Divine Embodied Interconnection
The sun rises, and the sun sets—
And glides back to where it rises…
There is no end to writing…
Kohelet 1:5, 12:12
In learning the Torah portion this week in preparation for writing to you, I looked back at the drash I wrote last year and the year before last. Each week Rabbi Rachel and I strive so hard to find the kernel of Torah that meets this precise moment, that has something to offer of nourishment, challenge, or guidance. And yet when I looked at my ideas for the last three years on parshat Ki Tisa, I was startled to discover that I keep being drawn back to the same theme! Apparently, this has become a core teaching for me, something perennially relevant to Kavana, and this year something that also touches on a cultural nerve in a new way.
The roots of this teaching all ground themselves in Exodus 33:18-20:
וַיֹּאמַ֑ר הַרְאֵ֥נִי נָ֖א אֶת־כְּבֹדֶֽךָ׃
וַיֹּ֗אמֶר אֲנִ֨י אַעֲבִ֤יר כׇּל־טוּבִי֙ עַל־פָּנֶ֔יךָ וְקָרָ֧אתִֽי בְשֵׁ֛ם יְהֹוָ֖ה לְפָנֶ֑יךָ וְחַנֹּתִי֙ אֶת־אֲשֶׁ֣ר אָחֹ֔ן וְרִחַמְתִּ֖י אֶת־אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֲרַחֵֽם׃
וַיֹּ֕אמֶר לֹ֥א תוּכַ֖ל לִרְאֹ֣ת אֶת־פָּנָ֑י כִּ֛י לֹֽא־יִרְאַ֥נִי הָאָדָ֖ם וָחָֽי׃
[Moses] said, “Oh, let me behold Your Presence!”
And [God] said, “I will make all My goodness pass before you (literally: before your face), and I will proclaim before you the name Y-H-V-H, and the grace that I grant and the compassion that I show,”
And [God] said, “But you cannot see My face, for a human being may not see Me and live.”
Moses yearns to see God in a more tangible way (intriguingly - perhaps a parallel urge to the one that motivated the Israelites to make a Golden Calf). God’s face remains hidden, but God proclaims the Thirteen Middot (Attributes) which we still use today to invoke God’s goodness and compassion on the High Holidays.
Two years ago, I was drawn to a teaching that connects these Thirteen Middot with another thirteen middot (methods in this case), a rabbinic list of ways to interpret Torah. Through a complex grammatical analogy, Levi Yitzchak claims that just as meaning can be drawn from seeing common terms between two otherwise diverse texts, compassion arises when otherwise diverse people connect to what they have in common.
“You awaken compassion by drawing close to someone who in many ways is quite distant from you, by seeing in them something that resonates with your own identity, experience, or circumstances. The common element brings us close together - and then the creative possibilities of relationship come into being because we are so different in other ways! For Levi Yitzchak, one of the expressions of God’s presence, what Moses so yearned to see, is the practice of compassion and the creative experiment of community. That’s what we do in our Kavana Cooperative. We care about each other, and as we are drawn together by some shared common terms, we offer our unique gifts which interact to create new possibilities for living a life of meaning and purpose.”
In other words, our work as people sharing a life together is to notice what we share in common (leading to compassion), and let our differences stir our creativity.
Last year, like a moth to flame, I apparently came back to that same Torah text. Yearning to see God’s hidden face represents a crucial part of our spiritual growth:
“A child, like the Israelites at Sinai, builds a spiritual life around a kernel of existential not-knowing. Each one of us moves forward with a different mixture of curiosity, fear, embarrassment, and hopeful yearning. We build idols and life smashes them, and sometimes the broken image of what we thought we knew is painful.
When, as adults, we ask who God is, the Torah offers insight into mature spiritual knowing of God. It is dynamic (ever changing like the divine name), reflective (when we glimpse backward like Moses does), and humbling (when we remember our inability to fully picture God and indeed each being).”
At the heart of what felt important to me each year was the idea that we humans are the same and we are different. We have so much in common, and yet we are also irreducibly mysterious to each other. This basic fact of life can lead to compassion, creativity, or humble spiritual growth - or mistrust, a desire to wall off others, and a reversion to our most selfish and destructive impulses.
This year, I fear that so many in power (and who enable those in power) choose fear and anger over compassion, choose chaos over creativity, choose the law of the jungle over the rule of law.
The medieval sage Ovadiah Sforno noticed the discrepancy between what Moses asked for and what God offered. God says, “You can see my goodness…but not My face.” But Moses asked to see God’s kavod - usually translated as Presence, or Glory, and also meaning honor, respect, and dignity.
Sforno says that God’s kavod refers to “how every creature, every phenomenon in this universe derives from You, even though these phenomena do not appear to be even faintly related to one another. This is what Isaiah 6:3 meant with the words“all the earth is filled with God’s kavod.”
We are similar, because we all derive from our Creator. And we are different, because the Creator created diversity! And a universe full of wildly different beings is the definition of what is glorious, honorable, and inherently dignified about God… Should we not aspire to see this deep truth, as Moses asks?
In a time where the roar of reaction to DEI has grown claws that slash, let us rededicate ourselves to Divine Embodied Interconnection: the practice of recognizing our shared humanity, valuing our diverse ways of being, and doing everything in our power to build communities and societies of dignity, justice, creative partnership, and spiritual wisdom.
Shabbat shalom!
Rabbi Jay LeVine
