Shmini and Jewish Meditation

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Parshah Summary – P’sha

The parshah opens with the eighth day (yom hashmini) of the inauguration ceremony for Aaron and his sons to begin officiating as  kohanim (priests). In a dramatic appearance of Divine power, a fire streams forth to consume the offerings on the altar, and the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence, comes to dwell in the Sanctuary. In their enthusiasm, Aaron’s two elder sons, Nadav and Avihu, rush forward to offer aysh zarah – “strange fire.” They are consumed by the fire and perish, yet Aaron remains silent in face of his tragedy. Moses and Aaron subsequently disagree about a point of law regarding the offerings, but Moses ultimately concedes that Aaron is in the right. The laws of kashrut are given, identifying the animal species permissible and forbidden for consumption: land animals may be eaten only if they have split hooves and also chew their cud; fish must have fins and scales; a list of non-kosher birds is given, and a list of the kosher insects, which include four different types of locusts.


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Torah of Awakening

וַיְהִי֙ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַשְּׁמִינִ֔י קָרָ֣א מֹשֶׁ֔ה לְאַהֲרֹ֖ן וּלְבָנָ֑יו וּלְזִקְנֵ֖י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

On the eighth day Moses called Aaron and his sons, and the elders of Israel.

​- Vayikra (Leviticus) 9:1 Parshat Shmini

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In his early life, Rabbi Yehiel Mikhal of Zlotchov lived in great poverty, but not for an hour did happiness desert him. Someone once asked him: “Rabbi, how can you pray day after day: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ... שֶׁעָשָׂה לִי כָּל־צָרְכִּי Blessed are You… who provides for all my needs? For surely you lack everything that a person needs!” He replied, “Apparently, what I need is poverty, and that is what I have been supplied with.” 

Rabbi Yehiel Mikhal’s response points to the deeper spiritual potential for how we may relate to our desires. Let’s look at what happens when we desire something, and then we receive the object of our desire. For example, food: we feel the pain of hunger, the desire to eat something, and then we eat and feel satisfaction. But there is something else going on that is easy to miss: that is, a different sense of incompleteness that is caused not by the hunger, but by the mental and emotional fixation on the object of desire. It is not just the incompleteness of hunger, but also a basic dis-ease with the present moment, a psychological “reaching” for a future moment when one imagines being satisfied. 

Then, along with the ordinary satisfaction of eating the food, not only is there a sense of completeness in satisfying the hunger, there is also (hopefully) a relaxing into present moment reality while one enjoys the food, and a dropping away of that dis-ease of wanting. That simple connection with the moment and the dropping away of dis-ease is itself satisfying – even more so, sometimes, than the food. This inner sense of inner Wholeness, available when we become present, is represented by the letter ג gimel. 

​Although it is true that everyone experiences the ג gimel, the inner fullness of Presence, it is rare to discern between the two different levels of inner Wholeness and ordinary gratification. Instead, we are inclined to assume that all of our satisfaction comes from the food, or from whatever is the object of gratification. But in any receiving of satisfaction, the deeper pleasure comes not from the object, but from the temporary letting go of wanting and relaxing into connection with the present moment. That is ultimately the purpose of self-restricting practices like fasting, for example, or the giving up of bread on Passover. These practices work because, ordinarily, when we feel a craving for something, our heart tends to run after what we want and we lose our connection with Presence. But when we let ourselves feel the craving on purpose, returning attention to our present moment experience without getting carried away by our desire for gratification, then it is possible to re-awaken that sense of inner Wholeness, without needing to satisfy the external desire – this is the essence of meditation. With practice, we can become more and more rooted in this inner Wholeness, which opens the deeper dimension of the morning blessing: 

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יי אֱלֹהֵֽ–נוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם שֶׁעָשָׂה לִי כָּל־צָרְכִּי.
Barukh Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melekh HaOlam, she’asa li kol tzorki!
Blessed are You, Hashem, our Divinity, Sovereign of the Universe,
who provides for all my needs! 

קָרָ֣א מֹשֶׁ֔ה לְאַהֲרֹ֖ן וּלְבָנָ֑יו וּלְזִקְנֵ֖י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל – Moses called Aaron and his sons, and the elders of Israel… Moses is calling to the priests and elders in order to give them instructions regarding the offerings they must bring in order to have a vision of the Divine. It then goes on in great detail about the animals and grains and oils the are to burn on the altar, which results in the desired vision. 

וַיֵָא כְבוֹד־יי אֶל־כׇּל־הָעָֽם – …and the Divine Presence appeared to all the people…. Why were all those offerings necessary to bring about a Divine vision? When we experience the satisfaction of eating, we can elevate that experience through gratitude – through affirming that our food is a gift from God. This is the practical function of the various blessings said for different foods. But if we want to experience the ג gimel – the deeper Wholeness that is present even within our neediness, then we must learn to differentiate the pleasure that comes from Presence from the pleasure that comes from gratification. We can do this through sacrifice – through purposely giving something up; such self-restricting practices are represented by the sefirah of Gevurah. 

Then, just as the Divine Presence appeared to the Children of Israel, so too we can taste the deeper satisfaction of connecting with the moment as it is, beyond all the temporary and finite pleasures, wonderful and necessary as they are. And when we do that, a deeper gratitude can emerge – gratitude not only for the particular blessings we experience, but for the opportunity we have to practice connecting with the unconditional Wholeness of simply Being through meditation. 

וַיְהִי֙ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַשְּׁמִינִ֔י – And it was, on the eighth day… The first word, וַיְהִי vay’hi, is a form of the verb “to be,” which is the root of the Divine Name, hinting at this deeper meaning of the idea of God: God is an entity to be believed in, but relational word, signifying a prayerful attitude toward Being. The word בַּיּוֹם bayom means “on the day” but it can also mean “in today” meaning, in the Now. In other words, the Divinity of Being is not something to achieve or reach; it is Ever Present; it is always This Moment. The word הַשְּׁמִינִי hashmini means “the eighth.” In Kabbalah, the number seven signifies the natural world, as in the seven days of creation. The number eight, then, is beyond nature – Infinity. We also have this meaning in the shape of our Arabic number eight, which when turned on its side, is a symbol for Infinity. In other words, when we connect with the Divinity of Being by becoming present, there is an experiential sense of the Infinite, as we come to feel the boundlessness of the field of awareness that we are, within which all experience comes and goes, including the experience of want. 

In this week of Shabbat Sh’mini, the Sabbath of the Infinite, let us absorb the lessons of Gevurah – of delaying and sometimes surrendering gratification, thereby strengthening our connection with that deeper satisfaction of ג gimel, in Eternal Present.

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Read past teachings on Shmini HERE 

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