Tuesday Kavvanah, 7/12/2011 - Spiritual Betrothal

While applying tefillin this morning prior to Shaharit (the morning service), I recited the customary verses from the prophet Hosea (2:21-22):

וְאֵרַשְׂתִּיךְ לִי, לְעוֹלָם; וְאֵרַשְׂתִּיךְ לִי בְּצֶדֶק וּבְמִשְׁפָּט, וּבְחֶסֶד וּבְרַחֲמִים. וְאֵרַשְׂתִּיךְ לִי, בֶּאֱמוּנָה; וְיָדַעַתְּ אֶת-יְהוָה
Ve'erastikh li le'olam
Ve'erastikh li betzedeq uvmishpat, uvhesed uvrahamim
Ve'erastikh li be'emunah, veyada'at et Adonai
I betroth you to Me forever
I betroth you to Me with righteousness and justice, with love and compassion
I betroth you to Me with faithfulness; then you shall be at one with Adonai

In biblical context, Hosea's imagery reflects his metaphorical marriage to an unfaithful wife, and the pair together symbolize the fraught relationship between God and the people Israel. When binding tefillin to one's arm on weekday mornings, these verses are recited as the strap is wrapped three times around the middle finger of the weak arm; the action suggests marriage, and so do the words.

I have never heard these verses recited at a wedding, although I think that they would work well. Binding tefillin is, however, just as much about betrothal - of course to God, but as well to one another as a community. Those of us who gather early in the morning to daven are bound together in qedushah / holiness and camaraderie.

Thursday Kavvanah, 6/30/2011 - Tefillin: Where the Physical Meets the Spiritual

In the daily binding of tefillin, the physical and the metaphorical align. We recite the in the first paragraph of the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:8):

וּקְשַׁרְתָּם לְאוֹת, עַל-יָדֶךָ; וְהָיוּ לְטֹטָפֹת, בֵּין עֵינֶיךָ
Uqshartam le-ot al yadekha, vehayu letotafot bein einekha
Bind them as a sign on your arm, and wear them as frontlets between your eyes

Never mind that we don't know what "totafot" (here translated as "frontlets") are. Perhaps the words of the Torah are to be taken literally, as an instruction to actually attach these words to our arms and foreheads. Or perhaps the image simply suggests the devotion of mind and hand, i.e. thought and deed.

Regardless, the tefillin that we wear in the morning remain with you all day, long after they are physically removed. This sign of devotion to the Torah begins with the concrete and continues metaphorically all day, a unity of the spiritual and physical.

Thursday Kavvanah, 4/7/2011 - Steadying the Rollercoaster of Life

As a rabbi, I am with people for all sorts of lifecycle events: birth, death, marriage, divorce, and so forth. These events often fall on top of each other, and occasionally within the same family.

This morning, I was with a family celebrating their son's becoming a bar mitzvah (one who reaches the age of Jewish adulthood in the context of Jewish law at age 13) as he put on tefillin ("phylacteries" - leather straps and boxes containing words of the Torah that are worn during Shaharit, the morning service) for the first time and read from the Torah. Meanwhile, the boy's cousins had just suffered the loss of the patriarch of the family, and the funeral was held just an hour and a half after the tefillin service. Nonetheless, the cousins were there, celebrating with the bar mitzvah boy.

Judaism sanctifies time with holidays and lifecycle rituals; such ceremonies give our lives meaning and framework. That joyous and sad moments occasionally coincide reinforces for me the sense that life can be a rollercoaster of emotion, one which can be steadied by said spiritual framework.

עֵץ חַיִּים הִיא לַמַּחֲזִיקִים בָּהּ
Etz hayyim hi lemahaziqim bah
The Torah is a tree of life for those who grasp it

Holding on to the Jewish framework helps alleviate the angst of high and low. That's why I do what I do.

Tuesday Morning Kavvanah, 3/8/2011 - Ancient Resonance

Let's face it: to those who have not spent their lives immersed in the intricacies of Jewish text, tefillah and Jewish ritual can seem impenetrable, and somewhat hard to relate to for modern people. Why wake up early every morning to recite a litany of mostly-meaningless syllables in a foreign language? Why bind inscribed pieces of parchment to our heads and arms with leather straps? Why drape oneself in a rectangular garment with knots hanging off the corners?

If we do not feel the compulsion of commandedness (which is very hard for most of us to feel these days), these rituals may fall flat. But when I put on tefillin and tallit in the morning, when I recite the ancient words of Jewish liturgy, I feel the resonance of all the generations that came before me, generations of people who, I hope, felt closer to God than I ever will. And my ancestors used the same words of tefillah, liturgy that has been handed down to us today. Who are we to be indifferent to its power?

This historical resonance enables me to engage meaningfully with Jewish tradition.