Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, Jerusalem: Taken in December, 2006 by Shai Gluskin

Tonight begins the 17th Day of the Omer (May 6-7, 2008).

May that part of me that is broken in Tiferet in Tiferet be healed on this day.

The God of the Hebrew Bible is associated with Tiferet. That God, as reported in the Torah, is concerned with ritual purity. Coming close to the holiest of places requires purity. Animals that are brought forward for sacrifice must be without blemish.

This week's Torah portion, emor deals with the rules established to maintain the purity of the priest class. In a world where purity/closeness to God preclude certain physical states, such as a menstruating women or a man having had a seminal emission, death represents the antithesis of God. Priests are instructed to keep at a distance from death, only being allowed to tend to the death of a close family member or to a corpse that has been abandoned.

Closeness to God brings its own danger. The holy of holies, a spot where God's world and the human world touch, was accessible only to the high priest and only on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement which comes just once a year.

In December, 2006, I visited the Temple Mount, the area near where the holy of holies was supposed to have been. Indeed the Dome of the Rock Shrine resides on that very spot. That spot is also where the binding of Isaac is supposed to have taken place and where Mohammed is supposed to have risen to heaven.

I remember going inside the Dome of the Rock in 1974 and putting my hand through a curtain and then touching the bedrock which contained the footprint that Mohammed left on his way out of this world.

In 2006 I had mixed feelings about going up to the Temple Mount at all, and absolutely didn't want to go inside the Dome of the Rock. It turns out that current Temple Mount policy allows only Muslims are allowed inside the Dome of the Rock.

Though I don't believe that holiness is created only within the physical and proximal realms, I also don't dismiss these kinds of holiness as I did in the past. It was after traveling to Mt. Sinai in 1977 and to the southwestern deserts of the USA in 1979 that I began to feel a connection to holy places that are rooted in geographic places.

For me, these kinds of holy places invite a heightened awareness of what is greater than us. That awareness can lead to humility. I think humility is the ultimate purpose of physical holiness. [That's just one of many reasons why I am completely opposed to ideas of establishing a third Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount. Even if it didn't cause massive violence, which it likely would, it would still be a great act of chutzpah and NOT humility, making it counter to a religious endeavor.]

On this day of Tiferet in Tiferet, I pray that I have the will, strength, and ability to approach holiness with reverence and humility.

Tulip and Other Beautiful Things: Taken by me from my house on May 4, 2008.

Tonight begins the 16th Day of the Omer (May 5 - 6, 2008)

May that part of me that is broken in Gevurah in Tiferet be healed on this day.

It's all good. Projects at work, new business, kids at school, kids at play, life in synagogue, family, life with spouse, holidays, volunteer efforts, work in the guarding, planning vacation, learning new things, blogging...

It's all good.

Gevurah in Tiferet is the "But." Gevurah in Tiferet says "You can't do it all. The sense of overwhelm that ensues from all that good ends up taking away from good."

Focus is the antidote to overwhelm. On this one I'm preaching to myself big time.

On this night of Gevurah in Tiferet, may I find the strength to focus and to let go of what I can't do.

Greene Street Garden

Today is the 15th Day of the Omer (May 4-5, 2008).

May that part of me that is broken in Chesed in Tiferet be healed on this day.

PamOur next door neighbor Pam is an awesome gardener. She's also head landscaper for Citizen's Bank Park (not the groundskeeper who works on the turf -- she makes the park itself beautiful with flowers, shrubs and trees).

I don't think she gardens for altruistic reasons, but her work improves the spirits of the neighborhood.

We often think of destructive internal desires that lead people towards various transgressions. But what about the driving internal forces that lead people toward making life better? I think that Pam's gardening is likely an example of that.

I hope also that this omer journal is an example of that.

On this day of Chesed in Tiferet I hope to unloosen my desires that make the world a better place.

Tonight begins the 14th Day of the Omer (May 3 - May 4, 2008).

May that part of me that is broken in Malkhut in Gevurah be healed on this day.

I'm going to recycle what I wrote two years ago for this one:

In the Kabbalistic system Malkhut, literally, "sovereignty" or "kingshipness" is also called, Shekhina. Shekhina, the Divine Presence, comes from a root which means to dwell. It is the emanation of God that is closest to the human experience. It mediates the Divine overflow (shefa) so that God's presence can be experienced by human beings in a flawed world without the world being destroyed by the purity of God's power.

Context is Everything - Macro and Micro Cuts from the Same Pic: Sedgwick St, Philadelphia, Spring, 2007

Tonight begins the 12th Day of the Omer (May 1 - May 2, 2008).

May that part of me that is broken in Hod in Gevurah be healed on this day.

Today, I listened to significant portions of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's post 9/11 2001 sermons that included "Gad Damn America" and "The chickens have come home to roost" (interpreted by many to mean Wright believed the US deserved 9/11).

The sermon in which the phrase "God damn America" appears is about the unchanging nature of God compared to the changing nature of governments. It was U.S. governments that permitted slavery and Jim Crow, but all along God was on the side of justice. The "God Damn America" wasn't a generic criticism of the U.S. It was tied each time to a conditional, "when she..." Watch the 20-second sound byte compared to the 10-minute of context version.

Shai Under Water With Goggles

Tonight begins the 11th Day of the Omer (Arpil 30 - May 1, 2008).

May that part of me that is broken in Netzach in Gevurah be healed on this day.

Netzach, forever, endurance, in Gevurah, limitation, boundaries. Humor is the salve for the long haul. Not taking things too seriously, being able to play, rif, have fun, crack jokes—all these things lower blood pressure.

The holiday of Purim plays the important role in the Jewish calendar for a day where everything is upside down. "Drink until you can't tell the difference between Haman (the villain) and Mordechai (the hero)." In a religion that takes so much so seriously (what religion doesn't?), Purim is a safety valve against the excesses of our collective self-importance and the artifices we've created, religious and otherwise.

Purim is a whole day once a year. But we can have little Purim as a part of every day.

On this night of Netzach in Gevurah, may I re-commit myself to silliness.

Canopy and Street: Sedgewick St. Phila, April 29, 2008

Tonight begins the 10th Day of the Omer (Arpil 29-30, 2008).

May that part of me that is broken in Tiferet in Gevurah be healed on this day.

Paperwork, scheduling, tax returns, scheduling, housecleaning, scheduling, the high cost of living, our high standards, scheduling, our high ambitions, the high stack of papers on the floor of my study—why... I think that is enough to make one downright grumpy! —which I do feel, often.

So many times, in attempted moments of breathing deeply (which doesn't come so naturally to either Sarah or myself), we sit together and enumerate our blessings: