Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 224

Profile of Chava Weissler in Zeek

My profile of Chava Weissler went live in Zeek earlier this week! Chava is a writer, scholar, and folklorist who teaches Judaism, folklore, and women's studies at Lehigh University. Her book on tkhines (Jewish women's prayers of the 17th and 18th centuries) is one of the most widely-read resources in that field; she's working now on a book about Jewish Renewal.

I spoke with her about her work on the Havurah and Renewal movements, their similarities and differences as alternatives to the more mainstream denominational paradigm, the blurry boundaries which come with being a participant-observer, and why she's fascinated with the Jewish life of "non-elites." Here's a taste:

ZEEK: I read in your bio that you were interested in how these "counterculture" folks created surprisingly traditional Jewish lives for themselves. Is there overlap between that work/that finding and the work you're doing now researching Jewish Renewal?

CW: Yes! I often use the following metaphor: the Havurah movement represents the Misnagdim and the Renewal movement the Hasidim of the Jewish counter-culture. The style of the Havurah movement is more cognitive, and the style of Renewal is more expressive and devotional. Also, the Havurah movement has a deep aversion to the "rebbe" model, while the Renewal movement has seen it as a way into a heightened spirituality.

ZEEK: The Hasidim/Misnagdim analogy is a fascinating one, though I can see how some folks in the Havurah movement might have bones to pick there.

CW: Especially because we saw ourselves as reinstating Hasidism, or parts of it. Some years ago, a well-known Renewal teacher taught at the Havurah Institute. I asked him how he felt it compared to the Kallah and Renewal. And he said, 'the havurah movement is so unspiritual, it really bothered me... when they have a study class, they go in, open the text, study, close the text and you're done. When I teach a class, we sit in silence, we open our hearts to the text, we sing a niggun, we study the text, we process what's happened to us, then we sing another niggun and sit in silence again to receive what we've received.'

My havurah friends were outraged that he would say the Havurah movement isn't spiritual! But it’s a different model of spirituality and also of study...

Read the whole thing here: Chava Weissler: Tradition and Renewal.

First of May

Hills on May Day.

This May Day is cool and green-grey. All the world seems chartreuse today. The grass is vivid, the forsythia bushes have mostly shed their yellow blooms, new leaves are pushing their way forth like tiny wet handkerchiefs.

The higher hilltops are still pale purple-brown, but the valleys vibrate at the unmistakeable frequency of new spring. And the color is on its inexorable march up the hillsides. Another few weeks and the green will win.

I moved my three geraniums outside today. They've held on through another indoor winter of too-dry air and my forgetfulness with the watering can. Now they're on the deck drinking in the light rain.

We used to invite friends over for May Day. May poles and bonfires and face paint. Maybe someday when our current crop of kids is old enough to enjoy it, we'll revive those traditions. I like to imagine our boys laughing, running, weaving ribbons.

It's the 24th day of the Omer, the day of tiferet (balance, harmony) within netzach (endurance). I can feel the natural world in balance today, winter gone but summer not yet here. Every plant, tree, blade of grass lives, thrives, endures.

Celebrating Shabbat...with the poems of Rumi

Back in January, at Ohalah -- the annual conference of the association of rabbis for Jewish Renewal -- I attended a Rumi morning service led by my friend R' Ed Stafman. I found the Rumi service to be incredibly powerful. We prayed a fairly standard weekday morning service, with all of its component prayers, with one twist: accompanying each Hebrew prayer was a poem by the Persian mystic Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks. I promised myself then that someday I would do something similar at my shul.

This coming Shabbat morning -- Saturday, May 5 -- I'll be putting that promise into action, leading what I'm calling our first-ever Rumi Shabbat service. I've adapted the liturgy which my friend R' Ed put together (his liturgy was a weekday one; this is a Shabbat liturgy, and I made a few changes to make the service hopefully fit my community as well as possible.)

I'm really happy with the end result: a 38-page booklet which contains each of the Shabbat morning prayers (either in abbreviated or fulltext form) alongside Rumi poems which speak to the same themes, and often reference the same scriptural stories, as do the prayers. I also spent some time browsing the internet in search of images to enliven and adorn the pages. So hopefully the physical document will be lovely to look at, as well as beautiful to read.

I'm hoping that this service will be meaningful to all who attend, and that it will open up some new ways of thinking about and understanding our liturgy. I know that for many people the beauty of the traditional liturgy is often obscure or hard to access. Perhaps these Rumi poems (which are quite beautiful, as poetry qua poetry) will help us see our familiar liturgy in a new light. And, of course, there's something wonderful about using the poems of a Sufi poet to illuminate new facets of Jewish prayer! The mystics of every tradition, I find, tend to be in-touch with the Oneness which underlies all differentiation.

The service will run from 9:30-11am, as usual, followed by kiddush (blessing bread and wine and gathering for a little nosh) and text study. This week I suspect our text study may take the form of a conversation about the service we will have just prayed.

If you are a fan of Rumi's poetry but have never spent much time with the Jewish liturgy -- or if you pray Jewish liturgy regularly but perhaps don't know Rumi's work so well; if you are looking for a warm and welcoming place to celebrate Shabbat, to offer thanks and praise, and to lift up your voice in song; if you're in or near western Mass.; I hope you'll join us.

To whet your appetite, here's a taste of the sort of thing you'll find in this service. Here's our setting of Psalm 150: a Rumi poem, the Hebrew text of the psalm and its translation. (The prayerbook booklet I'm making will also have transliteration, for those who are not comfortable reading in Hebrew.)

Psalm 150

Let the beauty we love

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

הַלְלוּיָהּ, הַלְלוּ אֵל בְּקָדְשׁוֹ, הַלְלוּהוּ בִּרְקִיעַ עֻזּוֹ:הַלְלוּהוּ בְּגְבוּרֹתָיו, הַלְלוּהוּ כְּרֹב גֻּדְלוֹ: הַלְלוּהוּ בְּתֵקַע שׁוֹפָר, הַלְלוּהוּ בְּנֵבֶל וְכִנּוֹר: הַלְלוּהוּ בְּתֹף וּמָחוֹל, הַלְלוּהוּ בְּמִנִּים וְעֻגָב: הַלְלוּהוּ בְּצִלְצְלֵי שָׁמַע, הַלְלוּהוּ בְּצִלְצְלֵי תְרוּעָה: כֹּל הַנְּשָׁמָה תְּהַלֵּל יָהּ הַלְלוּיָהּ. כֹּל הַנְּשָׁמָה תְּהַלֵּל יָהּ הַלְלוּיָהּ:

Praise God in God's sanctuary
praise God in the sky, God's stronghold.
Praise God for mighty acts;
praise God for God's exceeding greatness.
Praise God with blasts of the horn;
praise God with harp and lyre.
Praise God with resounding cymbals,
praise God with loud-clashing cymbals.
Let all that breathes praise God.
Hallelujah!

A taste of 70 faces -- set to music!

I learned earlier today that four of the poems in 70 faces have been set to music! The composer is Michael Scherperel, who teaches music at Broward College. He set four of my Torah poems -- 1. Red Heifer / Chukat, 2. Sandals / Balak, 3. Caretaker / Behar, and 4. Korban / Vayikra -- to music as a 70th birthday gift for a friend. (It appears that I'm in excellent company; he's also set material by John Donne and by CP Cavafy.) He just sent me the sheet music for the four poems he set! What a delight to see my words on the score. I only wish my piano skills were a little bit stronger.

This is actually the second time a composer has set my words to music. A few years ago Michael Veloso was commissioned by Boston-based womens' musical ensemble Cantilena to write music for a Mother's Day concert (all music featuring mothers and motherhood in some way.) He set two of my Letters to Little Bean (part of a poem cycle I wrote while pregnant, otherwise as-yet unpublished) to music. On my first Mother's Day as a mother, I went to Boston to hear Cantilena perform Mike's music and my words -- an experience I hope I never forget.

Mr. Scherperel had apparently tried to reach me to ask permission to set the poems, but when his email didn't reach me, he took the plunge and wrote the music anyway. (And I am so glad he did.) This is probably a good time to say, on the record, that I am always happy when someone is inspired to create this sort of transformative work out of something I have written! Please feel free to remix, translate, create art inspired by, compose a musical setting for, and/or otherwise make art responding to or inspired by any of my work, poetry or prose.

I ask only that you credit me as the original work's author (and, if online, please link back to my site / my work) and that you show me whatever you make, because when someone likes something I've made enough to want to make something else in response, that brings me joy.

 

The black dog; the shadow; the fog

Vincent van Gogh's 1890 painting "Old Man with his Head in his Hands (At Eternity's Gate.)"

When I think about depression, and about the writers I've encountered who are able to write about it in a meaningful way, I always think of the poet Jane Kenyon, may her memory be a blessing. Her poem Having it Out with Melancholy is extraordinary. I have read it countless times over the years, and every time I read it, it teaches me something new about depression and about being a human being who suffers. (I also love her poem Back, which is about healing from depression. Both of these poems can be found in Otherwise: New and Selected Poems, published by Greywolf.)

Depression comes in many forms. Acute depression and chronic depression. Depression which is situational, and depression which is existential. I'm neither a therapist nor a psychologist; these gradations aren't my bailiwick. But as a pastoral caregiver, I think often about the people in my care who struggle with depression. I wonder when they most need to hear that I have been there, too -- and have, thank God, found my way back. I wonder when they most need to just speak their experience, without hearing about mine.

Often all I can do is listen. Listen, and say "I hear you." If they can't access hope that things will get better, I can hope it for them. If they can't find their way to prayer, I can pray on their behalf; can pray that they find their way back to being able to connect again with God, whatever they understand God to mean. I can be kind. I can urge them to try to be kind to themselves.

I can hold them in my thoughts and in my heart; I can hold them in prayer. Sometimes I don't believe that intercessory prayer makes a difference in any tangible way, and yet I can't imagine not doing it. My teachers taught me to pray for the people under my care, and that includes my congregants and friends and loved ones who live with the shadow of depression peering over their shoulder or stealing their breath. The black dog; the shadow; the fog.

The Hasidic master Reb Nachman of Bratzlav is said to have suffered from terrible depression. And yet he is often remembered for his powerful teachings about the importance of joy. (Many of these teachings are collected by Rabbi Debra Orenstein on her page Reb Nachman's "Rules" for Joy.) Some say that we teach best what we most need to learn; maybe he wrote so beautifully about joy because these were the teachings he needed to receive. "Depression," he wrote, "does tremendous damage. Use every ploy you can think of to bring yourself to joy."

Rabbi Debra also offers Reb Nachman's prayer:

God, I stand beaten and battered by the countless manifestations of my own inadequacies. Yet we must live with joy. [We must] overcome despair, seek pursue and find every inkling of goodness, every positive point within ourselves – and so discover true joy. Aid me in this quest, O God. Help me find satisfaction and a deep, abiding pleasure in all that I have, in all that I do, in all that I am.

I wonder how I would have responded if I had read this prayer when I was struggling with postpartum depression. I suspect that the words wouldn't have penetrated the fog. My inadequacies felt insurmountable: there I was, a new mother, supposed to be enjoying the precious moments of my child's infancy, and instead I so often felt broken. I am grateful even now for the family members who convinced me to seek the help I needed.

But reading Reb Nachman's prayer now, I'm struck by his insistence that we must live with joy, not despite our sorrow -- not in a way that ignores our perceived inadequacies -- but because doing so is central to spiritual life. "Joy," he writes, "is not merely incidental to your spiritual quest. It is vital." Maybe the most fervent prayer I can offer on behalf of those who struggle with depression is: may the clouds lift so that you can once again remember how to access joy.

No one "deserves" depression. The voice of depression often whispers, insidiously, that this is who one really is, this is what life really is, that anything which has seemed pleasurable or joyful was merely an illusion -- but it's not true. Depression does not mean that you are weak-willed or not trying hard enough. Depression is real and it is awful -- and there are ways to banish it. If one way doesn't work, there are others. Always.

For many of us, one of the challenges of depression is the fear that one's friends and loved ones don't want to hear about it. The little voice that whispers, "No one likes you when you're like this." I am here to say: that isn't true either. The people who love you may be worried about you; they may be frustrated with themselves for not being able to magically make you feel better; but that doesn't mean they don't want to hear.

We want to hear. Even if we can't fix it, we will sit with you in your suffering. We will not judge. We are here.

 

 

Resources:

National Alliance on Mental Illness: Mental Health Support, Education, and Advocacy

Depression: Supporting a family member or friend, from the Mayo Clinic staff

National Institute of Mental Health page on depression (includes a downloadable booklet on depression and treatment, with information about getting help). Also: How can I help myself if I am depressed?

On Being (NPR show): episode on Depression. "Nearly ten million Americans are diagnosed with clinical depression. As a society, we're increasingly aware of the many faces of depression, and we've become conversant in the language of psychological analysis of depression and medical treatment for it. But there is a growing body of literature by people who have struggled with depression and found it to be a lesson in the nature of the human soul. Krista engages some of these voices experiencing a range of varieties of depression and religious perspective."

70 faces of Torah for Shavuot

As we count the Omer, we're counting down the days until Shavuot. (This year Shavuot begins on  the evening of Saturday, May 26 -- just under four weeks from now.) Like children counting the days until a birthday or vacation, like a bride or groom counting down the days until the wedding, we're counting the 49 days until we can celebrate the anniversary of standing at Sinai and receiving Torah.

The sages tell us that each of our souls was somehow mystically present on that day: not only the souls of every Israelite who had survived the Exodus from Egypt, but the souls of every Jew who ever was or will be. When we celebrate Shavuot with mindful intention, we can glimpse that ineffable moment of transmission.

My teacher Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi tells us that the divine broadcast is still happening -- that God broadcasts truth and love and kindness on all frequencies all the time. This is the frequency to which our community has historically been attuned. If we open the ears of our hearts and souls, we can hear it even now.

In my favorite understanding, the Torah we received at Sinai wasn't just the words we know and love, dance with and wrestle with, read each week in the scroll of Genesis through Deuteronomy. In that moment of mystical download we received too all of the commentaries, the Oral Torah, the writings of our sages of blessed memory, all the way down to every d'var Torah written even now.

Every insight, every interpretation, every mind-opening understanding was packaged with the Torah when it came down. Torah, the sages say, has 70 faces; turn it and turn it, for everything is in it.

If you're looking for a contemporary way to connect with Torah, allow me to humbly suggest my collection of Torah poems. It makes a great Shavuot gift for anyone in your life who loves poetry and/or loves Torah. If your community celebrates Confirmation at this time, consider giving it to confirmands! Or to b'nei mitzvah, or to your rabbi, or to a friend, or to yourself. Find out all about it, read the first few poems, etc, here at the Phoenicia Publishing website.

A great Shavuot gift for one and all!

There You Are

What in me resists
meeting You wherever I go?

The petals fallen
from the forsythia

the wind, the trees
flying wet chartreuse flags --

atop my filing cabinet
the receipts for jury service

and childbirth classes
which I finally throw away --

calendar chock-a-block with
Skype dates and board meetings:

all of these are You
clothed in the world.

From dreams of my teachers
to status updates

every message I receive
comes from You.

I don't have to meditate
in order to pray

in order to be ready
to feel Your presence.

 

 

Earlier this week I met with my mashpi'ah (spiritual director). This poem arose out of our conversation.

I welcome any thoughts, reflections, questions, or poems which arise in response! Shabbat shalom.

In which my kids teach me about tefilah

So What Is Prayer?

It doesn't have to be services or words, though it can be both.
It can be a feeling that God is present.
It doesn't have to include asking for anything.
It can be just awe or wonder, or a wave of affection breaking over you.
It can be like plugging into an electric current.
It can change while you're praying.
It can be surprise.
It can be... Fill in the rest from your own experience.

— Rabbi Lionel Blue and Rabbi Jonathan Magonet

On Monday, I taught a lesson on tefilah to the students in our b'nei mitzvah prep program. The Hebrew word להתפלל (l'hitpallel) means "to pray;" it also means "to judge oneself / look inside oneself." Prayer, then, can be understood as a contemplative practice, a practice of looking inside.

Of course, it's other things, too. I offered a list of eleven approaches to prayer (courtesy of Steven Brown's Higher and Higher: Making Jewish Prayer Part of Us): prayer as a way of expressing feelings, as a way of making requests / bringing our desires to God, as a mode of developing / maintaining relationship with God, of articulating our fears, of connecting with our community through time and space, of sparking our sense of ethical responsibility, as a form of learning (Torah study is itself considered a form of prayer), as a self-discipline which makes one sensitive to connection with the sacred, as a way of accessing the joy of language and words, and as a mitzvah, e.g. a commandment given to us by God.

I asked my students which of the above ways of understanding prayer resonated for them, and which didn't. I was not surprised to hear that most of them found the idea of praying simply because it's commanded to be a little bit weird -- "like how reading a book for fun is fun, but reading it because a teacher told you to isn't fun anymore." Nor was I particularly surprised to hear that most of them liked the ideas of prayer being a way to articulate one's innermost feelings.

But the real a-ha moment for me came when we were talking about how making a blessing or saying a prayer can attune us to the wonders of the moment. Maybe saying a prayer, they told me, is like leaving a comment on a blog post written by God. Sometimes one just wants to hit the "like" button (as on Facebook) and give something a thumbs-up: this sunset? "Like!" This ice cream cone? "Like!" And other times, one has more to say than just the sign of approval, and that's when one might write a long comment, or post a video, to tell God thank you or to make a request or to continue the conversation in detail.

Can you imagine posting a video-prayer as a way of saying thank-you to God? I wouldn't have, until they suggested it. Moments like that one are why teaching b'nei mitzvah kids is so much fun. For every class when I wonder whether I'm getting through to them, there's a class like today, when they help me see something I thought I knew in a whole new way.

Teachings for the new month of Iyar

We've entered the lunar month of Iyar. This month unfolds entirely during the counting of the Omer. And I just read some really beautiful teachings about spring, the counting of the Omer, and meditation. Here, have a taste:

Did you ever hear the expression "something's in the air"? when we can feel something, but it's just out of our reach, and yet we know it's there, that's when we say "there's something in the air". Judaism tells us that at all times, there is "something in the air". At any particular time, there is a spiritual influence, an ineffable influx, just beyond us, waiting to be tapped into. The minute we tap into it, it becomes a part of us, and we become imbued with it...

During the month of Iyar, meditation takes on special meaning, because it's connected with the exodus from Egypt. The exodus required a spectacular burst of spiritual energy in order to spring us out of captivity in Egypt. But, once having achieved the hurried exit from the land of limitations, it was incumbent upon us to start incorporating that sudden burst of spiritual revelation into our lives. The way we do that, during the month of Iyar, is by meditating.

But how do we know upon what to meditate? The answer is: it's in the air. It's been in the air since Pesach, since the exodus, since the onset of spring. "It" is the spectacular burst which sprung us out of Egypt, and into a state of freedom. Our meditation must be on this burst of energy, but in such a way as to integrate it into our own lives. The way we do that is by counting. The commandment of counting the "omer", requires that for every day for forty-nine days, -seven weeks-, we take a facet of that initial spring energy, meditate upon it, and integrate it into our personalities. The word for "counting" in Hebrew is the same as the word for "telling" or "narrating", and it also means to "polish", or make shine. By counting, we are actually accessing this spirituality which is "in the air", and internalizing it in order to make our personalities shine.

Read the whole thing: Iyar - Jerusalem Connection. (You may find that some of what's on the page is a bit esoteric, and that some of it focuses on Yom Yerushalayim in a way which may not be universal, but I think there's some really beautiful material there.)

I love the idea that Judaism teaches us that all times, there is "something in the air" -- a spiritual tenor or tone to every moment of the day, to every month of the year. And I love the idea that at this season, through the contemplative practice of counting the Omer and focusing on how the divine qualities of lovingkindness and boundaried strength and harmony (and so on) unfold in us, we can access what's uniquely in the air at this time of year. A sense of transformation, maybe. A readiness to go beyond the initial plunge into the Sea, and to continue on toward the moment when we will celebrate our reception of Torah, our covenant with God -- or, framed in different language, our encounter with the ineffable which has left us, and will leave us, forever changed.

 

Ostriker and Amichai

As Yom Ha-Atzma'ut -- Israeli Independence Day -- approaches, I find myself reading a lot of poetry about the Middle East and/or written by Israeli and Palestinian poets. Here are two poems  which have particularly moved me this week.

 

A Meditation in Seven Days, part IV.

For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. -- Isaiah 2:3-4

Here is another story: the ark burned
The marble pillars buried, the remnant scattered

A thousand years, two thousand years
In every patch of the globe, the gentle remnant

Of whom our rabbis boast: Compassionate sons
Of compassionate fathers

In love not with the Law, but with the kindness
They claim to be the whole of the Torah

Torn from a whole cloth
From the hills of Judea

That rang with praise, and from the streams
That were jewels, yearning for wholeness, next

Year in Jerusalem, surely, there would be
Milk and honey, they could see

The thing plainly, an ideal society
Of workers, the wise, the holy hill flowing

Finally with righteousness --
Here they are, in the photographs of the 1880s,

The young women with their serious eyes
Their lace collars and cameo brooches

Are the partners of these serious young men
Who stand shaven, who have combed their hair smoothly

They are writing pamphlets together, which describe
In many little stitches the word shalom

They have climbed out of the gloomy villages
They have kissed the rigid parents goodbye

Soon they will be a light to the nations
They will make the desert bloom, they are going to form

The plough and pruning hook Isaiah promised
After tears of fire, of blood, of mud

Of the sword and shame
Eighty generations

Here in their eyes the light of justice from Sinai
And the light of pure reason from Europe

-- Alicia Ostriker, from The Book of Life: Selected Jewish Poems, 1979-2011

 

Jerusalem, 1967

On Yom Kippur 5728, I donned
Dark holiday clothing and walked to Jerusalem's Old City.
I stood for quite a while in front of the kiosk shop of an Arab,
Not far from the Nablus Gate, a shop
full of buttons, zippers and spools of thread
Of every color; and snaps and buckles.
Brightly lit and many colored like the open Holy Ark.

I said to him in my heart that my father too
Owned a shop just like this of buttons and thread.
I explained to him in my heart about all the decades
And the reasons and the events leading me to be here now
While my father's shop burned there and he is buried here.

When I concluded it was the hour of N'eilah
He too drew down the shutters and locked the gate
As I returned homeward with all the other worshippers.

–-Yehuda Amichai, from Achshav B' Ra'ash ("Now, Noisily", Schocken 1975), transl. Richard Silverstein

(That book appears to no longer be in print, but if you are interested in Amichai's work, there's a lovely Selected Poetry edition.)