Einstein and the Rabbi Excerpt #2

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Pregnant Forever FINDING THE COURAGE TO COMPLETE WHAT ­YOU’VE BEGUN On Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, Jews recite a phrase in Hebrew over and over again: “Hayom harat olam.” It’s usually translated as “­Today the world is born.” It sounds like a very joyous phrase.

Not so fast. ­There is more to the story. The truth is, I never took the time to think about what t­hose words meant. I recently learned from a teacher of mine, Dr. Tamar Frankiel, the true context and meaning of the phrase “­Today the world is born.”

It’s actually a phrase that was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah in a moment of utter despair. Jeremiah spent his ­career offering the word of God to the Jewish ­people. Jeremiah pleaded with them to change their ways and stop the corruption, the sins, the materialism, the empty rituals and the shallow prayers. Did they listen to him? No. Instead they scorned him and ignored him. Jeremiah became dejected. He was sick of being a prophet who never got heard. He wished he had never been born. “Cursed be the day I was born,” he said. And then he added, “If only my m ­ other had not given birth to me. If only her womb was pregnant forever.”

If only my m ­ other was pregnant forever.

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­ ese are the words Jews recite so joyously in their prayers. The true Th translation of the Hebrew phrase is not “­Today the world is born,” but “­Today is pregnant forever.” That is not a happy phrase. It feels more like a curse. What exactly does that mean, “­Today is pregnant forever?”

When I learned the a­ ctual meaning of Jeremiah’s words, ­Today is pregnant forever, I suddenly flashed on a memory of myself being nine months pregnant and holding my dear friend Helene’s newborn baby in my lap. Let me explain.

Helene is from Brooklyn, I’m from Brooklyn. Helene went to Yeshiva of Flatbush high school, I went t­ here too. She was very close to my older b­ rother David when I was growing up, but then we lost touch.

Years ­later Helene and her husband, Rich, ­were visiting Israel, and she deci­ded to look up her old friend David, who lives in Israel. They began catching up and David said, “Hey, by the way, you went to Cornell? Guess what? My l­ittle ­sister Nomi went to Cornell too.” L ­ ater, when David learned that Helene had moved to LA, he laughed and said, “Guess what? My ­sister Nomi moved to LA too, and she’s a rabbi ­there.”

Helene was amazed at how closely our lives had paralleled each other—­well, except for the minor detail that she went to medical school and I went to rabbinical school. But w ­ e’re both in the healing professions.

The next ­thing I knew, Helene came to one of my prayer ser­vices and we reconnected. It was such a comfort to know someone in LA who shared so much history with me.

One day I called Helene and she said, “Nomi, how are you d ­ oing?”

I said, “To tell you the truth, I am ­really nauseous, but it’s for a good reason—­I’m pregnant!”

She laughed. “Guess what? I’m pregnant too!” We both started laughing.

Month a­ fter month we compared stories, and month a­ fter month

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we grew bigger together and shared dreams and prayers and anticipation.

Helene was due two weeks before me in July, and on July 2 she gave birth to a beautiful baby boy whom they named Michael. A ­couple of days l­ater I went over to visit her. She looked so happy, so natu­ral, like she was born to be a ­mother. I looked like a Butterball turkey. I was huge and I was ready to pop. All of a sudden Helene put her newborn son on my pregnant lap. And I freaked out! I know I was smiling on the outside, but t­ here was just no way in the world to cover up my panic. ­Here’s what was ­going on inside of me: “Oh my God! What was I thinking? I ­don’t want this. I ­don’t want a baby. I’m not ready to be a ­mother. I ­don’t even like babies! My life is fine as it is. Please make it stop right h ­ ere, right now. If only I could just be . . . ​Pregnant forever.”

Trust me, pregnant forever is not a healthy state of mind. It is a state of a permanent un-­living, of life being held back. I think Jews pray this phrase e­ very New Year ­because it comes as a warning. ­Every single one of us, somewhere in our lives, we are pregnant forever. Th ­ ere is something w ­ e’ve already conceived that is pleading with us, “Let me be born.” Maybe it’s a creative endeavor—­a book, a painting, a poem, a song, a script, a story, a business idea. Maybe it’s a ­career shift. ­You’ve been privately dreaming about it and exploring it, but ­doing nothing about it. Maybe it’s the words “I’m sorry,” or the words “I love you,” or the words “I forgive you.” They are fully formed inside your mouth, but you ­haven’t gotten up the courage to actually speak them.

Pregnant forever is not a blessing, and so many of us suffer from this frustrating affliction.

Maybe it’s a departure ­you’re holding on to, a breakup. You know it’s time to go. You know it’s time to stop pretending every­thing is fine when nothing is fine.

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Maybe y­ ou’ve already created something but y­ ou’re just too scared to let it be seen.

Scott Tansey is a man who has been attending Nashuva, the spiritual community I founded, for several years. Soon ­after meeting me Scott offered to volunteer his time to take photo­graphs of our events.

At ­every Nashuva event Scott was ­there, snapping photo ­after photo.

Scott has been passionate about photography since he was a child, and he has always been particularly drawn to taking pa­noramas. He told me, “Rabbi, I like the wide view of ­things.” Scott started to take his photography seriously when he was in his twenties. Even though Scott has a non-­Parkinson’s tremor in his right arm, he’s always found a way to steady his hand just at the right moment. He’s never let his tremor get in the way of his love.

For forty years Scott shot thousands of photos, breathtaking panoramas all over the world: glaciers, mountain peaks, seascapes, cityscapes, sunrises, clouds, sunsets, rainbows. For forty years Scott shot some twenty thousand photos. And he never printed a single one of them. Not one. What held him back? He told me he just d ­ idn’t have confidence. He was full of anxiety and worried about the judgments of ­others. But t­ here was also a deeper reason why Scott was full of anxiety.

When Scott was only six years old, his ­father was killed in a plane crash. This trauma left him feeling a generalized sense of fear that he’s carried with him throughout his ­whole life. He said a feeling that something awful could happen at any moment got seared into his soul. He figured, if the ­thing you love most can suddenly get taken away, perhaps it was better to keep his photos to himself. So Scott kept taking more and more photos and never printing them.

“I just c­ ouldn’t,” he said. “I w ­ asn’t able to push myself out or show my talent.”

In 2012 Scott gathered up the courage to take a printing workshop. ­There he learned all about the skill and the power of printing. Then a

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quote by the ­great photographer Ansel Adams got stuck in his mind: “The negative is comparable to the composer’s score and the print to his per­for­mance.” Scott realized he was holding on to his scores and never giving a per­for­mance.

That year, in 2012, Scott was sitting at ser­vices when I happened to give a sermon about overcoming our fear and reaching our p ­ otential.

Something in that sermon broke through Scott’s defenses and resonated deeply in his soul. That day Scott told himself, “No more excuses.” I suppose you could say it was a moment of grace.

A few days l­ater Scott told himself, “Okay, I’ve got to give Rabbi Levy a print. I want to give her a token of my appreciation.” So Scott printed a photo he had shot several months earlier of my husband, Rob, and my two kids, Adi and Noa, and he handed it to me.

What a breathtaking photo! It was taken on the beach. It was so alive. Scott had captured a moment of pure happiness.

It was the very first photo Scott ever printed. Suddenly, a spell was broken. Scott realized it ­wasn’t hard to bring his images into the light of day. Soon p ­ eople started taking note. Scott’s work was featured in two galleries in LA. Recently he had a show at the Leica Gallery, which I attended. I’m sure Ansel Adams would have been proud. Scott’s landscapes stretched across e­ very wall—it was a masterful per­for­mance indeed. I was considering purchasing one of his pieces, and then I saw that his pa­noramas ­were selling for ten thousand dollars apiece.

When I asked Scott what lessons he’d learned by sharing his private art form with ­others, he said, “Rabbi, I realize I have a gift, and all I need to do is just be me.” Then he added, “God gives you gifts.

Use them. ­Don’t be ashamed. I’m sixty-­one years old. It’s okay if ­others ­don’t like my work. My work’s okay. I’m okay.”

For forty years Scott captured such beauty, now he’s giving it a life, a way to light up the world.

What is keeping you permanently pregnant? What is it that holds you back? For some of us it’s a fear of judgment. For ­others it is a fear

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of the judge within, that familiar voice that says, “This is no good. I’ve got no talent.” For some of us it’s a fear of responsibility: “I’m not ready to take this on. I’m not ready to make this shift.” For some of us it is the ego’s hubris that keeps us permanently pregnant: “I’ve got all the time in the world to make this happen. I can do this tomorrow.”

For some of us it’s the body’s inertia, a lack of ­will.

Some of us are pregnant forever b­ ecause ­we’re comfortable being pregnant forever. We like the current routine, it’s easier to live with the status quo than it is to make a change. And that’s where Jeremiah comes in with his haunting phrase: t­ oday is pregnant forever. It echoes the soul’s voice beckoning us to journey forward and rise up.

So many voices stop us up, but the soul’s voice cheers us on. Why? ­Because the soul ­can’t fulfill its mission alone. It needs us to act. The soul is intimately familiar with the world of potential. It descended to this realm so that it could know the meaning of the word “fulfillment.” ­Today is pregnant forever! And you are the one who gets to choose what w ­ ill remain in a state of eternal potential and what w ­ ill break forth into life. ­You’ve been blessed with the potential to improve this world, but nothing w ­ ill come of your remarkable gifts u ­ nless you first learn to turn your potential into action.

So take a moment right now, and hear your soul asking you, “What am I holding on to right now that I need to give life to?” Can you see it? Can you see what you are pregnant forever with?

We are not doomed to remain stuck forever. ­There are ways we can strengthen our resolve to act.

I’d like to offer you five tools that can help you move from potential to action: Pray. Simply talk to God about your longings. Ask for the strength to break through, and listen for an answer.

Talk to ­others. Opening up to f­ amily and friends or a trusted mentor may release a burden from your soul and may be a terrific motiva-

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tor to act. Tell the p ­ eople you love what y­ ou’ve been sitting on and not hatching. Ask for their help. Ask for a pep talk.

Honesty is another critical ­factor. Look at your life and see the places ­you’ve left in suspended animation. Take the time to come face-­ to-­face with your unfulfilled potential.

Listening and seeing are pivotal ­factors on your path. Be receptive to t­ hose moments of grace—to words that might resuscitate your momentum—an article in the newspaper, a book, a movie. Listen to the voice of your soul rooting for you to take even one step forward.

This final suggestion is perhaps the hardest of all: feel the pain.

We must do something most of us spend our lives trying to resist—we must seek to feel discomfort. As we talked about earlier, we have the power to raise the flame of our urgency, to turn Same Old Stuff into a true SOS. Yes, sometimes it’s your drive and your courage that get you ­going. But more often, t­ hings as they are have to get painful enough so that you ­can’t live in a state of permanent pregnancy anymore. You just ­c an’t! We become aware of a deep aching within our souls, a knowledge that we are living well beneath our own potential. And once we allow ourselves to experience that pain, it gets to be too much to hold back the change that needs to come.

Two weeks ­after my friend Helene gave birth, I was so uncomfortable. I was so big, I was congested, I had heartburn, I ­couldn’t find a comfortable place to sit or stand or sleep or eat. Suddenly, I ­couldn’t wait to get that baby out of me and into the world. Ironically, the baby changed its mind. It deci­ded it w ­ asn’t ready to come out. I was ten days overdue. So I jumped up and down, I jogged, I ran—­nothing. I even went to a restaurant that had been written up in the L.A. Times. The article said that their balsamic vinaigrette salad had the power to cause pregnant ­women to go straight into ­labor. Well, ­after reading that article my husband, Rob, and I rushed over to the restaurant, and when

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we got t­ here we saw that the entire restaurant was full of miserable overdue pregnant w ­ omen. We sat down and the waiter came up to our ­table and said, “Let me guess, you’d like the balsamic salad?” I ate that salad, no baby.

Fi­nally I had to be induced. And a beautiful blessed ­little baby boy entered this world. Our son, Adi, is twenty-­three years old now. And not a single day goes by when I wish I could just have stayed pregnant forever.

May you come to see what is inside you waiting to be born. ­Today is pregnant forever. But you have the power to give it life. Break through, break ­free. ­Today is the day you get to decide what w ­ ill live only in your dreams and what ­will be born and light up the world.

May you choose life. Amen.

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