A List, Of My Sins, For Yom Kippur

Praise Elul, the plowing
Praise Selichot, the planting
Praise Rosh Hashannah, the watering,
Praise Yom Kippur, the weeding
Praise Sukkot, the Harvest.


Aveinu Yah
Emotainu Yah
God of our ancestors
God of my childhood
God of the mystics
God of the philosophers
God of this community

Tonight I ask to be released from all my vows of perfection.
They were impossible.
I have made bad choices.
I caused pain
I was selfish
I talked behind people’s backs
I lost perspective
I wasted time
I whined and moped
I said mean things and thought I was funny
I went into debt.
I boasted
I was insincere
I did not take care of myself
I was too angry
I wasn’t angry enough
I projected my neuroses onto others
I used my abilities to intimidate
I didn’t use my abilities enough.
I did not sow or reap or harvest
I did not create.
I didn’t give money when it would have helped.
I didn’t give my time when it would have made a difference.
I lied.
I didn’t see others pain because I was too busy with my own
I was unsupportive to my friends.
I took my grief out on others.
I showed off.
I was foolish.
I was lazy
I was sloppy
I wallowed in self-pity.
I grumbled.
I was sarcastic.
I started every sentence with the word, “I”.
I did things that hurt other people.
Sometimes I couldn’t help myself, or so I like to think.
Sometimes I could help myself, and I knew it, and I didn’t.
I feared death and pretended I didn’t.
I thought I could control life and despaired when I could not.

Aveinu Yah, Emotainu Yah, God of my fathers and mothers, God of my current understanding or lack thereof, awesome and incomprehensible, for all these sins and many more, I promise to try for better from myself and others, and I pray for compassion and kindness for all who are in pain or who cause pain. Amen.

Selichot Prayer

Praise Elul, the plowing
Praise Selichot, the planting
Praise Rosh Hashannah, the watering,
Praise Yom Kippur, the weeding
Praise Sukkot, the Harvest.

And now, we begin.
Plant the Seeds
Begin the search.
For Selichot, Forgiveness

Dear God
Incline your metaphorical ear
Open your metaphorical eye
To our Abundant Folly
Iniquity and sin against wholeness.
Notice our pain!
We’re on our knees,
Asking for blessings, bracha,
Bending, pleading for kindness.

The truly evil are already condemned
The truly good are already blessed
And the rest of us, most of us,
Can only hope for mercy
And a little leeway.

We are ready to start the search for teshuvah
Returning every year
To plant the seeds of forgiveness
Of self and others.

Be with us in our struggle
As we pray for compassion and kindness
for all who are in pain
or who have caused pain.

Praise Elul, the plowing
Praise Selichot, the planting
Praise Rosh Hashannah, the watering,
Praise Yom Kippur, the weeding
Praise Sukkot, the Harvest.

Another prayer for July 4th

© 2010 Trisha Arlin



Brucha Ya, Ruach HaOlam
Bless Yah, Breath of the universe
Thank you for all the contradictions of Home:

Connection and Independence,
Satisfaction and Frustration
Dull Sameness and Scary Change.

Faith and Skepticism
Patriotism and Rebellion
Cosmic Glue and Holy Separation.

Trust and Disbelief
Joy and Agony
True Perception And Cruel Obtuseness

Kindness and Squabbles
Imprisonment and Picnics
Serene Nature and Fabulous Fireworks.

Home.

Modim Anachnu HaMakom.
Thank you for this place, our country, our home,
the United States of America of many voices,
land of both opportunity and disappointment.

Imperfect but sometimes incredibly glorious, home.
Where doubt can be an act of faith
And all hands are needed.

Amen

A Prayer for Independence Day

© 2010 Trisha Arlin

Bless Yah
Awesone Oneness, wresting freedom from bondage
Essence of the Positive, offering the power to refuse.
Cosmic Glue, teaching holy separation.
Authority Incarnate, loving a good joke.

Bless Yah for this congregation where doubt can be an act of faith.
It is our home.

Bless Yah
Upon Which All Depends, demanding self-determination.
The Still Small Voice, knowing how to make a fuss.
Ruler of the Universe, ensuring that all Empires crumble.
Eternal and Fixed, giving the power to change.

Bless Yah for this Brooklyn of many voices.
It is our home.

Bless Yah
Natural and Beautiful Serenity, enjoying the fireworks.
Compassionate and Kind, keeping the ants from our picnics.
Biblical Warrior, making peace.
Ineffable and Unknowable, anchoring us in community.

And bless Yah for the United States of America, imperfect but sometimes glorious.
It is our home.

Brucha Yah, Ruach Ha Olam, notain lanu atzma-oo-tainu. Modim Anachnu HaMakom.
Bless Yah, Breath of the Universe, giving us our independence. We are thankul for this place.

Behold! Divrei Tefillah

Written for the 2009-2010 Drisha Artists Fellowship
© 2010 Trisha Arlin

Blessed Was•Is•Will Be, Breath of Eternity, that creates holy separation between waking and sleeping.

In Torah, God shows the future in our dreams to whomever God thinks appropriate
And then God sends wise interpreters to us so we can tell them our dreams and they will tell us the messages that God has sent us.
And, once and only when explained, the dreams come true.
Hinei! which means, Behold, that’s the word used in Torah to introduce such a dream.
Which is definitely not that thing that happens every night that you forget in the morning before you’ve brushed your teeth, but something important, something you must announce.
So here I go. I had a dream. Hinei.

II. Behold, Torah dreams.
So Joseph dreamed of wheat sheaves that bowed to him and the aging Wrestler understood and interpreted
Thus he gave his annoying son a striped coat,
So the dreams came true and the story commenced
And when Joseph saw his brothers again, they were hungry and he was a lord.
And they bowed down to him and he understood, and forgave because it was basherte, And no need to be bitter.
Thus they hugged and they ate and they cried.
So thank you, Jacob.
Because without interpretation, a prophecy is wasted.

III. Then behold, science dreams.
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 because what else is there?
And our brain imposes order on the random and constructs a story
And we call that a dream.
Chalom is the Hebrew word for dream, which sounds like chalon, is the word for window. Possibly no relation (I must ask the rabbi) but to my English-speaking ears, this establishes connection.
So perhaps a dream is prophecy or neurology or a window to one’s psyche, I dunno.
But our therapists interpret our dreams so we’ll understand our inner motivations.
Once analyzed, a dream gives insight.
So Danke Schoen, Freud.
Because without explanation, an image is wasted

IV. Behold, Rebbe Hannina says
Human versions of God’s vast intent are as unripened fruit.
Filled with potential, perceived completely only by God.
He 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.
We tell tales with beginnings middles and ends around our seder table, for instance.
Then we bite into sweet charoses and pretend it is mortar for bitter bricks
Because it fits the narrative.
So thanks, all you Jews,
Because without an audience, a maggid is wasted.


V. Behold, Moses dreams
Of a story of escape from bondage, bad guys, and a hero or two.
And after much pain and death, and a mad dash across the Sea of Reeds, there’s much rejoicing.
Quickly interrupted by hunger and miracles and rules and revelation.
And even though the rest of us
Often find ourselves in the desert, or tied up on the metaphorical railroad tracks
Pay the rent I can’t pay the rent
Not even dreaming of rescue, making bricks without straw
No aspirations, no hope, no prophecies, no future
Then comes Moshe, I’ll pay the rent
So Todah rabah, Shmot.
Because without complications, a happy ending is wasted.

VI. Behold, five old rabbis pull an all-nighter.
Reclining but not sleeping
Discussing the unripened fruit of Exodus.
Awake but always dreaming of questions asked over and over again.
Why on this night? And we children try to please them:
The grind who asks what they want him to ask and the wise-ass who won’t.
The sweet one, leaning against his mother, wants to know, why does anyone have to die?
And the littlest one at the kid’s table, stares at the drops of wine-blood on his plate and thinks, huh?
And the rabbis ask questions of each other and each one has a different answer.
But no matter how much they disagree, it always ends with the Shma.
So thanks, kids.
Because without questions, a long night is wasted.


VII. Behold, throwing dreams
Hannah invented personal prayer.
In private rebellion, she dared to speak her heart
And then fling it out to God.
And she wasn’t worried about High Priests or their approval,
Because her need was too great.
And God heard. Because God does.
Hineini, not Hinei.
So I pray and dream and listen for the presence of God in ambient sound
And hope to interpret the dream properly so that it will come true, if it should,
And be part of a much larger story.
So we can all forgive and not be bitter
And hug and eat and cry and change the world
As did our illustrious uncle, Joseph of Egypt.
So thanks, Grace Paley, who more or less said,
“Without action, hope is wasted.”

VIII. So anyway, behold behold behold!
Behold, my dream.
Sorry it took so long to get here, I wish it I’d arrived at it sooner
I really really do. But I got here as fast as I could.
So this is it, Hinei,
I dream of interpretation and analysis
Of neurons and freedom and food, of argument and doubt.
Of unripened fruit and leadership and complicated stories that get better each time you tell them.
I dream of Is and Was and Will Be
In the vast undifferentiated Ein Sof, timeless and gender free, One-ness.
I dream that we are kind to each other whenever possible.
And I dream of windows and connection and history.
I dream of the time and opportunity to study for all who wish to learn.
I dream of receiving wisdom from all who have to share.
And,Thank God,
Of a world where no books are unread
And nothing and no one is wasted.

IX. And behold, at last, my actual dream
That I had the night before the first day of classes last September:
HINEI! I am wandering the hallway and then I realize, I’m on a sort of scavenger hunt with the other students, we’re going from clue to clue.
It is very difficult but very exciting and at last, I find all the clues and I find my hidden treasure,
It is a message, written on a big piece of white oaktag, in calligraphy
One huge Hebrew letter,
Pei.
Mouth
Storyteller
The number 80, the sign of eternity and the the circle
Huh.
Behold.

Amen

A Book Unread: Drisha Artists Fellows May 16

Drisha Arts Fellows Program

Cited in Jewish Week

Forgive my kvelling, but--

Rabbi Ellen LIppmann, who was interviewed for an article on congregations and how they're dealing with the recession and she cited a prayer I'd written (and read to the congregation on Yom Kippur). The writer, Tamar Snyder, emailed me and did a little email interview and ended up using a little of that and an excerpt a small piece of the prayer, in the article. It's in the hard copy and also online

Va'Eira: A Fierce Mystery

This parsha starts off with God establishing God’s special relationship with Moses: “I am Adonai, I appeared, Va-eira, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shadddai but I did not make Myself known to them by my name, Yud Hey Vuv Hey.”

No one knows what El Shaddai means, it might mountains, or breasts, it might be a feminine name of God. Yud Hey Vuv Hey, as Rabbi Lippmann has pointed out many times, quoting Arthur Green, is a version of the Hebrew word to be, so it can be understood to be about the Is-ness of God, God not being in time, God is something that Was, that Is, that will be, that is in the moment at every moment in the way that we humans, with our beginnings, middles and ends, can never be.

The parsha continues. God gives Moses the task of confronting Pharoah and freeing the Hebrew slaves but when Moses tells the slaves what he is about to do, they don’t believe him. Their spirits and bodies are broken by slavery and they don’t dare to hope. So God sends Moses after Pharoah, with Aaron’s help. Moses fears he is unworthy of the task but God insists that he get started. Then follows a list of the people, the clans descended from Jacob’s sons, leading to the birth of Moses. Then God sends Moses out to confront Pharoah and tells him that God expects Pharoah to not listen, which will give God, through Moses, an opportunity to prove how amazing God is, both to Pharoah and the Hebrews. Pharoah and his people scoff. Then of course there’s a bunch of plagues, the first nine, ending in hail. Each time a plague happens Pharoah relents, then as soon as the plague stops he hardens his heart.

On the surface the parsha might seem like it’s mostly about the first nine plagues, but I think it’s about trying to figure out who or what God is, and about the nature of doubting and disbelieving. As we are a congregation whose opening line of the mission statement is that we are a place where doubt can be an act of faith, this is the parsha for us. It’s both a parsha about doubters and takes on the question of the nature of God. I like it.

So who are the doubters in this parsha? I think there are four. One, the mentally and physically exhausted slaves, and they’re thinking, Who the hell is this Moses? Where has he been all this time and what makes him so special? Two, Moses, who doubts himself, lacking confidence in his ability to speak and or inspire. Three, Pharoah, who sincerely believes him to be a God, who is stubborn and selfish and is simply not interested in losing his useful slaves. Miracles, shmiracles, he ain’t buying it.

As Neshama Leibowitz says,
“We see from here that the sign or wonder can only impress the one who is psychologically prepared to be convinced.”

I’m not sure I’m prepared to be convinced. The fourth doubter is me, us, we who read this parsha today, the modern liberal Jews, whose paradigm is rational and scientific, who read the Torah as a bunch of stories, our mythology yes, but not our history or that Torah is metaphorical or sometimes poetical at best, who don’t believe in an interventionist God or a God that is a being separate from the rest of us. Anyway, that’s me, maybe that’s you. I shouldn’t speak for you.

So Kolot Chayeinu, where doubt can be an act of faith… When I first joined Kolot I thought that meant, I can be a skeptic and still join a Jewish community, or it meant it honored past and present activism, truth to power, doubting the current Pharoahs, and it does mean that. We can join in this great community without checking our brains at the door.

But now, after some study and reflection, it means something else for me. Doubt, for me, is not about scorning faith or spirituality or Jewish. It means searching and questioning and studying as a Jewish way of life, as a Jewish way to seek connection which I can now say, yes, a name for that is Yud Hey Vuv Hey, Is Was and Will Be, and I don’t need proof and I don’t need no proof, it can’t be proven, it will always be doubtful, and that’s the most interesting thing about Is Was Will Be, at least for me.

God is connection and I find that connection is in the search for connection. Judaism is my gateway to this, and the jewish tradition of debate and questioning is mine as well. I am not halakhic, I don’t think God wrote those rules and when they don’t have meaning for me, or if they don’t serve as avenues to my search for God, or if they don’t connect me to my community, then I can’t follow them. But if I can find meaning, if by saying a blessing or lighting candles I can stop time and for a short moment, exist with God in the non-time that isIs Was Will BE, then why not? I mean, c’mon, such a complex thing, approached so easily by such simple acts. I doubt it means a thing, but maybe it does, maybe it does.

Rabbi Laura Geller writes:

"Think about the “god” you don’t believe in. Is it that you don’t believe in God or is it that you are stuck on one particular name, one particular metaphor that doesn’t name your experience of God? Might there be a different metaphor, another name that opens up the possibility of encounter with a power grander than yourself, with a web that can connect every person to every other person?"


El Shaddai, Yud Hey Vuv Hey, Ein Sof, Yah, Ruach Ha Olam, Adonai, Ha Shem, what’s the difference? Our relationship with God has moved from a family and tribal God, El Shaddai, to a people’s God, Yahweh, and now, I think, for many of us here, to a universal God that is not separate from us, not a part of us, but everything that is us and everything that is everything else. Doubt is an act of faith because to doubt is to engage, to care, to argue, to look for this God so I wish for every Jew, for every human, this wonderful gift of faith, this belief in doubt.

Alicia Ostriker write this about Moses:
Between the God of the universe and the God of a tribe, between inclusion and exclusion, between the imperative of liberty and the imperative of law, explodes Moses. What we know about him is exactly nothing, exactly everything, he is a fierce mystery.

And I’d say the same about God, whatever that is for you. A fierce mystery.

Miketz: Behold!

Behold!
We dream of the past, they dreamt of the future.

In this parsha, Pharaoh has two dreams that puzzle him, and his butler recommends an interpreter that he met in prison two years earlier, Joseph. Joseph appears, interprets the two dreams about upcoming seven years of good harvest years and then seven years of famine and Pharaoh, like everyone else before him, spots Joseph as someone who is deeply capable, appoints him ruler over all but Pharoah, with the power to organize things so that they’ll all have something to eat. After seven years, the famine hits and Joseph handles it well, with the exception of a rather disturbing episode during which he exploits the peasants’ hunger to steal their land but…we won’t talk about that now.

People come from all over to ask Joseph for food, including his family. The brothers don’t recognize Joseph and in this parsha, the dance between Joseph and his past begins, as he tests his brothers to see what manner of men they are, and, I think, examines his own heart and motivations. The story concludes in the next parsha with forgiveness stemming from Joseph’s belief that this was all set in motion by God so that Joseph could save his family and, we can read into it, to eventually get all the Hebrews to the crucible of slavery and the dessert and thus to Sinai so we can receive Torah. Yay.

In the Torah, when there’s a dream, this word appears:

Hinei!
Translated in this context, as Behold. Hinei! Behold! A dream!

If I’m sitting with you and say, hey I had an amazing dream last night you might, to my face, say, oh cool but inside you are more likely to say, please don’t tell me please don’t tell me, because a dream is never as fascinating to the listener as it is to the teller, alas. Which is too bad because a dream is so interesting, biologically, psychologically and spiritually. What is a dream? A neurologist may tell you it’s a series of random images thrown up during sleep that your brain needs to make sense of and so it turns it into a story. A therapist may tell you that the images your brain chooses are windows into past traumas and current anxieties. But to the ancient Hebrews, a dream is prophecy, literally every image is a coded message from God and really important, fully worth of a Hinei! Because God knows the future and has chosen to show it to you.

We dream of the past, they dreamt of the future

Now to the rabbis of the Talmud, a dream without interpretation is a wasted message from God, a letter unopened. Rebbi Hannina ben Yitchak saw a dream as un-ripened fruit, the unripened fruit of prophecy. Only by explaining the dream could it ripen into a fruit worth eating, a prediction of the future. And as it turns out, most of us are not qualified to interpret dreams accurately, nor should they because a dream, properly interpreted, will come true. Sfarno believed that the knowledge to intepret is a function of b’tselem elohim, of people being made in God’s image. We cannot look God’s truth in the face directly, but because we are made in God’s image, we can channel it through our dreams and see it there.

So in Torah and Talmud, if God wants the interpretation known so the dream isn’t wasted, God may choose someone like Joseph to interpret it correctly. The sages say only competent interpretation creates reality but, as someone who lives in a world of Fox News, Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh, I only wish this were so. Incompetent interpretation creates reality all the time. But I digress, back to Joseph.

I think we can look at the entire story of Joseph as a dream, properly interpreted.

Hinei!
Behold, Joseph dreamed.
And told his dreams to his brothers and father
But he did not interpret those dreams
And if it had ended there
Things might have turned out very differently.
But Jacob the aging Wrestler understood and interpreted
And gave him a striped coat
And so the dreams came true
The story commenced

And one day he saw his brothers again
He was a lord
And they bowed down to him
And he understood,
He had dreamed the story
And it had been explained
The cycle was complete
Basherte
And no need to be bitter
And they embraced. And they wept. And they ate.

And what was it all for?
To save the family from starvation?
To get them to Egypt
so they could become slaves?
so they could escape?
So they could meet God at Sinai?
Or was it just for the story?
It’s a good story.

Rabbi Hannina says the unripened fruit of prophecy is a dream.
And Rebbi Avin says the unripened fruit of heavenly wisdom is Torah.

And I say the unripened fruit of truth is the story.


In English, the word dream speaks about what we do during REM sleep but it also is about what we aspire to for our future, the stories we tell ourselves, personal and communal prophecies. We dream of the past, they dreamt of the future but I suggest that we embrace the ancient sense of dreams and look to our future, and dream of what is to come.

And I wish for us all that we choose our stories and interpret them properly through our words and our actions so they will come true and change the world for the better, and may we all see whatever happens as part of a larger story so we can forgive and not be bitter and weep and embrace and eat, just like our illustrious and probably fictional ancestor, Joseph of Egypt.

Hinei.

A Shabbat Prayer

So, this is what happened.

On the way to shul
Shabbat morning
I run into Max, also on his way there
And I walk with him.
We get to the corner, 

The light is red but there are no cars to be seen. 

I start to cross,
Max doesn’t.

I walk back to him, puzzled. 

 The light turns green, he crosses.
You don’t jaywalk? He smiles.
This is New York, everyone jaywalks.
Ah.
Not on Shabbat? I ask.
That’s it, Max says. 

 Every day we rush rush rush, 

On Shabbat, when the light tells me to slow down or stop,

I slow down or stop.

I get it, I say, fantastic. love it!
And I try it on the way home that afternoon.
How fun, a new minhag.

And it’s all Walk signs, 

The little white walking man,
Until I get to the corner
Two blocks from home. 

The light changes. 
Don't Walk.
There’s no traffic in any direction.
And the Don’t Walk sign is a palm print, a red hamsa.

Stop, says the hamsa. It’s Shabbat. 

 
Meditate on the moment, you are stopped, 

No future no past, 

Rest here 

On the corner of 14th Street and Eighth Avenue 

In Park Slope Brooklyn, rest, rest…
I stop.

It’s driving me insane.

There’s no traffic! What am I waiting for? 

This is soooo not New York,
I'm supposed to move forward whenever I can, 

Not stop when I can go.
And I can go!!!

Only a few more seconds I’m sure.

Friggin’ hamsa, 

Where’s the little white walking man?

I want the walking man. 

 People are walking past me, 

They must think I’m hurt or crazy, 

Just standing on the corner, 

No traffic, stopped. 

Damn you, Max!

But I said I would stop so I’m stopped. 

 
So I look around. 

I see the leaves on the sidewalk. 

I hear the sounds of Brooklyn Saturday afternoon. 

Some kids are shouting at each other. 

Across the street a couple walks together,

Bumping each other as they move, friendly bumps.
I’m breathing.

A dog barks. I like dogs.

I’m resting.

Leaves on the sidewalk. 

Huh, look, a nice kind of rust colored one, 

Laying next to a maroon one,  pretty. 

Reminds me of the curtain on our Torah Ark.

Nice day. 

Here. 

Just here. 

Not going forward. 

Not going backward. 

Shabbat.

Oh no, there's the little white white walking man.
Too soon!

I go on.

Blessed God of My Ancestors, 

Inventor of Shabbat, 

Thank you for the stopping and the not stopping.

Amen.