February 2012 Bulletin - Congregation B'nai Amoona

From Rabbi
Carnie Shalom Rose
AWAKENING TO THE POTENTIAL POWER OF THE DESERT
“We set out from Chorev and traversed the entire vast and awful
(OR) great and awesome desert that you all saw, along the road to
the hill country of the Amorites, as the Lord our God commanded
us.” Deuteronomy 1:19
“Abba…Abba…you awake?”
Truth is I’m a terrible sleeper. But whenever I can, I try to grab
a Shabbes Shluf (nap). Somehow, luxuriating in the middle of
the afternoon defines Oneg (delight), which is supposed to be
an essential part of our Sabbath experience. Barely opening
one eye, I looked up to see our 9 year-old, Lev (the most
“covert” of our children), standing over me with a bewildered
look on his face. “Abba, I get the Honey Cakes part – that’s for
Rosh Hashanah. But Silence – that doesn’t sound too Jewish to
me. What are you reading?”
Inadvertently, I had dozed off while making my way through
a beautiful little book, Silence and Honey Cakes: the Wisdom
of the Desert, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Reverend
Rowan Williams. The volume, which was on loan from my
teacher and friend, Dr. Alick Isaacs (who recently spoke at our
St. Louis JCC’s outstanding Jewish Book Festival), is a work
that shares some profound insights from the Desert Fathers
and Mothers who resided in the Egyptian Desert between the
3 rd and 5 th centuries CE. The reading was Alick’s first of several
gentle (yet paradoxically jarring) nudges in the direction of
helping me deconstruct and then reframe some unhealthy
and counter-productive long-held and outdated assumptions
about religious life and spiritual consciousness.
Smiling softly, I confirmed for Lev that he was indeed correct.
“The book isn’t a Jewish one, but it does teach some ideas
that I’m pretty sure God wants all human beings to know -
and there is a lot of wisdom in the world to be learned from
people of other faiths. By the way, why do you think we have
an Amidah (Silent Meditation) at every Service? Silence is
a very Jewish concept.” “Okay Abba, but I have to say that I
still like Honey Cake much more than Silence… Can I have a
Shabbes snack now?”
The Archbishop’s thought-provoking tome lead me on a
historical and spiritual journey to the desert community of a
group of monks and nuns who consciously located themselves
outside the confines of the cities in an attempt to live in
greater harmony with themselves, their fellow human beings
and the Almighty. The book itself is divided into five sections
and each chapter elegantly lays out – in sensitive and nuanced
ways – the complexities of the life of the spirit. What emerges
is a profound and remarkably contemporary reality. Religious
consciousness is not a zero-sum game and it’s not an “either” –
“or” proposition. It’s not “Silence” on the one hand or “Honey
Cakes” on the other. Sometimes spiritual consequence can
be found through isolation and deep introspection and at
God’s Love
B’nai Amoona Delivers
other moments, it is only through acts of sharing selflessly –
by means of generosity and magnanimity - that we discover
the transcendent. Either way, it is the desert that somehow
catalyses the opportunity for a fresh perspective.
Of course, the notion of the desert as fertile soil for the
soul is not new. After all, Moses our Teacher is called to his
sacred vocation in the Desert – at the Bush that Burns but
is not Consumed; the People of Israel is forged into a nation
during its 40-year trek in the most barren of environments;
the revelation of our Holy Torah takes place at the summit
of Mount Sinai - in the midst of wilderness; and Elijah the
Prophet gains renewed insight into the deepest dimensions of
Divinity in the most arid and barren of regions.
What emerges is a possible avenue for religious recalibration.
Though the desert is a physical location, it is also a state of
mind, a way of being. At times it can be foreboding and at times
inviting; sometimes ominous and sometimes encouraging;
awful and awesome; filled with vibrations – cacophonous and
harmonious; resonating with overwhelming noise or bereft of
any semblance of the audible. And as such, retreating to the
desert is – in potential – a mighty resource for those seeking to
revive, reinvent and re-imagine their truths, convictions and
orthodoxies. A space which we enter as a means to reconsider
the paths we have taken and the next steps on our journey.
“It is no whim of history that the birth of the first monotheistic
faith took place in a desert, or that it was followed there by
the other two great religions, Christianity and Islam. The
prophets of Israel repeatedly sought and found inspiration in
the desert. Christian hermits fled to it to escape the pollution
of the world and to commune with God, and in modern times
the secular literature of the desert in the works of Doughty,
Lawrence, Philby, Thomas, and many other famous travelers
reveals the powerful influence it exerts on the minds and
spirits of all who seek its mysteries.”
Michael Evenari, Leslie Shanan, and Naphtali Tadmor, The
Negev: The Challenge of a Desert (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1971), p. 9.
Maybe at some point in the not too distant future, my
clandestine child will find his way to the desert and
come to appreciate the delectability of Silence as much
as he enjoys the deliciousness of Honey Cake. And that
will be a most scrumptious treat – for him and for me.
Now back to my Judean Desert…
Carnie
Rabbi Carnie Shalom Rose
Rabbi Bernard Lipnick Senior Rabbinic Chair
On Sabbatical in Jerusalem: October 2011 - August 2012
RavRoseBA@aol.com
Congregation B’nai Amoona Bulletin
2
February 2012