Awakening Ki Tavo: Torah Mussar Mindfulness, 51st Sitting

The Institute for Holiness: Kehilat Mussar's weekly Awakening series, learning from our ancestors and God the weekly Torah (the teaching) portion from the practices and lens of Mussar Mindfulness. We explore Bikkurim, the offering of first fruits by our farming ancestors, and how the practice of this adjusted with ignorance and time toward more inclusivity and compassion. We practiced guided mindfulness meditation led by our Director & Founder, Rabbi Chasya, toward Gratitude and Joy.

Transcript

Welcome to awakening.

Delighted to have you here.

This is awakening Torah,

Mussa,

Mindfulness.

Thank you for your patience and starting.

We were having a little bit of technical difficulty of live streaming.

So I thank you for your patience and hopefully whoever was waiting will come back besides you Sarah.

Good to see you for all of you watching live streaming on the YouTube channel or on Facebook.

Welcome welcome.

So delightful to be here.

So we will have time for comments and questions and discussion at the end.

I will move through our new connection,

Which was based on last week's Parsha,

Which is a basically yesterday on Shabbat of key to vote.

And so we call it awakening key to vote and mussa mindfulness will help us with our interpretation of the Torah.

And so today is Sunday,

September 18th.

We are here in Israel at 741 normally starting at 730 and that is 1230 I believe Eastern Standard Time today on the Jewish calendar.

It is the 22nd of Elul.

We are getting closer and closer to the divine in the field to the new holiday Rosh Hashanah.

Delighted to be with you.

We always move into our intention,

Our kavanah for the practice first.

And I'm happy to say this is our 51st sitting together of going all the way around through this Torah together.

It's quite an honor and a blessing.

So here we have before us our kavanah,

Our intentions.

For those of you just listening on audio,

You will hear me read them.

For those of you following on video,

They are right here in front of you.

So we see this practice together right now as doing an act of radical self-care of honor of kavod,

The need of kavod of honor,

That self-honor that we need to do and take time for our practice so that we can care for others.

So we say this,

This is something I'm doing right now to strengthen my own soul in order to be a benefit to others in the future.

And we also say we're doing this act on behalf of others,

The well-being of others to cause less suffering to ourselves and others.

So we say this is something I'm doing to strengthen my relationship to others so I can be a better conduit of Hashem's good,

Of God's good to others when they need me.

And then we also see this act of strengthening our relationship to the divine.

We say I'm doing this to strengthen my relationship with the Creator so I can be a better conduit of God's good to others when they need me.

So may it be so we may merit this so much so as it's so needed in the world right now.

So as usual,

I'm going to give you a brief summary of this Parsha and then really hone in on what I want us to pay attention to today because obviously the Parsha is so huge you can focus on many,

Many things.

The key things that are very important today that I want to share.

First is just a brief summary that basically what we have here in Kitavo is an awareness that the average Israeli,

The average ancestor of ours entering the land and first being in the land was a farmer.

And that's very profound because we have that statement even leading in the whole month,

The Jewish month of Elul,

We say Hamelik Basadei,

The king is in the field.

And for modern listeners of that,

I get this a lot from my modern students will say,

I don't relate to God being in a field.

It's like,

Well,

You don't relate to that because you're not a farmer.

So for our ancestors who are constantly spending their time in the field,

This is where they encounter God.

There's no if there's no rain,

There's no there's no food and there's no food.

There's no Torah.

Right.

And so this is really key.

This is really tied to their whole life and how it's oriented.

So what do we get here in Kitavo?

It's oriented towards our average ancestor,

Which is a farmer.

And so you have this wonderful commandment for farmers to bring bikorim,

The first fruits from what they grow.

They're going to bring these to Rosh Elayim when there is an established temple.

And they say this beautiful special declaration thanking God for freeing us from Egypt,

From the institution of slavery.

It's a very famous declaration.

And how it's been made famous is because it's in our Haggadot during Passover,

During Pesach.

And so we also have where the farmers are commanded to bring what's called Ma'asser,

Excuse me,

Which is this tithing essentially of their crops that they must give to the levi'im and also to the poor,

To the widow,

To the orphan,

To the stranger.

These are part of this whole declaration that's going on here.

We also and this is where I'm going to focus our learning on today,

But I'm just going to finish a brief summary that they cross over the the Yarden,

The Jewish river here,

The not the Jewish river,

The Jordan River.

And when they cross it over,

They're supposed to inscribe the Torah on stone there.

And they have this very elaborate ceremony where they're going to be on two different mountains and they recite blessings and they recite curses.

And the curses are longer and very intense.

It's not going to be our focus today,

But it is part of the parshah.

OK,

This real sense of reward and punishment and the sense that you follow the covenant,

You follow what God has commandment.

These are the words and the rewards are very much what our ancestors needed in their lives,

Right?

They need rain,

They need health,

They need the crops,

They need to be able to reproduce,

Obviously,

Right.

And health and that fertility,

All the things that we take,

We might take a little bit of granted for today,

Hopefully not.

But this sense that the mundane is where the vitality of life is.

And that's where the reward is that God will support the curses.

You can read on your own are horrific and not,

You know,

Nothing that I would wish on anyone.

So,

But it's very clear in that whole section is known as to pay for.

OK,

It's it means rebuke.

OK,

It's very famous.

And finally,

The whole thing comes down to reminding Moshe is about to die.

Our ancestor Moshe Rabbeinu Moses.

And he's reminding the ancestors about the miracles of the whole experience of surviving the 40 years with offspring and children coming into the land.

And in particular,

This thing that they were really held during those years without even realizing it.

For instance,

The two examples are given that their clothes haven't been worn at all and neither their shoes.

And that's really there's something I talk about mundane,

Talk about taking for granted,

Right?

Is the sense that if you actually turned around and realized that for 40 years,

That clothing has been passed down to you and those shoes and they haven't been worn at all is quite profound.

So I will go on to say that these verses,

If you're following along,

We're in Chapter 26 verses one through 15 that I'm going to focus on,

But it really goes on and on for quite some time here in Quito.

I'll just tell you the ending if you want to be able to read the whole chapter later.

If you haven't read it,

It goes all the way to Chapter 29,

Verse eight.

OK,

So these verses,

What's called liturgical declaration that the farmer has to do,

Right,

Is that he or she brings these first fruits and after gives the poor tithing every third year.

And this prescription really,

It supplements early earlier laws that we had dealt with,

Particularly in Exodus,

With these donations that they had to give.

And what's so profound about these declarations is that they only address to God and the wording is prescribed for lady,

For the average person.

This is not something for the koenim,

For the priest.

This is for the everyday person who would have been a farmer then.

And basically that it's really seeking out this relationship with the farmer to honor what's in their lives.

And so although these decorations vary according to the nature of the occasion in which they're recited,

They have several features in common.

And one is that they're always they always say before the Lord,

Your God,

That's always included.

They always describe the land as flowing with milk and honey.

And each refers to the land as a gift from God,

And fulfillment of God's promise to our ancestors.

So we're going to,

We're going to be reminded of our patriarchs,

Abraham,

Yitzchak and Yakov,

Who were promised that God would bring their ancestors into the land.

And so now we are coming with here we are with our ancestors,

The farmers are coming with their gifts.

And they're referring to the land as a gift.

And that is showing the fulfillment of God's promise to Israel's ancestors.

Okay,

So there's a real profound thing going on here.

One is just honoring the average person and realizing that they have this really unique role to play in their observance,

Which is really understanding that it's tied to their daily labor.

It's tied to the gift from God of the land,

It's tied to the land,

It's tied to how they need to behave on a daily basis.

And so it's,

It's very profound.

Okay,

It's not when we talk about the Torah not being far off,

And some other land,

It's right here,

It's right before us,

It's in our heart.

This is the mundane behavior,

Right?

This is the behavior where our ancestors are recognizing the role of God in nature,

And that the God's role in history,

That had we not been taken out of the institution of slavery and been saved,

There would be no role in nature here either,

We wouldn't be given to,

You know,

The responsibility of dealing with this land and maintaining the covenant.

Okay.

So there's something quite beautiful going on here.

It basically acknowledges that,

You know,

There's a personal benefit from God's gift of the land,

That basically,

This gift was given before this person was even alive.

So it's acknowledging even today for us,

That our ancestors way,

Way,

Way,

Way back,

Were offered this gift and held this gift of this land by God,

Way before we were even born or considered.

And the same thing as this farmers acknowledging that right now,

The farmer of later generations who acknowledge that he or she is personally benefiting from God's gift of the land made way long before their own lifetime.

And the other thing that acknowledges is that this is the same God,

As we said,

Who guided the nation through this history through this relationship,

And is the source of the land's fertility.

It's very much important and being acknowledged that this is not the land that Israel created the people Israel,

It's not the land that they somehow on their own conquered and made like everything seen as this is God's and the God's land and this is the gift right this is for us.

So I want to say that the ceremony also we know from historians if we study some of the historical literature and anthropology around this,

Particularly from JPS,

The Jewish publication society has wonderful literature on this.

They believe that the ceremony here probably had no connection to the festivals.

So that means the farmer was coming if they live nearby Jerusalem itself,

They were coming often with these gifts.

Obviously the tithing was only once every three years.

But this other time,

You know,

The first fruits were brought often.

And then even those who live further away might come more than once a year and it wasn't tied to Shavuot.

It wasn't tied to the Pentecost that festival where we normally associate bringing the first fruits.

So there's something quite beautiful about this recitation.

It even talks about in rabbinic literature in the Mishnah,

For instance,

It requires that it only be said in Hebrew.

And for those who were able to recite it on their own,

They did so prior.

But for those who couldn't,

There was a prompter there who basically kind of told them what to say.

But then they started to notice that our people,

Some of them stopped bringing this offering.

And they realized this is where this practice of humility of Anava comes in.

The priests who were in charge of these ceremonies realized that the people weren't coming because of the embarrassment of not being able to recite this offhand from memory.

And so they decided instead of stopping like ceasing this bringing of this first fruits,

The procedure was changed so that everyone was led by a prompter,

Whether they had it memorized or not.

And there's something really profound there.

If we could just pause for even a moment to recognize that among your people and in your community,

There are those who aren't engaging with community because they feel either not as in learned or not as engaged or not able to share or whatever reason,

Maybe they're even disabled and it's too difficult to get there or there's chronic disease,

Whatever it might be of why people are not coming to wake up and be aware of that and to try to be inclusive as possible so that everyone feels that they can come.

So there's something really profound that went on for our ancestors in this practice.

The final thing I will share with you is something that appears only once in the whole canach,

Which is kind of amazing to be honest with you,

Is this word.

If you want to look yourself,

We're in chapter 27 verse nine,

Where it says Moses and the Levitical priests spoke to Israel saying,

Okay,

So get ready for this word.

Haskeit ushamay Israel ha'yom hazeh,

Niyyeta le'am le'adonai elohecha.

It says silence,

Silence.

Hear O Israel,

Today you have become the people of the Lord your God.

It's the first time in the Torah and the only time that this word of Haskeit,

Meaning silence,

Is here in the Torah and we are to learn something from this because we are told that we need to come to some form of silence,

Of stillness,

To be able to hear and to be able to become a people,

To develop a new covenant.

And this is something we need to renew all the time.

We think it's just something that's been established a long time ago and that's it.

No.

Every year,

Every practice,

Every day is a moment to say I'm in relationship with you,

I'm reestablishing this covenant,

I'm moving to silence so I can hear.

And that's very profound for our Mosar mindfulness practice.

We are very much aware of the need for silence and stillness to be able to hear and to be able to have this covenant.

Okay,

So we are going to move into our seated meditation practice.

If you can't sit,

Please assume one of the three other postures,

Which is of course standing,

Walking meditation or lying down.

I suggest if you're going to lie down that you keep the eyes open if you have vision so that you remain awake and alert.

For those of us seated on a chair,

Find yourself in an upright,

Comfortable position.

One that's awake and alert but not stiff.

Created in the image and likeness of the Hashem of God,

We want to be in a dignified position.

One where we feel good about ourselves.

Right?

Allow your hands to rest where it feels comfortable for some people that's lying on their lap or on their chest.

For others,

You might be in one of the classic meditation positions of holding your arms,

Whatever is comfortable for you.

And we will begin to settle and arrive.

We will become to silence.

We will begin with three deep cleansing breaths.

Inhalation,

Exhalation,

Attempting to let go of any tension in the body.

Inhalation and exhalation.

See in the gift from God of oxygen that we obviously take for granted.

So important.

Inhalation and exhalation.

Allowing your breath to settle to whatever its own natural rhythm is,

No need to control.

Notice if you're having any judgment towards yourself for the practice.

Attending and befriending as we arrive here together,

We will begin with a short body scan.

Staying with your feet,

Noticing what's here for you right here and right now.

Allowing yourself to use mental noting of how it might feel,

Any sensations,

Any emotions that come up in response to the sensations in the body.

Notice where your thoughts are.

Are they pulling you to the past or planning for the future?

Allowing yourself to come to the present moment,

To your anchor of your breath and body and to my voice.

Moving up your ankles and not to your legs,

Through your knees.

What is here for you?

Helping that inner witness,

What I call your inner friend,

Looking at yourself with curiosity.

This gift,

This body,

This temple,

Been given to you to do service on this earth.

As you move up your legs into your seated position,

The whole pelvic region holds so much memory,

Power,

Sometimes tension,

Pleasant and unpleasant.

Being here for whatever arises.

Into the low back and the stomach,

Into the mid back,

Moving up the stomach,

Into the chest,

The upper back,

Down your shoulders,

Through your arms,

Through your fingertips.

Paying attention to what is here for you.

If there's anything deeply strong or unpleasant,

You can ask yourself,

Can I be with this?

What does my body need from me right here?

Right now,

Can I be with it?

Moving into your neck,

Your jaw,

Your tongue,

Your cheeks,

The back of your head,

Even your ears and the muscles behind your eyes and eyebrow,

Your forehead.

Feeling how alive you have the potential to be right here and right now.

Feeling from our Torah,

From our ancestors and kithavo.

What is it that we need to be awake to?

If we're not here in the land,

If we're not a farmer,

What do we rely on?

What is provided by God?

What do we need to wake up to each moment full of gratitude and joy?

Our tradition,

Like other spiritual disciplines,

Both Musar and mindfulness,

Begin each day with a chant of gratitude,

The blessings of our life.

From Buddhist monks to Jews,

Waking up and saying,

I am grateful before you,

God.

Thank you for returning my soul.

The aim of this practice and our life,

Our spiritual life,

Our being on this path towards holiness is to awaken a joyful freedom,

A benevolent and compassionate heart,

Either in spite of everything or perhaps because of everything.

Our gratitude before God is a gracious,

Gracious acknowledgement of all that sustains us.

Bowing to our blessings,

Great and small appreciation for the moments of good fortune that sustain our life every day,

Including this breath and the next one and the next one and onward.

We have so much to be grateful for.

Gratitude is confidence in the divine trust,

And in life itself.

In it,

We feel how the same force that pushes grass through the cracks in the sidewalk invigorates our own life.

It gladdens our heart.

It receives in wonder the myriad offerings of rain,

This earth,

The care that we're given that supports every life and every moment.

And joy is natural to the open hearts.

We are not afraid of that which can be pleasant or pleasure.

We do not mistakenly believe that we are disloyal to the suffering of the world when we honor the joy that we have been given.

The farmers came and offered their bikorim,

Their first fruits whenever they had them,

Even or maybe even because when there was a lack of rain.

Joy gladdens our hearts.

We're going to be joyful for the people we love,

The moments of goodness.

Allow yourself to sit quietly and at ease.

Allow the body to be relaxed and open,

Your breath natural,

Your heart easy.

Begin this practice of gratitude,

Gratitude to our ancestors for practicing the bikorim,

For observing it,

The first fruits.

Gratitude to God for giving the land,

For taking our people out of the institution of slavery and sustaining us through the desert to bring us to the land.

Gratitude to God for sustaining us today that we are here thousands of years later to be able to have this gratitude for our ancestors.

Explain how year after year we have been cared for.

With gratitude,

We remember the people,

The animals,

The plants,

The insects,

The creatures of the sky and the sea,

The air,

Fire and water,

All whose joyful exertion blesses our lives each day.

With gratitude,

We remember the care and labor of thousands of generations of our elders and ancestors who came before us.

We offer gratitude for safety and well-being of what we've been given.

We offer gratitude for the blessings of this earth that we've been given.

We offer gratitude for the measure of health that we've been given.

We offer gratitude for the family and friends we've been given.

We offer gratitude for the community that we've been given.

We offer gratitude for the Torah and the Dharma,

For the teachings and lessons that we have been given.

We offer gratitude for the life that we have been given.

Just as we are able in our practice now to be grateful for our own blessings,

So too can we be grateful for the blessings of others.

Continue to breathe gently.

Bring to mind someone you care about,

Someone it is easy to rejoice for.

Picture them and feel the natural joy you have for their well-being,

For their happiness and success.

With each breath,

Offer them your grateful heartfelt wishes.

You may repeat quietly to yourself after me,

May you be joyful.

May your joy increase.

May you not be separated from profound gratitude.

May you be aware of your good fortune,

The causes of your joy,

And may that awareness increase.

Similar to our metta practice,

When you practice this meditation each day throughout the week,

You may extend this practice to another person you care about and gradually open it to include neutral people,

Difficult people,

And even enemies until you extend sympathetic joy to all beings everywhere.

Young and old,

Near and far,

Whether a member of the covenant or not.

When you are ready,

You can gently and slowly open your eyes if they were closed,

If you have vision.

Join us back into this shared sacred space of Zoom live stream.

Thank you for your practice.

Thank you for being here.

May we merit less suffering for ourselves and causing less suffering to others.

Welcome.

You're welcome to unmute yourself and share comments or questions,

Whatever you like,

If you wish.

Otherwise,

You can remain silent.

Great to see you.

Thank you for coming and being and practicing with me.

Thank you.

Thank you for your teachings.

Well,

Is this a time to accept questions?

Yes,

Please.

In this last portion,

I think,

Is it 20 sentence nine and 10 that you spoke about?

To me,

This is extraordinary because we're being asked to listen to the voice of God as if this is normal.

Yet we've forgotten the norm.

There's like to me different levels of the question I want to ask,

But one is,

Where the priest do you think at that time may be synonymous to rabbis today as teachers,

But not as intermediaries?

Because Claudio Sorel is being asked,

And I think planted the seed that each Jew.

Therefore,

The priest is no longer the intermediary,

Perhaps.

And therefore,

Then the confusion for me is later on,

Time of Nevi'im,

It appears that we as a people depended on the Nevi' to be that live conduit for the voice of God,

As if saying,

That's not for me,

That's not my domain.

And then to jump thousands of years later to today,

30 years ago,

When I tried to be in a conversation with a very from rabbi,

Asking about the Shema for this very reason,

Shema listen,

Like we're capable of listening to talk as if we can have a dialogue,

A listening to hear in the heart.

Hashem,

This would be considered also a real problem.

I've encountered this,

That the time of the Nevi'im has passed,

Therefore that level of being present,

To be in relationship is no longer possible.

So I've experienced these different intersecting threads,

And have chosen through heatbonenu to practice on my own and not affiliate in that way.

I'm wondering if you can bring from your experience and teachers,

How you would answer some of this confusion for me.

Thank you.

Yeah,

No,

What you're bringing is an alert from Calendar.

I'm so sorry.

It's okay.

That's what happens with the technology.

I'm sure it's going to happen to me sooner or later.

What you bring is so profound and so deep.

And what this is really about,

From my perspective,

Is developing a really beautiful balance,

Healthy self-worth,

Self-honor,

Really balanced in the mida of anavav,

Humility,

And also kavod of self-honor.

It's so important that you believe in yourself and the small still voice.

And sometimes we really need to learn then that boundary to not take what someone else says as if it's our story and it has to be our story.

So what you're getting from certain rabbinic authority are voices that this doesn't exist.

Maybe you shouldn't even attempt to experience it or practice it.

Those are their stories.

Those are their concerns.

Perhaps those are their even fear and sadness that they don't feel it or are not practicing or tapping into it.

It's not yours.

And so I would honor that first.

It's so important is to honor where you are because so often,

Especially as women,

We will be told in a very patriarchal religion,

Which Judaism still is by certain male voices,

Sometimes even women that were not to experience this or were not to honor what we were experiencing or practicing or hearing or having or whatever.

And I get throughout my practice in life have been told over and over again by teachers,

Colleagues,

You name it,

That God is hidden.

God is not with us in the same way.

Always remember that they are the ones speaking and that is their story.

And it doesn't have to become your story.

It's so important to be aware when you're doing mindful listening of someone else.

You don't have to internalize it and take it on.

And so that's why I brought up the need of honor and humility that you have to be balanced in them to know that this world we'd say this right.

The world is created for me and I'm also ashes and dust like that simultaneous relationship and holding both.

So I just want to honor that if and I'm not going to say if because I don't I'm still getting to know you obviously,

You know,

One day at a time.

But I do know that you have a relationship with Hashem the Divine and and that's very special and that you can communicate and you can hear and that's beautiful and to honor it and I've always felt that way since I was a child too.

And I do think it's very important and very personal and very here.

And so I think just to address the whole time when we relied on prophets,

You know,

There was a real disjuncture like people felt not as connected people went through a period where they weren't connected to themselves either and maybe not even to the land.

You have to realize that there was a lot of flux and even trauma in the land from different warring peoples that came through sometimes kidnapped us and took us out of the land and then brought us back and that all has an effect on this like intergenerational communal trauma that,

You know,

Disconnects you from the source.

And so you begin to rely on other voices and and that might have been something necessary that the people had to go through.

I don't know.

I just know that that's not us now.

And I don't think we would recognize a Navi or Naviaf.

We had one,

Naviut necessarily.

I mean,

Maybe we do.

We see them on the street and we don't listen to them.

Right.

Good point.

You know,

It's just we're in a new we're new.

We're in a new stage and it's unfolding.

It really is.

I do think that,

You know,

And I also think it's about social location,

Who you are and also where you're located in general.

Like I living here in the land feel much more tied to God than when I lived in the United States.

That was me personally.

But there's something about living the Jewish calendar and the rhythm of the year and it being so tied to the hugging the festivals.

It all makes so much more sense.

And I can even imagine more if I were a farmer and I was in the field and relying on the rain and I was laying on the rain for my crops to feed my family and everything.

But I'm not out in it.

Right.

I'm not I don't have a field of my own or my own farm.

So just to acknowledge that,

That,

That,

That,

That who you are right now is,

Is,

Is who you are.

And it's beautiful.

And sometimes we need to learn when not to listen,

Even when it's a story that we might actually learn from and look up to.

That's my response to you.

I hope that's so beautiful.

Beautiful.

Beautiful.

Thank you.

I've waited 30 years to have ghost tears.

I think something that women need to we need to like have like a rosh hoodish circles and to like share this and support one another because it's profound.

How long will hold this?

Thank you.

Thank you that this was just such a release and a great embrace and acceptance.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here today.

Thank you.

Thank you very,

Very much.

All right.

Take care.

Oh,

Thank you.

God bless.

Wishing you Shana Tova.

I probably Yes,

We won't be meeting that.

I'm glad that you've I just brought it up.

Sunday is area of Rosh Hashanah.

It'll be Rosh Hashanah here for me.

So we won't be meeting that day.

We will meeting after Rosh Hashanah.

I'll send out an announcement of it.

Okay.

So thank you so much.

And I'm wishing you a happy and sweet new year.

Take care all of you.

Bye bye.

Thank you.

Bye bye Bye bye