Malkhut: A Kavannah for the Last Week of the Omer Count

Written for the 2016 Kolot Chayeinu Anti-Racism Weekly Omer Counter

1.

We count the Omer for seven weeks, 49 days:

The loving kindness and benevolence of Chesed;

The strength and holy limitations of Gevurah;

The spiritual balance and beauty of Tiferet;

The eternal endurance of Netzach;

The prayer and intellecutalism of Hod;

The gateway of Yesod, collecting all of these sephirot and transmitting them to

Malkhut, the end of the chain, our human world.

Malkhut –  It is the culmination.

This is where we live, this is the here and now,

God's name in Malkhut is Adonai ha Eretz, Lord of the Earth. 

But in Malkhut we are ALL the lords of this realm,

We are one in the One-ness.

These are our laws, our nations, our communities, our religions,

These are our choices.

We are the rulers, here.

2.

When I was little I knew I was an American Jew

And I knew what that meant -- 

Ashkenazi,

European,

White,

UJA and Holocaust memorials,

Hebrew School and Fiddler on the Roof,

Chicken on Friday nights and Brisket on Passover,

Charoses made of apples, cinnamon, walnuts and

Manischevitz Concord Grape wine.

I was it, the Real Jew, a Pintele Yid, there was no other

And no other way to be.

There were, however, Others:  The Goyim.

Everybody who wasn't us.

My father sat in front of his TV, labelling every famous white person who appeared:  

Jew.  Not Jew. 

Jew.  Not Jew.

Jew was Good, Not Jew Bad.

Everyone was Jew or Not Jew, except for the, you know, them:

The S-words,

Literally the yiddish word for blacks,

Which could have been meant just as a description but wasn't, it was demeaning, no more than a step or two less disgusting than the N-Word.

And those people, the S-Words, were the Other times two,

The Permanently Not and Never Jews.

Even when i was really little I knew that this was a bad word to say and I was embarrassed for my father whenever he used it, which was a lot.

Because he was my father, I will make excuses for him:

Maybe to a people used to being The Other, it feels good to make someone else The Other? 

Or maybe it was a way to make himself more American, to be superior like all the other Americans, the white Americans? 

Or maybe, because he grew up on the streets of the Lower East Side and Brownsville, and he fought with the Black, Italian and Irish kids on the streets for survival, he thought he'd earned the right to be a tough guy? 

Or maybe he was just a racist?

I hope not.

But...

Well, I'm all grown up now

And is is upon me to face the truth

Of racism and Euro-centrism and privilege.

And that there are Real Jews

Of many colors and genders and nationalities and practices.

And I am only one amongst us all.

And because I know this truth,

I am obligated by Malkhut to be conscious of my choices.

Can I try tunes and prayer rituals that feel "weird"?

Can I be aware of my privileges without someone reminding me?

Can I shut up and learn from others?

Can I refrain from telling people I understand when I don't?

Can I be led by people I have never been led by?

Can I give up power I didn't even acknowledge I had?

I don't know, I guess I'll find out.

I hope so.

And really,

Brisket isn't very good for my health or the environment

And Manischevitz Concord Grape is cheap crappy wine

(I don't care, I love it).

3.

So here's a prayer for this world of Malkhut and all of us real Jews

In the last week of the Omer,

Making our choices,

As we gather at Sinai to receive Torah:

Baruch HaMavdil

Blessed Is The One That Divides,

Giving us the illusions

Of time and space

Of days and weeks

So that we may grow and learn

And take joy in the moment,

So that we may rest on Shabbat

And not go crazy,

So that we may count 49 days between Pesach and Shavuot.

We give thanks for this seventh week of the Omer

And the metaphor and earthiness of Malkhut,

Which gathers us in community

And takes us to the 50th day of the Omer,

Shavuot,

To study the choices of Ruth and Naomi

And join with all these real Jews waiting 

At the foot of Mount Sinai.

Blessed HaMavdil,

The One-ness giving us the joys of holy separation,

We are many and we are gloriously different

But we are also one in the One.

Please may we not divide ourselves against ourselves

So together, different and the same,

We may behold the Godhead.

So together, different and the same,

We may pray, forgive and be forgiven, study, create acts of loving kindness, heal the world

And receive Torah.

And let us say, 

Amen.

Yitro: Between Before and After

What is revelation? What does it mean to get ready for revelation, what leads to revelation, how does it changes everything afterwards, what of the Before and After, of the stories of Genesis and Exodus that lead to this moment, and the repercussions afterwards,

From the Liktuim Yekarim (sp?):

It is actually very surprising that a mortal human being should be able to attach himself to God. Besides his physical body, many Husks separate him from God. Even though, “the whole earth is filled with His glory”< God is still hidden behind many barriers. But all the barriers that separate and restrain can be torn down by the word that you utter. Your words should therefore be attached to God. This means that you must intimately feel that you are actually speaking to God. If we could speak just one line, or even two or three words, to God in each service, in the above mentioned manner, it would be sufficient.

What are the husks the Hebrews went through to get to that moment on Sinai, and what is it we go through to get to it? And let me just say here that for me anyway, it really doesn’t matter if it actually happened, or what any of us believe about that, because what we know happened are that stories got told about what got us here, and then there was the story of the moment, and then all the stories that stem from it. We’ve got Torah right here. This we know exists.

The Before is these two parallel stories, both a bout young men who are gifted but foolish, who get themselves in trouble and are pulled away from everything they knew or thought they knew, who have to re-invent themselves and in the re-inventing, find their true selves. And the first boy pulls his family into this re-invention and makes a family into a tribe. And the second boy pulls his tribe into the re-invention and turns the tribe into a people. And the people re-invent themselves and turn themselves from slaves into free people, from a people into a nation, from brutes into people of covenant with laws and ethics and spirituality. And all of this re-invention, it’s all to get them all there, at Sinai, at one place and one time, so that something huge can happen, so that everything and everyone can change, all at once, during this one incredibly special moment.

And this experience, it is so huge that it happens outside of time and maybe even out of space, I think when you hear some rabbi say that we were all at Sinai it’s because we were, because we’re there now, right now, at this moment.
And it was the biggest most important moment ever, and I know this because we tell this story every year, thousands of years later, even when it seems ridiculous or barbaric, yet we are compelled to work our way to the stories leading up to this moment, and then the stories that follow from it, from the words that were uttered on that day.

The Before stopped, the After hadn’t started yet, we were just there. Which is as complete a description of what Shabbat should be as I can come up with. So every Shabbat, we are in that moment of revelation of one-ness, of community, of connection, of right and wrong.

If we could speak just one line, or even two or three words, to God in each service, in the above mentioned manner, it would be sufficient.

Imagine if you could find that moment, those two or three words, at every service? And what is a service, what is a prayer, but the stories we tell ourselves, the Before of revelation, to get us to those two or three words of God, that will lead to completeness, no before and after, to shalom, wholeness, even if only for a moment.

And what would be revealed? Same thing at Sinai, on Shabbat, during a service, in a prayer….the Ten Commandments. Which for me boil down to this. Know this transcendence, recognize the moment. Respect your experience, don’t trivialize it, don’t try to make it small or material. Don’t forget this experience, give it to yourself once a week, call it Shabbat. Internalize the experience, live consistently within it, which means you treat your community and yourself with the same respect that you give to this moment.

If we could speak just one line, or even two or three words, to God in each service, it would be sufficient.

So what if, from now one, we start looking into each Shabbat, each service, each prayer, and look for the two or three words that might lead us to that moment. Maybe it’s this word. Maybe it’s this moment.

Maybe it’s this moment.

Baruch atah Adonai, Brucha At Yah, Blessed Ruach Ha Olam, God of my ancestors, God of my current understanding or lack thereof, God of my belief and disbelief,

I pray for those two or three words.
I pray for that moment.

It would be sufficient.

Amen.

Shabbat Shalom.