Posts
Jewish Spiritual Renewal: Shabbat 7/31/10 : A Path of TransformationThe JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL class list is hosted by Shamash: The Jewish Network, a service of Hebrew College.Shalom Dear Talmidim, Chaverim v ' Rabbanim:I hope you had an easy fast on Tisha B'Av.
July 26, 2010 is the 15th of Av, Tu B'Av which the Talmud calls the happiest day on the Jewish Calendar. May your lives be filled with love and joy! Rabbi Arthur Segal: RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:happiest day in the Jewish calendar:Tu B'Av:tree of life: or http://rabbiarthursegal.blogspot.com/2009/07/rabbi-arthur-segalhappiest-day-in.html
Today we will continue with our path of transformation via Jewish Spiritual Renewal, with the first third of Chapter 12: '' Having a Spiritual Shabbat,'' from (001) The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal - Rabbi Arthur Segal or http://www.shop.jewishspiritualrenewal.net/product.sc;jsessionid=5C09106E770F711A24A135C59A7E346E.qscstrfrnt03?productId=1&categoryId=1
To those new to the class, Baruch ha Ba, welcome! You can access last week's class, and from there work back with links to the first class, atRabbi Arthur Segal: RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL; JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL ; Daily Spiritual Growth or http://rabbiarthursegal.blogspot.com/2010/07/rabbi-arthur-segal-jewish-spiritual_2031.htmlREMEMBER PLEASE: This class is to be read over a week's period, not all at once. Enjoy and savour it.
Bitul is the spiritual state associated with the inner experience of Chochmah, wisdom. We have become spiritually awakened through our path of transformation via Jewish Spiritual Renewal and our consciousness opens up. We no longer are narrow, Mitzraim, but we are now Nevi, open. As we walk with God hand in Hand each moment, we allow the flow of Divine wisdom to enter us. We learned to do His will and hence nullified our own wills, and do daily work on ridding our delusional sense of being self-sustained. We understand we are finite, our friends, family, and fellow humans, are finite, and we learn to depend on the Divine infinite. In Kabbalistic terms Bitul is the experience of ayin, nothingness. We understand in our minds, and hearts, and in our kishkas, guts, that we are nothing within the ''omnipresent radiance of God's infinite light.''
The Zohar teaches we have two levels of Bitul. Bitul b'metziut (nullification of existence of self). This is the Bitul where we can lose all sense of the existence of our self. It is a level we obtain through our meditation techniques taught in chapter 9 but with many years of practice. The Kabbalists reached this state. It is the level they call Atzilut. The only thing that exists at this level is God's omniscience, and omnipresence. (Abba mekanen b'Atzilut)
The Zohar continues to teach that Bitul hayesh ("nullification of one's somethingness") is a lower form of bitul. We are consciously involved in the process of nullifying ego. This is the level that most of us are on while using the step by step process in The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal. We have been trying, with God's aid, to see reality, including ourselves, as "something from nothing."
And this creation of reality of something from nothing, brings us back to understanding creation and the first Shabbat. '' Shabbat is called Shalom.'' (Zohar) and ''God's name is Shalom'' ( Talmud Bavli Tractate Shabbat 10a). And Shabbat is an appetizer for Olam ha Ba, one 60th of heaven, pure joy. (Talmud Bavli Beracoth 40b). Therefore, let us learn to make our Shabbat's spiritual for the Divine connection.
Let us continue exploring our text by moving further and begin chapter 12, "Having A Spiritual Shabbat'' from (001) The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal - Rabbi Arthur Segal or http://www.shop.jewishspiritualrenewal.net/product.sc;jsessionid=5C09106E770F711A24A135C59A7E346E.qscstrfrnt03?productId=1&categoryId=1 . We will study the first third of this chapter this week.How to Have a Spiritual Shabbat in Modern Times
"…It was evening and it was morning, the sixth day. And the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their host. And God completed on the seventh day His work, which He had done; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work, which He had done. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because in it he rested from all his work which God had created, to make..." (Genesis 1:31-2:3).
As modern Jews seeking Spiritual Renewal, we intrinsically understand that an omnipotent God does not need to rest. This is especially obvious because one of the aspects of spirituality is knowing that God is always available to us and that God "neither slumbers nor sleeps." (Ps. 121:4).
Hence, His instructions are often given to us metaphorically so that we will understand them. If God needs to rest on Shabbat, so do we need rest. He knows our nature. He knows that without telling us to rest and to set aside a day specifically for spirituality, we will not. Furthermore, if we do not live spiritually, being consciously connected to God at all times, we will not live a spiritual life. For example, if one goes to Shabbat services only once a week and does nothing spiritual throughout the rest of the week, one will not live a spiritual life.
Never confuse feeling spiritual with living spiritually. As we all know, we can hold hands and dance the hora while singing "How good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in unity. Heenai ma tov oo-manayim, shevet achim gam yachad," (Ps. 133.1) and ten minutes later drive past someone needing help with a flat tire.
This chapter is not going to be about how to have a halachah-based kosher Shabbat. If at some point in your Jewish Spiritual Renewal you decide that this strict observance has meaning to you, there are plenty of books, Web sites and a whole Tractate of Talmud (Shabbat) to tell you how. I am going to teach you how to have a spiritual Shabbat, one that you will grow in many ways over time.
Shabbat has always been a special time for Jews. The sages say that it is a gift from God and that the Sabbath was made for us, not we for it. The rabbis call the Sabbath an appetizer of the World to Come. It is like a bit of Heaven on Earth, so to speak (Talmud Bavli Tractate Beracoth 57b).
God said to Moses, "I have a precious gift in My treasure house, and I present it to
The Sabbath has mystical qualities for those who wish to accept them. In Sarah's tent, a special miracle proclaimed that The Divine presence dwelled therein. The lamp she lit every Friday evening in honor of the Divine day of rest miraculously kept burning all week until the next Friday evening. When Sarah died, the miracle of her Shabbat lamp ceased. On the day of Sarah's passing, Rebecca was born. When Rebecca was brought to Sarah's tent as the destined wife of Sarah's son, Isaac, the miracle of the lamp returned! Once again the light of Shabbat filled the tent of the matriarch of
Your home should be a spiritual center, a "merkaz ruchani." Celebrating Shabbat at home is a wonderful way to do this, but how do you start? It can seem so daunting.
Well, take what you would normally do on a Friday night and put a Shabbat spin on it. If you're used to going out for dinner with friends, invite them over, even if they're not Jewish. My non-Jewish friends love and appreciate the Shabbats in my home because they always find something to learn about their own religions or the roots of their religions.
Maurice and Sadie invited Nigel, their gentile neighbor for a Shabbat dinner. The first course was served and Sadie said to Nigel, "This is matzah ball soup."
When Nigel saw the two large matzah balls in the soup, he was hesitant to taste this strange-looking brew. But Maurice gently persuaded him to try it. "Just have a taste. If you don't like it, you don't have to finish it, honestly."
So Nigel dug his spoon in and picked up a small piece of matzoh ball with some soup. He tasted it gingerly and found that he liked it very much. Nigel quickly devoured the whole bowl.
"That was delicious", said Nigel. "Can you eat any other part of the matzoh?"
Order two challahs from your local chain grocery a day or two before Friday. Yes, chain groceries will make challah for you. Why two? "See, God has given you the Shabbat. Therefore, on the sixth day, He gives you manna for two days. Let each man remain in his place; let no man leave his place on the seventh day. So the people rested on the seventh day." (Exodus 16:29-30). In the wilderness for forty years, God gave the Hebrews manna every day except on Saturdays. On Friday He gave the Hebrews a double portion, so they would have food on Saturday and not have to work harvesting it.
Today we place two challah loaves on the Shabbat table and cover them with a cloth to represent the dew-covered, double portion of manna that came down from heaven in honor of Shabbat. Spiritually this reminds us that God is always looking out for us. You can explain this to your guests.
"Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day you shall have sanctity, a day of complete rest to God." (Exodus 35:2). The sages teach that work is defined as what we would do to make a home for God out of the materials of our physical lives and that this work is the work we must cease on Shabbat.
Studying God's detailed instructions to Moses for the making of the Sanctuary, the rabbis (Talmud Bavli, Tractate Shabbat 73a) identified thirty-nine melachot (categories of creative work) that were involved in the making of the Sanctuary. These include: all stages of agricultural work from plowing and sowing to reaping and winnowing and baking, weaving and sewing, writing, building, and lighting a fire. The 39 melachot and their derivatives form the basis and core of the laws of Shabbat rest.
If there is something on this list that can wait until Sunday, try putting it off until then. Personally, I can honestly say that I have never committed the sin of winnowing on Shabbat nor have I ever done winnowing on the other six days of the week.
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA
Parasha Eikev: Deuteronomy 7:12-11:26
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal www.jewishrenewal.info
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA
"Shas Happens"
"Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes. You'd know what a drag it is to see you."
"Beware for yourselves lest your heart be seduced and you turn astray...Then the wrath of God will blaze against you. He will restrain the heaven so there will be no rain, and the ground will not yield its produce, and you will be swiftly banished from the goodly land that God gives you." (Deut. 11:16- 17). Ouch!
The Reform movement deleted this portion of the Shema from their prayer books. They did not believe, post-Shoah, in a God who dishes out reward and punishment. Yes, God is the God of all. He is One. But life is not a bowl of matzoh ball soup and if it were, some would be fluffy and float and others would sink to the bottom. Shas happens.
Not so long ago, Shas Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef said that the six million who died in the hands of the Nazis, may their names be blotted out, were "all the reincarnation of earlier souls, who sinned and caused others to sin and did all sorts of forbidden acts...They came back to do atonement for their sins." And God, as promised in the verses quoted above, got them all rounded up by Nazis and sent them to their deaths in the slaughterhouses of Germany and Eastern Europe. The next day guards were stationed around this Shas rabbi's home as a man was caught climbing into his home through a window. Rabbi Yosef is extremely influential among the Sephardic community and his Shas party has 17 members in the Israeli Knesset. Gee, did God send this intruder through his window?
Why does mankind suffer? Is it divine payback for our sins as the Torah teaches? The Kabbala gives a much different answer. Mankind suffers because God suffers. It is not mankind who suffers but God. The suffering we feel is not our suffering but God's suffering experience through us as if it were our own. Therefore, the Kabbala teaches, before we can liberate ourselves from suffering, we most first liberate God from His suffering.
The Zohar teaches that we know God suffers because mankind suffers. Genesis 1:27 says, "God created man in the image of Himself, in the image of God He created him." Therefore, as the Ba'al Shem Tov, the then-leftist reform founder of the now-rightist orthodox Chassidic movement said, "Man is a part of God, and the want that is in the part is in the whole, and the whole suffers the same want as the part." We can infer that God suffers because we know that mankind suffers.
"From what does God suffer?" the rabbis ask. God suffers from His exile from Himself. He suffers the separation in His Name - the "YH" divided from the "VH" - that took place when He created the world. He suffers to return to the Unity - the wholeness in Himself - that was shattered when He created the world. Therefore God suffers and man is commissioned to redeem Him from His suffering by returning Him to His former state of unity. This is what the Kabbalists say we mean when we say in the Aleinu adoration prayer: "On that day the Lord shall be One and His name One." (Psalm 22:29).
The rabbis then ask, "How can we liberate God from His suffering? How can we return Him to Himself?" The answer is that we must be watchful and alert all the time for God. As King David wrote, "at dawn I hold myself in readiness for You." (Psalm 5:3). We need to listen for God's voice: "I am listening. What is God saying?" (Psalm 85:8). Then we must speak the words that we hear God tell us and follow them. To quote the Ba'al Shem Tov again: "When I fix my thoughts on the Creator, I let my mouth speak what it will, for the words are bound by higher roots. The Holy sparks that fell from Himself when God built and destroyed worlds, man shall raise and purify back to their source: All things of this world desire with all their might to draw near man in order that the sparks of Holiness that are in them should be raised by Him back to their source. And who with good strength of his spirit is able to raise the Holy spark from stone to plant, from plant to animal, from animal to speaking being? Man leads it to freedom, and no setting free of captives is greater than this. It is as when a king's son is rescued from captivity and brought to his father. Then you will release God from His suffering and He, in turn, will 'fill your mouths with laughter and your lips with son' (Psalm 126:2)." This is the Kabbalistic concept of Tikun Olam, repair of the world, which is a credo of modern Jewish movements, and therefore cannot philosophically exist side-by-side with the second part of the Shema that we find in this week's parasha.
Please note however, that it is my experience that most who use this phrase Tikun Olam are using it incorrectly. They are using it as a synonym for either tsaddakah (charity), good deeds, or even acts of chesed (kindness). It is a much more spiritual concept because every time we bring two people together in God's love, we help peal back a husk that has been formed on one of the many sparks of light that left His face on the day of creation. If an hour later, we treat someone else with disrespect, we have just negated all the good we have done. Tikun Olam implies a way of life, a way of walking with God every moment. It is true derech eretz (literally walking the earth, but meaning living by treating every human with love).
"Nowhere is this enantiodromia - this conflagration between good and evil - more clearly seen than in the constant interplay of the two opposing Sephirot (ten manifestations of God), Chesed (good) and Gevurah (evil) - which individually constitute the Right and the Left sides - light and darkness, the yin and yang of the Tree of the Ten Sephirot," writes Rabbi Yakov Ha Kohain. It is out of this balancing act that this Tree is born.
The idea of a suffering God is not only part of Christian theology. It is part and parcel of Judaism as well. Jewish philosophy believes that God, the Father (not His "son," as we are all children of God) suffers not on a cross on earth, but in Heaven. He suffers not because we sin, but because of His separation from Himself. His former Unity has been shattered. His Holy Queen, the Sheckinah, has fallen and She yearns to be lifted up and returned to Her King. This is why in Pirkei Avot one reads so many references to the ways one can bring back the Sheckinah, i.e. studying Torah with another, discussing Torah while three or more eat together, etc.
For Tikun Olam to be done, for God to know and repair Himself, He first must be known by man. But for man to know himself, he first must know God as well. The Torah shows us how God perfects man in increments. God perfects man in order that man may perfect Him, in Zohar terms. This is what Karl Jung meant when he wrote, "God must become man precisely because He has done man a wrong through Job. He, the guardian of justice, knows that every wrong must be expiated and Wisdom knows that moral law is above even God. Because His creature has surpassed Him, God must regenerate Himself."
According to the Kabbalah, God went from being whole to fragmentary during the act of creation. His "face" was shattered. He needs man as His partner to end His suffering and do the Tikun (repair). Liberal movements in Judaism agree with this and has placed responsibility on us as a people to fix our globe and not be concerned that doing ritual or not doing ritual determines if good or evil things to occur.
Of course this leads to the question, "Is God good?" The sages answer yes and quote Exodus 34:6: "God, God, a God of tenderness and compassion." But they further ask, "Why does He permit evil?" They answer that "evil is the throne of good," and that good comes from evil. "The indwelling Glory of God, embraces all worlds, good and evil...How can he then bear in Himself the opposites good and evil? But in truth there is no opposite, for evil is the throne of good." So if good comes from God, where does evil come from? Evil also comes from God. "Now the spirit of God left Saul and an evil spirit from God filled him." (1 Samuel 16:14). The perfection of God lies not in being merely one thing or another, but all things at all times. God is darkness and light and goodness and evil. He is One. Satan, according to traditional Jewish belief, is not an opposite of God, but part of God. He is the left-hand side of the Mind of God. He is the left side of the Tree of the Ten Sephirot. Satan is not a "he," but an adversarial thought in God's mind. Satan is God's yetzer ha ra, His evil inclination.
In the month of Av we are taught that great evil befell us on the ninth day (destructions of the Temples) but that great good came to us on the fifteenth day when no more people died in the wilderness of Sinai, peace came to the tribe of Benjamin, the northern tribes were allowed to travel south to Jerusalem again, and the martyrs of Behar (122 C.E.) were allowed to be buried. The Kabbalah says that good things are born from evil. They forecast that the Messiah will be born on the ninth of Av. Holiness must be found in impurity, just as we as Jews have made the mundane into the sacred. There is no Torah law commanding us to say a prayer before we eat. This mitzvah is a rabbinic Talmudic law from Talmud Bavli Tractate Berachot 35A. The rabbis posit that one who eats before he says a prayer of thanks to God, is like one who steals from God. There is the mitzvah of saying grace after meals in this week's parasha (Deut. 8:10).
God loves us, but we are taught traditionally that He can also hate us. God even tried to kill Moses! "When Moses had halted for the night, God came to meet him and tried to kill him." (Exodus 4:24). Where as in the previous parasha we are commanded to love God, in this portion we are commanded to "fear God" (Deut. 10:12) as well as love Him. King David in Psalm 111:10 writes, "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and they that have sound sense practice it." Or as Jung says, "Even the enlightened person remains what he is, and is never more than his own limited ego before the One who dwells within him, whose form has no knowable boundaries, who encompasses him on all sides, fathomless as the abysms of the earth and as vast as the sky."
How do we as modern Jews today reconcile these theological differences? What does it mean to us to be fearful of God? Do we walk around waiting for lightning to strike us because we drove on Shabbat? Do we curse God when bad things happen, or worse yet, accept the Shas rabbi's view that we sinned somewhere in the past and we are being justly punished?
The answer lies in this parasha. In Deuteronomy 8:11-17 we are told: "Guard yourself...lest you eat, be satisfied, build nice homes, live in them…and become haughty, and forget God... and say my own might and the strength of my hand have made me all of this wealth." Talmud Bavli Tractate Sotah 5A teaches that we are commanded not to be haughty. When we are arrogant and haughty, we are actually forgetting God. We as spiritual Jews need to remember the many blessings we do have from God and continually to thank our Creator for them. We need not do it in the traditional formalized prayer, but we do need to do it. If we forget about God by being haughty, and only call upon His name when bad things happen, then our understanding of God is shattered, as we only view Him as a bandage for our suffering.
As spiritual Jews, we need to continually love God, be thankful to God, be ever mindful of God, be in awe of God, but not fear God. The reformer, the Ba'al Shem Tov, says not to do mitzvoth because of fear of divine retribution. He says that is childlike. He says to do mitzvoth for our own spiritual growth. Talmud Tractate Berachot 39A says there is no tangible reward for doing mitzvoth other than a spiritual one. Rabbi Akiva in Talmud Tractate Beracoth 61B compares a Jew without God and Torah to a fish out of water. If we as modern Jews do not develop a healthy sense of spirituality when things are going well, it is awfully hard to do so when things are going poorly. This is the punishment of God's "blaze" and "banishment." It is of our own making. This is why our movement's rabbis left the first part of the Shema in our prayer books so that we are reminded to remember God and Torah so many times during the day.
The parasha's name of Eikev has even caused much debate. In simple terms, it means "if," as in part of a contingency contract. Rashi translates it as "because." Onkelos translates it as "reward," and the Midrash says it means "heel."
What the Midrash is teaching is that it is not the big commandments that folks tend to forget. Almost all Jews go to synagogues on Yom Kippur and seders in homes on Passover. The rabbis are trying to teach that it is the ethical man-to-man laws that we tend to trample with our heels. Rabbi Aaron Kotler writes that in our day-to-day encounters we have many opportunities for good deeds that we trample under our feet in our pursuit of "greater" things in life. Simple kindness and manners are often overlooked. He writes that these seemingly insignificant encounters ultimately define us.
As the songwriter Jackson Brown sang, "Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking." The Mishna asks, "what is the path that a person should cling to?" It does not answer, "halachah" (Jewish ritual law), which actually comes from the Hebrew word for "path." The rabbi's answer is, "shachein tov" (be a good neighbor!).
All we as spiritual Jews can do is the best that we can do as people. As Isaiah, the author of this Haftarah says, "We are to be a light to the nations." (Is. 49:06). Our goodness and kindness to others will yield its own spiritual reward. Shas will happen. Our role as good Jews and good people is not to be haughty, but to do ahavath chesed, acts of loving kindness, to help each other when the inevitable bad things of life do occur. This is the essence of our Jewish way of life. This is how we can deal with the universal truth that "shas happens."
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA
The SPIRITUALRENEWAL mailing list is hosted by Shamash: The Jewish Network.
Join Shamash's Groups on Facebook and LinkedIn.
To unsubscribe from the SPIRITUALRENEWAL list, email: SPIRITUALRENEWAL-unsubscribe-request@SHAMASH.ORG
For other options go to: http://listserv.SHAMASH.ORG/
