Monica

Shabbat Shuva (yesterday's d'var torah)

2023-09-24T19:08:30Z

The Shabbat between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is called Shabbat Shuva, the Shabbat of returning, and it's customary for the d'var torah or sermon to focus on the themes of the season. This is the d'var torah I gave in our minyan yesterday.

Early in the pandemic, when grocery-store shelves were sometimes empty, I started growing a few things to see if I could produce at least a little of my own food. I've always had kind of a brown thumb, but I'd managed to not kill a basil plant that had come in a farm-share box the previous year, so I was game to try.

I didn't grow a lot – more herbs than vegetables – but the cherry tomatoes I planted were extremely bountiful. Encouraged by that success, I planted more. Last year I found myself fighting unknown critters -- I got a few of the tomatoes but I found more that were half-eaten on the ground. Netting didn't help. Tabasco sauce didn't help. So this year I tried a different variety and a different location.

I got to keep three tomatoes. On the day I was going to harvest six more -- they'd been almost ready the previous day -- I found that something had eaten all the tomatoes and most of the leaves besides. The plant looked dead. I left the dejected remains in the pot for the end-of-season cleanup and stopped watering it.

A couple weeks ago I was pruning some other plants and cut away all the dead stems on that plant while I was at it. Then an amazing thing happened: it put out new shoots, then new leaves, and this week, three small tomatoes. That plant stood up to attack followed by neglect and came back strong despite it all.

During the high holy days we focus a lot on our own actions and the things we have done wrong. We focus on making amends for our mistakes, on doing teshuva and turning in a better direction for the coming year. We try to make things right with the people we've hurt. These are all critical things to focus on, and I don't have much to add that hasn't been said hundreds of times before.

Instead, today I want to talk about being on the other side -- about being the one who has been hurt. We know what to do when those who hurt us do teshuva, but what about when they don't? Teshuva is hard, and we know it won't always come.

( Read more... )

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holidays

2022-10-14T00:59:44Z

My synagogue has gone through some changes in the last couple years, on top of the changes forced on all of us by the pandemic. Last year we hired a new rabbi and this year we hired a new cantor, and in-person services are more of a thing than they were, so lots of stuff is new together.

The rabbi and the cantor work well together. I already knew this from the morning minyan, but it also carried over to the formal high-holy-day services with all their extra stuff. Later, when all the holidays are over (they aren't yet), I want to ask the rabbi about some of the choices he made, but it was generally fine. It was nice to be together again.

I was asked to read torah, even though I said I'd pretty much have to memorize it because of the vision issues that are why I stopped reading torah on Shabbat. The readings for Rosh Hashana aren't that long, so I could memorize it, and anyway I don't know the special trope for the day so I was going to have to learn the music by rote anyway. That all went fine. I had the last aliyah and I noticed that other people were translating after their readings, so I followed suit on the spur of the moment. Later I realized that most of the others were reading translations, not doing it on the fly. (I'm not fluent in Hebrew, but I knew this part.) Ironically, I did need to look at the scroll for that part and there were some stumbles as a result, but on Yom Kippur several people stopped me to tell me how much they liked my RH reading, with specific compliments. Wow.

We have programming all day on Yom Kippur so you don't have to leave if you don't want to. The "learning" slot had two class options, fewer than in the past but I think this worked together. I went to a very good class on the Vidui (confessional) prayer, taught by someone who used to be our associate rabbi 15-20 years ago. (He moved away for another pulpit and returned to Pittsburgh a couple years ago, taking an educational position rather than a pulpit.) We did a close reading of the text compared to the translation in our prayerbook and talked a lot about the word aval.

In some years I've gotten to the end of Yom Kippur on a high, feeling scrubbed clean and energized and stuff. That didn't happen this year. I think some of that is due to some liturgical choices they made. I wonder how much of it is due to having finally been to a traditional Yom Kippur service (last two years) and now I'm more keenly aware of the differences.

For festivals we combine with another congregation and Sukkot was there not here. "There" is a two-mile walk each way for me, so I went to Beth Shalom, a Conservative congregation that also has an occasional musical Shabbat evening service that I've gone to. The people there were very welcoming, the service was complete and yet efficient, and the leaders and speakers were good. I was surprised to be offered an honor (carrying the first torah scroll). I had pleasant conversations with several people I didn't know at the kiddush after. I wonder if I should try to go there next Yom Kippur.

We've been able to have most of our meals in the sukkah this week, though a couple got rained out. This late in the year I didn't have expectations.

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short takes from the high holy days

2021-09-19T03:35:15Z

My synagogue hired a cantor for the high holy days. (We don't currently have one otherwise.) He's a friendly fellow, obviously very experienced, and very "performative" -- which some people liked but isn't to my taste. (I felt like I was at the theatre.) Unfortunately it's not just a matter of taste; elaborate chazzanut that you can only listen to is fine in a traditional setting, where it's in the cantor's repetition of the central prayer, but the Reform movement did away with repetitions. When there's only one trip through the prayer, everyone saying it together, and it's being led in a way that precludes me saying it, that's a problem. After Rosh Hashana evening and morning were like that, I decided not to go back. (I later skimmed the video of the second-day Rosh Hashana service, which started as a minyan-style service but drifted, and it was more of the same.)

For Yom Kippur I went to Chabad, like I did last year. Night and day -- I felt included from the moment I walked in, I was able to focus on the kavanah, intentions, behind the prayers, the more elaborate melodies didn't impede my own prayer because they were separate from it, a lot of the singing was accessible even with unfamiliar-to-me melodies, and there was plenty of way-finding (page numbers, quick explanations, etc) so people didn't get lost.

All are welcome, all included, on Yom Kippur, the machzor (special prayerbook) says, even transgressors, even that guy. Even me. The incense burned in the temple had many nice-smelling ingredients and one bad-smelling one (forgot the name, haven't looked for it yet) -- and the incense was invalid without all the ingredients. A congregation that excludes someone on the day of atonement is doing it wrong.

In the Al Cheit (confession of sins, really more like errors or "missing the mark"), there's one the rabbi commented on that I think isn't in the Reform machzor -- "the sin I have committed before you with a confused heart". There've already been confessions about intentional and unintentional sins, but this one is a little different -- it's saying that we can act with the best of intentions but still miss the mark because of the information or context we (don't) have. Our increasingly-radicalized society (and I blame extremists at both ends here) will cast someone as a villain for stumbling or for being a little different, but God will understand and Jewish teachings are full of instructions to presume good intent and judge others favorably. It seems entirely fitting that the Yom Kippur prayerbook does so too, even in the midst of listing serious sins that are wilful and wrong.

We ask for relief from many things -- famine, war... mageifah, plague. Yeah, that jumped out at me again this year.

God wants praise from us messy, sinning humans more than from perfect angels, says the machzor.

The final service of the day, Ne'ilah, talks about the gates of prayer closing at the end of the day. The liturgy has this urgency to get one last prayer in before they close. The picture I've always had in my mind is of us petitioners standing outside, pushing our messages through as the gates close before us. The rabbi said that the Chabad interpretation (I don't remember who he said it in the name of, sorry -- long day) is that the people are inside the gates, which are closing so we can have some alone-time with God without the pressures of the world. Or something like that. I'm not sure this idea really matches up with the liturgy, but it's an interesting alternate framing and since the whole thing is allegorical anyway, having different perspectives 24-25 hours into a fast helped me.

Chabad sure does say a lot of psalms. I couldn't usually figure out why.

I felt so warm, so welcomed, so included. The rabbi knows my background, and he welcomes me anyway. Like the transgressor. Like the smelly incense. Like a member of his own community -- and maybe, someday, mine too. (There are barriers both theological and practical, but there are also barriers where I am now, so... who knows?)

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Yom Kippur

2020-10-01T03:12:15Z

Oh, so that is what I've been missing. Fascinating.

I went to Chabad for Yom Kippur. This was my first Orthodox Yom Kippur. (For that matter, this was my first non-Reform Yom Kippur.) I found it engaging and meaningful, though sometimes repetitive -- repetitions of the Amidah and Musaf besides can add up. On the other hand, since I am a slower reader than the leaders, it gave me a chance to read everything at least once, usually more than once.

The Kol Nidrei service (for the evening that starts Yom Kippur) seemed pretty familiar. Afterwards I paged through the Reform machzor that I borrowed, and if you cut out all the creative modern readings and such, the core is all there. (That surprised me; I expected the publishers to have taken more liberties.)

This was not true of the daytime services, though. Some differences I knew, of course: the Reform movement replaced the Avodah service (about the high priest's service in the temple on this day), they changed the torah reading, they shorten the confession (Al Cheit) and Avinu Malkeinu, they don't do the ten martyrs, and Reform never does the extra Musaf service. Other differences I didn't know about in advance, and I'd like to get a traditional machzor to study it more. (It felt like there was more to the sanctification of the day in the middle of the Amidah, for one thing.)

So, about that Avodah service, recounting the high priest's offerings, the two goats (one for God and one for Azazel), the details of the ritual, the saying of the divine name out loud... On one hand I kind of expected this to turn me off (never really got my head wrapped around the temple service and the desire to return to it). On another hand, I had Ishay Ribo's song on my mind as another interpretation. And on yet another hand (who says there can be only two?), I entered the whole thing in a spirit of being open to new experiences and wanting to see where that took me.

I, uh, found that part meaningful. I felt the power of it.

Also, I had no idea that that part in the song about going to the high priest's house to celebrate was part of the liturgy. I thought that was Ribo. Huh. And that reinforces what I assume is a goal of the day, and how I usually feel at the end -- that it is cause for happiness, that feeling that we've been judged favorably and given another chance (but not a foregone conclusion going in). Cause for celebration, indeed.

And this feeling at the end is especially gratifying after this past year, a pretty terrible year in large and small ways and one in which I had to decline to forgive several people. The things that were under my control, I remedied as best I could, imperfect though it be. The things that were not under my control, the hateful actions of unrepentant people way more powerful than I, I am finally beginning to be able to put behind me -- not forgiven (not without teshuva) but not weighing me down either. After Yom Kippur I feel better, and I'm grateful for that, even while knowing there are big problems in our society yet to tackle.

Yom Kippur services are long, but the leaders did what they could to move things along so people didn't have to be around other people any longer than necessary. There was no sermon, though the rabbi sprinkled small teachings into the service sometimes. He -- I assume this is a Chabad thing but I don't have other experiences to compare to -- was good about providing signposts and summaries of stuff as it was happening.

One of these little teachings was around one of the times through the Al Cheit, the list of sins (or ways we missed the mark, more literally). One of these is "for the sin we have committed through speech", referring to lashon hara, evil speech. He said in the name of the Alter Rebbe that it's hard to avoid speaking negatively -- you think the thought and you try to keep it inside but someday you're going to mess up and blurt it out. So what's the remedy? Fix it farther back -- work to not harbor those thoughts to begin with, and then you won't have stuff you have to worry about accidentally blurting out. Easier said than done of course, but a good thing to strive for.

Another thing I learned was in the part about the ten martyrs. I knew that there was this list of prominent sages who were martyred by Rome that are talked about in the service; I'd never seen the actual content because, as I said, Reform doesn't do that. What I didn't know is the part about how these ten were "payment" for Yosef's brothers. I don't know where this is from (maybe Yoma in the talmud? haven't looked yet), but according to our tradition, the ruler of Rome asked a prominent sage what the punishment is for kidnapping. He replied (correctly) that this is a death-penalty offense. And the Roman ruler said "aha, so Yosef's ten brothers who kidnapped him and sold him into slavery were never punished for it, so ten of you will stand in". And the sage (who was this? I don't remember, but someone important) asked God whether to submit or resist and God said submit so they did. I know a different passage about Moshe challenging God over this -- is this (specifically Akiva's death) the reward of torah, to be killed? -- and God tells him to shush. But I didn't know this one. (Well, if it's Yoma maybe my eyes have passed over it, but if so I failed to retain it.)

The health precautions were as for Rosh Hashana. I was able to stay well away from other people. Their attendance was low enough, compared to their normal Yom Kippur turnout, that this wasn't a problem. (They required reservations, so they would have known in advance if there were going to be a problem.)

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Ha'azinu / Shabbat Shuva 5781

2020-09-27T17:32:05Z

Yesterday's d'var torah for the minyan (recorded in advance):

Ha'azinu consists primarily of Moshe's final poem, recited to the people before he ascends the mountain to see the land and die.

The language is very different from what I'm used to in the torah. It is not the language of events and facts and commands; it is the poetry of evocative images and allegory. It resembles the writings of the prophets -- which makes sense, as Moshe was a prophet too and these are his final words. Prophets give us words of admonition and words of comfort, and Moshe here does both.

The plain reading, the p'shat, of this text is a recounting of Yisreal's relationship with God. It's mostly focused on the negative -- God did all these good things and Israel rebelled and worshipped false gods and so on, and God withdrew. While it's mostly written in the past tense, it also predicts future events. And in the end there is a nechemta, a consolation -- that if the people return from those evil ways, God will be there for them. This was the case for the people Moshe was speaking to -- they were redeemed from the sins of their parents and granted entry into the land of Israel.

It seems possible to read this on another level, too. Moshe is at the end of a long life, the last third of which has been filled with contention and challenges. He, too, rebelled against God and cried out at the apparent unfairness of the punishment he received. But here, at the very end, it is clear that he has accepted God's authority, praising Tzur Yisrael, the Rock of Israel, repeatedly. He has returned to God, and when he dies God Himself takes Moshe's final breath with a kiss.

We usually read this portion on Shabbat Shuva, the Shabbat before Yom Kippur, when we too are focused on reflection of the past and aspirations for the future. We are especially challenged this year, when our our world, our country, our society, and perhaps our personal lives have seen many challenges. We face plague, violence, turmoil, corruption from our national leaders, personal losses, fear and uncertainty. But while we pray and confess in the plural, Shabbat Shuva and the whole season of repentance really call on us to take a personal accounting and not just a societal one.

There are two things I think are important about that personal accounting. The first is that it's important to look in both directions. We look back on the past year, on places where we missed the mark, and we try to make amends for the damage we've caused, try to set things right, seek and grant forgiveness. It's a mix of depressing, embarrassing, and cleansing. Sometimes we've strayed from each other and strayed from God. But then we look ahead -- teshuva is about returning to the right path, so what will we do differently in the coming year? What will we be more careful of? What hazards do we now know are waiting to trip us up so we should look out for them? What will we learn from the past, and how will we apply it?

The second thing is that we don't have to do it all at once. If we can repair one relationship, make amends for one thing we've done wrong, accept amends and forgive one person who has wronged us, that is progress. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Our Yom Kippur liturgy includes a blanket forgiveness clause where we say that we forgive people who have wronged us, even if they didn't ask like they're required to. When I say that passage, I quietly insert "except...". There are a few people who have wronged me severely -- I'm not talking about passing slights here -- and until they do teshuva then no, I do not forgive them. I'm not holding a grudge; I'm just waiting for them to make amends. There were five people on that list last year, people I was waiting to see positive change from, sometimes for years, and this year I was able to remove three of them. It feels great to be able to make those repairs, which require both parties to help. Unfortunately there are additions to my list this year, all rooted in a single evil, hurtful source, but maybe someday they, too, will see the harm they're doing and want to fix it. It's not under my control, so there's no point in focusing on it and letting it pull me down.

Ha'azinu is, on its face, about Yisrael's failings and teshuva, its path. On another level, it's about Moshe's path too. And maybe on yet another level it's about us, our path. Looking back we see failures and rebellion and wrongs done and received -- but looking ahead, we see return and renewed relationships.

Israel returned, and will again in the future. Moshe returned. May we also be able to return, one step at a time.

Adapted and reposted on Judaism Codidact.

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Rosh Hashana 5781

2020-09-21T01:48:39Z

My synagogue streamed its services, with some parts recorded in advance (like all the student torah readers) and some parts live. They assumed that people would check email and click links on Rosh Hashana (we say we're "inclusive" but we don't really mean it), and after much pushing I was able to get the stream link for Saturday morning mere moments before sundown Friday so I could set it up in advance.

During the service our (interim) rabbi said "this is live" and as proof, held up the day's New York Times. Which is how I found out the sad news of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's passing. (And now I fear even more for our country.)

It did not feel like a service, which didn't surprise me. I mostly prayed on my own instead, sometimes badly (there's a lot of stuff we don't say the rest of the year so I'm not fluent), but I listened to the torah reading and the sermon. The stream froze near the end, during the announcements after the sermon and before Aleinu. All of which strengthened my resolve for today.

Even if the technology were to be reliable, I just plain do not consider this an option for Yom Kippur. My choices are to pray it at home, badly, and hope to somehow connect on the holiest day of the year against those odds, or to join people who are gathering in person. Last month I contacted the Chabad rabbi, explained my situation, and asked if there were any possibility that they would have socially-distant room for anybody beyond their regulars. (I said I was perfectly willing to do the Rabbi Hillel thing and stand outside an open window. Alas, the windows in their sanctuary do not open.) He said yes, so I made reservations for Yom Kippur and also for this morning -- Rosh Hashana is two days, so I figured (in advance) that if the first day bombed, I could at least go the second day, including hearing the shofar.

They set up the space carefully, with single chairs appropriately distanced and some clusters of chairs for family groups. (They required reservations from everyone, including indicating group size, so they could plan for this.) There was a sort of "tent" around the prayer leader -- clear heavy plastic walls but open at the top, well above people's heads. This is also where they read the torah. The people who had aliyot (torah honors) said the blessings from a safe distance. Singing was restrained. The shofar blower was well distanced, and I couldn't tell for sure but there might have been a cover of some sort on the end the air comes out. Everybody wore masks, including while inside that "tent". (I couldn't see what the shofar blower did.)

Only once before have I been to a Rosh Hashana service that wasn't Reform, and that one (Conservative) was early on when I didn't know very much yet. So I either forgot or never knew some things: that Unataneh Tokef is during the musaf service not the main one, that apparently there are liturgical differences between the two days (don't know what, but the book had "RH 1" and "RH 2" versions of the Amidah), and that the shofar service doesn't require the calls.

On that last: I'm used to somebody calling each note, so the caller says "tekiah" (for instance) and then the shofar-blower blows a "tekiah". This was different. The prayer book specified what the notes were, as expected, and the blower just blew them. The book also had instructions, one-third and two-thirds of the way through the first set, to silently confess here. It didn't provide words (like Vidui), so I interpreted that as free-form. And without the verbal distraction of somebody saying the names of the shofar calls, I could do that -- I could listen to the shofar, let it inspire me, say words to God against that backdrop, and feel like I was doing something. It was a powerful experience.

If, heaven forbid, we are still streaming services a year from now, I'll ditch my Reform congregation and go to an Orthodox service instead. It's possible that I'll do that anyway. Meanwhile, I can attend services for Yom Kippur in person, and based on what I felt today, it seems likely that I will have a meaningful experience. That's important to me in any year, but especially this year on the heels of events beyond my control ruining the high holy days for me last year.

Question for anybody who's read this far: how do you fill the gap on Yom Kippur afternoon? In the Before Times my synagogue had classes and usually a dramatic presentation of the Yonah story to fill the time, so you could show up in the morning and not leave until it was over. This year I'll need to fill a stretch of several hours in some way appropriate to the day.

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Goodbye 5780

2020-09-21T01:19:23Z

The year 5780 began for me, personally, on a terrible note caused by evildoers at Stack Exchange Inc. I won't say more about that here (I wrote plenty at the time). As above so below -- the door to their teshuvah remains open should they choose to correct their transgressions, but I, unlike the Holy One, do not hold out infinite hope for sinners to mend their ways. There are more important things in life to focus on.

5780 was the (sob) first year of the global pandemic crisis. On top of the sickness, the deaths, the changes in daily life that come with any pandemic, we in the US saw reckless endangerment, needless deaths, and political profiteering to levels even those of us already worried about the authoritarian trends of the toddler-in-chief did not imagine. He knew. And he let it run rampant anyway. Because he thought, somehow, that it would hurt his political opponents and not his own supporters. Because that oath he swore on taking the office, those words about serving the people (all of them, not just red states) and upholding the constitution and suchlike, was just fluff to him, not a commitment. Having thrown the people under the bus, he's now in full sabotage-the-election mode, betting that he can get away with it as he's gotten away with so much more. At worst, he figures, someone will manage to sue him years from now and he'll pay someone off. I fear for our country.

I fear for our country in other ways too. The white-supremacist-in-chief emboldened bigots ranging from crowds chanting against Jews to attacks on houses of worship to vigilantes fatally "protecting" the public from unarmed demonstrators to police who kill and recklessly endanger black and brown people who are already restrained and thus not threats. (Whites, on the other hand, generally get the benefit of the doubt.) And it would be easy to say that the bigot-in-chief is responsible for all this and we have only to remove him from office, but that's obviously not true -- the roots run much deeper. Our society has work to do.

And that work involves nuance, discussion, hearing and trying to understand others' perspectives, working together with people who are different, acknowledging the humanity of every person. Too many on the far right and the far left believe that they are keepers of the One Truth and that anybody who doesn't commit 100% to their view of truth is an enemy to be disparaged, cancelled, or killed. People are complicated, and attempts to paint monochrome pictures, while enticing to crusaders seeking us-vs-them litmus tests, are failures if the goal is to solve problems rather than to triumph. Too few people are willing to consider positions that exceed the length of a catchy slogan, but that's where the work has to get done.

But for all the trouble that 5780 brought, both personally and on a larger scale, it also brought some moments of personal light. Despite the pandemic, my family and most of my friends are healthy, Dani and I are still employed, and our companies both made the transition to working from home. Even when (I say "when" but don't attach a timeframe to it) it is practical for us to go back to our offices, I think I will do a mix, working from home several days a week and going to the office for direct coworker contact once or twice a week. (I think it's now clear that this would work and I don't expect much resistance.) I don't want to see people only in two dimensions; digital interactions are not the same. But they often suffice if mixed with other interactions, and working from home affords some flexibility (and saved commuting time) that I wouldn't otherwise have. I can go to the weekly lunch-time torah study at my synagogue now, for example, which was never practical from the office.

This year, for basically the first time, I tried growing food and herbs.
I did some things right, some wrong, learned stuff, and have had the benefit of fresh-off-the-plant food when cooking. One of the tomato plants died last month but the other is still producing. I learned that I need to be more aggressive in pruning basil. I learned that I do not have many places that get 6 hours of sunlight a day (what counts as "full sun") and that they move over the course of the season. I planted in pots not the ground so I can move things to chase the sun, but now, as the equinox looms, there is no full sun to be had on my property and I'm not going to move pots over the course of the day. Maybe next year I'll do something on wheels. Maybe I'll just accept a shorter season.

A couple months into the lockdown a friend gave me a sourdough starter. This, too, is something I never would have done in the Before Times. The schedule that sourdough calls for isn't compatible with the daily commute, which leaves weekends, but it's also not compatible with Shabbat. But if I'm home it's easy to tend over the day and a half or so that the process requires.

But my biggest personal silver lining from 5780 is the Codidact project. We -- most of the original people are refugees from Stack Exchange, but we have others now who knew not those evil times -- are building anew, learning from our experiences elsewhere, and doing things we were never able to do on Some Other platform. I'm doing feature design, community management, something like product management, and more. We've launched several communities, including Judaism, to my delight. We have work to do on both the software and community-promotion sides, and we still need to set up a non-profit entity so we can accept donations, but I'm truly excited to be part of this, to be helping to lead this, and with such a great team.

Onward!

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a different take on the Yom Kippur avodah

2020-09-10T23:44:42Z

Today a friend forwarded me a link to this blog post, which talks about a song I was previously not familiar with. The song reinterprets the Yom Kippur afternoon liturgy in a way I find beautiful, resonant, and yet authentic.

Some context: on Yom Kippur when the temple stood, the high priest enacted an elaborate ritual that included offerings to effect atonement for the people. The traditional afternoon liturgy recounts this ritual. (A good chunk of Tractate Yoma in the talmud covers this in detail.) As the high priest splashed the blood on the altar he would count. This song adds some interpretation to the counting -- while mostly including the traditional text in the song.

If you're familiar with this text, I encourage you to listen to Seder Ha'Avodah by Ishay Ribo before continuing. And heck, even if you aren't familiar and don't understand Hebrew, let it play in the background while you read the rest of this. (You can buy the mp3 here. I now have.)

There's a third-party translation that I'll quote from here.

This part is from the liturgy:

And thus he would say
Please, O God, forgive the sins, the wrongdoings and the transgressions
which I have sinned before You, I and my house

The counting here is from the liturgy; the rest is interpretation:

And if a man could remember
the flaws, the shortcomings
All the transgressions, all the wrongdoings
Thus he would surely count;
One, one and one, one and two
One and three, one and four, one and five
He would give up right away
Because he wouldn't be able to bear
the bitterness, the sin
The shame, the missed opportunity
The loss

And similarly for the second petition:

And thus he would say
Please, O God, forgive the sins, the wrongdoings and the transgressions
which I have sinned before You, I and my house

And if a man could remember
the graces, the favors
All the mercies, all the salvations
Thus he would surely count;
One, one and one, one and two
One of the thousand thousand, thousands of thousands and myriad myriads
of miracles and wonders
which You have done for us
days and nights

Both times the people respond by praising God (from the liturgy).

Dov Bear writes in the blog post:

The idea here is that Atonement comes from within. We must recognize for ourselves what we have done wrong and recognize for ourselves all that has gone right and engage with both the good and the bad honestly, without vanity or depression, and through this exercise of introspection, a form of Atonement can begin. [...]

In the song, both counts are overwhelming. The count of failures is crushing, but the crowd comes to the rescue screaming "Blessed be the name of the glory of his kingdom forever and ever!" The next count is equally shattering, but this count of blessings is a celebration and again the crowd provides the momentum screaming the same words "Blessed be the name of the glory of his kingdom forever and ever!"

As someone who has trouble connecting to the temple service and this particular liturgy, I appreciate this interpretation and find a lot to think about in it, especially this year.

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Rosh Hashana and the season of repentance

2019-09-29T21:28:49Z

Rosh Hashana, the new year and the Day of Judgement, begins tonight. We've been in a season of repentance for a little while, but we kick it up a notch now through Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).

One of the things we focus on in this season is repentance for errors we have made, intentional or unintentional. In Judaism, teshuva (repentance) isn't just about feeling bad that you did something; the process requires regret, making amends, apologizing to the ones you wronged, and endeavoring to not repeat those mistakes in the future. (The rabbis say that the true validation of teshuva is that you were in the situation again and didn't repeat the mistake. This is, obviously, the part of the process that is partly up to God.)

The problem, of course, is that you have to know you screwed up before you can fix it. If I have wronged or hurt someone, I would like the opportunity to do teshuva. This is not a blanket "if I've offended you please accept my apologies" post, because I don't know how I can do teshuva for things I don't know I did (or know I did but don't know were problems). Instead, this post is a request: if you are reading this, if I have wronged or hurt you, I ask you to contact me privately and give me the opportunity to correct the matter. If correction involves public action it will of course be forthcoming.

I want to screen replies to this post to make it easier for people with Dreamwidth accounts to respond, but I don't see where on the posting page I can do that. My email address is this journal name at pobox.com and DMs are open on Twitter. I'll be offline for the holiday for two days starting soon, but I will respond to anything I receive.

Thank you.

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a few Rosh Hashana links

2018-09-16T19:39:22Z

Sunday evening our associate rabbi gave a sermon (video link) on how we use words to include or exclude. Readers of this journal will recognize the talmudic tale she includes. (So will lots of other people; it's kind of famous.) It's easy for discourses on this topic to be pat bordering on dismissive of real human complexities, but this talk was more nuanced. When she posts a text copy I'll add a link, but for now all I have is a video (~20 minutes).

Monday morning our senior rabbi spoke about pachad, deep fear (video link, ~21 minutes; text). I'm not going to try to summarize it.

I chanted torah on the second day. I didn't realize it was being streamed/recorded until somebody told me on Shabbat. Since it was, I'll share video evidence for anybody who wants to know what I'm talking about when I talk about chanting torah. (That's high-holy-day trop or cantillation, which is different from how we chant on Shabbat.) I decided fairly late to do my own translation from the scroll; by default my rabbi would have read it out of the book. It's not a hard translation, but word order is different between Hebrew and English, which is why there are some brief pauses in places you might not expect just knowing the English. (Also, I never really did settle on a good English word for rakiah; I've heard several.)

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