From constriction to freedom: a d’varling looking toward Pesach

I studied a text recently that I wanted to bring to my shul on the Shabbat before Pesach. And then I remembered that this year on Shabbat HaGadol, the Shabbat right before Pesach, we’ll be hosting noted culinary historian Michael Twitty! (All are welcome!) So I’m sharing a pre-Pesach teaching a week early.

Each of us has a still point within us, given to us by God. So says Yehudah Aryeh Lieb Alter of Ger, the Hasidic master known as the Sfat Emet (that’s the name of his best-known book, and it’s one of the Hasidic texts I’m studying regularly this year). He returns to this idea often. Each of us has a nekudat elohut, a spark of godliness. No matter who we are, this spark in us is eternal.

And sometimes that still point, that little spark of holiness, comes to feel constricted. This can happen when we’re min ha-meitzar, in tight places. Maybe you can hear the aural connection between meitzar and Mitzrayim — life’s tight places, and the Mitzrayim / Egypt of our people’s core story. Mitzrayim is constriction that makes our soul-sparks feel crushed and insignificant.

The Sfat Emet says that in those times, this still point, this spark, becomes our internal lechem oni — “the bread of our affliction,” our smallness, our poverty of spirit. That phrase comes from the haggadah, when we say of the matzah (in Aramaic, but it’s the same phrase) ha-lachma anya, “this is the bread of our affliction which our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt…”

He’s saying that the “bread of our affliction,” that sense of impoverishment, isn’t just the literal matzah that represents our ancient poverty food — it’s also our own souls. Our souls become afflicted, become crushed into smallness and flatness like a piece of matzah. The spark of our souls can become crushed into something dry and flat and tiny. That’s bread of our affliction.

Our job, he writes, is to make that crushed, tiny point become expansive — to grow the point of holiness within our souls, to give it space. Take that in for a moment: our job in spiritual life is to notice when our soul-spark feels crushed and flattened, and to create the inner conditions in which that spark can rise and expand. Our job is to help our souls take up the space they deserve.

Pesach is a time of distilled memory. (I think this is true both as a people and as individuals — we remember the Exodus from Egypt; we may also remember all of life’s other Passovers.) Torah tells us to remember it and keep it. That’s the same language Torah uses about Shabbat, which we also “keep” and “remember.” It’s the same language Torah uses about mitzvot, too.

(Here’s a funny thing: the Hebrew letters that spell mitzvot can also spell matzot. We keep the mitzvot and we keep the matzot, and together those two keep us. As the saying goes, “more than the Jewish people have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jewish people” — and far more Jews observe some kind of Pesach than observe Shabbes every week! But I digress.)

We’re called to remember and keep Pesach as a nation and as individuals. As we retell the core story of our people’s liberation, as we remember narrow straits and escape into expansiveness, we relive the Exodus not only on a national level but also on a soul-level. Our people went from constriction into freedom, and as individual souls we do too, not once but over and over again.

Pesach — says the Sfat Emet — is meant to be our springboard into expansiveness of soul. So that our lechem oni, the part of us that feels flattened like matzah by life’s difficult circumstances, can become expansive. So our tight constricted places can open, like a risen loaf.  So our hearts and souls can expand so far from that flattened state that we can barely contain our joy.

In one of the psalms of Hallel (which we sing at festive times including the Passover seder) we sing, “min hameitzar karati Yah / anani bamerchav Yah” – from the tight straits I called to You, and You answered me with divine expansiveness. Our own tight places are meant to be answered with expansiveness: with divine expansiveness, and with our own. May it be so.

This is the d’varling that Rabbi Rachel offered at CBI this morning (cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.) Offered with gratitude to her Torah study group of Bayit builders.

Remember and forget: a dvarling for Shabbat Zachor

Today is Shabbat Zachor — the Shabbat of Remembrance. That’s the special name given to the Shabbat before Purim.

It’s traditional today to read Deuteronomy 25:17-19 (from the end of parashat Ki Teitzei), describing the attack by Amalek. Amalek attacked as we were fleeing from Egypt. Amalek attacked the back of the winding train of footsore refugees. Amalek attacked those who were vulnerable and in most danger. The Talmud recounts a tradition that Haman, the antagonist of the Purim story, was descended from Amalek. As we prepare for Purim, we remember Amalek who attacked from behind. 

Tradition instructs us to blot out the name of Amalek — to erase the name, the identity, of those who harmed us. I see in this injunction an echo of those who today say that when there are, God forbid, mass shootings and acts of terror we should not publicize the names of those who committed the atrocities, because the perpetrators want to be known. Their twisted egos want fame for their horrendous acts, and therefore we shouldn’t talk about them by name, we should deny them the fame they crave.

And tradition also instructs us to remember. Today is Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat of Remembrance or Memory. We blot out the names of those who harm (indeed, there’s a tradition in sofrut, the scribal arts, of writing the name of Amalek and then crossing it out with a bold stroke of ink)… even as we remember our wounds and our traumas, because those harms are part of what has made us who we are. Because we owe it to the victims to remember their names, and never to let their sacred memories die.

Today we reach Shabbat Zachor in the immediate aftermath of a horrendous terror attack in Christchurch, New Zealand. A white supremacist who proudly called himself a fascist opened fire during Friday prayers at a mosque and at an Islamic center. When I woke to this news yesterday I had no words. I still have no words to wholly encompass my horror or my grief — or my fury at a person who would attack others in sacred places of prayer and community. I stand today with our grieving Muslim siblings.

The gunman in this horrendous, atrocious, unspeakable attack is Amalek: attacking the vulnerable, attacking those on the margins, attacking innocents at prayer because of their different mode of prayer or dress or connection with the Holy One. 

The gunman in the Pittsburgh shootings at Tree of Life synagogue a few months ago was Amalek. 

The gunman behind the Pulse nightclub shooting of GLBTQ people a few years ago was Amalek.

The gunmen behind every school shooting, every house of worship massacre, every predatory attack on children and worshippers and those who are “different” — those at the “back of the community,” those who are vulnerable — are Amalek. 

And today we are called to remember and to mourn — and also to blot out the names of those who would commit such atrocities. Blotting out their names doesn’t (only) mean redacting news articles to deny them publicity. It means blotting out the identities of hatred, the self-concept that would lead anyone to pick up a weapon and attack the innocent for any twisted reason. It means blotting out white supremacy and white nationalism, homophobia and hatred, antisemitism and Islamophobia and xenophobia.

It means we must build a world in which those virulent hatreds are no more. Only then will we truly be able to honor the memories of those whom Amalek has taken from us. Y’all know that I am mourning my mother right now, and you have seen me weep — you will see me weep again! But she died surrounded by family, at 82, after a life that was long and full of blessing. Those whom Amalek attacks do not have that luxury. And those who mourn them experience an entirely different kind of grief.

May we blot out the hatreds that animate Amalek in every generation.

May we stand in solidarity with all who are victimized.

And may our actions bring about the Purim when these hatreds are inconceivable, and when no one ever need mourn again as the Muslim community around the world is mourning today.

This is the d’varling that Rabbi Rachel offered at shul this morning. (Cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.)

Image source: soferet Jen Taylor Friedman. 

Tetzaveh: becoming mitzvot, bringing light

This week we’re in parashat Tetzaveh. The Torah portion takes its name from its first word, which means “You shall command.” (It comes from the same root as mitzvah, commandment.) God is telling Moses to command us to kindle an eternal light in the mishkan, the portable sanctuary. That’s a mitzvah that we still fulfill today — now with the eternal light in every sanctuary.

The Hasidic master known as the Sfat Emet reads this verse in a beautiful way. First he notes the verse from Proverbs, “The candle of God is the soul of a human being.” When we are in dark places, we light a candle to help us see. And God’s response to dark places is us — we are the candles that God lights in order to bring light into the world. It’s our job to bring light.

I want to say that again, because it’s so beautiful to me. We are God’s candles. There’s a ner tamid (eternal light) in every synagogue sanctuary, but the point of that lamp isn’t just to be a lamp: it’s there to remind us that it’s our job to be sources of light in the darkness. The darkness of grief, the darkness of cruelty, the darkness of fear. We can dispel those with our light.

That word tetzaveh, “you shall command” — the Sfat Emet reads it creatively to mean, “you shall bring mitzvot into the souls of the children of Israel, so that they themselves become mitzvot.” Bring mitzvot into our souls, and we ourselves will become mitzvot — holy acts, connected at our root to the Source of all goodness. That’s what it means to be a light in the world.

The blessing for a mitzvah — lighting Shabbat candles, or affixing a mezuzah — contains the words אשר קדשנו במצוותיו / asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav, “Who makes us holy in connecting-command.” The Sfat Emet is saying that this goes deeper than just blessing God Who gives us mitzvot. When we bring mitzvot into our hearts, we ourselves become connections with God. 

Rabbi Art Green writes in his commentary on the Sfat Emet that this is actually the purpose of our lives as Jews: to so thoroughly embody the mitzvot that we ourselves become mitzvot. To so thoroughly embody Jewish practices and values that they become who we are. And maybe that’s another way of saying what Proverbs says, that our souls can be God’s candles.

In Proverbs we read that a mitzvah is a candle and Torah is light. A mitzvah is a candle, an opportunity to bring light into the world. And Torah is light — we sing those words every time we dress the Torah scroll, תורה אורה / Torah orah!  For our mystics, the physical Torah we study in this world is a stand-in for the supernal Torah on high, and that Torah, the real Torah, is light.

So let’s recap: our souls are light — we’re God’s candles. The mitzvot are light — they too are candles waiting to be lit. And Torah is light. Which takes me to the other words we sing when we’re dressing the Torah, from the Zohar: ישראל ואורייתא וקודשא בריך הוא חד הוה  / Yisrael v’oraita v’kudsha brich hu chad hu, “Israel, and the Torah, and the Holy One of Blessing, are all One.” 

Us, and Torah, and God: the Zohar teaches that these are all fundamentally one. Our deepest essence is that we are One with Torah, we are One with God, we are One with the source of all light. Right now it’s Shabbes: we can bask in that light. And in the new week, we can strive to live it — to embody Torah, to embody the mitzvot — so that we can be bearers of light in the world.

Rabbi Rachel adds: This is the d’varling that I offered at CBI on Shabbat morning, and it is cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi. It is offered here with gratitude to my Bayit hevre for studying the Sfat Emet with me each week.

Right speech beneath the sapphire sky

You must not carry false rumors; you shall not join hands with the guilty to act as a malicious witness. (Exodus 23:1)

There’s a very similar instruction in the book of Vayikra (Leviticus 19:16, “don’t be a talebearer.”) Speaking ill of someone has a name in Jewish tradition: lashon ha-ra, evil speech.

Jewish tradition holds that lashon ha-ra is equivalent to murder. Talmud (Arachin 15b) teaches that “Lashon ha-ra kills three: the one who speaks it, the one spoken of, and the one who hears it.”

Maybe you know the parable of the man who gossiped and then went to a rabbi seeking forgiveness. The rabbi took a feather pillow, cut it open, and let the wind blow the feathers away. And then he said, “lashon ha-ra spreads even more thoroughly than these feathers.” Because speech, once heard, can’t be un-heard.

The worst form of lashon ha-ra, our tradition teaches, is motzi shem ra, telling lies about someone. That’s false tale-bearing — the thing explicitly forbidden in this week’s parsha, Mishpatim. That word means rules, or laws, or justice-commandments. This week’s parsha is packed with justice-commandments.

Torah is made up of both narrative, and legal material (commandments, ethical instructions). And I know that for many of us the stories can be more compelling than the legal sections. The stories are interesting, or thought-provoking, or occasionally distressing. The lists of laws can leave us yawning, especially when those laws seem out of date for today’s realities.

Like “If an ox gores someone” (Ex. 21:28) — I mean, who among us has an ox, these days? Though of course that verse is really about responsibility for someone else’s harmful behavior, and tradition teaches that ultimately we are all responsible for each other. Still, I’ve noticed over the years that in our Torah discussions, people often engage more with story than with law.

That’s why often, when we reach this portion in the Torah each year, I focus on the beautiful tale of Moshe and the elders ascending to God and their vision of the floor that was like bricks of sapphire. It’s poetry: there’s so much meaning to be found and made there! I love that story. I love singing Nava Tehila’s setting of one of those verses, as we’ve done here today.

But I think Torah is wise in juxtaposing our poetic stories with our prosaic laws. Poetry doesn’t mean anything — beautiful visions of God’s presence don’t mean anything — if not grounded in ethical behavior. Without the emotional and spiritual safety that come from right conduct and right speech, pretty visions of holiness are hollow at best and spiritual bypassing at worst.

One of my favorite teachings about the tchelet, the thread of blue that winds through our tzitzit, is that it reminds us of the Sea of Reeds — our place of liberation. And it reminds us of the sapphire pavement upon which God is described in this week’s parsha. And sea and sky can be mnemonics, reminding us of tzitzit, which remind us of mitzvot, including right action and right speech.

May every glimpse of sea and sky and tzitzit remind us that the path to the sapphire heavens and the Holy One of Blessing must be paved with ethical choices. Otherwise our holiness is false and even dangerous. We may yearn for celestial brickwork of sapphire, but what really matters is building a community of holiness, right speech, and ethical choices here on the ground.

 

This is the d’varling that Rabbi Rachel offered at CBI on Shabbat morning. (Cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.)

How can we keep from singing? (a d’varling for Beshalach)

In this week’s Torah portion (Beshalach), the children of Israel cross the Sea of Reeds. Upon experiencing that miracle, Torah tells us, three things happened: 1) they felt yir’ah, awe, and 2) they felt emunah, faith and trust, and 3) they broke into shirah, song. (And for me, the Torah is always both about what happened to “them” back “then,” and also about us here and now: our journey, our spiritual lives, our emotional possibilities.) Some of the words they sang found their way into daily Jewish liturgy:

 מִֽי־כָמֹ֤כָה בָּֽאֵלִם֙ יְהֹוָ֔’’ה? מִ֥י כָּמֹ֖כָה נֶאְדָּ֣ר בַּקֹּ֑דֶשׁ, נוֹרָ֥א תְהִלֹּ֖ת, עֹ֥שֵׂה פֶֽלֶא׃

Mi chamocha ba-eilim Adonai? Mi camocha nedar bakodesh, nora tehilot, oseh feleh!

Who is like You, God — majestic in holiness, awesome in splendor, Worker of Wonders?

And when we sing these words each day, we’re called to remember. To remember the miracle of the redemption from slavery, the Exodus from Egypt, the crossing of the Sea. Take apart the English word remember and you get re/member — to experience memory in the body; to re-inhabit lived experience. Singing Mi Chamocha is an opportunity to re-member liberation. To experience it again. To feel it in our bodies. To cultivate our sense of awe and trust, and from those emotions, to joyously sing.

The daily liturgy specifically mentions joy. “They answered You [and so we too answer You] with song, with great joy!” As the psalmist wrote — the words that are inscribed over our sanctuary doors and over our ark — “Serve the One with joy, come before God with gladness.” (Psalm 100:2) Once we were slaves to a Pharaoh in Egypt, but once we emerged through the sea we became servants of the Most High. Slave or servant: the same word — עבד / eved — but the emotional valance is completely different.

Torah tells us that while we were in slavery, we experienced קוצר רוח/ kotzer ruach: constriction of spirit / shortness of breath, both physical and spiritual. Without breath, without spirit, it’s hard to sing. And I want to acknowledge the fact that sometimes genuine joy is hard to come by. Sometimes life’s constrictions — depression, or grief, or loss — steal our breath and our song. Pretending otherwise would be spiritual bypassing, using spiritual life to pretend that everything’s okay when it’s really not.

And. Every day our liturgy gives us the opportunity to remember — to really re/member — awe and trust and song. The Hasidic teacher known as the Sfat Emet writes that thanks to our faith and trust the Shechinah (God’s own Presence) came to dwell within us, and our faith purified our hearts and then we were able to sing. He goes on to say: in fact that’s the whole reason we were created in this world in the first place: to bear witness to life’s miracles, to be redeemed from constriction, and to sing.

I want to say that again, because it’s so radical. The whole reason we were created is to notice life’s miracles, to be redeemed from life’s narrow places, and to sing. “Everyone else has a purpose, so what’s mine?” The Sfat Emet says: awe, and liberation, and song. Our purpose isn’t to get promoted, or to climb the social ladder, or to rack up accomplishments. “If you want to sing out, sing out; if you want to be free, be free!” Our tradition says: the experience of freedom will naturally lead us to song.

Our daily liturgy reminds us of the Exodus. We remember it again in the Friday night kiddush, which tells us that Shabbat is a remembrance both of creation and of the Exodus from Egypt. Shabbat exists to help us re/member our liberation. Today we’re freed from the workday, the weekday, ordinary labors, ordinary time. Today we can bask in a sense of awe and wonder: “Look around, look around, how lucky we are to be alive right now!” And from that place of wonder, how can we keep from singing?

 

This is the d’varling that Rabbi Rachel offered at Congregation Beth Israel  during Shabbat services. (Cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.) She adds: “It echoes the themes in Answering With Joy by Rabbi David Markus. Each week he and I study the Sfat Emet together with our fellow builders at Bayit, so maybe it’s not surprising that this week our divrei Torah are quite parallel!”

Art by Yomam Ranaan.

 

Vaera: Listening for a new name

וָאֵרָ֗א אֶל־אַבְרָהָ֛ם אֶל־יִצְחָ֥ק וְאֶֽל־יַעֲקֹ֖ב בְּאֵ֣ל שַׁדָּ֑י וּשְׁמִ֣י יְהוָ֔”ה לֹ֥א נוֹדַ֖עְתִּי לָהֶֽם׃

“I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El-Shaddai, but My Name יהו׳׳ה I did not make known to them.” (Exodus 6:3)

 

So what? What is Torah trying to tell us here in this verse from this week’s Torah portion? What is this verse really about?

We could read this verse as the text’s attempt to paper over an inconsistency. Our names for God change over the course of Torah, from our earliest ancestors to later ones like Moses. El-Shaddai is an older name in the strata of our sacred text, and יהו׳׳ה is a later one. A historical-critical reading uses those different names to show that Torah was written by different authors at different times. We could read this verse as an editorial attempt to smooth that out.

We could read it through the lens of what each of these divine Names means. El-Shaddai can be rendered as “God of Enoughness,” or even “The Breasted God,” God of nurturance and sustenance. יהו׳׳ה seems to be some kind of permutation of the verb “to be.” Maybe this verse comes to show us that in our spiritual infancy God was a Mother figure. As our people are growing up, spiritually, maybe we’re ready to handle a God-concept that’s more existential.

Whether we’re inclined to read it through a historical lens, or through a close-reading / etymology lens, we can always choose to read it through a spiritual lens. Spiritually, here’s what this verse offers me this year: God takes on different Names at different times. Our work is to open ourselves to the new name that will help us reach the land of promise. It was true of our mythic ancestors at this moment in the Exodus story, and it’s true of us here and now, today.

In last week’s Torah portion, at the bush that burned but was not consumed, God introduced God’s-self to Moses as אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר אֶֽהְיֶ֑ה,  “I Am Becoming What I Am Becoming.” אהיה, “I will be” or “I Am Becoming,” comes from the same root as the name יהו׳׳ה. That Name can’t be directly translated, but it seems to imply something about the nature of being and becoming itself. God is ever-changing. And we, made in the divine image, are always becoming, too.

“Your ancestors knew Me under one name, but here’s a new one,” God tells us. Sometimes we need to let go of an old Name, an old chapter, in order to be ready for a new one.  For instance, from House of Israel and Chevra Chai Adom, the two nascent Jewish communities in early North Adams, into Congregation Beth Israel. We remember and honor our community’s earlier names in its earlier incarnation. As part of our history, they will accompany us into our future.

And sometimes the work lies in learning to balance the old name and the new one. For instance, from Jacob to Israel, “the Heel” to “the Godwrestler.” Israel is the spiritual ancestor for whom our people is named — we are the Godwrestlers, the ones named after our willingness to grapple with the Holy! And yet, even once Jacob becomes known as Israel, Torah uses both names for him, reminding us of the need to integrate who we’ve been with who we’re becoming.

Sometimes a name stays the same, while the inner essence changes and grows. When my son was born my name didn’t change, but my soul changed. Or maybe my soul grew more fully into who I had always been becoming, on some deep-down level I couldn’t understand until that change came to pass. And: when I became a rabbi I acquired a new name to live up to and live into, but I didn’t lose the name given to me at birth. I’m both Rabbi and Rachel.

“Each of us has a name,” writes the Israeli poet Zelda, “given by the seasons, and given by our blindness.” What new name might be unfolding for each of us as we move deeper into this season? What name do we receive as a result of our blindness — what we are we blind to, about ourselves or about each other? What do we need to learn to see about who we are, about who we can choose to become, about how we can choose to become?

“I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El-Shaddai, but My Name יהו׳׳ה I did not make known to them.” Until now. At this moment in our people’s story, on the cusp of the Exodus from the Narrow Place toward the Land of Promise, God gives us a new name for God’s-self, a name that hints at becoming and at being itself. God says: you used to know me in one way, but open your eyes and see that I am more than what you knew. I am Becoming itself.

This week’s Torah portion invites us to ask: what’s the new Name of God that’s being revealed to us now? What’s the new possibility, the new identity, the new growth, the new becoming that we can vision-forth in this moment that was never possible before? This isn’t “just” about God. It’s about us, too, as we grow and change. What could we be becoming? What could our community be becoming, if we could open ourselves to who the future is calling us to be?

 

This is the d’varling that Rabbi Rachel offered on Shabbat at Congregation Beth Israel. (Cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.) 

 

Who we reveal ourselves to be

This week’s Torah portion, Vayigash, brings a dramatic turn in the Joseph story. After a long and twisty series of events — beginning maybe with Joseph telling the brothers to return to Egypt and bring Benjamin, Rachel’s other son, with them; or beginning maybe with the famine that brought the brothers down to Egypt in search of food; or beginning maybe when the brothers sold Joseph into slavery in the first place — Joseph can’t stand to hide from his brothers any more.

וְלֹֽא־יָכֹ֨ל יוֹסֵ֜ף לְהִתְאַפֵּ֗ק לְכֹ֤ל הַנִּצָּבִים֙ עָלָ֔יו וַיִּקְרָ֕א הוֹצִ֥יאוּ כָל־אִ֖ישׁ מֵעָלָ֑י וְלֹא־עָ֤מַד אִישׁ֙ אִתּ֔וֹ בְּהִתְוַדַּ֥ע יוֹסֵ֖ף אֶל־אֶחָֽיו׃

Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants, and he cried out, “Have everyone withdraw from me!” So there was no one else about when Joseph made himself known to his brothers.

Joseph reveals himself to his brothers, saying “I am Joseph. Is my father still well?” They’re so dumbfounded they can’t answer him. So he repeats himself: I am Joseph, whom you sold into slavery. And then he reassures them: don’t be distressed. God sent me here ahead of you in order to save life: to save your lives, to save our father’s life, to save the life and the future of our nation. He’ll say it even more explicitly later: don’t worry. You thought you were doing me ill, but God meant it for good.

The Hebrew word להתודע is a reflexive verb, meaning “to make oneself known.” Joseph isn’t just introducing himself — “Hi, my name is Joseph, nice to meet you.” He’s making himself known. He’s showing them who he really is. He’s revealing something core. And what does he reveal? An apparently unshakeable faith and trust. From his current vantage, even the worst events of his life can be redeemed. He can make something good out of them. God can make something good out of them.

If I were to choose from this list of character strengths to describe Joseph, top on my list would be emunah, faith and trust (in this translation, “conviction.”) He’s strong in gevurah, discipline and will power. He’s strong in anavah, humility. (Remember his repeated insistence that it is not he who interprets dreams, but rather God, flowing through him.) He’s strong in netzach, perseverance and grit. These are the qualities I see revealed in who his life story has led him to become.

Sometimes life gives us active opportunities to make ourselves known: I feel safe with a trusted friend so I let down my guard and show the tenderest parts of who I am, or I feel the situation at hand demands that I be honest so I make the choice to speak what I truly believe. And sometimes we make ourselves known in subtler ways, maybe without even realizing that we are doing so. We make ourselves known through our actions, our deeds, our words, our tone, our priorities, our choices.

There’s so much that we can’t control, including birth, family of origin dynamics, how others treat us, when and whether we struggle with illness, etc. But Joseph’s story is a reminder that we can choose what qualities we want to cultivate, both in years of emotional “plenty” and in years of spiritual “famine.” The qualities we choose to cultivate reveal who we are. When change or conflict or challenge offers us an opportunity to make ourselves known, who do we want to reveal ourselves to be?

 

This is the d’varling that Rabbi Rachel offered at CBI this morning. (Cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.)