Velveteen Rabbi

As Shabbat wanes

2009-07-13T09:57:41-04:00

"Mizmor L'David," psalm 23, sung to a waltz tune which is a variant on the one we sang. This recording is the exact tune we used, but the strings and synthesizer give it a feel that's very unlike our evening.

The final hour of Shabbat is gloriously bittersweet. Seudah shlishit -- the ritualized "third meal" of the day, though sometimes the meal consists only of silence and song -- is at once a moment of consummation (tradition teaches that during these last hours of Shabbat, the presence of God dwells most palpably among us in the world) and the beginning of our parting from the Shabbat queen and the neshama yeteirah, the extra soul, which is ours for the duration of Shabbat and is then gone. The moment when Shabbat is most present is also always the moment when Shabbat has begun to depart.

We sit in the dining room where we've just completed dinner. The artificial lights are turned off so that we can experience the organic darkening of the day. We sing songs of longing for God, interspersed with short periods of silence in which each song continues to resonate. We begin with "Shalom Aleichem," a song which welcomes divine messengers or angels, which most of us think of as a Friday evening song but which is also sung on Saturday late afternoons. There's a special extra verse for this time of seudah shlishit. And then we sit in silence, and breathe, and pause before we sing again.

We sing two different versions of "Yah Ribon" by Rabbi Israel Najara (circa 1600.) We sing "Tzama l'Chol Nafshi," a couplet from psalm 63 (lines 2-3, though we sing them in the opposite order: "O God, I have looked for you in the sanctuary, to see your power and your glory / My soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you!") We sing "Yedid Nefesh," by Rabbi Elazar Azikri (the words are 16th-century; Reb Zalman's singable English translation can be found at the bottom of this post, though we sing the poem in the original) using a melody which comes from the Bratzlav Hasidic tradition. (Bratzlaver Niggun 1 [mp3])

We sing the 23rd psalm to a beautiful and plaintive slow waltz melody, asserting in this moment when Shabbat is beginning to leave us that our faith in God endures, and I remember the seudah shlishit at Ohalah in January. The poem "Twilight" from my chapbook Through arose out of the experience of singing the 23rd psalm in a darkening room as Shabbat waned on the day of my miscarriage. I sing it now with my hand resting on my growing belly.

As the hour grows too late to be able to see our song sheets clearly, we shift into singing niggunim, songs of yearning without words. Though I love the songs with words, it's the wordless ones which finally crack my heart open, and there are tears in my eyes. The voices and faces sitting around this room are so beloved to me, and I know I will not see them for many months -- probably a year. My longing for Shabbat not to have to leave us is intertwined with and magnified by my longing not to have to part from my chevre, my circle of teachers and friends. My heart overflows with gratitude for this moment and with sorrow that the moment has to end.

When we are done, although we have not eaten an actual meal, we sing a brief one-line blessing over the spiritual meal of song and silence. Our blessing consists of two words from psalm 23: cosi revaya, my cup overflows. As we sing, we look around the room, and on everyone's face is an awareness of just how true the words are. When we're done, we walk in silence slowly across campus to the place where we will daven the evening service and then make havdalah, the ceremony separating Shabbat from week. When we get there, it's not quite time yet, so for fifteen minutes or so we sing a Hasidic chant about how there is nothing else but God. Hazzan Jack skillfully uses that tune as our impromptu nusach for the evening service, so we sing our whole evening service with echoes of "ein od milvado" ringing in our ears and hearts.

At havdalah, Reb Marcia tells us (in the name of Reb Elliot) that some Hasidim add an extra word to the final havdalah blessing, the blessing which praises God Who separates between holy and profane, Shabbat and workweek, etc. They -- and now we -- bless God Who מבדיל ומגשר, separates and bridges, between all of these binaries. The addition of that one word changes my whole havdalah experience, and also my anticipated experience of departure from beloved teachers and friends. Tomorrow will bring our separation, but even as we part, we're always on our way back together again.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, seudahshlishit, Shabbat, rabschool.

Seven jewels from smicha week

2009-07-10T09:39:31-04:00

On Sunday evening the Nava Tehila folks lead us in singing as we move from a circle around the room into three concentric circles. We sing the faculty in, and then "sing in" those who are already ordained (some of my spiritual direction fellows), and then sing in the rabbinic pastor students and prospective students, and then sing in the cantorial students and prospective students, and then the rabbinic students and prospective students. Each niggun is different and each is beautiful. Then comes "spirit buddy time" -- a chance to connect in triads and talk about who and how and where we are. I talk about gratitude.

In Monday's morning service, we read about Moshe going to the top of the mountain to see the land, and then laying his hands (the original smicha!) on Joshua, who accepts the weight of new responsibility. We have the practice here of doing group aliyot, inviting up to the Torah those who feel called to connect with a particular theme. My dear friend Simcha Daniel calls up for that aliyah those who feel we're on the cusp of taking on new responsibilities which we fear might be too much for us without God's help. Along with many others, I go up to the Torah (hi, impending parenthood) and the aliyah shines. I love hearing the voices of so many of my friends around me.

On Tuesday morning, I learn a new tune written by my dear friend Shulamit, which we use both for Modah Ani (the blessing for gratitude) and for Ashrei. I teach my dear friend David to lay tefillin for the first time, and then I breakfast with more dear friends. By the time I get to my morning class I've already had a full and beautiful day. My classes that day feel almost like the icing on the cake; the davening and the conversations are enough.

One night this week, maariv (evening services ) begin with a meditation led by my friend Nahariyah. She invites us to close our eyes, to go inside, and to notice the voices of our inner critics. Thank them for their input, she advises us, and gently explain to them that during this smicha students' week we have prepared a special place for them, a soundproofed room which will have everything they need. Usher them gently into that room, she urges, and close the door, and draw a curtain over it. Those voices detract from our learning, our prayer, and our ability to be together. We don't need them this week.

I co-lead Wednesday shacharit with two dear friends, Yafa and Aura, both of whom were with me in Jerusalem last summer. We bring some melodies no one has used yet this week -- some Debbie Friedman tunes, accompanied with guitar -- and then shift gears into weekday nusach for the heart of the service, and then close with a tachanun niggun and a poem of mine (a psalm for the day) and a song.

Maybe my favorite moment is the prelude to the "Asher Yatzar" blessing for the body (which moves right into "Elohai Neshama," the blessing for the soul) -- I stand and say, slowly and deliberately, "The miracle of our bodies," and a low murmur of delighted assent moves through the room! During "Mourning into Dancing" [mp3] I see that a friend has been moved to tears.

We sing niggunim (wordless melodies) as mental / emotional palate-cleansers during classes here. It's a great way to clear the air, to transition from one subject to another. But before I came to ALEPH, I'd never imagined a classroom where the teacher and half a dozen students might break into spontaneous circle dance, just because they can.

Four hevruta buddies sit at a small outdoor table in the twilight. Our assignment: to study different versions of the shema al ha-mitah, the bedtime shema, and then to write our own. We read the versions we find in several different siddurim, and Reb Zalman's interpretive translation. We talk about what we find there: the request that God free us from the karmic baggage of our hurts (both those we've inflicted, and those inflicted on us), an expression of forgiveness, an expression of God's oneness, a request for protection as we sleep. We talk about other customs: singing Hamalach ha-goel oti ("The angel who redeems me," part of the blessing Jacob gave to his children) or Reb Shlomo Carlebach's "B'Shem Hashem / Angel Song" (which you can hear here, track 7). And then we craft our own prayer, each of us contributing a line in turn, going around the table again and again until our prayer is done and we all say amen. Our prayer is like a sand mandala: we don't write it down, so it drifts away on the wind.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, rabschool.

Taking note of 17 Tammuz

2009-07-09T09:05:07-04:00

Today is 17 Tammuz, a minor fast day in which we remember the long ago day when the walls around Jerusalem were breached, the first step toward the destruction of 9 Av. It's also considered to be the anniversary of the day when Moshe shattered the first set of tablets upon seeing the Golden Calf -- a different kind of breakage.

I wrote a post about this day two years ago, Reflections on 17 Tammuz. I don't have anything new to add, so I'll just point you there again.

I'm not fasting today, for obvious reasons, but if you are, I hope that your fast is meaningful. May we find a way today to be open to whatever may flow through the places in us which are broken, remembering that our brokenness can be a place where holiness is found.

On a semi-related note, I wanted to point to a new initiative which recently came across my desk: Fast for Gaza. "In Jewish tradition a communal fast is held in times of crisis both as an expression of mourning and a call to repentance. In this spirit, Ta'anit Tzedek – Jewish Fast for Gaza is a collective act of conscience initiated by an ad hoc group of rabbis, Jews, people of faith, and all concerned with the ongoing crisis in Gaza." I'm inspired to see so many of my colleagues and teachers already on the list.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, 17Tammuz.

Transforming violence into peace (Radical Torah repost)

2009-07-09T08:00:00-04:00

Here's the d'var Torah I wrote for this week's portion back in 2006, originally published at Radical Torah.

Parashat Pinchas is another one of those Torah portions that's hard for many contemporary liberal Jews to read comfortably.

The story begins at the tail-end of last week's portion, when the eponymous Pinchas spears an Israelite man and a Midianite woman -- called, in later texts, Zimri and Cosbi -- who are consorting at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. God has declared a plague against the Israelites as punishment for "whoring with Moabite women" -- if we read it literally, the problem is exogamy; if we read it metaphorically, the problem is the spiritual idolatry involved in offering sacrifices to somebody else's deity -- but after Pinchas kills the pair of lovers, the plague ends.

That's the prologue. At the start of this week's portion, God gives Pinchas a brit shalom, a "pact of friendship" or covenant of peace, for him and his descendants for all time.

Arguably the central question of the parasha is, was the brit a reward for acting righteously, or a corrective intended to steer Pinchas toward a more righteous path? And what are the implications of each answer, in terms of how we understand violence, peace, and God's will for humanity?

The traditional commentators see the covenant as a reward. In their view, the spearing was absolutely the right call. But other readings are possible -- and maybe helpful to others like me who find the portion's unbridled violence difficult to bear.

Last summer at this season I had the pleasure of learning about this portion from Rabbi David Ingber (who has since then become the founder of Romemu.) He led us through a passage from the Mei HaShiloach, a.k.a. Mordechai Yosef Lainer of Ishbitz (also known as the Ishbitzer Rebbe), who makes a pretty compelling case that Pinchas' actions were a mistake.

Pinchas acted as he did because he saw the action of Zimri as a great evil, the Ishbitzer writes:

[Pinchas] judged Zimri as no'ef b'alma (sexually corrupt.) However, the depth of the foundation of the matter was hidden from him, for Cosbi was his [Zimri's] soulmate from the six days of creation, as explained in the writings of the Rabbi Isaac Luria, z"l. Owing to this Moshe Rabeynu didn't become involved and sentence Zimri to death. Pinchas' response in this action is thus compared to a child, meaning that he didn't know the depth of the situation, seeing only through human eyes and no further. Nevertheless, the blessed God loved him and agreed with him, for in Pinchas's mind he had done a great and self-sacrificing act in his zealotry.

Pinchas, the Ishbitzer is saying, did not have the wisdom required to understand the situation fully. He saw inappropriate sexuality, and took it upon himself to punish it...but if he could have seen what was really going on, he would have known that Zimri and Cosbi were soulmates, a pairing foreordained at the moment of creation. And if he had known that, he would have behaved in an entirely different way.

The Ishbitzer tells us this displays a kind of childlike consciousness. Pinchas leaps to conclusions in anger, and acts accordingly, as a child might do. In the eyes of the Ishbitzer, the covenant of peace is meant as a corrective for that action. Of course, it's a loving corrective, because God -- being God -- understands both what Pinchas did, and what his intentions were. Pinchas lost balance between his sense of judgement and his sense of compassion; God restores that balance by giving him a brit shalom, a covenant of peace, to change his character and the character of his descendants.

It's a radical teaching. It contradicts the conventional wisdom offered by Rashi and Ramban, both of whom declared that Pinchas's vengeance was good in God's eyes and that the covenant was a reward for good behavior. But I think it's a powerful way to read the text, and a natural extension of the Ishbitzer's fundamental teaching:

First and foremost, everything is in the hands of Heaven. Everything that we receive in our lives, we are receiving directly from the blessed G-d. It is then the work of man in the world to develop a mind that is conscious of this reality... Man must work...to know what G-d wants of him specifically in his life. He must also then know that G-d's will could change at any time... This also necessitates that he not assume that what G-d wants from him is the same as that which he wants from another. Even if he sees another transgressing the Torah, he may not assume that the other is rebelling against G-d's will, for he has no way of knowing the private relationship between the other and G-d.

(That's from the translator's introduction to Living Waters: the Mei HaShiloach, which can be found here.) According to this understanding, each of us has the responsibility to work at discerning God's will in our lives -- and we're obligated to focus on our own paths, not on the path we perceive anyone else to be taking.

Pinchas acted according to his discernment of what the situation called for: a quick spear through the pair of lovers. The Ishbitzer would suggest that it's not our place to condemn him for that, since we don't know the inner truth of what his relationship with God was like. The Ishbitzer suggests that Pinchas acted on partial knowledge, and that when one sees the whole picture it looks quite different: a foreordained lovers' embrace, rather than a sexual desecration of holy space. I think that's the critical teaching here. Not that Pinchas messed up, though it's arguable that he did, but that when one takes a step back to look at a situation in a larger perspective, it may appear in a new way.

And maybe that's what happened for Pinchas after he was given the brit shalom: a new perspective, a changed point of view, a gentler and more forgiving way of being in the world. And if we work at it, I think that's what studying parashat Pinchas can offer to us, too.

Happy news

2009-07-06T09:08:05-04:00

I didn't do a very good job of counting the Omer this year. Maybe some of you noticed that I didn't blog about my Omer-counting as I've done in years past. (Counting the Omer, for those who've forgotten, is a journey of counting the days between the festival of Pesach and the festival of Shavuot, between liberation and covenant. Once upon a time it was an agricultural custom, linked to the spring barley harvest; today for many of us it's taken on mystical resonance, and becomes an opportunity to spend seven weeks contemplating a set of seven divine qualities in which we also partake.)

Anyway. I fell down on the Omer-counting job, because my mind was elsewhere this year during those seven weeks. During Pesach, I discovered that I was pregnant.

Those who've been reading this blog for more than a few months probably remember that I had a miscarriage in January, so the news that I was once again pregnant raised a lot of emotions. I began immediately to count days -- but not the days of the week of lovingkindness, the days of the week of boundaried strength, the days of the week of harmony. Instead I counted the days of being five weeks pregnant. Six weeks pregnant. Seven weeks pregnant. My goal was the magical end of the first trimester, when I would be able to share the happy news more broadly without (as much) fear.

As of this writing I'm in my eighteenth week, well into trimester #2. My body is changing, and so is my relationship with my body. I'm by turns amazed (apparently I am capable of growing a tiny human being without any conscious volition) and mildly chagrined (apparently my body would like to sleep eighteen hours a day, and to eat about twice as often as I used to do.) It's a great exercise in recognizing both what's miraculous about this embodied life, and also what's absolutely not within my control.

My spiritual director has said that this baby will be one of my greatest teachers. He's not suggesting that the baby will be some innate spiritual genius -- rather, that the act of becoming responsible for a tiny person's wellbeing will transform me. That parenthood will be a spiritual journey all its own. I don't doubt it. I'm excited to see how it changes me. How it changes us. And also, I hope, to discover what in our current life won't change -- what will be the constants on which we can count, as our lives turn upside-down in December.

What does this mean for Velveteen Rabbi? I don't see myself becoming a mommyblogger; those of you who are here for the Torah commentary and the poems will hopefully still have what to read, though it does seem only fair to warn you that my posting frequency will probably plummet for a while next winter at least. I will remain in rabbinic school, so the posts about my rab school experiences will still come down the pipe, though I anticipate taking fewer classes for a while after the baby is born.

Since this blog is one of the places where I think out loud about my religious life, the ups and downs of spiritual practice, and the lessons I'm learning (both from books and teachers, and from whatever experiences come my way), I'll probably post here from time to time about motherhood through that lens. I hope that there will be poems about motherhood, after a while. I'd like to do some writing and thinking about modes of Jewish practice which fit womens' needs -- I don't know which of the spiritual practices I maintain now will survive the transition into parenting a newborn, nor which new practices might emerge once we get into new rhythms. I guess in this, as in so many other things, I'll just have to figure it out as I go along.

Anyway. Ethan and I are elated, and nervous, and excited, and we wanted y'all to be able to share our joy!

Edited to add: Ethan's posted about this, too: The real life update.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, baby.

Moving into Shabbat

2009-07-04T14:29:06-04:00

On Friday morning, my friends Aura and Shoshanna led an "Erev Fourth of July" (Fourth of July Eve) shacharit, which blended traditional nusach with a variety of American tunes. The first thing that really knocked me out was singing the entirety of psalm 148 to the tune of "The Water is Wide" -- the harmony around the room, and the gorgeousness of the Hebrew poetry combined with the power of the melody, brought me to tears.

We sang the Shema to the tune of Gershwin's "Summertime," and "Mi Chamocha" to "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." We sang Tom Paxton's "Peace Will Come" and a verse of "Simple Gifts." As our Aleinu, we sang an abbreviated version of "Letter to Eve" by Pete Seeger, where the chorus is a list of words which mean "peace" in a variety of languages. (Our version included shalom alongside pacem in terris, mir, shanti, salaam, and hey wa.)

It was completely extraordinary, and I suspect that it's going to subtly shift the way I feel about Independence Day this year.

I always love Jewish Renewal mikvah experiences. This time we were a group of maybe forty women, of all ages, including a few of the teens who are here this week. I wonder how I would have responded, as an adolescent, to seeing women comfortable like this in our varied and different bodies? I paired up with a mikvah buddy and we spoke quietly about what, from the week now ending, we each wanted to release in the world of assiyah (physicality), yetzirah (emotions), and briyah (intellect) and what we want to release into in the world of atzilut (essence.) We made the bracha for the immersion together as a group. And then, singing the "Woman I Am" chant I learned so many years ago at Elat Chayyim, we all made our way into the water, and sang throughout everyone's immersions. I watched my partner immerse four times, and then she witnessed me, and then we joined the singing circle. At the end, all those who were new to mikvah made their own smaller circle in the middle and we blessed them with a shechecheyatnu and with whooping and song, and then tromped out of the pool so that we could make space for the men's mikvah which would follow our own.

I forgot to bring my little jar of wearable glitter this time around, but even without it, as I moved into Shabbos I felt sparkly.

Of the three Shabbat evening davening options, I chose to daven with Nava Tehila -- no surprise to anyone who remembers my posts about the three Shabbatot I spent with them last summer, all of which were grand. This one was wonderful, too. If I closed my eyes, I could imagine that I was back in their meeting-space in in Jerusalem (though I missed the sweet priest who plays violin!) -- but when I opened them I was here at Kallah in Ohio, in a crowd speckled with my fellow ALEPH ordination students and many beloved faculty members. They did basically the music that I remember from last year, including what they call their "American Lecha Dodi," which I had forgotten until they started playing it and suddenly I realized I spent the fourth of July with Nava Tehila last summer because I remember honoring the holiday by dancing to their American-style "Lecha Dodi" tune last year!

I sang, and danced some when I felt able, and otherwise dancd in my chair. And then I joined the throngs walking in our white Shabbos clothes to the gymnasium, which had been set up as our Shabbat dining venue, and made kiddush and motzi with three friends. We ate dinner and talked about a million things: our classes and the ALEPH program and our journeys here and so on.

Eventually I made my way back to the atrium of the student center, where the Nava Tehila folks (plus Reb David Ingber, of whom I have also often blogged) were setting up an oneg of song and storytelling. It reminded me very much of the oneg at Reb Ruth's house after Nava Tehila meets -- after the potluck dishes have been cleared away, people hang out and sing and tell stories late into the night. Last summer I never stayed terribly late because I always felt compelled to walk the 45 minutes home so I could get up early and visit a different shul in the morning. This year I stayed until midnight, singing and listening to stories and waltzing a little bit with myself in the back of the room. When I left, the party was still going strong -- I wish I could have stayed, but my body was demanding sleep, and what is Shabbos about afterall if not rest?

So I caught a lift back to my dorm on one of the roving golf carts, and we sang Shabbat niggunim and rounds all the way. Singing outdoors at midnight felt deliciously transgressive -- as though we were rowdy college students making a racket in this sleepy corner of town, high on togetherness and Shabbat and song.

I chose to do my Shabbat morning davening with Rabbi David and Shoshana Cooper (he wrote the wonderful God is a Verb which I reviewed earlier this year), accompanied by Cantor Robert Michael Esformes. The service was very gentle: mostly it consisted of short chants interspersed with periods of silence to let the chants soak in.

Sleepiness is often a problem for me, especially these days, so during our periods of silence I mostly kept my eyes open, looking out the big chapel windows at the sky around us. The highlights of the service for me were the moment when Reb David made the impromptu request of Michael that he grace us with a song in Ladino (he sang a Ladino rendition of psalm 92, the psalm for Shabbat, which was utterly gorgeous) and the Torah service, which was led simply and elegantly by Reb Phyllis Berman. She chose to read from the part of the story which sparked this week's Torah poem -- the death of Miriam and Moshe's decision to strike the rock in order to get water. Before she chanted the verses, she spoke about how easy it is, in relationships, to imagine that you know what the other person is going to say -- but when we do that, we often close our ears to what they actually do say, and that can get us into trouble, as it surely did Moshe in this piece of our story.

After lunch with friends, I found myself dragging a bit -- sleepy, low-energy, and beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed by the reality that the week which has now ended is going to be followed by a second week of learning which will be even more intense! So I retired to my room for, if not a Shabbos nap, at least some Shabbos downtime. There are many afternoon happenings, but I'm giving myself permission to miss them. Yet another lesson in my own Kallah self-care...

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Shabbat, JewishRenewal, Kallah.

Prophetic (comedic) speech (Radical Torah repost)

2009-07-03T16:46:25-04:00

Here's the d'var Torah I wrote on this week's portion in 2007, originally published at Radical Torah. I would note now that I see an added universalistic note to this story: this story shows the Torah's recognition that there are true prophets outside of the house of Israel! But apparently I didn't think of that in 2007.

This week we're in parashat Balak, in which Balaam is called-upon to curse the Israelites, but upon opening his mouth discovers he can utter only blessings.

Looked at through a certain lens, this parsha reads like slapstick. Balaam, on the road toward the place of the cursing, is temporarily thwarted by his donkey, who refuses to do his bidding -- and then talks back to him, giving him tsuris for whacking her with a stick. Shades of Shrek; can't you just hear the donkey speaking in Eddie Murphy's dulcet tones?

Once Balaam gets to the place where he's meant to offer curses, he opens up his mouth and the wrong thing comes out. (In this moment I imagine Balak as a kind of Homer Simpson figure: "D'oh!") Balak drags him to a different mountaintop -- maybe the cursing will work from here! -- but, once again, Balaam succeeds only in saying what God wills. At that point Balak, exasperated, orders him to stop: "Don't curse them and don't bless them" -- just stop talking, because you're ruining my plan! But Balaam offers blessings a third time.

Now Balak gets really mad, and vows to send Balaam away without payment. Balaam shrugs -- fine, he'll go home; he didn't want to come here in the first place -- but before he goes, he offers yet more praises for the Israelites, and while he's at it, damns a couple of enemies for good measure. Take that, Balak. See what happens when you dare to try to bring down curses on a people favored by God.

Talking animals, curses that come out backwards, a wicked king spluttering with frustration -- it's a goofy story. But it's a goofy story wrapped around a serious message: that when a prophet is in-tune with God, the words he utters will inevitably be sweet. Well, sweet from our perspective; we're Israel, after all. I don't imagine the Moabites were especially pleased by what Balaam had to say. Therein lies the challenge today's post-triumphalistic or universalistic readers may find in this parsha: why does Balaam's blessing have to be paralleled with curses for the other guys?

There's a strong particularism to this story. Those whom God favors are showered with blessings, even when the speakers intend to speak otherwise; those whom God doesn't favor are ultimately doomed. That reading can be problematic for those of us on whom the mantle of chosenness doesn't rest comfortably. The stark binarism of the good guy / bad guy paradigm may seem outdated, no longer useful. How can that tension be resolved?

In his commentary on the writings of the Sfat Emet, Rabbi Arthur Green sees in this passage a "glimmer of another view, one that will be essential to any contemporary reappropriation of Jewish spirituality." Every nation -- "religious community," he amends -- has its own prophet, whose powers ultimately derive from the same one God. "The quality and clarity of each prophet's message depend on the community he or she represents and the degree to which that community is willing to say, 'Let us do and listen,' as Moses' people was." In other words: every community has its prophets, and all of them exist in relationship to the same Source. The efficacy of a prophet depends on how ready her community is to truly and actively listen.

Rabbi Green's interpretation neatly elides the sense of nationalism that might be troubling to the modern ear and eye. Prophets don't only exist in the context of Israel -- and what makes the people Israel remarkable is not some inherent superiority, but our willingness to stand in readiness to receive the prophetic message.

Prophecy, writes the Sfat Emet (in Green's translation), "brings speech forth from potential to real." But in order for a prophet to have significance, there also needs to be an audience -- ideally, a receptive one. A prophet speaking in a vacuum isn't fulfilling his mission; that tree falling in the proverbial forest doesn't make a discernible sound until there are ears to hear. Balaam's prophecy was meaningful because it reached somebody's ears. In that sense, prophecy is inevitably a relational activity -- the prophet relates both to God and to the person or people who hear the prophetic words.

And sometimes humor is the best way to get a serious point across. Parashat Balak is, by and large, a romp (aside from the challenging little story of Pinchas that seems tacked-on to the end; more about that next week.) It's comedic, but the words that come out when Balaam opens his mouth elevate the story to a different level. His prophetic speech cuts through the humor of the story, and reminds us how powerful our words can be if our speech is fired by connection with God.

On blessings and curses (Radical Torah repost)

2009-07-03T11:04:16-04:00

The second of this week's Torah portions is Balak. Here's the d'var Torah I wrote for this parsha back in 2006, originally published at Radical Torah.

"Now Balaam, seeing that it pleased the Lord to bless Israel, did not, as on previous occasions, go in search of omens, but turned his face toward the wilderness."

Earlier in the parsha (parashat Balak), we learned that Balak was agitated to see the Israelites -- victors in war against the Bashanites -- encamped beside him. They were so numerous, Torah tells us, that they hid the earth from view. (I imagine a valley, sage and scrub, blanketed with people and goats and tents.) So he hired Balaam, talented with curses, to curse these new and warlike neighbors so that they might go away.

Curses one and two have failed, and now Balaam turns his face to the wilderness. He turns his back on Balak and regards the desert, the empty place where God is easy to find. Often in Torah, revelation is found not among the teeming throngs of civilization but b'midbar, in the wild place of the desert, and this is where Balaam looks for guidance.

"As Balaam looked up and saw Israel encamped tribe by tribe, the spirit of God came upon him. Taking up his theme, he said:

Word of Balaam son of Beor,
Word of the man whose eye is true,
Word of him who hears God's speech,
Who beholds visions from the Almighty,
Prostrate, but with eyes unveiled:
How fair are your tents, O Jacob,
Your dwellings, O Israel!"

When Balaam gazes into the wilderness, his eye settles on the one thing that doesn't belong, the encamped community only recently alighted in this valley. It is when he looks upon the children of Israel that the spirit of God comes upon him. The human connection forged in regarding this spirited band of newcomers causes the prophetic spirit to arise in him.

He asserts first who he is, and then that his senses are unified in perceiving God. He proclaims his position vis-a-vis the Eternal -- prostrate, befitting the moment of encounter -- but assures us that his eyes are unveiled.

Mystics of many traditions use the metaphor of veils -- and the lack thereof -- in talking about encountering God. "The paradox of the veil is simply that things are not God, but God is present in the things," writes William Chittick. God cannot be seen with the eyes or understood with the mind, but God can be seen "by the unveiled heart." Balaam's heart may have been closed to God at the beginning of this story, but after his encounter with the angel on the road -- after God opened his eyes -- Balaam is a different man. He has learned Who is beyond the veil of ordinary existence. Facing into the desert, Balaam is again awakened into the deep reality of what the unveiled heart can perceive.

With eyes unveiled, Balaam sees a new reality. Instead of seeing a military threat, a foreign people to be feared -- as Balak had seen -- Balaam looks into the hills and sees a people who travel with the Holy Blessed One in their midst. He sees with mochin d'gadlut, his "big mind" or expanded consciousness, instead of mochin d'katnut, constricted consciousness. And in that moment of seeing, all he can do is offer praise.

"How fair are thy tents, O Jacob / Thy dwellings, O Israel," he says. In this synechdoche, the patriarch symbolizes the whole. Jacob is the earthly, embodied side of the patriarch, the aspect that inhabits physical spaces. Israel is the other side of the coin, the part of the patriarch which wrestled with the angel of God and came away blessed. Where Jacob has tents, Israel has dwellings -- in Hebrew, Israel has mishkanot, like the holy dwelling-place of the indwelling Shekhinah.

Each of us is both Jacob and Israel; we have Jacob-ness and Israel-ness in ourselves. And each of us can make the leap from inhabiting a tent to inhabiting a dwelling-place. When we wrestle and dance and dream with Torah, we transform ourselves from worldly Jacob to engaged Israel, and we embody Balaam's blessing.

Balaam compares the Israelites to palm-groves, to gardens beside a river; to aloes and cedars, branches dripping with water and roots drinking abundant moisture. (Clearly this is the sacred text of a desert people -- these words wouldn't be half so remarkable in a rainforest.) Of course, some of Balaam's imagery might be problematic for us today -- as when he foretells how the Israelites will devour enemy nations and crush their bones! Maybe today we aspire to a gentler mode of intercultural interaction.

In the end, Balaam strengthens both blessing and curse. "Blessed are they who bless you, / Accursed are they who curse you!" he cries. I can't help seeing a hint of the doctrine of karma in his words. When we offer blessings for the people around us, we invite blessing to flow forth from the Source of All Blessing; when we offer curses, we turn away from that shefa, that divine flow, choosing spiritual drought.

As we study parashat Balak this week, may we be blessed with the ability to choose blessing for all. May our eyes be opened, and may we understand deeply and fully how the stance we take toward our neighbors creates the reality of how we interact.

Kallah: another day in the life

2009-07-02T20:28:38-04:00

This morning I rode in a golf cart from the dorm where I sleep and eat to the building where classes and services are. My friend who was driving the cart told me he'd only gotten two hours of sleep because he'd been up until 4am singing, telling stories, and sharing Torah with a group of illustrious teachers, and I felt a pang of envy. People were singing and schmoozing and telling teaching stories all night and I wasn't there! But I'm increasingly aware that I can't do everything. If I want to wake up at 6:30 to daven (which I do), then I can't stay up late singing with friends and teachers. Kallah: an exercise in recognizing my own limitations.

I attended Rabbi Jeff Roth's morning service, a sweet chant-based service which consisted of pearls extrapolated from the liturgy. Many of the chants are the same ones I learned from him at my very first retreat at Elat Chayyim back in 2002 (seven years ago -- even before I had started blogging!), so I had a real feeling of having come full circle. He had some beautiful things to say about breath: how God breathed into the dust to create the first human, how we and the trees inter-breathe. Also how God is the breathing-out to our breathing-in, God is the counterpart, the out to our in and in to our out, that which is always before us or opposite us -- which gives new meaning to shviti YHVH l'negdi tamid (Psalm 16:8), usually rendered "I keep God before me always."

Our Torah reading (one short & sweet aliyah) was from the story of Balaam and Balak. It made me chuckle, because two summers ago at week three of DLTI some of my classmates performed a dramatic reading of the Torah text complete with voices and postures -- our Balak wore sunglasses and had a cellphone glued to his ear, our Balaam climbed onto a table and chanted eerily as though she were channeling, and our ass brayed her verses on all fours. I'm not sure that story will ever be the same. (As it happened, my friend who played Balak that year was sitting right next to me during this morning's service, and whispered, "Are you remembering what I'm remembering?" Indeed I was.)

Reb Arthur's Eco-Judaism class began on Tuesday with Biblical texts about the environment, and then moved to Talmud texts about the environment. Today's primary subject was Zionism and the environment. We had a rousing class discussion about the early Zionist paradigm of building the land and being built by it, about whether and how it's possible for the land to become an idol, the interconnection of the Israeli and Palestinian ecosystems, the ethos of development in the era when industrialism was triumphant, and about the question of whether the human race as part of God's creation is willing (and has the good sense) to do the work of preserving God's creation. We also talked about Reb Arthur's Haftarah for the Rainbow Covenant, which sparked a conversation about the difference between primary texts and commentary and what it might mean to write new primary texts today which speak to the big questions. (The text has been translated into Hebrew by Reb Zalman; you can read the English and Hebrew side-by-side in this pdf file.)

I lunched with a friend who's in the process of applying to the ALEPH rabbinic program, and then came to the bookstore to interview Linda Hirschhorn for a future issue of Zeek. I arrived about 20 minutes early, so I sat down on a tiny little couch to read... and fell fast asleep! Apparently even getting a good solid eight hours of sleep a night isn't enough to mitigate the overstimulation of spending time with so many wonderful people, so many conversations, so many experiences rolled into one.

In Reb Burt's afternoon Baal Shem Tov class, we studied an incredible teaching:

Our venerable teacher the Baal Shem Tov interpreted the verse "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18) as a commentary on the verse "And you shall love Adonai your God" (Deuteronomy 6:5.) Because each person contains a spark of divinity, when we really see the inner qualities of another person, what we're seeing is the Godliness in them -- so when we love one another, we're really loving God.

His text is framed in particularistic language, which makes sense given his original context. I find that I need to reframe it in universalistic language in order to really access it, but once I do that I find it pretty remarkable. It opened up a terrific conversation about what it means to love God, to love another person, to love even someone who has hurt one or who is difficult for one to deal with, all the way to loving someone who has committed atrocities. Some of us in the room felt that aiming to love someone who has done bad things is either impossible or irresponsible; others felt that this teaching is really valuable and could be personally transformative as a spiritual practice. The class totally energized me, and I sailed through dinner (which I ate with two recent ALEPH musmachim) and chorus rehearsal.

And then I returned to my room, feeling slightly lame for skipping the evening programs but aware that if I fell asleep sitting up on an uncomfortable bench this afternoon, that's my body's way of telling me that I need to rest. Shabbos is coming, after all, and I want to be well-rested enough to stay up late tomorrow night enjoying the singing and dancing... so it's a quiet night for me! Another chock-full day at the 2009 Kallah.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Kallah, JewishRenewal.

Choice and change (Radical Torah repost)

2009-07-02T09:42:17-04:00

This week we're reading a double Torah portion. Here's the d'var Torah I wrote in 2007 for the first of this week's portions, originally published at Radical Torah (which appears, once again, to have disappeared.)

In Kedushat Levi, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev offers some striking insights into this week's Torah portion of Chukat, riffing off of the first verse in the parsha, "This is the law of the instructed-ritual that YHVH has commanded, saying: Speak to the Children of Israel, that they may take you a red cow, wholly-sound, that has in it no defect, that has not yielded to a yoke[.]'" (Numbers 19:2, transl. Everett Fox.) Levi Yitzchak writes:

In our world, it appears to us as if we were created to engage in the things of this world. But in truth, that is not the case. The primary reason that we were created was so that we might come to recognize the unity of the Holy Blessed One...

That is the sense of "This is the law of the Torah:" there are mitzvot that reason compels us to perform. When we do them, we do not sense so strongly that we are performing them because the Creator commanded these mitzvot. That is why the Blessed Creator gave us commandments that reason does not comprehend. When we do them, we more readily recognize that we do them only because of God's commandment.

It's easy to understand why ethical commandments are important. How we treat one another matters. But ritual commandments, especially ones (like the red heifer) which don't make much sense -- those can be harder to cherish. For Levi Yitzchak, the illogic of a chok (a commandment which can't be made to fit our sensible paradigm) is precisely what makes it important. In accepting the chukim, we accept the "yoke of heaven" and acknowledge God's sovereignty.

There's something beautiful about that. It affirms that there are things in this vast universe which are beyond our comprehension and beyond our control. That life isn't all about us. That, as Levi Yitzchak writes, we were created for an ineffable purpose -- recognizing the fundamental unity of infinite God! All of our strivings and disagreements and philosophical ruminations are not the point. Performing chukim has an impact on our spiritual awareness. They're devotional practices, not intellectual exercises.

There's also something difficult about it. The red cow becomes a kind of red flag. Maybe especially for women, who may feel that we are always already trying to break free from the expectation that we will submit ourselves to priorities which come from someone else. The world is too full of hierarchy and power-over, and siting ourselves in a position of submission to incomprehensible mitzvot can feel like another iteration of the same old song and dance.

The Mishna talks about accepting the yoke of heaven upon ourselves, but what does that even mean, in a day and age when few of us have ever even seen oxen yoked? It's easy for the idea to feel uncomfortable, too much like unquestioning submission. Which may be fraught, even painful or impossible, to those who are already working to free themselves from subservience. The tradition knows that as well as we do -- just look at the story of the Exodus. When the Israelites were enslaved, they were incapable of covenant with God. Freedom was necessary first.

Of course, freedom is necessary but not sufficient. In order to live up to our whole and holy potential, we need to be free and in relationship with God. Still, I see in the Exodus story, and its aftermath, an awareness which can shape how those who today feel disempowered or disenfranchised might approach mitzvot. The yoke of heaven is necessarily something we choose, not something thrust upon us -- and a choice coerced by circumstance is no choice at all.

One of my teachers has suggested that the word mitzvah, usually translated as "commandment," can also be rendered "connection." The mitzvot connect us with God, and with one another. They place us in relationship.

Relationship with God, like relationships with one another, inevitably involves compromises. There are things I do because I want to do them, and things I do because they bring my partner joy -- and cutting either category out of my life would damage both me, and us. Just so, with God. There are things I do because I perceive that they enrich my days, and there are things I do because Jewish tradition teaches they are worthwhile. Maybe the practice of doing them opens me to a new kind of transformation. And maybe choosing to take on a practice is, itself, a radical and powerful change.

"Today we are all Jews by choice," writes Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. "The old understanding of being commanded was of commandments handed down the mountain, of an authority beaming down on us from above. Today any sense of commandment must come from within, from inside us. Can we feel commanded without feeling coerced?" Rabbi Marcia Prager poses a similar question: "Where, then, is the locus of the imperative once there is no commander, no coercion, once I can choose or relinquish obligations as I wish?"

More, she asks:

What do we do when we encounter a mitzvah we don't understand, or that we think we do understand and therefore reject? Is the system fixed and sealed, or is it flexible and unfolding? Is it ancient wisdom or ancient prejudices? Is the authority to craft the mitzvot allocated only to a hierarchy of male legalists in a particular chain of rabbinic command, or can we approach the evolution of mitzvot in a feminist, historical, and critical way? Do we practice only the things we understand and appreciate? Can we understand and appreciate without practice?

My answer to those last two questions is "no" -- though a delicate balance is required, and a healthy respect for paradox. For many of us, in this age of chosen-Judaism, it's hard to take on practices that don't immediately resonate -- even if we understand that some practices only resonate properly from the inside. The hardest thing may be making the leap of opening oneself to the possibility that an illogical practice can have transformative effect...and that's a leap each of us may have to make, not once, but repeatedly over the course of a lifetime.

Chukim (like the ritual of the red cow, and its decontaminating ashes) are the deepest level of mitzvah, and the hardest level to understand. The root of the word is one which denotes "engraved" -- these are the proverbial rules carved in stone. As Reb Zalman notes:

In order to reveal an engraved message, the medium of transmission must give up something of itself: this is what the chipping-out process of engraving entains. And the medium of transmission here is us. More than the other types of mitzvot, the chukim ask for a higher level of surrender to a will that is not our own.

Giving up something of myself isn't easy. Part of me rebels against it, and I have to work at discerning when that rebellion is healthy (feminism has valuable things to teach me about integrity and strength) and when it's an old defense mechanism (Judaism has valuable things to teach me about covenant and surrender.) In the end, this isn't an either/or -- neither feminism nor Judaism requires me to choose a single lens through which to see the world. Neither is the covenant detailed in this week's portion an either/or: mitzvot aren't binary, a single piece of whole cloth one either embodies or rejects. Each of us is a work-in-progress, and so is each person's relationship with mitzvot, and with power, and with God.

And how can we relate today to the chok which begins this portion, the ritual of the red cow without blemish -- no longer possible, in the absence of the Temple, and therefore ripe for revisioning in the new Jewish paradigm which we inhabit? For our ancestors, the sacrifice of a mother cow who had never been yoked offered a way to become tahor again after contact with death. What can we find in the deepest part of ourselves -- the part which has never submitted to anything -- to cast on the fire? What in ourselves should we burn in order to know ourselves as pure, no matter what loss or sorrow we have touched?

This week's portion: water from the rock

2009-07-02T09:30:00-04:00

WATER FROM THE ROCK (CHUKKAT)

When Miriam died there was no water
the wadis dried up the springs didn't flow

as though the desert were mourning her passing
her living waters blocked by stone

we thirsted for wisdom we drank salt tears
we ripped our robes and wailed for the Black Land

all Moshe could imagine was striking the rock
the water he called forth was chalky and tasteless

not like Miriam's melodies not like her dance
when our feet wove grapevines and our hearts were bells

This week we're reading two Torah portions: Chukkat and Balak. The Torah poem I wrote this week comes out of the first of those portions, Chukkat, which contains the death of Miriam, sister of Aharon and Moshe. The recounting is simple: "Miriam died there and was buried there," Torah tells us, and adds immediately "The community was without water..."

From this juxtaposition, this week's Torah poem was born. Miriam is often midrashically connected with water. A story holds that a well followed the Israelites in their wanderings through the desert. Filled with mayimei chayyim, waters of life, the well renewed all who drank from it. When Miriam died, her well disappeared. Torah is often described with the metaphor of an ever-flowing wellspring. God, too, is sometimes known in this way: as Source of Life (in a desert climate surely this denotes water) or as the Wellspring of all that exists. So it's possible to see Miriam as deeply connected with Torah and with insight.

Because the Israelites have no water, they turn on Moshe and Aharon. God tells Moshe to speak to a rock and it will yield water; Moshe strikes the rock instead. It does yield water, but God is incensed, and tells Moshe that he will not be able to enter the promised land. Generations of commentators have struggled with the question of what exactly Moshe did wrong. Is it that he slightly shifted God's commandment? Is it that he related to the rock with violence instead of with gentleness? One way or another, it's a fascinating literary moment in the Israelites' wilderness story.

So this week we remember Miriam. What does she represent for you?

[water.mp3]

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Torah, poetry, Chukkat.

Tefillin davening

2009-07-01T10:08:16-04:00

I went this morning to an incredibly sweet service led by my friend Simcha. The service was designed to highlight the mitzvah of tefillin, which I first took on when I turned thirty.

We entered the little chapel on the third floor of the student center (big windows painted with stained-glass patterns) to the sound of Simcha and her husband Reb Shawn singing "Kamti ani liftoach l'dodi / I will open to You, my Beloved / Will you open, open to me?" in a beautiful two-part round. Then Simcha spoke briefly about tefillin. She talked about how the line we recite while wrapping around the hand (from Hosea: "I betroth you to me forever, I betroth you to me with righteousness, justice, kindness, and mercy...") is sometimes written in English with a capital-Y You (so: it's us speaking to God) and sometimes written in English with a capital-M Me (so: it's God speaking to us.) The Hebrew, of course, connotes both at once. There's a reciprocity, Simcha said; tefillin call us to awareness of the reciprocal relationship of love between us and the universe.

We looked at some of the traditional texts related to donning tefillin (which you can find in the Artscroll siddur on pp 6-7.) Simcha talked about the texts in the box of the arm-tefillin and the head-tefillin, which remind us of God's unity, of the relationship of love between us, and also of how God brought us out from slavery in order to be in relationship with God. The arm-tefillin are next to the heart to remind us of the centrality of our loving relationship with God. We bind them on the hand to sanctify the work of our hands, and we bind them on our foreheads, near the seat of our consciousness, in order that the soul which is within our consciousness might be aligned with divine will. And after telling a few stories about her own relationship with the practice (and acknowledging that this, like every spiritual practice, ebbs and flows in our lives -- but, Simcha said, tefillin is a practice which calls us back to relationship) we returned to song.

I helped two women put on tefillin for the first time, showing them how I learned to wrap the binding around my arm and hand. Together we recited the blessing. All over the room were little clusters of people like us, gesturing and wrapping amid the buzz of low conversation. And then we davened a short morning service. After modah ani (the blessing for gratitude) we sang a line from psalm 42: "K'ayal ta'arog al afikay mayim, ken nafshi ta'arog elecha elohim (As the deer longs for water, so my soul longs for You)," which is a beautiful expression of longing for the relationship which the tefillin represent. The service itself was lovely; I was especially moved by the chanting of the ahavah rabbah blessing, which speaks of God's love for us. Most of the room chanted one line over and over in impromptu harmony while Simcha chanted the English translation over the top.

After the service I had the chance to chat briefly with a few people, and then came to class, where I spent 15 minutes or so doing "spirit buddy" time (one-on-one connection, talking about where we are and how we're doing) with a friend, and then it was time to begin Eco-Judaism class! From one gem in the setting of the morning to the next.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, tefillin, Kallah, JewishRenewal.

First full day at Kallah

2009-06-30T22:04:48-04:00

The thing that's surprised me so far about Kallah is how dense the schedule is. I'm used to smicha week and to Elat Chayyim, where generally there's only one thing I'm supposed to be doing at any given time. Here the schedule is far more packed: in the morning, there's davening from 6:30-8am, and also breakfast from 7-8am. In the afternoons, I have to miss mincha (afternoon prayer) in order to grab an early dinner at 5:30 so I can make it to rehearsal at 6:30 -- I'm singing in a pickup choir led by Linda Hirschhorn, which is a joy. (The music is gorgeous, it's all a cappella, and she's teaching it without using the piano -- just with her voice. She's quickly topped my list of choral directors I'm glad to have sung with.) And rehearsals run halfway through maariv (evening prayer), too. I've missed several programs, some impromptu art-making, and (I think) a bunch of short films, and it's only day one! It's impossible to do everything here.

Today was the first full day. Breakfast, then a dash to davening (I chose the outdoor service led by the folks from Nava Tehila, the Jerusalem Renewal congregation I love so much), then my morning class with Reb Arthur, then lunch, then I did some homework and took a catnap which I sorely needed, then the BeShT class which lasted for three hours, then a race back to the dining hall for the fastest dinner in known history and I zipped back to rehearsal. And by 8pm? I decided I was done; there were four different evening programs happening, and instead I opted to hang out quietly with a friend. I needed downtime more than I needed more stimulation. Self-care can be tough at a retreat like this -- there's so much going on! so many people I want to see! -- but I'm not a true extrovert, and I need to know my limits if I want to make it happily through two weeks of this intense retreat spacetime.

It's been great to see friends: both folks from the smicha programs (many of whom are here, almost all of whom will be here next week) and folks I've met in other contexts. Yesterday I ran into two good friends from the 2004 Reb Zalman retreat at Elat Chayyim! We haven't seen one another in five years, but it doesn't seem to matter. And I've met some lovely new people, too: applicants to the ALEPH rabbinic program (I spent lunch today chatting about the program with a guy who'd just submitted his application), and other fascinating people who are in one of my classes or another, or who happen to be sitting wherever I plunk down my mealtime tray.

There's a latenight music thing happening now, but I'm not going; instead I'm about to put myself to bed. The alarm's going to go off awfully early tomorrow, after all, and I want to make it to breakfast before I dash to daven. Now I just have to choose which of the four different shacharit options I want to try to attend...

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Kallah, JewishRenewal, rabschool.

Ohio-bound

2009-06-28T12:24:12-04:00

Tomorrow morning I'll wake at an ungodly hour to make it to the Albany airport in time for a 5:45am flight. (Ethan, bless him, is driving me to the airport.) I'm off to the campus of Ohio Wesleyan University for the ALEPH Kallah, the biennial gathering of the Jewish Renewal movement. I've never actually been to Kallah before, so I'm incredibly excited -- I've heard wonderful things, and of course, four years into this ALEPH rabbinic program journey I'm perennially eager to see my friends and teachers again.

After Kallah, I'll stay in Ohio for smicha week, the annual week-long intensive for ALEPH ordination students. (I missed smicha students' week last summer because I was in Jerusalem; I blogged a tiny bit about it when I went two years ago.) I'm looking forward to meeting new folks at Kallah, but part of me is most eager to relax into the smaller community of the various ordination programs. We'll be about 85 people this year, plus faculty -- large enough that our gathering will feel remarkable, but small enough that (I hope) I'll be able to spend quality time with folks I want to see.

I expect that blogging will be light while I'm away, though I'll try to post once or twice if I am able (and if there is internet access -- one never knows!) Have a great few weeks, all, and if you're going to be at Kallah, please come and tell me hello.

Technorati tags: JewishRenewal, smichaweek, Kallah.

Entering the summer semester

2009-06-26T10:38:39-04:00

The last few weeks have offered a blessed respite from coursework. I can't remember the last time that happened: usually one semester ends as the next is beginning (and if there are final papers to be written or translation projects to be undertaken, we're scrambling to complete them even as we try not to fall behind on the next semester's new offerings) so this little break has been a real mechaieh (life-giver) for me! But it's almost time to get back to the work of fulltime learning again.

Next week at the ALEPH Kallah I'll be taking two courses: a course on Eco-Judaism taught by Reb Arthur Waskow, and a deep immersion in the writings of the Baal Shem Tov (founder of Hasidism) taught by Reb Burt Jacobson. During smicha week, the annual week-long intensive for ALEPH ordination students which follows right on the heels of Kallah, I'll be taking two more courses: a spiritual direction class focusing on intercessory prayer taught by Reb Shohama Wiener and Reb Nadya Gross, and a course on liturgy/poems/stories for illness, healing and death taught by Rabbinic Pastor Shulamit Fagan.

At least two of the four (and possibly all of them) will continue with teleconference sessions once we're home again. (More information on all four of these classes can be found beneath the extended entry link.)

Eco-Judaism: The Theology and Practice of Jewish Responses to Ecological Crises, Past & Present

The course covers: 1) theology of the adam/adamah relationship and why crises appear in that relationship; 2) history of past Jewish responses to these crises in the context of the Sumerian and Roman Empires; 3) Jewish responses today, especially taking into account eco-kashrut, celebrating earth-moon-sun aspects of the festivals, liturgy, Torah- study, and life-cycle markers; Eco-Zionism; and Jewish advocacy for policy change. Taught by Reb Arthur Waskow.

Living in the Presence: The Core Teachings of the Ba'al Shem Tov
The Ba’al Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism, taught that through ecstasy, joy, love, awe and conscious living one could experience the Living Spirit and make every day holy. In this class a master teacher of the Besht will guide you through the methods of textual inquiry that will enable you to uncover the historic and the contemporary meaning of key Hasidic texts in Hebrew. You will discover new ways to integrate the Besht’s teachings into your life and develop your skills at teaching Hasidic sources to adults. The course will blend niggun, meditation, lecture, hevruta study, lively discussion, and creative writing. Taught by Reb Burt Jacobson.
Guidance from Spirit: God, Rebbes, Ancestors and Guides; Personal and Intercessory Prayer

This Intensive, for those enrolled in the ALEPH Hashpa'ah Program, will focus on Jewish methods of connecting with the spiritual realms through personal prayer and meditation, in order to receive guidance and healing for ourselves and others. Insights from the fields of contemporary psychology, neuro-biology, and ecumenical spirituality will be included. Taught by Reb Shohama Wiener and Reb Nadya Gross.
Liturgy, Poems and Stories for Illness, Healing and Death

Together we will explore a large body of liturgy, poems and stories available to us for use with our patients, their families, and ourselves around healing, illness and death. We will share, discuss, meditate and journal.

What does our tradition tell us about the origins of illness? How does it define healing? Where can we direct people for textual support? What part do Hasidic and modern stories play in healing and support?

This class will be very interactive. Each student is expected to come prepared to share experiences where text has helped them to understand Jewish custom and ritual in the healing process. Taught by Rabbinic Pastor Shulamit Fagan.

I don't expect I'll have much time for blogging during either of these coming weeks, though hopefully I'll be able to share some gems from these classes with y'all, either during Kallah and smicha week or when I am home again and beginning to integrate the learning from these intensives into my ordinary life.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, ALEPH, rabschool.

This week's portion: fruit

2009-06-25T17:54:42-04:00

FRUIT (KORACH)

in God's hands
the staff of my body
blossoms
and brings forth almonds

not a sign
that I am favored
or especially fit
for divine service

just garden-variety
transformation
the blessing
of whatever comes

This week's portion, Korach, tells the story of the rebellion of Korach, who argued that surely the whole people Israel could be holy and therefore a priesthood wasn't necessary. In this week's Shalom Report email, Reb Arthur Waskow gives over a teaching from Martin Buber, to wit, that "Korach thought the whole people was holy regardlesss of how it acted...It could kill, or worship gold, or rape the earth -- it could do anything, thought Korach, and still be holy." Moses understood, Reb Arthur explains, "that the people had to become holy, always and over and over -- had to act to make holiness out of ordinary life."

Anyway, that's a bit of a side note, because this week's Torah poem arises out of a piece of the story which comes after Korach's rebellion. God tells the Israelites that the head of each tribe should take his staff and carve his name on it, and then all of the staves are placed in the tent of the covenant. The following morning, Aaron's staff has burst into bloom. For me, rereading the text this year, that was the most resonant image, so it's what sparked the Torah poem. How does the image (how does the poem) sit with you?

[fruit.mp3]

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Torah, poetry, Numbers.

How I read the Bible

2009-06-25T10:36:03-04:00

I've been tapped to answer the question of what books or scholars have most significantly impacted how I read the Bible. (The post so many books, so little time includes links to many others who've done this meme.)

The first scholar I'll mention is Rashi, whose commentary on Torah is considered central and foundational by pretty much the whole Jewish world. (You can find a weekly dose of chumash -- a.k.a. Torah -- with Rashi's commentary here at Chabad's Daily Study page, though it may not be very accessible; Rashi has a very particular way of engaging with the text, and he works so often with wordplay that he doesn't necessarily translate well.) It's often helpful to consider the question, "What's bugging Rashi here?" In other words: what leapt out at him, when he read the Torah text, which demanded his interpretation? His economy of language is pretty dazzling, though I think it also makes him trickier for the novice reader. Rashi isn't foundational to me, per se, but he's a basic part of the Torah-study enterprise. If you want to understand Torah Jewishly, Rashi is one good place to start.

Alicia Ostriker's The Nakedness of the Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions was deeply formative for me. This book had a huge impact on me. I'm also a longtime admirer of Ostriker's poetry, but this book really knocked me out when I first read it. She delves into foundational Biblical texts and, in conversation with those texts, offers a combination of autobiography and some of the finest contemporary midrash I know. This is a classic of Jewish feminist scholarship and I can't recommend it highly enough. (As a side note, Ostriker's recent For the Love of God: The Bible as an Open Book, which I reviewed for Lilith when it first came out, is also top-notch and really worth reading, especially if you are a religious liberal who doesn't want to abandon the Bible to fundamentalist interpretations.)

The third scholar I'm going to mention is Rabbi Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl, who's usually known as the Me'or Eynayim, "The Light of the Eyes" -- that's the name of his best-known work, which is a running commentary on Torah, written through his sweet Hasidic lens. I spent a semester studying his work a while back, and wrote about him from time to time (here's one of those posts: Meor Eynayim on hospitality and going forth.) One of my favorite quotes from him is, "You struggle and find the light that God has hidden in God's Torah, a light not revealed except through struggle. After a person has truly worked at such searching, it comes to be called his (her) Torah." (The gender-neutrality is my own translation, naturally.) I love the playfulness, the expansiveness, and the depth of his commentary. Most of his work is available only in Hebrew, but if you prefer English, I can recommend Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl: Upright Practices, The Light of the Eyes. If you're new to Hasidic ways of reading Torah, though, you might want to find a good teacher to study it with!

Number four is Everett Fox, whose translation The Five Books of Moses is not only clear and lucid but captures the gorgeous wordplay of the original Hebrew text in a way that no other translation I've seen has done. The footnotes are also excellent, but the reason I keep returning to this text is that Fox perennially shows me new ways of understanding the old words, and that's incredibly valuable to me. I recommend this translation highly. (The JPS is my standard bilingual edition, and sometimes I peek into the Oxford Study Bible or the JPS Torah Commentary series for additional perspectives, but for direct engagement with the Hebrew text rendered into creative and startling English, nobody beats Fox.)

And the fifth piece I'm going to mention is not a book but an essay, which I read quite recently but which has become one of the lenses through which I read Tanakh. It's an essay by Wendy Doniger which she offered as a convocation address at the University of Chicago in June of 2008. Here's a quote:

We need to balance what literary critics call a hermeneutics of suspicion -- a method of reading that ferrets out submerged agendas -- with a hermeneutics of retrieval, or even of reconciliation (to borrow a term from the literature on the aftermath of genocidal wars in Africa and elsewhere).... And then we can begin to read our own classics differently, with what the philosopher and theologian Paul Ricoeur called a second naiveté: where, in our first naiveté, we did not notice the racism, and in our subsequent hypercritical reading we couldn’t see anything else, in our second naiveté we can see how good some writers are despite the inhumanity of their underlying worldviews. If their works really are great literature, they will survive this new reading.

Doniger's speaking most directly about literary criticism, but to my mind her message is tremendously relevant when it comes to reading and rereading Tanakh. As a Jew and a rabbi I need to be able to read the Bible critically and devotionally: to keep my eyes open to the problematic passages, its sexism, its racism, everything in it which troubles me -- and also to allow myself to look beyond what's problematic in order to draw from the deep well of intellectual and spiritual sustenance which my tradition has always found there. Anyway, you can find her essay online here: Thinking Critically About Thinking Too Critically [pdf].

Thanks for tagging me, J.K. Gayle; I'm sorry to see that since you tagged me last week you've left the blogosphere, but I appreciate the posts and conversations, and hope that you'll return to us someday.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Torah.

A blessing of butterflies

2009-06-24T11:43:45-04:00

She now knew the butterfly effect could produce a loon in her office.

But did the converse also hold true? She closed her eyes and concentrated, and the room filled with the rush of fluttering wings. One brushed the side of her face, impossibly gentle. When she opened her eyes, they were gone.

Almost. One bright monarch perched on the tendril of wisteria which snaked its way up her house, around the outside of her window, as though it wanted to bloom inside. The monarch regarded her solemnly, its wings moving like breathing, and then it lifted into the air and flew away.

What we breathe out, the trees breathe in. What they breathe out, we breathe in. The notion satisfied her. Butterflies breathe, and mint plants. The lettuces beneath their mesh, and the rabbits which skirt them, hungry.

Sometimes the internet seems to breathe. One person posts, and then another in response. She could sit solitary at her computer, facing the green world outside her windows, and never feel entirely alone. The thrum of conversation is perennial. We pick up the threads and follow them to the center of one labyrinth or another, and then we are gone, but the labyrinth remains.

The woman in leggings and a striped hand-me-down shirt scuffed her feet against the floor, contemplating the posting of comments, the flapping of tiny wings.

With her bright visitors gone, it seemed as though she ought to feel bereft, but she didn't. She felt blessed.

This is the fourteenth post in an online came of Consequences. Each post begins with the last line of the previous post; is (meant to be) 250 words long; and is on the theme of the individual within the community, or something along those lines.

Previous posts: No man is an island, Entire of itself, A part of the main, To belong, Be-longing, Expats, or la vie en rosé, Ex-hale, No Contest, Consequences, Consequences 10, Consequences 11, Follow the consequences, and Consequences 13. The series will conclude at Hydragenic, where it began, in a day or two.

Technorati tags: blogs, consequences.

Isn't it nice to be home again

2009-06-23T10:49:03-04:00

I'm home from my week in Texas! My family had a grand old time on South Padre Island; I'll miss my parents and siblings, not to mention the sun and the sand and the rish-rush of the waters.

Blogging may be lighter than usual for a while: I'm home for six days and then I'll depart for the ALEPH Kallah which is followed immediately by smicha students' week (the week-long intensive learning program we do each summer.) All good things, but oy, I could use a week or two to decompress in between!

Today my primary goals are email triage and laundry and relaxing into being home again, even though this feels like a brief visit to my normal life rather than a chance to settle in. Thanks for bearing with me, gang.

Heading for the Gulf Coast

2009-06-14T16:04:41-04:00

It's been a nice quiet Sunday: pancakes and the Times, throwing together a quiche for tomorrow morning (we're hosting old friends for brunch), folding laundry, cleaning house. I backed up my hard drive this weekend, and charged my phone and aging ipod for travel, since I'm off to Texas tomorrow to spend the next week with my family. I'll make it as far as San Antonio before I sleep; Tuesday morning we'll load up a caravan of vehicles and head for the Texas coast!

It's a bit over a year since last time I was in Texas, so I'm really looking forward to the trip. Seeing my parents and my siblings and their children is always a treat, and I'm jazzed about getting my annual fix of Tex-Mex cuisine and big Texas skies. Plus, ocean -- last one of those I had the pleasure of dipping into was the Mediterranean Sea, my final weekend in Tel Aviv last August. It's more than 15 years since I immersed in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, so I'm looking forward to that, too.

I hope there will be internet where we're staying; I intend to keep up with my discipline of writing a Torah poem each week, and I'd love to post that here, along with (maybe) whatever other small musings arise. But I doubt that I'll keep up with reading my blog aggregator, and I may not be blogging much from the road. Thanks for understanding, and I hope y'all have a lovely week!

Technorati tags: travel, Texas.