Shuckling {We Have to Keep Moving}

My messy, meager attempt to say anything about anything

Photo by my sister & shul buddy, Joanna Ballantine

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I sat down half an hour ago to try to at least start writing something. Instead, I thinned out my inbox a little, scrolled on Instagram, and looked as M.J. showed me photos of homes in California.

We just celebrated Shavuot. The word itself means “weeks,” as it marks the receiving of Torah at Mt. Sinai, and occurs 49 days, or seven weeks, after we were liberated from slavery in Egypt. I keep returning to a verse from a poem I found when I was gathering readings for the session I facilitated at our synagogue on Sunday night. It’s from Beth Kanell’s poem Shavuot – One Voice:

My session focused on movement, both literal and figurative. Shavuot is the culmination of a physical and spiritual journey from one place/state to another, and I found myself drawn to where this journey lives in our bodies, then and now.

As I shared with the 30 or so congregants who had gathered at our synagogue’s smaller sanctuary and on Zoom, liberation was only the beginning. We had to wander, with only stars and faith as our compass. We had to develop the discipline of counting the days. We had to stick together. We had to gather our wisdom and resilience as well as embrace our humility and vulnerability. We had to face our fears and confront our contradictions. We had to sharpen our senses and deepen our gratitude. We had to discover a sense of true worthiness before we could be ready to receive the revelation of Torah.

We had to keep moving.

This got me thinking about how so much of Torah itself contains movement from one thing to another.

The “thing” might be a state of being – from chaos to form, as in B’reshit/Genesis. Tohu va’vohu – we start with the void and end up with not only all of this, but also Shabbat.

The “thing” might be a place – from Mitzrayim (Egypt) to Sinai, literal places, and the things those places represent, constriction and expansion.

The “thing” might be a collective identity – from being “hefker” (“ownerless”) to being claimed by Hashem.

Shavuot presents an opportunity for us to reflect on this movement between things and what we can learn from it. What, where, and who were we? And what, where, and who are we now?

As a prelude to engaging in some text study together, I invited everyone into some very gentle, subtle physical movement. Closing the eyes was optional, as was standing up, according to each individual’s comfort and preference. I offered some intermittent guidance, very similar to how I might lead a short meditation. Notice the breath, notice how rocking or swaying side to side perhaps gained a rhythm by itself, without effort. Notice if it reminded you (as if did/does me), of holding a baby. Notice if you were distracted by thoughts of the cheesecake and ice cream that awaited us (traditional Shavuot foods). Then I was quiet for a couple of minutes.

I recently learned, I shared, that there is a Yiddish word for this movement: shuckling (or shokling).

It’s a way of immersing ourselves, intensifying our experience, increasing our focus, and, perhaps, even recreating the trembling we experienced upon receiving the Torah at Sinai.

We then moved into small groups of 2-3 people to study several texts and questions I had assembled. As with all Torah study, the intention was not to reach any conclusive answers but rather to explore what these readings and inquiries might open in and for us, particularly after starting out with this embodied practice. As people spread out with the handouts I had made, the social hall filled with the wonderful, inimitable sound of the beit midrash, or “house of study.” This is the sound, to me, of awe. Of learning. Of curiosity. Maybe even of thunder and lightning and revelation.

*

Earlier in the evening, just as I pulled into my sister and brother-in-law’s driveway for a quick bite to eat before synagogue, a headline alert flashed across my phone screen.

Molotov cocktails.
Boulder.
Run for their Lives, a weekly 1 km walk/run calling for the immediate release of hostages being held in Gaza by Hamas.
Bodies on fire.
Jewish bodies on fire.
Bodies moving, moving for others, whose bodies are being held captive.

From the website, in the section addressing safety concerns:

• Don't protest!

• Don't disturb your neighbors. Do it quietly and don't block roads. Be polite and peaceful.

• Focus on humanity. This is about innocent children, women, the elderly, and other civilians being held by terrorists—not about the war.

• We encourage carrying flags of all countries from which there are hostages (Amazon).*

*Hostages represented between 25 and 30 different nationalities

This weekly walk/run takes place in cities large and small around the country and in 23 countries around the world. I have friends and colleagues from Amherst to Santa Barbara who participate regularly, along with elders and children.

Again, from the website: “Our events are meant to be quiet and peaceful.”

We ate the last of last year’s pesto and chatted about the kids and my brother-in-law’s latest adventure race. I drove to the synagogue, where the executive director called me to ask that I make sure our rabbi had seen the news (he doesn’t use a smart phone). He had. Neither of us knew what to say in that moment, headed as we were to learn together, welcome the holiday, and celebrate the Revelation.

And therein is where I found myself today feeling not the expansiveness of Sinai but the restriction of Mitzrayim, as if my body didn’t get the memo with the time stamp.

My body could not find that gentle swaying movement we experienced together last night in shul; instead, I could tell I was holding in a bottleneck of emotion that I couldn’t quite access until something unrelated tripped it out of me, and then I was crying and blaming hormones, because they prove to be an excellent scapegoat these days. But really, I think I was just frozen again, fritzed out.

As the day went on, the injury toll doubled from six to 12. I could practically see the comments on the insides of my eyelids, the ones comparing this number to the number of dead children in Gaza, a comparison, or justification for violence, or explanation, or contextualization for terrorism, that causes something to happen in my body I still haven’t been able to articulate.

*

I have spent the past several weeks steeped in reading and listening to Jewish leaders who have my utmost respect and trust.

These individuals are speaking and writing very directly about the personal, spiritual, moral, and political angst and toll of this excruciating war. I do not know a single person who isn’t in some way shred to pieces about all of it. The death toll and physical destruction in Gaza, with hunger looming. The unending trauma and exhaustion among Israelis, close to 70% of whom want the war to end. The evidence of antisemitism – from Paris to London to Lyon, from Harrisburg to D.C. to Boulder – mounting and mounting and mounting.

Many people in this country are facing many, and multiple, crises of a magnitude that is nearly incomprehensible. This past weekend, we had the honor of listening to live conversations at the WBUR Festival with the likes of Roxane Gay, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Viet Than Nguyen, and Ira Glass. All of them, in some way, spoke to the questions I offered during my Tikkun Leyl Shavuot class:

What, where, and who were we? And what, where, and who are we now?

But how do we even begin to address these questions when we are trying to process, respond, hold space for, grieve, and protest simultaneous realities that are intensely difficult and dire to say the least – basically all at the same time, while also tending to the very real and important and precious details of our individual day-to-day lives?

How, indeed?

I don’t know, other than to say some layers of my own protective onion skin peeled back on Monday and suddenly I was crying, and a good friend was there to witness me and give me a chance to come back to breathing, and then later, I was able to open up to my beloved, who also met me with so much compassion and grace, both of which allowed me to find some of that medicine for myself and ultimately, to finally attempt to write something. (How’s that for a run-on sentence?)

*

Movement. So much movement. From held in to released. How do we celebrate the Revelation when so much that is now being revealed is showing us, as Jews, that we will be blamed for what is happening in Gaza no matter our politics, when we have seen over and over and over that the Free Palestine movement has made the world more dangerous for Jews worldwide without actually helping the lived plight of Gazans, that Jewish extremists are distorting Zionism, making it all the more of a needle’s eye to defend Zionism, being careful to parse what we mean by “Zionism” so as not to be lumped together with those who have no interest in coexistence, all while Hamas gets none of the blame for any of this hell on earth? How do I keep my heart open to the intense suffering of others, when that is literally the most fundamental, elemental obligation I carry as a Jew? How do I keep my heart open when Jewish suffering is treated as exaggeration or a provocation, like when my earnest question about Israel’s response after 10/7 was removed by a moderator during one of the WBUR sessions, as was my follow-up about being disappointed in the removal?

This is all my messy, meager attempt to say anything about anything.

No wonder instead of writing earlier I scrolled on Instagram looking at cute videos of French bulldogs.

Friends, I am tired. I am heartbroken. I am angry. I am confused. I am overwhelmed. I am defiant. I am on my knees with grief and humility. I am a single, tiny person. I am a Jew who wonders what does it even mean today to declare myself as such.

It is to say: I stood at Sinai, as it is said every single one of us did, whether we were born Jews or chose Judaism (or it chose us). It is to say: I am still standing here, trembling. I am not sure what God is asking of me or of us.

So I return to shuckling. I begin to sway again, ever so subtly. A tear slips through my closed eyes, then another and another. I am in a body. I am a body. Every body, every being, is a whole world. A whole world is moving in me, through me. Past, present, future, it all merges and hangs in the balance.

What do I do now, what do I do next?

I open my eyes. I wipe my tears and find my breath.

I read Beth Kanell’s words once again: