Exodus1verse8's Blog

March 23, 2010 / 8 Nisan 5770

One-Shelf-A-Day-Until-Passover-Preparation-Log
A.K.A. The Dayenu Log

D-log Motto:  Okay, that’s enough for today.

Today: Tuesday, March 23, 2010
8 Nisan 5770
The silverware drawer shelves utensils, those little hands.  I think of the yad used to point out each word we read in the Torah scroll, and all the other tools that mediate between us and our work.

Stress Relief Tip:
Paying bills is less stressful if you also use that time to give some tzedakah.  Then you aren’t just scrabbling for your own needs.  You are no longer alone when you include the needs of others among your own concerns.  Even a small and private contribution is significant.

Spring Lookout News:
Spring cold feels different from winter chill.  A shiver in spring is like yawning in the sunrise after climbing a mountain trail in the dark.

Hard Core Treatments for Relief from Oppressive Cleaning Issues:
Stories of spinning straw into gold, finding a needle in a haystack, and separating out all leavened foods are like the implacable face of a sea before it splits.  Are they just stories, or are they training sessions in discovery?  Miracles are events that defy practical sense, yet they are born out of the most ordinary elements of life.  They wait in hard places like durable desert plants, until a cloudburst allows them to bloom.

Go and Study:
Show us favor, O LORD,
Show us favor!
We have had more than enough of contempt.
Psalms 123.3

From p. 153, “The Receiving; Reclaiming Jewish Women’s Wisdom,” c. 2003 by Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, Harper San Francisco.:
“Another category of personal “evil” is the ego’s drives for power and gratification.  The rabbis called those drives our “evil inclination,” that seed within us bent on feeding and pleasing itself to the exclusion of others and our Divine Source.  The grasping nature within us, when taken to the extreme, can lead to the destruction of self and others.  Nevertheless, the rabbis explained, without it there would not be enough passion, selfishness, or ambition in the world to make life move forward…
…Amazingly, Judaism tells us not to deny, suppress, or even transcend the force of darkness, but to work with it, know it, and harness it so that it can be turned toward serving that which is the highest in our lives.  A beautiful prayer said by traditional Jews at the beginning of each day asks God to help us take in hand our evil inclination so that it may be put into the service of that which is holy. [22]“
[footnote 22.] V’chof et yitzreynu l’hishta-abed lach.  Found in the prayer Gomel Chasidim Tovim, just after the morning blessings.  Authorized Daily Prayer Book (New York: Josseph Hertz Bloch, 1963), pp. 26-27.

English translation,  p. 30, from The Koren Siddur, c. 2006,2009 by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Koren Publishers Jerusalem.:
“…v’chof et yitzreynu l’hishta-abed lach.
…and bend our instincts to be subservient to You.”

B’shalom,
Amy Brookman
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