Purim is associated with the Sefirah of Netzach. The text is from The Ten Sefirot in Sacred Time, available from Aleph.  Gabbai Seth Fishman, BLOG Editor

On Purim, God helped us, but it wasn’t obvious this was so.  God was never mentioned in the Megillah, and the name “Esther” means “I shall be hidden”.  God secretly helped us in our rescue from persecution and slaughter.  All the miracles were done for us by netzach, i.e., means, arrangements and influence and rooted in a kind of selflessness as, (Esther 4:3) “lying in ashes donning sack cloths” and, (ibid, 4:16) “fast for me, etc,” so that their salvation would be for the sake of netzach, and would endure. 

The Arranger of all Arrangements, Blessed be S/He, hid Hirself, but was behind the arranging of Vashti, Carshena, Bigsan and Teresh, the king’s sporadic sleeping and then learning of Mordecai’s action, and Charbona, etc., etc.  And even though God is not mentioned in the Megillah, the entire quality of the story was one of “return to God”, prayer, and faith until a recommitting between us and Hir: (ibid, 9:27) “The Jews established and accepted,” and now, (Shabbos 88a) “they reestablished what they had previously accepted” in the days of Moses our teacher, exalted guest of Netzach.  And to this day, we still read the Megillah and we occupy ourselves with donations to the poor and with support of the needy, (Esther 9:19) and “sending of goodies one to another.”

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In Reb Zalman’s book, Yishmiru Daat, the following section is a continuation of the last post, For Purim.  Have a joyful holiday!  Gabbai Seth Fishman, BLOG Editor 

[The previous section spoke of replacing the mantra of self-doubt associated with the remembering of Amalek with the mantra, “We are God’s treasure.”]

“Blot out the memory of Amalek” (Deut 25:19).  How must we go about eradicating the memory of Amalek? By recognizing that we are no longer in the same position we were then.  Now we are in the presence of a loving God, receiving Hir grace and blessing. Keeping the positive reminders in our awareness creates a situation for us which helps us find strategies to fight residual effects of having Amalek, self-doubt, within us. The positive reminders better enable us to look at our enemies objectively, without having our visions clouded by the past traumas and residual introjections, by other enemies or situations, by historic conditions which had once convinced us of our worthlessness, conditions no longer with us in the present, (such as the effects we still feel from the time when the Nazis wanted to destroy our bodies or the time when the Inquisition wanted to destroy our souls).

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The following is a translation from Hebrew of a section from Yishmiru Daat, Reb Zalman’s wonderful Sefer.  On Shabbos zachor, the Shabbos before Purim, (this year, March 7, 2009), we read about Haman’s ancestor Amalek.  Reb Zalman’s piece below gives us a fresh way to understand what the Torah had in mind when it asked us to remember Amalek, one of the six rememberances, (sheish zechiros).   Gabbai Seth Fishman, BLOG Editor

“Remember what Amalek did to you — — how he chilled you on the way and brought you down — — and when it comes to pass that you will find your peace and rest in the land to which the Lord your God will take you, you are to erase the memory of Amalek — do not forget!, (Deut 25;17,18,19). ”

Erase the memory of Amalek — that is, make sure that no memory of Amalek will remain with you.  Nevertheless, it says right away, “Do not forget.” This looks like a contradiction, (i.e. to remove all memory of Amalek and then, right away the words, “Do not forget.”)  It creates a paradox that does not yield to reason in a simple way.  This leads us to a SaFeQ / a doubt as to how to fulfill this commandment.

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Tu Bishvat / the fifteenth day of the month of Shevat is The New Year of the Trees.  This year, the holiday begins tonight, Sunday, February 8, 2009.  Here are some thoughts from Reb Zalman, on this holiday, “Our Gaian Yom Tov.”

Tu Bishvat: Our Gaian Yom Tov
by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

I thought that I was glad to see
a beautiful Midrash in a tree…

When we sing the Torah back to the aron hakodesh / the holy ark, the sentence we use in our song talks of a tree:

Etz Hayim Hi / she is a tree of life,
lamahaziqim bah / to those who hold onto her

The “Tree of life” is generally thought to refer to the Torah. However, the context of this sentence from its source in the Book of Proverbs, [Proverbs 3:18], refers it to Hokhmah / Wisdom, Sophia.

If Torah and Hokhmah are synonymous, then it doesn’t matter which of them one has in mind.  But our Sages, of blessed memory, did not see Hokhmah and Torah synonymously:  They saw Hokhmah as something universal, something in common and shared by non-Jew and Jew alike; in contrast, Torah was seen as something only for Jews.  So first, for Tu Bishvat, I want to talk about Etz Hayyim, i.e., Hokhmah.

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This wonderful and inspiring talk of Reb Zalman’s, originally given in the late 1990’s, can be found on the  Yishmiru Daat dvd, available from Aleph Resources.  It paints a picture of Reb Zalman’s role in the shaping of Jewish Renewal in our time.  Enjoy!  Gabbai Seth Fishman, BLOG Editor.

Renewal Is Not Judaism-Lite
by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

Contents

Tamid Echad / Always and Forever One
Not Judaism-Lite
Holocaust Losses
Kumran USA
Religious Environmentalist
The Havurah Movement and the Jewish Catalogue
Jewish Renewal Gains Momentum
My Teachers
Focus: Restoration or Renewal?
Internalizing the Renewal of Judaism
A Renewal Mashal / Analogy
Renewal Is Not Heresy
Building a Future
Somatizing
Loving Jews and Loving All
Intuition
From Empathy to Compassion
Investing in Shaping the God-field
The lamed-vavniker‘s Curriculum
Paradigm Shift
Moral/Faith Development
Soul and Mind Development
Hasidism
Gaia
Eco-Kashrut
Feminism
GLBT
Ger Tzedek, Ger Toshav
Recharging our Souls in Israel
Internationlization of Renewal
A Renewed Halachah
In Conclusion

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