I struggle to find words right now.

The virus has stolen life and breath from so many. Systemic racism has stolen life and breath from so many more.

What words could be equal to the murder of George Floyd? To the unthinkable horror of a police officer kneeling on a man’s neck until the life leaves him?

And we know that the pandemic disproportionately kills people of color because of the same systemic racism that causes police to arrest, and to kill, people of color in disproportionate numbers. It’s injustice heaped on injustice.

Havurah Shir Hadash invites all to join their very first live-streaming Shabbaton  on June 12 and 13th with Rabbi Rachel Barenblat and Rabbi David Markus, celebrating spiritual connectivity in the legacy of Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (1924-2014), pathfinder and futurist for Jewish spirituality in the emerging digital age.

Register here! (And read on to learn more.)

This year’s Reb Zalman Memorial Scholars are Rabbi Rachel Barenblat and Rabbi David Markus, next-generation visionaries and riveting teachers for the next transformations of Jewish life. With music, poetry, spirited prayer with liturgy old and new, mystic visioning, and re-mixing of ancient text, together we’ll bring forward visions for a Jewish digital future worthy of us all. It’s a spiritual future Reb Zalman began to imagine long ago – but left for future generations to bring into being. That time is unfolding before our eyes, on our screens, in our homes, and in a society changing with once unimaginable speed.  Join us for a weekend of depth and height as we surf those changes in the only true way we ever can – together.

Rabbi Markus is the nation’s only pulpit rabbi simultaneously holding a public oath of office.  In spiritual life, Markus serves as rabbi and music director for Temple Beth El (New York, NY), and seminary faculty at the Academy for Jewish Religion.  In secular life, Markus presides in New York Supreme Court as part of a parallel public service career that has spanned all branches and levels of government – from presidential campaigns to legislation to environmental affairs.  Markus has won numerous awards as an “innovator in public service” (Harvard University).

Rabbi Barenblat is one of “America’s most inspiring rabbis” (Forward 2016).  Barenblat serves as rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel (North Adams, MA); her Velveteen Rabbi blog was rated as one of the top sites on the Internet (Time Magazine 2008).  Barenblat is an accomplished poet and narrator of Jewish spiritual life: her collections include Texts to the Holy (Ben Yehuda 2018), Open My Lips (Ben Yehuda 2016), Waiting to Unfold (Phoenicia 2013) and 70 faces: Torah poems (Phoenicia 2011).

SHABBATON SCHEDULE

Kabbalat Shabbat & Global Convening -  Friday, June 12, 6:30pm PT

Shabbat Morning Service & Visioning - Saturday, June 13, 10:00am PT

Lunch and Learn: Mishkan Sandbox - Saturday, June 13 , 1:00pm PT

Malave Malkah: Poems of Yearning - Saturday, June 13, 8:30pm PT

#BeALight Havdalah - Saturday, June 13, 9:00pm PT

FRIDAY KEYNOTE – GETTING REAL, DIGITAL EDITION (Rabbi Barenblat)

Today we’re distant from each other physically because of covid-19. At times we may feel distant from community and from God for all kinds of reasons. The answer to that distance is emotional keruv, drawing-near: but how? How can we use the words of our prayers (both those we’ve inherited, and those we remix and create anew) to connect across distance both physical and spiritual? How can we be real with our prayer lives and with each other even when we feel (or are) alone? How can we safely let ourselves feel, even in this time of pandemic, so that we can be spiritually authentic with ourselves, each other, and our Source?

SATURDAY KEYNOTE – THE MISHKAN’S NEXT DIGITAL (R)EVOLUTION (Rabbi Markus)

Since history began, we’ve danced with the sacred in forms that evolved with us. Jewish history of a desert-wandering Mishkan settled in a place, then a Temple, then another Temple, then out to exile. Homes and learning centers became society’s sacred spaces. Eventually synagogues and clergy roles re-exerted centralizing influence. Now with covid-19 hastening society’s digital leaps, what’s next? As sacred gatherings de-center to living rooms and pixels, what will be our Mishkan? How will we build it to channel “me” and “we,” here and there, tradition and change?

LUNCH AND LEARN – MISHKAN SANDBOX FOR THE GENERATIONS

Exactly how can we uplift spiritual connection when we’re physically separated, even sheltering in place? What specific best practices, individually and collectively, can co-create a vibrant Mishkan exactly where we are? Join our multi-generational panel with Rabbis Barenblat, Markus and Zaslow as together we sandbox tangible practices to enliven spiritual life for this digital moment of transformation.

MELAVE MALKAH – POEMS OF YEARNING

Before creation, there was an eit ratzon – a time of yearning.  Rabbi Barenblat will lead us into that eit ratzon through poetry and niggunim. 

#BEALIGHT HAVDALAH – PASSING THE LIGHT FORWARD

Rabbi Markus will lead a #BeALight havdalah, bridging into the new week and rededicating ourselves to building a world of connection, justice and love. 

Register here!

The enemy
could be anywhere.
The tiny spiky mace
that liquefies the lungs
and clots the vessels
in the brain --

could be
on a door handle
or a package
or a light switch
or lingering in the air.

Going to the grocery store
or the mechanic
is a walk
through the valley
of the shadow.

This flimsy scrap of fabric
over my nose and mouth
is my shield.
Hand sanitizer my chain mail.
Will soap and water protect me?

I want to feel your presence
your cool embrace
on my hot skin
your glorious light
like early dawn breaking.

I don't want
to walk through the world
afraid.

Part of an occasional series: Pandemic Psalm 1, Pandemic Psalm 2. 

But I, through Your abundant love, enter Your house... (Ps. 5:8)

I enter your house
before sleep,
lying among sheets
not yet tangled

in the anteroom
I wonder whether
I'll hear your voice
right away

feel the blush 
rise in my face,
the jackhammer beat
of my shy heart

down to the floor
not in abasement 
but exultation
letting you in

Last week my congregational psalm group delved into psalm 5. In verse 8, the psalmist says, "But I, through Your abundant love, enter Your house; I bow down in awe at Your holy temple." (It's a line that's familiar to many of us from liturgy.)

From that line emerged a writing prompt: what does it mean to envision entering God's house during this time of pandemic when we are all sheltering-in-place at home? What is God's house, where is God's house, how do we enter it, what does it feel like to enter it now? 

The Israelites shall camp each with his standard, under the banners of their ancestral house; they shall camp around the Tent of Meeting at a distance. (Numbers 2:2)

Tn this week's Torah portion, Bamidbar, we read how the twelve tribes would encamp around the mishkan (the dwelling place for God) and the ohel moed (the tent of meeting). Each tent was at an appropriate distance from every other. In normal years, I've resonated with the idea that the tents were arranged at a distance to give each household appropriate privacy.

(That comes from Talmud, which explicates "Mah tovu ohalecha Ya'akov," "how good are your tents, O [house of] Jacob," to say that our tents were positioned so that no household was peeking in on any other. What was "good" about our community was healthy boundaries.)

This year, of course, the idea of camping at a distance from each other evokes the physical distancing and sheltering-in-place that we've all been doing for the past few months of the covid-19 pandemic.

Sometimes distance is necessary for protection and safety. Like our tents in the wilderness positioned just so. Like the physical distance between us now, each of us in our own home, coming together in these little boxes on this video screen.

But notice this too: our spiritual ancestors set up their physically-distanced tents around the mishkan and the ohel moed, the dwelling-place for God and the tent of meeting. The place of encounter with holiness, and the place of encounter with community.

Here we are, each in her own tent. This week's Torah portion reminds us that our tents need to be oriented so that we all have access to the Divine Presence -- and so that we all remember we're part of a community.

When the Temple was distroyed by Rome almost two thousand years ago, our sages taught that we needed to replace the Beit HaMikdash -- the House of Holiness, the place where God's presence was understood to dwell -- with a mikdash me'aht, the tiny sanctuary of the Shabbes table.

When we bless bread and wine at our Shabbat table, we make that table into an altar, a place of connection with God. That feels even more true to me now, as I join this Zoom call from my Shabbes table! In this pandemic moment, our home tables become altars: places where we encounter God and constitute community even more than before.

"Let them make Me a sanctuary that I might dwell among them," God says. Or -- in my favorite translation -- "that I might dwell within them." We make a mishkan so that God can dwell within us.

That feels even more true to me now too... as our beautiful synagogue building waits patiently for the time when it will be safe for us to gather together in person again. Until then, we need to learn to find -- or make -- holiness in where we are. We need to learn to find -- or make -- community even though we're apart.

Our distance from each other protects us. And maybe more importantly, it protects those who are most vulnerable in our community: the elderly, the immunocompromised, those with preexisting conditions who are especially at-risk in this pandemic time. Pikuach nefesh, saving a life, is the paramount Jewish value. For the sake of saving a life we are instructed to do anything necessary, even to break Shabbat.

Being apart is painful and hard and it is one hundred percent the right thing to do -- and the Jewish thing to do.

So we're at a distance. So were our ancestors, as this week's Torah portion reminds us. Our task is to make sure that our tents are positioned so that there's space for God, and space for our community connections. So that God and community are the holy place in the middle. The place toward which all of our tents are oriented, toward which all of our hearts are oriented. Even, or especially, when we need to be apart.

Shabbat shalom.

This is the d'varling that I offered at Kabbalat Shabbat services over Zoom this week. (Cross-posted to my From the Rabbi blog.)

One of the most extraordinary things in the world, for me as a writer who is also a singer, is hearing my own words set to music. The music transforms and uplifts the words, and the end result is a work of art that is rooted in but also different from the one I put out into the world. It is humbling and amazing and awe-inspiring for me. 

I've been blessed to have that experience a few times. In 2010, composer Michael Veloso (who is a dear friend) set two of my motherhood poems from Waiting to Unfold (Phoenicia, 2013) to music -- Letters to Little Bean (listen here at SoundCloud.)

In 2014, Michael Scherperel set four poems from 70 faces: Torah poems (Phoenicia, 2011) to music in a series called "שבעים / Shiv'eem" ("Seventy") (listen here at SoundCloud.)

And this week I heard my words set to music once more: conductor and composer Sarah Riskind (a longtime friend and fellow alumna of the Williams College Elizabethans) set my "Psalm of the Sky" (which appears in Open My Lips, Ben Yehuda 2016) to music (embedded below, or if the embed doesn't work, you can listen here at SoundCloud.)

It's particularly poignant to hear this setting of these words now. During this time of pandemic, I resonate with the words of this "psalm of uncertainty" in a new way. And because singing together in person is not currently possible (and may be contraindicated even when we are able to gather again, at least until there is a vaccine), and singing in harmony on Zoom is not possible (because sounds waves clash and collide), hearing voices in harmony is especially moving to me in this moment.

I'm grateful to Sarah for this beautiful setting of my poem, and I hope it speaks to you, too.

Newspapers overflow with empty words
     from men who value money more than lives
while bodies stack up faster than we can bury
    and doctors and nurses reuse protective gear
and each solitary death, lungs filling with water
     in a negative pressure room, is a world destroyed.

I wish I believed that God hurls lightning bolts
     like Zeus on his mountain striking evil down.
I want to smash what keeps us in thrall
     to petty kings who feel no empathy
who set their children one against another
     fighting for supplies in a zero-sum game.

My child asks why God doesn't answer our prayers.
     Grief stoppers my throat. What can I say?

This is the second poem in an occasional series. (The first is Pandemic Psalm 1.) I'm teaching three different classes right now on psalms (reading them, praying them, engaging with them devotionally, writing our own) and as a result the psalms are very much with me in this moment. 

These poems are not translations or renderings of the classical psalms -- they are the outpouring of my own heart. That said, this second psalm in my pandemic psalms series takes some inspiration from psalm 2 which speaks of people "murmur[ing] vain things" (in Robert Alter's translation), and of earthly kings, and uses the language of smashing or shattering. That language feels apt in this time when the world's brokenness is so palpable and so painfully clear.

Happy is the one
who sifts the detritus of the crisper
and from a third of a cabbage, a wilted carrot
and half a cup of sourdough discard
assembles okonomiyaki,
who grows new scallions from the stumps of the old
and sings to angels while kneading challah.

This one will find a thimble of chili crisp
at the back of the refrigerator,
a bag of dried beans when shelves are bare.
Her spice cabinet blooms at all seasons
with bright sumac and turmeric
and the striated crescents of cumin seeds.

If she can feed a hungry heart
she will always be content.

I recorded this short video for my community to share with them before Shabbat. I'm sharing it here as well, in case it speaks to any of you. And if you'd prefer to read it, rather than viewing it, the text appears below.

Hello friends.

As Shabbat approaches, we're finishing week eight of shelter-in-place and social distancing.

Many of you have described to me a sense of being unmoored in time. Normal life stopped in March. Kids don't go to school anymore. One day blurs into the next. Has it been two weeks since this started, or two years? It feels like both.

I keep thinking about the Torah story we're reading right now -- about our spiritual ancestors wandering in the wilderness. They might have thought when they left Egypt that their journey would be quick. It wasn't.

Even in my worst moments I know this pandemic won't last 40 years! But it might feel that way sometimes. And a journey always seems longer when we don't know how long it will take.

This year I empathize with our ancestors in a way I never did before. Everything about this is hard. Maybe especially wondering whether these hardships are worth it, and not knowing how long this will last.

In our Torah story, our ancestors displayed almost every emotion there is. Sometimes they railed against God and against their leaders. Sometimes they were accepting. Sometimes they were grateful for manna. Sometimes they complained because they didn't have meat. We too may be emotionally all over the map. That's normal.

And I'll bet our ancestors felt unmoored in time, just like we do. The only marker of time they had was the double portion of manna that fell on Friday, enough to sustain them on Shabbat.

Here's how I'm trying to tether myself in time. I try to bookend each day with a moment of mindfulness -- to wake with modah ani, the morning prayer for gratitude, and go to sleep with the bedtime shema. Counting the Omer helps, when I remember to do it.

Baking challah on Fridays helps. Friday morning meditation, now in the CBI zoom room instead of the CBI sanctuary, helps. Shabbat services, ditto. I try to take Shabbat as a day away from the news -- to give my soul time to heal, and to make Shabbat different from other days.

I try to notice as spring green return to the trees, as the moon waxes and wanes. These remind me that the cycles of the natural world continue.

And I'm trying to stop speculating about how long the journey will be. We can't know. But like our ancestors, we're not alone. Even if we can't be together "in person," we can be together on Zoom or Facetime or over the phone. We can be together in spirit.

Tonight as the sun goes down, I'll kindle two little lights. As sundown sweeps across the globe, I imagine a wave of tiny lights appearing in response. In my home and your home. All around the world. Whether or not we have candles, we can kindle that light in hearts.

May that light shine brightly and bring us comfort for the journey ahead -- however long the journey may be. Shabbat shalom.

Scallion-ends growing new shoots. 

Some days feel almost normal. Especially Sundays when I'm doing laundry, or planning what to cook, or sitting on my mirpesset watching the sky.

Those are all things I routinely did before the pandemic. Baking challah on Fridays is another. Lighting Shabbat candles. Reading with my kid at bedtime.

Anything that connects me with old rhythms of time can bring comfort. It can remind me that life unfolded before the pandemic, and will unfold again after.

Some days feel painful all the way through. I wake up grieving for the world, I struggle with the news of deaths and protests, I wrestle with despair.

And some days I feel mostly okay. Sunshine, and the chartreuse of new spring leaves, lift my spirits and my heart. So do the voices of friends from afar.

Of course, even when I'm feeling sanguine, I'm aware of the pandemic. There are terrible losses everywhere. I can't forget that thousands are dying.

The news that by June 1, the government expects the daily death rate to rise to 3,000... it's so terrible I can't hold on to it. My mind shies away.

When I can be in the moment -- breathing in "right here," out "right now," as Lorianne taught me so many years ago -- I feel more present, and more okay.

When I get caught up in thinking about the future (the likelihood of more waves of infection, the countless awful lonely deaths to come) I falter.

When I think of all the things my son is losing this year, I grieve. I tell myself that he'll be okay, that he's resilient, that he is learning good tools.

Time becomes fluid. The two months (so far) of sheltering in place and social distancing feel simultaneously shorter and longer than they measurably are.

And of course this is a journey of unknown duration. It's easier if we know when a thing will end. There is absolutely no knowing when this will end.

And yet life goes on. I make coffee. I cook meals. My son does math problems, plays Minecraft, re-reads a favorite book. It's like normalcy... almost.

I know how fortunate we are to have something like normalcy. I try not to think about how precarious that is. How easily these comforts could fall away.

This week we're reading Acharei Mot-Kedoshim. Acharei mot means after the deaths. After the deaths of Aaron's two sons, we read, vayidom Aharon: and Aaron was silent. That's resonating with me in a new way this year.

After the deaths that covid-19 has wrought in our county, our nation, our world -- after reading the accounts of ICU nurses and ER doctors in New York -- after facing the inconceivable suffering in this moment -- I understand Aaron's silence anew.

Sometimes there are no words. Sometimes nothing we can say makes anything better, and our words of hope for the future ring hollow or feel like bypassing. All we can do is sit with our grief, or sit with our fellow human beings in their grief.

Our double Torah portion this week takes its name from the two parshiyot that make it up, Acharei Mot and Kedoshim. Acharei mot: after the death. Kedoshim: God tells Moses to tell us, Kedoshim tihiyu: y'all shall be holy, for I your God am holy.

This year, the name of the double portion reads to me like a sentence, or maybe like a promise. Acharei mot, kedoshim. After the deaths, y'all can be holy. Because deaths are always part of reality, and we have a choice in how we respond to them.

When it comes to the horrors of covid-19, we can respond with nihilism: deciding that suffering is inevitable, so we might as well do whatever we want. People are going to die no matter what, so it's every person for themselves, right?

Or we can respond with care and compassion: taking care of our fellow human beings in the ways we are able. I think you can guess which one of those two options I think is ethical and correct. But don't take my word for it. Take the Torah's word.

Our Torah portion gives us specifics: Care for our elders. Keep Shabbat. When we harvest the earth's abundance, leave some for the poor. Care for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger in our midst. Don't keep a laborer's wages until morning.

Here's another way to put that:

Preserve the life and safety of our elders, and make their needs a priority. Give them the resources they need to stay healthy. Wear masks and shelter in place to protect their immune systems from being ravaged by covid19.

Remember that human lives are more important than productivity. That means life matters more than the economy. If someone doesn't have enough to live on in this pandemic moment, we can help them. If someone has died, we can't bring them back.

Make sure everyone has enough to eat: that means give to our local food pantries, if we can, and it also means ensure the safety of those who work in the fields and the meat packing plants. Don't force them to work in unsanitary and unsafe conditions.

Care for all who are vulnerable to abuse. Torah speaks often in the language of "the widow, the orphan, and the stranger who lives among you." Today that might be immigrants, refugees, people of color, queer and trans people. Those most at-risk.

Don't exploit those who labor for others. Protect and uplift them and give them the resources they need to be safe and healthy and fed. In a nutshell, protect and uplift life. That's what it means for the members of a community to be kedoshim. 

Kedoshim is a plural word.  As a community, it's our job to respond to death with compassion. As a community, it's our job to respond to death by taking care of the vulnerable. As a community, it's our job to live out Jewish values -- to be holy.

Acharei mot: kedoshim. After these deaths, in response to these deaths, in response to the world's suffering today, it's our calling to be a holy community. To respond by caring for those in need and making choices that uplift life.

Kein yehi ratzon -- may it be so.

This is the d'varling I shared at Shabbat morning services via Zoom this week. (Cross-posted to my From the Rabbi blog.)