Velveteen Rabbi

Song for the seventh day

In my Moadim l'Simcha class ("Seasons of our Rejoicing" -- the class on the Hasidic spiritual year) we've been reading a difficult but beautiful text from Netivot Shalom by Rabbi Shalom Noach Barzovsky, the Slonimer Rebbe. (For those who are curious, there's a partial translation of Netivot Shalom online here.) The text we're reading is a commentary on parashat Beshalach, the Torah portion which contains the crossing of the Sea of Reeds and the "Song of the Sea" which the Israelites sing on the far shore. Traditionally, this text is studied on the seventh day of Pesach, which in the rabbinic understanding is the day when the Israelites actually took the leap of plunging into the waters.

The Slonimer writes that there are three levels of emunah, "faith" or "trust": the emunah of the heart, the emunah of the mind, and the emunah of the body. And the highest of these is the emunah of the body. When we fully embody our faith in God, then the divine presence dwells in us, and that is when we are able to sing the song our redemption song. (I blogged about this a few years ago in a post called Embodied trust, after reading part of this text in translation. In this class we're reading the text in the original, which is more challenging but proportionally more rewarding, too.) Beneath the extended-entry tag I'd like to unpack this text a little further, and share some of what touches me in it.

Meditation on dew

Image courtesy of flickr user PentaxFanatiK

On the first day of Pesach, our daily liturgy changes subtly. There's a place in the amidah -- the standing prayer central to every Jewish service -- where we recite a one-line prayer for rain during the winter, and a one-line prayer for dew during the summer. This is the day when we mark that shift, and we commemorate it by reciting a special prayer called tefilat tal, the prayer for dew.

What follows is a tiny meditation on tefilat tal, the prayer for dew.

In my community we no longer daven musaf on Shabbat or festivals. Today this will be our musaf: this chance to stand before God -- whatever we understand that term to mean: God far above, or God deep within -- and together recite tefilat tal, the prayer for dew.

Geshem and tal: rain and dew. We pray for each in its season, geshem all winter and tal as summer approaches...not here in the Berkshires, necessarily, but in the land of Israel where our prayers have their roots.

In a desert climate, water is clearly a gift from God. It's easy for us to forget that, here with all of this rain and snow. But our liturgy reminds us.

Through the winter months, during our daily amidah we've prayed "mashiv ha-ruach u-morid ha-gashem" -- You cause the winds to blow and the rains to fall! We only pray for rain during the rainy season, because it is frustrating both to us and to God when we pray for impossibilities.

Today we recite a special prayer for dew -- and from here on out, during the daily amidah we pray "morid ha-tal," praising God for creating life-giving dew. As we daven this prayer, notice how it feels to return to the word "tal" which ends each line; this prayer mirrors the Arabic poetic form called ghazal, and that repeated end-word is like a refrain.

Throughout the Psalms, dew represents blessing, a gift from God.

Dew is sustenance which arises as if by magic. Overnight, something mysterious occurs and when we wake water gilds the grasses and the fields. (Of course, the scientific processes are well-understood -- I'm sure it has something to do with temperatures and condensation -- but I prefer to think of dew as a mystery.) Dew represents divine grace: omnipresent, mysterious, blessing everyone equally no matter who we are.

The imagery of tefilat tal is sweet. We ask God to let dew drop sweetly on the blessed land, to let dew sweeten the honey of the hills. Sweet water is required in order for us to inhabit the land -- both the land of Israel, and this land of the Berkshires where we have made our home.

I see the prayer for dew as a chance to practice gratitude for everything necessary and wonderful and ineffable which sustains us. Maybe it's the literal dew you'll find in a few months on the strawberry leaves at Caretaker Farm, where I see so many friends on Shabbat once summer gets underway; maybe it's something more metaphorical. What is the dew for which you are most grateful?

What does it mean to you to rise and be grateful for dew?

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, dew, Pesach.

A poem for Pesach

Pesach is almost upon us! Tomorrow I'll wake up early for birkat ha-chamah, detour to Pittsfield to pick up a dozen haggadot from Staples, and then high-tail it for Boston to have seder with my sister and her family.

As a holiday gift, I offer one of my favorite Pesach preparation poems. (This appears in my haggadah, so those of you who use the Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah for Pesach may recognize it from previous years...) I doubt I'll be online at all tomorrow, so: for those of you who celebrate, may your Pesach journey be sweet!

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ORDER

Breakfast on kosher macaroons and Diet Pepsi
in the car on the way to Price Chopper for lamb.

Peel five pounds of onions and let the Cuisinart
shred them while you push them down and weep.

Call your mother because you know she’s preparing
too, because you want to ask again whether she cooks

matzah balls in salted water or broth, because you can.
Crumble boullion cubes like clumps of wet sand.

Remember the precise mixing order, beating
then stirring then folding, so that for one moment

you can become your grandfather.
Remember the year he taught you this trick

not the year his wife died scant weeks before seder
and he was already befuddled when you came home.

Realize that no matter how many you buy
there are never quite enough eggs at Pesach

especially if you need twelve for the kugel
and eighteen for the kneidlach and another dozen

to hardboil and dip in bowls of stylized tears.
Know you are free! What loss. What rejoicing.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Pesach, poetry.

Exiting Mitzrayim

One more quick Blessing the Sun note: Nava Tehila, the Jewish Renewal community of Jerusalem (about whom I have posted before; here's my review of their latest cd) has posted music for the blessing of the sun. At that website you can stream audio-only or you can watch them perform the tunes via YouTube. Whether or not you're planning to learn their music in time for Birkat ha-Chamah, it's beautiful stuff and well worth a listen.

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Rabbi Jill Jacobs has posted a pdf designed to be a haggadah bookmark, which contains a short text about exiting the Mitzrayim (narrow place) of despair in these dark financial times. It's here: Escape from the New Mitzrayim [pdf].

I've been thinking lately about what constitutes the personal Mitzrayim from which I need liberation this year. I want to be liberated from feeling myself constricted by things that are tough: the economy, finances, health problems plaguing people I love. Facing the economic nightmare is difficult. Facing the reality that we live in fragile bodies which don't always work is difficult. When I'm at my best, I think I can respond to these truths with equanimity and grace. But lately I've struggled with overwhelm, which is self-perpetuating. It's hard to wake up with modah ani ("I am grateful before You...") on my lips when I'm feeling like the tough stuff is hemming me in.

Again I return to the distinction between ontology and epistemology, between the way things "actually are" and the way I perceive them to be. The ontology of the situation isn't likely to change anytime soon, and beyond that, it's not under my control. I can't change the world financial situation. I can't change the reality that we live in bodies which break. What I can change is my reaction to things-as-they-are. I can change how I experience them, by committing myself to recognizing that I can feel expansive, liberated, grateful even though the world isn't always an easy place to live.

Everything hangs on that even though. I have to find a way to feel grateful for the innumerable blessings in my life even though other things are tough. I have to find a way to understand (again) that I'm always already liberated, that the freedom we celebrate at Pesach is always real. That's what redemption means. We speak in our liturgy about God Who redeems us from slavery -- that's always ongoing.

In every generation we're commanded to see ourselves as though we, ourselves, had been liberated from Mitzrayim. This year, I think my Mitzrayim is the feelings of overwhelm in which I've allowed myself to become constricted. Pesach offers me a reminder, and an opportunity, to commit myself to breaking free. (If this way of thinking is fruitful for you, I'd love to see others' responses to the question of "from what do you need to be liberated this year" -- as comments on this post, or as posts on your own blogs.)

That said: as much as I love the reading of the Pesach story which holds that we can understand the  Exodus as a parable of self-actualization and liberation from internal constriction, there's a danger in that reading. One can become so absorbed in navel-gazing that one forgets that the entire world is in need of redemption. Rabbi Jill's haggadah insert reminds me of that. She writes:

By giving tzedakah, by working for policies that will create opportunity for everyone, and by helping to create a more just society, we too can make the divine presence evident among us, even – or especially – in difficult times, and will lift ourselves collectively out of the narrowness of Mitzrayim.

The Exodus was a corporate experience. Our story tells us that the Israelites and a "mixed multitude" left Egypt together, fleeing constriction and heading toward a new life of liberation and covenant. My own personal story of liberation each year has to be balanced with an awareness of our communal story of liberation -- and with the obligation to act to help lift others out of constriction, too.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Pesach.

Poetry and Pesach at JBooks

JBooks.com is perennially chock-full of good stuff. The handful of pieces which have been posted for the start of April and the Passover season are especially up my alley. Because, as the editors note, April is National Poetry Month (a month-long chag/holiday for those who hold poetry sacred) and this year April holds Pesach as well. What fertile ground for exploration!

My teacher David Lehman was invited to reflect on one of my favorite quotations from Harvey Cox (which appears in my own haggadah), about opening the door for an Elijah who is always a no-show. His piece is here (available both in finished form, and in a slow-mo version which allows the reader access into David's every keystroke as he composed the poem.)

Poet Joy Katz, in her essay Jewish Poetry?, explores questions of what makes a Jewish poem, and then uses the parable of the Four Children (wise, wicked, simple, and the one who does not know how to ask -- from the Passover haggadah) to explore four types of Jewish poetry.

And the editors there kindly invited me to share some reflections on the intersection of National Poetry Month and Pesach, which I did, in an essay called "All Who Are Hungry." Here's a taste:

Hametz comes from the verb l'chimutz, to sour or ferment. In the Hasidic imagination, hametz represents the sourness or puffery of excessive ego. Hametz is that within us which needs to be winnowed away.

The obligation to winnow is familiar to any poet. The weeks leading up to Pesach invite each of us to revise her life, cutting away the lines which don't serve the greater purpose of her poem.

You can read my essay in full here: All Who Are Hungry. Thanks for soliciting it, JBooks!

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, JBooks, poetry, Pesach.

A pre-Pesach miscellany

Jewish Woman on DIY haggadot:

The Spring 2009 issue of Jewish Woman Magazine features a lovely article called D.I.Y Seder. The writer, Rahel Musleah, included a fair amount of material from the interview she did with me several months ago on this subject. The article begins, in fact, with an anecdote I think I've shared here before:

When Rachel Barenblat's parents visited her from Texas five Passovers ago, several years had passed since the family had been together for the Seders. She and her sister—who both live in Massachusetts—had been using the "homegrown" haggadah Barenblat had written, a revealingly personal amalgam of the traditional text with feminist, creative and contemporary readings and poems. But she worried that her parents would miss the haggadah they were used to. "No one had ever questioned it, so I thought my haggadah would be strange and uncomfortable for them. It would be like...eating pasta on Thanksgiving instead of turkey." But her mother's face fell when she saw the stack of 20 old-fashioned haggadot Barenblat had bought and borrowed. "Oh," she said, "I thought we were going to do something different!" Barenblat had one copy of her haggadah. She adapted it for the children who were going to be present, and had it reproduced and bound for everyone by the evening...

The article does a lovely job of describing the joys and challenges of the roll-your-own haggadah phenomenon. And I'm delighted to share the page with Tamar Fox from MyJewishLearning.com and poet Marge Piercy, among others. The full text of the article is online, which is grand (though naturally I encourage those who are able to pick up a copy of the magazine.) Read it here.

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A miscellany of Pesach-related links:

Reb Zalman has recently posted a couple of excellent resources for Pesach. Here's a link to his post on the Afikoman, and here's a teaching called Of four children revised.

If you want to create your own haggadah from scratch, you can buy the texts of the classical haggadah (for DavkaWriter, Word for Windows, or Mellel II) for under $20. I've also just learned about JewishFreeware.org, which seems like the latest variation on the Open Source Judaism theme. (Hat tip to the Jewish Woman article; I hadn't known about Jewish Freeware before I read that piece.)

If your sensibilities lean toward earth-based Judaism, Ketzirah puts out a beautiful haggadah called the Peelapom Haggadah. She writes, "This haggadah is the result of several years of work to incorporate a Earth-based Magickal Judaism sensibility to a haggadah that will also be enjoyed by friends and family." Usually $18, this year she's selling copies for $5 in celebration of its fifth anniversary.

And of course there is always my own Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah for Pesach, which aims to marry traditional texts with contemporary poetry and creative, joy-filled interpretations. (The most recent version is 6.0, so if you have an earlier version -- perhaps one with 2004 or 2006 on the cover -- I recommend downloading the newest version. It is free.)

In the realm of truly gorgeous haggadot, I can't resist linking again to The David Moss Haggadah (here's my post about meeting him & buying the version I could afford.) David's haggadah is one of the most thoughtful, artful, gorgeous Pesach resources I know.

On a more humorous note -- you've probably all seen this already, but in case you haven't: Moses is departing Egypt, a Facebook haggadah. Ahahaha. It's probably the kind of thing that won't be funny anymore in five years, and in ten years it will be utterly baffling, but right now it's hilarious.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Pesach, haggadah.

Haggadah for Pesach!

Hello from Argentina! I have wonderful stories to tell...when we are home again. For now, I'm popping in to offer this, since a few folks have emailed to ask. There's no new version of the Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah for Pesach this year; I'll be using last year's version again, and hope some of y'all will, too.

The Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah for Pesach, version 6.0 [.pdf download]

Praise for the haggadah, version 6:

• Your haggadah is stunning and I am so excited that you posted it; I have been having a ton of anxiety about not having the time to put together my own seder this year, and lo and behold—your haggadah gets posted. And I am liberated! -- Ellen Bernstein

• This haggadah is truly amazing. Passover has always been my very favorite holiday, but as my political sensibilities have evolved, the celebration has become tinged with the constrictions of patriarchy and culture-boundness. I have longed for newer traditions that might challenge my family to collectively expand our understanding of oppression, and what our role is in interrupting it for not just Jews, but for all who suffer. -- Bree

• For the second seder this year, I knew that I was going to have a diverse group of guests and was looking for a haggadah that would help make it traditional enough for everyone to experience a ritual that would be recognizable to Jews anywhere, but accessible enough for everyone to connect without difficulty. With your help, it was an amazing experience for all - 6 Jews (secular to Orthodox, Ashkenazi and Sefardi, American and Finnish), 3 Tibetan Buddhists, 1 French Catholic, and 1 German Presbyterian. -- Rabbi Rebecca Joseph

The most current version of the haggadah will always be called VRHaggadah.pdf, and will be available at the same URL where this one is, so next year you'll be able to find (hopefully) version 7.0 there as well! Creating the haggadah is a real mechaieh (life-giver) for me; sharing it with others is even more so, and I hope you enjoy. Feel free to use, to share, and/or to adapt at will; all I ask is that you share the material for free and credit apropriately.

Wishing all of you a sweet journey into Passover-time. Talk to y'all soon when I am home again!

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, JewishRenewal, Pesach, haggadah.

The most beautiful haggadah

I came to Israel with the intention of buying myself a new tallit. I love the tallitot I have, very much. But I've been yearning for one in a different style -- the kind of big square tallit I can really wrap up in -- and I've also been contemplating getting a tallit with  rainbow stripes, given the importance Jewish Renewal accords to the kabbalistic qualities represented by the colors of the rainbow. (Here's one account of how Reb Zalman created the original Bnai Or rainbow tallit.)

On Sunday, after my last class of the day, I walked down the hill to the artists' colony near the walls of the Old City. In a window there I found a big tallit with muted rainbow stripes. The studio was closed, but I called the number posted on the door. The man who answered explained that he couldn't return to the studio that evening, because the British prime minister was in town and the streets of his neighborhood were therefore closed to traffic. But we agreed I'd drop by another time to see the tallit and try it on for size. (Of course, I completely forgot to ask what it costs; here's hoping it will be within my price range!)

Anyway, I left that studio and went a couple of doors down, drawn by the sight of spectacular calligraphy and word-art in a window. When I realized what I was looking at, I was gobsmacked; I'd accidentally stumbled on the studio of David Moss.

An image from the Moss Haggadah: part of the 4 Sons spread.

In 1983, David Moss created The Moss Haggadah. It's a single-edition handmade haggadah, in the tradition of medieval illuminated manuscripts, and each page is a work of art. I've read about it, I've seen photographs online, but I hadn't realized that the artist's studio lies along the first route I walked between the Old City and my house, on my very first excursion to the Old City the first week I was in town.

He was on the phone when I walked in, making arrangements to fly out that night, so he opened a book in front of me and beckoned for me to look inside. It was a limited-edition facsimile edition of the haggadah. I moved through it page by page, completely spellbound. Every word of the traditional haggadah is there. The calligraphy is gorgeous. But what's really amazing is the artistry of the individual pages -- the papercuts, the illustrations, the symbolism behind every detail! Every page blows me away.

And then he opened up the companion volume: commentary about every page, references to source texts, explanations of his artistic choices. Why the Four Sons are depicted as playing cards (and the implications of using southern European card symbols rather than northern European ones), and which Hebrew blessing he chose to accompany each of the four sons in spirals of tiny tight words.

When he got off the phone, he came over and extended his hand and asked, "Hello; who are you?" I introduced myself and told him that I'm a huge fan of his work (I think I managed not to sound like a complete fangirl, but it was touch-and-go for a while there) and that I too have created a haggadah (The Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah for Pesach v. 6.0 [pdf]) -- though it doesn't begin to hold a candle to his.

The edition through which I had so reverently paged turns out to be the Song of David Facsimile Edition, a limited edition of 500 copies. (All have been sold; today copies cost about $45,000.) There's also a deluxe artists' edition (two large hardcover volumes, one featuring the haggadah and one featuring the commentary; heavy cardstock paper, gilt lettering, papercuts and all) which costs $595, and a simpler standard edition (a single hardcover book, smaller than the other editions; printed on glossy paper, though no papercuts or hand-attached mirrors) for $195.

After I spent half an hour in David's studio, admiring his other work and chatting with him about what he does and how he does it, I couldn't resist making a purchase. I bought the simplest and cheapest edition of his haggadah (and told him that maybe when I get smicha I'll invest in one of his prints, or upgrade to the artists' edition!) Given my deep love of the haggadah (in both its classical and creative forms), and given the importance of Pesach in my spiritual life and my nascent rabbinate, and given how utterly glorious I find David's labor of love, it was clear to me that this is a book I really need to own.

I can't wait to read all of the commentary page by page...and I know that every time I open my coffee-table-book edition, I'll remember what it felt like to stand in David's Jerusalem studio leafing through the truly limited edition, and his art will once again take my breath away.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, haggadah, DavidMoss.

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.