Cyber
Archives BARBARA WAS ON VACATION IN JULY Dear friends, I'm in my last week of work as Education Director of Congregation Dor Hadash. It is a fascinating experience to be winding down and giving over a life work to other hands. It is a lesson in humility at its most basic. I'm working on doing this well, but I find myself feeling a bit bereft as I seek a way to redefine myself. I'm sure many of you can resonate with that feeling. I think it is truly important to work through the “"what I am"” versus “"who I am" dilemma that is becoming more essential to me as my old business cards (my “"what I am"”) become bookmarks, not a definition. Naming is one of the most powerful tools we have. In Midrash, naming is one of the great gifts given to Adam in the Garden of Eden. He gets to name all the animals, plants and other things created by God, which are forever more stuck with Adam's names. Parents do this to children, too. The story of my own naming sums up the complexity of this situation. I was to be named after my paternal grandmother, Hattie, who had died right before I was born. Neither of my parents wanted to name me Hattie, so in the classic Ashkenazi pattern for American Jews, they decided a name beginning with “h” would suffice. My maternal grandfather was lobbying for Heliotrope (he had a sense of humor) and my mother liked Heather – but worried that I might not look like a Heather. Heather as a name implied delicacy and pastels – and what if I turned out huge and a jock and only wore fire engine red? So, as many Jews did at the time, they named me in Hebrew, Hadassah – but in English, my name would be Barbara. It was a way to cover the bases, and they did. I’ve often wondered what I would have been like if my name was Heather (or Heliotrope). They don’t feel like me at all, but if I grew up with another name I’d have adjusted, I’m sure. Would I have taken different paths if my name had driven my actions? When we label things we certainly do create expectations around them. When we define ourselves with brief words we create limits on how we are perceived. However, in social situations, there’s rarely an opportunity to get to know someone well, so short explainers that define us are the norm. I’m a doctor, lawyer, teacher, student, therapist, accountant, airplane pilot, computer geek – we respond to others with our labels and then allow whatever stereotypes those labels imply to take hold. I’m lobbying for an alternative approach that might really disconcert people but also make them think a bit. Here are some questions I might like to ask people I don’t know when I meet them for the first time. If we try not to ask someone what they do, conversation becomes much more interesting. Asking real questions, that require real listening, can turn an obligatory social function into an opportunity to grow. So in no particular order, here they are:
Now I'm sure these questions are not the only questions you can ask. These are the ones that interest me. The game (sure it’s a game) requires that there be no short and sweet labels to sum us up. The game requires a willingness to participate on the part of the people you’are talking to and I'm sure there are some situations when this would be extremely inappropriate… but it could be a lot of fun. You might even want to try it with people you already know –- because real questions and real listening are not something we do all the time. So that’is your July assignment, folks. Ask some intimate questions and feel the change in your social dynamic. People have such fascinating lives away from the routine of their day-to-day selves and we are often made wiser by that realization. I will be taking the month of July off but will be back in your email boxes in August. If you read this through the website (www.dorhadash.org) and I know some of you do, the icon link on the homepage will no longer read “"Education Director"” but will probably read “"JRF Master Educator" ; however, everything else will remain the same. If you wish to receive this email from me directly, please send your request to brcarr1@cox.net. Enjoy your summer and have fun re-imagining yourselves and others. Still dreaming of peace, Barbara Early June Dear Friends, My official retirement doesn’t begin until July 1st, but I’m still in recovery mode from a weekend of tears, laughter and joy as my congregation celebrated my life work. It would be embarrassing (and inappropriate) for me to tell you all the wonderful things that were said – but it is also impossible for me to not reflect on what just took place. It is too big and if I can step back from the personal a little bit – I think it is worthy of a letter home. It isn’t often that you get to do work that not only makes you feel good but also impacts the people around you. It isn’t often that you get to hear what people think about your passions while drinking wine, eating good food, and celebrating with people you love. It is even less usual to have your students cry at your leave taking and tell you that you’ve changed their lives. It is a gift that requires acknowledgement and even a certain level of responsibility. I won’t have resolution of that for a long time. I can see some of you rolling your eyes and more of you wondering what I’m talking about… so let me tell you. We each have gifts. Some gifts are more obvious than others. However, with these gifts comes an obligation, I think, to understand them and use them well. For some folks, the gifts are obvious – the math prodigy – the football star – the painter or poet – and they find themselves driven by their gifts. Some gifts are more subtle – the ability to listen and truly hear – the ability to be there for a friend and know just what to say to make them smile – even the ability to move people to do things they may not automatically want to do. We know, if we are honest with ourselves, what gifts we’ve been given and what we “ought” to do with them. We fall short of our responsibilities to our gifts if we ignore them. We fall short of our responsibility to the world if we can do something to make it better and fail to do so. If we underestimate the power and purpose of our gifts, we are also letting our obligations go unfulfilled. We are here for a reason, folks. I believe that from the bottom of my heart. There is no other explanation for why we have our kinds of intellectual, emotional and spiritual capacities than that we simply have an obligation to use them well. I was blessed with the chance to watch gifts unfold that I didn’t know I had. By placing myself in an environment that fed me on every possible level, my gifts appeared to me truly as unexpected presents. I was continually surprised by what I could do professionally. I was continually amazed at how my own spiritual self grew as my work became more complex and more driven. I would come home some days so filled with the power of a holy presence in my everyday life that I had to sing or thank God or just share the overwhelming feeling of wonder in my writing. I know this may sound a little fundamentalist – so for those squirming – sometimes when I feel like this I also hug the dog… who puts up with my exuberance better than almost any other being. Sometimes I just sit really still. Sometimes I just grin. I just spill over my container…and have to acknowledge it somehow. So, what does that mean for you who are reading this and saying, “whoa, spiritual exuberance over work – sounds like minimum wage to me”. It’s just my way of encouraging you to find that path that makes you want to sing out in praise when your day is done. It may not be possible to do this work as a way to support yourself… but it is still possible to find an avenue, an outlet, or an opportunity to feel good down to your toes for the effort you make to enrich lives around you. To do this work – this holy kind of work – work that makes the world a better place – requires effort, of course. You need to find the spiritual match within yourself. You need to think hard about what you have to give and how you can give it. You may need partners – folks who will work with you toward a common goal. You may need to start small – being insecure about entering into new things is normal – but getting your toes wet is always the first step in immersion. Once you start, though, it is truly unthinkable to stop. Once you start and realize how incredibly good you feel about using your gifts – there is no looking back. Once you start and feel the absolute rightness of your choices – well holiness occurs. We each have it in us to feel that way and it is a shame if we don’t let that happen out of underestimating ourselves or not acknowledging how good it can feel to do rightly with our world. So, now, as my professional career as an Education Director is drawing to a close, I am reassessing my gifts to see how they can be used differently. I am balancing what I must do versus what I can do. I am blessed to have been able to see my gifts in action and my vision of what can be become real. I know how lucky that makes me. I am overwhelmed with gratitude. I am anxious to see what is next. So a new adventure begins and I hope that all of you may someday feel as blessed by your life choices as I have been with mine. And it all began just with sticking my toes in the water. Still dreaming of peace, Barbara Dear Friends, I just finished answering an online survey from Consumer Reports magazine about the “things” we own. We’ve subscribed to this magazine for years, using its ratings and reports for buying everything from cameras to dishwasher detergent. However, in all the years we’ve received their survey requests, we’ve always tossed them. This year I decided to answer the survey because of a strange sense of responsibility I felt to the other folks who support the magazine. I found it tedious in many ways but I finished it. I realized that I didn’t know the brand names of many items around my house that I use every day. I also realized that just about everything we own works well, causes us little aggravation, and succeeds at its assigned task. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our human interactions worked in the same way? So then I started thinking about human surveys. They exist for everything, of course, ranging from finding your perfect partner to determining how people feel about the color of their living rooms. However, there are more important questions to ask and more important assessments to make. If our lives were truly evaluated by a survey – if someone really decided to find out how well things work on a human scale, what questions would need to be asked? The posers of great questions have worked on this forever. The following story, however, will take us quickly to where I’m heading: The story is told of Zusha, the great Chassidic Master, who lay crying on his deathbed. His students asked him, "Rebbe, why are you so sad? After all the mitzvahs and good deeds you have done, you will surely get a great reward in heaven!" "I'm afraid!" said Zusha. "Because when I get to heaven, I know God's not going to ask me 'Why weren't you more like Moses?' or 'Why weren't you more like King David?' But I'm afraid that God will ask 'Zusha, why weren't you more like Zusha?' And then what will I say? " That’s really the key question, isn’t it? How do we find out who and what we are and how we can be the best we are capable of being? How do we get a “Best Buy” rating? If there was a real Consumer Reports for people – what would be our criteria for top rankings and what would be required of humankind to be the best at what we were put on earth to achieve? So what are our standards? What makes the perfectly functioning person? How do we achieve maximum benefits from our gifts and talents? How do we become completely us? How do we find the best use of our souls, our physical beings, and ourselves and then set our own evaluations of how we are doing? What is our purpose? What is mine and what is yours? Each of us brings to the table different pieces of the human puzzle and each of us is responsible for helping to find out what the puzzle’s answer may be in the moment. Here are some questions I’d ask – but I know there are others that you could add.
Of course these are my arbitrary questions – nothing about how many bedrooms you have in your house or what kind of car you drive. My questions have to do with our humanity – not a census. I know it’s a cliché to ignore the material for the sake of the spiritual, but the truth is, clichés do have substance. Owning things that work is satisfying… living a life that works is beyond satisfying… it’s incredible. So, add your own questions if you wish, but make sure you answer them, too. You’ll find, if you’re lucky, that answering yes to these questions may make a big difference in how you view your life. If you’re able to say yes, you will feel the gratitude that being alive and present and connected can give you. If you can’t say yes to all of them… maybe you will start wondering why. If you can’t say yes right now, maybe you will be able to do so soon. What matters is that you ask the questions before you feel the regret. We have the power within ourselves to improve the quality of our lives by our attitude, our efforts and our desire. What a shame it would be to waste the opportunity. Still dreaming of peace, Barbara Early May Dear Friends, I’m trying not to mope about my early retirement rushing up at me, but it’s like the pink elephant in the room. Told not to think about it, it’s all you can do… Although our email relationship will not change, I will be changing and you will share, by default, in that process. In many ways, I hope it will be liberating. These letters have always been about my particular approach to the world through Jewish eyes but there has been a slight constraint on my part because I felt the tug of “the children” and my role as teacher in their lives. Although I do have some subscribers to this letter who are teenagers, I believe that if they wish to subscribe then they are willing to dive into the deeper waters of religious and spiritual stretching with us. Now, as I begin this next phase of my life – where there are truly no constraints (other than civility which covers a wide range of sins) – we may have a lot more fun. At least I hope so… With that in mind, I thought I’d get a little testy today. I was cleaning out my desk this week and came across a press release that had gone out, relatively unnoticed, in March of this year. It was sent out from the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York – the first Conservative Rabbinical Seminary in the United States. In it was a call for a change in admissions policy to the Conservative movement’s Camp Ramah programs (which serve more than 6,500 children nationally). Now for most of you, this may come as a shock – but Camp Ramah has only been available to Jewish children with Jewish mothers or two Jewish parents (no patrilineal descent for them, thank you very much). The application form actually asks you to define your lineage. In defense of the many wonderful Conservative Rabbis that I know, especially those on the west coast where I live, many parents were encouraged by their clergy to just leave that section of the application form blank because it was offensive. However, the movement stood behind it. It was official policy. Jewish children of patrilineal descent need not apply. Then came the press release. Dr. Ismar Schorsch, the retiring Chancellor of the seminary, publicly called for the camp program to accept children who are Jewish by patrilineal descent until the age of 13 at which point parents would be encouraged to have their children converted (sic) in order to achieve Bar Mitzvah status. This means that after age 13, children of non-Jewish mothers and Jewish fathers would have to actively become “Jews by choice”, i.e. converted, whether or not they had grown up in a Jewish home, attended Jewish religious schools and identified completely as Jews. Jump through the hoops and you can stay at Camp Ramah. What a message to send to families who are doing everything they can to raise Jewish children! Dr. Schorsch acknowledges that the definition of a Jew is changing whether we want it to or not, but when his press release states that 34% of American –Jewish children who identify as Jews do so through their fathers, its time to say, welcome to America – the melting pot – and get past discriminating against our own. Reconstructionists have been in front of the curve for decades. Mordecai Kaplan was absolutely right when he said we needed a new American Judaism. We just haven’t gone far enough in rethinking what that means. We can’t fall back on old patterns and definitions because as soon as we look at the reality of what is vibrant and exciting in Jewish life today it has very little to do with how we identify “genetically” and far more with what we choose to do as a new kind of religious community. For non-Jews who have never had to struggle with the peoplehood/culture/religion question, all these issues may seem somewhat confusing – but the definition of who is a Jew has been a source of both pride and torment for the peoplehood for thousands of years. When my parents’ generation saw relatives marched off to a death camp because of one Jewish grandparent, what they believed was truly of no importance. That message has a deep imprint but maybe sixty years later in the safety of America, its time to look around and say, who are we now and what do we want to mean when we say we are Jews? I look out at our congregations and see a true rainbow of people from all walks of life – various nationalities – various stages of Jewish observance – Ashkenazim and Sephardim blending traditions – black, white and brown – gay and straight … converted and born Jews… and frankly no one cares where you are in the process. If someone enters the community and says they are Jewish or even just want to worship with us – who checks? So, maybe bloodlines from anywhere should no longer really make the cut as a standard for Jewish belonging and identity. Participation and desire, defined in millions of ways, are what really make the cut for me. Commitment and sincerity and practice and yes, belief, are what make the cut – also in a myriad of shapes and patterns and approaches. It’s time the rest of the Jewish world starts paying attention to that and develops an infrastructure that meets the needs of the new Jews – American Jews – who want their religious institutions to reflect the reality of who they are and not a fantasy of what used to be – because frankly – what used to be wasn’t nearly as good as what it is right now. We need to celebrate that and not lament the lost dark past. America at its best offers a model for Judaism to be its best. It’s worth exploring… Mothers Day is tomorrow… as I said at school last week… if you are blessed with memories of your mother… give thanks… if you still have your mother… say thanks… and if you are a mother… you know all about thanks… Still dreaming of peace, Barbara Dear Friends, We are in the midst of what is called in "Jewish time" the Counting of the Omer. One of the great gifts I have received by being an educator in a Reconstructionist setting is that first, I've had the opportunity to come in contact with a lot of what might be considered obscure Jewish learning and second, I've been not only permitted, but encouraged, to look at it with fresh eyes. I hope you are starting to feel empowered in the same way. The process of counting the Omer, or sheaves of barley, which were harvested around the time of Pesach, dates back to the time of the Temple in Jerusalem. The barley sheaves were waved on the second day of Pesach and then the counting began - seven weeks of seven days - until the wheat harvest was ready - and then the next Pilgrimage festival - Shavuot - was celebrated at the Temple when two loaves of wheat bread were brought to Jerusalem. Harvests were our timekeepers. With the destruction of the Temple the meaning of Shavuot and the interval between the two festivals took on a different and, for me, much more powerful meaning. The Rabbis determined that this was the length of time for the trek through the desert from Egypt until the arrival at Sinai. Shavuot became, in many ways, the most important day in the Jewish calendar. Shavuot was supposed to be the day we receive the Torah. The period between Pesach and Shavuot is now our symbolic march from physical liberation to spiritual revelation. The time is now. The tradition indicates it is a time of moderate mourning, and traditional Jews do not marry or even get haircuts during the period of the Omer. I, however, think it should be a time of celebration and study. No one knows for sure why this mourning period was established. Some people attribute it to the time of the great Rabbi Akiva and a plague that struck his students during the Roman era. Others talk about the destruction of the Temple. However, on the 33rd day of the counting is a "Get Out of Mourning Free Day" called Lag B'Omer, which is often celebrated with picnics and bonfires to break the solemn time. I, of course, think it's time to get past all that and focus on the process. I like to think about getting spiritually ready for the massive changes that Torah would require of the people. I think about the desert and what the Israelites went through in those 49 days. I love the southwest. I love hiking in the desert. I also know how harsh and unforgiving it is and I know that it is truly a place that tests all that you have. We now have the opportunity to focus on the journey between physical liberation and spiritual revelation in a far gentler way. I know that physical liberation is much easier to comprehend and feel then spiritual revelation. We understand slavery, even on our own terms. We know about our own addictions and compulsions. We know that we can be enslaved to things today and we know, with great sadness, that in parts of the world there is still slavery in the horrific traditional sense of the word as well. Spiritual revelation is much harder to grasp or even define. We are unlikely to receive stone tablets on a mountaintop. We will need to find our revelations in subtler ways. This is the time to dive in to our core texts as well as the texts on the texts. So many wonderful thinkers and poets and musicians and artists have opened their hearts and minds to us and shared their spiritual insights. This is a wonderful time of year to explore a spiritual writer you've never read before. The only thing I ask is that you bring your own inner voice to the process and be an active, not a passive reader. Think about questions and arguments you might have with the writer. Be in the moment with your author. write your author. struggle with your author. that's the way to revelation. believe me. If there is a single thing I know for sure it's that spiritual revelation doesn't come when your heart and soul are closed. If text reading isn't your thing, try a religious service that perhaps you haven't attended before. If you always go to an evening service, go to a morning service. If you always chant in Hebrew, try reading only the English side of the prayerbook for an entire service and see what you think. Go to a park and sit where there are beautiful flowers seven times between now and Shavuot (it starts the night of June 1st) and think about what makes you do what's right in the world. If you live near a desert - try and take a hike before June and think about 49 days of soul searching. If none of that is possible, just look within and wonder at the genius of the gift of Torah. at the writers of the text. at the ancestors who had the will to preserve it and know its core truths that somehow still resonate for us today. that still cause us to celebrate a revelation on Mount Sinai all those thousands of years ago. We don't have to believe that Moses went up on a mountaintop and received the literal word of God on Mount Sinai to appreciate the imagery of what the cycle from redemption to revelation affords us. We are now free to do with our souls what we choose. We are preparing for the great offer. We have free will. That is what our redemption has given us. we now symbolically have time to enjoy our complex and amazing freedom as the clock ticks on - because soon a choice must be made. Isn't that always the case? Still dreaming of peace, Barbara Early April Dear Friends, It is Pesach week, the Hebrew name for Passover. This holiday is the most celebrated of the Jewish year, although that always causes raised eyebrows when I tell people that statistic. Folks almost always think it’s the High Holy Days or Channukah because they get the most press… but Pesach wins out because we are empowered by our history and our tradition to celebrate it “our way” without anyone telling us what to do or how to do it. We have an outline but we are encouraged to create new traditions and bring our own stories to the table. We are told to “be there”, to create our own sense of enslavement and to understand what it would take for us to break free. What an empowering holiday this has become. As I was preparing some special readings for this year’s celebration I found myself diving into my growing collection of Haggadot (the plural of Haggadah – the book we use at the Pesach table to tell the story) and took enormous pleasure at how many I have. Each of them was designed with an agenda or viewpoint of some sort. There was a Freedom Haggadah written in Santa Cruz a number of years ago specifically focused on the plight of Soviet Jewry – a memory fortunately now more for the history books than a reality – although attention still must be paid. There is the classic Maxwell House Haggadah that so many folks use for its simplicity. There is the conservative Silverman Haggadah that so many grew up with and struggled to understand (too much Hebrew?). There is the lovely feminist Haggadah called The Ma’yan Passover Haggadah, The Journey Continues, the Reconstructionist Movement’s new Haggadah, A Night of Questions, and Noam Zion’s A Different Night, The Family Participation Haggadah. I grew up with the first Reconstructionist Haggadah called The New Haggadah first published in 1941 and revised in 1942 and 1978 and put together by Mordecai Kaplan his son-in-law Ira Eisenstein, and Eugene Kohn and we still use it today (with additions and corrections penciled in and wine stains and great affection). The publisher, Behrman House, revised it in 1999 and now calls it The New American Haggadah and it’s still pretty good. For the little ones there’s Uncle Eli’s Haggadah that tells the whole story in Seussian rhyme. There are also haggadot on the web and meditations and poems to enrich the experience. So what does this
tell us? It tells us that the experience of Pesach is
really ours to create and form so that what happens at the Seder – what
happens during the eight days of Pesach when we are reliving
our redemption from slavery – is up to us. In the same
way that each Israelite had to make the decision to pack up and go – no
matter how charismatic and compelling Moses and Aaron were before Pharaoh – each
of us has to decide how much this week will mean to us. We are
always given the choice. We can mumble our way through the Pesach
Seder, joking around, drinking too much sweet wine and asking
when we eat – or we can try and pay attention to the story and
put ourselves into the moment – each in our own individual way. But we are not yet truly free. The key to the Pesach experience for me is that we repeat it and repeat it because we are never totally free of enslavements and that is a vital part of the Pesach story that is alive in the subtext of repetition. The Torah doesn’t end with the redemption of the Israelite slaves. The wilderness waits. The testing of the people waits. The testing of Moses and Aaron waits. But for a brief moment – we are brave and strong and take a gigantic leap of faith. We say no more to Pharaoh or to whatever it is that is binding us up and making us less than we can be. We find within the pages of our Haggadah, or in a special reading or prayer or poem the inspiration to be stronger. We look around our Pesach table at family and friends and say, maybe this year I can walk away from x or y or z that is holding me down, holding me back, making me feel less than what I can be. Pesach is a moment of enormous strength and celebration. There is nothing to match it in our story. Its symbolism winds through our liturgy. Its characters fill our children’s stories, from cruel Pharaoh to tiny Moses in the bulrushes to frogs raining down from the sky. Midrash abound to fill in all the blanks, and there are many. This is the story that we have told again and again. However, telling the story and owning the story are two very different things. So this Pesach – try and own the experience a little bit. Slow down – even though the first night falls midweek and everyone will be thinking about work. Think about your own enslavements (work?) and what it would take for you to feel liberated this year. What would take that burden off your shoulders? What would let you walk with a lighter step? What brave action would it require of you? Don’t lose sight of who you really are and what you are supposed to be doing… Redemption requires you to enter the process – it doesn’t happen if you’re not there… Chag Sameach – A joyous festival for you and yours… Still dreaming of
peace…. Dear Friends, I do a regular workshop for teachers and college students called “Teaching the Inexplicable”, which has to do with God talk in the classroom. One of the exercises I use for a warm up is a challenging list of over 100 English names for God compiled by the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York – the first major seminary for the Conservative movement in America. They put the list together from the Tanakh, from prayerbooks and other texts and then used it as a survey to see what names made people feel both positive and negative about their personal images of the God idea. The names are mostly familiar to folks who read religious texts – My Rock and my Redeemer, The Holy One, Lord of the Universe, Maker of Peace, and so on. But there were some real stretches on the list as well, which is where our lack of knowledge of Hebrew sometimes protects us from the language of our ancient prayers. For example I found on the list The Fear of Isaac, Lord, Man of War and Reviver of the Dead… none of which work in my prayerful moments. Naming is a very powerful part of this God thing… and how we label this Power that Makes for Salvation, this Other, is one of our great stumbling blocks in contemporary prayer. We take it so seriously because naming is a profound human need – and humanizing God is something we really need to transcend in order to comfortably pray as adults. This doesn’t mean give up naming – it means changing our attitude about it. So in the April issue of the great magazine Spirituality and Health, I was thrilled to see an article by a Christian theologian named Sam Keen entitled “Sam Keen’s Ludicrous God Talk.” Keen’s premise is that the more we dive into finding a way to talk about the ineffable the more impossible it becomes. The more spiritual experiences we have the more we realize that the moments are without definition… they are unique to the moment. Keen says, “What sense can it make to think of approaching the Source that is inseparable from my being? … This is the open secret: the Emperor of the Cosmos is everywhere present but nowhere to be found. Nevertheless, we are impelled to juggle a thousand names for the nameless One.” So Keen proposes that we come up with what he calls Ludicrous Naming. It is not at all irreligious but a playful drawing of new metaphors for God that takes us to creative imagery that might be helpful in our prayerful search. Here are some of his intriguing suggestions: The Quantum Leaper; The Web Master; The Source from Whom all Longing Flows; The Eternal Not Yet; The Verb that Activates all Other Verbs; The Beyond Within; and one of my transcendent favorites – The Great Whomever or Whatever that is With-in-Without-Besides-Before-After-and-During. Now in this article Keen humorously suggested that people copy his list, add three new names and make a chain letter for folks to add their own additions to his ludicrous names. If you want to play, feel free to pick up a copy of the magazine and join his effort. It’s a great article. However, my point focuses in on something else. He premises that each name we choose or create also can place us on a spiritual path, and vice versa. For example, if our comfortable God image/name is the Eternal Not Yet then we must also be eternally becoming. That process, of course, is the goal for all of us as we strive for holiness. If we internalize that and bring that into our soul search, how much easier the partnership with God becomes. The opposite experience also works. We have our powerful spiritual “aha” moments when we know God is present… and they are unique and vibrant and that is when Keen says we should create a metaphoric name for God… to recall for all time the “aha”… So God’s name could be The Source of Earth’s Grandeur or The Gift of Life or The Guide of Saving Hands… (Can’t you see the moments?) Because God is omnipresent there are no limits to the number of God names you can have. Our prayerbooks are obviously full of them (remember. the seminary came up with over 100). If God is within me, as I believe to be true, if my actions reflect my efforts to act in a godly way… then the opportunity for metaphor is endless. If I can put aside my need for labels and think in a more universal sense of the role of God in my life and my world, the exercise becomes one of total awareness. It also can be one that is fun, as well. Joy and laughter are as godly as quiet meditation and prayer. So, play with this a little bit. If you’ve had trouble with the God image – try and think about what else you might call the God idea. Create a metaphor for the Cosmic Force that Lives Within… Design a name for The Power that Brought You to Understanding. Say a blessing invoking the Soaring Spirit of Peace… Just understand that there is something greater than us operating in this world… and it is within us and without and I stand in awe…and I hope you do too (at least sometimes). Still dreaming of peace, Barbara Early March Dear Friends, I lost most of my sense of taste and smell about five years ago when I had radiation treatment. So much else was going on at the time that I never gave it much thought, really. We’ve made lots of jokes about it… I no longer mind being downwind of the dog, for example… There have been problems as well – because food has little taste, I lost a lot of weight during treatment until I learned to eat for nourishment rather than pleasure – and my cooking which was always a pinch of this and a pinch of that until it tasted and smelled right, went into the skills to be relearned department. In reality, of the five senses, the others being sight, hearing and touch – losing taste and smell seem the two to give up. However, the previously mentioned dog, and a skunk, got me thinking about my two missing senses in a new way… and so you get to share… A few weeks ago, our brilliant in many ways and really stupid in others dog, and a neighborhood skunk had a close encounter of the aromatic kind. We live up against a big open space park so this is not unusual. What was unusual was I was completely oblivious to the smell and let the dog in, causing both the house and my clothes to suffer until Michael (my husband) stepped in to tell me fairly urgently that the smell was everywhere. Then I started thinking about the other real world ramifications of losing a sense as critical as smell. I can’t tell if there’s a gas leak. That’s a big one and I’ve decided that’s something that probably needs addressing. I also get strange moments when I can smell. Moments when I’m reminded, just for a second, what it was like to take in the scent of flowers, or candles, or the forest. So I’ve been thinking about our five senses a lot and wondering about each of their values and how strange it is that I’m lamenting now, all these years later, the loss of taste and smell. I think it is because, as silly as it was, the skunk encounter was a wake up call to remind me that I need to be more in touch with my whole self – as do we all. As a child I remember both my mother and my grandmother tasting food and saying that it just needed a little more “something”… We all have that image of folks around the stove, tasting and adding. What a wonderful picture that evokes. We also often know what certain things are supposed to taste like and that brings us an entire set of different memories. There’s the New York pizza and the Philadelphia cheese steak and the Chesapeake Bay crab cakes that you can only eat in their original hometowns, no matter how many people claim otherwise. Taste memories tell us stories about ourselves. Some can never be repeated, even if you still have taste buds that work, but they are part of your history and you should cherish them. Our son Sam swears the best hot dog he ever had was in Ireland on a great family trip and he spent several years trying to recreate it at home and never could. Every time we talk about it though, the image of his joy eating it that day is brought to the forefront of my memory bank. Taste memories are powerful. Aroma memories are even more evocative. The smell of a pine forest or a flowering meadow is so powerful they now call it aromatherapy. I’m obviously not a candidate. Think about what smells can move you. Baking cookies (it’s the vanilla, folks) always does it for some people. Roasting turkey or any Thanksgiving smells as you walk in the door can melt even the hardest heart. A freshly bathed and powdered baby has a smell that can get almost anyone who has ever been a parent, and even some who haven’t. The spices from Havdalah services at the close of Shabbat work for some and the aroma of chicken soup does it for others. These are the aromas that make you close your eyes and carry you away. These are the aromas that I miss but still remember on a primal level somewhere. I’m not writing this to share my disabilities with you, however, but to trigger your own sense memory. I want to try and get you to walk a minute or two in my shoes. I want to try and get you to cherish these gifts we all have and realize that our senses are all feeding our memory banks. They are helping us build an array of personal stories to define us. They are helping us build our family history and our unique individual history. Our other three senses do that too. Think about touch.
As much as I hate to admit it, my mother long ago had a sealskin coat
that was the softest thing I ever felt. Family visits by car would
find my father and grandfather sitting in front and my mother, grandmother,
sister and me in the back. My grandmother would be in her mink coat
and my mother in her seal coat and my sister and I would each try to
fall asleep on my mother’s lap rather than my grandmother’s
because the sealskin was so much softer than the mink. (Oy, I am embarrassed… but
it was a different time…) I can still feel that coat against
my cheek and then I can build the feel of the entire car ride again… riding
across the George Washington Bridge watching the lights go by feeling
so safe and secure. Think about sight. People say sight is the one sense they cherish most. I have so many sight memories… a lake at dawn when all is stillness. 100,000 peace activists marching on Washington, D.C. to end the war in Viet Nam with tanks and national guardsmen standing guard “against” the activists… Mont Blanc in Switzerland with my family… both my sons at every stage of their lives… my husband laughing… La Jolla Cove in the winter… the Central Coast of California anytime… Sedona… Canyon de Chelly… yup… sight would be very hard to give up… each one of these images bring emotional content into my heart… So that’s my challenge for you… take your senses one by one and think about their stories. Think about their gifts to you… Think about how much they are part of who you are and how you understand yourself. It’s been a fascinating time for me since the skunk and I hope you’ll learn a little bit more about how amazing this physical and emotional universe is that we inhabit… And say thanks for the gifts we have… this amazing machine called our body is so connected to our spirit… we do need to honor it… Still dreaming of peace, Barbara Dear Friends, My major physical problems, a benign but inoperable brain tumor, epilepsy, and lots of medications, which are probably the biggest difficulty I face, are hidden disabilities. There’s a tremendous advantage and disadvantage to living with these kinds of limitations. Unless I’m feeling wobbly, I don’t use a cane and except for six months or so after radiation therapy when I lost my hair, there has been no overt physical manifestation of my illness. If you look at me, I look perfectly well. This is a tremendous advantage out in the world when you want to “pass” and not get sympathetic looks or other kinds of looks as well. So I think my decision to retire has been a surprise for a lot of people and so I “outed” myself medically in our congregational newsletter and I do the same here. This is not a bid for sympathy (I’ve had more than enough of that) but merely a way to explain that I need to put my own priorities in order. I need to take a deep breath and make some very hard choices. No matter how much I love the creative part of what I do at work – no matter how much I love watching “my kids” (as opposed to my real kids – Josh and Sam) growing up and becoming incredible young adults – my body and my spirit are paying too high a price. I still do my work well so it is very hard to say I can’t do it anymore, but that’s my physical reality. I love it and have been blessed with much success in terms of appreciation and even awards. My religious community has become a family that will still be mine but will need to redefine their relationship with me, as I will need to redefine my relationship with it. I will need to find out what matters to me – what I need to keep me going – and selectively re-enter those arenas and leave others behind. I will need to redefine myself. So, with that in mind, and with just a few months left of this phase of my life, I have begun to wear two hats. I’m still the Education Director but I am also The Planner for the next chapter. I haven’t figured out what to call that chapter yet. It may be the Writer Chapter. It may be the Mellow Chapter. I know that there will be the Time Off interlude when I will do some healing and embrace silence and alone time – while I get a clearer vision of what is next. So I face many tough questions in the months ahead that need to be addressed. How do you say goodbye to something that you have helped to create? How do you decide what will be valuable and needs to be preserved and what is garbage even though you have saved it for fifteen years? What is the worth of your intellectual property to someone other than yourself? How do you pass on spirit? How do you package inspiration? How do you guarantee that something will last? How do you allow yourself to let it go? How do you hit the off button and walk away? Then how do you find the next open door? Or, hopefully, how do you pick out of many open doors? How do you keep doing work that is holy and meaningful and driven towards the good when you don’t have to keep your palm pilot up to date? What new rhythm do you need to find in your life when this kind of change occurs? How do you determine how much you can do with a body that one day says “yes” and one day says “no”? How do you make whole a life that has a disconnect between body and spirit? These are some of the many questions The Planner (that’s me, in case you forgot) will be struggling with in the months ahead. We spent the President’s
Day weekend in Sedona and I bought a small carved stone Zuni bear fetish
that fits in my hand as if it were made for me. Mr. Bear (I don’t
know why he’s a guy, but I knew he was from the minute I looked
at him) and I are spending a lot of time together. The bear fetish
is very powerful for the Zuni. He represents the West – giving
help through transitions and major life changes – even when you
need to hibernate for a while until you find the right choice for your
change. My bear even has a light side and a dark side – which
is of course an image of great spiritual power. Choices need
a dark side and a light side too, or else there is no choice, and ultimately
you find that out. So we will transition
together… It should be an interesting time… Barbara Early February Dear Friends, It’s Valentine’s Day – another one of those great pagan holidays that the Roman Catholic Church took hold of that we have managed to secularize and turn into a great day for Hallmark. What an amazing thing ritual is. We want it so desperately and then when we confront it we need to demystify it and reduce it to a common denominator so that it is accessible to everyone. This struck me Sunday night as I was teaching and I’ve been on a mental wondering about it ever since. Sunday night I had the incredible joy of doing a teaching about Judaism to an interfaith group of Episcopalian, Muslim and Jewish parents and supporters while their teenagers were studying together in another room. I was talking about Jewish liturgy and I mentioned what is called the Grand Aleynu in the Jewish High Holy Day ritual. This is the moment when the service leader(s) prostrate themselves before the ark, rather than just bowing, during the chanting of the Aleynu prayer. I have always found the moment incredibly moving and humbling – I often find tears in my eyes (not an unusual thing, for those who know me) – but I know it is because the moment is unique to the Holy Day ritual. If it happened every day I probably wouldn’t find it nearly as powerful. When I talk about it to some of my Jewish colleagues, they look at me as though I’m nuts. This is a replication of the ancient behavior of the High Priest in the Temple – how can I, Ms. Cutting Edge Jew, find this one of my most moving religious moments. My response is simple – for me the service leader is not the High Priest – but a symbol of all humankind, acknowledging that there is something greater than us in the world and before it we are in awe. That works for me. I can expand the text and I do. I do it all the time. I couldn’t go through life constrained by someone else’s definitions of what the rituals mean if they don’t work for me – but I can find meaning in the old rituals and see their power and feel their power because the definitions are merely words humans like me tried to use to define that same power. I need ritual in my life. We all do. Look at Valentine’s Day. Where we get stuck is when we don’t empower ourselves to make the rituals emotionally and spiritually and religiously laden. We do ourselves a disservice when we don’t acknowledge the importance of these things in our lives and the lives of those around us. Valentine’s Day is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. During our childhood we buy stupid little Valentine’s cards for our classmates. If we have a crush on someone we hope to get a special Valentine, and get hearts broken when we don’t. Girls (at least back when I was in school) get more into this than boys. As puberty strikes, the rituals become more serious. We have flowers and candy starting to appear as ritual objects to be exchanged. Cards become more expensive, although e-cards, thank goodness, are helping the financial burden. Then as we hit college, the fancy dinner out and the champagne and other gifts start becoming ritual purchases and roses – a dozen red roses – are the sancta – the sacred objects of this holiday. What is this about? Is this love? What does “Be my valentine” really mean? Why do we have a day to express romantic love? Why do men feel set up by this day and women feel a sense of entitlement? Why are so many people disappointed? This day with its rituals that affirm couplehood and the traditional “purchasing” of love tokens is laden with meaning on a pagan level – and yet…so often it is a disappointment. I think that what Valentine’s Day lacks, as a ritual, is meaningful content. Substance beneath the surface – beyond the “I love you” has been lost in the ancient past and probably wouldn’t stand up to contemporary scrutiny. I think any ritual experience needs to be assessed in the same way. If you want to have the moment matter to you, than you need to find what matters in the moment. (Oh, I like that line…) For me, that means paying attention and keeping my nerve endings alert. For me that always means study – questioning – self-exploration. Valentine’s Day fails in this regard because it is ritual without substance. We set our children up from their earliest days with a “love expectation” that is harmful to them and we continue to build on it through advertising in every medium. Nowhere is there an explanation that love doesn’t happen easily – that not everyone has a Valentine – that giving a Valentine to your mother is a little kinky – well, you understand what I mean. As an aside, I also wish there was a way to celebrate love without having to buy a Valentine’s Day card for my dog. I love my dog and the cards are really funny – and I actually didn’t buy one – but what is that about? What does that say about the card I did buy my husband? O.K. I’ve just heard a collective sigh telling me to lighten up – but here are some suggestions for next Valentine’s Day… Or if you read this before you go to sleep tonight – maybe try it today…
So what does this all have to do with the Grand Aleynu? Nothing, other than the strange leaps of thought in my head, but hang in there with me. Valentine’s Day happens once a year and so it hits with a big pow. It has a lot of impact on us. It is an event that has lost its original meaning, but unlike the Grand Aleynu, it has no weight or content or ritual meaning. The Grand Aleynu, on the other hand, has so much meaning that each of us can find a place to stand (or prostrate ourselves) within its power. Valentine’s Day has now been so spelled out for us by the commercial promoters of the day that we feel trapped in buying mode. It needs more room. So, lovers of the world, it’s time to rebel. There’s nothing wrong with having a day to celebrate your partners or your hoped for partners or just love in general. However, we need to do it with content, meaning and some sort of style. So, go for it. Find a better way to bring meaning to this day. Reject the roses and champagne or say a blessing before you lift your champagne flute and remember, make it matter. Still dreaming of peace, Barbara Dear Friends, I want to write today about a wonderful religious experience I’ve been having these last few months by participating in a weekday minyan (morning prayer service with a minimum of ten participants). As most of you know, I am a non-traditionalist when it comes to Jewish practice. I like to stretch the envelope but I am a firm believer in being aware of what makes up the envelope I’m stretching. Since I began teaching I have advocated the classic Reconstructionist position of tradition having a vote not a veto in our religious practice. In order for it to have a vote, however, it has to be heard. By that I mean that you can’t reject a tradition without knowing what it is, why it is, and then why you are deciding not to do it. The weekday minyan came about as a mitzvah (this time from the Yiddish, meaning good deed, not from the Hebrew when it means commandment – what can I tell you?) – so it wasn’t from a need for more communal observance but from a need to help. Someone in our congregation wanted an opportunity to say the Mourner’s Kaddish for a parent on a regular basis during the week. To say Kaddish in our tradition you need a minyan (ten Jews) and so we were asked if our community would try to pull together a weekday service. This is relatively unheard of in the more progressive branches of Judaism but very common in the traditional. To be frank, I didn’t think we’d do it. The service had to be very early, before folks went off to work. The service was not something our community had ever done before. We don’t have a large membership, so getting ten of us together on a regular basis seemed an impossible stretch. However, for a number of months now, on Wednesday mornings at 7:45, at least ten of us (sometimes more) come together for worship and it has been an amazing and soul nurturing discipline. The service isn’t long. It’s full of singing and intimate worship moments. We sit in a circle and our souls entwine in a way that the larger Shabbat service doesn’t necessarily permit. Maybe it’s because we’re all there with great intention. We have chosen to get up earlier than usual. We have chosen to do something very few of us have done before. We pray the weekday service with its slightly different melodies. We pray the weekday Amidah that has additional blessings and allows us to ask God to help us, which we cannot do on Shabbat… We are learning new ways of being a praying or davening community. We are learning new ways to speak to God… We are also taking a piece of traditional Judaism, the daily minyan, and making it our own. This is one of the great goals of progressive Jewish practice… Knowing that you cannot throw the baby out with the bath water. I don’t expect all of us to begin attending or creating daily worship services but I do want us to think about the pieces of traditional Judaism that have merit and have lasted generation after generation and have fed our souls for so long. To reject them because the more orthodox among us have kept the old patterns and declare them “theirs” is to reject some practices of great merit. When I worship with the Wednesday morning minyan I begin wrapped in my tallit as if I were still cuddled in my comforter in bed. I slowly wake to the morning…grateful to be alive and alert to the world, to the morning, to the light of day...I look around the circle as we sing the morning blessings and I realize that each of my friends in the circle bring different memories of gratitude and grace to their awakenings and they add power to the moment. As the service continues the warmth of the minyan grows in spiritual energy. We say blessings for healing and of course, the Mourner’s Kaddish, the prayer that celebrates life as we remember those we have loved and lost. By the time we sing the closing song for peace we are all totally in the moment, so glad we have come together, not regretting the early rising, but certain that the choice to set the alarm an hour earlier was well worth it. Religious discipline is something that every path to God requires. It can be personal or communal. To open a dialogue with your “Other” requires a focus, and each of us needs to find the discipline that allows that to happen. For me, there are a variety of triggers to that discipline depending on the place I’m standing at the moment. In order to hear the “still small voice”, in order to silence the chaos so that I can hear the whispers that soothe my soul, I need to let go of the noise that is daily life. Sometimes I find it in meditation; sometimes I find it in the desert or in a moment with my students or at a Shabbat service. Lately the voice has been speaking to me at the Wednesday morning minyan and it’s been a wonderful and unexpected gift – which is always the best kind. You may want to try it – or some other form of regular discipline that you have never explored before. You might be surprised at what it has to offer. Still dreaming of
peace, Early January Dear Friends, This coming weekend we are celebrating the birthday of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Junior. I was lucky enough to be coming of age at the time in our nation when the giants of the Civil Rights movement were holding a mirror up to the reality of American democracy and people were beginning to see some awful truths. The emperor, American democracy, had no clothes. Black people could not vote, could not use public transportation in the south, could not buy housing, or rent housing, or stay in hotels, or drink from water fountains, or eat in white restaurants… they were not equal – they were not free yet. White America had in large part turned its back on what was going on but Dr. King and other activists were getting ready. They were drawing courage from the actions of Mahatma Gandhi in India, who showed that non-violence, civil disobedience and having no doubt in your heart that your cause was just could change the world. It seemed that as I grew up the whole country was vibrating with energy and debate on Civil Rights. It began with the earth shaking 1954 Supreme Court Decision in Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas that ruled very simply that “separate but equal” education was not equal; America was in an amazing uproar of social change. It was a very thrilling time from my perspective as a left-wing young person growing up in the northeast. Movements (Civil rights, anti-war, women’s) came in one wave after another from the time I became aware of the world outside my door until the 80’s when sociologists tell us consumerism overwhelmed the activists… I’d like to think I wasn’t one of those overwhelmed, but it has been a long time since I’ve been tear-gassed. King was the standard bearer, however. He was the conscience of the Civil Rights movement. He was our teacher. He taught us the skills of non-violence. He gave us the ability to find our power. He taught us that the few could overcome the many when the cause is just. So all it took was the willingness to put our lives on the line and be pure of heart. That was the amazing part of those years… there were so many true believers. There were times when he was depressed and unfortunately, times when he was overshadowed by some who felt non-violence was too slow… but he never gave up and we owe him so much. King was also a clergyman. He was a prayerful man. He drew clergy from all over America to march with him, to go to jail with him, and to pray for him. The anti-war movement also was filled with prayerful lay people, and civil disobedience was often accompanied with prayers and hymns and a sense of religious purpose that helped those who were afraid to stand up to the fire hoses and the dogs and the jail cells. There were Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, and every other kind of believer standing with Dr. King and the Civil Rights activists in the 60’s. Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the most brilliant of Jewish thinkers in the twentieth century, was often seen on the front line marching arm and arm with Dr. King. Priests and nuns were hauled off to jail. I have teachers who proudly tell their jail stories. As we look back now it’s hard to believe America let this kind of legal racism happen. This is truly a “never again” story right here in our back yard. This weekend I’m
facilitating a workshop at my synagogue about the 1963 Children’s
March in Birmingham, Alabama. The material that I’m working with
came to me from the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that
makes available material about racism, bigotry and America’s
civil rights history to schools across America at no cost. It is an
incredible story about how the children of Birmingham were inspired
by Dr. King’s preaching on non-violence. He wanted to “fill
the jails of Birmingham” as part of a non-violent protest to
integrate the city. The children marched together to do just that when
the adults of Birmingham did not answer the call. Over the course of
a week there were over five thousand arrests of the children of Birmingham.
Children as young as four years old were arrested, processed and placed
in jail cells. Dogs were turned on them, fire hoses were turned on
them, and still they came… day after day… because they
wanted their freedom. They won their fight although the ugly war continued
until the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed and then the battle lines
moved primarily into courtrooms and consciences. How can we realize Dr. King’s dream of people being judged by, if I may paraphrase, the content of their character? How can we stop the blaming? How can we realize that individuals may be bad, but they are not the representatives of an entire people, race, religion, group, or whatever you want to identify? How can we accept responsibility for our own actions, understand the responsibilities we have towards each other, and realize that as Dr. King said, Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it. I often think back on those days and the people who I most admired during that time. The ones who stand out are the ones who were not angry and edgy but at peace. They were the practitioners of non-violence. They were the ones who would not lower themselves to hate their oppressors. They were the ones who were the mirror holders and simply said, “Look at what you’re doing. Look at what you’ve become. This is not America.” Finally, America looked back and dug its conscience out of whatever closet it was buried in and said, “You’re right.” Thank God for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We needed him. Still dreaming of peace, Barbara Dear Friends, How’s the Torah study going? Aha, you thought I forgot, didn’t you? We are in the portion of Genesis that has such power for the story of the Jewish people that it has a subtitle of its own… it’s called "the Joseph Narrative" because it explains how we ended up in slavery in Egypt. It’s contrived, in some ways, but it is the transition story that takes us from the up close and personal soap opera that is Genesis into the more heroic stories of Moses, Miriam and Aaron that are in Exodus. Those three siblings fight, but their rivalries are nothing compared to this week’s portion in VaYeshev where Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery rather than have him continue being Jacob’s favorite son. Now, all of us lucky enough to have brothers and sisters have probably wanted, at some time or other, to live a life without them. However, most of us got over those instincts at around five or six. Joseph’s brothers were older and theoretically wiser but Joseph, at this stage of the narrative, is a real pain in the neck. He knows he’s Jacob’s favorite and he has proof – the famous coat of many colors. He’s all of seventeen years old at the time and is having dreams about how special he is and with all the hubris of youth tells these dreams to his older brothers. We can’t really forgive them for what they do, but we can sure understand why Joseph was so annoying. Now there is a redemptive moment for one brother. The brothers first wanted to kill him but brother Reuben, intending to save him later, says to just throw him in a pit without water (which they do). Then when they are all sitting around having lunch, a group of Midianite (Ishmaelites – descended from Ishmael) traders came by and the Torah says they sold him for twenty pieces of silver and he was taken to Egypt. The brothers then take the coat of many colors dipped in animal blood, back to their father Israel (Jacob), and he is heartbroken. Then we are told that when the traders reach Egypt Joseph is sold to Potiphar, the chief steward of Pharaoh. Now, I want to tempt you with the rest of the portion… coming up is the attempted seduction of Joseph by Potiphar’s wife, the successful seduction of Judah by what he believes is a harlot but turns out to be his daughter-in-law and he gets her pregnant, Joseph gets thrown in prison, becomes a dream interpreter… well it’s a great portion… And there is now a Hebrew in Egypt… with more to come… What I love about the Joseph narratives is that in him we see a real coming of age. We spend some time with Joseph in a way that we don’t with any other character. Abraham and Moses are great men from the very beginning. Isaac, unfortunately, is never presented to us as a real figure. He is a victim and when we think of him we always put our own emotions on his character. He is without voice or defender. We are always drawn to his trauma on Mount Moriah. They are inextricably linked in all that happens to him. He is always “the Akedah”, the Sacrifice of Isaac. That is his fame. Jacob/Israel has his transformation occur in his wrestling with the angel/God/stranger that appears to him in the wilderness. It is instantaneous. When he is renamed, he is changed forever. Joseph’s transition from the selfish teenager who alienates his brothers to the wondrous man who ultimately saves all of Egypt from famine and forgives his brothers for their hatred and becomes the most beloved man in Egypt is a process we are allowed to share. We get to watch him mature. We watch him work. We watch him have “experiences” with different kinds of people. There is no other person in all of Torah who is filled out for us that way. Why Joseph? Joseph is not a Patriarch. The founders end with Jacob. The twelve tribes are Israel’s (Jacob’s) sons. We are who we are at that point. The founding of the people, Israel, is completed. The Joseph narratives begin the development of what we are as humans acting in the world, not who we are. This portion is really the beginning of our moral lessons in the Torah. Certainly there are great things that preceded this moment. Certainly there are wonderful God encounters that are incredibly significant for us to ponder and internalize. This Joseph narrative, however, is about how people need to behave. This begins the teachings. Joseph is the complete man. He learns. He gets the job done. He actively forgives. He reaches out to his family despite the horrible things they did to him. What a fascinating and unique story Joseph’s life offers us. We may not know why or how the writers of Torah decided to send Joseph to Egypt in this way. We may not know if they decided to give us a rich and full character’s “coming of age” story to challenge us or engage us. However they did give us a person to relate to in a way that is singular in Torah. I know this Joseph. I feel connected to Joseph in a way that I don’t with many of our other “relatives” in our texts. It makes me think of the following, which I will leave you with for the New Year. Lawrence Kushner wrote, in one of my favorite books Invisible Lines of Connection:
When we all accept that concept – the world will be truly what we wish it to be. Still dreaming of peace, Barbara Early December Dear Friends, When I was growing up the biggest difference in students in religious school was whether their families were from Eastern Europe or from Germany but we were all European. We didn’t even have any Sephardim (Mediterranean Jews) in our synagogue we were all Ashkenazi. We all had two Jewish parents and they had two Jewish parents, and it went back as far as anyone could remember. Bloodlines were everything. That’s no longer the case. My generation (the wild and crazy sixties) really tossed our bloodlines up for grabs. We intermarried at a rate never seen before and it is growing faster and faster. Acculturation to peoplehood, which implies a blood tie or at least some common physical memories, that great web of connection that Jews feel for one another, may therefore be threatened. Jewish communities all over America are scratching their heads, designing programs and tearing out their hair as they struggle over how to rebuild the web we once took for granted. What is that feeling? How do we recreate it? How do we instill a sense of Grandma’s latkes if Grandma is a Rastafarian? Or a Buddhist? Or an Episcopalian? We are learning just now to blend the Ashkenazi latkes (Eastern European potato pancakes) with Sephardic sufganiyot (Israeli deep fried sweet doughnut holes) when we celebrate Channukah on the West Coast. How long will it take us to figure out all the rest of our pieces? How can we do it? My perspective is to stop worrying about it because we can’t do it. We can’t pretend that we are recreating what we had. My grandparents came from Russia and spoke with delightful accents and talked about how important America was to them and that can never be replaced. It was unique. I received a gift from them that I can pass on – but much as with the game of telephone when words are garbled as they are passed from child to child – the message from my grandparents will change as it is passed on to my sons and to the generation after them. My sons will tell a different story and have a different relationship with Judaism and the world. They grew up in a totally different environment than I did. They have a Christian father and half their family is Christian. They have no sense of “them” as I did. I lived in a totally Jewish world as a child. My sons are Jews but they will never be without an understanding and respect for Christianity that was built in to their growing up. I had to learn that as an adult. So what will Judaism do with all these “cosmopolitan” children? How will we draw them to Jewish life and Jewish practice? The best answer I have is to make what we give them meaningful both intellectually and spiritually. Over the years I have been absolutely blown away by the depth of student yearning for something beyond the routine in their religious studies. They need a safe space. They need a place where the shouting stops and they can hear “the still small voice”. They need a place where the language of religion is lived out. They need a religious home. Most importantly they need to see others walking the walk so that they know it’s real. They need a sense that there is a path, a way to go that will give them comfort and support when they need it. We all need that. One of the biggest issues we face is realizing that we (and therefore our children) are having a totally different experience with organized religion today compared to when we were growing up. We still look backward, however, rather than forward. Today there is a completely different religious environment than thirty or forty years ago. Then the mainstream churches and synagogues were strong and membership was not an issue. People belonged. Clergy were the leading voices in Civil Rights and Women’s Rights and the Anti-War movement. When today we hear clergy on the radio we hear right wing ideologues spouting messages of hate or bigotry while mainstream churches and synagogues struggle for members and their clergy are rarely interviewed because they aren’t “good press”. It’s no wonder some are skeptical about organized religion. Our job is to join together to create that new kind of space. We all need it. We all want it. We need to set aside the visions of the past. They no longer work. We need to get clear about what we really need to nurture us and help us grow internally so we can fight the growing voices of discrimination that seem to think they are called to lead others to a hateful and sometimes violent place. We need to strengthen our understanding of contemporary Judaism so that it doesn’t get garbled on the “telephone line” but is a clear message for us all. We need to be strong and clear about who we are and why we are. We need to talk with our families honestly about the struggle and the transitions we are all making. We need to join… to be counted… to try to make a difference… to empower ourselves because then we can help others… Still dreaming of peace, Barbara Dear Friends, This year the teenagers at our synagogue are engaged in a program that would have been unthinkable when I was growing up. It would still be unthinkable today in many religious communities. However, because of some very brave and creative leadership in the Christian (Episcopal), Muslim and Jewish (Reconstructionist) communities, teens from these three faiths have just started an interfaith learning program that may be the beginning of something critically important to where we all need to go as faith communities. Our three teen groups just completed a study session during Ramadan at our local Mosque led by their Imam or spiritual leader. In addition, they observed the Islamic prayer service and broke the fast with the Muslim community with joy and warmth. Next month we will go to a local Episcopal church together to study with their Priest and share in evening worship and a meal and in January the teens will join us for Havdalah, study with our Rabbi, and of course share food. Parents are also invited but study separately at each location so each group can speak freely, but they are as anxious to participate as the teens have been. This truly has been a breakthrough experience for all of us. The thing that has struck me, both during the planning and then during the first session, is how important the adults know this concept is. We are so committed to breaking down the walls between us – to making sure that our young people have access to information about each other – that the energy driving these events is amazing. After the prayer service at the Mosque, a number of Muslim women came up to us and thanked us for being there. They thanked us for coming to learn about Islam and bringing our teenagers to the Mosque. One woman said to me, “Our children will fix things if we let them.” What a wonderful thought that was. In the teens’ discussion I learned afterwards that one of the Muslim teens was actually brave enough to say to the Christians and Jews, “we are not all terrorists”… knowing that that slur against Muslims sits somewhere deep in the non-Muslim American psyche. We learned so much that day. The most important thing, though, was simply that a conversation began. I ache over the enormous divide between faiths that seems to be growing greater in this country every day. It is growing not only between Christians, Muslims and Jews but also within each of our own “umbrella faiths”. When we began planning these programs we were very aware that what we were doing could only happen with “certain” churches and synagogues and mosques. We knew that some would look at what we were doing as inappropriate. There was something almost embarrassingly refreshing in finding out that we were all in the same boat… considered on the liberal edge of each of our worlds and it was a risk we were all taking together. The risk was not in the hosting but in the visiting. It’s always fine to bring someone in to your religious world but to go into his or hers is always considered dangerous. Our teens might find it too interesting, too compelling and heaven forbid, too much fun. We knew that we were setting ourselves up for criticism, but the program was voluntary and we had to take the risk. Our goal is a simple one. We don’t know enough about each other to stop the stereotyping and bigotry that so easily develops in each of our separate worlds. When you know that all Christians aren’t like the fundamentalists you see spewing forth strange comments about Jews on the television because you actually have talked to an Episcopal priest and Christian teens who don’t believe any of that stuff, you can ignore it or treat it with the contempt it deserves. When you hear someone saying something about the Muslim religion and you know it isn’t true because you have talked with Islamic teens about the Koran and you know what it’s about, you feel empowered to tell that person they don’t know what they’re talking about. When you actually have been to a mosque and a church and a synagogue as a teenager your worldview changes. When you have had open conversations with a priest, an imam and a rabbi (that sounds like the start of a joke – but it isn’t) you feel that any questions you may have can be answered. When we say to our teenagers – this is an opportunity to do something unique and special – and they respond – we have to hope that the woman who spoke to me at the mosque was right… Our children can fix it… We can only start it… We have a responsibility to open the doors… We have a responsibility to tell them that they are the first generation to be raised with a world that is at least struggling openly with issues that are culturally important but we haven’t quite mastered them yet… Our generation still has too much baggage… but they are our hope… they have their eyes open… They know it’s
ridiculous to hate someone because of what they believe… though
some people do… I am pinning my hopes on the fact that besides the teenagers I know there are other teens out there who are also growing up with the same sense of pushing the envelope… of asking good questions… that have families and religious communities that are saying “Let’s open the doors and windows wide and start talking…” We need to talk. We need to gather strength from each other. We need to realize that there are many things we have in common including our roots in Abraham. We have many shared values that can combine to help heal America… help clear away some of the ugliness that has entered the national discourse… help people speak in more civil tones to each other… Help people understand that faith is about healing the world not dividing it… When we were leaving the Mosque after our break the fast and I looked around at the wonderful mix of people of three faiths, of many cultures, of all ages… all I could think about was a powerful “if only…” followed quickly by a “why not?” Why not? Still dreaming of peace, Barbara Early November Dear Friends, I cannot let the passing of Rosa Parks go without writing about her and those that walked the walk with her. I am of an age that spanned the Civil Rights movement as well as the Viet Nam anti-war movement. Although I was only 8 years old when the Montgomery Bus Boycott began, I was fortunate to grow up in a home where the actions of those brave souls were supported. I also grew up at a time when the Jewish community proudly marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. and stood with people of color and joined forces everywhere to stamp out racism not just with financial support but also with time and occasionally with their lives. I was exposed to all that came after as well… the increased public awareness of the degradation of the blacks in the south and the subtler but still stunningly real racism going on in the north. It was an amazing time in America. Pictures in Life Magazine and television news shows finally exposed the reality that so many of our fellow citizens were going through. The hatred on the faces of white supremacists hurling rocks at children just trying to get an education turned this country upside down. Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Improvement Association, headed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. understood that America needed a wake up call. On December 1, 1955 that bright, calm, brave woman helped set this country on its ear. This was the beginning of a non-violent Civil Rights movement that inspired a significant part of an entire generation… mine. It’s hard for us to imagine those times if we weren’t actually living them. It’s hard to explain it to our children. Of course racism still exists. Bigotry of all kinds is hard to stamp out. However, the idea that the government would support racism in the form it once took, with separate but equal facilities including bathrooms and drinking fountains, riding in the back of the bus, voter literacy tests in the south, and hotels and restaurants that were “white only” makes my skin crawl, yet it was in my lifetime. Thank God this history is, for most of our children, ancient and very dark. Our children today have friends who are all the colors of the human rainbow and for that; we have to thank Rosa Parks and her compatriots. Our children find these racist ideas irrational, which they were. Our children find these ideas absurd, which they were. Our chil |