276. Song of the Sea

There's a blizzard today. Hysteria has ensued, newscasters warning of the next apocalypse. Our mayor, who ran billion-dollar corporations and knows a real crisis when he sees one, remains underwhelmed, suggesting we stay indoors for a few hours and relax until snowplows make it possible to go to the jobs tomorrow to which we'd really rather not go. Across the street, a long line of people shiver in flapping scarves and snow boots as they wait to order croissants from the gourmet bakery. And I sit in Starbucks nursing a Super Grande Extra Hi-Test, or whatever it's called, listening to a compilation of 70s rock while the creeping whiteness covers brave souls who shuffle and slip right outside. Just a few reasons why I love New York.

At services on Friday night the rabbi spoke about the beginning of the Song of the Sea, as the Israelites prepare to take a leap of faith into the Sea of Reeds. "Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord," it says. But "sang" is actually in the future tense--"would sing." Why this choice of word, asked the rabbi (and Rashi, a thousand year earlier)? Maybe, they suggest, we live fully in the present only by singing for the future and surrounding ourselves with the music of hope. I thought of the rabbi's words this Shabbat morning when I met nine-day-old Gavriella Malka, who carries in the song of her name the strength and gentle warmth of her great-grandparents. She's the first cousin I've been able to welcome into this world; when others of that generation arrived, their parents were just addresses on the yellowing pages of a notebook buried among my mother's papers, phone calls never returned, holiday cards bearing names I once heard but had long ago forgotten.

I do see certain members of my family quite often, but at the other end of the lifecycle. As a child I went to very many funerals. (When I started attending services after years away, the only melody that sounded familiar was El Maleh Rachamim, the prayer of mourning.) My parents did an extraordinary job of shielding me from the worst of the sadness, and I always felt safe, secure and loved no matter what was happening around us. I really did not know that other families were any different. My mother, the youngest of five, had four older brothers who all died between my fifth and twentieth years, their wives following right afterwards. Two of my uncles died on exactly the same date, five years apart. I don't know how my mother stayed sane in the face of so much grief, always able to share the smile that defined her father and everyone who followed. That smile, that sweet, deep laugh, shines particularly brightly in my cousin Phil, Gavriella's grandfather.

(To be continued.)

275. My other life

A friend just sent me this link, which bears inclusion as a fairly accurate depiction of how (until this past year, when I took a leave from my chorus) I used to spend hours and hours each week. It's a commercial for Honda Civic UK. Their creative challenge (a phrase I use ad nauseum in my work life, too): convey the human, personal side of the car through the sounds of a choir. In addition to Bach and a bunch of 20th century French guys, my old chorus sang a lot of music written last Tuesday, some of it gorgeous and melodic and some less so. I became expert, over the course of ten years, at making many strange sounds not found in nature, and doing my best not to laugh in the process. The choir in this commercial could be us, performing to an enthusiastic but far from sold-out audience at an impressively major concert hall in New York.

Here's the link:
http://www.honda.co.uk/civic/

Skip the intro, then click "Watch" at the bottom--and after that, click on the link to the mini-documentary about the rehearsal process.

I miss my old chorus, and hope to return one day when I get a little better at time management. But given the choice between singing and having fun, and singing and having fun while talking to God, I'll choose the latter every time.

274. Happy interruption

Barging in on my terribly serious discussions of Yom Kippur, jewels, and poppy seeds to announce something a little cheerier: my cousins just had a baby girl! For the majority of people in this world who do things like converge each summer at national parks with a hundred others in matching T-shirts bearing their last names, a new cousin is not such a big deal. But the average age of my living relatives is about 70 and although I have very many aunts and uncles, they all happen to be, well, dead. I'm not trying to sound morbid, but I do--within the bounds of reason--consider them as much a part of my family as the ones who still get a New Year's card. Since the formerly corporeal tend not to produce heirs, however, a new baby is a big deal. When I discovered these cousins about five years ago (long, wonderful story having to do with my tallit), I felt like I had been given the passport to a new and native country. Strangers, yet so familiar--and they knew more about my aunts and uncles, and my parents, than I ever thought I'd learn. I loved them the moment we met.

This particular cousin was fervently secular until a year ago, when he discovered Orthodoxy, met his basherte (soulmate), and got married--and is now a dad. A lot for a dozen months, but everyone, including his parents, are ecstatic--shellshocked, but very happy. The baby naming is this coming Shabbat, at a synagogue right in my neighborhood. I do not relish spending the morning behind a mechitzah, nor being denied the right to wear a tallit or be counted in a minyan, but it's no big deal for a few hours out of my life. When in Rome, etc. And I'm honored, as always, to be invited into their world. Next Shabbat I'll once again be in foreign territory, at the Bat Mitzvah of the daughter of dear friends. Their synagogue is sort of halfway egalitarian, an interesting concept I do not understand in the least. I'll bring my tallit, but be prepared to stow it under the humash.

I do know that I'll experience symptoms of withdrawal after missing two consecutive Shabbat morning services at my synagogue. They'll probably have to pry me out of the seat when I show up the following week.

273. Ne'ila, part 4

(Continued.)

That morning I had felt hopeful. We had a whole day ahead to reach conclusions and clear consciences. But now it was raining, and in the gathering darkness only one hour remained during which to learn, understand, and make peace. There wasn't enough time.

At the end of Ne'ila in past years I was always relieved and proud to have finished the marathon, as if Yom Kippur was a race. But until this moment I never understood that the day was really about having the strength to stand still, about admitting that we can never actually win in this world but simply learn to love our lives and help others do the same. I looked out at the congregation and was a little frightened; their faces reflected a silent Babel of more kinds of emotion than I could understand. I had no idea what they were trying to say, yet my voice was supposed to represent theirs. I could only be true to myself, and hope my openness would become a vessel. So I sang in desperation, in determination--in anger, not at anyone in particular, or even at God, but at the universe in general for being imperfect and unfair. We were very loud, the rabbi on one side of the bima, booming musaf shaliah on the other, and myself sandwiched in between, as we tried to get God to listen during those final moments.

272. Ne'ila, part 3

(Once again changing my train of thought; apologies for jumping around so much this week. Yom Kippur 5766, continued.)

This was a theater, with a professional sound system, and so I could hear the music swirl around and back at me from all angles. The cellist played the first note of the Ashrei, the prayer beginning the service of Ne'ila. It sounded funny. I looked at her and she looked back, our ballet of quizzical eyebrows lasting a few endless seconds, but neither of us could figure out what the other was trying to say. I decided to start singing, since a thousand people were waiting. The note, I soon discovered, was about five steps lower that what we practiced; a baritone would have been right at home. I'm an alto, fortunately, and was hoarse and tired, so could make the sound. The overall effect would have been a lot better in a cabaret filled with cigarette smoke. But I watched from the bima as everyone watched me, and no one seemed to mind. (The cellist later apologized profusely--she had never before played for so many hours while also fasting. It's not easy.)

271. Lucky

It was so much fun. I've said this before, I know; it's probably getting a little boring. But I'm no longer nervous when I sit at the bima, surrounded by musicians and people singing, smiling, crying, praying. (OK, maybe a little nervous. But in a good way.) The first few times I helped lead services, I needed to feel the energy of everyone in the room in order to be sure I wouldn't fall. Now my singing not only mirrors their strength, but has grown into an offering that can stand on its own, awaiting with open arms the sounds that return in welcome embrace.

It was great to lead with my old teacher, who doesn't usually get to be in charge (i.e., making announcements, giving a d'var Torah). Together we set tempi and made eye contact with the musicians to indicate when they should speed up or slow down, usually the rabbi's job. It felt a little conspiratorial, like we were kids at play while the adults were away.

This Shabbat my synagogue hosted a dozen rabbis who each spent two years here as part of a fellowship program. One spoke of how the experience taught her to access her true voice, and another of the awesome gift of being allowed to enter the lives and hearts of everyone at services each week. I can in no way compare myself to this brilliant cohort, or to any rabbi, but am continually floored by the honest, beautiful truth of those same lessons each random time I get to sit up front. Last night I saw "The New World," about (among many other things) the experience of Pocahontas as she encountered the Europeans. I feel like her, just a little bit, as I am patiently taught new customs (in this case, my own) by the kindest teachers in the world, and then allowed every once in awhile to partner with them and look through their eyes. I still don't understand why I'm so lucky to have merited this privilege, and hope that it never goes away--I have so much more to learn.

270. Winding down

(Interrupting myself...)

It's certainly been a week. But it's almost Shabbat, which seems to put everything back together. And I'm helping lead the late service again, this (twelfth) time with the woman who taught me how to chant. We'll be accompanied by amazing musicians (who are also cute guys, adding to my personal enjoyment of the evening) on oud, guitar, cello, and percussion. Not a rabbi in sight; they--four, plus two interns, plus the cantor, plus twelve more visiting for a rabbi-centric event this weekend--will be having dinner right downstairs from us. It's a little daunting that they trust me to do this important thing in the presence of so many people who really know what they're doing--and also comforting that an overabundance of expertise and kavannah (prayerful intention) will be emanating from below our feet, quite literally.

Fridays are a little crazy on those rare occasions when I lead the early service; I need to stop work by 3PM in order to have time to wind down and warm up by 5:30 or 6 (depending upon the time of year). But the late service doesn't start until 7:15, allowing me an hour or two to chill out, contemplate, write (like now), snooze, and enjoy the brief luxury of idleness. It feels like time spent on a airplane, where there's really nothing you can do but sit and anticipate the good place you're about to visit.

A wonderful, rejuvenating Shabbat Shalom to everyone out there.

269. Bread

(Continued.)

Some more thoughts about details:

When I was a kid, we lived down the block from not one but two kosher bakeries; I think my parents moved to the neighborhood for this fact alone. My grandfather was a baker, and my mother grew up behind the counter, ankle-deep in sawdust. So bread was serious business in our household. One of my first responsibilities as a child was to make the important purchase, once or twice a week, of a loaf of "the best" (which I suspect my mother scoped out beforehand, since she seemed to know, sight unseen, if this was an ideal week for pumpernickel). I received exact instructions: Rye bread with caraway seeds, but never marble rye. Horn rolls with sesame seeds. Poppy seeds, if a proper, evenly-distributed amount, were fine on anything within reason. Italian or French bread if we were feeling particularly exotic. Pumpernickel, sliced. (Unsliced was rustic, old-fashioned, and unacceptable.) Rolls, six at a time, hard but not brittle and never warm; prime was a half-day old. I never carried a crib sheet. The rule was unspoken, but I knew I had to commit all instructions to memory, as if making them a part of myself.

(To be continued.)

268. Jewels

Today I splurged and bought a most amazing book, The Miqra'ot Gedolot (loosely translated, "The Really Big Bible"). It's a collection of Medieval commentaries on Exodus and enough words to study, without interruption, for a lifetime. As a graphic designer, it's also cool to see pages laid out--in English--in classic Talmud style, primary text at the top, surrounding comments radiating like the rungs of a tree. Even at a glance, the explanations look like jewels adorning their centerpiece.

I've had jewels on my mind this week. As I mentioned before, I've been trying to write a short d'var Torah (commentary) on Parashat Tetzaveh, the section about the jewels on the High Priest's breastplate and the various furnishings, offerings and sacrifices of the tabernacle. Since I need about a dozen more years to understand all the relevant exegeses, and my head spins whenever I read Rashi, I'm trying to come up with a personal connection to the text. Unfortunately, my first and repeated reaction to Tetzaveh is: when does it end? Too much information. The universe was created in one line; why so many to talk about some guy's robe?

So I think I need to write about detail. I suspect I'm not the only reader with this problem. (Just the beginnings of an idea; I have a week or two yet to flesh it out. All feedback welcome.) I spend my days moving bits of type by the millimeter, my weekends singing passages that require accuracy in every syllable. But if I get lost in the esthetics of punctuation, I'll forget the overall message my client wants to tell the world through her brochure. And my chanted section will sound hollow, just a pretty tune, if I concentrate on individual notes without keeping the meaning of the text at the forefront of my mind.

"God is in the details," said architect Mies van der Rohe. But "Less is more," he also wrote. After learning from pages sprinkled with tiny dots and lines, we chant Torah from a scroll bereft of vowels and notes, a sea of words flowing into each other. Maybe this is the message of Tetzaveh--challenging us to see the bigger picture while living in a universe of Talmud pages, of sensory overload.

267. Square one

(Continued.)

There I sat at my laptop, back at square one. OK, maybe I should start my own list, in my five minutes per day of free time. No, not too smart. I thought about what I wanted from this experience; I didn't really feel the need for a vast exchange of ideas on the subject, but rather to learn how to articulate my own. I remembered the blog I tried to keep a few years ago, but was too self-conscious to actually publish. A blog seemed like a good way to develop self-discipline--even if no one stopped by, even if no one cared that I didn't write every day, I would care, since it was there and available for the entire universe to read if they wished.

So I began to write, and found that I couldn't talk about my chanting experiences without considering what brought me here in the first place. I shared the URL with a few friends, who were very encouraging. And then other random and wonderful people started to read. I'm not quite sure what I'll be writing about over the next 265 posts, but I'll come up with something.

Time flies. In many ways my life is just the same as a year ago, which is not entirely according to plan. But in other ways I'm a completely new and better person, having survived major surgery and emerged healthy, having chanted Torah in Jerusalem. The only response I have, the only response there can be, is to give thanks to God for the ability to write--about good and bad, above and below, beginning and ending, and everything else in between.

266. Rejection

(Continued.)

I read the list for the next week, and didn't see my post. Then one day I got an email from the moderator. Thank you for your interest! he wrote. Great to have you join us. Oh, by the way--are you a woman?

Ah. Clearly the question was posed for reasons beyond the need to clarify my obviously female name. Yes, I answered, I am. Why do you ask?

Well, he replied, women do not chant in traditional Judaism, as I'm sure you know. A few do post on this list, mainly about matters of grammar. You're welcome to participate on that basis, if you'd like. Or check out some of these links (about Jewish cooking, being a Jewish wife, etc.)

My first impulse, having steered clear of Orthodoxy for over two decades before rediscovering Judaism as a completely inclusive religion, was to reply with a vitriolic screed against his Neanderthal-like closed-mindedness. Then I took a deep breath, and acknowledged that he was just explaining the guidelines, clearly and politely, to his world, which he had every right to inhabit. I wrote back and said I hadn't known this was a "traditional" discussion and could not, in good faith, participate on a limited basis. Needing to vent some snarkiness, as well, I asked him if he knew of any egalitarian lists about chanting.

Ha ha ha! he replied. That's very funny. Good luck to you.

(To be continued.)

265. A year

Happy anniversary to me! One year ago today, I wrote this. Like most of the really good decisions in my life, I began "on chanting" on an impulse. 265 posts later (and having spent the other one hundred days of the year thinking about what I would say) I'm a different, better person for this experience of writing, being read, and reflecting upon generous and thought-provoking comments. Thank you all so much.

It had been only a few months, last January, since I led High Holy Day services for the first time. My friends, although they would never admit it, were getting a little tired of hearing me talk about the overwhelmingness of it all. I kept trying to come up with other words of description but was always struck dumb during conversation, as if my powers of speech had been snatched away during those moments at the bima.

But I had to talk about it or better yet, write about it--had to process and document it. I was never much good at keeping a journal; I guess I'm a bit of an exhibitionist, and have to know that someone might read what I write. Even if no one does, just the possibility is enough to get me motivated. I also wanted (and still want) to improve my skills, and needed the pressure of a daily commitment to do so. I'd taken an essay-writing workshop on and off for a few years, and had just published my first and only short piece. So I was all excited about this new endeavor.

But I still had no idea how or where to pursue it.

I poked around the Intenet and found a Yahoo group about leyning (the Yiddish term for chanting Torah). Perfect. I've been online since 1990, i.e. the dawn of time (mostly here), and am more comfortable in this medium than even plain old talking. I wrote an introductory post about how cool it would be to share my enthusiasm, and maybe learn a few new things in the process.

(To be continued.)

264. More frogs

So I chanted today, and all is well. I was just a little bit afraid that my eyes, as in November, would jump like unruly frogs to lines other than those decreed by the yad, and that my knees would buckle in response. Both stayed put, I'm glad to say. I was nervous, but to a manageable degree. I reminded myself, before I went up to the bima, that I had read in Jerusalem, which meant I could do anything.

(The reader before me also had to say hatzefard'im about a dozen times, which posed a challenge. "That's a lot of frogs," he whispered as he pointed out the place in the scroll where he left off.)

Afterwards a friend and teacher noted that the Torah uses two different forms of the plural to describe these unwanted amphibians: hatzefard'im and hatzefardea, also the term used in the Haggadah at Passover. A midrash postulates that the latter refers to one huge, initial frog who spawns myriad others, a strange and scary image. I prefer the literary interpretation; one word meant "frog life" and the other simply "multiple frogs," and the author included both to create a more interesting piece of art. Whatever the explanation, there were indeed a lot of frogs.

263. Letting go

A few weeks ago, on the Shabbat of Martin Luther King weekend, one of our rabbis spoke at services about teshuvah. The word is often translated as "repentance," especially as it applies to our task before the High Holy Days. But it means, literally, "to turn"--to go back to the place where we should have been, all along. The rabbi compared Dr. King to Ariel Sharon, apologizing in advance for his audacity. He wanted us to understand how both their lives and actions embodied teshuvah--very different paths to that road, but not as far apart as we might imagine. Dr. King taught us the teshuvah of a tzaddik, a person of holiness. We continue to try to reach this place of heaven, of fairness and equality, where mankind is supposed to be, but we are merely human; we're not yet capable. Sharon's kind of teshuvah, however, is more easily within the reach of our flawed selves. It is the teshuvah of letting go, even if just a little bit. We can all do this. Sharon took steps to lead Israel down a road of compromise that went against much of what he stood for throughout his career; whatever you think of his politics (like the rabbi, I do not like them one bit), it's hard to dispute that this change did not take some measure of personal courage.

I thought of the rabbi's words this week as we continue to read Moses' pleas to Pharoah to let his people go and allow them to return to the place where they belong. On Shabbat we all yearn to go back home and be free--from the stresses of work and daily life, from the little tyrannies imposed by others as well as by ourselves. I think it's a pretty big achievement to leave even one of those bits of bondage behind for one day of the week--teshuvah on a small level, accepting that just a little is OK, for now.

262. Shabbat

I sat down to write this post, and then reconsidered. There's no way, I thought, that I can describe how much I enjoy Shabbat without sounding like all the words I disbelieved and dismissed when I was growing up. Taste of eternity, oasis in time, etc.--beautiful images, but just an intriguing abstraction, like the sunrise to a blind man, until you've inhabited them.

It's taken me awhile to learn how, but I can now stop on Shabbat long enough to understand the gift of pausing. I don't always succeed--which is fine, because the acceptance of whomever I might be at that moment is also part of this day. I do my best to shove worry, fear, jealousy, and all their relatives under the rug for a few hours. It's pretty crowded down there; they won't get lonely, so I have no reason to feel guilty.

When alone, I don't always observe by the book. But I do my best to look at the world differently on Shabbat, mindfully and deliberately, marveling at the abundance with which I'm surrounded. With friends I delight in the ritual that sets this day apart: a real tablecloth, challah, some time wrestling with the words we heard or read that morning. I allow myself--demand, in fact--a few hours of feast for both palate and brain. And I must confess that my favorite Shabbat dessert is a nap on the couch right after reading People magazine. (Some people eat Twinkies; I take the low-calorie route and spend a weightless hour, preferably right after some meaty Torah study, pondering Brad and Angelina.)

Every week, month, year, I discover a little more about how to live in this gift. The best of Shabbats begin to feel like someone taking me by the hand, holding me close, teaching me to fly.