Month: September 2015

Let The Light ShineThrough

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I spoke about Pope Francis on Yom Kippur morning at Temple Israel. His style of leadership was the unifying scaffolding upon which I built my sermon for this most holy of holy days in the Jewish calendar. I was able to tie in Jonah (the book not Hill) and the theme of reflection and self-assessment that is at the heart of this Day of Atonement. The Pope’s visit and his popularity became the refrain for me to ask one of the Day’s fundamental questions: when all is said and all is done how we would like to be remembered.

Now the Pope’s visit is history.   He is back in Rome and CNN can return to its regular programming.  I am not an expert in Catholic doctrine or ritual but this is what I learned from him as a Rabbi and as a plain old ordinary Jew and a plain old ordinary human being.

I learned that there are no plain old ordinary human beings. Whether it was planned or orchestrated or not, it doesn’t matter. Every time he stopped his motorcade and picked up a baby or walked over to a young boy with disabilities or met with people incarcerated for terrible crimes, he underscored a fundamental religious value that at the core we are souls precious and unique, created in the image of God.   And don’t let God language get in your way of understanding that. It is a message that celebrates our humanity and our shared responsibility to one another. It is the sacred voice of collective wisdom speaking: we are kin and we share one small planet in a seemingly cold, vast, infinite universe. Let’s take care of it and each other.

This is what I learned as a Jew. This is not my grandparents’ Catholic Church. It is still a huge and wealthy institution that loves its ritual, its incense, its symbolic gestures and its mystery. But at least under Francis’ leadership, there are conscious cracks and openings for the message that a Jewish Jesus taught as an itinerant Rabbi/Sage/Prophet/Story teller and parable maker in and around Galilee and Jerusalem. And this is what I admired. The message of forgiveness, love and acceptance is real and it is to be acted upon and lived when you sit in your house, when you walk on the way, when you lie down and when your rise up.

This is the challenge to me as a Rabbi (and you can substitute minister or priest and lots of other professions, not just religious).  You cannot let the institution or other people’s expectations define you. The weight of all our traditions can force you into a mold that is at the same time comfortable and confining. Maybe I am reading into it, but I think you could see how heavy the past was in just the way Pope Francis walked: slowly, deliberately and balancing the miter on his head. And yet, he always walked forward, deliberately so. And he always seemed to let his inner light shine through. And he always seemed to be his own person – what a gift to us all.

Turning

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images (1)It is the weekend of turning. In Hebrew we call it Shabbat Shuvah; we are in the middle of the ten days of repentance. We are somewhere in between apples and honey and kreplach and chicken soup.

When you look up kreplach on a search engine, the first site that describes what they are and how you make them is Epicurious.com. They sit one site away from Chabad.org and although Epicurious describes them as Jewish wonton or ravioli and Chabad says that they are small squares of rolled dough folded into triangles, they both agree that they are to be filled with minced meat or chicken and usually served in chicken soup at the pre-fast meal on the evening before Yom Kippur.

Epicurious seems to think that the three points of the triangle represent the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I think that is totally unfair to the matriarchs who rolled the dough, sautéed the meat and onions, and assembled it all together to perfection. What does Abraham and his boys have to do with this? It is Grandma Miller who used to cook them and then send them packed in dry ice to Eileen and me in Cincinnati so we could have a “proper” Yom Kippur as the British would say. (Although Grandma Miller was way more Yiddish than British, but still a matriarch in the best sense of the word.)

I don’t get kreplach anymore.   I used to love them floating in the soup. I was always told that we eat them because they represent that which is hidden. Some say as the dough covers the meat, so God should cover and hide our sins. I prefer a variation of that. As the filling is hidden inside the dough, so there is a treasure hidden inside of each and every one of us. Yom Kippur asks us to open ourselves and remove the callousness and layers of protection that keep us from our truest selves. Yom Kippur invites us to be in touch with the sacredness of our inner lives and interior reality. Although I must admit that the fasting piece tends to make this a real challenge.

I expect matzah balls in my soup this coming Tuesday night. It seems to be our custom. I’m not promising but I think I will save the matzah ball discussion for Passover. It’s enough with the food when I am supposed to be turning inward and concentrating on my spiritual life, not the physical. I’m supposed to be asking how I let the light of my soul shine through my actions. I’m supposed to be turning towards forgiveness and finding a way to enter the New Year whole and restored, renewed to live fully and love completely. I’m supposed to be asking in the words of Micah: What does God want from me? To act justly, love mercy and walk humbly. And I will – ask, search, turn, try.

But I’ll still miss my kreplach (though they did tend to make me thirsty).

An easy and meaningful fast.

Which Brings Us To This Season

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Not Just For the Golfers Among Us

I was in the deep grass, pretty far from the hole. It was a par 5 and it was a good drive for me. I knew I could get to the green in 3 if I just made this second shot count. I took out a long club and took a practice swing. The grass was thick and sticky but I knew I could power through it. If you are a golfer, you know the end of this story. If not, let me tell you it wasn’t pretty. The grass caught my club; the ball veered off to the right and practically went nowhere.

Greedy is what I said out loud – I can’t write what I said inside. But the more I thought about it, “greed” was the wrong word.   I think it was hubris, loosely defined as the belief that I am invincible and can do almost anything I want or set my mind to. I should have picked a different club, one that was more forgiving but didn’t get the distance I was reaching for. I should have listened to my inner self and played it smart rather than macho. I should have learned from the last time I was in the same place.

I have a tendency to keep repeating the same mistakes, not just in golf, but also in life, in relationships, in love. The grass was calling out to me and trying to teach me: learn from your past; choose a different club and stay down, stay focused. The hybrid in your bag is called “forgiving” for a reason. Which brings us to this season and the New Year that begins with the shrill and broken sounds of the Shofar.

Traditionally the ram’s horn plays four notes: one is fierce; one broken; one triumphant, one long. Each note touches a different part of my soul. The fierce tekiah opens me up for the potential being birthed by the New Year. The broken shevarim wails and speaks to me about missed opportunities for wholeness. The triumphant staccato notes of teruah declare you can do it – you can take all the fragmented pieces of your past and glue them together. The very act of trying is itself holy.

It’s all about the effort and the club you choose from your bag. Pick one that is forgiving. Swing smooth and steady and let the club do the work. Listen to the sound of tekiah gedolah (the great and long note of promise). It reaches deep inside of me; reverberating, resonating, and repeating. Trust yourself; have faith. No matter how deep the grass, how dark the day, how heavy the task, the Shofar promises: This is a new start; this is a new chance; this is a new year. Enjoy it and use it well. Happy 5776

Standing Tall

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My mother and father were just about the same height, but somehow she always seemed taller. Maybe it was the shoes or maybe the way she carried herself in a proud but not superior Boston kind of manner. Or maybe the cigar, which was a horizontal point of reference, either in his hand or mouth, moderated his stature so it appeared that he was shorter.

I don’t think it ever bothered him. Generally, he was easy going, giving, happy and hard working, always trying to do more for his family. Charlie, with a broad “A”, almost no “R”, was a good person who struggled with his own successes and disappointments. He was a pharmacist and a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company, with a drugstore in the trunk of his car always full of samples. There was no Medicare Part D or Drug plans then, but there was Charlie with an open hand and heart. But when he perceived that people took advantage of him, or something went wrong in the house that neither my sisters nor I understood, you could feel the stillness and almost see the anger. It wasn’t like a match that flares and goes out; it was this steady kind of burn, the water in the pot just at the point of boiling over.

I feel guilty even writing this but I think he had a hard time letting go of the hurt, but then again, what do I really know of what transpired right before the flame was lit. This I do know: I have my own issues with forgiveness. I have my own challenges to work through and overcome. I somehow find it easy to shut down and retreat into silence when I am hurting. I own it and there is no blame or finger pointing here. We all have different modalities in our arsenal of coping and we are constantly learning and relearning them in every situation.

Enter Selichot, the prayers of forgiveness that whisper hope and renewal to me. Enter Selichot announcing a New Year is coming; a new time for me to begin again; a moment of growth and promise. Enter Selichot initiating a process of review and assessment for those who stop, look and listen. The liturgy, the music, the colors, the sounds gently surround me with compassion and concern. I need Selichot; I need a mechanism that invites me to face how I deal with the injuries I have felt and the hurts I have inflicted. I need Selichot; I want to enter the New Year fresh and rejuvenated. I want to enter it forgiving and forgiven. I love that our tradition gives me a chance to get it right and make it better by facing my own personal failings. I love the time worn words of our liturgy that are consistently pumping out ways to reflect and view a different image in the water.

When those “Al Chets -For the Sins we have committed” jump out of the prayer book, I’m there. Sometimes they are listed in alphabetic order; always in the plural. The sages understood that we are all in this together and no matter how individual our failings may be; it is human to fall and get up, to stumble and stand tall. “Arrogance, bigotry, cynicism, deceit,” I often don’t make it past “A”. The samples in my father’s trunk healed and restored. The samples in mine are the regrets, the hurts, the disappointments, the missed opportunities, the challenges I haven’t met, the words spoken without thinking, the self absorption that comes so easily, giving with not so invisible strings attached or giving grudgingly; taking eagerly. I could go on; in the quiet of the night, I’m good at listing all the ways I have disappointed others and myself.

But this is what Selichot says to me. Consider your deeds; reflect on who you are and who you wish to be; ask for forgiveness and whatever you mean by the word God will pick you up, clean you, brush you off and set you on a new course. It is work like all prayer, but it is worth it. Refreshed, renewed, ready for the broken call of the shofar to proclaim a New Year and another opportunity for wholeness.

(This post was originally published on Ten Minutes of Torah http://reformJudaism.org)