CHANGE (ELUL 21)


The only constant
except for your loneliness.
You've always needed someone
to talk with, to show you
your own reflection.
(It is not good for God
to be alone.) But you're
mercurial. You've changed
masks: from stern
to sweet and back again,
old white-haired man
above the highest heavens
to the friend I want to hug
and never let go. But
you're always more than.
Sometimes we call you
king, sometimes mother,
healer, lover -- you're
whatever we yearn for.
I yearn for you. And
whatever I think you are
you've already left behind.

One of my favorite understandings of the cosmogony, the way the universe came to be, is the kabbalistic teaching that when nothing existed but God, God was lonely. God brought creation into being so that God might have someone with whom to be in relationship.

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) You can read last year's and this year's #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; last year's posts are also available, lightly revised, in the print chapbook Elul Reflections.

I'm delighted to be able to announce that a new essay of mine has been published in the Symposium section of Transformative Works and Cultures, the fan studies journal published by the Organization for Transformative Works. The essay is called Fan fiction and midrash: making meaning.

Here's how the essay begins:

Because I am a Jew, the Torah is part of my inheritance, and along with that inheritance comes the obligation to read and to interpret. Reading and interpreting are also things I do professionally as a rabbi, though they're open to, and arguably the responsibility of, every adult Jew.

One of the ways that Jews interpret Torah is through midrash, exegetical stories that seek to explore and explain idiosyncrasies in our holy texts. The word midrash comes from the Hebrew lidrosh, to interpret or explain.

Midrashim (the Hebrew plural of midrash; in English, "midrash" can be either singular or plural) work in a variety of ways. They may fill lacunae in the Torah text, resolve contradictions in the text, or articulate character motivations and emotions that aren't explicit in the text. Sometimes they make a meta-point, an argument about where we should focus our attention, how we should live, or how we should read the text at hand...

After offering examples of midrashim which do each of those things, I draw a connection between midrash and fanworks (of all genres, though I focus here on fanfiction, because like midrash it's a written form):

As Jews constitute community through our interpretive storytelling about Torah, fans constitute community through our interpretive storytelling about pop culture or literary source texts.

I've written about this before -- see Transformative work: midrash and fanfiction -- though that essay isn't available online in full, so all you can read at the blog post is a teaser. Also, in Religion and Literature I presumed I was writing for an audience which might know about midrash but didn't know about fandom; TWC's readers, in contrast, presumably know about fandom but may not be familiar with midrash. Anyway, the big idea of this essay is that fanworks function like midrash, both in terms of the narrative moves they make and in terms of their community-building function. Ultimately I argue that when we think of fanworks in this way, we open up new understandings of both fanworks and the fans who create them:

Thinking of fan fiction as midrash is a useful alternative to Henry Jenkins’ textual poachers analogy. Whereas Jenkins' analogy positions fans as serfs poaching game from the lords' estate in order to make meaning and to reclaim ownership of the storytelling which fans see as our birthright, the midrash analogy positions fans as respected interpreters, analagous both to the classical rabbis who for centuries have interpreted scripture and to the modern midrashists who continue that work today.

(I'm actually a big fan of Henry's book Textual Poachers; it was hugely formative for me. But I think the poaching metaphor also has some limitations, and one of them is that it necessarily posits fans on the margins.)

One of the reasons I wanted to write about this for TWC is that  TWC is an open-access journal, which means that everything they publish is available online, for free: no need to pay for access to JSTOR or other academic databases. Go and read: Fan fiction and midrash: making meaning.

And while you're at it, check out the rest of the issue. I'm looking forward to reading the whole thing.

JUDGE (ELUL 20)


My name is four-dimensional.
You couldn't say it if you tried.

Call me the true judge, the one
who sees through your obfuscations.

Further out than Pluto,
deeper than Earth's core

the one who enwombs the world
and shines like a supernova.

The one who extends a hand
and forgives. Don't say otherwise.

Name me unforgiving,
call me the oncoming storm

and you'll pin that face on me.
Don't reinscribe those old grooves.

Call me author of every story,
life of all the worlds.

Call me by the face
you want to see.

One of the dominant metaphors for God in the high holiday liturgy is God-as-judge. We also refer to God as a judge upon hearing of a death, when we say the words "baruch dayan emet." I follow my teacher Rabbi Marcia Prager in interpreting those words as "blessed is the judge of beginnings, middles, and endings."

One of the passages we recite repeatedly during the Days of Awe is the "thirteen attributes," which comes from Torah and which some people regard as a single long name of God: "Adonai, Adonai, merciful and compassionate..." In Torah, this passage first indicates that God forgives, but then cautions us about cases where God does not forgive. In our liturgy, the passage has been intentionally truncated, so that we call only on divine mercy and not on retribution.

This poem draws on the thirteen attributes, on the phrase baruch dayan emet, and on kabbalistic ideas about divine partzufim, the faces or masks through which we see God's infinity.

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) You can read last year's and this year's #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; last year's posts are also available, lightly revised, in the print chapbook Elul Reflections.

ASK (ELUL 19)


And what if no one's listening,
if I'm truly alone?

Do I really get to start over?
What if I can't forgive myself?

When did I stop believing
in impossible stories?

Can you hear me now,
will you answer my call?

Can you imagine wanting
to see inside my chest,

my good inclination
and my bad one side by side?

Am I exposing too much,
will I scare you away?

Do you really want me
as flawed as I am?

This poem started life as a "twenty questions" poem, in which each line was a question except for the last one. It stayed that way for several days. And then I returned to it and realized that I only wanted ten questions, and I didn't want a conclusive answer at the end.

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) You can read last year's and this year's #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; last year's posts are also available, lightly revised, in the print chapbook Elul Reflections.

PRAY (ELUL 18)


What does the deepest mirror show?
Thank you for this moment; I'm alive.
--who I'm speaking to I'll never know.
What does the deepest mirror show?
My soul the ocean where I daily dive.
Yield into the moment and let go.
What does the deepest mirror show?
Thank you. For this moment, I'm alive.

The Hebrew word "to pray," l'hitpallel, is a reflexive verb which connotes introspection and self-examination.

This poem is a triolet. The form requires the use of repeated lines. I liked the idea of repeating lines in this poem, since daily Jewish prayer is liturgical and does involve some repetition. My hope is that each repeated line feels different the second or third time it appears, just as each repeated prayer in our liturgy can feel different at different moments in the day or in a week or in a life.

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) You can read last year's and this year's #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; last year's posts are also available, lightly revised, in the print chapbook Elul Reflections.

AWAKEN (ELUL 17)


Suddenly everything is new.
And these eyes
can't widen far enough
to take in the universe
contained in your heart
spanned with your hands.

There is no word
which means red and green
at the same time
but the apple
cupped in this palm
sings it joyously.

Time eddies and swirls
like the exuberant river.
The new year, the old year
the new year again.
Every instant precious
and then gone.

This poem arose out of the experience of holding a beautiful fresh apple, one of the varieties which is mottled red and green when ripe. I thought I remembered learning at some point that "cinnabar" meant both red and green, but it doesn't; it just means red. And then I thought: there's no word for that, but this apple is manifesting it anyway. It felt like a tiny moment of awakening. Hence the poem.

Shabbat shalom to all!

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) You can read last year's and this year's #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; last year's posts are also available, lightly revised, in the print chapbook Elul Reflections.

UNDERSTAND (ELUL 16)


Why sickness, why children
cringing from a blow
or broken by bombs, these
will never make sense.
Why cruelty. Why bar
anyone from the common table.

The sages say the world
was broken from the get-go,
too fragile a vessel
for God's infinite light, but
how can I listen to the news
without shattering further?

Our prayers talk about
who by fire, who by water.
It's the wrong question.
When will we rewrite
the words? The book of life
reads from itself, remember,

and inside is the name
of every living being
no matter our politics.
Our time here is so brief.
Scatter love like seeds.
Stop trying to understand.

I've been trying to draft each day's #blogElul poem a few days in advance so that the poems can benefit from a bit of revision before they go live. I wrote this one some days ago, not realizing that the 16th of Elul was going to correspond to September 11th on the Gregorian calendar. The confluence seems appropriate, though.

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) You can read last year's and this year's #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; last year's posts are also available, lightly revised, in the print chapbook Elul Reflections.

LEARN (ELUL 15)


Sun, can you teach me to gild
everything I see? Leaves,
how to flutter with awe?

Ground beneath my feet
don't let me go yet
I want to learn gravity.

Lenses in frames, I want
to learn not to mistake glass
for the view.

And you: convince me
that trying to be good is enough.
That lesson keeps eluding me.

Source of mercy, untie
my tangles: help me learn
when to hold on, when to let go.

The line "source of mercy, untie my tangles" is Reb Zalman's translation of the first line of ana b'koach, a prayer which I love.

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) You can read last year's and this year's #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; last year's posts are also available, lightly revised, in the print chapbook Elul Reflections.

REMEMBER (ELUL 14)


And what if I can't remember
who I've been, what other faces
I've worn beneath the wheeling stars?
Then make up a true story.

Look at who you are now
and work backwards. Every choice
a course correction
from how you once went astray.

Set aside cynicism, let yourself believe
the soul chooses its companions.
What then? How would that shift
the way you look at the person beside you?

Let your voice take on a new lilt.
Let the tide roll out again.
Remember your truest name,
the one no mortal voice can speak.

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) You can read last year's and this year's #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; last year's posts are also available, lightly revised, in the print chapbook Elul Reflections.

FORGIVE (ELUL 13)


All my excuses.
Acting as though
I mattered more
than you do.
The times when
I pretended I
couldn't see you.
The days when
I didn't bother
wrapping my hand
in the memory
of our connection.
Not my changes --
we both know
standing still isn't
a real option
-- but the things
I didn't say.
Letting myself pretend
I had time
enough to dally.
As though this
rise and fall
would last forever.

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) You can read last year's and this year's #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; last year's posts are also available, lightly revised, in the print chapbook Elul Reflections.

TRUST (ELUL 12)


How to trust
the one who
holds the universe
gluons to galaxies

who can speak
creation's own language,
past present future
all at once?

It's almost laughable
my bounded mind
reaching out to
touch bright infinity.

Can I believe
none of us
is ever insignificant
in those eyes?

I'm pretty sure I borrowed the "from gluons to galaxies" image from Reb Zalman, may his memory be a blessing.

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) You can read last year's and this year's #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; last year's posts are also available, lightly revised, in the print chapbook Elul Reflections.

Here's the d'var Torah I offered at my shul yesterday. (More or less -- when I offered it aloud, I extemporized and added some bits, but this is where it started out.) (Cross-posted to my From the Rabbi blog.)

This week's Torah portion is filled with instructions. Here are some of them which speak most to me this year (lightly paraphrased):

If someone works for you, pay them right away. You never know when someone might need payment desperately. Don't shame them by making them ask.

This is a time of year when requests for dues abatements and Hebrew school tuition abatements come across my desk. These verses in Torah remind me how important it is to respond to these requests lovingly.

If someone's children misbehave, try not to judge the parents. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Parenting can be difficult.

If someone's parents have done wrong, try not to judge the children. We are not responsible for the actions of those who came before us.

When the Torah speaks of not putting people to death for the sins of their parents or children, I hear a message about the importance of responding to people with generosty of spirit.

Maintain perspective about the difference between wants and needs. Remember that you don't need to own everything. Practice sufficiency.

Whatever abundance comes your way, be sure to share it. Cultivate a sense of trust in the universe which will allow you to give freely.

Though most of us no longer have fields or vineyards in which those who are hungry may glean, we can still choose to share with others, and to train ourselves to trust that we don't need to hold on to everything for ourselves.

Always remember the hard places and tight straits which you have known, and let those memories impel you to kindness and generosity.

We're almost halfway through with the month of Elul. This is the month during which we prepare ourselves for the coming Days of Awe. This is a time of teshuvah, the spiritual work of re-orienting ourselves in the right direction again.

One tradition teaches that we should seek to repair our relationships with each other during Elul, so that during the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we can focus on repairing our relationship with our Source.

The mitzvot enumerated in this week's Torah portion are mitzvot bein adam l'chavero, mitzvot between people. Directions for right action in our relationships with each other.

May we be strengthened in our intentions and in our practice. May these mitzvot become engrained in us, engraved in us, channels through which our behaviors naturally flow. Kein yehi ratzon.

COUNT (ELUL 11)



September ticks by. Count
your way through. It's time
to get the year's bill, measure
what the soul has spent. Turn
over your hands, see each day
marked on your palms anew.

Remember sharpened pencils, new
backpacks, how you would count
the hours of school's first day?
When we learn to resent time
an Eden is lost, a turn
we can't undo or measure.

Now how do you measure
your heart's response to new
beginnings? And in turn
do you remember to count
kindness given or received, time
to pause and breathe each day?

This is the day
that God has made: let us measure
ourselves against the marks time
has drawn on the doorframe. New
means that "before" doesn't count:
consult the old maps, turn

toward your yearnings. Return
to a clean slate each day.
Stop, this instant, to count
blessings. Who could measure
the gift of your body made new,
trees shifting colors, time

eddying like a river? It's time
to forgive yourself. Turn
around and make it new.
The sages say repent the day
before death, but who can measure
what's left in the glass? Count

your time a gift every day.
Turn toward mercy. Take the measure
of your soul anew. Make it count.

Today's poem takes me back to one of my favorite poetic forms, the sestina. (There's a whole sestina category at this blog, because I've posted so many of them over the years.) This form, which relies on six repeated end-words, seemed appropriate for today's prompt.

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) You can read last year's and this year's #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; last year's posts are also available, lightly revised, in the print chapbook Elul Reflections.

Last spring, just before Shavuot, I brought two classical midrash about the giving of the Torah at Sinai to my Hebrew school class, and one of my students made some fannish connections.

Rabbi Yochanan said: When God’s voice came forth at Mount Sinai, it divided itself into seventy human languages, so that the whole world might understand it. All at Mount Sinai, young and old, women, children and infants heard the voice of God according to their ability to understand. Moses, too, understood only according to his capacity, as it is said (Ex. 19:19), “Moses spoke, and God answered him with a voice.” With a voice that Moses could hear. (Shemot Rabbah 5:9)

I brought this midrash to my class, and one of my bar mitzvah students -- a big fan of the television show Doctor Who -- raised his hand and said, "It's like the TARDIS was there, translating!" I knew exactly what he meant.

With some prompting he explained to the class that the TARDIS is a time machine. It appears to be an iconic blue police box, though it is famously "bigger on the inside." And it contains a translation circuit which ensures that no matter where or when its inhabitants travel, everyone can be understood. I told him I thought that drawing an analogy to the TARDIS was an interesting way to think about the teaching that everyone heard Torah in a language they could understand. The tradition also teaches that "Torah has 70 faces; turn it and turn it, for everything is in it." Arguably the Torah too is "bigger on the inside" -- always containing more than we imagined.

Then we moved to the second midrash I had brought:

Because the Holy One appeared to Israel at the Red Sea as a mighty man waging war, and appeared to them at Sinai as a teacher who teaches the day’s lesson and then again and again goes over with his pupils what they have been taught, and appeared to them in the days of Daniel as an elder teaching Torah, and in the days of Solomon appeared to them as a young man, the Holy One said to Israel: Come to no false conclusions because you see Me in many guises, for I am God who was with you at the Red Sea and I am God who is with you at Sinai: I am Adonai your God.

The fact is, R. Hiyya bar Abba said, that God appeared to them in a guise appropriate to each and every place and time. At the Red Sea God appeared to them as a mighty man waging their wars, at Sinai God appeared to them as a teacher, as one who stands upright in awe when teaching Torah; in the days of Daniel, God appeared to them as an elder teaching Torah, for the Torah is at its best when it comes from the mouths of old men; in the days of Solomon God appeared to them as a young man in keeping with the youthful spirit of Solomon’s generation. At Sinai, then, when God said, I am Adonai Your God, appropriately God appeared to them as a teacher teaching Torah. (Pesikta de-Rab Kahana 12)

This, too, made my student think of the Doctor, because the Doctor also appears in different guises at different times: young and old, warrior and scholar. He was so enthusiastic about drawing out these lines of inquiry that I promised him that he could speak about this at his bar mitzvah if he were willing to do a bit of extra learning with me, a bargain which he eagerly accepted.

As I worked with him over the summer on his d'var Torah ("word of Torah" -- the spoken-word teaching he would offer at his bar mitzvah which would relate Torah and Jewish tradition to his own life), we talked both about how he understood his Torah portion and its relevance to his life, and about how these midrash evoke his favorite pop culture hero. (Of course we also talked about how Jewish understandings of God are different from the Doctor, because that matters too.) When he spoke from the bimah, he spoke about his Torah portion; about his participation in one of our congregation's social action projects; and about how he related Doctor Who to his understanding of what it means to be a Jew.

SEE (ELUL 10)


beyond brand labels
beyond the face I've learned
to cultivate
beyond the words I drip
like honey from an apple wedge
I want you to see me

see my missteps
and love me anyway
fiercely as the earth
loves the star it circles
inexorably as the tide
that rises and falls

on the mountain of God
there is vision
I am seen, I am afraid
made in your image, I see
you everywhere
when I open my eyes

Don't we all yearn to be truly seen for who we most deeply are? And, more than that, to be accepted and loved in the wholeness of our being?

Toward the end of the story of the akedah, the binding of Isaac (about which I wrote a poem cycle some years ago), we read that Avraham named that mountaintop "God Sees." Torah continues "as it is said until this day, 'On the mountain God is seen.'" There's a bit of an aural Hebrew pun which is lost in translation; the word-root denoting seeing is very like the word-root denoting awe or fear of God. Perhaps one might also say "on the mountain God inspires awe." Or maybe it is the act of seeing and being seen which evokes awe.

Shabbat shalom to all.

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) You can read last year's and this year's #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; last year's posts are also available, lightly revised, in the print chapbook Elul Reflections.

HEAR (ELUL 9)


The sound that means
change is coming.

The shout of triumph.
The broken plea.

The cry of the heart
cracked open at last.

The rise and fall
of every breath.

The future I haven't lived
knocking at the door.

Tradition teaches that we should hear the shofar every day during Elul as a spiritual wake-up call. The three customary shofar calls are often compared to human sounds of triumph and brokenness. What is the sound which would perk up your ears, speed your heart, wake you to previously-unimagined new possibilities?

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) You can read last year's and this year's #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; last year's posts are also available, lightly revised, in the print chapbook Elul Reflections.

BELIEVE (8 ELUL)


That I am more
than the stories I tell.

That some core of self
remains

though old photos
are no longer mirrors.

That the good
I've tried to do

matters.
That you see me.

That I will find mercy
in your eyes.

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) You can read last year's and this year's #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; last year's posts are also available, lightly revised, in the print chapbook Elul Reflections.

BE (7 ELUL)


Time to decide
who I want
to be
this time
around the wheel.

Look:
goldenrod sparks
and fizzes
like gold dust
by the roadside.

A new year
a new morning
a new lifetime
just around
the bend.

Will I be
playful today
or severe?
What in me
endures

no matter how
I dress
what stays
through all
of my changes?

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) You can read last year's and this year's #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; last year's posts are also available, lightly revised, in the print chapbook Elul Reflections.

SEARCH (6 ELUL)


I want you to see me
even when I'm unlovely.

Lost on familiar roads.
Who's in the mirror?

My feet are confused
but I know I don't want

to be a mechanical rabbit
on a greyhound track.

Is it safe to show
my true colors, flash

my most hidden heart?
Will you turn me away?

What mattered more:
the wrong turn

or the change in course?
What am I searching for?

I'm participating again this year in #blogElul, an internet-wide carnival of themed posts aimed at waking the heart and soul before the Days of Awe. (Organized by Ima Bima.) You can read last year's and this year's #blogElul posts via the Elul tag; last year's posts are also available, lightly revised, in the print chapbook Elul Reflections.