251. Israel, part 2

Here's the beginning of a letter I'll (soon) send out to family and friends, some ideas which I've posted here before.

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There is generally nothing more boring, especially for those who weren't on the trip, as a letter about one's vacation. But I know my powers of speech will fail if anyone asks how it was, and I'll be able to offer little else but a tongue-tied "amazing." So, instead, here are some brief (I promise) impressions of the Hanukkah week I just spent in Israel with [my congregation], my first visit ever.

I expected this trip to be about the place and people, and my community--and it was all those things--but mostly it was about me. All my ideas about Israel have been challenged, and most of them changed.

As some of you know, I got on the plane with mixed feelings. Israel wasn't part of the conversation when I was growing up, even though I attended an Orthodox Hebrew school (a really bad one) and my father prayed three times a day. We were concerned with the here and now, and Israel seemed to represent a place, like the Eastern Europe of my grandparents, from which we needed to move on. We sponsored trees and gave tzedaka, but out of a sense of duty rather than passion.

After many years during which I rarely set foot in a synagogue, I joined [...] and discovered I really did like being Jewish. But I still didn't understand the Israel part, and the more involved I became in Jewish life, the more this gap felt like a chasm between myself and the rest of my community. Israel was a color on a map, an angry paragraph in the newspaper. I had no sense of its people or soul. I felt like I was missing a point that everyone around me seemed to get it in a very profound way, and began to wonder if I was even capable of understanding. What right did I have to stand at the bima and chant Torah if I was unable to comprehend the central message of the whole story?

Until the we reached the end of the runway, I wasn't fully convinced I'd get there, or even sure I was supposed to be there at all. I started to change my mind after we landed and I saw Hebrew signs and mezzuzot in the airport. You'll be amazed, my friends had said; everyone in this country speaks in the language of prayerbooks! But I wasn't surprised at all. It seemed completely natural, familiar. I know very little Modern Hebrew, but recognized "Exit/Yetziah" --as in "yetziat Mitzrayim," the exodus from Egypt--in red above all the doorways. This was the language--a whole country full of it--of Shabbat, of secrets and thoughts I admit only to myself and to God.

250. Israel, part 1

Finally! My brain was working so fast this past week that I couldn't seem to capture its contents in words. I'm also recovering from a long, drawn-out case of jet lag (this morning was the first time I slept past 3AM since I returned), as well as lingering annoyance about my luggage (which finally arrived on Saturday morning, from destinations unknown). I'm trying to compose a long email to my family and friends about the trip, and will post excerpts--with additions I feel more comfortable writing here, which is kind of strange, but true. Before I begin, however, here's what I wrote on the plane going over:

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Dec. 26: The security agent at the airport said "Shalom" and I had that shocked moment everyone said would come: yes, they speak Hebrew in Israel! "Ivrit, Anglit?" she continued. "Anglit," I answered. "You didn't learn Hebrew in Hebrew school?" she demanded. "What's your Hebrew name?" "Ahuva." "It's not Ruth?" she yelled, looking at the middle name on my passport, and for a second I was ashamed that my parents gave me the wrong name. Then I realized she must be trying to weed out impostors, or maybe this was the cultural rudeness I had already identified in New York cab drivers. We spent four hours in limbo at the gate--the flight was delayed because of the rain--and finally boarded at 2:30AM in a herd-like free-for-all, after waiting patiently for our rows to be called and then realizing they wouldn't.

As we took off, the lights in the dark sky above Long Island looked like rows of menorahs all lit for the eighth day. (A beautiful image, but still not enough to make up for my ill-considered choice of a window seat, where I remained folded up like a envelope for ten hours.)

I tried to sleep, but my Torah portion kept going through my head.

On the little screen in the seat in front of me I watched a few minutes of a film about the Kotel. It showed a figurative chain of Jews who touched those stones over thousands of years (all men, of course). I started to cry. Soon I could be one of those faces in the circles, at least in the non-Orthodox version of the film. I'm still not sure how much of this emotion is me, and how much is what I think I should be feeling because so many people are excited for me. It's almost 9AM, NY time (3PM here, somewhere over Europe)--maybe I'll know in a few hours.

249. Back!

I'm back! But briefly--I need to sleep for a day or two. I am without words--the trip was incredible in all respects. (Well, to be honest, except one--my luggage is missing. The only thing that did not exceed my expectations was El Al. I'm not a fan. They assured me that 98% of lost luggage turns up, and that it will probably be on the next flight to arrive this afternoon. "What happens to the other 2%?" I asked. "Does it fall into the Atlantic?" They didn't laugh.)

[Update: My luggage has been located. It's somewhere between Tel Aviv, where it was held "for security reasons," and NYC. I guess my state of extreme exhaustion made me look dangerous.]

Once I find some new superlatives, and wake up, I'll be able to write some more. One thing I know for certain: before the trip, I had a feeling I wasn't supposed to visit Israel. I was wrong, completely. I was just waiting all my life for the right time.

248. As promised, an incoherent post

Here it is. Writing quickly, since I'm paying for time by the minute. Over the past two days, which have felt like a week or maybe a lifetime, I have (among many other things):
--climbed Masada
--hiked in Ein Gedi, and watched the gazelles leap just like King David said they did
--cried at Yad Vashem
--cried everywhere else
--listened to the music of a master oud player
--listened to Mizrahi Jewish women (of easten descent) talk about being an underclass in Israeli society
--ate the amazing food they sell as part of an organization to empower Mizrahi women to become entrepreneurs, despite lives often marked by poverty and violence
--dipped my hands into the Dead Sea
--counted to 40 many times (I am a bus captain or, as the tour guide keeps calling me, "bus boss")
--lit Hannukah candles with 200 people each night
--and, as my very first act in this country, after lying awake all night thanks to excitement and jet lag, chanted Torah.

Tomorrow morning we we'll have services near the Wall, at the southern part where there are excavations (and where men and women are allowed to pray together). And I'll chant Torah again, in the shadow of all history.

In the evening we head to Neve Shalom, an Arab-Israeli village where people are actually managing to live in peace. We'll be in to Tel Aviv for Shabbat.

I never understood before. I don't know how else to say it. This afternoon at Ein Gedi, watching a waterfall, the beauty of this place almost knocked the breath out of me. I feel like I've been here always.

247. Until later

This past Shabbat morning a line of prayer caught my eye. I thought about it for a moment, and realized it said exactly what I felt about my coming trip. I had read the line many times before, but only now did it make sense in context of my life.

I got home, took out my siddur, and looked for the line... and couldn't find it, not even the part of the service where it fell. Oy, I thought, I need to get more sleep. Here I had a revelation, and now I have no idea what it was about. I did recall that it made me feel excited about the trip, and then calm. I walked out of the synagogue in peace. So I guess the line did its job; maybe I was only supposed to read it once.

I suspect I'll feel this way in Israel, too. Some of what I see and hear will set like concrete in my brain, and other things will stay as the shadow of a color or echo of a laugh, or some emotion I won't be able to name. I look forward to forgetting as much as I remember, and filling in the rest on future trips. There's an internet café in our hotel (and, I gather, on every block in Jerusalem), and I may post something here during the three seconds of free time listed on the itinerary. It might be coherent, or an unreadable stream-of-consciousness narrative that could forever embarrass me in the blogosphere. Most likely I'll be back after Jan. 4. Until then, in the words of a very funny colleague, have a Happy CE New Year! And may 2006 bring only good things for us all.

246. Ne'ila, part 2

(Continued.)

I didn't doubt that God was hamakom hazeh, in this very place. So many words had been whispered that day--so many secrets revealed, promises made, pleas beseeched--but I was frustrated because I knew I missed the important ones, those without sound that still needed to be said. I wanted assurance that God heard these, too.

I figured that the only thing I could do on behalf of everyone at this final hour was try and get God to pay attention. On either side of me at the bima were the rabbi, her voice strong and clear, and the Minha shaliach--the teacher, 30 years ago, of my chanting teacher--who would join in some of the prayers. He sang loud enough for anyone in Jerusalem to hear the music drifting by on a western wind. I had no choice but to wake up and pray.

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More tomorrow, before I leave (although the end of Ne'ila might have to wait until I return from Israel)--I'm off, in few minutes, to a traditional Jewish Dec. 24 with latkes and Chinese food. My best wishes to everyone here, and especially those I know only as encouraging, kind and funny voices in this strange little blog world, for a Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa of light, hope and peace.

245. Ne'ila, part 1

(Continued.)

The haftarah was very, very long, much longer than I remembered, probably because I had been too asleep in past years to notice. The teenagers struggled; the rabbi stood behind them and prompted gently. They finally sat, relieved, and she gave her d'var Torah, a strong, hopeful entreaty to learn from past voices in our community. She finished, and beckoned me back up on stage to lead Ne'ila.

For the past month I've been trying to figure out just what I felt at those moments, and I think I now have the words. I once had a client who refused to pay for my designs, blatantly ignoring our contract. We hired lawyers; we finally settled, after much unpleasantness, without his admission of guilt. I endured this annoying ordeal in a state of righteous indignation, gaining new understanding of the phrase "banging one's head against a wall." How, I wondered, could he look at me and not see me? How could he not grasp that I was right and he was completely, utterly wrong? I wanted to shout it to the trees, take an ad out in the Times, stop every single person walking down the street and shake them by the shoulders--Listen! Isn't it obvious? Tell him, now! Maybe he'll pay attention to you.

This was what I felt during Ne'ila, this very mundane comparison to the world of work, a connection I made tonight at services as the rabbi spoke about injustice and determination. Not that God, or man, has ever wronged me; quite the opposite. I know I'm one of the luckiest people on this planet. But that feeling of, you must pay attention now--I deserve it, I need it, where are you, where have you been?--filled me like a river as I began to sing the final set of prayers for the day. I think I expected to see some great light of revelation after all those hours of fasting and emotional exhaustion. But there was only a sense of being ordinary, and frustrated.

244. Living room

(Minha, Yom Kippur 5766, continued.)

Trying not to trip over the many layers of white fabric draped around my body (skirt, blouse, parachute-sized tallit), I ran up the side steps to the low, deep stage. It felt, oddly, like a living room that just happened to have one wall missing, a thousand people in upholstered seats in its place. To the left were the musicians, instruments resting carefully at their sides as they waited for everyone to assemble at the bima. At my right, a row of folding chairs was filled with nervous, whispering teenagers getting ready to chant haftarah. The Minha shaliach, who had seen many dozen more services than them or myself, sat calmly off to the side; he would join us, once again, at the very end. A large Oriental rug covered the center of the grey stage floor, the Ark standing patiently at its farthest perimeter. I took my place at the bima, a podium with three microphones twisting out from its sides like strange metallic flowers. Even though it was odd to look down at everyone's faces (I imagined, for just a second, Evita about to address her minions) I felt not at all far from the thousand other people. We could have been a family up there on the stage, waiting with measured anticipation for the turkey or a favorite uncle to enter our home for the holidays.

The Torah reading began and ended. I have no recollection of who chanted, or how well; my eyes didn't leave the machzor for one second, because I was so exhausted that I knew I would never find my place again if they did. The teenagers began a tag-team version of the long haftarah, and I sat back down with the congregation.

243. Minha, part 2

(Yom Kippur 5766, continued.)

We faced east to pray the Amidah. I felt angry, and was unsure why. This past year had been difficult, but extraordinarily lucky. I had life, health, and hope; really, what more is there? Maybe I was confusing anger with frustration; I was about to talk to God very loudly, in front of a thousand people, but would be so wired and tired that I'd probably sing words and not sentences, notes and not melodies. Here I was so close to the source of answers but suddenly inarticulate, the questions I had formulated all month long in a jumble. I was annoyed at God for requiring us to follow a plan this day that diminished our ability to understand and think clearly just at that instant when, parched and spent after a long struggle, we finally reached the top of the mountain.

The Torah reading was next. The rabbi looked out from the stage and beckoned me over--why? Ne'ila wasn't for another hour. Then the other shaliach tzibur sat down and I realized she needed a gabbai sheni, which I had been that very morning, and so was now a pro. Of course, I hadn't looked at this Torah portion since last Yom Kippur. I ran up front shadowed by the massive, remonstrating finger of God now hovering like a dark cloud; a gabbai is required to be familiar with the reading, and I was about to stand there under false pretenses. On the other hand, I had been busy these past few weeks with the important tasks of learning Ne'ila and investigating every cold remedy known to mankind. I decided I had practiced enough contrition for the day, and hoped God would take a raincheck. I would study the portion later. Really.

242. Silence

Right before Shabbat began this week, I received upsetting news from a friend. Nothing life-threatening, grave or dangerous, but very, very sad. And I was powerless to do anything but listen. I sat here at the computer and contemplated the singing and dancing that would come in a few hours; it seemed inappropriate to welcome the Shabbat bride with joy and laughter at the very moment my friend would be engaged in a difficult struggle. But neither could I stay home; I needed, for my own sanity, to publicly mark the end of a long week and the beginning of a respite, however short, from my own mundane trials.

As if the calendar could see into my future, this Friday my synagogue added an additional "contemplative Kabbalat Shabbat" service of meditation and quiet chanting. Meditation used to make me very nervous. I was, although I wouldn't admit it, afraid to sit in silence with my own thoughts for any length of time. I couldn't imagine substituting the music I anticipated all week long with the mumbling I'd spent most of my life trying to escape, and meditation seemed vaguely pagan and inappropriate. (I later learned that it was a most authentic form of Jewish prayer, a passionate discipline of the ancient, mystic rabbis--a tradition which remains, in watered-down form, as we preface each service with the recitation of psalms.)

This past spring, as I faced scary (and ultimately uneventful) surgery, I decided to take a meditation class with one of the rabbis at my synagogue. All my usual methods of remaining calm had failed, and I figured this couldn't hurt.
It didn't, and was neither scary nor weird. I could pray as well in silence as with music; as Kohelet observed, there is a season for each. On Friday night, as we sat in a circle blanketed by each other's thoughts, I felt my worry lighten as each deep breath distributed it across the room until the pieces were small and weightless. If they had sound, it would be of broken crystal connecting and then drifting apart in the sunlight just like a wind chime.

241. Mercy

Psalm 136, sung on Shabbat morning, is one of my favorite prayers. I've heard it since childhood as part of the Passover seder, set either to a dirge-like melody or the odd, singsongy one favored by my ex's family ("who slew great kings, fa la la!"). The one we do at my synagogue is simple, repetitive--and also, somehow, encouraging, comforting, and challenging. It's upbeat and in a major key, but not so cheery and square that the triumphs it lists sound like slogans. We slow down at the long line "the moon and the stars to rule by night" as if to allow an extra second to think about the complex and more problematic proof of God's love that immediately follows: "...who smote the Egyptian firstborn." I wait each week to hear the proud swagger in the cantor's voice as he recounts the slaying of the mighty Sihon and Og. (I got to sing those lines on the High Holy Days and tried, without success, to hide the fact that I was attempting to imitate every nuance of the cantor's version.)

Every once in a while the rabbis change the refrain--"Ki leolam hasdo," "His love endures forever"--to their native language, "Su merced nunca falto." Most of the congregation doesn't understand; since the unpredictable is always interesting at my synagogue, I never minded being clueless. Today they finally let us in on the secret ("it's Yiddish by way of Buenos Aires"), and one of the rabbis prefaced the lesson with a story. Years ago, along with a student group, they visited an impoverished village in El Salvador. They held a Shabbat service, the first any of the local inhabitants had seen. The rabbis sang the refrain of Psalm 136 in Spanish, and the deeply religious native community, who had never before encountered Jewish prayer, joined in with all their hearts and souls. It didn't matter that everyone was from different religious traditions; God's mercy is a universal idea. The rabbi said he thinks often of that moment in the middle of the other side of the world when praying Psalm 136. And now, each Shabbat as I hear its melody swoop up and then perch, for an instant, on a high note, as if waiting for the questions that must follow each account of victory and praise, I'll able to leave New York for a few minutes, as well.

240. Still here

Work...and more work...and getting ready for my trip...and trying to figure out how I'll live my life in the coming week if there's a transit strike, not yet a catastrophe of biblical proportions, but which could be if it lasts too long...has kept me from thinking about chanting, or much of anything else, for the past few days. I plan to come up for air very soon. Meanwhile, we had our Israel trip orientation on Wednesday night, and I'm already overwhelmed. Every minute of every hour has been planned, and we even got little cards to hang around our necks with a name tag on one side, and the customized parts of our itinerary (did I choose a concert or walking tour from 8-10 in Tel Aviv on Dec. 31?) on the other. I've never taken a vacation where I had to make so few decisions, a welcome respite from the past few weeks. Since all 180 participants will be praying, non-stop, that by next Sunday all transportation issues in New York will have been resolved and we won't have problems getting to the airport, I'm confident that Someone will listen. (Even if it's just the president of the MTA, hearing encouraging voices in his dreams.)

At the orientation we studied Tefilat Haderekh, the prayer for travelers, traditional to say before beginning any kind of journey:

May it be Your will, Lord our God and God of our ancestors, to guide us in peace, to sustain us in peace, to lead us to our desired destination in health and joy and peace, and to bring us home in peace. Save us from every enemy and disaster on the way, and from all calamities that threaten the world. Bless the work of our hands. May we find grace, love and compassion in Your sight and in the sight of all who see us. Hear our supplication, for You listen to prayer and supplication. Praised are You, Lord who hears prayer.

Why, we wondered, does it begin "May it be Your will...God of our ancestors," rather than appealing to the usual "Sovereign of the universe"? We are where we are because of someone who traveled before us; had God not looked with approval upon the journeys of our parents or great-great-grandparents, we could not ask for this favor, or any other. To forget those people would render our own requests hollow and selfish. I hope, when I set foot in Israel, that I can feel a connection with those ancestors, and thank them for making the journey so long ago.

239. Covenant

In my Me'ah class tonight, we met with one of the rabbis instead of our usual teacher in order to put weeks of academic learning (i.e., scholars believe the Bible was written and redacted by many people over time; archaeologists have proven that history didn't happen like the stories say, etc.) into a religious perspective.

It was very interesting. Although my synagogue has members spanning a large variety of beliefs and practices, most fall on the liberal end of the scale. This generally means that we don't take the words of the Bible literally. So I was surprised to hear that many people in the class were troubled by what we studied. How, someone asked, can I reconcile all this information with the Torah as "mi Sinai" (given at Sinai)? How can I continue to believe it's a sacred text? Why observe mitzvot if they were made up by people, not heaven?

I'm sure these were not new questions for anyone, but were brought to the fore by many weeks of reading a sacred text as history, literature, and archaeological record. I was also a little surprised to acknowledge, with complete confidence, that I'm not bothered by any of what we've studied. With each theory I read, each literary connection between authors "J" and "E" or bit of proof that a battle did not take place as written but was fabricated in a creative way by someone else, decades later, I thought--how great that God gave us the ability to spin meaningful tales out of myths that have lost their relevance, or history otherwise doomed to be forgotten. If we're really made in God's image, He must be pretty cool. The rabbi talked about an "internal sense of commandedness" borne as much from the covenant with ourselves as the one with God, of which we must be aware even when we don't subscribe to the traditional reasons for following those rules. I understood; this, I think, is why I feel both compelled, and unworthy, to chant Torah and lead services. Maybe it's my duty to both God and people--the two categories blurring, overlapping, and sharing meaning--to do these things.

238. Countdown

Recent blogsurfing has led me to some interesting posts about the season of Advent, observance of which I was never really aware, except for noticing some really creative calendars. Counting down the days in anticipation of a spiritually significant event seems to be a shared concept for many different religions. I found mention online of parallels between the marking of daily fasts during the month of Ramadan and the Sefirat haOmer, the counting of days between Passover and Shavuot. And there seems to be more than a slight relationship (to me, at least; I've not yet discovered websites to corroborate this) between Advent and Elul, the month preceding the High Holy Days. This from the very first hit in my Google search:

"Advent is marked by a spirit of expectation, of anticipation, of preparation, of longing... Advent’s prayers are prayers of humble devotion and commitment, prayers of submission, prayers for deliverance, prayers from those walking in darkness who are awaiting and anticipating a great light (Isa 9)!"

The specific subjects of Advent and Elul are certainly different for Christians and Jews. And I understand that Advent is a joyous time, unlike the somber weeks of preparation for Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur. But every day in Elul we read selichot, special prayers for deliverance and mercy. And at the end of that month, Jews encounter their own "great light"--within ourselves, in the form of the hope and joy that a clean slate, and the year's new Torah, will bring.

This connection has been on my mind because I've started practicing my Torah portion for the week of Hanukkah. When I learned it last year, I immediately dubbed it (with apologies offered in advance to any and all for my irreverence) "The Twelve Day of Christmas, Jewish Version":

The one to bring his offering on the first day was Nachshon son of Aminadav of the tribe of Judah.
His offering was as follows:
One silver bowl weighing 130 shekels, and one silver sacrificial basin weighing 70 shekels by the sanctuary standard, both filled with the best grade wheat meal kneaded with olive oil for a meal offering.
One gold incense bowl weighing 10 [shekels] filled with incense.
One young bull, one ram and one yearling sheep for a burnt offering;
one goat for a sin offering;
and for the peace sacrifice, two oxen, five rams, five male goats, and five yearling sheep.
This was the offering of Nachshon son of Aminadav.

And so forth. There are twelve days of these bulls of pleasant odor, etc. (Only eight days to Hanukkah, so we don't read them all. I don't mind.) Like the Christmas song, it has lots of words, although they're decidedly less upbeat. And there the similarity ends.

237. Imagine

(Interrupting Yom Kippur, once again.)

This morning at services a remarkable boy and his amazing family celebrated his Bar Mitzvah with a new tradition: dramatized commentary on the Torah portion coached by the folks at Storahtelling, who have re-invented the art of traditional ritual theater and of whom I'm a big fan. Today was Vayetze, the story of Jacob, his father-in-law, angels and ladders, and lots of weird goats. In between each of the seven aliyot, the Bar Mitzvah boy and and his cousins and grandmother spoke in the voices of Jacob, Reuben, and Dinah (all written by the boy himself) to offer their own perspectives on what was going on with this complex, troubled, and very real family.

It was mesmerizing to witness words of Torah come to life through the eyes of an extraordinarily perceptive 13-year-old. Then the Torah service ended and we started to pray the Musaf Amidah, which begins communally and concludes with many minutes of silent prayer. The tradition at my synagogue is to finish that second section with a gentle melody to bring us out of ourselves and back to the group; the cantor, as usual, played his keyboard softly, a tune that sounded familiar. I hummed along, but couldn't place it. He beckoned the Bar Mitzvah to the microphone, who began in a sweet, soulful voice:

"Imagine all the people, living life in peace..."

We all smiled and started to sing along. The words and simple, beautiful melody did not seem at all incongruous in the middle of a religious service. When we got to "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one," I thought about how well John Lennon, a direct descendant of Jacob if ever there was one, would have fit in at my synagogue.