Water, Water Everywhere and the Command to Protect it so There Will be a Drop to Drink
By Rabbi Margaret Frisch Klein
I walked along the Merrimack on the trail behind my condo in Chelmsford. Everything was green, despite a dry, hot summer. The water level was higher than I expected. I’ve been thinking a lot about water this summer. Partly because of the oil spill in the Gulf and partly because I work at a mikveh, a Jewish ritual bath and partly, well, because I am just drawn to water. It’s a good season for it—give me a walk along the river, a swim in Freeman Lake or a trip to an ocean beach and count me in! Water can calm, inspire, nurture and heal. It can help us feel close to the Divine as we discover its beauty, its vastness, its power and its majesty. It is both timeless and ever changing. Understanding this, the rabbis placed a prayer about the beauty of creation right after the call to worship. Frankly, however, especially in the summer I would rather be outdoors by the water then sitting in a synagogue praying about it.
Deuteronomy 11:13-21 says that “If then you obey the commandments that I enjoin upon you this day, loving the Lord your God and serving God will all your heart and soul, I will grant the rain for your land in season, the early rain and the late…Teach these commandments to your children…to the end that you and your children may endure in the land.”
The ancient Israelites were an agricultural people living in a desert. They understood the importance of rain and of clean drinking water. We’ve lost touch with some of it and take some of it for granted. This has been a problem for some time. According to UNICEF, 2.5 B people lack access to water sanitation and 884M people still use unsafe, untreated drinking water. Lack of access to safe water kills and sickens thousands everyday. At the same time the largest consumers of water are industrial complexes and agriculture. This summer we have seen the catastrophic results on people, fragile environments and wildlife.
As I was walking I was reminded of the song Colors of the Wind from Pocohantas:
You think you own whatever land you land on
The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim
But I know every rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name
Yes, we want access to oil. But, we also have an obligation to protect this creation, these living waters. The rabbis teach the principle of bal tashchit, “Do not destroy”, which we glean from Deuteronomy 20:19 which says “When in your war against a city you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it, you must not destroy its trees.” From this verse we deduce the whole obligation to treat the environment ethically. We are partners in God’s creation. Rabbi Marc Gillman tells a story that after God separated the dry land from the waters the angels asked if creation was finished. “Not yet,” God replied. Each day the angels asked if the work of creation is done. Each time, God replied, “Not yet.” Finally God made Adam and Eve and told them that they were worthy and capable of being God’s partners. God explained a partner is someone with whom you work on something you cannot do alone. Some days it seems like too much. But Pirke Avot, the Wisdom of the Ancestors 2:16, teaches that ours is not to complete the task, neither are we free to ignore it.
There is an oft-repeated story told of a girl walking on the beach at low tide. She is picking up starfish and throwing them back in. A man spies her and asks what she is doing. “You can’t make a difference. You can’t possibly save them all.” She picks up another one, throws it back in and says, “It makes a difference to this one.”
The Talmud (Taanit 23) has a similar story, about Honi the Water Maker. One day he was going along the road, when he saw a man planting a carob tree. Honi asked, “In how many years will this tree bear fruit?” The man responded, “In seventy years.” Honi asked, “Are you sure that you will live seventy more years to enjoy the fruit of this tree?!” The man said, Just as my ancestors planted for me, so I plant for my descendants.”
As Deuteronomy taught, if we follow God’s commandments and teach our children it will go well for us on the land and God will provide rain and water. It is our obligation then, as we have seen to partner with God and ensure that there is enough clean water and enough trees for our children and our children’s children.
The task can seem overwhelming. The oil spills were not here but thousands of miles away. Our children today have clean drinking water here. Why should I bother? What can I do? What difference can I make? You do not need to do it alone. Start small. Pick up trash along the rivers and streams on your walks. Fix leaks in your houses and put in low volume toilets. Turn off the faucet washing dishes, brushing your teeth or shaving. Take shorter showers and replace your showerhead with an ultra-low flow model. Install aerators on your household faucets. Don’t dump hazardous waste, paints or other liquids down storm drains. Water your gardens only when appropriate and on the published schedules. Work to save our wetlands. Find a partner. Do it with your children. Together we can make a difference.
Hannah Senesh penned these words on the beach at Caesara in 1943
O Lord, my God
I pray that these things never end
The sand and the sea
The rush of the waters
The crash of the heavens
The prayer of the heart.
May it be so.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Parashat Pinchas
How Many Gods Are There? Does it Matter?
Rabbi Katy Z. Allen
(originally posted June 30, 2010)
In this week’s Torah portion, God tells Moses that he should take a look at the land God has promised to the Israelites – land that he, Moses, (because he will soon die) will never walk upon. In this passage, Moses addresses God as “the Source of the Breath of all flesh.” God then chooses a new leader to bring the people into that land.
“The Source of the Breath of all flesh.” All flesh – every living breathing being.
As a hospital chaplain, I cover a general medical floor, where I visit all the patients on the floor, no matter what their religion, dropping in to see how they are doing. Recently, I met a Christian woman*, her two brothers, and her husband. The woman was upbeat and cheerful. She told me briefly about her battle with illness and her concern for the future. I then asked, as I always do, if she would like me to say a prayer for her. She voiced what I often hear when I visit with Christian patients, but she spoke much more vehemently and animatedly than most people do. “There’s only one God,” she said. “Just one. I don’t care if people say no, to me, there is just one God.” When I completed the prayer, the patient and her brothers were effusive in their thanks. “Thank you, thank you. You are doing God’s work – it is so important. God bless you. God bless you.” The woman had a strong accent, and I didn't understand everything she said, but I understood the most important part of it.
Before I had entered that room, I had been upset about an incident in which I was NOT being either appreciated or understood. As this woman thanked me so profusely, the pain of that encounter washed away. These people got it. They understood what my work was all about. They understood in a profound way the essence, the importance, and the meaning of why I was there and what I was doing.
Recently, I finished reading Stephen Prothero’s book, Not One God. Prothero, a prolific writer and a professor of religion at Boston University makes a claim that the woman in bed 122 would not have accepted at all; he believes that the statement she made, that there is only one God, is a panacea, wishful thinking, naïve, and on the surface. He also claims that it can be dangerous to think this way when we look at today’s shrinking world. He gives an overview of eight major religions – the ones he considers most important – and he explains why they are important and what good they have brought into the world and what bad they have brought into the world -- something he describes all our religions as sharing, and Prothero admonishes that we are dishonest with ourselves if we deny it.
Prothero’s premise is that the fundamental differences among religions result from the fact that each religion is answering a different question and thus it approaches G!d and the world differently. He explains, for example, that Islam is dealing with the issue of pride, and the answer is submission, that Christianity is concerned with the question of sin, for which the solution is salvation, and that Judaism is dealing with exile, the answer to which is return to God. It is an interesting approach, and helpful, I believe, in recognizing the roots of our differences.
I would like to suggest, however, a slightly different approach, one that is articulated in a midrash – interpretation – about the Amidah prayer, a central prayer of the daily services. The prayer, begins, Blessed are you Lord our God and God of our ancestors, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob. In this ancient text, the rabbis ask the question, Why doesn’t the prayer simply say God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Wouldn’t it be much simpler this way? The rabbis’ answer is that the God of Abraham is not the same as the God of Isaac or the God of Jacob; every person finds his or her own path to God and experiences God in a different way; for every person, the pathway to God is different – and in essence, God is different.
Here we see that within a single religion, Judaism, tradition teaches that each of us experiences God differently, because we are different people, because, I believe, we experience life differently. And if this is true within one religion – which, like every other major religion, contains subgroups with different views of God and life, and therefore different experiences of God and life – how much MORE true this must be between our religions, where even larger differences exist.
At the core level, every single person on Earth experiences the sacred, and life, differently, for we are all different. Some of those differences show up in our religions and in how we express ourselves through our religions. And yet, the woman in bed 122 and I touched souls, we prayed together, experienced God together, and healed together. We CAN share our experiences of the sacred and we can do it across the boundaries of faith.
It is my belief that one of the most powerful ways we can experience the sacred together is in relation to the Earth. Like God, this planet is bigger than any of us, it is multifaceted, and we experience it in different ways. We may not be sure of whether there is one God or more, but we do know that there is only one Earth, and we know that we need it; we depend on it; we can’t get along without it.
Creation stories exist in every culture; the Earth is a connection between the Unknowable and us – the sacred becomes concrete through creation and is embodied in the physical; we need the ground upon which we walk, we need the air we breathe, and the water we drink; we relate to the physical world; we use it. And every time we do, we connect in some way to the Divine/the sacred, whether or not we allow ourselves to feel the connection. One of the ways that many of our traditions articulate the connection is through saying a blessing before we eat the physical food that has been brought forth from this physical planet.
The Earth – the Universe – in my view provides evidence that there really is only one God, for we all live on only one world. The diversity of landforms and of ecosystems dramatizes the many ways to live on this Earth. As organisms living in these varied ecosystems adapt to different environments, they make different adaptations – in essence, as our religions do, they must answer different questions. Yet all organisms are also fundamentally the same, for since there was just One creation on just One planet, all these organisms contain the same basic code of life in their DNA and RNA; they are all part of the One Sacredness, the One God, the One Whatever It Is that we all share. By corollary, they exhibit an almost seemingly infinite number of ways to be in relationship to God. And we don’t even need to call it God; atheists are spiritual, too; atheists need the Earth, too.
I have long struggled with the word God – what does it mean? What is it about? the God I hear some people speak of feels foreign to me. Before I learned that midrash, I knew the essence of what it teaches was true even if I couldn’t articulate it. I have learned to use the word God as a way to speak of something I cannot fully understand, about connections and distinction, about strength and compassion, about love and forgiveness, about getting through hard times, moving on, living life to its fullest. I have learned to use this word in order to communicate something impossible to understand, because this is the word our world and our culture use. But I know that what I mean when I say God is not exactly what you think of when you hear the word, because it is about my own personal experience.
We are all different. Our pathways to God and our experiences of God are different. And yet, they are also the same. And so, I invite you to take a moment to look out the window and meditate on the sky or the trees or the grass. I invite you to step outside and breathe the air and to remember that every other single human being in the world is breathing the same air, no matter how clean or polluted it is; I invite you to consider that every other human being is in some way worshipping the same Unknowable, no matter how different their expression of that experience may seem compared to yours, no matter if they are sacrificing animals or burning incense before images of their ancestors or covering their bodies in dark clothing from head to toe or worshipping a multiplicity of gods.
I agree with Prothero that we ignore our differences at our peril, (so do dogs – it is not a good idea for a Chihuahua to mate with a St. Bernard); not only on a global level, but also on a personal level, both in terms of our religion and also our individual personal differences, for our unwillingness to honor and celebrate our differences leads inevitably to fights and disagreements in our own homes and in our own communities. It is not easy to stand in the tension of holding differences in our two hands. The deeper and the closer we become to another person or group of people, the more we find the differences, but it is also true that if we are blessed, we also find the similarities, the commonalities, the sacred connections.
We are all trying to figure out how to live in this world.
In order to do all of this, which I believe we can, we need to expand our understanding of God, of the Divine, of the sacred (which for some religions is NOT something transcendent) to concepts that are outside our traditions’ teachings; we need to think of God as something far bigger and far greater than how we normally view God. If, after all, God is infinite, then it makes sense to me that God can hold all of these ways of living in the world within the Divine Self.
I am not a scholar – I have not read extensively on other religions. I speak out of my own experience of bridging the gap between the religions. I speak of my own understanding of my experience of the natural world and my knowledge that each and every one of us walks upon the same Earth.
I learned recently from a Tibetan Buddhist that Buddhists generally “pray” silently. Not long afterward, I visited a Buddhist patient. I put my recent learning to use in my visit, praying without words, which is not what I normally do, and I felt the power of the Unknown in the silence of the room that day, and so did the patient.
I visited a Catholic woman who wanted communion. I couldn’t offer communion in the traditional sense, but when I learned from her stories how much it meant to her to lie in an open field and gaze at the sky, I took from by bag a stone I’d picked up at the beach and gave it to her. She seized it and bonded with it. I had given her a different kind of communion.
No, there is NOT one God, but Yes, there is one humanness, and there is prayer, and there is silence, and there are stones, and it is through these that we know that YES, there is just one God – One Source of the breath of all flesh.
Ken yehi ratzon.
May it be so.
*Information about patients has been altered to protect their privacy.
Rabbi Katy Z. Allen
(originally posted June 30, 2010)
In this week’s Torah portion, God tells Moses that he should take a look at the land God has promised to the Israelites – land that he, Moses, (because he will soon die) will never walk upon. In this passage, Moses addresses God as “the Source of the Breath of all flesh.” God then chooses a new leader to bring the people into that land.
“The Source of the Breath of all flesh.” All flesh – every living breathing being.
As a hospital chaplain, I cover a general medical floor, where I visit all the patients on the floor, no matter what their religion, dropping in to see how they are doing. Recently, I met a Christian woman*, her two brothers, and her husband. The woman was upbeat and cheerful. She told me briefly about her battle with illness and her concern for the future. I then asked, as I always do, if she would like me to say a prayer for her. She voiced what I often hear when I visit with Christian patients, but she spoke much more vehemently and animatedly than most people do. “There’s only one God,” she said. “Just one. I don’t care if people say no, to me, there is just one God.” When I completed the prayer, the patient and her brothers were effusive in their thanks. “Thank you, thank you. You are doing God’s work – it is so important. God bless you. God bless you.” The woman had a strong accent, and I didn't understand everything she said, but I understood the most important part of it.
Before I had entered that room, I had been upset about an incident in which I was NOT being either appreciated or understood. As this woman thanked me so profusely, the pain of that encounter washed away. These people got it. They understood what my work was all about. They understood in a profound way the essence, the importance, and the meaning of why I was there and what I was doing.
Recently, I finished reading Stephen Prothero’s book, Not One God. Prothero, a prolific writer and a professor of religion at Boston University makes a claim that the woman in bed 122 would not have accepted at all; he believes that the statement she made, that there is only one God, is a panacea, wishful thinking, naïve, and on the surface. He also claims that it can be dangerous to think this way when we look at today’s shrinking world. He gives an overview of eight major religions – the ones he considers most important – and he explains why they are important and what good they have brought into the world and what bad they have brought into the world -- something he describes all our religions as sharing, and Prothero admonishes that we are dishonest with ourselves if we deny it.
Prothero’s premise is that the fundamental differences among religions result from the fact that each religion is answering a different question and thus it approaches G!d and the world differently. He explains, for example, that Islam is dealing with the issue of pride, and the answer is submission, that Christianity is concerned with the question of sin, for which the solution is salvation, and that Judaism is dealing with exile, the answer to which is return to God. It is an interesting approach, and helpful, I believe, in recognizing the roots of our differences.
I would like to suggest, however, a slightly different approach, one that is articulated in a midrash – interpretation – about the Amidah prayer, a central prayer of the daily services. The prayer, begins, Blessed are you Lord our God and God of our ancestors, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob. In this ancient text, the rabbis ask the question, Why doesn’t the prayer simply say God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Wouldn’t it be much simpler this way? The rabbis’ answer is that the God of Abraham is not the same as the God of Isaac or the God of Jacob; every person finds his or her own path to God and experiences God in a different way; for every person, the pathway to God is different – and in essence, God is different.
Here we see that within a single religion, Judaism, tradition teaches that each of us experiences God differently, because we are different people, because, I believe, we experience life differently. And if this is true within one religion – which, like every other major religion, contains subgroups with different views of God and life, and therefore different experiences of God and life – how much MORE true this must be between our religions, where even larger differences exist.
At the core level, every single person on Earth experiences the sacred, and life, differently, for we are all different. Some of those differences show up in our religions and in how we express ourselves through our religions. And yet, the woman in bed 122 and I touched souls, we prayed together, experienced God together, and healed together. We CAN share our experiences of the sacred and we can do it across the boundaries of faith.
It is my belief that one of the most powerful ways we can experience the sacred together is in relation to the Earth. Like God, this planet is bigger than any of us, it is multifaceted, and we experience it in different ways. We may not be sure of whether there is one God or more, but we do know that there is only one Earth, and we know that we need it; we depend on it; we can’t get along without it.
Creation stories exist in every culture; the Earth is a connection between the Unknowable and us – the sacred becomes concrete through creation and is embodied in the physical; we need the ground upon which we walk, we need the air we breathe, and the water we drink; we relate to the physical world; we use it. And every time we do, we connect in some way to the Divine/the sacred, whether or not we allow ourselves to feel the connection. One of the ways that many of our traditions articulate the connection is through saying a blessing before we eat the physical food that has been brought forth from this physical planet.
The Earth – the Universe – in my view provides evidence that there really is only one God, for we all live on only one world. The diversity of landforms and of ecosystems dramatizes the many ways to live on this Earth. As organisms living in these varied ecosystems adapt to different environments, they make different adaptations – in essence, as our religions do, they must answer different questions. Yet all organisms are also fundamentally the same, for since there was just One creation on just One planet, all these organisms contain the same basic code of life in their DNA and RNA; they are all part of the One Sacredness, the One God, the One Whatever It Is that we all share. By corollary, they exhibit an almost seemingly infinite number of ways to be in relationship to God. And we don’t even need to call it God; atheists are spiritual, too; atheists need the Earth, too.
I have long struggled with the word God – what does it mean? What is it about? the God I hear some people speak of feels foreign to me. Before I learned that midrash, I knew the essence of what it teaches was true even if I couldn’t articulate it. I have learned to use the word God as a way to speak of something I cannot fully understand, about connections and distinction, about strength and compassion, about love and forgiveness, about getting through hard times, moving on, living life to its fullest. I have learned to use this word in order to communicate something impossible to understand, because this is the word our world and our culture use. But I know that what I mean when I say God is not exactly what you think of when you hear the word, because it is about my own personal experience.
We are all different. Our pathways to God and our experiences of God are different. And yet, they are also the same. And so, I invite you to take a moment to look out the window and meditate on the sky or the trees or the grass. I invite you to step outside and breathe the air and to remember that every other single human being in the world is breathing the same air, no matter how clean or polluted it is; I invite you to consider that every other human being is in some way worshipping the same Unknowable, no matter how different their expression of that experience may seem compared to yours, no matter if they are sacrificing animals or burning incense before images of their ancestors or covering their bodies in dark clothing from head to toe or worshipping a multiplicity of gods.
I agree with Prothero that we ignore our differences at our peril, (so do dogs – it is not a good idea for a Chihuahua to mate with a St. Bernard); not only on a global level, but also on a personal level, both in terms of our religion and also our individual personal differences, for our unwillingness to honor and celebrate our differences leads inevitably to fights and disagreements in our own homes and in our own communities. It is not easy to stand in the tension of holding differences in our two hands. The deeper and the closer we become to another person or group of people, the more we find the differences, but it is also true that if we are blessed, we also find the similarities, the commonalities, the sacred connections.
We are all trying to figure out how to live in this world.
In order to do all of this, which I believe we can, we need to expand our understanding of God, of the Divine, of the sacred (which for some religions is NOT something transcendent) to concepts that are outside our traditions’ teachings; we need to think of God as something far bigger and far greater than how we normally view God. If, after all, God is infinite, then it makes sense to me that God can hold all of these ways of living in the world within the Divine Self.
I am not a scholar – I have not read extensively on other religions. I speak out of my own experience of bridging the gap between the religions. I speak of my own understanding of my experience of the natural world and my knowledge that each and every one of us walks upon the same Earth.
I learned recently from a Tibetan Buddhist that Buddhists generally “pray” silently. Not long afterward, I visited a Buddhist patient. I put my recent learning to use in my visit, praying without words, which is not what I normally do, and I felt the power of the Unknown in the silence of the room that day, and so did the patient.
I visited a Catholic woman who wanted communion. I couldn’t offer communion in the traditional sense, but when I learned from her stories how much it meant to her to lie in an open field and gaze at the sky, I took from by bag a stone I’d picked up at the beach and gave it to her. She seized it and bonded with it. I had given her a different kind of communion.
No, there is NOT one God, but Yes, there is one humanness, and there is prayer, and there is silence, and there are stones, and it is through these that we know that YES, there is just one God – One Source of the breath of all flesh.
Ken yehi ratzon.
May it be so.
*Information about patients has been altered to protect their privacy.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Parashat Bamidbar
A Bright Yellow Angel
by Rabbi Katy Z. Allen
The bright yellow bird caught my eye as I bicycled along. It was lying by the side of the road, dead. I pedaled past, but my heart stayed with the bird. I stopped, got off my bike, and walked back. The colorful bird was dead, but it had touched my heart. I needed to honor it, to take a moment to “turn aside” (Ex. 3.3) and look at it. I needed to acknowledge as something out of the ordinary this bird that I had never seen before.
For a number of months during the past year, I had seen one after another of unusual or uncommon birds, or common birds in unusual places, and each and every one of them had touched me somewhere deep inside. The sudden flash of bright blue of an indigo bunting, the appearance of an evening grosbeak outside my window, the stately posture of a blue heron at the edge of the Muddy River in the heart of the Boston medical area – these and many other birds had helped me open my heart, they had brought a touch of the Divine into the depths of my soul. I had started calling birds angels.
Angels have been a part of Jewish tradition since Biblical times. Angels can be considered the personification of the Divine Will [1]. Our task in life is to let goodness, to let the Divine into our hearts, and walking with the ministering angels – like those we sing about as we welcome the Sabbath – can help bring goodness and the Divine into our lives. Each new angel takes us one more step toward goodness, and then – like a quick-winged bird – it disappears. [2]
Each of the birds I saw flitted into my sphere of vision, and my life, and then flitted out again. Each was alive – G!d’s creation in full living color, darting from here to there, in and out of my life, bringing deep into my heart a bit of G!d’s powerful creative energy and the gift to love and to live. The archangel Gabriel “exhorts us to ‘stand up and live,’” and so, too, did each of these birds. [3]
But those birds had been alive. This one was not. It was dead.
Just as we honor our own dead, I felt a need to honor this bird that was dead.
At the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, Bamidbar, G!d instructs Moses to count the people. (Num. 1:1-2) The medieval commentator Rashi says that the census-taking did not occur just once, but that G!d “counts [the Israelites] all the time;” he counts them because their numbers keep changing; he counts them “because they are precious.”
G!d counted the Israelites, and we count birds. The Great Backyard Bird Count takes place in February. The Christmas Bird Count runs from mid-December to early January. Local bird counts happen on other dates. We count birds all the time. Their numbers keep changing. And birds are precious.
How do I understand my experience of the dead yellow bird by the side of the road? Angels disappear. I can see this bird in many ways, but to allow it, even in death, to be an angel and to continue to bring goodness into my life, I must make the decision in my heart to see it as goodness, even though it is no longer alive.
And so it was that I stopped. I let the bright yellow features of this bird enter my heart and my soul. I gently pushed the bird away from the road and into the spring grasses. I trust that while it was alive, its flash of yellow brought Divine goodness into someone’s heart. I trust that it was an angel when it was alive. I trust, too, that even if no human eyes ever saw it while it was alive, it nevertheless brought meaning to the universe, for this bright colorful warbler – like every other bird of any color, like every panda bear, elephant, and giraffe, like every mosquito, fly, and worm, like every ameba, alga, and virus, like every single thing in the natural world, is part of sacred creation and is holy. And so I stopped, I thought of angels, and I was touched and strengthened.
I rode by the same spot again the next day. Whether due to my declining vision, the nature of angels, or the cyclical nature of the web of life, I did not see the yellow bird. But it is not gone. I feel it still in my heart. It, too, was an angel.
[1]A Gathering of Angels, by Morris B. Margolies, p. 136.
[2] Ibid.. p. 135.
[3] Ibid., p. 90-91.
by Rabbi Katy Z. Allen
The bright yellow bird caught my eye as I bicycled along. It was lying by the side of the road, dead. I pedaled past, but my heart stayed with the bird. I stopped, got off my bike, and walked back. The colorful bird was dead, but it had touched my heart. I needed to honor it, to take a moment to “turn aside” (Ex. 3.3) and look at it. I needed to acknowledge as something out of the ordinary this bird that I had never seen before.
For a number of months during the past year, I had seen one after another of unusual or uncommon birds, or common birds in unusual places, and each and every one of them had touched me somewhere deep inside. The sudden flash of bright blue of an indigo bunting, the appearance of an evening grosbeak outside my window, the stately posture of a blue heron at the edge of the Muddy River in the heart of the Boston medical area – these and many other birds had helped me open my heart, they had brought a touch of the Divine into the depths of my soul. I had started calling birds angels.
Angels have been a part of Jewish tradition since Biblical times. Angels can be considered the personification of the Divine Will [1]. Our task in life is to let goodness, to let the Divine into our hearts, and walking with the ministering angels – like those we sing about as we welcome the Sabbath – can help bring goodness and the Divine into our lives. Each new angel takes us one more step toward goodness, and then – like a quick-winged bird – it disappears. [2]
Each of the birds I saw flitted into my sphere of vision, and my life, and then flitted out again. Each was alive – G!d’s creation in full living color, darting from here to there, in and out of my life, bringing deep into my heart a bit of G!d’s powerful creative energy and the gift to love and to live. The archangel Gabriel “exhorts us to ‘stand up and live,’” and so, too, did each of these birds. [3]
But those birds had been alive. This one was not. It was dead.
Just as we honor our own dead, I felt a need to honor this bird that was dead.
At the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, Bamidbar, G!d instructs Moses to count the people. (Num. 1:1-2) The medieval commentator Rashi says that the census-taking did not occur just once, but that G!d “counts [the Israelites] all the time;” he counts them because their numbers keep changing; he counts them “because they are precious.”
G!d counted the Israelites, and we count birds. The Great Backyard Bird Count takes place in February. The Christmas Bird Count runs from mid-December to early January. Local bird counts happen on other dates. We count birds all the time. Their numbers keep changing. And birds are precious.
How do I understand my experience of the dead yellow bird by the side of the road? Angels disappear. I can see this bird in many ways, but to allow it, even in death, to be an angel and to continue to bring goodness into my life, I must make the decision in my heart to see it as goodness, even though it is no longer alive.
And so it was that I stopped. I let the bright yellow features of this bird enter my heart and my soul. I gently pushed the bird away from the road and into the spring grasses. I trust that while it was alive, its flash of yellow brought Divine goodness into someone’s heart. I trust that it was an angel when it was alive. I trust, too, that even if no human eyes ever saw it while it was alive, it nevertheless brought meaning to the universe, for this bright colorful warbler – like every other bird of any color, like every panda bear, elephant, and giraffe, like every mosquito, fly, and worm, like every ameba, alga, and virus, like every single thing in the natural world, is part of sacred creation and is holy. And so I stopped, I thought of angels, and I was touched and strengthened.
I rode by the same spot again the next day. Whether due to my declining vision, the nature of angels, or the cyclical nature of the web of life, I did not see the yellow bird. But it is not gone. I feel it still in my heart. It, too, was an angel.
[1]A Gathering of Angels, by Morris B. Margolies, p. 136.
[2] Ibid.. p. 135.
[3] Ibid., p. 90-91.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Parashat Sh’mini
Silence
by Rabbi Katy Z. Allen
Aaron’s sons break G!d’s rules, offering alien, unrequested fire. Fire shoots forth from G!d and consumes them. Moses says to his brother, “This is what the Lord meant when He said, ‘Through those near to Me I show myself holy, and gain glory before all the people.’ And Aaron was silent.” (Lev. 10.3)
G!d shows the Divine self to be holy through those who come closest to that Presence, and when G!d’s rules are flouted, in particular by those closest to G!d, G!d shows the Divine power in response, and everyone witnesses the Authority of the Unnamable.
In the face of this Authority, as his sons lie dead before him, Aaron is silent.
Silence.
Silence holds sacred our deepest feelings…our deepest despair…our deepest sadness…our deepest prayers…our deepest love…our deepest joy…
Aaron is silent. G!d has spoken through deed.
Today, the Earth speaks through deeds. It speaks with rains and floods. It speaks with hot summer days in April. It speaks with nodding jonquils. It speaks with hurricanes and fires and blizzards and droughts and lovely spring days and pristine snow-covered mountaintops and so much more.
In the face of the voice of the Earth speaking through deed, I am silent.
I have tried to speak, crying out about my beloved, the Earth. But my voice is not heard. It is too loud. It is too soft. It is too many. It is too alone.
I can cry no longer. My heart cannot hold the pain. My heart yearns for peace and tranquility, even in the face of storms and open wounds, even in the face of death and destruction.
I can no longer cry. My heart must rest.
The Earth is changing. Its seas and its atmosphere are warming. Its air and its rivers are ever-more poisoned. Its oceans are filling with human debris. Its deserts are expanding. Its biodiversity is dropping.
The Earth is changing.
The Earth we have known is dying.
I no longer can cry.
Like Aaron, I am silent.
I mourn.
I love.
And I accept.
“Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” (Ps. 30:5)
In the morning I find joy. I find peace. I find new purpose. I find a new voice, not too loud and not too soft. No longer am I too many or alone. I am together, with myself, with the One, with All.
“Adonai spoke to Aaron….‛you must distinguish between the sacred and the profane…”’ (Ex. 10:8-10)
I accept, and, amidst the dying, my heart distinguishes sacred from profane; my heart finds peace.
May it be so – for us, and not for the Earth.
© 2010 by Katy Z. Allen
by Rabbi Katy Z. Allen
Aaron’s sons break G!d’s rules, offering alien, unrequested fire. Fire shoots forth from G!d and consumes them. Moses says to his brother, “This is what the Lord meant when He said, ‘Through those near to Me I show myself holy, and gain glory before all the people.’ And Aaron was silent.” (Lev. 10.3)
G!d shows the Divine self to be holy through those who come closest to that Presence, and when G!d’s rules are flouted, in particular by those closest to G!d, G!d shows the Divine power in response, and everyone witnesses the Authority of the Unnamable.
In the face of this Authority, as his sons lie dead before him, Aaron is silent.
Silence.
Silence holds sacred our deepest feelings…our deepest despair…our deepest sadness…our deepest prayers…our deepest love…our deepest joy…
Aaron is silent. G!d has spoken through deed.
Today, the Earth speaks through deeds. It speaks with rains and floods. It speaks with hot summer days in April. It speaks with nodding jonquils. It speaks with hurricanes and fires and blizzards and droughts and lovely spring days and pristine snow-covered mountaintops and so much more.
In the face of the voice of the Earth speaking through deed, I am silent.
I have tried to speak, crying out about my beloved, the Earth. But my voice is not heard. It is too loud. It is too soft. It is too many. It is too alone.
I can cry no longer. My heart cannot hold the pain. My heart yearns for peace and tranquility, even in the face of storms and open wounds, even in the face of death and destruction.
I can no longer cry. My heart must rest.
The Earth is changing. Its seas and its atmosphere are warming. Its air and its rivers are ever-more poisoned. Its oceans are filling with human debris. Its deserts are expanding. Its biodiversity is dropping.
The Earth is changing.
The Earth we have known is dying.
I no longer can cry.
Like Aaron, I am silent.
I mourn.
I love.
And I accept.
“Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” (Ps. 30:5)
In the morning I find joy. I find peace. I find new purpose. I find a new voice, not too loud and not too soft. No longer am I too many or alone. I am together, with myself, with the One, with All.
“Adonai spoke to Aaron….‛you must distinguish between the sacred and the profane…”’ (Ex. 10:8-10)
I accept, and, amidst the dying, my heart distinguishes sacred from profane; my heart finds peace.
May it be so – for us, and not for the Earth.
© 2010 by Katy Z. Allen
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Plagues Then and Now
D’var Earth for Shabbat Hagadol before Passover
by Joel Davidson
The haftarah recited the Sabbath before the beginning of Passover, the Festival that celebrates the beginning of the new year of spring and also of our liberation from Egyptian bondage, comes from the prophet Malachi. In this passage from Malachi, which bears a resemblance to the ten plagues which the Lord visited upon Egypt and thus to the story of Passover, we see signs the plagues here are abating because the Almighty will cause them to abate. “And I will rebuke the devourer for your good, And he shall not destroy the fruits of your land; Neither shall your vine cast its fruit before the time in the field.” (Malachi III, v. 11) For G-d says that he will not destroy the good things that come from the earth. That is important, for we must have food to eat if we are to survive; we cannot easily survive a famine. Later on in the haftarah, Malachi talks about another plague - the destruction of the plants of the earth by fire. Malachi seems to be unable to make up his mind whether he will save the children of men by preserving the harvest or whether he will destroy the earth such that it will “leave them neither root nor branch.” (Malachi III, v. 19) And yet G-d seems to say here that the wicked “shall be ashes under the soles of your feet.” Malachi, III, v. 21.
If the earth does not function properly for us as it should, then many bad things can happen to us. The plagues of locusts devoured the food in Egypt’s Nile River delta and brought famine in its wake. Forest fires and raging fires out West and in California can imperil people’s lives, forcing them to abandon their homes in times of distress. The earth is so important to us and serves as our mother from which we sprang. Without proper food or sustenance we cannot survive nor can we survive when food or shelter are destroyed by fires.
T.S. Eliot once said that he didn’t know if the world would end with a bang or a whimper (T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets) and Robert Frost said, “Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I‘ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To know that for destruction ice is also great and would suffice.” (Robert Frost, Miscellaneous Poems, Fire and Ice) The passage in Malachi refers to the destruction of the earth by fire. What about destruction of the earth by ice, such as with another ice age or by flooding? Wouldn’t that be a terrible catastrophe for us all as well? Look at the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile - they are another kind of destruction.
This Haftarah on Shabbat Hagadol before Pesach is a reminder of the terrible discomforts that the Egyptians endured when the Almighty visited plagues upon them. The devourer in the Passover story must surely be the locusts that descended upon the land of Egypt and ate everything in sight. And yet this passage in Malachi also seems to be saying that the Lord will punish the wicked by destroying them root and branch and that he will not bring a plague or plagues onto the world such as he did when the Egyptians refused to grant the Israelites their freedom.
As we approach the season of the greening of the Earth, we would do well to remember that we are dependent on Mother Earth for our sustenance and that we must not do anything to upset the balance of nature. Easier said than done, with the coming catastrophe of global warming with its concomitant freakish storms and precipitation of rain and snow in unexpected places. If it’s not too late to repent, perhaps we can fix the Earth in a way that allows us to continue to thrive on the fragile outer shell of our planet. However, with polar icecaps melting, threatening the habitat of the polar bears and with prospect of flooding and freakish weather, how can we longer survive in an environment which we are slowly poisoning, thus sealing our own doom?
Spring is a wonderful time of year. May the Almighty give us many more pleasant springs and summer and gladden our lives with the abundance which comes from the Earth and may we never know a time when Earth turns against us and refuses to allow us to survive on its soil.
Boruch Hashem Amen and Selah.
© Joel Davidson, March 2010
by Joel Davidson
The haftarah recited the Sabbath before the beginning of Passover, the Festival that celebrates the beginning of the new year of spring and also of our liberation from Egyptian bondage, comes from the prophet Malachi. In this passage from Malachi, which bears a resemblance to the ten plagues which the Lord visited upon Egypt and thus to the story of Passover, we see signs the plagues here are abating because the Almighty will cause them to abate. “And I will rebuke the devourer for your good, And he shall not destroy the fruits of your land; Neither shall your vine cast its fruit before the time in the field.” (Malachi III, v. 11) For G-d says that he will not destroy the good things that come from the earth. That is important, for we must have food to eat if we are to survive; we cannot easily survive a famine. Later on in the haftarah, Malachi talks about another plague - the destruction of the plants of the earth by fire. Malachi seems to be unable to make up his mind whether he will save the children of men by preserving the harvest or whether he will destroy the earth such that it will “leave them neither root nor branch.” (Malachi III, v. 19) And yet G-d seems to say here that the wicked “shall be ashes under the soles of your feet.” Malachi, III, v. 21.
If the earth does not function properly for us as it should, then many bad things can happen to us. The plagues of locusts devoured the food in Egypt’s Nile River delta and brought famine in its wake. Forest fires and raging fires out West and in California can imperil people’s lives, forcing them to abandon their homes in times of distress. The earth is so important to us and serves as our mother from which we sprang. Without proper food or sustenance we cannot survive nor can we survive when food or shelter are destroyed by fires.
T.S. Eliot once said that he didn’t know if the world would end with a bang or a whimper (T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets) and Robert Frost said, “Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I‘ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To know that for destruction ice is also great and would suffice.” (Robert Frost, Miscellaneous Poems, Fire and Ice) The passage in Malachi refers to the destruction of the earth by fire. What about destruction of the earth by ice, such as with another ice age or by flooding? Wouldn’t that be a terrible catastrophe for us all as well? Look at the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile - they are another kind of destruction.
This Haftarah on Shabbat Hagadol before Pesach is a reminder of the terrible discomforts that the Egyptians endured when the Almighty visited plagues upon them. The devourer in the Passover story must surely be the locusts that descended upon the land of Egypt and ate everything in sight. And yet this passage in Malachi also seems to be saying that the Lord will punish the wicked by destroying them root and branch and that he will not bring a plague or plagues onto the world such as he did when the Egyptians refused to grant the Israelites their freedom.
As we approach the season of the greening of the Earth, we would do well to remember that we are dependent on Mother Earth for our sustenance and that we must not do anything to upset the balance of nature. Easier said than done, with the coming catastrophe of global warming with its concomitant freakish storms and precipitation of rain and snow in unexpected places. If it’s not too late to repent, perhaps we can fix the Earth in a way that allows us to continue to thrive on the fragile outer shell of our planet. However, with polar icecaps melting, threatening the habitat of the polar bears and with prospect of flooding and freakish weather, how can we longer survive in an environment which we are slowly poisoning, thus sealing our own doom?
Spring is a wonderful time of year. May the Almighty give us many more pleasant springs and summer and gladden our lives with the abundance which comes from the Earth and may we never know a time when Earth turns against us and refuses to allow us to survive on its soil.
Boruch Hashem Amen and Selah.
© Joel Davidson, March 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Shabbat Parashat Vayakheil-Pekudei and Shabbat HaHodesh
27 Adar 5770 / March 13, 2010 - Rabbi/Cantor Anne Heath
Torah Reading:
Exodus 35:1 - 40:38
Shabbat HaHodesh Maftir Reading:
Exodus 12:1-20
Shabbat HaHodesh Haftarah Reading:
Ezekiel 45:16-25 (many read through 46:15 or 46:18)
Related Texts:
1 Kings 7:51 - 8:30, 1 Chronicles 29:1-19
We find ourselves this week concluding the reading of the Book of Exodus and what a conclusion it is. The complaining, backsliding, worshipping of the golden calf Israelites can only be faulted this week for being too generous!
God's desire to relocate from atop Mt. Sinai in order to be a continual presence among the people causes God to command (Ex 25:8) "Let them (the Israelite people) make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them." Having given Moses the plans for this sanctuary in earlier Torah portions, the work of its building comes to fruition in this week's reading.
Commanding that only freely-given offerings towards the building of the sanctuary be given (Ex 35:5), the people continue to bring donations until more than is needed has been brought. The artisans ask Moses for some relief. Moses pronounces, "let no man or woman make further effort toward gifts for the sanctuary." The donations cease and the work continues.
Contributing too much? Why? Perhaps the people sought to curry favor with their gifts as they might have observed in Egypt, their recent home and long-time cultural experience. Perhaps their hearts overflowed with gratitude that God hadn't abandoned them after the grievous sin of the golden calf. Or, perhaps, having begun, they just didn't know when to stop, and someone, here the artisans, had to say, "enough!"
Let's take the standard three-R's of environmental action - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - and consider Reduce as our link to this week's Torah portion. As we do so we need to visit a related biblical text from another, though, closely related event. Listen to the words of King Solomon at the completion of God's sanctuary in Jerusalem:
"Who am I and who are my people that we should have the means to make such a freewill offering: but all is from You and it is Your gift that we have given to You. For we are sojourners with You, mere transients like our fathers; our days on earth are like a shadow, with nothing in prospect. O Lord our God, all this great mass that we have laid aside to build You a house for Your holy is from You, and it is all Yours." (1 Chronicles 29:14-16)
Gifts given with willing hearts are not a transfer of our own possessions but an awareness and a recognition that from the vast store of God's creation entrusted to us we set aside this portion consciously for that which is needed for the task - in our Torah portion's case - for the building of God's sanctuary. Even for such a sacred task, we are to set aside just enough, and no more. All the more so must we consciously set aside "just enough and no more" for the ordinary building carried out in our lives.
Reuse and Recycle are the steps to take when you can Reduce no further, when you must deal with what's next for what you used in the first place and it can no longer serve its original purpose.
Reduce comes first. Rabbi Lawrence Troster in his "Ten Jewish Teachings on Judaism and Environmentalism" (on www.coejl.org and other places online) reminds us that Judaism prohibits the wasteful consumption of anything.
In our lives the locus of much wasteful consumption can occur in the building and decorating of our homes. We rightfully worry about the impact on God's creation. Perhaps we might more rightfully worry about the impact on ourselves, a core aspect of God's creation. Hear Kahlil Gibran from "Houses" in The Prophet speak to this very concern:
What have you in these houses? And what is it you guard with fastened doors?
Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power?
Have you remembrances, the glimmering arches that span the summits of the mind?
Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain?
Tell me, have you these in your houses?
Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and becomes a host, and then a master?
Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires.
Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron.
It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of the flesh. It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like fragile vessels.
Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.
Our ancestors overdid it. We overdo it. Can we be the artisans who say "enough"? Can we be the Moses who pronounces "give no further"? Can we be like the prophet Isaiah who responded "Here I am, send me" to the "voice of the Lord" in the courts of God's sanctuary which asked "Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?" (Isaiah 6:8).
Can we find, develop and nurture a willingness that will not pass "beyond enough"? Can we focus much more on Reduce such that we can reduce the need to Reuse and Recycle? If not now, when?
Rabbi/Cantor Anne Heath, the spiritual leader (since 2003) of Congregation Agudath Achim and the Jewish Community House, a 100-year old progressive, independent congregation in the heart of Taunton, MA, received rabbinic ordination from The Academy for Jewish Religion (NY) and is a member of the Association of Rabbis and Cantors, the American Conference of Cantors, the Cantors Assembly, and both the Massachusetts and Rhode Island Boards of Rabbis.
©Rabbi/Cantor Anne Heath
27 Adar 5770 / March 13, 2010 - Rabbi/Cantor Anne Heath
Torah Reading:
Exodus 35:1 - 40:38
Shabbat HaHodesh Maftir Reading:
Exodus 12:1-20
Shabbat HaHodesh Haftarah Reading:
Ezekiel 45:16-25 (many read through 46:15 or 46:18)
Related Texts:
1 Kings 7:51 - 8:30, 1 Chronicles 29:1-19
We find ourselves this week concluding the reading of the Book of Exodus and what a conclusion it is. The complaining, backsliding, worshipping of the golden calf Israelites can only be faulted this week for being too generous!
God's desire to relocate from atop Mt. Sinai in order to be a continual presence among the people causes God to command (Ex 25:8) "Let them (the Israelite people) make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them." Having given Moses the plans for this sanctuary in earlier Torah portions, the work of its building comes to fruition in this week's reading.
Commanding that only freely-given offerings towards the building of the sanctuary be given (Ex 35:5), the people continue to bring donations until more than is needed has been brought. The artisans ask Moses for some relief. Moses pronounces, "let no man or woman make further effort toward gifts for the sanctuary." The donations cease and the work continues.
Contributing too much? Why? Perhaps the people sought to curry favor with their gifts as they might have observed in Egypt, their recent home and long-time cultural experience. Perhaps their hearts overflowed with gratitude that God hadn't abandoned them after the grievous sin of the golden calf. Or, perhaps, having begun, they just didn't know when to stop, and someone, here the artisans, had to say, "enough!"
Let's take the standard three-R's of environmental action - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - and consider Reduce as our link to this week's Torah portion. As we do so we need to visit a related biblical text from another, though, closely related event. Listen to the words of King Solomon at the completion of God's sanctuary in Jerusalem:
"Who am I and who are my people that we should have the means to make such a freewill offering: but all is from You and it is Your gift that we have given to You. For we are sojourners with You, mere transients like our fathers; our days on earth are like a shadow, with nothing in prospect. O Lord our God, all this great mass that we have laid aside to build You a house for Your holy is from You, and it is all Yours." (1 Chronicles 29:14-16)
Gifts given with willing hearts are not a transfer of our own possessions but an awareness and a recognition that from the vast store of God's creation entrusted to us we set aside this portion consciously for that which is needed for the task - in our Torah portion's case - for the building of God's sanctuary. Even for such a sacred task, we are to set aside just enough, and no more. All the more so must we consciously set aside "just enough and no more" for the ordinary building carried out in our lives.
Reuse and Recycle are the steps to take when you can Reduce no further, when you must deal with what's next for what you used in the first place and it can no longer serve its original purpose.
Reduce comes first. Rabbi Lawrence Troster in his "Ten Jewish Teachings on Judaism and Environmentalism" (on www.coejl.org and other places online) reminds us that Judaism prohibits the wasteful consumption of anything.
In our lives the locus of much wasteful consumption can occur in the building and decorating of our homes. We rightfully worry about the impact on God's creation. Perhaps we might more rightfully worry about the impact on ourselves, a core aspect of God's creation. Hear Kahlil Gibran from "Houses" in The Prophet speak to this very concern:
What have you in these houses? And what is it you guard with fastened doors?
Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power?
Have you remembrances, the glimmering arches that span the summits of the mind?
Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain?
Tell me, have you these in your houses?
Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and becomes a host, and then a master?
Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires.
Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron.
It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of the flesh. It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like fragile vessels.
Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.
Our ancestors overdid it. We overdo it. Can we be the artisans who say "enough"? Can we be the Moses who pronounces "give no further"? Can we be like the prophet Isaiah who responded "Here I am, send me" to the "voice of the Lord" in the courts of God's sanctuary which asked "Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?" (Isaiah 6:8).
Can we find, develop and nurture a willingness that will not pass "beyond enough"? Can we focus much more on Reduce such that we can reduce the need to Reuse and Recycle? If not now, when?
Rabbi/Cantor Anne Heath, the spiritual leader (since 2003) of Congregation Agudath Achim and the Jewish Community House, a 100-year old progressive, independent congregation in the heart of Taunton, MA, received rabbinic ordination from The Academy for Jewish Religion (NY) and is a member of the Association of Rabbis and Cantors, the American Conference of Cantors, the Cantors Assembly, and both the Massachusetts and Rhode Island Boards of Rabbis.
©Rabbi/Cantor Anne Heath
Friday, March 5, 2010
how radiant the longed for water
by Lisa Greber
‘When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron and said to him, "Come, make us a god who shall go before us, for that man Moses, who brought us from the land of Egypt — we do not know what has happened to him."’ (Ex. 32.1)
What has happened to Moses? say the people. Where is this God he has promised us? Where is this God we are seeking, that we so desperately long to have with us? We long for God so much we will build God here ourselves, at some personal cost, out of our own gold. This, we learn later, is a sin. What is a sin? The Buddhists say: a sin is a source of suffering. We have been taught to call this particular sort of suffering idolatry: the confusion of an aspect of the divine with the Divine itself.
The Israelites are wandering in the desert, out of the old place and not yet in the new. Who among us has not been there? It is a shaky time, when you are between gods. This is when I myself like to fall in love with the wrong people, who perhaps embody for me something of the old and something of the new. Idolatry here means to see only a person’s true divine perfection, and not their co-existing humanity: their love of moussaka and red wine; their diligence with spreadsheets perhaps or embroidery; their inexplicable absences; their sudden rage; the frailty of their hands early in the morning when their joints are stiff from sleep.
I see, says the Lord, viewing the dancing around the golden calf, that this is a stiffnecked people. […] let Me be, that My anger may blaze forth against them and that I may destroy them, and make of you a great nation." (Ex. 32.9-10) Moses, in his own stubbornness for righteousness, pleads for his people’s lives, and the Lord renounces the punishment. But Moses, on returning to camp, does not renounce his own. He forces the Israelites to drink the ground powder of the golden calf. "Whoever is for the Lord, come here!" he then calls; he insists those who gather slay brother, neighbor, and kin who have not rallied to him. (Ex. 32.26-27)
Three thousand people fall, on the sand, between the old place and the new.
This falling may be the bloody cost of a civil war for control of the new Israelite nation. But I am reading it here metaphorically, remembering the times when I have murdered the internal parts of me dancing in front of a golden calf, in anger that they were not following the rules I had carved into my stone tablet, instead of listening to their longing and gently offering them a perhaps more skillful route to God.
Moses, too, is longing for God, even in the midst of their conversation: "Oh, let me behold Your Presence!" (Ex. 33.13) But no one can see God’s face and live. God shelters Moses in a cleft in a rock, shields him with God’s hand till God has passed by so Moses can see God’s back. Moses will reflect even this glimpse of radiance with his own, though unawares. Moses was not aware that the skin of his face was radiant, since he had spoken with Him. (Ex. 34.29)
Idolatry for me then arises in the midst of paradox – of our longing for a lived connection with the divine, here in the finite, which we must not mistake for the whole, lest we cause harm, and of the impossibility of viewing the Divine in God’s entirety, lest we die. It becomes more of a koan for me than a sin, more an ongoing effort for balance. Balancing my love for my particular beach – the resident great blue heron, the bent grasses of the winter salt marsh, the muddy boardwalk – with the knowledge its water comes also from the larger bay, which in turn reaches out to the sea beyond. Balancing my love for any particular person - the thinness of their arms, even if sinewy, their dislike of sweets, their ferocious vulnerability – with the needs of their work and my own, with the needs of the larger community, with the sacredness of a stranger’s face. Balancing my love for a particular tradition, with the knowledge that others are equally gifts to those who love and practice them.
Idolatry holds another paradox for those of us who are environmentalists. In my work with people from various traditions, I am sometimes asked: is love for the earth itself idolatrous? This view can cut us from the sacred that is in fact present in our finite lives. The heron has grey feathers running to black, a fluff of eyelashes, the thinnest possible legs. Maroon anemones, smaller than my fingernail, embed themselves in the packed mud in the center of the salt marsh. Sanderlings make a net of the incoming tide, herd minnows into the shallows for easy feeding. The tide can be counted on to follow the moon. The divine is here, in the salt water seeping through my jeans when I pray on the sand, in the bite of snow, in the ever present hope of green. On the sand I remember God saw that it was good, perhaps permission or suggestion that we may do likewise. (Gen. 1.12)
Aaron and all the Israelites saw that the skin of Moses' face was radiant; and they shrank from coming near him. (Ex. 34.35) If the radiance of God means to fear punishment for our little loves, the times we have danced around a golden calf and forgotten the calf’s connection to the larger world of soil, grass, sunlight, and its mother’s milk, it is no wonder we would shrink from Moses’ face. If it means we must deny our natural gratitude for gravity or the taste of rain, it prevents us from honoring the small sacredness of our human lives. But perhaps instead we might think of Moses’ radiance descending the mountain as a reminder to bring as much of the presence of the divine as we can bear to our finite dancing selves who so long for it. We are not alone, we can remind ourselves, even in the desert there is the radiance of longed for water and of each and every grain of sand.
‘When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron and said to him, "Come, make us a god who shall go before us, for that man Moses, who brought us from the land of Egypt — we do not know what has happened to him."’ (Ex. 32.1)
What has happened to Moses? say the people. Where is this God he has promised us? Where is this God we are seeking, that we so desperately long to have with us? We long for God so much we will build God here ourselves, at some personal cost, out of our own gold. This, we learn later, is a sin. What is a sin? The Buddhists say: a sin is a source of suffering. We have been taught to call this particular sort of suffering idolatry: the confusion of an aspect of the divine with the Divine itself.
The Israelites are wandering in the desert, out of the old place and not yet in the new. Who among us has not been there? It is a shaky time, when you are between gods. This is when I myself like to fall in love with the wrong people, who perhaps embody for me something of the old and something of the new. Idolatry here means to see only a person’s true divine perfection, and not their co-existing humanity: their love of moussaka and red wine; their diligence with spreadsheets perhaps or embroidery; their inexplicable absences; their sudden rage; the frailty of their hands early in the morning when their joints are stiff from sleep.
I see, says the Lord, viewing the dancing around the golden calf, that this is a stiffnecked people. […] let Me be, that My anger may blaze forth against them and that I may destroy them, and make of you a great nation." (Ex. 32.9-10) Moses, in his own stubbornness for righteousness, pleads for his people’s lives, and the Lord renounces the punishment. But Moses, on returning to camp, does not renounce his own. He forces the Israelites to drink the ground powder of the golden calf. "Whoever is for the Lord, come here!" he then calls; he insists those who gather slay brother, neighbor, and kin who have not rallied to him. (Ex. 32.26-27)
Three thousand people fall, on the sand, between the old place and the new.
This falling may be the bloody cost of a civil war for control of the new Israelite nation. But I am reading it here metaphorically, remembering the times when I have murdered the internal parts of me dancing in front of a golden calf, in anger that they were not following the rules I had carved into my stone tablet, instead of listening to their longing and gently offering them a perhaps more skillful route to God.
Moses, too, is longing for God, even in the midst of their conversation: "Oh, let me behold Your Presence!" (Ex. 33.13) But no one can see God’s face and live. God shelters Moses in a cleft in a rock, shields him with God’s hand till God has passed by so Moses can see God’s back. Moses will reflect even this glimpse of radiance with his own, though unawares. Moses was not aware that the skin of his face was radiant, since he had spoken with Him. (Ex. 34.29)
Idolatry for me then arises in the midst of paradox – of our longing for a lived connection with the divine, here in the finite, which we must not mistake for the whole, lest we cause harm, and of the impossibility of viewing the Divine in God’s entirety, lest we die. It becomes more of a koan for me than a sin, more an ongoing effort for balance. Balancing my love for my particular beach – the resident great blue heron, the bent grasses of the winter salt marsh, the muddy boardwalk – with the knowledge its water comes also from the larger bay, which in turn reaches out to the sea beyond. Balancing my love for any particular person - the thinness of their arms, even if sinewy, their dislike of sweets, their ferocious vulnerability – with the needs of their work and my own, with the needs of the larger community, with the sacredness of a stranger’s face. Balancing my love for a particular tradition, with the knowledge that others are equally gifts to those who love and practice them.
Idolatry holds another paradox for those of us who are environmentalists. In my work with people from various traditions, I am sometimes asked: is love for the earth itself idolatrous? This view can cut us from the sacred that is in fact present in our finite lives. The heron has grey feathers running to black, a fluff of eyelashes, the thinnest possible legs. Maroon anemones, smaller than my fingernail, embed themselves in the packed mud in the center of the salt marsh. Sanderlings make a net of the incoming tide, herd minnows into the shallows for easy feeding. The tide can be counted on to follow the moon. The divine is here, in the salt water seeping through my jeans when I pray on the sand, in the bite of snow, in the ever present hope of green. On the sand I remember God saw that it was good, perhaps permission or suggestion that we may do likewise. (Gen. 1.12)
Aaron and all the Israelites saw that the skin of Moses' face was radiant; and they shrank from coming near him. (Ex. 34.35) If the radiance of God means to fear punishment for our little loves, the times we have danced around a golden calf and forgotten the calf’s connection to the larger world of soil, grass, sunlight, and its mother’s milk, it is no wonder we would shrink from Moses’ face. If it means we must deny our natural gratitude for gravity or the taste of rain, it prevents us from honoring the small sacredness of our human lives. But perhaps instead we might think of Moses’ radiance descending the mountain as a reminder to bring as much of the presence of the divine as we can bear to our finite dancing selves who so long for it. We are not alone, we can remind ourselves, even in the desert there is the radiance of longed for water and of each and every grain of sand.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Purim Lyrics
Three songs for a Purim Spiel about Big Developers (led by Haman) against small Kosher Marts (owned by Mordecai) and CSAs (farmed by Esther and followers)
by Robyn Bernstein
Mordechai's Song (to the tune of "Guantanamera)
Kosher Mart, Mordechai's Kosher Mart.
Supporting local agriculture
For all Kosher locavores.
I am a modest man,
Running a simple Kosher Mart.
I am a modest man,
Running a simple Kosher Mart.
With Glatt Kosher and market fresh,
At the corner of Broadway and Main streets.
Kosher Mart, Mordechai's Kosher Mart.
Supporting local agriculture
For all Kosher locavores.
I own the only store
With organic free range Kosher meat.
I own the only store
With organic free range Kosher meat.
There is our own brand label,
Blessed by the Vad Ha Rabonim.
Kosher Mart, Mordechai's Kosher Mart.
Supporting local agriculture
For all Kosher locavores.
Esther's Song (tune of "This Land is Your Land")
This land is your land, this land is my land,
Each CSA member, and every farm hand.
From the dark rich soil,
To the rain water collection barrels,
This CSA belongs to you and me.
This is a green space, this is a safe place,
For earthbound critters and all that twitter.
I harvest the berries,
I make my own granola,
This CSA belongs to you and me.
From the rows of snap pears
To the flowering sweet peas,
They're all pollinated by indigenous honey bees.
We sell their honey for CSA money,
This land belongs to you and me.
We watch recaptured water flow.
Radishes, carrots and beans grow.
We pick up our farm share, among people who do care.
Then we pick flowers, 'cause they our ours.
This land belongs to you and me.
This land is your land, this land is my land,
Each CSA member, and every farm hand.
From the dark rich soil,
To the rain water collection barrels,
This CSA belongs to you and me.
Haman's Song (tune of Inch by Inch, Row by Row)
Inch by inch, row by row,
Gonna make a parking lot grow.
All I need is a truck and backhoe
To make a piece of infertile ground.
Gonna build it big and flat,
'Cuase that's where my big box store will be at.
Boy the profits will be fat.
I love the stimulus package.
Inch by inch, row by row,
Gonna make a parking lot grow.
All I need is a truck and backhoe
To make a piece of infertile ground.
Merchandise travels quite a distance,
Who cares about carbon footprints?
Cargo ships really go the distance!
Man, I love those fossil fuels.
Inch by inch, row by row,
Gonna make a parking lot grow.
All I need is a truck and backhoe
To make a piece of infertile ground.
Robyn Bernstein is a member and president of Ma'yan Tikvah - A Wellspring of Hope and a music therapist.
by Robyn Bernstein
Mordechai's Song (to the tune of "Guantanamera)
Kosher Mart, Mordechai's Kosher Mart.
Supporting local agriculture
For all Kosher locavores.
I am a modest man,
Running a simple Kosher Mart.
I am a modest man,
Running a simple Kosher Mart.
With Glatt Kosher and market fresh,
At the corner of Broadway and Main streets.
Kosher Mart, Mordechai's Kosher Mart.
Supporting local agriculture
For all Kosher locavores.
I own the only store
With organic free range Kosher meat.
I own the only store
With organic free range Kosher meat.
There is our own brand label,
Blessed by the Vad Ha Rabonim.
Kosher Mart, Mordechai's Kosher Mart.
Supporting local agriculture
For all Kosher locavores.
Esther's Song (tune of "This Land is Your Land")
This land is your land, this land is my land,
Each CSA member, and every farm hand.
From the dark rich soil,
To the rain water collection barrels,
This CSA belongs to you and me.
This is a green space, this is a safe place,
For earthbound critters and all that twitter.
I harvest the berries,
I make my own granola,
This CSA belongs to you and me.
From the rows of snap pears
To the flowering sweet peas,
They're all pollinated by indigenous honey bees.
We sell their honey for CSA money,
This land belongs to you and me.
We watch recaptured water flow.
Radishes, carrots and beans grow.
We pick up our farm share, among people who do care.
Then we pick flowers, 'cause they our ours.
This land belongs to you and me.
This land is your land, this land is my land,
Each CSA member, and every farm hand.
From the dark rich soil,
To the rain water collection barrels,
This CSA belongs to you and me.
Haman's Song (tune of Inch by Inch, Row by Row)
Inch by inch, row by row,
Gonna make a parking lot grow.
All I need is a truck and backhoe
To make a piece of infertile ground.
Gonna build it big and flat,
'Cuase that's where my big box store will be at.
Boy the profits will be fat.
I love the stimulus package.
Inch by inch, row by row,
Gonna make a parking lot grow.
All I need is a truck and backhoe
To make a piece of infertile ground.
Merchandise travels quite a distance,
Who cares about carbon footprints?
Cargo ships really go the distance!
Man, I love those fossil fuels.
Inch by inch, row by row,
Gonna make a parking lot grow.
All I need is a truck and backhoe
To make a piece of infertile ground.
Robyn Bernstein is a member and president of Ma'yan Tikvah - A Wellspring of Hope and a music therapist.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Beshelach – Rising Sap, Rising Songs: Parting for a new Song of the Sea
by Lisa Greber
Somewhere on the shores of the Reed Sea, Miriam and Moses are singing; the gathered men and women of Israel sing the song back in refrain: “Ozi v’zimrat Yah, vay’hi li lishua” — “My strength and the song of the eternal will be my salvation” (Exodus 15:2). The song is full of relief and rage, celebrating the drownings of their former Egyptian masters. They are not safe enough yet for compassion, although I am sure God weeps here as well as rejoices.
Today is a special juxtaposition of celebrations: the Song of the Sea and the festival of Tu B'shvat; the first act of freedom from Egypt, the first sap rising in the trees in Israel. Though not quite yet here in Massachusetts - here it is still winter. The wind alternates bitter and relenting. The buffleheads, black and white winter ducks, dive for dinner in Dorchester Bay. On the beach where I walk, a Malibu Beach nothing like its California cousin, the tides have sculpted the ice at the high tide line into stepped curviform shapes, layers of mini history - on this day, the tide was higher than others, on another day, a bit wilder, on another day, the tide barely reached here at all.
There was more snow here earlier. Maybe there is something in us melting, a new opening into spring. The sea and the trees have been in Egypt for a long time; what in us must part to let them pass into a land of freedom, a land of milk and honey?
What is milk and honey for a beach or a tree? I do not know for sure, since they do not speak English; I can only guess from what I see or measure or dream. My beach at Malibu - I use the “my” not in the sense of ownership but of my own belonging, as in, my family – was once wide open to the larger Dorchester Bay, allowing water to flow freely in and out. Now a boulevard blocks the free exchange; sediment comes in but cannot so easily leave. The beach is choking on a dark anoxic mud that smells not simply of composting low tide, but of leftovers from ship deconstruction, sewage overflow, and oil from the nearby highway. Still, small patches of salt marsh grow, the mud snails are happy, and one great blue heron comes daily to fish. I think to Malibu milk and honey would be a return to open water, and more wild greenness within – salt marsh and eelgrass, and the lives they sustain.
If the sea and trees have been in Egypt, so have been we. If I read the Song of the Sea in this light, I can understand it as a journey from an Egypt of mastery over nature, to a new world of kinship and care. It is our own willingness to step into the unknownness of a new relationship with nature that parts the sea; it is the sense of “mastership” of nature that may keep following us that drowns in the sea. It is not easy to change; it is not without cost. I trust the nature of the ocean in our hearts and in the earth that will not waste the parts drowned in it, but will dissolve them to their constituents of carbon, phosphorous and nitrogen, to come back in a new form into the world of life again.
Somewhere on the shores of a new Reed Sea, Miriam and Moses are dancing. There is a chain between their dance and ours, their songs and ours. I am sitting on the shores of the Reed Sea; I have come through the waters, I have nearly drowned. The waters, once roiled, have quieted. They taste of salt water – sea and tears. What is the song I sing? “My strength and the song of the eternal will be my salvation” as we sit here together facing a new land, greener and more humble than the one before.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Vaere - A Lament
by Rabbi Katy Z. Allen
G!d hears the outcries of the Israelites from their place of bondage in Egypt, and in this week’s parasha – Vaere – G!d responds and promises delivery. Thus begins the seminal story of the Jewish people of redemption from bondage. G!d sends Moses to lead the people out of Egypt – Moses, who feels totally inadequate for the job. G!d then sends a series of plagues, the first of which we see in this week’s parashah, attempting, it initially appears, to wake up Pharaoh and the Egyptians so they will let the Israelites go. But Pharaoh’s heart only opens up for brief periods of time, and then it closes again. Eventually, in next week’s parashah, his heart opens long enough for the Israelites to flee. Their elation doesn’t last long, for soon at the shores of the Sea of Reeds they face the crisis of the sea looming in front of them and the chariots of the Pharaoh fast approaching from behind.
We, having heard the story every year at Passover and every year when this and the next parashah come around, know the end of the story. We know that G!d parts the waters of the sea and the Israelites escape into the desert unscathed. But the people to whom the story is happening don’t know as they experience it what will happen, and the results are not the same for the Israelites and for the Egyptians, both during and at the end.
Turning to the present, imagine not the outcry of an enslaved and degraded people, but the outcry of an enslaved and degraded Earth. Does G!d hear the Earth crying out today? Do we? What does it take to be able to hear the silent (and sometimes not-so-silent) cries of the Earth? Is G!d asking us to take the role of Moses and help deliver the Earth from its suffering? Are we feeling today as Moses did long ago – totally inadequate? Are we, like Moses, nevertheless willing, even if grudgingly, to accept the call to service, to changing our lives, to standing before the Pharaohs of today, with only faith that at the moment we need it, G!d will turn our “rod” into a “snake” and back again, as G!d did for Moses, to prove to those around us, or even to ourselves, the need for action? We are, perhaps, in the middle of the “plagues.” Like the Israelites and Egyptians of ancient times, we do not yet know how the story will end. We can only hope and maintain our faith, and answer the call to leadership.
This week, I attended the annual conference of the National Association of Jewish Chaplains in Boston. As chaplains, we learn to be a “non-anxious presence” in the face of the people and the personal traumas of illness and injury, as a way to help people find the strength to deal with what is happening in their lives. We stand in the tension, as a way to help in times of painful transition. We do not “do” anything, the way the nurses and doctors do. We simply help people hold their pain.
Moses is a man of action. And yet, after the action and the crisis and the redemption, Moses will stand “in the breach” as G!d reveals himself to him more than to any other human. Standing “in the breach,” in the tension, is a way to help facilitate change.
At this conference, I attended a workshop presented by Rabbis Bonita Taylor and David Zucker on using the Biblical book of Lamentations to help people create their own personal deep laments about the pain in their lives, the understanding being that only by voicing our deepest pain can we travel through it to a place of joy, and that by connecting our own voices to sacred text, we can find healing. In the same way, the Israelites were heard by G!d only after their outcries came from the deepest recesses of their hearts – only then were our people redeemed. Lamentations, or Eicha in Hebrew, is a book filled with powerful outcries of the deepest nature. It is also a sacred text. Our own outcries to G!d, our own laments, our own complains – like those of the Israelites in Egypt – are also sacred. So, too, are the outcries of the Earth.
After studying the text in the workshop, we read laments written by previous students of this text and process, and then we wrote our own laments. As I listened deep within myself for my own lament, my own despair, I felt not my own personal sorrows, but my response to the degradation of the planet. I share with you here the lament I wrote, as the voice of the Earth speaking to me, or through me, rose up in my heart. Because the idea is to connect our own voices to the sacred text, you will see individual verses from the Book of Lamentations followed by words in my own voice. When you finish reading, I invite you to write your own laments, with a connection to sacred text if you so choose, or without it, if that is more comfortable. I invite you to post your lament as a comment.
May our laments cleanse us of enough despair to lead us to greater levels of action.
“he burned like a flaming fire” (Lamentations 2.3)
Burned, burned – wood, coal, oil, gas, gasoline –
burned, burned, burning, burning –
stealing from me my ancient gifts,
throwing back filth, black and invisible.
“He has demolished without pity” (Lam. 2:17)
Forests –
trees reaching toward the sky,
vines clinging to their sides,
nests of birds,
epiphytic orchids,
soil left open, denuded, barren, stripped of life.
“Zion stretches out her hands, but there is no one to comfort her” (Lam. 1:17)
I, the Earth, cry out –
tsunami, winds, waves, pelting precipitation,
raging heat, ice and snow,
and melting, melting, melting.
“I called to my lovers but they deceived me” (Lam. 1:19)
You claim to love me –
yet you drive your card, heat your home, turn on your lights –
eat fancy foods from across the sea,
get in an airplane to visit your ailing parent –
You claim to love me.
“They heard how I was groaning, with no one to comfort me” (Lam. 1:21)
Will no one hear my cries?
I only have one life to give.
“The kings of the earth did not believe” (Lam. 4:12)
They meet in Kyoto,
they meet in Copenhagen;
they claim to care, but not enough;
politics prevail,
little changes.
“Our eyes failed, ever watching vainly for help” (Lam. 4:17)
And while I wait, my rivers run dry, or dirty,
clouds of filth settle over summer cities,
you who caused it all sicken and die,
the indigo bunting shimmers blue but no one sees.
“Slaves rule over us” (Lam. 5:8)
The oil must be sold;
you must get to work;
you must have another pair of shoes;
you must hit the ball across grass kept green by poison;
must, must, must.
“Arise, cry out in the night at the beginning of the watches” (Lam. 2:19)
Lovers of life, hopers of a brighter future,
mothers of children, keepers of the faith and of the planet,
rise up,
cry out,
change your ways,
change your ways,
change your ways –
or give up hope for me.
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