Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 17

Untie

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I read an article yesterday (it scarcely matters about what.) Afterwards I spent a long while working on a terrible poem. Righteous indignation is not a good motivator for poetry. But the news so often fills me with grief and fury. Everyone I know is living close to the emotional boiling point, these days.

We haven't wholly grieved global pandemic, and meanwhile climate disasters intensify (and climate deniers pretend), and democracy is under attack, and the state where I was born is making it illegal to drive on state roads if one's purpose is to escape to a safe state for reproductive health care --

-- and how many of us live with all of this simmering in our hearts and minds most of the time? It's no wonder that even when we're doing all right, it feels like we're barely keeping our heads above water. Still, that's no excuse for terrible poetry, so the poem in question will remain locked away.

I've drafted my sermons for the Days of Awe. I surf the usual waves of worry. Does this speak enough to the challenges of right now? Does it ask too much? Does it ask too little? Is this the right message for someone who maybe only comes to shul twice a year? How about someone who's there weekly?

"You've drafted your sermons already, so what are you doing with all that extra time?" a friend asked. Not enough, was my answer. I should be spending this extra time on my own inner preparation for this holy marathon, but I'm not. I feel guilty. "What if you made your guilt your spiritual practice, then?" 

The question was flip, but also real. If the core question of spiritual direction as I practice it is "where is God for you in this," then I need to find God even (or especially) in the relentless worry and self- critique to which I am prone. Every time I think, "am I doing enough?" I need to respond with grace.

And when the news leaves me grieving or revved-up, the same is true. That I care about the world is a good thing. I just need to use Judaism's tools, because tying myself in knots that can't be untangled helps no one. "Maybe we've had a little bit of a week..." Right on time, here comes Shabbat.

Impulse buys

In early spring it's wild ramps,
dark blades of onion-scented grass.

Then come the fairytale eggplants.
On the cusp of fall, tiny plums.

In winter I splurge on clementines
though citrus won't grow here, at least

not yet. Sometimes I treat myself
to marzipan at Christmastime, though

almond trees are struggling.
We're running out of groundwater.

How long until the memory of coffee beans
will be implausible as the days

when silvery cod were so plentiful
we walked across their backs to shore? 

 

 

 

America Is Using Up Its Groundwater Like There's No Tomorrow, New York Times

Can New England's Cod Fishing Industry Survive? , The Guardian

A Future Without Coffee? , Inter-American Development Bank

 

Find

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I had actually forgotten that I'd written this poem until someone shared this image on the site formerly known as Twitter. As soon as I read it, I remembered what was on my mind and heart when I wrote it. I had to search on my hard drive to date it, though -- I wrote it in spring of 2015, earlier than I thought. Looks like it was originally written in couplets, though I also like the shape that someone gave it in this image. (There's a slight transcription error in line 8, but I'm honored that someone liked the poem well enough to share it this way, even without the original punctuation and italics.) It's not exactly a sonnet, in terms of rhyme or meter, though it's inspired by the movement of a Petrarchan sonnet -- eight lines, a turn, then six lines. My favorite line is still, "God isn't / a diner waitress saying: what can I get you, hon?" That's not how I understand prayer to work, even petitionary prayer. Sometimes I can't help wishing it worked that way, though. I would order so much wholeness and healing and sweetness and fulfillment of hope. 

Pursue

The cat can tell the moment I'm awake.
He purrs because he knows breakfast will come.
It's dark: I'm not so thrilled to be alert
this rainy Tuesday dawn, brain sputtering
on far too little sleep, running on fumes.
Next time the former president is indicted
for racketeering I shouldn't stay awake
refreshing headlines, waiting for the news.
Of all the things that don't belong in poems --
though justice does, blindfold and sword and scales.
This week our Torah portion is called Judges.
(I cannot make this up.) Too on the nose?
"Justice, justice" -- Moses said it twice.
I live in hope. What else is there to do?

 

 

 

This week's Torah portion: Shoftim.

 

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Lady Justice. You go, girl.

After the funeral

 

Rain taps on the roof like quiet hands.
So much softer than clods thudding
on a plain pine box.

Once everyone is gone
they take away the green tent
open on all sides, the worst chuppah.

The words wash away, but
I'll never forget
who rolled up his sleeves to finish shoveling.

 

 

In Jewish tradition, everyone present at an interment shovels some earth onto the casket. It is considered one of the last acts of lovingkindness we can do for the person who has died. 

I do remember, very clearly, who picked the shovel back up and helped us truly finish burying my parents after everyone else had taken a ceremonial turn. I wonder whether every funeral I conduct from now on will always bring those memories to mind.

 

If We Had To Choose: Re'eh 5783 / 2023

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See, this day I set before y'all blessing and curse: blessing, if y'all obey the mitzvot of your God that I enjoin upon you this day; and curse, if y'all do not obey the mitzvot of your God, but turn away from the path that I enjoin upon y'all this day and follow other gods whom y'all have not experienced. (Deut. 11:26-28)

That's the beginning of this week's Torah portion, Re'eh. The Italian rabbi and physician Ovadia ben Jacob Sforno, born in 1475, writes:

������, pay good attention so that you will not be like the nations of the world who relate to everything half-heartedly, always trying to find middle ground. Remember that �������� �������� ������������ �������� �������� ����������, I present you this day with the choice of two extremes, opposites. The �������� / brakha is an extreme in that it provides you with more than you need, whereas the �������� / klalah is another extreme making sure that you have less than your basic needs. You have the choice of both before you; all you have to do is make a choice.

I'm fascinated by the Sforno's admonition. I usually think of middle ground as a positive thing. Compromise, moderation, finding the balance between the two poles -- that's good, right? Living in community requires compromise. The capacity to make peace and find middle ground seems like a good thing. But what I hear the Sforno to be saying is: sometimes seeking middle ground isn't right.

I hear the Sforno to be saying: don't be wishy-washy. We shouldn't "both-sides" everything. There's actually a difference between brakha and klalah, blessing and curse, right and wrong. When it comes to making an ethical choice between what's right and what's wrong, it's our job to know the difference. When it comes to right and wrong, defaulting to some imagined middle ground helps no one.

Looking at the world around us, this feels resonant. We're faced with ethical choices all the time. We can uphold the truth, or we can shrug off lies. We can learn from our nation's flawed and messy history, or we can pretend slavery wasn't so bad. We can ensure that every American can exercise their right to vote, or we can ignore when a state party leadership simply refuses to redraw gerrymandered maps.

We can protect human rights and dignity, or we can let lgbtq rights be eroded as in many states (now also at risk federally). We can uplift diverse voices, or we can ignore the banning of books relating to race, gender, sexual orientation, and history, including books about the Holocaust. We can seek climate resiliency, or we can ignore the hottest month on record and the hundred-degree oceans.

On a smaller scale we can give each other the benefit of the doubt, or we can assume the worst of each other. We can speak with each other, or we can speak about each other. We can be curious and open about what's going on with each other, or we can make assumptions. And this too ties back to the "blessing or curse" paradigm that Torah gives us, because our relationships can feel like either one.

"The power to choose doesn't mean that every choice is equally wise... We can choose to let the elderly homeless remain on the streets.  We have that power," notes R. Bradley Shavit Artson. He doesn't need to add that if we can make that lousy choice, we also could choose to house the homeless and to feed the hungry. We can choose to take care of each other, or to say that others' needs aren't our problem.

Every year, including this one, we read these verses just before the Days of Awe. The new year begins five weeks from tonight, so new beginnings and existential choices may already be on our minds. But I think the choice between brakha and klalah is always in front of us. And this year, the Sforno's words remind me that equivocating, or opting not to choose, is also a choice... it's just not a very good one. 

There's a grammatical oddity in the first verse of the parsha. "See, this day I set before y'all blessing and curse" -- the instruction "See" is written in the singular, while "before y'all" and the rest of the verse is written in the plural. The opening word is spoken to each of us individually, a reminder that Torah speaks to each of us where we are. But the blessings and curses arise out of our communal choices.

The blessings and curses are aggregate. They impact the community as a whole. And they ask something of the community as a whole. If we want the coming year to be one of justice, we need to enact it together, because one person acting justly alone can't create justice. If we want the coming year to be one of concern for the needs of others, we need to live out that concern and act on it together.

What are the values we want to animate us in the CBI community in the coming year? In our towns? Across our state and the neighboring ones? In our nation? The choices we make together can bring blessing or curse, a welcome or a closed door, hope or despair, abundance or lack. I think we all know which is the world we want to live in. Now we just have to make that world real for everyone.

 

This is the d'varling I offered at Kabbalat Shabbat services at Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires (cross-posted to the From the Rabbi blog.)

Gevurot: Be There

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This new prayer-poem is in the same vein as Texts to the Holy (Ben Yehuda Press), my volume of love poems to a beloved or The Beloved (depending on how you want to read them). This is my contribution to the latest collaborative offering from Bayit's Liturgical Arts Working Group. Eight of us worked together on this one. It's part of a series of offerings arising out of the blessings of the Amidah.

I'll enclose the poem below as plain text for those for whom the above image doesn't work. If you know the blessing we're working with, you may be able to see how each phrase links back to something in the original Hebrew. Or maybe not, and that's okay, too. I hope that the prayer-poem can "work" either way.

These offerings are like fractals, or a kaleidoscope, or a collective word cloud, or a many-faceted gem. The same tiny piece of prayer inspires different things for each of us. Sometimes we root our offerings in the etymology of a particular Hebrew word or phrase. Sometimes the same word takes each of us in a different direction. (Hebrew is rich like that.) We take a prayer and we talk through it. We turn it over and over, and we refract the light of our creativity and our understanding through it. Or we refract ourselves through the lens of the prayer. Or the prayer through the lens of each of us. (Or all of the above.) We share our work, we critique and comment, we make suggestions. We turn things around, change stanzas, turn one poem into two or vice versa. Artists riff off of words. Writers riff off of images. And when all is said and done, we've created something that's more than the sum of its parts. 

I often feel these days that my own creativity is lying fallow. I'm not working on a big poetry project, and that's been true for a while. My last two books were Texts to the Holy (which came out from Ben Yehuda in 2018) and Crossing the Sea (from Phoenicia, 2020). It's going on four years since Crossing the Sea came out, and I don't know what's next. Maybe the pandemic and the loss of my second parent and my heart attack are percolating in me. Maybe the pastoral needs of this moment are so great that I just don't have space for holding a book in mind. Anyway: even in a time of limited personal creativity, this collaborative work at Bayit nourishes me, and it keeps me writing, a little bit. I'm grateful for that.

Read the whole thing here: Amidah Offering: All This Power / Gevurot.

And here's my small offering to the whole: 

 

Gevurot: Be There

 

Be there for me forever.

Wake up the parts of me
that have fallen asleep.

When I'm sitting in ashes
you lift me up
with gentle hands.

With you I feel alive.
All I want
is for your beauty
to bloom.

You're the dew that keeps me going
on the aching, thirsty days
when life wrings me dry,
the rain that refills
the emptied cup of my heart.

 

R. Rachel Barenblat

 

Return To Your Heart: Va-etchanan 5783

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After the deep dive into communal grief that is Tisha b'Av, our tradition gives us seven Shabbatot of comfort. On Wednesday night we faced the age-old hatred of antisemitism and the brokenness of the world. Maybe in the aftermath we feel anew that when we let ourselves be real, the grief doesn't annihilate us after all. And with that awareness we begin tradition's seven weeks of consolation. 

Enter this week's Torah portion. Parashat Va'etchanan is a kind of Jewish Greatest Hits. Moses recaps the Sh'ma and v'ahavta, reminding us to listen and to love with all that we are. Moses recaps the Ten Commandments and reminds us of receiving Torah in the first place. And we also have this verse, which maybe we recognize from the Aleinu prayer, because the Aleinu borrows these words from Torah:

������������������������ ���������������� ������������������������ ���������������������������� ���������� ������������''���� ���������� ������������������������ �������������������������� ������������������ ���������������������������� ������������������ ���������� ������������

Know therefore this day and keep in mind that ������''�� alone is God in heaven above and on earth below; there is no other. (Deut. 4:39)

That's not a bad translation; it captures the simple meaning of the text. The Sforno says, "establish it firmly in your heart." I like that better, because he's attuned to the use of the word lev, heart. But I want to look more deeply at this phrase ������������������������ ���������������������������� / v'hasheivota el-levavekha, because I think it's no coincidence that this verse appears for us now. It's a reminder, a foretaste of what's coming. 

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The Hebrew root ���������� mean to return or turn around -- as in teshuvah: repentance, return, turning our lives around, re-aligning ourselves with our highest values and with our Source. Returning to something we've maybe left behind or strayed from or forgotten. Literally re / turning -- turning again. In modern Hebrew, a teshuvah can also be an answer, as in a halakhic answer to a deep Jewish question. 

So another way to translate this verse might be: Deeply know, today, as you return to your heart: God is God. Torah is instructing us: to go into our hearts and make teshuvah. Do the inner work of re-aligning ourselves with our highest values. Answer the deep question that our heart is asking about who we mean to be. Return to our hearts and return to our Source, because God is God.

������������''���� ���������� ������������������������ / Adonai hu ha-Elohim: God far away is also God deep within. There's a unity that encompasses all of our differences. And as always if the "G-word" doesn't work for us, try: we do our inner work because Justice. Because Love. Because Truth. Because we just reminded ourselves at Tisha b'Av how much brokenness there is for us to repair in this world, and we've got work to do.

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Tisha b'Av set us on the runway toward the Days of Awe. Exactly seven weeks from tonight we'll be here in this sanctuary welcoming not only Shabbat but also a new year. Torah is here to remind us: the time for teshuvah is beginning. Return to our hearts, because that's the first step toward the great turning of the year, the great turning from who we've been toward who the world most needs us to be.

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In the spring we count the seven weeks of the Omer from Pesach to Shavuot, from liberation to revelation. We focus on seven inner qualities as we prepare ourselves to receive Torah anew. Now we move through those same seven qualities in reverse as we prepare ourselves for the new year that is coming. We begin this journey where we ended the last one: with malkhut, presence.

We begin this journey by simply being present to what is. Present to what's real, in us and around us. What does it take to really be present -- really in the moment, not in the stories we tell ourselves about what was or what might be? How can we be present for and with each other? Because though each of us has our own inner work, Judaism is a communal tradition; none of us walks this path alone.

Our mystics teach that Shekhinah (the immanent, indwelling divine Presence) goes with us in exile. Originally this was a teaching about being kicked out of Jerusalem. When Babylon destroyed the first Temple and sent us into exile, Shekhinah came with us. The place that we understood as God's home address was destroyed, but our mystics said: the Presence of holiness goes with us wherever we go.

And that teaching continued to be relevant. When Rome destroyed the second Temple and sent us into exile, Shekhinah came with us. In every expulsion: Jews kicked out of England, or Spain, or Portugal, or eastern Europe -- Shekhinah came with us. It can also mean: in whatever ways we feel exiled from wholeness, Shekhinah is with us. No matter how isolated or alienated we may feel, we are not alone.

It's a radical idea. God isn't just "out there" or far from us. We find God here with us in the messiness of our human lives. And -- this feels important -- not only in the easy places. On the contrary, tradition holds that Shekhinah hovers over every sickbed. When we say God's presence is with us in exile, we mean in our fear, or suffering, or doubt. ���������� ���������� / Ein od -- there is no place without the Presence.

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Ein od milvado calligraphy by soferet Julie Seltzer.

Our journey toward the new year begins where we are. With presence, Shekhinah, malkhut, really inhabiting all that we are. Step one is to return to our hearts. Be present to who we are, how we need to re-align. Make teshuvah and begin to return. Because justice, and love, and truth matter. Because we are about to start over, and we can make choices about who and how we want to be.

Shabbat shalom.

 

This is the d'varling that I offered at Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires (cross-posted to the From the Rabbi blog.)

What Gets Me - a new poem for Tisha b'Av

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Not just the litany of destruction: Babylon, Rome, the first Crusade.
Forced out of England, and France, and Spain.
Or how on this day in 1941 the Nazi Party approved
"The Final Solution," the mass graves, the gas chambers.

Or the old claim that we make matzah with their childrens' blood,
or the cartoons that show us hook-nosed and greedy,
money-grubbing, conspiring, defiling the world
with our stubborn insistence that we deserve to exist.

What gets me is that these hatreds persist.
In every antisemitic flyer and QAnon meme.
In every synagogue shooting.
In the uneasy fear that we might be next.

And still somehow we���re meant to look inside, to do the work,
To seek justice for those who have it worse than we,
To make things right with those we���ve harmed,
And if we must, to die like our ancestors  ���

��� with the Sh���ma on our lips.
 
R. Rachel Barenblat
 
 

It's almost Tisha b'Av. This is the new piece I wrote this year for that somber day. If it speaks to you, feel free to use it and share it.

I wrote it after traveling in Israel this spring. (And no, I'm not writing today about what's happening there. This is not that post.) I was profoundly struck by the reminder of how many peoples have hated us and tried to wipe us out. It's history I've always known, of course. But it lands differently now. Once I had the luxury of imagining that antisemitism was outdated and fading away. With the ugly rise of white nationalism and "Christian nationalism" both here and elsewhere -- with the reality that my synagogue now keeps its doors locked -- with praise for Hitler coming from public figures -- every Jew I know lives with the sickening awareness that there are people who want to exterminate us. Most of the time I keep the fear and grief at bay. But Tisha b'Av is in part about letting ourselves feel the things we keep at arm's length. We let our walls come down and face what feels annihilating. From the other side of that brokenness we begin the ascent to the Days of Awe.

And -- this feels really important to say -- if you are a trauma survivor, do what you need for your own safety. If letting your emotional or spiritual walls fall would harm you, don't do it. I can't say this strongly enough. The spiritual practice of opening ourselves to what's broken is a different thing altogether for someone who already suffers trauma's shrapnel. If that is you, maybe it's not safe for you to break open, or maybe you don't need the reminder of brokenness. Stay safe and whole. 

If you're looking for other resources for Tisha b'Av, here are two at Bayit that I find deeply powerful:

Hymn for the Hurting, R. David Evan Markus' setting of an Amanda Gorman poem in Eikha trope
For the Sake of Ascent, last year's offering for Tisha b'Av from Bayit's Liturgical Arts Working Group

May this year's Tisha b'Av be what we need it to be, and may it move us closer to a world redeemed.

A Week of Building With the Bayit Board

 

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Every summer the Bayit board gathers for a retreat. There are board meetings, of course. There are big-picture conversations about what we're building, how we're building it, whom we serve. There are late-night conversations and early morning confabs. As we learn, and pray, and play, and dream, we strengthen the foundations of the building work we aim to do (and to empower others to do.)

We talk Torah over breakfast. This week we're in Devarim. Why is Moses speaking to the next generation as though their parents' adventures were theirs? Is he showing that there is no before and after in Torah? Is he connecting the people with their ancestors? Is he coming unhooked in time and uncertain with whom he's speaking? What are the pastoral and spiritual implications of each of these?

We dip in the ocean. We marvel at the ocean, because most of us on the board don't live here. (The one who does live here laughs and affectionately calls us tourists.) Pelicans glide right overhead, and sandpipers run on wet sand. We hum bits of liturgy on the beach. A seashell with a hole in it sparks a sermon idea. Among rabbis, with the Days of Awe on the horizon, everything is a sermon idea.

 

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We brainstorm about build projects, governance and innovation, what we want to co-create in the year to come. We talk about collaborative play, about middot (character-qualities), about book projects and game mechanics and how to reach people where they are. We play Hebrew bananagrams, examine what makes good games work, talk about what might differentiate liturgy from poetry.

We fall into accidental build-planning and vision conversations even when it's not board meeting time, because that's what happens when we're together. We cook good food. We make endless pots of iced coffee. One morning we wake early and paddle kayaks among dolphins in the intercoastal waterway and I quietly sing R. Bella's Modah Ani to the ospreys and the dolphins and the little sea turtles.

We daven beside (and in) the pool and the ocean. We sing the psalms of Hallel at new moon. We talk about the spiritual implications of the shehakol blessing, usually rendered as blessing God Who made all things by God's word, though the grammar points toward the future, not the past. What does it mean to bless God for speaking-into-being not what is, but what everything will become?

 

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We unpack the possible gematria of our rental car's license plate. We unpack our various responses to R. Alan Lew's writings on responsibility for recurring patterns, and the fine line between agency and blame. We talk about spiritual direction and flow and dishwashers, how to use StoryCubes in Torah study, favorite melodies for regular prayers, the ideal number of builders on any build team.

We talk about Tisha b'Av, about different understandings of the fundamental rupture that that day represents, about what we talk about when we talk about God. While floating in the salt waves, we talk about what it means halakhically and spiritually for a hat on the waves to be hefker (ownerless). We write ideas down on post-it notes and move them around like a live-action Trello board.

We dream an entirely new build: talking about tools we can create and curate, the communities we think it could serve, the needs we hope it would meet. The whole room gets excited, tossing ideas out in turn, each suggestion building on the last. One night we are joined by one of our builders, and we brainstorm about tools, partners, Torah interpretations, what the world needs that we could make.

 

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At the end of the week we are scholars-in-residence at the Jacksonville Jewish Center. We share some Torah, some spiritual tools and technologies -- some of what we do. There are services, a Friday night d'var, Torah study, lunch table discussions. We return home nourished by dreaming, collaborating, playing, praying, remixing: ready to take up our tools again, and to continue to build. 

 

Shared with deepest gratitude to the Bayit Board of Directors; cross-posted to Builders Blog.