Dvar Torah Terumah
2013/5773
Behind the ‘Screen’
There is the story of a time of drought,
And one gentleman decided to give a dinar to a poor person
on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. His wife
became upset with him and he left to sleep in a cemetery where he heard two
spirits speaking to one another. One of
those spirits wished to travel ‘behind the pargod, the screen’ to find out what
misfortune would come to the world.
The screen is the veil that separates God from the world, or
as Rashi puts it, between the Ruler and the people.
Harry Potter fans may recall the gate of the ‘veil’ in the
Department of Mysteries, the one way door between the world of the living and the
dead. A person can hear only muffled
voices from behind the veil, and Harry’s godfather Sirius Black gets taken into
the other world during a battle there.
There is a darkness about these two stories, one from the
Talmud, one from popular literature of our day.
They suggest that the separation wall between our world and the ‘other
world’ is one that we cross to discover misfortune or death. But mystery need not be negative, nor
scary. Separation between the world of
the Divine and human can increase curiosity and wonder. It can set appropriate boundaries that keep
us at a safe distance from the harm of approaching too close to a world that we
should not ‘see’ with our own eyes.
God instructs the Israelites to create a parochet, a screen,
to cordon the Holiest spot in the Mishkan – the Tabernacle – the portable
sanctuary we carry through the wilderness for 40 years. This screen reminds the priests to respect
this most holy place, a place that even the high priest may not enter but one
day a year, Yom Kippur, to cleanse and atone sins.
There are many days when God feels distant, hidden away
behind the screen and inaccessible. We,
our loved ones, and friends struggle with relationships, health, any number of
life challenges that bury us in sadness, loss, pain, disillusionment. We want to find compassion from God, a sense
of peace that we desperately lack in these moments and every effort to grasp
some sign or signal that there is order beyond the chaos amounts to nothing.
While we cannot enter the Mind of God, we can allow our
inner voice, the unscripted natural reaction of ourselves to living in a world
that is filled with God’s invisible Presence and energy, we can allow this
voice to help us, to potentially help us…
Guided Meditation: Let’s take a moment to breathe, to release tension of the
past week, eyes open or closed, hands on lap, let random thoughts that come up
move to the side of your mind until we’re done, picture a room – a room with a
screen or curtain in the middle, hiding the area behind it, you cannot see
behind the screen, but you feel a warmth, you feel a Presence, you are not
alone, what does the screen look like? Color? Design? Texture? Thickness? See
it from top to bottom. Without saying anything out loud here, see
yourself speaking toward the screen or sending a thought of a challenge in life
you are facing toward the screen and through it – see the words or thoughts as
light moving forward and thru the fabric, what color are the thoughts? Wait a moment to allow all the light to go
through the screen. A voice, more than a
whisper but not a loud sound, speaks back through the screen or unworded
thoughts come to you. An answer. Hear the response carefully and repeat it to
yourself, once, twice, three times…hear it…hold onto it…
Let’s slowly return to this room, notice your breathing,
feel feet on the floor. Anyone like to
share re: screen, color of thoughts, did the answer you receive surprise
you-did you get an answer?
My prayer is that we may hear God’s voice buzzing throughout
the world and that the screen that shades the Divine from the human does not
prevent words and wisdom from coming across, from the world of pure energy to
the world of matter, from the world of mystery into the world we know best
where the experience of the present can be opaque and disheartening, but where
we can have courage to look beyond and find new sources of help and
inspiration.
Shabbat Shalom.
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