Pick A Ritual

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.

It was ridiculous, boring.

It was humbling, profound.

I stopped bowing.

And I missed it.

So now on Shabbat morning,
When I thank a being I don’t believe in 
For gifts I don’t usually have,

I bow.

I bow to history and my community,

I bow to everyone who has ever been forced to bow.

I bow to my fears and my need for something bigger than me.

I bow because my ancestors bowed.   
I bow because everyone in the room is bowing.

I bow because I am not the center of the universe. 
I bow because I do feel God's presence, somehow.

So, a suggestion:

Pick a ritual.
One that is done in your community. 
One that you don’t usually do. 
One that you almost never do. 
Just one.
Then do it.

Do it without a reason. Do it for a month or two. 
See if it takes on meaning for you, 
See if it creates sacred space. 
See if it creates sacred time.

Learn about this ritual.
Do you know its traditional reason?
Do you know it's communal value?
Do you find a personal resonance?

Can you create your own meaning?

Keep doing the ritual for a month or two.
Then stop.

Do you miss it?
Did it matter? 

Pick another ritual...

Kesher V'Gesher, A Prayer for Rosh HaShanah

We cross a scary, narrow bridge,
It has an awesome span.
From Tisha B'Av to Simchat Torah and back again.

It’s not a simple stroll across this bridge,
Revealing truth with each step.
How do we get across intact?

Tread gingerly, alone,
Exposed before our friends and family and yes, the Infinite.
But most of all, to ourselves.

We know what we have done. We do.

So what helps us across that bridge?

Our music, the poetry, the liturgy;
The wise words, the sharing, the rhythm of the rituals and conversations with God.
Tefillah.

Our gathering, these clergy and prayer leaders, this community,
Social justice and acts of loving kindness,
Tzedakah.

Our self-awareness, honesty, regret, humility, atonement,
Our forgiveness, grief, redemption and joy,
Teshuvah.

The same stuff every year but shockingly different each time.
This is Kesher, our connection to truth and hope.
This is Gesher, our bridge across these Days of Awe.

Kesher v'Gesher
Connect. Cross the bridge.
From Tisha B’Av to Simkhat Torah:

From Regret to Celebration
From Celebration to Teshuva
From Teshuva to Sweetness
From Sweetness to Atonement
From Atonement to Awe
From Awe to Abundance
From Abundance to Torah

Blessed One-ness, Breath of Everything, we are not alone on this journey.
Walk with us as we cross each bridge to a new year and yet another beginning.
Amen.

My Day That Day

It’s about 8:45 AM. Brooklyn, 15th St. stop on the F train. I buy tokens (or was it a Metro Card by then) at the booth, and the clerk says a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I don’t know why, both he and I assume it is an accident, a small plane. I ask, should I get on the subway? Sure he says, the F train doesn’t go under the World Trade Center, no problem.

So I get on the subway and after only two stops, at Fourth Avenue & Ninth Street,the train goes above ground. I’m wearing ear buds and listening to music, I notice people coming in to my car look disturbed, so I take out the ear buds and listen. What are they saying, a second plane? The doors close, the train moves and the conductor announces, “The World Trade Center has been attacked by two airplanes, if you want to see it look to your left.” The train veers right, we look out the windows to the left and there are the towers, just across the East River, each tower has what looks like, from this distance, a giant black window. Then we can see, there’s smoke.

The train pulls into Smith and Ninth, still above ground. We are all in such shock, no one, not one of us, thinks to get off the train. We don’t understand what we’re going towards. I have a doctor’s appointment, I had a long wait for, I can’t cancel. So I stay on the train. I start talking to the young woman sitting next to me, slowly she and I realize what two airplanes means, that it was deliberate. But neither of us can fully take in what this means, that we should get off this train while the trains are still running back in the direction of home. The train goes underground and for some reason this feels like I have committed to the journey, so I stay on.

The train goes in fits and stops, it takes almost twice as long as it should to get to 34th Street (my doctor is at 31st and Second Ave.). My seatmate gets off, too, and for some reason it’s finally there, on the escalator going up, that we realize that we made a mistake, that we should have gotten off the train and that we might now be in danger. We wish each other luck. I wish I had gotten her name.

Once I get up to the street, I finally hear exactly what has happened. I look around me, and I realize I am standing near Macy’s and the Empire State Building and Penn Station, all potential targets. So I start running, and run all the way to the doctor’s office. Of course, she’s not there. She’s been called to the emergency room, to await the mass casualties that never were.

Thinking the subway will still be running, but afraid to go back to mid-town, I decide to walk to the 23rd Street stop of the F train. This is not logical but this is what I decide. I walk to Sixth Avenue and then start walking downtown. At every restaurant or bar that is open at this early hour, people are gathered to watch TV, and many are people huddled around cars to listen to the radio. I stop now and again to hear the latest, but mostly I forge on. I have to go home, I have to get back to Brooklyn. The black smoke from the towers, which by then have collapsed, is directly in front of me, in perfect perspective, coming to a point and this point, the horizon, has blown up.

I try to call various people, my sister and friends, but the cell phones aren’t working. People pass me walking in the opposite direction. Many of them are covered in white dust. They look exhausted, but determined. They want to get home, too. I know where they’re coming from but I keep asking them, “Where are you coming from?” Everyone answers me, but they don’t stop walking. “The World Trade Center.”

Finally I get to 23rd Street stop and find out that the trains have stopped. Someone says, you should walk home, everyone is walking on the Brooklyn Bridge. But I’m tired. I don’t think I can make it all the way from 23rd to Park Slope. I think, maybe I’ll just sit here until the trains go on, then I remember I know someone who lives on 13th Street and Sixth. I have the presence of mind to get some cash from an ATM and I walk to Missy’s place. Thank God, she’s home and invites me up and I sit in her room and watch TV and for the first time I see the shots of the plane hitting the tower. Missy still has a landline so I’m able to call people.

Missy and I go out. We want to buy food in case the supplies dry up, and she needs cash. By the time we get to the ATMs they’re out of money, so I lend her $80 (which she never pays back). We walk over to St. Vincent’s to give blood but by then they’ve got all they need so they turn us away. We go back to her house and I stay there until they announce on the news that the trains that don’t go under the WTC are running again. I thank Missy and go and get on the F to go home. The trains are packed but no one is talking or even looking at each other. Many people on the train are covered in dust, they are given seats. There are more than a few women who don’t have shoes, I don't understand it then, but now I think they must have been wearing heels and kicked them off so they could run from the cloud.

I get home about 3 PM, I've only been gone about six hours but it feels like six days. I go up on the roof and find some of my neighbors from the building there. There’s some paper from the World Trade Center on the roof but most of that fell in other parts of Brooklyn. There used to be a great view of the towers from the roof but now there’s just the plume of smoke. One of my neighborhs works in Tower One but had the day off. He is distraught.

I get a call on my landline. Members of my shul are getting together with another congregation, to do what I don’t know, but I go. We all sit together and some people get up to say things. Some of the things they say are stupid, using this as an opportunity for political rants. No one has the energy to tell them to shut up. Still, it’s nice to be with my community now.

Later that week, I will be with them again, and all of Park Slope, as we walk down Seventh Avenue on candlelight vigil to the two firehouses in our neighborhood. They both lost guys and we're very sad. Some of the fire trucks are parked along the route, men sitting in the trucks, as if to escort or witness us. Almost all of us touch the trucks as we pass in the quiet parade. Some go up to the firemen, survivors of that day. “Thank you, thank you” or "We're so sorry for your loss" is all most of us can say, and they accept our words and some of them let us touch or shake their hands.

RETURN: A Prayer for Elul Rosh Chodesh

Return to Elul.
The sky was dark, and the month began.
A special time of starting over;
A month of kindness and clarity;
Of consciousness and knowledge;
Of bravery and strength.
It is said that the truly evil are already condemned
And the truly good are already blessed.
So for the rest of us
There is Elul.

Return to ourselves.
In Genesis the moon is called, “the lesser light.”
And that’s how I feel tonight,
Less than what I should be.
What was I thinking?
I was afraid, I was hurt, I was anxious…
No excuses, I know what I did,
Maybe it wasn’t so bad
But maybe it was.
How can I make it better?
There is Elul.

Return to the people we wronged.
Use the ritual,
Create a context.
It makes it easier to speak:
I am so sorry.
I was wrong.
I lacked compassion in the moment
But I see things clearly now.
You don’t have to accept my apology,
We can do teshuva together
If you want.
There is Elul.

Return to each other.
In community we pray
For the kindness to comfort and care;
And the clarity to see what must be done;
For the consciousness to accept the truth;
And the knowledge to get help if needed;
For the bravery to ask for forgiveness;
And the strength to forgive.
Most of all, we pray for all who are in pain or who cause pain.
All this and more because
There is Elul.

Bless the God of Justice, of Mercy and of Redemption that we may return every year, as new as the moon.
Amen

A Prayer for The Hurricane

Ancient God of the Sumerians, Hittites, Babylonians and Hebrews,
God of Noah and all who came after,
We can, if we survive, imagine being philosophically grateful
For this hurricane.
After all,
It reminds us that there are forces much bigger than ourselves
And puts our lives in perspective
Which is always a good thing.
But please,
Just remember this:
You promised, no more floods.
I'm just saying.
Amen

Blessing for Earthquakes & Hurricanes

‎"Baruch Ata Adonai Elohainu Ruach Ha'Olam Osei Ma'asei B'reisheet."
Translation: Bless the Source of Blessings, Guiding Force of the World, Who Reenacts the Works of Creation (Blessing for Earthquakes)

--thanks to Jewish Meditation Center of Brooklyn

HAVDALLAH: PRAYER FOR HOLY SEPARATION

Praise the Before, Praise the After, Praise the Time In Between.

I construct four walls and a roof and no windows.
I put in only one door, open it once a year, and never go in.
Inside the walls, Holy of Holies. Outside the walls, everything else.
All I did was build a temple.

I buy some fabric.
I put fringes on the corners and cover myself with the cloth.
Inside the cloth, I pray. Outside the cloth, I gossip.
But all I did was cover myself.

I have a candle, wine, and sweet smelling spices
I smell the spice, then I light the candle and dip it in the wine.
Before sunset, mindfulness and rest. After sundown, a week of new mistakes.
All I did was wait for it to get dark.

Praise Kadosh the holy,
Praise Khol the mundane,
Praise Ha Mavdil Bein Kodesh L’khol, that which differentiates between them.
Amen.

For Lost Homes on Tisha B'Av

Jer. 17:12 A glorious throne, exalted from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary

I am losing my home.

I love my home.
I love the birds singing in the morning outside my window.
I love my neighbors, we feed each others’ cats.
I love the bodega on the corner.
I love the Park, and my mailman.

I love sitting on the roof,
With the sky so large and the moon so bright and golden behind a cloud,
That I can always imagine myself 3000 years ago,
Looking up in awe to see Old Man White Beard God
Sitting on his Kissei Kavod, his Throne of Glory, surrounded by angels,
Looking down on me as I drink my vodka tonic.

My home, four flights up, a real shlep and not very spacious,
But a good home, a restful home, my safe place.
And I must go.

I am losing my home.
How can this be?
Running out of money and long term unemployed
I am being forced out, expelled.
Sell it or lose it and I’m lucky, I can sell it.

I’m not alone,
There are a lot of us.
We are losing our homes.

In my home there was a big chair, padded and comfy.
Destroyed by the cats, ripped to shreds
But a good and restful chair.
My chair.
But the realtor said it was too bulky for the space
And made my home look too cramped, I must get rid of it.
So I did.
And it works, my apartment looks....
Empty.

Oh, how I miss my big chair!
And I am losing my home.

In Israel, there is a beautiful wooden chair,
Intricately carved, hand-crafted by a butcher in 1808
For Reb Nachman of Bratslav.
It was Nachman’s chair in Bratslav, the throne of a ruler.
And Nachman had a dream that he sat in that chair and flew to Jerusalem.
After his death, the Breslovers kept the chair
And danced around it
In their hearts Nachman was still alive in his home, sitting on his throne,
The center of their universe.
And when the the Nazis came
They cut up the chair into small pieces.
Each chasid took one and set off for Jerusalem
And each chasid with a piece of the chair made it safe to this destination
Where they reassembled the chair.
And there they dance around it, to this day.
But my chair is gone.

Oh, how I miss my big chair!
And I am losing my home.

The destruction of the ancient Temple, the expulsion from Spain,
The pogroms against the shtetls in Russia, the murders of the six million--
So terrible and huge.
Much sadder than the sale of a small apartment in Brooklyn

But oh, how I miss my big chair!
And I am losing my home,
Where the birds sing outside my window in the morning

Baruch Atah HaMakom, Blessed Place, Where I Live No Matter Where I Live, give me sanctuary to grieve and the strength to stop, and the knowledge of when it is time to do both.


Amen.

A Weekday Amidah

I open my mouth, I open my heart.
I speak praise, hope and thanks.
I speak the Ancient Prayer:

1. 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 my strength and of my weakness
God of this community, and of mine alone
God of my current understanding and my lack thereof
God who knew my parents, God who knows my death
Blessed be Ain Sof, that which was here before IS, and that which will be here afterwards.

2. Praise God’s Power!
Incline your metaphorical ear
Open your metaphorical eye
Rambam says,
If you can’t imagine God then you don’t exist.
Blessed be God who brings us the Wow.

3. Sanctify God’s Name!
Blessed HaMavdeel, the Divider of Time;
Blessed Adonai Echad, the Uniter Of All Existence;
Blessed Ain Sof, That Which Cannot Be Known;
Blessed Ruach HaOlam, The Breath That Animates;
Blessed Shechina, the Presence of Eternity;
Blessed Elohim, God of our Past, Blessed Yah, God of our future;
Blessed HaMakom, God of our present.

Look from side to side, to see all these possibilities,
Holy, Holy, Holy
But there is only One.
Blessed be Echad, with so many names.

4. I ask for Knowledge.
I pray that I may continue to have so many questions
And give thanks for my teachers and hevruta for the answers
Which I will then question.
Blessed HaMavdil Bein Kodesh L’Khol, who is so interesting.

5. I ask for Repentance.
Someone asked, what were you thinking? I don't know.
I was hurt, I was angry, I was scared.
I’m not making excuses, I know what I did.
But it is good to be understood. I am so sorry.
Blessed be God, who is so patient.

6. I ask for Forgiveness.
The truly evil are already condemned
The truly good are already blessed
And the rest of us, most of us,
Hope for mercy and a little leeway.
I will do better.
Blessed is the Presence that does not hold a grudge.

7. We ask for Redemption.
We pray that we have no enemies.
But if we must have enemies, we pray that we may find a way to live in peace.
If we cannot live in peace, we ask for safety.
If we cannot be safe, then we ask to be saved from annihilation.
If most of us are killed, we pray that some of us will be able to run away to start again.
Bless the Redeemer, who has compassion for all who are in pain or who cause pain.

8. We ask for Healing.
We pray for the compassion to comfort and care,
the anger to keep going,
the clarity to see what must be done,
the acceptance of love from all sources,
the brains to get help,
and the strength to accept the truth.
Bless the Source of Life, that we may be healed, in our souls if not always in our bodies.

9. We pray for the Earth, our home and all that it gives us.
We pray for the rain and the dirt and the seeds.
We pray to be proper caretakers of this earth and all who live upon it.
We pray that all who are hungry will have to eat.
We honor the chain of work that brought us bread, from the farmer to the picker and the miller and the baker, to the trucker and the store owner and the shopper.
Bless the Creation, that which brings us the means to make our food that we may eat together.

10. We ask for the gathering of the exiled.
Sound a shofar, listen!
Gather the lost and homeless:
The Ivrit fleeing Mitzraim, the Ladinos exiled from Spain;
The refugees of Darfur, the Europeans who crossed to America in steerage;
The Cherokee on the Trail of Tears, the ethnically cleansed of Serbia;
The Oleh who ran from Nazis and Soviets to Israel, the Palestinians walled off from their farms.
Bless El, who gathers the dispersed and sometimes takes them home.

11. We ask for the rule of Law
Help us refuse to participate in wrongdoing
Help us act when we see someone else in danger, whether we know them or not.
Help us free ourselves from violence and recover when we cannot.
Protect us from police states and dictatorships.
Make sure our judges are impartial and our laws makes sense.
Bless The One Who Judges and Writes in the Book of Life, seeing us as we truly are.

12. We ask for tolerance and perception.
All division is false,
All superiority is delusion,
All separation is temporary.
Blessed Adonai Echad, the Uniter Of All Existence.

13. We ask for righteousness.
May we pray in mindfulness and not by rote.
May our actions match our ethics.
May we not oppress or bore others who do not believe or practice as we do.
Bless God Who Has Given Us Our Minds that we may use them to think for ourselves. May we all be Jews By Choice.

14. We ask for Jerusalem.
Have mercy on Israel and Palestine’s people.
May they all be able to see themselves clearly
And may they find themselves able to act ethically.
Please keep them safe from physical harm
And please, if at all possible, keep them sane.
As we have always aspired to return to Jerusalem,
May those who live there aspire to live in harmony and justice with their neighbors.
Bless Yud Hey Vuv Hey, the God of Abraham, Sarah, Ishmael, Isaac, Rebecca, Esau, Jacob, Rachel, Leah, Zilpah, Bilhah, Moses, Zipporah, Naomi, Boaz and Ruth.

15. We ask for salvation.
May the World To Come be the world we live in.
Bless HaMakom, we are in this glorious and troubled place and we take responsibility for how it turns out.

16. Hear Our Prayers
That which Was, That which Is, That which Will Be.
I imagine you. I’m listening. Do you hear me?
Blessed Adonai Elohim. Sh’ma.

17. We are thankful for our opportunities to serve.
For the eyes to see the suffering,
For the minds and body to take action,
For the liturgy that still speaks to us,
For the prayers we create now,
We are thankful.
And please, no need to rebuild the Temple:
God is everywhere.
Bless the Shechinah, the Presence that never leaves.

18.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 bread 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 embracing community
the sweet meals, the warm home,
the good friends, the silly toys, the spiritual seaches,
the sexual pleasures, the profound thoughts,
the crazy family, the big laughs,
and the loving.
Blessed Ruach HaOlam who gives us today, which is so beautiful.

19. We pray for peace.
May the Eternal bless us and keep everyone.
Let us have some inkling of the Holy Connection
And grant us wholeness and peace.

Blessed Ain Sof, encompassing all existence,
Incomprehensible. Simple.
May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart be truth.
May the good things I pray for happen and, if not,
May I never forget to hope.

Amen

This Is The Ritual

A DRASH ON CHUKKAT


This parsha, Chukkat, takes place about 39 years after the last parsha, when the 10 scouts and most of the Hebrews proved they weren’t able to leave their slave minds behind and so God has them wander the desert until that generation dies off. They’re near the end of this journey, and in the first part of the parsha they are instructed in two important rituals that they are going to need once they arrive and begin leading relatively normal lives.

Both set of instructions are introduced by the phrase, “This is the ritual” The first tells us how to find and sacrifice a perfect red cow so that its ashes may be used for the makings of the waters of lustration, to be used in purification rituals. The second tells us how to proceed when someone dies: how to treat the body, who may touch it, what to do with the unclean person when they have touched the body – Spoiler Alert: waters of lustration.

Then we read of how the people are thirsty, they have no water, Miriam is dead so there's no easy water. They complain for the umpteenth time to Moses and Aaron, Moses talks to God who tells them to take their staff, assemble the community before a rock and order the rock to provide water. So Moses and Aaron go to the rock with the staff but the people are rebellious and whiny. So instead of doing the simple ritual as instructed, Moses raises his hand theatrically and then strikes the rock twice with the staff. Water gushes out of the rock. But God tell Moses that because he did not trust God enough to affirm God’s sanctity with the required ritual, Moses will not be allowed into the Promised Land of Israel. Ya make one mistake….

So what did Moses do that was so wrong? Why are the first two rituals right and the third one wrong? What is a ritual?

Ritual separates the mundane from the special and creates sacred time and space and helps you get from there to here. Rabbi Larry Hoffman says in his book “The Art of Public Prayer”,
Ritual ”arranges our life into relatively small packages of moments that matter.”

I have personal rituals. Some are mundane, like in shower I wash in the same order every time. I don't feel clean unless I do. Some rituals involve magical thinking, like for years after 9/11, scared that a bomb would go off on the subway, I said the Shma to myself whenever the F train left York Street station (going under the East River)-- Shma over and over until we arrived at Fulton Street. It set the fear apart, helping me name and contain it.

Hoffman recognizes the distinctions between empty rituals, which he calls ritualizations, and true rituals. He characterizes a ritualization as “boring, meaningless, seemingly silly in the way the participants do a multitude of things with no inherent pragmatic connection to the job at hand…vacant words, empty gestures, vacuous activity. “ Perhaps that’s how at least part of the Shabbat service is for you? I hope not, but maybe so?

That’s how it was for me, growing up in my suburban non-egalitarian Conservative temple on Long Island. And that’s how it was for me when I first started coming back to a Jewish life. I wanted the community and the learning but so much of the service just looked and felt silly. Particularly the bowing.

I used to refuse to bend my knee and bow during the Blessings. Who was I bowing to, a being I didn’t believe in? A male King figure, antithetical to every feminist democratic bone in my body? Screw that. But people I respected bowed and they weren't delusional royalists, so I decided that I would start bowing regardless of how ridiculous it was and see how it felt. See if I could find a reason to bow, see if there was indeed something I could bow to. And I did. I bow to history, community, my fears, my need for something bigger than me. I bow because others are bowing. I bow because my ancestors bowed. I bow because I am not the center of the universe, shocking thought that might be. And sometimes I bow because it's just time to bow. So bending and bowing went, for me, from ritualization to ritual.

Back to the parsha. How was the Red Cow or the rituals for the dead true ritual and what Moses did with the rock false enough to bar the way to the Promised Land? To our 2011 eyes the first two rituals are much sillier than the third. Find a perfect red cow and burn it and use those ashes to create the water of lustration so if someone touches the dead they can be purified by the ashes of a dead cow? On the face of it this is a ridiculous performance. But if it is a ritual, if it is repeatable, done within and for community, if we all understand what it means, if it separates the mundane from the holy, if it takes us from one state to the other, it is a ritual. It’s a performance but in the service of sacred separation.

And when Moses knocks on a rock a couple of times calling for water? That’s a grand empty gesture of desperation. That’s pandering, that’s show biz and Moses knows it. Ritual, writes Larry Hoffman, “culminates in ritual moments that provide satisfaction of closure and a sense that life matters.” Banging on that rock did not matter.

Moses doesn’t get to go to the Promised Land because he lost faith in the ritual that means something, that in this case makes the simple act of looking for water filled with God, connection, history. Moses proves to be as stuck in the slave mentality as the others who had left Egypt with died off. He was of the past, not the future.

But we who create ritual moments alone in the shower, quietly on the subway and together in front of the Torah ark, we are now. So, a suggestion:

Pick a ritual,

One that is done in your community.
One that you don’t usually do.
One that you almost never do. Just one.
Then do it.

Maybe put on a kippah, Or maybe you wear a tallit,
Or point your pinky finger when the torah is raised,
Or, during the Shma, gather the four fringes of your tallit together.
Or, at the start of the Amidah, step back three times, step forward three times.
Or a home ritual: Shabbat candles, havdallah, mezuzah, whatever.

Just pick one.

Do it without a reason. Do it for a month or two.
See if it takes on meaning for you,
See if it creates sacred space.
See if it creates sacred time.
It this a ritual?

Do you know the traditional reason behind it?
What meaning does the community find in it?
And you? Do you find a personal meaning? If not, can you create your own meaning for the ritual?
Then do the ritual with meaning for a month or two.
Then stop.

Will you miss it? Was it a real or false?
Do you want to start doing it again? Could you keep doing it?
Did it matter?
Does it have anything to do with God, however you understand God?
Will it take you to the Promised Land?