Late September

Dear Friends,

It’s the day after my birthday and as Septembers go, this hasn’t been a very good one for the world at large.  Generally I love the month of September.  Not only does it contain my birthday, but it is an anticipation month – it is a month of beginnings – of start ups – of do-overs – whether it be the childhood belief of finding new friends in a new classroom or the belief that God’s forgiveness at the High Holy days will grant us the grace of a do-over… it doesn’t matter.  This September, however, the do-overs are far more immense. 

In this country we face the enormous do-over that is the Gulf Coast.  We face the internal and external debate that is raging about the beautiful city of New Orleans that for so many of us was all beauty and great food and incredible music – but now we realize it was also a city of enormous poverty and despair.  Even if we have no real say in what ultimately happens there, we are already engaging in a significant national debate.  How did it happen?  How could we have ignored all those families living so far below the poverty line, while Mardi Gras floats and jazz musicians were the joyous face of the city?  Where were we looking?  How could we not see? 

Then I have other questions – questions about the incredible character of the people who were living in the small towns.  Questions about how they survived for five days or more in 100 degree heat and humidity with no electricity and no water and no fresh food and smells and critters and they waited… trapped by nature, waiting for the local sheriff or someone to come by because everyone was worried about where the television cameras were focused.  Didn’t you wonder about all the people who lived in the suburbs and the small towns and the places where CNN and the Weather Channel didn’t go?  I don’t think the hurricanes played to the media but many others seemed to do so.  However, the local police and firefighters and volunteers did seem to take care of their own… slowly but surely, thank God.  

So the people on the Gulf Coast are facing a gigantic do-over – and not a good kind.  They are choosing whether or not to return, whether or not to rebuild, whether or not to risk standing once again in Mother Nature’s path and risking all in a “once in a century” storm.  Somehow it makes my sense of September’s joyous do-over a little different this year – but I fight that feeling and so should you.  I think it just adds to the questions we need to ask ourselves in our self-examination and our own sense of do-over this year.  

We need to ask ourselves, why don’t we look farther than the surface?  This isn’t just a question about New Orleans, but a question about our own hometowns.  If you are blessed with a comfortable life… if you live in a comfortable part of town… do you know what is going on in the rest of your community?  Do you know the percentage of people in your town who live below the poverty line?  Do you know how many families live in substandard housing?  Do you know how many people need help?  If someone took a magnifying glass to your city the way New Orleans is being examined now, would you be embarrassed or proud?

One of the things I believe is that being totally ignorant of the world outside you gives no spiritual grace. I know that living a life of meditation and total retreat is a path some choose – but I believe people were meant to be in the world and engage in it.   I have known so many people over the years that give of themselves to others and the joy in their lives is so palpable, so real, that it shines from their whole beings.  There are very few people in this world who are capable of being total givers – but each of us can give something – and I don’t mean financially – although that is always part of the need and is welcome.  I mean giving with your awareness and then with whatever part of yourself is then called into play.  Each of us has different gifts and different ways to participate.  When we become aware, we are able to see what we, individually, are capable of giving.  We find our niche.  We find our giving path.  We make things better in a comfortable way for us and so it works.  The gift is sincere and real.

So in this do-over time – I would ask that as part of your self-examination you think about your capacity to give of yourself this year.  Think about how you can make your community a better place by putting yourself in it.  Think about some ownership of where you live beyond your property lines so that your community will be enriched by your presence in it.  What a gift that would be in this year of examining what a city should be…

But before you panic and say you don’t have any time… also know that this has been a problem that goes back a long time…. Talmudic Rabbi Tarfon in the Pirke Avot, II: 20 addresses that problem and Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro interpreted him in his wonderful book, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages – and his comforting words are as follows:

You are neither obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.
Do justly, now.
Love mercy, now.
Walk humbly, now.
 
If you attend to Reality, you will receive great reward; for effort itself is good fortune.
Reality can be trusted to pay you the value of your work; every deed has a consequence.

And know this – the payment of the righteous is tranquility; knowing that “this, too, shall pass.”

So all I am asking, as Rabbi Tarfon says, is that you engage in the work.  We are told we are God’s partners in aiming toward the Messianic vision of perfection… aiming both our souls and our physical world toward peace.  That is what I’m meditating on this season.  There’s a lot to think about, a lot to pray about, a lot of work to do and I’m not free to abandon it, but I’m really glad I have some partners and I’m not obligated to complete the work…

Still dreaming of peace,

Barbara

Early September

Dear Friends,

We are in the month of Elul. For those of you who have been with me for a number of years, you know this is the Hebrew month leading up to Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur – our High Holy Days – our days of reflection and awe and repentance. When I was much younger and more earnest in my approach to Judaism, I saw the ten days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur as a time of great intensity and urgency. I had to work very hard to right all my wrongs because God was watching me and the Book of Life was open and my sins were all there for God to see. My childish vision had God sitting with an eraser and if I did the work required – apologizing either directly or indirectly for the list on God’s lap – the eraser would be used – my sins would disappear – and I’d be set for another year.

The reality, of course, was every Yom Kippur, as I listened to the ominous words about the gates closing and the year ending and the questions about my repentance being truly done – I was sure I’d forgotten someone I’d hurt or something I’d done wrong and I’d blown another year. My parents were not very concerned about all this and told me I wouldn’t go to hell (there was no hell) but I was never sure. I would try and convince myself that my overall regret had to count for something. I knew my work of teshuvah, of return and repentance, would never be done, and I was left with a sense of failure – of feeling that I had fallen short. I was not renewed but the next thing I knew it was Sukkot – and I was off the hook until the next year.

Now, I’m someone who very gratefully has had the opportunity to spend a good portion of her adult life engaged in figuring out why I want to be Jewish. Because of that I’ve also had the opportunity to figure out why the Holy Days, which always moved me as a young person, didn’t do the real job they were supposed to do. I’ve worked very hard to answer that question for myself and I want to share it with you so that maybe you can incorporate it into your Elul work as we approach these wonderful and renewing days.

The ancient High Holy Days, of course, have very little to do with the more modern practices of today. Although Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur are outlined in the Torah – those days are about Temple practices… not spiritual ones. So, Biblical literalists can check out here… But contemporary practice for readers like you (believers, skeptics, Jews, Christians, Buddhists and fellow travelers) has to do with self-assessment, adjustment, and awe. When you get those three things together as we approach the Holy Days… you get the Holy Days.

The primary thing we need to be doing right now is assessment. We need to be thinking about our lives this past year. We need to be thinking about how we felt about ourselves at our best and our worst. We need to think about where and what was going on when we were at out best and worst. We need to think about the people who matter to us that we have touched with our negative and positive energy. We need to think about people we may have ignored who needed us. We need to make lists. We need to reflect.

Then we need to make adjustments. We do this by being brave enough to acknowledge that we have hurt people or diminished people. We can also do this by just acknowledging that in the whirlwind of our lives the negative energy we may have put out could have altered someone’s life without our knowing. Many people make phone calls or send notes to people that reflect their awareness that they may have been hurtful or insensitive to them in the past year and ask for their forgiveness at this time of year. It’s a fascinating discipline to try.

And then there’s the awe. This is the God stuff. This is the meditation time. This is the conversation with the Other. This is the real power of reflection as we get to realize that we are given the gift of time. We are told to try again.

We are told that we all fall short and are given permission to pick ourselves up and start over. We are told that God/the Other/the Power that Makes for Salvation understands that we will never be perfect – we will never get through a year without letting a harsh word slip out of our mouths – but we are also told that we can make amends. What a gift! What a time of renewal. What an awe-some, holy time.

In closing I hope you will appreciate the following “Prayer of Intent” by Rabbi Rami Shapiro from his Elul Journal, which is available for downloading online for free and has some wonderful meditations and other work to lead you into the Holy Days:

May I cultivate the strength to look honestly at my actions.
May I cultivate the honesty to admit when I have been wrong.
May I cultivate the understanding to know how best to make amends.
May I cultivate the courage to ask for forgiveness.
May I cultivate the compassion to grant forgiveness when asked.
May I cultivate the humility to surrender myself to God.
May I cultivate the wisdom to know I do this not for myself alone but for all the world.
May the coming year be one of sweet delight to all.

So please use these days of Elul to assess, reflect, and share my awe.

Still dreaming of peace,

Barbara

Late August 2005

Dear Friends,

Well it’s August 30th and I just deleted the letter I was about to send out, so bear with me, this one is coming from the gut.  Hurricane Katrina has just vented her wrath on the Gulf States.  I came home from work and my 22-year-old son was “home” to do his laundry and reading in the family room between load switching.  I had an urge to see some breaking news about New Orleans, a city Michael and I had visited on our way west 28 years ago and loved dearly.  I turned on CNN and drove Sam from the room, but eventually he came back and watched about fifteen minutes with me.  Finally he said, “Haven’t you seen enough?”  Of course, he was right.  He said he remembered the same phenomenon after 9/11 – people unable to look away – transfixed by the same terrible images, over and over again.  So I began to wonder about our collective urge to share in the great natural (and unnatural) disasters that strike our nation, and sometimes even our world.

Now I cry easily.  I hate this fact about myself and ever since I was a little girl I tried to stop.  I thought it was a bad habit I could break – unfortunately if it is, I never figured out how to master it without shutting down the rest of me – and that I never want to do… so…I found as I watched these personal disaster stories unfold – a family torn asunder – dead bodies with nowhere to put them – I kept my hand on the remote so if I felt my eyes start to well up, I could turn off the television.  But show me the video of rescued little children going up in the Coast Guard basket five times an hour and I’m a happy woman, although strangely enough I may well up with joy sometimes, too.  Obviously embarrassing myself by crying is not the reason I turn off these stories.

I guess I just can’t stand tragedies played out on television for the world to witness.  I wrote about that when I wrote about Terry Schiavo.  I understand that personal tragedies are what bring in donations and other kinds of humanitarian aid and support, but I so wish there was another way.  I think looking at the rooftops at the waterline in New Orleans and boats 2 miles inland in Biloxi and bridges washed away tells enough of a story.  Folks on rooftops don’t need their individual story told… the generic tragedy allows us to be part of their story, too.  I want to see the heroes in our great disasters.  I want to hear the amazing rescues.  (I’m making this up, but it should be true) I want to learn about the 90-year-old woman who climbed on to her roof and calmly waited for two days for her helicopter rescue.  (This next is true.) I want to know the names of the doctors and nurses at Tulane University Hospital who are probably making insanely difficult choices in patient care and no one will ever know the hell they’ve gone through except their colleagues.  I want us all to think about what it would be like to be in the deep south at the very end of August and the beginning of September with standing water everywhere and no electricity for five to six weeks, which is what they’re predicting – and know that the heroes and heroines will be many and there will be hundreds of stories to tell and in two weeks the press will be gone but the mosquitoes won’t be.

So, now I’m starting to get some insight into why I watch some of these things. There is never a time when we are edgier then when our basic comforts are gone.  If we were living on the beautiful Gulf Coast and still were lucky enough to have our homes, we’d still have no power and no water and no cellular service and in parts of the Gulf region no way in or out of town.  Oh, and it’s hot and humid, too.  Then, of course, there would be no place to get food or ice or fresh clean water – you’d just have to wait and hope you have enough batteries for the one portable radio so maybe the National Guard will bring a couple of gallons of water a day to us. Edgy – we are beyond edgy. Then I see how many people are helping people and all the vitriolic over nothing that matters, compared to clean water and power and a way to find out if your mom and dad are o.k. fades into the background and what matters is what matters.

It’s another one of those times when the question: “Why does it take something like a hurricane or a tsunami or a death for us to find the giving part of our souls?” haunts us. But it’s just that we can’t always run with our adrenaline at full tilt.  We can’t always be 100%.  We can’t give it all, all the time.  However there are moments when we’re called upon when we can give 100%.  That’s what’s happening in Louisiana and Mississippi right now.  People are being called and people are responding in hundreds of different ways.  Some are responding with their bodies and some with donations and some by just becoming a little more aware of what matters and what doesn’t in this fragile life we live on earth.  Hug those you love a little tighter tonight if you can… if not send them blessings, good thoughts, or whatever your particular way for saying – I’m so glad you are in my life…

That’s part of why I watch disasters when they happen… I want to be awed, grateful for those who have been saved and those who saved them, aware again of my priorities, and reminded of how many brave and soul-filled people there are in the world…(and besides, I’m awfully curious about what happened, too…)

Still dreaming of peace,

Barbara

Early August

Dear Friends,

I’m back from vacation and it was blissful. It might have had something to do with spending two weeks between 7,000 and 12,000 feet. It might have had something to do with being in one of the most beautiful parts of the country – Four Corners (where Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado meet) and the Southern Rockies. It might have had something to do with sitting at an overlook at Canyon de Chelly staring at the giant monolith the Navajo call Spider Rock and listening to a total stranger reciting psalms because she was so moved by the holiness of the place. It might have had something to do with aspen forests or elk herds or hail storms or waterfalls or snow in July. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that everything slowed down and slipped back into place. Gears shifted. Silence was everywhere.

These kinds of times are so precious. The opportunity to step outside the vessel that we live in day to day and let go of the tensions and pulse of daily life is such a gift. I know that I am specially blessed because my husband and I like the same kinds of getaways and we are able to take them (not often enough – but we do take them…). This particular trip found us spending time exploring the relationship of the Native Americans to this dramatic landscape. So many times we found ourselves completely alone standing on rock outcroppings or at other vistas feeling the power of place (which I’ve written about before) and appreciating why so much native American art is tactile. The urge to replicate, to touch, to feel that which surrounds you is overwhelming and pottery, weaving and other three-dimensional art is one way to honor it all.

We discovered in our reading that the Hopi were offered rich farmland in Oklahoma as their reservation land in the 19th century. The Federal government officials were sure that they would take it. Who wouldn’t give up the dry Arizona and New Mexico wasteland for farmland that would feed them? The Hopi laughed at the suggestion. (A homeland for the Jews in Africa? Many years ago Theodore Herzl considered it… and turned it down.) They would never give up the land where their people began. The Hopi would never walk away from their red rocks and mountains and canyons. Their spiritual life was so much more important to them than their physical life. The flat Oklahoma grasslands meant nothing to them. The ancient ruins where their ancestors walked, the mountains where their folklore told them their gods and goddesses created and protected the earth, the clay that made their pots shimmer were all far more precious to them than good farmland with no roots to their past. We understand that, don’t we?

Something else is in that land too. It’s a holy place that transcends the “ownership” written on the land title. I don’t know if it’s because it is so beloved. I don’t know if it is just because it is so spectacularly beautiful. I just know that there are places of power that you just don’t give up. There are times when you seek them out because they are energy sources that remind you that there is something outside yourself so much bigger and more inspiring than words or music or anything made by the human hand or mind. If you are a geologist, you can look at these places and you can explain them scientifically and it still doesn’t change their spiritual impact. We have dozens of geology books and reading about these places actually just makes them more wondrous. If you are a skeptic, you just need to come along for the ride. Once you’re there, you’ll understand, too.

It might be fun for you to think about whether or not there’s a spiritual energy spot in your life. Is there a place you go that fills you? Is there a way to slow yourself down and find your center again? Can you be silent all over? How long has it been since you’ve been in that place? If you don’t have one, do you want one? I know that we can often come to that place through meditation but holy places that are God/Nature/Other given bring an entirely different sense of gift to our lives. They humble us – which is a critically important spiritual lesson for all of us to learn.

Still dreaming of peace,

Barbara Carr

Early July 2005

Dear Friends,

One of my closest friends died unexpectedly last week. She was 57 years old and full of life and plans and dreams. I’m still struggling with the shock of it all… and I’m aware that the shock will stay with me for a very long time. I was blessed with her friendship. I was especially blessed with the honor of delivering her eulogy. What I want to ponder with you is what happened afterwards…

When the service was over, innumerable people came up to me and thanked me for drawing a picture of my friend because they hadn’t really known her. They “knew” her through her husband or through the synagogue (she was a founding member of our interfaith couples havurah) or through her daughter or through some other activity… but they didn’t know her essence. They hadn’t known her joys or her quirks. They hadn’t known the broad expanse of her. So many people expressed regret at not knowing her better. So many people said, “I always wanted to get to know her…” Now, they never will. Now, the opportunity to enrich their lives with time spent with an extraordinary person is gone. How many times do we do that to ourselves? How many times do we put things off? How many times do we not take emotional risks or just wait until next week because we’ll have time later? Then we shockingly discover we don’t…

I know that we all have reasons to hold back from experiences that may be challenging or even embarrassing. As adults we aren’t used to reaching out just because someone looks interesting to us. That was the high school and college dating scene when we put our egos on the line… not adulthood. Now we socialize with people from our “affinity groups”… people who are like us, people who are safe. However, every once in a while people appear on the periphery of our lives that fascinate us. We think, “I’d like to get to know that person…” and we are a little unsure about how to go about it. We have busy schedules. Our days are full. We don’t know how to arrange a “play date” to make a new friend. That’s one of the saddest things about being a grown up. Too many people missed out on learning how much fun it was to play with my friend.

The death of someone you love always causes a reassessment, as it should. Frankly, this year there have been a shocking number of deaths of people close to me and it has left me deeply introspective about life paths. Each of these deaths have reminded me of the shortness of our time on earth, how important it is that we are overtly loving to the people we care about and that we don’t wait for the joy… but we seek it now.

I’ve struggled for a long time with a life-altering illness and because of that I have spent a lot of time on my personal end of life vision. I have two goals that are really important to me. The first is that I want to die without serious regrets – regrets are inevitable but I don’t want any big “if onlys”. I also don’t want to die with unfinished business between anyone I love dearly and myself, and by that I mean words left unsaid, whether they be apologies or thanks. Both of these goals are difficult ones but they also help guide my life path in a really positive and not morbid way.

I haven’t written much about my illness because it is a very personal thing but it also has brought me to a phenomenal awareness of the grace of living. Sometimes, in the busyness of day to day life, the intensity of that awareness can slip away and I try very hard to recapture it, either through meditation or reading or just being or thinking about people I love. What results, inevitably, is a total sense of gratitude.

The thank you that can well up in my soul for allowing me time to have been a loving daughter, sister, wife, mother, friend, cousin, niece, aunt… teacher, writer, poet, singer, photographer, hiker, well… it’s a big one… The thank you is a two way street, you see, because as I think of each of those parts of me I also am filled with a rush of what I received in each of those roles as well… Try it… Take a piece of paper and think of your relationships… think of all the people you are connected to and the power that runs through you like electricity… back and forth… Think about what you give and receive…

Then if it’s not enough… If you don’t feel like you have enough energy coming in and going out to generate the big gratitude thing… the solution is quite simple… Find some more sources of energy… they are waiting for you… Don’t be afraid or shy… That’s what I learned from my friend’s funeral… There is so much energy out there waiting to be shared – to fill your life with gratitude.

I am taking a vacation starting next week and will not be writing a Late July letter. For my long time readers, you know we’ve tried various substitutions… but nothing worked really well… We’re going on a wonderful road trip… Navajo and Hopi country… Mesa Verde, Taos, Salida, Colorado… lots of hiking, sitting along the Arkansas River in the Rockies… reading and thinking about the people we’ve loved and lost in the last twelve months…

And because of that this letter is dedicated to the memories of Elizabeth Tilles, Roger Wheeler, Robert Moore, Harriette Schapiro and Claire and Paul Treske… Their energy is dispersed among all who loved them… and there were many.

Still dreaming of peace,

Barbara

Late June 2005

Dear Friends,

I was at a wedding this past weekend. The setting was magnificent. The bride and groom were joyous. The guests were an amazing group of movers and shakers in the world of San Diego education, human services and politics. These were folks who have made a tremendous difference in the lives of children in San Diego but their roles were all secular. It started me thinking about the tremendous differences between the world they live in and the world I live in.

I thought primarily about the role of education in the secular world versus the religious (a hot button topic – but I’m not talking about vouchers today). In the secular world, a teacher is generally professionally trained, and has a classroom full (overfull) of students who are obligated by law to be sitting in the seats. They vary in skills and willingness to be there. The parents are helpful or not. The classrooms are well equipped or not. Well, you get my point. Secular education is completely variable. Having watched closely as my two sons moved through the public school system, the one thing I knew for sure is that every year was good or bad depending on their teachers.

In the religious world the situation is a little bit different. If we are talking about supplementary school (not day school), the teacher is often not professionally trained but is “coached”. They most often have another job in the “real world” and are called avocational teachers, in that they choose to teach in addition to what they do to pay the mortgage. They have students whose parents pay tuition for them to be in the classrooms. The classrooms are well equipped or not. The students vary in skills and willingness to be there. The parents are helpful or not. Well, you get my point. Religious education is completely variable. The one thing I know with absolute certainty is that every year is good or bad depending on the teacher.

So let me tell you why I think avocational religious school teachers have the edge. They have the edge because they get to teach religion. Secular school teachers know how to handle a classroom. They can manage unruly students and they can do things that our religious school teachers can’t, and it’s important that our religious school teachers get training in these areas and we do our best to see that they do. However, religious school teachers get to talk to children about the big stuff. They get to talk to children about what matters. Children respond to that and love it. With the right teacher, amazing things can happen.
The long tradition of rabbi as teacher did not have the rabbi sitting in a beautiful study with a secretary down the hall to keep track of when his (that’s an intentional his) next student was arriving. When we look back to the really long ago times, rabbis worked in the “real world” and studied in every free minute they could find, just as our religious school teachers do today. The great rabbis ran yeshivas or schools and they were lucky enough to be supported by their students who worked. Most rabbis, however, were avocational teachers. Over time and especially in this country, that changed. Rabbis became more like ministers and less like teachers. They assumed a pastoral role and an administrative role and religious education started being handled by others – other avocational teachers. First the teaching was just preparation for Bar Mitzvah (not much for girls – mothers taught the girls) but since girls were getting secular education, Sunday schools had Judaica lessons for girls with a little Hebrew thrown in. Eventually the present model evolved. It’s interesting to realize we’re not so far from the old cheders or religious schools from long ago. The difference is in the outcomes.

The key is the teacher. How do we find the incredible teachers we need to create the incredible next generation we want?
The first thing we do is pay attention. (Have you noticed that’s a theme of mine? If you don’t pay attention you might as well just stay in bed all day.) We need to look for people who get excited about what’s going on in the here and now with religion. We need to look for people with smile lines on their faces. We need to look for people who know how to talk to children with respect. We need to find people who get jazzed when a new idea about a Torah commentary arrives in their email and they send it along. We need to look for people who are willing to keep learning and not only that, see teaching as a learning opportunity. We need to look for people who are willing to have both their hearts and minds touched and to find out that stretching their souls is the best exercise they’ve ever tried…

And then… magic happens…

Now I’m not supposed to believe in magic but I don’t have another easy word for the thing that happens in that moment that feels like “poof then wow,” that people are comfortable with… I find it kind of funny/peculiar (not funny/ha ha)… I sometimes use Jacob’s line when he awoke from his dream in Genesis 28:16, “God was in this place and I did not know it…” The thing is I do know it – God does show up. But when I say it, people get uncomfortable… However, if I say magic happens, everyone is just fine with it. There’s another letter in that, I’m sure…

So if you’ll bear with me… the Godly moment occurs… a teacher who may not know he/she is a teacher appears. When this teacher enters a classroom it is often without an agenda beyond getting students to love what they love… to see the beauty in the world and the sense of an Other in their lives. The teacher of religion can comfort children with the idea that there is a way to find meaning and purpose in their lives. The teacher of religion can inspire children to dream big dreams. The teacher of religion can say this is how life ought to be and for thousands of years your ancestors have been striving to bring the world to this place of peace and goodness and you are part of that task. A teacher of religion gives children a sense of belonging and hope. A teacher of religion gives children questions and a place to seek answers. A teacher of religion is so much luckier then a teacher of secular studies… They just don’t get a pension…

It’s summer vacation… I’m missing my teachers… so I thought I’d tip my hat to them and all the others who touch the souls of our children and turn them into searchers on the path to God, however they define it.

Still dreaming of peace,

Barbara

Early June 2005

Dear Friends,

As the school year ends my thoughts become a little more esoteric… so hang on…

One of the biggest struggles I have when working with both young people and adults is to help them with using God language without carrying the baggage of God images from childhood and movies and popular culture and even the Torah. These things force us to use words to define a God idea that doesn’t exactly fit… but we don’t have words that do. The solution for me has been to bolster myself with lots of other people’s ideas about God so that I know I have many options. Today I’m going to share some ideas from one of my favorite God-stretchers – Rabbi Harold Schulweis.

I was re-reading a wonderful article of his called Adonai-Elohim: The Two Faces of God – Confronting the Reality of Suffering and Tragedy which is what really triggered this letter. It was printed in Reconstructionism Today a number of years ago.

The article was about a shiva call he made and the classic question of "how could God let this happen?” but what evolved was the far more interesting discussion of what exactly is God’s business.

He tells us that in the rabbinic texts acts of God fall into two categories. They are either the way of justice middat ha-din or the way of compassion middat ha-rachamin. What a strict interpretation would leave us with is that everything that happens would have to fall into one of those two categories. I struggle with that, as do many progressive religious thinkers – as does Schulweis. There is nothing less comforting or meaningful then the answer “It was God’s will” at a tragic occurrence.

However, when Schulweis turns to Torah, he comes up with a wonderful and meaningful interpretation of the evolving God idea that frees us up from this response completely. He then carries it through to the rabbinic texts – so hang on with me and you’ll see why there is so much room in text study for us to find a place for meaningful God discussion.

He talks about the Elohim name of God in the first chapter of Genesis, who is the creator God – the nature God, the raw essence God. He then defines the Adonai name of God who appears in the second chapter as the energy God that transforms the earth, the God who sends rain and sends humans to till the soil. So Adonai Elohim, the name we use most frequently in our blessings, in combination and cooperation, is the God who marks the transaction between the human and the divine. Together this gives us the symbolic imagery of how we are supposed to live our lives. Both powers, together, make the world a living functioning world. Elohim is the creator of a morally neutral universe… Adonai Elohim is our God – the God of the Shema – the God who is One – the God who we pledge to in cooperation. The statement is clear.

However, we must go to the Talmud now and the rabbis’ two statements of God’s actions. If there are only acts of compassion and justice there are no acts of moral neutrality. There are many things that happen in the world that are neutral. Gravity is neutral. There are natural laws. These are not God’s actions. So Schulweis finds in the Talmud the following: If a man should steal a measure of wheat and sow it on his own property, by virtue of the law of justice this stored seed should not flourish, but the sages observe: Olam k’minhago nohaig, nature pursues its own course (Avodah Zarah 54b).” The wheat does flourish. So even the Talmudic rabbis realized that nature occasionally trumps what “ought” to be. Sometimes God’s will (or what we think God’s will ought to be) is just not part of what is going on and we can’t blame God for our pain no matter how much our soul aches for a way to vent our rage.

The God idea that Schulweis is illuminating is all about duality and I love how he enriches my personal imagery. His vision allows me to remember that at the blessing over bread or wine, we are not blessing the Elohim – the grain or the grape – we are blessing the Adonai-Elohim - the bread and the wine – the result of the coming together as one – the cooperation that created the bread and the wine – the symbolism of the Genesis story that we all hold as a cradle memory. It also allows us to define Elohim as what is and Adonai as what should be… and the goal of bringing those two together into the one-ness is also a God image we can hold dear.

Since I have spent this whole letter using Rabbi Schulweis’ thoughts I would do him a disservice without a real quote from the article… So I will close with the following:

To live in the world of “is” without the world of “ought” is to live in a universe without dreams, sacredness, or possibility. To live in the world of “ought” without the world of “is” means to live in a world of fantasy and pretense…

We are clearly charged to bring it together as one...

Still dreaming of peace,

Barbara

Late May

Dear Friends,

Tomorrow is Lag B’Omer, the 33rd day of the counting of the Omer, or more practically, thirty-three days since Passover as we focus on arriving on the 50th day, which is Shavuot – when the Rabbis tell us that Moses received the Torah on Mount Sinai. And then, the Talmud tells us:

Moses received the Torah at Mt. Sinai and passed it on to Joshua. Joshua received it from Moses and passed it on to the elders and the elders received it and passed it on to the prophets. The prophets received it and passed it on to the men of the great assembly. (Pirke Avot 1:1)

And of course, we continue the chain of ownership today.

However, the real point of this letter is to talk about the joy of Lag B’Omer, an obscure holiday stuck in the middle of what is a 49 day period of minor mourning for the ritually observant. This is a time when weddings aren’t held, when having haircuts are avoided, and memories of the literal and figurative plagues that swept through the holy land, including the deaths of most of the revered Rabbi Akiba’s students, the banning of Jewish study and the occupation by the Romans all constituted cause for lamentation and mourning.

However, on the thirty-third day for a variety of reasons, restrictions were lifted. Picnics with bonfires were held, first haircuts for three year olds were given, weddings (and other kinds of fooling around) took place, learning in the hills with teachers willing to risk all went on, music, dancing and laughter all burst forth. Lag B’Omer is a time to cut loose and celebrate. It is especially a time to honor teachers and it is definitely a time to have fun.

So, you are probably asking yourselves, why have I chosen to write about this very minor little holiday tucked into an even more obscure series of dark days? I wanted to write about it because for some reason in the last few weeks I’ve been confronted with a number of people discussing the difficulty of having fun. On the face of it, that seems a little hard to believe, since fun seems like a natural ability. Children seem to know how to do it automatically – and yet some of the discussions even involved children. Adults were talking about how rarely they actually laughed out loud any more and how hard it was to move their lives from pleasant into the fun column. I kept thinking of that old Peggy Lee song, “Is That All There Is?” I know there’s more…
I worry, though, that if we only had one day to go have fun, some of us might not know what to do… It even makes me worried for our children.

I have discovered that one of the things that can make my whole self feel better and happier even when things aren’t going well is to just smile. Go ahead, try it… fake a smile… turn up the corners of you mouth and smile at these words… Just feel how your whole face is different – better… It’s true, isn’t it?

Now I had the chance to go play this game with some fourth graders who were very clear that they were way too cool to smile… These were children who were not giving an inch. So I poked my face right in front of theirs and just looked in their eyes and smiled as big as I could. They tried very hard to resist. But suddenly they were smiling and giggling and what had started as a semi-fake smile on my part was a real smile and we were all smiling and laughing and the whole room was smiling and laughing and we were having… fun.

I now have a memory that makes me smile every time I think about it… so I don’t have to fake it… It is a silly memory. It lacks intellectual content. It lacks depth. It is a joy.

I think a lot about ascetics and those who believe that deprivation is a path to holiness. I am in awe of monks who take vows of silence and are able to spend their whole lives in prayer and contemplation. I too find great power in silence and need it sometimes to center myself and regroup. However I find myself growing stale when I am only looking in one direction for my spiritual answers. One of the great discoveries for me in Judaism was the fact that there were so many options for me within it sheltering arms. The deeper I went, the broader it became. Part of it is the empowerment of learning, of course… but part of it is just the reality of a religion that has managed to evolve and survive for so long. It has had to speak to so many different people and cultures and approaches it is obvious the tent is very, very big. There is room for everyone if you are willing to look for a while (or ask for directions… I know that’s hard for some of us).

So, for Lag B’Omer, fun is on the menu. This is a great day for doing something totally delightful. I have heard it referred to as the Jewish Valentine’s Day, because it certainly has romantic overtones. In San Diego, time at the beach is appropriate (or in the hills as well). Just make sure that at some point during this time you laugh out loud. Your whole body will feel better. I promise.

Still dreaming of peace,

Barbara

Early May

Dear Friends,I realize I’ve been very heavy on “Jewish content” lately… which, given my work and my personal perspective on the world, makes sense… but the intent of these letters was never to speak just to those who were already comfortably on a Jewish path… but to also speak to those who were wandering around on a variety of paths… some Jewish…. some not… and even for those of you who weren’t sure you wanted a path but were happy wandering around encountering whatever spiritual moments you found.

I think a lot about you all. Who you are and what you are looking for in these letters… There are more than a hundred of you now who receive these via email and more who receive these second hand… either through the website or by having them passed on to you… One of the things I’ve learned is that depending on the content there are certain regulars who will respond. There’s the spiritual challenge group, the Jewish prayer group, the Jewish religion group (which is different than the Jewish prayer group) and of course the religion as politics group. Most of you are silent, which is fine. The intent of these letters was always to just get them out there for you to think about – and then my job was done. I never really expected a dialogue. But over the years a pattern has emerged and I find it fascinating.

Of course, over the years I’ve also wondered a lot about what these letters have meant and one of the constants I know is that most of us who struggle with who we are religiously/spiritually/internally are truly fascinated by the topic. We want to know what makes us care. We want to know what makes others walk away from the search. It makes no sense to us that something as amazing as religion, which has been a moving force in the world since recorded time (and I’m talking petroglyphs here) can be discarded by those who claim that its all in our imaginations. They say it’s an excuse – a way to avoid seeking scientific answers – a way to dump our problems on someone/something/somewhere else.

We say that it’s real. We see it, feel it and can almost touch it. We see it in people’s faces. We read it in their writings. We sense it in special moments and want to transfer that feeling into more moments. We have felt a presence and have sometimes called it God or Nature or Wow or Love or I’ve Never Felt So Moved. We have done things we never thought we could because they were just the right things to do and we have surprised ourselves with the righteousness of it. We have done things that were wrong and have surprised ourselves with the power of the guilt.

Sometimes it’s a very quiet feeling. Sitting with a group of people that you have shared a communal religious experience with – a service – a social action – a wedding – a shiva minyan – a birth – even a hike to a mountaintop… but a shared powerful moment that you know is unique and yours forever. There is an enveloping presence with you that is not always there but you have brought it forth. It’s real. We call it God’s presence.

Sometimes it’s a feeling that requires some noise. A shout of joy or laughter has to come forth because you just feel so overwhelmingly good. Still there is a presence that makes the moment unique from others. It’s real. We call it God.
To deny that those are the feelings when we have let God in to our lives is to just be too cynical for my taste. The power is overwhelming. We know it. We are moved by it. It is undeniable. Why we so-called intellectuals are afraid of the God idea just boggles my mind. We accept so many other invisible things… I don’t see radio waves but I hear NPR. God is much more comprehensible to me then the fact that I can get email from my cousin in Moscow. You can’t deal with God on a rational basis… that’s why it’s called “belief”… You just have to feel it and let go… I did that a long time ago and it is so incredibly satisfying. I am not a fundamentalist… I am not a believer in a personal God… but oh, I do believe. There have been too many “shehecheyanu moments” in my life… moments when I have been so sure of God’s presence that I have uttered that great “yay God” prayer… Moments that have been so filled with awe and love that God was certainly with me… but I can prove nothing… only say what I believe…

I sometimes think that it all goes back to the awareness question. Finding the God moments is the way to acknowledge God’s presence. Identifying the sensations when you are more than the moment before and the moment after is so empowering. I spent some time last week discussing God’s name with a friend. In the Jewish tradition, God’s name in Torah is unspoken and we are given hundreds of alternatives to use, which we do. God is actually an alternative name as well since it is in English and the unspoken name in Torah is in Hebrew. So, my Reconstructionist mind says that as you begin this awareness game, God probably wouldn’t mind if you called the moment something else if you’re uncomfortable using “God” as you begin.

So, exercising your imagination as spring is blooming and you are out in nature (one of God’s best venues for moments) try a little “when is God” exercising. Take someone you love or a good book or a picnic or just your inner self and have a conversation with the Other. Look for a quiet opportunity to bring God in. Celebrate loudly with God, if that’s your choice. God doesn’t have preferences, just presence.

Spring is about beginnings… enjoy them… it’s easier with the understanding that our souls are sources of comfort… and our minds are sources of strength… we are complex individuals and we need all our self united… the spiritual and the intellectual and the physical… and if we reject the spiritual, we risk becoming less than we are capable of being…

Still dreaming of peace,

Barbara

Late April

Dear Friends,

I was at a conference a number of years ago when some learned soul said, “The catechism of the Jewish people is the calendar.” I wrote it down and have never had the opportunity to really expand on the thought in my own mind, but today I’m going to do so. I grew up in New Jersey where many of my friends were Catholic; in fact in my small and very colonial hometown there were enough Catholics to rate two Catholic churches, one predominately Irish and one Italian, which always struck me as strange. Of course, my childhood synagogue housed Reform, Conservative and Orthodox sanctuaries all in one building which made perfect sense to me, but today seems like a Utopian vision – so my perspective may have been a little skewed. Anyway, what I knew about catechism was what my Catholic friends studied. It was strictly a Catholic word so hearing it in a Jewish context was jarring that day – and yet intriguing.

Here’s a traditional definition of catechism: A book containing a summary of principles, especially of religious doctrine, reduced to the form of questions and answers. Or here’s another that’s even more appropriate: A manual giving basic instruction in a subject, usually by rote or repetition. Now, if anything is repeated, it’s a calendar. Here are the real questions though: When confronted with the Jewish calendar over the years, how many times have you asked, “what is the Fast of Gedalia?” or how about, “What happened on the Tenth of Tevet?” Or “ What’s Pesach Sheini?” I actually have a list of Jewish holidays I print out each year for my students and if I don’t count repeating days (like the eight days of Channukah or the two days of Rosh Hashanah) there are twenty-two listed holidays during the year – not counting special Shabbats. These holidays all are tied into something in our people’s story. They tell us who we were and are. If you just studied our calendar and really spent some time understanding the Queen of all holidays, Shabbat – you’d have a really good grounding in the facts of Judaism.

Our calendar, year after year, tells our basic story. It doesn’t give us nuance. It doesn’t give us commentary. It doesn’t give us wiggle room. It is just there – in the simplest of formats – this is the day that X happened and when you learn about X, you learn that you do Y. That is why there is the long tradition of free Jewish calendars. We need to be oriented in Jewish time so we know when to do things that make us Jewish. I of course don’t mean that from my perspective as a Reconstructionist educator – I mean that in the fundamentalist sense that this would give you the literal information – not the soul/heart of Judaism. I know the calendar is not a book like the Catholic Catechisms my friends studied – but it offers up a similar image. It has pages and notes and sometimes – even commentary. It tells us where we are in Torah, when to light the Sabbath candles, it’s an amazing thing if you think about it.

However I think calendars offer us so much more. When our children were small, Michael and I used to spend New Year’s Eve quietly at home, reflecting on our past year. The tool we used to reflect was our family calendar. We would go month by month through the year and reminisce about the adventures we had shared, the places we’d gone and the things our little notes in the boxes triggered in our minds. Our notes became a family diary and our calendars were our lives revealed. We could share the good and the bad. We could revisit it all… No one enjoys your family stories as much as you do… The calendar lets you tell them.

The Jewish calendar can do the same. A great holiday shared can bring wonderful memories. I’m cheating a little bit because it’s the last day of Pesach and this is the holiday of great memories. This is the week on the calendar that is full of stories great and small. This is the week when we can all reminisce. I remember so many wonderful Passover stories from my childhood, my young adulthood, and all the years Michael and I have shared hosting the Seder here in San Diego. There was the time when I was sixteen and had a post-Seder date and when we opened the door for Elijah, my date walked in with everyone singing Eliyahu HaNavi. (He wasn’t Elijah the Prophet, but he was cute.) There was the time my now 46-year old cousin was just learning to talk and she had a few too many sips of sweet wine and after the singing of Dayenu kept running around the dining room table singing the song until she collapsed in a tiddly stupor. There was the first time my mother took over the matzah ball making from my grandmother… no, I won’t talk about that… We all have those stories that just looking at the calendar and seeing “Pesach” can bring to mind… We don’t need much help from the catechism at this time of year. It doesn’t have to be if it’s X we do Y. It should be, remember when we shared X we had the joy of Y… It should be that way all year…

So the holiday and festival calendar is a lot more then the Fast of Gedalia (a minor fast – don’t worry about it). It is a tool for us to build memories and traditions and story and celebration. It belongs to us. It is one more way for us to become empowered by our tradition. It is one more way for us to look at all the opportunities we have to recreate rituals that work for us while honoring our past. With twenty-two holidays and festivals there are a lot of chances to break new ground…

Still dreaming of peace,

Barbara

Early April

Dear Friends,

We are approaching the most important holiday of our religious year. In fact, without Pesach (or Passover in English) there would be no Judaism. The High Holy days are our most important personal religious time… but there is no denying that Pesach is the definitive Jewish festival. Without Pesach there is no Judaism. This story must happen for us to happen. Let me share with you why I believe that’s true.

The Israelites believed in the One God. This God was Abraham’s God and Isaac’s and Jacob’s and Sarah’s, Rebecca’s, Rachel’,s and Leah’s. This is what set our people apart in the beginning. However this God didn’t give us a whole lot of rules and regulations to follow until Sinai. We circumcised our male children since the time of Abraham as a sign of the covenant between God and Abraham’s descendants. Beyond that, we had some simple behaviors to follow but everything that really defines Judaism as a unique religion comes from the Sinai experience and beyond. Sinai cannot happen without Moses and Moses cannot happen without the redemption from Egypt. Moses alone cannot go to Sinai. A leader without followers is a prophet crying alone in the wilderness. Pesach is the most important holiday we have in terms of our history. Without Pesach we are nothing.

Now as a good Reconstructionist, the truth of the Pesach story is a bit of a stumbling block. Contemporary archeology has told us that there probably was not a single exodus from Egypt in the form that the Passover story retells. We also have no proof that a man named Moses actually existed – although every once in a while someone seems to come up with a shard of something that might be about him, but it never seems definitive. If there was no exodus then there was no parting of the Sea of Reeds and no dancing by Miriam and no manna and oops… no Sinai… what are we doing here? My premise falls apart.

Well, there could have been a Sinai experience. A man called Moses could have left Egypt with fifty or so followers and camped at Sinai and had a call beyond imagining. He could have been blessed above all prophets with a vision of the future that called forth the Ten Commandments and other laws of behavior. His fifty followers could have been early theologians who scripted the beginning of Judaism and ultimately arrived at the Promised Land with scrolls and tablets of stone that touched people’s hearts and minds. Those forty years in the desert could have been a university of wisdom that has never again been created with such talent and gifts. The image stirs my soul. There in this windy and desolate place were Moses and Miriam and Aaron defining ethics for all time. Sitting, arguing kashrut were Joshua and Caleb and Zipporah. Yitro, Moses’ brilliant father-in-law would drop by from time to time to offer his words of wisdom as they worked away in their tents, with God’s presence always nearby. Then the people Israel took the work that was created in the desert and made it their own and the rest is history, as we perceive it.

You see, the truth of the story withstands archeology because the truth of the story is what we have done with what came out of the desert. Something went in and something came out. The Israelites were slaves in Egypt. This is a fact. Then the Israelites were not slaves in Egypt and for a brief and shining time they were a glorious kingdom. The kingdom then became internal rather than external. We took the genius of Judaism, which our ancestors thought would be focused on a place and focused it on a people. We carried the vision within for thousands of years. It has evolved and changed, as it should. The land has evolved and changed as well. Truth is such a non-absolute when you are talking about religious history.

You see I believe that religious truth is tested and proved by its adherents. We are the living testament to Sinai and to the truth of the Pesach story. “Remember you were strangers in a strange land!” Do we care for those who are different from us? Do we redeem the captives? Do we take the vision and expand it to modern times and understand it to the depth of our souls and treat all who feel alienated and alone with compassion? Do we welcome those who feel like strangers so they are no longer strangers? “Remember you were once slaves in Egypt!” Do you remember your family stories? Do you remember your own ancestors’ humble beginnings? Do you remember with gratitude this country’s welcoming arms?

On Pesach night we ask many questions of ourselves. We are having our annual review of the story… We are obligated to have a brush up every year on this seminal piece of our history. It’s the only one mandated in such a way. Play with it this year. Think about how we have managed to be sitting in this country practicing our religion freely with bountiful tables while evoking our slave beginnings. Try and make it a little more real this year. Try and think about how each of us is obligated to carry forth the dream of Sinai, however you interpret it.

In the words of the late Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr, what should we do when we’re “Free at last, free at last, thank God, Almighty, we’re free at last…”

Still dreaming of peace for all,

Barbara

Late March

Dear Friends,

I did everything I could to avoid writing about quality of life, end of life, right to die, who is in charge here, what’s the difference between vegetating and living to those who love us… and yet I can’t shake it. I’m angry… angry to have been sucked in to what should be an incredibly private experience for a family that has been in mourning for a woman for fifteen years. Yet, I also think that as the media has been trumpeting loudly, there has been a gift in the midst of all the awfulness of this experience. People are talking about the “what ifs” for themselves and their loved ones as well as finally saying, maybe we’ve gone too far.

A woman lies dying in a hospice bed after fifteen years of being in what medical experts agree is a persistent vegetative state. Her husband, the person who was her most intimate companion at her most mature time of life, is clear beyond a shadow of a doubt, that after fifteen years of no change in her condition, it is time to let her go. This is what the woman he shared a life with all those years ago would want. He waited a long time to make this decision.

There is no documentation of a case of recovery from this condition after this long. Her parents dreamt of a miracle and longed for their child to recover. As a parent I can’t blame them, but I believe they have been duped by bad advice from doctors, lawyers and politicians. They had the “good fortune” or the “bad luck” depending on your emotional and political perspective, to live in the state of Florida where Governor Jeb Bush and the Florida legislature decided that politics inexplicably had a place in this most intimate of family decisions. The state stepped in (think about how you would feel if your Governor decided you couldn’t make a proper decision about your family’s medical care?) and the whole world started taking sides. What a nightmare! “What a shanda,” my grandmother would have said. What is going on in Florida has taken on a “life” of its own that has no relationship to the issues around Ms. Schiavo who is slowly being released from the body that hasn’t functioned for fifteen years. However, it also may finally have allowed us to see how far we’ve let ourselves go down the road of public indecency in the name of what some call religion or faith.

When I saw a ten-year old boy proudly being led away by two policemen because he tried to bring water to a comatose woman he didn’t know, wasn’t related to, and could have actually hurt by his actions I had to ask myself – what lessons had he learned? Had he learned that he should walk into any hospice or hospital and intervene in any medical situation if someone told him a person inside needed alternative care? If I were receiving an intravenous medication that someone thought was inappropriate, would he sneak in during the night and disconnect my IV in order to save me? How about my home? Was that safe any more? The people shouting outside the hospice must be making the other patients who are terminally ill inside the facility very uncomfortable. Do they care? When Ms. Schiavo’s family asked them to leave and they didn’t, isn’t there a message there for us all? When Congress takes up hours and hours debating this issue when there is a war in Iraq and a huge Federal deficit and a Social Security and Medicare problem looming ahead, aren’t priorities confused?

So, all across America good folks are starting to scratch their heads and wonder. The first step was the downloading of thousands upon thousands of Advanced Directives or Living Wills from the Internet or phone calls to doctors to get them. People were saying, “That won’t happen to me.” What a great gift Ms. Schiavo’s tragedy may yet be for families who haven’t had this conversation before. Secondly, people are finally starting to think about the line that must be drawn between politics and the personal. This quality of life question is a profoundly personal decision. For the faithful it is a profoundly religious decision as well. It is definitely not a decision for the government to make. Who is to say when we are no longer in this world? I certainly don’t want my congressperson to decide!

For me, the issue of quality of life is one I deal with on a regular basis. I live with a chronic illness and lots medication so my body changes randomly and I end up doing spot checks on my quality of life a lot. I think that for many people, especially young people, the bottom line varies dramatically. Thoughts can range from “I would pull the plug if I couldn’t get into a size 3” to “I would pull the plug if I’m not married by the time I’m 30”. I, on the other hand, am more inclined to pulling the plug if I’m brain dead… I’m much more willing to hang around even though I’m not a size 3, never was a size 3 and never will be.
The point is that each of us, in consultation with our loved ones and our spiritual guides, if we have them, need to use this moment in time to ask some big questions about our quality of life. The question is bigger than just our own comfort. The question is also what we want to leave as the memory for those we love. Do we want our loved ones to have as their last memories years of caring for the husk of who we once were? Do we want our loved ones to sacrifice years of their own lives in caring for the container that once had our essence but no longer does? When all the medical evidence indicates that there is no coming back, how long should our loved ones have to wait to say the final goodbye?

One of the most brilliant parts of the Jewish life cycle ritual is the death and mourning component. We bury immediately because we know that once the spark of life has burned out the community surrounding the mourners must focus on them, on those who suffer grief, and help them celebrate the life that has been lost. The body is merely the “place holder” but the soul, the spirit, the laughter, the heart… that is the person who we celebrate and fight to preserve.

When there are remnants of soul and spirit the decision becomes much harder. That is when the living will and discussions with our loved ones are critical. We need, each of us, to talk this out. We need to be able to say to our children under what circumstances we want them to be brave enough to get on with their lives. We need to be able to say to our partners that we love them enough to want them to love again if we are no longer responsive. We need to make these choices while we are able so none of us end up tearing our families apart.

If there is a gift to give that can make Ms. Schiavo’s death something other than a political football and a media circus, it is that… and perhaps we owe that to her.

Still dreaming of peace for all,

Barbara

Early March or in the Hebrew Calendar - Adar II

Dear Friends,

I added the Hebrew month to the heading of the letter because for Jews around the world this is crazy season - the month of Adar leading up to our very own Mardi Gras - otherwise known as Purim. Unfortunately this is a leap year in the crazy Jewish calendar which confuses us with the extra month of Adar II supplementing Adar I and Purim where Pesach should be, so if you are Jewish and wondering why you are feeling a little out of sorts - the calendar is not in sync with the sun at all this year. So, it isn't you… It's Adar II.

When you think about the great children's holidays in the Jewish tradition - there are really two: Channukah and Purim, the festival that celebrates the story told in the Scroll of Esther. Purim is unfortunately taught to our children with two themes - a grand love story and a great victory of the oppressed Jews over their evil oppressors (once again). Purim is the most difficult of these “rise up and win” stories for me because thousands of innocent Persians are slain by the Jews; yet we celebrate this massacre as our victory. Now to be fair, if the story is to be believed, the Persians would have killed us if we hadn't killed them, but they didn't get the chance… we got permission to kill them first (ugh). As a teacher, I struggle to find a way to reframe this and other holidays (as some of them were certainly reframed from other traditions) in order to find contemporary truth and meaning. Luckily, the struggle often becomes a delightful and richly rewarding exercise since the Tanakh (the Bible) always surprises me with its depth when I let it.

Play along with me for a minute. For example, as a child why did I know more about Esther winning the beauty pageant then about her day of fasting and meditation as she decided to put her life on the line for her people? Once Esther was “picked,” how come this great love story left her afraid of the King? Why was the scroll of Esther in the Tanakh anyway? It had to be telling us something of great import. Of course we have God's total absence. We have humans acting alone… free will… evil apparently centered in Haman and his sons as he corrupts the King who is not evil but ill served (and weak - why is this a love story then - or is it enough to be Queen?)… Is this a more modern sense of justice - hanging Haman and his sons? But then do the writers chicken out? Why are the Persians as a people then punished? But the text at the end somehow feels like an add-on, or is that wishful thinking? Why don't we know for sure what happened to Vashti (King Ahasuerus's first wife) after she was dismissed? I'm afraid I know. I'm not so crazy about Mordecai when I read the text, as I was when I was a kid. He seems a little petty every once in a while. Where did all the heroes go? I know - this book is really truly all about heroines.

And then I have a hook… Then the Bible story allows me to see wisdom and a gleam of almost humor in the eyes of the writer. This is the sheer joy of Bible study. It has absolutely nothing to do with scholarship and everything to do with interpretation, how I can have a home with these stories. I can go farther than that with this game. Think some more about the structure of the story that truly cannot exist without women. If Queen Vashti had bowed her head in obedience to her King at the beginning of the tale and danced naked before her husband and his drunken friends, this story would never have been told. The writer, therefore, created women who would defy Kings - both for their own personal pride and for their people. The writer drew for all time two incredible women, not in detail, but strong enough, for us to still use them as feminist role models. This writer created a world without God needing to be involved, but with two women of character - one a Jew and one a Pagan - who made critical choices that risked all - and hundreds upon hundreds of years later we still wonder at their story.

Now a similar kind of fable floated around the ancient near east. Scholars can tell us that this story is not new to the Jews. I don't care. What matters is that someone chose to put it in our Tanakh, our Bible, and it has become a part of what we teach… a part of what we are. Our tradition has been so male-centered, but if we wanted to make it so, this could be the perfect feminist holiday. This is a holiday that honors the actions of women, despite the direction of Mordecai. Without Vashti's actions, nothing begins. Then we are told, without any contradiction, that the Fast of Esther, the night before Purim, is truly the time when the decision to go to the King is made. Mordecai lays out her choic, but Esther alone must make the choice. Mordecai is important. Esther and Vashti are essential.

I appreciate the fact that over the years women have developed a seder at Passover to celebrate their freedom from oppression, but I think its time we take a look at our tradition and celebrate the women who declared their freedom with bravery and intention in Shushan all these hundreds of years ago. Purim is a perfect holiday to reconstruct as a feminist celebration. We already have role models in place. We already have the day blocked off on our synagogue calendars. Start planning now! There's a lot about Purim that needs to be reassessed anyway… The mitzvah of getting so drunk you can't tell the difference between Mordecai and Haman is certainly no longer on the to do list. So, let's replace that with some sort of special mitzvah to honor Esther and Vashti. It's time to read between the lines and then color outside them.

Chag Sameach… a good festival… and dreams of peace for us all…

Barbara

Late February 2005

Dear Friends,

Our congregation, as many of you know, is in the midst of a “Rabbi Search.”  I wasn’t going to write about it because I wasn’t sure if I could do so without exposing my own position on the various candidates.  Slowly I realized that something else was churning in me as a result of the process that we all need to think about – and that’s where “religious leadership” fits in to our individual spiritual searches.  For many of us our first encounter with a spiritual leader was with a rabbi or some other formally ordained clergy person.  Perhaps later on we met a different kind of spiritual leader – a guru, a spiritual healer, a poet, a lover, or a friend, who seemed to have found a path that they helped us follow as well.  Depending on our individual searches, the informal leader may have seemed more authentic, for others, the traditional clergy fit the bill.  However, spiritual leadership for most of us is necessary to get our own search underway, give us guidance as we go along, and most importantly give us the necessary energy to keep us going. 

Over the years my spiritual journey has been empowered by a number of different leaders or guides.  There were rabbis who taught me, teachers who trained me, friends who inspired me, ministers and priests who moved me, writers who made my heart sing, many children (especially my own) who changed my life, and most of all a husband who challenged me to find the voice of my soul.  Each of these people had a different role in the process but in reality, none would have touched me if I hadn’t been open to the possibility that they could.

One of my greatest frustrations in the many years I’ve been involved in work of a spiritual/religious nature is the hesitation I discover in people who are waiting for someone to “turn on” their religious lives for them and then tell them what to do next.  In much the same way that I love the imagery of God being our partner… setting us on earth to complete the task of creating a world that is holy and God-like, I believe that our religious lives become fulfilling only if we are active in the process – feel powerful in the process – and have a sense of ourselves and the outcomes we want to achieve.  We cannot sit back and wait passively for a spiritual leader to not just find our buttons to push but also give us a map, because each of us is unique in our spiritual search.  We certainly can be moved by some of the same things, but deep down our response will be an individual one, as it should be.

Over the years a spiritual path should twist and turn and offer many kinds of experiences.  Over the years our bookshelves should overflow with a range of writers who challenge us and make us think new thoughts.  Over the years we should wonder at ourselves and ask big questions and poke and prod at where we are going.  All of this can happen within one tradition, if need be – or in several.  What matters is that the search is without end.  Doors should swing wide and we should be brave, stepping over thresholds to take risks if the other side of the doorway looks tempting or staying away if it doesn’t.  Stretching our souls is as important as stretching our muscles in order to have a vibrant religious life.

So what is the role of the “spiritual leader”?  How does that person set us on this path?  First I see this person as a role model.  I want a spiritual leader to be someone who emanates peace and awareness and oneness with God or the Other or the Great Spirit or whatever you are comfortable calling the Power that makes for salvation.  This person must “walk the walk” seeking that path toward godliness.  This doesn’t mean that I’m looking for someone living in a cave in the desert dressed in flowing robes and chanting.  I want someone I can aspire to model my life after and so I want a real kind of person who is trying to do the best they can in the world – not apart from it.  However, the model can also be like a jigsaw puzzle too.  I can take a piece of one person and a piece of another.  I can take the heart of one and the mind of another.  (This is my game and my rules.) That’s the great part of the search.  You are in motion.  You are learning as you go what works in the moment and then you can move along, holding the piece of that spiritual soul that has touched you close to your heart while you wait for the next piece of the puzzle on your journey.

Second I see this person as a teacher, a giver of strength.  I see this person as someone who shares the tools, whether they are the symbolic walking sticks to help us along the path (books, stories, songs, prayers, whatever….) or explanations of the why of the search.  We all need help being empowered when times are hard.  We need an extra energy boost, a power bar of learning.  I want a spiritual leader who understands that when I falter it doesn’t mean I quit; I just need to rest and maybe have some trail mix to get me going again.  So along with the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle I also have some tools to carry too.

Third, I see this person as a companion but not necessarily a buddy.  One of the realities of life is that it is rare that a spiritual leader, when seen up close and personal, fulfills all our fantasies of perfection. Humans are flawed. I have yet to meet a person in the professional religious world, no matter how caring and wonderful and brilliant, who doesn’t have something about them that would irritate someone.  So if I invest too much emotion in this guide I will inevitably be let down.  So I need to remind myself that what I am looking for is a helper, a trainer even… not a messiah.  I need someone to share ideas with and talk to and be with and care about, whether it is in a formal or informal setting.  I need to stretch myself a little without risking embarrassment.  I need to ask “what if?” questions.  I need someone to help me gaze at the pieces of the puzzle and the tools and wonder at them.  I need to get what I need but not lean so hard I will fall if they step aside.

Finally I need to find my own strength.  I need to find my own ability to know that the search is a forever thing that ebbs and flows but never disappears.  There’s a scene in the movie “The Legend of Bagger Vance” where the Matt Damon character, who has been getting his strength from Will Smith through the stress of a magical golf tournament (I know, some of you who haven’t seen this movie may be scratching your heads, but it is an amazingly beautiful golf match…) looks up and Will Smith is gone, with a twinkle in his eye and a tilt of his hat… because Smith knows Damon has found his own strength… he’s found the pieces of his puzzle and his tools and he can call on his internal character and his soul and do what he has to do… and of course he does.  Not all of us have a Bagger Vance in our lives (the Smith character) but we all could use one.  It would certainly be easier to have someone as obvious as Will Smith helping us find our path.  However, life isn’t Hollywood…
 
But it is life… and we’re in it for the adventure… with people around us just waiting to be jigsaw puzzle pieces of our lives…
 
Still dreaming of peace,
 
Barbara

Early February

Dear Friends,

I’ve been browsing around my bookshelves for a topic this month.  I’ve wanted to get back to something “religious/spiritual” more for my sake than yours.   These letters are as much part of my own personal search and spiritual growth as they are a journal of sharing with you.  The other day I was talking with one of my teachers about how you discuss faith with teenagers.  The concept is so abstract and the feeling is so personal.  The idea has been so abused by the left and the right in the religious wars that those of us who have it are almost ashamed to admit it.  However, if religion is to survive we need to be able to name it and feel it and teach it and own it.  So today, in my own way, I’m going to write about it.

In a wonderful magazine called “Spirituality and Health” I found a great quote from the brilliant Catholic monk, Thomas Merton that they included as a lead in to a discussion about faith that I wanted to share with you and it goes like this:

God is the lead dancer and the soul is the partner completely attuned to the rhythm and patterns set by the partner. She does not lead, but neither does she hang limp like a sack of potatoes. — Thomas Merton quoted in Listening to the Music of the Spirit by David Lonsdale

Faith requires us to dance with God.  I love that image.  The Chasidic Jews know that and do that.  When the mystics of Safed danced in the hills to greet the Sabbath Bride singing Lecha Dodi they danced with God.  Years ago an interfaith family with a young child told me with slight embarrassment that their Shabbat practice wasn’t exactly traditional – that after they lit the candles they did a dance with their arms all entwined.  It just felt right.  I told them with great certainty that it was right.  They were dancing with God each Shabbat.  We tend to prize our intellectual engagement with the God idea far more than our physical engagement – but faith, as I’ve said before, requires us to put our whole self in.

The question of how to do it – of how to take the risk – is the tough one.  It’s especially tough to do as an adult.  I’m a firm believer in renaming things so that they aren’t so tough anymore.  I have an exercise I do with college students when I teach about God.  I hand out a list of over one hundred names of God that are found in the Torah and liturgical writings (You can find the list in a survey done by the Jewish Theological Seminary’s Melton Program – Google it and take the survey – it’s fascinating).  These names range from “Lord, Man of War” (I swear that’s on the list!) to “Maker of Peace” to my favorite, “The Power that Makes for Salvation.”  The point of course, is that the God idea is a one size fits all concept – or innumerable sizes fit all, perhaps.  You can try God on and God will fit. You just have to be willing to try.

Once you become comfortable understanding that your God idea isn’t like my God idea but it’s all God – your dancing partner can start to take shape for you.  Faith is really an empowering phenomenon.  Think about the people you’ve known who are really comfortable in their faith.  Don’t they seem stronger to you in some way?  Don’t they seem more comfortable in their skin?  That’s because they’ve got a date for the dance, if you’ll pardon my stretching Merton’s imagery to the adolescent limit.

What makes me nuts are the folks who tell us what faith is and if we aren’t feeling what they are feeling or praying what they are praying or defining things the way they are defining them then our faith isn’t authentic.  Faith is the most personal of all parts of religion.  Faith is what allows us to keep going when things are most difficult.  No one else can know exactly what it is that gives us strength.  No one else can know exactly what moment our faith will take hold and we will feel the energy of God’s presence in our life. Faith is. That’s what makes it faith.

My faith is a constant, but occasionally it feels like my partner has gone to get a snack at the dessert table and left me behind – that’s probably not true, but it means I’ve gotten distracted and ignored what was in front of me.  So sometimes I need to change the music so my partner will head on back and start dancing with me again.  The secret for me is to learn what music gets me focused once more.  That’s the secret for all of us.

I know that for people who claim not to believe or say they are searching for faith or think that faith is solely a learned behavior this is all very difficult stuff.  I struggle with answers for you and I ache to help you find an easy way in. My instinct is to say, relax.  My instinct is to say, you have faith, and you just need to uncover it.  However, I know that’s presumptuous of me.  I can only offer up the possibility that the obstacles to faith may be semantic…or perhaps the time isn’t right…but if you’re reading this there’s a reason… so you’re poking at something… and so am I…

Still dreaming of peace…

Barbara

Late January

Dear Friends,

My sons are now 25 and 21, but their childhood years were a time of incredible learning for me - not just about vaccinations and which teachers were the best and what snacks were the favorites for soccer - but about how to look at the world with brand new eyes. Children give us incredible gifts, whether the children are our own or we encounter them through our work or through family or friends. They give us a sense of freshness - of expectation - of amazement. They allow us to see inside their hearts before they learn to close them up protectively as they “mature”.

I have the good fortune to work in the world of children - and to have the responsibility to nurture their sense of expectation and amazement. I get to explore and use the resources that encourage their incredible capacity for wonder and holiness. I get to say to them on a regular basis - "You are supposed to take care of each other. You are supposed to love each other. The world is a place that is waiting for you to do good deeds and we will help you do them. There is justice and goodness in the world. People love you. This community loves you. You are safe." The children, in return, love back. They hug each other and their teachers. When someone misbehaves, a simple reminder of how they are supposed to behave is enough to get an apology and the problem is almost always solved. They will correct others lovingly. They help heal each other. The atmosphere in our school is one of joy and kindness. Their world, at least in the narrow confines of our religious school, is a safe and holy space. Being around these children allows the adults to behave with that same kindness and joy as well – for we are required to model ideal behavior. It is a gift they give us all.

This is not an advertisement for my school, however. This is a comment on the world children live in that we too often ignore or diminish by calling it “childish” or “naïve” or “immature”. We condescend to their world and yet I never loved the zoo more than when I would take my children and saw it through their eyes. I never loved Balboa Park more than on a silly day one summer when my niece, then age 10, was visiting and she and my two sons and I skipped along the Prado singing "Zippity Doo Dah" and laughed in total delight. I never loved singing Adon Olam more than when I first watched our Dor Hadash teenagers leading us in hand motions that made everyone feel silly and joyous at the same time. Children make things come alive in ways adults don't because for them everything is new and possible. They are more in the moment than we allow ourselves to be because we are afraid of making fools of ourselves, or opening up too much, or maybe just sharing too much. Children don’t understand that because they don’t have the walls we have. Thank God for that.

Children's books also have few walls. One of the less pleasant parts of my job is discipline. On occasion a teacher will send a student to me for disrupting a class. No matter what the age of the student, if they’ve done something wrong I'll almost always read them a story from a picture book. The reason why is very simple. Picture books with religious themes generally get to the core of what we teach. They don’t apologize for basic truths. They don’t back away from fundamental values. Now some of them are incredibly sappy and stupid, I’ll admit. However, they aren’t the award winners. They aren’t the ones that last. The good ones stay with us forever though. Let me give you an example.

A number of years ago several B’nai Mitzvah Class students were goofing off during a class discussion of the blessing for putting on the tallit, or prayer shawl. They were sent to my office and I pulled out a book called The Always Prayer Shawl by Sheldon Oberman and Ted Lewin. This is a picture book that begins in Russia and tells the story of a grandfather born in Russia and his prayer shawl that traveled with him to the United States, slowly falling apart, being handed down and repaired again and again, until all that was left was the memory. He tells this story to his 12-year-old grandson who pledges that the memory of the prayer shawl is enough. It’s a classic Jewish story and the twelve year olds in my office were silent through the entire reading. All of a sudden the tallit blessing was something bigger than one more prayer they had to master… it was part of their shared tradition and so simply told it required no effort to move in to their hearts. The best children’s stories do that for us. Public Television figured that out a long time ago when they realized that a lot of adults were watching Sesame Street with their children. How many of us who raised children have favorite moments from that program or from Mr. Rogers? How touched have we been by those childish moments that we excuse ourselves for because they were “for the kids?”

So, where am I going with this? IR