I lived near a street in Great Neck, New York, called Nirvana Avenue (really!). And there's a major artery in the area called Utopia Parkway. And I always felt a little sad that they didn't intersect anywhere, because how cool would it be to phone a friend and say, "I'm at the intersection of Utopia and Nirvana (driving my Infiinity...)?"

But I digress... the Netzach in Netzach...

This is a combination of Sefirot that might direct our thoughts to the fact that while we are mortal, and aware of our mortality, aware of the fact that we were born and will one day die, we still share in eternity... share in the greatest endurance there is.

Rabbi Min Kantrowitz plugs into this idea - using the Kabbalistic Four Worlds model - as "The Wisdom of Endurance Within Endurance." She suggests that:

Albert Einstein captured the essence of [the] dance of matter and energy in the formula, e=mc2. Our bodies are made of the same atoms and energy that existed when the planet was created. We share molecules with Moses... Science and spirituality are not very far apart. Netzach she-b'Netzach is a spiritual/scientific principle in action.

How does contemplating being a child of the cosmos, of The Eternity in Eternity, make you feel?

When Moses asks God at the Burning Bush what to say when the Israelites ask him "who is this God that sent you," God responds with the name, "I Am What I Am," and indeed, some see Y-H-V-H, the name we read as "Adonai," as a variant of the Hebrew verb stem meaning, "to be." Y-H-V-H might be, "The One That Is" or "The One That Causes All To Be" or perhaps simply, “Being.” How might this add to your understanding of the Netzach in Netzach?

I’ll close with the words to a song that I learned for the first time on the Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training Retreat that I attended last week (although it seems much longer ago now). It’s based upon a bit of writing by Rabbi Menachem Nahum of Chernobyl, from his commentary called Me’or Aynai’im (Light For The Eyes) -

Yai-ditty dai-ditty dai dai dai, I am alive.
Yai-ditty dai-ditty dai dai dai, I am alive
Yai-ditty dai-ditty dai dai dai, I am alive, I’m alive.

And what is this aliveness I am?
And who is this aliveness I am?
And how is this aliveness I am?
Is it not the Holy Blessed One?

Shalom,

SF

Tags: Netzach, eternity, endurance, retreat