Just wrote this in a comment on a social media but it truly is my deeply held, personal theology.
I will die on this hill.
“And it was all Done with Mirrors”
Before Pesach I rushed to type up some thoughts about the process of freedom, those leaving narrowness moments – how the very process of crying out is the first step towards liberation. During Pesach I rushed and I rested. Now at the end I find myself trying to get some ideas down before I’m back to the business of work and school and life, the everyday of liturgy homework.
Only haShem knows that perfect moment when dusk turns to Shabbat, when the moment of redemption arrives, when midnight in exactitude comes and suddenly the moment of freedom unveils. A huge part of leaving our narrowness is being open to the possibility of that very unknown moment, the moshiach energy waiting in each restful shadow.
But outside of the terror of waiting and the joy of leaving, after the miraculous – is the everyday. How do we keep going after?
How did we keep going during?
There is a midrash from Tanchuma Pikudei (free form retelling):
Pharaoh had issued a decree to keep his human properties’ numbers in check, stating men could not sleep at home and outlawing Israelite sex. So the women came to the fields with lunch, bringing bright copper mirrors as well. After food, they would rest awhile together. Eventually out would come the mirrors.
“I’m more beautiful than you!” they would declare, holding their mirrors.
“I am more beautiful than you!” would come the reply.
Back and forth, day after day – a pile of affirmations and the sustenance of more than a light lunch and short break.
And it was through these very mirrors that Pharaoh’s decree was overturned because they would “accustom themselves to desire.”
When building the Miskhan, all the people brought from their treasures – the women bringing these very copper mirrors! Moshe dismissively issued threats, demeaning the mirrors as vanity. But haShem ThemSelves rebuked Moshe, reminding that these miraculous mirrors kept The People alive during slavery’s hardships and the burden of Pharoah’s decrees.
Because of this, the mirrors were used to created the kiyor, the copper washing basin for the kohanim as they prepared to entire the holier, inner parts of the mishkan.
Freedom is a verb, a practice. I talked right before Pesach about that unknowable moment of liberty. But the difficulty of the unknowable is how to keep going until we get there. What can sustain us when Pharaoh’s strict decrees grow thicker, while legalistic bureaucracy’s hands and surveillance state eyes eat our time and capitalism killingly-isolates our communal needs?
Here are our ancestors again, making their own time within those harsh decrees. Just as our first mitzvah is to make a new separate calendar and mark our time by the moon, here its the women with their mirrors – carving out this silver sliver of hope during the heat of the day. Rest in the shade with a small meal and a playful partner every day.
Is this why Purim is right before Pesach? To remind the joy that keeps us alive in the face of these intersecting narrows?
Oy beloveds, We need each other so badly. We need joy so desperately. It is the joy and love, the playful but true recognition of our /own/ beauty with others, that allows us to see we don’t deserve the pain. And it is that connection that also lets us cry out, lets us see the flash of freedom that is Olam haBa- a world of care.
Something about how these mirror-holders don’t try to bolster the other. I’m sure all the people were ragged and bedraggled, enslaved for generations and barely remembering their own peoplehood, their own ancestral connections. I wonder if it felt ridiculous, as silly as Sarah looking to innards and laughing pointblank at angels. And yet, they insist – playful and sweet, “swinging them with words” in the shade as the too-hot-sun burns above – “I’m more beautiful than you.”
They insist “Now you” tracing the lines of a face, squeezing a hand, thoughts entangled.
I realize as I type, this was the lesson queers have bequeathed me and continue to over and over. Every person I see out in the world who’s gender presentation is at odds with the system’s expectation is like a whispered mirror “I’m more beautiful than you are.” And the reflection of copper, the refracted murmur sparkles back, “Now you.”
Friends, beloveds – Remember our mirrors. They are portals into our inner holiness. Not just to constantly peer at what needs repair, but to envision through fresh Spring what innate beauty and holiness already lives within, what flowers are bursting forth and shaking loose their petals.
I am a beautiful glorious discerning human. I am complicated and confused and curious and constantly contradicting. I contain multitudes, as queerly beloved Uncle Walt said; I know no other way toward g-d of such ultimate multitude but to emulate. I watch the cherry blossoms raining down heavy with Spring dew and I want to kiss the world, gently remind it. This handsome loving form of carbon-based life only comes once in the existence of the /entire/ universe and I am gorgeous because of it.
.
..
…
Now you.
PS – While this midrash is unsurprisingly focused on “traditional” married partners – the presumption of a man and a woman – it is still a midrash that undermines the hegemony of the expected. Women are recognized as integral to the process of freedom, are mentioned in sexual contexts without being vixens or virgins, and are incorporated into the very framework of the Mishkan’s holiness.
Also, let us not pretend that the lesson is limited to romantic partners or the monogamous / straights only. We all need others in our lives to be face to face with, to relax and touch and remind each other of our beauty. Every one of us wants to be wanted, for a connection that desires your nearness. That connection transcends far beyond any ancient constructs or modern nostalgic assumptions of marriage.
My father who is never sick got sick and dehydrated. He’s stubborn and a bit grumpy about it. As I get older I can finally let myself see how much I share with him, how much I got to be the sweet kind man I am because of his love.
I get my gregarious chattiness with random humans from him. The crook in my nose are his family’s. My ability to drink, the hidden ginger undertones in my hair, and every sunburn ever also. The way my temper rises and how I squelsh it are his. I have his sweet tea recipe and add cheese to chicken and dumplings because that’s what he does.
I’m a very lucky human to be so loved. I’m a very lucky human to want to see my parents in me, to be searching for those connections. And I’m blessed to have parents who are doing the same – letting me love them, finding our connections where they live. They did it my whole life – even when I didn’t see it, even when I actively didn’t want it.
And because of that sometimes thankless, always exhausting work, I exist knowing I’m loved.
It’s Tiferet sheb’Chesed before the sun sets. I’m trying to remember that balancing all the parts of myself is what brings sustainable wide-open living-kindness. My handsome wonderful beautifully-souled father who cries when I leave at the airport, who cried when my mother put me in the corner for the first time, is part of me. And I can’t be thankful enough.
I don’t know if I’ll have time to formulate it fully, so I’m placing it here for the chol hamoed.
There’s something about the process of freedom, where it starts, that keeps arising for me. We suffered. And suffered and suffered until … we cried out.
And the g-d remembered us. We mock this now – how could God /not/ know? Psht. But g-d is us and if we communally/socially think something is acceptable, the g-d image of the age will reflect it.
Until we cry out against it.
Suddenly, something in consciousness shifts and divine possibilities are unleashed. As we continue the constant fight against the Pharaoh-nic monopoly corporations that grease the oligarchy’s cogs, notice people reinvesting in Unions despite the propaganda against, sense ourselves finally begin the reckoning that is the genocidal creation of this world we inhabit.
We do this – not just for the next generation, not for our ancestors, not even for our future selves or past nostalgia. We do this for the Us of the Now. Only haShem knows that perfect moment when dusk turns to Shabbat, when the moment of redemption arrives, when midnight in exactitude comes and suddenly the moment of freedom unveils.
And so this getting free must be for us Now, every now. In every generation true, but this is the perpetual Now and we must truly inhabit it, embody the moment. Freedom, after all, is a verb.
What starts this freedom? How does this entire Exodus begins?! A people cried out.
Friends, there is no living without the hurt. So be hurt and – Torah tells us – let it be know. Getting free requires those first wordless attempts at making sense of pain – an injured cry. Lately, I feel we’re beginning to cry out more and more against this pressure cooker of a system designed to devour us body and soul. I see more people yelling out their own hurts, naming those scary vulnerabilities.
The more we speak these out loud, the easier it becomes to heal. And what is healing, but another process of freeing our Self?
This Pesach – after a double dose of Adar joy in this commanded rest of the Smittah year – is a beautiful sacred moment. The Spring is a powerful medicine. Friends, Beloveds, much love to you and yours 💜 Solidarity to all workers, to all oppressed people’s of the world ❤️ May today bring us a taste of Olam haBa, the World to Come. Let us drink deep of love.
At times a ladder looms and
you wrestle its vertical.
Vertigo slows those lights
Ascending Descending
Up Down Top Bottom
Such a strange charm too
to this gold thread bejeweled by
Wings Fire Eyes Wheels
I’ve slept on stones for decades and
they never become one.
Never saw angels where my Grand-
father thought to slit the throat of
his beloved son, eyes clouded.
The only sibling I’ve fought,
my own mirrored memory.
But I know this.
A ladder is a tool.
A rickety goat path.
A ladder is inaccessible.
Leave it to the angels.
I need g-d here.
Got asked about maintaining balance between work, school, and life :
The best balance practice I have now is to stand up and stretch – to remember my body exists and that it has an amazing sense of innate equilibrium.
The best balance practice I have now is to spin around in circles repeatedly until I can’t – to remind myself that even in disorientation, I can be safe; I can have fun.
The best balance practice I have now is to sit on the floor – to reconsider that maybe balance isn’t all about verticality, to recall I’m more balanced when I’m grounded.
We are in the new year dear friends!
This is the new year – in the Jewish calendar – of our souls, of our people hood, our communal connection. The flowers are blooming and so too should our hearts – be blossoming, be be-petaled and bedecked, thawing that winter frost and trying on beauty. A hardened heart in this season seems almost impossible!
We are in new time, our time.
In 14 days we’ll get free.
In this Shmittah year, after a double-dose of Adar Joy; in this year when we all truly need rest and an increase in joy – what about the radical human requirements of rest and of joy will help free us as people? Why does Torah require joy and rest as vital parts of our worldly and divine experience? And is that why late-stage capitalism feels particularly soul-crushing for us earth-beings? Are we simply longing to be part of what we’re already part, with its own patterns of rest and be-flowered joy – the planet?
There are 3 full moons of Pesach, just as there are 3 matzot on the Seder plate. Though only one happens in the time of the holiday, they are there to remind us, to get us in order.
Shevat🌑🌕Adar🌑🌕Nisan [we are here ➡]🌑[and then …] Pesach! ➡🌕
Right now we’re in the dark patch, the new moon of the month. If the mid-month is when Shekinah is most present, the new moon is when we start our count to see Her again, the sliver of hopefullness that reminds us the moon always returns.
The first of Nisan, this Shabbat, is the beginning of our peoplehood, when we got the first mitzvah! – to make a calendar based on the moon and to start with the month of Nisan. That commandment was given not just in Mitzrayim, but before we even went free!
This command is given while we’re still in Egypt because we needed it then – that we must make our own cycle of time that isn’t of the oppressors, that the ways we spend and mark our time are a building block of getting free. There are kabbalistic sources that bring down the reason we calculate by the moon and not the sun is because we Jews are like the moon. Like the moon we are always changing, but forever the same. And so must every Jew strive to always be renewing while holding tight to their Jewish Self.
When we fulfill this commandment, we eventually learn the next step in creating freedom time – Shabbat. And this year, the First of Nisan, our first mitzvah that binds us to each other and this path, this year it falls on this Shabbat when we read that parsha! 💜😍💜 Shabbat haChodesh, the Shabbat of the Month and the first of Nisan!
(The first of Nisan is also a great day for other reasons – the Mishkan as inaugurated, the Shekinah arrives, some say its the yartzheit of Miriam, and its the known yartzeit of Nadav and Avihu. )
eish zarah 