We Pray For Goodness

 Blessed Holy Wholeness,

No matter how much we know,

We don’t understand

Too much. 

Again and again 

Cruelty celebrates while

War assaults the One-ness.

Narcissists hate apologies,

Autocrats hate cooperation,

Fascists hate creativity. 

The violent ones get high 

Off destruction,

Let us not be bystanders to the crimes

Witnessing the degradation

But doing nothing to help. 

All these lives under attack, 

May they survive the camps

May they find freedom. 

As we  study and teach on how to help, 

May we spread knowledge and 

May we all learn strategies of resistance  

May kindness win over cruelty

May knowledge flourish over ignorance. 

May goodness prevail over evil. 

Amen

My Drink Of Choice

Over the last two years

I have discovered bourbon,

The good stuff. 

With, when I can afford them, 

Luxardo cherries.  

In  ginger ale.  

It’s my drink of choice

When cringing  in fear and horror

At the fanatics 

And their irrational hatred of 

Ineffective little me 

Because I am a Jew. 

It’s my drink of choice

When contemplating in surprise 

What I mean to them:

Either disdainful rich elite

Or feral rat-like destroyers. 

I am neither. 

It’s my drink of choice

When shouting in shul

At the name of Haman,

For all the good that does. 

Schadenfreude comforts 

But is not a long term solution. 

It is not my drink of choice

When I have no choice 

But to see truth

And then speak truth 

And for that I find

I must be sober.  Alas. 

For When You Cannot Sleep

Brucha At Yah,

Ruach Ha Olam

Blessed Steady Breath,

It is the middle of the night and I am awake. 

My brain will not stop:

I fret, I plan, I pine.

So I read, I pee, I pet the cat

But nothing works. 

Tell me a story,

Something familiar and soothing,

Nothing real:

Comfort and stupefy me. 

Then make this night like Shabbat 

With no before or after

And nothing to worry about

Besides my blankets. 

I close my eyes for this holy conversation 

And ask that every breath becomes a soothing prayer

And ask for a quiet heart,

And imagine that I sleep. 

Amen. 

This Is The Ritual

This is the Ritual:  Bowing during the morning blessings.

I used to refuse to bend my knee
and bow
during the Morning Blessings.
Baruch Atah Etcetera
Thank you for Etecetera….
Who was I bowing to?
A male king?
That’s not God.
Screw that.

But then I thought,
What if I bowed anyway?
What would that feel like?
So I tried it for a month.
As an interesting experiment,
I bowed deeply for a month.

And
It was  mechanical, pointless.
And then one day, kind of without warning
Each time I bowed, I found there was a reason.
I bowed to history and tradition,
I bowed because my ancestors bowed.   
I bowed to everyone who has ever been forced to bow,
I bowed because everyone else in the room was bowing.
I bowed to my fear of the future,
I bowed to my regrets of the past.
I bowed because I am not the center of the universe.
I bowed because I do feel God's presence, somehow.

This is the Ritual:  Wearing a tallit.
I never wore  a tallis during the Shabbat morning service
When I was little.
It’s cause I was a girl,
Girls didn’t do that.
I sat next to my Daddy in services and played with his tallis fringes
But they were his, not mine, never to be mine.
And anyway, do I even believe in the kind of God who would care?
How dare you tell me how to be a Jew!!
And anyway, navy blue stripes, so boring.
So screw that

But then I thought,
What if I wore a tallis anyway?
What would it feel like?
So I wore it for a month,
As an interesting experiment.
And
I felt dramatic and self-aggrandizing, very look-at-me.
And then one day, kind of without warning,
Each time I put on my tallit I found there was a reason.

I put on the tallit because it was winter and it kept me warm.
I put in the tallit to wrap myself in the memory of my father, sometimes I even wore his.
I put on the tallit because I can and you can’t stop me.
I put on the tallit because it covered the vanity of whatever I was wearing that day.
I put on the tallit because I found one that matched my outfit.
I put on the tallit because it draped me in Torah.
I put on the tallit because God apparently has a thing for fringes and who am I to argue?
I put on the tallit because women who wear tallit at the Kollel, the Wailing Wall, get yelled at by people who claim to be religious.

This is the Ritual:  Wearing a kippah.
I sometimes wore a yarmulke when I was young,
The flimsy lacy kind,
Stuck on with a bobby pin,
A trivial thing,
A girly affectation,
Stupid.
A real kippah was for boys,
It fit their short hair.
But it flattened my lovely curls
So screw that.

But then I thought
What if I wore a kippah anyway?
What would it feel like?
So I wore a kippah on my head for a month,
As an interesting experiment.

Immediately, each time I put on my kippah,
I found there was a reason.
And it was amazing!
I put on my kippah to make a feminist statement.
I put on my kippah because it shows respect for the synagogue and the prayer leaders.
I put on my kippah to announce to myself that I have entered the shul and I must be mindful.
I put on kippah because I can have a lot of different ones to match my moods and my earrings.
I put on my kippah because everything underneath becomes a capsule of kadosh, of holiness.
I put on my kippah because it reminds me to connect to God, however I understand God that day.


These are the rituals:

When I need something bigger than myself, 
I bow.

When I need to separate myself from the mundane but not my community,
I wrap myself in my tallit.

When I need to place myself in kesher, in connection,
I put on my hat of holiness, my kippah.


Brucha At Achat, 
Baruch Atah Echad, 
Bless the One-ness, 
Giving us the ability to encircle time and space with meaning.  
Amen.
  

Prayer For The Sad Ones

For those we know about 

Because they talk to their therapist,

Because they hang out online,

Because they write songs.

For those who get help

Because they have asked,

Because they have community,

Because someone takes notice.

For those we don’t know about

Because they stay in their room, 

Because they push us away,

Because they make us laugh. 

For those who need help

Because they don’t ask,

Because they are ashamed,

Because no one knows.

For all these people and more,

We pray.

See them.  

See us. 

Amen.

Four Cups - Four Ways to Action (For. Tu Bishvat Seder)

 

​​Blessed Holy Wholeness

We drink four cups in honor of the actions

That we might do, that we can do

That we should do, that we must do

For our trees and our planet

In honor of the possibilities of God. 

 

First Cup - Live Small

You have to be rich to live small.

It ain’t cheap to shop local,

Do the poor eat organic?

But bravo to those of us who can manage it

And no shame to those of us who cannot.

But if you are able:

Use public transportation

Shop locally

Don’t use plastic

Plant a tree

Vote

And drink that first cup

 

Second Cup - Act Small

You have to be caring to act small,

Like dripping water slowly eroding a boulder. 

Maybe you don’t have time or energy or leisure

To do everything that’s needed 

But you can do something. 

So, if you are able:

Write letters

Make phone calls

Show up at a rally

Send a little money

Vote

And drink that second cup

 

Third Cup - Live Big

You have to be committed to live big. 

Most of us don’t do it because 

These choices are, well, big. 

They will change your life

And maybe change others. 

Then, if you’re able:

Get rid of your car

Move into a tiny home

Install solar energy

Become a vegetarian

Vote

And drink that third cup.

 

Fourth Cup - Act Big

You have to be patient to act big. 

This is where systemic change occurs,

Much slower than we’d like,

But the earth is desperate and we must persist,

We have no choice. 

So make yourself able and get it done:

Enact a Green New Deal

Organize for voting rights

End the use of fossil fuels

End environmental racism

Vote

And drink that fourth cup (you’re gonna need it)

 

Blessed Holy Wholeness

We give thanks for the possibilities of

What we could, can, should, and must do

For our trees and for ourselves, 

Taking action for the possibilities of God. 

Amen.

 

 

Our Tallis Trees (slides from Bayit)

This was written for the Tu Bishvat 2022 release from the Bayit Liturgical Artists Workin Group.   

To see all our releases since the summer of 2020, as Google slides and/or as a text only PDFs,  go to Bayit Liturgical Arts.   

To get the our book, a collection of our work in the first 18 months:  FROM NARROW PLACES: LITURGY, POETRY AND ART OF THE PANDEMIC ERA

 With gratitude and love to Congregation Kolot Chayeinu, our clergy and our members and friends:

Slides by Joanne Fink

Our Tallis Trees

 

Our home shul in Brooklyn meets in a church.

We don’t have a yard or a roof or air conditioning 

So for many years during the summer we have met in Prospect Park

Under two large trees that overlook the ball fields. 

There used to be three trees but one fell down after Hurricane Sandy. 

 

These two big trees have trunks that have become our bimah. 

We place our camp chairs and blankets around them 

And we are shaded by their joined canopies

Which we have come to feel is like

Being covered by a giant green tallis. 

The many leaves are the fringes and

Everything inside is kodosh, holy, 

In Shabbat time and space,

And everything outside is khol, mundane, 

Prospect Park on a Saturday morning. 

Inside are study, prayers, songs, meditations, poems, potluck, community and words of Torah. 

Outside are ball games, the Dog Pond, bicycles and the guy who sells ice cream from a cart between the 9th Street entrance and the Long Meadow. 

It would be perfect if only there was a bathroom. 

 

That summer before Covid we planted a sapling in place of the lost third tree

In honor of our beloved retiring founding rabbi,

Bless her. 

That same day we acknowledged our summer Beit Knesset

When our Hazzan surreptitiously placed a wooden mezuzah in the crook of the biggest of the two trees. 

We sang and said a blessing. 

We didn’t have permission from the Park for this

But our cantor did check with an arborist who said it wouldn’t hurt the tree. 

This small outlaw act made us giggle and kvell and cry

For our founding rabbi

For the future

For our clever hidden mezuzah 

And for our sheltering Tallis Trees. 

 

Many of us liked to visit this sacred space when it wasn’t Shabbat 

To touch the mezuzah and say a private prayer. 

But last year the mezuzah disappeared. 

Our Hazzan asked a Park guy about it

(He knew her, because of the tree we planted).

He said he’d seen it almost immediately and decided to ignore it,

Bless him,

But that one day it had disappeared. 

What happened to the mezuzah?

Was it brought low by a bad storm?

Did a bird make a nest with it?

Was it taken down by a passing Jew with a strict interpretation of where a mezuzah should be?

Maybe it fell into the earth below

And our holy words were broken down into their smallest component parts,

Becoming Holy Mulch,

Feeding the Tallis Tree. 

 

HaShleimut, Blessed Totality,

We give thanks to the Tallis Trees 

For their shelter and their beauty.

We give thanks for having this special outside sanctuary 

During the years of Covid.

We give thanks to the deep rest

That comes when we are in Shabbat with nature. 

We give thanks to the staff of Prospect Park 

For their vigilant maintenance of the green spaces. 

And we ask for the clarity, endurance and skills needed

To keep our trees safe and flourishing. 

 

Because all trees are Tallis Trees. 

Bless them. 

Amen