Velveteen Rabbi

A weekend's ordinary joys

A paper-flower crown for Shavuot, featuring three of our son's four names.

A Shabbat service where my community's students -- from first grade through seventh grade -- sang the prayers and songs we'd been practicing, to their parents' obvious delight. The gusto with which they banged on the drums.

A wedding where the couple's visible joy in each other and in the moment illuminated the gauzy white chuppah, the lawn where the chairs were set up, possibly this whole quadrant of the earth.

Opening a Torah scroll for a group of young children, and reading the priestly blessing to them, at which point our son exclaimed, "We say that on Friday nights!" Yes, my little love, indeed we do, and I am so happy that you know that.

Following that up with the making of paper flower crowns, and then with ice cream sundaes -- in celebration of Shavuot (when we eat dairy because the Torah is compared to milk and honey) and the end of the school year.

Hearing from a friend and congregant that she loves hearing me read Torah because I translate as I go, and because my translation is so informal and colloquial that it makes the text feel alive.

Our son pushing his plastic lawnmower around the deck in a light rain while his father mowed the actual lawn. The scent, which I hadn't realized I'd forgotten over the months since the last lawn-mowing, of grass clippings mixed with wild thyme.

 

Daily April poem: cobbled out of a day's errands

MAKE A POEM OUT OF THAT

If you can't make a poem out of that,
she said, I'll be disappointed --

but I've forgotten what
the raw materials were: our visit

to the Ghanaian cobbler
with racks of dusty shoe polish tins?

The international market
with the forlorn plastic Santa

in the window, boxes of fufu
and Goya tinned mackerel on the shelves?

Maybe it was the blackboards, chalked
with the names of spring beers.

Cartoon stars soaring and twirling.
The little boy, jumping with glee.

 

---

 

This poem wasn't written to any particular prompt. Instead it arose out of an afternoon's errands in Pittsfield.

Daily April poem: out of luck

SPRING

April does the cha-cha
with my expectations.

I'm ready to pop champagne
and declare the glacier

in front of the garage
melted for the season

when I wake
inside a snow globe again.

Pity the robins,
returned too soon

and forced to squabble
with the angry chickadees

for scarce barstools
at the birsdseed diner.

Fortunate worms, granted
a temporary reprieve.

 

---

 

The third 30x30 poem prompt was "out of luck."

Yesterday morning we enjoyed a bit of spring snow, and I couldn't help wondering -- as I do every year -- what becomes of the robins who return to New England before the snow has entirely relinquished us. This poem arose out of that wondering.

If you're interested in other people's responses to these prompts, you can check out each day's submissions by clicking on each prompt link, here. Feedback is always welcome!

NaPoWriMo 2013

Tefillin and manicures

Me, in microcosm.

My mother always has beautiful nails. I'm not sure I've ever seen her without nail polish on. In recent years there are certain colors she favors -- a kind of creamy ivory, a deep maroon -- and I've come to expect one of those rather than anything else in the rainbow of available options. But her nails are always manicured. It's just part of being put-together. I don't remember my first manicure (though I remember the first one I had after my summer of backcountry camping when I was fourteen -- it felt positively sybaritic.) But getting my nails done is an ordinary, and sweet, part of my life.

The manicure I'm wearing now wasn't done by a professional. I painted my nails last night while my son splashed in the bathtub. He had chosen to color his bath water a brilliant turquoise blue (with a dissolving bath tablet which, amazingly enough, doesn't leave our bathtub stained when the water drains away.) He stomped and splashed, rocking his little duckies and boats, while I sat on the floor and painted my fingertips. Then he helped me blow on them to get them dry before I lifted him out of the tub.

I don't think anyone else in my immediate family wears tefillin. Scratch that: I'm pretty certain no one does. If I had to guess, I'd imagine that some of my Dallas cousins do, and possibly some of their sons. But I'd be surprised to discover any other women in my family who put on tefillin in the morning to pray. I became interested in tefillin the first time I went on a Jewish Renewal retreat at Elat Chayyim. Knowing that I'd been yearning for some, my dear friend David gave me my set of tefillin when I turned thirty.

In fairness: I don't always manage to lay tefillin. Life gets in the way. And, for that matter, I don't always manage to have my nails painted. But when I pause to put color on my fingertips, I feel like I'm treating myself to something special, and I remember again some of the many cherished ways in which I am my mother's daughter. And when I pause to lay tefillin, even if I only say one prayer before taking them back off again, I remember again some of the many cherished ways in which I am connected with God and with my tradition, with something bigger than myself.

In praise of Sundays

The thing I missed most about American life, the summer I was living in Jerusalem, was Sundays. (The thing I missed second-most was American-style coffee, which is to say, coffee made in a drip coffeepot. I never came to be a fan of Nescafé -- though I'm entertained by Shoshana Kordova's deconstruction of the brand-name into the Hebrew for "miracle coffee.")

The Israeli weekend is Friday and Saturday, which makes preparing for Shabbat much easier -- you have all day on Friday to do your shopping or cooking, get the house ready, and be in a position to be wholly relaxed and celebratory by the time the sun goes down on Friday night. It's an awesome luxury on a spiritual level. And it's also a practical necessity, since if you're in West Jerusalem -- which is where I was -- pretty much everything is closed on Saturdays, in deference to Shabbat. But by the time Shabbat is over, on Saturday night, there isn't much time for anything -- and first thing on Sunday morning, the work-week starts again.

I was only there for a summer. It wasn't long enough to adjust to this uniquely Israeli rhythm. I loved being in a place where Shabbat was built into the fabric of weekly life, and I loved the luxury of getting Fridays off to prepare for Shabbat -- but I always felt strangely cheated on Saturday night when it came time to go to bed early, and on Sunday mornings it was always a struggle to drag myself out of bed to go to school. Something in me yearned for the lazy experience of a morning I could use to do whatever I wanted. I could sleep in and laze around on Saturdays, if I wanted to -- but there were so many different synagogues and minyanim in Jerusalem where I wanted to daven, so Shabbat mornings usually meant waking up early and setting forth with my map and a pair of good walking sandals to find a new community with which to pray.

That whole summer when I was living abroad, I really missed lazy Sundays of reading the New York Times and drinking giant bowls of coffee with milk. And I missed the luxury of having a day to do whatever I pleased after the experience of Shabbat. There's something different about having the day of relaxation after Shabbat, rather than before -- since on Fridays, knowing that Shabbat was coming, I tended to be running around like crazy to arrange for everything before the stores closed.

Sundays have changed since we had a kid. Gone are the days of sleeping until 10 or 11am and then settling in to the couch with the Sunday Times until early afternoon! These days if we get to sleep until 7, that's a rare gift. And the mornings are likelier to include Kai-Lan cartoons and playing with the marble run toy than reading the Times. (The giant cups of American-style brewed coffee are, fortunately, still available.) But I'm still grateful for the simple pleasure of this weekly day of downtime -- a kind of downtime that's different from Shabbat, but still sweet.

---

I sat down to write a little bit this morning, and this was the natural subject which came to me -- though once I'd drafted the post, I suspected I might have written about it before. Sure enough, I had: Thank God for Sundays, 2008.

February, redux

I believe with a perfect faith in the coming of spring. Even though it tarries, nevertheless do I believe it will come!

---

The caption of the amaryllis photo is adapted, lovingly, from the 12th of Maimonides' 13 principles of faith.

(Related: February.)

February

The skies are grey. The streets are streaked with mud, and so are the sidewalks, and so are the cars. I lean on my car to toss something in the backseat and when I move away, my jeans and boots are smudged white with road salt. The excitement of early winter -- the first snowfalls, the holiday parties, the twinkling Chanukah candles -- are long gone. And we all know that no matter what the groundhog saw, even if the full moon of Shvat is now behind us, winter won't unclench for quite a while.

It's February. And around these parts, our eyes get starved for color. At least mine do. Where I grew up, it's greening already by now. I grow weary of this palette. There's a muted beauty to this season -- the hills all brown and grey and white, bare trees and distant conifers and patches of ice and snow -- but it's pale, and sometimes its subtlety eludes me. Afternoon sunlight, when the clouds part, is thin. And the sun still sets early -- not as early as it did six weeks ago, but early still. Spring feels so far away.

This is the season when I find myself standing idly in the hair products aisle of the drugstore, distracted by the glossy pictures on the covers of the boxes of hair color. I turn the names over on my tongue like butterscotch candies. Light auburn. Reddish blonde. Burgundy plum. Would I wake up feeling more vibrant, would the world be more vivid and bright, if I colored my hair for the season? In the end I purchase a bottle of nail polish instead: a little color, a little sparkle, but when it chips it's easy to remove.

I've lived in New England for twenty years now. I recognize the symptoms of The Februaries when they come on, and I know techniques for combating this particular brand of malaise. I feast my eyes on my red boots and my purple peacoat, treat myself to hot baths and to luxurious fires in the fireplace, purchase potted amaryllis or daffodil bulbs for my home office and my synagogue office so that I can drink in that hint of green, that promise of new life. I seek out strong flavors. I change things around: remove my home office rug and ponder what I might want there in its place.

The people who make catalogues are attuned to these rhythms, too. I glance through one which has come to our mailbox, and marvel at the canniness of showing photos of graduated cooking bowls in shades of lemon and lime, throw pillows in shades of effervescent spring chartreuse and bright summer sun. I come up with a zillion house projects, ideas for organizing and clearing the clutter. If I gardened, I'd be hip-deep in fantasies about seeds; as it is, I make stacks and piles, to-do lists, dreams of how I could brighten and organize.

What is it I'm really thirsty for during this slow short month of deepest midwinter? Color and spice. Experiences to saturate my senses. New growth and new potential. Windows clear and sparkling instead of fogged with condensation or streaked with salt. Some days, when I'm out at mid-day, I drive with my hat and gloves on so I can feel the fresh air on my face. This season requires patience. And the willingness to cobble together a patchwork of cures: dark green kale dressed with bright tangy lemon, the last of the sweet clementines, the fuzz of my son's red moose blanket sleeper as we cuddle before sleep.

The year winds down

There's no preschool today or tomorrow, so instead of spending these days at shul / at my desk, I'm spending them with our son. Today we'll alternate between watching Peanuts cartoons and playing with trains and paints at home, and running a few errands to prepare for our evening.

We're continuing last year's tradition of hosting some friends and family for dinner tonight (which I can't resist calling erev Christmas), and -- like last year -- Ethan's going to make zely and knedliky again -- Czech red cabbage and bread dumplings -- as a nod to my grandmother Lali, of blessed memory.

My online time is likely to be limited between now and early January, so I'll take this opportunity to wish all of y'all a lovely end-of-the-Gregorian-year! To those who celebrate Christmas tonight and tomorrow, may your holiday be filled with meaning, merry and bright.

Two reprints for these darkening December / Kislev days

Here is what I have to offer: be kind to yourself during these days. Pay attention to what your body is saying, to what your heart is saying, to the places where your mind gets tied in knots. What are the stories you tell yourself about this time of year? What are the old hurts to which you can't help returning, what are the old joys which you can't help anticipating?

Listen to your heart. Discern what awakens joy in you, as you anticipate the month of Kislev unfolding, and what awakens sadness or fear. Tell your emotions that you understand, you hear them, they don't have to clamor for your attention. Gentle them as you would gentle a spooked horse or an overwrought child.

-- A call for kindness during Kislev, 2011

---

[T]he matter of having enough, or not having enough, is surely an emotional one, as much as or more than it is a fiscal one. Scarcity is a kind of mitzrayim, a narrow place. And the fear of scarcity can be even worse, in the way the fear of a thing is usually worse than the thing itself. Fear of scarcity can be existential, can make the whole world seem constrained.

Fear of not having enough can blur into fear of not being enough. Fear that if we're not smart enough, or rich enough, or thin enough, we won't be valued. Won't be seen for who we really are. Won't be loved.

-- Enough, 2007

Early November in an image and five lines

Early sunset in early November. Five years ago.

The fingertips on my left hand ache faintly this afternoon. When I haven't led services in two weeks, my guitar calluses begin to wear away.

It felt good to pray in our sanctuary again. We were only seven, this morning, but it's a gift to be able to sing with six people I have known for years.

Driving home I smiled at the line, stretching across the leafless hills, where the purple of distant bare trees gives way to the frosting of high-altitude snow.

I am grateful for the quiet whirr of the washing machine rotating our clothes, the even quieter hiss of wood crackling in the fireplace.

Even though I think I'm prepared, tomorrow I'll be startled by how early the sun goes down.

Preparing for the hurricane

When one lives inland, as we do, it feels strange to be preparing for a hurricane.

Last year, when Hurricane Irene appeared, we'd already been planning a summer party for that late-August weekend. We went ahead and threw the party; why not, right? We live on a mountaintop, which should be relatively safe from flooding -- and why not have friends nearby as we rode out the storm? Ethan tarped our most vulnerable windows and screwed plywood down. We cooked huge bowls of noodles and wheatberry tabouli, foods which can be eaten safely and tastily even if there is no power. And then we fired up our outdoor wood-fired hot tub and sat outside in the glorious steaming water as the rain began to fall.

We were blessed. We came through that storm unscathed. We didn't even lose power. But others in our neck of the woods were not so fortunate. The Spruces trailer park in Williamstown, home to most of that town's elderly who are living on fixed incomes, flooded and some 200 people became homeless. Roads and bridges washed out. Just north of us, in Vermont, there was tremendous devastation.

Now everyone in New England is battening down the hatches in preparation for Hurricane Sandy. The forecasts are fairly alarming. Here at our house we've secured a tarp over the top of our ger, flattened our folding deck chairs, moved outdoor lanterns inside. I've cooked all the perishables I can, trying to make foods which will be relatively safe to eat at room temperature if we lose power, which I assume we probably will -- high winds plus trees which still retain some fall foliage means power lines will definitely come down. I've poured several pitchers of water, because losing power means losing our well pump. I've made two pots of coffee. I'm trying to do laundry while there's still power to do laundry with.

My shul has canceled Hebrew school for today (all of the public schools in our area have closed, and Drew's preschool will close at noon) and I've put out a message encouraging members to prepare for the storm and to check in with each other, especially with those who are older, living alone, and/or especially vulnerable.

I'm caught between the inclination to refresh weather.gov and wunderground.com incessantly (while I still have internet and power) and the awareness that keeping an eye on the storm's movement doesn't actually help me or anyone I might be worried about who lives in its path. I think we're all a little bit manic today, a little bit on-edge, knowing that something potentially terrible is coming and powerless to stop it or to truly predict what the future holds.

My colleague Rabbi Arthur Segal reminded me yesterday (on a Jewish Renewal email list to which I belong) that early in the mishna -- tractate Brakhot, Blessings -- we learn that when we witness a strong storm, we should pray "Blessed are You, our God, Ruler of the Universe, whose power fills the world." And for mild storms, we say: "Blessed are You, our God, who made all of creation." He continues:

And the sages in the Gemara of Talmud Yerushalmi go further and say that haShem would take a strong wind and lessen its force as it passes through mountains and hills, because God made wind, His breath, to make life, not take life.

(He offers more meditation on these themes in a post on his blog.)

I've always loved the fact that our tradition instructs us to offer blessings even at moments of difficulty and fear. It would be easy to respond to the might of a hurricane with curses, but the sages of the mishna argued otherwise. Strong winds and driving rain can be a reminder that there is a power in the world greater than we. Hurricanes are awesome in the original sense of the word -- awe-some, awe-ful, awe-inspiring; reminders of the awe we experience when we contemplate the infinity of the God Who creates them.

Of course, a storm like this one may draw forth other responses beyond blessing. My friend and colleague Rabbi Arthur Waskow has noted tha:

This is a storm unlike any we've seen before because the earth is doing things it has never done before. The water along the Atlantic coast is 5 degrees hotter than usual, super-charging Sandy's rainfall, and drawing the strength of the storm further north. Already too-high tides will be pushed dangerously higher by this storm.

Despite these rapid changes, our politicians have dropped climate from their agenda. So, in addition to preparing to stay safe, let's prepare to connect the dots between this storm and the over-burning of fossil fuels. We need to put climate change back front and center in the public conversation.

I appreciate his reminder that the ferocity of the weather conditions we are learning to take for granted has a great deal to do with the choices we have made about how to live on this earth. The sages of our tradition instruct us to offer blessings even when faced with a mighty storm -- but I doubt they could have pictured a future paradigm in which we understand ourselves to be co-creators of our planet's climate conditions, as many of us now do. A storm like this one is a reminder of God's infinite and awe-some power -- and also of our own role in creating a planetary system where ice is melting, currents are changing, and a summer of searing drought is followed by wind and rain we can't help but fear.

May we all be safe. May we all be dry and comfortable. May no one lose power; or, when we do, may we have enough to eat, a roof which keeps us dry, the companionship of family and friends. May no one else die because of this storm. And when we reach the other side, may we all take whatever steps we can to mend what is broken and to help those in need.

Conversation with a doctor

"Do you smoke?" the doctor asks as he peers into my ears.

"No," I tell him, truthfully.

"What do you do?"

For a moment I wonder: does he mean what are my vices, if smoking isn't one of them? But then I realize he's probably not fishing to find out whether I have a beer with dinner. "You mean, professionally?" I ask. He nods. "I'm a rabbi."

"Really?" He looks surprised.

"Really."

"Good for you," he says, absently, and presses the stethoscope to my back. "Breathe like this," and demonstrates how he wants me to inhale and exhale. So I do.

"My youngest daughter and her friends used to play dress-up," he informs me. "They would go up to the attic and get prom dresses, of which we at one time had quite the collection, and they would play all sorts of games."

I make some noncommittal sound and he continues.

"Sometimes they would play wedding. One of them would be the bride. Another would be the minister. They'd throw flowers. You know how it is."

Perhaps noticing the question in my eyes, he detours for a moment to say, "this has nothing to do with your sinuses," and then he goes on with his story.

"Not long ago I went to a wedding in Lenox, at the little church there. One of my daughter's childhood friends was getting married, and the minister was another one of the girls who used to play wedding in our yard."

Okay, I say, prompting him to continue.

"It was so beautiful," the doctor tells me, earnestly. "The bride was all grown-up. I think she's going to be a lawyer. And the homily was poignant and well-written. And I realized, these aren't little kids playing dress-up anymore! This is real life. And maybe," his voice is wistful now, "they really will carry something forward."

I'm not sure what he means, but I think it's something like: maybe the lessons we hoped we were teaching our children really got through. Maybe they'll make a better world than we did.

I imagine what it will be like when Drew is old enough to be thinking about marriage. When his little buddies from preschool are standing beneath the chuppah or at the altar. It's impossible to picture, but I know the day will come.

"That's beautiful," I tell him.

"Anyway, you're fine," he tells me in response, tone entirely businesslike again. "No sign of anything bacterial. Stick with the over-the-counter stuff."

I shrug. "Okay. I'm mostly just here because I've had a cold for a month and my husband said, 'you've had a cold for a month, go see a doctor!'"

He laughs. "Keep it up," he tells me, and opens the door.

First day of fall

Leaves under water. Margaret Lindley Pond, Williamstown.

First day of fall. The hillsides' green has shifted, yellow beginning to reveal itself as chlorophyll starts to hide away. I think of John Jerome's Stone Work, of how he wrote about yellow leaves falling, about the old year becoming mulch.

After the rush and flurry of September -- the start of the Hebrew school year, the first Family Shabbat service, Drew starting preschool, the spiritual work of leading two days' worth of Rosh Hashanah services -- it feels strange and wondrous to have a weekend off. Ethan takes Drew to Caretaker Farm; I stay home with a cup of coffee, eat challah with honey, knead bread dough, get the dishwasher running.

It's time to begin moving the summer clothes back into the attic and bringing the fall wardrobe back out again. In the span of a week we've moved from weather which makes me want sandals and flowing linen to weather which makes me want bluejeans and layers, socks and closed-toed shoes.

I love summer. I was born and reared in south Texas; I bask in the heat. And every year I brace myself against the darkening of the days. In high summer I think: how will I ever survive when the sun goes down at 4:30 in the afternoon? It seems inconceivable that we will spend so much of the year in the cold and the dark.

But then the Days of Awe roll around, and the leaves start to turn, and I realize I have missed autumn. I'd forgotten how beautiful it is to watch the mountains' slow color-shifting dance. I'd forgotten the appeal of cozy sweaters, of patterned tights, of Sundays watching football, of pumpkins brightening our doorsteps.

It's not cold enough yet for the real winter wear -- the fleece-lined jeans, the heavy wool sweaters. They still seem as implausible as armor, so they stay in their boxes...for now. But the summer clothes go into the attic, armload by armload, and the autumn clothes emerge. By the end of the morning I am sniffling like mad, my allergies reawakened by the inevitable encounter with our household's particular brand of dust.

But my closet is transformed. Gone are the flowy bright skirts and tanktops, replaced with velvet and corduroy and denim. I remember again how much I gravitate toward brown and purple at this time of year -- a mirroring of the colors our hillsides will take on once the leaves have offered their final farewell.

We move through so many gates, so many doorways, at this time of year. From summer into fall; from the old year into the new; from anticipation into celebration; from the light half of the year to the dark half of the year. What will be nurtured and nourished in us during the season now beginning? What gifts will the velvety darkness of fall and winter offer this year? What qualities will I clothe myself in as the new season unfolds?

---

For an explanation of the equinox, including a truly gorgeous photograph of the earth seen from space at both equinoxes and both solstices, try Autumnal equinox: Equal Hours of Daylight and Darkness? Or Not?

You might also enjoy the poem I posted a few years ago on the autumn equinox, titled, appropriately, Equinox.

A squirrel who wants to meditate

I clear my throat in the silence of the sanctuary. Eyes closed, I offer the following:

The Baal Shem Tov -- regarded as the founder of Hasidism -- offered the following teaching about what to do when you are engaged in prayer and foreign thoughts bubble up in you. When this happens, he said, don't castigate yourself for having these thoughts. Rather, recognize that the thoughts ultimately come from God.

He would say: if you are distracted from prayer because you've been caught up in fantasy about a beautiful woman, remember that the woman's beauty comes from God, and so does your desire. Don't think of it as getting in the way of your prayer; make it part of your prayer. Lift it back up to God.

The same is true for us. Whatever bubbles up in us, whatever thoughts or distractions -- whether about a beautiful woman or beautiful man, or about politics, or whatever it is -- we can just recognize what comes up, without judgement, and recognize that it comes from God, and lift it back up.

Some moments later, I am distracted from my meditation by a sound.

Scrabble scrabble thump. Scrabble scrabble thump.

Thump thump thump.

I open my eyes. A squirrel is peering into our sanctuary through the glass door. He takes a few steps away, then flings himself at the door, scrabbling to get in.

Then he tries the next little window. Scrabble scrabble thump.

And the window beside that. Scrabble scrabble thump. Scrabble thump. Thump.

Squirrel with churro. Photo by Lorianne of Hoarded Ordinaries.

By now I am holding back giggles as silently as I can. The squirrel is trying diligently to enter our sanctuary, poking and scrabbling at every single one of our small low windows, taking a few steps back and then flying through the air to bang into the glass again. THUMP. THUMP.

Our other meditators have also opened their eyes. We are all laughing. We have been sitting here in silent meditation every Friday morning, some of us for years on end, and we have never seen anything like this at all.

"Obviously he wants to meditate too," one of the women offers. "Their little lives are so busy."

Scrabble scrabble thump. THUMP.

A second squirrel has appeared on the patio and is watching the first one, head cocked. I imagine that he is thinking: what on earth are you doing? Why do you want to get in there?

Then the two squirrels run away. I close my eyes again and return to silence, but the silence is different now, charged with our laughter.

Sometimes thoughts bubble up. Sometimes it's squirrels. It all comes from God.

---

If this makes you grin, don't miss The squirrel said to the Buddha.

Cultivating equanimity

Equanimity (השתוות / hishtavut) is very important. That is, it should make no difference whether one is taken to be an ignoramus or an accomplished Torah scholar. This may be attained by continually cleaving to the Creator -- for if one has devekut [deep connection with God], one isn't bothered by what other people think. Rather, one should continually endeavor to attach oneself to the Holy Blessed One. 

That's a teaching from Tzava'at HaRivash, the collected teachings of the mystical Jewish rabbi known as the Baal Shem Tov. (A different translation of this passage appears here at Chabad.) This Eul, I find myself returning to this teaching again. I admire the ideal of equanimity, of responding to whatever arises from a place of centered acceptance and calm. As long as I do my best to be the kind of person I mean to be, to serve God and my communities in the ways I strive to serve, then that's what matters most. If I focus on my connection with something greater than myself, then I can handle things which seem in my limited understanding to be "good" or "bad" with equal grace and presence.

Even if life throws me curveballs, even if something goes wrong or if someone thinks ill of me, shouldn't I be able to hold fast to my faith and my spiritual practice, and to accept both the good and the bad with a whole heart? All I need to do is maintain mindfulness of God's presence -- as the psalmist says, and the Baal Shem reminds us, שויתי ה' לנגדי תמיד; "Sh'viti Adonai l'negdi tamid / I have kept God before me always." (The word shviti, "I have kept," shares a root with hishtavut, equanimity.) "Good" and "bad" are limited human concepts; from the perspective of the divine, whether someone calls one an ignoramus or admires one as a Torah scholar is beside the point. This is, I think, what the Baal Shem Tov is saying. 

Early American shviti papercut; 1861. (Source.) A shviti is a meditative focus: we look at it and are reminded to keep God before us always, as the verse from psalms says.

When I had my strokes, several years ago, I spent a lot of time talking with my mashpia (spiritual director) about equanimity. I was struggling to come to terms with what had happened to me, and with my desire to know why I'd had the strokes and to reach some certainty that I wouldn't have another one. My mashpia at the time brought a variety of BeShT teachings to bear on our conversations. (I touched on this in my 2009 essay Different Strokes.) I seem to remember that I was able fairly easy to respond with equanimity to the immediate experience of the strokes; I found it more difficult to maintain equanimity as we moved into the realm of longterm medical uncertainty.

Maybe because spiritual lessons recur as our life circumstances unfold, this Elul I find that I'm working again on cultivating this middah (this quality) within myself. There's much in the world today which challenges my equanimity.

I know in my heart that the Baal Shem Tov was wise, on this issue as on so many. If I could encounter rejoicing and sorrow alike without being shaken, if I could receive insults and compliments alike without paying either one any mind, remaining focused on connecting with the Holy One of Blessing and bearing in mind what's really important (pro tip: not my own ego), that would be a high spiritual state indeed. I try, every day, to get a little bit closer. I do know that when I'm able to achieve something like devekut -- cleaving; attachment to God; deep connection with something far beyond myself -- everything in my life, both good and bad, takes on a different tone.

Sometimes I reach a kind of devekut when I'm leading prayer and we reach the bar'chu, the call to prayer. I find sometimes that when I'm playing guitar and singing the bar'chu something shifts in me. I can feel my voice changing, coming from somewhere deeper in my body. It's as though I'm no longer praying the prayer; instead the prayer is praying me. In that moment of singing and praying and praise, it doesn't even occur to me to wonder whether I'm leading a good service, or whether people like what I'm doing. It doesn't occur to me to remember that unkind thing someone said last week or the mean-spirited email I got the other day.

Sometimes I reach a kind of devekut when I am cuddling with my son. At night, him in his pyjamas, the two of us in the gliding rocker where we used to nurse. I'm singing him his goodnight songs, he's giggling and squirming in my arms, and I catch his laughter and then I'm connected to something so much bigger than myself. In those moments I forget my consternation at reading the news; I stop dwelling on mistakes and unkindnesses. It's like the Sfat Emet teaching about Purim, where one ascends so high -- beyond the top of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; beyond dualities -- that everything is good, everything is God.

I'm not sure that's equanimity; it's more like bliss. Maybe equanimity is the quality which enables us to encompass both the moments of blissful connection and the moments of agonizing disconnect. Because I can't stay in that lofty headspace and heartspace, no matter how I wish I could. At some point, we always have to leave mochin d'gadlut (expanded consciousness or "big mind") for mochin d'katnut (constricted consciousness or "small mind.") For me, the question is: once I'm back in "small mind," how will I respond to the world around me? How will I respond to injustice, to unkindness, to lack? How will I respond to compassion, to connection, to joy?

Striving for equanimity helps me respond to my life with gratitude, to relate to the world at large with the kindness and compassion I most value. Sometimes I manage it, for a while. Then something shakes me and my balance wobbles. Then I take a deep breath and seek balance again. I don't think equanimity is something one reaches once and then the journey's over. There's a reason we use the language of gardening to describe this kind of work: it's a slow and steady cultivation. Once it's planted in the heart, equanimity may be a perennial (to run with that metaphor a bit further), but it still requires tending, and watering, and care.

Season of transitions

It's a season of transitions, all sorts. After daycare, I picked Drew up and we went together to a local orchard in search of an afterschool snack and a bag of peaches. But they were out of peaches, though they promised to have more later in the week; what they had instead were some of the season's first glorious honeycrisp apples. So Drew enjoyed an apple cider donut with cinnamon sugar (and so did I!) and I bought a few big beautiful apples. Down the street at the farmstand we got half a dozen ears of corn for a song; I saved one to boil for him to eat on the cob, and stripped the corn from several others to make a corn pudding.

But I'd had my heart set on doing something with peaches. Was I too late? Had I missed the season? Thankfully, although the orchard itself was sold out of peaches, our wee market -- right around the corner from both the orchard and Drew's daycare -- still had a basket of local orchard peaches for sale. We brought some home, with great glee. I saved a few for Drew to eat in slices, and prepared the rest to become a crisp. Peach season is giving way to apple season. The days are still warm, even hot, but the nights are cooling. The hills are deep rich late-summer green, but here and there the first maple branch blazes red. Everywhere, goldenrod is tipped with yellow.

Next week Drew will attend one last day at this beloved daycare, and the next day he'll begin attending a community preschool near my synagogue. He's two years and nine months now; old enough to start in the youngest preschool room, which he and I have visited before. I know he'll flourish there. But some part of me is a little bit sad to be leaving the in-home daycare which we, and he, have so loved. His daycare provider is equally wistful, I think. "They'd better take good care of him there," she told me today. "I don't want him to get lost in the shuffle." I promised her that I was pretty sure they would -- and that we would visit her from time to time, too.

Change can be hard, even when it's a change one has looked forward to. One of my Torah study colleagues told me recently that when he dropped his daughter off at college, he had the distinct feeling that she had just begun preschool the day before, and now suddenly she was moving into this whole new adventure, leaving him behind. I know I'll feel that someday, too: weren't we just giggling and cuddling in the gliding rocker, watching early-morning cartoons, splashing in the kiddie pool?  I hope I can model grace and gratitude for Drew as we move through this change in his life and in ours, as we move from daycare to preschool, as we move from Elul to the High Holidays, as we move from summer to fall.

Now and later: beginning to approach the Days of Awe

I've had three long Skype dates recently with my friend and colleague David Curiel. David is an ALEPHnik who will be leading services alongside me during the Days of Awe. So far we've worked our way through planning services for both days of Rosh Hashanah, plus Kol Nidre, plus about half of Yom Kippur morning. (Our next call is scheduled for a few days from now.)

Each time we connect via Skype, we go through the machzor page by page: okay, this prayer, what do we want to do for this one? How about, you sing the first paragraph, I'll read the second paragraph, you sing the closing line. Or: I'll lead this one with guitar. Or: this one's all you. And so on, and so on. Slowly but surely my machzor is filling up with sticky tabs and pencil markings.

As a result my mind is overrun with high holiday melodies. The nusach, the specific melodic modes unique to these days. The individual melodies we'll be using for this prayer or that one. The niggun (wordless Hasidic melody) I want to use a few times during the service. Shir Yaakov's new setting for Rabbi Rami Shapiro's We Are Loved, which we're planning to teach.

And yet we're barely past Tisha b'Av. I still don't know what my Rosh Hashanah sermon is going to be about. It's peach season, corn season, the season of crickets and cicadas singing their rising-and-falling summertime song.

So many competing impulses at this moment in the year. I want August to last forever: so I can splash with Drew at Margaret Lindley pond, so we can eat ice pops on the deck after dinner, so I can revel in the harvest gloriousness of the Berkshires at this time of year. Corn and peaches and basil. The rustle of the deep green leaves. And yet I'm looking forward, anticipating what's next. Like a kid who's too restless to sleep, knowing that school starts soon. Excited and reluctant.

So many competing responses at this time of the year. I'm eager for the Days of Awe, for the sounds of the season, the taste of challah drizzled with honey, my parents' annual visit, the introspection of the teshuvah process. I'm anxious about the Days of Awe: so many people come to shul then who don't come at any other time of year! What if we don't give them what they need? Is there anything we could do to make them want to come back, to immerse more frequently in these waters?

There's always the reminder that my own teshuvah work needs to be paramount. If I don't do the discernment of figuring out where I'm missing the mark, then I miss the opportunity to do better -- to be better -- in the year to come. And yet it can be hard to make the space for my own teshuvah when that little voice in the back of my head keeps reminding me that I still don't have the perfect idea for that Rosh Hashanah sermon.

And through all of it, maybe the real challenge is balancing the need to make lists and plan and anticipate the future with the ability to be in this moment. End of July. This beautiful sunny day. This cuddle with my child, this blog post, this instant. This opportunity to be who I yearn to be, right here, right now.

Reflections on a first year

One evening, about a year ago, I brought my son to the synagogue in the evening and fed him supper while meeting with the president of the board. When he started to melt down, I signed the contract which had been sitting on the table between us, and took him home to prepare for bedtime. The next day, while he was playing with his grandparents, I loaded up my car with boxes of Judaic books and brought them to work -- where I wound up beginning to prepare for a funeral, a bat mitzvah, and the Days of Awe. (So much for "I'm just going to bring over some boxes of books, I won't be long...")

Last night, at the tail-end of the congregational Fourth of July party, as "We Are Family" poured forth from a congregant's ipod and my son ate his millionth slice of watermelon, I signed a contract again. When I had signed all three copies, and so had the board president, she grinned at me and we shook hands with mock-solemnity.

I want to write something about this first year of my active rabbinate -- this first year of serving my community as its rabbi -- but I find I'm not sure where to begin. Is it even possible to begin to encapsulate this first year? The kaleidscope of images in my mind's eye is too full and varied. Preparing for Shabbat after Shabbat. Preparing for the Days of Awe. Celebrations of bar and bat mitzvah, watching our kids shine. Funerals of congregants I had known, and funerals of people who had been unknown to me until their deaths brought them front-and-center into my consciousness.

Speaking with a congregant one-on-one about something unfolding in their life. Sitting by the bedside of a man who was beginning his passage out of this life, singing him the niggun which asks the question of why a soul incarnates in this world. Standing in front of the open ark at the final service of last Yom Kippur, singing Avinu Malkeinu with all my heart and all my hoarse voice. Meditating in our sanctuary immersed in the silence of a thick winter snowfall -- and surrounded by the waterfall of summer birdsong. My son, at the cookout yesterday, gleefully banging the cymbals he had found in our basket of sanctuary instruments.

Times when I tried something and it worked -- and times when I came away feeling that I hadn't lived up to what I wanted to be. Times when I felt I was really reaching people, and times when I felt as though I had borrowed Sisyphus' rock and it was about to roll back down the hill. The quiet glow of satisfaction when someone who had seemed just the tiniest bit dubious about me began to call me "Rabbi," and the chagrin when a lesson I had thought would move our b'nei mitzvah students devolved instead into a flurry of paper airplanes and inappropriate remarks. The gladness when I was able to give over a teaching I'd received from my teachers, a melody I had learned from a friend, and to feel that it had hit home.

When I began telling people, a year and change ago, that I was working with this community to develop a job description for a "halftime pulpit," many of my friends and colleagues laughed. There's no such thing as a halftime rabbi, people said; only a halftime salary! And they weren't wrong. I'm a rabbi all the time, just as I'm a poet all the time, just as I'm a mother all the time. The rabbinate is a vocation, not merely X hours of work for Y dollars in pay. And a rabbi's work is never done. I could always be doing more: more pastoral care visits, more trips to the hospital, more phone calls to check in, more b'nei mitzvah tutoring, more preparation for services, more learning, more Torah study, more teaching.

And yet. In this first year I have found that the halftime model is a blessing. Not only for practical and financial reasons, but also because it gives me a different way of thinking about life and work and how they intersect. A rabbi's work is never done -- but it would be all too easy to keep trying to finish it even so. All of us who enter this line of work do so because we want to serve. How easy it would be to say to myself, "if I just put in another hour today..." If I just stayed a bit later tonight -- if I picked up the laptop again after the toddler goes to bed -- if I worked both days this weekend instead of only one...

But the work is neverending, and I know that. And that's the blessing, assuming I can let go of the fantasy of ever being "done." All I can do is what I can do today during the hours I've allotted. After that, I have to leave work and pick up my son and take him to a playground, or make him dinner, or read him books. This turns out to be an incredible gift. I am blessed to serve as a rabbi. And I am also blessed to step away from my desk at the end of the day, having done as much as I could, and to let go of what remains un-done... which in turn allows me to return, ready to pick up the yoke again. "It's not incumbent upon us to finish the task" -- that's as much a statement about life as it is about my job. That's the way life is meant to be.

Of course there are times when this truth is hard to remember. Like any working parent, I have days when I fear that I'm shortchanging either my family or my job (or both.) But my tradition teaches me that in every moment, God speaks the world into being, and in every moment teshuvah -- re/turning, re-orienting, starting-over -- is possible. Even when a lesson plan has failed, or I've communicated something poorly, or the to-do list looms, I can take a deep breath, find the blessing in whatever is arising, and begin again. As, now, I take a deep breath, thank God and my community alike for the gift of this first year of serving Congregation Beth Israel, and begin to write the book of year two.

Thinking ahead and staying put, or, how a toddler is like a meditation bell

One of the oddities of the congregational rabbinate is that one is always thinking ahead to a liturgical season which hasn't happened yet. Already this week I've solidified our schedule for the Days of Awe. I'm spending time contemplating what my sermons might be, revising selichot liturgy, planning an ad-hoc book discussion group around R' Alan Lew's This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared (which I wrote about back in 2006.)

But it's just a few short days after the summer solstice. I want to be enjoying this moment: picking strawberries at Caretaker with my family, enjoying the late long light of evening, getting ready for the congregational Fourth of July picnic next week. And yet I can't help having one foot planted in a season which hasn't yet arrived. I justify it in the name of being organized, planning ahead -- and it is true that this is always the way I have worked best; I am most comfortable when everything is in-progress well in advance -- but I wonder sometimes what might be the spiritual impact of living in the future instead of in the now.

It's a little bit like looking ahead to a much-anticipated vacation. On the one hand, imagining the vacation and planning how it might go can extend the pleasure well beyond the days of the trip itself. First you get to enjoy thinking about it in advance; then you get to go; then you get to enjoy remembering it afterwards! It's a triple blessing that way. And on the proverbial other hand, the danger in this kind of anticipation is that it can provide an easy opportunity to escape whatever's happening now. Plus, getting attached to expectations means running the risk of disappointment if and when something changes or the expectations don't come to pass. (See How to avoid having a strop & the secret to happiness, which Fiona just posted yesterday at Writing Our Way Home.)

So maybe the real question is, what are good tools for maintaining balance? How can I ensure that if I spend all morning with my head in the clouds of Elul and Tishri, I return to the present moment? That if I lose myself in daydreaming about a weekend with friends in late summer, I return to where I am now?

In a funny way, having a toddler is an excellent antidote to the tendency to get lost in the future or the past. Drew lives pretty much in the now. I think he can grasp the idea of immediate future (it seems to be helpful when I outline for him what the morning is going to hold, or how long a playdate is going to last), and I know he remembers the past -- but often he brings the past right into the present, narrating things we did days ago as though they were happening right now. Maybe for him they are.

A toddler is like a meditation bell, forever calling me back to the now. In meditation each Friday morning, I often remind myself (and those who are sitting with me) that the mind will wander; that's what minds do. Having thoughts is what minds are for! So when our minds wander, as they inevitably do, we can notice that without judgement and call them back to the present moment, this breath, right here, right now. Drew does that for me a million tiny times a day. "Want to play catch, mommy?" Catch. Yes. My son is right here, and I was distracted, but now I'm back. "Want to read Oh My Oh Dinosaur?" Of course, climb into my lap and I will read to you.

I remember thinking, last summer, as I was first settling in to my pulpit, that it was a tremendous blessing to have a reason to leave work at 4pm and take my child to a playground every day. (Indeed: that the whole world would be healthier if we all had to stop working after eight hours and spend some time playing instead.) I don't think I knew how true that would continue to be. I'm grateful to be part of a liturgical / spiritual tradition which flows throughout the year, like waves, going and returning: the cycles of day and week and month, the cycles of festivals which lead one to the next. I'm grateful to have reason to place myself out of time, to prepare for the holidays which are coming. And I'm also grateful to have a child who, without knowing it, reminds me every day to return to him and to myself and to right now. Right now. Right now.

Looking back at camp after eighteen years

Eighteen years ago, my sister gave birth to a daughter. I wrote a poem for her from far away; I think I sent it in a letter for her baby naming. I was working, that summer, as a cabin counselor at the Greene Family Camp for Living Judaism in Bruceville, Texas. I came out of that summer yearning to become a rabbi. I don't think I imagined the roundabout path I would take to make my vocation real.

That summer is a mixed bag in memory. I liked my campers, but I was lonely. Most of the other counselors had been campers for years; I had only attended Greene once, when I was nine. Most of the other counselors had pledged Jewish sororities and fraternities at UT; I had chosen a small liberal arts college in western Massachusetts which eschewed the Greek system altogether. The other counselors were perfectly nice -- we were just coming from different places, and at nineteen that isn't always easy.

I remember writing poems about the Berkshires, wistfully remembering the crunch of boots on snow as I sat on our cabin's cement porch in the evening heat. I remember Friday afternoons, when the whole camp dressed in white and we all walked together slowly to the limestone ampitheatre for kabbalat Shabbat. I remember the Friday night song sessions after dinner, led by camp director Loui Dobin -- that experience of singing Hebrew songs, sometimes jumping up and down with sheer enthusiasm, swept me up and carried me away.