Torah Covers That Go Wow: Changing the Torah Covers on Erev Rosh Hashanah

On Rosh Hashanah

It's time,

Among much else,

To change the covers on our Torahs from the everyday colors to white.

I google

Torah covers,

Hoping for some Jewish knowledge to inspire deep thoughts

And at the top of the list there is an ad,

An ad for a company that makes custom torah covers.

The headline for the ad reads,

Torah Covers That Go Wow!

Torah covers that go, "wow!"?

I'm impressed

And I start thinking about the other talking Torah covers I have known

And what they might have to say

Besides wow.

For instance, I once knew a Torah cover that said, Because You Are a Girl You're Not Allowed To Touch Me.

So I touched.  

I knew a Torah cover that said, Pick me up and Dance With Me!

I met that Torah cover at my first Simchat Torah.

And we danced.

I knew a Torah cover that said Take Me Off And Look Inside!

So I did and it was not boring.

I knew a Torah cover that said, Don't Worship Me, I'm Just A Book.

 I agreed, and then I kissed it with my tallit.

I knew a Torah cover that said, Doubt Is An Act Of Faith!

And so I asked questions, and then asked some more.

And these High Holyday white Torah covers, what do they say?

These cry out, Remember Me.

And I think of the loved one of blessed memory, who gave these covers to us.

I still miss her, and remember.

Last year the Torah covers spoke and said,

“Every small stain on white is visible, every blemish is there for the world to see”*

So that we may know ourselves, seek forgiveness and change.

And everywhere there is Rosh Hashana, what else do all the white covers say? 

They sing the song of the Shofar, the three notes,

According to Rabbi Arthur Waskow,

Tekiah, “Awake!”,  

Teruah ,”Open your heart!”,  

Shevarim, “Sob with all who suffer!”

All these noisy covers, going: Help Me, Touch Me, Go Away, Learn and Study, Ask and Listen, Worship, Fear, Dance, Forgive and Be Forgiven, Remember, Awaken, Open Up, Empathize, Resist...

All these voices

Kolot Torah, the voices of our torah covers,

Kolot Shofar,  the voices of the Shofar,

Kolot Chayeinu, the voices of our lives

As we join together

And go,

Wow.

Shana Tova

*Tabitha St. Bernard and Adam Jaffe, Changing The Torah Covers    http://kolotchayeinu.org/TorahCovers

A Blessing For Celebration

Baruch atah Adonai,

Brucha At Shechinah,

HaKodesh Baruch Hu,

We honor this entire community,

together with all holy communities:

All of us,

And our loved ones.

Bless the ones who began us.

Bless the ones who teach and the ones who learn.

Bless the ones who pray and create our sacred spaces.

Bless the ones who organize and change the world.

Bless the ones who do the hard work of building structure.

And bless those who care for those in need and those who need their care.

Blessed One-ness,

Creator, Created, Creating,

We honor the chain of work

that made this community.

We give love and thanks

for our founders who forged those chains.

We give love and thanks 

For all the links here today.

And we give love and thanks for those

Who will continue to build this chain into the future.

And with all the voices of all our lives, 

Let us say

Amein

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Thank you!

Trisha

BEHOLD, WHERE ARE YOU, HERE I AM: A Rosh Hashanah Invocation

© 2015 Trisha Arlin

I.  HINEI, BEHOLD OUR DREAMS

In the Talmud, Rebbe Hannina says, 

Human versions of God’s vast intent are as unripened fruit,
Filled with potential,
Perceived completely only by God.
Hanina says that the unripened fruit of prophecy is a dream.
Which is kind of cool.
So I speculate,
The unripened fruit of truth is the story.

While we sleep our brains show us random pictures of what we had seen that day or what we can imagine, based on what our brains already knew even if we didn’t know we knew them.
And our brain imposes order on the random and constructs a story. 
Thus we gain access to the things we know but don’t know we know,
And we call that a dream.

Chalom is the Hebrew word for dream, which sounds like chalon, which is the word for window.
So a dream can be prophecy or neurology or a window to one’s soul.

And the story is how we make sense of it.

Hinei, Behold.

II.  AYEKA – WHERE ARE YOU?

The story began in the Garden of Eden

With Adam and Eve, newborn and without shame.

Until one day the snake appears and asks the first question in the entire Torah,

Casting doubt on assumed truth,

A reptile after my own heart.

Did God really say, the snake asked, to you and Adam that you were not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge?

Huh, says Eve, and she eats that apple

And it is good.

Adam eats, too and suddenly, bam!  

Doubt and questions and fear and helplessness and despair and shame, and self-awareness. 

It is scary and they hide away.

Then God asks the first question God ever asks in the whole entire Torah,

Ayeka, God asks.  Where are you?  

They don’t answer. 

Where are you?

But poor Adam and Eve, it's before rituals, there’s no prayers, there’s no cantor singing and rabbi preaching.

Where are you?  God asks, and they haven’t a clue so they don’t say a thing.  They don’t have an  answer.

Do you? 

Ayeka. Where are you?

III.  HINENI – HERE I AM

So here today, we answer God’s question.  

Not Hinei, behold, but Hineni,  Here I am.

Hineni, said Abraham as he prepared to kill his son;

Hineni, said Moses at the burning bush as he prepared to free a people;

Hineni, sings the cantor, as she walks to the bima and prepares us for the Days of Awe.

It’s Rosh Hashanah and where are you? 

The place we stand is holy ground.

We listen for the presence of God in the cantor’s prayers and the rabbi's sermon

And the ancient rituals of the High Holydays,

Trying to hear truth amongst all the voices of our lives

Trying to interpret the noise properly so that redemption will come to us, if it should, 

And we can be part of the truth a much larger story.

Hineni.  Here I am

IV.  BEHOLD, WE DREAM TOGETHER

We dream together

And we make Teshuvah, when we return to our true selves and forgive and are forgiven;

We dream together

And we say Tefillah, when we pray and stop time in holy conversation;

We dream together 

And we do Tzedakah, when we transcend self by taking responsibility for our beautiful world. 

We dream together 

Because as Grace Paley once said, 

“Without action, hope is wasted.”

Behold Blessed One-ness, Infinite and eternal,

Here we are.

Where are you?

Amen.

We See What You’re Doing, Chapter 5

Now it came to pass on the third day

Esther got all dolled up

Dressed like a queen

All for the king.

And she waited in the courtyard

To attact the king's attention

Knowing she is beautiful

Because everyone tells her so.

They tell her that's where her power lies

But she knows better.

Because Esther is used to being looked at

She knows what it's worth

That is, she knows about the people who only look

But cannot see.

But she looks at them, too.

And she can see.

They can look and look and never see the truth

The power that she has

That she has to have

When you have no power.

So she waits in the courtyard

Because if the king lets her touch his golden scepter

(Insert double entendre here),

She lives.

But if he is offended

That she came to him without permission

She dies.

But here she is

She has to be

Because Esther sees what the king is doing.

Now it came to pass

That Esther is beautiful

And so she found favor in the king's eyes

So she invites him to a party

And Haman, too.

Especially Haman,

Only Haman.

And Haman gets all puffed up

Full of his glory

He can only see himself

The Great Man

Going to the queens banquet

And he walks past Mordechai

At the King's Gate

And Mordechai looks at Haman

And thinks to himself,

Feh

What an asshole

So Mordechai refuses to stand up

Because Mordechai sees what Haman is doing.

And it came to pass

That this really freaks out Haman

Haman sees himself through Mordechai's eyes

And everything crumbles

Classic narcissism

On one hand

Oh the glory and the money

Haman the Big Man

The king's right hand

Invited to the Queen's banquet

And on the other hand

Mordechai, that Jew, said,

Feh.

It kills Haman inside

Getting dissed by Mordechai

And he goes home to complain to Zeresh, his wife.

How, Haman asks,

Can I have a good time knowing Mordechai doesn't respect me?

So Zeresh the loyal wife says,

Look, Haman, love of my life,

don't let the Jew ruin your fun,

The solution is simple!

Build a gallows

50 Cubits high

And in the morning

Tell the king to hang Mordechai from it

Until he's dead.

Then party with a happy heart!

So Haman builds the gallows

Oy, he's in such a good mood

But as we all know

God sees what Haman is doing.