Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

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Category: High Holydays (Page 2 of 2)

#BlogElul: Connection to something larger #takeaseatmakeafriend

August 30, 2013 /
One of the challenges of our traditional liturgy at the High Holydays is the medieval language of our liturgy, compounded by the fact that most of us are reading these poetic passages in translation. It’s a bit like trying to navigate your way through Chaucer’s English. And some of the God images that I can get stuck on are the ones that seem to engender a feeling of fear. But in Hebrew, yirah can be translated as fear or as awe. I don’t connect with a God that is feared. That relationship does not convey the loving, compassionate energy that I want to feel connected to when I seek a sense of greater Presence.
But a God that leaves me in awe… that is something that I can completely connect to. When I try to wrap my head around the reality and complexity of the connections that exist between us all and all life, that is truly awe-inspiring.  My mind can’t grasp it all, but if I can do my own, small piece to contribute to fostering connections that are truly loving and compassionate, then I’m participating positively in the flow of giving and receiving in that infinite and intricate web of connection.
That, for me, is the meaning of feeling the awe of God.
And, as Brene Brown puts it that, indeed, brings a sense of perspective, meaning and purpose to my life.

#BlogElul: Take a Seat, Make a Friend

August 9, 2013 /

Each year, our wonderful colleague Rabbi Phyllis Sommer, puts forth a daily theme for the Jewish month of Elul – the four weeks leading up to Rosh Hashanah. There are many others who are participating in #BlogElul with quotes, images, and thought pieces. It is wonderful to read multiple interpretations of the daily theme by different writers on their blogs and via their tweets.

This year, I will also be blogging through Elul, but I’m going to be departing from the common themes of the #BlogElul project. It is a little chutzpadik on my part, but I’ll be continuing to label my postings with the #BlogElul moniker to connect with the larger community who is engaged in reflection during this preparatory month.  Traveling with my own congregation, connecting with community, and specifically relationship-building between congregants, is our larger theme for this coming High Holyday season and beyond.

I’ll explain more in a just a moment.  But first, I invite you to take a few minutes to watch this wonderful, heart-warming video to set the scene:

  And here are some excerpts from the message I shared with my congregation on the 1st day of Elul, to launch our own ‘Take a Seat, Make a Friend’ experience over the coming 7 weeks and beyond:

Four people, sitting in kayaks in the middle of a lake, strike up a conversation. It is not a hypothetical – it is what happened when two of the families who came to our Summer picnic at Hopkinton State Park just a few weeks ago met. They discovered that they have a great deal in common. Lesley and David learned that they’d grown up in the same town, and even belonged to the same temple. David and Jim learned that they used to work at the same company, and David has done business with Jim’s new boss. Jim and Lori discovered that they were both Industrial Engineers by training. But, as Lesley put it, more than the specifics, it was the overall sense of connection that was important – it created a warmth in their hearts and a feeling of being ‘home’. Just as our teens speak about Chai School being a place where a sense of common identity is felt by how friends just ‘get each other’, so that sense of connection is something that we all deeply hope to find in community.

This is what happens when you take a seat and begin to talk. It can happen on a kayak, in a ball pit, at a coffee table, at an Oneg, and anywhere that two people begin a conversation that scratches beneath the surface.

We all yearn for that kind of connection. And we want Congregation B’nai Shalom to be the kind of community where you can find it. This year we will be especially focusing our energies on creating the kind of gatherings and opportunities that will enable more of us to have those meaningful conversations and deepen relationships among the members of our congregation.

There will be many opportunities to experience this during the High Holyday season. However, there is no time to start like the present. While the core work of relationship building happens in face-to-face interaction, the next four weeks – the Jewish month of Elul – is traditionally a time of preparation. During this month, I will be posting inspirational quotes and videos on themes of connection and relationship, along with questions on our Facebook page (‘like’ the page to receive the feed on your wall). If you are not a Facebook user, you will find the same reflections on my blog (where you can also sign up to receive new postings in your email inbox). I invite you to engage, comment, and share when you can. Our online sharing and interactions with each other’s comments will enable us all to get to know each other a little more. If you prefer, you can choose to share anonymously on the blog and, if you wish to do so on Facebook, send me your comment and we will post as ‘CBS’ with your thoughts.

In addition, I am inviting congregants to contemplate some of the questions below and send me short responses in the coming weeks. I will weave these responses into our High Holyday services this year and, in this way, we will co-create our liturgy together, getting to know each other a little more deeply in the process.

  • Share something on your bucket list? Why this?
  • Who or what inspires you?
  • What is one experience that changed your life?
  • What keeps you up at night?
  • What do you have faith in?
  • What is most precious to you?
  • Who do you miss? How did they impact your life?

So… let the conversations begin.

#BlogElul 25: Why Forgiveness is the key

September 12, 2012 /

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

Elul – URJ Webinar series to prepare for the High Holydays

July 30, 2010 /

Tuesday, August 10, is Rosh Hodesh Elul.  This is the Jewish month that leads us to Rosh Hashanah – the Jewish New Year.  This blog launched one year ago on 1 Elul.  This year we will once again post regular thought-pieces, meditations and practices to help in your own personal reflections, reviewing the past year, engaging with the path of teshuvah, enabling us all to enter the High Holyday season with greater intention and awareness.

In the meantime, the Union for Reform Judaism has a 4-part webinar open to all, beginning on Rosh Hodesh Elul, with some wonderful teachers involved.  I highly commend this program to you.  The details follow, with a link to the URJ page where you can register for the webinar.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

August 11, 2010 – Welcoming Elul: Spiritual Preparations for the Days of Awe

Part one of four part High Holy Days and Sukkot series with special guest presenter Craig Taubman.
Sue Levi EllwellLanie Katzew
The rabbis teach that ELUL is the month when Ani l’dodi v’dodi li: I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine. Join us on the first of Elul for an hour of interactive study and exploration of how this phrase from the Song of Songs can inform our daily study, practice and reflection as we prepare to enter the Days of Awe and the New Year. 
 
Led by Music Specialist Cantor Alane Katzew and Worship Specialist Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell with special guest presenter Craig Taubman

Title: Welcoming Elul: Spiritual Preparations for the Days of Awe

Date: Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Time: 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM EDT
Click here to register.

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