Personal words, cut from my heart

Sometimes it feels like a balancing act trying to determine how much to share personally in public writing and speaking spaces. We all have our own boundaries and sensitivities around privacy and self-disclosure.

But one thing I’ve learned both myself and from others is that when one person is struggling with something, they’re almost never the only one. And that sometimes it helps to share- feelings, problems, solutions, and questions.

As a person of faith, I’ve never found a fulfilling (for me) answer to the almost cliché question of why a loving G-d would allow the innocent to suffer and evil to be perpetrated. It’s not only a theological difficulty, (which I spend a lot of time researching and pondering) but also an experiential/emotional one:

Meaning, even if we accept and believe that G-d exists, and is Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent, and Compassionate, which I do, it can still be difficult to feel and reciprocate His Love. Because my limited, mortal frame of reference for love begins with the most basic, minimal criterion to do no harm. When I love someone, and I have the power to protect her from suffering, that is the simplest expression of my love. Likewise, those who’ve loved me, have demonstrated this as well, by showing kindness and never deliberately inflicting unnecessary pain on me. While I can surrender my puny mind to accept philosophically that whatever pain is part of the human condition has been determined by the Omnipotent, Loving G-d to be necessary, it’s still difficult to associate that with my human paradigm for experiential love.

The way I managed to access Divine Love until about a year ago was by, most of the time, deliberately dissociating from these questions. When I focus on the goodness in the world, the beauty, the wonder, the hope, the joy, in those moments, I can turn a blind eye to all the pain and suffering, and the attending angsty questions and (for me) inadequate answers, and practice simple gratitude for the blessings.

To some degree, I imagine anyone with a conscience needs to do this, in order to stay sane, otherwise:

How could I enjoy my food knowing others have none?

How could I sleep restfully at night, knowing others are in danger?

How can I breathe while innocents are still gasping for oxygen in the terror tunnels?

How could I enjoy been held and protected while others are being abused?

How could I laugh while knowing my fellow humans are crying?

The very act of thriving could feel selfish and smug and tone-deaf in the context of social awareness and interpersonal empathy. And yet- we know that depriving ourselves and hyperfocusing on pain leads to depression and desperation, not “tikkun olam.” We need to self-nourish in order to contribute.

So we compartmentalize.

When addressing the good, we “thank G-d,” and when there is tragedy, we pull out our well-worn faith-quotes.

But this last 11.5 months, it’s been different, at least for me. The level of visceral pain and constant worry that so many of us feel for our sisters and brothers in Israel- the murdered, the mourning, the hostages, the traumatized, the soldiers, the displaced, the precarious future of the West, all the concentric circles, it’s often too loud, throbbing, and ubiquitous to sidestep or overlay with platitudes of gratitude.

Ideologically it shouldn’t be different from before; if we could feel Divine Love after knowing about the Holocaust, then what changed?

Nothing really, and everything too, but mainly the zoomed in view. The more removed, distant, obstructed the agony, the easier it is to bypass, distract, and refocus to love and light. The closer, sharper, fresher the wounds, the harder that becomes.

Also: it’s one thing to marshal faith in the face of one’s own personal pain, but is it appropriate or even moral to do that when the suffering is vicarious? It feels callous, and unholy- especially as G-d commands us to feel and care for one another.

Is it not disrespectful, even cruel, to draw silver linings onto someone else’s cloud?

There’s a verse in this week’s Torah portion that’s been playing in my head the last few weeks:

“And G-d will circumcise your hearts, and the hearts of your children, to love YHVH your G-d with all your heart and all your soul, in order for you to live.”

This verse contains the words whose initials are cited as the acronym for the Jewish month of Elul- the time designated for heightened introspection, self-improvement, making amends, and closeness to G-d.

The idea of a circumcised heart always felt a little graphic and specific to me. Couldn’t the verse have just said: “And G-d will ‘empower’ or ‘inspire’ your hearts?”

We were taught that just as circumcision is a symbolic, physical sublimation of human desire, we need

G-d to help us remove our baser temptations and elevate our inner processes towards His will.

This word, milah (circumcision) of the heart is a cognate with two other Hebrew roots, those denoting: word and opposite.

I wonder if another reason the Torah expresses the path to "loving G-d in order to live" using this word milah is to highlight the function of language. The words that we use to narrate, conceptualize, and frame our experiences, emotions, and beliefs can help us surgically peel back the ego-brain-questions that block our receptors of His love for us and ours for Him.

But what are we meant to do with that part of ourselves?

Why is it there?

Aren’t we meant to search for oneness and harmony in creation?

How can we integrate rather than divorce it?

The letters of the word milah are also the letters of the word “lamah”- why? And “lemah” for what?

These inevitable human questions are the challenges that can block the flow of Divine Love, but also, deepen it. Some of the greatest people in the Torah asked them of G-d Himself and were canonized for it.

Milah means circumcise and word, but it also means opposite (mul).

There is a premise that the best way to identify or define an entity is by contrast, the yin and the yang.

An idea or construct standing opposite its mirror image is the reflection, the backwards version.

The Talmud teaches that this version of existence is an upside down world; G-d’s goodness is concealed.

The part of our hearts that can feel confused, abandoned, and fragmented is the part that yearns for that elusive goodness, for wholeness, for joy, serenity, and peace. The fact that it’s ostensibly missing from the incomplete iteration of existence as we know it is what creates that sense of disconnect. But the very pain and betrayal we feel when standing opposite these scary questions is a form of Divinity within us too. It’s a reminder of how little we actually know. Childlike helplessness and experiential distress are what cause the baby to reach up for the loving parent, even amidst confusion.

Without G-d's help to make the intentional incision around the specific portion of heart, it could break or shatter; with His guidance, it can be carefully resected and slowly healed.

I don’t mean to sugarcoat. The questions still don’t feel answered to me.

Linguistic exegesis, however intellectually appealing, is often more hermeneutic than therapeutic.

The answer to the mystery of life is still only 42.

(Which is the numerical-gematria of the Hebrew word “bahm” which refers to words of Torah study in the Shma prayer, another verse commanding Love of G-d with all our heart and soul. That reference is more cute than deep.)

But ruminating on this verse about G-d “circumcising our hearts to love and to live” has been morphing into the secondary meanings for me: narrating, editing, contrasting, and reflecting our hearts, integrating the worrying parts that impede the love, through prayer, tears, yearning to repair this multiply fractured world. The deep, soul-surrender that ends on a sob, the messy, the brutal, the rock-bottom despair, thud in the trenches that cracks open a jagged sliver of hope, “in order to live”- that too is a form of love.  

Practically speaking, I've been searching for ways to try and excavate the love, and for me, I've found that studying books like Iyov (Job), Eichah (Lamentations), Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), and talking to G-d a lot in my own unfiltered words is helpful, sometimes.

Also: reading and listening to people of great faith despite their own adversity tell their stories and share their resilience, allows me to mooch off their holiness, at least for a bit.

This Elul and beyond, like so many of our family the world over, we’re begging like never before:

Bring them home. Bring us all home. Bring the entire world home to You, cut away the inexplicable sorrow from our hearts and lives, pull back the curtain, help us rewrite the ending, and shower us with Your revealed Love and Light.

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