Miryam's Space

Each morning blessing, in the T’filah, the prayer so important its name means prayer, I praise God as the hero who gives life to the dead. I don’t believe that those who’ve died can rise and walk the earth again. I do know that we are dead materials come to the miracle of life. That each day we breathe and eat materials and this becomes our living body, miraculously. I do believe that those who are dead in spirit can be inspired again and find hope again.

This week’s Torah portion is about new life coming from death. From an old, withered couple the miraculous conception and nursing of a son. From a slave woman, the bearing of a prince of nations. In the Haftarah, the death of a boy being reversed by mouth to mouth – by a man of God, a prophet. And climaxing in the near sacrifice of Ishmael and the Isaac. Ishmael (his name means God will hear) is sent with this mother with a skin of water, doomed to die in the wilderness. A messenger/ angel lifts the mom’s eyes to find water (vision and hearing are tangled as in Sinai’s lightening and thunder). But Abraham doesn’t know his son lives when he is called to sacrifice “his only one”. But God knows. It is curious. Here is an opportunity: Abraham’s escape from the command to sacrifice his son. Here is a lie, like Sarah’s (who says she’s laughed because she is too old, but really laughed because she thinks Abe is too old to impregnate), but it is God who is withholding the truth.
Like serpent twisting God’s command in the garden, a lie is the highway for chaos to enter the paradise of new life coming to an aged couple. And the midrash says Isaac dies on that mountain and is resurrected. The angel/messenger rewards Abe “because you have DONE THIS THING and not withheld your precious one”.  And father and son do not continue together as they started out this journey. Sarah will die, perhaps of a broken heart) immediately following the sacrifice of her son. Life and death and resurrection. We name our children after those we’ve loved, and hope that each loved one’s spirit is eternal. Death, mortality, is the elephant in the room. Yet our tradition speaks of values and songs and hopes that are eternal. Science hints that each moment may be eternal, we have just lost that access

This piece of a poem by R. Rachel Barenblat spoke to me powerfully this week:
Every birth is also a death: the end
of the life that used to be.
Every separation is also a rupture.
Read not “good” but “God:” God saw
that creation was constantly changing
just like its creator, dividing and torn.

Read the full poem here

I end with an excerpt from song, a Modim I wrote using E.E. Cummings Most Amazing day:
and I who have died am alive again this day
and this is the sun’s birth day
and the birth day of life and love and wings…
I thank You God for most this amazing day,
Modim anachnu lach…

Years ago, my Rabbi advised his teachers, (I was among them), “years from now, the children may not remember the subject you teach, but they’ll always remember the way you taught them.” Whether we smiled or scolded, were enthusiastic or annoyed, attentive or dismissive. And I told two students yesterday: “I know you are doing the best you can, and that there is so much going on that I cannot see..” “You have no idea how stressful my life is right now”, he said, “I am sorry that I have fallen behind in my work, I am really interested in this stuff.”  “I know. Just do the best you can. Let me know if I can help.” In the rush to do my jobs, to get the responsibilities off my back, I always try to stop, to encourage, smile, show a little love to them all.  Avram and Sarai in the Torah plunge into the unknown, escaping from what’s bogus. Ironically, though in search of truth, Avram will lie: “she is my sister”. In search of a home, they will be homeless for a long time. In search of God, God will predict “it is you that shall BE a blessing” My blessing: Baruch Atah: Holy One, source of being and blessings, thank you for the students in my life and the chance to teach them. They are the best blessings of all.

Remember swim wings on little children? One of my scariest memories as Momma involves those wings. We were visiting great grandma in Florida, and my little girl was only 3, and we were “swimming” together, but the air was kind of cold. We were on the pool steps, taking off those bright orange wings. “Wait,” I said, “I’ll grab that towel.” But when I turned away, she climbed back into the water. Accustomed to the wings, she thought she’d float again. I turned back to see her walking and under. Snatched her right out and she was fine. “I called for you Momma, and you came” But I hadn’t heard her. The sight of her under the water and helpless is one I’ll never forget. How fragile our little ones are, and so deeply dependent on our imperfect selves for protection is also a feeling I’ll connect with that image. “All that had the breath of life in its nostrils died” in Noah’s flood. Water is life, and in a flood of amniotic waters we, mostly made of water, are ushered into this world. The very fact that we can be done in by water out of balance and in the wrong place scares me. Noah is a scary read. I don’t believe G-d has a temper. I think that’s us making G-d in our image.
But our actions all have karma, and there is much in our human nature that is terrifying – that makes me wonder if people are worth it. I wish the bad guys would just disappear – you know, the ones that torture and rape, and rape this planet…. The possibility that flood waters (perhaps the waters of G-d’s tears) could wash clean the slaughter in human nature is comforting, at the same time as terrifying. And our salvation comes one human being at a time, and Noah’s name means comfort. I imagine Noah today living in the south Bronx – the way it was when I was a kid. All around him is violence and burning. But this simple kid has the guts to be good amid the terror, to walk in G-d’s ways. To be kind even to animals, because it is G-d’s command. To live even though other’s think you’re crazy. Not perfect, but courageous in terrible circumstances. One soul at a time – the future of the world. Hope emerging from chaos. And from all of this destruction and slaughter emerges covenant – sacred promises.

These musings about Genesis come from my perspective, with one foot in science teaching and one in Jewish spirituality. In my life I’ve found each deepens the other and assists in our understanding and awareness of this incredible universe. This understanding will always be beyond our grasp, but we are a part of it, and so we can always strive to grasp a bit of the mystery, which as Einstein said is the most beautiful thing we can experience….
This past week we began reading the Torah from the beginning, well, actually, from the end right into the beginning again, which implies timelessness, or no beginning….? So is the universe and time finite or infinite? And is God? Kaballah calls God ‘ain sof’ or infinite. According to physics today, there is no “before the universe” because the universe includes both space and time, and the big bang singularity (a horrible term, apparently) was the start of both.
Consider this: In all of this chaos, God is the creative power within this energy and chaos. And when parts of this universe combine to be much more than the sum of their parts, from quarks to atoms to molecules to cells, to organisms, that creative power, operating in opposition to entropy, the powerful tendency of the universe to Disorder (tohu va vohu in Hebrew) is where God is found. For me Genesis is a guidebook of where to find God in this universe, our spiritual origins, and value judgements of creation. We find God in the light (which took about 400,000 years to emerge after the big bang ). That light of opening our eyes and our hearts, after birth, and after darkness of spirit, is the light of God. So that’s day one. We find God in the beautiful oceans, that exist both on the shore, and within our physical bodies, which are mostly water. So that’s day two. We find God in beautiful forests (day 3) in Blue whales, and sparrows, and sea horses, coral, dragonflies and imaginary flying dragons! (day four) Our minds are blown open as we ponder the galaxies of the night sky (i cannot even stretch my mind far enough to match the numbers of galaxies out there!!!) and the powerful nuclear fusion of the sun which heats us as E=mc2 turns its material into the energy of our lives from 93,000,000 miles distant, into animals which evolved naturally and powerfully into our ancestors and into each other. We know the value God puts on each of these – they are GOODNESS! which itself is an anti-entropy judgement. And as for the animals and humans on that sixth day, very, or powerfully good. And that is why we are b’tzelem Elohim, in God’s shadow. That spark of creativity and potential for goodness is in the spirit of each of us. We are in the protective shadow of God as well, when we become as a community, more than the sum of each person alone can ever be. We are midrashically formed of this earth, a part of her, from earth of the four corners, of each color – from white sands, black volcanic ash, red mud and yellow clay. And in truth each human being is 99.9 percent genetically identical to every other, and a child of the universe. As much as the trees and the sky, we have a right to be here
and Love is the reflection of God, for it is parts in relationship which add up to more than the sum.  Perhaps Love is the answer (by Dan England).
And Adam and Eve left the perfection from which they were born to go to work and create new life, because we are all broken, and so must cling to one another to create shadows of the perfection from which we originated. And Cayin (whose name bizarrely means “Yes, I’ve created a man, with God’s help) slays “Hevel” whose name means “breath” becomes insubtantial, as death enters the world. Or did it enter when Hevel slew his sheep and offered it as a sacrifice, or when God accepted this sacrifice, showing favoritism to Hevel over his brother’s offering? I feel for Cayin, who pioneered sacrifice, only to be overwhelmingly rejected by God, tested to see if he could master his emotions, and failing this test. Failing the test of mastery is happening now to us. We are commanded to guard and serve this earth in mastery, and are messing it up royally. We’ll see in Noach next week, that the command to master is rescinded. But let us never forget the command to ovdah v’shomrah, serve and guard this precious planet – it’s where we find God. Again, perhaps Love is the answer

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Why?  I urge my students to ask me why they should care about the stuff we’re learning – why it should matter in their lives!  I tell them it’s my favorite question, asked with respect, of course!  And why? is so much fun to ask!  In the Mark Brothers movie “The Cocoanuts”, before the Why a Duck? quip (about 3:20 in this clip http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4493024/the_cocoanuts_why_a_duck/ ) Chico asks Groucho about the  Levees: is that the Jewish neighborhood? Groucho asides: I’ll Passover that remark. Then Groucho points out the viaduct and Chico asks Why a duck? So, to build on Chico’s question, why a Sukkah? In these days of huge worries, and technology, it’s so primitive, seems so out of place in the world. For me, it’s magic, one of my favorite times.  Just after Yom Kippur, I stop at the farm stand to buy a bunch of corn stalks, trim some evergreens for the branches, go into the basement to dig out the bags of decorations and strings of lights, laminate my New Years Cards and tote it all to the back yard.  I’ve had several types of Sukkot over the years, but 14 years ago, after building my kids’ swing set and tree house, It occurred to me that it would make an amazing sukkah! Just take off the roof, replace with branches, decorate up, and you can climb up and slide down – so much fun!

So, it’s fun, but still, why a sukkah?  Well, it’s autumn, the leaves are beginning to turn, the winds begin to blow. I do love autumn, the leaf colors and the crisp weather. Those leaves: a friend, native of California, who’d never seen the colors ’till she moved to NJ, she was blown away by the psychedelic flamboyant leaves. So I often try to see the leaves her way. But, at the same time, I hate the death of summer, the coming of the cold.  During the week of Sukkot we read Ecclesiastes, written, perhaps, by an older, ambivalent, wise, King Solomon, it speaks of life being in vain, or Hevel, in Hebrew, a breath (same name as the Brother Cayn killed), reminding us how fleeting youth, and health and life are, but hinting at the deep meaning and the timeless things beyond the vanity. The  Torah portion reminds us mistakes have been made in vanity: the Israelites have despaired and built a Golden Calf in Moses’ (and therefore God’s) absence. But as this portion begins, Moses goes up to Sinai for a second try at encounter with Divine, and carries down a new set of tablets, and is rendered radiant! Historically, we are wandering in the wilderness during this period.  All the Israelites will die, and their children must become the parents, and the inhabiters of the Promised land in spite of their losses. And all of this informs my personal answer to “why a Sukkah?”

In the Sukkah, I find an escape from the frenzy, as the sights of birds and decorations and leaves and moon and stars rule my vision. The quiet is startling, and then I become aware it’s not really quiet, but filled with he sounds of the wind through the leaves of the roof, music of a sort. Then I can sing quietly and add my heart’s sounds too, and it harmonizes right in! Waving the lulav, so primal, connects me to earth and sky and to my body: the etrog’s my heart, the lulav my spine, the myrtle, eyes, the willow leaves are lips. I am made of the stuff of earth too. The shakiness and the helicoptering leaves remind me of the passing of this season,  of the fragility of my life. The fruit reminds how sweet and beautiful it is in spite of impermanence. But amid this fragility come friends I’ve invited, reminding me how I get through those wilderness times in my life and the worries                         . And the children remind me that it can be timeless. And besides, it’s fun. Chag Sukkot Sameach.

One of my favorite children’s books is Legend of the Indian Paintbrush by Tomie dePaola.  A young man is different from the other young warriors, he is born for art, for painting. He goes on a vision quest and finds his reality, his fate. And today, flowers called Indian paintbrush dazzle the plains as evidence of his inspiration and insight. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyaifWkUWr0
Yom Kippur was yesterday, and when I took my shower this morning I had the weirdest deja vu experience:  to the morning after my son was born. It was life renewed: so great to take a shower, to have breakfast, to let the morning sun wash over me, to give thanks for the morning, and to ride my bike. A bit as I felt reborn after my own child was born. And I thought to myself, “wow, it really worked!” 
I want to write about the fasting on Yom Kippur. I’ve done it before out of trust and sticking with my buddies who fast. It’s sometimes difficult due to dehydration, and sometimes I just slog on and make it through the day to get to the end, that break fast. Is that all there is? Many that I know do not fast, they don’t see the value, and simply don’t want to.
But out of the trust that the tradition must have deeper value I have fasted. This year I realize that it’s myself I fast for. Friends often try to talk me out of fasting, for health reasons. As I was feeling a bit queasy yesterday morning (new medication on an empty stomach) one friend urged: “It’s Ok to eat, God doesn’t want you to get sick”. I assured her I’d be fine. Later I realized I don’t fast for God, but for me. To know that life is more than an endless quest to satisfy hunger, or habits. To know that food and water are not entitlements, but blessings. To raise empathy for those that go hungry and thirsty. But most of all, it’s my vision quest. http://www.schooloflostborders.org/content/huffington-post-what-vision-quest-and-why-do-one Through fasting to draw near to ultimate questions, to myself and to the possibility of more intensely resonating. And this year I emerged like Jonah. In my head I knew that the world and I still faced giants of problems, but In my heart was  joy. I remembered this song, by Dan Nichols. http://www.last.fm/music/Dan+Nichols+and+Eighteen/_/All+We+Can+Do
“Do as much as you can, with the time that you have, in the place that you are. Eighteen words from a kid, with less than a year to live, Eighteen words from a kid. He knew so much more than they thought he did. Lo Alecha…What can one person do, the task is great and the time is short, words our fathers knew. We can’t do it all but we can all do more…All we can do, is all we can do.” The next lyric cries: “from all that used to be, to all that might have been; there’s no mystery; if we work with what’s in between; All we can do is all we can do!”

Right on.
Hebrew, unlike English, has only three tenses, I’ve learned: present, future, and past. No might have beens. We’ve confronted our choices from last year, made apologies, moved on to the next year with a clean slate. No regrets, no “might have beens” Just all we can do, in

I love Rosh Hashanah to pieces. After all the cooking, the New Year’s cards, the rehearsals (choir), suddenly the prep, is done, all is still. Family members long gone feel close. The air hangs brilliant with possibilities. I stop rushing around and start being, and singing and receiving hugs and smiles. And I smile, and cry and sing (I know I repeated that one…)

This Shabbat is Shabbat shuvah, Sabbath of Return, as we return to the “land of our soul” in the ten day journey from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur. The Torah portion is Haazinu, “Lend me your ears”  From Craig Taubman’s Haazinu http://www.amazon.com/Haazinu/dp/B007NXA8CW

Listen O Heavens and I will speak; Listen O Earth, to my words; may my message be like rain and my speech be like the dew. To Adonai my God I sing praises to you…. Remember the days, the days gone by. Remember the days, Remember, be wise. How Israel is one, one with Adonai. Sing a new song, sing it to the skies.

Rain, dew, earth, sky:  the inspiration and beauty of the world, and the very foundations of life. They must be witnesses to the covenant, just as we must be.

So Listen we must, to the sound of the shofar, to the music of Rosh Hashanah, and the very skies will listen, and the rain and the dew. One more from Craig Taubman, ties the music we make on Rosh Hashanah to the heavens:

Everybody searches; in light or in darkness, unsure of the way, afraid and alone;   Someone who stood right where you stand, would like to take your hand, help you feel, help you see, help you dream your dreams. 

Open up all your eyes, let the truth make you wise; when we sing with one voice, music will fill the skies. We can fly, we can be more than you, more than me; take my hand, we can fly, it can be.

The quality of mercy is not strained, it falleth as the gentle rain from heaven.

The High Holy Days are coming, and some of the verses we read for Yom Kippur are previewed in this week’s reading: The laws of God are not in the heavens, or across the sea, they are very near to us, in our hearts. 
But how could laws from God not be in heaven?

A fabulous G-dcast cartoon, with music by Eliana Light , animates a famous Talmudic tale. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al4FgjbUztI about a court dispute about whether an oven was kosher. One man, Rabbi Eliezar had a special connection to God, but Rabbi Gamliel, Eliezar’s brother in law, disagreed. Miracles from heaven backed up  Eliezar: a tree uprooted, a stream flowed backwards, the building almost crushed!  But another Rabbi, Yehoshua, said: miracles are irrelevant, these are laws for us down here!

Heaven doesn’t need laws, we need them: within our hearts for wholeness, and in the charged up spaces between us for peace and wholeness as a community. But don’t we want deep truth to rule our laws? And why would the Talmud reject divine inspiration and intervention as a pathway to that truth? I’m not sure, perhaps because  we could run into the quicksand of zealots who are misguided or devious, and it’s too hard for us to tell the difference! So, we must figure it out logically and by engaging with dialogue with one another; outside miracles are no fair!  

And yet ideologues in government continue to refuse to engage with the other side, thinking their answer is in heaven.  But don’t we want those who stand up for principles? Yup, but it can’t only be in heaven, when we live it down here on earth.

This week, of course, marks the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. King’s march on Washington.  Was Martin an ideologue? Well, he said famously the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, and referenced a day when righteousness will flow like a mighty stream, and saw himself, like Moses as one who would not get to the promised land. But he put himself out there in dialogue with many, including many Jews who marched with him and helped craft Civil Rights amendment. He stretched out his neck and engaged  at risk of his life. He taught us about first steps, and crawling toward a dream if you cannot fly. I offer this link to David Berger’s Martin’s Dream sung by Zamir Chorale of New York http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djpASrrtnTM

Chimeras were ancient legendary mixed creatures. I think it’s such a powerful image for me because I imagine being a  chimera of all the influences that motivate me, including music, and science and Torah. How about you?

But here’s the thing: chimeras are real, legend no more. I am engaged in a conference in Genetics this week run by the DNA learning center (Cold Spring Harbor labs). It’s been 30 years since grad school, and I really needed this update in biotech and newer revelations. Science is cold hard facts, right? Not so much! This conference reinforces for me what I know: Its brilliant deductions, philosophy and insights  can blast minds open to layers of reality that were previously invisible. These insights relate to our health, our sustainability, they can predict problems, or solutions, can be tools or weapons. Perhaps it is scientists who are most like the Levites in this week’s Torah reading who proclaimed on mountaintops the amazing blessings if the Israelites did the right thing, and horrific curses if they didn’t. The blessings and curses of this portion capture me, they are the stuff of our dreams and nightmares, and everywhere in this world there are people suffering simultaneously with those joyful.  Our world is a mix, a little like a chimera.

And that brings us to modern genetics. With its tools, we are creating chimeras, mixes of creatures’ genes that have never existed before. With these chimeras, genetically modified bacteria make human insulin, sheep make cystic fibrosis treatments in their milk, pigs grow organs for human transplant (potentially), cats glow with a jellyfish protein (as a tag to see if they’ve taken up the HIV fighting gene). It’s amazing! 

But scientists warn us that danger is lurking.  The  instructor, Bruce Nash, of Cold Spring Harbor, a brilliant and funny guy, an inspired educator, http://www.dnalc.org/about/staff/nash.html is studying bee genomes, because we’re in real danger of losing the creatures that pollinate our food to the ravages of pestiicides. We have no alternatives to honey bees, and they’re dying. Many Genetically Modified organisms are developed to clean up pollution, which is best avoided in the first place. In this week’s labs we worked on DNA barcoding plants in a vanishing habitat. Species are being lost at a rate unrivaled since the time of the great dinosaur extinction, 1/3 of all life forms are threatened, which impoverishes and threatens us!  Bruce keeps saying these techniques are powerful, and they are, but I feel that few people are paying attention, too busy with their narrow paths.

Be quiet and listen! screams Moses to the Israelites.  Too much noise seems to be drowning out important messages. Science gives us amazingly powerful tools and advice. How do deal with them. Perhaps with humility and open ears as Moses and the Levites suggest, can help us bring more blessings to this complex and beautiful, dangerous, tortured, inspiring world.  It’s a chimera.

Of all the moments you’ve experienced, which ones are emblazoned in your memory? I am afraid of heights, and I screwed up enough courage to ride on the ferris wheel in Coney Island one day when I was ten or eleven, and it got stuck, with me on the very top. I was scared! I remembered the glint of the sun on the sea, and the sway of the car – I’ll never forget.  As Rosh Hashanah draws close, it is my Grandparents whose memory looms large in my life as I spent the holiday with them: the odors of holiday meals,  the scratchy feel of Grandpa’s clothes & talit as I sat with him to hear the sound of the shofar, the warmth of their smiles and embraces.

History is memory writ large. My daughter has recently graduated as a History major.  In particular, she has taken the tragic history of America’s native people to heart, and is impassioned to show people their story, and to expand that to awareness of all who are trodden.  History and memories are a strongly valued in Jewish tradition, I would even go so far to say we don’t exist as a people without them. REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE! advises Rafiki to Simba (from Passover post  https://margosmidrash.wordpress.com/2013/03/ )

This week’s Torah portion ends with an injunction to REMEMBER the scoundrels Amalek, who attacked us from the rear in wanderings through the wilderness, attacking the most vulnerable among us.  And we are paradoxically told to blot out their memory. Perhaps we should forgive, but never forget. This has become the mantra of how so many deal with Holocaust history. But what is it me must blot out about Amalek?  Perhaps this: shame on us for letting them straggle behind, rather than embracing the elderly, the children!  The uncaring behavior of ours is what we needed to blot out.  Memories are not blank, they come with emotions and lessons – as my daughter’s history scholarship shows.

We don’t exist as individuals, as souls, without memories either.  Physically, the people we used to be no longer exist! The molecules that make you up come from the surroundings: the air you breathe, and the materials you eat and drink. You are completely rebuilt after about three years, made of molecules that, guaranteed, were once part of dinosaurs, of Leonardo daVinci, of Shakespeare. http://www.jupiterscientific.org/review/shnecal.html  The surface of your skin, even on the oldest person, is completely replaced and new every six or seven weeks. Each new day we are reborn, according to the morning blessings.  The ONLY thing that gives us an identity through time, that says I’m the same soul as I was a year or a decade or a half century ago, that tells me who I am, are the ideas and images our memories stitch together as a continuum.

Do you remember the musical Cats?  The song Memories is about Grisabella, the glamour cat, who lives in the memory of her younger self.  What makes it so poignant is how true it is for some. Further, how many of those family and friends we’ve lost to death continue to inform our lives today? Their memories are powerful for us.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-L6rEm0rnY

Of course, for many the heartbreak is that Alzheimer’s disease,  erases what is so crucial. It is the long term memories that tell us who we are do persists the longest for patients. Ironically it is the loss of memory that drives home just how crazy important it is.

This incredible poem is by Alden Solovy is an ode to the value of History and Memory  http://www.tobendlight.com.

History

History is sacred,
Memory is holy,
Time is a blessing,
Truth is a lantern.

Source of sacred moments,
Creator of time and space,
Teacher, healer and guide:
Thank you for the gift of memory,
The gift that allows us to see beyond the present,
The gift that allows us to remember our past,
And to remember our lives.

Thank you for the gift of vision,
The gift that allows us to imagine the future,
The gift that allows us to learn and to teach
The lessons of the ages,
The lessons of millennia,
So that we may heal ourselves and the world.

Eternal G-d,
Thank you for the gift of history,
The gift of ancient moments and modern tales.
Grant us the wisdom and understanding to see history in the light of truth,
To trust the enduring power of memory to guide us from generation to generation.

Alden Solovy and http://www.tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

As the passing days bring us closer the Days of Awe, it is our memories that come front and center: memories of absent family members, memories of the deeds and mistakes of the past months, memories of last year’s resolutions, of past Holidays. They all converge to a sacred point in time. Awesome!