Last Sunday we went to Northampton for lunch with my in-laws. We had planned to spend some time bopping around town, browsing the aisles of the used-cd stores, but most things were oddly closed; apparently Sunday was some kind of holiday? (Joking! -- obviously -- and I wish a blessed Eastertide to all my Christian readers.) Still, we were bemused when we realized that even secular institutions seemed to have closed for the holiday; the only place open downtown was, amusingly, the bagel shop. So we bought some bagels and then we continued on down the road to Tran's World Market.

The layout of the stores is similar: You enter to an array of phone cards, Indian videos, over-the-counter medicines, scents and packaged snacks. Most of the stores take credit cards. The aisles are roughly divided by country or by food type. Typically, there is a row of dried noodles -- rice, wheat, cellophane (pea flour), fat and thin -- and spring roll wrappers. The soy sauces, oyster sauces, Sriracha hot sauces and fish sauces fill nearly an entire aisle. There is aisle of bulk spices, dals (lentils) and canned fishes...

That's from this post, which describes several different world markets in the Pioneer Valley. The first one on the list is Tran's, which is one of our favorite stores. Several of our cooking staples come from there: dark soy sauce in big plastic bottles, good sesame oil and sriracha hot sauce, soba noodles and strange spicy pickles. I love the sense of culinary possibility I feel every time we're there, and the way ingredients for different cuisines collide on the shelves. It's a little bit like traveling the world without leaving home.

It had only been two days since I blogged about hamentaschen, and in the process learned about the Iranian poppyseed cookie naan-e berenji, which are made with orange flower water and poppy seeds and rice flour. First I spotted the rice flour; then the black and white poppy seeds; and then the bottles of various flower waters. I couldn't resist. I brought them home, and today I tried this recipe. So Purim was a week ago; who says I can't still enjoy an Iranian Purim treat?

I suspect I should have softened my butter further, because my dough wound up a little crumbly even though I opted to use the lesser of the two amounts of rice flour the recipe offered. But the cookies are tasty; they have a fine grain, like rich shortbread, and their aroma is amazing. (Orange flower water is awesome stuff.) Having just seen Persepolis, I'm delighted to have made a first foray into Iranian cuisine.

A little bit of digging reveals that many folks enjoy these on Norouz (the Persian New Year); they're one of seven sweets that are traditional Norouz fare. Norouz begins on the vernal equinox, which in Jewish tradition we call call the tekufat Nissan; I was born on the equinox, so I feel an affinity with Norouz. (Hey, it marks a new year for me, too.) It sounds like in Iran people celebrate Norouz for 13 days, so -- these cookies may be a late Purim celebration, but they're still right on time for the Persian New Year. Happy new year to all those who celebrate at this season! I'll enjoy a cookie for you.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, recipes, Purim, Norouz.

2020 Edited to add: you can always find the most up-to-date version of the VR Haggadah by going to velveteenrabbi.com and clicking through to the haggadah page.

Purim sameach! I hope everyone's having a marvelous Purim.

Last night was the full moon of Adar II. From here, the moon will wane...and wax...and before we know it, the full moon of Nissan will be upon us, which means Pesach! Which means it's time for me to joyously announce:

2020 Edited to add: you can always find the most up-to-date version of the VR Haggadah by going to velveteenrabbi.com and clicking through to the haggadah page.

Praise for the haggadah:

• I made my first Passover tonight. I frantically searched the internet over the last couple of days to find an alternative haggadah which would speak to my heart and soul.  I found yours... Your words and vision made this Passover the most meaningful and enriching I've had so far. -- Robin, New York

• I used your haggadah this year and wanted to let you know how meaningful it was. It struck the right chord of being feminist without excluding men. Rather it brought the importance of women into the ceremony in a lovely balanced way. -- Merlinda, Nova Scotia

• I used your haggadah as my foundation for leading the second seder for my family... They told me afterwards it was the most meaningful seder they had ever attended -- actually they told me it was the FIRST meaningful seder they had ever attended. -- Rhonda, Massachusetts

• Your haggadah may be THE best haggadah I have seen in a very long time.  It has all the social justice things in it that I want to be there, but it is not sententious, it is joyous in spirit, the illustrations are wonderful, ditto the poems. -- Alicia, New Jersey

It's been two years since I last released a new version of my haggadah, and I'm really happy with how the text has evolved. You'll still find great poetry here, and a creative and heartfelt set of responses to the holiday and its traditions; that's as true now as it was seven years ago when this haggadah first took form.

But this year you'll also find some new strengths. I've revamped the Hebrew text, which is both more complete and more readable (now, with vowels!) In addition to adding contemporary and creative readings and poems, I've also folded back in some of the traditional texts which were absent from former versions.(Though there still isn't a full traditional birkat ha-mazon in these pages; if you want one, I can point you to a good one online here.) One way or another I hope the haggadah enriches your Pesach.

My deepest thanks are due to everyone who helped midwife this year's version of the haggadah into being, most especially Natalie d'Arbeloff for this year's cover image and R' Megan Doherty for proofreading; any remaining errors are mine alone. Thanks, too, to the artists who donated artwork two years ago, whose work still graces these pages.

And thanks to all of you who've used the haggadah over the years and have sent me emails or comments to tell me what worked, what didn't, and what resonated most for you. I appreciate all of you more than you know.

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

Despite the lovely savory hamentaschen recipe posted recently at the Jew and the Carrot, I decided to go oldschool and to make good old-fashioned sweet hamentaschen to bring to my shul for our Purimspiel tonight. But Ethan asked me a fine question while I was baking: what's the story with hamentaschen?

As a kid I learned that Haman (boo!) wore a tricornered hat. These tricornered cookies are called "hamantaschen" which means "Haman's Hat" (actually Haman's Pocket, but close enough) and we eat them as a sign of our triumph over Haman. In adulthood it's become clear to me that this is an anachronism (among other things, tricornered hat? in ancient Shushan? really?) but it's still an entertaining drash, mostly because it allows me to picture Haman as a kind of arrogant little Napoleon.

D'var acher / another interpretation: "mohn" means poppyseeds, and (as this article notes) it was customary to eat poppyseeds and honey at Purim-time all the way back in ibn Ezra's day. These cookies were originally called mohn-taschen, "poppyseed pockets." And then someone noticed that ha-mohn and ha-man sound alike, and started associating poppyseed sweets with our story's villain. (According to this article, poppyseeds were the tradition in Central Europe; the custom of filling the cookies with plum or prune filling is Czech in origin.)

In Hebrew school yesterday we unrolled a small scroll across the seminar table to show our b'nai mitzvah prep kids the megillat Esther. (No, not the JT Waldman rendition, though I've just taken my beloved copy off the shelf to re-read as I do every year at this season...) We noted a few interesting things about this particular megillah -- like, for instance, the fact that the first line ends with the word המלך / ha-melech (the king) and then in the next ten or so columns the first line begins with that same word, again and again. The king. The king. The king.

Clearly this text has something to say to us about the king. Who's the king? Obviously the king is Achashverosh, right? The first line of the text says so plainly! Of course, Achashverosh doesn't seem very bright. He's clearly ruled by his own sexuality (first the episode with Vashti, then the two times when he, er, raises his sceptre to Esther his new queen.) He can't make a single decision without an advisor there to tell him what to do. And toward the end of the story he admits that he can't annul a single one of his own decrees. Some king.

This story is filled with hints of another kind of power. The power that caused Esther to be placed in a position where she might save her people. The power to which the righteous Mordechai would bow (Haman demands the obeisance and is furious that he can't have it, but the text tells us simply that Mordechai "bows to no man.") The kind of power that would avert the severity of an evil decree and enact righteousness and compassion in its place. But that power, that form of kingship or sovereignty, is never mentioned. Purim is a festival when nothing is what it appears: Queen Esther is more than she claims to be, and the gallows on which Haman meant to hang Mordechai becomes his own undoing, and the true king in the story is never mentioned at all.

My rabbi gave over the following teaching: Pesach is the beginning of the festival cycle, the first holiday in the wheel of the year. (Yes, yes, the new year is in the fall, but the beginning of the holiday cycle is in the spring. The Jewish year has four starting points.) In the story of Pesach, the Jews are in jeopardy and we are redeemed by God, "with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. The vast miracles of that story (the plagues, the splitting of the sea) could only have come from God. Yes, there's a human agent involved -- Moshe -- but the traditional haggadah barely mentions him at all. In the story of the Exodus, God is the agent of change.

Move all the way around the wheel of the year, through Shavuot and the Days of Awe and Sukkot and Chanukah and Tu BiShvat, to Purim: the last festival in the year, the last stop before we begin again. In the story of Purim, the Jews are in jeopardy and we redeem ourselves: through the wisdom and faith of Mordechai, the fasting of Esther and the people, and then Esther's insight, and then the new decree she convinces the king to sign (which gives the Jews permission to defend themselves, turning their prospective day of destruction into a day of rejoicing.) Yes, God is involved -- but God is hidden, never mentioned by name. God may be the agent of change on a deep level, but the change is made manifest by our own hands.

We begin our festival year by relying on God to save us; we end our festival year by owning our own capacity to transform our world ourselves. And each year we recapitulate the journey from one to the other. In that sense, Purim is the ultimate celebration of human agency. Maybe that's why the sages of Jewish tradition suggested that in the World to Come, when creation is redeemed, all other festivals will fall away but Purim will remain: it's the quintessential messianic holiday, because it celebrates our ability to create a redeemed future with our own hands.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Purim.

The year after I graduated from college, I worked at the bookstore in Williamstown, selling textbooks to college students and "regular" (trade) books to townies. I liked that job. The work was sociable and not especially taxing, and the store gave me a thirty percent discount on books...which meant, of course, that I spent far too much of my small paycheck on books; they were so cheap! I used to enjoy opening the store: arriving early enough to turn on the lights, put on a pot of coffee, set some jazz playing on the stereo, roll out the awning. Like getting ready for houseguests every day.

The schedule was one of the best things about that job. In return for working Sundays, I got Fridays and Saturdays off. In those days the only Shabbat practice I maintained consistently was baking challah: I made bread every Friday that year. That physical act connected me to the rhythm of the week.

There's something about baking bread that has always both awed and soothed me. The alchemy by which flour, water, yeast and a bit of salt are transformed into bread still amazes me. And the process is so physical, so embodied: the scent of the poolish (yeast and water and flour beginning to percolate), the silk of a handful of flour, the satiny quality of dough as it becomes ready to rest and to rise.

I'm making bread and soup today, and as I set the dough to rise and put the chicken in my soup pot I thought, "what a classic Ashkenazic Shabbat dinner this could be!" Except, of course, that it isn't, exactly. Homemade bread yes, but not braided challah: this dough is golden with a cup of cornmeal, flecked with roasted onions and minced cilantro. The soup begins with a chicken, sure, but over the course of the afternoon I've added the black beans I soaked overnight, and dark poblano peppers, and a can of hominy. Later, as the dinner hour grows closer, I'll add fresh cilantro and a jar of the corn relish I put up last August.

But as I kneaded the dough this morning I whispered blessings, my hopes that this bread be capable of nourishing those who eat it on many levels at once. As I've been tinkering with the soup -- pulling meat off the bird's bones, slicing the jalapeño peppers I put up in September -- I've had the same prayer in mind. When I raise my wineglass tonight, I'll be thinking of my family and friends in farflung places, mentally and spiritually sending the blessings of Shabbat to their tables and their hearts. Isn't that what makes Friday night dinner into Shabbat supper? Not what we eat, but how we eat it; not what we make, but who we aspire to be.

A sweet Shabbat to all of you reading this, whoever and wherever you are.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Shabbat.

The focus of the fourth week of DLTI was Shabbat, especially kabbalat Shabbat, the series of psalms and songs that expands ma'ariv (the brief evening service) into a celebration of cosmic unification rife with mystical interpretations. Kabbalat Shabbat was also the service I was blessed to be co-leading during the last session of DLTI, so it was a natural focus for my week on at least two levels.

One of the most powerful parts of the week, for me, was Reb Marcia's teaching about the deep meanings and implications of Shabbat -- which was accompanied by Hazzan Jack softly playing guitar, modulating melody on-the-fly to match her words. I'm not going to reprint the teaching here in full; merely reading it, without the impact of voice and melody (and absent the context in which it was delivered) wouldn't do it justice. But I'll share a few of the ideas from it that are most powerful for me.

To enter into Shabbat is to live in perfect harmony. All the blessings that manifest in the material world depend on Shabbat. Shabbat is the center of a six-petaled flower; all the days of the week arise out of it, and depend on it. Without that center, the flower couldn't thrive.

Shabbat is the tree in the center of the garden, the nectar in the flower, the center of the cosmic wheel. Symbols of Shabbat include the moon, Jerusalem, the Tent of Meeting, the Garden of Eden, King David, the bride, the Queen, the holy apple orchard.

Our practice of Shabbat restores primordial wholeness to the cosmos. It has the capacity to irrigate the thirsty world. Shabbat is a transformation inside of God in which we are actors. It transforms and modulates the flow of God into the cosmos.

In order to understand Kabbalat Shabbat, you need to understand the difference between ceremony and ritual, between that which is symbolic and that which is theurgic. A ceremony is symbolic; it celebrates something that has happened. (Birthdays happen, with or without a ceremony.) A ritual is theurgic; it creates a new truth. A sacred event unfolding in the spiritual realm at that moment. (Like what happens under the chuppah: a cosmic shift.) Ritual ushers in a new reality in the material and cosmic realm. That's what Kabbalat Shabbat does.

The dominant energy of the week is duality, separation. Dualism is a gift: it allows for difference (day and night, hot and cold, chocolate and vanilla, me and you.) But it also has downsides. We never really know one another. We are each existentially alone. Shabbat is the counter to that, our chance to taste the river of oneness that flows through everything.

Living solely in separation is damaging, to us and to God. Shabbat is our weekly tune-up: a chance to repair brokenness, to effect union, one day out of every seven.

Our bad karma -- the combined effects of our negative actions and energies -- drags Shekhinah, the divine presence immanent in creation, into mis-alignment, like a divine slipped disc. Shabbat is a practice of divine chiropractic work, so that divine flow can be restored.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Shabbat, DLTI.

According to the Jewish way of counting, every tree in the world has its birthday today! At this full moon, the tradition teaches, the sap starts rising. Even though spring won't manifest here in the mountains of western Massachusetts for a solid few months yet, the trees are beginning to draw the sustenance they'll need for the coming year.

Though the holiday's roots are in an ancient tax system (whereby the fruits of trees could not be tithed to the Temple until they'd reached a certain age), Jewish mystics brought it to flower in a whole new way. They saw God as a tree Whose divine abundance flows like sap into creation, enlightening and enlivening all things. (We have them to thank for the custom of the Tu BiShvat seder, a ritual meal that's chock-full of symbolism, fruits, and nuts.) In our day Tu BiShvat is also an environmental festival, a time to celebrate not only trees but our obligation to care for the earth in which we are all planted.

For my part, I'm meditating today on the lessons we can draw from trees. My friend David sent me this quote, which I quite like:

In the Bible, as well as in later Torah literature, the tree is not regarded merely as a plant that gives fruit or provides shade. The tree is a symbol of life, and also the symbol of the upright man.  What impressed our sages was its endurance and tenacity.  The tree weathers all storms and yet keeps on clinging to the soil.  It suffers adversity, it is beaten by the winds and lashed by the rains, it is plucked bare in the autumn and snowed over in the winter.  Yet it does not wither away.  It retains its inner strength, and bursts forth into fresh blossom the moment the sun graces it again with its smile of spring.

For we know that it is in adversity that the tree collects its strength for renewed life.  Throughout the winter, the tree is not lifeless, even though it may appear so.  Beneath the crust of stem and branch, down below in the roots, hidden away in the soil, life goes on in undiminished intensity.

All the time, the tree is storing up new life energy and is replenishing its resources, to burst into full activity the moment Nature gives it the sign of spring's awakening: 'Gather strength through adversity, renew your life in times of suffering.'

That's what I was thinking about this morning as I breakfasted on an English muffin slathered with the etrog-ginger marmalade I made at the end of Sukkot. And I offer, again, a link to a Haggadah for Tu BiShvat [pdf] -- this is an amalgamation of two haggadot, one that I created and one that my rabbi created, and you're welcome to use it either as-is or as a jumping-off point for your own creative Tu BiShvat endeavors.

May we all know ourselves to be rooted, unshakeable; may we be able to find the sustenance we need to get through winter, on all levels; and may the light of the full moon bring us joy.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, TuBiShvat.

Today is overcast, white snowy earth mirrored in white clouded sky, so we won't see the sun actually drop behind the hills. One way or another, this is the shortest day of the year; starting tomorrow, the light lengthens.

In honor of the solstice, a story, courtesy of Tel Shemesh:

"When Adam saw the day gradually diminishing, he said, “Woe is me! Perhaps because I sinned, the world around me is growing darker and darker, and is about to return to chaos and confusion, and this is the death heaven has decreed for me. He then sat eight days in fast and prayer. But when the winter solstice arrived, and he saw the days getting gradually longer, he said, "Such is the way of the world,” and proceeded to observe eight days of festivity. The following years he observed both the eight days preceding and the eight days following the solstice as days of festivity." (-- Babylonian Talmud, Avodah Zarah 8a)

In this story the first human being is distressed over the decreasing light and believes it is a punishment. Only when he learns that the light will begin to grow again is he comforted. We too often feel sad or anxious when the light diminishes and are glad when it comes again. Adam's drama of fear and acceptance helps us to accept our own moments of not knowing.

After the truth is revealed to him, Adam is able to celebrate before and after the solstice. This Jewish story of the winter solstice teaches us to honor darkness as well as light. We can also wonder: where might Eve be in this story? What would she think of the changing seasons and how would she celebrate them?

I don't have good answers to Rabbi Jill's questions about how our sense of the winter solstice might change if we approached it from Eve's point of view. Maybe for Eve, and for us, winter can be a time for curling up by the fireside, savoring home and hearth, and biding our time to see what germinates in us as we follow the increasing light into spring.

Wishing all a happy tekufat Tevet! May we all be blessed with light!

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, solstice.

I never really understood Christmas lights until I moved to New England.

I'm not talking about the houses so covered in zillions of tiny bulbs that they can probably be seen from space. That kind of lighting may be remarkable, but it doesn't move me -- and it also doesn't seem to exist out here where I live. I'm talking about simple lights, prosaic lights. Lights twined around trees. Illuminated icicles along the eaves of rural houses and barns. Strings of light limning fences on back roads in the middle of nowhere. I never understood lights like that until I moved to a place where complete darkness can fall by 5pm.

Jewish time is closely tied to the cycle of the seasons: the phase of the moon, the angle of the sun. In summertime, it makes sense to daven shacharit (morning prayers) as soon as I can roust myself out of bed; the sun rises around 5am, after all. By the same token, evening prayers fall late in the day; in high summer, it's light until at least nine.

Not now. These days, where I live, the sun rises after seven, and sets during the afternoon. Hebrew school begins in the twilight, and when it ends the world is pitch-black. There's a lot of darkness here at this time of year, and that's changed my relationship with Christmas lights in a pretty fundamental way.

I'm especially fond of the houses where a single candle is lit in every window, which turns out to be a Scottish yuletide custom, meant to light the way for wayfarers -- or, depending on who you ask, for the Holy Family on Christmas Eve. Maybe that practice resonates because Jews place our chanukiyot (Chanukah menorahs) in the windows of our homes, so that the lights we kindle can be seen by all who pass. The prayer Hanerot Hallalu (recited after candle-lighting) is a reminder that we kindle the Chanukah lights solely for their beauty and their mnemonic power, not because we plan to use them for any other purpose. We don't light them to read by, or to play dreidl by. We light them in order to see them, remember, and feel gratitude and awe. They're just there to give light.

Obviously Chanukah lights and yule candles have a religious resonance that purely decorative lights don't and can't lay claim to. But the two kinds of light in the darkness feel kin to me in some way, and both make me happy. The religious ones because of the stories they evoke; the secular ones because they're proof that someone out there cares enough about spreading light to take the time to string the cords, replace the bulbs, and illuminate the darkness. They're a gift for everyone who passes by. Sometimes, especially late at night when snow's coming down, they light my way home.

And when I drive our dark winter roads during the week of Chanukah, the remembered lights of my chanukiyah gleaming in my mind's eye, the lights on trees and barns and houses feel like they're twinkling in celebration right along with me. The illuminated snowflakes that line Water Street in Williamstown have six points, in fact, which means if I squint they're almost stars of David. It's all in the eye of the beholder, of course, but at this time of year I'm inclined to find light, on all levels, everywhere I can.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, lights.

We have good friends who throw a Solstice party each year. (I've mentioned it here before.) On the longest night of the year we gather to eat tasty foods and drink hot mulled wine in a room festooned with evergreen boughs and as many lit candles as our hosts can find. The candles are a beautiful visual representation of what the party's celebrating -- light in a time of darkness.

We're gathering friends at our house tonight for the first night of Chanukah. We'll make a mess of latkes (the classic potato ones, with apple sauce and sour cream) and, of course, light the chanukiyah. Like the candles our friends light on the solstice, the lights of Chanukah represent light in a time of darkness: the metaphorical light of hope burning bright in a time of fear and sorrow, against all odds sustaining us.

The Talmud records a debate about how to kindle the holiday lights. (This article is excellent if you want to learn more.) The school of Shammai favored starting with eight lights, and decreasing the number each night; that way, the number of lights kindled on each night would correspond to the number of days remaining in the miracle of the oil. The school of Hillel favored starting with one and increasing until we reach eight, and in this -- as in so many things -- Jewish tradition follows the teachings of Hillel. Lighting one more candle each night allows us to tap into our sense of the miraculous. As we increase physical light in the world, so too can we increase spiritual and metaphysical light in our lives.

Lighting one solitary candle can feel insufficient, insubstantial. (Especially when one lights ordinary thin Chanukah candles. The huge mahogany chanukiyah that my brother made when I became bat mitzvah holds 12" tapers, but I don't have a chanukiyah like that. Our menorah is beautiful, but it's small.) Everyone gathers 'round -- the match is struck, the shamash (helper candle) is lit -- the blessings are sung, and the one light kindled -- and then it burns there, small and brave, until that one wee candle is gone. There's something poignant about it. The miracle we're hoping to connect with is only barely present.

But barely present is enough. It's something to hold on to. It's a start. Even if it only lasts for a little while, there's a little more light in the world. In our day, the work of creating light is in our hands.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Chanukah.

One of the blogs I've recently begun reading is the Reb Zalman Legacy Project Blog, where webmaster/gabbai Seth Fishman posts regular teachings from the (vast and multifaceted) teachings of Reb Zalman Shachter-Shalomi, who I am blessed to consider my teacher.

This year Reb Zalman released a special blessing for Thanksgiving, intended to be inserted into the birkat ha-mazon (Grace After Meals) in the same place where one would insert a special blessing on other festivals such as Chanukah or Purim. Although it's not Thanksgiving quite yet, I figured I'd post this now, to give anyone who's interested the chance to print this out before the holiday. Even if you don't say a formal birkat at the end of your Thanksgiving feast, this lovely short poem of remembrance and gratitude stands on its own.

The original post is here; if this speaks to you, feel free to leave a comment there and join the conversation.

Edited  to reflect a slightly updated version of the bracha. Yom Hodu sameach to all!

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Thanksgiving.

Austin Area Interreligious Ministries, the city's largest interfaith organization, announced Thursday that its annual Thanksgiving celebration Sunday had to be moved because Hyde Park Baptist Church objected to non-Christians worshipping on its property.

(-- Church rejects interfaith service on its property, Austin-American Statesman)

Boy: that's the kind of lede that makes me cringe. And in my former home state, no less.

Austin Area Interreligious Ministries sounds like exactly the kind of organization I'd be involved with if I lived in that neck of the woods. "AAIM envisions a respectful, caring and inclusive community where people of diverse cultures and religions are actively involved in enhancing the quality of life in the Austin area," their website explains, and "AAIM unites faith and cultural communities to foster respect, partnership and transformation in service of the common good."

For the last 22 years, AAIM has held an annual Thanksgiving service attended by over 1000 people. The sacred obligation of hosting the event rotates each year, and this year the Central Texas Muslimaat was slated to host. Since none of the local Muslim community spaces are large enough to hold 1000+ people, they arranged to rent space from Hyde Park Baptist Church...until the folks at Hyde Park realized that this Thanksgiving service would involve ecumenical worship, and yanked the proverbial rug out from under the AAIM three days before the event.

It's not my place to criticize members of other religious traditions for living out their faith as they understand themselves to be called to do, but this story saddens me profoundly, as stories of religious insularity always do.

There's a happy ending to this particular tale, though. Congregation Beth Israel, "the oldest and largest Jewish congregation in Austin," rise to the occasion and offered their building as a home for the Muslim-hosted AAIR Thanksgiving supper and service this year. Evidently CBI's immediate response was "It's an honor to be able to provide the space, especially knowing our co-hosts are Muslims," and they immediately offered to arrange space for Muslim evening prayer. (In Jewish tradition we pray thrice daily, rather than five times, but the practice of offering regular evening prayer is a place of common ground.)

The service was held yesterday, and it sounds like it was wonderful. (The Statesman has an article about that, too: Interfaith Thanksgiving service hosted by Muslims at Beth Israel.)

I am grateful to CBI for stepping up and doing the right thing, and glad to know that despite this hurdle it was possible for hundreds of south Texans to gather in a spirit of reverence, community, and gratitude to celebrate Thanksgiving together. Guess it's just one more thing to be grateful for this week.

Technorati tags: interfaith, Thanksgiving, Austin.

I used to love my black satin cat mask. It was quilted, sleek to the touch. It had almond-shaped eyeholes and stiff silver whiskers. I wore it with a black leotard and tights and a tie-on satin tail. I was wearing it the year my parents took me to meet the witch.

She wasn't a real witch, of course. I don't think my parents knew any Wiccans or Pagans, then or now. No; this was a friend of theirs, who dressed up every year to entertain kids like me. But I didn't know that. My father assured me she was "real," and -- filled with glee -- I believed him.

I remember faux fog and spooky cobwebs on her lawn. She wore all black and a tall pointy hat, like the witch in the Wizard of Oz. I asked her what it was like to be a witch, and she answered me according to children's logic. Maybe that's why I can't remember her answer anymore.

For years after that I felt a frisson every time we drove past her house, even once I knew she was really just a lady in a witch costume. I felt sophisticated and worldly because I had sat on her couch drinking apple juice and eating candy corn. The borders between real and make-believe were different then.

In recent years I've come to appreciate the symbolism of Samhain, the overlap between Samhain and Dia de los Muertos, and how the notion of connecting with those beyond the veil is paralleled in some of the Jewish observances of the lunar month of Heshvan.

Halloween is kind of a non-event for me these days. I'm spending the evening quietly at home. No costumery; no jack-o-lanterns; no trick-or-treaters, because we live at the top of a long dark hill on a short dark street in a neighborhood with no kids. I'm cooking myself supper (salmon in sake and soy, with spinach and brown rice), listening to the wind in the trees -- having a contemplative Halloween, I suppose. That's fine by me.

Still, I wonder how many of us crave the kind of Halloween I remember from when I was a kid: a night to allow ourselves to live in imagination, to enjoy the way it feels to suspend our disbelief.

Technorati tags: Halloween.

We gathered at the Jewish Religious Center at Williams College: members of my shul and members of the shul up the road. Some of us had celebrated Shavuot together, so there were familiar faces.

A local musician had brought a car full of big beautiful drums, and he led us in some drumming and singing to get the spirit flowing. I wound up playing a plastic tambourine so enthusiastically I came home with a bruise on the heel of my left palm. A young man from my shul lit the festival candles, and we all said the blessing together.

We removed all of the Torah scrolls from the ark -- big and small, Torahs of all sizes -- and made seven hakafot, processions around the room. Before each hakafah one of the two rabbis present called or sang out the blessing, and then started a song. We sang and drummed as the scrolls were carried and danced around the room. For the first few circuits, we made a kind of London Bridge out of our raised hands, and the scrolls were carried between us. When I was handed a scroll, I waltzed it around the room, holding it close. One person hoisted his scroll into the air the way we lift a bride or groom on a chair at a wedding.

And then we took one scroll into the bigger room, and stood in an enormous circle with all the children in the middle, and passed around a box of surgical gloves, and then unfurled the entire Torah. Each of us helped to hold it up, in our gloved hands. It took a surprisingly long time, and a lot of space, to unroll it all. (A full-sized Torah stretches almost the length of a football field, I'm told.) It amazed me: not only the beauty of the words and the calligraphy, but the graphic design of it, the places where white space shapes the feel of the text. Black fire on white fire.

And we retold the story, looking around the scroll and cherrypicking highlights, reminders of how our narrative has gone in the year that's just ended. We chanted two aliyot from the very end of the scroll -- Moses dies, and the Israelites mourn, and Joshua ben Nun has the spirit of wisdom that Moses transmitted to him; he will lead the people forward, though there will never be another like Moses. And then before the fact of having finished could sink in, we chanted the very beginning of the scroll: suddenly the world is entirely brand-new, ruach elohim hovering over the face of the waters, and God sees what has been created and calls it good. Evening and morning, the first day.

Going from the end to the beginning always knocks me flat. Every year we read this same story, but every year we are different, and see the old story through new eyes. And what seems like the end is always already the beginning. We live in linear time and we live in circular time. We hit the same highlights each year, holidays and seasons and anniversaries, but each year we're in a new place, a new twist in the spiral of our lives.

And then we sang while we rolled the scroll back up, restoring her to her usual form. And then it was time for dessert, and I quietly slipped away.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, SimchatTorah.

Today is Shemini Atzeret, which means something like "the 8th day of pausing" or "the pause of the 8th day." Eighth day refers to the seven-day festival of Sukkot, which has just ended. Shemini Atzeret is a kind of lagniappe, a bonus, an extra. Shemini Atzeret is the moment when, after a week of hanging out together, God says "wait, no, you don't have to go yet, do you? Stay for a snack! One more cup of tea!"

(In Israel and in the Reform world, today is also Simchat Torah, the day of "rejoicing in the Torah," when we read the very end of the Torah and then immediately cycle back around to the very beginning. Our central narrative is a kind of mobius strip, a continual spiral, which shifts in meaning each year as we change and grow. More on that later today, I hope.)

So, Shemini Atzeret: what's the deal? What does it mean for a seven-day holiday to have an eighth day? (Isn't that kind of an oxymoron?) During the middot class I took this summer, Reb Elliot taught some beautiful texts about atzeret. One of them is this set of teachings from the Slonimer rebbe, found in Netivot Shalom (I paraphrase):

There are two days of atzeret during the year. The word's root means "stop," so these are days of holy pausing. The Holy One of Blessing says to those who engage with God, heyyu atsurim iti, "be those who put on the brakes and slow down with Me." This is our time to be with the Beloved at the end of an intense cycle of spiritual work.

Just as Shavuot (the moment of revelation at Sinai) comes after the 49 days of Counting the Omer, so does Shemini Atzeret come after the 49 days of Elul + these weeks of Tishri. Each of these days is a kind of atzeret, a pause, a day of extra connection with God at the end of a long journey.

On Shemini Atzeret, as we dismantle our sukkot, we realize that the whole world is a sukkah. We may be moving back indoors to our solid, well-constructed houses, but that shouldn't mean losing access to Sukkot's insights about fragility, openness, and permeability.

It is taught that the smooth parchment between the letters (of Torah) is holier than the letters; for each letter has its own holiness, but the parchment contains the holiness of all the letters. Just so, Shavuot and Shemini Atzeret, the culmination of the two holiest periods in the year, are the smooth parchment which contains all the holiness of the days we've just completed.

I love the idea that after seven-times-seven-weeks of spiritual work, what God wants most is for us to linger just a little longer... and I'm unsettled and ultimately inspired by the notion that however holy our words may be (and Jewish tradition loves words, no doubt about that!), the silence -- the ineffability -- the pause in time -- the blank parchment that contains them is even holier.

P.S. Here's a shiny little gematria: סוכה / sukkah has the numerical value of 91; יהוה / YHVH has a value of 26 and אדני / Adonai has a value of 65. 65 + 26 = 91, so dwelling in the sukkah means dwelling in the integration of those two divine Names, the Name that connotes immanence and indwelling-in-the-world and the Name that connotes ultimate transcendence. Now that the festival of Sukkot is over, it's our job to integrate those two aspects of God in our ordinary lives.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, SheminiAtzeret.

Today is the seventh day of Sukkot, also known as Hoshana Rabbah. I wrote a post about Hoshanah Rabbah last year, complete with an extemporaneous prayer for rain. This year I'm feeling a little bit disconnected, spiritually wiped-out from the long span of holiday consciousness that started with the new moon of Elul seven weeks ago. Maybe because I'm hovering on the edge of a new semester I feel distracted, not entirely here. I'm too busy anticipating what's coming to feel rooted in what's happening now.

My solution? I return to the sukkah with my laptop. I'll work from out here for a while. It's the last day of the festival, after all. This weekend I'll beat the rugs that have been living out here all week, and drape them over the railings of the deck to air out before being folded and stowed in the garage. (We'll use them at midwinter, to line our ger.) I'll untwine the autumnal tinsel garland and coil it for next year. But for now, I can sit outside, listening to the constant pulse of crickets singing and to the rattle of warm wind in the trees. I can take the time to notice how it feels to be sitting in this open-air house, inside and outside at the same time.

I watch leaves falling, spiraling lazily from the still-mostly-green forest overhead, and I think about the leaves of the aravot, the willow branches we beat against the ground today. The practice renders our lulavim unfit for future use, preventing ourselves from holding on to this festival too long. I can't come out here and bentsch lulav next week, because it won't be time for that any more. "To everything there is a season," as Kohelet has it -- Kohelet, the megillah we read during Sukkot. (I can't seem to help adding the Byrds' "Turn, turn, turn.") The autumn equinox has passed. The angle of the earth is turning.

Tonight, at my synagogue's Simchat Torah celebration, we'll do a different kind of turning -- from the end of the Torah to its beginning. "Turn it and turn it, for everything is in it." The planet turns, the cycle of the seasons turn, and our central story turns. Endings are always also beginnings. Dismantling the sukkah will be the first step toward putting it back together again next year. But for now, it's time to accept that the leaves are falling. I knock my aravah against the table and watch its leaves flutter to the ground.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, HoshanaRabbah.

I've written here about the amazing, overwhelming, and beautiful Yom Kippur retreat I attended last weekend. But I haven't posted anything here about the sunrise equinox ritual that Rabbi Jill Hammer offered up, before dawn, one week ago today.

That's because I was hoping a short piece I'd written about it would appear on the pages of qarrtsiluni, and to my great pleasure the guest-editors for this issue graciously accepted the piece.

It's here: Equinox. I'd love to know what you think, both about the piece as a short nonfiction vignette and about the ritual, which I found really remarkable and sweet.

You're welcome to post in response here, or there -- I've subscribed to the comments thread on that post (one of the perks of qarrtsiluni having moved to WordPress) so I'll see feedback in either place.

The current theme at qarrtsiluni is Making Sense; that link will take you to a description of the theme, along with the revised submission policy. Some real literary luminaries are starting to publish work there, along with bloggers and writers whose work you may not know yet but will soon be glad that you do. If you've got anything that fits the theme, or feel like writing something specifically for this one, hurry; you've got until October 15.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, equinox.

When the rain blew in last night, conversation stopped. I was sitting around a table with a dozen other poets, talking about bringing poetry into the schools and to people on the margins of our communities, and the sound of the downpour silenced everyone. We listened to the waves of rain hitting the roof and the streets. Even the air tasted like rain.

But by the time I was driving home, the rain had passed -- for the time being -- and the full moon illumined everything. The patches of fog I'd driven through looked, from here, like low-lying clouds. Trees were dark silhouettes against the moonlit sky. Our driveway was covered with the first batch of autumn leaves, shaken free by the rain.

I ventured out to the sukkah, thinking I might sit in it for a short while, but it was too wet. Yesterday afternoon I layered two tarps beneath the rugs, and did my best to tug a third partway over the roof (not exactly halakhic, I know, but it seemed worth a try) but they've proven ineffectual. So I returned to the house, poured myself a nightcap, put on some music.

This morning the world is humid and sticky, the light of day filtered by thick cloud, but no actual rain. (Storms are forecast for later on.) I took my siddur and my arba minim outside, and I davened a brief shacharit in the sukkah. I took the etrog into my left hand, loving its pebbly surface; and the lulav into my right, trying not to be bummed that this year it didn't arrive in very good shape; and I shook them in all six directions, beckoning blessing.

I recited Hallel, singing the bits for which I know tunes, and reading the rest in Hebrew and English. I wished I could remember more melodies, or that I knew an appropriate nusach (melodic mode) for chanting psalms on Sukkot. Nu: my sukkah is rainswept, my lulav looks battered, and I didn't manage to sing all of Hallel. Good reasons to release myself from the constriction of needing everything to be perfect, so instead I can inhabit what is.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, sukkot.

There are four days between Yom Kippur and Sukkot. One of my favorite teachings about this is that we need four days -- one for each of the four worlds of body, heart, mind, and spirit -- in order to really process the new insights that Yom Kippur granted us. Yom Kippur, a day of connection with God, offers us the chance to download a new way of understanding the cosmos and our relationship with our Source; these four days are our chance to install that software on the hard drive of who we are.

This is all well and good, but I'm here today with an entirely different kind of quandary: what should I do about the floor of my sukkah, since the forecast here is for rain (sometimes quite heavy) through the end of the week?

Remember that the roof of a sukkah must be open to the stars, and the schach (roofing material) of which it is made must be organic. The interior of the sukkah can be minimalist (empty; a chair or two) to maximalist (Turkish rugs, floor pillows, tables and chairs and sofas, lighting fixtures, the works.)

This year I wanted our sukkah to be slightly spiffier than last. I dragged several old rugs out of our garage and laid them over the grass. I picked up some autumn garlands at the grocery store -- shiny tinsel ropes festooned with little leaves, in shades of copper and red -- and looped them around the room. I put the usual wee table and deck chairs inside. I took a break from my desk this afternoon to cut schach -- first a handful of sumac branches, and when those proved difficult to work with (too 3-D), a few armfuls of goldenrod to lace over the top of the roof.

And then I checked the weather forecast. Clouds growing tomorrow, and at sundown when Sukkot begins we're expecting heavy rains. Thursday there's a strong chance of storms. Thursday night, rain is likely. Friday and Friday night, more showers.

So much for my fantasies of spending mornings davening shacharit and bentsching lulav in the sukkah. (Not to mention eating meals in it -- the rabbis are quite clear that if it's raining, the mitzvah of dining/hanging out in the sukkah is nullified, because the whole idea is to enjoy the experience, not to suffer through it.)

But should I run out there tonight and remove the rugs I so lovingly put down this afternoon? On the one hand, maybe I should; there's no reason to get them drenched when we aren't likely to be able to enjoy the sukkah until the weekend. On the proverbial other hand, none of them is precious; at the end of the festival I was assuming I'd hang them on the railing of the deck to dry out anyway. If I put a tarp over the roof, that defeats the whole purpose of being open to the sky. (Of course, if I don't, the schach -- merely laid over the roofbeams, not affixed in any way -- is liable to blow away during the first rainstorm.)

Can anyone offer advice on this front? If you have a sukkah in a region where it rains at this season, what do you do?

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, sukkah.

1. Homecoming

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