Velveteen Rabbi

This week's portion: Caretaker (Behar)

 

CARETAKER (BEHAR)

Six days you may visit
to pick sugar snap peas

to burnish your fingers
with basil and dill

to strip string beans
from their leggy bushes

and choose radishes
to stash in your bag.

But on the seventh
let the land rest:

the chattering chickens
and drowsy sunflowers

the garlic hanging
fragrant in the rafters

even the earthworms
ineffable, underground.

Keep them in trust
and let them keep you.

---

This week's portion, Behar, contains injunctions to let the land rest one day out of seven and one year out of seven, and after seven cycles of seven years to declare yovel (Jubilee), releasing all debts and returning land to its original owners. In a deep sense, the Torah reminds us this week that we never truly "own" land, we only borrow it from its Creator for a time. Opinions differ on the question of whether the yovel a) ever actually happened and b) is even possible in our imperfect world, but even if it's just an instance of Biblical utopianism it's a powerful teaching.

The verses about letting the land rest reminded me of Caretaker Farm, the CSA to which Ethan and I have belonged for years. So that's where this week's poem went: not to the grand Jubilee, but to the small cycle of work and rest in which each of us can take part. As usual, if you can't see the audio player embedded at the top of this post or if you'd like to hang on to the recording, you can download caretaker.mp3.

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

Guest post at God's Politics

The folks at God's Politics, a blog by Jim Wallis and friends (presented by Beliefnet and Sojourners), asked me to write a guest post for them about the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel and how I wrestle with it as an American Jew. The post I wrote took the form of a letter to Israel on the occasion of her sixtieth birthday. It's here: The Velveteen Rabbi's Birthday Card to Israel.

Reb Zalman reminds us frequently that we should speak not only about God but also to God. So when the editors at God's Politics asked me to write this post, I decided to take that same tack, talking to Israel rather than merely about it. Writing the post as a direct address was both difficult and fruitful for me, and it made me realize that I'd love to see what others would do with the same assignment. If anyone else out there feels inclined to follow suit, drop a comment here and link to your post?

Thanks to the folks at God's Politics for the opportunity to send a guest post their way.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Israel, GodsPolitics.

Balancing learning and work

The next Talmud text I'm responsible for reprising with my two hevruta partners (study buddies) is a passage about the tension between Torah study and worldly work, from Brachot 35b. It's a nifty teaching, and surprisingly relevant in today's world. (The Jerusalem Post just published an article about it a few weeks ago, Let the Torah not depart by R' Levi Cooper.) I'm guessing it may resonate for many of y'all, as it does for me.

We begin with the prooftext "And you shall gather in your grain." That's Deuteronomy 11:14, and the rabbis of the Talmud ask: what does this verse mean to teach us? Rabbi Ishmael offers, well, we learn in Joshua 1:8 that "the book of this teaching shall not depart from your mouth," and one might imagine therefore that we're supposed to never stop studying Torah, so this verse from Deuteronomy is here to remind us that we also need to work toward worldly sustenance.

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai disagrees. If a man plows in the plowing season, he argues, and reaps in the reaping season, and threshes in the threshing season -- in other words, if he occupies himself all year long with the component acts of getting food on the table -- what will become of Torah? He brings a couple of prooftexts to show that if a person does God's will (and, one assumes, studies Torah all the time) then others will do his work for him -- whereas if a person doesn't do God's will, he winds up doing not only his own labor but also laboring on behalf of others.

Abayye pops in to note, rather archly I think, that those who've taken Rabbi Ishmael's advice and had "real jobs" in addition to learning Torah: things have gone well for those guys. But those who've followed the advice of Rabbi Shimon, focusing solely on learning in the hopes that God will provide the worldly material of living, haven't had it so good.

Taking care

What a week: anticipation, tension, relief, and aftermath.

Ethan's surgery seems to have been successful. When they let me back into the recovery room and I saw him sitting in a chair, upright and becoming alert again (right eye bandaged tightly), a fierce relief grabbed hold of me that didn't let go for hours. The unmitigated good news is that the surgeon believes they were successful in doing the work they wanted to do -- baruch Hashem and alhamdolillah! Deep thanks to all who left comments, sent emails, and have been saying prayers of all sorts on his, and our, behalf.

Since then, the week has been a bit of a roller-coaster. The surgery is over, but the recovery is just beginning, and the elation of making it through the surgery has given way to some frustration with the limitations of this post-surgical period. Slowly and surely we're finding our way. Yesterday afternoon while I was teaching Hebrew school, a friend came over to read to him for a while. He's planning and cooking elaborate menus; he can't work, exercise, or read, but at least he can cook. (As long as he stays clear of our very sharp knives...)

And I'm learning how unlike chaplaincy is the experience of watching a loved one undergo surgery. I've facilitated lifecycle events for "strangers" (folks I didn't know until they engaged me to work with them), for old friends, and for family, and those three categories feel entirely different to me. When a relationship already exists, the work can be both sweeter and more challenging. Of course, I'm not here to do the work of pastoral care! Though the chaplain part of my brain keeps pointing out how I might try to do things differently if I were.

The counsel I would offer to someone else in shoes like mine this week is this: being family to someone who's undergone trauma -- physical or emotional -- can be difficult. So be gentle with yourself. Cut yourself some slack. Do something nice for yourself. Remember that it's not your job to make things "all better" -- you can't. What you can do is be loving, and be present, and be responsive as best you can. That's all anyone could ask, and it's important work, so kol hakavod to you for doing it.

Anyway. Today is the third day after the surgery and so far, so good. Thanks to everyone who's been with us along the way.

 

Technorati tags: life, post-surgery.

Tiferet squared

Image by Pauline Frankenberg, from her series of 49 images for Counting the Omer.

I have endless respect for folks who are able to blog the counting of the Omer in a sustained way. To offer insights on a daily basis, tracking the practical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual resonances of the shifting grid of sefirot (divine qualities in which we as humans also partake), is a major undertaking. Each day is a unique intersection of the qualities of its week and the qualities of its place within the week, and as the seven weeks of the Omer pass we move through every possible point on the spectrum.

So far I've managed a single post each week of the Omer. Not, perhaps, the same degree of discipline as daily Omer-blogging, but it's working well for me. It's a commitment, but one that coexists nicely with the many other commitments in my life. There's a nice balance to doing it this way.

"Balance" is one way of translating tiferet, the dominant quality of this third week in the counting of the Omer -- and also the dominant quality of this third day of the week. Today is the seventeenth day of the Omer, a day of tiferet she'b'tiferet -- tiferet squared.

"Harmony" is another way to render tiferet in English. Where the first week of the Omer was all about lovingkindness, and the second week was all about boundaries, this third week of the Omer is resonant with the impulse to harmonize those two things. It's the triad that makes the chord, the synthesis that turns both thesis and antithesis into something new.

Two more translations for tiferet are "compassion" and "integration." Today -- the seventeenth day of the Omer -- is a day to aim for compassion and integration, balance and harmony, in their purest and fullest form.

In the wake of Ethan's surgery yesterday, I'm trying to figure out the appropriate balance between offering help, and hovering too much. Today may I, and we, begin the work of integrating the experiences we had yesterday, harmonizing it with our ordinary life, and balancing it appropriately and compassionately in the days of recovery to come.

 

 

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, akedah, Omer.

Rabbinic round-table on Israel

Zeek: Thank you all for joining us. The central issue I want to look at is how we relate to Israel as American Jews, in American communities and congregations and schools. The first question I want to throw out is, do any of you have experiences working in a community where your own relationship with Israel isn't mirrored by those you're working with?

Schiller: As I mentioned, I teach in a Modern Orthodox high school. The mood there is decidedly in line with the Israeli right, and has been since '67 war. My own perspective, favoring a two-state solution, is not that of the community in which I teach. The community in which I live, the Haredi community, is largely indifferent to these issues except to the degree that they share deep fear of Palestinians and of the gentile world in general.

...Angel: My experience is in some ways similar to Rabbi Schiller's, although from the other side. I'm in the Bay Area in San Francisco; this is the first time in my life I've been surrounded by so many Jews who developed a Jewish identity post-'67. By and large they're from secular backgrounds; they've felt marginalized by the mainstream for all sorts of reasons, and are deeply suspicious of mainstream ideas--and being pro-Israel is largely a mainstream idea.

Earlier this year, I had the honor of facilitating a round-table discussion in which Rabbis Camille Angel, Lynn Gottlieb, Fred Guttman and Meyer Schiller discussed the impact of Israel on their rabbinates. That discussion has now been published over at Zeek.

The panel of rabbis that we assembled spans a few different gamuts. Rabbi Schiller is a ba'al teshuva and a Hasid who works in the Orthodox world, while Rabbis Angel and Guttman were ordained Reform. Rabbi Guttman used to serve in a combat artillery brigade in Israel, while Rabbi Gottlieb is co-founder of the Muslim-Jewish Peace Walk. (And so on.) Our conversation was fascinating, thoughtful, and often surprising. Given that I've been wrestling with my own relationship to Israel, and how it might impact my rabbinate, this conversation was thought-provoking and fruitful for me. I hope it was for the participants, too.

You can read it here: The Synagogue/Israeli Politics Mashup. And if you have thoughts in response, please feel free to let me know, either via commenting on this blog post, or via commenting on the round-table article itself.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Israel, Zeek.

T-minus one day and counting

A few weeks ago Ethan blogged about eye trouble and forthcoming surgery, a pars plana vitrectomy on his right eye. That surgery is happening tomorrow, as per his latest post. We'll wake up at 5am and drive the three hours to Boston. After the surgery we'll spend a night there, and have a follow-up visit with the doctors on Wednesday morning. Assuming all goes according to plan, we'll get home by Wednesday evening.

I don't entirely know what to expect. We've read everything we can get our hands on, and Ethan's doctors have told us about how the procedure works and what its aftermath is likely to entail, but that kind of advance knowledge is only so helpful. Beyond the bare outlines -- surgery, recovery, an estimated three weeks abstaining from reading (!) -- we don't really know what's ahead.

I'm chagrined to discover the extent to which I'm more comfortable being the patient than the worried family member in the waiting room. I'm reminded, too, of something I learned from my supervisor during my year of CPE: ministering to one's family doesn't really work. In this situation I'm not the chaplain, I'm the wife. It's fascinating to be reminded how discrete those two roles are.

Anyway, we have high hopes that the surgery will be successful; that's something to, er, focus on. Meanwhile, if I'm somewhat slow to respond to emails and blog comments for a few days, I ask your understanding. And if you're so inclined, good thoughts and prayers are always welcome.

Technorati tags: body, eyes, vitrectomy.

A minister and a rabbinic student walk into a coffee shop...

Meeting other bloggers is one of the perennial pleasures of blogging. In some ways, meeting a blogger is like meeting an author whose works one knows well. Though in the latter case, the relationship tends to be asymmetrical (which is to say: given the opportunity I would totally fangirl Annie Dillard or Michael Chabon, but they don't know me from Eve) whereas when two bloggers meet the odds are good that we'll already know some things about each other. In an ideal world, that means one can skip the awkward pleasantries phase and leap right to the good stuff.

This must be a pretty ideal world, because I got to have lunch today with James Lumsden, a UCC pastor who moved to Pittsfield last August, who blogs at When love comes to town. I can't entirely remember when I first started reading his blog, but I've been a fan for a while now. His posts during Holy Week were especially resonant for me; most weeks he posts his sermons (illustrated by all manner of images), which never fail to be thought-provoking. But what speaks to me most in his blog is the sense I get of his joyful service, especially filtered through the prism of his simultaneous engagement with church and with rock music of various forms.

Lunchtime conversation ranged from who we are (how he came to the ministry, how I came to the rabbinate), to community and the Berkshires, to architecture and how it shapes the worship experience, to brokenness and wholeness, to the tension between love of liturgy and the desire to facilitate an accessible experience of prayer, to the desire to help (and how frustrating, and valuable, it is to be reminded that making things better isn't always in our hands), to Jewish Renewal and the emergent church, to deep ecumenism, to what it might mean if we understand ourselves to be walking parallel paths toward the same ineffable Source. And more. 

One of this blog's origin stories goes, "I started Velveteen Rabbi because I wanted to be having conversations about God and prayer and scripture, and my local friends were good sports about listening to me ramble, but I knew they were basically humoring me. I wanted to be engaged in conversations about all of this, so I started blogging." The pleasant surprise, five years in, is that my circle of conversationalists has been broadening both online and off. And today I got to make another online relationship into a f2f one, which was a treat. Thanks for lunch, James! Next time it's on me.

Technorati tags: religion, bloggers, Pittsfield.

This week's portion: Shall (Emor)

SHALL (EMOR)

And God said to Moses
When you reap the harvest of your land
you shall take choice flour, clear oil of beaten olives
they shall be holy
you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger

No man of your offspring throughout the ages
may eat of the food of his God
he shall not enter behind the curtain
None shall defile himself,
it will not be accepted in your favor

You shall not leave any of it until morning
You shall count off seven weeks,
you shall celebrate each in its appointed time,
you shall observe this
I am the Lord

 

---

This week's Torah poem is a cento, a kind of patchwork poem composed entirely of found lines. Some centos draw from multiple sources; others draw from a single source, but the lines wind up (ideally) recontextualized in their juxtaposition. Mary E. Moore has written a lovely cento which draws  on Emily Dickinson, and this one from the SemiCento project draws on sources from Dante and Shakespeare to Thich Nhat Hanh and Old Norse eddas.

As you've probably guessed, the lines in this cento are from this week's parsha, Emor (JPS translation.)There's much in this portion which evokes an intellectual response in me, from the injunction against priests coming in contact with death to the various laws having to do with blemishes (forbidden both in priests and in sacrifices -- as though blemished creatures were improper transformers, incapable of stepping-down God's high voltage into the gentle form with which we can interact.)

But when I went into the portion with an eye toward finding lines for this cento, the verses and half-verses that leapt out at me weren't necessarily the same ones that make me want to respond in prose. That's part of the joy of this practice: in digging my fingers through the portion, I find gems I didn't realize were there.

As usual, those unable to see the audio player embedded at the top of the post, or those who want a copy of the recording, can download shall.mp3.

 

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

Joann Sfar's "The Rabbi's Cat 2"

On a cold and damp Shabbat afternoon I curled up on the couch with my cat to read Joann Sfar's delightful graphic novel The Rabbi's Cat 2.

Both Rabbi's Cat books are set in 1930s Algiers. The narrator is the eponymous feline, who eats the rabbi's talking parrot in order to shut it up and is thenceforth capable of human speech. Hijinks, as they say, ensue. The cat is in love with the rabbi's daughter Zlabya, and the rabbi decides quickly that a cat who can talk circles around him is not appropriate company for an unmarried Jewish girl. Majrum's solution? He asks to become bar mitzvah. (You can read that story in Volume 1: The Bar Mitzvah, which Pantheon graciously put online.) He asks not because he cares about God or Jewish tradition, but because he wants to be able to hang out with Zlabya, which would be more proper if he were, well, a nice Jewish cat. Meanwhile, there's a new rabbi in town, who is young, and smart, and French. Will he steal our rabbi's job -- or our cat's owner -- away?

I won't answer that question for you. If you haven't read the first book, it's worth picking up, and I don't want to spoil its twists and turns. Anyway, book two begins where book one left off.

Announcing Zeek @ Jewcy

Big news in the Jewish literary world today: Zeek, the Jewish journal of thought and culture where I'm a contributing editor, has formed a partnership with Jewcy. Zeek's new home is here.

This isn't a merger; it's a joint venture. Jewcy wants to move toward hosting a publishing network of editorial sites serving "young, culturally omnivorous [readers] looking for meaning and community," and Zeek wants more readers and a more robust and flexible web presence. From where I sit, it's a win-win.

Zeek's 2002-2007 archives are still hosted at the old domain, and they'll remain there. But new material will be published now at jewcy.com/zeek, now on a more blog-like schedule (so instead of getting a batch of new content once a month, readers will be treated to an ongoing stream of articles a few at a time.) Zeek will retain editorial independence, and we'll continue to publish our print journal (of which the most recent issue, published last month, is a 120-page anthology of Russian-Jewish art, fiction, and poetry.)

Our May online issue focuses on Israel, in celebration of Israel's 60th anniversary. The first few pieces are online now, including three poems by Rivka Miriam and Joel Schalit's interview with Beaufort director Joseph Cedar. (My contribution to the issue will go live on Tuesday, and I'll point to it when it does.) Nu, go and read -- and feel free to leave a comment, since interactivity is one of the features of the new site. Here's to a long and happy publishing marriage.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Zeek.

Day 9 of the Omer: gevurah within gevurah

Image by Pauline Frankenberg, from her series of 49 images for Counting the Omer.

Today is the second day of the second week of the counting of the Omer. According to the kabbalistic framework many of us use to give added meaning to the process, today is gevurah she'b'gevurah -- the day of boundary & discipline within the week of boundary & discipline.

The connotations of gevurah include strength, bravery, limitation, boundary, judgment. Last week was the week of chesed, overflowing lovingkindness. Gevurah is a kind of corrective to that overflowing. It's the sefirah of boundary.

During this morning's tele-davenen, I told a story that's part of the traditional morning service, but which isn't typically a part of our practice: the story of the akedah, the binding of Isaac.

Abraham is associated with the sefirah of chesed, the overflowing love and light that the tradition tells us was the first impulse of creation. Isaac is associated with gevurah, strength and boundary. The akedah is, I think, the perfect illustration of Isaac's gevurah.

You probably know the story. How God called to Abraham, and Abraham said, "hineini," here I am. How God instructed Abraham to take his son, his only one, whom he loved, up to the place where God would show him. How Abraham and Isaac and two servants went forth, and after three days Abraham saw the mountain, and he told the servants to stay put. He tied the wood to Isaac, and carried the fire and knife in his own hand.

And they went up the mountain, and Isaac asked about the lamb for the sacrifice, and Abraham said that God would see to the lamb. And then on top of the mountain Abraham bound Isaac to the altar. This is the quintessence of gevurah, boundary and discipline: Isaac allowed himself to be bound.

And Abraham raised the knife and an angel called out, "Abraham! Abraham!" And Abraham said, again, hineini. And the angel said, don't stretch out your hand against the boy. Look up and see what's right in front of you. And Abraham looked up and saw the ram caught in the thicket, and he sacrificed the ram instead of his son. And he named the mountain Adonai Yir'eh: God Will See. 

When Isaac asks about the lamb for the sacrifice, Abraham says "God will see to the lamb, my son." Same word, yir'eh. So maybe this story is about trusting that God will see to what's needed, that God will provide. And maybe this story is about learning to see the solutions that are right in front of us. And maybe this story is about submitting ourselves to the boundaries we inhabit, trusting that even if things seem constraining, expansive possibility will appear when we need it most.

Today is the day of strength within strength, boundary squared. 

May the part of us that is broken in gevurah she'b'gevurah be healed today.

 

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, akedah, Omer.

readwritepoem: Brachot 35a

BRACHOT 35A

Mishna: "what blessings are said
over fruits," etc.
What do we learn? That we bless
both before and after. On this basis
Rabbi Akiva teaches it's assur
to taste anything
without making a bracha.

The first kushiya objects:
surely this teaches
God has declared "Redeem it and eat."
Shmuel bar Nachmani adds,
what requires a song of praise
requires redemption,
but what does not does not.

In Vayikra we read "yielding a
rich increase," and in Devarim we read
"the increase of the vineyard."
Gezerah shava: the repeated word
hyperlinks the two verses.
This makes the case for blessing after, but
how do we learn to bless before?

Kal v'chomer: if the Torah
requires a blessing after the meal
when full, how much more so
when one is hungry! Indeed
to enjoy without blessing
is stealing from God,
since "the earth is God's in its fullness."

D'var acher, "The heavens are God's
but the earth God has given to men!"
The definitive teirutz:
before we bless, food belongs to God.
After we bless, it belongs to us --
so long as afterward, bellies full,
we pause to make zimun.

---

It's been a while since I've participated at readwritepoem; writing these weekly Torah poems has kept me busy! But last week I jumped the gun with my poem about parashat Kedoshim. (I'm so used to the flow of one Torah portion into the next that I forgot that last week featured special Torah readings for the festival of Pesach, a pause in the weekly lectionary.) Anyway, having already written and posted a poem for this week's portion, I've got some space for other poetry this week.

The current prompt at readwritepoem is jargon. I figured, what could be more jargon-y than Talmud? The "14 Sugyot Every Jew Should Know" online course at the Conservative Yeshiva just ended, but my two hevrutot (study partners) and I decided that we wanted to spend more time with some of the texts, so we're still studying the course material. This week it was my job to reprise a teaching from Brachot 35a. Since I was already steeping in it, it became the material for this poem.

The first draft of the poem outlined the arguments on page 35a of masechet Brachot (Tractate: Blessings) in detail. It was a decent articulation of the Talmud text but a clunky poem, so I started paring down. This draft is much shorter, but preserves some of the thicket of textual references and the back-and-forth of the dialogue, so I hope it still captures the feel of Talmud learning. And for kicks, I recorded it in gemara nigun, the traditional melody of Talmud learning. (If you can't see the audio player at the top of this post, you can download brachot.mp3.)

Read all of the contributions to the "jargon" theme in the comments to this post at readwritepoem.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, poetry, Talmud, readwritepoem. 

Beginning to wrestle

During the first few years of this blog's existence, I didn't write about Israel. Because I wanted to quietly challenge the assumption that a Judaism-focused blog must necessarily be Israel-focused. Because I figured the last thing the internet needs is another person pontificating about a place she barely knows. Because most online discourse about Israel and Palestine is hotheaded and partisan. Because time and energy and passion are limited resources, and it often seems that so much of these go to Israel that little is left for other aspects of Jewish identity and experience.

All of those reasons still hold. And yet I'm beginning to grapple with what it will mean to shift this unofficial blog policy (and, more importantly, to shift the internal focus behind it) because this summer I'm going to spend seven weeks in Jerusalem, studying in the Conservative Yeshiva Summer Program.

The primary reason for the trip is to burnish my language skills. I'll spend mornings in ulpan, beating my head against verb conjugations and vocabulary, because I need greater Hebrew fluency than I have now; I'll take a variety of classes in the afternoons, to round out my learning in other directions. But beyond these academic purposes, I hope the trip will give me a chance to begin getting to know the place and its inhabitants. Israel feels to me like a distant cousin: I know we're related, but we don't exactly have a relationship. I don't delude myself that seven weeks is enough time to really get to know any country, but it's a start.

In 1998 I went to Israel for ten days with my mother and two dozen other San Antonio Jews. Much was wonderful about that trip, not least the chance to spend ten days traveling with my mom. Much was also frustrating (especially the sense that our experience was constructed in a way that was designed to push our emotional buttons.) I came home from that trip, wrote several poems, and -- feeling unsettled by the strength of my mixed emotions -- put Israel in a mental box labeled "I'll deal with this later." 2008 marks a decade since my first trip, and it's clear to me that I need to reopen that box.

Kol b'seder in the J-blogosphere (now that Jeff Klepper's here)

Jeff Klepper helped to spark the "nusach American" folk-music liturgical tradition that shaped my Reform upbringing. In the early 1970s he and his buddy Dan Freelander, both URJ youth group leaders (at the time), teamed up to form a duo called Kol B'Seder ("Everything's Okay.") They're the source of some of my favorite tunes: melodies for "Modeh Ani" and for "Lo Alecha Hamlacha Ligmor" (you can listen to snippets of each here), not to mention this Shalom Rav and this Oseh Shalom (which Jeff wrote in Israel in '82.)

(Both of those YouTube links feature chorale and orchestra, which show off the harmonies beautifully but are a bit showier than what I'm used to. For contrast, here's Jeff singing "Shalom Rav" solo, with guitar. Some of you may remember the post I made about erev Shabbat at the URJ Biennial in 2005; Jeff was one of the song-leaders who led the postprandial song session that made me so happy.)

Jeff is a cantor (ordained by HUC-JIR in 1980) and one of the real luminaries of the Reform movement. He's also a total mensch. So it gives me joy to be able to announce that he's got a new website, complete with blog!

He's only been blogging for a couple of weeks, but he's already posted some gems, like Echad Mi Yode'a from Syra in Judeo-Arabic (featuring stories and an mp3 of the song in question), Uno Chi Sa?...When In Rome (more stories and mp3s, this time a Roman version of the same counting song) and Music & Mishkan T’filah (Jeff was one of three cantors on the editorial committee for the new Reform siddur, and he has intriguing things to say about the process of putting it together.)

If you're interested in liturgical music, and/or in one the musings of one of the smartest and kindest people I know in the Reform movement, Jeff's blog is worth checking out. Pop over and wish him moadim l'simcha and a hearty welcome to the blogosphere.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, ReformJudaism, JeffKlepper.

Release

Blessed are You, Eternal our God, sovereign of all worlds, who releases the bound.

An object at rest tends to stay at rest, and it takes all of my willpower just to overcome my yetzer ha-ra and climb out of bed this morning. I make it to North Street, where it takes another act of will to drag myself out of the car and across the street and into the yoga studio.

The instructor invites us to close our eyes, to be aware of what it's like to inhabit this body right now, and realization washes over me: being present is the only thing that's called for. Whatever practice I'm capable of is exactly the practice I need to do today. The hard part is overcoming the voice that says I won't be able to do it so I might as well not try. The part of me that hangs back at the edge of the sea, afraid to take the first step.

Source of Mercy! With loving strength, untie my tangles.

I'm tense and knotted, God. It's force of habit. I'm braced against my own mistakes. And I'm a woman in America in the twenty-first century, which means I've spent a lifetime internalizing messages about what kind of body I should have. Those messages turn my psyche into macramé. It's so easy to feel like I'm too this and not enough that and next thing I know my body is a straitjacket. Help me lower my shoulders, God. Help me open my heart.

From the straits I called to You; You answered me with expansiveness.

From the physical straits of tension and tightness. From the emotional straits of anxiety and uncertainty. From the intellectual straits of habitual thinking. From everything in me that's been coiled and yearns now to expand.

You answer me with liberation. With openings. What was cosy in the fall is starting to feel too snug; what have I outgrown? The change in light is calling me to relinquish these too-tight places and begin to unfurl. I don't know what's been germinating, what the remnants of last year have nourished in me, but You're calling me to find out.

Today is the fourth day of the Omer: netzach within chesed, endurance within lovingkindness. A day to explore the light and love, openness and generosity, that endure.

---

"Who releases the bound" is one of the fifteen morning blessings said daily.

"Untie my tangles" is from Ana b'Koach, part of the morning liturgy; also recited after Counting the Omer.

"From the straits" is a line from Psalm 118, part of Hallel, recited daily during Pesach.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, prayer.

This week's portion: Gevurah (Kedoshim)

GEVURAH (KEDOSHIM)

 

You shall not let your cattle mate with a different kind; you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed; you shall not put on cloth from a mixture of two kinds of material. --Leviticus 19:19

The mystics saw the patriarchs     as a dialectic:
Abraham overflowing     his tent always open
boundaried Isaac     (motionless on the altar)
Jacob the harmony     that makes the chord.

Once upon a time    our flocks must have mingled
our fields a patchwork     of millet and barley
linen and wool together     combed, woven, and spun.
But mixing two kinds     is God's job, not ours

our God distinguishes day      from night, rolling away
light before darkness     and darkness before light
our God separates holy    from profane, the six days
from the taste of heaven    one seed from another

or maybe we're the ones     fixated on difference
wild with the pleasure     of ordering chaos
organizing the ruminants     the sheep from the goats
Angus from Holsteins     crisp linen from silk.

But strictness too     can be destructive.
Overfocused beams    burn what's in their path.
When will we receive     the Torah of interpenetration
new Morse code boundaries     that let holiness through?

---

This week we're in parashat Kedoshim. (ETA: actually, this Shabbat we're reading a special parsha for Pesach. Next week we'll be in Kedoshim. I jumped the gun with this poem. Whoops.)

There's a ton of interesting and thought-provoking material in Kedoshim, including some powerful ethical precepts: leave the margins of one's field unharvested (for gleaners), don't taunt the deaf or place a stumbling block before the blind, don't hate your kinsfolk in your heart. Love the strangers who dwell among you, for you were strangers in the land of Mitzrayim.

But this week's poem was sparked by chapter 19, verse 19, an injunction against mixing breeds of cattle or plants in a field or fibers in a fabric. Counting the Omer means I have the sefirot on my mind, and I began this poem on the second day of the Omer, a day of gevurah (discipline/boundary) within chesed (lovingkindness.) This verse of this portion strikes me as pure gevurah -- it's all about boundary and distinction. Keeping this apart from that.

I think a case can be made that this kind of unassailable boundary is no longer helpful to us. For many of us, the semipermeable membrane has become a central metaphor. How does that change our Torah, our worldview, our lives?

If you can't see the audio player embedded in this post, or if you'd like a recording of this poem, you can download it here: gevurah.mp3.

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

The first day of the Omer

Image by Pauline Frankenberg, from her series of 49 images for Counting the Omer.

I love counting the Omer, taking note of each day between Pesach and Shavuot, between liberation and revelation. I love the kabbalistic framework which associates each of the seven weeks, and each of the days within each week, with one of the sefirot, manifestations or aspects of God.

Each evening one is meant to make the bracha for counting and then count the new day that's beginning. If one forgets a single day, one can pick up counting again, but can't make the blessing; the blessing inheres in the experience of daily mindfulness, in not dropping the thread.

I've found it surprisingly difficult to remain aware of the counting all the way through seven weeks. If you'd like help remembering to count this year, there's a great Omer resources page at NeoHasid.org, including a widget (for download or to place on a webpage; it's in the sidebar of this blog now) to remind one to count.

There are other lovely resources on that page, including recordings of different tunes for Ana b'Koach. I first encountered the prayer as part of Jewish Renewal Friday night liturgy; it's also recited during shacharit (weekday morning prayer.) Turns out it's also traditionally recited after making the blessing for counting the Omer. The prayer has seven lines, one for each day of the week and/or for each week of the Omer journey. (You can learn more about it here.)

So: today is the first day of the Omer. The first week is associated with the quality of chesed, lovingkindness; the first day of each week is associated with that same quality, so today is a day of chesed squared.

Chesed is associated with the patriarch Abraham, legendary for his hospitality (his tent was open to all comers), with the light of the first day of creation, and with boundless, flowing love. Counting the Omer calls us to embody our Abrahamic qualities today, to open our tents and our hearts, to let ourselves overflow.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Omer.

A tale of two seders

"You're surprisingly mellow for someone who's hosting a seder for thirteen people tonight," my sister said. She'd come bearing matzah and macaroons from Clear Flour Bakery, and two kinds of haroset (the Ashkenazic recipe we grew up on, plus a Persian version which we all loved), and side dishes in an insulated carrier. She and her family set the dining-room table while I hard-boiled eggs and whisked matzah balls together (and spent a while nattering with Scott, a reporter from the local paper, toward this lovely article; thanks, Scott!)

It made me happy to greet the seder objects I hadn't seen in a year. The sturdy ceramic seder plate and matching Elijah's cup which my aunt gave me when I got married. The cup I use for Miriam, a china kiddush cup given to me when I became bat mitzvah. (It was customary in our community for boys to receive kiddush cups, and girls to receive candlesticks; in hindsight, the delicate china cup painted with flowers seems like a radical gift.) Everything we placed on the table had a story to tell.

The seder was sweet. Our table was full. Everyone sang the Four Questions together; we took turns reading stanzas of R' Lynn Gottlieb's poem about cleaning out hametz; my seven-year-old nephew led us in a few verses of Dayenu. Over dinner we talked about baseball and science and travel. We sang the beginning of the traditional Birkat Hamazon and I remembered, again, that my sister and I know the same harmonies and syncopations. During Hallel we read some traditional psalms, and some decidedly non-traditional -- Hopkins, ee cummings. At the end of the seder we raced through "Had Gadya" at lightning speed.

On Sunday we set the breakfast table with our everyday pottery, and filled it with friends. Early in the seder, my friend Daniel asked why our bracha over wine featured the term ruach ha-olam ("breath of all life") instead of the more familiar melech ha-olam ("King of the universe"), and Ethan joked that he'd made my night. He kind of had, actually. I derive such pleasure from explaining the valances of different God-language, and why I like to use multiple metaphors for God (Who is beyond all language anyway.)

There are parts of the haggadah which we read on both nights, of course, either because they're central to the experience or because someone wanted to read/sing them or because I just love them. But there were a lot of readings we did on night 2 which we hadn't done on night 1 -- poems by Jay Michaelson and Martín Espada, a few classical texts with creative interpretations, and so on. The counting of the Omer, that first tentative step toward Shavuot.

Our second seder wound up both more serious, and goofier, than our first had been. I offered an impromptu explanation for the ladybug crawling on our seder plate ("it represents the Israelites who, when their bondage became too heavy, 'flew away home.'") We established that The Ballad of the Four Sons (written by Ben Aronin in 1948) can be sung to any 4/4 tune (not only "Clementine" but also "The Yellow Rose of Texas," "Ode to Joy," the Gilligan's Island theme....) When it came time for the egg course, in a nod to my San Antonio heritage (Fiesta began this weekend), we cracked cascarones on each others' heads.

 

I am so grateful to be able to fill two seder tables with family both given and chosen, and to be able to celebrate this festival of freedom with so many people I love.

 

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Pesach, seder.

Birth

The three-legged stool of the Jewish year rests on the shalosh regalim, the three great festivals which were once occasions for pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem.

Reb Arthur Waskow teaches that they map to stages in an individual life. The festival of Pesach is a kind of birth; Shavuot, which the mystics understood as the date of our marriage with God (the Torah being our ketubah), represents adulthood; and Sukkot, the harvest festival, celebrates fruition before we wind down into the snow-covered stillness of a life's winter. And then we come around to Pesach again.

Pesach is the festival of new creation; Shavuot, the festival of revelation; Sukkot, the festival of redemption. (Franz Rosensweig mapped this same trio onto the blessings surrounding the Shema: yotzer or points to the light of creation, ahavat olam speaks of God's love manifest in revelation, and the geu'lah blessing describes our redemption from slavery as a reminder of the ultimate redemption toward which we strive.) Each year we move from birth to maturity to completion, and after each fallow winter we find ourselves born again.

And Pesach is step one, a new beginning. Pesach is Chag ha-Aviv, the Festival of Spring. It's the season of lambing, first flowers, new green. A season of birth and increasing light.

Birth is a leitmotif in the Pesach story. Pharaoh orders the Israelite firstborns killed -- and then midwives Shifra and Puah defy him, the first act of resistance that midwifes the new narrative into being. The ten plagues can be seen as contractions, preparing us to leave Egypt's initially comfortable but now constricting womb. Together we pass from the constriction of Mitzrayim through the birth canal of the Sea of Reeds and into the wide expansiveness of freedom. We're starting over, all of us together.

In the Temple of old, fifteen steps led up to the altar where we brought korbanot, sacrifices which drew-us-near to the Holy Blessed One. The seder we celebrate now unfolds through fifteen steps, a chance to make intangible offerings on the altar of our hearts. On this festival of spring, what are you bringing to draw you near? Having come through the Sea of Reeds, what songs will you sing?

 

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Pesach.