Malchut shebe Malchut
Nobility/Sovereignty within Nobility/Sovereignty
Tuesday evening June 11 and Wednesday June 12
Who am I walking with today?
You.
Hod shebe Malchut
Humility/Gratitude within Nobility/Sovereignty
Saturday evening June 8 and Sunday June 9
Shavua Tov
“I love this walk,” he says. “It’s so good every year. Farede Aklum,” the man walking near me introduces himself. He is wearing a light blue button down shirt.
“Samira,” says the woman in a red flowered dress.
“You know,” says Farede, “I read the bit you wrote about Judith. Did you know there is another Judith in our story? A queen.”
“Queen Judith?” I ask, unfamiliar.
Gevurot shebe Malchut
Strength/Judgment/Boundaries within Nobility/Sovereignty
Wednesday evening June 5 and Thursday June 6
I want to be in the tent listening when Esther, Batya, Miriam, and Yocheved stay up all night talking strategy. I want to be standing beside them when Esther and Ruth rinse their feet in the river to cool them and share stories about their families. I want to have my own cup of tea and be sitting near the fire when Esther, Judith, Yael, and Deborah reminisce about directly confronting power. I want to be a silent witness when Esther and Dina hold each other in deep understanding. Most of all I want more time with her.
“What is the legacy of Ruth and Boaz?” I ask. “If not King David?”
Chesed shebe Malchut
Lovingkindness within Nobility/Sovereignty
Tuesday evening June 4 and Wednesday June 5
I don’t think she hears me. Her steps have quickened and as she approaches the back of a man about her height who has crossed in front of us she reaches out her arm and rests her hand on his shoulder. When the man stops and turns I see his green and brown eyes light up. They embrace, holding one another close. The throng moves like a river around them.
Malchut shebe Yesod
Nobility/Sovereignty within Foundation
Monday evening June 3 and Tuesday June 4
Fourteen people have come up around me.
Seven and seven.
Some of them are walking quietly, some are talking loudly, some are in a signed conversation communicating with their facial expressions as much as their hands . . . a few are laughing.
These are the attendants of Batya and Esther, and today, a day of Malchut before the week of Malchut they have joined me.
Yesod shebe Yesod
Foundation within Foundation
Sunday evening June 2 and Monday June 3
I look up to a sky full of clouds and think about that one - the first cloud to hold a rainbow. I think about the cloud Moses entered when he went up the mountain. I think about what Rabbi Strausberg offers us, that the rainbow itself said to Moses, “Take me with you. When you go up on the mountain, when you are before God, you are going to need all of this color.”
Hod shebe Yesod
Humility and Splendor in Foundation and Bonding
Saturday evening June 1 and Sunday June 2
Shavua Tov
40 are the days of night and day rain in Noah’s generation.
40 are the days Moses was on Mount Sinai before he returned with the stone tablets.
40 are the days we waited for him under the mountain.
40 are the days between the first day of Elul until Yom Kippur.
40 are the four sides of the world according to the Kabbalah, each containing ten Sefirot.
40 are the se’ahs (a measure of water) of a mikveh - a ritual bath.
40 are the years in the wilderness.
40 are the years at which - according to the Talmud (Avot 5:26) - a person transitions from one level of wisdom to the next.
40 are the days the spies scouted the Land.
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Gevurah shebe Yesod
Strength and Boundaries in Foundation and Bonding
Wednesday evening May 29 and Thursday May 30
אני הולכת הביתה. | ani holekhet ha'bayita. | I am going home
“Na’eem m’od,” says the donkey kindly, blinking as she tilts her head this way and that, sizing me up. “Who are you?” she asks. “Where are you going?”
“You know who I am,” I respond, because of course she does.
“Well I don’t have to tell you that it’s been a while,” she huffs.
“No,” I agree. “You don’t.” Not that it’s been that long.
Hod shebe Hod
Splendor/Gratitude in Splendor/Gratitude
Saturday evening May 25 and Sunday May 26Shavua Tov!
Lag Ba’Omer
With gratitude to Jewish authors and storytellers every where and every time.
“Forty-nine days is one beat of a sunbird’s wing.”
The voice is gravelly, but not gruff. Round-sounding, and soft.
He is resting by himself.
I walk over and sit - not too close, but . . . not too far.
“For forty years we flew like a hoopoe, low to the ground. Slow. Deliberate.”
Para, para, says my mind to itself. Cow, cow. An idiom. Slow and steady like my breath.
This is Moshe Rabbeinu. Moses our Teacher, our Storyteller.
Tiferet shebe Hod
Harmony in Splendor/Gratitude
Thursday evening May 23 and Friday May 24
Boaz is beautiful the way a saguaro cactus is beautiful.
He is beautiful the way Palo Duro canyon is beautiful.
His eyes are dark brown, the desert sand at night . . . but one is brown with a hint of green and the other is brown with a hint of gold . . . if you look closely enough.
Other than brown, I don’t actually know what color his eyes are, but look at him. Shouldn’t that man there have eyes two slightly, but just slightly different colors?
Gevurah shebe Hod
Strength/Might/Judgment in Splendor/Gratitude
Wednesday evening May 22 and Thursday May 23
Gevurah.
Strength.
Hod.
Gratitude.
I don’t know.
I do know that today I’ve been walking with and praying for Liri Albag, Karina Ariev, Agam Berger, Daniella Gilboa, and Naama Levy.
Gevurah shebe Netzach
Strength/Might and Judgment within Endurance
Wednesday evening May 15 and Thursday May 16
I don’t feel compelled to ship together all of my favorite women from the TaNaKh, and I wouldn’t have thought Judith and Devorah . . . but here we are, and here they are, and . . . welcome to the way my mind works. Watching them together, they sure seem well-matched.
I’m liking the idea of a romance between these two elders.
Chesed shebe Netzach
Lovingkindness within Endurance
Tuesday evening May 14 and Wednesday May 15
Amira is shaped like a greyhound but her ears are long and fluffy.
She’s the color of sand and her eyes are bronze.
Running toward me she looks like the light at is shifts on the desert rocks, poetry in motion, right up until she pulls up in front of me and does her goofy whole-body-wag.
Yesod shebe Tiferet
Foundation within Compassion and Harmony
Sunday evening May 12 and Monday May 13
“I think she is one of the young Egyptian women who served Batya,” I say.
“When she went down from her father’s palace to rescue Moses?” Rabbi Leff asks.
“I think so,” I say.
“Who is that with her?” he asks.
“I think it’s one of Miriam’s nieces,” I say. “One of Aaron and Elisheva’s daughters.”
“What makes you say so?” he wants to know.
I shrug and smile, “Nothing in particular. It’s the story I want today. I want to be walking with Miriam’s niece and Batya’s maiden who just ran into some Jewish and Palestinian kids from the Jerusalem Youth Chorus as we all make our way toward Sinai together.”
Nitzach shebe Tiferet
Endurance within Harmony and Balance
Friday evening May 10 and Saturday May 11
The yahrtzeit of Irena Sender
Sometimes I feel like I’m walking in circles as if it’s a bad thing.
Then I see Choni haMe’agel, Choni the Circle Maker. His linen tunic is blowing about him in the breeze, a belt at his waist.
Choni isn’t much of a talker. He prefers to walk by himself, even with all of us around.
Seeing him, I remember that circles can also be miracles.
Seventeen Days of the Omer
Tiferet shebe Tiferet
Harmony and Balance within Harmony and Balance
Thursday evening May 9 and Friday May 10
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the Prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”
Chesed shebe Tiferet
Lovingkindness within Harmony
Tuesday evening May 7 and Wednesday May 8
Why Job? Why today? I’ve been working it out for almost 15 hours now, and am sharing these words only after counting the day.
Malchut of Gevurah
Nobility within Strength
Monday evening and Tuesday
Evening May 6 and Day of May 7
Some teach that malchut is the most important sefirah. They say that in malchut God doesn’t act by God’s self, but through us and that malchut is the goal God had in mind when creating the world.
That isn’t my personal theology, but I respect it and it helps me to stretch and think this way. What if it were? What if malchut is God’s existence and God’s actions resonating along our veins?
What if Rabbi Regina Jonas is Jewish royalty?
Nine Days of the Omer
Gevurah of Gevurah
Discipline/Justice/Boundaries of Discipline/Justice/Boundaries
Gevurah is also Strength
Wednesday evening and Tuesday
Evening May 1 and Day of May 2
I’ve secretly always wondered what Rebecca saw in him.
In Isaac.
Well, it was a secret.
Now you know.
Chesed shebe Gevurah
Somehow I’m caught in the midst of a bustle of bodies in intense conversation . . .
In the crush of priests, two voices rise over the others. One brings up Ramban, Nachmanides, and says, ‘We are taught by the Ramban that justice and lovingkindness are a combination of fire and water, which is to say, salt. And salt, as we know, sustains all the worlds.’ ‘But this is false!’ His walking companion disagrees amicably. ‘The main purpose of God, the main purpose of the world is Chesed!’