Next Saturday night, June 8th, we will be celebrating the holiday of Shavuot, when - according to Tradition - we received the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai.
This year at Ohev, we are partnering with Beth Israel in Media to first hear a panel discussion (with Muslim and Christian faith leaders), then learn together in breakout discussions, and later also share experiences of chanting, meditation, and singing, all centered on a common theme. And this year, our theme is Spiritual Resilience. I can't speak for you, dear reader, but I imagine MANY people are feeling utterly exhausted by political tensions, environmental disasters, threats of war, religious battles and scandals, and a general sense of uncertainty, chaos, and concern. My rabbinic colleagues and I felt it might be a good time to discuss Spiritual Resilience; how do the texts/practices/stories/rituals of our various traditions help us keep going in troubled times? How do we replenish, where do we go for support and nourishment, and how do we soldier on in spite of all the obstacles? Are you curious to know what the answers are? Well, let's talk.
So, I already told you that this whole Resilience-discussion is taking place NEXT Saturday, but how then is it relevant to the Torah THIS week? Well, I already had
Shavuot on my mind, so when I opened up the Chumash to look at our reading, B'Chukotai, it was like I was already wearing a filter and looking for connections. Sure enough, I found something. Our
parashah concludes the Book of Leviticus, and offers as its final subject in this volume on laws, rules, and regulations, a series of instructions regarding donations to the Temple. Inevitably, this leads to a discussion of wealth and poverty, and acknowledging the have's and have-not's in society. The Torah desperately tries to urge our ancestors to create (and maintain) just and fair community structures, so that social stratification doesn't keep widening and widening. One major tool that the Torah attempts to implement in this regard is the Jubilee Year, the Yovel.
In essence, the Jubilee Year is meant to be an occasion, every fifty years, where land reverts back to its original owners. So anyone who sold off land due to famine or poverty would get a chance to start over.
But it isn't hard to imagine who was wholly AGAINST this concept, and the kind of societal power those people might wield. Nonetheless, the Torah keeps pushing and pushing, demanding fairness. Ultimately, we don't know how often the Jubilee got implemented, or if it leveled the playing field as much as the ancient Biblical author had hoped. If nothing else, it should serve as a reminder to us all that we need a RESET. That is where I return to the idea of Spiritual Resilience. When the status quo drones on endlessly, when we perpetuate bad behaviors because they're just how it's ALWAYS been done, or when our apathy, lethargy, and fatigue cripple us and make us unable to even imagine change, let alone implement it; we need a reset.
It's not the ONLY tool. Next weekend, we will discuss many ways to recharge, lean on one another, and seek inspiration in the texts and practices of our various
traditions. But the Biblical Jubilee Year can inspire us to envision HOW to start afresh, get out of old ruts, and think outside various boxes. It may even have been aspirational, but nevertheless the text itself, and millennia of subsequent commentators, continued unrelentingly to push the concept of a do-over, a "mulligan," an equalizer that levels the playing field. So come and participate on June 8th. Delve into Muslim, Christian, and Jewish texts and rituals that renew our spirits and uplift our souls. As we head into the summer, let's hit the "reset" button, and approach our troubled world with new eyes, greater support for one another, and an unyielding insistence that better times lay ahead. See you on the eighth!
CC images in this blog post, courtesy of:
1.
The U.S. Army on
Flickr
2.
Uni Hamburg on
Wikimedia Commons
3.
gillicious on
Flickr
4.
flattop341 on
Flickr
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