The firewords at Mount Sinai

An amazing cycle of holidays plays itself out between Pesach and Shavuot. Overlaid upon our ancient journey from slavery to the fireworks at Sinai, we have a modern journey: the still bleeding wound of Holocaust Rememberance Day, which we celebrated at Kibbutz Yad Mordecai as Yom Zikaron l'Shoah u l'Gvura, the remembrance both of the Holocaust and of the Uprising. Mordecai Anelewich (leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: the kibbutz is named for him) himself stands defiant, triumphant, in sculpture over the whole heartwrenching ceremony. He died with a sense of glory, triumphing in the fact that his people had risen to fight. The words, "L'Olam lo od", Never Again, mean "Never again will the people of Israel be without a powerful army to defend themselves." Hayalim climb to the monument, to the blast of loud, wailing shofars in the night. And then we have a separate day to remember the soldiers who fell defending modern Israel. Very hard. Sirens sound and the entire country stands utterly still, cars stopped on the highway and everyone getting out and standing still, silent, solemn. At precisely eight o'clock in the evening, all over the land, the weeping suddenly transforms into joyous fireworks, dance, song, a boundless all night celebration of the miracle, the State of Israel.

 

 

 

First, the Beauty

Why plant bouganvilleas on the roof today, I thought to myself. This is the time to do more serious things. And then I recalled the story of Fania, in the book about Kibbutz Yad Mordecai. I am dazzled to discover what I always really knew, that Mommy's Uncle Moshe and Aunt Golda from Poland first started their kibbutz right here in Netanya, by the sea. A woman in their group, Fania, was assigned the job of making it beautiful. Some of the early kibbutzniks poo pooed the idea of flowers as too bourgeous, too frivolous at a time when basic sustenance and self defense were priorities. Fania knew that beauty does not wait. You weave beauty, now, through your work and your worry and your saving up for better times. Beauty's time is Now.

What if all of our firm action came of love.

This is an incredible week in the counting of the Omer. This week is gevurah, discipline, holding back, firmness. Today is chesed in gevurah. What is all the firm action we took came from love, from trust, from hope?
Week Two - Gevurah

If love (chesed) is the bedrock of human expression, discipline (gevurah) is the channels through which we express love. It gives our life and love direction and focus. Take a laser beam: Its potency lies in the focus and concentration of light in one direction rather than fragmented light beams dispersed in all different directions.

Gevurah - discipline and measure - concentrates and directs our efforts, our love in the proper directions. Another aspect of gevurah is - respect and awe. Healthy love requires respect for the one you love.


Day One of Week 2 (8th day of Omer):
Chesed of Gevurah

The underlying intention and motive in discipline is love. Why do we measure our behavior, why do we establish standards and expect people to live up to them - only because of love. Even judgement of the guilty is only to express love. In other words punishment is not vengeance; it is just another way to express love by cleansing anything antithetical to love. Tolerance of people should never be confused with tolerance of their behavior. On the contrary: love for people includes wanting them to be the best they can and therefore helping them be aware of anything less than perfect behavior.

Chesed of gevurah is the love in discipline; awareness of the intrinsic love that feeds discipline and judgement. It is the recognition that your personal discipline and the discipline you expect of others is only an expression of love. And that comes across when disciplining. It is the understanding that we have no right to judge others; we have a right only to love them and that includes wanting them to be their best.

Ask yourself: when I judge and criticize another is it in any way tinged with any of my own contempt and irritation? Is there any hidden satisfaction in his failure? Or is it only out of love for the other?

Exercise for the day: Before you criticize someone today think twice if it is out of care and love.

There is nothing in the world that can ever change my love

So our family kibbutz, Yad Mordecai, began right here in Netanya. Here are Shlomit Karmi and I at the water tower of the original kibbutz, just a way along the beach from our house.
Day Four: Netzach of Chesed

Is my love enduring? Does it withstand challenges and setbacks? Ups and downs of life. How much am I ready to fight for the love I have? Does my love have spirit and valor?

Exercise for the day: Do something that takes fight for a loved one.

An Exquisite Balance

Tiferet is a beautiful word, balancing the overflowing love we feel for someone, with the firm expectations and standards we feel for that person. Mmmm, Tiferet in our feelings towards ourselves, balancing that beautiful love we feel for ourselves (I keep this handy when needed by looking at the photo over my desk: framed in flowers, a picture of me at age 1 minute, a tiny babe on Mommy's chest, Mommy gazing at her new baby with sweet,entire love) with the firmness I hear in Mommy's voice, years later, when she would say, "Now look, girl", and talk some sense into me, usually when I was wallowing in self-doubt and pity. Tiferet balances my high standards for myself, with a total love for myself. The key here is that it is not "halfway between", a pinking of the two. It is the extremes both existing at the same time in their fullness: I love totally, entirely, my chesed is 100%. This balances with "I expect the best from you, my standards are 100%". A dynamic, forever correcting balance between chesed and gevurah makes TIFERET, beauty. Here's Simon Jacobson's instruction:
Day Three: Tiferet of Chesed

There is love and there is beautiful love. True love includes empathy and compassion which makes it a beautiful love. Love is often fostered in expectation of reciprocity. Real love is expressed even when one gets nothing in return; even when the other doesn't deserve love. Tiferet is giving also to those that have hurt you. It acknowledges the discipline of gevurah and says that, nevertheless, compassionate love calls for helping all.

Exercise for the day: Offer a helping hand to a stranger.

Spiritual Accounting, Cheshbon haNefesh

There are 49 days between our deliverance from Egypt and our big event at Mount Sinai. We use these 49 days, right at tax time, for cheshbon nefesh, a spiritual accounting, a balancing of personal traits. We look at 7 traits, and all of their combinations: 7 times 7 brings us to 49, balanced, ready to stand firm and solid at Sinai. Here are the traits we'll examine(I am guided by Simon Jacobson here).
The seven emotional attributes are:
1. Chesed – Lovingkindness; giving, no boundaries, laissez-faire, free love.
2. Gevurah - Justice and discipline; boundaries, limits, holding back
3. Tiferet – Harmony, compassion; A perfect balance between chesed and gevurah.
4. Netzach – Endurance; going for the victory
5. Hod – Humility; accepting the way things are now, being thankful for what we have.
6. Yesod – Bonding; a sweet balance between netzach and hod.
7. Malchut – Sovereignty, leadership.
In the first week we will look at chesed: chesed in chesed, gevurah in chesed, tiferet in chesed,
Friday was chesed in chesed, that everflowing noneheldback love we have for a new baby. Simon Jacobson writes,
" Week one - Chesed

Love is the single most powerful and necessary component in life. Love is the origin and foundation of all human interactions. It is both giving and receiving. It allows us to reach above and beyond ourselves. To experience another person and to allow that person to experience us. It is the tool by which we learn to experience the highest reality - G-d. In a single word: love is transcendence.


Day One: Chesed of chesed

Examine the love aspect of love. The expression of love and its level of intensity. Everyone has the capacity to love in their hearts. The question is if and how we actualize and express it.

Ask yourself:

What is my capacity to love another person? Do I have problems with giving? Am I stingy or selfish? Is it difficult for me to let someone else into my life? Do I have room for someone else? Do I allow room for someone else? Am I afraid of my vulnerability, of opening up and getting hurt? How do I express love? Am I able to communicate my true feelings? Do I withhold expressing love out of fear of reaction? Or on the contrary: I often express too much too early. Do others misunderstand my intentions?

Whom do I love? Do I only love those that I relate to and who relate to me? Do I have the capacity to love a stranger; to lend a helping hand to someone I don't know? Do I express love only when it's comfortable?

Why do I have problems with love and what can I do about it? Does my love include the other six aspects of chesed, without which love will be distorted and unable to be truly realized.


Day Two: Gevurah of Chesed (Today, Saturday)

Healthy love must always include an element of discipline. A degree of distance and respect for the other. An assessment of the persons capacity to contain your love. Love must be tempered and directed properly. Ask a parent who in the name of love has spoiled his child; or someone who suffocates their spouse with love and doesn't allow her any space of her own. Love with discretion is necessary to avoid giving to those that don't deserve it.

Is my love disciplined enough? Do others take advantage of my giving nature? Am I hurting anyone by becoming their crutch in the name of love? Am I hurting my children by forcing upon them my value system because I love them so? Do I respect the one I love or is it a selfish love? Am I sensitive to his feelings and attitudes? Do I see my beloved as an extension of myself and my needs? In my love is there as much emphasis on the one I love and his ability to contain my love as there is on me and my giving? Rain is a blessing only because it falls in drops that don't flood the fields.

Exercise for the day: Help someone on their terms not on yours. Apply yourself to their specific needs even if it takes effort."

The wicked son asks

This is a little scary. For the first time, the computer censored out today's post, and it showed up blank. Just the title, "the wicked son asks", and then a blank. It is painful to try to reconstruct a thought. I'll try. It went something like this:
Late into the night after the seder, we were folding up the tables and chairs and I remembered the mishkan, the holy worshipping place in the desert, a place for remembering, for delighting, and for hoping. I remembered the Torah's intricate instructions regarding the construction of a mishkan that can easily be folded and moved along as we progressed through the desert. I thought of this, and knew what a seder table is. Late into the night, as we washed Grandpa's silver trays and put them away, we were talking about certain seder guests from outside of Israel, who seemed to convey the attitude, "I like Judaism, just not the fighting parts. I like Moses, but leave out the parts where he killed a slavedriver. I like the hagaddah, but leave out the bit about the Egyptian army drowning in the sea. Tell me about our arrival in the promised land. Tell me we got there and it was all set for us, with placecards like on the seder table, a place all ready for each of us. I like Israel, just not the fighting parts". At our seder table there were four Israeli soldiers. That's not the whole story. At our table was Yosef, who fought in 1948, another time like the hagaddah's telling, when the land was promised to us, and we had to fight for it. It took a man like Joshua to bring us right into Israel. It took a man like my father-in-law Yosef. I first met Yosef, in uniform, in 1973, the day he came home from defending Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Altogether at our table we had at least fourteen people who have served in the Israeli army. And the children who are not old enough to have served yet. These soldiers at our table are gentle people, rational people, people who far prefer to solve problems by talking. But these soldiers at our seder table are people who understand that Judaism balances chesed with gevurah (Please join my exploration about balancing chesed with gvurah -givinglovingkindness with toughstrength- during the counting of the Omer, the 49 days from the seder to the day we're ready to stand, all of us together, at Sinai, and receive Torah). Late into the night, as we swept away all the matza crumbs on the floor, we suddenly understood the four sons. The rasha, the wicked one, asks, "What happened to you when you left Egypt?" Because he says "You" and not "We", he has cut himself off from his people.

The Bigger Half is Hidden

So much in the seder defies the laws of physics. Opposites co-exist. We are free people and slaves at the same time. Charoset is the mortar of our heavy toil and charoset is the sweet hope that we never lost, the sweet taste of freedom. Salt water is our slaverytears and salt water is the Red Sea that we crossed to freedom. It is written right in the Hagaddah that we break the middle matza in HALF, and the larger half gets hidden. All that telling before we get to the gefilte fish, and yet, the bigger half of the story is hidden, to be found by.......the afikomen hunters! the next generation! I see, penciled in to my hagaddah: "Why do we break the matzah? Why is there so much broken in our world? Why did the cosmic designer make a world where hearts break, lives shatter, beauty crumbles? A whole vessel can contain its measure, but a broken one can hold the infinite." And I think to myself, "It is from our broken places that we can feel compassion for the brokenness in others", and I think to myself, "Matzah is fragile food. Crumbs fill the house, take a bite and it shatters. And Matzah is a durable food, keeping the Jewish people connected and remembering, throughout the ages". This year, let's make the motzi over matza, and ask everyone at the table to be silent through the chomping on the first matza, to listen to the matza talking. It is a grand and glorious noise.

From Out of this World

Previsualizing the seder(a splendid table is set for 22, the shehechiyanu seder for this house), I was thinking about giving everyone a moment to invite in an unseen guest, from this world or the next one. Friends and family far away, having seders elsewhere, Miriam and her little brother Moses, our more recent grandparents and mentors, and of course, Eliyahu Hanavi. Of course, this led me to Mommy's wondrous moment at the seder chez Janie and Justin, when she suddenly understood the floating characters in Chagall's paintings. Let all who have inspired us, and all who need us, partake in the seder with us.

A Kiss on Your Elbow and a Gezint Auf Dein Kop

Thank you Mommy. Let's all, whatever we cook in the next few days, receive a blessing and a hug from the person who first cooked it for us, the person who gave us the recipe, the person who used to feed us this food when we were small. When my Mommy makes matzah balls, her own mother Sura Etele (may her memory bring us laughter and a hundred stories) stands at her elbow, guiding her and filling the kneidlach with history and with taam. When I make my charoset this year, I'll chop and stir with my sisters. When I make my kneidlach, Mommy will stand at my elbow, with Buby at her elbow. And when I take my first bite of matza (Let's all do the tradition of a silent time over the matza, so all you can hear is the crack and chomp of 40 generations eating the poor bread, the bread of affliction, the bread of survival, the bread of continuity, let all who are hungry come and eat) Yes, when I take my first bite of matzah this year, I'll crunch in time with my mother's mother's mother and her mother's mother's mother, in one long long seder table reaching all the way to Miriam and the women who danced with her, that first windy moment at the shores of the sea.
KNEIDLACH
Beat until fluffy 2 rounded tablespoons schmaltz
and 2 eggs
Add 1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup warm water
Add 1/2 to 3/4 cup matzo meal to make a thick paste
Refrigerate for several hours. Roll into 1 inch balls and boil in salted water. Serves 4 to 6 people.