Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 217

Rosh Chodesh Av; Ramadan Mubarak

A sliver of new moon.

This morning I woke to an email from Rabbi Arthur Waskow which began:

Tonight (July 19, 2012), as the New Moon glimmers, the Jewish and Muslim communities both enter a solemn month, known to one as Ramadan and the other as Av. In both, fasting takes on great importance as a way of focusing spiritual energy.

During the whole month of Ramadan, Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. As they do, they turn their attention from material gain and physical pleasures to the call of God to serve the poor, to work for justice, to meditate on what is deep joy rather than immediate pleasure...

Jews enter the month of Av with an eye toward its ninth day, Tisha B'Av, a day of lament for the destruction of the ancient Temples in Jerusalem. On that day, Jews fast for 24 hours, from sunset to sunset of the next day. This year the ninth day of Av falls on Shabbat; so the fast and lamentation are postponed to begin after Shabbat on Saturday night, July 28, leading into Sunday, July 29.

Read the whole thing at the Shalom Center website: When Ramadan and Av unite.

The Muslim calendar is purely lunar; the Jewish calendar is lunisolar. (What does that mean? Here's the Wikipedia entry on the Hebrew calendar -- basically, we insert a "leap month" in 7 out of 19 years to keep our spring festivals in the northern-hemisphere spring, and our fall festivals in the northern-hemisphere fall. As previously noted, the rabbis who originated our calendar were clearly not thinking about life in the global South.) Ramadan moves around the solar calendar year; a few years ago it overlapped with the Jewish month of Elul (see Allah is the Light: Prayer in Ramadan and Elul, 2009.) And this year Ramadan overlaps with the lunar month of Av.

I had the feeling I had written about that particular confluence before, too, so I checked my own archives. Sure enough, last year Av and Ramadan coincided as well, and I wrote:

In the confluence of our calendars this year I find a powerful reminder that we and our Muslim cousins -- descendants, our tradition says, of the half-brothers Yitzchak and Yishmael, Isaac and Ishmael -- are walking parallel paths toward the Holy Blessed One. During the coming lunar month, as the moon waxes and wanes, both communities (in our varied forms -- Jews whose practice ranges from Reform to Hasidic, in Israel and in Diaspora; Muslims of Arab, South Asian, African American, and every other descent, all around the world) will be engaging in prayer, in fasting, and in giving generously to those in need, in order to more wholly align ourselves with God's will.

Read the whole post: Approaching Av...and Ramadan.

To my Jewish friends and readers I wish a meaningful month of Av, replete with awareness of our communal journey from the depths of sorrow (during this last of the Three Weeks and through Tisha b'Av) into comfort and joy. And to my Muslim friends and readers, a blessed Ramadan! May both of our communities find blessing in this month of prayer and reflection, and may this month strengthen our sense of our common ground.

This is real, and I want to be prepared: beginning the journey

This coming Shabbat at my shul we'll begin discussing one of my favorite books: This Is Real And You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation by Rabbi Alan Lew. I've posted about it several times before. I try to make a practice of rereading it each year as we enter this season.

If you live locally, I hope you'll join us at CBI this Shabbat for a discussion of the first three chapters of this book (come at 11am -- or join us at 9:30 for davenen first!) And for those who don't live nearby, I thought I might share a few favorite passages here.

The journey I will describe in these pages is one of self-discovery, spiritual discpline, self-forgiveness, and spiritual evolution. It is the snapshot the Jewish people pull out every autumn of the journey all human beings must make across this world: the journey from Tisha b'Av to Sukkot, from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, from birth to death and back to renewal again. Seeing yourself in this snapshot will help you chart the course of your own spiritual evolution. Every soul needs to express itself. Every heart needs to crack itself open. Every one of us needs to move from anger to healing, from denial to consciousness, from boredom to renewal. These needs did not arise yesterday. They are among the most ancient of human yearnings, and they are fully expressed in the pageantry and ritual of the Days of Awe, in the great journey we make between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

I love this way of describing the journey of this season. And I love Rabbi Lew's assertion that every soul needs to express itself, every heart needs to crack itself open, every one of us needs to move from denial to consciousness...and that the meaningful dates on the Jewish calendar over the next few months, from Tisha b'Av all the way to Sukkot, are designed to be our spiritual touchstones on this recurring journey.

Rabbi Lew writes:

The Talmud claims that righteous deeds, prayer, and turning will modify the Divine Decree... The liturgy, however, makes a very different claim, namely that prayer, righteousness, and Teshuvah will not change what happens to us; rather, they will change us. We will understand what happens differently. These activities will not tear up the decree; rather, they will transform (ma'avirin) the evil of the decree. Spiritual practice won't change what happens. Rather, it will help us to experience what happens not as evil, but simply as what happens.

He's talking about the Untaneh Tokef prayer (which I posted about back in 2005), which takes a claim from Talmud -- that righteous deeds, prayer, and teshuvah will modify God's decree of what each person's fate will be -- and turns it in a new way. It's not that our deeds and our prayers and our turning will change our fate (or our karma, if you will.) But these things can change how we experience what comes to pass. Spiritual practice doesn't change our future; it changes how we relate to the future we get.

Later, Rabbi Lew writes that the journey of these two months isn't unique to this time of year. What's unique is our mindfulness of the journey we're always already on:

These two months merely stood for something that was going on all the time. The business of transformation was going on all the time. It never stopped. The two-month period in question was merely a time when we focused on it, when we gave form to something invisible that lay dormant but was possible to awaken at every moment of our lives.

So the walls of our great house are crumbling all the time, and not just in midsummer at Tisha b'Av, when we mourn the destruction of the Temple. Every moment of our lives, the sacred house of our life -- the constructs by which we live and to which we hold on so fiercely -- nevertheless falls away. Every moment, we take in a breath and the world comes into being, and we let out a breath and the world falls away...

And the time of transformation is always upon us. The world is always cracking through the shell of its egg to be open. The gate between heaven and earth is always creaking open. The Book of Life and the Book of Death are open every day, and our name is written in one or the other of them at every moment, and then erased and written again the moment after that. We are constantly becoming, continuously redefining ourselves.

The walls of our great house are crumbling all the time. That feels true to me on so many levels. The houses of our bodies are always crumbling -- they're beautiful, but they're not permanent. The houses of our intellects, the constructs we erect to keep us feeling safe and contained -- these too are temporary. The temple is always falling, though only on this one day do we allow ourselves to experience it in such an intense way.

And, that also means that rebirth is always happening, too. That something new is always coming into being. I find that endlessly comforting.

Lew quotes Rabbi Soloveitchik in order to make the point that Tisha b'Av is the beginning of the process of Teshuvah, repentance / return:

Soloveitchik wrote:

When man sins he creates a distance between himself and God. To sin means to remove oneself from the presence of the Master of the Universe. I was standing before you and Sin came and estranged me from you and I no longer feel that I am "before You." The whole essence of the precept of repentance is longing, yearning, pining to return again. Longing develops only when one has lost something precious. Sin pushes us far away and stimulates our longing to return...

So Tisha b'Av, the day when we remember our estrangement from God, is the beginning of the process of Teshuvah. This very estrangement is the engine that drives us on our journey back home, back to God.

For me, this sets Tisha b'Av into a new context. It's not just about remembering the fall of the Temple -- or, for that matter, remembering all of the other calamities which our sages tell us took place on this day, from the spies' false report to the fall of both Temples to the failed Bar Kokhba revolt to the expulsion from England and, later, Spain. It is those things. But it's also about recognizing our estrangement from God, and making the existential leap of choosing to turn toward connection again.

Here's one of the most interesting passages in these chapters, for me:

The destruction of the Temple and the exile it occasioned were signal calamities, and the tendency to telescope calamities around this date served to give form to a significant spiritual feeling, the sense that the same thing was happening over and over again but in slightly different form, and the corresponding feeling that our unresolved tendencies -- the unconscious wrong turns we keep taking -- carry us back to the same point on our spiritual path again and again...

Rambam, the great medieval philosopher and synthesizer of Jewish law, said that Teshuvah, this kind of moral and spiritual turning, is only complete when we find ourselves in exactly the same position we were in when we went wrong -- when the state of alienation and estrangement began -- and we choose to behave differently, in a way that is conducive to atonement and reconciliation. But this objection was raised: What happens if the circumstances in question don't repeat themselves? How do we make complete Teshuvah then? Don't worry, the Rambam replied. They always do. The unresolved elements of our lives -- the unconscious patterns, the conflicts and problems that seem to arise no matter where we go or with whom we find ourselves -- continue to pull us into the same moral and spiritual circumstances over and over again until we figure out how to resolve them.

I love this reading of Rambam. Heraclitus may have argued that you never step into the same river twice, but Rambam says that we all do, all the time. And this is precisely why and how teshuvah is possible! Think about the essential conflicts in your life, the places where you get stuck: how do they repeat? How does something that pushes your puttons now link back to something which pushed your buttons last year, five years ago, twenty years ago? How do your relationships now replicate your relationships from before now? This is human nature. We keep bringing ourselves back to the same situations until we figure out a new way to resolve them.

This is not to say that everything which goes wrong in our lives is our fault. But it does suggest that we need to take responsibility for our part in responding to the patterns which keep playing out in our lives. Rabbi Lew writes:

Spiritually we are called to responsibility, to ask, What am I doing to make this recur again and again? Even if it is a conflict that was clearly thrust upon me from the outside, how am I plugging in to it, what is there in me that needs to be engaged in this conflict?

Tisha b'Av is the day on which we are reminded of the calamity that keeps repeating itself in the life of our people. And against all reason -- against the overwhelming evidence of history -- Moses and the rabbis insist that we are not powerless in the face of that calamity. Moses and the rabbis insist that we take responsibility for what is happening to us. Moses and the rabbis insist that we acknowledge our complicity in the things that keep happening to us over and over again.

Intellectually, I can tell you that the second Temple fell because Rome had unbeatable military might. But spiritually I find meaning in the teaching that the second Temple fell because of sinat chinam, hatred between and among our people. Does that mean that we actually brought the building down? Obviously not. But there is a spiritual truth, I think, in the notion that when we fell into the well-worn groove of hating each other, we became complicit in the Temple's destruction. That when we fall into our own well-worn interpersonal grooves today, we become complicit in the painful patterns which repeat in our own lives. And that the way out of those painful patterns is to make ourselves mindful and to take the conscious step of getting out of those ruts. In other words, making teshuvah.

The final point of Rabbi Lew's that I want to share here and now is that the fall of the Temple was painful -- but also transformative.

Something remained when the Temple was destroyed two thousand years ago. This was perhaps the most significant turning point in Jewish history. Judaism continued without the Temple, an inconceivable possibility at the time. But the truth is that if the Temple had never been destroyed, the renewal Judaism needed so badly could never have taken place...

So the Torah tells us seven times. V'neifen, u-finu -- and they turned, now you turn. What is required of us at Tisha b'Av is a simple turn of mind, a turn toward consciousness, a turn away from denial, from the inertia, from the passive momentum of our lives, a turn away from those things that continue to happen unconsciously, and a conscious decision to change. A letting go, letting the walls of identity crumble, and turning toward that which remains.

Suffering happens. But it doesn't have to be meaningless. We can find meaning, or make meaning, even in moments of pain. When something beloved falls, there is loss, and there is also spaciousness for something new to arise.

I welcome any thoughts, reflections, or questions which these passages bring forth in you.

Writing about the Three Weeks for On Being

My thanks are due to the folks at On Being who asked to reprint one of my recent VR blog posts. I'm a longtime fan of On Being with Krista Tippett  -- I posted about one of its episodes a few years ago, when it was still called Speaking of Faith (TV and religion on Speaking of Faith, 2009) --  and I'm tremendously honored by the reprint! Here's how they're promoting my post in the sidebar of the main On Being website:

During this sacred time of year for Jews, the Velveteen Rabbi ponders how she can not only stop seeing the faults in people but 'to perfect the art of seeing the good in people.'

You can read it now at the On Being blog: Healing Our Sight: Training Ourselves to See the Best in People during The Three Weeks. Thanks, On Being editors! I'm so glad to see that post reaching a wider readership.

This week's portion: redeeming the instructions to displace and destroy

Here's the d'var Torah I offered yesterday morning at my shul, on last week's Torah portion, Matot-Masei.

 

God spoke to Moshe on the plains of Moab near the Jordan, and said: speak to the children of Israel and tell them: when you cross the Jordan into the land of Canaan, you will displace all who dwell in the land... and if you do not, they will be as thorns in your eyes, they will wound your sides...and I will drive you out of the land instead of them. --Numbers 33:55-56

 

Some weeks it's difficult to draw a clear connection between the Torah portion and contemporary reality. Not this week. This week we're in parashat Matot-Masei, which contains instructions for displacing the Canaanites, as well as instructions regarding the future borders of the promised land.

There are those who hold that this week's Torah portion is justification for establishing Jewish sovereignty over "Greater Israel." Are our only options either to accept that interpretation, or to disregard these verses altogether?

The Hasidic rabbi known as the Sfat Emet reads this text creatively. He says that we ourselves are the "borders" into which holiness can flow. Those other inhabitants, he argues, weren't able to experience the holiness inherent in the land. Only when the Israelites entered did the supernal land of Israel, the ideal Israel on high, merge with the earthly land of Israel here below. And when we prepare our hearts and souls with Torah, he says, God causes holiness to flow into us, contained by the borders of who we are.

I love the idea that we ourselves are the "borders" into which holiness can flow...but I chafe at the ethnocentrism. I espouse a post-triumphalist Judaism; I understand other religious traditions as meaningful paths to God. I can't accept that only we are capable of true holiness and true connection with our Source.

What, then, can we do with these verses?

The first thing we might do is look at their context. Along with these instructions are instructions for destroying the Canaanites' figured objects, molten images, and cult places. Perhaps, then, these instructions apply only to the nonbelievers of Biblical times; one could argue that today's monotheists are an entirely different category.

Maybe they can be read descriptively rather than prescriptively. The Torah isn't arguing that this is what should happen if we don't dispossess the inhabitants of the land -- rather informing us that this is what will happen, the natural karmic outgrowth of occupation.

I'm reminded of a poem I read recently by Palestinian poet Tawfiq Zayyad, in the anthology Before There Is Nowhere To Stand, a collection of poems arising out of the conflict in Israel and Palestine. It's called "Here We Will Stay," and it begins

In Lidda, in Ramla, in the Galilee
we shall remain
like a wall upon your chest,
and in your throat
like a shard of glass,
a cactus thorn,
and in your eyes a sandstorm...

A cactus thorn and sand in our eyes -- that's more or less what Torah promises.

How do we balance this week's Torah portion, with its instructions regarding displacement and violence, with the verses in Torah which call us to social justice and which champion the needs of the widow, the orphan, and the stranger? (For that matter, how can we balance the bloody slaughter of the Midianites with Torah's repeated calls to seek peace and pursue it?) Is it possible, or desirable, to read these verses today without thinking of Gaza and the West Bank: those who settle in Judea and Samaria, and those who argue that the settlements are a primary obstacle to peace?

Allow me to read our Torah portion expansively. What if we read the verses like so:

If you choose to dispossess the inhabitants of the land, then you'd better kill or displace all of them -- otherwise you're in for a world of reciprocal suffering, a spiral of violence which will enmesh generation after generation in hatred and bloodshed. But maybe someday, when humanity has evolved beyond this kind of tribalism, you'll reach the possibility of treating one another as fellow human beings despite your religious and cultural differences. That's the path to wholeness and peace, and if you don't seek it, you'll be driven out of the land yourselves.

Does Torah actually say this? Not in so many words. But we can choose to read between the lines, to seek the white fire between the black fire of the text. Have we collectively evolved to the point where we can seek coexistence and common ground? I don't know. I hope and pray that the answer is yes.

Rabbi Arthur Segal notes in a d'var Torah on Matot-Masei that this week's portion contains instructions about the "cities of refuge" to which accidental murderers could flee in order to prevent the vicious cycle of blood feuds. He points out that we can come away from this week's Torah portion either "remembering to do genocide to our enemies," or choosing to relinquish vengeance. I believe I know which option I would rather pursue.

I'll close with the Torah poem I wrote in 2008, after a visit to the West Bank. (You can find this poem in 70 faces, Phoenicia 2011.)

DOWNSIDE (MAS'EI)

But if you do not dispossess the inhabitants of the land, those whom you allow to remain shall be stings in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall harass you in the land in which you live[.] -- Numbers 33:55

Here's the part
God apparently didn't say
at least not aloud
where anyone could hear:

dispossessing anyone
not as easy as it sounds
and tends to have
side effects

feelings of guilt
among the tender-hearted
and a certain hardening
of those who do battle

refugee camps
persisting for generations
breeding bitter fury
which tends to explode

and don't forget
the damage done
to your chelek Elohim,
the eternal spark in you

which dims
with each interrogation
each humiliation
of another face of God.

I pray that our wrestle with this week's Torah portion, and with today's geopolitical realities, be for the sake of heaven and for the sake of peace.

Ten years in Jewish Renewal

The main house at the old Elat Chayyim in Accord, NY.

(my journal, August 5, 2002)

Seeing so many people in kippot startles me.

[at my first dinner] Sat with [name redacted], who talked about the power of laying tefillin, which makes me want to try it...

In August of 2002 I went for the first time to Elat Chayyim, the Jewish Renewal retreat center which was then located in Accord, New York. (It has since become the Elat Chayyim Center for Jewish Spirituality at Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, but my first visit was many years before that change happened.) That week-long retreat was my first taste of Jewish Renewal outside of books. A first big step on what I didn't yet know was my life's path.

I remember that feeling of startlement at seeing so many people wearing kippot. I wondered, at the time, what my reaction said about me; in hindsight, I think what it said was that I was completely unaccustomed to being around ardent Jews who were comfortable being visible in their Jewishness! (And I remind myself, whenever I bring my family into ALEPH contexts, that my family now is likely to be as startled by the sight as I was then...)

On the Jewish calendar, that first retreat included the first day of Elul. That's when I learned the melody for psalm 27, Achat Sha'alti, which I still pray and sing and teach today. This year, we're about two weeks short of that Jewish anniversary. But on the Gregorian calendar, that first retreat began ten years ago today. The anniversary gives me a good excuse to remember that first retreat, and to reflect on these ten years I've been blessed to spend in Jewish Renewal community.

The white yurt, where we davened on weekday mornings.

(my journal, August 7, 2002)

So much! Interpretive shacharit with Phyllis. Chants, prayers, intentions. What they really mean. Cold air, sun, one man and maybe 12 women. Seeing the face of God in all our faces at bar'chu.

En route to lunch I found myself amused by this notion: sure, if I could spend the first six hours of every day davening, meditating, and practicing yoga, of course I'd be this bright and serene all the time!

Shacharit was really gorgeous. All easy chants, easy to learn. (As we bless the source of life, so we are blessed...) I especially liked the interpretation of "ashrei yoshvei veitecha, od y'hallelucha selah" -- lit. "happy are those who live in your house, they will praise You always," but Phyllis talked about the houses we carry with us -- our bodies -- and how liberating it is to become happy in that house.

That first Jewish Renewal weekday morning service -- I chose the "interpretive" morning service, rather than the "traditional" one -- had a profound imapct on me. I remember sitting in a circle on the floor of the white yurt. I remember my first sight of women laying tefillin, and how the idea both startled and attracted me. And that teaching which Reb Phyllis offered -- her interpretation of the ashrei, the idea of becoming happy in our own bodies and praising the One out of that sense of grateful embodiment -- is one I still offer sometimes when I lead morning services.

 

The field.

(my journal, August 9, 2002)

Reb Nachman practice: walking in field talking out loud w/ God. Breakthrough experience. Was talking about this week, how I want to take this awareness with me -- and wound up weeping, wrapped in my tallit, because I understood that God is always with me. Even when I feel most alone. It was staggering. I can't entirely explain it.

During that first week-long retreat at Elat Chayyim, I spent my mornings studying Jewish meditation with Rabbi Jeff Roth, and my afternoons studying tikkun olam with Rabbi Arthur Waskow. On Friday morning, the culmination of our weekday learning, Reb Jeff gave us the practice of walking in the fields, speaking aloud with God quietly.

I remember telling God how glad I was that we were finally on speaking terms again. (That's a story which doesn't really bear exploration at this juncture; the short version is, I'd been feeling estranged from God for a while.) I remember saying that I was sorry I couldn't bring God home with me. And I remember realizing, in a flash of insight as sudden as any lightning bolt, that God would be coming home with me; that God had been with me all along. Even in the moments when I had felt most distant from God, God had been with me.

Is it corny to say that that moment changed my life?

 

 

Services at the old Elat Chayyim. Photo credit: Elat Chayyim.

(my journal, August 10, 2002)

As we sang mah norah hamakom hazeh ("how awesome is this place") I found myself weeping. All the voice parts, and the feeling! Also remarkable was the 84-year-old woman who, since we were using a mini-sefer Torah, got to do hagbahah and lift it overhead. She wept and so did I.

My first Jewish Renewal Shabbat, davening beneath the white tent which was open, like the tent of Abraham, on all four sides. On Friday night, Reb Jeff led services, all in white with a brocade vest for ornamentation. He played guitar and he sang and the service was beautiful. And on Saturday morning, the service was led by Rabbi Andrea Cohen-Kiener. The three-part melody she taught us for Mah norah hamakom hazeh is still one of my melodic touchstones, something to which I return when I need to feel connected.

And I remember the joy on the face of the woman who, at eighty-four, was able for the first time to perform the mitzvah of lifting our Torah scroll into the air for all to see. Her husband had died some years before, and she told us she could feel his presence with us as she held the scroll aloft. I think most of us were weeping happy tears by the time that part of the service was over.

(my journal, August 10, 2002)

By the end I felt...opened. Awed. Transported.

...I think this is what they mean by ecstatic prayer. That I can gain access to that joy -- I, with all my unOrthodoxies -- is overwhelming.

Opened. Awed. Transported. I hadn't known, then, that prayer could be like that. That service cracked my heart open, and all of my yearning for God and yearning for community and yearning for connection came pouring out -- and something ineffable poured back in.

I came home from that first week at Elat Chayyim and said to Ethan, "I've found my teachers. Someday I want to be a rabbi like they are rabbis."

Ten years. Could I have imagined, then, who and where I would be now?

Thank you, Elat Chayyim. Thank you, Reb Jeff and Reb Arthur and Reb Phyllis and Reb Andrea -- and everyone with whom I have learned and davened in the ten years since. Thank you to everyone in Jewish Renewal who has been a part of this extraordinary journey. I am grateful beyond words.

New film about the Baal Shem Tov

"The Baal Shem Tov was so different than other teachers of his day. They were studying the texts that were in books. And they were so smart about those texts, they were able to find the very fine finesses between one statement and another statement, and do a kind of philsophical building that they called pilpul... It led to cleverness, but it didn't lead to wisdom. The Baal Shem, on the other hand, didn't study at any of these schools. He lived and studied in nature. When people would say, he knew the voices, he could hear the speech of birds and of the trees -- it's not that they were speaking human language! It means that he had tuned in to the frequency where they were communicating."

That's my teacher Reb Zalman, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. (If you can't see the embedded video, above, you can go directly to it: A Clip from the Film.) This is part of an interview with Reb Zalman which appears in A Fire in the Forest, a new film about the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism. Here's how the filmmakers describe it:

Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer (1698-1760), known as the Ba'al Shem Tov, is one of the most beloved and celebrated figures in Jewish history, but also one of the most elusive. Today, Jews all over the world, and even many non-Jews, revere him as the founder of the Hasidic movement, and as a model of piety and mystical spirituality.

But many also find it difficult to say why he is so important to them, and to characterize his unique contribution to Jewish spirituality. Thus, A Fire in the Forest, a new documentary on the life and legacy of the Ba'al Shem Tov, sets itself the task of answering these basic questions, exploring how the Ba'al Shem Tov’s teachings can be applied to our lives today.

To do this, the filmmakers traveled with Rabbi Marc Soloway, our guide on this journey, around the world, talking to leading rabbis, scholars and teachers of Hasidism, traveling to the graves of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s spiritual heirs, and to his own prayer-house and grave in the town of Mezhibozh in the Ukraine.

I'm really excited to see this. I've ordered myself a copy, and I'm looking forward to settling in with it -- both to watch the film proper, and to take in the extra interview footage that's part of the dvd extras. One of the other teachers featured in the film is Rabbi Burt Jacobson, with whom I was blessed to study the BeShT a few years ago. (See Two short teachings from the Baal Shem, 2009.) R' Burt has dedicated his life to immersing in the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov, and he is an amazing teacher of those texts and of their meanings.

The film features interviews with a number of other rabbis and scholars who I admire greatly, as well: in addition to Reb Zalman and Reb Burt, the list includes Rabbi Dr. Mimi Feigelson, Dr. Susannah Heschel, Rabbi Dr. Art Green -- as well as others who I don't yet know but feel certain I will learn from as I watch. I'm looking forward to hearing what they have to teach about the "Master of the Good Name" and about the continuing relevance of his teachings in today's world.

Three more from Before There Is Nowhere To Stand

Here are three more poems from Before There Is Nowhere to Stand, a collection of poems arising out of the conflict in Israel / Palestine. (I have two poems in this collection as well; I am honored that my work is in print alongside these varied and powerful voices.) I have read the entire collection through more than once, and every time I open it, a different poem moves me.

My previous post in this series featured one poem by Rick Black and one by Reja-e Busailah. When I made that post, I was asked whether I felt I was equalizing the experiences of the two sides in this conflict. Am I implicitly saying that the each side has suffered the same amount, or that each side is equally righteous? It's not what I mean to be saying. But I'm not particularly interested in rehashing old arguments about which side has committed greater atrocities.

As a poet and as a rabbi, I'm interested in the possibility that poetry might be able to help us hear one another. (If poetry can't, I don't know what can.) Some years ago, when poet Rachel Tzvia Back spoke at Williams, she quoted Susan Sontag, who said -- in accepting the controversial Jerusalem Prize -- that now, more than ever, we need poetry because it is poetry which "will open up avenues of compassion and remind us that we might aspire to be better than we had ever imagined ourselves to be." (By the by, I recently reviewed Rachel's latest collection of poems.)

Perhaps you would never sit down with a settler, or with an Israeli peacenik, or with a Palestinian in a refugee camp, or with someone whose spouse or child was killed in a suicide bombing, or with someone whose spouse or child was killed by the IDF. But I invite you to sit down with these poems, and with the realities to which they bear witness. The first is about the withdrawal from Gaza in 2009; the second speaks of Palestinian resistance; the third is another look at the aftermath of a terror attack. (=

 

Waters of Gaza

June 22, 2009

They moved out of Gaza
not without protest, not without prayer
feeling like ivy ripped off the walls
like irrigation pipes torn from the soil
they moved out on unwilling legs
on buses to nowhere
fathers, mothers, children
and children without fathers
without mothers

They moved into Gaza
not without covet, not without envy
feeling like water released from a dam
bursting into surrendering fields
carrying all before it, trees, houses
places of prayer, fences, gardens
waves breaking over alien temples
again and again til water covered all

After the water came briny hatred
lusting for a redder liquid
and the skies darkened again
lightning and thunder returned to Gaza
rained on this thin strip of unhappiness
writhing between the wrath of history
and the dark depths of the sea

-- Johnmichael Simon

Here We Will Stay

In Lidda, in Ramla, in the Galilee
we shall remain
like a wall upon your chest,
and in your throat
like a shard of glass,
a cactus thorn,
and in your eyes
a sandstorm.

We shall remain
a wall upon your chest,
clean dishes in your restaurants,
serve drinks in your bars,
sweep the floors of your kitchens
to snatch a bite for our children
from your blue fangs.

Here we shall stay,
sing our songs,
take to the angry streets,
fill prisons with dignity.
In Lidda, in Ramle, in the Galilee
we shall remain,
guard the shade of the fig
and olive trees,
ferment rebellion in our children
as yeast in the dough.

-- Tawfiq Zayyad, transl. Sharif Elmusa and Charles Doria

(I may have more to say about this poem later in the week -- there are some interesting resonances between this Zayyad poem and this week's Torah portion.)

Body Parts

Outside a market, a foot
lies on the ground. An arm,
skin leathery and suntanned, or
slack, with blue cables of veins.
The freckled, the spotless,
the hairy, the smooth.

A rabbi in long coat and black hat
picks them up.
He will save them
for burial with the dead
so that on the last day no one will arise
without feet, arms.

The rabbi puts them
in the plastic bag, mixes
defenders with attackers.
At the last day, all
will stand up together.

--Hannah Stein

Learn more: Before There Is Nowhere to Stand at Lost Horse Press. As before, I welcome comments and conversation about these poems in the comments, but please bear the VR comments policy in mind; inappropriate remarks will be deleted.

New poem: Lunaria Annua

LUNARIA ANNUA

 

Honesty blooms once a year.
It comes from the Balkans.

Left to its own devices
it turns up in unexpected places.

Its sillicles may become coins,
monocles, chips of the moon.

Its windchime orchestra
entices bees to dance.

Silver dollar, satin pod,
moonwort, money tree.

The Dutch will tell you
its papery seedpods rustled

in Judas' pockets
all the way home.

My friend Emily found a plant growing behind her house. My friend Chris identified it as lunaria annua, colloquially known as honesty. (Also as silver dollar, satin pod, moonwort, and money tree, among others.) Once I read a bit about it, the poem followed.

Sources: Lunaria annua Wikipedia entry; How to grow Honesty; Honesty Plant - Lunaria. (The image accompanying this post is by Linda and is published under creative commons.)

At least one other poet has written a short poem inspired by this plant. If you know of other lunaria annua poems, let me know!

Hagit Ofran on the Levy Report

Hebron, 2008.

This week in Israel/Palestine news everyone's talking about the Levy Report, which argues that the West Bank is not, in fact, occupied territory. (See Validate Settlements, Israeli Panel Suggests in the New York Times. For more context, see Bombshell for the settlement enterprise in Levy report in Ha'aretz and A Tale of Two Reports in Open Zion.) I recently sat in on a conference call with Hagit Ofran in which she offered some thoughts on all of this. Ofran is the director of the Settlement Watch project at שלום אכשיו / Peace Now. I've heard her speak before -- at the first J Street conference in 2009 -- about the settlements and the peace process. The call was moderated by Peace Now's Ori Nir.

Some part of me wondered whether attending the call, and writing it up for Velveteen Rabbi, was a good use of my time. The internet is so often an echo chamber in which like-minded folks agree with one another, and those who disagree often engage unkindly with one another if at all. But I really did want to hear what she had to say. And I figured, as long as I was listening to her speak, I might as well share some notes here. What follows are some notes from her prepared remarks; then some information from the Q-and-A; and finally, information about Peace Now's 4% program. (Did you know that settlers make up only four percent of the Israeli public?)

 

 

Ofran noted that Netanyahu nominated this committee to provide recommendations to the government. Their recommendations are not obligatory, but rather advisory; the government can accept or reject, and that's in the hands of the Attorney General and the government.

"In my view [the report] could be potentially a challenge for us," she acknowledged, since the committee was officially nominated by the government and it includes former a Supreme Court judge. But the assertion that Israel's presence in the West Bank is not occupation "sounds absurd," and therefore people may not take the report very seriously. "If it's not occupation, what is it -- annexation? If it's annexation, how can you explain the discimination, why Jews are citizens and Palestinians are not citizens?" These questions will be opened if these findings are accepted.

Within the details of what the committee reported, she explained, one can see that its authors are trying to frame the issue of land disputes as a normal civil issue between equal citizens. "If I have a dispute with my neighbor, I go to court, and that's it." The situation in the West Bank is not so simple, however. "We have the responsibility of the occupier to protect the local citizens, and to make sure that their lands are not taken and their property is not taken." Saying that it's an ordinary civil dispute between equals is spurious -- it's more like a situation in which one person goes to the police to say 'somebody took my land,' and the police say that they don't need to act unless the person in question can prove ownership, and then refuse to accept their documentation.

An interesting detail: Netanyahu received this report three weeks ago and kept it quiet. He didn't want the media or the international community to hear about the report. When it was leaked, then he said, yes, it happened. But it appears to Ofran that Netanyahu is trying to bury some of the report's recommendations.

"It would be very hard [for Netanyahu] to accept it," she notes. Still, even if he doesn't accept the report officially, its existence will pose "a challenge to us in public debate and in the courts, because of some of the phrasing of the ownership issues and obligations of the state [which is] different than what we believe and how we interpret the laws."

After Ofran's official remarks there was a Q-and-A; here are some tidbits from that part of the call. What's the worst-case scenario, someone asked. "If Palestinians come to feel that there is no chance at all in the Israeli legal system, with no legal paths to take, they are only left with political or violent paths," Ofran noted. "Political paths, that would be okay, but violent would be a problem."

Is the report retroactive? Ofran indicated that the report doesn't change anything which has already been ruled-upon, but if there are new hearings, or cases which are not closed yet, the State could use this report to come up with new answers, and then the courts would have to decide whether to accept the State's position.

She noted that of course there have always been some Israelis who argue that Judea and Samara are part of Israel. But people are increasingly realizing that it's not so cut-and-dried. "People are realizing what we are doing, that we are taking other peoples' land, that we are occupying." This is one of the positive results of the work of Shalom Achshav / Peace Now. She added:

When we went to court, we didn't expect to quickly end settlements; we wanted it to be more in the public debate, the ways that the government has been establishing those settlements, using public money for this kind of land grab without any care for the rights of the Palestinians, and that is now exposed. There are no new outposts established since 2005, except for very small shacks that youth would put up and the army would take down -- but it's not the same as the settlements which had been built before. And there's been almost no new construction on Palestinian land. I believe that it wouldn't have stopped unless we went to court and made the government face the consequences of allowing this to go on. The settlers are trying to push back [in this report] with their way of looking at the occupation, and they are exposed in that.

It's fascinating to me to hear her articulate these small victories as victories: at least the question of settlements is in the public eye, and at least the land-grab aspect of how settlements came into being is being exposed. On the one hand, this seems to me like a pretty low bar to set, and on the proverbial other hand, I understand that these are battles which have been hard-fought and that these changes make the situation less awful than it would otherwise be.

From the Israeli perspective, considering Israeli interests, Ofran said, the best thing to do is to stop the settlements. Everything built now is going to cost us when we seek to evict them; and it makes the Palestinians less ready to compromise, and more ready to give up on the chance of two states. That's the real threat to Israel.

Someone else asked about Palestinian response to the report; Ori Nir indicated that an official PLO response from Washington was entirely dismissive of the report and called it a joke.

At the end of the call, Ofran was invited to talk about the Peace Now 4% campaign. "We have now in the public atmosphere around the issue of Ulpana and Migron that suddenly even mainstream media, who usually are not so much talking about this issue, are writing things which are very critical of the settlers." The idea that so many million shekels will be given to settlers who chose to inhabit a place illegally, that they will receive public money in order to help them move -- people are starting to feel anger and frustration at the way in which money and attention and time are being devoured by this issue. She went on to say:

Settlers are only four percent of the Israeli public. That's a number we believe people don't really realize, because on the radio and television you hear about them so much, there are so many of them in the Knesset -- but they are only four percent. What we are trying to say is, "Go back to proportions." They cannot run the state of Israel, those 4%. We're going to publish a report about how much money the settlers are getting from the Israeli public money, from taxpayers; it's not so much of a bottom line of how much money it is, but we will show that they are four percent in the society but in the budget of the ministry of housing they get a much larger percentage of that budget! In terms of education, if every pupil gets X thousand shekels from the government, they get 3X... You will hear about it and the Israeli public will hear about it. Today social justice issues are more on the agenda, there's more openness, and because we have good data which could be used well, I believe we can get public attention and hopefully support for that.

Another comment about the 4% issue: "Everywhere you go today in Israel, people are saying, well, the two-state solution is dying -- people are feeling despair -- and the settlers are trying to say, we are so many, you can't ever evict us. We want to try to give some other proportion. They're 4%. If you take the Geneva Initiative line of land swap, those who would need to be evicted are about 1.5% of the Israeli public. It's not impossible. It's not so many."

I look forward to seeing the materials Peace Now is going to release soon -- that report is not yet published, but it's in the works, and they're hoping in the next few weeks to get it ready for release.

The final question was, what can we in the Diaspora do? Stay informed, we were told. "Our voice is echoed in America," Ofran said. "Americans play a very important role... we are in the same family. Things that happen in Israel have an effect in America too, and vice versa. The partnership between us is really important for us." Ori Nir encouraged us to write letters, to publish op-eds, to talk to people, to keep abreast of the action alerts at the Peace Now website. A recording of this call will be posted there soon, too.

Rachel Tzvia Back's A Messenger Comes

In the beginning
it was sudden --
the world

that wasn't
yet
all at once

emerging
out of formless void --
space

of the infinite
broken
into pieces -- God

retreating
to make way
for perfect human

imperfection...

This is a taste of the beginning of Rachel Tzvia Back's new book of poems A Messenger Comes (Singing Horse Press, 2012.) These short sharp lines are poised in the space between classical kabbalah, Luria's cosmogony and the breaking of the vessels, and Back's own hopeful-sorrowful sense of God.

Later, in that same poem, she writes: "That first day when / he moved / gentle over the face // of turbulent waters / his heart / was breaking --" This is a God Whose heart breaks into pieces, and those pieces become the building-blocks of our creation.

This first long multi-part poem, "The Broken Beginning," is steeped in Torah. This is Bereshit, Genesis, in the beginning: the stories of our patriarchs and matriarchs, reflected through this sparse and spare lens."[T]he giving of names / as in the garden" -- Jacob wrestling with the angel, seeking a blessing, a name, acceptance of his body's brokenness -- what it is like to wake "to something / broken." As we all do.

The next multi-part poem, "Lamentation," is about the poet's father and his dying. This is life and death and loss, articulated in glimpses and fragments. In one section, she tells us that their alphabet (aleph-bet) "prepares itself / for radical // unraveling" -- the aleph of the abyss, of air, of ache unabating. The aleph of Av, the month in which we mourn the rupture of the Temple's fall; the aleph of Abba, father.

We move back and forth between the then and the now:

Six feet tall broad and bearded
traveling a world
(in a hospital bed)

professor and scientist
(huddled under
the covers)

in coat and tie commanding
(post-chemo hair white wisps
wistfully // soft)...

And, later:

you recite their names
one by one:

lymphocytes
monocytes
albumin creatinine --

creation's secrets
(modeh ani)
spoken as prayer.

The latinate words are strangely reminiscent of the Aramaic cadences of the kaddish: Yitgadal / v'yitkadash / sh'mei rabah. Back's framing turns science into liturgy.

I lingered on the page which begins "Each morning you bind yourself / to yourself / with tefillin" and ends by asking whether these black straps will hold her father here, in life, just a little longer. Oh, my heart.

The page which begins "In the prayer hall the Orphan / rises alone / to praise" is so beautiful and poignant that I immediately make myself a note: I want to include this poem in my congregation's next Yizkor / memorial service.

A list of the father's favorite scholarly tomes becomes a list of the unwritten books of the heart:

A Book from the Ruins
A Book of the Fathers

The Book of Glory

A Daughter's Book of Mourning

This collection here, this book which I hold now in my hand, is all of these things.

Mourning and lamentation are not this collection's only modes. Some of these poems are more peaceful, almost pastoral -- though even the poems about new life bear a tinge of anticipated sorrow:

From the stone verandah
I see almond trees
sitting low
in the orchard --
they are gentle rows
of bright-haired children
before a blackboard
their petaled selves
astir with
the thrilled certainty
they have all the right answers.

I love how the almond trees become rows of children, "petaled selves" astir, certain as only children can be. Adults, this poem does not say (does not need to say), are never so certain.

I heard Rachel speak at Williams several years ago. (2006: Placing the Voice: poet Rachel Tzvia Back.) I admired her poetry then, and I admire it now. Though part of what I admired in those earlier poems was their willingness to engage with the painful political realities of Israel and Palestine (Back lives in the Galilee, where her great-great-great-grandfather settled in the early 19th century.) These poems have a different tenor. They are more intensely personal.

And -- this is probably one of the reasons why this book so moves me -- these poems are deeply steeped in the concepts and vocabulary of Jewish tradition. Endnotes at the book's close explain the scriptural references, the quotations and nods to Lamentations, Song of Songs, Rilke. Even without these, the poems carry their own meaning. But with the added richness of these references and allusions, these poems sing.

I'll close this post with one of the short pieces I continue to find most moving. This poem makes reference to Rosh Chodesh, new moon, and to the ancient tradition of birkat ha-levanah, blessing the new moon and its light. Light intermingles here with loss. In this poem; in this collection; in this life.

It was the new moon
and the Devout were out
in the dark night
to bless the newborn Light --

lifting themselves on toe tips
toward the black sky
Hope

cradled in crescented bodies and prayer
as they chanted:

"May we live and not die
all month long" --
as you whom we love

Depart.

A Messenger Comes at Singing Horse Press; on Amazon; at AbeBooks.com.