Matot-Masei: On Vows and Vowing

Oh, how we try to wriggle out of vows.

I do it as a parent: "If you don't stop, I'm going to take away x." And then I feel guilty, or like it was a harsh punishment, and I find myself backing off. Another parent recently reminded me, "the trick is never to promise or threaten anything you don't intend to follow through on."

I do it as a partner: "I promise I will be better about a." And then I try to narrow the circumstances where a actually applies.

I do it to myself: "I promise to give my body the chance at a full night's sleep." And here I am staying up past my bedtime to write a blog post.

This week's Parashah, the combined Matot-Masei, opens with "If a man makes a vow to God...he shall not break his pledge." (Never mind that it then diminishes a woman's vow, saying her father or husband can negate it, or allow it to stand. I'm going to assume we all agree that men and women are equal, and thus nobody owns the vow of another.)

Torah has plenty to say about vows. Indeed, it is pretty serious about them, especially those in which we obligate ourselves to actions directed at God or in God's name, but also those in which we obligate ourselves to our neighbors, our planet, even ourselves.

Later Jewish custom wriggles, just like we (I) do in everyday life.

Kol nidre (All Vows) - the title prayer of the service that kicks off Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) - asks that our vows be annulled, that every serious oath we have taken be wiped out, that we not be held accountable.

No, Judaism doesn't say we can get out of our obligations so simply. Indeed, there were early concerns about the notion of annulling vows. The Jewish Encyclopedia discusses a medieval change in the prayer:

"An important alteration in the wording of the "Kol Nidre" was made by Rashi's son-in-law, Meïr ben Samuel, who changed the original phrase "from the last Day of Atonement until this one" to "from this Day of Atonement until the next." 

The implication in this change is that we shouldn't be making vows to God in the first place, because we are sure to falter. But while this might be a relief (since we might make vows in the heat of a situation), it does effectively wriggle us out ahead of any actual vow-making. And we might therefore think that we can go ahead and make those heat-of-the-moment vows, and other vows, and not really worry about the consequences.

What I fear (and I am not alone in this fear) is that we lose the meaning of vows, and even smaller promises - to God and to people - when we assume we are free because of a prayer recited months ago.

I see this diminishing vow-lue -- in the person who goes into a marriage saying, "well, if it doesn't work out, we can always get a divorce," and in my own practices of self-care, be it what I feed myself or my lack of exercise. 

The Kol Nidre prayer does not, in fact, ensure us freedom from our vows. Even with the prayer, we must still be careful with our promises, and we must nonetheless atone for our failures before we can expect forgiveness.

A vow is a weighty thing - and it should be. Whether we are promising something to a friend or to God, we should feel the obligation of the relationship. We should not enter in expecting that we can simply wriggle out from under that weight easily, lightly. Still, it's nice to know that, if we make a promise and cannot fulfill it, we can be forgiven, even if it takes some emotional, spiritual, even physical work on our part to get there.

Reflections on My Love for Israel

My Grandma Jean, z"l, at Kibbutz 

Gadot with a calf suckling her fingers.  

Also in the picture: my parents, brother, 

and our host Victor, a cousin of sorts.

In 1993, I traveled to Israel for the first time - a young adult - with my brother, parents, and grandmother. It was a wonderful trip, with some of the typical tourist experiences (though I have yet, in many trips since, to make it to the Negev or the Dead Sea), and a handful of the typical "visiting family" experiences. Our most relaxing days were in Haifa and at Kibbutz Gadot in the northern Galilee - precisely because those were moments visiting people rather than places.

A particular event stands out as part of how I, personally, connect with Israel - with the land, with the history, with the state (aside from coming home and declaring my final undergraduate major, in archaeology).

My favorite part of Israel, instantly from the moment we landed that December and to this day, is the sense of history and culture all around. There is energy, flow, emitting from the old walled city of Jerusalem to the tools of war rusting by the roadside; from the great abandoned ruins of Caesaria to the living ancient city of Akko; from Jewish religious sites to the mosques and minarets to the Baha'i gardens of Haifa; from the bustle of the old-style shuk to the more modern Diezengoff of Tel Aviv with its shopping and night clubs.

During our stay at Gadot, we went on a day trip to see local notable places. Just a short distance from the kibbutz, on a hill overlooking the northern Jordan valley and across to the Golan, we stopped for the view. On the hill was a building in ruins, and behind it was a clearly marked mine field. Like all other places with ruins, I felt a strong pull to the building, little more than an outlining foundation with a few wall sections rising angularly. I wanted to spend some time in what shadow it had left to offer.

"It's a recent building," said our host, "nothing interesting." Recent, as in from 1967, when Israel captured the land and occupied the Golan for security purposes. At that time, the hill we were standing on - and the kibbutz behind it - were besieged by weapon fire from the Golan.

We moved on. We saw the view, we noted the trickling Jordan below, recognized the archaeological site alongside it, and moved on.

But the next day, when everyone else climbed into the van to see yet more, I walked back over to that hill, despite a fierce wind. I sat in the shadow of that ruined building. I sat, and I thought, and I let the energy of the past sweep over me.

More than twenty years and multiple trips back to Israel, including significant time spent at Kibbutz Gadot, and that building - its broken walls, its energy, perhaps its hidden and almost forbidden nature - remains a profound symbol of my connection to Israel.

I love the connection to places where things have happened - or where things are said to have happened. The archaeology along that water above Lake Kineret shows preCanaanite cultures - and our history rises up from there. Jewish access to these historical sites should by no means be exclusive - but everyone should have access to this history, to the experiences, to the feelings evoked by historical places and objects that have cultural and ritual significance.

This post, this story, emerged for me when I sat down to reflect on a recent post by Keith Dvorchik, in which he calls on us to Take Back the Words "Zionism" and "Zionist". I wondered, what makes me a Zionist? This is my answer, based on the dictionary definition offered in that post - "Political support for the creation and development of a Jewish homeland in Israel." 

I am a Zionist because I believe that Jews have a strong connection to the land - that a connection to land is a deep Jewish value (note the maintaining of rituals connected to the agricultural cycle of Israel even by people who electively remain in diaspora). I am a Zionist because full access to the land and its history should be available to the Jewish people - as well as to others who have similar connection (Utopianism is perhaps a higher value of mine, if less realizable). I am a Zionist because I love the land of Israel. So even, or especially, when I dissent with certain political moves or election results, I am a Zionist. After all, an election cannot be fair without the ability for people to have voted against the winner, and without the ability to continue to disagree and offer suggestions for change. I am a Zionist because I have a personal connection to the Land of Israel, and I desire the continued development and improvement of the State of Israel.




Note: I don't have a picture of that particular building - at least not accessible digitally at the moment (I took 18 rolls of 36-shot 35mm, some in B&W, that trip, but have only digitized one roll so far). Please enjoy the gratuitous picture of my grandmother, may her memory be a blessing, at Kibbutz Gadot.

For Our Teachers and Our Students: A Journey in NonLinear Faith

A long time ago this morning (likely yesterday by the time I finish writing and post), I sat at the table of local Torah maestro Beth Huppin. She is marvelous at demystifying Jewish text and weaving difficult teachings into meaning for any interested learner.

This morning's text, in honor of Yom HaShoah this week - was from Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (1889-1943), Piaseczno Rebbe, who taught light in the Warsaw Ghetto (and before).

In his posthumous Sacred Fire, Shapira takes the Talmudic teaching that "when anyone repeats the Torah (teaching) of a dead scholar, the lips of the dead, though lying in the grave, mutter along with the speaker." (Read positively as "whisper," or "murmer" rather than "mutter" with its negative connotation.) Shapira argues that this is literally "in the grave," and literally "moving," not some dreamy picture of our teachers in an ethereal Olam Haba (world to come).

This teaching Shapira places near the end of a rather elaborate explication of the importance of students to teachers, which basically states that a teacher may learn something in the act of teaching that is far beyond the ken of the students, but which the teacher could not have understood without the configuration of particular learners around him.

Am I blown away by this teaching? Yes. While we were careful in the room this morning to read this as having broad meaning, I want for a moment to reflect on its context, a teaching during the Shoah, before I move on to weave in a few texts that came to my mind.

Consider: Shapira is teaching this in January 1942. By now he is aware of the death of teachers and students, and may, whatever hope he tries to keep alive, reasonably anticipate his own mortality. (Significant change came with partitioning of the ghetto in December 1941, two parts joined by a wooden foot bridge.) Did he intend this teaching as comfort to those he spoke them to that January? A reminder to himself that so long as people came to learn from him, he had purpose, and he could learn? To console himself at the loss of his own teachers?

Consider now the far-reaching meaning of this text. One of the questions Beth asked her students (me) to reflect on this morning was whether we had "ever experienced hearing the lips of the dead speaking" when we speak or teach words we learned from them.

This gives me chills, just thinking about it. And I say, "well, not literally, no . . . and, yes!"

Sometimes simply studying a text that is thousands (!) of years old, if in a moment I sense the person or people behind that text (author, editor, redactor), I may feel profound awe at the opportunity to find meaning for myself in their words.

There are people who converse with a text. I mean out loud, even. What do you mean by X? they might ask, or delving deeper, Does your idea hold up when you consider A? This, I think, was the savvy of the Talmudic rabbis - not to try to preserve the text as is (though with sacred texts they did their best), but to be in conversation with those texts, or to imagine themselves in conversation with the originators of the text.

Many scholars have done this simply in the margins of a text (See Rashi's Torah commentary, for example). Joseph Caro was overheard by his disciples having conversations with the personified Mishnah.

How do I do it? Usually quietly in my head. Sometimes jotting an epiphany on paper. And recently, I have begun the idea of writing out such conversations.

Am I "imagining" the conversation? What is imagination?
Am I "really" in conversation with a text?
Do the answers that I scribe for the text or its author actually belong to the person I am channeling?

Yes or no, it doesn't really matter.

What matters is:
Somewhere along the way, now and then, I experience the murmer, the דובב (dovev), of teachers past, some of whom I can never have known.

A long time ago this morning - now yesterday morning - I sat at the table of a great teacher. She taught the words of another great teacher. And he cited Talmud from more than a thousand years ago, which in turn cited Shir haShirim, Song of Songs, attributed to King Solomon nearly 3000 years ago.

There is no time in Torah. The teachings reach backward into the generations, and forward to students not yet born, who will elicit from their teachers new and revelatory understandings, just as our students do today for us, and as we have for our teachers. Though I prefer, unlike Shapira, to consider an Olam Haba rather than the earthly grave, I offer the prayer: May we hear the voices of our ancient teachers and their future students murmering through the veil.

In memory of teachers and students lost.

Dancing with Gravitas: Welcome, Elul!

On Shabbat, during the prayer announcing the new moon, marking the Jewish month of Elul that arrives tonight, the woman sitting next to me said with a stunned look, "Elul is here - already?!"

Elul always seems to arrive with startling force - more than any other month in the calendar. I often dread its arrival, a stressful month of preparations for the "high holy days," a rush to get out final information for the holidays, distributing tickets to congregants and guests, polishing silver and brass, distributing "honors" for participation in services, choir rehearsals, security concerns, and for rabbis and cantors the writing of sermons and preparation of annual liturgy.

This year, I can hardly wait for Elul. And really, why dread such a beautiful thing?

Elul is ideally a time of reflection, not a time to rush. It is a time to slow down and consider one's actions and experience of the past year, to prepare heart and soul for the biggest tasks of the ten days of awe that will begin Tishrei, the month that follows, when we ask forgiveness from all people we may have harmed, we offer our own forgiveness, and we approach G-d with humility.

When Elul arrives on Wednesday (we begin Rosh Chodesh (new moon) celebration on Tuesday), it comes with a responsibility, to begin to awaken. We blast (or listen for) the shofar each day, somewhere between one tekiyah and ten varied blasts, depending on minhag. "Get ready," the shofar seems to say, "this is a serious and important spiritual season."

I feel, in some ways, that I have been living in Elul for months - ever since my job ended last November. I spent a lot of time reflecting, as I went back on the job market: what kind of work do I really want; where do I really want to live; how do I want to live? 

My fabulous partner and I - with support of every kind imaginable from family and friends - made a hard, risky choice. 

This week, as I settle into my new workplace, I am grateful for Elul's gravitas, for the reminder to check in with myself daily - am I building community with my new coworkers? am I representing myself well with my words and actions? am I listening deeply with my shofar-awakened ears and heart? 

Chodesh tov - may the new month bring joy and positive outlook in balance with and consequence of the deep work of self reflection and teshuvah ("repentance," or more literally "(re)turning").

Cloud Dancing

"I've looked at clouds from both sides now, and still somehow, it's cloud's illusions I recall."

Clouds dance. I've seen them from airplanes up high in the sky, and I've seen them from perches on land. But I've only seen them dance when I've slowed down enough to listen to their music.

This is what I had started to write when the news started to come in. From SCOTUS, decisions that raise corporations above people (by the corporations for the corporations, rather than by the people for the people) a decisions that will have wide ranging and log term reverberations. 

From Israel - three kidnapped boys found murdered. Cries of revenge. An Arab boy murdered. Soldiers announcing rogue retaliations. Rockets flying this way and that. Desires to build new settlements and name them after the dead Israeli Jewish boys. 

And counterbalances: to SCOTUS, the dissent and the outcry makes me think that in the long run we might just beat this; from Israel, peaceful words and hopeful desires, from the families of the murdered boys and not just from the usual peace organizations. 

And because of this, I know that we still merit to dance with the clouds.

Today, I witnessed such dancing - of clouds and of humans - when my son pointed skyward and said "hippopotamus!"  He brought be back to awe and wonder.

He also brings me back to fear and heartbreak.  Because of him, I am much more empathetic to (and more likely to want to tune out from) the kinds of things I mentioned above.  My son could be targeted because of his religion: from American laws that protect corporate religious affiliation over personal (religious or otherwise) beliefs and choices; because he is Jewish, and someone here or abroad decides to take revenge or use a child to push a violent political agenda (he because he is Jewish - but clearly the other side must be wary, as well).

Forgive me if I vacillate, then, between hope and joy and awe on the one hand, and fear and uncertainty and utter sadness on the other.

But permit me to end where I began - with cloud dancing.  Because I first began to think of this blog topic a month ago, when I was in the city I most want to live in, visiting family and looking for work.  From the airplane window, I saw clouds dancing.  I saw them morphing and swaying and growing and dissipating.  I saw them responding to breezes and winds, to shadows and light, and to each other.  And in the dancing of the clouds, I saw great hope: that something so tangible, so real, could also be so open to becoming something different - a different shape; a raindrop, snowflake, or finer vapor; tall and thin, light and fluffy, dark and brooding.

I aspire to cloud dancing - to moving through life as a cloud, open to that which will invariably change me, and offering where I will invariably create change.

Thanks in part to those clouds and their dancing, and in part to the support of some magnificent people, I am in the process of moving to that place I want to live.  I will be near family, and I will be working with people I am very excited to work with.  I offer myself to the teachings of this transition and of the new work and of the new people who are coming into my life - to the ways they will change me and the ways I will change them. 

May I merit to dance - with all of my family, our friends, and the clouds. 

Addendum: today, Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi died. I did not ever meet him, though surely I could have had I tried only a little bit, and I regret that I did not make the effort. He was a teacher and an influence to many of my teachers, and in that way to me. I take this opportunity to add to my above words because the whole idea of dancing with clouds is related to both seizing and creating opportunity, and reaching for dreams. May Reb Zalman's memory be a blessing - and may I yet learn from him. 

The Gifts of Walking and Writing

Our bodies were made for moving - walking, running, stretching. And our minds/souls were made for creativity. For me, remembering these gifts, and the soul-freedom that comes from them, doesn't always come freely. 

I haven't written a blog post in two months. I started one, shortly after my mother's April heart attack, but I let "life" get in the way. I continue to write in my journal everyday, forcing myself to "stay unblocked," but quite obviously pushing myself some days to keep the flow going. 

In this two months, though, I have relearned the power of walking. It helps that warm weather has returned, and that I've been spurred on by teachers. 

Today, half a mile into my two mile walk I remembered beautiful things from this morning. A mile in, I remembered how critical walking is. This is what happens when I walk, especially when I walk alone or in companionable quite: My mind opens, my thoughts loosen up as my arms and legs limber, and I start to write - in my head, and something on whatever paper or device I can grab. 

Torah is both ancient and contemporary wisdom of storytelling and journey taking, and it reminds me not to forget that both are about life. 

This week's Torah reading, about the death of Korach and his followers, is full of the kind of blindness that gets me in trouble. I stop paying attention to the gifts I have - or I stop using them - and I try to force tight ideas into unreceiving spaces.   

There is a redeeming note in the story if Korach. "Once [things] have been used for offering to the Lord, they have become sacred." And ever more shall be so. 

A colleague this week reminded me to listen to my gut feelings - not to try to force myself into a particular situation that just didn't feel right. Wisdom for Korach. Wisdom for all of us. 

And from that reminder, along with another friend's about the gift of my writing and the above words from Torah, I am trying to connect to the sacred, trying not to let "life" get in the way of living - walking and writing and telling stories of the things that move me spiritually. Like teaching my son this morning to communicate with a caged bird by bobbing and nodding and tilting our heads the way the bird does, and being amazed that it actually calmed the bird, and my son. I almost forgot about that, until half a mile into my solo walk this afternoon. Thank G-d for this body and all the life and sacred, creative energy that flows through it. 

Counting the Omer - Leaving Mitzrayim, a Starting Point

בכל דור ודור חייב אדם לראות את עצמו כאילו הוא יצא ממצרים
In every generation, every person is obligated to see him/herself as if s/he came out of mitzrayim.
(Passover Haggadah)

From whence do we come, and whither do we go?

Mitzrayim evokes both the literal narrowness of Egypt's fertile strip on either side of the Nile, and the emotional/spiritual narrowness of slavery.  It is the latter that each of us is obligated to search for in our own lives.  But the "coming out" from narrow places is only the beginning, what we read starting on the first night of Passover.  On the second night of Passover, we begin to count the Omer - for seven weeks we will count days and weeks, until we arrive at our next holiday, Shavuot.

The Omer reminds us that leaving mitzrayim is only the beginning.  It is like Abraham's Lech Lecha moment.  "Get up and go...to a land that I will show you" (Genesis).

In the moment we leave the narrowness - whether it is a way of thinking, or a job that binds us, or a relationship that restricts us - we do not land immediately in a place of certainty and strength.

Wandering in Haifa (c. 2005, RSR)

Rather, we begin a journey into the unknown, into openness.  It takes time to shake off old habits. We might, like the Israelites, sometimes question why we ever left, wonder if we really had to leave the security of what we knew (was it really so bad? "were there not enough graves in Egypt?").  Wherever we think we are going, like Abraham and like Moses and the Israelites, we really have no idea.  And that uncertainty can be disorienting and disturbing.he begin the journey - not expect that just because we have begun the journey we must have arrived somewhere special.

The Omer, the counting of days, helps to ground us on the journey. It grounds us with the simple act of counting, but also with Kabbalistic spiritual teachings, and a custom of self-reflection as we count, as we mark the journey. 

ארמי אבד אבי
"My father was a wandering Aramean" (Deuteronomy 26:5; Passover Haggadah)

I love the closeness in English of the words wander and wonder.  The journey is about openness - about being able to wonder at what we encounter, to find awe.

As we begin this wandering period, this counting of the Omer, I invite awe and wonder.  I also invoke compassion in response to the desire to shelter in the known narrowness, and for the desire to know "are we there, yet?!"  May the journey be the "there." May we not become stuck in the places where we sojourn.

Skin Lesions and Life to the Dead

Unlike my other blog posts, this is a more "traditional" D'var Torah, or sermon, on the reading of the week, Parashat Tazria, Leviticus 12:1-13:59. I offer this in part for those who missed my service this past weekend. To all reading, especially if you actually did hear my words: I typically write out what I want to say as a way of helping to congeal the ideas in my head, but it's still a little like jelly, fluid, so this isn't exactly what I said on Saturday. Thanks for the supportive readership.

This week’s Parasha, Tazria, contains sometimes vivid descriptions of bodily functions and malfunctions, skin lesions, and other physical “impurities.”  While it fits well with the rest of the Levitical blood and guts experience, this can easily be the most difficult, even embarrassing, portion for bar or bat mitzvah kids to work with, and quite disturbing even for an adult audience, trying to read it from a spiritual perspective.  

Even the ancient rabbis had difficulty with it.  What were these physical illnesses and what did they have to do with the spiritual work of the priests?  Surely there were plenty of lesions and illnesses that didn’t have to be proven pure or impure by a priest’s eye or through sacred ritual?

Leaving aside the issue of childbirth, where the parashah opens, the rabbis asserted that the skin diseases weren’t just any physical lesions - these were spiritual afflictions, resulting from actions, things a person did (or didn’t do).  Torah teaches that Miriam contracts one of these skin lesion diseases as a direct result of speaking ill of, or doubting, her brother Moses.  And so the most direct link between lesions and actions is said to be lashon hara, speaking ill of another.  

We could simply leave it at that, as the rabbis do - not try to find any explanation for how action might lead to physical ailment.  And indeed, the rabbis more or less do leave it untouched.

But they do offer some clues, in their discussion of this parashah, and in various other biblical texts and rabbinic interpretations.

The lesions at issue here are white.  Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Epstein, an 18th century Chassidic leader known as the Maor VaShemesh, taught that this is the clue -

“Now, actually, the reason for this is simple. The key locus of life’s vitality is in the blood, ‘for the blood is the life’ (Deut. 12:23); the human soul (nephesh) is in the blood.”

Essentially, we pale when our life goes out of us.  And white skin lesions are evidence of life leaving one or another part of our body, usually, he suggests, because we have embarrassed ourselves or another through our actions or words.  Anger, he suggests, is one of the worst offenders, and Rabbi Jonathan Slater interprets this to mean anger is “a small death.”

First, we need to be careful in a reading like this not to think that because a person has an illness of any kind that they have somehow brought it upon themselves by action.  Even the rabbis suggested that this was something that used to happen.  

Still, the notion of anger as being a portion of death is intriguing.  The Talmud also suggests that “sleep is 1/60th of death,” a little like death.

And this carries us to one of my favorite lines in our prayers - mechayei hameitim.  That God gives life to the dead need not be read as a direct assertion of reincarnation.  It can be easily understood in this way of restoring spiritual life.

In the Reconstructionist and Reform liturgies, mechayei hameitim has been replaced by either mechayei hakol or mechayei kol chai - both essentially meaning that the life we have and know is the life God has given us.

To me, this change in the liturgy is unnecessary.  Indeed, it denies the notion that we can be spiritually, or even physically, revived.  

One of my colleagues, Rabbi Megan Doherty, once argued that mechayei hameitim was the perfect blessing to recite over the first cup of coffee in the morning.  This may be a little tongue in cheek, but I think that the idea isn’t far off base.  Indeed, some hold a tradition of reciting these words as a short blessing when seeing someone they haven’t seen in a full year or more.

And what of the Yiddish “mechaya”?  Something good happens, even something as simple as a warm day after the winter, or a cup of icy cold water on a hot day - that’s a mechaya.  It’s a relief, a little bit of life-reminder.

The Reform siddur has returned mechayei hameitim as an alternative in its new siddur.  The siddur you use here is great about giving the options.  Reading with alternatives in place is an opportunity for us to rethink how we are reading: is it too literal?  Is tzara’at really leprosy, or is it a psychosomatic / or spirituo-somatic symptom, a result of something being not quite right in our inner life force?  Is mechayei hameitim only (or even at all) about reincarnation or resurrection, or is it closer to the Yiddish derivation, a mechaya, a little bit of life returning where we have felt a little weary or lost or some such?

Baruch ata Adonay - mechayei hameitim.  Blessed are You, our God, who provides sustenance and renewal, raising life up where it has drooped, offering solace and support and nourishment - to the individual, and to our whole world.  May we be aware of this renewal as the earth brings forth new greens, as the coming month of Nissan and our season of spring and Passover heralds rebirth and new beginnings, emerging from the deathly constrictions of winter and mitzrayim.

Olfactory Memory and Temple Sacrifices

The inner doors to my son’s school opened to let through the onslaught of parents picking up our children, and we were instantly surrounded by a moist, bready smell.  “Why are they baking bread?” another parent asked, “it’s not Friday!”  And I remembered - they were going to bake hamentashen this morning - at least in my son’s class, and probably others.

In the Torah reading cycle, we are in Leviticus, full of bloody, gut-flaying animal sacrifices - and a few somewhat cleaner bread and grain and incense sacrifices.  But in the holiday cycle, we are at Purim, that joyous holiday on which we eat (depending on Ashkenazi/Sephardi background) yummy pastries designed like a man’s hat, or the slightly more disgusting version of his ears.  

In a post-sacrificial Judaism, the holiday yummies are probably more likely to conjure some level of religious connection than the sacrifices.  But where the Mishnah makes the transition from sacrifice to prayer, I would like to suggest that our own experiences of holidays through food, tasted but especially smelled, may in fact hold a more direct connection for us.

The phrase ריח ניחח - re’ach nicho’ach - a fragrant (pleasing) scent, appears numerous times in Torah, all in direct relation to various sacrifices - four times in this week’s reading.  Whether grain or beast or fowl, a fire offering provides a pleasing scent, often specifically described as “for G-d.”  The fact that these sacrifices were commonly consumed by the priests (and, in the case of the Passover sacrifice, by the masses), we can begin to see the connection between the altar that stood before the Holy of Holies and our grandparents’ (for example) kitchens.  

For me, the smell of latkes frying or chicken soup cooking on the stove can bring me home to my mother’s kitchen.  Fresh baking challah, tzimmes, brisket, roasting chicken, cholent, and yes, hamentashen, may be among foods that bring you to various kitchens of your memory.  

And not just any memories, but memories of Jewish time, exactly the kind of time that the sacrifices helped to mark.  The everyday, the Sabbath, various holidays and seasons.  

The association Jews have with food (there’s some idea that you can’t attract Jews to a program without it) is, therefore, not just about putting something in the belly.  It has the potential to be so very deeply spiritual -- in the sense that our kitchens are our altars, filled at their best with ריח ניחח, re’ach nicho’ach, pleasing odors that permeate our very souls and bring us into relationship with each other. It is an inherently spiritual relationship, in the sense that neshamah, soul, is related to breathing (as is smelling), and ru’ach, wind, another word for soul, is directly related to the word re’ach, odor.

Chag Purim sameach - a very happy and joyous Purim to all.  May your olfactory memories tingle, this week and always, with your own efforts or the efforts of someone you love.  

Happy Ritual Change of Year

“I’m looking forward to 2014...I’m so ready to move on.” (Anonymous) 

Yes, me too.  2013 has been a strange year, in some ways painful and in some ways freeing, definitely filled with unexpected transitions.  

But isn’t a calendar change arbitrary?  If we are so ready to move on, can’t we do it without the new year’s arrival?  Shouldn’t a new day be enough?

Sure!  Every day is a new beginning.  “Every day Creation is renewed.”  

One of the reasons I think the New Year holiday is so profound - even if our resolutions don’t last - is that it is so highly ritualized.  We prepare for (at least) a week: Facebook friends, organizations, newscasters and more count down what they see as important music, movies, events, and so forth from the past year.  We are encouraged thus to reflect on our own year, on its ups and downs, on our own successes and “failures,” and ultimately on what we would like to change in the coming year.  And then we all come together - in person or via technology - to count down the last minutes and seconds to the new year.  (But even as I write this it is already 2014 in parts of the world; I understood this early, growing up on the west coast, when the clock struck midnight in the “heart” of our country (Times Square) at 9pm.  See how arbitrary it is?)

Ritual is powerful.  Ritual awakens us - “wake up and see”! - urges us into awareness.  

We don’t have to wait for a new year.  We can ritualize our mornings.  We can wake up to a practice of prayer, reflection, renewal.  If we don’t already do something like this, we can resolve right now that in the new year we will.  Take note - it’s not just tonight as the clock strikes midnight, but:

Every day Creation is renewed: wake up and see

In the spreading light of dawn

The world and all it contains

Coming into being new and fresh,

Filled with divine goodness and love.

Every day, Creation is renewed: wake up and see.   

Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg

(Kol Haneshamah: Shabbat VeHagim)

So my resolution for 2014 is, when I feel like I am ready to move on, to leave something behind, I’m not going to look for an upcoming transition - a year or even a day.  As the saying goes, “never put off until tomorrow what can wait until the next day.”  Oh, wait - that’s the procrastinator in me.  “Never put off until tomorrow what can be done right now.”  This breath, this moment - now is the time!

Wishing you and yours many blessings in the year to come, moment by moment and day by day.  Happy New Year!

Havdallah - Blessing of Separation

Most holidays have a beginning and a middle, but the end can be less clear.  I think of Thanksgiving - before the holiday there is all the planning (where and with whom) and cooking, and then there is a time when all that planning comes together for a meal.  But how does it end?  From the dinner table to the football game - moments of drifting away, hugs goodbye for those who have gathered?

I love the ritual of Havdallah - a ritual that marks the end of Shabbat and all major Jewish holidays with candle, wine, and spices.  The candle, with its multiple wicks, sheds more light than the single-wicked candles that begin holidays - brightening the dimness that is the transition from holy time to the everyday.  The spices often make me think of smelling salts, even as they also carry a sweetness forward into the week to come.

There is great value in recognizing changes - from season to season, from year to year, and major life transitions. My graduating class modified the Havdallah ritual for our transition from being rabbinical students to being rabbis.  It was a profound moment, and that ritual as much as the larger graduation ceremony, helped us (certainly me) to move from one place in life to another.

This past Saturday evening, as my family ushered in the new week with the Havdallah ritual, I felt again the larger value of marking transitions.  I was entering my first week after separating from my employer.  I could feel the difference - the inevitable losses and changes in relationships I had worked hard to build that are no longer necessary, the shift in myself to cultivating new and different relationships and doing different work.  As the candle burned and we sang the blessings, I reflected on these changes.  As the candle sizzled out in the wine at the end of the ritual, I felt a calm come over me. I was ready to move forward.

Many holidays are, in themselves, markers of transition - either in some obvious way like marking the new year, or in more subtle ways.  Indeed, any holiday can help us to mark change, as we go around the seasons.

Holidays and rituals that mark transitions help us to name the changes in our lives.  By naming, we give ourselves space to acknowledge and process changes, both privately and publicly.

We can bring meaning to the holidays through our own reflections: Where were we last Thanksgiving, or ten years ago?  Who have we spent this holiday with?  Who are we spending it with this year?  What does it mean for us?  If you, like me, are also celebrating Chanukah, ask the same questions about this Festival of Lights - and then ask how the convergence of these two holidays changes our experience of them.

Whatever holiday(s) you are celebrating this week and in the coming month, may you find whatever blessings you need - blessings of naming change, blessings of light and joy, blessings of gratitude.

Fixity and Flexibility

The hardest part of religion (or any part of life, frankly), for me, is that which is fixed.  I don’t like to follow rules.  The more rules you give me, the more I rebel - inside if not out.  Tell me that I have to do something a certain way, and that’s the only way I don’t want to, almost can’t, do it.

Perhaps this is a case of “point a finger out and three are pointing back.”  When I ask people to do things, I sometimes expect them to be done a certain way.  

Over the years, though, I’ve grown more flexible in the latter (I think) than in the former. I’ve grown deeply aware that things can get done well and properly even (and sometimes especially) if it isn’t done the way I expect it to be done.  But if someone tells me something has to be done a certain way, I still fight.

When I’m working on a project, large or small, I am prone to extreme flexibility - not setting anything in stone ever.  As a rabbi, if I am leading services, I frequently make choices in the midst of the service, based on who is present or a feeling in the moment, to add or skip a song or reading.  At a bigger event like the Community Day we did last Sunday, our Hebrew School students sharing their learning from the first third of the year, I am open to changes in the order of presentations even after the program is printed.  

I like the fluidity of water and dreams, ever changing and changeable.  In this week’s Torah reading, Jacob sees the ladder with angels ascending and descending.  As I understand dreams to be of us, I see Jacob processing his world.  When he wakes and says, “God was in this place and I, I did not know!” I think he is saying that his heart, which knew, was telling his head, which had not grasped that God is everywhere.

Head and heart.  Different parts of our body, in both of which thought forms and action derives.  Forgive me a bit of spin - the head is the place of fixity, of fixed ideas and of “set-in-stone” action, and the heart is the place of fluidity, of open ideas and flexible action.  

Both head and heart, both fixed plans and flexibility, are valuable.  When we choose to attend an event -- a play, a religious service, a carnival -- we expect certain things, because those event names carry some fixed meaning.  But if every play is the same, if every religious service is identical, sameness becomes droll.  We want something different -- a new inflection for Tevye or MacBeth, a different sermon or an innovative prayer that reaches out to where we are, a new ride at the carnival.

God of Jacob, dreamer of angels, dreamer of heavens, hear my prayer!  Give me courage not to require others to do things "my way," and strength to be flexible to all that comes my way, including fixity demanded by others.

Chayye Sarra and the Dance with Torah

Welcome to my new blog!

This week, Jews around the world read from the Torah the section known as Chayei Sarra, literally “the life of Sarah.”  Thirty years ago, I read from this story at my Bat Mitzvah.  It is a fascinating segment of the book of Genesis, which in fact begins with the death of the great matriarch, Sarai cum Sarah.  

The more involved story in Chayei Sarra, however, is the story of Sarah’s son Isaac receiving a wife.  More to the point, it is the story of Rebecca as a woman of valor, a woman who is strong and beautiful and kind and generous, and who because of all of these things finds herself in the position of becoming the second matriarch of the Jewish story.  It is far less about Isaac, about whom I am discovering as I reread the Torah year by year we actually know very little.

I find myself thinking of Sarah and her son Isaac -- as I and my son both turn a year older this weekend.  Who was Isaac to Sarah?  He was her son, her only son, her beloved -- the child of her old age.  When she heard she would have a son she laughed.  Was it disbelief?  Was it joy?  A little bit of both?  And how did she experience her son once he was born into this world?

This is a beginning for this blog (you can see previous blog entries on my workplace website), and it needed a name.  I am taking a phrase from my almost-two-year-old’s greatest desires -- “Dance with Torah?” he pleads nearly daily since celebrating Simchat Torah a month ago, and I have tried to find ways for him to do so.  Confession: I am a rabbi, and Torah, as text and in the broad sense of Jewish tradition, is my life.  Yet my son inspires me to deepen the joy I take from Torah, to dance with it physically, intellectually, and spiritually.

It is my hope that this blog, in which I will share about Judaism, tradition and innovation, and general spiritual pursuits, will inspire and support others in the age-old yet stunningly contemporary Dance with Torah.