The Editors

R. Kook, twentieth century philosopher mystic, teaches that every generation is part of the unfolding revelation of divinity.  Each generation, picking up from where the last one left off, moves closer to understanding the full depth and divinity of sacred rites and passages. In this sense the “covenant between me and the children of Israel”  is not only between God and the people – but “between”  the children of Israel”. and their children ….and their children – a covenant between generations. Israel means for me, borrowing a reading from my teacher Mordechai Lainer of Izbica, based on a close and creative reading of the original Hebrew, Yashar El; the direct apprehension of the divine.

The community of Israel are those who receive tradition reverentially and yet seek their own unmediated experience of divinity as the lodestone of their spiritual and ethical journey.  In this covenant each generation promises its forbearers to continue the journey of unfolding divinity though the prism of our questing souls.

Dr. Marc Gafni
The Dance of Tears (forthcoming 2013)

From Ken Wilber’s “A Spirituality That Transforms”:

Even though you and I might deeply believe that the most important function we can perform is to offer auhentic transformative spirituality, the fact is, much of what we have to do, in our capacity to bring decent spirituality into the world, is actually to offer more benign and helpful modes of translation. In other words, even if we ourselves are practicing, or offering, authentic transformative spirituality, nonetheless much of what we must first do is provide most people with a more adequate way to translate their condition. We must start with helpful translations, before we can effectively offer authentic transformations.

The reason is that if translation is too quickly, or too abruptly, or too ineptly taken away from an individual (or culture), the result, once again, is not breakthrough but breakdown, not relapse but collapse.

To read the whole article, see KenWilber.com.

God is called in biblical myth “Shadai,” translated by the wisdom masters as, “He who said to his world, ”˜Dai’ – enough.” Two meanings well up from the word. The first is that the creative process was stopped when God said enough. Divinity turned to humanity and said, “I have done enough. You – each one of you – be my partners in completing the work of creation.”  Have you ever created something, conceived of a project and then handed over responsibility for it to another. You have to really trust that person to “entrust” to them Your creation. The phrase “Raba Emunatecha” – from the Hebrew liturgy, literally means “Your trust is great.”  I read it to mean that God’s trust IN US is great. God entrusts creation into our hands.

The Erotic and the Holy
Dr. Marc Gafni

Love implies not only freedom but responsibility – awesome responsibility. Remember Master Menachem Mendel who was asked by his students, “Rebbe (teacher), where is God?”  The master responds, “God is only where you let him in.”

The repair and healing of the world depends on our partnership with God. God steps back and says, “I cannot do it alone. I need you to be my messengers. Even more, I need you to be my eyes and ears and hands.”

When you see someone, and in the process give a person the gift of feeling seen in the world, then you are seeing with God’s eyes. When attention is paid and a person feels heard, then you are God’s ears. When you move to heal after seeing pain and hearing the cries of oppression, then divinity is visible and active in the world. The language of God is man. We are God’s love verbs in the world. Conversely, when you oppress and hurt, when you ignore the cries of the sufferer and turn a blind eye to evil, then you make God blind and deaf.

The Erotic and the Holy
Marc Gafni

By Marc Gafni

Yet, corporations in the end are made up of real people, and real people all have the potential to be lovers.

The following is an excerpt from an acceptance speech made by Howard Schultz, the chairman and chief global strategist of Starbucks.

 “When I was in Israel, I went to Mea Shearim, the ultra-Orthodox area within Jerusalem. Along with a group of businessmen I was with, I had the opportunity to have an audience with Rabbi Finkel, the head of a yeshiva there. I had never heard of him and didn’t know anything about him. We went into his study and waited ten to 15 minutes for him. Finally, the doors opened.

What we did not know was that Rabbi Finkel was severely afflicted with Parkinson’s disease. He sat down at the head of the table, and, naturally, our inclination was to look away. We didn’t want to embarrass him.

We were all looking away, and we heard this big bang on the table: “Gentlemen, look at me, and look at me right now.” Now his speech affliction was worse than his physical shaking. It was really hard to listen to him and watch him. He said, “I have only a few minutes for you because I know you’re all busy American businessmen.” You know, just a little dig there.

Then he asked, “Who can tell me what the lesson of the Holocaust is?” He called on one guy, who didn’t know what to do–it was like being called on in the fifth grade without the answer. And the guy says something benign like, “We will never, ever forget.” And the rabbi completely dismisses him. I felt terrible for the guy until I realized the rabbi was getting ready to call on someone else. All of us were sort of under the table, looking away–you know, please, not me. He did not call me. I was sweating. He called on another guy, who had such a fantastic answer: “We will never, ever again be a victim or bystander.”

The rabbi said, “You guys just don’t get it. Okay, gentlemen, let me tell you the essence of the human spirit. As you know, during the Holocaust, the people were transported in the worst possible, inhumane way by railcar. They thought they were going to a work camp. We all know they were going to a death camp.

“After hours and hours in this inhumane corral with no light, no bathroom, cold, they arrived at the camps. The doors were swung wide open, and they were blinded by the light. Men were separated from women, mothers from daughters, fathers from sons. They went off to the bunkers to sleep.

“As they went into the area to sleep, only one person was given a blanket for every six. The person who received the blanket, when he went to bed, had to decide, ‘Am I going to push the blanket to the five other people who did not get one, or am I going to pull it toward myself to stay warm?'”

And Rabbi Finkel says, “It was during this defining moment that we learned the power of the human spirit, because we pushed the blanket to five others.”

And with that, he stood up and said, “Take your blanket. Take it back to America and push it to five other people.”

As our birthdays roll around, year after year, the accumulation of wealth and power seems more and more vapid and ridiculous. At each birthday, we ask with more urgency, “Did my last year have any lasting significance? Did I push my blanket to five people? Have I made progress in the search for a life that matters?  Did I make a difference? Did I give something of important to the world? Was I a lover?”

 The Erotic and the Holy
Marc Gafni

A sacred conversation between the fourth century Babylonian Wisdom masters:

“It is written that God withdraws his presence from the world to dwell in the empty space between the Cherubs in the Temple. But how could this be? Is it not also written that all of heaven, indeed all the space in the cosmos, is not enough to contain divinity? “Ah,” says Master Jose. “It is to be likened to lovers. When they quarrel even a palatial home is not enough for their needs, but when they love, they can make their bed even on the edge of a sword.”

The mystery of creation, of existence itself, is Tzimtzum.

Tzimtzum, meaning “withdrawal.” God creates the world by withdrawing to make space for the world. What is the motivating force of Tzimtzum? Both of our images give the same answer. The motivating force of tzimtzum is love. 

Love is the force in the cosmos that allows God to step back and allow room for us. As with God, so with us. We are Homo Imago Dei who participate in the divine image – divine miniatures. In order for us to create a world, a relationship, we need to step back and create an empty space in which there is room for other, in which there is a place for the relationship to unfold. “Let us be close friends and there will be room.” If I love you, I need to know how to step back and make space for you.  Tzimtzum is God saying, “You can choose – even if you choose against me.” This is the gift of love.

Marc Gafni
The Erotic and the Holy