Daily Kavanot
Writings of reflection by the Stephen Wise Temple clergy.
Each weekday morning, members of our mailing list receive the “Daily Kavanah,” which includes messages of thought, inspiration, and contemplation from our clergy, along with a schedule of events. Every Thursday, the “Daily Kavanah” turns into “Eyes on Wise,” our weekly newsletter featuring the latest news, photos, videos, stories, and tikkun olam opportunities from our community. Sign up and don’t miss out!
Daily Kavanah – Wednesday, September 29, 2021
Exploring Genesis: This week’s Torah reading And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because on it God ceased from all the work of creation... — Genesis 2:3 (JPS translation) This is the first time we see the word “holy” in the Torah. In the ancient world, people, animals, and buildings were seen as holy. God’s designating a day to be holy was revolutionary. It was the first time that time was holy (sanctified). The Shabbat is not merely a day to cease from work. It is a day to devote to God and to the spiritual. The Talmud says that on Shabbat a Jew receives a neshama yeteirah—an additional soul. I’ve encountered many Jews who do not find great spirituality in their religion. I hope that will change for them. Often they’ve yet to experience the beauty of Shabbat, surrounded by family and/or friends as candles are lit in an [...]
Daily Kavanah – Tuesday, September 28, 2021
Exploring Genesis: This week’s Torah reading And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth. And God created man in God's image, in the image of God, God created them: male and female, God created them. — Genesis 1:26-27 (edited JPS translation) Only human beings were created in the image of God. From this, Maimonides notes that humans alone—like God—are endowed with morality, reason and free will. Thus, the Torah goes out of the way to distinguish between human beings and animals in two arenas. People alone are made in God’s image, and humanity is to rule over nature. One of the consequences of an increasingly secular society is the loss of those distinctions. While the Torah later makes it clear that [...]
Daily Kavanah – Monday, September 27, 2021
Exploring Genesis: This week’s Torah reading This week the Torah scroll is rolled back to the beginning, the opening chapter of the book of Genesis. The first words in the Torah are among its most important. In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth (Genesis 1:1) The world was created singularly by God. The Hebrew word bara (created) in the Torah is used exclusively for God—for only God can create from nothing. While humans can “form” or “make” from other materials, we are unable to create from nothing. God is the beginning, the Source of everything. Perhaps most important, with God as the sole Creator and therefore the God for all humanity, the world did not come about randomly. There is meaning and purpose to our existence. — Rabbi David Woznica
Daily Kavanah – Friday, September 24, 2021
Sukkot is known as z’man simchateinu—the season of our joy. We rejoice spiritually and perhaps even existentially because we have made it to the other side of Yom Kippur. We have, it seems, been inscribed for good in the Book of Life. Moreover, we rejoice in the bounty of the fall harvest, olives and grapes especially, symbols of light and gladness. There is a beautiful teaching from Rabbi Hayyim Vital, a 16th century Jewish mystic who was born in Damascus and then moved to Tzfat in the Galilee and studied with the great Kabbalists Isaac Luria and Moshe Cordovero. Rabbi Vital shares a message about the joy we find at this season in the gifts of friendship and love. According to Jewish law, a Sukkah must have two complete walls and then at least part of a third wall to be considered “kosher.” Rabbi Vital imagines the walls of the sukkah [...]
Daily Kavanah – Thursday, September 23, 2021
I have long loved the Catholic method of dividing time; there are seasons: the Lenten season, the Advent season, and there is ordinary time. I think that our time, Jewish time, offers similar binaries. There is sacred time—Shabbat, our holidays and our festivals. And there is chol—the everyday, what the Catholic liturgical cycle calls: ordinary time. This binary makes sense; we literally make havdallah, a separation, between the two. It’s easy to live in these two, easy to live in sacred and not, or everyday and not. But Sukkot challenges us, physically and spiritually, to live for a bit betwixt and between—in time that is neither entirely holy nor entirely every day. Chol HaMoed—literally means the everyday of the festival, the everyday of the sacred time. It refers to the days of our longer festivals—Passover and Sukkot—that fall between the bookends of the holiday. They are the days that are, indeed, betwixt and [...]