Every week, a portion of the five books of
Moses, known as the Torah, is read in the synagogue. The reading that I wanted
to share some of my insights, and questions regarding is the portion known as פרשׁת
וִיַרְא, Parashat
Vayire. The part of the portion that I discuss in this piece, consists
essentially of Genesis, Chapter 18 &
19.
It is, to put it mildly, a heck of a text. It has 3 angels visiting Abraham, to tell him and Sara, both approaching their 100th year of life, that she was going to have a baby. It contains the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, with Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt. Then we have Abraham's lying about Sara being his sister, and finally the binding of Isaac.
As much as I would have liked to have completed the whole chapter, at this stage, I am sharing just up to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorroh and Lot's ending up in a cave in the mountains with his two daughters.
Whenever I approach these texts more closely,
I keep in mind the environment in which this story takes place, which, I have
to admit, was probably something a lot different from that which we are
accustomed to today. Ignoring the lack of “modern technology”for the moment,
let us note some of the strangenesses that were spoken of from those days. Let
that strangeness allow us to open our minds to the non-rational, or perhaps the
supra-rational.
Using shaman methodology to investigate this
story, I look at what part of it could be a journey, and what part of it could
fit into my understanding of what I will refer to, as the “3D” or“consensual”
reality in which we live. I do that because I take the journey to be one that
will take me to a non-material realm. And the non-material realm is where the
spiritual begins. For it is the realm of the ideal, of the vow, of the Brit.
|
“HaShem appeared to him”
|
וירא אליו יהוה
|
Approaching it from the English rendering, in
which the Parasha begins with the nameless aspect of G!d, HaShem, the one we refer to as the Name, because It
has no name, being beyond the realm of naming. Part of creation’s emergence was the need for
Adam to name everything. HaShemthen is beyond this realm being the source of
creation, the “One” that exists before creation. Now, this could alert us to
the fact that this portion is starting in the presence of the Divine, “For HaShem
appeared to him”, thus he must be in sacred space. We could say that he was
visited by the Divine.
In the Hebrew, the first word is not HaShem,
but is ויראVayirah. It is also the name of the chapter,
and can be rendered as “It (HaShem) will
be seen,” a form of looking that is the looking into the future, “You will see”, and hence “appeared”, because of the biblical
future tense being rendered as the past.
I find this straddling, this con-fusion of the
past and the future fascinating. It generally occurs in reference to the Divine
though. It is as if She acts in the future, that is, exists as the future, as
pregnant with possibilities. The “past” is
what has been actualised, been made manifest. But HaShem remains the only
possible, potential, action.
In the Hebrew, HaShem is not the second word
either – it is the third. Thus it intimates that first there needs to be the
act of seeing, which requires also looking. In order for it to appear, he must
have been looking for it, and then found, i.e. seeing, it. And this requires
astillness, an ability to hear, to receive.
Read more!
