Days of Awe, Days of Sadness

As I write, Rosh Hashanah is less than a week away. Full disclosure: mu parents were mostly gastronomical Jews – holidays were more about meals and family gatherings, and less about religious obligation, God or ritual. The High Holy Days were the (mostly) exception to this rule.

Don't get me wrong – we still had the huge meal, inhaled in mere seconds, or so it seemed. Every year we promised that while the  next year may not be in Jerusalem (and we were mostly sure that we were referencing the wrong holiday, but we said it anyway, because it was Jewish and . Me us seem mostly knowledgeable) we would at least create more space between the courses, eat more slowly, and maybe – just maybe – cut a course or two. That never happened, Still, once a year, we all gathered – the immediate family, extended family of grandparents, aunts uncles, cousins from both sides, along with anystray friends with nowhere to go.

More, on these days – two for Rosh Hashanah and one for Yom Kippur, we all went to synagogue. There were no kid services, no family services. There were new dresses and shoes, and mom hauled out the brimmed hats and good jewlery. Dad did the suit and tie and my brothers were forced into their ouw suits, with ties the sixe of Texas and colors that ran the spectrum. Hey, it was the 60s and 70s; what would you expect?

So, you'll understand my love for these days, these Days of Awe – they are about gathering and connecting and loving and jostling about and food and family. And these days, as I have chosen to dive more fully into my own Judaism, they are also about obligation and ritual and God. And, oh! how I love that my Judaism holds sacred space for both expressions!

I accept that, by training, the High Holy Days are reserved for family (whether you like 'em or not, and on these days, whatever the feuds may be, they are set aside for these gatherings as much as possible, even though flare ups were bound to happen, and provided some amount of theater to the long and sometimes boring dinners), just as I accept that I have been commanded by God to be present for ancient prayer, sacred music, the afflcting of my soul. On that first day of Rosh Hashanah, I know that then the shofar sounds, I have both satisfied the commandment that I hear the shofar and that the service is just about over. I am a Jew with feet in both worlds.

Unfortunately, I also know – have known for the past eight years – that my brother literally took his last breath as the shofar sounded on that first day of Rosh Hashanah. We were all gathered, not around my brother's crowded dining room table, but his haspital room. He was not conscious, not on those last handful of days, but we were there, to talk to him, talk to one anohter, let kim know (please God, let him know!) that he was, ever and always, surrounded by love.

We played his sacred music on that last day, the first day of the new year – music from the Broadway stage. He, my other brother and I had grown up on this music, had spent our summers on the stage, performing our hearts out to the music of Gershwin and Berlin, Rogers and Hammerstein and Hart. The last show we played for him was Once Upon a Mattress, the first show he was eer in. It was during “Yesterday I Loved You” that he suddenly opened his eyes for just a flash, took a shallow breath and died. The shofar sounded at that exact moment in a room down the hallway.

Rosh Hashanah: what a busy and joyous jumble of a day! The Book of Life and Death is opened and the Gates of Justice swing wide. 1It's the birthday of the world. We stand with awe and trepidation as we undertake the breathtaking majesty of diving inwards, a deep and long and solitary dive, into murky waters that make us gasp and shiver with cold. But eventually, the water warms and the silt and grit settle and we learn to see, to shine a light on the inside, all the beauty, all the pain, all the hope and need.

It is all about redemption.

This day is redemption and majesty and reflection and God.  It is joy and celebration and hope and...

Whatever this day is, whatever the ritual and tradition that surrounds this day may be, what it is, what Rosh Hashanah and all the Days of Awe will ever and always be, is my brother's yahrzeit. And year after year, for all the pomp and circumstance of Rosh Hashanah, for all my yearning for redemption and God, drowning out the music and prayer and the triumphant sounding of the shofar that opened the Book and flung wide the Gate - all I could hear was the steady cadence of "This is the anniversary of my brother's death."

So yo'll understand, I hope, this is one of those days that I am less forgiving of God.

I know - absolutely know - that God is not at fault in this. God didn't set the butterfly's wings to flapping that ended in the hurricane of my brother's death. There was no Divine Plan here. Randy smoked four packs of cigarettes a day, existing on equal parts caffeine and nicotine. He was diagnosed with Stage Four metastatic, inoperable and incurable lung cancer when he was 45, and died when he was 47. Not a day goes by that I don't miss him, though I don't think of him every day as I once did. Stretches of time go by-- a handful of days, a week maybe, and I will suddenly stop, feeling the ache of his loss like a stitch in my side, sharp and hot, receding into a dull throb until it is more memory than real. My breath doesn't quite catch in my throat when I think of him. Mostly.

He died because he smoked. He died because he got cancer. But he died on that day, eight years ago. On Rosh Hashanah, the day of pomp and circumstance and joy and celebration. On that day, there in the hospital, the Book was laid open and the Gates swung wide and my brother died, all in the space of tekiyah.  And so these Days have suddenly become hard. And I am suddenly less forgiving of God.

And for all of that, when I stood in prayer and my knees began to buckle from the weight of my sorrow, when I was filled with an ocean of pain and loss, when I wanted to curse God-- when I did curse God - there were hands that reached out to hold me steady, and strong arms to carry me through to firm ground. When I demanded of God, to God-- where the hell are You? I was answered: here. No farther than the nearest heartbeat, in the still small voices of all those around me, who showed me, again and again, that I was not alone. Even in my pain, even in my doubt and despair, I was not alone.
In my faith, in my prayer, what I find, again and again - what I am given, again and again, is grace. What I get is strength and courage to face what life has placed in front of me in that moment... even if that thing is the death of my beloved brother. My faith is not a guarantee that I will never know fear, or that only good and happy things will happen. My faith, my prayer allows me to put one foot in front of the other and know that I will be carried through. And in that exact moment, the moment I take that step, I am enough and I am redeemed.

And in that moment, I dance in the palm of God's hand.


For my brother, Randy (z'l)
May we all dance in the palm of God's hand



L'shana tova u'metukah
May you have a good and sweet year

Chanukah Matzo (yes, I said matzo)

The Christmas push is on. Red and green and bits of tinsel are being crammed into an aisle or two in many stores. An almost infinite variety of Christmas wrapping paper is quickly pushing out its more secular cousins. The generic metallic golds and blue-with-white-snowflakes papers can't compete for Santa Claus and Christmas tree eye candy. Last week, I was treated to a host of heavenly angels doing an easy-listening rendition of some carol or other. The ads are creeping with inexorable zeal into print, pixel and television, reminding the world that the season of giving (and buying) is nigh.

All this was a few days past Halloween. A week before Thanksgiving, the temperatures here in Chicago were a balmy 60 degrees and there were still more than a few trees clothed in green leaves. Ugh.

To be clear, this is not an anti-Christmas, War on the Holidays rant. I happen to love the Christmas season - I love the carols, having learned them in elementary school music classes, when it was still ok to sing them, and the only Chanukah tunes were the Dreidl Song and, um, well - that was it, so we all learned it and sang it, in between the four-part harmonies of Hark! How the Bells and Gloria in Eggshells is Day-o (or whatever the words were). I loved the Christmas specials on TV, the lights that twinkle on houses along my block, the trees that I see through picture windows, boughs spread so proudly, laden with baubles and silves and stars.

Nor is this a rant on the seepage of  the Christmas buying season into the days and weeks before its traditional launch on Black Friday (which now, apparently, is a month-long event in the eyes of marketers throughout the land). And bravo to those few, brave retailers who are advertising their refusal to open on Thanksgiving Day, to give people a chance to celebrate the holiday known for gratitude and thanks (and tryptophan comas on the couch, while the football is tossed about on national television)! Bravo, I say, bravo!

This is not even a rant on the derth of funky Chanukah songs and games and family fun activities that seem to just miss. Seriously - look at Mao Tzur. The song tells the story of this tremendous victory, a real David-and-Goliath story (by the people who invented David and Goliath; I mean, descended from the David of the David and Goliath story), of a small band of rag tag rebels who overcome the forces of evil with the help of a hammer and God - and we get a dirge to mark the occasion. I have a lot of musician friends who are writing and crafting fast, to change this, but change is sometimes painfully slow.

Here's the rant: even as we approach Chanukah, which seems, for so many, to wander through the calendar much as our ancestors wandered the desert, I know that the matzoh, kosher grape juice and yahrzeit candles won't be far behind.

Every Jewish holiday. Every time.

With the exception of those grocery stores in the more Jewish neighborhoods, every Jewish holiday meant a single aisle endcap display pf matzoh, grape juice and "jelly glass" candles. I'm 56 years old, and not much has changed in that time. When my son was little, he wistfully eyed the holiday finery that decked the aisles of every store I hauled him to - just as I had done when I was a kid. That the plastic toys and noisy-for-a-minute-until-the-batteries-died tchotckes were silly and cheap and would certainly be discarded within mere hours after I (or my mother back in the day) had caved was of no consequence.

And look, I am long past the days of yearning for a tree or a visit from Santa. I still love carols, still hate egg nog, have no problem with mall Santas and cashiers who wish me "Merry Christmas!" as they hand me my change. I still call it Christmas break rather than winter break when my son gets out of school, at least in my head.

Here's where I get stuck: matzoh, grape juice and candles.

Every Jewish holiday, for 56 years at least, that's what we get. And this goes way past the commercialism of holidays, Jewish or not. There is a recognition of the beliefs and ideals and existence that is far outside our community. You'd think, after all this time, after the science that marketing has become - where advertising and manipulation and cash go hand in hand in hand, these grocery stores would at least learn to distinguish which holiday requires matzoh, or when to lay out the yahrzeit candles. Apparently, we missed that radar.

Even more, there are still major retailers who refuse to carry Chanukah things in their glut of holiday merchandising. Refuse. In the 21st century, they are a picture of red and green and tinsel and bows, and they don't even throw us a bone of something in blue and white.

I'm not calling for a Marketing and Merchandising symposium, to ensure we Jews have a place at the tchotchke trough. What I'm saying is that we are Outsiders. Still. And this time of year, when the air is filled with family and community and love, it would be nice this year to feel that I was considered a part of that, regardless of my religious beliefs. It would be nice to feel as if I mattered.

It would be nice if the matzoh stayed in its crates in the warehouse, waiting for spring to come.

Omer. Day Seven

I was at a yizcor service yesterday. It was sweet. Here on the North Shore, there's not always a guarantee that we'll get a minyan, so a handful of synagogues band together on these festival celebrations. Each of the synagogues plays host in some kind of rotation, but all of the rabbis and cantors show up, and we congregants (those who can, those who need). We get a decent showing, all of us together.

I like that: all of us, together.

We rise, we pray, we sing. Probably less davening than in my Zayde's day, but there are more women than in his day as well. At least - more women praying and singing and being, right along with the men. Here, we women count. Here, our voices are heard. We are all a community, and we carry one another. And so there are enough of us all, to ensure that no one mourns alone. I like that, too.

This was the 26th yizcor service since my brother died. I didn't realize just how huge that number is until I typed it out just now. Twenty-six times, not counting all the kaddishes I chanted during the first year after his death.

Twenty-six festivals have passed. In the beginning, I wasn't sure I would get through one. Not that I thought I would die! Not that, no - but I didn't think I could make it through a memorial service without my knees buckling and my throat tightening and my sorrow threatening to dissolve me. And in the beginning, all those things happened, knees and throat and sorrow huger than anything I could bare. And every time - every single time - no matter where I was, there were hands that reached out to hold me, arms that wrapped around me.

I stuttered out the words of the mourner's kaddish - harsh, foreign, not even Hebrew, but Aramaic, so that I almost knew what they meant, almost could say them with ease - and I would hear all around me, the answering amen.

Amen - a word that has its roots in both faith and truth. The rabbis attach considerable power to this tiny (and, alas, often thrown away) little word. Rav Meir believed a child immediately earned his/her place in the world to come upon saying it for the first time. Rashi believed that all the gates of heaven open to one who says "amen" with all his strength. Most of those rabbis agree that no benediction should be orphaned. no prayer should go unanswered or unframed, as it were.

We have a lot of rules about "amen" - when to say it, when not to say it, who can say it and who can't. Of course; we're Jewish. Why wouldn't there be a host of rules? I don't know them all. I know some, mostly in the way we all know a lot of rules - I observed, someone told me some stuff and I think I read something somewhere along the way, and no one is telling me I'm wrong, so I must be right, right? That kind of way.

So, I'm not too sure of the "why" of it, but I think I have the mechanics of it down. The words of the Mourner's Kaddish are said by the mourners; the congregation responds amen - so be it (in faith, in truth, let those words be a testament).

Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash shmei rabba - Glorified and sanctified be God's great name.There can't be silence here. This phrase must be answered. And so the congregation responds, as we have been taught: amen.

And so it went, from festival to festival: I would recite the words of praise to God (because that is the essence of the Mourner's Kaddish - not about death, but the glory of God), and the congregation around me would hold me up, and hold up the words of my prayer, and they would say "amen." Or, at least, if not "they," then someone. My relationship to the prayer changed over the years. How could it not? I went from raw and desperate grief to various shades of sadness.

Then there was a time, not too long ago, when there was no answering "amen." A space of silence before everyone continued on. What? Where was it? Why didn't everyone - anyone - stop and wait and offer? Why didn't I? I'm in mourning, dammit! I have grief. My brother died. Isn't the congregation duty bound, to be present for the mourners, so that no one grieves alone? I was carrying the dead, all of them, and they were getting heavy. I deserved at least that tiny amen to lighten the load, at least long enough to get to the next festival, the next yizcor. Right?

Yeah - I heard it: that whiny, screechy voice that demands constant attention and worship. I so love my self-righteous narcissism. It's attractive, isn't it? That shook my world, more than a little. Who the hell am I, to think I am the one, the only one, to carry the dead? Who even said I had to carry them?

That's the moment it all changed for me. I can carry memory, without having to carry the dead. I can carry those in my community, lift them and lend them strength in their grief, even as I am lifted. I love those who have died no less. I don't need to prove it to them, to myself, to the world around me. I can be kind and generous, just as there were so very many who offered me kindness and generosity. I can be one within my community, no more, no less.

I can answer a benediction. And so let us say
Amen.


In honor of my brother, Randy (z"l)
If you'd like to read about my journey through the first year after his death, saying kaddish, read my essay, Joy in the Empty Spaces)

A Quiet and Holy Current

Black tights.

Black knit dress.

Careful makeup, a touch of jewelry and heels. A hooded raincoat, to stave off the gusty downpour of rain and sleet. I grabbed my kippah (tastefully black, like everything else I wore) just before I shut the car door. One more funeral, after a handful of funerals in tha last month or two.

As I put the clips on, to keep it from slipping off, I heard Nate laughing in my head. Of course he would be laughing. At me. "What are you doing?" he would rasp. "Girls aren't supposed to wear yarmulkes (the Yiddish word for kippah)!" Then he would throw up his arms - dismissively, I think, when we first met, and then later, more in gentle resignation, while a proverbial "Bah!" slipped out under his breath. Or not so under. He wasn't shy about anything, especially in letting you know exactly what he thought about something.

I had no illusions about what he thought of me. I met him in my mid-forties. I was a girl to him-- not because he was thirty-some odd years my senior, but because I was, well-- a girl. My gender, the two Xs of my chromosomes declared me to be a girl forever. Not a woman. Not an equal. A mere girl.

And yet, there I was, every Saturday morning, talking Torah with the guys. And praying with them. 

And more-- I argued (in the best, most philosophical sense of the word) with them, and with the rabbi,  too. Sometimes I argued with myself. I disagreed as easily and as often as I agreed. But I was an uppity girl, who had the temerity to talk Torah with the guys, and then stay to pray with them. Every Saturday morning, for years.

It was the best part of my week, every week, for years. Me, and my guys.

They had been coming together for Shabbat morning services for almost as long as I'd been alive. Maybe more. These men, these remnants of a different world and another time-- they were the captains of industry, the craftsmen and the doctors, the scientist and industrialists, shop owners and salesmen. They were the symbol of the American landscape writ large, across the small backdrop of our synagogue: mainly second generation Americans who were taught that the rhythm of Jewish life was the undercurrent of everything else. It held them and sustained them and became the bedrock upon which they created and lived their lives.

After a while, when it looked like I wasn't going anywhere, that I was maybe perhaps a regular, they would tell me stories of what it used to be like, when the synagogue was in a different place, a grand old building on another side of town, a growing and thriving and tightly-knit community. Over lunch, they would talk of births and deaths and weddings that arced through the steady stream of b'nai mitzvah-- boys (with the occasional girl on a Thursday or Friday night) who would make their way to the bimah and stand so stiffly in a suit and tie, waiting with a butterfly stomach before leaning over the Torah, with its yellowed parchment and hand-scribed letters, while they, the fathers simply kvelled. It was a life they were making, for themselves and their families, bordered on every side by this holy place.

I don't know that they would have defined it as holy. Not then, when they were young and ambitious and feeling their way in the footprints of their fathers. Then it was brick and mortar and salaries and schools. There were rabbis to hire and committees to fill and teachers to find. There were leaks to plug and money to be raised. Lots of money-- a never-ending stream of money to fund a never-ending stream of fixing and hiring and need. They would get quiet, my guys, my Saturday morning minyan guys, and let slip the stories of the time (those many, many singularly repeated times of compassion and humanity and righteousness) when one of their group-- nameless, because that's how it worked -- who made sure that this one or that one, that kid with the patched clothes or the rumbling stomach, had tuition, or a bar mitzvah or a book. Or that his parents could pay dues. Or a car note.

They were a community. They were a family, forged by shared ties and shared faith.

For all of that, time moved and landscapes shifted. While faith might be constant, the synagogue -- and the community -- morphed, and then morphed again. From Orthodox to Conservative to Reform, moving farther west into different, newer, more modern buildings, this once large and thriving community was changing, growing smaller, more diverse. Faces changed more frequently, custom was lost, traditions changed.

But these men, this Saturday morning minyan of men, gathered together, every Shabbat morning, to study and pray and connect. And slowly, like the drift of planets and time, they let me in.

Every week, we would study some, and pray some and eat some. They taught me their rhythms, their quiet. If Friday night services were a joyous, raucous dance with God, Saturday with my guys was an inward journey, a solitary yet shared walk. It was no less joyous, but we seemed to find God in the stillness, in the gentle stream of light that came in through the windows, and the dancing of the dust motes as we moved in a slow and steady cadence through the service. They taught me to listen for God, that listening and quiet and service to others were their own kinds of prayer, and that every prayer was holy.

I was an uppity girl, but they made a place for me, right next to them. I am infinitely blessed to have been able to stand with them, these captains of industry, these men of quiet faith. Every Saturday morning,  for years, we stood together, and prayed some and learned some. We celebrated and grieved some, too. We were a family. A community. 

I don't know if I ever mentioned how much I loved them. Love them still. They brought a depth and richness and a thousand points of brilliance that had been missing into my life. I was changed because I knew them and loved them. My guys, my Saturday guys. They are fewer now. I am shocked, when confronted once more with the reality of their absence, just how much smaller the group is now.  I have had to say good  bye far too many times of late. But we come together, to grieve and remember, to tell stories of our lives and the lives of those for whom we gather. We are carried by the rhythms of faith and love, a quiet and holy current. 

Zichronam liv'rachah -- may their memories be for a blessing. I carry you with me always, and remember you in the quiet stillness of a Saturday morning, as I listen for the voice of God and find community and benediction there. Thank you for the gift of your lives, the song of your prayers and silence.

And so let us say: Amen

Afternoon Call to Prayer

There is a blurred and dotted line
That separates the world
And time,
And me from
you.
I stand on one side
not knowing
that I wait to cross,
that I yearn to hear,
that I long to be called.
But the light changes,
And the world slows,
And sun and moon and stars
Dance together,
And I cross--
We cross
that dotted line together.
We are called--
One and one and all of us together,
In the changing of the light,
And together we pray.

Morning Call to Prayer

I carry my dreams with me
Into the pale and quiet of morning
I carry the sound of coffee
And the smell of sleep-warmed sheets,
Tumbled, then
smoothed.
I carry
Birdsong and traffic noise
And distraction
Into the pale and clamoring morning.
I carry bright dreams and sharp-edged rush,
And I lay them down-
All down-
In that breath,
That narrow space
That separates me from
You,
That holds the voice of holiness
And calls me to prayer.

Who Opens the Eyes of the Blind...

Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha'olam, pokei'ach ivri'im

Blessed are you, Adonai, Sovereign of the universe, who opens the eyes of the blind.

From Nisim b'chol yom, for daily miracles 

The morning liturgy

I chant this prayer every time I say the morning blessings.  It is not as often as I'd like, but at least every Saturday morning, for Shabbat, I chant it. It's a sacred moment.

At least, it would be if I thought about it. I think moments are not inherently sacred or holy. They become so, with our thought, our mindfulness and intentionality.

Today, as I stood under the rickety, shivering roof of the Sukkah, where  pale morning sky peeked through a roof of haphazardly-laid dried corn stalks, and the light wind presaged the certainty of autumn-to-come (though the valiant sun, not-quite blazing, but shining brightly nonetheless, did a tango with the still-chill air before it started to warm) -- today, wrapped in my tallit and a soft sweater and the holiness of that moment, my voice rose with those other voices of this lovely community, praising God for the miracles of the day.

Praising God for opening the eyes of the blind.

That's when it hit me. Again, after all those other agains, when I've struggled to see my computer screen, and the road just beyond the hood of my car, and the last bit of dried-up milk at the bottom of the glass that my son has left on the counter again (for a whole different tirade of "agains"). More, for the struggle to see the breathtaking beauty of the words of Torah as I lean down to chant their ancient melody. They've worsened, those struggles, steadily, now somewhat exponentially, until today, this moment as I sing out my praise of God for the miracle of sight -- and my vision is a cubist nightmare, a blurred and darkened view of the world around me. Tough to see a miracle right about now.

So this morning, I chanted those words, where I so often sing them rather than pray them, and today they became holy and that moment shifted into rare and exquisite sacredness. And I wept.

I'm terrified that I am going blind.

Before I continue, let me say: my condition is, so my doctors assure me, treatable. Not cureable, but treatable. They may be able to arrest its progression. Or at least slow the pace of it. I may not, in fact, be going blind. Tell that to my fear.

I know, I know-- fear is a liar, and this is Sukkot, the season of joy. So I stood under the shelter of this very tenuous, very temporary shelter that was draped in God's bounty, that was filled to its very edges with prayer and hope and gratitude, and I sang and prayed and tried so desperately to lose myself in my prayer-- or maybe to find myself there, and God and benediction and something holy and pure, something transcendent and free of the fear that lay coiled around me, that bound me and tethered me to its dank lies and dirty promises. I tried so hard to rise with my prayers. 

And when I came to chant from Torah-- and really, not an incredibly inspiring passage, from a particularly troubling parasha, but it is Torah, and the blessing of it is that we are given the whole of the Torah, not just the pretty passages and happy stories, because it is ours to struggle with and dance with and learn from, to teach and carry and study and live-- so I stood at the makeshift bima and I bent to read those silly words, about bullocks and rams and offerings for drink and meals and sin-- and I stumbled and faltered, because although my eyes were open, I could not see.

The service leader was kind-- chanting Torah is difficult under the best of circumstances (considering there are no vowels or punctuation), he explained, but I was laboring under some heavy duty eye problems for which I would be operated on later this week. I walked back to my seat where I proceeded to break down. 

A woman, a friend, came to sit next to me. She put her arm around me, to offer strength and comfort. "What do you need?" she said, and would not accept stiffening shoulders or my mumbled answer of "Nothing. I'm fine." She was merely the first in a parade of others. Some I had known for years, those casual, intimate acquaintances who fill our lives with pleasantries and conversation and shared experience. There were a few I'd never seen before, though their concern was no less sincere. Included in that jumbled mix were a few real friends, people who were part of the regular ebb and flow of my life, whose presence was a steady and shimmering light.

What do you need? What can we do? And then: Never mind; I'll come over. I'll drive you. We'll bring you...

My skin fairly crawled. I am the Fixer of Broken things, I wanted to cry out. I do not get Fixed. I do not get taken care of. I am not fixable, I wanted to whisper. I cannot afford to need.

And in the midst of my fear and pain, draped in my pride-- a miracle. 

My prayer, my blindness: it had nothing to do with sight. It had nothing to do with vision, with rods and cones and color and light. There is holiness in giving, in caring for, in being present for another. There is also a sacredness in accepting that care. Community is about connection, a give and take of love and experience, a binding of joy and sorrow. 

I have no idea what will happen with my eyes. I am still terrified that I will go blind, that something will go wrong with this (fairly routine) operation. That I will not be able to drive, or read or stare in wonder at the color of the sky just as the sun kisses the horizon. Soon, and forever. I am an awfulizer of the first order. My fear is a liar that tells me I will no longer see.

But I will not be blind. How could I be, when I stand with my community, that holy and sacred bunch, under the shelter of heaven, to find strength and compassion and love. 

Blessed are you, God, who opens the eyes of the blind...

15 Elul 5773: Learn

Every Friday morning-- at least every Friday morning that we're both in town, which, during the summer can be a challenge-- every Friday morning, before the workday begins, for the last two years, I get to start the day in study with my Rabbi. I treasure those sessions. We sit at a wobbly table at a local Subway, eating our salads for breakfast, then take out the Sefer Aggadah, and dive in. We read and talk.  Discuss. Wander far afield. Disagree occasionally. Discover always.

Learn.

We're doing it in Hebrew, That is, I'm reading and translating the Hebrew.Needless to say, my Hebrew is-- how shall I say it-- not so much good. After two years, we're only up to Chava. He claims I'm improving. He is very kind, my rabbi is. One of these days, I want to write a book about our study sessions. I have a title already: Conversations of the Chasid and the Musar. I'll leave it to you to figure out which one of us is the Chasid, which the Musar (not that either of us is actually one or the other-- but we tend to approach our discussion from pretty consistently, he from one perspective, me from another. I like to call it twin sides of the same coin-- one is all outward exhilaration, dancing a joyous and celebratory path, the other is a more inward dive, a path of quieter contemplation. Both of our paths lead us to God.)

I can't imagine having a better way to start my day (that it is also just before Shabbat is an added bonus). I would be a professional student if I could. I don't know that there are many (any?) subjects I wouldn't want to jump into, splash around in the ideas and equations and arguments they have to offer. I want to learn the intricate beauty of fractals and string theory, understand the tragedy of ancient Rome and modern Egypt, Picasso's use of blue and Alinsky's use of direct action. I want to learn everything.

Sigh. I'm going to guess that that's one wish that will remain unfulfilled.

What I have managed to learn is astounding. Yes, yes-- I'm a school wonk, a study geek. I got me some book learning. The amount of minutiae and esoteric scholarly stuff that I've forgotten -- let alone learned -- would keep me awake at night if I ever thought about it. It may or may not have helped me in my actual life. Trust me: I'm not so sure that my PhD work in Early Modern English history was a relevant factor in landing me my job (Not directly, at least. Let's not get into the debate on how learning to think and write critically makes me who I am. I get that in spades) (And it has been helpful-- all of my training in history-- as a Jewish educator, so there's that).

The trick is, especially now, as I make my way through Elul to the promised land of the new year, the trick is recognizing the important learning that I've done. There's been a truckload of that, too. Let me break it down some.

I have learned

• There's nothing so bad that a drink won't make worse
• Sometimes the people you love will fail you. Remember that they are human, and sometimes, humans fail. 
• Sometimes the people you love offer a hand to hold in the darkness and shine a light so that you can find your way.
• Sometimes this is done by complete strangers
• Sometimes life is pretty crappy
• Even in the crappy stuff, there are moments of sudden brilliance and wonder
• It's ok to yell at God. Dometimes it's the only prayer we have to offer. God appreciates the conversation and loves a good argument
• I have wounded people I love dearly
• There's a difference between humility and humiliation; I get to choose where I stand in that
• I have two families-- the one into which I was born, and the one I have chosen along the way. Today I am grateful for both
• Pray to God, but row towards shore
• Practice kindness. It matters
• So does compassion
• The dictum "If you don't open it, you don't owe it" and its corollary "If you ignore it long enough, it goes away" are not true. No matter how much I'd like for them to be.
• Read some, study some, laugh some, learn some-- every day. It makes your heart full and keeps your soul dancing
• It's all Torah. Really
• I'm ok with contradictions.
• Life will not always turn out the way I want it to. 
• My best intentions will not always produce the outcomes I plan on
• Some learning is hard. 
• My son has taught me everything I know about love, patience and God. Not necessarily in that order.

There's more. There's always more. That's another thing I've learned: there's always something next, something after. It's the Scheherazade syndrome (I just made that up): life happens, a whirling, swirling mess o' life, filled with adventure and boredom and love and betrayal-- and at the end of every day, I sit, like the King in 1001 Nights and say "Not bad. I guess we'll do it one more time, see what happens next."

I am blessed beyond belief. That was a hard lesson to learn. I am grateful for all the lessons, even the hard one (maybe especially the hard one). I am grateful to all my teachers. I can't wait to see where my learning takes me next...

Saturday Afternoon Amidah

Strange,
To realize suddenly
That the soft murmurs
Of intensely--
Personally--
Public
Conversation
Buzz
at the exact same frequency
as the hum of the
espresso machine.
They clearly go together:
A droning
Confluence of
Coffee and conversation.

There is benediction here
And blessing
In publicly private
Circles and squares of
Contiguous community,
Coming together
As many ones:
Fluid, with
Bittersweet offerings
On coffee-stained altars
Of smoothed wood
And hard-backed chairs.

Rising
In the bronzed light
of late afternoon
Dust motes, like rain
dance;
Rising
Amid the hiss and clatter
of steaming milk
to stand;
Rising
in the too-chill air
warmed by the opening
and closing
of the door.

Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh!

We move
And stand;
Shifting through--
From here to there,
To different--
To separate--
To pause,
In the in-between
Afternoon light
That lingers and lengthens
Into softening shadow.

Rising,

We stand--

At our coffee-stained altars,

In between dust motes

And late afternoon.
Rising,
Again,

To the opening 

of closed doors,

To the closing of opened,

And offer a prayer of
Thanks.

Ten to the Power of One

I found a mystery of ten
or it found me
and will not let me go

Some tens are easy:
Chiseled in stone
carved and cut
commandments of
love
and justice

But this was a different ten,
uncarved and
not so clearly cut

at least not to me

This was a cantillation of ten
a kabbalah of prayer.
This was
a way to get from ten to
One

I thought
I remembered
the why of this ten
I thought
I was taught
that this ten
this minyan of men
-- at first just of men
though later we counted too;
we women could stand
with the best of them
with the least of them
with all of them
all of us
together.
Our voices could carry
could ascend
like sweet smoke rising from
old altars
to reach the ears of God,
but it took at least ten
of all of us

I thought
I was taught
in my own days of old
before ever I reached the heights of ten
that the ten of this assembly
came of one man who thought
he could stay the hand
of God
with a mystery of honest men
of fifty
then forty
no lower than ten

But the righteous had fled
or perhaps had never been
not there

Later I thought
I was taught
that ten comes from twelve
Twelve were sent out
and twelve returned
laden with tales of power
and bounty.
Ten told of giants
and doubt
though two stood firm
in the palm of God's hand

Ten swayed the seventy
who swayed the whole nation
the becoming
and dusty
and ragtag
nation.
Ten swayed the seventy
who stayed the many
the multitude
of men
and women
together they counted
and feared
and doubted
and turned
like Lot's wife,
they turned back
turned to stone

The power of ten
could turn a world
to unmoving stone
cast out
to wander in dust
and there to find hope
in fluid grace
to find one another
from stone to
ten
to One
we call
one to another
and all together
become
a numerology of praise
a cantillation
and kabbalah--
A prayer to the power of ten


And this,
the rabbis tell us,
this is the why of it
the heart and the soul of if it:
the power of ten--
this is the community assembled
this power of ten
was
is
the power to change the world
This I was taught
This I believe

Believed

This I believed in
and rejoiced
in sacred hallelujahs
This I believed

until

Until there was a time
I was filled with
despair
and doubt
my knees bent
and buckled
and I was bowed and
buried
by my grief
And in that moment
when I was lost
I was found
I was lifted
by the hands of strangers
and friends
unknown altogether
unseen through my veil of tears
Lifted by ten
redeemed by ten:
Gentle fingers
on deft hands
Ten
again and again
carried across a
chasm of grief
found by
ten

This mystery of ten--

it was never
bargains with God

nor fear born of freedom and doubt.

It was never that

that could stay God’s hand

or change the hearts of men

and women who counted

together

It was

It is

ever and always

     gentle fingers

     and deft hands

     that reach out

     and lift us

     and redeem us

     this mystery of ten

     this power of ten
ten to the power of One

Yad b’yad

Amen

Open My Lips: reflections on the Amidah

It's funny, but when I was a kid, I thought that the Amidah was The Silent Prayer (intoned portentously, with a deep and booming echo).  We would stand.  We would mumble some Hebrew-sounding words.  And then we would go silent. 

There were no instructions, no words of wisdom from the bima to bend and bow, chant or sing or speak.  Nothing.  But we all went silent together.  Our prayer book contained some Hebrew, but mostly old and dusty English, littered with "thees" and "thous" and a very male (and very stand-offish, kind of angry) God on high.  So, we would come to this silently screeching halt, and I would try to keep focus, read the English (but really: who could get through that English with a straight face) (or worse, stay awake while reading it), and wait (fidget) until time started up again in a forward motion.

Who knew?

Who knew the sweetness, the power, the community contained in the Amidah?  Why did no one ever tell me of the raw vulnerability offered at its start, and the answers that can be found later in its passion and hope?  Yes, there is silence, but not the silence of the fidgety and bored.  Rather, it's the silence of  thought and consideration and yearning.  It ascends in a delicate spiral, a plea-- for connection, for redemption, for past and present, peace and holiness.  It is all there, a silent prayer, shared.


So, my own offering, another of my Bar Mitzvah poems.  This one a reflection on the Amidah.  Feel free to read it aloud. <3

Open My Lips

Prayer.

It is a reaching out
A yearning
Desire wrapped in longing
Despair wrapped in joy

We cry out into darkness
And luminous silence
And glorious, sheltering peace
And offer
The sacrifice of

Of what?
What do we sacrifice?
What do we place on the altar of our hope?

It is not what we pray that matters
It is, ever and always
That we pray
That changes us
And redeems us
And heals us

Prayer is the heart of us
The center of us
We open our lips
And let our souls fly
Free

From Generation to Generation

Just a few weeks ago, Nate and I were in Rosenblum’s Bookstore, ordering kippot for his Bar Mitzvah-- those omnipresent black suede head coverings, imprinted with his name (in both Hebrew and English) and the date, to be given away at the service-- and on impulse, I asked him to pick out a yad (a pointer to use while reading from the Torah).  He walked over to the case and carefully inspected the array displayed there, and then said “Mom, I want to be able to pass this down to my children.”  

Here's a surprise-- my eyes instantly welled with tears. But my primary thought was "He's getting it."  All the years of talking and teaching and trying to live what's important, and he was getting it: family and connection, from one generation to the next, stretching out to forever in every direction, what was and what will be.  We are a part of it all, the center of it, the border of it, a link in a chain as fragile as memory, as strong as thought.  

So my beloved boy steps into the whole messy, vibrant, jumbly mix, with his own offering: a yad.  It is small and delicate, gold wire wound around a garnet sheath, ending in a hand poised to guide him (and all who will follow) through Torah, that whole messy, vibrant, jumbly and beautiful gift that generation after generation have studied and chanted and struggled with and wept over.  All the love, all the questions, all the doubt, focused at the end of that small and delicate yad.

As he creates a new tradition with that beautiful yad, we practiced an older tradition on the day of his bar mitzvah: I presented him with my grandfather’s tallit. My grandfather wore it as he prayed, and as a cohan, he wore it as he blessed his congregation with the priestly benediction. My father, in turn, gave it to me.  It was the first tallit that I wore, and now I’ve passed it to Nate, l’dor vador –from generation to generation. It is my hope that he will feel the blessings and love of all the generations who have worn it before him.

And so he stands, poised himself, right there, at the entrance-- to adulthood, to community, to his Judaism, to the adventure of his life.  It all waits for him, waits for him to step through. 

In honor this day, I also composed a series of poems to introduce each section of the service. The poem that follows, The Gate, can be just as much about how we all wait to step through, to enter, to begin as it is about how we gather together to pray.

I hope you enjoy this.  I hope we will meet all together at the gate one day soon.

The Gate

We start, as we always do, standing at the gate.

It’s a good place to wait,

This gate.

It is the entrance to our service,

to a holy place

and a sacred community.

As we step through,

We step outside of

Place

and into Time.

We come together

to celebrate

with friends and family,

with strangers and loved ones,

with song and prayer,

words and silence.

As it happens every Shabbat morning,

We start at the gate.

We start with mystery and wonder,

If we allow it.

We welcome small miracles

And stretch our souls

Outwards and

Upwards

And meet one another at the gate

This gate

This holy gate

And we enter

Together

Love and Loose Threads

This is the second of The Bar Mitzvah Writings-- the poems I wrote to introduce each section of the Shabbat morning service, to honor my son for his Bar Mitzvah.  


For me, this section, the Sh'ma and its blessings, is all about sound, the calling out and the coming together, declaring and rejoicing: a rich jumble of noise that goes up and out, higher and sweeter and made more pure with every voice that is added.  I heard someone ask once, during Torah study, why do we come together as a community to pray? Is there a difference in that than in praying on one's own.  The only answer that made sense to me was all about sound and harmony: when I sing with others, there is a richness and a depth that is impossible when I sing by myself.  There can be beauty, but there is no harmony.  I sing-- I pray-- with others, to hear all the notes that can make a joyous noise.


This is the song I hear, all the notes rising and falling, a transcendent arc bordered by love and loose threads...

We call to one another

Into the quiet

Into the burgeoning clamor of the day

We call

To one another

To come together

Prayerfully.

We listen

     We hear

          We declare

That there is Oneness in God

And majesty

And glory

When we call

When we hear

When we love.

And love we must 

Because we are bound--

To God

To one another

By loose threads and ancient words

By truth

And faith

And freedom

By love.

Bound by love for

Beloved of

In an endless spiral,

A double helix

That ends (begins) on the shores of a distant Sea

Choreography in Holy Time

When my son was born, I cradled him against my heart, arms wrapped gently yet surely around his small and fragile body.  I would stand, holding him, our breaths mingled, our hearts beating in an elegant call and response, one beat to the next, and I would sway, a slow and gentle side-to-side rock that lasted for the eternity that exists between heartbeats.  I could feel his body relax into the motion, like oceans, like drifting, like peace.  I loved the simplicity of that rhythm, the warmth of him, the smell of his newness and his infinite possibilities.  As he drifted, as he gentled, my own body would react in kind, and I followed him.

These moments became our own Fibonacci sequence: the delicate curve of our bodies, in motion, at rest, in motion again, twined in an eternal spiral, more intimate than a lover's kiss, repeated again and again and again (world without end, Amen).

So, when I found God again---

No.  When I found the need to find a communal God---

No again.  When I found the need to be part of a community in order to engage and have a conversation with God as part of that community, I began to pray more formally.  I began, as it were, to daven.  In earnest. 

It started with Friday nights, happy, joyous celebrations that welcomed in the Sabbath Bride.  With music and prayer (and clapping, with an occasional crash of cymbal or the downbeat of a drum), we ushered in Shabbat, remembering the light of creation, the promise of wholeness and completion. I needed the community raucousness, the loud holiness of erev Shabbat to ease me into a different kind of worship.  My voice was rusty after years of disuse; there was comfort in the foot-stomping, toe-tapping, almost giddy prayer of those nights.

Saturday mornings came later for me, when I learned how to be still, when I learned that listening was as much a part of prayer as words and song.  They were all about quiet joy.  Intense, but soft and gentle.  If Friday nights were all a communal romp at play in the fields of the Lord, Saturday mornings (and, later, festival mornings) were a way to find individual sacredness in the midst of a holy community.

As I prayed, as I found my voice, something surfaced for me.  It was so familiar, a recognition that washed over me like pools of light: warm and gentle and cleansing.  As a child, I had seen my grandfather daven often enough.  In shul, he and his congregation would shuckle as they bentsched, a quick, rhythmic motion back and forth, as if they were all about to walk forward but were rooted in their places.  The more impassioned their prayer, the faster they moved.  Now, decades later, I found an odd connection to my grandfather: a choreography in holy time.  Prayer moved me, not just emotionally, but physically as well. 

There was a difference, though.  Where my grandfather rocked, forward and back, so ready to be propelled outwards, or upwards, to soar wherever it was that his prayer led him, my dance was different.  Mine was that gentle sway, the side-to-side rhythm I had found in my son's infancy.  Unlike the shuckling of my grandfather's generation, my sway seemed to be centered, to be grounded.  Don't get me wrong: one was not better than the other.  Just different.  I was not meant to be propelled, but to flow.  Like oceans or time.  Like light.

I cannot shake the feeling that there is something holy in that movement.  I can lose myself in that tidal sway, let the sacred wash over me and through me.  I can believe, in those moments, that the movement itself, that easy to-and-fro, is a prayer.

In fact, I know that it is: sacred and holy and eternal.  Like oceans or time.  Like light.

Like love.

My son is preparing to become a Bar Mitzvah.  To be fair, he is a Bar Mitzvah, having passed his thirteenth birthday just last month.  But in fine American Jewish tradition, he is preparing to lead a service, chant from Torah, teach us something about what he chants.  As I've tried to teach him, now, not only does the community have something to offer him, he now has something to offer the community.  It's a two-way street, and he has obligations to fulfill as he steps onto the path of burgeoning adulthood.

But as he prepares, I've really tried to stay out of it.  I'm his mom: I drive him to his tutor's, I remind him to practice (I remind him again to practice), I nag him a little about practicing, I'm planning the social festivities of the day itself (and thinking a lot about wardrobe.  Mine, not his.)  But I am not his teacher--- not for this.  Let others help him prepare.  I have, I hope, laid the foundation and given him guidance enough for him to follow his own path.  But there is a community upon whom he can depend, who have so much to teach and share with him.  Let him learn this lesson as well (I pray).

So I was surprised one day, when I reminded him, but had not reached the level of nagging at him, to practice, and he asked if I would chant with him.   Would I chant with him?  Would I pray with him?  Would I?

I held as still as I knew how, as if a delicate butterfly had lit upon my finger, shyly flapping its gossamer wings, so ready to take flight again.  I held my breath and nodded, hoping I appeared calm and nonchalant, while inwardly doing my little happy-dance-of-joy.  I did not want to frighten him away.

Would I pray with him?

And he came to me while I sat at the table, my not-so-tall boy, my almost man.  He came and stood and nestled his body next to mine, so that our hearts beat in time together, a gentle call and response.  And we prayed, my son and I, and we swayed, he cradled next to me, a simple back and forth, that gentle back and forth, slow and stately, a dance in holy time.  Like oceans, like time.  Like light.

Sacred and holy and eternal, like love.  Exactly like love.