Serving God in the Moment

After the devastating plague of locusts, Pharaoh hurriedly calls for Moses (Exodus 10)

24. And Pharaoh called to Moses, and said, Go, serve the Lord; only let your flocks and your herds stay; let your little ones also go with you.

25. And Moses said, You must give us also sacrifices and burnt offerings, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.26. Our cattle also shall go with us; there shall not a hoof be left behind; for we must take it to serve the Lord our God; and we know not with what we must serve the Lord, until we come there.

These last few words are interesting. It's true that Moses might simply have been giving Pharaoh some kind of excuse, to explain why they needed to take all the cattle with them. However, there is also a deeper truth in the words "we know not with what we must serve the Lord, until we come there."

For a while I studied with a teacher of the Yemima method. One of Yemima Avital's fundamental principles was that every moment has its diyuk - its precise and right action. The aim and skill in life is to live each moment as rightly as possible, bearing in mind all factors. You cannot predict the diyuk in advance, based on yesterday's diyuk or your imagination or logic. It is only in the moment that the true diyuk emerges. To me, these words of Moshe's point to that. We need to come as prepared as possible because service of God is not (or not simply) by pre-prescribed laws, but rather also according to the call of the moment.

Those of you familiar with the Myers-Briggs test will recognise the P here, rather than the J. Come prepared by all means -  but don't plan out every second, remain flexible.

Rebbe Nachman has a teaching that also helps us to remain in the present and focus on the avoda of the present (Likutei Moharan 272:1 translated by Sefaria):

“Today! if you heed His voice.” (Psalms 95:7) 

A very important rule in Avodat Hashem is to only focus on what one has to do today. Whatever it may be a job, work, learning... One should always only focus what he has to do that day and not think ahead and look at everything he has at once. Focus on what you need to do at that moment alone.

When someone wants to improve in his Avodat hashem, of he doesn't take this advice and try to focus on everything he has to do not just today but the next day and the next week it will seem like a burden and too hard to follow. But when he only focuses on that day, that moment alone it will feel much easier. And he will be much better off.

And it's very important to not delay it and say, I will start tomorrow or later because all we have to do in this world is to focus on what we should be doing right now. That's why the pasuk said היום אם בקולו תשמעו to דוקא listen and start improving ourselves right now, one step at a time with whatever we have to do right in front of us right now.

Moshe's life journey taught him not to plan. He took every day as it came, listening for G-d's intructions for that day. Planning for the future didn't work out for him - he never entered the Promised Land, though that was the original plan. On any given day in the desert, he did not know if the pillar of cloud would begin moving again. Yet he was able to spend a full 120 years in this mode. This is the mode of faith.

Esther, Descendant of Sarah

When we experience challenges, we can remember that our ancestors went through similar and probably worse. We can draw on their strengths, that have come down to us as a legacy. This point is one that can be drawn out of the following:

In the midrash (Esther Rabbah 1:8), Rabbi Akiva connects Sarah with Esther via the number 127:

Rabbi Akiva was sitting and teaching, and the students were dozing off. He sought to arouse them. He said: What was Esther's merit to rule over 127 provinces? Such said the Holy One, blessed be He: Let Esther, the descendant of Sarah, who lived for 127 years, and rule over 127 countries.

The connection via this number is not the end of the conversation, it is just the beginning. They are indeed highly connected. Each of these attractive women had to spend time in the palace of a mighty non-Jewish King who desired her. And each had to keep a major identity component secret, because a man close to her had requested it.
In the case of Sarah, she concealed that she was actually Abraham's wife; in Esther's case, she obeyed Mordechai's instructions that she tell no one she was a Jew.

That takes fortitude, self-discipline, and courage.

Perhaps it was in the merit of the earlier story, of Sarah's dedication in doing this dangerous thing for the sake of her husband, that Esther, this sheltered young girl, was given the strength for her tremendously challenging mission.
Or perhaps it was a kind of spiritual DNA that came down from ancestress to descendant.
And conceivably, Esther also knew the story of Sarah her foremother, and drew inspiration from her strength.[1]
All three are likely true.

Today we too can draw strength from knowing that those who came before us faced many terrible situations. Sometimes their courage failed. But many times they also won. And we are their children.


[1] Although their ending was different. Sarah was freed, while Esther remained forever in the palace. Thanks Tobie Harris for pointing that out.

Serving God with "You yourself"

An age-old question on the Cain and Abel story is: why does God accept Abel's offering and reject Cain's?

The Hasidic Master, Rabbi Judah Leib Alter of Gur, known as the Sefat Emet, suggests that the answer is to be found in a close reading of two phrases from the story (Gen 4:3-5):

3. And in process of time (literally: at the end of days) it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground as an offering to the Lord.
4. And Abel brought, he too, of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat of it. And the Lord accepted Abel and for his offering;
5. But Cain and for his offering he did not accept.

The Sefat Emet quotes another Hasidic master, Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Przysucha, that the phrase "At the end of days" reveals to us why Cain brought an offering in the first place - it was due to the fear of his own death, which brought him to a thoughts of repentance and a desire to cover his bases. However, Abel brought "he too" (literally "himself too"), meaning while he was still alive, in life.

In other words, elaborates the Sefat Emet, Cain did not offer with his full heart and soul, he was merely afraid of his death, while Abel brought the fullness of his own being to the sacrifice; and that is the key in sacrificing to God, that one intends to use it as a way to become closer to God. To serve God with one's entire existence, not a behavioral gesture stemming from other motivations.

That is, in fact, the point of the all of the commandments. They are empty if not joined with the intention of deveykut, cleaving to God.

This reminded me of the book of Iyov/Job). In the first verses, Job is described as a righteous man and God Himself describes him as "blameless" to Satan. In the book, Job indeed rejects his friends' attempts to attach blame to him.

And yet - at the risk of joining Job's friends - I have to say that the explanation of the Sefat Emet made me think of the book of Job, and puts Job in the role of Cain.

From the outset, we hear that Job would always make sure to sacrifice, in case his sons had sinned while feasting. To me, that sounds like piety out of fear, out of covering his bases - and not out of fullness of connection to God. I feel as if the suffering God made him go through, along with the vision of the whirlwind at the end, were all designed to force him to bring "himself too", to move from being a meticulous saint who immediately checks to see if he has sinned in the minutest place but without actually serving God, to someone who by the end has been cracked wide open, discovered his own darkest places, and in that way can come to admit that he never really knew God before :

I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees you (Job 42:5)

The word for knowledge, daat, appears over eighty times in the book of Job. Jewish daat is not just in the mind - we need to know things intimately, with our entire selves, which is why the biblical Hebrew verb for conducting sexual relationships is leyda, the same verb as for to know.

We need to know G-d not through habitual actions covering ourselves in case we sinned, but with our heart cracked open and our full, flawed being.


> With thanks to my teacher Dr Elie Holtzer for his marvelous classes on Sefat Emet.

Hallelujah

I was in Edinburgh watching a gospel choir from South Africa singing songs of freedom, with colorful costumes, soaring voices, dancing and much gusto.

The final song they sang, though, was Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. While this is not my favourite of songs, the fact that they were singing a song by a Jew and through it were intending to praise God moved me; and I was even more moved when the entire audience rose to their feet and sang in unison "Hallelujah" with incredible joy and vitality. 

And it suddenly struck me that every time someone says the English word Hallelujah, since fortunately in this case the annoying J that creeps in in English versions of Hebrew words is not pronounced, they are literally saying the Hebrew words הללויה or הללו יה, Hallelu Yah, praise God.

Meaning that, without ignoring negative things this religion has wrought such as the Crusades and anti-semitism, one good thing Christianity has certainly done is brought millions of mouths down the ages to say the words "Praise God" in Hebrew, and that goes on until today.

And each time a mouth does that, surely that is a bolt of good energy in this troubled world?
Perhaps it even creates an angel?

Sing Hallelujah
Sing it!

The Precise Thing for Every Moment

In Bamidbar chapter 27, God tells Moses that his life is drawing to a close. Moses’ concern, upon hearing this news, is not for himself but for the people. They will need a new leader. He says to God: 

16. Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation,

17. Who may go out before them, and who may go in before them, and who may lead them out, and who may bring them in; that the congregation of the Lord be not as sheep which have no shepherd.

Wait a minute! Isn’t there a person who has been groomed for the leadership for the past 39 years - Joshua? He was placed in charge of the battle against Amalek. He was the only one Moses took with him (at least partway) up Mt Sinai. He was at the Tent of Meeting with Moses. He was one of the only two good spies. Isn’t it obvious that he is to be the successor, having been mentored by Moses, having spent all these years learning from him, and being the only Israelite with the military experience necessary to conquer the land?

So why does Moses phrase it as if there is no specific candidate, and his request is for God to choose “someone”? Does Moses really expect God to reply, “Ok, appoint Joe Shmoe.”

I’ve been pondering this question and for me, the point emerging from this one brief interchange is that we should never think we know God’s will. Even Moses, the prophet who “knew” God better than any human, needed to humbly acknowledge that God’s will is connected to a larger picture that we can never fully fathom, and therefore there may be surprises. Moreover, even if God’s favour seemed in the past to have been leaning towards Joshua, that doesn’t mean that at this moment it is still the same.

Important to note: This does not mean that God is capricious and acts on whims. What it means is that life is dynamic. Every moment comes with new energies, new strategies, and new mindful behaviour. As the verse is Psalms says, “Today, if you listen to his voice” and as Rebbe Nahman of Breslov points out, “This is to remind us that we must do our living in the present, in today. Every day, every hour has its own specific work, regardless of the past.”

This is a lesson I learned from Yemima Avital, creator of the Yemima method (see my article here for more): that every moment has its diyuk, its precise action. So Moses, accordingly, did not make assumptions and he waited to see what God’s will was in the now. 

We too need to become aware that whatever was right in the past might not be right for now – but if we plug into our intuition, do a clarification process, pray, we will hopefully discover what that precise right thing actually is.