One of the most beautiful ways to get in touch with the never-ending miracle that is God's act of creation of our world is to engage in the acts of creation that God has gifted us with the opportunity to participate in. Years ago, I used to garden some, mostly vegetable gardening -- tomatoes and green peppers and such. I haven't had access to land to do that for a very long time. I still don't, but now I have access to the little back porch above and I spent some hours today preparing containers for tomatoes and herbs. I realized that I hadn't bought enough potting soil for the containers, so I went in search of other organic matter to give the soil some bulk and maybe some nourishment and water-holding capacity for the plants, too. First, I threw in some vegetable scraps we had been saving with the idea of starting a compost bucket. Then I went in search of cardboard and paper and tore up every bit of unnecessary food packaging we had hanging around (why does breakfast cereal come in boxes, anyway?). Above you see me tearing them into bits and pieces.
It felt good to be taking things that would go into a polluting, land-consuming landfill and to try and put them to a productive purpose. It reminded me of how much I love the earth. . . . And the God who gave it to us.
Have a great week!
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Here is a closer-up view of the cardboard on its way to "becoming" soil (along with a pic of me "in the act").:
And here is how things looked when we were a bit closer to done planting:
In case the last pic made you think Minna _can't_ smile, here she is smiling!
Already my year in Israel feels a bit like a dream. Images fray and I strain to hold on to their threads. Everything is different here: a wide landscape of green and a light rain on a late spring day. Alan and I wandered into a Kmart on Friday and I immediately felt like a visitor to a strange planet I had only heard of in movies. Everything was shiny and there were gadgets to fill needs I never knew I had (a special citrus peeling device that left me muttering, "Couldn't you just use a knife?"). And I feel slightly like an amnesiac returning to my memories. Yesterday, just as I was about to start pumping gas, Alan remembered that the car (my car!) can't be filled all the way up. And, contrary to expectations, my old cell phone has returned to me. Different number, but the little thing is still filled with all the old contacts. It feels heavy with the weight of numbers I forgot I ever had.
I am worried about how to hold on to what was important to me about being in Israel (stay up on the local news there, keep my Hebrew gains). Don't know whether we'll keep this blog going, but it will certainly be a helpful record for me.
Perhaps, from the perspectives of "Israel educational" and "Jewish peoplehood," the comfort of being back in the States is double-edged, but I am unequivocally happy to be here. Spending the weekend in Sag Harbor, I made sure to visit both the ocean and the bay. Soaked up sweet moments with family. And I feel like I am coming home to myself in some important ways.
Growing up, I think I thought of prayer itself – certainly offering a spontaneous prayer out loud off the top of your head! -- as something inherently Christian (and not Jewish). I never even imagined I could become comfortable doing it myself. So, it was really exciting for me Wednesday when one of the participants in a workshop I was leading at an Israeli Spiritual Care conference said she had come to the workshop in the hope that I could help her to get over her own discomfort with offering spontaneous prayers!
Offering a custom-made prayer – tailored specifically to the situation and the hopes of the suffering person you are with – can be a powerful source of healing. The greatest pain for an ill person is often not directly from their physical sufferings – it is the loneliness people experience amid their illness. The sense that they are now somehow different than everybody around them and that nobody can (or is willing to) understand what they are going through. The sense, maybe, that they have been forsaken by God.
A unique and beautifully tailored prayer from a visitor of faith coming into their hospital room can help break that loneliness. It can help the person to feel seen, to feel that someone had indeed heard their situation. And that that person is genuinely joining in their hopes and wants their suffering to end. And, finally, by bringing God into the experience, the offering of a spontaneous prayer can help heal a spiritual rift and help the person to feel a renewed relation with (a loving) God, even amid the confusion their sufferings bring.
And, yet, so many Jews – like the participant in my workshop – are reluctant to offer spontaneous prayer, largely because it doesn't “feel” Jewish. That's why it was so important to me to put a Jewish “stamp” on my approach to spontaneous prayer, and to come up with my own framework for composing my prayers. This framework is based on the structure of the Amidah , a central prayer of the traditional Jewish prayer service. My approach – and the Amidah – are divided up into three basic parts:
1) שבח/shevah/Praise (the “approach”) – This is where you address the One to whom you are approaching, and what specific aspect of that Ultimate Reality you want to hear your prayer. By choosing whom you are addressing and what aspect of that “whom” to address, you say something about what your theology is – what you think God (or an Ultimate Reality or Force) is. So, when you're offering a prayer for someone else, you can say something about what his or her spirituality is about in framing this first part of the prayer. If the person has a “Vertical” or “Transcendent” understanding of how God relates to humans – an understanding where God is far above us and directs what's below, you could start by saying something like, “Father above. You are the one who has always directed us and given us strength ...” Or, if the person has a more “Horizontal” or “Immanent” God view, you could start with something like, “Oh, Source of all life. You have nourished the plants and trees around us and we find you everywhere we look . . . “
At the end of this section, I also introduce the person, by name, to God, and say something about what is happening for him or her. Something like, "Dear God, we stand here before you with Sarah. She is frightened about the surgery coming tomorrow."
2) בקשות/bakashot/Requests (the “ask) – This is the heart of the prayer, the expression of what we would like God to grant us. If you're offering a prayer for another person, there are two ways you can approach this. The easiest and most straightforward one is to simply mirror back the hopes the person has expressed to you. A great way to help this process is to ask the person right before the prayer, “is there anything in particular you want me to pray for?”
While I always do ask this question before offering my prayer, I don't think the straightforward approach is quite enough. The experience of doing this workshop – and interacting with the great people who came – helped clarify for me why I want to do something more than simply rephrase the person's hopes. It's because offering a prayer is not just about the words of what I say. I think it's not even just about the feelings expressed along with those words. When you're in a real pastoral conversation with a person – where real pain and real, deep hopes are expressed – something more comes into the room. Something is summoned. Maybe it's called the shekinah. Maybe it's called God. Maybe it's something from all the other people who care. Maybe it's just spirit. But, as intangible as it is, it's real and powerful and a key to true healing. It should not be ignored.
But that “something” can't be truly summoned – or be a part of the prayer – if what is expressed is not something in common, something shared, that was part of the encounter. That's why the number one question I ask myself in composing this part of the prayer is “What do I hope for this person?" Bringing myself into the prayer in this way, allows me to offer a more powerful prayer, one that expresses Shared Hopes, and provides a more complete caring experience.
As you can imagine, however, this kind of a "Use of the Self" in spiritual care is controversial, and the participants in the workshop challenged me about it, expressing shock at the possibility that I might offer a prayer for something that the person I am caring for does not want. My answer to them is that, if you truly take a Shared Hopes approach, that that kind of "contradiction" of the suffering person's hopes is not what happens when you express your hopes for them -- because in a Shared Hopes approach, it's not really my hopes or the person's hopes I express -- it's the shared ones that arose in the "space between us" during our conversation.
There's a theory behind this. It's called intersubjectivity. In short, it holds that communication and the creation of meaning are not things that one person does on his or her own. It's something that is co-constructed by the two or more parties in any interaction. It's an especially influential idea in psychoanalysis, and it provides a theoretical basis for the therapist to use the feelings he or she experiences as a tool for understanding, and caring for, their clients. This theory has freed psychoanalysts from feeling they have to take the kind of cold, detached attitude that Freud did with his patients. Instead, they can become more warm, human and genuine with them. This theory has the potential to free spiritual caregivers in the same way, so that they can bring true emotion, feeling and spiritual depth to things like their spontaneous prayers. [The best expression of this theory in the field of pastoral care is Pamela Cooper-White's book Shared Wisdom .]
3) הודאה/hoda-ah/Thanksgiving (and a wish for peace/shalom) -- This part (along with the first one) is a tremendously important part of my approach to spontaneous prayers that is missing from so many other approaches (which tend to only include "ask" elements). It is a chance to return to a place of humility (after the audacity of asking God for things) and to restate something about what we believe about God and about our wish to be in relationship to God. It is also a chance to take our prayer outside the small, immediate realm of the patient's experience and bring it out into the broader realm of all humanity. And this is a key part of almost all religious practices in the major faith traditions -- to link each individual with the community at large in a way that brings greater power to our effort to elevate our spirits and reach for something higher. Communal experience nurtures faith, as do our acts of caring for others. Thus, I conclude every prayer with a wish for peace, starting with the person before me, but then moving outward. First to wish for peace for the person's immediate family and loved ones, but finally I move on to a wish for peace for all people.
Before I offer this request for shalom, I first, as the Amidah does, offer thanks, and say something like, "Dear, God, we thank you for everything you have given. We thank you for the gift of life, and for all that we have been able to know -- especially the love we have been able to experience -- during our time here on earth."
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Another part of a Shared Hopes approach -- one that I borrow from the Jewish prayer tradition -- is to, as much as possible, put the language of my prayer in the language of "we" and to say things like "we pray for you to give her strength, oh gracious God." (Jewish standard forms of prayer -- like the Amidah -- ask for things using the language of "we".)
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I was so impressed with the people who attended my workshop. Many of them are already using spontaneous prayer in their work and they shared their experiences with it. One participant shared that sometimes when there is a prayer that appears to have particularly touched a person, he writes it down and shares those written words with the patient.
Another participant shared a four-part framework for composing spontaneous prayer he uses in Hebrew. His approach is very similar to mine, but differs in the last part especially:
ברוך אתה ה' (אלוהנו מלך העולם) ה_____________ ץ
1) This approach begins with the words that start every standard Jewish blessing, "Blessed are You, HaShem our God, King of the Universe, Who ____________." The "Who" part is key here. In the blessing before eating bread, we say "Who brings forth bread from the earth." When we say the havdalah blessing marking the end of Shabbat and the beginning of a new workweek, we say, "the one distinguishes between the holy and the secular." In this approach, the spiritual caregiver works closely with the person to determine which "Who" of God to address here. (This process, I believe, allows the prayer to start, as my introductory section does, by saying something about the person's theology in making that introduction to God.
אתה יודע
2) Literally, "You know". The words following the "You know" are a chance to say something about the situation the person finds his or herself in, and to hold that up to God.
הבקשה
3) This is an "ask" section, just like mine.
אבל אם לא, תן לי כח להתמודד
4) I was fascinated by this final section, because it is not something I have in my framework. It says "but if my requests are not granted, give me the strength to cope."
I think this is a very powerful thing to have in a prayer and it can -- as the participant himself stated -- foster an important humility that can be a key part of a spiritual growth that can lead to better coping. It seems to me to reflect an acceptance that is a key part of a suffering person's coming to a stronger place, one that has room for entering into a positive relationship with God even amid inexplicable suffering.
Here is a copy of the contents of a handout, I created for the workshop. It has some more details about my approach and that of others who have worked in this area before, especially the work of Rabbi Bonita Taylor, a New York chaplaincy educator (Clinical Pastoral Education supervisor) who has long focused on helping her students gain experience with offering spontaneous prayer. The handout, especially, emphasizes the importance of linking a prayer to an assessment. That is, as I said at the beginning, the truly effective spontaneous prayer has to be one that is specifically tailored to the person and the person's situation and hopes. So much of the prayers some clergy and spiritual caregivers offer do not meet this important minimum condition. While they may indeed be said off the top of the caregiver's head -- rather than read from a book -- they are essentially canned words that the caregiver would say for anybody.
It was such a privilege to give a workshop at this pioneering conference and to have some close contact with people doing such exciting work in Israel. I am grateful to have had the opportunity. I pray it will be the will of the Holy Blessed One -- the One who is the author of all knowledge, compassion and spirit -- that I will be able to offer more such workshops in the future and to learn again from students and to continue to grow in my knowledge and mastery in this area. And may it be the Holy One's will that there will be many more such conferences in Israel and that the infant field of spiritual care there will continue to grow and to thrive.
My bags are very nearly packed (still unclear how all of the stuff will fit into the available space). Our flight leaves in the middle of the night tonight. And I have come to my local coffee shop for one more קפה הפוך/cafe hafuch/(literally "upside-down coffee") cappuccino and two little cheese bourekas. This favorite little breakfast of mine reminds me of Israel's crossroads status: a European coffee with a Middle Eastern/Mediterranean pastry.
Even (or perhaps especially) with all its challenges, I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to spend 10 months here. I leave very ready to be back in the States and also deeply hoping to be able to spend more time here in Israel in the future. I am better able to express what I value both about Jewish life and culture here and Jewish life and culture in the Diaspora. My two sentence versions of these views:
- I value Israel primarily as a vital center of Jewish/Hebrew cultural production. Creating (and continuing to create) a Jewish state has allowed for, inspired, and goaded people into expressions of art, literature, poetry, music, and scholarship which are huge gifts not only to the Jewish people, but to the world.
- Diaspora and exile are not 100% overlapping categories; in Jewish history, having a "center" has never meant that "periphery" has nothing to offer. Perhaps because of how I grew up, perhaps because of some deeper constitutional attributes, perhaps for reasons that need not be explainable, I personally have always felt more interested in Jewish life on a variety of "margins" and find myself looking forward to building my rabbinate back in the U.S. of A.
But I will miss this place, the country itself (with all its contradictions) and its people, my neighborhood, and this little place that has supplied warm coffee and tasty baked goods: And now to finish packing and clean, clean, clean.
The fifth annual Spiritual Care conference in Israel opened today with an emotional and intensely personal keynote address by Rona Ramon (pictured above), the widow of Ilan Ramon, Israel's first person to travel into space, who was killed tragically in 2003 during the re-entry of the shuttle Columbia to the Earth's atmosphere.
It is amazing that this is only the fifth such conference in Israel. This nation of contrasts is, one one hand, a highly modern economy fueled by a high-tech industrial sector that is still thriving amid the world-wide recession. And, in many other ways, it is yet an infant nation, still building institions, like chaplaincy (and environmentalism, as I wrote a few weeks ago), that we take for granted in the United States. I feel so privileged to have a chance to be present among the 150 or so pioneering professionals who attended Ramon's talk this morning and who will be at the conference over the next two days.
As I write this, I am listening to a lecture by a true pioneer -- a woman who is working to not only bring Spiritual Care to this young nation, but to bring it to a relatively new and sometimes challenging population to care for: immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Tomorrow, I will be a presenter, myself, giving a workshop on techniques for offering spontaneous prayer.
I am so excited to be here at the conference at the Ma’ale HaHamisha Conference Center in these beautiful hills on the western outskirts of Jerusalem!
This little "rapids" is about as mighty as you will ever see the river Jordan -- a waterway that, like the country it flows through, can be so giant in our imaginations and in our hearts, even if it is but tiny in the "real" world. The "kayak" with the screaming children upon it is rental from Kfar Blum, the kibbutz in the northernmost part of Israel where Minna spent a year as a teenager. We managed, as our days dwindled here in Israel, to sneak to the north for a bit, and Minna got to finally show me around Kfar Blum.
Here she is, in front of a statue of the kibbutz's namesake, Leon Blum, who was once the prime minister of France:
The room she shared was on the second floor of this building:
We met this little guy nearby. He was pretty cute, although not too friendly:
On the way up there, we had a chance to stop briefly at Beit Shean, an amazing ruin of an ancient city that, being at the junction of the Jezreel and Jordan river valleys, was on the trade routes between the empires of Mesopotamia (Babylonia, etc) and of Egypt and the rest of the west.
Much of the significance of Israel in the ancient world was due to its being located between these two great groups of empires. It is no accident that the Torah begins its story of the Jewish people with Avraham leaving his father's house in Mesopotamia, and later tells of his journey to Egypt before settling finally in the Holy Land and burying his beloved wife Sara in Hebron -- the basic experience of the ancient Israelite people was the experience of being a little people situated on, and sometimes wandering upon, these roadways between these "giants". Other of our "Avot" -- like Joseph and Jacob -- would make journeys similar to Avraham's in the course of their lives.
In Beit Shean, Minna found this pomegranate tree, and was fascinated by its "baby" pomegranates, still more flower than fruit.
It may get scary as the night goes on, but when Minna and I went walking through this Jerusalem park at around 9:30pm tonight, the bonfires of the Lag B'Omer celebrations around us had more of a family feel than the wild "Lord of the Flies" atmoshphere one of our friends had predicted -- there were quite a few parents and young children around, having bbq's amid the bonfires.
I really enjoyed walking around the park. It was a reminder -- as our days here in Israel come towards an end -- of the specialness and uniqueness of living in a Jewish country. I am so glad to have had the chance to be here so much this year.
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Here are a few more photos of the fires at the park near the Hartman Institute (as well as some from the smaller San Simeon park).
One of the exciting parts of the Hazon-Arava Israel ride for me was that the riding days of our journey from the Mediterranean to Red seas were separated by one of my very favorite Torah portions: קדושים/kedoshim, or Holy ("you will be; for Holy am I, HaShem Your God").
I love this Torah portion, or parsha, because it stands at the very center of the Torah. Not only is it in the very middle of the middle of the Torah's five books, but it is at the center of the Torah's central narrative: the narrative of a people coming out of slavery to the wondrous -- but also terrifying -- task of trying to be all of everything that God expected them to be. And God surely expected a lot of a people who, as slaves, had never even before been expected to make decisions for themselves. God expected them now to have so much wisdom as to be able to even figure out how to be קדוש/kadosh, to be Holy.
The Torah tells of the many stumbles of the people Israel in their efforts to find their way to becoming what God expected of them as they wandered through the desert. They sometimes complain and wish for the simpler times that were the predictability of the simple life of a slave. But the biggest stumble came just before back in chapter 10 when Aaron's two sons, in their excitement, brought "strange fire" before God, and were destroyed for this mistaken attempt to take part in holiness.
The whole rest of the Torah, beginning here with this parsha, is about the acts of repairing from this mistake -- about the acts of learning how to be Holy. The parsha gives a grand list of requirements for being Holy that is a kind of updating of the Ten Commandments. This list is almost the same as the Ten Commandments, but it has one important addition -- it commands us to take care of the poor and make sure they have enough to eat from the produce of the Land. And this book of the Torah comes towards its conclusion with this specific focus on the land and who may eat of it. It declares that you cannot treat this land as a resource that can just be used constantly with no regard for its limit. In the seventh year, the land must -- as God did on the seventh day of creation -- rest. It must have a Shabbat:
וְהָיְתָה שַׁבַּת הָאָרֶץ לָכֶם לְאָכְלָה, לְךָ וּלְעַבְדְּךָ וְלַאֲמָתֶךָ וְלִשְׂכִירְךָ וּלְתוֹשָׁבְךָ הַגָּרִים עִמָּךְ. And the Shabbat produce of the Land will be food for you -- for you, and for your servant, and your maid, and your hired hand and for the stranger who dwells among you. (YaYikrah 25:5 )
Rashi, the great Medieval bible commentator, says that the reason the Torah lists all these people who may eat from the food of the Land is to emphasize that in that year -- that special Shabbat year of the Land -- you cannot act like you are a בעל/baal -- a master -- over the Land and the people who work and live on it. You are equals, and you must share in the food of the Land equally.
This, the Torah tells us at the central place that is this great parsha, is part of what it means to be a Holy people -- to be willing to rest the Land when it is the time for it to be rested, and also to be willing to make sure all are fed, and all know what it is like to be treated equally as a human being.
Riding through the desert at the beginning of this week, I thought often about what it means to be Holy. I thought of how precious water is. I thought of the great gift that God has given us in these modern times to be so free of the terrible diseases that for most of human history killed most people in the earliest years of childhood -- to have so much abundance of food that literally billions can be fed every day even with so much food just being thrown out before being eaten. These are the gifts that have come with our mastery of the tools of science, gifts that would not be possible without the intelligence that God has given us.
Yet with such great gifts comes so much responsibility. Being a Holy people in our time means limiting our overuse of the tools of science. It means not squeezing every drop out of what lies in the ground below us. It means giving the Land its Shabbat in its time. And it means that all among us are able to live full lives and enjoy the benefits of this Land.
We spoke of water so often during the bike ride. How precious it is, and how much we squander it. The experts who spoke to us sought to raise our awareness that the water that we use is not just in the obvious uses that happen when we open a faucet and take out water for things like our showers and our cooking. Every product we use -- the very clothes on our backs -- took water to produce. If we're really going to preserve this precious resource, we need to raise our awareness of all the inefficient ways it is used in the manufacturing and food production that supports us.
This is nowhere more true than here in the Middle East. The shortage of water regionwide is not what caused the conflicts that plague us, but it stands in the way of finding solutions. If there ever is to be peace, a way must be found for everyone to drink, for everyone to have the opportunity to live a full life.
Our speakers told us of some of the amazing things that are happening in Israel to solve the water crisis, things like the desalination plant in Ashkelon, and the widespread use of recycled sewage water for the irrigation of crops. Israel is one of the world leaders in these kinds of technologies. They are not cure-alls -- it takes a great deal of energy, for example, to make desalination work -- but they are wonderful examples of the determination of people here to find solutions.
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As I let go of the brake levers on my bike to start that final descent from our position near the mountaintop of הר יואש/har yoash -- some 2,300 feet above Eilat and sea level only about six miles away -- I thought of how precious life is. I cried with joy inside as I felt the wind whipping by my ears and witnessed the glory of the mountain and hillsides I was screaming by. God was out there somewhere and I was standing -- even as I was rolling rapidly on my two wheels -- before that Lord of my life. I was grateful for what I had been given. And, I promised to do my best to take care of it and thus make it a place where God's infinite and wondrous Holiness would be welcome among us humans here on earth.
Jerusalem is a tremendously hilly city, yet, as our bus plodded its way through some of the city's most crowded neighborhoods on its way to the central bus station last night, I was cheered to see people on bikes -- some of them wearing the kippah that marks the religious, male Jew -- winding their way through the dense traffic on narrow streets.
One thing that makes Jerusalem doable by bike (despite the challenges of the hills, etc.) is it's actually amazingly compact compared to America's sprawling cities. Even Jerusalem's most far-flung neighborhoods are only about six miles from the city center, and most people's commutes are much shorter. Many Americans, on the other hand, find themselves commuting dozens of miles in each direction every day.
This more-compact nature of Israeli cities is just one of the many ways Israel has set itself up in a way that makes a more sustainable, and environmentally friendly, lifestyle possible, and is a reminder that there is much we can learn from the way Israelis approach life.
That is not to say that Israelis are more environmentally conscious than we are. I was reminded of this last Shabbat when we were in Mitzpeh Ramon as part of the Hazon-Arava environmental bike ride trip. I stepped outside the prayer service for a moment to get some air and think alone. It was so beautiful to look out towards the huge desert crater -- an inspiring example of God's works. But below my feet were the cigarette butts and other garbage that Israelis seem to feel free to dump anywhere. As one of the speakers on the trip told us, environmental consciousness is only beginning among the general population in a country where security concerns have long been paramount. He held out hope to us that things are changing, however -- as evidenced by the recent election in Tel Aviv of some environmentalists to city government -- and Israel is growing to be more consciously concerned about preserving some elements of the quality of life, and not just the preserving of life.
I was so glad to have a chance to contribute something back to Israel with two wheels (by participating in -- and raising money for -- an environmental bike ride). The bicycle has never been just a means of recreation for me. When I was a kid, I had a paper route, and I hauled my papers with a bicycle that had baskets on its sides and to which my Dad (of blessed memory) had jury-rigged a folding shopping cart as a trailer. I rediscovered the bike as a means of carrying cargo (groceries and such) while an adult in Los Angeles, and have continued that practice even amid the hills and winter winds of Reading, PA. I try to cast for myself in Reading a life more like the one I am able to have here in Jerusalem, a life where things are only a few steps -- or a few pedals -- away, and I do not have to get into some gasoline-burning and carbon-fume-expelling device every day.
Heschel talked about the glory of Shabbat as Judaism's great solution to the dangers of technological civilization. Shabbat does not ask us to abandon the benefits of technology -- we get to work for six days -- only not to be dominated by it, to be able to live free amid it. Those five riding days from sea to sea and inside the great emptiness of the Negev desert were a reminder that there is another way than living dominated by technology, and of how two wheels can help free us to be able to live free. I was so grateful to be a part of it, and hope to keep learning from it.
Though back in Jerusalem now, I am still thinking about this morning's short but sweet snorkeling outing. The water was a bit cold for extended exploration -- not surprising considering that Eilat claims to have the northernmost coral reefs in the world (never mind that Wikipedia thinks the winner is Norway) -- and it was choppy as well. But it was still wondrous for me. Seeing the fishes in the Oceanarium yesterday (see Alan's pics and post) and then again this morning, filled me with a sense of awe and joy at the diversity of Creation. The line from liturgy that echoes in my head is: מה רבו מעשך ה' כולם בחכמה עשית/"How manifold are your works, God, in wisdom you have made them all."
These words from the morning prayers remind me of how Unity unfolds in our earthly experience into endless disctinct possibilities. I take joy in remembering the importance of diversity and in having these living, swimming, fishy reminders of its importance.
Here's on of my favorites of the dozens of different fishes I saw this morning. It's a Purple Tang:
When we arrived home, today (see here), we found this pile of wood and cardboard in the entrance of the building. Now, just having come back from an environmental bike ride, I am somewhat hopeful it is piled here for recycling purposes. But I know it is much more likely that it is preparation for next week's Lag B'Omer, a holiday that the religious and the secular alike celebrate here by setting bonfires all over the city . . . . . I just hope they move it out from underneath the buidling before they torch it up! :)
We raised a glass high when we arrived back at the apartment in Jerusalem after the bus ride home from Eilat and the end of our bike ride from Tel-Aviv to Eilat. Minna and I both offered our hopes as we drank together -- asking for, among other things, many other experiences that will help bring the two of us closer together and also that will bind us more strongly to the Jewish people and the land and people of Israel. I wished also that it would be the Holy Blessed One's will that we would continue to find ways to have fun together that will involve some exercise to renew our bodies and our souls, and will take us out into the great outdoors that is the infinitely wonderous creation that God has given us. I felt thanks and gratitude, especially, to the Israeli crew who spent so much time with Minna and I when we were often the last riders of the group, and encouraged us and offered us their friendship. Most of them were alumni of the Arava institute who were volunteering their time for the ride this year. תודה רבה!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Todah Rabba)
Rolled into Eilat safely yesterday afternoon though the last day's journey was not without incident. Alan got caught in a sand/dust storm! Intense head wind and unbreathable air made the ride unworkable and all the riders pulled off the road and waited for the bus to scoop them up. The bus, meanwhile, was taking me and my smaller group on a tour of Timna (where the dust storm had not yet reached). We got to see some amazing sandstone "sculptures" as well as copper mines from the Calcolithic period and Midianite rock carvings before we cut our tour short to ride to the rescue of the cyclists stuck up on the plateau.
As a full busload, we rode to the top of the final descent into Eilat where the wind had finally died down enough to ride safely. They let Alan go down the steep descent first (out of the whole group!) because he likes fast descents. He rode down with Kfir, our professional lead rider, and they arrives together at the bottom of the hill. Then we all rode in formation to our hotel and I had a quick dip in the Red Sea before checking into our room.
Alan has ridden away and I'm getting ready to head out as well. He'll ride from a nearby junction (doing a bit of back tracking) all the way down to Eilat. My group will be bused to Timna -the site of some ancient copper mines-- to do some touring on mountain bikes. Then we'll meet up with the rest of the riders for lunch and all head down into Eilat together.
One blessing of this trip has been the daily davening/praying. An irony of living in Jerusalem this year has been the marked absence of a daily prayer community for me. But both Alan and I have made it to morning prayers every day of the ride and it's been nice to have our little traveling group praying together. This morning, looking at the mountains over in Jordan, coming to the prayer that focuses on gratitude, I felt particularly grateful for all the people who have supported us on this ride --the staff here, but also all the friends and family members and colleagues who gave the donations that made this journey possible.
Here at Ketura, we've gotten to meet students of the Arava Institute and hear about the work they are doing. One theme that many students expressed --Israeli, American, Palestinian and Jordanian-- was that they came primarily for the environmental studies, but have been most transformed by the social aspect: building a learning community based on co-existence. Being able to meet the people who benefit from the funds we raised makes a big difference!
I've also very much enjoyed the touring I've been able to do by only riding half-days. On Thursday (which seems like a year ago), we met a man named Haji Ibrahim. He is a communal leader in an unrecognized Bedouin village. The village doesn't receive any support from the government and is placed dangerously close to a number of toxic sites. He is very concerned aboout the health impacts on his community and had a number of very sad stories to share. He welcomed us warmly to the village and shared coffee he had ground himself and tea whose every herb he picked and described in detail.
Yesterday, I visited Kibbutz Lotan, a community associated with the Reform movement. This trip has definitely re-ignited long-dormant fantasies of kibbutz life. Much more to tell, but the bus is leaving soon.
God willing, this afternoon, we'll be swimming in the Red Sea!
Minna snapped this shot of me on the road bike I've been riding (lent to me after I broke a spoke on the mountain bike I'd been riding) outside the guest house at Kibbutz Ketura, where we arrived today after a 60-mile bike ride from the lip of Israel's great crater (which is not _really_ a crater), Makhtesh Ramon, where we had spent Shabbat. Kibbutz Ketura is the home of the Arava Institute, an environmental organization dedicated to trying to find sustainable living situations for all the Middle East -- something that, hopefully, will one day bring us closer to peace!
It was a great -- but challenging -- ride, today, with some spectacular descents, through some truly amazing desert scenery. We started the day with morning prayer on the lip of the Makhtesh before descending into it at high speed. It was such a great way to start the day -- praying in God's great glory... in the Holy Land!
Here's Minna at the Kibbutz with the desert mountains in the background.
And here she is in the Kibbutz pool talking with Gonen, one of the Israeli members of the crew who we've made friends with and who is working on a doctorate in environmental education.
And here are just some of the other riders _chillin'_ at the pool after a day of riding.
In addition to the spectacular riding, this has really been just a great Jewish community building experience -- just such a wonderful opportunity for folks to deepen their connection to Israel, environmental causes and Jewish fundraising efforts, amid other people doing the same thing!
After 35 miles of riding --mostly uphill-- through beautiful desert, we have arrived at Mizpe Ramon. I haven't looked at the view yet, but the hotel sits on the rim of Machtesh Ramon a huge geological formation that many people erroneously call a "crater"...too tired to explain; Google it if you're interested.
Too exhausted for anything right now, actually, so I'll just say: Saw a fox, lots of ibex, some flowers, lots of desert; feeling proud of both of us and impressed with the Hazon/Arava crew; looking forward to a restful shabbat with Alan and (mostly new) friends.
As Alan's post below tells in greater detail, we have arrived at the beautiful Ashkelon seashore on the first full day of our Hazon Israel Ride. Today I took the option of riding half the day and touring half the day. We visited a kibbutz that from 1945-1948 had a secret underground bullet factory. Workers entered through the laundry and the ventilation system used the chimneys on the laundry and the bakery nearby. Our tour guide, Yuval, was fantastic, combining a tour of the site with thought-provoking questions and his own reflections on what it meant for him --as an educator and a soldier-- that Yom HaZikaron/Memorial Day and Yom HaAtzma'ut/Independence Day were right next to each other. I'm proud of Alan for taking on the challenge of longer riding days, but I'm also very excited for the touring my shorter days leave room for.
Back in Boston, my rabbinical school community was also celebrating Yom HaAtzma'ut. Daniel (my study partner here in Israel) and I were asked to write reflections to be read at the morning prayer service in Boston. My words are included below. Tomorrow we head into the desert! It will be a very long day of riding for Alan and another half day for me plus a tour of a Bedouin village. We're also closing in on our fund-raising goal, but still need a final push. If you've got what to give, please visit our donation site by clicking here. AND, I got a write-up in the local Sag Harbor paper a couple of weeks ago; click here for the interview.
----------------------------------------------------- Reflection for יום העצמאות/Yom HaAtzma'ut 2009
I am a warmly welcomed guest in the home of an eccentric and beloved relative. She offers her riches openly, a well of generosity. Swaths of desert and seashore and forested hills, I gulp down landscapes of such variety and beauty that I want more and more. Cappuccino and burekas for breakfast, their tastes and smells layering and mixing like the many languages I hear in the streets.
She promises protection and safety, a place to call home. This home: musty, windswept, full of old secrets, constantly under renovation, full of ghosts and and booby traps and pregnant women and young men pushing baby strollers. She is the strongest person you have ever met and she weeps constantly, not only for the death of her children but with the overwhelming longing brought on by the smell of sun-heated pines.
And I am both enchanted and terrified. I walk on tiptoes but with deep curiosity. There is always a lump in my throat when I speak to her, and I do not know whether it's from the miracle of Hebrew coming out of my mouth or from pure and inescapable anxiety.
We are, to each other, both deeply family and deeply foreign. She is a well of generosity and just as generous with scrutiny and criticism. She shows me myself in her mirror; it is one-way glass.
I open myself to listen, her songs and poems and speeches and jokes come flooding in. My own voice is washed away. I know she wants me here, but then she doesn't really know me or see me as I am; she doesn't really need me and she has me doubting that God really needs me. I know she wants me, but I have to leave a lot of myself behind.
Yet I am no more fair to her: I need her to love me; I wish she would leave me alone. I am by turns proud of her and embarrassed to be seen together in public. I cannot wait to get away and I cannot wait to come back.
When I am not here, and when I speak of her, I want to remember her in the fullness in her nuances, with all of her tensions intact.It is the sharpness of these tensions that makes her unforgettable.
The more I know her, the more I want to know her. I want to know her all the way down to a depth where disillusionment is no impediment to loyalty, disappointment no obstacle to love.
Milk and honey Well and good But what sets me celebrating you is this more specific mix: זבל/zevel* and jasmine flowers
(*Zevel means "crap," literally poop/manure but also in a somewhat similar sense of the English slang. As I wrote about early in my year here, the combination of dog poop and flowers in Jerusalem sums up something important about my experience here.)
Life just seems so much more intense -- so much more real -- to me here in Israel. In some ways, the Independence Day beachside bbq's that we witnessed when we arrived in Ashkelon, today (after pedaling 50 miles from Tel Aviv) were not much different from the ones you find in the States on July 4. But there was some incredible energy to it here. Minna told me a female cab driver here told her that if they were to pull over the car right there, the bbq-ers would run over to share their food with them -- עם ישראל פתוח/am yisrael patuah, the nation of Israel is open, the cab driver told her.
And, of course, the Independence of this holiday is so much more recent than the US of A's independence -- it only happened in 1948. And, even more importantly I think, the price of this independence is so much more current and intense, with all the wars and such that have touched this land and this people. Independence Day here is immediately preceded by Yom HaZikaron, Israel's memorial day for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism. That holiday began on Monday night with a one-minute siren. All the shops were closed in Tel Aviv where we were staying. We turned on the television to a children's channel and watched a show where the host interviewed a small group of young children in depth about what it was like to have lost a parent to war. I just could not imagine something so intense being on a major network in the States as part of a national holiday.
The ride, today, was the first part of our trip from Tel-Aviv to Eilat. Here's a shot of Minna near an amusement park we took a break at just south of Tel Aviv:
And here are some of the other riders outside the amusement park:
And here we are by the beach when we finally got to Ashkelon:
It was a great day! .. . And it was so great to be in Israel for Yom HaAtzmaut (Independence Day). I almost didn't mind when the disco music of nearby celebrations kept us up way past our bedtimes last night, or even having to dodge the debris left over from the street celebrations on the narrow streets of Tel Aviv's Neve Tzedek neighborhood as we rode through it this morning. . . . I really felt free -- independent -- riding today!
Well, ready or not, next week Minna and I will be going on the Hazon-Arava bicycle ride -- all the way from Tel-Aviv to Eilat! Today, I went on my last training ride, my fourth ride of the week. On Sunday and today, I took challenging rides through the Aminadav National forest, which includes the mountaintop Yad Kennedy monument to JFK (see pic on the right). Twice this week, once with Minna and once with our friend Amy (who will also be on the Hazon ride) I went to Yad Kennedy itself.
I really enjoyed my ride, today. I went past Har Herzel on my way to Ein Kerem and then down past Sataf to the Nahal Refaim entrance to the national forest. For a number of kilometers from there, I followed the Nahal (a Hebrew word for a stream) on a dirt road. It was so beautiful to be in the Nahal's valley and looking up at the hills around. From there, I climbed up almost to the Yad, and then down to get towards home. I was out for six hours all told. Oh, how I will miss riding in these hills!
The approximate route I took today (up until a spot below Yad Kennedy where Minna and Amy like to rest) is below in the red [part of today's route was on the path of a trail from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem that's called מים אל י-ם in Hebrew and "From Coast to Capital" in English]:
"Ugly Baby" -- as Minna named the baby dove who was born in our window nest -- has, we presume, flown away to start his new life as an adult dove bird of Jerusalem.
We would have loved to witness the lift-off, but Ugly Baby was here this morning when we left to get some breakfast at a local cafe, and when we got back this afternoon the nest was empty.
"It's a memorial for the Holocaust. It's Yom HaShoah ."
That's what I said to the young (British-sounding) tourist who turned to me after the ceasing was over and the people got back in their cars at one of Jerusalem's busiest intersections. She asked, "what was this? What were people doing?"
By the ceasing, I mean one of the most short -- but powerful -- ceremonies in all of Israel, the way Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) is marked. At 10 am, a siren goes off everywhere in the country and everything comes to a stop for two minutes. At the busy intersection Minna and I were at, there was horn honking right up to the moment the siren went off. But then it all stopped and the honking drivers all got out of their cars to stand at attention for the silent observance. A similar observance will be held next week for Yom HaZikaron, which honors the dead from war and terrorism.
Last night, Minna and one of her classmates had the honor of being at the official national ceremony for Yom HaShoah, which was held at Israel's main Holocuast Museum, Yad VaShem.The Prime Minister and many other dignitaries were there.
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It was kind of an important step for me to be so intentional about engaging such an important part of Israeli life as Yom HaShoah -- on this visit I have been so consumed by the work and such I brought with me that I've been more "just living" here as opposed to "visiting" here. On one hand, that's great -- it's an expression of how much I feel at home here in Jerusalem. On the other hand, this is such a special opportunity to be here, and who knows when I will ever be able to be here, again. I have about four weeks left -- I'm going to try and enjoy them! :) . . . . . I have _definitely_ enjoyed the bicycle riding that I finally managed to get to this week. I posted here about one great ride I took Sunday. Yesterday, I took a shorter, but still challenging ride up to Yad Kennedy. . . . . The beauty of the hills on that ride -- and in all the hills in and around Jerusalem -- is something that speaks to me in a way I just cannot describe. As I write this I am sitting in a park overlooking one such beautiful hillside not far from where Minna is at class now at Machon Schechter. . . . . It really is these things -- the hills and the people of the city -- that speak to me so much here, and not necessarily so much the famous holy sites like the Western Wall. . . . I've been reading Karen Armstrong's book on Jerusalem. In the opening pages she talks about what it is that makes a place holy to people. She says it has something to do with an association a place gets with the _experience_ of the holy. . . . Somehow, for me, God is closer here. Here, in the people. And in the hills.
The Hazon (Tel-Aviv to Eilat) ride is only a little more than a week away now, so I wanted to work on getting my "sea legs" before we go, and I brought so much work with me from the States that before today I was only able to get out once before.
The ride, today, was extremely challenging and involved a lot of climbing, but I really enjoyed it. The Judean hills are so beautiful.
Counting up Passover is over; today I ate my first pasta and bread. It was yummy. There's actually a new bread store in my neighborhood that had its grand opening last night when the holiday ended here. Very smart marketing and a move that only makes sense in a neighborhood like mine where most of the folks living here haven't been eating bread for a week. I went in today and picked out a loaf by passing my hand over the bags of bread until I found the shelf where the loaves were still warm!
With the second night of Passover, we start counting the Omer --the period between Passover and Shavuot, the next festival in the year cycle. The counting itself is commanded in Leviticus and marks the time between the offering of the first fruits of the new harvest (in this case represented by barley) until the offering of the first wheat of the new season. It's 50 days which is a week of weeks plus one. Counting the Omer literally means that when night falls (and the new day begins in the Jewish calendar) we say the blessing that accompanies commanded actions and then state, "Today is the X day of the Omer."
Not surprisingly, people have wanted to bring/find other meanings in this ritual. One common way of finding our way through this time is to use the 7 x7 format (seven weeks of seven days) as a way of contemplating in turn each combination of the seven lower sefirot. (Sefirot are Divine aspects or symbol clusters as my teacher Art Green prefers and explains very clearly in his Introduction to the Zohar.) In more recent understandings (e.g., in the shift from Lurianic Kabbalah to Hassidism), these sefirot can be understood psychologically, as different aspects of our own selves. In this way of seeing them, חסד/hesed/lovingkindness, unbounded love is about my own capacity for lovingkindness rather than a focus solely on Divine love. The seven lower sefirot move from חסד/hesed/lovingkindness through גבורה/g'vurah/strength, judgment, boundedness all the way down to מלכות/malkhut/immanence, gateway to reality (literally "kingdom").
By focusing on these sefirot in counting the Omer, we have the opportunity to use this practice to examine our own attributes. For example, the first week we would focus on חסד/hesed/love, lovingkindness. The first day we would focus on the חסד שבחסד/hesed she'b'hesed/the lovingkindness of lovingkindness. We might ask a question like, "Who am I when I am truly in this place of the very heart of love? Are there ways in which I have forgotten or wounded this aspect of myself?" The second day would be גבורה שבחסד/g'vurah she'b'hesed/the boundedness of love. We might focus on our own boundaries around love, "Is the gate through which my love flows too open or too closed?" Because the sefirot are symbol clusters, each one has many different associations and shades of meaning. Rather than fixating on a set meaning for each word, counting the Omer this way is meant to give us a chance to think about all of our attributes and all of the combinations of these attributes with one another and to check in on how our inner workings are working, for ourselves, for our loved ones, for our work in the world.
Some years I have spent more time with this practice than others (sometimes keeping a journal or taking some time to reflect each day). This year, I am enjoying counting the Omer each night with Alan (last year we made it all the way to 50 without missing a day!) and letting the practice mostly just be itself. I do hope I'll remember to look for an "Omer counter" while I'm here in Israel --it's a ritual object of various shapes, sizes, and constructions that's meant to help keep you on track in your counting. The one pictured above was designed by Amy Gilron. One of the few Christian ritual objects I was jealous of as a child was an Advent Calendar. An Omer counter with little windows and chocolate...sounds good to me. Click here for an online version that is always amusing.
Counting down This also marks a time when I am starting to count down to my return to the U.S. Now that both Alan and springtime have arrived, I am less eager to get out of here than I have been at other times this year. But I am still pretty eager to be back on more familiar shores and most especially to be back working, to be back in settings in which I feel more consistently competent, valued, and put to good use!
At the same time, this counting down (I'll be home before the end of the Omer, God willing) allows me to focus on those aspects of being here which I truly savor. As I count the days of the new harvest as my ancestors did, I hope to be able to use this space to celebrate the harvest that this year has brought me --sweet, tart, and otherwise.
