This past Shabbat, Jews around the world began studying the biblical book of Exodus, by immersing ourselves in the Torah Portion (assigned biblical reading) of the week. The first section is called: Shemot, which literally means “names” and corresponds to the beginning of the story of Exodus, as the Children of Israel awaken to their enslavement and begin to dream of a “promised land” where they can be free. The assigned biblical readings are Exodus 1:1-6:1 as well as Isaiah 27:6 – 28:13 and Isaiah 29:22-23 and they speak about the ways in which the names and words we use can transform the spaces in which we reside.
Awakening is liberation: Questioning is redeeming
Central to the liberation from Ancient Egyptian Slavery (Mitzrayim), was Moses’ awakening: he saw the injustice of this world by seeing the ways in which someone else was being oppressed and he heard his Sacred Call by stopping long enough to notice that the bush that he saw burning in the desert was not consumed by the fire. Both of these actions required stopping, paying attention, asking questions and being willing to change everything in order to be the answer that can liberate and heal. The deeper wisdom: when we stop, can we notice the world around us? Do we question what we see? Are we willing to let go of everything we thought we knew was true in order to align with our new understanding of what is Holy?
Rabbinic wisdom teaches that there is profound symbolism in the timing of the Torah portion of the week and the unique ways that it juxtaposes with our world’s recent events… I think of it almost like a combination of astrology and divination: the universe’s rhythms are sending us ancestral Energy and Wisdom, if we can align ourselves with Jewish time, which is punctuated by Torah. There is a pattern of Wisdom to the Universe that requires us to see through the lenses of “chachamim” which means “the wise ones” (generally translated to refer to the rabbis of our tradition/who came before us). The rabbis further teach that true wisdom will emerge when we understand that each person has Torah to teach us: this is the beginning of our redemption, when we look for the hidden “tzadikim” (the wise ones) that are everywhere.
Wisdom begins when we stop long enough to recognize G!d’s Presence in everyone and everything. We need to change the way we talk about the burning bush: the miracle was not that the bush was burning (pretty common in the desert), but rather that Moses stopped to pay attention, and was able to discern Wisdom from it, sufficient that he was inspired to face his fears and go speak Truth to power. Moses’ entire life was transformed when he left the palace where he was raised, and opened his heart to feel for those who were suffering. He began to receive Torah when he fell in love with someone forbidden (Tzipporah) and when he sat at the feet of his father-in-law, Yitro, the Midianite priest. This is one reason why prohibitions against interfaith marriage or queer relationships are so profoundly damaging. Moses learned from everyone, and this was part of what liberated him, in the same way as those of us who choose love over tradition have done deep spiritual work that should be celebrated not castigated. Perhaps Moses did so, in part because he (like so many of us) never felt like he belonged. When we feel like we don’t belong, do we try to fit in, or do we allow ourselves to lean into the discomfort to see what it can teach us?
Traditional rabbinic commentary explains that often the first step to wisdom is to re-order the words or letters of the texts we have been given. In Hebrew, the word “chochmah” which means wisdom, can be understood to also refer to “koach mah” which literally means the strength of our question. What Judaism has always taught is that wisdom begins by asking questions and pushing us out of our comfortable assumptions: this is how we can transcend our current reality. And so, here are some preliminary questions for reflection, drawn from the biblical text of Shemot: What are the parallels of this biblical text that we can see in our own (personal) world?How powerful to read this passage at this particular moment in time: how will we answer these questions, on both a personal and a collective level?
Questions to ask ourselves this week
What does enslavement feel like? Is it like feeling trapped? What causes us to feel trapped? Is it fear? Is it shame? Is it the world or people around us? Is it the words we use toward ourselves? The “promised land” can be translated to mean a sense of home and safety… Do we feel safe? Where do we feel safe and/or with whom? What can we do to feel free to be ourselves/who we were created to be in this world? If we look at our time and energy, money and behaviors, do they reflect the things that we value? If next week was our last week on this planet (G!d forbid), would we want to spend our life doing and thinking about the things that we are choosing to do?
Our Torah portion invites us to reflect soulfully on these questions and how the practices that we were given by our wise ancestors, can help us to learn from their mistakes and transcend the narrow words and ideas that we have been taught, in order to find true liberation, healing and blessing. How has our understanding of Judaism has been impacted by intergenerational trauma? How much are we willing to question the stories that we have inherited? How do these continue to influence our collective unconscious? How are they embedded in our values and decisions? What questions do we need to ask if we want to change the story that we are reenacting, and the inherited scripts that are influencing us all?
Questioning the stories we were told
No less than children in a family will have very different accounts of what happened when they were young, often because of their positionality (the eldest and the youngest for example), so too do we see, amongst the children of Abraham, very different understandings of what happened to get us to where we are. And like any family conflict, arguing over what actually happened and whether someone’s version of the story is correct will rarely get us to a place of healing. We can never fully know what it is like to be someone else, and yet we waste so much time and energy trying to get other people to see things from our perspective, instead of trying to understand what it might be like to live life from their vantage point. Arguing over who is right or wrong is usually a no-win argument.
There are many different approaches to healing family conflict, but we must begin by acknowledging that everyone has a different understanding of the problem. Couples rarely resolve an argument by focusing on facts, but rather by focusing on how we made the other person feel. We can’t change the past, and we rarely can agree on what happened, but we can make different decisions moving forward by focusing on the outcome we want (healing or peace). Narrative therapy is one way to transform the stories we tell, so that they can lead us to making different decisions. The stories we tell impact the decisions we make, because these can either perpetuate our trauma or heal it. We are like sponges: if we are immersed in trauma, we are likely to spread it. We need to heal our interpretation of what happened if we are to ensure that the future will be different than the past. Jewish tradition gave us a rich set of tools to reinterpret the Torah, lest we err and understand its words literally: beware every stubborn and rebellious child, for they are to be stoned according to Biblical text. For more on Jewish ways of reinterpreting this verse and others, please read here. These approaches reflect a rabbinic approach to narrative healing which our world desperately needs.
The power of the stories we repeat
Name-calling and labeling is always at the root of harm: healing begins when we rename and choose a different interpretation. This is true on every level and this is why so many of our ancestors are renamed as part of their personal healing journey: the words we use are powerful. They shape our interpretation and the decisions that we make as a result: the same behavior can mean different things to different people. The words that we choose will determine how we respond. For example, behaviors such as not paying attention in school used to be (and too often still are) labeled as “willful” and needing to be punished, but increasingly, we are beginning to understand that often, it may be due to a student’s neurodiversity like ADHD, or they are hungry but their family could not afford to feed them or they are experiencing violence at home or at school or both. We don’t know what is going on inside of someone, yet we give so much power to the interpretations we ascribe to their external behaviors. Decisions to punish children rather than help them are at the root of so much that is wrong with our world today.
The words we use shape the stories we tell ourselves and impact our choices and experience: this is the foundation of cognitive behavioral therapy, which tries to help us understand the danger of cognitive distortions such as all-or-nothing (either/or) thinking (false binaries). This is one example amongst many of the ways in which such cognitive distortions are central to colonization and pervasive in our brain’s thinking. Often, the first step to feeling less trapped in any given situation is to realize that there is probably more than one or two ways to deal with it, and that labels such as “right” or “wrong” tend to make things worse. Trauma-informed interpretations shift us away from blame, shame and judgment toward healing and wholeness. Everything changes when we change our questions: how different things would be if we stopped asking “what is wrong with you?” and instead asked “what happened to you?” or “what is going on inside of you?”
This is why the story of our Exodus begins with “shemot”: we have to begin to question the stories we were told and the words that we use, if we want to break the legacy of intergenerational trauma. What really led to our “slavery”: there was a gap of hundreds of years between the death of Jacob and the birth of Moses, and we know nothing… perhaps this silence is part of the problem? Secrets can lead to pathology: this is true for families that have struggled with addiction and violence for generations, and this is true for religious traditions that have given their blessings to religious wars. We have all inherited a broken system of injustice and intergenerational pain, and we have to deconstruct what we have been taught in order to heal. In our world that is so very wounded/wounding, it is time for us to try a new way… It is time for a trauma-informed approach to Judaism (and religion… and life). Trauma causes “splitting” which is to say binary thinking and defensive reactions that lead us further way from the healing unity of our prayers. The less we talk about the doubts, complexity and nuances that exist in each of us, the more polarized things become.
Embracing the diversity of Jewish thinking
The Talmud has a famous story about how Jewish thinking is nonbinary thinking: in a world where the answer is either X or Y, we believe that there is holiness in both approaches and that each one has their own logic in their own context. What matters is how we deal with the conflict and whether we can affirm the holiness in the other person, not who is right or wrong. The schools of Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai are said to have argued over who was right or wrong until a “bat kol” a voice from above (literally a female voice or a different gender than that which was being argued) came down from the Heavens to say: elu v’elu divrei Elohim chayim (=these are BOTH words of the living G!d). The way to peace is to transcend the false binary through mindfulness and compassion: this is how a conflict can become constructive and healing. The fact that many of us appear to be locked in cognitive fallacies such as “either/or thinking” is an example of how deeply traumatized/colonized we are/our binary world is. Anger and polarization is a sign of this trauma. This is at the root of much of our suffering and spiritual bondage, in that we feel trapped by the lack of options we believe we have.
Judaism, since the destruction of the Temple developed a way of healing that is needed now more than ever The rabbis teach that there are four worlds of meaning and that what we see (or think we see) is just the tip of the iceberg for the deeper resonances on other levels or realms. What happens on one level impacts the others, just like all of us are being impacted by the world around us, so too is our inner world influencing our outer reality. These are the four world of Jewish understanding: I believe that our world is impoverished and wounded because we have become so literal that we have forgotten how to see and make the connections that our brains were created to do. This is at least partly because neurodiverse people (for more on how Judaism celebrates neurodiversity, which may be why we are hated) have been uniquely harmed by colonization: for more on this as a central part of our collective trauma that can only be healed by a return to spiritual practice, please read this.
We live in a neurotypical world that celebrates left-brain or “logical” thinking and that undervalues art, creativity, play and rest and that relies on literal and concrete functioning, rather than abstract critical thinking. While this may make it easier to control people, it has led to the world we now live in: only a shift away from this celebration of productivity and linear thinking can help us find a pathway out of the profound trauma of this world. Healing requires transcending neurotypical ways of thinking, so that we can live more soulfully and compassionately and think more comprehensively about how to heal. The only way to create a new outcome is to be able to think creatively and to transcend that which exists/has already been done before.
Shabbat and Torah study are sacred pathways to neurodecolonization that Jews need now more than ever. Neurodecolonization means training our brains to be healed by the traumas of this world so that we can think and feel and live the way we were created to do, rather than the ways that society (=colonization) has taught us we are supposed to think and feel and live. It means choosing to rewire our brain by practicing rest, prayerful meditation and blessings of gratitude.
There are many other healing practices at the core of Judaism that can help us to heal from our trauma, and over the next few months, I will be working to integrate EMDR and somatic therapeutic insights into guided meditations and prayers, as part of my own commitment to try to bring healing into this broken/colonized/traumatized world. I have found my own healing, over the last year, in large part thanks to this approach that I developed for myself. In the same way as I feel like it has liberated me from my closet (=Mitzrayim/bondage), so I have found that others have also begun to be healed through it. I will be posting these on this blog, so please make sure to subscribe if you have not yet done so.
Decolonizing Judaism
Decolonizing Judaism means allowing ourselves to be liberated by the intergenerational trauma that has haunted us, and the ways in which social and global factors have penetrated our ways of thinking, feeling and living. The term “decolonizing Judaism” is triggering for many Jews because they hear echoes of people who hate Jews and talk about Zionism as (the only) colonization, without ALSO talking about how EVERY SINGLE PERSON AND COUNTRY ON THIS PLANET has been colonized. To ask Jews to leave Israel is equivalent to asking every non-Indigenous person on Turtle Island (=North America) to go back to where they came from. We all inherited a colonial legacy that pre-existed us. This colonial legacy is everywhere, from our social policies and systemic biases, to the values and ways of thinking that permeate our mindset: our tendency to blame or shame is just one example amongst many. Decolonizing ourselves is a psychological and spiritual practice, as well as a concrete behavior that leads toward justice, healing and peace for all.
Colonization speaks to the ways in which our words (English) and our thinking (shaped by our language) have been forced upon us. Language shapes reality and perception. The fact that only 13% of North-American Jews understand Hebrew is an example of colonization and the ways that it has impacted Judaism. So much of Jewish Wisdom is grounded in the “lashon hakodesh” (the holy/healing language of our ancestors). English is a noun-based language which promotes objectification and acquisition, as reflected in British history, while Hebrew (like many Indigenous languages) is verb-based, reflecting movement and relationship. So much of our world and thinking is impacted just by this, let alone by the policies that continue to promote inequality and injustice everywhere. Neurodiversity is not bad, it is different and increasingly, science is understanding that it is actually just a cognitive and linguistic translation issue, because our world is structured to reflect a neurotypical way of living and being. Verb-based languages reflect patterns of thinking (associative) that are different than the world we live in. Shifting from noun-based languages to verb-based languages is an important part of healing and reconnecting to the Wisdom that was stolen from us.
For Jews, even time has been colonized. Saying that it is 2024 means acknowledging that our understanding of time revolves around the birth of Jesus 2024 years ago. When we use language like “common era” (CE) or “before the common era” (BCE), instead of “before Christ” (BC) and “anno domini” (AD=the year of the lord), we are tiptoeing around the bigger issue, which is that “the common era” is a euphemism for how our understanding of time revolves around Jesus. The New Year represents his circumcision, eight days after he was born. Christianity has been colonized by Constantine, and has since been colonizing the world, and every single person on this planet has been harmed by this truth, which is just one ugly truth amongst many that is not popular to say. For more on how Christianity has begun to acknowledge their role in colonization and work on Truth and Reconciliation, please read here.
Psychotherapy teaches that until we talk out loud about the trauma that continues to impact us, we will continue to be haunted by its legacy. Instead of tiptoeing around, we need to talk about all of this- otherwise, we will just keep reenacting it unconsciously. The first step to healing is putting words to the unconscious trauma, in order to make it conscious. This is what helps us to make different decisions. This is the power of words and naming. Using words like colonization, which is more often used only to talk about certain groups of people, is how we begin to see our interconnectedness and to discern our collective path toward healing and liberation. In the same way as Indigenous people are seeking to heal themselves from colonial trauma by learning their own language and ways of living and being, so too must Jews understand our own inherited ways of Wisdom in order to begin to heal.
Indigenous languages, like Hebrew, contain the decoding blueprint of our healing, because it can help us understand concepts and relationships that do not seem evident in English. This is why the first step to our trauma was the loss of language, as described in the parable of the Tower of Babel. This is why central to the colonial strategy is teaching English, and central to healing, is reconnecting to the Wisdom of the languages of our ancestors. While the story of Babel is told in the Bible as a cautionary tale about human cooperation, we should perhaps rethink it and see how it reflects a different message: loss of identity is actually the problem that leads to the spiritual emptiness that turns people against one another. For Jews, this story is a reminder that all human knowledge is limited and fallible, and this is why we should always be ready to question and deconstruct our assumptions. In the same way as a relationship thrives, not when two people become twins and try to become like one another (codependence), but rather when two people celebrate their individuality and connect in ways that help one another to grow in their own uniqueness (interdependence), so too does diversity lead to unity. When we are allowed to be fully ourselves and true to who we were created to be, then we are able to make G!d’s Presence manifest on earth. So long as we are hiding our true selves, we will be divided from one another: because this is the externalization of our inner conflict and trauma.
Understanding the connection between Shabbat and Torah: How time and rest can heal us
Every Shabbat, there is a specific passage that we are commanded to “study”. The blessing for the study of Torah is the blessing over “immersion” in words of Torah. When we use the English word “study” we have an idea that we are supposed to memorize and parrot back: this is colonization and this is what much of our educational system has tried to enforce. But Judaism teaches a different approach to studying: “chevruta” study is the study of unlearning our assumptions by practicing to see things from the perspective of others. Our world is in chaos because this approach to study is so deeply under-utilized. To explore chevruta study from a progressive perspective, please look at Svara or my alma mater, Pardes, or what my colleague, Rabbi Heather Miller, is trying to do virtually with her Keeping it Sacred Talmud Study classes.
To immerse ourselves in words of Torah is to superimpose the spiritual architecture of the Universe onto the daily activities into which we exist, in order to begin to decode our existence and understand the realities that baffle us with a new lens. There are deep mystical teachings related to the ways that each biblical passage derives its power and holiness from the Universe’s energies that on specific dates and times align to support our insights and decisions. It is sort of like a Jewish astrology, in that when we re-center ourselves into the Sacred Wisdom of the Torah, which Kabbalah teaches is the blueprint for the Universe, then we are able to “find our groove”.
What does it mean to “find our groove”? There are many definitions, but all of us instinctively know when we are in alignment with the Flow, and everything seems to be connecting… we “happen” to run into the person that we need to meet that changes everything, we feel grounded and centered, our energy is flowing and we are channeling our destiny. Doubt is replaced by faith and Love and Light is guiding us. We are where we are supposed to be and doing what we know we were created to do… sometimes, we are blessed to be in this place for a moment and sometimes for longer… these are the moments when we look out at the universe and everything makes sense: we feel a sense of joy and purpose, peace and Calling.
In theory, every Shabbat (Sabbath) has been given to us so that we can experience this mystical reunion between heaven and earth. The ancient mystical rabbis teach that on Shabbat, we are given an extra infusion of Soul-Fullness (it is called the “neshamah yeteirah“: and extra soul) that can help us to last through the week: it is the ultimate soul re-charging and it happens when we stop what we are doing, engaged in the stressors of this world, and reconnect to Torah. The soul is a sponge: it absorbs the energy that surrounds us and feeds off our thoughts and feelings. If we want to heal, we must become intentional about releasing the trauma that surrounds us and that is inside of us. Now, more than ever, we need a trauma-informed approach to spiritual practices that can help us let go of the beliefs and behaviors that keep us trapped in unhealthy patterns (be they individual, or collective).
Our soul’s blueprint for healing
In the same way as we would not expect our cellphones to keep working if we did not regularly recharge them, why do we think that we can keep going the way we are going without recharging ourselves? There is a parallel process in everything: this is the point of the rabbinic teaching about the blueprint of Torah. The wisdoms of the Universe and the pathway to peace and healing can all be found if we dive deeply into the wisdom of the Torah. But, the first step to doing so is to learn how to read the text, not based upon the literal words of the stories (this is the idolatry that has led to the weaponization of religion), but rather to deconstruct our brain’s understanding in order to discern the Call of our Soul: G!d’s Wisdom. To learn more about the four levels of biblical interpretation that is the foundation of Jewish teaching, please read this article I wrote.
Science calls the idea of a blueprint for creation (how the kabbalistic rabbis understand the Torah’s secret Wisdom) a holon: what is true in one sphere can be applied to another. In a brilliant essay on the concept, Mayank Chatarvedi explains that the “word is a combination of the Greek “holos” meaning whole, with the suffix “on” which, as in proton or neutron, suggests a particle or part. The holon, then, is a part-whole. It is a nodal point in a hierarchy that describes the relationship between entities that are self-complete wholes and entities that are seen to be other dependent parts. As one’s point of focus moves up, down, and/or across the nodes of a hierarchical structure so one’s perception of what is a whole and what is a part will also change”.
Shabbat and Torah: Two transformational pathways
Understanding this helps us understand why Shabbat is so deeply needed, and why there is so much suffering. We live in a soul-crushing world where we are all burnt out and exhausted, deeply traumatized and therefore, deeply traumatizing. We are so exhausted that we can barely survive. Compassion is a luxury: for others or ourselves. This is how the capitalist/colonizing machine works, and this is why “rest is resistance“. The ancient Jewish practice of Shabbat has been lost: indeed, Jewish time itself has been stolen from us… it is not surprising therefore that Judaism, along with every other colonized/colonizing religion, preaches an ideology grounded in the false belief that humans can own land and that there are times when killing is justified.
Such a belief is grounded in trauma: we are scared we will be hurt because others have hurt us, therefore we must hurt people from the same tribe as those who hurt us. Trauma changes our brain structure and chemistry, so that we respond from the most animalistic parts of our brain. So much of the trauma in this world exists because we are not stopping to rest and heal, but rather running on empty and transmitting the unprocessed trauma of the generations before us onto the next generation. This is the real meaning of the biblical phrase: “the sins of the parents will be visited upon the children”. It is not a punishment from G!d (as too many people interpret it), but rather a cause and effect statement of what happens if we don’t try to fix the patterns that we inherited. Intergenerational trauma is explained by the science of epigenetics, and we need only open the newspaper to see it happening everywhere.
Science teaches us that the brain has grooves, and many people are beginning to understand that the way we can heal our brains is by creating new and positive grooves in our brain. Increasingly, people are seeking ways to heal and “get our groove back” after our souls have been crushed by trauma. Shabbat is a way to heal: we are commanded to stop what we are doing, to detach from the technologies and activities of this world that cause us deep harm and to rest. Judaism has daily spiritual practices which teach us gratitude such as the commandment to recite 100 blessings a day. Mindfulness and meditation can help us to notice miracles, just like Moses was able to stop and pay attention long enough to discern the Sacred in the burning bush. Science explains that these are ways that we can re-wire our brain so that we can heal. As I continue to heal myself, I will begin to share some guided meditations and prayers that can hopefully help others.
Healing is liberation
Our planet is at risk of extinction. Our ancestral holy land of Israel is drenched in blood and the world appears to be careening toward the third world war. There is more poverty, inequality, violence and suffering than we can tolerate. We feel helpless and hopeless, trapped by our jobs and obligations, our debts and fears… intergenerational trauma is repeating itself as we speak. Life seems bleak. It is not a great leap of faith to imagine what life might have been like in Mitzrayim (ancient Egypt/literally in Hebrew, the place of our narrowness and suffering). The rabbis explain that there are two ways that we can lose our soul and need to be redeemed: affluence and suffering. Both cause us to forget our essence, and they liken it to two biblical places Ashur and Mitzrayim, which are supposed to be read as metaphors for the ways we become exiled from our Soul’s Essence.
Too often, we have interpreted our bible literally, and think that these places are geographic locations, rather than understanding the spiritual wisdom contained in these stories. This focus on the concrete and literal is a form of idolatry, and causes us to miss the deeper wisdom that is generally the exact opposite of what the words say. We have forgotten how to study biblical text, looking at it as a form of “ukimta” or prooftext for what our egos or fears tell us we want or need, rather than understanding that we are commanded to study G!d’s Word to re-center ourselves in a perspective wiser than our own.
Jewish mystics (Kabbalah) teach that G!d’s Word (=Torah) is the way that G!d breathes Life into the Universe. G!d spoke and the world came into being (the meaning of the Hebrew word of Abracadabra). Judaism believes that G!’ds Name is made up of the Hebrew letters that correspond to breath, and that when we stop and breathe, we can reconnect to that Source that is our essence. Our task, when studying, is to learn to align ourselves with the Wisdom that can heal us, by discerning our soul’s truest Essence. When we do this, we can reinterpret the texts that we have inherited, by unscrambling the letters to the words that we were told are holy, so that we can begin to see that everything and everyone is an expression of G!d’s Breath of Life. For more on this, please read here.
When we work on healing ourselves, we can heal our understanding of the stories that we were told, which are grounded in deeply wounded intergenerational trauma. We can look at the story of Abraham and how he almost killed his son because of his misunderstanding of G!d’s Word. We can see how this trauma was reenacted by his son, Isaac, who favored one child over the other, causing Jacob (who became known as Israel- literally: one who struggles with G!d) to favor Joseph, which led to all of Joseph’s brothers trying to kill him, but instead selling him into slavery, where allegations of sexual violence led him to prison, only he did favors for people who eventually helped him become second in command in Egypt… which ultimately enabled him to rescue his family and find healing.
But, this healing was short-lived, because on his deathbed, Joseph’s father, Jacob blessed all his brothers and his children but did not bless him. While our rabbis understand that this meant a double portion of blessing for his lineage, Jacob may have felt like he was included, not because he was family, but because of his political usefulness. When we are traumatized, we tend to see our own pain more clearly than what is actually happening. The intergenerational trauma that continues to haunt the children of Abraham to this very day preceded Abraham, who had to leave his family’s home, and may very well link back to the ultimate archetype of our collective trauma: the expulsion from the garden of Eden…. which is to say, the loss of the sense of home and safety that is the story of anyone who has survived war or violence.
Maggid: How we tell the story
Central to the Passover ritual of liberation is “maggid” which is the commandment to retell the story of our liberation from Mitzrayim (bondage/suffering). The version of the story we are supposed to tell is different than that of the Hebrew bible, because we are commanded to retell it as if “we ourselves” we liberated. Central to this tradition is the understanding that the stories we tell are what can imprison or liberate. The stories we tell influence who we become.
The rabbis explain that the Hebrew word “Pharaoh” is “peh-rah” which literally means the evil mouth: the ways in which our words do not reflect truth, but rather what our ego thinks is true or what our ego wants others to believe. The Hebrew word “Pesach” which is translated as Passover Liberation, literally means the mouth (peh) that speaks (sach). The Hebrew lesson that these words seek to teach is that healing/liberation comes when we speak truths that our ego wants us to hide. We empower others to speak their truths and we defuse the (evil/enslaving) power of the ego. In fact, this is why we are supposed to eat matzah/unleavened bread, according to the kabbalistic tradition: leavening represents the ego (what puffs us up). We have to stop empowering shame by letting it control us: we have to start talking about the things we were taught to hide if we want to become truly free.
We have to talk about them, not in a shaming tabloid kind of way, but in a trauma-informed and compassionate way, so that we can recognize them as patterns of intergenerational trauma and discern the pathways to healing. When we shift from a narrative of shame and blame, we begin to see how they are part of a much larger theology that is influenced by intergenerational trauma. Jews were kicked out of their home more often than any other people on the planet, and this means that our lack of safety has caused us to act in ways that we may not feel proud of doing. We may feel stuck in a defensive posture that is not helping us. Countless historical traumas and genocidal events such as the Holocaust and the Crusades have encoded themselves into our behaviors and caused us to adapt in order to survive, by sometimes identifying with those who oppress us.
This is not unique to us, but it can be seen in all oppressed people. Such a traumatic response is called “fawning” and means that we don’t even realize the ways in which we are our own worst enemy. The “fawn” response of trauma means that we wind up hurting ourselves even when we think we are doing the right thing, and this makes it harder for us to acknowledge our own part in things. This is true on both a collective level and individual level: we often become so focused on how wronged we feel and become unable to see how our responses are (also) impacting others, or hurting us. We have to shift from a military response to terrorism (that only perpetuates and amplifies trauma) to one that focuses on healing: we need therapists and spiritual counselors if we want peace.
I believe in the restorative justice principles of Truth and Reconciliation, which teach that we should not be afraid of talking about what we have done that is wrong, because everyone has done something wrong to try and survive in this broken world, and true healing can only happen when we each own our part and do what we can to try to fix, heal and put an end to the intergenerational trauma that has haunted us all since time immemorial. It requires an accountability framework. Restorative justice is Teshuvah. Rather than be embarrassed about “airing dirty laundry”, let’s recognize ways our response to trauma has become its own trauma, and work to change the pattern and make amends. Talking about the stories we tell and how they perpetuate trauma is an important part of undoing the harm and starting the work of healing. This is part of how we liberate ourselves from the oppression of intergenerational trauma: the true way to translate Mitzrayim (=Ancient Egyptian slavery).
From Genesis to Exodus
The last Shabbat of 2023, Jews around the world read the last passage of Genesis, which spoke about the death of Jacob, our last patriarch… also named Israel, which in Hebrew means one who struggles with G!d. He reflects our own struggle to embody G!d’s Love and Presence in a not-yet-redeemed (tragically wounded/wounding) world. Jacob’s death marks the end of an era. The empty space between Genesis and Exodus in the Torah scroll speaks to our human need to give ourselves space to grieve in our own lives and in our world. What we know from psychology is that, if we do not grieve or do our own inner work, we will not be able to heal. This avoidance leads to burnout and spiritual death, issues which continue to haunt our planet to this day. As Jews, we must work on healing the intergenerational trauma, grief, rage and fear that continues to haunt us and that is only growing with each passing day that we stay stuck and trapped in the status quo of a war on terror that is only making everyone more terrified. We need to heal, not fight.
The start of the book of Exodus speaks to collective grief and decision-making that forgot about Joseph’s forgiveness of his family and efforts to help Egypt/a world beyond his own people. This reflects a need for healing that was not met: as a result, deep injustices slowly grew until the Children of Israel became enslaved to a cruel task master Pharaoh (=in Hebrew, one who speaks evil/traditional rabbinic commentary explains that this is our ego). Our bondage put everyone’s children at risk… this still feels true. In our biblical parsha (reading) for this week, Moses had to be hidden, and lost from his people, in order to survive.
This past Shabbat, as Jews around the world begin reading the Book of Exodus which in Hebrew is “shemot” (=names), we think about the deeper significance of this text. When Moses encounters G!d for the first time, Moses presses the Divine for a personal name, asking, “What is Your name?” G!d answers with the mysterious, Ehyeh asher Ehyeh (I will be that I will be), adding that this name, like G!d, is eternal. Jews have many names for G!d, traditionally using the word “HaShem” (=the Name) to reflect the power of words and to acknowledge that G!d’s Essence is beyond what our limited knowledge can understand. The letters of G!d’s name (yud, hey and vav) are vowels and breath, leading to the Jewish teaching that G!d’s Name is the Breath of Life in all of Creation. Traditional Jewish teachings explain that idolatry begins when we think we know what G!d wants… Indeed, this was the hubris of Mitzrayim (usually translated as Egypt, but literally, in Hebrew, Mitzrayim means suffering): we become enslaved when we think we know what G!d wants….
The Reform Jewish liturgical poet, Alden Solovy, offers a poetic take on the power of names in our tradition, and reminding us of the sacred Jewish belief that our task on earth is to recognize that each of us represent part of G!d’s Name and essence on earth. May the time come soon when we recognize that everyone and everything as incarnations of G!d’s Breath, and align our world and behaviors to reflect this Truth.
Emerging Torah as Rabbi Nachshon emerges 