If We Choose To Pray

If we are going to choose to pray to God, let's not direct our prayers to the Divine for Boston, for the Red Sox, for the Marathon, or for any other thing that doesn't breathe.

Let's direct our prayers to God for people. Let's pray for 8 year old Martin Richard's family and friends and classmates and teachers at school. Let's pray for the families and friends and communities of 29 year old Krystle Campbell,  graduate student Lingzi Lu, and MIT police officer Sean Collier. Let's pray for the hundreds of people who cling to life, whose limbs were lost, whose lives are shattered. Let's pray for the helpers who run toward chaos instead away from it. Let's pray for any and all of the people whose lives have been physically, emotionally, spiritually violated, because they were at the Marathon, or heard about it, or live or lived in Boston, or feel connected to it because something in them hurts when others do. Let's pray for the people whose hearts move swiftly from a necessary desire for justice to a seething desire for vengeance that God comfort their pain with a loving-kindness that tempers the hate and anger and hurt they feel. Let's pray for people whose souls and lives are so broken that they seek not to build, but to destroy.

For justice, for mercy, for healing, for consolation, for a Shelter of Peace, for hearts and souls all around us.

Simultaneous Joy and Pain: The Wisdom of the Counting of the Omer

(Originally published on Huffingtonpost.com, based on a sermon I delivered on April 29, 2013)

This year at our Passover Seder, I experienced something deeply powerful -- something I had not felt in the context of Passover before. Like many, we spend much of our Seder going around the table, each reading a section from the Haggadah out loud. Generally, because our Seder is populated partially by adults and partially by very young, mostly illiterate children, we move from adult to adult, skipping over the smaller folks at our table. But this year, when my husband finished reading his part, my Kindergarten age son said he'd like a turn to read.

And all of a sudden, space and time expanded for me, while I assume it continued at a normal pace for everyone else. It felt like a worm hole opened, and in what must have actually been only a second between my son saying he wanted to read and his starting to pronounce the Haggadah's words, his entire life so far from his birth until that moment flashed through my mind. And in that 5 1/2 years contracted down into 1/60th of a minute, I felt the most profound, overwhelming joy, and at the very same time, an all-consuming sadness. Joy at the fact that my son could actually do what he was doing: he could read, was somehow growing up, increasingly less toddler like and more and more fully real. Sadness that my son could actually do what he was doing: he could read, was somehow growing up, increasingly less toddler like and more and more fully real.

This is the time of year when we Jews find ourselves in the middle of the annual observance known as Sefirat haOmer, the Counting of the Omer. As such, beginning on the second day of Passover, each day (technically evening since Jewish days start at night) we say a blessing and literally count which day and week it is in the seven-week cycle, leading us up to Shavuot, which falls on the 50th day. What began as an ancient agricultural-spiritual holiday to mark the weeks between barley and wheat harvests has evolved significantly over time.

Thanks to the rabbis of the Talmud, we understand the Counting of the Omer primarily as the communal spiritual re-enactment of our ancestor's process of journeying from the Egypt for 49 days to the Torah being given to them at Mt. Sinai.

Thanks to the Kabbalists, we also understand the Omer time as an individual opportunity to refine and perfect areas of our own lives as we leave our own individual Mitzrayim -- whatever narrow and constricted parts of ourselves hold us back, and then travel to a place where we too can be open and receptive to whatever Revelation awaits us.

In either case, most important is the idea that we count up, not down, to express our ancestors and our own increasing excitement as they and we step closer and closer toward Revelation.

But the period of the Omer, as you might know, is also overshadowed with the tone and rituals of mourning, thus the associated prohibitions against haircuts, shaving or getting married, except on Lag B'Omer , the 33rd day of the Omer. The question is: Why? Why the sadness and mourning, if the time should have been completely celebratory? Think about it: Our ancestors were finally free -- no Egypt, no taskmasters. They could live life on their terms and would soon culminate their seven-week trip with the most momentous, holy experience of meeting the Divine and receiving of the Torah. Not much to be sad about, right? There are a few explanations for the mournful tone of the Omer period, mainly having to do with a plague that was said to have ravaged a Jewish community at the time of the Mishnah's composition. But I wonder if there isn't something more at play?

When we think about our own journeys out of whatever enslaves us, into moments of liberation and redemption and then ultimately to moments of real awakening and revelation, what are they really like? Are they filled only with excitement and joy? Or are they more complicated than that?

As a person whose job privileges her to share many important moments in people's lives, I have seen this complexity -- simultaneous overflowing joy and sadness -- particularly, but not exclusively at life-cycle events, made manifest in tears. Tears that society and Hallmark card commercials suggest are wholly joyous, but which I know also contain an honest sorrow. Both feelings evoked by the same experience, at once deep happiness for the arrival at a new marker, and also grief that the arrival at said marker comes with the knowledge that all the previous markers won't be sought out and reached again. It's in these moments that we live in both worlds, but out of which we all have to make a choice: which sensibility we will choose to let color our experience? When we arrive at these crossroads, one the path of joy and optimism and one the path of sadness and regret, how do we choose which route to take?

The Omer tradition, linking Passover to Shavuot, gives us the answer. This set of seven weeks, each made up of seven days, enables us to live in the real, complicated world of emotional complexity, fully, experiencing both joy and sadness -- incarnate in each day of the counting. But when the last day of the Omer concludes, the mourning ends. There is a reason that the moment of Revelation happens the first day of the eighth week, the 50th day -- the day after the last day of the counting. Because to experience Revelation, we can't be in mourning. We have to release it, and take that deep breath that acknowledges that we have a choice to make: Will we view life as some sort of diminishing, increasingly limiting count down to the end -- a road that ultimately leads us back to Mitzrayim, to the death of the spirit -- or will we see life as opening to an unending fount of opportunity, hope and joy -- a road that is the promise of a Revelation at a mountain point in an open, awaiting, uncharted land?

The wisdom of the Counting of the Omer is that it enables us to live in both worlds for a bit. The moments in between, those moments where only a second in real time passes, but a lifetime flashes through our mind's eye, those moments between Mitzrayim and the Mountain, that's when the real awakening happens. But you can't stand at Sinai unless you are awake -- heart, mind, body and spirit not somewhere back where you've been before, back in Mitzrayim, but open to the only place and moment there really is: the Present.

Back to our Seder: So I'm in this out-of-place-and-time experience, fully immersed in my seemingly conflicting feelings. And then, I hear my son carefully sound out: "God -- took -- us -- out -- of -- E...E...E...g...." And just like that, I am back. Back from this journey into the realm of my own reflections and emotions, because my son needs my help. "Egypt" I say. "Egypt with -- a -- strong -- hand..." he continues. And my eyes well. And there is no longer any sadness. But neither is there joy. I am simply and only and entirely filled with the most deep and overwhelming sense of gratitude and wonder instead.

Are We There Yet? On Sea Crossing, Mountain Climbing, Departures, Arrivals, and the Space In Between

 Each year at the Passover Seder, we read these words:

“This year we are here, next year, in the land of Israel. 

 This year we are slaves, next year, free people.”[i] 

We navigate the entire Seder through this dichotomy, as if dancing back and forth between the imprisoning constriction of Mitzrayim and the boundless openness that true freedom seemingly provides.  We engage in story-telling, observe and consume edible symbols, and physically mimic different postures evoking these same themes of slavery and freedom,  disgrace and glory, degradation and praise, departure and arrival.  And ultimately, we culminate the Passover Seder with the same hopeful words every year:

           “L’shanah haba’ah b’Yirushalyim – Next year in Jerusalem!” 

Which can lead one to wonder: will we ever actually get there? To that state of shalom/peace and shaleim/wholeness that Jerusalem represents? Will we ever actually arrive at the freedom, liberation, openness, and fulfillment that is the yearning and promise of every previous Seder’s beginning and end?   What’s the point of telling the same story with the same unfinished ending over and over again if we never really get anywhere?

Because ultimately, there is only one story to tell, and it is the Truth of our lives.  How often do we find ourselves in our relationships, our work, our education, our bodies, thinking “I’ll be satisfied when:”  
*my partner understands or does what I need him/her to
*I get that next promotion or title
*I attain my degree
*I lose that last 5 pounds...
 - only to arrive at that milestone to discover another "I'll be satisfied when" destination marker somewhere yet to be attained in the future? 

An interesting insight comes from what is generally perceived as our ancestors’ culminating moment of true freedom from the grips of Egypt: the Crossing of the Sea.  In a section detailing the various occasions upon which a person should utter a blessing of gratitude, the Talmudic sages point out, “One who sees the abrot/crossings of the Sea [of Reeds]…must give thanks and praise to God.”[ii]  But what does it mean to see the abrot/ crossings of the Sea?  When exactly should one utter gratitude at such an occasion: once safely across when the miracle is complete and finish line crossed or somewhere along the way when the fullness of the miracle is not yet realized?  Nineteenth century scholar Rabbi Naftali Zvi Berlin notes Exodus 14:29, “The Israelites went on dry land into the midst of the sea.”  Picking up on the past-tense phrase “the Israelites went,” Berlin asserts what most tend to think: that it would only make sense to offer praise once completely across the parted sea, safely on the other side. We cannot, after all, offer gratitude for something that is yet to be done, can we?  But Twentieth Century commentator RabbiBaruch HaLevi Epstein, Berlin’s nephew, disagrees.  Noting Rashi’s definition of abrot/ crossings as “the place through which they traversed the sea,”[iii] Epstein asserts that our ancestors offered thanksgiving while walking the entire length of the crossing.  As Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg so masterfully surmises in her book The Particulars of Rapture: “…the Talmud is urging praise and thanksgiving while one is in the midst of the narrative.  Before the tension is resolved, before one has emerged from the undetermined, ominous passage - that is the time for gratitude and song.”[iv]

I don't know from crossing the sea, but I do know that charting the course of our lives can often feel as if we are climbing a mountain, taking each step higher and higher in the hopes of one day reaching the very top.  Which is a noble goal, but that’s just not how mountain climbing works.  When climbing a large mountain, we work to ascend what seems like the tallest peak, only to arrive at that top to gaze on to the vision of a yet taller and grander peak in the distance.  And once we arrive at the tallest point, we don’t get to stay up there forever; the journey back down awaits.  Mountain ranges don’t provide one steady, evenly paced ascent or descent.  They are full of small and large elevations and depths that go on and on, from the smallest foothills to the most majestic highlands, and back down the range again. Think about where a mountain range ends?  It’s not at the height of the tallest peak.  It’s once the larger slopes merge into foothills that merge into flat ground again, back on the road, back on the journey, until arriving at the place where foothills emerge from flatland again. 

Why do we repeat the same story over and over again? Why do we never actually "get there?” Because every place we stand is “there,” if we only allow ourselves to be there.  Every place, every moment has the potential for constriction and release, for fear and hope, for degradation and praise, for brokenness and wholeness.  Our lives are not black and white; our souls are complicated amalgams of all these qualities, sometimes leaning one way, sometimes another; we live somewhere in the middle.  This is the Seder's ultimate lesson: we don’t have to wait until the height of achievement or the perfect moment to express gratitude, to change our own lives or make an impact in the world.  Every place, every moment is the perfect and best time from which to be grateful and catalyze repair.  Indeed, this year we are slaves, next year, free people.  

---

[i] From Ha Lachma Anya – This is the Bread of Affliction

[ii] Brachot 54a

[iii] See Rashi’s comment on the meaning of “abrot” in Brachot 54a

[iv] P. 216, see too Sforno and Nachmanides on Ex 15:1 and 15:19

Bar Mitzvah You Tube Save-the-Date Haters and Internet Bullies

Call me old-fashioned, but I was taught that upon receiving an invitation to a Bar Mitzvah, the ONLY thing one should respond with is "Mazal Tov!"

Over the past week, a certain YouTube video has gone viral on the Jewish net-waves and social media feeds.  The video presumably was intended to serve as the "Save the Date" for the friends and family of a boy who will become Bar Mitzvah this Spring.  I don't know the family or the boy, but I received a link to the video, presumably from someone else who doesn't know the family either, and they likely received it from someone else who doesn't know the family, etc. etc.  The video has drawn much attention. Those on the positive side (I find myself in this camp - a minority from what I can read on the comment feeds) praise the child for finding a creative, fun way to discuss his upcoming experience.  The video is "not all about the party" and even includes some footage at the family's synagogue as well as a cameo appearance of the congregation's rabbi.  Those on the negative side (a clear majority from what I can read on the comment feeds) condemn the "clear lack of purpose or integrity," the "gross misappropriation of financial resources" by the family - funds "that could have been donated to charity," the fact that "the boy didn't even mention his Torah portion," and the list goes on, and on, and on, some even criticizing the child's lack of rhythm and mocking the lyrics to the rap performed by the child.  

And to that, I ask: since when did it become acceptable for adults to speak so critically, negatively, no less   publicly and permanently about a child? After all, this child  is likely reading directly or being forwarded every snarky or judgmental remark ticking down on the feeds and websites of people he does not know and who he certainly did not invite to his family's upcoming simcha, but most of whom seem to feel justified in rendering an opinion or judgement about him and his family's decision about their save-the-date Bar Mitzvah notice.  I'm sure a Bar Mitzvah boy can handle the fact that hundreds of people are standing in judgment over him and his video.  He is, after all, the ripe, mature age of 12 or 13!  NOT!

I don't know how the video spread so quickly, why the family did not designate better privacy settings on the video, or really what their intentions were.  The truth is, I don't think any of that matters.  How can responsible adults (some of whom are my fellow clergy) condemn loudly the devastating impact of youth cyber-bullying, but in the same breath become so blinded by their own judgmental stances on what is or is not "Bar Mitzvah Appropriate" that they themselves become cyber-bullies, freely condemning the actions of a child and his family?  It is one thing to debate non-specifically choices and priorities for religious coming of age events, but it is something entirely different to air one's judgments so publicly and specifically in an arena that we all know can be cruel and where context can easily be lost.  Even if the intention of the family was for the video to go viral, are any of us really willing to assert that this soon-to-be Jewish adult should actually be treated as a real adult and somehow expected to have the capacity to handle the potential "criticism" he could receive knowing that he "put it out there in the first place?"  I would certainly hope not.

Here's what I'm really hoping won't happen, but what I fear will. What likely started off as a wonderfully positive way for a young boy and his family to engage creatively around an important, upcoming moment in his life will now likely become a tarnished, if not traumatic occurrence overshadowing not just his Bar Mitzvah, but his Jewish identity and development as well.  Where's the win in that for this boy, his family, the Jewish people?  Oh right, there isn't one.

Enough with the judgement and bashing.  It is really easy to fall into the trap of passing judgment on others when their choices, both personal and in relation to Judaism, diverge from what we perceive we would do in the same situation.  It is much harder to take a step back, accept that different people make different choices, and try to find the positive, raising up the good instead.  

So, if you happen to see the video pop up in your twitter of FB feed or in your inbox, extend the boy and his family a hearty "Mazal Tov!"  Praise him for his willingness to add his own creativity and community into the process.  Let him know we are proud that he is going to be an adult in the Jewish world and we can't wait to see how he'll invest his talents and self after the big day has come and gone.  Perhaps if enough of us put out positive energy, or at a minimum keep our negative opinions to ourselves, we might send a different, better, more enduring message, to the boy, his family, our own community, and the world.

My Grandmother's Hands and Psalm 90

We are in her house in Dallas.  Sesame Street plays on the television I am supposed to be watching.  But instead, I watch her, specifically her hands.  She grips her new, clean easel, finagling its three legs in different positions until it stands independently.  She extends her arms, pinching her thumbs and middle fingers on the top corners of a recently gesso-ed and pencil-detailed canvas, lifting and setting it down gently to rest on the easel. Her soft, peachy hands reach into an off-white fabric and brown leather-lined painter's bag resting on a table next to her and pull out 1 larger and 1 smaller plastic paint tube.  She sets the smaller one down, carefully unscrews the larger one and gently squeezes about a tablespoon of its bright white contents a bit off-center on , what at the time seems, an oddly shaped, somewhat rounded wood plate.  She screws the top back on, puts it down, picks up the smaller tube, unscrews it and applies even more controlled pressure to the tube, causing a smaller teaspoon size deep cobalt-colored mound to ooze out.  She screws the top back on and puts it back down. Next, she reaches into the bag for her brushes, lots of them, different shapes and sizes that she gathers up in one hand and places vertically on a table, releasing as if they were pick-up sticks to fall and spread haphazardly on the table's surface.  The bristles are clean, but the handles are splattered with layers and layers of her past paintings - blues in pastel shades are most noticeable, but there is a speck of white here, a smear of pink or red there.  And when ready, she selects a brush, dips it into the smaller splotch on her palate and pulls the now bristle-blue bulb toward the center where it meets the dollop of bright white.  She mixes the two colors together, blending them until they are no longer deep sky and ice, but instead a perfect Caribbean Sea. 

We are in a quiet hospital room, and my grandmother is unconscious, peaceful, and dying. She lives for two days like this after I arrive. Neither my mother nor I leave the hospital these oddly endless, urgent, blurry forty-eight hours.  We spend the time in a quiet rhythm: me sleeping while my mother keeps watch and then the reverse.   Most of my awake time is spent holding and looking at my grandmother's hands. 

One of My Grandmother's Paintings

My grandmother was a creator: a painter, a sculptor, a decorator, a seamstress, a pianist, a cook, and the list goes on.  Over the past year and half since she died, countless reminiscences play like old-style home movies with no sound reel in my mind's eye, sometimes because I turn them on myself and sometimes because they seem to have a will of their own. In them, I see my grandmother painting, sculpting, playing piano, cooking, sewing, often looking up to smile, laugh, or say something that I cannot hear.  But inevitably, the focus zooms in on her hands: how they moved, what her nails looked like, the length of her fingers, the shape of her knuckles, the pale tone of her skin.  And then, as if in time-lapse projection, the film clips capture advance to show memories of more recent times, and I watch her hands change.  The once taut skin loosens, revealing deepening wrinkles and more pronounced veins.  Her arthritis becomes more and more challenging and as such, her knuckles appear larger.  A broken wrist changes the angle at which her hand rests when flat on a table.  And then I flash to those final moments, sitting at her bedside, holding her hand, her still soft and smooth and strangely strong and beautiful hand.

I have always been moved by Psalm 90, its honesty, its intentionality, its yearning, its hope.  In acknowledging the limits of life and the struggles we all experience, the Psalm asks the Divine to teach us mindfulness, perspective and compassion.  The Psalm concludes that we find purpose in life when we can recognize the Holy, the Divine around us. And ultimately, life extends beyond the finite bounds of days and years  when our lives and legacies are remembered and lived out in those who live on after us. The Psalmist expresses this idea so beautifully in the last verse:  "Establish the work of our hands that it may long endure."[i]

My son loved my grandmother, his great-grandmother.  He inherited much of her creativity and talent, demonstrating a real artistic gift very early on in his life.  Now, at the age of five and a half, if there is down-time, he spends it creating: sculptures, drawings, and most often paintings.

We are in our home in Deerfield.  The water is pouring over the dishes I am supposed to be washing, but instead, I am watching him.  He is determined to create something "really special, like Nani used to do" he says.  He reaches into his plastic art supply box to set up the palette, acrylic paints, "fancy" brushes, and canvas he received for his birthday.  Then, he reaches along-side a book shelf, in the space between the shelf and the wall.  It takes a little coaxing to set up since it hasn't been opened in many years, squeaking and creaking as he pulls each leg out so it can stand balanced.  The top is still very clean, but the ridge along which the canvas rests is covered in paint. Layers and layers of paint - blues in pastel shades are most noticeable, but there is a speck of white here, a smear of pink or red there.  It is like a yet-to-be excavated site of the countless layers of works of art my grandmother painted on canvases that rested on this same easel.  My son places his blank canvas on my grandmother's easel, selects a brush, dips it into a deep shade of blue, pulling up a substantial glob. And then what I see and my son does not is that as he lifts his brush to the canvas and begins to paint, a drop of azure from his brush falls to the bottom of the canvas and drips onto the ridge, adding his own layer, his own imprint, onto the foundations of history and story and love that sit beneath.

May Your Work be visible to Your servants, and Your Glory to their children. And let the beauty of the Divine be upon us; establish the work of our hands that it may long endure. Psalm 90:15-16

---

[i] A modified translation as suggested by the Reform Rabbis manual.  

Why I Am a Jewish None (or a None-ish Jew) and Why You Should Care

(This is an adapted version of the sermon I delivered on Friday evening, December 28, 2012 at NSCI)

I’d like to share a recent self- revelation: deep down inside, my soul is the soul of a None.  No, I didn't spell that wrong. I’m not referring to a Catholic nun of course!  Let me explain. A "None" is the name given to a “member” of the fastest growing religious group in our country - a seemingly new religious denomination named by the Pew Forum and other religion demographers as those who will not identify with any singular religious grouping, category or denomination.  The Nones have grown from 15% to 20% of the US population in the last 5 years alone, and they’re projected to increase even more over the next decade. 

It seems like a pretty sad indicator for the face of organized religion at first. But don't get too distressed.  Here's something interesting: Although atheists and agnostics are included in the "Nones" category, their specific populations have remained a steady, flat 6% for a quite a while now.  So who are the other now 14% of our population of those not identifying in one singular religious category but yet not atheist or agnostic, and why on earth would I consider myself to be like them?

Well, 37% of them say they are spiritual.  Check.  68 % of these Nones say they believe in God. Check.  58 % say they have a deep connection with nature and earth. Check.  1 in 5 say they pray daily. Check.[i]  The Nones are searchers, seekers, boundary pressers and question askers, souls unwilling and uninterested in tightly reinforced definitions and denominations. They may very well have deep spiritual encounters in a prayer service, but they will also have them in their yoga class, or walking in the Botanic Gardens. Or listening to stirring music or reading a powerful book.  Check, Check.  They view themselves as open vessels for the meaningful and the sacred in all experiences.  Check.  In many ways, they sound like they'd make great Jews!

What are the true defining characteristics of Jews anyway?  Outside of not believing in more than one God, what other consistent indicator or unifier is there - in origin, in practice, in ethnicity, in language, in sexuality or in family structure?  Jew by birth, Jew by choice, Jew by matrilineal or patrilineal descent? Jew by synagogue membership or not?  Jew by how many days a year or lifetime they attend services? None of these offer a real limitation on what being Jewish means, only what Judaism can mean to a given individual in a given situation.

After all, who among us fits perfectly in the category of any label?  We are by nature complex, amalgams of identities, experiences, histories, practices and beliefs that don't generally fit a cookie cutter definition or picture.  And that, if you asked me, is a pretty wonderful thing – these combinations keep us interesting, diverse, learning and evolving!  If being a None equates to a rejection of black and white, absolutist religion then the real question should be, who among us isn’t a None?

So what at first seems like a pretty ominous report of eventual religious demise instead turns out, I would suggest, to indicate an evolution in the openness  of what faith based and religious communities, including Jewish ones, will someday become, if they aren't already on their way.

Here's the snag:  Many Jewish organizations and Jewish population study publishers have a problem with what I just said.  They want to perpetuate the emotional response from what seems to have become Judaism's historical meta-narrative:  Someone, somewhere is trying to put an end to Judaism by steering us away from our long-held, steady and implied "proper" roots and traditions.  Maybe it is an external demise that's predicted, maybe it’s an internal one, as the latest Chicago and New York Jewish population studies seems to suggest about all forms of non-Orthodox Judaism.   We've gone astray from our tradition - strangers to our faith and the so-called "right" way to practice it.  Failures of perpetuating what our ancestors throughout the ages fought and died for.  And the truth is, these erosion narratives have long worked as catalysts for community solidarity and fundraising.  It is one of the main myths at play when non-Orthodox Jews make financial contributions to organizations like Chabad instead of their own non-Orthodox synagogues or organizations with which they are affiliated – almost as an apologetic and acknowledgement in a sense of their self-perception as somehow a lesser or failed Jew. 

But if the only justification for practicing Judaism, for identifying as “Jewish” is to react against this so-called erosion, then how can it ever be possible to really flourish?  Survival mode never yields much other than stasis at best, and at worst, ironically, it causes the very same erosion it was created to fight against.  I think that is what we are seeing now in the non-Orthodox world, and maybe even the Orthodox world too.  The reality of most Jewish institutions 

for the last 6-7 decades has been one of survivalist mentality.  It’s as if we, at some point, forgot that at its heart, Judaism has always, always been about a relationship between the evolving mundane and ineffable qualities of life, with Jewish traditions and laws not designed for stagnation, to serve solely as anchors of vessels never intended to take to sea, but more as wide, billowing sails, enabling us to traverse and discover more of the endlessly revealing cosmos of which we are an integral, covenantal, evolving part.  Solely surviving inhibits and prohibits thriving.

One key reason the Nones are important is because they are not interested in just surviving, erosion, in anchored vessels that can’t sail; they are wholly invested in yearning, in seeking, in thriving.  They seek deep rooted answers to the significant questions of existence and meaning in the universe.  Their yearnings, I believe, are not unique, but are actually shared by every human being. It’s just that not everyone is comfortable or willing to articulate them in a so-called religious or Jewish context because we, as Jewish institutions, have failed to foster an environment where such questions are the norm.  But these questions are ultimately what we find at the heart of life.

Our desires to know and deepen our understanding of ourselves, our place in the world, what we are here to do, ultimately our search for Truth – with a capital T – the asking of and searching for answers to these questions, I’d say prove the very purpose for which God created us in the first place.  And that search is necessarily about wrestling and digging.  The goal is not reaching “a single, eternal realization,” as Rabbi Irwin Kula teaches,  but instead “living out the process of realizing again and again.”[ii] 

Our Jewish teachings are at once plentiful and varied, ripe and evolving, rooted and ethereal.  Ours is a wisdom tradition intended to be lived, wrestled with, imagined, “deconstructed, and re-imagined.”[iii]   We must not be afraid to do just this – to activate and enliven our own yearnings and souls’ quests in this light.  Not to do so surely resigns us to a life of malaise and stagnation.  And that’s not just a modern psychological statement.  Jewish mystics have been talking about it for centuries, originating in Jewish folklore about the Golem of all places, with poignant teachings about the Hebrew word for Truth:  Emet.  Rabbi Kula puts an interesting twist on it. He teaches: If you remove the first letter from Emet, you are left with a different word: “met” – which in Hebrew means death.  As such, the mystics taught that if you only have one side of the story which you believe is absolute truth – with a capital T, you've essentially begun your own demise.  Truth, they inherently understood from a most profound level, has always been more complicated, nuanced, evolving than that. When viewed all together, Emet – aleph, mem, tav - is comprised of the first, middle, and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet – as if to suggest that the very composition of the word Truth itself urges us to seek a wider, more inclusive, deeply resonating, and all-encompassing truth.[iv]

Indeed, this call to seek a wider, more inclusive, deeply resonating and all-encompassing Judaism, I believe, is the call to all of us at this precise moment in our evolution as a faith. 

So I’m a Jewish None, and maybe you are too. And maybe we’re all better for that.

---

[i] http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx

[ii] From the teachings and language of Rabbi Irwin Kula in “Yearnings” p.4.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] These teachings on Emet are sourced to any number of places, both ancient and modern.  The play on Emet and Met is a reference to any number of Golem narratives.  See Sefer Yitzirah as an example.  The concept of Emet as comprised of the first, middle, and last letters of the alphabet I first heard mentioned in rabbinical school and have since heard and read mentioned many times, however I do not know the original source of it.  Irwin Kula offers a fitting description of these stories, and it is from his conceptions of the stories that this sermon derives its meaning.

The "Fathomability" of Gun Violence against Children - Remembering Noah Pozner and Aliyah Shell

Like most everyone I know, I am having a really hard time coping with the horrific murders in Connecticut. Since I have young children myself, I keep having these nightmarish visions placing our family there, me waiting at the fire station and my child never returning to me. I see the sweet face of 6 year old Noah Pozner, the youngest murdered victim, and in my mind, his face morphs into the face of my own 5 year old son. He could, after all, have been my son, that young Jewish boy attending elementary school in a "good, safe, suburban school." The nightmare plays over and over again in my head, until I shut it down. Something I, as someone whose child was not actually there, have the luxury of doing. Truth be told, I have absolutely no clue how anyone in that community, especially those whose children or family members were murdered, will ever find any peace. It is beyond fathomable.

"Unfathomable" has, far and away, proved the most common descriptor appearing on the boiling feeds of my Facebook and Twitter accounts since Friday's tragedy. And on every emotional level I know, "unfathomable" seems a fitting descriptor of the cold-blooded mass murder of innocent children and teachers in an elementary school; it goes against the most basic core values and code of social order and decency we have. But the heartbreaking thing is, this event was not "unfathomable." It is certainly "fathomable" - it has been fathomable for a long time now. People have been heartlessly and carelessly or calculatedly murdering or injuring children through gun violence for a long time now.

I vividly remember first hearing about the school shooting in Columbine on April 20, 1999. Sitting in the lunch room of my rabbinical school in Cincinnati, we all sat stunned and declared the shootings "unfathomable." Until one of my professors called our attention to the fact that children were being shot and killed all the time; the difference being that Columbine symbolized the expanded reach of gun violence into middle/upper class white America. He called us out on our own selectivity in personal identification with a certain type of event and victim over another, and challenged us to see the Columbine murder victims as part of a longer series of American tragedies and travesties with a much more expansive trail of murdered and wounded children strewn in its current's wake. One that demanded multi-faceted government, educational, health, social, spiritual, and psychological engagement and action.

In 2011, 700 children were hit by gunfire in Chicago and 66 of them died. There is ongoing mass murder in Chicago's gang-ridden neighborhoods to which most of us living in safer, suburban neighborhoods have closed our eyes or ignored. On Friday, speaking about the victims of the Newtown attack, President Obama stated, "They had their entire lives ahead of them -- birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own." And this is true. It is what makes the murder of children in particular so horrific. But I wonder why the same is not being said too of those children struck down by gun violence in the city of Chicago (or elsewhere). I think about Aliyah Shell, the 6 year old girl murdered by gang crossfire while sitting on her mother's lap, on the porch of their Little Village home earlier this year. "Birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of her own" were Aliyah and her family's right, but the same cry was not made nationally when she was murdered, or any of the other of the hundreds of children like her. It is as if we have somehow, as a nation, accepted that for children like Aliyah, such future promise should not be assumed; and that is simply unacceptable. Because birthdays, graduations, weddings, and children should be part of the promise to any and every child. And that future has been stolen from all those slain in the wake of gun violence: black or white, wealthy or poor, shot down in their house or walking on the street, lying down to sleep or waking up, sitting on their front porch or at their desk in their classroom.

Many will take issue with me here.  They will say that linking the Chicago youth murdered to the Newtown tragedy somehow diminishes one or the other.  They will say this is a time of mourning, not of speaking and acting.  They will claim that these are two different problems, one impacting one way and the other a different way. That a school shooting is, by its nature, different than gang related gun violence. On all counts, I disagree. It is indeed a time of mourning, a deepening mourning given these most recent, horrible events.  But one and the other are both inextricably intermingled in what can only be called a community and system-wide web of failure. And that failure isn't rooted in one cause over another. It is immensely complex; it is about gun control and mental health and gang prevention/education and security and anger-management and race and wealth and class and early intervention and public health and, and, and....

If not now, when?  Genesis/Breishit teaches that all humans are created in the image of the Divine, and in the Mishnah, we learn that each life is an entire world. When one destroys a life, they destroy the world. When one saves a life, they save the world. The matter is more urgent now than ever.  So I will not allow myself the anesthetizing ease of time or distraction. And to my own nightmares, I will be mindful to add the face of Aliyah along with the face of Noah. I hope remembering both of these children will remind me of the totality of the real task at hand, and as such, strengthen my personal resolve to be an individual who actively works to create and catalyze change across our communities, within and without, in the areas in which I have a voice and impact. May it be so for each and every one of us who has not yet been caught in the cross-fire directly.

My prayer is that perhaps this most recent horror in Connecticut will be the spark that ignites a system-wide change across all channels, so that the flow of all the murdered souls, whose lives have been cut short too soon, might finally be checked.


Things you can do to start to make a difference now:

Get educated around legislation for safer gun laws/regulation and advocate on its behalf:
http://action.rac.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5252
http://www.passthebill.us/PTB/Home.html
http://signon.org/sign/today-is-the-day-for-1.fb23?source=s.fb&r_by=254810

Get informed about improving mental health awareness and treatment and advocate on its behalf:
http://thebluereview.org/i-am-adam-lanzas-mother/
http://www.nami.org/gtsTemplate09.cfm?Section=Grading_the_States_2009

Support organizations that are already working to make a difference:
www.bradycampaign.org
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/14/connecticut-elementary-school-shooting-how-to-help_n_2302760.html
http://www.imagineenglewoodif.org/


Feel free to use the comments space below to add your own ideas about how to make a difference.