The Eighth Day
THE BIG IDEA
This week’s spiritual energy carries some of the most challenging to digest.
Unable to hold and serve an entirely abstract notion of divinity, God agrees to dwell amongst the people in a holy tent, the Mishkan, a space completely filled with divine Presence.
On the eighth day of spiritual initiation of both the Mishkan and the high priests designated for spiritual service, Aaron’s two oldest sons went beyond the prescribed rituals, made a spiritually unauthorized incense offering at the altar, and were immediately consumed by a mysterious fire from above.
This dramatic unfolding was amplified by the requirement placed upon Aaron and his remaining two sons to complete their spiritual initiation and not enter into a state of mourning.
Aaron’s silence in the aftermath of his shocking loss is an energy that is currently reverberating across the land of Israel. For the past 6 months, the entire nation has been initiated into its own spiritual service. Too often parents have buried one son while sending another off to fight.
The hardest part to swallow about the situation is that there is no alternative. With divinity so closely enmeshed with our midst, the only effective protest must come from within the same deep stillness Aaron and his 2 remaining sons were forced to find during their initiation process.
This weekend, sense into Aaron’s loss as if it was your own, and from that place of profound stillness, appeal to the Creative Force of the Universe to accept the offering of our enduring faith, and save us from looming threats of war, destruction and suffering, and, in the merit of Aaron, ask God to find a way to return the hostages and bring all our soldiers home safely and soon.
DIGESTING THE MYSTERY
The same week that Aaron’s personal loss manifest in his inability to eat the animal offering in the manner he was commanded to do, we receive the mystery of spiritually forbidden and permitted foods, and the laws of kashrut.
While there will always be people trying to explain the biological advantage to keeping kosher, the spiritual logic behind what is allowed and restricted is entirely unknowable.
And so, this Shabbat, invite yourself to imagine your food as a metaphor for spiritual consciousness. With every bite of spiritually permissible food (kosher food) try to digest the mystery of the current situation, and feel the energy of that food, and your surrender to the mystery, fill your body with both the physical, AND spiritual energy needed to get us through this war.