PaRDeS of Jewish Becoming – also needs to positivize the four personalities
To be Jewish, in Rivkin’s sense, is to walk through the garden of PaRDeS as both explorer and cultivator. Each interpretive mode mirrors an aspect of his vision:
Peshat (Literal): Cherish individuality. At the surface level of the text and life, affirm the distinct self—each word, each soul, has its own form and meaning.
Remez (Hint): Seek out novel possibilities. Beneath the obvious lies the shimmer of potential, the hints of something not yet known—an invitation to discovery.
Derash (Interpretive): Enrich oneself through encounter. Interpretation demands dialogue—with tradition, with cultures, with the other—turning exposure into insight.
Sod (Mystical): Risk the anxiety of transcendence. The secret layer is not comfort but courage: the readiness to step beyond inherited boundaries into the unguarded openness where mystery dwells.
Through PaRDeS, Rivkin’s call “to be Jewish” becomes a disciplined art of meaning-making: to stand rooted yet restless, to weave inner exploration with communal continuity, to transform anxiety into sacred creativity.
In the Garden of Becoming
Peshat:
Root me, Eternal One, in the soil of my own being.
Let me cherish the form You have shaped —
each contour, each breath, a letter of Your living Torah.
Remez:
Whisper new paths through familiar words.
Show me the hint beneath the surface, that curiosity itself is a doorway to holiness.
Derash:
Teach me to seek wisdom in encounter —
to listen to the many tongues of Your world,
and to weave their stories into my own.
Sod:
When mystery stirs and certainty falls away,
hold me in the trembling of unknowing.
Let my fear become faith, and my wandering, worship.
To walk Your garden, O God,
is to risk, to reach, and to rejoice —
to be ever remade in the image of Your endless becoming.