A mile wide. That was the center of this tornado. When nature strikes with such devastating force it rips lives apart—the death toll from this tornado was mitigated because some residents of Moore, Oklahoma built shelters after a 1999 tornado, of lesser force, killed 36 residents. Six people were saved by entering 94 year old Nancy Davis’ shelter—she built it after surviving the tornado of ’99.

The deaths and the devastation to lives permeated our classes today and this time it was nature, not human hands that was the cause for questioning whether or not events are random. Kabbalah posits that nothing is random.

As we were discussing this I began thinking what would be a good antonym to use for “random” and I drew a blank. I felt a bit better when I plugged in random in antonym finder and one of the definitions, among many, was nonrandom.

Here is the full list:

willful, steady, orderly, aware, regular, continuous, thoughtful, established, systematized, deliberate, purposeful, constant, organized, systematic, planned, arranged, managed, nonrandom, orchestrated, purposive, stable, set, fixed, even, ordered, methodical, conscious.

I wondered if any of these adjectives could be applied to the tornado’s path of destruction—and more specifically to who died or was injured and who survived. The tornado itself may have some fixed order to it but we certainly would not anthropomorphize and call it willful or purposeful.

The bottom line of the questioning in class can be simply put: Is it random that children in one elementary school died and in another they survived?

When we confront such suffering and loss it is not wise to invoke, in the name of any philosophy or doctrine an intellectual explanation; far better to remain in the question—and stretch out a helping hand.

I would though like to share an idea that emerged from our discussions. I will call it the nonrandomness of nonevents. Nonevents are always far greater in number than the events themselves. To cite a well known example: A meteor or asteroid that flies by earth without entering earth’s atmosphere, let alone impacting on earth’s surface. It is rare that a meteorite (what breaks off from a meteor) slams into planet earth, nonevents are surprisingly common—meteorites miss earth (or land in uninhabited areas quite often).

Turning our attention to the tornado that slammed into Moore we can reflect on both “events and nonevents.” If we call one random we must logically label the other random as well. Keep in mind that the nonevents in Moore far outnumber the events. Some of the nonevents received media attention –Nancy Davis and her tornado saving cellar was one-other nonevents included parents and teachers huddling with schoolchildren in bathrooms and watching cars and trucks fly over their text book covered heads. Last minute decisions to run this way or get in the car and drive that way led to many other nonevents. For those whose survival is a nonevent, the word lucky comes up often in their speech and for other survivors; the word that comes up is miraculous.

For every event there are exponentially more nonevents. What would you choose as the antonym for random?

Perhaps creativity is a function of how little we know. There is this guy who keeps popping up on my radar—name David Eagleman. We share an interest in time. I credit a physician for giving me the metaphor of what we don’t know we don’t know by once saying in passing, “A fish will be the last to know it is in water.” This morphed into a question posed in our first year class on the Time Dimension, “A fish is to water as humans are to_____________?” An Eagleman quote: “We’re stuck in time like fish in water.”

Eagleman is a neuroscientist by trade and his experiments on how the brain processes time are unique. For a taste of Eagleman see a 2011 profile in the New Yorker entitled The Possibilian, a word Eagleman made up–which morphed into a movement he is proud to lead on a road between what he labels as the “certainties called atheism and religious belief.” He has a talent for making hard things easy to understand while giving you a headache at the same time. He is one of those meteors that enters the earth’s atmosphere and leaves debris in the back yard of your mind.

As reported in the New Yorker profile, Eagleman wears a Russian wristwatch to work though it’s been broken for months. It turns out that all the scientists in his lab wear broken watches. Eagleman noted that, in his experience, scientists are often drawn to things that bedevil the–citing a lab that studies nicotine receptors where all the scientists are smokers, and another lab that studies impulse control where all the scientists are overweight.

This small piece of Eagleman observational debris is a wonderful confirmation of the metaphor work we engage in at Kabbalah Experience—what in Kabbalah study we call the connection between the story (metaphor) and the reality we manifest. In this case, what a scientist takes interest in is a reflection of the story of their (personal) life. Eagleman also has a deep and abiding interest in story-making; he argues that our brains are continuously creating stories about reality. Through his investigations as a neuroscientist he calls into question what the present moment can possibly be for us humans as the present moment from the perspective of the function of the brain is inevitably a reconfiguration (story) of the past (even if admittedly that past may be only milliseconds old).

I am writing this blog in the early hours of Friday morning—it is pitch black except for the brightly lit face of my laptop—now an old friend, who in computer years is about as old as I am in human years. During the last couple of days I have been off the “grid” living the holiday of Shavuot and as often happens, holidays brings me into reflection about community. And while I was reflecting on community I received an ‘unsolicited’ e-mail about guess who? David Eagleman.

I imagine Eagleman, a man I may never meet in person, up, as well, in the light of a laptop, typing some debris that will fall into the backyard of my brain. Eagleman points out that there are more connections in a cubic millimeter of brain tissue than stars in the Milky Way.

I imagine other words that could start movements such as Impossibilian or Probabilian. What I do experience is a neural net, not related to grey matter, which David Eagleman and other neuroscientists have yet to chart (and probably won’t be charting very soon). This neural net also consists of trillions of connections—deep connectivity of souls that form a community that are related to “light matter” in which all its members don’t smoke, overeat or wear watches.

This final week of the count of the Omer (the sefirah of Malchut) asks of us: “Now that you have faced the truth (about yourself) what are you doing about it?” Kierkegaard put it this way: “Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.”

In our Kabbalah study we attempt to face another question: “Ask not what you are but who you are?” This Sunday is Mother’s Day.  For those who accept matrilineal descent as determining who is Jewish the explanation offered is that we always know who your mother is. A story that surfaced this week puts a new face on mothers and who we are.

My notions of altering one’s identity comes from fiction—books or the movies in which a person has a plastic surgeon change their face as a disguise. The first actual face transplant occurred in 2007. Unlike fiction, it is a painstaking and dangerous surgery and requires months of slow recovery as the new face learns to harmonize with nerves and muscles. As in any organ transplant there is the significant challenge of the immune system rejecting the organ. Not only the recipient, but the recipient’s immune system does not recognize the new face as its own.  This foreign and threatening organ will inevitably be attacked. The medicines used to counter the attack, as in other forms of chemotherapy are highly dangerous as well.

There is also the challenge of the donor—who must be willing to gift their face to someone. We all laughed in class this week to one person’s observation about donating your face for transplant: “You are pretty attached to your face!”

A woman who had been waiting for a face—her own face having been damaged beyond repair by a husband who doused her with lye—received the face of another woman. If you can tolerate looking at the before and after photos (google Carmen Tarleton) it will help you understand the need and the courage of this woman for receiving another’s face. The story was made more poignant by the recipient finding out who her donor is (it is not routine to reveal that information though one might think that the face would in itself reveal their identity) and to meet, this week, the donor’s daughter. (Click on the link at the end of the blog for the interview on NPR).

When the daughter of the donor met the recipient of her mother’s face she was moved to tears and felt she was with her mother again. The intellect may know quite well—“this is not my mother”—but the face is so much of who we see as that person that a daughter, especially a daughter grieving her mother, could feel, “I am with her.” So it was for daughter Marinda Righter when she touched her mother’s face, every mole and freckle, on Carmen Tarleton.

This week as we celebrate Mother’s Day and prepare for Shavuot (which starts next Tuesday night) we come face to face with our source—our mothers and the Divine Mother. The Shechinah—the Divine feminine—manifested on Mount Sinai and we manifested inside our mother’s womb.

So who are we?  To confront that question fully we must look to our original face.

Link to the interview on NPR

Daniel Matt, professor, scholar and student of Jewish mystical teachings arrives this Sunday at DIA. Dr. Matt’s scholar-in-residence week is a  joint effort for the new Jewish learning collaborative of the Loup Jewish Community Center, Denver University’s Center for Judaic Studies and Kabbalah Experience.

If you have time to ask only one question of the man who is at the center of the monumental translation of the Zohar which question do you choose?  I will have that opportunity as we settle into the car ride from DIA to east Denver.

The Zohar is the centerpiece of the thousands of books that transmit the wisdom of Kabbalah.  The Zohar is a mystical midrash—teachings of the Kabbalah that intermittently, but consistently, follow the Torah text. This allows the Zohar to stand out as a practical tool for seeking a deeper understanding of the verses in the Torah which served to popularize it among scholars and people in general. The Zohar also gained its unique status for its denseness and complexity.  The first complexity is the denseness of its Aramaic language. A translation into English, with copious annotations, will help dissolve that barrier.  The second complexity is the language of the Kabbalah itself and for that no translation can quite overcome the Zohar’s meaning. One needs to study in order to enter the Zohar.

Much of the Zohar is story telling; following the students of the first century master, Rabbi Shimeon bar Yochai as they bring their questions and experiences to their teacher and challenge each other. Even the stories are layered in shrouds of meanings—intentionally obscuring understanding for the uninitiated.

The story of Matt’s translation is also layered, as is any life work we engage upon. Margot Pritzker, married to Tom, who is CEO of The Pritzker Organization (among whose businesses is the Hyatt hotel) was studying the Zohar with her rabbi in Chicago and wondered why there was not a comprehensive translation of the Zohar in English.  This led to a now famous meeting at O’Hare airport between Pritzker and Matt. Dr. Matt was dubious about Margot’s grasp of what it meant to undertake the project until she reassured him that no matter how long it took and whatever might be involved, the support would be there. I can only imagine Moses de Leon, the author of the Zohar hovering in the airport lounge and smiling.  Some 800 year ago he too found patrons to support his writings, including the writing of the Zohar, most prominent of them, Joseph Abulafia, CEO of The Abulafia Organization.

How fitting is it that the Zohar’s fate continues to be a collaborative effort between scholar and financier? The soul and the body must find their union at all times. And who knows, maybe the next time you stay at a Hyatt, check the nightstand. There just may be a yellow covered book entitled, Daniel’s Zohar.

This week my awareness of the present moment is being challenged by knowing that once you read this Danny Matt will have come and gone. Who knows what tomorrow will bring forth from this disguised mystic wearing what others often only see as the clothing of an academic scholar?

We have had some wonderful quiet moments, Danny and I; the gleam in his eye as he showed me a photocopy of the earliest near complete Zohar manuscript housed at the University of Toronto. This manuscript also bears a historical fascination—it was acquired for Shabbatai Tzvi, the failed Messiah of 1665 and then, by way of many hands, wound up in the hands of Toronto resident Albert Friedberg, a private collector of ancient Jewish manuscripts who donated them to the University of Toronto.

I feel young in Danny’s presence—not because he is my senior by eight years. It is his youthful excitement about a passion we share—the thrill of discovery of a variant text and the realization that the text is not only out there, on the pages of the Zohar–the variant reading is inside each of us.

In one of the seminars today a questioner probed to understand how the scholar-translator is affected by the mysticism of the book? Danny answered that after hours of research on the meaning of an unusual Aramaic word it is wonderful to let the Zohar simply wash over him. He was stating clearly that both activities provide profound joy—there is the work of the scholar and the mystic that unites through the left and right brain and is crowned in what flows infinitely out of the single point of discovery.

Danny shared with us one of my favorite stories I knew about his committing to translate the Zohar—his meeting with Margot Pritzker at the O’Hare Hyatt—he added one detail I had not known before. Margot had decided that the Zohar could use a new translation into English. I would surmise that when Margot decides something she is not to be denied. What I did not know was that Danny had also determined that he was not going to agree to be the translator. He knew it would be a commitment of 15 years, day in and day out and he was convinced he did not have the desire to get that intimate with just one book.

What convinced him to change his mind? Margot. Danny had agreed to the meeting to be courteous. In the midst of explaining how long and arduous a task a translation would be—not wanting to offend Margot, though wanting her to know that it would require her financial support perhaps for decades. To this she replied: “Dr. Matt, if you think you are scaring me, you are not!”

Was Danny scared? I know I would have been to think of the awesome responsibility of taking on such a monumental and important work as translating the Zohar. Sometimes we need to come face to face with our fears and then love takes over. It is now 15 years for Danny Matt—seven volumes done, two more to go. Margot is still not scared. Danny is clearly in love.  We are inspired by their emotions.

People were thrilled this week on Monday and Tuesday. It did not snow. May 1st today, Wednesday, it is snowing. Imagine the trees questioning, “Are we there yet?”

Whether it is a long car ride, or awaiting spring, “Are we there yet?” implies that we were ready to “be there” a long time ago. This week of the Omer count—the week of Yesod (foundation) is “not quite there yet” implying—not yet ready to be there. As the Jews were heading to Sinai I can imagine many a child echoing the same chorus—are we there yet? and some parents wondering the same. The week of Yesod is the week of truth—are we there yet transforms into are we ready to be there, yet?

Our ability to change (in relation to procrastinating or any other characteristic of our behavior) is predicated on facing the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Yesod has an inner meaning—the Hebrew word is Emet (Alef-Mem-Tav) and we are taught that the three letters that comprise Emet come from the beginning (Alef) of the Hebrew alphabet, the middle of the alphabet (Mem) and the end of the alphabet (Tav). The truth has to be the truth from the beginning, to the middle, to the end; through and through. That is what we can call nothing but the truth.

We can raise many questions about this statement. What is truth to begin with? What is it in the end? What does it serve as a middle(man)?

This topic is at the center of an Israeli documentary entitled The Flat. In clearing out his grandmother’s apartment in Tel Aviv he comes across a series of photos that when enlarged reveal a startling story of the relationship between his parents and one of the architects of the Holocaust.

While the filmmaker, Arnon Goldfinger, is tenacious in discovering and revealing “the truth”—there is a truth revealed that is nothing—but the truth. I leave it up to you who see the film to comment on the layered meanings of revealing to self and others, “the truth” and what can be understood from a spiritual point of view about the truth that is nothing.

Meanwhile it is snowing. It is May. One week to confront our ability to face the truth. Next week it is time to get there—whatever truth it is we seek.

The sefirah of Hod (the sefirah of this week’s Omer count) feels misunderstood. Yet she is too humble to make a big deal about it. There are those who translate her as a false face, others as the ecstasy of a ride in a Ferrari and still others as the delight in the variety of tastes (this from a quick perusal of Kabbalah websites). In a world full of possibilities Hod can guise herself in the imagination of many interpretations.

According to the dogma of Kabbalah, Hod means acknowledgment—a derivative of the word in Hebrew L’Hodot—to acknowledge. From here some Kabbalists expand the meaning to words such as surrender, acceptance, gratitude, compromise and an underlying concept of humility.

As I am writing this blog my daughter, who at age 2 is quite a master of technology, just deleted all the photos and videos on my I-phone—the more recent ones not having been saved to my computer. It is a moment of Hod—surrender. The memories are still present. The images are no longer preserved to be shown. Hod happens. We come to accept the reality of what is.

This coming Sunday is the holiday of Lag Ba’ Omer—which simply means the 33rd day of the Omer. The interplay of the sefiort—one within another—has this day be the Hod of Hod. It is a day of general celebration in Jewish tradition—for Kabbalists it is called a “birthday” –specifically celebrating the day of the great mystic Rabbi Shimeon Bar Yochai departing this earthly plane. Rabbi Shimeon—the master, is released from his finite existence into the infinite–the ultimate moment of surrender is death. Tied into the meaning of acknowledgment we get the phrase “Grateful Dead.”

There are deaths though that are hard to accept. Especially the death of young ones, personified this week by Martin Richard, the eight year old boy killed in the Boston bombing. Only a few paces from Martin, in the VIP section, were honored guests from the Sandy Hook Elementary community in Newtown. They came to the Marathon to support runners who were raising money for the families of the school shooting victims. There were 26 who died at Sandy Hook and each mile of the Marathon (26 in total) was dedicated to one of the victims.

A dogma of Kabbalah was restated by our speaker this past Tuesday night, Rabbi Tirzah Firestone. She interpreted the concept of Tikkun as being “on purpose” and that nothing occurs in this world by accident—it is all purposeful. When we face the incomprehensibility of the death of a child we are in Hod—surrender. Which way we interpret it though is up to us: Is Hod teaching us to surrender to the dogma of Kabbalah that the death is purposeful or to surrender the dogma and wonder if there is a purpose?

My personal reflection is that the answer is beyond either of those interpretations. For My thoughts are not thoughts (says God) nor are My ways the ways of categorization. We must search beyond the dogma of purposefulness and non-purpose to embrace a final hug of a dear son and his father.

We had a beautiful evening celebrating Kabbalah Experience this past Thursday night at the Loup JCC. Many people asked me over the weekend whether I was still floating in the clouds. The decorations were balloons in the shape of clouds, simulating a dreamlike atmosphere for hearing about Dreamwork from our speaker, Rodger Kamenetz.

As part of our evening of celebration we showed a short video about a “Kabbalah Moment” that you can view above or by clicking here. You will be introduced to a family who all share a rare disease—it is commonly known as brittle bone disease—its medical name is Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI). It was not explained in the video that the parents, Chris and Lisa sought to adopt a child who had this condition—and were matched with Anicee, described by those who knew her in her native country of Belize as a little girl possessing an unbreakable spirit.

Bones for a person with OI are extremely fragile. Their spirit though is of another essence.

I visited Chris in the hospital today. Seeing him in person is very different than viewing him through what a camera captures. He is tiny. His body looks so frail. I wanted to brighten his day—he was not able to attend our event and had yet to see the video. I looked into this man’s big eyes; behind glasses situated on his disproportionately big head and I saw pride—in the story told of the bond between himself and Anicee and the synchronicity of meeting his pre-school teacher after 30 years.

Modern medicine and technology have been a big aid to Chris and those who are challenged with OI. Still I marveled at the patience required of Chris to carefully navigate the world from the command post of a highly sophisticated wheelchair. I told Chris that we insisted in keeping his laugh in the video—and he laughed again. This brought me great joy and on leaving his hospital room a reflection on this week’s Omer count—the week of Netzach (perseverance).

If we are to overcome obstacles—the meaning of Netzach-perseverance, then we must possess some measure of the indomitable spirit of a person with OI. Chris and for that matter Lisa or Anicee could be of great help to the many who are left without legs or disabled in other ways from the bombing in Boston yesterday. They can share stories about the marathon of daily living, stories about brittle bones and a story about a spirit that is unbreakable.

I descended quickly from the clouds. Down into the clouded reality of Boylston street. Down into the clarity of Chris’ world. A moment in the clouds and now back to work.