Disciplined Kindness
The TBE Brotherhood hard at work reminding us all to remember the Holocaust - sending out Holocaust Memorial Candles to the whole congregation. Remembering to do a kindness requires effort.
Read MoreCounting and Caring
Today is the First Day of the Omer, a Jewish period of counting and reflecting that connects the liberation of Passover to the receiving of the Covenant at Mount Sinai on Shavuot.
Each of the days of the seven weeks of the Counting have been given a theme by Jewish mystics. The first week and first day are both devoted to the idea of chesed in Hebrew, or loving-kindness, in English.
Just what is loving-kindness?
In the culture of the Jewish Bible, a colleague of mine, Rabbi Amy Scheinerman, pointed out that "love" can be better understood to be devotional loyalty - as in "You must love God" and describing that love by talking about upholding the Covenant between the Universe and the Jewish People.
So we can talk about chesed as noticing what the world and the people around us need most, and offering it with care and devotion, and with no expectation of compensation.
Let us all find a moment to realize the great caring accomplished for our souls, our friends and family, and our larger communities, when we give out of compassion and devotion.
Entering Kabbalah starts again this month!
Seeking shelter during the time of Sukkot also means building it. The Sukkah is a sign of shelter because it requires being a good neighbor and dwelling among good neighbors. We invite in our ancestors in to help us be a person of integrity supported by traditions of good behavior. We open the sides to invite in our physical neighbors too. Finding the inner path that connects our actions, emotions, thoughts, and inspiration so that we are givers and receivers of shelter, that's a path in Jewish mysticism.
Want to learn more?
New Ways to Connect
Seeking a new approach to spiritual life and bringing meaning into our lives?
We have two new opportunities - one is a four session class exploring Kabbalah from a useful and scholarly perspective - how can Jewish mysticism affect my life for the better every day?
Find out - details and registration here:
Entering Kabbalah
Here is another new way to connect:
Lunch with Martin Buber
Monday, February 2, Noon - 1:15 PM
Bricktop's Restaurant, 6401 Morrison
"I and Thou" and lunch.
We will begin to read and discuss Martin Buber's majestic and humble approach to finding God in the world.
We will look at at the First Part (pages 53-85 in Walter Kaufman's translation).
Copies provided, no reading ahead required.
In these troubled times...
This quote from Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg's book, The Murmuring Deep, page ix, echoes and resonates:
In any vital encounter, much more is transacted than lies within the field of consciousness. As Hans-Georg Gadder often remarks, we "always already" belong to prejudices, wishes, and interests that close us to certain truths and open us to others. The complex interplay of forgetting and remembering, the traumatic departures from our own experience, all leave traces in our movements of communion with one another.
In Praise of Creation on Sukkot Evenings
On Shabbat of Sukkot we stand exposed
A people outside, under stars and moon,
staring up in awe, humble before You.
The light of day fades, evening rolls in,
The cycle of the world turns, night creeps up
into the sky. Our eyes open, soften.
The harvest of the summer hangs and frames
the signs that show the season soon to come.
Through the walls and ceiling of the Sukkah,
we sense Your miracles, depend on them.
What a great gift that we should be able
to draw so near to You in prayer.
How many walls stand between us, though God
fills all the world, still You seem so hidden,
Yet a single word of prayer topples all walls,
we reach between the leaves of the Sukkah,
our vulnerable bodies outside,
stretching in wonder, drawing near to You.
Praised are You, Adonai our God, who brings the evening.
Overcoming Fear
Yom Kippur Morning 5775 – Saturday, October 4, 2014
Temple Beth El, Charlotte, North Carolina
Rabbi Jonathan Freirich
Ted called the rabbi about his wife Doris, who was dying in the hospital. Ted wasn’t a Temple member and was concerned about whether or not the rabbi could do Doris’ funeral.
“How is Doris?” the rabbi asked.
“Doris is dying. They say a day or two. Do I call over to the funeral home and make preparations now? We have cemetery plots but no funeral plans.”
“Is Doris in any pain? Is she awake and aware? Is she frightened?”
Ted still had more questions about the funeral. “Ted, Doris isn’t dead yet. The funeral director will be available later. What can we do for Doris now? Would you like me to visit her?”
Ted thought that a visit would be nice, but the rabbi shouldn’t make a special trip.
The rabbi found Doris alone in a room with two beds. “Hi Doris, I was in the hospital and heard you were here, so I thought I would come by and say hello. We met once before. Do you remember me?”
Doris opened her eyes fully. “Rabbi,” she managed to say.
“Yes.” He slid a chair close enough to the bed so he could sit and hold her hand. “How are you doing?” She didn’t answer, but she looked at him steadily. “Are you in pain?” Her eyes rolled up to the IV drip. The medication was adequate. “You don’t have to say anything. If it’s alright with you, I’ll sit here for a while. Is that all right?” She nodded.
Her eyes were open to him. Some of her history stared back at him. She knew why Ted had called the rabbi. It wasn’t the first time he had buried her.
There was no denial, but no acceptance either. Only resignation.
His eyes were open to her. She saw in them a reflection of her situation. She saw his concern and compassion. She knew he had made a special trip to see her.
“Would you like me to pray for you?” he asked her, still holding her hand.
Her surprise was evident. She had never prayed before. She had no notion that someone else could pray for her. To her surprise, she wanted him to say a prayer. She sincerely wanted it. Her desire struggled with her notion of hypocrisy. All her life she had never seen the point of prayer. Now that she was dying, she welcomed prayer. For the moment, she was stuck between her desire and her disbelief. Her desire won out. More than anything else in the world, at that moment, she wanted a prayer. “Yes, I would like that.”
“What do you want me to pray for?” the rabbi asked, knowing how crucial that decision would be.
He felt her shock through her hand. It flashed across her face. She knew for a certainty that the gates of prayer were open. She had two choices. She could pray to die.
She could pray to live. She had known she could die. She had not known she could live.
The rabbi read the argument in her eyes. She had a good reason to die. Could she find a good reason to live? He saw and felt the shift in her when she found it. He didn’t know what her reason was, but she had found it.
“I want to live,” she said.
“Can you say that again, please?”
“I want to live.”
In that instant her prayer broke through. The rabbi sealed it with a quick prayer of healing. The rabbi’s words were unimportant. The real prayer had burst from Doris’ heart. The rabbi had been there as witness, and nothing more.
He squeezed her hand. “I’m going to leave now. I hope to see you again soon.” She smiled in response.
Doris recovered. The doctors called it a remarkable spontaneous remission. She lived another six months during which she healed a rift with a son from whom she had been estranged for years. The next time she came to die, the son was present to hold her hand.
In this story originally told by one of my teachers, Rabbi Mitchell Chefitz, in his novel, The Seventh Telling, Doris rediscovered her ability to choose. Choice is a fundamental aspect of our humanity, and our Judaism, and may be the most frightening thing we need to reclaim on this day.
We are about to talk about the “Power of this Day”, how it causes us to stand in awe, and full of dread. This is one of the culminations of the Days of Awe, and Un’taneh Tokef, one of the central prayers of these days, stands before us as a declaration of a great decree upon the year to come. Have we done what we needed to do in order to end up on the correct side of the statement, “Who shall live and who shall die”?
Have I done what I needed to do?
Can I face the year to come feeling like God will decree for me a good year?
No.
You may not believe that a rabbi feels this way, but I do not actually believe this. In no way do I feel that there is a supreme personality weighing my year to come and deciding my fate for it and that if I do or don’t do something in particular at this moment, on this day, then my fate will be changed my some supernatural force.
Because, if I believed in such an idea, that God made a decree on October 4, 2014, on the basis of my level of sincere repentance, which would impact whether or not earthquake or plague struck my neighborhood in Charlotte sometime before the next year’s Yom Kippur, on September 23, 2015, (God forbid – I am both a rationalist AND STILL superstitious!), then my whole way of thinking the rest of the year wouldn’t work.
If my prayer or repentance could alter weather patterns, stock markets, or whether or not my family would suffer from hunger, then why would I do anything but pray?
What use would any of my actions be if I believed in the supernatural impact of prayer?
We know that this is not a choice for some being in the sky to make for us – it is ours to make – I must be the one to choose life. We must be the ones figure out how to navigate the twists of fate that will come our way, for better or for worse. And the prayer before us reminds us of that too – it concludes emphatically:
“But REPENTANCE, PRAYER, and RIGHTEOUS DEEDS, temper judgment’s severe decree.”
These words, sung out every year at the end of our worrying litany of potential fates remind us that when all is said and done, our fate is in our hands.
Maybe this is the problem.
While it may feel great to know that it is all up to us, I am frightened about it.
A day “full of dread” indeed – Yom Kippur, when we remind ourselves that the entirety of our year is in fact on us to improve or ruin.
On top of all of that, like Doris in the story, we must accept that this choice before us is real and that choosing makes a difference. Our prayers reflect our willingness to open ourselves to possibilities – to go beyond the fear of the worst-case scenario and accept that we can choose something else. We must make a choice even though we fear to do so.
There are so many fears out there – the notion that we might be less responsible for some of the things going on around us would be a comfort. Taking all that on is just one more thing to be anxious about.
The future often holds the worst of our fears.
The future leads to death. I fight that all the time, and I hope mostly in a healthy fashion. I even joke that the reason I am so serious about running is that I am fleeing from death. I want to live long to see our kids grow up and live as adults.
After all, I am a forty-four-year-old with a seven-year-old and a ten-month-old!
Is that a positive desire, or just another expression of our fear of everything going wrong? I am not sure.
I do know that when I face up to my fears, I accomplish things that are truly important.
I fear that my struggle with the memory of my father, with my anger and resentment towards him, gets in the way of me being a better person, a better husband, father, and rabbi.
On Sunday I ran twenty miles, yes, all at once, and so had a lot of time to listen to podcasts. One of them, an interview between “On Being”'s Krista Tippett and yoga instructor Seane Corn, who talks about taking yoga “Off the Mat and into the World”, highlighted Ms. Corn’s experience of coping with great difficulties. Her experiences reminded me that I needed to choose to forgive my father. I needed to choose transform whatever injury I felt I received from him into a gift, and even to be grateful for the things that I once thought were hurtful. I need to choose to live my life, and let his life, now over for seven years, be an asset for me. After all, I am the only one in the relationship now, I had better figure out a way to make it work to my advantage.
When I hear “Who shall live and who shall die” I can take it as an inspirational statement to choose a better life in the year to come.
The rest of this frightening prayer goes beyond life and death and into quality of life:
“Who will rest and who will wander, who will live in harmony and who will be harried, who will enjoy tranquility and who will suffer, who will be impoverished and who will be enriched, who will be degraded and who will be exalted.”
This gets deep into the heart of our difficulties – every single one of us wants to come out on the right side of these. And we want these things answered for our families and friends too.
It would be terrifying to think that our demeanor and seriousness on this day, on the days leading up to this day over the last month of our repenting, would actually result in harmony or suffering for us for the next year.
We want to accomplish the thing that would make this all work out – it would be so great if there were ONE thing we could do today to accomplish this.
Not so simple though.
Think about the consequences of a wrong action.
This summer we watched an Israeli documentary, “The Gatekeepers” – interviews with former directors of the Shin Bet – the general security agency tasked with Israel intelligence and counter-terrorism in the occupied territories since 1967.
In one of the opening scenes, as a surveillance camera tracks a van, one of the Shin Bet directors talks about the decision to take action. He says:
“Acting out of fear means killing people who shouldn't be killed.
“People expect a decision, and by decision they usually mean ‘to act’. That's a decision. ‘Don't do it’ seems easier, but it's often harder.”
Our responsibility for others' lives isn't usually so self-evident. Others' lives are not directly in our hands. We are not pushing any buttons that can end someone else’s life at any moment.
Still, everyone's lives are in our hands, every moment, every action, every inaction – each of these makes a huge difference, even when we don’t notice it.
Fear leads us to not merely make the tough decision to not act, or to act rashly, fear leads is to turn away and wash our hands of the whole thing.
To see ourselves in this prayer, to see ourselves as responsible at all times – this is what we are asking of ourselves on this day. We feel dread, because we can make a difference. We ease our fears, as individuals and as a community, when we realize we are not alone. We are in it together.
This is one of my definitions of God.
Instead of imagining that God will suspend the rules of the world for us – change the course of the reality on which we depend – merely on the strength of our prayers today, let us use these moments to connect with each other, and remind one another that these connections are the point of Un’taneh Tokef.
God is in what we create when we connect.
“Who shall live and who shall die…” – who among us will remember the value of our lives, and the lives of those around us, and use every day to make those lives worth living.
“Who will be degraded and who exalted…” – who among us will reach past our fears of connecting to a person in need. Who among us will reach past our fears of asking for help, and bravely turn to someone when we are in need. We are truly here for each other – we must ask and we must answer.
This moment is not about how we pray but how we live.
Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson says:
“We are most God-like when we open ourselves up to the vulnerability of real relationships.”
When we open ourselves up to the choices and choose to connect with each other, with the world, with the sources of our fears and our hopes, then we can accomplish miracles, just like Doris did. We can choose life.
Feel our fear, because on this day we remind ourselves about the choices that lay in front of us every day of the year.
“But REPENTANCE, PRAYER, and RIGHTEOUS DEEDS, temper judgment’s severe decree.”
And we have the power to overcome this when we are open, when we find openings, when we offer openings – to our selves and to one another.
Take a leap, decide to overcome our fears in the year to come...
Offering gratitude with our entirety
[a prayer I wrote for tonight's Shabbat worship - join us!]
We offer thanks with our whole selves:
good inclinations and less than good intentions,
anger, fear, and jealousy,
compassion, courage, and generosity.
We are all of these together.
We offer thanks and gratitude
for the chance to transform our difficulties
into opportunities for creation and connection.
We offer thanks with our whole selves.
Kindling our hearts in prayer
This Shabbat we read about the lighting of the menorah in the Tabernacle, an obligation that we all have to bring light into our homes, here's a quick meditation inspired by that and an anonymous 13th Century text, see Daniel Matt 's The Essential Kabbalah, p. 119 for the source text:
When we pray on our own we aim for unity with all,
we kindle the fire on the altar of our hearts.
By concentrating our thoughts, we unify our feelings,
our principles, our hopes, our dreams,
until they are drawn to the source of the infinitely sublime flame.
Here lies the secret of unifying which we perform in prayer,
raising up our ideas, like an elevating offering, towards one source.
In praise and in thanks
we draw ourselves nearer to the spark that ignites all.
Day Thirty-Eight of the Omer
Tiferet in Yesod - balanced harmony and beauty in a solid foundation.
These two concepts are picture perfect, precisely honed, needle in a haystack, ideals. I am often intimidated by an ideal - can I really push for that thing that is so far out there, so beyond my capacity?
I recently read a beautiful Hasidic teaching that helps me with a lot of problems: the world is finely balanced between, on the one hand, creative deeds and thoughts, and on the other, destructive deeds and thoughts. Every positive thought and deed that we muster contributes to the leaning of the world toward greater creativity and repair.
The ideals of balance and wholeness are meant to be difficult to reach - they are ideals after all. In reaching for them we make a difference in ourselves and all of creation, because all of the quanta matter.
Day Thirty-Seven of the Omer
Gevurah in Yesod - rigor, discipline, and strength in a solid foundation.
Building anything lasting, starting with the ground up, requires discipline. This applies to relationships as well as construction projects.
I have actually managed to ride bicycles to school with my son twice this week - and what a joy. This didn't happen all at once.
The first time Jude and I went for a long bike ride it ended in his tears. That was more than two years ago. Since then I worked with Jude, when he asked, on his bike riding. I often ran miles along side his bike when he dropped the training wheels to help him to gain confidence, listening to his requests for help. Eventually, he became a confident and accomplished cyclist, and did so at his own pace.
Jude's capable cycling is his accomplishment, and I couldn't be prouder. I am grateful that I took the time to step back and be his assistant.
Sometimes rigor is self-control that needs to be used in order to participate in the building of a foundation that lasts.
Day Thirty-Six of the Omer
Chesed in Yesod - loving kindness in a solid foundation.
I like to hope that society will eventually recognize more fully that compassion is an essential element of civilization, and an expression of fairness as well - that is, establishing equal compassion to all peoples makes a society more fair.
Civil rights, marriage equality (which is a civil right), promotion of the full franchise (see the Daily Show's coverage of India) - these basic understandings of sharing space with our human companions and acknowledging their common humanity with our own make us civilized.
Compassion and kindness start a solid foundation so that it holds all who need to be a part of our project. Build sensibly, fairly, and include kindness.
Day Twenty-Nine of the Omer
Chesed in Hod - loving-kindness in grace.
We open up this week of the Omer focusing on humility, grace, and smallness. A week of remembering that the role of the pixel is both vital and beautiful in its importance and tininess.
How we interact with our environment may be an exercise in compassion. We are so small our impact seems negligible. Yet each of our infinitely tiny actions makes a difference, as we each contribute ripple effects that expand our smallness in all directions.
I work to be compassionate to the planet, to my neighbors, and to my family.
Every small action still counts.
Day Twenty-Eight of the Omer
Malchut in Netzach - ruling and being effective in eternity.
Long term effectiveness - how to put something in place that stands the test of time - I often worry so much I don't dip a toe into the water.
And shouldn't we worry? Someone once thought that eating fat made us fat, so eating low fat would make us skinny. And a person who sold sugar thought that was a great idea. Forty years later look at the experiment that has resulted in the American diet and our health.
We must be careful when we act with eternity in mind, and perhaps we should always act with eternity in mind. The long term effect of this action, and acting with a sense of the long term, these frameworks may be better starting points in any moment of decision and planning.
Act, be bold, and be thoughtful too!
Day Twenty-Seven of the Omer
Yesod in Netzach - a solid balanced foundation in the long view persistent.
Building something to last needs a solid beginning. We have been building to the moments that turn into lifetimes in this country when we make marriage possible for everyone.
I am so proud and honored to be part of multiple communities who put compassion and family first, and support and advocate for LGBT inclusion and same-sex marriage.
I am thrilled when I see an openly gay football player kiss his boyfriend in joy and celebration at being drafted into the NFL.
Take the time and effort to build something from the ground up so that it will become lasting. Aim for eternity, and start on the ground.
Day Twenty-Six of the Omer (Yesterday)
Hod in Netzach - the grace of the minute in eternal victory.
[A delayed reflection on Mother's Day]
Attention to details matters. Small things make a difference in the biggest of pictures.
Yesterday, according to Ginny, the mother of our children, I did pretty well at providing her a good Mother's Day. Everything was about the small things: providing tasty and celebratory food for the family throughout the day, and cleaning up the kitchen too. Giving Ginny time and space to enjoy the day, start and complete an art project, now hanging in our living room, and attending to the little things that Ginny thought would be good for us all.
Providing a good day works when it reflects our attempts to provide good days all the time. The little details count so much more when we work on them regularly.
Day Twenty-Five of the Omer
Netzach in Netzach - the everlasting in the long view.
On this day when I was so honored to celebrate Shabbat with the Teen Vocal Ensemble and the Teen Band of Temple Beth El, I am deeply touched by how easily our actions can ripple forward and backward in time.
One of the first students I met here, Caleb Seidler, gave a D'var Torah, a teaching of Torah, about the importance of caring for the earth. As I have been honored to be his teacher, so he as one of our youth assistant teachers has been an influential teacher of my son Jude.
Our actions, our stories, our attempts at wisdom, they strike the fabric of time and weave a tapestry so quickly beyond our own individual threads.
I am in awe of it all.
Day Twenty-Four of the Omer
Tiferet in Netzach - balanced harmony in eternity.
As the harmonization between rigor and compassion, I fully embrace the challenge of attempting to be a parent for the long term, and how much that beautiful balance must be a part of it.
To set a standard, enforce it, and then when broken, be compassionate to our children so that they can learn and grow from the experience. So that they will still turn to us and not fear us too much. So that they can engage with the world and its rules as adventurers and not be oppressed by the weight of it all.
This is a challenge!
Day Twenty-Three of the Omer
Gevurah in Netzach - power and rigor in the creation of the long term.
We can easily imagine how creating something that lasts will require strength. The question is how to best apply that strength?
Strength in the long view needs to be consistent and flexible - when we plan past the five-year plan we need to tap into a different understanding of rigor, since we must be able to sustain it.
Find the strength that feels like a sequoia when thinking about eternity.
Day Twenty-Two of the Omer
[Applies to yesterday, from Tuesday night through Wednesday, May 6 - 7 - sorry for the delay!]
Chesed in Netzach - kindness and compassion in the ego everlasting.
My spiritual path often leads me into pendulum swings between devotion to self-care and selflessness. This week of the Omer asks us to explore Netzach, the sense of the eternal as personal, the notion that, with a little bit of ego, we can see the world as created entirely for ourselves.
With that message in one pocket, Jewish sages also remind us to keep the idea that we are nothing but dust and ashes in the other.
So I want to approach my self with compassion. If the things I care about are going to last, I need to treat them - ideas, emotions, people, my very self internally and externally - with kindness. Being kind to ourselves does not mean being selfish, it means that we need to see the bigger picture of our needs, both immediate and in the long term.