Episode 2: Chakeh-Mah – Wait for What
Delving into Miriam’s Torah of patience and presence, this episode explores the Jewish mystical teaching of Chakeh-Mah, the ability to “wait for what.” we’ll talk about the power of a Sufi sermon, the narrow place, Spiritual Chutzpah, razzle dazzle slave economics, time travel, moishiachtzeit, and a practice for bringing Miriam’s living Torah into our own lives. R' Jericho talks about the definition of wisdom, Wait for What, what kind of salt we want to be, a concussion, descent for the sake of ascent, why you’re alive in this moment, and a practice for bringing Miriam’s living Torah into our own lives.
SHOW NOTES
You can learn more about Rabbi Jericho’s experience leaving ultra-Orthodoxy in their memoir Cut Me Loose, under their old name, Leah Vincent.
Reb Zalman on spiritual vitamins here. With gratitude to Seth Fishman.
The Zohar on the sacred encased in harm can be found in Pekudei 26:248
One of many examples of a mystic reading the Torah archetypically can be found in this teaching by the mystical master Rabbi Shefa Gold.
The story of Miriam sitting by the side of the river can be found in Exodus 2:2-10
For more on chochmah as Chakeh Mah see page 70 of The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism by Daniel C Matt.
The story of Idit, Lot’s wife can be found in Genesis 19:26; we learn the name of Lot’s wife in Pirkei DeRabbi Elizer 25:11; Recanti on trauma can be found in Vayera 11
One of the many places that the prostrate position, nefal al apay, is mentioned in the tradition include Targum Jonathan Numbers 24:16.
Kedushat Levi on Merarchok can be found Exodus, Shemot 6.
Sefer HaYashar on Miriam’s name can be found Sefer Shemot 24.
Learn more about Dr. Yosef Rosen at his website.
One of the many places where the principle yerida l’tzorech aliyah is applied is in Sfat Emet, Bereishis, Vayeshiv 12:4.
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When I was a teenager, I was pushed out of my ultra-Orthodox family because of my rebellions. It was overwhelming, figuring out how to survive. I got my shit together enough to hold down a job, to make enough money to keep a roof over my head and food in my belly, but the emotional fallout—that was hell, for a long time. Thank Goddess, when I was 18, I got into therapy, and my therapist strongly recommended that I learn some mindfulness or meditation to help me cope with my wounds.
I started going to Zazen at a nearby Zen Buddhist temple, sitting in silence with my legs folded, returning to my breath again and again. I had a job at a nonprofit right near the boardwalk in Coney Island, and I started going to work early, so I could sit out on a bench in front of the sand and meditate with the rhythm of the surf echoing the rhythm of my breath[insert wave sounds]. It was powerful. The lineage of Zen Buddhism gave me a great gift. It was a big deal to slow down, to focus on what was present in that moment, instead of getting lost in the pain of what had already happened.
I’m really grateful for what I learned from the Buddhist community–I still use Zen meditation as part of my spiritual practice. My teacher Reb Zalman used to say that every faith has its own vitamins, and a person might need different combinations of faith practices to get all the nutrients they need, to stay in good health. Buddhist meditation gave me some pretty essential vitamins I’d been missing.
Meditation seemed super Buddhist, I didn’t really know that there was such a thing as Jewish meditation. I only discovered Jewish meditation when I started to re-engage with Judaism in my late twenties, when I realized ultra-Orthodoxy wasn’t historically authentic Judaism, and that there were many other lineages that had different messages than the ones I’d been raised on. So I started learning Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, taking in the wisdom but spitting out the misogyny and xenophobia that encases that tradition. Which, by the way, is in itself a Kabbalistic practice. The canonical mystical text, the Zohar, says that which is deeply sacred is often encased in a shell of harm. We’ve got to crack the shell, get at the meat.
Through Kabbalah, I discovered Jewish meditation, and in particular, the mystical meditative practice of the ancestor Miriam. This secret Jewish meditation practice contains vitamins that I have found very potent for navigating this painful political moment, right now.
In this episode, we’re going to talk about the definition of wisdom, Wait for What, what kind of salt we want to be, a concussion, descent for the sake of ascent, why you’re alive in this moment, and a practice for bringing Miriam’s living Torah into our own lives.
I’m Jericho Vincent, your local feminist trans Kabbalistic rabbi and. This is a Survival Guide for a spiritual wilderness. Let’s continue on the path.
Last episode we witnessed Miriam exercising Spiritual Chutzpah to get her parents back together after they separated. Then her mom, Yocheved, has a baby boy. And the Pharaoh has issued an executive order that every newborn Ivri boy must die.
We can look at this story historically, mythologically, archaeologically, or some other way, but the mystics ask us to read these ancient stories archetypically. We each have an inner Miriam, an inner Yocheved, an inner baby that at some point in our lives will be in the situation this baby is about to find himself in:
Yocheved knows it’s only a matter of time before the soldiers come find her baby and kill him. So she decides she would rather let nature kill her baby then let her baby die at the hands of man. She puts her baby in a basket in the river and then she walks away. She can’t stand to be there and to watch the crocodiles or the waves take her child’s life. Yocheved goes home to sit shiva. But Miriam, Moses’ big sister Miriam, she stays by the side of the river to be present with her brother, to watch him as he tips back-and-forth between life and death.
Her mother reacts to what she assumes is inevitable, she mourns the imminent death of her baby. But Miriam has this staggering capacity to be present with what is. In the Zohar, the canonical Kabbalistic text, it asks what is Chochmah—what is wisdom? It defines wisdom by taking this ancient word for wisdom, chochmah, and cutting it in half to make two new words “chakeh mah” –which means “wait for what.” Wisdom is the ability to wait for what, to accept a difficult present reality without jumping to conclusions about the future, to be calm and poised, open to what unfolds. Miriam on the riverbank, watching her brother balancing between life and death, is the embodiment of wisdom, of chakeh mah, of waiting for what. Waiting to see what will unfold. Not reaching a premature conclusion. Cultivating curiosity.
This has some similarities to the concept I learned from my Buddhist teachers of non-attachment, of a kind of disengagement from outcome, but Chakeh Mah, wait for what, has an implied expectation that action is forthcoming—at the right moment.
Miriam, in her Chakeh Mah, her waiting for what in this very painful situation, is an iteration of a previous archetype. Many generations before Miriam, a family: Lot, Idit, and their two daughters, are fleeing their city of Sodom and Gomorrah, which God is destroying with hellfire and brimstone, Idit, Lot’s wife, the girls’ mother, looks back at the destruction and what she sees when she turns to face the pain transforms her to a pillar of salt.
Long before the invention of modern psychology, in the twelfth century, Italian Kabbalist Rabbi Menachem ben Benyamin Recanti taught that when we see something traumatic, even if it doesn’t touch us, it can cause an echoing psychological damage in our minds. Rabbi Recanti says that’s what happened to Idit. She became salt because she was traumatized by watching sulfur and salt rain down on her town. If we read this mythologically, we might say that the trauma of the destruction that Idit witnessed was so intense, it immobilized her. It paralyzed her. She became frozen in the pain of what she’d left behind.
Miriam, like Idit, witnesses the pain, but it doesn’t immobilize her. One of the many meanings of the name Miriam is Mar Yam– salty sea. Like Idit, Lot’s wife, when Miriam faces pain it makes her salty– but a salty sea, not a pillar of salt– Miriam remains liquid, fluid, able to contain life. She does not allow herself to become frozen by the pain.
How does she do that? How do we do that? How do we face the overwhelming pain of a spiritual wilderness without becoming immobilized? Yes, we utilize our spiritual chutzpah to envision a better possibility, but while we’re waiting for that to unfold, how, in the most embodied way, do we survive the wilderness?
Miriam shows us how with Chakeh Mah, wait for what, a three step process.
The first two steps come from the one potent line in the Torah that describes Miriam after Moses is placed in the water:
וַתֵּתַצַּ֥ב אֲחֹת֖וֹ מֵרָחֹ֑ק לְדֵעָ֕ה מַה־יֵּעָשֶׂ֖ה לֽוֹ׃
And his sister [Miriam] stationed herself at a distance, to learn what would happen to him [Moses].
Vtaitatzav achoto, Miriam stationed herself. Taitzav, stations yourself. That’s instruction number one of Chakah Mah, waiting for what. When we’re stressed and overwhelmed, we need to station ourselves, to be deliberate and make an intention to work with this difficult situation, to hold our body with attention and readiness. That might include a specific pose–lotus position or nefal al apay–bowing down to the ground or going to a particular sacred place where we can best station ourselves– whatever prepares us in an embodied way to do this work of chakeh mah, waiting for what.
Step 1: Taitzav, station yourself; Step 2: Mirachock, at a distance; Miriam stationed herself mirachok, at a distance, so we need to make a little distance.
The 19th century mystic, the Kedushat Levi highlights this second step, mirachok, at a distance: he teaches that to live a spiritually awakened life we have to be like Miriam, emulate her Torah, her wisdom by making a little distance between ourselves and the difficult reality unfolding in front of us. That distance can create space for our curiosity.
We learn the third step of this process of chakeh mah, after step one, taitzav, station yourself, and step two, mirachok, at a distance, from the sacred text Sefer HaYasher which tells us that Miriam gave her little brother a name– she called him Yared or Jared– which means “to go down” – because, the text says, Miriam went down to the riverbank to see what would happen to him.
This language of “going down” is very loaded for us Kabbalists. As teacher of Kabbalah, Dr Yosef Rosen explains: Yared, to go down, means to descend mythologically and emotionally. To go into a difficult place. And Kabbalah tells us that the way to ascend, to rise, to overcome great difficulty is through this descent– this principle is called yerida l’tzorech aliyah, we go down to the depths in order to rise to the heights.
To translate into practical terms: Miriam descends by really letting herself feel her own pain of being a child watching her brother in this dangerous situation, her own fear, her own anxiety. And when we’re being present with a part of ourselves in pain, we can allow ourselves that descent as well. We can let that part express the true depth of its fear and its anxiety. It might be counterintuitive, but if we’re willing to bear compassionate witness to our own selves in this deep way, this is actually how we survive and even thrive in terrible situations, how we ultimately rise in strength and triumph, finding spaciousness and calm, meaning, connecting deeply to love for ourselves and with love with each other, it’s how we’re able to ground ourselves to be present and of service for others, to survive and even thrive in a spiritual wilderness.
Because Miriam has this ability to chakeh mah, wait for what, with Step 1: Taitzay, station yourself; Step 2: Mirachock, at a distance; Step 3: Yared, go down. — then— when she sees the basket holding her baby brother floating towards the princess of Egypt, the daughter of the Pharaoh, bathing in the river, when she sees the princess reach forward to grab the basket, Miriam is in a position to jump forward and asks the princess: Can I get you a nurse for this baby? When the princess says yes, Miriam runs home to her mother, who is grieving her dead son, and says: come with me. Your baby is alive. The princess is hiring you to be his wet nurse, to breastfeed the child.
If Miriam had stood at the riverbank when her brother was put in the water and started freaking out, screaming, crying, panicking, the Egyptian soldiers would have been alerted and grabbed her brother. They were hunting for him. If the baby came on land it would be an instant death sentence. But Miriam waiting, not jumping to conclusions, staying present with the pain, that put her in a perfect position to act at the right moment.
When we start to spiral, when we’re faced with a painful uncertainty Step 1: Taitzav, station yourself; Step 2: Mirachock, at a distance; Step 3: Yared, go down. And then, notice what emerges from that process, where we are called to act. This is a meditative process that we can utilize when we’re facing catastrophic global news or small difficult personal moments.
Some years ago, when my son was three and my daughter ten, we were up in the mountains of Colorado for the summer. My partner and I were sitting at the table while the kids were playing a game jumping around on the couch, when suddenly there was a loud crack sound, kind of a coconut sound. We turned to see our son had fallen backwards from the arm of the sofa onto the wooden floor, about two and a half feet up. He’s a stoic kid—I tend to get more upset when he gets a scratch than he does, but this time it took him a very very long time to stop crying, he was sobbing for like fifteen minutes. To calm him down we gave him some tv not knowing he had a concussion and with concussion you’re supposed to avoid stimulation. About half an hour after he’d fallen he abruptly threw up over the floor. We called his doctor back in New York who advised us there was a chance that there was brain hemorrhaging and we should take him to the emergency room as quickly as possible.
We drove him to the little mountain hospital. As I watched the doctors examine my son, as I watched him throw up again, and again, I made a decision to be very deeply present, a kind of taitzav, stationing myself. When it comes to my kids safety, like a lot of parents, I can be quick to catastrophize, but I wanted to stay present, hyper aware of my body, in the moment, not spiralling off into what his symptoms might mean. Of course there was a part of me that wanted to go spiralling off, so step two, mirachok, I created a little distance. As my son rested and the doctors arranged a cat scan, I noticed the tightness in my upper chest, in my temples. I asked it to unblend, to step forward, so I could bear witness to it with love. And I saw this younger me, I saw them sobbing, so afraid. So step three, yared, I went down into the depths.
I’d grown up on stories of people losing children for their sins. The ultra-Orthodox people I’d grown up with had made it clear that they thought I was a grave sinner, for thinking for myself, for pursuing a secular education, for marrying a non-Jew. This young part of myself was terrified I was going to lose my child. This young part of myself had already lost my ten siblings when I was pushed out of my ultra-Orthodox family as a teen. It was afraid that now I was going to lose my son too. I witnessed its terror, I witnessed the grief it had for what it already lost. I felt so tender towards this part of me, it loved so deeply, it loved my brothers and sisters that I hadn’t spoken to in two decades, and it loved, it so enormously loved my son.
The pain was intense for a while, but it was clean pain. Cleansing. Thank Goddess, my kid’s CAT scan came out clear. He was growing an awful lump on his head and they wanted to observe him for a couple more hours, but it did not seem like he had a brain hemorrhage. The good news certainly shifted everything, but so did that meditative process of step one, taitzav, step two, mirachok, step three, yared. An instinct arose in the new spaciousness. A push to reach out to my community, to ask them to hold my son, and by extension me, in this situation. Ask for prayers for my son’s swift healing. It might seem silly, but it was an important nudge. I was grateful for the flood of prayers that came in, and I felt them travel back in time to me at seventeen, when I lost my brothers and sisters, and no one was praying for me, no one even knew what I was going through, because I was so isolated and alone. And there was healing in that. There was a sweet and precious healing.
There’s many different ways to practice chakeh mah. Since the election, I feel like Goddess is asking me to practice it every damn day. Each time I check the news, I feel my system go into overdrive–there’s this natural urge to protect myself by feeling into what might happen next, how this might impact my future life. I know I have to be thoughtful and strategic about the dangers we’re facing, emotionally, emotionally I need to chakeh mah, to wait for what. I need to be present with what is right in front of me–not with what I think is inevitable right after that. It’s challenging spiritual work, to be present with this moment.
Here’s the thing about the future: it’s not actually physically possible to live in the future, so when we try to throw our consciousness into the future–into what’s about to happen, it hits the brick boundary of the now and that impact creates a nasty wave of anxiety. So come back to the now. So come back to what we can do in this moment. Let’s build our wisdom by building our capacity to chakeh-mah, wait for what.
Chakeh mah creates a spaciousness that allows us to pay attention for longer. To wait until it is our moment to act. And let me tell you friends, there is a moment, many moments, in this current spiritual wilderness when we will need to act. But if we’re spiraling in panic we’ll miss them.
There’s a lot of pain coming at us right now. Some of us have internalized this kind of messaging that we’re supposed to bear witness—keep ourselves doom scrolling as a kind of sacred task. But flicking through snapshots of human tragedy isn’t bearing witness. It’s just messing with our mental health and our ability to actually help. If you don’t have space in your life to do massive amounts of processing, don’t do massive amounts of bearing witness. Don’t spend two hours a day scrolling through instagram or refreshing the news. Don’t. It won’t help anyone, it’ll only harm you and your relationships and have a net negative effect on the communal body. Figure out what the right amount of bearing witness is for this season of your life— and adjust, as your resources adjust.
The future is unwritten, but when Goddess was looking down at the earth twenty, thirty, fifty years ago, She saw shit was heating up. She saw the world was going through what the Kabbalists call some intense liberation labor pains. Scary stuff. And She thought: okay, first I need to unleash lots of Miriam energy onto this planet, because the people are going to need some guidance through this spiritual wilderness, and then okay, which pieces of myself am I going to plant in human bodies to be present on the earth to help midwife the world through this difficult transition? And she chose the part of Herself that lives in you and the part of Herself that lives in me.
Does the idea that you have a role for you play put you back in that frozen place? If so, take a breath with me and receive this blessing...May you be assured that there is a move for you to make. In a spiritual wilderness we need artists, activists, students, teachers, caregivers, poets, philanthropists, volunteers. May the practice of Chakeh Mah, waiting for what, enable you to see clearly that your action is forthcoming - at the right moment. help you figure out your role, and how you’re going to play it. May you be assured that your move is not to play superman saving the whole world by yourself but one small move that’s in front of you right now. May you have the space to feel the responsibility and the honor that it is to be a member of this generation. May you find the small but real step in front of you, that you’re supposed to take, and may you take it. May you feel Miriam cheering you on, reminding you of your strength, celebrating you in your flawed and radiant perfection.Let’s take a moment to practice some of Miriam’s Chakeh Mah, Wait for What, together.
Step one, like Miriam, taitzav, ready your body. How do you like to position your body in a posture of readiness? Take a moment to find that position.
Let’s lower our gaze and drop into our bodies like a handful of salt dropping into warm water.
Call to mind some element of the spiritual wilderness that’s stressing you out, one where there’s urgency and a sense of unending uncertainty.
Notice how your mind might be racing ahead to tell you what is about to happen next, jumping to what feels like a reasonable conclusion.
Take a deep breath in through the nose, out through the mouth and let’s try Miriam’s second meditative instruction: mirachok, from a distance. Where in your body do you notice your stress? Is it in your forehead, your jaw, your shoulders, your hips? What’s the feeling like? Is it tight or icy or fragile or pokey?
Let’s breathe a little tenderness into that place. And now, ask that stressed feeling if it might be willing to give you a bit of space so you can hear it more deeply and take better care of it.
Sometimes the answer is no. Then you just keep breathing tenderness into the stress. You might turn your focus to the no, notice where in your body that is, and continue the exercise with a focus on that no feeling.
But if the stress is willing to give you a little space, ask it to move from your body to the front of you in your mind’s eye. How does it appear? Is it a being? A color? Some other kind of image?
Let it know that you’ve taken up the position to witness it with love. That you want to make space for it as it is, without an agenda. You’re really ready to chakeh mah, to wait for what will unfold.
And then step three, Yared, go deep, go down deep: ask it to tell you more about the stress. Open your heart and witness it with compassion as it expresses, in whatever way it wants, how it’s been feeling and what its experience is. And keeping that compassionate distance, so you can see it, love it, remain present to it without becoming it, listen, listen deeply, listen with love.
Pause my voice, and take as long as it takes to be lovingly present with what it wants you to know.
Notice what shifts in your inner world, when you spend enough time Yared, descending. Notice what shifts in your body. Notice: do you have more clarity about what action you’re supposed to take now, in this moment of uncertainty?
Last episode, we planted some Miriam energy in our belly, acknowledging that Miriam energy, that wise guide, within us all. So now let’s put your right hand, the hand of compassion, on your belly and draw forth a stream of that indigo energy and offer it to the parts of you that have been stressed. Let it know that this is ancestral energy, an energy of strength and spaciousness and love. Watch, Chakeh Mah, wait for what, watch and see what unfolds. How does this part of you want to interact with this offering?
I want to pray for us, for you, my friend, and for me, I pray: Morah Miriam, Ancestor Miriam, Thank you for the gift of your wisdom.Thank you for the gift of your presence. Thank you for the gift of us being in community amidst the wilderness of this moment. Please, help us feel your love. Please, help us connect to our own strength. Please, give us the discernment to bear witness taitzav, with intentional embodiment.And please give us the discernment to know what our role is, when we’re supposed to act and how.
Let’s place our hands on our belly again, first the right hand of love, and over it, the left hand of strength, and let’s feel the seed of Miriam energy there grow a little larger, feel it sprout roots that begin to move down into your seat, anchoring you in this uncertain time.
Next time you notice yourself getting overwhelmed by the world, take a moment to remember that you have this tool of Chakeh Mah, Step 1: Taitzav, station yourself; Step 2: Mirachock, at a distance; Step 3: Yared, go down.Okay, so you’ve got your spiritual chutzpah fired up, you’re using your meditative tool of Chakeh Mah for the difficult moments meanwhile, but what are you supposed to do when you come face to face with a dangerous harmful person?
This kind of person is pretty ubiquitous in a spiritual wilderness, and Miriam has some super provocative wisdom to share about how to deal with this. I’m going to warn you— it might piss you off– but it’s powerful stuff, and I’m excited to explore it with you next time.
I'm rabbi Jericho Vincent, and I'm so excited to take this trip with you, guided by the ancestor Morah Miriam. This is a Survival Guide for a spiritual wilderness. I'll see you on the path.
Thanks to Ella Joy Meir for the beautiful original music, to Dr. Yosef Rosen, to the Kanfei Edges Group, to my creative partner Ben Blum, to Morah Miriam for her guidance, and to Ruach HaOlam, the oneness within, between and beyond us all. Survival Guide for a Spiritual Wilderness is a part of the Judaism Unbound family of podcasts made possible with support from Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah.
