Yom Kippur 5784: Cheshbon HaNeshamah - A Mental Health Accounting

A version of this sermon was delivered at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregation in Wantagh, NY on Yom Kippur 5784

One of the questions I have been asked the most since my time away this summer was how I got interested in glass.  The quick answer is that I was always a potter, working in clay, and one semester there was not a pottery class offered that seemed interesting, so instead I registered for a glass bead-making class.  There isn’t a lot of carryover of skills from one discipline to the next, but there is certainly a center part to a Venn diagram between the two art forms.  And that’s the coil pot.  Some of you may have to think back to elementary school to remember, but this is where you make a snake of clay and coil it up to make a pot.  It’s a similar process in glass.  Holding it above the fire, you melt a rod of glass by feeding it into the flame and coil it upon itself, attaching it to one end of the hollow glass tube you have in your other hand.  First you make the rings bigger, then smaller until you’ve created a ball shape.  Using the flame, you smooth out the ridges from the coil.  Now you’ve got a glass bubble on the end of a hollow tube you can form, shape, and sculpt.

As we were learning how to do this technique, the teacher asked the class a question.  Having smoothed the outside of the glass bubble, he asked us what was happening on the inside after we smoothed the outside.  I answered that glass is fluid, so if the outside is smooth, the inside must be as well.  Makes sense.  But I was wrong.  Just because the outside is smooth, doesn’t yet mean the inside is.  The ridges have only been smoothed on one surface.  To smooth out the inside ridges, and then to get a clean, even glass bubble, it takes more than some time in the flame.  That’s only enough for the outside.  To smooth the inside, you have to heat the bubble, blow into it to expand it, and then reheat it to contract it.  It’s the expanding and contracting on the inside that ultimately smooths it out.

           Smooth on the outside, rough on the inside. 

           Easy to make the outside smooth, much harder to care for the inside.

           I think many of us can relate to this piece of glass.  We spend a lot of time smoothing our outsides, or at least showing them off at their smoothest, shiniest, cleanest, clearest.  We don’t spend nearly enough time caring for our insides, for our souls and spirits, our neshamah, and from what I can see from our community and our society, the effects have been detrimental, particularly to our mental health. 

           Before I go on, I want to clarify some language I will be using.  “Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act, and helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices.”^[1]  This is distinct from mental illness, which encompasses specific, diagnosable medical conditions.^[2]  Mental illnesses should be thought of like any other illness, but too often, they are not.  They are often not talked about, undiscussed, often evoking shame.  Cancer affects the way your body functions and causes abnormal cell behavior.  Mental illness is the same, just with different cells and different behavior.  How we understand and think about mental illness ought to be equivalent to how we understand and think about cancer.

           Some mental health issues are brought about by mental illness and genetics.  And some are based on other factors, like life experience, trauma, and stress, or you know - a global pandemic.  Struggling with mental health, even if it’s not mental illness, affects our actions, our reactions, and our relationships.  It is real, and it is becoming more common, and it is necessary that we talk about it in a real way, without shame, and without feeling the need to whisper.  Seeking help for mental illness is a good and important thing.  Seeking help when we’re struggling with our mental health is a good and important thing.  At least that’s what my therapist tells me.

           Yes.  I see a therapist.  Every week.  Almost every rabbi I know does.  It’s an important place for me to process what has been going on and get a regular insight into how things are going for me, on the inside.  I know and I have experienced how the insides can be rough, even when the outside is shiny and slick. 

           Our tradition, while not silent on issues of mental health, does not have a lot to go on.  Like today, it seems that those who recognized the necessity of caring for our spirits were too often in the minority.  A short quote from the Talmud exemplifies this. ^[3]  In Tractate Yoma, which is about Yom Kippur, there is a section where two rabbis, Rabbi Ami and Rabbi Asi, are debating the meaning of certain biblical verses.  They come to a verse in Proverbs and disagree as to how to understand it.  Proverbs 12:25 reads: “If there is worry in a person’s heart, let them quash it.”  Rabbi Ami reads the verse as written and explains that quash here means to push the worries out of your mind with force.  But Rabbi Asi says that the reading of the verse is wrong.  The verb at the end shouldn’t be understood as quash, but rather, with a few changes to the vowels, it should be read as: “If there is worry in a person’s heart, let them tell others.”  Commentaries explain what rabbi Asi means.  If there is worry or anxiety, let them tell others of their concerns so that their anxiety will be lessened.

           Many centuries before Freud, Rabbi Asi seems to understand the importance of processing and talk therapy.  But in order for Rabbi Asi to get there, he has to change the plain meaning of a biblical verse.  And, the rabbis are not piling on in agreement.  Rabbi Ami seems to think that all it will take to rid someone of their anxiety is to tell them to stop being anxious.  Rabbi Ami is wrong.  Anxiety and mental health struggles are not overcome by will and trying harder.  To think so is like thinking that you can just will away cancer. 

In 2020, one in five American adults experienced a mental health condition.  One in six young people experienced a major depressive episode, and one in 20 people lived with a serious mental illness.  These numbers are from 2020, and they either represent data from prior to the pandemic or data which is skewed in some ways due to the quarantine and the way we lived in that year.

           Data has shown that mental health struggles have increased.  And I’m seeing it in our community.  It’s no surprise that our collective mental health and wellbeing  have declined over these last years.  We spent 13 months in full fight-or-flight mode, but we couldn’t fly anywhere, so all we had was the tension of fight mode.  Fight mode is not supposed to last that long.  While we were at home, we didn’t slow down, really, we just adapted, and we added new activities.  What has been interesting to note as well is that the full psychological effects of the pandemic seem to be delayed.  I surmise this is probably because in the immediate aftermath, we were all just so happy to be out of the house and back with people, with our friends, family, and community, that the joy of relationship and connection overshadowed and distracted us from            focusing on what we had been through. 

           This is a perfect example of why Rabbi Ami was wrong.  If all it took to keep mental health struggles at bay was to be happy and push them out of our minds, we wouldn’t be seeing what we’re seeing now, including increased levels of anxiety and depression, up to 25% higher than before the pandemic, according to the World Health Organization.  We also know that only about half of those who are struggling seek and then get help.  Some of this is about access, some of it is about stigma.

           When we came out of the pandemic, we didn’t slow down either; we kept the new activities, and we added back in the old ones.  We traveled like never before; we started projects on our houses.  We didn’t reflect.  We didn’t mourn.  We didn’t process.  We didn’t talk.  And now, we’re seeing the results.  We were given the opportunity to slow down and too many of us didn’t take it.

           In addition to glass blowing, my sabbatical truly taught me the importance of rest.  We are here on Shabbat Shabbaton, the sabbath of sabbaths, and a sabbath is meant as a day not of doing nothing, but of not working, cooking, building, etc.  As Reform Jews, we have a looser interpretation of the Shabbat prohibitions, of course.  And at the same time, there is a restorative power in putting all our worldly matters on hold for one day a week. 

           Shabbat is not a cure for mental health struggles.  But Shabbat can be a form of self-care that can help stabilize our mental health, even as our lives continue to be stressful.  Rest is self-care.  Setting boundaries at work, like “I don’t respond to emails on Saturday,” is a form of self-care.  Recognizing our blessings and God’s presence in the world, allowing ourselves to experience awe, is a form of self-care.  Sharing a meal with others and singing together is a form of self-care.  Going for a walk is a form of self-care.  Shabbat can allow all parts of us to rest.  Shabbat allows us opportunities to care for our insides and work to smooth them from their ridges. 

I am so grateful to the congregation for my sabbatical time because it was restful and I was able to put my work to the side.  And because of that rest, I am less stressed.  I can feel the difference on the inside, and how much smoother I am.  I feel how much more ready I am to face the challenges of this holy work because I rested, recalibrated my baseline, and reset my spirit.  Shabbat gives us that opportunity every week.  We have to be willing to care for ourselves and take the opportunities given to us.

           We spend so much time over these Days of Awe thinking about cheshbon hanefesh, the accounting of our souls.  This is meant to be a personal ledger of our deeds, so that we can reflect and turn toward better choices where needed.  In addition to cheshbon hanefesh, I’d like to suggest that today, we add one more accounting.  On top of the bad deeds and good deeds today, we ought to also engage in a cheshbon haneshamah, an accounting of our spirits.  A mental health inventory, or self-check.  And, like today’s atonement and teshuvah, this is not a one-day-a-year activity.  Today sets the example.

Now, let me be clear, this is not about diagnosing anything.  This is about checking in with yourself to see how everything is feeling.  If you need to, do it once a month in the shower when you check for cancer.  And like that cancer check, if something feels off kilter, like it has changed from the month before, it is probably time to consult someone who is a professional.  And this is how we need to think about mental health, like all other health.  It’s ok to get help when something is wrong.  It doesn’t make us weak.  It doesn’t make us less than others.  It makes us healthier.

           So, let’s do it together, now.  Close your eyes if you need to.

           Over the last month:^[4]

           How has my sleeping been?  Have I been sleeping more than usual?  Have I had a hard time getting to sleep?  Do I feel motivated to get up every day?

           How has my eating been?  Have I lost my appetite?  Have I been seeking comfort in food?

           How have my relationships and interactions with others been?

           How has my temper been?

           Have I had trouble concentrating?

           Have I lost interest in things I normally find enjoyable?

 

           Any one of these for a few days, or on occasion, is usually nothing to worry about.  Sometimes we feel sad or anxious.  Sometimes we are dealing with grief or trauma.  Feelings like these are good and normal reactions to the realities of life.  But, if you sense a difference in yourself, your habits, or your routines, and if you notice that it’s lasting for more than two weeks at a time, it’s something to notice and mention to your doctor, or your partner, or your parent, or your child, or your friend, or your rabbi or cantor.  That is part of what we are here for.  No, I am not a mental health professional.  But you know me, hopefully trust me, and you know, especially now, that I do not judge and that I only seek to make sure you get the right resources.  We are lucky as well that our Executive Director, Eileen, is a Licensed Social Worker.  If you’d feel more comfortable with one person over another, that’s ok.  The point is that you say something to someone before it becomes a crisis.

It’s up to us all to check on each other, too.  Ask your friends and family how they are doing.  If you notice your partner or your child staying in bed more than usual, or foregoing things they like to do, ask questions and seek help together or on their behalf.

Our tradition understands that there is a connection between the mind and body.  At the very beginning of our service, we opened with two blessings.  One was for our bodies, recognizing that the body is fragile and a delicate system.  If something doesn’t work as it’s supposed to, we wouldn’t be able to stand before God.  The second is for the soul, our neshamah.  While our ancestors did not in this blessing include language recognizing that our souls, even in their Divinely-given perfection, can be troubled, we know and understand this to be the case.

           Nothing can be made smooth without work.  If your insides feel rough, it’s time to say something.  On this day when we recognize that we will have a hard time keeping our promises, as we sang in our Kol Nidre, let us promise to do better when it comes to our mental health and wellbeing.  Let us promise to check in with ourselves and our loved ones.  Let us promise not to judge others who are struggling.  And let us promise to give our insides the attention they need.  Let us turn toward becoming a community that cares about mental health and healing for the mind, the body, and the soul.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah.

---

[1] https://www.samhsa.gov/mental-health

[2] https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/what-is-mental-illness and others

[3] BT Yoma 75a

[4] These questions are based on a list of symptoms to watch for from the National Institute of Mental Health: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/caring-for-your-mental-health

Kol Nidre 5784: A Life of Awe

 A version of this sermon was delivered on Kol Nidre at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregation, Wantagh, NY on Kol Nidre 5784.

           The time I spent at glass school this summer spanned two Shabbats.  On both of them, I made a point to go and pray.  There I was, on Friday night, following a road into the woods, past all the cabins, looking for a place with a great overlook of the sound below.  One thing I neglected to take into account, unfortunately, is that I was on the West Coast, so unlike our Shabbat on the beach, I was going to have to pray with my back to the beautiful view.  The water is on the wrong side of the land out there...  Luckily, the view of the tall trees is equally majestic.

           So, I found a place.  And, having scoped it out in advance, I knew I had a view of the water below and the skies above.  I knew I was surrounded by trees older than anyone I would ever know, towering into the heavens above.  And I also remembered that the mystics in Sefat would greet Shabbat on a cliff, overlooking the Mediterranean, watching the sun set, facing west, so I prayed Kabbalat Shabbat facing the water, and then turned to the east when I got to Barechu. 

The spot I picked had light that filtered through it and shone in a color I had never seen in light before.  An orange, amber glow, soft and ethereal.  I stood in that light, deep in prayer, I basked in God’s creation, and I made my way to the Psalm for Shabbat.

           I adjusted my tallit and I continued.

           Mizmor shir l’yom haShabbat, tov l’hodot l’Adonai!

           A song, a psalm for the Sabbath day, it is good to praise Adonai.

           I’m in the right place for it.  I’ve got the right view.

           It’s just me and God, so I’m singing out fully into the woods, over the cliff, my prayers hovering over the waters like the primordial spirit of God, making their way to the heavens, and all around me.  If someone had come upon me, I’m not sure what they would have thought.  But they would have seen me swaying to the rhythms of the prayers from my heart and soul, my fringes sweeping the underbrush.  They would have heard me, passionate and off pitch, praising God’s creation.

           Mah gadlu ma’asecha Adonai!

           How wonderful are your creations, Adonai!

           And finally, I understood the psalmist.  I knew where King David found the inspiration for these words.  I felt it.  I saw myself as ever so small under these giant, extraordinary trees, and even smaller compared to God and the universe.  I felt the light slipping away as the Earth turned toward its day of rest.

           Tzaddik katamar yifrach, ke’erez balvanon yisgeh.

           The righteous flourish like a palm, they shall thrive like the cedars of Lebanon. 

           The last words of the psalm exited my mouth, and I was still, tall trees towering above and around me.  It was quiet.  I took a deep breath.  Woah.  I was in awe.  I allowed myself to dwell in that moment, to bask in that awe, to let it wash over me like the amber light of the evening.  And soon I felt my face form into a smile, almost a laugh really, as I was overcome with a sense of the Divine, with a new understanding of awe.

I gotta tell you.  I felt like the Baal Shem Tov or Nachman of Bratzlav, communing with God in the woods.  It was freeing.  It was intimate.  It was personal.  It was expansive.  It was awesome.

           We call these the Days of Awe.  What do we mean when we say this word?  According to Dr. Dacher Keltner at Berkeley, “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.”[1]  Awe is an experience.  Awe is about opening up to something more.  On our calendar, these are the Days of Awe because we are supposed to open ourselves up, especially on Yom Kippur, to an experience of awe.  We are supposed to open ourselves to God, to possibility, to the community around us.  We are supposed to walk away from this 25-hour fast changed by that awe.

Awe makes us stop and say “woah.”  Literally.  A vocal expression of awe is among the most universally understood sounds.  It doesn’t matter where a person is from in the world, nine out of ten times, they will understand: “oooh,” “ahhh,” “wow,” and “woah.”  Anthropologists and linguists believe that as early as 100,000 years ago, our ancestors, before language had even been invented, were declaring their awe with a “woah.”[2]  Awe is at the core of what it means to be a human in this world.

In English, awe comes to us from the old Norse word agi.[3]  This word referred to fear, dread, horror, and terror.  In Hebrew, the origin of the term awe is similar.  We use the word awe to translate the word yirah, which is the same word in the Bible as fear.  Yira gives us the word Norah, like yamim nora’im, literally the days of awe.  We hear the word in Un’taneh Tokef, which describes the holiness of this day as awesome and full of dread.

One famous use of this verb we heard at Rosh HaShanah, on Moriah.  When the messenger of God stays Abraham’s hand, the rationale given is that now God knows that Abraham is “yirei Elohim.”[4]  So, which does it mean?  Is Abraham afraid of God, or in awe of God?  Well, there’s certainly beauty in thinking that it can mean both.  And on this day when we come face to face with God’s judgment and God’s mercy, it makes sense that fear and awe comingle. 

We often think of awe as stemming from an encounter with something big, grand, and overwhelming.  It sounds frightening.  The truth is that awe and fear share similar reactions but are actually not really near each other on the spectrum of human emotions.  Even though our language often puts fear and awe next to each other, our experiences don’t.  When plotted with other emotional experiences in a controlled experiment, subjects placed awe closer to admiration, joy, and aesthetic appreciation and far from fear, horror, and anxiety.[5] 

What’s the difference if at that moment on Moriah Abraham fears God or is in awe of God?  Fear can represent coercion.  Awe implies devotion.  If Abraham brought his son to the mountain out of fear, it means something entirely different than if he did so due to his awe of God.  Abraham’s relationship with God is one of awe, of being present with something that transcends the world.  And, if that’s Abraham’s relationship with God, that should be our relationship with God as well, for Abraham sets the model for us.  We are inheritors of awe!

           Awe makes us blurt out an “Amen.”  Awe makes us take a beat, take a moment, take it all in. 

           What is it that elicits awe?  What experiences cause us to have no choice but to instinctively declare: “Woah!”?  According to Dr. Keltner’s research, there are eight wonders of life that lead to an experience of awe. 

           We might think that most people, when prompted to describe a moment of experiencing awe, would relate something like the story I began with, a story of beauty in nature, or prayer.  But in actuality, the most prevalent source of awe was what Dr. Keltner describes as moral beauty:[6] experiencing other people’s courage, kindness, strength, or overcoming.  More than anything else, participants described witnessing another person channeling their better angels.  We elicit awe from others when we live lives of courage, kindness and strength.

           A second wonder of life is what Emile Durkheim called collective effervescence, where we feel like we’re buzzing or crackling with some life force that merges people into a collective self, a tribe, an oceanic “we.”[7]  Think of the wave at a football game.  You see it coming, you anticipate it, and collectively all around you, so does everyone else.  And when the undulating mass of humans makes its way toward your section, you join in, lift your arms and body and sit back down.  You were a small part in something much bigger.

           Third on this list is nature.  The fourth wonder is music.  It’s no wonder Taylor Swift concerts have yielded such a response.  The fifth is visual design.  The sixth wonder has to do with moments of deep spirituality.  The seventh with experiences of life and death, particularly birth moments and death moments.  The last wonder is the experience of an epiphany.

           All of these call us to moments when we see ourselves as part of something more.  All of these allow us to move away from our ego.  To sense more than ourselves.  To discover how we fit into that something more.  But awe is not a bingo card to fill out.  It’s not about collecting all eight to get to awe.  It only takes one moment in any category to feel awe.  It only takes one moment to take our breath away, to give us goosebumps, to wow us.

           All of Yom Kippur, if we allow it to be, can lead us to these wonders of life.  When we all chant together and beat our chests in unison at our great acrostic confessional, we feel that collective effervescence.  When our friends and family work hard to atone and to apologize and when we, also, make efforts to overcome our pride and find contrition: these can be moments of moral beauty for us and others.  We gather together in community for prayer.  We intone ancient melodies and words.  We implore God in moments of spiritual dedication.  The music of these services is grand and powerful.  We are called to consider our lives and come face to face with our mortality.  We invoke the memories of those we’ve lost.  We hopefully, by the end of the day, will come to some realization of who we hope to be in this next year. 

This whole day, Yom Kippur, HaYom, The Day, is an exercise in providing us moments of awe.  You may not blurt out a “woah” after the Vidui.  But if you take a moment to appreciate that hundreds of us here together, millions of Jews around the world, are all coming together to say these words on this day, the beating on your chest may take on a different feeling, especially if you open yourself up to it!  Our sins may be an alphabet of woe, but our worship is meant to be an acrostic of wow!

           Our ancestors, both ancient and more recent, put together this day of awe and passed it down to us.  And so there must be a point to it.  The reason, though, is not awe.  Awe is not the end goal.  Rather it’s what awe does for us.  Among other reactions, awe can make us less self-centered, ready to see the world differently, and more giving.

           In experiments conducted on awe and its effects, Dr. Keltner discovered that people who had experiences of awe and were then asked to take a selfie made themselves smaller in the photo than folks who did not have an awe experience.[8]  There was proportionally more background in the selfies of folks in awe.  Awe leads to a “small self.”  People who felt awe practiced tzimtzum, contraction, a divinely inspired quality of making space for others.  If we make space for others, we consider their opinion and we may be ready to reconcile. 

           Awe also undoes what psychologists call our default self, the part of us which focuses on how we distinguish ourselves from others, makes us competitive creatures, and helps us to achieve our goals.[9]  Modern society prioritizes this default self.  Awe is here to help us move toward our more communal natures, to remind us that while the self is important, it’s not the only thing; we’re part of something more, something greater.  Awe leads us to a more interdependent, collaborative understanding of the world.  More balance.  “We sense that we are part of a chapter in the history of a family, a community, a culture.”[10] 

In another experiment, participants were asked to help make paper cranes[11] for victims of the 2011 tsunami in Japan.  Those who had an awe-filled experience just before the request stayed longer and made more cranes than those who did not experience awe.  Awe can make us more giving and willing to offer our time.

It is awe that leads us to teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah.  It is awe that can help us to temper judgment’s severe decree, if only we let it!  Our traditions place before us a smorgasbord of awe on this day: from the Kol Nidre with its call to the heavenly court, to the reenactment of the service of the High Priest, to the story of Jonah who survives in the belly of a fish for three days, to the open aron tomorrow, as the sun is setting, and we rush to get our prayers in before the gates close and we usher God into the heavens with the last, long shofar blast.  Yom Kippur is a day of awe whose goal is that we make ourselves smaller, more communal, and more giving.

Awe makes us see the world differently.  Awe allows us to see what we don’t know, and to realize that we don’t know everything.  An experience of awe can be fleeting.  It’s also true that awe begets awe.  The more awe we experience, the richer it gets.[12]  Folks who went on an awe walk once a week over eight weeks found that their experience of awe increased over time, not decreased due to repetition as you might expect.  Awe begets awe.

Yom Kippur calls us therefore not to a day of awe, or ten, but to a lifetime of awe!  The awe we can feel over these 25 hours is meant to be taken with us so that we can live a life of awe.  A life where we value others.  A life where we see ourselves as part of a community.  A life where we give of ourselves.  A life where we do not believe we know everything.  A life where we see ourselves not at the center, but as part of something more, connected to others and to God.

The sun set on my prayer in those Washington woods.  The amber light faded.  The darkness descended upon me.  I took off and folded my tallit and trekked back to my cabin, reflecting on the experience feeling like I was reflecting God’s light. 

In 23 hours, the sun will set on our Yom Kippur prayers.  We’ll fold our tallits; we’ll put away the red books until next year.  But the awe will stay with us if we let it change us.

Our tradition gives us this day of awe to teach us to live a lifetime of awe.

 

G’mar Chatimah Tovah. 

---

[1] Keltner, Dacher PhD.  Awe: The Transformative Power of Everyday Wonder. 2023; Allen Lane. p 7

[2] Keltner. p 58

[3] Ibid. p 19

[4] Genesis 22:12

[5] Keltner. p 21

[6] Keltner 11

[7] Ibid p 13

[8] Ibid p 34

[9] Ibid p 34

[10] Ibid p 37

[11] Ibid p 41

[12] Ibid p 106

Erev Rosh HaShanah 5784: Sparking our Flames

 A version of this sermon was delivered on Erev Rosh HaShanah, 5784 at Temple B'nai Torah in Wantagh, NY.

            Many, if not most of you, may by now know that I spent a large part of my sabbatical time this past summer in the Pacific Northwest, traveling around, learning, seeing beautiful things, and then attending Glass Blowing School for 12 days at the renowned Pilchuk Glass School.  Over these next weeks, and probably longer, I’ll be excited to share about my experiences there and while traveling around that part of the world.  The experience was and continues to be inspiring for me.  I’m grateful to this community and Cantor Timman for affording me the time to be away.

            The Pilchuck Glass School was started in the 1970s by Dale Chihuly and his friends, setting up their temporary shop in the middle of a tree farm about 90 minutes north of Seattle.  This photo, taken by a classmate, Alyssa Miller, shows the sunsetting over the hotshop, whose furnaces never extinguish.  Each year over the summer, the school hosts a series of sessions with various classes offered in different glass disciplines. Here’s my class.  That’s me in the back.  There was glass casting, stained glass, and I was placed in a flameworking class, which is not the large-scale furnaces in a hot shop you may be familiar with.  Of course, they had quite the hot shop as well.  Flamework involves an individual flame in front of you which you use to melt, shape, and blow glass.  Here’s a photo of me at work at the flame, wearing special glasses to protect my eyes from its brightness. 

In order to flamework glass, you need two things…glass and a flame.  You light the flame, you introduce the glass, you keep it moving, and you melt, shape, form, combine, and stretch the glass.  Now this is not just any old flame in front of you.  For the glass that we are using, which is borosilicate or true PYREX glass, you need a lot of heat to get it to melt.  To get a flame that hot, you mix propane and oxygen. 

Now these torches we were using had inputs for both gases, and two knobs for each one, so that you could adjust the flame as needed to create differing flames of differing strengths to accomplish different tasks.  If, for example, you’re working on a small detail, you want a small, pointed flame.  If you need to melt a large gather of glass to molten, you need a dense, wide flame.  It’s a constant adjustment of flame size and composition.

In addition to the gas, of course, you need something to spark the flame.  You can use either a sparker that you squeeze, like you may recall from high school science and your Bunsen burner, or you can use a lighter.  Either way, there’s a correct order to lighting the gases and a real finesse to getting the mixture right.

But the sparks from the lighters were not the only sparks that were impactful to me.  There were other sparks, equally important for the many artists who spend their summer at Pilchuck.  Each night, the entire session gathered together for dinner.  Dinner was followed by slides and presentations by the visiting artists, teachers, and TAs, showing off their work and explaining their inspiration.  Almost without fail, each presentation included a description of the moment that the artist first saw glass art or a demonstration that sparked their passion for glass.  In order to devote your life to this art, which is expensive, time consuming, fickle, and dangerous, you have to have the passion for it, and that passion requires that spark.  As in glass, as in life.

Being surrounded by folks with such a passion for their art was inspiring in itself.  For some of these artists, both aspiring and established, everything, every aspect of their being has to go into the art: their hearts, their souls, and their might.  They are always thinking about it, feeling it deep within themselves.  They are guided by their desire to make this art because ever since that spark, they haven’t been able to put out the internal flame.  Even when their lives are hard and unpredictable, they choose not to leave it behind because they love it so deeply.

What is passion if not a deep love for something?  A love that encompasses all we are and all our decisions.  Passion means to love something entirely, with heart, soul, and might.  And as Jews we are commanded to be passionate.  We are commanded to summon our hearts, souls, and strength—our passion—to love God.  V’ahavta et Adonai eloheicha,[1] we chanted together a little while ago.  You shall love Adonai your God bechol levavcha, uv’chol nafshecha, uv’chol me’odecha.  We are supposed to be passionate about loving God.  It may sound redundant, that we’re supposed to love loving God.  Isn’t loving God enough?  Our tradition would seem to say no.  You might think v’ahavta et Adonai eloheicha would be enough.  The Torah comes to tell us that there’s more to it.

            What does our tradition understand this command to mean?  What does it mean to love God as a Jew, and what does it mean to do so with all our heart, soul, and might?  With the entirety of ourselves?

            “But wait, Rabbi, I’m not sure I even believe in God.  Have you looked at the world lately?”  That’s ok.  Because no matter how elusive God may be, love is less so for us.  So, if we’re having a problem with God, let’s start with love: v’ahavta.  It’s a seemingly simple command, yet can we command the love of another?  Isn’t love supposed to grow organically?  Rabbi Jonathan Sacks teaches that many other nations in the ancient world had systems of justice like the Israelites, but it is the Torah which originates the idea of love as a moral imperative.  We are commanded to love our neighbors and to love the stranger at the same time as we are commanded to love God.  Perhaps the focus here is indeed not on God, or the stranger, or the neighbor, but on the action, on the love. 

            Maimonides[2] explains that to love means to be obsessed, lovesick, so that all the time, no matter what we’re doing, we’re thinking, acting, and living with our beloved on our minds.  When love refers to God, Maimonides means that every action of our day, from waking in the morning to lying down at night, ought to be done with God on our minds.  With a sense that what we are doing in each moment serves to spread light, peace, mercy, and justice.  If we strive in every moment to live a life dedicated to morality and Jewish values, we’re loving God every moment.  It means we’ve become passionate for God.

You’d probably be less than surprised to learn that there’s some disagreement on how to understand the second half of our verse, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. 

B’chol levavcha, with all your heart.  Rashi says that this means that you are to love God without division, such that what we do is not at odds with what God wants.  Ibn Ezra says that heart means knowledge.  Ramban says that hearts means the power of desire. So, while Rashi tells us it’s about listening to God, Ramban and Ibn Ezra disagree with each other on what the heart represents.[3]

            B’chol Nafshecha, with all your soul.  Here, Ramban and Ibn Ezra disagree again.  Now, Ibn Ezra says that this is the spirit within, your nefesh, your divinely given breath and soul.  Ramban says that this is the intellectual capacity.  But they do both agree that within these two commands is a combination of mind and spirit.  So, we are to love God with all aspects of ourselves, our mind and our spirit.

            And then we get to b’chol me’odecha, with all your might.  Here, we find some agreement.  First, Rashi says that we have to love God no matter whether God sends us the good or the bad.  And then Ibn Ezra and Ramban agree that with all your might actually just means very, very much.  They pick up on me’odecha and hear in it me’od, very, like tov me’od, very good, as God calls creation in Genesis.  They both explain that the love must be fervent.  It must be passionate.

            But there’s an additional wrinkle to this last one because earlier than all these commentators, the Mishnah[4] suggests that with all your might should actually be rendered as “with all your wealth; [explaining that we are to] put our resources toward good purposes and to serve the Most High with everything we possess.”  Nineteen hundred years later, Rav Kook goes on to explain that this doesn’t mean that we are supposed to reject material things and comfort.  Rather, we are supposed to use these things we have to live fully, to cherish the world and its treasures in order to achieve a full measure of love which will then allow your heart to expand, which will in turn make you more giving as a person.[5]

We have to love God with our bodies, our spirits, our minds, and with great passion.  We have to love God by loving the life that God gave us.  And, like the gas in the flameworking torch, we often have to adjust to achieve the right balance. Sometimes we may need more heart than mind, and sometimes we may need more passion than spirit.  Each moment of every day requires a different combination of loving God, and I promise you, if my experience with the flame can be your guide, sometimes the mixture will just be wrong.  And it will take practice to get it right more often than not.  And that’s ok, even helpful, because the effort of loving God, according to Rabbi Adin Stensaltz[6], will be enough to lead you to where you need to be.  Striving for love leads to love.  This is why it’s not enough to love God.  We have to love loving God.

But to light that flame, we also need that spark.  And so, as we embark on this new year, let us all ask ourselves, what will spark our passion in 5784?  Will it be prayer or meditation?  Do you need to turn up the knob on your spiritual self?  Will it be study?  Do you need to increase the amount of Torah in your life?  Will it be spreading tzedek, justice?  We could all turn up that knob more often.  No matter what it is, your temple is here to help.  Seek out your flame with us this year. 

Kindling a flame ushers in the holy days.  Kindling our personal flames ushers holiness into our lives.  As we add our hearts, our souls, and our mights, our flames of love grow stronger until we cannot help but fulfill those commandments.  May our flames burn strong this year.  May 5784 be a shanah tovah and a shanah shel ahavah.  A good year, and a year of love.

---

[1] Deut 6:5ff

[2] MT, Laws of Repentance 10:3

[3] Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Ramban on Deut 6:5

[4] Berachot 9:5 referenced in Mishkan HaNefesh for YK p 31

[5] Referenced in MHN for YK p 31

[6] Pebbles of Wisdom