Exodus Cycle Four Sh'mot

Sh'mot

Today I received an email from someone I thought I respected. In it he spoke out against women rabbis. This is for him.

Today we all, male and female, begin the parasha Sh’mot. And with top-notch credentials. After all Joseph is close to royalty as you can get. And we are in the clan. We get to drive that Porche. Not because of anything we did. Our behavior. But because of the family web. Because of what we were born with. We get the best tables in the four star restaurants, the hottest slaves south of the Jordanian desert, the most gilded idols. We are bought in and paid for, thank you very much. It’s a nice ride. We can say our grandfather or our grandfather’s cousin or the brother of our great aunt’s husband…that he was Joseph. And as we experience more generations we can still say rather smugly….I am by the way a descendant of the grand vizier Joseph.

So few of us came in…70 in all with Jacob…but look how many there are of us now!

As it says in Torah…seventy souls came into Egypt with Jacob…kol nefesh yitzeh yerech yakov sheva’im nefesh…Then Joseph dies… v’kol achiv v’kol hador hahu…and all his brothers and all of that generation…uvney yisrael paru v’yishratzu v’yirbu v’yatzmy… and all of the sons of Israel were fruitful and teeming and multiplied and became very strong…and the land was very filled with them.

But wait…..Where does it say how we acted…what we were doing…to each other? Where does it describe our behavior system and our faith during this important time? All we know is that we are teeming on the earth…like the slithery things in Genesis. There is nothing else to describe us but this action. Not consciousness. Not kindness. Just our growth and teeming. It’s as if we have gotten stuck on our own selves. Where else are there slithery things? In Leviticus 11: 21 right after the death of Nadav and Avihu. These slithery things, the very center of the Torah-letters, the black fire, the commentary, they stay on the earth. Stuck. Compare that to Nadav and Avihu who get zapped to the holy radiance above. What next? How to deal with such a dichotomy?

Let’s look back a bit at Joseph. We know that he turns loss to gain, drought to abundance. He gets it like the perfect yogi, moderation and balance, consciousness. Jagged cliffs of the black fire are unheard of or clearly marked. There’s time to love, time to pray, time to think of long blessings and to create long funeral arrangements, time for rhythm, time to rise to God, openings. Dreams push the voice of God into the real world. People follow the Pharoah who listens to Joseph. He sets the example. He forgives and has compassion even for his brothers who sell him into slavery.

Let’s bring this state-of-mind to now. This means balance, respect for family, for ethnicity, natural kindness, natural lack-of-judgment Knowing God from the inside, that inner pulse. Helping others embrace their darkness. This means a reach for any tool that levels mountains and raises valleys so all land is Mt Sinai. Every moment is a burning bush. Every burning bush is Mt Sinai. Words bow to the light pulsing out of them, to the millions of vibrations within each letter. Chesed…the flow from God… is top priority not because boundaries don’t matter but because they are already set, defined, dependable and secure.

Thanks to Joseph.

Women as well rise above the words-literal meaning and encompass more than can be found in the black print. Any intention to degrade or hurt is stopped by this responsibility. The boundaries that we so cling to today are not necessary because (like Jacob) we are already gifted with the knowledge of a future redemption, the boundaries of the eternal. We already are doing the work. We already are knowing that we aren't just born into it, man and woman alike. The strict literal interpretation of Torah is obsolete. The conflict around the role of women is in the past.

The question is how did we lose this potential and become teeming on the earth? There was certainly a downfall, a time of complete forgetfulness, a loss of the key to Torah and to metaphor. Something that would mark us soon as slaves.

Yes soon, it would take a prophet to raise us out of our behavioral slump, to repeat the promise of Joseph, pakad yipkad. It would have to be someone who has been conditioned beyond words, who has picked up somehow the power of transmission and dream states, someone who can confront the pharaoh, who can learn how to pick up a snake by the tail…a snake by the way has the same gematria as the meshiach… so that it once again can become his staff, who has the faith to see miracle.

Man or woman, male rabbi or female rabbi…….we can all have this faith to hear and see. If we apply redemption…how we see it…to this world now…that is the way. To bring in the whole chorus, pull all the ropes, figure all the ways of the fallen Temple, probe into ancient minds and how they could have possibly entered into God. Moses and Ruth, Deborah and Joseph…ourselves with the bits of enlightenment that can with work be pieced together.

As for myself, the other day I had just finished studying from the sefer Torah and I was out hiking, flying with Jacob and redemption and Rashi on my mind. Suddenly about ten feet in front, a baby bear crossed my path. I stopped. The Momma followed. I didn’t feel fear. I admit though…I forgot what to do. There are rules around these events. Was I to run? Act big? The Momma stopped and stared at me. Her eyes were huge. I returned her stare for a split second and then looked down, shut my eyes, tried to make my body dissolve. Felt a wash of light, a pillar, rush through me. I brought the light in, did it knowingly. Maybe the bear still staring would only see that light. I felt the eyes for around three minutes, a long moment of questioning, eternal wells. Now that I think of it, they seemed to be a witness of the generations between Moses and Joseph, the shadow of the world this moment, centuries of self-destructive myopic literal thinking, centuries in which women have been trash in brothels, sold women, witch women, all of us made for babies and sauce-making, servants, concealed and there for husbands only. Now that I think of it, I felt the bear questioning me how long I’d put up with it….. all the restraints enslaving both of us there that minute. I was facing my own impermanence and using it to save my body. I was saving my soul by facing the shadow of the whole human story continually revolving. I was in God that moment.

Then the bear moved on.

And I continued walking. That was it for me at least until the next time. And hopefully the next experience would not force me into the presence of a man or a woman-killing beast.

This is the point though. We can grasp a tiny piece of that burning bush day after day as we deal with issues that seem to be much bigger than ourselves. We can face our own burning bush, look into the face of God both in light and in shadow. We can do it with small actions. Picking up someone’s dropped bag. Holding the door open for a friend. Calling someone you love., This is the only way to pull ourselves and our people up from the swarming creatures of the earth, out of those Porches, through the window and gliding on strobes of light that rush and swirl way above and beyond time or gender or anything disgusting that anyone might say. This is the way to move out of the slavery cycle, earn our ancestry. It’s together and rising, man and woman, as we accept our growth into the white space with respect, focus, open hearts and love. And it’s ours to do.