Rachael’s Reflections

‘Pinky Swear’ Has Nothing On This 

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Hi everyone,

Hope you had a great week.  I had an interesting adventure this week that involved a trip to Ikea, a 4 year old girl and confronting my own integrity.  It happened within seconds of entering an Ikea store. Between you and me, it happens to me within seconds every time I go into an Ikea store…I get lost.  To be clear, I enjoy the bright colours and the way things are set up so that I can leave the outside world outside for the time I spend in Ikea.  The problem is that the time I spend in Ikea gets longer and longer because I’m trying to find my way through the labyrinth of aisles and displays.  I follow the arrows on the floor and try and see the number codes hanging from the ceiling all at the same time. It results in my eyes quickly moving from floor to ceiling and back and forth until I wonder if it got dark outside yet.

A few days ago I had to take a family member with me, a little 4 year old girl.  I picked her up from school and we merrily sang of our ‘girl adventure’ to the furniture store.  I had pretzels waiting in the car for a fun snack and we held hands as we skipped into Ikea (ok, we didn’t really skip but you get the picture).

This Ikea was the same as any Ikea I’ve ever gone into in my city.  The ground entryway immediately leads to a staircase to the floor where the furniture displays begin.  We walked up the stairs and I stopped to get my bearings. I’m not sure what my facial expression was or if my hand stiffened as I held hers but something prompted this little cherubic 4 year old to tug on my hand and say: ‘are we lost?’

I immediately lied and said, ‘of course not’.  That’s when I confronted my own integrity and realized she deserved the truth.  I looked at her and said, ‘I’m always lost’ followed by a realization that I needed to provide context and added ‘in this store’.  I told her I would watch the signs on the ceiling if she could keep us going in the direction of the arrows on the floor. Team work, I thought – maybe I should tell her ‘team work makes the dream work’, or maybe I should just zip it and focus on the signs above.  Everything was working beautifully until I heard those dreaded words from her, ‘I need to pee’. I felt the blood drain to my feet.

All of this happened yesterday and since then I’ve been thinking about my moments of honesty and judgment in securing a little 4 year old without lying to her.  Then I wondered about what circumstances might indeed prompt me to lie to anyone and then I thought about being a woman in Judaism today and that I could never be called as a witness in an Orthodox court because women cannot be witnesses.  I can never sign as a witness on a Ketubah, as my signature would invalidate the document if it were ever needed in an Orthodox court. ‘But’, I said in my heart, ‘I tell the truth in Ikea! Why can’t I be a witness?’ And then I thought of this week’s parshah: Chayei Sarah.

In the parshah, Abraham makes his servant, Eliezer, take an oath.  In order to take the oath, Abraham tells him to place his hand under his thigh.  The oath is administered in that position. I remember learning this portion as a little girl in school and wondering what on earth could be so important about grabbing the back of your thigh.  I thought it made you look ridiculous. How much more noble to ‘raise your right hand’ like they did on the Perry Mason shows. I had one of my first questions of Jewish difference at that moment: just because we’re Jews doesn’t mean we have to do EVERYTHING so differently!  It wasn’t until decades later that I realized ‘under the thigh’ is where the testicles are – a nuance completely lost in my little girl Jewish world.

Taking an oath in the ancient world meant that a man would hold his manhood and symbolically put it on the line if he should break the oath.  He is now risking everything to fulfill the vow and therefore I can believe he will move heaven and earth to get it done. He is believed because he placed his hand ‘under his thigh’.  It certainly beats the childhood oath of ‘cross my heart and hope to die’ – a phrase every parent is horrified by. (By the way, as a child in a Jewish school we were all making ‘x’ signs on our hearts, it’s actually supposed to be a Christian cross on the heart – boy did we get that one wrong).

So, if a man takes an oath by risking his external maleness, how could a woman do anything comparable?  How would you believe a woman taking an oath, in the ancient world, if she cannot put up collateral to hold her to her word the way a man can?  It is a biologically skewed system of exclusion. But it’s not saying a woman can’t be believed, it’s saying we don’t have a comparable mechanism to administer.  That should all have changed in the modern world.

Today, no one goes into a court of law and grabs their genitals.  I dare say they might be found in contempt of court if they tried.  Women in a secular court are administered an oath the same way a man is and are held to the same legal standards.  But the Jewish courts never equalized things when the rabbinic courts introduced oath taking in God’s name. Clearly, no one goes into a Jewish court with the biblical ‘under the thigh’ gesture, everyone invokes God’s name to tell the truth.  Lying under those circumstances is the definition of “taking God’s Name in vain’, a commandment equally binding on men and women.

It’s time for women’s equal oath taking status to move through the Jewish world.  If a woman can bear witness without restriction in Judaism, then she can hold leadership roles without restriction as well, and that, I believe, is the political issue at stake that impedes this.

And just before we conclude how wonderfully modern and egalitarian our western secular world is, let’s not forget that a witness in our courts is called to ‘testify’ as they give their ‘testimony’, words that root back to a man being believed in his words because of what he holds in his hands under his thigh.

See?  I told you trips to Ikea are never as simple as they seem.

I Don’t Think We Could Ever Solve This One – Parshat Vayera

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Hi everyone,

Hope you had a great week.  This week’s parshah is Vayerah and it’s filled with controversy and some of the most challenging concepts in Judaism.  It contains the narrative of the binding of Isaac, the test that shatters all relationships, and it contains the Sodom narrative.

I think Jews will struggle with the binding of Isaac narrative for all time.  How could God ask Abraham to kill his son? How could Abraham have been willing to do so?  In willing to do so, does Abraham pass or fail the test? A labyrinth of theological dilemmas with no way out.  But on the other end of it is an outcome we must all be grateful for: Jewish children will be saved forever from ending up on religious altars.  Abraham introduces the sacrificial substitute of a ram and never again could a Jewish child end up on the altar of its parents.

But it costs everything.  The Torah doesn’t hide that God and Abraham never speak again.  Abraham and Isaac also never speak again and Sarah dies as a result of that moment on the mountain.  In one midrash, Isaac speaks his last words to his father, Abraham, and asks that after all is done and he is burned to ashes, he wants Abraham to collect his ashes and place them in a jar in his parent’s bed so he can sleep next to them forever.  Abraham asks his son, ‘what makes you think I’ll live through this?’  

That says it all.

But as a result of that heartbreaking moment, all Jewish children are forever safe from the altars of their parents.

And the Sodom narrative is no less challenging.  The brutality of the populace of Sodom is juxtaposed with the hospitality of Abraham’s tent.  The same strangers (angels) who are treated so beautifully in Abraham’s household are mistreated so horribly in Sodom, in Lot’s household.  The fact that the men of Sodom demand Lot’s guests be brought out so they may sexually abuse them is horribly answered by Lot offering his virgin daughters to the rape mob.  Another father thinking to sacrifice his children.  

Most challenging of all is the fact that it is the Lot narrative that will eventually give us final redemption, a messiah.  After Sodom is destroyed, Lot’s daughters believe God destroyed the world again (this is only 10 generations after the Flood of Noah’s ark).  Just like in the Noah story, the daughters believe God only saved 1 family (them) and therefore it is up to them to save humanity. Except…the only male left alive, they believe, is Lot, their father.  Thinking they have no choice and that this must be what God wants, they plan to become pregnant by their father. With God on their side (or so they believe), they get Lot drunk, lay with him and both become pregnant. In today’s world, when someone gets someone else drunk, with the intention of taking advantage of them, it’s called rape.  The irony is not lost on us that they do to Lot what he had offered that the mob do to them.  

One of the daughters bears a son named Moab.  The Moabite people will come from that baby and the Moabites will eventually give us Ruth.  Ruth gives us David and eventually David will give us the messiah. It all starts in Sodom – the epitome of the worst of human brutalities.  The Sages ask how such potential redemption can result from such terrible action. The answer lies in the intention of these women. With erroneous information they still intended to save everyone they could. Redemption begins with intention.

In another midrash, that always impacted me, God is speaking with Abraham and telling him that while searching the world entire, God has finally found the seeds of redemption.  Abraham says ‘tell me’ and God replies ‘they lay buried in Sodom’- they are deep within the intention and action of 2 young women.

Years ago, I was driving with one of my sons north of the city.  He was about 7 or 8 years old and we were talking about God. He was asking me where God lives and I was explaining how God could live everywhere.  We broke it down to his world and were finally concluding that, yes, God also lived in pockets. Suddenly he pointed at something outside and said that God lives everywhere but he thinks God lives mostly there.  He was pointing at an abandoned, broken down, dirty school bus sitting in a derelict field. I was baffled and asked him why God lives mostly there and he said: ‘because I would never go there, it’s too scary’.

Parshat Vayerah is filled with those scary places and scary moments and then shows us that God lives there.  We feel trapped by those theologies and our minds reel, but in the end we emerge knowing that on the other side of Abraham’s nightmare lies the safety of all our children.  

The Torah shows us again ‘that which enslaves us, redeems us.’

Don’t Make Me Turn This Car Around

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Hi everyone,

Hope you had a great week.  This morning I woke up a little more stiff than usual.  There’s snow on the ground, I thought, there’s pressure in the air.  Maybe I slept in a strange position or maybe I twisted awkwardly yesterday…

…or maybe it’s the result of waking up a day older.  In the words of that famous rock and roll visionary legend: ‘what a drag it is getting old.’

Actually, I believe that age is a state of mind (as the cliche goes).  Though I’m the first to admit that I believe this because I often forget how old everyone in my family is, so as age affects my memory, I opt to believe it’s a state of mind – and round I go.  

The movement forward, the aging process, the journey of a life.

In this week’s parshah, Lech Lecha, we are introduced to a journey that will seed covenant and begin the Jewish people.  God approaches Abraham to accompany God toward…? He is told they are moving toward a place God will show him, in other words, an unknown destiny.  That means he doesn’t know where he’s going, so he won’t know when he gets there – a journey of life.

Not once does Abraham ask ‘are we there yet’, as none of us would ask that question of our life journey, though we always try and imagine the next stage.  I remember being a little girl and getting so excited as every birthday approached because I was getting closer to being a grown up. I remember thinking that when I become a grown up, everything will make sense.  Grown ups have it all figured out and never feel confused. I couldn’t wait to join that club. The journey of life is realizing I’m still waiting to find that club and ultimately understanding that this elusive club doesn’t exist.

Hundreds of years ago, a Protestant minister wrote about his belief that children blame themselves for everything that goes wrong because they understand that the world is run by adults.  Everything wrong in the world must be the result of demons (thinks the child) and if the adults are responsible, then the adults are demons and the world is run by the devil. But, if the child blames themselves for all the problems, then the world, which is run by adults (who are now angels) is a safe place.  Children must blame themselves and think they are the sinful ones or they will never believe the world could be a safe place.

But we know the child is wrong, the world is a confusing and often painful place and it has been impacted tremendously by terrible people.

So it seems that the words of Mick Jagger ring sadly relevant – what a drag indeed.

But then a curious and quirky moment of Torah catches my attention.  

Sarah and Abraham are about to enter Egypt and they are both in their 80s.  Abraham worries that Sarah will be taken into Pharaoh’s harem because of her beauty.  In fact, she is indeed taken into the harem because of her beauty. We all pause and wonder if 80 years old means something different in those days.  What is the average age of the women in this harem?

And then I remember the cover of a newsmagazine I saw years ago.  It was the face of a woman in her 80s, her face, etched with wrinkles, looked like a roadmap of her life.  The headline indicated she was an African woman and considered the most beautiful woman in the region. The article discussed how beauty was defined by life experience and not youth.  In a second I understood that anyone would be honoured and flattered to be chosen by this woman as a partner since she had so much experience she could quickly discern who was an exceptional partner.  Beauty is in the gathering of experiences – the more wrinkles the more beautiful.

Of course Sarah would now be in the harem.  Imagine what the challenges of an uncharted relationship with God would do to her countenance, to her eyes.

The Torah unapologetically shows us that getting older is getting more beautiful because wisdom is beauty.

And so we read of their journey with God, with each other and with the people around them.  As Jews we are taught that everything begins with Lech Lecha, God approaching Abraham to take a journey.  Interestingly, we disconnect this parshah from what happened immediately before it. Abraham did not begin a journey, it is his father, Terach, who began the journey.  His father took the whole family and left the Chaldeans and began a journey of discovery. Then, in the midst of the journey, Terach died and the family stagnated. They dwelled in the place of his death and did not move forward.  That’s when God approaches Abraham and tells him he must journey forward. It is both a statement pulling toward movement as much as a statement objecting to stagnation.

It’s a parallel concept to Shabbat.  We are equally commanded to be productive for 6 days as we are commanded to refrain on Shabbat.  The positive and the negative balancing each other.

So when I wake up stiff in the morning and the words from Mick Jagger enter my mind, I stretch and get the blood flowing.  I remind myself that I can hum the tune and smile at the words, but getting old only gives me more insight to the new travels I will begin.

Abraham and Sarah dislodge themselves, late in their lives, and begin their journey from where Terach left off.  Every Jewish person inherits their own version of the ‘lech lecha’ journey, but we do not set our feet on a newly created road made just for us.  If we glance backward we will see the road has been paved behind us. Abraham and Sarah continue the journey begun by Terach.  

God has told them they must never stagnate as we learn that the journey of a life takes longer than a lifetime.

I Can Sing A Rainbow

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Hi everyone,

Hope you had a great week.  This week’s parshah is Noah, the story we all learned as children about the Great Flood, the Ark and the animals who came in twosie-twosies.

The story lends itself to fantastic imagery and grandeur.  And while that may speak well to children and their developmental stages of understanding, it is the nuances of the narrative that amaze me.

But before we get there, I think we can all appreciate how animals have enriched our lives.  I grew up with a myriad of pets that included many dogs, 1 cat, endless birds and tanks of fish.  I rescued wounded birds from our porch and nursed them back to health in shoe boxes in my closet. My parents never knew.  A few times the birds disappeared from my closet and I spent days quietly searching the house for where they may have flown…(hi mom).

I had a Mynah bird I named Mozart because I was so excited to hear him sing.  Mynah birds imitate sounds and since we had 2 dogs at that time, Mozart learned to bark.  I learned never to underestimate the free will of animals.

And so, we arrive at Noah and the ark of animals.

We know he collected animals to save from the impending doomsday flood.  We know it rained for 40 days and 40 nights and we know Noah sent a dove out to check on things and the dove brought an olive branch back, to show the earth had dried.  Peace was in place between God and humanity so the olive branch has become synonymous with peace.

Ah, if it were only that simple.

The story of Noah and the ark is a birth story.  It is an ark surrounded by water that is carrying the seeds of life within it.  It will take 40 days and 40 is the number of weeks it takes for a human baby to gestate.  And while the image of birth is strong and beautiful, the destructive image of the battle with God is devastating.

The Torah says that God decided to destroy the world because the ways of flesh had corrupted its nature.  Many commentaries have been written to explain what that might mean. Murder, mayhem, immorality, the list becomes a litany of horrors.  But the plainest of meanings is that life had denied its nature, had become inauthentic.

In essence, it means I don’t know who I am or where is my natural place.  Worse, I choose to defy who I am or my natural place. It only gets worse when I add that I am the image of God.  Now it means I don’t know, nor do I care about who, or what, God is. That means I have ignored God or, in the worst of cases, I challenge God.  If I challenge God, I have thrown down the gauntlet and I have now declared God my enemy.

And so, God picks up a divine weapon and wages a war.

When all is said and done, God puts down the weapon and declares that after every rainfall we will see God’s bow in the sky.  The word used is ‘bow’, as in ‘bow and arrow’. The rain from above were the arrows which God had slung to the earth with a divine bow.  It becomes the word ‘rainbow’ because it appears after the rain, but the arch in the image is the image of a weapon, the image of a bow. God disarms and places the weapon forever hanging, forever inactive.  That is the beauty of it and that is why it should comfort us.

That is the grandeur.

And a beautiful subtle moment is when Noah sends out 2 birds to see if things are dry.  The first bird is a raven, it is male. The Torah says it won’t go far from the ark, it keeps circling and coming back.  The Sages say it is protecting its mate and will not leave her. So Noah sends out a dove, a female. She returns with a branch.  She lets Noah know that she has what she needs to build a nest. That is when he knows all is good.

The Torah says that animals go into the ark but families emerge.  The raven, who would not leave his mate and the dove who seeks to secure her babies.  The present and the future.

So let’s keep singing the Noah children’s song, ‘it rained and poured for forty daysie-daysies…’ but never allow that to keep us from enjoying the wonder that is above and living with us. 

Same Old, Same Old? Hardly!

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Hi everyone,

Hope you had a great week and a great end of Sukkot.

At this point in the Jewish calendar, we start reading the Torah from the beginning again.  The very first chapter of the very first book: Genesis. It is a milestone and we mark it by naming this Shabbat: Shabbat Bereishit.

We read the Torah over and over again, not because it’s ‘same old – same old’, but because we search for new perspectives on things we think we already know.  We are not seeking the information, so much as we are seeking the innovation.

And so…

I thought I might explore a few things we thought we knew and maybe a few new perspectives.

It seems pretty straightforward, in Genesis, that God created man and then took a rib out and created woman.  Understood that way, man is created in God’s image and woman is, quite literally, a side effect of the process.  At least, that’s what it says in the English.

In the Hebrew, the word we translate as ‘rib’ is not so straightforward.  There is a strong reading, in ancient Jewish texts, that translates the word as ‘side’.  Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai specifically describes the first human being as a two-sided, androgynous being – one side male and one side female.  According to him, they were joined back-to-back and could therefore never look at the same thing in the same way at the same time. If they communicated well with each other, they would create a totality of view, if not, they would argue about what each was seeing because, in fact, they were seeing different things.

According to this reading, God puts the human to sleep and removes one side (not one rib), thereby separating male and female so they can now face each other.  It creates a partnership between the genders and not a hierarchy.

Ah, the things we thought we knew.  No more movies named ‘Adam’s Rib’ (one of my favourites), no more references to ‘women are from Venus and men are from Mars’ (thank God no one came from Pluto – we know what happened to Pluto…). A new perspective on dialogues that are incomplete unless both voices are recognized and heard.

Yet, once the word translates into ‘rib’, Rabbi Shimon’s opinion retreats into the quiet background.

But Genesis does not only give us the beginnings of the world, it also gives us the beginnings of religious law.  The first ‘thou shalt’ (be fruitful and multiply) and the first ‘thou shalt not’ (don’t eat from the Tree of Knowledge), followed by the first ‘don’t blame me’ human response.

Which brings us to the question of Judaism and the commandments.

There are 613 commandments in Judaism, with the full recognition that no one can possibly keep all 613 of them.  Interesting, although we understand no one can keep them all, we still judge each other and label entire communities based on the commandments they keep.  Somehow we have concluded an ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ attitude toward the mitzvot, and we can’t agree on what constitutes a penny or a pound.

We expect that if a woman observes Shabbat, she shouldn’t be wearing pants.  If a man puts tefillin on in the morning, he should be wearing a kippah all day.  The list goes on and on (remember, 613 of these things). One of the judgmental statements I’ve heard people say about someone is that they pick and choose which commandments to keep.  It is never said in a positive way.

Yet, Judaism expects us to pick and choose.  Once we say we can’t do all of them, it now necessitates that we pick and choose.  The ‘Code of Jewish Law’, the book that lists all the mitzvot, is a mistranslation of the book’s actual name: Shulkhan Arukh’ – the Set Table.  A ‘code’ means you must adhere to everything, whereas a set table invites you to take a seat and fill your plate. Only you know what to put on your plate.  If you put too much, you will overeat and make yourself sick; if you put too little, you will walk away hungry. Every now and then you will be curious to taste something new and see how it feels.  Some people like to sit at the table and watch others enjoy, though they themselves choose not to eat. Judaism invites you to the table, assures you there is a seat ready for you with a set table of soulful delicacies – who could resist?

And so, we learn to pick and choose, we learn to grow and try more, or to leave something for now, knowing it is still there for later.  The difference is, we should pick and choose with pride!

Judaism never describes a hypocrite as someone who keeps one commandment but not another.  On the contrary, the Talmud repeatedly describes a hypocrite as someone who keeps many commandments with a false nature, or worse, for the purpose of misleading others.

According to Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak, Heaven will judge those who wrap themselves entirely in their tallit.  The ones who use mitzvot to isolate themselves from the suffering of others, from the world around them. That is a Jewish hypocrite. 

Things we thought we knew…new perspectives on old information.  Can’t wait to start reading Genesis again!

How To Hora Till Tomorrow

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Hi everyone,

Hope you’re having a wonderful Sukkot.

Last blog I wrote about the lulav & etrog, and the sukkah itself.  I didn’t get a chance to write about the water – an essential part of Sukkot.

Sukkot is the time that God judges the world for rain.  Of course, the measure of rain in the world is key to…everything.

So, in ancient times, when the Temple still stood, there was a ceremony called ‘Simchat Beit haShoeivah’, the joy of the water drawing libations.  Water was drawn from a particular place in Jerusalem and brought to the Temple for a ritual of water libations. The descriptions of this celebration are astounding.  There was ongoing music, dancing, singing and the Sages juggled burning torches! The Talmud specifically mentions Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, who juggled 8 burning torches at once and never let them touch each other – I’d want to stand near him.

If the rabbi of my shul juggled burning torches… it would be standing room only!

In fact, the Talmud states that if someone has not seen the celebrations of these water libations, they have not experienced joy (in other words, we don’t know from parties).  It is the holiday when we are told that the men and women were separated in the Temple. It is these texts of separating men and women that will eventually lead to the traditional separation of men and women in prayer at all times.  But that’s not what is being described here. Here, special mention is made that during this celebration, in particular, men and women were separated, with celebrations and jubilation occurring on both sides. The Levites would stand between the places of the men and women and play their instruments and sing, so both sides could enjoy the moment equally.

Actually, as a woman, I can well understand and appreciate that if everyone is celebrating with great abandon, and if water is freely flowing, pouring and splashing…I might not want to be standing in public with my clothes soaking wet, outlining every inch of me.  It’s meant to be a religious ritual, not a wet t-shirt contest (sorry for that image but we all know how a party can go so wrong).

In fact, as Sukkot comes to an end, the seventh day is called Hoshannah Rabbah – the Grand Hosannas.  In a tradition that dates back to Temple days, we take our lulav and etrog and walk around the sanctuary in circuits as we recite the Hoshannot.  The day marks the end of the High Holidays, as the decisions of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are made, sealed and now delivered. It is a ceremony filled with Jewish mysticism and a step back into our ancient past.  I love watching the hakafot, the circuits around the sanctuary, from a balcony view. Everyone below looks like a water current flowing round and round. The medium becomes the message and the power of the High Holidays infuses the participants and then slowly ebbs away.

And for all of us who have ever danced a hora at a simcha (the circle dance, also called the Mayim dance), we have emulated the water libation dancing.  The words to the hora begin: ‘ushoftem mayim bisasson, mimainei hayishua’, ‘and you will draw water in joy from the waters of salvation’ – a quote referring back to Simchat Beit HaShoievah – the joy of the water drawing libations.

Soon we will transition out of our holiest time of the year, as we should.  We need to go back to the mundane, but if we’re lucky we can carry some of these moments with us in the coming year.  

May we all enter a year of peace, abundance and health.  May we dance a hora or two with the images of rabbis juggling burning torches and may we learn to experience joy that has no limit.

The Lemon, The Bush, The Hut…and The Neighbours

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Hi everyone,

Another Yom Kippur has come and gone and now we have barely 2 minutes to catch our breath before Sukkot is here.

Someone asked me once why Jews walk around with a lemon and a bush for a week in the Fall.  Here are the possible answers:

  • Because the Torah told us to
  • Most of us aren’t really sure
  • We do?
  • Wait until I tell you about the huts we build

And then the answers would also include:

  • it’s not a lemon, it’s a citron, the source of citrus fruits
  • It’s not a bush, it’s the branches of different trees bound together
  • We hold them together to symbolize all Jews
  • We hold them together to symbolize male and female
  • It is a celebration of unity and inclusion
  • We expand our dialogue with God by including the wondrous objects in creation

But building the Sukkah, that’s a whole other symbol.

I remember as a little girl, I would lie in my bed late at night and listen to our neighbour hammering in his yard long after dark.  He worked during the day, so he could only build his sukkah at night. I thought it was strange and a bit scary. Now, I think it’s one of the most beautiful expressions of meaningful choices.

The Torah tells us that we followed God in the wilderness, living in temporary dwellings, expressing ultimate trust.  The prophets refer to it as if we were newlyweds finding our foundation. God refers to it as a sweet and cherished Divine memory.  And so we build our huts, our Sukkot, year after year. It is a place that reminds us of a time when God and Israel struggled to learn of each other, but loved each other with the freshness of new love.

It’s such a beautiful concept…if you live in Israel where it’s warm.  Here, in Canada, Sukkot has always felt cold, wet and uncomfortable. It’s how I imagine it must have felt in the shtetls of Eastern Europe for centuries.  In the Torah it was an expression of our security with God in the wilderness, but in the shtetl it made Jews vulnerable to the elements and to hostile neighbours – and yet we continued to build our Sukkot.

The beauty of Judaism is that meaning not only renews, it layers.  I can listen to someone building a Sukkah and think of ancient Israel and God forging a relationship that will change everything forever.  I can also look at the Sukkah and realize how flimsy a shelter it provides. And in today’s world, I sit in a Sukkah and have a fleeting glimpse of what a homeless person in Canada must endure night after night.

All these meanings speak at once, they are all relevant.  And, of course, Sukkot is a harvest festival which coincides with Thanksgiving in Canada this year.

My brother and his family once lived on a street with mostly observant Jews.  It was a lovely cul de sac with a sense of community on the street. One year, an older Asian couple, recent immigrants, moved onto the street around Rosh Hashanah.  By Sukkot, every neighbour was inviting the new couple to be guests in their Sukkah and so this elder Asian couple spent 8 days eating in a Sukkah at every meal. The following year, the Asian couple built their own Sukkah.  It appears they thought it was a Canadian tradition to mark Thanksgiving. Someone explained to them that it was a Jewish ritual. They decided that the expression of community and caring for the stranger was so strong, that year after year they have built their own Sukkah and invite guests to meals for 8 days.

Sometimes these things work out so right.

Chag same’ach, have a wonderful Sukkot!

To Yom Kippur…and Back

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Hi everyone,

Hope you had a wonderful Rosh Hashanah.  With that said, the High Holidays have begun and we are approaching Yom Kippur.

A non-Jewish friend of mine asked me recently why these holidays are called ‘High’.  I immediately flashed to the Hebrew name for these holidays: ‘Yamim Hanoraim’, the Terrible Days of Dread…I decided I couldn’t tell him that…

But it definitely got me thinking about how difficult it can be to actually celebrate these holidays, when they’re filled with prayers that include: ‘who by fire’ – followed by a long list of horrible fates.  Yom Kippur is a day of fasting and deprivation of the body, something Judaism tells us not to do too often. In fact, many people won’t wear leather because it’s so soft and comfortable and we want to deprive ourselves (more on that later, it’s actually not that simple).

So, I’ve decided that we need to recapture the celebration of these holidays, and maybe one of the best ways is to visit some of the lesser known stories of great Rabbis and Sages who struggled with some of these same questions.

One of my favourite stories is of the Chassidic Rebbes who spent so much time preparing for these holidays, that they isolated themselves from their students.  Of course, this would only make their students more curious about what they were doing and a few crafty ones would follow their Rebbes to see what they were doing.

In one story, the student discovers that the Rebbe is not teaching his students because he is dressing as a peasant and going to the cottage of a single old woman in the forest.  The Rebbe would speak to this non-Jewish woman in her native tongue (meaning not Yiddish) and would do chores around her cottage. The work included chopping wood and preparing meals as well as serving her the food.  She had no idea who he was and he never accepted payment. The student hid in the woods and saw his Rebbe do this day after day. After a week or so, the other students asked if anyone knew where the Rebbe was and what he was doing to prepare for the High Holidays.  One student said that the Rebbe is so holy, he must be going to heaven and back. The student who knew the truth of where the Rebbe was going finally broke his silence and spoke. He said that he has followed the Rebbe and he can confirm that the Rebbe is not going to heaven – he is ascending even higher.

In another story, a great Rabbi would shut himself away from his students for weeks before the High Holidays and study, frantically writing for days and days.  He’d stop in order to pray on Rosh Hashanah and then begin the same routine again until Yom Kippur. Every year the same thing happened. Finally, one trusted student asked him to please explain what was going on.  The Rabbi said that up to Rosh Hashanah, he is studying Torah and writing down the promises and agreements God has made with humanity and with particular people. On Rosh Hashanah, he would include his list in his prayers and read it over and over again to God.  After Rosh Hashanah he did the same thing, reflecting on his own personal promises and agreements from the last year and he would write them down. On Yom Kippur, he would read his list in his prayers over and over again to God. Toward the end of Yom Kippur, the Rabbi would hold both lists close to his heart and say: ‘this year we have both left things unfulfilled with much work to do.  I ask You for Your forgiveness and I give you mine.’

A few years ago, I came across the writings of a Rabbi in a displaced persons camp in Europe right after the Shoah.  It was Erev Yom Kippur and the Rabbi later writes that he looked at the crowd of people assembled to hear Kol Nidre. He writes of his moment of disbelief that so many Jews gathered for Yom Kippur, having just survived the horrors of the Nazi regime.  He looked at the crowd, and through tears, he pronounced they have nothing to beg forgiveness for, they are not to fast on this Yom Kippur, they have atoned enough.

And as we prepare ourselves to go to shul for the holiday, I’d like to share the thoughts of a Sage recorded in the Talmud.  In discussing their personal prayers, one Sage shared that he considers his clothing to be part of his personal prayer. Deciding what to wear to prayer, according to him, is a decision of self-expression, as are the words of his prayer and therefore it must be a deliberate choice of clothing.

Often times we angst over what to wear to shul based on very mundane and superficial reasons.  If I wore that dress last year, can I wear it again this year? (Interesting how we think people care or would even remember what we wore last year…isn’t ego a funny thing?)

And while we’re talking about what to wear, I’d like to revisit the prohibition on leather that many people observe.  One of the ideas about prayer that we learn, is that it is not appropriate to pray for things we ourselves are not willing to give.  In other words, praying to God for compassion would be ironic, if we ourselves do not act compassionately toward others. By extension, if on Yom Kippur we are praying to God for life, remembering that our clothing is part of our prayer, how ironic if we are clothed in the skin of an animal whose life we took only so we could be more comfortable.

While Yom Kippur can certainly be looked at as the Day of Dread, the decisions of fate and destiny that scare us, there is the other side to the holiday.  The stories of spirituality and compassion that connect one person to another; the nuances of accountability that connect us to God; the moment we elevate our wardrobe to an expression of the holy.

I love exploring all of that to the heights these concepts open.  I also think I need to prepare my husband for the hours to come, standing in front of my closet, while I ask over and over: “what to wear, what to wear?”

Standing Together

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Hi everyone

Hope the week was good.  My thoughts this week moved between the Torah portion and the upcoming High Holidays.  Then, I realized how much they speak to each other. This week’s parshah is Nitzavim and it starts with Moses as he declares to Israel: ‘Here you all stand’ – all of Israel standing before God, and I can’t help but think of the High Holidays.

Nitzavim – here we all stand.  We bring with us the truth of who we are, in all our strengths and our weaknesses.

Moses stands facing his imminent death and Israel stands looking at an unknown future – here we all stand.

Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of our Jewish new year, is not always remembered as our Day of Judgment.  However, another name for the holiday is: Yom Hadin, the Day of Judgment. God makes decisions about humanity that will then be sealed on Yom Kippur.  I find myself caught between the daunting aspects of the holiday and the celebration of sitting with my family.  

We stand together under the umbrella of Rosh Hashanah, with its major Divine decisions that sit above us, while we celebrate with each other down below.  I cannot tell you the number of times I have dipped a piece of apple in honey, only to have the apple slip from my fingers into the honey bowl. It’s not like I could ignore that I just dropped my apple into the communal honey, but digging my fingers into the honey to retrieve my apple will only make it worse. The truth is, I actually don’t like honey.  I love the concept of honey, the sweetness that comes as a result of the collective hive; the purity of it, the solid/liquid hybrid of it; the fact that it will inevitably end up in some little person’s hair… I love it all.  The only thing I don’t like is the taste.

So I celebrate that the holiday revolves around honey, because for me it represents the wonderful, funny, and symbolic things that are less than perfect.

I remember, as a little girl, anticipating hearing the shofar.  My teachers emphasized how important it is and my parents always made sure I came into the sanctuary especially to hear it.  I also remember hearing it and thinking a cow was baying at the moon. I didn’t find it a strange sound, strange would be an understatement.  I found it weird and jarring. The sound of a shofar is an acquired taste. But the more I acquire it, the more I love it.

The midrash tells us that the sound of the shofar is the matriarch, Sarah, crying and sobbing before God.  She believes her son has been killed and so she cries, and then she sobs and then she hyperventilates and then she screams the most gut wrenching and soul wringing scream imaginable and those are the sounds of the shofar.  They are strange, they are soulful and jarring and I love them.

The Rabbis also tell us that the physical sight of the shofar is our remembrance of the patriarch, Abraham.  He brought the vision of a partnership between God and humanity to the world. He contracted his relationship with God to create an eternal inheritance for the Jewish people – and it cost him everything.  He lost his wife, Sarah, and the relationship with his son, Isaac. His communication with God, toward the end of his life, is all but non-existent. What he gave the world is priceless, while the price he paid is unimaginable.  The bent and curved appearance of the shofar is the bent and curved back of Abraham as he bears the price he paid.

I celebrate that the shofar brings me to my ancestors, Abraham and Sarah, in their glory and their humanity.  I celebrate that they continue to lead us, through the shofar. It is magnificently strange and its sound is beautifully imperfect, as are we all.

Whether it is spelunking for my apple in the caverns of the honey bowl, or surrounding myself with everyone who makes the decision to go to shul, Rosh Hashanah will bring me to a moment of celebration.  Yet, with all that, the most powerful spiritual moment will lead me back to this week’s parshah, as I remember Moses’ declaration:

Here we stand.

May we all be inscribed for a year of life, health, peace and sweetness.

To Dream My Impossible Dream

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Hi everyone,

Hope everyone had a good week.

I had a week reflecting on fantasies and fairy tales.  I started watching a series about fantasy creatures and the dystopian world they are fighting to survive in.  I believe in fantasies and fairy tales.

To be clear, I don’t believe they’re real, I believe in them.  I believe we create them and then treat them as reality. That makes them very powerful.  I remember the perfect birthday present I ever received as a little girl was a toy spinning wheel.  It had red legs and a brown wheel. I got it as a present at my birthday party where I wore a beautiful dress with a crinoline underneath.  My party shoes were black and shiny with a bow and the dress had white beads on it. And though it is one of my best and favourite memories, I’m not sure if any of it is actually real (though my mother confirmed I once got a spinning wheel and seemed to love it – I think she said I slept with it). 

I love my fantasy moments because they are created by me, shaped by me and I can revisit them at will.  I revisit the first moments I met my newborn children. They were handed to me and birds were singing, the rainbow ended right above us and they smelled so beautifully like my husband and me.  Nothing else about the reality of the moment: the medical stuff, the staff rushing around, the lights, the beeping sounds, nothing about all of that enters my blissful fantasy moment.  

And, unfortunately, I can easily create my worst nightmare.  It will have no limits to the pain, the threat, the unending fear that only I would know how to create for myself, because only I know what will hurt me the most.  No theoretical hell to come could surpass what I could put myself through if I built my own personal one and no heaven afterlife could give me the joy of my fantasy moments.

I believe in fairy tales because I know we make them real.

But, they are the definitions of our personal extremes and deep down we know that both of these extremes could never happen.  We live our lives between our utopia and our dystopia. Jewishly, we know our minds can take us to our extremes and so the Torah and all of our texts always tell us: ‘choose joy’.  

This week’s parshah, Ki Tavo, paints a utopian image of the world if we follow covenant and build the society of values that Judaism outlines.  It is pure bliss, health, prosperity and affluence – we will want for nothing. Conversely, if we stray from covenant and betray the core of who we are, the picture of a cursed world that the parshah describes is bone-chilling.  Moses splits the people in two and while one half describes the horrific curses, the other half must answer ‘amen’ in agreement. Then we do it again with the blessings.  

Yet, the most surprising part of all of this is that both the rewards and punishments are described as implementing in this world.  In other words, if we do good, we are not rewarded with a blessed world to come, a wonderful afterlife. On the contrary, we are blessed with a world here that we would want to live in.  If we destroy everything we stand for, we are not punished with the eternal fires of hell – we are punished by having to live in the hell we created.  

The parshah outlines both a utopia and dystopia and neither one is real.  They are the extremes we have the power to create in our lives with the choices we make.

I used to be afraid of the pictures painted in this week’s parshah.  Would God really deliver the hell that is described? But then I realized we don’t need God to do it, we’ve done pretty good all by ourselves throughout history.  But equally powerful is the reality of the blessings we can create and the world it would bring.

God created the world we live in but we work with God to continue as partners.  We are instrumental in renewing creation every day that we live. We learned that in this week’s parshah, we heard it, we understand it and we answered amen.