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  Shabbat Fridays in July

We’re welcoming Shabbat all month long with Friday night services and a dairy dessert potluck Oneg.

Bring a dish, bring a friend, or just bring your spirit — there’s a seat waiting for you.

  Fridays, July 11, 18 & 25 at 7:00 PM

 Meaningful services  Singing  Dairy dessert potluck Oneg after each service

 Congregation Bayt Shalom  All are welcome — come as you are.

Snakes on a Pole

Just about everyone recognizes the age old image of the snake on a pole as a symbol of healing.  Called the Staff of Asclepius, its official origin is ancient Greece.  Asclepius was a god associated with healing.  Apparently, his temple was visited the sick and crippled or blind—much like Lourdes in France—in hope of finding relief, perhaps a miracle.  According to some scholars, harmless rat snakes were loose all over the temple as somehow part of that process.  From this, then, comes the image of the snake on a pole as associated with healing. 

            Scholars differ as to the origin of the snake being particularly on a pole (and not, for example, on the floor or window sill).  Most, however, identify it with yet another very dramatic scene in the Torah and this week’s parsha.  It’s the same old story:  The people complain, God sends punishment (in this case-snakes), the people beg forgiveness, Moses prays and God saves them.  In this week’s parsha, God instructs Moses to make a saraf –which is ironically a venomous snake—and place it on a pole.  Anyone who looks at it will be healed.  Moses does that, and everyone looks up and is healed.

            Of course, all this is wide open to interpretation of how it works and what it means.  Here, sitting in my office (at Panera) on this Fourth of July, eating salad (trying to lose weight  (I’ve lost 40 pounds so far!, thank you for your support)) and writing the newsletter at the same time, this is where my thoughts are taking me:

            I remember that the Talmud someplace suggests God and Moses were both trying to make dying Israelites look up toward the heavens, ‘from whence might come [their] help,’ as David wrote in a psalm.  The snake on the pole is not going to heal them anymore than the picture of that snake outside a doctor’s office.  It’s Who/who is on the other side that is the agent of healing.  However, both God and Moses both know that Moses can’t just say, ‘look to God for healing.’  (In fact, if they had trusted God they wouldn’t be in this mess anyway!)  Who’s going to do that?!  So God and Moses have to sort of trick everyone into looking up, away from Death to Life.

            This interpretation is delightfully reinforced by the fact that the Hebrew word saraf, or venomous snake, derives from the word for burning—as in how venom burns—and also for blazing, heavenly angels, serafim.  Snakes below and angels on high.  Death and life, suffering and healing, darkness and light, heaven and hell—it’s all above and below.

            And we live in Middle Earth.

            Yes, I am a rabid Hobbit fan, but the words Tolkien made famous are derived from an actual medieval phrase stemming from the Christian belief that heaven is above and hell below, and we are in the middle, thus, we all live in Middle Earth.  (And The Ring story is from Nordic mythology and celebrated in Wagnerian opera, which I despise.)

            Back to this salad and newsletter, here in Middle Panera, it all seems to be about where to look, where to direct your gaze, and where to help others look too.  A complement and some  encouragement, an act of kindness or thoughtfulness, helpful advice, bright, enticing colors in a salad, a piece of cloth on a pole--are all much more understandable than a snake on a pole and a whole lot easier too.     

            What way and with what are you pointing today? 

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