The Preparation Begins. . .

Tisha B'Av can be a profound experience. We listen to the mournful chanting of Eicha, Lamentations. We grieve for the loss of our center in the commemoration of the destruction of the Temples in ancient Jerusalem. We break down as we take in so many of the calamities that our tribe, the Jewish people, have suffered.

Rabbi Lew, z''l, saw this day of breaking down as the start of the yearly path to the Days of Awe, the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. As the evening of the 9th of Av draws near, I share some of his teachings from his book This Is Real and You are Completely Unprepared"

"Tisha B'Av comes exactly seven weeks before Rosh Hashanah, beginning the process that culminates on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Tisha B'Av is the moment of turning, the moment when we turn away from denial and begin to face exile and alienation as they manifest themselves in our own lives -- in our alienation of estrangement from God, in our alienation from ourselves and from others. Teshuvah -- turning, repentance -- is the essential gesture of the High Holiday season. It is the gesture by which we seek to heal this alienation and to find at-one-ment: to connect with God, to reconcile with others, and to anchor ourselves in the ground of our actual circumstances, so that it is this reality that shapes our actions and not just the habitual, unconscious momentum of our lives."

"The time between Tisha B'Av and Yom Kippur, this great seven-week time of turning, is the time between the destruction of Jerusalem -- the crumbling of the walls of the Great Temple -- and our own moral and spiritual reconstruction. The year has been building itself up, and now it begins to let go -- the natural cycle of the cosmos, the rise and fall, the impermanence and the continuity, all express themselves i this turning. The walls come down and suddenly we can see, suddenly we recognize the nature of our estrangement from God, and this is the beginning of our reconciliation. We can see the image of the falling Temple -- the burning house -- that Tisha B'Av urges upon us so forcefully, precisely in this light."

"Tisha B'Av is the beginning of Teshuvah, the process of turning that we hope to complete on Yom Kippur, the process of returning to ourselves and to God. And the acknowledgment of the unresolved in our lives, as a people and as individuals, is the beginning of the sacred power the Days of Awe grant us -- to transform our lives in this moment when we feel the pull of both the waning moon and the setting sun; in this place, in this life, here and now."

To help anyone who will continue on the journey of Teshuvah, I recommend reading Rabbi Lew's book in these seven weeks. While we no longer have him with us in body, his spirit lives on in his teachings which remain as powerful as ever.

Zichrono L'vracha - His memory continues to be a blessing for us all.

Birthday Girl

Today is my 56th birthday.

Most of you who are reading this know that I am a birthday girl. As long as I've been conscious of the birthday ritual, I have celebrated with some sort of gusto. I used to say, "Lincoln has his day, Washington has his day, I have my day." Those poor guys have lost their individual days to President's Day, but I maintain mine. This year I bring back one tradition I have let lapse--the birthday message.

I enter this next year of my life with certain clarifications that have eluded me for too many years. I had a calling, but the path to the what and how has been foggy. Taking the plunge into teaching this year has cleared the way. There's still much work to be done with more adventures along the way, but that's the best part :) But I have a direction that goes inward and outward; lets me connect with others and feed my soul.

I'm also gaining some balance--something I've been struggling with for years. I feel myself breathing again, making space while setting boundaries. I am learning to release my anger. With the meditative, reflective month of Elul ahead, that work with continue.

I am mindful and grateful for the advantages I have in life. Sixteen years ago, in my 40th Birthday Message I wrote:

Life has certainly been anything but boring up to this point. Interesting things have happened to me, and I've made interesting things happen. I've gotten to a pretty good place without too much compromise. I'm lucky to live with a special person in my life whom I love, and who loves me. I have the love and support of friends and family.

All that still rings true.

The heavy mist that surrounded me in this past years brought a disconnect with many people in my life that I hold dear. As a birthday present to myself, I'm going to reach out and reconnect. I'm hoping some of you are reading this now. If so, I apologize for my long absence, but know that none of you ever left my heart.

So as I pass another marker on the journey of life, I thank you all for accompanying me along the way.

Love,

Marilyn

Completing the Cycle

היום תשעה וארבעים יום שהם שבעה שבועות בעמר
Today is the forty-ninth day, making seven weeks of the omer
מלכות שב מלכות
A day of majesty in a week of majesty

The seven week cycle is now complete. I have counted each of the 49 days, and noted each combination of the sephirot. Each day has a thought, a point of view, a story. I've taken the biblical ritual with the medieval kabbalistic layer and made it an expression of my practice.

The Torah reading for this coming Shabbat is Naso. It's a parasha that covers a lot of ground--the sotah, the nazarite, the priestly blessing. The parasha ends with the dedicating of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. We hear about each of the tribe's offerings--which are exactly the same. But the description is repeated for each tribe. Why would this be written in this manner? Couldn't the gifts been listed once, prefaced by "Each tribe gave . . ."?

One easy case to be made is to reference the oral transmission of our sacred texts. The more the words are chanted, the easier they are remembered. The emphasis the comes with the repetition also brings to the listener the enormity of the celebration.

I have my own midrash on this event. Each year--and on Hanukkah--when we read this, I get this image of the uniqueness of each tribal offering, not their sameness. The repetition tells me to image how one tribe brought the offerings with a song, another with a dance, another with a skit. They were presented on cloths of different colors and different patterns for each tribe.

And that is one way to approach a life of practice. We all have the same basic tenets of ethics of how to live together in this world. Taking on a commitment of spiritual practice is a fluid experience--you learn, you ingest, you accept, you adapt, you continue to learn. The best sort of practice is the one that grows with you.

I leave now for my final preparations to "stand at Sinai" -- to study and take in the Torah in commemoration of the time of it's first offerings. May my study be as sweet as the first fruits that we also celebrate. May we all find a way to respect ourselves, each other, all around us, and the world we live in and accept each uniqueness the contributes to the One.

חג שמכח
Chag Sameach

Shavuot - A Festival Ignored

היום שמנה וארבעים יום שהם ששה שבועות וששה ימים בעמר
Today is the forty-eighth day, making six weeks and six days of the omer
יסוד שב מלכות
A day of foundation in a week of majesty

Tablet Magazine - a daily Jewish e-magazine from Nextbook, Inc - posted an article today, "Field Study: Why the holiday of Shavuot is all but ignored across America." This essay looks into the factors that make this the least practiced of the three Pilgrimage holidays - the remaining to being Pesach and Sukkot.

In its earliest incarnation, Shavuot marked a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the sacrifice of the harvest’s first fruits and is one of a historical trio of harvest celebrations, along with Sukkot and Passover, known as the shalosh regalim. According to Paul Steinberg, a rabbi at the Conservative synagogue Valley Beth Shalom in Los Angeles and the author of a series of books on the Jewish holidays, rabbis in the Talmudic period needed to reinvent Shavuot after the Jews left Israel for the Diaspora and no longer traveled to Jerusalem with harvest offerings. So, through what Steinberg calls the use of “complicated mathematical formulas” that were debated for centuries, the sages associated Shavuot with the giving of the Torah. But that interpretive shift, says Steinberg, has not “captured the imagination of Jews in America or anywhere else.”

The article goes on to talk about the custom starting to catch on in more American cities--staying up all night in study sessions called tikkun leil Shavuot. I will be participating in one such event in Berkeley tomorrow night into morning.

One of the comments on that piece caught my eye. While there's a definite snark factor that makes me want to say, "back off Jack," There are points in there that hit home:

Almost all American Jews celebrate and commemorate Passover in some form or another but only the Orthodox by and large celebrate Shavuot.
Another strange American Jewish phenomenon is that while most observe Shabbat by making Kiddush, very few observe Havdala, the ceremony marking the end of Shabbat.
Why are these two Mitzvoth, Shavuot and Havdala, neglected by most
American Jews, and is there any connection between the two?
I believe there is a connection.
Passover celebrates freedom from slavery and exodus from Egypt.
Shavuot celebrates the giving and receiving of the Torah and the Jews commitment to serving HaShem and His Torah.
Friday night Kiddush represents the Sanctity and Holiness of Shabbat.
Havdala repesents the leaving of the sanctity and holiness of Shabbat and the return of the mundane week.
By only celebrating Passover and not Shavuot, the American Jew is celebrating Freedom, but neglecting to commit to serving serving HaShem and His Torah.
By observing Kiddush but neglecting Havdala the American Jew is stating that everything is Kodesh-HOLY- without any distinction between that which is truly holy and that which is actually mundane.
How typically American to try to have your cake and eat it at the same time!

There is something to be said about people preferring the warm and fuzzy liberation/holy stuff and checking out on the commitment to the practice. I don't condemn anyone over this, as the writer of the comment seems to express. Instead, I wish more people would realize the mindfulness that consistent spiritual practice can bring to their lives

Shabbat Minuchah - Rest

היום ששה וארבעים יום שהם ששה שבועות וארבעה ימים בעמר
Today is the forty-sixth day, making six weeks and four days of the omer
נצח שב מלכות
A day of perseverance in a week of majesty


It was Shabbat--and I rested......

Rosh Chodesh Sivan

היום חמשה וארבעים יום שהם ששה שבועות ושלשה ימים בעמר
Today is the forty-fifth day, making six weeks and three days of the omer
תפרת שב מלכות
A day of compassion in a week of majesty

Chodesh Tov! Today is the first of Sivan--six days to revelation.....whatever form that takes :)

I fulfilled the promise made in yesterday's post and dedicated my Rosh Chodesh Torah reading to Noa Roz and the Women of the Wall (WoW). Responding to a message from WoW posted on Facebook, I sent them the photo you see below so they can document the support coming to them from all over the world. I was glad to have my 90-year-old Russian friend Yitzchak in the photo with me. Sadly, because of circulation problems, he can no longer wear his tefillin. But he is proud and happy that I wear mine.

לדור ודור –– l'dor v'dor
from generation to generation
all genders included.

Shabbat Shalom

Women of the Wall

היום ארבעה וארבעים יום שהם ששה שבועות ושני ימים בעמר
Today is the forty-fourth day, making six weeks and two days of the omer
גבורה שב מלכות
A day of strength in a week of majesty

Earlier in the omer period, on Yom HaAztma-ut, I wrote about my complicated emotions concerning the state of Israel. That post centered around the Israeli-Palestinian relations--or lack thereof due to those presently governing Israel. That issue is only one part of why, like Jay Michaelson, I find myself in a position where I'm losing my love for Israel.

Another major factor contributing to my angst is the power the Haradi, the ultra-orthodox, have over Jewish ritual in Israel. Because of their stronghold that is legitimized by the Israeli government, I am not free to practice Judaism in Israel as fully as I can in the United States. This is solely due to my gender.

My first visit to Israel was in 1971 with USY Pilgrimage on a Jewish teen tour. This was years before egalitarianism was a part of Conservative Jewish practice, and I had no thought to wearing a tallit. This was still the case in 1980 when I was there on my second visit as a tourist, While I would consider myself a feminist at that time, I was removed from most of my Jewish practice so again, the act of wearing a tallit wouldn't have entered into my mind.

Throughout the past twelve years, I've continually increased my commitment to Judaism and taken on so many rituals that were previously out of my reach--getting an aliyah, reading Torah, wearing tallit and tefillin. It only recently occurred to me that all of that is still out of my reach in most religious settings in Israel--most importantly, at the Kotel, the Western Wall.

This is difficult for me to fathom. For years now, when I imagined myself in Israel, I would see myself wrapped in tallit and tefillin, davening Shacharit at the Kotel. The travails of the Women of the Wall have shown me another story--a tale that tears my soul. Women are being arrested, detained, and assaulted for the crimes of donning tallit and tefillin, carrying a Torah, lifting their voices in prayer.

The assault that happened this week is extremely chilling, for the woman who was attacked could have been me:

MAY 13^th -- Noa Raz, a Conservative Jew in her early thirties who lives and works in Tel Aviv, was physically assaulted early Tuesday morning by an ultra-Orthodox man at the Central Bus Station in Be’er Sheva for having the imprints of tefillin (phylacteries) lines visible on her arms.

She had woken up several hours earlier to pray and wrap tefillin, as is part of her daily routine. “I’m very pale, so the tefillin lines are still visible for hours afterward,” she said. While she was waiting for the bus to arrive, an ultra-Orthodox man in his forties stood next to her and stared at the lines on her arms. He asked her twice if the imprints were from tefillin. She ignored him at first, then admitted they were. At that point he grabbed her hand and began to kick and strangle her while screaming “women are an abomination.” She struggled, then broke free and ran to the bus which had just pulled into the station.

There were several bystanders present, though Noa Raz stated that the assault happened so quickly that none had time to react.

Raz arrived in Tel Aviv and sent out a message about the assault on Twitter. Dozens of people responded urged her to go to police to report what had happened. Raz contacted the police the following day, fearing that a similar incident would happen to another woman.

The Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC) has been working with the Be’er Sheva Police and has insisted they treat Raz’s assault as the hate crime that it is. To this end, IRAC has demanded that the proper resources be allocated in the search for Raz’s attacker, that security camera tapes be reviewed, and that the Chief of Police for Israel’s Southern District be personally involved.

Anat Hoffman, Executive Director of IRAC, stated that the assault on Noa Raz for wrapping tefillin “should not be seen as an isolated incident, but as taking place within an atmosphere of growing violence toward and intimidation of women who seek to pray freely and equally. Too often these acts of violence are tolerated. The fact that this man thought it acceptable to attack a woman for performing a religious act in private is an example of the escalation of violence targeted against women and against religious pluralists in Israel. We at IRAC are pushing the Israeli police to take this investigation seriously.” She added, “Noa, a member of Women of the Wall, is expected to join us tomorrow for Rosh Chodesh Sivan.”

Tomorrow, I will dedicate my Rosh Chodesh Torah reading to this brave group of women who are standing up for the rights of all Jews to practice fully in the land of our ancestors.

כן יהי רצון
May it be so

Into the Home Stretch

היום שלשה וארבעים יום שהם ששה שבועות ויום אחד בעמר
Today is the forty-third day, making six weeks and one day of the omer
חסד שב מלכות
A day of loving kindness in a week of majesty

One more week to go in the omer count. I do feel that this year, it's done its work. I'm not sure if it's in the marking of the day, taking in the sephirot, or writing the daily post--maybe all three. Or possibly there ar other forces that have nothing to do with the ritual have brought about this change in psyche.

I do see what lies ahead a bit clearer. I have a direction that will guide me along for now, aware that there will always be those forks in the road bringing the need for new decisions to be made. I appreciate this time in the Jewish sacred calendar that helps me process all the life decisions that need to be made. May I always be able to tap into that flow.

With all this talk about roads and forks and decisions, how can I not share one of my favorite poems, Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

What does Sacred Space mean to you?

היום שני וארבעים יום שהם ששה שבועות בעמר
Today is the forty-second day, making six weeks of the omer
מלכות שב יסוד
A day of majesty in a week of foundation

On this last day of the sixth week of the omer I finish my first year of teaching at PTBE. I hope I was able to teach my students some Torah and inspire them to think about the spiritual concepts contained within. I certainly learned much from them this year, and will be evaluating what I did this year, looking for more ways to reach them. Some of that processing will happen on this blog--if anyone out there has some wisdom to share, I would appreciate the input.

In honor of this year's students, I will share a poem written today by one of the students in my Sacred Space class. I don't know that I could have come up with this when I was 11 or 12.....

SACRED SPACE

Sacred
a word
what it means
no one knows
Sacred
a tree
a house
or any place at all
Sacred
a breath of air
a beat of the heart
a death
a birth
Sacred
is a state of mind
Sacred
is an abstract
Space

Losing a Practice

היום אחד וארבעים יום שהם חמשה שבועות וששה ימים בעמר
Today is the forty-first day, making five weeks and six days of the omer
יסוד שב יסוד
A day of foundation in a week of foundation

We didn't make minyan this morning. This is becoming a more frequent occurrence these days, closer to a weekly rather than a monthly event. More and more, I feel that within a couple of years we will not be able to sustain a daily morning minyan and need to move to a different, part-time schedule. I sincerely hope that I am proven wrong, for attending morning minyan has become a touchstone for me and for my practice.

As Leviticus is the book teaching us the practice, Bamidbar is the book that contains the lessons of bringing the practice into our lives. Participating in morning minyan is one way I am able to do that. I can't help but start my day with thankfulness and mindfulness--the poetry of the liturgy guides me along. The words don't always stick :), but they're there for support when I need them. Just as I am always able to support those who are saying kaddish, the mourners' prayer, for loved ones--those whose grief is still new; those who share cherished memories of friends and family long passed.

Starting your day at morning minyan is one of those hidden gems of Jewish practice. In some ways, it's like having a mini Shabbat each day. Your only obligation--be present. And you're always welcome for coffee and a snack afterwards :)

So to all those of the Jewish persuasion who are reading this, wherever you are--think about finding your local minyan, maybe check it out. You get to support those in your community, and you will be surprised at the support you will get in return.

Perfect

היום ארבעים יום שהם חמשה שבועות וחמשה יומים בעמר
Today is the fortieth day, making five weeks and five days of the omer
הוד שב יסוד
A day of humility in a week of foundation

Dallas Braden, pitcher for the Oakland A's, threw a perfect game today. The opposing team, the Tampa Bay Rays, are currently the best team in baseball. It was the 19th perfect game in major league history and the 2nd in team history. Jim "Catfish" Hunter pitched a perfect game 42-years earlier almost to the day--May 8th, 1968.

Dallas Braden has reached a milestone event for his career at the early age of 26. He's proven to have a brash personality, as evidenced by his recent feud with Alex Rodriguez. That's not necessarily a bad thing--if that brashness is tempered with "menchness" and backed up with talent. I wasn't sure if he had either. Watching his performance on the mound, his emotion with his grandmother, his appreciation for the support of his teamates, and his obvious love and honor for the game showed me both.

A Leviticus Farewell

היום תשעה ושלשים יום שהם חמשה שבועות וארבעה יומים בעמר
Today is the thirty-ninth day, making five weeks and four days of the omer
נצח שב יסוד
A day of perseverance in a week of foundation

We just finished reading Leviticus for this year. Across the globe, many shul-going, Torah reading Jews breathe a sigh of relief. We're done with all the bloody details of the sacrifices, and all the lists of laws and rituals, many of which are steeped in an ancient culture very removed from our own. The only story we get is of Nadav and Avihu and how they are zapped by God when they offer אש זרה – strange fire – that was not requested--a troubling tale in and of itself. So we're all happy to move on with the Israelites, even if it is Bamidbar -- into the wilderness.

But I gained some insights into Torah study as we traveled through Leviticus this year. I began the book with these two concepts in mind: it's a book about practice and we need to look at the contents through different lenses--both the one of that ancient time and the one of our present era. I finish the book with a better appreciation of how the practice works and a way into deciphering the teachings that lie within the words.

And so while I look forward to the next leg of the Torah journey, I am grateful that I have found a way in to taking in this sacred text that can feel so removed from my life. There's still a lot of struggle ahead--I wouldn't have it any other way. It's the perseverance with the struggle that forms the foundation for learning.

חזק חזק ונתחזק

May we be strong, strong,
and strengthen each other