I open the bathroom cupboard, as I do every night. I twist off the child-safe bottle cap and shake a light blue bill onto my palm. I drink it with a glass of water. After my routine is finished, I walk to the bedroom and pull the warm covers aside and climb in. I take a deep breath in the quiet of the night. Peaceful and steady, I turn my side table lamp on to read and study before I go to sleep.
I’ve heard the rabbi’s say that when we pray, we speak to God, but when we study Torah, God speaks to us. Today, I study words from the Torah and a midrash. Behold, a voice speaks. I sit with these words that I’ve just read. I hear an answer to a troubling question that has plagued me for many years.
Then Matt, who was reading next to me, mumbled something about the impracticality and the “just-for-fun” nature of all my reading, studying and writing.
I told him, “Hey! This book speaks to that! Look here…” and he leaned across the bed as I opened the pages to where I had underlined and starred the different sections. “It says Abraham was called ‘madman.’”
I showed him another section, and said, “Granted in some ways, he lived in the structured, real world--within the paradigm as a wealthy, well-connected elite. But, look! He also lived outside the paradigm. It says here, he lived as “a distraction, irrelevant, and even crazed” (85).
“And here!” I exclaimed pointing to another sentence underlined with dark blue ink. Matt leaned across the bed with his elbow pressing into the mattress. “They would say, ‘Look at that old man traveling about the country like a madman!’ Ultimately, that is the finest compliment that is paid to Abraham’”(88).
He looked at me with his eyebrows raised. I know “distracted,” “irrelevant,” and even “crazed” is how some people view me. Over these years, I have been seen as my book describes: shoteh (fool), for abandoning safe structures and faring on unmapped roads. Perhaps this is my madness. But, I have also, perhaps in a way like wealthy Abraham, been covered by safe structures: as a wife, a mother, a social worker, and a youth pastor. We may frame my journey in respectable ways. But, anyone who knows me intimately knows that I have been in tiltul (exile; lit. “off the point”) wandering through religious community, religious texts and religious wild imaginings as one in the travails of faith--going forth to a land that my God shall show me.
In this book by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, she reflects in chapter 3 "Lekh Lekha: the travails of faith" on Abraham's journey. In Hebrew, Lekh Lekha means “Go Forth.” It is descriptive of Abraham’s journey into the wilderness and into the unknown. I also experienced the imperative to go forth. And I travailed to make sense of it. Today, perhaps, I received part of a long awaited answer, a revelation to my own travails of faith.
I showed Matt the most important part from this chapter, the cream, the meat and potatoes (starred and underlined boldly). Zornberg cites Rambam from the Mishneh Torah.
“Listen to this, honey! It makes so much sense. It’s the answer to my eternal question!”
What is this condition of right love? It is, that one should love God with an excessive, powerful love, till one’s soul is totally involved in love of God, and one is constantly obsessed [shogeh] by it, as though ill with love sickness, when there is no place in one’s mind free of the love of that woman with whom one is obsessed--neither when one sits nor stands, eats nor drinks. More than this, should be the love of God in the heart of those who love Him and are obsessed by Him. This is the meaning of the command, “You shall love your God with all your heart and with all your soul…” And also of King Solomon’s allegory, “for I am love-sick” [Song of Songs 2:5]: indeed, the whole of Song of Songs is an allegory for this. (Mishneh Torah, Hilkot Teshuva 10:3)
And Zornberg’s next words: “To love is total obsession: the [Hebrew] word used is shogeh, which is clearly related to shaga, madness” (88).
We stared at the page together for a moment. I turned to my partner, my love, “Can you see what this is saying? Does it make sense?”
I read this almost pleading, hoping for him to see that my obsession with study and prayer is my love (shogeh) of God. That, yes, I have been diagnosed with Bipolar disorder. I accept this and take my meds. But, there is also something in the condition of right love that keeps me sane. There is something in the condition of right love that could prevent me from the rending of my mind. This love weaves back together all the torn parts. Zornberg describes it as teruf ha-da’at (lit. rending of the mind). It’s an insanity in which the center will not hold, a dislocation.
Matt considers me torn, teruf ha-da’at, because of Bipolar Disorder.
Yet, Zornberg writes that this torn-ness is woven into the text about love and reward, implying that we can live it as a life-sustaining gift:
The danger of teruf ha-da’at, literally, the rending of the mind, an experience of sharp dislocation and discontinuity, is thus woven into the text about love and reward...The gift of rending, teruf, of discontinuity, madness, God gives to those who fear Him (Psalm 111:5)...But how live a teruf, a torn-ness, that is a gift and not a destruction? (90-91)
I wonder how can I live this madness, this obsession, this condition of right love as a daily sustenance and not a destruction? I am love-sick and I believe that this could, in fact, sustain me--like the daily bread which is broken. Perhaps right love can sew together my mind that has been torn.
“Look! This is a thing,” I told him. “My experience is connected to a tradition, to a reality, to an explanation about the condition of right love.”
Matt said frankly, “No. It’s Bipolar Disorder.”
Then, he gave me that look of suspicion-concern-fear, the have you been taking your meds? look.
I said, “Honey, this is my ultimate question. I began asking it so many years ago--is there a link in my madness to God who I experienced so palpably?”
I don’t want to be love-sick for any man, but I have known that feeling; I don’t want to be obsessed in madness, but I know that experience. Yet, it is written that, “More than this, should be the love of God in the heart of those who love Him and are obsessed by Him.” I have no other ground to stand on while I am wandering through this wilderness in exile, tiltul, “off the point,” trying to make sense of my madness.
I feel that this midrash is an answer and I want to share it with Matt. I have recovered my ability to live in the real-world paradigm. Meds help. Therapy helps. Perhaps, my madness has been replaced with a condition of right love. But, after so many years of struggling with this question, I’m relieved to see that even this ancient text proves that there may be a relation. In my great love of God (my shogeh--love related to shaga--madness), I have listened intently. I have sought for God. I have knocked at the door. And afterwards, revelation. She writes,
When one strains for intimations of relationship, one demonstrates hiba...[God] did not reveal to him the land right away, so as to endear it to him, and give him reward for each word spoken. (Gen. 12:2).”...[There is] an intense listening--and ‘afterwards’ akar kakh--revelation. (89-91)
The meaning of my experience has not been revealed all at once, and so I demonstrate hiba. I am endeared and rewarded for each word spoken as I study and read. This is all I want in the world--to love our God and to love my neighbor as myself. I may have had an experience of being mad (shaga), but I also have the experience of love (shogeh). I must be love-sick, I realize.
“Hey” I say smiling at my life-partner, my love, nudging him to loosen up. My outbursts of enthusiasm like this come only every so often, and he's learning to trust that I'm staying well. He gives me a goodnight kiss, and for a moment we look in each others eyes. There is affection, then perhaps a twinkle of humor, then we can't hold each other's gaze any longer. We laugh together. Because we both know I’m taking my meds, and all this enthusiasm about words is just-for-fun.
