(19) For the horses of Pharaoh, with his chariots and horsemen, went into the sea; and the Holy One turned back on them the waters of the sea; but the Israelites marched on dry ground in the midst of the sea. (20) Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her in dance with timbrels. (21) And Miriam chanted for them: Sing to the Redeemer, for They have triumphed gloriously; Horse and driver They have hurled into the sea.
What's a Timbrel?
(5) David went out [with the troops], and he was successful in every mission on which Saul sent him, and Saul put him in command of all the soldiers; this pleased all the troops and Saul’s courtiers as well. (6) When the [troops] came home [and] David returned from killing the Philistine, the women of all the towns of Israel came out singing and dancing to greet King Saul with timbrels, shouting, and sistrums.
When the Egyptian nobles observed their viceroy completing his preparations to meet his father, they did the same... The procession that accompanied him was composed of countless men, arrayed in byssus and purple, and marching to the sound of all sorts of musical instruments. Even the women of Egypt had a part in the reception ceremonies. They ascended to the roofs of the houses and the walls of the cities, ready to greet Jacob with the music of cymbals and timbrels.
Miriam was a prophetess, as it is written explicitly: “And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand” (Exodus 15:20). The Gemara asks: Was she the sister only of Aaron, and not the sister of Moses? Why does the verse mention only one of her brothers? Rav Naḥman said that Rav said: For she prophesied when she was the sister of Aaron, i.e., she prophesied since her youth, even before Moses was born, and she would say: My mother is destined to bear a son who will deliver the Jewish people to salvation. And at the time when Moses was born the entire house was filled with light, and her father stood and kissed her on the head, and said to her: My daughter, your prophecy has been fulfilled.
But once Moses was cast into the river, her father arose and rapped her on the head, saying to her: My daughter, where is your prophecy now, as it looked as though the young Moses would soon meet his end. This is the meaning of that which is written with regard to Miriam’s watching Moses in the river: “And his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him” (Exodus 2:4), i.e., to know what would be with the end of her prophecy, as she had prophesied that her brother was destined to be the savior of the Jewish people.
פועה, שהופיעה פנים כנגד אביה, שהיה עמרם ראש סנהדרין באותה שעה, כיון שגזר פרעה, ואמר (שמות שם, כב): כל הבן הילוד. אמר עמרם: ולריק ישראל מולידים?! מיד הוציא את יוכבד ופרש עצמו מתשמיש המטה, וגרש את אשתו כשהיא מעוברת משלשה חודשים. עמדו כל ישראל וגרשו את נשותיהן. אמרה לו בתו: גזרתך קשה משל פרעה, שפרעה לא גזר אלא על הזכרים, ואתה על הזכרים ונקבות! פרעה רשע הוא, וגזרתו ספק מתקימת ספק אינה מתקימת, אבל אתה צדיק, וגזרתך מתקימת! עמד הוא והחזיר את אשתו, עמדו כל ישראל והחזירו את נשותיהם. הוי, פועה, שהופיעה פנים כנגד אביה:
...[Miriam] was called Puah because of her insolence which, in this depiction, was directed against her father Amram. When Pharaoh ordered the Israelite boys to be cast into the Nile, Amram said: “Shall an Israelite lie with his wife for nothing?” He immediately separated from Jochebed and divorced her. When the Israelites saw this action by Amram, who was the head of the Sanhedrin at the time, they also divorced their wives. Puah told her father: “Father, your decree is harsher than that of Pharaoh! He only decreed against the males, but you have decreed against both the males and the females. It is doubtful whether the decree of the wicked Pharaoh will come to pass, but you are righteous, and so your decree will be fulfilled.” Amram immediately took back his wife, and following his lead, all the other Israelite men did the same. Miriam was accordingly given the name of Puah, since she was insolent (hofi’ah panim) to her father.
Shofar (Ram’s Horn) made under perilous conditions in the forced labor camp Skarzysko-Kamienna in Poland in 1943
The idea of making a shofar was initiated by the Radoszyce Rabbi, Rabbi Yitzhak Finkler, who was incarcerated in the camp. He yearned to fulfill the commandment of blowing the shofar at the Jewish New Year. Finding the horn of a ram, as required by Jewish law for the making of a shofar, was far from a simple task. A Polish guard was bribed and brought a horn to the camp but it turned out to be the horn of an ox. Only in exchange for a further bribe did he bring a ram’s horn. The Rabbi approached Moshe Winterter, whom he knew from Piotrkow and asked him to make the shofar. He did not agree at first. Preparing an item which was not an armament in the metal workshop, or even carrying something from the workshop to the barracks, carried with it a penalty of immediate death.
In spite of the danger, Moshe Winterter carried out the task and on the eve of the holiday brought the shofar to the Rabbi. Word spread and on the holiday eve the inmates gathered for prayers and to hear the sounds of the shofar.
Moshe Winterter kept the shofar with him throughout his incarceration in Skarzysko-Kamienna and managed to keep it with him even when he was transferred to the camp at Czestochowa. When he was transferred from there to Buchenwald it remained in Czestochowa until the camp was liberated. At that time, the shofar was passed on to the local Jewish community and later taken to the United States. Moshe Winterter immigrated to Israel after the war. In 1977 he assisted in its transfer to Yad Vashem for safe keeping.
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/live_with_honor/shofar.asp
Reb Nachman's Prayer:
God, I stand beaten and battered by the countless manifestations of my own inadequacies. Yet we must live with joy. [We must] overcome despair, seek pursue and find every inkling of goodness, every positive point within ourselves – and so discover true joy. Aid me in this quest, O God. Help me find satisfaction and a deep, abiding pleasure in all that I have, in all that I do, in all that I am.
http://www.rabbidebra.com/rules-for-joy.html
Entering the Gate of Sadness
Jay Michaelson
This is about what always is and what only sometimes is.
This is about the paradox that sadness and joy are the same.
This is not a parable.
*
Sometimes a crumb falls from the tables of joy
Sometimes a bone is flung.
To some people love is given,
To others, only heaven.
Langston Hughes
*
When Jacob the Patriarch awakens from his dream, he says "God was in this place -- and I, I did not know." In Jacob's stuttering realization lies the true secret, not the one advertised on television but the one which awakens hearts: that for all our doubting of the existence of God, God is here and we are not.
Jacob does not say that God suddenly showed up. Rather, God -- It, What I Want, This, The Point, Enlightenment, The Good, The One; all of those many synonyms for whatever we think we can designate as holy, worthwhile, or sacred -- was always there. Where were we? Complaining, or paying the bills.
Always there -- not sometimes there. That is to say, contemplative practice is not about ontology. Ontologically, we're always It, always God, always swimming in the infinite. But epistemologically, psychologically, emotionally -- we don't know it. This is why the Jewish language for mystical union is made up of gerunds: devekut, sticking to God like glue; achdut, unification. States of being which do not change being, but change our relationship to it.
At the beginning of the spiritual path, the purpose of practice is to cultivate more of these states; more devekut, more hitlahavut (fiery ecstasy), more hitbonnenut (quiet contemplation). In so doing, it is possible to spend more time in an expanded mind (mochin d'gadlut) and less in the contracted one (mochin d'katnut).
Gradually, however, this path becomes a cul-de-sac. It is impossible to always keep getting higher, and even if it were possible, it is, in the Jewish tradition at least, irresponsible. Not only are their mouths to feed and promises to keep, there are injustices to mend and suffering to ease. There are families, responsibilities, and expressions of the soul; friends and communities; obligations and delights. Is all of human life to be aligned with a single axis of value, with one form of devekut the only goal worth pursuing?
As that question comes to be answered in the negative, a further stage of the spiritual path is required -- one in which the peak experience is replaced with the awareness that was once present only during the peak experience being extended to ever-greater spheres of our experience. This is the psychological extension of the ein sof, the Infinite, which comes to reflect the ontological reality of infinitude itself: that now, both the laundry and the ecstasy are holy.
And "holiness" itself changes its character. At first, "holy" meant connected times, beautiful times, blissful times; now it means anytime. Even "good" begins to shift from its conventional meaning into a panentheistic reality in which even that which is deeply satisfying is, in some non-moral and non-communicative way, deeply tov, good. Now contemplative practice ceases to be about a certain kind of peak, wonderful, joyous, experience, and becomes about the transformation of any kind of experience into one of holiness, or at least of worthiness.
Easy when you're reading a little essay. Hard when you're doubled over in pain, or mourning, or just going to the bathroom. Is this moment worthy? This one? This one? Clearly, "worthy" cannot mean "okay" or "it's all God's will." Concepts mar the simplicity of what is.
But what about the times at which our illusory wills and selfish interests seem to us to be the entirety of life's meaning? Are we, at these times, totally lost? What about the times when we have suffered a loss, and feel we cannot recover -- when, no matter how many lovely poems we read about God or enlightenment, no matter how many trite self-help books we have digested, we still feel sad?
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One should note that Joseph often cried. In fact there are no less that eight references in the Torah to him doing so. One who has suffered greatly in bad times will cry easily even in good times. The brothers, on the other hand, who had not suffered in their lives, did not even cry when the situation demanded that they should. And as Joseph even cried at the distress of others, he was worthy of attaining his high rank.
Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin (1881-1966) in Oznayim La-Torah
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The Jewish morning prayer service begins with the words of a non-Jewish prophet, Balaam, who had been sent to curse the Israelites by a foreign king. The Torah tells that on his journey to curse Israel, Balaam had been blind to the reality of God's presence. Even his donkey had seen that angels were accompanying them (and blocking their way), but Balaam was on an errand. Maybe you know this feeling, when you're so busy rushing and worrying and planning that you do not see what is around you. I certainly do.
After a series of extraordinary events, Balaam finally does open his eyes, and by the time he arrives at the Israelite camp, he is filled with insight. Instead of a curse, he says: mah tovu ohalecha ya'akov, mishkenotecha yisrael. Which means: how good are your tents, Jacob; your dwelling places, Israel.
The sentence is really a parallel construction of two clauses: one about the tents of Jacob, the other about the dwelling places of Israel. Come and see: Jacob's first act was to grasp the ankle of his twin brother, Esau, as they came out of the womb. As a boy, he lived in the shadow of his older, stronger brother, and he schemed to obtain Esau's blessing and birthright. Jacob is the grasper, the small-mind, the part that hurts and yearns and cheats and steals -- all of that shadow. He lives in a closed tent.
Dwelling places of Israel, on the other hand -- that is the place of expansion. Mishkan is the word for the Divine altar. Don't we all want that -- to be godwrestlers, or the builders of places in which the Indwelling Presence of Divinity can abide? Surely the point is to be more like Israel and less like Jacob -- right?
Not the way the text is written. Balaam does not say that only Israel's dwelling places are good. Nor does he say how great it is when our finite tents are transformed into places for the Infinite. Rather, both sides are tov, good.
We are here, with bodies, with hearts, minds, and souls. We cry when we are hurt and laugh when we are joyful. This is tov -- Good. It is tov when we make our lives into dwelling places for holiness, and it is also tov when we are suffering.
And not merely "good." According to the Zohar, the masterwork of the Kabbalah, the word Mah, which ordinarily means 'what' or 'how,' is a signifier of the Shechinah, the Divine Presence Herself. So when Balaam says mah tovu, he isn't just saying AHow good are your tents..." he is saying AHow God are your tents..."
In other words, that ultimate Goodness, the Presence of God, however you understand what it is you most want to be -- it inheres both in times of Israel, when we feel expanded and wonderful, and times of Jacob, when we don't. Devekut, merging with God, is all-inclusive.
Logically, this is obviously the case.
If God is everywhere and fills all of creation, God is right here, now, in your mind and outside your mind, in fact there is no inside or outside, no separate self or separate anything, and this moment is arising only within primordial Awareness.
It's not that your personal tents of Jacob, your constricted places are Aokay" because they are part of life. Those places are God in that moment.
Put simply, “This Is It." This moment, even if it is flavored with sadness, is It -- the Big It, God, the Friend, Enlightenment, the Now, Being, Awareness. There are no bells and whistles to announce God's Presence: only the opened mind of the one who is present with It.
When we cry, when we feel isolated, when we encounter loneliness or pain -- that is God in the guise of crying, or isolation. There is no inside or outside to God; the One Being is what is around you right now, and what is inside you. Thus the gate of sadness teaches that all of our soul is purely God, even those parts which our egos regret or despise.
*
Lama Surya Das says: “The only thing that keeps us from happiness is searching for it."
Does that seem like a “paradox” to you? It is not a paradox.
Zeek Magazine, August 2007
“From Where Did the Israelites Get Timbrels in the Desert?”
Miriam, the Women, and Playing the Long Game toward Liberation
Aryeh Bernstein
“Miriam the Prophet, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with flutes” (Exodus 15:20). So teaches this week’s Torah portion in the immediate aftermath of the Song of the Sea, or, better, perhaps in generation of the Song of the Sea, as my beloved teacher, Rav Bonna Devora Haberman, z”l, taught.
The early Midrashic work Mekhilta of R. Yishmael asks a fundamental question:
“But from where did the Israelites get timbrels & dance-flutes in the desert?!”
“?!וכי מנין היו להם לישראל תופים ומחולות במדבר”
This question is deceptively perceptive. On its face, it asks a technical question, but at its heart is a profoundly human one: How does liberation happen? How does it actually happen? If real human beings under real oppression are really emerging from it, what are the mechanics? How does a bunch of slaves who just made a run for it get timbrels and flutes in the desert? Consider the midrash’s answer:
“Rather, righteous people were confident and knew that the Holy Blessed One was doing miracles & mighty things for them, so when they left Egypt, they constructed timbrels and flutes.”
“.אלא הצדיקים היו מובטחים ויודעים שהקב”ה עושה להם נסים וגבורות. עת שיוצאין ממצרים והתקינו להם תופים ומחולות”
A few lessons can be learned here. No, I’ll say it more strongly: I think we are at our peril if we don’t learn these lessons, and truly internalize them:
1) Confidence is crucial and precedes triumph; redemption requires swagger. Even though the Israelites were long-time slaves, some had the confidence to prepare for triumph. Maybe being commanded to despoil the Egyptians on their way out helped them build up that confidence. That is, being assured that their labor was valuable — that they are valuable — that they were owed reparations, and that they had the backing and even the obligation to confront their oppressors to demand them, is profoundly constitutive of human dignity and confidence.
2) Liberation needs celebration: There’s a time for confrontations, and morbidity; there’s also a time to bust out those instruments and shake your booty. Some Israelite women understood that. Liberation that doesn’t pass through song and dance may be a mirage.
3) Liberation requires preparation. The midrash could have said that their confidence led them to bring the instruments they already had. It could have easily said that these timbrels and flutes were in the spoils they took them from the Egyptians. No, they made them. Real swagger isn’t just spontaneous and in the moment. It plans ahead.
4) Granted, the language of the midrash for “righteous people”, is the “all-inclusive”, masculine “tzadikim”, but it’s hard not to read this as especially the women who were doing the preparation work with the instruments, since it’s the women who have and use the instruments. Throughout the exodus story, women, at the bottom of the totem pole, reject the option of trying to socially climb into slightly less subordinate positions by selling out their people, but understand that real freedom requires solidarity and dignity. It’s the women who are the swaggering, well-prepared, freedom-fighters who understand that celebration is at the heart of liberation. Rashi, commenting on this verse, understands this when he renders the midrash in the feminine:
.מובטחות היו צדקניות שבדור שהקדוש ברוך הוא עושה להם נסים והוציאו תופים ממצרים
“Righteous women of that generation were confident that the Holy Blessed One was doing miracles for them, so they brought out timbrels from Egypt.”
Making instruments takes time. That means that during Egyptian captivity, before seeing the shocking slaying of the first born or the wondrous parting of the sea, during the dark hour of oppression, these women played the long game, banked on liberation, believed that it was coming, and prepared for it painstakingly. Victory does not come just through playing defense against crisis, but, even in hours much darker than ours, playing a long game to win.
#TorahForTheResistance
https://jewschool.com/2017/02/78630/israelites-get-timbrels-desert/