A man sounds a shofar at a synagogue in Minnesota.(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We’re in the season of the shofar.
If you go to a synagogue with weekday services, you’ll hear it: the primitive sound that comes from a raw-looking piece of animal horn. It’s meant to wake up your soul. When you hear it, just shut your eyes and let yourself feel it. Let the vibrations shake you up.
Jews have listened to that sound since the earliest days; there are records of the shofar sounding in the Torah, as the Hebrews traveled through the desert. We know the shofar was blown in the Temple. The sound echoes down the centuries.
On Thursday, Sept 5, 2013 we’ll hear it again: there’s a whole short service dedicated to it in the Rosh Hashanah Day service.
Here are some basic facts about the shofar:
The singular is SHOW-far, the plural is show-fa-ROTE.
The commandment for Rosh Hashanah [New Year’s Day] is to hear the sound of the shofar.
No, you do not have to blow it yourself.
Do not ask to blow someone else’s shofar. It’s as personal as a toothbrush (and full of their spit.)
The shofar is usually a horn from a ram or kudu, but never a cow.
Most shofarot are plain, with no decoration or separate mouthpiece.
A man who blows the shofar is a Ba’al Tekiah (bah-AHL Teh-kee-YAH).
A woman who blows it is a Ba’alat Tekiah (bah-ah-LAHT Teh-kee-YAH.)
The best apology is like an egg: simple, bald, fragile. If I fumble it, I’ll really make a mess.
“Forgive me,” is a start.
The next step is the real kicker. “For” — for failing to acknowledge you, for failing to remember your name, for failing to think, for failing. Or for doing: for saying cruel words, for acting out, for lying, for stealing, for betraying.
A good apology takes responsibility. It says, “I did it.” It does not shift blame, it says, “I’m sorry” and “I did it.”
Then sit back. Wait. See what happens.
There may be anger. There may be sorrow. There may be fake forgiveness or self-serving forgiveness, as the Gingeet Rabbi has described in her blog. Or there may be a really good conversation in which you will learn something. This is the thing about a good apology: no matter how predictable you think the other person is, you can’t know for sure what comes after the apology. The better the apology, the more unpredictable the response.
On a wet day in March of 1971, I stood in the sheriff’s office in Williamson County, Tennessee, peering across the room towards an eye chart. I say “towards” because I couldn’t see the chart; I just knew the general direction. Sheriff Huff was testing me for my driver’s license, and this was part one: he asked me to remove my glasses, and then told me to read the letters on the chart. After I allowed as how I could not exactly find the chart, he laughed with a big hooting laugh and said, “Wa’al, honey, Ah don’t have t’ worry about you drivin’ without your specs. You caint find the car without ’em!” And boy, howdy, was that the truth.
It’s still true, decades later. So every six months I stop by the optometrist’s just for a “tune-up” to get my frames adjusted, and every two years I’m in his chair, peering through the phoropter (that’s that thing in the picture above ) so that Dr. Rivera can see if my eyesight has changed. It’s a ritual:
Which is better? <click> A? <click> Or B?
Whirr. <click> A? <click> Or B?
Whirr. <click> A? <click> Or B?… and so on.
It takes time to get it right, time and experimentation. And because he is extra careful, Dr. Rivera always checks the prescription with my eyes dilated, so the little muscles in my eyes can’t fake either of us out. That part of it is unpleasant, but it’s the only way to be sure it is the proper prescription.
Cheshbon Hanefesh – Accounting for the Soul – can be a little like my trips to the eye doctor. It takes time and effort to get past my own self-deceptions, to root out the ways in which I may be deceiving myself:
“I’m just fine”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“No one will know.”
All of those lines are like the little muscles in my eyes, struggling to hold things together after the lens isn’t working for me anymore.
During the month of Elul, I have to sit down and take time. I have to listen carefully to myself, listen not only to the voice of my conscience but to my kishkes [Yiddish for guts.] There are no magic drops to help me, but I want to see clearly. Sometimes I have to ask for help. Sometimes it just takes time and humility. But when I’m done, I will be able to do the things I need to do to make my corner of the world better.
So, nu? Is it time for a little adjustment? Don’t put it off. Once you’ve done it, then we can all sing with Johnny Nash:
The first funeral at which I officiated by myself took place at graveside on the afternoon before Kol Nidre.
I remember it vividly. My feet were planted uneasily on the distinctive grass typical of cemeteries, a spongy carpet of thatch. Before me was a plain wooden casket suspended over a hole in the ground. The raw earth looked like a wound; it disappeared into darkness below. The Las Vegas sun beat down on our heads and a hot wind ruffled the pages of my rabbi’s manual.
The dead woman’s name was Ruth. The eerie quality to saying my own name at graveside was magnified by the fact that I did not know this Ruth at all, nor did I know her family. I was simply performing a mitzvah. I was the newest rabbi in town, and it was my turn in the rotation to provide funerals for unaffiliated Jews. I had assembled a hesped [eulogy] from the recollections of her relatives, but they were taciturn people and I had not yet developed much skill for drawing stories out of strangers. Skills or no, the hesped had the proper effect: the meyt [dead person) was remembered with dignity and the mourners began their process of grieving with tears.
Fortunately they did not know that the rabbi was well and properly freaked out.
I hardly remember the Kol Nidre service that night. My place in it as the new part-time assistant was small, and I was free to pray as long as I remembered to sit like a lady and keep a calm face on the bimah (front of the sanctuary.) So I sat like a lady, processing the afternoon’s revelation: that someday some other rabbi would stand by a hole in the ground and say those words before they lowered my body into it. Someday I would die and they would bury me. It was unpleasant, but as I worked through it, I realized it was a gift. That visceral knowledge of my own mortality taught me that I have no time to waste on this earth.
The Psalmist wrote that our “days are like grass.” Most of the time we are able to avoid that knowledge. Thinking about it too much isn’t healthy. Thinking about it too little is just as bad.
Someday I will die. What must I get done before that day comes?
Selichot, special services of penitential prayers, are offered during Elul.
Many Jews visit the graves of relatives or friends during Elul. It is a form of respect for the dead, and also a reminder that our lives are finite (a theme of the High Holy Days.)
A greeting for Elul is “K’tiva chatimah tovah” – “May you be written and sealed for good.” This is a reference to one of the major metaphors of the High Holy Days, the Book of Life.
Did you know that you can tell where you are in the Jewish month, just by looking at the night sky?
Every Jewish month begins on the New Moon, when the sky is darkest. We call that day Rosh Chodesh, “Head of the Month.” In ancient times, that’s how the calendar was set: experienced Jews would look at the sky from the Temple Mount and decide when it was the New Moon. They would then make the official announcement of the arrival of the new month.
So if the moon is dark, it’s a new Jewish month. To find out which month, consult a Jewish calendar. <- If you click on that link, it will take you to the niftiest Jewish calendar imaginable. If I could access only one website, it would be hebcal.com, no kidding.
If the moon is waxing (appearing to grow larger) then we are in the first half of the month. If it is waning (appearing to grow smaller) a new month is coming. Some Jewish holidays (Purim and Passover, for example) begin near the 15th of the month: no surprise there, it’s the Full Moon!
This is also the reason that the Jewish calendar sometimes seems crazy relative to the secular calendar. The Jewish year is lunar (matched to the moon) with periodic adjustments to keep it in sync with the seasons (the solar year.) So some years the holidays seem “early” or sometimes “late.” Really, they’re right on time.
The best thing to do is to get a Jewish calendar and use it. But some things you can know just by looking at the sky: “It’s Rosh Chodesh!” you can say, whenever you see the New Moon.
“Why bother with a separate calendar?” some might ask. The beauty of the Jewish Calendar is that it brings us into sync with the rhythms of nature. Days begin at sundown, not at a mark on a clock. Months begin when the moon is dark; they swell and then fade. While we can learn details and names from a calendar or a website, the plain facts of Jewish time are in the sky above us, if we are only willing to go outside and look.
Tu B’Avis a minor but fun Jewish holiday. After the mourning of Tisha B’Av, this is a lovely little day to be happy and to celebrate love.
Tu B’Av = Fifteenth of the Month of Av. In Hebrew, the letters that form the number 15 can also be pronounced “Tu.”
Today in Israel, it’s called Chag HaAhavah, the Holiday of Love, and it’s a favored day for weddings. Think of it as Jewish Valentine’s Day.
In Temple times, in Jerusalem, the grape harvest began on the fifteenth of Av and ended on the tenth of Tishrei, Yom Kippur. On both those days, single girls dressed in white and went to dance in the vineyards in the afternoon. It was a traditional time for courtship.
There are no big religious observances for the day. However, it’s a good day to get married, a good day to fall in love, and a great day to tell your loved ones “I love you.”
During the three weeks before Tisha B’Av, Jews read the three Haftarot of Affliction warning us about the penalties for ignoring our responsibilities as Jews. Those readings are a bracing antidote to fusses over fine details of liturgy or who-slighted-whom in the High Holy Day honors. A little taste from the first chapter of Isaiah:
Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation— I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. When you stretch out your hands I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.
According to Isaiah, unless we care about those who suffer, and we do something about poverty and injustice, we have missed the point of Torah.
John Scalzi at the Whatever blog points to an interesting article that includes a calculator for the cost of raising a family in several major metro areas in the U.S. and compares it to the official federal poverty line, which is currently $23,550 for a family of four. The same article points out that a single adult with a full time minimum wage job will make $15,080. To sum up, in my own neighborhood:
Cost for a family of four to live in the SF Bay Area with a minimum level of security: $84,133.
Federal poverty line for that same family: $23,550.
Minimum wage job, 1 adult: $15, 080. Even with 2 adults working: $30,160.
Contemplate those figures for a few minutes.
In my own personal circle of acquaintance, I know of several folks who lost jobs during the Great Recession and who have not managed to find work again above the minimum wage level. Most are middle-aged adults who have responsibility for teenaged children and/or aging parents. They are not stupid people, nor are they lazy people. They are unlucky people in fields where employers would prefer to fill positions with younger employees who don’t have as much experience and therefore cost less.
I know of another person who worked at a job she loved for many years. It wasn’t the sort of thing that made a lot of money, but she saved what she could. However, she could not afford disability insurance, and when her knees and back gave out (it was a physical job) she, too, was middle-aged and uninteresting to employers. She’s been tangled in the red tape of public assistance for months, and I am worried that she will become homeless.
I know way too many young people for whom college wasn’t an option, because they had no wealthy relatives and they have a healthy fear of the crippling debt that a college education requires of such people these days, even for a state college. The ones who went to college are in a different pickle: they are mostly underemployed and drowning in debt. See, they had to work summers to pay for college (even with the debt) and wealthier peers spent that time at unpaid internship jobs. A resume with a well-chosen internship on it trumps one with none – so the poorer student cannot compete.
Seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.
I’m focusing here on the personal economic misery among people I know, but the cost to us all is staggering. The great boom of the 1950’s and 1960’s was fueled by a large educated workforce in the United States. Now no one but the wealthy can afford to go to school. (If you are grumping about “part time jobs” and “scholarships” you have not sent anyone to college lately.)
Back in 590 BCE, Isaiah preached that if Israel did not take care of her poor, disaster would result. God was fed up with the fancy ritual that substituted for the Torah virtues of hesed [lovingkindness] and tzedakah [relief of the suffering.]
I do not have the eloquence of Isaiah, but if Tisha B’Av has any meaning for us today, it is that we neglect the care of the poor at our peril. When we focus so tightly on the Temple edifice, we fail to hear the voice of the speaker in Lamentations, the scroll we will read this Tuesday: he does not wail at length about the loss of that edifice. He weeps for the suffering that he has seen, the destruction and waste of a great city.
This Tisha B’Av, whether you fast or not, let us consider what we personally are going to do about the suffering all around us. Have we given as much tzedakah as we can to the agencies that relieve suffering? Have we explained to our elected officials that we are not going to vote for them again unless they can manage to get something done? have we organized with others on behalf of those who suffer? Have we done everything in our power to see to it that every neighbor can go to sleep at night feeling “minimally secure?”
Jeremiah and Isaiah are crystal clear that our fast does not matter, is in fact offensive, if we are not doing something to right the wrongs around us. Nor do I think that we get points for indignation, unless we are actually Doing Something.
Tisha B’Av is traditionally a day of mourning, but if it is only that, then we are trapped in the past, a dead religion.
Torah is more than a museum piece. This Tisha B’Av, let us arise, let us say, “Torah is alive, it lives in each of us, and there is work to be done!”
English: Excavated stones from the Western Wall of the Temple Mount (Jerusalem), knocked onto the street below by Roman battering rams in 70 C.E. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Tisha B’Av is a Jewish fast day.
Tisha B’Av means “Ninth of Av.”
In 2018, Tisha B’Av will begin on July 21 at sundown and continue until sundown on July 22.
On Tisha B’Av we remember disasters that have befallen the Jewish People, especially the destruction of the Temple in the year 70 of the Common Era.
The Temple was destroyed by the armies of Rome, but Jewish tradition says that the Temple was destroyed on account of “baseless hatred” among Jews against one another.
Keeping a Jewish home is an important part of Jewish life. Here are some reasons:
HOME RITUALS Many of Judaism’s key rituals take place in the home: Shabbat candle-lighting, Shabbat dinner, Passover seder, Chanukah candles. Even one lifecycle event, the bris[ritual circumcision] is most often performed at home.
JEWISH IDENTITY Everywhere except in Israel, Judaism is a minority religion. Even in the United States, which has a number of large Jewish communities, we are only 2% of the population. For Jews, home is the key place where Jewish identity is formed and nurtured, not only in children but in adults.
HOME MITZVOT – There are Jewish commandments that pertain specifically to the home. We hang a mezuzahin the doorways of the home. Cooking and meals have many different mitzvot [commandments] associated with them: blessings, dietary laws, even some rules for cooking. Those may occasionally be performed in a synagogue, but they most often are observed in the home. Even certain safety rules for the home are actually commandments from Torah.
MIKDASH ME’AT means “little sanctuary.” Ever since the destruction of the second Temple in 70 A.D., our sages have regarded the home as a primary worship environment for Jews. Torah is a set of instructions for living our daily lives, and those lives take place at home, not at synagogue.
If a visitor came to your home, would he or she recognize that it is a Jewish home? What would be the tipoff?
How many different ways is your home identifiable as a Jewish home?
