Tyler’s Torah Thoughts for 22 Av, 5783

Good morning.  I find today’s Torah portion fascinating.  There are basically two parts:

• Don’t hurt ourselves when we are mourning
• Remember the Kosher laws

Moses is taking this time in his lecture to bring these up. Why?

I think the idea for the first part – don’t hurt ourselves when we are in mourning, to me is about the connection between our emotions (heart) and body.

What do we do when we feel? When we feel sad? When we grieve (which is the idea of mourning, isn’t it?).  The stages of grief are:

• Denial
• Anger
• Bargaining
• Depression
• Acceptance

It’s not a linear process for sure – it cycles (like the moon). But there is a LOT of potential to “gash” ourselves or hurt ourselves in our grief, isn’t there?  Moses is telling us “grief is going to happen. It’s a normal part of life.  Just be careful not to hurt yourselves in your grief!”

I want to just sit with that. How do we handle our grief? Especially our anger?

We hurt ourselves. And others.  We need to be aware of this.  Allow ourselves the FEELINGS – but not take it out on our bodies (or the bodies of others).

THEN

Moses jumps into food (the body) and spirit (soul).  So we go from emotions (grief) to body (hurting ourselves and/or eating) to soul.

Moses connects us to our divinity here.  Our feelings, our body, our soul – it is all connected. We are children of Hashem.

And Moses seems to bring us right back to being one with Hashem.  One with each other.  Do we treat OTHERS like they are divine? That is the question.

I’d love to know your thoughts!

Here’s my commentary from a year ago:

Tyler’s Torah Thoughts for 27 Av, 5782

Good morning. Today let’s jump right in!

Moses is continuing his last lecture to the people.

He tells us not to gash ourselves or deface ourselves when mourning. Because we are a holy people to God. Hashem has chosen us to be a treasured people for Him. Because we are a treasure, we shouldn’t deface that treasure. All of us.

Moses then reminds us of the “forbidden foods.” He moves us out of the realm of ritual impurity; and when we enter the promised land; the land of freedom, he tells us that even though we aren’t talking about ritual impurity, we need to expand our thoughts. The promise land is divinity and we need to treat it as such.

I’m really reflecting on how the repeat of the kosher laws here is NOT connected to ritual impurity like it was before. If the promised land isn’t just a physical land, but a spirit – it really comes down to divinity. And how connected we desire to be to our own divinity.

We have choice in that matter.

And that’s important.

Because if I choose to connect to MY divinity. And you connect to YOUR divinity. Then it ceases to be MY divinity and YOUR divinity, doesn’t it? It becomes OUR divinity. Because the divine is the divine. We are not greater than or less than the divine. We are the divine.

This brings new depth to “treating others as we desire ourselves to be treated.” Because in a sense, we are treating others – as if they are literally us. Because what is in my soul and what is in your soul is the same thing. It’s the divine.

Those are my thoughts today. What are yours? Or maybe I should say; what are OUR thoughts on this today? Share!