In his diary entry on July 28, 1940 [22 of Tamuz, 5700, a few weeks before Tisha B’Av 5700], Mordecai Kaplan reflected on the fact that our world is continually being shattered and broken, and that we are continually working to restore a sense of connection and wholeness. “Whatever restores the unity of one’s world or confirms one in the feeling of that unity adds meaning to one’s life.”[i]
Like Kaplan some eight decades ago, many of us approach Tisha B’Av this year with the painful awareness of a crisis in meaning and connection that parallels the mood of Tisha B’Av — the day that recalls the destruction of the two Jerusalem Temples and is perhaps most associated with grief in Jewish tradition.
In traditional imagery, we mourn the loss of our access to the immanent Divine Presence that resided in the ancient Temple. In contemporary terms, we may mourn the loss of connection to a Whole that is greater than our individual selves or the loss of meaning that, as Kaplan suggests, a feeling of unity may provide.
Of the many aspects of the Divine in the Jewish imagination, the Shekhinah is the most accessible and tangible. She dwells with us, and indeed, the word Shekhinah itself is from the Hebrew lishkon, “to dwell.” In ancient times, Her primary residence was considered the tabernacle — the mishkan (linguistically related to the word shekhinah) — and later, the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. There, our ancestors drew close to the Divine through sacrificial offerings — korbanot, from the same root as lekarev, to draw close. When the Temple was destroyed, it was not only a sense of physical safety and an entire way of living communally and religiously that was lost. With the destruction of the Temple, God was no longer “in the midst” of the people, no longer accessible to them.
The specific images of the ancient Temple and its sacrificial system of worship, or even of the Shekhinah itself, may not immediately resonate with us today. However, we may still yearn for, or even intuit, a sense of something greater or deeper than what we encounter on the news or in our divisive daily lives. I would suggest that when we open to that yearning, and to the pain of isolation and lack of meaning, we invite in the possibility of transformation and healing.
The presence of a dear friend or beloved one can ease our suffering and allow us to keep our hearts open.
Sociologist Brene Brown suggests that “vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.”[ii]
It can be challenging, however, for us to follow this “Torah” of Brene Brown. When we feel alone and frightened — or when the world feels so broken that we lose faith in the possibility of Kaplan’s vision of salvation — it is difficult to be vulnerable.
If we are fortunate, we know that in our personal lives, the presence of a dear friend or beloved one can ease our suffering and allow us to keep our hearts open. In the days and weeks following Oct. 7, many of us spent more time in Jewish communal spaces just to be comforted by the presence of others who were also in shock and confusion, and to be in a space that was holding and reflecting our pain. Conversely, many of us have felt even lonelier when we lacked a supportive friend in a time of personal crisis, during the isolation of the pandemic or in the face of failing to communicate across ideological divisions.
When we experience loss, it is simply the presence of a caring, empathetic other that can help me to pause, and be with the pain in the world and in my heart, so that I can then be more clear and creative about how to act wisely.
Tisha B’Av gives us a symbolic opportunity to hold our grief and vulnerability by recalling the archetypal, historical devastation of the loss of the ancient Temple.
So, too, the sense of a caring Divine Presence, in whatever way we may experience the sacred, may have the power to soothe our nervous systems and help us to feel whole. As neuroscientists and therapists would suggest, simply imagining an empathetic, loving presence may help to rewire our brains and open our aching hearts.[iii] While we may need to reinterpret these images in language that resonates with us, the Jewish textual tradition offers us a wealth of depictions of the Divine that can expand our capacity to engage in that act of sacred imagination.
Tisha B’Av gives us a symbolic opportunity to hold our grief and vulnerability by recalling the archetypal, historical devastation of the loss of the ancient Temple. On this day, we read the book of Lamentations (Eikha), which begins with a single-word cry “eikha,” a wrenching expression of anguish. Literally, eikh means “how.” How did this devastation happen, and who was to blame? While the rabbis of the Talmud attempted to answer these questions, the book of Eikha wisely does not. Instead, it invites us each year to remain for a time in the depths of our own grief and loss; rather than trying to answer the question of “how” or why, we stay in the realm of emotion rather than analysis. As we read the scroll, we are touched by the broken, devastated heart at the moment of utter abandonment, of complete separation from the Divine as we find in the opening scene and throughout the book. The cry of Eikha is not the mind’s question, “how”; it is the heart’s sigh of anguish, “alas” or “woe.” Eikha! Lamentations ends with yearning for return and connection that feels impossible in the state of desolation — “Return us to You, and we will return.”[iv]
The pain of separation
The destruction of the ancient Temple is not the first time that humanity felt the pain of separation from the Divine Presence. The dance between presence and absence is inherent in the very beginnings of the human story, according to the Torah. In the biblical narrative of the Garden of Eden and its later interpretations, the themes of deep, healing connection and agonizing separation are as old as human history and integral to what it means to be human.
As the story of humanity begins in the Torah, God understands that Lo tov heyot adam levado — “It is not good for the human to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). This Divine insight on the importance of human connection prompts the creation of a second human being to be together, naked but not ashamed, in the Garden. The Garden of Eden (the Hebrew word for “delight”), is an idyllic image of pure pleasure precisely because it is the site of Presence, connection and Oneness. Adam is deeply connected to Eve. God’s footsteps can be heard meandering about the Garden. But these connections, this presence, also can be broken, lost.
When the humans eat from the tree, it is not just a sense of good and bad that they ingest, but a global perspective of dualism — good and bad, this and that, self and other — through which they might view the world ever after. In those divisions and in the separation between the first humans, blame and suffering arise. The Garden of Eden story attests to the fact that like us, our ancestors identified the lack of connection as the primary cause of human suffering.
In the breach between the Divine and humanity, it is not only people who feel the absence of God’s presence. In rabbinic understanding, God, too, yearns for humanity. God reaches out with a single word — ayekah — “where are you?” The Pesikta DeRav Kahana, a midrashic volume from the rabbinic period, points out that God’s question, ayekah (“where are you?”) could have been spelled without the letter hey. In adding this letter, God is “uttering a lament over [Adam].” The Torah evokes the anguished cry of Eikha that opens the book of Lamentations. In God’s searching for the beloved human in that moment of ayekah (“where are you?”), God is also feeling the pain of separation (the cry of Eikha — of the human hiding of self and foreshadowing the banishment from the Garden, the site of connection, that will come from this breakdown between Divine and human.
The Zohar takes this moment of separation and banishment one step further. In the Torah, we find that “God banished the human (et ha-adam)” from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:24).[v] The Zohar radically suggests that it is actually the reverse — that Adam, in the hiding, shame and blame that result from “ingesting” a perspective of dualism that is not rooted in underlying connection [eating from the tree of good and evil], drives out the presence of the Shekhinah from the Garden. In doing so, it is humanity that separates the imminent, multi-faceted aspect of the divine that manifests in nature from her roots in Divine Oneness. Part of God is separated from Godself.
In our own world, what is the Greater Wholeness that is searching for humanity and asking ayekah (“where are you”?) Might it be the vitality that permeates the natural world, (Rav Kook’s “unifying congruence that penetrates all branches of existence”) or Democracy or Truth that is wondering why She has been banished by humanity’s hiding and our false perception of dualism? This false sense of separateness from the Whole has allowed us to abandon our accountability to each other, to the planet and to the Shekhinah, however we might understand or experience Her in our times.
Love and empathy flow from the divine presence
In yet another imaginative part of the Zohar, the exiled Shekhinah is associated with the biblical figure of Rachel. The prophet Jeremiah,[vi] imagines Rachel bitterly weeping by the side of the road, mourning her children who have gone into exile, refusing to be comforted. The Zohar picks up on Jeremiah’s poignant image and expands it, depicting Rachel as the Shekhinah mourning the loss of her dwelling place and those who worshiped her there.[vii]
Beginning with the rabbis of the Talmud, our tradition offers images of an exiled Shekhinah who not only refuses to be comforted but refuses to leave her people, even though (as we saw in Eden) it was actually humanity that caused her exile. In the Talmud we find that “Every place to which they [Israel] were exiled the Shekhinah went with them.” (Megillah 29a)
In the Zohar, we have an amazing, wild image of the Shekhinah attempting to willingly leave her place in the Godhead to be with her suffering people.
The Zohar imagines that
dismal darkness obstructed Her to prevent Her from descending … . Fifteen million accusing angels appeared by Her, preventing Her descent. At the same time, an entire assemblage of supernal angels appeared before the blessed Holy One, and said, ‘Master of the Universe! All our splendor and all our radiance derive from Shekhinah of Your Glory, and now She will descend to those below!’ At that moment, Shekhinah steeled Herself and broke through the dismal darkness, as one breaks hard chunks of ice, and She descended to earth. (Zohar 2:140a-b)
Just as Shekhinah in the guise of Rachel refused to be comforted and to leave her mourning place by the side of the road, this warrior Shekhinah would do anything to be with her people, to be with us in our pain.
No matter how much we close in on ourselves — hiding as Adam did and viewing other people, the natural world, and life itself solely from a dualistic perspective — our tradition insists that there is a sacred divinity that is fighting to be with us so that we will ultimately not be alone in our pain and exile, and so that She will not be alone in Her exile. For me, as a daughter and a mother, the image of this Divinity as the mother is resonant. Adam hid in response to his fear of a judgmental, punishing God. When I have imagined a loving, compassionate maternal presence, and have cultivated that in my own awareness through contemplative practice, it has had a long-lasting effect on the way that I hold my own imperfections and missteps, and those of others. Over time, I have actually become less critical and more compassionate with myself and others through my encounter with the Zohar’s images of the Shekhinah.
Sixteenth-century kabbalist Moshe Cordovero writes:
For Shechinah is the one who is expelled with us, ascending with us and descending with us, redeemed with us and exiled with us. She is the one united with us always, never separated from us under any circumstance. She dwells with us. Our deeds cause her union or separation or mercy.[viii]
For me, the power of these images of the Shekhinah lies not only in her fierce, unwavering presence, but in her capacity for empathy. She is not a dispassionate healer who comes to soothe us in our pain. She herself knows the anguish of separation and exile; she experiences what we experience.
Rabbi Alan Lew, z”l, suggests that we might think of Tisha B’Av as the beginning of the High Holiday cycle. In the Selikhot liturgy that we recite just before Rosh Hashanah, we call upon the Divine as the “Discerner of hearts, Perceiver of submerged thoughts, speaker of truths.” בּוֹחֵן לְבָבוֹת. גּוֹלֶה עֲמוּקוֹת. דּוֹבֵר צְדָקוֹ[ix]
We might understand this Divine like a very skilled therapist, whose presence invites us to do the hard work of uncovering the depths of our hearts so that we may do teshuvah. Or we may be inspired to bring this sacred awareness into our interactions with others, listening deeply across ideological differences or misunderstandings, even when it’s uncomfortable to do so.[x]
The Divine presence is in our midst
One of the many names for the Shekhinah in the Zohar is Knesset Yisra’el — the Assembly of Israel. This name suggests that the Shekhinah not only empathizes with us through her experience and is a reflection of our collective action (think Mother Earth), but she is us in our collective, whether we understand that collective as the Jewish people or humanity as a whole. We may have had the experience of walking into a gathering and having a sense of the quality of what is taking place, even in the absence of spoken words or facial expressions. Whether at funeral or a wedding, it may feel as if the space itself reflects the collective emotional experience of the people in it. Thus our tradition speaks of the Shekhinah being present in the space between people, whether when 10 people gather to pray or two people study Torah.
On the Divine promise that “I will be ever present in your midst” (Lev 26:11, regarding the mishkan), the rabbis offer the following parable, hearkening back to the Garden of Eden:
This may be likened to a king who went out ambling into the orchard with his tenant. The tenant attempted to hide, and the king said to the tenant: Why do you hide from me? I am just like you. So too the blessed Holy One says to the righteous: Why should you be frightened of Me? In the future, the Blessed Holy One will amble with the righteous in the Garden of Eden. The righteous will see [God] and be frightened, but [God] will say to them: I am just like you.” (Sifra, Bekhukotai, 3:3)
If we envision the Shekhinah as “just like us” as the Sifra or the Zohar would suggest, there is no need for us to hide, even when we are in pain or have missed the mark as Adam did in the Garden.
In the absence of a central temple or mishkan in modern times, where might we encounter the Shekhinah today? And how might we think of and experience Her presence, whether we believe that God is a separate, transcendent Being or instead, a benevolent force that manifests through humanity’s deeds? How might we “cause her union or separation or mercy”?
The natural world offers many of us a setting where we might experience the Sacred. In Jewish mysticism, the Shekhinah is associated with the natural world. One of the most powerful metaphors of the Divine presence in nature is that of a cloud, which can both conceal and reveal that presence. In Lamentations, we find that God has “screened Yourself off with a cloud, that no prayer may pass through.” And a careful, perhaps creative reading of the words eikha ya’iv be’apo[xi] at the beginning of the second chapter of the book of Lamentations (2:1) might yield “You have ‘beclouded’ your face” and cast out the Shekhinah (bat zion) from the heavens.
The image of the cloud also appears in Exodus and is for the Zohar yet another manifestation of the Shekhinah. As the people traveled through the desert after leaving Egypt, in their brokenness and bewilderment, a steadfast cloud guided them; according to the Torah, it never left them (except when replaced by a pillar of fire at night). Likewise, it was a cloud that Moses entered at Sinai to encounter the Divine and receive revelation.
There is no need for us to hide, as Adam did in the Garden, even when we are in pain or have missed the mark.
While the magical realism of a GPS- like cloud (or even, its metaphoric version) might be too much for some of us, we might still find greater access to our own inner wisdom by spending time in nature, and even lying on the grass looking at the clouds pass by. So too, there is unique “Torah” that we might receive from the brilliance of the more-than-human world in our encounters with nature and in our grieving cry of Eikha at our earth’s destruction in the age of climate crisis. Whatever our sense of God, might we find guidance, insight and divine presence in nature, or an art studio or a synagogue? Might we soften our analytic minds and be guided by a wispy, cloud- like whisper of our own intuition and creativity, the still small voice within?
The Shekhinah, pictured as the Assembly or community of Israel, has parallels in our own lives. When we are in connection with each other, vulnerable and not in hiding (naked and unafraid, in the language of the garden), the space between or among us is sacred. Traditionally, we are told that the Shekhinah is present when 10 people pray together and when two people study Torah together. I imagine that the Shekhinah is not only present but delighting in meaningful encounters among or between people. When we are able to honor our differences and hold them softly so that we may have connected, productive conversations, we “cause Her union,” bringing a sense of wholeness into the realm of multiplicity and diversity.
We understand that ultimately it’s not good for us humans to be alone, and that we really are “flesh of flesh” and “bone of bone” to each other. The Jerusalem Talmud (Eruvin 5:1:4) teaches that “Anyone who receives the face of a friend is as if s/he received the face of the Shekhinah.” But in our age of Zoom and masking and social media and deep, painful political divisions, how might we find a way to meet each other panim el panim (“face to face”)?
Might we soften our analytic minds and be guided by a wispy, cloud-like whisper of our own intuition and creativity, the still small voice within?
At the construction of the Mishkan, Moses instructs the people to “Take from yourselves an offering for YHVH. Everyone whose impels them shall bring it/ her … ” (Exodus 35:5). At the basic level (peshat), it is the offering that will be brought. Because the word for offering (terumah) is in the feminine, the Zohar takes this as an opportunity to suggest that it is the Shekhinah that we may draw down. How? By taking an offering from [within] ourselves.
In my own life, when I struggle with fear or uncertainty, it is tempting to hide or shut down as Adam did in the Garden. But as sociologist Brene Brown suggests, “Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.” When the question Ayekah/“Where are you?” is posed to us, and we respond from our vulnerability, we create a Mishkan, a sacred dwelling for the Divine as we enable the divine to move and act through us. When we ourselves genuinely seek the full, multifaceted, imperfect presence of others — when we pose the fundamental question, Ayekah? — we create more space for the divine to be present through the other. When we bring our curiosity and creativity to our engagement with the more-than-human world, we open the possibility that nature may be a sacred dwelling place, a mishkan, for the Source of Creation.
In his 1940 diary entry, Kaplan wrote further that “Every creative act of … [humanity] adds to the meaning of life and is a revelation of the Divine.”
With the loss of the ancient Temple that we commemorate on Tisha B’Av, our ancestor met crisis and loss with enormous creativity and generativity. When the state of the world feels impossibly, irrevocably broken, if we have the courage to remain vulnerable and be open to an imagined or intuited wholeness or renewal, our intuition might guide us to new solutions or wise action. In her commentary on this line from Kaplan’s diary, Rabbi Adina Allen wrote, “It is through our creativity that we partner with God in renewing the world.” When things fall apart, if we are able to stay open to our fear and grief, we may hear the whisper of our own imagination and creativity. As our ancestors did in response to the loss of the ancient Temple and its familiar mode of religious practice, we may be able to create anew from the brokenness that we experience this Tisha B’Av. “The place of creativity,” Rabbi Allen suggests, is the place where we and the Divine meet.[xii]
Perhaps our open hearts, and creative, imaginative minds themselves might be a dwelling place for the Divine.
[i] Full quote from diary: As man [sic] goes on living, his world is continually being upset, and he is always reconstructing it. Whatever helps to restore the unity, man is deeply grateful for. It enables him to pursue his efforts at self-realization. Is it not to be expected that he would ascribe the restoration of the unity to the same Power that makes for salvation not ourselves, however he conceives that Power, which had originally bestowed on him the very ability to create his world? In other words, whatever restores the unity of one’s world or confirms one in the feeling of that unity adds meaning to one’s life. It renders life worthwhile and significant in that it reinforces the drive to salvation. It is a revelation of that original Power which has bestowed upon man the sense of his own centrality and unity of his cosmos.
[ii] Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
[iii] “Your brain on imagination: It’s a lot like reality, study shows”
[iv] Melila Hellner-Eshed writes: “Bergson argues that there are two ways to comprehend reality: the first mode of knowing is that of analysis, which seeks to break things down into component parts that are then described in well-known terms. The second mode is intuition, a form of “sympathy whereby one carries oneself into the interior of an object to coincide with what is unique and therefore inexpressible in it.” Intuition is able to accomplish what reason and rationality cannot — namely, it enables direct, unmediated apprehension of reality as the duree of consciousness.
”A River Flows from Eden: The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar” (Kindle Locations 3883-3886). Kindle Edition. ]
[v] With its characteristic radical creativity, the Zohar turns the verse around so that Adam becomes the subject of the sentence. Instead, the one who is banished from the Garden is “Et”. What, or who is “et”? In Hebrew “et” is a tiny word that indicates a direct object. We don’t have an equivalent word in English. But the Zohar, in its imaginative, playful style gives the Shekhinah many names; she is the imminent, multiple, diverse manifestations of divine oneness in the world. She is the natural world, the garden, the tree. And she is the tiny direct object indicator, “et.”
[vi] To whom the book of Lamentations is attributed.
[vii] The Zohar wonders the following:
Rabbi Hiyya said, “From what place did She begin to be exiled?”
He replied, “She began from the Temple, and then went around the whole Land. Afterwards, when She left the Land, She rose above the desert and then sat there three days. She remembered Her legions and camps and those who sat with Her in the King’s house [the ancient Temple], and She exclaimed about Herself: “Eikha: How does she sit alone? … (Lamentations 1:1).”
[viii] Rabbi Moshe Cordovero Elima, Ein Yaakov, Palm #1, Ch. 3: “For Shekhinah (Malkhut) is the one who is expelled/moves with us, ascending with us and descending with us, redeemed with us and exiled with us. She is the one united with us always, never separated from us under any circumstance. She dwells with us.Our deeds cause her union or separation or mercy.It all comes from us, for she depends on souls.”
[ix] Selikhot Edot HaMizrakh 155.
[x] Alan Lew, This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation (p. 18). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition: “So this concatenation of ritual—this dance that begins on Tisha B’Av and ends on Sukkot, that begins with the mournful collapse of a house and ends with the joyful collapse of a house, this intentional spasm that awakens us and carries us through death and back to life again—stands for the journey the soul is always on.”
[xi] Literally: God has shamed in God’s wrath
[xii] Kaplan Center website, https://kaplancenter.org/kaplan-and-creativity-talmud-page/
