Our essay is called "We Eat First" and it's about how our congregation, Kolot Chayeinu, uses food to create community.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
The Sacred Table: Creating a Jewish Food Ethic
I co-wrote a chapter, with Rabbi Ellen Lippmann, in the anthology, The Sacred Table.
Our essay is called "We Eat First" and it's about how our congregation, Kolot Chayeinu, uses food to create community.
Our essay is called "We Eat First" and it's about how our congregation, Kolot Chayeinu, uses food to create community.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Two Cups: Elijah and Miriam
We open the door
for Elijah,
Angry prophet of the world to come.
And we ask God to pay attention
To the fire from the sky that was Elijah’s gift,
Angry prophet of the world to come.
And we ask God to pay attention
To the fire from the sky that was Elijah’s gift,
A regretted necessity.
Elijah announces the Mashiach
Who then saves the Jews! Huzzah!!
Elijah, the angry bringer of justice.
It’s a little scary
So invite that in.
Bring down the anger, bring down the plagues
Sometimes we need them,
It’s part of the story.
We were slaves in Egypt and it was horrible.
Elijah announces the Mashiach
Who then saves the Jews! Huzzah!!
Elijah, the angry bringer of justice.
It’s a little scary
So invite that in.
Bring down the anger, bring down the plagues
Sometimes we need them,
It’s part of the story.
We were slaves in Egypt and it was horrible.
But
If there is a child at the table
Let her open the door for visiting Uncle Elijah
And hope that there’s some wind tonight.
And when it blows
Tell her that’s Elijah as he comes inside
Visiting each Jewish home on Pesach
To have his cup of wine.
And when the child sits back down
Jiggle the table just a little
And tell her to watch the wine shake in the cup
So the kid thinks Elijah is there, taking a sip:
The anger will wait, let's have fun.
We lift Miriam’s cup,
Dancing prophet
If there is a child at the table
Let her open the door for visiting Uncle Elijah
And hope that there’s some wind tonight.
And when it blows
Tell her that’s Elijah as he comes inside
Visiting each Jewish home on Pesach
To have his cup of wine.
And when the child sits back down
Jiggle the table just a little
And tell her to watch the wine shake in the cup
So the kid thinks Elijah is there, taking a sip:
The anger will wait, let's have fun.
We lift Miriam’s cup,
Dancing prophet
Of the world that glories in Now.
And we tell God we are grateful
For the water that was Miriam’s gift,
A welcome necessity.
Miriam announces joy!
And teaches us to save ourselves.
Miriam, the bringer of mercy,
There’s no prayer for her in the haggadah--
So make one up!
It’s a little scary
But what the heck.
Bring up the water, start the party
Sometimes we need it
And it’s part of the story:
We were slaves in Egypt and now we are free.
And we tell God we are grateful
For the water that was Miriam’s gift,
A welcome necessity.
Miriam announces joy!
And teaches us to save ourselves.
Miriam, the bringer of mercy,
There’s no prayer for her in the haggadah--
So make one up!
It’s a little scary
But what the heck.
Bring up the water, start the party
Sometimes we need it
And it’s part of the story:
We were slaves in Egypt and now we are free.
But
If there is a child at the table
And all the gabbing makes him thirsty,
If there is a child at the table
And all the gabbing makes him thirsty,
Let him take a sip from Miriam’s cup.
And while he drinks
Tell him about Miriam the artist
Singing Mi-Hamochah on the Red Sea shore,
Taking too much pleasure in the Egyptian's deaths.
And when the child is ready
Remember that Miriam was a truth teller
And for that the prophet paid a heavy price.
Make sure the kid values that water:
The fun will wait, let's get angry.
Fire and Water,
And while he drinks
Tell him about Miriam the artist
Singing Mi-Hamochah on the Red Sea shore,
Taking too much pleasure in the Egyptian's deaths.
And when the child is ready
Remember that Miriam was a truth teller
And for that the prophet paid a heavy price.
Make sure the kid values that water:
The fun will wait, let's get angry.
Fire and Water,
Justice and Mercy,
Tzedek v’ Rachamim.
The cup of wine to stir the flame,
The cup of water to quench it.
Only with both cups are we complete.
Baruch Atah Adonai,
Tzedek v’ Rachamim.
The cup of wine to stir the flame,
The cup of water to quench it.
Only with both cups are we complete.
Baruch Atah Adonai,
Brucha At Shechinah
Elijah and Miriam
We are blessed this Pesach night.
Amen.
Elijah and Miriam
We are blessed this Pesach night.
Amen.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Doubt As An Act of Faith
The latest issue of VOICES, the journal of Kolot Chayeinu.
Our Rebbitzin, Kathryn Conroy, coined the phrase, “Doubt can be an act of faith,” which was then incorporated into our mission statement. When Kolot members first heard this phrase, we all instantly recognized the truth of it, but rarely discussed what it actually meant.
In this issue of VOICES, we do.
I am the editor, and this issue features a great piece by Rabbi Ellen Lippmann, and many other writers including Scott Fox, Arthur Goldwag, Nancy Workman, Raul Rothblatt and myself, all of whom are members of our congregation.
To see other issues of VOICES going back some years, go here.
Our Rebbitzin, Kathryn Conroy, coined the phrase, “Doubt can be an act of faith,” which was then incorporated into our mission statement. When Kolot members first heard this phrase, we all instantly recognized the truth of it, but rarely discussed what it actually meant.
In this issue of VOICES, we do.
I am the editor, and this issue features a great piece by Rabbi Ellen Lippmann, and many other writers including Scott Fox, Arthur Goldwag, Nancy Workman, Raul Rothblatt and myself, all of whom are members of our congregation.
To see other issues of VOICES going back some years, go here.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Tazria - Separation
I was randomly assigned to do this drash for my community, Kolot Chayeinu, and it turned out to be both the best and the worst parsha for me to contemplate right now, as I am in the process of cleaning up and out of my home of 22 years so I can sell it not out of choice but out of necessity. This cleaning is both a burden and a purification, and it begins a separation that in the end will be helpful and maybe even fantastic but that right now is very sad for me. But sometimes the body must be taken care of before the spirit so it can approach the metaphorical mishkan. So--
Tazria is short and divided into three sections, all of which are about how to purify something or someone when you or it is tameh, that is, impure and unclean.
The first part is about the customs necessary to a woman after she has given birth. The second, and longest section, is about how the high priest must diagnose that someone has a skin disease of some kind, when one’s skin is tame, impure, commonly translated as leprosy but sounding more like really bad psoriasis that also makes your skin turn white. The third part is about how cloth or leather can become unclean or has become impure, which in the translation I read sounds like the cloth has gotten a disease, an affliction, which sounds absurd, but which the rabbis interpreted to mean some kind of mold or fungus.
And then of course, in all instances there are rituals for making the impure, pure, the unclean, clean.
In the parsha, unclean appears to be anything that touches body fluids, anything that oozed and it is assumed that these fluids were associated with death and anything that touched anything associated with death could not approach the Mishkan and thus could not receive expiation through temple sacrifice, through the cult practices of the Mishkan and later, the temple.
To my modern ears, at first glance this all appears rather ridiculous. A woman has a baby and that makes her unclean? Be fruitful and multiply? How do you multiply without childbirth? I reject that utterly. And, it turns out, the rabbis did, too.
Nehama Leibowitz sums up their thinking,
“The new life within her, the mother, made her deeply conscious of the greatness of the Creator and at the same time of her insignificance and the dust, ashes and impurity of man’s origins and for this reason she brought a sin-offering.
I can accept that. She is mindful of how awesome and spectacular the birth was, and she places herself, humbly in that continuum.
In the second case, that of the skin disease, the rabbis decided that the sufferer must have been guilty of the sin of gossip, lashon hara, the evil tongue (a sin with which I more than intimately acquainted with, that and a life long mild case of psoriasis…). This sin can be so destructive that the sinner must be marked by God with skin disease, declared unclean and separated out, forced to live in a tent outside the community. And you don’t need to guess when the gossiper has repented, you’ll know when the skin heals.
More significant to me, is that all three prescribed rituals to clean the unclean, the ones for having had a child, for having a skin disease and for having moldy clothes, all demand, at some point, the separation from the community of the impure component—the recent mother, the afflicted sufferer, the disgusting cloth.
Why must they separate from the community?
Modern commentators talk a lot about Shabbat when they write about this parsha. The separation that each act of ritual cleansing demands is not unlike the separation of Shabbat from the rest of the week. Shabbat separates us from time, from the past with all our mistakes and the future with the likelihood of many more. The bloody necessities of birth, the sad disabilities of illness, the inevitability of decay and death, those are behind or in front of us but they are not now. Today, on Shabbat, I am in community and conversation with God however I understand that today. Today on Shabbat, sadness, stasis, spiritual desolation, depression, alienation and death are put aside and I am kadosh.
Rabbi Shefa Gold writes,
Often, a person's growth happens on the inside before it manifests in the outer world. The spiritual challenge lies in navigating this awkward time of dissonance between inner and outer. During this time the two realities must be reconciled. It is an uncomfortable time because there is a tendency to resist change and that resistance can manifest in the physical body. Retreat time is required in order to attend to and integrate the inner changes. The spiritual challenge of Tazria/Metzora is to know when to separate yourself from the community and to know how to return.
There is no absolute purity. Today, on Shabbat, there is only the process of seeking purity, of seeking wholeness. That is what tefillah, Gemilut Hasidim v’tikkun olam are, I think. Through prayer and acts of loving kindness and repair of the world we seek and sometimes attain connection. Together we welcome new lives, wash our soiled clothes and comfort each other in times of affliction. The word Shalom means Hello, Good-bye, Peace and it also mean whole, complete.
So, I wish you all a full, whole, repairing, sanctifying, expiated completed and peaceful Shabbat. Shabbat Shalom.
Tazria is short and divided into three sections, all of which are about how to purify something or someone when you or it is tameh, that is, impure and unclean.
The first part is about the customs necessary to a woman after she has given birth. The second, and longest section, is about how the high priest must diagnose that someone has a skin disease of some kind, when one’s skin is tame, impure, commonly translated as leprosy but sounding more like really bad psoriasis that also makes your skin turn white. The third part is about how cloth or leather can become unclean or has become impure, which in the translation I read sounds like the cloth has gotten a disease, an affliction, which sounds absurd, but which the rabbis interpreted to mean some kind of mold or fungus.
And then of course, in all instances there are rituals for making the impure, pure, the unclean, clean.
In the parsha, unclean appears to be anything that touches body fluids, anything that oozed and it is assumed that these fluids were associated with death and anything that touched anything associated with death could not approach the Mishkan and thus could not receive expiation through temple sacrifice, through the cult practices of the Mishkan and later, the temple.
To my modern ears, at first glance this all appears rather ridiculous. A woman has a baby and that makes her unclean? Be fruitful and multiply? How do you multiply without childbirth? I reject that utterly. And, it turns out, the rabbis did, too.
Nehama Leibowitz sums up their thinking,
“The new life within her, the mother, made her deeply conscious of the greatness of the Creator and at the same time of her insignificance and the dust, ashes and impurity of man’s origins and for this reason she brought a sin-offering.
I can accept that. She is mindful of how awesome and spectacular the birth was, and she places herself, humbly in that continuum.
In the second case, that of the skin disease, the rabbis decided that the sufferer must have been guilty of the sin of gossip, lashon hara, the evil tongue (a sin with which I more than intimately acquainted with, that and a life long mild case of psoriasis…). This sin can be so destructive that the sinner must be marked by God with skin disease, declared unclean and separated out, forced to live in a tent outside the community. And you don’t need to guess when the gossiper has repented, you’ll know when the skin heals.
More significant to me, is that all three prescribed rituals to clean the unclean, the ones for having had a child, for having a skin disease and for having moldy clothes, all demand, at some point, the separation from the community of the impure component—the recent mother, the afflicted sufferer, the disgusting cloth.
Why must they separate from the community?
Modern commentators talk a lot about Shabbat when they write about this parsha. The separation that each act of ritual cleansing demands is not unlike the separation of Shabbat from the rest of the week. Shabbat separates us from time, from the past with all our mistakes and the future with the likelihood of many more. The bloody necessities of birth, the sad disabilities of illness, the inevitability of decay and death, those are behind or in front of us but they are not now. Today, on Shabbat, I am in community and conversation with God however I understand that today. Today on Shabbat, sadness, stasis, spiritual desolation, depression, alienation and death are put aside and I am kadosh.
Rabbi Shefa Gold writes,
Often, a person's growth happens on the inside before it manifests in the outer world. The spiritual challenge lies in navigating this awkward time of dissonance between inner and outer. During this time the two realities must be reconciled. It is an uncomfortable time because there is a tendency to resist change and that resistance can manifest in the physical body. Retreat time is required in order to attend to and integrate the inner changes. The spiritual challenge of Tazria/Metzora is to know when to separate yourself from the community and to know how to return.
There is no absolute purity. Today, on Shabbat, there is only the process of seeking purity, of seeking wholeness. That is what tefillah, Gemilut Hasidim v’tikkun olam are, I think. Through prayer and acts of loving kindness and repair of the world we seek and sometimes attain connection. Together we welcome new lives, wash our soiled clothes and comfort each other in times of affliction. The word Shalom means Hello, Good-bye, Peace and it also mean whole, complete.
So, I wish you all a full, whole, repairing, sanctifying, expiated completed and peaceful Shabbat. Shabbat Shalom.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011
Purim Havdallah
(delivered after regular Havdallah, to start Purim, with much kibitzing from everyone)
What’s all this holy Havdallah? Too serious! We need a Purim Havdallah!!
I. Praise
Praise Shabbat when I slept late
Praise Purim, let us get upside down
Praise the Before when we are healthy,
Praise the After, the Holy Hangover
Praise Havdallah, Is Shabbat over? Can I check my email?
Praise the…I’m sorry, what was I saying?
Oh yeah,
It’s party time!
II. Wine, Spice, Fire
Wine – (pull out bottle of Scotch) Yay!! Have a drink, have two!!! It’s Purim!
Spice – (pull out large deoderant, refresh on self) Hey baby, lookin’ good with your funky self. Love that outfit! Smell ya later. You, too.
Fire - (pull out joke candle) Hey you, light my fire!!! (sing davenning) Come on baby light my fire, Come on baby light my fire!!
III. Blessing
Blessed Echad, that which Unites, and connects us that we may pay dues to the congregation.
Blessed Ruach HaOlam, That Which We will never understand and really, who cares?!!!
Blessed HaMavdil, that which divides, so that we can be what we are NOT!
And let us say:
(reverently) (H)amen.
PURIM!!!!!!!!
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Vashti Says No
What happened? I’ll tell you.
He summoned me,
That old drunk,
He wants to show me off to his friends
Disgusting.
I didn’t think
I just answered,
I said to the messenger,
Tell him, Vashti says No
To ask such a thing
It’s the last straw
Maybe this makes me a bad wife.
I don’t know, what do you think?
I should do as he commands?
He sends back more notes
I’m a bitch, I’m a shrew,
I don’t know my place!
Fine, I say to the messenger, who is just a kid.
Fine, tell him, Vashti says no.
Five minutes later
Back comes the kid
Poor thing, I feel sorry for him
The old man is going to hurt him
When he hears what I’ve said.
I wish I could help him, but I can’t.
Because the kid announces,
It’s official
I’m divorced, banished, forgotten instantly
Make room for the next one.
Hmph! Do I care?
Tell him, Vashti says No.
So now what?
What do I do?
Pack, ladies, we’re packing to go.
Does my life end if I’m not the queen?
If not magnificent, what will I be?
A mere person!
How interesting.
Merely a princess of Babylon.
Merely the great-granddaughter of King Nebuchadnezzar
Merely the granddaughter of King Amel-Marduk
Merely the daughter of King Belshazzar
Kidnapped by Darius of Persia
Given to his idiot son to marry.
Merely the Queen of Persia...
Such fun.
Merely me?!!
Tell him, Vashti says No
The messenger comes back, he’s got a black eye.
The king wants to give me one more chance.
Beloved First Wife!
Dress up in your finest and parade yourself!
Then beg for forgiveness, he’s in such a good mood
I give the poor messenger a pat on the head
And an aspirin
Sorry sweetie,
Remember to duck
When you tell him, Vashti says No
Maybe I’ll cut off my long black hair,
Maybe I’ll burn all my beautiful clothes.
Maybe I’ll stop wearing make up
Maybe I’ll get fat
Hah!
Show this off buster!
Messenger falls back in the room, he’s limping now
And I think his arm is broken.
The old man wants my crown.
This crown?
The old man wants to give it to the next wife
The clothes, and servants and the jewels
So get it all, ladies, stuff it in the bags
I’m taking everything.
And tell that old glutton,
Vashti says NO.
All packed?
Good, thanks.
Get the carriage, I’ll wait here.
You know, I’ve got a lovely palace in the country
5000 square feet and a heated pool.
I think I”ll plant tomatoes.
Maybe I’ll take a lover
And write my memoirs.
As for you, husband,
Go ahead, get yourself a new queen.
On second thought, take the crown
I’ll never wear it again.
It’ll just remind me of you.
(here, give it to the boy to deliver, it might save his life
When he tells him
Vashti says No.
And lotsa luck to the next one, whoever you will be.
Display yourself if that’s what he wants
But get him drunk first
It goes faster.
Manipulate him if you can
Let him think he’s clever
It’s not that hard
Unless he’s with his friends.
So when you’re the Queen, girlie, say yes yes yes
But please, honey, whoever you are
Tell him, Vashti says No.
And lotsa luck to the next one, whoever you will be.
Display yourself if that’s what he wants
But get him drunk first
It goes faster.
Manipulate him if you can
Let him think he’s clever
It’s not that hard
Unless he’s with his friends.
So when you’re the Queen, girlie, say yes yes yes
But please, honey, whoever you are
Tell him, Vashti says No.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Yitro: Between Before and After
What is revelation? What does it mean to get ready for revelation, what leads to revelation, how does it changes everything afterwards, what of the Before and After, of the stories of Genesis and Exodus that lead to this moment, and the repercussions afterwards,
From the Liktuim Yekarim (sp?):
It is actually very surprising that a mortal human being should be able to attach himself to God. Besides his physical body, many Husks separate him from God. Even though, “the whole earth is filled with His glory”< God is still hidden behind many barriers. But all the barriers that separate and restrain can be torn down by the word that you utter. Your words should therefore be attached to God. This means that you must intimately feel that you are actually speaking to God. If we could speak just one line, or even two or three words, to God in each service, in the above mentioned manner, it would be sufficient.
What are the husks the Hebrews went through to get to that moment on Sinai, and what is it we go through to get to it? And let me just say here that for me anyway, it really doesn’t matter if it actually happened, or what any of us believe about that, because what we know happened are that stories got told about what got us here, and then there was the story of the moment, and then all the stories that stem from it. We’ve got Torah right here. This we know exists.
The Before is these two parallel stories, both a bout young men who are gifted but foolish, who get themselves in trouble and are pulled away from everything they knew or thought they knew, who have to re-invent themselves and in the re-inventing, find their true selves. And the first boy pulls his family into this re-invention and makes a family into a tribe. And the second boy pulls his tribe into the re-invention and turns the tribe into a people. And the people re-invent themselves and turn themselves from slaves into free people, from a people into a nation, from brutes into people of covenant with laws and ethics and spirituality. And all of this re-invention, it’s all to get them all there, at Sinai, at one place and one time, so that something huge can happen, so that everything and everyone can change, all at once, during this one incredibly special moment.
And this experience, it is so huge that it happens outside of time and maybe even out of space, I think when you hear some rabbi say that we were all at Sinai it’s because we were, because we’re there now, right now, at this moment.
And it was the biggest most important moment ever, and I know this because we tell this story every year, thousands of years later, even when it seems ridiculous or barbaric, yet we are compelled to work our way to the stories leading up to this moment, and then the stories that follow from it, from the words that were uttered on that day.
The Before stopped, the After hadn’t started yet, we were just there. Which is as complete a description of what Shabbat should be as I can come up with. So every Shabbat, we are in that moment of revelation of one-ness, of community, of connection, of right and wrong.
If we could speak just one line, or even two or three words, to God in each service, in the above mentioned manner, it would be sufficient.
Imagine if you could find that moment, those two or three words, at every service? And what is a service, what is a prayer, but the stories we tell ourselves, the Before of revelation, to get us to those two or three words of God, that will lead to completeness, no before and after, to shalom, wholeness, even if only for a moment.
And what would be revealed? Same thing at Sinai, on Shabbat, during a service, in a prayer….the Ten Commandments. Which for me boil down to this. Know this transcendence, recognize the moment. Respect your experience, don’t trivialize it, don’t try to make it small or material. Don’t forget this experience, give it to yourself once a week, call it Shabbat. Internalize the experience, live consistently within it, which means you treat your community and yourself with the same respect that you give to this moment.
If we could speak just one line, or even two or three words, to God in each service, it would be sufficient.
So what if, from now one, we start looking into each Shabbat, each service, each prayer, and look for the two or three words that might lead us to that moment. Maybe it’s this word. Maybe it’s this moment.
Maybe it’s this moment.
Baruch atah Adonai, Brucha At Yah, Blessed Ruach Ha Olam, God of my ancestors, God of my current understanding or lack thereof, God of my belief and disbelief,
I pray for those two or three words.
I pray for that moment.
It would be sufficient.
Amen.
Shabbat Shalom.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
A Fierce Mystery
“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.” -- Alicia Ostriker, THE NAKEDNESS OF THE FATHERS
My congregation's mission statement describes Kolot Chayeinu as a community "where doubt can be an act of faith." When that first came out, I thought that meant either, oh goody, I can not believe in God and still join a Jewish community, or, oh fantastic, Kolot is all about truth to power and challenging Pharaoh, or, oh wow, I can join in this place without checking my brains at the door. This is all true, and this is also very limiting.
The God I didn’t believe was a child’s God, learned in a Conservative suburban “temple” of the fifties and sixties that wouldn’t let me, as a girl, have an aliyah, wear a tallit or chant Torah, and which discouraged complexity, at least in its young people. I was right to not believe in that God, but it also never occurred to me that there was an alternative. My Jewish education at my tedious and soul-destroying Hebrew School was so poor that I had no knowledge of or access to the thousands of years of rigorous study of Jewish texts and customs. So I thought being religious, which for me meant being Jewish, was by definition tedious and soul-destroying.
I was disappointed in that God and that Judaism but I was (and am) a contrary sort so, if only to piss off the powers-that-were, I demanded alternatives. No answers were forthcoming and I didn’t actually expect them. It never actually occurred to me that there actually might be a Judaism that rewarded someone like me whose main talent was an ability to ask the next logical question.
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? –Rabbi Laura Geller
Then I grew up and asked, what could God mean if I made the same kind of demands of God-ness that I made of anything else? What if truth to power doesn’t just mean truth to the powerful but means truth is power? What does that demand of me? And what the heck is in all those books written in Hebrew and Aramaic? I began to study. Now, with my teensy bit of Jewish knowledge, I try to reconcile the ancient with the modern, I attempt to interpret laws, ethics and stories that come from a culture that shares almost no references or paradigms with the culture I live in and I look for a linear rationality in a people’s creation myth that was never meant to be linear or rational. I accept that I am a religious person, whatever that means, with a desire for faith as strong as my need for doubt.
So, what is to be done? How do I reconcile my doubt with my religiosity? Thus far I have found five possible strategies:
1. Scoff at the contradictions and walk away from the whole thing.
I was fourteen when I invented atheism.
2. Live with inconsistency.
I used to think that the only way to have intellectual integrity was through consistency. I thought that if God as I was taught God as a child was nonsensical, then I had to reject everything else that came along with that God. So at the very beginning of my God-search I decided I could resolve this by giving up consistency. I said, okay, I want rational empirical thinking and transcendent religion and Torah knowledge in my life, I will just wall them all off into their separate worlds, I won’t try to make them gibe and will enjoy them all just as they are but separately.
Question: Am I not capable of holding more than two opposing ideas in my mind at the same time without my head exploding?
Answer: No.
3. Intellectualize the contradictions away.
But then I started to do study, really started to see a glimmer of the coolness of Talmud and Midrash. Those guys, they wanted consistency, too! Who knew? And they were gonna make it work, no matter how tortured the logic got, reasoning their way through all the permutations until they came up with rationales for why the Torah is sometimes inconsistent, nutty and/or creepy. Much of their work is brilliant, some of it is kind of sad and ridiculous but dazzling nonetheless. I love this stuff. I’ve barely dipped my toe into how the rabbis and scholars have worked to understand the anomalies, or as Larry Kushner calls it, the “not fitting of ideas”, but it’s fascinating and deep. I’d happily spend the rest of my life learning this cumulative and associative way of thinking. But it easily becomes nothing more than a mind game, thrilling but devoid of emotion.
4. Use transcendence and feelings to understand intuitively.
Midrashic and folk stories can be the Jewish equivalents of the Zen koan, the sound of one scroll clapping, more or less, and they make intuitive sense that isn’t dependent on logic. Music and poems describe basic human needs and feelings and perceptions within the framework of Jewish thought. They sound right and feel good, capturing the essence of what we know to be true, bypassing the logical next questions by going straight for the heart. Jewish meditation unlocks a spirituality that is Jewish but also universal. All of this is a very acceptable strategy for assimilating basic Jewish values, culture and God-ness and works for many of us lot of the time. But too much intuition without enough rational judgment leads to sloppy thinking and precisely the kind of faith I don’t want.
5. There are no contradictions or inconsistencies.
Clearly what I need to do is to tolerate, intellectualize and intuit the contradictions all at the same time, if possible, and even run away from them when it’s necessary. When this approach is even remotely successful, I then begin to glimpse the possibility that there are actually no contradictions to reconcile. I begin to see that it’s all a part of a larger understanding of connection and learning and yearning, that it’s okay if I can’t always see those connections. I can just let them be there and if at some point I manage to put it together (unlikely, but you never know) that will be great and if not, that’s fine, too.
In other words, I begin to have faith that it all makes a kind of sense, even if I cannot and will never perceive it. Gosh.
“...the sign of wonder can only impress the one who is psychologically prepared to be convinced.” - Neshama Leibowitz
Each approach is just one aspect of a mindful Jewish life. God’s presence, for me, is in the questions not the answers, and in the arguments not the resolutions. This is truly doubt as an act of faith. What a fine life that could be, to scoff, ignore, intellectualize, poeticize and accept it all and live within the connections and contradictions, whether I call that God (however I understand that at any given moment) or not, to give oneself permission to live within the fierce mystery.
Blessed HaMavdeel, that which Divides Time
And separates the whole into increments that we may comprehend it,
Blessed Adonai Echad, that which Unites All Existence
And connects us that we may be one,
Blessed Ruach HaOlam, that which Cannot Be Known
And provides us with so many questions:
Thanks for being so interesting.
Amen.
My congregation's mission statement describes Kolot Chayeinu as a community "where doubt can be an act of faith." When that first came out, I thought that meant either, oh goody, I can not believe in God and still join a Jewish community, or, oh fantastic, Kolot is all about truth to power and challenging Pharaoh, or, oh wow, I can join in this place without checking my brains at the door. This is all true, and this is also very limiting.
The God I didn’t believe was a child’s God, learned in a Conservative suburban “temple” of the fifties and sixties that wouldn’t let me, as a girl, have an aliyah, wear a tallit or chant Torah, and which discouraged complexity, at least in its young people. I was right to not believe in that God, but it also never occurred to me that there was an alternative. My Jewish education at my tedious and soul-destroying Hebrew School was so poor that I had no knowledge of or access to the thousands of years of rigorous study of Jewish texts and customs. So I thought being religious, which for me meant being Jewish, was by definition tedious and soul-destroying.
I was disappointed in that God and that Judaism but I was (and am) a contrary sort so, if only to piss off the powers-that-were, I demanded alternatives. No answers were forthcoming and I didn’t actually expect them. It never actually occurred to me that there actually might be a Judaism that rewarded someone like me whose main talent was an ability to ask the next logical question.
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? –Rabbi Laura Geller
Then I grew up and asked, what could God mean if I made the same kind of demands of God-ness that I made of anything else? What if truth to power doesn’t just mean truth to the powerful but means truth is power? What does that demand of me? And what the heck is in all those books written in Hebrew and Aramaic? I began to study. Now, with my teensy bit of Jewish knowledge, I try to reconcile the ancient with the modern, I attempt to interpret laws, ethics and stories that come from a culture that shares almost no references or paradigms with the culture I live in and I look for a linear rationality in a people’s creation myth that was never meant to be linear or rational. I accept that I am a religious person, whatever that means, with a desire for faith as strong as my need for doubt.
So, what is to be done? How do I reconcile my doubt with my religiosity? Thus far I have found five possible strategies:
1. Scoff at the contradictions and walk away from the whole thing.
I was fourteen when I invented atheism.
2. Live with inconsistency.
I used to think that the only way to have intellectual integrity was through consistency. I thought that if God as I was taught God as a child was nonsensical, then I had to reject everything else that came along with that God. So at the very beginning of my God-search I decided I could resolve this by giving up consistency. I said, okay, I want rational empirical thinking and transcendent religion and Torah knowledge in my life, I will just wall them all off into their separate worlds, I won’t try to make them gibe and will enjoy them all just as they are but separately.
Question: Am I not capable of holding more than two opposing ideas in my mind at the same time without my head exploding?
Answer: No.
3. Intellectualize the contradictions away.
But then I started to do study, really started to see a glimmer of the coolness of Talmud and Midrash. Those guys, they wanted consistency, too! Who knew? And they were gonna make it work, no matter how tortured the logic got, reasoning their way through all the permutations until they came up with rationales for why the Torah is sometimes inconsistent, nutty and/or creepy. Much of their work is brilliant, some of it is kind of sad and ridiculous but dazzling nonetheless. I love this stuff. I’ve barely dipped my toe into how the rabbis and scholars have worked to understand the anomalies, or as Larry Kushner calls it, the “not fitting of ideas”, but it’s fascinating and deep. I’d happily spend the rest of my life learning this cumulative and associative way of thinking. But it easily becomes nothing more than a mind game, thrilling but devoid of emotion.
4. Use transcendence and feelings to understand intuitively.
Midrashic and folk stories can be the Jewish equivalents of the Zen koan, the sound of one scroll clapping, more or less, and they make intuitive sense that isn’t dependent on logic. Music and poems describe basic human needs and feelings and perceptions within the framework of Jewish thought. They sound right and feel good, capturing the essence of what we know to be true, bypassing the logical next questions by going straight for the heart. Jewish meditation unlocks a spirituality that is Jewish but also universal. All of this is a very acceptable strategy for assimilating basic Jewish values, culture and God-ness and works for many of us lot of the time. But too much intuition without enough rational judgment leads to sloppy thinking and precisely the kind of faith I don’t want.
5. There are no contradictions or inconsistencies.
Clearly what I need to do is to tolerate, intellectualize and intuit the contradictions all at the same time, if possible, and even run away from them when it’s necessary. When this approach is even remotely successful, I then begin to glimpse the possibility that there are actually no contradictions to reconcile. I begin to see that it’s all a part of a larger understanding of connection and learning and yearning, that it’s okay if I can’t always see those connections. I can just let them be there and if at some point I manage to put it together (unlikely, but you never know) that will be great and if not, that’s fine, too.
In other words, I begin to have faith that it all makes a kind of sense, even if I cannot and will never perceive it. Gosh.
“...the sign of wonder can only impress the one who is psychologically prepared to be convinced.” - Neshama Leibowitz
Each approach is just one aspect of a mindful Jewish life. God’s presence, for me, is in the questions not the answers, and in the arguments not the resolutions. This is truly doubt as an act of faith. What a fine life that could be, to scoff, ignore, intellectualize, poeticize and accept it all and live within the connections and contradictions, whether I call that God (however I understand that at any given moment) or not, to give oneself permission to live within the fierce mystery.
Blessed HaMavdeel, that which Divides Time
And separates the whole into increments that we may comprehend it,
Blessed Adonai Echad, that which Unites All Existence
And connects us that we may be one,
Blessed Ruach HaOlam, that which Cannot Be Known
And provides us with so many questions:
Thanks for being so interesting.
Amen.
Monday, December 20, 2010
BEHOLD
I. Behold
In Torah, God shows the future in our dreams to whomever God thinks appropriate.
Then God sends wise interpreters to the dreamers to explain the messages that God has sent us.
Only when interpreted can the dreams come true.
Hinei, meaning Behold, is the word used in Torah to introduce such a dream.
II. Behold, Joseph dreams
Joseph dreamt of wheat sheaves that bowed to him and the aging Wrestler Jacob understood and interpreted
Thus, he gave his annoying son a striped coat.
So the story could begin and the prophecy come true.
Once upon a time, a gifted but foolish child was sold into slavery…
But 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, meant to be.
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 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 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. Hinei! Rebbe Hannina dreams
He 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.
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 a congregation, a maggid is wasted.
V. Behold, Jacob dreams
Jacob dreamt of a ladder and souls that went up and down,
But his soul stayed put as he mourned his dead son, Joseph, who turned up actually not so dead.
And when Jacob got the good news and moved to Egypt, he had to face the facts.
At the end of his life, the end of Bereishit, he predicts the future.
Behold! says Jacob, and some get a farmland and some get sheep.
Behold! says Jacob, and those rotten kids, Reuben, Simeon (not so nice, not so honest, not so deserving) get futures of disgrace and division.
Behold! says Jacob, and Judah, who made teshuvah, who pleased God because he could learn from his mistakes and change,
Judah gets history,
Jew-dah gets us, the Jews.
Then Jacob dies, a hard, full life.
Chazak, chazak, Jacob – Be strong, be strong
So thanks, Genesis,
Because without dynastic mythologies, a dysfunctional family is wasted.
VI. Behold, Moses dreams
One tale ends, so another can begin.
In Shmot, starting next week, another great story, more unripened fruit, this one of murdered babies, supernatural revenge, bad guys, and heroes.
And, after 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 here comes our hero, Moshe, “I’ll pay the rent!
Have some commandments! Become a people!”
So, nice to see you coming up in the third act, Moishe.
Because without a happy ending, complications are wasted.
VII. Behold, our dream
So we pray and listen for the presence of God in ambient sound
Trying to hear truth amongst all the voices of our lives
Trying to interpret the noise properly so that it will come true, if it should,
And we can be part of a much larger story.
Not Hinei,
Behold
But Hineini,
Here I am.
So we can all take responsibility and not be ashamed,
Se we can all learn from our mistakes and make teshuvah,
So we can all forgive and not be bitter.
And hug and eat and cry and change the world.
For good and for ill,
As did our illustrious uncle, Joseph of Egypt.
And our great great grandpa, Judah the Lion.
So thanks, Grace Paley, who more or less said,
“Without action, hope is wasted.”
Brucha At Yah,
Infinite and eternal so that we may have endings and beginnings.
I am so grateful that we are able to study Torah together.
Because without connection, dreams are wasted.
Amen.
Written originally for the Drisha Institute Artists Fellowship program, based on our study of dreams in Talmud
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