2 Adar, 5775
Reading through Parsha T'rumah - a.k.a. "The Ikea Portion of the Torah" - in prep for today's Trah study, some questions emerge, like:
- just a few weeks ago, the Israelites built another in/famous structure, The Golden Calf, ostensibly to make a distant invisible God (connected to this new nation by a suddenly disappeared Moses) more visible and present in their lives. results were disastrous. (Anger management much, Moses and God? - although arguably we could not have expected more from a society Durkheim would have labeled as mechanic.) Is it coincidence then that a short time later, God instructs Moses to have the Israelites build a structure that would visibly represent God's presence in their midst? Leading one to ponder if the Tabernacle would have been built had the whole 'Golden Calf Incident' not have happened.
- And just to be sure we're all clear which object God and the Torah prefer, we get elaborate instructions for the Mishkan, down to how the angels' wings on the lid of the Ark should be made, while we get no real details about Aaron's calf. (Yep, dude, totally throwing you under the bus here.) Also, please note that no Israelites were slaughtered in the aftermath of the Mishkan. (Whew!)
- the dolphin skins, the dolphin skins, exactly how do dolphin skins make an appearance in The Torah? Ram skins, I get. Acacia wood? Absolutely. Dolphin skins?
- "everyone...whose heart was so moved..." (Exodus 25:2) So yeah, I understand from a literary p.o.v. why it's important to add this, to show motivation. I think it's worth noting its inclusion inside a society that is clearly forming around mechanical solidarity. What I find so fascinating is that this one line did not need to be included - how many of us would have said, "Wow, if only those Israelites had volunteered their goods, that would have proved their devotion!" What are the Torah's writers'redactors trying to say here to their three-thousand year old audience? While Denise Eger in "The Women's Commentary" offers some compelling thoughts on the questions (470) they are written to a modern readership. What might the Babylonian exile have made of this passage?
- In case you were wondering what a cubit is...
- not a question but being very appreciative of the Golden Calf/Mishkan comparison. In the former, the Israelites construct a visual representation of (a?) God, while in the latter God calls for a dwelling so that God may still exist among them - invisible and nebulous as always. Remaining beyond the constructs of imagination is prioritized here (indeed, unto the death). What does it mean to be imagined by another, and how is that constraining to the one being imagined?
- Finally, as one of my rabbis 'drashed: all the Israelites brought something to this project of God-dwelling construction - which leaves us with the question of what do we bring to our communities so that (our version of) God may find God's place among us?
Showing posts with label Mishkan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mishkan. Show all posts
Saturday, February 21, 2015
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Catching up 5: Elul, 5771 - Selichot:
(In which I start off with my first HHDs with awe . . . )
On the desk next to me is a yellow ticket. Its heading reads: "We invite you to celebrate the 5771 High Holy Day Season". Below my name is inscribed this passage from Isaiah: "The Gates of Return are Always Open."
This is my comp ticket to the High Holy Days 5771 at Temple Israel, BostonTemple Israel, Boston. I did not think I would get to celebrate Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur at the synagogue where I was actively converting. I had made my peace with the fact that I would need to find a more suitable venue that reflected my (at the time) current life circumstances somewhere else. For this I held no animosity; how could I? This is where I was in life - just starting two part-time jobs after a hard stretch, struggling with new rent and old bills. I might as well rally against the wind.
But then my rabbi sent me a letter regarding my conversion, which included this comp ticket. Although she might not have known what this gift meant, I certainly did. I exaggerate only slightly when I say my heart cried a little out of thanks at the sight of it. I could now share my first HHD with the people I had been going to Shabbat service and Torah study with. I could be in the place I was starting to think of as my spiritual home.
Two new friends from the temple invited me to go with them to Slichot. I accepted and proceeded to bombard them with questions. What was this? Like a midnight mass? Uh, not quite, they replied, wisely saying nothing else so that experience could fill in my blanks.
The first part of the evening was a discussion on the six questions (according to the Babylonian Talmud) you will be asked on the way to heaven. We split up according to what question called to us. I ended up in the room where we tried to discern what is meant by dealing honestly with people in our business practices. If I thought, it was going to be some tinder-dry conversation I was quickly corrected. The topic may have been "business practices" but the theme of ethics quickly spread out over many facts of everyday life. Soon everyone was adding their experiences into the mix and all I could do was sit back and smile (of course, after adding my own .02). Here was this wonderful give-and-take, two-Jews-in-a-room-with-three-opinions dialogue that I loved about Judaism. After decades of unchallenged Roman Catholic-obedience to scripture and then, later, Pagan wanderings in search of its own Book of Shadows, I had finally come home to a circle where spiritual Truth was vigorously sought after - even if no definitive answer was ever found.
After a break we ended up in the Temple’s main hall which had been transformed into a sanctuary. We were given candles and programs. "Leil Slichot," read the cover. "Beginning the Inward Journey to Forgiveness" its subtitle. I searched through my mental files for any Catholic and Pagan experiences with a similar philosophy but could find none. It was hard not to tremble in my seat. I felt as though I was standing on that razor-fine edge that separates the old and the new, the mundane from the unexplored. Whatever this was going to be tonight, for me it would be an absolutely new dawn.
The lights were lowered and the rabbis began reading from the program text. Torahs were solenly brought in, heralded by the hallowed sound of the shofar. It was a calling that stood my spine straight up. As each scroll was "clothed . . . in light"(Leil Slichot 4) the rabbis spoke of being a community before God, a family coming back to Sinai, a people following the footsteps of their ancestors back in time to a definitive moment. This stirred me in deepplaces I had long forgotten. Although I had heard the word before only briefly in song and did not know its dictionary meaning, I was beginning to feel the true resonance of the Hebrew word, Am.
Next came Havdalah. Rabbi Freedman stepped forward to mark the distinction between the end of Shabbat, the separation of the holy from the profane. "From this one Havdalah candle we light the candle of Memory . . . that helps us find a path back to you . . . " (6)
Now that we had come together, it was time to start turning, turning back, returning. "O Merciful One, I am afraid to look at all the times I have turned away . . . I am sorry, forgive me, help me begin to return to myself . . . " (10)
The words left me in a warm state of wonder. Return, return to what? Me, myself...my Self? Well, what was that, anyway? Roman Catholicism would have me believe that was an eternal sinner forever pleading on bended knee for salvation. Modern-day tenets confirmed this, painting me as abhorrent for being queer and to be shunned as handicapped for being trans. I was not to be celebrated or advocated for; I was to be pitied, kept from sight and reminded to be ashamed as often as possible.
I wish I could tell you that Paganism left me feeling more empowered but I had run into door-slamming fundamentalists there, too. One priestess dis-invited me from an all-women ritual after learning of my trans status, confessing she was doing was ‘probably wrong’ but kept the door closed all the same. (As a friend once wisely observed, "a fundie is a fundie is a fundie.")
So what was Reform Judaism saying via Selichot? I heard that night that my queer trans soul was actually worth coming back to; that I wasn’t some sort of cosmic mistake or social leper to be shunned at the door; that my presence there wasn’t embarrassing to this congregation and those leading it; that, like everyone else gathered there, I had been "drawn from the reservoir of the Holy. (Mishkan T’filah 35)
Now came "Sho.fa.rot...Awakening". More shofar blasts. "T’ki.ah! Wake Up! Sh’va.rim! Look! Tru.ah! Return! And the shofar signals my turning to You. (10)"
This night ended much as it had began, with select voices singing Shlomo Carlebach’s Return Again, uging us to "return again/to the land of your soul." I left the temple that evening thinking about that deep topography, seeing it with my gladdened heart as a true land of beauty, wonder, goodness and purity.
What a way to start my first High Holy Days
On the desk next to me is a yellow ticket. Its heading reads: "We invite you to celebrate the 5771 High Holy Day Season". Below my name is inscribed this passage from Isaiah: "The Gates of Return are Always Open."
This is my comp ticket to the High Holy Days 5771 at Temple Israel, BostonTemple Israel, Boston. I did not think I would get to celebrate Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur at the synagogue where I was actively converting. I had made my peace with the fact that I would need to find a more suitable venue that reflected my (at the time) current life circumstances somewhere else. For this I held no animosity; how could I? This is where I was in life - just starting two part-time jobs after a hard stretch, struggling with new rent and old bills. I might as well rally against the wind.
But then my rabbi sent me a letter regarding my conversion, which included this comp ticket. Although she might not have known what this gift meant, I certainly did. I exaggerate only slightly when I say my heart cried a little out of thanks at the sight of it. I could now share my first HHD with the people I had been going to Shabbat service and Torah study with. I could be in the place I was starting to think of as my spiritual home.
Two new friends from the temple invited me to go with them to Slichot. I accepted and proceeded to bombard them with questions. What was this? Like a midnight mass? Uh, not quite, they replied, wisely saying nothing else so that experience could fill in my blanks.
The first part of the evening was a discussion on the six questions (according to the Babylonian Talmud) you will be asked on the way to heaven. We split up according to what question called to us. I ended up in the room where we tried to discern what is meant by dealing honestly with people in our business practices. If I thought, it was going to be some tinder-dry conversation I was quickly corrected. The topic may have been "business practices" but the theme of ethics quickly spread out over many facts of everyday life. Soon everyone was adding their experiences into the mix and all I could do was sit back and smile (of course, after adding my own .02). Here was this wonderful give-and-take, two-Jews-in-a-room-with-three-opinions dialogue that I loved about Judaism. After decades of unchallenged Roman Catholic-obedience to scripture and then, later, Pagan wanderings in search of its own Book of Shadows, I had finally come home to a circle where spiritual Truth was vigorously sought after - even if no definitive answer was ever found.
After a break we ended up in the Temple’s main hall which had been transformed into a sanctuary. We were given candles and programs. "Leil Slichot," read the cover. "Beginning the Inward Journey to Forgiveness" its subtitle. I searched through my mental files for any Catholic and Pagan experiences with a similar philosophy but could find none. It was hard not to tremble in my seat. I felt as though I was standing on that razor-fine edge that separates the old and the new, the mundane from the unexplored. Whatever this was going to be tonight, for me it would be an absolutely new dawn.
The lights were lowered and the rabbis began reading from the program text. Torahs were solenly brought in, heralded by the hallowed sound of the shofar. It was a calling that stood my spine straight up. As each scroll was "clothed . . . in light"(Leil Slichot 4) the rabbis spoke of being a community before God, a family coming back to Sinai, a people following the footsteps of their ancestors back in time to a definitive moment. This stirred me in deepplaces I had long forgotten. Although I had heard the word before only briefly in song and did not know its dictionary meaning, I was beginning to feel the true resonance of the Hebrew word, Am.
Next came Havdalah. Rabbi Freedman stepped forward to mark the distinction between the end of Shabbat, the separation of the holy from the profane. "From this one Havdalah candle we light the candle of Memory . . . that helps us find a path back to you . . . " (6)
Now that we had come together, it was time to start turning, turning back, returning. "O Merciful One, I am afraid to look at all the times I have turned away . . . I am sorry, forgive me, help me begin to return to myself . . . " (10)
The words left me in a warm state of wonder. Return, return to what? Me, myself...my Self? Well, what was that, anyway? Roman Catholicism would have me believe that was an eternal sinner forever pleading on bended knee for salvation. Modern-day tenets confirmed this, painting me as abhorrent for being queer and to be shunned as handicapped for being trans. I was not to be celebrated or advocated for; I was to be pitied, kept from sight and reminded to be ashamed as often as possible.
I wish I could tell you that Paganism left me feeling more empowered but I had run into door-slamming fundamentalists there, too. One priestess dis-invited me from an all-women ritual after learning of my trans status, confessing she was doing was ‘probably wrong’ but kept the door closed all the same. (As a friend once wisely observed, "a fundie is a fundie is a fundie.")
So what was Reform Judaism saying via Selichot? I heard that night that my queer trans soul was actually worth coming back to; that I wasn’t some sort of cosmic mistake or social leper to be shunned at the door; that my presence there wasn’t embarrassing to this congregation and those leading it; that, like everyone else gathered there, I had been "drawn from the reservoir of the Holy. (Mishkan T’filah 35)
Now came "Sho.fa.rot...Awakening". More shofar blasts. "T’ki.ah! Wake Up! Sh’va.rim! Look! Tru.ah! Return! And the shofar signals my turning to You. (10)"
This night ended much as it had began, with select voices singing Shlomo Carlebach’s Return Again, uging us to "return again/to the land of your soul." I left the temple that evening thinking about that deep topography, seeing it with my gladdened heart as a true land of beauty, wonder, goodness and purity.
What a way to start my first High Holy Days
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