Friday Morning in Tsfat: All Things Possible

My note: It's always a little dangerous to mix one faith's teachings (in this case, Jewish mysticism) with another's texts (in this case, Christian texts).  There's a temptation to say (a) that they're all really the same thing, or (b) that one builds a new and better version of the former.  I'm not interested in either of these: instead, I want to suggest a dynamic conversation between the Jesus tradition and the Kabbalah tradition.  It seems timely and powerful, inspiring really.  And we have much to learn from one another.  We are not exactly the same--and that's clearly not the point.  The  point is community and communion, peaceful coexistence and mutual celebration!

TSFAT (11.7.14) Before a wall of his own artwork, David Friedman seems almost embarrassed by the beauty, the brilliance, the purpose of his tradition.  He's a gentle man, and he slouches just a bit as he introduces Kabbalah and its influence on his work.  It’s clear that his intention is not to play up his own creativity—but to lay bare some of the mysteries of the Kabbalah itself.  We’re in Tsfat today, a center of Jewish mysticism for centuries and home to a vibrant community of Jewish artists.  Among them, David Friedman stands out as a teacher, a visionary, and a bridge between peoples and traditions.

“Kabbalah teaches,” he says, “that in the beginning is the infinite, and the infinite is One.  Kabbalah offers that the One contracted to make room for many, that the infinite contracted so that One might become many finite selves.”  This, he says, is the impulse of creation (and the Creator): to be known in partnership, in relationship, in the mix and stirring of many mortals, many nations, many beings.  “Kabbalah teaches that God is willing to be broken, that God’s brokenness is God’s openness to us, and to partnership with us, as a mortal and among mortals.”  (David's wonderful website is here!)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...And the word become flesh and pitched his tent (lived) among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (From John’s prologue: John 1)

Pointing to another work, his own work (Ein Sof, below), David Friedman insists that “the broken places, where we are incomplete, vulnerable, even frail, also reveal the union of the divine and the human.  The One comes to us (in brokenness) and we move toward and into God and eternity.  Our very brokenness is also our openness, our receptivity to God.”  And then David reminds us that the very meaning of the word Kabbalah is something like ‘receptivity.’

Ein Sof and the Ten Sefirot

Looking at his picture of broken circles (here on the right--representing, I think, body and heart and mind and soul), we see between these circles the unbroken and eternal circles, the white space between the others.  “And these,” David says, “suffuse the many.  In contracting, in being broken, in fracturing into many, God reveals eternity and wholeness and grace and mercy.  And we who are broken and finite, who are even at war with one another and ourselves, meet the infinite.  Not in another perfect place or time, not in a purely religious dimension, but in the physical, tangible, spiritual realities of this life, this time, this world.” 

Though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not count equality with God as something to be exploited (grasped), but emptied himself (kenosis), taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness...And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.  (Philippians 2)

All this sets me to thinking about Jesus and Paul and the earliest strands of Christian tradition.  It’s Jesus’ willingness to be broken (not just on a Roman cross, but on the way of the cross) that makes so many relationships possible: among his disciples, with the poor and oppressed, with criminals on other crosses and so many others.  It’s his openness to contraction, to servant leadership, to compassionate care for others, that reveals the eternal and infinite in the daily round and troubling present.  Yes, the body is broken and breaking, and the heart and mind and soul; but even then, in their breaking, is grace most active and transparent.

But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. (2 Corinthians 4)

Here, in 2 Corinthians 4 as in Philippians 2, the Christian tradition does its best to connect to the spirit of Kabbalah.  Brokenness is neither weakness nor defeat, but an opening to the eternal presence of love and grace, the spirit of the crucified Christ in our flesh and frailty.  And mortality (even death) is not so much an ending, as a spiritual returning to the One who unites and reconciles all in love.  As I sit in the back, watching David Friedman, his 'nonchalance-with-intensity,' I'm amazed that here in Tsfat an Orthodox mystic is pointing me toward the deepest mysteries in my own tradition.  The many are indeed One.

The Separation Wall in Bethlehem

“The infinite then is right here,” says David Friedman, “in our brokenness, in the incompleteness of our bodies and spirits.”  And I wonder if this might not re-frame the strange and awful conflict shrouding this Holy Land and exhausting its peoples.  

What if the infinite, the eternal, the One God, is longing to be known: right here, exactly here, precisely here?  What if the broken and breaking God is aching for us and aching for communion here—in this bewildering multicultural conflict; on this contested holy ground that invites such rage and contempt for the 'other'; and in the anxious hearts of parents and the wounded hearts of victims and the fearful hearts of Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Arabs?  What if this very moment is an 'apocalyptic' moment: that is, a moment of potential and revelation and possibility?  What if HERE AND NOW God chooses to do a new thing, making lions and lambs lie down together, leveling mountains and raising up valleys, inspiring communion and restoration and renewal FOR ALL?  "That all flesh might see the glory of God" (Luke 3).  What if we choose to recognize in these many wounds so many invitations to compassion and creativity, courage and sacrifice--not grim inspiration for bitterness, retaliation and occupation, but motivation for reconciliation and risk and even a thrilling jubilee celebration?  ('Apocalyptic'--in this sense--is not the cataclysmic end of the world, but the end of an arrangement and the birth of another more joyous and holy and egalitarian one.  BEHOLD, I AM DOING A NEW THING!)

At the outset of our trip, Rami Elhanan and Bassam Aramim modeled just this: looking into their terrible losses (both have lost children to this violence) to discover compassion for the other and determination for peace.  In my mind, these two fathers (one an Israeli, the other a Palestinian) bear the 'apocalyptic' message in their flesh and spirit.  A NEW THING, costly and painful, but imaginative and hopeful.

Ghassan Manasrah

Two days ago, Muslim teacher Ghassan Manasrah reminded us, out of the Quran he loves, that God created not one people, one nation, but many nations.  Ghassan said that God could very well have created one people with one faith, one way: but this was not God's intention or God's passion.  God makes many nations and peoples—because we come to know God and love God and surrender to God only as we come to know and love and surrender in love to the other.  “You are my mirror,” Ghassan insisted, “and it’s in knowing you that I know myself; and only then can I know God.”

David Friedman may well agree.  The spaces between us are indeed the avenues of God's spirit, the differences among us are opportunities for understanding and celebration.  This is not an easy thing: and the world is full of stories where opportunity turns to violence and misery.  But our diversity is God's passion.  

“Kabbalah teaches that God is always within us,” he says, “that each and every body is God’s temple, that all are created in God’s image.  We do not say the name of God, as I understand it, because the name of God (Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh: YHVH), is breath or being itself.  We are always breathing, you and I, always invoking the name.  So we don’t need to pronounce it or distinguish it from our breathing, our breath, our lives.  It is always with us.  It breathes us into being.”

As he’s speaking, I’m thinking of the Christian meditation teacher James Finley who talks about contemplative life as the door to impermanence and eternity.  We inhale and welcome the divinity of the present moment; we exhale and release the moment.  It’s this very rising and falling of the breath, this coming and going of experiences, this celebration and release of life itself—that meditation honors and observes and cherishes.

David Friedman asks the perfect follow-up: “Isn’t it true, then, that God is always pronouncing God’s own name in OUR breathing?  And also in the breathing of those around us, even those unlike us?  We breathe, we learn, we receive, we let go, we pay attention.  And God reveals the eternal in the finite, the holy in the broken, the one in the many.

David Friedman's "Tree of Life"

These last two weeks, I’ve been reminded at every turn that this is not (at its core) a religious conflict: it’s a conflict around land and sovereignty, around fear and occupation and violence.  But listening to David Friedman and Ghassan Manasrah, I’m struck by how deep and rich their traditions are, one a Kabbalist, the other a Muslim and a Sufi.  So too, our Christian tradition and its texts.  All three peer honestly and courageously into the heart of darkness, the wounded flesh of humankind—and all see not the inevitability of war and cruelty and division, but the numinous possibility of reconciliation and communion.  Yes, many hearts are broken.  And yes, many souls are tormented by disappointment, occupation and rage.  But this is the sphere of God’s loving.  This is the realm of God’s blessing.  There is no other: the One Eternal God reveals the eternal in the finite, the holy in the broken, the one in the many.  And all things are possible, even shalom, even peace, even salaam.