Mincha Yom Kippur 2001
Breshit bara elohim et hashamayim v'et ha-aretz. V'ruach elohim merachefet al p'nai ha-mayim. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters. Breshit Rabbah says, "The soul of the human being was created on the first day, for it is the spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters. Thus, instead of being the last, the human is really the first work of creation."
The human soul is the spirit of God moving on the face of the waters. The human ruach is part and parcel of the divine ruach in its primordial form, the original hovering Wind by Whose presence water was connected to water. The human soul is made up of the creative essence of God, the holy essence whose intention, whose speech, whose language separated water from water and created all that is. Elohai neshama she-natata bi t'hora hi --ata barata ata yatzarta ata n'fachta bi --the soul which You placed within me is pure. You created it, You gave it form, and You breathed it into me. The human soul is the divine breath, the breathing, hovering, desirous primal energy breathed into the form of the body, breathing out life and creativity and energy.
The human soul is that creative, desirous, hovering, moving, connective divine energy that could best be described by the word "love."
Each of us has within us a pure, perfect, hovering, breathing, desirous, moving, loving divine wind within us, at our center. It is what gives us life and motion and spirit and creativity and yearning and curiosity and connectivity. The soul which You have placed within me is tahor--it is pure. It is Your essence formed as You have wished, breathed, as it were, from Your lungs into the material of my body and personality, animating my cells and thoughts and dreams. Each of us has this within us. Each of us is this. Without the divine spirit in its quality of hovering over the primordial waters residing within us, we would be nothing but scrap. We would have no energy, no yearning, no imagination, no passion, no intelligence, no empathy, no humor, no wisdom. That divine energy infuses us, connects cell to cell, thought to instinct to drive, gives us life, makes us holy and remarkable and precious. Vayomer Elohim naaseh adam b'zalmeinu kidmutaynu -- and the Divine said "let us make the human being in our image, after our likeness." We are made in the image of God because we are infused with God.
Then why do we not enter into immediate ecstasy whenever we see another human being? Why are we not completely bowled over by the divine Temple in our presence whenever it enters the room, walks by us on the way, sits down next to us or rises up in our company? What happened? Did we forget? Go blind? How can we be immune to the splendor that is another person?
In some measure, it is your fault, not mine. As you walk through daily life you become cluttered, corroded, encased, swaddled, engulfed, distracted, swayed, steered wrong, swindled, sucked away from your orbit. You become bored, anxious, itchy, hungry. You begin to take things you don't need, to go where you shouldn't go. You develop habits and obfuscations. That hovering, vibrating center is still there, but it is covered over. I can't see through to the Holy of Holies in you because of the clutter you've gathered around your core. You hide yourself.
And in some measure the fault is mine. Because I am doing all the same things every day, cluttering my own paths and channels. I am choosing to dull my senses, to overstimulate and bore myself, to eat beyond satisfaction, to want and need and crave and resent and wish. And so, even if you walk by in all your radiant, vibrating holy splendor I might well be looking another direction and miss you entirely.
And so we are both lonely and loveless.
The High Holy Days offer the opportunity to shed the unnecessary and the distracting, the klipah, the shell, to restore ourselves, to return, lashuv, as in teshuvah, to the Divine, hovering spirit which is our central truth. In so doing there is the great relief of feeling light and unencumbered.
And there is an additional opportunity in this day. By returning, by teshuvah, we not only feel relief for ourselves. We also become visible in our splendor. And so, because on this exact day we are all in the midst of this holy, redemptive effort to shed the dry husks which hide us and weight us down, because we are doing this together, we will be gifted with glimpses of the radiant essences of our friends and neighbors. Because we have chosen to engage in this return, this teshuvah, this emergence, together instead of in private, we will see each other unmasked, unhusked, open, evident, clear. We will see in each other the Divine image. We will see in each other the divine essence in its primordial embrace of the face of the waters.
We probably shouldn't stare at each other. But if you happen to cast a glance at the person here that you know the least, or perhaps, god forbid, like the least -- you may well see a moment or more of unimpeded holy splendor emanating from the head or the hands or the heart of that person. And you will love them. You won't be able to help it! Even if it just lasts a moment before it gets crusted up with something else, you will remember it. And when you meet during the year at the post office or the shul, you will remember this glimpse you had of this person on Yom Kippur 5762. You will remember the secret of what is within your friend or your enemy, the spirit of God in its freest moment ever, the moment before division and separation, when the waters above were connected to the waters below by the hovering soul that became our soul, that became life, that became love and that yearns in all of us for teshuvah, for return.
There is nothing special about the High Holy Days. This opportunity to see into each other's holy souls and to adore each other, is available to us any and every day. It may very well happen that, because of what I glimpse today, I will months from now be walking down the street when you will appear in front of me on the sidewalk, and I will suddenly see God, in all the holy, naked divine wonder that inhabits you all the time. And I will enter right there into the bliss that is my birthright as a creature of God. L'shana tovah!
Copyright 2001 Rabbi Margaret Holub
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Last updated 12/24/2001(rge)