Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

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Category: angels

#BlogElul 13: Breaking through my excuses

August 31, 2012 /

When I’ve had a difficult interaction with someone, what are the kinds of excuses I come up with to avoid dealing with the unfinished business?

  • They need time to cool off before we can have a fruitful conversation.
  • I need time to cool off before we can have a fruitful conversation.
  • This always happens when we try and have this conversation – I should just avoid further conversation.
  • I don’t know exactly how this will end, and if I can’t predict how the conversation will go, maybe I shouldn’t go there.
  • I’ve overthought where this conversation will go, and I don’t want to go there.  So my imaginary outcome to this next exchange is stopping me from having the conversation.

Perhaps you have further excuses you can add to this list.  These are some of mine.  In areas of my life where I’m not always proud of my words or actions, I look to those that I can learn from, inspired by their example.  When it comes to getting beyond the excuses I have for following up on difficult conversations, my spouse is one of my greatest inspirations.

She doesn’t like to leave things hanging.  Knowing that someone is upset with her, she seeks to heal the rift sooner rather than later.  She seeks to have a respectful conversation to understand differences of opinion, or how words or acts that were intended one way were received another.  And she is dedicated to honesty in the midst of the exchange.

We all have angels in our lives.  Angels are melachim – messengers – in Hebrew.  We all have people who deliver important messages that we need to hear at crucial moments in our lives.  Sometimes its someone we’ve never met before and may never meet again.  But one interaction can teach or inspire us.  Sometimes its someone who is a constant and important part of our lives.  And they teach us how to deal with the difficult challenges in our lives, and how to overcome some of our most-repeated limitations.

So what are your excuses?  And who inspires you or teaches you, encouraging you to move beyond them by their example?

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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