Baal Shem Tov and Pulses

This is a story that has come up in my life in three different unrelated contexts recently. When that happens, I realize it must be important. This version is from The Wings of the Sun by R. Avraham Greenbaum.

Another English version of the story, which is slightly longer, can be found in The Light and Fire of the Baal Shem Tov By Yitzhak Buxbaum.

"...Another story tells of a prominent doctor who had come to visit the wife of the local lord.

The countess lavishly praised the Baal Shem Tov as a great man and an expert healer. The doctor asked the countess to send for him. When he came, the doctor asked him if it was true that he was an expert healer. `True,' replied the Baal Shem Tov. `Where did you learn? Who was your professor?' asked the doctor. `God taught me,' replied the Baal Shem Tov. The doctor laughed heartily and asked him if he knew how to take someone's pulse. The Baal Shem Tov said, `I myself suffer from a certain problem. You take my pulse and see if you can find what it is, and I'll take your pulse and see what it reveals.

The doctor took the Baal Shem Tov's pulse and could tell that he had some kind of problem but he did not know what it was, because the truth was that the Baal Shem Tov was sick - he was love-sick for God (cf. Song of Songs 2:5), but this was beyond the doctor's level of understanding. After this the Baal Shem Tov took the doctor's hand and examined his pulse. The Baal Shem Tov turned to the countess and asked, `Have you had a burglary here?' The Baal Shem Tov listed a number of precious items. `Yes!' replied the countess, `It's some years since they were stolen and I have no idea where they are.' `Send to the doctor's lodgings,' said the Baal Shem Tov, `and open his chest. You'll find everything there, because I can feel this theft in the doctor's pulse.' The countess sent to search the doctor's lodgings and found the stolen goods, as the holy Baal Shem Tov had said, and the doctor left in disgrace" (Shevachey HaBaal Shem Tov #206.)

Responses to a flood

I've always been fascinated with the idea of Jewish Archetypes. I think we could gain a lot in understanding our actions by seeing our own lives reflected in the stories and patterns of our ancestors. As I discovered last year, when I began to study texts in greater depth, the characters and choices of our ancestors are complex and often difficult to understand. The stories I understood, and last studied, when I was a child have a much greater depth than my childhood understanding could comprehend. Now that I study the stories as an adult, I see there are patterns and stories in our ancestors that replay themselves today, and maybe understanding the patterns will help to do Tikkun Olam.

I am not sure that I am the right person to prepare a comprehensive analysis of Jewish archetypes, but I think it's a good idea. So I'll send it out in the Universe and maybe it will germinate in the someone else for awhile until it grows into something or is passed along. (I also don't feel that I've studied enough to add to this discussion, but that's really an example of giving away my power - check in later for another post on that topic.)

It's raining in Jerusalem today. Due to soil conditions, an overabundance of development, and a lack of good drainage, whenever it rains, the runoff on the sides of roads tends to be mini-floods. This got me thinking about Jonah and Noah.

I had a patient awhile back who was re-playing the story of Jonah. There was something within herself that she was being asked to do that she absolutely didn't want to do, so she was spending a lot of time and energy running away from it. When I would connect to her, the vision I had was either her standing on the deck of a ship during a storm (when her symptoms were bad), to hiding in a storage room (when her symptoms were decreased).

I had no idea what God was asking her to do, but it became clear to me that for her to get better she needed to jump overboard in a raging storm and get swallowed by a fish for a few days. The first required courage in that she was essentially going to have to choose to allow her old self to die (a common shamanic metaphor - the shaman needs to die to move forward). The second would be enormously painful as she went though a near death experience in a cold dark place. But when she got spit up by the fish on the shore, things were going to be a whole lot better.

Today weather got me thinking about Noah too. In that case, Noah listened to what God asked and was able to ride out the flood in an ark. I can't imagine it was comfortable living in a huge boat filled with animals for a little over a year. Nor can it have been easy to watch your entire community, and everything you know, get wiped out. Noah also went through a "death" of sorts and emerged a changed man.

Comparing the two:
Noah listened to what God wanted and rode our the storm on top of the water.
Jonah ran away, got tossed around on a boat until he jumped into the water and rode out the storm in the water and in a fish.
Noah went through the change with his family.
Jonah went through it alone.
Noah listened and went through the storm with God.
Jonah ran away and caused the storm.
Noah accepted the change at the end and became a new person, though somewhat of a drinker.
Jonah didn't accept the change and did what he was asked but resented it.

If we are to think of these as Archetypes, we need to look at what they can teach us about our own lives and the problems we face. Both of these men were challenged by God. Is our response to our challenges to run away or to figure out what to do? Is the storm part of the challenge or is it caused by our response to it? Are we willing to let the challenge change us or are we going to resist to the end, long after the change has happened? How do we involve others in our challenges? Are we going to maintain our community connections or try to go it alone? Do we keep our problems to ourselves or do we let our challenges cause problems to others (the sailors on the ship Jonah was on)? Or do we involve others to help them ride through a crisis?

The Archetypal part of this is to ask if these behaviors go together. If we identify as a Jonah or as a Noah, can we use that to understand our behavior? And most importantly, can we use that to change and grow? A Jonah might suddenly understand why they cause problems to others when faced with a challenge and try to head off the storm by spending more time with themselves. A Noah might try to involve others in help her to meet her challenges instead of trying to go it alone.

This is just a brief sketch of what two Jewish Archetypes might look like. These two stories are very short and incomplete, so I wouldn't think that a person would be primarily one of them, but a person might have a bit of Noah in him, and that might be useful to understand. I'm very pragmatic about this and if they can help us to understand and grow, then it's something worth pursuing.

Amulet making part I

I've begun work on an amulet. I had a feeling that this was the right time to do it and called a friend in the art world. She gave me the name of a jeweler who gives private lessons and the two of us hit it off immediately. I had thought of making amulets in the past, but things never seemed to work out. Now the path opened for me very simply, so I am assuming that this is the right time to do it.

I'm at the beginning of the process, but it's very interesting to learn a new skill at this point in my life. I've worked with tools all my life, and silversmithing is not that different, everything is just much, much smaller. I've come up with a very simple design for the amulet I want to make and the first step was cutting a small triangle out of a sheet of brass. (Brass is for the model, Silver will be for the amulet itself.)

Holding the sheet of brass and running the tiny hacksaw blade up and down was not an entirely new skill, but my attitude was wholly different. Amulets are about channeling spiritual energy into an object of power. In the past, when I have "charged up" objects, I have held them in my hands and done the equivalent of a healing on them: connect to Shechina, connect to the object, and let the energy flow through me into the object. In this case, I am creating the object, so I need to make sure that I am transmitting energy every moment that I work on it.

I try to always work on the amulet in a healing mode. Usually my healing is very quiet with my hands kept still while on a person's body, tuning in to the patient's energy. Jewelry making is very different, every moment is concentrated on moving the tools in the proper direction using good technique. For me, it's a healing in motion where the only person in the room is me and the presence of the Shechina comes from my focus on my work, not from my connection with the client.

As I worked, every few moments I would have to stop and make sure that my body was relaxed. The focus in learning the new skill was causing me to tense up my whole body, especially my shoulders and neck. Then I would need to breath deeply and allow the energy to flow as I began to work again. It makes me realize how tense I must have been in the past when I've done physical work.

The hacksaw required a softness of hand that I'm not used to. Carpentry taught me to let the saw do the work instead of my muscles, but with thin blades, any tension or misdirection in my hand would snap the blade. The lines I was cutting were tiny without the margin of error I'm used to. Then I needed to breath and relax again, letting the Shechina flow through me.

If I get in the habit of always working on the amulet in a spiritual way, then it will come naturally as I continue to do the work. My focus is intense now because it is such a new skill. But as I get more practiced, it will become harder to maintain the focus and the energy. I don't know if I will make one amulet or many, or even if I'll complete the one I'm working on, but it gives proof to the idea that people don't need to be healers to bring God into the world. Anything that we do can be done with connection to the shamanic realm, it's just requires practice.

My Thoughts on Ritual Impurity

One of the restrictions on Cohanim is that we are not allowed to be in the presence of a dead body, which is considered ritually unclean. Growing up this mostly meant I stayed out of graveyards and sat in a shed next to the funeral home with my father when my Aunt died.

I never understood why I did these things, though I did know that on the few occasions when I went through graveyards, I felt uncomfortable and had the feeling that it was wrong to be there. (Notably only recent graves; when I've walked through colonial era graveyards, I experienced no discomfort.) A few years ago, I attended a wake for the brother-in-law of a close friend. I looked at the body out of curiosity, but then stayed as far away from it as possible - it just felt wrong. I could feel the soul of the deceased was present in the room, which was normal, but the body itself made me feel uneasy.

Two years ago, my dog died. She had been with me for almost 12 years and fought against cancer for five months when we decided that the pain was too much and it was only going downhill from there. We brought her to the vet and as she was put to sleep, my wife and I cried. I felt her ancestors come into and fill the room immediately before the injection. They gathered her to them as she died, and surprisingly quickly, they took her to the other side and were gone from the room. We sat there crying and then I suddenly looked at my wife and said that we had to leave. Her body, which only a minute or two early had been filled with life, was now empty. And impure.

A few days later, when I picked up her body to take it to bury, it was no longer impure, energetically I felt nothing.

At the moment of death, there was a particular energetic about it that felt like this was a vessel for life that had none in it. It's very hard to describe as it's not anything I've felt since. It's hard to base my thoughts on a major tenant of Judaism on a single experience, but when I look at other examples of ritual impurity, it seems to make sense.

In modern times, menstrual blood, or Niddah, is a good example of ritual impurity. When women have their periods, they are ritually impure until a period of time passes (seven days after the last drop of blood) at which point the woman needs to immerse herself in a Mikvah (ritual bath) to become pure again. There are many Jewish men and women who do not touch members of the opposite sex because they are worried that the woman is in a state of Niddah and may pass along the ritual impurity.

Menstrual blood is that same state as I describe earlier: it is a vessel for life that has none in it. The egg has the potential for life, but there is no life there. When it is discharged from the body, the blood would have the same potential. The seven days might be the time period that it takes for the impurity to wear off, so to speak, just as it did with my dog.

Different people have different gifts, and I think feeling ritual purity has not been one of mine, or at least it's nothing I've focused on. I don't know if I felt it so acutely with my dog due to the intensity of my emotions, or if it was because it was the first time I had ever been with someone as they died.

I suspect that there are people who feel impurity very acutely and I think the Jewish laws on ritual purity originated in a person or persons with that gift. They then got canonized and expanded by people with a more intellectual gift. I need to study all of the other instances of ritual impurity (such as Tzora'at) in the Torah to find out if my ideas fits in the other cases.

A first look at Tzora'at

I took a few minutes today to look over the mention of Tzora'at in the Torah. Tzora'at refers to some sort of skin disease. The usual translation is leprosy, but from what I understand, it is not known what disease it is exactly. The discussion is found in Leviticus 13-14, in parshas Tazria and Metsora.

A quick read is that the first section is about deciding when a person has Tzora'at, which is mostly about a Cohen (priest) coming to look at the person. The Cohen then makes a determination if the person is clean or unclean depending on the color of the skin, the depth of the skin disease, and the color of the hair growing in the affected area. If a person is unclean, they are isolated from the community for seven days at which point they are checked again. If they are determined clean, they can re-enter the community, but they need to go through a very elaborate cleansing ritual which involved shaving all the hair off of their head (eyebrows included) and sacrificing sin and guilt offerings. The blood of the offerings is put on several places on the person's body and then they are considered clean.

The first thing that stuck me was that the diagnosis is done by looking - it's entirely visual. The Cohen must be there is person, and they must look at the afflicted person. I have to study it more to see the role of the Cohen in the healing, but it seems that they declare a person as impure, wait, then declare them pure and perform the purification ritual to allow them to re-enter the community. (I will write another post soon on my thoughts about purity and impurity.) So the simple read is that the Cohen's role is to know when a person can or cannot be ritually pure, and help them become pure when it's possible. This bears more thought.

One passage that particularly struck me was Leviticus 13:13:

יג וְרָאָה הַכֹּהֵן, וְהִנֵּה כִסְּתָה הַצָּרַעַת אֶת-כָּל-בְּשָׂרוֹ--וְטִהַר, אֶת-הַנָּגַע: כֻּלּוֹ הָפַךְ לָבָן, טָהוֹר הוּא.

13 then the priest shall look; and, behold, if the leprosy have covered all his flesh, he shall pronounce him clean that hath the plague; it is all turned white: he is clean.

If someone has Tzora'at, they are impure, but if it has covered his entire body, so that he has no healthy skin at all, then he is pure. The following passage states that if "living skin" re-appears, then he is immediately impure.

In Chinese medicine, one of the basic principles is that Yin can transform into Yang, and Yang into Yin, and extreme Yin can transform into extreme Yang. A simple example is hypothermia. One of the warning signs that someone is entering hypothermia is that they start feeling warm when it is freezing outside. They become so cold that the Yin transforms into Yang and they begin to feel warm.

So it is in this case, when someone has become completely transformed by the impurity such that there is nothing pure remaining about them, they are transformed into a state of purity. It's as if the disease itself, by completely taking over the body, has purified them. This strikes me as a third possibility, they are pure, impure, or extreme impure that becomes pure.

This would also suggest that there is a state of extreme pure that becomes impure, though I don't know what that would look like but the myth of Icarus comes to mind. Perhaps there are those that try to get too close to God only to have it destroy their body.

The role of the Cohen is also generally considered the one who blesses. My hope is that this study will help me understand what exactly is the blessing that we give, and how to do it.

Bringing God into the world through the 13 attributes

We studied a passage from the Sefer Ba'al Shem Tov last week and as we were studying the sources behind the text, I went in a different direction than the text. So I'll present the sources and how they formed my thoughts.

This post has a lot of text quotes. I like to provide as much original texts as possible to inform as well as empower. These are my conclusions, but far from the only possible interpretation. If you have the whole text, you can come up with your own interpretation.

The first is from the 3rd Chapter of Joel:

ה וְהָיָה, כֹּל אֲשֶׁר-יִקְרָא בְּשֵׁם יְהוָה--יִמָּלֵט: כִּי בְּהַר-צִיּוֹן וּבִירוּשָׁלִַם תִּהְיֶה פְלֵיטָה, כַּאֲשֶׁר אָמַר יְהוָה, וּבַשְּׂרִידִים, אֲשֶׁר יְהוָה קֹרֵא.

5 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered; for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those that escape, as the LORD hath said, and among the remnant those whom the LORD shall call.

The question that arose from this is what does it mean to call on the name of the lord? How does one do it?

One answer can be found in Sifrei Devarim 49:

ללכת בכל דרכיו, אלו הן דרכי מקום?
"ה' אל רחום וחנון" (שמות לד ו)
ואומר: "והיה כל אשר יקרא בשם ה' ימלט" (יואל ג ה)
וכי היאך איפשר לו לאדם לקרא בשמו של מקום?
אלא נקרא המקום רחום - אף אתה היה רחום,
הקדוש ברוך הוא נקרא חנון - אף אתה היה חנון, שנאמר: "חנון ורחום ה'" וגו' (תהלים קמה ח) ועשה מתנות חנם,
נקרא המקום צדיק, שנאמר: "כי צדיק ה' צדקות אהב" (תהלים יא ז) - אף אתה היה צדיק,
נקרא המקום חסיד, שנאמר: "כי חסיד אני נאם ה'"(ירמיה ג יב) - אף אתה היה חסיד.
לכך נאמר: "והיה כל אשר יקרא בשם ה' ימלט"(יואל ג ה) ואומר: "כל הנקרא בשמי ולכבודי בראתיו יצרתיו אף עשיתיו" (ישעיה מג ז) ואומר: "כל פעל ה' למענהו"(משלי טז ד) .

"To Walk in all his ways." (Deut 10:12) What are the ways of God?
"God, God, a merciful and gracious God." (Ex. 34:6)
And it is said: "Whoever will call on the name of God shall be saved." (Joel 3:5)
How is it possible for a person to call on the name of God?
God is called Compassionate - you also be compassionate;
The holy one, blessed be he, is merciful - you too be merciful, as it is said: "God is gracious and compassionate" (Psalms 145:8) and you should give unconditionally;
God is called righteous, as is said: "For God is righteous, Justice he loves" (Psalms 11:7) - so you be righteous;
God is called Merciful - as it is said: "For I am merciful, says God." (Jeremiah 3:12) - You too be merciful.

I think the simple reading of the text is that when one does something merciful, one is calling the name of the God. Another way of reading it would be to say that when one does something merciful, one is bringing God into the world. That to embody the attributes of God is to bring God's presence into the world. I connected this to my idea of the messianic age - when it comes no one will notice. It's not that God sends someone down to save us, but we raise the world up to God. In that sense, going back to Joel, those who embody God will be saved, and such, will save us all.

My pragmatic side made me think about how one does this. I think I need to think and explore a lot more about the 13 attributes of God, but one thing that strikes me is that they are very vague attributes. They are not specific actions, but philosophical principals. So how does one encourage this in oneself and in others?

One of the child-rearing principals I hold to is process based praise. Trait based praise is praising someone for being smart or pretty. Process based praise is praising them for the effort they put into things. An example would be a child who completes a puzzle - one can say that she succeeded because she is smart or because she thought carefully about where each piece goes. The child will then try to emulate the praise: the process based praised child will try to think more carefully about where each piece goes and ends up working harder. The trait based praised child will try to be smarter. But how does one do that? By succeeding, so that child will look for easier challenges to succeed at and get frustrated when she has to work harder at things because it indicates that she isn't smart.

Applying this to the 13 attributes, one needs to praise oneself for working towards Justice or putting effort into righteousness, not for the trait, but the process that leads to each. The next step is to determine one's personal gifts and how we can use those to bring God into the world using the 13 attributes as a guide.

A family story about being a Cohen

I was just reading something my father wrote last year and came across this passage:

By the way, my father’s synagogue was basically a store front kind of place, and the people in it were all from Ostrova. My father and I were the only Kohanim in the congregation, so at the important holidays the few Leviim would wash our hands and we would bless the congregation.

Every one, of course, knew each other. It wasn’t a big congregation, all poor people who couldn’t afford a Rabbi, so everything was done by the people themselves.

On Saturday, after services, there would be a small piece of cake and some schnapps, so I got used to strong liquor from when I was a child. I wore tzitzit till I was sixteen, and in my second year in college, when I guess it got too embarrassing for me.

At some point one of the writers, who must have been widowed, for one of the Jewish newspapers, not an Ostrovan, joined the synagogue, and many of the congregants (the word doesn’t feel right, but it fits) would vie to have him come for Sabbath lunch – he was, after all, an educated man.

Given my reconnection this past Shabbat, I found this very interesting and timely.

Receiving the blessing of the Cohanim

I went to the Amika-Debira minyan this morning. It's a wonderful place to pray, they pray with a lot of Ruah (spirit) and they sing almost all of the prayers. Which makes for a very enjoyable, though long service.

One difference between praying here in Jerusalem and in the states is Birkat Cohanim, the priestly blessing. It's done during the leader's repetition of the Amidah. The Cohanim (those descended from the priests of the temple) go to the front of the room, say a short blessing, and then bless those assembled. Outside of Isreal, it is done only on High Holidays, if it's done at all, but here in Israel, it's done all the time.

When I first got here, I remember seeing it done and staring amazed at the people up front with the Talitim over their heads blessing the congregation. I am a Cohen, but I'd never done the Birkat Cohanim. I felt an urge to, but always felt held back because I had no idea what it meant or how it was done. So when the Cohanim would go up front, I would stay in my seat. On a Shabbat morning, the Birkat Cohanim is done twice, once during Shacharit (morning prayer), and once during musaf (additional prayer).

At some point during Shacharit today, I got to thinking about how I heal. This past week, I was explaining to someone about my approach to healing (in Hebrew) and mentioned that I study shamanism. "Shaman?" She asked, "That's a kind of Cohen (priest), isn't it?" It got me thinking that she was correct and that perhaps what I do could best be termed "Cohenic Healing" or something like that. I realized that I don't really know what that means and it might be a good idea to go through the Torah and look at all the examples of when the Cohens acted as healers.

About then, it came time for the first Birkat Cohanim. I saw only one person go up front and give the blessing (there are usually three or four people as all the Cohanim present give the blessing). We then took a break for kiddush and I put my thoughts on hold. When we gathered again for the Torah reading, I realized that the only other Cohen had left. So when they asked if there were Cohanim present, I raised my hand for the first aliyah (call to the Torah).

My teacher Avraham, who was reading the Torah for that Aliyah, looked at me very funny and said "You're a Cohen?"
"Yes." I replied, "Is that ok?" He was looking at me very funny.
"With the name Askanase, I didn't think..." He replied.
"I got the name with the marriage." I said. I took my wife's name when we got married. She wanted to keep her name, and I wanted to have the same name - we both won.

I did the blessings over the Torah reading and returned to my seat thinking that this really was a Cohen day. Now that I had come forward as a Cohen, and there were no other Cohanim there, I was going to have to go forward to do the Birkat Cohanim! I kept my eye on Avraham and later on, I saw him step outside for a breath of fresh air. I followed after and asked him if he could tell me how to do the Birkat Cohanim. He told me that he hadn't realized I was a Cohen because I never did the Birkat Cohanim, to which I replied that I had never done it because I had never done it and didn't know how. He was amazed and gave me brief instructions on what to do.

He asked me why I had never done it. I stumbled for an answer and told him I just didn't know what to do. If we'd had a second more, I would have continued that I'd never done it because it would have made me feel arrogant - that I get to do this special thing because I am better than everyone else. But the truth is not about humility or ignorance, but about fear. This was a new thing to me and I was scared to try it out.

Whenever the other Cohanim had done the blessing, I had tried to feel the energy or power that came out of it, but hadn't felt anything. So I put the ritual down and came up with all sorts of rationalizations why I shouldn't do it. But the truth is that I was scared. I probably hadn't felt anything from it because the fear blocked my perceptions. When I got his basic instruction, I became less scared, but as the time came closer, I began to shake quietly with fear.

When it came time, I went forward to do the blessings, only to be led to the side by two Levites (the tribe who traditionally did the administrative and logistical duties in the Temple). They took me into a side room and ritually washed and dried my hands. I returned to the front of the room and took off my shoes and stepped onto a rug placed there for this purpose. I pulled my Talit over my head and felt the fear throughout my entire being. It was an interesting sensation to, at the same time, be both experiencing and being aware that I was experiencing the fear.

I said the blessing before the blessing, then put down my prayer book, placed my hands in front of me in the priestly sign, and repeated as the blessing was read aloud word for word. I know the blessing very well as it's the same blessing I say to my children every week, but I couldn't remember a word of it. I had trouble understanding the words that were being said to me even though I knew them by heart. That's how scared I was.

When I finished, and lowered my Talit, I head Avraham say a Shehechianu (the blessing thanking God for bringing us to this moment that is said when something significant or new happens). Others looked around, not understanding why he had said it, but as I found my way back to the seat and Avraham gave me a big hug, he told others that it was my first time. Then all of the handshakes came and another friend came over to give me a big hug.

When the service came to a close, many others came over to thank me for letting them share in my first time doing the Birkat Cohanim. It was quite moving.

I continued to talk to Avraham, a few others, and the person who had been leading Musaf. It turned out that he was a cohen also so he gave me a few instructions on how to do the prayer. Avraham looked at me and said that it all made sense now as the Cohanim were the spiritual healers, the shamen of the Jews, and it was all in the discussion of Tzoraat (sometimes translated as leprosy). I looked at him and said that now I knew what I needed to study next.

The whole time we were talking I kept turning around to find out who was behind me, but there was no one there. Then I realized that I was feeling a huge spiritual connection behind me. It felt like there were generations of cohanim standing behind me, and they had all shown up to be with me for this service.

I am a Cohen, and this is my lineage, and today I finally realized what that means and how powerful it is. I hope that I can make them proud.

Blessing the Children

This is something I wrote last year that I wanted to share.

December 17, 2007

Blessing the Children

In this week's Torah Portion, VaYehi (Genesis 47:28-50:26), we come across the blessing the Jacob give to Manasseh and Ephraim. They are his grandchildren, the children of Joseph. The blessing they are given is:

"The God in whose ways my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked,
The God who has been my shepherd from birth to this day -
The Angel who has redeemed me from all harm-
Bless the lads.

In them may my name be called,
And the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac,
And may they be teeming multitudes upon the earth." (Genesis 48:15-16, JPS Translation)

Later on it continues:
"By you shall Israel invoke blessing, saying: God make (put/appoint) you like Ephraim and Manasseh." (Genesis 48:20)

And so it is that on every Friday night, we bless our children with the blessing that for boys begins: May God put/appoint you like Ephraim and Manasseh, and for Girls begins: May God put/appoint you like Sarah, Rebbecca, Rachel, and Leah. It continues: May God bless you and keep/guard you, May God illuminate his face (presence) for you and teach you, May God turn his face to you and put/appoint peace for you.

We were talking about this in class today and what does this actually mean. What was the blessing the two grandchildren received, and what exactly does it mean to bless someone like Ephraim and Manasseh?

People were throwing out some very good ideas of what it means to be blessed like these two, such as that these are the first example of brothers without sibling rivalry in the bible, so we should all be so lucky. Or that they were really fathers to our people, and we should all be blessed with such fertility. Or that they grew up comfortable and didn't really seem to experience many struggles or hardships, so we should all be blessed to have such uneventful lives. (We know very little about their lives as their only role in the bible is to receive these blessings, but given what others had to go through, that's maybe a good thing.)

I sat quiet for the first part of class because I was lost trying to figure out how I would bless my children. I mean, I say this blessing every week, and my wife always does a wonderful job of giving each of the girls their own personal blessing after I do the traditional one. Things like: "a week of health", "A week of good sleep", or "A week of new words." But I've never really thought about how I would want to bless my children. And I was at a loss.

I think often of the blessing I gave a good friend's daughter at her naming. There is a chassidic story that goes something like this: Reb Zusya was dying and was very anxious and worried. He was known far and wide as a tzaddik, a righteous man, and those around him said: don't worry, you have lived as righteous a life as Moses or King David, surely God will accept you into the world to come. When Reb Zusya heard that, he cried even more and answered: When I get to the world to come, I won't be asked if I've been a good Moses, I'll be asked if I've been a good Zusya. I'm worried if I was the best Zusya that I could be. My blessing for my friend's child was to be the best her that she could be.

I always thought that my blessing for my daughters was something similar to that one, it's how I try to parent, so it would make sense. But how then to make sense of this blessing that I say every week. It feels very powerful and I enjoy saying it, but how to make sense of it?

It then came to me to understand it slightly differently: not to be blessed like Ephraim and Manasseh, but to be blessed like they were blessed. Jacob blessed them by connecting them to his lineage, to his God and the God of his fathers. The Torah portion continues with Jacob's blessings to his own sons, which are pretty stark. Some of them even sound like curses, but these two boys were blessed with the connection to God, and with Jacob's spiritual lineage. And maybe that's why we are commanded to bless our children as they were blessed - we give our children our spiritual lineage, our connection to God and the Jewish people. It's a call to me to work on my own spirituality so that I have more to pass on. We are not commanded to bless our children to be any particular way, but we are blessing them to be connected to God like our forefathers and mothers were.

The blessing for daughters is then read that they should be blessed as our foremothers were blessed. Each of whom was blessed with a strong and powerful direct relationship with God. I will continue to try to help my daughters to be the best persons that they can be, and in terms of blessings, I'm not sure what else I could hope for other than a strong connection to God who can help them be the best them that they can be.

Joel 2:13 - Tearing one's heart

In Joel 2:13 it reads:

יב וְגַם-עַתָּה, נְאֻם-יְהוָה, שֻׁבוּ עָדַי, בְּכָל-לְבַבְכֶם; וּבְצוֹם וּבִבְכִי, וּבְמִסְפֵּד.	12 Yet even now, saith the LORD, turn ye unto Me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with lamentation;
יג וְקִרְעוּ לְבַבְכֶם וְאַל-בִּגְדֵיכֶם, וְשׁוּבוּ אֶל-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם: כִּי-חַנּוּן וְרַחוּם, הוּא--אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם וְרַב-חֶסֶד, וְנִחָם עַל-הָרָעָה.	13 And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God; for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abundant in mercy, and repenteth Him of the evil.

In the midst of reading Joel, I was struck by the above passage. Joel begins with an apocalyptic vision of the destruction of Israel followed by a call to repentance, after which there will be an abundance in Israel.

Two things struck me from this passage, the first is that he asks us to rend our hearts and not our clothes. When we are doing true repentance and change, it must come from the inside, not the outside. It's no good changing our external appearance - we can fast, we can weep, we can say the right things, but only when our hearts are torn in two can we really change.

Later, we learn our rewards for change in Joel 3:1:

א וְהָיָה אַחֲרֵי-כֵן, אֶשְׁפּוֹךְ אֶת-רוּחִי עַל-כָּל-בָּשָׂר, וְנִבְּאוּ, בְּנֵיכֶם וּבְנוֹתֵיכֶם; זִקְנֵיכֶם, חֲלֹמוֹת יַחֲלֹמוּן--בַּחוּרֵיכֶם, חֶזְיֹנוֹת יִרְאוּ.	1 And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out My spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions;

The result of all of this soul-searching and heart rending is prophesy and being filled with רוח הקודש (the wind/spirit of God). One could read this in reverse and learn that if one is searching for direct spiritual connection, one must start with repentance and do תשובה (Tsuvah - returning) from the heart.

In my mind, this is a very simple thought, but I think it's a very important one. It's a nice summary of the Jewish approach to building spirituality. The first step is to make oneself as pure as possible, then one is able to connect to the spirit world.

[The translations are from http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt1403.htm]

Thoughts on a seminar with Tommy Thompson

Two days ago, I had the pleasure of attending a seminar on the Alexander Technique given by Tommy Thompson. From July 2003 until we left Boston in 2007, I had been working with a student of Tommy's in Boston named Debi Adams (a very gifted healer), but had never managed to meet Tommy himself. I'm glad I made the effort to attend his seminar in Tel Aviv as it was really great and contained many gems on Healing that are applicable to all healers, no matter what your modality.

This seminar was mainly for teacher of the Alexander technique, so it was interesting to be a witness to the internal Alexander debates. Tommy mainly focused his lecture on differentiating between really connecting with the person and working with them as a piece of machinery on whom the technique is performed. He gave many demonstrations of working the "regular" way and then working when connected.

Watching Tommy switch back and forth between a connected treatment and a "regular" one was impressive. His words for connecting were "finding the person". In doing the treatment, you related to the client as a person, not as a machine or a piece of meat. Instead, you try to find their deeper movements beneath their normal "patterns of behavior". He told a story of being on a sea kayak in the ocean. He could see the waves moving, but it took him a long time to realize that there were deeper currents underneath. When he ignored the visible waves and focused on the currents, he was able to maneuver with ease, but when he tried to steer according to the waves, he always struggled.

He said that our patterns of behavior are the waves, but those may not be the person, they may just be what the person is used to doing. Underneath that is the real person and we need to connect to that person when we are doing healing.

In many ways, it is such a simple concept, yet so profound and difficult to do. Some practitioners reach this point on their own through either long experience or moments of realization. Some meet a teacher, and are helped to this realization. Some have a natural tendency to connect to the true person, and some never manage to do it at all. It strikes me that many of the best practitioners I've met all get to this same point. Much of what Tommy spoke about is very similar to how my mentor John Myerson talks.

There were several people in the crowd, several of whom were very vocal, who clearly did not get it. They kept trying to understand it within their own patterns of thought and it was clearly not their experience so they missed the point entirely. Some tried to minimize what he was saying by rationalizing it into other, more popular concepts in their work. I guess there is a fine line to know when someone is saying something that can enlighten my own understanding of my experience, and when they are experiencing something completely different that requires me to broaden my understanding.

Some other gems from the seminar:
People don't come to you for their health problem, they come to you because the energy of the universe has led them to your door. Their deeper self brought them to see you, so don't get lost in their surface problems.

He took two matches and lit one. Then pressed it to the other match which flared up as it was lit. He said that this represented our passing the knowledge onto to our clients - we are not given them something they don't already have. We are igniting something that is already there. In the moment of contact, the two matches burned brighter than either apart.

"Put your hands where they are needed." Not where you think they should go. He was clear not to get caught up in the technique, but to let the healing happen. "You can find the face in the back." No matter where you are working, you are treating the entire person.

"If you get hit a lot, you develop a pattern of behavior to prevent yourself from getting hit." Which may not really be you, but a reaction to your surroundings. Try not to focus on the pattern, focus on the person inside.

As a practitioner, always let the work to make you a better person.

When someone goes through a traumatic experience: if they experience it, they will be fine. If they react to it, it will get stuck in the tissue. Most people react to it without experiencing it and have troubles later on. Help the client to experience it without reacting to it and the can move beyond the event. (I was struck by how similar this is to the way in which I approach fear.)

Experience what you are experiencing. If we don't go looking for something in particular, then we can really experience what is going on, but if we go looking for something, then we miss what's happening.

Experience things from who you are now, not who you were. Change the story you tell to reflect who you are now, not who you were when the story originally took place. Let go of any attachment to the event as you used to understand it and then you can heal and move on.

I really enjoyed learning from Tommy, and look forward to attending another seminar tomorrow. If anyone has a chance to study with him, I strongly recommend it.

You can read about the second class here.

Rethinking the Shechina

The Shechina is understood as the feminine presence of God. When we feels God's presence, we are feeling the Shechina. I've never given much thought to what this meant, but recent study has made me realize that I had been thinking of the Shechina as the warm and fuzzy side of God. The presence that arrives which makes us feel whole and connected. But I think I've been wrong. Or at least not complete in my thinking.

With many Kabbalistic concepts, my methodology has been to compare the writing to what I have experienced in the past and see if they are explaining something I've experienced. If it doesn't, I try to connect to the author of the text, and then use that connection to feel what they were experiencing. Another variation on that is to use the text itself as a guide to try to find the experience. If I'm still drawing an experiential blank, I try my best to understand the concept intellectually and how it fits in to my larger understanding of shamanism, spirituality, and Kabbalah.

Shechina is traditionally associated with the lowest sephira of Malchut. I've been studying Shaarei Ora by Rabbi Yosef Gikatilla (1248-1310) with my Hevruta and we've just completed the first section on Malchut. He finds many different words in the Torah that connect to the Shechina and uses them to describe her different aspects. Two of the major descriptors of the Shechina are as an empty pool or mikvah that is filled up by the other sephirot, and as the gateway between the spiritual world and the physical one. The Shechina sits on the bottom of the sephirot and in order for us to access the treasure rooms above, we must first pass through Malchut. Likewise, when the higher sephirot act upon the world, they also pass through Malchut.

He seemed to imply that there are time when the other sephirot act upon us directly, through malchut, and times when the empty nature of malchut fills up with the higher Sephira and then malchut acts upon us. Practically, I'm not sure if we would be able to feel much difference between the two, though I would imagine that when the higher Sephira acts upon us directly, it is a more powerful experience as there is no mediator involved.

This makes a lot of practical sense to me. There is a veil or a gate between the spirit world and the physical one which can be called Malchut. Whenever we want to enter into the spiritual world, we need to pass through this gate. There are many different ways of doing this, through drumming, singing, praying, and others. But the idea of a gate or doorway makes a lot of sense with my past experience. It also didn't bother my notion of a warm fuzzy Shechina.

But at the end of Gikatilla's section on Malchut, he writes about Malchut wearing three types of fire, each associated with a name of God: black (Shakai), red (Elokim), and green (A-D-N-I). (I'll write another post with the whole passage and a longer discussion.) The Black devouring fire disperses bad spirits and impure things. The Red fire destroys everything around it, good and bad, like a plague. And the green fire causes fear, awe, and trembling upon all the created. Not so warm and fuzzy.

This version of the Shechina means that when the presence of God comes to us, it can be terrible and dark. It can use that dark energy to heal us and drive away dark spirits, but it can also destroy everything around itself. In this sense, when the Shechina comes to us, it's not always a good thing. I am tempted to link this to what John Myerson writes about dark energy and the dangers it presents when we use it, but I think that would be too much of a reach at this point. I want to see what else Gikatilla writes about dark energy, if I can use that term "black fire that devours".

In class yesterday, my teacher taught us of an idea in the Zohar that the Shechina is the energy that is created between people. The Shechina can be thought of as Knesset Yisrael (the gathering of Israel) . And from that we can understand that anytime people get together the shechina manifests. I experience this everyday. There is a particular power that manifests in my healing when there is a connection between myself and the patient. I just have been calling it a connection, but might I also be able to understand it as the Shechina?

That connection has a power, but it can be many different types of power and do many different things. I have to pay more attention to this to determine if what I am terming the power of connection is truly the presence of the Shechina. If so, it can lead to a whole new way of explaining the connections between people, and a new way of understanding how to call the Shechina. It is not just the presence we hope will descend upon us, but something that we intentionally draw towards us by improving the connections between us.

We'll see how that develops, but for now I am certain that the Shechina is not always so warm and fuzzy!

Words stretching across creation

I had a wonderful vision during a treatment I recently received. I was brought into a room and shown a book with black pages. I looked into it and knew I had to write something. In white letters, I began writing בראשית (Berashit - the first word of the Torah). I wrote the letters in the same script as the Torah. At some point, I realized that I was writing black letters on a white page. As I finished the word, I looked at it and realized it stretched across creation. The start of the word, written in white against nothingness crossed into black letters on creation. It was profoundly beautiful.

The Role of Healers in the Healing

In dealing with my Yetzer haRah (see last post), I spent a lot of time thinking about the role of the healer in the healing, and particularly my role in the healing.

I often think of my treatments as creating the space for the healing to happen. My role is connecting to the patient, connecting to God, and then the healing happens. The power for the healing came from God, but I was involved as well. So how do I understand my role? And from that, how do I become a better healer?

I can interpret every treatment as completely God's work in which I am an empty vessel who simply does God's work. In this story, my role is to learn to be empty. There is no particular training needed, no need to work on healing techniques or better needle insertion. There is only one skill - being empty. Whatever path I followed to suppress my ego and become empty is all I need to keep doing to be a better healer. The danger of this path is that one can beat oneself up for having any ego at all, and so get into a rut of self-denial and self-suppression. I think there are people for whom this path works, it's just not who I am.

Another way of describing the treatment is that I can take complete credit for the treatment. I can believe that the whole treatment comes from my power, and there are no greater forces involved. My ego has complete control here. The dangers here are many. The story is all about me, and there is no room for God. This is the story of arrogance, and there is no need for growth - I did such an amazing thing, aren't I wonderful. There is no fears or tears or tensions created that would drive me forward. In this story, I am already perfect.

The challenge is finding a way to tell the story that allows me to have a sense of self, to keep growing, and to acknowledge the role of God. I think it is natural to take joy in our successes. When the harvest comes in, the farmer is joyful, but the farmer knows it is only temporary as it will be soon be time to start planting again.

I know that God played an integral part in the treatment and all the power is his, but I was there too. Is that arrogant to say? Is there a way to tell the story such that I acknowledge the work I did to enable the treatment to be successful?

The farmer knows that just scattering seeds on the soil and waiting won't bring crops to harvest. One needs to do a lot of planning, and hard work to make those plants grow. Ultimately, it's God who makes the plants grow, the rains fall, and who decides if the harvest will be successful. But that doesn't free the farmer from working very hard to create the right conditions in which the crops can succeed.

I think it works this way with healing. I have to work very hard to create the right space, to relax the patient, to place the needles in the right points, to place my hands on the right places - all that so that the healing can happen. My tension for growth is to always get better at my part of the healing. And then when I succeed and the patient gets better, then I feel joy. But like a farmer, I know the joy lasts only until my next treatment when I must begin all over again.

My teacher John once said to me that the Zen concept of not attaching to things is very important. I see it in this case: if I attach to the joy, then it prevents me from growing. If I deny the joy, I am not being honest with myself. If I feel the joy and then let it go and move on, then I can continue to plant and grow.

The story should perhaps be told in this way: A patient came in, I worked hard to create the space for the healing, and then felt joy when God connected to us and helped the client to heal. And then I moved on to the next patient.

A final note:
I wrote this post yesterday. Last night, I was reading The Wings of The Sun by Avraham Greenbaum. In the section on the rabbinic tradition (chapter 4, p. 33), he solves my dilemna by stating that God heals, but he grants the doctors power to heal as God's agents. He continues the point thus:

This latter viewpoint is vividly expressed in a midrash telling of a sick man who approached Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Akiva as they were walking in Jerusalem one day. The sick man asked the two rabbis what he should do to be cured. They gave him a number of recommendations, upon hearing which a farmer who had been listening said to them, "You're interfering in something that's none of your business! God afflicted him with illness and you want to heal him?" "But don't you as a farmer do the same?" they replied. "God created the earth, but you have to plow, till, fertilize and weed if you want the land to yield produce. `As for man, his days are as grass' (Psalms 103:15). The human body is the tree, the medicine is the fertilizer and the physician is the tiller of the earth" (Midrash Shmuel 52a #4).

What amazed me was that my analogy of a farmer was actually a classical one. It's amaizing when things come together like that!

If you follow the link to Wings of the Sun, the entire book is available on-line. It's worth the read: http://www.azamra.org/.