TorahParsha

How should we use our senses?

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How should we use our senses?

 

for Parshat B'har

 

i

I see the world from my own vantage-point.

But I hear your voice

from any direction;

sound calls me to you.

*

Consider:

Eve finds the Fruit

a pleasure to the eyes;

but she and Adam hear

the voice of God in the Garden,  

and they know they have wronged Him.

Eyes are a gateway to your pleasure;

sound startles you

from yourself

toward another.

 

ii

We count out forty-nine years.

On the fiftieth

we blow the shofar,

the trumpet.

Debts are forgiven,

land reverts to ancestral families,

land goes fallow;

slaves go free.

To say:

your borrower

your land

your slave

have their own existence

apart from yours.

*

We come to this understanding

through the trumpet:

through listening.

 

iii

Of the slave who shall go free

in the fiftieth year,

God says:

he is owed freedom,

you shall not see him worked brutally 

before your eyes.

To say:

train your eyes

to find brutality

to root it out.

*

For forty-nine years

you ready yourself to hear the shofar:

to listen,

to hear around you.

Learning to listen,

you learn to use your eyes.

Learning to listen,

you learn to see.

 

Genesis 3:6,8; Leviticus 25:8-28,53

 

 

 

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

The House at the Center of the World

Plenty

 

for Parshat Emor

 

God says: Count out seven weeks in the season of harvesting grain. At the end of seven weeks, on Shavuot, sacrifice bread.

And God says: As you harvest your crop, leave grain aside for the poor.

 

Counting the days of your harvest, you realize the plenty that you have.

And you realize, too, that this plenty is not yours.

 

 

___

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

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How can you discover yourself?

for Parshat Kedoshim

 

i

God tells us: you shall be holy:

- Honor your father and mother.

- Do not mix wool thread and linen thread in a single garment.

- When you plant a tree, let it grow for four years before you take its fruit.

Honor the other people, the other things, for what is unique within them.

*

Honoring others, you cannot say: I am the center of the world.

Honoring others, you say: These others aside from me matter.

ii

God says: you shall love the immigrant like yourself,

for you were immigrants in the land of Egypt

(coming to Egypt in the time of Joseph,

fleeing hunger).

Do not say: I am very different from others.

Even with those who come from far away,

say: They are like me.

iii

So others become the focus of the world—and not you.

And you do not cut yourself off as different from all others;

you love others,

you know you are one of them.

*
You do not discover yourself.

You discover the world,

you discover that you are a part of the wider world.

This is what you must discover if you are to be holy.

 

___

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

 

For more thoughts like these, buy my book: The House at the Center of the World: Poetic Midrash on Sacred Space