Four Children, Five Rabbis

Okay, so

Four Children sitting around a table, talking

At a seder

And they have to ask,

Why is this night different from all other nights?

Why on this night do we ask so many questions?

And who gets to answer?

And who must  listen?

The first child, 
Book smart.

The wise child

Knows all the rules.

He's direct,

No messin' around,

This is what you do on Pesach:

Tell the story, dip the herbs

Recline, drink four cups

Ask the questions, Know the answers .

It's obvious. Duh.

The second child,

A smart ass, smart and an ass.

Doesn't care about the rules

Unless she knows what they're for,

She wants meaning

And is kind of obnoxious about it

Because sometimes it's hard to ask the next logical question

Without annoying someone.

What does this story mean to you? she asks.

And it comes off as a challenge, but it's not.

She really wants to know:

What does it mean?

So you tell her,

Freedom!

To be who you are,

To make choices,

to seek God whether you find God or not,

To become a person and then a people,

To ask questions.

The third child,

A beginner,

Doesn't know what to do

Doesn't know why we're doing it,

A baby!

So you say to him,

We tell a really good story

With a beginning middle and end

And a hero

And a villian

And miracles and dancing and bugs and dead cows and blood,

You'll love it!

And this is why we tell the story:

So we don't forget we were slaves,

So we don't forget what God did for us,

So we don't forget Torah,

And the seder is what we do to remember.

And because we remember

We don't enslave others.

We bask in God's presence.

We study Torah

And we tell stories.

And then there's the fourth kid

 The child who doesn't even know

 that she can ask a question.

Is it because she doesn't care?

Or is it, that she doesn't have a context?

Doen't know that she doesn't know?

So she doesn’t know how interesting it all is?

Or perhaps it’s because no one will let her talk

So she doesn't even try?

Sitting in the back of the bus,

Not allowed to study Torah,

Married at 17, popping out babies at 18.

So let's not wait for either of them to say something

Let's hold out our hands and say,

We were slaves

And now we're not.

And there is so much to know and do

And you can know and do it

And we will help you.

You are inspired,

You just don't know it yet.

Okay.

So

Five Rabbis sitting around a table, talking

At a seder.

They don’t have to ask,

Why is this night different from all other nights?

Each of them knows the direct meaning.

All of them plumb the depths of the hidden and symbolic.

Any one of them can tell a tale that bridges a gap.

Five out of five are inspired by God's revelations.

They know the rules and the meaning and the stories and oh my God, are they empowered to talk.

They stay up all night

And talk and talk and talk!

Each one smarter than the other

But in the morning when their students come in,

They still haven’t got an answer.

Hey you guys, say the students,

Listen.

Tzav, a drash

Tzav, this week's parsha, establishes some of the sacrificial duties of the professional high priest, the Kohanim,  along with some of their perks and ends with the ritual of their consecration.  There is an obvious parallel between these duties, perks and consecration and those of the modern Jewish religious leader. 

In Tzav, God tells Moses how to conduct a series  of religious rituals that only the Kohanim can carry out, specifically the rituals of Burnt Offering, meal offering, offerings for purgation, reparations, sacrifices for well being and the prohimbitions regarding fat and blood, and then the insturctions for ordination of the priests.  We are told what the priests should be wearing, how they kill, burn or otherwise consume the food or creatures being sacrificed.

The purpose or efficacy of sacrifice is taken for granted.   If done correctly, the ritual will evoke well-being,  sin will be purged, God will be placated.  The acts are not without meaning and effect, but to me the obligation seems  paramount and is perhaps an ends unto itself.  One wonders how the high priests managed to escape corruption and cynicism and one assumes many did not.   But noneless, they – and we - we brave alll the possible pitfalls, because they and we need the rituals.  Why?

Rabbi Nancy Fuchs Kreimer wrote in The Torah, A Women's Commentary,

As we learn about ritual as a human phenomenon, we come to understand it as a language of it's own, uniquely meaningful.  

But what gives it that meaning? Is it the ritual itself, is there some magic in the specific act, or is it enough that it is separate and repeatable and and we have all agreed to assign meaning to it?  And in our own time, is group or private prayer an adequate substitute for an orchestrated and dramatic public offering of value to God?  Or is the system of halacha and all the attendent sacrifices one makes in comfort and ease if one is halachically observant, the only true substitute for a fire on a high altar?

Or are those special creatures, the hereditary high priests the only ones who can perform the rituals correctly so that we may be made whole and holy?  If so, can these Kohanim serve as models for a moden rabbinical student?  How should we approach the learning and carrying out of our rituals?  Is there is the inherent value to a ritual even if is divorced from its history, or meaning?  Where can we find our fire?

Arthur Green writes in his interpretation of the Se-fat Emet's commentary on Tzav,

We long for a perfect act of worship, one in which there is no distraction, no doubt, no holding back, no wandering of the mind, nothing but the pure gift of love.  But we miss the point.  Our worship is all about struggle, an ongoing inner process of transformaiton

I would like to tell you what was, for me, a perfect act of worship and a transformation.

My father was a kohen.  When I was young, I knew he was special, and he got to do stuff other people didn't do because of it and that made me special.    

One day my father came home with this wooden box, and inside were five beautiful silver coins, which were for the pidyon ha ben,   the ritual of redeeming the first born son from service in the temple.  My father would "sell" these coins to the parents of the child for the price of a donation to the temple, he would then perform the pidyon ha ben, whatever that was, and they would pay him with the coins.  My father was very proud of these coins and I really wish I still had them.  We bonded over the coins, until he told me that I could never do this ritual because I was a girl, and only boys counted as kohanim, and only boys needed to be redeemed.  Not fair.

Years pass, I am an adult feminist and completely alienated from Judaism and I move to Seattle and then discover Judaism ain't so bad after all and move back to Jewish New York, but  as drawn as I was to the Jewish community, I still couldn't help feel that religion was irrational and not for me.  But then, friends of mine had a baby, their first, and a boy, and they knew I'm a Kohen, I don't remember why, and they asked me to perfrom their son's pidyon ha ben.

Me?  But I'm a woman?  You mean, I can be a Kohen now? Or at least act as one? Yes, I can.  It was so exciting!  I hadn't read Hebrew out loud in a long time, but Rabbi Sami Barth stood next to me at the ceremony while I enabled Debby and Wrolf to redeem the infant, Jeremy.  And myself.  Because in that act, that perfect act of ritual, both Jeremy and I were redeemed.  My fear and doubts were nothing next to the connection I felt to Aaron, to my father, to every woman who ever wanted to lead and study and pray as a full human being and a Jew, and most of all, to my authentic self.   A perfect act of worship and transformation, indeed.

That baby, Jeremy,  is going to college next year.  And I am applying to rabbinical school, though not because I'm a kohen.  I belong to a congregation that considers such hereditary status to be beyond anachronistic, no, more like repulsive and un-American and we never, and I mean never, do aliyot by Kohen, Levite and Israelite, but I still, whenever I hear the priestly blessing recited by the rabbi and sung by the cantor, I still think, that's mine to say, not yours, mine, though I don't tell anyone, well I just told you, because I know I'm not supposed to feel that way, and I know it's not real but I do.

But I have come to know that any leader of ritual can be that k'li kodesh, sacred vessel.   Rabbi Shefa Gold, writing about this parsha in her book, Torah Journeys, says:

We are commanded to be a nation of priests, to take responsibility for the holiness of our world, to be healers, and when necessary to stand between Life and Death, bridging the finite and the infinite.

The ritual leader, kohen or rabbi or not, lights the holy fire, whether it's a burning pigeon or a powerful metaphor, and creates the bridge between the past and the future.

A Rosh Hashana Amidah

I open my mouth, I open my heart.

I speak praise, hope and thanks.

I speak the Ancient Prayer:

PRAISE OUR ANCESTORS

God of my childhood faith, of my adult skepticism

God of the mystics, of the philosophers

God of our ancestors, of our children

God of this community, and of mine, only

God who knew my parents, God who knows my death

Blessed Ain Sof, what WAS before IS, and WHAT WILL BE when THIS is no more.

PRAISE GOD’S POWER

God of my strength and of my weakness,

God of my current understanding and my lack thereof,

Incline your metaphorical ear

And open your metaphorical eye.

Rambam says, 

If you can’t imagine God then you don’t exist.

There is no thing that is not God.

God is no thing.

Wow.

Blessed be God, bringing us the Wow.

PLACE YOURSELF in front of the fear. 

You will be judged, you will die.

Place yourself in the center of the universe

You earned that spot simply by existing.

Place yourself under obligation to God

However you understand or don’t understand God.

Place yourself in the path of holiness and joy and truth.

Bless Ruach HaOlam, the breath of mindfulness.

REMEMBER  

Remember what you did wrong

Remember what you did right.

Remember those who came before you.

Remember that you are responsible for those who come after you.

Remember your history.

Remember Torah.

Blessed be El, remembering us.

DECLARE YOURSELF

Because the truly evil are already condemned

The truly good are already blessed

And then, there’s the rest of us.

It is said that on Rosh Hashanah God decides your fate: life or death.

And the ten days until Yom Kippur are your opportunity to change God’s mind.

So don’t blow it.

This is a powerful day, a fantastic opportunity!

Declare yourself for holiness and joy and truth.

Bless Shechina, seeing how hard we are trying.

NOW WE DECLARE

And as a congregation, we proclaim:

Let the holiness rise up!

On Rosh Hashanah it is written

On Yom Kippur it is sealed.

And let us declare together:

We understand nothing.

All that is physical, ends.

We die.

But not today.

Except sometimes, today.

We fret about the past and worry about the future

And forget to live with where we are now.

And then we die.

We understand nothing.

But  

Teshuvah, Tefilah & Tzedukah 

Restore us to our place.

Teshuvah, when we return to our true selves;

Tefillah, when we stop time in holy conversation;

Tzedukah, when we transcend self;

And that’s when God decrees.

Bless the Presence, remembering when we have forgotten.

THE DAY IS HOLY

Listen to the Shofar as it announces:

Awesome and sacred is this sweet day!

The world is filled with the Divine, we are surrounded!

Hear us, know us.

Love us, enjoy us.

Remember us, rouse us.

Forgive us, inspire us, 

Bless Elohim, the Creator, the Created, Creating. 

SANCTIFY GOD’S NAME, so many holy names:

HaMavdeel, the Divider of Time;

Adonai, the Uniter Of All Existence;

Ain Sof, That Which Cannot Be Known;

Ruach HaOlam, The Breath That Animates;

Shechina, the Presence of Eternity;

Elohim, God of our Past

Yah, God of our future;

HaMakom, The Place, God of our present.

My the holiness be eternal

Let me look from side to side, to see all these possibilities,

The names help me comprehend

That which cannot be comprehended.

Holy, Holy, Holy!

Blessed be Achat/Echad, the One-ness, with so many names.

HEAR OUR PRAYERS,

That which Was, That which Is, That which Will Be.

We imagine you. We’re listening. Do you hear us?

We are in this glorious and troubled place and we take responsibility for how it turns out.

Blessed Yah, May the World To Come be the world we live in.

WE ARE SO THANKFUL. 

Ah, the sweetness of life, savor the taste.

Life can be so good, can’t it?

And right now it is fine.

Feed it with challah and honey,

Irrigate and watch it grow.

Who cares which book we’re inscribed in?

This moment is so great.

I am so thankful for the beautiful weather, 

the glorious music, the fine words, 

the sweet meals, the warm home,

the good friends, the silly toys

the sexual pleasures, the profound thoughts,

the crazy family, the big laughs,

and the loving.

Blessed  HaMakom, giving us today, which is so beautiful.

WE PRAY FOR WHOLENESS.

Bless us with love and mercy over us and all Israel and all the world.

Bless us with transcendence from the Light That Illuminates

Bless us with pleasure in the Awesome Connection

Adonai Echad, Bless us and keep everyone safe.  Grant us peace and wholeness that we may have decent and happy lives.

RUACH HA OLAM, Eternal Breath,

Incomprehensible. And really, so simple.

May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart be joyful truth.

May the good things I pray for happen and, if not, 

May I never forget to hope.  AMEN

Miketz, a drash

Pharaoh dreams of seven handsome fat cows being eaten by seven ugly, skinny cows.  Pharaoh dreams of seven solid healthy ears of wheat on a single stalk, being followed by seven thin sickly ears on a stalk scorched by the east wind.  He is a hereditary monarch, and therefore not very bright, so he calls for a man of discernment and wisdom to interpret the dreams, and Joseph is remembered and summoned. 

Joseph tells Pharaoh that God had determined there were to be seven years of plenty that would be followed by seven years of famine, when, as Rashi wrote, “the plenty would be forgotten”.  Joseph, not being an idiot, follows this interpretation with a recommendation to Pharoah that he find a man of discernment and wisdom to oversee a program of gathering food during the good years so that it can be distributed during the bad years. We know our man Joseph got the job, and the rest is, well, Exodus.

Seven years of plenty and seven years of famine; seven years of good-looking and seven years of ugly;  seven years of profit and partying; and seven years of grief and shock.  We know this cycle.  Boom and bust.  And we’re busted. 

So now, some of us are oblivious and some of us are scared.  Some prosper and some barely get by.  Some get bonuses and some have been broken.  Some of us blame the greedy and some of us blame ourselves.  Some of us have been permanently beaten down and some of us have risen up.

Good times, bad times.  Good guys, bad guys.  Good and evil.  How can the good survive the evil? And, why do we read this parsha, Miketz, on Chanukah, the Festival of Light & Dedication?  

Rabbi Arthur Green, in his interpretation of the Hasidic Sefat Emet’s commentary on Miketz, writes:

 “Divinity is everywhere:  there is no other source of being.  All that exists is of God, whether revealed or in hiding.  But the power of hiding, the exile of the mind from any awareness of divine presence, can sometimes be very great.  And the evil that human beings can perpetrate in the course of hiding from God’s light can indeed be without end.”

I hate the banks.  I hate the banks so much that I can’t walk past an ATM without wanting to throw a rock at it.  I hate the banks so much, that even as I quote Arthur Green telling you that God’s light is without end, when it comes to banks and bankers, I don’t believe that for a minute.     How can God be in something that is so impersonal, so uncaring, a machine that crushes without a glance at who or what it is crushing?    It’s hard to see the people in that machine.  I know they’re there.  I know most of them must think of themselves as good people. I must try to have compassion for them, find  God’s light in them, even if they can’t see it themselves, even if they hide from that light, I should be able to see it.  But it’s hard work.  I want justice.  I want consequences.

Since the recession I have not been able to get a full time job but I lived like I was working.  I refused to forget the time of plenty.   I hid from the truth of my own financial foolishness and trouble, and I hid from the inevitable consequence of waiting to for someone else to fix up my personal mess.    I find myself desperately wanting a man of discernment, a Joseph to come and organize me through the lean times.  For a while after the recession began, I wanted to rely on Obama to get us through this experience and I squirmed or denied or felt hopeless when he did not or could not fix our economic mess.  We are on our own.   We must organize ourselves.

Why do we read Miketz on Chanukah, the Festival of Light and Dedication?   This is the time when the mighty were delivered into the hands of the weak.  Chanukah is a Festival of a light that shines on the lies and delusions, on the delusions of the fat years and the troubles of the lean ones.  It shines on the pharaohs and the starving peasants and the banks and the unemployed.  And it asks us to choose whether we will embrace or hide from God’s light. Joseph was in prison, falsely accused with no end in sight.  The Maccabees lived under the thumb of invaders and a mad capricious king.  But neither wallowed in the despair of their situation.  They did what they needed to do. 

So, are we Joseph, that discerning man who serves the powers-that-be so he can feed the hungry?  Or are we Maccabees, resisting the bad guys with direct action?

Good and evil, boom or bust, all that exists is of God.

Rabbi Shefa Gold writes:  

“We can honor and protect the seeds of liberation that are in us - our compassion and open-hearted vision of the preciousness of every being. When we carry old hurts, and the bitterness that surrounds those wounds, then our every attempt to do justice is distorted by a sensation of pain.  And so the spiritual challenge is to heal those deep places of bitterness. In that healing, the Spirit of God in us is made manifest.”

So—

It’s the winter solstice,

The earth tilts away from the light,

The east wind scorches.

So we must lean forward

And light candles

So we can see whatever there is to see.

And the days will grow longer

When the earth tilts toward the sun.

Shabbat Shalom.  Happy Chanukah.

Lean Forward

The earth tilts away from the light

So we must lean forward

And light candles.

After a year of change

that is both welcome and unwelcome,

And a year of rising up and sinking down,

of community and solitude,

of creation and bureaucracy:

I’m tired.

All very interesting

And really, a little too interesting.  

Onward!

May you be blessed with light in the darkness, warmth in the cold, glitter in the snow and a joyful winter solstice.

A Verb Is A Noun: A Psalm

(inspired by Arthur Green, SEEK MY FACE)

Maybe
God is a gerund, a verb ending in 'ing', 
a verb that has become a noun.
Always doing, always being.  
And Being.
Never starting, never ending.  
But real and solid, 
a thing made of action.

Selah:  Pause and think.

I want always to be in the image of that Noun, 
A believer and doer and caretaker,
As my true self
In prayer and social action and conscious living,
I want to be in full connection with that Verb, 
Believing and doing and caring, 
In the truth, whether I call it God or not,
And regardless of the payoff.   
I want that Gerund, the noun that is a verb.

Selah: Lift up and exalt.

I construct descriptions and meanings
Or attach myself to rituals and history.
My weakness becomes my strength
My solitude becomes community.
This helps me get through my life
And I am comforted.
The universe is vast and incomprehensible.
I need to find joy in my lack of understanding.
I yearn for God’s goodness to pass over me,
Making the intangible, tangible.
Imagining the unimaginable.
God is a gerund: a verb and a noun.

Selah:  Stop and listen.  

We Dance Around The Shul

Our Torah is old.

The blue velvet cover

And the silver plate that hangs over the velvet

Are both covered in names

Of donors long gone,

And their honored loved ones, gone even longer.

These names mean nothing to us:

We ignore them

On Shabbat

When we dance around the shul.

On Selichot we put aside the old velvet

And dressed our Torah in fresh white covers,  
only a year old,

Donated by a beloved member,

Amina.

She died this year, four days before Rosh HaShanah.

Tonight it’s Simkhat Torah.

So we now take off Amina’s white cover

And put on the old one,

Blue, embroidered with strangers' names. 

Then we will dance around the shul.

We will think of Amina every year at this time 

From now on 

Until none of us are around,

Until there is no one who remembers her, 

Or us.

Then others will carry this scroll with the white cover

Donated by a Jew they never knew,

While they dance around the shul.

We give thanks for the ancient traditions, 

Telling the story even when we can’t, 

Keeping our loved ones’ memories 

And giving us Torah from the beginning, every year.