In the summer of 2009 I spent four weeks in 'vegan boot camp' to learn a new way of living. When asked what I do, I would say, 'I'm a professor of late modern Jewish philosophy'. I did my best to steer away from the words 'rabbi', 'mysticism' and 'kabbalah'. Usually once I answered the question in that manner, I would be nodded at, and the conversation would move on from there. 'My privacy spared one more day,' I would congratulate myself.
But one morning, when coming down to breakfast I was confronted with the president of a local shul, who claimed to be an atheist, pointing at me and saying, "She believes! You ask her!" All I could think of was my quiet breakfast that had just disappeared in front of my eyes.
Deloris, a beautiful forty-something African-American woman with a visible diamond crucifix around her neck asked, "You believe in the Bible?" to which I smiled "Yes." Then she pushed, "You believe in Adam and Eve in The Garden of Eden?" Again my smiling nod "Yes". "And Moses, too???" It was at this point that I felt a wave inside of me gain momentum and I could not hold back what was about to pour out of my mouth.
My heavy saved-for-special-occasions African-American-Southern-Baptist accent that I had learned from my teacher, Reb Shlomo Carlebach of blessed memory (1925-1994), came gushing through: "I believe that Adam and Eve dwelled in The Garden of Eden! I believe that God split the sea as we left Egypt! I believe that Moses stood at Mount Sinai and brought down The Ten Commandments! I believe! I believe! I believe! Glory hallelujah, I believe!!!" Our shul-president-atheist goes white, shocked by what he perceived as bordering blasphemy and mockery. But I knew that what Deloris and I shared was that we were both women of faith. It is for this reason she started laughing and said, "Sistah, not only do you believe, you also have a sense of humor!" Needless to say, we shared many meals together that week.
But this is the question I want to ask of you - do you believe???
Twice we are told that the waters of the Reed Sea stood as a wall on both sides of the Children of Israel [Shemot/Exodus 14:22, 29]. I find myself asking this year a similar, yet different, question to the Mei HaShiloach (R' Mordechai Lainer of Ishbitza, 1800-1853) regarding this moment. He asks, why is this perceived to be a miracle and why do believers even need miracles? He ponders, whether, for a believer, this is different from any other moment in their life. Is the splitting of the Reed Sea different than a sunrise, a bird singing, a child laughing?
The way I found myself addressing this question when contemplating this moment was, "What was God thinking???" as a more discrete way of saying, "Was God out of His/Her mind??? We're told only a few verses earlier that the Children of Israel were petrified, that the Egyptians were on their heels, that they were sure that they were going to die - and God goes and splits the sea??? What person of reason would walk through a split sea? What person of reason would think that the water would change its nature to stand still? And, for how long? A moment or two? How far could they go before the reality of the water would catch up with itself and return to be ocean?
This is the question that I am left with - do I really believe? Am I willing to enter into a space of wonder and not-knowing? Would I have believed that the waters were going to hold up as walls till I got to the other side?
Rebbe Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810) tells 13 stories in the last two years of his life. The first, Rosh HaShanah of 1808, he tells the story of the lost princess. It is a story of a King that has 6 sons and a beloved daughter (six days of the week and the Shabbat / the six lower sefirot and then Malkhut, the body and the soul, as interpretive examples). One day the King loses His temper and says to daughter, "May the No-Good take you!" and the next morning she has vanished from the palace. The devastated King sends his viceroy (the ego, perhaps) to find her... as the story unfolds the viceroy is told to go to a specific place and yearn for her for a year. He is told to not sleep the last night. But... while waiting that last day he sees a spring that gives forth wine, not water... He says to himself, 'It is true that the liquid flowing looks like wine and smells like wine, but I know this to be a spring, and springs bring forth water, not wine... He drinks from the wine flowing out of the spring and sleeps for seventy years, i.e. he sleeps a life time... leaving the princess waiting for him to find her and bring her home (there is more to the story; please see this as an invitation to find the story and read it through).
This is where I would like to invite us to sit together: To sit in these questions of faith, belief and not-knowing. Am I willing to surrender what I consider reasonable and plausible for the sake of the ineffable? Am I willing to walk away from what I believe to be true in order to experience freedom and servitude? Can I forego my need to control in order to taste a moment of trust?
Do I really believe? Am I willing to believe?
Do you believe? Are you willing to believe?
Shabbat shalom, and may we dance together on the 'other side'!