God-Naming
Rudolph Otto, who sought to understand the idea of the holy, found himself led
to a traditional Yom Kippur Service in a North African synagogue. Seeing the
sincere prayer attitude of the worshippers he was caught up in their fervor. His
book The Idea Of The Holy was an outcome of his experience. He describes
the attraction of the Mysterium Fascinans, something like the Burning Bush,
beckoning to approach God and the Mysterium Tremendum that overwhelms
one, threatens to be fatal and demanding that one removes one’s shoes from off
one’s feet ( Na’alekha – your lock that holds you captive to your regel – foot, your habits – hergel)
Kadosh Kadosh Kadosh is what the Seraphim proclaim. They, who have six
wings and raise one pair with each Kadosh stand like a Menorah before the
Throne. When we want to recite it we might each time raise our arms higher as
follows: The idea of kadosh, "holiness", touches us in three different ways
(kadosh, kadosh, kadosh). The first level is the kadosh of immanence, the sense
that the Sefer Torah will be safer and more honored if you store it in the Aron
Kodesh. The second level is the kadosh of transcendence, the voice which tells
you that the Ark is holy and therefore your prayer will be better heard in front
to it. And then there's kadosh on the third level, the dynamics of calling upon
the Names of God, reaching out for transcendence and then bringing it all
together in your heart, making the transcendent imminent, addressing God on
the basis of where you're at in the moment. It is saying "Adonai Zevaot!" -which means "Lord of Hosts" -- and bringing it home to "Lord, I am going to
be Your host!" and then opening up the door to God, looking around, and
proclaiming: "The whole world is filled with God's glory!" In other words, the
transcendent God becomes immanent, not by the God-Name I call out but by
my intent, how I face that name,.
This age cries out for the need to create new God-Names and to make peace
with the old ones. We need to deal with the no longer acceptable patriarchal,
Male image of God and work some androgyny into the God-Naming process. I,
for one, am not going to wait around for a Linguistic Moshiach so I have
juggled the Him/Her into Hi as in Hi'r Glory, for example. At the same time,
change takes time, change needs time, and we must be patient with the old
names and terms whenever they pop in uninvited and not let it get to us so
much. We need to see the more. That's the only way it'll happen, the only way
things grow into fruition. An acorn cannot become a tree instantaneously. So if
the stuff bothers you, if you're seething, think of it as the Pappa stuff and GodWilling you'll be pregnant with it for a while and then give birth to something
new.
I've got a friend who had trouble with the image of "Father". His father did
some heavy stuff with him so the word "father" had become like treif in his
mouth and he couldn't address God as Father. And then God helped him and he
became a father and what he felt for that baby brought him to the realization
that "Father" was a perfect name for God. But it took the experience of being a
father, not just being subject to a father, for him to realize that this root
metaphor, father, is a good root metaphor. The root metaphor mother is a good
root metaphor. It is accessible to us., We have it.
The problem, however, is that root metaphors and names of God must undergo
seasonal change. In Chassidus this process is called Binyan HaMalchut,
"building the Kingdom", establishing the God-field.. If you were to ask R’
Yitzchak Luria to explain the business of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur -going all the way to Sh'mini Atzeres -- he will say it is binyan hamalchut, to
build up malchut.
The way this goes is as follows: Every Yom Kippur God scraps last year's
Name. The Name, after all, is an interface between the infinite and the finite,
and during the course of the year God's Name has been pierced by our sins. Our
infidelity creates leaks in the Name, in the interface; they interfere with the
harmonious flow of divine energies and their focus. After a while, the Name of
God needs mending. The whole thing of the High Priest going into the Kodshei
Kodshim on Yom Kippur is a process of bringing down a new Name of God.
So the old Name of God dies and a new Name comes down.
Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Ladi (l8th century) taught that there is great
significance to our usage of the root metaphor "King" during the period of
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur because it is a time when we are making God
a king. During the service we are falling to the ground and saying, "We share
with You, God, because You cannot be a king over animals. A king needs to be
a king over other peers, as it were, and at the same time the king cannot be a
king in his own family. A pappa is a pappa and a king is a king. So what we're
trying to find out Rosh Hashanah is, are we going to do pappa stuff or king
stuff with You?" Avinu Malkeinu is this kind of rap.
On Yom Kippur God becomes manifest in the 26 hours of that day. Twenty-six
is the numerical value of the Sacred Name: Yud Hey Vuv Hey, so God
becomes that day, becomes incarnate into Time on that very day. God now
enters into the world to atone for us. As the Midrash puts it:
"For in that day (Yom Kippur) will there be atonement for you" (Leviticus,
15:30) -- And how do we know that there would be atonement even without the
sacrifices, without the scapegoat? Therefore does the Torah state, "For by that
day will there be atonement" -- the day itself atones (Sifra on Lev., 15:30).
"For it is a day of atonement, to make atonement for you before the Lord"
(Leviticus, 23:28) -- I would have assumed that there is atonement on that day
only through sanctifying the day, fasting, and abstaining from work. But how
do I know that there is atonement even if the day is not sanctified and one did
not fast nor abstain from work? Thus the Torah teaches: "For it is a day of
atonement". And how do I know there is atonement even without the scapegoat
and without the sacrifices? Thus the Torah teaches: "For it is a day of
atonement" (Sifra on Lev., 23:28).
The God-Name for Yom Kippur, Yud Hey Vuv Hey, is very important. It is
non-judgmental. It connotes compassion. It connotes immanence, incarnation.
God as Elohim, judge, on the other hand, is not as accessible to negotiation.
Elohim does not accept bribes, does not go for appeasement. Elohim means
"judge" and judges can't be bought. The Zohar says: If you offer a korbon to the
Name Elohim, it's like a bribe. So all the sacrifices that need to be offered up
on Yom Kippur are offered to Yud Hey Vuv Hey. Offer them to Elohim and
you'll only find yourself in more trouble. [Zove’ach l’elokim yochrom]
In those times you had the attributes of the two respective Names acted out for
you in your own front yard, in the desert of Sinai. If you would go to Moses
and say, "I sinned", he would say to you, "Okay your punishment is such and
such", and if you came to Aaron, he would say, "Don't worry, I can fix you up.
Bring me a sheep and I'll make a sacrifice" because he would be moving in the
circle of Rachamim, Compassion, the Name of Yud Hey Vuv Hey.
After the Yom Kippur business there are four days that take us to Sukkot. The
Hassidim call them "the four days of God's name". In other words, the first day
is when the letter Yud comes down, the second day the letter Hey, then the
Vuv, and then the other Hey. It's like the letting down of the Divine Name,
bringing down the Name one day at a time. Finally, Sukkot arrives and we can
start to dance. Now that the Name is back down on earth again we can celebrate
and so we do Simchat Torah.
Every year needs a new Name of God. The Chinese have the Year of the Dog,
or the Year of the Pig; they have a sense that time has texture and there are
curves in history that manifest themselves in economics, politics, all that stuff,
an empirical truth that is behind Yovel and Sh’mittah and so on. In human
relations, for instance, a relationship is given naturally seven years. If you want
to do the relationship longer than seven years there's a lot of homework to be
done during the bridging time. And so the Torah says that obligations, liens that
people have on you cannot last longer than seven years. How wonderful this is,
that not a single molecule, even a bone structure, remains the same after seven
years. So if I say I am identical to the who I was seven years ago it is only in
the form but not in the substance. The substance is no longer the same. So a
new God-Name comes down every year.
When the Death Of God discussion came out in 1960, I asked myself what it
meant to me, and it became clear that the old Name of God had died, not God.
What we call God, therefore, is but the name of God. ("In that day shall God be
one and Hir Name shall be one" [Zechariah, 14:9].) A lot of Kabbalah deals
with this, with the use of divine names and all that stuff.
If I want to relate to the Infinite, I need to examine my image projection, my
personal partzuf because image is important. The partzuf which you show to
me is a close reflection of the partzuf which I am showing to you. If I'm smiling
at you then you start smiling at me. The face you make to me is a response to
the face I make to you.
Way back when I was a yeshivah boy there was an instance I recall when my
mashpiya’ (supervisor, or guidance rabbi) approached me while I was
davvening and observed with concern the way I davvened so strenuously,
kvetching out my supplications with an "Oyoyoy!" -- my face contorted with
concentration and so on. Suddenly, he moved in on me and jabbed me in the
ribs, startling me out of my intense dialogue with God. So he says to me: "Did
you already try it with a smile and it didn't work?"
When you observe the facial expressions of people while they are praying, you
can get a picture of the expression on God's Face in response to their prayers.
How do you think the Baal Shemtov looked at God, or Rebbe Shneur Zalman?
So it has to do with faces, with partzufim.
The Name of God for the last paradigm died around l960. What does it mean
when we're told to do something "for God's sake", or "in God's name"? It
doesn't work anymore. The idea has lost its original meanings. It no longer
bears any social powers. At one time, "for Christ's sake" was a sacred
declaration rather than a cuss word. A beggar would proclaim, "Alms, for
Christ's sake", or, "Alms, in the name of Allah!" Before retiring for the night,
Jewish kids say, "In the Name of the God of Israel, to my right is Michael, to
my left is Gabriel..." and so on. But it doesn't work anymore because the old
Name has died.
The science of God-Naming requires that we first learn a little about the old
Names. Of the most ancient, there was Eyl Elyon, "Eyl the Most High"
(Genesis, 14:18-20). What does Eyl look like? According to some sources Eyl
looked like a fiery bull. He is called shoreyli(?) and some people assert that the
sin of the Golden Calf was that they reverted back to a God interface that was
already an atovism(?) at that time. So by going back to an earlier stage and
saying that this a God, the God of my fathers -- this got us into trouble.
In those days it was the age of Taurus, of El the Bull. El was the poppa, the
head of the pantheon. At his side was Asherah, the mistress of the womb, and
begotten by him, among all kinds of other gods and godlets, was Baal, the
husband, the yesod-tiferet-being involved in a sister-bride relationship with
Anat. Anat was the Kali like goddess who wore a garland of skulls. She has to
do with the womb, and with life and death. She is Mechayah Meitim, "reviver
of the dead". She helped Baal to set up house, and so he becomes Ba’al Zefon,
Ba’al Zevul, and so on. This was the Holy Family -- El, Ashera, Baal, and
Anat, who is also sometimes known as Ashtoret, which in Hebrew sometimes
means "womb".
There's also Demeter, Cybele, Adonis, with a lot of heavy family stuff going on
with the mother goddess and the son that has to die and has to go through this
whole thing.
I've always had trouble with graven images, having overdosed on men tor nisht
("thou shalt not") in my yeshivah days, and therefore not able to be fully
present with a sculpture. But I remember that when I lived in Manitoba I was
once standing in front of the huge sculpture of the bisons at the parliament
building and I could feel this power, I could imagine how a person would want
to do obeisance in the age of Taurus because the interface with the gods back
then was so fantastically morphic. Interfaces, gods, looked like animals. And
they ate, too. They ate human beings for breakfast. Minotaur got a virgin each
time.
Once, when I was in Frankfurt, a friend of mine took me to a church where
there was a life-size pietta(?) and it moved me deeply. I see a Yiddishe
mommele in brownstone holding the broken body of her son and tears just
poured out of me. It was only stone, but what I saw was the fantastic power
which embodied by this iconography which brings us imagery of this sort and
how it gets us to this place of feeling along. Sometimes I feel really robbed of
being able to see God in a baby. A confession: When I was a kid I went to
public school in the morning and to cheder in the afternoon. Once a week there
was "religion hour" at public school and all the Christian kids would go to have
class with this priest. And I would envy them. They had coloring books with
pictures of this beautiful old pappa god, and at his side sat this son and so on. I
envied all that. Most of all, I envied what I saw in later years in Khrishna and
other traditions where a baby is born, coming out of the womb, where God was
being incarnated once again.
So you see how there was some real strong stuff back then, in both the mother
and the son teachings. Then the paradigm shift occurred and we get Yud Hey
Vuv Hey, a whole new Name, as the text itself attests: "And I appeared to
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with the Name Eyl Shaddai, but My Name Yud Hey
Vuv Hey I did not make known to them" (Exodus, 6:2).
My sense is that a new God-Name is about to be born, but it is the education of
that new God-Name which concerns me. The moment you are aware of
something happening you taken on the responsibility to do it consciously and
this is what Kaplan said very clearly, that we cannot go on reinterpreting
history unconsciously but it has to be conscious interpretation and here we are
not merely dealing with reinterpretation of history but reinterpretation of God's
Name. What kind of a God-Name do we want to bring down? We are doing
binyan malchut not just for Rosh Hashanah but an entire eon; to help GodBirth. Can you imagine that a thousand years from now there will be people
davvening from a siddur? Who do you want them to address at that time?
Which God-Name?
We must design a divine interface, a software by which the infinite will
communicate with the finite. We need to write out our side of the Brit, of the
Covenant and determine which God-Name we wish to serve, with whom we
wish to covenant. What kind of interface do we wish to connect with?
In the Middle Ages we used to call God names like Hakodosh Baruch Hu, "the
Holy One Blessed Be He", or Melech Malchei HaMelachi, "King Who Is King
Of Kings". Then we shifted from names to attributes. and God became
Rachum, "Merciful One", Chanun, "Gracious One", Erech Apayim, "Tolerant
One", HaMakom, "The Place", Gevurah, "Strength" -- names of attributes. The
Sufis operate with 99 beautiful names of Alah, 99 interfaces for bringing
something down. If you need healing and you are a Sufi you would have a
particular name to use. If you needed forgiveness, another name, and so on.
You would call upon that particular attribute of God and that is how you
connect.
If we are given the task to design the Shemot, the divine names, the interfaces
of the new paradigm, we have to do it with wisdom. We have to integrate it
without losing in the long run, gaining a new understanding without losing the
old one. Otherwise we'll have the same bugs in our spiritual progression as we
do in our material, scientific progression. For example, we have yet to find a
way of investing as much energy and sophistication into the technology of
peace as we have invested into the technology of war.
So we have to know how to make a God system, a Dos system for the operation
of this universe. How will we design it? Will we run CPM? How about
developing a Divine Operating System for Dos?
There is a midrash about Abraham discovering God when he was only three.
Reb Nachman takes it a step further and read “ Av yadoakha mino’ar” as,
Abraham knew God when God was just starting out in the "God business".
Abraham was a God educator, Moses was a God educator, and Isaiah finally
gets God to graduate, to become universal.
In the siddur of the future. And I'm still talking like I mean books, but I don't
mean books. But I would like to see the following things. I would like to have
some names for God that in the part of the siddur which deals with he world of
assiyah I would like to have a different set of names for God than in the worlds
of yetzirah, p'sukei d'zimrah, where I go into the song part. So I would want to
say creator, fabricator, maker, supporter, you know, instrument-izer, energizer,
all what I am doing at that moment. So I would say, Blessed are You, O
Energizer, who makes me stand up, etc. But I would want to say, O lover, O
friend, I want to sing you a song, and then do the p'sukei d'zimrah. O divine
minds, I greet you with the shma Israel. O essence that I am, is that is I, I know
you. O Lord Open my lips and my mouth shall tell thy praise. Let the identity
which I have at the moment address the corresponding name in God. So each
prayer would have a corresponding name of God to go with it. Each layer of the
davening would have its own root metaphor that would engage us in the most
effective attunement possible to all aspects of God.
If we can do that I would like to have the following exercise. Jung has this
typology of four sensations corresponding to the four seasons:
Winter=intuition, Spring=sensation Summer=reason, Fall=feeling. I would like
to have the people born in the winter to take the task in groups of four
representing the year so that here are the people with the Yud, here are the
people with the bottom Hey, asiyah, here will be the upper hey, Briah and here
the vav -- the chodesh hashvivyi -- into the feeling place, so you have yud hey
vuv hey, you have the typology. If you feel absolutely that your typology and
your birthday don't fit together, I would say go by your insight into your
typology. Make then groups of four. I can't swear to the accuracy of this but
this is our working model for today. I would like to have one woman and two
men come up here to join me. Let us now stand back to back and chant
together: It is perfect, you are love, all is clear and I am holy.
Have you ever seen images of the three faces of the hindu gods, they seem to
be coming out of one center. Sometimes you have the triangle for Trinity. What
we were doing was a quaternary. A quaternary is a s static,. It keeps on turning
and sometimes you see one aspect then you see another aspect. This is as I
would want to see in the siddur of the future, different aspects of identifying
with God during different phases of the davvening by addressing God by
different names depending upon the place that I am, as I am turning my center
and exuding various aspects of myself and my experience.
Now I wish for each group of four to sit down and talk. Each person
representing a different World, but not to deny what the other is saying. So if
you are coming from the world of briah, not to say yetzirah you're crazy.
You're one of those feeling shmattehs because that's precisely why you're on
the committee. If I had a senate of advisors to the president of the United
States, I'd want to have them each represent a different sign of the Zodiac and
the chairman should be the one, like right now the cancer should be the
chairman, whatever the month be. So what I'm saying, the divine name we call
upon God, we sometimes call on only name. I'd say shma’ koleynu, adonai., I'd
rather say shma koleynu yah eloheynu, sort of an opening. Even the sound of
the name would be appropriate.
Like parents looking to name their baby, what name would we want to give it.
Would we want CH sounds to be in his name do we want J sounds, and so on
because we want to find out what would evoke the best qualities in that child.
What name do we give means how do we engage that neshamah in the world.
When I call you by name I call you out. How are we going to call God, how do
we want to call God. So right now it's like they're saying "find yourself a pin
number, a personal identification number" and we are getting names we can
call at God, our code number, our password., If you want to get into the infinite
storehouse of compassion, power, truth, how do we tap into that., So they're
saying choose your code words.
Each of you will be doing a different note but you will be trying to harmonize it
not homogenize it. Each of you can bring a special gift tot he God name, be it
sculptive, music, words, body movement, whatever your process, your talent is.
We are making new tzirufim, this is practical kabbalah. When we resume we
will put on the board all the asiyah names, the briyah names and so on. And
they don't have to be words either. It could be a sound, for example.
Sing with me the chant of the Four Worlds: Lord I want to do for you, Lord I
want to feel for you, Lord I want to know for you, Lord I want to be for you,
Yah I want to do for you., Yah, I want to feel for you, Yah I want to know for
you, Yah I want to be fore you. You are action, you are feeling, you are
knowledge, you are being, you are action, you are feeling you are knowledge,
you just are. You are asiyah, you are briyah, you are yetzirah, you are atzilus.
You are action, you are feeling you re knowledge you just are.
Now we will have a market. Leave everything on your seat, start collecting
your team in whichever way you want to do this.
"Behold I give unto you today the blessing and the curse." There is sort of a
leftover fro the last session that is tickling my mind and it goes something like
this: Every situation in the world has in itself that possibility, of being
polarized, good and evil. Part of the education of something is to dedicate it, as
if to say, from the beginning I want it to be for a brachah. Whatever it is that
I'm about to do, I want it to be a bracha. The consciousness, it goes: I'm
obligated to make a brachah or else superego is going to come and hit me in the
kishkehs. It is different than saying that I am a partner with the universe and my
response now with the energy exchange which is about to take place is to make
a brachah. To dedicate this thing to brachah. I'm saying, I’d like to take making
a brachah into a functioning state and not just do halachically what is called for,
that if I say one brachah I don't have to say anymore, I am yotze’.
At times I go and say mizmor l'todah. I drive on the highway. Baruch Hashem
the cop doesn't stop me when he should have. I want to thank the universe.
How do I do that? I say mizmor l'todah, etc. In other words, if I wanted to bring
the korbon Today in the first paradigm I'd have brought a sheep, if I wanted to
bring akorbon in the second paradigm, I bring a shtikeleh Torah. He who
studies the korbon it is as if he brought a korban, so I bring an interaction of
these two things. I feel like making a brachah now so what do I do? You know,
if someone would tell me if the world to come is a yeshiva and that will be
paradise -- I don't know. But if they told me it was going to be a kallah, it gets
more credible. You know, what are they studying in the mystical academy,
what are they doing, we are God designers. I want to give a brachah. How do
you feel in the space of your body? How do you feel brachah-dik?
"In briyah we looked at computer energy and arrived with conceptualizer, as
the name in briyah. I am going in the reverse sequence. In asiyah we looked at
mechanical energy and received the name, transmitter. In atzilut we are looking
at electrical energy and came with the name transformer. In yetzirah we are
looking at biological energy and came up with the womb-er."
It's almost as if one could say that the sefiros of chesed and hod have reported.
"We came up with kind of a 3-dimensional cross world puzzle.
Interconnections of names, an image of a 3-dimensional cross world puzzle,
sort of a DNA spiral. Then we took our circle and divided it into the quadrinity
and had each interact with each, the fall in summer, the fall in spring."
I now want you all to stand up and say an AMEN. Here's a headline in the daily
cosmos. The kallah in bnai or submitted today the first entries to the contest of
the new four-letter word of the next yah. AMEN!