Category Archives: Poetry

“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

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“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.

Remembering Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman (1921-2014)

28 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Poetry, Tributes

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Rabbi Leonard Beerman has been in my life since I was 12 years old, and his death this past week at 93 years represents a huge moment in the life of this community, the Jewish world, and the personal lives of many, including me.

One of our g’dolei dor (great ones of this generation), Leonard inspired me and so many in my generation to engage as young teens in the civil rights movement, to protest American military involvement in Vietnam, to apply for Conscientious Objector status during that war, to protest nuclear weapons proliferation, to engage in interfaith dialogue, to join coalitions of decency on behalf of just causes, and to support the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people for a state of their own alongside a secure Israel despite (as Leonard put it many years ago) Palestinian “cruelty and stupidity.”

He was, in my young eyes, larger than life. He was brave and smart, eloquent and passionate. We were not close when I was growing up – that would come much later – but he was a force that shaped my moral conscience and sensibility.

Leonard enlisted in the Marines during World War II and was a rabbinic student in 1948 studying in Jerusalem when the War of Independence began. He enlisted while there with the Haganah to fight in that war. Those two war experiences persuaded him to become a pacifist, an unpopular position in the Jewish community following the Shoah.

For the last 65 years since his ordination at the Hebrew Union College, Leonard has been a uniquely courageous voice in the American Rabbinate advocating for peace, justice, compassion, and human rights.

Leonard’s message of moral responsibility was as provocative a message as there was in American Judaism during all these years. I grew up hearing the gentle resonance of his voice and the prophetic power of his words. He believed that speaking his truth as a pacifist was more important than feeding his community what they wanted to hear. People loved him or they walked away. He once remarked that unless at least one person resigned from his congregation after the High Holidays he had failed. When I think of him, I am reminded of the 19th century Rabbi Israel Salanter’s words: “A rabbi whose community does not disagree with him is no rabbi. A rabbi who fears his community is no mensch.” He was a great rabbi because he was honest and fearless, and he spoke his truth without hesitation.

Over the past few years, Leonard and I began meeting for lunch every few months to talk, share stories and thoughts about issues great and small, personal, Jewish, and worldly. These were precious times for me. Leonard generously told me how much he treasured our time together as well, that I made him feel young again and gave him hope, that he was proud of me because I took the battle for justice, compassion and peace so seriously. I told him that he was my standard bearer of rabbinic leadership and that I was merely emulating him, that anything I may ever have said or done pales by comparison with his words and deeds over a lifetime.

Leonard’s humility, compassion, intelligence, wisdom, honesty, courage, and principled activism are, indeed, a beacon of light of rabbinic leadership for me and for so many of my colleagues.

In advance of the High Holidays this past August, Leonard and I met for lunch, and we commiserated about the terrorism, missiles, bombings, destruction, and loss of innocent life that occurred during this past summer’s Hamas-Israeli War, as well as the harm the war likely did to the future of a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which we both so deeply believed is the only way to assure Israel’s security, democracy and future.

In emphasizing the brutality of war, Leonard referred me to a passage in Dostoyevsky’s “The Brother’s Karamazov” in which two brothers, Ivan and Alyosha, discussed the death of a child:

“Tell me straight out…answer me: imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny creature, … a child … and raise your edifice on the foundation of her unrequited tears – would you agree to be the architect on such conditions? ….

No, I would not agree, ….

And can you admit the idea that the people for whom you are building would agree to accept their happiness on the … blood of a tortured child, and having accepted it, to remain forever happy?”

No I cannot admit it brother…”

As we parted, knowing that I would be speaking about the Gaza war on Rosh Hashanah to my congregation, as he would to his, Leonard said to me, “John, remember to be moral!” I assured him that I would, but I knew that my “morality” and his would look different concerning that war.

Leonard sent me a copy of that sermon, the last he would ever deliver to the Leo Baeck community on Yom Kippur morning. I was moved and provoked as I always was when I heard him, but I did not agree with his emphasis. I thought he did not take into consideration nearly enough the context in which Israel acted, and that he was overly harsh in his criticism of the IDF.

I sent him my sermon as well. He complemented me on the writing, though he wrote, “We do not agree about Gaza,” which, of course, I knew.

Leonard was a lover of great literature and poetry, and he gave me a gift one day of a poem called “My Promised Land” by Carl Dennis, which reflects our shared dream about the land and state of Israel:

“The land of Israel my mother loves
Gets by without the luxury of existence
And still wins followers,
Though it can’t be found on the map
West of Jordan or south of Lebanon,
Though what can be found
bears the same name,
Making for confusion.
Not the land I fought her about for years
But the one untarnished by the smoke of history,
Where no one informs the people of Hebron or Jericho
They’re squatting on property that isn’t theirs,
Where every settler can remember wandering.

The dinners I spoiled with shouting
Could have been saved,
Both of us lingering quietly in our chairs,
If I’d guessed the truth that now is obvious,
That she wasn’t lavishing all her love
On the country that doesn’t deserve so rich a gift
But on the one that does, the one not there,
That she hoped good news would reach its borders.

And cross into the land of the righteous and merciful
That the Prophets spoke of in their hopeful moods,
That was loved by the red-eyed rabbis of Galicia
Who studied every word of the book and prayed
To get one thread of the meaning right;
The promised Land where the great and small
Hurry to school and the wise are waiting.”

Were he here now, Leonard would remind us to keep fighting for justice and for the realization of the ideal. I promise that I will do so, in his memory, and I will hold his compassionate, just and prophetic voice close to my heart and soul now and always.

The words of Samuel have resonated in my mind and heart this past week: “Eich naflu hagiborim – How the mighty has fallen!”

Zicharon tzadik livracha – May the memory of this righteous and great man be a perpetual benediction.

[Note: An interview of Leonard was recorded a few years ago and can be found at this link – http://vimeo.com/17542880]

 

A Weeping Isaac Alone in the Field

13 Thursday Nov 2014

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

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Chayei Sarah is a monumental Torah portion in the Book of Genesis (23:1-25:18) that establishes Hevron as one of our people’s holiest cities in the land of Israel and tells the story of the betrothal of Isaac and Rebekah. Thus, for the first time in Jewish history we witness the passing of the baton of history from one generation to the next.

We, the current generation, however, have yet to fulfill our Jewish destiny. Until there is peace between the tribes of Israel and between Israel and the Palestinians, we will not have fulfilled our raison d’etre as a people to be rod’fei shalom, pursuers of peace.

I offer a poetic midrash on Isaac’s and Rebekah’s encounter leading to their marriage. I love this story because their meeting is pure and sweet, and it suggests a paradigm of what is possible not only between individuals, but between the tribes that comprise the Jewish people today (e.g. Hareidi, Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, secular, liberal and right-wing Zionists, American, Israeli, Russian, British, European, Latin, etc.), and the peoples of the Middle East who know far too much polarization, suspicion, distrust, and hatred of each other.

A Weeping Isaac Alone in the Field

To be alone amidst shifting wheat
And rocks and sun
Beneath stirred-up clouds
And singing angel voices
Audible only by the wind.

‘I’ve secluded myself
As my father did
When he went out alone
Leaving all he knew
For a place he’d never been
That God would show him.

I can do nothing else myself
Because my father broke my heart
And crushed my soul
When he betrayed me
By stealing me away one early morning
Before my mother awoke
And nearly offered me up to his God.

When my mother learned what he had done,
Her soul passed from the world.

O how she loved me!
And filled me up
With laughter, love and tears.

Bereft now of them both,
I’m desolate in this world
And in this field.

O Compassionate One –
Do You hear me
From this arid place
Filled with snakes and beasts,
hatred and vengeance?

I sit here needing You.’

As if in response,
Suddenly from afar
There appears a caravan
Of people and camels,
Led by Eliezer, Abraham’s servant,
With a young girl.

Isaac, burdened by his grief
Does not look nor see.
He sits still
Lasuach basadeh
Meditating and weeping
Beneath the afternoon sun
And swirling clouds
And singing angels
Whom he cannot hear.

Rebekah asks:
‘Who is that man crying alone in the field?’
Eliezer says:
‘He is my master Isaac, Your intended one,
Whose seed you will carry
Into the future.’

“Vatipol min hagamal –
And she fell from her camel”
Shocked and afraid
Onto the hard ground
Yearning.

She veiled her face
And bowed her head
And together Rebekah and Isaac
Entered Sarah’s tent,
And she comforted him.

“The Creation” – A Poem by James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)

17 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in Art, Beauty in Nature, Divrei Torah, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Poetry

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And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I’m lonely–
I’ll make me a world.

And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.
Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That’s good!

Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,
And God rolled the light around in his hands
Until he made the sun;
And he set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said: That’s good!

Then God himself stepped down–
And the sun was on his right hand,
And the moon was on his left;
The stars were clustered about his head,
And the earth was under his feet.
And God walked, and where he trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up.

Then he stopped and looked and saw
That the earth was hot and barren.
So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And he spat out the seven seas–
He batted his eyes, and the lightnings flashed–
He clapped his hands, and the thunders rolled–
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.

Then the green grass sprouted,
And the little red flowers blossomed,
The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,
And the oak spread out his arms,
The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,
And the rivers ran down to the sea;
And God smiled again,
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around his shoulder.

Then God raised his arm and he waved his hand
Over the sea and over the land,
And he said: Bring forth! Bring forth!
And quicker than God could drop his hand,
Fishes and fowls
And beasts and birds
Swam the rivers and the seas,
Roamed the forests and the woods,
And split the air with their wings.
And God said: That’s good!

Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that he had made.
He looked at his sun,
And he looked at his moon,
And he looked at his little stars;
He looked on his world
With all its living things,
And God said: I’m lonely still.

Then God sat down–
On the side of a hill where he could think;
By a deep, wide river he sat down;
With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I’ll make me a man!

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand;
This great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in is his own image;

Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen. Amen.

Why I Don’t Want to Die

05 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by in Health and Well-Being, Life Cycle, Poetry, Tributes

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My ailing mother and I had a conversation yesterday that broke through the fog of her dementia enough for her to express her greatest fear as she confronts the end of her life.

My mother is 97 and suffers from serious macular degeneration, deafness and dementia. She still knows my brother and me, though at times I have to persuade her that I am, indeed, her son. She is mostly able to communicate what she feels and thinks, though her vocabulary has become more and more limited and her confusion has increased. She has little short-term or long-term memory left.

When I arrived at her assisted living home yesterday, the aids told me that she had had a very bad morning, had broken a piece of equipment and wanted no one to touch her. They had medicated her to calm her. She sat alone appearing still agitated.

She can’t do much of anything by herself anymore. She needs assistance getting out of bed, using the bathroom, getting dressed, and moving anywhere. For the first 95 years of her life she had been independent and self-sufficient, so her frustration at her incapacities is now severe.

For some time now she has told me that she wants to die, that since all her brothers and sisters are dead, and most of her friends, this is no way to live.

Seeing me yesterday after several bad hours changed her mood. I let her vent and kept touching her and asking her direct questions – “Are you in pain?” “Does anything hurt?” “Do you need to use the bathroom?” “Do you know who I am?” “Do you need anything from me?”

Then she said, despite her past readiness for death, “I don’t want to die!”

“Really, Mom? That’s a change,” I said. “Why do you not want to die now?”

“I don’t want to leave you and everyone,” she answered.

I knew that was true, but I had the sense she was really saying something else, something deeper, trying to tell of a fear about dying that she had not expressed to me before.

I asked on a hunch; “Mom – are you afraid that I will forget you?”

She looked at me (I always sit very close to her with about a foot between my face and hers so she can see and hear me), and then with a clarity she had not had since I had arrived – “Yes!”

I took the opportunity to tell her a fundamental truth about my life, despite her having been a very difficult personality for both my brother and me throughout our lives, the following:

“Mom, let me tell you something. Even now, where ever I go, you are with me, in my heart. After you die and are gone, you will still be here with me in my heart. You have taught me so much about loyalty to family and generosity to everyone, about love and kindness, about giving back to others and trying to make a difference in the world, about making a contribution. That is what you have always tried to do and I believe you did it all really well. Just as Daddy has been with me every day since he died [56 years ago], as I know he has been with you and has been with Michael [my brother], you will be with me always too. Don’t worry about that. I cannot nor do I wish to ever forget you. I love you and am grateful that you are and have been my mother!”

She smiled at me for the first time that day – “I love you so much, John.”

I stayed a while longer. She was convinced that she was holding something in her gnarled hands and she wanted to put it onto a tray sitting on her dresser. I assisted her for a while and then just took her hands in mine and rubbed them and asked her to flex her fingers for exercise. The “sandy” sensation that she had tried to release went away.

It was lunch time, and I left her with her aids. As I walked to my car I was reminded of the concluding verse of one of my favorite e e cummings poems:

…here is the deepest secret nobody knows
here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life
which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide
and this is the wonder that keeps the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

On Humility and Kindness

11 Sunday May 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Ethics, Poetry, Tributes

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In the next several weeks I will have the privilege of praising publicly two dear friends and colleagues on the occasion of significant milestones in their lives and the lives of their synagogue communities.

The first is Rabbi Ammi Hirsch, the Senior Rabbi of the Stephen S. Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan, on his tenth anniversary as that community’s spiritual leader.

Ammi is brilliant, eloquent, thoughtful, visionary, and dynamic, and is among our nation’s finest congregational rabbis. His greatest virtues, despite all these undeniable strengths, are his modesty, humility and kindness.

Ammi did not wish to be honored on this occasion, though he is without question well-deserving, but allowed his community to do so on the condition that the synagogue raise substantial funds to expand their synagogue’s youth programming. His intent is to engage and inspire the youngest generation of Jews to become our future Jewish leaders imbued with serious Jewish learning, strong ethical impulses, and a proud identification with the people and state of Israel.

The other is Emeritus Rabbi Martin Weiner, who is being honored by his congregation, Sherith Israel of San Francisco, on the 50th anniversary of his ordination.

I spent the first seven years of my rabbinate as Marty’s assistant. He is a rabbi’s rabbi, a wonderful teacher who models integrity, wisdom, humility, kindness, and a commitment to people. Marty has inspired many young women and men, including his own son Daniel, to become rabbis themselves. Always gentle and wise, Marty is beloved by so many because he gives of himself so selflessly.

As I reflect upon the virtues that distinguish both Ammi and Marty, humility, modesty and simple human kindness immediately come to mind.

As servant-leaders, they are worthy recipients of the gratitude and praise of their communities.

The following are reflections first on humility and then on kindness because the latter naturally springs from the former:

Know before Whom you stand. -Talmud, Berachot 28b

Humility is a river fed by two streams – a sense of limitation and a sense of awe. -Rabbi Norman Hirsch

Teach your tongue to say ‘I don’t know.’ – Talmud, B’rachot 4a

The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos. -Stephen J Gould, paleontologist

For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner…on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies…That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that. -Carl Sagan, astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author

Why was the human being created on the last day? So that if such a person is overcome by pride it might be said: ‘In the creation of the world, the mosquito came before you.’ -B’reishit Rabba

When a person comes into the world his hands are closed as if to say, ‘The whole world is mine, I want to possess it.’ When he leaves the world his hands are spread wide as if to say, ‘I possessed nothing of what is in the present world.’ -Kohelet Rabba

When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people. -Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

A thoughtful act or a kind word may pass in a moment, but the warmth and care behind it stay in the heart forever. – Marjolein Bastin, artist

The best portion of a good man’s life: his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love. -William Wordsworth, poet

Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.-Dr. Theodore Isaac Rubin, writer

Kindness is loving people more than they deserve. -Joseph Jourbert, moralist and essayist

Show me the man [woman] you honor, and I will know what kind of man [woman] you are. -Thomas Carlyle, Scottish philosopher

 

Erotic Poem, Intra-Divine Allegory – or Both?

18 Friday Apr 2014

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

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“The world is not as worthy as 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.”

So said Rabbi Akiva (2nd century Palestine), who believed that The Song of Songs, traditionally attributed to King Solomon as a young man, is an allegory between two lovers, God and Israel.

According to Moshe Idel, Professor of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Kabbalah – New Perspectives, 1990), the 12th century Spanish mystic, Rabbi Ezra ben Solomon of Gerona, the 13th century Castilian mystic, Rabbi Isaac ibn Avi Sahula, and others focus on what are called the theosophical processes taking place between the two lower Sefirot of Tiferet (symbolized by the bridegroom) and Malchut (symbolized by the bride). According to these Kabbalists, both the biblical description and human love itself reflect or symbolize higher events within the metaphysical structure of God. (p. 206)

In other accounts, such as that of the 13th century Spanish Kabbalist, Avraham ben Shmuel Abulafia, The Song of Songs is an allegory of the intellect and its union with God.

These allegorical interpretations of The Song of Songs, beginning with Rabbi Akiva, are the basis upon which The Song of Songs is read each year on the Shabbat during Pesach, for it is then that we celebrate our people’s redemption on the one hand and the hoped-for-redemption of God within God’s Divine Self on the other.

All that being said, this extraordinarily enriched poetry seems at first glance to be a purely secular poem (God’s Name is never mentioned) celebrating young, sensuous and erotic love, the passionate draw of two lovers yearning for relief from their existential loneliness:

“For Love is strong as death / Harsh as the grave. / Its tongues are flames, a fierce / And holy blaze” (8:6 – Translation by Marcia Falk)

Taking the Songs as a secular poem, an allegory, or both, the emotional and spiritual longing can be sated only by one’s human and/or Divine lover.

The great Rav Avraham Isaac Kook wrote of the higher love this way (Translation by Ben Zion Bokser):

“Expanses divine my soul craves. / Confine me not in cages, / of substance or of spirit.

I am love-sick / I thirst, / I thirst for God, / as a deer for water brooks.

Alas, who can describe my pain? / Who will be a violin / to express the songs of my grief?

I am bound to the world, / all creatures, / all people are my friends.

Many parts of my soul / are intertwined with them, / But how can I share with them my light.”

          Shabbat shalom and Moadim L’simchah!

 

 

 

 

A Rabbi at 93 and a Poem Called “The Promised Land” by Carl Dennis

09 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Holidays, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Jewish-Christian Relations, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Poetry, Social Justice, Tributes

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Rabbi Leonard Beerman has been in my life since I was 12 years old. He inspired so many in my generation and me to engage as young teens in the civil rights movement, to protest American military involvement in Vietnam, to apply for Conscientious Objector status during that war, to fight nuclear weapons proliferation, to engage in interfaith dialogue and create coalitions of decency on behalf of just causes, and to support the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people for a state of their own alongside a secure Israel despite (as Leonard put it many years ago) Palestinian “cruelty and stupidity.”

Leonard was a rabbinic student in 1948 learning Hebrew in Jerusalem when the War of Independence broke out, and he aided in the effort to help establish the Jewish state.

For the last 65 years Leonard has been a uniquely courageous and consistent voice in the American Rabbinate advocating for human rights here, in Israel and around the world despite personal ostracism and political blow-back at the hands of many fellow Jews. Leonard spoke as he did because he believes that the principles of justice, compassion and peace as articulated by the Biblical Prophets are primary Jewish ethical concerns.

Leonard is as eloquent and provocative a speaker as there is in American Judaism today. I grew up hearing the gentle resonance of his voice and the prophetic power of his words. His message at once inspires me, comforts me and forces me to think critically even if I do not agree with him. Even so, Leonard is always worth hearing because like the Biblical Prophet he understands that speaking truth is more important than feeding his community what he knows they want to hear.

Today, April 9, is Leonard’s 93rd birthday, and I send him birthday wishes with hopes that he will enjoy many more years of productive activism and good health with his dear wife Joan, his adoring children and grandchildren, and his many cherished colleagues, friends and admirers.

Leonard and I meet for lunch every few months to talk, share stories and thoughts about issues great and small, personal, Jewish and worldly. Last week when we met he brought me a poem that evokes the Jerusalem I love of Jewish messianic dreams and the real Jerusalem that I also love that inspires so much passion by so many and is one of the core issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The poem, called “My Promised Land” by Carl Dennis, is at once wistful, melancholic and hopeful. It is worth reading at our Passover Seders because it reminds us of our messianic dreams and of the work that is yet to be done for the sake of peace:

“The land of Israel my mother loves / Gets by without the luxury of existence / And still wins followers, / Though it can’t be found on the map / West of Jordan or south of Lebanon, / Though what can be found / bears the same name, / Making for confusion.

Not the land I fought her about for years / But the one untarnished by the smoke of history, / Where no one informs the people of Hebron or Jericho / They’re squatting on property that isn’t theirs, / Where every settler can remember wandering.

The dinners I spoiled with shouting / Could have been saved, / Both of us lingering quietly in our chairs, / If I’d guessed the truth that now is obvious, / That she wasn’t lavishing all her love / On the country that doesn’t deserve so rich a gift / But on the one that does, the one not there, / That she hoped good news would reach its borders.

And cross into the land of the righteous and merciful / That the Prophets spoke of in their hopeful moods, / That was loved by the red-eyed rabbis of Galicia / Who studied every word of the book and prayed / To get one thread of the meaning right; / The promised Land where the great and small / Hurry to school and the wise are waiting.”

 

 

 

The Big Bang and “Cosmos: A Space Time Odyssey”

21 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by in Art, Beauty in Nature, Ethics, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Poetry

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“What are you doing earth – in heaven? / Tell me – what are you doing – silent earth?”

I recalled this two-line poem by Giuseppe Umbaretti (1888–1970) recently because in the last two weeks the relationship between heaven and earth has come sharply into focus in a new 13-episode Fox television series called “Cosmos: A Space Time Odyssey” that explores the beginnings of the universe. It is narrated by the astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson, the Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

In addition, the Wall Street Journal reported this week that scientists have detected in patterns of gravity waves in the radiation that lingers in space that they believe is the faint afterglow of the big bang. Before, the big bang was only a theory of the universe’s origins, but with this discovery astrophysicists and astronomers believe that the big bang actually occurred 14 billion years ago.

“Cosmos: A Space Time Odyssey” has stunning graphics and spectacular photography, so it is a magnificent series to watch. As I experienced that first episode I was struck by awe and wonder and by how very small we human beings are against the staggering size of the cosmos and the enormity of time that has passed since the big bang.

In the first episode Dr. Tyson sought to make intelligible the enormity of cosmic time by placing the events of the last 14 billion years on a single one-year cosmic calendar.

The first two hundred million years, he said, were quiet, but then things began to happen. The first stars appeared on January 10, thousands of galaxies emerged on January 13, and hundreds of billions of suns on March 13. The birth of our own sun came much later, on August 31, four and a half billion years ago.

On September 21 life began. On December 17 sea creatures filled the oceans. The first flower bloomed on December 28, and on December 30 a great asteroid crashed into the earth wiping into extinction the dinosaurs.

On December 31,at precisely 11:59 PM and 46 seconds, 14 seconds before the cosmic year ended at mid-night, our human ancestors stood erect, walked the earth, looked up, and contemplated the cosmos.

Consider how far we’ve advanced in just the last 57 years since Sputnik and 35 years since Neil Armstrong walked the lunar surface.

Where formerly imagination and the spirit world claimed heaven as their domain, the space age has enabled us humans to enter that formerly inaccessible realm.

Everything connected with our space program has brought us deeper scientific knowledge and achievements the ancients could not have imagined.

The staggering immensity of it all boggles the mind. Science is now postulating, as religion has always affirmed, that every species of life, tens of thousands of diverse forms, have come from a single atom exploding in the big bang.

This recognition of our oneness with the universe is where science and faith come together. Both inspire surprise and awe. Both evoke appreciation and gratitude. And in our hearts our response can only be one based in love, because in oneness we understand that all things, all creatures and all existence belong to each other, are a part of one another and share together our one universe.

We live, each of us, in a sea of energy that moves all things forward. Our task is to attune ourselves to that flow of energy, to the life of the world and the surprise of being, that we might flow with the greater family of life, and become one with the same force that moves the sun, moon and stars.

Our yearning to belong and be a part of that oneness is fulfilled when we give back of ourselves in love to others and the world, thereby preserving and perpetuating what has been given to us.

Shabbat shalom!

Moses and God’s Tears – A Midrash for Parashat Vayikra

07 Friday Mar 2014

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

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So often God called upon Moses – / Three times they met; / first at  the flaming bush, / then on Sinai amidst rock and stone,  / and finally before the Tent of Meeting,  / that Moses might intuit God’s mind / and soothe God’s broken heart / as a lover brings comfort to her beloved.

Since creation / God yearned to bridge the chasm / formed when the Creator pulled away / to open space for the universe.

Alone – exiled within the Divine Self / The holy Name, YHVH, / was divided from Itself as well / when the vessels holding the light shattered / and matter was flung to the far reaches of the universe – / the upper spheres were divorced from the lower, / male from female, / the primal Father from the Mother, / Tiferet from Malchut, / Hakadosh Baruch Hu from Sh’chinah, / Adonai from K’nesset Yisrael.

God yearned to restore what was once whole, / And not remain alone.

Before time and speech / and earth hurled into space / God appointed the soul of the Shepherd-Prince Moses as prophet / and endowed him with hearing-sight / and intuitive-wisdom / and integrated-knowledge.

No one but Moses / came so near to God / for all the rest of humankind / has inadequate vision and understanding.

Moses alone saw with his ears / and heard with his eyes / and tasted with his mind / to withstand the Light.

The prophet descended from Sinai aglow, / the primordial Light shielded through a veil / with divine ink-drops touched to his forehead  / radiating everywhere  / and illuminating the earth’s four corners.

Moses descended as if upon angel’s wings, / weightless cradling the stone tablets / in the eye of raging winds.

Despite his soaring soul, / the prophet was the aleph of Vayikra / most modest of all the letters / unheard – only seen, / to be known internally, intuitively, / as the most humble of anyone / ever to walk the earth.

Though Moses appeared as a Prince in Egypt / his destiny was to be a lonely shepherd / to gather his sheep and God’s people / to draw them by example / nearer to God.

There was so much God needed from Moses – / to bring the plagues / to overpower Pharaoh, / to liberate the people and lead them to Sinai, / to commune with God and pass along the Word, / to construct the Tabernacle and create a home for God / that divinity / might dwell within every Israelite heart  / and thereby comfort God from loneliness.

After all God’s expectations and demands /we might expect Moses’ strength to be depleted, / that he would be exhausted to the bone / and ready to say; / “Enough! O Redeemer – find a new prophet!  / I can no longer bear the burden / and be Your voice and create bridges! / You are Almighty God! / I am but flesh!  / My strength is gone! / My time expired!”

“Nonsense!” proclaimed the YHVH. / “I am not yet ready for your retirement! / My world remains shattered, / My light obscured, / My heart still broken and aching? / I need you to teach My people / and instill in their hearts / a deep love that may heal My wound. / for I cannot do this for Myself.”

Alas, the Creator-Redeemer’s needs were clear – / to be close, so very close to Moses / that the prophet and Israel together / might wipe away God’s tears / and restore God’s heart  / and heal God’s Name.