The Tree in the Midst

By Susan Weinstein

Dear friends,

You’re coming home from work or from running around town. Your mind is busy. Your heart full of concerns. You unlock the door to your apartment and are about to step in. Your eye catches sight of the Mezuzah on the doorpost. You remember the first word in the scroll inside of it: Shma, Listen! You pause to fulfill the commandment, to change gears before entering a new space, to walk into your house with your mind, not just your body.  

When a friend described this to me yesterday it struck me as a good example of the mental transformation described in Psalm 27. How do we get from the state of mind in verse 2: 

 בִּקְרֹ֤ב עָלַ֨י ׀ מְרֵעִים֮ לֶאֱכֹ֢ל אֶת־בְּשָׂ֫רִ֥י צָרַ֣י וְאֹיְבַ֣י לִ֑י הֵ֖מָּה כָשְׁל֣וּ וְנָפָֽלוּ׃  

When the bad angels 
Crowd close over me 
To eat my flesh 
My constrainers, 
My enemies 
They fail And fall. 

To that in verse 6: 

וְעַתָּ֨ה יָר֪וּם רֹאשִׁ֡י עַ֤ל אֹיְבַ֬י סְֽבִיבוֹתַ֗י וְאֶזְבְּחָ֣ה בְ֭אׇהֳלוֹ זִבְחֵ֣י תְרוּעָ֑ה אָשִׁ֥ירָה וַ֝אֲזַמְּרָ֗ה לַֽיהֹוָֽה׃  

In that moment 
My head will rise 
High above my surrounding enemies 
I will gift Her 
Beautiful sacrifices of sound 
Poetry and song to YHVH 

The 16th century kabbalist Moshe Alsheich illuminates the phrase My constrainers, My enemies: 

צרי ואויבי הם צרי ואויבי הנפש 

My constrainers and my enemies are the constrainers and enemies of the soul. 

The question, then is an internal one: How can I change my inner world from a state of fear and anxiety into one of confidence and peace? 

Two possibilities surface in my search for an answer, one available, immediate and short-lived, and the other demands work and time but can be offer a much longer stay in the state of peace.  

The quick option appears in the following Hassidic teaching: 

"It is written (in Genesis): “The tree in the midst of the garden.” Whenever a person prays, they should think that they are in the garden of paradise, where there is no envy and no lust and no pride, and they will surely be safe from distraction. But how can they think in this way, since they know that they are in this world and among people they are acquainted with? This is how: When a person studies or prays with reverence and devoutness begotten of love, and remembers that nothing is void of God, but that everything is filled with life granted by the Creator, then, in all they see, they see the living power of the Creator and hear Her living voice. That is the meaning of the words: “The tree of life in the midst of the garden.”  

In that moment of pause before entering the house, or any such moment of pause, one can step out of their mind with its temporary anxieties, and step, temporarily into eternity, into sound, into the reality of the natural world. We are certainly still in the world around us, but we become a tree in a garden rather than a lunatic in the city.  

Hard as that may sound, the deeper option is harder. Alsheich writes: 

The constrainers and enemies of the soul are the destroyers that were born out of my faulty acts. “My” denotes that they are mine. And the point is that whoever commits a wrongful act, creates along with it a corrupting force. However, the one who returns from them with love can transform those misdeeds into meritorious gifts, and the prosecutors become defense attorneys and lovers. Then how could they “eat my flesh?” Therefore, the verse continues: “they fail and fall.”  

The more foundational way to shift our state of mind, Alsheich explains, involves the work of transformation and repentance. It’s not just the world that is oppressing us, our oppression is related to the way we behave in the world. Our job is to find those places where we are straying from the path of goodness.  

“Anxiety is engendered by straying from the right course,” wrote Harav Kook. “Through penitence inspired by love even this damage can be turned into a source of good.” 

Ultimately though, the short path to transcendence and the long one are connected. Penitence begins with stopping, witnessing, observing yourself. If we don’t step out of ourselves to take a look, we will never be able to change our behavior. We will be stuck in our minds, seeing the same enemies and constrainers coming to eat our flesh, or treat us unfairly, or take what is ours, and we will never be able to enjoy the feeling of watching them fail, disintegrate or if we’re very, very lucky transform into our defenders and lovers. 

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha