Rav Lachem- you have gone too far!!

With these words, Korach, the namesake and protagonist of this week's Torah story, challenges the political/spiritual leadership and the entire caste system of the Israelites that has been established in hiddenness.

Is Korach's rebellion a righteous call for a system with greater transparency and access to power and resources? After all, the significant decisions affecting the Israelites and the great decisionmaker are hidden behind veils of clouds, hidden on mountains. A basic principle of Nonviolent Communication is that we advocate for systems that are based on the principle of everyone having a voice and being represented in decisions that affect them. This is the antidote to the domination system of pharaoh.

And yet, Torah condemns Korach's rebellion in dramatic storytelling. The Hiddenness causes the Earth to open up beneath the rebels and swallow them. Hiddenness reveals itself by inflicting another plague on the faction of the priestly leadership for dividing the people in the interest of their own greed and jealousy. The rebellion represents a spiritual sickness, one that is permeated with greed and jealousy, taking and dividing for its own sake, completely out of integrity with the vision of wholeness and transformation from the system of enslavement and domination.

Hiddenness calls us to look deeply to see for ourselves the values that underlie any rebellion. Is it rebellion just for the sake of "shaking things up" in a way that reinforces the domination and supremacy of one group over another? Or is there a deeper transformation, one that starts from the principle of everyone belonging and including everyone’s voice? This is what Torah models at the end of the story this week. The Mystery sends out Aaron's son Eliezer, the future of the spiritual/political leadership, to literally forge together into the altar the hopes and dreams of everyone affected by the rebellion.

Not through the division and taking that Korach represents, but by weaving together everyone's needs, wholeness is restored to the moveable sanctuary within our own hearts, at the heart of the journey through the desert and into the promised land.

This is all the subject of this week's video and the practice below. In this time of great division among the people here in the US, among the Jewish people, among the peoples of the world, let us unite around the understanding that our futures, our freedom and our safety are completely intertwined.

Practice: Transforming Fear/ Our Inner Korach

Principle from Nonviolent Communication: Our fundamental Needs are Never in conflict. Only the Strategies we Employ to Meet the Needs

How can we overcome the fear that generates our patterns of taking and dividing? Nonviolent Communication offers a practice where we make peace within ourselves so that we have a vision and process to bring more peace and justice into the world.

Think of a situation in which you see in yourself the tendency to create an “us versus them” frame. A situation where you believe that you, or one set of your needs, are in conflict to others’ needs. This could be within yourself, your own family, society or any place where you interact with others.

First identify the needs of yours, what you want more of in the world, that you are valuing and attempting to meet by thinking this way. Note that by "needs" we are talking about these fundamental universal pathways to the fullness of life: Use the Needs section of this chart to find up to five needs.

Now think of what you would like to do, or have someone else do, to meet these needs. These are the strategies you would like employed to meet your needs. Write down at least two strategies for each of the needs that you have identified.

Now, and this could be more challenging, imagine the needs of the other person or part of yourself that wouldn't be met by employing any of your preferred strategies. Use the chart again! Allow identifying this other set of needs to enter your own being.

Can you see that the conflict is not about the needs themselves but rather about the strategies you would like employed to meet the needs? You might even be seeing that your needs and the other person's needs are actually the same.

If it's hard for you to see that, note that there is always more than one strategy to meet every need. Now use your creativity to imagine possible strategies that would meet everyone's needs. Write down at least two strategies that are your attempt to weave together all the values and needs at play in this situation. Just as the young priest Eliezer did.

What changes for you doing this process?

The Inspiration for the Title of this Weeks’ Essay

The Tenth Mindfulness Training: Protecting and Nourishing the Sangha (Community)

Aware that the essence and aim of a Sangha is the practice of understanding and compassion, we are determined not to use the Buddhist community for personal power or profit, or transform our community into a political instrument. As members of a spiritual community, we should nonetheless take a clear stand against oppression and injustice. We should strive to change the situation, without taking sides in a conflict. We are committed to learning to look with the eyes of interbeing and to see ourselves and others as cells in one Sangha body. As a true cell in the Sangha body, generating mindfulness, concentration, and insight to nourish ourselves and the whole community, each of us is at the same time a cell in the Buddha body. We will actively build brotherhood and sisterhood, flow as a river, and practice to develop the three real powers – understanding, love, and cutting through afflictions – to realise collective awakening.
Plum Village/Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings

Bonus Teaching from Rabbi Art Green:

“…it is worth recalling that the Korah story is all about greed. It is especially seen as the tale of a wealthy man who endlessly wants yet more. He even uses the populist argument ("Are not all of God's people holy?") to advance his cause.

Shabbat Korah should be a time to think about greed, the most dangerous sin of our times, and to stand up against it. Greed for money, for land, for power. They are all the same sin and they are behind many of the most disturbing headlines of our day. Will our planet's future be destroyed by the greed of oil and gas companies and their investors? Will Artificial Intelligence be created in destructive ways for humanity because of the greed of Silicon Valley? Will the man in the White House sell us out due to his endless greed for money? Will Israel wind up destroying itself because of greed for Palestinian land?

״איזה הוא עשיר? השמח בחלקו.״"

"Who is wealthy?" our sages ask. "The one who finds joy in what he has."

Previous Essays on Korach from Torah at the Intersection:

Korach/Leading from Wholeness
Korach/Leading Us out of Trauma Responses

With this gift, Jacob tragically continues the family karma of favoritism and sibling rivalry. Jacob’s mother, Rebecca, had covered young Jacob with an animal skin disguise to win dominance over his brother Esau. Joseph now puts on this special multi-colored coat, this special skin, and takes on the role of superiority. He becomes blinded to the impact of his words and dreams on his brothers. The impact, Torah tells us, is that his brothers hated him and could not speak peacefully to him.

Caught in the continuing karma of anger and revenge, the brothers strip Joseph of his special coat and throw him into a pit, from which he is kidnapped and sold into slavery in Egypt. To cover their crime, Judah and the other brothers dip the coat in blood and present it to their father as (false) proof that Joseph was killed by wild animals. The family is fooled again and again by disguises and false identities.

Jacob, taking the bloody coat as proof of Joseph's death, mourns the loss of his favored son. Judah separates from the clan, finally embarking on his own journey. Joseph, meanwhile, sees deeply into the shadows and hidden places. He finds his power in those places of interpreting dreams and inhabiting pits and prisons. The magic coat and all of his future disguises are manifestations of his hidden inner capacity to cross the boundaries of all identity.

I moved many years ago to a Zen monastery, looking for peace and enlightenment. I imagined the road to that peace and enlightenment would itself be a peaceful and enlightened road.

Instead, I continually rubbed up against myself and the nuns and laywomen with whom I shared a house in snowy Vermont.

The Abbess told me, that is exactly what this is meant to experience. “Here,” she said to me one day, “in the kitchen, we are like potatoes boiling in a big pot. We rub up against one another until our skins are smooth.”

I had chosen to live together in close community, following a very tight schedule that was crafted to quiet my mind's constant chatter about what should I be doing, am I doing it right, does this person like me, what am I doing here?

Quieting the mind made space for me to really feel the feelings arising in me that these thoughts were carrying. Many flavors of fear and loneliness.

The intensity of this practice led me to explore Nonviolent Communication (NVC) to help me accept myself and understand my journey through all these shadow places. And NVC brought me back to this disciplined Buddhist practice in a newer, kinder way.

Sister Annabel, the Buddhist Abbess, was encouraging me to identify with my true nature, my true home, under the skin. Over decades I have learned to love myself as a being just struggling like all other beings to do my best in this life. To learn and grow and feel freer. Sister Annabel and NVC have showed me how the more I loosen my identification with all the thoughts and concepts and beliefs that hold me as less than or not good enough, the freer and happier I am.

A few years later, I traveled with the same Buddhist Sangha to India and met a holy wandering sadhu who sat and talked beneath a tree along the Ganges river every evening. I asked him, what does he do with fear? He said, no fear. And, pointing to the skin on his arm, which was completely covered with gray ash, he said, clothing.

The protagonists in this week's Torah portion, Joseph and Tamar, find incredible freedom and power by recognizing that all of our outer appearances are just clothing. This distinguishes them from their family members who are fooled by disguises. Joseph and Tamar find the courage out of great difficulties to shed false identities that are born from sibling rivalry, jealousy, the patriarchy and the cultural strategies of meeting needs at the expense of others’ needs.

Tamar

On his own, Judah suffers loss after loss, losing his sons, his wife, the possibility of progeny. A new relationship to role and power, a new paradigm, is needed to end this cycle of violence and strife.

This new paradigm arises through Tamar, Judah’s daughter-in-law. Tamar is widowed when Judah's son dies. Empowered by the patriarchal society, Judah banishes her to invisibility in her father's house.

Tamar rejects the widow's white robes as her identity. She refuses to submit to the invisibility and powerlessness assigned by the patriarchy to the role of widows. She sees through the veils of roles and victimhood, and then uses another of the roles assigned to women as a source of her power — the prostitute.

She devises and carries out a plan to gain her freedom and place in society by taking on the cloak of identity of a temple prostitute, setting a trap that Judah falls into. Judah propositions her, not recognizing her in her disguise, and she bargains with him for the markings of his identity and power — his staff and his seal. She uses them to claim her freedom, understanding that power and privilege are fluid and ephemeral. In her disguise as a prostitute, Tamar conquers Judah nonviolently and obtains his birthright status.

By refusing to sink into the shame and invisibility that accompany the roles assigned to women, Tamar uses her inner power to embrace a new paradigm. She pretends invisibility, without identifying with it, without taking on the shame associated with the roles, to claim her new status in the family and society.

Joseph

Tamar's light shines brightly as the story returns to Joseph, now a slave in the house of Potiphar. Potiphar's wife attempts to seduce Joseph and rather than abandon his values, he flees from her, leaving her holding his coat. Joseph, like Tamar, now understands the danger of identifying with the veils that cover our humanity.

These are cracks that let the light in. As we celebrate the winter solstice this year, can we celebrate what is hidden even as we rejoice to let in the light. Perhaps it is our very celebration that lets end the light.

This is surely the anthem of Torah of our time: What do we have to shed to break out of the endless cycle of rivalry, objectification, manipulation, abuse? How can we abandon privileges born from the oppression of others? Can we learn to be fluid with our identifications, even the most precious ones, so that we encounter each other without skins that separate us?

Click here to read more about abandoning identity and disguises from Torah at the Intersection about Vayeishev

Click here to read more about settling as a practice or a bypass from Torah at the Intersection about Vayeishev

And click here for last year’s substack, Wandering, Settling and Dehumanizing: Torah at the Intersection/Vayeishev

Registration open for the 2025 Nonviolent Communication online Conference

Discussion Questions for Small Groups:Vayeishev- Shabbat Winter Solstice Retreat

Overall theme: Illuminating what is Hidden.

Caught in perceptions of others, not seeing into hiddenness,

1. Settling
   "And Jacob settled (Hebrew: Vayeishev) in the land where his father had sojourned, the land of Canaan." Genesis 37:1
   
   Discussion Question:
   When does settling contribute to illumination, when to ignoring or bypass? What does your way of reading Torah and its stories illuminate for you?
   

2. Favoritism

"Now Israel (a new name given to Jacob) loved Joseph best of all his sons—he was his “child of old age”; and he had made him an ornamented tunic (often translated as a coat of many colors)." Genesis 37:3

Discussion Question:

How has favoritism manifested in you, in your thinking and actions? What is the impact you see In our world? Where does it come from?

3. Finding Illumination in the Pit of Darkness and Constriction

"When Joseph came up to his brothers, they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the ornamented tunic that he was wearing, and took him and cast him into the pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it." "Then they sold him for 20 pieces of silver to the Ishmaelites or Midianites who took him down to the Constricted Place (Egypt in Torah)." Genesis 37:24

Discussion Question:

What have you learned in the pit(s )of darkness and constriction?

4. Dehumanizing the other, Not Seeing Beyond the Veil

So she (Tamar) took off her widow’s garb, covered her face with a veil, and, wrapping herself up, sat down at the entrance to Enaim, (the place where the eyes become opened). When Judah saw her, he judged her as a temple prostitute for she had covered her face. Genesis 38:14-15

Discussion Question:

When do you dehumanize someone by labeling them? When has this happened to you?

5. Dreams Speaking to us from the Darkness

"Pharaoh was angry with his two eunuchs, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, and put them in custody ... in the same prison house where Joseph was confined. "Genesis 40:2,3

"And the eunuchs said to him (Joseph) , “We had dreams, and there is no one to interpret them.” So Joseph said to them, “Surely God can interpret! Tell me [your dreams].” " Genesis 40:8

Discussion Question:

Think of a dream you remember from the dark night. How does it live in you now? What do dreams illuminate for you?

We begin a new year of the Torah cycle in the midst of continuing unbearable, horrific spiraling of violence in the Middle East, intensification of global climate crisis and anxiety over the elections in the US and the rise of dictators and war in so many parts of the world. I am continuing to share the respite, refuge and guidance I receive from the spiritual teachings of Torah, Buddhism and Nonviolent Communication. May this publication contribute to healing and repairing the web of life.

A Guided Meditation to Begin:

Before jumping into some words of Torah, Buddhism and Nonviolent Communication, let's pause to do a practice together, right now, to replenish and reconnect with our inner life energy.

[Follow your breath and the prompts at your own pace, repeating each verse of two lines at least twice, as you inhale and exhale with these words]:

Breathing in, I am aware I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I am aware I am breathing out.

Breathing in, I feel my breath filling my entire body.
Breathing out I follow my breath in and out.

Breathing in, I feel my body calming.
Breathing out, I calm my body.

Breathing in, I contact my heart.
Breathing out I feel my breath dissolving all the constricted and walled places in my heart.

Breathing in, I open my heart to my own suffering and to the suffering of everyone, without walls or limits.
Breathing out, I rest in an open undefended heart.

Breathing in, I feel the gift of life in my whole body.
Breathing out, I know I am alive in this moment.

Breathing in, I begin anew, in this moment.
Breathing out, I touch the wonderfulness of this moment. 

As you read further into the writings about the Torah portion of the week,  can you return to this pause, this feeling, this inner peace? Torah begins with establishment of life energy through breath and word. You can return to this meditative pause through the day so that the light in you brings light into our troubled world.

This week we begin a new year of weekly Torah readings. The first of the five books of the written Torah is called Bereishit after it’s first Hebrew word. Bereishit is derived from ‘beginning’ and the form of the word used in the text invites us into a timeless process of beginnining. The Hebrew languaging transcends static concepts generated by usual translations such as, in the beginning, so that we understand that creation, generativity and life itself are continuing processes of beginning-ing, in every moment.

As Torah opens, the earth is empty of distinction, but full of something unexplained called tohu v vohu. We don’t know what this is because it predates us and is therefore beyond our perception and understanding. It is a field of non duality, not organized in any way we can recognize, and an essential part of the mysterious fabric of what we are. In Torah, as in perhaps all spiritual texts, what is beyond form is not subject to human perception through our sense organs. But beyond form does not mean nothingness. Tohu v vohu is a pure field of generativity, like emptiness in Buddhism which signifies a fertile void from which everything we can perceive arises. Torah is teaching us that our conditioned world, the conditioned way we perceive and experience everything, springs from a field beyond duality, the field of a god figure called Elohim.

Torah introduces Elohim as world-creating energy, always in motion, beyond classification, signified by presenting Elohim’s actions in a mix of singular, plural and unknowable word forms. Elohim speaks our world into its distinct forms in six “days” of creation, from darkness and light to the animals in the soil, the stars, moon, vegetation to the human form Adam, meaning Earthling.

Torah is a book of movement in which all the characters, including the Divine Energy itself, are shaped and affected by interactions with the world that comes forth in early verses through spoken word. Torah wants us to understand that what we do matters profoundly. How we step into every moment, how we treat each other, affects everyone and everything, including the energy that brought us here and that we pass on.

The First Verse:

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָֽרֶץ

Beginning-ing of Elohim’s creating of the heavens and earth.
— Tr. Roberta Wall

At the beginning of God’s creating of the heavens and the earth.
— Tr. Everett Fox

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few. — Suzuki Roshi

A story about Beginning-ing
I was seated with a few hundred meditators on the floor of a large chapel in a Catholic convent in Litchfield, Connecticut. We gathered there every year with Roshi Bernie, the preferred name of Jewish Zen Buddhist teacher Roshi Bernie Glassman. This was a New Year’s meditation retreat, seven days of silent sitting, chanting, and quiet contemplation.

Roshi Bernie spoke to us one evening about beginner’s mind, beginning-ing, by retelling a koan, a Chinese Zen teaching story:

The old Chinese master is sitting peacefully in his pagoda, sipping a hot cup of tea. His student comes to the door and calls, Master, Master.

It was the way Bernie said Master that went right through me. “Maaaaaster,” in a raspy, singsong voice, stretching out the vowel sounds in ”Maaaaaaster”

I heard in it the voice of my childhood, a Brooklyn-accented Jewish singsong intonation. Bernie and I were from the same neighborhood and went to the same high school. I knew that earthy voice.

Bernie went on with the story, bellowing out the Master’s one word answer in a deeper, steadier baritone voice, “yes.“

Silence.

And the student came again the next day and stood at the door and once again called, “Maaaster, Maaaster,” in that raspy  singsong voice, stretching out the sound of the vowels in ”Maaaaaaster.”

And the Master replied in the same steady sonorous voice, “Yes.“

Silence.

And, Bernie said, this went on, day after day.

Silence.

And I am just sitting in the hall, listening and wondering, what is the Dharma, the Torah, the teaching of this story for my life?

And then Bernie looked out at us again and he said, it’s like when you put your child to bed, and you tuck them in, and you turn out the light and go into the hall, and you hear a little voice from under the covers calling, “Daaaaaddy," stretching out the “a” in Daddy so that it sounds like Daaaaddy,” and you go back in and you say “yes, my love,” and the little voice says, “I’m scared, it’s dark…”

You say, “yes,” and you turn on a night light. And you head out, and the little voice calls again, "Daaaaaddy," stretching out the “a” in Daddy so that it sounds like “Daaaaddy,” and you go back in and you say, “Yes, my love. ”And the little voice calls again, “I’m cold,” and you go back in and you ask, “Would you like to be tucked in again?” And you tuck them in again, touch their forehead, and brush your lips against their forehead, and you head out and again you hear the little voice calling again, “Daaaaaddy,” and go back in and hear, “I’m scared.”

And you go back in, and on and on.

And Roshi Bernie said, "Can you go in each time as if it’s the first time?"

Sitting here decades later, I look up from my computer and see a riotous crisscross of deciduous and evergreen trees, red, brown and yellow leaves falling. Another autumn is here and passing so quickly.

Can I see this as if it’s the first time?

Torah at the beginning
Bereishit, בְּרֵאשִׁית, beginning-ing, is the very first word of the written Torah. In the cycle begun 1500 years ago by rabbis in the Mideast, we begin studying and practicing this first section, or parashah, of Torah each year, entering this consciousness of beginning-ing, right after the Jewish festivals of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and the Sukkot harvest festival.

The calendar and rituals are set up to create a collective experience of beginning-ing, of beginner's mind. New relationships with ourselves, our families, our God. Everything is new, everything is possible.

Nonviolent Communication
Nonviolent Communication offers helpful practices for us to step into the consciousness of beginning-ing so we see another person and communicate with them in new ways.

We start with curiosity — what have I experienced that has caused a breakdown in connection with this other person? And what have they experienced? The mind of curiosity is beginner’s mind, free of judgments and diagnoses of the other person, the mind of beginning-ing. We look with curiosity to understand what worlds were created with our words and actions and what worlds do we want to create with new words and actions.

Let’s say you have received an email or a communication from someone.

You receive the communication in a way that doesn’t bring you a joyful connection. You know this because you feel tension in your body, or you recognize thoughts appearing in your mind such as, this person is an idiot or this person is so clueless, selfish, etc. And/or you recognize that you feel irritated, angry, hurt, tense, etc.

Can you step into curiosity about your own experience so you get clarity about why this other person’s words affect you the way they do.

That clarity will help you understand yourself and also communicate more clearly to the other person what is important to you.

Here is a chart about how we use Nonviolent Communication to develop clarity, then compassionate connection, then empowerment to act in ways that are more likely to meet our needs.

Let’s start by getting clarity about the thoughts and judgments you are having about the other person, and using those thoughts and judgments to understand what the impact of their actions has been on you.

You  can do this by translating your thoughts/judgments/analyses the person  into what NVC founder Marshall Rosenberg called Life Serving Communication.

First you get clear about what happened — what did they do that is so painful/aggravating /scary for you, that you are labeling them good/bad, right/wrong?  Not what you are thinking about what they did; just what happened. This is your observation.

That observation, the way it impacted you and the meaning you make of it, has generated feelings in you. How do you feel in your physical body and emotions, when you think now about what happened? Feelings List . 

And what is it about what happened that is so important to you that you feel this way? What is it that you deeply value? What would bring you fully alive, what would contribute to your joy, safety, connection, respect? Needs/values list.

Instead of beginning or proceeding from judgments about the other person, which will cause further separation, you begin from understanding your own feelings and needs, why what happened has impacted you in this way. And, if you decide to let the other person know, you begin to communicate about yourself, not blaming or shaming the other person.

Or, you may feel curious about the other person's experience, what happened for them, and you would begin by guessing from curiosity what they observed and what their feelings and needs are.

From a shared place of curiosity about each other, hearing each other's needs/values and experience, new strategies to solve the problem will arise. A new consciousness arises out of the common field of shared experiencing.

Please Call Me by My True Names

This poem by Thich Nhat Hanh speaks from the place of beginning-ing, of arriving anew in each moment to discover how we open to compassion when we recognize ourselves in each other:
—

Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow —
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his “debt of blood” to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart
can be left open,
the door of compassion.

Click here for more Torah at the Intersection writing on the beginning verses of the Torah

Click Here for Registration and Information on Upcoming Weekend Retreat:
Finding Illumination in the Darkness: Judaism, Buddhism, and Nonviolent Communication
With Rabbi Ben Newman and Roberta Wall
December 20 - 22, 2024