Parshat Devarim - The Opportunity in Wilderness

Each of experiences a spiritual wilderness from time to time - we feel out of place, alienated from the very core of what we've become and who we are. There is a sense of being cast aside by our own lives and decisions - suddenly a world and way of living that felt rich and plentiful is burdensome and lifeless.

In the Torah portion this week Moses recounts the earlier episode when the Israelites, anxious that their journey will not end well, accuse God of bringing them out of slavery to die in the desert because God hates them.

The Zohar argues that this wandering into the wilderness was an opportunity. The wilderness is a place controlled by the 'sitra achra' - the forces that act against life and goodness. God prepared the journey so that Israel would have strength there and could vanquish those forces once and for all - by wanderin theough the darkness they could overcome it with internal strength. But the Israelites could only see the danger and not the opportunity.
We have to look again at these wilderness walks, their dry arid threats of danger and dissolution and disorientation, and see them not as places empty of meaning, but as places that challenge us to overcome them with internal strength. They are not wrong ways but are rather essential to our development.

Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Joshua Rose
303.499.7077
3950 Baseline Road
Boulder CO 80303

Shema, Yisra'el: Being Present

In the past two weeks I have been doing a lot of sitting in front of my computer, in between diaper changing, sleeping, feeding, and tending to both children. It's led me to more Face-booking, blog-reading, headline surfing.

I've accumulated and shared a lot of information, but what's been lost in this frenetic information exchange? I'm a physical presence, but I'm barely here.

The fundamental religious challenge for me right now is, I think, to try to maintain a sense of presence in the lives of those around me - to really listen - amidst the increasingly frantic pace. But also to maintain a kind of presence and groundedness in whatever it is that I'm doing. I know that the medium is only the medium, a tool is only a tool and all that, but there's something about computers that takes us away.

On that note, goodnight...