Bibliomancy: A Recollection from My Teen Years

BIBLIOMANCY (use of the Bible or other sacred text for divination)

In an in-depth Talmud class the other night, looking at Sanhedrin perek 10, considering the prohibition of using a certain verse from the Torah as an incantation to heal a wound (a verse that, weirdly to me given this prohibition, is in the bedtime Shema!), the rabbi mentioned that in some varieties of Orthodoxy, bibliomancy is practiced, using the letters of the Rebbe or the like, and I mentioned a couple of examples I’ve run across in Christianity.

The Roman Catholic religious order I was in, the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, entered the Roman Catholic denomination in 1909, but were founded as an order in the Episcopal Church in 1898. The Episcopal priest who founded them got the name “Atonement” from a New Testament verse he opened to at random in the pulpit Bible in his church one Sunday afternoon after praying (and there were a couple of other verses of significance to the order he similarly found).

But as a teenager, I knew someone personally who practiced bibliomancy with her Bible. Although raised Baptist, she was involved in the charismatic movement, in the prosperity gospel end of things, and met my father through some charismatic event (I think at a local charismatic Bible school event run by a very sketchy evangelist). She paid for a trip to Hawaii for my parents (I stayed with other friends they had met through a charismatic church we attended for a few months – the husband gave my parents some far-right Christian nationalist publications which were quite frightening and appalling – and I got macadamia nuts and the autobiography of Karl Hilton from my parents on their return). She would frequently pray and then open her Bible, put her finger on a verse, and assume that was “G!d” speaking to her.

She was, despite her religiosity, one of the most overtly narcissistic and frankly greedy materialists I’ve ever met. She was not a member of one particular church, but would go to different churches. (She did once go to the United Methodist church I had joined to introduce some stability into my religious life and start distancing myself from my parents’ toxic fundamentalism – and that was the Sunday the associate pastor gave a benediction in which he prayed for the “grease of our Lord Jesus Christ” to be on the congregation – he had meant to say “grace and peace” – and the congregation dissolved into laughter – and she said afterward she needed the laugh.) She had been involved in a divorce proceeding with her wealthy husband – whom she claimed only became wealthy through her efforts – for over seven years. At one point, she wanted to hide assets in my parents’ bank account – and my father was stupid enough to agree – my mother and I objected, so he condescendingly had this awful woman talk with us to persuade us otherwise. I was not persuaded (not even “Almost Persuaded” as the emotionally manipulative altar call hymn is entitled) – but as a minor, I had no real say. But rather than settling the divorce and start over with what were, by her own admission, quite brilliant business skills, she wasted many years of her life fighting with her ex-husband over their assets. Her ex-husband was indeed most likely a terrible person – but she made it clear she wouldn’t be satisfied until she took EVERYTHING he owned. (She only had one adult daughter who already had a child by the time we met her – and the daughter was from a prior marriage.)

She also gave me three birthday presents in successive years – two years in a row, she very insultingly gave me copies of the SAME Bible story book written for kids 9-12 – I was in my teens and had already studied New Testament Greek and pored over my father’s copy of the Interpreter’s Bible Dictionary and felt profoundly unseen. Another year, she gave me a key to some motel room she had stayed in – she couldn’t remember the city – which was very weird and, in retrospect, profoundly creepy. I’m certain nothing physically ever happened between her and my father, but it was definitely an emotional affair, and my mother, who was pretty miserable at that point as the only breadwinner, after my father had been fired from four churches in two denominations, was made even more miserable by this woman’s relationship with my father – and her periodic descent on the household to consume all the oxygen with her drama.

I went off to college and my parents ended up as Southern Baptist missionaries to Iowa to convert the heathen (Lutherans and Catholics, but the one – and only – good outcome of my father’s involvement in the charismatic movement was becoming more ecumenically minded, so he was actually friends with the ALC/thenELCA and RC pastors). At one point, there was a “revival” and my father had a friend who was a bivocational Southern Baptist minister and jeweler come preach for it. This awful woman also came. She and this minister fell in love and got married quite quickly – even though my parents urged caution and going more slowly. It was at least her third marriage – maybe her fourth. It ended in an acrimonious divorce and she blamed my parents (who deserve blame for much – but not for this, since they had urged caution!) and largely stopped talking to them, other than Christmas cards.

When my father died and I was going through their address book to notify people, I decided to send her a notice – but NOT include any of my contact information, since I do not need that kind of insanity back in my life. I later googled her – she had a charitable remainder unitrust (which is not something one has without some wealth), gave money to a right-wing Texas fundamentalist politician, and got stuck in a snowbank and was rescued by some college students. She has since died, having lived into her 80s.

Good times.

Gematria

Place

G!d Squared

Creation Place

Place I was nearly murdered! Place I fled from, away from my would-be murderer – my father – and in the flight is Life and Powers and torrential rains that washed away my tears and my fears and my destroyed dreams and caused new life to spring forth

Place where I build the Sanctuary – and it gets destroyed – and

Place where I rebuild the Sanctuary – and it gets destroyed – and

Place where I rebuild the Sanctuary . . .

G!d Squared

Place

The Shabbat Bride/Queen is . . . David HaMelech? First Take

My friend Netanel Zellis-Paley, on Twitter, asked for everyone's spiciest Judaism take, and this occurred to me Friday night while reading Arthur Green's A Guide to the Zohar, so I tweeted it in response as my spiciest take. I will post an expanded version later on.

Kabbalah teaches that Malchut/Shechinah is the alienated bride who desperately longs to be reunited with her male lover, G!d, which happens on Shabbat when Malchut is the Shabbat bride. (This is already a very traditional take that was spicy in its day.) There are figures from the Tanach associated with each sefirah. The ones primarily talked about are the male figures. The figure associated with Malchut? David HaMelech.

Many readings of David and Yonatan see it as more than a friendship, but rather as a gay love relationship. II Samuel 1:26 has David saying Yonatan's love was more wonderful than that of women and I Samuel 20 seems to be about lovers forced to part, with 20:41 perhaps referring to a physical sign of arousal on David's part toward Yonatan. Therefore, I think one can read Malchut/Shechinah and G!d's love story as a gay love story, and the Shabbat Espoused as David - and this is how I will think of it going forward, as a gay man, when reciting Lecha Dodi and Ka Gavna, on Friday nights.

HaAkud

He never really paid much attention to me before. Sure, he threw a big party for me when I was weaned, but that was more about him proving what a big man he was, not really about me. The only person who paid attention to me that day and played with me was my older brother Ishmael, and my mother, whose picture is in the dictionary next to the word “overprotective,” got so jealous because she hated his mother, my Aunt Hagar, for sleeping with my father AT HER REQUEST that she had both of them sent into the wilderness. Worst day ever.

Well, until that fateful day when my father took me and a couple of servants and the family donkey on a trip to make a sacrifice. The three days’ journey was great, camping out under the stars. It’s the first time he really paid attention to me as anything other than a prop for his fantasy of being a rich wealthy family man.  Or so I thought. Once he and I set out to climb the mountain, with me carrying the wood, naturally, it slowly dawned on me that he didn’t leave the others behind to spend quality father-son time together. No – he was going to sacrifice me – I later found out because the Holy Terror in the Sky told him to. And he nearly went through with it, too, until that angel stopped it!

We ended up sacrificing a ram caught in the thicket. It smelled soooo good – I’ve loved wild game ever since. But when it came time to go back, I knew I had to run away – no way could I spend another minute with that sociopath.

It was hard and I had to find my own way – but it was the best decision I ever made. I never spoke to him again – and now that he is gone, I do not regret that decision one bit.

I eventually realized that the Holy Terror in the Sky wasn’t the G!d I came to know and I learned to pray in the field in the evening when I go out to meditate. But finding G!d was very much in spite of my father, and not because of it. And I will never forget how distant G!d felt in that moment when the knife was descending to kill me.

I still wake up in a cold sweat sometimes, feeling the ropes binding me to the cold sharp stones of the altar.

Ahavah and the Need for Gevurah

Today, in a chasidus shiur with Rabbi Nissan Antine, we looked at a piece by the Sfas Emes on Noach, but it came up that the gematria for אהבה, love, and אחד, one, are the same - 13.

It occurs to me that in the Akedah, G!d tells Avraham to offer your son, your only one יְחִֽידְךָ֤, whom you love אָהַ֙בְתָּ֙, Yitzchok - with the two middle words derived from אהבה, love, and אחד, one.

Avraham is associated with chesed, or lovingkindness (hard to translate), and unbounded, this can lead to a lack of boundaries that can result in harm to others - as it did, clearly, with Yitzchok in the Akedah, who did not return with his father and never spoke with him again in the Torah. I think of Magen Avraham, the shield of Avraham, in the end of the first blessing of the Amidah, as being as much about shielding others from Avraham's harm as it is about shielding Avraham from harm by others.

G!d can navigate Oneness and Love through Tzimtzum, withdrawal, to allow others to thrive - but we must have Gevurah, strength/boundary-setting (associated with Yitzchok), to be able to express it appropriately.

And the Princes of Pharaoh Saw Her: The Permutation of the Divine Name for Tishri

There is a kabbalistic practice found in some Chasidic siddurim in which, during Musaf of Rosh Chodesh, there are four-word phrases taken from different verses in the Tanach, whose first or last letters spell out a permutation of the Tetragrammaton. There is a different permutation and corresponding phrase for each of the twelve months of the year, with all twelve being used in Adar Sheni in leap years. The phrase for Tishri is from Genesis/Bereshit 12:16, וַיִּרְא֤וּ אֹתָהּ֙ שָׂרֵ֣י פַרְעֹ֔ה - “and the princes of Pharaoh saw her [Sarah]” – and it contains important insights for the month of Tishri.

This phrase is taken from the account of Avraham and Sarah going down to Egypt during a famine to find food. Avraham fears that if the Egyptians know that she is his wife they will kill him, and so he decides that they will dishonestly say instead that they are brother and sister. (I realize that there is a rabbinic interpretation that they really are half-siblings so that it isn’t an outright lie – but even if this is the case (I’m not convinced that it is), concealing the primary relationship, which is spousal, is still a form of profoundly deceitfulness.) Predictably, Pharaoh’s princes see her and how beautiful she is, with the result that Pharaoh attempts to marry her. He is struck with some sort of plague, along with his household, and returns Sarah to Avraham, expels them, sending them away with gifts.

Sarah is led into deceit about who she is – into living inauthentically, at least at that time – by Avraham. When we allow others – even and especially those closest to us – to cause us to live a lie – to live inauthentically, serious problems follow, both for us (Sarah is taken by Pharaoh) and others (Pharaoh and his household are struck with plagues for treating her as if she is someone other than her authentic self).

It's interesting that the letters for the word for “princes” are the same as for Sarah’s name at this point in Bereshit/Genesis, שרי/Sarai. Vocalized differently, this could be read as “They saw her, Sarai of Pharaoh.” So by living inauthentically, she comes to be seen as especially associated with the king of Mitzrayim – read midrashically as “narrow places” – the very places of oppression from which the Jewish people are redeemed in the exodus. By being intimately associated with Pharaoh, she ceases to be seen as a full human being created b’tzelem Elokim – in the image of G!d – but rather as an appendage to Pharaoh, a very narrow place indeed.

What does this have to do with Tishri?

First, the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the time for intense teshuvah. We learn from this phrase about Sarah that we are meant to be our authentic selves –and yet we live inauthentically and are seen as someone else, as Sarah was – with disastrous results. The Chasidic Rebbe Zusha lay dying and was weeping, and when his chasidim asked why, he said, “I’m not worried that G!d will ask me why I was not more like Moshe Rabbenu or David HaMelech – I’m worried G!d will ask me why I was not more like Zusha!” This is how G!d judges us each Yom Kippur (and every day, truth be told) – why are we not more like our authentic selves? The teshuvah/repentance/return we must do is to return to who we really are – as unique human beings – and not as the inauthentic selves we develop in the hope that it will preserve us from problems with others.

Second, Sukkot reminds us of the impermanence of life – we dwell in shacks that provide only temporary shelter, for a week. Sarah and Avraham go to Egypt temporarily during a famine, yet they find the need during this temporary sojourn to live inauthentically. Sukkot is zman simchatenu, the time of our joy – and joy cannot come from inauthenticity. To find true joy in this temporary life, we must be who we truly are – that is the message of this phrase for Sukkot.

Finally, it is interesting that the first two letters and the last two letters of the Tetragramaton are inverted – rather than yud-kay-vav-kay, it becomes vay-kay-yuk-kay. This reversal of the two pairs points to the reversal of true priorities – living as our authentic selves must come before how we are seen by others. Only when we do this, can the Divine Name be restored to its correct order.

May we take the lessons of this phrase and this permutation of G!d’s Name into our teshuvah and our simchah.

Thanks to Joey Eisman, with whom I have discussed the importance of returning to our authentic selves as part of teshuvah, and to Rabbi Ben Greenberg, Cantor Naomi Hirsch, Charles Schnur, and Shirley C in remembering who the story about Reb Zusha was told about.

Akedah 5783: The Quest for the [Un]/Binding of Isaac

I have been a part of a number of different religious groups in my life (I’m now referring to this as my “sectually promiscuous” past) and, at one point in my very early thirties, was a part of a Roman Catholic religious order. One priest in the order who did not like me wrote what he thought was a negative comment in an evaluation that said “Tim seems to be on a spiritual quest” – and this was one of the most puzzling things I have ever read – I couldn’t imagine (and still can’t imagine) how any clergyperson of any religious tradition could be worth their salt WITHOUT being on a spiritual quest. I took a class at a local synagogue last spring that studied Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book Man’s Quest for God and shared this story in the first session and was heartened to learn that the rabbi teaching the class and the other participants share my view.

I have also been obsessed with the Akedah for three decades, since in some ways it seems to serve as a parable for my own childhood, in which my fundamentalist Christian minister father was willing to metaphorically sacrifice me to his ministry and religious mania. I believe Avraham failed the test (he should have argued with G!d as he did for the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah) and read the story through a lens of the trauma Yitzchak experienced. Yet I still see new insights in the story and the reading of the Akedah on this year’s second day of Rosh Hashanah landed differently for me this year.

I took a class with Rabbanit Goldie Guy on Rebbe Nachman last year and she introduced me to his teaching about Ayeh/Where, in which he teaches that discovering that one is in a place of filth far from G!d and asking, “Ayeh/Where is the place of G!d’s glory?” (from the Musaf Kedusha for Shabbat), “this, this, is the essence of his rectification and ascent” (Likutei Moharan, Part 2, 12:11). He goes on to say that Yitzchak’s question to Avraham as they ascend Mt. Moriah, “Where is the lamb for the olah/burnt-offering?” shows that this is the means of spiritual ascent (“olah” also means “ascent”):

This is also the concept of the olah (burnt-offering), as in “but ayeh (where) is the lamb for the olah?” (Genesis 22:7). [Asking] “Ayeh?” is itself the concept of the lamb for the olah to rectify and atone for those thoughts in the heart that stem from the “filthy places.” For it is through the concept of Ayeh that a person is rectified and oleh (ascends) from there, as mentioned above. (Likutei Moharan 12:16)

Learning this shifted my understanding of the Akedah (see http://www.timcravens.com/2022/02/where-is-lamb-for-ascent.html for my first response to this learning).

Today, it shifted again for me slightly – “Where?” is the lamb for the ascent – the means of ascent – because it is the invitation to a spiritual quest to answer the question. Yitzchak does not return with Avraham to join the servants and goes his separate way – possibly to a yeshiva (one midrash), possibly to join his brother Yishmael (a more modern theory), possibly to do something else. But he must follow this quest – because it is his raising this question that begins his spiritual quest that is the REAL sacrifice. (NOT the pshat/literal meaning of the text – I believe he was young and did not have agency in the literal text, which is why I read it as trauma – but seen in a more midrashic way, I can see it as a partially voluntary acceptance of the sacrifice as a response to the abusive actions of his father.)

And here is an interesting thing that I realized today – in Gen. 22:9, it states that Avraham bound Yitzchok and placed him on the altar on top of the wood. However, the text does NOT say that Avraham UNbound Yitzchak – even though the ram was offered instead. Yet even the word “tachat” – translated (correctly for the literal meaning) “instead of” in v. 13 – “Avraham took the ram and offered it as a burnt-offering ‘instead of” his son” – also means “under” – so, spiritually and metaphorically and midrashically, I think one can read it as the ram being the physical olah/burnt-offering under the spiritual olah/offering-of-ascent of Yitzchak – the beginning of his spiritual quest.

There are readings of the story of Yitzchak that see his life as a sacrifice (for example, unlike Avraham, Yaakov, and the twelve sons of Yaakov, he never leaves Eretz Yisrael) – and I think seeing his making the question “Where?” the offering that began a life of sacrifice and spiritual quest is one way to read this. (I am grateful to Daniel Krupka who has shared the understandings of Yitzchak as sacrifice with me.) In this reading, the Akedah still involves Yitzchak being offered as an olah/offering-of-ascent – only transformed from a physical sacrifice involved death to a living sacrifice involving a constant quest for G!d.

I recite verses for two names that are significant to me (Tomer and Michael) at the end of the Amidah, as is a minhag (albeit a minhag introduced in a Sabbatean text, Kitzur Shelah, but that is a discussion for another time) – and at Musaf, I was inspired to also read the verse in my machzor for Yitzchak (or any name beginning with yud and ending in kuf): “[G-d] brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death and broke their bonds asunder” (Psalm 107:14). So the binding of Yitzchak is done by Avraham (albeit with partial consent from Yitzchak) – but the unbinding can only be accomplished by G!d – and is the ultimate result of the quest of Yitzchak begun on Mount Moriah