Notice Everything
After taping a large sheet of watercolor paper to the wall, I dab some gobs of pink and red tempera paint onto a plate, grab a brush, and get busy making art. A flick of the wrist creates one vivid streak, then another. The awkwardness of starting gives way to the intent exhilaration of creative flow. The room fades from consciousness - it is just me, the paintbrush, the tempera, and the unexpected world emerging on the paper. This is the zone, where all of my attention coheres into one activity, blissfully free of distraction. But as I turn to get more paint, I see Holly a few feet away, clearly in the zone as well. Her use of bright and dark colors draws me in as she merges them together. The room comes back into focus, and I take a minute to scan what everyone else is doing. Wait - is that someone making a tinfoil sculpture with a strange little yellow wig on it?? Whoa - I’d never thought to speckle paint on a canvas with a toothbrush like that before! Mm - how interesting that Elyza has expanded the corner of her canvas with a page from a magazine, sticking out beyond the edge. I return to my mark-making with new ideas to steal borrow. This is the magic of making art together through the Jewish Studio Process. And in particular, what happens when you follow the rule of: Notice everything!
The fourth book of Torah, which we begin this week, offers through its English and Hebrew names two models of noticing. In English, we call this book Numbers because there are multiple censuses taken of the people. Dozens of paragraphs detail the tribal enrollment numbers, a proactive and precise form of noticing. Reading the first few chapters of Numbers, you start to become impressed with this ragtag group of formerly enslaved people who have transformed into a well-organized and orderly nation. However, the Hebrew name of this book hints at the messier stories that characterize the later chapters - Bemidbar, “In the Wilderness.” In the wilderness, the people send scouts into Canaan to notice on their behalf, but the scouts only notice what will be difficult about settling the land. Again and again, the people notice every opportunity to complain and take full advantage. Wilderness noticing in this book seems often tinged with negativity, but it also summons forth the powerful noticing of the prophet Balaam, who sees in the people nothing but blessing. In the wilderness, noticing itself is wild with danger and possibility. Noticing in the wilderness is a form of wandering attention, not directed but responsive, not precise but present to whatever emerges.
One powerful mode of noticing the self is to do a body scan. (Here’s one version that I find very accessible. Please note that this may not be a useful activity if trauma or overwhelming pain is present.) The purpose of a body scan is to practice noticing the body (and all the thoughts and emotions that come up when we think of our bodies) without judgment, simply to notice what is there. In the body scan, the two modes of noticing blend - we notice in a particular order (Numbers) and yet while our attention rests in one area we soften into wandering with what’s there (Bemidbar). Often, mindful teachers will explain that there are three general categories for what we notice - pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. Unpleasant or uncomfortable feelings draws our attention often, and we pursue pleasurable sensations intuitively. Neutral areas can be rich places to deliberately spend more time noticing, since we spend most of our lives ignoring them.
Sacred text. Returning us to Torah, imagine reading it like a body scan! Where do you notice pleasure - words that inspire you or where you see clear alignment with values, stories that resonate with your lived experience and offer new ways to make meaning, perhaps intellectual delight in tackling an interesting text and exploring the ever-expanding world of commentary.
Where do you notice unpleasant words, stories or laws that cause some discomfort? For many of us, the sacrificial offerings or some depictions of God may be difficult to stay with. Yet, there is deep wisdom within those words if we can be present without judgment and explore them a bit more. There may be stories that are not always productive or safe to engage with, what feminist scholar Phyllis Trible calls “texts of terror”, in which “the story is alive, and all is not well.”
And then there are the neutral aspects of our text, the places where the subject material is just not that compelling or understandable. Like a census, for example… But if you look closely even at the parts that normally you glide right over, you may discover hidden vitality pulsing. After a lengthy listing of each tribe’s enrollment, Numbers/Bemidbar 1:44 reads: “Those are the enrollments recorded by Moses and Aaron and by the chieftains of Israel, who were twelve in number, one participant from each ancestral house.” A basic summary, I suppose. But medieval commentator Sforno declares that we should take it literally - Moses and Aaron had personally counted every single person. A tremendous feat of noticing! And this is how many of the sages of the past read Torah - attending to every verse, word, even letter.
Notice everything. Methodologically. Spontaneously. With curiosity and care. And of course imperfectly. In the Jewish Studio Project, “noticing everything” assumes that I need to learn from others who are seeing things differently. I can’t personally see everything myself! But when I see what others are doing, how they are using the materials and making creative choices and interpreting familiar texts in new ways, my field of noticing expands. This is true for us all individually, and collectively it is so critically important to notice the world through perspectives that have historically been marginalized. When we hear voices of women, lgbtq+ folks, people whose bodies and minds work in diverse ways, people with different racial and ethnic identities, our noticing leads to more justice, more truth, more creative joy.
Here at Kavana, over the next several months, these newsletter openings will come not just from my perspective, but will sometimes feature the voice of others on our staff as well, one way of broadening perspectives within and beyond our community and noticing in new ways.
This Shabbat, may you notice in new and nourishing ways!
Rabbi Jay LeVine
