Rabbi’s message - Vaetchanan 5780 (July 31 - August 1, 2020)

Dear Members and Friends of Kehilat Shalom Calgary,
This week, I share with you words of wisdom from my own amazing teacher and mentor, Rabbi Ronnie David Zisha Cahana, as imparted by his son Dvir Cahana - an emerging Jewish leader and future rabbi (בע״ה) in his own right.
Shabbat Shalom!
Dvir Cahana writes:
"I had the honour to base this week's Torah off of my father, Rabbi Ronnie David Zishe Cahana's sermon.
"In it, he meditates on the tension between the direct, dutiful, language of the divine tongue and the desire to be guided through fecund poetry. It is accompanied by his poem, which, as you will read, is his response to this departure from the expectation of what is entailed in celestial intimacy:
"It isn't Shalloש, it's Shalom."
BS”D
I wonder why we use such spare words in our entrance to Shabbat? Especially on Shabbat, after we read Shir Hashirim. Shalom Aleichem teaches us very little. We know the Angels enter our domicile, but shouldn’t they be greeted with more flowery words; wouldn't there be a poetic welcome to such lofty guests? In Shalom Aleichem, we only say a one-word verb to G-d’s serving Angels “Boachem”, “Barchuni” and “Tzetchem”. It seems like such a minimized request on the Heilige Shabbos.
Why do we use such sparse language? It’s the same in our Parsha. We hear G-d's commands from the prophet Isaiah in the haftarah. "Be comforted" that’s it, "Nachamu Nachamu Ami”. Wouldn’t more love need to be expressed from the Holy One? The utterance of this staccato expression feels void of compassion. In our low points we beg for G-d’s consoling intimacy, but all we get are two callous “Nachamu”s. Nachamu is a response to the destroyed state of the Beit Hamikdash and Yerushalaim that we mourn on Tisha B’av, but because Nachamu is echoed a second time, we know that it’s about the exiles we have carried all over the world. Don’t read it as a suggestion, G-d speaks it as a commandment. “Be Comforted", even, maybe, do the work to comfort yourselves. It doesn’t say, "I’ll comfort you", nor "I’ll never leave you". It seems that G-d expects us to have a faith beyond ourselves. It is so minimal, so lacking. We have no choice, G-d says, “You must comfort”.
How can we blend? We want poetry and G-d wants action. G-d gives every human being an extraordinary gift: the riches of their imagination. Each experience in our lives approximates a unique answer that informs us of what “Nachamu” might mean -- if we actively hold this question before us and revolve our answer we will intuit what G-d wants. We grow our ideas and ideals of comfort by expressly comforting others. We can embody this commandment, “Nachamu”. Say, “I will give what I need from G-d's comfort to others". The love we crave from G-d will be the love we present to Israel. We realize our mind's imaginings as we receive G-d’s signs of loving embrace. We describe the holiness of G-d Presence within our own parameters of life, and so we live with an idyllic notion actualized.
My mother never really wanted to go back to Auschwitz. There, as a teenager, she met the Malach HaMavet. She was reticent to return to the place in which the memory of cruel destruction ran amuck unimpeded. She didn’t want to look back; she was an artist of the Holocaust, but she always painted the piercing blue light overwhelming the blurred darkness of the past. In fact, she faced forward when she volunteered in the jail system of her adopted hometown to make art with women, who were incarcerated and separated from their children. She showed them, there in jail, to always live for freedom and meaning and expression and not to succumb to the despair of a dying spirit. She embodies: “Nachamu Nachamu Ami”. I see its holy call to life.
Holy language should be succinct and unembellished. In Vaetchanan, we have a six worded essence of our belief starting with the word “Sh’ma”. When we Daven this text, what do we intend? First G-d approaches us with love, “B’Ahava”, and then we sing out “Sh’ma Israel”. Why do we emphasize "Sh’ma" as we call out “listen to me"? What does it mean to hear? Does it mean more than ‘realize’? How can we say Sh’ma and not “Re’eh”? Why don’t we say “Tedah”? Why don’t we say, ”T’daber”? Why don’t we say “T’kabel”? All of those senses are subsumed in “Sh’ma". “Sh’ma" is an inner call from G-d. G-d calls each of us to reach out and hear the Almighty ever-calling us to holiness. (When we read Torah we listen to G-d, when we study, we fill the dialogue with our imaginations. We know affirmation, we live within every answer of G-d’s vocal creation of the world.) G-d calls us into our being and purpose.
Next, we call Our G-d, Hashem Kellokeinu, the G-d of inside and outside -subjectivity and objectivity- and then we come back and say Hashem is whole. Always subjective: "Hashem Echad”. What can we learn by the ideation of Echad? The wholeness of everything? Why is Echad lived out in the flesh? What is the beauty of Oneness?
Oneness is the experience, the holiest experience, cleaving to the G-d form, the experience of completion, of inseparability, oneness is the spirit of being, of belonging. To belong is to be one with the world, and not separate from it. Oneness is also the collection of all of those individuated realities starting with Adam Harishon until us, merging into a larger unity. Oneness is the glimpse of connection back to our Gan Eden. It’s because we ingested for and against Hashem’s Mitzvot there that we have both Gan Eden and exile inside each of us. Once we have re-glimpsed the garden, we can never lose sight of it. Nachamu Nachamu Ami is the promise of its return. Thus, we return our Neshama’s approximation of Gan Eden back, at the end of our lives, to be judged by the Eibishter.
Our judgement is at night. When we say the Sh’ma as the day begins, we just are in G-d’s totality; indistinguishable from everyone else. “Nighttime” represents Kabalat Ohl Malchut Shamayim, and “Daytime” represents Kabalat Ohl Mitzvot. With daytime we change the world but at night we examine it. On Shabbat we infuse our own poetry in our preparation to enter Kabbalat Shabbat, and only from that subjective beginning can we heed G-d’s call to action with Shalom Aleichem.
So now let’s recap. The reason that we say Bo’achem, Barchuni, and Tzetchem, is because we are speaking to the Malachei Hasharet. They are the serving angels only to G-d. They deliver the Kadosh Baruch Hu’s Peace, Shalom, to each household. They are called to do their duty. To bring the Shalom of G-d to us, to bless the Shalom of G-d in us, from G-d to mingle with our Shalom and then to take the Shalom back to G-d. They came from G-d and they Tzeitchem to G-d with our added Shalom. They are not going to the streets, to wander, they are returning us back to our home in G-d. It is on Shabbat that we live in both our days and in G-d’s day in Eternity. For 25 hours we come out of exile as promised in Isiah and with the Angels’ compass we are directed in how to bring G-d’s Nachamu to the world.
שיר לנחם
When i was just a little feller
I was bravado & oh so clever
life was light and brightly stellar
Now I’m ‘neath
Below the cellar
Undetaching
Like Helen Keller
I used to wait for the world uncloudy
Physicality was rooted and bawdy
People lived and landed tawdry
How in the world do we reach the G-dly?
When I shout out, “My people,’Dasein’.”
‘Maginin’that mountain wills the climb
Here is my soul
Sublime and refine In the humanity of angelicalkind
-- Rabbi Ronnie David Zisha Cahana
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Rabbi Leonard Cohen
Kehilat Shalom, Calgary
(403) 850-0106
leonardecohen@gmail.com