On 4 June 2020, I participated in an evening of tribute to and remembrance of Reb Zalman. Given the five minute limit, I only shared a condensed version of what I had written. Here, then, is what I would have shared had there been more time.
השגחה פרטית, Divine providence or guidance, that God partners with us in finding our purposes in life and guides us in their actualization, is both central and problematic in our tradition. On the one hand, it is central to our narrative of being “taken” from Egyptian slavery and “brought” to Mount Sinai, of being a ממלכת כהנים וגוי קדוש. It is also problematic when facing the historical realities of exile, destruction, persecution, and the continuing power of those who abuse others and exploit the planet’s resources. The problem is so deep that one way the tension is resolved is to deny the existence of a personal God. I share that tension.
However, in my life השגחה פרטית has played an essential role, and nowhere more than in my relationship with Reb Zalman. I experienced him first when I was about 16 and a camper at Camp Ramah in Connecticut where he was the resident “spiritual environmentalist.” While I did not talk with him nor attend his workshops, he implanted a gentle melody for ברכת המזון, which I remembered (My Heart Opened). Some years later, a friend invited me to Havurat Shalom in Boston and there I heard Reb Zalman sing El Adon to the tune of Donna Donna. As noted in midrash (בראשית רבה פ"ה), while the brothers were busy selling Joseph, while Jacob and Reuben were in mourning, Judah married. While they were all engaged in the events that led to the first exile, God was already beginning the lineage which would produce the final redeemer. Prior to the disease taking hold, the cure is already in development. In my case, השגחה פרטית provided the means to move beyond the spiritual malaise that set in four years after I had visited Havurat Shalom. The way in which Reb Zalman prayed, these softer, gentler melodies, opened the possibility that he might help me find my own way as a practitioner of the Jewish spiritual path.
In these difficult times, I miss my rebbe’s love and encouragement, his willingness to brainstorm and try new approaches. Last year, during another difficult time, he began singing inside my head the words and a melody to verses from שיר השירים. I did not hear him telling me anything specific. What I did hear was him pointing me to God, for whose presence I was yearning and whom I could trust was near.
As Reb Zalman put it:
My criticism of a lot of modern spirituality is that there is no longing.…They begin with self-satisfied people who are saying: “Now I’m going to meditate” or something like this. There is no ingredient with a question that asks how will I become what I need to become? How will I serve in the way in which I need to serve? So these are what you call Ga’agu’im (from Davvenolgy).
Reb Zalman spoke of this need for געגועים, a deep yearning to be guided to one’s true self and purpose, as central to our humanity. In 1959, he wrote: “perhaps a meditation is a daydream: a daydream of the soul as the beloved and God the lover. When was it that you had a romantic daydream about God and you? Such a daydream is very important!”
In these days of climate disruption, Black Lives Matter, pandemic, and economic contraction, we need, perhaps more than ever, a renewal of that internalized feeling of being in a mutual relationship of caring with the Holy Blessed One despite how much responsibility we bear in exacerbating, if not creating these realities. In the words of Reb Nachman:
וְאָנוּ צְרִיכִין רַחֲמִים
אַך בַּעֲווֹנֵינוּ הָרַבִּים בַּדּוֹר הַזֶּה אֵין מִי שֶׁיִּתְפַּלֵּל כָּך, שֶׁיּוּכַל לְהַמְשִׁיך הָרַחֲמִים
מֵחֲמַת שֶׁאֵין מִי שֶׁיַּכִּיר גְּדֻלַּת הַבּוֹרֵא כָּל כָּך, מִפְּנֵי גּדֶל הַגָּלוּת וְהַדַּחֲקוּת והַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּך הוּא בְּעַצְמוֹ צָרִיך לְהִתְפַּלֵּל עַל זֶה
‘מִכָּאן שֶׁהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּך הוּא מִתְפַּלֵּל. וּמַה מִּתְפַּלֵּל, יְהִי רָצוֹן וְכוּ
[ ״יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְּפָנַי שֶׁיִּכְבְּשׁוּ רַחֲמַי אֶת כַּעֲסִי ויָגוֹלּוּ רחֲמַי עַל מִדּוֹתַי ואֶתְנַהֵג עִם בָּנַי בְּמִדַּת רַחֲמִים וְאֶכָּנֵס לָהֶם לִפְנִים מִשּׁוַּרת הַדִּין״
(.ברכות ז)
We need compassion, but there is no one who can pray for it, who can draw compassion down because we have lost our connection to God’s greatness due to the stresses of the moment. Therefore God must pray that God’s compassion be stronger than God’s judgement and that compassion will extend to us. (Likkutei Moharan 105)
To re-activate the mutuality of our relationship to that aspect of the divine which is guidance, השגחה, Reb Zalman said that acknowledging the reality and immediacy of a paradigm shift in the way we map our reality is crucial. As he said:
My commitment to the life of the planet is stronger than my commitment to any philosophy or creed. Many of us have the same commitment. If you have felt commanded by the Divine Imperative to protect Earth from planetary destruction, then you have undergone the first stage of a Gaian initiation.
GAIAN INITIATION
Such an experience also requires that we, all of us, undergo an identity shift from ethnic to global so that we can begin to live that initiation. As Susan Saxe once put it, we have to become "matriots" of mother, Earth instead of patriots of a particular state.
In more traditional Jewish language, my theological approach is based on the realization of the pervasiveness of hashgahah, Divine Providence, the unfolding of Earthmind. That is, we are deployed from beyond ourselves. Let us have emunah, loyal faith, and bittahon, trust, that the universe is unfolding as it should. Accept that you will be led by Wisdom, Hokhmah, Sophia, as She arises from the planetary mind. Open up to the possibility of accessing on the inner-net, the inner internet, what the melekh ha-olam requires of us. The Torah that is now coming down vertically will harmonize with what has come down through history longitudinally.
Reb Zalman assumed that this beloved and lover could and would meet, that through Gaian consciousness each of us can feel the imperative from מלך העולם directing us, deploying us as he said so often. Remember that Reb Zalman always said that being a rebbe is a function more than a person and that each of us needs to find the rebbe function within and deploy it when needed and in ways that are appropriate.
At the ALEPH Kallah in 1995, he said it this way:
What worries me is that all that work, that learning that awareness, that growth will die when I die. I want to deposit the essentials of the teaching in the right places. I don't want you to later on say you were here when I was teaching and it was so great, but when someone asks you, “What did Reb Zalman teach?” You say: “Duh, I dunno.” To them and to others who aspire to leadership I must give over what I still can. More than anything I would mourn at my death that that learning of a lifetime would go into oblivion without ever having been passed on.
Remember also that Reb Zalman’s deepest gift to all of us is his encouragement to learn the content of what he taught rather than combing his teachings for the “right” ones to apply to situations that are now beyond his event horizon. Even more important, his gift to us is to remember to seek God, knowing how hard that can be when the holocaust is in progress, as it was for him, and this pandemic is for us.
Reb Zalman had a few favourite ניגונים, some of them his own and some from within his family. I close with one of these, set to the words of Psalm 27, the psalm we say during Elul:
My heart has said: I turn to seek You,
Your Presence is what I beg for.
Don’t hide Your Face from me, don’t just put me down,
You, who have been my helper
Don’t abandon me, don’t forsake me, God, my support.
,לְךָ אָמַר לִבִּי, בַּקְּשׁוּ פָנָי
.אֶת פָּנֶיךְ ה’ אֲבַקֵּשׁ
,אַל תַּסְתֵּר פָּנֶיךָ מִמֶּנִּי
,אַל תַּט בְּאַף עַבְדֶּךָ
עֶזְרָתִי הָיִיתָ, אַל תִּטְּשֵׁנִי
וְאַל תַּעַזְבֵנִי אֱלֹהֵי יִשְׁעִי