Holidays

There are eight ways to practice the attribute of humility and each corresponds to a place on the body.

The third practice is with one’s forehead, as he writes:

A person’s forehead should display no harshness. Your face should reflect willingness, acceptance, pleasantry.

When I was a child a girl’s forehead was the place where you debated with your friends and mom, bangs or a center part. Then as my own daughters became teens, they spoke a lot about eyebrows. Unruly, uni-brow, bushy, plucked, waxed, thin line, severely arched, slightly curved, or groomed like Brooke Shields. Then, as the years passed, I somehow stopped looking at eyebrows started looking at hairlines. Receded or simply disappearing hairlines seem to have less judgment than comb-overs. And then there is always the question, is the thinness from illness or age.

But now, right now, I understand that the space above my eyes tells a story to the world. In the lines of your forehead is an expression of your spirit. Worried, concerned, deep in thought, content, angry.

There are eight ways to practice the attribute of humility and each corresponds to a place on the body. (Moshe Cordovoro, Tamar Devorah)

The second practice is with one’s thoughts, as Cordovoro writes:

“Meditate and contemplate on thoughts of goodness, godliness, kindness.”

Moshe Cordovoro teaches in Tamar Devorah (The Palm Tree of Devorah) that to be in the image of God means to be humble, for through humility we learn and practice compassion. There are eight ways to practice the attribute of humility and each corresponds to a place on the body.

The first practice is with the head, as he writes:

Lower your gaze, a person who raises their head upward glorifies himself.

Dear Congregants,

There is a spiritual practice that I have developed over the years. During the weeks before Rosh Hashanah I choose a word to contemplate. This word stays with me the entire year. I research it, I talk about it with friends, I go to sleep asking to dream about it. It is a word that becomes my friend and my teacher, my prod urging me toward resolution, revelation, growth. One year my word was grace, another year it was presence, then I chose forgiveness.

This year I choose humility. Sefat Emet, in his commentary to Ki Tavo in the Book of Deuteronomy writes:

Never think that you have come to the truth; understand that you are always standing at the entrance. The word ‘doorway’ (delet) is related to the word humility (dalut). By realizing how little you have achieved, you find door after door opening for you. A person is always ready to hear the word of God, then when a moment of grace occurs, something opens up for him. But he has to be standing at the doorway.

I have tried to learn humility from others. I only know five:

One I know very well. Three I watch from a far. One was my teacher.