Category: Forgiveness (Page 1 of 2)

#BlogElul 5775: Yizkor and Forgiveness

August 21, 2015 / gurevitzr

Why do we have a Yizkor (memorial) service on Yom Kippur? It is clearly a ritual that has great meaning to many people. In most congregations it is one of the services of the holiest of days with the largest attendance. There’s an historical answer to the question, if we want to learn more about the original connection between remembrance and atonement. Certainly, some of us attend Yizkor because its just what you do, and it is what those before us did. But, like most things in Judaism, especially in progressive communities, rituals and times of gathering don’t continue to be widely observed unless they have a contemporary meaning and value that is experienced by those who engage in them.

Yom Kippur is sometimes described as like a rehearsal for death. The Vidui (confession) that we pronounce several times over the High Holy Days is a ritual that is also meant for one who has the opportunity to say it if they are aware that they are close to death. There is also a nightly vidui ritual, precisely because most of us can never know when our last day will come. So there is something powerful, as we reflect on our own mortality, about turning our thoughts to those who have already died. They have shaped our lives, and we often see things in ourselves that we inherited from them. There are things that we do, and ways we behave that we are aware that we do because of them, or sometimes in spite of them.

Yizkor may be a time for appreciation. It may be a time for us to be inspired by our memories of others to seek to live each of our days so that others will have cherished memories of us at some time in the future. It may be a time to find a spiritual path forward to deal with unfinished business, pain or hurt.

As with each and every step of the High Holy ritual, our new machzor provides prayers, reflective readings, and insights that can help us with all of the above. Here is a piece written by Cantor Linda Hirschhorn entitled Forgiveness and the Afterlife (copyright CCAR, 2015, Yom Kippur machzor, p.581).
I do have an ongoing relationship with the dead, and I do think about the afterlife – my afterlife, that is – after someone I know dies: what happens to me afterwards, in my life.
Some deaths come too soon; some deaths are unexpected; some deaths we think we are prepared for, but really we are rarely ready: we don’t usually know when a conversation is the last conversation, with so much that may be left unsaid, unresolved.
So in this afterlife of mine I am still in relationship with people who have died. I miss them, I talk to them in my mind, I ask them questions about our relationship that I wasn’t ready to ask them when they were still alive. I show off my accomplishments, and wish they could witness them; and yes, I still have some of the same old arguments, still trying to prove my point of view. What helps me go forward? How do I resolve these lingering feelings?
Here is what makes the Yom Kippur Yizkor so special – this forgiveness prayer devoted exclusively to those no longer with us, that comes late in the afternoon when we are tired, hungry, vulnerable, and open. During this Yizkor I am given the opportunity to forgive myself for cutting off that last phone conversation with my father – I was always in a hurry; he always wanted to chat longer; and then he died. It’s during this Yizkor that I have the opportunity to forgive my mother for her harsh ways; to let go of being angry – for my sake in this world, if not for her sake in the world-to-come.
For this Yizkor to feel honest and meaningful, I don’t want to sentimentalize those relationships. I don’t just want to remember the ideals and gifts they may or may not have passed down. I want to remember those relationships exactly as they were, and then be able to forgive myself and them for our failings, for what we never got a chance to repair or finish.

May our memories bring the light of loved ones into our hearts. May our prayers help us forgive and receive forgiveness. With remembrance, may healing come our way.

#BlogElul 13: Buying forgiveness on credit

September 9, 2014 / gurevitzr

Avinu Malkeinu – one of the central prayers associated with the High Holy Days. I remember a congregant in my last community commenting on how uncomfortable she felt reciting the long list of ‘asks’ that this prayer contains:

Avinu Malkeinu – listen to our voice!

Avinu Malkeinu – let our hands overflow with Your blessings.

Avinu Malkeinu – do not turn us away from You with nothing.

Avinu Malkeinu- listen to our voice; treat us with tender compassion.

On and on it goes – these are just a sampling of the lines. My congregant asked, ‘Isn’t this the ultimate act of chutzpah? What right do we have to make these demands of God?’

She had a good point. And it reminded me of a story that I once heard Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi z’l tell. He describes a time when you would go to the General Store and you’d ask the shopkeeper behind the counter, ‘Can I have a ball of string?’ and the shopkeeper would go to the shelves behind the counter and bring down a ball of string. ‘Can I have a yard of cloth?’ ‘Can I have a dozen cans of this’ and ‘half a dozen boxes of that’. So it would continue, and the shopkeeper would pull down all the items on your order list and pile them on the counter. At the end he would calculate the total bill. And, embarrassed but hopeful the man would respond, ‘I don’t have any money to pay you, but may I take these items that I need nevertheless?!’

You can imagine how that would go in real life. But at the end of Avinu Malkeinu, we acknowledge as much in the closing line:

Avinu Malkeinu, chonainu vaaneinu, ki ein banu maasim – aseh imanu tzedakah vachesed, v’hoshieinu.

Avinu Malkeinu, Almighty and Merciful – answer us with grace, for our deeds our wanting. Save us through acts of justice and love.

(translation from the forthcoming CCAR machzor, Mishkan haNefesh)

We ask for the response to our pleas to come as an act of grace. That’s not language that we are used to associating with Judaism, but it is, in fact, very present in our liturgy and many of our teachings. Ki ein banu maasim – because there isn’t anything in our deeds. We showed up the store without any money to pay for our requests.

Here is how I translate these words into more contemporary concepts that speak to our inner lives. When I really engage in the work of the High Holy Days and look deeply at myself, there is plenty to cause me disappointment. We are often pretty harsh judges of ourselves. And here we are, in an act of chutzpah, hoping that life will be good anyway. That we will be forgiven for our failings. Can we give to others what we ask for ourselves? Can we respond to others from a place of grace? We go to the store without credit, but one of the ways we can acquire credit is by paying it forward.

Living more of life with that awareness we understand that only through acts of tzedakah and chesed can we change the meaning of our lives. Its not about what we have or haven’t got. A lot of life ‘just happens’; we like to think we are in control, but that’s seldom the reality. So we’re never going to be able to ‘pay’ for our fate through our deeds. Because it doesn’t really work that way. Acting morally doesn’t buy us more life, but it does enable us to practice and to receive forgiveness. Because it gives us the tools we need to be authentically remorseful and try to make amends when we mess up. And that is the answer, from a place of grace, that we seek. Remind us, as we pray, that we can change the quality of our existence, and the existence of others, through our acts. This is how salvation comes to this life and this world.

Avinu Malkeinu – our deeds are wanting; help us to do a little bit more in the year to come.

#BlogElul: Writing the story of your life #takeaseatmakeafriend

September 3, 2013 / gurevitzr

One of the images found in the High Holyday liturgy is ‘The Book of Life’. The traditional language makes it sound like a kind of ledger, with accounts being recorded, added and subtracted. At the end of the accounting, God decides if we’ve enough credit in the bank to make it to the next year. If you grew up being taught it this way, as I was, you may be mightily put off by it all. All these invitations to engage more deeply in the High Holydays may be falling on resistant ears.

A number of years ago I arrived at the belief that if my experience of life and my way of understanding the world around me didn’t correlate with an ‘idea’ of God that I thought my tradition had conveyed through its liturgy and the philosophy of Rabbis from centuries past, it was the old ideas that had to go. They were, after all, only the putting into human language of a God too ‘other’ to truly grasp, and so carried with them the limitations of the humans who wrote them. To truly have a relationship with God, I had to be present to my experience and trust it.

And so, I could no longer believe in a God filling out a ledger, at least not in a literal sense. But I liked the image of the ‘Book of Life’ and the pages that were filled. But I am the only one holding the pen. Whether I like what has been written, and whether what is still to be written will be worth reading is up to me. Sometimes we can be harder on ourselves than the God we imagine is forgiving us and erasing the bad lines and paragraphs to give us the chance for a re-write. But when we recognize our agency in writing our own Book, it can be incredibly freeing and empowering. For sure, we do not get to write every twist and turn in the plot. There are many things that life brings to us that are not of our design or our asking. But we write the response. We are always able to write the response.

We cannot decide how the next chapter will go if we are not willing to read what we’ve written so far. Now is the time.

#BlogElul: If we could see inside other people’s hearts #takeaseatmakeafriend

September 1, 2013 / gurevitzr

One of the most powerful and thought-provoking sermons I ever heard was delivered by a friend while we were students at Hebrew Union College. It was her ‘Senior Sermon’ – the sermon we all give before we graduate in one of the weekday services at the college. She shared an experience she’d had on the train during her commute into the city. One day there was a passenger seated nearby whose music was playing objectionably loudly through his headphones. It was clearly a distraction to all seated nearby, but no-one was doing anything. My friend politely tapped the man on the shoulder and asked if he wouldn’t mind turning down the music a bit. He responded furiously, cursing her and telling her to ‘watch it’, threatening to make trouble for her when they left the train. She was terrified and unsure what to do next. No-one nearby on the train spoke up or came to her aid. She’d recently been reading the book ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ by Mitch Albom, a book that I drew from just this past Friday for a creative service where Morrie’s words inspired us to do our own spiritual preparations for the High Holydays.

‘What would Morrie do?’ she asked herself. A little further into the trip, before they reached their destination and departed, she saw that she had an opportunity to speak to the man again. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realize how much your music meant to you.’ The anger in his face dissipated. He started to tell her that he’d lost everything – his girlfriend, his job… his music was all he had left. In that brief moment he felt seen by someone who cared about him more than they cared about the volume on his iPod. They both left the train in peace. The moment was brief, but there was no question that it was transformative for both of them.

The powerful video above asks us to contemplate how much we don’t know about people. What would it take to uncover just a little of what lies beneath the surface? In the context of community, how transformative could that be?

#BlogElul 25: Why Forgiveness is the key

September 12, 2012 / gurevitzr

Last Saturday night, for our pre-Selichot service study and discussion, I presented the animated shorts of Hanan Harchol, found at www.jewishfoodforthought.com Not only are these charming, they are wonderfully thought-provoking, and generated a great deal of conversation. We watched ‘Forgiveness’ first.

I will speak for myself when I say that, despite my understanding that forgiveness is creating an internal change that allows another person’s acts to no longer keep a grip on my thoughts and emotions – to, as we hear in the animation, no longer let someone ‘live rent free in my head’ – it is an incredibly difficult thing to do in practice. At times, often unexpectedly, I find myself replaying painful scenes from my life when someone’s words hurt me, or I felt wronged, or someone acted in a way that was dismissive or condescending toward me. I have no desire for these scenes to occupy space in my memory banks. But they seem to have an uncanny ability to maintain their grip.

Mindfulness practices can help combat the power of these thoughts. While I may not be able to neutralize them completely, a greater self-awareness can at least enable me to notice when my mind is in that place, and I can then consciously let it go and try to clear the picture in my head. Sometimes that is as good as it gets. I don’t believe that forgiveness is a one-time thing. It is a process that we need to repeat over and over when a particular moment of our past swims back into view, churning up old emotions with it. And then, perhaps, over time, the more we find ourselves able to notice and dismiss the memory and observe rather than be drawn in by the emotions, the more we are able to neutralize the intensity of the memory when it arises the next time.

Why is it so important to forgive? I’ve been thinking a lot during my preparations and sermon-writing for the High Holydays, that our entire orientation to life – our outlook, our motivation to engage in purposeful acts in the world that make a difference to the community we live in, and the ways that we engage with others on a day-to-day basis, are all driven by the things that we marinate our minds in. There are many ways that we can marinate the mind in something that is burning with negativity. Painful memories from the past are some of the ways. And I know that, for me, when those memories arise, I feel myself get tense and my teeth grit, and my brow furrows, and I’m more likely to be sharp with someone or impatient, and I’m more likely to want to shut myself off from interactions and just hibernate in my own, private space.

But when I do those things, how can I make a positive difference in the world? How can I contribute in a meaningful way to the life of my family, friends, or community? How can I be open enough to give and receive love, to act compassionately, to create space for a different kind of interaction next time around?

Forgiveness is the key. When we read Jonah on Yom Kippur afternoon, that is the message. Jonah wants to see strict justice applied to Nineva. When we dredge up past scenes of hurt, isn’t that what we want? We want to know that person got their comeuppance. We want to know that someone gave them as good as they gave. We want to see them fail at something. But what does that achieve? If we recognize that when we feel miserable we are less likely to do good in the world, why would we hope for someone else’s misery? Yes, there are times when acts are committed that require societal justice to be done. But, on an individual level, forgiveness and legal justice are compatible and can co-exist, because one is an internal state of mind, while the other is a social system for maintaining some controls over the worst excesses of human behavior.

Forgiveness is the key.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

#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

Elul Reflections 9: A Muslim sister reflects on Ramadan

September 4, 2010 / gurevitzr

This year, the month of Elul has largely coincided with the holy month of Ramadan. There are some specific rituals associated with Ramadan – a daily fast from sunrise to sundown for the month, the giving of charity, and a heightened consciousness around not engaging in gossip or malicious speech. While there are differences, these two months share much in common – a time of spiritual purification and preparation, a time of atonement, and a time of re-centering ourselves in relationship to God and to others as we strive to be the best human being we can be.

Over the past four years, through the work of an interfaith group, The Tent of Abraham, our congregation has built bridges and created new friendships with Christians and Muslims in our local community. We organize 2-3 dialog programs each year, and a parallel program brings our teenagers together each Spring.

Last week, our Rosh Hodesh group – the women’s spirituality group of B’nai Israel – was invited to Iftar – break-fast – with the women of the Bridgeport Islamic Community Center. It was a wonderful evening of sharing and meeting and our hosts laid on a feast. We are looking forward to reciprocating when we host an evening for Christian, Muslim and Jewish women during our Festival of Sukkot later this month.

This evening, our guest post is by Olga Shibtini. Olga is the Vice-President of the Bridgeport Islamic Community Center, is involved with the Tent of Abraham and helps to organize our teen interfaith program. She shares with us the meaning of Ramadan for her. We wish all of our Muslim friends a Blessed Ramadan. May our spiritual practice inspire us to reach ever higher and reach out as we continue to build the bridges between us.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

My feelings for Ramadan have changed tremendously over the years since I first became a Muslim 16 years ago. Initially, I didn’t like it because I didn’t undersand the true meaning and spirituality of the month. I used to just look at it as another month faced with not eating or drinking anything from sunrise to sunset and actually being depressed over it.

However, as the years passed and I began to really understand the true meaning of what it really means to fast, I started loving the month of Ramadan and even feeling sad when it came to an end.

Many times we are so busy that we cannot find the time to really connect with God. Maybe we go through the motions of prayers and of everything else during the day, but we really don’t feel connected because we are so busy working, eating, etc. However, during Ramadan everything changes. We tend to slow down a bit and find more time to be with family and friends breaking fast together and praying at the mosque. I remember the first time I really understood what it meant to sacrifice something for the sake of God, and how I felt ashamed of myself for initially seeing this month as an obstacle rather than as a reward that God gives us to cleanse our souls and be forgiven for our sins.

And, of course, the realization that this is the month when God opens the heavens and closes the gates of hell made me feel like a fool for not appreciating the chance that God gives me to be forgiven by allowing me to live another year and make it to another month of Ramadan. How blessed am I that God grants me this reward.

I never really quite understood the meaning of our supplications being answered more during the month of Ramadan until my husband became very ill in 1998. It was during the last 10 days of Ramadan and he was given a 50/50 chance to survive. He was hospitalized in the intensive care unit at St. Vincent’s Medical Center. I recall staying up most of the night asking God to save my husband so that my then 7 year old son would not be left without his father, and I remember feeling really connected with God and his giving me a sense of calm and peace during those nights when I didn’t know whether my husband would live or die. I still remember when I returned to the hospital the second day and having the doctors tell me that my husband was going to make it. I just knew God had really heard me.
This is my most cherished memory of Ramadan.

Olga

Elul 29. Reflections on a month of soul-preparation

September 17, 2009 / gurevitzr

Tonight is the last night of the blog before Erev Rosh Hashanah. For those who have written, read or contributed, I hope that it has provided an opportunity for daily pause and reflection and that this year’s Rosh Hashanah, 10 days of repentance, and Yom Kippur, we are able entered more mindfully and more centered as a result of these daily moments of reflection.

Last Saturday night, when our local communities joined together for a staged reading of Merle Feld’s ‘The Gates are Closing’, we learnt about 10 individuals and the pains, losses, guilt, silences, and fractures that each character carried from the lives they had lived up to this moment. From the perspective of the audience it was so powerfully evident that no-one who begins to reflect on the parts of their lives that need healing and the places where teshuvah can help them reconnect, re-center, and drawer closer to a God-presence in their lives when they enter a synagogue sanctuary on Yom Kippur, can possibly hope to complete the process in a 25 hour period. We need time to contemplate, to speak healing, forgiving, or confessional words to others, to God, and to re-commit ourselves to aiming toward new patterns of behavior in the coming years. The month of Elul provides us with the gift of this time, if we choose to accept it.

But while these days are Judaism’s annual invitation to return, the possibility is always there. If we are open to God’s comforting Presence, accompanying us and holding us as we find the courage to do the difficult work of teshuvah and growth, we will find that the gates never truly close.

Over this past month Sh’ma Koleinu – Hear Our Voices, has received more than 500 visitors. The blog will be continuing into the New Year, not on a daily basis (although a kabbalistic reflection series is in the works when we arrive at the Counting of the Omer, after Pesach), but there will be more coming between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, a weekly reflection just before Shabbat, and festival reflections throughout the year. An invitation to share teachings, practices, and reflections remains open – we continue to strive to expand the number of voices represented on these pages, so please do send in pieces that you’d like to contribute.

Wishing everyone a Shanah Tovah u’m’tukah – a very Happy & Sweet New Year,
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

Elul 26. Sorry, Again

September 14, 2009 / gurevitzr

Today’s blog entry is a cross-post from Tablet Magazine. Marjorie Ingall writes a wonderful piece, subtitled, ‘There’s no sure way to raise kids who apologize and accept apologies’. How do parents help their children to say ‘sorry’, and learn forgiveness of others? The link below will you take you straight to the article.

Sorry, Again

Elul 24. Psalm 32 – A guide to teshuvah

September 12, 2009 / gurevitzr

Over the past three weeks, our Shabbat morning Torah study group has been studying psalms that reflect on themes of forgiveness. The first of the three we studied, psalm 32, has a particularly contemporary resonance to it, offering what today we might label a psycho-spiritual teaching on forgiveness that offers much food for thought. Here is the text of the psalm:

Psalm 32. Of David. Maschil.

Happy is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered over. 
Happy is the man whom the Eternal does not hold guilty, and in whose spirit there is no guile. 
When I kept silence, my limbs wasted away away through my groaning all the day long. 
For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my sap was turned as in the droughts of summer. Selah 
Then I acknowledged my sin to You, I did not cover up my guilt;  I said: ‘I will make confession concerning my transgressions to the Eternal’–  and You, You forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah 
For this let every one that is godly pray to You in a time when You may be found;  so when the great waters overflow, they will not reach him. 
You are my shelter; You will preserve me from distress; with songs of deliverance You will surround me. Selah 
I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you shall go; I will give counsel, my eye being upon you. 
Be not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding; whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, that they come not near to you. 
Many are the torments of the wicked; but he that trusts in the Eternal, mercy encompasses him. 
Be glad in the Eternal, and rejoice, you righteous; and shout for joy, all you that are upright in heart.

Some of the observations and points of discussion in our study group were:

What is the meaning of ‘happy’ in the opening line? When we have a committed a wrong, does confession to God and true teshuvah lead to happiness? Some thought that ‘relieved’ might be more appropriate; but others recognized more of a joie de vivre – a spiritually-ground joy in living that can emerge from true teshuvah as we allow ourselves to recommit to positive living rather than forever being trapped in the depths of our own remorse.
In verse 3 we see what, at face value, seems to be a contradiction; when I kept silence my limbs wasted away from all my groaning… But when we are aware that we have done wrong but hold back from speaking with those we have wronged, or even offering up our feelings of deep remorse in prayer to God, our guilt can have a real psychological and physical impact on our body and soul it can literally ‘eat us up.’
The psalm enjoins us to do teshuvah and experience God’s mercy and presence as we work through our guilt and inner torments. The horse, who is guided by our lead via the bit and bridle, is contrasted with the free will of humanity, containing both the yetzer hatov and the yetzer hara – the inclination to good and to evil. What is the source of our internal steering mechanism? When we stray from our path, acts of teshuvah, tefilah, and tzedakah (in the words of the High Holyday prayer, unetaneh tokef), can help us find our way back into God’s embrace. There is surely a deep, spiritual joy that can emanate from finding our way back home again.
Several times we see the word ‘Selah‘ after a line. Difficult to translate literally, it is perhaps best interpreted as ‘Pause and consider’. Psalm 32 offers a contemplative text that we can use as a gateway to our own teshuvah process as we move ever-closer to the New Year.

Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz