What did I do today?

I met with four brothers and sisters to plan tomorrow's funeral service for their mother. I prompted them to remember times of great love and joy while they mopped tears of devotion and grief from their faces.

I met with a 96-year-old woman and her daughter in the assisted living facility into which the mother has just moved. I listened to them both tell stories about their lives, their family and their anxieties about what may be life's last chapter.

I met with a woman who traveled across the country to be with her mother as she lies dying in hospice. I heard her talk about her mother's rage, the hurt her mother has caused her and her siblings, the difficult life her mother has lived, and of the way she has found joy and sweetness by forgiving her mother.

The most sacred moments in life are sometimes the hardest. Yet, the joy we experience in times of sorrow can be the most intense. In grief, we remember the things that make life most beautiful and most meaningful to us. Moments of celebration, too, can be times when we experience loss most intensely because we miss the people who are not there. We go up as we go down; we go down as we go up.

In this week's parashah (Vayetze), Jacob comes to rest as he is running away from his family and from the hurt he caused his brother, Esau. He is on his way to Haran, where he shortly will meet the love of his life, Rachel, and his greatest adversary, Laban. He lies down on the hard ground to sleep and has a dream of angels going up a ladder and coming down a ladder (Genesis 28:10–19).

The rabbis say that the ladder represents the fortunes of life—good and bad. Some ascend in fortune while others descend. The ladder also represents the link between heaven and earth, a pathway to the sacred in our lives. Both the ascending angels and the descending angels are sacred. Our lives are made holy by moments of intense joy and they are made holy by moments of unbearable grief. Sometimes, they are the same moments on the same ladder.

Tonight, thinking back on my day, I am thinking about that ladder. 


Other posts on this topic:
Acharei Mot: Facing the Direction of Azazel

A few months ago, I wrote a post titled, "Why Pray?"  that got a lot of response in the comments and even more in private messages. After some time of reflection, I'd like to follow up on it.

In the original post, I talked about some of the historical answers Jews have given to this basic question about prayer. Over the centuries, Jewish prayer has been understood as a replacement for the Temple sacrifices, a way of expressing personal attachment to God, the fulfillment of a commandment, an act of mystical unification of the godhead, and a way of creating a shared social experience among Jews.

At the end of the post, I also mentioned another answer to the "why pray" question—the answer that means the most to me and that, I believe, is the emerging answer for Judaism in the twenty-first century. Prayer is a spiritual discipline that helps us discover our inner life, develop a sense of equanimity and peace, and deepen our joy in living. 

I would like to explore some of the nuts-and-bolts aspects of that idea more deeply by sharing some of my own personal prayer practices. This is my answer to the related question: “How to pray?” Ideally, I would like you to join the conversation by leaving comments with your own experiences, observations and hopes from your prayer life.

I pray every day, but my prayer does not always take the same form. For me, the variation of different types of prayer experiences is part of what makes the practice fulfilling. It makes prayer feel like an ongoing experiment in which I am collecting spiritual data about how different types of prayer make me feel.

On most days, I pray using the liturgy of the siddur, although I do not often use the full traditional service. Sometimes I pray in the morning standing and wearing a talit (and sometimes tefilin, too). Just as often, I pray as part of a seated meditation. I love to be outdoors, so sometimes I pray while going for a walk around my neighborhood, in a park, or wherever I happen to be. Over the years, I've written a bunch of different "short versions" of the morning service, and I freely switch around the ones I use.  

When I pray with the words of the prayerbook, I pray only in Hebrew. That works for me because I understand the words of the traditional Hebrew liturgy and I find that they are difficult to translate. When I call God, "melech," for example, that conveys a different feeling for me than I get from the English words "king" or "sovereign." In similar ways, "kadosh" means something different to me than "holy" or "sacred," and "Yisrael" has a spiritual meaning that goes beyond "Israel" or "the Jewish people." 

I recognize that the special character of prayer in Hebrew is not available or apparent to everyone. For those who want to pray in English, I recommend looking for a translation that speaks to you. Not all translations are created equal. 

What have I discovered in my varied and eclectic prayer life? 

First, I find that the commitment to praying daily is most important. As with jogging or practicing an instrument, it would be foolish to expect much reward from praying if it is only a “once in a while” experience. The benefit of prayer comes from repetition, familiarity and a deepening practice. 

Second, I believe that prayer is best for me when I am able to suspend (or, at least, quiet) the rational, analytical part of my brain. Prayer is more about feeling than thinking; it is more like poetry than prose. My most meaningful experiences of prayer are those in which I enter into the world of the prayer and allow it to open me, rather than me trying to open the prayer with “left brain” thinking.

Third, I have found that, for me, prayer works. I don’t mean that I always feel peaceful or insightful after praying—on the contrary, sometimes it is aggravating. I certainly do not mean that I regularly feel “touched by God” in prayer. Rather, I have found that after practicing prayer regularly for a long time, I feel that I have become a less anxious person and better able to deal with life’s ups and downs. I feel more in touch with myself and with what makes me truly happy. There are times for me when prayer is ecstatic and intensely joyful, and I am grateful for such moments. However, for me, the long-term change in the way I feel in my own skin has been more valuable to me than any particular moment of transcendence.

Do you have comparable experiences with prayer? An entirely different experiences? What works and what does not work for you?

I know that several of my readers are also bloggers. Let me encourage you to write about your own prayer experiences and include links to your writings about prayer in the comments.


Other posts on this topic:
Why Pray?
Learning About Jewish Prayer from Yoga

On this Thanksgiving Day, I make this simple offering on the subject of gratitude. If your family takes time to speak words of appreciation as you sit around the Thanksgiving table, I invite you to use this meditation based on the Ten Commandments:

1. "I Adonai am your God…" I give my thanks for living in a world in which there is a divine purpose. Even when the specifics of my particular task are hidden from me or uncertain to me, I am grateful to know that there is a moral order and a cosmic design that makes life worth living and gives my life meaning. 

2. "You shall not have other gods…" I give my thanks for a world without easy answers. God is a mystery to me and I am grateful for the ability to discover God's hidden presence in all that surrounds me. In all things, I am thankful for the possibility of discovering the living God.

3. "You shall not take the name of Adonai your God in vain..." I give my thanks for the opportunity to give praise to the source of my existence. Every day of my life is made more joyful by the simple act of singing out the name of Creation's God in gratitude and wonder.

4. "Remember the day of Shabbat…" I give my thanks for moments of rest, reflection and gathering with the people I love. My life is richer and my experience of living is more profound because of the gift of a day to lay down work, celebrate with others, and to ponder life's deeper meaning.

5. "Honor your father and mother…" I give my thanks for the parents who gave me life, cared for me with love, hoped for my future, and raised me with integrity. I owe my life to them.

6."You shall not murder." I give my thanks for the precious gift of life, a miracle without comparison.

7. "You shall not commit adultery." I give my thanks for the mystery and beauty of living life in an exclusive partnership. I am grateful for the love of my companion and for the opportunity we have to share our love mutually and in the deepest intimacy. I am thankful for the sanctity of this precious relationship.

8. "You shall not steal." I give my thanks for the the boundaries between myself and others. I am grateful for the ability to enjoy friendships and community without losing my identity and without the need to make others subservient to my will and desires. I am thankful for the opportunity to live a life of integrity.

9. "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." I give my thanks for the miraculous gift of language and speech and for the opportunity to sanctify life through the words of my mouth. I am grateful for the opportunity to use my words as servants of truth.

10. "You shall not covet your neighbor's house…" I give my thanks for the people and things from which I am permitted to benefit. I am grateful for the ability to feel gratitude for all that I have and for the awareness of sufficiency in my life.


Other posts on this topic: 
Ki Tavo: Gratitude in a Recession

Most people imagine that there is a connection between wealth and happiness. The more stuff you have, the happier you are supposed to be.

A recent psychological survey shows that this is true…to some extent. People who are less affluent do tend to be less happy. The survey also shows that people at or above about the 90th percentile of wealth tend to be the happiest. Curiously, though, there is no difference in the happiness of people from the 90th to the 99th percentile. If you already have a "comfortable" income, having more money will not make you any happier. You will have to find greater happiness someplace else.

Another interesting finding of the survey is that the happiness that comes from wealth is relative. People who are wealthy compared to the people around them tend to be happier in absolute terms. In other words, whether you have a well paying job and live in a nice neighborhood in the affluent United States, or whether you are a successful goat herder living in a better-than-average hut in impoverished Tanzania, you have about the same chance of being happy. 

We could say that it is not really wealth that brings happiness. Rather, it is the perception and expectation of wealth that contribute to making a person happy. Billionaires who have come to believe that their wealth is "normal" have the same likelihood of unhappiness as vagrants who are inured to a wandering, homeless life. Happiness is built on perceptions, attitudes and gratitude.

In this week's Torah portion (Toledot), Isaac asks his son to kiss him and he observes, "The fragrance of my son is like the fragrance of a field that Adonai has blessed!" He then blesses Jacob, saying, "And may God give you from the dew of the heavens and the fat of the land; the abundance of new wheat and wine." Rashi, the medieval commentator, wonders why Isaac begins his blessing with the word "and." Is the blessing a continuation of the observation about Jacob's fragrance?

Rashi concludes that the "and" is there to tell us that Isaac wishes God to bless his son over and over again. Just as he has been blessed with the fragrance of an orchard, he wishes God to bless him repeatedly and further with the plenty of heaven and earth. Rashi quotes a midrash that says, "יתן ויחזור ויתן," "May God give and give again." (Bereshit Rabah 66:3)

This is the way we usually wish blessing upon people. We do not wish for some windfall to come upon them that will "set them up for life." Rather, we hope that blessings large and small will be an ongoing presence in the life of people we care about. We wish for them a life in which blessing is a constant, not a one-time event.

In his commentary on this week's portion, Aharon-Ya'akov Greenberg says that Rashi's commentary teaches a deeper lesson:

Every joy in which we take pleasure in this world is only temporary. If you suddenly were to become wealthy, you would be happy for a day or two. Afterwards, though, you would become used to it and think that it is just the way things must be. All desires of the world are insubstantial, and when they are fulfilled the delight quickly fades. However, if you were to become wealthy gradually, day by day, your happiness would grow every day. Thus was the blessing of Isaac for Jacob—that he would not become wealthy all at once, but rather that “God would give and then give again.”  That way, his success would increase day by day without interruption. (Iturei Torah, 1:236. Greenberg cites "various sources")

This wealth that grows day by day is not necessarily some kind of monetary annuity. The wealth that each of us can experience each day is the riches of just living in this world with gratitude. By regarding the universe around us—which we did not create and which was given without our asking—as a gift, we can become happier in the recognition that God has given and then given again.

Happiness is the product of our perceptions and attitudes. When we cultivate an awareness of the miracles around us, we are able to expand our joy beyond the finite limits that material wealth can bring. We become people whose happiness can grow every day.

Other posts on this topic:
Re'eh: Giving and Receiving

I officiated at a bris today (not the surgery, just the talking part). I am sure that many rabbis will agree that this ritual is one of the best parts of the job. Babies are wonderful, of course, and the raw emotion and spiritual power of a bris is without equal. 

A bris (more properly called brit milah) is the ritual circumcision of an eight-day-old boy. In Jewish tradition, circumcision is referred to as "a sign of the covenant." As we state in the blessing that follows circumcision, the relationship between God and Israel is marked in our flesh:

Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Source of all being, who sanctified the people of Israel, Your beloved, from the womb, placing Your law on our flesh, and placing the seal of Your holy covenant on our children. Therefore, may You—God of life, our Portion, our Rock—keep our beloved safe from harm for the sake of Your covenant which is set in our flesh. Blessed are You, Adonai, who establishes the covenant. 

No matter how many I attend, the brit milah ceremony always seems the same. There is the father bursting with pride, the mother wondering how she is going to get through the ceremony in which her perfect newborn will be scarred for life (literally). There are the nervous guests cracking inappropriate jokes ("He only took tips"). There is the mohel (the person who does the surgery) who tries unsuccessfully to calm everyone's anxieties about the baby's cries. There are the women who smile reassuringly for the mother; the men who stand pale-faced with their hands folded in front of their genitals. It makes for quite a tableau.

But there is something else that always is present at a bris that is harder to explain. There is this feeling of being part of a huge, unfolding story that includes us all and that never can be fully told. We are performing a ritual that is stunningly serious—putting a knife to the most vulnerable part of the most vulnerable of all human beings—in order to make a stunningly serious statement. Each of us is part of the Infinite and Eternal. Each of us is present at the beginning of the world—for the birth of every child is a recapitulation of the moment of Creation—and each of us is present in the eventual, final redemption—for the birth of every child carries with it the possibility of the world's fulfillment. 

At each brit milah, we stand in a timeless time, when past and future collide into one endless moment. We recall our future and hope for our past. How does the ritual do this? In part, it is a paradox: An intense moment in the present allows the past and future become vividly alive within it.

I cannot ignore all the obvious and difficult aspects of brit milah. Well into the second century of feminism, we still have not figured out a single, authoritative way to enter our baby girls into the covenant of God and the Jewish people. There is still some controversy about the ethics of performing elective surgery on an eight-day-old child. But history seems to be on the side of Jewish tradition. There is not a shred of scientific evidence that circumcision is harmful and there is some evidence of benefits. 

In many ways, the fact that circumcision raises these problems and concerns is part of why the ritual is still so powerful for us. It takes us out of our comfort zone and into a world of stark realities where blood, love, pain, longing and eternity commingle.

Officiating at a brit milah is one of the best parts of being a rabbi. Holding the child, feeling the power of the primal ritual, experiencing a palpable connection to past and future, and falling in love again with Jews of all times and places—all make a bris a moment beyond imagining. 

The life of Sarah was a hundred years and twenty years and seven years; these were the years of the life of Sarah. (Genesis 23:1)

It is not that Sarah lived to the age of 127 years old that took the rabbis by surprise. Rather, it was the odd way that her age is stated in the opening verse of this week’s Torah portion (Chayei Sarah). First, there is the way that her age is divided into “a hundred years” and “twenty years” and “seven years.” In the midrash, the rabbis use this unusual division to compare Sarah to the righteous person mentioned in a verse from Psalms (37:18):

“Adonai knows the days of those who are whole [תמימם]. Their inheritance shall be forever.” As they are whole, so are their years whole. At the age of twenty, Sarah was as at the age of seven in beauty. At the age of a hundred, she was as at the age of twenty regarding sin. (Genesis Rabbah 58:1)

The midrash answers the oddity of the way Sarah’s age is stated by saying that it teaches that the lives of righteous people are, in some way, “timeless.”  For Sarah, the archetypical woman, ages seven, twenty and one hundred are all of a piece. She is a woman of integrity and not a single moment of her life is missing from the integrated whole.

The second oddity in the way Sarah’s age is recorded is in the phrase: “these were the years of the life of Sarah.” After we have been told Sarah’s age, the phrase appears redundant. What does it add? 

In the same midrash, the rabbis answer this by noticing a play on words in the Hebrew. The word that is translated as “the years of” [שני] is a homonym for a word that means “two” [שני]. The rabbis creatively reread the verse two say, “These were the two lives of Sarah.”  The midrash says that the righteous have two lives—the life of this world and the life of the world to come. 

What does this all mean? 

Meaningful life is not bound by time. It exists in an eternity in which past, present and future are fused together. As a righteous person, Sarah lives both a life in this world and a life in olam haba, the world of eternity. Her life in this world may end, but her life in the eyes of God is forever. Lives lived meaningfully never really end. They continue to leave a lasting impression upon the universe.

Thinking about your own life, do you recognize regrettable moments in your past that have become “unstuck” from your life and have become spiritually lost? Do you also recognize moments from your past that continue to live into your present (and into eternity) because of the positive spiritual choices you made in them? How does living a life of integrity allow us to hold onto the past? How do choices in life that lack integrity cause our past to disappear from us? What does it mean to you to live life in such a way that “not a moment is missing”?

What makes the experience of praying in a community really work? What do you most hope will happen for you and the congregation in a service? How do we make worship superb?

This week, I am attending my first meeting of the Reform Movement's Joint Commission on Worship, Music and Religious Living, and these are some of the questions we are asking. It is a great group of lay leaders, rabbis, cantors, composers and other synagogue musicians, all committed to creating superb Jewish experiences for the people who walk into our houses of worship. For me, the meeting has been stimulating and challenging.

Last night I had a conversation with other Commission members—friends old and new—trying to answer these tough questions about defining superb worship. We talked about the way people feel when they are part of a service that is really working well and what makes them come back for more. What is distinct about those services?

This is how I framed it: 

Superb worship happens when a person feels that something personally important and transforming has happened in the service—something that has allowed him or her to see life with new eyes. Superb worship happens when members of a community feel that they have, as a group, been transformed together. Superb worship happens when people feel that they have been through an experience that has had cosmic consequences—something existentially meaningful has happened to transform the soul of the universe.

Now, I recognize that this is a very high standard to set for any congregation seeking to create superb worship. Yet, I know that it does happen. There are times—maybe not every time, and not for every person—when praying together touches us deeply in a way that feels like being touched by God. There are times when we feel ourselves to be part of something much larger than any one individual, and that experience has ripples that go beyond the walls of the synagogue and into the universe and beyond. When that happens, worship feels indescribably wonderful.

Take a moment to think about when this has happened for you. What were the elements that made it special? What is your recipe for making worship superb?

There is no one-size-fits-all model of what such worship experiences look like. For some, it can happen when beautiful music is performed beautifully. For others, it comes from hearing a sermon that speaks clearly and powerfully to the mind. For most people, the experience comes from being part of a service in which each person feels like a participant, not just a spectator. 

There are some specific things that I think service leaders can do to help create superb worship experiences. Here's a list for starters:

1) Collaborate. When worship leaders truly build partnerships with each other based on trust, and when they generously share their talents and ideas with each other, amazing things can happen. The positive energy of prayer leaders who work together with open hearts can infect an entire congregation.

2) Invite Participation. By broadening the circle of collaboration to include the entire congregation, prayer leaders form communities of inclusion and meaning. By inviting people to participate in the service—through music, discussion, call-and-response prayers, individual honors, dancing, and so on—we make the service theirs.

3) Be Willing to Experiment. Old models for worship can grow stale quickly. By trying new ideas and being willing to take risks, prayer leaders can keep the worship experience fresh and exciting, both for their communities and for themselves. Even when experiments do not work, they send the message that the community is alive with creativity and thought.

4) Allow Silence. Much of what can make worship superb happens within the mind and heart of each worshipper. People need time to process their overt experience and to consider internally how it applies to their own life. People need to discover themselves in the service, and that takes time and space. By allowing for moments of quiet reflection, we allow people to create their own superb experience.

That is just a beginning. What else belongs on this list? What are the experiences you hope for in worship that makes it superb?

One of the things I like about practicing Yoga is that I don't know very much about it. I have never directly studied the texts of Yoga or even learned about them in any kind of classroom setting. For me, Yoga is all about the mat and the studio and the words of my instructor. For someone who is more used to being the instructor and spiritual guide, it's nice to have a chance to be the student. I also find that learning about Yoga helps me to understand Judaism better.

Of course, we are talking about two very different traditions. Yoga is all about embodiment—one becomes a student of Yoga by feeling the experience of it in ones body. Judaism is also, very much, an experienced tradition—you can't just study Judaism, you have to live it—yet, there is very little emphasis in traditional Jewish texts on the way that the practice of Judaism feels in the physical body. From time to time, though, I see strong parallels in the way that Yoga and Judaism talk about their deepest experiences. The two traditions, it seems, have a lot to learn from each other.

One of the things that Yoga and Rabbinic Judaism have in common is the image of the yoke. A yoke—על (ol), in Hebrew—is used throughout rabbinic writing as a metaphor for the way in which we connect ourselves to God. The first paragraph of the Shema is called, Kabalat Ol Malchut Shamayim, the Acceptance of the Yoke of Heaven's Rule. This is the section that declares, "Hear O Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is One." The first step of observance, the rabbis state, is for us to submit ourselves to a singular God who is our sovereign. Without recognizing that there is something outside of ourselves that has the authority to dictate a moral code and pattern for our lives, there can be no meaningful connection to God. This acceptance is called a yoke because, like the collar that ties the ox to its fellow, to its master and to the plow, reciting the Shema ties us to each other, to God and to the work of repairing the world.

Once each of us accepts that we are not the center of the universe, we must take the next step and acknowledge the corollary: our actions have consequences. The second paragraph of the Shema is called Kabalat Ol Hamitzvot, the Acceptance of the Yoke of the Commandments. (Unfortunately, it is omitted from most Reform prayerbooks). The section states that observance of the mitzvot is connected to the fulfillment of the natural cycle of agriculture and the seasons. Living life as we are intended leads to plenty and satisfaction for all, but ignoring the right path leads to starvation and death. When we behave well, we promote joy; when we behave poorly, we promote suffering. Reciting the second paragraph of the Shema is a declaration that the way we choose to respond to the eternal moral code links us to God and to each other. 

The word yoga in Sanskrit means "yoke," and Yoga uses the metaphor of the ol in ways that are similar to Rabbinic Judaism. Scott Feinberg, my amazing Yoga instructor, talked this week about the three-step path of a yogi. The first step is to yoke together the body, the mind and the breath. This is a simultaneous act of discipline and exploration in which one unites ones being in harmony with itself and with reality all around. It is a harnessing of the mind and spirit to the material reality of the body, and harnessing the material reality of the body to the varied and infinite possibilities of mind and spirit.

The second step is to yoke oneself to the Divine, however it may be understood. To be a yogi is to allow yourself awareness of the universal life force of which you are a part. It is a celebration of the gift of existence and the ability that we all have to shine brilliantly as a part of that miracle. The third step is to return to the material world, to recognize its limitation and its beauty, and to surrender to it. 

There is no direct parallel between the way that Yoga describes its yokes and the way that Judaism describes its ulim—they are cousins, not siblings. Yet, the conversation between them is interesting. Rabbinic Judaism puts far more weight on the idea of "commandedness" than does Yoga. Judaism insists that "there is judgement and there is a Judge." It is not enough to perceive a yoke that ties us all together, says Judaism, we must also know that the yoke has authority over us. Judaism can teach Yoga that discipline does not just come from within; its origin is a commanding presence from beyond ourselves.

Yoga can teach Judaism that the yoke should not be viewed primarily as a burden, but as a joy. Putting on the yoke is first an act of harmonizing ourselves, not just stifling our evil impulses. By accepting the discipline of the Yoke of Heaven's Rule and the Yoke of the Commandments, we prepare ourselves to enter a new awareness of the Universal Life Force (חי העלמים, chei ha-olamim) in which we can shine brightly with our entire being—mind, body and spirit.