November 6, 2024

Dear community,

It’s been a hard week. As our country grapples with the election outcomes, let us turn to the wisdom of the Jewish calendar to guide us during these challenging times. Each Hebrew month is a portal to particular energies, with specific spiritual practices to navigate them. This week we entered the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, which the Mishna and the Talmud (the oral rabbinic tradition) refer to as “MarCheshvan.”

The word “Mar” in Hebrew means “bitter,” like the Maror bitter herbs we eat on Passover. MarCheshvan is a month of bitterness. Its zodiac symbol, the scorpion, conveys the sharpness of its sting. 

It is the month in which our foremothers Sarah and Rachel passed away. As Sarah died in cries of outrage when she found out her husband Avraham had sacrificed their son Yitzchak, we are invited in MarCheshvan to connect to the outrage when the most vulnerable in our communities come under threat. As Rachel died in tears of yearning for children after years of barren anticipation, MarCheshvan is a time when we are invited to connect to pain of delayed gratification, when our deepest desires are unrequited. 

The Torah portions we read in MarCheshvan illustrate the bitterness we access this month. In Parshat Noach, in which we read the story of the flood last week, we connect to the devastation of having our world destroyed. In Parshat Lech Lecha, which we’ll read this Shabbat, Avraham is promised a glorious future – only to be immediately beset by famine, the kidnapping of his wife and nephew, and battle with four kings. He can’t seem to catch a break – one calamity after the next. 

MarCheshvan is also the month when the Jewish people split into two kingdoms during the time of the first temple. It’s a time of polarization and division. MarCheshvan feels ominously relevant this month.

So the first spiritual practice of MarCheshvan is to connect to the bitterness you may be experiencing this month. Give yourself the space to feel what you are feeling. Fear, anger, hopelessness, sadness, whatever else is coming up: welcome it all. A friend of mine who is an herbalist taught me that bitter foods are helpful for digestion. Perhaps MarCheshvan is a time for us to metabolize for ourselves what just happened. We can’t act effectively from a place of suppressed emotions. 

There will be time after MarCheshvan for campaign post-mortems and finger-pointing, analysis of exit polls and voter data, mobilizing and activism and next steps. As Peggy Gannon writes. “We do not need to find hope, yet. We do not need to organize, yet. Today, we can howl at the moon. Cover our mirrors. Rend our garments. There will be time to reignite, To fight for our country, To protect the vulnerable. With everything we have. But, today, we grieve.”

There is a second spiritual practice of MarCheshvan. Mar also means “a drop of water,” as in the verse from the prophet Isaiah: “כְּמַ֣ר מִדְּלִ֔י, like a drop (mar) from a bucket.” MarCheshvan, on the heels of our rain prayer last month, is the time of the first rains. It’s when our seeds begin the long process of germination of the winter. It’s not the season of blossoming or harvesting – but it’s the beginning of the journey. Not a torrent of water, just the first drop. 

As taught in the Zohar, the core text of Jewish mysticism, the first word of the Torah (which we read two weeks ago) is “Bereishit – In the beginning,” which can also be read as “Bet Reishit – Two beginnings.” The first beginning was the creation of the world. But the second beginning, as we read in last week’s Torah portion, was after the flood. In the wreckage of the devastation was the opportunity for a new beginning. The Midrash, the oral rabbinic elaboration of the Torah, teaches that the Moshiach – the liberatory consciousness that will bring an end to conflict and deprivation – will arrive in MarCheshvan, the month of new possibilities and future liberation.

MarCheshvan is not a time for naive optimism. It’s the reminder that the arc of history is long, and that today’s tears may be the water for tomorrow’s possibilities. As said by African-American Christian mystic Howard Thurman, a dear friend and mentor to my teacher Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (who founded Jewish Renewal): 

“During these turbulent times we must remind ourselves repeatedly that life goes on… The wisdom of life transcends our wisdoms; the purpose of life outlasts our purposes; the process of life cushions our processes. The mass attack of disillusion and despair, distilled out of the collapse of hope, has so invaded our thoughts that what we know to be true and valid seems unreal and ephemeral… This is the great deception… 

“To drink in the beauty that is within reach, to clothe one’s life with simple deeds of kindness, to keep alive a sensitiveness to the movement of the spirit… in the quietness of the human heart and in the workings of the human mind –  this is as always the ultimate answer to the great deception.” 

(Thank you to our community member Rabbi Dan Goldblatt for sharing these words with me last night.)

Almost 200 members of our community joined us last night at Chochmat HaLev to hold each other in song, prayer, meditation, ancestral wisdom, and sharing. Despite the uncertainty ahead for our country, we can count on this community to be there for us in the coming weeks, months, and years. Resist the temptation to isolate in the wake of despair. 

We have planned many opportunities over the next two weeks to be held in community: Join us for Music Mishmar jam and sing-along tonight at 8pm; Shabbat morning services this Saturday (and delight in the hope of the next generation for Soloman Brown’s bar mitzvah); our Big Effin’ Sing interactive musical experience on Sunday night; OpenLev Soulful Co-Working all day Wednesday; a special Sephardi Kabbalat Shabbat next Friday night; and next Saturday morning’s Torah Study with special guest Yael Karanek, whose Toratah project has regendered the whole Torah.

May you be blessed this MarCheshvan with the space to connect with the bitter sting of whatever emotions are arising for you. May the bitterness serve to metabolize those emotions for you. And may you be sustained by the droplets of water that will eventually irrigate a better future for us all.

Blessings,
Zvika