Hoshana for Right Relationship

הושע נא / Hosha na, please save!
For the sake of Acting in good faith
For the sake of Boundaries and their maintenance
For the sake of Choosing to see clearly
For the sake of Directly naming what is broken
For the sake of Ending unconscious patterns
For the sake of Finding strength to speak
For the sake of Growth and transformation
For the sake of Holding firm to principle
For the sake of Integrity in all things
For the sake of Justice in every moment
For the sake of Keeping ourselves honest
For the sake of Love and awe in equal measure
For the sake of Making real teshuvah
For the sake of Noticing when we're culpable
For the sake of Opening ourselves to becoming
For the sake of Power wielded justly
For the sake of Questioning and discernment
For the sake of Repairing what we've damaged
For the sake of Standing in our truth
For the sake of Taking responsibility
For the sake of Understanding our own choices
For the sake of Victims of abuse, believed and honored
For the sake of Walking away from toxicity
For the sake of eXamining our behavior
For the sake of Yin and yang in balance
For the sake of Zeal to do what's right, not just what's easy:
הושע הא / Hosha na, please save!

 


Today -- the seventh day of Sukkot -- is also a minor festival in its own right, called Hoshana Rabbah. On this day it's customary to recite alphabetical acrostic prayers called hoshanot

This is the hoshana that I most needed to pray this year. May its words ascend on high; may its implications sink deep into our hearts and shape our actions as we move into the new year.

For those who are interested, here is another contemporary Hoshana for Healing and Consolation by Rabbi Dr. Dalia Marx, published at the Open Siddur project in Hebrew and in English translation.

Chag sameach / a joyous festival to all.


Hoshanot after the end of a marriage

1.

I feel for these willows,
clipped from the tree

they never imagined
would stop being home.

Packaged and moved,
unpacked and shaken:

blackening at the edges,
shriveling and curling

leaves bedraggled now,
ready to come apart.

We beat our branches
against the earth.

I fling myself down too.
Let the rains fall.

 

2.

From loneliness
wrapped around me like a tallit.

From nights when the house
is too quiet.

From the relentlessness
of responsibility.

From wondering
what I should have done.

From imagining a life
that's not this one.

From self-blame.
From the ocean of grief.

From wishing I had an "us"
I could ask God to save.

 

3.

The sukkah begins to come apart.
Wind and rains unravel its garlands,

knock the cornstalks askew.
This is its purpose: to remind me

how to celebrate what can't last.
How to grasp its beauty with both hands

and then open my fists, let
the chapter be over. How to trust

there will be more abundance.
How to rejoice in what I don't yet have.

The ebb and flow will carry me to shore,
and I'm not crossing the sea alone.

Salt has scoured me clean. Drench me
with honey, sweeten every decree.

 


Today is Hoshana Rabbah, the seventh day of Sukkot. It is its own mini-holiday within the bigger holiday. (For more on that, see Three more holidays at the very end of Sukkot, 2012.)

We beat our branches / against the earth. On this day it is customary to take willow branches and beat them against the ground in an embodied prayer for rain. 

From wishing I had an "us" I could ask to save. The day of this festival means "The Great 'Save Us!'" Today it's customary to recite supplicatory prayers called hoshanot, which ask God in a variety of ways to save us. (See Hoshanot, 2010.) 

The sukkah becomes to come apart. See Pictures and words (Hoshana Rabbah), 2012.

How to rejoice in what I don't yet have. This is the spiritual work that Sukkot asks of us. See Joy Like Our Lives Depend On It by Rabbi David Evan Markus.

The ebb and flow. I learned from my teacher Rabbi Elliot Ginsburg that the Jewish year, and that spiritual life in general, has an ebb and flow; see The year as spiritual practice, 2009.

I'm not crossing the sea alone. Our daily liturgy includes "Mi Chamocha," the song our ancestors sang after crossing the Sea of Reeds. Often from the bimah, as I play the guitar chords that usher us in to the melody we usually use for this prayer, I remind the room (and myself) that whatever we may be facing -- with the Egyptian army behind us and the sea ahead of us, as it were -- we never have to cross the sea alone. We have each other. We have God. We have the presence of love to companion us in our crossings.

Drench me / with honey, sweeten every decree. Some maintain the custom of continuing to eat challah or apples dipped in honey not only on Rosh Hashanah, but all the way through the holiday season until tomorrow. One tradition holds that today is the day when the "decree," the verdict for the world declared on Rosh Hashanah, is finally sealed. I like to think that though we can't avert whatever life has in store for us, we can seek to sweeten it -- for ourselves, and for each other.

Moadim l'simcha -- wishing you joy in the festival; may this be a season of rejoicing.


Apples and honey; falling leaves

ApplesAll the world feels redolent with apples and honey at this time of year. I've taken our son apple-picking twice since Rosh Hashanah. We go to a local orchard, only a few minutes away from our house. I love the palpable abundance of apple trees laden with fruits. And there's nothing else quite like the spicy-sweet crunch of a honeycrisp apple, especially one we've just plucked from the tree.

And when I look out the window in the morning, or step outside into the sukkah, or walk around the playground, the trees are brilliant orange and yellow. When the sunlight filters through their leaves, the very air feels honey-colored: golden and bright. The hillsides are an autumnal kaleidoscope, shifting and changing as the jewels of the leaves tumble, catch the light, float through the air.

It's easy to wish, "if I could only capture this moment!" Right now, with the trees all rustling and brilliant, with the sukkah standing proud in the backyard, our son singing silly songs in the car on the way to preschool. But even as it's happening, it's changing. Already some of the trees have lost the leaves at the top of their highest branches. The end of one thing, the beginning of the next.

Today is the seventh day of Sukkot, also known as Hoshanna Rabbah. Rabbah means great; hoshanna means "please save us!" In many communities people gather today to recite hoshanot, prayers which beseech God to save the earth. In the immediate aftermath of the climate march, with the drumbeats of the need for change ringing in our ears, these prayers take on a different urgency.

This year of 5775 is a shmita year, a sabbatical year, during which Torah teaches we are not to harvest in the land of Israel but instead to let the earth rest and lie fallow. "By the time the next shmita year rolls around," one of my colleagues said to me recently, "it will be too late to turn the earth around." A sobering thought. Ana Adonai, hoshia na -- please, God; please save us! -- takes on new resonance.

OrangehillsAnother Hoshanna Rabbah custom is circling the sanctuary seven times holding our lulavim, the bunches of branches with which we have beckoned blessings all week, and then beating the willow branches against the ground. The falling leaves represent the rain which is always so urgently needed in the Middle East.

We don't observe Hoshanna Rabbah in any formal way in my congregation. There will be no circumnambulations of the sanctuary, no beating of willow branches against the patio stones. But I will watch leaves fall from birch and oak and maple as the day unfolds. They drift and spiral to the ground, and they evoke the precipitation which I know will fall as the season deepens. Already our lawn is becoming obscured by their fading colors.

I know that it won't be too long before the lawn is obscured instead by fallen snow. And then it will be green again, and so will the trees. The end of one thing, the beginning of the next. I read recently that the leaves of our deciduous trees contain these astonishing pigments all the time, but when photosynthesis is happening, the chlorophyll obscures the reds and oranges and golds.

And then the trees gracefully let go of the need to keep producing food, trusting that their reserves will see them through what's coming, and for a gleaming fiery moment their hidden brilliance can shine.

 


Decoration

Plates
The rainbow foil garlands broke
on the night of heavy rain.
Slivers of color adorn the lawn.

Your tears fell like willow leaves.
You insisted we find
the decoration store.

This slow disintegration
is part of the point, each sukkah
as fragile as a life, but

who understands that at four?
A compromise: the art supply box,
our spool of kitchen string.

Now paper plates spin and clatter.
Their crayoned markings face me
then whirl away

like your laughing face
hiding under our blanket
then bursting back into view.

 


Re: "Your tears fell like leaves" -- today is Hoshanna Rabbah, when it is customary to beat our willow branches on the earth; their falling leaves represent our prayers for rain.

(Photo source: flickr.)

 


A poem for Hoshanna Rabbah

My footsteps across
this patch of earth's scalp
release the scent of thyme.

Even in the rain
the squirrels have been busy
denuding the corncobs.

The wind has dangled
my autumn garlands. I untangle
them one last time.

Every day the sukkah becomes
more a sketch of itself.
The canvas walls dip

and drape, the cornstalks
wither, revealing more
of the variegated sky.

Today we ask God to save
this ark and all that it holds.
Today the penultimate taste

of honey on our bread.
Today we beat willow branches
until the leaves fall.

The end of this long walk
through fasts and feasts:
we're footsore, hearts weary

from pumping emotion. We yearn
to burrow into the soil
and close our eyes. We won't know

what's been planted in us
until the sting of horseradish
pulls us forth into freedom.

 


 

This is the poem I worked on yesterday -- Hoshanna Rabbah -- while sitting in the sukkah during a cool clouded stretch of afternoon. (What's Hoshanna Rabbah? See yesterday's post, Three more holidays at the end of Sukkot.)

The stanza about asking God to save "this ark and all that it holds" is a reference to the hoshanot, the prayers asking God to save the earth, recited on Hoshanna Rabbah. Beating willow branches until the leaves fall like rain is another of the day's practices.

One tradition holds that we eat challah drizzled with honey not only on Rosh Hashanah at the new year, but all the way through the holiday season to Shemini Atzeret, which is today.

I'm wondering whether I should cut the first three stanzas. What do you think?

 

ETA: based on responses here, I revised the poem into a new form, which you can see in the next post: Pictures and words (Hoshanna Rabbah.)

 


Three more holidays at the very end of Sukkot

There are three distinct and special celebrations at the end of Sukkot. The first of them, Hoshana Rabbah, is today.

HoshanaRabba09_9Hoshana Rabbah -- "The Great 'Save-Us!'" -- is the seventh day of Sukkot and a minor holiday in its own right. On this day, traditionally, we make seven circuits of our sanctuaries with our lulavim and our Torah scrolls while reciting prayers called Hoshanot which ask God to bring healing and salvation. Seven is a number with spiritual significance in Judaism: seven days of the week, the seven "lower" (accessible) sefirot (aspects of God), the seven ancestral figures (some invite seven men and seven women) welcomed into the Sukkah as ushpizin (holy guests) -- and now on the seventh day of this festival we circumnambulate our sanctuaries seven times, singing and praying. There's also a very old custom of taking the willow branches from our lulavim and beating them against the ground; the falling willow leaves are an embodied prayer for rain. (For more on that: The Ritual of Beating the Willow.)

Even if you're not dancing or processing around a sanctuary with branches and Torah scrolls, reading some hoshanot and reflecting on their meaning is a lovely observance of Hoshana Rabbah. I like the ones written by my teacher Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, which online here at the Reb Zalman Legacy Project blog, and also here at the Shalom Center (with commentary from Rabbi Arthur Waskow below the hoshanot themselves.) And here's a brief excerpt from a translated hoshana, provided by Rabbi David Seidenberg of NeoHasid.org.

Shemini Atzeret -- "The Pausing of the Eighth Day" -- is the eighth day of Sukkot. Yes, Sukkot is a seven-day holiday, but tradition tells us that on the eighth day, God (Who has been so enjoying spending time with us in our sukkot) says "awww, do you really have to go? Can't you linger a little longer?" So we stay in our sukkot for one more day, one more chance to engage in intimate connection with Shekhinah, the immanent and indwelling Presence of God. This is a day for spaciousness, a day of pausing, a day to celebrate the white space which cradles and contains all of the texts and teachings and observances of the holiday season now ending. The Days of Awe and Sukkot are a dense and busy time, full of obligations and sermons and teachings; Shemini Atzeret is a chance to pause, to take a breath, to receive the blessings of stillness.

This day is a hinge-point in our liturgical year between the summer season and the winter season. On Shemini Atzeret, we recite special prayers for rain, and we enter into the liturgical winter-season when our Amidah contains a one-line prayer for rain every day instead of the summertime one-line prayer for dew. I've written a contemporary prayer for rain which can be read / davened on this day, which you can find in the VR archives here; you might also enjoy my Sestina for Shemini Atzeret, which I wrote last year and which I still really like. Shemini Atzeret is the 22nd of Tishrei, which begins tonight at sundown and lasts through tomorrow (Monday).

Children-kiss-torahSimchat Torah -- "Rejoicing in the Torah" -- is the culmination of all of our celebrations during this holy season. We read the very end of the Torah scroll, then read the beginning again, celebrating the neverending nature of our collective story. We dance around the room with Torah scrolls singing songs. Here's the poem I wrote some years ago for this festival, Mobius, which is also available in 70 faces, my collection of Torah poems (Phoenicia, 2011.)

So when is Simchat Torah? Well, it depends on who you ask. In Israel, Sukkot lasts for seven days; the seventh day is Hoshana Rabbah; and the 8th day is both Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. Reform communities outside of the land of Israel also operate on this calendar. (I'm not sure about Reconstructionist communities; Jewish Renewal communities' practices vary.) In Diaspora, Orthodox and Conservative Jews move from 7 days of Sukkot (the final one being Hoshana Rabbah) to two days of Shemini Atzeret, the second of which is Simchat Torah, making the whole shebang a 9-day observance insted of an 8-day one. (In my local community we'll celebrate Simchat Torah on Monday night, in conjunction with the local college Jewish student group.)

It's possible to experience a kind of holiday fatigue at this moment in the year. Tisha b'Av, then the month of Elul, then Rosh Hashanah, the Ten Days of Teshuvah, Yom Kippur, a week of Sukkot...! But there's beauty and meaning in each of these three final days of this holiday season. I offer this blessing: may each of us find a point of access into the beauty and wisdom of Hoshana Rabbah, Shemini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah. May we connect with the gift of being able to ask for help in healing our world, the gift of holy pausing and sacred rest, and the gift of Torah, the story which never ends.

 


Hoshanot

Today is Hoshana Rabbah, the seventh day of the festival of Sukkot which is also a minor holiday of its own. The name means "The Great Hoshana" or "The Great 'Please Save Us'!" It's traditional, on each day of Sukkot, to make a circuit around the interior of the synagogue or around the Torah-reading table carrying our lulavim and reciting a hoshana (supplicatory prayer); on the seventh day, we make seven circuits and recite seven hoshanot.

R' Shlomo Carlebach singing a wordless niggun on Hoshana Rabbah.

My teacher Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi has written a set of contemporary poetic hoshanot in English. Reb Arthur Waskow notes that:

These Hoshanot in English by Reb Zalman follow the model of the traditional Hebrew Hoshanot, which are aimed at the protection and healing of the earth from locusts, drought, etc. These English versions do so not only in the line-by-line meaning, but also by celebrating, day by day, the aspects of the universe that (according to the first chapter of Genesis) were created on each of the original seven days. They also draw on the alphabetical pattern of the traditional Hebrew Hoshanot.

Here's how they begin:

Hosha'na for the sake of
the Aura of life
the Beams of Light
the Clearness of Light
the Dynamics of Light
the Effulgence of Light
the diFfraction of light
the Glory of light
the Haloes of light
the Illumination of light
the Joys of sight...

Even if you're not dancing around a sanctuary with lulavim and Torah scrolls, reading Reb Zalman's hoshanot and reflecting on their meaning is a lovely observance of Hoshana Rabbah. They're online here at the Reb Zalman Legacy Project blog, and also here at the Shalom Center (with commentary from Reb Arthur below the hoshanot themselves.) Reb Zalman has also written a separate bilingual hoshana (the Hebrew is an alphabetic acrostic; the English is a translation) which is online here, and which speaks out of contrition for how we've damaged creation.

Speaking of Reb Zalman, I'm happy to be able to report that his beautiful English-language siddur (prayerbook), Sh'ma, is once again available in print. I just ordered myself a copy; if you have any interest in Jewish prayer in English, it's $10 well-spent. You can order it online here.


Tomorrow will be Shemini Atzeret, "the pause of the 8th day" -- it's the extra day of celebration tacked on at the end of the seven days of Sukkot. It's customary to recite special prayers for rain on that day; last year I wrote a contemporary prayer for rain to be recited on Shemini Atzeret. If you're interested, you can find it here.


Adonai, open my lips...

I recently encountered a beautiful teaching by the Sefat Emet (Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter of Ger; I've blogged his teachings many times before.) This is one of his teachings for Hoshanna Rabbah (the seventh day of Sukkot) and can be found in The Language of Truth. It's about prayer.

On Hoshanna Rabbah we beat willow branches against the ground. The willow, he says, represents speech, which connects it with prayer (prayer being, after all, a form of speech.) The willow is also associated with David, the psalmist, who said "I am my prayer before You."

Prayer is all we have for reaching God. In some sense that may seem either inadequate or chutzpahdik. On the other hand, prayer is all we need for reaching God. The leaves of the willow are shaped like lips, and our lips are the gates through which our prayers pass.

At the end of Yom Kippur we make much of how "the gates are closing." We seem to need the catharsis and the drama of dipping deep into the experience of that day as though, when that day ends, our chance to reach God were over. Though the tradition also says that the gates of repentance remain open through Hoshanna Rabbah (some say, through Shemini Atzeret, the 8th day of Sukkot)... and really, says the Sefat Emet, the gates to God are always open as long as we use our lips to pray.

Our mouths are the gates. When they are closed -- when we perceive that God is far from us -- that's because we've closed the gates ourselves. That's the heartbreaking news: our experience of God as being distant from us is our own doing! But the good news is, opening the gates is always within our power. All we have to do is open our lips.


Rainmaker, rainmaker...

The seventh day of the festival of Sukkot is also known as Hoshanah Rabbah, "the great supplication" or "the great 'save us'!" (That'd be today, in case you weren't keeping track.) Today is the day when, according to Jewish tradition, our relationship with water in the coming year is sealed.

What activities mark Hoshanah Rabbah? Going in circles, for one. Whereas during Sukkot it's customary to carry one's lulav and etrog around the synagogue sanctuary once during morning prayers each day, on Hoshanah Rabbah seven hakafot (circuits) are made. Another involves greenery: after the reading of a set of piyyutim (liturgical poems), willow branches are beaten against the ground until their leaves come off. I like to read this as a kind of embodied prayer for rain -- the leaves fall like raindrops, symbolizing the sustenance we hope for in the year to come. (Rabbi Bradley Artson Shavit offers a broad range of other interpretive possibilities.)

Some see Hoshanah Rabbah as the culmination of the holiday season that began with Rosh Hashanah, and regard today as the day when judgement is finally passed on who we are and who we aim to be. I just learned this fall that it's considered a mitzvah to eat one's challah with honey all through the holiday season (not just on Rosh Hashanah), and that Hoshanah Rabbah marks the last day when it's appropriate to savor the honeyed tastes of the holidays.

In an age when we strive to be conscious of our ecological footprints, when we're aware of how precious a resource water is (and how easily, and unthinkingly, we waste and pollute it), Hoshanah Rabbah may have new resonance. Today offers an opportunity to reconnect with our longing for rain, and for divine help in saving ourselves from the environmental dangers we know we don't want to bring upon ourselves, our children, and our home.

So what am I doing for Hoshanah Rabbah? Not going to shul; we're too small to have a weekday minyan, even on a minor festival day like this. But I went out to our sukkah this morning to bentsch lulav for the last time this year, my footsteps crunching on the frost-coated grass. I spent a while reading this series of Hoshanot [poetic prayers] for a Planet in Danger -- Reb Zalman's davenable English adaptations of the traditional prayers for salvation (meant to be read, one each day, during Sukkot, and then the whole cycle on Hoshannah Rabbah.) And now I am listening to an old classic tune that seemed like appropriate holiday music: "Rainmaker," by Traffic, off The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys...

And finally, I'm blogging an extemporaneous holiday prayer:

Source of all that is! Help us tap into Your sustenance in the coming year. Shower us with mayim chayyim, living waters, in all four worlds. In the world of actions and physicality, give us real water to irrigate with and to drink. In the world of emotions, let our hearts move us as mighty currents move the seas. In the world of thought, let our minds be as clean and clear as the purest waters. And in the world of essence, let us truly know ourselves as beings mostly made of water, sustained by Your ineffable wellspring in all that we do.

Amen.

 

Technorati tags: , , .