Kislev - How to Heal Your Altar

O, troubledness concealing

An undivided love

The heart beneath is teaching

To the broken heart above

And let the heavens falter

Let the earth proclaim

Come healing of the altar

Come healing of the name

My own healing journey began by listening to this song by Leonard Cohen enough times on repeat that the words finally lept off the page into my own heart, and became a prayer for seeking a kind of help I could have never expected would be available to me in this lifetime. In what felt like a series of endless moment of tragedy, I reached out to “Come Healing” to both hold all my sorrow and guide my attention to all the spheres of my life in need of restoration. Now, one month out from the murderous attack across Southern Israel, and almost a month away from Hanukkah, I have finally found that my personal altar, my mizbeach, is also in need of repair. 

The altar is a fundamental architectural anchor of the Jewish spiritual tradition, the physical site of making offerings and often receiving Divine encounters and downloads. In the ancient Temple, the structure was quite imposing—reaching five meters in height and sixteen meters in width, the altar received all the sacrifices made by the priests and the people, holding both the fire for offerings as well as the esh tamid, the eternally burning flame that remained present yet untouched. Made with unhewn stone and earth and overlaid with bronze, this altar symbolized the body and the maintenance of Earthly equilibrium. It is said to be “the means of establishing peace between the people of Israel and their Divine parent; therefore, iron, which is used as an instrument of murder, should not be swung over it. What an affirmation for those that endeavor to establish peace between humans, and between nations, that no evil shall befall them!” The altar’s axis of Divine and human connection was so central that it embodied all forgiveness, merit, blessing, and life in this world.

I began dedicating my own altar has just recently, over the last six months or so, as a way of cultivating a living representation of my inner life and my prayer practice outside of my own mind. Since my experiences with infertility and pregnancy loss and the disruption of COVID lockdown and anxiety, tefillah has never truly recovered as the anchor of my spirit life as it once was. As my own psychedelic practice has evolved and grown, I learned about the custom of creating a sacred center in ceremony space—candles, symbolic objects of particular importance and connectivity to the practitioner, items to be used in ceremony. Common in indigenous ceremonies and adopted by Western psychedelic culture, altars are used anchors of experience when exploring expanded consciousness as well as creating a supportive space during integration. My altar represents my inner and outer life: everything pointing to the candle at the top, vectoring towards the light. I gather feathers from the bird friends we watch and listen for in our neighborhood, the bouncy, hungry scrub jay; the occasional hawk battling it out with the rascally crows. Two etrogim—the shriveled but immaculate one from last year meeting its green and yellow sibling from this year, marking the cyclical passage of sacred time, and honoring my own “plant medicine” tradition. An old hamsa, my first, given to me by a soul brother’s departed father, once a key chain and now a remembrance of kindness and friendship. A jew’s harp I bought after losing the one which mysteriously appeared nailed to a tree in my front yard as a child. The handbells I used in meditation class, teaching myself while teaching others, lost and teaching the lost. At the center, an old wooden bowl, over. a hundred years old, from my wife’s childhood, ready to receive. Many items for creating smoke and fragrance, each with a special place in my heart. I visit this altar every day, before, during, and after my work day, but after October 7th, this place of connection has become a sanctuary of silence. The pain is so great, the feelings of betrayal, the steady competition of higher values, a sinking feeling like a the world is changed forever (again) and my place in it is uncertain. In a moment, the holiness of this space I have made for myself is like a body without a soul.

The end and beginning of an altar’s life is also a story our people know well, or at least knew well. In non-canonical texts like the Book of Maccabees and a version of Megillat Ta’anit, we learn that it is the removal of spiritual impurity from of the altar and the renewal of sacrifices which constitutes the ultimate victory of the holiday, not the finding and kindling of pure oil beyond its natural order, as is now the central myth we tell ourselves. Even the term hannukah—rededication—originally referred to hannukat ha’mizbe’ach—rededicating the altar. We can learn to heal our own broken altars in the Now by listening to the voices of our ancestors. In the Book of Maccabees, Judah and the priests beat back the colonizing Greeks but find they have defiled the inner sanctum of the Temple, and the altar along with it:

They deliberated what to do about the altar of burnt offering, which had been profaned. And they thought it best to tear it down, so that it would not be a lasting shame to them that the Gentiles had defiled it. So they tore down the altar, and stored the stones in a convenient place on the temple hill until a prophet should come to tell what to do with them. Then they took unhewn stones, as the law directs, and built a new altar like the former one..they rose and offered sacrifice, as the law directs, on the new altar of burnt offering that they had built.(1 Mac. 4)

In ancient Israelite practice, sometimes objects or vessels which have become impure are beyond the process to become whole again. While the Maccabees decide to create the altar anew, the components of the old one are still kept in tact, understanding that they must be treated in a reverent and careful way. In order to return to my practice, should I start my altar anew? Has the form become more significant than the function? Where could I put the preset items around my space which would convey thoughtfulness? What new items would I start to gather?

Megillat Ta’anit, decidedly shorter and even less well known than the Book Maccabees, offers a simple, elegant description of how the Maccabees rededicated their spiritual center:

And they found a demolished altar and they repaired it,

all eight [days] and the service vessels,

and it is therefore celebrated for eight [days],

and there was the dedication [hannukat] of the altar.

Whether physically or spiritually, the altar was simply “repaired.” No dramatic need for the tearing down of the old to make room for the new, only to do the tikkun which brings it back to working order, and celebrate its rededication. Perhaps what is needed is not a wholesale deleting of the work I have done up to this point, but to rededicate my practice, with some slight adjustments in the space to which I am bringing my prayerful attention.

As this moment continues to unfold, with feelings of overwhelm, sadness, outrage, and hope, I pray our practices, prayers and intention are intensified and deepened, and that the lessons from the battles which are being fought and won within are brought into our world for the sake of rebuildling a world from true love and concern for each other.

Hodesh tov,

Z