Can you imagine that there is something about you that you do not know at all? That in some ways you are still in utero, still have not yet come to be who you really are? Have not even begun? And if they told you that on a certain date you would be receiving that new self, how would you prepare?
I love the idea of it, that I have not yet even begun - that the limits that I perceive I am bound by are not true limits at all, but are only my own projections. I necessarily relate to them differently - I can almost enjoy my limitations, without them threatening my very life. I won't need to avoid them, and run from them in shame. I can engage them, see where they come from, see what good they are doing, how they are protecting me. I can thank them.
Time is wonderfully confusing. Each moment is caught on the narrow bridge between total relevence and total irrelevence. On one hand it is "just a moment." But on the other hand, all life is a series of "just a moment"s. There is somewhere a balanced way to live, to live fully in each moment and then to fully let go of it.
Each conversation I have, I am having with a person who is like a river. I catch this moment, this manifestation, which has as much to do with the person as it does with the moon and the wind and my mood and the look in my eye. I must grab on, but at the same time realize I am not grabbing anything that should last. I should be fully engaged, and then fully let go.
As I read, I come across an idea that changes my life. I must let it change me, and then let go of it so that it might change me again later. Like Levinas says, I can only caress a reading when I encounter it. Next time I can caress it again, differently. I will never own it.
Robert Corrington says we humbly carry the words which we use - or the songs we sing. The Piazetzner Rebbe would add the prayers we say, the mitzvot we do. We are blessed to humbly engage them, to caress them for a moment, then to let them go. The Beloved tells Her Lover after she has been close with him "Go now..." (Song of Songs the last verse).
The Torah adds the concept of relationship to land - for 6 years we work the land, the 7th we cannot. The Izhbitzer Rebbe adds that in that seventh year, when the field can grow wild, is when magic can happen. When possibilities unknown can flower. When we control the land, we know exactly how much we plant and how much to expect. When we do not, we can be surprised.
On the larger scale of time, The Torah commands that every 50th year is a Jubilee year - in this year, every
person returns to his tribal and familial territory. Almost all claims on land are nullified - all Jewish slaves are freed. Everyone must return - to the familial land and therefore to the family.
The familial land resonates with the deepest parts of us. Some of us know we resonate with one type of land, or even a specific palce, and not another. One loves forests, one the desert, one the city. These places for each of us is close to the archtypes of our being. They are external manifestations of our internal selves. The Midrash says the lottery to distribute the land in Israel was done with Ruach HaKodesh - divine inspiration. Each tribe and family was sent to a specific place where they could see themselves in the trees, could hear their own song in the wind through the grasses and the birdsong. We are commanded to return there, to relocate ourselves in space. So too, as we return to our family - these people who are responsible for our earliest memories, our deepest pains and joys. They are the landscape of our personhood. There is deep fixing there.
The hardest part of Jubilee must have been letting go of the store you have been running, or the job. Especially the job - the assignment of purpose. To let go - and not with the intention of coming back. But to leave it forever. To begin a new cycle, to start from home again, and to make new decisions from a solid place, from a place of not-hiding.
This week is the week of yesod - foundation. It is also associated with connection. Our foundation is our connection. That which really binds us is really that which we have in agreement, or in common. This is a week to not force relationhips, but to find them.
Shavuot approaches - the giving of the Torah which has the same shofar blow as the Jubilee, and the same position as the 50th, the end of a long process, the climax of a cycle. Receiving the Torah is the receiving of definition, of purpose, of guidance through relationships to self, to other, to the Most High. The Torah takes us to a deeper sense of family - it reminds us of all being in Adam, one, it takes us to the archtypes of our existence, the place we all have in common, the common ancestors, the laws which bind us all - the ultimate yesod. This is the covenent not with only with Hashem, but with each other. The Torah is home. May we all be blessed to receive Torah into every limb, every cell, to allow ourselves to be guided, to be shown who we are, and why, and how to be ourselves, and toward what end, and with whom. Shabbat Shalom.
Rav Gavriel Goldfeder
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Rav Gavriel Goldfeder is one of the first semicha recipients of the yeshiva. A graduate of Drew University in Religious Studies, he came to Bat Ayin after stints in other yeshivot and found a spiritual and intellectual home. Here he met his wife, Ketriellah, who was a student in our short-lived Women's Yeshiva. Upon graduation, Gavriel took the position of rabbi of the Aish Kodesh Congregation in Boulder, Colorado and together with Ketriellah and their growing family, they are busy creating (in Gavriel's words), "a community infused with Torah values, passion for learning and prayer, consideration of one another, and action, as well as deep celebration of the joys of life." |