Tonight’s message is a sermon
in four (short) movements, held together by the biologically imperative
yet sublimely spiritual, literally vital and vitally metaphorical theme
of water.
I’d love to start with metaphor,
with something encouraging and uplifting. It’s Rosh Hashana, after
all, the birthday of the world—not Yom Kippur (!) But it’s also
the start of the Ten Days of Teshuva, and we have a Jewish model for
starting with the basic and literal, moving from there towards the spiritual
heights, in four steps. It’s PaRDeS, or orchard; also
an acronym: Peh for Pshat, basic meaning; Resh, Remez, a clue;
Daled, Drash, diving further to deeper meanings; and Samech, Sod, the
ultimate mystical truth.
So, with that in mind, our four
levels: One/P’shat: Water. Who dirties or diverts it, and who drinks
it? Two/Remez: what can we learn from water? Three/Drash:
what does it means to thirst? And four/Sod: the deep spiritual mystery
of water, how it fits into Tishrei and the New Year.
First,
the literal level. What’s going on with water on this planet?
I addressed that in my last Newsletter column, titled ‘Mayim Chayim’
or waters of life. What, not everyone reads every word of every
Scroll? You’re forgiven! (That’s another big theme
this season ;-). But among those who did read it was Harlene Bernstein,
who emailed me.
She wrote: “There are 500,000
people in Niger who are dying for a lack of water. Due [in part] to
global warming they now have one month of rain where they once had five
months. They will drink mud if they can find it. Half
of their children die before age five. [My friend] Ariane [Kirtley]
has created a foundation (named Amman Imman) which translated means
"water is life". You can see why your article excited me….”
Harlene’s friend’s NGO digs
deeper wells, down to natural, potable water (for as long as those ancient
non-recharged aquifers last, anyway). We may know of similar efforts,
all worth our support. But in this season of cheshbon,
of introspection: do we really see drought in Africa, or overtapped
groundwater in South America, or polluted wells in Asia, as “our problem”?
Or do we give lip service to a notion that we live in a global village,
but manage still not to see villagers across the globe as ‘neighbors’?
Harlene’s email ends:
“Imagine 500,000 people whose focus each day is to relieve their thirst.....and
we leave the shower running to answer the phone.” [pause]
Her
thought echoes a key Talmudic text, from Yevamot (11b): “a person
should not dump out water from their cistern, when others are in need
[of it]. This sounds so simple – but doesn’t Yevamot’s logic
implicate us for leaving the shower running to answer the phone?
Or keeping old washing machines that use twice the water of new front-loaders,
or old toilets that take six gallons just to clear some yellow out?
What some people in this world would do for those six gallons…
Clean safe accessible drinking
water should be a fundamental human right. The quote of the day
from last Sunday’s New York Times has a West Virginia woman,
whose local water was polluted by coal slurry, asking, “How can we
get digital cable and Internet into our homes, but not clean water?”5
Our local water is pretty good; in DC at least, WASA does a decent job,
and the huge Blue Plains treatment plant (despite some issues) is state-of-the-art.
But ‘neighbors’ not so far away are among the billions of people
who lack access to that basic right.
And we are implicated.
We leave on the lights, powered by the coal whose residues pollute West
Virginia water (especially with whole mountaintops lopped off and dumped
into streambeds, to get to the coal that powers our not-fully-conserving
lives). We enjoy (or have, until last year, enjoyed) pension
and mutual funds and investments in corporations, like Bechtel, who
privatize and make profit off the only water sources for entire regions
in the developing world.
We drink our Dasani water or Cola,
blithely unaware of the human rights impacts of the groundwater pumps
where Coke and Pepsi subsidiaries claim a public resource for private
gain, leaving local subsistence farmers literally high and dry. The
Earth gets too crowded and too polluted to safeguard its life-giving
water, and our economic machines too corrupt to provide water to those
who thirst for it—unless it’s for cash, in unsustainable plastic
bottles. That’s the pshat of water. Enough said.
Second/Resh/Remez
-- what we learn from water: As a physical entity and a
biological necessity, water inspires amazement. Most substances
are denser in their frozen than their liquid state, and thus sink as
temperatures drop. Water is a rare exception – which allowed
a cold Earth’s early oceans and lakes to freeze only on top, stay
liquid down below, and thus foster the beginnings of life. Incredible,
when you think of it. (But how often do we think of it?)
Our liturgy tries to point us
in that direction – consider the opening of tonight’s service, that
lovely dramatic setting of Genesis-inspired poetry, [sing] “the Creation
of the world began, and it continues, on down to this day”.
Recall the biblical account, poetically true if not scientifically so,
of primeval waters above and below on Day Two, and actual ‘waters
of life’ on Day Five. And indeed it ‘continues on down to
this day’ – to this traditional anniversary of the world’s creation,
as Talmud Taanit (8b) teaches, "The day when rain falls is as great
as the day on which heaven and earth were created." (Remember
that when your next picnic gets washed out!)
Water is so plain, so simple –
even its chemical signature is as simple as it gets, two Hydrogens and
an Oxygen (hyper-abundant elements). Rabbis like Eliyahu Kitov
make symbolic hay out of this – teaching that “water, [such] a basic
form of nature” that yet serves such a sacred role in ritual and in
life, offers “a reminder that even the simplest of people have access
to the Divine spirit.”6 And since Remez /clue is
like a divining rod saying ‘dig here,’ consider Talmud Bava Kama
(17a), where the rabbis teach, “Whenever water is mentioned in the
scriptures -- it means Torah.”
That’s a big clue. We dig, and then we reach --
Third, Drash/interpretation; a classical midrash, of water-Torah analogies.
Soak (sic!) this in:
"
* Just as rain water comes down in drops then forms rivers, so with
Torah; one learns a bit today and some more tomorrow, until in time
it’s like a flowing stream. * Just as water
has no taste unless one is thirsty; so too, Torah is best appreciated
through great effort and yearning. * Just as
water leaves a high place and flows to a low one, so too, Torah leaves
one whose spirit is proud and remains with one who’s humble.
* Water is a great equalizer -- no matter your station or class, all
can drink water; so too a scholar should not be ashamed to say to a
simpler fellow, 'Teach me a chapter, a verse or a letter'.
* Just as water is a source of life for the world -- as it says, “A
fountain of gardens, a well of living waters” (Song of Songs 4:15)
-- so the Torah is a source of life for the world.
* Just as water restores the soul, so too, does Torah.
* Just as water is cleansing, the words of Torah are purifying.”7
Water is life, Torah is life and life is Torah, Torah is water. That’s drash.
More
drash, as we explore what it means to thirst:
The
Psalmist says Tzama lecha nafshi – “my soul is thirsty for
You” (63:1), God. ‘Thirst’ implies need, desperation.
Our bodies parch after two dry days, and die after four. Thirst
is real, it’s existential. Do we truly thirst, then, for divinity
and ultimacy in our lives? Is our thirst for bringing greater
godliness into our actions? If these Holy Days are something to
go to and get through, then we’re not so thirsty. If
we’re mostly content with who we are and how well we’re doing as
people, we’re not really looking to drink from sacred wells.
But: if we take seriously our mission to make a difference, if
we treasure our God-given ability to improve, then these Yamim
Noraim come to slake our thirst.
[and as I asked in that Scroll
article:] Of whom, or what, might we say “my soul
is thirsty”? We think we thirst for truth, for love, beauty,
justice – and sure, we take some baby-steps toward finding these nourishing
wells. But a true reckoning of where we put most of our time and
energy – a heshbon hanefesh, a soul-accounting, as this season
asks of us – might suggest otherwise. Too often our thirst turns
out to be for money or status; for ‘stuff’ rather than for sustainability;
for ephemera, rather than for the Eternal. This day, this season,
helps us clarify just what we should want to drink. May
our thirst be for what matters – and if so, may it be quenched.
Which
brings us to our last, tie-it-together element – Sod, the hidden secret
of water in this sacred season. And within this Sod, within thoughts
of water during this spiritual month of Tishrei, is nestled an entire
orchard, one more four-part pardes.
So, the Pshat (within the Sod):
Tishrei’s all about water. Think about it – within three busy weeks
we have Rosh Hashanah, where on Sunday afternoon we gather down by the
riverside, to lay down our swords of shortcomings and our shields of
self-defensiveness, to cast our failings into the water and watch them
sink, never to harm us or others again. Yay, tashlich. A
week later, Shabbat Shuvah’s haftarah offers tashlich’s prooftext,
from Micah (7:19): “you will cast all their sins into the depths
of the sea” (which after all is where Cabin John and Rock Creek do
flow, via the Potomac and the Chesapeake). Then comes Yom Kippur,
our day of thirst, when among the “al chets” we ask for forgiveness
for sins committed through maachal umishteh, food and drink –
an ancient awareness that what we drink, or the sources from which it’s
obtained, may indeed be an area for ethical improvement.
That’s all good, but it pales
next to Sukkot, when the Talmud (Shabbat 16a) tells us that water is
judged, apportioned, each year, for the whole world. That’s
one of many pieces that reinforce Sukkot as the big fall harvest festival,
dependent on the rain – it’s the week when we feel the rain in our
vulnerable sukkah; when Simchat beit haShoevah took place, the great
festival of the house-of-water-drawing, ancient Jerusalem’s water-themed
mardi gras. It’s when we shake our lulav & etrog, the
arba minim or four species, all (palm, willow, myrtle, and citron)
uniquely water-loving. And, above all, on the last Festival Day,
Shemini Atzeret, we offer our literal “Prayer for Rain,” Tefillat
Geshem.
(Before moving past the literal,
one shameless program plug: Sukkot’s water-themes are why Adat
Shalomers of all ages will visit the National Aquarium downtown on the
second morning of Sukkot, Sunday October 4th -- the kickoff
of our extended “Honoring our Holidays, Caring for Creation” or
H2C2 initiative, via a generous grant from the
Legacy Heritage Innovation Project – info is on your handout, by Mat
Tonti’s lovely image of the fish with lulav. Hope to see you
there!)
Now onward, deeper into that last orchard that grows within this seasonal
Sod – deeper into the profound ways in which water mirrors t’shuvah
(our core High Holy Day mission of introspection, repentance, positive
change).
The Remez/clue within the Sod:
water is the ultimate example of that which we take for granted.
Our lives and our world utterly depend on it, yet we get used to water
always being there, and don’t stop to appreciate that indoor plumbing
is new and luxurious in the span of humanity -- that clean accessible
water without cholera or diphtheria or horrible contaminants is remarkable
-- that water is a miracle.
The Baal Shem Tov (18th-century
founder of modern Hassidism) spoke of a traveler in a forest, hot and
exhausted and thirsty, about to give out, who stumbles on a cool gushing
spring – a miracle! They drink, are satisfied and healed, and
on their way. A second time that person walks through that forest,
pushes their endurance, finds the spring, hooray. The third time
they anticipate it; the fourth time they expect it; soon it’s utterly
routine, not even noteworthy. Yet, the Baal Shem Tov reminds
us, isn’t the very existence of a spring, the very fact
of clean cool water coming out of the ground to sustain us, the greatest
miracle of all? Rosh Hashanah comes to teach us to think about
the many springs in our lives – to take nothing, and no one, for granted.
The Drash within Sod is on interconnection. The water cycle itself moves
quintillions of molecules of H20 constantly, from ocean to
cloud to ground to organism (often us); back to ground; then stream,
river, estuary, ocean… As Kohelet (aka Ecclesiastes -- the megillah
associated with Sukkot) writes,8 “All the rivers flow into the sea, yet
the sea is not full; to the place from which the rivers flow, there
they flow again.” All is connected. Our bodies, like the
earth itself, are two-thirds water – we are interconnected.
Water reminds us of the unity, majesty and mystery of Creation – appropriate
on this hayom harat olam, Birthday of the World, when we focus
on the Malkhut, the rulership or kingliness of the Creator we know as
Echad, One -- whose Creations are thus One, as well. The water
cycle, and our common dependence on water, is indeed the “great equalizer”
of all that lives.
Finally, the Sod within the Sod -- what we might call ‘Hidden
Tshuvah’: because we’re so interconnected, our use of anything
(especially water) affects others – and, because it’s so easy to
take things like clean water on demand for granted, we easily miss some
adverse effects of our choices. This again is a time for cheshbon,
a deep reckoning-research-checking, an unremitting search for internal
faults we might have missed before.
As with the pesticide-contaminated
water folks drink in the Midwest (or Chile or Thailand), because of
the food grown there that we consume; as with the climate-changing
audacity of drinking water shipped in plastic bottles on ships from
Fiji (as if we didn’t have water in the mid-Atlantic!?!); as
with the West Virginia water we pollute by telling PEPCO to burn that
coal; as with the water we spill out of our cisterns, while others
need it – so too with all our lives. A true cheshbon
will ask about these actions, and many more -- it will ask what we’re
doing to relieve drought and poverty in Africa, and what we’re
going to do about that woman’s slurry-polluted tap water just west
of here. …What will we do?
May
our souls be restored to a place of wholeness and compassion, through
the Torah of water. May we look more deeply for the bycatch of
our trawling, the ‘externalities’ of our acquisitions – for the
easily missed impacts of our actions, and the unintended adverse consequences
of our choices. Now we turn (do tshuvah); we face the hard
rain that’s gonna fall; and we do our best to clean up our act --
clean up our water -- clean up our souls. May the healing mayim
chayim, waters of life, restore us all.
Shanah tova.