We are moving into the fourth week of the Omer, the seven-week period between Passover and Shavuot, traditionally a time for spiritual reflection and growth as we move from freedom towards revelation.¹

This fourth week of the Omer is associated with the kabbalistic sephirah (Divine emanation) of Netzach (“victory” or “endurance”). A middah (spiritual/ethical trait) associated with Netzach is zerizut, the energetic response necessary for fulfilling an intention. The Ba’al Shem Tov, founder of modern Hasidism, taught that as beings “formed in the image of the blessed Holy One who generates worlds … everything we do should be with energy and dedication (b’zerizut), since in every act we are able to serve God.”²

In his ethical masterwork Mesilat Yesharim (“The Path of the Just”), Rabbi Moshe Chayim Luzzato describes two forms of zerizut: one prompting us to act, and one sustaining our action. In the first, we respond immediately as opportunities arise.³

For Luzzato, such zerizut means:

not allowing a mitzvah to become chametz (literally, “soured”). Rather, when the time of its performance comes, or when it happens to present itself, or when the thought of performing it enters one’s mind, one should hurry and hasten to seize hold of it and perform it, and not allow time to go by in between. ... [E]ach new second that arises can bring with it a new impediment to the good deed.⁴

Once we’ve initiated action, we shift into the second aspect, “follow through zerizut” or persistence:

[Once] one [has taken] hold of a mitzvah, one should hasten to complete it. … [W]hen one is performing a mitzvah with great swiftness, this will move one’s inner being to kindle aflame also, and the desire and want will increasingly intensify within. But if one acts sluggishly in the movement of one’s limbs, so too the movement of one’s spirit will die down and extinguish. This is something experience can testify to.

Lethargy represents a “shadow aspect” of zerizut. Many of us have a habitual inclination to procrastinate when facing a task, particularly if we anticipate it being unpleasant or challenging. Our lassitude may reflect the yetzer hara operating within us, fulfilling its function of protecting us from frustration or disappointment. Our instinct to avoid may reflect underlying patterns of thought and emotion designed to shield us, such as fear of revealing our limitations. Or we may simply feel overwhelmed, driven by fear of inadequacy to the task. 

In mindfulness practice, we witness how our mind generates justifications to rationalize and support our tendencies to delay or avoid. Rather than judge our propensity for procrastination harshly (“I’m so lazy!” “I should do more!”), we apply chesed or compassion to our underlying anxieties, fear, and/or pain. We “befriend” the bases for our sluggishness. We remember that perfection is neither expected nor attainable, and that we are called to do only our small part in addressing even huge tasks. “The day is short and the work is much, the workers are lazy and the reward is great, and the Master of the house is pressing,” Rabbi Tarfon teaches in Pirkei Avot 2:20-21. “It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” 

Softening the grip of our fear and undermining the associated justifications can free our Netzach energy to manifest zerizut by taking immediate steps responding to what had felt daunting. Once we have “engaged our engine,” we cultivate zerizut as persistence in the face of obstacles and the inclination to slow down.  

In these deeply challenging days, many of us may experience a sense of despair and paralysis in the face of so many pressing issues. It is easy to fall prey to a false belief that we cannot make a difference. Some of us are crippled by perfectionism. As we notice inner messages feeding our sense of inadequacy, we meet these with compassion, soothing our fears enough to open our mouths to say what needs to be said, move our feet and go where we are needed, and take small steps towards justice. Moving skillfully through our internal and external hindrances, we practice zerizut by meeting obstacles with compassion and determination. Nevertheless, despite all the internal and external challenges, we persist.

¹ Week Four runs from sundown Thursday, April 23, until sundown on Thursday, April 30.

² Tzava’at HaRIVa”Sh #20 (“The ‘Testament’ of the Baal Shem Tov),” trans. Rabbi Jonathan Slater.

³ In keeping with a rabbinic adage “zerizin makdimin lemitzvah, those who engage in zerizut perform any mitzvah at its earliest possible moment.” Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 4a.

⁴ Rabbi Moshe Hayyim ‎Luzzatto (1707–1746), Mesilat Yesharim (The Path of the Just), Amsterdam, chap. 7 (trans. Sefaria).

Mi-shenichnas Adar, marbim b’simchah. When the month of Adar begins, one increases in joy.
Babylonian Talmud Ta’anit 29a

Mitzvah g'dolah l'hiyot b'simchah tamid. It is a great mitzvah to be joyful, always.
Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlov, Likutei Moharan II: 24

How do we nurture simchah through spiritual practice – especially in such challenging times, when joy seems hard, maybe even unjust, to access?

Nachman describes simchah as emerging from our capacity to develop greater awareness of the deeper truth of our lives, to "reveal" that which previously had been "concealed" from us:

At every stage in a person’s spiritual growth, there is an aspect of Torah and mitzvot which is ‘revealed’ to him – a level he can understand and practice – and then there is a higher level that is as yet ‘concealed.’ Through prayer, the level that was previously ‘concealed’ becomes ‘revealed,’ leaving an even higher ‘concealed’ level to aspire to. Simchah is when one constantly advances from level to level, turning the ‘concealed’ into the ‘revealed’.¹

For Rabbi Nachman, simchah/joy is not a sentiment synonymous with happiness, but rather a level of spiritual awareness, waking up to the underlying interconnectedness of all. This may help us understand the teaching of Ben Zoma in Pirkei Avot “eyzehu ashir? Ha-sameach b'chelko; "Who is rich? One who rejoices in one's portion."²

We can understand chelek/"portion" here to mean our unique perception of what is true in this moment, and understanding it as fundamentally connected to all other perceptions. When we surrender judgment and comparison, and simply attend to and "rejoice" in this breath, this thought, this feeling, this sensation, this moment, we are ashir/rich; we experience a sense of fullness and wholeness. We have everything we need in this moment.

Rabbi Nachman illustrates this kind of simchah in a tale about a shoemaker described as tam ("simple," unperturbed by complexity and separation) who always rejoiced in every experience even though he was inexpert at his craft, made inferior products, and earned less money than his competitors. When his wife pointed out to him how much better the other shoemakers were doing, he replied, "What do I care about that? That is their work, and this is my work! Why must we think about others? ... As long as I make a clear profit, what do I care?' He was thus always filled with joy and happiness."³

This kind of simchah/joy born of deep connection to self and others can transform the energy of challenging thoughts and emotions such as pain, anger, shame and guilt. The Ba'al Shem Tov is said to have taught a parable in which the anger of a king is dispelled when his beloved child comes into his presence:

For even if the king is in a state of anger, the very sight of his precious child brings him joy and delight. The anger dissipates of its own, and obviously never returns, all the time his son stands before him, as is human nature. The child, therefore, has no worries, and enters at any time he so wishes and exudes praise without end, for he knows that this brings the king, his father, joy and delight.

Why is it this way? Why do anger and fury disappear when joy and love enter? Where do they go? Yes, this is human nature, but nevertheless, we must try to understand how and why. But this is the power of love and joy: When they prevail, they cause anger and fury to ascend upward toward their root. This is part of the secret knowledge, that these forces of anger and strict judgment are mollified only when they reach their origin, since at its origin, all is pure goodness. It comes out that anger and fury are healed and mollified through love and joy.⁴

Mindfulness does not mean eschewing sadness or anxiety to practice simchah. To the contrary, it involves embracing challenging emotions, thought patterns and narratives with compassion, thereby transforming the energy within them to yield the spiritual state of simchah. Experiencing and cultivating a sense of deep relation to others and to ourselves helps relieve our constrictions and allow the chiyut/life force within them to shift and flow in its proper, more wholesome and holy direction.

We can assist in this process not by trying to compel ourselves to be “happy,” but by understanding our grief, sadness, and pain as portals to profound connection — what Rabbi Jay Michelson aptly describes as “unhappy happiness,”⁵ the simchah/joy born of a sense of spiritual connection.⁶ We don’t have to feel “happy” to experience “joy.”

In any moment of any day, we can choose to engage in “awareness practice,” stepping up, as it were, to the balcony of the mind and simply witnessing there, without judgment, the thoughts and feelings swirling below. From this “God’s eye perspective,” the narratives forming in the mind lose their power, and we intuitively “remember” the infinitely larger context in which we live and of which we are a precious, inseparable part.

As we move into Adar in these deeply unsettling and challenging times, may we find and nurture simchah in the essential, foundational truth that we are profoundly, inextricably connected in an unfathomable web of life energy through time and space.

¹ Likutei Moharan I, 22:9.

² Mishnah Avot 4:1.

³ "The Sophisticate and the Simpleton," in Rabbi Nachman's Stories, trans. Aryeh Kaplan (Breslov Research Institute: 1983), p. 168-173.

⁴ Tzava'at Harivash 132.

⁵ Jay Michelson, "What Rabbi Nachman and Pharrell Have in Common," The Forward, August 16, 2014.

⁶ See David Brooks, “The Difference Between Happiness and Joy,” New York Times, May 7, 2019: “Happiness usually involves a victory for the self. Joy tends to involve the transcendence of self. Happiness comes from accomplishments. Joy comes when your heart is in another. Joy comes after years of changing diapers, driving to practice, worrying at night, dancing in the kitchen, playing in the yard and just sitting quietly together watching TV. Joy is the present that life gives you as you give away your gifts."

“Knowing our roots” means cultivating conscious contact with a deeper source of nurture and support. This core Jewish spiritual practice is embodied by Joseph, the protagonist in the Torah reading cycle which coincides with and follows Hanukkah, and which concludes the Book of Genesis. 

Throughout the story of Joseph and his brothers, he manifests the middah (spiritual/ethical quality) of bitachon, awareness of being implanted in and connected to a source in which he trusts. When Joseph interprets the dreams of the butler and baker in prison and, when he is freed, the dreams of Pharaoh, he insists that God, not he, is the source of their interpretations. According to Rashi, Joseph in effect tells Pharaoh that "the wisdom is not mine, but God will answer and put an answer into my mouth that will bring peace to Pharaoh." Through his quality of bitachon or trust, Joseph understands himself simply as a conduit, a vessel through which the Divine source will flow. 

Despite the manifold challenges and injustices Joseph experiences throughout the narrative (being sold into slavery, imprisoned unjustly, and forgotten by those on whom he depended) he maintains this awareness of a greater or deeper power operating within him. His consciousness of and trust in this process does not waver, even when its energy leads him into extreme challenges and painful experiences.

Strikingly, throughout the Joseph narrative in Genesis this deeper, greater power is never described as operating overtly. God functions down below the surface, in the roots, never "speaking" explicitly to Joseph or anyone else. The hidden reality of the Divine is clearly present but, as depicted in this the narrative, human beings must acknowledge and draw it out. The character of Joseph illuminates and symbolizes this process of drawing up sacred energy through the roots.  

Joseph is associated in Jewish mystical tradition with Tzadik, one who does that which is right, acting in alignment with the deeper flow of the Divine. The Friday evening liturgy of Kabbalat Shabbat features Psalm 92 (click here for a healing chant by MIRAJ, a trio consisting of Rabbi Geela Rayzel Raphael, Juliet Spitzer, and Rabbi Margot Stein), which concludes: 

tzadik katamar yifrach, 
the righteous bloom like a date palm, thrive like a cedar in Lebanon, 
sh’tulim b’veit Adonai, b’chatzrot eloheinu yafrichu, 
planted in the house of the Holy One, they flourish in the courts of our God.
Od y’nuvun b’seivah d’sheinim v’ra’ananim yehiyu
In old age they still produce fruit; they are full of sap and freshness,
Lehagid ki yashar Adonai, tzuri v’lo avlata bo
attesting that the Holy One is upright, my rock, in whom there is no flaw.

Our roots, planted in the Divine, represent the nexus between ourselves and the deeper Source from which we emerge and which is constantly causing us to flourish. When we grow in awareness of this constant process—when we “know our roots”—then we, like Joseph, can experience a sense of bitachon, trusting in that flow and our ability to draw it up through ourselves into the world. Through this practice, moment by moment each of us has the potential to act as a tzadik, one who does what is right, manifesting the Divine flow, healing and repairing ourselves and our world.

One of the central (and paradoxical) themes of the Yamim Nora’im, the Days of Awe, is that accepting our mortality opens the gate to personal transformation. The extent to which we make peace with the end of our lives helps us begin to live more fully today.

Moses models this kind of radical acceptance as we move towards the end of the annual Torah reading cycle. The Sages imagined Moses vigorously resisting God’s decree that he should die before reaching the Promised Land, moving progressively through the five stages described by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her classic work, On Death and Dying¹: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance.

His ultimate acceptance of his demise enables Moses to request and extend forgiveness to the people he has led through the wilderness – and to praise God, with whom he has been negotiating furiously:

They [the heavenly court] came and said to Moses: ‘The hour has arrived for you to depart from the world.’ He said to them: ‘Wait until I bless Israel, for they have not found contentment from me all my days, because of the rebukes and warnings with which I rebuked them’ ... [Moses] said to Israel: ‘I have caused you a lot of grief over the Torah and over the commandments, but now forgive me.’ They said to him: ‘Our Master, you are forgiven.’ Israel also arose and said: ‘Moses our Master, we have angered you a lot and increased the burden upon you. Forgive us.’ He said to them: ‘You are forgiven.’ They came and said to him: ‘The moment has arrived for you to depart from the world.’ [Moses] said: ‘Blessed be the name of the one who lives and abides forever.’²

In accepting mortality, Moses finds a gateway to forgiveness, transformation, and gratitude, rather than being stuck in blaming and bitterness.

Throughout the Days of Awe, we are like Moses, face to face with our finitude. Yom Kippur is a voluntary near-death experience. We rehearse our own deaths and imagine our own eulogies. We wear white or dress in a kittel representing our own burial shrouds. We recite the Vidui, the confession we are to profess before we die, say Yizkor prayers for those we have loved and lost, remember our martyrs, and end the day as we are meant to end our lives, by chanting the Shema. We abstain from food, drink and sex, freeing ourselves from our customary focus on our bodily wants and needs. These practices enable us, like Moses, to attend to deeper, more enduring truths than our own, inevitably bounded physical survival.

A Hasidic teaching observes that Moses’s awareness that he would die before reaching the Land prompted him to see beyond himself and pray on behalf of the Israelites. Earlier in Deuteronomy (3:23), Moses tells the Israelites, “Vaetchanan el Adonai baeit hahi leimor, I pleaded with YHVH at that time, saying…." (Deut. 3:23). Rabbi Mordecai Yosef Lainer of Izbica (1801-1854) interprets this verse as indicating a shift in Moses’s awareness stemming from the finality of his death:

Why did Moses see fit to tell Israel about this prayer? It might appear as if his prayer accomplished nothing! Nevertheless, through this Moses made it known to the people that his prayer became a protection for them: "Even in your undertakings in the Land of Israel I will be your Rabbi, and so throughout the generations." He demonstrated to them that he accomplished something through his prayer.

We learn this from the word "I pleaded with (va-etchanan)" - which is in the reflexive form. This means that Moses was filled with supplications, and his prayer flowed in his mouth. This signifies that God aroused him to pray, and so surely this prayer will not return unfulfilled. That is signified in the phrase "at that time (ba-eit hahi)": Moses said, "Even after the Holy Blessed One had sworn not to bring me into Israel, God nevertheless did not prevent me from praying."³

In this interpretation, the acceptance of death opens Moses’s awareness even more to the needs of others, allowing prayer to rise organically from concern for them rather than from self-service.

Our mindfulness practice is rooted in hitlamdut, curious, non-judgmental attention to the truth of our experience—in this case, our habitual inclinations about our mortality. Some of us lack the luxury of denial and are forced by illness and/or age to confront death. Some of us struggle with depression and suicidal tendencies, and must practice keeping thoughts of mortality in their proper, healthy place. For those of us who devote much psychic energy to avoiding our mortality, the example of Moses teaches us to turn towards that which we would rather avoid.

Psychologist Marsha Linehan describes this capacity for radical acceptance as “the ability to perceive one’s environment without putting demands on it to be different; to experience one’s current emotional state without attempting to change it; and to observe one’s own thoughts and action patterns without attempting to stop or control them.”⁴ Practicing acceptance is an opportunity to turn towards even that which we most wish to deny. We notice the power of our resistance, and apply compassion rather than judgment; we console ourselves by infusing grief with love.

As we move into this season of death and rebirth, may we receive the deep lessons of accepting (without embracing) our inevitable death. May it help us turn with greater urgency towards life, with more clarity, wisdom, and compassion for ourselves and others. May we envision previously unnoticed transformational possibilities and be freed from that which keeps us bound to old, familiar patterns. May our capacity to accept endings engender myriad beginnings within us and our world.

Taking the teaching into practice:

• During the coming Days of Awe, investigate with curiosity your relationship with your own death. Can you notice and investigate any resistance to your thoughts and emotions, without judgment?  Can you hold your pain and fear (which of course are completely natural) with compassion and kindness? 
• investigate purchasing a burial plot (if you don’t have one and intend to be buried), prepare or revise your will, and/or write an ethical will or letter to your loved ones about how you would like to be remembered—or, at least consider each of these, and pay attention to your instinctive reactions.
• Consider taking a walk through a nearby cemetery and seeing what, if anything, shifts within you when you are in close proximity to mortality.

Taking the teaching into prayer practice: Unetaneh Tokef, a prayer featured in the High Holiday liturgy, includes the deeply challenging reference to “who will live and who will die” in the year ahead. It also includes a passage which goes to the heart of accepting our temporality: adam yesodo mei-afar, our origin is dust.  Experiment with this part of the prayer, using this lovely melody (watch and listen here to a melody sung by Cantor Steve Zeidenberg and choir at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in NYC; for the audio, click here for the same melody sung by Cantor Ayelet Porzecanski; for classical hazzanut, try Cantor Leibele Waldman’s recorded version.

¹Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, On Death and Dying (New York: Macmillan, 1970).
²Midrash Tanchuma, Vaetchanan 6:2.
³Rabbi Mordecai Yosef Lainer of Izbica, Mei HaShiloach on Vaetchanan (trans. Rabbi Jonathan Slater).
⁴Marsha Linehan, Ph.D., Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder, (Guilford: 2018), p. 147.

The holiday of Shavuot, commemorating the revelation of Torah at Mount Sinai, begins this year Sunday night, June 1. It is striking that despite the cacophonous scene of revelation described in the Torah in Exodus 19, there is a stream within Jewish tradition that emphasizes silence as the context for intimate encounter with the Divine.

Rabbinic tradition offers an interpretation that at Mount Sinai, the people heard only the first two of the Ten Commandments: "I am YHVH your God" and "you shall have no other gods beside Me.” A Hasidic tradition asserts that at Sinai the people “heard” only the first letter of the first word—that is, the silent letter aleph.¹

We can understand the experience of revelation at Sinai as consisting of “hearing” only Divine “silence,” the sound of the letter aleph – a concept we find as well in rabbinic literature:

Rabbi Abahu taught in the name of Rabbi Yohanan: When God gave the Torah, no bird twittered, nor fowl flew, no ox lowed, none of the ofanim stirred a wing, the seraphim did not say, 'Holy, Holy', the sea did did not roar, no creature spoke; the whole world was hushed into breathless silence and the voice went forth:, ‘I am YHVH your God.’²

The Bible (I Kings 19) relates that the prophet Elijah has a similar experience of revelation when he flees from Queen Jezebel and finds refuge at Mt. Sinai. There, like Moses at the burning bush and the Israelites at Sinai, Elijah “hears God” in the kol d'mama dakah, the “still, small voice”—the sound of silence.

While many of us claim to yearn for more quiet in our lives, in mindfulness practice we often notice how silence can render us uncomfortable and desiring distraction. As we attempt to settle into stillness, we may observe an inclination to “stir things up,” to “entertain” our minds and avoid what we perceive as “boring” or threatening.

As we notice these aversions, we do not judge them or seek to repress them. Rather, we accept them with compassion as part of what it means to be human—as instincts to protect our vulnerable selves—and we allow them to pass. Moment by moment, we let down our guard, slowly surrender distractions, and settle into silence. We become more present, “flush” with our experience in the moment. In such a moment, it is as if we too are standing at Sinai.

In silence, we become acquainted with our more authentic self. The writer Dinty Moore offers this helpful analogy:

The mind is like a bowl of water... sloshing back and forth, spilling out the sides. Most of us have lives like earthquakes, so the water is in constant motion. Add to this the fact that we are always grabbing at the water, struggling to make sense of our brain messages, yet all the grabbing just further churns the liquid. Two things have to happen for the bowl of water to come to rest. First, you have to turn off the faucet, stop all that input. Second, you have to quit grabbing. What happens finally, if you are successful, is that the water settles and... the still water of the mind then becomes a mirror in which you can find yourself.³

In Jewish mindfulness practice, we seek to quiet the inner conversation, to “let the water settle,” and see ourselves as whole human beings, part of the Unity that is God. Harpu u-d'u ki anochi elohim, says the Psalmist [46:11], "be still, and know that I am God." In stillness, we can discern that Anochi, the "I," our self, offers a path to deeper wisdom.

As a practice for Shavuot in our incessantly noisy world, we might dedicate time and space to immerse in silence. We might pay particular attention to moments when we seek to avoid stillness or silence, such as by playing the radio or a podcast. Experiment each day with turning off anything that produces sound in such situations; explore, without judgment, habitual reactions of mind and emotion when encountering silence.

You might also practice by inserting a bit more silence into life, seeking out a quiet space or time each day, imagining ourselves as “standing at Sinai,” listening for the kol demamah dakah, the “still, small Voice.”.

Finally, we might practice silence even in the midst of conversation, while listening to someone else, by noticing and releasing the inclination to formulate a response rather than fully attending to the other, instead listening as fully as possible.

At any moment, we can access the inner stillness which brings us back to the foot of the holy mountain, and open ourselves to receive the wisdom being revealed. At any moment, we can be present at Sinai.

¹ Gershom Scholem, the great scholar of Jewish mysticism, comments on the teaching of Rabbi Mendel of Rimanov (d. 1814) in On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism (Schocken: 1965), p. 65: "To hear the aleph is to hear next to nothing; it is the preparation for all audible language, but in itself conveys no determinate, specific meaning. Thus, with his daring statement that the actual revelation to Israel consisted only of the aleph, Rabbi Mendel transformed the revelation on Mount Sinai into a mystical revelation, pregnant with infinite meaning, but without specific meaning."

² Exodus Rabbah 29:9

³ Dinty Moore, The Accidental Buddhist: Mindfulness, Enlightenment, and Sitting Still (Algonquin Books: 1997), p. 187.