This is the week in our yearly Torah cycle when we first shift away from the story and narrative and majesty that have characterized the first book and a half of the Torah. As we move into the parts of the Torah detailing the plans, construction, and ritual use of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle that traveled with the Israelites on their journey, the narrative arc becomes less constant. Instead we have the technical writing section of the Torah, the blueprints and user manuals that underlay our sacred text.
As more of a humanities person, I have always struggled with this section of the Torah, preferring to stick to searching for deeper meaning in the pieces that felt more relatable to me. The first community I served as a rabbi, however, was chock full of scientists and engineers. To my utter surprise, they absolutely loved this part of the Torah. In our years together, they opened my eyes to the beauty and power contained in the detailed lists that make up much of this section. Parashat Terumah begins with such a list, detailing the items that were to be collected from the Israelites for the construction of the Mishkan. Among the more conventional building supplies, we read that they were to collect “tanned ram skins and taḥash skins,” (Exodus 25:5) which would be used as a covering. While I am deliberately leaving the word taḥash untranslated, English versions of the Torah often render this word as “dolphin,” “seal,” or even “dugong.” Not a material you see every day. And although I just said that the narrative arc all but disappears in this section of the Torah, let’s remember where we are for a moment - in the wilderness, just a few months out from having left Egypt and the momentous Revelation at Mount Sinai. In other words, in the desert. No matter which aquatic mammal you prefer as the translation of taḥash, they were all in short supply at this point in the people’s journey. Rashi’s commentary on this word draws from the Talmud’s discussion of the taḥash (Shabbat 28a) as well as a related midrashic account (Tanḥuma, Terumah 6:1). Evidently, the taḥash is a miraculous creature of the wilderness, distinguished by its massive size, single horn protruding from its head, and the many colors of its skin. It was known by the name Sasgona, because it prided itself (שש / sas) in its vibrant colors (גוונין / g’vanin). What can we learn from this mysterious taḥash and its role in the construction of the Mishkan? In many ways, the Mishkan was both a reflection of and an aspirational statement about the Israelite community. Built from voluntary donations, it was a house of the people. Meant as a locus for God’s presence, it was a place where the Divine could be experienced. Constructed from both common natural resources and precious materials, it symbolized the blending of mundane and sacred. Covered by vibrantly colorful taḥash skins, it represented the diversity of the people and the necessity of inclusivity. The taḥash took pride, found joy, in its many colors. As a Jewish community, we should also experience the diversity that exists among us - of background, of opinion, of identity - as a source of joy and pride. The Midrash explains that the taḥash existed only at this time, and that it disappeared after the construction of the Mishkan. This is also instructive. Maintaining our openness to diversity, our pride and joy in the differences that exist within our community, is challenging. True and lasting inclusivity can be elusive. However, the Mishkan stayed with the people, accompanying them on their journey through the wilderness and even into the Promised Land. That whole time the vibrant many-colored covering of taḥash skins remained in place. That, too, should be our aim. May it also be our blessing. Shabbat shalom.
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I didn’t watch the Grammys this past week and I honestly hadn’t thought about the awards ceremony at all when I began seeing my social media feeds blow up with people offering commentary, posting videos, and sharing articles about one or both of two performances: Tracy Chapman and Joni Mitchell.
That made me pay attention. In addition to the sheer volume of things I was hearing and seeing about the two performances, Tracy Chapman and Joni Mitchell had been key parts of the soundtrack of my college years. I had listened to their music on long walks, analyzed their lyrics in my dorm room, and had sung their songs at karaoke bars with friends. And as both artists had come back into the public consciousness over the past couple of years, I had followed along here and there - weeping while watching videos of Joni’s performance at the Newport Folk festival with Brandi Carlile and singing along at full volume when I heard Luke Combs’s cover of Fast Car on the radio (even as I imagined it was Tracy’s iconic original I was hearing). So I clicked around the interwebs over the past few days, mesmerized by what I saw and heard. Hearing both of these singers share their music was a powerful experience. Even more meaningful to see, though, was the profound love and respect being shared with them, both from the stage and from the audience. It seemed clear to me that the other musicians and performers in the room, extremely accomplished themselves, knew that they were in the presence of giants - giants on whose shoulders they stood. They looked at Joni and Tracy with adoration and awe, the way a young child looks at their parents, when they very easily could have seen them as relics, whom they had surpassed. As I was reading Parashat Mishpatim this week, I was struck by how so many of the mitzvot in its chapters are couched in the negative. Mishpatim serves as the practical counterpoint to the majestic words of Revelation we read last week in Parashat Yitro. Focusing largely on how we are to treat one another, Mishpatim contains the details of our covenantal relationship with God, which we act out in our relationships with other people. But rather than telling us what to do, Mishphatim mainly tells us what not to do and details consequences and reparations for when things go wrong. In one stark example, the Torah instructs us that the punishment for one who curses their parents is to be put to death (Exodus 21:17). A good number of the mitzvot in Parashat Mishpatim are the “You shall not” side of other mitzvot that instruct us in what *to* do. And with the reverence I saw in the videos from the Grammys fresh in my mind, I couldn’t help but be reminded of other mitzvot from the Torah that detail the ways that we are supposed to treat our parents and our elders. Most notably, just a chapter earlier, we read “Honor your father and your mother” (Exodus 20:12), the fifth of the Ten Commandments. Midrash Tanḥuma picks up on the connection between the mitzvah in Mishpatim and its positive counterpart in Yitro. In commenting on the verse from our Parashah, it says (Tanḥuma, Kedoshim 15:1) “Come and see how precious honoring one’s father and mother is to the Holy Blessed one; for the Holy One never withholds the reward for this mitzvah.” The midrash then goes on to present different biblical examples of people being rewarded for honoring their parents. The midrash concludes by envisioning a world perfected through this reward: “The Holy Blessed One said, “In this world the people are afflicted because of the yetzer hara (evil inclination); but in the world to come I will remove the evil inclination…And I will put My spirit within you.” What I saw in those videos was perhaps a glimpse of that reward. Respect, reverence, love, and the spirit of the Divine. May we all be fortunate to witness such blessing in our own lives. Shabbat shalom. I didn’t watch the Grammys this past week and I honestly hadn’t thought about the awards ceremony at all when I began seeing my social media feeds blow up with people offering commentary, posting videos, and sharing articles about one or both of two performances: Tracy Chapman and Joni Mitchell.
That made me pay attention. In addition to the sheer volume of things I was hearing and seeing about the two performances, Tracy Chapman and Joni Mitchell had been key parts of the soundtrack of my college years. I had listened to their music on long walks, analyzed their lyrics in my dorm room, and had sung their songs at karaoke bars with friends. And as both artists had come back into the public consciousness over the past couple of years, I had followed along here and there - weeping while watching videos of Joni’s performance at the Newport Folk festival with Brandi Carlile and singing along at full volume when I heard Luke Combs’s cover of Fast Car on the radio (even as I imagined it was Tracy’s iconic original I was hearing). So I clicked around the interwebs over the past few days, mesmerized by what I saw and heard. Hearing both of these singers share their music was a powerful experience. Even more meaningful to see, though, was the profound love and respect being shared with them, both from the stage and from the audience. It seemed clear to me that the other musicians and performers in the room, extremely accomplished themselves, knew that they were in the presence of giants - giants on whose shoulders they stood. They looked at Joni and Tracy with adoration and awe, the way a young child looks at their parents, when they very easily could have seen them as relics, whom they had surpassed. As I was reading Parashat Mishpatim this week, I was struck by how so many of the mitzvot in its chapters are couched in the negative. Mishpatim serves as the practical counterpoint to the majestic words of Revelation we read last week in Parashat Yitro. Focusing largely on how we are to treat one another, Mishpatim contains the details of our covenantal relationship with God, which we act out in our relationships with other people. But rather than telling us what to do, Mishphatim mainly tells us what not to do and details consequences and reparations for when things go wrong. In one stark example, the Torah instructs us that the punishment for one who curses their parents is to be put to death (Exodus 21:17). A good number of the mitzvot in Parashat Mishpatim are the “You shall not” side of other mitzvot that instruct us in what *to* do. And with the reverence I saw in the videos from the Grammys fresh in my mind, I couldn’t help but be reminded of other mitzvot from the Torah that detail the ways that we are supposed to treat our parents and our elders. Most notably, just a chapter earlier, we read “Honor your father and your mother” (Exodus 20:12), the fifth of the Ten Commandments. Midrash Tanḥuma picks up on the connection between the mitzvah in Mishpatim and its positive counterpart in Yitro. In commenting on the verse from our Parashah, it says (Tanḥuma, Kedoshim 15:1) “Come and see how precious honoring one’s father and mother is to the Holy Blessed one; for the Holy One never withholds the reward for this mitzvah.” The midrash then goes on to present different biblical examples of people being rewarded for honoring their parents. The midrash concludes by envisioning a world perfected through this reward: “The Holy Blessed One said, “In this world the people are afflicted because of the yetzer hara (evil inclination); but in the world to come I will remove the evil inclination…And I will put My spirit within you.” What I saw in those videos was perhaps a glimpse of that reward. Respect, reverence, love, and the spirit of the Divine. May we all be fortunate to witness such blessing in our own lives. Shabbat shalom. In the Jewish professional world that I inhabit, “unity” is a word that gets used an awful lot. Community crises of all sizes demand a united approach. In considering the curricula or methods we want to teach, we need to be united behind a particular philosophy or approach. We often issue calls for Jewish unity, asking us to set aside our differences in pursuit of what’s seen as a higher goal.
In those first dark days after October 7, the calls for Jewish unity came frequently and from different sources. In our own community, I remember opening up a discussion on Simḥat Torah to allow us to talk through our experiences and feelings. During that conversation, several of us spoke passionately about the need to be united as a community during this painful time for Israel and the Jewish community. At that time, at least to me, it felt that the calls for unity were about standing in solidarity and supporting each other. It was about sharing our pain and offering a familiar embrace. It was not necessarily about uniformity. Perhaps things were too raw and new; perhaps we needed each other so much that we didn’t even consider the things that divide us. Over the ensuing months, I have seen a painful shift across the Jewish world: more insistence on sameness or uniformity of opinion; less tolerance for difference and diversity in one space. In our Torah reading for this week, Parashat Yitro, we see perhaps the most united gathering of Israelites in the whole Ḥumash. Standing at Sinai, awaiting God’s word, the people are together, both physically and spiritually. A number of well-known midrashim and discussions of this scene and what follows paint a picture of a people entirely in lock-step with each other, speaking and acting as one. Staying that united is hard, and we know that the people will soon fall apart, just as they have before. And perhaps their perpetual disunity was in part due to seeking out the wrong kind of unity. Perhaps they needed instead to seek out God’s unity. The opening words to the Ten Commandments give us a glimpse, if we look deeply enough, of a different sort of unity, a unity that is more honest, more inclusive, and more sustainable. “God spoke כׇּל־הַדְּבָרִ֥ים הָאֵ֖לֶּה (all these words).” (Exodus 20:1) Picking up on the use of the word כׇּל (all), the Talmud engages in a discussion about the essential nature of the words that God spoke, namely the Torah (BT Ḥagigah 3b). Torah can be compared to a goad, as Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah taught, because just as a goad is flexible and not rigid, so too words of Torah can be moved from one interpretation to another. And God’s word can be compared to something well-planted - just as something well-planted can flourish and multiply, so too words of Torah flourish and multiply. One of the ways, says the Talmud, that words of Torah flourish and multiply is in the multiple groupings of scholars who each read and interpret the text in different, often contradictory ways. Should a person despair of learning Torah due to the presence of so many divergent opinions, the Talmud reminds us that God spoke *all* these words. God’s singular utterance contained multitudes. God’s unity has room for difference, dispute, and contradiction. God’s unity can hold us all - not because we are the same, but because we are unified in just how different we are. Shabbat shalom. This past weekend was my mother’s fifth Yahrzeit. It was a kind of surreal milestone, made more unusual by the snowy quiet of the day that preceded it. As I was settling into my time of remembering on Saturday night, I was fortunate to join in a post-Shabbat jam, led by my friend and colleague Rabbi Ben Shalva.
There are few things I find more healing than singing with other people, and I was starting to breathe a little more easily when Ben started playing the familiar strains of “If I Had a Hammer.” Almost immediately, I was transported in my mind to a memory of standing on my parents’ front porch, hearing my mother sing that song to me. It was as if she was right there with me. I was so grateful for her presence on a night when her memory was very much on my mind. My parents raised me and my brother on a steady diet of Motown and folk music. We saw Peter, Paul, and Mary in concert a good number of times, and I knew their songs by heart. “If I Had a Hammer” was definitely in the regular rotation. And although both of my parents couldn’t have possibly been more “square,” they never shied away from the social messages often at the heart of the songs in the folk music tradition. It was in part through those songs that I learned to care about the values of equality, justice, and making room for multiple voices to be heard. Indeed, the songs we sing speak volumes about who we are and who we might become. Mom’s Yahrzeit falls on or around the week of Parashat B’Shalaḥ, when we chant another song, the Song of the Sea. After escaping the violent pursuit by the Egyptians and miraculously crossing the sea, the Israelites, led by Moshe and Miriam, cry out in song. Their song is an expression of their gratitude, of their joy that God protected them. At the same time, a well-known midrashic interpretation of this week’s Torah reading (Babylonian Talmud Megillah 10b) envisions the heavenly angels bearing witness to the Israelites’ escape into the sea and seeking to turn to each other in joyful song. But the Holy Blessed One said, “My creations are drowning in the sea and you wish to sing?!” While it was acceptable for the Israelites to focus on their own experience and sing about their miraculous deliverance, God expected the angels to have a broader perspective, understanding that the salvation of the Israelites brought with it the destruction of the Egyptians. We are not angels and we can only really know our own experiences. But the Talmud’s words are meant to be instructive to us as well. Everything that happens in this world has multiple points of impact. Our moments of song and celebration may entail suffering for others. Our own songs should be sung, but we must not allow them to drown out everything else. Shabbat shalom. One of my favorite questions from a student centers on Parashat Bo, from which we read this week. About a million years ago, in my first congregation, I was discussing Parashat HaShavua with the fifth grade students. We were talking about the importance of the story of the Exodus, how it’s the story of our becoming a nation, the story that drives our celebration of Pesaḥ. One student insightfully asked: If this is the story of Pesaḥ, and that story is so important to us, why do we read it now, in the winter? Why don’t we read it in the spring, closer to the holiday?
Her question parallels another question about the way the Torah tells the story of Pesaḥ, a question about the anticlimactic pause right in the middle of our parashah. The beginning of Parashat Bo tells of plagues number 8 and 9, locusts and darkness. Moshe then comes before Pharaoh with Aaron and explains what will happen for the tenth and worst plague, the death of the firstborn. And then…we learn the rules for the Jewish calendar and the procedure for celebrating Pesaḥ. It does get back to the exciting stuff after a good bit, detailing the Israelites’ night of painting their doorposts with the blood of the sacrifice and waiting through that terrible night for the right moment to leave. But it’s a noteworthy place to have a pause in the action. There are innumerable commentaries and midrashim offering explanations for the presence of this legal passage in the midst of an otherwise pretty exciting part of the Exodus narrative. However, the answer that speaks most to me right now is the same answer I gave my fifth grade student all those years ago: Planning ahead is important. We read the story of Pesaḥ in the dead of winter, when we can better appreciate its twists and turns, allowing ourselves to feel the desperation and the awe without worrying about making shopping and clearing lists. This no-strings-attached reading helps us more openly engage with the story, planting a seed for how we envision our celebration of Pesaḥ a few months down the road. Similarly, the break in the narrative right before the final plague’s execution serves as an instruction both to the Israelites and to us to pause and make a plan before jumping into something big. The plan that’s given to the Israelites in that moment isn’t intended for so far in the future; it’s meant for more immediate use. Still the message is there - before you do something, stop and figure out how you want to do it. This is advice I need to hear and I imagine I’m not alone. From the busy-ness of our lives to the expectation that things like social media posts need immediate responses, we can easily forget the value of pausing and planning. I invite you this week to follow the underlying message of Parashat Bo and find an opportunity to pause and plan. Maybe you take a night to sleep on an email response. Or you give yourself room to breathe and think about what you want to say when a child or partner says something that pushes your buttons. Or you make a meal plan for the week before you do your grocery shopping. Find the opportunity to pause and plan that makes the most sense for your life. Try it out. I’ll be doing it too. Shabbat shalom! Recently, I had the most wonderful opportunity to spend a quiet, child-free evening with my closest friend. We ordered in dinner, camped out on the couch, and talked. For hours. And hours. This is not a new thing for us. When we were roommates our first year of college, we would stay up until far too late in the night talking about everything. But it had been a good long while since we had been able to reenact our college dorm days so closely.
During our far-ranging conversation, we reflected on our parents’ friendships, how we would see them interacting with their dearest friends and how this would give us a glimpse of pieces of our parents that we didn’t really know. We talked about how we have only gotten to know certain aspects of who our parents are as adults, when both we and they were ready to share those parts of themselves with us. We reflected on how this was also true for our own children. Even though we parent very differently from how we were parented, being far more open with our children than our parents were with us, we realized that our children, too, only know pieces of who we are. We see something similar happening in our Torah reading this week. Parashat Vaera begins with God speaking to Moshe with an act of introduction. “God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the Lord [YHVH].” (Exodus 6:2) At first read, this passage is perplexing. God and Moshe have already met. The burning bush has already happened. And even though God doesn’t use God’s name the first time Moshe encounters the Divine, God does use this name when telling Moshe what to say to the Israelites. It’s a name that should be familiar to Moshe. There’s no reason to start from scratch here. A number of commentaries and midrashim pick up on this inconsistency, going in different versions of the same direction to explain it. In one way or another, they each say that God was introducing Moshe to an aspect of the Divine self that he hadn’t before known. Moshe is being introduced to God’s promise to reward the faithful, or to God’s merciful nature, or to God’s power to sustain the entire universe, or to God’s eternality, and so on. Each of these attributes of God, previously unknown to Moshe, would be important for their relationship and for liberating the Israelites. Moshe didn’t know these parts of God’s character before, because he wasn’t ready to. Reading this text through the lens of my conversation with my friend highlights for me something about my ever-evolving relationship with God. As children, we thought we knew our parents so well and as adults, after putting ourselves in our children’s shoes, we realized that we didn’t know them very well at all. Only over time and with experience did we come to know more and more facets of our parents as people. Similarly, we often read our sacred texts and find in them prescriptions and descriptions of God. We sometimes come out of that, like children, believing that we know who and what God is, that we know God well. This scene at the beginning of Parashat Vaera is telling us that God is not static. Our relationship with God also need not be static. We can hope to be like Moshe, over time seeing more and more facets of who God is, when both we and God are ready. I love to read the text of the Torah closely, noticing how the text’s word choices and turns of phrase add nuance and, layers of meaning to my understanding. One of my favorite close readings comes right at the start of this week’s parashah, right at the beginning of our new book of Shemot.
The book opens by reminding us of the journey down to Egypt, and lists the names of בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל (b’nei Yisrael), the children of Israel - that is to say, Jacob - who traveled to Egypt in search of food. This passage connects us back to the book of Bereishit, revisiting the members of the family, our ancestors, who were the primary subject of that first book of the Torah. Just a few short verses later, the text jumps several generations and tells us, וּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל were fertile and prolific, multiplying greatly and filling the land. This time, the use of the term בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל (b’nei Yisrael) describes not a family, but a nation. And for the remainder of the Torah (and the rest of the Tankah that follows), the term בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל (b’nei Yisrael) always means the entire people, the nation of Israel. Here at the very beginning of the book of Shemot is where we see the denotation of the phrase suddenly shift from a collection of individuals to a national collective. I usually read this section of Shemot just as I described above, noting that by changing the meaning of the phrase בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל (b’nei Yisrael), the Torah is moving its focus from our family of origin, away from the particular, to our whole people, to the more universal. But today, I’m feeling inspired to flip things around a bit and read the text in the opposite direction. Rather than seeing the individual children of Israel overtaken by the large and populous (and therefore more anonymous) nation of Israel, I want to remind myself and all of us that our nation, our community, is not one monolithic organism, but made up of distinct individuals. Each of us brings something unique to our community. We have our own personalities, talents, needs, passions, vulnerabilities, histories, and beliefs. We contribute to the community in many different ways and we each feel part of the community in our own way. In my first reading of the text, the strength of the nation lies in its collective identity. We had become too many to count, filling the land in fulfillment of God’s promise to our forebears. In this flipped around reading, our strength as a community lies in our ability to recognize each other’s unique perspective. We may differ from each other in significant ways, but we need not all be the same to be one nation, one community. When we allow ourselves to express our differences and respect each other for who we truly are, we create a community that embraces diversity and values the role of every individual. May we continue to work together to build and sustain such a community. Looking at Parashat Vay'hi, I see so many different kinds of blessings. Without even looking at the text itself, we have find blessings, in the words we say to each other as we reach the final lines of the first book of the Torah: חזק חזק ונתחזק (hazak hazak v'nithazek - may we all take strength from reaching this moment). And then there's the text! Evocative blessings, powerful blessings, blessings we use today for our children - and also: confusing blessings, contradictory blessings, backhanded blessings. There are a number of ways to mine these blessings for meaning (for a thoughtful, accessible take on a source critical reading of the text, check out this article!), but for this week, I want to look more closely at Jacob's interaction with and blessing of his grandsons, Menashe and Efraim. The interaction has always been an uncomfortable one for me. As Jacob greets his two grandsons and prepares to offer them his blessing, he crosses his hands to place them on the boys' heads, thus offering his primary blessing to the younger child, Efraim, rather than to the "rightful" heir, Menashe. Joseph at first believes this to be a mistake and tries to correct his father. But Jacob remains firm in his choice, explaining that the younger son will be the greater one. There's so much of this interaction that feels like Jacob replaying the events of his own life, how he received the primary blessing from his father by deceit, how his father gave the overlooked Esau a blessing that kind of makes him sound like an also-ran, and which led to much strife, fear, and threats of violence. After all that Jacob and his descendents went through to get to this place, it's hard to see him carry this same problematic dynamic forward into the generation of his grandchildren. At the same time, the words of the blessing that Jacob offers are powerful and beautiful. These are his own words, transcending the words of the covenant that was passed down to him, which he also references in his blessing. Some of these words, Jacob's words, have become part of the liturgy of our most tender moments. We bless our children on Friday nights with the invocation ישמך אלהים כאפרים וכמנשה, May God make you like Efraim and Menashe (Genesis 48:20) A portion of his blessing, המלאך הגאל אתי, HaMalakh HaGoel Oti (Genesis 48:13) is part of the extended bedtime Shema. I have sung it to my own children since they were born. It is true that there is a disconnect between Jacob's complicated actions and his moving words of blessing. This truth mirrors something that is likely also true about each of us. In many ways, we do what was done to us. We parent how we were parented. We build relationships that feel like and often replicate the relationships we saw as children. We follow the paths that were laid out for us by our upbringings. But this does not stop us from forging our own paths, from making (at least some) different choices than the ones that were handed down to us - choices that can have a lasting impact and enduring beauty. Like Jacob, we are not carbon copies of what came before. There may be parts of how we interact in the world that we inherited, that we continue to pass down, that perhaps we might do better not to. And there are certainly ways that we are wholly individual beings, that the blessings we offer to our world and to each other are unique, entirely ours, and full of beauty. Shabbat shalom As I walk around school of late, I see so many of my colleagues in real need of a break. I feel it too. And there are so many reasons for the weariness we’re feeling. The rush to finish grading and get report cards written. The excitement and shpilkes of the students as we near winter break. The exhaustion following a busy celebration of Ḥanukkah. And of course, it feels like it’s October 76th.
This is a time of year when many of us are anticipating and deeply needing some time off - not just those of us who follow the academic calendar. I’m hearing from people about going on vacations, visiting family and friends out of town, enjoying a little down time as the end of the year nears and we have a couple of days off from work. In thinking about what I wanted to share with you this week, a phrase kept popping into my head: “the Torah of taking a break”. I wasn’t sure if it was a title for an article, a wish for an authentic Jewish connection to what’s been on my mind - or something else entirely. I wondered if someone else had already written on this idea - could I look to them for inspiration at a time when I’m feeling a little depleted? I started scanning my bookshelf and came across my collection of commentaries and explorations of the Book of Psalms. At various points in my life, I have found the words of the Psalms to be a source of comfort and spiritual grounding. I have mined their verses for personal connection, sung them in community and on my own, landed on them as a mantra for meditation. Psalms are woven throughout our prayers. They appear, in whole and in part, all over the siddur. There are psalms we say in times of trouble, in times of celebration, when seeking healing, when comforting mourners. Some people have a practice of reciting Psalms as part of their regular spiritual practice. Surely there is a psalm for this moment. While I’m certain that there must be more than one psalm that can serve as “the Torah of taking a break,” I was immediately drawn to the final psalm in the book, Psalm 150. It’s a well-known psalm, recited in its entirety as part of the daily service. Focusing in on the final line helped me find two helpful messages, both of which I’d like now to share with you. The psalm ends with the words: כֹּל הַנְּשָׁמָה תְּהַלֵּל יָ׳הּ הַלְלוּ־יָ׳הּ׃ Let every נְּשָׁמָה praise God. Hallelujah. Translating this line is a little bit difficult. The word נְּשָׁמָה (neshamah) has a number of meanings. Let every soul praise God. Let everything that breathes praise God. My favorite: Let every breath praise God. This concluding line comes after the psalm describes a number of very active ways we can offer praise: with horns, cymbals, and other musical instruments; with dance and drumming. Each stanza begins with the same phrase: Praise God, הַלְלוּהוּ. But the concluding line is different. It uses different words and offers a different instruction. Let every breath praise God. The first message I draw from this is that after all the music, the grandeur, the hard work comes breath, comes rest, comes a pause. We cannot only do. We must also stop, take a break, just breathe. The second message captures the beauty of taking a break. After telling us of all the ways to offer through making joyful noise, the psalm tells us that breath, silence, stillness is also praise. The breaks we give ourselves are holy, just as everything we do in this world is also holy. For those of us getting a break in these next few weeks, I wish us stillness and rejuvenation. I hope we all can take some time to breathe. |
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