One Interpretation of the Meaning of the Cross

This coming weekend involves timing where the calendar provides for Easter and the end of Passover coinciding. There will probably always remain unresolved issues whether The Last Supper was a Passover Seder, but it was a stunning revelation to have an “aha!” moment many years ago when it first came to me that it was likely a Seder, and the wafer was matzah and the wine was kosher for Passover wine.

In keeping with an interspiritual theme as we approach this weekend, I am sharing the view of a Sufi as a Potent Quote:

One Interpretation of the Meaning of the Cross

“Yes,” he said, “the cross is a good symbol to describe those two aspects of time. The vertical bar of the cross represents the eternal aspect of time, and the horizontal bar the aspect of passing time. Where the two bars cross, it is possible to see both times at once; the flashes of deep understanding that we have come from that point.”

---from The Invisible Way by Reshad Field

A Perspective on the Ten Plagues

With Passover beginning this weekend, I thought about sharing this little essay from one of my books for your pondering pleasure. That is followed by a provocative quote from Einstein that I somehow felt was related.

A Perspective on The Ten Plagues

Excerpt from Torah Portion Summaries,

With Insights from the Perspective of a Jewish Yogi

By Steven J. Gold

     As we know, the traditional Passover Seder includes a description of the ten plagues that were inflicted on the Egyptian oppressors prior to the release/escape of the Israelites from their bondage. I have not found much discussion about the significance of each particular plague either in the Haggadah or in traditional sources, and usually, what discussion there is focuses on the suffering endured by the Egyptians caused by the plagues.

     During a group study of these events a few years back, it suddenly dawned upon me that we are possibly missing an important lesson by not focusing on the impact on the consciousness of the Hebrew slaves who witnessed these events. Were these events merely to inflict suffering on the Egyptians and illustrate to them the superiority of the Hebrew God and the protection God afforded to His People? What about the effect on the consciousness of these people? Perhaps witnessing these events was important as a preparation for this people which was about to emerge as a newly independent nation. Perhaps the forty years of wandering in the dessert was necessary in order for this people to adequately digest and absorb the inner significance of these events into their collective and individual psyches before they would be ready to enter the Promised Land. What was the significance and nature of each of these plagues? How were they intended to impact and impress the people witnessing them? How are they intended to impact and impress the consciousness of the people reciting them in subsequent Seders year-in-and-year-out? They involve water turning into blood, pestilence in the form of amphibians, insects, land animals, disease affecting livestock, boils affecting humans and livestock, hail with thunder and lightning, locust swarms, darkness, and finally, the death of all first-borns.

     Traditional sources claim that each plague took a total of four weeks. There was first a warning issued by Moses, with the actual plague starting three weeks after the warning, and generally lasting for one week. The first nine are noted by traditional authorities to run in cycles of three. The first two of each group of three are preceded by a warning from Moses, giving Pharaoh a chance to comply with Moses’ request to let the people go and thus avoid the plague, while the third one commences without warning as punishment for Pharaoh breaking earlier promises. This parallels the time of the human gestational period of nine months, divided into three trimesters, so perhaps these can be seen as figurative stages of development in the womb in preparation for birth.

     Why ten plagues? Any correlation with the ten sephirot and the ten commandments?

     There is much food for thought and pondering here. So think about these things the next time you’re munching on your matzos, marror, charoset, and downing your kosher for Passover wine!

Potent Quote – Einstein’s Not-God

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own – a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.

--Albert Einstein

Chant

In keeping with my promise, I am now moving on from the topic of music. I hope some of you enjoyed the carefully curated selections I suggested for your listening pleasure and inspiration. However, for this one time and not any prolonged series, I am moving only slightly away from music to chant, which is admittedly still a form of music with the human voice as the instrument.

Chant in various forms has been an integral part of most spiritual and religious traditions spanning all times and places. As I have often related regarding the Torah and Veda traditions, the teachings were first conveyed and continue to be conveyed through chant. Both the Vedas and Torah first emerged as chant passed on from generation to generation, as is still practiced today, and only later were reduced to written form. There have been many variations of chant that have appeared over the centuries since its primordial emergence, in forms ranging from word to wordless, soft and delicate to passionate and exuberant.

I had been enthralled and inspired by several forms of chant, particularly call and response that is found in parts of traditional Jewish liturgical services and wordless Hasidic nigguns, and similar call and response or repetitive phrase chanting as found in Vedic kirtan. However, on my one and only trip to Israel several years ago as part of a group led by the Jewish Renewal wife and husband pair of Rabbi Marcia Prager and Cantor Jack Kessler, there was a person who joined our group after we arrived in Israel who engaged in what I found to be an interesting and peculiar practice. He chanted in Hebrew quietly all the time, while still engaging in life activities. He had a cheerful and welcoming countenance, although some members of the group found it to be pretentious. Other than it being novel, I didn’t think much of it until some years later, I was introduced to this different approach to chant in the Jewish tradition when I attended a weekend workshop with Rabbi Shefa Gold (no relation). She presented chant practice as an integral way of life, which I realized was similar to some Vedic practices of constantly chanting Sanskrit mantras with the use of a mala (prayer beads) while engaging in all waking life activities. I had encountered such practitioners who had mastered the ability to keep the silent or barely audible chanting going while simultaneously engaging in all everyday life activities, including holding conversations. Shefa Gold promotes a similar practice using Hebrew chant, and I realized that was what our fellow traveler on the Israel trip was doing. If you are interested in this approach or other forms of Hebrew chanting, below is her website and websites for other forms of Hebrew chant. There are several chant audio files in the “Chant/Music” page of this website, but I commend you particularly to two files as particularly good samples of Hebrew chant, “Kol D’mama Daka” (“The still small voice, please listen”), and a “Shalom” (“Peace”).

rabbishefagold.com

Kirtan Rabbi is also great in a different mode:

kirtanrabbi.com

My dear friends in Atlanta, sunmoonpie.com are also wonderful. 

And last but not least, check out https://www.congregationbethaverim.org/downloads