These days, I seem to be a channel for loose, chatty, non-dualistic English-language riffs on traditional liturgy, responding line by line to ancient impulses. Here is #1 of 19.

ברוך אתה יי אלהינו ואלהי אבותינו ואמותינ, אלהי אברהם, אלהי יצחק, ואלהי יעקב, אלהי שרה, אלהי רבקה, אלהי רחל, ואלהי לאה

I am humble before You, my God, our God and God of our fathers and God of our mothers.

The call, the itch, the impulse hasn’t left a single generation untouched, not since Abraham first heard a Voice, since Sarah laughed at Divine Chutzpah. God of flawed, self-doubting leaders.

האל הגדול הגבור והנורא, אל עליון, גומל חסדים טובים וקונה הצל

The Omnipresent Point of Origin, Source of that nagging feeling that we are part of something bigger, more majestic and more wondrous than all of us and everything put together. Underneath, within, above, behind, beyond our senses and our silly tools.

Not some remote unmoved Prime Mover. No way. More like Santa with an overstuffed bag of toys and a burning desire to give each one to the kid it is perfect for. Filled with longing for everything that is, that was, that will be. 

וזוכר חסדי אבות ואמהות ומביא גואל לבני בניהם, למען שמו באהבה

The Omega Point,  ultimate repository of memory, of all memories, all the ripple lines of all the rocks our mothers and our fathers tossed from the shore. And somewhere, somehow, someone will come along and help us make sense of it all. Maybe tomorrow, maybe a thousand, maybe ten thousand or a million years from now.

We know this. It will all fit together in some gorgeous cosmic collage, and the love behind it all will be unmistakable. 

מלך עוזר ומושיע ומגן. ברוך אתה יי, מגן אברהם ועזרת שרה

Sovereign Spark of the Universe, Impulse that pulls all life, sometimes kicking and screaming, towards entwinement. Source of rebirth and regrowth and restoration, source of shelter and shielding happenstance.

I am humble before You, my God, our God, Who looks out and looks ahead for our father, Abraham, and our mother, Sarah, in their doubt and fear and fumbling. 

The Ashrei (“Happy”) is a heart|mind opener built into every traditional Jewish service. It’s an acrostic — each line starts with a sequential letter of the Hebrew aleph-bet, except for nun (no one is sure why).

Ashrei stands out at the beginning of the late afternoon service, which is where I had occasion to engage with it at the Davennen Leadership Training Institute, a four-week, two-year retreat on communal prayer leadership led by amazing teachers aligned with the Jewish Renewal movement.

One powerful tool in the DLTI kit is the practice of taking traditional liturgy and putting it into a kind of high-resolution spiritual x-ray scanner. You blast through the patriarchy and particularism and illuminate the universally accessible, redemptive minerals in the bones. Then you use this new understanding to wrap the whole thing back together with music, breath, and movement — in whatever language the now irradiated piece calls out for.

And so it was that I sat down with the Ashrei. I looked at it through the lens of non-dualism, which is how I look at pretty much everything in liturgy and scripture. This idea is of ancient, diffuse origins; I learned everything I think I know from Jay Michaelson’s Everything is God. 

God does not exist, the thinking goes. God is existence itself. Ein od mil’vado, as Deuteronomy 4:35 tells us. Nothing exists separately from God.

So this is what happened. DLTIers learn to lead services collaboratively, and my co-leader helped me refine these lines and pick out a few to focus on, alternating with chant and breathing. If it moves you, I hope you’ll use it in your own practice.

א ALEPH. I raise my consciousness to You, my True North. Sovereign Reality of the Universe.

ב BET. At my stopping points, my comings and my goings, I will make a sacred space of moments when I felt You near me.

ג GIMEL.  Grandeur of All Existence, Source of Mercy as big and wide as all the Universe, unmeasurable, unmistakable.

ד DALET I feel the chain of past and present flowing into You, that there will always be someone, somewhere who keeps the great and open knowledge.

ה HEH. I want to stop people in the streets. I want to buy them coffee and ask them — “You realize it’s all God, right? The sky and stars, the coffee and the cup, you and me, and everything and nothing and both and neither?”

ו VAV. Somewhere, somehow, they know already. Still, transcendent moments, planted deep and wide. A child is born, a sunset in the mountains. Oneness made transparent.

ז ZAYIN. We tell stories — we all have them — of when joy and mercy filled the air. We sing old hymns and spirituals and protest songs. We sing defiance in the face of injustice. It is all You.

ח HET. Source of Wonder, Source of Lovingkindness, Source of Patience deep as all Creation.

ט TET. Your goodness soaks deep the blueprint of life. Every heart pumps Your red, radiant compassion.

י YUD. We see it when we clear our minds, unfold to gratitude, align ourselves to You. How can we help but love You back?

כ KAF. And – look! – there it is. The shimmering light of all Reality. The one great, unending moment of clarity. It is all You.

ל LAMED. Take out billboards, megaphones! Do podcasts, YouTube videos! A hashtag, maybe! Anything it takes to get the word out!

מ MEM. All time and space. A multitude of mercy, Big Bangs of Blessings. Life and death. Creation and destruction. Over and over, and it all fits together. It is all You.

ס SAMECH. A cut repairs itself like magic. Flowers opens to the sun. We walk away from hurt we thought would flatten us for good.

ע AYIN. You are the hope that pulsates in our vision. And maybe, just maybe, it all makes sense. It is all You.

פ PEH. You are the great unfolding of the Universe. Contentment, balance, ebb and flow.

צ TZADI. When we are still and open, we understand. You coded righteousness and mercy right into our DNA.

ק QUF. We call You close. You are the called, the caller, and the truth inside the call itself.

ר RESH. Somewhere, in You, it all works out. Somewhere, in You, is balance.

שׁ SHIN. You are reward and punishment, the ebb and flow, the either, both and neither, all and nothing. Source and object, channel, vessel, and the outcome of it all.

ת TAV. The awareness of You, of Your eternity and immanence, Immensity of Love, fills my every cell.

And all the people took off the gold rings that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. This he took from them and fashioned it and made it into a molten calf.

And they exclaimed, THIS IS YOUR GOD.

The people offered up burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being.

They sat down to eat and drink and then rose to dance.

God spoke to Moses, “They have been quick to turn aside from the path I commanded.

They have made themselves a molten calf and bowed low to it, and sacrificed to it, saying:

“THIS IS YOUR GOD.”

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 6,300 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 11 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

This year, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs launched the Food Stamp Challenge, an experiential event to draw hearts and minds to the millions of people in the United States who live on what used to be called “food stamps.” The benefit is exactly $31.50 per person per week, or about $1.50 per meal. The challenge is to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, to live on this budget when you don’t have to, to donate the money you don’t spend to hunger relief and awareness building.

Each of us sets up a page for individual donations. Here’s mine – I hope you can spare at least a few dollars!

Approaching Day 1

The circle gathered outside the entrance to an Aldi store in University City. It was time to go shopping — on a budget of $31.50 per person for a week. Our guide on this excursion, a staff member from a nonprofit serving the food-insecure, couldn’t make it, so it was just a dozen or so of us with Rabbi Susan.

I haven’t shopped at an Aldi since the early nineties when I was studying in Germany, where the chain originated. It has the same reputation over there — dirt cheap, low quality. It was where homeless people would go after a decent haul from panhandling.

I could be wrong, but I think there was a widespread sense of awkwardness. I think most of us haven’t had to live on a food budget since college. I’d even wager that a lot of us spend $31.50 a week just on high-end coffee and artisan bread. It’s uncomfortable to admit this, but most of my thoughts in the days leading up to today have focused on how much I’m going to miss my favorite, way-out-of-budget condiments and spices.

In the meantime, tips have been coming in from friends who have lived or are living on a budget close to that of the Food Stamp Challenge.

One night’s menu: pinto beans, cornbread, fried potatoes, spinach (either in a can or a frozen block). I’m pretty sure that will come in at under $3. Breakfast menus are easier … eggs and toast, oatmeal, pancakes, waffles .. all those are going to be well under $1.50 per person

I feel like such a clod, even more when I remember that to this day, my father won’t touch beans or peanut butter, because when he was growing up, that’s all his family could afford.

In the circle, Rabbi Susan tells us about the film, Food Stamped, we’ll be watching together at the end of our weeklong exploration. After a while, a middle-aged security guard approaches and asks us to disperse. If he lets us gather in a big group, he says to Jen, then he’d have to let everyone gather in a big group. The racial overtone is hard to miss. We disperse and go in.

It’s a small store, but the products don’t look half bad. Some of us have lists and menus, but Brian and I are doing it all on the fly, with just a calculator and some scrap paper. I’m thinking low-budget vegetarian staples — rice, dried beans, root vegetables, peanut butter. You can get a lot of prepared, boxed foods — Including macaroni and cheese for 45 cents a box, a 20-pack of ramen noodles for $2.19. Hard to pass up a bargain like that.

The produce selection is pretty good — broccoli crowns and a nice acorn squash for 99 cents each. Altogether, we ended up spending $31.40 at Aldi. Later, we hit an international market in our neighborhood, a food hub for many immigrant communities, and pick up a mess of dried beans, lentils, brown rice, and a big bag of carrots. I splurge on some nicer low-budget coffee.

As we unpacked the groceries, I felt like we did pretty well, but there’s no telling how soon we’ll start running out of things.

Day 1

Breakfast: 2 eggs each, two pieces of toast, and coffee
Lunch: Lentil soup and grilled cheese
Dinner: Elbow macaroni in marinara sauce, 3 carrots each

We bought two loaves of bread, and we’re already halfway through the first one. Plenty of leftover lentil soup and pasta for lunch on Day 2. We figured out we left our one jar of peanut butter at Aldi’s, and it will take about a third of our remaining budget to replace it.

In Psalm 113, part of the Hallel prayers that are added on major holidays, G-d is envisioned as flipping human hierarchies:

M’qimi mei’afar dal
mei’ashpot yarim ‘evion
l’hoshivi ‘im-n’divim
‘im n’divei amo

G-d stations a pauper
From an ash heap G-d elevates a beggar
To place them with nobles
With the nobles of G-d’s people

When you hold it up to the light in a certain way, our High Holidays liturgy, with all its confessions and chest pounding and pleading for Divine mercy, is really a grand allegory with a simple message. We are not in control. We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or even an hour from now. We can never be sure what the consequences of our actions will be. We don’t really have any of the things we think we have — security, comfort, prosperity. It can all be taken away in an instant.

Enter the Food Stamp Challenge

This year, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs launched the Food Stamp Challenge, an experiential event to draw hearts and minds to the millions of people in the United States who live on what used to be called “food stamps.” The benefit is exactly $31.50 per person per week, or about $1.50 per meal. The challenge is to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, to live on this budget when you don’t have to, to donate the money you don’t spend to hunger relief and awareness building.

Each of us sets up a page for individual donations. Here’s mine — I hope you can spare at least a few dollars!

We got lucky this year. Many of the political candidates who had vowed to gut this lifeline — including our own Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin  – were defeated at the ballot box. But the threat hovers above a landscape of bottomless need, especially among the millions of long-term unemployed.

Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue!

I am taking the Food Stamp Challenge in the hope of plugging in to the radical core of tzedek, tzedek, tirdof (Deut 16:20). We’re not supposed to just work for social justice, we’re supposed to chase after it with everything we’ve got. But the great irony is that most of the time, I’m too anaesthetized by food and drink to engage at that level. Just in preparing for this experience, I’ve learned of friends and family members are now or have recently been reliant on public assistance. If that’s how close food insecurity has gotten to me without my learning first-hand what it feels like, day in and day out, what kind of justice-chaser can I really be?

Not long ago, I had the privilege of leading a beautiful community in reciting this prayer using a particular approach I learned at my home congregation. Apparently, it just came to our rabbi one day and acquired the name “sh’mantra.”

The idea is that everyone approaches the words as they are moved — some faster, some slower, some sooner, some later. What comes out is a churning sea of sound — all different, but all one, all focused on love and awe of God.

The sh’mantra has always brought me a deep sensation of what I understand to be God’s presence — vast and overflowing, churning with pattern and possibility, universe-spanning and closer than the beating of my heart, enveloping, permeating, intimate yet profoundly Other.

This time, the experience played out in a room filled with about seventy deeply focused and committed pray-ers, among them at least a dozen working cantors and cantorial students.

So sit back, breathe a while, click ‘play,’ then close your eyes and let it wash over you. The sound you hear at the end is a number of the people in the room, myself included, weeping.

So Here’s the Backstory.

My husband and I are now devoted groupies of an organization called Nehirim, from a Hebrew word for “lights.” Founded by author and activist Jay Michaelson, Nehirim hosts retreats, trips, conferences, you name it — all with the goal of building community among LGBT Jews, partners, and allies and helping them take that spark back home.

Retreats that coincide with Shabbat include full services — some traditional, mostly Renewal-style, but always complete with Torah readings. When the organizers of this year’s Men’s Summer Camp reached out for volunteers to read from the scroll, I raised my hand, and before I knew it, I was practicing an hour or two a day every day for about three weeks. Two aliyot, portions of about half a dozen verses each, from the triennial cycle.

Did I Mention the Bar Mitzvah Thing?

I only volunteered because Brian and I have been studying for the past few months with one of our community’s wonderful rabbis, in preparation for what might be, for all we know, the world’s first joint adult bar mitzvah ceremony for two married, gay converts.

Bar mitzvah (or the female version, bat mitzvah) is an Aramaic phrase meaning “son of commandment.” Since the early middle ages, and for girls since the late 20th century, it’s been a rite of passage whereby children become adults under Jewish law, fully entrusted with the tradition and its joys and obligations. In more recent decades, “a bar/bat mitzvah” has become a community celebration, too, with big parties and social justice projects, and it’s also become a common step for adults who didn’t go through the process at age thirteen, either by choice or circumstance or because they converted.

So that’s where Brian and I are, having decided to take our commitment to Jewish living up a notch or two, in April of 2012, when each of us will read from a Torah scroll.

And That Is No Small Feat.

A Torah scroll is a copy of the entire Five Books of Moses, a roll of stitched-together parchment pages, every letter reproduced by hand from an unbroken chain of manuscripts going back to at least the early Middle Ages.

Each scroll is a dramatic work in its own right, with critical moments in the text reflected in spacing and lettering. When the Sea of Reeds parts on the way out of Egypt, the text pulls apart into two jagged, parallel lines. When the Ten Commandments are given, each is set apart from the rest of the text in a way that’s impossible to overlook.

The text itself is right out of ancient Semitic literary culture, which means its primary function is to aid the memory of readers who are presumed to know every word by heart. The alphabet is made up only of consonants, with some letters doubling as vowels under conditions that take a while to explain.

To give you an idea, here’s how a Torah scroll would render Hamlet’s famous soliloquy:

To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of struggles, and, by opposing, end them. 

TW B’ ‘R NT TW B’ THT ‘S THQWSTYN WHTHR T’S NWBLR ‘N THMND TW SFR THSLYNGS ND ‘RWS ‘F ‘WTRGYS FWRTN ‘R TW TK ‘RMS ‘GNST ‘SY ‘F STRGLS ‘ND BY ‘PSYNG ‘ND THM

Did I mention there’s no real punctuation, either? What’s more, every line of text is meant to be chanted according to a prescribed set of melodies, which must also be memorized.

So Here’s What I Was Looking At.

The Torah portion from the week of the Nehirim retreat is called ‘Ekev, from Deuteronomy chapters 7 through 11. This is what the first bit of ‘Ekev looks like in a Torah scroll (via Navigating the Bible):

And this is what the text looks like when overlaid with all the information you really need to chant it. If you have a RealAudio plugin, you can hear roughly what it comes out sounding like.

Except for some of the dots in the middle of the letters, every little doohickey is either a vowel sound or a melodic sequence to be memorized.

Difficult But Doable

Just ask any of the millions of bar/bat mitzvah kids who met the challenge and went back to eighth grade homeroom all the stronger and more affirmed for it. After several lessons with our rabbi, I felt I had enough preparation to manage a moderately sized reading, using the notation and audio files at bible.ort.org.

And so began one of the most remarkable encounters in my short life as a Jew. Every day for about three weeks, I listened and repeated, quizzed and corrected myself, adding phrase by phrase, verse by verse to the parts I could recite from memory.

Without much in the way of conscious thought, I started to feel the emotional shapes of the melodic inventory — tenderness, alarm, solemn awe, comfort, and more, all packed into little scales almost anyone can sing.

And bit by bit, the text itself opened up to me in a way that’s hard to put into words.

I’m no literary noob, you see. I got enough graduate coursework under my belt to critically engage with any text, day or night, with one hand tied behind my back. I’ve spliced and diced Torah plenty, applying literary-critical approaches, queer hermeneutics, structural and cross-cultural analysis galore.

This was different. I think the realization came to me when I was working on the text one day over my lunch hour. There I was, sitting in a little room, reading and repeating, over and over again, letting the text and its melodies, its consonants and its vowels and subtle structures wash over me like sheets of rain.

The lines stopped being a thing under my microscope, an item on my to-do list, a test of my cognitive abilities. Somewhere along the line, ‘Ekev became my companion.

That meant I could start taking the text at something deeper than face value. ‘Ekev is a fraught little package of Divine reward and punishment and a seeming endorsement of the ethnic cleansing of Canaan. I think I’ve read some settlers in the the West Bank use it, along with other portions, to justify displacing and assaulting the Arabs who live there. There it is, in black and white:

v’achalta et kol ha-amim asher Adonai eloheicha notein lach lo’ tachos eincha ‘aleihem v’lo’ ta’avod et eloheihem.

And when you have consumed all the peoples that HaShem your G-d has given to you, show them no mercy and do not worship their gods.

But with all the lines and their melodies in my head, I couldn’t just magnify one part of the text, as I had plenty in the past, and say, “this is its unforgivable flaw, this goes too far, this is too much.” That would be cutting my best friend out of my life because she disappointed me or lied to me once. That would utterly negate her beauty, her compassion, her love for me.

And her wisdom. You’re going up against immense odds, she’s telling me, with nothing but a strange and invisible G-d on your side, One Who values action more than objects, justice more than jewels. You won’t be able to hold onto your values if you try to accommodate the people waiting for you by, say, agreeing on an acceptable level of ritual prostitution, human sacrifice, idol worship, and oppression of the poor. Whatever happens, don’t ever become like them.

ki t’omar bil’vav’cha rabim ha-goyim ha-eileh mimeni eichah ‘uchal l’horisham

You might say in your heart, these nations are greater than I am. How will I be able to drive them out?

You’re not going to make it if you accept the geopolitical realities at face value. You’re not going to make it if your vision is fixed on the world as it is, not as it could be.

lo’ ta’arotz mipneihem ki Adonai eloheicha b’qirbecha el gadol v’nora’

Do not cringe before them, for Adonai your G-d is with you, a great and awesome G-d.

The values you are taking with you are more powerful than any of the armies you will face, but only if you believe in them and remember where they came from and never stop fighting for them.

The day before I was called up to read, I was alone, swinging in a hammock on a beautiful country day, having practiced the reading a dozen or more times, and it hit me. This text is radiant with love. And my tears fell.

Showtime

I rehearsed a few times with generous rabbi friends, including in front of the actual scroll at our Nehirim retreat, one with tiny little letters and variations on some shapes I hadn’t seen before.

At first, I approached the reading the way I do a lot of things — softly and with meek self-effacement. I felt so much tenderness in the words and the melodies that I hadn’t really thought about the broader context.

One of my rabbi friends, David Dunn Bauer, reminded me that this is Moses’s dying speech to his people near the end of their long journey. He’s heaping upon them his admonishment and warnings, love and awe and frustration and his desperate hope that, in spite of all the failures and setbacks of the last forty years, it will all be enough.

So it was kinda written to be belted out, not softly murmured. Project. Butch it up a little why don’t you. Put some masculine oomph into it and let it be beautiful just that way.

So on a Friday afternoon while the rest of the gang was off tubing or mud bathing or something, I took a hiking trail into the woods and chanted at the top of my lungs, over and over, until I started going hoarse. At one point I saw a large doe on the trail ahead of me, scrutinizing me. I smiled and wished her a good Shabbos, and then I started belting out my lines again. She turned and trundled off into the woods.

Come Saturday morning, a group of about thirty men sat davenning together, singing and bowing and speaking our ancient words. When the Torah scroll was lifted up and carried around like a newborn baby, I was connected to all the other times I’d encountered a scroll.

One time in particular I’ve never told anyone about. I was at an evening study session at our synagogue, and one of our scrolls was on the table from a previous session. I volunteered to return it to its arc, the stone cabinet that holds all our community’s scrolls.

This one in particular was very special — it was found, along with hundreds of others, in Prague after the Second World War. The Nazis had stolen it from a small Bohemian community just before deporting or murdering every Jew they found there. Along with the other scrolls, it was intended for a museum  to commemorate the total destruction of Jewish civilization. After the war, the scrolls were restored and adopted out to Jewish communities all over the world, including ours.

The sanctuary was empty as I carried our scroll, our survivor, to the arc, cradling it like a baby. My steps slowed and I started to cry as I remembered the last time I had held it, on the day of my conversion, in front of a whole community that had come to welcome me as a brother.

I had stood there that day only because Torah, with all its seams and scars and beauty, had opened my heart wider than I ever thought possible.

“I love you so much,” I said as I kissed it gently and laid it to rest in the arc.

I had to contain those same tears that morning at Nehirim as I approached a sister scroll. After all, I couldn’t very well chant if I was crying and sniffling.

I watched and prayed as the blessings were recited and then I pointed at the spot where the reading was about to begin. Men who had come up for special blessings touched the corners to their prayer shawls to the scroll and kissed them, and then it was time.

Breathe In. Breathe Out.

All the men there, we’d all been through so much.

So much doubt and rejection, so many years lost trying to be what we weren’t, so much struggle just to find safe places to love and live and pray.

“V’haya-a-a-a-a ‘e-KEV tishme’u-u-u-un,” I sang. It’s up to you to guard this relationship with G-d, these transcendent values that have brought you so far.

My legs were shaking, and my voice was quivering, but I kept on, my whole body moving in tune with the melody.

“Ve-sha-ma-a-a-a-ar AdoNAI elo-HEI-cha le-cha-a-a-ah et ha-BRIT ve-et-ha-CHESED …” G-d will protect you, G-d’s covenant and lovingkindness will go with you. I missed a trope and started out on the wrong note for the next one, but I just kept going.

“Va-ahe-e-ev’cha u-ve-ra-che-cha v’hirb-ECHA …” G-d will love you and bless you and multiply you.

Such deep longing for our happiness and well-being. I tried to keep all the men in the room in my heart as I put everything I had into each word.

“V’chol mad-ve-e-e-e-ei mitzRAYIM ha-ra’IM…” all the terrible afflictions of Egypt. Your freedom and liberation came at such a heavy price. What will you do to honor and remember that?

“V’lo-o-O ta-a-VOD et-elo-o-o-hei-he-e-m, ki MOKESH HU LA-A-A-ACH.” No matter how far you come, you must not fall into worshiping power and control the way your oppressors do. You are love. You are justice. Don’t forget that.

The first aliyah was done. I stepped back. Another group was called to the Torah. More blessings, more love and inclusion.

Second aliyah. “Ki-i-i to-MAR bi-l’VA-a-a-ve-CHA-a-a ra-BI-i-i-im ha-goyim ha-EIL-eh mimeni…” You’re going to doubt yourself. You’re going to see yourself as your oppressors see you, as small and weak and divided. It’s okay.

“Lo-o-o ti-RAH-A-AH mei-hem! Za-CHOR TIZ-KO-o-o-or eh-eh-et asher a-SAH Adonai elo-HEI-chem le-pha-ROH u-le-chol mitz-RA-yim…” Don’t be afraid. The G-d of history, the G-d of all creation is on your side. Carry that knowledge and let it make you strong.

“Ken ya-ah-SEH-eh-eh-eh-eh Adonai elo-HEI-CHA le-chol-ha-a-MI-i-i-im asher atah yar-EH-EH-EH mi-pnei-HEH-em.” The people who oppress you, the people who put power and fear ahead of love, they will know what it means to be powerless, to lose the control they thought they had over you.

“Ki Ado-NA-a-ai elo-HEI-CHA be-kir-BECHA. EL GADOH-O-L VE-NOH-O-O-O-RA-A.” Don’t be afraid. G-d is with you. G-d’s great love and justice and passion will win out in the end. Nothing on earth is more powerful.

I looked up. There was so much love in that room. Such a perfect, radiant moment with this strange document at the center of it, this one improbable survivor.

I got it. I really got it. Torah is beautiful in ways that nothing else on earth can be beautiful. And in that one crystalline moment, I saw it. Just like Torah, the men in that room could not have been more beautiful, more perfect than with their joys and scars and wrinkles.

Since it was my first time ever reading during a Torah service, we sang and danced around the scroll and said shehecheyanu, the blessing of gratitude for perfect moments.

Lots of praise and affirmation afterwards. Lots of gratitude for the love and passion that came out of me.

But the love and passion came right out of that scroll. All I did was put in the hard work to channel it to the men then and there in that space, which was a joy any way you slice it.

Leyn or leynen is an old Yiddish word that just means ‘to read,’ but when used in English, the word means to read in public from a Torah scroll. It’s good that Yiddish gave us a distinct word, because when you leyn, you don’t just read. You melodically chant, using timings and structures that have been mapped onto each line of Torah over the centuries.

I’ve leyned three times in the past year, but it’s important you understand that I don’t have much in the way of training. I worked with one of our teachers, the inimitable Rabbi James Stone Goodman, for a few weeks before leyning for the first time last year, in one of the most intense experiences of my short life as a Jew. But almost a year later, I still haven’t gotten around to learning the rules.

That means I have to practice with recordings. As in chanting the text hundreds of times until I’ve basically memorized it. That seems to unlock the spiritual intensity, so when we signed up for a June retreat with one of our favorite organizations, Nehrim, I leapt at the chance to leyn again as part of Shabbat services with Rabbi Jill Hammer and Shoshana Jedwab.

Of All the Portions …

This year’s Nehirim retreat fell in the yearly cycle of Torah readings at the portion of Numbers we call sh’lach lecha. It’s the episode with the ‘spies,’ the twelve tribal leaders sent by Moses to scope out the Land of Israel in preparation for settlement.

In the story, ten of the spies come back consumed by fear. The land is as rich and beautiful as G-d promised, they say, but it is occupied by powerful, well-defended enemies, they say, even giants, and it would be crazy to move there.

The people panic. They weep. They long to go back to Egypt and die as slaves rather than face their fear. They ignore and then try to murder Kalev and Y’hoshuah, the two scouts who come back with a clearer vision.

At this point in the story, G-d has a dramatic meltdown, arguably G-d’s worst moment in the story, and has to be talked down — by a human, Moses — from killing all but a handful of the people and starting over.

That’s the narrative backdrop to the portion Rabbi Jill let me pick, Numbers 14:28 through 35. And so I started practicing. I went through the lines a few hundred times before the text started to open up to me.

And then I couldn’t stop crying.

So Much Pain.

Numbers 14:28 picks up just moments after Moses has talked G-d out of mass extermination, but G-d is still seething with rage and betrayal.

e-MO-or a-lei-HE-E-E-em, chai A-NI, me’um a-do-NA-AI, im LO-O-O-o k’a-sher di-bar-TE-E-em be-oz-NAI, KE-E-en e-e-seh la-CHE-em. Ba-mid-BA-AR ha-ZE-E-E-E-EH yi-PLU fi-grei-CHE-em

Tell them, Moses, you tell them. I am so angry with them, with every fiber of My being, that I’m going to do to them exactly what they said they wanted. Their corpses will rot in the desert. This desert. You tell them that.

ve-chol pe-ku-dei-CHEM le-chol-mis-par-CHEM mi-BE-E-E-en es-rim sh-NA-A-a va-ma-A-LAH a-sher ha-li-no-TA-A-am a-LA-i

Everything I did to give meaning and purpose to their lives, it’s all going to die with them. Everyone who let their loss of faith in Me control them, in spite of everything I did for them, in spite of all the death and destruction it took to set them free — their corpses will drop in this desert.

im a-TEM ta-VO-u el-ha-A-retz a-sher na-SA-TI et ya-DI-i le-sha-ken et-CHEM BA-AH, KI-i-i ka-LEV ben ye-fu-NEH vi-ye-ho-shu-A-A-ah ben NU-n. 

Not one of you is going into the land I swore to give you. Not one of you.  Only Kalev and Y’hoshuah.

The G-d of these early stories is such an intensely emotional Being, and despite all the jokes about G-d’s anger management issues, my encounter with this text was the first time I really got what’s important.

In this wrenching moment in our story, G-d is in intense pain.

Even as G-d lashes out, G-d is hurting G-d’s own Self. G-d is destroying G-d’s own hope for this generation.

I read from the scroll on a perfect, sunny day with a circle of fellow travelers, praying outdoors. I read G-d’s words condemning a generation to wander in the desert, and the pain of the story washed over me. I read through my tears, through the trembling in my voice.

Over and over, the text reads yip’lu figreichem bamidbar hazeh. Your corpses will drop in this desert. A death sentence, a cry of anger and hurt, a self-inflicted wound.

I never expected to feel boundless compassion for the Angry Being of the Five Books. But there I was, weeping. So much longing. So much love spurned. None of the usual qualifications mattered — not the lingering slave mentality of the human characters, not G-d’s insecurity or outsized expectations. All I felt was pain. G-d’s pain, the people’s pain, it’s all the same.

That’s What Compassion Is, I Suppose. 

Empathy without blame. Weeping with each other without looking at the scorecard. As usual, Torah teaches us this in a way no other text can.

And all this leyning has taught me there’s a level of understanding Torah that comes only from immersion, from living with the letters and lines and letting them permeate past my rational mind.

The experience is utterly transfixing, and all I can think about is how to get back up there.

They end up choosing a date in April that corresponds to a double portion from the Torah, arguably the two ickiest parts of the Book of Leviticus. Verse after verse of skin diseases and bodily fluids. They work really hard — maybe a little too hard — to find the positive message in the text, and this is what comes out…

The Characters

 Shmuel
The Main Character and Narrator, appearing as an adult

Young Shmuel
Shmuel’s younger self, about sixteen

Hannah
Young Shmuel’s best friend and protector, about the same age as Shmuel

Shmuel’s father, a priest of the First Temple

Shmuel’s mother

Boy 1 and Boy 2
Young Shmuel’s tormentors, about his age

Introduction

Tazria’ and M’tzorah — two portions of the Book of Leviticus that read, at least on the surface of things, like a technical manual for managing different kinds of ritual purity. These are among the oldest layers of Torah, deeply alien to our modern sensibilities. The rules on blood and bodily fluids and skin diseases offer us an ancient consciousness that sees life and death, creation and decay, virtue and sin as so dangerously intermingled that only constant attention can keep them apart. In a very peculiar language of images and analogies, it seems to be telling us  –

Be careful. Watch what you do. Your every action has cosmic significance.

The text is deeply concerned with childbirth and menstruation but also with (and there’s just no more delicate way to put this) male emissions. Rabbi Susan taught us that one of the ways to understand this is to see each of those things as representing, in the most concrete way you could imagine, human potential. So maybe in its own way, the text is broadcasting to us at full volume –

Don’t be casual around the unfolding of God’s creation. Don’t delude yourself into thinking you’ve got people figured out, that you know everything they are and will be, because you don’t. You can’t.

All of this came together in our minds — during a few weeks when the headlines were filled with the awful story of another dead gay teenager — with one of the text’s main technical concerns, which is how to deal with an outbreak of ‘leprosy,’ or tzara’at in Hebrew. We actually have no idea what condition this was; all we really know is that it couldn’t have been leprosy as we know it, because it’s also described as infecting clothing and houses.

As it happens, the Hebrew word tzara’at has counterparts in Arabic and Aramaic that mean something like ‘putting down’ or ‘oppressing.’ That works pretty well, because later in the Bible, Miriam is struck with tzara’at when she (and Aaron) start saying bad things about Moses in public. So maybe this strange disease is a warning to us –

Don’t put people down, because you have no idea where or how the damage you do will show up.

But we didn’t want to just stand here this morning and tell you these things; we wanted a way to bring you into the text and the many difficult propositions it put in front of us –chief among them the idea that isolating people from a community could ever our best first move.  So with the help of the CRC Players, we’re going to create for you something a little like ancient Jerusalem. I’ll let our main character introduce himself to you.

Opening Scene

[Shmuel appears stage right or stage left, and narrates as events from the past unfold center-stage]

SHMUEL: Hi, my name is Shmuel, and I have a story for you that’s related to this week’s Torah portion. I think you’ll want to hear it, because you see, my father was one of the priests who worked on the first draft. Hi Dad!

[Father, in distance, waves back]

SHMUEL: All my brothers became priests, all my sisters married priests. But I never wanted the priestly life. I just liked to stay home and help mom around the house.

SHMUEL: My best friend Hannah was the same way. She and I were little terrors at school, and it didn’t help that my dad was the teacher.

CUTAWAY:

[Scene of Father chanting from a scroll as Young Shmuel and Hannah sit behind him, squirming and giggling. Shmuel’s mother is nearby, giving them dirty looks.]

FATHER: Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, if any man has a discharge from his flesh, his discharge is unclean …

[Young Shmuel and Hannah giggle harder. Father turns and gives Young Shmuel and Hannah a dirty look. They quiet down. Father turns back to the scroll]

FATHER: And this shall be his uncleanness due to his discharge: if his flesh runs with his discharge, or if his flesh is plugged up by his discharge …

[Young Shmuel and Hannah lose it, start cracking up]

MOTHER: [Annoyed] Shmuel!

SHMUEL: My dad tried for a long time to get me to study the Teaching, which is what the word ‘Torah’ really means.

CUTAWAY:

[Father and Young Shmuel sitting across from each other, studying the scroll. Mother is in the background, sewing.]

FATHER: So anybody who sits on an object that’s been sat on by somebody with a discharge has to wash their clothes and bathe and they’re impure until the evening.

YOUNG SHMUEL: This is gross. Why does it even matter?

FATHER: It’s the Teaching.

YOUNG SHMUEL: Well it’s dumb. How does this help us create a better world? That is what we’re supposed to be doing, isn’t it?

FATHER: This has to be a part of it.

YOUNG SHMUEL: Why?

FATHER: I don’t know why. Maybe you’ll be the one who figures it out.

YOUNG SHMUEL: [Sighs deeply, rolls his eyes]

MOTHER: [Annoyed] Shmuel!

SHMUEL: I always felt like I was the only one in Jerusalem who just didn’t get it. At least when Hannah wasn’t there. We were inseparable, Hannah and I. I think our families always thought we’d get married, but we were, you know, just friends.

CUTAWAY: [Young Shmuel and Hannah sitting together. Hannah laughing uncontrollably as Shmuel talks]

YOUNG SHMUEL: Did you see that girl Miriam at services the other day? I wanna know where she got the money for that dress! One day she’s wearing burlap sacks and the next she looks like the Queen of Egypt. Who knows, maybe she’s found some work as — you know … [They crack up. Young Shmuel starts rubbing his forehead]

SHMUEL: But the truth is, Hannah was my protector, too. I got bullied every day because I was, you know, different.

CUTAWAY:

[Two boys are shoving Young Shmuel around, hurling insults at him.]

BOY 1: Sissy!

BOY 2:  I saw you doing it with another boy. I’m going to tell everyone, starting with
your father!

YOUNG SHMUEL: That wasn’t a boy, that was Hannah dressed up as a boy.

BOY 1: So what, Hannah’s your girlfriend?

YOUNG SHMUEL: Yeah! We do it all the time. She loves it. [Young Shmuel rubs forehead]

BOY 2: You’re lying.

[Hannah walks up, her hands on her hips, forcefully shouts]

HANNAH: Hey! Knock it off!

[The boys shove Young Shmuel one last time and walk away in a huff]

HANNAH: Shmuel, why did you say those things? Why did you tell lies about me?

YOUNG SHMUEL: Don’t you get it? I gotta fit in somehow.  [Walks off, rubbing forehead]

SHMUEL: And then one day, something happened.

CUTAWAY:

[Young Shmuel and Hannah are standing alone together. Young Shmuel has a big white blotch on his forehead. He’s rubbing his forehead near the spot.]

HANNAH: Shmuel, what’s that on your forehead?

YOUNG SHMUEL: What’s what? [He touches it]. Oh. [Takes out a mirror and looks at himself, grimaces.]

HANNAH: Does it hurt?

YOUNG SHMUEL: No, it’s fine, it’s just — I don’t know. I’ll be fine.

HANNAH: We should tell your dad.

YOUNG SHMUEL: Are you crazy? We’ll never hear the end of it. Here, just give me your hat. It’s never looked good on you anyway.

HANNAH: No!

[They start struggling over the hat. Shmuel’s father walks up, and they stop. Young Shmuel keeps his back to his father]

FATHER: Shmuel, people in the neighborhood have been talking. They said they saw you … with someone. Is this true? Because if it is, then we need to talk. Shmuel, look at me. I SAID LOOK AT ME.

[Young Shmuel turns to look at his father]

FATHER: Shmuel, what’s that on your forehead?

YOUNG SHMUEL: What’s what?

FATHER: Come here.

YOUNG SHMUEL: [Walks up to his father.]

FATHER: Get your things. You’re leaving. You might be impure. We can’t have you here until we know for certain.

SHMUEL: I couldn’t believe it. I was outside the city, away from my mom and dad, away from Hannah, all on my own for the first time. I kept a diary during the whole experience. Here, I’ll read a few excerpts for you:

Day 1. This is stupid. [Turns the page]

Day 2. I’m bored. I still don’t understand why I’m here. [Turns the page]

Day 3. I miss Mom. I miss Hannah. I even miss my dad.

Day 4. I can’t stand this. I didn’t do anything wrong! This thing on my skin just happened.

Day 5. I’m lonely.

Day 6. I feel like crying all the time.

Day 7. Dad came to see me. If I’d paid attention in school, I guess I would have known he’d come see me on the seventh day. He wouldn’t even talk to me. He just looked at the thing on my head, turned around, and left.

Day 8. I can’t stand having no one to talk to. They’re never going to let me go back home. And maybe I shouldn’t. I don’t fit in there. I’m never going to fit in there. They all hate me.

Day 9. Mom came to visit. And this is what happened.

CUTAWAY:

[Young Shmuel is sitting inside a pup tent, with the flap closed. His mother walks up.]

MOTHER: [Quietly] Shmuel! Shmuel! [Looks around warily]

YOUNG SHMUEL: Mom? [He opens the flap] Mom! I’m so happy to see you!

MOTHER: SHHH! Keep it quiet! If your father finds out I’m here, I’ll never hear the end of it.

YOUNG SHMUEL: Mom, this is stupid. I want to come home.

MOTHER: Is that thing still on your forehead?

YOUNG SHMUEL: Yes.

MOTHER: Then you can’t come home. Oh, this is all my fault. The shame on our family, I can’t bear it. [Cries] Here. I brought you something to eat… [Tosses a bag of food in front of the tent, then pauses, looking at her hands]. Shmuel …

YOUNG SHMUEL: Yes, Mom?

MOTHER: I know you’re … different from other boys, but do you have to make fun of the priests, the Teaching? Your father?

YOUNG SHMUEL: [Silent]

Day 10. Hannah came to visit! And this is what happened.

CUTAWAY:

[Young Shmuel is still inside the tent, the flap closed. Hannah walks up]

HANNAH: [Quietly] Shmuel! Shmuel! [Looks around warily]

YOUNG SHMUEL: Hannah? [Opens the flap] Hannah! It’s about time you got here.

HANNAH: SHHH! Keep it down. If your father finds out I’m here, I’ll never hear the end of it.

YOUNG SHMUEL: Hannah, I miss you so much! You have to get me out of here.

HANNAH: I miss you, too, Shmuel, it’s just…

YOUNG SHMUEL: What?

HANNAH: Having you gone, it’s helped me understand a few things.

YOUNG SHMUEL: [Defensively] Like what?

HANNAH: Listen, I know you and I don’t fit in, but do you really think lying and making fun of people is the way to deal with it?

YOUNG SHMUEL: What do you mean? Nobody cares about us anyway, so what’s the point? Besides, it’s fun.

HANNAH: I know it feels that way, Shmuel, but what if we’re wrong?

SHMUEL: [Closes the journal] Look, I’ll level with you. Sometimes the Teaching drives me crazy. So many strange rules, so hard to understand. But it’s wiser than we know, in ways we don’t always see at first. If it hadn’t been for the Teaching, I would never have gotten to be alone — alone with all the hurt I carried inside me, alone with the hurt I caused others. And as it turns out, I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

CUTAWAY: [Mother is mopping a floor. Father walks up]

FATHER: What are you doing?

MOTHER: What does it look like I’m doing? I’m cleaning.

FATHER: Didn’t you just do this part?

MOTHER: Shmuel usually helps me, but with him gone, I can’t seem to get it clean. [Keeps mopping while father watches uncertainly]. I miss him.

FATHER: I miss him, too, but the Teaching is the Teaching.

MOTHER: But what if we’re the ones who brought this on? What if we’re not loving him the way we’re supposed to?

SHMUEL: My father came again on Day 14, and this is what happened.

CUTAWAY:

[Young Shmuel is in the tent, the flap closed.]

FATHER: Shmuel? It’s me. Come out so I can look at you.

[Silence]

FATHER: [Concerned] Shmuel! Come out here, I need to inspect that thing on your forehead.

[More silence. Father opens the tent and finds Young Shmuel, one arm covered in blood]

FATHER: SHMUEL! What have you done?!

YOUNG SHMUEL: I … I was going to …I didn’t want to go on… But then I got to thinking-

FATHER: [Holding Young Shmuel close] Shmuel, my poor boy!

YOUNG SHMUEL: I put a bandage on it. I stopped the bleeding.

FATHER: I love you. You’re my flesh and blood.

YOUNG SHMUEL: I’ve been so cruel to everyone. I’m so sorry. I just wanted to fit in.

FATHER: Oh Shmuel. [Puts a cloth on Shmuel’s wound] Poor Shmuel. I’m sorry. We’re all sorry.

[They hug, after which Father inspects Young Shmuel’s forehead]. Well, your lesion isn’t getting any bigger, so I have news for you, son. You’re pure. We just have to wash your clothes, go to the mikvah and then you can come home.

[Mother and Hannah enter the stage.]

MOTHER: Shmuel, come home. We miss you. Everything else we can work on. [Glares at father] And we’re ALL going to the mikvah; we all have things we need to wash away.

HANNAH: [Holding out the hat from earlier] I brought you the hat.

YOUNG SHMUEL: [Smiles] Keep it, Hannah. It looks good on you. [They hug]

SHMUEL: You notice I still had that thing on my forehead, but it went away eventually. How? Well, maybe I’ll tell you about it the next time we see each other.

[From out of view, Shmuel retrieves a priest’s garment, puts it on]

SHMUEL: Shabbat shalom, everyone [Exits]