Let’s Party In The Garden

Friends, it’s my birthday. I feel super grateful to share this moment with you.

It’s a most auspicious time in the Hebrew calendar. And so yeah, it’s making me want to talk to you, beloved reader, super raw-style for a sec.

I am not saying we won’t end up with a poem on our hands when all is said and done.

My Hebrew birthday is 19 Tishrei, and my Gregorian birthday is October 15th.

It’s an especially locked-in time for me, because I am especially locked-in to Bereisheit, aka Genesis, aka the “In the beginning…” part of The Bible, although that translation of those three words—in case you’re wondering—falls tragically short of the Hebrew.

It’s more along the lines of “With beginnings…” More like, “From the substance of beginnings…” Leaning into, like, “Out of beginnings…”

Meaning, if you want to get really literal with the words here, (and I am no expert. As a matter of fact, I am but a fool, but some of the real experts…big ones, like Nahmanides, had this idea…) “With beginnings, the ineffable, unknowable source created G-d out of the substance, the material of “beginning-ness.”

Can you dig it? Something more along those lines. Like I said, I am no expert. But if you translate the Hebrew purely—and why shouldn’t we, (as best we can, anyway, with me as your very humble/early-and-oft-humiliated servant?) We’re just banging our way through this together.

Here’s an incomplete list of my turn-ons: The scientific method, evolution, physics, emergence theory, 4th dimensional reality, ancient texts and mystical wisdom. I want to know what is being offered. On every level, how can this (whatever the “this” is in whatever particular instance,) bring healing, and comfort, and enhance the core essence, raise the vibration, shine the light with the quickness and blessed gentleness?

I’m into Midrash, aka interpretation, aka the poetry of the situation. I am into digging into the seed of the sod, aka the secret, aka the deeper meaning that is waiting to be revealed. My entire life has primed me for this practice, even when I didn’t know that was what was happening.

The reason I mention my fixation with the beginning is that we are about to celebrate Simchas Torah, which basically translates to “Rejoicing in the Torah” and commemorates the finishing of the weekly readings of Bible Parshas, aka portions, aka sections and the starting over again, in a never-ending circle. And to celebrate, we dance with the Torah. Like, that’s what’s happening next. Like, that’s what we come out of my Gregorian birthday into this year. That’s how the timing worked out.

That means that the Torah Portion unfolding from my birthday forward will be Bereisheit. We are starting the cycle of Torah anew. We’re at the very beginning of the scroll. The tippy-top. It is a brand new go-round, a brand new year, a brand new beginning to create with.

Eve lives inside my skin. Inside all of us. Her voice vibrates up through me. Up through the vessels of us all. She wants to be listened to. She deserves to be heard. She is Chava, she is primal, she is woman, she is curious, she is new, she is wild, she is pure, she is bright, she is fully in it;

I am saying:

She is not
The fallen slut that caused all the trouble,
Though oversimplifications of these texts would have us believe that.

As with pretty much everything ever,
it’s just a scoche more complicated than all that.

There’s so much I want to tell you—about the dichotomy
That threatens to flay me.
The tzanua and the soul-nudity.
The power and the brazen frailty.
The dancer and the scholar.
The body and the mind.
The spirit intertwined.
The neshama rising above, combined.
The paradox that the wise advise me to embrace,
Despite the unrectified world’s inability to reconcile the disparity.
There are volumes I long to reveal,
But I can’t call back what’s been released to the wild.
Hence, my ginger procession.
My intention: to peel back and reveal the feminine divine,
All in due time.

This is my With beginnings to build from.
Everything comes out of something.

Someone had to coin the term “substance.”
Broken down into parts, we can peek inside
And see the sub-stance of the “under-standing,”
The “standing-under” that underlies everything…that is substance.
Baruch Spinosa gave us this perfect word-gift,
But before he could identify that which is foundational,
There had to be an everything to identify. 

Eve Speaks:

Let me teach you a secret:
Read the blank space in the opening phrase.
Learn the sacred art of seeing white emptiness
As intimately as black lettering:

With beginnings,
(_____________ )
Created G-d.

Behold the lush unfolding,
All of existence
Pregnant with my potential from before the beginning—
With which I was created.

This is how the garden got started.

We were light-beings.
It is not that we didn’t have bodies,
It’s that they were not consequential,
We were operating via vibration.

Understand that all of this: this gathering of atoms
Is made up of more empty space than solidity.

This is how the garden got started.

There is no time before me.
I am whole.
I am complete.
I am woman.
I am Isha.

I did listen to the serpent.
I did fill myself with pomegranate until
Juice rivuleted down the corners of my mouth.

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Oh, this intimacy is beyond.
This is the futility of hiding from that which you are made of.

Etz Chayim, Tree of Life blossoms inside me.
Sephirotic dance, winding spirals,
Eternal helixing.
Branches and blossoms,
Roots and trunk,
Earth and sun,
The abundant generous love-flood of without-end/ever-becoming.

I will never be sated,
Never grow weary.
My thirst knows no bounds.

I will drink eternal.
My devotion is total.

This is how the garden got started.

***

I want to offer infinite gratitude to my holy teacher Sarah Yehudit Schneider and to Daniel Matt for his translation of The Zohar from the original Aramaic, as their wisdom informed me in the creation of this piece.

***

As we begin this brand new year in a never-ending cycle, I want to offer you—yes, you—a blessing of love, joy, health, and abundance beyond-beyond. May your loveliest light-filled fantasies beyond your wildest dreams come true. May life continually surprise you with goodness beyond what you could have imagined. My prayer for you is love, only love, love, and more love…and lots of laughter and dancing and singing…together, we rise!

***

And now…your EMOJI DVAR TORAH! Special Genesis Edition.

EMOJI GENESIS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PHOTO CREDIT © 2014 Tess Lotta photo/graphics http://tesslotta.com
*From her visionary dedicated project series, The Eve Mandate: Eve Freak