Author: Naomi Gurt Lind

Naomi Gurt Lindhttps://jewishthemes.wordpress.com

Lost and Found

For most of my adult life, I have been Yisrael: in joyful combat with the Divine. For yearsx—decades even—I thought I was somebody else. Several somebodies actually. As a child and young adult, I mostly thought I was an actress and singer, which I was. Then I thought I was a hippie crunchy stay-at-home mother, which I was. Then I thought I was a Jewish professional, which I was. 

But also, I thought I was shy, which I was. I thought I was Jewishly underdeveloped, which I was. I thought I was too far along in my established choices to try something new, which I was.

Until I wasn’t.

The whole time, I was a searcher, a God-wrestler. Maybe that was the truest identity all along. It’s certainly the one that seems to stick.

As an undergraduate music student, I had briefly considered the idea of cantorial school, but two things stopped me: my ego and my ego.

Ego #1 was the insecurity that I had not had a proper Jewish education and would never be able to catch up.

Ego #2 was that I had read an article about cantorial work that cautioned that it was its own profession and not a fallback for failed opera singers. Hmpf. I still had much more ground to cover in fulfilling my destiny as a failed opera singer.

So I let it pass, grew up, sang a while. Then after my sons were born and I brought my focus closer to home, I began to develop a more realized Jewish identity and went to work in the Jewish community.

A few years in, I participated in a Unity Mission organized by the Synagogue Council of Massachusetts. On this pluralistic exposure trip to Jewish New York, I found myself (in both senses) at a tiny weekday Shacharit in an unfamiliar setting. Though the service was conducted entirely in Hebrew and at breakneck speed, something about its beauty touched my soul. Before my thoughts even formed around my words, I blurted: I think I want to go to Rabbinical School.

When your deepest voice speaks without your conscious mind’s permission, it can take a while to allow yourself to listen. 

At that time I had established a career in congregational life: doing membership, community engagement, informal education, and more, for a synagogue I felt deeply connected to. My work was satisfying and joyful, but somehow incomplete. One day, a congregant was in my office to talk about a project we were working on together; out of nowhere she summed up that sense of incompleteness, saying, “Naomi, the work you’re doing is spiritual leadership, but you’re limited by your position.”

It would be a few more years before I linked my sudden insight in New York to my congregant’s comment, before I gathered up the courage to be a beginner again and believe, Ted Lasso-style, in the impossible.  

At one point in the discernment process, I attended a study program for aspiring prayer leaders. For days on end, I prayed and studied, walking in the woods during the breaks, and singing with friends until all hours. One night I came in quite late, after my roommate was asleep. Not wanting to make a disturbance, I tried to settle in quietly and in doing so, I put my things down … wherever.

Next morning I woke up and couldn’t find my glasses. Of course the great irony of misplaced glasses is that you need the thing that’s missing in order to find it. 

My kind roommate helped me look. We looked in the obvious places and in the non-obvious places. Nothing. 

Then she suggested checking the one place they couldn’t possibly be, the place I dismissed outright, the place that made no sense.

Of course. You know the rest.

Less than a year later, I enrolled in Rabbinical School.

Department of Unpopular Opinions

I don’t know where to stand or how to be
The days are constant internal arguments

This one with a stranger on the radio, 
the woman who described her family’s suffering 
since the aggression began

Which beginning, I wonder?

(I know what she meant. Her world crumbled on October 8.)

Which beginning indeed.

Who has the oldest, surest claim to a crumbled world?
Who has dibs on all this suffering, 
this endless supply of degradation alienation & displacement

Who wins the prize for Most Unwanted People?

בָּרְכֵנוּ אָבִינוּ כֻּלָּנוּ כְּאֶחָד בְּאוֹר פָּנֶיךָ
Bless us, God, all of us as one, with the light of Your presence

Give us the courage to move beyond claims
Give us the courage to claim one another 

Petition

I wrote this poem in response to the Hamas Simchat Torah attack on Israel (2023) and the ensuing violence. I originally shared it in my Rosh Hodesh Heshvan message, and some readers suggested posting it for wider readership.

Petition

Pardon me?
Excuse me?
Please stop walking.
Look at me!

Do you have a minute to sign my petition 
to say I don’t know anymore 
I can’t read any more special messages and perfect poems and heartfelt prayers 
We need approximately a billion signatures 
to say it’s all too much 
there must be space for not knowing 
I’m collecting signatures for a petition 
to stop reposting memes as if they’re news 
to stop sloganizing the world’s most enduring conflict 
to stop with the words 
too many words
to stop 
just
stop

Could I interest you in a little calm and reflection?

Hi, would you be willing to sign a petition 
to elect the Ukrainian stranger in Whole Foods who offered me a hug 
to some position of high honor?
Or at least to provide her with an endless supply of 
the overpriced potato salad she was eyeing?

Would you like to sign this petition in support of confusion
We’re trying to inform the public that it’s just not that simple 
Could I ask for a minute of your time to 

Yes, sign here
And print
Yes

No I’m not asking for money, just for your signature to get this on the ballot
Let’s just let the people decide 
whether we really can afford to keep doing this

Truth | Consequences

Our new parsha is Eikev: Consequence. We often hear the word paired with “truth” and I’ve been musing today about that association. Deep in the last century, at the height of the television age, there was a game show called Truth or Consequences. The game consisted of participants being forced to answer impossible trivia questions, and upon (inevitably) getting the wrong answer, being subject to humiliating pranks. I guess it was considered funny in its time. The eponymous town in New Mexico was allegedly named in tribute to the show.

I’m curious about that “or,” though. In real life, it’s not truth OR consequences. Telling the truth has consequences; not telling the truth has consequences. The truth is a thing unto itself and whether it’s spoken aloud or not, it has consequences. They are inextricable, truth and consequences; like smoke and fire, where there’s one, the other is there too.

With the loss of Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor this week, many are recalling the brave statement she made on Saturday Night Live in 1992, when she tore up her mother’s photograph of Pope John Paul II to draw attention to child abuse. O’Connor was roundly criticized for this move; people called her vicious names and belittled her concerns. In today’s parlance, she was canceled, but it was more than that: she was erased.

Sinéad O’Connor was right.

It would be another ten years before the Boston Globe’s Spotlight series would come out, revealing the cycle of sexual abuse committed by priests, and the culture of silence that resulted in perpetrators being transferred to other parishes rather than removed from their posts.

Sinéad O’Connor was right.

There are always consequences. 

Parshat Va’etchanan: God will Provide

A phrase I heard frequently in my household growing up was, “God will provide.” My sweet father used to say it a lot. Still does, at age 90. He is not a very religious man, but he is gentle and optimistic, which is almost the same thing. His faith is not often articulated at all—much less in fancy words—but more times than I can count, when we asked him how something we had doubts about was going to work out, he would say, “God will provide.”

He was usually right.

Our Torah reading this week, Parshat Vaetchanan, begins with Moshe pleading with God for a bit of grace: the opportunity to enter the Land of Israel despite God’s determination that he wouldn’t be permitted to do so. The word vaetchanan is rooted in the letters chet-nun-nun, and depending on the conjugation, can mean either to be gracious or to seek grace. Rashi suggests that the word could also be interpreted as being from the root letters chet-nun-mem, (as in sinat chinam, baseless hatred) to mean something unearned—so in this case, according to Rashi’s reading, Moshe might be asking for an unearned gift.

The two meanings pair nicely, and the parsha supports both. In chapter 6, verse 10, we read Moshe’s prediction that the Israelites, upon entering the Land, will find waiting for them: cities they didn’t build, houses full of things they didn’t fill them with, cisterns and vineyards and olive groves…  וְאָכַלְתָּ וְשָׂבָעְתָּ and you will eat, and you will be satisfied. The promise of the Promised Land here is that the Israelites will have their needs fulfilled, without having to work for it. They will have a head start in life, seemingly offered unconditionally from God. This seems to me the very definition of grace, and very much unearned. 

So Moshe goes on to warn the Israelites not to get so caught up in their bounty that they imagine their success to be to their own credit. Usually the so-called self-made man has a whole lot of unacknowledged help. We all do.

Vaetchanan reminds us that there is still a covenant in place. As Moses steps back from his leadership role, he reiterates this foundational teaching: 

הִשָּׁמְרוּ לָכֶם פֶּן־תִּשְׁכְּחוּ אֶת־בְּרִית יי אֱלֹהֵיכֶם אֲשֶׁר כָּרַת עִמָּכֶם
Watch yourselves so you don’t forget the covenant
that Adonai your God sealed with you. (Deuteronomy 4:23)

That is, the unearned goodies are actually part of a spiritual ecosystem and we have a role to play. Our role comes from words so familiar that their meaning may have dissolved in our minds; these words, too, come in our parsha this week.

וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת יי אֱלֹהֶיךָ בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשְׁךָ וּבְכׇל־מְאֹדֶךָ
You shall love Adonai your God, with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your being. (Deuteronomy 6:5)

You could recite it all by memory, no doubt, but let’s linger over it for a moment and make a point of not taking it for granted. What is it to love God with all the fullness of our selves?

It’s complicated: we don’t even really know Who or What God is, so that makes love hard to define or fathom. And how can we be commanded to love; aren’t feelings out of our conscious control? The Israeli Torah scholar Nechama Leibowitz offers two possibilities for approaching the question of how to love God: she suggests it can mean either to love the world that God created with undistracted passion, or to sever our connections to the world in order to focus solely on God. 

I am typically wary of answers that come in black and white. After all, if we drop everything and focus only on God, we risk isolation and myopia. And if we are locked in undiscerning gratitude, we risk squandering chances to improve the world through acts of kindness and righteousness. I would rather look for a way to unbind the Leibowitz binary and find a flexible approach that allows for a little of both. 

Love, of course, is both a feeling and an action. In any deep and sustaining relationship there are times when the feeling comes to the fore, and times when the feeling might seem dormant but action carries us through. Think of it this way: When your toddler suddenly grasps a concept they have been reaching for, or mixes up their words to say something adorably wrong, or covers you with hugs and kisses, the feeling of love is the most obvious thing in the world. When your toddler dumps baby powder on the carpet five minutes before guests arrive, or falls into a lightning-storm of wild emotion because you served the Ovaltine in the wrong sippy-cup, or rips several pages out of your favorite book, the feeling of love might go quiet for a while, but the action of love will keep you steady. 

So it is with God. At different moments, we have different experiences of our love for God: sometimes all-consuming, sometimes making the long way round through deep appreciation of the world’s many blessings. Sometimes, it’s easy to feel God’s presence and love as an emotion suffuses us; sometimes not so much, and our covenantal responsibility is to love anyway, as commanded. 

Sometimes it is easy to see what God has provided; sometimes God provides us with a challenge or a question. Our task is to love through feeling—through noticing and attending to the world in all its complicated glory, and through action—in the form of mitzvot, the things we do simply because the Beloved asks.

Parshat Dvarim: Crisis of Faith

This week, we begin reading the last book of the Torah: the book of Dvarim. Not a lot that’s new happens in the Book of Deuteronomy; rather it’s an extended moment of retelling the tale of the past several generations of the Israelites’ history as they—we—stand at a crossroads. Moshe, the leader who has been so instrumental in our formation as a people, is close to his end, and we are poised to enter the Promised Land. Before we take this momentous step, there is a pause as we transition from living the story to telling the story. Moshe, as always, takes the lead, sifting through the tumultuous events of the forty years of wandering and turning it into narrative. He enacts the universal human impulse to make meaning by telling what happened, shaping it into a story. As he does so, themes and threads emerge.

I was struck in particular by two contrasting ways he talks about the Israelites’ relationship with God. In chapter 1 verse 27 he scolds them saying:

וַתֵּרָגְנוּ בְאׇהֳלֵיכֶם וַתֹּאמְרוּ בְּשִׂנְאַת יי אֹתָנוּ הוֹצִיאָנוּ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם 

לָתֵת אֹתָנוּ בְּיַד הָאֱמֹרִי לְהַשְׁמִידֵנוּ

You sulked in your tents and said, “Because of God’s hate for us, God brought us out of the Land of Egypt to give us over to be destroyed by the Amorites.”

This phrase sin’at Adonai (God’s hate) is shocking, almost lacerating. We see it only once in the whole Tanach; clearly it’s a strong indicator of the level of Moshe’s disdain. Yet taken literally, he’s probably not wrong in his description of the Israelites’ experience. After all, in moments of particular crisis, they do tend to think that God hates them, that the whole thing is a mistake, that somehow they would be better off back in Egypt, taking up the yoke of slavery once more. 

The journey out was not as easy as they wanted it to be; exhausted from forced labor, they no doubt wanted everything to fall into place the minute they crossed the Sea of Reeds. Surely we’ve suffered enough, and a waiting world will soften the path for us. The fact that achieving that first goal had not immediately perfected the world must have been a great disappointment. Maybe God really does hate us.

But in just the next chapter, Moses turns this on its head: 

זֶה  אַרְבָּעִים שָׁנָה יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ עִמָּךְ לֹא חָסַרְתָּ דָּבָר

These forty years, God has been with you, you have lacked for nothing.

So…on the one hand, God hates us, and on the other, that same God has steadily accompanied us, providing for everything we needed. This also has the ring of truth to it; think of the manna that daily descended from heaven, arriving each morning like clockwork in just the right amount, tasting of whatever we most needed to taste. Think of the water that Miriam always managed to locate when the Israelites were thirsty. Think of God’s constant guidance, in the form of a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

How do we reconcile these contrasting but agonizingly plausible descriptions of our relationship with the Divine? The God that hates us and makes progress so hard and the God that stays alongside us and makes sure our needs are met.

Of course different times feel different ways, and our response to our surroundings is so often an echo of our inner state and the emotional churn that makes each day distinct from the others. When we feel that God hates us, it may have as much to do with us as with God. The funhouse mirror of our own emotions (truthfully not that much fun) can trick our minds. The Midrash Sifrei Dvarim says: אפשר שהקב”ה שונא את ישראל? Is it possible that the Holy Blessed One hates Israel? Is it not written in Malachi 1:2 “I have loved you, said Hashem”? Rather, they are the ones who hate the Holy Blessed One (as per the folk saying: “As you are disposed toward another, you think them disposed toward you.”)

The Midrash summons both a biblical text and a contemporary saying to illuminate our human capacity for thinking the worst of others by imagining they think the worst of us. This recalls the incident of the scouts in Parshat Shelach L’cha a couple weeks back, the matter that catastrophically derailed the Israelites’ progress toward the Promised Land and lengthened the journey to get there by 39 years. Like the Israelites thinking God hated them, the scouts convinced themselves that entering and conquering the land would be too hard for them, that the people who were already there were too huge and powerful for them to overcome…even with divine reassurance that this was indeed their destiny and purpose. 

In other words, while God is with us and providing for our needs, we still find a way to psych ourselves out and assume that things will go badly. (Sound familiar?) And when we play that mental trick on ourselves we do it so well that we cover our own tracks. Thus in Dvarim, this whole head trip somehow gets pinned on God. It’s because God hates us, not because we’re scared and tired and demoralized. 

Of course the verses we’re looking at, the two statements that are in so much tension, both come from Moses. Each one is in its own way his rebuke against the Israelites, either scolding them for thinking God hates them or scolding them for taking for granted the many acts of hessed with which God accompanies them during those four decades in the desert. As our season of rebuke reaches its peak this week leading up to Tishaa b’Av, even Moshe’s voice joins the chorus of admonition in this parsha that is always read the Shabbat before Tishaa b’Av. It is seasonally appropriate to take in this notion that questioning God and undermining ourselves actually spring from the same source: a lack of faith. And that when we act like there’s a conspiracy against us when in fact we’re luckier than most, it is an insult to God and to our tradition. This understandable human tendency—to lean into fear and insufficiency—narrows our pathway to the divine. So as we pause in Parshat Dvarim, tending our story and winnowing through its many lessons, let one of them be this: as we read in the last line of Adon Olam, יי לי ולא אירה. When God is with me, I have no fear.

Counting the Days

Shabbat Shalom! 

לִמְנוֹת יָמֵינוּ כֵּן הוֹדַע וְנָבִא לְבַב חָכְמָה׃

Teach us to number our days truly, so that we may develop a heart of wisdom.

The confluence of our doubled parsha today, Tazria-Metzora, and this liminal stretch between Pesach and Shavuot, has me thinking a lot about counting days. As you know we are in the period of Omer counting. As of the night of the second seder, those who take on this practice have been observing the mitzvah to count, forty-nine days, seven weeks of days, in anticipation of Shavuot. Bless and count, bless and count, bless and count. Meanwhile, in the parsha this week, we learn of all sorts of occasions for counting days: days of seclusion following childbirth, days of isolation following illness, days of vigil following the discovery of mold or other damage to one’s home.

What does all this counting mean, and are there connections between the days we count in Tazria-Metzora, and the days we count in the Omer? 

What are we doing when we count the days?

To me, noting each day as it passes is a way of holding steady in a sense of purpose. It helps us to see ourselves as part of a larger pattern. Counting the Omer and knowing that Jews all over the world are engaged in the same ritual—that in each of our individual houses, we are saying the same words each night—gives us a sense of scope and connection. We are less alone—even in our individual houses—because Jews in our neighborhoods and around the world are on the same wavelength. Counting gives us a felt sense of a larger project; in counting we feel more like we count.

There is also a quality of attention that counting lends us. Back in my undergraduate days, I took an acting class with a wonderful, eccentric, charismatic teacher, Professor Schweibert. One day, Professor Schweibert called for a few brave volunteers and had us stand at the front of the room, facing the rest of the class. It was incredibly awkward! After a minute that felt more like an hour or two, he put us out of our misery and broke the silence. He huddled us “few brave volunteers” and told us a secret and then—again!—positioned us in front of the class. Totally different experience! 

What was the secret? He told us to count the chairs. Suddenly we were purposeful and calm, and had no difficulty standing in front of our classmates in silence. The chatter in our minds that had made us so uncomfortable in the previous iteration settled, and we could just be. The teaching my professor shared on that unforgettable day was that when you have something to do to focus your energy, it connects you. Counting the chairs was a simple task; in fact, counting out loud is one of the first things a toddler learns to do. Yet the act of counting evoked a profound sense of steadiness whose lesson has stayed with me through many years.

Whether counting chairs or counting days, the practice brings serenity, resoluteness and stability. Almost like a long-form meditation that plays out over a larger span of time, counting the Omer or counting days in response to divine commandment fills us up and generates its own meaning. There is great spiritual potential here, something even more than the steadiness and rootedness of counting. 

We return to the verse from Psalm 90.

לִמְנוֹת יָמֵינוּ כֵּן הוֹדַע וְנָבִא לְבַב חָכְמָה׃

Teach us to number our days truly, so that we may develop a heart of wisdom.

What is this heart of wisdom? What is the wisdom that comes into our hearts through having a clear-eyed perception of the numbered-ness of our days?

In numbering our days truly, we cannot help noticing that we don’t know how many of them we get. Our sense of mortality, of the preciousness and fragility of life becomes more attuned. This, of course, is a lesson that most of us have a complicated relationship with: we want to embrace the importance of our days, to pull the marrow out of each and every experience, and yet we constantly get distracted from what matters most in a thousand different ways, and shy away from the awareness of our own mortality. Truly counting our days can be terrifying; when we allow ourselves to think what it all means, we also get a glimpse of what it could mean to lose it. And yet, if we don’t slow down and pay attention to our lives, if we don’t count the days and treasure each one, what is the point of life? There is existential dread either way, so we might as well embrace life in its entirety!

The reward is even deeper than that, and in articulating it, we can see a subtle connection between the parsha and the Omer. In Parshat Tazria-Metzora, all that counting is in the service of ritual purity. When a woman gives birth she counts off a certain number of days before she can return to full participation in the world of the Temple service. When finally she reaches readiness, she brings an offering to the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest, and is welcomed back into communal life. Likewise, when a person is afflicted with one of the many skin diseases described in the parsha, they are obliged to enter into quarantine until the tzara’at has cleared. At that point, they, too, are welcomed into full participation in the central institution of the time: the Temple rite. And so it goes for the various cases of counting. Those transitional periods represent times of disconnection; the counting holds the counter steady until they can return to community.

Likewise, when we count the Omer, we count our way toward Sinai, toward the revelation of Torah recounted (!) in Parshat Yitro. Exactly fifty days after Pesach begins, we find ourselves at the foot of the mountain, assembled all together to receive the wisdom that will form the backbone of our tradition in perpetuity. Counting the days through that interstitial period represents joyous anticipation as well as earnest preparation. One by one, we make ourselves into the people we need to be in order to truly receive Torah. 

And then, the moment of revelation—as we stand trembling at Sinai—becomes a deeply communal one. Twice the Israelites accept the obligation of the mitzvot. In Shmot 19, Verse 8 they say: 

כֹּל אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּר יְהֹוָה נַעֲשֶׂה

All that God says, we will do

And then a short time later, in chapter 24, verse 7, they say: 

כֹּל אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּר יְהֹוָה נַעֲשֶׂה וְנִשְׁמָע׃

All that God says, we will do and we will understand

There’s incredible faith inherent in these statements, and incredible unity. While those seven days of weeks were experienced individually, they led Bnei Yisrael to a moment of transformative communal connection. In the moment of accepting God’s gift of Torah, they spoke in a unified voice. 

We are told in Dvarim 29:13-14, looking back on that moment of revelation, that God makes the covenant not just with the individuals standing there on that very day, but with those who are not there yet but who will come after. 

Similar to the obligation we articulate at the seder—to see ourselves as personally being brought forth from Mitzrayim—counting the Omer in our own time links us to that experience of a shared covenant, a shared destiny.

לִמְנוֹת יָמֵינוּ כֵּן הוֹדַע וְנָבִא לְבַב חָכְמָה׃

Teach us to number our days truly, so that we may develop a heart of wisdom.

Numbering our days brings us to a heart of wisdom by connecting us to ourselves, to one another, and to God. And so I close with this blessing: during the Omer and beyond, may you number your days in ways that bring you meaning, depth, and companionship, both human and divine.

Shabbat shalom!

About Time

I gave this drash at the Walnut Street Minyan on the eighth day of Pesach 5783. The noodge persona I mention in the first paragraph refers to my Minyan job, reminding other people of their Minyan jobs.

The first thing I noticed as I began studying in preparation to write this drash was that the Torah portion we read on the eighth day of Pesach… tells us that Pesach lasts seven days. Hmm. If I were inhabiting my noodge persona, I would fire off a snarky comment or two about fuzzy math and click send. 

Instead, I started to wonder. The Torah reading teaches, among other things, about rituals for remembering Yetziat Mitzrayim. If we take the portion literally, we are reading these words after the holiday has ended. There is a cyclical quality to it, reminiscent perhaps of another flurry of holidays, the one that culminates in Simchat Torah: as soon as we’re done we immediately begin again. In that case reading the story of our people; and in this case telling the story of our people. Torah shebichtav. Torah sheb’al peh. 

Rather than being a clerical error, though: what if this quirk of structure is a profound comment on the need for vigilance in memory? Or a statement about the importance of this memory in particular? Rashi has taught us the principle, ein mukdam um’uchar baTorah—there is no before or after in Torah—but this isn’t quite that. Rashi’s principle of “timeless” Torah seems mainly to come into play when we need to rationalize or smooth a narrative inconsistency. Our reading today, instructions for remembering what we just finished celebrating, seems to me more a lesson in preservation, attention, and perspective. 

Our text seems to be playing fast and loose with the linearity of time, on purpose. What does it mean? 

I allowed my mind to wander. First stop: Sefer Shmot Chapter 12, wherein God tells Moshe how to instruct the Israelites to prepare to make their daring escape from Mitzrayim. Acquire a lamb or a portion of one, and when the moon tells you it’s time, slaughter the lamb, mark the doorposts. Be ready to go, shoes on, staff at the ready. We know this story. And then, between Verse 13 and Verse 14, there is a jump cut and suddenly God is telling Moshe how to celebrate Pesach, how to commemorate an exodus that has yet to happen. Here, too, themes of memory and anticipation are dizzyingly intertwined, as the narrative places itself in two times at once: working toward and preparing for liberation and celebrating it ritually.

In our portion today, we are told to observe Pesach for seven days 


לְמַעַן תִּזְכֹּר אֶת־יוֹם צֵאתְךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם כֹּל יְמֵי חַיֶּיך
In order to recall your departure from the land of Mitzrayim all the days of your life. 

כֹּל יְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ

The Sages take up these words in the last Mishnah of the first chapter of Brachot. Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria cites Ben Zoma, who reads כֹּל יְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ ritually, using these words as a proof text for recalling Yetziat Mitzrayim in the evening prayers. If it had just said בִּיְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ the exodus would be recalled in daytime davening. The addition of the word כֹּל indicates that memory to be for the nights as well.

The Chachamim, however, are painting on a bigger canvas, one with theurgic implications. They argue that יְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ refers to this world, while כֹּל יְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ brings on Moshiach Time. Think of it: if we were to remember Yetziat Mitzrayim each and every day, we could bring about redemption. What is it about that memory that gives it the power of redemption?

The discussion that ensues in the Gemara touches on the relative weight of old memories and new ones, and what happens when we run out of disk space for telling the stories of our people. Do we overwrite the old stories with new ones, or keep the foundational layer as the primary one? The Sages land at a compromise: that other redemptions will begin to take precedence, but that they cannot uproot the primacy of Yetziat Mitzrayim.

Firmly ensconced as I am in the sandwich generation, I’m still stuck on the power of memory for redemptive purposes. Gradually I’m getting used to the empty seat at my table where my college-student son used to sit. All the while, I watch with nauseous optimism as my wonderful father approaches his ninetieth birthday. I am all too aware of the impermanence that pervades every aspect of life. We are often told that the present moment is all we have, and in some ways it’s true. Yet without the wanderings of our minds, we would not have the capacity to remember our children as cherub-cheeked, affectionate toddlers nor to recall our parents living at full speed, unencumbered by the body’s betrayals. We would not be able to look forward to an important simcha nor to hold onto people after they’re gone. 

We would not be able to imagine ourselves liberated when we are not yet there, nor to remind ourselves in the darkest nights, that whatever we are facing, we’ve been through worse. 

In the first of his Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot wrote: 

Time present and time past 
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past. 
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.

Perhaps Eliot is right, that time is unredeemable. Once it’s melted into itself, there is nothing that can distinguish it again. And yet, the wandering mind offers twin antidotes. The ability to imagine something better than what is before us gives us energy to continue pursuing it; and the vigorous exercise of the muscle that remembers our hardest times and the extraordinary power that brought us through, is the closest we have to redemption.

Meditations on Manna

Part I: Manna is the taste of in between. 

It came into being at twilight, moments before the first Shabbat. In the breath between chapter one and chapter two of Breishit, something magical occurs. Ten things are created, things of great consequence and mystery. God had already said וְהִנֵּה־טוֹב מְאֹד – Look! This is so good! – but there were finishing touches yet to be made, wonders and oddities that would only be revealed later, of which one is the manna. 

This mysterious substance, likened to clouds and heavenly dust and coriander and your mother’s honey cake, is how God sustained Bnei Yisrael in the wilderness. Forty years our people wandered, liminal in space and purpose. We were neither who nor where we were destined to end up; rather we were fully in between. Throughout that in-between time, there was manna, a provision which eludes concrete description to this day. It appeared for collection each morning, like frost. It evaporated in the heat of the day, and was the first example of planned obsolescence: any amount that wasn’t eaten on the day it was collected became rancid overnight. The exception was every seventh day, for which twice as much appeared, in order to obviate the need of collecting any on the day of rest, which both had and hadn’t been invented.

In the interstices between enslavement and freedom, between Egypt and the Promised Land, there was manna. The manna descended day upon day for forty years, no matter where Bnei Yisrael wandered. It remained with them up to the border of the Promised Land. Upon their arrival, the story goes, they were no longer in between.

Part II: Manna is the taste of Shabbat

Manna is associated with the first Shabbat, twice. Recall that when God rests for the first time after having created the world, manna is among the ten magical afterthoughts. The first human Shabbat comes later, in Beshallach. (Long before the Torah comes, incidentally.) Moshe introduces the idea of Shabbat, instructing the people to plan their cooking ahead of time and making the allowance to leave it overnight in this circumstance. The culture of Shabbat develops in part from what we tell ourselves about manna. The double portion of manna becomes the source for having two challot on Shabbat. And the Mechilte d’Rabbi Ishmael teaches us to stay close to family on Shabbat, not go more than 2000 cubits from home, and to have three meals corresponding to the three hayoms in

 וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אִכְלֻהוּ הַיּוֹם כִּי־שַׁבָּת הַיּוֹם לַיי הַיּוֹם לֹא תִמְצָאֻהוּ בַּשָּׂדֶה׃

And Moshe said: Eat it today, for today is a Shabbat to God; 
today you will not find it [manna] in the field.

Although the Torah has yet to be given at this point in the story, one of its central principles is introduced here in connection with manna. Manna and Shabbat become linked in the Jewish imagination. Like Shabbat, manna comes without our effort and without our merit. It is an inheritance that God grants us despite our shortcomings, no matter how little we deserve it. 

Part III: Manna is the taste of hope  

Manna shows up for the Israelites at a moment of prolonged uncertainty. As the gut churns with questions of what we are doing, where we are going, and whether we are on the right path; as the people wander, err, dissolve and resolve, manna is a constant presence. Manna adapts itself to meet needs both known and unknown: when a person collects too much or not enough, somehow, through some divine alchemy, the amount is made right. 

We learn that Moshe instructed Bnei Yisrael to gather an extra omer of manna, to protect as an inheritance for future generations. This was to be held as an eternal reminder of how we were sustained through those years of wandering, so that future generations can see the heavenly bread God fed us as we were being taken out of Egypt. 

Perhaps forty years of coriander would grow tiresome; according to Ramban, the manna tasted like whatever the person eating it desired. If that isn’t the taste of hope, I can’t imagine what is.

Part IV: Manna is the taste of the divine

There is a Name for what happens when our needs are met. There is a Name for unknowable things that spring from the generations of light. Manna is the very dust of heaven pouring through the open doors, the grain of shamayim raining down as angel bread. If it happened once, it would be miraculous. That it happened day by day for forty years is beyond miraculous. 

Its very daily-ness was a blessing. The Netivot Shalom writes that the manna was a pipeline to the Divine, a way for Bnei Yisrael to remain in close daily contact with God by entrusting their needs to Hashem. In Parshat Breishit, when God exiles Adam and Eve and the serpent from Eden, the humans are cursed to toil for their daily bread, while the snake is cursed to eat dust. The Slonimer Rebbe teaches that the abundance of the earth-dust that the snake eats means that it never looks up, never takes note of a higher presence. On the other hand, the Jews’ awareness of their own human needs turns out to be a blessing, for in this awareness, we seek the presence of God. The manna, as the bread of heaven, is representative of the Holy One’s constant presence; the daily posture of seeking allows us to connect with God.

The Sfat Emet expounds on the omer they were permitted to keep as an inheritance for future generations. He teaches that this rem[a]inder is that which is seen through the eye of wisdom: that true freedom comes when the soul is not entangled in the body. The capacity to transcend our physical needs, and to open our eyes instead to the spiritual, is what we learned anew each and every day in the wilderness, and what we pass along to our children today. The manna offered our ancestors a taste of God’s constant presence; its remainder is still with us.