Korach is a Levi who wants to be a kohen. He doesn’t see what is rich and beautiful about being a Levi. Today I want to spend some time helping Korach and all of us honor and reclaim the Levi heritage.
The Name Levi
The name Levi comes from the word lelavot, to accompany. Levi is Leah’s third son and she names him Levi because she says – atah hapa’am yelaveh ishi elay (Genesis 29:34). This time my husband will accompany me and attach himself to me. Leah’s husband Yaakov loves his other wife, Rachel, and not her, and Leah keeps hoping that providing him with more children will bring him closer to her, but it does not.
Leah’s And Our Loneliness
Levi is the name that represents what Leah longs for and perhaps what we all long for – someone to stay with us, to accompany us, to love us in a steadfast unconditional way, not to be so alone. Even if we are fortunate enough to have a friend or partner who is loyal and loving, I believe that most of us still harbor some version of this existential loneliness of Leah’s, this yearning for an accompaniment that will finally quench that thirst, fill that hole, that emptiness.
Levi represents this longing, but also our divine capacity to fill it, to be that companion, to offer something of that company to ourselves and to one another. I think of the mitzvah of livuy, from the same Levi root, the mitzvah of escorting guests out of your house for at least a few steps, an acknowledgment that you can’t actually keep them company for the whole way, but that symbolically you are still with them, they are not alone on this confusing, challenging journey of life.
Levayah, Escorting The Dead
And then there is the levayah, again from the same Levi root, levayah, our term for a funeral, which does not really mean funeral, but accompaniment or escort. We offer our company to the deceased as they make their journey alone out of this world. This is really important, this accompaniment of the dead, because it helps us orient to what the work of accompanying actually entails. At this point, at the point of death, there is nothing we can do to help in a practical sense. There is no fix for this predicament, no way to struggle against it and make it otherwise. We are forced to abandon our natural tendency – good and helpful at other times – to want to change things and make them better, called to dig deeper into ourselves to find something else to offer. At long last, we realize the only thing left to offer is ourselves: our presence, our company, our open loving heart. And that is enough. Not just enough, but essential, elemental, sacred, exactly what is needed.
Nothing To Do But Sit With It
Can you feel how that relaxes your system? I invite you to try it on for a moment. Yes, most of the time, we are not dealing with death and there are things to be done to improve the situation. I don’t deny that. But I think we tend, like Korach, to undervalue the power of simple company, to get so wrapped up in fixing and doing that we lose sight of this other Levi power we have in us to accompany. What if you gave yourself permission just for this moment, as an experiment, to drop all the agendas, all the plans for healing and making it better, and opened yourself to the possibility of – “there is nothing to do here but keep company”? Let yourself feel that simplicity. Just to be here. Let all the pressure of efforting drop from your shoulders and your tensely focused head, let it all fall off, and rest in pure presence, in that still point in your core, being with yourself, with the world, with the pain, with whatever is here, being with all of it, just as it is right now, nothing to do but sit with it, as you would sit with a wrought up crying child, rocking and holding and stroking her hair, or as you would accompany someone who is dying, breathing slowly and opening your heart to them, sitting bedside and holding their hand in silence, nothing more to say or do, simply lelavot, to accompany.
Angels of Accompaniment
This is divine work, to be God’s loving presence on this earth, to be like God, steady in that love, that presence, that accompaniment. Think of the angels, the malakhei levayah, the angels of accompaniment, who came to be with Yaakov on his journey out of the land of Israel, the angels of his ladder dream (Genesis 28:12). Yaakov was alone as he left his parents’ home, alone and desolate, and these angels came lelavoto, to accompany him on his journey (Rashi on Genesis 28:12). Their presence didn’t stop him from experiencing hardship. They didn’t fix things for him. Yaakov had a terribly hard life. But he was not alone in it. They accompanied him, they were with him.
Maybe pausing for a moment to get a sense of your own accompanying angels right here beside you now, like the pillars of fire and cloud surrounding the Israelite camp in the desert, your own pillars steadily accompanying you as you walk through your desert journey, through uncertainty and travail and challenge. Meyimini Michael, to your right is Michael, to your left Gavriel, ahead of you is Oriel, behind you, Rafael, and above your head is the presence of God (prayer before bed). There is an aura of angelic divine presence surrounding and embracing you always, accompanying you and loving you, walking with you through thick and thin. Taking that in for a moment, sensing how much you – like Leah – desperately need it. You don’t have to beg for it or give birth to another child to earn it. It’s already here. You are already accompanied. You just have to notice it, become aware of it.
You Are With Me Through the Valley
Gam ki elekh begei tzal mavet, lo ira ra ki atah imadi. Lo, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil for You, God, are with me (Psalm 23:4). How does God’s being with us actually help? The fact is that difficult things continue to happen to us, and yet God’s company comforts us, soothes us, helps alleviate our fear. Evil may come and evil may go. But I will not be afraid. I will walk solidly on my path, one step after another, because I feel God with me. I am not alone.
It Is The Aloneness That Traumatizes
This is the Levi energy that we so desperately need inside us. You might say – what difference does it make to have company, even divine company? I submit that it makes all the difference in the world. The definition of trauma is not the difficult experience itself, but the fact that it happens to us alone, without the benefit of someone to co-regulate with us, to accompany us and help us to assimilate and process it. It is the aloneness that traumatizes. It is not the event, but the aloneness that traumatizes.
It Is the Accompaniment That Heals
And on the flip side, it is the accompaniment that heals. It’s not the fixing, but the accompaniment, the loving presence, for someone to really see and hear and understand us, for someone to just listen and be with us, to stay with us and love us through what is hard. That’s what our little ones inside, like Leah, that’s what they most want. We think they want us to fix things, but when we dig down to the most buried exiles, the ones with the core wounds, what they want is simply for us to be with them, to keep them company. It’s like if you have little kids and you’re busy buying them more and more toys when what they really want is for you to sit on the floor and play with them. It’s so simple and obvious to them, and yet we are so wrapped up in trying to achieve and get things done, when what they really want is our attention, our company.
Who Inside Needs Your Company
Pausing here to check inside and see who is in need of your company right now. Maybe there is fear or loneliness or hurt or maybe there is just a dull throbbing ache in your belly that is unexplained. It doesn’t have to explain itself. We can walk with it in the fog, in the uncertainty, in the desert. The urge to figure it out can have a kind of aggressive fixing energy, and we are letting go of that for the moment. We don’t need to know what it is exactly or where it came from in order to be with it, in order to offer it company and connection. So checking inside and focusing on whatever hurts or feels uncomfortable in this moment, physically or emotionally, and approaching it, perhaps imagining it as a child shivering and crying on the curb, going up to her and just sitting down beside her. Being quietly present with her, breathing with her, becoming aware of her suffering, and feeling in your own heart a surge of care and love and compassion, offering that to her ever so gently, a cord of light, a golden thread of connection. I’m here with you. That’s all. I’m here with you. Nothing complicated, nothing fancy, just companionship.
Noticing how that feels for you and how that feels for the suffering one inside. Maybe she stops crying, and, sniffling and wiping her nose, looks up at you, surprised and relieved and ready to laugh and play, or maybe your presence evokes a further pang in her, making her feel how intensely she has longed for precisely this kind of attention, bursting into more tears and falling into your waiting arms. Or maybe she is still suspicious and not trusting, holding back a little, checking you out. it’s all ok. Just continuing to be present with her, to accompany her as she is.
Filling Up That Hole
Over time, such connection, such levayah, such accompaniment, fills us up and heals us. It doesn’t solve our problems and it doesn’t take away the pain and the fear, but we feel better anyway, more content, more at peace. There is great healing power in this humble Levi accompaniment.
In the next verse of Psalm 23 (cited earlier), after we feel God’s accompaniment through the valley, we say, kosi revayah. My kos, my cup, is revayah, is overflowing. That’s what it’s like. The levayah, the accompaniment, leads to a sense of revayah, of fullness and abundance. That emptiness that Leah and we suffer from, that sense of existential loneliness, that hole, it becomes a cup, a container that can be filled to overflowing by this experience of companionship, of being met. It doesn’t change anything, and yet it changes everything. The heart is bursting with joy and love and hopefulness. I am seen. I am not alone. I am accompanied. That’s what Levi accomplishes. That’s what happens through this practice of accompaniment, learning to be with ourselves, to let God be with us and to let God’s capacity for presence live in us and flow out of us. Our cup runneth over.
Image by frans van heerden at Pexels
A beautiful essay and a reminder about the deepest parts of the act of loving.