Cyber Conversation Archive with
JRF Master Educator, Barbara Carr
August 2006 - July 2007
Many families of Dor Hadash have been allowing our recently retired Education Director Barbara Carr into their homes via email for informal conversations about Jewish issues that tweak Barbara's interest and theirs.
Two fairly lengthy email letters go home which are designed to generate further thought and discussion. The emails contain material that Barbara has discovered which might be of interest as well as general musings on what it means to be Jewish and a family in the twenty-first century.
If you would like to receive the emails please register with Barbara. Or, just bookmark this page and check back every few weeks to see if a new message has been posted. Remember, these are Barbara's personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Congregation Dor Hadash.
Dear friends,
As I have done previously, I am taking the month of July off and recharging my batteries with a California road trip and time to just absorb what’s going on around me. I will be back in your email boxes in early August. Because I’m not going to be writing to you for a while I feel a sense of responsibility in this letter to poke at you a little more than usual. I do this so that perhaps, in the month ahead, I may trigger a discussion or a musing or a reorientation by raising questions about “God, the universe and everything”…
I’m using as my prompt one of Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro’s compelling projects for The Simply Jewish Foundation. This was called 23B The Simply Jewish Billboard Project. He based his work on the Talmudic discussion of the essence of Judaism which is found in Makkot 23B. His premise is that we often find Judaism too complex and overwhelming to “sell” to others (or ourselves) in modern terms. There’s just too much “stuff” to absorb. The Rabbis of the Talmud understood this too and boiled things down to make it more comprehensible. I wrote recently about Hillel standing on one foot and explaining all of Judaism and in Makkot 23B other Rabbis take on a similar task. This section of Talmud expresses what the individual Rabbis felt was the core teaching of Torah and a satisfactory response to the question, “what’s it all about?”
In the Billboard Project, Rabbi Rami Shapiro came up with 80 statements of 25 words or less which he envisioned being plastered on billboards all over America. The entire set is available on line at http://www.rabbirami.com/books.htmll along with other ebooks and books to purchase. His billboard messages are all challenging – some with humor and some with solemnity but all are significant for modern Jews. Let me share some of them with you:
- Everything I Need to Know About Judaism I Learned in Seventh Grade. Wrong.
- God - It’s all and nothing.
- Should Jews Give Christmas Presents? Sure. To Christians.
- One God. One World. One Humanity. One Moral Code. – Liberty, compassion and justice for all.
- Why Are Jews Always Complaining? Because there is so much that needs fixing.
- What Is the Most Important Thing About Being Jewish? Judaism.
- Is Israel the Holy land? Yes. So is Cleveland.
- Someday I Want to Meet God. You already have. Yesterday.
- Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? For the same reason good things happen to good people.
- Is Adonai God’s True Name? Yes. So is Allah, Jehovah, Brahman, Dharmakaya, Tao, and the Great Spirit.
- What Can We Do About Assimilation? Nothing. We are already assimilated.
- Can I Be Jewish Without Judaism? Sure. But why bother?
- The Only Authentic Judaism Is Orthodox Judaism. And the only authentic painting is cave painting.
- 100 Blessings – Every day.
As you can see from this taste, these are wonderful and succinct ideas that seem on the surface to be simplistic but when we let them sink in they are rich with meaning. They were literally designed to go on billboards and I love to fantasize what it would be like to be driving on the freeway and seeing one of these statements/questions staring me in the face. What kind of discussion would ensue in the car after we got over the shock of seeing the billboard in the first place? How would we feel? Would we be embarrassed? Would we be annoyed? Would we be thrilled or proud? Talking about Judaism publicly, outside the confines of “the tribe” as some call us makes many uncomfortable. Part of it is that we are not sure enough of our understanding of Judaism to bring it out in the open and talk about it. We comfortably talk about the cultural pieces – music – recipes – folktales - but we rarely take on the discussion of Judaism, as it exists, or should exist, in America today. As Rabbi Rami says clearly above, the things we worry about – assimilation, authenticity, and Israel’s status as the holy land – are old issues. They are the issues of the post-Holocaust generation and we now need to move on to the reality for today’s generation of Jews who have different religious and spiritual needs then our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.
I am writing this because I find myself again and again at odds with the traditionalists who are continually talking about protecting Jews from the risks of assimilation. It’s too late. As Rabbi Rami says, we already are assimilated. We live in a country that was founded on the principle of freedom to practice religion of whatever kind. We live in a country that is a melting pot of cultures and religions. The United States is unique in this regard. There is no single American culture that needs to be protected against the “others”. We have gone through the fires of racism and religious intolerance and despite the terror of that time, ultimately the Constitution has prevailed and hatred and bigotry are now viewed as deviant and un-American. This makes us free to find our own path without fear. I’m not naïve enough to believe that things are perfect for the newcomers to America or even long-time citizens of color. I know that the Muslim community is going through a horrific time as some of the uneducated in our midst still carry fear and hatred in their hearts. I know that racism and anti-Semitism still exists. But overall, America is the best place in the world to be different and it is evolving and making it less and less acceptable for citizens to act in any way that threatens our freedom to live life as we choose.
The generation that is now coming of age in America now demands an “outing” of our Judaism and asks that we not carry paranoia in our hearts. If we want to continue to live up to the Reconstructionist vision of a real American Judaism, we need to address the question of what that looks like. We cannot be truly American Jews if we still in the depths of our souls, worry that some modern version of exile will be forced upon us. We need to look at our teenagers and young adults and realize that their roots as Americans are deep and they are looking for a proud and democratic Judaism that can address their religious/spiritual needs.
The Billboard Project was in some ways that “outing” of who we are today. Those simple statements are part of the answer to the questions our young people are asking. So what I challenge you with for the month of July is to think about what a real American Judaism should look like. I want you to think about what the basic teachings of Judaism are that work for today. I also think that it would be delightful to find, in twenty five words or less, the religious messages you would want to pass on to our next generation. If you were Rabbi Hillel, asked to explain all of Judaism (your Judaism – not someone else’s) while standing on one foot, what would you answer? Even more importantly – what would you answer if you felt you wouldn’t be judged by your personal response? That’s where we have to go.
It’s frightening for some to take these kinds of leaps. There is great comfort in doing just what was done before. However, it is obvious that change is necessary for American Jews and we can welcome it or fight it. If we welcome it we have the opportunity to shape our children’s religious future and all of American Judaism. If we fight it, we will join the fearful who believe Judaism isn’t powerful enough to withstand change. In reality, Judaism has survived because it has the capacity to evolve and this democracy we live in will make it stronger if we pay attention to what really matters – the teachings that touch our hearts and minds.
Still dreaming of peace,
Barbara
© Barbara R. Carr
Early June 2007
Dear friends,
This is going to be a very personal letter because it is about some of the ways that at this particular moment I believe in the God idea and the faith that surrounds it. I have written it in this way in order for you to perhaps be challenged a bit about your own internal lives. Under no circumstances do I mean to say that what I believe, or how I believe, is the right or only way to be. For me, that changes on a fairly frequent basis. With that in mind, I wanted to speak in my “i” voice in order to emphasize that point. With that said… the real letter begins below):
I have found that being a person of faith is an awkward thing to be. In today’s world, believing strongly in the unimaginable requires a defense of something that has no intellectual scaffolding. There is no way to explain to the satisfaction of those who do not believe why one does. I live in a world where most of the people I encounter are well educated and fairly sophisticated. Many of these people belong to a synagogue or a church or a mosque but do so out of a sense that it’s the right thing to do – not because of a need to express their own faith in community. In fact, sad to say, many people struggle so much with the concept of faith that they consider it a childlike approach to religion – something one outgrows as academia and the world around them make concepts like a transcendent God incomprehensible.
In their defense, these same people are often searchers. They may like the idea of believing in something but feel most at ease defining “traditional” religion as only for people who need some kind of crutch to get through their days. Others look outside their own traditions for answers – whether it be on the more esoteric Eastern paths or in self-help gurus who appeal to the people who know they should nurture their inner life but don’t know how to do so. This doesn’t even take into account those who have come to believe that religion and politics have become so enmeshed that being a religious person means you are an anti-intellectual trying to force your beliefs on the entire population.
I think that part of the reason for this is that for many of us, our understanding of religion stopped in childhood. When we studied “comparative religion” in college (if we did) it was done without the reinforcement of religious celebration – and so religion became something outside ourselves – a sociological phenomenon rather than a path to inner understanding. If we returned to religious communities after the requisite period of rejection and denial that is part of being a twenty-something, we often felt insecure and uncertain about why we were there. If the religious community is a successful one by modern standards, i.e. self-supporting, it often spends more time on events and experiences then on asking its members to think about why they are there. Yet without understanding the why in addition to the what, we can often find the experiences and events inauthentic.
The people I am most comfortable with in conversations about religion are, not unsurprisingly, other people of faith. It doesn’t matter whether they are Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists or any of the other religions that exist today. People who can talk about God without apology – who understand God as having unlimited aspects – who can feel God within – and have lived their lives in pursuit of the holy however it is defined, are my kind of people. To feel that the only purpose we have in life is to do – to perform – to succeed – is for me a life that is unfulfilled. To live a life that aspires to be worthy of the label role model – to demonstrate the best of religious values – and to find joy in the glories of the world around us and within us – is for me a life fulfilled.
Now saying all of that is saying just what I believe – not what is true. Truth is not something I can lay claim to in this regard. That’s really what faith is about – believing through uncertainty. I can only do what works for me. Faith to me is a language as much as a path. Faith gives me context and support. Faith gives me my own individual version of certitude as well. People of faith, from whatever background, seem to me to be more peaceful and comfortable in their skins. Again, that is not absolute truth – just my perception.
So why am I sharing all this? It comes from frustration with those who find people who believe unconditionally irrational, and therefore write us off. Irrationality is not a bad thing. Great explorers, great scientists, great academics, great writers (well, you get my point) all have had moments of irrationality. Often those irrational moments led to great leaps for civilization. The key questions that begin with “what if?” are questions that open our world to possibilities.
Jews may be familiar with the Midrash (a story which further illuminates the stories in the Torah) about Nachshon ben Aminadav who fled Egypt with Moses. The tale is told that when the Israelites stood at the Sea of Reeds, caught between the water and the armies of the Pharaoh pursuing them, the sea did not automatically open. Nachshon, who stood at the water’s edge, began to walk into the water, knowing at his very core that the God, who had brought down the Pharaoh with wondrous acts, would not let the Israelites drown. As the water reached his nostrils the sea parted – not because Moses raised his staff but because Nachshon believed.
Now in today’s world, there aren’t many of us who have the faith of Nachshon. The story is, of course, completely apocryphal. However, it is still a fundamental story of faith. It is the moment of truth when everything is on the line and you do what you must. It illuminates for us what the bottom line has to be. It is a story that can help us understand the fundamental difference between what should be done and what must be done – and know that the distinction is a holy one.
Part of being a person of faith is being aware that there is a holy and God-like way to behave. When caught up in the mundane struggles of day-to-day life and falling far short of that godly behavior, I still know there is a better way to be. Faith allows me to believe in teshuvah, repentance and return, because it gives me a way to address my shortcomings. I can also look at the stars in the sky – feel the warmth of the sun – hear the laughter of children – and know that there is a reason we are here on this earth. We are a great experiment, as irrational as that may seem. There is much to be grateful for amidst the darkness we see in the world. What if everyone believed that? What if we made an effort to teach that? What if ?
Now, that’s faith…
Still dreaming of peace,
Barbara
© Barbara Carr - 2007
Dear friends,
As many of you know, I seek spiritual insights from a variety of sources… and am not inhibited by language that may skew towards the Christian or the Buddhist or the spiritual generalist perspective. I don’t ever want to lose the opportunity to grow my own spiritual life from the vast number of searchers in the world and to only use Jewish sources would be too limiting to my own adventure.
Over the years I’ve shared many favorites with you – and the wonderful writer, Anne Lamott, has been a major source of personal growth for me. This has been true despite the fact that her intense search for religious meaning has found its home in Christianity – but with a special spin that works for her. I like to think that we have a common approach. Her search truly began as an adult as did mine. Her relationship with organized religion was a struggle until she found a church that was welcoming to her slightly off center view of the world as was the case with me. She is in a state of constant becoming – and I hope that I am as well.
However, there’s no getting around the fact that she is truly a Christian and so her language often requires internal translation when I read her books. I know that her embrace of Jesus is a wall I can’t climb. Nevertheless, her struggles for solace and answers and paths to follow resonate with me deeply. Her doubts and fears are universal. Her joy in God’s grace (and our own) is a wonder to read about and fills me with joy as well.
I was reading her new book Grace (Eventually) Thoughts on Faith while we were having houseguests a couple of weeks ago. My cousin’s daughter (Jewish) and her friend (Christian) were visiting with us for a week or so and we were sitting on our patio having a discussion about whether or not you could read religious texts and have the same response to them despite being a Christian and a Jew. The talk was intense and fascinating. Here were two 20-year-old college students uncomfortably sitting on opposite sides of a critical issue. The discussion has stayed with me because I think it’s really important. Can a Jew and a Christian view the Sinai story in Torah and understand it in the same way? Can a Jew and a Christian read about the resurrection of Jesus and share a common reaction? Can westerners ever really understand Islam or Hinduism through their texts? I feel quite strongly that we can’t, although that makes me sad.
Let me give you an example. In Lamott’s book she says at one point: “…Easter means you can put the truth in a grave but you can’t keep it there.” Because I am married to a liberal Christian who has been a source of great religious growth for me, I am fairly conversant with the Christian Bible and many Christian theologians. When I read that phrase it just gave me goose bumps. I immediately shared it with my husband and we both took a moment to just love the use of language and meaning that she shared. To the literalist, it’s a physical image. Jesus was entombed and then rose from the dead. To Lamott, I believe, it is a far more profound image. In much the same way that we take our Jewish texts and give them contemporary meanings so she has taken the core Christian story and reframed it so that its meaning far exceeds the physical resurrection that the Easter story tells. The phrase is transcendent for me. I love it.
But then I was struck with the conversation on our patio. I had said quickly and with great intensity that I believed there were filters that we all have on our understanding of religion and the many stories that illuminate our faiths. I had been clear that I didn’t think I could understand non-Jewish texts in the same way I understood Jewish writings. I believe that the opposite is true as well. Non-Jews see the Jewish Bible in a way that Jews do not. This is because, I think, we are required to understand the subtext of religious writings in order to really be moved by them. Subtext requires a vast underpinning of awareness that comes from many sources. Subtext understanding comes from both academic and human encounters. Subtext is where religion really lives – it is the soul of our stories.
I don’t want to believe that I am cut off from really understanding Christianity, but I think it’s true to a certain extent. No matter how much I love Anne Lamott and how much she inspires me – the readers who will be most moved by her should be Christian seekers. Her language is the language of Christianity. That’s not to say she isn’t spiritually important to me – but I filter her message through my own lens. In the Easter quote I shared above I leapt immediately to the metaphor because the literal meaning has no resonance for me. I think a Christian might have lingered more on the transition from literal to metaphorical and might have had a more enlightened experience from the words she put on paper.
This new understanding that grew that evening on our patio has challenged me to be more aware of my Jewish lens. Lamott and my young relative have gifted me with this. I am now wondering if these lenses could ever be removed. I am wondering if these lenses could ever be shared. Will there ever be a time when we can viscerally understand each other despite our differences? Will there ever be a time when we can view holy people as universal and holy truth as belonging to us all? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the languages of faith would no longer sound like the Tower of Babel but would make a beautiful musical chord that could bring on the coming of the Messianic age? There is still much learning to be done.
Still dreaming of peace,
Barbara
© Barbara R. Carr
Early May 2007
Dear friends,
On the evening of May 22nd we will celebrate the pilgrimage festival of Shavuot, the moment that the Rabbis of the Talmud decided was the time of giving and accepting the Torah. This was perhaps the key moment in the development of Judaism as a religion – separating us forever from our tribal roots and declaring that a way of life that honored the One God, the Power that Makes for Salvation, was the path we were required to follow. Torah gave us the new rules we had to follow and the acts we had to perform. Over time, those rules and acts have been modified and adjusted to allow us to develop as a civilization/culture/people – but the tie to Torah has informed all those changes.
I’ve been reading a wonderful book of essays by Abraham Joshua Heschel called Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity edited by his daughter, Susannah Heschel. It is full of the heart and mind of this brilliant 20th century scholar, with topics ranging from prayer to the Viet Nam war. The essay that I want to write about is one called The Moment at Sinai and was published in the American Zionist magazine in 1953. It is the clearest message I’ve ever read on the importance of revelation to contemporary Judaism.
Heschel talks at length about the difference between events and process. Biblical revelation is an event – although it is also timeless. Process is what we do with the event. The Bible is written as history (although it is clearly not historically accurate). It is a steady unfolding of revelatory events that occur between God and human beings. Shavuot is celebrating an event that requires acceptance and acceptance is what makes the revelation eternal. God speaks to the prophets and when people hear the words they always have a choice. The event, the prophetic moment, stands or falls on whether we accept it. Heschel uses the image of a tiny cymbal in God’s hand that when struck, resonates throughout the world. We, at Sinai, felt the vibrations of God’s words to Moses, and we were forever changed. Prophetic moments, moments when the word of God is so clear that there is no possibility of denial, do not last. What we do with those moments is what makes us faithful people. We say yes or no. We do what is right or wrong. We can accept or reject. However, the event of revelation exists separate and apart from what we do with it.
Torah shows us these events and then challenges us to make them our own. We are a people defined by our prophets. We are challenged by revelation. We are engaged in a weekly reading of Torah so that again and again we confront these events and wonder at them. Heschel says quite clearly “Revelation lasts a moment, acceptance continues.” That is our challenge as modern Jews – accepting what was revealed. He goes on to say, “Revelation is not an act of interfering with the normal course of natural events but the act of instilling a new creative moment into the course of natural events.” What an exciting thing revelation becomes when viewed through that definition! How many moments of revelation then become obvious to us as we think about how we have evolved as a people. History rushes to the forefront of our minds as we think about this idea.
We can think of revelatory moments that have occurred in modern times and wonder at their power. Gandhi’s call to non-violence, which brought down the British Empire, is an obvious example of revelation and acceptance. Dr. Martin Luther King’s call for equality in America resonated for many as we watched the revelatory events of the Civil Rights movement. Heschel, too, wrote and preached prophetically about the war in Viet Nam, which forced us to look at what we were permitting to go on in our name.
Revelation is a big word – laden with mystical power – and it frightens some of us because it is so intense. However, if we look closely at history and how its events have created change in our hearts and our minds, the simplicity of the experience becomes obvious. Revelatory moments are nothing if they don’t impact the world in some positive way. Time is their test.
But Heschel warns us that we can’t idolize the revelatory moment or the event. It is what we do with that moment that is its “proof text” – the way we know that something that is holy and in keeping with the teachings of Torah has truly occurred.
Heschel closes his essay on the Sinai experience this way:
The moment at Sinai depends for its fulfillment upon this present moment, upon all moments. Had Israel been disloyal subsequent to Sinai, that great moment would have been deprived of all meaning. The tablets are broken whenever the Golden Calf is called into being. We believe that every hour is endowed with the power to lend meaning to or withhold meaning from all other hours. No moment is as a moment able to bestow ultimate meaning upon all other moments. No moment is the absolute center of history. Time is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose periphery is nowhere.
So on this Shavuot, let us think about this Sinai experience and what Torah has taught. We are given an instruction manual that has evolved over time but its core values are constant. We should remember the teachings of the great Rabbi Hillel, who when asked to explain all of Judaism while standing on one foot said simply – What is hateful to you, do not do unto others. For me, the first time I heard that wonderful teaching as a child, it all began to make sense. It was a revelation.
Creation, redemption and revelation – our three great themes that are echoed in every synagogue service – culminate at Sinai. And then, as the rest of our story unfolds, we see the profound truth of our acceptance or rejection of Torah – the failures and the successes – the paths taken and the paths ignored – and we also see in ourselves what these moments have made of us.
Still dreaming of peace,
Barbara
© Barbara R. Carr
Late April 2007
Dear friends,
The great Talmudic translator and interpreter, Adin Steinsaltz, once said, “the catechism of the Jewish people is the calendar”. Many Jews would be uncomfortable with that statement, questioning first whether or not we even have a catechism, and second, wondering what the calendar had to do with it. A catechism, for those of us who may find the definition just beyond our reach, is a doctrine of faith or beliefs. It’s most often used in a “high church” context and is usually a text laid out in a question and answer format. A catechism is not a negotiable document. Jews generally don’t use the word to describe any of our study or teachings, but I figure if Rabbi Steinsaltz said it, it has to be kosher.
So once I heard the phrase a number of years ago in a class I was taking, I decided to think about it. It hit me hard enough that I actually put it into the notes section of my palm pilot. Over the last few years I’ve pulled the phrase out and rattled it around – poking at it – struggling with it – and really wondering if I believed it. I certainly disagree with it in a traditionalist sense… but when I stretch things out a bit and look at contemporary writings on our frequent calendar events (beyond every Shabbat there are still a ton of dates you are really supposed to pay attention to and acknowledge), I find some real merit in the thought.
I’m thinking about this because we are in the middle of the counting of the Omer (just check out a Jewish calendar, and there it is… as I write this my calendar says Omer: 16 and tomorrow is interestingly enough Omer: 17). The counting of the Omer, which were measures usually of barley, occurs in the time between Passover, when we left our bondage in Egypt and Shavuot – a pilgrimage festival that has come to mark the moment/day when Moses and the Jewish people received and accepted Torah at Mount Sinai. Seven days of seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot – and each day is marked by a special prayer that tells us just how many days have elapsed and allows us to anticipate the great gift that lies at the end of the count.
Twice a year we have great chunks of time designated in our calendar to think about things ritually on a daily basis. Elul, the month before the High Holy Days, is the time to turn inward and think about the state of our souls. The Omer counting is more about the state of our spiritual/moral selves. The reason that this time is laden with spiritual content is because today’s practice of counting the Omer is based far more on the work of the Kabbalists who took the external message of the pilgrimage festival and turned it inward then the work of the priests who told us to haul our barley to the Temple after 50 days had passed from the first night of Pesach.
I often find it interesting that non-Reconstructionist Jews think that we radicals are the first to say that the times demand a change in style or intent of observance. Throughout Jewish history, things have been modified and adjusted to meet the needs of the time. For example, the Kaddish, one of our most famous prayers, is written in Aramaic, not Hebrew. Hebrew was the language of scholars and Aramaic was the lingua franca, the public language, of the time. We are told this was done so that everyone could understand this prayer since it was so important. Today, there are far fewer speakers of Aramaic then there are of Hebrew – so we haven’t kept to the intent of those who wanted this prayer understood. The ancients couldn’t imagine a time when there would be Jews all over the world, speaking different languages and having different observance requirements. If we were to keep to the original intent, the Kaddish should be said in English, Russian, Chinese and every other language spoken by Jews today in the marketplace and in their homes.
So we come back to the intent of the Omer counting. It’s a truly ancient concept yet we can look at intent – at timing – at how we have evolved our rituals and find its place in our lives. We began with sacrifices at random altars built by those inspired to do so, to the Temple in Jerusalem, then the rabbinic period, the mystics, the development of the synagogue, the Chasidim, the cultural Zionists and onward to this moment in time. We need to look back as well as forward and say, what is this Omer thing about and how can I embrace it in a meaningful way? If we wish to reject rote observance, we need to look at the why for ourselves.
For me, this is all about calendar. What am I heading towards? Why is this time so critical? What is this interval between these pilgrimage festivals supposed to tell me? I know it was once pagan – nature based – full of earth focused meaning. We followed the seasons and brought our sacrifices to the Temple in Jerusalem. During the rabbinic period the story was rewritten for us (those wild and crazy radicals felt empowered to do so…) in order to make Shavuot mark the time when we arrived at Sinai since it conveniently followed Passover and our redemption.
So the Omer period is our time of testing. It is our time to determine whether we are worthy or not of receiving the Torah. The Israelites that followed Moses don’t do too well in the text itself. The golden calf thing was really a problem for God. However, the rabbis have a series of great midrashim (stories to explain stories in the Torah) that do make us worthy.
The quest for us is to determine whether we feel within that we are ready for this great gift and great responsibility. The mystics have us explore different characteristics of ourselves as we anticipate the Sinai moment. I think we can use any method we wish if we can ask ourselves the hard questions:
- Am I ready to act in a way that is guided by the principles of Torah?
- Am I learned enough to know what those are?
- Am I willing to say yes, I will teach these lessons to those who come after me?
- Am I grateful enough that I have this opportunity?
- Can I stand and wait?
- Can I say yes, not maybe?
I think that this isn’t a process reserved only for Jews, although our calendar catechism makes it seem that way. I think all of us can use the counting of the Omer and the month of Elul to do self-examination and see what shape our spiritual selves are in.
In much the same way that the reason for saying Kaddish in Aramaic was a fine one although we seem to have lost touch with the intent of that choice – we need to make this counting time our own and understand its purpose. Spend a little bit of each day thinking about wandering in the desert both excited and afraid. Think about the redemption of spirit that freedom brings. Think about the gift of Sinai – the responsibility of accepting your place in the line of history – and you will reach Shavuot with a new appreciation of the holiday. I promise.
Still dreaming of peace – both at home and abroad,
Barbara
Early April 2007
Dear friends,
I wasn’t going to write about the Don Imus story because until he was fired, it felt like I would just be adding to the tabloid-type mess that was going on. However, I was drawn to the story for a multitude of reasons. First, the Athletic Director at Rutgers is an old friend… I worked with and for him when I lived in New Jersey and he was the state Deputy Commissioner of Human Services. He is one of the most ethical and competent men I know. Second, Rutgers used to be an all-male school with a sister school called Douglas. A number of my family members attended both schools and I identify with it strongly. Third, I found myself stunned, in a positive way, at the caliber of discussion that resulted from Imus’s egregious slurs in describing ten women he knew nothing about.
I went through the liberal internal debate about the First Amendment to the Constitution and my own membership in the ACLU and what that meant. I wondered both aloud and internally about where we draw lines in the sand. I reflected back on the steady diminishment of civility in public discourse. At the core, though, was the reality of the pain that this man had inflicted on a group of young women who did absolutely nothing to cause this uproar except live exemplary lives and take their basketball team to an unexpected championship game.
What is thrilling me about the debate is not that Imus was fired, but that the country is starting to say that we have gone too far in dehumanizing each other. Certainly, we need to protect free speech. Certainly we need to allow various opinions to be aired. Certainly, I will defend the Bill of Rights with all parts of my being – but in the same way that you are not permitted to yell fire in a crowded room if there is no fire – you should not be able to attack others with ugly and untrue slurs on the public airwaves. There are limits. If Don Imus wanted to question the quality of the play during the championship run – he had every right to do so. However, he stepped over the line – and the line for America may finally find itself held up for intense scrutiny.
I will admit that I’m part of the generation that started pushing that line back. I remember using swear words a lot when I was doing the anti-war, anti-poverty thing that filled my life in the late 60’s and 70’s. For many women that was a perverse way of equalizing ourselves on the political playing field. I also remember being less than polite when discussing the leadership of the United States – but they seemed like fair game when thousands of young men were being killed in a war in Viet Nam that had no discernible purpose. (Sound familiar?) I am still stunned, however, at how far the ugliness has grown.
Our political figures are considered fair game in the ugly talk arena. People have said horrendous things about candidates running for office and those who have been elected or appointed to various government positions. As each slur appeared our tolerance for ugliness grew. My real awareness began in 1972 when I worked for George McGovern and dirty tricks in campaigns became a skill set. Today, 35 years later, the caliber of ugliness has reached unbearable proportions when children can be called awful names and some think its o.k. in the name of free speech.
There have been apologies and there have been consequences. That is
a good thing. However, as these young women have said, the grace of the
moment has been ruined forever. They will always be the team that Imus
attacked. They will always be famous for the wrong reasons. This is a
personal tragedy for them and a communal tragedy for Rutgers. I ache
for them all and feel pride in them as well. They identified the problem
exactly and had the courage to speak out and say, “this is not
acceptable – we are better than this.” The country, and the
media, seems to have heard them. We are all asking ourselves, or should
be, how and why civility has broken down to this point. We are asking
ourselves, when is protected speech hate speech? We are asking, who decides?
We are wondering how far people can go to generate ratings and income – and
we have found, finally, a line we know has been crossed.
I would like to think that this goes far beyond racism. I would like to think
this goes far beyond sexism. I would like to think that this was a moment when
America held a mirror up to its ethics and said, “we’ve failed”.
Imus did not appear in a vacuum. He is/was incredibly popular. He is/was a
self-proclaimed shock jock that pushed buttons intentionally to generate ratings.
However, this moment may be the moment when we turn things around and say,
these are not American values. This is not about religion or party affiliation
or what part of the country we live in. This is about a shared dream of equality
and the pursuit of happiness that we are all entitled to have. These young
athletes pursued that happiness by reaching a pinnacle in sports and then had
that happiness destroyed in a brief instant by an idiotic comment from a very
powerful media figure.
That was ugly. That was mean-spirited. That was beyond acceptable.
I hope and pray that the tremendous support that has been directed towards the Rutgers’ women’s basketball team is helping these ten women, their coach, their athletic director and the students and alumni of this fine school. In Judaism we are currently in a time of preparation to receive the Torah. We are counting the Omer, a way to number our days of self-examination as we try to become worthy of the great revelation at Sinai. I would like to think that we could add reflections on our moral/civic responsibility to the world around us as we redefine what constitutes worthy public discourse.
Sometimes, we are gifted with moments that require that attention be paid. This is one of them.Still dreaming of peace,
Barbara
© Barbara R. Carr
Dear friends,
In keeping with my semi-Passover theme this month, I want to talk a little bit about passion. I know this may not be the first thing you think of when you think about the Passover holiday – but in my continuing effort to create contemporary approaches to ancient stories – passion is what I need to address.
For Christians, The Passion is a specific time in the life of Jesus leading up to his crucifixion. It is permanently entwined in Jewish time because it occurred during the Passover season and so we often find ourselves looking for connections. At this time of year we can see, in concrete terms, the roots of our schism. Although Christianity as a separate religion didn’t develop until a long time after the death of Jesus, its roots are embedded deeply in that long ago Passover season in Jerusalem. Our differences are in stark relief when we look at this time of year.
As many of you know, I live happily in an interfaith marriage. That means that this time of year is a complicated mix of “holy day” feelings. I’ve tried over the years to learn as much as I can about Christianity and I have enriched my own appreciation of Judaism in the process. That’s not to say that I don’t respect Christian teachings, just that my path is the one that has worked for me. However, I believe from the bottom of my heart that faith-full people transcend their differences when they come together in common cause – finding the good in the world and living lives that continually enrich that good.
Passover is a holiday that is about a people, not a person. In fact, when the original Passover celebrations were held, Moses was left out of the Haggadot (plural of Haggadah – the service book that tells the story) so that we would not focus on an individual and raise him up to mythic status. (The fact that Moses is for many a mythic figure was not an option to consider.) The emphasis of Passover was the redemption of a people with the help of God’s mighty power. Christianity, and Holy Week, is about the life and death of a great teacher who, from my perspective, was intentionally lifted up as a mythic figure when Christianity took shape. Jesus and Moses were both incredibly great teachers, according to their stories, but one religion minimized their greatest teacher as a force for redemption and the other called their greatest teacher the actual path to redemption.
So I wonder, what would have happened to the development of Judaism if we had changed our approach to Moses? What would have happened if the idea of a people hadn’t taken precedence over the amazing story of this one man? Was it timing? Did we need to emphasize peoplehood in order to create our identity and isolate ourselves from the pagans amongst whom we lived? What made Judaism move in one direction and Christianity, all those years later, move in another? Was Judaism and the idea of the all-powerful God sufficiently imbedded in the culture of the Middle East that the followers of Jesus saw weaknesses in it and changed their path? Were these early Christians, in reality, the first Reconstructionist Jews?
There are so many “what ifs” in the development of these two great western religions. There is bad and good in our continuing story. We can look at the continual marginalizing of Jews throughout history and the growth of Christianity as it became the dominant western religion and the western world’s first mighty political power and wonder about the road not taken. However, we can also look at the sustained faith of Jews throughout years of attempted conversion as well as extermination and be amazed as well.
We wonder at the passion of those small groups of Jews who continually fought back. We wonder at the passion of those small groups of Jews who continually studied and fulfilled their obligations to teach their children about their history and their people. We wonder at the passion of those small groups of Jews who hid their religion behind locked doors or walked a thousand miles to escape pogroms. We wonder, at this most celebrated time of year, at the passion of our ancestors who sustained Judaism for thousands of years despite continual efforts to remove our remnant from the earth.
So this year, may your Seder tables be filled with passion. Honor our ancestors who held our stories to heart so that we may share them today. Feel free to bring Moses to the table and wonder at his role in our lives. As your table fills, realize that the path to redemption really lies within – not without. In today’s world, what redeems us is not the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, but the clarity that comes with knowing that what we do and how we live is the holy path, the only way through the wilderness. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors and their passion runs through our veins if we only take the time to remember. That is what Passover can be about if you want it to be…
Chag Sameach (a joyous festival) to you all…
Still dreaming of peace,
Barbara
© Barbara R. Carr
Early March 2007
Dear friends,
I want to rev up for Pesach a little bit by talking about the three basic components of our liturgy and our faith… Those three concepts are creation, revelation and redemption. Every piece of our worship is connected somehow to those three ideas. They are fundamentally religious but also, in a strange way, historical. We need to suspend our intellectual baggage as we pursue this idea but please bear with me and you’ll understand what I mean.
We open our liturgical journey with celebrations in prayer and song of creation in all its wondrous parts. We give thanks for the earth and its “luminaries”. We express gratitude to God in concrete imagery. We celebrate our Creator, however we define that image. We sing songs and say prayers that honor the world that has been given to our care by our Partner. Some of these images are clearly pagan but others become more esoteric as we read more and more about the beginning, or as Julius Lester puts it so brilliantly, “when the beginning began…”
The second major component on our path is revelation. The big revelation, of course, is at Sinai. This is the setting for the giving and receiving of Torah – the five books we call simply “Teaching” – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The sages tell us that all we need to know is contained within these books. The literalists have one perspective on what that means and the rest of us find our truth in our own ways. However, even as a progressive, when I approach Torah study I am continually amazed at the modern spin that can be developed from simple commandments such as, you shall not put a stumbling block before the blind. Think about how many ways we do that (and shouldn’t) and realize its power. Taking the opportunity for education away from those who don’t know its value is one way to think about this idea. What someone doesn’t see or know, but is still an obstacle – is what we must be careful to avoid. Another easier concept is what is called in the Christian world, the Golden Rule; do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself. That requires no explanation.
But revelation has other meanings in Torah itself. The growth of revelation in its various key moments is fascinating. Different characters in our “history” have revelatory experiences that are always powerful and mark turning points for the people Israel. Abraham has a revelation in a conversation with God and gets up and takes everything he has with him and heads out of town. Isaac’s revelation occurs on the mountaintop when he sees with his own eyes the power of God as manifest in his father and the angel. Jacob has two revelatory experiences that are fairly close together. He has the dream of angels climbing the ladder to heaven and he has his wrestling match with the unknown figure who renames him Israel – the one who struggles with God. Moses has his burning bush to change him forever. Each of these stories illuminates the individual’s unique struggle to find meaning in something much bigger than the day-to-day cares of home and work. And each of us knows that if only we had that kind of experience, our doubts about faith and God would dissipate. Unfortunately, in today’s noisy world, that rarely happens. As our sages say, God is still talking to us but we’ve made the world too loud to hear the words.
When Moses comes down from Sinai with the Ten Statements (not commandments – the Hebrew is clear – these are simply statements of fact) the people Israel are first awed and afraid but then finally say yes to the revelation – as a people – not as individuals. The experience is totally different than the previous revelatory moments. The people say yes. We do the same when we chant the Shema. We make a statement that the revelation of God to us is a done deal. Over time our imagery of the God idea has changed dramatically – but the chanting of the Shema is a collective affirmation of the revealed. Pretty heavy stuff for us to swallow – but that’s how our story flows.
Finally, liturgically, we have redemption. We can’t have redemption without revelation because we don’t have a reason to seek it without an awareness of the state that we need to leave. In our story in Exodus, the Torah is revealed after the redemption from slavery but there have been revelations already and so the flow is not impaired. The transition from slave followers of Moses to a free and believing people is our real redemption, however. The liturgy uses the exodus from Egypt as our redemptive moment – and we were certainly physically redeemed at that time. However, as more and more archeological and historical studies seem to prove that the Exodus from Egypt couldn’t have happened the way Torah tells us it did, the Sinai story and the redemption of the spirit of the Israelites becomes more key to understanding what redemption really means.
Physical redemption is significant in ways we can barely understand if we have never been enslaved. However, as modern alternative liturgy points out, we are also enslaved in many other ways and freeing ourselves from that slavery is a life long task. We need to be freed from bad habits, shaky values and all the other obsessions of modern life. We need to be free from multi-tasking when we need to be in the moment. We need to be free to be who we are at our core and not what we feel we need to present to the world. Pesach is about freedom to believe and to live as we choose as long as we keep our teachings in our hearts. We must celebrate what we have learned about aspiring to holiness and live up to our responsibilities as God’s partners (and each others).
Redemption, revelation and creation are our touchstones and Pesach helps us to remember that.
Still dreaming of peace,
Barbara
© Barbara R. Carr
Dear friends,
This is going to be a slightly different letter… but since I completed my early February letter this theme has been running through my mind… I would try to write something else and I kept reverting to this. So for whatever reason, this is what I need to share with you.
I live with a chronic illness. It has truly changed everything about my life. I’m not really complaining about it… but I want to use it as an example of why joyfulness is so essential to living a whole life. When I turned 50 (9 years ago) everything about my life seemed blessed. I had a wonderful marriage, wonderful children, wonderful friends and a job I truly felt lucky to have. Nine years later I still have a wonderful marriage, wonderful children and wonderful friends. The job fell victim to my illness… but overall, life was and is still excellent.
A month before I turned 51 a series of physical events led to the discovery of a benign but inoperable brain tumor in a place no one was pleased with… a seizure disorder requiring brain-altering drugs… and a new path of doctors and medications and lifestyle adjustments for me to pursue. In the last eight years I have had to readjust my life (and the lives of those who love me) to absorb the changes that my body was forcing me to make. Those who cared about me watched me adjust… did their best to be there for me… and helped me when I could swallow my pride enough to ask for help. Together we managed spooky cutting edge radiation therapy that left me with a new hairstyle, a lot of hats, beautiful gifts of handmade canes and a tiredness that I can attempt to explain only with the image of your body turning into a puddle on the couch.
The way one can really deal with something like this – something that thankfully isn’t going to kill you but is going to change you forever – is to be willing to let go of who you once expected yourself to be. You have choices. You can be angry (that’s pretty useless – but everyone stops there for a while). You can feel self-pity (that’s even more useless than anger). You can fight it (helpful every once in a while). You can embrace it (and forever define yourself as sick). You can reject it (and your body pays the price). You can grow from it (ultimately the best choice – but it takes a while to get there).
For me, the pursuit of a calming spiritual path to help me through the weeks, months and now years of illness has been my growth path. I don’t always succeed. There are days when the aches and pains of my illness overwhelm me. There are days when I’m in the midst of a medication change and my whole body is rejecting the altered chemistry and nothing I do spiritually works. However, there are moments when I can transcend my body’s annoyances and my soul begins to sing and everything else fades away. Those are the moments that are so compelling that I feel gratitude for the illness that led me to them. I don’t think I would have been able to reach the heights without visiting the depths.
I don’t want to suggest that the only way to have profound spiritual moments is to become seriously ill. What I do want to suggest is that we are sometimes so caught up in the surface needs of our lives that we lose track of our deeper needs. I believe that’s part of what I was doing prior to my diagnosis. It took something that serious to wake me up to the things that are most important to me. We shouldn’t have to look over the edge at our own mortality to help ourselves find our spiritual identity. We should be able to clear away the surface of our lives to see the inner core. We don’t willingly do that, however, because it hurts. We don’t want to say the path we’re on isn’t enough. We don’t want to think that there’s more effort required. Once I was on my path, the idea that “the road not taken” might be the better road was unacceptable to me. Then I hit this detour.
I’ll never have the opportunity to shift gears voluntarily. Frankly, I don’t know if I would have known how important it was. I don’t know if I could have come to where I am now if I hadn’t gone through what I’ve gone through. I’d like to believe that with the proper inspiration – I could have. I’ll never know. Too many of us have transcendent experiences only after we’ve been forced to the brink – not by choice but by the fates that move us in mysterious ways.
Some of us who have had fate intervene talk about the gifts of trauma – the gifts of illness – the gifts of loss. It seems incongruous to those who haven’t walked the walk. It’s a real feeling though – and in that regard I am also blessed. When I start slipping – when I start getting caught up in the mundane – caring about new wrinkles in my face or clothes that don’t fit – I force myself to get to the basics. I force myself to remember the lessons I’ve learned. I pray for the memories of gratitude to fill my heart.
So, without knowing if it’s possible, I challenge you to look over the brink of your current lives and see what miraculous gifts you really have. Take an inventory of those gifts. See which gifts are essential to your souls and cherish them. Write some figurative or literal thank you notes.
Thanks be to God for my life-partner Michael, my sons Josh and Sam – my extended family – my friends – and my capacity to wake up each morning and count my blessings. They are as endless as the stars in the sky… and so are yours…
And it’s raining hard in San Diego…
Still dreaming of peace,
Barbara
© Barbara Carr
Early February 2007
Dear Friends,
I was sitting on my patio Sunday listening to the gentle rain hitting the roof and I was transported, almost as if I were in some other foreign natural space, not my own back yard. I wondered on that for a bit and I want to share what happened in my quiet musing.
First of all… I live in San Diego where we average about 10 inches of rain a year. For the people of upstate New York, choking under eleven plus feet of snow this week… I acknowledge I have a different perspective about precipitation. Anyway, this year, as we are in the midst of our “rainy season” we are woefully behind our annual rainfall average. Our rainfall count begins in July and we are at 2.2 inches total so far this year when we should be at 6.23. We take rain very seriously here – where we are versus our seasonal average is part of almost every forecast and is printed daily in the paper. So, the gentle rain, which barely registered on our annual total, still filled me with great pleasure.
As I sat looking out at our trees and plants literally changing color before my eyes as weeks of dust washed gently off, I felt an incredible connection to our ancestors who had the wisdom to acknowledge the importance of rain. In the Amidah, our central prayer, as the winter rainy season begins, the approach to the gift of water strangely changes. The acknowledgement of God’s power is realistic – in winter we acknowledge the Creator’s ability to bring wind and rain and in summer, we settle for gratitude for the dew. This ancient prayer literally changes with the seasons. San Diego shares a climate pattern with ancient Israel upon which this image is based. It rings true here as well. We avoid making unrealistic assumptions, even about God’s power. Why remind us in this daily prayer, that except for a few winter months when it does rain, God is not doing what we say can be done? Conversely, if we had a July rainstorm, we’d be wondering what happened to the dew… we had a beach trip planned. The acknowledgement of what is in reality a natural phenomenon put in place by who/what we call God or Mother Nature, makes the prayer valid in a way so many are not. The acknowledgement of the physical world around us is a shared celebration in all religions.
Making the leap from the acceptance of what Mother Nature is capable of doing versus thanking God for nature in all her wondrous parts is where many folks get stuck. I find that somewhat amusing (here’s what I was musing about!). Nature and God are in many ways the partners we claim to be with God. Nature and God are one, as well. Creation and the concept of caring for the earth inextricably bind the God concept with the Nature concept and they live separately in our minds only because one, nature, seems to be scientific and provable. God, as we well know, is without science. God just is.
But we can and do find pagan roots in our celebration of light and dark – the rainbow and the sunrise – the mountain’s majesty and the river’s wild fury. We are intellectually untroubled by that kind of awe and wonder as we wander about this earth. In California the earth moves and we are aware of the geology of fault lines and tectonic plates but I defy anyone who has experienced an earthquake to say they didn’t have an emotional reaction to the ground moving beneath our feet, out of our control, not knowing what will happen next. Feeling the power of nature transcends science.
So what is that about? Where do we find our transition from pagan power to God power? What is contemporary religion but a way of revisiting what touches us profoundly but cannot be defined? Any religious historian can tell us that all our roots go back to pagan rituals. The primal truth, I’m afraid, is that religion today is merely the acceptable version of dancing naked before the full moon. Nature inspires awe. We react in wonder, in fear and in celebration. We write prayers and petitions in an attempt to find our place to stand in the universe – which is exactly what the non-monotheists did as well. We just believe that this time we’ve got it right. However, what we’ve really got is what works for us.
You can find the strands that bind us to our pagan ancestors within our prayerbooks today. Every time we attempt to acknowledge God’s control over the physical world we are not far away from the ancients. Every time we celebrate the rising of the sun and the stars in the firmament we are connected not just to our patriarchs and matriarchs but also to the idol makers and the myth builders and unknown celebrants throughout time. I kind of like that…
So I sat on our patio and quietly mused at the innumerable people who in the name of religion reject all that went before. I mused on how much better off we would all be if we could laugh at our stumbling towards inner truth and acknowledge that in every generation throughout time, truth is a momentary thing. I wished we could just lighten up and celebrate the rain and the dew in its season as people have been doing since there was a way to say thanks. I’m grateful to the ancestors for holding on to the strands that bind us all together. I can envision them – strands of brilliant color weaving throughout human history – reminding us that we are just part of a transcendent tapestry of thanks.
Still dreaming of peace,
Barbara
© Barbara Carr
Dear Friends,
One of the issues that I think often isolates Jews from other people of faith is the fact that for many of us, faith can be the least of the package – whereas other religious communities focus on faith as the key to their religious path. Many Jews “have faith”. Many Jews pray regularly and with deep intention towards the Other – but in many Jewish hearts there is the secret awareness that this God thing gets in the way of their understanding of what being Jewish means.
I’ve written about this before but I think it’s not a one-time conversation. I think that we need to bring this out of the closet and talk about it. I don’t think it’s possible to recite the Shema, the basic credo of Judaism, and not think that one must try to believe in God. The Shema, translated into English, is a simple statement. It says, “Listen, Israel, Adonai (the unspoken name of God) is our God, Adonai is One” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). We are instructed to say this on awakening, on going to sleep at night and if we are able, as the last thing we say before we die. The Shema is in every service. It is the first Hebrew many of our children learn. It is the basic statement of monotheism. It is what set the Israelites apart from others thousands of years ago.
Now, as I see it… even though we are intellectually capable of denying this is a statement of faith… we are affirming the existence of God with the Shema. The hypocrisy of chanting these words and then saying we are not obligated to believe in God (or try to believe in God) bothers me a lot. I’ve discussed this with a number of rabbis over the years and I’ve yet to find a satisfactory response to my questions – which is “How can anyone not think there’s a requirement to be a monotheist – a believer in one God – when they say these words?”
I worry that we are dealing with an accommodation to the intellectual. I worry that we are so focused on retention of our Jewish numbers that we don’t raise this question more often. We say prayers that are addressed to an Other but we don’t really understand what that means. We don’t fulfill our name as the people Israel, the ones who struggle with God.
The following is a reading from a siddur (prayerbook) called Likrat Shabbat published by The Prayer Book Press and compiled and translated by Rabbi Sidney Greenberg. I think it sums up exactly what I’m trying to share with you.
If You Look at the Stars
Praise Me, says God, and I will know that you love Me.
Curse Me, says God, and I will know that you love Me.
Praise Me or curse Me,
And I will know that you love Me.Sing out My graces, says God.
Raise your fist against Me and revile, says God.
Sing out graces or revile,
Reviling is also a kind of praise, says God.But if you sit fenced off in your apathy, says God,
If you sit entrenched in, “I don’t give a hang,” says God,
If you look at the stars and yawn,
If you see suffering and don’t cry out,
If you don’t praise and you don’t revile,
Then I created you in vain, says God.-- Aaron Zeitlin
For many, the struggle to find the “addressee” for our prayers is frustrating and unfulfilling. I ache for those who cannot suspend their intellectual understanding of Judaism and dive in to the mysteries of the unknown. I also know that it can be a lifetime search with frequent false starts and wrong turns. Zeitlin’s poem/prayer is a reminder of the conflict. It isn’t easy to believe in something that offers so little concrete reward. It isn’t easy to allow the irrational to become part of who we are. However, I truly believe that when you achieve the ability to have the conversation, then being one of those who struggle with God is rewarding beyond measure.
I know I will hear from those of you who think “doing” is enough. I will hear from those of you who think “belonging” is enough. I remind you that these are active words… as is “believing.” Nothing about faith/religion is static. When it becomes static, it dies. However, I think it is too easy to rest on the doing and belonging. In this day and age when so many of us, Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists and all others, share core values, caring for those in need, behaving in an ethical way, supporting causes that make the world a better place, we need to ask ourselves what in our behavior is Jewish? What makes our actions and our Jewish identity set us apart on our path to listening intently to the teachings of Torah?
What sets us apart is the certainty of the Shema. It isn’t a question - it’s a statement. It doesn’t mean that it has to be swallowed whole. The reason its repeated so often, I believe, is that we are supposed to think about it anew, each time we hear it. What is the one-ness we declare? We make an affirmation – and then we are commanded to teach it. We make an affirmation – and then we revisit it again and again.
How we go about the struggle to believe in something so irrational but omnipresent is for each of us to determine. The struggle is the beauty of Judaism. The struggle is who we are and have been throughout time. It isn’t easy. There are huge periods of time when even the most believing among us will wonder about the certainty of belief. However, the wholeness that believing, belonging and doing bring to our souls, even if it only is apparent in a fleeting moment of joy, is worth the struggle.
Still dreaming of peace,
Barbara
Early January 2007
Dear friends,
While writing to my son about the embarrassing maternal cord that bound me
to him all the way over in Yokohama, I misspelled the word and wrote “chord”… and
I of course immediately decided it was a far better word to use then the leash-like
cord… and as I wrote on I realized that chord is exactly right… that
from the moment the umbilical cord is either literally or figuratively cut… from
the moment your child demonstrates the ability to breath air… to live
outside you… you are starting to create tunes that will evolve and grow
into a many-parted symphony of chords… and if your lucky, the chords
you make will be good ones, ones that echo harmoniously in the minds of all
who took part in making up that particular music.
Let me digress slightly. There is an incredible song by the Canadian poet, singer and songwriter, Leonard Cohen, called “Hallelujah” or as we might say in Hebrew “Hallelu – Yah” which means literally, “praise God”. It opens with the following lines:
“ Now I’ve heard there was a sacred chord that David played, and it pleased the Lord, but you don’t really care for music, do you? It goes like this the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift, the baffled king composing Hallelujah.” (From the album, Various Positions © Leonard Cohen 1984)
The song is one of Cohen’s best, in my humble opinion, although “Sisters of Mercy” and “Hey That’s No Way To Say Goodbye” are echoing in my head as I write these words… let me say then that for the moment, this is the song I most love by this voice, whether talking about the lyrics, the melody or the actual gravely bass that sings his words better than anyone. I have loved his work since I first heard him in the sixties. He has been God wrestling for a number of years but his chorus on this song has me raising a joyful noise (mostly in my car) and wondering how such a dark voice can bring God’s presence so powerfully into my soul with his refrain of repetitive Hallelujahs that has to be made up of sacred chords.
I think it must be the chord thing. I am an alto. That means often a warm deep voice that sounds really good singing folk music but is at its best in enriching a chord. All my life I have sung. Sometimes I sang in musicals, sometimes in coffee houses, always in choirs. I learned the gratification of creating music with an instrument that happened to be part of my physical being, rather than something I had to cart along externally. The hardest lesson, though, was to learn the beauty of being part of a chord and not a soloist.
Now for the non-musically inclined, a chord is a set of notes all played/sung at the same moment that hold together to make a richer and more interesting sound. You can have chords that sound totally and safely blended, as with a barbershop quartet, or you can dance on the edge of musical challenges and put together dissonance that forces the listener into a place of questioning norms (think John Cage, if you know his work). What is true is that chords don’t have to sound the same to be music to the listener. But you can’t have a chord without multiple notes happening at the same time.
All of this is to say that with the winter holidays mostly behind us, we’ve all just lived through the epic making/singing/hearing of old and new chords. We have the melodies of our family rhythms, where you know who sings lead but every once in a while a new soloist will appear or a favorite from your history will no longer be present to finish your symphony of 2006. We have melodies with our partners and our children. We have quick little chords we put together with acquaintances and longer musical lines with friends. If we’re lucky we have a number of chords we make with those closest to us. We have gentle sequences of chords that make us feel safe and then there is energetic chording with powerful beats that make us move together. We have fragments of songs that we’ve begun but are still being written.
I’ve often asked you to be still and listen to the silence. Today I’m asking you to think about your music. Think about the beat of your songs in different moments of your lives. What sounds evoke the best in you and even what evokes the worst? Think about your place in the various chords of your life… then think about the music you make everywhere… Does it blend? If not, is that still all right? Dissonance is often necessary. How many different pieces of music have you created? How many melody lines have been fulfilled by the addition of other notes/people/places?
And as I thought about the chords that bind us all to each other, I realized that there probably is “a secret chord that pleased the Lord” but it’s really just another one of those challenges that are there for us as we find our internal voices. Finding the chord is part of the journey… and the music we make as we try to find it is what teaches us. As we are blending people into our internal music it makes them part of our individual symphonies that will play in our minds, and the minds of those around us, for all time…
So when I think about the chords that tie me to my sons and my husband and others I love, I am flooded with memories of different notes that combine into a shared song that no matter where we are makes our lives richer for hearing them. Those are the kinds of ties that bind our souls not our bodies.
So start singing your melodies… hear the chords that each person brings into your life… tap your feet… clap your hands… and please the Lord…
Still dreaming of peace,
Barbara
© Barbara R. Carr
Dear Friends,
It’s December 23rd – the last “day” of Channukah. Last night we lit the full Channukiah (the special menorah, or candle holder, used for Channukah) and enjoyed its beautiful light – but I also felt as if I had received an interesting wake up call. I love our Channukiah – Michael made it for me years ago out of a beautiful piece of walnut – and it is shaped like curved fingers holding the light to the sky. However, the act of lighting the candles last night was not what I wanted it to be. It felt flat.
For years I’ve lobbied for a way to celebrate Channukah as adults – to find meaning and intent in the festival that transcends children playing dreydl (in Hebrew – sevivon) and opening presents. Last year the holiday was made real because our son Sam was still in town and he brought a Japanese friend who knew nothing about Judaism to our home to share in the holiday. This year, on the first night of Channukah, we had a dear friend and my brother-in-law over for latkes and candle lighting, but it wasn’t the same. The celebration of what is basically an historical/political event, no matter how we dress it up, is hard for adults to recreate without the westernized add-ons of silly songs (where oh where is the Jewish O Holy Night?) and lots of wrapping paper.
The problem, as I ponder it, is that the real content of Channukah, once you put aside the rabbinic invention of the miracle of the oil, is very secular. It’s something that the ACLU would lick its chops over. The holiday is absolutely about civil rights. This is a holiday to have conversations about and study… This is a holiday that certainly is about “dedication” – the meaning of the word Channukah – but the dedication has to do with a physical building. The festival, at its core, celebrates the recovery of the Temple by the Hasmoneans and the defeat of the Syrian-Greeks who had defiled it. We build it up with the story of Mattathias and his sons (especially Judah the Maccabee) and their personal integrity and strength. We build it up with the fictional story of the magical cruse of oil so God can enter the battle. We have the great quote “Not by might, not by power, but by my spirit alone” which instructs us to look beyond the facts of war to the power of belief in the One God. However, despite years of saying otherwise, I am starting to feel an emotional schism between our holidays that are historical and our holidays that I would define as religious.
I think both the genius and the burden of Judaism is the celebration of our peoplehood that teaches us who we are but not where our believing comes from… From our liturgy, which constantly uses “history” to tell us how we came to be and what our obligations are to the ancestors, then moving on to our calendar full of fasts commemorating historical events we know nothing about, we struggle to find answers to what we are supposed to believe. We have our core declaration of faith in monotheism – the Shema – but broken down, it contains no belief demand – just a statement of fact. Our prayers celebrate creation, redemption and revelation but there is often a disconnect between what we see on the page and what we want to feel. The prayers are outdated and saying “amen”, concurring with what was just said, often feels hypocritical.
This intellectualizing of Judaism is what some people really love about being Jewish. Many people are much more comfortable with the historical Judaism that says you don’t have to believe in God, you don’t have to practice rituals, you just have to be Jewish. This is the Judaism of bloodline. This is the Judaism that allows us to acknowledge our connections to each other and our history but it doesn’t necessarily give us spiritual growth or religious power. This is the real Judaism for many and it’s all they want. I’m not making too much of a value judgment here. I just know it isn’t enough for me. In fact, in some ways the peoplehood is almost an obstacle to my faith. I think, for American Jews, it is also becoming an enormous cause of schism between traditionalists and those who keep stretching the envelope.
I want to believe in something outside myself. I want to find my own path but within the huge tent of Judaism. I want to continue to find connections to the spiritual and I want to do it as a Jew. I want to be able to say that Judaism can find its theology in modern times. I want Jews to understand the great gift of believing that our ancestors felt. The irony is that each of the historical figures we study who define our understanding of what it means to be a Jew had spiritual lives that allowed them to do whatever it is we remember them for. These were people who believed in God. These were people who we are told had conversations with God. Abraham even walked with God, for goodness sake. Why do we admire them for their spiritual depth yet not try to emulate the models they set for us?
As I look forward to the New Year I also will continue to explore this topic. I think we need to ask questions constantly about our individual paths to God. I think, in this age of incredibly unethical behavior ranging from student cheating to civil rights violations of the most heinous kind, we need to find the path of mitzvot that was laid out for us. We must remember that once you believe in something wholeheartedly, behavior that reflects what you believe automatically follows.
We were taught that we were to be a light unto the nations. The lights of Channukah should be about that as much as it is an old Veteran’s Day for the Hasmonean soldiers. What does that charge mean? It doesn’t mean that the State of Israel needs to clean up its act (although that would be a good thing – but that’s a political discussion not a religious one). Being a light unto the nations, taken in the context of Biblical Judaism, means living a life that is responsible – that reflects that we were created in a godly image that we are charged to fulfill. Every holiday we celebrate needs to remind us of that responsibility. In many ways that remembering is a much more satisfying explanation of how to celebrate historical holidays today.
Who, in our long peoplehood, do you want to emulate? Who matches your image of your best self? Whose life can teach you how to live in the world? Whose prayers echo in your own soul?
The struggle to find a voice of our own – to sing unto the Lord a new song – is a great adventure. The best part of progressive Judaism is that it lets us try.
May the secular New Year ahead bring you health and contentment…
And I still am praying for peace…
Barbara
© Barbara R. Carr
Early December
Dear Friends,
Although this would normally be my time to do a seasonal letter, I’m going to pass this year. I started one and couldn’t get into it… maybe because I’ve always had to struggle to find common threads to the winter solstice celebrations every year and this year, the threads seem a little frayed. I don’t want to go there… so I won’t. (One of the wonderful things about being a grown up is the ability to say, “I don’t feel like it” without guilt – or sometimes without guilt.
So instead I want to write about something that came as a gift today. I was at the Wednesday morning minyan and we read a short commentary on holy beings written by the wonderful Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg. I’ve meditated on this reading before and today it just leapt out at me and clearly needed to be shared.
Here’s the reading as it’s found in Kol HaNeshamah Limot Hol: the Reconstructionist Daily Prayerbook:
Who are holy beings?
They are beloved, clear of mind and courageous.
Their will and God’s are one.
Raising their voices in constant gratitude they marvel at every detail of life,
Granting each other loving permission to be exactly who they are.
When we listen for their sweet voices, we can hear the echo within our own souls.
We all know of holy beings. We all are also, at one time or another, holy beings. The attributes that are defined above are all within our reach. For me, when I come closest to what I perceive of as holiness, it’s a visceral as well as spiritual feeling. I can never stay there, which is the normal human condition, but those moments of being there more than compensate for the feelings that are more mundane. When I say I feel it viscerally I really mean it. Colors are brighter. My focus is better. My words tumble out of my mouth in ways that often surprise me… because what I mean and what I say are in total synchronicity. I cherish those moments and try to recall them when I feel out of step with who I really want to be.
The people who sustain holiness are few and far between. These are folks such as Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Ba’al Shem Tov and Thomas Merton and Mother Theresa and Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. These are people we hold before us as leading lives of spiritual authenticity. It doesn’t matter what path they are following to that trueness – but they fulfill my definition of demonstrating God’s will in the world. These are people of peace. These are people who not only taught others but also taught themselves – going deeper and deeper into the place where what fed them was the rightness and righteousness of their life choices. There is nothing more awe inspiring then knowing that human beings can absolutely be better because we have role models that just said yes to life in its fullest.
So where’s our part in this? Rabbi Peltz Weinberg breaks down her holy characteristics in such manageable ways that perhaps we can try some of her ideas on for size. To be clear of mind and courageous is a powerful goal by itself. To be grateful to the wondrous details of life is a mantra I’ve been chanting for a long time… so can you. To give each other loving permission to be exactly who we are is a little tougher, especially for parents, but it could go on a list of resolutions. To understand God’s will and blend it to our own is a far bigger leap (of faith) but Torah reading with commentary (and some modern spiritual readings to give you language that works) would make for a great stretch for some of us.
All of this is to say that holiness is not reserved for the listed few. Holiness is not outside but within. Holiness doesn’t surround us in a halo of permanent light. It comes and goes. It fills us with moments of amazing transcendence and then disappears in a blink. Awareness of its existence is what lets it in. Feel it. Dance with it. Sing with it. Let others see it shining in you. It’s contagious!
Have a holy season.
Still dreaming of peace,
Barbara
© Barbara R. Carr
Dear friends,
I have a little book called Shmooze: A Guide to Thought Provoking Discussions on Essential Jewish Issues which was published in 2001 and compiled by Nechemia Coopersmith and published by Targum through Aish HaTorah – an Orthodox group with a fairly contemporary mindset. (All language is relative, remember…).
The book is a gem if you belong to or want to create a group willing to talk about faith issues and have some fun with them at the same time. Questions are posed and then there is a brief discussion and then a summary. At the end of each section there are appropriate quotes and citations… but the real issue has to do with the bridges the questions build. I love the idea of people once again really talking and listening to each other. As you may have guessed from the title, the questions have less to do with whether or not we believe in God speaking to Moses from the Burning Bush and more to do with how to keep putting one foot in front of the other in a thoughtful way, while smiling.The major topics range from love to free will to goodness. These seem like fairly heavy slogging… but here are some questions the book asks:
- Can you love obnoxious people?
- Would you be willing to murder one innocent person if it would guarantee a cure for cancer? And part b: What if that innocent person was ninety years old?
- Would you consider a seventeen year old in Germany in 1941 morally responsible for joining Hitler Youth?
- A fanatic and an idealist are both willing to give up their lives for a cause. What makes them different from each other?
As I read through the questions my mind leapt back through the fog of history to late nights in college and for a few years afterwards when questions like these were the energizing force of my newly liberated brain. These conversations may not have been on these same topics (although loving obnoxious people had to have been part of some of the conversations) but they have the same feel to them. What a treat it was then to push myself and see others reach for the outer edges of our conversational comfort zones. How exciting it is/was to talk about ideas, concepts, values, our inner and outer lives and their conflicts… all these things that define who we are.
Then I realized that it had been a long time since I had the feeling of a whole group treading down the risky path of thinking out loud, which is what the best of conversations entails. It’s been a long time since my daily values were shaken or I even examined them with any great seriousness. Why do we have these discussions at the time in our lives when we don’t have a clue about the ramifications of our actions? (I know, when better to stretch the envelope?) The bigger question is how can we ask these questions at only one stage of our lives? Shouldn’t this be part of an ongoing dialogue with our moral and intellectual selves? Even more important, once we escape from academia or late night bull sessions with friends, we are just beginning to give ourselves the tools to even wonder about these issues because life experience humbles our certainties and leaves us often adrift. I loved that time of striving for certainty and wonder now why it never occurs to us to push the envelope again.I wonder if our moral/ethical envelope that we once danced at the edges of – pushing and pulling and shocking and liberating – is too corrugated with age. I wonder if our thousands of “buts” that fill our discussions today have dried up the “why nots”? I wonder why shared ideas don’t still excite us – are our notebooks too full for another new section? Does just living our lives drain our imaginations? Are we too aware that imagination can be dangerous if not treated with care?
The taboo against talking about religion, politics or sex in public is because these are three of our most powerful certainties. We know where we stand and don’t want to move unless pushed. We don’t like being pushed. So if we don’t want to go there, we can still push our buttons with generic questions such as the following:
- Do you really think there is anything that can be done about poverty?
- Do you think that somewhere deep inside, everyone is a bigot… we just have different targets?
- How do you really feel about global warming and what are you doing about it, if you really care?
- How can you not be a vegetarian? (I write that as someone who was a vegetarian in my early 20’s and I used to dream about greasy cheeseburgers. I gave it up because I hated the dreams but I know I should be a vegetarian.)
Aren’t these the very kinds of conversations that used to stir the juices and get you thinking and questioning? And when you sometimes found yourself having to defend your position you learned more about what matters to you than you could imagine. Do your remember those kinds of brain stretches? I do… and I also remember that people can be hurtful in conversations like this as well… but perhaps that’s the advantage of a little ripening. It would be a delight to have the energy tempered by kindness. That’s a vision I’m going to hang on to and try to nourish.
All this to say, have a real conversation with friends some time. See what’s stirring in the emotional center. I’m blessed with a group of friends who are likely to have the nerve to try it if I have the nerve to bring it up. Risk taking to see what’s doing “inside” is something too many of us give up with the passing of time and I’m working on doing it a little more… Let me know if you try it too…
Still dreaming of peace,
Barbara
© Barbara R. Carr
Early November
Dear friends,
Michael and I have just returned from a wonder-full long weekend on the central coast of California. No matter how old I get, I find road trips to be the most rejuvenating and interesting kinds of vacations. We find strange and fascinating things to discuss and ponder. We drive through towns with populations of 500 (or in the case of Harmony, California - a population of 18) and we fantasize about life in that kind of environment.
We wonder about the strangest things: Why do water birds appear to flock together for no apparent reason (gulls and kites and pelicans, oh my!) and then split up again for no obvious cause? Has some mystical leader of all birds called a meeting? What is the agenda? Who says to the different flocks, it's time for us to get together? What a source of joy playing with those kinds of ideas gives!
Then as we hugged the coastline and headed into Big Sur, other questions arise. Who decided to put a road here where it is clearly impassable? Who decided where to put protective railings and where to let you see the rocks and ocean and feel the awe of unimpeded views? Who did the work? (Turns out prison inmates did the labor… and now you can wonder about how happy they were doing what appeared to be suicidal work and did they maybe leave us any surprises -nah).
Wonder is one of the greatest gifts humans possess. When we stop feeling it, we become rigid and bored. We lose the sense that around any corner, something new and challenging and thrilling may await us. For all of us, it is easy to forget wonder, to plod along without looking up or out or around. But we need to feed ourselves experientially. We have the capacity to lift ourselves out of the day to day by realizing that awareness brings a lightness to our step and enthusiasm for just being in the moment.
The starting point for this letter began when we were actually on our trip. I was wondering about the power I feel in certain places. There are moments when I actually will fling my arms wide and embrace the energy of a particular place and then my whole being will feel renewed. We joke about the energy vortices of Sedona, Arizona but something is profoundly different about that place for us. We've felt it in Canyon de Chelly and the eastern Sierra and at Ragged Point in Big Sur. What is it that we feel and embrace?
What it is, I now firmly believe, is that these places feed the “power vortex” that we carry within us. Not everyone's place is the same. In order to truly lift ourselves out of whatever rut we may be in, we need to acknowledge that not only must we feed our bodies, but we must also feed our souls. We know what food our souls need - each of us knows the feeling of being soulfully enriched. What makes us strong spiritually is finding our individual diets… not the diet that worked for a friend or a writer of trendy books or letters home.
For some of us it is an actual single place - a favorite memory place - a place where it all came together at one cosmic point in time and we will cherish the memory and wonder why it doesn't happen more often. For others it's a kind of place - gothic cathedrals - the rocky coast of northern California - feeling the spray of a waterfall, whether it is in Yosemite or Mission Trails Park. For still others it is hearing/singing a song, dancing a dance or praying a prayer… but we all know that the energy we have received is greater than just because of beauty or memory or natural phenomena. These aren't Kodak moments when you take a picture that looks like everyone else's picture. These are the moments when we are most at one with our godliness because the mundane has dropped away - and we are all feeling. Feeling feeds us in a way that tells us we matter. Feeling awed by feeling is as good as it gets.
So, as the
drizzly gray of a November day draws to a close, I'm seeing the pelicans
flying across the tops of the waves on Moonstone Beach even
though I'm actually home at my computer. I'm closing my eyes and hearing
the sounds of the gulls and the crash of the waves. I'm rolling along
in the car through Paso Robles and seeing landscapes outside my window
that can be no other place but San Luis Obispo County… the famous
acronym of SLO is a reminder that nothing is so important that you can't
slow down and look around.
So this is just a reminder as Thanksgiving approaches that we each need to
answer our own inner hungers by identifying what fills the hole within. We
all have it. No one is exempt from feeling the achy hunger that we know, at
our very core, is capable of being filled. We just need to fill it. We need
to reflect and experiment. We need to know that everyone is hungry but some
are just better at hiding it than others.
Feed your soul…
And dream with me of peace…
Barbara
© Barbara R. Carr
Dear Friends,
I’ve been busy sorting books. The domino effect of bringing home my office collection of books and needing a place for them has turned in to a wonderful (although time consuming) experience of visiting old friends. We have books everywhere in our house. There isn’t a room without a bookcase. We’ve finally come to the realization that some of our books have to go in order to make room for new friends. Each book I handle in this process has a story. The decision making about what we will never need again versus what we may someday want to revisit is exhausting as well as exhilarating. Books have so many different purposes. I’m going to ruminate on that today, as I believe I have in the past, but from a different slant.
When Michael and I moved to California and set up our first real home together we unpacked cartons and cartons of books. The books arrived before our furniture and so we were able to unpack them all in our living room and sort them together. We found, much to our amusement, that we had many of the same books and so some had to go. Those were the easy decisions – one of us had a hardbound copy or a book in better condition and so we could easily give away the “bad” one and keep the good. Where things got more difficult was when we realized that although there were well-deserved “keepers” we weren’t the ones who were going to keep them. We just didn’t have room. So we had poignant discussions that rang with the rational language we tried so carefully to use. Will we ever look at this book again? Is this a classic? Will someone want it someday? Does it have emotional value (i.e. I had a lot of books from my grandfather’s library – how much did that matter)?
There were also many books that captured the particular excitement of our coming of age time and so for us, were classics. These were the books that we cherished in a whole different way. There were books by Franz Fanon and Jonathan Kozol and Betty Friedan and Richard Wright. There was the sappy but powerful poetry of Richard Brautigan. There was Salinger and James Baldwin and Abbie Hoffman. There was Mao’s Little Red