It turns out they don’t let you go home in the middle of childbirth no matter how nicely you ask.
And I did, several times. Luckily for all involved, neither Ever nor our doula Kate filled me in on the fact that it wasn't an option.
I have never in my life been as vulnerable as I was that day, or that entire week prior. For a week leading up to the day our son was born, we waited in the hospital hoping Meir Gamzu would cook just a little longer, fearing infection, and the mystery that was yet to unfold.
In that time especially, as in my entire life, I have bucked against this lesson: that to create something, we must be vulnerable to it. We must allow our hearts to crack open for something new to come forth. I don’t like that very much, because being vulnerable is [fill in the blank, community!] Yes! I’d say: terrifying. Creation is uncontrollable. We are at its mercy.
Tonight the world was born, created out of nothingness, spoken into existence by the Divine. Five thousand seven hundred and eighty three years ago, as we keep time in these parts, the Holy One retracted into Her holy self to make room for all of existence to spring forth. 5,783 years ago the Holy One of blessing laid it all out on the table, said “BANG” and worlds, stars, things that crawl on their bellies, the angels that sing on high were all born.
But there is a teaching that this world was not Gd’s first draft. Howard Schultz tells it this way in his collection of myths Leaves from the Garden of Eden:
Before the world was created, Gd alone existed, one and eternal, beyond any boundary, without change or movement, concealed within God’s self. When the thought arose in Gd to bring the world into being, Gd’s glory became visible. Gd began to trace the foundations of a world before Gd’sself, and in this way Gd brought a heaven and earth into being. But when Gd looked at them, they were not pleasing in Gd’s sight, so Gd changed them back into emptiness and void. Gd split and rent and tore them apart with Gd’s two arms, and ruined whole worlds in one moment. One after another, Gd created a thousand worlds, which preceded this one. And all of them were swept away in the wink of an eye.
Gd went on creating worlds and destroying worlds until Gd created this one and declared, “This one pleases me, those did not.” That is how Gd created the heaven and the earth as we know it, as it is said, “For, behold! I am creating a new heaven and a new earth” (Isa. 65:17).
How tender is it to bring something into the world, create with our speech, with our hands, with our hearts and bodies. How holy to believe that this existence was not the first draft, but one that took effort and practice.
We learn at each turn in the stories of the early days of the world that we are small–creation, Noah’s flood, that we are at the mercy of the forces of nature, at the mercy of Gd’s compassion or anger, the mercy of our own human instincts to be cruel and curious and generous and smug. How vulnerable is this world–or those many worlds, in the hands of its Creator.
And what of the Being that could create and destroy worlds with such ease? To create these many worlds Gd had to retract into Gds self, tsimtsum. Make space for something unimaginable to emerge, even if it wasn’t quite right. Continue to do so until it was right.The God of the midrash on Lamentations weeps for the destroyed city of Jerusalem, tears flowing so freely that it spooks the angels. When they beg Gd to stop, Gd threatens to retreat to a far away place to cry uninterrupted. We cannot imagine that the Gd that created draft after draft was so unphased by what was lost.
As you can imagine, our teachers get stuck in the question, but how many worlds existed before this one!!! Guesses?
Midrash Tehillim says 974 worlds, which were said to have been created and destroyed over 2,000 years.
Rabbi Yitzhak Eizik Haver of the 18th-19th century claims evidence of prior creations in the fact that the Torah starts with the letter bet, the second letter, rather than with an aleph, the first letter. “The verse begins with the letter bet to hint that Creation was divided into two realms—that God created two beginnings.”
Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, aka the Eish Kodesh, the rabbi of the Warsaw Ghetto, connects the creation and destruction of the prior worlds with the Lurian vision of creation in the Shattering of the Vessel, and claims that Gd made the present universe out of the shards of those broken vessels. Gorgeous!
But it is Sefer ha-Zikhronot that suggests that when it entered Gd’s mind to create the world, Gd drew the plan of the world, but it would not stand until Gd created repentance. Thus repentance is the key element that made our world possible.
Repentance is the key element that made our world possible.
When we communicate, we create worlds. Vayomer elokim yehi or, v’hei or. And Gd said, let there be light! And there was light. To communicate is to create. To create is vulnerable. We are smack dab in a season of repair, and our tradition teaches that we cannot create something new, repair something between ourselves and another person or the Divine, without articulating it. In order to repair what has been broken, to create something new, we must put words to it. To create new worlds, we must be vulnerable to them. To create new worlds, we must have teshuvah.
To receive an apology, to gather our courage to make an apology, we must humble ourselves, be vulnerable to our own ability to mis-step and our ability to correct, trust in our ability to imagine a new world outside of this hurt, of feeling this way forever. This season calls on us to summon a profound amount of courage and tenderness with what was in order to envision what could be.
This vulnerability thing is not easy. But it does create something new.
The vulnerability of teshuva creates a new pattern of communication between friends.
The vulnerability of teshuva creates healing between siblings.
The vulnerability of teshuva creates peace between neighbors.
Just on this side of the new year, with our shelter open on all sides to the elements, it is impossible to not be conscious of our vulnerability. So much of our day to day lives is spent ignoring that fact–that our bodies need space and care and tenderness, that we cannot work endlessly at the cost of our well being, that we are innately intertwined with our neighbor whose decisions impact us too, that while we wish we could individually change the future of our planet, we ride upon it as vulnerable as the next.
So this year, allow yourself when you are able to be vulnerable. If you find yourself with the opportunity to choose, choose what could birth a new world through your tenderness.
This year, make your art. Make bad art, make bad art that only you think is good, it doesn’t matter.
This year make the friendship, court the new love interest, build something between you and another that wasn’t there before.
This year mourn what you cannot control, or embrace it even.
This year surrender more fully to the work of teshuva, of looking at your actions and inactions first plainly and without judgment, then assess what needs mending.
May worlds of stability, ease, peace, abundance, safety, connection, respect, adoration, and beauty be created from your brave vulnerability. Shanah tovah