What a weekend!

Just a brief note to say L'Shana Tova to all. We had an amazing set of services at Beyt Tikkun, with a great talk by Reb. Estelle Frankel on Saturday and wonderful teaching by Dr. Harriet Zeiner on Sunday. I will write more internal stuff tomorrow...

Just a one to ponder: I learned of a mystical teaching this weekend which holds that on Yom Kippur, when the gates are closed, Gd takes on a new name for the year, as the name for the previous year has been pierced with our cheyt (poorly translated as sins, but with the meaning of an arrow missing its mark). Much more on the subject, but what will Gd's name be for you in the new year?

In the meanwhile, peace.

Forgive me

Tonight's talk by R. Lew absolutely blew my mind. I won't even try to summarize - he packed in so many earth-shattering concepts, I'm still trying to sort them out! One pithy line I can repeat, "you can start to forgive when you move from the injury that someone has done to you, to the pain it has caused."

In that vein, I'll post an excerpt that he read by Charlotte Joko Beck. I don't have a citation, but would be thrilled to find it.

Forgiveness
In our culture the term "forgiveness" is a very loaded word. The idea "to forgive" usually implies that there is some form of magnanimous acceptance of another even though the other did wrong. This understanding of forgiveness is not what forgiveness practice is about; forgiveness is primarily about seeing through our own emotional reactions - seeing what stands in the way of real forgiveness. Real forgiveness has to entail experiencing first our own pain, then the pain of the person to be forgiven; and it is from this understanding that the barriers, the separation, between two beings can dissolve.

She goes on to describe these steps in detail, which is far too long for this post. She concludes by saying

We have to first see and experience the degree to which our own emotional reactivity is what stands in the way of real forgiveness. We can then, and only then, truly understand that the other person was simply doing the only thing that they could do, given their beliefs and conditioning. We can then say the words, "I forgive you. I forgive you for whatever you have done to cause me pain. I forgive you because I know that what you did comes from your own pain.

R. Lew concluded, "when we realize that our pain comes from the same pool, we can begin to forgive."

This is so powerful for me. When Amberly & I started talking to R. Lerner about our marriage, we asked him for some spiritual advice in our path. He said simply, "develop a practice of forgiveness." We started by sitting in bed every night, lightly saying we forgave each other for this and that. After a couple of days, though, it started to feel more like blaming than forgiving, so we stopped. We did, and do, find a way to forgive each other every day. The process is not dissimilar for us, and is part of the amazing bond that we have together. Is it too corny to say that it makes our love stronger?

Having this practice spelled out for me by R. Lew made me realize that true forgiveness has the quality of being with a loved one, which ties back to R. Lerner's worldview. He preaches creating a more loving world by stopping the "repetition compulsion," and not passing on the pain that has been passed on to you, while acknowledging the pain and fear that has caused the other to want to treat you ill. These are one and the same thing. Imagine, then, truly forgiving your family members. Your work nemesis. If we take it to a global scale, imagine, as R. Lerner does, Israelis forgiving Palestinians, and Palestinians forgiving Israelis. What would that be like?

Week Wrap-up

Oy, what a week it's been! This run-up to Rosh Hashana has been exhausting but exhilarating. To mention a couple of things briefly: Amberly & I are taking part in an interfaith discussion group, which started last Monday, and I started a course of tui na treatment with Terry (my tai chi instructor) to see about my back pain and supposed hip injury (another story for another time). Both positive, good things and part of my teshuvah, to be sure. But put that together with the ongoing class with Rabbi Lew, the S'lichot service at Rabbi Lerner's, and today's wonderful "Tools for Torah" class with Garry Koenigsberg, and you can see why I'm behind on posting relevant stuff to this blog!

I'll start in no particular order with last night's S'lichot service. Hamish is my new yiddish word for the season, meaning cozy or homey, for you who like me had Zaides & Bubies that kept the language to themselves. That describes all services at the Rabbi's house, which was an especially nice way to transition into the high holy day mood and melodies. It also served to underline my teshuvah for the season. The Rabbi drashed a little bit on the subject: in addition to the traditional teshuvah for missing the mark between humans and God and between human and each other, an overlooked but very important component is repairing the ways in which you have missed the mark with yourself.

This self-reflective, psychological aspect of teshuvah is of course much of what Rabbi Lew talks about in the meditation class. It sounds like much of what he has to say on the subject can be found in his book,
but there are bits that are worth highlighting, if just so I can get them clear in my head. He emphasizes the importance of Elul in the process of atonement (at-one-ment), and that's what we have dealt with the most. This week, he connected meditation with the week's parsha, which he finds particularly meaningful. Deut 30:11-14 says, in part (and from two different translations):

For this commandment, which I command thee this day, it is not too hard for thee, neither is it far off...No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart...

This thing, what Rabbi Lew calls the pain sitting on the top of your heart right now, can be accessed through prayer (your mouth) and/or meditation (your heart). In other words, in the times when you have let go of your ego and have gotten outside yourself, that's when you glimpse it. They're the thoughts that seep into your consciousness when you're not looking, and keep doing so.

Now, I am still wresting with this one (but that's our lot, isn't it? :), because I'm not entirely sure I can trust the thoughts that creep up when my mind veers in shul to be any different from those that come up while stuck in traffic. When I voiced this on our way home from class that night, Amberly pointed to what is perhaps the right sign-post: when we are praying (really into it, not looking to see who just came into room) and when we meditate, we have different stimuli than we do the rest of the time (in traffic or whenever). That is to say: it's only ourselves. So if we're our only stimulus in these times, I can buy that just maybe the stuff that comes up again and again might be what our hearts are trying to tell us about ourselves.

I think I'll skip talking about Garry's class (since it is part of a different week) for now to just say that I had a wonderful shabbat. I went to davven with the Mission Minyan on Friday night, in the spirit of trying everything at least twice. While I don't find the spark that I find at Beyt Tikkun, it's not an altogether disagreeable service, and I was able to get my prayer on, if sometimes despite my surroundings. Saturday, I spent a quiet morning (silent is more precise, since Amberly is out of town) reading and studying. An afternoon walk to Dolores park led to a chance encounter with a friend, which is always nice. I do admit, I couldn't resist the temptation to tune in the Michigan football game on TV...I'm okay with that! Despite that slight backslide, I found what I had been missing for a while - the connection to, and being in, creation.

One thing that I still miss, and am finding is at the core of my teshuvah (and, as I said before, isn't new), is connecting with a community. After five years in this city, you'd think that wouldn't be the case...but this is a topic for another post.

L'shana tova, y'all.

Before the answers, more questions

I've been meditating and writing and reading, trying to suss out the name of the weight on my heart this Elul. The answers, not surprisingly, are not new. But before I get there, I feel like I need to sharpen, or in this case broaden, the questions I am asking. So, here we go:

Where and when am I acting out of fear or greed? Why?

What am I afraid of?

When is enough? How can I learn to tell?

How can I replace with love my places of fear?

This is not new territory for me. It is a practice I learned from Rabbi Lerner - re-framing situations based on a continuum of love and fear, and trying to maximize the love in the world. I have spent a lot of time in the last year or so trying to see God in the stranger and identifying fear in the actions of others, but now I need to go internally and look at myself more deeply.

I also spent the last year wrapped up in the bliss of my new marriage. That's not to say married life is any less blissful now that our first anniversary passed (yesterday), but as the intensity has worn off to a healthy warm glow, it has revealed other areas in my life that need attention. This is good. More on this to come.

Booklist

As I go through this process of Teshuvah, I am compiling a list of books I would like to read (oy, so many!). This is in no particular order and by no means exhaustive, so if anyone would like to add to it, please do so.

Finding Our Way: Jewish Texts and the Lives We Lead Today, Barry Holtz (N.Y., Schocken, 1993)
Guide to Jewish Books: Where to Start Reading About Jewish History, Literature, Culture and Religion, Barry Holtz (N.Y. Schocken Books, 1992)
Wanderings, Chaim Potok (Knopf, 1978)
The Way of Torah: An Introduction to Judaism, Jacob Neusner (Belmont, CA, Wadsworth Publishing, 1988)
Jewish Spirituality, Vols. I and II, edited by Arthur Green (Crossroad, 1988)
Honey From the Rock: Visions of Jewish Mystical Renewal, Lawrence Kushner,(Jewish Lights, Woodstock, Vt., 1990)
Kabbalah: the Heart of Jewish Mysticism , Daniel Matt, (HarperCollins, S.F., 1995)
Hasidism and Modern Man , Martin Buber, (PUB)
Seek My Face, Arthur Green, (Jewish Lights, 2004))
Standing Again at Sinai, Judith Plaskow,
These Holy Sparks : The Rebirth of the Jewish People , Arthur Waskow,(Harper and Row, N.Y., 1983)
Down to Earth Judaism: Food, Money, Sex, and The Rest of Life ,Arthur Waskow, Wm. Morrow 1997)
Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation, Michael Lerner, Grosset/Putnam, N.Y., 1994) (for real this time)
Netivot Shalom, Rabbi Shalom Noach Brazovsky
I and Thou, Martin Buber
God in Search of Man, Abraham Joshua Heschel

I'll keep adding posts when I come across other reading lists. Thanks to Aleph for the start of this one...

My first Elul

I feel like a newborn, experiencing things for the first time. Maybe it's this funky mood I've been in, but I think it goes beyond that. Elul, the month given for reflection leading to Teshuvah - our return - at Yom Kippur, grabbed me without my knowledge, shook me and said, "We're really doing it this year."

Tonight was the first night of the "Meditation and Teshuvah" class with Rabbi Lew, and he described the cycle of the days of awe as starting with Tisha b'Av, the time we mourn the falling of the temple and our estrangement as a people. Estrangement is necessary in a process that ends in return. Elul, then, is the time to listen to our hearts and find where it is we need to (re)turn to.

I've been Jewish all my life, but never have I stared the tradition in the face so directly and felt it so...new. I realize that I have taken my habit of relying on secondary sources to an extreme with my Judaism, content with listening to rabbis tell me about texts and interpretations, without engaging them directly. I think that is about to change.

I've been reading Adam Lavitt's contemplative blog, and came across an interesting thought about questions for the season, which I'll give a shot:

Where do I begin?

What aspects of Jewish practice are really important to incorporate into my life/our lives?

What do I want to do with this thirst for knowledge?

How does my daily (secular) work relate to my spiritual practice?

How can I align the two more tightly?

Marriage Blessings

It is difficult to speak of love - or any other fundamental truths in the world - without sounding corny or overserious. It's even harder to write about them, because there is no room for irony or cynicism, which make for much better reading, but here it goes. I guess that can be said for this site as well as this post...

A quick post before Shabbat -

We had a friend over last night. We spent a lot of time talking about her upcoming wedding and our recent one. It got me thinking about those weeks last year leading up to our wedding. I'm not speaking hyperbolically when I say it was a turning point for me in the way I think about the world.

I was floored by the outpouring of love directed at us leading up to and including our wedding day. It was like nothing else I've ever encoutered. I had normally gruff men admit to me that their wives were their best friends, and that marriage had been the best thing that ever happened to them. Friends and family from near and far went out of their way to express their joy at our union. The Aufruf we received at shul was overwhelming. On our way home from the big day in our decorated car, a Berkeley woman stopped in the crosswalk, flashed us a great big smile and mouthed, "35 years." That image still makes me well up.

The tradition is that a married couple can confer special blessings in their first year of marriage. I didn't fully understand the significance of that. After having experienced ours, I know: there is so much love directed toward you in those weeks and months, you have a very special reservoir of it to pass on to others. I still feel it to this day (2 weeks away from our first anniversary), and it STILL blows me away.

That is the power of love (this is where the difficult part happens - whatever you do, don't think of Huey Lewis & The News). The rabbi is always talking about YHVH as the transformative power of the universe. That is love. I really got it. The love that we were blessed with was nothing less than proof of God's existence. Even as I'm writing this, I feel incapable of fully expressing what I mean. There is something that happens when you open yourself up to love someone and take them as part of yourself, and in turn opening it up for the whole world to be a part of. It makes me ever hopeful for humanity. When I begin to despair about all the messed up things in this world, I think of my experience of love, and how it is universal. Everybody can love, it's what makes us human. Ok, that's all - if you got it you got it, if not, then I don't have anything better to say.

We are going away this weekend for an early celebration of our anniversary. Shabbat shalom and have a good long weekend...