In a normal week, I typically send these reflections to Andrew, our wonderful senior operations associate here at IJS, on Wednesdays. Andrew formats them and gets them all set to arrive in your inbox Friday morning (hence the name, “Josh’s Friday Reflections”). Natalie, one of our other wonderful team members, puts them on our blog. And then our communications & marketing team puts them out on social media.
In a normal week, that works pretty well. Sometimes, when things in the world are a little more uncertain, I’ll wait until Thursday morning to send my piece to Andrew.
This is a particularly abnormal week. As I write, it’s Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday for me are yom tov, the last days of Passover, when writing (even on a computer) is prohibited. And on top of that, on this particular Tuesday, the President of the United States has threatened the death of “a whole civilization” unless the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran opens the Strait of Hormuz.
While mindfulness practice reminds us that we never truly know what the world will look like in a few days, or even in the next moment, in some moments that truth is more acute than others. This is one such moment. I feel like I’m writing a message in a bottle. Yet I think it also reflects a deeper paradox, which is that we can never be fully secure—in our knowledge, in frankly just about anything—and yet must find a way to live with a profound sense of security. This, in so many words, is the conundrum of home.
Regular readers will know that, after years of thinking about it, I developed my bumper sticker definition of the word spirituality: It’s our capacity to feel truly, deeply at home in the world. That can be in nature. It can be with loved ones. It could be at particular moments, in particular places, performing particular rituals. It could be when we’re able to be simply and truly at home in this body, with this breath, right now.
Whatever the experience, I think a through-line is this profound sensation of being at home: Safe, held, embraced, grounded, connected, loved and able to love.
And yet, home can also be profoundly fraught. It is not necessarily always pleasant. Precisely because home should be a place we can trust, the moments when that trust is betrayed can be among the most harmful and painful in our lives.
Parashat Shemini marks the fulfillment of a homecoming. For weeks now we have read of our ancestors’ labor to build a home for the Divine Presence. Finally, the moment comes: “The Presence of YHVH appeared to all the people… And all the people saw, and shouted, and fell on their faces” (Leviticus 9:23-24). The Holy One and the Israelites are at home with one another.
And then disaster strikes, as Nadav and Avihu offer a “strange fire which was not commanded,” and are consumed by a Divine fire. All the promise and hope of that feeling of at-homeness is betrayed in an instant.
The tradition chose a fitting portion of the Prophets to pair with this portion as the haftarah this week: the story of King David bringing the holy ark to Jerusalem in II Samuel 6-7. While the two stories would seem most linked by the death of Uzzah, who is struck down by God for touching the ark, I would suggest that there are other deep connections. In particular, I think both stories are fundamentally about home.
We see this most explicitly in the second half of the haftarah, when David says to the prophet Nathan, “Here I am dwelling in a house of cedar, while the Ark of YHVH abides in a tent!” Yet the Holy One’s response is not straightforward: “From the day that I brought the people of Israel out of Egypt to this day I have not dwelt in a house, but have moved about in Tent and Tabernacle. As I moved about wherever the Israelites went, did I ever reproach any of the tribal leaders whom I appointed to care for My people Israel: Why have you not built Me a house of cedar?”
Commenting on this passage, Rabbi Meir Leibush Wisser (Malbim, 1809-1879) suggests that God’s words to David can be understood as a kind of rebuke. He reminds us of the Rabbis’ understanding that a final resting place for the Divine Presence could only be established when the people of Israel a) had a clear and fully legitimized government, and b) were finally, truly at rest from their journeys and persecutions. While David may have felt that his dynasty was now secure and that the people were finally at rest, the Holy One calls that into question (at least momentarily—the text goes on to promise that David’s son, Solomon, will indeed build the Temple).
I think it’s worth lingering on the Malbim’s interrogating impulse. I hear in his comment some deep questions about what it means to be truly at home: What does it feel like to be provisionally at home—in a tent, on the move, going from place to place, yet still somehow abiding? What does it feel like to be permanently at home? Can we ever really know that our security is finalized and guaranteed? If so, what might be the effects on our spiritual practice, our ethics—and are those effects all desirable ones? If not, what does it mean to live a life in which we never feel truly, deeply at home?
These are some of the most ancient of Jewish questions and we are, of course, asking them in our own way right now—in how we think about land of Israel, and how we inhabit our sense of citizenship in the countries in which we live. But also on more day-to-day levels, as we yearn to feel safe and secure in our homes and our bodies, while also knowing that, on some level, no safety is ever truly guaranteed. How we hold that holy fire, that space of existential insecurity, is our perpetual spiritual task.
For Reflection & Conversation
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Where, when, or with whom do you feel truly, deeply at home? What do you think enables or supports that feeling?
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Have you ever had to assemble or reconstruct a new home or a new life—after a move, a life event, an accident? How, if at all, did your sense of home change?