This is Real and you are Completely Unprepared
07/17/2025 03:29:31 PM
Jul17
A bit of trivia: Parashat Pinchas (or at least parts of it) is read from the scroll more frequently than any other. However, what we read so often are not the dramatic stories of Pinchas the zealot, Tzelophad’s feminist daughters, or Joshua’s appointment as successor. Rather, Pinchas contains a comprehensive list of the offerings to be brought on every Torah festival, so in addition to the regular weekly reading, there 22 festival days, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot, plus up to 18 days of Rosh Hodesh, when read the selection from Pinchas that describes the sacrificial offerings for those days. However, if you read just those readings, you would get a very stilted view of the holidays. It is all about rams and lambs and libations, with just a phrase each about shofar, fasting and matzah, and not even a hint of sukkah.
It is possible to see our holidays with a mechanical sense of obligation, meals to eat, services to attend, checking the boxes without really having them impact us spiritually and emotionally. But maybe we can do better. This summer we’ve undertaken a community study project that may help, using a book called “This is Real and you are Completely Unprepared.” Click here to find out more about opportunities to participate in person, read on your own, or maybe even join in on line, or keep reading to find out why I think you should.
The premise of the book is that many of us wander through life until we are struck and transformed, perhaps against our will, but moments of vivid intensity-- births and deaths, marriage and divorce, illness and accomplishment. He suggests that in fact the season that begins now with Tisha B’Av and continues through Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot, can and must have a similar intensity and impact. He interweaves the seasons of his own lives and our common experiences with the experiences of the season.
We are offering the opportunity to use this book as a key to finding deeper meaning in the High Holiday season, and everyday life. Starting next Shabbat afternoon, we will offer two weekly opportunities to discuss the ideas of the book, and you are welcome even if you have not read the book! The Saturday afternoon group will be available via zoom as well, and If there is interest in a zoom-only group we will schedule one. We can also provide resources if you want to learn more in a private group or even on your own.
The book is particularly moving because Rabbi Alan Lew was a unique spiritual figure. He grew up as a secular Jew and was planning on becoming Buddhist priest, when he rediscovered his Judaism and made a sharp turn to be ordained as a rabbi. He walked a unique line, looking at how techniques of meditation and mindfulness could be new entryways into Jewish traditions. I am not much of a meditator, but I had gone to a retreat where I had hoped to take one of his sessions. He passed away during the middle of the retreat, so I never go that opportunity.
Instead, this is one of the few books that I take off the shelf to re-encounter every few years. As someone who almost day-in and day-out is called into some of the most intensely beautiful and terrifying days of our Jewish lives, I sometimes find it hard to shift gears and engage fully in the mundane. As someone who spends his professional life engaged in the logistics of holidays major and minor, I can easily forget to connect fully with the meanings of those days? In some sense, the same thing happens in our portion this week. Pinchas had been engaged in an intense and moment, responding to idolatry with violence. God offers him a covenant of peace, the gift of being able to understand the intensity and meaning of the everyday, to understand the REALNESS of the ritual and spirituality that he encounters each day. That is a blessing that I believe would benefit many of us.
Sat, August 30 2025 6 Elul 5785