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...