Genesis Cycle Four Vayishlach

Vayishlach

Three times a week I go to the yoga studio. I practice Bikram. The room is hot and we do the same asanas or positions every class, same full minute for each. I like the repetition. The asanas penetrate beyond our consciousness. It’s like Torah. We study the same parasha cycle after cycle and drink-in something new each time….much more than we even recognize.

Recently I managed to do a heart-opening position much deeper. Right afterwards, I felt tears. A new vibration of light had entered. I wasn’t quite sure how it had happened. Certain prayers like the Yotzer Or have the same effect. I don’t analyze it. I simply accept and allow myself to be healed. In this case, it was joyous but it also hurt in an inexplicable joy/pain way. As I continued with the other positions a thought hit me. About the sciatic nerve. Rabbinic students might consider the sciatic nerve when you might least expect it. In any case, there are several mentions of it or the thigh in Torah. It’s a tender point. And this week is the major sciatic nerve parsha. Vayishlach.

This is what happens. Jacob has sent ahead his whole family and all his belongings … to meet with his brother Esau who he hasn’t seen in decades and who has sworn to kill him. While Jacob is waiting to leave an angel visits him. He wrestles with the angel who touches the sciatic nerve on Jacob and dislocates his thigh. This is when Jacob takes on the name of Israel.

Now, just to make this clear, I do manage to empty my mind during yoga…except sometimes…So I catch all thoughts carefully with my mind-net and stare at them. I don’t dissect them. I let them live. But I stare real hard, at the colors, the weight, the overall expanse.

This is what I found that day in my mind-net. Yoga does for the body as Judaism does for the sciatic nerve. Judaism is the yoga of the sciatic nerve.

Quite an idea. Perhaps I should explain that the yoga room is really hot. But I think the idea merits some exploration.

At that time I hadn’t done much research on the nerve itself. I just knew it was in the thigh and that it’s the subject of many pages of Talmudic meanderings. It felt esoteric. In other words, I had already placed the sciatic nerve into the holy heart of metaphor. I wasn’t thinking of medical and science books. I was imagining an extra unseen conduit (or appendage) connecting each of our human bodies…beyond our mind…to God. Sort of like an organ that might enable a sixth sense. The ear enables hearing. The eyes enable sight. In this paradigm in my opinion the sciatic nerve enables consciousness. And though this might seem like a really non-traditional take on it we only need to look at our sages for support. In Pirkei Avot 2:1 for example Rabbi Judah…and this rabbi compiled the Mishnah…that’s how important he is… says we need to have an observant eye and an attentive ear. He also says this though: to look above. What’s above? God. The universe. Rabbi Judah therefore wants us to have some consciousness. Cut to Mishnah Chullin and Rabbi Judah wants us to have great consciousness of the sciatic nerve. The prohibition against eating it extends to the past to the present to the future to where we are on the path to right and left to in and out of Israel. This prohibition is so expansive and the details of the teaching are such…that you know he’s not just looking at a physical body organ. We’re looking at something much greater.

Here’s one angle on it. We all know we don’t need our appendix anymore. The sciatic nerve could very possibly therefore (in this paradigm) not be doing something because we are not quite ready for it yet. This might sound like a stretch of reality but I have to admit I’m not alone in this stretch either. Think of the writings of scholars and rabbis like Buber, Kushner, Nachman, and going back about a thousand years, Rabbi Akiva. All of these writers point out quite explicitly that there’s a lot that we as humans have the potential to access, whether we are using our built-in potential or not. As Yoga cleanses our bodies (therefore) Judaism cleanses our transforming connection to the radiant unknown.

Here’s another interpretation of the sciatic nerve. We read in Talmud that the angel was sent by Esau. And was therefore a messenger of darkness. The Sfat Emet has pointed out that Jacob was in a higher place than the angel from the start. Meanwhile though, the fact that the angel touched Jacob, according to mystics, means that Jacob was brought down…was wounded…by his struggle. And what this means is the sciatic nerve has now become the achilles heal of Judaism. It has become the available grip with which others can drag us down. Sure enough, we are all influenced by energies every day. We can be in near-perfect frames of minds and the negativity of a friend can swing us into despair in a matter of moments. I remember once going on a vacation with someone close to me. I had a great time. When we got back though all he could do was talk about the moments that were a struggle. This same person would go to the dog park on a beautiful evening, the grass glistening, the sun orange and red, the heat cooling off quickly. And he immediately would stare into the dog-excrement container. So suddenly the dog poo would not only be his it would be mine as well. Because like Jacob I have that Achilles heel. I’m not fleet of foot enough. I’m not beyond the yetzer harah as flung at me by others, especially close friends. I admit I can also upset people at times. Especially when I’m tired or sick.

Moving on to bigger pictures, what about our political position both in America and Israel? How hard to have to engage in battle knowing that we will come out touched and even in a slight way twisted…that in some way our soul/body will not be able to remain at its height. Think of emergency nurses, doctors, lawyers, teachers, social workers, counselors, and yes rabbis. Think of ourselves. For many of us it is our profession to delve into a perpetual struggle with people who need healing from shadows that can easily aggravate our own. In this interpretation, Judaism stretches and brings strength to the weakest piece in each of us….the funnel that is connected to the yetzer harah. Given this way-of-seeing the sciatic nerve we could say this: As Yoga brings healing to our bodies, Judaism does the same to the tender point…the organ that no doubt needs to be continually massaged with our true light.

These two interpretations reflect each other and at certain places of awareness actually merge. On Purim for example we are instructed to move beyond both light and darkness, good and evil, to embrace the radiant meeting point. I’m not saying this is easy. I am saying however that our sciatic-nerve- influenced behavior will be the same given both interpretations because ultimately they are the same. The sciatic nerve is clearly a human organ with a dual spiritual capability.

This reminds me of a conversation I recently had with a friend and teacher. It was cold, frost glazing each twig and blade of grass. The sun was exploding in the vivid blue sky and the earth was shimmering. The ground was wet, the rocks on the stream slippery. My friend walks fast. You have to race to keep up.

“I’m writing on the sciatic nerve, “ I said.

He smiled.

“What is it? Where is it?” I asked.

“Somewhere in the thigh.”

“Yeah, but where?”

“What are you writing about?”

I got excited. I told him about my interpretation.

“It’s the closest place to God,” I said. “I mean the angel touches it. It’s what connects us to angels. This is how God connects to Jacob. I mean, isn’t that amazing? There’s all this mishnah on it because it’s our holiest organ. It’s way beyond the physical. It’s in the heightened realms.”

“What if it’s the farthest away from God?” he asked.

That sounded ominous to me. He continued.

“What if the angel is reaching to embrace all of humanity and therefore touches the lowest, farthest part of Jacob?”

“Could be,” I said.

We were walking on the same path, heading for the same place, using the same language, with the same ultimate knowledge. No doubt we were talking about the same thing. Two interpretations. Mirror image.

Now let’s take a glance at the world of science. The sciatic nerve is the largest and widest single nerve in the human body. It begins in the lower back and runs through the behind and down the leg on the outside of the thigh to the foot. The upper part creates little branches that supply the hip joint.

So it’s clearly important to us physically. Whether it is our closest point to God or our farthest, it supplies the thigh with feeling. And the thigh is also mentioned in Torah several times. First, if we look at Genesis 24:2 Abraham asks his servant to place his hand under his thigh to make a vow. We see this later in Genesis when Jacob asks Joseph to vow to him that he will not allow him (Jacob) to be buried in Egypt. In our culture, it seems like an odd thing to do…place a hand under a thigh to show sacred integrity of intention. Later (according to Aryeh Kaplan) in Talmudic times the man making a vow would place his hand near the holy sign of the covenant. And even later (according to Shavuot 38b) the hand would be placed on the Torah scroll. The holiness of the thigh is clear in Genesis 40:26, Exodus 1:5 and Judges 8:30 where descendants are born from the thigh of their father. When the angel touches Jacob..his sciatic nerve…and dislocates his thigh…it could very well be seen as not an action of violent intention. But one of light-force. We see this because Jacob calls the place where he wrestled with the angel…Peniel…saying because I saw God face to face. In my opinion Jacob has recognized the higher vibration of the angel and how the touch…even in a place as holy as the thigh…can hurt. Why? Because right at the center of our holiest place is found our deepest shadow. Right at our closest to God we find ourselves farthest. The powerful vibration can transform Jacob but not without a spiritual and physical shake-up. Therefore the dislocation. To simplify, every time we let God touch that spot we give up body in pieces to get soul…in pieces…until finally we give up all of body and become soul. This wasn’t harm being done. This was healing.

Intimacy with God is a continual theme in Torah and we can only imagine the powerful sciatic nerves of Abraham and Moses as covenants are established, revelation is accomplished and the Promised Land is approached.

I also want to mention that we can’t forget about our battles with the Midianites, about our own need to raze the land of our enemies, the devestation of Shiloh in this parsha and the recurring theme of Amalek. Given these themes of darkness in Torah…and all of the prohibitions… it would seem absurd to me that our connecting organ…our sciatic nerve…doesn’t in some way deal with the yetzer harah. Why would God want to materialize only our beauty and our closeness and leave our weakness in some un-defined blur? Why would there be an appendage to touch God but not one to clean up our mistakes? It would be like a doctor supplying a man with preventive medicine when he already has a condition…the human condition. The doctor, one would think, would want to write out an extremely generous prescription for a drug that could soften anger, jealousy, doubt, and fear.

The sciatic nerve therefore as I have said is both the closest we can be to God and the farthest…concurrently. It is both the organ that no doubt needs to be continually massaged with our true light and that closest conduit/connection that we have to the radiant unknown. It is our responsibility as Jews to guard and protect it.

This is what the Sfat Emet says about the struggle of Jacob:

Our sages say they raised up dust that rose up as high as the Throne of Glory. This hints at the tradition telling us that Jacob’s form is engraved on the Throne of Glory. But in that case the power of the struggle with the “yetzer harah” reaches that high. Thus it is written “There is a hand raised over the throne of God” meaning that God swears the Throne of Glory will not be whole until Amalek’s name is wiped out. But can it really mean that there is some imperfection on God’s glorious throne? That rather means that God’s glory cannot be revealed in this world as long as Amalek exists. So too…the spreading forth of Jacob’s power and the revealing of his true form….that too cannot happen in a full way.

I understand this is a bit complicated. This is how I see it…that maybe if Jacob did not have the yetzer harah within him his thigh would not have been dislocated. The struggle with the angel would have had a very different result…one that I do not have the ability to know.

How do we deal with the sciatic nerve? Well, like I said we guard it. We don’t eat it. When we eat something we fully incorporate it, take it in, let it blend with our veins and organs. It melds with us. When it comes down to it, eating something is using it for physical survival in the world of the mundane. The sciatic nerve is too holy to undergo this process. We want to keep it in its altered place…whether above or below us. We want to raise our consciousness of it no matter our location or our place on the path. If we are in the Promised Land or not.

What would it mean here and now to raise our focus of our organ of consciousness? How can we avoid eating it? What would we need to do? No doubt, there would need to be a balance of intellectual, physical and spiritual stimulation, a closeness that could seem like a confrontation. There would need to be our dedication to balance and flow so that as Jacob, we would not experience dislocation. Study, music, prayer, active participation in the arts, chanting, nature, a dedication to raising sparks either through kind words or actions…and/or through visualization. One person says something and it can really have an exponential effect. For example a teacher says…you did that really well…and the world shines. We pass the same comment to our students and to our children and suddenly the world is shining exponentially. There also could be an acceptance to new methods of heart openings….the openness to our physicality through yoga or movement so that the work on the sciatic nerve ( both metaphoric and actual) becomes habitual, regular, a way-of-life for everyone. Ah paradise.

So the next time you’re in a negative situation focus-in on the sciatic nerve. That’s my guess. For me, that would mean remembering that moment in yoga that almost brought tears. It means taking care of the body. It means whenever possible choosing the angels with whom you want to wrestle and no doubt, maintaining a sense of humor. Finally, it helps to have the humility to ask the person who is being negative for a blessing. By doing that you lift the friend up immediately to the place of blessing. This is huge. That’s what Jacob does with his angel. In other words, once his thigh has been dislocated and he is in that place of joy/pain and thrown back on himself…once he has realized suddenly that he has forgotten the sciatic nerve and so now he has been dislocated…Jacob asks for a blessing from the angel..and he gets one.

I want to end this teaching with two quotes by Rabbi Nachman. First…If you could turn a person inside out you could see that thousands upon thousands of worlds depend on every single sinew of his body.

And next…As soon as God gives you the opportunity to do something holy, do it at once.