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Good faith in people

 “How are you?”

“Hmm…I am doing OK, if I don’t think too much about it.”

This is an unsatisfying if honest beginning to a potentially good conversation. I know, because one of the best conversations I’ve had “post November 5, 2024” began this way.

Many of us may be feeling very “not OK”.

In an America where polite greetings include the incredibly curt “How are you?”, seldomly followed by enough time to answer that question honestly, finding time to sit down and chat seems more necessary than ever.

Let’s do that.

Meet more in person with everyone, especially those closest to us.

Pay more attention to the relationships that sustain us and to those around us who need sustaining.

Jews sum up all of Judaism in many ways, one of those central teachings that I have felt and aimed for is:

“In order to care for the world, we must start with ourselves, our families, and our communities.”

I don’t have a citation for this, it may be my own digest of several rabbinic aphorisms. I like to think of it as a Jewish communal version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – we can’t take care of anyone else if we aren’t taking care of ourselves first. Like the instructions to put on our own oxygen masks before helping others.

Let’s go back to basics. And when we do that, see what we really need and the people around us really need. Let’s focus on those fundamental needs for ourselves. When we do that, let’s see ourselves as interconnected with a whole lot of other people with fundamental needs. Everyone’s got them.

I don’t know what will work for all of us going forward.

I do know that caring for one another, listening to each other, and believing each other when we say what we’re feeling and what we need, is the start of good faith in each other, and maybe the beginning of a community of people working in good faith with one another.

It’s a start.

I am ready to meet you and go with you into a better future together.

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Accomplices for Justice - Take 18

Living with more soul, speaking in good faith, and more.

This week, we look at Mary Anne Franks', "Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment".

Let's collaborate in thwarting the historical efforts to prevent American from being a nation with a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."

Facebook event link.

Zoom link.

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Accomplices for Justice - Take 17

Living with soul, doing better, and liberalism, through the lens of Adam Gopnik’s “A Thousand Small Sanities: the Moral Adventure of Liberalism”. Here’s the Zoom link.

Here’s the Facebook Event Link.

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Good Faith Judaism

“Good faith partners don’t quote scripture at each other.”

Working with people from multiple faith backgrounds, I often say this and find general agreement among accomplices in justice work.

Jewish teachers regularly cite sacred sources, from the Five Books of Moses all the way through current writings. Many Jews quote texts all the time and do much more than say: “Look, I have a source to back up my argument.” We have thousands of years of established procedures for “d’rash-ing” or interpreting texts.

As a rabbinic colleague pointed out, we try not to do this “at” each other, so much as with one another. We aim to be guided by some agreed upon principles in the process. We don’t always get it right. We can be argumentative and hurtful and divisive as much as anyone else, but we do try to unite around some basic ideas, like these, which are only a sample:

- Respect and Dignity — as one family of humanity, hailing from the same universal source, we try to treat one another as mutual bearers of an infinite spark, a shard of divinity. When we teach, generally, and particularly when we use our sacred texts, we aim to uphold these principles, and our teachings ought not defy them.

- Compassion and Inclusion — kindness, soulfulness, a high regard for each other’s humanity and human needs. While there are many sources in our traditions that can be used to divide and exclude, we should aim higher.

- Learning and Tradition — while wisdom often starts in a source text, Jews have embraced an evolution and movement with the times that progresses our texts with us. We are people of many books, some of which have only been written yesterday.

Rabbi Amy Scheinerman teaches about these principles and and many others, calling them “meta-commandments”[1] — underlying guidelines for applying Jewish teachings in practice.

We try not to use our texts as a bludgeon against one another. Sharing wisdom from ancient sources fulfills another important Jewish principle — bringing us together in community. When we use our sacred texts to sow division and enmity, we fall into historical challenges that Jewish wisdom has cautioned us against for millennia. Jewish teachings often attribute the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, in 70 CE, to “baseless hatred” between Jews, taking responsibility, perhaps unreasonably, for something that was clearly done to our ancestors by the Roman Empire.

Nearly seventy rabbis and rabbinical students from different affiliations recently joined together in an organization called Beit Kaplan, which is “a forum for the cultivation of a flourishing, dynamic Jewish civilization…With deep ties to Reconstructionist Judaism”[2].

Beit Kaplan rallied in support of students who left the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College last year because of the hostility directed at them as supporters of the State of Israel, self-proclaimed “liberal Zionists”. Beit Kaplan sponsored a gathering to hear the testimony of these former students on Monday, September 9, 2024.

On Friday, September 6, 2024, a rabbi and faculty member at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) wrote a regular email to rabbinical students and advised them to not attend the Beit Kaplan gathering “both for the sake of your own well-being, and to not give the event undue attention”. The rabbi continued to provide “Torah framing” for help in dealing with “the problems that pain us” seemingly raised by the Beit Kaplan event.

The rabbi invoked that week’s Torah reading, called Shoftim, (Deuteronomy 16:18–21:9), declared that the students who left RRC were “those who provide false testimony” who spoke “unethically” and cited the verses that call for such people to be swept from your midst (Deut. 19:19) and killed for their crimes without pity (Deut. 19:21). While tempering this harsh decree from scripture with the Talmud’s qualifications that punishments should be the monetary payment for damages, the rabbi summed up with this interpretation: “There is still a consequence, and the consequence does not need to be identical to the initial action. There is mercy mixed in with justice.” The rabbi concluded with a nod to loving-kindness as a sign of power and rigor in pursuing communal justice.

This brazen use of sacred texts to condemn former community-members, disparage them as unethical liars, and then call for their punishment in vague terms shocked me. This was the kind of scriptural argument that justified American white supremacy, imposed patriarchy and misogyny onto generations of women, and argued for the subjugation of the Jewish people for nearly 2,000 years. That a rabbi made these claims, offered no evidence nor any judicial process by which those they accused could be condemned, and then alluded to punishments from Biblical and Talmudic times without any real qualifications, horrified and saddened me.

This rabbi used our shared sacred texts as a bludgeon against former students and potential colleagues as part of a message to prevent people from engaging with one another. In contrast, I propose an embrace of shared values as a necessary precursor to an argument from sacred sources. What we are arguing for is as important as which sources we use to support that argument. Quoting from the same passages in last week’s Torah reading (Deuteronomy 16:20), “Equity, equity you are to pursue”, or “Justice, justice shall you pursue”[3], we do so understanding that equity, and justice may be repeated in this verse to remind us to take others’ perspectives into account. Justice requires community and overcoming distances between one another — it is a collaborative project. In this way, I offer a Biblical interpretation that I believe asks us to participate in a system of community values that elevate all of us to behave better with one another.

As a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and a proud student of the teachings of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan that inspired the founding of RRC, I implore the faculty and leadership of RRC to reconsider the words of one of your own. Please join us in this season of return and reconciliation in shared work of repair. Please engage with us and those who have shared their difficulties with RRC in good faith.

Let us teach and learn our texts with one another, and not use them as weapons against each other.

 [1] I have heard Rabbi Scheinerman teach this under the phrase “meta-mitzvah”, here is one place in print:  Scheinerman, A. (2018, October). Hospice, Interfaith, and Halakha. https://collegecommons.huc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/BullyPulpit_Rabbi_Amy_Scheinerman_Transcript_FINAL.pdf, Pages 4–5

[2] Beit Kaplan. (n.d.). The Rabbinic Partnership for Jewish Peoplehood. Retrieved September 10, 2024, from https://www.beitkaplan.org/

[3] The first translation is from: Fox, E. (1997). The Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Schocken.

And the second is from: Jewish Publication Society Inc. (2009). JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh. Jewish Publication Society of America.

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Accomplices for Justice - Take 15

A different perspective on what to do next, reading and discussing:

Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People―and the Fight to Resist It, Ari Berman

Join us on Zoom here.

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Open Door Judaism - Annual Meeting

Join us for a discussion of all that Open Door Judaism is doing: - Accomplices for Justice - Partnerships with educational and justice organizations like Real Talk - What’s next? Nominate board members. All in under an hour. Join at Zoom link here.

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Accomplices for Justice - Take 14

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No Straight Lines

Tuesday, June 18, 2024

 The arc of history doesn’t bend towards justice. Not by itself.

We must bend and break the arc, again and again, to pursue justice.

Time and patience always favor the oppressors. Falling apart is the natural direction of things.

This holds for individuals, peoples, and nations.

I am a moderately lucky person. My life does not move in a straight line of progress. I worked hard, got lucky, faced challenges, got unlucky, and struggled. Life is filled with interruptions of any easy path forward. I can look back and see progress over time, which is lucky, but only by smoothing over all the falls and drops and times of difficulty. And sometimes, in the middle of one of those “valleys in the shadow of death”[1], seeing any progress feels impossible. The arc of my personal history may bend towards justice over time, but it is no smooth climb. It is rocky and challenging and sometimes every step forward is an enormous effort. And still, I am much luckier than most.

As a Jewish person working with many multi-faith partners, I often explain how Jews are not a “people of the Book”[2]. Judaism is a culture of many books, even Hebrew Scriptures themselves are a library written and compiled over centuries. Most importantly, the books that help define who Jews are today and how we organize ourselves were written much later, they are rabbinic works like the Mishnah, the Talmud, all the interpretative stories of the Midrash, and the commentaries and legal codes written about them starting in the Early Middle Ages and continuing today. And like our own lives, while we can smooth out the struggles and show a steady progress in Jewish history, many Jewish innovations overturned and upended all Jewish culture sometimes all at once.

One of the biggest interruptions in Jewish history was the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 CE. We can easily break Jewish civilization into before and after this moment. To this day, Jews are the heirs of the culture developed in the wake of that time. We are no longer a Biblical people, adhering explicitly to customs and laws laid out in Hebrew Scripture. We are no longer a people of burnt offerings and a hereditary patriarchy of monarchs and priests. Rather, in the millennia without a center, the Jewish people became varied in our identities and ethnic cultures, often trying to be pluralist in our acceptance of our differences, and in our best moments, struggling towards becoming democratic and meritocratic. Our many ways of reading and living were outlined and explored by the authors of all those later works.

Judaism responded to that great historical tragedy, the destruction of our central place of worship and rulership, with a revolution. Instead of that central ancient Temple run by an elite few, we became a decentralized people with local leaders who usually convinced nearby Jews of their authority by answering Jewish questions in ways that Jews felt were most authentically Jewish.[3] The many Jewish peoples continue to make our way into the future with progress fought for and lost and fought for again.

Americans like to think that American History follows an arc of inevitable improvement – that progress comes as time passes. This is not the case in Jewish History, and it is not the case in American History. Progress by fits and starts, through disruptions and steps forward and back, is the norm. Kermit Roosevelt III convincingly makes this point about the United States of America in The Nation That Never Was[4]. Roosevelt argues that the United States didn’t set out on a course of justice for all and a democracy that would expand to include everyone. The United States course-corrected violently during the Civil War, needed to course-correct again during the Civil Rights Era in the 1960’s, and must do so again now. Furthermore, we obstruct our own progress when we hold that the ideals the mythological “Founders” held and fought for are the same principles we hold dearest today and that those principles were clearly articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the original US Constitution.

Our understanding of “all people are created equal” is not the same as Thomas Jefferson’s, who not only owned slaves but refused to free his own children from slavery. The American Revolution was fought by insiders, people who were British citizens – white, landowning men – so that they could govern themselves. They were not interested in sharing government with anyone else. President Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. both used Thomas Jefferson’s words and the principles of the Declaration of Independence differently than Jefferson intended. Lincoln and Dr. King aimed to establish more inclusive and expansive understandings of American citizenship and democracy than Jefferson ever considered. Their versions weren’t perfect, they still needed work, like the inclusion of women Native Americans. Yet their versions were improvements, and we can improve upon them still.

The people who took Jefferson most seriously, the ones who felt they could throw off the yoke of a government they disagreed with for the sake of their own advancement, were the Confederates who sought to preserve slavery against the democratic will of the American people in 1860 who chose Lincoln largely in order to abolish enslaving people. American history does not lead neatly and directly from Jefferson, to Lincoln, to King, to the electing of the first African American president. It is a crooked path of oppression and fighting for justice and Americans are still in the thick of it today. Roosevelt lays this all out in detail and I recommend his book to anyone interested in helping make a better, more inclusive, more egalitarian, more democratic, and more “e pluribus unum – out of many one”, American future for us all.

We must be clear and honest about who we are and what we think and why. The Civil War was fought against enslaving people and the those who thought that owning people was their “American Way”. Most of the American Founders agreed with the Confederates and more than half of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were owners of enslaved people. Progressive Americans have been refighting the issues of the Civil War since the end of Reconstruction in the 1870’s. Fighting against Jim Crow which was slavery by another name for a century and fighting against the abuse and misuse of due process and citizenship in the Fourteenth Amendment for the sake of the powerful against the powerless for nearly a hundred and fifty years. This fight continues today as those who would oppress still use the same words against us all. They call it “originalism” and mean minority-rule, or religious freedom and mean freedom to restrict other people’s rights with whom they disagree, or “history and tradition” and mean the protection of gun rights and no rights for women.

People of faith who are also of good faith tend not to quote scripture at one another because we know that we can justify almost anything with a good Biblical quote. How we use an ancient source and for what principles are more important than whether we’ve found a clever text to support our opinion. Judaism evolved to read our ancient sources in ways that created a more just society over time. Not a perfect one, not one that we can’t question, but one that we are responsible for making better as individuals and as members of a community. In my own life the guideposts that led me down roads into trouble before are not permanent. I must reinterpret them, learn from them anew, and find a better path forward.

As thoughtful Americans we must embrace the complicated history and figures in that history, flaws and all, and see ourselves as empowered participants in building something better and new. We have no one in the past who “got it right”, whose words are the blueprint for “getting it right again”.

Let us leave aside simplifications that close us off to a better future and instead boldly walk forward together, creatively equipping ourselves with ancient wisdom and contemporary innovations and everything in between, so that our thoughts are guided by good values and lead to better practices and a better existence for us all.

[1] Psalm 23, Verse 4, my own perspective on the Hebrew, בְּגֵיא צַלְמָוֶת, as seen in:

Jewish Publication Society. (1999). תנ״ך = JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh: the traditional Hebrew text and the new JPS translation (2nd ed.).

[2] “People of the Book” seems to originally come from Muslim sources, and not Christian characterizations. Now, in my opinion, it is inappropriately embraced by many contemporary Jewish people. For Muslim roots of the term, see:

Dana, N. (2014). Part Three: The Qur’an’s Approach to “The People of the Book” (Ahl al-Kitab). In The struggle for Jerusalem and the Holy Land: A new inquiry into the Qur'an and classic Islamic sources on the people of Israel, their Torah, and their links to the Holy Land (p. 185).

[3] This is a description of Judaism sourced from many places throughout the course of my learning as a rabbi. I am happy to explore my references and reasons for this portrayal in future conversations.

[4] Roosevelt, K. (2022). The nation that never was: Reconstructing America's story. University of Chicago Press.

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Accomplices for Justice - Take Two

Continuing conversation with serious race consciousness between Pastor Wylie Hughes and Rabbi Jonathan Freirich.

Covering:

- The Black-Jewish Alliance - what happened to it and how to revive it?

- Public Discourse - can civil conversation return to civic life?

- The illiberal Left - can we revive liberalism among progressives?

The answers begin with: only when we pull apart the Gordian knot of White Supremacy, American misogyny and patriarchy, and anti-Indigenous genocide, for a start.

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Souls to the Polls - Saturday!

Saturday, October 28, 11:00 AM - 5:00 PM Delavan Grider Community Center, 877 E. Delavan

Come out and vote and celebrate making democracy work better…

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Uncomfortable Conversations that Change the World

Register here for this conversation: bit.ly/3qocyqL

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Presidents Day and our Voice

American politics continues to seem to disappoint us as we pursue justice together.

And yet, there are glimmers of light amid the centuries of oppressive darkness.

In today’s New York Times alone, there are stories of collaboration among African American mayors, an ember of progress in providing multi-racial access to suburban housing in New York State, and, on the bleaker side of things, Mississippi’s creation of a police-run judicial system for majority black neighborhoods.

At Rev. Dr. Wylie Hughes’ suggestion, I recently read James Cone’s powerful work, Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare. Among the wealth of wisdom offered, Cone reminds us of the need for both principled engagement and strong cultural identification and support - we need to be strong in our own identities and equally strong in our willingness to work with people from all backgrounds. A grounded and diverse pluralism continues to be a key to making sure there is shared justice. We work towards a day when celebrating our past presidents also elevates all of our communities and the justice we bring to each other. Thank you Rev. Hughes for the excellent recommendation.

Please join VOICE Buffalo in our efforts to collaborate and mutually support justice efforts together. There are opportunities for connection with Faith in Action coming up (see below) and we are constantly meeting with legislators about initiatives that make a difference to directly impacted residents on the East Side of Buffalo, and thus to us all.

There is no justice for anyone as long as injustice persists anywhere.

Wishing you all a good week,

Jonathan

Please consider supporting VOICE Buffalo as an individual member here, or as an organizational partner here.

FIA National is pleased to be hosting another FIA Federation Orientation Session on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023 from 4 PM EST to 5:30 PM EST. We held one a little over a year ago and got very positive feedback from attendees. 

REGISTER HERE

At this 90 minute gathering, leaders and organizers will share what it means to be part of the Faith in Action network and the relationships we build. If you have staff, board members, or key leaders who want to know more about the history and mission of Faith in Action, what organizing is, where we are and what we work on, please join!

Transformational Leadership School - Cohort 7

Tuesday's February 21st - April 18th, 6:30pm - 8:30pm (virtual)

This TLS cohort will focus on supporting congregations and community members building a clear issue they can build organizing power around over the next few months. Sessions include: One to One's, Developing a Listening Campaign, Story of Self, Us and Now, Power and more. Sessions will be in English and Spanish.

With the support of our funder, Trinity Wall Street, VOICE is attending this cohort for free.

TLS Registration Link: bit.ly/TLSws23

Please join me in Albany for this action on Tuesday, 3/21 - Tell Big Banks to Stop Funding Fossil Fuels!! | RSVP here - if you want to ride with us, let me know ASAP.

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Our VOICE, Black History Month, and Conscientious Citizenship

Welcome to the inaugural VOICE Faith Engagement update!

 Please feel free to respond, ask questions, make suggestions, and more – consider this an opening to discussion about rallying our multi-faith efforts to advance black liberation because, as Rev. Denise Walden-Glenn reminds us, “There is no liberation without black liberation”.

 This week beginning Black History Month we are again reminded of the disregard with which American culture treats black lives, as we mourn the horrific beating and death of Tyre Nichols, watch the African American Studies AP get banned by the State of Florida, and then scaled back by the College Board, barely notice that African American “Eunice K. Dwumfour, a 30-year-old councilwoman serving her first term in Sayreville, N.J., was fatally shot on Wednesday night”, and see that D. L. Hughley devoted an entire show on Monday to Tyre Nichols while Steven Colbert didn’t mention him at all.

 Meanwhile, on the upside, talk of the latest renaissance in African American culture is out there in offerings like Amplify with Lara Downes.

 Join me in finding some inspiration in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call for “conscientious citizenship”. Michele Moody-Adams leads her profound essay “The Path of Conscientious Citizenship” with these words:

“I contend that, for King, conscientious citizenship is a way of living that seeks to give substance to the idea that justice is indivisible, aspiring to an ideal that (adapting a notion from Josiah Royce) King called the ‘beloved community’—by which he meant a world that would allow reconciliation between the former oppressed and their former oppressors, and embody an all-embracing love for humanity.”

[This essay appears in this vital collection: To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by Tommie Shelby and Brandon M. Terry]

 Knowing that this vision is the ideal and that we must work diligently, and over the course of many generations, to continue to approach it, helps me cope with the vastness of the project. Each of us can make a difference by devoting ourselves to this path. It is not easy, and it will not come quickly, but we can only get there by working on ourselves and collaborating.

 Wishing all of you blessings for a good weekend,

 Jonathan

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Counting Tao - Omer 32

Today’s Omer theme is endurance and eternity in humility and grace. (See comments below for more on the Omer)

Before and after meditating today, I read chapter 59 from the The Lao Tzu (See comments below for full text)

Eternity and endurance in the application of humility and grace, frugality as the seed that leads to everlasting existence - some days the connection between the Tao and the Omer themes seem designed to be together.

Big things start small.

I think about breathing when meditating. Each breath, each unique breath, varies in size. Smaller controlled breaths may lead to a calmer body and mind and spirit.

For the long term accomplishment, let’s start with a small breath.

[From The Lao Tzu (Tao-Te Ching) as found in Wing-Tsit Chan (translator and compiler), A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, (1963), pages 167-168, slightly adapted by Jonathan Freirich]

59. To rule people and to serve Heaven there is nothing better than to be frugal. Only by being frugal can one recover quickly. To recover quickly means to accumulate virtue heavily. By the heavy accumulation of virtue one can overcome everything. If one can overcome everything, then they will acquire a capacity the limit of which is beyond everyone’s knowledge. When their capacity is beyond anyone’s knowledge, they are fit to rule a state. One who possesses the Mother (Tao) of the state will last long. This means that the roots are deep and the stalks are firm, which is the way of long life and everlasting existence.

About the Counting of the Omer in the Jewish holiday cycle:

Today is thirty-two days, which is four weeks and four days of the Counting of the Omer - a time when many Jews note each day between the Second Day of Passover, the celebration of freedom, and the next major holiday, Shavuot, or “weeks”, when Jews celebrate the covenant given at Mount Sinai. Each of the seven weeks and each of the seven days in these weeks correspond to a particular “sefirah” or “sphere”, or perhaps better, “a divine emanation/human aspiration”. These themes allow us to reflect on the days as we move from liberation to revelation in the Jewish calendar.

Today’s Omer theme is endurance and eternity (“netzach” נֶצַח) in the week of humility and grace (“hod” הוֹד).

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Counting Tao - Omer 32

Today’s Omer theme is endurance and eternity in humility and grace. (See comments below for more on the Omer)

Before and after meditating today, I read chapter 59 from the The Lao Tzu (See comments below for full text)

Eternity and endurance in the application of humility and grace, frugality as the seed that leads to everlasting existence - some days the connection between the Tao and the Omer themes seem designed to be together.

Big things start small.

I think about breathing when meditating. Each breath, each unique breath, varies in size. Smaller controlled breaths may lead to a calmer body and mind and spirit.

For the long term accomplishment, let’s start with a small breath.

[From The Lao Tzu (Tao-Te Ching) as found in Wing-Tsit Chan (translator and compiler), A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, (1963), pages 167-168, slightly adapted by Jonathan Freirich]

59. To rule people and to serve Heaven there is nothing better than to be frugal. Only by being frugal can one recover quickly. To recover quickly means to accumulate virtue heavily. By the heavy accumulation of virtue one can overcome everything. If one can overcome everything, then they will acquire a capacity the limit of which is beyond everyone’s knowledge. When their capacity is beyond anyone’s knowledge, they are fit to rule a state. One who possesses the Mother (Tao) of the state will last long. This means that the roots are deep and the stalks are firm, which is the way of long life and everlasting existence.

About the Counting of the Omer in the Jewish holiday cycle:

Today is thirty-two days, which is four weeks and four days of the Counting of the Omer - a time when many Jews note each day between the Second Day of Passover, the celebration of freedom, and the next major holiday, Shavuot, or “weeks”, when Jews celebrate the covenant given at Mount Sinai. Each of the seven weeks and each of the seven days in these weeks correspond to a particular “sefirah” or “sphere”, or perhaps better, “a divine emanation/human aspiration”. These themes allow us to reflect on the days as we move from liberation to revelation in the Jewish calendar.

Today’s Omer theme is endurance and eternity (“netzach” נֶצַח) in the week of humility and grace (“hod” הוֹד).

[jewishandmore]

Counting Tao - Omer 31

Today’s Omer theme is beautiful harmonious balance in humility and grace. (See below for more on the Omer)

Before and after meditating today, I read chapter 58 from the The Lao Tzu (See below for full text)

There is a fine balance in ruling over ourselves internally, spiritually, and bringing our governing ideas into the world so that our spirit can be made real.

I find the Tao inspirational in this regard, asking us to follow the sage in honing our best attributes and not overextending them.

Balance requires restraint, even when we have done the work and think we it might be our time to shine.

In Judaism, one of the central ideas on this topic is summed up in the Hebrew term, tzimtzum, or self-reduction. Creation is facilitated not by over-attention, but by a combination of caring and restraint, action and inaction.

We are working on this right now in our yard. We recently planted apple trees and berry bushes and I am so tempted to over-water and over-attend to them, which might crowd out the plants’ own abilities to grow and take hold on their own.

Real growth happens when we find that subtle balance between attention and inattention.

[From The Lao Tzu (Tao-Te Ching) as found in Wing-Tsit Chan (translator and compiler), A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, (1963), page 167, slightly adapted by Jonathan Freirich]

58. When the government is non-discriminative and dull, The people are contented and generous. When the government is searching and discriminative, The people are disappointed and contentious. Calamity is that upon which happiness depends; Happiness is that in which calamity is latent. Who knows when the limit will be reached? Is there no correctness (used to govern the world?) Then the correct again becomes the perverse And the good will again become evil. The people have been deluded for a long time. Therefore the sage is as pointed as a square but does not pierce. They are as acute as a knife but do not cut. They are as straight as an unbent line but do not extend. They are as bright as light but do not dazzle.

About the Counting of the Omer in the Jewish holiday cycle:Today is thirty-one days, which is four weeks and three days of the Counting of the Omer - a time when many Jews note each day between the Second Day of Passover, the celebration of freedom, and the next major holiday, Shavuot, or “weeks”, when Jews celebrate the covenant given at Mount Sinai. Each of the seven weeks and each of the seven days in these weeks correspond to a particular “sefirah” or “sphere”, or perhaps better, “a divine emanation/human aspiration”. These themes allow us to reflect on the days as we move from liberation to revelation in the Jewish calendar.

Today’s Omer theme is beautiful harmonious balance (“tiferet” תֵפְאֶרֶת) in the week of humility and grace (“hod” הוֹד).

[jewishandmore]

Counting Tao - Omer 31

Today’s Omer theme is beautiful harmonious balance in humility and grace. (See below for more on the Omer)

Before and after meditating today, I read chapter 58 from the The Lao Tzu (See below for full text)

There is a fine balance in ruling over ourselves internally, spiritually, and bringing our governing ideas into the world so that our spirit can be made real.

I find the Tao inspirational in this regard, asking us to follow the sage in honing our best attributes and not overextending them.

Balance requires restraint, even when we have done the work and think we it might be our time to shine.

In Judaism, one of the central ideas on this topic is summed up in the Hebrew term, tzimtzum, or self-reduction. Creation is facilitated not by over-attention, but by a combination of caring and restraint, action and inaction.

We are working on this right now in our yard. We recently planted apple trees and berry bushes and I am so tempted to over-water and over-attend to them, which might crowd out the plants’ own abilities to grow and take hold on their own.

Real growth happens when we find that subtle balance between attention and inattention.

[From The Lao Tzu (Tao-Te Ching) as found in Wing-Tsit Chan (translator and compiler), A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, (1963), page 167, slightly adapted by Jonathan Freirich]

58. When the government is non-discriminative and dull, The people are contented and generous. When the government is searching and discriminative, The people are disappointed and contentious. Calamity is that upon which happiness depends; Happiness is that in which calamity is latent. Who knows when the limit will be reached? Is there no correctness (used to govern the world?) Then the correct again becomes the perverse And the good will again become evil. The people have been deluded for a long time. Therefore the sage is as pointed as a square but does not pierce. They are as acute as a knife but do not cut. They are as straight as an unbent line but do not extend. They are as bright as light but do not dazzle.

About the Counting of the Omer in the Jewish holiday cycle:Today is thirty-one days, which is four weeks and three days of the Counting of the Omer - a time when many Jews note each day between the Second Day of Passover, the celebration of freedom, and the next major holiday, Shavuot, or “weeks”, when Jews celebrate the covenant given at Mount Sinai. Each of the seven weeks and each of the seven days in these weeks correspond to a particular “sefirah” or “sphere”, or perhaps better, “a divine emanation/human aspiration”. These themes allow us to reflect on the days as we move from liberation to revelation in the Jewish calendar.

Today’s Omer theme is beautiful harmonious balance (“tiferet” תֵפְאֶרֶת) in the week of humility and grace (“hod” הוֹד).