Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

Rabbi Gurevitz' creative works: Podcast, blogs, videos and more

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Remembering Debbie Friedman on the 1st Yarzheit

January 27, 2012 /

This post was previously published at myjewishlearning.com and is reprinted here on the eve of the 1st yarzheit for Debbie Friedman



On January 9, 2011, a sweet singer of Israel, Debbie Friedman, passed away. While her Hebrew yahrzeit is at the end of this month, for many this is becoming a month of remembrance. Family gatherings, concerts in her memory, special Shabbat Shira dedications in early February, as her legacy and her songs live on.

On Monday night, I ended my eighth grade class with a brief sharing of some of my own personal interactions with Debbie, and the enormous role she had in pointing the way to the path that became my life as a rabbi. When I teach Torah about m’lachim – angels in Jewish tradition, I often point out how, when they show up in our holy text, they bring a message that redirects the life path of the one being visited. Think Hagar (twice), Jacob wrestling with an angel, Joseph meeting a ‘man’ in a field who redirects him to find his brothers (without which the rest of the Joseph story that we have recently read in this year’s Torah cycle might never have unfolded). When I teach these texts, I ask people to think of the encounters in their own lives that might fall into this domain. Debbie was most certainly ones of those people for me. One of the last songs she wrote was a new setting for Shalom Aleichem – the poem we sing on Erev Shabbat to welcome the Sabbath angels into our homes and our lives … how fitting.

Many have written far more eloquently than I about the legacy of Debbie’s music; how she transformed the way we sang our souls to God, and the sound of prayer in our sanctuaries; and how her blending of English and Hebrew enabled us to understand and connect with the prayers in a deeper way. For me, and for many who had personal encounters with Debbie, whether they were intimate friends, or once-only events, the legacy that we remember goes beyond the gift of the music. In the outpouring of remembrances that were shared online in the days and weeks that followed her passing, what so many shared was the way that Debbie was deeply and truly present to others. She had a gift for seeing within another person and, in that moment, asking the most important question. She was a Spiritual Director of sorts, although she would never have claimed that label.

During this month of January as I remember, sing Debbie’s songs, look through old photographs, and connect with others, I know that all who do likewise, in the USA and beyond, are truly making her memory be for a blessing. ‘And you shall be a blessing’, she sang to us. Now we sing it for her.

At the end of my eighth grade class, I played the original recording of Debbie as a teenager singing the Shema. I told them how young she had been when she began to write these melodies, how she song-lead at camp, how she went on to touch so many thousands of lives. I pray that, while they will never have the blessing of meeting Debbie Friedman, they may still be touched by her gifts and inspired by her life.

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NFTY – Our teens inspire and teach us

January 5, 2012 /

Last week I went up to the URJ Eisner Camp for a day during the December Institute of NFTY-NE – the regional winter gathering of our movement’s youth group.  There were over 150 teens there and, in the short number of hours I spent there, I learned and I was inspired.

I arrived in time to lead a fun and noisy session – a drum circle.  As I told the teens, I profess no great expertise in teaching anyone else to drum.  I do have good rhythm and average drumming skills, but we happen to own a particularly large drum collection, making it possible for me to offer this to about 15 people.  Of course, a group drumming session like this offers a fun and informal way to explore not only rhythmic abilities but also skills of leadership and followship.  What was wonderful for me to see was that, while I came armed with a few ideas to make one round of drumming a little different from the next, leaders in the group naturally emerged … getting us up and marching around the room (and eventually around the building), leading a call and response round, and suggesting chants to add to the few that I’d brought to give us something to drum along to.

Next, I observed a teen-written and teen-run program about labels and terms used so often in derogatory ways and the real mental or physical health issues that they relate to.  It was a tough program to maintain momentum with, but I was so impressed by the seriousness and dedication of the teen leaders who led the discussion groups, and the incredibly supportive participation of the teens.  Every synagogue board and committee could learn from watching these kids in action!

The highlight of the visit for me was watching Michael Kalmans, the Co-President of our Temple Youth Group, BIFTY, lead the evening prayer service that he had written.  In its creativity, spirituality, social conscience and beauty it was inspiring.  In so many ways it was ‘outside the box’ and, simultaneously, one of the most spiritual services I’ve been to in a very long time.

In the busy lives that our teens live, and the heavy workload of school, it is harder these days for Temple youth groups to find a place in the schedules and priorities of our kids’ lives.  Yet the power and importance of NFTY goes far beyond the social hang-out space that these groups provide.  The values of the organization, and the empowerment and life skill set that NFTY provides for our teens is priceless.  How much so?  Please watch this powerful video made by a NFTY teen who was another regional gathering over the same week. There is just one word… Inspiring!

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Is contemporary Jewish chanukah music ‘going Greek’?

December 23, 2011 /

I love telling the story of Chanukah.  Like so many of our Jewish holidays, it is a wonderful and fascinating study in how rituals and myth and religious experiences come to be.  As we begin our exploration of this holiday, we might think that there is a story that is told, born out of a historical experience, recorded for us in the Books of Maccabees.  We celebrate the victory of the Maccabees over the Syrian-Greek empire in taking back control of Jerusalem and re-dedicating their holy Temple, which had been desecrated through a previous re-dedication to the Greek god, Zeus.  The Books of Maccabees never quite made it into the official canon of Jewish Holy books, and the Rabbis reasons for that were partly a matter of dates but mainly a matter of politics.  That’s a longer story, but the result for us is that, while many Jews know the basic story of Chanukah, almost none have read the ‘original’ in the Books of Maccabees themselves.  The story to be found there (and I’m not going to give the game away) is somewhat different from the folk version that most of us have had passed down to us through the ages.  For a detailed review of the historical evolution of Chanukah, take a look at the essays at myjewishlearning.com

One of the things that is often not emphasized in the folk re-telling of the story is the inner conflict between Jews about the extent to which Greek culture – Hellenism – could appropriately be absorbed into Jewish life, culture and practice.  The Maccabees, it seems, may have been zealous to an extreme in their distaste for Hellenism, while there were plenty of Jews in Jerusalem and beyond who embraced Hellenism and sought ways to maintain their Jewish faith and practice but in a way that enabled them to fully participate in the culture that was unfolding around them.  (see here for a longer essay on this).

Today, we celebrate the victory of the Maccabees, and a miracle of light.  But, if the Maccabees represented the anti-assimilationist, anti-Hellenist stance, what are we to make of the way we celebrate Chanukah today? We sing Maoz Tzur to a melody taken from a medieval German marching tune.  We eat latkes and donuts – neither of which are ‘native’ to the Middle East, but represent a claiming of central European food traditions onto which we add a Jewish layer by connecting them to the miracle of the oil.  We play dreidle – an ancient gambling game that can be traced back as far as 11th century England, and probably made its way into Jewish life in the 13th or 14th century in Germany.  We added our own set of 4 letters to remember the Chanukah story (Nes Gadol Hayah Sham – a great miracle happened there).


And this year we see so many new Chanukah songs and videos that engage and delight us, all of which borrow in style and, more often, in actual tune, from the secular pop music world.  I’ve posted some of my favorites from this year below.

So… did the Maccabees really win?  Or have we Jews been ‘Going Greek’ ever since?
I believe that what we see is true of the way we have absorbed the richness of so many cultures through food, music, rituals and games is, in fact, simply a truth about being human.  This is what we do.  Its not ‘good’ or ‘bad’… it just ‘is’.  And the miracle is that we’ve been doing it since the very first generation of Jews and yet, while the Greek, Babylonian and Roman empires (and many more since) have come and gone, we are still here.  Not in spite of our constant adaptations to the world around us and the cultures we come into contact with but precisely because of them.  Well – that’s what I believe.  Feel free to pitch in and add your thoughts in the comments section below.
Happy Chanukah!

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Engaging our Teens

December 13, 2011 /

cross-posted from the Rabbis Without Borders Blog at myjewishlearning.com

At Congregation B’nai Israel, Bridgeport, CT, I’m blessed with a class of almost 30 eighth graders and we meet weekly on Monday evenings.

Last week, we began a conversation with them that emerged from a desire to highlight the upcoming Reform movement biennial conference. I haven’t attended a Biennial for several years, but they are always exciting opportunities for me to hear how visions are being articulated and what kinds of new ideas are being incubated. Some of that comes from the official program but, as is so often the case with these large conferences, its the one-to-one conversations that we get to have with old friends, and new people that we chance upon that provide some of the great food-for-thought. And praying on Shabbat with approximately 5,000 people (the estimated turnout this year) is a unique experience.

This year, Teen Engagement is one of the key areas of focus, with a special track of the conference dedicated to this work. The old models of top-down movement-led design of a program to be launched and rolled out across the country is gone. Instead, a vision of a much more fluid and dynamic project that involves teens in conversations to co-create new opportunities is the direction we are heading.

I wanted my teens in my eighth-grade class to know about this, and gain a sense of being part of something bigger. We began with an initial trigger video, playing this:

While the context for this video is Israel, and the miracle of returning to the land, we extended the conversation to ask our teens how they respond to an idea of carrying a heritage and being part of ‘the hope’ for what might still be to come. The core of our conversation turned to the challenges they identified to their being engaged in Jewish life and activity and, finally, to some of the creative ideas they might have to respond to those challenges.

I don’t think I can truly do justice to what emerged during the conversation, but it was indeed very hopeful and helpful. We only had limited time, and I’m sure the conversations will continue, but the two areas they focused on was the communal worship experience, and ways of engaging in Jewish culture and ideas that tapped into some of the cultural forms and technologies that they are utilizing in the rest of their lives.

On the worship front, they sought more diverse expressions and experiences, and a musical style that had the energy of the music that some of them knew from Jewish summer camp. While this music has been a major influence on the evolving music of prayer in the Reform movement from the mid-1970s, there is no question that the newest sounds still emerge from camp, and a multi-generational service is not going to be the same experience as an age-specific experience. But the generation-specific sounds are not the only reason why young adult independent minyanim and 20s-30s services in large city-based congregations are proving to be increasingly popular.

My teens also pointed to the way that they are engaged in creating the prayer experience when they are at camp, weaving contemporary themes and readings into the core prayers. This is very much in tune with what we are seeing among our engaged younger generations – a desire for more of a ‘do-it-yourself’ kind of Jewish community, where a Rabbi may offer guidance and support, but is not expected or even wanted to be crafting and leading the whole experience. This kind of inclusive engagement in creating communal prayer experiences is working for teens and young adults beyond the Jewish community too. Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran minister in Boulder, CO, leads an emergent Christian community that uses this approach to shape the worship experience. She says that it is important that the worshipers are producing and not consuming. ”Sometimes things are a little ‘clunky’ but its completely worth it because the people are really owning it,” she says.

Beyond the world of synagogue and Jewish worship, my teens had expressed the ‘otherness’ that they sometimes feel in their public school context, where they could name countless examples of ignorance of Judaism or ways in which their sense of Jewish identity was so different to outsider perceptions. But their pride in their identity was strong, and they sought more opportunities to be with teens who ‘get it’. Not necessarily through more face-to-face opportunities – these kids already have heavily scheduled lives – but they brainstormed things like a Jewish Facebook for under-18 Jewish teens who wanted to talk about ‘Jew-stuff’ or a Jewish kind of Second Life where they could experiment with different kinds of virtual Jewish experiences and explore more of Judaism for themselves (these kids haven’t discovered ‘Second Life’ yet, otherwise they might know that there is already quite an extensive area of Israel, synagogues and more already there.

They also loved getting ‘Jewish answers’ to the everyday things … how about a ‘Jewish Siri’?

So much of what I heard in this brief conversation and brainstorm reinforced what we with Rabbis Without Borders at CLAL (the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership) have been discussing for some time now as we seek to better understand the contemporary cultural contexts in which we passionately share paths to Jewish life. There are start-up organizations, online communities, and worship communities already responding to the next generation, but ‘mainstream’ Jewish institutions and congregations have a ways to go. I’m encouraged by a Biennial conference that is opening to new conversations and forms of engagement. As we respond and co-create an evolutionary Judaism together, within and beyond Jewish movements, we need only ask the questions and we’ll find that our youth have plenty to say.

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The role of music in the healing of Gabrielle Giffords

November 16, 2011 /

Yesterday morning, in a weekly class on Jewish mysticism that I teach in the local community, we were concluding our study of the ten psalms that Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav selected for the practice of the Tikkun haKlali – the Complete Repair.  Rabbi Nachman (1772-1810) was referring to a spiritual repair – healing at a cosmic level – in which all that was broken would be healed and the flow of Divine energy through the sephirotic system found in the teachings of Kabbalah would come down to us unhindered.  This system consisted of 10 Divine attributes which, together, form the kabbalistic Tree of Life.  There are a multitude of explanations and allegorical images used in kabbalistic tradition to try and convey something of the nature of these 10 attributes.  Among them, Rabbi Nachman spoke of 10 melodies – 10 kinds of sound resonance that, when unblocked, would vibrate in perfect harmony with each other, bringing perfection and wholeness to the world.

I sometimes liken the teachings of Kabbalah to that of theoretical or particle physics, not only because there are some truly amazing resonances between some of the teachings in each discipline, but because Kabbalah is very abstract and requires translation into something that we can respond to in the here and now.  Rabbi Nachman, by proposing a ritual practice of the recitation of 10 psalms, sought to provide a spiritual methodology by which even an individual could make a small contribution to the greater Tikkun by speaking words that he believed carried the resonances of the ten kinds of melody.  At the very least, these might help to release some of our own blockages as we seek to be more ‘in tune’ with ourselves and with others.

The last of the ten psalms is Psalm 150:

Hallelujah. Praise God in His sanctuary; praise Him in the firmament of His power.
Praise Him for His mighty acts; praise Him according to His abundant greatness.
Praise Him with the blast of the horn; praise Him with the psaltery and harp.
Praise Him with the timbrel and dance; praise Him with stringed instruments and the pipe.
Praise Him with the loud-sounding cymbals; praise Him with the clanging cymbals.
Let every thing that has breath praise Yah. Hallelujah. (JPS, 1917)
In the context of Rabbi Nachman’s Tikkun HaKlali, this psalm literally vibrates with the sounds of the instruments played in the ancient Temple of Jerusalem.  Rabbi Nachman taught about the spiritual importance of fostering joy, and the power of music and of singing to lift oneself up, even from the most difficult of circumstances.  Our study group considered the power of song and of music at multiple levels.
It was in this context that a member of our study group thought of the example of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, and the role that music and song has played quite literally in her physical healing.  If sound has the power to shatter glass, might it not also have a literal potential to heal, in addition to the emotional and spiritual sustenance that it can provide?
Rep. Giffords has been working with a music therapist, among others also tending to her treatment and recovery.  Music has had the power to tap into her memory, and assisted with regaining language mastery, as the music appears to help the brain to access new ways to communicate.  Her therapist, Morrow, explains: “It’s creating new pathways in the brain … Language isn’t going to work anymore, so we have to go to another area and start singing and create a new pathway for speech… 
Music is also linked to brains areas that control memory, emotions, and even movement. “The thing about music is that it’s something that’s very automatic — part of our old brain system,” Morrow said. “If I play a rhythm, I can affect the rest of the body. The body naturally aligns with a rhythm in the environment.”

Throughout my childhood I often accompanied my mother who would go and sing at Assisted Living and Nursing Homes.  And time and time again, I would witness residents who would not or could not easily speak or communicate any more literally return to full life when the music began.  Intentionally singing a repertoire of music that would be familiar from their youth, my mother would have residents singing along, moving their bodies – even getting up to dance.
The enormous power of music and sound, working at the physical, emotional and spiritual level, has always been evident to me.  It has been an integral part of my Jewish spirituality as I have found ways to access the meaning of our rituals and our prayers through the vehicle of the melodies we bring to them.  Rabbi Nachman understood this two hundred years ago.  We’re just beginning to tap into the potential that vibration, sound, and song have to bring healing to our lives.



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What happens next? Reflections on Steve Jobs’ last words

November 3, 2011 /

In the last few days, many people have been talking about the eulogy that Mona Simpson, Steve Jobs’ sister, gave at his funeral. More specifically, her sharing of his last words:

The Huffington Post reported: In a stirring eulogy delivered at Jobs’ memorial, held at Standford University’s Memorial Church on October 16, Simpson revealed the last words Jobs uttered mere hours before he died. Her tribute to her brother was reprinted by the New York Times on October 30. According to the Times’ printed version, Simpson said Jobs had been looking at the members of his family, gathered around his bed, when he gazed past them and said,” OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”

Much has been said by media pundits, blogged, and talked about in homes, over coffee and around water coolers, about what those last words might have meant. I’m not going to provide ‘the answer’, or even ‘a Jewish answer’. We simply don’t know. Way back in the Talmud (compilation of Rabbinic writings from approx. 0-500 CE), Rabbi Joshua ben Chanania said, ‘When they come to life again, we will consult about the matter.’ (Niddah 70b). Of course, this in itself might be understand as the declaration of a particular belief – that one day the dead will rise again. But this quote came to mind because, in effect, ben Chanania is also saying that we simply aren’t able to say with any certainty what happens after we die and until someone comes back to our world to tell us how it is, we’re not going to be able to reach any conclusions.

What is interesting to me is the widespread response to Steve Jobs’ last words. A few weeks ago I was discussing beliefs about God with some of my eighth grade class. One group that I was talking to largely expressed that they didn’t think they believed in something after death, but that they wished they did – they liked the idea, and found it comforting. In a recent discussion about death and dying at Fairfield University where I was a guest speaker, some students expressed belief in a heaven, but they no longer held to the idea that one would be judged and one’s destination depended on choices in this world. Perhaps there was just one ‘place’ where we all went, and perhaps it was more a transferral of energy or awareness, but not an actual physical place. Some expressed that it was in actions, family, and memory that we ‘lived on’, but only in those kinds of realms in this world.

While we may not be able to achieve clarity of answer, both the ideas we have and the questions we have about life after death are core questions that human beings have pondered since we walked on this earth. Every culture, every civilization, and every religion has had one or more ways of responding to the question. The great Jewish teacher and philosopher of the twelfth century, Maimonides, wrote extensively of the ideas found among the Jewish people in his introduction to Perek Helek. Maimonides was largely dismissive of most the mainstream ideas of his time, and implied that they taught us more about what people valued in this world than informed us of the truth of what happens when we die.

As a Rabbi, I’ve had enough exchanges with people about near death experiences, or the sense of presence of a loved one after they have died, that I have come to believe that something continues after our physical death on this earth. I’ve had personal experiences that have brought me to that place of believing in an energy – what some might call the Soul – that goes on. And, while I know those same experiences could be explained in other ways, I find my belief comforting and I believe it is comforting to others. An important part of my faith involves being able to live in the space of ‘not knowing’. I am able to experience the mystery of life and Creation in a deep and visceral way when I am able to occupy that space of not knowing. This is an important part of my spiritual awareness.

And so, while I don’t know what Steve Jobs, may he rest in peace, saw or felt in his last breaths, I hope his soul is united again with the energetic source of all existence. I hope it is quite incredible – the kind of incredible to which we might only be able to utter ‘Oh wow!’
Rachel Gurevitz

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Creating Jewish memories this Simchat Torah

October 19, 2011 /

There’s always a lot of energy at B’nai Israel on erev Simchat Torah, which we celebrate this evening at 5.30p.m.  Our Junior choir sings and our Temple Band plays.  It makes for a special service with young and older brought together.

This year we have an additional special component, bringing in some of the youngest people in our community, and their families.  For over a year now, Rabbi Nicole Wilson-Spiro has led a weekly Young Families Chavurah on Shabbat morning.  Breakfast, yoga, music and prayer, stories, crafts, snack and play time – the chavurah offers a rich morning of Shabbat celebration for pre-school aged children. And it offers a great place for parents to meet each other and create new friendships in the Jewish community.

The chavurah has evolved and has generated innovative ideas and ways of celebrating Jewish life that are often out of the box.  A summertime Havdalah gathering included an Earthwalk at a local nature reserve, topped off with making smores around a campfire.  Apple picking before Rosh Hashanah at one of our local (and congregant-owned!) farms, Silverman’s, has been a big hit two years in a row.  In a couple of weeks, when we read the story of Noah, a special convoy of animals from our local Beardsley Zoo are coming to visit the children at the chavurah on Shabbat morning at our Temple.

This Simchat Torah, the creativity and innovation that the chavurah has brought to B’nai Israel will be front and center of our Bima at the start of the service.  After a year of the cuddly torahs that our kids march around the chapel with every Shabbat coming in and out of a large cardboard box, the Young Families Chavurah will be dedicating their very own Ark, especially designed to house these baby torah scrolls.  Sponsored by one of the families, designed by a local artist, and including the artistic contributions of many of the children who attend regularly, this is a very exciting project for our youngest children to see in its completion.

Our services are starting earlier than usual (6pm, after flagmaking at 5.30pm) so that our youngest children can enjoy them.  They’ll get to experience the music, see older children that they look up to singing and leading the prayers, and get to dance with their Torah scrolls when we take out the rest of the Sifrei Torah from our sanctuary Ark.  And then, in a tradition that many congregations are now sharing, they’ll get to see an entire scroll unwrapped around the room.

For children who are 2, 3 or 4 years old, tonight is going to be an exciting night that I don’t think they’ll easily forget – creating a Jewish memory that is special and something that I think they will want to experience again next year.  Their parents too!

But Simchat Torah is not just for kids! For the rest of us for whom this isn’t so new, imagine coming to celebrate Simchat Torah tonight and trying to see and feel the experience as if through the eye’s of one of these children.  What Zen Buddhists would call ‘Beginner’s Mind.’  Imagine the renewed joy we would bring to responding to the music; when we felt our toes tapping, we would get up and dance because we don’t have any layers of self-consciousness that have built up over decades, blocking our access to that joy and movement.  We would sing and clap, because we were moved to do so and we hadn’t built up years of inhibitions about whether our voices were good enough.  We would smile and laugh, because we would find the smiles ad laughs of the children around us infectious.

Now stop imagining.  If you are local, come and join us for Simchat Torah this evening!  And if you are reading from further afield, I hope you have a community close to where you live – check their websites or give them a call, and celebrate like its 5772!  We all deserve new opportunities in a new year to make meaningful Jewish memories.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

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Wishing you Well over the Fast

October 7, 2011 /

May you delve deeply into the pages of your life, seeking understanding, love and compassion.
May you release yourself from the ink smudges, strike-outs, poor choices and long-winded yet aimless passages of past chapters.
May you weave deep and meaningful connections with others into the story you tell of your own life.
May you recommit to writing all that is essential and significant in your Book of Life.


Wishing you well over the Fast,
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

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Blogging Elul 5771: Did you remember to set your alarm clock?

September 27, 2011 /
This piece was published by one of our local weekly newspaper consortiums, Hersam Acorn, and appeared in print this week in the Amity Observer, Bridgeport News, Milford Mirror, and Trumbull Times.

This entry is my closing posting for Elul 5771.  I wish you all a Shanah Tovah um’tukah – a Sweet and Happy New Year.  May we all experience fully the blessing of life, and offer blessings to others through our words and deeds.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which begins on Wednesday, September 28 in the evening, is a very different kind of New Year to January 1st.  ‘The Choosing’ is a recently-published memoir in which a Jew-by-choice and now Rabbi, Andrea Myers, tells the story of the first year her Italian-Catholic family encountered Rosh Hashanah.  She was living back at home with her parents and, after a long walk to a synagogue for evening services on the first night of the New Year, she returned home late, quite exhausted.  She was awoken at midnight from a deep sleep when her family, wanting so lovingly to help her celebrate, arrived in her bedroom clanging pots and pans, letting off streamers, and shouting ‘Happy New Year!’  The loud sounds more typically heard on Rosh Hashanah are the blasts of the shofar – the ram’s horn, and we usually hear those at the quite respectable time of late morning.  The shofar is, however, metaphorically, our communal ‘wake up’ call.
While the secular New Year is a time when many people make ‘New Years’ Resolutions’, the Jewish New Year marks a period of time when we first look back at our deeds from the past year.  Our worship liturgy speaks of God who holds us accountable, but the inner work that the New Year requires of us is really about how we hold ourselves accountable and take responsibility for our mistakes, the hurt we have caused others, and the ways we have behaved unethically or thoughtlessly.  If we really engage in this spiritual work, we can emerge ten days later, at the end of Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement – transformed.  If we have the courage to speak to those whom we have hurt, and ask forgiveness, we can transform the relationships we have with others.
In the world we live in today, it almost feels deeply unfashionable to talk of a spiritual practice and a faith community that asks us to engage in a personal accountability inventory in this way.  There are those who speak in the name of faith, or offer spiritual paths, that emphasize what these things can do for you.  What about what we can do for others?  Faith is not about wish fulfillment.  It is about the meaning and purpose of our very existence as human beings.  It is about being fully present to life and to each other in all of the downs as well as the ups.  It is about the hard work of doing things together as communities with shared values, recognizing that no one person is more important than another, yet at the same time each and every one of us is necessary and has a unique voice to add as we work together to make things better.
As the Jewish community arrives at Rosh Hashanah, my hope and prayer is that we can learn from the wisdom of our ancient faith traditions, and hear the sound of the shofar as our alarm clock, reminding us of the perils of living in too much of ‘me’ society and not enough of an ‘us’ society.  The spiritual work of taking account, repairing what we can, and rededicating ourselves to the future takes courage and strength.  May we, by coming together, give each other the courage and strength that we need.
Shanah tovah u’m’tukah – May it be a sweet and good year for all.
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Blogging Elul 5771: Lighting the way to peace

September 20, 2011 /

Have you been following the Jewels of Elul this year? Craig Taubman, musician, compiles short daily postings from a wide range of contributors on an annual theme that is woven into the pre-High Holyday month of Elul.  This year the theme is ‘light’ and postings have come from authors, politicians, musicians, activists and spiritual leaders from all walks of life, Jewish and non-Jewish.


I always find the Jewels of Elul to be insightful, but this year the most powerful posting that I have found so far came not from one of the official contributors, but from the page where anyone can leave a comment.  Craig received a short teaching from the great Jewish teacher and leader of the twentieth century, Rav Kook.  It was sent to him by Don Abramson. He shared it on the comments page.  I’m re-sharing it below.  It speaks for itself.
“There are those who mistakenly think that world peace can only come when there is a unity of opinions and character traits.  Therefore, when scholars and students of Torah disagree, and develop multiple approaches and methods, they think that they are causing strife and opposing shalom.  In truth, it is not so, because true shalom is impossible without appreciating the value of pluralism intrinsic in shalom.  The various pieces of peace come from a variety of approaches and methods which make it clear how much each one has a place and a value that complements one another.  Even those methods which appear superfluous or contradictory possess an element of truth which contributes to the mosaic of shalom.  Indeed, in all the apparent disparate approaches lies the light of truth and justice, knowledge, fear and love, and the true light of Torah.”
Olat HaRe’iah
 Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook
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