This past winter and early spring, I was struggling. I felt as though I was being pulled in a thousand directions. Though I wanted to show up for everything and everyone, I found myself fully present for nothing and no one.
My not-fully-present manifested as exhaustion. Not like a “I really need to sleep” kind of exhaustion, more of a “my soul needs a lie-down” kind of exhaustion.
Read MoreI picked up We Do This ‘Til We Free Us because I wanted to better understand the principles of the Abolitionist movement (and because the good folks at Anti-Racism Daily recommended it!). The prison abolition movement, as envisioned and articulated by Mariame Kaba in this collection of essays and interviews, is as radical as it is beautiful. When I say “radical” I don’t mean “irrational” or “impossible.” I mean “profound,” “paradigm-shifting,” “mind-blowing.”
Read MoreThis week’s portion can be a challenging one. Over the past several parshot (portions), we’ve been reading instructions about how the priests, Aaron’s sons, are supposed to treat different sacrifices offered on the altar of the mishkan, the tabernacle. In this week’s portion, we’ve moved past instructions, and we see Aaron and his sons actually slaughter the calf of sin offering, mark the horns of the altar with its blood, and turn the appropriate bits into smoke upon the altar. We see this happen with Aaron’s sin offering, with the people’s sin offering, and with the people’s offering of well-being. These animal sacrifices happen again and again, pretty much the way we read it was supposed to, with oft-repeated phrases that turn a vegetarian’s stomach, like “the protruberance of the liver.” To be honest, it’s tough for me to to pay close attention or to distinguish between this portion and earlier ones describing sacrifices.
And then something curious happens.
Read MoreSeveral years ago, I decided to move to a fully vegetarian (actually ovo-pescatarian) diet because of my empathy for animals. I saw too much of humans (and dogs) in the cattle and even the chickens whose bodies had formed my meals to continue to consume them. That backdrop of my life choices makes this week’s parsha particularly unpleasant for me to read. The Adonai of Va-Yikra is a big fan of barbeque. The scent of burning animal flesh is pleasing to this Adonai. Indeed, in Lev 3:16 we read “All the fat is Adonai’s.” The phrase “dash the blood against all sides of the altar,” or versions of it is repeated again and again in parsha Va-Yikra.
Read More“In that golden calf I see today’s hustle for worthiness. The things that are separate from us that seem precious are productivity, perfection, and pleasing. Instead of earrings melted into a calf, today we meld job titles and salaries into worth and worthiness. We bow down to our idol and serve it, even though the Divine is right here.”
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