Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 240

Anticipating what's next

My fingers smell of etrog.

It's the day before Yom Kippur. I'm neck-deep in preparations for the holiday: I meet with my cantorial soloist to talk through the services, print a few last-minute materials, add names to the list of those for whom we pray for healing, punch holes in the guided meditation I wrote for the Avodah service (in which we remember the sacrifices of old on this day) and file it in my prayerbook binder.

And then the long narrow boxes materialize at the synagogue. Three sets of Four Species -- each containing a citron fruit, a willow branch, a myrtle branch, and a palm -- which we will wave during Sukkot. It's a wonderful reminder that, as big a deal as Yom Kippur is (both spiritually and professionally), it's not the end of anything: just another step in the continuing journey of the wheel of the year.

As I open the boxes, I feel like a little kid getting a birthday gift. Something beautiful has traveled a long way to reach me just in time. We haven't even entered into Yom Kippur yet, and I'm already remembering what comes next: the week of trying to daven and eat in the flimsy wee house which hints at the kind of booth in which my spiritual ancestors might once have dwelled while bringing in their harvest, which reminds me to cherish the beauty of what's open to the air and the rain.

We're not there yet. Right now it's time to intensify and complete my preparations for Yom Kippur. Tomorrow it will be time to dive headlong into the immersive experience of Yom Kippur, of Shabbat, of the day when tradition tells us God is most near to us, when the channels between us and God are clearest and most open. After Yom Kippur comes Sunday: a day for football, for building our sukkot, for winding down. But it's on the way.

As I've been writing this post, the scent of etrog has faded. I miss it already. I might have to walk across the room, open up one of the little padded etrog boxes, and breathe it in one more time.

For the days when you feel thin-skinned: Listen

Listen

 

LISTEN

 

The craving for distraction
-- maybe you should open
four different social networks
in four adjacent tabs --

is a messenger.
Some part of you
wants to pretend
you're not feeling tender.

Your beating heart is too big,
too vulnerable. You've stretched
until your skin's too thin,
your knobby places exposed.

Offer a gentle greeting
to the little girl who hopes
that if she spurs the acrobats
and keeps the sparkles flashing

no one will notice
the smudges on her knees
or the circles beneath her eyes.
Let her stop performing.

Ask your aches to gather round
and teach you what they know.
Then they can go, gentle
as a hair drawn out of milk.

One of the things I value most about contemplative practices, prayer and meditation among them, is that they offer practice in noticing one's own emotional landscape.

Imagine if you could make a practice of not avoiding what hurts, but rather greeting it with compassion: what might that change, in your life?

The final image in the poem is drawn from Talmud, where Rav Nachman describes death as being as painless as "drawing a hair out of a bowl of milk." I like the idea that once we ask our wounds to teach us something, they might quietly disappear.

G'mar chatimah tovah: may you be sealed for a good year.

A poem about poetry as scripture: People of the Book

I received a little new year's gift from the universe when I learned that Rabbi Jonathan Singer of Temple Beth Am had read one of my poems -- "People of the Book," originally published in the first issue of Drash: Northwest Mosaic back in 2007 -- during Rosh Hashanah services. I'm always happy when my poems find new life and new audiences.

Anyway, hearing that Rabbi Singer had opened Rosh Hashanah services with this poem inspired me to post it here. I haven't shared a poem here in a while, and though this one is a few years old, I still like it quite a lot. Although it's tongue-in-cheek, it's also heartfelt; Torah belongs to all of us, and I believe that poetry does -- or should -- too.

 

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK

 

Sometimes, studying
Torah in the morning
I jot lines of verse
instead of sermon.

I wish we read poems
with this fervor.
Imagine a lectionary
of Stevens and cummings,

Kenyon and Williams
and Hall, read week
after week, dissected
and cherished.

Everyone knows
you needn't be
a scholar to care about
Torah. It belongs

to every Jew
who cracks a spine
or grasps the spindles
of the scroll. Poetry

too should be read
by children and parents
together, lying down
and rising up,

great lines a sign
shaping our speech
and our vision, the work
of our sanctified hands.

Forgive

I hope all who are reading this had a wonderful Rosh Hashanah! We're cradled now in the embrace of the Days of Awe: Rosh Hashanah on one side, Yom Kippur on the other. These are the aseret y'mei teshuvah, the ten days of repentance and return.

There's so much I want to write. About my first Rosh Hashanah as a "real rabbi;" about reaping the harvest of the sacred storytelling class I took last summer at the ALEPH Kallah; about watching my parents discover my son anew at this wonderful moment in his life. Maybe next week I'll have time to share some of those stories and reflections.

For now, I just want to say -- and I mean this, honestly -- if I have hurt or offended you in the year which just ended, I ask your forgiveness. Jewish tradition recognizes a distinction between sins which impact the relationship between a person and God, and sins which impact the relationship between people. As we read in Talmud:

את זו דרש רבי אלעזר בן עזריה, (ויקרא טז) מכל חטאתיכם לפני יי תטהרו, עברות שביןאדם למקום, יום הכפורים מכפר. עברות שבין אדם לחברו, אין יום הכפורים מכפר, עד שירצה את חברו

R. Elazar b. Azariah taught this interpretation of the verse "From all your sins you shall be made pure before God." (Lev. 16:30) For transgressions between a person and the Everpresent One, the Day of Atonement atones, but for transgressions between a person and one's fellow, the Day of Atonement atones only if the person regains the other's goodwill."

I ask for your goodwill and your forgiveness for any places where I may have missed the mark in our relationship in the past year.

Wishing all who live by the Jewish festival calendar a g'mar chatimah tovah -- may you be sealed for a good year to come.

Akedah poems

Last year, as the cantorial soloist at CBI, I gave the sermon on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. In years past, our visiting cantorial soloists had offered a "sermon in song;" I offered a sermon in poetry, a cycle of ten poems arising out of the story of the akedah / the binding of Isaac, which is the story we read on that day.

This year I'm the rabbi and my friend Shayndel Kahn is our cantorial soloist; she will offer today's sermon at my shul. But in case you missed it last year, or in case you'd like to read it again -- I hope that the poems will speak anew to us this year, as I hope that the Torah story continues to speak to us! -- here's a link to last year's sermon for this day: The Akedah Cycle.

Spiritual Lessons of the Arab Spring (a sermon for Rosh Hashanah morning)

Last winter there was a revolution in Tunisia. It began on December 17, in the town of Sidi Bouzid.

A policewoman, seeking a bribe, confiscated the illegal vegetable stall of an unemployed man named Mohamad Bouazizi. For years, the police had been routinely confiscating his wheelbarrow of produce, demanding bribes. On this day, he had already gone into debt to buy the vegetables he needed to sell to feed his family. And now his vegetables, and his street cart, were impounded, and he was harassed and humiliated by a city official and her aides. Bouazizi tried to see the governor to beg for his cart and his weighing scales, but the governor refused to see him.

Out of despondency, or out of desperate desire to make a statement, Bouazizi set himself on fire. This was not an act of violence against others, but a way of protesting and showing his despair. On December 17, the day when Bouazizi self-immolated, protesters took to the streets. They posted videos of their marches on Facebook. After 23 years of dictatorship under the rule of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the Tunisian people were fed up with corruption and misrule. Al Jazeera broadcast this smalltown Tunisian revolution throughout the Arab world. Less than a month later, Ben Ali stepped down from power.

That same month, a revolution unfolded in Egypt. Protests took place in a Cairo square called Tahrir—"Liberation." More than a million people took to the streets and the square, rallying behind the aims of free speech, an end to police brutality and corruption, and an end to the state of emergency law which had persisted since 1967. They protested high unemployment and food price inflation. They demanded free elections, a say in the management of Egypt's resources, and justice.

The protestors faced police willing to use tear gas and rubber bullets to drive them back. Ordinary people who lived near Tahrir opened their homes so that protesters could shower, and showed up in the square to cook food and sing songs. You may have seen news footage of Egyptian Christians linking hands to protect Egyptian Muslims as they prostrated themselves in prayer—a prostration which is akin to what some of us will do, later this morning, during the Great Aleinu.

Within days President Hosni Mubarak stepped down and a new chapter of Egyptian history began.

Since last December, there have been revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt; a civil war in Libya; uprisings in Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen; protests in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, and in Gaza and the West Bank. Over the summer, unprecedented numbers of Israelis too have taken to the streets, setting up tent cities and protesting inequities in Israeli life, inspired in large part by the Arab Spring. A vast tectonic shift is underway. The world is changing.

It's become popular to analyze the Arab Spring in terms of how social media—like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook—played a role in the organizing of protests and the disseminating of information. (Indeed, my husband Ethan has given many lectures on this very subject!) These technologies and their use worldwide have enabled a profound change in how people communicate. As those who were once voiceless connect with each other, they find strength in togetherness, and new possibilities arise.

Others look at the Arab Spring and ask: what does this mean for Israel? Let me be honest: I don't know yet. I don't think anyone does. But Israel's security does not, must not, depend on a status quo where the inhabitants of neighboring countries live under oppression and repression.

The Declaration of Establishment of the State of Israel says that Israel "will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture[.]" These are lofty aims. As a rabbi, and as a Jew, I yearn for the day when every woman, man, and child everywhere in the world knows these rights and cherishes them as their own.

For me the most interesting question is what the Arab Spring tells us about the human spirit. What can we learn from these stories as we enter into the Days of Awe? On this Rosh Hashanah morning I'd like to offer three spiritual lessons I find in the unfolding of the Arab Spring.

 

The first is the lesson of presence. Protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square, in Manama's Pearl Square, in the streets of Sidi Bouzid, began by simply coming together. And where one person's presence might not have made an appreciable difference, the presence of thousands and tens of thousands is what began to open the doors to change. These were not riots. These were nonviolent protests, where what mattered was simply that people showed up.

And they weren't just physically present; they were spiritually present, too. I know this because people took care of one another. Grown-ups watched after children. Christians took care of Muslims. Those who could afford to cook food for a crowd did so. Those who could open their homes to offer a meal or a shower, did so. Sometimes difficult or scary situations bring out the worst in people; sometimes they bring out what's best in us. People who are caring for one another are present not only in body, but also in heart and soul.

This simple presence matters for us as well. On this Rosh Hashanah, may we be blessed with an appreciation of how important it is that we be present. We're here. We've come together to place our bodies, our hearts, our minds, and our souls in service of the common goal of connecting with God and with community. And when we come together, something ineffable arises, something that's more than the sum of its parts.

The second lesson I take away from the Arab Spring is that hope is a powerful force. Injustice tends to be self-sustaining: when a system becomes unjust, it can calcify and harden. In Torah we read about our people's history in Mitzrayim, "The Narrow Place"—a place of constriction and constrainment, hard labor and grievous punishment—and that's often what the name Egypt represents in the Jewish imagination. Torah tells us that God hardened Pharaoh's heart against the plight of the Hebrews. How can it be, the rabbis ask, that God would harden Pharaoh's heart? And the answer comes: first Pharaoh hardened his own heart, and once his heart was hardened, it was easy for God to let it stay that way. Like the Pharaoh of the Passover story, we too can harden our own hearts against those who are different from us… and when we do, it becomes easier for us to accept injustice as the status quo.

But injustice can be overcome. Tzedek, tzedek tirdof, says Torah: justice, justice shall you pursue! And once one person has the strength to stand up, whether in protest or in despair, to take action to create change—then more people follow suit.

The people of Tunisia and Egypt had given up all hope of change. If they could imagine a better life, they imagined it coming after their leaders' deaths. No one believed that these men, who had clung to power for so long, could be overthrown.

Mohamed Bouazizi's mode of seeking change is horrific to imagine. This act of desperation is not a way I could ever imagine seeking to further an agenda of transformation. But I think we must feel compassion for a man whose life was so awful that he clutched at self-immolation as a way of sparking hope and change. And I pray that we here today, engaged in our spiritual task of seeking righteousness, may be inspired by his courage, even as we mourn the need for his flames. His sacrifice led an entire region to begin to believe that the change they had thought was impossible could actually happen, not in some distant future but in their own day.

And that's the third lesson I want to lift up from the Arab Spring: change is possible. Political change, social change, personal change, spiritual change.

Those who have taken part in nonviolent protests across the Arab world this year have put their bodies in service of their hopes for political change. They seek changes in government, changes in how their police and army treat them, changes in the economy and the job market, changes in their rights to assemble and to speak for themselves.

We in this country are justifiably proud of our democracy and of the rights which we know to be inalienable—and yet even we can be prone to slipping in to the familiar comfort of skepticism and despair. It's easy to knock the other guys—Republicans or Democrats, whoever we think is to blame for whatever's not right. But the enemy is not those who see the world differently than we do: it's the insidious voice of despair which whispers in our ears that nothing will ever change.

Some who seek marriage equality in this nation may despair of ever being able to wed the person they love. And yet, earlier this summer, the New York State senate ruled that denying gays and lesbians the right of marriage was unjust, and the first legal gay weddings there took place. Some who believe that global warming is real and dangerous may despair of ever convincing those who don't. And yet, earlier this year, the windmills at Berkshire Wind in Lanesboro began to turn, generating power safely and sustainably from the winds which whip along the ridge. Change is possible.

People can change, too. That may be the most central teaching of these Days of Awe. This is the time of year when our tradition invites us to do the spiritual work of cheshbon ha-nefesh, taking an accounting of the soul; to strive to discern where our lives and relationships are working, and where we could be doing a better job of living up to our highest ideals. This is the season for teshuvah, repetance or return, re-aligning ourselves so that we are pointed in the right direction again: toward God, toward our highest selves, toward our hopes and dreams of a world perfected and renewed. The Days of Awe come each year to remind us that we, too—with our habits, our customary ways of being, our perennial challenges and stuck places—we, too, can change.

It's easy to feel distant from what we see on the news, what we read about in the paper. Tunisia, Cairo, Yemen, Bahrain: these places are far away. The people who live there don't look like us, don't dress like us. Most of them don't worship like us. But like us, they are made in the image and the likeness of God; each protester contains a nefesh elohut, a spark of divinity, within them. (And so does each policeman aiming a water cannon…though it may be more difficult for us to see the divinity in those who persecute than in those who are perscuted.)

In more recent months, hundreds of thousands have gathered in Israel to protest an untenable cost of living, lack of housing and jobs, the deteriorating educational system, and issues of social justice. They too have been galvanized by the Arab Spring.

Of course, as the Arab Spring gives way to the Arab Autumn, the stories are not always joyous and inspiring. Even as the Israeli tent city protests offer reason for hope, the recent attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo offers reason for concern. It began as violence against the Egyptian police force, which continues to mistreat and abuse activists with relative impunity—but it quickly became an attack on the Israeli Embassy, and that's alarming.

Mubarak maintained a cordial relationship with Israel while allowing his thuggish police force to brutalize Egyptians. It makes sense that some Egyptians now resent that relationship with Israel as a relic of the Mubarak years. There is clearly some anti-Israel sentiment in Egypt, which was surely both strengthened by Mubarak's policies, and silenced by his regime. Now that he is gone, that anti-Israel sentiment is newly visible, which in turn awakens our fears.

I believe that a free and democratic Egypt will ultimately be a better partner for Israel than was Mubarak's brutal dictatorship...though the road to that partnership may not be easy. Meanwhile, I'm heartened when I read voices from the Middle East—like the recent column in the Jerusalem Post by Gershom Baskin—arguing that what is needed are more bridges between people, even (or maybe especially) those among whom there is mistrust.

(He also notes that many Egyptians believe that the leaders of the mob which torched the Israeli embassy were members of Mubarak's hated internal security force, actively working to undermine the revolution. If that is true, it also gives me hope.)

Many of us who feel an identification with Israel have the long habit of relating to the Arab world with fear and anxiety. But this season of teshuvah is a time for examining our patterns and discerning which ones no longer serve us. If we can relate to the Arab Spring with empathy, compassion, and hope instead of with fear, what might change in us—and in the world we share?

In Jewish tradition, the fact of humanity's many diversities and differences is seen as a sign of God's greatness. We read in the Mishnah, the compilation of rabbinic wisdom which dates from the second century of the Common Era, that "Humanity was produced from one man, Adam, to show God's greatness. When a man mints a coin in a press, each coin is identical. But when the Holy Blessed One creates people in the form of Adam not one is similar to any other." (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5)

We who are here in this sanctuary, and we who are in every sanctuary in the world this morning, and we who are not in any sanctuary at all—all of us are made in the image and the likeness; all of us deserve to have hope and to know freedom; and all of us are capable of the holiness of change.

Shanah tovah tikatevu v'techatemu: may you be inscribed and sealed for a good year.

Happy new year!

Challah dough, rising.

As I knead the dough -- Leah Koenig's apple cider challah; thanks, Jew and the Carrot -- I pray aloud that this bread contain all of the blessings with which I hope my loved ones will be graced in the coming year. Blessings of joy and contentment, blessings of parnassah (income), blessings of togetherness, blessings of love, blessings of peace.

It's 8:30 in the morning; Rosh Hashanah begins tomorrow night. Two honeycakes are in the oven. The challah dough is rising. The new year is almost, almost, almost here.

I can't serve these baked goods to most of y'all who are reading these words; leaving aside for the moment the reality that you live all over the world, there's also the non-negotiable fact that I am not, at this point in my spiritual development, capable of turning two loaves of apple cider challah into a feast for thousands.

But I hope all of you who read these words know that I mean for this blog to be a kind of feast, and that I consider all of you to be sitting around my metaphorical holiday table, and that the blessings I hope to bake into the bread for my family are also blessings I hope for each one of you.

L'shanah tovah tikatevu v'techatemu: may you be inscribed and sealed for a good year!

Six ways to usher in the new year

Rosh Hashanah -- literally "the head of the year;" colloquially, the Jewish New Year -- is approaching! Wednesday evening at sundown we'll say farewell to 5771 and we'll welcome in 5772.

A few years ago I posted a set of Rosh Hashanah resources: sermons, explanations of liturgy, podcasts, you name it, all intended to help farflung readers enhance their experience of this special festival day. This year I'd like to offer something different: a set of six ways you can observe Rosh Hashanah even if you won't be coming anywhere near a shul (though I hasten to add, you can use these even if you will be spending all day davening in community, too!)

Six Ways to Usher In the New Year

1. Eat apples with honey or challah with honey -- or, really, anything you enjoy, with honey on top! This is one of my favorite tastes of the new year season...and some traditions hold that this taste should be savored from now until Shemini Atzeret (at the end of Sukkot), so you have some time to enjoy this one.

2. Jewish tradition holds that today is the birthday of the world. Stick a candle in a cupcake if you're so inclined; go outdoors if you're so inclined; wish the world happy birthday, and take some time to be grateful for the corner of the world in which you live, wherever that may be.

3. Eat a favorite food you haven't tasted since last year (a fruit that's newly in-season where you are? a favorite family recipe? something seasonal and delicious? personally I've been wanting to try the pumpkin ice cream at Whitney's Farm, though I'm not sure I'm going to manage it this week) and say the shehecheyanu, the blessing sanctifying time.

4. The Hebrew word shanah, year, can be understood as related to the word shinui, change; this festival offers us an invitation to usher in the change we want to see. Spend a little while thinking about your life, and identify one place where you want to change -- and begin that change today, right now.

5. Hear the shofar -- either in person, or on YouTube. Rambam -- aka Maimonides -- heard the calls of the shofar as saying, "Wake up you sleepers from your sleep, you slumberers from your slumber! Search your deeds and return in repentance!" (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah 3:4.) The Baal Shem Tov heard, in the sounds of the shofar, a metaphor for the broken heart which brings us close to God. When you listen to the call of the shofar, what do you hear?

6. Go to a body of open water with some bread in your hand. Cast bits of bread into the water, each one representing one of the ways in which you've missed the mark in the last year. As you cast the bread upon the waters, you might choose to use one of these contemporary rituals, or to read the traditional text from Micah (learn more here), or just to enjoy your own silent contemplation and the rush of the waters washing the old year away.

No matter what your holiday practices may or may not be, I wish you a good and sweet 5772! May we all be blessed with prosperity, good fortune, and companionship in the new year to come.

Hopes for Israel and for Palestine

Outside the Ein Yael checkpoint. As described in this post about the All Nations Café, 2008.

It's been a busy week for those of us who try to carefully follow happenings in/around Israel and Palestine. I want to write about this week's new developments, but I have a tremendous amount of work to do -- practically, emotionally, spiritually -- in preparation for the Days of Awe. Then again, engaging with happenings in the Middle East is arguably part of my work. Hence this post...though, thanks to the obligations of the season, this may be briefer (and my ability to respond to comments may be less) than might otherwise be the case.

Israeli-American blogger Emily L. Hauser is worth reading on Israel/Palestine this week, as always. Here's an excerpt from the post she put up on Friday, after both Abbas and Netanyahu had spoken to the UN:

After a quarter of a century of living, studying, reporting, researching, and writing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, my demoralization has reached a low that I never dreamed possible. I cannot do it.

I will say only this: The Palestinian statehood bid is an entirely legal, nonviolent attempt at a work-around to Israeli and American intransigence. 

Along with the 600+ other members of the JStreet rabbinic cabinet, I support the existence of a free and prosperous Palestine which could be a good neighbor to Israel -- and, it goes without saying, the existence of a just and safe Israel which could be a good neighbor to Palestine. I know that many Israelis and Palestinians share this yearning. Everyone I know in Israel wants two safe, independent, thriving states alongside each other.

And yet it keeps not happening. Not only that: the two sides continue to be at one another's throats. Settlements continue to expand, carving the West Bank into the proverbial block of Swiss cheese. Rockets continue to be fired from Gaza into southern Israel. Injustice continues to unfold, and in its wake come its close cousins resentment and terror. I can understand why these realities might spark depression in those who care about this place.

I imagine that if the Israeli government had been able to respond to the Palestinian statehood bid differently, that might have changed the conversation. (One interesting possibility along these lines was suggested in Tikkun: Recognize Palestine AND Reaffirm Israel as a Jewish State.) But that's not where Netanyahu is coming from. Gershom Gorenberg of South Jerusalem writes, at the American Prospect, about Netanyahu's remarks at the UN:

His truth, he said, would include "the fact that [Jews] are not foreigners … that we have rights in this country that go 'only' 4,000 years"—an argument not likely to convince U.N. delegates that the Palestinians do not also have a right to self-determination. Nor will his claim that "the Palestinians are doing everything to torpedo direct peace negotiations" erase his own refusal to stop settlement construction...

But Netanyahu is playing to a different audience. He may hope that his speech...will appeal to the legitimately scarred side of the Jewish psyche that says that the whole world is against us, that we must demand our rights, but that any recognition of them is really only the smile before betrayal.

The historical traumas that produced these fears are entirely real. The problem with post-traumatic stress is that it alerts you not only to real dangers but false ones. For the mugging victim, every friendly wave of a hand may look like the prelude to the blow of a fist.

Gorenberg notes that Netanyahu has legitimate reasons to relate to the Palestinians with fear -- but also notes, quite pointedly, that so did Yitzchak Rabin (of blessed memory), and Rabin was able to put those traumas aside and choose the path toward peace. I wish I thought that Israel's current government were capable of learning from Rabin's example.

I continue to hope that change is possible; that peace is possible; that someday I will be able to travel with my family to two thriving, independent, safe, and beautiful states of Israel and of Palestine. I don't know how the world is going to get there, but I continue to pray and to hope.

Perhaps the most poignant response I've read to this week's events is Uri Avnery's "Sad and Happy About Palestinian Statehood Bid," printed at Tikkun as part of a selection of responses to the potential UN recognition of Palestine. Remembering 1948, Avnery writes:

The idea of peace between two gallant fighters after the battle is as old as Semitic culture. In the epic written more than 3,000 years ago, Gilgamesh, king of Uruk (in today's Iraq) fights against the wild Enkidu, his equal in strength and courage, and after the epic fight they become blood brothers.

We had fought hard and had won. The Palestinians had lost everything. The part of Palestine that had been allotted by the U.N. to their state had been gobbled up by Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, leaving nothing for them. Half the Palestinian people had been driven from their homes and become refugees.

That was the time, we thought, for the victor to stun the world with an act of magnanimity and wisdom, offering to help the Palestinians to set up their state in return for peace. Thus we could forge a friendship that would last for generations...I am telling this story (again) in order to make one point: when the "two-state solution" was conceived for the first time after 1948, it was as an idea of reconciliation, fraternization, and mutual respect.

Given the status of things now, after 60 years of strife between the two sides, reconciliation, fraternization, and mutual respect seem unlikely. But I join Avnery in continuing to dream that this is possible. There must be a way to get there from here.

Please, God, may the coming year of 5772 be the year in which things begin to change for the better in that beautiful, complicated sliver of land which so many people love so fiercely! I don't know whether the Palestinian request for membership in the United Nations can create that reality, but I know that what's been tried over the last several decades hasn't worked. I'm ready to place my hope in new alternatives, if they might help create the paradigm shift which will lead to the change I yearn to see.

As Elul draws to its close

Tomorrow night, at the closing cusp of Shabbat, we'll hold Selichot services -- the formal beginning of our high holiday season. The Days of Awe are almost here! Here are a few of my favorite posts from this moment in previous years:

Release, 2010

Hatarat nedarim means "releasing of vows." It's a ceremony in which one person assembles three others to serve as a beit din, a court of law... The idea is that these friends serve as representatives of the court on high, and that if each of us can honestly say to these friends that we made vows in the last year in error and wish to be released from them, as our friends hear and accept our regrets, the heavenly court does the same.

Looking forward to selichot, 2010

"Ana B'Koach" is the prayer I turn to when I'm asking for help in letting go of something that has me all worked up in guilt and recriminations. I'll be singing Hanna Tiferet's melody for the prayer, which features just the first line... So often we tie ourselves in knots over things we've done or haven't done. This season of teshuvah (repentance / return) is a perfect time to work on untangling what's become tense and knotted in our spiritual lives.

Petition: a prayer for selichot, 2009

Compassionate One, remember / we are your children // help us to know again / that we are cradled...

The Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah, 2005

Buying groceries, and learning Torah. Making a pot of Joe (because my grandmother Rachel's honeycake recipe requires a cup of cold coffee) and practicing the last section of Tuesday's Torah portion, in which God hears Ishmael's soundless cries...

Shabbat shalom to all; may this Shabbat bring a heightened sense of how near we are to these majestic Days of Awe!