Velveteen Rabbi

Notes from Shabbat Shuvah at Elat Chayyim, fall 2003 / 5764

From my journal, October 2003 / Tishrei 5764:

Elat Chayyim is every bit as fantastic as I remembered. When I arrived on Friday, I had this feeling of, "It's real! It's really here! I didn't make it up!" I walked around like I was in a dream.

The first thing we did on Friday night was daven the evening prayers, and I was transported. I really, really like the way they think about prayer here. I like the melodies, I like how easy they are to learn, I like that the focus is on saying fewer words with kavanah (intent) rather than saying lots of words. I like their approach to God-language. I like how prayer services become a vehicle for learning new things.

Saturday's classes were with Rabbi Miles Krassen. We studied a text by R' Schneur Zalman of Liadi, about teshuvah (turning/returning oneself toward God) and preparing for the Days of Awe. We covered a few interesting topics, among them ultimate reality, higher and lower levels of soul, the purpose of Yom Kippur, humans and angels, the views from different states of consciousness, the purpose of creation, transcendent God and immanent God, the true longing of the soul, Jacob-soul and Yisrael-soul, what it means that many religions have similar mystical teachings, the nature of mystical union, and how to prepare for Yom Kippur.

Saturday night we had a short havdalah service (the service separating Shabbat from the rest of the week). I always love havdalah: the singing, the wine, the spices, the flame. Word had come that there had been another bombing in Israel, so we sang a song to awaken compassion in ourselves. We sang it in Hebrew and English; the words in English are, "On behalf of my brothers and friends/ on behalf of my sisters and friends/ let me ask, let me sing, peace to you./ This is the house, the house of God/ I wish the best for you..." I found myself wondering: what does it mean to "wish the best" even for those who hurt us? Is that even possible? I found myself weeping.

After havdalah came more class; by the time we went to bed, my brain was completely full. So much to carry with me into Yom Kippur!

 

I know now that the melody we sang at that havdalah, the song meant to awaken compassion in ourselves, is L'maan achai v're-ai by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach:

R' Shlomo Carlebach sings "For The Sake Of My Brothers And Friends."

If you can't see the embedded video, you can go directly to it at YouTube.

This Shabbat Shuvah retreat, back in 2003, was my second time at Elat Chayyim. There was something amazing about discovering that this community of passionate and committed spiritual seekers was still real, that I hadn't dreamed it up the first time I went.

The awful news we mourned that night at havdalah was the Maxim restaurant bombing. I hope and pray for comfort for the families of the victims as Shabbat Shuvah approaches once again. I hope and pray for comfort for all who are impacted by cycles of hatred and violence, there and everywhere.

I wish I knew which texts from R' Schneur Zalman we studied with R' Miles Krassen that weekend. I'd love to return to them now. My jotted scribblings suggest that we talked about what the text called "lower" teshuvah (repenting for our misdeeds) and "higher" teshuvah (a kind of reaching-for-God in response to the knowledge that we are alienated from our Source.)

Shabbat Shuvah means "Shabbat of Return," and the name is meant to evoke teshuvah, repentance / returning-to-God. That first Shabbat Shuvah retreat I attended was when I first learned to sing "return again, return again, return to the land of your soul" -- which felt, at the time, like a chant about returning to Elat Chayyim and to conscious community, but which also carries a much deeper truth.

Shabbat, Shabbat Shuvah, Yom Kippur -- all of these are opportunities to connect with God, to make teshuvah, to re/turn to the place where we live out our highest aspirations and our hearts feel most unfettered and free.

Shabbat shalom, y'all.

Ten years in Jewish Renewal

The main house at the old Elat Chayyim in Accord, NY.

(my journal, August 5, 2002)

Seeing so many people in kippot startles me.

[at my first dinner] Sat with [name redacted], who talked about the power of laying tefillin, which makes me want to try it...

In August of 2002 I went for the first time to Elat Chayyim, the Jewish Renewal retreat center which was then located in Accord, New York. (It has since become the Elat Chayyim Center for Jewish Spirituality at Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, but my first visit was many years before that change happened.) That week-long retreat was my first taste of Jewish Renewal outside of books. A first big step on what I didn't yet know was my life's path.

I remember that feeling of startlement at seeing so many people wearing kippot. I wondered, at the time, what my reaction said about me; in hindsight, I think what it said was that I was completely unaccustomed to being around ardent Jews who were comfortable being visible in their Jewishness! (And I remind myself, whenever I bring my family into ALEPH contexts, that my family now is likely to be as startled by the sight as I was then...)

On the Jewish calendar, that first retreat included the first day of Elul. That's when I learned the melody for psalm 27, Achat Sha'alti, which I still pray and sing and teach today. This year, we're about two weeks short of that Jewish anniversary. But on the Gregorian calendar, that first retreat began ten years ago today. The anniversary gives me a good excuse to remember that first retreat, and to reflect on these ten years I've been blessed to spend in Jewish Renewal community.

Yom Kippur 5770

1. I wear my prayer shawl at night

Kol Nidre is the only night of the year when we wear our tallitot (prayer shawls). Usually the prayer shawl is worn only for morning prayer. But Yom Kippur is considered by the tradition to be one long day filled with light. On this one night of the year, we don tallitot just before the Kol Nidre service (before evening has fallen) and we wear them throughout the day. We don't make the blessing when we don them again in the morning, because in a spiritual sense, it's as though we never took them off. We spend the whole night and day wrapped in holiness, enfolded in Presence.

---

2. Knocking

When we recite the vidui (confessional prayer), we can knock on our hearts ("anybody home?"), we can gently massage our hearts (to get them to open), we can tap harder to break what needs to be broken-open in us. Only we know what kind of knocking we need.

On Yom Kippur we focus on all the places where we've missed the mark in the last year, all the ways in which we've failed to live up to who we know we can be. We ask ourselves: if this were the day of my death, if the work of my life had to stand as it is right now, through what would I be remembered?

But at the same time, on Yom Kippur we are incredibly close to the Holy One of Blessing. The gates of repentance are open to anyone who approaches them with an open heart. There is an infinite source of love available to us, and we are always already forgiven. We just have to come knocking.

One last post before Yom Kippur

I'm off to Elat Chayyim / Isabella Freedman today to spend Yom Kippur on retreat. Earlier in the summer I was sad that I didn't find a student pulpit within driving distance of home (my doctors would prefer that I not fly during my third trimester), but now that the chagim are upon us -- and now that I see where my energy levels are in week 30 of the pregnancy -- I'm grateful to have the gift of a holiday when I can sink into my own experience and do my own internal work. There will be many years ahead when I get to return to serving others during this time of year.

Before I go, I wanted to point y'all to two posts I've made here during this season in years past:

• Grab-bag of resources for Yom Kippur -- A post filled with resources for those who might be celebrating Y"K on their own, or who might want some personal/spiritual material for reflection to augment their more traditional observance.

• Thirteen ways of looking at Yom Kippur -- About my last Yom Kippur at Elat Chayyim, two years ago. Thirteen short thoughts / meditations on the holiday; I hope they add light to this solemn day.

I wish all of you a g'mar chatimah tovah -- may you be sealed in the book of Life for a good year to come.

DLTI links roundup

I find myself reluctant to stop blogging about DLTI -- as if ceasing to blog about the program would mean it was really and truly over. I imagine that the experience will continue to find its way into my writing, both here and elsewhere...but it's probably time to draw the series of posts written during the program itself to a close.

For easy reference, a final links round-up post. One way to navigate this material is through the DLTI category; that link will bring you to all of the posts on a single page, in reverse-chronological order. Or, if you prefer, here's a series of snapshots of the experience as it unfolded:

• Week 1 at DLTI

• DLTI: 4 worlds, week 2, post 1

• DLTI (week 2) post 2: gleanings

• First thoughts on week 3 of DLTI

• Religion, and the 3-petalled iris (DLTI week 3, post 2)

• Approaching our last week of DLTI

• Ineffable week 4 of DLTI

• Shabbat gleanings: DLTI week 4, post 2

• Shabbat mincha poem

I was part of DLTI-4 (the fourth cohort to enter into the journey of the program.) A few of my dear friends are already enrolled in DLTI-5, the next iteration of the program, which begins in August. I envy them a little: they're about to embark on something truly extraordinary. I look forward to reliving the experience vicariously through their stories...as, perhaps, others have relived the experience through mine.

I can't thank my chevre, or my teachers, enough.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, JewishRenewal, ALEPH, DLTI.

Thirteen ways of looking at Yom Kippur

1. Homecoming

It's always a little bit hard to explain why I so deeply love going to Elat Chayyim for Yom Kippur. The answer has something to do with what I feel when I first drive across the threshold: gladness, relief, gratitude that the place and its community exist and that I have been blessed to find them. My first visit to Elat Chayyim was five years ago, at the old site in Accord, and I didn't know what I would find there. Ever since then, returning to Elat Chayyim feels like my soul is coming home.

First thoughts on week 3 of DLTI

It's funny, I said to Reb Shawn on Friday morning. Even if you'd tried to tell me during week one how remarkable this process was going to be -- how it would change my relationship with the liturgy, with the act of prayer, and with God -- I don't think I could have heard you. I had to live it.

Toward the end of week one, our teachers offered a rubric for understanding how we assimilate new skills into our toolboxes. First comes awareness -- aha! There are things I need to know (and maybe I didn't even realize I didn't know them!) Then comes awkwardness -- oy, now I know what I've been doing wrong, but that knowledge doesn't yet enable me to do things differently. Then comes skillfulness, when the work becomes transparent and we can work within it and be changed by it. And finally, integration.

Week three of DLTI is the week of skillfulness, when we find ourselves dipping into the liturgy in deep ways we couldn't have done in week one (the week of learning just how much we didn't know) or week two (the week of bumping into our mistakes and our baggage around those mistakes.) This week, we really started to soar.

The first night, when we gathered in the sanctuary after dinner for our opening program and for prayer, the energy in the room buzzed and crackled. When we started davening maariv (the evening service) we clicked right into the groove of evening prayer together as though we had never been apart. That feeling persisted for me all week -- it was like this kahal (community) and I had been praying together all along, every day since we parted in February. In a way, I think, we had. We carry one another in our hearts.

I entered DLTI looking for liturgical leadership skills, and I'm definitely getting them. I'm learning a lot about our liturgy; how to work within and augment it, how the pieces fit together and what they mean. But more than that, DLTI is teaching me how to pray, how to connect with the liturgy's big ideas and to speak with God from where I genuinely am. The practical skills arise out of emotional and spiritual growth. This isn't just about learning how to do stuff. It's about opening myself to transformation, and then leading prayer out of that new place.

How was week three of DLTI? Honestly awesome. It's amazing to see my colleagues grow -- not only as leaders-of-prayer, but also as leaders in our community, and as daveners in their own individual ways. It's amazing to see how we flourish within the structure of this program and this community, and how that structure and safety allows us to blossom. I think we really embodied prayerful consciousness, both within davenen and in the flow of our days outside of formal prayer time, and that gave rise to some pretty awesome stuff. (I know I surprised myself with the ways I was able to stretch and shine.)

There's more I want to say. As I process the week more fully, dip back into my journal and my notes, and also make headway in the work of email triage and re-entry into my ordinary life, I'll post more. But at least this is a start. In the tiniest nutshell, the kernel of what I want to convey is: Holy wow. I feel so blessed.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, DLTI.

Off to DLTI week 3

I'm off today for week three of DLTI!

If you'd like to be reminded exactly where I am and what I'm doing again, here are a few previous posts on the subject: Week 1 of DLTI (written last summer, after the first week of the program); DLTI: 4 worlds, week 2, post 1 and DLTI post 2: gleanings (about the second week of the program, which was back in February.) I imagine I'll post something about the third week of the program after I get home, in the fullness of time.

I don't expect to be online during the week of this retreat, so -- take good care of the internet (and yourselves, and each other), and I'll see you when I'm home again.

Shavua tov / have a good week!

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, dlti.

Five years of Elat Chayyim

Five years ago today I left for my first visit to Elat Chayyim. That's on the Gregorian (secular) calendar, of course; on the Jewish calendar that was the 27th of Av, and today is the 21st of Av, so we're off by about a week. Still, though -- by one reckoning, today marks five years since I first set foot on the Elat Chayyim campus.

That was the old Elat Chayyim, housed in a former Catskills hotel in Accord, NY. I remember parking my car, walking slowly and a little bit uncertainly to the main building to check in, and wondering what exactly I had gotten myself in for and whether the place could or would fulfill any of the dreams and expectations I couldn't help having.

That was before this blog began, so there's no record of my first Elat Chayyim week here in these pages. I spent mornings in R' Jeff Roth's Jewish meditation workshop, and afternoons studying tikkun olam with R' Arthur Waskow. I had my first taste of weekday shacharit in many years -- this time, davening in a yurt, seated cross-legged on meditation cushions, learning chants that matched each of the basic morning prayers. (We had the option of choosing "traditional" or "interpretive" morning prayer. Today I enjoy both; but oh, I'm glad I chose the interpretive davenen then!) For the first time, I saw women laying tefillin, which was awesome and attractive and a little bit overwhelming.

I had a lot of firsts that week. My first "mishpacha group" (a kind of ad-hoc family, a group with whom one processes the emotional roller-coaster of any week-long retreat), my first real conversation with God (walking in the fields and speaking quietly aloud, after the practice of Reb Nachman of Breslov), my first mikvah, my first Jewish Renewal Shabbat. I felt increasingly comfortable, at-home, luminous as the week went on.  By the end of that week I knew that I had found my Jewish tribe, and that someday when I felt ready to work formally toward becoming a rabbi I wanted to do it with this community, because the rabbis who had led our learning and davenen all week were the kind of rabbi I aspired to be.

Five years: that's all. On the calendar, it's a nothing, an eyeblink. And honestly, in lived time it doesn't feel like it's been that long.

And yet. Tomorrow I'll head back to Elat Chayyim -- in its new home at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center -- for the third week of DLTI, the two-year davenen leadership training program run by ALEPH. I've long since lost count of how many times I've been to Elat Chayyim; it is home for me now. And so is Jewish Renewal. I'm an ALEPH rabbinic student. Many of the teachers who first awed me during that first Elat Chayyim week are now beloved colleagues and, I hope, friends. I am -- baruch Hashem! -- on my way, learning how to live up to their example.

When I stop to think about how my life has been changed by that first week at Elat Chayyim, it takes my breath away. I'm overwhelmingly grateful to that place, and to the people who enliven it -- hell, to Rodger Kamenetz for writing The Jew in the Lotus which sent me looking for Reb Zalman which brought me to Elat Chayyim which led me right to where I am. So thanks, everyone. It's been an incredible first five years. I can't wait to see what the next five will bring.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, JewishRenewal.

DLTI: 4 worlds, week 2, post 1

When people ask, "so how was the second week of DLTI?" I'm not sure how to answer. The one-word response is "amazing," but that doesn't tell you very much, does it?

So I'm going to try a four worlds response.

I can answer the question on the level of assiyah, actions and physicality, by telling you that most of my colleagues made it to snowbound Elat Chayyim eventually (and that we deeply missed the few who couldn't be present in person), and that our days together were packed. We davened three times a day -- though on a different schedule than in summertime, because winter days have a different physical rhythm. Mostly this meant our days were denser. We still began and ended each day with prayer, but those dips into davenen happened closer together. Sun rises later, and so did we -- though we ended our days well after sunset, because there was just so much to do.

Again, after each weekday shacharit (morning service) we re-opened the service in "lab" so everyone could learn from the experience of critique and re-creation. (Imagine live-action workshopping of service leadership: we weren't just discussing morning prayer, we were asked to immerse in it again in realtime even as we discussed it.) This time students led everything, even the davening on Shabbat. We built on what we learned last time about the matbeah (deep structure) of Jewish prayer. We began learning the Shabbat morning nusach (melody-system) and how it differs from what's done on weekdays. Any moment when we weren't actively in session, we were clustered around in small groups, planning the services which were yet to come.