571. Hurrah!

It got a little more difficult this final week, but I did it--a post each day for all of November. Whew. I didn't finish everything I wanted to say, but there are many, many non-NaBloPoMo months ahead. More posts to follow--perhaps not EVERY day, but close. Please stay tuned, and Shabbat Shalom!

570. Pillow-top

This post is about neither singing nor Judaism--although you could say that life is always about connecting to Something Greater, which I find within the context of Judaism. Which means everything I write is, by default, on topic. Today I bought a new mattress, to be delivered tomorrow. I can't really afford it, but months of waking up with backaches finally convinced me to take the plunge. One reason I waited to so long is that I can generally fall asleep anywhere--on a couch, sitting up in a chair, whatever. I like to sleep and seem to have a talent for it, although don't get nearly enough practice. That I was able to remain unconscious for many hours at a stretch on my current rocky plain of springs and cotton helped me delay this purchase for many years. Then last week a friend spoke in ecstasy about her new bed, and I was jealous--and realized Something Greater was giving me a hint.

As a child I was taught, rather vehemently, that the purpose of a mattress was to offer support, end of story. Mushy beds were coveted by mushy, spineless people. It didn't help that my college roommate had a board under her mattress (the closest she could come to the sensation of a sleeping bag in the woods, her preferred habitat), and my post-college boyfriend opted for the Marine-quality brand. I would never admit to them, or anyone else, that I yearned to sink nightly into a sea of fluff. I've purchased two prior mattresses in my lifetime, and in both cases stood in the store struggling with the words of past and present loved ones in one ear ("You're strong! You don't need pillow-top!") and the Heavenly Messenger of Comfort in the other ("You know you want it!"). I remained stoic.

But now I understand that I'm honoring God with this new mattress. God wants us to sleep--we're ordered to rest on Shabbat, and during the week must have energy to work. So sleep is surely a mitzvah that keeps us alive and able to fulfill God's commandments. And we're instructed to perform mitzvot with a measure of elegance and beauty (hiddur mitzvah)--I could indeed sleep on the floor, but this new mattress will raise the experience to a level of art I know God will appreciate.

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Tomorrow night, accompanied by the Angel of Hedonism, I will experience my very first pillow-top Shabbat.

568. With feathers

Some days a person just doesn't feel like writing. But NaBloPoMo continues until Friday, so here I am. This month has been a great exercise for me, proof that I always have something to say even when I'm sure I don't.

Tonight the one word that comes to mind is "hope":

Israelis, Palestinians agree on framework for peace talks

567. The right time

I did it--two hours of Hebrew homework before I started the work day. And I also managed to get to the gym. I'm exhausted, but my brain feels just a little more full than yesterday.

Much of what I'm learning in this class is familiar, things I sort of halfway know by osmosis or learned a few years ago during a tutorial. (We met in a diner under the elevated subway tracks, an excellent place to study Torah.) Some skills I can pick up on my own, like the design software I use in my work life; not so with language, which require drills, repetition, and a great teacher in order to stick in my head. Every class and page in the textbook has been an aha! moment, and the Torah portion I'm now learning is starting to make sense as intuitive grammar rather than discrete words all strung together. I don't know why I didn't take this class years ago. For whatever reason, I wasn't ready.

566. A person-flower

Whenever I feel old, I remember the things that haven't changed since I was a callow youth--in particular, my sometimes poor time-management skills. I spent the day working, and will get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow to finish the Hebrew homework I could have done two weeks ago, but did not. (I haven't yet written about this class, which is fantastic, challenging and completely different than last year's fun but kind of boring and way too easy one.)

So I will grab a few hours' sleep and let Abraham Joshua Heschel finish today's post:

My Seal
Why am I not a flower,
a person-flower?

Bless me, my spirit
with tenderness instead of might!

To own smiles instead of words,
and always being light to the world.

To be able to give love, good fortune
with my hair, like orchids.

And may my way through rooms be
like finger-touches on piano keys.

Tenderness, you ineffable name of God,
be my image of God!

--from The Ineffable Name of God: Man

565. Coming soon

If not for the fact that night is now falling during the afternoon, I would refuse to believe December is next week. But today's glass-blue sky, and patterns on shoulders and tallitot of white sunlight filtered through the stained glass windows of the church where we have services, has convinced me otherwise. The end of autumn is coming. As is, um, how do you spell that again?

Time to scour the neighborhood for non-drip candles (I waited too long last year and spent hours scraping wax off my menorah as a result).

564. Energy, part 4

(Continued from here.)

Another moment from last Friday's service:

We always sing a soft niggun at the end of the silent Amidah to ease us away from personal reverie and back into the consciousness of the group. The rabbis lead the tune, and I always marvel at how it seems plucked from thin air (I'm pretty sure they don't choose in advance). This evening I finish the prayer, walk back to the bima, and listen for the rabbi. I don't recognize his melody at first, but then hear the refrain and the words he doesn't sing:

Oifn pripitchik, brente fayerel... (On the little hearth, a fire is burning and the school room is so warm, and the rabbi teaches small children the aleph beys [ABCs]. Pay attention children, think, you dear ones, on what you are learning here...)

We've used this tune before, although not for quite awhile. Everyone hums along, but I'm speechless for a few seconds. Tomorrow is my father's yahrzeit, and he sang this to me all the time when I was a very little kid--my mother, too. I never understood the words; my parents made a point of not teaching me Yiddish, whether because they wanted to be able speak to each other in private or believed I had no need for it as modern American, I'll never know. I always had a sense that they were embarrassed to know the language at all, as if it were horribly archaic and irrelevant. But they did use it, and those sounds always remind me of a simple and safe part of my life. And make me miss what's gone, but how can I be sad this evening as I stand surrounded by hearts warmer than any fireplace? I hear "Oifn pripitchek" and imagine my father humming along from somewhere, a little off-key, as always, proud and smiling and glad to be remembered.

563. Grateful once again

I've posted these words before, but can't hear them enough:

"To pray is to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the mystery by which we live. Who is worthy to be present at the constant unfolding of time? Amidst the meditation of mountains, the humility of flowers--wiser than all alphabets--clouds that die constantly for the sake of God's glory, we are hating, hunting, hurting. Suddenly we feel ashamed of our clashes and complaints in the face of the tacit glory in nature. It is so embarrassing to live! Only one response can maintain us: gratefulness for witnessing the wonder, for the gift of our unearned right to serve, to adore, and to fulfill. It is gratefulness which makes the soul great."
--Abraham Joshua Heschel

I attended the interfaith service again this year, a most gentle hour and a half. There were prayers and readings from scripture (including a riveting telling of the Passover story by a minister who sounded unlike anyone I've ever heard around the seder table), but our common language was music: a Japanese song on koto; a gospel choir; a bell accompanying Buddhist meditation as we envisioned all beings as happy, well and peaceful; Native American chant; a Methodist hymn; Violetta Parra's "Gracias A La Vida"; Aaron Copland's "At the River"; Hineh ma tov ("Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters dwell in harmony").

Then I went to dinner with friends, the wonderful sounds still reverberating in my mind and mixing with the taste of pita and olive oil. Tonight, another tradition: Thanksgiving dinner with more great friends and my dearest relative at a new restaurant (she gets to pick each year, as she's a foodie). How grateful I am to spend this day with family I love (vs. family I'm obliged to endure while stuffing my face with turkey as football blares in the background). I am also grateful to have no need or desire to run to Sears at 4AM on this lovely Black Friday. May we all have the luxury of sitting home today and doing nothing except writing in our blogs!

562. Energy, part 3

(Continued from here.)

We reach the end of Mizmor LeDavid and the rabbi slows down; I follow suit. But the musicians don't agree; their pace remains steady and they get a little louder, a bit more forceful. Each note sounds more purposeful then the one before. I think I know what they're about to do: create a deliberate, measured pace, and then speed up again. I wait--just a few seconds, but the tension is unbearable--and am ready to move faster at a second's notice and spin into the frenzy for which they're surely preparing. I feel giddy and complicit in this shaping of communal mood, certain that no one but those of us up front can guess the thrilling secret about to be released. And impatient--start now, you back there with the drum! I implore telepathically. Don't torture them! Don't make them wait any longer!

Then I notice the rabbi's hand motioning below the bima so only myself and the musicians can see: lower, lower. He knows what's happening, of course, probably sensed it even before any of us had a clue. It's not time yet; just a few more minutes and everyone will be done climbing and be ready to jump. For an instant I feel like I've been slapped in the face, and stop singing. The musicians slow down immediately and guiltily, I imagine. How could we have misjudged, and why can't I go there now? But then I see everyone looking up and waiting to hear what the rabbi has to say, and my self-recrimination disappears as quickly as it arrived. Faces and shoulders relax as calm and anticipation wash over us like cool rain. He was right--just a few more minutes.

.....

After services, there's a community dinner and guest speaker. I've missed the first half, the eating part, since the dinner began after the early service. I've asked a friend to save me some food and there it is, heaped on a plate. I arrive just as everyone is singing zemirot, and devour potato kugel while surrounded on all sides by voices and music. I suddenly remember a time, years before, when I fell asleep on a sofa during a break in the middle of the day at an a cappella workshop, and opened my eyes to see a group of faces right above me singing Monteverdi's madrigal "Zefiro torna" ("Return, O Zephyr, and with gentle motion/Make pleasant the air and scatter the grasses in waves"). They were the zephyrs come to life, and tonight all my friends at the dinner are the Shekhina, the Shabbat bride, preparing my table and teaching me to rest.

(To be continued.)

561. Energy, part 2

(Continued from here.)

The rabbi is standing next to me and so I can't actually see him, but keep expecting big, multicolored, concentric waves of his energy, like round, fuzzy neon tubes, to bump me on the shoulder or at least appear in my peripheral vision. Joy explodes from his hands as they pound on the bima, and I'm infected as well--I keep forgetting where I am, and every few moments notice I'm banging on the table with my palm as I sing, and stop self-consciously. I'm really not trying to imitate him. But then I start again. I feel like two people, one so happy I can barely breathe and another hyper-vigilant, aware of the rabbi's every twitch and trying to stay one beat ahead of the musicians so I don't lose my place.

(Continued here.)

560. Energy, part 1

A moment from this past Friday evening:

We reach Mizmor LeDavid, the prayer that comes right before Lekha Dodi, which is the official opening prayer, as it were, of Shabbat. We dance to Lekha Dodi at my synagogue, always to one of many different fast, rousing tunes. Mizmor LeDavid can be fast, too, but when the energy level seems low, the rabbis sing it at a slower, more contemplative pace.

This night the warm-up of psalms hasn't yet brought us anywhere near Shabbat-appropriate ecstasy, so Mizmor LeDavid is mellow and relaxed. As an experiment, the set-up of the Sanctuary has changed: service leaders (tonight, myself and a rabbi) stand at a bima, with the musicians to our right and behind. I can tell that the congregation is a little unsettled by this, as am I; for the past two years, rabbis and kahal alike sat together in a big semi-circle. But the musicians had trouble hearing one another, so we're going back to the old way for while. Although I miss the electricity of being enveloped by the ensemble, standing in front reminds me of the High Holy Days. I am immediately more confident (and it's easier to breathe, too.)

(Continued here.)

559. Egg salad

One day soon I will again have time and energy to write something substantial, but I don't think it's today.

The reason why is a good one, though--I spent all afternoon talking about social action with other members of my synagogue as part of a community-based organizing initiative. The first step is figuring out what issues move us and spur us to action (and the half of a step after that is eating lots of bagels and egg salad, which we also did very well).

I rounded off the evening with continued email angst, but I think it's solved now. The coming week will bring lots of work and even more eating (and, unless I want to hate myself forever, a few trips to the gym). And more thinking and writing about the wonderful Shabbat evening that just passed.

558. Scintillating

Instead of writing or otherwise having fun, I spent a lovely evening after Shabbat ended migrating my Eudora email box to Apple Mail. This was a less than scintillating activity having nothing to do with chanting Torah that took many hours instead of the few minutes I had planned, but it's done. I hope to have a little more time tomorrow to think of loftier things, like singing and laundry.

557. More to come...

I helped lead Shabbat services again last night, first time since March. So much fun! More to come tomorrow, and continue having a Shabbat Shalom, everyone.

556. Angels

If not for NaBloPoMo, this would be one of those days when I get into bed, remember I didn't write in this blog, feel guilty, feel guiltier about the deadline I will surely miss because I'm too old for all-nighters and decide to go to sleep instead, conclude that sleep trumps guilt, and then have nice dreams. Instead I will experience marginally less guilt because I am, at least, writing. I spent a few hours this afternoon after a trip to the ophthalmologist walking around Manhattan with dilated pupils. Herald Square a week before Thanksgiving is always otherworldly, but at dusk, with rain changing illuminated signs and traffic lights into glowing, crystalline orbs that are further magnified by my drugged eyes--I felt like I was walking among the angels. Addled angels, but mysterious creatures nevertheless. I dodged them left and right, and somehow made it into the subway and back uptown. Then I sat in an empty diner for an hour to recover. As pharmaceutically enhanced adventures go, this one was interesting and not at all scary.

Tomorrow evening I'm helping to lead Shabbat services (it's been awhile), and then chanting Torah the following morning. Those experiences now seem more real to me than the frenzy of Herald Square, one of the most familiar places I know; my mother and I went to Macy's every week or so for years when I was a kid. Those angels in the traffic lights have been doing their jobs.