We’re back in the zoom room again.
Back where a friend can see-but-can’t-really-touch a friend.
As much as we may plead
Or numb the pain with weed,
We’re back in the zoom room again.
Here we are, back in our zoom room, where some of us had anticipated being, while others were looking forward to being together, inside our beloved building for the first time in 16 months.
But when the doctors in your congregation – your professional pandemic advisors – get in touch and say things might be changing again and maybe it’s not a good idea to gather in the building right at this moment, well, you can’t really say no. It’s hard to find a reason to overrule their judgment except that we miss it, we miss each other, and that’s probably not a good enough reason. Because what a dark punchline it would be if, after 16 months of being so vigilant, making sure no one at Ner Shalom was placed at risk, we got back together and became someone else’s cautionary tale, this late in the game.
So, as we’ve said for so long, better safe than sorry. It’s just that I know we’re so tired of “safe.” Especially now, after this short reprieve from safe that some of us have taken in the past month or so. It’s been nice. Our spirits have lifted. Feeling that first hug with amazement and reverence. Noticing the exact feel and mechanics of how arms enfold. And within weeks some of us can’t even remember how many people we’ve hugged. It’s hard after that reprieve to think we might once again not be hugging quite as much, or at all, while we wait to see what’s next. And some of us in this room have not been able to be vaccinated and have not been afforded even those freedoms. Ah, is it better to have hugged and lost than never to have hugged at all?
I remember over the last year how many times people invoked the metaphor of “the light at the end of the tunnel.” So this last little chunk of time tricked us into thinking we had emerged. But it seems the tunnel has just become more translucent. It’s brighter, but we’re still in the tunnel. At least for a while.
There is a little bit of Jewish wisdom that might help us in this tunnel. Wisdom that comes around this time of year. Because we are in a 22-day period known as bein hametzarim – “in the narrows,” a period that presents a model of how to hold the spiritual challenge of constricting times.
These 22 days are made up of the last 13 days of the month of Tammuz and the first 9 days of the month of Av. This is the stretch that runs from when the Babylonians besieged Jerusalem to when they breached the walls and destroyed the Temple. Or earlier, in Torah, in the story of the Exodus – the stretch from Moses smashing the first set of tablets after seeing the Children of Israel dancing around the Golden Calf until the scouts came back from the Promised Land proclaiming its inhabitants to be giants and its lands unconquerable, driving the Children of Israel into tears of despair.
This is a time of the Jewish year characterized by narrowness, anxiety, grief. It is a time of being aware of and holding our anxiety and grief, so that we can begin working with them as we move toward the High Holy Days.
There is wisdom in setting aside time for this, that easily applies to the time we’re living in. We have lived through 16 months – and counting – of anxiety and grief. Those don’t go away with the lifting of a handful of restrictions. There has been damage to the fabric of our lives, and that damage has to be observed and considered and held and honored. We need to honor our resilience and our suffering and our isolation, even as the promise of greater freedom continues to be dangled in front of us.
We are still in the narrows.
Our mystics described the narrow period of bein hametzarim as a time in which our access to the Divine is impaired. As if we see are seeing God through a veil. They would engage this symbolically by speaking of God not as YHWH, the Four-Letter Name representing the presence of the Divine in all that is, was, and will be. Instead, they subtracted 1 from each of those four letters and got tet-dalet-heh-dalet – pronounced Tadhad. This diminished or “downgraded” Divine name represents how we perceive God when the Divine Presence is not shining quite so bright.*
I notice that my experience of the Divine, the Holy Aliveness, in all that is, was, and will be, has been diminished throughout this pandemic. My perceptions, both physical and metaphysical have not been as expansive. It’s not like I’m seeing the Divine through a veil, but rather experiencing the Divine while wearing a mask. I am able to breathe, it’s just a little harder. I am able to speak, but not fully convey. The mask isolates me and my senses, makes the world feel remote, so that I don’t hear quite as well, or use my peripheral vision quite as well. I stumble, I drive poorly, I drop things, I get frustrated quickly. The mask doesn’t officially cause any of that. But somehow everything is just . . . off. How the mystics describe their experience of these 22 days feels a lot like mine over this year and a half.
But the spiritual dip of these 22 days is not relentless. It has an internal rhythm and this is where some useful wisdom comes in.
The Dinover Rebbe, also known as the B’nai Yissaschar, points us in the direction of Psalm 133, a psalm we all know even if we don’t all know it’s a psalm.
הִנֵּ֣ה מַה־טּ֭וֹב וּמַה־נָּעִ֑ים שֶׁ֖בֶת אַחִ֣ים גַּם־יָֽחַד׃
Hineh mah tov u-mah na’im shevet achim gam yachad.
Behold how good and pleasant it is to sit as family together.
Here’s what he does with this verse. The word yachad, meaning “together,” has the numerical value of 22. So in the Rebbe’s mind, yachad is code for these 22 days. “How good and pleasant it is to sit together during these 22 days.”
And there’s more. He re-reads the word shevet as Shabbat. He explains that in this 22-day period of bein hametzarim, Shabbat happens 3 times, and Rosh Chodesh happens once. So there are 4 holy days to elevate us, to push out the tight margins and give us some space to breathe. Four holy days, and 18 others – 18 that in Hebrew equals chai, “life.” It is the presence of these days of holiness that ensure the flow of life even through times of constriction.
Hineh mah tov, “behold how good and how pleasant it is to experience Shabbat together, allowing the flow of life even during the narrow time.”
This might be some wisdom for us to keep carrying with us. We don’t need to wait for the end of the tunnel. Instead we come together as community to welcome Shabbat and push out those confining walls, expand them like our own diaphragms, and breathe deep. We do not need to hold our breath, waiting for some future freedom. Instead we make breath possible here and now. So that the life force can continue to flow in us and through us.
Since we began sheltering in place, we have, by my count, spent 69 consecutive Shabbatot together, here in this dazzling Zoom Room. Sixty-nine opportunities to sit together and breathe. Six-nine opportunities to gently push back against the narrowness of the time. To feel expansive. Shabbat has been our technology for resilience. The light inside the tunnel. We have made community Shabbat into a part of our lives in a way few of us ever did before. Some of us every week like clockwork. Opening up our laptops in our living rooms or at our kitchen tables, letting the Sabbath Queen pour out of the device and into our homes. Feeling the non-physical but very real loving touch of the other members of this community. We have not lived solely in anxiety and grief. We have, on a weekly basis, infused our lives with the breath of holiness.
Hineh mah tov u-mah na’im Shabbat achim gam yachad.
We’re back in the Zoom Room again,
Letting our breathing expand,
Whoopi-ty-aye-oh,
To the Shabbos place we go,
Back in the Zoom Room again.
________________
* The B’nai Yissaschar, cleverly broke down this muted name Tadhad more, noting that the first two letters – tet-dalet – total 13 and the second two letters – heh-dalet – total 9. This, he points out, represents the 13 days in Tammuz and the 9 days in Av that constitute this bein hametzarim time.
Gratitude:
Everything I know about Bein Hametzarim and the B’nai Yissaschar is a gift from Rabbi Elliot Ginsburg.