Adina Roth – Head of Jewish Life

Life in goblet-sized sips

Life at Emanuel is rich, full and varied! There is enormous enthusiasm from teachers to build, create and offer classes, projects, activities, excursions and trips for our students and there is a simultaneously warm reception from students to participate in academics, sports, the arts and cultural activities and more. Put a little differently, it’s busy! What’s more, it’s busy with good stuff! As a teacher and as a parent I sometimes wonder about that fine line between participating in everything and overdoing it to the point of saturation, exhaustion and burnout. A classic 21^st century dilemma!

This very dynamic is discussed in this week’s double-parsha bonus, called Vayakhel-Pekudei. This portion enumerates the building of God’s Tabernacle, called in Hebrew the mishkan, the House of God, in the desert. The Jewish people are invited to make contributions of their own towards the building of the Mishkan. The people come out in their throngs and generously contribute towards the building of the Temple. One can imagine a pile of materials growing, from linens and cloth, to metals and animal skins; a gigantic, ancient  desert, thrift store. The people bring so much that the artisan-project managers exclaim that actually the people have brought ‘too much.’ We can imagine the drop-off zone, somewhere in the desert, the people arriving with their offerings, their second-hands ‘this and that’. The piles of stuff accrue and suddenly we read, perhaps in a tone of panic, “The people are bringing MORE than is needed”.  And so, “Moses issued a proclamation through the camp, ‘let no man or woman bring anything further towards the building of the Mishkan’ and the people ceased from bringing”. The next sentence is puzzling, “their contributions were enough (dayam), and there was also surplus”. We are suddenly pulled into a dynamic between sufficient and excess.

This particular sentence has puzzled our commentaries. They wonder, was what the people gave sufficient, in Hebrew, dayam, or was it extra and excess, hoter. The sentence seems to imply it is both. A Hasidic Commentary from the 19^th century known as the Kedushat Levi write that in the Jewish godhead, there is a similar dialectic between excess and sufficiency. He takes the word dayam/enough, and links it to the word Shaddai, a name of God often translated as “The One who Suffices”. However, the word Shadai contains another Hebrew word, shadayim. In Hebrew, shadayim are breasts. The Kedushat Levi says that this name for God refers to God using strong maternal imagery as an overflowing breast, God as the great and ample provider of  milk and sustenance to the creation. For those of us who grew up with images of God as a man in the sky, this image of God as the Ample Breast might be refreshing, if a little unusual. However the Kedushat Levi, with remarkable insight says that the feeding, nurturing aspect of God could be overwhelming, overflowing with life force and with energy. Therefore, built into this very name of God, Shaddai, is another word which complements and balances the Shadayim. This word is Dai, which means Enough. God offers the milk but is also able to manage the flow of Godself, to withhold, so that God’s offering isn’t experienced as too much, or as overwhelming.

This dialectic between overwhelming generosity and boundaried restraint is touched on in a Greek myth where young Psyche is trying to regain the affection of her beloved Eros. Eros’ mother Aphrodite, the goddess of Love, has assigned Psyche four tasks. One of them is to retrieve a goblet of water from the River Styx. This mythical river is guarded by dangerous monsters and animals and it seems as if Psyche will not succeed to retrieve this water. She is assisted by an eagle who comes to her aid, swoops over the river and fills the crystal goblet for her. Robert Johnson, a Jungian analyst asks why Psyche is limited to retrieving only one goblet of water (I like to imagine it as one kiddush cup of water). Johnson suggests that the River Styx represents the river of all of life and he goes on to explain that as humans we cannot take on the river of life all at once. Rather, life needs to be taken on in bite-size, digestible bits, ‘life in goblet-sips.’

The building of the Mishkan is considered as a parallel to the creation of the world. As the House of God in the desert, the Mishkan is considered a prototype for the perfect space, an ideal world. In this word, there is an achievement of that elusive balance between the offering of excess and the boundary that curbs that excess with ‘dai, enough.’ As teachers, we sometimes are filled with a longing and enthusiasm to pour out so much to our students and we are in the constant act of modifying our visions so that they can be received in digestible, bite-size chunks. I think as parents we also battle with this. How do we expose our children to the River of Life, showing them all the wonders and giving them access to the multiple options of life without tiring our kids. In our world where busy is kind of trendy, how do we find that other aspect of the Godhead, the dai, of saying enough, we will only fill one goblet of water at a time.

As we approach the April holidays and anticipate our much needed breaks, let’s imagine breaking the cycles of excessive busyness. We can do this by creating a metaphorical Mishkan, a space that carries us through both term time and holiday time that allows for the abundance of life to flow while curbing the excess, ‘life in goblet-sized sips’.