Rosh Chodesh

Eternal One-ness, 
Living outside of time
Blessed HaMavdil,
The One Who Divides:

We live our lives in discrete increments
And we imagine that long ago

We might have been afraid

When the moon disappeared.

It was so dark at night

Like the end of the world.

We howled at the empty sky

And then, like a miracle,

A sliver appeared:

We give thanks for the returning moon.

Did you know that in the fifites

The United States Goverment

Considered blowing up the moon

Right out of the sky

Just to freak out the Russians?

But smart people decided it was too dangerous

And the moon was saved:
We give thanks for the sane and the rational.

Over the centuries
We have noticed
The tides of the ocean both high and low,
The seasons of the year that are hot then cold,
The fertility of the earth that flows and rests,
The faces of the moon that wax and wane. 
Whatever arrives, leaves,
Whatever is gone, returns:
We give thanks for the regularity of nature.

Blessed One-ness 
Outside of Time, Eternal.

Blessed HaMavdil
Dividing time into years and months and days
And sharing the skies with us.
For that and so much more, we give thanks.

Amen

New Moon in January: Rosh Chodesh Shevat

Eternal One-ness, 

Living outside of time

Blessed HaMavdil,

The One Who Divides:

We imagine that long ago

We might have been afraid

When the moon disappeared.

It was so dark at night

Like the end of the world.

We howled at the empty sky

And then, like a miracle,

A sliver appeared.

The moon, it's back!

We gave thanks for the new moon.

This new month,

Rosh Chodesh Shevat,

The new month of winter,

Begins as the month of Tevet ends.

Tevet is the month of resting and darkness.

Shevat is the month of days growing longer

But somehow also colder,

January and February.

When the world seems the most devoid of life,

We give thanks for the future.

Yes,

This is the month when we tell the story

Of the escape from the narrow place.

This is the month of Shabbat Shirah,

When we sing the song of liberation

And Martin Luther King.  

We give thanks for the freedoms we have and we work for the ones we do not.   

This is the month when we talk of wine and nuts and fruit,

The New Year of the Trees,

We give thanks to the earth

This is the month of Tu Bishvat

When we eat the gifts of our planet.

And pray that we are doing enough to preserve it.  

Blessed One-ness 

Outside of Time, Eternal,

Blessed HaMavidil

Dividing time into years and days.

And every month,

Sharing the new moon with us, 
Sharing the future.

For that and so much more, we give thanks.

Amen

Shemot

Names

This parsha is Shemot, which in Hebrew means names.  It's also the name of this second book of the Torah.  In English it is called Exodus, which means the mass departure of many people.   Life sucks in Egypt for the Hebrew slaves and so they leave.  Stuff happens.  Exodus.  

The plot of this one little parsha is hard to sum up quickly:  The torah names all the tribes of Israel who have moved to Egypt, they become enslaved, AND THEN  after 400 years they become so numerous and the Pharoah is afraid of them so he orders the midwives to kill all the male Hebrew babies.  AND THEN Two midwives manage to save a lot of the male babies, one in particular is hidden from the bad guys until he gets too big and loud to hide, AND THEN his mother puts him in a basket and floats him towards Pharoah's daughter, who adopts him and names him Moshe AND THEN he is given to his mother to nurse and then back to Pharoah's Daughter to be raised as an Eqgyptian prince.  AND THEN One day Moses sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave AND THEN he kills the Eqgyptian so he has to skedaddle AND THEN he faces the fact that he is a Hebrew  AND THEN He runs away to Midian, marries Zipporah, has children, becomes a shepherd and generally drops out, AND THEN one day, just when he thinks his life is settled, God appears in a burning bush that is not consumed, insists that Moses go back to Egypt and liberate his people with the help of his brother Aaron AND THEN God teaches the reluctant Moses some magic  tricks AND THEN  Moses goes back to Egypt, confronts the Pharoah of all Egypt and says, no, demands that he let his people go, AND THEN Pharoah says hell no and gets even meaner to the slaves than he was before, AND THEN God tells Moses that he is going to kick Pharoah's ass.

Great story.  Can't wait to see what happens next.

But for me, this is not about the journey, epic though it may be, but about something as simple as a name.  With a name you are given a place, in your family and your community, and sometimes within your soul. The Israelites and then Moses, and then God, are named and found in this parsha, and the nexus is the Burning Bush, when God invites Moses back into who he is, Mose the Hebrew, the friend of God and the savior of the slaves.

The slaves are the children of Israel, known as the, Ivrit.  The word Ivrit, meaning, Hebrew, comes from the shoresh Ayin, Bet, Raish.  As a verb, it means to cross over, and it's first used to describe that wanderer, Abraham.  But by the time the people are in Egypt they are definitively known to the Egyptions as the Hebrews, re the people who crossed over, from Canaan to Egypt.  And Shemot is the story of when those Hebrews go across the desert to go back home.  The name is descriptive of how these people, our people, act and how we are seen.  We know how to move on, when necessary.  History acts upon us, we change as we must.

The second name is that of Moses, which is taken from the meaning, to be drawn out, Pharoah's daughter names him that becuase he was drawn out of the water..  It is apparently also now meant that it is also Mose who draws the people out of Egypt.   Moses is given his name as a child, acted upon by others, until he kills the Egyptian and runs away, spending his time in Midian becoming a new person until his encounter with God, at which point he can reclaim himself and that name and become the agent of his own life.  He draws himself out and discovers his true self, who is is, his I am that I am and embraces his connection with the one-ness and his people and goes back into the story.  Moses, the protagonist, changes dramatically.  Pharoah, his mother, his sister, Pharoah's daughter, Jethro, Zipporah, and God, they all act upon him, but finally, when Moses sees the Burning Bush, when he chooses to see the Burning Bush, he draws himself out and becomes his people's leader.  He names God and becomes Ivrit at last.

And what about God's name?  Many observant jews never call God by any name other than HaShem, The Name.  I'm not totally sure why, but to me it seems that it's as if, by naming God you quantify God, you surround and separate and personalize, you make the Is-ness into a human or a supernatural that which cannot be surrounded or separated or personalized or be human or a being. 

And yet we insist on giving this non-corporeal non-being a Shem, a name.  In fact, Shemot.  Names:

El

Elohim

El Shaddai

Elyon

Shechinah

Yah

Adonai

Yahweh

Jehovah

Ruach HaOlam, The Breath of Life

The Eternal

The Righteous One

Ha Makom, The Place

Adon Olam, Lord of the World

Avinu Malkeinu, Our Father Our King

Elohei Avraham, Elohei Yitzchak ve Elohei Ya`aqov

Elohei Sara, Elohei Rivka, Elohei Leah ve Elohei Rakhel

E'in Sof—"endless, infinite",

HaKadosh, The Holy One

 Barukh Hu , Blessed One

HaRachaman-"The Merciful One"

Melech HaMelachim—"The King of kings" or

Ribeinu Shel Olam, Master of the World

Rofeh Cholim, Healer of the Sick

Tzur Yisrael, Rock of Israel

Oseh Shalom, Maker of Peace

And my personal favorite, Zokef efufim, Straightener of the Bent.  What ever does that mean, I wonder?

God is not nearly as pretentious as we are.  When Moses asks God what he should call God, God simply (!) says, Eheyeh Asher Eheyeh.  I Am That I Am.

Rabbi Art Green interprets this to be not the description of something that has ever been, is now, and ever will be, outside of time and space, Was/Is/ Will Be.  It is the essence of, well, IS, and this Is-ness knows it.  For the first time, The Was/Is/Will Be, the I AM THAT I AM, doesn't identify itself as God or Lord or Father or any of that.  This Is-ness sends Moses off on his quest to bring the Hebrews out of Egypt and into covenant with I am that I am.  So HaIvrit, The Hebrews, and  Moses and I AM THAT I AM have come together and the story that will climax at Sinai in Torah and Jews and you and me.

So  What are the names you were given at birth? 

What are the names you were given by your history? 

What are the names you have chosen for yourself at your burning bush? 

My parents gave me the name, Patricia Ilene Arlin.

AND THEN They gave me a name for my religion, my people, my history, Aleeza Bat Rut v'Shlomo.  Aleeze means Joyful.  That's me, Full of Joy.

I always hated that name, Aleeza.   I didn't have much joy growing up and I don't present as joyful lke some people do, even when that's how I'm feeling.  So the name Aleeza never sat well with me.  So when I started studying Jewish stuff, I thought I wanted a more appropriate Hebrew name.  My hero became Rabbi Akiva, who was illiterate until he was in his forties and who then started to learn from scratch and who became one of the greatest rabbis of his time.  I decided I wanted the female equivalent of the male name, Akiva, but when I looked it up one one of those sites for finding Hebrew names, it said there was no female equivalent.  AND THEN, I complained about this to a friend who had some knowledge of hebrew names, AND THEN she suggested what she thought was the closest female equivalent to Akiva:  Aleeza.

I've been thinking about it, and I think I am almost ready to drop the name I was given, and reclaim my name and draw myself out and choose to be joyful. 

Aleeza. 

Baruch atah HaShem, Blessed be the Name, blessed be that which cannot be named and blessed be our names, those we receive because of love, and those we receive because of our history and culture, and those names we choose for ourselves, because we are B'tzelem Elohim, made in the image of the I AM that chooses to be I AM.  

Amen.

Giving Light

Baruch Atah Adonai

Blessed Yah

Giving Light in the Darkness:

About ten years ago,

I was home alone.

I didn't have a menorah

I wasn't gonna light any candles

But it's no big deal.
I didn't do Hanukah.

Why make a fuss?
It's a minor holiday,

Just some Maccabees

With a boring miracle,
Eight days of oil:
What the hell is that?

But I still gave out presents

I used to think

A present wasn't a present

Unless the gift I gave

Was something I wanted to keep for myself.

Oh well.
I guess I was a little lost in the darkness.

And then that December,

A week before Hanukah
A friend came by to drop off a Hanukah gift:

She gave me a menorah!

And some candles and some matches, too!

And there it was, that year,

On the first night of Hanukah,
And I thought, why not?
And for the first time in a long time
I lit the candles on a menorah,
My new menorah,
And I said the blessings
And I remembered the Maccabees:
When times were hard
They did not disappear,
They fought so hard for their community.
And I thought of all the Jews lighting candles
All over the world.
And I was not alone.

Which brings me to

The storms and the wind and the floods and the wars

When so so many people

Are lost in real darkness.

Nothing poetic about that.

So for eight nights this year
As I light the candles on my now old menorah
I will say the blessings

And pray for those who have been injured or killed or raped.

And pray for those who are worried and homeless and hungry.
And pray for those who are lost to themselves.
And thank God for all of us who are still here.

And thank God for our loved ones.
And thank God for the Maccabees,
Of all places and religions and races,
Who, when times are hard,
Refuse to disappear.
They are still fighting so hard for their communities
With food and shelter and work and love.
Not a miracle exactly,
It's what good people do,
They give when giving is needed. 
They are the best and

It is a blessing.

We are so grateful.

We are not alone.

Blessed is the Source of Light

We are made holy with the obligation to do good.

And so tonight we kindle the Hanukah candles.
Amen

This Week I Needed to Connect

11/3/12

This week I needed to connect:

To the world

To my community

To Brooklyn

To New Jersey

To Breezy Point

To my family

To the power grid

To Facebook

To the local news

To Mayor Bloomberg

To Governor Cuomo
To Chris Christie and Barack Obama

To good-deed-doers

To my rabbi

To my cantor

To the volunteers

To those in need

To the MTA transit workers

To the  NYC police

To the NYC Fire Department
To freezing friends

To prayer

To politics

To Jon Stewart

To tragedy

To grief

To loss

To stupidity
To my solar phone charger

To randomness

To truth

To Shabbat

To my cats

To my sofa

To candy

To children dressed as ladybugs and elephants and gumball dispensers
To my block

To my landlord

To music

To anguish

To heroism

To despair

To foolishness

To hope

To God

This week I needed to connect.

And I did.

Blessed One-ness,  when we most need connection,  it is there.

Amen