Shabbat Shalom
A reminder that
Friday night services now begin at 7 PM. With Cantor Fishman on vacation
this week, I’ll be going solo - with a special focus on silence and mindfulness
(see below). In addition,
we’ll be having a special family service led by our 5th and 6thgraders at 6, with a
Disney theme, including prayers sung to Disney themes (I’m tempted to dust off
my Lyin’
King Purim parody that I
wrote years ago). I’ve seen some of the material and it’s really
creative! Great for the whole family.
Next Friday night
Cantor Fishman will be bringing musical guest Avram Pengas, a world renowned musician specializing in guitar and oud.
Plus, join Mara and for a special Oneg Shabbat at our home after
services. Looking ahead, circle January 30 on the calendar for our
Shabbat service downtown.
Other than Shabbat, I
hope you can join me at three big events next week. I’m really looking
forward to the first session of my “Hot
Topics for Cold Months” series on Tuesday night, this time focusing on
Judaism and Gun Violence. On Wed. at noon, ourLunch
and Learn series on Pirke Avot continues.
And on Thursday evening, our interfaith “Learning and Latte” will step
aside for this month for an interfaith community conversation, Moving
Beyond Racism, featuring Mayor David Martin.
Also, our new LGBT
group had a preliminary meeting this week. The next meeting will take
place on Thursday evening, Jan. 22 at 7:30. A Havdalah / social event is
also on the calendar, set for March 7 at a Harbor Point location. Save
those dates! More info to come.
And don’t forget our
Israel trip - see the itinerary and other info here. We would love
to have you join us this July.
Holy Silence, January
Cold, Jerusalem Snow, Heschel and “Wild”
Jerusalem in snow
“It had nothing to do
with gear or footwear or the backpacking fads or philosophies of any particular
era or even with getting from point A to point B. It had to do with how it felt
to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with no reason other
than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts,
streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was
powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to
be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel
this way....It offers a silence. It offers a solace. It offers a perspective.”
Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
“The deepest language
of the soul is silence.”
Rabbi Rami Shapiro,
quoted in the current issue of the digital
journal Sh’ma, which features some stirring essays on silence.
Over the holidays, I
went to see the excellent film “Wild.” In this week’s portion of “Shmot,”
the book of Exodus begins with Moses embarking on a similar journey -
remarkable similar, in fact, as he retreats to the silence of the wilderness to
escape family trauma (his estrangement from the Egyptian court) and personal
calamity (his murder of a taskmaster) in a tortured and tortuous journey of
self discovery.
The great
conservationist Aldo Leopold spoke of January as an ideal month to explore the
outdoors, despite the cold, because, with so much of nature in hibernation,
there are few diversions. As I walked across the frozen tundra of my lawn
this morning and heard little but the crunch of ice beneath my feet, I could
understand what he was getting at.
He writes, in his classic, “A Sand County
Almanac,” “The months of the
year, from January up to June, are a geometric progression in the abundance of
distractions. In January one may follow a skunk track, or search for bands on
the chickadees, or see what young pines the deer have browsed, or what muskrat
houses the mink have dug, with only an occasional and mild digression into
other doings. January observation can be almost as simple and peaceful as snow,
and almost as continuous as cold. There is time not only to see who has done
what, but to speculate why.”
January, then, is a
time when we can pause, meander and reflect. The cold forces us to go a
little more slowly (unless you are in Green Bay or Foxboro, that is), and the
snow blankets the world with a coat of mystery. It coated
Jerusalem with a few inches just
this week, and for a fleeting moment, the tumult of the region was replaced by
silent stirring, with the only noise being children at play.
Friday marks the
yahrzeit of Abraham Joshua
Heschel, whose contributions to the Civil Rights battles of the 1960s was apparently
airbrushed out of the film “Selma,” which opens nationally this weekend.
Heschel spoke out against silence, both human and God’s, in the
face of injustice. But Heschel also understood the power of silence
in prayer. Long before mindfulness became a fad, he practically invented the
concept of wonder for the 20th century
Jew, living in an increasingly urban, complex and noisyworld.
Here’s what he wrote about
prayer, nature and silence:
“To pray is to take
notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all
beings, the divine margin in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to
the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the
mystery by which we live. Who is worthy to be present at the constant unfolding
of time? Amidst the meditation of mountains, the humility of flowers - wiser
than all alphabets - clouds that die constantly for the sake of His glory, we
are hating, hunting, hurting. Suddenly we feel ashamed of our clashes and
complaints in the face of the tacit glory in nature. It is so embarrassing to
live! How strange we are in the world, and how presumptuous our doings! Only
one response can maintain us: gratefulness for witnessing the wonder, for the
gift of our unearned right to serve, to adore, and to fulfill. It is
gratefulness which makes the soul great.”
...In a sense, our
liturgy is a higher form of silence. It is pervaded by an awed sense of the
grandeur of God which resists description and surpasses all expression. The
individual is silent. He does not bring forth his own words. His saying the consecrated
words is in essence an act of listening to what they convey. The spirit of
Israel speaks, the self is silent.
...Twofold is the
meaning of silence. One, the abstinence from speech, the absence of sound. Two,
inner silence, the absence of self-concern, stillness. One may articulate words
in his voice and yet be inwardly silent. One may abstain from uttering any
sound and yet be overbearing. Both are inadequate: our speech as well as our
silence. Yet there is a level that goes beyond both: the level of song. “There
are three ways in which a man expresses his deep sorrow: the man on the lowest
level cries; the man on the second level is silent; the man on the highest
level knows how to turn his sorrow into song.” True prayer is a song.
That’s our unofficial
mission statement here - to cultivate silence, and to transform it into song.
On Friday night at 7 PM, we, like Robert Frost,
Moses and Meryl Streep will also travel “Into the Woods” - I mean the
wilderness (got my movies mixed up), with quotes by Cheryl Strayed and
others. Let’s see if we can’t experience some meaningful moments amidst
the holy silence.
And on Shabbat
morning, we’ll deepen mindfulness with a discussion of the portion through the
eyes Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev, as described in the new book, “A Partner
in Holiness.”
"It is only when
we silent the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear
the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the
doorsteps of our hearts." K.T. Jong
Have a peaceful - and
quiet - Shabbat.
Rabbi Joshua
Hammerman
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