1. Exodus: Ki Tissa

wow…big week.  And yes, I know I’m late again.  It’s been a big few weeks in a lot of ways.  I’ve made a major life decision.  I’m leaving my job and going to work for myself.  It’s a crazy time to be doing this, what with our insane economy and the extreme lack of work in architecture, but it’s the right time just the same.

It was an even bigger week in Moses world.  He got to meet God and chat.  He even got to talk God out of killing all of the Israelites because of the golden calf.  That’s huge…Moses, the little human guy, was heard by God, the big god guy.  Being heard by the big guy is huge in anyone’s world.

So I was reading one of the ever so many Jew-mails that I get.  I have to copy and paste a bit here.  I read it while I was waiting for my lunch at the cafe that I usually go to near my office (my nearly ex-office).  I was reading it on my phone and got so excited I was tempted to show it to someone, anyone, even though there was no one that I knew in the place.  Really crazy….stuff happens the way it’s supposed to happen if you live with intention.  So here’s a bit of what Rabbi Naftali Reich has to say on this week’s portion:

In our own lives, it is important to recognize the enormous power we hold in our own hands. We are capable of attaining any goals we pursue with true single-minded perseverance, but sometimes we would do well to stop and consider where we are going. Only if we channel our energies correctly and pursue goals of enduring value can we truly enrich our lives and find true happiness and fulfillment.

So, in the spirit of choosing the right path, I am choosing to : 

  1. leave my job but not my career
  2. spend more time doing the work that fulfills me but doesn’t drain me
  3. volunteer to help the organizations that I am well equipped to help without emptying myself
  4. be available to my children and my family without feeling someone else is being cheated
  5. be happy to be where I am

So go check your map and make sure you’re on the path you want to be on, mean to be on.

1. Exodus: Tetsavyeh

The faster I go, the behinder I get.  My dad used to say that.  It seems to fit my pattern right now, but it will change.  I know that I can tell you my little not-so-secret.  I am leaving my job.  I’m sad, nervous, relieved, sad.  I know I said sad twice.  But I do love my job and all of the people that I work with.  So I’ll be sad to leave them, but they need me and a half.  And all I have to give is me.  So it’s time to step away and find a way to do what I love to do in the amount of time that I have to do it.  I’m sad, yes, but also excited to set out on a new adventure.  And I’ll have to dress properly.

Not a very graceful segue, but it’s late and I’m behind (er).  Tetsavyeh is all about fashion.  Appropriate fashion.  Aaron and his progeny’s priestly fashion to be exact.  And God was extremely exact about how the priests should dress.  Colors, materials, how they were used and what they stood for are all covered here.

Fashion is a gift and a curse.  In our society so many are slaves to the fashion gods (you know, the beautiful people in all of those advertisements).  I once had a plan to take the label out of every piece of clothing I owned and put them all on a single shirt.  That would be my “label”.  When my kids were young I told them that I wouldn’t buy them clothes with the name of the manufacturer brazenly displayed (unless of course the company wanted to pay me to use my children as billboards).  That is the cursed aspect of fashion.

But there’s another side to fashion.  As a society we set up visual rules and customs that help us to organize.  Every society does this.  Remember when Nixon flashed his two finger peace sign (in China perhaps?) and deeply offended the locals?  They didn’t read his two finger gesture as a compliment….I think it had a similar meaning to our middle finger gesture.  Well our clothes carry messages as well.  When I walk into a business meeting, I don’t wear jeans and a t-shirt.  I wear clothing that tells the people in the room that I have style and taste.  I’m an interior designer for heaven’s sake!  My visual presence is part of my story.  It’s not ALL of my story, but it definitely carries a message.

How many times have you connected someone that you did not know well with what they looked like?  “Remember that guy who had the funny tie and that yellow shirt?”  We hired a sculptor once to work on a hotel project that we were involved in.  He showed up at the meeting in pants that exposed much too much of his nether region, a t-shirt that was a few sizes too small, and an odor that was memorable.  When discussing him later, he was always described as the slob.

We cast judgment before we have a chance to know people.  It’s not a terrible thing, so long as we remain open to our judgment being wrong.  But you save a whole step by dressing in synch with the message you wish to send.  So it seems right that God made a big deal about the fashion associated with the people who were representing him.  If someone were representing me, I’d have an opinion on the subject as well.

1. Exodus: T’rumah

Gifts.  That’s what t’rumah means.  God tells Moses to tell the Israelites to bring gifts, specific gifts, but only if they are moved to do so.  Then God gives very specific instructions for building the tabernacle with these gifts.  Being in the business that I am, one day I will build a model of this tabernacle.  It’s just too tempting to not do it.  My son explained that a cubit is the distance from your elbow to your fingertips.  So I’ll scale a cubit down to maybe an inch or so and see if I can lay out this tabernacle.  Maybe I’ll just draw it in CAD.  That would be fabulous.  Then I can model it in 3D and add all of the colors and textures God requires.  One day, when I have a lot of free time.

The thing that struck me in reading this parsha is the portability of so many of the pieces described.  Plus the whole thing is a tent which is pretty portable in itself.  I think this is significant.  I know that everything is significant in the Torah, but I think this is especially significant.  I think God wants us to be able to carry our beliefs with us easily and always.  I think God wants us to carry Him with us.  I don’t think that God wants us to go to Him.  He wants to come to us.  He wants us to have a place to receive Him.

When I look at some churches I see magnificence, hugeness, greatness beyond man.  I see a place that one goes to experience the holy.  Or to try to find the holy.  But what I feel is small and insignificant.  Certainly not worthy of a meeting with God.  I don’t see God.  I don’t feel God when I am in a place bigger and more fancy that the greatest palace. 

I feel God in small quiet places.  I see God in the faces of my children, in the loving look in my husband’s eyes.  I feel God when my Jewish community comes together to take care of one another.  The tabernacle that God describes is filled with precious metals and stones, but it does not seem magnificent.  It is not bigger than a neighborhhood.  It is based on the length between a man’s elbow and his fingertip.  It is human scale…a place for us to receive God.

I seem to remember Howard Roark building his “temple to the human spirit” on a scale smaller than the churches of the day and being condemned for doing so.  Maybe it’s time to re-read that book….

2. Exodus: Mishpatim

“He who insults (or reviles) his father or his mother shall be put to death”. 

A synonym of revile is scold.  It is a miracle that our species has survived.  We were all teenagers once, and we all had parents.  Teenagers revile their parents.  So I guess this is one of those commandments that is left up to some amount of interpretation.  And the blessed memory of our teenagers as sweet and loving young children.  But only during those moments of revilation.  Is that a word?

Mostly I love having two kids at every stage.  But teenagers are crazy.  And the parents of teenagers are crazy.  I’m crazy.  Seriously crazy.  Today I picked up my crazy teenager and acted like an even crazier mother.  There was definitely a lot of reviling going on.  But we’re both still here.  And now I’m reading a book.

I turn to books when life is broken.  I know that’s a little melodramatic, but it feels a little broken right now.  So I’m reading a book by Mike Riera.  I strongly suggest that all crazy parents of crazy teenagers read all of the Mike Riera that they can get their hands on.  He gets teenagers.  And after only 35 pages I’m significantly less crazy.  I don’t know about my teenager, but I do know that the more I know, since I’m the parent, the less broken things will be.

So maybe some of the reviling will stop and the species can go on.  I do love my crazy teenager.  A lot.  All the time.  Even when she’s crazy and I’m crazy.

1. Exodus: Mishpatim

Mishpatim means laws.  One of my friends’ sons has never wanted to learn about his Jewishness because he doesn’t want anyone to tell him how he should relate to his spiritual beliefs.  How he should believe in his god.  He doesn’t want religious rules.  At least that is the way that she has explained it to me.

I’ve always wanted to be an independent thinker.  A trailblazer.  The leader rather than the follower.  But really I might not be.  I do like rules.  I do feel more comfortable with boundaries.  Sometimes I want to know the rules just so that I can break them.  Judiciously.  But the rules make me feel safe.  And the rules are like the lines on the freeway.  They keep us all organized and moving in the same direction without too much chaos.  So long as people use thier blinkers, things move along pretty smoothly.  Occasionally I don’t use my turn signal when I change lanes.  Rarely, but when it happens, I feel like such a rebel!  That is my free thinker stepping up.

I’m glad that there are rules to follow and rules to break.  It shapes us as a community…as a people.

1. Exodus: Yitro

Do not take God’s name in vain.  That’s one of the ten commandments that God gave to the Israelites this week.  When I was growing up people said that this means you can’t say “oh my god” because it means “oh my God” and that is taking God’s name in vain.  So for a long time I taught my kids that it was not okay to say “oh my g/God”.  It might offend people.  Of course, when I’m pleasantly surprised, or suddenly frightened, I always say “oh my god” and for years felt just a twinge of guilt.  Because of course I would not want to take God’s name in vain.

Then I was listening to someone speak.  It was a woman that I have very little respect for, so I was not expecting to hear anything of great value.  But she surprised me.  Pleasantly.  She said that a rabbi explained what it means to take God’s name in vain.  It has nothing to do with an innocent “oh my god”.  Taking God’s name in vain means doing something with intention and doing it with the understanding that it is being done for God.  Doing it with the belief and understanding that God would want it done.  Like flying airplanes into buildings because it’s what God wants.  That is taking God’s name in vain.  That is clearly not what my God wants.

So now I say “oh my god” and barely feel any guilt at all.  And I don’t stop my kids when they say it (most of the time).  I do cringe just a bit and worry about offending someone.  But then I try to remind myself that “oh my god” can sometimes be “oh my God”….since maybe the cool and surprising things in my life are not a complete coincidence.  Maybe God had a little something to do with it and I’m just noticing and celebrating the attention.

So totally off topic, and so totally exactly right…the unknowable

I know.  I didn’t write anything about last week’s parsha.  I am breaking all of my rules.  Isn’t that ever to irreverently Jewish though?  I did of course read last week’s parsha.  And a bunch of commentary.  And I have tons to say on the subject.  But I have something else stuck inside me that needs air more than my thoughts on last week’s reading do.

I spent last weekend with a group of women, most of whom I barely knew or didn’t know at all.  They were all very nice and we had a really lovely time, thank you.  I learned to play a game called “truth truth lie” where you tell 3 facts about yourself, one of which is entirely made up.  It’s very revealing and gave us much to talk about.  And there was wine involved, so that loosened a lot of lips too.

A couple of us were discussing beliefs (this was after one of the women went outside to dance a very rapturous and jiggly prayer for a friend of hers who is in the hospital).  The dancer calls herself a pagan, the other woman I was talking with calls herself an atheist who was raised a Jew, and then there was me.  I know you’re never supposed to talk religion in polite company, but this wasn’t exactly polite company.  By this time in the evening there were very few secrets left in the house.  We were no longer “company”.  Of course we were still very polite.

So the atheist Jew is bothered by the whole god thing.  Her mother has not been well and is apparently feeling her own mortality and dealing with it as many do…with help from her god.  She has been pushing her version of god on my new atheist friend.  Her version is very similar to Santa Claus with a different outfit and address.  My atheist friend doesn’t buy that god.  She asked me about my belief, knowing that I do deeply and enthusiastically embrace my Jewishness.  I answered the way I usually do:

“What is at the end of the universe?  At the very edge, beyond everything we know?  Beyond the dark and the stars and the planets and the solar systems? “  That is my understanding of God.  If I could answer one question, then I would be able to answer the other.  It is the unknowable that holds us all together.

Her answer though, was that there is nothing at the end of the universe.  Honest as this is, it baffles me.  I don’t understand nothingness.  I’m reading a book by Lawrence Kushner, “Kabbalah, A Love Story”.  I haven’t gotten very far yet, but this is how Kushner describes the end of the universe.

Einstein, in describing the “big bang”, describes that everything comes from a single point of light.  “Everything” includes matter and energy and space and time!  So, if you were to go out to the edge and look back at everything we know, you would have gone back in time and be looking at a single point of light that contains everything yet to come.  The light would be so dense as to contain “galaxies and planets, civilizations and centuries, people, everything”.

It kinda feels like God to me.  Unknowable.  So immensely huge.  And for me, deeply comforting.  Aaaaah….all that air feels good.

1. Exodus: Bo

Five years ago right now (my portion was Bo) I became a bat mitzvah.  Kind of in a born again way.  It’s been decades since I was thirteen, so officially I became a bat mitzvah in the seventies, but I learned the Hebrew, wrote a drash, went up on the bimah, and got my very own sisterhood kiddush cup five years ago.  So today I’m going to cheat just a little and post the drash that I wrote five years ago.  I’m quite certain that I’ll have more to say though, so stay tuned….the whole thinking around freedom and belief is so intriguing, just sets me all a tingling….hope you like this.  It made me cry (everything makes me cry).

Exodus 10:21-23

On my refrigerator is an ugly little bedraggled piece of paper.  The edges are torn and the paper has faded to a very unattractive yellow.  It’s been on my refrigerator, and several prior refrigerators for about 15 years.   This ugly little piece of paper has received much comment over the years, and has given me comfort on more occasions than I can count.  It says:

When you have come to the edge

of all the light you know,

and are about to step off

into the darkness of the unknown,

faith is knowing

one of two things will happen:

There will be something solid to stand on

Or you will be taught how to fly.

Darkness is every child’s earliest fear.  And as parents, it is our job to teach our children not to fear the darkness, the unknown.  But so many adults fear darkness.  Where does the fear lie?  In the lack of control, the lack of power?  The ninth plague visited by God on the Egyptians was to create darkness in the land, “a darkness that can be touched”.  In Genesis 1:3, God’s first act was to create light.  In Genesis 1:4, “God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness.”  So, in God’s act against Pharoah and the Egyptians, God took away his first greatest gift.  Like the mother who says to her mis-behaving child, “I gave you life and I can take it away”.  Yet the Jews still had light in their dwellings.  They had faith.  After 400 years of enslavement by the Egyptians, they still had their faith.  But what about the Jews who did not have faith?  Were there none?  According to Rashi, nearly 80% of the Jews enslaved in Egypt chose to remain enslaved.  They did not want to leave Egypt, and slavery, into the unknown.  Perhaps these Jews didn’t have faith.  Rashi suggests that, during the 3day plague of darkness, these Jews died and were buried.  The Egyptians were not aware of these deaths.  Otherwise they might have ignored the impact of the plague, noting that it was happening also to the Jews.

 

Today, too, there are Jews, and others, who do not have faith.  And not merely religious faith.  But faith in themselves, in their fellow man, in a greater good.  How do these people teach their children not to fear the darkness?  God does not want us to fear darkness; God wants us to look up, to have faith.  In Genesis, God tells Abraham several times to look up, to look toward heaven.  To see.  If Abraham had not heeded God’s words, he would not have seen the land God promised him.  If Abraham had not heeded God’s words, he would not have known that his wife, Sarah would finally have children.  If Abraham had not heeded God’s words, he would not have known to prepare his favored son Isaac for sacrifice to God.  Most importantly, if Abraham had not heeded God’s words he would not have known that preparing Isaac for sacrifice was God’s test of his love.  Abraham would not have heard the angels telling him not to sacrifice Isaac.  He would not have looked up and seen the ram that God provided instead for the burnt offering.

 

God gave us free will.  God wants us to make choices, hopefully good and righteous choices.  But how often do we make the choice to live in darkness?  Why would we want to choose darkness?  Think about this.  When you’re driving, do you always slow down to let the person next to you, whose blinker has been on for 3 miles, move into your lane?  If you’re waiting in line at the supermarket with a huge cart full of groceries, and someone walks up behind you with a carton of milk, do you pretend not to notice so you won’t feel obligated to let them go ahead of you?  What do we gain by this chosen blindness?

 

Nearly ten years ago, when I was nearly 6 months pregnant with my oldest child, my daughter Emily, I lived in San Francisco.  With a broken down car in the shop, I had to take the bus to work.  I waddled onto a commuter bus, nearly 40 pounds overweight.  The bus was crowded, so I moved into the aisle and stood, stomach at attention, next to a man sitting down reading the paper.  That man’s eyes were glued to his newspaper.  He was not going to look up no matter what happened, because that might require him to see, and be seen seeing, that I was standing there with my still innie belly button nearly resting on his nose.  We rode all the way downtown this way.  The next morning, when I got on the same bus, now at least 41 pounds overweight, at least 3 people jumped out of their seats to give one up to me.   They had seen me the day before, standing on my swollen ankles, from 27th Avenue all the way down to Kearny Street.  I had seen their scowls directed at the man with the newspaper.  I gratefully made my way to one of these kind souls and sat.  The man with the newspaper was nowhere to be seen.  What had his blindness, his chosen darkness, gained him? 

 

What does darkness, or not seeing, gain any of us?  It isolates us, it removes community.  We gain nothing, except perhaps the illusion that our needs are the most important needs and should be met first.  As a result, we become lonely slaves to our self-created darkness.  God doesn’t want us to choose darkness.  Like the Jews of Moses’ time, God wants us to have light in our dwellings.  The choice to have faith in ourselves, in people, in God, belongs to each of us.  That faith is our light.  When we slow down to let the bedraggled driver next to us into our lane, he smiles a thank you.  When we step aside to allow the mother with the crying baby to pay for her groceries ahead of us, she thanks us apologetically.  When we give up a seat on the bus for the elderly person with the cane, perhaps our action isn’t even noticed.  It doesn’t matter.  Each of us has the power to shine a little light into the life of another.  And no matter what, that light is reflected back to us.  It is the nature of light.  It is the nature of faith.

2. Exodus: Va’era

Freedom is a fallacy.  Have you seen “Up in the Air”?  We are connected animals living in a society together.  Even the most distant hermit is still likely connected in some way.  The rest of us are connected in so many ways.  To believe that we are free because we choose not to commit to something or someone is fallacy.  It’s all relative.  We choose which freedoms we wish to embrace and we pay some price for that choice.  The woman in love is free to love her lover, and likely not free to share that same love with anyone else.  And the woman who chooses not to commit to a lover, is no longer free to be loved by her lover.  It’s just two sides of a coin really.  And it does not apply just to love.  We are all as free as we choose to believe that we are free.

Of course I’m referring to life in my world.  It is likely very different in many other countries and maybe even other cities.

1. Exodus: Va’era

They found some bones in the desert  near the Pyramids of Egypt.  I heard the archeologist interviewed last night.  He said their discovery is the biggest of the 21st century and that it proves that the pyramid builders were not slaves.

I took an incorrect leap and thought that this meant that the Israelites were not slaves, but actually it just means that they were not pyramid builders.  Apparently the belief is that Egyptians built the pyramids because of their love of Pharaoh.  The Israelite slaves apparently built Ramses.

But anyway, I was enjoying the path my incorrect thinking sent me down.  If in fact the Israelites were not slaves of the Egyptians, why did they not leave Egypt?  Why did they act like slaves?  And I think my thoughts apply even if they were actual slaves of the Egyptians.

You can be a slave with or without a slavemaster.  The Israelites had been taken in by the Pharaoh of Joseph’s time and fed during the famine.  Once Joseph was dead, they really didn’t have a leader, anyone to look up to.  And no one had told them yet how to worship their God.  So I wonder why they would have done anything other than whatever was right in front of them?  Even if it wasn’t pleasant, it was really all they knew.  And the Egyptians had all the power anyway.

So maybe Moses was the first leader, speaking through his brother Aaron, who stood before the Israelites and even suggested that their lives could change.  And maybe the actual reason for the plagues was to prove to the Israelites that the God of their forebears was the only God and was really their God.  Maybe that’s why God hardened Pharaoh’s heart….the plagues had to happen so that the Israelites would believe.  In Him.  And in a better life, a self-directed life rather than a life directed by Pharaoh.

Torah lishma

Rabbi Stacy taught today about the books of the Jews.  It was good to hear words and terms that I’m familiar with.  It’s good to know that I’m really learning.  But there is so far to go.  When I was younger this would have dismayed me, to know how little of the path I’ve travelled and how long the path actually is.  But not so now.  It inspires me to know that there is still so much to learn and that the path goes so far and is so full.  It makes me kind of teary thinking about all of the amazing things that are ahead of me as I study.  What a sap!

She taught us the term Torah lishma.   Studying Torah for Torah’s sake alone.  I realize that my intention is not always pure enough.  Probably is never pure enough.  So part of my learning this year will be to learn, as best I can, to study Torah lishma.  Of course, as soon as I got the chance, I got right to my computer and did a google search on “lishma”.  That was after I’d failed at finding the word in my Hebrew dictionary.  I found some great discussion on a yeshiva site from New York (an orthodox boys school…likely a great source of future study for me!  I hope they won’t mind).  Sometimes, because I’m trying to blog on my reading, I get to the end of the week and don’t really study.  I just read the story.

So, in an effort to be more conscious about how I study Torah, I may do things somewhat differently.  I’m not sure how differently, or even what I mean by that, by maybe differently.  When I read Torah, I want it to be for Torah’s sake alone, not for blogging’s sake.  That seems a bit of a desecration (Torah for blogging’s sake).  So from now forward, I will do my best to set my intention a little differently, more consciously.  And to study Torah lishma.

Rabbi Stacy also taught us PaRDeS.  As I sat there listening to her I thought about the Contemporary Jewish Museum in SF and thought I remembered that they have a PaRDes wall.  So another google search (what did we do before google?  I love those brilliant people) and found this description of the 4 levels of textual study as depicted by the CJM:  literal, allegorical, personal and mystical.  Rabbi Stacy’s explanation clarifies the CJM terms for me. 

The P (Peshat) is the simple or direct meaning of the text.  The obvious.

The R (Remez) are hints at the deeper allegorical meaning.  Gematria also falls under remez (Jewish numerology…every Hebrew letter has a numeric equivalent and words with the same numeric value are thought to have further relationship).

The D (Drash) is the deeper interpretive meaning as related to other similar occurences.  The personal meaning.

The S (Sod) is the secret meaning or the mystical meaning.

I think at this point I’m certainly capable of understanding Peshat, and I can make a stab at Drash.  I hope that eventually I can learn more of the Remez and Sod meanings.  This must be what they mean by turning the Torah over and over.  It seems so simple to read and so easy to follow.  But that’s just the Peshat.  (I hope I’m using these terms properly.  If not, feel free to correct me.)  Then you’ve got to look at the same text from another perspective, turn it over, and dig out some deeper meaning.  Turn it over and over.

And that from a woman who rarely is willing to re-read a book.  Of course, the book was never the Torah.****

****!!!! there are exactly 613 words in my blog to this point!!!!  There must be some deeper meaning there, don’t you think?  Okay, now I’ve screwed it up and we’re up to 636.  But I truly stopped at 613 before I got all excited and wrote this bit after the stars.

1. Exodus: sh’mot

Names.  That’s what this portion is called.  “These are the names of the sons of Israel…”  And there’s a burning bush that is not consumed.  And bare feet standing on holy ground.  And a reticent leader.  What an interesting portion.  This feels like the actual beginning.  Genesis now feels like it was the prelude…the set-up.

The twelve sons of Israel are listed.  Again.  They have been listed several times already, but that was in the prelude.  Now they’re listed as a kind of starting point I think.  They’re listed but they don’t do anything other than die.  They are listed as our beginning.  The rest of us.  It’s a reminder that we all come from them.  Their offspring multiplied and became a nation.  Not just a guy in the desert who forsakes everyone else’s idols in favor of one god.  But a whole nation, large enough to be feared by those in power.  Big enough too feel the first wave of oppression.  Big enough to matter.

I keep reading that Judaism is dying.  There seems to be this big infernal fear that we have to hold on tighter, or Judaism will disappear.  I don’t want to hold on tighter.  As a parent, I find that when I hold on tighter my grip is lost and whatever I was holding onto slips out of my grasp.  Won’t the same thing happen if we hold on too tightly to our need to maintain our Jewish community?  Holding on too tight, despairing that we’ll disappear if we don’t work harder, try harder,  believe deeper says that what we’re believing isn’t good enough to stand on its own.  And my Judaism is strong.  I know there is lots of inter-marriage.  I’m not married to a Jew.  But my children are Jewish.  By choice.  By their own understanding.  Because they want to be.

Won’t Judaism survive on its own merits?  The more I know about Judaism the more I love being Jewish.  I can’t imagine that others don’t feel the same way.  Maybe not all others, but many others.  We are the only religion that teaches the holiness of this life.  Isn’t that enough to keep us in the fold?  I love living a life that is lived just for itself.  Em and I were talking today about fun and happiness.  I think that fun and happiness are not valid goals in life.  Fun and happiness are by-products of living a good, righteous, ethical, right life.  Of course there’s plenty of pain and suffering as well, but that comes whether you live a right life or not.  I realized after our conversation that this is a really Jewish thought.  If you live right, happiness follows.  Don’t you think?

So the more people that live a right life are living a Jewish life.  Judaism can’t die.  It’s too good to die.  Too perfect.  It doesn’t need our paranoia to survive.  It just will.  Twelve boys born a long time ago saw to our survival.  They made lots and lots of babies.

2. Genesis: Va Yiggash & Va Yehi

I just learned that christ means messiah.  Interesting.  Always thought it was just a name.

So I know it’s time to write on the first chapter of Exodus, but I still have a piece of Genesis stuck in my head.  The death thing.

Before Jacob dies, he has all of his children brought to him and he speaks to each one.  Actually only his sons come before him.  I wonder what happened to Dinah?  I guess maybe she left her family when she married.  In those days it wasn’t like you could come home for the weekend because dear old dad was dying.  No phones or trains.

Jacob isn’t entirely kind when he speaks to his sons, and it would take more of a Torah scholar than me to decipher half of what he’s talking about.  But what I do get is that he spoke to each son before he died.  There is huge blessing in that.  How amazing to have that one final conversation with someone.  Knowing that in fact this is the final conversation.

Three of my closest family members have died.  I did not get to have a conversation with any of them before they died.  It would have been wonderful.  One of my dearest friends died a few years ago.  I didn’t get to speak to him before he died either as his death was sudden.  He was a bit of a hobo though.  He never really lived anywhere so always kept a phone number with voicemail.  It took the phone company several months to figure out that no one was ever going to pay the bill before they finally turned it off.  So I spoke to Alex quite regularly on the phone after he died.  Often I yelled at him, as there was really no reason for him to die other than absolute degraded neglect of his own well being.  It was wonderful to be able to hear his voice and pretend for a moment that we really could have that final conversation.

Maybe the lesson is that we should treat every moment like it could be the last.  Not in a pessimistic end of the world kind of way.  In a be good to yourself and the people around you kind of way.  That’s what they say at the end of my yoga class.

1. Genesis: Va Yiggash & Va Yehi

I know…bad bad bad.  The days have just totally gotten away from me.  But don’t worry, I’m still here.  Reading and thinking. 

We’ve come to the end of Joseph’s story, the end of Genesis.  Everyone has kissed and made up (then died).  Joseph took care of his family and forgave them their, um, unkindnesses.  So I guess when the people we love do anything short of throwing us in a pit and selling us as slaves, we should consider forgiving them.  Maybe the lesson’s kind of obvious, but still.  It’s amazing how we hold onto our grievances, isn’t it?  I’m still kinda pissed at a friend who once told me that he wouldn’t take sides in a matter that left me very vulnerable.  For heaven’s sake, take sides!  I’m your friend….you didn’t even know the guy who was hurting me!  But yes, I should get over it.  I’m sure everyone else involved has completely forgotten the whole incident.

Two thoughts are floating around in my head from the last two weeks’ readings:  sex and death.  I’m not sure which to tackle first.  I think sex, since it comes first.  Or maybe death, just because I know it’ll make me sad and I should get it over with.  I’ll go make a cup of tea and I’ll have decided by the time I return.

Sex.  If you notice, every time there is a list of offspring in the Torah, there are ever so many boys and ever so few girls.  But the girls do get mentioned.  At first I thought perhaps the girls just weren’t being mentioned.  And maybe some, or even many, of them are not.  Regardless, there are an awful lot of sons.  And I know that sons were the preferred style of baby back in the day. 

As I’ve already mentioned, I’m in the midst of reading the Rashi’s Daughters series.  There are some pretty explicit sexual descriptions in the book.  Keeps things interesting and kind of spicy.  Apparently, there is a Talmud portion that deals with sex and explains to husbands how to please their wives.  Yes, how to erotically please their wives both before and during intercourse.  By Jewish law, men are required to provide three things for their wives:  food, clothing and SEX .  And they must provide sex that is pleasing to the wife.  Sex is not just for procreation or male pleasure.  As a matter of fact, it seems that the husband’s pleasure is and should be tied directly to the pleasure he instills in his wife.  He must never force her and he must make sex pleasurable and that means foreplay.  In all it’s many styles.  Explicitly described.  Apparently the sages knew that a happy wife makes a happy husband.  And yes, there is a point that I’m heading toward here.  Be patient.  Remember it’s always better if you wait a bit.

One of my girlfriends, ever so many years ago, wanted a daughter.  She already had one son and really wanted a girl as well.  So she bought a book that told her how to have a girl.  There were specific ways to have sex, and times to have sex.  Based on her description, the sex has to be really boring.  No orgasm for the woman.  She must be on her back, missionary position only.  And again, did I mention, NO ORGASM.  At all.  Ever.  At least not until after the baby is conceived.  My friend lasted about two weeks.  She had another boy.  Apparently there is something about the speed at which boy versus girl sperm swim and hormones excreted by women during orgasm that make for boy babies.  So seriously, when I see a woman with a passel of girls and no boys, I really want to give her a hug.  And a vibrator.

But now back to Rashi’s Daughters.  In the story, they describe some of the passages from the Talmud that deal with sexual relations.  The characters in this story are very pious and study and know Talmud very well.  Several times there has been reference to how important it is for the woman to “spill her seed” before her husband.  In other words, to have the first orgasm.  This will assure them a son.  So the Jews knew more about sex than did scientists fifty years ago.  And honestly, I think there is more and better information about relationships in the Talmud than in most of the relationship books I’ve seen.  They understood way back when that relationships that are close and loving are necessary, and that sexual relations are a part of this closeness.

So, that’s why there are so many boys when you look at a list of Jewish progeny.  The sages taught that to have sons, men should please their wives.  And please them well.  Apparently they did.

The more I learn, the more I love being a Jew.

1. Genesis: Mikkets

Last week Joseph’s brothers threw him into a pit then sat down to a meal together.  This week when the brothers came to Joseph for food during the famine, he invited them to sit down to a meal together.  I don’t remember any story so far that included discussion about having a meal together.

At our house, we eat dinner together nearly every night.  The odd night that we don’t eat together is rare.  And we all look forward to dinner.  Even the kids.  It’s the one time of day that we can rely on to talk.  Sometimes to argue.  Sometimes to sit silently and eat.  Lots of times we are able to repair whatever we’ve broken….feelings, confidence.  It was like that when I was growing up.  We always ate together, and usually there were people that we weren’t even related to eating with us.  Everyone liked eating at my mother’s table, and it wasn’t just because she was a great cook.  It was because we talked and argued and laughed a lot.  It’s because that was where we lived together. 

And that’s what my children have learned…we live together at the table.  If dinnertime were taken away from us tomorrow, I can’t even imagine how damaging that would be to my family.  I don’t know how we’d replace the quality of that little piece of the day.

I’m trying to figure out how this fits into Joseph’s story.  Maybe after the brothers threw him into a pit they needed to sit down together to figure out how to pull off their crime.  They needed the amount of time that a meal takes to discuss their plans.  Then, when Joseph asked his brothers to share a meal when they came begging for food, maybe he wanted them to suffer through a meal, wondering how me might punish them.  Or maybe he wanted to spend a meal enjoying their company.  Or maybe he just wanted them to to all enjoy a meal together for the first time in so many years.  Or maybe he wanted to show off his prosperity by offering a lavish meal.

It just seems significant that the brothers shared a meal when they sold Joseph, and now they are sharing a meal again.  I wonder what Rashi says….