Soul Trait Studio: Sh'vat 5785

Practice guide for the Soul Trait Studio mussar practice for Sh'vat 5785 (02/02/25) focusing on the soul trait of "ahavah" | love.

Photo by Jiroe (Matia Rengel) on Unsplash

Each month I host an open session called Soul Trait Studio, a mussar practice session focused on the soul trait of the month.  The current month is available to all and previous months are available to subscribers at the monthly, yearly, or beloved levels.

Come when you can. All registrants for the month will receive the video the following day. The Soul Trait Studio for Shevat 5784 is January 14, 2024 from 3-4:30pm ET on Zoom, registration required - no charge but your time.

Register for this and upcoming sessions: devotaj.com/soultraitstudio

I consider your time to be the exchange for this offering, which is why I don’t charge money to register. While it is always an option to attend on your own time, via the recording I send out the next day, these sessions remain free of monetary charge because of those who do commit to attending in real time.

Ahavah Resources

• Intro to Mussar and Devotaj Sacred Arts Approach

• Introduction to Ahavah by Kohenet Ketzirah

• Mussar Practice eBook with guides to each soul trait of the year from Devotaj Sacred Arts

• Ahavah, Love is Complicated (Sh’ma Now)

• Ahava, song & teaching (Romemu on SoundCloud)

• Making Mensches: A Periodic Table (JewishCamp.org)

• Courage song

• Love is a Choice by Merton Pajibo

• 📚 Every Day Holy Day by Alan Morinis; Chapters 15 & 41

• 📚 In Search of the Holy Life by Ira Stone and Beulah Trey; Middah 4: Intimacy

• 📚 With Heart in Mind by Alan Morinis; Chapters 29-180

• 📚 All About Love by bell hooks

• 📚 To Heal a Fractured World by R’Jonathan Sacks

Monthly Practice

Note: we rarely get through all of this during the 90 minute session, so consider the entirety of it to be an invitation for your personal practice this month. This guide will remain available to all until the end of the month. Previous monthly guides are available to subscribers at the monthly, yearly, or beloved levels.

• Opening Chant

• Introduction to Soul Trait of the Month

• Cheshbon HaNefesh

• Text Study

• Incantations

• Embodied Practice

• Mitzvah

• Journal Prompts

• Closing Chant

Opening Chant

Sweet Love (Sweet Love)
Do not play it small
The world depends on your greatness

May you be loved as you go forward
May you give love as you go forward
May you be loved as you go forward
May you give love as you go forward

Sweet Love Rav Kohenet Taya Ma & E. Oscar Maynard
2nd verse lyrics adapted by Ketzirah

Soul Trait of the Month

A Prayer before Mussar Study

The Journey:

• Last month:  Tevet | Moon of Clarity | Sakranut (סקרנות) Curiosity | Doreshet (דורשת) Seeker

• Now: Sh’vat | Moon of Centering | Ahavah (אהבה) Love | Ohevet (אוהבת) Lover

• Next Month:  Adar | Moon of Revealing | Zehirut (זהירות) Illuminated Awareness | Leitzanit (ליצנית) Sacred Fool

When we give love others, other may take courage to make choices that help repair themselves and the world. Some teach that root letters of ahavah (אהבה) love are hei-vav-hei (הוה) which means “ give,” among other things. The root of the English word for courage is from the latin “cor” heart.

Ketzirah haMa’agelet (5785)

Cheshbon HaNefesh:

What does ahavah (אהבה) love mean to you right now.

What does it mean to act with ahavah she’be tiferet?
What does it meant to behave with tiferet she’be ahavah?

Text Study

Partnered text study. One per breakout room.

Explore what the text teaches you about the interconnections between ahavah and ometz lev (courage) — and the choices you have made and might make.

Text 1: 

The great Kabbalist and mystic of sixteenth century Safed, Rabbi Isaac Luria, pointed out that the when we look at the opening letters of the words “the lamps at twilight” - את־הנרת בּין הערבים - it forms the acronym Ahavah the Hebrew word for love. Each and every day, the great mystic teaches, if Aaron wants his service to ascend to the heaven he must do it with feeling, with emotion, with love.

Light the Lamps by Marc Gitler

וּבְהַעֲלֹ֨ת אַהֲרֹ֧ן אֶת־הַנֵּרֹ֛ת בֵּ֥ין הָעֲרְבַּ֖יִם יַקְטִירֶ֑נָּה קְטֹ֧רֶת תָּמִ֛יד לִפְנֵ֥י יְהוָ֖ה לְדֹרֹתֵיכֶֽם׃

and Aaron shall burn it on the lamps at twilight—a regular incense offering before Being and Becoming throughout the ages.

Exodus 30:8

Text 2: 

Mussar leader Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler defined love from the Jewish point-of-view as “giving without expecting to take.” The Hebrew word for love is ahavah, the root of which means “to give.” Love then, according to both Judaism and our children, is defined through the action of giving of one’s time, attention, admiration, and resources.

Defining love through action, author unknown (via PJ Library)

Text 3: 

… never let anyone be humiliated in your presence is a very powerful starting point, because it means that not only can you not humiliate someone, but you can’t be indifferent. You can’t be a bystander. You can’t allow things to happen — you are implicated in what happens. And that’s really fundamentally the shift, I think, between being a spectator and being a witness.

Hope is a Muscle, Rabbi Ariel Burger (episode of OnBeing with Krista Tippet)

Text 4:

When we were sitting in, it was love in action. When we went on the freedom ride, it was love in action. The march from Selma to Montgomery was love in action. We do it not simply because it’s the right thing to do, but it’s love in action. That we love our country, we love a democratic society, and so we have to move our feet.

Love in Action, John Lewis (z”l) (episode of OnBeing with Krista Tippet)

Text 5:

You shall love Becoming your G!d/dess with all your heart, with all your life-force, with all your gifts. These words which I tell you this day you should take into your heart. You shall teach them to your children, and speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the path, when you lie down and when you rise up. Tie them as a sign upon your hand and let them be ornaments between your eyes. Write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates.

Spring and autumn rain corn and wine and oil you shall have if only you would love Becoming itself and sit with it at home and walk with it and on your journeys and lie down with it in your dreams and rise up with it and your hopes you will eat and be satisfied and if you will close your heart and turn away from your nefesh-wisdom and your communion with the world and serve gods that are other than Becoming the earth will not yield her fruit and the skies will shut their doors and you will be lost from the good land that Becoming and gives you yet if you love Becoming with heart, body, and soul and weave it into the thoughts of your mind and the works of your hands and teach it to your children and tell it in your stories then your days will be long and whole as the days of the sky above the earth.

V’ahavta (1st verse) adapted from Deut 6:4-9, V’ahavta (2nd verse) adapted from Deut 11:13-21, translation by Rav Kohenet Jill Hammer, Siddur haKohanot

Incantations*:

• Through my body let it flow. Let my love lead to change, as above so below.

• May I give and receive. Act courageously with ease. Love and be/loved in all I perceive.

• Let love be the spark. I’ll nourish the flame. And in each, may I do the same.

• Unblock my heart. Let it flow. To receive (give) love I will let it go.

• To love myself I must love you. When harm is done the “other” — it harms me through and through.

*The term from inherited forms of mussar is “affirmations”. Feel free to think of them this way, if it’s more aligned and/or nourishing for you.

Embodied Practice

Breathe out and close your eyes.

Let your attention come to the part of your body that has to work hardest for you right now or is “letting you down” in some way. Maybe it’s causing you physical or emotional pain.

Let loving attention flow to that part of your body. Massage it in your mind or physically with sweet scented lotion.

Thank it for working hard to support you.

Breathe out and open your eyes.

[Consider doing this while listening to We are Loved by Shir Meira Feit (né Shir Yaakov)]

Mitzvah* 

Choose from Robin Wall Kimmerer list of loving behaviors. Alternate between intentionally action on these with yourself, with those you love, strangers, and with those you find challenging.

• nurturing health and well-being 

• protection from harm 

• encouraging individual growth and development 

• desire to be together 

• generous sharing of resources 

• working together for a common goal 

• celebration of shared values 

• interdependence 

• sacrifice by one for the other 

• creation of beauty 

From Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

*I translate mitzvah as “sacred connective action.” In other forms of mussar these are often called kabbalot, committed practices to help you take the practice in the world around you.

Journaling Prompts:

• WHAT does ahavah (אהבה) love mean to you? What different types of love can you describe?

  • What does it mean to act with ahavah she’be tiferet ?

  • What does it meant to behave with tiferet she’be ahavah?

• WHERE in your body do you experience these different kinds of love?

  • Ohev eit haMaqom (אוהב את המקום): Loving the Divine (Loving the Place of G!d/dess)

  • Ohev eit haBriyot (אוהב את הבריות): Loving the Divine’s Creatures

  • Ohev eit haTochechot (אוהב את התוכחות): Loving Feedback/Rebukes

  • Ohev eit haMeisharim (אוהב את המישרים): Love of Uprightness/Justice

• HOW do you act with love in a morally compromised world?

• WHO is unworthy of your love?

• WHEN do you make choices through love and when through fear? If fear is driving you can you replace it with courage?

• WHY is it important to fuel our decisions with love?
  

Closing Chant

Sweet Love (Sweet Love)
Do not play it small
The world depends on your greatness

May you be loved as you go forward
May you give love as you go forward
May you be loved as you go forward
May you give love as you go forward

Sweet Love Rav Kohenet Taya Ma & E. Oscar Maynard, 2nd verse lyrics adapted by Ketzirah

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