Ring… Ring… “Hello?”
“Hello, is this Lawrence?”
“Yeah, who’re you?”…
“Hi, Lawrence, it’s Ms. Millstein calling.”
“Ms. Millstein?! What are you doing calling me?”
“Well, Lawrence, can you think of a reason why I might be calling?”
”Ummm…cause I ask to go to the bathroom a lot?”
“Lawrence, on average, about how many times a day do you think you ask to go to the bathroom?”
“About ten, Ms. Millstein.”
“Tell you what, Lawrence, if we can make a deal, then I think we can keep this conversation between us.”
“Okay…I know, I’ll only ask to go to the bathroom on Tuesday and Thursday…is that good?”
“Great, Lawrence.”
In the book of Exodus, we read of Moshe’s journey down to Egypt, when God “vayeefgeshu,” met him on the way. The use of this verb implies an intense meeting with the “shechina,” one of God’s manifestations in this world. In such a meeting, there is potential for either incredible chesed (giving) or incredible gevurah (destruction) - compare the giving of the Torah at Har Sinai to the fire and brimstone to which Sdom and Gemarra were reduced. When God is on the phone for us, the reason for the call is never clear. Did we just reach a new level from which we can hear God more clearly, or have we fallen so far that we needed a wake-up call?
This Shabbat, we read Parshat Noach, the story of the flood. Kabballah, says Rav Ginsberg, sees a striking similarity between Noah’s Ark and Shabbat. The first time it is mentioned, the Ark is described as a “Tevat Eytz Gofer,” an ark of gopher wood. Tevat and Shabbat differ by only their first letters, which are next to each other in the Hebrew alphabet. Shabbat is an oasis in time into which we enter each week, but we don’t leave the week behind. The power of Shabbat is it’s role as an anchor , a point of focus that can give us the strength of perspective on where we’ve been in the past seven days. Wherever we’ve gone, whatever falls we’ve suffered, whatever heights we’ve reached, they are all a part of the “full package” we bring into Shabbat, hoping for an opportunityto lift it up. The week is our “mabul,” our flood, and Shabbat, like the ark, is our safe space to get some perspective. Noach is intimately connected to the “nuach,” rest, we are longing for on Shabbat. But despite that deep desire, it’s not sought by ignoring the elements of strife in our lives. Noach is told to bring in pairs of every animal, to confront the ways he fails to realize his unique potential as a human being. His only connection to the outside world is a window with a view that recalls the spacious land that was taken for granted… it would be a full year before humanity and land met again.
And what of that land, adamah. I discovered today that our connection to land, to place, is so much deeper than I realized. Rav Daniel Kohn brought the Ramban’s thoughts on Rashi’s first comment in the book of Genesis. Ramban explains that the first stories in the Bible delineate the incredible interconnectedness between humans and place. There are indeed places that we are MEANT to be in order to achieve very specific goals, and very individualized potentials. We must become that which is appropriate to the place in which we are put. Thus, the story of the creation of the world is interwoven with the story of the creation of man. The world’s creation is ongoing, affected by choices we make due to the place in which we are. Rashi saw the whole Torah as revolving around this idea: how can we bring a sense of belonging to our place in order to grow into who we’re meant to be, and nurture that space into what IT is meant to be? “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was…” The earth, our land, is the focus. What happened there? What’s the story of that place?
In this tiny land, it’s easy to hear that God is on the phone, and unfortunately, the message is clear. The battle we’re all fighting won’t be won by might, where we seek to uproot and segregate. The only battle that matters is the battle to come close and connect, to plant roots and sow seeds. We should all be blessed to soak up the rains of our flood and bring them into our Ark this Shabbat. When we come out, it will be a whole new world - a world thirsty for us to unleash the water that will bring back thriving life to this land.