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Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks, which comes fifty days after the second
day of Passover -- seven weeks of seven days, plus one day -- begins this
year (2016) on the evening of Saturday, June 11.
What does it celebrate, what does it teach?
But as the Jewish community became more and more widely dispersed,
and then when the Temple was destroyed and the Jewish community
shattered by the Roman Empire, the ancient Rabbis realized they could no
longer celebrate Shavuot this way. Indeed the food-offering connection
with any piece of earth grew weaker.
To replace food and land, the Rabbis sought to make words of prayer,
words of Torah, words of reinterpretive midrash into new ways of
connecting with God. They sought to create a festival when all Israel in
every generation could stand at Sinai to receive the words of Torah and
speak new words of Torah, just as all Israel in every generation could use
Passover to become again a band of runaway slaves, newborn from
Egypts Tight and Narrow Space (Mitzrayyim).
But The Thunder is not Christian, and its whole text is built around
Anokhi Whose Divine Voice was/ is Feminine.
Its title, The Thunder, did not describe any specific part of its content -
but the whole text feels like The Thunder that spoke at Sinai.
Here are excerpts from The Thunder (translated by Rev. Hal Taussig
and published in his anthology A New New Testament (Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 2013). The full text is below.
I am my fathers mother,
The lines of text, as you can see below, continue in an ever more mold-
breaking, paradoxical, boundary-crossing way.
Perhaps if at Sinai men were gathered on one side of the mountain and
women on the other (as the Torah text hints), this is the I Who spoke to
us all but was best received in the womens hearing. Perhaps today we
will find Her as holy, as awe-inspiring, as the I of the other Sinai text,
the one that the men heard and recorded in what we know as Torah.
Could we hear the Shavuot of Harvest and the Shavuot of Sinai as one:
I am the earthy food that goes into your mouth, and I am the airy words
that come forth from your mouth.
Could The Thunder teach us that Earth and Torah are one, The One?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Last year, Rabbis Phyllis Berman, Nancy Fuchs Kreimer, and I were
invited by Methodist minister and scholar Hal Taussig to take part along
with about 15 Christian scholars and spiritual teachers in a discussion of
a number of religious texts written in the first two centuries of the
Common Era. Most were clearly Christian, but the early Church had not
included them in what became known to Christians as the New
Testament. Should they have been? Should they, even now?
When Rev. Taussig shared with us The Thunder: Perfect Mind, he said
this title had been appended much later, and that
it had no connection with the content.
When I read it, however, I felt and said that its title, The Thunder, was
precisely about its content for the whole text felt like The Thunder that
spoke at Sinai. Someone asked whether I meant it was/ is a midrash on
Sinai. No! I said, It IS Sinai. My passion helped convince the
Christians to vote for it, and it is included in the (heretical?
transformative?) book of A New New Testament.
After "The Thunder," you will find part of a chapter from a book by Rabbi
Phyllis Berman and myself. This, too, bespeaks the great Anokhi, I.
I am my fathers mother,
You who loathe me, why do you love me and loathe the ones who love me?
I am ashamed
I shall shut my mouth among those whose mouths are shut and then I will
show up and speak
I, I am without God
Dont reject the small parts of greatness because they are small
I am being
And the one who shapes your outside is he who shaped your inside
And what you see on the outside, you see revealed on the inside
It is your clothing
Hear me, audience, and learn from my words, you who know me
At Sinai:
Anokhi,
"I!"
It comes like a drumbeat, again again: Anokhi.
The I is the I that I am. I speak it, it rolls from my throat, I affirm it, I.
Anokhi.
And the I is also the entire people. I speak Anokhi also as one voice of
all the people. Again again again again, Anokhi. I.
One I.
And, still in the same moment, the entire universe becomes Anokhi, "I."
All time, all space whirls like a Moebius strip through a vast expanse
curved in an unspeakable dimension while it holds but one surface and
one edge.
I tremble, topple, fall to ground that disappears beneath while its textures
enter every inch of blazing, open skin.
Stop stop how can I stop forget how can forget, I need forget, how can
forget
I see too deep, I stand too big, I must forget, how to forget?
Our body quivers; I taste the world, the world is tasting me, is touching
all my skin, and inside too: inside our mouths, my belly, every opening
filled and every limb outreaching to fill whatever is empty in the world.
Back and forth, I am/ we are All All There IsAnokhi, "I"and Everything
is all there is, we/ I am part of everything and less than nothing,
I stand inside God's skull, behind the face; I look out through God's eyes,
my face in Face, I see myself, ourself. Anokhi.
And reeling, stunned, I fall, roll, stumble away from the Mirror in the
Mountain, I close all eyes and shriek to see that I can still see Everything.
I close our ears, I hear the Voice still ringing in my bones, I back away
and try to blot it out, forget. To not be "I" or we or any one.
Naaseh, "We will do . . . we/ All There Is/ will do," there is no Other.
I- Thou.
Connect.
An artery channels streams of blood, just I; but now organic unity is gone.
Connect is necessary.
Ruefully I linger, trying to remember the Anokhi and trying to forget it,
relieved I have been able to escape and joyful I will never be able to
escape,
already wishing to recreate the moment and frightened that the moment
will recur without my wishing,
***
Universal:
Spirituality of Justice
Jewish and Interfaith Topics:
World-Healing Judaism
Shavuot
Torah Portions:
Yitro
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