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High Holiday Summaries
Drashes--Teachings--and summary
of High Holiday activity
Date: 10/10/2006 12:31:21 PM ( 18 y ) ... viewed 1376 times 10:31 AM
October 10, 06
Morning inspirations and High Holiday
Summary from Leslie Goldman, Your Enchanted
Gardener, and Yom Kippur Drash,
"Awakening from Exile, by Rabbi Diane Elliott
___
The first Soilmates Sacred Circle we held here at the Enchanted Garden
on the third day of Succot (October 8)
was a milestone for bringing home the energies
from Rosh Hahashan and Yom Kippur.
I led a Rosh Hashanah at the Whole Being Weekend up in Idylwild.
I went up to the mountain to bring down
a new form of Judaism that could sustain 1000 years of Peace.
I feel we are called now to take the best of all expressions of God as shown
in various Religions and Spiritualities. I feel asked to
declare Peace. I want to further accept that the Earth and the Soul
are Soilmates. I want to appreciate the closeness of a Twin Soul/Best
Friend to help me come to terms with my own need to increase
understanding through Peace between my inner and outer M/F balance.
We had a Native American Medicine person give a blessing
at our Rosh Hashanah. All the women helped light the candles and made up
a new blessing since they did not remember the "official" words.
About 75 people showed up at one point. A number of Jewish folks
were deeply moved, and had not seem this kind of expression before.
They felt freed from exile, so to speak.
We had a lovely Shekinah Intro by Regina Perlmutter, and a Shema
chant and Mid East Meditation.
We ended with a little Fress of a Raw Peace Pie from Paul Edwards...
on the theme That we are each the Missing Peace.
Yom Kippur was deep and rich. R. Stan explained that Yom Kippur is
about going to the place of the deepest wound. The service was elegant
and heartfelt, real, and authentic. I added a few poems. During the Kol Kidre
Stan called me up as well, That poem began,
began "In the midst of my dark hour, I awaken to realize there is
nothing wrong with me."
I have been feeling to do fewer things deeper.
I focused on Job's Prayer that is a call
to dance with water hoses.
I feel renewed in my desire to support myself as a Jewish Person
in accepting we can be Peaceful Hubs--Individual inspirations.
R. Diane speaks of pain in her Yom Kippur Drash below.
Here is my take:
"What is Pain?
Pain is a calling out from within,
a loud yet silent yearning, telling us we have not lived fully.
We have missed something.
We have not grasped the meaning of the moment somewhere,
that will lead us, when we do,
to the paradise of self-fulfillment."
Pain confirms we are meant,
we are intended to live in paradise."
--Pain in Paradise
A highlight of the Yom Kippur was working with the kids.
The boys played with earthworms, and the girls helped decorate
a Macrobiotic bucket that said World Peace Breakout Startup kit.
Lisa helped make bandana's for the kids that said, "Soilmates."
The kids decorated them too. My dear ol' friend Stephen Fiske
made up a song as we declared Peace.
The words from R. Shlomo's "Return Again to the Land of your Soul."
was on the bucket.
I had a couple opportunities to express Job's Prayers during
the Holidays, and share the Enchanted Garden Idea
that rather than fighting over Holy Land, we can use
the Gifts of Mother Earth and Pop to make more Holy Land.
During our Yiskor Service at B'nai Horin, Lenore Chudd, Lori, and Stephen Fiske
led a lovely choir of Shlomo's "Return Again, Return to the Land
of Your Soul."
Lynda Levy sang part of Debbie's "Sow in Tears, Weep in Joy"
from her "One People" CD.
We have the greatest of Natural Technologies--
to build peace. We have the opportunity of increasing
Understanding between men and women, to drive us
to make peace with our inner and outer M/F aspects.
We are called, I sense, to surround The Cousins with Green, so that
one day, one Arab and Jew person holds back the violation
and asks, "Can you remind
me why we are fighting?"
One of the last places on earth
where there will be World Peace is the Mid East.
A Breakout of World Peace can only begin here
where we live.
Succot here at home, witnessed our first Soilmates Sacred Circle
in the garden at the house--we had a sacred meal
prepared and eaten in part in silence by a lovely woman
named Kat Alessi, an intuitive healer, and new friend
that I met at the Whole Being Weekend.
Kat prepared with intention, locally
grown organic foods that had been in the ground the day before,
and that had been grown by Joe Rodriquez, AKA Joe the Farmer.
I brought the food home from the Farmers' Market.
We, as a group, listened and sang the words of
Debbie's "Sow in Peace. Reap in Joy" before we ate,
and then three read parts of "Job's Prayer."
http://curezone.com/blogs/m.asp?f=92&i=1898
We sat under a natural Succah, a canopy of Trees in the backyard
at a table where we declared peace with mother earth.
The garden provided metaphors...the table was filled with
falling Olives--from the Olive Branch---One Olive hit me while
I was speaking. We passed a talking Stick--a colored
Corn. I made mention of the presence of Archangels.
One woman saw a Fairy standing nearby that also wanted
to be invited in. Some in the circle were singing new songs;
another witnessed to a Golden large Angel overshadowing
the Garden, asking us to partake of the vortex of abundance.
The sounds of swaying trees, the bird sounds at perfect moments
reminded us that Two Leggeds
are not the only inhabitants of our Earth. Today, this
fifth day of Succot, I was gathering newly fallen quavas
hitting the ground for the first time this year.
I am reminded where my Higher Power is, and how grand
the gift of relationship to point out where I am off the mark.
I am going
out now to gather more Job's Tears.
Truly, as our Beloved R. Diane says below,
it is a time to Awaken from Exile
Leslie
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From: Diane Elliot
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2006 23:39:32 -0700
Subject: Re: Yom Kippur drash
Hello all,
One more drash for you from these High Holy Days just past. The Aquarian Minyan had chosen "wake up, a new day is dawning!" as their over-arching theme for these Holy Days services, and this d'var, like the Rosh Ha-Shanah drash I sent you the week before last, also speaks to that theme--in perhaps a deeper and more personal way. Thanks to you all, near and far, for the loving support and presence you each offer to so many others in your lives. If we can continue to hold the strong intention of enveloping this world in a web of compassionate consciousness, perhaps we'll be in a different place next year when we come together to celebrate this time of cosmic re-wiring. With deep yearning for peace and wholeness, and so much love,
Diane
[5767] AWAKENING FROM EXILE
Dear Friends,
I want to begin by acknowledging a number of important teachers for me, whose work is reflected in my message this evening: Rabbi David Wolfe-Blank, Rabbi Wayne Dosick, Rabbi Miles Krassen, and Rabbi Burt Jacobson. In addition I stand here with great gratitude for all the women pioneers, rabbis, cantors, teachers, who have gone before me, opening the way for women to serve publicly as spiritual teachers and leaders among the Jewish people. If not for their courage and passion, I would not be here with you this evening.
We come together this Yom Kippur, this most awesome and holy night of the year, at a time of great darkness, of anguish and suffering in the world. So many ill, so many dying, so many displaced from homes, torn from families. So many of our fellow Jews suffering, in fear for their lives, so much hatred festering in the world, so much distrust and aggression. During these ten days of teshuvah, of deep soul-scouring between Rosh Ha-Shanah and this night, one Minyan member wrote to me: “ Maybe I am just not right for the Minyan right now, because the theme [for these High Holy Days] is “waking up to a new dawn,” and I think that we still have to get through the night.”
The Talmud teaches [Bava Metzia 59a] that from the day the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed the gates of prayer have been locked. But even though the gates of prayer have been locked, says the Talmud, the gates of tears have always been open, as it says in the Psalm: “shim-ah t’filati Ha-Shem, Hear my prayer God, v’shavati ha-azinah, and give ear to my cry; el dimati al tekh’rash, You will not disregard my tears.” [Ps. 39:14]
Yet, though the gates of tears may always be open, we don’t always take the time or have the koakh, the strength, to open to the depths of our own need and desire for peace and wholeness, for healing, for life. We come together tonight to raise a mighty wailing before heaven’s gates which are also the gates of our of own beings, to mingle our tears and our cries and our prayers of the innermost heart. We give and gain that strength from each other on this most auspicious and holy day.
On Rosh ha-Shanah we spoke of the fact that the dark, though it can be a fearful time, a time of unconsciousness, is also a time when surface mind gets out of the way, when our most powerful experiences are digested, and when, through persistent and skillful spiritual work, we may receive the powerful transmissions from Great Self that are trying to break through.
Rav Kook, the great scholar/mystic and first chief rabbi of Israel, taught that what we term evil or sin is not an absolute, self-contained force, but rather “a relative absence of the spirit or wholeness,” a condition in which the “part” loses sight of its relationship with and “seeks to usurp that which belongs to the whole.” For him teshuvah —the actual act of “turning away” from sin and the misperception that gives rise to it—implies a re-turn, a “turning around” to perceive the Divine Light present within all creation. He believed that the light of wholeness could infuse even social institutions—even governments.
We live in a time of so many great displacements, uprootings. For Jews the mass executions and transports and death camps of the Holocaust have been the most cold-bloodedly systematic and widespread brutality in a long history of violent persecutions. In rabbinic school, I wept my way through classes in Medieval Jewish history and the history of Zionism…so much bloodshed and hatred and misunderstanding, so many impossible choices.
Tonight I am holding the awareness of so many painful displacements and shiftings in our world: millions of people displaced and dying in Darfur, the displacements of our people in northern Israel and of the people in southern Lebanon, tenuous certainties and illusions of security being swept away, the entire city of people, New Orleans, displaced by hurricane, the ocean displaced by earthquake in southeast Asia and washing away homes and lives, even the icecaps and glaciers of our planet dissolving at an ever-increasing pace. Are these all failures of human stewardship, deficits of human vision and compassion? Is God asleep, hiding? Are there large movements working here, beyond what we can control or ever comprehend? What are we to do? How are we to be?
I’ve been dealing with a great deal of displacement in my personal life, and its lessons have been increasingly jarring and painful. For much of my adult life, as a student, an itinerant dance artist, a visitor, a student again—I’ve lived out of suitcases and boxes in a series of small apartments, sublets, guest rooms—never really at ease, never really settling in. I keep my packing boxes, broken down, in the basement. Soon after moving to San Diego from Minnesota, some eight years ago, I received my rabbinical calling, and for six years commuted to Los Angeles for school, sleeping and working where I could, in other people’s homes and office spaces, constantly adapting to new spatial configurations, smells, noises, traffic patterns, as I tried to keep up with and integrate massive amounts of new information from classes.
Now I’ve moved Bay Area to be with my partner—the ninth or tenth major move of my adult life. And though my displacements have all been voluntary, I’ve nevertheless chafed bitterly—more bitterly, now that I’m older—against the discomforts of not having “my” things around me, of not knowing where things are, of breaking beloved objects, losing keys, papers, my DSL modem, my mind!
I find myself reacting with anger, even outrage, and shutdown, a physical hardening of shoulders, neck, nerves, to what are in reality minor inconveniences. I have been angry and blaming of my partner, projecting again and again my internal discomfort. During these days of teshuvah, especially, I’ve become aware that I have embodied, in my moving and pervasive sense of displacement, the painful story of galut, of exile, deeply woven into Jewish identity.
The Hebrew word galut, exile, comes from the root gimmel-lamed-hey and has two primary meanings: to remove and to uncover. Both are words of movement. The meaning “to carry away into exile” comes from the hiphil or causative form of the verb; it is a removal, an exposing, that is done to us. We are uncovered, stripped of our defenses, of our property and possessions, of what has been comfortable, of what we have held sacred. In the defining myth of our people-hood, we fall into deep spiritual and physical degradation in Mitzrayim, the most confining of places, yet we have to be extracted from that place by God, acting through Moshe. Short of spirit, we complain bitterly. Then, in the wilderness, almost against our will and with great trepidation, galut metamorphoses into gilui, revelation. We receive what the Sages called gilui Ha--Shekhinah, the revelation of Holy Presence in the world. It is not an easy gifting. Midrash teaches that with each of the Ten Commandments, the people recoiled twelve miles, expired, and had to be revived and carried back to the mountain by angels....just a little bit of resistance there!
Galut and gilui —the same root, the same movement, almost the same word, but perceived differently: galah becomes exile when we freeze in terror, in anger, in our sense of being pulled from where we want to be; and revelation, when we are somehow able to turn, lashuv, and perceive the Divine light pouring through this movement, this perhaps uncomfortable or even terrifying displacement. Then, as the Ba’al Shem Tov taught, what is untenable becomes sweetened through our spiritual labors, and though the experience may never be easy or pleasant, we can yet abide in gilah, joy. The only letters that distinguish the words galah, to remove or expose, from gil, to rejoice, are the yud and the hey —Yah.
What I see now is that very old holding patterns that keep fear and the stance of victimhood anchored in my very tissues are being forced to the surface, in this case, thank G-d, by my own choices, so that they can see the light of day. Galui v’yadua, it is revealed and deeply known. When I open my hands, my nerves and muscles, releasing old patterns, then what is revealed, galui, is the deepest truth of who I am, v’yadua, and I am known, through and through—more deeply, almost more intimately than I can bear.
This is the work of waking up! It’s not romantic or sweet or idealistic. It’s ugly and messy, and I’d rather not do it, but here it is, in my face! The Tikkunei Zohar taught, “leyt atar panui minei,” there is no place devoid of the Divine. If this is true, then what’s in my face is G-d’s face. And Reb Yaakov Yosef, one of the Ba’al Shem’s primary disciples taught: “When you realize that the Origin of the Universe is present in every tenuah, every change, every movement, that occurs in the universe, then you will be able to bear anything without suffering brokenness.”
This is such hard work. I have no answers to the large, painful, urgent questions of these times. I do believe that if we are —if I am —to awaken to the dawning of a new day, of many new days, and to move with any grace through these painful changes, which I pray and hope are pains of growth, then I—we—no longer have the luxury to say, “This is how we’ve always done it,” even in small things. As Reb Barry taught us on Rosh Ha-shanah, we have no time to waste. We must fully commit to engaging in the highest form of tzedakah —the righteous giving away of our attachment to the patterns of the past, the shutdown, the fears, the wounds, and the scars.
We, both as individuals and as a community, must try to do this where it is perhaps most difficult, where we are most unconscious—on the most subtle, minute, personal levels—to feel through the pain in ourselves, to have great compassion upon ourselves, and to refrain from attaching this pain to others—to those closest to us, our families and our friends, to each other, to our fellow Jews, and to all those with whom we join in communities of learning and spirit. Reb Moshe Aharon—Rabbi Miles Krassen—teaches that if we commit to such a practice of radical kindness internally and through all our communities of work and spirit, then we will be engaged in reconfiguring not only ourselves, but G-d as well.
[sing] ai-yi! ai-yi! ay-yi-yi-yi! oy gevalt mir shluft! oy gevalt we sleep! oy gevalt, gevalt, gevalt, ura lama tishan….. gevalt, wake up! Why do you sleep?!
The verse “ura lama tishan, why do you sleep” comes from Tehillim, the very difficult Psalm 44, which says, in effect, “God, we’ve heard about how you helped our ancestors triumph in the days of old, but now you’ve rejected and disgraced us. Though I am covered with shame from the voice of taunting revilers, though we are cast to the depths and covered with deepest darkness, we have not forgotten You! Ura lama tishan Adonai, rouse Yourself! Why are You asleep, Adonai?”
Yet, “What we may perceive as Divine disapproval or absence,” writes Reb Moshe Aharon, “is really G-d suffering along with us.” These High Holy Days are the time to call a new YHVH into existence, to “neutralize Divine judgment with kindness,” to “birth a kinder, greater G-d and draw a new YHVH into time and space.” Perhaps when we as a community commit to bringing more compassion, a deeper respect for the other, into our every interaction, we draw down compassion from above and are able to have a beneficial effect on our corner of the world. And who knows? Perhaps we will have an effect on the planet and the Cosmos and G-d, as well.
O G-d, G-d,
may our prayers on this Yom Kippur be deep and raw and true,
life-changing and G-d-changing.
Help us to shake free
from the last year’s crystallized ideas
of You and of ourselves,
to liberate an independent Shekhinah
from last year’s confining exile.
Inscribe us for blessing
so that, infused with strength,
we may continue this hard, worthy work
of awakening
to ever-new days,
Amen.
Photo of Rabbi Diane here:
http://curezone.com/blogs/m.asp?f=92&i=1777
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