HIDDEN AND REVEALED
This past weekend we enjoyed two meaningful and entertaining programs with this year’s visiting rabbinical student intern. Michelle Katz (RRC 2027) taught us about Jewish games (mahjong club, anyone??) on Friday night, and the history of bagels on Sunday morning, a delicious pairing.
There is, obviously, a great deal of hidden lore in the times and places we gather to eat and recreate. As we move through this omer period, for example – the time of counting from Liberation to Revelation between the second night of Passover and the festival of Shavuot – we come to the 33rd day, Lag BaOmer. The origins of the observance, the how-and-why it landed on our calendar, are shrouded in mystery. Yet it has become a festive (though not festival) day of play with bows and arrows (is that Jewish?!?) and bonfires.
Sometimes, some times are just times of opportunity, structures of possibility when and where what arises within the space brings unexpected gifts, shifts in perspective or new understandings.
A small case in point. To make our home more comfortable for the Sunday morning gathering, my son and I shifted the dining room table against the wall, making more room between the kitchen counter and the table laden with the sumptuous bagel brunch offerings. Afterwards, as the last dishes and leftovers were put away, it struck me that we should leave the table there, providing a much more comfortable passageway, some might say better feng shui, the Chinese practice about balance and alignment in one’s physical surroundings.
We’ve lived in this place for over three years, and this never occurred to me! A small adjustment literally opened up breathing room. The metaphor did not escape me. How many times have I overlooked a space or a time, whether on my calendar, in my observances, or in relation to another, when a different way to shape the experience would provide amplitude, room to breathe, a fresh approach?
When we play games like the ones we learned about on Freylekh Friday, the ones tied to Jewish festivals like spinning the dreidel on Hanukkah or Apples to Apples: Jewish Edition, we aren’t necessarily homing in on the “this is a Jewish learning experience.” We may not even be able to discern what is unfolding. Our debates (okay, our sharing-with-conviction!) about our favourite bagels Sunday morning were about more than just taste and texture. Layered over our shmears of butter or cream cheese is also a more ephemeral patina of unquantifiable associations.
Writing about Shavuot Theology in A Guide to Jewish Practice, vol. 1 from Reconstructionist Press, Rabbi Jacob Staub teaches:
“The enterprise of liberal Judaism assumes that the Torah was not literally revealed in the sense that every letter and word was dictated by God and thus is binding upon us for all time. But if the Bible is just a book written by human beings, why do we continue to treasure it, and why do we choose to live according to its teachings? … Reconstructing our understandings of divine revelation and the authority of Torah enables us to see ourselves as links in the chain of tradition…”
We don’t always see, or even know, what we are learning when we taste, when we play, even when we study. The hidden or as-yet-unknowns beckons us to keep on exploring, keep on gathering, keep on moving the furniture.
Rabbi Liz
