Shabbat Shalom to all! It's time to really start praying for rain.
The other night I went to a birthday/rain party, and-low and behold-the first rains hit Yerushalayim. We sat and sang rain songs and enjoyed the first rainy evening. In the midst of the fun was a request for a d'var torah, so I started thinking about rain. It turns out, rain is a pretty common issue in our religion. Sukkot was all about rain, each of the four species bears a unique relationship to how it receives its water, there's a water drawing ceremony at Beit ha-Mikdash (The Temple), and Eretz Yisrael is special for its dependence on rain. Rain is all over the place in our tradition. And as Motzei Shabbat is the start of the "davening season" for rain-which in Sephardi Shmone Esrei means a whole new paragraph, not just a few word changes-, it's worthwhile to understand what we are asking for.
"Geshem," rain, is the coming down of water, the drawing near-like "vayigash"-of "mayim" water. Geshem becomes physicality through the process of growth that it starts. This is an obvious metaphor for the manifestation of Hashem's giving to and sustaining of this world.
One of the most marked traits of the physical world is the diversity and difference that life takes. Unfortunately, the ensuing competition, the rat race, for "survival of the fittest" between all of us is a klipah (by-product) of the gift of the rains. We daven for a year of plenty, and then all too often that same plenty becomes the source of much social strife and even violence. The world of "gashmiut," the physical, is inherently a divided world of haves and have-nots. This is the level to which our everyday relations can fall, where the univeral becomes lost in the particulars; but praying for rain offers us a chance to come to a place of unity since EVERYONE NEEDS THE RAIN, and when the rain falls, it don't fall on one man's house (Bob Marley). The need for rain is a readily apparent reminder of our inherent unity in this world, and an avenue from which we can return to our primal role in the universe as channels of provision.
So the rain is now a vehicle for universal consciousness. This lesson is clearly evident in the story of the flood. One of our tradition's description of the problem in the world before the flood was that each person cast a bad eye on the portion of their neighbor. Jealousy and nasty competition was the status quo, survival of the fittest at its worst. The Mei Shiloach says this is the reason why Noach didn't pray on behalf of the rest of the world…there just wasn't a concept of unity available to humanity. The flood changed all that. "We're all in the same boat" was born, the very idea of unity was born in the ark. The unity of all peoples starts with the story all people can share of having been stuck at one time on the ark. This brand new idea of unity was quickly perverted by the builders of the Tower of Babel. Wily Nimrod figured that if the whole world lived together, Hashem could never get them. They clung together, killing anyone who tried to leave, in a form of unity built on a traumatic fear of god. The center of their building was like a sword keeping God out.
This pervesion found its fixing in Moshe Rabbeinu, the generation of the desert, and architecturally in the Mishkan/Beit haMikdash, where the center focus of the building…was an open sanctified space inviting Hashem back down to earth.
Remember last week in the creation, how the plants and trees were all stuck just under the surface awaiting the arrival of Adam to pray for their rain? This connects to a crucial Jewish teaching that every person must look out as if the whole world was created on their behalf, and hence, it is upon me to sustain the whole world. Everything. On the deepest level, I am truly bound together with every other creation. That can be the deepest happiness, like at the water-drawing celebration in the Beit ha-Mikdash.
The highlight of Sukkot is this ritual where the Cohanim took some water from down below and walked to the top and poured it back in the stream?!? What is that all about? I think that joy stemmed from the symbol of us stepping in and playing a part in the water cycle. Having a role in the world. In those times, our whole nation gathered on the holidays after the harvest, and the rain was the obvious focus to unite us. For the ceremony in the world of spirituality to so clearly reflect an integral part of everyone's daily life was a tremendous unification, between the thousands of people there and between the physical-spiritual dichotomy.
When our lives were of farming and we had the Beit ha-Mikdash, it was easier to see the commonality of fate between us and feel how we are sown into creation. The times have surely changed, but that need for unity has grown stronger than ever. In today's exile and our increasingly atomized existences, an experience-like sitting together with friends under the pitter patter of rain on the roof-is a refuge of sharing. The rain naturally fosters togetherness. In fact, Rav Daniel once brought an amazing midrash explaining why the beracha for the rain comes before the beracha of the ingathering of exiles. When the Jews left Egypt and were heading to Israel, the nations of Canaan cut down all the trees to scar the land. Hashem couldn't bear to have us enter a barren land and had us wander through the desert while the forests could grow. So that's why the asking for a year of rain and blessing in the land precedes the asking for a unification of our people. That is something we should merit to see this year like no other…. Gut Shabbes.
Incidentally, the garden is really growing a nice field of arugula, spinach lettuce, broccoli etc….
Shaul David Judelman
|
Shaul David Judelman currently resides in Jerusalem. After growing up amongst the Douglas Firs of Seattle, Washington, he came to Israel on a quest for Judaism alive in its land. He spent six years in the Bat Ayin Yeshiva Rabbinical program and now teaches at Yeshivat Simchat Shlomo while working on several different environmental initiatives in Jerusalem. He is the founder and coordinator of Simchat Shlomo’s Eco-Activist Beit Midrash, a program offering holistic in-depth Torah study around issues of ecology. |