Doikayt is a Yiddish word
central to Buddhist teaching:
"right here, right now."

Wait, that's wrong.
The definition said Bundist.
Labor unions, not zazen --

build better wherever we are.
Justice is the promised land
we may never reach.

But the mystics are right too.
When we're fully here, God
is in this place.

When I'm paying
continuous partial attention
to three different news apps

or biting back responses
to someone wrong on Facebook
I'm not really here.

But last night my son
danced with his double bass
and the headlines all fell away.

At shul the other night, someone mentioned doikayt, Yiddish for "hereness." I knew the word, but wanted to know more about its origins, so I resolved to look it up when I got home. I did, and promptly misread the first line of the definition. That's what sparked this poem. 

I love the idea of Buddhist doikayt, though.

For more on doikayt, and its origins in Yiddishist / diasporist labor circles, see Jewish Word | Doikayt: the Jewish Left is Here. For a more personal take, try this short instagram post from poet Aurora Levins Morales, including gorgeous art by Wendy Elisheva Somerson created for Morales' book Rimonim. 

I also love these words from poet Melanie Kaye / Kantrowitz, "Doikayt means Jews enter coalitions wherever we are, across lines that might divide us, to work together for universal equality and justice."

That dovetails with something I've been thinking (and writing) about a lot lately: how do we build coalitions toward justice across lines that might divide us when we are so divided as a community around Israel / Palestine? 

(And, relatedly: when we are turned against each other, who benefits? When we are busy with anger at one another, what opportunities for tikkun do we miss?)

Collaborating with members of Bayit's liturgical arts working group has become an integral part of my spiritual practice in recent years. As we brainstorm, create, workshop, revise, and polish new art and liturgy together, I feel more grounded in the now and also more ready for whatever is coming.

We just released a new collaborative collection for Pesach, and it moves me deeply. There's a lot of anxiety and grief here, which speaks from my heart (from all of our hearts.) There's also hope, to which I am clinging as fiercely as I know how. Maybe that's something you need this year too.

Here's one of the pieces I wrote for the offering:

(I'll also enclose it below in plaintext for those who need it in that format -- I know the screencap of the slide isn't readable to everyone.)

You can find the whole collaboration here: From the Depths -- available, as always, both as a downloadable PDF and as slides suitable for screenshare. I hope something here speaks to you in a way that will enliven your seders this year.

Multitude

We are a mixed multitude: some frozen in trauma,

some burning with grief. Each of us carries

at least one image of a child's unjust death

seared into our hearts. How do we walk free?

Tell me the story again of how God said,

"My children are drowning and you sing praises?!"

Every human being is a child of God,

even the ones on the other side.

This year nobody's cup of joy is full.  

Our souls feel as fragile as matzah.

Even if we and our children and our children's children

aren't certain what freedom would feel like, 

maybe we can agree that this state of brokenness

isn't it. I want to believe we can get there from here.

Maybe the only way is as a mixed multitude

holding hope for each other until we can feel it again.

R. Rachel Barenblat

There is no problem, I like to sleep.
When I'm sleeping, it's just dreams:

too many suitcases to carry, or
realizing I packed the wrong clothes

and nothing in this closet fits.
(This airport is too big, I can't find

the right gate, I forgot to turn in
the rental car...) The hum of anxiety

is constant, like a hybrid car singing
its quiet chord, but I know exactly

what I'm nervous about. Small potatoes.
Awake, the shadows are darker.

I know I can't control whether or not
this year's Haman is stoppable.

A couple of years ago I wrote a pair of Sukkot poems, Fragile and Rejoice. In the manuscript for my next book of poetry, they're a two-part poem titled "Shekhinah says." You could read them as written in God's voice to us, or as written in a human voice to a human beloved. (Or both at once.)

In recent months composer Adam Green (who is also the music director at my synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires) wrote a musical setting of those two poems. And yesterday, at our belated Tu BiShvat concert, the two-movement piece was premiered by the CBI Choir. 

It's an incredible honor to have a composer write music to uplift my words. Melody and rhythm give them a whole new layer of meaning. I love that one piece feels wistful and soft, like watercolors or fog in the valleys -- and the other, written in 5/4, feels multilayered, surprising, like it ends too soon.

Every time we sing these poems, I'm hyperlinked to what I was feeling when I wrote them. I can call the exact feelings to mind and heart. And now the poems also have another layer, because I hear them in harmony! Adam also switched the order of the two poems, which (for me) subtly changes their arc.

When I wrote the poems, I was praying for a trajectory from fragility to rejoicing. I began with what's broken, and closed with the hope of wholeness. Adam's choice to put them in the other order makes an existential point: even within wholeness, we are fragile. But in that fragility, we are not alone.

The recording you'll hear, on the YouTube video embedded above, isn't a perfect studio recording. This was recorded live at our concert, which moved through the four seasons the way a Tu BiShvat seder does. (Here's the program as a google doc, in case you're curious what other pieces we sang.)

Making music with the CBI choir is one of my great joys. Singing in harmony connects me with God more immediately and wholly than anything else I know. I feel lucky that I get to sing with this ensemble, and that together we get to learn from and with Adam -- and savor the music he writes.

The sheet music is available for download at Adam's website, along with music for his setting of my Baruch She'amar poem, which we premiered last November. Let me know if you decide to sing either of these where you are -- words and music are both available under a Creative Commons license.

When my angled knife cuts through
the air smells sharp and clean.
Shreds of cabbage pile up.
Fennel, apple, scallion, celery.
Lemons, olive oil, kosher salt.

I learned this as "Shabbat salad."
Searching for its origins, I find
salatet malfouf, which is Lebanese,
and another variation (same name)
on a Palestinian cooking blog.

File this alongside salat katzutz
(or salata falahiyeh, same thing,
the chopped one with the cucumbers) --
one of those foods everyone wants
to claim as ours. Someone

I don't know yelled at me
recently on Facebook that there's
"no standing together with evil,"
which is what he said "all of them"
are. I hear this from both sides.

I wish I could set a banquet with
no chairs empty. This is medicine:
like the first shoots of spring
that I believe with a perfect faith
(though it tarry) will someday come.

I learned this as Shabbat salad. See Shabbat Salad at Sivan's Kitchen (video and recipe).

Salatet malfouf, which is Lebanese. See salatet malfouf. See also A Jew Cooks Palestinian: Cabbage Salad Edition.

Salat katzutz / salata falahiyeh. See Salata Falahiyeh (Palestinian or Farmers Salad). In the Jewish Diaspora it's often called Israeli salad; in Israel it's usually either called סָלָט קָצוּץ / salat katzutz (chopped salad) or סָלָט עֲרָבִי / salat aravi (Arab salad.) Its Arabic name is سلطة فلاحية  salata falahiyeh.

With no chairs empty. See The Empty Shabbat Table.

I believe with a perfect faith. "In the coming of the Messiah. Though he tarry, nevertheless do I believe that he will come." From the prayer Ani Ma'amin, adapted in turn from Rambam (d. 1204), arising out of his commentary on mishnah (c. 200 CE.)

For more background: 

• Anthony Bourdain Explains the Israel-Palestine Conflict Through Food, The Washington Post, 2013. Watch the episode of Parts Unknown here on YouTube, or read the transcript - though watching is more powerful. The second half of the episode in particular lands differently now than it did 12 years ago. 
• Here's why Palestinians object to the term 'Israeli food', Reem Kassis in The Washington Post, 2020. All About Israeli Food (a response to the previous piece), Ilana K. Levinsky in The Times of Israel, 2022.
• In a new war over eating Middle Eastern food, eating hummus and shawarma has become a political act, Andrew Silverstein in The Forward.  2023.

May all be fed, may all be nourished, may all be loved. 

I believe the days are getting longer. I believe this nation can become the land of promise my mother understood it to be. I believe we have obligations to each other. I believe every human being is made in the divine image. I believe in science. I believe fundamentalism damages the spirit. I believe truth matters. I believe everyone should be ethical. I believe hope is a discipline. I believe what I see with my own eyes. I believe vaccines work. I believe we shall overcome someday. I believe life is always better with music. I believe we are stronger together than we are apart. I believe a better world is possible. I believe as a Jew I am obligated to love the stranger. I believe there is more than enough to go around. I believe it takes work not to swing at every pitch in the dirt. I believe I would be a terrible baseball player. I believe no race or gender is superior. I believe there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy. I believe healing the world is everyone’s responsibility. I believe it’s the government’s job to care for all of its citizens. I believe human beings are meaning-making machines. I believe Star Wars Episode IV is the best of the bunch. I believe humanity can be better than we have been. I believe that spring will come. I believe that love matters. I believe it is not incumbent on me to finish the work. I believe I am enjoined to begin anyway.

That's one of my contributions to a new collection of liturgical poetry and artwork arising out of the avodah blessing of the Shabbat amidah, co-created by members of Bayit's Liturgical Arts Working Group. (I'll enclose my prayer below in plaintext for those who need it in that format.) 

We begin our offering by asking some of the questions this piece of liturgy prompts for us:

Is service the same as prayer? Is all work a form of service? How do we (want to) serve today? These questions, and others, animate our collective offering on the theme of avodah. We hope that our offering serves to open up your deep questions, too.  

You can find the whole offering here: Avodah / Service. There's work by Trisha Arlin, Joanne Fink, R. Sonja Keren Pilz, R. David Zaslow, and me.  I love how we each chose different facets of the prayer to unpack, riff on, and uplift. As always, I think that together our contributions make up something that's greater than the sum of its parts. 

I serve today

I serve today by turning off the news.

I serve by refusing to blame everyone or anyone.

I serve by re-training myself not to check 

to find out what terrible thing has happened 

in the last fifteen minutes. I serve by affirming

it’s okay to feel joy even in times like these. 

By taking teenagers to the nursing home

and afterward praising the adolescent boy

who answered the repeated questions kindly

as though each time were the first.

I serve by admitting I don’t have the answers.

By promising I’m here for what you need

and meaning it. By reminding us to focus

on the horizon, the fixed point, our hope for better

that we may not live to reach. And that’s okay.

Judaism was here long before we were.

Someday our childrens’ childrens’ children

might cross the border into promise –

into lions lying down with lambs, into vines 

and fig trees and enough water to grow them,

and no one ever again will take our rights away,

no one ever again will make us afraid.

--Rachel Barenblat

Reading the news
is like
waking into
still having
dead parents.

Microplastics
and wars
persist.
Permafrost melts.
Hillsides burn.

Soon, in charge
of health:
a guy
who doesn't trust
vaccines.

No limbic system
was made
for this.
I am
a cracked jar.

I don't like
what I've woven
from my outrage,
every ugly headline
a bold slash
of the wrong color.
What dissonant plaid,
plasticine fabric
dyed with arguments
about who counts.
Righteous indignation
too easily curdles.
Every choice
lays a thread.
Source of Mercy --
Shekhinah wearing
embroidery glasses,
Your golden scissors
like the ones
my mother used --
untie my tangles.

Plasticine fabric. I just read the fascinating essay Ghana Must Go, so those ubiquitous bags are on my mind. 

Arguments / about who counts. This moment in the United States seems full of those: are immigrants fully human? Are trans people? (Yes and yes, obviously.)

Every choice. In the words of the Maggid of Kozhnitz on Chayyei Sarah, "The days of our lives are garments for the soul." 

Source of Mercy... untie my tangles. See אנא בכח, part of Friday night liturgy.

"Make the ark with rooms and pens."
Include thick creamy paper, soft
as brushed cotton, and enough ink
to write our way through.

None of us asked to be born into
the generation that might lose
everything: not just homes
falling into the waters

from North Carolina to Alaska
but also democracy. Not just
a free press, freedom to be Jewish,
freedom to not be pregnant

but also the capacity to draw
a full breath. Who does that anymore?
God, please tell me that somewhere
on this rickety boat, tucked

beside hay bales or the barrels
for collecting rain, I'll find hope.
We understand the physics
behind rainbows now, but

I'm still holding You to Your promise
that the cycles of day and night
will never again be blotted out
from the face of the earth.

"[Make it an ark with compartments (kinim)” - with rooms (kilin) and pens (medorin).]" Genesis Rabbah 31:9. Yes, I know the original text is referring to animal pens, not fountain pens.

North Carolina to Alaska. I'm thinking of Hurricane Helene on the east coast, and of recent devastating floods in Kotzebue in the far north and west.

But also democracy. See Trump tells supporters they won't have to vote in the future.

A free press. See We must fear for freedom of the press under a second Trump administration.

Freedom to be Jewish. See Trump says Jewish voters will bear 'a lot' of blame if he loses.

Freedom to not be pregnant. See If Trump wins the election, Idaho's extreme abortion ban could go nationwide. 

Capacity to draw / a full breath. See What is the no. 1 leading cause of stress for you?

"Your promise." See Genesis 8:21-22.

Every time I reflexively twitch
toward news or polls or news about polls
I will write a line of poetry instead.
No, that won't be sustainable, I'd write
an infinite poem. Did you know
there are infinities bigger
than infinity? That's how much
we're carrying this season, bursting
through the flimsy walls of our hearts
like the floodwaters we all just saw
on the news I am resolutely not checking.
Every time I stop myself from doomscrolling
I will study some Torah. That might work.
"Turn it and turn it, everything is in it."
If I lift high enough I remember God's
in everything, even the wrong lawn signs.
Still, all mental roads lead here:
anxious and agitated, restless as Cain.
This is a problem as old as humanity,
though the welter of computer monitors
and phone notifications can't help. I almost
wrote minotaurs. I might feel calmer
in a Cretan labyrinth: only one monster.
Uneasy thoughts, I welcome you
like Shabbes guests. You want to warn me
the world is ending? Message received.
Let's root ourselves again in breath.
The moment I turn myself around
I'm no longer lost. Every time is now.

Turn it and turn it. See Pirkei Avot 5:22. 

Restless as Cain. See R. Yisroel Hopstein / the Maggid of Kozhnitz, Sefer Avodat Yisrael, Bereshit.

Anxious thoughts, I welcome you. Thanks for your teaching, R. Sam Feinsmith.

And as always, to my hevruta partner R. David Evan Markus, thank you for learning with me. 

This old phone no longer charges.
The solution's simple,
a silvered circle. Current
soaks in, awakening from below.

I think about that in the sukkah,
layers stripped away by holiday
after holiday. Low battery so familiar
I forget I was ever otherwise.

The answer is to sit and wait.
Don't close up. Trust
that sustenance exists.
God, remind me how to shine.

Mine asks: why is social media so enthralling?
Why do you keep opening new tabs to check in
on everyone we've ever known? Are you aware
that refreshing three different newspapers
gives you no control over anything?
Have you noticed how despair is just
below the surface, and do you think it has anything
to do with the questions I just asked
that you clearly don't want to answer? I'm sorry,
did you think I was being rhetorical?
What's so difficult about knowing you're going to die
that you'd rather fritter away your precious days
in a haze of rage and indignation
than live them and love them before you
leave them at an undisclosed location and time?

My eyes harvest color.
Paper-thin slivers
of purple cabbage
gleam, speckled
with Aleppo pepper.

Slabs of ruby beet
make labneh blush.
The burning bush
outside my window
blazes scarlet.

My crispers teem
with ombre leeks,
with wax peppers
in yellows and oranges
bright as tree-tips.

If I hold my breath
will time stop
on this hinge
between seasons?
But then

I wouldn’t get
to embrace you
again, or to hope
for what yet
might grow.

It is always humbling to read my words translated into another language -- especially into this language that I so deeply love. And I'm moved to know that this particular poem, a cry from my heart, reached one of my Israeli friends and colleagues deeply too. Thank you for this translation, R. Simcha Daniel Burstyn.

(You can read my poem in English plaintext here in an earlier blog post. And/or, the Hebrew and English are both posted as comments on this Facebook post where I also shared this translation.)

From Texts to the Holy, Ben Yehuda Press. 

Here's the poem in plaintext for those who need it that way.

Pray

Sometimes I manage
formal conversation,
a love letter evening
and morning and afternoon

but most of the time
I rely on the chat window
open between us all day.
I want to tell you everything.

This month you are near.
Walk with me in the fields.
I want to take your hand
and not let go.

 Rachel Barenblat

How can we approach a new year
when time stopped on Shemini Atzeret

-- "the pause of the 8th day," when
God beseeches, "linger with Me

a little longer," and we relish
the sukkah's peaceful fragility

for just one more day before
jubilant circle dances with Torah

in our arms like a toddler --
last year we woke on that awful day

to the news of Hamas attacks
and now it's Elul again, when

"The King is in the Field," but
this year God walks with us

in endless mourning, paying
shiva call after shiva call, and

there are still hostages, though
six fewer living ones than last week

not to mention whole neighborhoods
razed to rubble, resurgence of polio,

forty thousand Palestinian souls
dead, an endless abyss of grief?

I can't write an Elul poem this year
when my heart stopped beating properly

on Shemini Atzeret and may never
feel entirely unbroken again.

The pause of the 8th day. See Silence after the chant, 2014.

The King is in the Field. See Walking in the fields, 2017.

Previous years' Elul poems.

And here's the poem in plaintext for those who prefer it that way:

Chord

Grief hums constantly
like cicadas.
It's silt clogging
the storm drains.
It's a bad penny
landing same side up.

Grief says
the poem ends here.

And still
there are cornflowers
amidst the froth
of Queen Anne's Lace,
the moon peeking
through cotton candy clouds,
your voice in my ear.

Give the penny away.
Dredge the streambed clear.
Take up your instrument
and turn the doleful hum
into a chord.

We've reached light's peak
but that doesn't mean
everything is downhill.

The riverbed to loss
is well-carved.
Keep your cup brimming.

Even if you can't name
the tree of white blooms
it flowers anyway.

Volunteer wildflowers
take defiant root.
Learn from them

and from this profusion
of petunias,
silent orchestra

of purple trumpets
in riotous array
singing color and light.

The Torah of knobby roots
protruding from sandy earth.
The Torah of watch your step
in every language at once.
The Torah of Duolingo lessons
teaching me to praise God
for Duolingo lessons.
The Torah of my heart,
a fragile paper balloon
buoyed by candlelight.
The Torah of silence, broken
by an unexpected dance beat.
The Torah of small cats.
The Torah of photographs.
The Torah of chlorophyll
singing its exuberant chorus
across these green hills.
The Torah of saying what's true.
The Torah of uneven stones
and wildflowers between them.
The Torah of tracing
this curving path, trusting
it goes where I need to go.