I travel frequently for work. My checklist of things to do before I leave home includes not only packing undershirts and a toothbrush, but also emptying the compost bin that sits next to our sink. I seem to be the member of my family who can stand the smell the easiest. So before I get in the taxi to the airport, I dump the compost into the larger bin outside.

I therefore think about the compost with some regularity. On the one hand, I feel good about it: We’re diverting waste from the landfill; we get soil back in the spring; we’re contributing to a larger movement. On the other hand, there’s a little perversion that creeps in when I clean out the fridge: “Ooh, that lettuce I bought last week that didn’t get eaten–awesome, it can go in the compost!” But, of course, it would have been better to either eat the lettuce or not buy it in the first place.

The existence of the compost bin can thus provide a subconscious crutch for overconsumption. While it mitigates some problems, it doesn’t address the basic questions of desire and sufficiency operating in my mind and heart when I’m at the grocery store or standing in front of the fridge thinking about what I want to eat. Those questions are still mine to work through.

These issues are on my mind this week because at the heart of Parashat Vayakhel is a story about sufficiency and saying, “Enough.” Making good on the Holy One’s invitation for everyone whose heart is moved to contribute to the construction of the Mishkan, Moses invites the Israelites to do just that. But not only do they bring–they keep on bringing, to the point that the craftsmen come to Moses to tell him they’re being overwhelmed.
“Moses thereupon had this proclamation made throughout the camp:
‘Not a single man or woman should make further effort toward gifts for the sanctuary!’ So the people stopped bringing: their efforts had been more than enough for all the tasks to be done.” (Ex. 36:6-7)

In his Mei Hashiloach, Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner interprets this passage spiritually: “In truth, one does not know the root of their heart—if they are truly giving. The test of this is, if one is asked one time to donate for a new mitzvah, then they can give abundantly, but after they have grown accustomed to this mitzvah they then close their hand from giving. From this it is understood that they are not giving from their roots, for if it came out of their roots they would not refrain from giving.” In the case of the Mishkan, the rebbe says, the Israelites kept giving again and again, manifesting that they were truly giving from the roots of their hearts. Hence these verses should be read as praising them.

Now, this would be a good place for me to make a fundraising pitch. (Sure: If your heart is moved, please do donate to IJS!) But/And: I think the larger point is one about the spiritual practice of discerning and knowing our hearts–in our giving, our consuming, our making, our selling. The Torah invites us to consider that, just as there is an economy that exists between the grocery store and the compost bin (or the trash can), there is likewise an economy within our hearts–impulses, either genuine or manufactured through advertising, of need, desire, and craving; stirrings of generosity, openness, and sufficiency.

In an age characterized by consumerism, impulse purchasing, and life-threatening levels of waste, mindfulness practices are more important than ever. They enable us to walk through the grocery store–or Amazon–with stronger, wiser hearts that are less susceptible to the manipulation of desire. And in an age characterized by isolation, division, and epidemic levels of loneliness, our practices likewise help us to cultivate connection, compassion, and resilience. These are two sides of the same coin, two parts of the economy of the heart that, with practice and dedication, can become the economy of the world too.

Josh’s Friday Reflections
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Every Friday morning, IJS President & CEO Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares a short reflection on the week in preparation for Shabbat. Josh weaves together personal experience, mindfulness practice, and teachings from the weekly Torah portion in a uniquely accessible and powerful way. Sign up to receive Josh’s weekly reflections here.

On Monday night, for the first time since before I had children (meaning at least 21 years ago), I went to the opera. Not just any opera, but the premiere of a new production of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino at the Met–a production that lasts four hours and involves a huge cast and elaborate sets. And, because it was opening night, there were a lot of people decked out in their finery. It was a scene.

Yet what made this night so memorable was the singing–and especially that of the soprano, Lise Davidsen, who was making her Met debut in an Italian opera. This was a big deal, as Davidsen, a Norwegian-born star in the opera world, is known for her work in German pieces (Wagner, Strauss). But Italian opera is a different animal, and there was a lot of anticipation about how she would do.

Suffice it to say, she brought down the house–both with her aria before the first intermission and then, most memorably, with her rendition of Pace, pace, mio Dio in the final act. And that was when the moment I’ll never forget unfolded. You see, unlike in virtually any other Western performance art form, opera not only invites the audience to applaud mid-performance, after every solo (jazz does this), but, because it’s a theatrical performance, there’s a pause in the action when that happens (something that doesn’t happen in jazz). While most of the time the applause runs its course and the show goes on, occasionally something magical can happen.

That’s what happened on Monday: Davidsen’s performance was so immediately appreciated and beloved that the audience clapped and clapped, hooped and hollered, yelled “brava!” and “bravissima!” for what seemed like an eternity. Even the conductor and the orchestra started applauding. And Davidsen, trying to remain in character, simply couldn’t ignore it–she ultimately had to break character and acknowledge the reality of the moment with a smile and a hand to the heart. Only then could the performance go on.

It was that breaking character–breaking through the “fourth wall” of the performance–that made the moment indelible in my memory, and probably in that of the several thousand other members of the audience, because it is such a rare thing to witness. Performers and audience alike are so committed to maintaining that imaginary wall; it is a fundamental part of the experience of theater and music, ceremony and ritual. We invest spaces like theaters and symphony halls–and synagogues–with an artifice that allows another world to come into being. When we break that wall, the experience can be jarring, just as it can also be magical.

The story of the Golden Calf is a counterpoint to the story of the construction of the Mishkan that it interrupts. And while its most fundamental lesson, of course, is to be ever mindful of the possibility of idolatry, some of our tradition’s most insightful, even radical, interpretations see significance not only in the people’s construction of the calf, but of Moses’s smashing of the tablets of the law in response. As Rashi, quoting the Talmud, famously says in his very final comment on the Torah at the end of Deuteronomy: “The Holy Blessed One agreed with Moses’s action, as it says, asher shibarta (Ex. 34:1), which implies that God said, ‘Yishar koach,’ Good work breaking the tablets.”

I wonder if we might think of these two breakings–the breaking of the tablets and breaking character/breaking the fourth wall–as partaking of or expressing a related impulse. In the case of Lise Davidsen, the moment demanded that she break the fourth wall in order to acknowledge her own humanity and that of the audience, which wanted to express their love and appreciation for her singing. In the case of Moses as interpreted by the Talmud, the Holy One recognizes that the moment called not for standing on ceremony, but instead for the expression of emotion–disappointment, anger, rage–of Moses’s gesture; or, perhaps, on an even deeper level, the moment called for a lesson that nothing, not even words of Torah written by the finger of God, should become an idol, immune to the realities of the world, and thus the tablets had to be broken.

How do we discern what the moment calls for? That’s one of the reasons we practice. Through our mindfulness, we hopefully become aware of the overt and subtle ways idolatry operates in our hearts and minds: in the things we cling to, in our inability to live with uncertainty, in our stubborn desire to maintain an impermeable, unbreakable fourth wall between the lives we live and the stories we tell ourselves about them.

We don’t seek to break the fourth wall all the time, of course, or even most of the time. In both opera and in Torah, those moments of breaking are meaningful only because they are rare. But I would suggest that one of the reasons we practice is so that we might  know when those moments have arrived–and that we might have the courage to break those idols when they do.

Josh’s Friday Reflections
FREE

Every Friday morning, IJS President & CEO Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares a short reflection on the week in preparation for Shabbat. Josh weaves together personal experience, mindfulness practice, and teachings from the weekly Torah portion in a uniquely accessible and powerful way. Sign up to receive Josh’s weekly reflections here.

I was boarding an airplane recently when the man in front of me, who looked to be about 20 years my senior, turned and asked, “How long have you worn a kippah?” He was not wearing a kippah, so I was a little startled by this very direct question. But my mind picked up on other cues and quickly filled in a story that he was Jewish and was asking this question out of a sense of solidarity.

As I’m regularly privileged to do, I spent part of this first week of February with 50 rabbis and cantors, some of the 530 alumni of our IJS clergy cohort programs, during our annual Hevraya retreat in Simi Valley, California. First and foremost: We were all okay with the weather. Thankfully, the American Jewish University’s Brandeis-Bardin Campus, where we have long held this retreat, is at a high enough elevation to avoid major flooding. While there were some travel delays, everyone arrived safely. And given all that these spiritual leaders have been holding for themselves and their communities in recent months, it didn’t take long for the weather to become an afterthought.

During this retreat, I found myself reflecting on a talk I listened to recently by one of my favorite teachers, Gil Fronsdal, about the meaning of “retreat.” Gil suggested that the word is a bit of a misnomer, because the label “retreat” suggests that the experience is a pulling back from what’s normal: Our normal world is full of hustle and bustle, but on retreat we do something different, live at a slower rhythm, engage more deeply with ourselves and the world. And while that’s true, Gil suggested that a better label might be “return”–because the truth is that our actual normal is that slower, deeper reality. It’s the fast-paced, surface-level life before and after the “retreat” that we should see as the unusual setting. When we go on retreat, we’re really returning to our truest nature.

The rabbi in me was immediately drawn to this notion of return as teshuva. Every year during Elul and Tishrei, we make a special effort to return, as it were, to our factory settings: to reconnect with what we know to be our deeper nature, the go back to the intentions we know we really have. Throughout that intense period of teshuva, it can feel like we’re on a kind of retreat, and at the end of it we’re remade and reborn.

Yet we don’t have to wait for Tishrei, as evidenced by the retreat/return we held for those spiritual leaders this week. For so many of them, this time has become a sacred period of reconnection, renewal, and rebirth. It’s truly one of my greatest honors and joys that these holy souls trust us to create and hold the container for them to do that returning.

At morning services on Tuesday, Rabbi Hannah Dresner, one of our wonderful alumni, shared a beautiful teaching about Parashat Mishpatim from the Hasidic master Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger’s Sefat Emet (Terumah, 1895). At the end of the Torah portion, Moses ascends into the mountain, where he will stay for 40 days and 40 nights while he receives the Torah. The Sefat Emet picks up on the number of 40 days, which in the mind of the Talmudic sages is the same amount of time it takes after conception for a fetus to be formed in the womb. Putting the two ideas together, he teaches that during his sojourn on the mountain (which was enveloped in cloud, suggesting to the midrashic imagination a womb-like experience), Moses “received an entirely new form”–that is, he was literally transformed, renewed, reborn. And further, through the study of Torah, all of us have a share in Moses’s experience–we can experience our own renewal and transformation too.

I wonder if we might understand this transformation and renewal as of a piece with the return we experience on retreat or during the fall holidays. I wonder if we might think of it as available to us not only through those intensive experiences but even on a weekly basis (Shabbat) and a daily or even moment to moment basis through our mindful return to our intention. As we say in our liturgy, the Divine “renews creation each day.” Likewise, we can, through our practices, experience that renewal, that return to our factory settings, in every time and place.

In some of my recent morning meditation sits, I’ve noticed a feeling of sadness and grief arising. Yes, of course, there’s plenty of cause for sadness and grief in the world and amongst the Jewish people. But this grieving was coming up from a different place. It’s some anticipatory grieving around a subtle but significant shift in the life stage my wife and I are going through as our middle child prepares to graduate high school and leave home.

In one of those mysterious poetic rhymes in which life can sometimes speak, my children–21, 18, and 11–have almost precisely the same spread in age as my brothers and I (I’m the youngest). And I’m finding echoes of the feelings of loss that I experienced when my two older brothers had flown the coop and it was down to just my parents and me at home. But this time, I’m approaching that point as one of the parents, aware of all the memories of these now-grown children in this house we’ve lived in for the majority of their lives. While I am happy that both my older boys are making their way in the world–and that we can still look forward to the company of our wonderful little one for a few more years–I get why there’s some grief making its presence felt. The shape of home is shifting, and that’s hard.

Home, its shape-shifting, and even the undertow of the powerful emotions surrounding it, is a theme in Parashat Yitro–though I think we sometimes have to look for it a little. But when we do, it’s right there beneath the surface. Look right at the beginning: “So Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, took Zipporah, Moses’ wife, after she had been sent home, and her two sons—of whom one was named Gershom, that is to say, ‘I have been a stranger in a foreign land’; and the other was named Eliezer, meaning, ‘The God of my father was my help, delivering me from the sword of Pharaoh.’ Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, brought Moses’ sons and wife to him in the wilderness, where he was encamped at the mountain of God.” (Ex. 18:3-5) Rashi, quoting the midrash, paints a scene wherein Aaron, when he first greets Moses on his way back to Egypt from the burning bush, asks him, rhetorically, “We’re already grieving so many people in Egypt; why add to the number?” So Moses sends his wife and children away–a moment, one imagines, of painful family separation, of grieving and loss, of shifting the dimensions and feelings of home.

Home is also present in the Ten Commandments: the mitzvot of honoring parents (#5), honoring marriage (#7), focusing our attention on what is present in our homes and not coveting that which is over the fence (#10)–and the ways we can imagine or have experienced the transgression of those commandments–all of these tap into the strong emotional currents surrounding the nature and shape of home.

I’m fond of saying that I think spirituality is our capacity to feel truly at home in the universe. And in this sense, perhaps the most powerful teaching about home comes not in any of these moments that I’ve mentioned, but in the mitzvah of Shabbat: “For in six days YHVH made heaven and earth and sea—and all that is in them—and then rested on the seventh day; therefore YHVH blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.” Like the Creator, for six days we label and separate, calling things heaven or earth or sea, this name or that home, home or not-home. All that naming connotes both standing in relationship with and standing over and against the world–at home in the world, but also not fully at home in it at the same time. On Shabbat we rest from all that, from the constant work of naming and labeling and separating. We allow ourselves to feel deeply, truly at home–in the world, in our houses, in our relationships, in ourselves.

Yet Shabbat doesn’t only happen every seven days. Shabbat consciousness is actually available to us every seven hours, every seven minutes, every seven seconds. That, in many ways, is the whole point of Jewish spiritual practice. When we can cultivate it and allow it to take root and grow within us, we can respond to the shifting shapes and tones of home more wisely and graciously–because we can sense that, on the deepest levels, we’ve never really left home at all.