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June 10, 2023
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Parashat Beha’alotecha
June 10, 2023 — 21 Sivan 5783
Tending To Our Soul
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
What character in the Hebrew Bible says, “kill me now”? What character is so burnt out, so dark inside, so spent, so worn down, that he does not want to live any more and literally says “kill me now”?
The answer is Moses in our reading this morning. Usually the Torah says nothing about its characters’ interior lives. When God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham says hineni, here I am, ready to do the deed. What was he thinking? What was he feeling? The Torah does not say.
In stark contrast, in today’s reading, upon hearing the Israelites complain for the umpteenth time, upon hearing their revisionist history that they used to eat fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic for free in the land of Egypt, upon hearing their demand for meat when there was no meat to be had, Moses finally lets God have it:
And Moses said to the Lord, “Why have You dealt ill with Your servant,
and why have I not enjoyed Your favor, that You have laid the burden of all this
people upon me? Did I conceive all this people, did I bear them…I cannot carry
all this people by myself, for it is too much for me. If You would deal thus with me,
kill me now, I beg You, and let me see no more of my wretchedness.
Numbers 11:11-15.
We need to pay attention to this passage. Moses had an interior life, and his interior life was not being tended to, and as a result, he was in a deeply dark place. What is true for Moses is true for all of us. We all have interior lives. Jewish language for that is neshamah, soul. We all have a soul. And we need to tend to our soul lest we become burnt out, anxious, depressed.
If we want our physical health to be robust, we tend to it. We eat right, drink moderately, exercise regularly, get enough sleep. If we don’t, our physical health deteriorates.
The same principle applies to our interior life. There are three things we can do to tend to our own soul. The good news is that, conveniently enough, they all begin with the letter P.
The first P is place. Everybody has that special place we love, that special place that heals, that special place that is our own sanctuary. We need to make sure that we get there regularly. As summer approaches, many of us have our favorite summer place, the beach we love, the boat we love, the place in the Cape or Berkshires or Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket or Nantasket or New Hampshire or Vermont that we love. All that is wonderful.
But our soul’s need for a place that heals it is too important to wait for the magic of summer. What is our place on a cold day in February? I have a good friend who gets a dose of his healing place first thing every morning. He takes his dog for a walk to the woods around the Chestnut Hill Mall. He is there seven days a week, through all the seasons, for years, and yet he has never had the same walk twice. The feeling, for him and his dog, are different every time, and yet renewing every time.
What is your place not only during the summer but every day that can heal your soul?
The second P is for purpose. When we wake up in the morning, we need to feel that our life is relevant to something, someone, some purpose, beyond ourselves. The great biographer of Lyndon Johnson, Robert Caro, tells the story of LBJ becoming president upon JFK’s assassination. And LBJ, the southerner from Texas, determined early on that he was going to try to pass record civil rights legislation. His political advisors warned him not to; they said it would endanger his standing with the south; it would weaken him politically. LBJ dismissed these concerns, famously declaring: What is the presidency for?
That word for, is so important, and not just for the presidency, but for our own lives.
What is our life for?
That changes over time. The question is: what is our life for now, in this current chapter?
No amount of fancy purpose yesterday insulates us from the need to rediscover our purpose today. Writer and Harvard professor Arthur Brooks tells the story of one night taking a flight from Logan to Washington, D.C. Upon landing, he overheard a conversation between spouses. The husband was a person of renown who had had a brilliant past. He said to his wife: I don’t do anything anymore. Why am I even here? What is my purpose? Arthur Brooks has never revealed who that was, because that person could be every one of us. That conversation inspired him to write the book From Strength to Strength, the main point of which is that if we want to go from strength to strength, we have to rediscover our new sense of purpose for the chapter we are in now.
This question, what is my purpose now, is not only a question for when we retire and rewire. It is a question for every age and stage. The actress Micaela Diamond wrote an op ed piece in today’s Times. She is currently on Broadway in the show Parade about the lynching of Leo Frank in Atlanta in 1913. She plays Leo Frank’s wife Lucille. Micaela Diamond writes that although she is Jewish, her Jewish identity had never been in the forefront of her consciousness. She had always made other aspects of her identity a higher priority. She is a woman. She is queer. She is an actor. She is committed to progressive politics. All of that was more important to her than her than identity as a Jew. As she put it in her essay, she was Jew-ish more than Jewish.
Then came her role in Parade. Eight performances a week, week after week, month after month, she plays the wife of a man who is hanged by a mob because he is Jewish. The Leo Franking lynching, in the context of current anti-Semitism, including neo-Nazis who protested the play in New York City in 2023, 110 years after he was hanged, deepened her awareness that anti-Semitism, racism, and hatred remain virulent problems. While she does not go to shul, she found herself joining her Jewish caste members saying Kaddish for Leo Frank, before every performance. She now has a new purpose that she did not have before her new role: combatting anti-Semitism, racism, and all forms of hatred.
What is your purpose now that can fill your day with meaning and your soul with healing? What is your life for now?
And the third P is people. There is a new film about the writer Emily Bronte, author of Wuthering Heights called Emily. There is a line in the film that I just love because it is so simple and so true, the human condition in one verse. Happiness is loving and being loved. That is it. Happiness is loving and being loved.
If we are blessed to find our life partner, that is why that blessing is so deeply important. That is why the auf ruf of EG and Yuli is so deeply joyful. That is why the auf ruf of Max and Charlotte is so deeply a blessing. Because happiness is loving and being loved.
That also explains an oral tradition of the Jewish people. If you can help three couples come together, if you are the matchmaker, the shadchan, three times, you get a portion in the world to come. That oral tradition speaks to how hard it is to find love. And how important it is, what an incalculable mitzvah it is, to help people who are looking for love find it. We need one another to help each other find what matters most in this world.
That is why a sacred community, that is why our sacred community, matters. In a cold and lonely world, this place is warmth and connection. In a world out there where we are not seen and not known, this place is a counter world where we are seen, known and loved—through the years.
Who are the people whom we love, and who love us, that will heal our soul?
There is an irony about our soul, our neshamah. Classically Jewish tradition refers a lot to the soul in one specific context: namely death. If you go to any Jewish cemetery, you are likely to see at the bottom of the matzeivah, at the bottom of the tombstone, five Hebrew letters that form the acronym known as tenatzbah. Tehei nafsho tzerurah bitzror hachaiim. May the soul of the beloved departed be bound up in the bond of life eternal. It is good to think about the soul of our beloved departed.
But we need to be thinking not only about our loved ones’ soul when they die, but about our own soul when we are alive. When we ignore our soul, we can get to a dark place like Moses this morning. But when we tend to our soul, our inner life can be strong and can keep us strong. That is why the three Ps are so important. What is our place, what is our purpose now, who are the people who love us, and whom we love, that will restore our soul and brighten our lives? Shabbat shalom.