note about opposites: this fire will inspire the birth of a nation through water.  birth happens in the midst of  death, emancipation from the crucible of slavery, guided by pillars of fire and vapor, led by the son of a slave who emerges from the king’s palace, saved by water which drowns. A male hero emerges entirely fashioned by the strength of wonderfully subversive women who, in their courage choose life.

Names describe, identify, limit and constrict our reality, but they’re crucial.

We are the Namers, it was Adam’s job in the Garden to name animals. We name our children, and name ourselves by our actions. and we are our Names. or we are much more than our names, or sometimes much less than our names. We are named after loved ones … A poem:

Each of Us Has A Name

Each of us has a name
given by God
and given by our parents

Each of us has a name
given by our stature and our smile
and given by what we wear

Each of us has a name
given by the mountains
and given by our walls

Each of us has a name
given by the stars
and given by our neighbors

Each of us has a name
given by our sins
and given by our longing

Each of us has a name
given by our enemies
and given by our love

Each of us has a name
given by our celebrations
and given by our work

Each of us has a name
given by the seasons
and given by our blindness

Each of us has a name
given by the sea
and given by
our death.

~ Zelda ~

This poem honors those names who perished in the Holocaust.

I have a favorite song linked to this Torah portion: Holy Ground by Craig Taubman. It’s not about names, but it’s pretty cool anyhow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpVqLEzvt6Q

Name your price, a ticket to paradise,

I can’t stay here anymore, I’ve looked high and low, I’ve been from shore to shore to shore

If there’s a shortcut, I’d have found it, but there’s no easy way around it

Light of the world, shine on me, love is the answer. 

Shine on us all, set us free, love is the answer.               England Dan and John Ford Coley  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj9MbG2OPtM

It’s  Dec 24th, and after baking and devouring pizza and we’ve settled down to watch Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I was intrigued: what is it that the “spirits” of the play reveal inspires Ebenezer to completely change directions to embrace a life of joy, tzedakah and community? Dickens has brilliantly played with time using these spirits: awareness of childhood heartbreak and of the grave which awaits Scrooge sandwich a present moment in which his actions can influence the future.  Unbelievably, this is echoed in the end of father Jacob/Israel’s life. (Lest you think this is coincidence, recall the name of Ebenezer Scrooge’s dead partner, whose ghost starts this hullabaloo: Jacob, of course, Jacob Marley!)  As  is Jacob is nearing death, we are told of his life:  Jacob’s days, the years of his life added to 147. Days blend with years and life with death. As the days of his death draw near,  Jacob calls out for Joseph. Stand with me, do me an act of truth and loving kindness… and it is his grave he sees, and the act of  kindness is to bury him with his ancestors is Canaan. In the very next scene his grandsons, Ephraim and Menasheh appear: the future.  It is Ephraim and Menasheh’s names that many parents use today to invoke blessings for their sons.

Past, present, future, all mixed together, which of these time-realities has intense meaning? which holds the divine? One philosopher’s view of time is this beautiful thought by the pacifist  Alain “we wait to die as if every moment were not dying and coming back to life. With each moment we are offered a new life.  Today, now, immediately, it is our only foothold.”  And yet all those moments in the past, and perhaps the possible lines into the future are real and eternal too.   In relativity, time exists as  part of the weave of space-time, which says that all time exists at once: past, present and future we can only experience it linearly. For more on time and relativity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7vpw4AH8QQ

Ultimately, perhaps what’s real, and what links these times and perspectives is love, as Carole King sings:

Childhood dreams like muddy waters

Flowing through me to my son and daughters …

Only love is real, everything else illusion …

We end the book of Genesis this week with the dying of these iconic giants of our history/psyche. There are many forces and emotions which have propelled our ancestors and propel us too. But perhaps the only one which yields life, which endures has been love – the “foothold” and reality.  Judah’s and Joseph’s love have trumped jealousy and resentment to allow this moment. For Ebinezar Scrooge, acts and awareness of love save Tiny Tim, himself, and maybe us too.

But seriously, what’s love got to do with reality? what about all those other physical realities, such as those revealed by cold science, you know: f=ma? ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQmYBF_Sd8I )  Consider this: it it is love that makes this universe full of stars and life meaningful, is why we care about the universe at all. The pieces of the universe in proper relationship have created our bodies and souls, and  if we choose it or if we’re lucky, pieces of the universe love us, and we them.  One of the commandments most puzzling to some is the V’ahavta the command to Love God with all our heart, soul and might. This command follows the Shema and is in our mezuzah. But how and why love God? Perhaps this: love itself – the creative power that emerges with pieces of the universe in just the right relationship, is in reality a facet of God. What if our echo of this divine love is what makes us b’tzelem Elohim, in God’s image/shadow? But how can we love God in such a troubled world?

From Aaron Zeitlin’s Look at the Stars and Yawn:

Praise me, and I will know that you love Me.  Curse me, and I will know that you love Me.   Praise me or curse me and I will know that you love Me.

Sing out My Graces, says God; raise your fist and revile Me, says God  

Sing out graces or revile, reviling is also a kind of praise, says God.       

But if you sit fenced off in your apathy, says God, If you sit entrenched in ” I could care less” says God,                                        

If you look at the stars and yawn,  If you look at suffering and don’t cry out;

If you don’t praise and you don’t revile,  Then I have created you in vain, says God   **

So Ebinezer gets a glimpse across time and dimensions, recognizes the love lost in his childhood and youth, and lets love rule his present actions and so change the future. Jacob glimpses also across time, and our family survives through love. Love is the answer: God bless us every one!

** I know this poem has theological challenges: it presumes a deterministic view of God, in other words that God is puppeting the bad stuff, so we are obliged to raise our fist in protest. But in a universe containing chaos, and quantum fluctuations, God is the good stuff, the creativity, the life and love. We are God’s partners in making the good happen. In my view!

But I’ve wandered much further today than I should
And I can’t seem to find my way back to the wood

So help me if you can, I’ve got to get back
To the House at Pooh Corner by one
You’d be surprised, there’s so much to be done

Count all the bees in the hive
Chase all the clouds from the sky
Back to the days of Christopher Robin and Pooh

from Return to Pooh Corner, Kenny Loggins

I love this song, and Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pan and kids’ movies. Childhood is: wonder, play,  dreams, finger painting, messiness, temper tantrums that go out of control….

As parents we become intensely focused on protecting our children’s fragile/resilient  childhoods, and probably reliving ours a bit, (Carly Simon sang: “it’s coming around again”) But there are some scary limits on our power to protect our children. I remember the time I turned my back on my preschool daughter for a moment to get a towel for her -she was coming out of the swimming pool. Only she turned back and walked in under instead. She told me she called for me under the water, didn’t you hear me, Mom?

As for our teens. we are told: if you really love them set them free, also scary.  So here’s the story of a teen sent out on an errand by Dad. Teen son is fiercely beloved, in fact Dad’s favorite. But the unthinkable happens: crime, deception by his own brothers, human trafficking and enslavement. Dad’s told his worst fears have come true, and there is no bottom to his broken heart. The son: I imagine him crying out:   Why don’t you come and help me Dad, can’t you hear me? and how could you have put me in such danger? I bet you guessed, it is the tale of Joseph and his brothers. What is certainly high drama, even a Broadway musical, suddenly seems to me to be deeply personal. From the Torah portion named Vayigash, meaning to come close, it’s about youth, emotions suppressed that finally surface, about drawing close to yourself, your childhood and your family.

And through this process of drawing close, magic happens, life is saved. From Gen 45:33 – Judah offers himself in place of the youth (Benjamin) – who must be returned safely to their father. and the words youth, brothers and father appear many times in these verses. With this proof that his brothers can change, and these repeated reminders of his father, and of himself as a youth, Joseph can no longer swallow his emotions. Though he sends everyone away, all Egypt hears his wail – I’m Joseph he declares, and then again, the second time more dramatically. Then a question burst from the guy who named his firstborn God made me forget my past: he finally is able to ask Does my father still live? Joseph wanted to forget, but there is no forgetting childhood, that’s why all the world hears, though all are sent away – it’s true for us all.  From this cathartic cry, this drawing close, the pattern of Genesis, of brother against brother,  is finally broken as this brother, Joseph, forgives the almost unforgivable. Life is saved, our lives.

An excerpt from a song by David Wilcox is called How Did You Find Me Here?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3cXpTf2nh8

I thought I saw your footprints in the sand along the shore, I mumbled empty phrases, that sang so well before

Inches from the water, about to disappear, I feel You behind me, how did You find me here?

I couldn’t reach for rescue, I hid myself from view, I couldn’t stand to see me from Your point of view.

I knew I’d disappoint You if I showed to You this child, who was crying out inside me lost in the wild….

I think  Joseph has wandered much farther than he should, but that hurt child cries out, no longer lost, somehow healed. He finds our way back to Pooh Corner. People change, we can heal. May God help us protect the children, and may we all please heal.

The moon belongs to everyone, the best things in life are free; the stars belong to everyone, they gleam there for you and me. Lyric by B.G. De Sylva / Lew Brown / Ray Henderson

It is the sixth night of Chanukah, all the flames have burned down dark. It is also the new moon, Rosh Chodesh Tevet. It is the darkest month, and the darkest time of that month. But my head is spinning. On this clear, moonless night, Jupiter is shining piercing bright, a close approach to our planet. And we are passing through the Geminid meteor shower. So I walked outside, looking upwards, hoping to see a shooting star, but prepared for disappointment: you know, the light pollution, stars fade in the wash of man made lights of the auto dealerships and malls. And then I saw that streak across the sky. I cried out. Then another and a third, I screamed and jumped up in absolute glee (I really did, in the middle of the street at night). And When I finally eame inside I wondered: how can glitz and glitter, even our Chanukah candles even compare to Jupiter and shooting stars? The meteorites are visitors from time and space, reminders of the vastness. My own candles seemed so small, brief, and insignificant in comparison. But I was feeling way too good to accept this answer. Then I knew, my candles, my life too, is a window, a link through time and space. Their light’s made of hope and photons, just as the stars (and meteors and planets) are. Their shine carries memories of childhood menoras kindled. Joseph’s insight is that our dreams are windows to a greater reality – the faith of finding meaning in our symbols of hope and fear. And because of this insight he knows that we must save up the pieces of light for the dark times. That this will save life. Joseph is recognized as having insight, wisdom and Ruach Elohim, the spirit of God within him. That gorgeous night sky on this dark December night! Those lights are a window to my own lights, they are shards of light within the darkness, and ask us to open up our mind to what our dreams know: those sparks of hope saved up against the darkness are beautiful, timeless, and somehow linked to the candles in the menorah.

Behind all seen things lies something vaster; everything is but a path, a portal or a window opening on something other than iteself. Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sand and Stars

These song lyrics by Josh Nelson (The Josh Nelson Project)

In these lights we are surrounded by these lights, we are reminded by these lights, there are stories that will light our way.

In these lights we are reflected in these lights we are protected by these lights, there are miracles to find here in these lights.

What did you dream of last night? The images in dreams are fuzzy for me (sometimes I dream in music). Often I cannot remember them. Dreams can turn weird or nightmarish too. Are they real? Perhaps this: the ideals and hopes and fears in them are more intensely real than what we see awake.  Waking reality is weird, and  we can’t truly perceive it:  for example, two substances cannot truly touch, only repel. But Dreams, now that’s what can really touch us!
This is the darkest time of year for us in the northern hemisphere as we approach the winter solstice. A time perhaps for dreams. Those stars that light up our night sky reach into infinity – light coming from them comes from very far and is ancient. It reminds us of the awesome things in the midst of darkness. That darkness itself sparkles with the possibility of creation and brilliance and powerful forces, in other words that God is there.  Our days begin with the night just as our lives begin in the darkness of the womb. Darkness is a beginning; light is coming.  And Channah Senesh wrote of memories of those brilliant souls who have perished, but whose lives are inspiring: the stars that light the darkest nights are the lights that guide us.

The story of Joseph always begins on this week of Chanukah approaching. A season of dreams collides with a saga of Dreams and with the festival of lights.  As we light more and more candles in defiance of the increasing darkness (to help coax the light back?) we retell a story of faith against the odds: of dreams and ideals against the crushing power of the mighty.  From the song Never Give Up by Joel Sussman of Safam tells the story of the Macabees and Chanukah:

Never give up
From making the lantern light shine
Never give up
‘Cause there’s always another way….

Oh the miracle
Is that the light shines to this day
Yes it’s a miracle
That we still feel its rays

And Joseph, the dreamer, dreams of stars; and his dream touches the future just as real stars reach across time. And Joseph never gives up though he is in darkness that would plunge any person into despair. First thrown into a pit through the dark rage of his brothers’ jealousy,  “Behold, the Master of Dreams comes,” they say. But in their sarcasm they’ve hit the nail on the head. Joseph is next thrown into a dark pit due to the treachery and lies of Potiphar’s wife (everything happens twice in Joseph’s story) Both times Joseph rises from the darkness because the dreamer never loses faith that God is with him, and never gives up. Just like the Macabees, outnumbered, in darkness, and rising against the odds. Another soul who changed reality with his dreams: the  Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, whose birthday we celebrate in another month;

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Wow- talk about dreams being the brightest reality!

An inspiring song, Dreamers, by Leon and Beth Sher/ Beged Kefet, includes these words of  light emerging from darkness

We each have lonely hours, we wonder how we’ll cope, we’ve been in darkness, drowning, deprived of all our hope.We question God’s great wisdom giving each of us free will, to trust, to choose, to do what’s right though we’re imperfect still. And then a leader comes, who’s not afraid to dream, a preacher leads with faith and dares each cynic to believe; A teacher makes her life a lesson so we won’t forget; the journey of a thousand miles begins with just one step;

Dreamers, we’re dreamers; Like a candle shining light where it is dark…..

Finally, this song by Dan Nichols is called To Be a Light. This Chanukah I hope it will help me to dream big: that my soul, in synergy with others, can BE a light in darkness When I fall,   I will rise,   In the dark,  you’re my light.   I will walk,  love will lead, in the search for ones in need. And I want to know what it means to be a light. Light a candle, say a prayer, Shine a light on darkness somewhere.There is hope, this I trust, for the gracious and the just, And I want to know what it means to be a light. Remember, you are made of star dust. Dream – be a light! Chanukah Sameach!

I don’t go to see violent movies, just ask my family: Friday the Thirteenth, The Wild Bunch. The Evening News – (oh, wait, that’s not a movie) I think people like to own these, to have some measure of control over the ragings. But I hate them. It’s not the blood and guts, it’s the entropy, the heartbreak. To conquer and overcome these forces is the heroic, it makes me cry. Well, in the continuation of the twins’ saga, Jacob and Esav will break a pattern of violence against brothers which began with the first brothers, Cain and Abel. The conflict is mirrored in Isaac and Ishmael, and now twin sons who’ve been fighting since before they were born. Esav’s identity, blessing and birthright have been stolen, and he brings 400 armed men to destroy the thief, his brother. But instead the brothers embrace, Esav the hunter kisses his brother on the neck. HOW is the pattern broken? The key is in that famous wrestling match, where Jacob struggles with a man all night long, or is it an Angel of God, or is it himself/ his life, or is it his brother? Jacob sort of becomes Israel, “God-wrestler” and gains a brilliant insight – that the humans that we wrestle with have within them the image of God, B’tzelem Elohim. He wrestles with a man, but it’s also God. And this enables him to be broken/limping/humble enough to call his brother “my Lord”, to bow before him and tell Esav, the brute, that seeing his face is like seeing God’s. And brother does not kill brother. But the new formed tie is fragile, Jacob/Israel won’t join his brother’s journey. and then the saga turns to Friday the Thirteenth. Israel cannot keep his new name, and the pattern of trickery turns very violent. Rape, deception, murder. Dina, Jacob’s only daughter is raped, or at least her virginity taken; The prince, Shechem so wants to marry her that he agrees that all the males of the town will be circumcised, and then while recovering all the town is murdered. That these are no strangers, but the children of Israel/Jacob is a warning: beware the enemy for he is us. and I rage, I wrestle I scream at us, at God, for this is our God-inspired text, and I hate that this is in our Torah. But maybe that’s what we’re supposed to do. Jacob/ Israel/ we have failed to learn b’tzelem Elohim, that we are in the image of God .  Perhaps it is impossible to see divinity in the face of threat to our own – our family, our ego. How can we hold on to our ideals? What should the brothers and father of Dina have done? Please chime in here, because I don’t know. But I know what they did was the worst possible expression of our humanity. Jacob never climbs that ladder, we are forever stuck between heaven and earth. By finding a better way, the best in each other, a way out of the cycle of violence, perhaps our generation can begin to climb those rungs.

From Safam Brother on Brother   safam.com Piece by Peace Album

Two brothers, together,
That’s how it should be.
Each one has determined
His own destiny,
A hunter, a fighter,
One lives by the sword.
The other has chosen
To worship the Lord.

Brother on brother,
They can agree blood is thicker than water,
Brother on brother, so much to be gained.
Brother on brother,
Look at them now embracing each other.
Brother, brother. . . . Peace will reign!

So often it’s only the object we see and not the spaces in between, but this star above is created by both. So often in life it’s the things we focus on: the job, the car the tv, you know, THE THINGS. But, I think the real meaning is in the spaces in between, the relationship. The spaces are not empty, but buzzing with the possibility of creation, it’s the place where love lives, maybe it’s where God is.

So lots of things exist in the spaces in between, life for example. It’s not the organs in your body that make for life, it’s the interactions they do – that’s what stops the moment after a creature dies.  Also it turns out in physics that the empty space between “things” isn’t empty, that it is filled with dark energy, and that as the universe expands, this energy increases, sending the universe hurtling ever outward (http://www.youtube.com/user/scishow?feature=results_main if you’re interested).  Also it turns out that the space between things is filled with a Higgs field, and that it’s the interaction of photons with this field that makes things real, gives them mass, (I think!)

Parts add up to more than the sum, the interaction, if correct, births new levels of existence: in the universe, in biology, in our lives and communities. Perhaps that’s  where Torah speaks loudest love your friend as you love yourself, honor your parents – it’s all about interaction that forms caring, beautiful communities in which we can live and raise our children.  Which brings us to the story of Jacob. Jacob’s been a heel grabber all his life, striving, by trickery if need be, for what he cannot have – to be better and get more than his twin brother. But one day all that evaporates, and he is sent into the wilderness. I don’t know about you, but it’s how I felt in the aftermath of the storm – without power things were more basic and clearer. With his ego just a little dimmed, he lies down.  Dreaming is a space in between, so is night. Urgently he needs solidity, a Rock (!) is his pillow and he dreams of the ultimate connection, the ultimate in relationship, a ladder who’s feet is on solid ground, but whose tip reaches into the heavens, and there, are messengers/ angels going up and going down.  The thing is, these connections are always there, but we need the insights to see them – our egos must get out of the way.  and Jacob wakes, God was in this place and I, i did not know. He might have walked right on by the very gate of heaven, maybe we do each day. and those angels go up first. Jacob’s still not there yet, making a bargain with God, he just doesn’t get it – he doesn’t ever climb that ladder! But he is changed, perhaps into someone who can enter into relationship. The next thing he will do is roll the boulder off the well, kiss his sweet Rachel, and cry out in the anguish of love. When he leaves this in between place to return to Canaan, he will enter into a wrestling relationship with a mysterious stranger. He will be shared between two wives, four women, even his sheep will be a mix between colors. But it all begins with that ladder, the ultimate connection, relationship, space between, filled with rungs to connect. But WHAT ARE THE STEPS MADE OF?  musical harmonies, perhaps (a beautiful form of interaction)? our acts of lovingkindness? certainly! yet another form of connection. chime in: what are the steps made of? would you make the climb? Where is that place in YOUR life where heaven and earth meet, and what must you dream to see it?

This song came out this morning:  Between

Take my hand and help me climb, I’ve been in the depths below; don’t know why I’m here among all these broken hearts,               ok It’s my own heart that’s been so hollow I’ll admit.  how can climb? help me look beyond my own four walls

Life happens in the space between and there are angels going up and going down.

You are that angel, inspiring me to climb to the heights of hope and mystery

Ev’ry rung is made of love, and gravity helps me to return the favor done me

And Jacob, he dreamed in the wilderness, needing that rock desp’rately; always climbing, dreaming of being his brother’s best, to defeat fist to word; But Jacob don’t you know it’s brothers that we need,    ……chorus….

Bridge: Maybe between is all we ever have, between heaven and earth, between  death and birth, Between you and me it’s love that’s the best, helps us find our way in the wilderness

But Jacob never climbs that ladder, his between. so did he miss the point of his great dream? God was in this place and I didn’t know, Next thing he’s rolling that old rock off a water well, kissing his sweet Rachel; and wrestling makes a space between two  brothers                     …chorus…