Enjoy this sweet video from our friends at Isabella Friedman Center in Connecticut.
It celebrates the joy of planting for others. (I am mellowing toward the purple hair!)
I know it is cold outside but hope you are planning on planting some trees this spring!
(And if you want places and advice on planting, come and work with us at the Baltimore Orchard Project.)
Tu B'shvat is this Shabbat - you can turn your shabbat table into an improvised seder. There's a ton of stuff on the web. Here is one site to get you started.
And maybe have a green-themed menu with green and leafy foods? Above all, celebrate the glories of our plant world.
Enjoy!
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Raphael
Sometimes you can find lost strands of wisdom of your own tradition in the oddest of places.
While doing research on my eternally elusive book on "home", I came across this:
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"[The angel] Raphael is charged to heal the earth, and through him, the earth furnishes a home for human beings, whom he also heals of their maladies" [according to Rabbi Abba, as found in the Zohar]. (Benjamin, David N. ed.; assisted by David Stea The Home : words, interpretations, meanings and environments, p. xv)
The tradition of Raphael as personal guardian and healer is well-known. Raphael's name means "God heals," and angels, in Jewish tradition, are not cuddly chubby cupids but messengers of God charged with carrying out particular tasks.
We invoke Raphael's name, along with three of his confreres, every night when the bedtime Sh'ma is recited.
But Raphael as healer of the earth is something I did not know. And what does that mean? Were the authors of the legends of the Zohar thinking of natural disasters such as droughts, storms, flooding, disease, locusts? Was Raphael called upon to ease or erase these dark arts of the earth?
Or were the rabbis invoking Raphael as healer of earth despoiled through our habits of waste and abuse of natural resources?
And if it was this latter, how would Raphael do that? By miraculously fixing what we have broken or by training our hearts and our appetites to live in concert with the world's natural rhythms?
While doing research on my eternally elusive book on "home", I came across this:
-->
"[The angel] Raphael is charged to heal the earth, and through him, the earth furnishes a home for human beings, whom he also heals of their maladies" [according to Rabbi Abba, as found in the Zohar]. (Benjamin, David N. ed.; assisted by David Stea The Home : words, interpretations, meanings and environments, p. xv)
The tradition of Raphael as personal guardian and healer is well-known. Raphael's name means "God heals," and angels, in Jewish tradition, are not cuddly chubby cupids but messengers of God charged with carrying out particular tasks.
We invoke Raphael's name, along with three of his confreres, every night when the bedtime Sh'ma is recited.
But Raphael as healer of the earth is something I did not know. And what does that mean? Were the authors of the legends of the Zohar thinking of natural disasters such as droughts, storms, flooding, disease, locusts? Was Raphael called upon to ease or erase these dark arts of the earth?
Or were the rabbis invoking Raphael as healer of earth despoiled through our habits of waste and abuse of natural resources?
And if it was this latter, how would Raphael do that? By miraculously fixing what we have broken or by training our hearts and our appetites to live in concert with the world's natural rhythms?
I for one am skeptical of the first method, the divine miracle of the earth healing itself while we blithely continue consuming and discarding without worries.
In which case, all we can rely on is the second. If Raphael is to succeed, then, he will have to work through us.
May our hearts and hands respond to this call.
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