Being Mindful and Shavuot

As I sit here in my study this morning, I am wrapped in talit. While, yes, it helps with the chill in the basement, more importantly, it helps keep me focused and wrapped in G!d. That is why I wear a talit (or semblance thereof). While the Torah reason for wrapping in talit is to remind us to keep the 613 mitzvot, for me, it is more basic than even that. It is a reminder to be mindful, and mindfulness is always centered on the Beloved. It lifts me out of my narrow center-of-the-universe focus, out of rushing from one moment to the next, one feeling to the next, one frenzied thought to the next. It slows me down enough to take a breath, take a beat, settle into the moment and not let it pass me by, unused and tossed aside as if I have all the moments in the world.

All I have is this one single moment. This one, and no more, no less. Will I embrace it? Savor it? Wrap myself in it as I wrap in this talit?

At the end of the day, isn't mindfulness really what Judaism, at its core, is all about?  Furthermore, is it not at the very heart of every religion and all spirituality? If not, why not?

Every religion has proscribed actions, be they prayers, sacraments, mitzvot, service to others. Judaism has the tradition of saying 100 blessings a day. Are these not at their center to make our lives meaningful each day, each moment? To make us more mindful? And in being more mindful, to be more accepting and kind of what, and whom, each moment brings us?

One might say, but what about the painful and awful moments? The bad things that happen? The mean people who can be so unkind? What about abuse? And these are, indeed, terribly challenging moments, some of them horrific and inexcusable beyond thinking. Yet, are not these the very moments where I am given the opportunity to be even more mindful, perhaps less of the moment, and more of G!d? Where my focus needs to be razor sharp in knowing that, even if it feels like it, I am not alone in this boat?

Rabbi Joseph Gelberman, z’l, shares this story in his book, Zen Judaism: “A man who hid out in the basement during the Holocaust scratched a Star of David on the wall with the following words: ‘I believe in the sun, even when it does not shine. I believe in love, even when it does not speak.’”

While this is not the easiest thing to do when I find myself in the midst of turmoil, pain, hurt, grief, or other bad things, it is precisely in those moments that belief in enduring love, compassion, kindness, and hope are all I might have left.

Mindfulness in these moments keeps me out of the mental resistance, those negative thought patterns which keep me stuck in the unanswerable questions of “Why me?”, “It’s not fair!”, “This shouldn’t be happening!”, “I want this to change.” The questions and thoughts engage me in a battle with the present moment, and results in creating  more layers of suffering. Mindfulness is to look for the rainbow in the midst of the storm.

I am left with the question if any of this applies to abuse. Having lived through it as a child who was powerless to change the situation, the only way through it was to go mindless, to take myself far away from what was happening to me. I have spent a lifetime trying to undo the damage, some of which will never be undone. I have also spent much of my life feeling guilt and shame about it, and castigated myself for not being able to resist.

And yet, it seems that the ability to not resist might have been the very thing which saved my life. In the presence of a raging, abusive alcoholic who was clearly not in his right mind for most of his life, I feared for my life–every day of my life for 18 years. Not resisting, not fighting, leaning into those horrific moments with the knowledge that “just getting it over with” would happen, and I would endure for another day.

While abuse is certainly a rather extreme example, sadly, it does happen. As does rape and muggings and trama and violence of all kinds. When we look to the survivors of the Holocaust, so many of them continued to hold onto that hope, while at the same time being forced to comply and not to resist the horrors they were forced to endure.

Even in the extreme, it seems that mindfulness might still be the way to go. Perhaps not being mindful of the pain or atrocity being perpetrated, but being mindful that eventually, this will pass. Eventually, there will be someone who loves me unconditionally. Eventually, there will be peace and kindness and goodness in my life again. Eventually, I will heal a bit.

Sometimes, leaning into the moment means leaning into the moment just beyond the moment. That, too, is being mindful. Wrapped in an actual or imaginary talit, I can feel enrobed in light and love and goodness, and know that in this moment, I am blessed. No matter what I might be going through in the physical or mental realm, my soul can remain both embraced in and embracing that which really matters: G!d Who is with me in this very moment, and just maybe, whose heart is shattering the same as mine.

At sundown tonight, as we commemorate perhaps the least commonly known yet greatest holiday we have, that of Shavuot, we will look towards that pivotal moment at Mt. Sinai when we responded mindfully and completely to the Torah with words recorded in Exodus 24:7, “All that G!d says, we will do and we will hear [v’nishma].” Throughout the ages, the Rabbis have pondered and questioned why it is recorded that our immediate response was "we will do," and only then followed by "we will hear."

While I am certainly no wise sage on this matter, what this speaks to me is that, like children, our spiritual understanding grows in stages. When we are immature, we are made to comply, to do as told. We don't get to question or argue. We do as told or suffer the consequences.

As we become spiritually mature, we begin to question and think for ourselves. We enter into sacred dialogue with the Holy. In this dialogical relationship from a more mature and life experience perspective, we begin to truly listen. We no longer do because we are told to do; we listen, we learn to hear the word beyond the words, for the moment beyond the moment.  And it is the “nishma” – the listening, hearing, heeding – that is the key response here. Mindfulness allows us to fully listen and hear. To do so, we must be more spiritually mature than we were before. And we must keep listening, hearing.


On Shavuot, as we reconnect with being mindful, we remember that it is in the listening that we open ourselves to the light of the Infinite, continually bringing us out of narrow places.

As a current rabbinical student, I am refining my skills in being a light and a beacon of hope in a broken world too often shattered by violence. My studies, really, guide to me keep listening, to be more mindful of every moment as a deeply spiritual moment in a holy dialogue with G!d.

As Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi’s, z”l, reminds us: The morning blessings “are the ‘blessings’ of awareness and mind, …giving thanks that sleep has passed from my eyes, …[to] prepare my mind for learning this day.” Once I bring myself to this place of mindfulness, I can then truly pray the next morning blessing, “Blessed are You … Who connects us with holiness by commanding us to engage ourselves in the words of teaching.” In other words, I am mindful that everything today is going to be a learning experience, everything today can be my teacher, if I am mindful and open myself to it.

At the end of the day, being grateful, appreciating and blessing the loving energy that surrounds me, pausing to see G!d in EVERY moment, good and awful, as well as in every single individual soul, that is true spirituality. Whether I am writing or being of service, passing on a smile at the store, doing something loving for another person or one of my pets, perhaps even for myself, all of that done mindfully is the most sacred and spiritual action I can take.

May every day, every moment, every experience be my teacher, helping me become more mindful and grateful. May I remember, over and over again, to take a breath, to breath in G!d.

Amein.