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Rabbi Shoshana's Blog

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Oh, Gather Up the Brokenness: Loving Our Shattered Parts



My sermons draw from Jewish sacred texts, as well as science and mindfulness.


They always have a universally applicable message.



This sermon was delivered on Rosh Hashanah 2024/5785 at Temple Beth El of Portland, Maine, where I have led High Holiday services since 2019.


 

Let’s cross the veil into the place of mythic history for a moment.


Join me on the flank of Mt. Sinai, at the end of Moshe’s first forty days and forty nights with God. The desert sun is setting – there is a vibrant orange glow over the horizon, and a deep indigo dome spreads over the desert sky. A few stars come out. A wind whips up from below the mountain.

 

Moshe, who has just sat for forty days and nights with the presence of God, is rushing down the mountain. We follow silently behind. He cannot hear us or sense us, but we can see and hear him: His panting breath as he picks up speed. His dusty robes fluttering out behind him. The bumps and grainy heft of two stone tablets cradled in his arms – the stone tablets that were hewn and inscribed by the hand of YHVH – the stone symbols of perfect human intimacy with the ever-living creator and sustainer of all.

 

And then we hear it – the sound Moshe is rushing towards. A sound of merriment and revelry in the valley below, floating up over the sparks of a giant bonfire. There! There are shadows of dancers stretching across the Sinai scrub and grasses. Ah, they are circling something… something set apart from the fire, something that catches the fire’s light and reflects it like pure gold. We peer to get a better look, and it is gold, a golden figure of a young bull, perfectly cast with curved horns, a broad snout, and empty golden eyes.

 

We can barely look away, there is so much light and sound in the camp – the fire, the sparks, the statue of the calf, the singing and hollering…

 

But we do look away. We look into Moshe’s face to see what he will do. We look just in time to see his face break into a thousand pieces of grief and rage. His eyes widen and his mouth contorts into a wail that could crack the heavens themselves.

 

And like something physical, we see a wave of immense pain crash through the prophet’s body – and at the wave’s crest are the two stone tablets rising in his arms…The people stop dancing – his cry has torn through their bodies, too… they turn as one and watch with us, as the tablets carved and inscribed by YHVH and cradled in the arms of the prophet come crashing down the side of the mountain, and shatter in the dust.

 

It is for this moment that we have come, because this is where the story as we’ve been told is incomplete.

 

We know that, lying in the dust, hidden among the thorny bushes and the holes where the snakes and scorpions nest, are fragments of the shattered sacred stone.

 

And we know that much later,

after the people have paid the terrible price for the golden calf, 

after Moshe has returned up the mountain to carve new tablets

after Bezalel and the Israelites have constructed the Tabernacle…

after  they build the aron – the sacred container to house those new tablets –

we know that the shattered pieces of the first tablets are laid inside the aron, next to the second, unbroken set.

 

How do we know this?

 

“Carve for yourself two tablets of stone like the...first…,” God tells Moshe after the golden calf. “and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke, and you shall put them in the Ark.” (Exodus 34:1)

 

Place them. Both sets of Tablets, the Talmud teaches. Both the whole second set of tablets and the broken pieces of the first set of tablets were placed in the Ark. (Bava Batra 14b)

 

We know they are there.


But we don’t know who gathered up the shards from the desert floor.

 

We don’t know how the person or people found the shards, camouflaged as they must have been among the scrub brush and pebbles of the arid Sinai desert. Were they crawling on hands and knees? Were they led to each shard by an angel?

 

We don’t know when they gathered the shards. That night? In the darkness, listening to the screams of those who worshipped the golden calf be put to death by the Levites? In the morning, awakening before the rest of the survivors?

 

We don’t know their demeanor as they searched and gathered. Purposeful? Timid? Was it with tears streaming down their faces or grim determination and a set jaw?

 

We don’t know how they felt as they touched the shards – Emptiness? Numb? Awe? Were they grieving loved ones lost to the punishment from the golden calf?

 

We just know, as my dear teacher Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, wrote in her Kol Nidre sermon from 2022, that someone knew these broken pieces, “could not be left behind, that they too needed to be placed in the sacred ark that would accompany the people through the wilderness and beyond.”

 

Oh, gather up the brokenness, and bring it to me now.

The fragrance of those promises you never dared to vow.

 

What are your broken pieces?

 

The disappointments. The betrayals. The traumas. The shame. The losses. The heartbreaks – personal and collective.

 

What wholeness has been shattered for you? What broken pieces are you carrying around, in the sacred ark of your body, the sacred rooms of your heart? What broken pieces have you left on the desert floor, and tried to forget?

 

The splinter that you carried, the cross you left behind.

Come healing of the body, come healing of the mind.

 

In September’s issue of the Atlantic, Stephen Metcalf has an article about Leonard Cohen, who wrote Come Healing, the anthem I’m singing, and which we’ll sing together at the end of this sermon.

 

Metcalf, referencing a new biography of Cohen, explains that the reason Leonard Cohen’s music is so powerful, the reason his concerts saw strangers swaying at the front of the room, sobbing with their arms around each other, is that Leonard Cohen understood that “human beings are inherently fallen creatures.”


The way I understand this word fallen in not in sense of primordial sin. But fallen in the sense that we humans have, in our centers, a longing for a remembered wholeness that we have lost – and continue to lose.

 

The gravity of Cohen’s music and poetry speaks straight to the heart of this fallen human condition.

 

And let the heavens hear it

The penitential hymn

Come healing of the spirit

Come healing of the limb

 

We remember those unbroken tablets.

We remember the sensation of skin on skin with our parents.

We remember getting lost in play as children.

We remember the headiness of romance, the surge of endorphins.

 the dance at the wedding.

We remember being in flow state with our passions.

We remember the rush of strength in our limbs when our bodies align on a run, on a hike, at the gym, in the whir and spin of the wheelchair when we finally get the mobility help we need.

We remember states of transcendence reached through meditation, dance, psychedelics, nature, breath work, prayer – a deep knowing of Oneness. A visceral experience that we are held by a Love beyond all logic or religion.

 

And then we fall.

 

We hurl the tablets to the desert floor in rage.

Our parents cannot attune to us perfectly or at all.

The flow state of childhood is interrupted.

The marriage cannot protect us from loneliness.

We get betrayed.

Our hearts and bodies get hurt.

People whom we cannot live without leave us or die.

War or violence tears at our lives.

We tumble down the mountain and we are back in the world of kitchen sinks and email. The plastic streaming into the oceans. The terrifying news stories. We fall back into the shattered heartbreak for the world. For ourselves. We fall back onto the sharp edges of our insecurities – about our bodies, our worth, our relationships, our careers.

 

The tablets carved and inscribed by God shatter over and over.

 

In Musaf of the High Holidays we chant

Adam y’sodo may afar v’sofo l’afar. Each person’s origin is dust, and end is dust. We are compared to cheres hanishbar– a broken shard…

 

We are crafted of clay in the Potter’s hands, as the song goes on Kol Nidre evening. And we break into pieces later.

 

This isn’t bad. This isn’t a punishment. It simply is.

 

I am reminded of a beautiful teaching I learned from Rabbi James Jacobson-Maisels, director of Or HaLev, a Jewish mindfulness community. When something like a mug breaks, he teaches his students to say:

 

“That was always going to break.”

 

And it’s true. If not now, then years from now. If not years from now, then millennia from now. If not millennia from now, then when the Earth is absorbed back into the Sun.

 

Nothing is whole forever.

 

The story of the golden calf, around which our Yom Kippur liturgy turns, is not a warning story of a people who betray their God.


It is a descriptive story of the human condition.

 

Moshe didn’t know it, but those first tablets? They were always going to break.

 

The question is not how we stop breaking and hurting.

 

The question is how do we relate to those shards when the break happens?

 

How do we hold them? How do we build the discipline to act and attend in a way that brings healing and relief from suffering?

 

As my beloved husband and teacher Yotam Schachter says so beautifully: Vulnerability is not a skill. It’s a fact.


The question is what do we do with it?

 

If you’re willing, hold in your mind one of your personal broken pieces – for the purposes of this exercise, it’s best to pick something that has some charge and pain for you, but not an overwhelming amount. Stay away from really deep trauma, since we don’t have a safe container for you to be with that.

 

A shame. A regret. A stuck place at work or in a relationship, or in parenting. A loss. A past heartbreak. An unfulfilled longing.

 

Now come with me back to the side of Sinai, where the shards are hidden in the scrub brush of the desert. It's you - you are the one who gathered up the broken shards. See, there you are peering through the grass, looking for one.


You find it, at the roots of a bush. Your hand reaches for it. You pick it up. How does it feel against your hand? Notice if you want to hurl it towards the horizon. Notice if you want to bury it and walk away.  

 

Can you caress its edges? Can you press your thumb into a sharp corner? Does the sting feel good? Does it draw blood? Can you hold it in your hand as a talisman? As a comfort? Can you kiss it, cradle it, put it in your pocket, welcome it home to you?

 

Can we relate to the broken shards not as enemy but as teacher?

 

Buddhist teacher, Pema Chodron, writes in her beloved book When Things Fall Apart: “Could we just settle down and have compassion and respect for ourselves? What about practicing not jumping and grabbing when we begin to panic? Relaxing with loneliness is a worthy occupation.” (p. 55)

 

Gathering up the shards of the first tablets, tenderly, is a metaphor for sitting with our pain and not running from it, judging it, or acting out from it. It’s a metaphor for getting curious and compassionate towards our own hurting parts.

 

Tara Brach is another wonderful mindfulness teacher. You can easily access her teachings and soothing voice through her podcasts. Tara teaches a practice called RAIN. R-A-I-N. It’s a practice for sitting with pain, with our broken parts.

 

RAIN stands for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture.

 

I’m going to walk us through RAIN very briefly. If you’d like to do the practice, you can bring back to mind that broken shard you were holding earlier. A shame. A regret. An unfulfilled longing. A past heartbreak.


You can also just listen to the instructions, and later look up one of Tara Brach’s RAIN podcasts to do a full meditation.

 

The R of RAIN is for Recognize. Recognize the hurt you have brought to mind. Name it, realize it is present inside you. If there is physical sensation, recognize it happening. If there are thought patterns that go along with the pain, just recognize them. If you notice self-judgement, just recognize that too.

 

The A of Rain is for Allow. This is a countercultural revolutionary moment. Instead of fighting against the discomfort, allow it to be there. The sensation. The thoughts. Even the self-judgement. Allow means holding the shard instead of hurling it into the desert night. However, you are feeling, however much it hurts, it is allowed. It’s welcome in the room of your heart.

 

The I of RAIN is for Investigate. Investigate what is happening inside you. If you can feel sensation in your body, where do you feel it? Is it hot in your belly? Aching in your heart? If you can’t feel it physically that’s no problem. You can get curious about your thoughts. What are they saying? When have you felt or thought like this before? What emotions are underneath all this distress?

 

The N of RAIN is for nurture. What does the pain you’re holding need from you right now? It may help to picture the pain as a child part of you. What does that child need? It may be as simple as “I love you and I’m here with you.” or “I’m sorry it hurts.” Or “You’re not alone.” You might offer your hurting part a gentle caress above your heart, an alternative to the traditional chest-beating on Yom Kippur. A gentle heart caress with a closed fist, or tender fingers.

 

After the RAIN is the moment of just being with yourself. Noticing any change that may have happened inside you. Any relief from suffering. Any amount of space that wasn’t there before.

 

I’ve found RAIN to be a transformative practice.

 

In the story of the golden calf, vengeful character of God is but a shard of the fullness of the Divine.

 

We call on the fullness of God later in the story, and over and over on our holidays. YHVH, YHVH, El Rachum, v’Chanun… Womb of the world, Compassionate One, Merciful Heart. I call it The Great, Deep, Awesome, and Abiding Love. Capital letters on all those words.

 

The most surprising thing for me about mindfulness in the face of pain is that when I actually do go straight into the middle of the pain, tenderly holding my broken shards, with the right support, I find that Great, Deep, Awesome, and Abiding Love waiting for me, right there, in the middle of the hurt. I don’t mean to glorify suffering. I just mean to notice the transformative practice of sitting in pain without running from it. I have found a fullness there, a presence, a peace that is impossible to find when I am hurling my broken pieces as far from me as I can throw.

 

It is taught in the name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yocḥai, the rabbi who is credited with writing the Zohar, that: … “the ineffable name of God and all of the God’s appellations – nicknames - were placed in the aron, the ark. Alongside the whole tablets. Alongside the broken shards. (Bava Batra 14b)

 

I love this text so much. It seems to indicate that it is not the sliver of a vengeful or angry God who sits with us in our suffering, but the wholeness of divine love - or, if. you prefer to stay away from God language, cosmic source energy. The hum, perhaps, left over from the Big Bang that literally vibrates in every atom of our body. Whether you experience this love or energy as your own higher self, your own deepest heart’s compassion, or the womb of the world, as a mystic I understand all these Loves to be the same.

 

Oh, troubledness concealing an undivided love

The heart beneath is teaching to the broken heart above

 

During the height of the pandemic, I broke my favorite mug. The mug was cobalt blue, with glossy, rainbow pastel glaze that dripped over the rim.

 

I loved this mug.

 

I always wished I had bought more of them when I’d come across the potter at a local Open Studios. The mug represented a particular chapter of my life, when I lived in Jamaica Plain with my boyfriend in my 20s. A lifetime ago, it seems.

 

When the mug slipped and broke into a dozen pieces, my heart hurt like I’d lost a part of myself. I tried to learn Japanese kintsugi – golden adhesive – to put it back the together with gold in the cracks…buuuut…word to the wise: Don’t try your first kintsugi on a favorite mug. I couldn’t get the pieces to fit back together in the right way and the adhesive smelled terrible. In the end, I had to throw most of the pieces away just to get rid of the smell.

 

But I was able to wash one shard. I keep it on my desk, along a shard from my wedding breaking glass. I hold them as I meet with clients, their sharp corners pressed into my thumb as a soothing stimulation, a reminder of the wholeness the pieces once were and the beauty in the brokenness they now are.


It hurts, but it hurts so good.

 

The broken vessels at the start of the Kabbalistic Creation story. The broken tablets at Sinai. The three wails of the sh’varim shofar blast, whose very name means broken. The breaking glass at a wedding.

 

Our tradition is trying to tell us something.

 

My mug was always going to break.

We are all, always, going to break.

 

Let’s gather in the broken pieces tenderly together, that we may be written in the book of Life.

 

Shanah Tova.


Please join me in singing Come Healing, by Leonard Cohen.



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