Category: #BlogElul (Page 4 of 4)

#BlogElul 13: Breaking through my excuses

August 31, 2012 / gurevitzr

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?

#BlogElul 11: Why won’t you change?!

August 29, 2012 / gurevitzr

We all have certain people and certain kinds of things that ‘push our buttons’. I certainly do. I was just reminded last night about a particular pattern of behavior that I’ve observed over and over again from certain individuals that is hurtful to others. I found myself infuriated. In the heat of the moment, my buttons are pushed, and I feel the anger rising.

On the one hand, this is natural, human behavior. When you see people that you love being hurt, you want to protect them from that hurt. On the other hand, when individuals who are part of your world – family, co-workers, neighbors, etc. continue to exhibit annoying or thoughtless behavior even after you’ve taken thoughtful steps to try and bring the effects of their behavior to their attention, yet they show no sign of change… what next?

The ‘easier’ option may be to minimize one’s interactions. But that may not always be possible. Another path may be to continue to inform the other of the way you are experiencing their actions or words. In unequal power relations (e.g. an employee and a boss), that may not always feel like a viable course of action either. Of course, if the behavior is truly abusive, it may well be necessary to remove yourself from the situation by leaving – something that takes courage but which, ultimately, can be enormously freeing and healing.

What else can you do? We have no ability to make someone else change. We can only truly take charge of making change within ourselves. And so, perhaps we can change our response? Perhaps, when we notice the anger rising we can take a step back and laugh, saying, ‘look at them doing that ridiculous thing that they always do!’ Perhaps instead of anger, we can learn to nurture compassion in our response, ‘I feel so sorry that they so lack the awareness to understand how their behavior makes them look in the eyes of others. That must be so isolating for them.’

The ability to turn the experience in this way helps to get us a little closer to the next step … forgiveness. It is hard to forgive if we truly believe that someone is intentionally hurting us again and again. And, if that is indeed what is going on, perhaps its not the time to explore forgiveness until we’ve been able to create more distance. But if someone seems to exhibit the same behaviors over and over, and seems incapable of change, perhaps we can find our way to forgive what they do out of ignorance and limitation.

Change is hard. Self-awareness is a necessary component of making change in our own lives. Finding ways to let go of our frustrations when others have not changed, we can take the opportunity to look within and find the places in our own lives where change is hard for us. If our awareness of how the lack of change in another makes us feel can inspire us to take up the challenge of making the changes necessary in our own lives, perhaps they’ve given us a gift after all?
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

#BlogElul week 2: Sharing Inspirational postings

August 29, 2012 / gurevitzr

This past Shabbat, reflecting upon the arrival of Elul with my congregation, I mentioned that I would use my own blog to share some of the other contributions to #BlogElul that have been inspiring me. First, a brief excerpt from my sermon, where I offered some thoughts on what this month of preparation is all about. After all, the 10 days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur feel intense enough to many of us… what purpose does thinking about this entire month as ‘preparation’ time serve?

Rabbi Alan Lew, z’l, wrote a book, ‘This is Real and You are CompletelyUnprepared’. He’s talking about our souls. We may think we are prepared – prepared for work, for the week ahead, for the weekend. We may prepare ourselves for life by studying hard, learning a trade, earning a living, participating in family life or community life. But soul preparation is a different thing.

We know that we’ve prepared our souls when we have something to fall back upon in a moments of crisis.
We know that we’ve prepared our souls when the words that come out of our mouths in the heat of the moment are the same as the ones we would say if we had time to reflect first.
We know that we’ve prepared our souls when we are able to articulate what we believe and why.
We know that we’ve prepared our souls when we can make ‘big talk’ and not just ‘small talk’ in our interactions with other people.
We know that we’ve prepared our souls when we’ve made choices about how we structure our day such that we have space for something that nourishes the spirit – taking a walk, a swim, meditating, yoga, quiet reading time…
We know that we’ve prepared our souls when we can find the spark of holiness in the midst of the messiness of everyday life.
We know that we’ve prepared our souls when we feel a sense of inner peace and wholeness. If this day were to be our last (the big question that, with courage, is the question to explore on Yom Kippur), could we find that place of inner peace?

I don’t think that there is anyone in this room, myself included, who can answer ‘yes’ to most of those questions. Spiritual preparedness takes practice.

I sang an excerpt from Psalm 27, traditionally recited during this month. The Institute for Jewish Spirituality shared a beautiful, interpretative rendition to this psalm written by Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg. You can find, at along with several other wonderful sources to guide spiritual practice and introspection this month here.

There have been many wonderful contributions to the #BlogElul project this past week. If you are not a twitter user and haven’t been keeping track of multiple blogs, it can be hard to track them all down. Here are just a few of my favorites as a sample to introduce you to the writings of some of the other contributors.

Ima on (and off) the Bima: the Blog of Rabbi Phyllis Sommer, who got us all started on #BlogElul

The Musings of Rabbi Eric Linder (one of my fellow graduates from HUC-NY, 2006!)

Kol Isha: Reform women rabbis speak out! – a wonderful, new blog, featuring a different woman rabbi each day – many have been posting on #BlogElul themes.

A Good Question – the blog of Rabbi Yair Robinson

#BlogElul via the movies – a novel window to look at some Elul themes, from Rabbi Mark Kaiserman

I hope you find some of these intriguing and inspiring.
Below is a review of the themes of each day of the month (we’re up to day 10!). If you don’t have a blog of your own, but would like to have a go at writing a reflection on one of the day’s themes, email it to me and I’ll post yours here on this blog in the coming days.

Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

#BlogElul 7: Shofar – the cry of compassion

August 25, 2012 / gurevitzr

One of the midrashim that seeks to explain the origins of the different calls on the Shofar that we sound out each Rosh Hashanah has had the most impact on my understanding of teshuvah and the call to action signified by the Shofar blasts. It tells us that the shofar calls were modeled on the sound of Sisera’s mother, wailing while she waited at the window for his return from battle.

Who was Sisera and who was his mother?

In the story of Devorah, the Judge, Sisera is the enemy. He is the General that Devorah and her army general, Barak, are out to defeat. There is a poignant line toward the end of the story, when we are told that Sisera’s mother waits at her window for his return. It is poignant because we, the reader, know that he has been defeated and has fled. But his end is gruesome. A woman, Yael, encourages him to rest in her tent. She feeds him and gives him drink and, when he is asleep, she cuts off his head.

‘Hurrah! The enemy is defeated!’ might be our response. But then we find a rabbinic midrash that suggests that the sounds of the Shofar, that most emblematic of sounds for the High Holydays, remind us of the cries of Sisera’s mother.

In the midst of our season of return, when we are seeking forgiveness, when we are asked to find it in our hearts to forgive others, we struggle with our desire for justice in our world and the world’s need for compassion. That, after all, is the moral of the story of Jonah that we read on Yom Kippur. If we are all Jonahs then cities will be destroyed and who could stand in judgment? But if we are in the image of God, we respond with compassion, particularly when we see remorse in the words or actions of another.

The sound of the Shofar reminds us that even those that we regard as our enemies… even those who we regard as evil and have committed the worst atrocities – they have a mother. And that mother cries out in sorrow when harm comes to them.

Framing our world in this way, I have found myself able to be less angry at wrong-doing in the world, and, instead, feel the emotions of deep sadness. It doesn’t make me any less desiring to act in ways that might help make this world a little better. But instead of running in with sword unleashed, angrily battling the world of injustice, the sound of the Shofar asks me to see the world with greater empathy. It calls me to unleash a little more love and compassion in the ways that I seek to make a difference.

And I can thank Sisera’s mother for reminding me of these valuable lessons.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

#BlogElul 5 & 6: How great is Your trust in me

August 23, 2012 / gurevitzr

I’m taking two of the #BlogElul themes and putting them in one for this blog – Trust and Faith. In Hebrew, there is one word that can capture aspects of both of these english words – Emunah. There is another word in Hebrew, bitachon, that can also convey ‘trust’, and sometimes bitachon and emunah get used interchangeably. But in rabbinic literature, emunah is often the word that conveys both meanings.

When we awake in the morning, the traditional blessing that is recited upon noticing that we have regained consciousness is Modeh (Modah for women) Ani lefanecha, Melech Chai v’kayam, she’he’chezarta bi nishmati b’chemla rabah emunatecha: Thankful am I before You, Living and Eternal Sovereign. You have returned my soul to me in mercy. How great is your trust/faith in me!

The idea of waking with this blessing goes back to Talmudic times and is derived from verses in Lamentations (3:22-23) that rabbis interpreted to mean that Creation is renewed every day. Our souls are safeguarded in God’s hands, metaphorically speaking, while we sleep and, when we awake, it is God who has restored our souls.

When I pray these words, I often focus more on the first phrase – Thankful am I before You… There is so much to contemplate in these few words. A story is told of a Hassidic master, the Apter Rebbe, who had not started his morning prayers, yet it was now noon. He explained that he had awoken and begun to recite modeh ani, but began to wonder, ‘Who am I?’, and ‘Who is the You before Whom I am I?’ Still pondering these questions, he had been unable to go forward. (in ‘A Book of Life: Embracing Judaism as a Spiritual Practice, by Rabbi Michael Strassfeld, p. 5).

Focusing on the first part of the prayer can invoke a sense of awe if, like the Apter Rebbe, one truly begins to think about the essence of the ‘I’ and what we understand to be the ‘Thou’.

But the last part of the prayer is where we find the word, emunah, and the emphasis is quite different. How great is Your faith. Does God need faith? Surely not. But on days when we might not feel like opening our eyes, on days when we might not be looking forward to the tasks that lie ahead, on days when we feel loss, pain, loneliness… uttering the words of Modeh Ani can remind us that each day is created anew. We have been given the gift of today. What shall we do with it? When we are lacking faith in our own strength, our own abilities, or our own will to get ourselves up and out of bed, we remind ourselves that God has faith in us. Its God’s little daily pep talk with us.

Here faith and trust are interconnected in one Hebrew word – emunah. God has faith in us. Our soul has been entrusted to us for one more day so that we may do something remarkable with it. And God believes in our capacity to do just that. God trusts that we will use this day wisely. Rabah emunatecha, we say – Great is your faith/trust. Why so great? Because perhaps we didn’t use the gift we were given so wisely yesterday. Perhaps we didn’t do all that we could have with our time. But great is God’s faith that we may still live up to our full potential. Preparing for Rosh Hashanah, we are invited to consider how we are using each gift – each day. We are called upon to have the faith to believe that more is possible. We are called upon to trust and believe that we can raise ourselves higher.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

#BlogElul 4: Catching myself counting

August 21, 2012 / gurevitzr

Today’s #BlogElul theme is counting. Round about now, there are parents everywhere counting down to the start of the school year. For some, they are counting down to their kids being back in a regular schedule – they can stop worrying about how to keep them occupied in the wide expanse of Summer. For some, they are counting down to the end of the delicious, extended time they are able to have with their children in a qualitatively different way to the rest of the year. For most, its probably a combination of the two, depending on the day and the hour, and how adorable (or not) our kids are being.

Poet and writer, Merle Feld, has a powerful poem in her book, ‘A Spiritual Life’ that describes a mother looking through the window at her child, worrying about her wellbeing. She reflects on the years she spent watching and worrying, never just looking out the window to take in the pleasure of watching her child at play.

I’ve recently been through (admittedly, am still going through) a transition of my own. I left my position as the Associate Rabbi of one congregation to begin as the Senior Rabbi of another. The last month in my last post was both a counting down of the precious days I had left there, in a community that I loved, and a counting down to beginning a new and exciting phase of life in a community that I was looking forward to getting to know. On days when I felt myself consciously counting, I realized that this act was a way of managing my emotions and the mix of excitement and anxieties that come with making significant changes in one’s life. But, in the moments that I stopped counting and, instead, was just ‘being’, I experienced a much more complex and richer array of emotions. I allowed myself to feel all that was happening for me, my spouse, and the communities that I was a part (or soon to be a part) of. These emotions could sometimes feel overwhelming, but it was at these times that I was most present to what was happening, moment by moment.

I’ve noticed in other contexts too, that counting often appears to be a substitute for just being present. Like the mother in Merle Feld’s poem, worrying about things that may not be real, counting the passing of days and years, but missing out on the sheer pleasure of play by simply being present to her child in the moment.

We can count our days, or we can learn to make each day count. And they are very different things. What choice will you make today?

#BlogElul 3: The intentions of the ‘other’

August 20, 2012 / gurevitzr

If you’ve been following along since last week’s blog posting, you’ll know that I’m blogging throughout the Jewish month of Elul on daily themes created by my colleague, Rabbi Phyllis Sommer. If you use Twitter, you’ll be able to see many posts by many bloggers on the daily theme by following #BlogElul.
Today’s theme is Intentions.

Yesterday’s post was about inventories. As I reflected on taking stock of our own character trait inventories, I used judgment as an example. I’m aware that this is a character trait that I’ve worked on over a period of years. While I am always going to be ‘a work in progress’, I know that I’ve been able to adjust how this particular trait plays out in my own life. Today’s theme – Intentions – has a lot to do with how I’ve been able to make some progress in this area.

In any given day, we experience effects caused by the words and actions of many other people. If we are able to be truly mindful about what is happening, we might be able to clearly identify the act. We might also be able to clearly identify how we are feeling. But, for most of us, we rarely possess such clarity. Rather, somebody does or says something, it invokes a feeling in us, and we then construct a whole story about it. And this is what gets us into trouble.

Let me provide an example. Someone ignores you when you are waiting for attention in a store. Or cuts in front of you in a line or on the highway. Our judgmental voice – the one that rings out with a righteous sense of right and wrong, fair and unfair, steps in. Our ego is bruised. ‘Why do they think they are more important than me that they need to go first and ignore my needs?’ ‘What a selfish person to think that they don’t need to wait patiently like the rest of us.’ ‘Doesn’t that driver realize the enormous harm they could cause if I hadn’t noticed them and put my foot on the brake – how reckless and irresponsible!’

But the truth is, while we may have been unfortunate enough to interact with an individual who thinks and behaves in these ways, there are many other possible stories we could tell. ‘That shop attendant needs me to gently turn their attention my way; they are lost in thought because they are worried about their ailing mother in the hospital.’ ‘That driver just received a call that their kid got hit by the ball in lacrosse and was taken to the emergency room – they are getting there as quickly as they can.’

Notice how these completely different stories transform your emotional response to the very same set of circumstances. In mindfulness practice, being aware of what is real and what is the story we tell ourselves about our experience of that reality is one of the gifts we can receive from meditation. In Buddhist meditation, ‘Suffering’ is understood as a psycho-spiritual condition we often inflict upon ourselves by remaining attached to stories that may or may not be accurate, and serve no useful purpose as we try to live our best lives.

So learning that I cannot assume the intentions of the other can release me from a lot of the hurt that I might be feeling. If I have a difficult interaction with someone, finding a way to enquire about their intentions can be the opening to a conversation. Perhaps I will just listen and gain a new insight into the essence of another. Or perhaps I will feel a need to explain to them that, while they may have intended one thing, I experienced it in another way. It may be important that they gain some awareness of my responses to certain things. We come to better know each other and, perhaps, to act with more consciousness and sensitivity to each other’s needs. And, as I come to realize that the intentions of the ‘other’ may not be what I first assumed to be so, I may gain greater awareness of the ways in which my own intentions can be misunderstood or misinterpreted by others. Learning this about ourselves and about others can help us to lessen the voice of judgment and strengthen the voice of compassion within us.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

#BlogElul 2: Soul Trait Inventories

August 20, 2012 / gurevitzr

http://www.superiorwarehousing.com/images/inventory-picture.jpg

In the last few years, the Jewish spiritual practice of Musar has made something of a resurgence among Jews from many different walks of life. Perhaps Alan Morinis can be most identified with making what was once primarily under the purview of observant, Jewish males into something accessible that speaks to a much wider audience. But others, such as Ira Stone, also have written extensively on Musar and, similarly to Morinis, offer online courses and communities of practice for those who wish to engage more deeply.

The link above provides a more detailed explanation of the history and practice of Musar. But one key element is the identification of separate (although often inter-dependent) character traits that one can examine over time, through study with others, and with self-observation and journaling as one takes a designated period of time (usually at least a month) to become aware of how this particular characteristic reveals itself in your own life. You might be looking at the trait of judgment. Or trust. Or, perhaps, compassion.

In Musar, there is a recognition that there is not one right way to exercise each of these traits. The practice is one of paying attention to how it manifests in your own life now in comparison to how you might believe it should manifest if you were able to raise your spiritual life to a higher level. As part of the practice, one of the most important elements of one’s self-awareness is to recognize the ‘Bechirah’ – the choosing points when examining how a particular trait exhibits itself in your life.

So, for example, there may be many kinds of interactions where I feel good about my ability to be non-judgmental. But that is not where I need to do my deepest spiritual work. It is the kinds of interactions where I hear the judgmental voice in me rising sharply… if I can notice what specifically flips that switch in me, I can then begin to really examine and understand where my judgment comes from. The goal is not to arrive at a completely relativist world where I never judge anyone or anything. But perhaps I realize that I can sometimes be harsh. Or sometimes I rule out people or options too quickly when they deserved deeper consideration. And so, over time, I can choose to work on rebalancing this particular soul trait in my own life. And how that looks for me, may be different to how it looks to you. You may be someone who seldom judges. And this may manifest in ways that sometimes has people taking advantage of you and manipulating you. Your soul trait work on this trait may see you rebalancing in a different direction, and becoming a little more judgmental in certain contexts.

When we talk of Elul as a month to take stock, to turn, to reflect…. its not just about counting up ‘sins’ and telling ourselves that we’ll try and do better next year. There are many spiritual practices and tools that we can draw upon from the well of Jewish wisdom. They can guide us in a deeper way so that, when we return to Rosh Hashanah a year from now, we may notice that we’ve not just circled a year, but that we’ve spiraled a year, and we’ve ended up a little higher along the path than the year before.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

Returning on August 19th – Elul begins

August 12, 2012 / gurevitzr

A week from today we arrive at Rosh Chodesh Elul – the beginning of the new Hebrew month of Elul. This is the month that leads up to Rosh Hashanah. The Jewish New Year has a very different flavor to the secular New Year with its party hats, champagne and poppers. The Jewish New Year in an invitation to reflect, turn and return, realigning ourselves with a spiritual center that is our God-given holy spark. When we are paying attention, this is the spark that lights the path and helps us find our way through life, being the highest of what we have the potential to be.

For Rosh Hashanah to be a meaningful holiday, we need to prepare. Elul provides a month of reflective preparation time. In our modern age, there are many tools and guides available to us that enable us to set aside a little time each day for this reflective work of soul preparation. One of my colleagues, Rabbi Phylis Sommer, has again suggested a theme a day for #BlogElul and #Elulgram, and I’ll be participating by blogging here on her listed themes. The ‘#’ tells you that the various bloggers who join her can be easily found on Twitter if you search for #BlogElul – we’ll all be posting links to our blogs that way. If you follow me on Facebook, you’ll also see the Elul postings there. And, of course, you can sign up on the right side of this blog to receive an email in your inbox whenever I’ve posted a new blog piece. An #Elulgram is a photo posted on Twitter, offering a visual interpretation of the day’s theme.

While you may let some of us provide a guide through the month of Elul by reading some of these postings, anyone can contribute. If you have a blog, try writing some of your own reflections. Or, use the comments box on my blog to add your own thoughts on the day’s theme, on the days that I post. I don’t usually manage to post every day of Elul, but about once a week I’ll post my personal selection of the ‘best of’ #BlogElul with links to some of the pieces by others that I have found most thought-provoking in my own preparations for the High Holydays.