Pesach 5772: The Hidden Language

Pesach 5772: The Hidden Language

Sometimes at our Seders each participant is asked to choose a question to answer- sort of an icebreaker. What movie role would you have liked to play? Who was your childhood hero? If you had to eat only one type of food for a year, what would it be? And many others.

In line with these kinds of questions that are meant to evoke a sense of the person’s inner world, let me ask you the following: What one word do you think a seed would say the moment that it sends its out its first root? Or alternatively, this one: what would the cells of your body near a cut or wound say to each other as they regenerated and formed new tissue?

There are deep places in your heart, soul and psyche, my friend. There is so much mystery and such rich and incredible inner processes going on inside you every moment. You are not just one self, but a dynamic community of voices: the parts of your psyche, the aggregate of your memories, only a few of which you are aware at any moment, your inner drives, potentials, wounds, epiphanies, discovery, the child inside, the explorer inside, the poet, maker, hidden soul, yearning soul, seeking soul… And then, because there is no true demarcation between the physical, psychological and spiritual, the births, deaths, regenerations, cycles of the flesh, blood and spirit, all happening at once, all revealing and hiding, joining and separating. Ask the psychologist what you are. Ask the biologist, the physicist, the anthropologist, the philosopher, the neurologist, all of the scholars of the mind, body and spirit what you are. They will simply shake their heads in awe and wonder. You are a city, a temple, a port of call, a thousand adventures, a million points of view. You are your ancestors, your instincts, your ambitions and dreams and the parts of yourself that gave birth to them. You are a community. You are the greatest work of the greatest artist in the universe. You are magnificent!

And yet, for all of your glory, my friend, you are invisible to yourself. You cannot directly experience or access that incredible hidden community. You are Job, who, at the end of his book of the Bible, faces G-d. Rather than providing answers to Job’s inquiries, G-d fires a series of questions: Where were you when I established the foundations of the earth? Upon what do they rest and where are they established? Where were you when the morning stars sang? Have you walked in the deep places and seen the gates of shadow? Do you know the way to the dwelling of the light? We are so constructed as to be conscious only of the outer and not of the inner. The deeper levels of consciousness are forever inaccessible to us.

This is the dilemma of the healer of the mind: how to make the unconscious manifest and reveal the layers of the inner psyche where trauma and unresolved and unfaced loss and pain stop us from realizing our potential for life, joy and fulfillment. The therapist will ask the patient to speak and through words try to access the inner life and discover the structure of the consciousness and its faults and flaws. But ultimately, words fail because the inner community doesn’t speak in words but in more primal language, closer to the bone and the heart. Art and music and the visions of dreams reveals that language, for the inner life speaks in the language of symbol, myth, metaphor and image.

And this is the true healing power of ritual in general and Torah specifically: to give us a vocabulary of symbols that enables us to access our inner world, to unblock our souls and to give them wings.

This year, we needed to make a large oven kosher for Passover; not just kosher but super-kosher, fit to bake Matzah, the ultimate expression of Passover and freedom. We spent hours scouring it, scraping, washing and scraping again. Vast amounts of ash, dried grease, caked on grime and all manner of refuse and dirt came out and still the oven was dirty and unfit to bake the bread of freedom. The more my friends and I scrubbed, scraped and scratched, the more invested and committed to cleansing I became and the more frustrated that we were failing.

Finally, the young Rabbi whom we were working with pulled out the final step: a blowtorch! Not a small shop torch, but a big weed-burner meant to clear acres of brush. We all stood back and the flames exploded into the oven. At first, the orange and blue tongues seemed to have little effect, merely sweeping over the spots and stubborn stains. But then the fire seemed to take hold and all at once a stain glowed red and burned away and then another and another. The interior of the oven glowed white hot and then, as the flame moved on, stood revealed as completely empty, completely clean.

It was then that I realized that I had been holding my breath. As I exhaled, I felt something leave me, some knot that I had been carrying, some inner clenchedness that had nagged at me was gone. Now I’m ready, I thought. Now I’m pure inside and can take one step closer to becoming truly free.

And so I learned what the seed says as it sends out a root and the words of the healing wound. They are not things that I can say in words but they are profoundly meaningful in the inner world. In the same way, in the speech of symbol, the Passover Seder is filled with speech on a level deeper even than the words of the Haggadah. The breaking of the middle matzah, the pouring of wine, the voices of children saying ancient words and even the concealed Afikomen, hidden in hope; the textures and tastes and sequences of the Seder, all speak a deep language that our souls can understand even if our minds don’t fully grasp. And the message is one of inner liberation and inner transformation. All we need do is allow our souls to listen. How? By connecting with the others at the Seder, by laughing, pouring wine for each other, enjoying the evening; and in this way, the heart expands and the soul can awaken to the other Seder, the inner Seder going on beneath and within the familiar rituals. There is an ancient story for us to live here: a story of oppression overcome, of triumph over despair, of the ongoing liberation of the spirit and the ascension of the soul to places undreamt.

Is it all understandable and accessible to the conscious mind? No- and it is precisely there that the power and meaning of the Seder and its mission of memory resides. The Romantic poet William Wordsworth speaks to this lost language of flowers and hearts:

Thanks to the human heart, but which we live.
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears
To me, the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears-

A sweet Pesach- Next Year In Jerusalem

Memories from the Ancient Night: Pesach Preparation

The question of the week seems to be, “where are you for Passover?” But perversely, let me ask myself: “where am I the month before Passover?” And the answer, equally perverse, is, “I’m not sure, but wherever it is, I know what I’ll be doing every day, for at least a few moments…” So, please, let me explain:

The Kabbalah says that studying Torah is important. How important? Here’s how important:

On an ancient night, our father Yitzchak called his son Ya’acov and said, “This is the night that the rhythms of renewal and liberation are awakened and the rains cease and the flowers appear. This is the night when the dew begins to form on thorn and twig and blessing showers the earth.

“And why? Why is the this night the beginning of the springtime and renewal and liberation?

“It is because this is the night that our descendants, the Children of Israel, will be redeemed from slavery and liberated.

“For know that they will make an offering, a Passover offering, and that offering, which is their faith and hope embodied, will awaken the powers of redemption in the world.

“And those powers of redemption, whose outer expression is fertility and dew and flowering, the voice of bridegroom and bride, will be renewed from year to year, and the love awakened will radiate backwards and forwards in time forever.”

And Ya’acov went and brought his father a roasted lamb, like the one that his descendants would one day offer. And the powers of redemption and blessing were awakened and Yitzchak blessed his son Ya’acov and said, “G-d give you the dew of heaven and the fullness of the earth and may all who bless you be blessed.”

“For as long as your descendants shall study these words, then shall the redemption awaken and the treasuries of heaven shall shower the dew of blessing on the earth.”

-Midrash Pirkei D’Rabbi Eliezer, Shigyonot Moshe commentary

So study your Torah, Children of Israel, and awaken the love here below that will awaken the love there above. Study one line, one law, one custom, one bit of Jewish history, one chapter, one word.

As modern Jews and modern people, how do we understand this text? Do we seek a rational/sociological explanation- that by connecting ourselves to the aggregate wisdom of Israel we achieve a greater sense of peoplehood, that ultimate connection that both respects our autonomy as individuals while making the inner resources of our heritage available? Can Torah study, the record of the ongoing ideals of Israel, inspire and motivate? Can it help us achieve the state of consciousness that psychology calls an integrated personality, where we master uncertainty, fear and self doubt and learn to live spontaneously and joyfully?

How about a new age reading, made famous by Oprah, that Torah study activates the “law of attraction”, that posits that positive thinking creates energy that influences positive outcomes. How about a magical reading, like a horoscope? Or a pragmatic reading that would argue that reflecting on non-material values that encourage us to deeply reflect on our lives and priorities allows us to make better choices?

Me, I’m going through a post-modernist period that rolls its eyes at the belief that we can really know or be sure of anything, least of all that ultimate mystery: our selves. All explanations and reasons for things are ex post facto attempts to force the experience into a contrived artificial intellectual framework whose only purpose is to make us feel better about the world and the things we encounter because we can give them names. Better yet, call it spiritual phenomenology: to win it, you have to be in it. The philosopher Martin Heidegger called it dasein- “being there.”

So I read the above text as just one thing: an invitation to an experience. That experience is a daily encounter with ancient sources that are part of my family’s inheritance. The encounter is not meant to make one smart, rich, popular or anything else. The encounter is meant to bring blessing to the world. It’s not up to me to figure out, however ingeniously, how that part works. My part is no more and no less than to intend that my daily encounter bring blessing. And so, I tried it…

It’s been many years since I made a commitment to this daily nourishment and I attest that it has enriched my life, widened my vision, empowered and enabled me and much more than any other experience in my life. It has made me feel that Torah is like a candle flame that illumines a corner of darkness and shows me miracles. It fills me with the hope that other candles will be lit too to show even more of the wonders that are hidden everywhere. It encourages me to think that if enough candles were lit, a fundamental change might come about not only in my life but in the world.

The depth of the experiences of Torah changes the consciousness in ways that are both subtle and obvious. An example is that when that ancient night, the 14th of Nisan, comes around again and I’m sitting at the Seder table, I won’t be worried about when we get to eat, or if the brisket is dry or if the kugel is wet. Don’t make a mistake: I love food- oy, if only I didn’t so much! But on that night, that ancient night, I simply have other priorities, other longings, so much deeper than those of the body and psyche.

To the soul that has been prepared through this simple discipline of a few minutes’ study, that first taste of Matzah: dry, simple, vaguely nutty, humanity’s most primitive prepared food is like a catalyst, unlocking the genetic memories of a thousand generations, of voices, mountains, journeys and one eternal presence all in one moment. But what is the point in reporting an experience that is freely available to anyone?

Pesach isn’t so much about the night of as it is about the nights before- may yours be blessed.

-Moshe

PS: Links to online/emailed quick Jewish resources:

Torah: www.mechon-mamre.org
Jewish Law: www.halachos.com
Jewish Customs/Holidays/History: www.jewishtreats.org
Hebrew: http://www.akhlah.com/newsletter/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1

Tu Bishvat: Mud, Roots and Memory

Tu Bishvat…

No, really, I’m not crazy. No more than anyone; I think!

But surely there have been moments in all of our lives, generally I would suppose within the first two or three decades of our lives at any rate, when we had a visitation of craziness. Or of spontaneous, transporting, overwhelming joy. Or of being lifted high, high up on an ecstatic wave of wonderment that came from nowhere and disappeared into nowhere leaving us inspired, a little bewildered and almost always dirty, wet, hungry and exhausted…do you know what I mean?

I’m not talking about the “experimentations” that everyone associates with growing up in the sixties and seventies. I always believed and still do that such things are acts of boredom, despair, surrender to peer pressure or thoughtless reflex. I’m talking about something much more profound. Falling in love- not the hearts and flowers and unicorns sort of watery emotion that’s packaged in music videos but the real deal, the radical readjustment of the self to stand forever in relation to another precious soul. That’s the only thing similar to the radical moment of wonder that I mean. The difference is like what Ralph Waldo Emerson said when he’s giving advice to the heartbroken youth: “When the demigods leave, the gods enter.” That is, when you realize that falling in love with one beloved is only one aspect of a greater love that embraces the whole world. That touching the heart of the world is perhaps the greatest blessing that youth gives to the self as a whole.

I’m sure that you can find a place like that in your memory. It might have been on a beach, climbing a mountain, attending an outdoor rock concert, seeing a sunrise in a desert or even from your back porch: things like that almost always happen outdoors… But something happens. Something happens. Something changes. You fall down laughing, or crying or shouting, or start running like mad for no reason and then, just as you become aware of yourself, the moment of transport fades away like thunder rumbling in the distance and is gone, leaving your ears ringing- or your heart ringing.

But such moments are hidden away quickly, aren’t they? Because they come out of some secret center of the soul and can’t last too long. No fireworks or geysers or electric guitar power chords. They are hidden moments that arise in hiddeness and fade away into hiddeness.

Hard to discuss and impossible to really share, but I think that’s part of the job of the Rabbi: to talk about the uncomfortable stuff, the embarrassingly personal stuff because it is in those “oh please don’t be so open” moments that G-d finds us. So here goes…I’ll get to Tu Bishvat in a moment!

The Jezreel Valley is a long and wide expanse of fields and woods in northern Israel. On one end, a low, round green mountain lifts up above the valley floor: Mount Tavor, the “world’s navel”, from where the Israelites looked down upon the heavy chariots of the Canaanites in the old wars. On the other end, the Carmel- “G-d’s Vineyard” lifts itself into the blue. It was on the highest of these mountains that Elijah the Prophet confronted the priests of the idol Ba’al in a battle royal of prophetic power back in the eighth century BCE.

And between these uplands is the valley itself: miles and miles of arable land, reclaimed from the malarial swamps that still linger in its center by the work of generations of chalutzim, Jewish settlers from Eastern Europe who arrived in the early part of the twentieth century looking for their own salvation and a place where they could stand; restless and energetic, rejected by Europe and Russia both, refusing to yield their identity and hopes, they headed east to the old land of the legends. And the land embraced them and they became renewed together. The pioneering youth built collective settlements along the foothills of the mountain ranges that ran down into the valley: Beit Alpha, Nahalal, Beit HaEmek, Genigar, Mizra, Alonim…the names of Kibbutzim, the only place in the world where communism actually worked, where people labored and lived together in equality and sharing, living the vision of social justice embodied in the words of the Prophets of Israel; a place where no one was forgotten, no one disenfranchised, no one having more at the expense of another. Small settlements of a few hundred souls where labor and working the land wasn’t seen as a necessary evil or as exploitation but as an act of redemption.

And there came I, one rainy night, long-haired and wild-eyed in my early twenties on my first trip back to Israel in over a year. I had just flown in to Ben Gurion airport earlier that day and, after the stop off at the favorite felafel stand in Tel Aviv, had boarded the bus for the northern city of Afula at the end of the Jezreel Valley. I arrived at Afula in the light rain of earliest spring just in time to miss the last bus to the Kibbutz where I was headed.

And so, I decided to walk it….not the brightest decision I’ve made in a lifetime of impulsivity. No problem I thought, to cut across the fields instead of trying to hitchhike down the one narrow road. After all, I’d spent a year in the valley and had hiked all around its expanses and wooded sides, even climbing Mount Tavor one evening and getting kicked out of the monastery at the top where my friends and I had tried to take shelter. Our return journey through several Arab villages- a story for another time!

So I started slogging through the fields of Kibbutz Tel Adashim, heading in a direct line to the orchards of Genigar and the Kibbutz where I’d lived and where I was heading for a visit.

Well, I guess the best way to present the journey is to say that nothing momentous happened. I fell a dozen times in the wet mud of the fields of Jezreel and arrived late in the evening, covered in moist earth with hiking boots that bore at least five pounds of mud each. My friend Miriam looked at me with wonderment and directed me to an outdoor shower to clean up. The sky had cleared by then and the last hour of my journey was beneath the stars of Israel: stars that always seem in my memory to be the size of plums.

I met up with no caracal wild cats, no jackals, although I heard some howling in the distance, no marauders, no Egyptian asps or quicksand or any other hazard or excitement.

Instead, I encountered something much more momentous. That trip, for all of its sliding about in the dark in the rain and under the stars, seemed timeless and more and more beautiful and holy. I felt the life of the land, of soil and of the slow, powerful, inevitable germination that renews life like a song all around me. I felt the land of Israel- much of it covered me by the end of the night after all- in a way that had nothing to do with prayers and texts. I felt a sense of being welcome and belonging and at home. I felt buffeted about and slapped upside the head in a way that was both wild and primal and totally accepting and loving. That was the night of Tu Bishvat, the New Year of the Trees, when the Torah says that most of the rainy season is over and a spark ignites in the earth and spring slowly awakens. Decades have passed since that night and I am far away from the Land of Israel and have celebrated many Tu Bishvats with cups of red and white wine and pomegranates and grapes, toasting the trees and the renewal of the year.

But it was on that night, that Tu Bishvat that something awoke for a moment. The life of the world and land that warmed me recedes year by year into the past, but it is a memory that has nourished and lit other sparks. Stand strong, take root, reach down deep and remember the soil from which you sprung. Fruit is the future and it has a song, but roots have a song too- and Tu Bishvat is a song of fruits but even more, a song of roots. Sing yours- Chag HaIlanot Sameach- Happy Tu Bishvat.

Running with the Angels

Running with the Angels: Hatikvah’s first Chanukah torch relay in Long Valley

This year we began a new practice for our public Menorah lighting. Connecting to our history and the traditions of the Maccabees, we organized a torch run up to the center of town where the tall Menorah awaited its kindling light. Darkness, rain and all, the zeal of the warrior-priests, who ran from the little town of Modi’in up to Jerusalem to light the flame of freedom in the original Menorah burned again. At least that was the plan. Everything came off very well. Rafi and Iris, the community leaders who organized the lighting, agreed that we could set off from their family’s Bed and Breakfast and asked for a police escort as we ran down the narrow, busy road, most of which lacked a sidewalk. Making a serviceable torch was a bit of a challenge but in the end, the blue flames spouting from the end of the stout piece of pine were most satisfactory.

But the Rabbi went down. That’s right…at about the half way mark he, that is I, had to stop and kneel down; just for a moment, just long enough to tie my shoe…except there was more.

This being the first year that we’re trying a torch run, I hadn’t much hope that we’d get many volunteer runners to join in on the journey- fairly short for this first year at only a bit more than a mile- but to my pleasure and surprise, Jay, a past president and community leader and wife Janice, a past president of our sisterhood, stepped forward and offered to help out on the day before the run. Both of them are runners, not just occasional joggers like me, but real runners who take part in marathons and are always in training. They arrived in bright yellow reflective running suits, ideal for visibility in the dark, ready to do their part and promising to run slowly and both with medical training- I felt protected…in fact, I felt blessed.

There’s a statement in the Talmud that says that when someone does a mItzvah, angelic beings are created to accompany and ensure the safety of the mitzvah-doer. Our shul had collected many crates of canned goods to help fill the shelves of the Long Valley food pantry- the torch run was meant to raise awareness of the food shortages faced by our neighbors and encourage donations. And so, as representative of the synagogue community, I was blessed to be accompanied by these two fleet-footed angels, Jay and Jan, radiant in the darkness, laughing and at ease, running circles around me as I lumbered through the dark.

And then I remembered how only two years before our community had been shocked and wrung with sorrow when Jay, haggard and grieving, told us that his soul mate had been struck by a truck when out biking in Pennsylvania and had suffered a grievous brain injury; we feared for our friend’s life. Even when it became clear that her injuries of themselves were not-life threatening, Janice’s very self-identity was in doubt and peril . No one knew if she would ever recover, would ever be able to return to her self, her life, her family or her career.

Moved to a rehab center, Janice spent months relearning and remembering who she was as well as dealing with the painful and persistent physical effects of the accident. During my visits to her over months, progress at first was slow, but steady. Through the whole terrible ordeal, Jay stood by his wife, supporting, aiding, posting updates and serving always as a source of strength and hope,caring for their daughters and holding it all together.

And then, slowly at first but with ever-increasing certainty and indomitable courage, Janice became to come back, stronger and stronger, regaining her memory and skills, reclaiming the scattered parts of herself one struggle at a time. Over the course of months, Jan reasserted herself; moved less to pity now and more to awe at her courage and progress, we saw her come home, return to her practice and renew her active lifestyle. Two years ago at Rosh HaShana, she stood, poised and beautiful as ever on the Bimah at services and shared the miracle of her recovery and thanked the community for its support.

And now, here she was, running the torch through the night to the Menorah, the sign of eternal hope, the sign of a miracle. Losing patience with the slow, plodding Rabbi, she flashed out in front, the embodiment of hope and the miraculous. And that’s when I had to stop for a moment and just live in the amazement and gratitude.

There’s a saying in the Talmud: blessing only abides in hidden places. G-d’s presence in the Chanukah odyssey is hidden in the smallest of places: in the flames of the Menorah, in the courage in the hearts of the Maccabees, in the determination of a small and peaceful people not to submit but to cleave fiercely to their soul, their identity, to each other and most importantly to their G-d. Seeing Janice bearing the torch gave me, gave all of us, a glimpse of the presence of the possibility of the miraculous in every moment. Maybe the meaning of the holiday isn’t to only celebrate the ancient miracle but to sensitize us to the miracle that is, or that can be, now.

The Raving Rabbi’s Meditations on the “December Dilemma”

I went to a nice little public school- or rather schools, since we moved around a bit. I guess it meant that I never really felt like I was a part of the classroom community: I was the new kid, or the kid that arrived later in the year, or that left early… always a bit of an outsider.

But don’t click away yet! I’m not sharing a sob story, just a little background! My feelings of otherness were inevitably exacerbated right around this time of year. Why? Because that’s when we’d start rehearsing for the “Holiday Concert.” Which holiday was abundantly obvious. Christmas decorations, Christmas snacks, Christmas Carols, Christmas cards, Christmas art projects, Christmas charity projects, secret Santas, Christmas stories, Santas Elves, candy canes, the class tree.. well, you get it.

Can you argue that Christmas is an American cultural holiday, just like Thanksgiving, Halloween, Valentines Day and… Easter? You can certainly argue it. Lots of the American Christmas symbols, songs and practices don’t seem to have much or anything to do with the birth of Jesus. But as a child in elementary, middle and then high school, it was hard to make that distinction. All that I felt was increasingly other, increasingly alien, increasingly excluded.

Unless I would just stop being uptight, relax, smile and- be assimilated! What’s the harm? Share somebody else’s holiday- after all, isn’t there usually a dreidel or a menorah stuck up somewhere off to the side? Don’t we sing some lame Chanukah song in there that no one joins in on amidst the familiar and homey carols? But the marginality of those “other” December holiday’s appearance and celebration only increased my own feeling of marginality.

I don’t recall feeling that there was anything I could, or should do about it. It was just one of those things about being a minority, about being who I was. I’d sing the carols but skip the key lines or mangle them so that I wouldn’t feel like I was being indoctrinated. But there was no escaping it ultimately; Christmas was not merely a winter holiday. It was a Christian holiday- attempts to make it other are disrespectful both to Christianity as a great world religion and to those of other faiths.

In high school, which I spent in Minnesota, I developed a sense that the Christmas Tree on the White House Lawn, the Easter Egg Roll and the other practices that took place in the same civic breath that leaders and educators lauded the separation of church and state, were meant to exist at a remove from the religious meaning of the holiday. That’s why trees were in but creches were out, why mulled cider and carolling were in but, apparently, why Christmas mass was out. Unless it wasn’t- but more on that in a bit.

Some told me not to sweat it, not wear my religion on my sleeve, by which I guess they meant not to be too demonstrative about who I was and what my heritage was. Others told me to keep a low profile and accept that I was part of a minority, that it was “their” country and to simply acquiesce and face it that my values and priorities were not the same as the state’s, the school’s or the culture’s. Games and practices are to be held on Saturday. Easter and Good Friday were holidays, Pesach was not. Got it.

As an adult and as a Rabbi, it seemed to be hypocritical to expect the majority of the country not to celebrate their holidays in public forums. The United States is a country of believers. More specifically, the United States is a country with a large Christian majority- whether this makes it thereby a Christian country is a difficult question. Creches in town squares- it’s just an expression of the reality of who we are as a country; we are a country of believers. The proof? Chanukah menorahs in town squares- also fine. The mayor and town council turn out for the Menorah lighting just as they do for the Christmas tree dedication. What’s wrong with that? Of course, it might be interesting to ask if the trees and creches are paid for out of our taxes, and if so, what that says about the first amendment’s statement about not establishing a state religion, but better not to go there.

Israel certainly celebrates Jewish holidays in a public, civil manner. Can the argument be made that Jewish holidays are cultural while Christian holidays are religious? That seems like a double standard.

So where are we left? We are left at the intersection of sharing diversity and compulsion to assimilate. Public schools are compulsory as are their programs, by both community standards and peer pressure. One of the historical roles of public school education has been to further the goals of the American melting pot. But there comes a point where melting should end. There comes a point where respecting differences means acknowledging the responsibility to not exclude and to not marginalize.

A few years ago, I read the words of a certain G. Washington to the Jewish community of Newport, Rhode Island. Here’s what he had to say:

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.

According to Washington, we Jews are not a “tolerated” minority, but part and parcel of this country just as much as anyone. That is the big difference between Jews here and Jews anywhere else: here, we are not graciously bestowed rights as outsiders. Rather, we and our community are part and parcel of the warp and woof of American society. According to washington, our identity deserves the same respect and acceptance as the identity of anyone. It is not “their” classroom or “our” classroom. It is an American classroom and that means, according to that glorious document, the Constitution of the United States, it is a place where religion is not instituted or coerced.

All very abstract, right? Wrong. Two short stories: one that happened to me many years ago, the other yesterday.

Back in high school, being someone who liked to sing, I was in the Concert Choir and the Chamber Singers- the elite sextet that you had to audition for. I was accepted without having to audition..wow. So I stretched the point, put on my hose and medieval garb- no joke!- and wassailed and carolled and even sang masses like there was no tomorrow. We were carted all over the Twin Cities, performing in mall, “Holiday Parties”, even the capitol…Did I compromise? Sure I did. Did I compromise too much? Well, at that point, I was a fiery member of a Zionist youth group, religious chair of the Temple Youth Group, TA in the Hebrew school and was already calling myself by my Hebrew name, kept Kosher (driving my mom crazy), and was planning to take a year off between high school and college to go to Israel. I recall the experience as being one combining a lot of fun and some damage as well; damage because as much as I told myself I was sharing my Christian friends’ celebration, it wasn’t really true. It wasn’t sharing, it was fitting in because I got lots of recognition, status, acceptance and fun.

There was a beautiful, dark-eyed young woman in the choir whose name was Bracha- I’ll use her Hebrew name. One of the very few other Jews in my high school. She didn’t have the Jewish support structure that I did. The message of the choir and classroom, of the school culture which invited in church youth groups with their retreats, youth pastors and community service projects whose agenda was to influence and mold. In her junior year, Bracha declared that she had found “Emmanuel”- i.e. Christ- and shared her new faith with everyone, singing about the Son of God as an audition piece for the solo concert.

I had never been close to her, but I was hit hard by what had happened. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one. Her father died of a heart attack a few months later. I have no idea if the two events are related, but that’s how it comes across in my memory.

Why was I hit so hard? Not because other religions aren’t inspiring and not because other religions don’t have truth, but because it meant one less Jew in the world, one less of us to carry on the mission of our people, to continue the legacy of light, persistence and integrity that we have borne with pride through the millenia. I mourned not for Bracha so much as for myself as a Jew. Because there are so few of us and, in this country at least, the country that has welcomed us and accepted us more than any other country in history, the few becomes ever fewer. Whatever unique contribution Jews and Judaism has; and whatever intrinsic worth Judaism has for the world is fading away.

What happened to Bracha isn’t unusual, although maybe it is a bit of an extreme example of something that is all too common. It does show that there are few forces in our community that teach our children how to resist and that there are many, many forces that teach about fitting in, denigrating our own identity, absolving ourselves of any responsibility for nurturing and furthering who we are and who our people have always striven to be. The decline of the American Jewish community, one of the freest, best educated, most prosperous and most contributing to the surrounding society speaks for itself. We can do better. We must do better.

Isn’t that the whole point of the Chanukah story? That being true to yourself, your roots, your destiny is something that is worth standing up for? Something worth fighting for?

And now the second story:

But there I am, cruising along, at peace with God and man, so to speak, when I hear my daughter singing one of the songs she’s preparing for her middle school Winter Concert.
“Born in a manger, the savior of mankind, Lord of Love, Halleluya…” she warbled absent mindedly in her childish alto.

Twenty years of resistance, of saying “I am this and not that and I demand to be respected for it”, dealing with the insensitivity and willful ignorance of the public educational system, the exclusion and being made to feel like an outsider kicked my heart into overdrive. Oh no. You’re not doing it to her, not like you did to me. I don’t remember in which order I called the choir teacher, the principal and the Anti-Defamation League. I did my best to be civil and reasonable. I explained that I understood that Christmas had an American cultural component. I said that a religious message was inappropriate and intolerable.

The choir teacher wrote back a long and respectful email. He said that the choice of songs was culturally and educationally determined. He said that if I had asked for a revision earlier in the year it might have been possible but due to the short rehearsal schedule…. Finally, he said that if I objected to the content of the song, my daughter would be excused from singing it with no “penalty to her standing or grade.”

I had begun to write back with several cc’s- the school system superintendant, Etzion Neuer of the ADL and several others- when I received a call from the assistant principal asking if I’d like to meet so that the administration could explain. I responded- and I’ll admit that I might have been just a bit testy!- that I saw no need to be told in fancy nomenclature that the school would do just what it wanted. I also said that the choices that either my daughter segregate herself or be forced to take part in a religious expression were insufficient and that the school could do better.
“We won’t tell you that,” she promised, and so I went.

I found myself facing two administrators. “I don’t want to have a debate,” I began. And then a debate began. “Would you object,” I was asked, “if we taught Handel’s Messiah in the high school?” I responded, “that piece isn’t taught because it’s religious music, but because it’s one of the staples of western music. That’s totally different than this case, where you’re making the children sing what amounts to a Christian rock ballad.”

“What about the Chanukah song that is being sung as well?” the conversation continued. “Doesn’t that make the concert pluralistic?” “Only if you think that Chanukah is the Jewish Christmas,” I answered. “As it is, it’s no more than a token nod to inclusion- getting rid of your obligation to be truly diverse. Do you sing songs for Ramadan, Passover or Diwali?” Looking the song over, I noticed that it had almost nothing at all connected to the Maccabees or the story of Hanukah, being just a “Chanukah wish” for peace. “Would it be appropriate,” I asked, “if I were to ask you to teach a Chanukah song all about how the chosen people overcame the nations arrayed against us? Wouldn’t that make your non-Jewish students feel excluded?”

And then, something amazing happened; something that I had never heard in all of my battles through the years of my own upbringing: “Point taken,” said the music director.

Point taken. After that admission of openness, the business was concluded quickly. The song containing the religious message was removed and we observed that while Christmas is not only a cultural holiday but a religious one, it is impossible not to recognize that some of the elements of Christmas are cultural and it is those, and no others, that it may be argued may have a place in a pluralistic classroom or performance stage, just as there may be a place for an American Chanukah, Pesach or an American Eid Al Fitr; these holidays too are developing an American aspect- and this too is something worth sharing as part of our diverse and welcoming society, unique in all the world.

What had happened? It’s not as if I or “the system” had been redeemed. The wounds that were within me are still there. But maybe, just maybe after all these years, after all of the attacks on our country’s determination to respect all, to be a place free of coercion and prejudice that at long last it is possible to have a discussion as parents and educators with the same goal- to create a classroom and a country that lives up to Washington’s promise. Bullying, now the hottest button topic in the American classroom, applies to any child who can be marginalized for any reason. As parents, we must advocate for our kids and we generally do- how is advocating for their right to be who they are without compromise and to be accepted and not excluded any different?

On my way out of the office, I looked back and said, “You’re not making this change because of one raving Rabbi, are you? Because if you are, then this isn’t about doing the right thing. It’s only about mollifying the angriest person in the room.”

The educator’s answer was one I like to think about, “We’re not making this change because of a raving Rabbi,” he said, smiling. “We’re making this change because we don’t know everything.”

“Me neither, “ I said. “I guess we have a lot in common.”

Winston Churchhill famously said, “Democracy is the worst form of government: apart from all of the other forms.” The main thing, it seems to me, is not to be afraid to have the conversation; to trust our society enough, our friends and neighbors enough, to be willing to have the conversation in the spirit of openness, good will and sincerity which are the hallmarks of our country at its best.

The Month of Elul, Hurricane Irene and the Mysteries of Life Eternal Meditations on a Stormy Night

If you’ve been called up as a Bar/Bat Mitzvah, you might remember the blessing you say when it’s all over:

Baruch Atah Ado-nai, Elokeinu Melech HaOlam
Asher Natan Lanu Torat Emet
V’Chayei Olam Nata B’Tocheinu
Baruch Atah Ado-nai, Noten HaTorah

We acknowledge you Eternal Source of Blessing-
Who has given us the Torah of Truth
And implanted within us Life Eternal
Blessed are you, HaShem, Giver of the Torah

Those phrases occur over and over again in Jewish prayers. One of the most evocative, and maybe most difficult is the term Chayei Olam.. Life Eternal… What exactly is it? How do we achieve it? What do we do with it?

First of all, the term Chayei Olam, like almost all expressions in our Hebrew language, has more than one meaning. It can certainly be interpreted to mean Eternal Life as in everlasting continuation of life. It can also mean Life of the World.

So how do we understand? Back to meanings. Regarding what lies beyond life, we are warned over and over again by our sources to not lose focus. Take care of the tasks set before you, says the Talmud, and what comes later will see to itself. Baruch Spinoza, the Dutch Jewish philosopher, puts it beautifully: the business of the living is with life.

But still… we ask, we wonder and at times, we are desperate to know or to be given a foothold for faith. What is this Life Eternal that we hear of, that our prayers speak of when the Amidah says, Baruch Atah Ado-nai, M’chayei HaMetim- Ado-nai, source of blessing, You give life to the dead?

It seems to me that there was a time in the development of Jewish spirituality when this question just never came up. In the Tanach, the Hebrew Bible, there is scarce a mention of anything beyond this life with expressions and images such as ne’esaf el amav- “He was gathered unto his people” and tzror hachaim, the “bundle of life” being left at that. It also seems to me that there was a time, five hundred years later, when the question constantly came up. The Rabbis of the Talmud see in the hints in the Tanach a detailed and developed journey of the Neshama, the soul, beyond the confines of mortality. Like everything else, I guess that there are epochs where the emphasis of spiritual life changed from one focus to another, from how to live meaningfully to why…

As the High Holidays approach, with their liturgy that demands that we examine the fact of our mortality, with visits to the graves of loved ones a part of the customs of the month of Elul preceding Rosh HaShana and the image of being inscribed- or omitted, God forbid!- in the Book of Life, these questions must occur, and if not answered in a final way, at least reflected upon.

But this isn’t meant to be a dissertation. The above is only for background. When I ask about the meaning of Life Eternal, I don’t for one second wish to imply that I don’t believe with all my heart that something within us survives death of the body and continues to both journey to places where ayin lo ra’ata v’ozen lo sham’ah- “the eye has not seen and the ear has not heard” as well as to continue to somehow have access to those left behind. To me, these are not matters of faith, but of experience. However, I also know that we are discouraged from pursuing this path: we touch the enduring presence of our beloved departed at sacred moments for comfort and relief from the worst pangs of loneliness, but no more is permitted. The business of living is with life.

But the meaning of Life Eternal is distinct from the fact of Life Eternal. I know that sounds insufferably philosophical, but it is the meaning that speaks to us of how to live our lives.

Rabbi Meir of Rotenberg, the greatest Rabbi that Europe produced, wrote a book called, Chayei Olam HaBah- “Life Eternal”, back in the 13th century. Don’t think for a moment that the medievals were, well, medieval. In the pages of his writings, you encounter a voice of reason, wisdom and deep insight. I won’t quote, but paraphrase what the Maharam (acronym for Moreinu HaRav Meir- our teacher and Rabbi, Meir) says about Life Eternal.

Everything in the world eventually breaks down and dissolves, its parts becoming disintegrated from the original whole and recombining with other things to form new wholes. This process of disintegration, recombination and reintegration is true of all systems, from weather (as I write, a hurricane blows through our part of the world: a system of awful power), to life (think of the carbon cycle) to human history where societies form and fall and rise in different forms, to language and ideas. Even the system of the cosmos is subject to breaking down and building back up as is every cell in our body. Human relationships are likewise subject to this immutable process.

What causes this to happen is that things are made up of parts: everything. As long as the parts are connected to its source of energy- what the Moharam describes as its essence, then the entity continues to exist. Like a tree being connected to its roots, a life form to its DNA replication process, a star to its ongoing fusion reaction, a society to its purpose and a friendship to its love, continuity is a function of connection of the part to the energy source. This hurricane will soon lose its integrity as the hot sea water and converging equatorial winds become diffused by the colder waters of the North Atlantic and jet stream. And so with every system.

Eternal Life, argues the Maharam is what happens when an entity never loses that connection with its essence. In other words, Eternal Life is a function of maintaining integrity with what one truly is, of keeping faith.

This is the point where the Maharam departs from an examination of the physical and extends his analysis to the spiritual.

Now, please permit me a brief excurses: It is at this point that medieval thought departs from modern thought. The medievals believed that the physical and metaphysical were extensions of each other. To the medieval, the physical world is a working out of rational principles: with enough information, you could figure out everything without having to resort to experience/empiricism. The moderns realized that sometimes you had to actually find stuff out not by reasoning it out but by testing your hypotheses in the real world.

This is all textbook stuff: the nineteenth century was the age of empiricism where truth was that which was provable through verifiable and repeatable results. It seems to me that nowadays, anticipated by Newton with his discovery of the laws of motion and going through Einstein and Stephan Hawking, that once again reason begins to trump experiment: when it comes to vast distances, eons of time or orders of magnitude millions of times beyond our ability to measure or even conceive, empiricism is left in the dust. End of excursus.

The Maharam’s point is simple: Life Eternal is synonymous with the integrity of the soul. What is the soul’s integrity? The soul’s essence is the creative power of the universe; what we call G-d. G-d is expansive. This means that both G-d and the true human essence is focused not on holding or taking in but on giving, on radiating out. G-d and the human essence is not static but actualizing: constantly transforming potential into actual. G-d and human essence is never enervating but always empowering: constantly nurturing all around it and allowing it to become a creative essence as well. These three characteristics of radiating being, actualizing being and empowering being are identical with what the Torah calls G-d’s middot or attributes: love, justice and truth. Love is freely giving of self without fear. Justice is empowering all that is to be itself and truth is actualizing potential.

The final step of the Maharam’s analysis is to argue that affirming and developing the connection between the small self of the individual with the Self of the Universe is the purpose of Tefila: of proclaiming G-d’s oneness through Shema and developing a relationship between the human and G-d’s essence/energy through the Amidah. Performing the Mitzvot is what allows the soul to actualize itself and to strengthen its integrity. Life lived in this way, says the Maharam, is a process of taking the raw materials of self and soul and transforming it, through personal integrity, into an eternal being, a being at one with the Life of the World.

Did the Maharam live his teachings? Alas, his story ends tragically. In an attempt to raise monies to consolidate his power, King Rudolph I of Germany imprisoned the Maharam and demanded an enormous ransom from the Jewish community for his release. The Jews of the German Empire hastened to raise funds until Rabbi Meir, from his prison cell in Enisheim near Alsace, wrote a takkana, a legal proclamation, forbidding the payment of ransom for fear that it would set a precedent of extortion. In point of fact, the Maharam’s sacrifice was born out by history: holding Jews hostage was rarely attempted by even the most anti-Semitic despots. For the last seven years of his life, the Maharam was imprisoned, separated from his family and people. But there can be no doubt that his integrity did not falter.

And what of the meaning of Life Eternal? What can we make of this vision of an inner world where the primary relationship, underlying and informing all others is between the soul and its source? How do we make sense of the idea of what ultimately benefits us is not to see the world or even other people as a source of gratification of our needs but rather to nurture the world because that is what connects us to our essence, our ultimate energy?
All I can say is that when I look to others, even to my nearest and dearest, with the expectation that they give me something; affirmation, approval, validation and even meaning, then I find that I become entangled in my needs and unable to give what my love for them asks. When I approach the world as a bestower of quid pro quos, expecting to receive in a manner commensurate with what I believe is my effort and entitlement, I am inevitably disappointed and frustrated. I seem to store up points and grievances, to keep score that is inevitably unequal: far easier to remember things that hurt us rather than injuries that we have caused.

However, when I am able to get out of my own way, when I focus on G-d, when I try to connect with that tiny, elusive but so very present essence that we share, that Tzelem Elokim- the Likeness of God- then every labor becomes a labor of pure love and the flow of personal energy is no longer blocked by my own needs. It is in those moments when life is not a check list of tasks or a warehouse of experiences but a service of joy.

And Life Eternal? The mystical poet William Blake, in his Auguries of Innocence says,
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

Perhaps to the soul that is connected, truly connected, to the Source of being, eternity is every moment. Perhaps to the one who is truly alive, there is no past, present or future, only an eternal now. If you had been present at the Big Bang, riding on the first photon traveling on the forefront of the expanding universe, then for you, traveling at the relativistic speed of light, only seven days would have elapsed from the Beginning. Such is time: not a fixed artifact, but a function of point of view.

Maybe we can experience a taste of that eternity when we say, during the Shema, Ado-nai Echad. Maybe in that Echad- One-ness an eternity is hidden, enfolded like a map or rolled like a scroll. The Rabbis challenge us to say Shema twice a day and during that last word, to allow the self to merge into that which is beyond the self, into G-d’s allness. Perhaps that brief respite, that momentary immersion in Life Eternal can power us through all of our joys and sorrows and enable us to surmount all of the storms of the world-

Chodesh Elul Tov- a blessed month of Elul

The Tenth of Av

Yom Kippur is a pretty busy day…from Kol Nidrei to Ne’ila, there’s generally something going on and the Fast is generally…well, fast. Before you know it, the Shofar is sounded and it’s all over; a little wine, a little challah- and then the serious noshing begins!

Not so Tisha B’Av. If Yom Kippur is the White Fast, then Tisha B’Av is the black fast. Sitting on the floor, you read the Book of Lamentations with its incredibly bleak images of children crying to their mothers for bread in besieged Jerusalem and of the city and Temple burning to the ground…the reading repeats in the morning, along with reminders of the Second Temple’s destruction on the same date six hundred years after Lamentations and the beginning of Israel’s exile among the nations. More is added through liturgical dirges about the tragic expulsion from Spain in 1492 which destroyed nearly half of world Jewry and the terrible coincidence of that same day as the date of the first transport of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp- and that’s pretty much it. Putting on Tefilin in the afternoon provides a bit of distraction, but only for the moment. Tisha B’Av isn’t a day for high thoughts and elevated reflection but for mourning…

But for what? This past Shabbat, I heard a Rabbi opine that it’s clear why the commemoration of Tisha B’Av isn’t widely observed by Reform or Conservative Jews. Modern Judaism, she said, has evolved beyond the need for edifices and buildings, and the rebuilding of the Temple and reinstitution of the sacrifices and the priestly caste doesn’t speak to most of us. In fact, women weren’t allowed into the Temple Court- so why should we long for the restoration of an institution that we have outgrown?

I thought that her drasha was cogent, well presented and well argued. And also completely and totally wrong. The thing is, Tisha B’Av isn’t really conducive to reasoned arguments and analysis. It’s about images, things you feel- pardon me- in your guts and not so much in your head. During a traumatic event- a fall, a car accident, a sudden stroke of chaos that turns life upside down, God forbid- reasoning and reflection are the very last things that occur to you.

The Italian poet Cesar Pavese said, “We do not remember days, we remember moments.” Belonging to Am Yisrael, the People Israel, means extending the limits of the self to embrace all of us through all of our history. We remember the flames that engulfed Jerusalem because we were there. Our culture carries millennia of moments: moments of joy, of liberation, of sorrow and of loss. To be a Jew is to experience life infinitely more deeply than is possible for any one individual because we experience the life of all of us in all of its glory, ecstasy, elevation and pain.

So there is no why of Tisha B’Av, just as there is no why of remembering the Holocaust. It’s not about just learning in order to not repeat the mistakes of history, for the mistakes weren’t ours during those days between the invasion of Poland and the end of the war. We remember because memory is our identity.

For my part, Tisha B’Av is a stark immersion in the brokenness of the world; as powerful and necessary an experience as it is difficult, like one of those cleanings or other treatments that hurts like hell but heal. Tisha B’Av rids us of illusions, brings us face to face with the most difficult questions that life asks of us and demands that we answer. It reminds us- more than that, it brings home to our very flesh, that everyone we meet, including ourselves, especially ourselves, has something that they fear, something that they love and something that they’ve lost.

And the rebuilding of the Temple? I long for it and never more than on Tisha B’Av. Do I want the sacrifices restored and all that? I have to say that this question seems to me to be on the same order as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or if God is omnipotent, can He create a stone too heavy for Him to lift. It means nothing- for the rebuilding of the Temple ultimately has little to do with any ritual. Instead it has everything, everything to do with love, with human limitations and the one way that they can be transcended.

When I yearn for Zion, I think sometimes of that haunting passage from Joseph Heller’s novel, Catch 22. In it, the hero, Yossarian, reflects that it is because of the self control of suffering children that the world continues to stand: for if one stern-faced child would cry out in his or her agony and need and fear for justice, then Creation would not be able to abide it and the world would collapse into chaos.
I want it to end. I want the suffering of children, and the fear and the hatred and the intolerance to end. I want the world to be the way that we all know it could be and should be. The yearning for Zion is the yearning for less barbed wire, for less slander that poisons the mind and anger that clouds the heart. The tears shed for the burned Temple, the House of God on earth, are tears for the millennia of loss and heartbreak of all humanity. So many people of good will have labored for so long and still, the tale of horror and sadness goes on; and on and on and on.

The yearning for Zion is the yearning for the intrusion of what is more than human into humanity. It is not just a building that will rise in Jerusalem but a monument, a channel for the presence of God among us. Only when humanity can see the image of God in each person can that presence be restored and only then can the Temple rise again.

Ya’acov Kalonymous Shapira, tAhe Rebbe of Polnenza, trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, left words in a book found in the rubble. In his testament, Ohr Kodesh- the Holy Fire- he says that yearning can rekindle hearts in which faith and hope has died down to embers. No bread for HaMotzi, no wine for Kiddush, no candles, no Torah scrolls, no Shofar…in that emptiness, only one thing can infuse life: yearning- yearning that inspires action for the Rebbe says that if we act as if something worthy and beautiful is true, than it begins to be.

Tisha B’Av speaks all of these things with all of the stark eloquence that our tradition has in its ancient storehouse of meaning. It is not a commemoration for traditional Jews. It is not a commemoration for liberal Jews. It is a commemoration for Jews.

May this be the last Black Fast; may next year see the light begin to rise. Our tradition says that this day of mourning will become a holiday of joy and restoration. May this day, this tenth of Av, the day after, inspire all of us to not only do our part in world-repair, but to yearn, to pray to HaShem- or to orient yourself through meditation to the energy underlying reality or to be open to the potential for radical renewal or however you choose to define the act and practice of self-transcendence- to open the Gates that have been locked too long. The Torah says that Jerusalem will be restored through righteousness: but our righteousness, the righteousness of humanity alone is not enough. But human yearning- perhaps that can be enough.