Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 115

Coming home into Shabbat

Kabbalat Shabbat feels like coming home. Or it can -- and this past Friday night, it did. I was in Boston for the ALEPH / Jewish Renewal Listening Tour (note the spiffy new webpage!) and was blessed to daven with a shtibl (home-based minyan) which met in Rabbi Art Green's living room. He greeted us, handed out siddurim (prayerbooks), and we began to daven. As others arrived, they joined in.

The siddur was one I had never used before. It featured beautiful Hebrew typesetting, and some nifty nusach Sfard changes from what I usually daven with. I didn't know most of the people in the room -- though of course there were a few souls there (including an ALEPH board member, and of course David, my co-chair) who are already very dear to me; my Renewal hevre (friends) are chosen-family.

But what really felt like a homecoming was diving into the words in a room full of people who were also diving deep. When I am with people who are welcoming Shabbat with heart and intention, I am home. No matter what melodies we're using, no matter what siddur, no matter where I am -- when we're singing to welcome the Shabbat bride, ushering in Shabbat consciousness, my soul comes home.

We davened. We dined. And then after Shabbat dinner there was a lull in the conversation, and Rabbi Hanna Tiferet Siegel offered a new niggun she had recently written. Not surprisingly, it is beautiful. We sang it and sang it. Harmonies arose, and we kept time gently on the table. And then came the sweet, satisfied pause after the song, and Rabbi Art reached for a Hasidic text to give over some Torah.

He taught about how each of us writes a Torah with our own deeds, and how collectively we all fulfill all of the mitzvot which none of us could fulfill alone. As we sang the niggun again to seal the learning in our hearts, I felt as though I were sitting at a Shabbes table on high with the angels. What a gift it was to welcome Shabbat together into our midst, and to welcome ourselves home into Shabbat.

I'm grateful to be doing the Listening Tour for a lot of reasons. One reason is that I'm already learning a lot about the depth and breadth of Jewish Renewal's impact in the world. Another is that it's giving me the opportunity to have meaningful conversations about the future of Judaism. And a third reason is Shabbat evenings like that one, where I get to be in community in a way that nourishes my soul.

Bringing the ALEPH / Jewish Renewal Listening Tour to Boston!

This weekend, my ALEPH co-chair Rabbi David Evan Markus and I are bringing the ALEPH / Jewish Renewal Listening Tour to Boston! Via emails, video chats, phone calls, coffee dates, and weekend visits to a variety of places around North America, we're spending our first year as ALEPH co-chairs actively listening to what people want Jewish Renewal, and Judaism writ large, to be in years to come.

Everywhere we go, we bring the set of questions we posed at the beginning of this adventure: What do you most cherish about Jewish Renewal, and what would you change? How can we cultivate continued spiritual and organizational innovation, both within ALEPH and in the broader phenomenon which is the continued renewing of Judaism? Given that Renewal is bigger than ALEPH, what role should ALEPH play, and how can we best bring together different people, places, and institutions doing the kind of heart-centered and innovative work we value? What are ALEPH's strengths and weaknesses? And what question should we be asking which isn't on this list -- and how would you answer it?

The format we've evolved for Listening Tour weekends features some public events and some small-group events. This weekend a small group will daven together on Friday night at a home-based minyan, and share Shabbat dinner afterwards, hosted by Rabbi Art Green. On Shabbat morning we'll meet at B’nai Or, an established Jewish Renewal community, for joyful and spirited davenen. Afterwards there will be a Lunch & Learn / Open Mike during which David and I will share about the Listening Tour and will harvest hopes, dreams, and feedback from the community. (If you're in the Boston area and want to be part of the conversation about the future of Jewish Renewal, please join us! Shabbat morning, and the Open Mike / Lunch & Learn, are open to all.)

On Shabbat afternoon and Sunday morning we'll host small-group sessions for a curated group of invited guests. We're making a practice of ensuring that in every place where we go, some of the people in our curated group are "within" ALEPH / Jewish Renewal, while others come from outside the self-identified Jewish Renewal community. All are interested in the future of Jewish life generally and heart-centered innovation particularly, and all are leaders who have a stake in what ALEPH and Renewal are and become. Shabbat afternoon's conversation will be a Vision conversation, aimed at big-picture dreaming. Sunday morning's conversation will be a Tachlis (practical details) conversation, aimed at taking Saturday's vision conversation and bringing it into reality.

We've been honored by the caliber of people who've been part of these conversations thus far. When we did this in New York, our curated group included Maggid Yitzhak Buxbaum, Rabbi Jeff Fox (the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Mahara”t), Rabbi Jay Michaelson, Amichai Lau-Lavie (of Lab/Shul), and Maggid Peninnah Schram (among others), and our Boston group is equally luminous. This coming Shabbes, we get to sit down at a table with Rabbi Art Green from Hebrew College, Rabbi Jill Hammer from the Academy for Jewish Religion, and Joel Segel who with Reb Zalman z"l co-authored Jewish With Feeling and Davening: A Guide to Meaningful Jewish Prayer (among others) to talk about the future of Judaism! We both feel incredibly blessed to be able to have these conversations.

Our New York weekend was co-hosted by Romemu (where I just went for Simchat Torah) and by Yeshivat Mahara”t, the groundbreaking seminary ordaining Orthodox women to serve as kli kodesh ("holy vessels," e.g. spiritual leaders.) Our Boston weekend will be co-hosted by transdenominational seminary Hebrew College,  by B’nai Or, and by transdenominational mikveh Mayyim Hayyim. Later this fall we'll be doing something similar in Philadelphia and in Washington, DC. And in the secular new year, if we can secure the funding and can make everyone's calendars line up, we're hoping to visit Montreal, Boulder, southern California, northern California, Seattle, and Vancouver.

(For those who aren't in any of these places but would like to chime in about what you hope the future of Jewish Renewal will be, you're always welcome to email us at chair@aleph.org.)

David and I have made a commitment to a year of receptive listening, a practice which is familiar to both of us from the pastoral work we do in our rabbinates. Our job is to be open and to receive what people have to say -- the things we're happy to hear, and also the things we may not be thrilled to hear -- about Jewish Renewal in general and ALEPH in particular. And our job is also to connect that conversation with a broader conversation about the future of Judaism in decades to come.

It seems likely to us that the future of Judaism won't have the same top-down, denominational shape that's become familiar to us over the last century. We think that the future of Judaism is going to be co-created by a variety of people and institutions working together -- not a hierarchy, but a network. We hope that the future of Judaism will be characterized by the kind of meaningful innovation which has been a hallmark of Jewish Renewal from the beginning -- and we want to partner with others who are engaging in that kind of work. The Listening Tour is both an opportunity to hear from our constituency about what they want from Jewish Renewal, and a step toward bringing together some of the people and institutions doing the work of renewing Judaism across the board so that we can brainstorm together about what we want our Jewish future to be.

And when we say "our constituency," we mean both those who already self-identify as part of ALEPH or part of Jewish Renewal, and also those who don't. We want to hear from everyone who has a stake in the success of this pivot point in Jewish life – whatever your denominational affiliation may be, and regardless of whether or not you see yourself as part of Jewish Renewal now.  The fact that you are reading this post is proof that you are part of the circle of people from whom we want to hear.

If you think what we're doing is worthwhile and want to support the Listening Tour and help launch the future of ALEPH and Jewish Renewal, please donate to ALEPH. (You can earmark your donation for the Listening Tour in the comments field at the bottom of the page.) And if you're in the Boston area, I hope to see you at B'nai Or for Shabbat davenen and the Open Mike / Lunch & Learn to follow.

A Jewish Renewal Simchat Torah

The sanctuary is full of people. A voice calls out "Ana Adonai, hoshia na!" ("Please, God, bring salvation!") and the whole room echoes it. "Ana Adonai, hatzlicha na!" ("Please, God, help us!") and the whole room echoes it. And then the band strikes up and everyone is singing "Aneinu, aneinu, b'yom koreinu" ("Answer us, answer us, on the day when we call!") Then the band shifts seamlessly into a wild whirling Hasidic niggun, and the whole room is singing, and all along the aisle people are standing with their hands raised to make a kind of London Bridge, and people dance beneath the raised hands carrying Torah scrolls. All around the sanctuary there is dancing: circle dancing, spiral dancing, people hoisting the Torah scrolls up like a wedding couple. The whole room is singing and dancing and rejoicing as though the Torah were the most joyful thing imaginable. It is wild. It is sweet. It is a kind of celebratory Jewish mosh pit. It is unlike anything else I have ever experienced.

Welcome to Simchat Torah at Romemu.

Here's the livestream. The Torahs come out of the ark around the 35-minute mark. Scroll to minute 45 to get a sense for what the hakafot were like. (If the embed isn't showing up for you, you can go to the video.)

One of the challenges of smalltown life is that it's not always easy to convene a quorum when minor holidays roll around. Maybe especially when those holidays come at the tail end of a dense and action-packed season of religious observance. The final holiday in the long round of fall observances is Simchat Torah, the festival of "rejoicing in the Torah." On Simchat Torah we sing and dance with the Torah. Sometimes we read the end of the Torah, followed immediately by the beginning.

Some communities unroll a Torah scroll from beginning to end, and people (wearing protective gloves so as not to hurt the parchment) hold it up in a giant circle, and then someone looks for a blessing for each person based on the verses near where their hands happen to be. (We did that here, some years ago.) Many communities dance seven circuits of the room while carrying the Torah -- one for each day of the week, one for each color of the rainbow, one for each of seven sefirot  / qualities of God.

Sometimes there's a special aliyah, an "ascent" to the Torah, for children. Sometimes there's constant singing and dancing. Sometimes the Torah is carried in a kind of festive parade around the sanctuary, preceded and followed by kids waving flags. One way or another, Simchat Torah is meant to be big, celebratory, raucous, joyful...and those things can be hard to provide in a small town shul, especially one where most people (including me!) have never experienced a big Simchat Torah celebration.

Plus, by this time of year, a lot of people have holiday fatigue. First there was Selichot, then the  cemetery service, two days of Rosh Hashanah, Shabbat Shuvah, five services on Yom Kippur, a week of Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret services with Yizkor, and what, you mean there's another holiday after all of that?! The last few years, it's been challenging to get anyone to show up for Simchat Torah. So we've let the holiday go, at least for now. In a small town community it's hard to do everything.

I had resigned myself to not having a Simchat Torah this year. But then I had an unexpected opportunity, at the last minute, to celebrate Simchat Torah with friends at Romemu, my friend Rabbi David Ingber's big Jewish Renewal shul in New York city. The invitation came, and I thought "...wow, that sounds amazing, I wonder whether that's possible?" Against all odds the stars aligned and I was able to make the trip. And holy wow, am I glad that I did. It was every bit as awesome as I had hoped.

During ma'ariv, the evening service, some of the niggunim which became liturgical melodies had a hauntingly familiar ring to them. Oh, wait, that wasn't festival nusach, that was the "Gilligan's Island" theme! And the theme to the "Brady Bunch!" There was a lot of laughter, and that was a wonderful way to begin the evening together. Laughter, and prayer, and singing with our arms around each other. The evening service was short and sweet and delightful -- a warm-up to the main event.

And then Reb David (Ingber, not Markus -- I am blessed with a lot of Reb Davids in my life) spoke about Simchat Torah. It's been a difficult week, he said. In a lot of places. And yet on this day we sing and dance with the Torah -- in the manner of the Hasidic masters, who also knew profound suffering, and who made the existential choice to sing and dance and rejoice not as a way of ignoring the suffering, but with full awareness of our broken places. We bring our brokenness into the dance.

And then the ark was opened, and the Torah scrolls came out, and Reb David invited everyone in their 70s to come up and lead the first hakafah, the first circle-dance with the Torah around the sanctuary. And a voice called out "Ana Adonai, hoshia na!" and the room echoed the traditional call-and-response which is part of our liturgy of celebratory psalms. And the voice called out "Ana Adonai, hatzlicha na!" and the room echoed. And then the band began to play, and everyone began to dance.

When the call came for everyone in their 40s to come up and lead a hakafah, I went. We sang the call and response, and the band began to play, and I joined the chain of people who ducked, laughing, to dance beneath the raised arms of the community. The human tunnel stretched halfway around the sanctuary. And then when we emerged from beneath those raised hands, we joined hands and danced a hora, a grapevine dance, a spiral dance, circles within circles with the Torahs in the middle.

I did a do-si-do with one of my best friends, and then with one of my beloved teachers, and then with my friend again. I danced and sang and spun until I was dizzy and out of breath and my heart was pounding like the bass and the drums and my heart vibrated like the saxophone and guitar. I collapsed into a seat, laughing and singing. I got up and danced again. I hugged people I love who I don't see very often (none of whom knew I was coming to the city, because this was such a last-minute miracle.)

This is what it means to be a Jew: not only to wrestle with Torah, not only to study and argue with Torah, but to dance with Torah. To dance with our story. The last letter of Torah is ל and the first letter is ב and when we put them together, end-to-beginning, we get לב, lev, which means heart. Torah is at the heart of who we are, and even when our hearts are broken, we embrace our story, we embrace each other, and we dance. By the time we had danced all seven hakafot, my whole being was uplifted.

And this morning I rode that spiritual updraft all the way back home.

Navigating transitions with grace - at the Wisdom Daily

...Watching my son learn to navigate transitions has given me more compassion for myself as I navigate my own emotional landscape. I have more life experience than he does, so I should be able to face transitions with less anxiety and more grace. And frequently I do. But I also struggle with beginnings and endings. I think everyone does.

One season gives way to the next. Summer vacation gives way to school. On the Jewish calendar, we've just moved from an old year into a new one. All of these transitions come bearing gifts - as well as challenges. And if that's true for annual transitions like the shift from summer to fall, how much more true it is for emotional transitions which may not follow any calendar or arise predictably....

That's a taste of my latest essay for The Wisdom Daily. Click through to read the whole thing: Can You Learn to Love Navigating Transitions?

All I have

All I have is love.
It doesn't feel like enough.
What can I give you?
I'm trying not to hide my light.

It doesn't feel like enough.
(I'm working on this,
and trying not to hide my light.)
What do you need?

I'm working on this:
can't I make offerings?
What do you need
to sweeten this day?

Can't I make offerings:
rose petals in your path
to sweeten this day?
I want to lay my words

like rose petals in your path,
the work of my hands.
I want to lay my words
at your feet, to nourish you.

The work of my hands.
What can I give you
at your feet, to nourish you?
All I have is love.

 

I'm spending some time revising the poems of yearning I've written in recent months -- many of which were written for #blogElul, others over the course of the summer -- into a rough draft of a chapbook manuscript. (Working title: Texts to the KBH. That's short for Kadosh Baruch Hu, "Holy One of Blessing" -- a common name for God.) This is one of the #blogElul poems which is undergoing some transformation; now it takes the form of a pantoum. (Here's the original.) If you like one version better than the other, let me know.

Sitting with sorrow in the sukkah

Sukkot is called זמן שמחתנו, zman simchateinu, which means "season of our rejoicing." But what does one do if one isn't able to rejoice at this season? If sorrow, or grief, are getting in the way of the ability to rejoice? What then? My answer is this: we bring whatever we are feeling, in its fullness, into the sukkah with us. Even if it isn't joy. Spiritual practice asks us to be present to what is, whatever it is.

There are five megillot (scrolls) in Jewish tradition which are associated with particular festivals. At Purim we read Esther. At Pesach, we read Song of Songs. At Shavuot, we read Ruth. At Tisha b'Av, we read Lamentations. And at Sukkot, we read Kohelet (in English, it's called Ecclesiastes.) Think "A time to be born, and a time to die..." In every life, there is a time for gladness, and a time for sorrow.

When I am wrestling with sorrow, there is comfort for me in the knowledge that everything comes and goes. "This too shall pass" -- even the deepest of grief. הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים הַכֹּל הָבֶל -- often rendered as "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity" -- can also be translated "Breath, breathing; everything is fleeting as a breath." Even our sorrows are not forever -- though they may feel that way when we are in them.

Sukkot is a festival of impermanence. For a week we do our best to dwell in our little harvest houses which must have roofs through which one can see the stars. We remind ourselves that the structures we build in our lives are not forever. The challenge is finding joy not despite the temporariness, but in it. Not despite life's sorrows, but even as we allow ourselves to wholly feel those sorrows.

Enter Rabbi Jay Michaelson's essay Entering the Gate of Sadness, published in Zeek in 2007. (Speaking of which, I'm looking really forward to reading his new book, The Gate of Tears: Sadness and the Spiritual Path, coming in a few days from Ben Yehuda Press.) Jay writes:

Sadness is not an expression of the heart to be discarded in favor of those which are better. To believe that everything happens as it must is not to be fatalistic and cowed; it is not to believe everything happens for the best; it is to understand that sadness is part of the unfolding of the God Process. Praise God with it. Even that which is not, apparently, for our best may be turned to an instrument of praise. Not by denying its painfulness, but by deeply seeing this soul, in this body, at this moment, as manifesting the unfolding of the One. The pain is real, and it is God.

For me the critical words there are "Not by denying its painfulness[.]" There is always a temptation to respond to sadness by shutting it down, or papering it over, or pretending it's not there. Maybe especially at times of year when we feel we're "supposed" to be happy -- at anniversaries or birthdays, at holidays. But spiritual practice calls us to resist the temptation to put a bandaid on what hurts.

The mitzvah of Sukkot is  לישב בסוכה / leishev ba-sukkah, to dwell -- literally, "to sit" -- in the sukkah. If your heart is breaking, then bring that into the sukkah and sit with it as best you can. Sitting in the sukkah can be a kind of embodied meditation, an opportunity to feel what comes and what goes. Torah tells us to rejoice in our festivals, but if you can't, that's okay. God is with you, wherever you are.

Maybe singing the praise-psalms of Hallel will "help," in the sense of lightening your heart, and maybe not. (You might find more resonance in מן המצר קראתי יה / min ha-meitzar karati Yah -- "From the narrow straits I called to You!" -- than in the more overtly joyful verses.) Either way, bring what is with you into the sukkah. Let yourself feel whatever you feel. And remember that this, too, shall pass.

 

Related: Joy, 2009.

 

The fourth of four lunar eclipses is on its way...

We in North America are about to experience the fourth of four total lunar eclipses in a row which, incredibly, have coincided with Pesach and Sukkot. The full moon of this Sukkot will be eclipsed (on Sept. 28), as was the full moon of Pesach last spring -- and the full moon of the previous Sukkot and Pesach, as well. Over these two years, the full moon marking these festival times has been eclipsed at the moments of perhaps the greatest joy in the Jewish calendar – at Pesach, when we experience freedom from the Narrow Place, and at Sukkot, when we enter with thanksgiving into our fragile and impermanent harvest houses...

That's the beginning of an essay I wrote jointly with my dear friend and ALEPH co-chair Rabbi David Markus. (Slightly updated to reflect the fact that we're approaching the fourth eclipse rather than the first.) I shared it here a couple of years ago when we first wrote it, but it seems worth sharing again as we approach the final eclipse in the series: Four eclipses; four worlds; four holidays; four holy perspective shifts.

Do, Hear, and Be Changed - a sermon for Yom Kippur morning 5776

I'm doing something new with our b'nei mitzvah kids this year. (Credit where it's due: this is an idea I adapted from my friend and teacher Rabbi Burt Jacobson of Kehilla Community Synagogue in the Bay Area.) It's called Mitzvah Experimentation.

I brought this to our seventh graders in our first Hebrew school class of the year. The first thing we talked about was, what's a mitzvah. Some of them said "good deed," which is a fine answer, though not a direct translation. Others said "a commandment," which is what the word mitzvah means. A mitzvah is something which we are commanded to do, or to not do.

Commanded by whom? The most traditional answer is God. That word raises some eyebrows. Not all of my students are certain that they believe in God. What if you don't believe in God -- does that scotch the mitzvot?

There's a story about Reb Zalman z"l, the teacher of my teachers, faced with someone who didn't believe in God. He asked that person to tell him about the God they didn't believe in. Because "maybe the God you don't believe in, I don't believe in either!" Over the millennia we've thought about God, talked about God, and described God in all kinds of different ways. Some of those ways work for me. Some don't. Some might work for you; some might not. The name "God" can mean a lot of different things. And if my students want to talk about that, I'm happy to do so.

But when I go deeper into the question, what I hear is: if I don't believe in God, do the mitzvot matter? I think they do. And I'm not alone in that. There's a longstanding tradition of Jewish atheists and agnostics practicing mitzvot alongside Jews who have faith in or experience of God. It turns out you can be Jewish -- and maybe more importantly you can do Jewish -- whether or not you "believe" in "God."

The Hebrew word mitzvah is related to the Aramaic tzavta, connection. A mitzvah is something which connects us. Doing mitzvot is what our ancestors did -- maybe our genetic ancestors, and maybe our spiritual ancestors who lived Jewish lives in eras before our own. Doing mitzvot can be be a way of investing one's life with meaning. And I believe that doing mitzvot can connect us with God -- though each of my students is going to have to figure out what that means to them.

Are these reasons important enough to merit taking on the mitzvot? Our b'nei mitzvah students won't know until they try them on. That's what mitzvah experimentation is about. I gave my students a list of twenty mitzvot. Ten are mitzvot bein adam l'makom, between a person and God, and ten are mitzvot bein adam l'chavero, between a person and another person.

Praying in community, fasting for Yom Kippur, lighting Shabbat candles, studying Torah, building a sukkah next week and then rejoicing in it -- these are mitzvot bein adam l'makom, mitzvot which take place in the space between us and God, us and our Source.

Feeding the hungry, as we do each month when our Take and Eat volunteers cook meals for 200 homebound seniors who would otherwise go hungry; giving tzedakah; making a conscious effort to respect one's parents, both inwardly and outwardly -- these are mitzvot bein adam l'chavero, between one person and another.

Each kid will choose two mitzvot from each list, and will dedicate one month of the school year to practicing each mitzvah. After spending a month immersed in each of their four chosen mitzvot, each student will give a report to the class about which mitzvah he chose, how he practiced it, what the experience was like for him, and how the month-long experiment with that mitzvah changed him.

For me, that's a big piece of what mitzvah experimentation is about, and a big piece of what Jewish life writ large is about: openness to being changed. There's a famous moment in Torah when Moshe has communicated to the children of Israel not only the Ten Commandments but also a list of other mitzvot which came along with them, and the children of Israel say נעשה ונשמע/ na'aseh v'nishma, "We will do and we will hear."

The sages of our tradition seized on that phrase. What does it mean to say "we will do and we will hear" -- wouldn't you think it would be the other way around? If I tell my child to get dressed for school, he has to hear my words before he can do what I've asked. It's not fair to expect him to do the thing before he hears me, is it?

Even if we expand the definition of "hearing" -- maybe it's not about literally hearing the instruction, but about understanding it -- the verse is still tricky. Surely it's better to understand something before one tries to do it? Jewish tradition says otherwise. Jewish tradition says, sometimes we have to do in order to understand.

This is a dance which has been going on for thousands of years. It's as old as Judaism, and so is this question: when we dance with the mitzvot, when we dance with God, who "leads"? How much of it is dictated by our Partner, and how much depends on us? And what matters more: doing the steps without mistakes, or doing the steps with heart?

In the early centuries of the Common Era our sages argued: is it better to recite the words of the Shema perfectly without feeling their meaning, or is it better to focus on feeling the meaning even if one errs in saying the words? And relatedly: should one wait to say the words until the feeling is there?

The same questions might be asked of what we're doing today. Is it better to recite the prayers of Yom Kippur without feeling their meaning, or to focus on feeling the meaning even if we don't say all of the words? Should we wait to say these words, or wait to fast, until we "feel like it"? What if we never "feel like it"?

The tension between doing and feeling does matter. We don't want our religious lives to be dry structures with no heart in them. But we also don't want our religious lives to unfold only when the feeling is already there. Sometimes we need to do in order to feel. We hear the music in a different way when we give ourselves over to the dance.

I don't know what our bar mitzvah boys (and yes, this year they're all boys) will feel, or understand, or experience, as they try on different mitzvot. I'm looking forward to learning from them.

I invite y'all to experience a taste of what our bar mitzvah boys are doing. I'm asking them to choose four mitzvot and spend one month practicing each. My invitation to you is to choose one mitzvah this year, and dive into it as deeply as you are willing and able to go. (Here is a copy of the list of mitzvot I gave to the bar mitzvah class: Twenty Mitzvot [pdf].)

Try a new mitzvah this year in solidarity with our bar mitzvah boys, and model for them what it's like to be an adult who's still learning and growing. Or try a mitzvah you've done before, but do it now in a more sustained way. And then make an appointment with me, and tell me how practicing that mitzvah has changed you.

If you are like me -- and I suspect that you are -- you may be feeling some discomfort around the idea that a practice will change you. It sounds like giving up agency. It sounds like admitting that you need to be changed. Maybe, like me, you're thinking: but I don't want to change. I like myself how I already am. I don't need to be changed. Actually I'll bet it's not even going to change me.

We all feel that resistance. Even the rabbi. Change is hard, and accepting that we might need to change is even harder. We can all come up with a million reasons why we are the way we are, why our existing habits suit us, why we can't possibly do things differently.

We make excuses. I've been yearning to make havdalah every week, but then I think: I can't possibly impose that on my family. My prayer life is perfunctory sometimes, but then I think: that's normal for a working parent, it's not anything I need to fix. I don't always speak my mind and heart in all of my relationships, but then I think: better not to rock the boat. I know I should be more engaged in the struggle for social justice, but then I think: I can't add anything else to my already-full plate...

Yom Kippur comes every year to remind us that change is not optional. Without change, there is stasis, and stasis is death. Yom Kippur comes to remind us that our habits of body, heart, mind, and soul become calcified and constricting. That each year we miss the mark in our habitual ways, and each year we have the opportunity to break free from those habits and become someone new.

Our sages see Yom Kippur as a rehearsal for our death. Some of us wear white, like the burial shrouds in which we will all someday be buried. Many of us fast from food and drink, as those who have died no longer savor the tastes of this world. We recite a vidui, a confessional prayer, as we will recite a vidui on our deathbeds.

The sages say, make teshuvah -- repent; return; align yourself with God again -- on the day before your death. We never know when the day before our death might be, which means we should be making teshuvah all the time. If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what in your life would you wish were different? What would you wish you had changed while you still had the chance?

What are the truths you've been afraid to speak -- to yourself; in your relationships; to God? If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, would you feel free to speak them at last, so you could leave this life with a clean slate and light heart? Yom Kippur comes to urge us: speak those truths now. Don't wait.

Every day is an opportunity to wake up and to shake off old fears and old habits which no longer serve us. Every day is an opportunity to live more fully into the mitzvot, and to let the practice of mitzvot change us. And because it's human nature to resist change, our tradition gives us Yom Kippur as a day dedicated to this uncomfortable life-changing work.

Yom Kippur calls us to face ourselves, in all of our imperfections and with all of our resistance. Today invites us to ask: what are we so afraid of?

Are we afraid that we'll have to admit to ourselves that we could have been better people, we could have been truer to ourselves, we could have lived with more mindfulness and more integrity and more connection with God every moment of our lives until now?

Are we afraid that we'll have to admit to ourselves that we've sold ourselves short, that we've been settling for less, that we've taken the path of least resistance instead of seeking continued change and growth in our lives?

What's worse: having to admit that I could have been better before now, but committing myself now to embracing my changes and the fullness of who I can be -- or refusing to admit that, and therefore never growing, never changing, never deepening my spiritual practice or my relationships or how I am in the world?

Yom Kippur comes to remind us: there's no time like the present. In fact, there's no time but the present. And Yom Kippur comes to remind us: this isn't actually so hard. As we read this morning:

 כִּ֚י הַמִּצְוָ֣ה הַזֹּ֔את אֲשֶׁ֛ר אָנֹכִ֥י מְצַוְּךָ֖ הַיּ֑וֹם לֹא־נִפְלֵ֥את הִוא֙ מִמְּךָ֔ וְלֹא־רְחֹקָ֖ה הִוא: לֹ֥א בַשָּׁמַ֖יִם הִ֑וא לֵאמֹ֗ר מִ֣י יַעֲלֶה־לָּ֤נוּ הַשָּׁמַ֨יְמָה֙ וְיִקָּחֶ֣הָ לָּ֔נוּ וְיַשְׁמִעֵ֥נוּ אֹתָ֖הּ וְנַעֲשֶׂנָּה: וְלֹא־מֵעֵ֥בֶר לַיָּ֖ם הִ֑וא לֵאמֹ֗ר מִ֣י יַעֲבָר־לָ֜נוּ אֶל־עֵ֤בֶר הַיָּם֙ וְיִקָּחֶ֣הָ לָּ֔נוּ וְיַשְׁמִעֵ֥נוּ אֹתָ֖הּ וְנַעֲשֶׂנָּה: כִּי־קָר֥וֹב אֵלֶ֛יךָ הַדָּבָ֖ר מְאֹ֑ד בְּפִ֥יךָ וּבִלְבָבְךָ֖ לַעֲשׂתוֹ:

Surely, this mitzvah that I enjoin upon you today is not so wondrous for you, and it is not so far. It is not in the heavens that one should say, "Who shall go up into the heavens for us and get it for us that we will hear it and do it?" It is not over the sea that one should say, "Who will cross over to the other side of the sea for us to get it for us that we will hear it and do it?" The word is very close to you, in your own mouth and in your heart to do it.

The mitzvot are right here within our grasp. They will change us, if we let them. Just as life will change us, if we let it. Everything we experience offers us an opportunity to become more conscious, more compassionate, more mindful. Every mitzvah invites us to let go a little bit, and to let something greater than ourselves in.

Our people's dance with the mitzvot has been going on for thousands of years. The dance is what changes us: not necessarily any given set of steps, but the fact that we're willing to take the risk of entering into the dance, and to keep dancing.

Na'aseh v'nishmah. "We will do, and we will hear." Yom Kippur calls us to do. Do, and then listen for the still small voice of your own soul. Do, and then hear. Dance, and let yourself be changed.

 

Almost Yom Kippur

Yom Kippur begins tonight at sundown. We'll wear white garments as a sign of purity, or as a reminder of our mortality. We'll eschew leather, choosing instead to symbolize our conscious vulnerability with soft canvas shoes. (More about both of those here if you are interested.) We'll go without food or drink for 24 hours, subsisting instead on song and praise. (That makes me think of the last time I was with my Jewish Renewal community...)

Yom Kippur is a day set aside from ordinary life -- like Shabbat, only more so. It's a day for reminding ourselves of what's most important. On Yom Kippur we remember that we will die, and we think about what changes we need to make in our lives so that when we do leave this life we will feel that we lived as righteously and as well and as meaningfully as we could. On Yom Kippur we set aside the needs of the body and focus instead on the needs of the soul.

Yom Kippur is a day for intense teshuvah -- repentance, return, turning-around, turning our lives around, turning to face God again, returning to who we most truly and deeply are. Some of us have been engaged in introspection and cheshbon ha-nefesh (taking an accounting of the soul) since the start of Elul, the lunar month which preceded this one. Some of us have been doing that work since Rosh Hashanah. And some of us may begin doing that work on Yom Kippur, in what feels like the eleventh hour. It's never too late. The great 12th-century sage Rambam (also known as Maimonides) taught that one who makes teshuvah is more beloved to God than one who never messed up in the first place. He taught that one who makes teshuvah rises closer to God than one who has never sinned.

I love Yom Kippur. I have loved it ever since my first Jewish Renewal Yom Kippur retreat at the old Elat Chayyim, and that love was intensified through the years of Yom Kippur retreats which followed (until I was privileged to begin serving my shul.) I love Yom Kippur because the Zohar teaches that it is the day when God is closest to us and most available to us, when we can most powerfully create repair in our broken souls and in the broken world. I love Yom Kippur because it is a day dedicated to prayer, song, Torah, introspection, inner work -- things I love deeply, and on Yom Kippur I get to share them with others. I love Yom Kippur because it is always a journey, and I never know exactly what it's going to feel like, but I trust that I will emerge on the other side feeling emptied, opened, and purified.

May your Yom Kippur be meaningful and sweet. G'mar chatimah tovah -- may we all be sealed for good in the year to come.

Seeking out the goodness: a teaching from Reb Nachman

You have to judge every person generously. Even if you have reason to think that person is completely wicked, it's your job to look hard and seek out some bit of goodness, someplace in that person where he is not evil. When you find that bit of goodness, and judge that person that way, you really may raise her up to goodness. Treating people this way allows them to be restored, to come to teshuvah.

That's the Hasidic master Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, as translated by Rabbi Art Green. It's one of my favorite teachings from Reb Nachman. My friend and colleague Maggid David Arfa brought it to the first meeting of my congregation's Hebrew school faculty this year, and he began the meeting by reading it to us. It's a text I've encountered many times before, and every time it speaks to me anew.

Honestly, even just the first sentence  -- dayenu, that could be enough for me to meditate on for a while. "You have to judge every person generously." That's a profound spiritual practice. It's easy to see my beloveds through generous eyes -- but someone who has upset me? Someone who has hurt me? Someone who did or said something I find reprehensible -- can I judge that one generously, too?

This is why the Psalmist said, "Just a little bit more and there will be no wicked one; you will look at his place and he will not be there." (Psalms 37:10.) He tells us to judge one and all so generously, so much on the good side, even if we think they're sinful as can be. By looking for that "little bit," the place however small within them where there is no sin (and everyone, after all, has such a place) and by telling them, showing them, that that's who they are we can help them change their lives.

The spiritual practice is looking for that "little bit," the nitzotz Elohut (spark of godliness), in each human being. Every person has such a spark within them, and if I make a practice of trying to see people through generous eyes instead of through skeptical or mistrustful eyes, my very seeing of them will be transformative for them, and they will live out their best selves instead of their worst selves.

That's a powerful theological statement about the power of being truly seen. Imagine if everyone who looked at me saw in me the very best things I have done. Imagine if, looking at me, what you saw was me at my most compassionate, my most kind, my most caring. You wouldn't be able to  impute ill will to me, because you would see my best self... and as a result, my best self would continue to manifest.

Even the person you think (and he agrees!) is completely rotten -- how is it possible that at some point in his life he has not done some good deed, some mitzvah? Your job is to look for it, to seek it out, and then to judge him that way. Then indeed you will "look at his place" and find that the wicked one is no longer there -- not because she has died or disappeared -- but because, with your help, she will no longer be where you first saw her. By seeking out that bit of goodness you allowed teshuvah to take its course.

Even someone I think is completely beyond the pale. Even someone who has hurt me profoundly. Even someone who doesn't see the goodness in her or his own self! My task is to seek to see the goodness in that person, and in so doing, to erase my sense of their wickedness or their hurtfulness. My task is to see them anew, because when I see them anew, they become the way I newly see them.

It's a leap of faith. There's a defensive part of me which wants to say, "wait a minute -- how does that work -- surely it can't be true that if I just try to see someone through good eyes, they become their best selves in response to my seeing!" But I think that very defensiveness is a sign that Reb Nachman is on to something. And his wisdom here requires us to take on some substantial spiritual work.

So now, my clever friend, now that you know how to treat the wicked and find some bit of good in them -- now go do it for yourself as well! You know what I have taught you: "Take great care: be happy always! Stay far, far away from sadness and depression." I've said it to you more than once. I know what happens when you start examining yourself. "No goodness at all," you find. "Just full of sin." Watch out for Old Man Gloom, my friend, the one who wants to push you down. This is one of his best tricks. That's why I said: "Now go do it for yourself as well." You too must have done some good for someone sometime. Now go look for it!

I love the turn he takes at the end of this teaching. "Now that you've found some good even in a person who is difficult for you, don't forget to turn those same positive eyes on yourself!" It's a useful thing to read before Yom Kippur, at this time of teshuvah, of taking an accounting of which relationships need repair. It's easy to look at what's broken or damaged and blame myself for what needs re-aligning.

But Reb Nachman says: ah-ah, not so fast. I too merit the same generous eye with which he teaches me to seek to view others. The work of cheshbon ha-nefesh, of taking an accounting of the soul, isn't meant to make us feel bad about ourselves. (And neither is Yom Kippur, for the record.) It's meant to help us illuminate our innate goodness, so that we can enter into teshuvah with rejoicing.

 

 

I blogged about this same text in 2006.