Shabbat Shalom Dear TBZ Community,
It is a joy to be writing this Shabbat note with my dear friend and hevruta (study partner), Kohenet Rabbi Sarah Bracha Gershuny, visiting from Boulder, CO. She traveled to celebrate in joy as Alma becomes bat mitzvah, having also been honored to attend her baby naming!
For about a decade, Rav Sarah Bracha and I have been studying Sha’arei Orah, Gates of Light, a book of Kabbalah by the 13th-century mystical philosopher Rabbi Yosef Gikatilla. The book is a sequence of 10 chapters, or Gates, each of which explores a constellation of names for God which, when taken collectively, help to describe the nature of this particular aspect of reality and the Godhead. The book proceeds from Malchut to Keter, progressing from the most superficial, or accessible, to the most profound.
Life also has a way of taking us from one gateway to the next. Even though Rav SB came here to celebrate in joy, the day she arrived we learned that the beloved partner and husband of our colleague had passed away. Thus this morning we went to a funeral, once again seeing the profound wisdom of the Jewish tradition in calling people together in times of sorrow no less than in times of joy.
Parashat Shemini also presents us with the deep truths of life’s gateways, beginning as it does with the initiation of the priesthood, and ending with the deaths of Aharon’s eldest sons, Nadav and Avihu. Both are powerful and irrevocable changes of state and status. Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam, reminds us that all such irrevocable changes in status involve a death of some sort: the old self dies as the new self is born. Even as we are born, our existence as a fetus comes to an end.
Many of us may well remember 13 years ago when Alma was born, and Rav Claudia and Rav Ebn became parents, their lives also undergoing irrevocable change. Of course, these two gifted and scholarly parents being who they are, this became a wonderful opportunity for the whole community to see up close what a covenanting ceremony for a Jewish baby girl might look like. For anyone who missed it or does not remember, the ritual for Alma’s naming involved her being anointed with kiddush wine on the three other parts of the body the Tanakh instructs us to circumcise: the heart, the lips and the ears.
In Hebrew, the word for what is removed through circumcision is orlah, which also means the husk of the fruit, as well as the fruit of trees that are not yet old enough to be offered to God or consumed by humans. Both meanings convey a sense of not yet being ready or not fit.
As a part of the bat mitzvah ritual tomorrow, Alma’s proud parents will recite the bracha releasing them from spiritual obligation and culpability for her deeds:
בָּרוּךְ… שֶׁפְּטָרַנוּ מֵעָנְשׁה שֶׁלָּזוֹ
Baruch sh’pettaranu m’oneshah she’la’zoh.
ּBlessed… that we are released from the consequences of this one’s actions.
This word petaranu connects to both birth and death. In the Torah, the firstborn, like Alma, is called the petter rechem, the womb opener; and when a person dies we say they are niftar, from the same root, as the soul is released from the husk of the body.
We recognize that this time of joy, Alma’s becoming bat mitzvah, goes hand in hand with a certain sadness. This is the sadness of the ending of a chapter of her life, her childhood, as she is reborn in a new identity. She will now be a young Jewish adult, a member of the covenant in her own right. From this point, Alma gets to discover her own relationship with Source and experience how her unfolding spirituality guides her choice of actions.
May this discovery bring with it profound joy as well as life’s measure of sorrows, and may our community always be here to guide and uplift her through all of life's gateways, from the most superficial to the most profound.
Mazal tov to Alma and all of her family. May all of you go from strength to strength!
Shabbat Shalom and much love to the Kreiman-Leaders and the whole TBZ family,
Rav Tiferet and Rav Sarah Bracha
