Awareness - Shabbat Experiment Week 1

Beginning on Shabbat October 17th, the SAJ will have the opportunity to experiment with the first section of the Shabbat service. As I spoke about on Yom Kippur, I would like to focus the first twenty minutes of Shabbat morning services on themes in our inner lives. The Torah portion for this first week is Bereishit/Genesis. Our theme will be awareness or literally awakening to the day.

Each week, on Tuesday, I will post the theme for the upcoming Shabbat. There will be a verse that will highlight the theme. The verse can serve as a focus or reflection for you in the week leading up to that Shabbat. Feel free to refer to it during your day or look at it first thing in the morning or before going to bed. There will also be a fuller explanation of the theme of the upcoming week.

This experiment will run for seven Shabbatot (through the Shabbat of Thanksgiving). I encourage you to attend as many of these Shabbatot as you can. Please feel free to share any feedback that you have. I hope you can participate in this attempt to "reconstruct" prayer into a meaningful experience.

Awareness
This first week of this experiment (October 17), the verse is shiviti adonai le-negdi tamid (Psalm 16:8). It is commonly translated as "I will place God before me at all times." I want to read the verse as urging us to live life in awareness. Place before me an awareness that the world is larger than myself. As I look in the mirror "negdi" before me, may I see not just my face but the whole world around me. Whatever my belief or non-belief in God, shiviti reminds us we should strive for an awareness of the opportunities and challenges of each day and in fact every moment. shiviti adonai le-negdi tamid---let awareness be my constant companion in life.

The underlying premise of my Yom Kippur talk is that Judaism is about our spiritual life. Specifically, prayer could be reconstructed as an opportunity to focus on our inner lives. Prayer is not asking for something from a God that we may not believe in. Rather prayer is a time to gain a perspective on our place in the universe. We acknowledge both that we are a small finite being in a vast universe and yet we have the potential to seriously impact the lives of those around us.

We begin at the beginning with the creation of the world as told in Genesis chapter 1. It is an appropriate place to start. Awareness is the beginning of life and of spiritual practice. Thoreau said: "Only that day dawns to which we are awake." How shall we awaken to this new day?

The Torah begins with the letter "beit". Why? ask the rabbis. One answer they give is that the shape of the letter is closed on the top and bottom and to the right. It thereby teaches that we can't know what is above or below or what came before. We can only go forward into the unfolding moment. For the rabbis, this was a theological statement about the mystery of God and God's ways. I would suggest that it teaches that we can not go back to the past but only forward into the future.
The letter "beit" the 2nd letter of the Hebrew alphabet also reminds us of the duality of the world. We live in a world of two's. One of our tasks as human is to live with the contradictions of that dual world. We are powerful and mortal, we are alone and connected. Like Noah, we are to invite in to the ark of our lives all the animals in pairs of two.
Beit also teaches us about second chances--that we have the opportunity at every morning--at every moment to begin again.
How shall we awaken to this new day? To its freshness and newness? To its possibilities and challenges?
How can we begin to embrace the challenge of this week's verse shiviti adonai le-negdi tamid---let awareness be my constant companion in life?

One way is to appreciate the wonders of creation as in this reading by Ruth Brin:

Genesis
In the beginning, You made a simple world,
But now You create galaxies beyond systems
Now we know You create with subtlety
the invisible atom with its secret heart of power.
You create with delicacy, with violence,
Filled with joy, You make a human being,
a whole world, mysterious, delicate, violent.
Overflowing with joy, You create myriads of people,
kinds of life.
Your love, massive, cosmic, joyful, explodes around us,
as in the beginning, in a burst of light, a rush of waters,
(Ruth F. Brin, "Genesis" published in Harvest: Collected Poems and Prayers)
But most of all the "beit" of bereishit teaches us that we must enter in to (ber) the beginning (reishit). Life is to be engaged.

This Shabbat morning beginning promptly at 10 am, Rabbi Michael Strassfeld we will engage life by exploring the theme of awareness.