The Courage to Stand Up, With Love

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNMuJWw6syY]

Here’s a video of my sermon if you’d rather watch it than listen to it. (It’s here on YouTube.) Or, you can read on, below…

 

Do you remember how you felt when you heard the news about the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting?

I remember feeling shock and horror and disbelief. I remember feeling grief. I remember our synagogue sanctuary filled with members of the Northern Berkshire community who came together for a vigil in grief and remembrance.

And I remember coming to shul the very next Shabbat — with a prickle of anxiety running through my veins — and stopping short when I saw the “graffiti love-in” all around our front door.

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I knew it was coming. Someone I did not know had reached out to me earlier that week, saying that a group of non-Jewish allies wanted to organize a show of support for us. They didn’t want to surprise us in a way that would compound our feelings of un-safety, so they asked first.

But even though I knew they were doing something, I couldn’t picture what it would be. I didn’t know how it would feel to drive up to our shul one week after the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre and be greeted with chalk art and signs and cards and banners proclaiming that the North Adams community values us and wants us to be safe and wants us to be here.

Their gift made me weep tears of joy — because we are seen, and cherished, and uplifted. And not just by other Jews but by non-Jewish people, by people who are not part of our community or part of our covenant. But they saw that we were afraid, and they stood up for us and said, “you matter; we want you here; we’ve got your back.”

There’s a reason that the most oft-repeated commandment in Torah instructs us to love the stranger for we were strangers in the land of Egypt. Thirty-six times Torah tells us to love the stranger, the immigrant, the refugee, the vulnerable population, because we know how it feels to be in those shoes. The instruction is in the plural: v’ahavtem et ha-ger, y’all shall love the stranger. This isn’t an individual commandment: it’s a communal mitzvah. Together, we love the stranger because we know how it feels.

We know how it feels.

And that’s why I have two signs on my condo front door. One is a blue mogen David that says “Chai Y’all!” I want it to be clear to anyone who drives by that I am Jewish, I am here, I am visible, and I am welcoming! (And I say y’all.) The other is a sign that says Black Lives Matter.

I know that some Jews are uncomfortable with the Black Lives Matter movement because of real or perceived connections between BLM and pro-Palestinian sentiment. I empathize with that discomfort. And there are many intellectual conversations we can have about BLM and Israel / Palestine. But I believe that Jewish values call us to stand up for Black lives even if we feel some discomfort. We need to “de-center” ourselves, because right now this isn’t about us — it’s about standing up for the victims of prejudice and violence. And that’s work we do with our hearts and our souls, not just our intellect.

The Black Lives Matter movement is a grassroots coalition of many organizations, focused on saving the lives of Black people and people of color by changing how we do public safety and policing.

The vast majority of people protesting or holding vigils or putting signs on their lawns are not thinking about international issues (including the Middle East). They’re thinking about George Floyd who died gasping “I can’t breathe” to the officer kneeling on his neck. They’re thinking about Eric Garner who died gasping the same thing to the officer holding him in a chokehold. They’re thinking of Tamir Rice, killed at twelve because an officer mistook his toy for a gun. They’re thinking about Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and Atiana Jefferson and Stephon Clark and Botham Jean and Philando Castile.

And maybe they’re thinking about the Greensboro Four, brutally beaten for daring to sit at a Woolworth’s lunch counter. Or Emmett Till, lynched because someone thought he smiled at a white woman. Or the countless Black souls ripped from home and brought to this nation in chains. Or the reality that Black people are dying of covid-19 at rates far higher than white people. Or 400 years of communal experience and communal trauma showing them just how little Black lives have mattered on these shores.

Just as we need non-Jewish allies to stand up for us when there are attacks on Jews, Black people in this country need allies to stand up for them when they are under attack.

And it’s not an either/or. There are many Black Jews who feel keenly both of these forms of oppression, both antisemitism and racism. Not in our little rural community, but in the broader Jewish community. We owe it to them to stand up for them…. and we need to stand up for non-Jewish Black lives, too.

Rabbi Margaret Frisch Klein, who serves as a police chaplain, expresses the needs of this moment with a policing metaphor from Sergeant Dan Rouse: “If we get a call about a domestic violence incident [at a particular address], we don’t stop at every other house along the way. If you go to a fundraiser for breast cancer, you don’t stop at every other fundraiser along the way and say all cancers matter. Right now, Black lives are hurting.” That’s the call we need to answer.

Remember how it felt to see those signs of support on our synagogue doors? I hope that’s how it feels for Black people to see a Black Lives Matter sign. It signifies that someone who sees their trauma and their fear is willing to stand up in the name of their safety. It means that someone who maybe doesn’t look like them nevertheless wants for them basic human rights and human dignity.

I mentioned earlier the discomfort that I know some of us feel around the connection between Black Lives Matter and support for the Palestinian cause. I honor the discomfort, and I understand it. And… I think our discomfort is part of our spiritual work in this time of American reckoning with institutionalized racism. I think part of our work as white-skinned Jews is saying: what you’re enduring is untenable and we stand with you against it, and any disagreements we might have about politics can wait.

We need to stand up for each other even when we feel discomfort. Safety and basic human dignity are the birthright of every human being, no matter what — or at least, they should be, and if they’re not, then we have work to do. And standing up for one another’s safety and dignity is a moral imperative more important than any political disagreement.

In her book Braving the Wilderness, social scientist Brene Brown notes that the English word courage is related to the French coeur: heart. Having courage means having heart. Having courage means listening to the heart and acting from the heart.

It takes courage to stand up for our fellow human beings when they are under threat. It takes courage to stand up and say: I will fight for your human rights and your dignity and your right to live safely. Even if your skin looks different from mine. Even if your politics are different from mine.

Standing up for Black lives is an act of hope that we can build a better America, an America where everyone truly enjoys the rights that our Declaration of Independence enumerates, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, when that Declaration was written, the only people who merited those rights were white men! Thank God our laws no longer enshrine those injustices. But those injustices persist, and our work is not complete.

Standing up for Black lives asks us to confront our own stuff that might get in the way. It asks us to do our own inner work, and to learn how to be actively antiracist — to resist and change the subtle and pervasive racism that’s baked in to our nation’s history and its present.  That kind of inner work is exactly what this season of teshuvah, repentance and return, is for.

Remember the kindness our non-Jewish North Adams neighbors extended to us after Pittsburgh? Standing up for Black lives is how we can “pay it forward.”

Torah asks us to love the stranger, because we were strangers in the land of Egypt and we know how it feels. We know how it feels! And we know how it feels when our neighbors stand up for us. May our knowledge move us to stand up for Black lives with hope and courage and heart.

 

 

For further reading: from the Jewish Council on Public Affairs, Black Lives Matter, American Jews, and Anti-Semitism: Distinguishing Between the Organization(s), the Movement, and the Ubiquitous Phrase [pdf] 2020.

 

This is Rabbi Rachel’s sermon from Rosh Hashanah morning (cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi)

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Holy at Home, With Love

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTun5Lk9PfE]

Here’s a recording of my sermon if you’d rather watch it than read it. (It’s here on YouTube.) Or, read below…

 

Not quite two thousand years ago, the Roman army sacked the second Temple.

That’s a tough place to begin my words to you on erev Rosh Hashanah! But in a way, it’s where tonight’s story begins.

The Temple was the center of our universe. It was our axis mundi, the holy connection point between this world and God.

And then it was destroyed.

Judaism could have ended when the second Temple fell. The Temple was the site of our daily offerings to God. Our whole religious system was built around it! We could have given up hope. That could have been the end of the Jewish people and the Jewish story.

Thank God, it wasn’t. That destruction sparked a paradigm shift in how we “do Jewish.” Jewish life become portable, something we could take with us into every corner of the globe. The center of Jewish life became the synagogue, which aspires to be a beit knesset (house of community gathering), beit midrash (house of study), and beit tefilah (house of prayer) all in one.

And, some would say: the center of Jewish life became the Shabbes table. Tradition teaches that the table where we celebrate Shabbat each week is a mikdash me’aht, a tiny sanctuary. The home table replaces the altar of old; the twin loaves of challah replace the doubled Shabbat offerings on that altar; and holy space becomes… wherever we make it.

Never has that seemed so true to me as it does right now… or as necessary.

Six months ago when we began sheltering-in-place to stop the spread of covid-19, we hoped that a few months of disciplined quarantine would quell the pandemic and that we would be back together again in person by Rosh Hashanah. Instead here we still are: making Rosh Hashanah in our homes, keeping each other safe by staying physically apart.

Our synagogue is still a house of gathering, a house of study, and a house of prayer… and right now all three of those houses are our own houses. Our challenge is learning how to create sacred space here at home where we are. Learning how to create community together when we can’t embrace or sing in harmony. Learning how to find holiness in our everyday spaces, and how to feel community connections even when we’re apart.

It turns out that Judaism has some spiritual technologies designed for exactly these purposes. The Shabbes table is one of them — a white tablecloth, maybe some flowers, the Shabbes candles burning to remind us of the first light of Creation and the light of revelation at Sinai. These are tools for making sacred space.

Another is tzitzit, wearing fringes on the corner of our garments to remind us of the mitzvot — that’s a tool for mindfulness, and for community connection. Our community’s tradition of making bracelets each year serves the same purpose. For several years now we’ve printed silicone bracelets for the Days of Awe. This year’s bracelets read:

Love ♥ Ahavat Olam ♥ Rebirth ♥ Courage ♥ Resilience ♥ Teshuvah ♥

There are two transliterated Hebrew words or phrases. One is teshuvah — repentance, return, turning ourselves in the right direction again. That’s the fundamental move of this season, and that word has been on our bracelets every year we’ve gotten them printed. The other is ahavat olam, a phrase from daily liturgy. It means unending love, or forever love, or eternal love. Our tradition tells us that God loves us with ahavat olam.

For some of us “the G-word” is a stumbling block. Which God, what God, what do we mean by God — God far above, God deep within, Parent, Sovereign, Creator, Beloved? And for some of us “the L-word” might be equally challenging. The word love gets so overused it becomes almost meaningless.

“Wait ’til you hear this song, you’re going to love it!”

Fiddler on the Roof: “Do you love me?” (“Do I what?!”)

My son would tell you that he loves Minecraft and plain vanilla soft-serve. That’s not the same thing I mean when I tell him that I love him.

When I say I love my child, I’m talking about something profound and soul-expanding. If “I love ice cream” is a five on the love scale, maybe “I love my child” is 500… and ahavat olam is infinity. And I think in this pandemic year, we need connection with that sense of infinite ahavat olam more than ever before.

That’s why love — ahavat olam — is our theme for this year’s Days of Awe. And our four cups tonight at our Rosh Hashanah seder represent different facets of love.

The first cup was for creative love. One of my favorite teachings holds that God created the universe of love, because God yearned to be in relationship with us.

Our second cup was for courageous love. Love asks us to risk disappointing each other. To risk speaking difficult truths. To act with courage and integrity, even when we feel as though we’re in the wilderness.

Our third cup just now was for resilient love. In this season of teshuvah, love asks of us the resilience to honestly turn our lives around.

And before Mourner’s Kaddish we’ll bless a cup of tears, evoking love that remembers.

Tonight we’re celebrating Rosh Hashanah while sheltering-in-place. We’re making our home spaces holy, and learning how to feel connected as a community from all the various places where we are. These are actions that we take to protect each other, to prevent viral spread, to care for those who are medically vulnerable and immunocompromised. They’re actions we take out of love.

Our bracelets this year also say rebirth: because tradition says that today the world is reborn, because this season is our chance to begin again. They say resilience, because the new year calls us to resilience; because the pandemic calls us to resilience; because authentic spiritual life calls us to resilience. And they say courage, because starting over takes courage. And living during a pandemic takes courage. And as Brene Brown reminds us, “courage” has its roots in the French word coeur: heart. Courage takes heart. Which brings us back once again to love.

May these Days of Awe strengthen our resilience and our courage and our heart. May they help us find holiness at home, here in all the physical places where we are. And may we emerge from this sacred season more able to give and receive love in all the ways that our world most needs.

L’shanah tovah.

 

This was R’ Rachel’s brief d’varling from tonight’s Erev Rosh Hashanah Seder (cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.)

 

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Runway to the Days of Awe 7: Ready or not…

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Dear CBI Members and Friends,

Selichot is coming up on Saturday night — this year our Selichot services are a partnership between the three Reform congregations in the Berkshires; RSVP here! — and the holidays follow soon on its heels. (Here’s the schedule.) Do you feel ready?

One of my favorite lines in my Passover haggadah is an explanation of why we eat matzah: to remind us of the waybread our ancestors baked in haste, and to highlight the spiritual truth that if we wait until we feel fully ready, we might never take the leap at all. 

Like everything else in our core story of peoplehood, this teaching about matzah as a reminder to leap even if we don’t feel fully ready can be a powerful one in every era. The Days of Awe don’t wait until a convenient time, until we feel prepared, until the pandemic is over and we can convene in person again. New moon is on its way. And when that first sliver appears in our night sky, it will be 5781, ready or not. 

Readiness is overrated. It’s almost time to start this journey — even if we’re not sure we have everything we need, even if we’re not sure quite where we’re going or how we’ll get there. Spiritual life is like that sometimes. (Spiritual life is like that most of the time.)

The holidays are almost upon us. I’m humbled and honored to be walking this path with all of you in this unprecedented year. It’s okay if we don’t feel ready. Together we’ll step into this High Holiday season that will be unlike any other we’ve ever known. 

Together we’ll learn and pray and sing — and hopefully laugh — and maybe cry — and together we’ll make meaning in this difficult pandemic year. Our holidays and prayers and spiritual practices helped previous generations through countless tragedies and struggles. This year, they’ll help us through ours.

Ready or not, here they come. 

See you on Zoom very soon.

Blessings to all —

Rabbi Rachel

The Runway to the Days of Awe

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Runway to the Days of Awe 6: Inner Work

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Dear CBI Members and Friends,

This week’s high holiday preparation message is about the inner work of getting ready. 

One tradition teaches us to spend the month before Rosh Hashanah repairing our interpersonal relationships, so that during the Ten Days of Teshuvah (between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) we can focus on repairing our relationship with God. Another tradition suggests that we do the personal / spiritual work of examining our relationship with God before the holidays, and use the Ten Days of Teshuvah to repair relationships with each other.

Either way, this is the perfect time of year to think about our relationships with self and others and God. What’s working, and what needs repair? Where do we need to genuinely apologize and make amends? How do we need to change our actions in order to be better people in the year to come? 

To get your mind and heart and soul moving along these lines, here is a link to a beautiful poetic English-language reflection by Rick Dinitz on teshuvah (repentance / return), singable to the same melody as Kol Nidre. It is accompanied by a recording, “liner notes,” and explanations:

Here are links to a few posts and sermons from years past:

If you’re open to reading something longer, here are two books that are invaluable to me — I return to them every single year at this season, and they always enrich and inform my season:

Both are available as bound books or as Kindle e-books, and both are extraordinary.

Take some time this week to delve into this inner work – looking at your relationship with yourself, and with others, and with tradition, and with our Source. The more of it we do, the more easily we’ll be able to stand before God (whatever that word means to each of us) with a clear and open heart.

Blessings to all,

Rabbi Rachel

The Runway to the Days of Awe

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Schedule for the Days of Awe 5781

For Zoom login information, contact the CBI office (cbinadams @ gmail dot com) to join our email list — the Zoom link will not be publicly posted anywhere. Our services will also be streamed via Facebook Live on the CBI Facebook page, though we hope you will join us via Zoom so that we can see your face! For more information on what to expect, here are our weekly Runway to the Days of Awe posts. For all Zoom services, if you are able, please log in ten minutes before the service begins.

Before the Days of Awe

Sept 12 – Selichot: An Evening of Spiritual Preparation. 8pm, login 7:50pm.

Selichot invites us to open our hearts as we prepare to welcome the new year. Join the rabbis of Reform congregations across Berkshire County for a heart-opening Selichot celebration. Our celebration will include havdalah, poetry, prayer and music to help each of us move into the Days of Awe with intention. We invite you to set up a sacred space for yourself as you join us via Zoom, as well as paper and pen for some reflective writing. Registration is required — RSVP here!

Sept 13 – Socially Distanced and Masked Cemetery Service – 2pm, CBI cemetery, Walker Street.  

Rosh Hashanah

Sept 18 – Erev Rosh Hashanah Zoom Seder – log-in 7:20pm, seder begins 7:30pm

Sign up by September 7 to receive a bag of seder supplies!

Sept 19 – Rosh Hashanah Morning Zoom – log-in 9:50am, service begins 10am

Sept 20 – Second Day Rosh Hashanah Zoom – log-in 9:50am, service begins 10am

Tashlich – Socially Distanced and Masked at the River – 1:30pm

Bring your own bread. At the suspension bridge at TOURISTS, across the street from CBI.

Sept 20 – Socially Distanced and Masked Family Service, outside CBI – 2pm / Bring your own blanket to camp out on! Rain date is the following Sunday, 9/27. Canceled because of multiple cases of covid-19 at Pine Cobble.

Yom Kippur

Sept 27 – Kol Nidre Zoom – log-in 5:50pm, service begins 6pm

Sept 28 – Yom Kippur Morning Zoom With Yizkor – log-in 9:50am, service begins 10am

Yom Kippur Afternoon Zoom – log-in 2:50pm, service begins 3pm

Ne’ilah Zoom – log-in 5:50pm service begins 6pm 

Following Ne’ilah, we’ll keep the Zoom room open for folks who want to schmooze and be together while breaking their fast.

Sukkot

Stay tuned for a link to our sukkah sign-up sheet, coming soon! (We will ask people to sign up to use the synagogue sukkah, both so we can try to avoid accidentally crowding each other in the sukkah, and so that we can do contact tracing if God forbid there is a case of covid-19 in our community during or after the holiday.)

How to Prepare for Zoom Services

Thanks to Steve Silbert for this sketchnote of how to prepare our home spaces to become sacred spaces for the Zoom Days of Awe!
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Runway to the Days of Awe 5: What to Expect

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Dear CBI Members and Friends,

The Days of Awe are drawing nearer! I’m writing this week with more information about what you can expect from our Zoom services in general, and specifically, what you can expect from our erev Rosh Hashanah ma’ariv (evening service) and seder. 

Days of Awe on Zoom

The Bar’chu / Call to Prayer – one slide from our digital machzor.

Our services on Zoom will not be exactly like the services we’ve held in person in years past. Trying to replicate the experience of being together in shul might just remind us of what we’re missing (in-person togetherness). Instead, we’re embracing what’s different about this year, and what’s possible in this new medium that we can’t do in person.

Never fear: we will still have many of the features of “regular” high holiday services: familiar words, familiar melodies, familiar prayers. Avinu Malkeinu (as a niggun on Saturday; with words once it’s no longer Shabbes), shofar-blowing (before Shabbat and Rosh Hashanah formally begin, and on second day Rosh Hashanah and at Ne’ilah), and more.

There will also be images on every slide. And occasional videos. (We can’t sing together in harmony over Zoom, but we can sing along with some of the Jewish world’s finest!) Our encounters with Torah and haftarah will be different than ever before, sometimes involving video, sometimes involving new voices. Every so often I’ll stop the slideshare for a moment of “face to face” time, where instead of seeing the words and images in the slides, we’ll see each others’ faces and connect as a community.

On the second morning of Rosh Hashanah, our service will interweave liturgy with a selection of contemporary poems. We’ll also have the opportunity to hear shofar on the second morning (not on the first morning, because traditionally shofar is not blown on Shabbat.) Our service on second morning will not include a sermon, but will include a Torah video and discussion.

Speaking of sermons, all of my sermons will also be shared on YouTube for those who want to watch the sermons but aren’t inclined to daven (pray) with us on Zoom or Facebook Live.

(Our hope is that most of you will join our services via Zoom, so that we can see each others’ faces. We will also “broadcast” our services from Zoom to the synagogue’s Facebook page. Those who participate via Facebook instead of Zoom will miss the intimacy of the times when we stop the screenshare for “face to face” time, and won’t be able to see the faces of others in our community — but will be able to view the services asynchronously, e.g. after they are over.)

I’m spending the summer crafting this new High Holiday experience for all of us, and connecting with colleagues across the denominations to share ideas and best practices. I’m deeply hopeful that our High Holiday Zoom experiences will speak to your hearts.

About Our Rosh Hashanah Seder

The order of our Erev Rosh Hashanah Seder.

The Sefardic / Mizrahi custom of the Rosh Hashanah seder is ancient — dating back at least as far as the Talmud, circa 500 C.E. — and in many homes quite elaborate. In a traditional Rosh Hashanah seder, there are many symbolic foods whose names are Hebrew puns — e.g. eating carrots (gezer) as a wish for positive judgement, because their name sounds like gezerah (decree, as in God’s decree of our fate.)

Our Rosh Hashanah seder will feature four cups (just like the Passover seder). The first three cups (or sips) will be grape juice or wine. Our fourth cup will be a cup from which we do not drink — a cup of salt water, representing our tears of mourning as we prepare for mourner’s kaddish.

Our Rosh Hashanah seder will also feature symbolic foods, some of which we will distribute in our High Holiday boxes (sign up by September 7 if you want one!)

We’ll taste a bite of maror as we let go of the old year’s bitterness. (Do you have a jar of horseradish? If not, how about a bite of raw onion, or even a sip of vinegar.) We’ll eat pomegranate seeds during the prayer that speaks of Torah and mitzvot, as an embodied wish for mitzvot in the new year. We’ll eat dates before the Bar’chu as a symbol of meaningful relationship. And at the end of the seder we’ll bless apples and honey (sweet foods for a sweet year) and bless a round food (a roll, a challah, even a rice cracker — whatever you’ve got) to represent the cycle of time and how each year we come back around to the beginning again. 

(We plan to include pomegranates, dates, apples and honey in the Holiday Box. It’s up to you to come up with grape juice or wine, salt water, a round challah or roll or cracker, and something bitter / spicy for maror.)

In between these seder steps, we’ll pray the evening service, sanctifying the transition from day to evening, from weekday to Shabbat, from ordinary time to festival time, and from the old year to the new.

I can’t wait to celebrate with you soon. 

Blessings to all,

Rabbi Rachel

The Runway to the Days of Awe

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Runway to the Days of Awe 4: Clothing

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 Dear CBI Members and Friends,

Some of you have asked: if we’re gathering digitally for the Days of Awe, does that mean we can invite our friends and family who aren’t in northern Berkshire to join us? The answer is YES!

Feel free to forward these notes to your friends and family who live elsewhere, and invite them to join the CBI email list so they can receive links for connecting to our services during the Days of Awe. This offers us new opportunities to build community and experience our interconnections in new ways.

In the second post in this series, I talked about making our home prayer space feel special and how to prepare a home space for Zoom prayer. (That post has now been updated with an illustration of what it might look like to ready our space for Zooming into the New Year — deep thanks to Steve Silbert for that!)

This week’s suggestion for high holiday preparations has to do with clothing. Just as a white tablecloth can transform a regular table into a sacred space, clothes can help us transform how we feel in body, heart, mind, and spirit.

One of my earliest high holiday memories is of going shopping with my mom in August, looking for a new fall outfit to wear to High Holiday services. (It was also always far too hot in south Texas to wear heavy wool fall clothes at Rosh Hashanah, but somehow I remember doing so anyway… )

This year many of us may not be shopping, for budgetary reasons or for covid-19 reasons. But I want to encourage us to choose something special to wear for Zoom services, even if it’s something we already own.

Even though we’ll be participating from home (and therefore could show up in pajamas or sweatpants), resist that temptation! Instead make your pre-holiday shower into a spiritual “mikvah,” washing away the schmutz of the old year, and put on something special. Choose clothes that are comfortable and in which you feel good. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur morning, if you’re going to engage in our annual moment of Jewish yoga (prostration / child’s pose on the floor during the Great Aleinu), make sure you’re wearing clothes that allow for movement.

Getting a bit dressed up is a way of physically reminding ourselves that we’re entering a festival. Even when we’re celebrating from home, we can harness the embodied experience of dressing up to help lift us out of ordinary consciousness and ordinary time. 

And on Yom Kippur, remember the tradition of wearing white throughout the holiday, symbolizing purity and new beginnings. You can read more about that here: Preparing for Yom Kippur.

Blessings,

Rabbi Rachel

The Runway to the Days of Awe

Week One: Seven Weeks Until Rosh Hashanah
Week Two: Creating Sacred Space at Home
Week Three: Music
Week Four: Clothing

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Runway to the Days of Awe 3: Music

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Dear CBI Members and Friends,

Each year I choose an “anthem” — a melody and/or a setting of traditional words — to be our melodic throughline for the Days of Awe. (Last year’s anthem was “Come, Come, Whoever You Are.”)

This year our anthem adapts a beautiful setting of Ahavat Olam (the prayer that speaks of God’s unending love for us) with new English words written for this season.

Here’s a recording of Ahavat Olam (with the traditional words) as sung by the Platt brothers to a melody by Gabe Mann and Piper Rutman:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yhk_obX7CQ]

If you can’t see the embedded YouTube video, here’s a direct link to the Platt brothers’ version.

And here’s a recording of our English words which we will sometimes use in addition to tradition’s Hebrew words:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzZpbLa7C3s]

If you can’t see the embedded YouTube video, here’s a direct link to our version.

We Are All Loved

We are all loved by unending love
We’ll be reborn in love
We’ll do what’s right in love
Please heal the world in love
For all the world needs Your light of love.

And so, Source of All, we return to You:
Teach us how to fulfill, show us what to do.
Lift our hearts, fill our souls with love every day.
Inspire our lives, help us find the way
As You guide us onward, so we say:

We are all loved by unending love
We’ll be reborn in love
We’ll do what’s right in love
Please heal the world in love
For all the world needs Your light of love.

(English words by R’ Rachel Barenblat and R’ David Markus)

I invite you to listen to the Platt Brothers version and/or to the one I recorded often between now and the holidays — it will inscribe the melody on your hearts and minds so that when we sing it together during the Days of Awe, it will be a familiar tune.

I invite you also to look back at previous years’ recordings for the Days of Awe — here’s last year’s music post, which contains YouTube videos and audio recordings of many of the melodies we hear each year at this special season.

May this music soak into our hearts. May it uplift us and energize us and carry us through this year’s Days of Awe and beyond.

Blessings to all,

Rabbi Rachel

The Runway to the Days of Awe

Week One: Seven Weeks Until Rosh Hashanah
Week Two: Creating Sacred Space at Home
(This post is week three)

And here’s a sketchnote from Steve Silbert about creating sacred space at home:

ZoomingIn

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Runway to the Days of Awe 2: Creating Sacred Space at Home

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcNzg50fw7g]

This is the second post in a series; the first was Seven weeks until Rosh Hashanah. This one is available as a YouTube video (embedded above — or here at YouTube) and also as text that appears below.

Dear CBI Members and Friends,

Today I’m writing with an invitation to think about how to make our home prayer space feel like sacred space. 

When the Temple was destroyed so long ago, we had to learn how to connect with God and holiness and tradition from smaller sacred spaces in all the places to which we were scattered. (That’s how the synagogue became the center of Jewish life and practice.) In today’s pandemic reality, we’re in a new kind of diaspora — scattered into our homes for safety’s sake. We need to learn how to sanctify our homes, how to make our home-spaces feel holy.

Many of us use the same table for meals, for homework or paying bills, and for joining Zoom services. (And we likely use the same laptop or tablet or phone for secular purposes and for sacred ones, too.) How can we transform a home-space into a prayer-space, and how can we use our devices to help us focus instead of distracting us? Here are some ideas:

  • a festive tablecloth on which to place your laptop or tablet or streaming device;
  • a scarf or piece of pretty fabric to use as a table runner to make it extra-special;
  • a vase in which to put flowers on your festive table;
  • candlesticks in which to light festival candles on the eve of each holiday;
  • a framed photograph of loved ones on your table next to your Zoom device, to connect you with family and friends in this pandemic time (this may be especially meaningful on Yom Kippur when we say Yizkor memorial prayers);
  • go for a walk in the beautiful Berkshire outdoors and find beautiful objects in nature (stones, shells, pebbles) to place on your table.

I’ve found that putting down a tablecloth makes a big difference — it transforms the table where I pay bills and my kid plays Minecraft into a table that evokes Shabbat and seder and other special times. For the Days of Awe, I’m thinking about making a centerpiece out of a bowl of apples and pomegranates to remind me of the season.

On a more prosaic note, when it comes to Zoom services, I recommend closing other apps or windows or browser tabs once services begin (and silencing all notifications on our cellphones and tablets until services are over). This way we can make ourselves fully present to the liturgy and to each other, rather than allowing our devices to distract us from the holy work we’re coming together to do.

May our journey toward the Days of Awe be meaningful and sweet!

Rabbi Rachel

Edited to add: Here’s a sketchnote by my friend and colleague Steve Silbert, created to accompany this post!

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Runway to the Days of Awe 1: Seven weeks until Rosh Hashanah

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Dear CBI Members and Friends,

We’ve just come through the door of Tisha b’Av, the most grief-soaked day on the Jewish calendar. After Tisha b’Av, the Seven Weeks of Consolation lead us to Rosh Hashanah. Believe it or not, Rosh Hashanah begins seven weeks from tonight.

In the spring, Jewish tradition gives us the counting of the Omer — the seven weeks between Pesach and Shavuot, liberation and revelation. Now we encounter the year’s other seven-week countdown — the countdown from mourning to renewal, from Tisha b’Av to the Days of Awe.

In seven weeks we’ll convene in the CBI Zoom Room for a Rosh Hashanah evening experience in our own homes. Our erev Rosh Hashanah service will interweave the evening liturgy with some of the Sefardic customs of a Rosh Hashanah seder.

I chose to begin the Days of Awe this year with a seder for a few reasons. One is that seder (unlike Rosh Hashanah services) is a ritual we’re accustomed to doing at home. Thanks to the pandemic, celebrating together on Zoom from home is the best way to keep each other (and ourselves) safe. The seder gives us some tangible, taste-able elements that I hope will help make the evening feel more real.

And, this will be a Rosh Hashanah unlike any other that we’ve ever experienced. I didn’t want to just replicate our usual erev Rosh Hashanah service over Zoom. Instead, we’re embracing the fact that this year is different. It’s an opportunity to try new (or new-to-us) spiritual technologies in service of uplifting our hearts and souls.

Here’s another new (or new-to-us) spiritual technology we’ll be making use of this year: the CBI Board and I are planning to offer a High Holiday Box to members of the CBI community.

This will be a box of holiday supplies — e.g. candles to light on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur; symbolic seder foods such as apples and honey, dried dates, and a pomegranate; a Yizkor memorial candle for Yom Kippur; and more — to help each of us have the physical tools we need to help our spirits soar.

If you would like a High Holiday Box, please sign up by filling out this form. The intention is to distribute these in the CBI parking lot shortly before Rosh Hashanah, though stay tuned for updates on that. (If you need us to drop one off for you, you can indicate that on the form, and we’ll do our best to deliver one.) Regardless, we need to know how many people will take us up on this offer, so please sign up if you want a High Holiday box for your household!

I’ll circle back next week with more suggestions for how to make the most of this unprecedented high holiday season.

For now, wishing you all blessings of uplift  —

Rabbi Rachel

(Edited to add: here are subsequent posts in the seroes)

The Runway to the Days of Awe

Week One: Seven Weeks Until Rosh Hashanah
Week Two: Creating Sacred Space at Home
Week Three: Music
Week Four: Clothing

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