"To be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner.  I am not a teacher, only a fellow student."  (Soren Kierkegaard)

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A FEW PRE-SHABBAT WORDS FROM RABBI AARON

In God We Trust
Right before we take the Torah from the ark on Shabbat morning we sing "bei ana racheitz." These lines are part of a small clipping from the Zohar's commentary on Parashat Vayakhel. I'd like to focus on the first three words (bei ana racheitz), which mean: I trust in You (God). My question: how do we take a phrase that has literally become the coin of the realm? While the words adorn the dollar bill, we probably don't notice them in any meaningful way; they've become wallpaper. I still recall the cynically funny note near a cash register which read: In God we trust; all others pay cash - funny as the note is, I think it speaks to how the phrase has been emptied of content.

So we're in shul and the ark is open and we're singing bei ana racheitz. I will reset the stage so that we can somehow re-animate the words. I do so, knowing full well that our ultra-rationalist bias, our living so much in our heads, make it awkward and strange to re-approach the symbols and their mystery without our tragically corrosive sense that we know it all, that there's no mystery left.

Regardless of how many or how steps lead us up to the ark, the steps make their point; we're ascending the mountain. Atop the mountain, we are receiving the Torah; which means that, for a moment, each of us is Moshe. The ark is lit. Symbolically, we are reminded of God's shining glory. 

Around the world, through the centuries...
What does it mean to be given the gift of Torah each week? 
What does it mean to revisit the words with a yearning to know how the words can speak to us personally?
What does it mean to assert that these words resonate with truths that transcend the contemporary culture whose powerful currents we navigate?
What does it mean to stand with reverence for the Torah, to reach out and touch the mantle as a gesture of love?

Mull this slice of ideas over a bit...
Not on mortals do I rely, nor upon angels do I depend, but on the God of the Universe, the God of truth, whose Torah is truth, and who abounds in deeds of goodness and truth. In God do I put my trust; unto God’s holy, precious being do I utter praise.
How do we relate to certain powerful mortals? Do we have any sensible notion of what it might mean to [not literally] put ourselves in God's Hands? What does it mean to utter praises to something beyond ourselves? Very hard for some of us, I think.

How about this one?
Open my heart to Your Torah.
The writer is saying that these words are meant to travel from the calligraphed parchment into our ears and into our hearts. If those words lodge there, they will surely leave an impression, and we will, over time, be profoundly shaped by the ongoing ritual.

This is not about entertainment. It is not remotely modern or technologically interesting. Novelty? Not really. Our parents, our grandparents - rewind for several centuries - the Aramaic text is there, read or sung in a shul somewhere, before an open ark. We know the words in our sleep. Or do we? We haven't taken the words and touched them to our hearts.

There is a humbling leap of faith here; are we bold enough to jump?

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Aaron

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