Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

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Category: psalm

#BlogElul week 2: Sharing Inspirational postings

August 29, 2012 /

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.
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

#BlogExodus, Nisan 1: From the narrow places I call

March 24, 2012 /

Tonight is Rosh Hodesh Nisan, the beginning of the first month of the year.  Yes, I know, its confusing – isn’t Rosh Hashanah – the Jewish New Year that usually falls sometime in September – the start of the year?  Well, yes, that is the Jewish New Year, but Rosh Hashanah actually falls on the 1st day of the 7th month.  Because Jewish holy days were tied to the seasons long before our people superimposed historical and mythical layers to add to their meaning, it also makes sense that we would arrive at the beginning of the 1st month right after we announced the 1st day of Spring.  New life, new buds, new flowers appearing on earth – the sense of a new cycle beginning again.

This month I’m joining Rabbi Phyllis Sommer, along with many others, in #BlogExodus (that’s how you’ll search for others on Twitter who might have posted blogs as part of the project).  Together, we’ll cover the days between the 1st and 14th of Nisan, leading up to Pesach.

Today’s theme is the narrow places of Mitzrayim (Egypt).  As part of the Hallel (selection of psalms we sing on holidays and as part of the Passover Seder) we find the lines, min hameitzar karati Yah, anani va-merchav Yah.  From the narrow places I called out to God; God answered me expansively. (Ps. 118)

The first time I heard and learned the melody to these verses was with Debbie Friedman, z’l, at a Healing service in Westchester.  I don’t quite recall, but it may well have been only the second time that I attended one of these services, and it was the month leading up to Pesach.  You can hear an excerpt of Debbie singing Min Hameitzar from ‘The Journey Continues’ album here.

I remember back to that time in my life.  I was not sick, but I had recently left the UK for a nine month stay at Elat Chayyim the transdenominational Jewish retreat center.  I was a bit home-sick, but it was also one of the most important periods of my life, in my mid-20s.  Looking back, I see that it was my soul that was aching – I was struggling internally with my sense of who I was and how to live my life.  I guess its the kind of angst familiar to many at that stage of life.  But it was a kind of spiritual mitzrayim – a narrow strait.  Debbie sang that song with a yearning in her voice – perhaps calling out from her own mitzrayim – and i felt some of the restraints that were holding me back start to break apart.  It was the beginning of my own journey through the wilderness to my Promised Land.

When I introduce the Mi Shebeirach prayer for healing during a service, I always invite my congregation to think of those in need of healing, ‘whether healing of body or healing of spirit.’  I know that most people’s minds turn immediately to those that they know who are physically ailing.  But Debbie taught us that we all need healing of spirit.  There is not one of us in this world who is so complete that we have no rough edges, no broken shards, or tender hearts, from some emotional or spiritual aching.  Each one of us can identify the mitzrayim that we live in, or have experienced at some time in our lives.

We begin the journey by calling out from that place – the narrow straits.  The ability to perceive expansiveness, to see that there is a path forward that can release us from the places we feel stuck in our lives, in our sense of self, in our sense of possibility … the miracle is that the mere act of calling out can create the opening.  Just as the Hebrews in slavery had to call out before God heard and responded to their suffering.

Last week, we welcomed approx. 130 women, men and youth at our Women’s Seder, dedicated to Debbie’s memory, and led by the incredibly gifted and soulful Julie Silver.  It was a real honor to lead the Seder with Julie, accompanied by Carole Rivel, who accompanied Debbie in so many of the healing services and Women’s Seders that she led for many years.  We all carry Debbie in our hearts, and her legacy lives on when we teach in her name, inspired by what she taught us.  She will forever remain as one of my greatest teachers.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

Blogging Elul 5771: Reflections on our enemies

September 7, 2011 /

Today’s blog entry is by student Rabbi Lisa Kingston.  Lisa was our rabbinic intern this Summer.  She is a fourth year student at Hebrew Union College, New York.  She delivers her Senior Sermon next Thursday morning during the morning service at the college.

Psalm 27:
The Eternal is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
The Eternal is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be terrified?
In my very guts came evil to gnaw and consume me,
But these my troubles, my enemies, stumbled and fell.
Though an army encamp against me, my heart will not fear;
Though war rise up against me, even then I will keep faith.
During the days of Elul it is traditional to read Psalm 27, an affirmation of God’s help and protection when enemies surround us. Today, we may understand it as a plea for God’s help in dealing with the enemies within us. These are the demons of our own true self who frighten us away from living the lives we want.

I think one of the largest demons that can consume us is self-doubt. A friend of mine is studying to be a psychologist and she told me of an interesting conference she recently attended. Instead of wearing traditional nametags, each person in the room was asked to write their biggest fear and wear it upon their chest. One might assume participants would share silly things like a fear of heights or spiders, but people took the exercise to heart and shared what really unnerved them. They shared fears of failure, fears of being a fraud, fears of not being able to help people in the way they hoped, fears of letting down family members, and fears that they were not worthy of their success. We all share fears like these even when we appear confident and successful.

            Don’t worry, you wont be asked to wear the badges of your fear publicly this year, but Elul is the time to try to name and face your fears. When you arrive to Rosh Hashanah services this year, try to have at least one fear you want to address written on your heart. Identifying what holds you back can begin your steps to teshuva.

Playing in the Symphony. Jewish Meditation, part 4

November 11, 2009 /

Kol haneshama t’hallel Yah, Hallelu Yah (Psalm 150:6)
Let every neshama praise God.  Hallelu Yah.
This is the last line of the last psalm in the Book of Psalms – it is the culmination of so many words of poetry, prayer, contemplation and praise.  The psalm is part of every Jewish morning service, and it is equally a part of many Christian worship services.  And, to add to its universality, many synagogue communities today have become familiar with a melody that just chants this last line over and over again, and that melody was an adaptation of a Pakistani Sufi chant (the mystical, and most universal form of Islam) written by the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

Six words.  On face value, just a simple declaration of praise.  Six words that are a gateway to an awesome experience (awesome, as in ‘wow!’ and awesome as in ‘Oh boy, that’s overwhelming, I don’t know if I can handle that’).

It begins with that Hebrew word that I didn’t translate – neshama.  Biblically, it means something like ‘living thing’.  So sometimes you’ll see a translation that says ‘Let every living thing praise God’, or ‘Let everything that lives praise God’.  But the rabbis of ancient times took a look at the creation story in Genesis and found in the second description of how God created human beings the line, ‘And God blew into his nostrils the breath of life (nishmat chayyim), and the man became a living thing (nefesh chayyah) (Gen. 2:7).  They understood this to mean not only the ability to breathe, by which we are alive, but that the aspect of our selves that ‘enlivens’ us – the God-given part – is what we call our soul.  And so, for the rabbis, neshama also means soul.  In fact, in an ancient midrash (expounding on the Torah), they describe 5 different names that were given to the spirit by which we live (Midrash rabbah 14:9), enabling them to describe and explore different aspects or attributes of the soul, of which the neshama is just one.

The final element of this teaching that we need to put it together with a mantra meditation practice on this verse of Psalm 150 requires us to know that, in the Hebrew language, all words are formed around a ‘root’ of three consonant letters.  Changing the vowel sound, or the grammar, can change how we would translate the word into English, but the common root in Hebrew teaches us that the words are conceptually and experientially linked.  And so, if you look again at the verse from Genesis, you’ll see the word nishmat chayyim – the breath of life.  N’shimah means ‘breath’.  And so, in the ancient teaching of the midrash, we find that Rabbi Levi says in the name of Rabbi Hanina,: “at each and every breath (neshima) which you breathe, you must praise the Creator” What is the meaning of this? “Kol ha neshama tehallel Ya, Let everything that has breath praise God (Psalm 150, 6).

Jewish mystics turned the phrase one more time, and this becomes the foundation for our meditation practice – let each and every breath be a praise to God.

It is through the act of breathing that we can bring awareness to the Divine spirit that gives life to everything.  With this awareness comes gratitude, an opening of the heart, and from this comes praise.  When we meditate on the breath with this awareness, it takes us beyond ‘my breath’ and connects us to everything that breathes.  We become but one musician in an orchestra; we are responsible for how we play our instrument and the contribution we make with each and every note we play, but we are able to do and be so much more than is possible within our own limitations, when we recognize that we are part of the symphony.

This meditation, connecting us to life itself, and to the Source of all life, cannot be grasped with the mind, but it can be experienced, at least in brief moments.  And it not only transforms our awareness of the power of the breath, it also transforms the meaning of what it is to ‘Praise God.’  That will have to wait for another day’s blog.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

Elul 24. Psalm 32 – A guide to teshuvah

September 12, 2009 /

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.

  1. Happy is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered over.

  2. Happy is the man whom the Eternal does not hold guilty, and in whose spirit there is no guile.

  3. When I kept silence, my limbs wasted away away through my groaning all the day long.

  4. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my sap was turned as in the droughts of summer. Selah

  5. 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

  6. 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.

  7. You are my shelter; You will preserve me from distress; with songs of deliverance You will surround me. Selah

  8. I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you shall go; I will give counsel, my eye being upon you.

  9. 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.

  10. Many are the torments of the wicked; but he that trusts in the Eternal, mercy encompasses him.

  11. 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

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