Monday, September 24, 2012

November 10, 2018

It seems far off, right?

It's Sam's Bar Mitzvah date. 2 Kislev 5779.
His parasha will be Toldot. It's a good one. One of my favorites.

Sam's 13th birthday is on a Thursday AND it's Rosh Chodesh Kislev. But I figure we'll wait two days until Shabbat to make it more convenient for folks. Time is on our side.

I like to plan ahead.

There will be many many many milestones between now and November 10, 2018.

But this is what I'm focused on right now.
With three rounds down and one to go...a mama has to make plans.

Because even though sometimes God laughs at the plans, they are exactly what we need to keep going. Plans grow from hope. Or perhaps they ARE hope. Either way, it's one of the things that is driving me through all of this.

I'm not going to write about cancer forever. I'm going to write about other stuff - B'nai Mitzvah, weddings, and a whole heap of other good, NORMAL things.

My friend Anne imagined it right at the beginning.

I've latched onto it...it is my beacon. I can feel the handle of the Torah scroll in my hand as I watch and hear him read Torah. I can hear him chanting the brachot. I can even imagine him playing an instrument - some days it's sweet, like a flute. Other days, I cringe when I imagine him setting up a drum-set on the bima. I play it out in my mind. The bagels and kugel. The frog-and-turtle-green kippot. The hand-made tallit with love woven into every stitch. The count - how many years that he has been cancer-free? The tears. The reluctant hugs. The wide smiles.

Mark your calendars now.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

A Sweet & Healthy Happy New Year

May this new year bring health, happiness, blessing and peace.

From our family to yours...l'shana tova - Happy New Year and many blessings.


P.S. this is still our favorite shana tova video...

#BlogElul 29: Justice


Justice.
It seems like a strange ending to BlogElul. What could I have possibly been thinking?

Maybe I meant "social justice" - those words are so often used together. It's such an important part of the holidays, right? We talk about all the problems in the world and how we can fix them. We collect food and set up volunteer programs.

But maybe I meant the vast unfairness of it all. Maybe I was wondering how we can speak of justice when we know darn well that the world is full of injustice.

And maybe that is it - maybe we speak about justice just like we speak of peace - if we abandoned our talk of it altogether just because it seems so totally out of reach....then we would for sure lose hope. So we continue to speak of it fondly, like it's just around the corner, like it's in the next room waiting for us.

Someday it will be.
For all of us.
For the whole world.

Okay, maybe justice was a good ending to BlogElul. As Elul draws to a close, we hold our hopes for the new year so tightly and we speak of them as though they have come true. If our highest aspiration is justice for the whole world, then let us go into the new year feeling, breathing, hoping, believing that is just around the corner. Just in the next room.

May it be so.

The Jewish month of Elul, which precedes the High Holy Days, is traditionally a time of renewal and reflection. It offers a chance for spiritual preparation for the Days of Awe. It is traditional to begin one’s preparation for the High Holy Days during this month with the Selichot, the prayers of forgiveness. We look to begin the year with a clean slate, starting anew, refreshed. All month, along with others, I'll be blogging a thought or two for each day to help with the month of preparation... I will be blogging here, and sharing #Elulgram photos on the same themes at imabima.tumblr.com. Follow me on twitter @imabima for all the #BlogElul posts, not only mine but others' as well! 

Today is the last day of Blog Elul! Leave your blog Elul post in the linky below!

Saturday, September 15, 2012

#BlogElul 28: Responsibility



The Jewish month of Elul, which precedes the High Holy Days, is traditionally a time of renewal and reflection. It offers a chance for spiritual preparation for the Days of Awe. It is traditional to begin one’s preparation for the High Holy Days during this month with the Selichot, the prayers of forgiveness. We look to begin the year with a clean slate, starting anew, refreshed. All month, along with others, I'll be blogging a thought or two for each day to help with the month of preparation... I will be blogging here, and sharing #Elulgram photos on the same themes at imabima.tumblr.com. Follow me on twitter @imabima for all the #BlogElul posts, not only mine but others' as well! 

Leave your blog Elul post in the linky below!

Friday, September 14, 2012

#BlogElul 27: Good and Evil




The Jewish month of Elul, which precedes the High Holy Days, is traditionally a time of renewal and reflection. It offers a chance for spiritual preparation for the Days of Awe. It is traditional to begin one’s preparation for the High Holy Days during this month with the Selichot, the prayers of forgiveness. We look to begin the year with a clean slate, starting anew, refreshed. All month, along with others, I'll be blogging a thought or two for each day to help with the month of preparation... I will be blogging here, and sharing #Elulgram photos on the same themes at imabima.tumblr.com. Follow me on twitter @imabima for all the #BlogElul posts, not only mine but others' as well! 

Leave your blog Elul post in the linky below!

Thursday, September 13, 2012

#BlogElul 26: Readiness


This is the time of the year when people start to greet each other with "are you ready?"

Sometimes they're referring to their holiday menus or food prep.
Are the challot baked?
Kugels ready?
Brisket marinating?
Tables set?
Guests invited?

Sometimes, in the case of rabbis, they're referring to our sermons.

There's a lot to get ready for the holidays. A lot of order to be made from chaos. A lot of arrangements to be made and plans to be created.

But we should all be greeting each other with "are you ready?"

Are we ready to face the New Year having thought deeply about the previous year?
Have we begun to think about where we've been and where we're going?
Is our list of goals and intentions at the forefront of our minds?
Do we have the right frame of mind with which to begin the holy days?

Are we ready?

The holidays will come regardless of our preparation.

But each year I tell the story of the carwash. There are two kinds. The first is the kind where you drive your car in, and the carwash cleans only the outside. When you drive away, your car is squeaky clean. But then you look around and see that there are still cookie crumbs and smudges and a whole bunch of miscellaneous things still left behind stuck to the rug. The other kind of carwash is the one where they open up the doors, and vacuum and dust and scrub the inside and the outside. When you drive away from that carwash, you really feel as though you did something to change your outlook.

When we are ready for the holidays, when we have done the work and the preparation...we open ourselves up. We invite the holidays to help us sweep out the crumbs. Being ready allows us to open ourselves up to the possibilities of growth and change...not just coasting along, waiting for it to happen.

So...are you ready?

The Jewish month of Elul, which precedes the High Holy Days, is traditionally a time of renewal and reflection. It offers a chance for spiritual preparation for the Days of Awe. It is traditional to begin one’s preparation for the High Holy Days during this month with the Selichot, the prayers of forgiveness. We look to begin the year with a clean slate, starting anew, refreshed. All month, along with others, I'll be blogging a thought or two for each day to help with the month of preparation... I will be blogging here, and sharing #Elulgram photos on the same themes at imabima.tumblr.com. Follow me on twitter @imabima for all the #BlogElul posts, not only mine but others' as well! 

Leave your blog Elul post in the linky below!

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

#blogElul 25: Forgiveness


Yesterday was September 11.
Our nation is not usually focused on forgiveness on this day.
We talk about remembrance. About honor. About patriotism and pride.
Can we, should we, also talk about forgiveness?



The Jewish month of Elul, which precedes the High Holy Days, is traditionally a time of renewal and reflection. It offers a chance for spiritual preparation for the Days of Awe. It is traditional to begin one’s preparation for the High Holy Days during this month with the Selichot, the prayers of forgiveness. We look to begin the year with a clean slate, starting anew, refreshed. All month, along with others, I'll be blogging a thought or two for each day to help with the month of preparation... I will be blogging here, and sharing #Elulgram photos on the same themes at imabima.tumblr.com. Follow me on twitter @imabima for all the #BlogElul posts, not only mine but others' as well! 

 Leave your blog Elul post in the linky below!

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

#BlogElul 24: Giving


I had planned to write this post about tzedakah, the Jewish value of giving charity.

But then I read a quote this week that said "Forgiving is for giving - it is a gift you give to yourself."

And I started to think about that. We spend so much time during our High Holy Day preparation looking inward and accounting our own sins and deeds. And we are required to make amends and say that we are sorry for the things we have done badly in the past year. But I think that we spend less time on how to  actually grant that forgiveness. Now, I realize that tomorrow's topic is forgiveness, but bear with me.

Is forgiveness actually a gift that we give to ourselves? Is it really more true that the one granting the forgiveness gains much more than the one who is begging it?

Forgiveness is, perhaps, the ultimate in giving - it is a gift to ourselves. We are giving ourselves the opportunity to live free of a grudge. We are giving ourselves the gift of a clean slate. We are giving ourselves the gift of letting go of the past, and the gift of creating a new and different future, one in which we have control over our own ability to let others define who we are and how we behave.

When assigning the themes of teshuvah and tzedakah, repentance and holy giving, to the High Holy Days, perhaps our wise ancestors were actually teaching us something about the nature of forgiveness - that in fact, the very act of granting forgiveness is the holiest act of giving...to ourselves.

The Jewish month of Elul, which precedes the High Holy Days, is traditionally a time of renewal and reflection. It offers a chance for spiritual preparation for the Days of Awe. It is traditional to begin one’s preparation for the High Holy Days during this month with the Selichot, the prayers of forgiveness. We look to begin the year with a clean slate, starting anew, refreshed. All month, along with others, I'll be blogging a thought or two for each day to help with the month of preparation... I will be blogging here, and sharing #Elulgram photos on the same themes at imabima.tumblr.com. Follow me on twitter @imabima for all the #BlogElul posts, not only mine but others' as well! 

Leave your blog Elul post in the linky below!

Monday, September 10, 2012

#BlogElul 23: Awakening {Guest Post}

I decided that I would invite friends to do a "guest post" here on Ima on and off the Bima during BlogElul. There were quite a few motivations - 1) writing daily posts on two blogs - whew! 2) encouraging non-bloggers or new bloggers to "get out there" and just do it and 3) to hear from other people! So I hope you enjoy them - there are a number of guest posts coming up in the next two weeks! Yay!

Today's guest post comes from Anita Silvert. Anita is a free-lance Jewish community educator, writer, and blogger. Her love of Jewish learning is met only by her passion for all things Broadway, where life wisdom also resides. Anita and I worked together at OSRUI and I am so happy to welcome her here today!

 I offer thanks to You,
living and eternal Ruler

You have mercifully restored my soul within me;
Your faithfulness is great.


Reciting this prayer is an every-morning practice by many Jews; it is said upon waking up in the morning.  What happens when we wake up?   It is a moment of transition.  We move from one realm to another.  Are we our full selves in either state?  Perhaps it’s the combination of the two that makes us whole.  Perhaps it is when our sleeping state, where our dreams are most in control, and our wakened state, when our minds and bodies take over, is when our soul is at its most alive.  It’s not only restored, but it is restorative.

Our soul is the bridge between sleep and awake.  It is ever-present, yet how often are we aware of it?  How often do we awaken to its presence, its passion, and its power?   But why are we thankful for God’s faithfulness at that moment, and not our own?  Surely it takes faith to be able to lay down and sleep, believing we’ll be waking up again.  

This month of Elul is like we’re setting the alarm clock, getting used to it before starting school again.  The shofar blows every morning to get us used to waking up (not on Shabbat – we get to “sleep in!”) so that by the time we come to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we are ready.  We are ready to be aware of our wakened state.  We’re aware of our failings when we’re awake.  We know where we’ve missed the mark, and we can rededicate ourselves to getting closer next time.  We are awake and ready to ask for forgiveness, even if it isn’t clear we’ll receive it.  

In Elul, we are in transition between the two states of being – sleep, or complacency and wakefulness and awareness of our vulnerability and frailty.  We ask over and over for God’s faith in us to make us worth the effort to restore that soul within us.  


The Jewish month of Elul, which precedes the High Holy Days, is traditionally a time of renewal and reflection. It offers a chance for spiritual preparation for the Days of Awe. It is traditional to begin one’s preparation for the High Holy Days during this month with the Selichot, the prayers of forgiveness. We look to begin the year with a clean slate, starting anew, refreshed. All month, along with others, I'll be blogging a thought or two for each day to help with the month of preparation... I will be blogging here, and sharing #Elulgram photos on the same themes at imabima.tumblr.com. Follow me on twitter @imabima for all the #BlogElul posts, not only mine but others' as well! 

Leave your blog Elul post in the linky below!

Saturday, September 8, 2012

#BlogElul 21: Hearing {Guest Post}

I decided that I would invite friends to do a "guest post" here on Ima on and off the Bima during BlogElul. There were quite a few motivations - 1) writing daily posts on two blogs - whew! 2) encouraging non-bloggers or new bloggers to "get out there" and just do it and 3) to hear from other people! So I hope you enjoy them - there are a number of guest posts coming up in the next two weeks! Yay!

Today's post is from Wendy Grinberg. She likes experimenting with technology and Jewish education and is working on a new podcast (stay tuned!). She is a freelance writer and Jewish education consultant and serves as clinical faculty at HUC-JIR. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and two kids.(And, this is the first time that I've ever included an audio file here on my blog. I'm loving the challenges that my friends are placing before me. Did it work?)

--

There is also another important element in the Shema as a meditation, and this concerns the actual spelling of the word. … The shin has the sound of s or sh, and hence, of all the letters in the alphabet, it has the sound closest to white noise. ... The opposite of white noise is pure harmonic sound. This is a hum.... This is the sound of the mem. … True listening involves a transition from normal “shin” consciousness to meditative “mem” consciousness.” --Aryeh Kaplan, Jewish Meditation

A Meditation on Hearing
By Wendy Grinberg

Hear, Israel!

“Can you hear me now?”
This year, I will hear you.
This year, I will hear myself think.

“We will do and we will hear.”
This year, we will do and hear.

Hineini. Here I am. Hear: I am.
Here I am, hearing.
Hear! I am here-ing.
Here, I am hearing.

Praised are You, God, who makes us holy by commanding us to hear.

Now, hear this...

The Jewish month of Elul, which precedes the High Holy Days, is traditionally a time of renewal and reflection. It offers a chance for spiritual preparation for the Days of Awe. It is traditional to begin one’s preparation for the High Holy Days during this month with the Selichot, the prayers of forgiveness. We look to begin the year with a clean slate, starting anew, refreshed. All month, along with others, I'll be blogging a thought or two for each day to help with the month of preparation... I will be blogging here, and sharing #Elulgram photos on the same themes at imabima.tumblr.com. Follow me on twitter @imabima for all the #BlogElul posts, not only mine but others' as well! 

Leave your blog Elul post in the linky below!

Friday, September 7, 2012

#BlogElul 20: Endings {Guest Post}

I decided that I would invite friends to do a "guest post" here on Ima on and off the Bima during BlogElul. There were quite a few motivations - 1) writing daily posts on two blogs - whew! 2) encouraging non-bloggers or new bloggers to "get out there" and just do it and 3) to hear from other people! So I hope you enjoy them - there are a number of guest posts coming up in the next two weeks! Yay!

Today's guest post comes from Rabbi Wendi Geffen. Wendi is a rabbi at North Shore Congregation Israel in suburban Chicago, a mom, wife, and pescatarian, among other things. Her blog - PrihaGeffen is at www.rabbigeffen.blogspot.com. I'm so happy to welcome her beautiful writing here today! 
\
Anticipating Rosh Hashanah: Beginnings and Endings?

If this is when it all begins, when does it end?

Breishit bara Elohim et haShamayim v’et ha’Aretz.
1 verse, 7 words, 28 letters, and 20 vowels.
All add up to what you know as “The Beginning.”
The very first sentence of the Torah:
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
Which tells us that all of it,
And each of us,
started from the moment God began to create.

But look a little closer,
and you will see
that what you think you see,
you don’t.  
What you think it says,
it doesn’t.

You will have to look really close -
because the place of this mis-Understanding  isn’t big.  
It is, in fact,
very,
very
small.

You won’t find it in book,
or a parasha,
or a chapter,
or a verse,
or a word,
or even in a letter.  

You’ll find it in two small dots instead of one straight line –
under the first letter
of the first word
in the first verse
of the first chapter
of the first Parasha
in the first book of the Torah.
And it changes EVERYTHING.

Ba- in the, B’ - in

Not “Ba-reishit” – “in THE beginning”
but
B’reishit” – in beginning.

See it as it is:
In beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  

“The” is not a lot to miss – or is it?
In beginning…not the beginning.
Because:
beginning isn’t confined
to a moment
in space or time.

Midrash teaches that God had been beginning for a long time,
long before chapter 1, verse 1
that is.
So what you thought was the beginning
is really

the middle.

There was no real start –
only a middle.
Or better,
one continuous beginning.
Starting and stopping,
creating and destroying,
succeeding and failing,
over and over again
until arriving at this world we know.

So what then about an end?
That’s just it.
There isn’t one.

Because the ending is just like the beginning.
It’s all the middle.

Breishit, Shmot, Vayikra, Bamidbar, Dvarim…
Next page?
Just start over.  
Cycles and circles,
spiraling on top of themselves each and every year.
To teach us that
Each and every day,
We get the chance to begin the world

again,
anew.

Everything is a second chance.
Even when you think it’s the first,
It isn’t.

And when you think your work is done,
It’s not.


The Jewish month of Elul, which precedes the High Holy Days, is traditionally a time of renewal and reflection. It offers a chance for spiritual preparation for the Days of Awe. It is traditional to begin one’s preparation for the High Holy Days during this month with the Selichot, the prayers of forgiveness. We look to begin the year with a clean slate, starting anew, refreshed. All month, along with others, I'll be blogging a thought or two for each day to help with the month of preparation... I will be blogging here, and sharing #Elulgram photos on the same themes at imabima.tumblr.com. Follow me on twitter @imabima for all the #BlogElul posts, not only mine but others' as well! 

Leave your blog Elul post in the linky below!

Thursday, September 6, 2012

#BlogElul 19: Beginnings {Guest Post}

I decided that I would invite friends to do a "guest post" here on Ima on and off the Bima during BlogElul. There were quite a few motivations - 1) writing daily posts on two blogs - whew! 2) encouraging non-bloggers or new bloggers to "get out there" and just do it and 3) to hear from other people! So I hope you enjoy them - there are a number of guest posts coming up in the next two weeks! Yay!

Today's post comes from Rabbi Dan Plotkin. Dan is one of my oldest and dearest friends, we have known each other since we were babies! (We are also step-fourth-cousins-in-law or something like that. Aren't we all related!?) He is the director of education at a congregation in Columbia, MD. He is married to the wonderful Rachel and they have two adorable little boys. Welcome, Dan!

Elul is an end.  It is the end of the Jewish year, it is the end of the summer, it is the end of our sacred cycle of our holy days.  But if it were only an end, there would be little meaning to it.  The great meaning of this month and this season comes from the fact that it is time to prepare for a new beginning.  We take this time for Heshbon Nefesh, our self-accounting, but the purpose is not to simply wrap up last year in a pretty (or not so pretty) little bow as if it were our taxes or a annual family album.  The purpose of our Heshbon Nefesh is to prepare for our new beginning on Rosh HaShanah.  We consider ways to right those things in our life that are wrong and to build on all the good we have done.

The fall is often seen as a time of ending, especially for those of us in more northern climates.  But we see how many beginnings there are as well.   A new school year offers the promise of renewed learning for our children and hopefully for ourselves as well; a new football season gives us hope that maybe, just maybe this will be our team’s year (offer void in Minnesota); this new year for us as Jews allows us that same new beginning.  

Elul is a chance to prepare to begin again in all our relationships.  In our relationship with others, we can apologize for wrongs we have done and forgive those done to us (or even apologize for failing to forgive).  With those closest to us we have the opportunity to renew our commitment to those relationships and be the best spouse, parent, sibling, child or friend that we can be.  As we turn our thoughts toward the sacred meaning of the upcoming days, we can consider how to begin again with our relationship with God through finding mizvot that speak to our hearts and committing ourselves anew.

More than any other relationship, we can begin again with ourselves.  Self-forgiveness is often the toughest.  But as we begin a new cycle of our year we can let go of those self-resentments, the regrets for things done or for that which we did not do but should have done.  When we pledge ourselves to begin anew with our own actions and attitudes that is something over which we can be in full control.  We can say no to the negative habits of the past and embrace positive patterns and habits moving forward.

Elul is our time to be ready for a new beginning.  It is an amazing gift from God that this new beginning comes to us each year.  May each of us use this gift to its fullest potential so that all of our new beginnings will lead to amazing ends.

The Jewish month of Elul, which precedes the High Holy Days, is traditionally a time of renewal and reflection. It offers a chance for spiritual preparation for the Days of Awe. It is traditional to begin one’s preparation for the High Holy Days during this month with the Selichot, the prayers of forgiveness. We look to begin the year with a clean slate, starting anew, refreshed. All month, along with others, I'll be blogging a thought or two for each day to help with the month of preparation... I will be blogging here, and sharing #Elulgram photos on the same themes at imabima.tumblr.com. Follow me on twitter @imabima for all the #BlogElul posts, not only mine but others' as well! 

Leave your blog Elul post in the linky below!

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

#BlogElul 18: Love


9 Things I Love About Elul - something of a re-post from 2007

1. I love the anticipation!

2. My favorite service of the whole year is Selichot, the Saturday evening before Rosh HaShanah when we say penitential prayers late at night. It's beautiful and meditative and I just love it.

3. I think it's so cool that the initials of the phrase "ani l'dodi v'dodi li" (I am my beloved and my beloved is mine) are the letters that spell the word Elul. It's such a beautiful metaphor for the love affair between Israel and God. Before we go into the "shock and awe" of the holidays, we focus on love.

4. I love the planning. I don't really "make yontif" but I love thinking about menu items, what to wear, how it will go, etc.

5. I enjoy anticipating seeing the people who really do only show up at the synagogue once a year. Sometimes it's young couples that I've married, or older people who don't come around much...I look forward to seeing their faces in the seats!

6. The Haftarot are great during this month.

7. Everyone understands when I explain what I do and that I'm very busy this time of year. It's been described to me once as my "tax season." Which I think is great -- taxing our souls!

8. I like knowing that all over the world, Jews are counting down the days....
 
9. #BlogElul has given me a new way to think about preparation. I am really loving #Elulgram, too, thinking of visual ways to represent the themes of the month. I love reading all the amazing interpretations put forth by my colleagues and friends.
 
What do you love about Elul?

The Jewish month of Elul, which precedes the High Holy Days, is traditionally a time of renewal and reflection. It offers a chance for spiritual preparation for the Days of Awe. It is traditional to begin one’s preparation for the High Holy Days during this month with the Selichot, the prayers of forgiveness. We look to begin the year with a clean slate, starting anew, refreshed. All month, along with others, I'll be blogging a thought or two for each day to help with the month of preparation... I will be blogging here, and sharing #Elulgram photos on the same themes at imabima.tumblr.com. Follow me on twitter @imabima for all the #BlogElul posts, not only mine but others' as well! 

Leave your blog Elul post in the linky below!

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

#BlogElul 17: Inspiration {Guest Post}

I decided that I would invite friends to do a "guest post" here on Ima on and off the Bima during BlogElul. There were quite a few motivations - 1) writing daily posts on two blogs - whew! 2) encouraging non-bloggers or new bloggers to "get out there" and just do it and 3) to hear from other people! So I hope you enjoy them - there are a number of guest posts coming up in the next two weeks! Yay!

Today's guest post comes from Caroline Musin Berkowitz, and she describes herself as "a voracious reader, a Jewish educator, and a joyously lazy cook." You can peek inside her brain as she tweets @CarolineEr. (And she posts yummy looking stuff to Pinterest, too!)

When I'm preparing for an upcoming holiday, many things come to mind: menu, guests, whether clothing needs to be dry cleaned. (Just kidding. I never think about dry cleaning until the last minute, usually when it's too late.) Basically, my mind is focused on standard, run-of-the-mill logistics.

Unfortunately, the mental preparations seem to get short shrift. What are the themes of the holiday? What are the ritual and spiritual foci? How do we take time to wrap our heads around the intangible work that must be done in order to experience the holiday in the fullest way?

It's hard to do a personal accounting. It's hard to ask others for forgiveness. It's hard to forgive ourselves and pledge to do better. Listening to the shofar can shock us if we're not ready, or it can awaken us, or if we're really, really lucky, it can be the call to action we've been anticipating for a few weeks already.

For me, #BlogElul and #ElulGram provide a wonderful method for creating that anticipation in my daily life. For the past two weeks, I've read blog posts and smiled over pictures as others have been inspired to share their unique takes on the daily themes, and I've jumped in with my own thoughts and pictures, too. Sometimes, those themes align easily with life (as in the wedding I attended the day before "blessing," and the person who snapped a pic of her boarding pass on the day designated for "return." But often, as in life, we are challenged to work harder to make those connections.

Today -- and throughout this month -- I am inspired. Thank you for being part of my journey toward Rosh Hashanah.

The Jewish month of Elul, which precedes the High Holy Days, is traditionally a time of renewal and reflection. It offers a chance for spiritual preparation for the Days of Awe. It is traditional to begin one’s preparation for the High Holy Days during this month with the Selichot, the prayers of forgiveness. We look to begin the year with a clean slate, starting anew, refreshed. All month, along with others, I'll be blogging a thought or two for each day to help with the month of preparation... I will be blogging here, and sharing #Elulgram photos on the same themes at imabima.tumblr.com. Follow me on twitter @imabima for all the #BlogElul posts, not only mine but others' as well! 

Leave your blog Elul post in the linky below!

Monday, September 3, 2012

#BlogElul 16: Wonder {Guest Post}

I decided that I would invite friends to do a "guest post" here on Ima on and off the Bima during BlogElul. There were quite a few motivations - 1) writing daily posts on two blogs - whew! 2) encouraging non-bloggers or new bloggers to "get out there" and just do it and 3) to hear from other people! So I hope you enjoy them - there are a number of guest posts coming up in the next two weeks! Yay!

Today's guest post comes from Rabbi Kari Tuling, who serves as the rabbi of Temple Beth Israel in Plattsburgh, New York and is finishing a PhD in Jewish Thought. You can follow her theological blog, “To Whom it May Concern,” at ravkari.wordpress.com. On a totally personal note, Kari and I were chevruta (study partners) in rabbinical school and she is one of my favorite people. Her boychick, Ben, and my son David were born a few months apart, and they were early BFF's, just like their mamas. Kari was one of the signers of my ketubah! Oh, and she's kinda brilliant. (...and it's a first for my blog - I don't think there's ever been a footnote before!)

[This entry has been cross-posted on “Kol Isha: Reform Women Rabbis Speak Out!” at womensrabbinicnetwork.wordpress.com]

It has happened to me more than once in my lifetime that a person will come to me and tell me something about what will happen next. It is usually a very specific bit of career advice from someone I know but not well; it is normally not someone I would seek out for counsel. And every time it is the same thing: the person will see me out at a social gathering – often at a gathering in which it was not a given that I would be there! – and announce to me ‘I have a message for you,’ as if they had just listened to a voice mail addressed specifically to me.

When that happens, I know to listen: the person will invariably tell me something that I need to know about what will happen next.

The most recent example occurred right as I started my job search last fall. At a Halloween party, an acquaintance came up and told me the following: ‘You will leave here; there is a move in your future. It will be some place – like Texas – that you’ve never considered before.”

“Texas?” I ask, wondering. “Why Texas?” As a matter of fact, I do have a list of ‘places where I would not want to live’ in my head, and the plains of Texas are high on that list. As far as I am concerned, they call it ‘plain’ for a reason.

She shakes her head: “It’s not Texas specifically; it could be Texas or it could be somewhere else; I can’t tell you where exactly. But it’s a part of the world that you have never considered before. They need you and you need them. They need to hear what you have to say, and you need to have them hear it. You will both benefit.”

Okay.

At that point in the process, I had not even mapped out what precisely I wanted to do. So I took her comments under advisement.

A month (two months?) later, I had come to the (somewhat surprising) conclusion that I really wanted to go back to congregational work. I love academics, of course, but I realized that I missed that element of transcendence that hovers over the work of a rabbi.

So I called the Director of Placement and told him that I was thinking of returning to congregational work. After he quizzed me about my general background and interests, his first question regarding my search was: “Have you ever considered living in Texas?”

Okay.

“Texas is fine;” I tell him, “I am open to living in any location.”

As it happened, the place where I went to work was not Texas; it turned out to be a small congregation in a college town in northern New York.

And I love it.

I cannot give you a good reason why this phenomenon takes place; I simply cannot explain it. I can tell you that the Bible records several instances of a person – ‘ish’ – who appears mid-narrative with instructions as to what will happen next. Joseph, for example, finds his brothers after encountering such a person.

The person’s instruction is not necessarily one that makes the road smooth; rather, it is an announcement of what needs to happen next. And it has happened enough times now that I heed its call.

How does this relate to the month of Elul, and the concept of wonder?

Our perception of the world involves the interplay of presence and absence, of articulate speech and of silent wonder. But we do not capture its fullness; in truth, we simply cannot. As Abraham Joshua Heschel writes:

We are able to exploit, to label things with well-trimmed words; but when ceasing to subject them to our purposes and to impose on them the forms of our intellect, we are stunned and incapable of saying what things are in themselves; it is an experience of being unable to experience something we face: too great to be perceived.[1]

I am, of course, an academic as well as a rabbi; I am nearly finished with a PhD; I value highly the work of the intellect. But, as Heschel reminds us, this emphasis on our capacity to name and categorize might at times push us away from apprehending the truth.

There are times when we best encounter meaning when we drop our categories and our names and simply abandon ourselves to wonder.

So, in this month of Elul, stop for a moment and listen; let an ish come and tell you what happens next. Maybe, the ish will tell you, it is time to let go, to forgive, and to move on. That is usually – maybe even always – the larger message to grasp, even as it is conveyed in these small, concrete steps: ‘you will leave here; there is a move in your future. It will be someplace you’ve not considered before.’

As I said: I cannot tell you why it happens, any of it; I can only stand in wonder.

[1] Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (New York: The Noonday Press, 1994), p. 36.

The Jewish month of Elul, which precedes the High Holy Days, is traditionally a time of renewal and reflection. It offers a chance for spiritual preparation for the Days of Awe. It is traditional to begin one’s preparation for the High Holy Days during this month with the Selichot, the prayers of forgiveness. We look to begin the year with a clean slate, starting anew, refreshed. All month, along with others, I'll be blogging a thought or two for each day to help with the month of preparation... I will be blogging here, and sharing #Elulgram photos on the same themes at imabima.tumblr.com. Follow me on twitter @imabima for all the #BlogElul posts, not only mine but others' as well! 

Leave your blog Elul post in the linky below!