Shalom v'Shalva

Another post from the floor of the yoga studio. The other day at the end of class our teacher announced that it was her 30th birthday, which is why, according to her, she “took it easy on us.” This led to an endearing scene of all of us singing “Happy Birthday” to her while still lying on our backs, spandex-clad and sweaty. As our teacher left the room, I heard a number of folks around me say, “God, I wish I was 30!” Being 34 myself, I had a momentary feeling of privilege – according to many of the 40, 50, and 60-something practicioners at the yoga studio, I’m still “young”. And, as I heard exclaimed by my neighbors on nearby yoga mats, being young is enviable.

A few weeks ago, I was called to the hospital to offer prayers for a man in his last hours of life. While I held this man’s hand and chanted ancient blessings over his departing soul, I actually witnessed the moment when his life departed. The moment was marked by one thing and one thing only — he exhaled and then he did not inhale. He stopped breathing and he was dead.

If you are reading this post, you are alive. And being alive, breathing, is the relevant detail that should determine how we live our lives. Sure, a 30-year-old has younger bones and joints than an elder in his or her later years. This, however, is not a measure of life and vitality. If you are inhaling and exhaling right now, regardless of your age, you are very much alive. And being alive means you are the recipient of the greatest birthday present of all — one more breath.

I love Bikram Yoga. Some of you are probably familiar with Bikram Yoga, sometimes referred to as “Hot Yoga” or “I-can’t-believe-you-would-subject-yourself-to-that Yoga.” Bikram Yoga, created by Indian yoga master Bikram Choudhury, is a 90-minute Hatha Yoga series conducted in a room heated to 105 degrees. It is a powerful combination of exercise, meditation, and spiritual renewal. It has, quite honestly, changed my life.

This yoga practice continues to teach me not only about body and breath, but about my relationship with the Creator. How does sweating buckets in Cobra Pose lead one to contemplate God? Good question. Here’s an example.

As I mentioned, a Bikram Yoga studio is heated to 105 degrees. To maintain this temperature, the instructor must make small adjustments throughout the class, turning up or down the heater, turning on or off the ceiling fans, and even occasionally opening the doors or windows of the studio to let in fresh air. In the midst of an especially difficult class, where the heat in the room feels as if it is suffocating me alive, there are few greater pleasures I have experienced than the moment when my yoga instructor opens one of the studio windows to let in some fresh, cool air. Usually, I am lying on my back in Savasana (Dead-Body Pose), and as I stare at the white ceiling and fluorescent lights above I begin to feel an exquisite wave of fresh air slowly pass over me. It is pure, total relief.

My sense is that God designs our lives in a similar fashion. Most of the time, we work and struggle. We go from pose to pose, sweating, trying to grow, running into limitations and imperfections, and expending a great amount of blood, sweat and tears going from day to day. Then, and we all have known these moments, God provides us with a moment of sweet relief. Maybe it’s a Shabbat dinner at home with family. Maybe it’s a nature walk, a drink with friends, or one of those hard-to-predict moments that can happen anytime and anywhere, when, at least for a minute or two, everything feels like it will be alright. At these moments, God is opening the window. In the midst of our earthly struggle to learn and grow, the open window rejuvenates us, reminding us that there is meaning in the struggle, that the Holy One is here with us, instructing us, and helping us to keep stretching forward.

This morning I had the opportunity to speak to a group of Gann Academy students about my Jewish journey.  What is a “Jewish journey?”  Essentially, a Jewish journey is the story of how a Jew has arrived at his or her present Jewish observances, activities and beliefs.  In my case, it is the story of how I grew up in a moderately involved Reform Jewish home in Milwaukee, then simultaneously immersed myself in Zen Buddhism and Jewish summer camp work, followed by a move to Israel and a return to Jewish practice.

What is your Jewish journey?  I haven’t yet directly asked for comments or posts on this blog, but I’m thinking it would be wonderful to see some of your stories posted here.  How did you become the Jew you are today?  Who were your most important and influential teachers on this journey?  Where do you think your Jewish journey will take you next?

Don’t be shy — share your story…

Hi all — I’m back blogging and what a great time to get this going again!  Here we are, just a few days from Purim, dusting off our costumes and packing Mishloach Manot.  Purim is a time of simcha, of joy and celebration, and we at Temple Reyim are planning an all-out party for this Saturday night as part of our Erev Purim Megillah reading.

In the midst of preparing for Purim this year, however, I find my simcha subdued.  In the Holy Land this past Sunday, 20,000 mourners buried Udi (36), Ruth (35), Yoav (11), Elad (4) and Hadas (3 months) Fogel, who were murdered in their sleep by knife-wielding terrorists.  Quite honestly, at this stage in my life, my identification with the Fogels is not primarily as a Jew, but as a member of a young family.  When I heard the news, I pictured the Fogels getting ready for bed — the chaos, the children’s voices, the stories and songs.  I pictured the way my children look when they sleep and imagined the Fogel children looking the same.  And then, whether I like it or not, my brain formed the image of a knife taken to a 3-month-old infant, to a mother, to a young boy.   

In Gaza, news of the murders led some to go out into the streets and distribute candy and sweets.  Writing about this, Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe writes: “Human goodness is not hard-wired. It takes sustained effort and healthy values to produce good people; in the absence of those values, cruelty and intolerance are far more likely to flourish.” 

Jacoby is absolutely right, and his words get me thinking once more about Purim.  Purim is a celebration of Jewish survival — Haman tried to have us massacred, but his plot was foiled by Mordechai and Queen Esther.  At the same time, Purim is not just a celebration of Jewish survival.  Purim is a celebration of a Jewish military victory.  Instead of being killed, the Jews fought back, eventually killing 75,000 of their Persian neighbors.

I wonder, what Purim would look like if, instead of celebrating our military victory, we took the time to imagine 75,000 Persian corpses?  Would we still pass out sweets and sing and dance?  As Jeff Jacoby writes, “It takes … healthy values to produce good people.”  Are we, in our Purim celebrations and our war revelry, raising our Jewish children with healthy values?  Is there a way for Jews to celebrate life without simultaneously celebrating our enemies’ deaths?

Purim will begin Saturday night and, believe me, I will celebrate.  But I will be thinking about the Fogels, too.  And the Persians.  And the Libyans.  And all victims of war, wherever they are.  Until we see an end to such spilling of blood, there is much less to celebrate.

A lot of folks have been talking about Amy Chua’s article “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior,” which appeared in the Wall Street Journal on January 8, 2011.  And there’s a lot to talk about.  Ms. Chua presents a model of motherhood, specifically a Chinese model for motherhood, where “the solution to [a child's] substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child.”  Ms. Chua has seen first hand how such parenting creates literally prize-winning children.  Her own daughter Sophia played Carnegie Hall.

One notable response to Ms. Chua’s article comes from Ayelet Waldman, author of the recent bestseller Bad Mother.  Ms. Waldman begins her rebuttal, titled “In Defense of the Guilty, Ambivalent, Preoccupied Western Mom,” understandably tongue-in-cheek (thank you Ayelet for spicing the debate with a little humor) but eventually leads us to her earnest conclusions: “Roaring like a tiger turns some children into pianists who debut at Carnegie Hall but only crushes others.  Coddling gives some the excuse to fail and others the chance to succeed.”  In other words, we don’t parent “children,” we parent individuals.  A successful parent takes into account the individual qualities of his or her child, strategizing for success based on a child’s unique combination of skills, weaknesses, personality traits and inclinations.

I am struck by something that is absent in both Ms. Chua’s article and Ms. Waldman’s response.  While both writers discuss the models for motherhood that may or may not help children overcome adversity and achieve academic and extra-curricular success, neither writer addresses the models for motherhood that help children become mensches.  Whether or not a child is an A-student, a piano virtuoso, or a star athlete, how can parents raise children who are emotionally intelligent, socially capable, and abundantly compassionate?  What is the ideal parenting model for creating children who seek lives filled with joy, gratitude, and faith?

Of course I don’t have an answer to these questions.  Yet even without a Wall Street Journal-worthy contribution, I get up each morning and try my best to create mensches.  I talk to my kids about things like God, charity, feelings, friendship, and trust.  I bug my kids to say blessings before they eat and to say “thank you” even to the person behind the register at the toy store.  And above all else, on this quest to turn my children into good people, I “parent” myself, placing limits upon my own temper and impatience and encouraging my better self to take the wheel.  Like I said, I don’t know if any of this will work.  In the world of parenting, whether we come from China or Berkeley or Boston, we’re all making it up as we go along.  The best we can do is point in the right direction.

I had a nice interview with the Newton TAB recently.  To read the piece, click here and enjoy!

Yoga. Holy body-bursting heart-opening yoga.

During my freshman year of college, I attended my first yoga class, held in a common room of one of the dorms. For the next six years, I continued to practice yoga on and off, including a year of very intense yoga practice as part of my theater conservatory training. And then I stopped. The details of why I stopped aren’t really that important. There was no great disaster, nor epiphany, nor (Baruch Hashem) some kind of injury. I just moved on.

Then, a few weeks ago, while visiting family in Connecticut, I was invited to join my cousins for their yoga class. I entered the class, began the series, and then slowly realized that my body was extending into each pose as if no time had passed between my last class, ten years ago, and this class. My muscles, tendons, ligaments, heart, lunges — they all remembered, as if they had been patiently waiting this past decade for my brain to get in gear and guide the rest of my body back to the studio.

Our bodies hold memories. Our organs and tissues house a treasury of experience and an abundance of nostalgia. For this reason, if and when we discontinue an activity, we should never feel intimidated to pick it up again. Haven’t prayed in a while? I wouldn’t worry about it. Just pick up a prayerbook and let your body, heart and soul find where they last left off. Haven’t lit Shabbat candles recently? B’seder. Just dust off those candlesticks and gently, without judgment, begin again. Whatever the mitzva, and however long it has been since last performed, your body will remember. In fact, your body will more than remember. It will rejoice!

The truth is, I used to make fun of Debbie Friedman’s music.

This was a while back, during my first year or two of rabbinical school, as I desperately tried to prove I was a “real Jew,” a Carlebach-singing Talmud-quoting Orthodox-pining Yid.  Debbie Friedman represented the opposite: her music seemed to be written for any Jew at any time, regardless of that Jewish listener’s commitment to liturgy, law, or tradition.  Her accessible melodies and English-heavy lyrics announced: “Whoever you are, wherever you are, and as disconnected from Judaism as you might feel, you can be a joyful Jew in this moment.  Just sing.”  While I was preparing to push as many Jews as possible, including myself, into the deep end of the pool, Debbie was singing with Jews wading just up to their toes.

This week, as Jews around the world mourn for Debbie Friedman, we read of the splitting of the sea and the Jews passage from slavery to freedom.  The Midrash teaches that when the Jews arrived at Yam Suf, with Pharaoh’s army closing in behind them, the sea did not part until Nachshon ben Aminadav waded into the waters.  In other words, the miracle was initiated not by a diving head-first into the deep sea, but by wading into the waters step by step.

When I think of Debbie Friedman, of her music and her message, I am struck by her Nachshon-esque courage and wisdom.  To love the Jewish People and to lead the Jewish People is to guide all Jews, regardless of background or knowledge or perceived commitment, from slavery to freedom.  Debbie’s music brought so many of us, step by step, into the water.  She sang with joy and hundreds of thousands of Jews began to practice the mitzvah of Havdalah.  She sang with compassion and thousands of synagogues offered Mi Shebeirachs for healing.  She offered us a path into the water and we followed.

As a rabbi standing at the banks of the sea, having thankfully outgrown some of the arrogant ignorance of my rabbinical school days, I am struck by the miracle that was Debbie Friedman’s life and work.  As long as we share her music, her memory will be for a blessing, encouraging all of us to take that first faithful step into the waters.

I grew up in Milwaukee, just a few hours south of Green Bay, Wisconsin.  Green Bay is home to the Green Bay Packers, the third oldest team in the NFL and the only franchise in American professional sports that is a non-profit owned by the community.  To live in Wisconsin is to love the Packers.  To love the Packers is to travel the saga of every season with baited breath, exulting in every victory and aching with every loss.  When I lived in Jerusalem, all cars and commerce would stop for Yom Kippur.  I have only experienced an equal absence of activity when walking down the street in Milwaukee during a Packers playoff game.

Living in Boston is a bit like coming home.  The fever-pitch fanaticism of Patriots fans reminds me of Packers fans, only that the three-cornered caps here are not made of cheese.  This past Sunday, I was blessed to visit Gillette Stadium for the first time to watch the Packers and Patriots play.  Despite the Packers’ defeat, it was a fabulous game, full of drama, surprises, and even a last-second finish.  And it was fun, so much fun to be in that thick soup of screaming fans, exploding fireworks, and pounding music (is there a stadium left in America that doesn’t play Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle”?), all fueled by the gladiatorial theatrics down below.

We Jews are asked to love God with all our hearts, souls, and resources.  What does that actually mean?  What does it look like to love God completely — heart, soul, and body?  Sometimes the love is contemplative; a thoughtful Jew in quiet communion.  Sometimes the love is altruistic; a public Jew protesting poverty and injustice.  And sometimes the love is ecstatic.  Explosive.  Dramatic.  Joyful.  Fun.  Sometimes loving God with body, heart and soul means walking into a shul, or a Torah study, or a soup-kitchen, and thinking, “It’s game time, baby!”  There’s a reason Patriots fans keep coming back for more.  At Gillette Stadium, we are given permission to let ourselves go.  To be a mass of hooping hollering human beings.  Sometimes, that’s just the kind of love we need to feel.