Holidays

Hello Again

/ howardshapiro / 3 Comments

It’s the last day of Passover (for Reform Jews and Israeli Jews) and I am thinking about the ratio of strawberry jelly to whipped butter on my egg matzah. (By the way – I think it’s very strange that the NYT almost always spells it “matzo”. Now that I think of it, I have three different brands of matzah in my house (Streit’s, Manischewitz and Yehuda) and they all use the “matzo” spelling.) I am trying to perfect the amount of pressure to use when spreading butter on the matzah before it breaks. Although I think that it is smarter to break the matzah before taking it out of the box – less crumbs. And isn’t Gluten Free Matzah a game changer, especially if you get the onion flavor? Eileen wanted to know if we could use it at the Seder. But the side of the box says: not for Seder use and the blessing to be said over it isn’t even the Motzi. (The blessing we say over bread). The blessing is the one we use over things that have lots of different ingredients, especially if they didn’t grow from the ground or a tree or a bush.

But back to crumbs. I have no apology in me for six months of inactivity on this blog. Do I really want to say this? I just couldn’t write. Depression? Fear? Angst? Paralysis? Between Israel and worry; Antisemitism and anger; the political climate in Washington and frustration; the presidential polls and fear of what the election might bring; the hostages and hope; struggling to keep the faith; praying for peace and a cessation of suffering both in Israel, Gaza, the Ukraine and countless other places I confess I do not pay enough attention to.

That’s probably why it is easier to get out the dust buster to pick up the pieces. I can do something about the mess in the kitchen. I feel fairly powerless when it comes to everything else. I know, I know. This is a democracy, and every voice has a place, every voice is heard. Really – seems to me it is mostly the ones that are screaming the loudest and the most extreme. Genocide? Do they even know what that means? And West Palm Beach or probably to be exact Palm Beach County had more incidents of antisemitism than any other county in Florida? And our college campuses? Did I say I wonder if things will ever get back to what we use to call normal?

But enough – tonight it is Pizza. Although there was an article that Corey sent me recently that posits that the original matzah that the Rabbis were eating in the first century or so was soft and pliable more like pita than cardboard. Now that would be a real game changer. And what do you think of the Manischewitz rebranding? Maybe we need to rebrand the world.

Hoping to get back to you soon.

Musings

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I don’t know about you but every day that I get up in the morning and see the sun rising I know I am blessed. I don’t know about you but every day when I get up in the morning and get out of bed without pain in unexpected places, I feel lucky. I don’t know about you but anytime my nose runs or my throat tickles or I cough I fleetingly ask myself is this COVID. We live in unsettling times. There is almost no such thing as normal. We think we are in control of what will happen tomorrow or the day after and the airlines throw a curve ball, or the weather does a number, or the rapid test shows two lines, and you are screwed.

It’s not that I am in a bad place. Not at all. I am aware how amazing my life is and that I live in interesting times. Not that they are perfect. Not that they aren’t worrisome. Not that sometimes I feel like we are living on the edge of a precipice. And tomorrow is either free fall into an unknown abyss worthy of depiction in a movie about the apocalypse or we are on the border of a new epoch about to soar into horizons we can barely imagine. There are so many things I don’t know.

I don’t know what it felt like to live as a Jew branded with a yellow star or cone or hat in some European ghetto or Middle Eastern Mellah. I don’t know what it felt like to live as a serf on land that was not my own in a time when life was valued by what you could produce and not by who you were. (Although we are not so distant from the same kind of yardstick). I don’t know what it was like to live without antibiotics or modern medicine when a simple cut could end your life. Or maybe I do – maybe we all do. This pandemic has certainly humbled us and taught that the simple act of covering your face can keep you safer. And things we once took for granted like sitting in a theater or dancing the hora (I just came from a beautiful wedding) or dining inside a restaurant can’t be taken for granted. Neither can attending a 4th of July parade.

I don’t even know what there is to say about all these guns. I don’t know why anyone needs semi-automatic weapons. There are no dinosaurs roaming our streets. There are no lions lurking in the tall grasses. There are no marauding masses breaking down the barricades. Most of us live in relative safety. Why the guns, the guns, the guns? The politically correct thing is to applaud the “bipartisan” gun bill just passed. But this is what I know. It is not enough. Not enough. Not enough. And I feel powerless to make effective change. I know: VOTE. I know: SPEAK OUT. I know: GIVE MONEY/TIME. But in the words of the prophet called Pete: “When will they every learn; when will they ever learn?” I don’t know about you but the fireworks didn’t do it for me the other night.

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)