– This month is crowned by a monster. What are ways forward to healing, acceptance, and even compassionate love toward the monsters other people make of us?

– What is your roar right now?! What ferocious furor can you use to protect those in more dangerous positions than you? This is the month Esther was taken into the palace. How are you using your unexpected power to undermine the systemic structures of harm?

– This is the month against the evil eye, a protection against those roars sometimes used cruelly against us. How can you protect yourself when feeling attacked in healthy ways that don’t repeat past trauma? What are some rituals you can make or find to reclaim in positive ways the harm used against you?

We start at the sham, the midnight hour thereness with Pesach’s full moon… Or perhaps we started back at the moon’s rebirth, the dark potential of spring when we were first commanded to make time. Shining in the dark, we peer through narrows into the new unknown. “He takes one of the stones from the Place—something from the place where he really stands—and from there—mi-sham … “ We leap! The cry and finally even the words jump from the narrows of our throat! This leap of Pesach is dangerous and necessary, an acknowledgement that we don’t and can’t know – but still must leave. The essence of strong leaping is foundational; this sham-stone must be something we can truly stand upon to jump forward. Bounding toward the sea, we reached a blank as huge as its surface stretching to the horizon.

Between the river and the sea was Egyptian dryness; we lept outward but did not allow the full water weight of the narrows pain – the tears, the sweat, the salt water of our selves and the sea. Now we must face it, must walk into the water or encounter Pharaoh’s deadly chariots … instead, suddenly, the maid servant’s fingers point “Zeh Eli!” The sacred opens another option beyond the binary and waters part. Somehow this second leap turns terror into tune, supernatural scare into song. “We will sing” and “We sing now” too, building brick upon tile in full Elemental Trust, knowing the narrows can guide us to renewal.
But after our joyous song has echoed into silence, once Pharoah’s chariots lie broken and the sea closes behind us then the slow long walk begins, the time and movement through Iyar healing. The everyday step by step of the Omer flips us from Pesach’s overpouring itaruta delaila into the gravity-laden itaruta delatata, the sisyphean trudge of navigating wilderness after escape. Somewhere in this long march we soften and shift; at 33 days our heart/lev – heavy from trauma and sudden leaving – moves into good/tov.

Near the beginning of Sivan, we reach the desert goal. Encamped together at the base of the mountain, we declare our excited intent “Naaseh!” “We will do!” “We will complete this and place it into Assiyah’s doneness!” But under the belly of the mountain comes the lightning revelation of Shavuot – sounds become sights become scents sensed. An invisible unpronounceable aleph hangs in the air as thunder crashes, the shofar grows louder, and what previously seemed simple becomes a place where revelation also needs its time – “Naaseh vnishma!” It is too much for our human bodies, even bolstered by the angels and turning over direct divine contact to Moshe. We will understand it fully later, through the extended doing. Even revelation takes its time. Even lightning is not finished with its work after a singular flash.

We keep walking through Tammuz. Like the sartan/crab carrying our homes on our backs, we crisscross the wilderness. We even build dwellings for divinity to live with us as we traverse this desert. And yet what also gets carried through the midbar is the dry heat still simmering from before the first leap – the resentment, the jealousy, the glint of gold and the want of ease. Once the spies’ fear infects the group early in Bamidbar, what remains is a quick fire succession of bad tidings – the Spies undermine, Korach rebels, Balak’s blessing shifts something, and Pinchas emphatically closes with punctuated violence. What remains unspoken is the 40 years unnamed passing as various first generation post-Egyptians die in the desert.
Something in these hardships also breaks our relationship with g-d. The heat lengthens, the sun shines too bright, and the burden of carrying everything with us becomes exhausting. We tire of the searching, the way the midbar speaks through us, how the hot spots and dry places grate our frazzled nerves. We long for soothing shade and places of knowing, for water that flows without being struck into existence. Instead our walls and our safety become punctured to begin a devastating three-week tumble into rubble. Against our will, we are left exposed and – once our boundaries are down – all places of mourning, each place of devastating loss, every death comes crashing into our consciousness. Tisha B’Av’s destruction refuses to be contained to one place or one time, instead shattering throughout our collective history and lives. 
When the dust settles after a scant six days of mourning, the turn around is shocking. Once we realize all the pain and hurt, anger and resentment were rooted in grief – mourning the way things weren’t – we can uncover the true root – love, longing for the way things were or might have been. At this the switch is flipped! Mourning transforms to dancing, wailing to song, and the white outfits that might have been shrouds are worn instead as robes of desire for life. The hakafot that seal our hearts are both as fixed and shifting as grief and love, as life and death itself – an ever moving circle dance with no end or beginning.

Now at the edge of Elul we find ourselves staring into the mirror of the mikveh, the fluttering surface where reflections scatter. Ani lodi, vdodi li. First so clear – I am to my beloved and my beloved is to me. Then the water ripples and the clarity refracts. I am my beloved? Is my beloved me? Am I myself? From the work of leaping, healing, and Av’s integrative circle dance of grief/love, we come to question the separateness and the circularity of the Self itself. Each week we descend deeper into this forty day mikveh – Where do I begin and where do others stop? The introspection of existential questioning is not to unravel reality. This isn’t the place of Satre’s suffering, but the start of connection outside the egotistical. In the slow-time of sacred preparation, we ripen to ratzon beyond ourselves – not narcissistic navel gazing, but integral integration. In decentering our finite play-acting as Ruler of our world, in doing the gentle work of setting Ego aside, G-d Themselves wades into the fields to meet us. 
Ani lodi – I belong also to this divinity, the g-d that draws near when I put mySelf aside.
V’dodi li – The sacredness I sense in this greater field is forever in symbiosis with my internal g-d field.

The new moon of Tishrei begins the final work of binary balance into yichud. Still within the forty day mikveh, what is left at this fourth week but two letters – li, “to me” – lamed and yod? What is left ‘to me’ after such soul-searching? Rosh HaShanah continues the difficulty of these integrations. If the categories of grief and love are two sides of the same coin, if even myself and the other overlap at the edges – then what of life and death? Of good? Of evil? Of judgement and righteousness? This liminal location where the harvests are completed and the next year’s fruitfulness remains unknowable, where the scales of the very stars wait for balance, where the new moon’s silver sliver of hope has barely begun, brings a sharp severity. While current we flip Yom Kippur into Judgement’s shadow, for our ancestors Rosh haShanah was the Day of Din. 
The work of Elul’s mikveh waters has washed away extraneous selves and the detritus of our fractured lives; our entire being longs to be re-inscribed. Life and Death and we ourselves hang in the balance. And at Tishrei’s edge we burst forth to surface from this metaphorical mikveh into the final ten days. In anticipation of the second set of tablets waiting beyond this terrifying limbo, we sound the shofar. Its call resounds with thunder – or is it the sound of the completed mikveh dunk being declared kosher? “It isn’t beneficial for humans to keep the king in the mode of judgement.”  And in the tablets of our heart, we see awe-full truth – Life and Death and Self and Other, Love and Grief are all for the good. The King who wishes to be our Friend moves from the Throne of Judgement. All prayers become blessings and the transitional magic of the mikeh’s dunk is nearly done.
Now blessed and surfaced, now newly inscribed, our bodies turn toward Shabbat Shuvah where the eastern gate of the near equinox finally balances Libra’s scales. We step from the mikveh to enter Yom Kippur like angels. There is no food or drink, no leather or sex, but our bodies are still present – sleeping and waking, singing and moving together. This is the revelation of long avodah work – the step-by-step far longer than the Omer. We stand before haShem for this one day covered in totality. The binaries once clenched in stark opposition are actually just as easily held together as my right hand can hold my left. The kittel of grief/love and of life/death transcends all categories until we are enrobed in shleimah sanctity. … And at its Neilah end, the shofar echoes into full emptiness. The final exhalation is softly breathed out into the greater spirit of the world.

Coming back from angel mode takes time. Coming back toward a body requires a home. We count a handful of days after Yom Kippur to build a shelter as natural and porous as we humans wish we weren’t. It is open to elements and to ingatherings. The entire world – the six directional nexus that draws water down – is G-d’s sukkah and our small huts dot that fractal. At Yom Kippur we stood at attention. Now on the other side of judgement’s narrows, we sit, we reside, we eat and relax and mellow under the dappled greenery. Our ancestors arrive where we live, where the ghosts of past and possibility mingle. Eating and sleep spill outward under the stars. The act of living and the gifts of the dead mingle within the sukkah.

And finally, on Shemini Atzeret itself where the perfection of seven slips into the infinite beyond-ness of eight – the friends have left, the family has gone to bed, and all the finery has been put away. Alone and quietly, the crown gone and the pillar of fire aside, G-d arrives in gentle clouded glory. The sukkah was a new mishkan all along and you, its sacred caretaker. How could you not celebrate the next day? Why would you not dance close with the longest name of g-d yet, the Torah? How could we not celebrate and complicate even the place where beginnings and ends meet? And so, faster even than Tu B’Av;’s turnaround, Simchat Torah follows Shemini Atzeret’s downflow back to back. This double seal upon the full season draws Tishrei’s power to a close.

Marcheshvan sits fallow but for those of the Beta Yisrael who count an Omer from Yom Kippur to the end of the month. The rains begin as we read of Noach’s flood in Torah and the world grows darker to slide into Kislev, the time of sleep and dreams. Near the winter solstice’s new moon, at the year’s deepest dark where nebulous koh/thus-ness reigns, we invoke light. The ner tamid of the temple was renewed each day at dawn, the wicks trimmed and the oil refilled and the lighting tended. At this annual moment we care for our inner menorah, but find it lacking. We are low on fuel, tired from sleep and longing to return to dreams. And yet somehow, unbidden, eight nights of miraculous fuel prove to us that even in the cool dark there are ways to sustain a flame. Some light more candles each night, a glittering bridge into Tevet. Some start with the blaze of physical light and dwindle into the darkness of that original light once hidden away. And yet both Hanukkah minhagim, Shammai and Hillel, are necessary to create a symbolic convection current which moves the heat and light, the dark and cool. This circulatory system is mirrored in the dreidl’s spin, doubly mirrored in Nachman’s sevivov invocation of the temple as the spinning wheel of our prayers.
This convection power slowly fires up the sap of the trees and the dormant energy lurking in hibernation. Tevet awakens the Leviathan’s roar and Shvat’s trees begin the end of winter. As Adar shimmers into view, the sun shines shockingly bright, but the cold winds whip about and nighttime freezes still burn fresh growth. Suddenly, the beginnings of buds appear, greens shoot up like laughter, and the topsy turvy of early blossoming arrives in a carnival riot. And we too become riotous, uproariously funny, farcical even. We drink, we revel, we mock everything. The laughter is so overwhelming that tears arrive.

After the revel comes reckoning and possible revelation. Purim brings a double face like the theatrical masks of comedy and tragedy merged; its full moon cracked as the middle yachatz matzah a month away. G-d lives unspoken in the white letters of Esther’s book. Before we can reach Pesach, before we can even consider getting free, we must do the inner Amalek work. Esther and Mordechai both save us … And they both are part of the imperial power of a childish genocidal king. When we look into our own blossoming, the laughter bubbling up, is it in service of sacred human growth or is it the cruel whims of a self-centered system? Can I climb these 50 rungs toward Binah to find the singular place where good and evil are undifferentiated, where I might tease apart my culpability? Where have I allowed Amalek to fester within me and what blossoming growth will undo that harm?
In the Adar work of unifying and differentiation, of gazing into my part in harming the world and my role in the oppression of others, I have stared into where I hurt and have been hurt, the places where I am in non-consensual service to harmful forces. My laughter turns to silence and words melt away. At the new moon of Nisan I find, yet again, we must make a new time for ourselves.

— — — –
Surrounding it all, beyond the pillars of framing fire and flowing water, beyond the rising air and the grounded earth, beyond even the stars wheeling and moon’s shifting and the sun’s path – Shabbat encompasses the entirety. The work of the everyday builds us into its rest, just as the weekday work of the mishkan leads the sacred Now to pause with us every seven days. And this Shabbat ohr sovev infuses the calendar with its healing pulses, the never-ended love of Presence.

It’s dark. Here in the night, under the mountain. We wait like seeds in the soil. There is so much beautiful darkness in our Torah :
The protective shadow under g-d’s wing
The exact midnight of Pesach when we get free
Inside of the Kedosh Kedoshim, the holy of holies.
Inside the Aron haKodesh, the holy ark.
When King Solomon was building the Temple, he stated, “God has chosen to dwell in the thick darkness (ba ‘arafel)” (I Kings 8:12 and II Chronicles 6:1). 

Darkness dissolves separations into oneness. Darkness is depths, cave, innards and womb, soil that sprouts seeds, soothing shade in the heat of sun, The nighttime during which we dream, grow and make long-term memory.

Time was made here in the dark. The sun shines always, the seasons vary from place to place. But the waxing waning moon, the zodiacs belt, these gave us the patterns we carefully constructed into our calendar. There is a circle dance every night sweeping across the sky around the center.

We’re like explorers. We were camped at the mountain but now being next to it isn’t enough. Others may go to the highest peaks to see a g-d of heights, but in Shavuot we also go into our depths, into the lowest parts of the mountain. You’ll need a light – something to help us navigate the dark.
On Kislev, the darkest time of year, it is a candle, the flicker of a small flame. On Shavuot it is electric revelation, lightning under the mountain. And here, right now, whether its a small torch or the caught spark of lightning, you illuminate an opening.

It’s dark. God warned us They would come in a thick clouded darkness. The mountain is all in smoke and there is a great shaking! In some Shavuot stories we were petrified, the anvil of the entire mountain hanging over us!

But Shavuot can also be in and under the mountain, gently held in the natural dark of new moons, of caverns, of where we were before we were born. The shaking of the mountain? The lullaby rocking of a newborn tribe?

What are we doing here? Looking for resources, precious gems and metals? Exploring for new life, for ourselves. Just for the fun of poking around?
What will we meet down here? What has been growing within us,  waiting to be revealed – where the future lives –
In the dark

I am counting the Omer
like a bull plowing heaven;
a thing sisyphean, this task.

The trudge and tramp
of heavy hooves;
the muck and mud
of our every day.
This yoke chafes
my stubborn neck.
Reins bite
like gnats.

Horns
point
down
like a
Keruv’s
gaze.

The
Place
where I
long to undo
my Self sleeps,
as the feet tamp
Earth and hands dig
soil and the sun sprouts
reaching rays of lengthy light.

Each day plods, but this field and I
will rest later when we finally open
Heaven

as water
wears
its hole
in stone.

a Mamash Permutation

One starts at the beginning.

Chet, enclosed like a courtyard (ḥasir), like the rasp at the end of ruach, the soft palate shuts. At spring, at the blossoming of Aviv, at the Nisan new moon we move into the aspect of heh – a letter as open as a relieved sigh. One overturns the closing of the chet into the unencumbered breathing of heh, where the restriction unfurls and unimpeded airflow begins.

Through the Omer and into Tammuz, we will reconstruct this Chet : The embodied vav of Iyar, the zayin of Sivan’s divine zug, till finally vav and zayin align into Tammuz’s chet, the summer dome enclosed like a courtyard (ḥasir).

In the same way, the remaining letters mem and tzadi remind us. For after the 50 days of omer, Shavuot reopens the heavens. Then there are 40 days (mem) until the sin of the golden calf. 50 of omer and 40 of encampment brings us to 90 (tzadi) and the fast of Tammuz when the heh snaps shut into chet self again. 

( A breath of relief awaits at Tishrei’s great exhalation. )

So in spring we undo the winter’s lungwork and breathe deep the scent of petal-filled breezes. We sigh in relief as the greenery shows and the sun warms. Therefore the chet once cracked open into heh, moves to the final place – Matz aaah – with no letters after to obstruct the airway.

Now the mem is the head of the word, but its form does not change for it is not holding the end. Mem, the primordial water – in the chet of chametz self there is a thin thread (ḥut) to follow into the water, a courtyard enclosure to pretend we can comprehend the infinite. But in Nisan the great sea of Torah opens wide like the yam suf and we go into the mystery unknowing where it’s might leads.

Finally the no longer final tzaddi. This particular place of everyday ego – the puffed chametz self – is rooted where the tzadi dips down like an anchor. The tzaddik self stands like a rebar pillar, upholding self righteousness where I center my Self in the moshiach energy soon coming. In this chametz Self, I am a tzaddik who brings moshiach into this longing world. But when the chametz is nullified for Pesach, the strength of that tzadi’s finial pillar must bow to the reality that I am not moshiach. I am not the water nor the direction of flow, not the whitecap nor the undertow. I am a particle of H2O on the wave’s swell as the waters of Torah lap towards Olam haBa.

The bent tzadi best unfurls at the end of Shevat as the sap rises, transforming righteous work into the rooted leg of Adar’s quf and the topsy turvy where weighty power can be rebalanced in the human world. Nisan though comes to remind of power that is only rebalanced at the g-d aspect which is ‘Elohim equals HaTeva.’ For without the heh these do not align.

Now with the Primordial Waters realigned to the head, the tzaddik self bent into humble awareness, and now restrictive chet dethroned from its starting place and unshackled from it’s restriction into the open breath of heh. We have turned chametz into matzah. Feel them in your mouth, the texture of chametz’s cut end, of matzah’s humming start. Open the resonance of matzah’s ah-ah and sense the closure into chametz’s “eeey.” Let them live in your mouth with more attention. 

This is the opposite of Hannukah’s mirror work as it stands a shadow to Shavuot. For in Hannukah we are solidifying, turning the nebulous energy of Hannu-Koh into “Zot Hannukat mizbeach” the altar of dedication we can point to. But in Pesach we are undoing our hold on the world of control, letting loose all the kavod and chazaq and kashah, all our want of glory and strength and stubbornness, all the hardening heavy ways the yetzer hara can twist into evil.

And this is the itaruata delaila, the Awakening Above that Springs forth in bursting blossoms and growing greenery to remind us. We have no power here. It arrives as it will and enlivens us, catching our breath each year in its riotous colors. Allowing the air to renew in our lungs unbidden, it is as uncontrollable as the “at midnight” of Peasch’s hour when all the gates open and we will march out together away from the world of enslavery. We wait, as wide open as wind swept blossoms, as closed as bare buds – to leap.

All who can permute the חָמֵץ chametz into מַצָּה matzah, will also merit מָצָא. A heh elevated and deepened into aleph – the divine/human connection beyond words, allows one who puts aside chametz and eats the matzah of Pesach to matza ‘go out’ in sacredness.

The final permutation? This is the secret of צֶ֤מַח, the sproutings of Moshiach. Humble righteous can enter into the waters – wider than the thin thread (ḥut) but narrower than the mind-stuttering expanse of open waters – holding enough friction at the end to enliven world ruach. But as the particle of H2O before, the bent tzadi will know at Aviv there are a thousand tzemach, a million leaves bursting forth, and that they are no greater than the other bright green shoots and wind-swept blossoms of humans in Spring.

May we go out together.
May we leave behind what is heavy.
May we breathe together, freely conspiring to undo narrow Pharaoh places.

(a kabbalistic fairy tale in the style of Rebbe Nachman)

Shir hashirim 3:1
עַל־מִשְׁכָּבִי֙ בַּלֵּיל֔וֹת בִּקַּ֕שְׁתִּי אֵ֥ת שֶֽׁאָהֲבָ֖ה נַפְשִׁ֑י בִּקַּשְׁתִּ֖יו וְלֹ֥א מְצָאתִֽיו׃
Upon my couch at night I sought the one I love—I sought, but found him not.
[Read not only bikashti ‘in my seeking,’ but also b’kashti ‘in my rainbow.’]


Paam achat …
Once upon a time there was a king who woke suddenly one night to find his second, his best friend, had become stone! In shock he sent for his counsel of ten advisors.

The first was already there. “My king, because I am accustomed to gaze at the stars, I can see your friend will be returned. There is naught to fear.” – But the friend was not returned.
The second came as quickly as she could. “My king, I will use my scrying stone to peer through the chaos for answers.” — But the friend was not returned.
The third arrived with the dawn. “My king, I will reach out to the 50 scouts from the 50 gates. They will be our eyes and ears.” But the scouts had no news and the friend was not returned. —

At this, the king sunk into despair and stopped speaking.

The fourth came as the sun rose. “My king, I will send my eagles out to scan the land” — – But still the friend was not returned.
The fifth appeared after shacharit. “My king, I will use my magic sword to cut through the stone! It slices around, not across.” In desperation, they allowed the fifth to try, but the sword simply glanced off the stone. — — And the friend was not returned.

At noon, the sixth wrestled with what action to take. All the other ideas from the other learned advisers had not even softened a pebble of the stone. “My king, in the heart of the kingdom there is a tree of fire whose spring sap is known to revive even those bodies dead to the world. At the base of the burning tree is coiled a great snake. We must build ladders of iron and send a party to retrieve the precious sap, even though it is a treacherous journey.”
The third advisor gathered the scouts of the 50 gates and the fifth beveled ladders of heavy iron that could withstand the fires of the tree. They traveled many days into the deep heart of the land and finally saw the great tree’s glow. It stood aflame, its fruits like glittering embers. The ladders were placed, the snake lulled with delicacies and song, the sap safely retrieved, and the party went forth triumphantly!
— — But the friend was not returned, for they were stone and not flesh.

At this, the king sunk into further despair and stopped eating.

The seventh and eighth advisors were a pair; they came down at sunset.

“My king! We have shortened – – – – – – – – – – – – – – the way with our seven
-league boots, striding the length of – – – – – – – – – the week to witness who has
cursed our friend. Let us consult – – – – – – – – – – – – the date palms and blessed birds
to counsel us.”

— — – But birds had no counsel and the date palms kept their secret
— — — and the friend was not returned.

The ninth arose from the garden after the stars were out. “My king, the Earth itself will not answer what has become of your friend. But in a dream I saw the crescent moon tied up in a rainbow, unable to grow full.” — — —-

At this, the king sunk into the deepest despair and stopped moving.

The tenth advisor could not be found though the other advisors searched by candlelight through the castle. Unable to find her and having pinned their last hopes on her, they all despaired. They cried out “Our king we failed you! All along we thought we might solve the problem through our power, but we are no closer to helping and now you suffer as well!”
At this moment near midnight, the clouds of night cleared and – through the throne room’s great windows – the still and silent king beheld the cloud of hazy rainbow round the full moon.

Great tears fell from the king’s eyes, rolling down his cheeks and towards his lips and as the salt water touched his mouth, he let out three cries that shook his entire body. With great heaviness, he took three steps to his petrified friend and threw his arms around the stone, weeping. The king fell on his knees and somehow, through the tears, began a low near inaudible tune.

And as the clock struck midnight, the tenth advisor finally materialized.
She spoke “My king! I too have been trapped for I was the stone itself wrapped around. I could not free myself from the petrification.” The other advisors despaired, for they had pinned their last hopes on her and feared she also had no power over the solution. But the king did not head her words or look away at the advisors’ cries. He remained on the floor near his friend, embracing and weeping and singing. The clock rang, each bell resounding, and the silence between filled with the king’s quiet tears and the murmuring niggun.

And finally, as the last strike of the midnight hour dissipated, the stone dissolved, the friend’s eyelids lifted and he touched a hand to the king’s wet cheek.

— — — –
And the friend was returned.

There is an alchemy between the elevated but limited ego of Ani (אני) and the beyond-self of Ayin (אין) where the bent nun unfurls to reach into the depths, the root, the generative cave space under the mountain. This Nothing place where binah’s fifty gates open full and the shefa flows unimpeded, where the secret of the inverted nun hovers. The Between is the ratzo v’shov space, that liminal place betwixt holding the Self and letting it go. But before the generative tehom of the divine Void is often the dry pits, the bor where Yoseph languished and no Torah was found. This is the ani (עני) of poverty, where the ayin self limits our ability to see beyond what we are, a place where the godly aleph self cannot yet form from the limitations of what is seen by the eye (ayin).

There is no Torah but to stumble upon it, over her, into him. This includes the intimate complications of making the self. The divine aleph “Ani” self is a stepping stone to the g-d void of Ayin; for if you haven’t gazed into the possibility that even your Self is mutable, maybe even multiple, then how will you recognize the multifaceted mutability of the g-d field Selves?

The Self beyond self, the recognition of the greater, is what ultimately led me to explore my slichus, my deployment and what inner need has propelled me into rabbinical school :::::::::

Trusting Mind requires space, as when we went out from Egypt – “the People had faith” [Ex4:31]; we logically understood we had been freed, but emotionally we still felt unable to trust. We could not yet sing, but we could walk, we could go forth from the lack.
Logically I have faith in my ability to accept my deployment, to recognize my self and rectify my Self in service of what is beyond my limited me. I have mostly gone out from the poverty, the narrows of the non-sacred world and find myself in a place where the openness teams with possibility. 

Trusting Heart requires time, as seven days later we trusted, like Nachshon, to walk into the barely-parting sea. A radical trust that arises in the kishkes, that arrives from time together and in moments of decision. 
Just plant a “You are Here” sign for me. Living in the radical revelation of a sacred world requires a certain trust that only arises with a relationship, a period of time together. Divinity and I are still new to each other; not fresh faced honeymoon, but not even half a decade of conscious attempt to be within a sacred world. I keep trying, like Nachshon, to walk into the fray, to let my heart fill with a possibility that could split seas. Mostly, it feels like wiggling my toes in the shallow end. Often the salt spray laps around up to my nostrils and I, like Jonah, wonder about being tossed into the heart of the sea.

Trusting Embodiment requires communication, as we unlocked this rung of Trust with the music that poured forth from the narrows of our throats once throttled from “shortness of breath.” Now we walked between pillars of water. The Song at the Sea. Were we singing in conversation with g-d? Our logic and our emotion enmeshed, leaping from our lips in an exclamatory knowing?
And yet, I am often Moshe – “I will sing” at some future moment when I envision my self. I can’t see the goal, I simply must imagine it exists. But the true goal? Inscribe an X to mark instead to this spot, the goal portal that Miriyam lives within “Sing!” In the present! In the plural communal! 
There is no place where I will sing alone in the future because there is no future for me that doesn’t involve relationship and communication, that won’t center embodiment, that can exist without a community surrounding.

Elemental Trust requires all of the above, commitment to the above, a dash of mazal, and timing.

I have used words as a boat, an attempt to hold the story and myself together, to keep the narrative running. The ancient and early magic of the word holds, creating a vessel to cradle my consciousness. But there is no boat across the reed sea, there is either the miraculous dry land and ringing timbrels or the dashing of chariots.

It’s all narrows. The stifled screams of our suffering through constricted vocal cords. The precision midnight of Pesach. The narrow walkway between walls of water. The cramped horizon as the mountain hung like an anvil. The bein hametzarim, waiting for grief we know will arrive. And here, another liminal narrows. Things are dying, dried and wilting in the Tammuz sun; but what is a’borning, who I am becoming is still enshrouded in the arafel unknown. Will the stumbling blocks and thick clouds reveal themselves as elevated klipot and rising incense? Will I continue to struggle for parnassah and stability? Will I find some meaningful work even if it isn’t the totality? Are their others who will share this sea that feels frozen within myself?

Like my namesake Betzalel, I’m building a mishkan. But unlike the superior craftsman, I still don’t know what to construct with these tools I’ve been given. I don’t have an Oholiav to weave with. My hands are only just beginning the holy work that is consciously divine-focused. I do not feel prepared for the busy, for the large tasks and groups. And so I find myself focusing on the smallest of the earth and the wisest of the wise – “קְטַנֵּי־אָ֑רֶץ וְ֝הֵ֗מָּה חֲכָמִ֥ים מְחֻכָּמִֽים” – to focus on the swarm power that forms community together without hierarchical power.

Melekh ein laarbeh 
מֶ֭לֶךְ אֵ֣ין לָאַרְבֶּ֑ה וַיֵּצֵ֖א חֹצֵ֣ץ כֻּלּֽוֹ׃ 
There is no king to locusts and they go forth all of them in formation

אַרְבָּ֣עָה הֵ֭ם קְטַנֵּי־אָ֑רֶץ וְ֝הֵ֗מָּה חֲכָמִ֥ים מְחֻכָּמִֽים
Four of them are smallest of the earth and they are wisest of the wise.

– Torah from Beshallach for Leftists in the Wilderness of Words

from parashat Beshallach : Shemot 14:13
And Moshe said to the people “Do not fear! Organize! and see the openness HaShem is making for you today.”
וַיֹּ֨אמֶר מֹשֶׁ֣ה אֶל־הָעָם֮ אַל־תִּירָאוּ֒ הִֽתְיַצְב֗וּ וּרְאוּ֙ אֶת־יְשׁוּעַ֣ת יְהוָ֔ה אֲשֶׁר־יַעֲשֶׂ֥ה לָכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם.
– said at the edge of the sea, with the Egyptians pressing upon

And what is hityatzvu (הִֽתְיַצְב֗וּ)? This is to order and arrange. Like a military? No, as the stars wheeling in heaven. For the God aspect of the One “ordering the stars” (וּמְסַדֵּר אֶת הַכּוֹכָבִים), why “Adonai Tzvaot is Their name” (יהוה צְבָאוֹת שְׁמוֹ)
As we see, this is in the hitpael. The armies of Egypt that press upon us, they are already organized. But we, the people wishing to be free, are stuck between the sea and the army of the state. We went out in haste, so quickly that even the bread couldn’t rise – even less so could we organize.
And so, here, in the moment of great terror where all the freedom we thought we had is ready to crumble back into the abyss – what do we do? Moshe Rabbeinu tells us :

Don’t fear!
Organize yourselves!

And what will these enable us to do? To see. (רְאוּ֙ אֶת־יְשׁוּעַ֣ת) the “salvation of HaShem.” This “salvation,” this “deliverance” is from “יָשַׁע” – there is an openness, a spaciousness that is the opposite of the Tzar Mitzrayim narrows. The acts of Not fearing and Organizing will enable us to see the openness even in the Today (הַיּ֑וֹם).

My friends, this is the moment between the sea and Pharoah’s army. It is incumbent upon us to Not Fear and to Self Organize. If we let fear reign and remain individualized disparate parts, then we will find ourselves back in Egypt or tossed into the sea’s chaos. But through the power of self-organization – the communal power of self rule, the power of people – we can push back fear. And we must, because without these first actions, we are less likely to see this openness we desperately desire, the very spaciousness that makes for life’s freedoms.

For without holding the saving possibility of even “this day,” that even today in all its constrictions and narrowness has some part of freedom’s possibilty, how will we escape of the Egypt of tomorrow?! This is the secret of shortness of breath “מִקֹּ֣צֶר ר֔וּחַ וּמֵעֲבֹדָ֖ה קָשָֽׁה” for we were not able to then conspire – read ‘breath together – in ruach, which makes our forced labor even more laborious.

“… help is necessary. Where do we get that help? To find the aspect of the hidden by means of the lamps. The essence of hiding is in the dark. That one needs lamps to search to find things as above. And in the book ‘Kedushat Levi’ Hanukkah has the aspect of Koh.” – Sefat Emet referencing Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev’s ‘Kedushat haLevi’

When we begin Hanukkah we are at the place of supernal darkness, near the winter solstice. The shortest days and longest nights of the northern hemisphere are upon us, the solar calendar reaches its winter tipping point. But this winter darkness is only of the solar variety; the moon is at the highest angle, taking the longest journey across the night sky. Once the days are shortest and the full moon of Kislev diminishes into a waning crescent, once the moon light and sun light both are lessened, then we light the hannukiah.

What is the first night? It is the aspect of Hanu-koh? Koh, כה, equalling 25 in gematria is the first day – the 25th of Kislev. Koh “thus” adds description and texture, but what is this flavor? Rashi brings down a textual comparison from Bamidbar 30:2 : 
“…the other prophets also prophesied with “Thus says haShem” “koh amar haShem.” Moshe added upon them prophesying in the language “This is the thing” “zeh hadavar.”
Moshe looking through a bright clear mirror – aspaklarya me’ira – sees in ways that are unavailable to other people and prophets. Moshe’s eagle-eyed prophetic vision sees Zeh hadavar, something so clear and close you can point to it – This is the thing! But Koh denotes vagueness, something nebulous. “Thus says haShem” – like this, not exactly, a sort of translation. Thus, as close as I can approximate.

On the first day, the  ‘thus’ness is supreme. The nebulous lowlight where we feel our way through the mystery. We are unable to say “zeh” as Moses might, unable to visualize. The first night of Hanukkah was the night without hope, the place without expectation of the miraculous within the everyday, where there is no future to visualize. This is the place of “כשלהבת קשורה בגחלת” “as flame bound on coal,” like how during the day the embers that will sustain a fire can not be seen.

[ Before Hanukkah is the time when one does not even know miracles are needed. This is the secret of “ולפני אחד מה אתה סופר” ”And before one, what do you count?” in the aspect of Hanukkah. ]

What is the last day of Hanukkah? It is “This is the dedication of the altar” “Zot hanukat hamizbeach.” From the last Torah reading of Hanukkah we find this 8th day is the place we dedicate our altars.
Why the 8th? For we know Seven signifies perfection, the beyond ordinary. This is why the seventh of the week is Shabbat. Eight comes to remind us even perfection must be stepped past, must be continued from. The overturned Eight like an infinity sign, a reminder that the journey of progression never ends looping in a mobius strip like .
Which altar? Like the Degel Machaneh Efrayim’s Yaacov whose altar is made from the sham – the “there”ness quality of the moment – the final day of Hanukkah is an altar to the divine quality of zot. Zot/Zeh, the matched pair of Hebrew “This,” a word adding definitiveness – not just any thing but this one.
This final night brings the ability to differentiate, to point even in the darkness to your dedication, like an arrow from the keshet of Kislev seeking its target. It is the altar of “בְּזֹ֛את יָבֹ֥א אַהֲרֹ֖ן אֶל־הַקֹּ֑דֶשׁ” “In This Aaron entered into the Holy,” for only in the aspect of “Zot” “This” was Aaron able to enter into holiness just as we can only enter the full holiness of Chanukkah’s final day by centering Zot.

While we may only dream to aspire of Moshe’s mythic “Zeh hadavar” clarity, Hanukkah asks not for “More light;” but instead to dedicate our ability to cycle with the Koh and the Zot, to allow clarity and nebulousness both to exist, and to know when each is needed in measure.