Every one of us is receiving a partial world. Our senses take a flood of raw signal and hand us a small, usable slice of reality. And for humans, this narrows further: the world we are raised in and the stories we inherit shape what we notice without us even realizing it.

But Judaism does not tell us that the world we inherited is the world we are destined to remain inside. Jewish practice trains new receptors. It teaches us to notice what we once overlooked, until what was invisible becomes impossible not to see.

I am a halachic Jew — I shape my family practice through Jewish values and tradition. But I remember how we received these laws in this weeks parshah/Torah portion - vayikra, and G!d called to Moses.  A personal invitation — hey Moses —not in thunder on a mountaintop, but quietly - can we talk in the tent of meeting? A tent for relationship, connection. An invitation to step into presence with the Divine, with self, and then lead the way.

When the first earthling — an androgynous being —  is created in the Garden of Eden, G!d separates the earthling into two. And from this separation the first human relationship forms. We meet Adam, who holds a vast inner knowing from which he names every animal — partnered with Eve, who searches for greater wisdom from the natural world, leading her to taste the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. In the moment that Eve and Adam eat from the tree, they awaken to a new reality. They understand a deeper truth of the world.

“What’s the matter?” asked Levi Yitzhak.
“Oh, everything’s fine,” replied the seamstress. “As I was getting ready to attend the service, I made a list with two columns. At the top of one, I wrote my name, and at the top of the other, I wrote, ‘God of all the Universe.’ Then, one by one, I began to list my sins: ‘Cheated Goldman out of a pair of trousers.’ And in God’s column, I noted God’s omission: ‘Little girl died of pneumonia.’ Then the next sin, ‘Lost my temper with my children,’ and in God’s column, ‘Watched famine unfold in another country.’” And so it went.

The seamstress showed the rabbi the completed list. “And for every sin I had committed during the past year, God had done one too. So I said to God, ‘Look, we each have the same number of sins. If you let me off, I’ll let You off!’”

The rabbi’s face grew red, and he scolded her: “You fool! You let God off the hook?”