Shavuot : Revelation Revolution

Here’s my Shavuot playlist “Revelation Revolution”

Leftist classics, lightning/thunder/mountain imagery, chaotic love songs, and a few trippy moments in honor of Ezekiel.

Incantation

Incantation

Arch palette buttress and
holy hyoid balustrades;
The resonance of your
vowels filling the air

Obdurate text block by 
blocking the babbling builds 
of new growthed buds

encircle instead with
breath unfolded, the

flow of vocal vibrations

your breath

and

.

names of praise and songs unworded
that brings down soft lightning
in high places where the
ozone of our known 
thins the particulate 
Into oneness

Words melt

In cant

2 Out of 3 Ain’t Bad

The incorrect Instagram post 🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️📜💜

2 out of 3 hypotheses ain’t bad:

1. That the pleasing scent’s “pleasing” is related to the same root as Noach. It’s a soothing comforting scent. Possibly even soporific? (thanks to housemate Rabbi Fern Feldman for deciding to look this up when I made the random postulation!)
2. Sefer Yetzirah’s joke and deep meaning in references to the words pit and pillar when speaking of Yesod.
3. The root of the word for “libation” is connected to “molten” yes as in “molten idols.” I felt like it was a particular roast about the Golden Calf/Bull gods of Egypt, but it isn’t because I don’t know the sacrificial system well enough and I didn’t check before making my photo edit notation. 🤷‍♂️ (But the libation – molten idol connection is cool!

There is no Torah except stumbling over it.

The two yods of Iyar

Shabbat Shalom beloved friends 💜
This month of Iyar, this month of healing, is spelled two ways – אִייָר or אִיָּר – with one yod or two. When g-d forms the Adam, the first human, the verb unexpectedly has two yods as well. And our rabbis argue about what this means, making references to a variety of binaries – This World and The World to Come, the Good Inclination and the Bad Inclination, etc.
Whatever the two yods are in this moment to us, whatever those parts that seem split and in opposition, let us realize they are all of the same whole. The parts of the system I’ve internalized sometimes turns me against myself, pitting split trauma selves in unwinnable fights. Let us learn to make those oppositions “ezer k’ eged” a helper opposite. Let us move towards one day meeting these oppositions in the love of “panim el pnanim,” face to face. May some of our healing begin to bridge the binaries that harm us – turning two yods into one.

See you on the other side of grappling with rest.