August 9, 2024
D’var by Susan Stone
How many of us have schmoozed with a friend about a recent vacation? WE tell the highlights… the ups and downs…The disappointing parts..getting lost, grouchy tourists…museums closed when you arrive, etc. …. and the elation..meeting nice people who helped you…beautiful vistas, great food, etc.. This is what this Torah portion is like…Moses begins his historical review of the ups and downs of the 40 year vacation—the travels…that the Israelites took in the desert. Well, not quite a vacation.
Our parsha.. D’varim, means ‘words.’ “These are the WORDS Moses spoke to the Israelites on the other side of the Jordan….etc.” Your God יהוה has multiplied you until you are today as numerous as the stars in the sky.— May יהוה, the God of your ancestors, increase your numbers a thousandfold, and bless you as promised.
But Moshe was fed up….”How can I bear unaided the trouble of you, and the burden, and the bickering! “ Like a good leader he collaborates…
“Pick from each of your tribes candidates who are wise, discerning, and experienced, and I will appoint them as your heads.”
It then places us and them at the border of the Promised Land…The Land of Promise… after a lifetime of journeying. They, we, pause now to look back at the path we have traveled thus far in order to understand its meaning, receive its lessons, and embrace the wisdom and love that we have received. It is indeed a blessing to come to this place of such wide perspective and calm discernment.
Our journey through the wilderness has not taken the form of a straight line, but rather a series of breath-taking zig zags, with an added dimension of awareness.
Moses recounts the start of the journey like we might recount our travels to a friend: For instance….the Israelites appreciate Moses, then rebel; they fight and win and fight and lose. The Torah tells us that by linear calculations our journey should have taken but eleven days. How did it take a lifetime — forty years — to arrive here?
I have come to revel in the astonishing understanding that Torah is the Tree of Life. With humility and limited knowledge, though, I depend on my teachers to explore…
So now here are the words of Reconstructionist Rabbi and spiritual teacher, Rabbi Shefa Gold, which I have adapted for you.
The blessing of D’varim, this Torah teaching, is the expanded awareness that comes from the attainment of a wide perspective…by looking back — the ability to see our own lives from the vantage point of dispassionate clarity…we are no longer in the midst of those points of our lives…we can look back and have perspective, like Moshe did in this parsha. From here we look back on our defeats as well as our victories, gleaning the blessings of both.
THE SPIRITUAL CHALLENGE
The spiritual challenge of D’varim is to attain an expansive perspective on our lives in order to investigate the imprint of each defeat and each victory. It is then possible to learn from those experiences and turn them into wisdom for the journey, instead of being enslaved by them.
First let’s explore our moments of DEFEAT…”
IN RISING TO THIS CHALLENGE, we first remember our moments of disappointment, shame, loss, or hopelessness that we have accumulated on our journey instead of being enslaved to the past.
Do we resort to kvetching like the Israelites did who had no perspective…what we would call self awareness?
How do we wear our defeats? Do they weigh us down? Embitter us? Armor us? Shame us? Immobilize us? Or can we be pruned by them? Learn from them? Be humbled and lifted up? Find compassion for others and ourselves through them?
Every defeat, disappointment, can be either a destructive force or a fertilizer for growth and heart-wisdom. For example…one gets fired, divorced, breaks a friendship, can’t quit smoking, doesn’t exercise…add your own list. The spiritual challenge is to mitigate the destructive force of our defeats through self-compassion and to turn that force instead towards ultimate goodness as we build the strength of our character. Can we learn to overflow in gratefulness, channeling that force of our defeats, our broken hearts, into acts of compassion and tzedakah, like the construction and funding of this lovely playground?
NOW LET’S EXPLORE SUCCESS
In rising to the challenge of D’varim, we next turn to our moments of accomplishment, celebration, and fulfillment. How do we wear our victories?
Do they make us arrogant? separate us? Make us complacent? Judgmental? Forgetful of others’ suffering?
THE SPIRITUAL CHALLENGE OF SUCCESS is to respond to our abundance through expressions of generosity.
The danger posed by victory, success, is that its force may be seized by the false self , the ego, the yetzer ha ra, to build itself up. The result is an expense of vital energy diverted to the yetzer, in further protection of its defenses.
So Victory can go in two ways…it can offer both the possibility of expansion into the sweetness of knowing we are competent, kind and worthy…or conversely, tzim tzum, contraction, in our compulsion to rigidly defend the turf we have conquered.
May we all be blessed to continue on this journey through the wilderness that is our lives. This is our “avodah,” our work. Like in D’varim, to look back and learn from our lives….to understand that our work is self awareness in order to grow in understanding and “rachmonis,” compassion, for ourselves and the world. My blessing is that we all find our Land of Promise.
Good Shabbos.