To Pray with the Transgressors

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Sicha, Continuing the Conversation

We grant permission to pray with the transgressors.

So ends the prologue to Kol Nidre.  How pompous and unwelcoming, how divisive and polarizing this sounds: “We, the court, permit all of the pure faithful to pray in the company of the transgressors.”  If “transgressor” once upon a time identified a specific violation, it carries that meaning no more.  As we hear this declaration, we ask: Are there members of the community who are not transgressors, who have never “transgressed,” “crossed over a line”?

Let’s refit the word abar-yan, transgressor, taking the term back to its root meaning: “to pass over, to travel.”  Now, again, the declaration:

We grant permission to pray with fellow travelers.

Community is formed at the intersection of all the roads that we have traveled, all lines that we have crossed.  The individual is also formed by solitary travels and inner journeys.

We have a tendency to clarify by polarizing: weak-strong, healthy-ill, faithful-transgressor.  Clarifying is useful, to a point.  But more useful still is honoring the collective knowledge gained by the various roads traveled, strengthening ourselves from what we learned beyond the line. We are made stronger by mistakes and missteps during our travels.  Our transgressing can become our treasure. “We grow around and live from our weak spots,” says psychologist, James Hillman.

The Israeli poet, Rivka Miriam, points to the strength that comes from our heroes’ weak spots.  It is only when we are wrapped in our vulnerabilities that we can succeed.  Such strengthening requires an “inner room,” a Yom Kippur that embraces the weak spots that become strengths:

And in the inner room we keep Moses’ heaviness of mouth
Isaac’s weak eyes, and Jacob’s dragging leg.
And when war stirs us, it is to the inner room we go
To examine them closely.
For each one who goes out to battle, wraps himself in just these.

Click here for Rivka Miriam poem in Hebrew and English.

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Elijah, May He Be Remembered for Good

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Sicha, Continuing the Conversation

In the religious imagination of the Rabbis, Elijah, the prophet, appears as a traveler, a warrior, a beggar, an Arab merchant, a prostitute, a sage.  He oftentimes appears in the doorway (as during the Passover Seder), at the mouth of the cave, in places and times of transition.  For the sages, Elijah represents redemption.

Elijah appears in the porous moments of one’s life, when the soul is ready or in need.  Sometimes, we do not discern his presence until memory unveils it:  a stranger in the right place at the right time who showed kindness, who gave direction, warning, or advice.  A moment that we realize was momentous becomes an “Elijah moment.”   In the same breath that they would say “Elijah,” the ancient sages often said, “May he be remembered for good/zachur la’tov,” an epithet not for the departed, but for the living.

Many years ago, a beautiful Israeli Tallit appeared in the Synagogue on the day after a Bar Mitzvah.  No family, guest or community member claimed it.  The owner of such a beautiful prayer shawl could not simply have forgotten about it.  Yet, there it was.  In the world of religious imagination, there was only one explanation:  The Tallit had been left by Elijah, the Prophet.  What would we do to honor the gift?  From that day to this, the Tallit of Elijah, the Prophet, has been used in the community as a Chuppah and as a covering for the Chair of Elijah at the Brit ceremony of a newborn.  Most regularly, each year for the entire month before Rosh HaShannah, a Chair of Elijah, draped with the Tallit of Elijah, the Prophet, is set in the Synagogue sanctuary before the Ark awaiting anyone who would like a quiet moment in pursuit of insight and strength for the year ahead.  How can you know that the Tallit was a gift of Elijah?  Ask anyone in the community.

The sages have said: “Happy is the one who has met Elijah, the Prophet, and sat next to him.”  We all have our Elijah stories.

Hearing the Elijah stories of tradition and telling our own stories is a celebration of religious imagination, of possibility, of redemption in the everyday.

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The World is Filled with Remembering and Forgetting

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Sicha, Continuing the Conversation

In the world of the Bible, memory is prized.  There are many commands to “remember,” and some, “not to forget” along with the resigned admission that you likely will forget.  The need to remember and remind is a theme that runs throughout the Days of Awe:  The shofar unlocks memory and reminds God of our ancestors’ loyalty—as though God needs reminding.  For, even as we remind, we name God as “The One Who Remembers All Forgotten Things.”

In the world of the holidays, memory is prized, forgetfulness is not useful.  But is it really so—in the world?  Yehuda Amichai offers a world in which remembering and forgetting, just like sea and land are the elements of existence.   Each is in the world and each is of value.  Is memory always a life giving drink while forgetting is dry and parched?  What of the flood, the torrent, the torment of memory?   The truth is that sometimes—and we know it to be so—it is forgetting that saves us.

The world is filled with remembering and forgetting
As it is with sea and dry land. Sometimes memory
Is the dry land that is firm and founded
And sometimes memory is the sea that covers everything
Like in the flood. And it is forgetting that is the dry land like Arrarat.

Click here for Amichai poem in Hebrew and English.

Posted in Days of Awe, Holidays, Memory, Names, Poetry | Leave a comment

The Poet’s Response

Posted on August 20, 2010 by Sicha, Continuing the Conversation

What follows is a further conversation (see blog of Aug. 17) between the Israeli poet, Rivka Miriam, concerning a poem studied at Sicha Shabbaton:

Rivka,

I want to share a bit more response of the Sicha Shabbaton community to your poem, “I Spread Out My God’s Names Before Me,” (click here for poem) and also invite you to write a few sentences of your own to continue the conversation with that group.

There was acknowledgment that a poet had put into words some of our own thoughts about needing to name a God who frightens, in whose presence one feels fragile and mortal.  This is the God of the Yamim Nora’im: the one who knows everything, forgets nothing, who judges.  We spoke together about how also to bring to the Yamim Nora’im the name of God that comforts and soothes.

Many also strengthened by a poet who could say: there are times when one wants attention from God and other times when one would be happy to be just one of the crowd.

Thanks to your poem, we might tuck into our prayer books our own names of God, generated during the year, known only to us, as individuals; names to call upon in our more private moments.

Dear Shabbaton community,

First of all, I am greatly moved by the fact that my poem reached you.  When one writes a poem, as in our other creative acts, we find ourselves in an absolutely intimate work, corresponding with an inner person more interior than one’s sense of “I.”

Therefore, when a poem such as this one, written from such an inner place finds its way to others and touches them as individuals, this always strikes me as miraculous.   Therefore, I feel that a miracle has occurred for me in that my poem has touched you.  This seems to me like a child born from the innermost world of the parents, who, after being raised under mother’s care and weaned, and taking first steps, then goes out into the world without her.  That mother will always feel that this is her child, even though he separates from her and enters worlds which she does not know and can never know.

As for my poem, I haven’t anything to say.  The poem speaks itself.  There is something living and personal here that even I cannot discern… If I were to say something about God and God’s names, or about names in general, it would not be as relevant as when you come to read my poem…

Thanks to you all,

Rivka

Posted in Days of Awe, Holidays, Names, Poetry | 1 Comment

Conversing with the Poet

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Sicha, Continuing the Conversation

What follows is the beginning of a conversation between myself and Rivka Miriam, a wonderful poet who lives in Jerusalem.  One of Rivka’s poems (click here for poem) made a moving contribution to the theme of the recent Sicha Shabbaton (see blogsite for more information), at Wildacres Retreat, in western North Carolina:

Dear Rivka,

Last week, my new organization, Sicha, sponsored a Shabbaton in the mountains of North Carolina.  Our study theme was: “Naming Ourselves, Naming God.”  The project of Sicha is to create conversations between ancient Jewish texts and modern experiences.  Sicha participants bring their own experiences into conversation with Torah, Midrash, Mishnah and Talmud in pursuit of creative, imaginative and rich Jewish life.  In addition to these ancient voices, other voices are important to the conversation—voices such as yours, a modern Israeli poet writing in Hebrew and engaging an ancient tradition in a personal conversation that you make available to wider audiences.

Your poem, “I Spread Out God’s Names In Front of Me,” was one of our basic texts.  This title is Linda Zisquit’s title in her fine collection of your work, These Mountains: Selected Poems of Rivka Miriam.  I offered our group my own translation to which I gave a slightly different title:  “I Spread Out My God’s Names in Front of Me.”  I wanted to emphasize the very personal nature of your poem. We, your readers, never see the names of God spread out in front of you.  You offer us the experiences that create the names.  But the names are for you alone to know.

Your first word, parasti—“I spread out,” evokes the name that cannot be invoked, shem ha’m’forash—the name that is most explicit, but that we do not pronounce.  Your names for God are parus/spread out, but they are hidden from the reader.  Here is an echo of Rosh HaShannah when the poet says: ein peirush l’eilum sh’mecha—”There can be no expressing of the hidden-ness of your name.”  Your names of God are hidden, but in hiding them you offer each of us the quest for our own names.

This poem became an important example for each of us:  Naming God is a creative act of deep and high importance—a way of bringing a God into the world.

The end of your poem also suggests deep associations.  The cold floor of your room, covered with your Names of God, offers you cool comfort k’chom ha’yom—“in the heat of the day.”   This phrase evokes Abraham meeting the unnamed divine strangers k’chom ha’yom—“in the heat of the day” (Genesis 18:1).  Abraham prostrates himself before the three guests.  You strike the same pose as Abraham.   Your verb for “prostrating yourself” is playfully similar to the verb in Genesis.

In these and other ways, you add a modern poetic voice to a timeless conversation about the power of names and the creative act of naming God.

Our Sicha Shabbaton participants may want to write to you, if you are willing, to continue the conversation.  In any event, we are grateful to you.

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A God By Any Other Name

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Sicha, Continuing the Conversation

What is the power that resides in a name? Is it true that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet? Why do I gain power over you if I discover that your name is ‘Rumpelstiltskin,’?

The ancient Babylonian creation epic, Enuma Elish, begins before the beginning of things:

When on high the heaven had not been named,
Firm ground below had not been called by name…
None of the gods had been brought into being,
And none bore a name, and no destinies determined…

Even the gods require birth-through-naming.

In the Genesis story of creation, God begins to create by naming, finally making Adam a partner in creation by allowing him to name all of the creatures. According to one rabbinic legend (click here for legend), the proud Creator shows off Adam’s capacity to call a rose, a rose—an ability that the jealous angels do not possess. In an even greater demonstration before the angels, God invites the human to name God. Rabbinic legend joins the Babylonian epic. God is created; creatively named into the world according to past experience, according to future hopes.

In Jewish tradition, to know the Name of God is to have a certain powerful intimacy that must be handled carefully: Know the Name, but do not pronounce it. Notwithstanding the inheritance of a single divine name cherished by a single people, each of us names God into the world through our own personal experiences, needs and hopes. Each of us has a God with many names.

The Israeli poet, Rivka Miriam, spreads out the names of her God (click here for poem in Hebrew and English):

I spread out my God’s names before me
On the cold floor of my room.
The name by which I called him when his spirit breathed in me.
And the name by which I called him when I was a girl.
The name by which I called him when I was given to a man.
And the name by which I called him when again permitted to all.
The name by which I called him when my parents were a roof to me. And the name when I had no ceiling.
The name by which I called him that I might fear him. And the name that I called him so that I would not be afraid.
The name by which I called him so that he would remember me. And the name so that he would not remember.
In the heat of the day I will prostrate myself
On the cold floor of my room.

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Conversation of Sages and Singers

Posted on August 11, 2010 by Sicha, Continuing the Conversation

Modern Hebrew poets and ancient sages could have rich conversations on their shared themes.  They weave on a common loom warped with an ancient language and a legacy of images.  Sages and singers have much to say to one another about Abraham’s spiritual journey, the binding of Isaac, about loves and disappointment, about the nature of humans made in the image of God.

Across the centuries, each contributes timely art to a timeless project.  When they speak to one another, there is no early or late.

The project of Sicha is to put these creative voices in conversation one with the other, allowing them to agree, to argue, and to combine so as to broaden and enrich those of us who join the discourse, for it is our conversation as well.

Click here for Parshat HaShavuah.

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