Rabbi Jon's Website and Blog

Pitchers and Catchers, Candles and Circles, Rivers and Apples: How Rituals Will Really Help Us Approach This New Year

This is almost too good to be true: the beginning of the month of Av in the Jewish calendar this year coincided with opening day for Major League Baseball.

Usually around this time of year I show you this T-shirt based on an observation by Rabbi Morris Allen at my parents’ shul about the absolute parallels between the Jewish calendar and the baseball calendar. 

In all other years, pitchers and catchers report to training camps around Tu Bishevat, and spring training games begin around Purim. Which is for us the start of a warmup period too, with planning and preparation for Pesach, which generally coincides with baseball’s Opening Day!

On the T-shirt this part of a typical year is what here is called the “dog days of summer”, and it lines up with Tisha B’Av, the fast commemorating the destruction of the Batei Mikdash (the two Temples). In baseball this kicks off a hot and hard period of time leading to the pennant races for spots in the playoffs and the World Series. The climactic moments of the season in September and October coincide with the month of Tishrei and the High Holy Days. (Well, they did before the expanded playoffs!)

This year, time and the seasons have been disrupted, and summer isn’t what summer usually is for many of us. Even baseball has this compressed season -- the whole cycle from Opening Day through the champshiop will take place in three months from now to the end of October. And for us, our season of teshuvah, of reflection and renewal, begins now with the week of Tisha B’Av and this Shabbat called Shabbat Chazon, the Shabbat of Vision. 

This week and this Shabbat kick off two months of reflection that lead toward the big games, so to speak, the High Holy Days, when we judge how the past year went and think about our destiny in the new year. We think about being in exile and coming home. We spend a month, well into October, with the holy days through Sukkot and Simchat Torah.

Like in baseball, there’s a lot this year packed into three months. But baseball’s new Opening Day, just invented out of whole cloth, can remind us that time in a ritual sense is something we construct as communities, to help us do what would otherwise seem infinite and overwhelming. Without the calendar rhythms and rituals, it would be harder to stop and take note of our blessings. Without them we couldn’t step out of everything that’s driving us, to tell stories of our past, stories of challenges and resilience, stories of difficulty and hope.

Without the calendar in particular, we could easily be overwhelmed by the demands of staying alive and getting by, in a world that is enormous and throws so much at us.

My teachers at the Seminary, Rabbi Neil Gillman and Rabbi Joe Lukinsky, taught us what calendars and rituals do for human communities. They are how we fight for some order out of chaos, and how we build actual power to push some of the chaos away. Think about how many of our rituals take place at the moments when darkness begins. Our candles on Friday night and Saturday night, when we fight off the darkness where danger might lurk -- we refuse to retreat, we insist on saying I am standing, we are standing. In Jewish ritual, we choose those night times for our most messianic dreams -- when we step into Shabbat, the Taste of the World to come; when we step out of Shabbat in the first darkness of the week and summon Eliyahu, the prophet who tells us when redemption will arrive for the whole world.

Think about how many of our rituals are sitting in circles, or nowadays rectangular circles around tables, singing -- creating strength, covalent bonds between us, a binding chemistry that draws out the power in each other that is more than the sum of all our parts.

Our genius as human beings is ritual and calendar. These allow us to pull blessing and strength and resilience and connection out of the chaos that could be the world. otherwise Rituals are supposed to help us face what we are afraid of and make it safer to be afraid and handle fears, together with each other, together with the wisdom of our ancestors. Rituals let us tell stories not just about the past but about the future, the crazy audacious stories of a world so much more perfect thatn our own.

Rituals aren’t life, and they aren’t the only thing religion is supposed to be. They are where we find the energy pods, the wisdom pods, and the connecting bonds that we need to go out and live. Rituals and holy days are not for themselves -- they are for life,as a whole and we need them so we can live in this challenging time.

This year, we especially need those rituals. We will use them and wring us much as we can out of them in this particular season of this particular year. We need to consciously bring more of the rituals and more of the calendar rhythm, from this Opening Day of the beginning of Av all through the whole holy day season, Rosh Hashanah through Simchat Torah. We need to use all of it, because there is so much chaos and so much overwhelm in our worlds. As individuals, as households, as parents and schoolchildren, as citizens.

I want to help us this year make use of all the time of these three months coming, especially starting with Elul at the next new moon. And I want to help us make use of rituals that we sometimes just do superficially.

The four weeks of Elul leading up to Rosh Hashanah should include four deliberate check-ins. Maybe you’ll set aside four times for yourself to sit and reflect. Or meet four times with a group of people online or in a yard, twice to look back and twice to talk about hopes for the new year. Or maybe you commit to just getting to know a group better within the congregation, or learning something that might be valuable for your new year from a Jewish source. 

We will have the sweet apples and honey, so we can think about what is still sweet in our lives, what is fruitful, what has been generative this year that we forgot to notice. We can look at the seeds and think of what we planted, or who planted something inside us that has grown beautiful and nourishing to others. We can think about what might grow and what will be sweet even in this unique new year.

We have the shofar, blown every day of Elul and on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We will think about the shevarim blasts, the brokenness of our world and the things that broke apart for us in our lives, and how we want to see them put together again. We will think about the t’ruah blasts, the scattered details of our lives as we have learned how to do each little thing again in a new way. We will think about the t’kiah gedolah, the clear calls we still believe in and still want to hear, the ways we are whole, the summons to  where we want to be going.

We will have lakes and streams and oceans we can stand by, where we can toss away the things we badly want gone from our old year.

We will have the sukkah, the simple structure that challenges us to think about what protection is, what we really need in our material lives. By the time of Sukkot, we can hopefully think of ourselves as active builders of the new year.

All of these times and rituals will help us think about uncertainty and fears, and give us time to reflect and redirect -- and help us find the powers we still have, the wisdom we still have, the power and wisdom we can share with each other, all that power over the chaos of 2020 and 5780. Our rituals and our calendar will not be another demand added to an overwhelming list. They will make our lives easier, and help us turn our cries into songs.

We will have this new season through these months, from the new Opening Day we declare this week to the World Series of our holy days. One way or another -- together, online --  we will stand in circles as the sky becomes purple, and light our candles, and sing together,  so we can live well in a new year.

Post 2 After George Floyd's Killing

I tried to begin writing today not from anger but from reflection and even hope. Very hard to do right now. Anger comes more naturally. I write snide very well – you should see the first drafts, and there's a snider post to come.

This is a preface to links below about a president with a spotty record on race and civil rights responding very differently than our current president about race, civli rights, police, and violence.

Why am I posting this? When I think about presidential leadership right now, I need to locate hope.

Vaclav Havel wrote: “Hope is not prognostication... [It] is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success... Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

For years every summer I would try to write a Rosh Hashanah sermon about hope, and I would look at it and throw it away because I couldn’t even define it. Then I had an insight related to the Jewish festival of Chanukkah. I realized that the miracle we talk about in that story isn’t the one we always talk about. Hope is the reality that someone at an earlier time of destruction hid away a source of light and energy -- knowing that a later time someone else would dig it up, and it would give them the start they need.

On March 15, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson addressed the Congress. It was not long after Bloody Sunday in Alabama. This was the speech where he dared to appropriate the phrase “We shall overcome.” This was a president who had a previous record of opposing civil rights more than twice as long as his more recent support. Below is the speech to read or to watch it in full or a video of excepts.

The thrice-daily Jewish prayer known as the Amidah (the “standing” prayer) was originally called simply “Hatefillah” or “The Prayer” – the prayer par excellence, in other words. It opens with a section known as Avot/Imahot or “Ancestors.” Throughout the pandemic, and now this past week, I have been using that prayer to make myself focus on legacies and the individuals who passed them for us or who hid them to be discovered. People in my family history, American and Jewish figures of the past, great moral and theological teachers. We don’t have enough on our own. We need to go dig out the jars of special oil, the energies that seem buried, that will get us started. 

For this particular day after President Trump's address of yesterday, for me, LBJ is an alternative idea of presidential leadership, another way that a white leader carrying plenty of racism spoke to a moment.

Watch the whole speech or a video of excerpts

Read the text below or here: https://www.historyplace.com/speeches/johnson.htm

I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of Democracy. I urge every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all colors, from every section of this country, to join me in that cause.

At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There, long suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many of them were brutally assaulted. One good man--a man of God--was killed.

There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma. There is no cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights of millions of Americans. But there is cause for hope and for faith in our Democracy in what is happening here tonight. For the cries of pain and the hymns and protests of oppressed people have summoned into convocation all the majesty of this great government--the government of the greatest nation on earth. Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country--to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man. In our time we have come to live with the moments of great crises. Our lives have been marked with debate about great issues, issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and depression.

But rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, or our welfare or our security, but rather to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved nation. The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, and should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation. For, with a country as with a person, "what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem.

And we are met here tonight as Americans--not as Democrats or Republicans; we're met here as Americans to solve that problem. This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose.

The great phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart, North and South: "All men are created equal." "Government by consent of the governed." "Give me liberty or give me death." And those are not just clever words, and those are not just empty theories. In their name Americans have fought and died for two centuries and tonight around the world they stand there as guardians of our liberty risking their lives. Those words are promised to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man. This dignity cannot be found in a man's possessions. It cannot be found in his power or in his position. It really rests on his right to be treated as a man equal in opportunity to all others. It says that he shall share in freedom. He shall choose his leaders, educate his children, provide for his family according to his ability and his merits as a human being.

To apply any other test, to deny a man his hopes because of his color or race or his religion or the place of his birth is not only to do injustice, it is to deny Americans and to dishonor the dead who gave their lives for American freedom. Our fathers believed that if this noble view of the rights of man was to flourish it must be rooted in democracy. This most basic right of all was the right to choose your own leaders. The history of this country in large measure is the history of expansion of the right to all of our people.

Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument: every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to insure that right. Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes.

Every device of which human ingenuity is capable, has been used to deny this right. The Negro citizen may go to register only to be told that the day is wrong, or the hour is late, or the official in charge is absent. And if he persists and, if he manages to present himself to the registrar, he may be disqualified because he did not spell out his middle name, or because he abbreviated a word on the application. And if he manages to fill out an application, he is given a test. The registrar is the sole judge of whether he passes this test. He may be asked to recite the entire Constitution, or explain the most complex provisions of state law.

And even a college degree cannot be used to prove that he can read and write. For the fact is that the only way to pass these barriers is to show a white skin. Experience has clearly shown that the existing process of law cannot overcome systematic and ingenious discrimination. No law that we now have on the books, and I have helped to put three of them there, can insure the right to vote when local officials are determined to deny it. In such a case, our duty must be clear to all of us. The Constitution says that no person shall be kept from voting because of his race or his color.

We have all sworn an oath before God to support and to defend that Constitution. We must now act in obedience to that oath. Wednesday, I will send to Congress a law designed to eliminate illegal barriers to the right to vote. The broad principles of that bill will be in the hands of the Democratic and Republican leaders tomorrow. After they have reviewed it, it will come here formally as a bill. I am grateful for this opportunity to come here tonight at the invitation of the leadership to reason with my friends, to give them my views and to visit with my former colleagues.

I have had prepared a more comprehensive analysis of the legislation which I had intended to transmit to the clerk tomorrow, but which I will submit to the clerks tonight. But I want to really discuss the main proposals of this legislation. This bill will strike down restrictions to voting in all elections, federal, state and local, which have been used to deny Negroes the right to vote.

This bill will establish a simple, uniform standard which cannot be used, however ingenious the effort, to flout our Constitution. It will provide for citizens to be registered by officials of the United States Government, if the state officials refuse to register them. It will eliminate tedious, unnecessary lawsuits which delay the right to vote. Finally, this legislation will insure that properly registered individuals are not prohibited from voting. I will welcome the suggestions from all the members of Congress--I have no doubt that I will get some--on ways and means to strengthen this law and to make it effective.

But experience has plainly shown that this is the only path to carry out the command of the Constitution. To those who seek to avoid action by their national government in their home communities, who want to and who seek to maintain purely local control over elections, the answer is simple: open your polling places to all your people. Allow men and women to register and vote whatever the color of their skin. Extend the rights of citizenship to every citizen of this land. There is no Constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong--deadly wrong--to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country.

There is no issue of state's rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights. I have not the slightest doubt what will be your answer. But the last time a President sent a civil rights bill to the Congress it contained a provision to protect voting rights in Federal elections. That civil rights bill was passed after eight long months of debate. And when that bill came to my desk from the Congress for signature, the heart of the voting provision had been eliminated.

This time, on this issue, there must be no delay, or no hesitation, or no compromise with our purpose. We cannot, we must not, refuse to protect the right of every American to vote in every election that he may desire to participate in.

And we ought not, and we cannot, and we must not wait another eight months before we get a bill. We have already waited 100 years and more and the time for waiting is gone. So I ask you to join me in working long hours and nights and weekends, if necessary, to pass this bill. And I don't make that request lightly, for, from the window where I sit, with the problems of our country, I recognize that from outside this chamber is the outraged conscience of a nation, the grave concern of many nations and the harsh judgment of history on our acts.

But even if we pass this bill the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.

And we shall overcome.

As a man whose roots go deeply into Southern soil, I know how agonizing racial feelings are. I know how difficult it is to reshape the attitudes and the structure of our society. But a century has passed--more than 100 years--since the Negro was freed. And he is not fully free tonight. It was more than 100 years ago that Abraham Lincoln--a great President of another party--signed the Emancipation Proclamation. But emancipation is a proclamation and not a fact.

A century has passed--more than 100 years--since equality was promised, and yet the Negro is not equal. A century has passed since the day of promise, and the promise is unkept. The time of justice has now come, and I tell you that I believe sincerely that no force can hold it back. It is right in the eyes of man and God that it should come, and when it does, I think that day will brighten the lives of every American. For Negroes are not the only victims. How many white children have gone uneducated? How many white families have lived in stark poverty? How many white lives have been scarred by fear, because we wasted energy and our substance to maintain the barriers of hatred and terror?

And so I say to all of you here and to all in the nation tonight that those who appeal to you to hold on to the past do so at the cost of denying you your future. This great rich, restless country can offer opportunity and education and hope to all--all, black and white, North and South, sharecropper and city dweller. These are the enemies: poverty, ignorance, disease. They are our enemies, not our fellow man, not our neighbor.

And these enemies too--poverty, disease and ignorance--we shall overcome.

Now let none of us in any section look with prideful righteousness on the troubles in another section or the problems of our neighbors. There is really no part of America where the promise of equality has been fully kept. In Buffalo as well as in Birmingham, in Philadelphia as well as Selma, Americans are struggling for the fruits of freedom.

This is one nation. What happens in Selma and Cincinnati is a matter of legitimate concern to every American. But let each of us look within our own hearts and our own communities and let each of us put our shoulder to the wheel to root out injustice wherever it exists. As we meet here in this peaceful historic chamber tonight, men from the South, some of whom were at Iwo Jima, men from the North who have carried Old Glory to the far corners of the world and who brought it back without a stain on it, men from the east and from the west are all fighting together without regard to religion or color or region in Vietnam.

Men from every region fought for us across the world 20 years ago. And now in these common dangers, in these common sacrifices, the South made its contribution of honor and gallantry no less than any other region in the great republic.

And in some instances, a great many of them, more. And I have not the slightest doubt that good men from everywhere in this country, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Golden Gate to the harbors along the Atlantic, will rally now together in this cause to vindicate the freedom of all Americans. For all of us owe this duty and I believe that all of us will respond to it.

Your president makes that request of every American.

The real hero of this struggle is the American Negro. His actions and protests, his courage to risk safety, and even to risk his life, have awakened the conscience of this nation. His demonstrations have been designed to call attention to injustice, designed to provoke change; designed to stir reform. He has been called upon to make good the promise of America.

And who among us can say that we would have made the same progress were it not for his persistent bravery and his faith in American democracy? For at the real heart of the battle for equality is a deep-seated belief in the democratic process. Equality depends, not on the force of arms or tear gas, but depends upon the force of moral right--not on recourse to violence, but on respect for law and order.

There have been many pressures upon your President and there will be others as the days come and go. But I pledge to you tonight that we intend to fight this battle where it should be fought--in the courts, and in the Congress, and the hearts of men. We must preserve the right of free speech and the right of free assembly. But the right of free speech does not carry with it--as has been said--the right to holler fire in a crowded theatre.

We must preserve the right to free assembly. But free assembly does not carry with it the right to block public thoroughfares to traffic. We do have a right to protest. And a right to march under conditions that do not infringe the Constitutional rights of our neighbors. And I intend to protect all those rights as long as I am permitted to serve in this office.

We will guard against violence, knowing it strikes from our hands the very weapons which we seek--progress, obedience to law, and belief in American values. In Selma, as elsewhere, we seek and pray for peace. We seek order, we seek unity, but we will not accept the peace of stifled rights or the order imposed by fear, or the unity that stifles protest--for peace cannot be purchased at the cost of liberty.

In Selma tonight--and we had a good day there--as in every city we are working for a just and peaceful settlement. We must all remember after this speech I'm making tonight, after the police and the F.B.I. and the Marshals have all gone, and after you have promptly passed this bill, the people of Selma and the other cities of the nation must still live and work together.

And when the attention of the nation has gone elsewhere they must try to heal the wounds and to build a new community. This cannot be easily done on a battleground of violence as the history of the South itself shows. It is in recognition of this that men of both races have shown such an outstandingly impressive responsibility in recent days--last Tuesday and again today.

The bill I am presenting to you will be known as a civil rights bill. But in a larger sense, most of the program I am recommending is a civil rights program. Its object is to open the city of hope to all people of all races, because all Americans just must have the right to vote, and we are going to give them that right.

All Americans must have the privileges of citizenship, regardless of race, and they are going to have those privileges of citizenship regardless of race.

But I would like to caution you and remind you that to exercise these privileges takes much more than just legal rights. It requires a trained mind and a healthy body. It requires a decent home and the chance to find a job and the opportunity to escape from the clutches of poverty.

Of course people cannot contribute to the nation if they are never taught to read or write; if their bodies are stunted from hunger; if their sickness goes untended; if their life is spent in hopeless poverty, just drawing a welfare check.

So we want to open the gates to opportunity. But we're also going to give all our people, black and white, the help that they need to walk through those gates. My first job after college was as a teacher in Cotulla, Texas, in a small Mexican-American school. Few of them could speak English and I couldn't speak much Spanish. My students were poor and they often came to class without breakfast and hungry. And they knew even in their youth the pain of prejudice. They never seemed to know why people disliked them, but they knew it was so because I saw it in their eyes.

I often walked home late in the afternoon after the classes were finished wishing there was more that I could do. But all I knew was to teach them the little that I knew, hoping that I might help them against the hardships that lay ahead. And somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars on the hopeful face of a young child.

I never thought then, in 1928, that I would be standing here in 1965. It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students, and to help people like them all over this country. But now I do have that chance.

And I'll let you in on a secret--I mean to use it. And I hope that you will use it with me.

This is the richest, most powerful country which ever occupied this globe. The might of past empires is little compared to ours. But I do not want to be the president who built empires, or sought grandeur, or extended dominion.

I want to be the president who educated young children to the wonders of their world. I want to be the President who helped to feed the hungry and to prepare them to be taxpayers instead of tax eaters. I want to be the President who helped the poor to find their own way and who protected the right of every citizen to vote in every election. I want to be the President who helped to end hatred among his fellow men and who promoted love among the people of all races, all regions and all parties. I want to be the President who helped to end war among the brothers of this earth.

And so, at the request of your beloved Speaker and the Senator from Montana, the Majority Leader, the Senator from Illinois, the Minority Leader, Mr. McCullock and other members of both parties, I came here tonight, not as President Roosevelt came down one time in person to veto a bonus bill; not as President Truman came down one time to urge passage of a railroad bill, but I came down here to ask you to share this task with me. And to share it with the people that we both work for.

I want this to be the Congress--Republicans and Democrats alike--which did all these things for all these people. Beyond this great chamber--out yonder--in fifty states are the people that we serve. Who can tell what deep and unspoken hopes are in their hearts tonight as they sit there and listen? We all can guess, from our own lives, how difficult they often find their own pursuit of happiness, how many problems each little family has. They look most of all to themselves for their future, but I think that they also look to each of us.

Above the pyramid on the Great Seal of the United States it says in latin, "God has favored our undertaking." God will not favor everything that we do. It is rather our duty to divine His will. But I cannot help but believe that He truly understands and that He really favors the undertaking that we begin here tonight.

Tech Tashlich

Tashlich (pronounced tash-leech, with the Hebrew-sound 'ch' at the end) is the ceremony of throwing bread into a river on Rosh Hashanah, symbolically washing away our wrongs and bad habits.

"Tech Tashlich" is an annual practice of taking one day in the month before Rosh Hashanah to focus specifically on technology in our lives. What things do we do with phones, computers, tablets, etc that we need to throw away, for the good of our relationships?

Why today? It is the 16th of Elul. 16 represents 4 "bits" -- the basis of early microprocessors, which are the foundation of today's consumer devices, from personal computers to smartphones and tablets. So it's an appropriate day in the month before Rosh Hashanah to reflect and commit.

Do you stop in the middle of a conversation with someone to answer a call or text? When you're out socially with family or friends, do you check your e-mail? Does the time you spend monitoring social media prevent you from relaxing at the end of the day?

Take some time today to think and work on this. If it helps, you can use your machine very briefly by posting thoughts or commitments in the comments to this post. Or at the Tech Tashlich Facebook page, where there are some further ideas and links to interesting reflections.

Some food for thought:

• On Being -- Krista Tippett's incredible interview with Sherry Turkle, MIT professor and author of Alone Together and Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age
• My Rosh Hashanah sermon from 2013, "Being Here in the Digital Age"

 

5 Big Ideas for the High Holy Days

5 core concepts, 5 interpretations of the Shofar, 18 minutes. Watch, or listen/download audio here.

The Art of Apology: Lena Dunham

Over the weekend in the world of celebrity, actor and writer Lena Dunham generated a stir over an interview in which she commented on being seated at an event next to athlete Odell Beckham Jr.  Ms. Dunham noticed Mr. Beckham on his cellphone, and she said that she imagined he was avoiding her because of her looks and body type. (See the full interview here.)

After much reaction, Ms. Dunham quickly issued the following apology through social media:

I owe Odell Beckham Jr an apology. Despite my moments of bravado, I struggle at industry events (and in life) with the sense that I don't rep a certain standard of beauty and so when I show up to the Met Ball surrounded by models and swan-like actresses it's hard not to feel like a sack of flaming garbage. This felt especially intense with a handsome athlete as my dinner companion and a bunch of women I was sure he'd rather be seated with. But I went ahead and projected these insecurities and made totally narcissistic assumptions about what he was thinking, then presented those assumptions as facts. I feel terrible about it. Because after listening to lots of valid criticism, I see how unfair it is to ascribe misogynistic thoughts to someone I don't know AT ALL. Like, we have never met, I have no idea the kind of day he's having or what his truth is. But most importantly, I would never intentionally contribute to a long and often violent history of the over-sexualization of black male bodies- as well as false accusations by white women towards black men. I'm so sorry, particularly to OBJ, who has every right to be on his cell phone. The fact is I don't know about his state of mind (I don't know a lot of things) and I shouldn't have acted like I did. Much love and thanks, Lena

What do you like about this as an apology? Feel free to post a comment.

 

 

Holiday Weekend: Sit Back With a (Fun) Video With High Holy Day Theme

Wow, I have not posted here for a long time.

It is the month of Elul and a long holiday weekend.  How about getting a video or streaming a less than completely serious film that takes on a High Holy Day-related theme?  Here are some ideas, and feel free to post a comment with any of yours.

 

Comedy:

 

Groundhog Day -- an obnoxious TV personality is trapped in the same day over and over again, and tries to figure out how to live that day right (Bill Murray, Andy McDowell)

 

Mr. Destiny – a middle manager with a mid-life crisis experiences what he would have gained – and lost – had he gotten the big hit during a baseball game on his 15^th birthday (Jim Belushi)

 

Heaven Can Wait (remake) -- a football player tries to live out his dream in another person's body and life, when an angel mistakenly takes him out of his own (Warren Beatty, Julie Christie)

 

Fifty First Dates – an oceanographer falls in love with a woman who, because of a car accident, cannot remember anything new from one day to the next, so he creates a video “book of her life” she watches every new day (Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore)

 

Drama:

 

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind -- after a fight, two lovers each hire a firm to erase all memories of the other from their brains (Kate Winslet, Jim Carrey)

 

The Adjustment Bureau -- a rising political star tries to find the woman he met by chance, while the Adjustment Bureau responds to his every move to try to prevent him from deviating from "The Plan" (Matt Damon, Emily Blunt)

 

Sliding Doors -- two alternate but related versions of the same life, after a person makes or misses a train (Gwinneth Paltrow, John Hannah)

 

Action: 

 

Minority Report – in the not-so-distant future, murderers are arrested before they can commit their crimes, but one police officer acts when he is accused of a crime he may not be destined to commit (Tom Cruise)

More ideas?

 

Parashat Ekev: Credit Where a Little Credit is Due

The first line of Parashat Ekev is difficult to translate.  It looks like this:  And it will be, ekev you will observe the mishpatim, and take care to do them, then Adonai your God will keep the covenant and the chesed that God swore to your ancestors (Deuteronomy 7:12).  You get the basic idea, but the really important words don't go into English so well.

So for instance, rather than say in Hebrew im for "if" -- if you will observe -- the Torah says ekev.  Rambam delves into the many meanings of this root, which is an unusual but not unheard-of way to say "if."  It is the same Hebrew root as the name Jacob, the word "heel", and the idea of crookedness, a not-straight path.  So Ramban says that God is hinting here:  Even if your path toward keeping faith with God and the covenant is roundabout, if you eventually get there, God credits you as a faithful partner.

Most often, the term mishpatim is taken to mean civil laws, as opposed to ritual laws, or laws derivable by reason as opposed to those that have no explanation.  Usually, the term mishpatim is paired with the term chukim -- the less-intelligible laws.  Rashi takes note of the fact that in our verse we have  mishpatim without chukim, and suggests that God means this:  Even if your path toward keeping faith with God is through the easier laws, easier to follow and easier to understand, God credits you as a faithful partner.

We are reading this parasha during the weeks approaching Rosh Hashanah, and these comments of Ramban and Rashi boil down to the same lessons.  God takes note of the good we do in whatever measure, by whatever motivation, and sees it as a complete vindication of our covenant together.

I think the lesson is even more important toward one another.  Whatever expectations we have of the others in our lives -- even if they are high -- we shouldn't forget to give credit for the small things.  A little effort at change; a small difference in attitude; an occasional kind word when we weren't expecting it... sometimes, these small things should count as everything.  We should take the small changes for the good as indicators of good faith, of trying.  And where someone is changing for us, even if it's just the first step of the many we really hope for -- we should rejoice that the other values the bond, the love, the covenant of friendship or marriage.

And that should trigger something in return.  Encouragement, a thank you, or at least noticing.  There's a time to expect a lot, and there's a time to see the spark revealed in just a little.

Shabbat Nachamu: Beginning the Repair

This week marks the beginning of the season of teshuva, of return and repair in all facets of life before Rosh Hashanah.  The Shabbat after Tisha B'Av is known as Shabbat Nachamu, after the words of the haftarah.  Nachamu nachamu ami -- Comfort, comfort my people.

From the depth of the fast day, recalling so much national tragedy, so much distance of the Jewish people from God, we immediately begin the spiritual climb.  Even the last verses of Megillat Eicha (Lamentations), the graphic poem of destruction which we read on the fast, point this way.  Hashivenu Adonai elecha v'nashuva -- Return us, Adonai, to you and we will return.

And so the Torah reading, Parashat Vaetchanan, brings out the big guns.  We hear from the mouth of Moshe the Ten Commandments, and the Shma.  The parasha is both a loud wakeup call, and a vote of confidence in us.  God says:  You don't need a slow healing, a gradual climb back to spiritual health.  Let me show you the heights.  Let me remind you of who you have been and who you could be again -- who you will be!

Still, we have these seven weeks to put ourselves in order.  To look at our relationships -- in our families, among our friends, with others in our community.  To ask whether we are leading our lives by the values we claim to living by.  To think of any changes of direction.  This is an agenda for weeks, not for the hearing of one reading of the Torah.  The days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, even the single month of Elul is not enough.

So the Torah exhorts us, sets the bar, brings back the wisdom we know is out there.  And the haftarah encourages us, lifts us when the burden of teshuva seems heavy.  May we be blessed with both throughout these weeks.  The wisdom and the encouragement we need to repair, to heal, and to begin a new year.

Devarim -- Introducing Your Two Personal Assistants

I hate to say this, but this Shabbat is a signal that the High Holidays are coming.

We turn a page in the Torah cycle and begin reading the book of Dvarim or Deuteronomy, which will be our backdrop from now all through the High Holidays until Simchat Torah in mid-October.  This Shabbat begins the week when we commemorate Tisha B'Av.  That's a fast day, a kind of seasonal book-end matched with Yom Kippur. 

Week by week, we will be guided to the holidays by two voices from the Tanakh, the Bible.  One is the voice of Moshe (Moses).  Deuteronomy is unique among the five books of the Torah.  The other four books come to us via a narrator, who tells us "The Lord spoke to Avraham, to Yaakov, to Moshe...."  This last book is, until the last little bit, in the first-person voice of Moshe.  It presents a series of speeches he delivers to the assembled gathering of Israelites as they get ready to enter their new home.

The other voice belongs to the prophet Yeshayahu (Isaiah).  Each of the haftarah readings comes from the last half of the book of Isaiah, except for this week's which comes from the first chapter.

Moshe and Yeshayahu are our two guides as we get ready for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  It's time to get focused on teshuvah -- on looking into ourselves and at ourselves, on assessing our relationships with others and taking steps to repair them if needed.  Moshe's voice is insistent -- you need to do this!  Yeshayahu's voice is encouraging -- you can do this!

Moshe is concerned that we will forget the things that should guide our life.  He spends the coming weeks reviewing the laws, reminding us where things veered off course, warning us of dangers.  If he could, he might just step in and make sure we don't do the wrong thing, that's how it sounds sometimes!  But he knows he is not going with the people into the new land.  He knows that only we, each of us, can go ahead into the new year.  So Moshe reminds us of the rewards that come from leading our lives in line with God's wisdom.

Yeshayahu is concerned that failure, suffering, and pain will cause us to lose hope that things can ever change for the better.  Historically, he preached when decades of destruction and exile were coming to an end, in the sixth century B.C.E.  He knows that we hear voices that cause us to doubt ourselves and the power of the Divine.  Yeshayahu sees the light at the end of the tunnel, and in his mind's eye we're already there, shining in our glory.

Each week in the synagogue we'll be able to hear these two voices.  These two prophets, from Deuteronomy and Isaiah, are your personal teshuvah assistants in the weeks leading up to the High Holidays.  Pay attention to them, concentrate on them even more than the specific words, laws, exhortations.  It's possible you need to hear one more than the other this year -- more Moshe or more Yeshayahau, more goading or more cheering, more "come on!" or more "you've got it!"  It's possible that will change from week to week.  In any combination, they can help you frame your approach to the season of reflection and change.

Chametz -- Rising Bread, Inflated Souls

The day before yesterday, I wore two unmatching shoes.

I left the house about 9:00 AM, toward a work day that did not end until 8:30 in the evening.  A little after 6:30, I was sitting and talking with a congregant when I looked down and noticed that I had on two different shoes.  I was horrified and self-conscious.  My thoughtful conversation partner, bless his soul, said, "I thought I was the only one who did that!"

My own thoughts included:  In seven-plus hours, how many people must have seen me today and noticed the shoes?  How foolish I must have looked!  How many people did they tell?  I can't even go home and fix this, I'm stuck looking ridiculous for a couple more hours.

But then I thought about a teaching about chametz and self-importance that I had shared on Shabbat:

Chametz -- bread that is leavened or risen -- is a symbol of haughtiness, self-importance.  Think of it this way:  If you start with just flour and water, then mix them together, the resulting dough takes up no more space that what you started with.  That's matzah, which represents humility and a sense of proportion.  Anything that rises is taking up more space than it really deserves.  So chasidic thought teaches us around Pesach that getting rid of chametz means breaking the pattern of puffing ourselves out, thinking we deserve more space than we really take up.

So I realized the best thing was to laugh at myself and move on.  After all, how many people really noticed?  I mean, are my shoes -- even if they are the rabbi's shoes -- really all that important in someone else's day?

Before Pesach begins, we are supposed to search for chametz in our homes and other spaces.  I think one way to apply the chasidic perspective is to go through all the places where we eat, and think about the conversations and relationships that take place there.  In the kitchen and dining room, that's obvious.  But we snack in the bedroom, or in the car while we talk on the cellphone, and we eat in our workplaces as well.

As we push our brooms or brush out crumbs, we should pause to think about who we're with in this place and how we act.  Am I puffed out?  Do I grandstand, show off, perform?  Or am I just right?