Pinky Swear

We were studying Bresheet together over the summer.
I’ve been in this text before, but for my student it was new.
New and confusing and hard to get into.
This was the text she wanted to study. She was curious about the snake. She was curious about all of it.
And she was frustrated that God hadn’t just put a fence around the Tree if it was so important that Eve and Adam not eat from it.
Or plant it somewhere else. Or not create them to be curious.
But so much of it seemed inaccessible to her and I could see the frustration on her face on the other side of the screen.

So I took a plant off of the shelf behind me and put it in front of my face.
“I’m Eve,” I said from behind the plant.
“What are you doing?” asked my student.
“I am hiding,” I said. “And you are God.”

God: “Why are you hiding?”
Eve: “I’m embarrassed.”
God: “Because you ate the fruit?”
Eve: “Well, yeah. And because you said . . . well, you said not to. And . . . I’m scared.”
God: “Why are you scared?”
Eve: “I’m scared you’ll be mad at me. Are you mad at me?”
God: “Yes. You ate something I told you not to.”
Eve: “Well, but why did you put it where I could so easily get to it? Why didn’t you put a fence around it? Why didn’t you plant it somewhere else?”
God: “I don’t know.” God shrugged. “I’m new at this.”
Eve: “What happens now?”
God: “You are going to know things.”
Eve: “Why didn’t you want me to know things?”
God: “Because I was worried about you getting hurt. But, now you have eaten from the tree. You’ll get hurt and stuff. But, I guess it’s okay.”
Eve: “Why is it okay?”
God: “I don’t know. But it seems like it is.”
Eve: “What else happens?”
God: “You have to leave the Garden.”
Eve: “Will I be alone?”
God: “No,” she paused. “Adam will be with you.”
Eve: “Where will you be?”
God: “Everywhere.”
Eve: “You are outside the Garden, too?”
God nodded.
Eve: “So, I won’t be alone?”
God: “No.”
Eve: “And you’ll still be with me.”
God nods: “Yeah. I’ll still be with you. It will just be different.”
Eve: “Pinky swear?” I reached out toward my camera with my pinky.
God: “Pinky swear.” God smiled and reached back toward me.
We pinky swore through the screen, folding distances of all kinds.

Since that evening in July, not long after my dad died, I’ve intended to share our Torahprov, Bibliodrama, Storahtelling, whatever you want to name it during this week of Bresheet - this week of beginning again. I had so many ideas of how I might frame it, and what I might say about it. I haven’t gotten to it until these last moments before Shabbat because this week wasn’t that kind of week. This week my heart has been broken and beaten and made raw. So raw. This week from scraping myself out of bed until crawling back into it I have been doing my best to take care of people and love people and explain the impossible-to-explain to my students in age-appropriate ways. I’ve been listening to their parents. I’ve been leading minyan and going to minyan and holding peaceful prayer spaces. I’ve been going to listening spaces and bearing witness as Israelis who survived last Saturday’s terrorist attack shared their stories. Horrific stories. I will not watch videos, but if someone needs me to listen to them and affirm their humanity and witness their experience I will do it - no matter how much it hurts. I’ve been loving Israel, and praying that Israel will be there for the queer Israelis and the Israelis who have been protesting for democracy and the Arab Israelis and all who have stepped up to defend Israel when we get to the moment after this moment. I have been praying about and caring about the Palestinian folks who like me are on the side of those who want peace and justice and life and dignity and security for everyone. There are many sides, not two, and that’s the side I’m on. I don’t know how we get there, but I know that’s where I’m standing. I’m listening to Dr. Vivek Murthy’s book, Together, mostly because Rabbi Rabbi Sharon Brous said we should, and while the ideas in it aren’t exactly new to me they are now informing everything I think and do. It’s about loneliness. And maybe that’s partly why just after Yom Kippur I agreed to open the “Jewish and Still COVIDing in Minnesota” Facebook group up to Jewish still COVIDing folks anywhere in the world and we ballooned from 12 members to 170+ in just this short time. I am still the only admin. We are a space of folks who identify as Zionist and Anti-Zionist and Non-Political and “I don’t know where I fit in these labels anymore” and all kinds of ways trying to protect a shared space together and create real community together for Jewish people who are marginalized in so many intersectional ways in particular because we are still masking and taking a range of protective precautions. And apparently we are doing that Right. Now.

I am in a fog.
I can barely remember what it was I was thinking in July.
I can barely remember what it was I was thinking fifteen minutes ago.
I don’t know what I thought I would have to say about our pinky swear, but I do remember this:

In that moment I was 100% pinky swearing with God.

My students sometimes ask me what I believe God is. They assume I believe in God because I’m a rabbi, which is a reasonable but not actually reliable assumption. I say the best words I’ve found to describe what it is I believe in, what I believe is God, and I mean them, but they are always missing some essential sparkle that I can’t quite put into language. And we talk about it - these big ideas we collectively call God even though each of us means something a little different. We talk about the seemingly limitless list of names Judaism has for God and that this is partly why.

This student of mine? She never asked me.
I did ask her, and she shrugged.
“I do believe in God . . . I think,” she said. “But what God is?” she shrugged again. “I have no idea.”

After we pinky swore I asked her if she had any new thoughts about God.
“Maybe God gets confused by us sometimes,” she said.
Hmmm. Maybe.
“Maybe God is just trying to be with us . . . somehow, you know?” she said.
Yeah, I thought.
“And maybe,” she paused, thoughtfully. “This isn’t about God, but maybe we just want, I don’t know . . . you know when we reach out,” she reached out a little with her pinky and then dropped her hand in her lap, “maybe we just want . . .” she shrugged and stopped.
“More to say?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Maybe,” I said gently, “maybe we just want to feel God, or something, reaching back?”
She nodded.
Did she have tears in her eyes?
I can’t say.
I was looking at her through water.

Shabbat Shalom.