Miryam's Space

For the past many years, I have baked two loaves of challah each week for Shabbat: one chocolate chip and one raisin. It keeps my hands in touch with reality, fills my home with amazing odors, and tastes amazing when it’s warm: they’re baking right now as Shabbat’s approaching tonight! And this week’s Torah portion is about bread as an offering to God in the MIshkan. The Kohanim (priests) would bake a dozen loaves for “show” that would stay fresh. This portion also contains advice about counting our days (toward Shavuot) and commands us to celebrate, and make some periods of time holy. But why bake bread for God as an offering -when God can neither eat nor smell the wonderful odor? A famous folktale to explain (I think I heard it first from R. Henry Weiner).  The richest man in a small Shtetl was Chayim. Though he was wealthy, he was pious, if a bit drowsy. One Shabbat he dozed off during services. The Torah was being chanted: the verse about the 12 loaves of bread, the show bread offered to God in the MIshkan. Reb Chayim in his twilight consciousness was sure he heard The Holy One commanding him to bake bread personally as an offering. He was shaken to his core, after all if the Master of the Universe cared enough to speak to Chayim , he could do nothing less than obey! So, the very next Friday, Chayim spoke with his wife and servants about preparing the extra Challahs. He brought them to the synagogue very proudly and placed them within the ark next to the Torah. “I hope you enjoy them,” he whispered to God.
The very poorest man in the village was the Shammes, the caretaker of the synagogue. Normally he would rush home on Friday eve to celebrate Shabbat with his wife and seven children, his in-laws and mother. But he knew that today there would not be much to eat and so he tarried. He approached the ark. “Dear God”, he prayed, “I am grateful for my family and the coming of Shabbat, but I’m so ashamed to see my family share so little, please can you help, show me the way?” and with that, the Shammes sobbed and hit the ark door. Well, it opened, and you can imagine the surprise and glee with which he saw the beautiful loaves and smelled their fragrance! “Master of the Universe, thank you!” he cried and carried his bundle home to his overjoyed family.
Later that evening, Reb Chayim returned early to check the ark. He was delighted to see not a crumb remained! Feeling overwhelming pride, he whispered to the ark, “I’m so happy you enjoyed my wife’s challah!” and he returned to the pews before anyone was the wiser.
The next Friday and the next the scene was repeated, each man feeling specially blessed by God with such favor.
But one Friday the Rabbi watched as the Shammas removed the challas from the ark. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
“Rabbi, it’s a miracle!, I prayed to God for help feeding my family for Shabbat, and each week I come to the ark and my prayers are answered!” The Rabbi scolded “Don’t be a fool! I have just seen Reb Chayim leaving, let me call him back, and we’ll know what is really happening”.
Sadly the Rabbi uncovered the mystery. No longer did it seem a miracle, and the world seemed just a bit colder and less magical.
That night the Rabbi had a terrible dream, a nightmare. He had a bolt of insight and knew what he must do. He gathered Reb Chayim and the Shammes back to his office. “I dreamed last night that God was terribly angry with me. A miracle had been in place since creation, and I have disrupted this master plan. That miracle was you, my friend,” he explained to Reb Chayim, “and you,” he said to the Shammes. “God really did require those challahs your wife baked so lovingly; indeed you and your wife have been the hands of God!” “And God really did wish you to take those challahs to feed your beautiful family,” he said to the Shammes. This is ordained and MUST continue!” proclaimed the Rabbi. And so it did, except for the occasions when the family of the Shammes dined with Reb Chayim’s family as guests in their home.
The magic of challah, and making and baking, becomes a fragrant symbol of the holiness our hands can form in partnership with the gifts of wheat and rain and sun. We form it’s dough into intertwined shapes as we are all intertwined. There is no rushing challah, it must take it’s time to rise, just as the savoring of time itself is such an intimate part of Shabbat.
Here’s my recipe:
3 cups bread flour (I use King Arthur)
make a well and put in 1 tsp salt, 2 TBSP sugar, 1 TBSP yeast
add 3/4 cup warm water
1/8 cup oil
1 and 1/2 egg beaten. Reserving the last half egg to brush on top.
Mix and knead. It should be the consistency of play dough.
Let rise in a warm place till doubled, about an hour (or overnight in the fridge)
Break in half, and roll out each on a floured board
fill with chocolate chips or raisins,….
Roll up like a jelly roll
Break the snake into three parts and braid.

Let rise on a floured cookie sheet,. Flour the top and cover with a towel till double in bulk, about an hour. Brush with the remaining half egg (I refridgerate, and then warm for 5 seconds in the microwave)
Bake 350 for 25 minutes.
Write me if you Knead more info.
Shabbat Shalom

“Teach me all of Torah while standing on one foot, and I’ll engage,” challenged the outsider. Sent away by the teacher Shammai, Rabbi Hillel famously answered “What is hateful to you do not do to another. This is all of Torah, the rest is commentary, go and study.” This week the Torah challenges us all: “You (plural form) shall be holy, because I, God, am holy” Holiness, distinguished from the ordinary and profane – a noble goal, but how? By strange and mystifying rituals? By beautiful words. Those are not the pathways to holiness. As Hillel said, the pathways we must reject are those that are hurtful: don’t insult the deaf (though they cannot hear you) or fool the blind. Don’t elevate yourself on the blood of your fellow. In Boston’s tragic massacre this week, this is exactly what’s happened, and it profoundly savages our trust. If these are the “don’t” command, is there a positive path to a holy and beautiful life? Torah’s answer is among its most renown: Love your dear one as you love yourself. What’s love got to do with it? asks Tina Turner, “What’s love, but a second hand emotion?” Love is why we’d take a bullet if someone threatened our kid. Love sent rescuers running into the danger in Boston this week. Inspiring. I hope I have enough love in my little body to run to help another. I counter Tina Turner’s song with one from Jonathan Larson’s musical Rent. Although we could measure a year in our life in midnights, cups of coffee, or minutes, (525,600 of them), it’s far better to measure it in love. Maybe love really can be the answer. A community full of love is holy, much more than the sum of its parts.
Built or destroyed by the sum of our choices. I don’t know why the perpetrators of the Boston attack chose hatred and chaos, but I know that many others that day chose the incredible path of loving those near to them (just by chance!) MORE than they loved themselves for that moment. It reminds me that love can be the answer.

My paternal grandparents came through Ellis Island around 1920. My Grandma Gussie (z”l) was 16, afraid of the journey, so she had her fortune told by a Gypsie before departure for reassurance. Crammed on a boat like so many others, she arrived in a strange place, greeted by Lady Liberty. When Ellis Island became part of liberty park, before it became the beautiful museum it is now (1990) I visited this cavernous, dark, ghost-like building with them. “So many were turned away,” they told me, “if they had a rash, or bald patches on their heads” Probably ringworm, poverty made soap and water dear. A fungus: contagious to be sure, but definitely not life-threatening. The fear of contagion that sent people back on that boat after so much effort to enter, surely was also a fear of poverty and alien cultures, and the unseen microbe. Not much has changed. We think we’re so savvy and civilized, until an infection rears its head. We need other people, and delight in them, so we gather together in larger and larger groups. We send our kids to daycare, school and camp, gather in stadiums, shopping malls, cities. We travel for vacation, business, and war, and our food travels too. With us come invisible microbes. The Spanish flu killed 25 million in 1918, a virus mutated from a pig farm in Tennessee, most likely, spread by the war. HIV virus likely existed in rural Africa for 100 years, until urbanization and travel turned the virus pandemic. The fear, blame, isolation of even child-victims of this disease  was akin to that of the middle ages, hard to believe, unless you were there… I was. Remember Ryan White?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCMr9jbq3Tk0
This week the Torah portion gives us a window into how illness and contagion were handled in ancient times, perhaps there’s something to learn today. Illness that appeared as a rash on the skin and hair was called Tzara-at, often translated as leprosy. The person in the community asked to reach out to the patient, and when healed to return him or her to the community is a spiritual leader, the priest. In today’s society, and in medicine, we separate body from, and ignore the soul, perhaps ignoring a key part of healing. And, as Ryan and so many other stories show, we lack a clear path to return to society. In ancient times, the pathway back was to offer a sacrifice, and in one interesting verse, 14:14 of Leviticus, the priest would mark the patient with a drop of blood on the right ear, thumb and big toe, which is the same ritual as in ordaining the priest! it’s reminiscent of the blood of rebirth perhaps, with the right ear attuned, the hand doing deeds, and the foot “walking the walk”. In truth, many who recover from life threatening illness often feel they’ve been given a second chance, feel more intensely the gift of the moments of their lives. Now, I don’t want to go back to those times, lives were short, and blaming illness on moral failings is certainly problematic. I’m just suggesting there’s something valuable we can annex as patients or physicians: seeing the whole patient as one with spiritual needs, essential to healing. Seeing health care as a holy profession. In the Talmud there is a conversation between Rabbi Joshua with the prophet Eliyahu. He asks the prophet “where is the Messiah?” Elijah replies: “at the city gates” “What is he doing there”, asks Joshua. “He is changing the bandages of the lepers, one by one” “When will he come?” (to bring world peace) The reply is” Today, if we are ready to listen.”
The song I offer today is Cantor Leon Sher’s beautiful “Heal us Now” performed here by the plaintive voices of the teens of Hazamir. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg_4uAR3gng

It’s April. Spring has arrived, soft rains and breezes, promises. But this week is a strange convergence. Sunday night is Holocaust memorial day, Yom Hashoah, day of the calamity, recalling how so many souls went up in smoke. The Torah portion read this week is one of death by fire of Aaron’s sons, very strange. These were not 2 ordinary boys, not just sons of Aaron, high priest, but among the select few who ascended Sinai, beheld the presence of God, ate and drank and survived. Select, holy men. They were consumed by flame in the tent because they offered “strange fire”. Taken too young, a warning, a sacrifice, a tragedy. Commentators suggest they were intoxicated, only because the next section speaks of such things, but the truth is unknown. Aaron was strangely silent, as the world was strangely silent for decades. As some survivors were until they could come to grips with the Shoah, until people were ready to hear. It also became April this week. TS Eliot wrote of April in his poem “The Waste Land”
April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rains.
It is easier to sleep than to be intensely away, dealing with loss. The poet later continues
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?

May the memories of Aaron’s sons be for a blessing. They offered strange fire, but they offered, perhaps wishing, just as Moses did in last week’s reading, only to experience God more deeply. May the memories of our families lost in the Shoah also be for blessing

The song I offer is Hannah Senesh’s poem and Jeff Klepper’s music in Yeish Kochavim: There are stars up above, so far away we only see their light, long, long after the star itself is gone; and so it is with people that we’ve loved; their memories keep shining ever brightly though their time with us is done; and the stars that light up the darkest night, these are the lights that guide us; As we live our days, these are the ways we remember…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So5VuGPPfmk

Hannah Senesh died in prison after parachuting into enemy territory for the resistance  to bravely rescue people during the war . Her poems continue to light our way.

I love Passover: it is when I get to taste springtime, and hear the voices of family, both those with me and those no longer here. It’s a time to be grounded and to remember who I am, cause it’s easy to forget. For days I am lost in the preparation, and then it stops, and the song and the candle light begin. And I taste springtime in the flavors of parsley, wine, horseradish, eggs, crunchy matzah and chopped apples.  I am tasting springtime! And I hear voices: my son’s new found base (he’s fourteen) my daughter joining in the conversation (!), my Mom blessing the candle light. Always my grandfather’s laugh and lilt of his voice, and my grandmother’s tired but comforting tones – their memories are for blessing. And this year as I cleaned up after,  I reallly heard the past voices of my children and nephews when they were younger and so excited by the energy, and others. These experiences transformed ordinary days into the freedom only spring feels like. I awoke the next morning with more than a memory, because my eating habits and even dishes are not the usual ones. The sight of flowers will come, but it’s not there yet  – vision is not a sense I associate with Passover, funny enough.

I was delighted to find in these senses a new connection of Pesach to this Shabbat’s Torah reading, which is the aftermath of the golden calf. There are some easy connections: The festival of  Pesach is in mentioned as part of our new covenant. Also, the golden calf may be about the choices that follow freedom from slavery, including the freedom to make wrong choices.  But it’s also partly about the senses with which Moses can experience God in some way. In Ex. 33: 20 Moses has asked of God “Please let me see your honor”.  God replies that vision/ seeing is not possible. God’s Goodness will wander by (connects to Hebrews – wanderers) and Moses will hear the calling of God’s name, but cannot see God and live! And there’s a Place in a Rock (both names of God) where Moses can be. And God’s Honor will wander by and then afterwards can See. Moses will feel the Rock and the Goodness,  hear the name. Just Like Pesach it’s vision that eludes. Interestingly vision is our longest range sense: taste, touch, smell are immanent and intimate.* Similarly,  it’s not through vision that I experience the  honor and goodness and spring-feeling and freedom of Passover, it is by hearing and touching and tasting.
The song and link I offer this Passover week is Circle of Life from Disney’s The Lion King. I have always had fun showing kids clips from the animated movie, and seeing how many Passover-Lion King connections they can find. OK Scar is Pharoah, Simba is Moses, who sees a vision of his father in a burning bush in the sky and returns to free his people, uh, lions. The moral which Rafiki tells Simba: Remember who you are!  Perhaps Simba and Nala’s love song (Can You Feel the Love) connects to chanting Song of Songs at Pesach. The Circle of LIfe is a lot more than welcoming a new baby lion to the Pride, it’s about the grandness of it all, and the journey through despair to faith and hope and love till we find our way along the path – to redemption. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLIVetkn6lE

My gratitude to Rabbi Rachel Barenblat for her Haggadah which I enjoyed immensely at our seder. http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2012/01/velveteen-rabbis-haggadah-for-pesach-72-abridged-and-expanded.html

The poetry for the birkat, grace after the meal, even included a favorite poem by E.E. Cummings:

i thank You God for most this amazing day

for the leaping greenly spirit of trees

and for a blue true dream of sky

and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes

(and i who have died am alive again this day,

and this is the sun’s birth day

and the birthday of life, and love, and wings)…

*Although hearing is at a distance the vibrations happen within the middle and inner ear as well, most immanently.

I had the most startling answer from a student Monday. In answer to the question What exemplifies “freedom” to you? Dawn answered (name changed): the Hurricane! Woah! I do get it: freedom from the demands and the routines. This kid sheltered  in the synagogue’s social hall during Sandy for power, heat, company and internet, playing and doing volunteer work for a couple of weeks. Here’s a thought: could we be overscheduling and overpressuring our kids? Passover’s so enriched by our children at the table, asking questions, searching for the hidden, maybe acting out dramas, singing “dayenu” (it would have been enough!). And here’s a child reminding us to give them back the freedom of childhood. Children are magic. This week’s haftarah contains some of the most beautiful verses from the prophet Malachi (3:23-24): Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet… to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the hearts of children to their parents. No wonder these verses are always read on the Shabbat before Passover! Not only is Elijah redemption man on Passover, our redemption story, but redeeming will come with the uniting of parents and children! Children: keeping our eyes tuned to wonder and idealism, to where we come from and the future we are headed to. And there is always that child in us, a part of us. My favorite musical setting of Bayom hahu (the Day will Come) is by Lisa Silverstein and Pete Tobias, and it includes these lyrics:

A day will dawn in the time to come,

a day when God’s name shall be One,

all war and suffering shall be through,

when that day comes Bayom hahu;

Bayom hahu, and on that day, I will wipe all tears away;

Sorrow and pain will all be through,

when that day comes Bayom hahu;

Let justice and righteousness flow like a stream,

the old and the young will see visions and dreams,

and what we dream shall yet come true,

when that day comes: Baym hahu;…..

The spear will break and the chariot burn,

the hearts of the parents to children will turn,

children and parents will all turn to You,

when that day comes, Bayom hahu..
So in a way, it is in our relationship with our children that Elijah visits our seder and holds the promise of redemption of the world. They are the SEEDS of redemption and a bright future – teach them well and love them, and make a safe place for them, and they will teach and love their children and perhaps this broken world can be fixed.  And we can taste this promise at the seder.
At the seder we taste slavery (bitter herbs) and perhaps the charoset is a taste of love and redemption, rather than of bricks:under the apple trees the women of exodus seduced their husbands into having children, like Moses and Miriam who would redeem us. And speaking of seduction under the apple tree, we read song of songs on Pesach! I would like to offer that Matzah is not so much the taste of slavery as the taste of seeds, and an guarding of their magical properties of sprouting feeding us. The technology of fermentation has been around at least from ancient Egypt, (they brewed beer). This technology, like fire, is a double edged sword: fermentation flavors, rises bread and preserves, but fermentation also rots, causes disease and wasting. At springtime we must carefully guard our new seeds – if they rot they cannot sprout and feed us. We must use up all our old seed, and begin to guard the new, keeping it dry. This bread of pure seed, guarded from water, and therefore rotting is what we make our bread/matzah of at the start of spring. In seed is the promise of spring and of our nourishment. As we refrain from eating risen, fermented foods = we can remember that we are fed from the magic of seeds. And loved under apple trees, planted from seeds. An in our souls, the magic of children. Zissen Pesach: a sweet Passover to all.

Why are we made of the same ingredients as our food? This is a favorite classroom question of mine, with a follow-up hint/question: Where does every morsel of food we eat come from? I am answered with silence at first, and then a voice offers: The Store?  Finally someone gets it: Everything we eat was alive, like us.  That‘s why we have the same ingredients as our food. Albert Einstein, that fabulous advocate for a sense of wonder, knew that there are only two ways to live your life: one as though nothing is a miracle, the other as though everything is a miracle. Nothing is more miraculous than the act of eating. You become what you eat – our ancestors knew this. They raised herd animals, but didn’t eat meat often.  Three times a year they placed their hands on an animal’s head and knew it was a sacrifice, a life for theirs, intense. This act of sacrifice drew them closer to the Creator- the word for sacrifice korban means to draw close. Why? Perhaps a profound appreciation for the miracle of working bodies and food, I don’t know. Maybe it reveals that acts of sacrifice help make our lives holy.

This week begins the reading of a new book in Torah, Leviticus, which many modern folks feel very uncomfortable with. Many sections deal with the details of the animal sacrifices of the ancient Tabernacle, and Temple.There’s a yuck factor for us, who don’t want to deal with, or think of the realities of where our meat comes from: we call them primitive. But it’s not primitive to fully understand the life that’s been sacrificed whenever we eat a morsel of meat. That creature’s very substance becomes our energy and materials – it’s a profound transfer.  In a world of connections we often dismiss the connections we have to other creatures – and the animal, the physical in us.   The truth is what many pet owners and nature lovers know in their hearts, we are deeply connected.  I am a pet lover, and a nature lover too. Feeling that connection strongly becomes a challenge to anyone that eats meat thought-fully.

This system of sacrifices is also a brilliant way of making amends for wrongs, celebrating thanksgivings.  All in a package deal of eating and sharing meat with the Levites and others on special occasions.  We dismiss ancient ways and instead employ mechanized meat raising, cruel treatment of animals and slaughter house employees. We encourage disconnect, discourage spirituality, and the chanting of blessings. These modern ways are what’s truly primitive!

I am reading an amazing book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman, about a child named Lia of the Hmong community of California. These  loving, land-connected, live-free-or-die folks still practice animal sacrifice today.  When the family gets Lia back at one point in the story they are beyond grateful. They drive out to a cattle ranch, buy an animal, sacrifice it, tote the meat back at great expense to host a huge celebration which feeds the community. Being so very poor, this was a sacrifice on every level.

After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, we found other pathways to spirituality and connections: prayer, tzedakah, mitzvah. But in order to lead to holiness these acts have to be real:  intense. Yet how many of us mumble prayer by rote, write checks to charity without feeling the connections, sacrifice for our loved ones or do righteous acts without knowing it’s healing the world! Our challenge is to make our lives holy: pay attention! find connections! say a blessing and really mean it! Choose to live your life knowing everything is a miracle. oh, and you might consider eating a little less meat, it has enormous implications for climate change and feeding the hungry of the world. Eating and our choices: more profound than you ever guessed. You are what you eat.

A song for this week, by Todd Herzog: Tov L’Hodot which means: it’s good to give thanks, song 11 in the jukebox at toodherzog.com

The chorus: Tov L’hodot, I won’t taken these things for granted; Tov L’hodot now I see the world anew;

Tov L’hodot, friends and family bring laughter to my soul, and my life would have no meaning without You.

I knew Sam since he was a little kid. By the time he was in high school he was getting up by five so he could get in a couple of more hours practice on the flute. He breathed music through his pores as though they were tiny flute holes. Like a few other artists I know, I suspect, if a tissue sample were placed in the microscope, instead of cells, eighth notes, clef signs, sharps and flats would come into view, of a person entirely made of music. Sam has talent and we are in love with the arts, and talent has always been one of those deep mysteries. Where does come from? Is it inspiration from on high, or just the passion that makes someone work till art oozes out of them? Gould and Prokofiev claimed not to  have practiced, though! So mystery it remains!
A story from our tradition is tells of a king who built a new palace. Not knowing how to decorate it, he announced a contest. Artists and sculptors came from far and wide displaying their work, and the king chose the two whose work spoke most to him. “I give you each a wall of my palace, materials and craftsmen to do with as you wish. The one whose work is best in one year’s time will be well rewarded. The first artist’s name was Tuvia, and he went to work immediately, drawing plans, hiring craftsmen, buying materials. He decided that the way the sun shone on the wall in the afternoon would be perfect for a scene of nature and flowing water, and he followed this insight. He worked many days each hour perfecting texture, color, perspective. The work in progress filled him with joy. The second artist, Golde, was stumped. She would sit and stare at her empty wall day after day, just hoping that the inspiration would come, but it never did. As the contest time neared its conclusion, Tuvia began to dismantle his scaffold, clean up paint and fabric. He proudly signed and veiled his work, while Golde’s wall was just as empty as ever. But, as the day of the judging dawns, surprisingly, Golde had some work to present. The King eagerly approached two contest walls and commanded them to be unveiled. As Tuvia saw his finished work, his heart swelled with pride. But as his eyes turn toward the other wall, his mouth fell open, and blood of anger rushed to his face. There on Golde’s wall is an exact replica of his own, line for line, exactly the same colors, down to the brushstroke. Every leaf, every dewdrop, the same! The King was surprised indeed, but as he felt the cold, smooth texture of Golde’s wall, insight dawned on him.”Who has won?” they asked the King. “I have declared this contest a draw,” he proclaimed. “You shall each return tomorrow to receive the reward you deserve.” Golde breathed a sign of relief. “But your majesty, this is unjust!”, began Tuvia. “Silence! It shall be as I have decreed!” bellowed the King, “return tomorrow!”
When the artists returned to the palace the next day, Tuvia, who had been downhearted, was delighted to see a pile of gold beyond his imaginings near the king. “Your dedication and inspiration honors my home, and I have gifted you enough gold for you to work to your heart’s content all your life!” declared the King. Deeply honored, Tuvia bowed and thanked the King. “But your majesty, what of my reward?”, protested Golde. “I have promised you the reward you deserve, and here is yours,” boomed the king. Golde looked where the king was pointing, and there shone a reflection of the mountain of gold in  a mirror. “Take it and leave my kingdom, never to return.” Spoke the king. Golde looked sadly at the King, and slowly left the palace.

This week in the Torah, the portion is named “Vayakhel” – which can translate “and he made them into a community” The portion later names the artisans that God has chosen to create the portable Mishkan, a sanctuary and dwelling for God in the Israelite’s midst.  The first is B’tzalel, who is gifted with “Spirit of God in wisdom, understanding, knowledge in all his work”  I love this! B’tzalel is an artist, but artistry is not defined as an ability to make “pretty pictures”, but rather as true insight and wisdom and  truth -turned to the works of art. And B’tzalel’s name means in God’s shadow! But for me the best is yet to come, because B’tzalel’s assistant is Oholiav, and his God-given,  gift of the heart is the ability to teach!  Teaching, visual arts, music -all are precious communications, one heart to another, about the beauty and truth we see in the world. An ability to connect, both to the universe and to other souls is the talent we may receive.  It is also how we can create community. Perhaps our life’s work is  our painting on the palace wall of God’s universe.  IF we create an original works, never just reflections.  Sam paints gorgeous pictures of sunlight and water and more with his inspiration, his talent and of course, his flute. I can learn from him, be inspired by artists, and also recognize the art and the gift which is my own life’s work: teaching.

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Teaching Hebrew school is a second pathway for me. I never would have guessed (in a hundred years!) I’d do this, nor that I would be flying so high after a day with these kids as I did this week. Now I admit, not every day’s this rewarding, and supplimentary Hebrew school’s got it’s problems, but these days make it so worthwhile. The kids’ names have been changed.

The afternoon began with the sixth grade reviewing the morning version of the Mi Chamocha – the giddy song of triumph sung at the crossing of the sea. I sang this Michael Walzer poem for them to figure out, (used as an intro to the prayer by the reform siddur): Standing on the parted shores of history; we still believe what we were taught before ever we stood at Sinai’s foot; that wherever we go, it is eternally Egypt; that there is a better place, a promised land; that the winding way to that promise passes through the wilderness; that there is no way to get from here to there, except by joining hands, marching together.

What does slavery mean today? I asked, is it just ancient history? Did you know people were bought and sold still today? Yes, they knew. What else could enslave folks? Adam told me people today were slaves to money! That so many parents in his town don’t see their kids so much, in the pursuit of this master. Brett knew what the poem meant by “marching together”: that none of us can do it alone – we need one another. Dave knew why music was the choice of response at the sea because “music’s inspiring”. Seriously, wow! After telling this group how much they rocked, I welcomed in fourth graders. We were beginning blessings, b’rachot. by telling of gifts they’ve given others. Most had been thanked for their gifts, but Jaden shared how her little brother had just run off with a gift she’d given him without thanking – made her feel pretty low. Can you think of gifts you’ve gotten today? How about a hundred gifts a day? “I didn’t get a hundred gifts!” shouted Jake. Well, the other kids argued with him – I didn’t have to do it, that he DID get those gifts: family, friends, food, love, puppies. But how can you remember to pay attention to these gifts? I told them about Aldous Huxley’s parrots from Island: “pay attention!” they squawked. How annoying! my fourth graders called out. Maybe saying blessings would be a better way to go!

This session was followed by Youth choir, one of only three twenty minute rehearsals we get per month. Sometimes these rehearsals are just a high point of my week – their youthful idealism just comes out in their voices and shines in their eyes. We are singing this Shabbat, and in a new program we call Kehilah Kedoshah (holy community) students are matching various arts to the Torah portion for that week – students choose their group, and ours is music. Well, this week’s Torah portion, called Ki Tisa, includes the saga of the golden calf and its aftermath. Moses, after receiving the gift of the tablets, God-inscribed,  sees the Israelites dancing, worshiping a sculpture of gold, and smashes the tablets. Talk about wrong moves: both the Israelites and Moses could have done a lot better. But it’s not the end of the story for either the Israelites or their temperamental leader. Instead it’s time for second chances. Moses argues for the Israelites, takes a second trip up that mountain, and is told to carve another set of tablets like the first, this time to inscribe them himself. This second try far outstrips the first. Troubled, or inspired, Moses asks to see God’s honor/presence. God explains that it could be deadly, but placed in that cleft of the rock, all God’s goodness will pass before Moses as God’s “back” (afterglow?) passes by. Inspired, Moses exclaims the thirteen attributes of God which have become a part of the Holy day Torah service liturgy. In a beautiful symmetry of how God calls “Moshe, Moshe” at the burning bush, Moses calls God’s name: Adonai, Adonai, merciful and kind, slow to anger, with great loving-kindness and truth… Moses is so transformed by the experience that he glows like he’s radioactive, so much that he must be veiled ever after.
The songs sung and chosen by the youth choir this month are about fixing mistakes, about making things better.  The first  is called “if Not Now” by Carrie Newcomer, (and credit to R. Hillel!) . If not now, tell me when? is about fixing the world. Check it out here, sung by Dan Nichols and Danielle Rudnisky http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3RUKmvD0bc.

I swear the sound of these 30 or so kids singing their hearts out to these words was just inspiring. As was their rendition of Todd Herzog’s Be the Change (toddherzog.com) Talk about blessings, I’ve got ’em.  No more to say!

Except my night was just half over. Hebrew High was coming, ninth grade. First up was “Expression of our Jewish Soul in Song” – a survey of mostly contemporary Jewish music arranged around themes, and this week’s theme was Torah. I’ve encouraged the kids to bring instruments if they’ve got ’em, and two brought their ukeleles and were playing Stairway to Heaven  -how perfect! (Led Zeppelin). So I joined in on the chords and we discussed the chords, and those of songs in general, and how to write songs…and class hadn’t even begun! This class is a taste of lots of songs, and we did some fun ones. My favorite moment: I was teaching them a two part arrangement of Leon Sher’s Adonai, Adonai which beautifully sets to music the words from this week’s portion (see above). We’d only gotten through half of it when Lizzy said something like “wait, I’m taking out my iphone to record this, we sound freakin’ amazing”, so we sang it again for her recording! After this someone shouted, “Hey can we sing Shalom Alechem again?” Ok, after we do Sweet as Honey, I replied, we just have to do that first. So we sang a bit of Todd Herzog’s Calling all Angels/ Shalom Alechem which we’d learned a couple of weeks ago, and they can’t get enough of. Be still my heart.

My last session for the night, after putting away the music, keyboard and guitar, was one on Science and Torah. OK,  cue the DVD player, take out the props (tarps, marbles, slinkies…) enter the all-boy class. The topic was on unity in physics and Torah. The last fifteen minutes featured a discussion of the Shema and a reading on Unity. The reading was an excerpt from Arthur Waskow’s Freedom Journey and I asked them what part of the reading spoke to them, and Bob selected this part: I am part of everything and less than nothing; I Anokhi a cell of the great Anokhi of the world come conscious.  I stand inside God’s skull, behind the face, I look out through God’s eyes, my face in Face, I see myself, ourself, Anokhi. Bob said that sometimes when he awoke in the morning he felt like this, and looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize who he was, and wondered what was real.  Wow! End the session.

Ki Tisa, second chances is about my life this week, I realize. I have gone up the mountain a second time with this second vocation teaching Hebrew school, and I have come down with my face radiantly aglow, and I am blessed.

Light. The universe vibrates in particles which are also waves, traveling at amazing LIGHT speeds!  The part of the energy  spectrum we can see is light. Our flame, our passion and inspiration are also light. The awareness of our soul is light. When we remember a loved one we light a candle, and at Chanukah we sing: Don’t let the light go out! We leave the light on for our teen when they come home late, and light candles for Shabbat and Havdalah. We seek enlightenment and hope for a new light to dawn with each day. This week (portion Tetzaveh) the Torah speaks of the flame that is continuously lit, the ner tamid. Perhaps a symbol that God’s always there, and that our awareness can rise and rekindle like that flame.

One of my favorite songs of light is Dan Nichols’ Or Zarua. Or Zarua latzadik means light is sown for the righteous. The lyric continues: We must keep our hopes alive, we must raise our voices high , we must hold each other tight, we must stand up in the night and BE light! Listen here, and keep it light! http://www.myspace.com/dannicholseighteenmusic/music/songs/or-zarua-71716268

So how can a person BE light? Well one more thing about Light: it is the symbol of inspiration, of learning, of Torah.

I had an opportunity to find out about being light because I got to learn this week at Limmud, the NY/ London Jewish learning connection.  There I met teachers who WERE light! One of the teachers who touched me most was Arthur Kurzweil, author, publisher, musician and ….magician? Yes, I saw some of his illusions in a magic show that night. For Arthur magic is symbolic of some of life’s mysteries. The illusion is all we see, for we don’t know the whole story. In just this way we are too limited to understand all of the forces and effects of the bits of life we witness, just a small part. We miss too much due to our small slice of time and space and limits to our awareness.

Anyway, Arthur presented (in too brief a time) his twenty most important lessons from Kaballah to teach his children. He often referenced a book by Adin Steinsaltz, The Thirteen Petal Rose.  I’ll share some of his list here.

1. The key to wisdom is this paraodox:  knowing we can never understand is the first step to some measure of wisdom and understanding
2. We are not a body with a soul, we ARE a soul that happens to have a body.
3. God is constantly creating the world at each moment, (rather than a past, distant creator)
4. Perspective is not what you think: God knows each soul in the same quantity as the largest galaxy, because each is proportionally the same in relation to infinity!
5. Only imagining the infinite makes understanding the finite possible, like Desargue’s Theorem in geometry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desargues%27_:theorem
6. All actions are the same size relative to God: the movement of a finger, or the largest catastrophe, both are miracles, important in the life of the universe
7. Every descent is for the sake of ascension. Reb Nachman teaches that the greatest sin is pessimism, and R. Akiva teaches Gam zu l’tovah – “This too is for the good”
8. Every detail of the human body is for the sake of divine revelation. Job exclaimed  In my flesh I see God. Arthur then added that our bodies are the pinnacle of creation. (My own opinion: in all nature there is divine revelation, not in our bodies alone. And remember, we are a soul, not a body!)
9. The voice within you when you’re lost, that cries Ayekha? Where are you? is not your voice, but God’s, it’s a holy thing
10. I love this one: If you think you’ve arrived….., that’s when you’re lost!
11. The answer to the question Who am I? cannot be answered in relation to any other person: you are not defined as the child of… the spouse of… the parent of … any other. You are defined only in your relationship to the Infinite Eternal One. And the best in human relationships, helps you to better this ultimate relationship, to be more truly yourself
12. The sin of knowing, of eating from the Tree of Knowledge is the sin of a bad education! This type of education doesn’t answer a person’s real questions, does not respond to who they really are, is a barrier rather than an enabler. As an educator, this one’s an eye opener!
13. There is great benefit from instability: only through this risk can you be open to growth. Similarly to how your foot must be at the unstable place between rungs to climb that ladder.
14. In studying Talmud, which Arthur described as 63 volumes of doubt, studies are interrupted for to pray from the siddur, a tiny volume of faith. To be stuck in either place is to be lost. The trick is to balance, to go back and forth.

I studied with another wonderful teacher Alicia Jo Rabins http://www.aliciajo.com/  who has composed songs in a  soulful  bluegrass style about the lives of biblical women. After an inspiring chevruta (partner) study on the life of Miriam, the text where Miriam gets “leprosy” after she and Aaron criticize Moses for marrying a Cushite woman, I wrote this song:

I Am Your Sister

What has happened to my hands, my face?

So white, like death, like rice.

I only want to live, finally free

Why not Aaron, Why just me?

Help me now please, I am your sister

I guarded you in those primal waters

Guiding you to flow to life so new

Now we need to see this through, to  renew.

Moses, she’s your wife, your forgotten one,

Mother of your two sons

I meant to remind you of her needs

She’s a woman scorned, like me.

Help me now please, I am your sister

I guarded you in those primal waters

Guiding you to flow to life so new

Now we need to see this through, to renew

Bridge: Miriam, bitter waters, falling like snowflakes on my skin

   Miriam, bitter waters, like my tears, there’s no place here for me, heal for me!

Help me now please, I am your sister

I guarded you in those primal waters

Guiding you to flow to life so new

Now we need to see this through, to renew

Finally, I studied with an amazing Brit named Clive Lawton who is the executive director of Limmud, chair of development charity Tzedek and a former head teacher of King David high school in Liverpool. He has become the accidental world expert on intercultural calendars after organizing an 18 culture calendar for the Brittish public schools. His presentation It’s about time was on the impact on our lives. Just a couple of points – the Jewish calendar is the only one which marks the start of time with the beginning of the universe, not our particular people. The Muslim calendar is the only one not tied to the solar year, because it’s not tied to any one place or to the seasons: it’s just as valid in Argentina as Alaska.  The Chinese New Year is impossible to predict more than a year in advance, most calendars are luni-solar, and that calendars organize how we think about time. One favorite quote: what were you doing on this day two years ago? Nothing, this day has never existed before, and never will again.

These teachers were a light in my life, as I pray I can bring some light to others’ lives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limmud