Miryam's Space

Remember when?

I date my life’s events in the past 25 years based on how big my kids were at that time, (sound familiar Moms?!). The Torah portion Massei retells the Israelites 42 camping stops from slavery to the promised land. “Imagine you are packing up your belongings to take a journey,” my  instructor directed. In my imagination, I took only one thing: my toddler in my arms. Interesting, because it’s been at least 12 years since I’ve had a toddler. What would you take? Where are the places along your life’s path? How will you mark or describe them. Perhaps this: we journeyed to the place of love, and rested at despair. From despair we journeyed the place we were sick, and rested at a place of recovery. From recovery did you journey to someplace: California, and perhaps rest in a place of inspiration? And all along the way, how will you remember your journey, (by how big you have grown)?  Pathways diverged along the way, how did you choose?  Well, last week I journeed to New Hampshire. There I was attending the Aleph Kallah, organized by the Jewish Renewal movement: a passionate, new, liberal, movement strongly influenced by Chassidism, the teachings of Reb Zalman Shachter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Wtq5L_zymM; by modern environmentalism and feminism, Conservative chavurah and Reform  and even Buddhist influences  but attended by a large mixed tent of Jews. Among my favorite experiences were morning services lakeside: the breeze rustling through the leaves blew through me too!  Evening services in the giant tent were fun: many hundreds raising voices, dozens dancing (many barefoot on the grass), many smiles, much music and joy.

I studied for a week with a great philosopher, lover of life, and trickster (I’m told), Rabbi Jack Gabriel, a child of survirors, yeshivah educated, modern musician, traveler, and a funny guy. He who spoke about music and the Chasidic masters, and Kaballah. He taught me what it means to walk through walls when it seems there’s no way out. He’s one of those teachers you just love to listen and soak up all you can. I had one cool, original insight from his teaching of Kaballah’s four worlds.  This is from his song “Four Worlds Chant”

…We’re in Four Worlds simultaneously…

The first World is Assiyah, where we do our deeds. We world, we fix, we build a way to fill our needs.

The second is Ytizirah where emotions flow. We laugh, we cry, we hold or let our feelings go.

The third World is B’riyah where our thoughts are found. Beliefs and world and theories goin’ round and round

The fourth World is Atzilut, where we stop –to bbe. A soul within a spirit of serenity.

So, I thought, how can you be in these four parallel universes simultaneously? How to unite them? Then I doodled: a musical staff has five lines, yes, but four spaces – one for each World! The clef sign can bind these spaces together as music can do for our soul! So cool!

I also studied Torah in a new way, with 20 study buddies, in a group called Speak-Chorus  taught by Cantors Abbe Lyons and Michal Rubin, and Rabbi Melissa Wenig. We listened to the verses in Hebrew and varying translations. It turns out that the names of each of the 42 stops in the wilderness have amazing meanings hidden in translation. For example, Rimon Peretz means “Exploding pomegranates”,  Marah is bitterness, Yam suf, usually the Reed Sea can easily be read Yam sof, the Sea at the end. We studied interpretive text including the Baal Shem Tov, Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, modern poets too. We were asked to write responses to what we heard individually in poetry and prose, and then in small groups. We spoke of our own lives’ journeys. Then the three teachers did something pretty amazing, combining the ramblings of seventeen students into a script! The common thread made it a dialogue between we wanderers and God.  The group presented this collage as the D’var Torah following the Torah reading. Rabbi Melissa explained we were presenting the Drash (commentary) of our hearts. It suddenly became beautiful, a sacred connection of the text to ourselves, and out to the listeners we were sharing with.  I include a bit of the script here:

Are we there yet? Am I at the Promised Land? (voiced as whiny children in the back seat)….

You and I stopped and camped so many times; explosive spaces between the resting…

40 years of wandering You and I, sleeping on dynamite! …

Your holy man the Berditcher told me: “Discover the divinity in each place and raise it up to its holy source”  Eighteen months.homelessness: Where’s the divinity in that?

Yam sof. The sea at the edge of the world. I lean into the wind, smell the salty algae,  feel the squishy sand between my toes. It’s lonely there. You don’t advertise that you’ve been there. You don’t get a bumper sticker: “This car drove to the sea”, “Been to the End”.  I think I’ve come back, but sometimes I don’t know. Sometimes I smell the salt in the air.

Rimon Peretz: Exploding Pomegranates, Bursting forth with aliveness, all 613 vitxvot break loose and explode me into a juicier place. …Suck the sweetness out of each seed…

..Retracing my own birth between worlds, the rooms of my heart calling for restoration.

God, may I find my way in a land that is mine…

We ended singing a translation of Noami Shemer’s Haderech Aruchah

The road is very long, it is so long,

The road is very long and full of splend’rous song

And this long march…I travel all alone

And so I sing… the lonely singer’s song, Halelu, haleluyah, halellu.

May you grow and enjoy on your journeys!

There once was a father with FIVE daughters: oy! he must make matches for them all, and they’re all such modern, uppity young women, and then there’s this arduous journey…..

Perhaps you think it’s Tevya, the Dairyman, from Fiddler on the Roof,  but this family predates Tevya by a couple of thousand years, and the journey is not across the Atlantic, but across the wilderness, wandering toward Israel.  The father’s name is Tzelofechad, and he will die in the wilderness, as all the parents of the wanderers will, leaving orphaned families who must rely on each other. But Tzelofechad had no sons, which meant that when the daughters arrived in the Promised land they would have nothing:  the law from Sinai said only sons can inherit!  Now, life has been tough: born into slavery, a promise that seems unfulfilled, merciless attacks from the rear, followed by more wandering in wilderness. Cries of thirst and hunger, mutiny, plague and rebellion – things are so bad, the Israelites cry to return to slavery. And now they are fatherless and faced with poverty, a system that doesn’t respect daughters, but favors sons?

But these five daughters have it all figured out: they love their father and want to honor his memory, they support each other and believe in God’s justice and goodness. So they grab the guts to stand together before the powers that be: Moses and the elders in front of the tent of meeting, and make their reasoned, impassioned legal plea.

Perhaps God waits for such as these, a test to see in which of us the love and faith and ideals are more powerful than the fear. And… AMMENDMENT to the Torah!: the plea of Tzelofechad’s daughters is righteous!

So I wondered what these wonderful ladies were like, and I closed my eyes, and pictured them dancing in printed skirts, waltzing with each other. They each must have had talents, hopes and fears! Here’s one possibility:

Sister’s Keepers Waltz

Chorus:           Machlah, Noah, Holga Milkah and Tirtzah, daughters of Tzelophehad

                        Five beautiful sisters, each her sister’s keeper, as we journey to our land….

Machlah we call you Ima, you carried little ones on your back, too soon our mother died,

Noah master of the lyre, making even sad hearts smile,

Holga, tender and shy, open, gentle soul, don’t hide!

Milkah weaver of tapestries, brilliant at her art;

and Tirtsah you’re our little one, beyond your years you’re wise of heart.

Chorus

Now our father’s gone, We miss him so; What will come of us?  we can’t know.

But we believe in the promise, a land where milk and honey flow, where justice and wisdom grow.

The law says we have no hope, but we know that can’t be so!

Chorus

Arm in arm we stand, Moses hear our plea, Our father was a good man, but no sons had he.

We will keep his memory, alive in the promised land.  Just give us a chance, lend us your hand!

Chorus

Have we been too bold?  what will our future hold?  It is clear to all who hear: God has said our law is just,                 a future forged in faith and love is now within our trust

Chorus

So after I wrote down these words, I heard a song for the first time, and fell in love with it. The song called Show the Way  by David Wilcox is about how the violence of the world so overwhelms someone that they no longer believe in hope or love, and the composer sings an inspiring antidote. And then I realized that this is what the daughters mean to us.  It’s been another violent year. A shooting of 20 children in an elementary school, a war in the Middle East again, and….  But five daughters trusted in God and love and promise and stood up together to the powers that be and….changed the world! and maybe we can too…

http://davidwilcox.com/index.php?page=songs&category=Big_Horizon&display=1367

Show the Way,  David Wilcox

You say you see no hope, you say you see no reason
We should dream that the world would ever change
You’re saying love is foolish to believe
‘Cause there’ll always be some crazy with an Army or a knife
To wake you from your day dream, put the fear back in your life

Look, if someone wrote a play just to glorify
What’s stronger than hate, would they not arrange the stage
To look as if the hero came too late, he’s almost in defeat
It’s looking like the Evil side will win, so on the Edge
Of every seat, from the moment that the whole thing begins
It is….

Love that mixed the mortar
And it’s love who stacked these stones
And it’s love who made the stage here
Although it looks like we’re alone
In this scene set in shadows
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it’s love that wrote this play…
For in this darkness love can show the way

So now the stage is set.  You feel your own heart beating
In your chest.  This life’s not over yet.
So we get up on our feet and do our best.  We play against the Fear.
We play against the reasons not to try
We’re playing for the tears burning in the happy angel’s eyes  For its….

Chorus

The Daughters five know the stage is set for them: they feel their hearts beating as one, and stand up tall and put their plea. They do it with love and faith, though the odds were stacked against them, and there were lots of reasons not to try (the earth swallowed challengers to status quo previously). The five an inspiration in our own lives.

I’ve always liked the animated movie Shrek. It’s cool how the film plays off the many childhood fables and icons to build its comic world. But where does Donkey, the wisecracking sidekick come from? My sixth grade students are tickled to learn that Donkey in Shrek was born in the Bible, from this week’s reading, verses which begin with comedy and move toward beauty and blessing.  A crazy mix of spiritual and comic that you don’t often see.   King Balak has hired the greatest visionary and wizard of the pagan world, Bilaaam, to curse the Israelites, because their numbers scare him. The visionary wizard is indeed open to God, who first tells him not to go, but when Bilaam persists, “alright, go already! but be aware of what I’ll tell you and do it!”, God groans. Perhaps expecting all the drama to come from the heavens, Bilaam is blind, cannot see a messenger/ angel right in front of him waving a flaming sword. But the donkey he’s riding can! Does this ever happen to you – can’t see what’s right in front of you (I could not find my glasses or my tea this morning!)

Inattentional Blindness: The lack of awareness we constantly experience because we’re focusing on what we think is important – we miss so much. Optical illusions, deceptions, mind blowing stuff – check it out here from National Geographic’s “Brain Games” We are blind due to lack of attention- so true!  http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/brain-games/videos/brain-games-seeing-is-believing-preview/

But what does it say that the ass Bilaam is riding CAN see the angel, and because of that saves Bilaam’s life? And when the prophet goes to the mountaintop (to curse the Israelites) he ends up being the conduit to God’s blessings instead – all because a donkey has vision!

Maybe the donkey we ride is the animal within us, or wild nature.  We ignore nature and our own instinct at our peril. Thoreau writes: In wildness is the preservation of the world

Sharing this song once again: David Wilcox’s “How Did You Find Me Here”

I knew I’d disappoint you

If I showed to you this child

Who is crying out inside me

Lost in the wild

http://davidwilcox.com/index.php?page=songs&category=How_Did_You_Find_Me_Here&display=206

Brothers and Sisters. We grow up in the same universe of childhood, and share so much. If you’re lucky, (as I am! shout out bro!) this is a relationship you keep, as a compass and a connection in your life. I hope my own children always look out for one another, and keep each other in their hearts as an anchor, a lifeline. In this week’s Torah portion Moses loses his brother and his sister. How must Moses feel, losing siblings that have shared leadership with him? Strangely Aaron is mourned but not Miriam: Miriam, who followed Moses along the Nile, who led us in freedom, birthed from the sea, whose very name has the sea “yam” within it, draws no tears. This always reminds me of siblings who’ve shared leadership in my own memory, the Kennedy brothers, and whose passing brought tears.  The date of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination was June 6th, so it’s also on my mind. He might have won that race for the presidency, if not for the violence, and then how would our world be different today? For me, his most memorable words were

There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?   but he’s got many memorable words http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/98221.Robert_F_Kennedy

Back to MIriam: a woman who is  water in the desert. The legend surrounding Miriam speaks of a miracle: a well of fresh water which followed the Israelites through their desert wanderings. For a great song on the well, check out Debbie Friedman’s Water in the Well at 2:50 in this clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jJXCpEqO54

Water: It’s just been pouring in New Jersey, again.  Yet, recently  I was reminded of the terrible drought that plagued so much of the nation this past year.. It is summer on the Jersey shore, and the crashing of the waves draws people and commands them to look toward the horizon. Water is life, Or flooding and storms bring death and destruction.  Miriam is  Mayim Chayim, living waters to her brothers and to the spirit of this rogue people. And when she dies the people cry out for water, and Moses strikes a rock, in defiance of God’s command to speak to it. And for his loss of words, he will never enter the promised land. Or is it his loss of Miriam, or loss of tears for her? In any case, when he strikes the rock, Great waters gush forth for the people, Mayim Rabim. This phrase reminds me of Song of Songs: Great waters cannot quench this love of ours.  Although love between siblings is not something you hear about much in songs on the radio, they moved a nation through the wilderness, drove our nation in the 1960’s and powerfully drive our lives each day.  Here’s to brothers and sisters. I offer this song about great water from psalm 93, whose melody rises and falls as water waves: Mikolot Mayim Rabim:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmdSade-P9I

“The single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.” Carl Sandburg

These words were the cover of readings which enhanced a T’flilah (prayer) session at Hava Nashira that I attended this past week.
At this session, dozens of us encircled three leaders, teachers, lightening flashing outside the bay windows. It was beautiful, even when giggles (!) took over for a few minutes (an experiment in group sound). I was in an amazing place. It sounds sappy, but it strongly occurred to me earlier that day, as I walked along lovely paths, song and harmony coming from everywhere all day long, that I had wandered into Paradise. And it wasn’t just the natural and aural beauty that lent truth to this feeling, but the people, whose hands were ALWAYS open to help and embrace. I have never been in a place like this before, it’s good to know that reality can take this form for a few days, that this is possible. Inspiration on so many levels.
In this week’s Torah portion, the rebels’ talk of paradise and of ideals, is abused to bring the spiritual and moral leaders down, in order to raise egos up. Korah tells Moses and Aaron: Rav L’chah!- you are too much! All of the community are holy, not just you, because God’s in their midst.  Sweet, head-turning words, appealing to the democratic instinct in us, but although God is always among us, but it’s how we act on that potential, with open, embracing hands that makes a holy community. It’s what we do. But Korah’s hand is clenched in a grasping fist. The first words of the portion lets us know Korah took: he’s a taker. He want’s Moses’ turf, and the turf will swallow him alive to Sheol, land of the dead. Then Moses sent for Datham and Abiram, but they would not come, and they used the words of paradise as a weapon. First they called Egypt, of slavery (!) a land of milk and honey compared with the accursed wilderness they were in. Then they announced: even if they land they’d been led to was paradise, land of milk and honey, it wasn’t enough, because Moses had “gouged out subordinates’ eyes!” Talk about living life with a fist, and making paradise irrelevant! They will be consumed by fire. A plague would begin, and only the courage of Moses and Aaron could stand between the living and the dead. Nowhere, and during no time in my few days at Hava Nashira was there ego, power struggles, or grabbing. Spiritual leaders sang, and souls soared, though each song leader in attendance could have led, there was no resentment. Faculty and students, basses and sopranos, teens and elders, our voices harmonized and raised us all. There were lots of great moments: 240 voices in Shabbat prayer blew me away, as did Billy Jonas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXMngHZapiI, Dan Nichols, Rosalie Boxt, Merri Arian & Ellen Dreskin (just plain inspiring, all faculty were awewome), a song tribute to Debbie Friedman, enthusiastic teens, Nigg’n leading by Joey Weisenburg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mUYOyC5-Hw , Shira Kline https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGw2g_5DWa4, a lovely lake, beauty everywhere the eye or ear turned.

I’ll share that there was one moment when I knew, like lightening, that I was in a place better than Paradise. It was following a really cathartic Mi Sheberach, a prayer for healing, sung by the open scroll. We embraced one another, Dianne, next to me, embraced me with her tallit, and lent me a tissue. Angels don’t need healing, don’t have their days made more precious for their impermanence, and don’t receive the benefit of the support and magic I was receiving, my hand held out and waiting.

I end with this new Oseh Shalom, which resonated through the camp and our hearts http://www.navatehila.org/35897/Oseh-Shalom  You’ll just have to imagine it raising the roof 240 voices strong!

A tale is told of two very cranky men, Schlemeil and Schlemazel who left Egypt during the great Exodus. They became very weary what with all that marching, and at one point noticed that their shoes were being muddied, as they slogged along. “Ugh”, complained Schlemeil, “my sandals will be ruined with much more of this, can’t we rest already!” and “are we there YET?” They never noticed the sea was parting beyond their heads. They continued to look downward as the trumpets blared and the mountain smoked. “How rocky this road is, and all that noise blaring!” whined Schlemazl. “Are we THERE yet?” The never noticed the revelation at Sinai! “Oh, my aching feet!” they both declared. Time passed and there was lots more marching. Eventually, exasperated they both shouted “ARE WE THERE YET!?” and never noticed the sight of the promised land.  Where we look determines our experience, not where we go. Miracles could be happening around us, but if we don’t look up every once in awhile, they don’t happen for us!
I’ve just been watching this eye opening series called “Brain Games” on National Geographic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xia09Ix-NJs&feature=em-subs_digest
The limitations of our brain makes us blind to MOST of the things going on around us. We focus, quite efficiently on what we think’s important for our survival, They call it “inattentional blindess”. So what do we focus on? Problems! As Rachel Barenblat wrote this week: when’s the last time you were sleepless thinking about something awesome? What if our worst blindness was ourself: that we couldn’t see the goodness, the powerful potential within to do great things? It’s an easy trap to fall into: when I was a student, the really good grades made no emotional impact, but I’ll always remember that first grade math test I failed (arithmetic eluded me, I was too scared of my first grade teacher).

This week’s Torah portion is a favorite of mine, Shelach L’chah was my son’s Bar Mitzvah portion and it contains the stories of the twelve scouts. Each scout representing a tribe of Israelites, leaders all, took the same trip and were in the same places, but saw different realities. For ten of them the land of milk and honey was scary, full of man-eating danger. The natives of the land were so enormous that we were, in our own eyes, as tiny grasshoppers, and so we must seem in their eyes. These tiny grasshoppers, chagavim, are edible, by the way. To see yourself as a grasshopper is to lack the self love and respect of a creature who is forged in the divine image. Newly liberated slaves failed to hold on to faith in themselves and in God in a scary, new world of independence.  In the classroom, one of the best predictors of a child’s failure is a self fulfilling prophecy of I don’t have what it takes, I’m not college material. So powerful, it may be an insurmountable barrier blocking success. All tries to help become diffracted through this lens. Our brain is hard wired to focus on those pieces of our life that threaten our survival – they become the all we see. Perhaps it’s why elections are won by fear mongering. But there’s a better way to live: “We pray to live, not by our fears, but by our hopes” expressed in this line of the Modim (prayer for thanks) in the reform prayer book.

But where do we find the strength to live by our hopes, and, recognizing our fears, put them in a place that does not paralyze? Family? Possibly, but having a family to care for can make us even more fearful, for good reason. The Israelites response to the spies reports is to cry out: Why is God bringing us to this land to die by the sword? Our wives and children will be captives! It would be best to go back to Egypt!’  Maybe for strength we can lean on some sweet spot of inspiration,  for perspective, and to help us raise our eyes out of the mud of fear.   For much of the history of the Jewish people this strength that lifts our eyes has been Torah. Chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek, is traditionally chanted upon completing a book of Torah. But I like it here for these verses too, and so I sang Dan Nichols’ interpretation  to my son after blessing him for his Bar Mitzvah. It means: “Be Strong, be strong, and let us strengthen one another” Here are some of the lyrics:

We have come from near and far, to raise our voice in song;

The more we join in the refrain, the more we feel strong: chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek.

There is a power in this place and time, to shape the rest of our lives

As we return each year we fine a truth we can’t deny.

Be strong, let us strengthen one another! Be strong let us celebrate our lives!… chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek!

As we sing we link ourselves, to those who came before,

and we’re one with those who’ve yet to come, our strength it will endure. Be strong!….

Red light, green light, one, two, three! -a  kids’ game with clear signals, and a clear aim – to reach another person, the caller. We long for clear signs on our journey – of stopping and starting places. Well, this past week ended the school year for my sixth and fourth graders, our journey ends, and we say goodbye, I’ll miss you! I know they will grow and change – they won’t quite be the same in September. Last week were commencement exercises at the community college where I teach. I guess it’s a green light, but it ends a journey, and many relationships that were forged. In this week’s Torah portion are interesting traffic signals for our journey in the wilderness. A cloud over the Tent – that portable sanctuary, meeting place, during the day – to comfort, cool and surround. Pillar of fire at night to enlighten and warm. These are the times to linger in the wilderness, to experience what it has to teach you, not to move on in your journey. When the cloud lifts from the tent, we know it’s time to move – but what will we do on the move? Well, Moses then instructs the Israelites to fashion silver trumpets, instruments for us to listen to, whether it is to fight our battles, or to celebrate our joys. Either way, the blast of melody can help us to respond with a full heart. But perhaps the real aim, of commencing summer vacation, or a job search, or other battles and joys, is to stride with our hearts trumpet-inspired and reach another soul. Red light, green light, one, two, three. Miriam, sister of Moses, must battle illness – snow white scales. Her journey stops, and she waits, on the outskirts, for the week. Her brother reaches out to her, and to God, with a heartfelt prayer for healing “El na r’fah na la” God, please heal her, please! And then the journey can continue. Perhaps that’s the real meaning of the cloud of vapor and pillar of fire while we must wait: Cooling vapors surround us in the heat, fires warm away the chill so we can refresh and heal. The enclosures of childhood: family, teachers, friends are these clouds and flames,  lifting to release us, so we can move forward. Melodies inspire and guide which way we’ll go . I offer this song for healing by Beth Schafer, because she urges that the power to move forward, out of the darkness is deep within us all along

El Na Ra fa na la (playing as a rhythmic chant throughout)
It’s in you, it’s in me
The power to emerge into the light from the dark, it’s in you…
Talk to every fiber of your being with your heart, It’s in you
Oh God, give me the strength
I am tired but I’m listening
Is it in me? The answer’s in me
Oh God give me the courage
To risk battling my brokenness
Is it in me? The way is in me
El Na Ra fa na la
It’s in you, it’s in me,…

.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loBl3DkEAF4

“May God bless and Keep you always, may your wishes all come true;  May you always do for others and let others do for you; May you build a ladder to the stars, and climb on ev’ry rung; and may you stay forever young”

Youth – grace of body, openness of mind and heart, perhaps. We were of a generation coming of age in the 1960s and 70s that mistrusted the older generations, and hoped not to become them, like Peter Pan. In truth there is something precious in remembering the child within us. One illusion of youth, though, is invincibility and immortality. Perhaps it’s what Adam and Eve lost in the garden, this illusion. But there is a grace and beauty in aging and perhaps even in facing our mortality. In the move Troy, Achilles says the gods envy this about us: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dulxL0t5l7U

All I know is that when threatened by age’s infirmities, and loss of time, a sense of urgency can prod us to make it count, to find meaning in small and large gifts and acts. So maybe grownups need that blessing as much as kids.

Debbie Friedman in “Youth Shall See Visions” (1981, quoting from the prophet Joel) Sings “childhood was for fantasies, for nursery rhymes and toys… when I grew up I came to know that life was not a game; that heroes are just people that we call another name;…I cannot have a future ’till I embrace my past; I promise to pursue the challenge, time is going fast; And the old shall dream dreams, and the youth shall see visions; and our hopes will rise up to the skies; We must live for today, we must build for tomorrow, give us time, give us strength, give us life.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wt_uaTrDtc

So the blessings of the Torah are for all of us, young and old, and I’m not sure if I agree with Bob Dylan, that we should add “forever young” to those blessings. What do you think?

Final link is Peri Smilow’s beautiful melodic version of the blessings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93O5JAYGH4s

Numbers and Wilderness – do they have anything to do with one another? My son recently told me he was “very, very, very, very, very, very, very hungry” That’s seven veries, I counted, because Numbers matter.  Math and science speak to us in the language of Numbers, and Numbers is the name of this past week’s Torah portion. But it’s also named “In the Wilderness”, With quantities and equations we can understand both ordinary and extraordinary phenomena of our universe. Equations like E = mc squared, give us insight to this wild universe.  But technology has used numbers to mechanize our piece of the universe, and, perhaps, to dehumanize each other. Numbers names this portion, because the Israelites take a count of themselves, well, not all, just men of fighting age. This evokes some troubling images: the names on the Vietnam memorial wall, the numbers of the draft, the numbers on the evening news of the wounded and dead and captured of today’s warriors. It also separates those who are counted from those not counted. And we are told Abraham’s descendents would be as the stars: too numerous to count But we do count: check out the population clock http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
7.1 billion and counting on this precious planet. What are the implications of an ever more crowded world? Do we devalue people in the crowd as being in our way? Will there be enough resources for us all? Can we value the tiny lives born into poverty around the world as much as they deserve? And many move out of rural areas into megalopolises, where there is little of the wilderness, and less humanity. And we live mechanized lives in polluted areas. Out of touch with nature our souls are impoverished. Albert Einstein, composer of the equation above was devastated to think that the numbers and the science he loved were being misused to threaten the natural world and people he loved. This clip from a wonderful PBS video on the scientist’s views – check it out here at about 3 minutes in:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB6_0pcUfBc&list=PLK1jVke6c4kZttMPXE9IPeVqxu2hh8bur

Wilderness served as a crucible for the Israelites, a place they find Heaven meeting earth and themselves.
So perhaps numbers threatens wildness, and the best things are beyond counting? what do you think?
I think this song “Seasons of Love,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmlj2JF5yLk has the best advice for what counting’s best.
I had this running joke going with my Grandma, all we had to say was “how many legs does a chair have?” and we’d laugh. You see once, when helping her to buy those little pads for the feet of a chair, she insisted we must buy multiples of three, because in her imagination, for that moment chairs had three legs. She didn’t realize her error until asked “and how many legs does a chair have?” And the whole world rests on three things, says tradition -truth, justice and peace. Or maybe just one thing? – the whole world is sustained by the breath of children!  (Talmud)  Numbers matter, each child counts!

“Remove your shoes, for the place on which you are standing is Holy ground” God said to Moses. We must take our shoes off, if only to feel more intensely that we are earth-connected.
Jacob similarly was shaken by his vision of the ladder: “This is the very gateway to heaven… God was in this place and I, i did not know it.” Consider: every bit of ground on this planet gifted to us is Holy ground, a place where heaven and earth can meet, or be severed depending upon our actions.
In the Torah portion Behar, meaning “at the mountain”, God speaks to Moses, not from the tent, but from Sinai itself, because crucial insights are coming: the land is alive! It must be, because it requires a Shabbat after six years in the same way the human spirit does after 6 days. The land further requires a Yovel, or Jubilee after fifty years, just as humans do, for the Yovel demands release of humans in bondage, and debts which bind us are released. Keratem d’ror – proclaim release throughout the land, and blow the Shofar and celebrate! And we really can celebrate, because we are free from the burden of Adam’s curse, to work the land for sustenance. We are in synchrony with the land, and we can never really own landa, as we can never own a human soul, a slave. Both belong to God. This release, the Jubilee, is proclaimed on Yom Kippur, when we remind ourselves that our lives and souls are in God’s keeping, releasing our egos to this reality. Furthermore, the land must never be sold beyond reclaim. Our fate, our lives are tied up with the land.

The land: is it really alive? Our earthly atoms are made literally of stardust. But alive? The ancient Greeks enlivened the planet in a persona named Gaia. This is not legend, but actual Biology. The planet’s living and nonliving parts interact to keep this planet habitable. We are part of an incredible, living system, truly intertwined with the earth for our survival. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44yiTg7cOVI check out the Gaia hypothesis. In addition our spirits are in synchrony with the wild, and we suffer malaise too much removed from the forest, and the shore. “In wildness is the preservation of the world,” prophesied Thoreau, our own wild creativity, and that of the earth itself.
But the universe also pulses with time, and here too Torah links our lives and the land’s. With the pattern of counting seven we breath a sigh of relief, and so must the land. And after seven sevens, the Jubilee. The amazing thing is we are paralell-living this pattern of seven sevens right now as we count the Omer, building up to Shavuot – the fiftieth day – a Holy Day. It is a day of harvest, one in which we celebrate Ruth, whose very survival happened because we didn’t harvest everything, leaving the corners and the fallen grain for the wanderers, the impoverished, for Ruth, for us. We are making our way to Har Sinai – to receive ethical/ spiritually linked commandments. The same mountain from in this week’s verses. And Time itself is what we revel in when our spirits are released from the clock’s relentless ticking of our responsibilities when we celebrate Shabbat and Festivals.
The earth right now all around me feels like it’s being released from winter’s prison in a riot of new life and gentle breezes. How would this planet be different if sometimes we’d realize that every step was taken on holy ground, that the earth’s life is tied up in ours, spiritually and physically, and each creature and soul upon it? Wow, the possibilities! Our failings to one another and to this planet are profoundly spiritual failings. Perhaps that’s why the Jubilee was announced on Yom Kippur.
The song: Holy Ground, by Craig Taubman is here beautifully performed in Jerusalem by Abbe Silber https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBpF8W2iJao