Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 136

Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah for Pesach, Version 8

The full moon of the month of Shvat was last night. (Happy Tu BiShvat!) A month from now, at the next full moon, we'll celebrate Purim. And a month after that, at the next full moon, we'll celebrate Pesach!

Okay, so most of you probably aren't thinking about Passover yet. But just in case you are...

If you're looking for a free downloadable haggadah which tells the story of the Exodus with traditional texts alongside creative interpretations; offers classical material alongside contemporary poetry; honors new traditions as well as old ones; and interweaves song, story, prayer, and opportunity for community participation; you might dig the Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah for Pesach.

The Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah for Pesach, Version 8 (2015)

available on the haggadah page at my website

(also on that page: many kind things which others have said about the haggadah over the years!)

or download here:  VRHaggadah [pdf, 4.1 MB]

 

It's four years since the last full version (7.1) came out, so I figured it was time for an update. New in this version:

a better Hebrew font, in which all of the vowels are clear (now matching the font in Days of Awe)
clearer page design (now matching the look and feel of Days of Awe), as well as more transliteration
many new poems, including (but not limited to) poetry by Linda Pastan, Primo Levi, Lisa Greene, Yehuda Amichai, Luisa A. Igloria
a rendering of the prayer "This is the bread of our affliction" not only in Aramaic (and English) but also in Ladino, courtesy of Rabba Emily Aviva Kapor, along with a teaching of hers
a new teaching from Rabbi Jill Hammer, from Pirkei Imahot / the Sayings of the Mothers
another alternative to the traditional Four Sons text by Tamara Cohen, Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, and Ronnie Horn (of course the classical text also still appears, as does Reb Zalman z"l's creative reinterpretation, as does Ben Aronin's singable English ballad along with Howard Cruse's fabulous illustration)
some poems about Miriam to balance the material about Moses
three different options for the classical prayer "Pour out Your wrath"
before Had Gadya, a poem ("Poem for the Kansas Shootings") by Rabbi Michael Rothbaum
...and much more!

As always, the haggadah is available to all -- download it, use it, share it. Let all who are hungry come and eat; let all who are needy have the resources they need to celebrate the Passover!

 

 

Whoops!

Those of you who subscribe to this blog via email received a draft post yesterday which was not at all intended to go live. The post contained a poem for the tenth day of the Omer, the journey of 49 days which we count between Pesach and Shavuot, between our festival of liberation and our festival of revelation.

The poem is a very early draft and was not intended for prime time. Also, of course, it is not the tenth day of the Omer! My apologies for the inadvertent spam email. And as for the final version of that Omer poem, you'll just have to wait until April...

Calling all psalmists! And, an event featuring women writers of faith.

 

On March 10 from 3-4:30pm I'm going to be teaching a workshop on writing one's own psalms. The workshop is being offered as part of the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers, and will be free and open to the public. Here's the official description of the class:

Writing Your Own Psalms

The psalms are a deep repository of praise, thanksgiving, grief, and exaltation, an ancient collection of poetry which also functions as prayer. In this class, each of us will become a psalmist. We'll explore what makes a psalm, read psalms both classical and contemporary, talk about the emotional tenor of the psalms and how they work both as poetry and as prayer, warm up our intellectual muscles with generative writing exercises, and enter into a safe space for creativity as we each write our own psalms. After sharing our psalms aloud and sharing our responses to each others' work, we'll close with a psalm of thanksgiving for our time together.

If you're interested in the intersection of poetry and psalms, and if you live in or near western Massachusetts, I hope you'll join us.  The workshop will take place at Congregation Beth Israel - 53 Lois Street in North Adams, MA. If you're interested in signing up, please leave a comment to let me know.

I'm also participating in the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers in another way; I'm delighted to announce that I will be participating in a panel discussion / group reading, along with Sokunthary Svay, Liz Goodman, and Hannah Fries. Here's the description of that event:

In the Beginning Was the Word: A reading and panel of women writers of faith

In her book The Nakedness of the Fathers, poet Alicia Ostriker writes, "By the time the spiritual imagination of women has expressed itself as fully and variously as that of men, to be sure, whatever humanity means by God, religion, holiness, and truth will be completely transformed." This multigenre reading and panel discussion will feature four Berkshire women writers -- with backgrounds in Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism -- whose work is influenced by their faith, either overtly or just beneath the surface.  The participants will each give a short reading and speak about the intersection of their life in writing, their life in faith, and how the two intertwine.

The reading and panel discussion (also free and open to the public) will take place on Monday, March 16, at the First Congregational Church of Stockbridge, 4 Main Street, at 7pm. I hope to see you there!

Day 10 of the Omer

 

DAY 10: JOURNEY


The tenth day:
fortune cookie says, find balance
within constraint. Even bound
to the count, you're free
to stargaze while you wait.
Are we there

yet? Do we even know where there
is? Once a cloud by day,
a fire by night showed us when to wait
and when to leap, the balance
between movement (free)
and stillness (bound).

As we trek toward Sinai, we're bound
to have days when there's
nothing can stop us, we're free
to dance -- and days
when mud sucks our shoes, we lose balance
-- even fall backwards. Wait

and discern the path ahead, the weight
of ancient trauma falling away. Bound
like lambs across the hilltops! Balance
with the patient angels. There
will come, I promise you, a day
when we encamp around the mountain, free

to receive transmission. Free
yourself from expectation. Wait
until you see the voice that day!
You don't have to believe it now, bound
by old scripts. Once you're there
harmony will hang in the balance

of old and new, balance
of rearview mirror and windshield free
from roadsalt's cloud. There's
much to be said for learning how to wait,
how to live within the bounds
of celebrating what God has made today.

Balance urge to run, willingness to wait.
The trip is free. Blessings abound.
Trust you'll be there on the 50th day.

 

 

Today is the tenth day of the Omer, making one week and three days of the Omer. Today is the tenth day on our 49-day journey between Pesach and Shavuot, liberation and revelation.

In the kabbalistic paradigm, today is the day of tiferet (balance and harmony) within the week of gevurah (boundaries, strength, judgement.)

Today's poem is a sestina, one of my favorite poetic forms. (If you click on the "sestina" tag in the sidebar you'll see the many others which I've posted here over the years.)

Ten days down, 39 to go. What is the journey like for you so far?

Community without borders: gathering with RWB

I'm returning today to the Pearlstone retreat center outside of Baltimore for the Rabbis Without Borders Fellows alumni retreat. This will be my second year attending the alumni fellows retreat (fellows alumni? alumni fellows?  people who've completed the Rabbis Without Borders fellowship) and based on my experience last year, I know I'm going to have a good time.

RWB Fellows are smart, thoughtful, interesting people. They approach spiritual life in meaningful ways. And because they come from across the Jewish denominations, they're all already ready and willing to learn and dine and daven and connect with people who "do Jewish" differently than they do.

Last year I wrote:

"What does it mean to be a rabbi without borders?" people ask. "Is it like Doctors Without Borders? Do you travel the world?" Not in the sense of accruing more stamps on my passport. The travel is between perspectives and viewpoints, not between nations.

Longtime readers know that I went to a transdenominational rabbinic school where students and faculty from all of the major streams or denominations of Judaism learned together. There are three such seminaries now, though I believe that ALEPH was the first, and ALEPH is unique in its explicitly Jewish Renewal orientation. Anyway: my whole adventure of rabbinic school learning was a transdenominational one. My primary context for rabbinic community has always involved people from different Jewish backgrounds with differing Jewish practices.

For that reason, although I knew I would enjoy the Rabbis Without Borders fellowship, I wasn't sure how groundbreaking or new it would feel to me. After all, sitting around a study table with Jews ranging from Reform to Orthodox was already a familiar part of my worldview, and so was the assumption that there is a multiplicity of valid paths toward truth.

So maybe it's not surprising that my experience of RWB/Clal has been in many ways parallel to my experience of ALEPH. It's not so much that the passionate pluralism of RWB feels new, as that it's a delight to discover another transdenominational rabbinic hevre (community of colleagues and friends) who share my ideals and my yearning to bring Judaism and God-connection to those who thirst.

(Here's the whole post from last year: On my two rabbinic communities, Rabbis Without Borders and ALEPH.) Everything I wrote then holds true now. I experience a lot of common ground between these two rabbinic communities... and both of them feel "borderless," in the sense that we transcend and include a variety of viewpoints and practices, and also in the sense that we are geographically dispersed; our community transcends borders because what connects us isn't geographic or doctrinal, it's heart and attitude and soul.

I'm looking really forward to reconnecting with this group, and to coming away with new ideas and new Torah percolating in my mind and my heart. The fellows alumni retreat is self-run; different fellows will offer sessions, text study, davenen, and so on. I don't know, going in, which sessions will resonate most with me -- but I know that the conversations will be grand, and I know that I'll come home enriched and ready to bring new wisdom to the community I'm blessed to serve.

Revising Days of Awe

One of the great pleasures for me of last year's Days of Awe was getting to co-lead davenen (with the fabulous student hazzan Randall Miller) using a pilot edition of Days of Awe, the machzor which I created building on the wonderful work of Rabbi Jeff Goldwasser. Days of Awe was several years in the making, and went through more than thirty printed proof drafts -- and, of course, once we used it in realtime for our high holiday services, I found things which I wanted to fix. I knew that would happen; that's why this was a pilot edition! Still, it was interesting to see what needed revision.

Some of the edits are minor, e.g. places where two Hebrew vowels were trying to occupy the same space and therefore looked blurred, or Hebrew typos which needed a global find-and-replace, or places where I left out a line of transliteration. Others are more substantive. For instance, after the Days of Awe were over, I translated a relevant Lea Goldberg poem and now I want to include it in Ne'ilah. Or I realized while leading services last fall that I wanted to include the Hebrew refrain for "We Are As Clay." Or I realized that I hadn't included "Eliahu Hanavi" and "Miriam HaNeviah."

I've been working this winter on revising Days of Awe toward a second edition. Some additions, some subtractions, some general improvements. I've made a point of not changing any of the pagination. So if a community has copies of the pilot edition and then augments their collection with copies of the second edition, their prayer leader will still be able to give page numbers and they will work for both versions. The nifty material which is new to the second edition won't be in the first-edition volumes -- but a creative shaliach tzibbur (prayer leader) should be able to work around that.

I'm uploading revised versions of both manuscripts (the right-to-left edition and the left-to-right edition) now. I plan to order a printer's proof of each, and spend some quality time with it, to make sure that I'm happy with how the changes look in print. (I may also reconvene my editorial / proofreading team.) What this means for everyone else is that Days of Awe is temporarily unavailable while I'm proofing the second edition. I assume that most people aren't thinking about the high holidays during January and February, so I figured this was a good time to do this work.

If you used Days of Awe last fall in your congregation or in your own solo prayer, and have suggestions to offer for the second edition, I welcome them!

 

 

For the birds

Woodpecker, snacking.

 

I love our bird feeder. Okay, in fairness, it's not the feeder itself that I love -- that's just a tube of plexiglass with some little bird rests attached. It's the birds who come to the feeder. The juncos and chickadees and sparrows and occasional woodpecker who spend the winter visiting our deck and supping at the repast of mixed birdseed that we provide. I love to watch them from inside.

Often I marvel. They are so tiny, especially the black-capped chickadees. January temperatures here can be arctic. How can something so small sustain itself when the air around it is so cold? It seems as though they ought to just freeze and drop like stones. How can their tiny hearts keep beating? How can their feathers insulate them enough to withstand this level of bitter cold?

But this is their native habitat. (And though I've been here for more than twenty years, it isn't mine; perhaps that's why I still boggle at the profusion of wildlife which flourishes not despite the winter but because this is the climate for which these creatures and plants evolved.) These birds are apparently perfectly content to winter over, and I'm grateful for that, because they cheer me.

When our son and I step outside first thing in the morning to go to preschool, we are often greeted with the sound of a woodpecker, hidden somewhere on the forested hill which abuts the house. "Shhh!" our son will say to me, and we both stand stock-still and wait, and just when it seems as though the sound isn't going to come again, we hear it: rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. And we both beam.

I feel an obligation to the birds. I don't bother to feed them in the summertime; at that time of year, the world is filled with living things for their delectation. But in winter, I feel as though they depend on me. I like being here for them. And when I see them swooping through the air to land on the feeder, and then swooping away to the trees beyond our hillside, my heart swells with gratitude.

What the birds do naturally -- fly, most of all; sing their particular songs, making sounds I can only attempt to imitate; thrive to preen and roost even in the snow, even though they're tiny -- is inconceivable to me. And every time I'm reminded of how amazing the birds are, I remember again that there's more to the world, even the simple world on this hill, than I can understand.

 

Sylvan stirrings in the still and chill of winter

For those who don't live locally -- here's the Rabbi Reflections column I wrote for the Jan/Feb 2015 issue of the Berkshire Jewish Voice. (I didn't come up with the title, though I quite like it.)

Every winter, as we turn the page on the secular calendar and welcome the Gregorian new year, I begin to look forward to Tu BiShvat, the New Year of the Trees. For me, Tu BiShvat is the first step away from midwinter and toward the longer days and brighter light of spring.

Every year I remind myself that a good cold snowy winter, followed by late-winter days where the temperatures skate above freezing and dip again at nightfall, ensures a good maple syrup harvest. I await the days when steam will rise from sugar shacks across the region -- a kind of secular Tu BiShvat, celebrating the trees and the gifts they bring.

I didn't grow up celebrating Tu BiShvat, but it has become one of my favorite holidays, perhaps in part because of where and when it falls in the cycle of our festival year. It begins a series of months during which we celebrate something wonderful at every full moon: first Tu BiShvat, then Purim, then Pesach. (Except during leap years, when there's an extra month of Adar -- but this isn't a leap year.) These festivals are stepping-stones across the season's frozen expanse.

Living in New England where the trees are leafless and seem dormant at this season, I love Tu BiShvat's reminder to celebrate the glory of nature even at this moment in the year. I love taking time, in deep winter, to thank God for the abundance we receive from the trees of our world. And I love thinking about how human beings too are like trees. Just as trees need sun and water and earth in order to flourish, so too we need light and fluidity and rootedness in our own lives.

At Tu BiShvat many of us read an excerpt from the Talmudic story of Honi the Circle-Drawer, who mocked a man for planting a carob tree which takes seventy years to bear fruit. "Just as my grandparents planted trees for me," the man replies, "so do I plant for my grandchildren." It's a fine environmental sentiment: we must care for our earth so that the planet will be here for our children's children.

But the continuation of the story -- not usually read at Tu BiShvat seders -- is equally compelling to me. Honi falls asleep for 70 years, a kind of Jewish Rip Van Winkle. When he wakes, he sees the grandson of the man who planted, now harvesting the carob.

Then he visits the house of study where he once learned. He finds students lamenting the fact that they no longer understand Torah as clearly as did (the now legendary) Honi the Circle-Drawer. "That's me," he exclaims, but no one believes him. He dies, whereupon the Talmudic sage Rava says, "Hence the saying 'Either companionship or death.'"

What can we make of the latter part of this tale? For me, the first part of the story is about the vertical connections of one generation to the next; the second part of the story is about the horizontal connections of one friend to another. Honi becomes uprooted in time. And without being known for who he is, he can no longer thrive.

We all derive sustenance from being part of a communal context. We all yearn to be known and recognized and cherished for who we are.

As we approach Tu BiShvat this year, may we experience rootedness in our own generation, our own communities, our own context -- even as we reflect back with gratitude on generations before us, and hope for sweetness for generations to come.

 

 

Tu BiShvat, the full moon of the month of Shvat, falls on Feb. 4 on the Gregorian calendar this year. (If you're in western Mass, you're welcome to join us at my shul on the following Shabbat morning, Feb. 7, for a vegetarian / dairy potluck lunchtime seder. RSVPs are requested; here's more information about that.)

 

...Not off to Gambier

Today I was supposed to be heading to Gambier, Ohio for a very quick visit. Gambier is a town of about 2300 people and is home to Kenyon College. Kenyon College, in turn, hosts the Kenyon Institute where I will be teaching next summer. I was meant to go there for a night and a morning to engage in a brief but intensive process of planning for the Beyond Walls Spiritual Writing Institute.

This is what I expected to see in Gambier.

(It's also more or less what I'd be leaving back home: snow and college buildings.)

I was looking forward to getting an advance glimpse of Gambier (though surely its January face is different from the face it wears in July!) and to spending a night and part of a day with the rest of the faculty planning our workshops and sessions and brainstorming about how we want the week to unfold.  We were going to plan curricula, plenary sessions, and opportunities for spiritual practice.

Then a nor'easter made itself known. (See Potentially Historic Blizzard Taking Aim On New England.) The storm has a few repercussions for me. Ethan's having a tougher-than-expected time getting home from Cebu, where he's been for the Global Voices Summit on Protecting the Open Internet. Our son's preschool is likely to close. And there is absolutely no way I'm flying to Ohio today. 

That said, so far I've been really impressed with how this program is coming together. The organizers are thoughtful, engaged, and genuinely passionate about providing an amazing week of spiritual writing instruction to clergy and spiritual directors of all stripes. Based on our emails and phone conversations thus far, I'm expecting our time in Ohio in July to be thought-provoking and rich.

Need a refresher on the Beyond Walls Spiritual Writing Institute? Here you go:

You already feel confident writing to those you know in your church or synagogue. Yet clergy of all faiths tell us that there’s another conversation that matters, outside their institution’s walls, among those who aren’t there for services, but are reading, thinking, caring about living a moral and spiritual life. This is your chance to learn the best ways to join that conversation.

This one-week writing intensive program teaches you how to be a more expressive, authentic, and skilled writer, honing what you have to say and becoming more proficient and current in how to say it in media as diverse as op-eds, blogs, the personal essay, and social media. Our multi-faith approach is founded on the belief that our writing traditions have something to teach one another. Seminars and lectures by some of the most prolific and respected spiritual writers today will help develop your personal voice as a spiritual exponent in your community.

The list of faculty and speakers is fantastic. If you are a spiritual director or clergyperson (of whatever stripe), I hope you'll consider joining us. Enrollment is limited and I know we're already getting some terrific applicants, so if this sounds up your alley, please apply soon.

And if you're in the path of this potentially-historic nor'easter, stay warm and dry, y'all.

Deep winter

Winter in the city is unlovely, all slush and grit. But even here in the country it's not always a picture postcard. Snow which was soft and fluffy when it fell has thawed and refrozen. Driveways are uneven hockey rinks of lumpy ice. Hillsides which had been white are scraped with grey and brown. The small river which runs through Williamstown is jumbled with ice. Cars are gritty and crusted with dirty slush and rock salt. On cloudy days, everything feels frozen and grey.

The twinkling lights of December are well behind us, and the first glimmers of the coming spring are too far ahead to anticipate. The new moon of the lunar month of Shvat has just begun to wax; we're almost two weeks away from the full moon which will herald Tu BiShvat, the New Year of the Trees. And besides, here in the Berkshires Tu BiShvat is still deep winter. The almond trees may be preparing to bloom in the Middle East, but God knows nothing is blooming here.

Winter's novelty has worn off, well before winter itself is even thinking about unclenching. For a lot of us, this can be a difficult season. I'm not talking about seasonal affective disorder per se, though I know plenty of people who struggle with that to one degree or another. But there's a general sense of malaise which can set in during late January and into February, especially in places like New England where the days are still short and our movements are circumscribed by ice and snow.

Over the years I've tried a lot of different remedies. Eating clementines by the box, as though warding off scurvy with their bright sweetness. Hot baths. Endless pots of tea. Making the effort to light a fire in the fireplace, because even though it takes some time to get it going, there's a kind of primal comfort in sitting beside a warm, bright blaze. These days I try to retrain my eye to see the beauty even in the low grey skies and the dirt-streaked ice. To notice subtle gradations of winter light.

 The work of hashpa'ah, spiritual direction, teaches me to ask the question "where is God in this?" So where can I find God in this wintery world leached of color? Where can I find God in my reaction to the low-ceilinged clouds and the early sundown? Where is God for me in ice and snow, dirt and road salt, the work of mitigating winter's isolation? Where is God for me in the work of maintaining my own even keel at this season? And where is God for you, in whatever your struggles may be?