Category: Rabbis

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Ethics Healing Rabbis Reform Judaism

The Red Tent: Oddly Compelling, Despite it All

I was slightly too young to swoon over the iconic mini-series “The Thorn Birds” in the early 1980’s (though my babysitters weren’t).  So imagine my excitement, tinged with an eye roll or five, when I saw that “The Red Tent,” based on Anita Diamant’s best-selling novel, would be broadcast over two nights (two nights!) in December.  In spite of more inaccuracies than the rabbi in me could count, Lifetime Television for Women (coincidence?  methinks not!) did manage to present the movie around the time the Torah portion containing Dinah’s story is read.  “The Bible Gave Her One Line” the trailer intoned dramatically.  Fine.  They had me at one line.  With a December 2nd article from the Forward titled “159 Thoughts We Had While Watching ‘The Red Tent’ (We Watched It So You Don’t Have To)” beside me, and my husband happily watching the Packers game in the other room, I settled on the couch and prepared for Part One, also known as “A Blissful Two Hours Of Mockery.”

And I found I couldn’t look away.

So embarrassing!

To assuage said embarrassment, and mostly thwarted mockery, I’m playing with a few theories as to why.

Good production values.  I want to say that the Torah is just as visually arresting, and sometimes it is.  But sometimes sweeping desert vistas, ominous drum beats, what sounds like the almost constant accompaniment of the sitar, and veils softly billowing in the wind help things along.

Even better hair.  Whether growing up under the watchful eyes and shaped by the hyper-articulate wisdom of her mothers, lighting up a darkened palace with her first sexual awakening, losing more than anyone has a right to, suffering terribly, then flourishing in ways she never predicted, Dinah’s curls were unfailingly gorgeous.

Genuinely moving theological soundbites.  I still can’t put my finger on what lifted reflections like “God’s will doesn’t come through words – it’s in what we become,” and “To mourn is respectful; to remember is holy” out of the realm of florid nonsense.  Could it be that when you peel away the mannered accents on the actors’ part, and the tendency towards sarcasm on mine, these insights are more or less true?  The lump in my throat said yes.

To round out all the possibilities, at a pre-Chanukah gathering last night, I asked a member of our congregation’s Sisterhood what had moved her about “The Red Tent.”  She told me it had to do with Dinah’s ability to take what the women in her life had taught her and to use it to survive what the rest of her life brought.  Well… right, I thought.  If we’re very lucky, that’s something we all do with the memories of those who matter to us most.

I read The Red Tent in 1999, just months after my mother died, during my first year at HUC in Jerusalem.  It was neither my favorite nor my least favorite piece of literature.  But this congregant’s words struck a chord.  I realized that this story – however hyperbolic — is bound up with a specific loss in my life and with the person, and the rabbi, I have since become.  That’s what our best stories do.  They give our worlds back to us.  We bind ourselves to them.  And they point us towards something new.

By the way, the Packers won.  And against all odds, “The Red Tent” as a mini-series did too.  I’m filing it under “oddly compelling.”  And then I’ll be putting the word out to see if anyone has a used, double VHS tape of “The Thorn Birds.”

Rebecca Gutterman is the rabbi of Congregation B’nai Tikvah in Walnut Creek, CA.

Categories
Prayer Rabbis

Texas: Unexpected Moments of Awe

It has happened to me (more than once in my lifetime) that a person will come and tell me something about what will happen next in my life. It is most often a very specific bit of advice from someone I know but not well; it is normally not someone I would seek out for counsel. And every time it is the same thing: the person will see me out at a social gathering – often at a gathering in which it was not a given that I would be there – and announce to me ‘I have a message for you,’ as if they had just listened to a voice mail addressed specifically to me.

When that happens, I know to listen: the person will invariably tell me something that I need to know about what will happen next.

The most recent example occurred right before I started my job search a few years ago. At a party, an acquaintance came up (someone who did not know that I was looking for work) and told me the following: ‘You will leave here; there is a move in your future. It will be some place – like Texas – that you’ve never considered before.”

“Texas?” I asked, wondering, “Why Texas?” It’s not the first place I would pick.

She shook her head: “It’s not Texas specifically; it could be Texas, or it could be somewhere else; I can’t tell you where exactly. But it’s a part of the world that you have never considered before. They need you, and you need them. They need to hear what you have to say, and you need them to hear it. You will both benefit.”

Okay.

At that point in the process, I had not even mapped out what I wanted to do. So I took her comments under advisement.

A few months later, I had come to the (somewhat surprising) conclusion that I really wanted to go back to congregational work. I love academics, of course, but I realized that I missed that element of transcendence that hovers over the work of a rabbi.

So I called the Director of Placement and told him that I was thinking of returning to congregational work. After he quizzed me about my general background and interests, his first question regarding my search was: “Have you ever considered living in Texas?”

Okay.

“Texas is fine,” I tell him. “I am open to living in any location.”

It did not turn out to be Texas, but my move was to a place I’d not known existed. Nonetheless, the advice to be open to new places, to leaving, to going somewhere I had not considered before was indeed helpful. When the option came open, I was in a place spiritually and emotionally to accept it, and to do so joyously, without doubt. I left with a clear heart.

I cannot give you a good reason why this phenomenon takes place; I simply cannot explain it. I can tell you that the Bible records several instances of a person – ‘ish’ – who appears mid-narrative with instructions as to what will happen next. Joseph, for example, finds his brothers after encountering such a person.

The person’s instruction is not necessarily one that makes the road smooth; rather, it is an announcement of what needs to happen next. And it has happened enough times now that I heed its call.

And it can be subtle. Recall, for example, the story of Elijah the prophet’s encounter with God. Elijah has retreated to a cave after a difficult set of circumstances to try and regroup. He is a wanted man, and he is experiencing grave doubt. And then he seeks God. This is how the text describes the encounter:

“There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks by the power of the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.”

“After the wind – an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake.”

“After the earthquake – fire; but the Lord was not in the fire.”

“And after the fire – a still, small voice.”

Elijah encounters God as a still small voice after the fire and noise and trembling.

There are things in this life that you just know intuitively, in a spiritual way, in a ‘still, small voice’ kind of way. There is an element of God in that knowledge.

Our perception of the world, as we move through our lives, involves this interplay of presence and absence, of articulate speech and of silent wonder. But we do not ever capture its fullness; in truth, we simply cannot.

As I said: I cannot tell you why it happens, any of it. I can only stand in awe and listen.

Rabbi Kari Tuling, PhD serves Temple Beth Israel and teaches at the State University of New York in Plattsburgh.

Categories
General CCAR Healing Rabbis

Rabbinic Soul Maintenance

I recently met with a colleague who informed me that she really doesn’t like to ask God for help, especially during Tishrei, because there’s already so much on God’s plate. It reminded me just a little bit of the old story with the punchline, “look who thinks she’s nothing?” I am reminded as well of a poignant piece by Jacob Staub on the difficulty of asking for help, available at http://firstdaypress.org/asking-for-help/: “And it is, for many of us, so difficult to ask for help. We may feel things slipping away from us, or the color bleeding from life. But all too often we wait until everything has already hit the fan to pick up the phone and say, ‘I need you.’”

Seth Bernstein posted a beautiful contemplation regarding the gift that Ruth Alpers and he offer our members as the Hotline rabbis of our CCAR Rapid Response team. I am honored this year to be able to join them as CCAR Intern for Member Care and Wellness, as part of my training at the NYU School of Social Work, where I am pursuing an MSW. Seth offered up a list of the kinds of issues which might prompt you to pick up the phone and call one of the three of us. Additionally, I invite you to attend to the basic question of soul maintenance – how are you holding up on a day-to-day basis in the face of all you shoulder personally and professionally? We would never hesitate to encourage a congregant who tells us she is feeling listless or he is feeling joyless to consider speaking to a therapist? But how many of us wait until something has gone dreadfully wrong. Are we sufficiently attuned to the weight of compassion, fatigue and, even, vicarious trauma on our psyches?

Dear colleagues, you offer yourselves up so generously to help others bear the burdens of their lives. The CCAR offers you the same. Ruth and Seth are available for moments of crisis. And for those who would like a few sessions of listening, sharing and examining where you are right now in your life and in the center of your being, I am here for you as well. I am also available for a small number of sessions of spiritual direction and will be facilitating some group work over the course of the year as well.

For more information, go to:  http://ccarnet.org/rabbis-communities/personal-resources-chevruta/rapid-response/

Rabbi Rex D Perlmeter is the CCAR NYU Social Work Intern for Member Care and Wellness.

Categories
General CCAR Healing Rabbis

Don’t Let Me Struggle Alone: CCAR’s Rapid Response Line

We are blessed to have family and friends whom we rely upon, just as they rely upon us.  As rabbis, we also are blessed to serve others in the context of a community that widens and deepens our relationships.  Nevertheless, despite all the relationships that we have and nurture, unfortunately there are times in the course of our rabbinate when we and those we love find ourselves in a free fall.  That could be due to sudden illness or trauma, employment setbacks, familial problems, congregational or personal crises.  There are a host of ways and a variety of people within the CCAR which can help.  On the CCAR website under “Rabbis and Communities” there is a tab that reads “Personal Resources & Chevruta.”  Here CCAR members can find contact information for the Rapid Response Hotline for contacting me or our colleague, Rabbi Ruth Alpers.

Our colleague, Rabbi Richard Levy, paraphrased the “Ahavat Rabbah/Ahavat Olam” prayer found in Mishkan T’filah, “As You Taught Torah”. The prayer states a plea that we all feel at times in the course of our lives and rabbinate, “Don’t let me struggle alone.”  When the rug is pulled out from under us, we have the choice to struggle alone or to call upon assistance.  As one of the CCAR’s Rapid Response members, we are available whenever you or your family is in need.

What are some of the reasons why colleagues place the call to the Rapid Response Line in the first place?  It could be trouble with an employer or congregation, a family crisis, the beginning of an alleged ethical violation, marital or family conflict, job placement, and health issues, just to name a few reasons.  For example, colleagues have shared:

“Everything has been going downhill since my divorce. I was just told I will never see my kids again.”

“I can’t find a job, even after all of these months and years of trying.”

“I’m a dead man.  When does this stop?”

“I know my marriage is tenuous and my spouse needs stability, but I am in a dying community, and I don’t see as if we have any choice, or there is any way out of here.”

“My spouse (the rabbi) was asked to give a large sum of money back to the congregation if he wants to keep his job.  We’re being blackmailed.”

“I live in Shmini Atzeret, seventy-five miles, from a city. Can you refer me to a good psychiatrist whose office is close by?”

“Do I inform my congregation about this psychiatric issue in my life? And if so, how do I go about it?”

“I should have called you a while ago.  Where do I begin?”

Ruth and I are just two colleagues here to assist CCAR members as you will see on the website under “Rabbis Caring for Rabbis.”  The prayer, As You Taught Torah continues, “Don’t let me struggle alone; help me to understand, to be wise, to listen, to know.  Lead me into the mystery, Baruch atah, Adonai, ohev amo Yisrael.”

Rabbi Seth Bernstein serves Congregation Bet Aviv in Columbia, MD

Categories
News Rabbis Reform Judaism Social Justice

Praying for Rain: Marriage Equality in North Carolina

As we move toward Sh’mini Atzeret/Simchat Torah, we begin to pray for rain.  We change from morid hatal to mashiv haruach umorid hagashem.  So this is a good time to recall that other outpouring called for by the prophet Amos: v’yigal kamayim mishpat utz’dakah k’nachal eitan, let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Just before Shabbat, justice and righteousness began to roll down in North Carolina.  Earlier this year, the CCAR and several of our North Carolina colleagues joined in a litigation to challenge Amendment One, the prohibition on same sex marriage in the state.  Several other colleagues wanted to join but could not do so for technical legal reasons.  The challenge had two elements.  First, it claimed that the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution barred a state law that prohibited same sex couples from marrying.  Second, it claimed that, even if that ban was otherwise constitutional, it ran afoul of the First Amendment, in that it threatened clergy who performed religious-only same sex marriages with civil penalties.

Last week, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that overturned Virginia’s ban on same sex marriage on Fourteenth Amendment grounds.  Because the Fourth Circuit also covers North Carolina, that meant that, as Daniel would have understood, the handwriting was on the wall.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn, who was hearing our case, ruled that Amendment One violated the Fourteenth Amendment and had to be struck down.  This meant that he never had to decide the First Amendment claim.  It also meant that starting Friday in some North Carolina counties, and Monday in others, registrars began to issue licenses for same sex couples to marry, and marriage ceremonies started to take place.  Yesterday, another federal judge in North Carolina came to the same conclusion in another case.  Marriage equality in North Carolina is now a reality.

TomAlpertI used to practice law and serve as the amicus brief coordinator for the CCAR.  This meant that I had the privilege of being involved in our decision to take part in this case.  When I read Judge Cogburn’s ruling, I felt pride that our CCAR leadership and our courageous rabbis helped bring about this change for the better.  The attorneys in this case donated their time, and I felt gratitude for them.  And as I read of couples finally being able to marry, I sensed the rush of righteousness all the way from North Carolina to my home in Massachusetts.  May we continue to be inundated with it as we pray for rain at this season.

Rabbi Thomas Alpert serves Temple Etz Chaim in Franklin, MA. He was ordained from the New York campus of the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in 2000 after a previous career as a lawyer.

Categories
Books High Holy Days Machzor Mishkan haNefesh Prayer Rabbis Reform Judaism

Hin’ni: The First Step Into the High Holy Day Pulpit

Last year I was in Jerusalem for the High Holy Days. The experience of being in Israel for this focal point of the Jewish year, especially as it coincided with my entering into Rabbinical school at HUC-JIR, provided a new layer of meaning to the holidays for me. Praying with my community while looking out into the Old City through the gorgeous windows of Blaustein Hall in Beit Shmuel, I was drawn to connect to the past of our people. For millennia, the hill that I was gazing upon has been the central focus of this very service. Our ancient predecessors worshiped the same God, at the same time of year, by making animal sacrifices on the hill framed right in front of the entire HUC-JIR Jerusalem community, where our eyes rested as we prayed through our traditional liturgy.

The High Holy Days are often described as an ominous period that evokes reflection on mortality and the worth of our lives. As Rabbi Ismar Schorsch wrote, quoted in the Rosh Hashanah Morning portion of Mishkan haNefesh, “we gather again in the fall against the backdrop of a natural world that is beginning to wither in order to contemplate what the passage of time means in our own lives.”

I have never felt this theme of the High Holy Days as acutely as I do now. In stark contrast to last year, in which our services were planned out and led by the faculty of HUC-JIR, this year the responsibility is all mine. In the coming weeks I will, for the first time, be leading a community in their High Holy Day worship. No musical accompanist, no senior authority to follow – just myself. This is a humbling prospect, and one that certainly makes me contemplate the path that led me here.

The majesty and power of the High Holy Days has often been lost on me. As a child, I looked forward to Yom Kippur only for the annual break-fast we held at my house with our community of friends. Dramatic, operatic choirs and music, prayers speaking to a king-like God of which I saw no proof in my life, and sweating in an overcrowded sanctuary, did not draw me into the spirit of teshuvah, nor did it make me feel connected to the tradition being put forth. Instead, I felt alienated and, for many years, stopped attending High Holy Day services altogether.

Now, it is my turn to be the one leading a community of people who may or may not feel completely alienated by the service they are going to attend. More likely than not, most of the people in attendance at the small Hillel where I will be leading are going to be searching for a sense of home, a sense of community, and a sense of meaning. They will want the familiar, but will also want to be engaged in something that intelligently challenges their worldview. They will be searching, as I have in the past, for something that connects them our tradition in the way they have heard others speak about the transformative power of the rituals and liturgy. When I consider the fact that it is my responsibility to bring this about, the opening to Hin’ni speaks to me more than it ever has before: “Here I am. So poor in deeds, I tremble in fear, overwhelmed and apprehensive before You to whom Israel sings praise.”

Many of my classmates are in a similar position. Some are going to other Hillels, some are going to small communities throughout our country from Wyoming to Arkansas, all with the same new experience of the High Holy Days awaiting them as fall arrives. Each location has its own set of circumstances around the days, but the main theme is the same: We are no longer congregants in the pews, we are now leaders on the pulpits.

mishkan_hanefesh_520x250I feel incredibly lucky that, in spite of my apprehension and fear, I have the opportunity to make use of the new Reform machzor, Mishkan haNefesh, as my guide for leading this community. Although I grew up using Gates of Repentance, I still associate it with the alienation and frustration of my earlier years. It is a wonderful coincidence that for my fresh start with the High Holy Days I am gifted the experience of using a new form of our tradition as the foundation for my leadership. We are in this together, and both of us are pretty new to the task. I hope that Mishkan haNefesh and I will be able to provide the students of Gettysburg College Hillel meaningful holiday worship that invites rather than alienates, that inspires rather than bores. I look for to writing further about this experience after the gates have closed, and we are on solid footing in 5775. Shanah Tovah!

Andy Kahn is a second year Rabbinical student at HUC-JIR in New York, and is also a Rabbinic Intern at CCAR Press.

Categories
Death Healing Rabbis

Mussar for Rabbis – Bitachon (Trust), Life, and Death

“Rabbi, I wouldn’t want your job,” congregants have often said to me, most often in connection with the rabbi’s proximity to death.  My response often surprises people:  “Being with those who are dying, and with families coping with the death of a loved one, is actually the most meaningful part of being a rabbi for me.”

Make no mistake:  The rabbi is not immune from feelings of sadness in the midst of mourners.  Having served more than two decades in one community, and now forging meaningful bonds in a new one, I frequently experience real personal loss at the death of a person who has become dear to me.

Still, the well-boundaried rabbi does not become consumed by grief at the death of a congregant.  With true caring for the person who is dying, or who has died, and for the family, the rabbi can play a unique role to bring healing.  The rabbi can leverage the liminal moment to draw people closer to the congregation, to the Covenant, and to God.  Most importantly, the rabbi can convey authentic faith, which I have come to understand most importantly as the middah of bitachon (the soul-trait of trust), thanks to my learning with Alan Morinis.

In significant measure, I take my cue from the Christian funeral, a comment I make in the context of a witticism I often share about Jews attending a Christian funeral:

A group of Jews gets in the car after a Christian funeral, after offering condolences to the family and kind, if not entirely sincere, words to the minister or priest.  The car windows are rolled up.  I have been in this car.  “Geez,” one person exclaims, “I thought we were going to Ploni’s funeral.  But I didn’t hear hardly anything about Ploni! Did we just attend Jesus’s funeral?”

Naturally, the Christian service doesn’t resonate to Jews.  We don’t share the theology proclaimed there.  We are not imbued with faith that Ploni has found the blessings of life eternal because of his/her relationship with Jesus.  That Christian funeral does not inspire bitachon (trust) in us.

IMG_2309The question remains, though:  Do our own funerals offer faith and hope to us and to our own people?

In our own day, people often ask why rabbis bother to give eulogies at all.  After all, family members are often eager to speak, and they knew the deceased better even than a rabbi who has shared a long relationship with the departed.  While I agree that the loving words of familial mourners are meaningful, and certainly called for (as in Proverbs 31), the rabbi can fill a role that most family members cannot.

I minister to dying individuals and their families, and I craft each eulogy, with a clear, rabbinical goal in mind:  I am there to offer bitachon, trust, despite the unhappy circumstance before us, that:

1) Life is an inestimable gift from God, exemplified by the life now ending or ended.  The dying or recently deceased person has made an important impact on this world which will not soon be forgotten and is indisputably not erased by death.

2) We who yet live can keep this person very much alive here on Earth by finding our own ways to live our dear one’s values.  I suggest that this responsibility to a person’s immortality on Earth is what we mean when we say that we are reciting Kaddish “for” somebody.  Literally, the Kaddish is an opportunity to praise God on behalf of one who no longer can do so.  We may interpret our Kaddish obligation more broadly as a duty to perform mitzvot, to offer cheesed (loving-kindness,) and tzedakah (righteous charitable giving), and/or to continue shalshelet hakabalah (the chain of Jewish tradition) on behalf of the one who no longer can do so, thereby granting immortality in this world.

3) Life after death for the departed in the World to Come is also a meaningful part of our Jewish faith.  This is the hard part, for countless reasons, not the least being that any honest discussion of Jewish theology in this regard doesn’t fit into a eulogy.   Still, I affirm that even poetic, oblique reference to eternal life in God’s embrace offers faith and hope that our funerals might otherwise fail to convey.

Serving my congregants at their times of greatest spiritual need, I have come to realize, has bolstered my own bitachon, my own ultimate trust in the Eternal.  Death is a difficult aspect of the human condition, from which rabbis are not exempt.  Striving to help others face death with faith serves as a constant reminder to me:  I must pursue tikkun middot, the repair of my own flaws, to deepen the meaning of my own earthly existence; I am charged to recall the goodness of my grandparents, of blessed memory, by striving to “say Kaddish” for them through my own actions; and I would do well to remember that I, too, am “but dust and ashes,” my body destined for the cemetery, my soul in the hands of God, a prospect I increasingly accept with bitachon, with faithful trust.

Rabbi Barry Block serves Congregation B’nai Israel in Little Rock, AR.

Categories
High Holy Days Machzor Mishkan haNefesh Prayer Rabbis Reform Judaism

What Are We Doing Here?: Mishkan HaNefesh and the High Holy Days

You are probably aware, if you’ve sat through High Holy Day services in years past, that these worship services run longer than most other days of the year. If you have not really studied or examined the words on the pages closely before, you may not be aware of all the ‘extras’ that are part of the High Holy Day liturgy. Of course, the Shofar service is one of the most immediately recognizable additions. And the singing of Avinu Malkeinu. And you may have spent many a year struggling with the medieval piyyut (poem) U’netaneh Tokef (that’s the one that contains those uncomfortable lines, ‘who will live and who will die’). 

But perhaps you don’t remember a series of paragraphs that are inserted into the Amidah that extend the section known in Hebrew as k’dushat Hashem – the Sanctification of the Name. That is the section where we repeat 3 times, kadosh kadosh kadosh… holy holy holy is the Eternal God of Hosts.

The reason why this section of prayer is extended with some additional paragraphs is because the ‘sanctification of God’s name’ was, historically, a big theme of the Jewish New Year. In ancient times there would be an official day of the year to celebrate and honor each year of a king’s reign. Think of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. There was a lot of fuss and fanfare as her Diamond Jubilee was celebrated back in 2012.  Something of this ancient ritual was borrowed in Jewish ritual – one day a year we recognize and honor the coronation of the King of Kings.  In our Rosh HaShanah liturgy we do this when we ‘sanctify God’s name.’ But what does that mean exactly?

The three additional passages that become part of the sanctification prayer over the High Holy Days each begin with the word u’v’chen, meaning ‘therefore.’ What follows in the 3 passages are an ancient liturgists idea of what the world would look like if we all IMG_0716acted in ways that demonstrated our attempt to bring a sense of God’s holiness into our world. First, all of creation would feel a sense of awe and reverence for God. Second, the Jewish people would no longer struggle because they would receive honor and respect and, third, we’d all be acting righteously and we would no longer be witness to evil.

Now, putting the history lesson and the ancient language of kings aside for a moment, what we have here, right in the center of one of the central prayers of our liturgy, are words that remind us that we’ve really failed to do much of meaning if we dutifully sit in synagogue and mindlessly recite words, unless the time we spend in reflection and connection remind and inspire us that, when we get up, we make meaning by doing. That’s why I love some of the alternative, contemporary readings that our upcoming new machzor, Mishkan haNefesh, has placed across from the three traditionalu’v’chen passages emphasize the centrality of our actions if we really want to do honor to God’s name and bring holiness into our world.  My favorite of the passages is one that I intend to make the focus of this section of worship this year  in my congregation – it is an adaptation of a prayer first written by Rabbi Jack Reimer and published in New Prayers for the High Holy Days in 1971. It begins:

We cannot merely pray to You, O God
to banish war,
for You have filled the world with paths to peace
if only we would take them.
We cannot merely pray
for prejudice to cease
for we might see the good in all
that lies before our eyes,
if only we would use them…

And, following additional passages in a similar mode, it concludes:

Therefore we pray, O God,
for wisdom and will, for courage
to do and to become,
not only to gaze
with helpless yearning
as though we had no strength.
So that our world may be safe,
and our lives may be blessed.

I know how easy it is to feel frustrated in the ritual of sitting and praying over the High Holy Days. I know how easy it is to look around a room and wonder how many of the people we see will leave the sanctuary after a couple of hours of reciting righteous words and exert themselves to live according to those words. I know how it feels because I have had those thoughts and feelings, sitting as a congregant in years past. But I have come to appreciate that with all things in life, I most often act and do with greater care and greater impact when I have first taken sufficient time to contemplate and consider all aspects of the task that lies before me – not only what needs to be done, but who needs to be included, what challenges face us, and how we can achieve something collaboratively.

So it is with the High Holy Days. There are a great many words on the pages that lie before us. But they are there not to numb us into mindless recitation, but to prod and cajole us into action. Action that, when we rededicate ourselves to our purpose each New Year, might be that much more energized, thoughtful, and effective because we took the reflective time that the High Holy Days give to us to do better.

Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz serves Congregation B’nai Shalom in Westborough, MA.

Categories
Prayer Rabbis

Where I Find Prayer, Where Prayer Finds Me: Thoughts for Elul

I am an exercise-aholic. I count on exercising like others count on caffeine. I exercise for all of the requisite health benefits, but the real icing on the cake for me is how exercise transforms my prayer life.

No surprise that prayer plays a central role in my life: after all I am a rabbi. I say the Shema before I go to sleep and the Motzi when I eat. I create rituals filled with prayer for the peak moments in people’s lives. I extend prayers of consolation to soothe the wounds of the down heartened. I sense the thread of God’s presence connecting members of my congregation when our voices unite chanting Tefillah.

Yet my purest prayer comes when I am deep in the woods in North Carolina’s Umstead Park, traversing the miles of trails, trees buffering the sights and sounds of the world. When I first get on the trail, my mind is racing, organizing: what do I have to accomplish today; where are my children; what do I need to do for them; what is weighing on me? Deeper into the woods, my mind cannot carry all of those organizational charts, and it slowly lets go – until I fall into a rhythm of one foot in front of the other, moving forward, with no clutter, my body advancing in one fluid motion.

It is then, when my foot and the trail are flowing in tandem, at once letting go of the stuff of my world, and connecting to the entirety of it; the border melts between movement of body and meandering of path; between the acorn fallen from the tree and the forest that renews it. All is one. And at that moment, not because I have planned to offer it like all the other rituals of my life, but more that it has planned to offer me, thanks pours forth from my soul. My heart blurts out THANK YOU GOD. Pure and unadulterated thanks — ZEH ANI MODAH.

Thoughts for your personal introspection during Elul:

  • For what are you grateful?
  • How do you express thanks?
  • How does thanks express from you?

Rabbi Lucy Dinner serves as Senior Rabbi at Temple Beth Or in Raleigh, North Carolina. Among several communal and professional commitments, she sits on the executive board of international relief agency Stop Hunger Now. Walking, cycling, and occasional jogging keep her in balance to be present for her family, her congregation, and her service to community.

Categories
Ethics News Rabbis Reform Judaism

Meaning in a Half-Opened Eye: Reaching the Unresponsive

When I interviewed for hospice chaplain jobs, a question I got just about every time was, “What do you do when you visit an unresponsive patient?” By that my prospective boss meant patients who would not respond to anything I did, like touch their hands, talk or sing. Usually they could not talk, or if they did, it was to themselves or to the world at large. During such visits I could feel invisible. If that is so, you might wonder why an interviewer would ask such a question. But rather than being a gratuitous curve ball, it strikes down deep at the essence of a chaplain’s role and to what it means to exist as a person.

While some patients truly could not respond because they were in a coma or were asleep, I often found many so-called unresponsive patients did respond if I loosened the definition of communication, or spent a long enough time to give the patient enough chance to respond. I remember one time when I introduced myself to a lanky man as I sat down in a metal chair by his bed. He did not reply, and after several seconds, I figured he had not heard me or did not understand me, so I drifted off into my own thoughts and guessed this would be a very short visit.  Luckily I lingered in my own reverie. I say luckily because after a full 30 seconds at least, he had processed what I had said, and gave an answer that a normal person would give after just a second or two max. I said something else, waited another 30 seconds as if that were the normal way to talk, and again he gave an appropriate answer. I thought to myself, “I bet most visitors casually stopping by would give up before they found out he could converse.  I wonder how long he went without having a chance to talk.”

The key task of a chaplain is to find a way to reach people. This means slowing down enough to see details that the average visitor would miss. Like an eye half opening or a finger moving in response to my voice. Like more rapid or more relaxed breathing when I hold the patient’s hand, or their turning their head towards or away from me when I sing, indicating their yay or nay to hearing it. (Believe me, there were plenty of “nays” to the music option.) It is not I who is invisible with these patients. It is the patients who are invisible to those who too automatically designate them as “unresponsive.” The patients’ essence as persons, I believe, is their ability to reach back in return, to connect with others.

Interviews are not the ideal environment for nuances, so my answer to what I did with unresponsive patients ran along the true but more superficial lines of, “Well if I knew they were religious, I would say a prayer. Otherwise I would touch their hands, sing a calming song, or say something friendly and soothing. Sometimes I would just sit by their side, in case they could sense the presence of another human being who cared enough to notice them.” Perhaps my interviewers liked this answer (at least the ones who hired me did) because they thought that kind of patient gave nothing for the chaplain to do. On the contrary, finding the key that will breach what separates them from me takes the observational skills of a Holmes and the deliberateness of an artwork restorer.

A board certified member of the NAJC (Neshama: Association of Jewish Chaplains) Rabbi Karen B. Kaplan served as a hospice chaplain for 7 years, including Princeton Hospice in New Jersey. Now a writer and teacher, her book Encountering the Edge: What People Told Me Before They Died (Pen-L Publishing, 2014) is available on Amazon and can be useful for caring committees. This post was taken from her blog, offbeatcompassion.com, a useful resource as well.