Category Archives: Inuyim – Prayer reflections and ruminations

10 Days-10 of Life’s Biggest Questions Answered by You

29 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Holidays, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

For the past several years I have participated in a project of “Reboot” in which on each of the days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur I received a question in my email. I answered the questions each day, and the following year was sent my answers. I could see where I was, where I wished to go, and where I am now as the New Year begins.

I recommend this to everyone who wants to utilize the High Holidays for introspection and reflection.

Here is Reboot’s description of 10Q:

Answer one question per day in your own secret online 10Q space. Make your answers serious. Silly. Salacious. However you like. It’s your 10Q. When you’re finished, hit the magic button and your answers get sent to the secure online 10Q vault for safekeeping. One year later, the vault will open and your answers will land back in your email inbox for private reflection. Want to keep them secret? Perfect. Want to share them, either anonymously or with attribution, with the wider 10Q community? You can do that too.

Next year the whole process begins again. And the year after that, and the year after that. Do you 10Q? You should.

10Q begins October 2nd, 2016

10Q: Reflect. React. Renew.
Life’s Biggest Questions. Answered By You.

Get started by clicking onto this site – http://www.doyou10q.com/

“All you need is love!”

04 Sunday Sep 2016

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Divrei Torah, Health and Well-Being, Holidays, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Poetry, Quote of the Day

≈ 3 Comments

“All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need…” (John Lennon – 1967)

Surveys indicate that we gravitate throughout our lives to the music and musical groups we loved when we were teens. For me, it’s the Beatles, Dylan and much of the classic folk music of the 60s, as well as Israeli music of the classic pioneer era. The Song of Songs was a popular source for much of that music, and perhaps, this is why my wife and I engraved on the inside of our wedding rings “Ani l’dodi v’dodi li – I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” (Song of Songs 6:3)

Attributed to King Solomon as a young man, the eight-chapter  poem expresses the passionate romantic yearning and love between two lovers. Tradition recognizes, however, that the Song is far more than a secular love poem. It is understood as an allegory of the eternal love between the people of Israel and God. Rabbi Akiva said of the Song when debating whether the poem would be included in the Biblical canon at the end of the first century CE: “For all the ages are not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel; for all the Writings are holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies.”

I recall the Song and particularly this verse because today is the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul in which the Jewish people begins a 30-day period of introspection and self-criticism leading to Rosh Hashanah. Today also commences a 40-day period that crescendos on Yom Kippur, the same period of time that Moses communed with God and received Torah (Exodus 34:28).

The verse – Ani l’dodi v’dodi li – evokes both this Hebrew month and the goal of our 30- and 40-day periods. The verse is an acrostic – the first letter of each word – Aleph – lamed – vav – lamed – spells Elul, suggesting that it is love that can lead us back to ourselves, to everything we cherish, to our families, friends, community, people, Torah, and God – “All you need is love!”

May this season be a time of turning, renewal and love for you, the people of Israel, and all children of the earth.

“Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love” – and a prayer for the ages

16 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Tributes

≈ 2 Comments

As I watched Lin-Manuel Miranda accept the Tony Award for best musical “Hamilton” in New York on Sunday, I was struck not only by the beauty of his sonnet but by the passionate effect of his eight-time repetition of that simple four-letter word – “LOVE”:

“…When senseless acts of tragedy remind us
That nothing here is promised, not one day.
This show is proof that history remembers
We lived through times when hate and fear seemed stronger;
We rise and fall and light from dying embers,
Remembrances that hope and love last longer
And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love
cannot be killed or swept aside…
Now fill the world with music, love and pride.”

Love knocked this week reminding us who we are and ought to be.

Thousands lined up to give blood. Restaurants brought food. Hands touched hands and eyes beheld eyes. Hearts melded into one in Orlando and throughout the land.

The destruction of life by the assassin begets mourning and stimulates the resolve of all decent people to resist hate and fear.

The truth is that love eclipses hate every time.

It happens that in this week’s Torah portion Naso, there appears the oldest blessing in Jewish recorded history:

“May God bless you and keep you;
May God’s light shine upon you and be gracious to you;
May God lift up the Divine countenance upon you and grant you shalom – wholeness and peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)

Known as the Birkat Kohanim, the blessing of the priests, it is at least 3000 years old. The oldest copy of this ancient text was unearthed in the City of David in Jerusalem and is estimated have been written down around 900 BCE.

Rabbinic tradition of later centuries developed a  mythology about the use of this blessing. The midrashim say that these words were invoked by God when contemplating the writing of the Torah and the creation of the universe, when the first humans emerged from the dust and were infused with Divine breath, and when Moses received the Torah on Mount Sinai.

The Kohanim (priests) and many rabbis today raise their hands in the form of the Hebrew letter shin (the first letter of one of God’s names – Shaddai) and bless the congregation on Shabbat and holidays, at a brit milah and the naming of a baby girl, upon b’nai mitzvah, Jews by-choice, and marriage couples under the chuppah at their weddings.

This blessing acknowledges the creation of something new, that never existed before, a blessing of hope and faith, a hedge against cynicism and despair.

Rabbinic tradition requires that the priest (and rabbis today) say these words ONLY when they love the people and the community upon whom they invoke this blessing. If there is even one person present about whom the priest feels no love and/or bears animus, that priest must defer to another priest to say the blessing.

Lin Manuel-Miranda had it exactly right – “And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.”

Leonard Nimoy internationalized the hands of the priests in an iconic gesture of shalom in his greeting as Mr. Spock in Star Trek with the accompanying phrase “Live long and prosper.”

Leonard fondly remembered going to shul on Shabbos in South Boston as a child with his grandfather who told him to cover his eyes when the Kohanim ascended the bimah and invoked God’s blessing upon the congregation.

Leonard asked me years ago why his grandfather told him to cover his eyes, and I explained that at that moment of blessing tradition says that the “Shekhina” (the feminine Divine presence) enters the congregation. Torah warns that no human can glimpse the Divine presence and remain alive, and so we cover our eyes as does the priest under the tallit when saying the blessing, much as Indiana Jones did when the Ark of the Covenant was opened in Steven Spielberg’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

Leonard, a gifted photographer, was inspired to embark on a project he called “Shekhina” in which he photographed nude women in poses wearing the tallis and t’fillin. I have one of Leonard’s images hanging in my synagogue study, and I’m inspired every time I look at it, and my love for this man is rekindled.

“Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside,” ever!

Shabbat shalom!

The Wilderness Within – Parashat Bamidbar and Shavuot

10 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Beauty in Nature, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Holidays, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Quote of the Day

≈ Leave a comment

We celebrate Shavuot on Saturday evening and Sunday this week. In the spirit of this holiday celebrating the giving of Torah, I offer from the literature of our people, ancient and modern, gleanings that consider the meaning of the wilderness as the site of the revelation of God and Torah.

“And God spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, from the tent of Meeting…” Numbers 1:1

“God transferred the Divine presence from Sinai to the Tabernacle, from the Sanctuary (Mishkan) of Adonai which God’s hands had established to the sanctuary which Israel had made. Adonai would henceforth speak to Moses from the tent of Meeting and indicate to Israel by means of the cloud when to journey and when to encamp. The Tabernacle was a mobile Sinai in the midst of them, the heavens and heavens of heavens (the holy place and the most holy place) transplanted and brought down to earth.” Rabbi Benno Jacob (1862-1945) – Reform Rabbi and Biblical Scholar, Germany

“One should be as open as a wilderness to receive the Torah.” Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim 55a

“Torah was given in the wilderness because cities are filled with corruption, luxury, idolatry, and other evils…to be pure and ready to receive the Torah, one must be separated from all the vices of the city.” Philo, On the Decalogue I

“There is a wilderness within each person, a desert where selfish desires rule, where one looks out only for one’s own needs. No person is ever satisfied in the desert. There is constant complaining about lack of food and water, the scorching hot days and bitter cold nights. Anger, frustration, disagreements, and hunger prevail. The Torah is given in the desert to conquer and curb the demonic wilderness within human beings. If human beings do not conquer the desert, it may eventually conquer them. There is no peaceful coexistence between the two…” Rabbi Pinchas Peli – Jerusalem Post, June 1, 1985, p. 17

“To a people whose entire living generation had seen only the level lands of Egypt, the Israelites march into this region of mountain magnificence, with its sharp and splintered peaks and profound valleys, must have been a perpetual source of astonishment and awe. No nobler school could have been conceived for training a nation of slaves into a nation of freemen[women] or weaning a people from the grossness of idolatry to a sense of the grandeur and power of the God alike of Nature and Mind.” Nachman Ran, the Holy Land, p. V-27

“Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav…contrasts the sanctuary offered by wilderness to society’s corruption…in his depiction, in the story the Master of Prayer, societies have sunk one step below evil – into insanity. The story describes a series of countries, each organized around its own made obsession. In one, money is worshiped so totally that it has become the key to human identity: ‘Whoever had more money was a human being, and those who were very wealthy were considered gods.’ The master of prayer subversively penetrates these societies and draws people ‘out of the settled places,’ into the wilderness and a life of prayer and meditation…Prayer is the antidote to society’s obsessions because it alone has the power to lift consciousness out of the web of socially conditioned desires into a new matrix whose center is God.”  Rabbi Micha Odenheimer, The People and the Book – “To the Wilderness” – The Jerusalem Report, May 19, 1994, p. 35

“The wilderness is more than a physical location. B’midbar depicts a social wilderness, a human wasteland. This is the place where everything falls apart. It portrays a people wandering, without a shared vision, shared values, or shared words – leaders attempt to lead, but no one listens. The people of this wilderness, driven by fear and jealousy, moved only by hunger, thirst and lust, have no patience for God’s transcendent vision. This is a book of noise, frustration and pain. B’midbar may be the world’s strongest counterrevolutionary tract. It’s a rebuke to all those who believe in the one cataclysmic event that will forever free humans from their chains. It’s a response to those who foresee that out of the apocalypse of political or economic revolution will emerge the New Man. Here is the people who stood at Sinai, who heard Truth from God’s mouth – unchanged, unrepentant and chained to their fears. The dream is beyond them. God offers them freedom, and they clamor for meat…At the end of the book we arrive in the Promised Land – exhausted, depleted, defeated – B’midbar gives way to D’varim – “words” – shared words, shared values, shared direction. Moses talks; people listen. Moses leads; people follow – now shared vision – now dialogue and consensus – the key word of D’varim is Sh’ma – D’varim is a book of listening. This is the Torah’s message of hope, that nothing worth doing in life can be accomplished without crossing the midbar. But the midbar isn’t the last word. There is a promised land of D’varim.” – Rabbi Eddie Feinstein, “The Wilderness Speaks,”  Modern Men’s Torah Commentary, edited by Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, pps. 201-2013

Flames Kindled – A Poem for the Shabbat in Hanukah

11 Friday Dec 2015

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Divrei Torah, Holidays, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Poetry

≈ 2 Comments

Flames kindled
This Shabbat-Hanukah night

Hanukah wicks flickering
Casting street-light

Shabbat flames dancing
Illuminating soul-sight

Hanukah – God descends
Shabbat – Jews ascend
Claiming every n’shamah
Sparks seeking light

Shabbat-Hanukah flames kindled
Lifting Israel
Burning bright
Glorious night!

Composed by Rabbi John L. Rosove

HANUKAH READINGS, BLESSINGS AND THEMES FOR DISCUSSION AT HOME

06 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Holidays, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Social Justice, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Lining up the Hanukah Candles and Blessings:

On each night we add a candle lining them up on the Hanukiyah (Hanukah Menorah) from right to left. The shamash candle lights the others going from left to right (i.e. the most recent candle is lit first). Sing each night the Hanukah melody using the words of the first two blessings. On the first night only, sing the third blessing:

[1] Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha-olam asher kid’shanu b’mitz’votav v’tzi-vanu l’had’lik ner shel Hanukah – Praised are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign Power of the universe, who sanctifies us with mitzvot and commands us to light the Hanukah Menorah.

[2] Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha-olam sh’asa nisim l’avo-teinu ba-ya-mim hahem baz’man ha-zeh – Praised are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign Power of the universe, Who made for us miracles at that time during in this season. Amen.

[3] Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, she-he-chi-ya-nu v’k’yi-ma-nu v’hi-gi-a-nu laz’man ha-zeh. Praised are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign Power of the universe, who has given us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this holy season.

The following blessings may be read and questions for discussion between parents, grandparents and children as the candles of the Hanukkiah are kindled each night.


FIRST CANDLE: THE LIGHT OF TORAH AND BLESSING

With this candle we reaffirm our people’s commitment to the study of our sacred tradition. May the light of this flame cast its warmth upon us all and inspire us to be grateful for the blessings of life and health.

For discussion – Read together this Yiddish proverb: “If you cannot be grateful for what you have received, then be thankful for what you have been spared!” and ask: [1] Why is it important to be grateful? [2] How does learning Judaism actually change our lives?
SECOND CANDLE: THE LIGHT OF LIBERATION AND HOPE

On behalf of all our people dispersed in the four corners of the world that live in fear and distress we stand this night in solidarity with them. Our Hanukkah flames are theirs and their hopes are ours. We are one people united by tradition, history and faith.

For discussion – Read together this statement from Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav: “The whole world is a very narrow bridge; the important thing is not to be afraid,” and ask: [1] Why does fear make it harder for us to love other people? [2] In what ways can we show the Jewish people living around the world that they are part of our Jewish family and that we care about them?

THIRD CANDLE: THE LIGHT OF PEACE AND MEMORY

With this candle we pray that a just and lasting peace may be established between Israel and the Palestinians. May the memory of all those Israelis who gave their lives for peace be a blessing for our people and all peoples of the Middle East.

For discussion – Read together this statement by Albert Einstein: “Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. This may be said of peace between nations, between people, and even peace within oneself.” Then ask: Why is peace so dependent on understanding the “other” person?

FOURTH CANDLE: THE LIGHT OF TOLERANCE

With this light we pray that racism, political enmity, gender bias, religious hatred, intolerance of the “other,” and fundamentalism of all kinds be dispelled, and may we recognize that every human being is created B’tzelem Elohim, in the Divine image.

For discussion – Read together this passage from the Sayings of the Sages (4:1): “Who is wise? The person who learns something from every other person.” Then ask: [1] How is learning from someone else different than learning math, science or history? [2] What does it mean to “know the heart of the stranger” and what can each of us do to get to know people who are not like us and learn from each of them?


FIFTH CANDLE: THE LIGHT OF ECONOMIC JUSTICE

With this light we recommit ourselves to work on behalf of the poor in all our communities and throughout the world. May we be inspired not only to feed the hungry and uplift up the fallen, but to act strategically as advocates to reorder society’s priorities so that all may have the opportunity to support themselves and live lives of dignity.

For discussion – Read this statement by Elie Wiesel: “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the  tormented…There may be times when we ar powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” Then ask: What concrete actions can each of us take as individuals and as a family to help the poor and discriminated against in our community and help those in other countries who are oppressed?

SIXTH CANDLE: THE LIGHT OF CREATION

With this light may we renew our commitment to preserve God’s creation, to support policies that preserve our air, water and natural resources for, recalling the Midrash, if we destroy it there will be no one after us to make it right.

For discussion: Read this passage together from the Midrash collection on the book of Ecclesiastes (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:28) – “Upon presenting the wonder of creation to Adam, God said: ‘See my works, how fine and excellent they are! Now all that I created, for you I created. Think upon this, and do not corrupt and desolate my world; for if you corrupt it, there is no one to set it right after you.” Then discuss ways in your homes you can help protect the environment.

SEVENTH CANDLE: THE LIGHT OF FAMILY AND COMMUNITY BLESSING

May the light of this flame cast its warmth upon us all and everyone in the public square to be ever grateful for the blessings of family and community.

For discussion: Read together this passage from the Talmud (Taanit 11a) – “When the community is in trouble a person should not say, ‘I will go to my house, eat, drink, and be at peace with myself.’” Then ask, what can each of us do as individuals to help another human being who is in trouble either in our families or in our community?

EIGHTH CANDLE: THE LIGHT OF MEMORY AND WITNESSING

May these lights, kindled all, inspire us to perform deeds of loving-kindness for others, friend and stranger alike.

For discussion: Read together this passage from the Talmud (Succah 49b) – “All who perform acts of charity and justice, it is as if they fill the world with loving-kindness.” Then ask what little acts of kindness can we as individuals do all the time for others?

On Gratitude

25 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Poetry, Quote of the Day, Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Tennessee Williams put it exactly right: “You know we live in light and shadow. That’s what we live in – a world of light and shadow; and it’s confusing.” (Orpheus Descending)

No life is simple, but along comes Thanksgiving and tradition compels us to emphasize gratitude regardless of our circumstances, how we may feel and conditions in the world.

For some, gratitude comes easily. For others gratefulness is challenging. Nurturing gratitude, however, is one of our most effective means to dispel the “shadow” and lift us towards the “light.”

Here are a number of reflections from Jewish tradition and world literature that offer us perspective, insight, wisdom, and hope.

“Hodu l’Adonai ki tov, ki l’olam chasdo – Give thanks to God, for Adonai is good…God’s steadfast love is eternal.” –  Psalm 136 (9th century, B.C.E.)

“When you arise in the morning give thanks for the morning light, for your life and strength. Give thanks for your food and the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies in yourself.” – Native American Prayer, Tecumseh Tribe

“How strange we are in the world, and how presumptuous our doings! 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.” – Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972)

“Ingratitude to a human being is ingratitude to God.” – Rabbi Samuel Hanagid (993-1056 CE)

“What have you done for me lately is the ingrate’s question.” – Rabbi Joseph Telushkin

“If you cannot be grateful for what you have received, then be thankful for what you have been spared.” – Yiddish proverb

“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” – William Arthur Ward, American scholar, author, pastor and teacher (1921-1997)

“Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity.” – Anne Lamott, writer (b. 1954)

“Thank everyone who calls out your faults, your anger, your impatience, your egotism; do this consciously, voluntarily.” – Jean Toomer, poet and novelist (1894-1967)

“We should write an elegy for every day that has slipped through our lives unnoticed and unappreciated. Better still, we should write a song of thanksgiving for all the days that remain.” – Sarah Ban Breathnach, author (b 1948)

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.” – Cicero, Roman philosopher (106 BC – 43 BC)

“If the only prayer you say in your life is ‘Thank you,’ that would suffice.” – Meister Eckhart, German theologian, philosopher (1260-1328)

“When I started counting my blessings my whole life turned around.” – Willie Nelson

“The highest tribute to the dead is not grief, but gratitude.” – Thorton Wilder

“I can no other answer make but thanks, and thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks.” – William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Jacob’s Dream and His Emergence into a Man of Faith

19 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by in Divrei Torah, Ethics, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Stories

≈ Leave a comment

Jacob’s destiny was set from birth and would come at a price. As his mother Rebekah’s troubled twin pregnancy came to an end and the babies were born, Jacob holding Esau’s heel suggesting a strong pre-natal desire to be born first and become the future leader of the tribe. In a clever commentary, Rashi (11th century, France) says that the scene reflects a primogeniture truth, that Jacob was actually conceived first, though he came out second, much as a pebble dropped into a tube first will come out second when the tube is inverted.

Despite being second-born, tradition asserts that Jacob’s spiritual potential merited his assuming first-born rights, and it also suggests that Rebecca knew that Esau, a hunter, lacked the requisite sensitivity, gentility, vision, and prophetic capacity to lead the tribe, whereas Jacob possessed all those virtues.

Jacob’s dream event that opens this week’s portion Vayetze (Genesis 28:10-22) signals the beginning of a new stage in Jacob’s life. He had just fled in fear from an enraged Esau, was alone in the mountains, unsure of himself and exhausted. He fell asleep and dreamed of ladders and angels.

This dream sequence is filled with powerful religious imagery, suggestion and mythic archetypes. The stones Jacob placed under his head are symbolic of what Carl Jung called the Ego, the limited “I” of Jacob, a man still unaware of the implicate order linking the material and metaphysical worlds. The top of the ladder represents what Jung called the integrated Self which unifies the conscious and unconscious into a non-dualistic cosmos.

When Jacob went to sleep using stones as a kind of pillow, we suspect that something unusual is about to happen, that he is on the cusp of new self-consciousness. Lo and behold, he sees angels ascending (representing his yearning for something greater than himself) and angels descending (representing God’s outreach towards him), Rabbi Heschel’s idea of God’s pathos and the Prophet’s empathy.

When Jacob awoke from the dream and opened his eyes, he was astonished: “Surely God is in this place, va’anochi lo yadati, and I did not know it! … How awesome is this place! This is none other than the abode of God, and this is the gateway to heaven.” (28:16-17)

The beginning of any religious experience requires us to understand that we know nothing at all. In Hebrew “I” is ani (anochi is a variant form), and when we rearrange the letters – aleph, nun, yod – we spell ain, (meaning “nothing”). The religious person must transform the “I” of the  ego into a great Self in which the individual becomes part of God’s Oneness. Jacob’s sudden awareness results in his newfound humility and is a prerequisite to the development of his faith.

Despite the spiritual potency of this experience, Jacob remains unaware (i.e. he lacks access to his full unconscious – that is, the integrated Jungian Self) and his faith is conditional. He says, “If God remains with me, if God protects me…, and gives me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and if I return safe … the Eternal shall be my God.” (28:20-21)

One of the consistent themes throughout the Genesis narratives is that in order for Biblical figures to grow in faith they had to suffer trials. As a protected child of his mother, Jacob had been pampered. However, in being forced to flee for his life from the brother he wronged, Jacob became aware of the shadow (Jung’s term denoting that part of the unconscious consisting of repressed weaknesses, shortcomings and instincts) in which he lived and which would envelop him for the next twenty years. Then he met a being divine and human at the river Jabbok and emerged with a new name, Yisrael – the one who perseveres with God.

From Jacob’s birth to next week’s encounter at the river we witness the patriarch’s evolution from the unconsciousness of his childhood to greater awareness, from a self-centered trickster to the bearer of the covenant. As he progressed he learned to view the world through the eyes of faith as he stood at heaven’s gate.

Shabbat Shalom!

Note: This is an edited version of my 2011 blog.

“Sacred Faces” – A Photographer Evokes the Universal Human Spirit

24 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by in American Politics and Life, Art, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life

≈ 1 Comment

There are hundreds of photographic images of Buddhas and Christ figures, Virgin Marys and Saints, and real-life human beings including a meditating 70ish woman graced with a beatific face, and a 93 year-old Terezin, Auschwitz and death march survivor.

There is a haunting shot of the “Shoe Memorial” in Budapest where thousands of Jews were shot and drowned in the Danube River by the fascistic Hungarian Arrow Cross militiamen, as well as Hebrew inscribed weathered tombstones in the ancient Prague Jewish cemetery, a secret small synagogue in Terrezin at the end of a driveway with magnificent Hebrew calligraphy calling upon God for redemption from the Nazi horror, and relief details and spires of countless churches in Poland, Prague and Germany.

Taken together these images reflect the diversity of human spiritual expression across time, place and culture, each image illuminated as if by a perpetual flame from within, captured by a gifted and inspired photographer who, a year ago in his 71st year, saw by accident the face of a Buddha that captured his soul as he walked in his neighborhood.

Inspired by a Koryo Buddhist painting entitled “15,000 Buddhas,” Andy Romanoff had an idea, to create an ever-expanding oeuvre of an additional 15,000 photographic images (more or less) of a diversity of religious icons, each representing an unknown artist’s sense of the sacred, and when taken together build a house of spiritual yearning for enlightenment and transcendent oneness.

Andy Romanoff is a Chicago-born Jew and a member of my synagogue community. He views the world as a Jew and with a larger universal vision. He has enjoyed a long career in Hollywood as a camera operator, a cinematographer and an inventor of camera equipment and technology that has enabled photographers to capture images in previously inaccessible environments.

Andy has now embarked upon the artistic and spiritual journey of his life, to record the world’s great religious traditions’ sacred iconography and place them into the context of the whole of humanity’s vision.

Andy calls his photographic enterprise “Sacred Faces.” An exhibit of some of his initial photographs opened in Los Angeles this past Saturday night, February 22, in the Shatto Chapel of the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles.

The show includes many large framed photographs and a projected show onto a large screen of more than 140 images flowing into and out of each other against a background of contemplative music. When the cycle of photographs concluded, I found myself wanting more. Andy promises to oblige.

The exhibit continues for another five weeks. The senior minister of The First Congregational Church, R. Scott Colglazier, will deliver a sermon each Sunday morning through Easter Sunday focusing on one photograph, using it as a sacred text and then reflecting on a specific religious or spiritual theme that the image evokes, such as humility, gratitude, peace, suffering, and love.

This is an exhibit one should see. It is also an exhibit that ought to travel to the great cities of the world because it is moving, inspirational and universal, and it compresses the multitude of spiritual images into a single expression of faith and longing.

Avishai Artsy of KCRW (89.9 FM LA) reported on the exhibit last Friday and interviewed Andy. You can hear the story here:

http://blogs.kcrw.com/whichwayla/2015/02/sacred-faces-finds-inspiration-in-religious-imagery

You can see many of Andy’s images here:

http://andyromanoff.zenfolio.com/sacred

Enjoy!

“The Ineffable Flame of God” – D’var Torah Sh’mot

08 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by in Divrei Torah, Ethics, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

“The prophet is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden upon his soul, and he is bowed and stunned at man’s fierce greed. Frightful is the agony of man; no human voice can convey its full terror. Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profaned rules of the world. It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophet’s words.” (Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel)

This week’s and next week’s Torah portions (Shmot and Va-era – Exodus 1-9:35) describe Moses’ first and second revelations of God, the first out of the burning bush (Exodus 3:2+) and the second God’s call for Moses to liberate the Israelites from Egyptian bondage (Exodus 6:1+).

Tradition regards Moses as the greatest of all the Biblical prophets, the only prophet to meet God “panim el panim – face to face” whereas the others encountered God in visions and dreams.

The prophets were solitary, lonely figures, often unpopular, hated and denounced by those whose lives they sought to change. They were all cast into a role they did not seek, often during times of great social and political crisis, and their mission was religious and ethical, this-worldly, bound in covenant and committed to the fulfillment of God’s will that human society be governed by high standards of justice, compassion and peace.

The “I” of the prophet, per Heschel, was God – never the prophet himself. The prophet was merely God’s mouthpiece, and when he spoke it was God who was speaking.

The prophet alternately, depending on circumstances, admonished the people for their ethical lapses and comforted the people in their suffering. He did not predict the future. Rather, he articulated the consequences of unrighteousness and evil practice.

The prophet placed the experience of the people in an historical and salvationary context thereby giving ultimate meaning to his/God’s words and hope to those who suffered despair.

Not every human being was destined for prophecy. God chose only those lonely figures who had primed themselves to be able to “hear” the divine voice. Moses, for example, had first to leave the opulent life of the Egyptian palace and witness first-hand the suffering of his people beneath Pharaoh’s yoke. Acting out of righteous anger and indignation at the injustices he saw, Moses killed an Egyptian taskmaster, fled Egypt and became a wandering refugee in the wilderness. Eventually, he settled into the humble life of a shepherd tending his flocks, a quiet life of solitude beneath open skies and star-lit nights.

The burning bush was, according to Rabbi Heschel, the paradigmatic scene of “God in search of man.”

The 13th century Spanish sage, Rabbi Bachya ben Asher, noted that God revealed the divine Self gradually to Moses:

“Since this was Moses’ first experience of prophecy the Almighty wished gradually to initiate him and raise him by stages until his spiritual perceptions were strengthened.” Thus, the narrative “underlines that Moses achieved the perception of three things: the fire, the angel and the Shechinah [the feminine presence of God].”

Moses first noticed the physical fire, then the angel appeared to him in a flame, and finally God called out to him from the bush. Moses “saw” God with his ears and he “heard” God’s voice with his eyes.

This singular experience characterizes a prophetic moment, all-encompassing, beyond the rational and imaginative faculties, a psychic intuition.

The following poem by Rabbi Heschel describes the life and experience of the prophet. When asked if he (Heschel) was a prophet, Rabbi Heschel rejected the idea entirely.

“God follows me everywhere / Spins a net of glances around me, / Shines upon my sightless back like a sun.

God follows me like a forest everywhere. / My lips, always amazed, are truly numb, dumb, / Like a child who blunders upon an ancient holy place.

God follows me like a shiver everywhere. / My desire is for rest; the demand within me is: Rise up, / See how prophetic visions are scattered in the streets.

I go with my reveries as with a secret / In a long corridor through the world – / And sometimes I glimpse high above me, the faceless face of God

…

God follows me in tramways, in cafes. / Oh, it is only with the backs of the pupils of one’s eyes that one can see / How secrets ripen, how visions come to be.

The Ineffable Flame of God – Man. Poems of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (in Yiddish and English). Translated from the Yiddish by Morton M. Leifman. Introduction by Edward K. Kaplan. Continuum. New York, London. 2005. pages 56-57. Originally published in 1933 in Warsaw.