Beha’alotelha – The Secret of Lifting Flames

Beha’alotekha – Rashi says ‘one must kindle until the flame rises by itself.’
If one has been close enough to burn another with fire, one is obligated to stay in closeness so the fire becomes one shared. Not the burning fire of painful klippot, but instead the glowing nogah that nourishes souls.

Our task is to enlighten what vivifies the other. “Lighting fires” means little in a burning world where the pain is the lack of support to keep alight. Support yourself. Support others. Build a community where you can share each other’s fire when needed.

Shabbat shalom. This is the secret of why one must light two Shabbat flames.

אֶל-מוּל פְּנֵי הַמְּנוֹרָה
Toward the face of the menorah

Rashi brings down this means one must light toward the the middle lamp. This is because the center line of the menorah is as the middle of the sephirot. One must light toward the middle line, the to place of moshisch beyond the “binary” of left/right, male/female, light/dark and to the non dual of “the face of the menorah,” the face to face that illuminates.

Good Shabbos May we turn toward the other and enlighten in ways beyond societies binaries.

Tammuz’s Grief – the First Breach

The heat is arriving and the moon is waning into a new month. We are moving from Sivan – the month of Shavuot’s revelation – into Tammuz – the beginning’s of grief and loss.

More and more this calendar teaches me, not just to watch the moon and to feel the passing of time’s natural origins, but that built into the Jewish calendar is also a path of core emotional journey. Back in Nisan and Pesach, we liberated ourselves and others. But once free, we are still living in the pain and trauma we left. And so we spend a month in healing, Iyar. After healing work, once we’re in a place of more safety, we come to a revelation about that very harm we were escaping – leading us into Sivan and Shavuot’s lightning ephiphanies.

But after revelation, there often comes a fall. When we come back from the depths and heights – from the clouded tops of the mountain to its generative caves as g-d holds a chuppah above – when we move back into the world, the world also moves back into us. It is difficult to live in and hold on to the perfect discovery of revelation.

While Moshe was still on the mountain, the people’s wish for connection turned against them. Their fear that Moshe had disappeared, that g-d had perhaps left them, their deep longing for divine indwelling led to the creation of something else they could connect to. An idol easier to control, with less fear of abandonment. A gold calf cannot leave your midst. g-d though is not controllable – forever there and never there, invisible. g-d is much scarier to worship than the shining gold you can carry about, that can be remolded into the image you wish to see.

And so the joy of revelation is shattered. Tammuz is the month we create the Golden Calf. The month the walls are first breached by imperial Rome. The first breaks lead to greater shatterings. Av – the month after – is filled with some of the most painful events in Jewish history and mythohistory. And yet, that pain leads to Elul – a time of introspection, a time we know g-d walks in the fields trying to find us so we can return.

The Jewish calendar is not just agricultural nor astrological, nor even “merely” religious liturgical. It is also a path we follow in our lives – the natural ups and downs, rhythms of rend and repair, hurt and heal. Tammuz is coming. Even the crab of cancer knows it must carry its home on its back. The start of diaspora is hard. The shell of home must be harder. Jews and other marginalized people have learned to carry their homes with them, with each other. When home breaks – something many around the world experience from war, hatred, poverty, and imperial displacement – we must be home to each other. Even g-d is in exile now, out in the fields, waiting for us to come back to a sense of wholeness in the midst of breakings.

This Pride month, as we move from revelation to the first shatter of walled defenses, how do we survive when we are currently assaulted by the same imperial forces that powered Edom/Rome? How do we stay intact and whole in the face of such cruel attempts at literal and “political” genocide? I ask these questions, not because I have answer but because we must ask.
And between the guidance of our trans/queer and Jewish ancestors, within the care of community and mutual aid, amongst the love within the loss, may we find the answers.