Parshat Mishpatim 5785
I started reading a book about healing trauma, uniquely titled “Healing Trauma,” by Peter Levine. In this surprisingly short manual on healing, he gives twelve exercises for getting back into our bodies again after a troubling experience. “Love sweeps us off our feet,” he says, “but trauma pulls our legs out from under us.” Feeling safety in our bodies and grounded on the earth, he says, are the keys that open up our body’s innate ability to heal from distress.
The first exercise he outlines is shockingly simple and powerful. With your right hand, begin tapping your left hand, feeling the contact between your two hands and the sensations of the tapping. “This is my hand,” you say out loud, “it is connected to my body. My body belongs to me.” You continue this with your entire body, claiming the skin barrier that separates you from others and the world. The next level is squeezing each muscle, claiming the next layer of your body as yours. In this way, with each layer, a person is claiming their autonomy, claiming the incredible power and resources they have within their body, that we all have within our bodies.
In the Mishna, Masechet Yoma, there is a discussion about a sick person eating on Yom Kippur. The rabbis say, “With regard to a holeh (sick person) [on Yom Kippur], they feed him according to experts. If there are not experts present, they feed him according to himself, until he says ‘enough’”. (Mishnah Yoma 8:5)”
In the Gemara, the rabbis go on to dissect what/who is an expert? And is it really true that if a sick person feels they need to eat on Yom Kippur they need to wait for a group of experts to approve? The stamma brings a verse from Proverbs that repeats like a mantra throughout the sugya, “lev yodea marat nafsho, “the heart alone knows its own bitterness” (Proverbs 14:10)
In short, the Gemara concludes, the sick person is the expert on their body, they do not need doctors or other professionals to give them permission to listen to their heart/body.
On this Reproductive Rights Shabbat, as we read the case our parsha brings about two people ghting, one of them pushing a pregnant woman, resulting in a miscarriage. The one responsible is fined but it is not treated as murder. Leading to the conclusion that the Torah thinks fetal life doesn’t equate full personhood, supporting reproductive rights.
Connecting this back to our other text in the Mishna, we are in a time in history in our country where the “experts” do not have our best interests in mind, especially when it comes to women and trans people. So, this lev yodea marat nafsho, this body awareness, and knowing of our own hearts and bodies and souls is more important than ever. Trusting one another, trusting women and trans people to know the inner workings of their own minds and bodies, trusting them and us to make our own decisions with our bodies, should be so obvious and yet– as we can see all too clearly- is not.
As I did the tapping exercise on my hand, saying “this is my hand, it is connected to my body, my body belongs to me,” I couldn’t help but think of the Bibas family. These were our beautiful red headed children and mother, they belonged to us– they belonged to Israel and to the Jewish people’s body. Just as they belonged to us and they are no longer here, like a phantom limb we can still feel them, can still feel our longing for them to come home safe and whole and alive.
May their memories be for a blessing, may we know that our endless longing for them and prayers for them have not been for nothing. May we trust that they were felt and received.
And on this reproductive rights shabbat, may we lift up and trust not only women– but ourselves, knowing that we have the innate wisdom and ability to heal from the traumas of the past 500+ days, and anything else that we have had to endure.
