tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75426786838974565382024-03-13T07:12:18.483-07:00Torah GeekUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-64330947487789928982018-09-24T15:14:00.000-07:002018-09-24T15:14:18.413-07:00Keep, Toss, Repair: Yom Kippur as a Day of Spiritual Cleaning<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Altar Smoke"<br />by Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik<br /><br /> </td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I have a confession: I am terrible at keeping my car clean. Every so often I pull the car out of the garage and give it a thorough cleaning. Like any good Californian, I keep an emergency kit in my car in case of earthquake or fire — but I am really bad about cleaning and updating it. During my most recent cleaning I discovered that my emergency kit still contained diapers and long-dried-out baby wipes — my children are now 15, 17 and 19 years old. It seems that the only emergency I was equipped for was one that included time travel. I enjoy having a clean car, but I am not a big fan of doing the actual cleaning. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Altar Flame"<br />by Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">However, cleaning is what today is all about. Yom Kippur does not actually mean “Day of Atonement.” We often translate it that way: “yom” as day and “ki-PUR” as atonement… or if we are trying to be clever as a “Day of At-One-Ment” — but that’s not really what it means.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In the Torah the word “ka-PER” is a verb and it means to clean, to purge or to purify. Yom HaKippurim — what this day is called in the Torah — means a Day of Purifications, or a Day of Many Cleanings.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In the Torah, the purpose of Yom Hakippurim is to <i>ka-PER — </i>to clean and purify both the physical space in the Temple and the community. Our ancient ancestors believed that over the course of the year the transgressions of the community would build up and contaminate not only the holy space, but the items in it as well: the ark, the curtain, the sacred objects. Intentional as well as accidental transgressions were believed to defile the Temple in the same way that dirt and dust build up. Our ancestors believed that the Temple was the place where God dwelled, and so it was vital to decontaminate the space to make room for God. (1)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If we look in Leviticus where the rituals for Yom Kippur in Biblical times are described, we are told of three cleaning rituals that make up Yom HaKippurim: the physical cleaning and purification of the Holy of Holies (the inner sanctum of the Temple) that was done by the priests, the removing of sin from the community through the scapegoat, and the purification of the people through fasting and refraining from regular work. These three tasks are the rituals and cleanings that create a pure place for God to dwell.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We are an ancient, ancient people, and while our rituals for Yom Kippur are nothing like what is described in Leviticus, we still believe that our ancient practices have meaning and relevance for us today. So if we are no longer cleaning out the Temple, how can we understand these rituals today? Since the destruction of the Temple, all Judaism is Reform Judaism, and Jews have replaced animal sacrifices with words of prayer… which brings us to our worship today, filled with prayer and song.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But we still recognize this desire to free ourselves and our community from sin; to spiritually clean the detritus from our souls and to wash away our wrongdoing. Today, the only one of the three <i>kippurim</i> that we still do as described in the Torah is purification through fasting and refraining from work. In ancient times, most of the rituals were performed by priests on behalf of the people, but fasting and not working was the part of the ritual that individuals were responsible for and this is the method they used to ka-PER, to purify, themselves. We often think that fasting and self denial — not wearing leather shoes, avoiding bathing or wearing perfume, and abstaining from intimate relations on Yom Kippur — is a punishment of sorts and how we atone for our sins, but I suggest to you that this is not about self-affliction. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Dr. David Ariel teaches that these are the same rituals of purification that the Israelites performed in order to prepare to receive Torah at Mount Sinai. He writes, “It is as if someone catalogued the specific actions that must take place in preparation for hearing God directly.” Ariel writes that rather than seeing these prohibitions as rituals of repentance, guilt, or self-affliction, we should see them as mystical rituals of preparation for hearing the Divine voice. “And,” he continues, “seen in this light, these rituals are pathways to a joyful outcome.” (2) We can reframe our fast so that it is not a punishment, but instead a way for us to make a spiritual connection. We fast, in whatever way we are able, because this is how we focus ourselves to be ready to receive Torah; we choose to take our focus off our bodies and put it on our spiritual needs. We remind ourselves that we have the self-control and self-discipline to choose not to give in to every craving. It’s not that we don’t feel that desire; it is that we can make choices based on our values (3) — and if we can do it today, we can continue to use our willpower all year long. Our self-denial is not about punishing ourselves; we are opening ourselves up to hearing the still small voice within us, guiding us to do better.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The other cleanings for Yom Kippur were specific to the Temple in ancient Jerusalem and were performed by the priests. The cleaning of the Holy of Holies was not just about sweeping up dirt and ash and repairing damaged ritual objects; there was also a spiritual cleaning to decontaminate the Temple and its objects from ritual impurity. Part of the way the priests cleaned the ancient Temple was by sprinkling blood from specific sacrifices seven times on the curtain and on the altar. This is not anything remotely like what we would consider cleaning today, in fact it is the opposite and it is not as easy to see how this applies to our lives and our worship here today.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Rabbi Edward Greenstein suggests that the ancient notion of purifying the Holy of Holies is worth keeping in mind. On Yom Kippur we must clean <i>our own</i> “Holy of Holies” — our innermost heart. We must scrutinize our own lives carefully so that we do not allow unwanted behavior to become so rigid that it will be too difficult to undo. We must repair injured relationships before they become permanently damaged. (4) We must undo our bad habits before we become set in our ways. We are doing a different kind of spiritual cleaning than our ancestors did, but it is just as important.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Jewish model for this is called a “cheshbon nefesh” — an accounting of our souls — but maybe it is easier to think of this kind of spiritual housecleaning in the same terms that professional organizers suggest we use to clean our closets or garages: take everything out of your car or your closet, evaluate each item, and sort them into three categories: the things we want to get rid of, the things that need repair, and the things we want to keep. In ancient times on Yom Kippur the High Priest would lay hands on a goat and place all the sins of the community on the goat’s head and then send it out into the wilderness, away from the community, ridding us of our sins. This is where we get the concept of the scapegoat, and, like that ancient goat sent to the wilderness, we should toss out our sins.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We need to get rid of our bad habits and take out our mental garbage. We need to let go of old resentments and hurts. We need to banish our meanness, cruelty and misplaced anger. We need to let unhealthy relationships go. We need to throw out the fears that hold us back. Letting go is not always easy; we tend to cling to our resentments. But holding on to resentment and grudges often only hurts yourself. We need to let go of the things that are no longer serving us, like unnecessary guilt. Rabbis ancient and modern have understood that it is for our own sake that we should do so. Rabbi Rami Shapiro teaches that after you have done t’shuvah, after you have used the feeling of guilt as a catalyst to make amends and change, on Yom Kippur you let it go. Shapiro also explains how to do this: “The next time the memory arises and threatens to overwhelm you with guilt, don’t give yourself over to the drama. Simply remind yourself that Yes, I did that. I won’t do it again.” (5) This is part of the forgiveness on Yom Kippur: forgiving ourselves, and letting go of the things that are holding us back from growth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">T’shuvah can help us repair damaged relationships, but what about the other kinds of self-repair that we need to make? You probably already know some of the things about yourself you want to change — the things you know could fix and do better — but our self-reflection on Yom Kippur demands that we look deeper, that we recognize the things that are broken so we can fix them. The vidui, the confessionals that we repeat over and over today, list our sins and help us acknowledge that we all have work to do. Dr. Susan David, author of <i>Emotional Agility, </i>teaches that “One of the great paradoxes of human experience is that we can’t change ourselves or our circumstances until we accept what exists right now. Acceptance is a prerequisite for change.” (6) Our liturgy helps us to bring our broken parts into the light and is like a to-do list of what we need to repair to become whole again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Some of these sins are the worst things about us and it is painful to acknowledge that we have done them. There is an anonymity in group confession that makes it easier for us to admit that we are guilty of some of the terrible sins on that list. We have to acknowledge that what we have done wrong, so that we can change. We have to admit the ways we are broken so we can fix ourselves. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">There is a Japanese practice called kintsugi, which involves repairing broken pottery with gold, so that the repairs add to the beauty of the original work; the newly-repaired piece is considered even more beautiful than the pristine original. There is grace and beauty in the repairs; you can see the care in reconnecting the pieces and in filling in the inevitable missing shards with precious metal. We have all missed the mark, but on this day, we repair our souls, we open our eyes to see the purity of our souls; and we find that the repairs only add to our beauty.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And finally, as we engage in ka-PER we need to recognize what to keep. There is a midrash which teaches that someday in the future, even if we no longer have need for any other prayers, our prayers of gratitude will never cease. (7) From this we learn that it is just as important to remember the things we got right this year as it is to list the things we got wrong. How do we know what to keep? Think about the things that you are grateful for, the things that fill your heart with joy. The family and friends who support you and the people who you want to thank just for being in your life. Just as when we clean, we find things we might have thought we lost — we can rediscover our passion, our energy, our sense of wonder. We can remember the old friends we want to reconnect with. We can recover the parts of our younger selves that we miss and thought were buried under the day-to-day detritus. Now is the time to remember the best parts of ourselves and to let our best qualities shine. We can also do the same for our loved ones, reminding ourselves of the things that made us fall in love with our spouses in the first place and letting ourselves feel that “new love” feeling again, seeing their best selves that have also been buried under the day-to-day of errands and chores and work. We can also do the same for our friends — remembering why we became friends to begin with and we can look for the best in our children. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">You should hold on to the things that matter — the values that you continue to hold dear. If you are not sure what those are, Dr. David suggests, “answer a single question each night before bed: ‘As I look back on today, what did I do that was actually worth my time?’ This isn’t about what you liked or didn’t like doing on a particular day; it’s about what you found to be valuable.” (8) Now is the time to clarify our values are make them a priority.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We should hang on to our compassion, our ability to see the good in others and our sense of humor. You should hang on to the hard work you have done to be a better person this year than last. Think of all the good you have done in the past year, all the acts of generosity, all the time you offered love and support, all the times you treated others with care and respect, honored your commitments and kept your promises, all the ways you cared for the earth, forgave others, fed the hungry, took care of your health, encouraged others, and all the times you acted with honesty and integrity. (9) Part of the work you should be doing today is to remember all of the good — all of the things you got right, and all of the times you hit the mark you were aiming for — so you can continue to do it all year long.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We should not end this day hungry and defeated and weighed down by all of the times we missed the mark in the past year. Yom Kippur is a good day to sort our priorities and to decide what to keep, what to toss and what to repair; to let the power of this day wash us clean, so we end this long day with the blowing of the shofar, refreshed and ready to change. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Our tradition sees this kind of intense spiritual cleaning as a kind of heart transplant. Ezekiel teaches that God says, “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean: I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness. And I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit into you: I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh.” (10)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Today we confess; we open our hearts to the pain of our past actions and we begin to heal. We clear out the things that are dragging us down, and we repair the things that need repair and we reconnect with our most cherished values. And it is as if we can become new and whole again. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In the Talmud, Rabbi Simeon Ben Gamaliel wrote that “Yom Kippur is the most joyous day of the year because it is a day of forgiveness and pardon.” Yom Kippur gives us each a fresh start, and Rabbi Gamaliel saw the joy and the relief in starting over, in letting go of the past and emerging fresh and clean by the end of this long day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May this Yom Kippur be a day filled with the joy of pardon and renewal. May you let go of the things keeping you in the past. May you fill in all the cracks and empty spaces and see the beauty in the repairs. May you rediscover your favorite things about yourself and your loved ones. May we all find the joy that is at the center of this day of cleaning – and may we emerge from it refreshed and ready for the year ahead.</span></div>
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<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 6px;"><a href="http://thetorah.com/yom-ha-kippurim-the-biblical-significance/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">http://thetorah.com/yom-ha-kippurim-the-biblical-significance/</span></a></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 6px;"><a href="https://www.ariellearning.com/the-mystic-drama-of-yom-kippur/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">https://www.ariellearning.com/the-mystic-drama-of-yom-kippur/</span></a></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 6px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">David, Susan. <i>Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life</i> (p. 80). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.</span></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 6px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Kol Haneshamah</i> p. 19.</span></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 6px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Rami Shapiro - in <i>Mishkan HaNefesh for Yom Kippur,</i> p. 385.</span></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 6px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">David, p. 71.</span></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 6px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Vayikra Rabbah 9:7.</span></li>
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<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 6px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">This list of positives is inspired by <i>Mishkan HaNefesh,</i> p. 313.</span></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 6px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Ezekiel 36:25-26.</span></li>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-2178384279970472692018-09-12T12:22:00.000-07:002018-09-12T12:22:41.688-07:00Unstuck – Rosh Hashanah 5779<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YipeBqbtqFg/W5lfQsnqRoI/AAAAAAAAAwQ/KAMHRW6pCsMHQaYsDvoO7ahKu7RESK_eQCLcBGAs/s1600/isaacb2_thicket.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="474" data-original-width="343" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YipeBqbtqFg/W5lfQsnqRoI/AAAAAAAAAwQ/KAMHRW6pCsMHQaYsDvoO7ahKu7RESK_eQCLcBGAs/s320/isaacb2_thicket.jpg" width="231" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"The Thicket" by <a href="http://www.nicejewishartist.com/" target="_blank">Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik</a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In San Jose, California, there is a small museum set in a beautiful garden; the front of the building is guarded by an army of ram-headed lion sphinxes similar to those found in ancient Thebes. It is the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, and inside there is a replica of an Egyptian tomb which you enter down a dimly-lit flight of faux rock stairs, designed to create the illusion that you are climbing down into an ancient pyramid, not a museum basement.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Life after death was a paramount concern of the ancient Egyptians, and the tomb is a testament to all the measures they determined one could take to ensure a happy afterlife. The ancient Egyptians believed that whatever you depicted in your tomb would come true after your death, so every luxury imaginable was either placed in the tomb or painted on the walls. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The main room of the tomb was painted with a mural of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and depicted what the afterlife of the deceased pharaoh would look like. Each wall portrayed a different part of the afterlife, including the path one would take to cross over into eternity. On the last wall was an image of the dead pharaoh standing in front of a balance scale, with all of his good deeds piled on one side and all of his bad deeds on the other. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I was struck by that imagery. Here in the midst of an Egyptian tomb was a pictorial representation of how we Jews talk about God and judgment on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur! Our liturgy tells us over and over that we are being judged and that just one mitzvah can “tip the scales toward good.” Our own liturgy invites us to conjure the image of a divine scale judging our actions of the past year. At first glance one might think that we share this idea with the ancient Egyptians.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">However, there is one critical difference: the Egyptian vision of the judgment came with a guarantee. The mural depicted many gods overseeing the weighing of deeds, including two key figures: a god waiting to take the pharaoh away to an eternity of luxury, and another — the crocodile god —waiting to gobble up the soul of the deceased if the scale should tip towards bad deeds. The Egyptians wanted to ensure the soul would join the other gods in a peaceful and satisfying afterlife. To make certain of that, at the bottom of the scale was a depiction of yet another god – this one carefully and discreetly adding weights to the side of good deeds, so no matter what the deceased had done in life, the scale would always tip toward good. It was not about what you did in life — it was about knowing the right god to help you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I looked at the picture of a god helping this dead pharaoh cheat his way into a better afterlife and thought that this must be part of the reason why we had to get out of Egypt. This radically different view of death – and life – seems to show that the Jews needed a spiritual rescue as much as a physical one. Jews believe that what you do in life matters. Our focus is on life and how we live it in this world, rather than on what happens after we die.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We spend these Days of Awe aware of the delicate balance between good and wrongdoing. We shift our focus inward and we reflect on our lives and how we can more often make the right choices, do the right thing, and become our best selves. We know that it is our actions and our relationships that make our lives good and worthwhile. No wonder we had to get out of Egypt; fantasizing about the afterlife is no way to live.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In Hebrew, Egypt is called “Mitzrayim” — which means “a narrow place.” A narrow place is a place where you are stuck and it seems all but impossible to get out. A narrow place is where you are closed in, your vision is limited and can’t see the possibilities that are around you. The opposite of that narrow place, our destination, is Israel — which means “struggle.” Growth and change are a struggle, and on Rosh Hashanah we begin the hard work of getting unstuck — of getting out of our narrow places. Our goal is to open ourselves up to our potential and to struggle, to mature, to continue to grow in wisdom and in kindness.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Our prayer together is one of the ways we begin to get unstuck. The Psalmist said, “I cried out to You from a narrow place, and You answered me from an open space.” We call out from that narrow place in our souls, and when we open our hearts in prayer we may find ourselves open to answers we could not see before. The Hebrew word for prayer, l’hitpalel, literally means to judge oneself. The image of God on a throne as judge is a metaphor for the real work of the High Holy Days, when we must look back on the past year and judge ourselves. We talk about God as a judge not because we believe there is a supernatural being accounting for and judging all of our actions, but because this is what we need to be doing for ourselves on Rosh Hashanah. We need to take an honest look at ourselves as we truly are.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This is easier said than done. We don’t often want to acknowledge our flaws or weaknesses or shortcomings. Rabbi David Ellenson teaches that human beings “are most comfortable seeing ourselves as creatures of power, majesty and strength.” (1) He writes that our High Holiday prayerbook reminds us of something we’d rather deny: that we are human; that we are frail and needy and finite. Our prayers force us to confront our true nature because they force us to view ourselves honestly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">When we hide from knowledge of ourselves — when we lie to ourselves — we are hunkering down in that narrow place. The Hebrew word for a lie is “sheker,” with the Hebrew letters shin, kuf and resh — three letters that are all next to each other in the Hebrew aleph-bet. This teaches us that lying is a form of narrow-mindedness — that lying comes from a narrow place, not from our best selves. On the other hand, the Hebrew word for truth is “emet,” with the Hebrew letters aleph, mem and tav — aleph is the first letter in the aleph-bet, mem is in the middle, and tav is the last letter. From this we learn that truth is broad and all-encompassing; truth is open and freeing. (2) When we call out from that narrow place, it is the truth that brings us out into the open space and gives us room to struggle and grow.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">When we get stuck in that narrow place we often can’t see a way out. We develop tunnel vision, and we start to think that the way we have been doing thing is the only way, and we can’t see any other direction to travel. We can get stuck with a negative perspective; we tell ourselves over and over that we can’t, that it is too hard to change, that we are too old, that we will change once we get that promotion or lose five pounds, or after the holidays, or we will change next year. But the longer we stay there, the more the walls seem to close in, and get closer and closer, and soon we are stuck in that narrow place.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Once we are trapped in the narrow place we get used to it. It is easier to look back on the past year and justify our bad choices and we may try to alleviate our guilt by blaming the circumstances, or other people — but when we do this, we are not doing the work of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It is uncomfortable to look at our flaws, and while we may spend most of the year minimizing our faults, on these Days of Awe we need to bring them into the light. It can feel uncomfortable, like we are physically struggling to get out of the narrow place, and we’re scraping up against rock and stone, but it is only by facing that discomfort, recognizing the things about us that do not fit, that we can truly change. During the High Holy Days, we need to broaden our vision and see ourselves clearly in order to move out of that narrow place.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Another way to move out of that narrow place is to reframe how we think about the changes we need to make. Many of us will make some kind of resolutions in this new year; if we are doing the work of the Days of Awe we know that we can do better next year. We can be more loving and less judgmental; we can develop healthier habits; we can spend more of our time doing the things that matter us; we can become more generous and less easy to anger. We know how we want to fill the clean pages in our Book of Life, and this moment, today, Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of the world is a good day to start. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Many of the ways we will want to change involve the words “I have to.” I have to start eating healthier. I have to go to the gym more. I have to be nicer to my co-workers. I have to go to synagogue more. I have to be less judgmental, I have to spend more time with my family. Dr. Susan David, a professor of Psychology at Harvard and the author of <i>Emotional Agility</i> teaches that our “have to” goals become chores. If you are only exercising because you have to, you will look for excuses not to go. It you are only calling relatives out of obligation, how meaningful will your conversations be? “Have to” goals are imposed on us, often by a nagging loved one, or a doctor, or by our own sense of obligation.” (3)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Dr. David teaches that by changing your self-talk from “I have to” to “I want to” you will be more successful with your goals. So instead of, “I have to call my sister more,” one might say “I want to have a good relationship with my sister.” Then when you call her, you are more likely to have that meaningful conversation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Want to” goals reflect our genuine interests and values — our “why.” We pursue “want to” goals because of personal enjoyment, because of the inherent importance of the goal, or because the goal is a part of our core identity. These goals are freely chosen by us, and if you can’t find a “want to” reason for the things you “have to” do, perhaps it is because they do not align with your values, and it is a sign that you need to make a change. (4)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">You can choose to apologize to someone you hurt out of a sense of obligation or social niceties or because Jewish tradition demands it this time of year. Or you can choose to apologize because you care about your relationship, you view t’shuvah as an important quality and you want to grow as a person.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">What do you want to do better this year? Do you want to be kinder? Do you want to make your relationships a priority? Do you want to spend more time making this world a better place? </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Are you here this morning because you have to be? Because someone else insisted that you be here?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">What if you framed it in terms of what you want? Are you here because you want to be with your family? Do you want to connect with your community? Do you want to be a part of the larger Jewish community that is all praying today? Do you want to find joy in prayer and song? Do you want the time and space to reflect and improve? What is your bigger goal? Why do you want to be here? (5)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This requires some self-work to determine what it is you truly want in the new year, and that is part of what we are doing here this morning, and over the next 10 days. We ask ourselves who we want to be; we ask ourselves how we want to spend our time. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Imagine how your life would be different a year from now if you made just one change. Imagine what your life would look like when you are 99 years old if you were to make that one change. What is holding you back? What will it take for you to start? Maybe you need a wake-up call?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Rosh Hashanah and the sound of the shofar should shake us out of our narrow places. It is an alarm that reminds us that now is the time, this day, this moment, when we need to make a change, when we let go of the things from the past year that are holding us back, and open our arms wide to the potential of the new year. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We read this morning how Abraham thinks that sacrificing his son Isaac is the only way to fulfill God’s command, but it turns out that God had another way in mind and shows him the ram tangled in the thicket. Our midrash adds to the story by explaining that the ram kept trying to pull itself free but kept getting tangled up in the bushes and that this is a metaphor for the Jewish people who get caught in their sins and mistakes year after year. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Rabbi Yaffa Epstein teaches that: “It is not simply that the ram was caught by its horns in the thicket, but that the ram was repeatedly getting itself stuck. Just as it managed to free itself, it found its horns stuck in the next thicket. Many times in our lives, we are stuck in some problem or another, and just as we are getting over that problem, just as we are making progress, we find ourselves caught up in another issue, and another. It feels as though we can never change, grow, or move on. The horns of the ram remain stuck when the ram keeps its head down, entangling them again and again. The cry of the shofar however, reminds us to raise our heads; to have faith in our potential to change. Thus, with our heads raised, we will be able to see more clearly, and avoid those pitfalls that allow us to stay stuck.The shofar then, is a wake-up call to us to have faith in our own potential for growth and change.” (6)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The shofar is curvy, not straight — and from that we learn that we, too, need to bend in the new year. We can not hold ourselves stiff and unchanging; we need to be flexible if we are going to grow and wiggle out of that narrow space.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The shape of the shofar goes from narrow to wide — the same direction that it grows from the ram’s head. The shape teaches us that we need to widen our view, that growth should make us more open-hearted to the people we love, more open-minded in the world and more open to change.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This is the wake-up call that it is time to get unstuck, to get out of that narrow space and move towards something better.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We spend these days of awe talking about the Book of Life because we know that our time is limited and that it is up to us to make the most of each moment. We are reminded to live each moment to the fullest and to get our of our narrow places and to live out in the open, open to all the new year might bring.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May you open your heart to love.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May you open your arms to caring. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May you open your eyes to the beauty in the world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May you open your mind to wisdom.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May you be open to all the potential and blessing in every moment of this new year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span>Notes</div>
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<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Rabbi David Ellenson, <i>Mishkan HaNefesh,</i> CCAR Press, p.xxiv</span></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Joel Grishaver, <i>Stories We Pray</i></span></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><a href="https://ideas.ted.com/want-to-help-your-resolutions-stick-make-this-one-word-change/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">https://ideas.ted.com/want-to-help-your-resolutions-stick-make-this-one-word-change/</span></a></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Ibid.</i></span></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Questions inspired by Rabbi Jamie Korngold, <i>The God Upgrade.</i></span></li>
<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Rabbi Yaffa Epstein, Pardes, <span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><a href="https://elmad.pardes.org/2018/08/the-pardes-rosh-hashana-companion/">https://elmad.pardes.org/2018/08/the-pardes-rosh-hashana-companion/</a></span></span></li>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-83358040191354003142018-07-13T17:23:00.000-07:002018-07-13T17:23:00.583-07:00Science, Creation and Paper Midrash at URJ Sci-Tech<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">When Isaac stood up and ripped a page right out of the comic book, he was met with gasps and expressions of horror. But that was the plan — after all, we were explaining to the campers at URJ Six Points Sci Tech West how they were going to destroy comic books to create their own paper midrash.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We spent several days last week with the campers at at the newest URJ Summer Camp - Sci Tech West, talking about Torah and midrash and creation, and teaching them how to use cut-up comic books to make new works of art.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">One of the first things we did with the campers was ask them who their favorite heroes were. We were met with answers ranging from “which universe, Marvel or DC?” to Einstein and Darwin — superheroes of science. We weren’t surprised, because it’s a science camp, after all. That’s one of the reasons we focused on the story of creation for our midrash workshop; it’s often a flashpoint in debates about teaching science in schools, and it was an opportunity to explore how the science of creation and the biblical story of creation can coexist. We were happy to share with these budding scientists the revelation that Jewish thought does not expect them to take the story as written in the Torah literally; even in the middle ages, we taught them, sages like Rashi taught that the story as written in the Torah is not to be taken literally as the order of creation.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TVvZ0OfOyOk/W0kZZrtqsvI/AAAAAAAAAtw/DaICuVmxxYYte9s52nje6dt46sEtVtzpwCLcBGAs/s1600/by-rick-winer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="800" height="213" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TVvZ0OfOyOk/W0kZZrtqsvI/AAAAAAAAAtw/DaICuVmxxYYte9s52nje6dt46sEtVtzpwCLcBGAs/s320/by-rick-winer.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We always say a blessing with workshop participants, to give our actions a Jewish context.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">After learning how to use the knives safely, the campers began to imagine their own midrash about creation; they explored the separation of darkness from light, the celestial bodies, land and water, animals and our place on earth. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And then we asked them to do what many had thought unthinkable: to tear pages out of comic books and to use the images, thought bubbles and heroes from those books to help share their stories and midrash. Some chose to use their favorite hero, some used a mix of heroes — one camper chose to use all images from female superheroes. While there was some cringing and lots of asking “can we really cut that up?”, the results were some beautiful images and interpretations of Breishit.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-40dSiEqCT1s/W0kZrnpsFtI/AAAAAAAAAuA/7K2z-Es_aNMyll2DkTn9Qi3nSymB7X0zACLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_4738.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="636" data-original-width="800" height="254" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-40dSiEqCT1s/W0kZrnpsFtI/AAAAAAAAAuA/7K2z-Es_aNMyll2DkTn9Qi3nSymB7X0zACLcBGAs/s320/IMG_4738.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In this camper's midrash, the fourth day of creation results in the establishment of time.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GBAtjWs7bsk/W0kZrqxT2cI/AAAAAAAAAuE/rT2HL3ZLLwg3I0h-rfaE3MFvIhoEQmWxwCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_E4740.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="621" data-original-width="800" height="248" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GBAtjWs7bsk/W0kZrqxT2cI/AAAAAAAAAuE/rT2HL3ZLLwg3I0h-rfaE3MFvIhoEQmWxwCLcBGAs/s320/IMG_E4740.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The separation of light from darkness: and it was good.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-V5odm-zAIBg/W0kZr-g8CII/AAAAAAAAAuI/BaksBEIkW1Q77zPH9-Cr9TXHrJNtY-R7ACLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_E4743.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="705" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-V5odm-zAIBg/W0kZr-g8CII/AAAAAAAAAuI/BaksBEIkW1Q77zPH9-Cr9TXHrJNtY-R7ACLcBGAs/s320/IMG_E4743.JPG" width="282" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">All of the days of creation are found within the continents and waters of this earth.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NEpXsvHhRU8/W0kZsGgBxgI/AAAAAAAAAuM/1UYdINnVr7AWNEGIrdV8nKvXX94TK4tmACLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_E4750.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="622" data-original-width="800" height="248" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NEpXsvHhRU8/W0kZsGgBxgI/AAAAAAAAAuM/1UYdINnVr7AWNEGIrdV8nKvXX94TK4tmACLcBGAs/s320/IMG_E4750.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">butterfly, symbol of change, created on the fifth day.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V2NnLkvUdAk/W0kZslxYpEI/AAAAAAAAAuQ/tIfmWTmgfyQTHH9dILbtyUi_g6GtMZ3jwCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_E4751.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="649" data-original-width="800" height="259" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V2NnLkvUdAk/W0kZslxYpEI/AAAAAAAAAuQ/tIfmWTmgfyQTHH9dILbtyUi_g6GtMZ3jwCLcBGAs/s320/IMG_E4751.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Separation of the waters above (shamayim – heavens) from the waters below (mayim – seas)</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With campers and their finished work</td></tr>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-33759304554848622632018-07-05T15:03:00.002-07:002018-07-05T15:14:38.496-07:00All Hands on Deck - Fingerprint Mosaics at Camp Newman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sDGHsaNmy3k/Wz6XVb_BdlI/AAAAAAAAAs0/D-1YIz-7zk8J7kHyb7Hg22d-Kamr9uCcQCLcBGAs/s1600/isaac-guiding-bogrim-campers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sDGHsaNmy3k/Wz6XVb_BdlI/AAAAAAAAAs0/D-1YIz-7zk8J7kHyb7Hg22d-Kamr9uCcQCLcBGAs/s320/isaac-guiding-bogrim-campers.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 11px;">This summer at Camp Newman Isaac and I were asked by Rabbi Allie Fischman to help create some new tallitot (prayer shawls) to be used when the counselors bless their campers on Friday nights. We were tasked with finding a way for each eidah (session) to work together to create a single tallit, at the same time giving each camper and counselor a chance to contribute in a personal way.</span><br />
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The challenge was that the groups ranged in size from 30 people to 120 people. How could we find a meaningful way for each participant to be a part of a large group project? And all in an hour-long evening program?<br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We decided to create fingerprint mosaics, where each camper had a chance to add their personal mark to the tallit and, ultimately, create a work of art that was not just for those campers, but would be enjoyed by everyone. The idea was that fingerprints are personal, but combined together they create a mosaic-like pattern, creating a communal work rather than an individual one — and that it would take the fingerprints of the whole eidah to create a finished work.</span></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_d-20WwBEwI/Wz6XUl1PqWI/AAAAAAAAAso/1O9Z-wd2UtEY6dNvzH991WUI5sZ1-_g9QCLcBGAs/s1600/Rabbi-Brynjegard-Bialik-painting-fingertips.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="133" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_d-20WwBEwI/Wz6XUl1PqWI/AAAAAAAAAso/1O9Z-wd2UtEY6dNvzH991WUI5sZ1-_g9QCLcBGAs/s200/Rabbi-Brynjegard-Bialik-painting-fingertips.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-kerning: none;">The fingerpainting itself was a big hit. Rabbi Laura Novak Winer helped us paint all the fingers, and campers and counselors alike were thrilled to try a form of art they had not done since they were little.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">There is often a desire expressed by participants when creating camp art to put their name on it somewhere, to create something to be a legacy and that they can point to summer after summer and say “I made that.” We chose fingerprints instead of names to allow that personal connection, and combined those prints into images: waves on the water, the spreading branches of a tree, the seven species, Jerusalem, Miriam’s Well.</span></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XNGkL-y0few/Wz6Wp34O-tI/AAAAAAAAAsk/LvCu8XrL_Dw-Q8dZLEZuCJLR_JHQC8OpwCEwYBhgL/s1600/tallit-detail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="600" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XNGkL-y0few/Wz6Wp34O-tI/AAAAAAAAAsk/LvCu8XrL_Dw-Q8dZLEZuCJLR_JHQC8OpwCEwYBhgL/s200/tallit-detail.jpg" width="150" /></a><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wK_07dq51oQ/Wz6XU84GEiI/AAAAAAAAAss/euVbA_jZrMYdJ9gChbvXNA3claqONeEzgCLcBGAs/s1600/Rabbi-Winer-tying-tzitzit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="543" data-original-width="800" height="135" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wK_07dq51oQ/Wz6XU84GEiI/AAAAAAAAAss/euVbA_jZrMYdJ9gChbvXNA3claqONeEzgCLcBGAs/s200/Rabbi-Winer-tying-tzitzit.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-kerning: none;">With the Avodah campers we created a rainbow huppah for them to carry at the San Francisco Pride Parade. Rabbi Rick Winer helped them tie gorgeous colorful tzitzit on the corners, and accompanied them to the parade.</span></div>
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<a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=7542678683897456538" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=7542678683897456538" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=7542678683897456538" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=7542678683897456538" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=7542678683897456538" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=7542678683897456538" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span style="font-kerning: none;">Some of the counselors asked how we could do such a thing — to fingerpaint on a tallit! We were able to paint them because they were not tallit yet; we were fingerpainting on a four-cornered piece of fabric, but they would not become tallit until after we tied the tzitzit on to the corners. It is the tying of tzitzit, the knots in the fringes that remind of the 613 commandments, that turn the fabric into a holy object and transform it into a tallit. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">On Friday night the counselors held the new tallitot aloft over their campers while singing a blessing to them, and on Saturday morning the new tallitot were worn by campers called to the Torah for an aliyah.</span></div>
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<a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=7542678683897456538" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=7542678683897456538" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=7542678683897456538" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">There is such a joy in creating new ritual objects, in engaging in <i>hidur mitzvah</i> — the beautification of the commandments — and you can see that joy reflected in the campers as they stand under the tallitot that they helped create.</span><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LQExDdT524g/Wz6XVAyJQxI/AAAAAAAAAsw/XmGgJpQSAZcrPdxAqusYgwzYJy3tp5vSgCLcBGAs/s1600/avodah-tallit-at-services.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LQExDdT524g/Wz6XVAyJQxI/AAAAAAAAAsw/XmGgJpQSAZcrPdxAqusYgwzYJy3tp5vSgCLcBGAs/s320/avodah-tallit-at-services.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-15745671696215399582018-05-18T10:08:00.000-07:002018-05-18T10:09:49.780-07:00Shavuot: Our Origin Story<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Superman is the last son of dead planet, raised by salt-of-the-earth parents who taught him to use his power to help others, in support of “truth, justice, and the American way.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Wonder Woman lived her entire life on an island of peace and prosperity; learning of the injustice and imbalance in the larger world she commits herself to being an ambassador of peace and defender of the weak.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Spider-Man is bitten by a radioactive spider and gains the proportional strength and abilities of a spider; he chooses to be a super hero because of the lesson from his uncle that “with great power comes great responsibility.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt and in fear for their lives, the children of Israel escape their bondage and travel to a mysterious desert mountain, where they are gifted with a moral code and a mission: to be a holy people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">On Shavuot we celebrate the revelation of the Torah, and our acceptance of our unique destiny. On Passover we reenact our liberation from slavery, but on Shavuot we understand what it means for us to be free and how it shapes us and guides our actions in thew world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Comic book origin stories are familiar to many of us; they tell us not just what happened to these characters, but why they choose to be heroes. Michael Chabon, in his fictionalized history of comics, <i>The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier & Clay</i>, points out that what many of the superheroes do is very similar — they fight crime — but the important thing is not if they fly or have super strength. What makes superheroes interesting, the reason people read comic books and come back to these stores over and over, even knowing that the plot follows a pattern (the hero will defeat the villain and save the world), is that even superhero characters have depth. We are intrigued by the why: why do they do what they do?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Shavuot is tied to the giving of the Torah, connected to Pesach from the counting of the Omer. Our “why” is because we were slaves in Egypt. The first commandment is our “why”: “I am Adonai your God who led you out of Egypt to be your God.” Our sense of commandedness is far more than just the first ten commandments — it comes from our often complex relationship with the Divine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Much has been said about the “Nones”— the growing number of people who, when asked about religion, reply “None” — and there is an argument that one does not need to be religious to be moral… which is true. There are lots of paths to ethical behavior, but what makes Judaism interesting, and relevant today, is our struggle with the “why.” Does it matter if I am donating to a food pantry out of a sense of fairness, or because I feel commanded to, or because this mitzvah fulfills my Jewish soul? Ultimately, if everyone contributes no matter what the reasons, the food pantry will be full, but if I am obligated to do this mitzvah, if I see myself as a partner with God, it will not matter if I feel like it, or if I’m feeling generous or fair or sympathetic — I will continue to do this mitzvah even when I am not in the mood, because Torah is my reason why. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Rabbi Larry Hoffman offers this translation for the first commandment: “I am the One who frees people from what enslaves them” — our origin story and our mission, our moment of realizing what we must do and how we should strive to act in the world. Yes, anyone can be ethical. Everyone can and should work to make this world a better place. On Shavuot, we affirm that it is our Judaism and our commitment to Torah that shapes us and we invite the depth and complexity and meaning it adds to our story.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">written with my husband, <a href="http://papermidrash.com/" target="_blank">Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik</a></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-91365407893684781322018-03-26T20:38:00.000-07:002018-03-26T20:38:18.539-07:00When It's Time to Stop Praying and Start Marching.<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">This past weekend many of us took to the streets with our communities to “March For Our Lives,” and this week we welcome the festival of Passover, which makes it a good time to remember that the Torah tells us “thoughts and prayers” can only do so much; we need action to move forward.</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QKNitm3aosY/Wrm6slF4v3I/AAAAAAAAAp4/ypZ-EMI1EEsLJeae-SMKcIiE6AUN5YH2wCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/IMG_3369.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QKNitm3aosY/Wrm6slF4v3I/AAAAAAAAAp4/ypZ-EMI1EEsLJeae-SMKcIiE6AUN5YH2wCK4BGAYYCw/s320/IMG_3369.JPG" width="320" /></a><span style="font-kerning: none;">In Exodus 14 we read that when the Israelites were stopped at the shore of the Sea of Reeds with the Egyptians fast approaching behind them, Moses began to pray. The people were distressed and feared for their lives and were demanding action — and Moses offered prayers. God said to Moses, “Why do you cry out to Me? Tell the Israelites to go forward. Lift up your rod and hold out your arm over the sea and split it, so that the Israelites may march into the sea on dry ground.” The Torah is pretty clear that there is a time for words, but when trapped between the Egyptians and the Sea, it’s time for action.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Our sages expanded on this idea in the Talmud, which teaches us that as the Jews were standing at the shore of the sea, Moses was prolonging his prayer. God said to him, “My beloved ones are drowning in the sea and you prolong your prayer to me?” Moses replied, “But what can I do?” God said, “Speak to the children of Israel and tell them to go forward. And you, lift up your rod and stretch out your hand.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">There’s a midrash that imagines God saying, “My loved ones are drowning in the sea, and the sea is raging, and the foe is pursuing, and you stand and wax long in prayer?” To which Moses replied, “God of the universe, what can I do?” And this is when God replies with the words from Exodus 14.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A story in the Talmud teaches that while Moses was busy praying, one person — Nachshon — stepped into the sea and began to walk. Nachshon had faith that God would see them to safety on the other side, and demonstrated his faith by stepping into the water.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Even in a tradition that annually celebrates the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea, it is clear that we can not just cry out or send “thoughts and prayers” – we must take action. Faith is not waiting around for God to do the work, but taking that first step – speaking out and raising your hand.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">That is what the teens are trying to teach us: there is a time for thoughts and prayers (and often that is where we find comfort in the face of tragedy), but the Torah teaches us that when you life is in danger, you don’t stand around praying; you have to speak to the people and take action.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This is faith. Not that God will fix it, but that we have within us the power to change the world for the better; that even when it looks as if there is no way forward, we can find a way; that even when enemies are fast approaching and threatening us, we have the strength to keep going. Faith is working together to bring a future where everyone is free from violence.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-84009784264164485572018-03-26T20:17:00.003-07:002018-03-26T20:17:37.847-07:00The Four Children of Metropolis<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Four times the Torah tells us to teach our children about the redemption from Egypt, and from this comes a midrash that there must be four types of children who each learn in a different way. That midrash has become part of the Haggadah; every year we talk about these four types of children: the Wise One, the Wicked One, the Simple One and The One Who Does Not Know How to Ask.</span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Today that sounds like an internet quiz: “Answer these four questions and we can tell you which child from the Haggadah you are!”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Pop culture can give us new ways to connect to our tradition. The main characters in Superman, when taken together, can give us new insight into the four types of learners that our midrash teaches about. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>The Wise One</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Lois Lane is the wise child. She is an investigative reporter, whose job requires a depth of knowledge and ability beyond the average citizen… but which also requires her to constantly ask questions in hopes of finding deeper meaning. Lois wants more – she actively seeks out knowledge, and she wants to share it with others. She knows so much about the world; what can we tell Lois that will add to her understanding of the Passover story?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>The Wicked One</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Lex Luthor is one of the smartest people in Metropolis, but as with any villain he makes everything about himself. “What does this have to do with me? Why should I care?” He fears what Superman brings to the world, and sees himself as better than everyone else. What can we tell Lex to help him understand that he is a part of the story, but not its center? How do we help him connect to something bigger than himself?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>The Simple One</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Superman is a stranger among us. No matter how much he learns about Earth and the humans who inhabit it, he always struggles to understand the strange world he landed in as a baby. He wants to understand what it is to be human, and how he can be a part of our story, but he doesn’t always see how he fits. How can we tell him our story in such a way that he will understand, and find his place within it?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>The One Who Doesn’t Know How to Ask</b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Jimmy Olsen is always just trying to keep up. When something happens he’s right by Lois’s side with his camera, ready to point it at whatever’s happening to capture it, but he doesn’t understand what it all means. He’s easily distracted, and a bit of a goofball. He is willing, but needs our guidance. How we do we give him the tools to engage with the story? How do we help him to learn how to use his voice to ask questions and seek answers?</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">There are, of course, many other people living in Metropolis. Who would <i>you</i> pick as each of the four children?</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><i>Written with my husband, <a href="http://isaacb2.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik</a></i></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-6933016317268495272017-12-22T13:17:00.002-08:002017-12-22T13:17:30.762-08:00How to approach life - a Dvar Torah on Vayigash for Limmud<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">How do you approach life?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">After Joseph imprisons Benjamin his brothers come to plead for his release, Parashat Vayigash begins when Judah approaches Joseph. The midrash wonders why Judah “approaches” — he is already there in the room, having a conversation with Joseph. In Bresheit Rabbah the sages suggest different reasons for the use of the verb “vayigash” (he approached).</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Rabbi </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(255, 38, 0);">Yehudah</span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> said it implies an approach to battle, as in 2 Samuel 10:13: “So Yoav and the people that were with him approached for battle.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Rabbi Nechemiah said it implies coming near for conciliation, as in Joshua 14:6: “Then the children of Judah approached Joshua.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Others said it implies coming near for prayer, as in 1 Kings 18:36: “And it came to pass at the time of the evening offering, that Elijah the prophet approached.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Rabbi Eleazar combined all these views, saying that Judah approached Joseph for all three. He imagined Judah saying to himself, “I’m here, whether it is for battle, for placating, or prayer. Whatever it is, I’m ready.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Rabbi Simchah Bunam (1765-1827), in his commentary, suggested that prayer is only accepted favorably if it comes “from the depths of the heart and the essence of the soul,” and likewise one must prepare for war or conciliation “with all one’s inner powers.” Therefore, Bunam concludes, the use of this word means “that Judah came closer to his own essence."</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Judah is wholly present in the moment and he approaches Joseph with his whole self — hopeful that his appeal will be successful, but prepared to argue or placate. He knows that he must be prepared for any eventuality.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We often use the word approach in another way — not just for physical proximity, but when we talk about how we apply ourselves, such as our approach to a subject we are studying, our approach to work, or our approach to life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Just as Judah did, we have the opportunity to approach things wholeheartedly, ready for whatever might come our way; but it is not always easy. It is sometimes easier, and far less risky to our sense of self, if we keep part of ourselves back. After all — we mistakenly imagine — if we are not successful in our endeavors, failure will be less painful because we were not really giving it our full effort.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Judah does not have that luxury. He is sure that his failure will result in his father’s death of a broken heart, and perhaps he knows he could not bear the guilt of betraying another brother. He has to bring his whole essence to the moment — it is too important to bring anything less as he approaches Joseph.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In all of our interactions we too can approach people or experiences by being fully present, bringing our whole essence to our endeavors and knowing that we are prepared to handle whatever may come our way. For Judah, this results in a reunion with his brother, as Joseph is so moved by Judah’s words that he bursts into tears and reveals his true identity — and ultimately, this leads to the entire family being reunited.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May we too approach life with our whole essence, just like Judah: prepared to be challenged, prepared to make peace, and prepared to find holiness in this world.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-59821245668108476222017-10-11T10:21:00.001-07:002017-10-11T10:21:58.174-07:00The World Needs Less Empathy - Kol Nidre 5778<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">The world needs less empathy. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Not what you were expecting me to say? </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I’m a bit surprised myself; I have stood in this spot before teaching about the importance of empathy — how our experience as strangers in Egypt is supposed to lead us to empathize with other people suffering today and that our empathy should motivate us to work for causes that support the poor, refugees, LGBTQ rights, racial justice, equality, health care and more. But it turns out that inspiring empathy is not the best way to increase moral behavior and that empathy is not enough.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Empathy is often understood to be the root of compassion and moral behavior: if I feel how you feel, if I’m hurt when you hurt, then I will do whatever I can to alleviate your suffering. Empathy <i>can</i> lead to good outcomes — we <i>might</i> be more likely to help someone if we empathize with them — but empathy is not a good enough motivator for moral action, and can not fix the world by itself. To truly fix the world, we need less empathy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In his book <i>Against Empathy,</i> Paul Bloom argues that empathy, “the act of feeling what you think others are feeling is different from being compassionate, from being kind, and most of all, from being good. From a moral standpoint, we’re better off without [empathy].”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Empathy is actually a relatively new word; it didn’t enter the English language until the 20th century. Empathy is when we try to put ourselves in another person’s shoes and see from their perspective, to feel what they feel; if they are happy we are happy, if they are in pain, we feel their pain.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Bloom explains that “The English word empathy really is the best way to refer to this mirroring of others’ feelings. …terms like sympathy and pity are about your reaction to the feelings of others, not the mirroring of them. If you feel bad for someone who is bored, that’s sympathy, but if you feel bored, that’s empathy. If you feel bad for someone in pain, that’s sympathy, but if you feel their pain, that’s empathy.” While it may seem counter-intuitive, more empathy does not increase moral behavior, and it does not lead to doing the most good in the world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Why is empathy failing us? Bloom explains that empathy is like a spotlight, directing our attention to where it’s needed. But spotlights have a narrow focus, he writes, and therein lies the problem. In a world where there are so many people in need, kindness driven by empathy alone can lead to greater suffering.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This summer was filled with examples of how empathy fails us. We have seen catastrophic flooding around the world. Hurricanes and severe weather and earthquakes have destroyed lives and property, leaving thousands homeless and hundreds dead. Here in the United States we were all horrified as we watched Houston virtually sink beneath rising flood waters; Hurricane Harvey was devastating and we could not help but empathize with those who had lost everything.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">That’s what our empathy does – it enables us to feel the pain of others and perhaps motivate us to help them. It is easy for us to empathize with those in Houston and Florida. The people being rescued look just like us, their neighborhoods look like ours, the belongings they lost and their destroyed homes could have been ours. And yet at the same time this summer, flooding in West Africa and Southeast Asia was even more devastating. Thousands of people were killed in Sierra Leone, Nepal and Bangladesh. The pictures are just as horrifying — thousands of people lost everything and buried their loved ones. But their neighborhoods don’t look like ours… and they are so very far away… they speak another language… so they did not arouse as much empathy and we were not as quick to open our wallets or our hearts.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This spotlight effect causes us to feel empathy for some people but not for others. We are more likely to feel empathy for people more like ourselves — human beings have evolved to put our own tribe first.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We also have a hard time empathizing on a large scale. We are just not capable of that kind of empathy; it is beyond the limits of the human brain. It is why we find it much easier to focus on one person and their pain than to think about the big picture. This is why more than two million dollars were crowdfunded for a single terminally ill baby in England this summer, while at the same time 60 children died in a hospital in India due to an unpaid oxygen bill of less than $100,000. It is unfathomable to consider that those 60 children would have lived, if not for an unpaid bill, but it is much easier to empathize with one particular family than with 60 unnamed families. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Mother Teresa describes it this way: “If I look at the masses, I won’t act, but if I look at one, I will.” Northwestern University Professor Adam Waytz says that extending our compassion to every other person on Earth is psychologically impossible. It comes to this: we can not feel empathy for more than one person or group at a time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">When we are overwhelmed by so many people in pain, we become numb to it — we experience empathy collapse. With disaster after disaster, hurricane after hurricane and then earthquakes in Mexico, it became harder and harder to generate empathy. Harvey was the topic of national conversation; by the time Maria hit Puerto Rico, with its significant devastation impacting 3.4 million lives, we were overwhelmed. Empathy fatigue makes us slow to respond. When we feel the pain of others too often, we lose our ability to feel empathy. At some point it becomes too much. Empathy is a limited resource: when we run out of it, we lose our motivation and we fail to act.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Our empathy is also limited when we think a person deserves what is happening to them. We feel far less empathy for people suffering from disease if we think they brought it upon themselves with drug use or unhealthy living. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The limits of empathy can hinder us from doing the right thing – and misplaced empathy can lead to evil. The rabbis knew this when they taught that “if you are compassionate to people who are cruel, you will ultimately be cruel to people who are compassionate.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Empathy to one can be cruelty to another, and this is how empathy can lead to immoral behavior. When student athlete Brock Turner was found guilty of three counts of felony sexual assault he was given a light sentence because the judge had empathy for him — he was young, athletic and had a bright future ahead of him; the judge, who was also an athlete as a student, did not want to ruin the rest of his life. There was little empathy for the woman Brock assaulted.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Empathy for men who commit sexual assault leads to cruelty toward those who are assaulted. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has empathy for the men who are accused of those crime and is eliminating protections for women who are victims of sexual assault. Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California system, has said that this “weakens sexual violence protections and will unravel the progress that so many schools have made,” and there is no doubt that this will result in fewer women reporting sexual assault. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">There is also an arrogance to empathy — acting on the belief that we think we know how another person feels. And of course sometimes we’re wrong — otherwise there would never be a terrible birthday present or unwanted surprise party. We hear about the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you want them to do unto you,” but the Jewish version comes from Rabbi Hillel: “What is hateful to you, do not do to another person.” There is a subtle but critical difference between assuming that someone else will like the same things we do, and avoiding doing the things that we don’t like to someone else.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And we don’t always need or even want empathy. When you are anxious and stressed, empathy is the last thing you need. You don’t want your friend or doctor to get anxious along with you; you want calm and compassion. We don’t have to be in pain to want to ease someone else’s. We don’t have to live through a hurricane to know that people need help.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It’s not that empathy is itself is terrible, but it does not always lead to moral behavior and it is not the best motivator to do good. We need less empathy and more kindness.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">You don’t need empathy to generate compassion. Compassion is not the same as empathy, and it is a much stronger motivator toward good. Paul Bloom writes that the difference between the two is critical, and is supported by neuroscience research. Researchers Tania Singer and Olga Klimecki point out that compassion does not mean sharing someone else’s suffering; “rather,” they write, “it is characterized by feelings of warmth, concern and care for the other, as well as a strong motivation to improve the other’s well-being. Compassion is feeling <i>for</i> and not feeling <i>with</i> the other.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Compassion allows us to focus on helping others without necessarily feeling their pain, and that distance from emotion might also be the cure for empathy fatigue. In studies where people are trained to foster either empathy or compassion, the group that improved their ability to empathize felt worse and did less, while the compassionate group not only felt better — they also did more to help others.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Empathy leads to donations for individuals; compassion can lead to much greater results.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If we were informed about the crisis in India and were motivated by compassion for families with sick children, donations to health organizations in India could have saved those 60 children’s lives this summer. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Empathy is not the answer; we need responsibility and compassion. So how do we develop those things? The answer, as always, is in Torah. As Jews we are commanded to act compassionately. It is not about feeling empathy; it is about doing the right thing. <i>Tzedaka</i> does not mean charity — it means justice, and a mitzvah is not a good deed — it is a commandment. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We often mix up the Yiddish, <i>mitzveh, </i>which is a good deed, with the Hebrew word <i>mitzvah,</i> commandment, because they sound so close. Both doing a <i>mitzvah</i> and <i>mitzveh</i> are good, but there is a difference between doing something because you are inspired and doing something because it is required. The Talmud teaches that “Greater is the one who is commanded and does something, than one who does the same thing without being commanded.” Why? Because if you are only welcoming the stranger or feeding the hungry because you feel like it, you might not feel like it next time. Judaism, and the obligations that go along with it, push us toward compassion —regardless of whether we feel empathy. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Yom Kippur demands that we make amends with people we have hurt, but we might not have much empathy for those people, because we don’t realize how much we have hurt them. We tend to think the pain that we caused was accidental, or incidental; we excuse our actions as tough calls, hard choices and honest mistakes. But we are not as quick to offer excuses for those that hurt us; wrongs that other do to us seem worse: intentional and cruel. We don't weigh the pain we caused to someone else as much as we weigh the pain we experienced ourselves because it did not happen to us. This is called the moralization gap: the tendency to diminish the severity of our own acts relative to others.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Our communal confessional on Yom Kippur helps us put ourselves on even ground with others; it is a reminder that the hurt we have caused others is just as damaging to them as the hurt we have experienced ourselves. We may not be able to feel as much empathy for those we have harmed, but we can be compassionate. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Jewish values guide us toward compassion. Tomorrow afternoon we will read from the book of Vayikra — Leviticus — from the section called the Holiness Code. We are told exactly what we need to do to be compassionate, regardless of whether we feel empathy. We are taught not to harvest the corners of our fields, and to leave some for the poor and the stranger. We are taught not to steal, lie or bear false witness. Not to exploit our neighbor. Not keep a worker’s wages overnight. Not curse the deaf or place a stumbling block before the blind. To be fair in judgement, and not to favor the weak or defer to the powerful. Not to spread slander. Not to stand idly by the blood of a neighbor. Not to seek vengeance or bear grudges. Not to wrong a stranger, not cheat in business dealings. We are told we are required to love our neighbor, to respect the elderly and to treat strangers among us like citizens. This is what makes us holy, and this is what we are commanded to do.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We do these things not because we know what it feels like to be hungry or cheated, not because we know what it feels like to need your wages on the day you earn them, not because we know the pain of being the subject of gossip or the victim of a scam. We do these things because they are <i>mitzvot</i> — they are commandments. Obligation pushes us toward moral action — toward compassion for others. We don’t need empathy for our employees or for the elderly — we are obligated to treat them well. And while it is nice to proclaim that we empathize with the stranger, because we were once strangers in Egypt, we are obligated to welcome the stranger even if we don’t have any empathy for them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The kind of compassion that the Torah demands can also help us continue to do good when empathy fatigue sets in. There are so many things that need our attention right now and if we are trying to fight for racial justice, protect the environment, ensure that people have access to health care, preserve voting rights, defend LGBTQ rights, stand up for immigrants, help the people of Puerto Rico and… well, it is overwhelming and far too easy to just turn it off. Empathy fatigue paralyzes us and we fail to act. The Torah demands that we take action for all of these things — not out of empathy, but out of justice and compassion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">These core Jewish values, at the very center of the Torah, guide our actions. And unlike deeds motivated by empathy, it does not matter if if feels good to do them or if we don’t feel like it; this is what needs to be done.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So practice rational compassion in your giving. In addition to giving to causes that arouse your empathy, research where your dollars will do the most good for the most people and give some there too. Find out what the organization really needs and give what you can. And then work to change the system — if you donate to a GoFundMe page to help pay for a friend’s medical care, write and call your congressperson to demand health care for all; if you are sending money to hurricane victims, be sure to demand that our government take climate change seriously; if you are moved by the story of one family in poverty, make a commitment to bring an item for the SOVA bin every time you enter this building, because that is what the Torah demands.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Torah is our ever-renewing resource in our fight for justice and peace. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May the lessons of Torah and our sages teach us how to repair the brokenness in our world. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">May we always act with kindness and compassion, even when our empathy fails us. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Footnotes and sources available upon request.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-25207163427336548452017-09-21T22:37:00.002-07:002017-10-11T10:24:50.312-07:00A Rosh Hashanah Letter to My College-Bound Daughter<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-P1T0Ug9ykAk/Wcrv3CqQefI/AAAAAAAAAkk/GplkEbhoOGIxIYtDazFTShlW0Pfu_qKEwCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_7747.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-P1T0Ug9ykAk/Wcrv3CqQefI/AAAAAAAAAkk/GplkEbhoOGIxIYtDazFTShlW0Pfu_qKEwCLcBGAs/s320/IMG_7747.jpg" width="240" /></a><span style="font-kerning: none;">This summer at camp there was a family of birds nesting in one of the trees right outside the dining hall. There were a few days early in the summer when we were told to keep our distance — the baby birds were learning to fly and the parents were not thrilled with humans standing next to their tree. One morning, one baby bird plummeted onto the table where we were having a meeting. After some adorable and awkward hopping and flapping the small bird wound up on the ground in the bushes and throughout the meeting we would look over to see if it was still OK. Was it stuck? Did it need help? Where were this bird’s parents? I was worried about the baby bird.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">You probably realized far sooner than I had what was really going on. In two days my oldest daughter, Mira, is starting college and leaving our nest. Many of you have been through this before; you know the combination of intense pride and happiness that comes along with a vague sense of loss. In the words of the Roman philosopher Seneca, made popular by the band Semisonic, “every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” Things are changing, and while it is a good and welcome change, it is still a bit of a shock when your kid does the thing you have been talking about for the last 18 years.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So last month, when I called my sister to discuss in great detail the pros and cons of a particular beach towel I was buying for Mira, she listened patiently before pointing out to me that I was nesting again — that my disproportionate concern about the size and color of a beach towel relative to another almost identical beach towel was similar to how I prepared for her birth more than 18 years ago.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Beach towels and bath caddies are the easy things, but what I really hope I’m sending her off to college with is the Jewish wisdom that will sustain and nurture her as she continues to grow into adulthood. What I really hope is that Judaism will continue to guide her, as it continues to guide me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And so, I wrote a letter to my daughter to pass along some of that wisdom — and realized that starting college has much in common with starting the New Year. There are moments when we can feel that changes are coming— when we can look at a date or pass a milestone and know that from this moment on, things will be different. Some transitions are happy and welcome, like the first move-in date for college, getting married, watching your children get married, the birth of child or grandchild, starting a new job, starting retirement, moving to a new house. Others are not-so-welcome, like the diagnosis of a disease, the end of a relationship, losing a job, friends moving away, the death of a loved one.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We are all sitting here tonight on the verge of changes — some eagerly anticipated, others with more trepidation. None of us know what this new year will bring. We are all starting something new and unknown, right here, tonight, on Rosh Hashanah. So, while I may be addressing my daughter, this is for you as well. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Dear Mira,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">You are about to go forward into the unknown, starting a new chapter in your life. Our tradition teaches us how to go forward into the unknown. Abraham and Sarah follow God’s command to go to the land God will show them — they do not ask questions; they just leave everything they know and head for somewhere they have never been before. This must have been terrifying, to start a journey without knowing the destination, and yet they go anyway. They have faith that the journey will be worth it despite any hardships, and that they will find meaning and purpose along the way. Their path is not easy, nor without trials and heartbreak, and yet Abraham and Sarah become the first human beings in the world to bless other people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Your path may not always be easy or straightforward, and as with our ancestors it is up to you to create meaning and purpose in your life’s journey. Sometimes you will find yourself exactly where you thought you would be, and at other times on a path that is more wonderful than you could have imagined or one that you would never have chosen or expected; like Abraham and Sarah, look for blessings and find an opportunity to share those blessings with others.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">You will make mistakes. Some will be small and easily repaired, like missing a deadline. Others will be devastating and not so easily repaired. There are some things that you will only learn the hard way, and it will be painful. Mistakes are a part of life and part of growing up and learning; and you can’t avoid them no matter how old you are. It is up to you to decide to learn from your mistakes. The lessons of the High Holy Days can teach you how to do <i>tshuvah,</i> to truly make repentance. First you must admit that you have done something wrong — and not in general, but in detail; you must recognize your wrongdoing, without downplaying it or making excuses for yourself. You may want to hide from your mistakes sometimes, but owning up to them is the only way you will change. If you hurt another person, you need to apologize. Not a generic blanket apology on Facebook, not a text, not an insincere “sorry, not sorry” but a genuine apology where you acknowledge your part in causing hurt. Yes, this might be an awkward conversation, but it is a necessary part of the process. In the words of Dan Nichols, “embrace the awkward,” and your relationships will be stronger. If you can learn to take responsibility and apologize for the small hurts you cause, you will have the tools to do the same for the harder ones. And then, forgive yourself. It is OK to make mistakes; you don’t have to be perfect. Don’t beat yourself up over your missteps — learn from them, so you can do better in the future.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Talmud teaches “Either friendship or death,” and it is more than just a folk saying. Friendship can save your life. The friendship between the young King David and Jonathan led Jonathan to protect David and save his life. But there’s more than just anecdotal or metaphorical evidence — new research shows that friendships are literally life-saving for everyone. A BYU study of hundreds of thousands of people found that the biggest predictor of how long you will live is your relationships. It turns out that people who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community, are happier; they're also physically healthier, and they live longer than people with fewer friends. Dr. Robert Waldinger, Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, has discovered that loneliness is toxic. “People who are more isolated than they want to be from others find that…their health declines earlier in midlife, their brain functioning declines sooner and they live shorter lives than people who are not lonely.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So Mira, I hope you will nurture your friendships. It takes time to build trust with someone, to have the kind of friendships where you can share not just your joys but your disappointments and the things that embarrass you. You need people you can trust not to judge you and who will always tell you the truth. Practicing <i>tshuvah,</i> apologizing and making amends when necessary, will help you maintain those relationships over many years.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">There will be times in your life when you are lonely. The <i>Avot d’Rabbi Natan,</i> a collection of teachings from about 1500 years ago, teaches us how to acquire a friend: by eating and drinking together, by studying Torah and debating with them, by spending time together, and by sharing private thoughts. I admit that I have not always been the best example of this, neglecting my own friendships at times. Don’t let other things get in the way; there will always be other things — classes or work or just the busyness of life — but you have to make time to nurture your friendships. Your life depends on it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Mira, even when it seems like everyone in the world is a jerk, I hope that you will still be kind. Rabbi Mattia ben Cherish taught that you should be the first to greet every person — this is more than just good advice; it is good for you. The same study from BYU also found that the second biggest predictor of how long you will live is how much you interact with other people throughout your day. Rabbi Shammai taught that you should greet every person with a pleasant countenance; 500 years before the invention of cell phones Rabbi Obadiah ben Avraham of Bertenura understood this to mean not to offer things to your guests when your face is buried in the ground, because if you are not looking at them, it is as if you have given them nothing. If you are not paying attention to the person in front of you, if you are not present, it does not count. Treating everyone you come into contact with as if they matter sounds so simple, but acting on it can be very difficult. Remember that the rude waiter may be having a bad day and needs to be treated with kindness. Talk to the people you come into contact with; the cashier, other people in line, the girl who makes your coffee remember that they are people and that everyone has a story.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Stand up for what you believe in. If your relationship with Israel was a Facebook status, you would label it as “complicated.” For years you have been hearing about the dangers of anti-Zionism on campus. Make no mistake: anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. BDS, the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel, is anti-Semitic — but they are attracting Jews, especially Reform Jews, by pretending to be a social justice movement. You have learned here at TAS how important it is to stand up to oppressors, to fight for rights and to make sure that all people are treated equally. BDS preys on that by telling you that if you really, truly care about social justice you will recognize Jews as oppressors and will stand against Israel. There are people who will tell you that unless you denounce Israel you can not have a voice in any other issues.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This summer Jewish groups were asked not to participate in the Chicago Dyke March because a rainbow flag with a Jewish star on it was considered threatening and against the values of the marchers. Similar things were said by the organizers of that city’s Slut Walk. There are people who will try to tell you that you can not be a feminist if you are a Zionist. They are wrong. This is anti-Semitism. Calling it anti-Zionism does not change the fact that it is anti-Semitism. Zionism is the belief that Jews are entitled to a nation in our ancestral homeland, Israel, and modern Zionism encompasses our values of democracy, pluralism, and equality. A love of Israel demands honesty and a commitment to the continuation of building a morally exceptional society — to be a light to the nations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The good news is that your relationship with Israel <i>should</i> be complicated. Israel is not perfect. The Israeli government is not perfect. Just as we can love America without loving everything our government or leadership does, you can love Israel without loving everything its government does. The treatment of Bedouins and discrimination against non-Orthodox Jews are just two of the serious issues that are deeply problematic. Loving Israel does not mean you agree with everything; it does not mean that you will not have reasons to legitimately criticize — there are legitimate problems and you should criticize when it is called for.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">To be an<i> ohav Yisrael,</i> a lover of Israel, you need to stay informed, pay attention to what is going on in Israel, read the news, learn the nuances of the complex issue of creating peace and establishing borders with our neighbors, when you criticize, do it from a place of love, and stand tall as a proud Jew and Zionist.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Mira, there is so much in this world that can break your heart, and you will get your heart broken. And I wish I could protect you from it, but that is not the way our world works. We often try to deny this truth, but on these Days of Awe, we call it out. We name it when we pray Unatana Tokef, conceding that terrible things will happen in life, things we cannot avoid. You will be hurt, you will experience loss, you will be disappointed. Life will not be fair; don’t expect it to be.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The message of this prayer is not that repentance, prayer and charity will keep you safe; it is that those things help make sure that the things that break your heart, don’t leave you broken. It is not that tragedy has a reason or higher purpose. I don’t believe that everything has a reason; it is that you can choose to find meaning in the things that would otherwise break you. Learning, reflecting and connecting with others is how you will heal. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And yet, don’t let fear of failure or hurt stop you from reaching out to others and trying new things. Don’t let fear stop you from enjoying life to the fullest. Yes, there will be heartbreak and disappointment and sadness, at times, but, there will also be love and friendship and awe and gratitude.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Talmud teaches that every human being will have to give an account for all that they saw that was permitted to them, but that they did not enjoy. There will be much to enjoy in this new year, many new adventures, new friends, new experiences — you should take advantage of the opportunity to enjoy them. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel taught: “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement… get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal. ...To be spiritual is to be amazed.” As you begin this new chapter in your life, allow yourself to be amazed. Don’t be too cool for wonder and awe; geek out over the stuff you love, even if nobody else gets it; and let yourself appreciate all the wonderful things that are happening in your life. Embrace all the blessings coming your way; you deserve them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May this New Year bring you blessing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May the wisdom of our tradition guide you on life’s path.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">When life is challenging, may you find comfort and strength.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May you always be an <i>ohav yisrael,</i> a lover of Israel.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May you always look for blessings and when you find them, share them with others.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May you have strong friendships that will sustain you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May you experience all the joy that life has to offer,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">in this New Year and in all of your years.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Shanah Tovah.</span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>citations available upon request</i></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-7064255170765787152017-03-28T11:26:00.000-07:002017-03-28T11:36:22.594-07:00Praying with Knives in Wonder Valley<br />
[This post was co-written with my husband, Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik, and is also posted on his blog, which can be found at <a href="http://www.nicejewishartist.com/">www.NiceJewishArtist.com</a>. Photos are courtesy Rabbi Rick Winer and Bill Leifer.]<br />
<br />
It
is always a privilege and pleasure to worship and create in a new
community — making new friends, gaining new insights, and bringing new
works of art into being. This past weekend was such an experience, when
we joined <a href="https://www.tbifresno.org/" target="_blank">Temple Beth Israel of Fresno</a> as the scholar and artist in residence for their 2017 Shabbaton retreat (in Wonder Valley, California).<br />
<br />
The
heart of the weekend was “praying with knives” — meditating on the
Saturday morning prayers and then using knife and paper to explore their
meanings.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-C0tt6dffYYA/WNqEBj7UWYI/AAAAAAAACpg/yA13_5TVkBoWlC0at394dLZ2ZA6l0lZUgCEw/s1600/rabbi-shawna-teaching.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-C0tt6dffYYA/WNqEBj7UWYI/AAAAAAAACpg/yA13_5TVkBoWlC0at394dLZ2ZA6l0lZUgCEw/s320/rabbi-shawna-teaching.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Providing encouragement and guidance</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
In our Shabbat morning worship Rabbi Shawna encouraged worshippers to
choose a prayer that intrigued them, reflected a personal experience,
or spoke to how they were feeling right then, and to focus on it during
personal silent prayer: to read it more than once, to connect with the
language, to read it slowly to pull out meaning, to imagine what words
they would use if they were writing the prayer, to see what images came
to mind when reciting the prayer, to meditate on the feelings that it
invoked. And when our service finished, we began to pray with knives.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KkXPakDhOFs/WNqEAvnX0vI/AAAAAAAACpg/oUP77saI6xov6vcau_62zsux-hs6wlGggCEw/s1600/isaac-teaching.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KkXPakDhOFs/WNqEAvnX0vI/AAAAAAAACpg/oUP77saI6xov6vcau_62zsux-hs6wlGggCEw/s320/isaac-teaching.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Isaac gives some drawing and cutting tips</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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After
a bit of guidance from Isaac on approach and technique, and a little
experimenting with their knives, the worshippers began to wrestle with
their prayers — first sketching out some basic ideas, and than
translating that idea to a papercut design.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P3ioJsZKZ9w/WNqECI8MsrI/AAAAAAAACpg/46q7LNfCsdIdcEQg2dGu3bqnK1e1iHU-QCEw/s1600/two-folks-cutting.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P3ioJsZKZ9w/WNqECI8MsrI/AAAAAAAACpg/46q7LNfCsdIdcEQg2dGu3bqnK1e1iHU-QCEw/s320/two-folks-cutting.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mark and Cindy, hard at work!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
No two creations were
the same, even when people chose the same prayer. Several people used
rays of light in some fashion, but each time it was a part of a
different prayer. A few people asked us to figure out which prayer they
were working on based on the images they were trying to convey in their
sketch, in a pictionary-meets-prayer sort of moment.<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UMNIFtDtvMg/WNqEAUv2Q4I/AAAAAAAACpg/0ilZEKRbjO8pbcserY3HB5mEiuD-sTMjQCEw/s1600/judy.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UMNIFtDtvMg/WNqEAUv2Q4I/AAAAAAAACpg/0ilZEKRbjO8pbcserY3HB5mEiuD-sTMjQCEw/s320/judy.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pnSrHSaJFxQ/WNqEBPPpSbI/AAAAAAAACpg/E1y00IQO3H4GgPXMcAFAr5rdWWNDf9bzQCEw/s1600/mikayla.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pnSrHSaJFxQ/WNqEBPPpSbI/AAAAAAAACpg/E1y00IQO3H4GgPXMcAFAr5rdWWNDf9bzQCEw/s320/mikayla.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rqZ1rt9tpOA/WNqEA9zyRCI/AAAAAAAACpg/nvNd5gILHoYD_n2NPwPcOV6Y_msNUDDDwCEw/s1600/maria.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rqZ1rt9tpOA/WNqEA9zyRCI/AAAAAAAACpg/nvNd5gILHoYD_n2NPwPcOV6Y_msNUDDDwCEw/s320/maria.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aMzGxBFgz3c/WNqEB1CJ8_I/AAAAAAAACpg/4FZDt8lGHKMoUtOa6_IwCvO5rogtGlAbwCEw/s1600/stan.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aMzGxBFgz3c/WNqEB1CJ8_I/AAAAAAAACpg/4FZDt8lGHKMoUtOa6_IwCvO5rogtGlAbwCEw/s320/stan.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>
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<br />
The prayer
book was explored in its entirety — worshippers weren’t limited to the
standard prayers that compose a service, but also explored psalms,
readings, quotes and songs in the artwork. The lines that we often skip
over because they are placeholders were sometimes the inspiration that
reached out and grabbed someone.<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-M9rLIers_HM/WNqEBaDHIfI/AAAAAAAACpg/F3oTJBBfdJIzsl3JZnD4rbd7C7zHqyW1QCEw/s1600/rabbi-laura-sharing.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-M9rLIers_HM/WNqEBaDHIfI/AAAAAAAACpg/F3oTJBBfdJIzsl3JZnD4rbd7C7zHqyW1QCEw/s320/rabbi-laura-sharing.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rabbi Laura Winer shares her papercut prayer.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
At the end of the Shabbaton on
Sunday everyone had a chance to share their artwork. Prayer by its
nature is personal, and it can be a vulnerable moment to share a piece
of artwork based on prayer, even among friends — but so many people
wanted to stand up and share what they had created. The art and stories
took prayer to a new level; for some they had a favorite prayer that
they were excited to represent, for others something just caught their
eye.<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mYPSj1T44hY/WNqELPBGrQI/AAAAAAAACpg/7DX3Tt4Gwj44xPL_qo6yeg8KsAQ1_KqwQCEw/s1600/papercut-with-prayer-inspiration.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mYPSj1T44hY/WNqELPBGrQI/AAAAAAAACpg/7DX3Tt4Gwj44xPL_qo6yeg8KsAQ1_KqwQCEw/s320/papercut-with-prayer-inspiration.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Side-by-side with the prayer that inspired it.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
We so often think of prayer as written, as the recitation of
words written on a page. But all written prayer started out as
someone’s inner thoughts — as a spontaneous moment of prayer — and over
the years became a part of our standard worship service. In Hebrew
school we often begin by teaching prayers; mastering them in Hebrew is
often a requirement for bar or bat mitzvah. But beyond familiarity with
the words of others, prayer is our attempt to express our deep yearning
or to articulate our gratitude or to help us shift our own perspective,
and we are able to do those things through art. In their creations
participants expressed gratitude, their dedication to helping others,
their appreciation for the people in their lives, looking inward,
creation.<br />
<br />
The retreat coincided with the Torah portion Vayekiel,
in which we learn that God assigned Bezalel to create the mobile
tabernacle — the mishkan — and the objects that go with it. Bezalel is a
craftsman skilled in many art forms, but we learn that each of the
Israelites has something to contribute to the creation of the mishkan.
God is the ultimate Creator — the Torah begins with divine creation,
culminating in the creation of human beings in God’s image — but we have
the ability to create as well, and when we do we are connecting with
the Divine within ourselves.<br />
<br />
[For more information on how you can bring "the dynamic duo" to <i>your</i> community, please contact Isaac via email: isaac@nicejewishartist.com.]Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-29074388979622608082016-11-17T21:16:00.000-08:002016-11-17T21:17:10.361-08:00How Women Lead The Fight Against Pharaoh <div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">The women in the Torah know something about how to respond to a repressive Pharaoh.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In the time of our slavery, the Egyptian midwives Shifra and Puah are ordered to drown all the Israelite baby boys, but they refuse to do something morally repugnant, and they ignore Pharaoh’s command. Not only do they refuse to be a part of this immoral order, but they actively work against it in order to save and protect others. They could have given up their jobs and turned over the responsibility to people more willing to follow Pharaoh’s orders, but instead they continue to act as midwives, helping the Israelite women and then lying to Pharaoh about why the population continues to grow. Their action saves lives. These are women who do not follow immoral orders; they are at the center of one of the first acts of civil disobedience. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; min-height: 18px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Pharaoh’s daughter also refuses to follow her father’s commands. When she finds Moses floating in the Nile she knows he is a Hebrew baby; she is aware of her father’s order, and knows the only reason why a baby would be floating in a basket in the river. And yet, she picks him up. She brings him home and even allows his own mother to act as his wet nurse. She knows exactly what she is doing, countermanding her father, but she does what she can to save a life. No act is too small — in saving just one person, Pharaoh’s daughter saved an entire people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Perhaps the most difficult act in times of fear is keeping hope alive; in this we have the example of Miriam and her mother Yoheved. There is a midrash which teaches that in response to Pharaoh’s cruel order, the Israelite men all divorce their wives in order not to produce any children, so that none of them would be in danger of being drowned in the Nile — but Miriam knows better. She tells her father that his decree is even more severe than Pharaoh’s; she tells him that he is condemning both males and females; Pharaoh’s harsh decree might not be completely realized, but by ceasing to have any children at all the Israelite men are guaranteeing that there is no future. Miriam is right. The people do not realize that redemption is on the way — Moses has not been born yet — but Miriam knows that you cannot have a future without hope. Her mother Yoheved also has faith; she hides her newborn son until she can no longer keep him a secret and then places him into a basket on the Nile. She makes it watertight to protect her son the best she can, because she has hope that he will be rescued. Miriam and Yoheved teach us how important it is to continue to live, to love, to raise children and to have faith and hope in the future. At a time when it seems as if there was no hope, these women do not accept that this is the way of the world; they act from their faith that things can get better as long as we don’t give up.</span></div>
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<br /><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">These women, both Egyptian and Israelite, working separately but together, teach us how we can bring about change in even the most challenging of times. These women teach us how to stand up and do the right thing, how to help in whatever way we can, and how to have hope for the future.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-42709550121652142742016-10-22T13:47:00.000-07:002016-10-22T13:47:13.713-07:00Sleepless in the Sukkah<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal;">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rLMSH3zSZV8/WAvP0oYvmyI/AAAAAAAAAcQ/K0hKq9M_HOM3S4fmcJEWSQ2eXpfEN7ZygCK4B/s1600/IMG_6778.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rLMSH3zSZV8/WAvP0oYvmyI/AAAAAAAAAcQ/K0hKq9M_HOM3S4fmcJEWSQ2eXpfEN7ZygCK4B/s320/IMG_6778.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The first year we had a home of our own our oldest daughter was only a year old and we built a sukkah in our backyard. It started small and we added a bit to it every year. When our kids were little we used to read bedtime stories in the sukkah — taking out the air mattress and pillows and blankets and cuddling up together to read before carrying the kids upstairs to bed. As soon as the kids were old enough, we tried sleeping outside in the sukkah — and it was a huge hit with the kids. The dogs were confused; they could not figure out why we would all sleep outside when there was a perfectly good house right behind us, but they curled up with the kids and waited patiently for the humans to realize that we were supposed to sleep indoors.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And so a family tradition began: every year at Sukkot we picked a weekend night to sleep outside in our Sukkah. We didn’t manage to do it every year, because some years it was just too windy and the sukkah could barely stand, and there was a year or two when the kids were on fall break from school and we were not home, but whenever we could we would all gather the air mattresses, the sleeping bags and blankets and pillows and all sleep together outside in the sukkah with the dogs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Somehow it became the most important thing about Sukkot for my kids — what I always thought of as a nice treat when the weather allowed for it, became the thing my kids most look forward to. This year it was not looking good; Sukkot started out way too windy, and we had to take most of it down because it was blowing away. Once the weather cleared, the only night we would all be together to sleep outside was a school night and the practical side of me thought we would just have to skip it this year. But my three teenage daughters insisted that we sleep in the sukkah as a family. My oldest is applying to college this year and has been wondering if she will be around to sleep in the family sukkah next year… my 15-year-old is at a Jewish camp this weekend and did not want to miss sleeping outside with the rest of the family… and my youngest would have slept in it ANY night, windy or not. By Thursday night the wind had finally died down, so — school night or not — we were sleeping in the sukkah.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">One of the lessons of Sukkot is about finding sanctuary in the temporary. A sukkah is, by nature, temporary and flimsy and does not make a very stable home — that’s why there are some years our sukkah practically blows away — but this year my teenagers reminded me of all that is permanent about a sukkah. It has become a part of their experience, a part of their memory and an important part of our family tradition. Our sometime-precarious sleeping-in-the-sukkah tradition has become ingrained into our children as one of the most important parts of the holiday. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So, even though the practical side of me reminded me of why it was a bad idea — the air mattress will deflate in the middle of the night and it will be cold in the morning and we will all be up as soon as the sun rises — and despite knowing that nobody would get a good night’s sleep — not even the dogs, who still can’t figure out why we are all in the yard — I said yes to sleeping outside in the sukkah on a school night. I said yes, because Sukkot also reminds me that sometimes you have to just let go and enjoy what you can. And sipping a cup of coffee, tucked into a sleeping bag on a half-deflated air mattress is a great way to start the morning. </span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-46790612493792667322016-10-21T12:11:00.001-07:002016-10-21T12:22:12.563-07:00No Regrets - Kol Nidre Sermon 5777<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">“<a href="http://www.torahgeek.com/SB2-Sermon_NoRegrets.pdf" target="_blank">No Regrets</a>”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Sermon for Kol Nidrei 5777</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Rabbi Shawna Brynjegard-Bialik</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Temple Ahavat Shalom – Northridge, California</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Maggid of Dubnow was once passing through a town and came upon an old, abandoned barn. On the side of this barn were 100 targets. And in the center of each target, was an arrow. 100 targets, 100 bullseyes. He was amazed. Immediately he went to the town square and asked the villagers who was the marksman that had such amazing skill. They pointed to a boy, sitting off to the side with a bow and quiver next to him. “Young man,” he asked him, “how is that you are so skilled to have accomplished this incredible feat with your bow and arrow?” “It’s really easy,” the boy replied, “I shoot the arrows first, and then I paint the targets around them.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If you draw the bullseyes after you shoot the arrows, you never regret a single shot.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">American culture celebrates this “No Regrets” attitude. We hear it all the time, as if living life without regrets is the secret to happiness. Life is too short to live with regrets; don’t waste your time worrying about things that you have done.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">On the surface it sounds ideal: “I have no regrets because I am happy with who I am right now. I have no regrets because I don’t waste my time dwelling on the past, I am focused on the future.” No regrets, no looking back, just moving on.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Perhaps Shakespeare put it best: “Things without all remedy should be without regard; what's done is done.” And it sounds like good advice for life… until you remember who said it. It was Lady Macbeth, advising her husband not to waste time regretting his past actions…like committing murder.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The sociologist and author Doctor Brene Brown teaches that living without regrets “doesn’t mean living with courage, it means living without reflection.”</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8.7px; line-height: normal;"><sup></sup></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> To live a life without regrets is to live an unexamined life, and Jewish tradition teaches us that that we need to be examining our lives, especially on Yom Kippur.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In our confessional, we pray these words: “Adonai, we are arrogant and stubborn, claiming to be blameless and free of sin. In truth, we have stumbled and strayed. We have done wrong.” It is the height of arrogance to come here on Yom Kippur and say that we have examined our lives and have no regrets. It is much easier to reflect on the year when we justify our mistakes as what we intended to do all along, when we shoot first and paint the targets later. But painting the targets after the fact does nothing to improve your aim, and we are here because we have missed the mark and have made mistakes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It is not easy to admit to our regrets and failings, which is why we recite them together in the plural: Ashamnu, <i>we</i> have sinned, <i>we</i> have done wrong.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Our tradition teaches that regret is universal and both necessary and unavoidable and we have to face up to it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Even God has regrets.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">God regrets choosing Saul to be the king, telling the prophet Samuel, נחמתי “I regret that I made Saul king, for he has turned away from Me and has not carried out My commands.”</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8.7px; line-height: normal;"><sup></sup></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> God, who should have known better, made the wrong decision.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Later, in the book of Jeremiah, we learn that God regrets using Rome to destroy the Temple and sending the Jewish people into exile. נחמתי “I regret the evil I have done to you”</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8.7px; line-height: normal;"><sup></sup></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And probably the most well-known instance of God’s regret is in the story of the flood. Not long after creating the world, God regrets doing so. The Torah teaches that,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">When Adonai saw how great was the wickedness of human beings in the earth, that the direction of their thoughts was nothing but wicked all the time, Adonai regretted having made human beings on earth, and was heartsick. So God thought, “I will wipe the humans off the face of the earth, נחמתי I regret the day I made them.”</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8px; line-height: normal;"><sup></sup></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;"><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">God’s regret is so profound that God takes an extreme action to try to fix it, tries to erase the mistakes made with humans and go back and start all over again. What started with good intentions —the creation of human beings — has gone horribly wrong. It is from a place of deep regret that God destroys almost all that had been created.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Talmud explores God’s regret and there is debate about what exactly God regrets about creating human beings. As part of that discussion, Hillel and Shammai argue about whether it would have been better for human beings to be created or not have been created at all. In one of the rare instances when Shammai wins an argument it is determined that it would have been better had human beings not been created. However, the rabbis go on to say that since we already were created, it is our responsibility to examine our both our past and future deeds.</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8.7px; line-height: normal;"><sup></sup></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> This is what we are doing here tonight.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We come here to work on our souls, to sit with the uncomfortable truth that we have not always done the right thing and that we need to do better. Yom Kippur challenges us to name our regrets because that is the first step of Tshuvah — repentance — and how we become better. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Regret is painful and uncomfortable. We cringe with regret. It forces us to face the worst in ourselves, the moments when we would like to tell ourselves that we were acting out of character, a momentary blip instead of who we really are. Yet it is those moments that we truly regret that teach us who we really want to be and how we could be better.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Part of the pain of regret is that we have to take responsibility for our actions —we must admit that we had a choice and made the wrong one. We could have done something differently. We could have made a better decision. We could have exercised more self-control. We could have taken the leap. But we did not. And it is frustrating to imagine how things might have been better if we had only done something differently. Regret is the first step — that intense, emotional response to our self-examination that helps us to own up to our mistakes and change ourselves.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Doctor Brene Brown teaches that “Regret is one of the most powerful emotional reminders that change and growth are necessary…Regret is a tough, but fair teacher. To live without regret is to believe you have nothing to learn, no amends to make, and no opportunity to be braver with your life.”</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8.7px; line-height: normal;"><sup></sup></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If you have no regrets, then you are not doing the work of Yom Kippur. That is what really would be a waste of time — to spend all these hours in prayer and contemplation and not leave this place changed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Talmud teaches that one who has no regrets —who says, “I will sin and repent and then sin and repent” —that person is not truly penitent.</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8.7px; line-height: normal;"><sup></sup></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> Tshuvah is about recognizing what we have done wrong and learning from it, so that if we were to face the same circumstances again we would do something different.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Brown says something similar to the Talmud based in modern psychology: “There’s a power in… saying, ‘I do regret this decision. What can I do differently? How can I grow? How can I change?’ It is an uncomfortable but really important reminder to learn to do things different next time.”</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8.7px; line-height: normal;"><sup></sup></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> Regret is painful, but if you let it, regret can be the motivation to act differently in the future. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Reflecting on the last year and on our lives, our regrets come in all sizes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Some of us may have big regrets —things that were life-altering and continue to unsettle us —but most of our regrets are smaller, more ordinary occurrences. We fail to act kindly. We pretend not to see someone in need so we don’t have to stop and offer a hand. We pass up opportunities because we are afraid. We intentionally misunderstand a cry for help so we don’t have to answer it. We don’t take a chance, sticking with what we know instead of trying something new. We are silent when we should speak up. We say the hurtful thing because the other person deserved it, or because we were justifiably angry, or just because we were hurting and wanted to offload it onto someone else. These moments happen all the time. Perhaps this is why we want to ignore them and pretend that we have no regrets.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Our Yom Kippur liturgy and tradition are clear: we are supposed to remember and regret all of these things. We confess our sins over and over. In case we are tempted to say we have no regrets, reciting Al Chet and pounding our chests reminds us otherwise —it reminds us of everything we have done wrong, categories of sin we may have forgotten about until we recite the words together.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“What we regret most,” says Brown, “are our failures of courage, whether it’s the courage to be kinder, to show up, to say how we feel, to set boundaries, to be good to ourselves.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Our regrets can help teach us to take that chance, to speak up, to be kinder.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Our regret can remind us to refrain from hurting someone just because we can, to refrain from the revenge that feels good in the moment, to hold back the hurtful words that are truly better off unsaid.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Perhaps the reason regret is so painful is because it forces us to acknowledge that there are some things we can not fix. There are some mistakes that we can not undo, chances we can not go back and take, words that we can not unsay, there are things that are irreversibly broken.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">God regretted creating human beings and tried to start over, but we know that you can’t go back and erase mistakes, and what God did next is equally regrettable, destroying the earth and living things in an attempt to wash everything away. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">After the flood waters recede God seems to regret destroying the world in anger and promises to never again cause such complete destruction.Knowing that humans still have the capacity for evil and concerned about the temptation to once again send rains, God creates a reminder in the form of a rainbow, a promise to stop the rain and not let floods again destroy the whole earth.God learns through experience and regret.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Later in the Torah, the Israelites have escaped Egypt into the wilderness, only to panic and build a Golden Calf. God is ready to destroy them and start over with Moses as the new father of the Jewish people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Moses reminds God about the promise to Abraham,Isaac and Jacob that their offspring would be numerous and would populate the promised land. Moses asks God to repent from the plan to wipe them out.God listens to Moses and here uses the same word for “repent” as was used to express regret over creating humans: נחמתי nechamti, I regret. God has regrets and repents, and does not act on the impulse to punish the people by completely destroying them.God is learning, and changing. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">When later faced with a similar situation, God makes another choice, and does not act in anger. This is true repentance: choosing not to repeat the action that you regret. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">An admittedly-fallible God seems at odds with the theology of Yom Kippur. Instead of being all-knowing and all-powerful as portrayed in our prayers. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">An all-knowing God would not make mistakes, our Torah teaches that God does not know everything; instead God feels sorrow and has regrets. An all-powerful God could go back in time and change things, but our Torah teaches that even God does things that can not be undone. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Rabbi Brad Artson teaches that: “A timeless, changeless God cannot regret. Regret means being different than you were a moment ago…Over and over again the Torah emphasizes a God who expresses emotion, a God who is always meeting people in relationship, and changing because of that relationship.”</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8.7px; line-height: normal;"><sup></sup></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">God’s regrets are a lesson in Process Theology, a theology which teaches that God and the universe and everything in it are constantly changing together. Process theology understands that God is not a static and unchanging being, but instead is growing and evolving, alongside humanity.</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8.7px; line-height: normal;"><sup></sup></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If God is capable of regret and repentance and change, then these things are woven into the fabric of the universe and we too are capable of regret, repentance and change.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">One of the most fascinating things I found when researching this sermon is based in the Hebrew we use for these concepts that shows how they are woven together. The Hebrew word used in Torah to describe God’s regret — נחמתי nechamti — and that God later uses to mean “repent” —is the same word used elsewhere by the prophets to describe God’s offering of comfort. It may seem odd to use the same word for regret and repent and comfort in Hebrew, but this is the real key to Yom Kippur. Reflecting on our deeds and learning from our regrets is ultimately where we will find comfort. Regret, repentance and comfort are tied together. And comfort is an important part of the process: first an examination of our deeds, then regret for our mistakes —both big and small — then repentance, and finally the comfort that comes from learning from our regrets. Yom Kippur is a reminder that we can change, we are constantly changing and we can change for the better.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">You can come away from Yom Kippur with a sense of comfort and satisfaction with who you are now and everything that has brought you to this point —not because you have no regrets, but because you have learned from them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> Regret is a powerful teacher.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May wrestling with your regrets teach you to learn from your mistakes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May you find true repentance and may you change for the better.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May your repentance lead you to forgive yourself</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">and give you the wisdom to act differently in the future.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May you continue to grow and change.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May we all be able to say <i>nechamti —</i> I regret.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Nechamti —</i> I repent.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Nechamti —</i> I have found comfort.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Reshuffling Life”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Sermon for Erev Rosh HaShanah 5777</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Rabbi Shawna Brynjegard-Bialik</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Temple Ahavat Shalom – Northridge, California</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">What if you could arrange the events of your life in another way? Perhaps you wonder how different your teenage years might have been if only you had the knowledge you have now… or maybe some of us wish we still possessed the optimism and energy of our youth. We might imagine reordering entire days or years of our life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Author David Eagleman imagines a different way to organize the events of your life. In his vision of the afterlife you relive all of your experiences, but similar activities are grouped together. He writes:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>You sleep for thirty years without opening your eyes. You take all your pain at once, all twenty-seven intense hours of it. Once you make it through, it's agony-free for the rest of your afterlife. But that doesn't mean it's always pleasant. Eighteen months waiting in line. You can't take a shower until it's your time to take your marathon two-hundred-day shower. Two days lying. Six weeks waiting for a green light. Fourteen minutes experiencing pure joy. Three months doing laundry. Sixty-seven days of heartbreak. Four minutes wondering what your life would be like if you reshuffled the order of events. In this part of the afterlife, you imagine something analogous to your Earthly life, and the thought is blissful: a life where episodes are split into tiny swallowable pieces, where moments do not endure, where one experiences the joy of jumping from one event to the next like a child hopping from spot to spot on the burning sand.</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8px; line-height: normal;"><i><sup></sup></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">At this time of year, we envision a metaphorical Book of Life — a clean slate where our names might be written for another year of life and blessing. Now try to imagine another book… another type of ledger… where how we spend every second of our time is written down and calculated.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Eagleman’s numbers are based on averages — so you might spend less time sleeping, or more time doing laundry, but as estimates go they’re not too far off. That said, he leaves out an important category I know many of you are wondering about: how much time have you spent in High Holy Day services? According to my calculations, the average Reform Jew will spend about 33 days over the course of a lifetime, more if you stay for the whole day on Yom Kippur. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black;">I hope you've got a comfortable seat.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It’s surprising to realize how much time we spend on all of these activities. Organizing every second into categories, the way Eagleman does, certainly gives us a different way to look at how we spend our time. Which is exactly what we are supposed to be doing here tonight, and over the course of the next ten days. Thinking back over the year that just ended, reviewing our choices... reviewing how we spent our time. Were we engaged in the things we wanted to be? The things that matter to you? Or were you wasting time? Rosh Hashanah is an annual reminder that life is short, and so much of our time is taken up by such little moments: laundry and showers and waiting in lines. It seems impossible in one lifetime to fit in everything we want to do. We have limited time; how will you use it?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Psalmist was acutely aware of how finite our time is when he wrote, “The span of our life is seventy years, or, given the strength, eighty years; but even the best of them are trouble and sorrow. They pass by speedily, and we are in darkness… Teach us to count our days, that we may obtain a wise heart.”</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8.7px; line-height: normal;"><sup></sup></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Psalmist knew that wisdom comes from knowing that our time is limited; it is precisely because we have only so many days that we are forced to examine them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If you had an infinite lifespan, there would be no urgency to focus on important tasks, or to fix your mistakes —you could waste time on unimportant things until you were ready to live a life of meaning, and still have an infinite stretch of years ahead of you. The Psalmist is not telling us to count our days, but telling us to make our days count. It is up to us to find something meaningful in every day. Life will be difficult, there will be trouble and sorrow; it is how we respond to difficulty that matters. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Our patriarch Isaac knew better than anyone how short our time is. Rabbi Bradley Artson teaches that Isaac had a near-death experience when he went under the knife, about to be sacrificed by his father Abraham on Mount Moriah, and from that experience he gained clarity about what is truly important in life.</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8.7px; line-height: normal;"><sup></sup></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> Like many who have faced their mortality when staring death in the face, Isaac’s new understanding of life’s brevity leads him to reorient his life, to focus on what writer David Brooks calls “Eulogy Values.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In his book <i>The Road to Character, </i>Brooks posits that there are two types of values: Resume Values and Eulogy Values. He explains that Resume Values are the skills and talents you have that you bring to the marketplace. Eulogy Values are just what they sound like: what people will talk about at your funeral — things like “whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful.”</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8.7px; line-height: normal;"><sup></sup></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Isaac is frequently thought of as the least of the patriarchs. He is not the communal leader that his father Abraham and his son Jacob are recorded as being; he is often viewed as a mere link in the chain between generations. He is not a warrior or public figure; he does not have a huge family; he is not known for his wealth or his skill in negotiating with others. Isaac, perhaps because his own life flashed before his eyes as he thought he was dying, goes on to lead a very different life from the other patriarchs.</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8.7px; line-height: normal;"><sup></sup></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> His priorities are different. He spends more time focused on Eulogy Values than on Resume Values.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Isaac has a deep sense of empathy. He is the only one of the patriarchs to plead to God on behalf of his wife when she is unable to get pregnant. He dedicated his life to Rebecca, and never takes another wife or concubine to prove his virility or to ensure that he will have heirs. Isaac is also the only patriarch to be described as loving his wife — and he remains in love with her throughout their lives. Isaac at one point tells King Abimelech that Rebecca is his sister, thinking that his wife is so attractive that someone would want to kill him in order to have her for themselves.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This is decades after they have met — they have adult sons! —but he still finds her irresistibly attractive and assumes everyone else does too. They don’t. Nobody else is interested in Rebecca; it is only Isaac that continues to see her as beautiful as the day they met. And in that same story we also see their playful intimacy with each other; it’s abundantly clear that they have a deep and lasting relationship. Isaac’s focus is on love, connection and partnership.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Isaac is more concerned about peace than material wealth. When he is challenged about the wells he has dug, he willingly hands them over to the Philistines instead of going to battle. Isaac does not put others’ lives on the line to gain or preserve his wealth; he is aware that accumulating a larger fortune is not worth risking the safety of his family or others who depend on him. Isaac is a peacemaker; he knows that not every battle is worth fighting and his restraint results in a harmony between him and the surrounding people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Isaac stays in the land of Israel all of his life; unlike Abraham and Jacob he never sets foot in Egypt, and is the first Jew to practice farming — planting and staying in one place until the harvest; showing his dedication and patience. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Isaac is shocked at the point of a knife into an awareness that his life is fleeting and he learns not to take life for granted.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Isaac is the often-overlooked patriarch because he does not have the prestigious resume and outward success that Abraham and Jacob do, but his life is an example of what it means to cultivate Eulogy Values — to live a life of meaning, loyalty, devotion and peace, focused on relationships and faith. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The ram caught in the thicket granted Isaac another chance at life. We have such a moment as well in these Days of Awe. As the ram was Isaac’s salvation, the call of the shofar is our wake-up call — a reminder for us not to take life for granted either. It is in this moment that we let our own lives flash in front of our eyes. All of the good and all of our sins.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">David Brooks suggests that the theologian Augustine offers a good working definition of sin — that when you sin it is because you have your loves out of order. “We all love a lot of things. We love family, we love money, we love a little affection, status, truth,” Brooks says. “And we all know that some loves are higher. We know that our love of family is higher than our love of money. However, when those ranks begin to shift, that’s when sin comes in. Our love of truth should be higher than our love of money. [But] if we’re lying to get money, we’re putting our loves out of order.” If a friend tells you a secret and you share it at a dinner party, you are putting a love of popularity over your love of friendship.</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8.7px; line-height: normal;"><sup></sup></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This definition of sin is also a way to organize a <i>cheshbon nefesh, </i>an accounting of our soul; how we spend our time is an indicator of what we love and what we value the most.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">On Rosh Hashanah we ask ourselves, “how did we spend the past year?” If you were to reshuffle the events of this past year, does the way you spend your time reflect your values and what’s most important to you?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The reality is that we can’t spend every moment doing something that we love, or only the things that bring us joy — we need our sleep and it is impossible to avoid pain. But there are many, many hours that we <i>do</i> have control of — and on Rosh Hashanah we are reminded that it is up to us to determine how we will spend those hours.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">When we try to imagine our lives reshuffled into orderly categories, all of our pain and heartache all at once, it seems unbearable. Eagleman points out that it is because we experience all of these things in small amounts that they are manageable. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In reflecting on the past year, when we think about our moments of pain, we also remember the moments of comfort — the kind word... the friend that reached out… the hug when we needed it. How often in the past year were <i>we</i> that source of comfort? How often did we make someone else smile?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We have choices in how we respond to the world around us, how we respond to the inevitable heartbreak that none of us can avoid, how we respond to the challenges that test our abilities. The average person spends five months of their life complaining. We can choose not to spend our hours that way. We can stand up for others. We can take responsibility and make amends. We can nurture our friendships and love deeply. We can help bring peace to our homes, our community and our world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As we begin the New Year, we take stock of our lives. Are you living the way you want to be remembered? Are you living a life that reflects your values?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If not enough of your hours are spent doing things that are meaningful to you, if your time does not reflect your values, you can start by changing just one hour: spending one more hour a week doing something that matters to you — something important that reflects who you really are and what you value. Just one more hour a week. Only eight and half minutes a day. And it adds up — by next Rosh Hashanah that’s 52 more hours working on your eulogy values, two more days spent doing the things that matter. Let the call of the shofar wake you up and remind you to make your days count.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Our lives are made up of so many little moments.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May your moments be filled with joy,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May your hours be filled with contentment, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May your days be filled with meaning and </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May your years be filled with purpose</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And may you find blessing in this new year.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-62782301388355677712016-06-15T22:26:00.000-07:002016-06-15T22:26:20.650-07:00Summer Camp Packing Tips - What I've Learned After 10 Summers of Packing For Camp<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">This will be our 10th summer at Camp Newman. When we started, I packed for everyone — now my kids can pack themselves. These are my tips from 10 years of packing for summer camp.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>You’re going to forget something, and that’s OK</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">There will always be something that your kids will forget or wish they packed, but don’t worry — camp is a community, and they will share clothes and shampoo and help each other find what they need... and that’s part of the fun. Don’t overpack, and don’t worry; your kids are learning how friends help take care of each other.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Just like Las Vegas — sometimes what goes to camp, stays at camp</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Not everything that goes to camp comes home again. Don’t send anything to camp that you would be heartbroken to lose. If you love it and can’t live without it, leave it at home. And label EVERYTHING you bring with you. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Label everything</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I can’t say this enough. I have seen the inside of a cabin halfway through camp: stuff is everywhere. The kids just throw all their stuff together and shove it under the bunk when they’re in a hurry to clean up. Things fall off the clothesline, towels get left at the pool… I have even seen a sleeping bag in the lost-and-found - if you label it, you are more likely to find it again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Ziptop bags are the best</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In addition to toiletries and stationary, put underwear and socks in separate bags; it makes it easier to find clean socks and underwear when they’re not tossed in with the pile of clothes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Be prepared for “color wars”</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Bring things in red, blue, yellow and green — and not just a t-shirt. Bring lots of things in those colors — shorts, bandanas, headbands. The more you have, the better. And if you don’t use it, you will likely have a friend who will want to borrow it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Lots of sunscreen</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Seriously – lots. I also send a sunscreen stick to make it easier for kids to put sunscreen on their faces. Kids will share, counselors will remind kids to apply and reapply, but I try to make it as easy as possible for my kids to stay slathered in sunscreen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Regarding your feet</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Closed-toe shoes are a great idea. I love my Keen sandals; I'm sure they have saved me from a bloody foot on more than one occasion. Many camps are requiring shoes that have either a closed toe or heel; make sure to read and follow the rules. That said, bring a pair of cheap flip-flops for the pool or shower or for stepping outside to hang up a towel on the clothesline. They’re not an alternative to shoes — they’re an alternative to bare feet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Extras</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">My kids suggest sending an extra set of pajamas, as one set gets dirty on the overnight. And an extra set of clothes so they have something to wear on laundry day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Theme events</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Pack some crazy accessories. As kids get older their groups have more theme nights and activities. Send hats, costume-type clothes… hit up the thrift store for unusual clothes — especially 80s things. Yes, parents, we are now old enough to be a theme night.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Bedsheets</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I send a fitted sheet to go on the mattress under the sleeping bag. No particular reason; it’s just a nice little touch of home.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Or two. My kids love to read and sometimes there is downtime when a kid just wants to read. You don’t need to send enough for the summer — here is where the sharing thing comes in again — because kids will pass books around the cabin; my kids have discovered new authors that way.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If you want your kid to write, make it easy. And then don’t panic when they don’t write — if your kid isn’t writing, it’s because they’re having too much fun with friends to stop and send you a letter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Do not try to sneak in electronics or cell phones. Camp is a chance to unplug. Your kids are well cared for at camp and they are learning independence, and that means not being able to call mom and dad. For kids struggling with homesickness, calling home tends to make it worse and not better. Send your kids letters instead - even if they don’t write back, campers love to receive mail.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-55694947306690407752014-10-02T17:19:00.001-07:002014-10-02T17:19:55.437-07:00This sermon is making me uncomfortable<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Last spring my friend Portlyn talked me into lifting weights.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">At first I said no.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am not a gym person and it is so far out of my comfort zone I can barely see it from here. I do not enjoy exercise, I don’t get that endorphin rush that even casual athletes talk about, but I know it is good for you and Portlyn persisted and so I eventually gave in and called the gym.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The first time I walked in the door I wanted to turn around and walk out again. It seemed that everyone around me knew exactly what they were doing: what to wear, what kind of water bottle to have, where to stand and how to move… Everyone looked like they had a purpose, whereas I had no clue and I was sure everyone could tell that I didn’t belong. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I was so uncomfortable that I could feel it on my skin, that sense of unease that everyone was staring at me and finding me lacking. I did, in fact turn around, and there was my friend, blocking the door and reminding me that nobody was looking at me or even cared about what shoes I was wearing. It was awkward and I did not like it, but I <i>did</i> go back and kept going back.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I still don’t really enjoy it. It’s still outside my comfort zone, and I still feel awkward, but I am getting stronger so I keep going. But every time I start to get a bit more comfortable, every time I start to feel like I’m getting the hang of it, someone hands me another weight and I am shoved right back out of my comfort zone.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’m pretty sure we’ve all heard that phrase: the “comfort zone.” It was first defined back in 1907, when two psychologists — Robert Yerkes and John Dodson — discovered that there is an “anxiety neutral” zone where one has very little anxiety and very steady behavior: the comfort zone.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s not surprising that humans are most comfortable in the absence of anxiety, there is a whole industry dedicated to relieving anxiety and stress. And while there is nothing wrong with feeling at ease, staying in your comfort zone leaves you with no reason to grow or change. And the longer you stay in your comfort zone the more challenging it is to get out of it; it can lead to a state of inertia.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What Yerkes and Dodson discovered through experiment is something we instinctively know: to grow we need to try new things. To change we need to be disturbed. We need to push ourselves to do things we’re not quite sure about.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sometimes we’re forced out of our comfort zones — we lose a job, we suffer an injury, or we lose people we love. Sometimes we choose to leave the comfortable behind by taking a risk and discover we are capable of far more than we thought.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The Torah is filled with examples of people who could only achieve greatness once they stepped outside of their comfort zone.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Adam and Eve could not stay in the Garden of Eden, as comfortable as it was; there was no chance to become fully human until they left and were forced to find a new way. Judaism teaches that leaving the Garden was necessary.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Abraham and Sarah had to leave their home to connect with God and to parent a nation. And when they got comfortable — when they finally had a son who would be the first of descendants as numerous as the stars — God demanded that Isaac be sacrificed, testing Abraham’s core beliefs.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Jacob, too, had to leave home in order to create his new family — and along the way he wrestled with himself to forge a relationship with God. He also had to deal with what was assuredly an awkward confrontation, meeting face-to-face with the brother he had tricked out of his birthright. Without these trials Jacob would not have grown from a spoiled, favored boy into a man and the father of a nation.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Moses was uncomfortable with his role as leader of the Jewish people, but he had to stretch past his discomfort before he could lead them out of slavery to freedom. And as terrible as slavery was, the Israelites had become comfortable there; once free, they constantly complained about the desert and even asked to go back to Egypt. But the path to freedom in the promised land could only be found while wandering in the desert.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I could go on and on with examples in Torah — not just because it is our tradition, but because it is in my comfort zone. But to really understand what it means to push ourselves and why we need to do so, we need to get out of my comfort zone and into mussar.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Mussar is relatively new for me. I can admit that I am not as versed in it as I am in Torah and I have to also admit that saying in front of all of you that I don’t know something is <i>way</i> out of my comfort zone. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The word “mussar" means instruction, but we understand it as self-improvement that focuses on living a more conscientious life and heightening our awareness of the world and our responsibilities in it. In short mussar is about “becoming more of a mensch.”</span><span style="font-size: 9.3px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup></sup></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our examples in the Torah teach us why it is important to make a change, but mussar tells us exactly how to do it — it is a step-by-step action plan. Most of our days are taken up by doing just what we have always done; mussar challenges us to recognize these moments and to make better choices so that our actions align with our values.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, an early 20th century philosopher considered one of the great mussar teachers, had a method for improving and changing behavior. He taught about the concept of a <i>bechirah</i> point, or a “decision” point. We all have one, and for each of us it is different.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Most of our decisions are habits, things that we don’t necessarily even think about — it is obvious to us, says Dessler, how we will respond in the majority of situations. A <i>bechirah</i> point is different — it’s a moment that gives us pause and makes us question our values — a choice we’ve never had to make before and possibly will never encounter again. Everyone’s <i>choice</i> point is unique, and it changes as we mature and change.</span><span style="font-size: 9.3px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup></sup></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">How do we change? Jewish wisdom understands that we each have two impulses which pull us in different directions. The <i>yetzer tov</i> — our good inclination — is the voice that reminds us of the truth; some people call that voice our conscience. The <i>yetzer ra,</i> also called our evil inclination is our selfish impulse, our greedy impulse, or jealous reaction; it encourages us to see the world as if it exists only for our personal benefit. When faced with a choice we may know what’s right, but our self-interest can lead us astray. These two forces are constantly at odds with each other, but we can train our <i>yetzer tov, </i> our good inclination to be the stronger force.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And as we make decisions about our actions the balance between the <i>yetzer tov </i>and the <i>yetzer ra </i>changes. The more we listen to our good inclination, the better choices we make and we can change our habits for the better and become our best selves.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Mussar is a way to do this. We know that one-time resolutions are not the path to change — how many of us are still making the same promises we made last year, still asking for forgiveness for the same things as last year? We can’t expect to become new people overnight, to wake up tomorrow on Rosh Hashanah morning transformed — but we can make better choices. You <i>can</i> remain content in your comfort zone… but if you do, you will never realize your full potential. Real change is in the details.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The details are often easily overlooked and our slide into sin can be so slow and subtle that we do not even notice our own bad behavior. If not held in check our moral compass will shift and we will no longer recognize when we are wrong. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">That is why we come here on Rosh Hashanah: to determine where we have gotten off-track. To shift the battle line between our <i>yetzer tov</i> and <i>yetzer ra.</i> When our habits and behaviors are more ethical, the territory controlled by our <i>yetzer tov </i>gets larger and we become more virtuous.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">One of the places your <i>bechirah</i> points come into play is when you have to decide, do you speak up when a friend tells an offensive joke or do you laugh it off? Do you look the other way when someone is being harassed because it’s none of your business? Do you remain quiet when a colleague says something derogatory because everyone has their own opinion? </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When we avoid speaking out because it is uncomfortable we not only move ourselves toward our <i>yetzer ra,</i> our evil inclination — we move our whole culture in that direction as well.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Over the past few weeks the National Football League has been an example of what happens when our cultures moral compass slips. A video came to light of an unconscious woman being dragged from an elevator by an NFL player. Minor charges were filed and the offender was suspended for two games… but these reactions were minor and perfunctory, and passed nearly without comment. We did not reach a collective <i>bechirah</i> point until a more graphic video surfaced — of this player punching the woman so hard he knocked her unconscious. The circumstances had not changed, but it was not until faced with the images of that kind of violence, the NFL and the public could no longer ignore it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But the sad truth is that our culture can tolerate knowing that women are victimized; we acknowledge it’s wrong, and yet we don’t do anything to change it. Violence against women on college campuses is almost a given. The “yesallwomen” campaign of the summer showed just how common misogyny and harassment of women is. It shows how far off course we are that we need to see graphic violence before we say that we are upset by it. We know it exists, but it takes video footage to really make us uncomfortable. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When it comes to cultural change, it often takes huge violations for us to recognize that we need to change. As Jews we must not shrug our shoulders and say, “that is just the way things are; it is too big to fix.” There are some things about which we must never say “boys will be boys.” As Jews we are called to stand up for the vulnerable and to notice when our society is drifting toward our collective <i>yetzer ra. </i>When the Torah says we have to take care of strangers, widows and orphans, that is our call to stand up for all who are suffering from an imbalance of power. We are obligated to get our of our comfort zones, to say the unpopular thing, to shine a bright light on injustice and to demand change when change is so clearly needed. How we treat the weak, the disenfranchised, the minority populations, and those not in power is a barometer of how we are doing as a society. In addition to personal reflection on Rosh Hashanah we need to reflect on what needs to change in the world around us, we should not be comfortable with the way our society treats the marginalized.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If we have become complacent about a little misogyny or a little homophobia — if we are not offended because it is just a little bigotry, a little racism — if we don’t speak out about a little anti-Zionism, a little anti-Semitism — then we surely need to get out of our comfort zones. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Judaism requires that we have to go beyond what <i>feels</i> good to what <i>is</i> good. We have a higher purpose: to be God’s partners in creating a more perfect world, to spread justice, to care for others, to find meaning in our lives. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Over the next ten days your task is to think of all the ways you have become comfortable and complacent…and ultimately that kind of introspection can lead you to take new risks and stretch beyond your limits. By being aware of our personal <i>bechirah</i> points, our decision points and how they shift as we evolve, we can see a path to righteousness. By being aware of what is happening in the world around us we have a chance to bring cultural change. At Rosh Hashanah we are reminded to think of the trajectory of our lives, we are reminded to think long-term, to think about who we are and who we want to be and the kind of society we want to live in — we are challenged to grow and change. We are also challenged to make a difference — to remember our role in the world, to work to create a more just society.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">May this New Year be a year of growth and change for us. May our worship here together inspire us to move beyond what is comfortable to what is challenging. May you recognize all the moments you are faced with a choice and may you find the strength to make good choices. May your <i>yetzer tov </i>always speak louder than your <i>yetzer ra.</i> May all the little steps you take in this New Year lead you to a life of increased meaning and holiness.</span></div>
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Shana Tova.</div>
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<a href="http://nicejewishartist.com/torahgeek/SB2-Sermon_Uncomfortable_092414.pdf" target="_blank">Click here for a PDF with footnotes.</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-43465229656369775322014-06-23T08:41:00.000-07:002014-06-23T08:41:18.250-07:00Shalom from Camp Newman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Shalom from Camp Newman</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Last Tuesday was the day campers arrived for the first day of the first session of Camp Newman 2014, and we greeted the arriving campers with cheering and song; by Tuesday night camp was already in full swing.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The days at camp have a rhythm. They have to in order for the schedules of so many campers to work together. Kids quickly learn the flow of meals and swimming and menucha (rest time) and tefillah and chugim (electives) and programs. By Thursday it’s already become routine, so everyone notices when things shift on Friday afternoon and we begin to prepare for Shabbat.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The rhythm of camp changes for Shabbat. During the week campers spend most of their time with their age group, so when on Shabbat the whole Camp Newman community comes together — starting with the CIT vs. staff frisbee game — it’s a big change. It continues with all-camp clean-up, when campers have extra time to clean up their cabins and to take a shower and dress in white. Shabbat is welcomed in a processional as the songleaders walk through camp singing Bo-ee Kallah (“Welcome Shabbat Bride”). The campers stream out of the cabins and follow them, more and more joining as they wind their way through the cabins until everyone comes together in the Beit Tefilah (our outdoor prayer space) to sing and worship together.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The Beit Tefilah is nestled into the side of a hill, surrounded by trees. We watch the sun set through the tops of the redwoods and pines. The highlight of the service is when the counselors take out colorful tallitot and spread them over the campers while blessing them.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Shabbat dinner is the only meal that the entire camp eats together at the same time, and it features brownies for dessert. Then the whole Camp Newman community heads up to the basketball courts to sing and dance together. The Shabbat schedule continues on Saturday, with extra time to read Torah and enjoy “Its-It” ice cream sandwiches in the afternoon.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We hosted the 15 campers and staff from Temple Ahavat Shalom in our cabin for a special Oneg Shabbat celebration on Saturday afternoon. When asked what the highlight of camp was so far, the kids agreed: Shabbat. At camp you can really feel that it is Shabbat; it is unlike celebrating Shabbat back at home or even with the synagogue. Everything changes on Shabbat and you can’t help but feel the joy and the sense of rest that comes with it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When asked about other highlights of the first week at Camp Newman, the TAS campers also said climbing the tower, swimming, sharing inside jokes with their cabin mates, the ropes course, archery, and sports. For the campers who are in the new cabins, they also raved about the new buildings, the great view of the frisbee game from the balcony, and how the new bathrooms by the field are the best bathrooms in the whole camp. Ah, the simple pleasures of summer camp.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-36166241305624399392014-04-28T16:07:00.000-07:002014-04-28T16:07:16.027-07:00Memory and Action: Reflections on the Jewish World Watch Walk to End Genocide and Yom HaShoah<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Yesterday my congregation, <a href="http://www.tasnorthridge.org/" target="_blank">Temple Ahavat Shalom</a>, participated in the <a href="http://www.jewishworldwatch.org/" target="_blank">Jewish World Watch Walk to End Genocide</a>. The TAS team was the largest it has ever been, with more than 70 participants raising more than $2,000 for Jewish World Watch. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This year there were more than 3,000 participants, all gathered in Los Angeles’s Pan Pacific Park to start the walk. It was such a joy to see so many Jews gathered in one place, working together to make the world a better place and to alleviate the suffering of others. “Never forget” means not taking our power for granted and remembering that together we can make a difference and save lives. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But it was not just Jews participating. There were many other groups walking with us, including “Burmese Muslims Against Genocide.” That others would participate in an event with Jewish in the title (though this was <i>not</i> a Jewish event, but a human one) gives me hope — hope that we can come together and remember that the things which connect us are more important than the things which separate us. We cannot just take care of our own group; as part of the human family — each of us in God’s image — we have a responsibility to take care of all people. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">To help make that connection every one who walked received a water bottle with a person’s name on it — the name of someone living in the Congo or Sudan who has survived the atrocities there and is rebuilding their life and helping others. We have to remember that the people of the Congo and Sudan are people just like us. If we forget that we are all human, or don’t act as though we know it, that is when tyrants can get away with treating others as less than human — that is when horrors like the genocide in Darfur and Sudan can happen. It was when others thought of Jews as less than human that the Holocaust was possible.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">After the walk we returned to Temple Ahavat Shalom for our Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) memorial service led by our seventh grade students. Rabbi Barry Lutz told our students that reading Torah is an act of defiance. Our little Torah comes from Kolin, Czechoslovakia, a city whose Jewish population was destroyed in the Holocaust. There are no more Jews there to read from this Torah, but every bar and bat mitzvah at Temple Ahavat Shalom carries that Torah and reads from that Torah. Rabbi Lutz reminded them what it means to carry Torah in their hearts and how it should inspire them to act in the world. Our seventh grade students spend the year learning about the Holocaust and what happens when hatred goes unchecked; it was inspiring to see them at the Walk in the morning and leading the service in the afternoon — joining with other Jews to remember our past, to help make a difference in the world, and to save lives.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Rabbi Lutz frequently speaks about what it means for each of us to be <i>b’tzelem eloheim</i> — each one of us in God’s image — and it was wonderful to walk with so many members of the TAS family. We have an obligation to take care of each other — even people across the world, people we may never meet. It is not enough to light a candle and to remember and to say “never again”; we have to take action and work together to make sure it does not happen again.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-55359781913866008112013-12-12T18:07:00.000-08:002013-12-12T18:07:13.428-08:00On the way to the URJ Biennal<div style="font-family: Helvetica;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">As rabbi’s kids my daughters </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; text-decoration: line-through;">are dragged to</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> attend more than their fair share of Jewish events and activities and right now we are on a train headed to the <a href="http://urjbiennial.zerista.com/" target="_blank">URJ 13th Biennial</a> - the world’s largest gathering of Reform Jews. I have been looking forward to Biennial - seeing old friends sharing best practices and hearing about all the ways that Reform Judaism is thriving. With multiple options for worship and study and discussion it is a chance to live Judaism that is not always as easy in the real world. It is Jewish camp from grown ups.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I want my kids to see that you can be an engaged Jewish adult without being a Jewish professional. That the feeling of connection and community that they have at camp can be found well beyond their teenage years. To know that those NFTY friendships made in high school really do become lifelong friendships. To see that a vibrant Jewish community happens when people work together to create one. That all the things they love about camp can exist even when they will one day be sending their own kids to camp. That Reform Judaism is alive and well - and serious, and spiritual, and studious, and joyful, and dynamic, and diverse and authentic.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-36366952587546840112013-09-18T14:50:00.000-07:002013-09-18T14:50:45.318-07:00Rosh Hashanah Sermon: Be Vulnerable in the New Year<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">My father died seven months ago.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">He spent the last few weeks of his life in the ICU, and we were there with him almost every moment. Many of you know what that’s like — the heartbreak of watching someone you love, slowly dying. You know about the fear and the sadness and the pain. You know about the endless days waiting... the hours you can’t keep track of... careening between hope and despair. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">It was awful.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">During the weeks my dad was in the hospital and after his death I was blessed to be surrounded by community and friends... but I found it difficult to accept help. People offered meals, but I turned them down. Friends offered to come sit with me, but I turned them down. I wanted to be strong. I wanted to handle it well. I wanted to control an uncontrollable situation. Those closest to me saw through me, and took care of me despite my protests that I was fine, but I put on a brave face for the rest of the world.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Until one friend didn’t let me get away with it. I was politely refusing her offer of dinner when she said to me, “Stop it. I need to do this mitzvah and you won’t let me. You may not need help, but I am asking you to help me do this mitzvah by letting me help you.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">And that was it. Now I had a reason to accept her offer : it was not for me (yeah, right!). I was helping her. It was easy for me to let her help if I reframed it in my mind that way.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">What I had trouble admitting to myself — what I only realized once I let her in — was that I really did need her help, that I didn’t even need to pretend to make it through on my own.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In my own grief I had forgotten that there is no way to handle the death of a loved one well. The only way through was to be vulnerable — to admit that I could not do it on my own.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">This is not my usual role. Like many of you, I am much more comfortable as a caregiver than as the one being cared for. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Last year, from this same spot, I spoke with you about the Caring Community and I invited you to help care for others. And you answered the call. The Caring Community has done so much this year, offering support to so many members of our community, including me. More than two dozen care packages were delivered to grieving families; more than 50 servings of food were prepared and delivered; and more than one hundred cards were sent and two hundred phone calls were made. But they could have done more; we have lots of volunteers waiting and wanting to help. So why, you might ask didn’t the Caring Community do more? The reason is simple; when approached with offers of assistance, most people said, “No thank you, I’m OK, I don’t need anything. I’m fine” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In talking to other rabbis at other congregations, I’ve found out we’re not alone . Many of my colleagues say that they have a congregation ready and willing to help others... but not as ready to accept help for themselves. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">My first reaction was, frankly, relief: “I’m so glad it’s not just me who has trouble accepting help!” Lots of us refuse help, even when it’s needed. And then I wanted to understand why. Why is it so hard to accept help from others? What is holding us back from letting others help us?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">I found part of an answer in the words of Dr. Brene Brown, a shame researcher whose TED talk about vulnerability went viral on the internet. She explains that asking for help means admitting that we are vulnerable — and that we don’t like being seen as vulnerable. We want to be seen as strong, independent and healthy. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Dr. Brown suggests that when we don’t accept help from others it is because we are judging ourselves. Unless we can receive help with an open heart, we are never really giving help with an open heart. When we refuse help when we need it we are knowingly or unknowingly judging ourselves and judging those we offer to help.1</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Most of us would deny attaching judgment to our giving, we want to see ourselves as generous and caring and don’t recognize that we get some measure of self worth from always being the one to offer help and not the one needing it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Think about that for a moment - while we would all claim never to judge a person who accepts our help, when we refuse to accept ourselves because we think it makes us appear weak or needy is on some level what we think about the people who accept our help. We have to learn to accept help when we need it, that is the only way we can truly help others - freely and without judgement. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Being vulnerable is about allowing ourselves to be seen — really seen — it’s about revealing our true and authentic selves as they are, not merely as we wish to be seen. When we are vulnerable there is uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. 2 </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">To be open – to let others see us when we are feeling vulnerable – is hard. It’s hard to drop all pretense. It’s hard to open ourselves up. It’s hard to let others help us. Letting others help me meant I had to let myself be seen as a person who was intensely grieving and that I have to admit how just hard it is to be on this side of loss. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">What makes vulnerability so difficult to face in ourselves? Perhaps it’s that we so often mistake it for weakness, when it is really courage. We take a huge emotional risk when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable. Taking risks, braving uncertainty, and opening ourselves up to emotional exposure is never weakness.3 … but we all know it can feel that way.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Tomorrow in the Haftarah we’re going to read about Hannah — a woman who is not afraid to be vulnerable. We will read about Hannah going to a temple in Shiloh and pouring out her grief to God. And really, she is absolutely and utterly vulnerable in her prayer.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In that holy place she sobs and pours out her grief — and her hopes — to God. She does not recite a standard prayer; she opens her heart and allows herself to be seen by God, to be seen as who she is: a childless woman at a time when a woman’s worth was determined by her offspring, a person who is devastated by the hurtful things another person is saying to her and about her.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">She does not hold back.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In fact Hannah is so open with her emotions that the priest, Eli, mistakes her heartfelt prayer for drunkenness. He is quick to judge her, saying, “How long do you propose to carry on drunk like this!” And here’s where Hannah does something somewhat unexpected. She doesn’t apologize or make excuses or run away or hide. Instead she reveals her vulnerability to Eli, saying, “I am a sober woman; I have had neither wine or liquor, but have been pouring out my heart before God. All this time I have been speaking out of my great sorrow and grief.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Hannah is courageous in opening herself to emotional exposure, especially after she has already been criticized. Perhaps Eli’s response is one of the things that holds us back in our own prayer. Perhaps we don’t want to be judged the way that Eli judges Hannah, so even in this safe place — even in this sacred space — we hold back; we don’t allow ourselves to be truly vulnerable even in our own personal prayer.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">So yes, we struggle with vulnerability. Even here, in this sanctuary. Even now, on this day. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">It is, admittedly, uncomfortable, but it’s not just about wanting to appear strong in front of others. Dr. Brown suggests that vulnerability is closely linked to shame. She defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”4 We all feel it, from time to time. But nobody likes to talk about it or even admit that we have it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In your mind, finish the following sentence about yourself by filling in the blank: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">“I’m not [blank] enough.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">We fill in the blank with all kinds of things we are not “enough of.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Not smart enough.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Not nice enough, not tough enough, not caring enough, not successful enough. not religious enough. Not feminine or masculine enough. Not happy enough, not attractive enough, not thin enough. Not productive or popular or creative enough. Not Jewish enough, not important enough.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">That blank your mind filled in, that feeling that we are not enough is where shame comes from - and nobody is immune.5</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Our tradition tells us of King David, a pillar of strength: a warrior and ruler. But even in David we find that vulnerability. While he is struggling with Saul for the kingship, David is responsible for his own army. In the manner of military leaders at the time David sends his soldiers to request food and supplies from Nabal, a local nobleman. Nabal, however, denies the supplies and sends David’s men back to him empty-handed with a message, saying: “Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse? There are many slaves nowadays who run away from their masters. Should I then take my bread and my water, and the meat that I slaughtered for my own shearers, and give them to men who come from I don’t know where?”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Nabal denies David’s request, he denies his kingship, and he compares him to a runaway slave. In doing so Nabal tapped into David’s fear that he was not enough — who was he to be king?Nabal has voiced David’s own fears about himself – that he can’t provide for his men, that he was not really worthy to be king, that he was an impostor. David responds with out-of-control anger and violence, telling his men to ready their swords; David is going to slaughter Nabal and all his men to prove that he is the king - that he is in fact worthy and that he is enough.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">It is Abigail who sees through David’s pretense and helps him calm down. She reminds him that he is worthy, and she helps him make a more strategic response — one that helps ensure his future kingship. David recognizes the worth of a woman who can see him at his most vulnerable — and can help him despite himself, and eventually he marries her.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">At first glance one might mistake the willingness of a warrior to go to battle as courage, but that isn’t so. True courage comes when he admits to being vulnerable. David is strongest when he is able to listen to wise council.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Everyone is capable of this kind of courage. Facing up to our fears about not measuring up takes courage. We need this kind of courage at the High Holy Days.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">On Rosh Hashanah we can become so focused on what we are supposed to be — all the ways that we did not measure up in the last year, and all the things we want to do better in the new year that we start to feel shame. We start to feel unworthy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">And that’s OK. It’s OK to feel that way, and to be vulnerable. That’s why we’re here.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">When we focus on our deeds we need to be open and vulnerable — not to run away, not to fight it off, but to face our fears about ourselves head-on.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Yes, facing our shortcomings hurts, but this is the place to face those hurts and not to let them take over. This is the place to face up to our actions, to admit the things we did that were bad without thinking that we are bad. When we compare who we are against who we want to be, it is uncomfortable, but it can help us see where we need to change. These holy days are not about achieving perfection; they are a time to open ourselves up to the possibility of change, by recognizing and acknowledging where we have fallen short. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Our challenge for Rosh Hashanah is to recognize all the things we can do better in the new year and still remember that we are worthy of love and belonging — right now, right this minute, just as we are. 6</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The shofar is our wake-up call. Don’t wait until you think you are “enough.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Don’t wait until you are “fill in the blank” enough.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">You’re ready. We’re all ready. That’s why we’re here.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">We need to be open and vulnerable in the new year — and while that is scary and leaves us open to pain and uncertainty, it also means that we are open to joy and possibility. We need to be be courageous in the new year.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">We need to be vulnerable in our experience of these ten days of repentance; we need to focus on being our real and authentic selves. We need to recognize that we are not perfect and that’s OK, because we are committed to being better. We need to admit admit the things we have done wrong without thinking that something is wrong with us. This is how we change for the better in the new year. When we remember that we are all in God’s image, we know that we are inherently worthy. Worthy of love. Worthy of belonging. Worthy of this holy community. Worthy of blessing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">May we recognize our own strengths. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">May we remember that vulnerability is courage. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">May we have the courage to show up and allow ourselves to be seen by others. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">My prayer for you in the new year is:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Be who you are, and may you be blessed in all that you are.7</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"> <span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup> 1</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Brown, Brene (2010-09-20). The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Suppose to Be and Embrace Who You Are (p. 20). BookMobile. Kindle Edition.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup>2</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p.34</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup>3</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 37</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup>4</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> Daring Greatly, p. 69</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup>5</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> Brene Brown</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup>6</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Brown, Brene (2010-09-20). The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Suppose to Be and Embrace Who You Are (pp. 23-24). BookMobile. Kindle Edition.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup>7</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> Marcia Falk, “The Book of Blessings”</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">In researching this sermon I read “The Gifts of Imperfection” and “Daring Greatly” by Dr. Brene Brown.</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">For a complete list of references and sources please contact me directly.</span></span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-2684056775018873962013-09-10T13:33:00.001-07:002013-09-10T13:33:22.952-07:00Israel As A History BookI'm blogging for the URJ this week - check out my post about traveling in Israel with Birthright here:<br />
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<a href="http://www.reformjudaism.org/blog/2013/09/09/through-time-and-space-visit-historic-jewish-sites">http://www.reformjudaism.org/blog/2013/09/09/through-time-and-space-visit-historic-jewish-sites</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-67134974340828485492013-06-13T14:42:00.000-07:002013-06-13T14:42:24.689-07:00The Death of Miriam Changes Everything<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We learn about Miriam’s death in just one short line, all the Torah tells us is that “Miriam died there, and was buried there”; there are no details of how the community mourned her, but it is clear that her loss is felt by the community and by Moses.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Israelites complaining about conditions in the desert and longing for Egypt is not new. Throughout Numbers the Israelites are quick to complain to Moses and long for the delicacies they had in Egypt. In this case we might excuse their complaints as insecurity. They are grieving and they are uncertain about the future -- what if the well was only there because Miriam merited it? In their sorrow, the community falls back into their old pattern of complaining. They forget about all the other miracles in the desert and myopically only see the current crisis. Grief narrows their vision to only the negative. When Miriam was alive they danced and praised God; after her death they are quarrelsome. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Moses and Aaron are also changed by grief. At first they respond to the people’s complaints by appealing to God, but when the time comes to bring forth water from the rock Moses loses his temper. Moses calls the people rebels – the Hebrew word is <i>morim</i>, a word that sounds very much like Miriam. Is it possible that Moses was still thinking about his sister this “Freudian slip” is what came out of his mouth instead of the order to the rock? Ora Horn Prouser, in “The Torah: A Women’s Commentary,” suggests that while the Torah does not directly state how Moses is feeling, that his mishandling of the demand for water indicates that he is still struggling with his sister’s death. Prouser goes on to suggest that Moses learns to take the time to grieve because later in Hukat, when Aaron dies, the Torah tells us that “All the house of Israel bewailed Aaron thirty days.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If Moses did react to the people in anger, out of grief, God’s punishment of denying Moses entry into the promised land seems even more harsh. Moses, who has been shepherding these admittedly difficult people through the desert for 40 years, is denied entrance into the promised land because he hit a rock instead of speaking to it? It is not even unreasonable that he hit the rock; when they first got to the desert God ordered Moses to strike a rock to deliver water to the people. Wouldn’t we expect God to recognize that Moses is grieving and to comfort him instead of punishing him? Perhaps God recognized that grief had so profoundly changed Moses and Aaron that they were no longer capable of leading the people into the promised land. Moses had already begun to do some damage to the people — insulting them and setting a bad example by not following God’s exact instructions. The brutal nature of grief is that it can change us in ways we do not want to be changed.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Hukat begins with a description of the ritual of the Red Heifer, that Water of Lustration that purifies those who come in contact with death, Moses’ reaction to the death of his sister reminds us that sorrow can not be washed away so easily.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Written 2010 for the Board of Rabbi's Weekly Dvar Torah</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-32808040685235772792013-06-03T10:40:00.001-07:002013-06-03T10:49:46.771-07:00Packing for Summer Camp<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My family and I have been going to Camp Newman for seven summers now, and we have packing down to a science. I’ve got a list of some “must-have” items you’ll want to through in your kids’ bags, but first things first: here’s what you really need to know.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>You’re going to forget something, and that’s OK.</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Nobody gets everything into the bag, but that’s not a problem. Your kids will be filthy, and they will wish they had brought something they forgot, and they will share clothes... and that is part of the fun. Don’t overpack, and don’t worry about how they’ll manage at camp – they will.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Also: not everything that goes to camp comes home again. One summer one of my kids left her duffel bag at camp; she brought home everything in her laundry bag instead. Don’t send anything to camp that you would be heartbroken if you never see it again. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Packing: beyond the list.</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">First, you’ll need a list. Start with the suggestions from camp, and adjust it until it seems right. Our camp’s list never includes a flashlight, but I always send one. Our list also suggests only four pairs of shorts for twelve days; I send six, figuring that my kids are likely to be able to wear the same pair for two days, but not three. I make the same calculation with shirts and pajamas. My kids suggest sending an extra set of pajamas, as one set gets dirty on the overnight.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Once you’ve got your list finished, make multiple copies. I keep a copy at home as a packing checklist and one in my purse so that when I am out shopping I can check to see what I still need to buy.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As you pack, label everything — and I mean everything. My favorite tags are <span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><a href="http://namebubbles.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Name Bubbles</span></a></span> and <a href="http://labeldaddy.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #021eaa; letter-spacing: 0px;">Label Daddy</span></a>, but I also keep a Sharpie next to me while we pack. My kids tease me about putting their names on everything, but I have seen the inside of a cabin halfway through camp — stuff is everywhere; the kids just throw all their stuff together when they are in a hurry to clean up.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Don’t underestimate the importance of zip-top bags. I use them for everything: shampoo in one, sunscreen in another, bug spray in a third. They also hold stationary, pens and friendship bracelet string. I write the kids’ names on the outside of the bags (as well as what’s inside) so they can find their stuff.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Now that you’re organized, here are some suggested essentials.</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Here’s my list of ten extras that might not be on the list from your camp, but I’ve found to be good ideas over the years.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>1. A bunk organizer</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My girls like an organizer to hang from the bunk — there are camp-specific models, but any small hanging organizer works. Sometimes clothespins on hooks work even better.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>2. A shower caddy</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Last year I sent each of my kids with a mesh carrier for their shower stuff. Once they got to camp they put all their toiletries in the mesh basket so they would dry between uses and would be easy to carry to and from the bathroom.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>3. A small backpack or bag.</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">At Camp Newman the kids go on an overnight in tents, away from the cabin; a small backpack helps them pack for the overnight.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>4. Lots of sunscreen.</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Seriously – lots. I also send a sunscreen stick to make it easier to put sunscreen on their faces. Kids will share, counselors will remind kids to apply and reapply, but I try to make it as easy as possible for my kids to stay slathered in sunscreen.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>5. Closed-toe shoes and flip-flops.</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I love Keen toe-protecting sandals; I'm sure they have saved me from a bloody foot on more than one occasion. That being said, I also throw in a pair of cheap flip-flops for the pool or shower or for stepping outside to hang up a towel on the clothesline. They are not an alternative to shoes, but an alternative to bare feet.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>6. Pack for planned special events.</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If you know they’ve got special themed days or activities, pack accordingly. For instance, “Yom Sport” or “Maccabiah” is what we used to “color wars” — so I make sure they have some red, blue, yellow and green, because you never know what color they will be. It doesn’t have to be a t-shirt; a bandana or a hat will work too. And pack some crazy accessories. As kids get older their groups have more theme nights and activities. Don’t worry if you don’t know what to send; the counselors also bring things to share. (80s night tends to be popular, but as a person who grew up in the 80s I am always surprised at what the kids think we wore; I swear we did not look that bad.)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>7. Cabin fun.</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Those $1 glow bracelet packs are fun to bring to share with the cabin. And a plain pillowcase works great as an autograph memento at the end of the session. Send some colored Sharpies to go with it and everyone in the cabin can sign.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>8. A bedsheet.</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I send a fitted sheet to go on the mattress under the sleeping bag. No particular reason; it is just a nice little touch of home.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>9. A laundry bag.</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Even though my kids are not at camp long enough to have their laundry done, I still send a laundry bag so they can throw in stuff that is too dirty to wear again. If your kid will be there long enough to have laundry done, use a canvas or nylon bag so the clean clothes stay clean.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>10. Pre-addressed and stamped envelopes.</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If you want your kid to write, make it easy. Great-grandparents, grandparents, auntie and best friends... anyone they want to send a letter to. If they’ve got a stamped, addressed envelope they’re more likely to write a letter.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>On the flip side: don’t send this stuff.</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Do not try to sneak in electronics or cell phones. Camp is a chance to unplug. Your kids are perfectly fine at camp and they are learning independence, and that means not being able to call mom and dad. Read more about why you should leave the cell phone at home <a href="http://reformjudaismmag.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=3239" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">here</span> </a>and <a href="http://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/dear-mom-dont-pack-my-phone-for-camp" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">here</span></a>.While we are at it, don’t try to sneak in food either; there is always plenty of food at camp, and food in cabins attracts bugs.</span></div>
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Want more tips? Check out these links:<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />
<a href="http://www.reformjudaism.org/packing-jewish-camp-10-tips?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Referral&utm_content=Packing&utm_campaign=Camp" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Packing for Camp</span></a></div>
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<span style="color: blue; letter-spacing: 0px; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.jewishcamp.org/blog/?p=843" target="_blank">All Packed Up</a></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.myjewishlearning.com/blog/the-canteen/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">The Canteen</span></a></div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542678683897456538.post-85845141216802576272013-05-28T16:13:00.000-07:002013-05-28T16:13:46.778-07:00Stop Complaining: Dvar Torah on Be'ha'alotekha<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The desert is not a happy place for the Israelites. We spend much of the Torah repeating the same story over and over again: the people sin, God punishes them, the people ask Moses to make it stop, Moses prays, the punishment ends, and wherever they are gets named after the events that happened there. It happens over and over and still the Israelites never learn from it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Three verses that appear in our Torah portion are a story in and of itself:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The people took to complaining bitterly before God. God heard and was incensed: a fire of God broke out against them, ravaging the outskirts of the camp. The people cried out to Moses. Moses prayed to God, and the fire died down. That place was named Taberah, because a fire of God had broken out against them.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">How can we understand these three verses? This short piece is a complete story in and of itself. What can we learn from it. We all know that it is not good to complain, there must be something else here that we can learn. The Torah does not tell us what they were complaining about, it is up to us to interpret the text and determine why they are complaining. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our sages read these three verses and understood them in different ways.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Rashbam assumed that the people were complaining because of the journey. The preceding verses mention that the people had been marching for 3 days after leaving Sinai. For him, the context was simple, after 3 days of walking in the desert the people began to whine. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Rashi thought something similar, that the people were murmuring to themselves, and not so quietly “woe is us, three days on the move without a moments rest from the hardships of the trip” and that God is angry because of course God was moving them quickly, Rashi imagines that God responds “I meant it as a favor to you - so you could enter the promised land as soon as possible”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Ibn Ezra understood that the sin was complaining itself. He looks carefully at the word choices and says that the word used to describe the complaining is mitonenim, which he says is related to aven, to transgress. What they are complaining about is not clear, so it must be the complaining itself that God objects to. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And then Nachmanides thinks something else altogether. First he openly disagrees with Ibn Ezra, a reminder to us all that Reform Judaism is part of a legacy of Jewish discussion about what the text really means.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Nachmanides tells us that Ibn Ezra is wrong, that is complaining is a sin the text would tell us, just like it does in other places.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Nachmanides thought that once the Israelites left Mount Sinai, which was relatively close to a settled area and moved into the heart of the wilderness of the Sinai they began to feel sorry for themselves. “What are we going to do? How will we live in his wilderness? What will we eat? What will we drink? How can we stand this toil, this torment? When will we get out of here?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He says that the word mitonenim is instead related to ben-oni, Rachel’s original name for Benjamin which is an expression of pain and feeling sorry for yourself. He says they were “like” people who were complaining, they spoke out of desperation, as those suffering from pain do. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Abrabanel says that the key is “like” c’mitonanim, that they were not legitimately complaining, they did not believe their complaints, they were just testing God.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There are so many ways that our sages understand these three simple verses, but it is clear that complaining, is not a good thing. We know that, in looking for wisdom from the Torah, we already know that whining is bad - so there must be more that we can learn from these verses. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">These three verses describe the what the Israelites experience in the the desert over and over again after receiving the commandments. After this short description, the Torah goes on to detail another incident of complaint and divine punishment, this time filling in all the blanks. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This time the people are complaining about the food, they are sick of mannah and they want meat.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">By this time both Moses and God are fed up. When the people complain to Moses that they want meat, Moses then complains to God that he would rather be dead than to deal with the Israelites any longer. That toxic whining drives Moses not only to not be their leader anymore, but in a fit of drama makes him not want to live any longer. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And God responds as a frustrated parent would, telling the people that if they want meat they will get so much meat that it will be coming out their noses. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Now everyone is miserable, the Israelites, Moses and God. And why? Our sages are careful to remind us that the mana was not so bad, that it was like Marry Poppins cough syrup, tasting like whatever you want it to taste like. This makes them wonder about the true source of the complaint asking for meat and longing for the vegetables of Egypt. The Israelites seem ungrateful, unable to recognize the miracle of mana in the desert, unable to appreciate food that is provided that they do not need to work for, unable to celebrate their freedom from slavery because they are so focused on what they do not have. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We all know people like this. People whose constant complaints make us want to get as far away as possible. We have all been like this at one time or another, either feeling sorry for ourselves or just so frustrated with what we perceive around us that we are the ones complaining, that we are the ones unable to experience gratitude for all that is going well.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Knowing it is a problem and doing something about it are two very different things. Our text makes it clear, over and over again that it is a hard lesson to learn, and that knowing we should stop complaining and actually stopping are two different things. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Judaism is really all about cultivating our sense of gratitude and wonder at the world. One could say that taking the time to stop and appreciate the Shabbat kiddush wine is a cure for whining, but it goes much deeper than that.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our prayers encourage us to develop a sends of gratitude, to recognize and appreciate what is good in life. But even beyond that the title of our Torah portion can help guide us.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This weeks portion is called Be’ha’alotekha, which means when you step up, it is connected to the root, aliyah, to go up. We are told Be’ha’alotekha et hanerot - when you step up to light the lights. We all have an opportunity to light the lights, to step up and make the world a brighter place. We can choose to wallow in complaining or we can choose to step up and light the lights - to light the lights of gratitude and joy - and to spread that light to others. When we embrace the light and pass the flame onto others we can fill the darkness with love and gratitude and be a blessing to each other. </span></div>
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