Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

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

Page 7 of 26

Overturning DOMA and the blessing of being seen

June 26, 2013 /

This morning I waited until the Supreme Court convened before posting here. Elation is the feeling that many of us whose marriages have not previously been recognized federally are feeling this morning. And for those in California, marriage equality can, at last, be celebrated. For sure, the work is not yet complete – 40 states continue to discriminate against their citizens. But there is no question that progress was made in civil rights and civil law today.

There is so much that could be said this morning. But for me, the blessing that I am recognizing this morning is the blessing of being seen. It is a blessing that each and every one of us, irrespective of sexuality or any other aspect of our identity, can bestow on others, understanding the incredibly powerful impact of receiving that blessing ourselves. It lies behind the central principle of all world religions, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

Each time I have filed my taxes separately from my spouse, each time I had to apply for the next round of immigration on my journey from rabbinic student to permanent resident and the love of my life was invisible … these were moments when an essential part of my self and my life was unseen. Standing in line to come through security on our way back from a trip and watching the married couple in front of us being processed together and then having a TSA agent insist that my wife and I be processed individually was a moment of humiliation that highlighted how something that is so precious to us is treated as unseen by others. And for anyone who has ever had the experience of being denied access to their loved one’s side in a hospital room, the experience of being unseen is excruciatingly painful.

As Jews, every Passover we announce how we will tell the story as if we, ourselves, personally experienced the Exodus from Egypt; we are called upon to get in touch with the experience and feelings of the journey from having lived a restricted life to entering a new world of freedom. Over and over we are reminded in the Torah to remember that we were once slaves in Egypt as we engage with others that we encounter. Our own experiences of being unseen can sensitize us to the ways in which others often go unseen too: the individual who is sitting alone in the synagogue sanctuary, the child who can’t learn in the same way as others but deserves the blessing of a bar or bat mitzvah and a meaningful Jewish life just the same, the homeless person on the street that we can always greet even when we can’t give, the person sitting in a wheelchair who would like you to look at them and speak to them directly when you are serving them in a store, the cashier in the supermarket who isn’t just another piece of the check-out machinery…

The experience of being fully seen is a holy experience. The philosopher, Martin Buber, might call it an ‘I-Thou’ moment. We often hold back from fully revealing ourselves at the deepest, soul level that truly represents who we are because we are afraid that our gift may be rejected. When another person responds in a way that makes us feel invisible, the pain that results is something that most of us, at some point in time, has experienced. But the blessing that comes with revealing our full essence and being received fully by another human being is a truly spiritual experience that brings wholeness not only to individual lives, but to communities and societies too.

For thousands of gay and lesbian married couples, today is a day when we can celebrate the blessing of being seen. May it propel each one of us to do our part to spread that blessing to all.

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Why do we eat dairy on Shavuot, and other excuses for an ice cream party

May 3, 2013 /
We’ve put our town’s historic ice cream stand, Uhlman’s, on notice… large numbers will be descending on their corner of town toward the end of Shavuot day for our congregation’s first Shavuot Ice Cream Flash Mob.  Its a favorite place for locals to go, and its going to be a lot of fun for our families to get our community together over one of the lighter (but not in the calories sense of the word) aspects of this harvest holiday.  But why ice cream? What’s this dairy eating on Shavuot all about anyway?

I often tell people that whenever you ask a question about a Jewish practice and you are given several answers, it means that no one really knows what the original answer was. I’m only half-joking, because in each answer that we get we learn something about the concerns of the Jewish leadership at a certain point in time, and each teaching can offer something meaningful. In the case of eating dairy on Shavuot, among some of the more ‘traditional’ answers we sometimes hear that it has something to do with observing Kashrut – a precaution against breaking the covenant the very moment we received it, but that is clearly a later lesson expressing concern that we uphold the laws that provide the infrastructure which shapes Jewish living in response to Revelation.

I prefer a more allegorical set of meanings. Torah is likened to milk – something that provides life to newborns, nourishing and sustaining them in their infancy. Likewise, the Hebrews standing at Sinai were in their infancy as a people and were to build a society upon the bedrock of ethical and ritual practices that would enable them to endure and mature. Mystics also point out that the Hebrew for milk, chalav = 40 (chet -8, lamed -30, bet -2) – the number of days that Moses stayed on Mount Sinai.
But I am also drawn to a deeper mystical teaching. Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav (1772-1810) gave one of his most significant lessons one erev Shavuot, dressed in white, in which he described how we can effect a tikkun haklali – a complete healing – of the fractured kabbalistic Tree of Life. Just as when our thought, speech and deed are in alignment and we are in spiritual alignment, so we can bring the sephirot of the Tree of Life into alignment in the spiritual realm, and the Zohar describes the flow of Divine Presence throughout the worlds as being like a lactating mother. While the specifics of the Zohar, and Rabbi Nachman’s explanation are complex and multi-layered, at its essence is the idea that Torah provides a guide to spiritual daily practice in all we think, say and do, and each one of us can bring a piece of healing and wholeness to our world through mindful living. I’ll raise an ice cream cone to that!
A couple of years ago, when I first published this answer to the question of dairy on Shavuot in the Connecticut Jewish newspaper, the Ledger, my father responded with his own attempt to answer the mystery of dairy on Shavuot… it’s a lot more amusing than my version above – you can enjoy reading it here.
See you at Uhlman’s for the CBS Shavuot Ice Cream Flash Mob, May 15, 6:30 – 7:30 p.m.!
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Entering ‘The Ritual Lab’: the purpose of creative services

May 2, 2013 /

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

During my first year with a new congregation, I’ve been offering a creative service slot once a month. Borrowing the term from Rabbi Hayyim Herring’s book, ‘Tomorrow’s Synagogues Today’, our ‘Ritual Lab’ Shabbat lets congregants know to come expecting the unexpected for that particular service. Over the course of the year, some services have been more experimental in format than others – more or less similar to the flow and musical styles of our regular Shabbat worship – but each have had a specific goal in mind.

My ‘training’, such as it was, for shaping these creative services came from the Jewish Renewal movement, having spent many years praying with these communities and creating prayer services in that context prior to my formal rabbinic studies. There, one of the terms coined is ‘interpretive davenning‘ – a way of entering the prayer experience in an interpretive mode so that there is a sense of narrative and conscious spiritual journeying that accompanies the flow from one prayer in our liturgy to the next. Different modes may be explored to accompany particular prayers in a way that helps to peel back the layers of history, poetry, and other aspects of meaning found in each prayer. Each of these modes helps to uncover something of the meaning of the prayer, or highlights an aspect of personal spiritual reflection that a prayer might help to highlight. Sometimes it is the mind that is engaged, and sometimes it is something more experiential that helps us see the words of prayer as vehicles for getting beyond words; in many ways this can be the deepest experience of prayer. Such modes can include meditation chanting, movement, dance, study/discussion of a prayer text in pairs, juxtaposing traditional prayers with other kinds of texts to create new readings and meanings, and more.

I so often hear congregants say that the words of our traditional liturgy get in the way of being able to find spirituality in the Jewish communal prayer experience.This is partially because we lack the tools in our spiritual toolbox to unpack the layers of meaning and possibility found in those prayers. But it is also because the sheer amount of words can be overwhelming so that we cannot possibly derive significant meaning from all of them in every service. Of course, not everyone enters into prayer with this expectation – for those who pray in a more traditional mode, it is the overall ritual and rhythm of the familiar prayers that provide the vessel for taking time out to enter into a different mode that is the primary experience. But for many Jews, and certainly in what has been, historically, the more rationally-focused Reform movement’s approach to prayer, the perceived lack of meaning gets in the way for many individuals seeking a spiritual practice that truly touches and transforms them.

In our ‘Ritual Lab’ services, typically two things happen simultaneously; the prayer service becomes a vehicle through which we can attach a learning experience on an infinite number of topics and, at the same time, the materials or experiences we weave into the service brings a new sense of meaning to the individual prayers that have always been there. The next time we pray our way through our traditional liturgy, we bring the insights from these interpretive experiences with us, and they forever change our understanding of and relationship to these traditional prayers.

So, for example, the Shabbat of Thanksgiving weekend, we held a drumming worship service, juxtaposing insights from Native American spiritual traditions with Jewish ideas and writings that resonated with similar insights. During Pesach we held a ‘Song of Songs Shabbat’ that raised awareness of the Song of Songs being read at Pesach, introduced Jewish mantra chanting into the worship experience, explored the mystical roots of Kabbalat Shabbat and the connections to Song of Songs, and highlighted the nature imagery in our traditional prayers and our own spiritual experiences in nature. Sometimes I’ve been intentionally provocative. For example, there is great ambivalence in the Jewish world about acknowledging Halloween in any way in our Jewish community. I personally don’t feel that this is a useful battle to pursue, given the place of this day in American popular culture and the families and children who delight in the modern expressions of dressing up and going trick-or-treating. Instead, the Friday night closest to Halloween became a time to weave teachings about Ghosts, ghouls and demons found in Jewish folk and mystical tradition into the fabric of our service, demonstrating how some specific prayer and ritual traditions that we still have today may have their roots in these stories and beliefs.

For some of our more regularly attending worshipers, these services have become a highlight. They tell me that the format offers a way for them to be exposed to different kinds of spiritual practice and ways to pray that are accessible and can be internalized, while also providing a forum for learning in a setting other than an adult learning class. The feedback tells me that these creative services are fulfilling their purpose. I look forward to another year of experimentation in our Ritual Lab.

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Reaching for holiness after death: Torah wisdom after Boston and Texas

April 21, 2013 /
D’var Torah given at Congregation B’nai Shalom, Westborough, MA, this past Shabbat.

After the death… you will be holy. That is the meaning of the opening phrases of the two parshiot allocated to this Shabbat. The timing is somewhat uncanny given the unfolding of events in Boston these past 24 hours. Two of Aaron’s sons commit an act that is displeasing to God – in their case it is a ritual act and nothing as horrific as the act of terror committed by two brothers at the Boston Marathon. In the Torah story, both brothers die in the explosion that is a result of their behavior.

At the beginning of the next parsha, Kedoshim, God tells Moses to speak to the people and tell them, ‘You shall be holy, because I the Eternal your God am holy.’ What follows are a set of laws that begin with our relationship with our parents, moves on to reminders to keep far from idolatry, but then primarily focus on providing the kind of social structures that will enable us to preserve relationships with others in our community, built on lovingkindness and mutual respect. And, even as we are told to do justice, we are reminded, ‘do not hate your brother in your heart.’ Yes to justice, yes to rebuking someone when they do wrong, but we must not take vengeance. We must love our neighbor as ourselves.

Earlier this week I posted a blog on myjewishlearning.com in which I shared my sense of anger. It was partly in response to a slew of prayers that other colleagues had written and were sharing on line. Loving, gentle words; words that expressed sorrow and loss, yet hope and inspiration too. Thoroughly appropriate prayers. Prayers like the one we will hear tonight when we pray for healing. Some of our local town churches called mid-week prayer circles together. I’ll be honest. I didn’t much feel like praying. Perhaps it was partly because I, personally, don’t pray to a God that does or does not do something that brings about or fails to prevent these kinds of human-driven evils. I didn’t want to bring God into this picture of terrorism or, for that matter, the terrible images from Texas in the wake of the explosion at a fertilizer factory.

But our ancestors responsible for compiling the text of our Torah were inspired by a sense that we human beings, made in God’s image, could emulate God’s holiness by living according to a code of values and practices. In that sense, whether we believe in a God who literally speaks the commandments to Moses as portrayed or not, we can understand that our people spoke words that were understood as a response to God’s revelation. A deep sense that God’s presence can be revealed at any time and place when we tune in to our highest, holiest selves and choose to act inspired by that sense, rather than react based on fear, anger or despair.

It is very easy to respond from that lower place; all we need do is unleash the energy of our raw emotions. Rev Paul Raushenbush, writing in the Huffington Post Religion pages earlier this week, articulates the difference between Holy Anger and demonic anger; not literally demons, but those raw emotions that can unleash vengeful and destructive acts. Holy Anger, however, is that sense of outrage that human beings commit these acts and take away the lives and futures of others with such randomness and disregard for the value of another human life. But instead of lashing out, as a group of men in the Bronx did this week to the first Muslim they came across, we channel our anger into energy that we intentionally direct to countering hate with love. We counter those who would disregard the value of another human life by acting in ways that honors those lives, treats others with respect, and fosters more love and understanding between us.

And that, I believe, is the message of Kedoshim. We channel our energy in ways that lifts us up as a community and as individuals, to our highest image of ourselves. We respond to death and darkness with lovingkindess and light. I’ve heard the media tell us this week that we are ‘resilient’. I worry, sometimes, that this word might be interchangeable with ‘desensitized.’ But if we are choosing to respond to the negative and evil that would seek to poison our society in a way that makes us truly worthy of the label ‘holy’ then, indeed, we are resilient in the true sense of the word. And, understood through the lens of our ancestor’s response to the call of Revelation, we draw a little closer to the purity of the powerful life-giving energy that I choose to call God.

Hareini m’kabel alai et mitzvat haBoreh v’ahavta l’reicha kamocha, l’reicha kamocha
Here I am, ready to take upon myself the commandment of the Creator, to love your neighbor as yourself. (Leviticus 19:18; lyric from Sheva).
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Mysticism: the Experiential path to finding God

March 6, 2013 /

I’ve just started teaching a new course at my congregation on Jewish mysticism. There are many ways to engage with this sizable topic: we could focus on the intellectual history of mysticism from Ezekiel’s vision of a holy chariot through Merkavah mysticism, the Zohar and Kabbalah, Lurianic Kabbalah and Chassidism, to name just a few eras and genres of literature. But I have found that the theory can get in the way of what really draws people to want to learn more about mysticism.

Mysticism, in its essence, is about the experiential. It points to direct experiences of that which others have then sought to do the impossible with – to put those deeply felt and powerful experiences into the limiting vessel of words. We need words to try and convey something to someone else. But words will never enable another to truly get inside the experience.

Take the biblical account of the Burning Bush. I don’t know if I can believe in that account in a literal manner. A bush that burned with fire yet was not consumed. And a voice spoke from out of the bush. But here’s what I absolutely do know from the story that is recounted. And I don’t mean ‘know’ in the sense of historical accuracy, but rather in terms of what the essential message of that moment in the story conveys to me. Moses, who had left his people and could have spent the rest of his life tending sheep and living among the Midianites, has a life-course altering experience. He is ‘called’ to do something else with his life. So powerful is the tug that he is willing to go back into the lion’s den, so to speak, to confront Pharaoh and lead his people with whom he has had so little contact. Perhaps it was the earlier interaction that he had had with a slave driver that weighed on his conscience for all those years until he could bear it no more, realizing that he had a responsibility to change the situation for the enslaved. Perhaps it was a dissatisfaction with his simple life and the question that had gnawed at him as he wondered what his purpose on earth truly was. But out in the wilderness with his sheep he had a mystical experience that caused him to entirely change the direction of his life and, with it, the history of our people.

How do you explain that to someone else? How do you express in words the power of such a transformative moment? There is no question that the image of the burning bush is a powerful one that conveys not only the extraordinariness of the moment, but also conveys that this is a God experience. Whether it actually happened that way or not is almost irrelevant – the transformative power of the moment is undeniable.

When I started my Jewish mysticism course this past week, I asked attendees if they could think of personal moments when an experience was so deeply felt that it seemed to point toward the existence of something beyond the here and now. A moment, if you like, when you ‘peered behind the veil’ of material existence, if only for a moment. The examples shared were not hard to find. Personal experiences of healing, or working with the sick and the dying, were particularly prevalent, perhaps because at these moments of greatest vulnerability we are more likely to let down our own defenses and be open to something larger than ourselves. And, as people shared, there was an emotion that came with the sharing; that lump in the throat and the tearing up of eyes as, through re-telling about the moment in words, the power of the original experience was felt all over again.

That’s the experience that we need to pay attention to. So often, we get caught up on the ways that others have defined God for us. We get caught up in philosophical debates about whether God is all-powerful or all-knowing. We may find the intellectual exercise an engaging one but, ultimately, it will not bring us any closer to truly understanding the nature of God. The most we can hope for are the brief glimpses that emerge in the fabric of our everyday lives. And we can learn, through awareness and spiritual practice (meditation in particular, but not uniquely) to pay attention to these moments and let them teach us and guide the path of our lives.

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Why I love the Women’s Rabbinic Network

January 14, 2013 /

My first awareness of the Women’s Rabbinic Network came, rather appropriately, from one of the first women rabbis that I learned from and was inspired by while I was still living in the UK.  Rabbi Marcia Plumb, originally hailing from Texas, but living and working in the UK for a number of years, already had many years of first hand knowledge of the WRN.  Since arriving in London, she had also become one of the founding members of a wonderful feminist Jewish group that ran its own conferences and workshops, ‘The Half Empty Bookcase.’
And so it was, back in 2002, just as I was starting my rabbinic studies at Leo Baeck College, that Marcia brought a group of us together – other female colleagues out in the field and rabbinic students – and announced that, at the last WRN Convention, she had suggested that they all come to London for the next one.  And they decided to take her up on the offer!  We went to work creating a convention program – a considerable achievement for a group, only one of whom had ever seen what a WRN Convention looked like.
Board installation at WRN London, 2003

Ten years ago, in January, 2003, approximately 80 women rabbis gathered in London – an incredible bringing-together of women from North America, Israel, the UK, and several communities across Europe.  Now, by this time I had met many, if not all, of the female rabbis in the UK.  I don’t have the total number that existed then, or now, but if I tell you that there perhaps 60 or so Progressive synagogues in the UK altogether, some too small to have their own clergy, you can imagine just how overwhelming and exciting it was to see 80 women rabbis descend on London at the same time!
Because of my own travels back and forth between the USA and London, I already knew a handful of these women.  It felt wonderful to introduce them to ‘my land’, and they introduced me to many of their colleagues.  Women that I am proud to serve alongside today in the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ); women who taught at Hebrew Union College (HUC-JIR) who I would, less than a year later, be learning from when I transferred my studies to HUC-JIR, New York; women who served as Regional Directors of the movement, and in other roles as consultants with expertise in a variety of areas; women who were congregational rabbis, and women whose rabbinate was served in chaplaincy or in schools.  One of the things that the WRN has done better than many rabbinic associations has been to embrace and try to support Rabbis who work in many different fields, recognizing that women in particular are more likely to have a diverse portfolio that represents their different passions and interests, and sometimes the choices that have been made or have been necessary to facilitate life-work balance.
Many of these women became my role models.  WRN gatherings, and especially the unique conventions, became a highlight for me.  While these gatherings always include content that contributes richly to our professional development, there is an added component of spirituality, creativity and innovation in worship, and encouragement and support for the real life stuff of being a woman working in the rabbinate, that I have seldom experienced so authentically and deeply in any other professional setting.
Rabbinic shmoozing at WRN London, 2003

I am writing this on the plane, as I make my way to Memphis for this year’s WRN Convention.  I’m excited to reconnect with friends and colleagues, and this year I’m especially excited by the direction the organization is beginning to move in.  I’ve been a member of the WRN Board for the past couple of years, and took on the role of Communications VP, as we transitioned away from a print newsletter to expanding the ways we communicated with our members, and helped our members communicate with each other. Taking full advantage of the ways that social media and other technologies can help to connect us when we are not together, we are moving into a new phase in the life of the organization where we make better use of those connections to advocate for our members, and for women’s issues more broadly.  We’re finding ways to help the voices and perspectives of women rabbis be more present and heard in the public sphere.  Our WRN Blog, Kol Isha (the voice of a woman), was launched less than a year ago, and has already received over 17,000 hits.  A team of women rabbis have shared the blog, offering a plurality of voices and perspectives on many issues.  At this convention we will receive training from the Op-Ed Project, which works to help under-represented groups within society be seen and heard on the op-ed pages of online and printed media.  Some of our colleagues have already made significant inroads in these areas, but our work together at this convention will, we hope, help to empower many more.

I know that some of my colleagues are excited about the possibility of seeing Elvis at Graceland (and yes, we are going to Graceland!).  I’ve never been much into Elvis, but I am excited about spending the next few days with some of my female rabbinic colleagues.  I know that I will return ‘All Shook Up’ – re-energized, spiritually nourished, and inspired.
We will be tweeting the Convention at #wrn13
We will be posting blog updates at the WRN Blog, throughout the Convention.

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‘It was meant to be’, and other theologically complex statements

January 9, 2013 /

I recently returned from an amazing trip to Senegal.  I was there to visit my step-daughter who is in Peace Corp out there.  It was incredible to get just a brief taste of her experience living in a village in an inner region of the country.  Returning home, as many have asked us ‘did we have a good vacation?’ I have found myself answering, ‘it was an experience.’  I’m so glad we had the opportunity to have this experience and yet it is unlike anything I’ve ever done for ‘vacation’ before.
There is much that I could say about the trip and all that we experienced, from the landscape, the people and cultures, the food, to the village way of life.  But I’d like to share one story that I shared with two of my classes at Religious School last night in the context of our theological, ‘God Talk’ sessions.  The topic – transportation.
Public transportation is quite an experience in Senegal.  Aside from our initial trip in from Dakar to the inland region, where we shared a private ride with another Peace Corp family, we opted to use public transport to get around.  We found ourselves getting into vehicles that, in any other country, I would never dream of traveling in.  There was not a single taxi ride that we took for very local journeys that did not involve a taxi with multiple cracks across the front windscreen.  All of the shared 7-seater cars that we took had taken some kind of beating on the severely pot-hole marked roads that we rode upon.  But the most challenging ride we took was in one of their regional minibuses that ride from market town to market town.  After a three hour wait on the side of the road following a beautiful hike to a waterfall in a fairly remote eco-tourist location, this was all that came by, and we decided that it was possibly our only ride back to home base that day.
Senegal minibus
These buses are loaded with as many people as they can hold, along with any assortment of items up on the room (in another location we saw 3 goats that had been purchased in the market town seated up top).  After a very bumpy hour and a half ride back to base, one of us seated in the aisle on a bag of rice and one of us with a set of live chickens under our seat, we arrived safely at our destination.
We had planned to take a ‘night bus’ back to Dakar at the end of our trip so as to avoid traveling in the hot daytime.  However, upon arrival at the market town where we expected to make that connection we learned that the reservation that had been made by phone didn’t exist as that particular bus had been rerouted for that one night to Touba for a Muslim pilgrimage.  Another lengthy wait ensued and we got ourselves a ride on a seven seater car that brought us safely back to Dakar in plenty of time for our plane home the following night.
The following morning, sitting in a Dakar coffee shop, I picked up one of the French newspapers.  My French isn’t what it used to be, but I could translate enough of the front page article to see that the previous night, a bus on its way to Touba had been in a head-on collision with one of the regional minibuses.  Tragically, all 26 occupants of the minibus were dead.
After taking in the tragedy of the story, my very next thought, reflecting back on the previous day’s frustrations as our plans had gone awry and we’d had a long, hot wait for alternative transportation was, ‘perhaps it was meant to be.’  And in almost the same moment of utterance, I felt ashamed.  Meant to be that we were not on one of those buses? Meant to be that we had to change our plans?  But surely not meant to be for the 26 souls who died?
As I shared the theological implications of the statement with my students, we reflected on how often we find ourselves, upon seeing the larger picture, or realizing that something good has come out of something that we initially perceived as bad, voicing such a statement.  Its familiar to many.  But what do we actually mean by it?
For some, their belief is indeed shaped by a sense that something larger than ourselves – often understood as God – is guiding the direction of our lives.  When we experience something negative or painful or tragic, one who believes this can find it a meaningful way to manage their suffering through the faith that there is a bigger picture and a larger plan that we simply don’t understand.  However, for others, this kind of belief leads to incredible anger toward God and a magnification of their suffering.
For some, the statement is less of a theological statement about God’s hand in our lives and more of a pragmatic statement of relief that, perhaps by random chance, we ended up going left instead of right, left 5 minutes later instead of 5 minutes earlier.  In order that we find ourselves where we are right now, it had to be that the turn of events prior evolved as they did.
Beliefs about the extent to which God has a will and is directly engaged in our lives are many and varied throughout Jewish philosophical thought. They feed into a wide range of beliefs and opinions of the extent of free will vs ‘fate’.  If we do not believe in fate, is it a contradiction to believe that something was ‘meant to be’ in the sense of God having a hand in the specifics of our lives?
For some, their belief in God is more of a sense of the pulsing energy of existence that encapsulates and goes beyond all things knowable and unknowable.  To that extent, it is more of an ever-unfolding ‘is’ than an entity with conscious will, at least in the way that we understand those words in human terms.  For such a believer to use the phrase ‘it was meant to be’, they have more in common with the one who believes that it is all just random chance, except that this unfolding of their life and reality may be imbued with a greater sense of awe and a sense of the mystery of it all that provides the foundation for their spirituality.
Personally, it is in this latter group that I find myself. But what I realized as I analyzed these ideas with my students is that a variety of different belief systems can lead to the same outcome – a way of accepting that which ‘is’, whether felt as positive or negative, and taking the next step forward into life because or in spite of what has just come before.  Its not arriving at the specific formulation of one’s belief that is most important; it is recognizing how it serves or hinders one’s ability to live a meaningful life in this world.  And understanding that the only moment that we truly have is this one.
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Who Speaks for Judaism?

November 29, 2012 /


Cross-posted from the Rabbis Without Borders blog at myjewishlearning.com

As an ex-pat British Jew, living and working in the USA, I’ve been following the press coverage on the search for a new Chief Rabbi in the UK with interest. The Times of Israel just recently published an update on what is becoming quite a lengthy and arduous search, raising a number of poignant issues in its coverage. Its been nearly two years since Rabbi Jonathan Sacks announced that he would be stepping down from the position come September 2013. British commentators have noted that the Anglican Church managed to appoint a new Archbishop of Canterbury in a mere 8 months.

For those less familiar with the British religious landscape, that comparison was not just plucked out of the air. Rabbi Herman Adler became the first, self-designated ‘Chief Rabbi’ from 1891-1911, and promoted this role as the Jewish equivalent to the Archbishop of Canterbury. With a much more centrist Orthodox rabbinate, the fledgling progressive communities were content with this singular spokesperson for the UK Jewish community for quite some time.

However, the official title is actually ‘Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth,’ and the preciseness of this label has become more pertinent over time. The United Synagogue, as it is often referred to, is the umbrella organization for modern Orthodox communities only. As the rabbinic authorities in the UK – the Dayanim – (judges that sit on the Beth Din – the Jewish Court) have played an influential role in moving the mainstream Orthodox United Synagogue further and further to the right (in part, no doubt, responding to pressures felt from their counterparts in Israel), and as the Progressive movements have grown in number and strength over the decades, it has become virtually impossible to conceive of one person who can represent and speak on behalf of the British Jewish community. Here, the parallel with the Archbishop of Canterbury breaks down. The archbishop only speaks for the Anglican Church. The fact that this is still somewhat of an influential voice in British culture is not because he speaks for any of the other Christian denominations to be found in the UK, but because of the UK’s own political history, by which the Anglican Church is the official State religion of the country.

And, in fact, there has been an official spokesperson for the Sephardi Jewish community, the Reform and the Liberal Movements of the UK for quite some time. Over the past 20 years or so, the British government has become much more attuned to this plurality of voices and representatives, ensuring that they are all invited to the appropriate State events.

Even before the current dilemma on who to appoint as the next Chief Rabbi came into being, I’ve found my American counterparts to be quite amused by the whole system in the UK. Here, the land of rugged individualism and autonomy, the thought that one would even attempt to find one spokesperson for the Jewish community is seen as laughable. Aside from the enormous diversity of Jewish expression to be found here that is movement-based, there is also a great deal of independence within each and every community.

In today’s cultural milieu, more than ever, when a congregation finds that its’ members values and practices are at odds with the official positions of the movement to which they affiliate, we are seeing more of them choose to go independent. While something is lost from being part of a larger collective, most intently felt when the movement brings people together from across the country or speaks up in the public sphere in a way that makes us proud, there is a growing feeling that communities are willing to let go of those larger affiliations if they perceive the restrictions laid upon them to be too great. Likewise, while rabbis still have great capacity to teach and guide a community, if they are perceived as being too out-of-step with the community, they are likely to find themselves looking for new work.

In truth, these are not new phenomena. This was very much the way of things for many Jewish communities across the world, prior to the communication and travel technologies that enabled geographically spread and diverse congregations to find each other and gather under the banner of a common label. But let us not be fooled – the desire to do so was in the fulfillment of larger communal needs as Jews sought full emancipation and inclusion in the larger societies of which they were a part. They provided a means to gather with other like-minded communities as we found ourselves responding to modernity and figuring out how to keep our religious traditions and practices relevant and meaningful within this new world.

Those needs still exist. And I am certainly making no early pronouncement that our movements no longer fulfill those needs. But what is clear, in the age of social networking and crowd-sourcing, is that they no longer remain the only way for separate communities to explore those questions together. Organizations like Darim Online, and CLAL (National Center for Learning and Leadership) – the creators of the Rabbis Without Borders fellowship program – demonstrate that speaking across and beyond denominational and movement-based lines can enable all of us to move forward in the ways we create and run spiritually purposeful Jewish communities today.

And we, the Jewish people, continue to do what, in fact, we have always done – we speak for Judaism whenever we engage, act, celebrate, and live our lives through a Jewish lens.

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A Thankful Heart Changes Everything

November 22, 2012 /

Last night I delivered the sermon at our Westborough Interfaith Thanksgiving Service.  It was a charming evening that brought many from the town together.  This was the 40th year that the town has held this service.

A prayer of gratitude… attributed to Homer.  No, not that Homer – Homer Simpson.  It goes like this: 
Dear Lord: The gods have been good to me. For the first time in my life, everything is absolutely perfect just the way it is. So here’s the deal: You freeze everything the way it is, and I won’t ask for anything more. If that is OK, please give me absolutely no sign. OK, deal. In gratitude, I present you this offering of cookies and milk. If you want me to eat them for you, give me no sign. Thy will be done.” (Homer Simpson, as written by  Dan Castellaneta).
Of course, despite being quite funny, the requisite response to Homer’s words, is ‘Doh!’  The only thing in this world that stays the same is change. So if we can only express gratitude when we are coasting on the peak experiences of life, we are likely to feel quite ungrateful for substantial periods of time.
But can we really muster up an attitude of gratitude when life isn’t plain sailing?  How can we get there, and why does it make a difference?
Now, I’ve only been in town since July but in the 5 short months that I’ve been at B’nai Shalom, my congregants have already learned that I’m not so much of a morning person.  I tend to burn the candle at the other end of the day. But it takes me a couple of hours each morning to get up to full speed.  When the alarm goes off at the quite respectable time of 7am, I’m more inclined to turn it off with a groan.  But the Jewish tradition invites us to utter a sentence in prayer each and every morning, the moment we are aware of gaining consciousness again.  That prayer begins, Modah Ani Lefanecha… thankful am I before You.  Thankful am I before you! Not, ‘urgghh, do I have to get up already?’  Thankful am I before you.  And even though I may not literally recite the blessing, my awareness of its message helps refocus me on the days that I am reluctant to get going.
The prayer functions as a mantra for daily mindfulness.  We find that many faith traditions have similar ways of placing an attitude of gratitude into our hearts and minds.  And what they all particularly have in common is their attachment to the ordinary, every day events of our lives. 
It is not at the peak moments of life that our spiritual traditions ask us to bring gratitude to mind.  While we may well take those moments for granted when we should not, it is not those moments that faith and spiritual practice provide support and help with.  Rather it is the moments that are so mundane that we take them for granted almost every single day.  And so Jews have a blessing for waking up.  Christians and Jews utter brief words of gratitude before eating a meal. 
Buddhist and Vepassana meditation begins by bringing attention to the simple act of breathing in and out, bringing to mind an echo at the end of Psalm 150, ‘Let each and every breath be a praise to God.’  During the five daily prayers in Islamic practice, a Muslim may utter words from the Qu’ran: Worship Allah, and be of those who give thanks. (Quran 39:66)
But while it is quite clear that every spiritual tradition prods and pokes us into mindful awareness of all the simple and quite ordinary things in life we could be grateful for – and that’s before we come to the Jewish Bathroom prayer – yes, we really do have a daily prayer of gratitude that is traditionally recited to give thanks that all the plumbing down there is working just fine – what changes when we adopt these spiritual practices and let them guide our daily consciousness?
A grateful heart does, quite literally, change everything.  Even in the midst of the most challenging periods in our lives, if we can bring awareness to the briefest moment of blessing, it can provide a spark of hope and light in dark times. I’m struck when I visit families after the death of a loved one that, even in the midst of the sorrow of loss, the ability to tell stories and share sweet memories can bring back smiles; sometimes even laughter.  While the pain of loss can be enormous, somehow it can coexist with these moments.  And the truth is, the pain only exists because of our capacity to love.  It is the blessing of the multitude of moments we shared that makes the loss so acute.  But we would not choose to give up one of those precious memories to avoid the pain of loss.

In recent weeks, as many of us have directed resources to help those most affected by Hurricane Sandy, in the midst of the loss and the extreme discomfort, we have all heard heart-warming stories about the moment a volunteer reaches the 25th floor of an apartment building in the Rockaways by foot to be greeted by an ever-so-grateful elderly resident as they hand over blankets and food. The places of worship that have opened their doors to provide shelter and hot meals to so many who are grateful that they have not been forgotten.  Each moment, a spark of light offering hope in the midst of darkness.

I’ll end with a story from the Hassidic Jewish world of the 1700s:

Some students of the Maggid of Mezheritz came to him. “Rebbe, we are puzzled. It says in the Talmud that we must thank God as much for the bad days, as for the good. How can that be? What would our gratitude mean, if we gave it equally for the good and the bad?” The Maggid replied, “Go to Anapol. Reb Zusya will have an answer for you.”

The Hasidim undertook the journey. Arriving in Anapol, they inquired for Reb Zusya. At last, they came to the poorest street of the city. There, crowded between two small houses, they found a tiny shack, sagging with age.

When they entered, they saw Reb Zusya sitting at a bare table, reading a volume by the light of the only small window. “Welcome, strangers!” he said. “Please pardon me for not getting up; I have hurt my leg. Would you like food? I have some bread. And there is water!”

“No. We have come only to ask you a question. The Maggid of Mezheritz told us you might help us understand: Why do our sages tell us to thank God as much for the bad days as for the good?”

Reb Zusya laughed. “Me? I have no idea why the Maggid sent you to me.” He shook his head in puzzlement. “You see, I have never had a bad day. Every day God has given to me has been filled with miracles.”

Imagine the power of such a positive orientation to living each and every day, whatever it brought with it. Ask yourself, how would Reb Zusya’s life, or even his state of mind, benefit from bringing his attention to things that he might have wanted and he lacked? What is the impact of his answer on his visitors? They may be amazed, but they are also inspired. If such a man, living such a simple and encumbered life, is able to taste the sweetness of each day, oriented to life with an attitude of gratitude, recognizing the daily miracles that continue to exist even in the midst of hardship… would not such a man inspire them toward a positive orientation to all that they are blessed with in life?

May we be so inspired and may our hearts, filled with gratitude, guide our hands and our communities to act so as to raise each other up, ever providing more for one another so that, turning to one another and seeing there the face of God, we can truly say to each other, ‘Modah Ani Lefanecha – thankful am I before You’.

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How to Make a Shiva Visit

November 8, 2012 /

Earlier this week I led a workshop at Congregation B’nai Shalom, Westborough, to offer guidance on how to make a shiva visit to a mourner.  The workshop covered many practical and pragmatic aspects of shiva, particularly helping more congregants feel comfortable making a shiva visit to someone in their community that they don’t know personally.  Much of what I offered was geared to the contemporary culture of a Reform Jewish community, with pragmatic advice on how to decide how many nights of shiva to have, how a shiva service may be run, etc.

The workshop was recorded and can be accessed via the link below.  If you are listening in from somewhere beyond Congregation B’nai Shalom I hope you also find the material helpful.  Please do feel free to add additional guidance or responses via the comments, either here on the blog or in the comments box on the sound cloud page where the workshop is hosted.

The article referenced during the workshop from myjewishlearning.com can be accessed here.

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