This Week: Rain, Rain, Go Away
On communication (spoiler: it's hard).
Dear fam,
Do April showers bring May flowers? They’d better bring some kind of niceness, because the first week of April was certainly damp and I think we all deserve some kind of prize at then end of this gray. The sky is sitting heavily atop the days; I feel suffocated by the omnipresence of clouds.
I don’t know if this lightless weather is why both my girls were cranky as hell this weekend, but that’s the theory another mom suggested to me on the blacktop Saturday morning. And maybe it is cabin fever that’s making all the kids extra bouncy (and extra exasperating). It’s certainly difficult for me to muster any energy when the days are dreary. Something about a cloudful sky inspires me to snuggle deeper under my covers, makes my mind cloudy, too.
It’s not much of a stretch to imagine this feeling in my little ones as well.
It’s easy to have compassion for my bouncy kids and their cabin feverish hearts now, on Sunday eveniung, when they’re asleep in their beds. It was much harder to have this grace during the day. Toddler drops something on the floor and begins to whine (“Oh noooooooo!”) instead of *gasp* picking it up herself. Big Kid has a full-blown meltdown because her pal is late to the playdate, screaming “You’re the worst!” as I carry her home from the playground. Big Kid and Toddler both invent new and creative ways to pick fights with one another.
At 9:30 Sunday morning I looked at my wife and asked how many hours were left until bedtime. It was going to be a long day.
Honestly? It had been a whole long weekend. Big Kid and I drove back and forth from New Jersey to Connecticut twice, where I led Shabbat services. Driving four hours in the rain is a lot. In between, we played and ran around and threw ninja stars at one another. We planted flower seeds in our garden, she built legos with my wife, Toddler and I built giant towers and smashed them to the ground.
There was joy, too, is what I’m saying.
Big Kid doesn’t usually come to services with me on her own — either it’s me, on my own, or the whole family. This time, though, she declared she wanted to tag along. I was surprised — it’s not like she sits in the services that often — but happy to have her company in the car. It felt special to be together, an hour each way, chatting and singing along to Moana.
She is my first baby. Sometimes I look at her and can’t fathom how she got to be so big, so much her own person. And sometimes she’s still my baby, the sweet child I carry to bed when she falls asleep on the way home.
We’re in a liminal space now, as a family. The kids are big enough to have opinions about How Things Should Be™ and to express them with force. When I said I was tired this morning, Toddler furrowed her teeny brow and said, “You no go sleep, Mama. Sit up.” Big Kid is old enough to ask complex questions (“But where did the very first plant come from?”)
But they’re not big.
They’re five and two — little by almost any standard. There are so many things they don’t yet know. So many things I protect them from knowing. Especially these days.
As part of the annual cycle of reading the whole Torah, we began the book of Leviticus (in Hebrew, Vayikra) this week. The third of the Five Books of Moses, Vayikra is known for being a book of mostly rules — it contains over 200 commandments, according to Maimonides! — and being pretty thin on narrative arcs. I’ve read it a bunch of times, but that was then. Every time I read the Torah I see something new.
When I looked at the text this week, I saw something in the very first verse, which reads:
וַיִּקְרָא אֶל־מֹשֶׁה וַיְדַבֵּר ה׳ אֵלָיו מֵאֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לֵאמֹר׃
[G-D] called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying…”
You’ll notice there are three synonymic verbs in this verse: “Called”, “Spoke”, “Saying.”
One is differently conjugated, sure, but still — they’re there. In a sacred and (crucially) finite text, every word matters. Why would the text provide three ways of verbal communication in one verse? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just have the verse read “And G-d said to Moses,”?
No. G-d calls, then speaks, then says. Three verbs, three distinct ways of communicating. Calling and saying are, after all, quite different. So is speaking. Perhaps the Divine One did communicate with Moses in a variety of ways. Perhaps this mode of communication mattered enough to write it down.
I went looking for some rabbinical wisdom to make sense of this, quickly finding that Rashi, the renowned 11th-century commentator, had some thoughts about it. He wrote that “All oral communications of the Lord to Moses […] were preceded by a call (to prepare him for the forthcoming address).” Basically, Rashi thinks G-d is being kind by giving Moses a heads up before listing a long and detailed list of rules. Sure. That makes sense. The point is further supported by other commentaries — a 17th-century commentary called Tze’enah Ure’enah suggests “the Holy One spoke to Moses nicely, he called, like one used to speak to an angel.”
And, yes, absolutely we should be kind when speaking. We should ask if it’s a good time before relaying instructions. That might be the point. But what if this repetition also has to do with the ability of one to receive information, rather than the kindness of the one doing the communicating?
This thought occurred to me today, as I was asking my kids to go put on their shoes for the 1,895th time. And it occurred to me as I was driving down the Garden State Parkway with Big Kid in the back and the Indigo Girls on the radio.
We are not always able to receive information. Sometimes it really is a bad time. Sometimes we’re not open. Sometimes we’re so distracted, or blind, or wrapped up in our own stuff that we can’t hear the words.
This is true when I call Toddler to put her shoes on, then speak to her about putting them on, then look her square in the eye and say, “Sit. Put these on.”
It was true yesterday, when Big Kid said she was missing me — not verbally, but by choosing to spend half her weekend in a car just so we could be together. I don’t know if I would have heard her message as clearly had she told me in words; this was the way I needed to hear her.
In the span of nine words, G-d tries to get through to Moses in three ways, only then going on with the details of the sacrifice. To take the time to figure out exactly how to communicate with the person before you? That’s compassion right there.
The more complicated the world gets, the harder it gets to figure out how to explain things to our kids. As I mentioned above, there’s a lot we don’t explain at all. For example, we told them the giant Pride flag outside our house is a Love Flag, there to show we believe in all forms of love. Which is true! But it’s only one piece of the truth. We’re also showing, for example, that we aren’t going to bow to the pressures of homophobia. And that transgender people will always be welcome in our home. And that we believe trans rights are human rights. We leave those parts out, when explaining to Big Kid.
The days of innocence are rapidly coming to an end, though. Soon, we’ll have to figure out a way to communicate some complex truths. Such as:
There are a lot of people who hurt other people in the world. Still, we believe in the inherent goodness of people.
There are a lot of people who will hate our family because of who we are. Still, we believe in the boundless human capacity for love.
There are a lot of people who don’t have enough, and a lot of people who are working to make sure those without have even less. Still, we believe in the inherent generosity of people.
Thinking about the first words of Vayikra heartens me. If even G-d can’t find the right way to get through to Moses on the first try, who am I to try and find the right words without a little trial and error? The point is to keep striving. To call, and speak, and say, and cajole, and explicate, and reason, and listen listen listen. And whatever the hell else you have to do to create connection and meaning.
That, I can try to do.
Wishing you a shavua tov,
Mikhal
Hey there! Welcome to the Chaos Palace is a space uplifting ADHD, queerness, Judaism, and how to find opportunities for growth & creativity in the messiness of life.
You can support my work by sharing this post with someone you think might get a kick out of it, upgrading to a paid subscription, or just clicking the little heart button. That makes the algorithm send my words to other folks who might enjoy ‘em. Or just read! That’s huge, too, and very appreciated! Thank you, thank you!
