That tree in the garden….

So what was the real essence of that tree? Seems the tree was the first footprint of idolatry in this world and the first man and woman were tested to see if they would surrender to its temptation or serve only Hashem in trust and obedience.

How so?

1. Hashem forbade Adam and Chava to eat the fruit of his special tree. He forbade us later not to worship idols. Is there a similar vein here? Both forbidden, so what? Is it far fetched to compare them?

2. The forbidden tree was desirable. (Anything forbidden can be desirable if we think the one forbidding us is robbing us of some pleasure or exalted status). Idolatry became desirable. But to whom would these things be desirable? The seeds of rebellion begin to sprout when we do not trust the one making the rules. When we see Gd principally as strict Judge and King (Elokim), demanding obedience without the element of love and compassion for the individual, it is easy to reflect that we are mere objects to be manipulated.

3. When Hashem Elokim said “Let US make man in our image” he was not done creating us. True he made a body and put breath and a soul into it, but in a way he was speaking to man as the other part of the workforce. He wanted a team. He wanted man to work using the resources Hashem provided as he needed them to complete his marvelous creation in himself. Creation of mankind was to be a team effort. The master plan was for man to develop in a way that would bring honor and fulfillment to himself and to the Creator and eventually become like G-d in a fuller sense than when he was a mere created living nefesh of flesh and bone. This thought was manipulated by the serpent and woven into his suggestive deception. In a way, he was saying to Hava, Why do you need Elokim? You can do this yourself by taking into yourselves the substance of this tree which is forbidden to you and thus you will create yourselves as you would like? You don’t need HIM! Why would you want a gd over you who is a master manipulator, who seeks only His own fulfillment? So, just eat this and then do it by yourselves and then you won’t need G-d anymore. And Hava believed and ate the apple.

4. And so idolatry is set up promising us power and blessings and self-aggrandizement while completely ignoring the One who made us, separating us from him, denying us the resources that we really need to complete our creation. Idolatry promises entrance to eternal life without Hashem. It is based on our belief. An idol is something that stands in the path between us and our Creator. An idol diverts our attention from the SOURCE of all things, Hashem.

Much like an addiction, idolatry brings a rush of excitement when first experienced, then it becomes necessary for life itself, because the lie that we believe when we reach out to grasp the forbidden thing grows and as it grows so grows the addiction. It is not long until the seemingly innocent experimentation becomes a ball and chain which eventually leads to death in its downward spiral. Embracing a false gd is like this. Belief grows and the chains attach until one is willing to sacrifice anything in order to keep getting what the false gd offers. (In biblical history, idolatry ended up in child sacrifice, done to keep the rain falling and the crops growing!)

5. Just so the tree in the garden, after the snake manipulated the image of Hashem, seemed to be desirable for food and to make one “like GD” knowing good and evil. But where has it take us? And do we still bite the apple? Are we still trying to be independent from Hashem who loves us and has all resources at our disposal in the continued creation of our own eternal destiny? How long will we say: “No thank you, I’ll do it my way”?

I stood at the edge of the northernmost point of Mission Peninsula, a finger reaching out into Lake Michigan. The day was bright and a cool breeze tossed refreshed the moment and the small waves at the shoreline beckoned me to get my feet wet. The distant laughter and chatter of tourists at the lighthouse made me realize that the world spins and life goes on even when one person’s day has just gone all wrong and human aberrations still dominate religion. The breeze moved the trees and the water and the sky in it’s iridescent blue framed the day. But I knew something was wrong. After all this was Yom Kippur and my husband and I had just left the local synagogue group to find a place to relax for a couple of hours and decide if we would return or if we would write off the whole mess. We still were shaking inwardly at the thought that the rabbi and his “partner” were homosexuals. And this rabbi (though I feel he does not deserve the title) had invited his “father in law,” an Anglican minister to give the sermon on the holiest day of the year. A day when congregants seek forgiveness of sin and assurance of a good new year. What absurdity! And all the preparation of the month before in examining our souls for repentance and cleansing on this great day, now seemed about as important as the laughing crowd down the beach. A willow tree swung its weeping branches across my vision and I realized that the Creator might just express things better in nature than in these hunks of twisted humanity that fit nowhere and yet assume the position of a pulpit to lead G-d’s people!

The black sand got all over my shoes but I didn’t care. I stood there wishing I could plunge beneath the gentle waves and cleanse my soul, and in a way it was a better service than the one we just left. Let nature speak to me, for what do the lies of mankind matter? Dressed in white and wishing for something that would help us enjoy the day, we felt nauseous after what we had gone through in the morning. We had said nothing about our thoughts to anyone at the synagogue. We actually did not realize the significance of the scene before us until after the sermon, when the minister remarked in his parting words. “Yes, G-d sees things differently than we do! My son married a rabbi, who wanted a hog roast for his wedding reception!” And that is when we knew. As we walked out of the foyer one of the chatty older women asked us how we liked it. We asked her if the rabbi was really a homosexual, and she replied; “oh yes, and isn’t he wonderful?” and I wanted to vomit and to scream. But we quietly left to drive up to the beach and get away from it all. Driving is something we do not usually do on Holy Days, yet at this moment, it was a better choice of mitzvah. And now we were at the beach, but the light and meaningless chatter behind us reminded us that we share a world with the careless and that even there, we would not find the needed consolation.

Who decides what is right and what is wrong when there are few fundamental principles that are engraved, as it were in stone, set up as a basis for eternal judgment? Has mankind progressed to such an extent that he no longer needs a guide as archaic as the ten commandments? When the ancient wisdom handed down from a loving Creator is no longer deemed viable for a world that bases its truth on relativity and adaptation, where, I ask will we end up? Religious fundamentalists infer that the world’s horrific natural events stem from its defiance of the laws established by the Creator are mocked and derided and they go into their closets and end up keeping their mouths shut.

Society’s liberal laws protect from judgment those who debase themselves and foster unnatural affection, burning in lust for that which mankind was never created. And those who show a disregard for this society run the risk of lawsuits and jail time and the hatred of the mob for inferring that what they do is not right.

Religions, to show their progressive acceptance of society’s abrogations of the fundamental rules of the Bible, hire clergy who are anything but examples of truth and piety. Instead of helping these abnormal souls, lost in a world of disobedience and sin and defiance of the G-d of Heaven, it is as if, society and its misplaced compassion for those that practice evil, find an excuse to spit in the face of the Almighty. These mixed-up creatures need someone to lead them to repent and return to the ONE who made them, but instead, churches embrace them not only as normal but as special people who are fit to lead others in the observance of that which once was about G-d and his desires for mankind. They are esteemed as examples of that which can lead the masses to follow more closely the divine plan. And the congregants love them and boast: “Look how we have progressed!” And all heaven shudders as G-d positions himself to raise up off his holy throne and declare war on a world gone mad.

Who among the sons of man will stand in awe of the holiness of G-d’s name and declare the separation of the children of light from the children of darkness? Who will draw the line in the sand and ask “who is on the LORD’s side?” Who will insist that those of clear and untainted conscience step over into the safety of the few who attach themselves to the eternal precepts of G-d’s word?

The world of religion, where not fully aligned with the agenda of evil, is weak. Fear of loss of worldly comfort keeps many from speaking out and they go along to get along and the world tolerates and reels to and fro as the drunken orgy of wickedness leads those who once dedicated themselves to the truth to follow weakly along, embracing that which G-d hates. There is little faith and little hope in mankind and the world cries under Heaven’s hand as hurricane after hurricane hits the vulnerable planet and fires burn as if added fuel has been added to devastate great parts of the earth. And this will happen until somebody gets the idea that the evil must be stopped. Who will stop this nonsense and return us to a humble religion of piety and regard for the Creator who made us? Or has society gone so far that there is no return? Can a kingdom of peace be established when war is not made with sin? Light was the first thing created by G-d at the beginning. The very next thing that G-d did was to separate the Light from the darkness. But man continues to say that his ways are better and that light can exist within darkness. It is only the mind of rebellion that tries to mix darkness and light. There is NO middle ground no place for mixture. Until light stands alone to reveal the darkness for what it is, there will be no change and the world careens towards an abyss that buries the light in indifference and unwillingness to stand. The end of all things may well be just around the corner UNLESS…

Shabbat. I pull on a hoodie and tie my tennis shoes, pop out the door and head for the water front.

Down to the boardwalk, across several docks, the ocean and the plaintive call of seagulls calling to me to look out upon the open water, out over the rocky jetty on the other side where the water is dark gray green, sullen and deep. The water seems to have a soul. It cries to me, touching a torrent of tears in my heart. Tears for things I do not even understand. I feel down to the very bottom, wherever that is.

Is it 20 feet deep here? I feel myself pulled as if by a supernatural force—pulled towards the depths, desiring to be there and yet my brain tells me that I can’t breathe down there. What is it about deep water that calls to my soul? My thoughts play before me as an old tape unreels before my mind. I am standing on another dock’ alongside the lock in Seattle where giant boats pass into a harbor. I am four years old. Drippy rain, damp slippery wood, the salty smell of seaweed, barnacles encrusting rocks and metal, slime and rotting fish, the suffocating smell of motor exhaust billowing from behind immense gray ships—I look down at the gushing water over the edge of the boardwalk where I am standing not ten inches away. I tremble as it pulls me. I feel I am falling and I envision myself pulled inside its depths, down down in to the cold murky silence. I close my mouth against a silent scream. My mother notices my panic and takes my hand. She leads me to where my father stands by a guard rail watching the giant vessels pass through the canal. We watch as immense concrete doors mechanically open while the water drops 50 feet in less than a minute, or surges up at the same rate when the doors close. Some man up in a tower is pushing a magic button to a machine that makes the world do strange things. Things a child could never imagine.

Birth trauma, that’s what the psychologists called it. But I wonder as more than fifty years have passed and water still has the same effect on me. Giant green breakers crash on the beach, turning to innocuous white foam in a matter of seconds. Unharnessed power shattered in an instant and revealed again in the next wave. Yet the shore has been commanded to hold back the tide. Oceans of furious water remain bound by their preordained limits. What if the Eternal slept? What if the Power that binds the Universe was released? We trust, sometimes we take for granted that we will always be here doing what we have always done. But we do not know tomorrow’s tide, not for a fact, we can only presume that tomorrow will be like today and continue ad infinitum. And we go on in our ways, racing against time to amass the material, experience the temporal—heaping up money, houses, and gadgets. Rarely do we take time to breathe and ponder, to open our minds. Do we ever stop along life’s boardwalk to peer into the murky depths and ask; who am I? Why am I?

The windswept beach created an uneasy feeling in my heart as I walked and tightened the belt of my trench coat. It was July fifth and the Pacific Ocean shore was chilly–not the most welcome weather for a summer Shabbat. It was as if the very atmosphere felt my indecision—I asked the Eternal what was the direction of my life and where I would go after three months alone at the ocean?.

I fought the temptation to anxiety,  I prayed and blessed the Creator and walked farther. Shabbat was not a day to struggle with G-d. And I tried to let it all go and to realize that His Hand would guide me in my future no matter which path I should take. Long blades of gray green grass and sage waved along the path, clumps of daisies here and there nodded as in the distance summer vagabonds plied the waters with their surfboards. I turned from the huge rocks along the beach and walked again. I stopped.

“Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokenu…Hashem Echad.”  I felt lighter, but still there was a slight burden on my heart as I started back on the paved bicycle path towards my RV. Where was my destination? What was my purpose? What was my next turn? I had not managed to afford the move to an observant Jewish community, something I felt I should do. I shrugged as I admitted to myself that it was something I had only halfheartedly tried to do. It seemed I needed someone to reach out to me and hang onto me. It was not easy to abandon everything and go for an unknown purpose when it seemed that doors were either shut or that I must force myself into a situation which was not at all familiar to me. I carried these thoughts as I neared the end of the trail.

Suddenly something coaxed my eyes up to the sky. Above me I saw the Hebrew letter Shin formed by a soft fluffy cloud. I knew what it meant. Shin is the letter that is written on my Mezuzah. Shin begins one of the names of G-d, El Shaddai. It signifies provision and protection. Joy sprung from my soul and I blessed Hashem! I took this to be his promise that he would be with me in the unknown and forbidding future that seemed to engulf my days in worry and uncertainty. The cloud formation stayed above me for more than 15 minutes as I finished my walk. I knew that G-d was with me. I knew then that I could walk whatever path I was called to walk. And that the Shin was shown to me to remind me of his caring and provision for me no matter where I would be called to go, even to an unknown land. And I remembered “Lech Lecha” the words of G-d to my father Abraham, and the Parsha which I chose for my adult Bat Mitzvah in the fall of 2009, a journey to a land that was still unrevealed to him and now to me.

And thus it has been…