The Antidote to Kotzer Ruach
It's a little hard for me to believe that a presidential inauguration took place only four days ago, as so much has happened since and the news cycle has been so unrelenting that it's felt like a month at least! In talking to many of you this week, I'm hearing a good deal of weariness and exhaustion already. I get it -- and I'm certainly feeling some of that too. This week's Torah portion may be helpful to us -- at least in the sense of offering us a cautionary tale -- and commentators on this week's parasha may have some insightful and relevant suggestions to offer.
Parashat Va'era opens with God speaking to Moses. This is a beautiful and compelling speech, in which God says (and here I paraphrase, but do feel free to check out the full text of Exodus 6:2-8): "I've had a long-standing relationship with your ancestors and established a covenant with them. Now I have heard the moaning of the Israelites in bondage, and I will free you from slavery, redeem you, and bring you into the promised land."
This seems like a wonderful offer: God is paying attention to the suffering of the Israelites enslaved in Egypt, and is prepared to do something about it! Unfortunately, the verse that comes next takes the wind out of both God and Moses's sails. Exodus 6:9 reads: "But when Moses told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to him, because of their crushed spirit from cruel bondage."
The Israelites' "crushed spirit" -- in Hebrew, "kotzer ruach" -- is a tremendous problem! Not only does Moses need to convince Pharaoh to release his Israelite slaves, but he now also has the unenviable task of trying to convince the Israelites themselves to be willing to leave Egypt with him! From later in the Torah, we know that although Moses does eventually succeed in leading the Israelites out, their "challenged spirit" will remain with them, so much so that -- according to midrashic interpretation -- a majority of Israelites ultimately choose to stay in Egypt. Among those who do leave to pursue freedom in the wilderness, the Torah's Book of Numbers chronicles their constant complaints, their lack of gratitude, and even their nostalgia for the period of their enslavement back in Egypt. Kotzer ruach, in other words, not only represents a spirit that is crushed in the short-term, but also a state of being crushed that doesn't dissipate quickly!
What exactly is kotzer ruach, though? Rashi explains this phrase in his comment on our verse, taking "ruach" in its literal sense, to mean "breath"; he writes: "If one is in anguish his breath comes in short gasps and he cannot draw long breaths." In his understanding, kotzer ruach is quite literally the inability to catch one's breath... which could imply extreme exhaustion and overwhelm, or perhaps a panic attack. Ibn Ezra deepens our understanding of the phrase by focusing on the fact that kotzer ruach renders it impossible for the Israelites to hearken and pay attention to Moses's words... in other words, when we are in this kind of perpetually panicked state, we lose our ability to take in information and react appropriately.
In today's parlance, we might translate the concept of kotzer ruach as a "lack of spiritual well-being" or even "despair." This week, I've read and heard a number of political analysts point out that driving people towards exhaustion and despair is a deliberate strategy of the new administration in DC: that by bombarding the American people with extreme executive orders and extremist appointees, terrifying hand gestures and insulting tweets, all at a frantic and unrelenting pace and volume, our country's new leaders are hoping that we will become overwhelmed and feel ourselves to be constrained, such that we do not resist.
Fortunately, our tradition has been dealing with kotzer ruach for millenia, and we have much wisdom about how to combat and guard against it. Playing off of a commentary by the chassidic master Sefat Emet, for example, contemporary Torah scholar Rabbi Erin Leib Smokler writes about this same verse:
Exile is not a place. It is a condition of being in which we are closed down, shut off, unable to receive, unable to activate our faculties of imagination. It is the state of being stuck, folded into ourselves, unable to open to the presence of another. To exit exile, then, we must render ourselves vulnerable, capacious, receptive. Redemption and revelation demand radical openness, an inner quieting so that we might hear the sounds of the others who call to us. Such an emptying, the Sefat Emet assures us, will return us to deep breath (neshima) and to our expansive souls (neshama). In humbly listening for the whispers of revelation, we simultaneously attune ourselves to intimations of the Divine.
Hers is a beautiful image: that in the face of constraint and stuck-ness, we must actively pursue radical openness, quiet, and deep breath. These, she associates with vulnerability, capaciousness, and receptivity... all signs of spiritual alive-ness and readiness.
Along similar lines, Rabbi Yael Shai -- in a Torah commentary for the Institute for Jewish Spirituality -- writes:
How do we emerge out of this place of extreme narrowness? One clue comes from Ramban. He argues that kotzer ruach indicates the Israelites’ impatience of spirit, “as a person whose soul is grieved on account of his misery and does not want to live another moment in his suffering even though he knows that he will be relieved later.” If impatience leads to despair, practicing patience and trust is our path out of it. In the Torah, God backs off of the Israelites. God does not demand anything of them at that moment. They can’t hear the declaration of commitment and love that God is promising, so God starts the process of offering signs and signals that slowly peel away the layers of doubt and closed-off-ness on the part of the Israelites. Trust slowly emerges in the place of doubt, melting the despair and hopelessness.
(Both of these beautiful commentaries on kotzer ruach, together with quite a few others, can be found on this Sefaria source-sheet on the topic, compiled by Rabbi Amy Bernstein.)
All of these sound to me, too, like precisely the aims of an intentional spiritual community like ours. This weekend, Kavana will be celebrating its 18th birthday! For the past 18 years -- a whole lifetime ("chai") -- this very special Jewish community has been cultivating space for radical openness and for inner quiet, for Shabbat prayer and meaningful dialogue, for the receptivity of revelation that comes through shared Torah study and the capaciousness of "both/and" thinking, for building patience and trust in a community context.
Over the coming years -- which are sure to continue to move at a frenzied pace -- Kavana will aim to be intentional, as always. At times, we'll be consciously trying to slow things down, in order to provide a space where those of us who are feeling short of breath and crushed in spirit can come to catch our breaths. We will aim to be a sanctuary of calm in the midst of the storm. And there will be other times, without a doubt, when we will need to be ready to stick together and spring into action quickly. In order to preserve the energy we will need for such times, we must cultivate regular spiritual practices to help guard against the kind of cumulative overwhelm that is kotzer ruach.
This Shabbat also happens to be the one on which Jewish people everywhere will announce the coming of the new moon of Shevat (which begins next Thursday). Shevat -- the month that contains the holiday of Tu BiShevat -- hints that renewal is on the way and spring is just around the corner. Already, our days are already getting longer (in fact, last night was the last pre-5pm sunset we here in Seattle will see for many many months -- hurray!). It's helpful to have this reminder of hope as we move into what's sure to be a challenging slog of a next chapter for our country.
And so, on this Shabbat of Parashat Va'era, I call on all of us recommit to the spiritual community we've already been building together over the past 18 years... the one that has the capacity to serve as an antidote to kotzer ruach, to weariness, despair, and crushed spirits. I have no illusions that the coming days, weeks, months and years will be simple to navigate, but I do believe that together, we have the capacity to lift each other up. Together, we can prevail against the constrained spirit that plagued our ancestors. Slow and intentional spiritual practices -- deep breaths, openness and listening, song and quiet, the joy of community and our ability to mourn together -- will give us the fuel we need to remain in our real-world struggles for the long haul. Together, we can buoy one another and take turns accelerating and resting to prevent burn-out and embitterment. Together, there are many ways we can join together to advance that which is good and block that which is hateful, to protect the most vulnerable and mitigate damage to our society.
Parashat Va'era promises that someday, opportunities will arise for us to move forward out of the constraints of our modern-day mitzrayim, and it cautions against succumbing to the crushed spirit and despair of kotzer ruach. Now is precisely the time for us to invest in strengthening our spirits to ensure that when that day comes, we will be ready to move forward! In this moment, we need spiritual community more than ever.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum
