Election Special: Sandwiches and Caves; Chayei Sarah

I’m sure each of us has our story, like from 9/11: “Where were you when…?”

But this time it was about what felt to us like the most significant election in U.S. history. 

Many of us heaved a sigh of relief, shouted for joy, banged pots, jumped up and down, danced in the streets. 

And shed a lot of tears.

I know I did. I didn’t even know how much grief I was holding in while I was holding it together. 

This week’s Torah reading begins with grief. Sarah has just died, and Abraham, his life partner, must bury her. They’re not home for some reason, and I guess it’s too far to ship her body (no modern amenities). 

After much negotiation with the locals, Abraham settles on a cave for her burial site, and when the mourning period is over, he sends his servant to find a wife for his son Isaac “back home”. 

The terms are very specific: Isaac is not allowed, under any circumstances, to go back and live with the girl if she does not agree to come. The servant swears under oath and with the threat of a curse (hand under master’s thigh--a serious vow indeed) to bring a woman back with him. 

Naturally, the servant worries that he will not be successful. Abraham promises that an angel of God will lead the way and make his quest successful. 

We could easily read this injunction as Abraham saying, “My family and my people are superior to these locals; we need to keep our bloodline pure.” 

This would be a normal and correct reading.

Yet, there’s another way of looking at it. Abraham is the beginning of our people’s making its way away from many gods, towards the Oneness of God, away from separation, towards Unification. 

With this comes the understanding that we are all equal. That humanity is One. And though he is just getting this message and barely beginning to understand what this means, he will not allow his family to go back there. Whatever good comes from his place of birth must come to a new land. 

Abraham represents our continued struggle with separation vs. Unity. 

We have just come through---wait a minute, have we yet??---a very trying period. I’m going to venture and guess that the past weeks, months, and years, have involved the highest stress we’ve experienced as a race---the human race---globally since the beginning of time. 

Between a pandemic and a leader who---oh, there’s no need for me to repeat what everyone hears and repeats constantly...

So, yes, many of us collectively heaved a sigh of relief this past Saturday. 

But many of us did not.

And the grief is not gone. 

These past four years, and the pandemic, have exposed the sickness that is in our country and our world.  

And it didn’t take long after the initial celebration for me to realize that I want to start saying that the incumbent lost, not that Biden won. 

Because what does that winning mean? So many votes that went to Biden were protest votes--against something we don’t want, like Abraham not wanting Isaac to go back. The not-going-back doesn’t really represent a change from the (previous) status quo, in Abraham’s case or our present situation.  

There’s been so much talk of our “divided country” and the need to come together, to “unify” us. 

But is unification of our country really what we’re looking for at the present moment? 

Sure--if unification means that racism and bigotry disappear and everyone wakes up to the fact that we are all equal, then yes, we don’t want a “divided country”. 

But if unification means working together with those who have no interest in your welfare and literally want you dead, well, that’s not the kind of unification we’re after. 

As I heard a political analyst and writer on the NPR show, On the Media, this past Sunday say, why would you work together with someone who wants to destroy you? This is not to say we shouldn’t be hopeful, but it doesn’t bode well for the kind of change we’re after.  

It’s an age-old problem, this thing that Abraham teaches us about: those people are different and they’re not good enough for my son. 

But there’s something positive there as well. In sending for a wife from “back home,” Abraham shows a willingness to find something of his past to bring into the future. Rebecca, Isaac’s future wife, knows this instinctively when she agrees without hesitation to leave her home and go forth to a new place and a new life; the servant’s quest is successful.

We, too, must find and bring forward what’s good from the past, like the age-old wisdom of ancient cultures that’s been lost.

I find it interesting that the Torah reading of the week is sandwiched with a cave; Sarah is buried in a cave at the beginning, and Abraham is buried with her there at the end of the parsha. 

We also are not out of the cave yet. We can’t fool ourselves. We definitely can’t go back to where we were--there’s really no going back---and too many people have come out for change, real change, during these past four years. But there are still so many people who aren’t getting the message of Unification with a big “u”. We’re still in the dark. 

After Sarah’s death and after Isaac is married off, Abraham marries again and has five more children. We also learn of Ishmael’s future generations. These children are named, and the line continues with grandchildren into the future. 

Life goes on and we keep moving forward, on the path to Oneness that Abraham set us on when he smashed the idols. 

And in the same way we prayed during this trying period, whether out of habit or really believing the Universe could hear us, perhaps we can stretch ourselves and believe there are angels accompanying us along the way, just as they did for Abraham’s servant, toward success on our quest. 

Abandon Hope: Va-Yera

I wanted to get this out before the results of the elections come out, which we know will take some time, while everyone is on edge, holding their breath. 

Following is a summary of all the insane things that happen in this week’s Torah reading. It would be an interesting exercise to find a parallel in today’s world for much of the story line (and I invite anyone out there reading this to do so if it strikes your fancy). 

Warning: the following contains disturbing images and a fair amount of violence.

1. Soon after Abraham has circumcised himself at 100 years old, he runs around (ouch) preparing a feast for some visitors in the heat of the day along with Sarah. The three men/angels that Abraham and Sarah are serving bring news that Sarah will give birth at 90. (How can that be a pretty picture?)

2. God decides that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are too evil and need to be destroyed. Abraham argues on their behalf, God sort of agrees, and destroys them anyway.  

3. Two men/messengers from God come to Lot’s house at his invitation and the townspeople attack the house with a threat of rape against the strangers.

4. Lot offers his daughters instead. (Nice move.)

5. The messengers tell Lot he must leave Sodom with his family because they are about to destroy the (twin?) cities. He informs his family, and they think he’s lost it and seem to ignore him. 

6. After stalling for a while, Lot flees with his family at the last moment before the destruction, and sees the cities consumed by fire. 

7. Lot’s wife looks back and turns into a pillar of salt. (A little traumatic.)

8. Lot’s daughters, bereft of all hope and believing their father is the only man left on earth, get him drunk so they can sleep with him and continue the family line and humanity.

9. Abraham pretends a second time that Sarah is not his wife, this time with King Abimelech.

10. Sarah casts Hagar out, also a second time, but this time with her baby Ishmael to die in the desert because she is afraid her son Isaac will have to share his inheritance. 

11. And the grand finale: Abraham almost sacrifices his son on an altar. 

This parsha reads like a terrible nightmare that you can’t wake up from. 

Maybe like the one we’ve been in, just a different version. 

Fear, it can be argued, fuels so much of what takes place, both in the biblical world and in ours. 

Hope, also, is figured into the lives of the biblical characters, as we are obsessively talking about our own hopes for the near and far future. 

According to Buddhist nun Pema Chodron in When Things Fall Apart, hope and fear are two sides of the same coin. 

Hope is described as robbing us of the present moment. It means we are thinking about the future and all that is wrong that needs to change. 

Whenever we start thinking about the future, we become afraid. 

And things definitely feel like they’re falling apart. 

We are pinned to the news, looking at election results moment by moment, even though we know it’s useless to do so. 

We are panicked and holding our breath, wondering what kind of plan we should have in place, just in case. Just like the messengers of God who pull Lot by the hand and force him to leave before Sodom and Gomorrah go up in smoke, should we be planning an exit strategy and pulling each other along...before it’s too late?

But there’s one particular detail that caught my eye in the parsha, aside from all the destruction, which occurs twice; Hagar and Abraham, in the worst possible moment, lift their eyes and open them to see something they hadn’t before: Hagar sees a well of water in the desert; Abraham sees an animal for sacrifice in place of his son. 

I was talking to my friend (and rabbi), Esther Azar, about this, trying to put into words what she was able to for me. 

The question: What is the significance of this looking up, having their eyes lifted and opened, amidst all this violence and violation? What’s the connection between the two? 

The answer: In their looking up, Hagar and Abraham are taken out of the cycle they are swept up in. 

To take that a step further, they are taken out of their story, and suddenly they see something they couldn’t before. 

In this time of upheaval, as we are swept up in American presidential politics and everything else that’s wrong in the world, holding our breath, afraid of what we will see going forward, frozen in time, like Lot’s wife, consumed by fear, we need to step out of this cycle and this story, and allow ourselves to see something we perhaps couldn’t see before. 

We don’t know what we’ll find if we do, but it might get us out of our cycle of hope and fear for just a moment. 

Go Forth and Multiply, Octopi! Lech Lecha

I’ve been thinking a lot about silence. And faith.

During this pandemic, it feels like we’ve been shut indoors, deemed helpless, unable to express ourselves in the usual ways. Silenced.

I got to thinking about the different kinds of silence. 

Silence can save or condemn. It can be active or passive.

There’s silence that’s complicit or self-serving or judgmental or controlling or disapproving or impatient.

Then there’s silence that’s contemplative, mindful, meditative, sacred, prayerful, and thoughtful. This kind of silence allows space to open up. It’s a patient kind of silence.

Silence can be stubborn. It can mean standing your ground. 

Silence can be a demonstration of faith. 

Last week we saw that God was concerned with the survival of the human species, figuring he would give humans one more shot at it through Noah.  

But Noah is silent when God says he will destroy the world. He has faith that God will save him. But in his silence, he also becomes complicit when following God’s commandment and he puts the survival of his family, his personal gain, above all else. He is not concerned with the rest of humanity. 

This week, Abram, like Noah, silently obeys God when he tells him to leave his ancestral home and go out into the world. He, like Noah, has faith that God will take care of him. 

Abram again chooses silence when dealing with Hagar and Sarai, allowing Sarai to treat Hagar with cruelty. 

But he’s not silent when asking Sarai to pretend to be his sister so he can live and profit handsomely in Egypt. 

He is silent when Pharaoh takes Sarai to live in the palace with him as a wife, and when Pharoah discovers the truth and questions him: Why did you tell me she was your sister?? Why did you let me take her as a wife? 

Abram silently leaves with all his newly acquired wealth when Pharoah throws him out. 

Yet he is not at all silent when his nephew Lot is captured in war. He quickly gathers his legions to rescue him.

Back in the spring, during one of many sleepless nights,  I heard a podcast on RadioLab about a momma octopus found deep in the ocean, three or four Empire State Buildings down, so far down that no light comes through. The deep diver scientists discovered her and kept visiting her as years passed. 

They named her Octo-Mom. 

Her head the size of a cantaloupe, she sat there silently in the darkness, her tentacles wrapped around her hundred and fifty or so eggs, warding off all kinds of predators, never moving from her spot--for four and a half years. 

She never ate, and she turned more and more pale as she wasted away, until her babies were born. And then she died. 

Talk about faith!

And her silence was patient and stubborn and steadfast. She was committed to the survival of her species and future generations. She was not self-serving. She knew she wouldn’t be able to see her babies grow up. 

We are at a turning point in American history. People are standing in long lines, waiting silently for hours and hours, in order to vote. For the future generations. Whether they’re here to enjoy them or not. 

It feels like there’s not much we can do right now. This, we can. Silently and steadfastly. It shows that we haven’t lost all faith. 

But this turning point is so much bigger than just the U.S. election. This is a global time of darkness, and we’re going into the darkest time of year. 

We must have faith, like Octo-Mom, that in this time of darkness something new is waiting to be born, whatever the outcome of the election. 

Because even in the depths of darkness, there is life waiting to be born. 

Floody-Floody

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that our cultural associations with Noah are happy ones of cheerful camp songs and cartoons: a quaint wooden ark, an old  (white) man with a long, bushy white beard, animals with their heads sticking out of windows, and a colorful rainbow arching across the sky. 

We never talk or think about what the earth must have looked like after the floodwaters receded. 

Whether we’ve lived through it and experienced it first-hand or seen images, we know what floods can do. It’s a shocking sight, unfathomable to our human brains, forgotten and skipped over as soon as we can tuck it away. It’s just too horrible. 

I’m not sure why God thinks he has to drown absolutely everything just because of his disappointment in human beings. But a fresh start is clearly what he’s after, with a man and his family that he deems righteous and good enough to be the ancestors of the future of humanity. 

Clearly, God’s first creations were not up to the job. Maybe with some good genes, the future will be more promising. 

Just as clearly, God did not foresee what this destruction would look like after the floodwaters receded. There must have been a moment when God realizes that this was a mistake. A huge mistake. We can imagine God’s shock at what was left behind: the regrowth that needed to happen, the rebuilding required. On a global level! 

Not only has he brought unnecessary pain upon the earth, he awakens to the fact that humans are humans, imperfectly made in the image of Godself, imperfect just as God is, with evil in their hearts. 

God is not the all-knowing, all-seeing God we were sold on. 

How do we know this? 

Because there is a turning point. Noah makes a sacrifice (I suppose thanking God for having made it through this terrible time, stuck in a boat with just his family--and all these animals for months and months). God smells the pleasing odor, and just then, promises himself—in his heart, literally, as the Hebrew says—and later Noah, that he will never again bring such destruction upon the earth. The pain of it must have really hit him.

This is when God awakens to the sacredness of creation--all of creation; God’s promise comes with a warning that there will be a reckoning for every human life taken by another. 

And to be sure that we don’t forget just how sacred life is, God tells Noah and his sons to never eat meat that still contains the lifeblood of the animal; life is sacred, no matter how much evil resides in the heart.

I guess this is when God realizes that you can’t skip steps and get to perfection. You can’t just wipe everything out and jump ahead. 

What God has done seems a lot like what we might call “spiritual bypassing”; we want to skip over the hard stuff; let’s jump over our pain and anger and skip to forgiveness and love. If we pretend it’s not there, maybe it will simply go away. Let’s just go to a mountain top and sit and meditate and we will find enlightenment. If we don’t have to see it, we can pretend it’s not there.

But looking down from that mountain, even if you’ve avoided direct assault, you can still see the destruction. There’s no escaping it. You still have to clean up the mess. 

There’s one last interesting detail in the story of Noah; God knows that he doesn’t have to tell Noah to take two of each species of plant life. The plants will take care of themselves. With their seeds and roots buried in the soil, the plants are safe. 

Deep down in the darkness, the seeds are waiting to sprout as they always do, when the time is right. They are pure and good and nothing about them needs to be fixed, and they don’t need anyone to do it for them. 

We must continue to plant the seeds that will sprout into our future, and we can’t skip any steps. We have to go through it all. We live in a global community now and we’re living in a time of reckoning. There’s no escaping Global Warming, no matter where you go, and we can’t lay the blame on one group the way God blames humans for their humanity. It obviously gets us nowhere—or it leads us to greater destruction.

The seeds that are buried are the seeds of awakening for the entire human race. They’re still buried, but little by little, they are sprouting, no matter what. All we need to do is water them. 

Earthy-Boy, Breathy/Life-y Girl and Beginnings: Breishit

I feel like I should have something really profound to say. After all, we’ve completed an entire cycle and we are starting the reading of the Torah from the beginning again! And we’re reading about beginnings. 

Also, we’re heading into a profoundly important period in American history. Unprecedented, in fact. It’s a beginning of sorts in itself. We are in the process of creating what will be our future as a nation. What will election week bring? And how many chances do we have to get it right? Is this “the end” if we don’t get it this time?

How many chances.

It’s an interesting question because, according to the Torah, there are at least two ways that human beings came about--two Creation Stories.

In the first story, we get all the details of the beginning of the world and the universe: the heavens and the earth, the skies and the waters, the animals and the birds--and earthlings. We are presented with--let’s call him Earthy-Boy (I know it’s cute, and I can’t take credit for it), as the Torah does: “adam,” meaning “earth.” God is super-organized and orderly. God has it all planned out, day by day. 

Except for one detail: the creation of--let’s call her Breathy/Lifey-Girl, Chava/Eve, who is Earthy-Boy’s woman or “wife”. In this story, Breathy/Lifey-Girl only comes about when God realizes that Earthy-Boy shouldn’t be alone, and no other creature can meet his needs as a partner. 

In other words, The Omnipotent God we all know and love (or not) didn’t predict this! (I mean! How did God think Earthy/Breathy-Babies (I did make this one up) would come about??)

Anyway, together, between Earthy-Boy and Breathy/Lifey-Girl, things happen. They’re in a beautiful garden, there’s a cool tree that offers wisdom and everlasting life, God lies and tells the couple that they will die if they eat of its fruit, but there’s a serpent that knows otherwise and tells Breathy-Girl the truth. The serpent wants to get these humans in trouble (we don’t know why), and figures it can do it best through Breathy-Girl, and Serpent is right. 

Curiosity causes the couple to go against God’s rules, they eat the fruit of the forbidden tree, their eyes are opened by eating said fruit, they become aware of their nakedness and experience shame for the first time, they hide, God kindly dresses them, but they’re banished from the garden forever, which is now guarded by fiery cherubim (interesting beings that also later guard the Temple), and they are cursed.

They have children, the famous Cain and Abel, and jealousy and competition rear their ugly heads between them, leading to murder, followed by fear and emotional pain, and banishment and disconnection from God’s Presence and the land forevermore--at least for Cain, the murderous brother. 

A lot of emotions are identified in the story. 

Then there’s a second story, one with much less detail: Earthy-Boy and Wife or Woman (not named here) are created simultaneously. There is no Cain or Abel mentioned here, only Baby-Seth. Is there even a garden? There’s no mention of it, or a tree or a serpent. Adam goes on to have other children after 800 years (with Breathy-Girl?) and we learn of all the generations until finally God is fed up with his creation and wants to start over again by destroying everything and everyone (which he doesn’t in the end---remember Noah?).

The question is, which story is the “true” story? And why have we as a culture focused on the first story more and basically ignored the second? Who is responsible for our thinking that there was only one way of thinking of the creation of humans even though there are two stories here, and that that way was a girl named Eve coming from the body of a guy named Adam, with him being given dominion over her, rather than the two of them being created together, as equals? Whose purpose did it serve for us to believe this?

Not only that; if there are two stories, God had at least two chances. In fact, all through the Torah, as we see going through the year, God keeps wanting to destroy everything and everyone and start all over again. 

For us today, it definitely feels like we are on the brink of destruction--and extinction--at this moment.

Maybe we also feel banished from God’s Presence. Maybe we feel exposed and naked and vulnerable. Maybe we feel jealous and competitive and ashamed of ourselves and afraid and disconnected from the earth. Maybe we want to hide or deny that we are our brothers’ keepers because sometimes it’s just so overwhelming. Maybe we feel cursed with thorns and thistles sprouting before us daily the way God curses the earth. Maybe we feel lied to and unnoticed and ignored. Maybe we need our eyes opened. 

There is a moment of intimacy between God and Cain. Cain has tried again and again to get God’s attention with his grain offering, but only his brother Abel’s offering is noticed; thus the jealousy. Cain’s face “falls”. God wants to know why. He cares. And he reminds Cain that his actions count no matter what, whether God takes note or not: doing good counts and matters. God tells Cain that he is the master of his emotions and any tendency he might have to do bad; he has “free will”.

To master our emotions is a tall order for us earthlings. Whatever we are feeling seems true in the moment. Our emotions often create our stories, as we know. It also matters which story we focus our attention on; one might be a useless distraction—or even a deliberate one. And our actions really do matter. 

Luckily, like God, we get more than one chance to create our story. I like the idea of using curiosity, the first emotion in the bible, as opposed to competition and anger and fear, as an approach to the creation of our story going forward and its outcome. And we can use the '‘free will” God gave us to choose where to place our attention.

Whatever the results in November, this story is not over. 

Release, Reset, Rejoice...in Small things with Great Love

Tell the truth; there was just a little bit of rejoicing in your heart, maybe that little fluttery feeling in your stomach, when you heard the news; after all these months, finally he got Covid. What you’ve been wishing for all along. 

Okay, let me speak for myself. It’s what happened to me. But maybe it happened to you, too.

Either way--perish the thought!!

As an observant Jew (I do “observe” and I am Jewish)---and one who’s becoming a rabbi no less---I shouldn’t admit to such an awful thing. I should wish only good for everyone, even my worst enemies. Turn my worries (and my rage) into blessings, as Rabbi Shefa Gold says. Like in Fiddler on the Roof, the question to the rabbi: “Is there a proper blessing for the Tzar?” 

What would be a proper blessing for this one? Keeping him far away from us doesn’t seem sufficient. 

Anyway, truth be told, it was a mistake to be happy even for a moment; it didn’t take long for this bit of news to get thrown onto the heap of the nightmare we’ve been living through: over 200,000 deaths in the U.S. alone (remember when we didn’t believe it would get to that number?); the manipulation of the CDC; the rush to push a vaccine through and to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s position in the Supreme Court; voter suppression….Oh, did I mention the fires?  

Still, didn’t you get more than a little bit of joy hearing about the fly that landed on Pence’s head during the debate and wouldn’t leave--the fly there’s been much talk of, just as Pence was denying the existence of systemic racism. It stayed there for a full two minutes!!! What was that about?? On justthenews.com, in an article by Joseph Curl, he wrote, “Throughout the history of Western painting, imagery of flies can symbolize death, rot, decay, corruption and “‘painting’s power to deceive the eye.’”

If you’ve read my blog before, you know how I like symbols. Talk about gifts from God! (Unlike the experimental drug they gave the president in the hospital! You did hear him say that, right?)

But it still feels terribly overwhelming and insurmountable. We should be doing so much more than we are--we should be doing great things! To change the world!

Mother Teresa says we can do no great things, only small things with great love. I like her. Did she also talk about joy? 

In Judaism, we are, in fact, “commanded” to be joyful, especially in this season--even when our hearts lie panting on the floor (Fiddler on the Roof again). Even as we ask, “Do we even have the right to be joyful at such a time?” 

But I agree that it is our duty. We can’t go on when our hearts lie panting on the floor. We affect those around us. Like the wave and smile my friend gets from her child’s school bus driver years after her daughter has grown up. Small things, great love.

How do we find joy (re-joyce) again?

Here’s my formula: Release, Reset, Rejoice. (I probably didn’t make it up.)

In order to find joy again, we must release something, which is like hitting a reset button. 

Yom Kippur is supposed to be a joyful holiday, as well as Sukkot, because we know ahead of time that we will be released from our vows and “sins” by the end and we get a fresh start. We may think about death a lot, but that’s only a way of getting us to appreciate life.

But I didn’t start out joyful at all this Yom Kippur. I don’t think many of us did, given the circumstances. 

I woke up at 7:30, with three hours---three hours!!--before services would begin, and no place to go! Just from my bedroom to my living room. No rushing around getting dressed, leaving early for a long walk to shul, which always brought me joy.  

I felt sad, just like I do every Shabbos these days, and I started to do what I’ve been doing many Shabboses since Covid hit, things traditionally thought of as forbidden because they are work. 

I went to my kitchen and started cleaning. First, the dishes, then I took apart the stove and scrubbed all its pieces. Next, I went to the bathroom and did some deep cleaning there. 

I did this because I was sad and I needed something productive to do in order to feel better. As soon as I started, I wondered how I could make this work holy on one of the holiest of Jewish holidays. 

So I started to talk---to myself? To “God?” 

I knew that I needed to find a way into prayer for the day, and I had rage and loss and sorrow and helplessness and doubt to release. I needed to cry and no one was around to hear me, and I needed someone to talk to and hear me. 

I admitted that I felt like a fraud--what did cleaning my house have to do with prayer? What if I couldn’t connect to prayer today? I asked for help, for me and for my fellow earthlings. To fix what we’ve messed up. To not give up hope. 

As I was cleaning the physical space around me, and my tears were pouring out, it started to feel like I was cleaning my inner space as well. Finally, I was ready to set the table and make it look beautiful for the evening. If home was the focus here, I needed to make it look and feel purified. 

Then I was ready to davven. 

I made a commitment in that moment, to throw myself into the davvening and really pray on this day.

And I did. In whatever position I wanted: in a chair, on the floor, on my back, on my stomach, sprawled out, singing as loudly as I could along with the voices on the internet, not worrying about it if it was the right time, or what others would think, for six hours straight. 

By the end, I felt purified. I had done the work required of the day. And it had been cleansing and joyful. I had released, reset and rejoiced. It had been a small thing, perhaps, but I did it with great love.

The joy continued then and through the first days of Sukkot, and then “the news” came into my life again. That news that got piled on to the heap of the nightmare we’re living now. And my blood boiled. 

I need another Release, Reset, Rejoice now.

Good thing I get to sing again tomorrow. It’s a small thing I can do with great love.

Rosh Hashanah Special: New Year, New Page; Old Rage, New Stage

Just when I thought I was done. Just when I thought I’d moved on, feeling powerful and independent, having done “the work,” this person steps back into my life. Just before the new year, as I’m preparing to lead my first ever Rosh Hashanah service. As informal as it is, it’s mine. Finally. I’m in a good place. 

And suddenly I’m not. The worst timing. 

At first it feels like a benign message. But I’ve done enough work that, this time, I see the flashing lights. Warning warning warning! 

When I don’t respond as expected, from my old, sweet, scared self, but rather from a place of centeredness and self-assurance, they lunge for the attack: a long, screaming text dripping with condescension, arrogance. They are the victim. Again.

I’m thrown off. Confused. My fear comes back. My self-doubt. I’m on the defensive again.

I guess I have more work to do.

It’s actually perfect timing. Just in time for Rosh Hashanah! 

I get through the holiday successfully, pushing it away. Then I get a migraine. And I realize it’s suppressed rage. And finally I see the connection between this person and the voices of my childhood. Voices that said, “If you just said it in a way that I could hear it...” And, “Such and such would have shown more good will.” 

Same voice, different vehicle. 

Old rage, new stage. 

Because here’s the thing: I tried so many times to “say it in a way they could hear it,” and I showed incredible amounts of good will, well beyond what they deserved. Why was I surprised? Again? What indication had there been that they’d done “the work”?

And why had I taken it? Because I’m trained to take it. I’m a woman. I must be kind and gracious and patient. Even if I’m raging on the inside.

But here’s another thing that took so much work to learn: It’s not my responsibility to say it in a way they can hear it. Let me say that again: It’s not my responsibility.

And the phrase that kept coming up was: “Do the work. Just do the damn work. I’ve done mine.” 

Old rage, new stage. 

As part of my own work, questions came to me: 

Do I need to let my rage loose toward this one person? 

Would it be satisfying? 

Would it release it once and for all? 

Or would I just end up with the same old frustration?

Just as I was pondering these questions, I heard the verdict on Breonna Taylor’s case. 

It brought further questions that went deeper still, beyond me personally: 

What happens when you literally can’t express the rage you feel toward your perpetrator?

What if they’re dead or inaccessible? 

Worse, what if it’s not just one person? 

Worser still: What if it’s an entire system?!

Herein lay my answer; for generations upon generations, Black people have been asked---no, expected and forced---to repress rage---to show “good will” and act “properly,” which means act humbly, tamping down the rage screaming to be released. In other words, add to your rage by living in fear and on the defensive. Always.

I know this is going to sound funny, but just as I was sharing these ideas with a friend, I segued suddenly to my hair. I was standing in front of the mirror snipping away at stray hairs that seem to be flying in my face constantly these days. No matter how much I snip snip snip, there seem to be more. Hairs that refuse to conform to the curls on the rest of my head ever since I began recovering from Coronavirus. They felt symbolic of the out-of-control feeling we are all experiencing right now. They seemed rageful. 

There was a horrible presidential debate the other day. It’s easy to focus our attention and rage on the lies, attacks, viciousness and the endless analyses of the debates from which we learn absolutely nothing new. They are a distraction, like the stray hairs on my head. Those trying desperately to hold on to power want to dangle them in front of our faces, making us crazy as we keep snipping away at each one, as if revealing each lie will save us. 

The rage itself can be a good thing. It’s an indicator that something needs to change. 

Not only that---sometimes it’s actually the rage that gives us the power and strength to act in ways that we would otherwise not be able to. 

But rage needs to be focused in a way that brings about the change needed. We need to find productive avenues to channel it. Living in fear and on the defensive is not productive. 

Overall, I still have a good head of hair, though I lost a lot due to Coronavirus. 

And overall, We The People actually have the power. 

This is a powerful and crucial time. We need to use it wisely. We have work to do. Part of it is inner work, and this will guide and inform the outer work. Awareness is a very powerful thing. It helps us focus.

Let’s all commit to “doing the work” in the coming months, and channel our rage in productive ways. 

New Year, new page; old rage, new stage.

This, you say, is a blessing? V’zot Ha’brakhah

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Friday just before the Jewish New Year started. The significance of this was not lost on those of us who observe and follow the Jewish calendar. 

So many of us mourn her death. We know how she held on so, so tight, through numerous bouts of cancer, to the very end, trying to make it through until the elections. But we ask, How could she die now? The dread associated with her death adds to the other dreads we’ve been carrying. 

“V’zot Ha’brakhah,” begins the last Torah reading of the year: “This is the blessing that Moses, man of God, gave the Israelites before he died.”

There is a tradition that says that God arranges for the righteous, the tzaddikim, to die right before or after a new year begins. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a woman of God, for sure.

But is this the blessing RBG is giving us? Her death??

Indeed, the new year is a turning point, and the tradition states that she will be able to help more from the “other side” in a more widespread way. 

On Saturday, the first day of Rosh Hashanah, I went to the park and sat with my machzor, the prayer book for the High Holy Days, reviewing and preparing for the next day when I would be leading a Rosh Hahsanah service for my first time. I sat leaning against a huge boulder, the kind that inspires awe with its height and breadth, feeling the support and energy of this rock, and I thought, “This is what our prayers mean when we say to God, “You are the rock of our salvation.” 

Rocks are solid. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was rock solid. 

But the story doesn’t end there. To my amazement, as I sat there on the ground, my knees bent in front of me, a tiny yellow bird, probably a finch, flew over and landed directly on the toe of my shoe, not 3 feet from my face. It sat there looking at me, cocking and turning its head back and forth as birds do, and after about eight seconds, it left as quickly as it had come and disappeared into the tall bushes across the path. It was an experience I will never forget. It felt as if the bird were talking to me. 

“What does it mean??” I asked a friend. And she looked it up for me: yellow birds carry messages of personal power, and they show up in your life when you feel defeated, are confronting someone who is suppressing your potential, or you are scared because you are starting something new. They come to remind us that we are stronger than we think and that we can make it through the storm. 

I laughed with delight at the thought because I was feeling all these things personally at the moment: That there was someone trying to suppress my potential, that I do have a fear of being defeated, that I am starting something new, and it’s all more than a little bit scary. Could I make it through the storm? 

The next day, I led that Rosh Hashanah service in Central Park to a group of almost 20 people. It was a great triumph for me. It was scary. I was not defeated. 

But I’m not special. Everyone has way more power than they think. That bird came to remind me of mine, and I am passing on the message to you. 

May we open ourselves to the indomitable spirit of RBG and allow it to flow through us and spread among us.

Thank you, Ruth, for the work you’ve done on earth. We will carry it on. 

We have not been defeated. 

Turtles, Snakes and T’Shuvah: Ha’azinu

In a dream I had a few days ago, I was looking down at a beautiful lake surrounded by rocks. The water was crystal clear and there were thousands and thousands of turtles of all sizes. They were sitting quietly on the floor of the lake, not moving, all clumped together, but with large open spaces of water in between the clumps. It was a calming though perplexing sight. I felt no fear, only awe. In the next part of the dream there were snakes. Not dangerous. Just there.

With their hard shells, turtles protect themselves well against attackers. They are powerful and solid. They plod along, slowly and steadily. They are patient. They win the race. 

Snakes can represent transformation through the shedding of their skins.

For transformation to happen, space must be made for a different kind of work. Patience and a kind of psychic protection are necessary factors as we make our way through this difficult time.

Last week in the Torah, Moses was told by God that he would not be crossing over into the Promised Land with the rest of Israel. This week, in Ha’azinu, he makes his last speech of warnings to his people. They are still a stiff-necked people who have been unfaithful to the God that took them out of Egypt and showed them countless miracles. Moses chides them one last time, speaking harshly with warnings of dire endings, right before he dies.

Earthlings are still a stiff-necked people. We carry hard shells of protection against threat. It is difficult for us to believe in miracles and to have faith in God. It is difficult for us to change. Patience doesn’t come easily to us. We want it all now, in our lifetime. And making space, like cleaning out drawers of junk we collect, is something we avoid. It means we have to deal with old “stuff.”

The other day I was listening to two interviews with the Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams on Krista Tippet’s radio show, On Being. Williams is an African American Buddhist, an amazing writer and teacher. 

Williams says we are living in a time of great potential and desperation; because there is so much potential, there is also desperation. But we are at a turning point; this time is different. This is not the same “go back to business as usual.” People are dismayed and disgusted. Enough of us have learned how intolerable it is to be intolerant, and we are willing to face what we have been unwilling to face before--to clean out that cluttered drawer. 

And here’s the key; she says, “We know we must face this because it is intolerable to live in any other way than a way that allows us to be in contact with our full, loving, human self...We can not have a healed society, we can not have change, we can not have justice, if we do not reclaim and repair the human spirit.” 

This means we have to do the hard inner work of “coming into the deep knowing of ourselves” because “that’s the stuff that bringing down systems of oppression is made of; capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, couldn’t survive if enough of us set about the work of reclaiming the human spirit---which includes the sense of humanity of the people that are the current vehicles for those very forms of oppression...

“We can take action, which is very important, but without the willingness to be flexible, open and to be moved by the truth of the ‘other,’ change is not transformative; the stroke of a pen can change it back.”

Finally, she explains that “our cultural impulse is to leap to change; We feel discomfort and want to leap over that inner work.” In other words, we don’t want to feel. It’s too painful. And anger often feels easier than love, so we become “angry activists.”

Moses, the older leader, must hand over his leadership to the next generation. He speaks harshly and angrily to the people. This is a people he has dedicated his life to, and he loves them, but he is unable to express that love.

Perhaps the Israelites need a new kind of leader—one who will show compassion for their slowness to change. One who makes time and space to pause and consider their struggles and to wait patiently as they plod along; one who helps them feel supported and protected and teaches them what love is really about, allowing for their imperfections and confusions about the world and what truth really is.

At this time in history, “we are being called to transcend our truth, with lower case letters, to finding Our Truth, with a capital 'O’ and a capital ‘T’,” says Williams. 

Like the Israelites entering the new land, we are leaving something old behind. As Williams says, we will backslide; this is normal. But “something is dying in our culture, and that is the willingness to be in denial.”

If we keep doing the inner work required of us, we will slowly and steadily get there as a society. 

May our inner work strengthen us and take us closer to true transformation in the coming year. Let’s be turtles and snakes and make time to do our t’shuva of returning to our true selves and repairing the human spirit.  

Shana tova!

In Your Mouth and in Your Heart: Nitzavim

This week’s Torah reading, Nitzavim, begins: “You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God…”

Is it a coincidence that we read this right before Rosh Hashanah, asking for forgiveness, asking for another year?

“...I make this covenant, with its sanctions, not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with us this day before the Lord our God and with those who are not with us here this day...”

This year more than ever, we are acutely aware of the many who are no longer with us today-- and the many who may not be with us next year. 

“...Perchance there is among you some man or woman, some clan or tribe, whose heart is even now turning away from the Lord our God to go and worship the gods of those nations...sprouting poison weed and wormwood…”

Hmmm. Sprouting poison. 

“...When such a one hears the words of these sanctions, he may fancy himself immune, thinking, “I shall be safe, though I follow my own willful heart.”

Hmmm again. 

“...And later generations will ask---the children who succeed you, and foreigners who come from distant lands and see the plagues and diseases that the Lord has inflicted upon that land, all its soil devastated by sulfur and salt, beyond sowing and producing, no grass growing on it….”

But eventually, it seems, things will get better, because:  ”Then the Lord your God will open up your heart and the hearts of your offspring to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, in order that you may live.”

Good news. We need it. And then some sarcasm?...

“...Surely, this instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, ‘Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?

“No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.” 

Hmmm.

In your mouth. 

And in your heart. 

After writing and publishing my blog last week, I got some feedback from a couple of friends, and it made me worry about what had come out of my own mouth and the effect of my words on others. It had seemed so harmless---talking about my joy. 

Only that wasn’t all I was talking about, and  there were questions. 

One friend said that a person of color might be offended by my making an analogy between the onslaught of curses from the bible and bullets coming from police against unarmed Black men and women. So I changed it. Just in case. 

The other said she didn’t feel the nuance in my writing of my understanding of the political situation as she knows I understand it; I forgot to point out my awareness of the privilege I hold by being able to escape the city at all---ever! 

She knows that I grew up going to (integrated) New York City public schools (an extreme rarity, then and now, in the most segregated public school system in the country--have you listened to the podcast, “Nice White Parents”? If not, you should).

This friend also knows I was taught to be sensitive to the history of the Black and brown students I went to school with, and to understand the anger they expressed toward white, blonde, little me and my siblings. 

She knows I had parents who taught me to argue against those who said, “‘They’ need to just get over it. Slavery ended a long time ago.” 

She wanted to hear this nuance in my writing. She thought it was important. I couldn’t sleep that night, I was so concerned. In the morning, I made some more changes. 

Should I worry about every single word that comes out of my mouth? If I do that, I won’t end up saying anything; I need to have a thicker skin; someone will always find something to criticize. 

If, on the other hand, I don’t worry enough, I’ll be like people I don’t want to be like. And how deep do I want my message to be?

Over the past couple of years, I’ve heard people complain: “Everyone has gotten so sensitive; you can’t say anything these days without worrying about offending or making someone feel ‘unsafe.’ 

“Feeling uncomfortable,” they say, “is a part of life; if you’re not uncomfortable, then you’re not growing.” 

All true. 

Everyone is very sensitive right now. And for good reason.This culture of “honesty” we are living in is hurting many people in real ways. 

And it’s important to have the uncomfortable conversations that help us grow. We are on a steep learning curve at this moment in history, and a lot--more than ever--is being asked of us. It’s hard. Many times, we’re not going to get it right, despite our best intentions. 

Besides trying my best to get the words right, I can be more patient and forgiving of others who aren’t getting it right, even those I completely disagree with. The world is a confusing, scary place for us all right now. 

I can’t do anything about other people’s mouths and hearts, and it’s really, really frustrating, but I can do something about my own. I want to know that I have tried my hardest to check my own mouth and my own heart, when I stand before God this year on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. 

Surely, this is not too difficult or baffling. 

Joy and Snapping Turtles: Ki Tavo

Today it’s my birthday, and I’m joyful, but that’s not really why I’m joyful. Last week I was not joyful, and it wasn’t because it wasn’t my birthday. It was because I was feeling a lot of pain, and also trying not to. A friend and colleague was dying an untimely death in a crazily short amount of time. I wanted to feel grateful and joyful that I was alive, but I just felt really sad. 

Like pain, joy is something I can’t seem to control very well. I reach for joy daily as part of my spiritual practice, but it feels very elusive. Usually it just comes spontaneously, but it’s always a goal: To Live in Joy. This is what we’re told we should do to praise God. It says so in this week’s Torah reading, too. And I want to do it for my family, because it makes life easier for them, and for myself, too, because it makes my life easier as well.

The parsha Ki Tavo is a continuation of the preparation of previous weeks for “Entering the Land,” “Ki Tavo---When you enter,” it begins. It feels like it should be a joyful reading, because the Israelites are about to enter the Land of Milk and Honey, but it’s so incredibly painful to read. It’s just an onslaught of curses---forewarnings of all the terrible things God will bring upon us if we don’t walk in God’s ways. 

As I read it, it felt like a series of bullets entering my body, pow pow pow pow pow!

Then there are the blessings to counter them. If you walk in God’s ways...

On Sunday, for the first time in six months, I left the city and got to be together with my husband, my children, my sister and her daughter, my twin brother and his family, at his house in the country. It was a perfect day. The weather was perfect, sandwiched in between cloudy, stormy, humid, hot days. Perfect temperature. Low humidity. Sunny. A Goldilocks day, as a friend described it. 

I got to go swimming in a stream on the spur of the moment with my sister. First we just put our toes in the water. But the cold, living waters were calling to us, so after a bit of debate, we simply threw our bodies into it. The joy was great and it was incredibly healing.

When we got back to the house, I shared the news excitedly with my nephew. He smiled mischievously: “That’s great! Did you see the snapping turtle?”

I’m glad we didn’t see the snapping turtle. I’m glad I didn’t remember about the snapping turtle, or I wouldn’t have dared go in. 

After this idyllic day of perfect weather, delicious food (that my brother cooked on the grill), playing and fun, and no fights (I think those days are gone. This younger generation in my family seems to have figured out what’s important, I’m happy to report), we got off the train at 125th Street in Harlem, and had to face the snapping turtle after all. 

As we waited for a taxi, the homelessness, the mental illness, the drug problems, the neglect and the racism of our society were all hanging out right in front of the station with us, and it was really painful. The contrast with the incredible privilege I’d just been able to participate in, and that I get to regularly, was stark, and the irony of the situation was not lost on me. And I wished only to escape back to the idyllic world we’d just come from, and to feel the joy. 

Such is the struggle posed to us every day: to face the pain that snaps at us constantly and to make our society a place of joy for everyone. We are to hear the call of the Shofar (the ram’s horn we blow in this season) daily during this month of Elul in preparation for the New Year. It is a call to wake up and make room for change—in ourselves, the way we live, the way we treat others and the earth.

At the same time, we are enjoined to find the joy, even in the midst of the pain. 

I’m no saint. I can’t seem to live in that place of joy, though try I might. I’m just so damn human.

Yet, it’s another intention I have for the Jewish New Year: to really be aware and grateful every day to be alive, and to find the joy in that. Simply put: to fulfill the commandment of living in joy, because it is thus that we are praising God. 

Sometimes I get glimpses of it, like this past Sunday, and it stays with me for a good little while, like today. I know the snapping turtle is there in the background, but I can choose to forget it’s there for just a short time so I can have some peace. 

And that’s okay. 

I understand that it is my privilege that allows me to escape at all. The question is, do I dare to continue to dip my toe—or throw my body—into some joyful waters if the possibility arises, forgetting the snapping turtle for at least a little while. For my own sake and for my family during this very trying time, I have to if I can. But also, I can’t help others and the world if I’m in a constant state of agitation. So I’ll keep that intention.

Happy Elul.

Responsibility, Blame, Guilt and Vows:“Ki Teitzei”

As we enter the month of preparation for the Days of Awe, our job is to do a lot of inner soul work and searching; the idea is that we should feel ready to make the vows we will make when the new year starts. 

Vows are not to be taken lightly. In this week’s Torah reading, Ki Teitzei, we are told that if you make a vow and don’t follow through---and soon---you’re guilty (you have “Chet,” like the famous High Holy Day prayer, “Al Chet”). 

If you don’t make the vow, however, you’re okay. 

Promises are really important. Just like what you wish for, be careful what you promise. 

Let’s talk about responsibility for a minute.

Doctors are responsible for doing their best to save a person’s life, but it stops there. They’re not God, and they can’t promise. They’re liable if they do promise and then things don’t turn out okay. 

But how do we separate responsibility from blame and guilt? 

Our inner critical voices are so strong. Throughout this pandemic, but even before, people have been telling me, “Be gentle with yourself.”

If you’re lucky, you’ve been in touch with people who tell you the same thing--and regularly!

We carry these harsh voices within us from childhood, and even earlier. Our whole society is set up that way: “you didn’t study enough; you’re not smart enough; you weren’t paying attention; you didn’t listen to me; you aren’t grounded; you aren’t taking care of yourself your body your house your kids your money; just relax; you’re too stressed out; you’re too negative; just ignore it; get over it; move on and forget about it…” 

Aaaaaaaarghhhhhhh!!! The admonitions can go on and on and on and on, like this sentence and that song from my teenage years.

All these things may be true or even good advice, but does that make us guilty?

And how often do we say such things to other people without intending to make them feel guilty, but the effect is just that? 

One of the kindest things a friend recently said to me was, “I don’t think you do anything to cause your migraines. I think they just happen.” I was going through my mental list out loud of all the possible things I’d done to cause my latest one. (This is a (bad) habit of mine each time I have a migraine.)

“I don’t think you do anything to cause them.” 

She said it so casually, but the impact was so immense that it still pops into my head weeks later each time I get a migraine. And it lessens the stress, if not the pain. 

I’m not to blame. What a relief.

This week’s Torah tells us lots of things we’re responsible for, and migraines are not one of them. 

To give a few examples from the Torah: We’re responsible for giving back the animals that belong to a neighbor if we find them; marrying your dead brother’s wife so you know she’s taken care of; protecting a run-away slave; making sure you give full inheritance to a son whose mother you don’t love; leaving pickings in your orchard for the poor person; not taking too much from a field that’s not yours; listening to the priest’s instructions to keep a skin condition from spreading; crying out if you’re being raped. 

We are all responsible, but very few of us are actually guilty. 

If the priest doesn’t give you the right advice, you can’t be guilty of not containing the spread of the affliction. And if you cry out but you’re in a place where no one can hear you, it’s not your fault for not being heard.

My friend had no idea of the impact of her words, but they were heard, probably because of the casual, gentle way she said them. It just felt like a fact. She didn’t need to yell or admonish me. 

We all know what we have to do. We know our responsibilities. 

Here are some goals I like for the coming year:

• To be the gentle, casual voice that reminds myself and others, “It’s not your fault.”

• To not make unrealistic vows that I can’t carry out, whether they’re personal or for the world

• To seek out those who carry those gentle messages and make them my regular company.

• To keep crying out, in whatever ways I can, for what I need and for what is needed in the world, but to let go of any guilt for what I seem unable to change.

 Because we are all responsible, but only a few are truly guilty. 

“Shoftim:” T’shuvah, Returning and Turning Points

At what point do we decide, collectively and individually, that it’s been enough? And what does that “enough” look like? 

I’ve been thinking so much about the coming month of Elul, our Jewish entry into turning/change and returning--returning to our true nature, returning to “God.”

In this week’s Torah reading, Shoftim, the Israelites are given many laws they are to follow as they establish themselves in a new land, to live a new life. It is here that we find the famous line, “Justice, Justice shall you pursue: Tzedek tzedek tirdof.” 

Great idea!

Some of the laws sound really good, like, when you take over another people’s land, don’t chop down or destroy any fruit bearing trees, especially not for building your houses; have respect for the tree and the life it gives. 

Another good law: if you are a king, don’t amass too much silver and gold. 

And another: Don’t go back to Egypt--to Mitzrayim, the “narrow place,” for any reason! 

Other laws sound really harsh to modern sensibilities, like the punishment for worshiping other gods when you’ve been told not to. Since you should know better, because you’ve been told again and again, you get stoned to death for doing so. 

Meanwhile, in our “First World” country, we chop down trees and destroy forests to build pipelines, and we still have the death penalty, so let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. We’re still living in the narrow place. 

What is the turning point where people make the collective decision, “No more destruction, no more torture, no more abuse! Enough!” As individuals, it could be in a job, a relationship, a marriage, or a way of behaving, thinking, being. 

Like, you’re no longer going to live with fear and panic. 

Yeah, that’s mine: living with fear and panic--not always, by any means, but it’s become very prominent for me again these past months since the beginning of the pandemic and being sick.

Those close to me know that I struggle with this, but it’s really hard to put it out there to the general world. There’s so much lack of or misunderstanding and judgment still in the world and in our culture when it comes to people with anxiety and any kind emotional problems or mental illness. I judge myself. 

Yet repeatedly this week I was reminded in different contexts that I am not alone, that there are countless other people who know exactly how I feel because they also experience or have experienced the same thing; I am not alone. 

At the same time, for each of us who suffers in this way, or in any way, can there be a moment when we wake up and say, “Enough! I can’t live this way anymore! I’m sick of it and I reject it!” Maybe it was a gradual, creeping awareness, or maybe it took a lot of work.

What is that work? 

I think it’s about building faith and trust that we will be okay, that the world will be okay, that this is not the end. The reminder is there again in Torah: “Do not bow down to false gods. I’ve been telling you this and you’re not listening.” God is frustrated with us. He wants us to start paying attention. We are to be stoned to death if we don’t. 

Sounds harsh, no?

Often we think of false gods as money and possessions, but false gods can be anything that takes our attention away from what really matters. Fear mongering and panic are what sells the news and it takes us away from love of other people and the earth and the inter-connectedness of us all. In the narrow place of fear and panic, we forget that God is One. 

Sometimes we need to be clobbered over the head to start paying attention. Or maybe we can start paying attention to the little things that happen all the time. For me, each week there seems to be a theme to the messages that come into my life. They come from seemingly disparate places and voices, and it always surprises me, but then I think, I guess that’s God’s way of communicating with me. “You are not alone; countless other people know exactly how you feel.” God is One. 

I don’t want any more clobbering.

When I live from a less constricted place, the fear and panic diminish, and sometimes even go away completely. I know I’m not alone in my panic and fear, but I’d rather be not alone in my faith. 

If we build faith together, we can come out of the narrow place and put away the stones. Or use them to build houses. Then we don’t need to chop down any more trees. 

“R’eih;” Seeing Blessings within Curses

Who’s to say and how do we know what’s a blessing and what’s a curse...if we can allow ourselves to ask the question, so taboo? Especially when people are suffering: “How dare you say that what I’m going through might be a blessing?” 

Like the story of a man who has mishap after mishap in his life. In a long line of curses and condolences, his son finally breaks his leg. Yet a war breaks out shortly, and the only young man who isn’t hauled off is the one with the broken leg. A curse is turned into a blessing.

Does it come down to the way we look at things? The way we “see”? 

The title of this week’s Torah reading, and the very first word, is R’eih: See: A commandment. 

Last week, I said that the world requires us to live with our eyes wide open. The reality is a painful sight: Coronavirus, illness, death, unemployment, homelessness, deportation, our president, earthquakes, hurricanes, no electricity, explosions...

How could any of this ever be a blessing? Isn’t it much more realistic--aren’t we seeing more clearly--when we talk about how horrible everything is? My depressive father used to say with a little chuckle, teasing himself a bit, “Those who are depressed see the world as it really is. Those who aren’t, are delusional.” There’s even a psychological term for it: Depressive Realism. 

What a depressing time we’re in. It seems that finally, more and more people are seeing the world as it really is.  Should we say “yay” to that?  It feels scary and cruel to state; The pandemic has been a curse, for sure, yet so many blessings have come out of it. 

It was a curse to get sick and live in fear of losing my husband, and to continue to suffer the after-effects of Corona, yet a blessing to be able to see a clear path in a different direction, directly caused by the suffering. This new vision has allowed for an opening of space for new things to happen, creating something new for myself and separating from toxic relationships.

It’s a curse not to be able to gather and sing together in our communities, yet it’s been a blessing to be able to explore other communities far away--because of the internet--that thing we’ve said was also a curse. 

Not being able to see family and friends feels like a curse, yet it has made certain bonds stronger and deeper on a new level, especially with my children. 

Our curse of a president has brought the blessing of forcing so many people out of complacency--seeing more clearly what needs to be done in the world and acting on it. 

The other day, after hurricane Isaias hit, I went walking in Central Park. As I passed one of my favorite spots, what I like to call “my meadow,” I saw that one of my favorite trees had been ripped out of the ground from its roots.  It’s a spot I discovered in the spring when I was beginning to recover from COVID, with a beautiful ground covering underneath, a spot I chose to practice yoga and Qi Gong--a healing place for me. Surrounded on one side by very tall trees, it seemed highly unlikely to be a target of the hurricane winds, so low. Yet there it lay languishing on its side, its wide bushy branches spread out and leaning on the ground. I went over to it and touched its branches and cried.

In this week’s Torah reading, the bible tells us to destroy all the sites where other gods have been worshiped, whether on mountaintops or under luxurious trees. What a strange thing to imagine; altars under luxurious trees? Mountaintops? Sure. But under luxurious trees? Why luxurious?

It seems clear that we are to leave the tree alone and just destroy the false gods and altar, but it still felt sad as I thought of the destruction of this favorite little tree in a spot that felt incredibly luxurious in this big, hot city full of concrete where I’m stuck because of the pandemic.

The injunction is a continuation of last week’s parsha; walk in the way of God, a One God of Unification, not many gods separate from each other and us; wake up to the fact that all of life is connected; live with humility, not arrogance; know the source of the abundance in your life, for it is not your own hands that created it; know that this earth is a gift and treat it as such. 

Is it unrealistic to see the blessings in the curses? Is it unrealistic to think that we can change the world--even after all this? Perhaps. But I’d rather be delusional and live with hope and belief that we can change the world, as Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of Revolutionary Love, A Political Manifesto to Heal and Transform the World, among other revolutionary works, says. I’d rather believe in the infinite possibility of transformation. That is God to me: the possibility of transformation for the whole world, even with the pain. 

Maybe there is a blessing in the fall of that beautiful little tree. Maybe it has made space for something else that I can’t yet see. 

“Eikev,” Pilot Lights and Firecrackers: Spiritual Lessons for living in what seem like hopeless times

A year ago at this time, I supported a bas mitzvah student of mine, a certain Rebecca who is not mine but has the same curly hair and name as my own younger daughter, as she stood in front of our congregation and spoke prophetically about the urgency of the climate and Greta Thunberg; if we live in the ways of God, take care of each other and the earth, then we will make it into the Land of Milk and Honey. 

Continuing from her message: We can help the earth, and all that lives on earth, find its balance again if we remove the layers we have protecting our hearts. 

I suppose we are all afraid to feel too much; if we allow ourselves to start crying, maybe we’ll never stop. Right? 

This morning, after a week of excruciating pain in my head, I may have reached a new level of acceptance--not about the climate, no, but about my challenges...

...Acceptance that I will not be “balanced” or find any kind of complete balance during this time...that I will continue to have migraines that will incapacitate me for periods of time...that I will continue to feel stuck, just like everyone else...that I will continue to struggle find balance and to counter this feeling of stuckness with positive messages.

You get the idea. I know you have your own list of “shoulds” that could be turned into a kind of acceptance or surrender.

And so it should be--this continued struggle. If I didn’t continue to struggle, it would mean I was giving up. Instead, I choose hope, as I said last week in my blog post, No Room for Despair; there is no room for despair. 

Following is another hopeful message, this time from the late congressman John Lewis’s words in an old interview with Krista Tippet on NPR’s On Being. He talked about pilot lights (as in the little constant flame in the old gas stoves) as opposed to firecrackers.

I paraphrase: “You tell us to wait. You tell us to be patient. We can not wait. We can not be patient. We want our freedom now...But that has to be balanced. Pace yourself. You don’t change the world and society in a few days. It’s better to be a pilot light than a firecracker.” 

In other words, be an “Aish Tamid”--a continuous flame that is never allowed to go out. 

But what about the environment, you say--I say! We’re running out of time! Haven’t you heard?? The arctic is not just warming, it’s burning up!!

True. Yet, I must choose hope. I have no choice. 

Some of you may believe in people who get messages from the spirit world, some may not. No matter. Again, I think of this as a choice, like believing in God. (There’s no proof either way, so why not believe in the thing that makes you happier and live longer and healthier? I quote from Dr. Mario Martinez in his book, The MindBody Code, 2014—I read it a few years ago and consider it an important part of my spiritual journey.)

I have a friend who forwards me monthly messages and predictions from a certain Sara Wiseman. Sara is not the only one carrying messages that humanity is waking up, and that we’re close--really close--to things changing for the better, including the earth healing itself. 

The message is that the pain we are experiencing, if we allow ourselves to, physical or emotional, is that of humanity “burning karma,” not just for our own families, not just for recent generations but for the whole world. It says that we are past the worst. After all, how much more “worst” can we take? The spirit world asks that we live with our eyes wide open, allowing ourselves to feel the pain, for with this kind of living, we will achieve the healing the world needs. 

In this week’s Torah reading, Eikev, we are asked to cut away, or circumcise, the foreskin of our hearts, the extra layer that we use to protect ourselves from feeling the pain, and live in God’s ways. 

I want--I have to believe that humanity as a whole is waking up, that real change (revolution?) is around the corner, and that this pain, this personal pain I experience each time I struggle with migraines, each time there is nothing, I mean nothing, I can take that “works,” is giving birth to something truly new. 

There is really nothing we can take that will cover up the pain we are all feeling right now as a collective. I mean nothing. 

So let’s be like pilot lights, take care of ourselves, keep seeking balance, for our bodies and our activism, and live with our hearts and eyes wide open.

Let’s strip away any extra layers that make us blind or unfeeling. 

Yes, protect ourselves from overload, but also allow ourselves to feel and see. The more we do this, the more we are helping our own selves and the world. 

Tisha B’Av: No Room for Despair

I’ve never been much into Tisha B’av. Maybe nobody is. After all, it brings us into a place of mourning over a Temple from two thousand years ago that we can’t really relate to if we’re not from a religious community. And if we’re part of the progressive Jewish community, then we are forced to face the pain of today’s society.

These days, we’re a bit overloaded, no exaggeration. 

But I was pleasantly surprised yesterday when my 20-year-old daughter read to me from one of her books about Jewish stuff. This one was a book about Tisha B’av. 

Being in a funk myself, I was pleasantly inspired. 

There is the story of a Holocaust survivor, gaunt from starvation, who approaches a Jewish lieutenant who comes to the ghetto. The ghetto resident tells the story of a rabbi Elchanan Wasserman whom he had approached in the ghetto and asked in despair, “What is the meaning of this?” 

Rabbi Elchanan proceeded to tell him a parable of a man who came to a farmer who wants to learn about farming. (Said man seems extremely naive, but so it goes with parables sometimes.) 

The farmer takes him through the process month by month and the man is horrified each time by what he sees and experiences. First, a field is cleared of its beautiful flowers and grasses, stripped bare and left ugly. But then neat rows are made and things begin to grow. So it goes every step of the way, as the wheat grows and is cut down and beaten to separate the seeds from the sheethes, all the way to creating a loaf that is placed in the oven to be “burned!” Each time, the man feels like he is witnessing senseless destruction. Each time he is told to be patient and wait and see. 

When the beautiful loaf of bread comes out of the oven, the man in the parable finally sees clearly what he could not along the way. We are told by Rabbi Wasserman that we can not understand God’s ways until we look back and see the entire process.

We, too, are having a hard time seeing the big picture. It all feels so, so horrible and hopeless. When Trump was elected, as scary as it was, I thought it was a good thing that we were being forced to confront the issues that would stay swept under the rug if we continued with the status quo, comfortably in denial. 

As scary as things are, they’re getting scarier. We have a president who “doesn’t like to lose,” and may refuse to concede if he does. (On Democracy Now! Noam Chomsky points out what we are facing is unprecedented in history, even in dictatorships. To listen, go to democracynow.org, or here’s the link on youtube.

This alone is terrifying enough, but it’s piled on top of everything else (need I make a list?). I would argue that we are living through the worst times on earth on a global level and I’m not alone in saying that. It’s enough to leave us in despair. 

Yet, the bigger picture over the arc of history has yet to be revealed, as much as it feels like we haven’t made any progress and we are going backwards. In the grand scope of things, the history of this country is very, very short. 

The protesters in Portland are not giving up. There is no room for despair. They need us. 

From Breishit to Devarim: From our beginnings to the Promised Land

I remember back in September when the year was just starting out. I was on a Jewish chant retreat with Rabbi Shefa Gold. It was Breishit, the first parsha of the Book of Genesis. The question was, what were we committing to for the year? What were we each making a choice to do differently? I committed out loud to a small group of people that I would begin leading my own services. Voila! I’m doing it! And much much more than I ever imagined. Yay! 

Looking back, none of us had any idea that this year was going to be SO much different from anything imaginable. It’s become cliche to say that. The pandemic has caused many of us to change the direction of our lives…to see things differently…to open our eyes to things we didn’t see before. It certainly did for me.

Now we come to the part of the Torah where the Israelites finally get to enter the Promised Land, after forty years of wandering in the desert. Moses retells the whole story, detail by detail, place by place, again, as if telling the story of a trauma. 

We too, are in the middle of a trauma, and we too, need to keep telling our stories. I find that I need to tell my personal story of Covid 19 less and less, which is a good sign, but the trauma has not passed and is not passing yet. 

Black Lives Matter, murders by police, abductions by the military in our own country—and the weather is tied in, of course. It’s been unseasonably hot and humid in the northeast as in many parts (remember when they stopped saying “unseasonably” on the radio? I guess they realized there was no point anymore). It’s impossible to stay fit and also stay hydrated when I go out in this weather, and migraines often accompany this weather for me. 

Last night there were huge booms of lightning hit the ground right outside my window—more “severe weather”—shaking the city ground and my building. And with those booms, my migraine raged. It felt like a biblical level of God’s rage, even though I don’t believe in an anthropomorphic God. 

The question I was left with from the week’s Torah reading was, are we like the Israelites, finally entering the Promised Land, or are we like Moses, who never gets to? 

When I think of all the work we humans still have to do before we get the “reward” of the “Promised Land,” it makes me think of the flow of the year, from our beginnings to the “end” of the story. 

Are we living in the flow? How do we make sure we are? We flow in and out constantly, losing touch with what’s most important, and then remembering again, or being rudely awakened to it if we don’t remind ourselves. We are definitely in a rude awakening right now.

Our work is to keep trying. Just keep trying. Do our spiritual work of reconnecting when we lose  the connection--with each other, the earth, and all living creatures. Constantly. Every day. In some way. We keep practicing. 

If we can learn to live in the flow more often than not, maybe we’ll make it to the Promised Land. 

Let’s keep trying. 

Torah & Dreams: Lizards and Mourning Doves, Part II

A few days later after this dream of iguanas, I had a healing session with a friend. I’d just finished a book called Buried Rivers; A spiritual Journey into the Holocaust, which I felt had an important message for me. My friend intuited, and I agreed, that I needed to heal some ancestral stuff and free myself of old fears passed down through generations of living in terror.  My friend calls this a Divine Mother, or Shechinah, healing. It was profound and cleansing. 

The next day I got a terrible headache that turned into a three-day migraine.

Migraines for me are always an opportunity for deep spiritual work. The pain, the pulsating stabs that won’t subside, no matter what I take, drive me to tears. This time, waves of grief passed through me that came out in loud sobs throughout the second day, I felt like I was releasing generations of grief over loss. 

The next day, as I was still recovering, I spoke to a friend who is a medium. We were talking about a friend from our synagogue, Evelyn, who just died a couple of weeks ago at 92 of pancreatic cancer. And Evelyn came with a message for us: “Live with a clear and open heart. Start living that way now. It will change your life. I’m not talking out of my ass.” We laughed and cried. 

And I asked Evelyn that if she visited me again, would she please show a sign. 

Shabbat morning, as I was just waking up, still in that liminal space, I remembered it was Shabbat, and quietly said to the world, “Shabbat Shalom,” and tears immediately sprung to my eyes. Would it be a Shabbat Shalom? And July 4th--what’s to celebrate? A history of continuous and continuing oppression of Black people, stark inequality on the rise, Coronavirus on the rise, I feel so much rage, and  no, I would not be going to synagogue or seeing friends or being in community. 

Then I heard the sound of a mourning dove outside my window. I often see them in the park, and they’re my favorite bird besides blue jays, but never do they come into the courtyard below my window. So I went to make sure that’s what I was hearing, and it was.

A couple of minutes later, as I’m wiping my tears still, I hear it louder. I look up and there it is perched on my window sill, inside the little slit between the open glass and the screen. It could have much more easily landed beside the open window on the other part of sill, but it comfortably flew in between the small opening to walk back and forth, cooing and looking in at me through the screen. I immediately thought of Evelyn, and tears came up again. Is it her? 

I go to look up doves this time as spirit animals. This is what I found on two different websites:

1. Doves lay two eggs. This is apparently unique and important. 

2. They are ground eaters so they remind us to stay connected to the earth--the feminine aspect of the Divine, which is linked to creative energy. 

3. The mourning dove in particular invokes new “waters of life” from its mournful cry. It reminds us that new waters can still flow and new life is still possible even in the worst of times. 

4. The mourning dove reminds us that it’s fine to mourn what has passed, but we must remember to awaken to the promise of the future. 

5. This is a bird of prophecy. It can help you see what you can give birth to in your own life. 

6. It reminds you to soar; to know when to move your wings and when to allow the wind to take you to new heights; when to surrender and let the wind support you.

7. Or stop and take a deep breath; let go of the turmoil surrounding you and take time to find peace within. Reality is shifting in ways you never thought possible. 

8. Finally, it may be a sign that you need to purify your thoughts, because you attract what you focus on. 

Words associated with the dove are: ascension, peace, gentleness, grace, holiness, hopefulness, love, peace, promise, prophecy. 

Evelyn’s message, over and over again, was: “Do the hard spiritual work while you’re here. You can do it when you’re gone, but it’s better when you’re here. It’s worth it.” 

May we all find ways of living with a clear and open heart. It will change our lives. And I’m sure it can change the world. 

And I’m not talkin’ out of my ass.

Spiritual Messages from Torah and Dreams: Living Waters, Lizards, Broken Pencils, and Mourning Doves

It started with a dream I had last week, during the weekly Torah reading called Korach, when Korach and his supporters are swallowed up by the earth for rebelling against Moses, and the “Living Waters/Chayim Mayim,” are used as the final purification rite for those in contact with the dead. 

What is dead now? What needs to be purified? 

The dream: 

Two Iguanas with spikes on their backs. They’re somehow my pets. I feel responsible for them and I don’t want them. I’m afraid of them. I also realize they’re not on leashes, so they can easily get away, which would make me very happy. I’m sitting on a rock, the two of them in front of me, one closer. It tries to snatch my pencil, an old #2 yellow pencil, but I kick at it. It doesn’t succeed in taking the pencil but it does break it in two pieces. (That image still floats in my mind, of a broken #2 pencil floating in the air.) Then the two iguanas slip into the beautiful water to go hunting, and I’m free! I go prancing off to hike in the forest, overjoyed by my freedom. 

Why two? Why Iguanas? Why the pencil?

I hope I don’t offend anyone with what may seem like cultural appropriation, but a few years ago I was introduced to the idea of Native American Medicine Cards and Spirit Animals. I include my experience with these because I believe that all spiritual paths lead to the same place ultimately, we are all fundamentally connected, and I have found them useful and enlightening. I include my experience with the utmost respect--and my story wouldn’t be a story without them--or it would definitely not be as good. 

I read about the medicine of lizards first. According to my book, they come in dreams, are the medicine of dreamers and can help you see differentiate the shade from the shadow. The shadow can be your fears, hopes, or the very thing you are resisting, and it is always following you around. For me, they were the fears that are always following me around--about my health mostly. The broken pencil was the old story of my childhood, and the fears I inherited from generations of hypochondria as a survival mechanism, I’m guessing. Broken because it’s an old story, but it’s still mine and can’t be taken away from me. I can now write a new story. I am free to do that. 

We talked about my dream during a Zoom Shabbat morning service last week and someone  brought the idea of two doves into the conversation as a somehow substitute for the iguanas. Then I responded, and another person pipes up and says, just as you were talking, two doves landed on my deck. 

Cont. Spiritual Lessons from Coronavirus

Monday, April 20, 2020

How do I savor this feeling of a new lease on life? How do I stay in this place of gratefulness?

I have been trying to live in that place for years now, and I see how quickly the feeling starts to fade, especially as I wake up still feeling shitty more days than not. 

This morning as I woke up, instead of just saying “Modah Ani” and moving on to the next prayer, I took the time to sit in bed for a couple of minutes and chant it, really thinking about the words, letting a melody come to me. You see, I don’t usually think I “have the time.” I have an “agenda,” after all. I’ve got to get up and move into my “morning routine” more quickly: the yoga, qi gong, davenin. (As it is, I feel much too privileged to have the time for all this at all. My children are grown, I don’t currently have a job, I’m in school full time. Feelings of guilt abound. I know, I know, so many people would give anything to be living my life. Is it like survivor’s guilt? Anyway, not the subject at hand…)

Of course I’m aware that the moment of waking up, washing my hands and going to the bathroom are part of my morning routine, but I so often rush through it. That’s the thing with routine. We can easily fall into doing it unconsciously. 

On the other hand, it’s regular practice that strengthens a routine. If we do exercise regularly, our muscles get stronger. But so often do people put on music or watch a show while doing exercise. 

If we’re not aware, we might do the same with prayer. Our own distraction can lead to unconscious prayer. I struggle with this all the time, every day in fact. I am constantly looking for a balance. 

Something that works for me often and especially this week is experimenting with throwing my whole body into prayer, shuckling, but from my knees, especially when I don’t have the energy to stand. On the “baruch” of a prayer, I really throw my body forward, and sometimes stick my nose into my prayer book. The shuckling I’ve observed in many Orthodox men is my inspiration, and the nose in the book and rocking back and forth I take from observing Orthodox women. It offers a kind of passionate pleading that helps me focus. 

This morning I was listening to the news--only coronavirus--as I began my prayer. All I could do was just sit, my head covered by my tallis. I wondered as I often do, what does my prayer actually do? 

At the very least, it helps me to try to be the best person I can be. It may not make me feel better, but it refocuses me to my efforts to be my absolute best, which includes being cheerful and loving towards the family I’m in the house with every day, all day.