What an intense week it has been.
Yes, yes: I’ll get to the new administration in a bit. But there was much more to this week too.
For me, the week began with clearing out my mother’s apartment and visiting her frequently, as we moved her into memory care. Not a simple thing, of course. It’s definitely the right move for this moment in her life, and she is adjusting to it with her customary good humor. But Sunday and Monday were both physically and emotionally draining.
While making arrangements and going through items in the apartment, on Sunday I was also feverishly refreshing my phone for updates on the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and to see pictures Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, and Doron Steinbrecher, the three Israeli women who returned alive to their families.
And then, before dawn on Tuesday morning I boarded a flight to the west coast for a series of meetings–some with IJS foundation funders, but the central one with Gil Fronsdal, the longtime head teacher at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Over the last 18 months or so, Gil has become something of a rebbe for me: I listen to his guided meditations many mornings sitting at my kitchen table (or when I’m on an airplane), and I listen to his other talks frequently when I’m walking the dog.
A couple of months ago I emailed Gil, in a sort of cold call way, and told him how much I have appreciated the clarity and wisdom of his teachings, and asked if he might be open to meeting. He responded warmly with an offer to meet on Tuesday afternoon, and I built my trip around that encounter.
There was a meeting wrapping up at the center, and it was a beautiful day outside–and 60 65 degrees warmer there than in Chicago–so when Gil asked if I wanted to walk and talk, I happily agreed. We walked slowly–you might call it mindfully, or simply with presence. And we got to know each other, sharing our stories and asking each other questions. As a general rule, Judaism as it has developed eschews monasticism, and I told him one of the things I appreciate about his teaching is that it’s really designed as what the Buddhists might call a householder practice–what we might call a practice for ba’alei batim, householders–rather than monks or nuns.
We talked about the implications of that, and many other things, and eventually, after a stop at coffee shop along the way (he had tea, I had an oat latte–both on brand), we made it to the meditation center. He gave me a tour, I helped him set up tables and chairs for a board meeting they were having, and then he let me use their conference room for a meeting on zoom before he left.
I arrived home Thursday. night just as our dear friend Sarah-Bess Dworin (who is married to my IJS colleague Rabbi Sam Feinsmith–they live in our neighborhood) pulled up with a U-Haul to take some of the furniture we had cleared out from my mom’s. SB, as everyone calls her, works with schools to promote nonviolent conflict resolution, and she took the sofa and desk and chairs for a “peace room” at one of them. I literally got out of the taxi and helped SB and my wife Natalie to load the items into the van. We’re all grateful they will be put to such good use.
And yes, there was the inauguration and the new administration and Elon Musk’s arm and the pardons and the executive orders and… all of it. I thought about the philosopher Emil Fackenheim, who coined the notion of the “614th mitzvah:” not to grant Hitler a posthumous victory, and thought that perhaps there’s a 615th for these days: not to let anyone, Donald Trump or otherwise, live rent-free inside your head.
Parashat Vaera opens with some of the most beautiful and sweeping language in the Torah: “I have now heard the moaning of the Israelites because the Egyptians are holding them in bondage, and I have remembered My covenant. Say, therefore, to the Israelite people: I am YHVH. I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and through extraordinary chastisements. And I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God. And you shall know that I, the Eternal, am your God who freed you from the labors of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you for a possession, I YHVH.” (Exodus 2:5-8).
Sweeping stuff, inspiring. If I were scripting it as a movie, this would be the pre-game locker room speech followed by the Israelites roaring and putting on their helmets. But what do we get next? “Yet when Moses told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to him, for their spirits were crushed by cruel bondage.”
Rashi comments on the language of crushed spirits, kotzer ruach, which might be more literally rendered, “constricted breath”: “If one is in anguish their breath comes in short gasps and they cannot draw long breaths.”
Which reminds us of something we know from our practice: While there is much we cannot control, there is also much that we can. And that can start with our breathing. We can focus on this breath. And then another breath. And another. We can be present with the breath in this moment, and another moment, and another. With each one of those breaths, with each one of those acts of mindful attention and presence, we exercise our own freedom and agency.
If we practice regularly, we might shift our consciousness enough to recognize that no one gets to live rent-free inside us: whatever the external conditions in the media or on the ground might be, we are imbued with a divine essence, an ember which can provide light and warmth when we give it the air of breath and awareness.
This has been a week. For me, and perhaps for you, it has been a really long week. Yet, with the help of my own practice of Jewish mindfulness, it has been a very full week too, one in which I have felt alive and present, in which I’ve been able to do some important and wonderful mitzvot–honoring my mother, learning from a great sage, giving meaningful tzedakah. As we enter a new/old era with all of its unknowns and challenges, our practice is as important as ever. The story of our ancestors reminds us that it is the touchstone of our freedom.