Exodus, Passover, Divine Emanations, Revelation
Shabbat Shalom. Tonight we begin two days of the Omer, Gevurah Shebe Chesed, Strength within Covenantal Love.
Tonight I will try to weave together Passover, Divine Emanations, and the journey toward Revelation.
I have officially finished reading The Exodus, by Richard Elliott Friedman. So, in Friedman’s understanding, the Levites were a group of people who left Egypt and became attached to Israelites and Judeans.
These people were joined to the Egyptians, traveled through Midian, and then became joined to the Israelites. The probable origin of their name, Levites, is to join / attach oneself.
The Levites quickly became the priests and teachers of the native people. And their stories became integrated into the wider understanding of origins. So instead of saying “you came out of Egypt,” everyone said “we came out of Egypt.” And so it remains.
What did the Levites bring with them? They brought the Proper Name of God, yud, hay, vav, hey. They brought the idea of Only One God. And they taught us to be kind to the stranger, because we were strangers in the land of Egypt.
See, our history didn’t go from polytheism straight to monotheism. Just as the Hebrew language distinguishes between pairs and plural, so too did the people believe their god had a mate. El had Asherah. The Levites threw out Asherah, merging El with their One God. So begins complete male domination of religious history and history writ large.
Whether or not our ancestors actually came out of Egypt, they certainly enjoyed the metaphor. More than anything else, that theme: of God acting in history, is repeated in every prayer service, not just on Passover. God brought us out of the land of Egypt to be our God. Worship God because He has drawn you out with signs and with wonders.
How do we engage with this story if we don’t believe in a God who acts directly in history? Why would God be so active against Pharaoh and so silent against Hitler?
We’ve bumped up against another reason my reading of the Bible rarely focuses on the p’shat level. The plain meaning of the words, the lives of ancient people who sacrificed animals – it’s interesting, but it’s not particularly relevant to my life.
So what is relevant?
The thousands of years of interpretation that are built around this text.
The concept of the inner Pharaoh: the Inclination Toward Destructiveness who challenges our forward movement. The one that calls us back to our smartphones and mindless TV.
Pharaoh is the pull towards pretending everything is normal and that Covid doesn’t move through the blood to cause long-term and unknown damage to every system in our bodies.
And how do I fully leave Mitzrayim? It can’t happen just by reading the ancient story or the new PJ Library version of the story or any particular story.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a Greco-Roman feast as much as the next Jew, and I’m very, very attached to Seder and the Jewish calendar. Every 14th of Nisan, I look up at the moon and remember how much I missed my family when I was in college. I remember how much comfort I received from ancient Chinese poems about connecting with the same moon as loved ones who were far away. (It’s a random thing I studied in college, long before I met my Chinese husband.)
I particularly loved having my son help me read the end of the seder, from the blessing after the meal, through Hallel and the weird songs.
Yet, none of that really pushes me out of Egypt. I’d still be zombie walking towards building a Golden Calf if not for the Omer Count.
Not the simple “today is one day after the barley harvest.” Rather, step by step into the flowing Essence of Divinity. I’m a Neo-Platonist. I believe that we can never know the True Essence of God. Rather, we can reach towards God level by level. These Emanations are ordered, though circuitously. The upper three are in a mystical realm. The lower seven engage with everyday material reality. We don’t start at the one closest to us. We reach towards the overflow that creates reality.
Olam Chesed Yivaneh. The whole world, All of Reality, is created through Chesed.
What is Chesed? Our ancestors knew it as Covenantal Love. God chooses us and we choose God. We co-create a covenantal relationship and each side of the relationship has obligations, responsibilities.
Others have described it as LovingKindness. Though, to be perfectly honest, I could never figure out what difference was made by adding kindness to loving.
Me, I enjoy flowing into Grace. That love God gives us because God is Love.
Tonight begins the second day of the Omer. So we add a refraction to Chesed. Gevurah Shebe Chesed. Din Shebe Chesed. The strength within Chesed. The judgment within Chesed. The world was made through love because if Judgment reigned supreme, the world would be destroyed. None of us are perfect. The goal was never perfection.
The goal is to wake up to the opportunity to evolve. The opportunity to live into ourselves more fully. The blessing of making space for the souls within us and the souls around us.
So we judge within love. We gain strength through love.
We know that the people around us are doing the best they can. No one can live up to rigid expectations. We can only sink into the reality of our lives and allow ourselves to be guided by Love. We must Love ourselves, accept ourselves. Then we move outward and love our neighbors as we love ourselves. We move further beyond ourselves and recognize that our obligations don’t end at our species: we must love all living things, including the Planet Earth, as we love ourselves. And all of our thoughts, feelings, and actions need to be guided by this Love, Strengthened by this Love. Our Judgments must align with this Love. This is our task. This is what it’s all about. Holding Chesed and Gevurah in Balance. Knowing that these values are truly real and that by taking them seriously, we live more authentic lives.
Thank you for being on this journey with me. Shabbat Shalom and Happy Passover.
Book Mentioned
Photo by pascal claivaz.