February 2019
Rabbi Lisa Goldstein
Netzach and Hod: A Year of Learning
Last week we celebrated a special anniversary: it has been one year since my husband and I became foster parents to a wonderful 18-year-old refugee from West Africa. It has been a year of great blessing and joy and also of tremendous learning, as you can imagine, given that this is our first time parenting and we jumped right into teenagerhood – not to mention all kinds of cultural differences.
 
And yet, a year in, I realize that so much of the learning is simply refining the work we are engaged in all the time anyway.
Practices in this Letter
Rabbi Sam Feinsmith
Shelly Nelson-Shore
Rabbi Jonathan Slater
Rabbi Marc Margolius
Two Pockets Teaching: Netzach and Hod
Rabbi Sam Feinsmith
Netzach means victory, it refers to unrelenting effort, grit, and tenacity toward improving upon our world. Hod connotes surrender, humility, acknowledging our smallness and limitations and accepting that we can't do it all. A healthy sense of self that isn't too large and overbearing or too small and self-deprecating lies in the balance between these two, which this meditation practice is meant to help us cultivate in real time.

Netzach and Hod : Our Spiritual Legs
Shelly Nelson-Shore
How aware are you of your legs?

For many of us, our legs do a great deal of work. They hold us up. They take us from place to place. They brace us in moments of surprise. They propel us toward our goals, literally and figuratively. They clue us into our emotions and our health. They support us, drive us, and ground us.

The Paradox of Netzach and Hod
Rabbi Jonathan Slater
In the Jewish mystical conception of the Godhead, there are three triads of emergent aspects of the Divine Being. They are not separate from God, but are each different modes through which we might experience divinity in the world and in ourselves. They are made up of forces or inner psycho-social orientations that we might all recognize.

More and Enough
Rabbi Marc Margolius
The kabbalistic  sephirah  of  Netzach  represents energetic desire to fulfill that which has not yet been realized: a sense of desiring more. Hod, which complements it in the kabbalistic rubric, represents satiety: the sense of being and having enough.  Netzach represents our drive to improve, and can be associated with the six days of work;  Hod represents our capacity to experience what is as sufficient, and can be associated with Shabbat.

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