Reemergence

It feels like only this weekend that I have started to find my feet again.

It has been a time of new beginnings in our home, a time of wonder, also a time of sleepless nights.

I notice as I step out from a long weekend here in the UK, one of almost no work, one only of family time, time in the park, time in the garden and of course, time eating and playing. I notice how much I am capable of when I am feeling right and at the same time how limited, emotionally exhausted and quite useless I am when I am down.

I am a well of energy right now, today! Who knows what tomorrow may hold!

And I cast my eye on the days and weeks ahead…

This morning, I started my day with a little cleaning, some repotting of some herbs I planted from seed and a little exercise and stretching…work can wait. And now as I sit at my desk I feel razor focused and ready for the carnage and hurry of the week.

What is the opposite of this Oliver? Oliver overwhelmed, who sees every corner of my home and my world as out of reach, unachievable, impossible.

As a core command of our Torah, a spiritual and emotional instruction, we are told in the last book of the Torah, ‘לֹא בַשָּׁמַיִם הִוא לֵאמֹר מִי יַעֲלֶה־לָּנוּ הַשָּׁמַיְמָה וְיִקָּחֶהָ לָּנוּ’, ‘It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us…”’ [Deuteronomy 30:12]. A primary teaching of our Torah is not to make the first step too far out of our reach, to not make targets and ambition too lofty and beyond our capacity.

And yet I am floored; in this week’s Parsha Shmini we are reminded of the story of Aaron’s sons, consumed by a holy fire for an infraction against God. The power of the story for me has always been Aaron’s response, ‘וַיִּדֹּם אַהֲרֹן’, Aaron is silenced, spiritually destitute, like a stone, unable to utter a word. This has been my relationship with the outside world in the last weeks. Exhausted in my own home, certainly at a loss to speak to the outside world.

We are a people, Israel, with an intimate, ancient and holy connection to the land of Israel. We are hurting right at this time from the monstrous acts committed against Israel on October 7, 2023. We need our hostages returned, the emotional turmoil and trauma of the combined acts of October 7, alongside the continued strife of standing alongside families who night after night await news of those captive in the dungeons of Gaza. In Europe, the Jewish community has faced an additional and yet distinct wounding by way of the level of aggression and contempt many on the streets of our cities have shown for the Jewish community and the freedom to practise religion. That wound is still open.

There is a flip to this story, that is the civilian toll of those who are suffering in Gaza. The hundreds and now thousands who have lost their lives in this gruesome war. There are many in our Jewish and Israeli community who would like to lay a major part of this blame on Hamas and their extremist backers, the Government of Iran. At the same time, the modern state of Israel must take its part of responsibility and the level of strife and protest against the Israeli government at this time, is in part a call to say “we can do better”.

In Shmini, our Parsha this week, we read many of the laws of Kashrut, the laws of how Jews eat. They are laws which largely do not have rational explanation. Law for the sake of law. We read in the Parsha ‘כִּי אֲנִי ה אֱלֹקֵיכֶם וְהִתְקַדִּשְׁתֶּם וִהְיִיתֶם קְדֹשִׁים כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אָנִי’, ‘I am God, your God: you shall sanctify yourselves and be holy, for I am holy’. It is a reminder of our personal responsibility for ourselves and ourselves alone. At its very religious core we are first and foremost responsible for our acts and deeds, that is number one. I am also aware, with clear aggression against the Jewish people and Israel facing what many call ‘an existential war’, it is all too easy to grow in our hatred against other humans. At the core of our ‘I’-ness, our sense of self, must be a clear idea and vision of humanity, of the oneness both of God and of all human beings.

These years have and will continue to push us to extremist positions, all corners of our society. We hold a sense that we are on the margins (all of us different margins!), opposing the extremists in the other corner. When we find it, our capacity is to give room for the polar-opposite emotional, spiritual identity, to continue to imagine our own capacity, our hopes and dreams, our capacity for baby steps and to push to make this world better and ultimately to hold and nurture the vision of a communal unity and a human unity that is currently so lacking.

Shabbat shalom.

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