Posts Tagged 'King'

The Queen is in the Field: Another Look at Elul

Published September 18, 2022 8.1.1 Rosh HaShanah , Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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In Hasidic thinking, the days of Elul are a time when “The King is in the field.” Gaining an audience with the King during Tishrei is a whole to-do. We must travel to the capital city, arrange an appointment, and then get permission to enter the palace. It may be days or weeks before we are finally allowed to enter. And even then, when we do finally get to see the King, the audience is likely to be short and very formal. Lost among the throngs of people, it is hard to imagine it being a deeply personal interaction. Since very few of us actually live in the capital city, the royal surroundings we experience during the High Holidays make us feel out-of-place. By the time we get there, we might have even forgotten why we came to seek the audience of the King in the first place. It hardly seems like a good plan for a meaningful experience.

According to Rabbi Schneur Zalman (the first Lubavitcher Rebbe), during Elul “Anyone who desires is granted permission and can approach the King and greet the King. The King received them all pleasantly, and shows a smiling countenance to all” (Likkutei Torah, Re’eh 32b). The King’s arrival is heralded by the shofar blown throughout Elul. Here in the field, the formality is transformed into familiarity. 

While I have always loved this idea, I am not sure I ever truly understood this notion of majestic formality. I got a little more insight into this idea when reading a story about Queen Elizabeth II after her passing. On January 27, 2005, the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Queen Elizabeth hosted a group of Holocaust survivors in St. James’s Palace in the center of London. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks was present and later recounted: “When the time came for her to leave, she stayed. And stayed. One of her attendants said that he had never known her to linger so long after her scheduled departure. She gave each survivor – it was a large group – her focused, unhurried attention. She stood with each until they had finished telling their personal story.”

What does it mean to break royal protocol? It meant that she realized her role was to listen to their stories regardless of where else she was “supposed to be”. It meant that the Queen was in the field. May the memory of Queen Elizabeth II be for a blessing. While none of us should know the pain of those Holocaust Survivors, we should all feel that we have the royal attention during Elul. There should be no protocol when it comes having our stories heard. Shana Tova

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Table of Brotherhood: Joseph, MLK, and Race in America Today

Published December 12, 2014 1.09 VaYeshev , 1.11 VaYigash Leave a Comment
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In VaYeshev, this week’s Torah portion,  Joseph tells his brothers of his dreams that their sheaves will bow down to his sheaf and that their stars will bow to him(Gen. 37:7-9). Jacob makes it clear to everyone that Joseph is pompous, but still his chosen son. These dreams and their father’s open display of favoritism moves Joseph’s brothers to the brink of fratricide. Once they get him alone they throw their little brother into a pit and cruelly sit around and eat lunch (Gen. 37: 24-25). Eventually Joseph gets sold into slavery in Egypt. There, Joseph lived through the nightmares of slavery and imprisonment. Through an interesting turn of events Joseph finds himself in a position of security and power. During a famine, his brothers, seeking food, come to bow before him. Sure enough in the passing of time Joseph’s dream becomes a reality. What is the meaning of this through-line of the brother’s eating?

With all of events in Ferguson and New York in mind and in light of Joseph’s dreams I pause to reread Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s  “I have a Dream” speech from August 28, 1963. Where Joseph’s dreams spoke of his hubris and ends with him in a pit, King’s dream describes the situation of Blacks in this country being in a pit and King’s aspirations for us all to live as equals. There he said:

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

King delivered this iconic speech on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.  In his speech he referenced it being 100 years since Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. With all of the recent events, it is crazy to realize that it has been 51 years since King’s speech. Unfortunately the question of how someone could kill or enslave a brother is both timeless and  still so timely. The fraternal order of police along with the rest of us need to look into the mirror and determine how we allow this plague of fratricide to continue.  As king says:

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

When none of us are in a pit we can see each other as equals. At that point we can break bread together and sit with each other at the table of brotherhood. Just because this problem has existed since the time of  Joseph and his brothers, does not  mean it is not urgent. We all have a lot of work to do.  How many more brothers need to die before King’s dream becomes a reality?

In the Field – Thank You Camp Directors

Published September 24, 2014 8.1.1 Rosh HaShanah 1 Comment
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According to Hasidic thinking the days of Elul are the time when “the King is in the field.” The metaphor follows that gaining an audience with the King during Tishrei is a whole to-do. We must travel to the capital city, arrange an appointment, and then get permission to enter the palace. It may be days or weeks before we are finally allowed to enter. And even then, when we do finally get to see the King, the audience is likely to be short and very formal. Lost among the throngs of people, it is hard to imagine it being a deeply personal interaction. Since very few of us actually live in the capital city, these royal surroundings we experience during the High Holidays makes us feel out-of-place. By the time we get there we might have even forgotten why we came to seek the audience of the King in the first place. It hardly seems like a good plan for a meaningful experience.

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Once a year, the King leaves the capital to visit the various constituents of the Kingdom. According to the Rabbi Schneur Zalman (the first Lubavicher Rebbe) during Elul “anyone who desires is granted permission and can approach the King and greet the King. The King received them all pleasantly, and shows a smiling countenance to all” (Likkutei Torah, Re’eh 32b) Now a King can’t just enter a city unannounced. This explains the shofar. Here in the field the formality is transformed into familiarity. We the common folk are allowed to come out to greet the King and receive personalized blessings. During Elul, with limited effort, the King is accessible. We just need to go out and greet the King.

When I try to imagine that space of meeting the King in the field I am transported to rich memories from my youth in nature at camp. Jewish summer camp is an amazing place where many of us had our first experiences of spirituality, community, and personal connections to Jewish life.

In my six years working at the Foundation for Jewish Camp I am consistently amazed by the senior leadership at camp. Each of them in their own way play an incredible role in setting the stage for joyous Judaism in their camp utopia. While most of the year they are running a business called camp, when the time comes to move up to camp they are transformed. You will see many of them walking around their camps picking up trash as if you were in their living rooms. They treat camp as their home and they invite hundreds of people to sleep over. Walking around camp they know everyone’s names, their stories, and how to make personal connections. They decide who stays and who goes. They are responsible for so many lives, but they are not cowering behind their desks. Rather, they are out there on the playing on the baseball field. In the environment of camp the senior leadership is king, but camp is special because they know that their power is making room for others and being accessible. Each camp is creating an environment in which their campers and staff feel that they belong, make a difference, and are part of something bigger then themselves. We all owe the camp leadership a great deal. Thank you. In these moments we can experience the majesty of Elul.

Have a wonderful New Year.

– Reposted from Canteen Blog

Those in Glass Houses

Published January 14, 2011 2.04 Beshalach Leave a Comment
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Crazy people will do crazy things, but they still have to work within the parameters of the sane. Whether with the recent shooting of Gabrielle Giffords or Rabin, people did bad things in the name of what they thought were just causes. The words we use to talk about our enemies frames the limits of how we should treat them.

In BeShalach, this week’s Torah portion, we read the Song of the Sea. It is a poem said by Moses after the miracle of the splitting of the Red Sea. There was one line from the poem that I have not been able to get out of my mind during this week of national grieving. There we read, “The deeps cover them–they went down into the depths like a stone” ( Exodus 15:5) The simple meaning is that the approaching Egyptians fell into the water of the Red Sea as fast as a descending rock in water. But on another level it speaks of the trivial nature of their value. In this sense this rhetoric speaks of a certain lack of compassion.

Later in their journey toward the Promised Land, Moses is told that he must speak to get water from a rock for the complaining Israelites. And sure enough Moses hits the rock instead of talking to it. We attribute Moses not being allowed to enter the land to his hitting the rock.

When we were young we used to say, ” Sticks and stone will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” In the wake of recent events, I have come to realize how wrong that idea was. Sticks and stones will break our bones, but words can really hurt too.  The words we use create the context for all of the other actions we take.  When Moses speaks of the Egyptians as just rocks, they are expendable. Later as in the case of getting water from the rock, it seems as if he is being asked to read the metaphor the other way around. Can Moses model confronting their oppressors with civil discourse and overcoming the urge to just use force?

The temptation to use force or hyperbolic rhetoric is natural, but it does not mean it will help us create a sustainable future. Understanding that every human being has inalienable rights is the bedrock of a just society. We must hold ourselves to the highest standard when we seek to bring about justice. We must follow the model of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King in fighting injustice with eloquence that strives to evoke the  divine potential in all of us, the oppressed and the oppressor. Only at that point will we all be free to sing a song of freedom.

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