One of the most beautiful ways to get in touch with the never-ending miracle that is God's act of creation of our world is to engage in the acts of creation that God has gifted us with the opportunity to participate in. Years ago, I used to garden some, mostly vegetable gardening -- tomatoes and green peppers and such. I haven't had access to land to do that for a very long time. I still don't, but now I have access to the little back porch above and I spent some hours today preparing containers for tomatoes and herbs. I realized that I hadn't bought enough potting soil for the containers, so I went in search of other organic matter to give the soil some bulk and maybe some nourishment and water-holding capacity for the plants, too. First, I threw in some vegetable scraps we had been saving with the idea of starting a compost bucket. Then I went in search of cardboard and paper and tore up every bit of unnecessary food packaging we had hanging around (why does breakfast cereal come in boxes, anyway?). Above you see me tearing them into bits and pieces.
It felt good to be taking things that would go into a polluting, land-consuming landfill and to try and put them to a productive purpose. It reminded me of how much I love the earth. . . . And the God who gave it to us.
Have a great week!
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Here is a closer-up view of the cardboard on its way to "becoming" soil (along with a pic of me "in the act").:
And here is how things looked when we were a bit closer to done planting:
In case the last pic made you think Minna _can't_ smile, here she is smiling!
I just can't believe that some people actually think God approves of them violently taking life like this. I am so deeply saddened by this news. . . . . May it be the will of the Blessed Holy One that peace should come to us. Soon. Speedily. In our days.
Doctor Who Performed Abortions Is Shot to Death - NYTimes.com: "WICHITA, Kan. — George Tiller, a Wichita doctor who was one of the few doctors in the nation to perform late-term abortions, was shot to death on Sunday as he attended church, city officials in Wichita said.
Less than a year-and-a-half after making candidate as a Clinical Pastoral Education supervisor, my theory position papers -- one of the biggest hurdles in the process for full certification as an educator of chaplains and other spiritual caregivers -- have been approved by a committee of three APCE supervisors!
I am truly overjoyed to have reached this milestone: much of my time and energy over the last year went into writing these now-approved papers, and it is an especially joyful thing to have learned this weekend that they have been approved -- on Monday I begin supervising my second summer unit (I have six wonderful chaplain students coming to spend 11 intensive full-time weeks with us!). Knowing the papers are behind me means I will be able to focus my energies fully on my new students and their learning.
I am especially proud that my papers were approved on the first submission, and that the committee did not think they needed any revisions.
Growing up, I think I thought of prayer itself – certainly offering a spontaneous prayer out loud off the top of your head! -- as something inherently Christian (and not Jewish). I never even imagined I could become comfortable doing it myself. So, it was really exciting for me Wednesday when one of the participants in a workshop I was leading at an Israeli Spiritual Care conference said she had come to the workshop in the hope that I could help her to get over her own discomfort with offering spontaneous prayers!
Offering a custom-made prayer – tailored specifically to the situation and the hopes of the suffering person you are with – can be a powerful source of healing. The greatest pain for an ill person is often not directly from their physical sufferings – it is the loneliness people experience amid their illness. The sense that they are now somehow different than everybody around them and that nobody can (or is willing to) understand what they are going through. The sense, maybe, that they have been forsaken by God.
A unique and beautifully tailored prayer from a visitor of faith coming into their hospital room can help break that loneliness. It can help the person to feel seen, to feel that someone had indeed heard their situation. And that that person is genuinely joining in their hopes and wants their suffering to end. And, finally, by bringing God into the experience, the offering of a spontaneous prayer can help heal a spiritual rift and help the person to feel a renewed relation with (a loving) God, even amid the confusion their sufferings bring.
And, yet, so many Jews – like the participant in my workshop – are reluctant to offer spontaneous prayer, largely because it doesn't “feel” Jewish. That's why it was so important to me to put a Jewish “stamp” on my approach to spontaneous prayer, and to come up with my own framework for composing my prayers. This framework is based on the structure of the Amidah , a central prayer of the traditional Jewish prayer service. My approach – and the Amidah – are divided up into three basic parts:
1) שבח/shevah/Praise (the “approach”) – This is where you address the One to whom you are approaching, and what specific aspect of that Ultimate Reality you want to hear your prayer. By choosing whom you are addressing and what aspect of that “whom” to address, you say something about what your theology is – what you think God (or an Ultimate Reality or Force) is. So, when you're offering a prayer for someone else, you can say something about what his or her spirituality is about in framing this first part of the prayer. If the person has a “Vertical” or “Transcendent” understanding of how God relates to humans – an understanding where God is far above us and directs what's below, you could start by saying something like, “Father above. You are the one who has always directed us and given us strength ...” Or, if the person has a more “Horizontal” or “Immanent” God view, you could start with something like, “Oh, Source of all life. You have nourished the plants and trees around us and we find you everywhere we look . . . “
At the end of this section, I also introduce the person, by name, to God, and say something about what is happening for him or her. Something like, "Dear God, we stand here before you with Sarah. She is frightened about the surgery coming tomorrow."
2) בקשות/bakashot/Requests (the “ask) – This is the heart of the prayer, the expression of what we would like God to grant us. If you're offering a prayer for another person, there are two ways you can approach this. The easiest and most straightforward one is to simply mirror back the hopes the person has expressed to you. A great way to help this process is to ask the person right before the prayer, “is there anything in particular you want me to pray for?”
While I always do ask this question before offering my prayer, I don't think the straightforward approach is quite enough. The experience of doing this workshop – and interacting with the great people who came – helped clarify for me why I want to do something more than simply rephrase the person's hopes. It's because offering a prayer is not just about the words of what I say. I think it's not even just about the feelings expressed along with those words. When you're in a real pastoral conversation with a person – where real pain and real, deep hopes are expressed – something more comes into the room. Something is summoned. Maybe it's called the shekinah. Maybe it's called God. Maybe it's something from all the other people who care. Maybe it's just spirit. But, as intangible as it is, it's real and powerful and a key to true healing. It should not be ignored.
But that “something” can't be truly summoned – or be a part of the prayer – if what is expressed is not something in common, something shared, that was part of the encounter. That's why the number one question I ask myself in composing this part of the prayer is “What do I hope for this person?" Bringing myself into the prayer in this way, allows me to offer a more powerful prayer, one that expresses Shared Hopes, and provides a more complete caring experience.
As you can imagine, however, this kind of a "Use of the Self" in spiritual care is controversial, and the participants in the workshop challenged me about it, expressing shock at the possibility that I might offer a prayer for something that the person I am caring for does not want. My answer to them is that, if you truly take a Shared Hopes approach, that that kind of "contradiction" of the suffering person's hopes is not what happens when you express your hopes for them -- because in a Shared Hopes approach, it's not really my hopes or the person's hopes I express -- it's the shared ones that arose in the "space between us" during our conversation.
There's a theory behind this. It's called intersubjectivity. In short, it holds that communication and the creation of meaning are not things that one person does on his or her own. It's something that is co-constructed by the two or more parties in any interaction. It's an especially influential idea in psychoanalysis, and it provides a theoretical basis for the therapist to use the feelings he or she experiences as a tool for understanding, and caring for, their clients. This theory has freed psychoanalysts from feeling they have to take the kind of cold, detached attitude that Freud did with his patients. Instead, they can become more warm, human and genuine with them. This theory has the potential to free spiritual caregivers in the same way, so that they can bring true emotion, feeling and spiritual depth to things like their spontaneous prayers. [The best expression of this theory in the field of pastoral care is Pamela Cooper-White's book Shared Wisdom .]
3) הודאה/hoda-ah/Thanksgiving (and a wish for peace/shalom) -- This part (along with the first one) is a tremendously important part of my approach to spontaneous prayers that is missing from so many other approaches (which tend to only include "ask" elements). It is a chance to return to a place of humility (after the audacity of asking God for things) and to restate something about what we believe about God and about our wish to be in relationship to God. It is also a chance to take our prayer outside the small, immediate realm of the patient's experience and bring it out into the broader realm of all humanity. And this is a key part of almost all religious practices in the major faith traditions -- to link each individual with the community at large in a way that brings greater power to our effort to elevate our spirits and reach for something higher. Communal experience nurtures faith, as do our acts of caring for others. Thus, I conclude every prayer with a wish for peace, starting with the person before me, but then moving outward. First to wish for peace for the person's immediate family and loved ones, but finally I move on to a wish for peace for all people.
Before I offer this request for shalom, I first, as the Amidah does, offer thanks, and say something like, "Dear, God, we thank you for everything you have given. We thank you for the gift of life, and for all that we have been able to know -- especially the love we have been able to experience -- during our time here on earth."
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Another part of a Shared Hopes approach -- one that I borrow from the Jewish prayer tradition -- is to, as much as possible, put the language of my prayer in the language of "we" and to say things like "we pray for you to give her strength, oh gracious God." (Jewish standard forms of prayer -- like the Amidah -- ask for things using the language of "we".)
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I was so impressed with the people who attended my workshop. Many of them are already using spontaneous prayer in their work and they shared their experiences with it. One participant shared that sometimes when there is a prayer that appears to have particularly touched a person, he writes it down and shares those written words with the patient.
Another participant shared a four-part framework for composing spontaneous prayer he uses in Hebrew. His approach is very similar to mine, but differs in the last part especially:
ברוך אתה ה' (אלוהנו מלך העולם) ה_____________ ץ
1) This approach begins with the words that start every standard Jewish blessing, "Blessed are You, HaShem our God, King of the Universe, Who ____________." The "Who" part is key here. In the blessing before eating bread, we say "Who brings forth bread from the earth." When we say the havdalah blessing marking the end of Shabbat and the beginning of a new workweek, we say, "the one distinguishes between the holy and the secular." In this approach, the spiritual caregiver works closely with the person to determine which "Who" of God to address here. (This process, I believe, allows the prayer to start, as my introductory section does, by saying something about the person's theology in making that introduction to God.
אתה יודע
2) Literally, "You know". The words following the "You know" are a chance to say something about the situation the person finds his or herself in, and to hold that up to God.
הבקשה
3) This is an "ask" section, just like mine.
אבל אם לא, תן לי כח להתמודד
4) I was fascinated by this final section, because it is not something I have in my framework. It says "but if my requests are not granted, give me the strength to cope."
I think this is a very powerful thing to have in a prayer and it can -- as the participant himself stated -- foster an important humility that can be a key part of a spiritual growth that can lead to better coping. It seems to me to reflect an acceptance that is a key part of a suffering person's coming to a stronger place, one that has room for entering into a positive relationship with God even amid inexplicable suffering.
Here is a copy of the contents of a handout, I created for the workshop. It has some more details about my approach and that of others who have worked in this area before, especially the work of Rabbi Bonita Taylor, a New York chaplaincy educator (Clinical Pastoral Education supervisor) who has long focused on helping her students gain experience with offering spontaneous prayer. The handout, especially, emphasizes the importance of linking a prayer to an assessment. That is, as I said at the beginning, the truly effective spontaneous prayer has to be one that is specifically tailored to the person and the person's situation and hopes. So much of the prayers some clergy and spiritual caregivers offer do not meet this important minimum condition. While they may indeed be said off the top of the caregiver's head -- rather than read from a book -- they are essentially canned words that the caregiver would say for anybody.
It was such a privilege to give a workshop at this pioneering conference and to have some close contact with people doing such exciting work in Israel. I am grateful to have had the opportunity. I pray it will be the will of the Holy Blessed One -- the One who is the author of all knowledge, compassion and spirit -- that I will be able to offer more such workshops in the future and to learn again from students and to continue to grow in my knowledge and mastery in this area. And may it be the Holy One's will that there will be many more such conferences in Israel and that the infant field of spiritual care there will continue to grow and to thrive.
The fifth annual Spiritual Care conference in Israel opened today with an emotional and intensely personal keynote address by Rona Ramon (pictured above), the widow of Ilan Ramon, Israel's first person to travel into space, who was killed tragically in 2003 during the re-entry of the shuttle Columbia to the Earth's atmosphere.
It is amazing that this is only the fifth such conference in Israel. This nation of contrasts is, one one hand, a highly modern economy fueled by a high-tech industrial sector that is still thriving amid the world-wide recession. And, in many other ways, it is yet an infant nation, still building institions, like chaplaincy (and environmentalism, as I wrote a few weeks ago), that we take for granted in the United States. I feel so privileged to have a chance to be present among the 150 or so pioneering professionals who attended Ramon's talk this morning and who will be at the conference over the next two days.
As I write this, I am listening to a lecture by a true pioneer -- a woman who is working to not only bring Spiritual Care to this young nation, but to bring it to a relatively new and sometimes challenging population to care for: immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Tomorrow, I will be a presenter, myself, giving a workshop on techniques for offering spontaneous prayer.
I am so excited to be here at the conference at the Ma’ale HaHamisha Conference Center in these beautiful hills on the western outskirts of Jerusalem!
One of the exciting parts of the Hazon-Arava Israel ride for me was that the riding days of our journey from the Mediterranean to Red seas were separated by one of my very favorite Torah portions: קדושים/kedoshim, or Holy ("you will be; for Holy am I, HaShem Your God").
I love this Torah portion, or parsha, because it stands at the very center of the Torah. Not only is it in the very middle of the middle of the Torah's five books, but it is at the center of the Torah's central narrative: the narrative of a people coming out of slavery to the wondrous -- but also terrifying -- task of trying to be all of everything that God expected them to be. And God surely expected a lot of a people who, as slaves, had never even before been expected to make decisions for themselves. God expected them now to have so much wisdom as to be able to even figure out how to be קדוש/kadosh, to be Holy.
The Torah tells of the many stumbles of the people Israel in their efforts to find their way to becoming what God expected of them as they wandered through the desert. They sometimes complain and wish for the simpler times that were the predictability of the simple life of a slave. But the biggest stumble came just before back in chapter 10 when Aaron's two sons, in their excitement, brought "strange fire" before God, and were destroyed for this mistaken attempt to take part in holiness.
The whole rest of the Torah, beginning here with this parsha, is about the acts of repairing from this mistake -- about the acts of learning how to be Holy. The parsha gives a grand list of requirements for being Holy that is a kind of updating of the Ten Commandments. This list is almost the same as the Ten Commandments, but it has one important addition -- it commands us to take care of the poor and make sure they have enough to eat from the produce of the Land. And this book of the Torah comes towards its conclusion with this specific focus on the land and who may eat of it. It declares that you cannot treat this land as a resource that can just be used constantly with no regard for its limit. In the seventh year, the land must -- as God did on the seventh day of creation -- rest. It must have a Shabbat:
וְהָיְתָה שַׁבַּת הָאָרֶץ לָכֶם לְאָכְלָה, לְךָ וּלְעַבְדְּךָ וְלַאֲמָתֶךָ וְלִשְׂכִירְךָ וּלְתוֹשָׁבְךָ הַגָּרִים עִמָּךְ. And the Shabbat produce of the Land will be food for you -- for you, and for your servant, and your maid, and your hired hand and for the stranger who dwells among you. (YaYikrah 25:5 )
Rashi, the great Medieval bible commentator, says that the reason the Torah lists all these people who may eat from the food of the Land is to emphasize that in that year -- that special Shabbat year of the Land -- you cannot act like you are a בעל/baal -- a master -- over the Land and the people who work and live on it. You are equals, and you must share in the food of the Land equally.
This, the Torah tells us at the central place that is this great parsha, is part of what it means to be a Holy people -- to be willing to rest the Land when it is the time for it to be rested, and also to be willing to make sure all are fed, and all know what it is like to be treated equally as a human being.
Riding through the desert at the beginning of this week, I thought often about what it means to be Holy. I thought of how precious water is. I thought of the great gift that God has given us in these modern times to be so free of the terrible diseases that for most of human history killed most people in the earliest years of childhood -- to have so much abundance of food that literally billions can be fed every day even with so much food just being thrown out before being eaten. These are the gifts that have come with our mastery of the tools of science, gifts that would not be possible without the intelligence that God has given us.
Yet with such great gifts comes so much responsibility. Being a Holy people in our time means limiting our overuse of the tools of science. It means not squeezing every drop out of what lies in the ground below us. It means giving the Land its Shabbat in its time. And it means that all among us are able to live full lives and enjoy the benefits of this Land.
We spoke of water so often during the bike ride. How precious it is, and how much we squander it. The experts who spoke to us sought to raise our awareness that the water that we use is not just in the obvious uses that happen when we open a faucet and take out water for things like our showers and our cooking. Every product we use -- the very clothes on our backs -- took water to produce. If we're really going to preserve this precious resource, we need to raise our awareness of all the inefficient ways it is used in the manufacturing and food production that supports us.
This is nowhere more true than here in the Middle East. The shortage of water regionwide is not what caused the conflicts that plague us, but it stands in the way of finding solutions. If there ever is to be peace, a way must be found for everyone to drink, for everyone to have the opportunity to live a full life.
Our speakers told us of some of the amazing things that are happening in Israel to solve the water crisis, things like the desalination plant in Ashkelon, and the widespread use of recycled sewage water for the irrigation of crops. Israel is one of the world leaders in these kinds of technologies. They are not cure-alls -- it takes a great deal of energy, for example, to make desalination work -- but they are wonderful examples of the determination of people here to find solutions.
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As I let go of the brake levers on my bike to start that final descent from our position near the mountaintop of הר יואש/har yoash -- some 2,300 feet above Eilat and sea level only about six miles away -- I thought of how precious life is. I cried with joy inside as I felt the wind whipping by my ears and witnessed the glory of the mountain and hillsides I was screaming by. God was out there somewhere and I was standing -- even as I was rolling rapidly on my two wheels -- before that Lord of my life. I was grateful for what I had been given. And, I promised to do my best to take care of it and thus make it a place where God's infinite and wondrous Holiness would be welcome among us humans here on earth.
Jerusalem is a tremendously hilly city, yet, as our bus plodded its way through some of the city's most crowded neighborhoods on its way to the central bus station last night, I was cheered to see people on bikes -- some of them wearing the kippah that marks the religious, male Jew -- winding their way through the dense traffic on narrow streets.
One thing that makes Jerusalem doable by bike (despite the challenges of the hills, etc.) is it's actually amazingly compact compared to America's sprawling cities. Even Jerusalem's most far-flung neighborhoods are only about six miles from the city center, and most people's commutes are much shorter. Many Americans, on the other hand, find themselves commuting dozens of miles in each direction every day.
This more-compact nature of Israeli cities is just one of the many ways Israel has set itself up in a way that makes a more sustainable, and environmentally friendly, lifestyle possible, and is a reminder that there is much we can learn from the way Israelis approach life.
That is not to say that Israelis are more environmentally conscious than we are. I was reminded of this last Shabbat when we were in Mitzpeh Ramon as part of the Hazon-Arava environmental bike ride trip. I stepped outside the prayer service for a moment to get some air and think alone. It was so beautiful to look out towards the huge desert crater -- an inspiring example of God's works. But below my feet were the cigarette butts and other garbage that Israelis seem to feel free to dump anywhere. As one of the speakers on the trip told us, environmental consciousness is only beginning among the general population in a country where security concerns have long been paramount. He held out hope to us that things are changing, however -- as evidenced by the recent election in Tel Aviv of some environmentalists to city government -- and Israel is growing to be more consciously concerned about preserving some elements of the quality of life, and not just the preserving of life.
I was so glad to have a chance to contribute something back to Israel with two wheels (by participating in -- and raising money for -- an environmental bike ride). The bicycle has never been just a means of recreation for me. When I was a kid, I had a paper route, and I hauled my papers with a bicycle that had baskets on its sides and to which my Dad (of blessed memory) had jury-rigged a folding shopping cart as a trailer. I rediscovered the bike as a means of carrying cargo (groceries and such) while an adult in Los Angeles, and have continued that practice even amid the hills and winter winds of Reading, PA. I try to cast for myself in Reading a life more like the one I am able to have here in Jerusalem, a life where things are only a few steps -- or a few pedals -- away, and I do not have to get into some gasoline-burning and carbon-fume-expelling device every day.
Heschel talked about the glory of Shabbat as Judaism's great solution to the dangers of technological civilization. Shabbat does not ask us to abandon the benefits of technology -- we get to work for six days -- only not to be dominated by it, to be able to live free amid it. Those five riding days from sea to sea and inside the great emptiness of the Negev desert were a reminder that there is another way than living dominated by technology, and of how two wheels can help free us to be able to live free. I was so grateful to be a part of it, and hope to keep learning from it.
When we arrived home, today (see here), we found this pile of wood and cardboard in the entrance of the building. Now, just having come back from an environmental bike ride, I am somewhat hopeful it is piled here for recycling purposes. But I know it is much more likely that it is preparation for next week's Lag B'Omer, a holiday that the religious and the secular alike celebrate here by setting bonfires all over the city . . . . . I just hope they move it out from underneath the buidling before they torch it up! :)
Life just seems so much more intense -- so much more real -- to me here in Israel. In some ways, the Independence Day beachside bbq's that we witnessed when we arrived in Ashkelon, today (after pedaling 50 miles from Tel Aviv) were not much different from the ones you find in the States on July 4. But there was some incredible energy to it here. Minna told me a female cab driver here told her that if they were to pull over the car right there, the bbq-ers would run over to share their food with them -- עם ישראל פתוח/am yisrael patuah, the nation of Israel is open, the cab driver told her.
And, of course, the Independence of this holiday is so much more recent than the US of A's independence -- it only happened in 1948. And, even more importantly I think, the price of this independence is so much more current and intense, with all the wars and such that have touched this land and this people. Independence Day here is immediately preceded by Yom HaZikaron, Israel's memorial day for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism. That holiday began on Monday night with a one-minute siren. All the shops were closed in Tel Aviv where we were staying. We turned on the television to a children's channel and watched a show where the host interviewed a small group of young children in depth about what it was like to have lost a parent to war. I just could not imagine something so intense being on a major network in the States as part of a national holiday.
The ride, today, was the first part of our trip from Tel-Aviv to Eilat. Here's a shot of Minna near an amusement park we took a break at just south of Tel Aviv:
And here are some of the other riders outside the amusement park:
And here we are by the beach when we finally got to Ashkelon:
It was a great day! .. . And it was so great to be in Israel for Yom HaAtzmaut (Independence Day). I almost didn't mind when the disco music of nearby celebrations kept us up way past our bedtimes last night, or even having to dodge the debris left over from the street celebrations on the narrow streets of Tel Aviv's Neve Tzedek neighborhood as we rode through it this morning. . . . I really felt free -- independent -- riding today!
Well, ready or not, next week Minna and I will be going on the Hazon-Arava bicycle ride -- all the way from Tel-Aviv to Eilat! Today, I went on my last training ride, my fourth ride of the week. On Sunday and today, I took challenging rides through the Aminadav National forest, which includes the mountaintop Yad Kennedy monument to JFK (see pic on the right). Twice this week, once with Minna and once with our friend Amy (who will also be on the Hazon ride) I went to Yad Kennedy itself.
I really enjoyed my ride, today. I went past Har Herzel on my way to Ein Kerem and then down past Sataf to the Nahal Refaim entrance to the national forest. For a number of kilometers from there, I followed the Nahal (a Hebrew word for a stream) on a dirt road. It was so beautiful to be in the Nahal's valley and looking up at the hills around. From there, I climbed up almost to the Yad, and then down to get towards home. I was out for six hours all told. Oh, how I will miss riding in these hills!
The approximate route I took today (up until a spot below Yad Kennedy where Minna and Amy like to rest) is below in the red [part of today's route was on the path of a trail from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem that's called מים אל י-ם in Hebrew and "From Coast to Capital" in English]:
"It's a memorial for the Holocaust. It's Yom HaShoah ."
That's what I said to the young (British-sounding) tourist who turned to me after the ceasing was over and the people got back in their cars at one of Jerusalem's busiest intersections. She asked, "what was this? What were people doing?"
By the ceasing, I mean one of the most short -- but powerful -- ceremonies in all of Israel, the way Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) is marked. At 10 am, a siren goes off everywhere in the country and everything comes to a stop for two minutes. At the busy intersection Minna and I were at, there was horn honking right up to the moment the siren went off. But then it all stopped and the honking drivers all got out of their cars to stand at attention for the silent observance. A similar observance will be held next week for Yom HaZikaron, which honors the dead from war and terrorism.
Last night, Minna and one of her classmates had the honor of being at the official national ceremony for Yom HaShoah, which was held at Israel's main Holocuast Museum, Yad VaShem.The Prime Minister and many other dignitaries were there.
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It was kind of an important step for me to be so intentional about engaging such an important part of Israeli life as Yom HaShoah -- on this visit I have been so consumed by the work and such I brought with me that I've been more "just living" here as opposed to "visiting" here. On one hand, that's great -- it's an expression of how much I feel at home here in Jerusalem. On the other hand, this is such a special opportunity to be here, and who knows when I will ever be able to be here, again. I have about four weeks left -- I'm going to try and enjoy them! :) . . . . . I have _definitely_ enjoyed the bicycle riding that I finally managed to get to this week. I posted here about one great ride I took Sunday. Yesterday, I took a shorter, but still challenging ride up to Yad Kennedy. . . . . The beauty of the hills on that ride -- and in all the hills in and around Jerusalem -- is something that speaks to me in a way I just cannot describe. As I write this I am sitting in a park overlooking one such beautiful hillside not far from where Minna is at class now at Machon Schechter. . . . . It really is these things -- the hills and the people of the city -- that speak to me so much here, and not necessarily so much the famous holy sites like the Western Wall. . . . I've been reading Karen Armstrong's book on Jerusalem. In the opening pages she talks about what it is that makes a place holy to people. She says it has something to do with an association a place gets with the _experience_ of the holy. . . . Somehow, for me, God is closer here. Here, in the people. And in the hills.
The Hazon (Tel-Aviv to Eilat) ride is only a little more than a week away now, so I wanted to work on getting my "sea legs" before we go, and I brought so much work with me from the States that before today I was only able to get out once before.
The ride, today, was extremely challenging and involved a lot of climbing, but I really enjoyed it. The Judean hills are so beautiful.
A touch of jet lag and a sore shoulder had me up in the very early morning hours, today, laying down aluminum foil on every exposed surface of the kitchen here in Jerusalem in preparation for חג המצות/hag hamatzot -- the Festival of Matzah (otherwise known as Passover). Suddenly I found tears in my eyes.
The tears were related to the music in my ears. I was listening to Billy Bragg's version of Woody Guthrie 's "All you fascists are bound to lose. " I heard such courage in Guthrie's words. It sounded to me like a prayer. A prayer for a day where hate and violence would come to an end, a prayer, in Guthrie's words for a time when there would be "people of every color marching side by side." A prayer in line with what was in my heart as I was "making a spaceship" of this kitchen to follow in the thousand's years old tradition of my people to clear their houses of all leavened products for the week-long holiday. . . . Guthrie made me think of my rabbinical school colleague, Rabbi Scott Slarskey, whose teffilin bag while we were in school had on it the words Guthrie had on his guitar -- "this machine kills fascists."
I never asked Scott what those words meant to him, but I know how powerfully it spoke to me to see it associated with a part of the Jewish religious tradition. . . . Because I really believe that it's not enough to just want a world free of the hate (of fascists and others) -- a world of peace and love and freedom. In the last 100 years, too many dreams for that have ended up leading to all sorts of unintended and tragic consequences. To stay on course for our goal, we need God. We need our devotion to God. We need a way to express it. A way that's rooted. That's ancient. That keeps us hand-in-hand with the generations that passed before.
I was trying to keep faith with those generations and their own hopes for a world of peace as I was laying my foil. I was asking God for peace. . . And for freedom.
For countless generations Jews around the world have ended their Passover Seders with the words, "next year in Jerusalem!" This year I will, God willing, be spending my Seder -- for the second time in my life -- there. As I write this, I am still amidst last-minute packing and wrapping up things here in the States, but at 6pm or so tomorrow I should be above the Atlantic on my way towards Israel. I can't wait to see Minna!
May this year's Seders and Passover be Kasher -- and joyful! -- for everyone.
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At the Seder, our tradition asks us to see ourselves as if we ourselves -- and not just our ancestors -- have been brought out of the bondage of Egypt into freedom. The last year has been a time when I have started to see great hope that many new freedoms and many new paths are being opened up before me.
First among these have to do with Minna. Long have I dreamed of being able to have a partner on so many levels. Our shared commitment to a Jewish life -- and our respective deep commitment to finding paths to Jewish leadership -- has deepened my own Jewish life in ways that I am deeply grateful for and in ways that make me hopeful for a continued blossoming in that part of my life in the future . . . A year ago this time, Minna and I were really just at the very beginning of getting to know each other, and were struggling to find ways to spend time together amid the challenges of a long-distance relationship. But, over the last 12 months, we were able to find a way toward having over two months together in Israel (and are planning on having more time together now).
New paths to freedom have also appeared in my professional life. Most importantly, it was just about a year ago that I passed a big hurdle in my chaplaincy educator/supervisor training process and was officially certified as a supervisor candidate. This put me on the path to writing a series of papers about my approach to chaplaincy education (getting those papers passed is the next big hurdle towards certification).
I got so excited about what I was writing (especially ideas like evaluation as blessing) that I decided I wanted to extend my research and knowledge about how people learn -- especially about understanding how the Jewish tradition has shaped its unique way of forming leaders (rabbis and not rabbis) and how empathy -- caring -- can be taught (here's a recent New York Times article on empathy training in a public school that is interesting, but I think misses the point a bit by confusing being "nice" with being empathetic). . . And that led me to applying to a great doctoral program in Jewish Studies and Education at NYU. I'll be starting there in the fall (don't worry -- I'm not giving up chaplaincy and will continue to be a part of the hospital here)! . . . . . It will be important for me in the coming year, however, to remember how easy it can be to confuse freedom with bondage. . . . The people Israel, after their liberation at God's hand, got pretty confused about this during their long wandering in the wilderness and even made a Golden Calf for themselves in the "freedom" they had when Moses left them alone to go up on the mountain for the tablets. I have taken on quite a heavy task for myself to be starting a doctoral program while still working towards my certification and while still being a contributor to the chaplaincy services at my hospital.
I believe, especially with having Minna's support, that this is the right path for me. But I also know that, for all its benefits and joys, that it may test me severely at times. I pray for God's help and support amid that -- to help me make all my life, and not just Passover, a Feast of Freedom!
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I can't resist including this. . . Have a great Passover!
Long before there were blogs or Facebook people were trying to find ways to express themselves on the Web. Recently, I found the files from an early personal home page of mine (from the mid or late 90s, I guess). It was surprising to me to see how much my situation then mirrors the one I'm at, today. . . . and how it's very different.
The page started out (yes, with the much-bearded photo to the right) with these words at its top:
My name is Alan Abrams. My life has three halves. Having 1.5 lives crammed into one life keeps me pretty busy, but I'm not complaining -- it's pretty sweet most of the time, although I can get pretty tired.
It went on to say something about my job (I was a buisness journalist then working for a then-daily newspaper called The Journal of Commerce). It then went on to talk about faith. Here's what I said (pre-Rabbinical School, mind you) about faith:
Ok, work is great. It keeps me off the streets and/or from napping all day. But where does it all end!! Nowadays, we tend to think of each other as if we're all machines or commodities designed for certain tasks. When can we tell ourselves and/or our bosses that enough is enough and that we're human after all?
For me, that enough-is-enough comes every week with a sundown and lasts until the next one. When enough is enough, I am transmitted to a holy place where no person rules over another. It is a place that does not exist in space, but only in time. It is a place called Shabbos.
On the Sabbath, I have found freedom by accepting the restrictions and rules that Jews have accepted down through the ages as having come from God. Shabbos is His day. On that day He is the only ruler, the only King. And on that day by accepting his sole rule we find freedom because that act of acceptance allows us to throw off all the bonds that come from Mankind and from ourselves......ok, ok, so maybe I can't make myself completely free every time. But, I'm trying and in that process of trying, I have found a treasure in my life.
Now these days I would never use such gender-specific language for God like this. But it's wonderful to have a reminder of how central Shabbat was to me even at that early stage in my journey towards a serious engagement with Judaism. Sticking with that commitment to Shabbat has not always been easy and has involved many a sacrifice. It is very affirming to me to read the words I wrote about Shabbat those years ago.
I think there are three halves to my life also, today. But I'm not sure I would divide them up the same way. My faith life is so integrated into all aspects of my life -- including my work life -- now that I'm not sure I would give it a seperate category alongside the others . . . . It's just such a part of everything.
So what would the three halves be, today? Certainly, Love (hi, Minna!). Certainly, Work. . . . The third? Maybe, learning? Maybe (for the moment, at least) physical exercise. . . . . Whatever it is -- it's tiring, but sweet!
))))))))))))))
Here are some excerpts from the "work" section:
I am a reporter for The Journal of Commerce, the world's premiere source of daily information on international trade and transportation. My previously occasional column on technology will now appear once every two weeks!! But mostly I report on shipping. I love oil spills .. ... ok, ok, I don't love oil spills, but they make my life more interesting. Never forget, most accidents are due to human error and most human error is due to boredom and/or lack of sleep. Please, please, if you're piloting an oil tanker, try and get your rest and stay alert. If you own an oil tanker, please let your crew get the sleep they need. . . . . .
. . . . . The world's seas really don't have a police force, but our Coast Guard does a pretty good job, considering ..... considering being massive budget cuts and all that jazz. But, I tell ya, these guys are a joy for a reporter to deal with -- articulate, knowledgeable and willing to talk with very few exceptions. If I ever get lost at sea, I want these dedicated men and women looking for me.
And here are some excerpts from the "Love" section:
Work and faith are good -- very good -- but life would be pretty lonely without friends. I have some great ones!! . . . . We [New Yorkers wear our surliness] as a badge of pride, ya know.
Bunches of my other friends happen to be Southerners, but they're actually pretty surly, too, in their Southern way, which must be why I love them so much. They can be so brutally indirect. I admire them for that bizarre brand of honesty. And for their love. They really know how to adopt a Northerner.
I've largely lost touch with those Southern friends. They really helped me through some tough times in my life with their love and I am so grateful for that. But as my Jewish journey got more intense, it was, sadly and somewhat ironically, harder to stay in touch.
The other thing that's changed is that I guess I really don't wear "surliness" as a badge of pride anymore. That's part of growing into my rabbi role, and moving beyond identifying myself so much with New York (although I still love it and have it written on my soul for sure). . . . I've learned to be better at appreciating other places and the people who come from them. . . That's growth! :)
When you say something -- or write or draw something -- you may know what you mean to express, but the reader (or receiver) may hear something else entirely. Who gets to determine what your message means? The original owner (the speaker/writer), or the new owner (the receiver)?
This may sound like a question only an academic could love, but it's actually a very important one that comes up all the time in practical ways and it's one that has special relevance to the world of pastoral education. There is a very sharp controversy in the media right now that illustrates well this "who owns it" question. The New York post published a cartoon showing two police officers standing over a dead chimpanzee on the ground with two holes in its chest. One officer is holding a smoking gun. The other says to him, "they'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill".
What did people receive when they saw this cartoon? Well a lot of people heard that the chimpanzee represented president Obama (who is, after all, the ultimate author of the stimulus bill meant to revive our ailing economy). And thatmessage is offensive because it resonates with deeply painful stereotypes about African-Americans.
In my view, however, it's pretty clear that the artist intended no such thing. He did not intend the chimpanzee to represent Obama; he intended it to represent Washington as a whole (after all, the stimulus bill we ended up with was not really authored by Obama -- it was authored by a series of committees in the House and Senate who negotiated endlessly over its final form).
But, so what? Does the fact that the author didn't intend to say something hurtful make the hurt some people felt just disappear? Certainly not. Once it left his pen (or whatever he drew it with), the author no longer owned the message. His cartoon was indeed hurtful and offensive and he should unreservedly apologize about it.
In the world of pastoral education and pastoral care we transmit messages all the time. We ask our student chaplains to take the risk of offering feedback and critique to one another. These transmissions are not always received as the author intended them to be. Sometimes both the transmitter and the receiver end up feeling deeply hurt. Communication fails.
The path to a better way starts with realizing that neither the transmitter or the receiver really owns the message. The construction of what a message really means -- and this is the insight we get from Social Constructivism and similar approaches -- is something that is co-constructed by transmitters and receivers. So, the better path starts with embracing the fact that you need to co-construct the meaning of what you want to say -- the feedback you want to give -- with the person you are talking to. You have to invite them into the feedback giving process. You have to ask their permission every step of the way. "Is it alright if I talk to you about this?" "Have you ever thought about this?" "Ok, I hear what you're saying about that, but would you be open to my perspective on that situation?"
I call this the forging of Shared Meaning. Or you could call it contracting, conventing, or -- to use the appropriate Hebrew word -- the cutting of a brit.
If we realize that feedback is really a Holy process that involves a shared dialogue of back-and-forth between its participants, we can get closer to truly communicating with one another -- and with the people in need we are hoping to offer some healing and comfort to.
With bike riding, they say that the thing that declines most as you get older (47-year-of-age I am) is not how fast or how far you can go in a single day -- it's how much time it takes you to recover after a ride. So, after two days of riding at the beginning of the week left my legs feeling like rubber, I was wondering if I would feel recovered today.
I'm happy to say that on a two-hour mid-day ride (with about 900-feet of climb), today, I felt pretty strong. (I was able to take a "long lunch" today because I had went into work early for some meetings, etc., and I have to stay until 9pm tonight to teach my class.)
The ride itself was what has become my favorite standard route -- going up into the hills to the south of here. A beautiful place in any season, but sometimes I love winter best. . . It was, however, a shock to me (when I left it was sunny and almost spring like) when I found snow falling upon me from grey -- and windy! -- skies! It was warm enough that it wasn't sticking, though.
With a 300-mile bike ride in Israel only about nine weeks away, training has -- despite the snow on the ground here in PA! -- been much on my mind these days. They say you need to work yourself up to not _just_ doing long, challenging rides in preparation for a tour, but also to getting to the point where you can do two hard days in a row. This is not just a challenging thing for me to do because of weather and the physical challenge -- but also, because of my commitment to Shabbat, Sunday is the only weekend day I have for riding.
So, I decided to take a vacation day this week and make a a two-day mini-tour from here in Reading to Columbia, Pa., on the banks of the mighty Susquehanna river, which had me crossing the entire length of Lancaster County. It was a challenging and beautiful ride in temps that were a bit below freezing in the mornings and late afternoons, and a bit above freezing in the middle of the day.
Lancaster is known for its cycling , both for the beauty of its rolling hills, and for the influence of the Pennsylvania Dutch, both the Amish and the Mennonites , on its culture and landscape. Sunday morning they were out in force -- mostly in their traditional black horse and buggies, but some also on bicycles -- on their way to and from church.
Here's the route I took on the way there (about 55 miles):
I took a shorter trip on the way back, today -- about 37 miles. But the riding in the cold was just as challenging, today, as it was on Sunday. I spent a lot of time zipping and unzipping my jackets, trying to keep myself just cold enough so that I would not sweat too much -- if you let your clothes get all wet, there's no way to keep warm on the downhills.
I feel pretty good now. Some parts of my body are clearly still warming up -- and my legs are quite sore! But, I feel like I could ride even further if I had to, a good feeling for someone planning on a long tour!
PS If you'd like to sponsor me and Minna on the tour, click here!
A year and a half ago in Dallas, there was a report before the leadership of the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education calling for a major restructuring in how the supervisors and and educators of chaplains are certified. In effect, the report said the certification process was broken. But the leadership rejected the report. Their main evidence for this position? That they had approved 87% of the people who went up for certification at the meeting.
Well, here we are not so many months later and I hear that at the latest ACPE convention only 10 out of 15 (67%) who went up for associate and only 6 out of 10 (60%) who went up for full were approved.
The idea that these kinds of numbers are acceptable in this day and age reflects a series of antiquated attitudes that threaten the very future of education in pastoral care. It is long past time for the ACPE leadership to wake up and face up to the fact the certification and education process for supervisors/educators has to be reformed to look something like what the rest of the world does, today. There was a time -- many decades ago now -- when people who went to medical or law school entered with the knowledge that they might "wash out" of the program. Those days are long past. Today's students -- who often go into deep debt in search of their education -- need a more predictable process. They need to know if they're going to be likely to finish, and they need to know how long that will take. Otherwise, quality talent will just not bother with seeking to become educators in pastoral care.
Barack Obama may have been many miles away, but his presence was very much felt at the Racial Ethnic Multicultural network (REM) meeting of chaplains in Orlando over the last couple of days. Obama's election has certainly given much hope to African-Americans and other ethnic minorities. But it has also posed challenges -- if an African-American can rise to the highest office in the land, does that mean America is past racism, and that therefore there is no longer a need to discuss racial discrimination and how it can be corrected? Have we become a color-blind society?
The conference's keynote speaker -- Stacey Floyd-Thomas, an African-American college professor and feminist whose passion reminds me a bit of my hero bell hooks -- addressed this "color blind" issue. "I don't want to get past race; I want to get past racism," she said. "My race isn't the problem, your problem with it is."
This was my second REM conference, and it was again a prviledge to be a part of it. Although I am most certainly a member of a minority group myself as a Jewish person in the world of interfaith chaplaincy, REM has a predominantly African-American feel to it, and so I feel a bit more like a guest than a participant (I especially felt like a non-participant when the keynote speaker began her morning talk with a prayer in the name of Jesus!).
But I am most happy to be a guest here. The incredible passion and thirst for justice that can come from Amerca's black preachers -- the passion that once all of America knew in the presence of the great Martin Luthur King -- is something that I almost never have a chance to see in my current life. Here at REM, however, I got to see some of it still burning bright. Floyd-Thomas' expression of deep pride in being a black woman was just one part of that.
There is another side, however. At one workshop for people, like myself, who are training for certification as chaplaincy supervisors, the issue of privilege came up. What happens when I start to become one of the priviledged, one of the particpants, asked. Am I going to no longer be recognized as "belonging here," she continued.
In reaction, another participant shared a story about coming to the neighborhood where he grew up and where his mother still lived. He overheard a conversation between two workers in a passing garbage truck. They were questioning what he was doing in the neighborhood because he didn't look like he belonged there.
I certainly do not think racism in America is over, but these accounts tell an important story -- many African Americans, like Barack Obama, have managed to lift the worst of the chains of racism off of themselves. They have become more privileged than oppressed.
For Jews, this transition to become more privileged than oppressed has brought great challenges along with its blessing. Oppression -- for all its evils, none of which I would wish back -- guaranteed that a Jewish person could never forget for a moment that he or she was a Jew. It guaranteed that Jews would continue to identify as Jews. And it guaranteed that Jews would create and maintain their own distinct and unique culture amid the American melting pot.
With the lifting of the worst of the oppression, Jews who are interested in the survival of a Jewish culture and identity in this country have had to work hard to find new ways of preserving that precious identity.
REM reminded me once again that African-Americans -- especially in the traditions of their churches -- have their own great, distinct and unique identity. It is my prayer that they will find new ways to maintain it, just as they find new ways to reach for the rungs of opportunity that have been appearing before them.
If you're preparing for a big ride, there's no substitute for actually getting on the bicycle and pulling yourself up some real hills. So, despite temps in the low 20s F, I got on the bike today for about six glorious, but challenging hours -- heading down into Lancaster county where the ponds have frozen amid the bare farm fields and have young men playing hockey on them.
As challenging as winter riding is, I love riding my routes that follow woodland streams up into the hills. With the trees bare, you can see the streams -- flowing through the whiteness of the snow-covered ground and with ice starting to form in them -- almost the whole way. On the steepest climb, I shed my jackets and let my body heat -- with the help of just a thin sweater -- keep me warm. There was something almost surreal about exercising so hard, and yet not sweating at all.
I'm sure that will not be the case on the "big ride" I am training for -- the Spring Hazon Israel ride, which will take us from Tel-Aviv to Eilat -- Israel's southernmost point -- via the (hot!) Negev desert. The ride is to raise money for two organizations -- the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and Hazon -- that have been deeply involved in things like projects to help protect Israel's environment.
But, having participated in another of Hazon's rides (in New York) a few years back, I know that the ride itself is something very much worth supporting for those of us who care about the future of the Jewish people -- the community that is forged through the shared challenge of climbing so many hills together is something that gives people, especially young people, the energy, resources and ideas to take their leadership in the Jewish world to a higher level. It is the future that is being forged here.
That said, courtesy of Minna, here is some info about Hazon and the Arava institute:
The primary beneficiary of the Israel Ride is the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. The Institute is working to confront the serious environmental challenges in Israel, by creating a leadership cadre of environmentalists, through important research, and through public involvement. The Arava Institute draws students from across the Middle East, encouraging environmental cooperation between peoples, and working towards peace and sustainable development on a regional and global scale. To learn much more about the work of the Arava Institute, or about the environmental movement in Israel, check out http://www.arava.org/.
The second beneficiary of the Israel Ride is Hazon, one of most innovative organizations in the American Jewish community and now the largest Jewish environmental organization in the United States. The word "Hazon" means vision. Hazon's vision is to create a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community as step toward creating a healthier and more sustainable world for all. Through the Jewish Environmental Bike Rides, the Community-Supported Agriculture projects, the conference on Jews, Food & Contemporary Life, and other cutting edge programs, Hazon brings people together, builds community, promotes sustainability and vibrant Jewish life.
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Although I began this blog post by saying there is no substitute for actually getting outside on the bike, I am actually, for the first, time taking a more "classic" approach to off-season training that is not completely dependent on my being able to ride through the winter weather. I have invested in some "inside" gear, including a "trainer" that lets me convert my bike into a stationary cycle. And I am also, again for the first time, doing some non-cycling (cross training) workouts with free weights and some core exercises, as well as some stretching.
"Know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy." These are the words that (now) President Barack Obama uttered today in a part of his inaugural speech that addressed the Muslim world and critics of the West.
I don't know if Obama had the people of Gaza in mind when he spoke these words, but they certainly came to my mind as I listened to him. The people of America are not the only people who stand at a crossroads. As Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza and its residents start the task of sorting through the rubble, the people of Gaza stand at a crossroads. Which way do they want to go? Do they want to build? Do they want to focus their energies on creating the institutions -- and the economy -- that a successful nation needs? Or do they want to remain focused on destruction and hate? Do they want to continue devoting their energies to following Hamas' professed goal of the destruction of the State of Israel? Do they want to keep on supporting people who use courtyards and alleys right beside their homes and mosques to fire deadly missiles at Israeli civilians? Or are they ready to throw off Hamas' rule (or, alternatively, force Hamas to change its program -- to focus its energies on building Gaza instead of destroying Israel).
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I found tears in my eyes throughout Obama's speech and in the moments I saw his face on the television screen beforehand. The tears came from many places, but one was of fear. I looked at Obama's head -- hatless despite the cold, as JFK was hatless at his inauguration -- and thought of what a fragile thing the human body is. So much hope put in that person. And it could all be taken away with a single bullet. I was afraid for Obama and for us. I thought of Martin and Bobby. . . . and of the Russian civil rights lawyer killed just, yesterday. I thought of the courage it takes to work for freedom and change in the face of the possibility of violence. I thought of the courage it takes to choose life, to choose to build, instead of destroy.
It is this courage that I see when I think of the people and nation of Israel; they are very much on my mind these days, especially when I have a loved one there who I left behind just a couple of weeks ago. It pains me so much to know that the impression many have of the State of Israel now -- an impression left by the television images of destruction in Gaza -- is of a state dedicated to destruction. I wish people could see the miracle that is the building of what is now a modern state with an advanced, high-tech economy from what was largely a poor, agricultural nation not so long ago. A building that has been accomplished against so many odds. A building that has happened despite the hate of so many for the Jews and for the state they formed. A building that happened despite so many acts of violence against it. This is a people that long ago chose building over destruction and that would gladly keep its tanks and planes in their sheds if only they could.
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After Obama spoke, Elizabeth Alexander delivered a poem that near its end featured a repetition of the word "love" again and again. ("What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light.")
And then the 87-year old Rev. Joseph Lowery delivered his benediction. His words will probably be most well-remembered for his conclusion when he departed from his serious tone to pick up an almost whimsical rhyming to depict a vision of a world where race is no longer an barrier (" . . . . when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right . ."). But I was most touched a few sentences earlier when he referenced the vision of Isaiah of a day "when nations shall not lift up sword against nation" and modernized Isaiah's "they shall beat their swords into plowshares" to add a hope that "tanks will be beaten into tractors".
Then he turned to one of Martin Luthur King's most favorite biblical verses (Amos 5:24) as he called for a day "when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream."
"Pilot is hailed after jetliner's icy plunge." That is the headline on the New York Times" day after story about the seemingly miraculous survival of all on board the plane that crash-landed into the Hudson river, yesterday. And there is no doubt that pilot Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III is indeed a hero for his quick thinking and calm in this extraordinary crisis.
But, as I looked at the pictures of the people out there on the plane's wing and in its safety rafts I thought of my Father, of blessed memory. No, he never piloted a plane. He was an engineer. And, like the "engineer's engineer" that he was, he walked around with Murphy's Law always on his brain -- he was always thinking about what could go wrong. And, more importantly, what could be done to prevent it, or to prevent lives from being lost if it did go wrong (as something went horribly wrong with yesterday's flight).
The survival of those 155 passenger's and crew would not have been possible without all the safety and emergency features built into that aircraft. Countless hours were spent by engineers examining past accidents and trying to quietly imagine what would happen in an emergency. They gave the pilot the tools he needed to save those lives.
In the Jewish tradition, we say that to save a life is to save an entire world. To all you engineers who helped save those 155 worlds, yesterday, I salute you. And your work, done in quiet, but with determination and commitment.
The first time I applied to rabbinical school, I was turned down. I was devastated. How could this happen, I thought? I was a person of intelligence, character and passion who had come to make a decision to dedicate his life to Torah and the Jewish people. How could anyone turn down such a person? Didn't the Jewish people need leaders? Weren't the (religious) leaders on this admissions committee I had sat in front of supposed to be kind and wise and welcoming? How could they be so cold to me, I cried to myself.
At the time I felt completely alone. But I -- especially in my work as a Clinical Pastoral Educator (a person who trains chaplains) -- have come to learn that my experience is anything but unique. Many people make a decision to commit themselves to some kind of service in ministry only to be deeply wounded when they are rejected by the religious leaders they apply to. This can be especially challenging in some of the Protestant denominations where people need to make multiple (anxiety provoking) appearances before committees before being ordained; at any of these, a person can be turned down for ordination even if they have dedicated years to studying for it. (At least for rabbinical school, there is typically only the one committee appearance -- the initial interview for admission.)
But what has really been shocking for me is to realize that not only do these rejections happen, but that some people think they are for the good. "Why shouldn't people be allowed to fail?" one senior Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) leader, said to me. "Isn't that how they learn?"
We have these kind of failures all the time in the process I am in to become fully certified as a CPE educator/supervisor. This certification process is designed very much like the kind of Protestant ordination process I described above -- we have to appear before committees multiple times. They can turn us down, putting an end to our hope for certification or setting it back months or years. (Not surprisingly, the CPE certification process was originally designed by mainline Protestants.)
I have too many times now witnessed colleagues coming back from such a failed appearance. Their pain -- their wounds -- are deep. This is not like failing to pass the law "bar" exam the first time (as devastating as that can be). When the bar slaps you with rejection it's only some impersonal test that you have to be angry at. But when a CPE committee -- a committee of clergy people with careers devoted to helping people in pain -- turns you down, it's like being slapped by a parent (or rejected by God). It is being turned down by someone who you expect to nurture you.
And, it's your very person that is being turned down. When you go before a committee like this, you are not being evaluated on how much you can recall from some body of knowledge; you are being evaluated on your very person. So, it's more than humbling to be turned down -- it's devastating.
And what really pains me is that I felt in quite a few cases that a colleague preparing to go up was not really ready. But I didn't tell them that. I withheld my opinion. This is no excuse, but in doing so I think I was acting in accordance with the "culture" (the culture of CPE) that I am in. We just don't stop people. We let them go up even if we think they're not ready.
I think the CPE certification process, as well as the culture that it springs from, is in very serious need of reform and change. We need to stop thinking of failure as a normal part of the process. If a student is not really ready to go up before a committee, their supervisor has a duty to tell them that. It's an irresponsible cop-out to hide behind saying that "people are adults and they should be allowed to learn from their failures."
While it is certainly true that learning from mistakes is at the core of the CPE educational model, this kind of mistake -- this kind of failure -- is like a person failing from the trapeze when there is no safety net below. As people of caring, we can't just stand by mute and let it happen.
Israel has certainly been much in the news, lately, which has led many people to think again about what Israel means to them and what the still-young nation's nature truly is.
I thought about this on Sunday as I looked out on the Jerusalem view above. At that moment, I felt filled with a love for Israel and for Jerusalem. It's a challenge for me to understand what this love is really all about. After all, this view is not one of Jerusalem's famous ones. It does not have the Old City, the Western Wall or the Mount of Olives in it. And, yet this fairly ordinary view of west Jerusalem -- from a park hillside not far from the Israel Museum and which I have walked across many times on my daily business -- speaks to me deeply.
My thoughts brought me to the Pesach seder meal – our yearly “Feast of Freedom”. We conclude with the words, “לשנה הבאה ביושלים/l-shanah haBa b-yerushalayim” -- next year in Jerusalem. Since the time – since the formation of the State of Israel in 1948 – that Jews in large numbers have come to be able to live in Jerusalem, some have changed those words slightly -- “לשנה הבאה ביושלים הבנויה/l-shanah haBa b-yerushalayim haBenuyah” -- next year in the [re]constructed Jerusalem.
It never leaves my thoughts when I'm in Israel that the very existence of this State – and the very fact that I, a Jewish person, am able to get on a plane and freely go there to visit – is a miracle. It is a miracle built on the incredible sweat, spirit and courage of the Israeli people over the decades of the 20th and now the 21st century.
Yesterday, I spent much of the day going through various airport security stations on my way back to the United States via London Heathrow. All of us who have gotten on an airplane since September 11, 2001 have gotten used to these kind of intense security procedures, procedures that are based on the fact that there are people out there who would just like to murder us, just because of who we are. Just to make a political point.
But, when we leave the airport here in the States, we leave all that behind – including that strange feeling that comes with the realization that some people want us dead. In Israel, however, that sense never leaves. For all the decades of its existence – and even for the Jews who lived in that land well before the State was formed – it has lived like the inside of an airline terminal. When school kids go out on trips, it is never without someone with a gun. To enter a shopping mall – or even to go into many cafes – you must pass a security checkpoint and have your bag examined.
To build and maintain a country like Israel takes incredible spirit, vigilance and courage. That is what I see when I look across that park valley at the hills of the neighborhoods beyond – I see the built Jerusalem. I see the evidence of all the blood, toil and sweat that the Israeli people have devoted to the project we call the State of Israel. And it is that which I feel the most love for and awe of – much more than for any of the great holy sites the city is famous for.
With a war in Gaza and with Hamas rockets falling daily on the cities of Israel, now is a particularly poignant time to reflect on the sacrifices it takes to maintain this State. I was very sad to have to leave Israel at such a time of crisis. As small a thing as it is compared to the sacrifices that Israel's soldiers and their families are making, just being there as a tourist or student is still an important way of showing support – of showing a willingness to join in the dangers and struggles that come from being a people that some would just like to murder, whether it be with rockets fired at random places in residential neighborhoods or with suicide bombers getting on a random rush hour bus. I will miss Israel, and especially Minna, who I left behind there to continue her studies in that Holy city.
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I had ridden on Sunday by bicycle up to that hillside to meet Minna who was finishing up a class at Machon Schechter near the hilltop. We walked down a bit into the park and took pictures of each other on bicycles for our Hazon ride web page. This coming Spring Minna and I will be showing our support for Israel by participating in a charity ride to raise money for two organizations particularly dedicated to the task of maintaining Israel's threatened environment. You can help us by donating on my Hazon Irsrael ride page here! (http://arava.kintera.org/2009springride/abayye)
In the above pic, you can see a bit of an olive tree in the foreground on a right – olive groves are one of the most famous and beautiful parts of the Israeli landscape and it's a bit of a miracle to find them so close to the “built” Jerusalem of Wolfson Towers in the background. . . . . In addition to the people, what I love about Jerusalem and its surroundings is just the hills, so many of which have olive trees growing on terraces built into the hillsides. The site of those hills always takes my breath away.
Here is Minna also riding amid the olive trees with the “built” Jerusalem in the background.
Quiet. That's what Ehud Barak says is the goal of Israel's current operations in Gaza -- "quiet for the south." By quiet, he says he means no more Hamas rockets falling on Israeli citizens within range of Gaza. No more sirens going off, giving people "45 golden seconds" to stop wherever they are -- even driving their cars -- and try to find cover, something a woman in Ashdod wasn't quite able to do the other day.
Here in Jerusalem, where I unfortunately will only be for a few more days before I have to return to the States, there is a strange sense of quiet. I feel confident that we are out of the range of Hamas' rockets for now. But, it has been raised in my conscious for the first time that I am staying in an apartment that does not have a "safe room". I do not have a gas mask or anything else I might need if Jerusalem suddenly came under a serious attack from the skies.
And, I well know that the quiet can end in many other says. I was here at another time of "quiet" -- in the summer of 2000 when there was real hope that, with Bill Clinton's help, a real peace agreement might be forged and all this death and violence could come to an end. But, at that time, the Palestinians, then led by Arafat (who has since passed from the scene), chose another course and returned to a violent path to seek their goals. Bus and other suicide bombings fell upon Israel over the rest of the year I was here and beyond. Everyone here knows that such attacks could happen, again.
Israel is gambling that it can continue to prevent such attacks with such measures as the controversial security barrier that prevents people from the West Bank -- hopefully, including suicide bombers -- from freely entering into Israel. The stated goal of this current operation is to, as I said above, prevent rocket attacks from Gaza. The possibility of rocket attacks was very much on my mind a few days before the operation began when Minna and I were driving up the relatively new Highway 6, a toll road that makes it possible to head from Jerusalem to the north of Israel without having to either pass through the Jordan Valley (in the West Bank) or through the traffic of Tel-Aviv. I noticed how close the road runs to the West Bank and, thus, how easy it would be for a tiny cell of terrorists to shut down the road entirely with a few homemade mortars. I know that it is not force that is preventing that from happening. Rather, it is a political solution -- the currently relatively good relations with the Palestinian Authority (which controls the West Bank, while the more radical and Islam-focused Hamas controls Gaza).
I think this is what this current operation has to really be about -- not stopping Hamas from firing rockets, which is something that is pretty much impossible to do with force, but with making a political statement to the Palestinian people. A statement like, you have a choice. You can either live in peace beside us and have a chance to form a real state that can join the community of nations and start to build a stable economy, like the Palestinian Authority is starting to do in the West Bank. Or, you can continue to live in a continuous state of mutual violence next to us. If you choose the second option, note that Hamas cannot even protect itself, not to mention you, from the Israeli Defense Forces. Look how pathetic and hopeless are their attempts to respond militarily with a few rockets. Look how our planes took them by surprise and killed so many of their leaders in the initial attack last Saturday morning. How is it in your best interests to choose to be led by such people?
Of course, Hamas is gambling that the Palestinian people will hear the opposite political message. They are hoping that -- instead of the people in Gaza looking to the West Bank and deciding it is better there -- that the people in the West Bank (and East Jerusalem) will look to Gaza and let their anger and outrage motivate them to choose Gaza's current path, the path of Hamas. If that happens, few places in Israel will have the safe feeling of quiet I enjoy now.
In order to reject Hamas' path, the Palestinian people will ultimately have to accept something that they have not been able to accept for decades before the State of Israel even came to be in 1948 -- they will have to accept that Jews have a right to live in this land and that the State of Israel has a right to exist. That will indeed involve much sacrifice for them.
One of the most inspiring figures of my rabbinical school education was Rabbi David Lieber, with whom I studied Psalms and who was the editor of the EtzHayimHumash, a Torah text and commentary that can be found in nearly every Conservative synagogue and that has greatly enriched how we view our biblical heritage.
I was saddened today when I learned that he had passed away late last night. The funeral services will be held in Los Angeles Thursday.
Rabbi Lieber was the kind of giant of Jewish scholarship that is so rarely found today -- for Rabbi Lieber, unlike for so many current scholars, there was no divide between the academic and the spiritual. When you studied Psalms with him, it was with the tools of modern scholarship in hand. But the atmosphere in the classroom was characterized by anything but the sterility we sometimes associate with the academic -- it was deeply spiritual.
His technique was slow and deliberate. Just as it was with the ancients and the medievals, Rabbi Lieber treated every word and turn of the text like there was the possibility to uncover infinite holiness beneath it. Rabbi Lieber knew that, as brilliant as the medieval scholars were, they had unfortunately lost something that the ancients knew so well -- the Psalms are poetry. For Rabbi Lieber, the value of modern scholarship is that it -- in things like its revival of the Hebrew language as a spoken tongue -- had reawakened us to the true depths of the beauty and poetry of the text. It had reawakened us to realize that the Psalms are songs that were meant to be sung -- meant to be sung at specific spiritual times and places.
Dr. Lieber, thank you so much for what you have given me. I am so deeply grateful to The Blessed Holy One that I had a chance to learn with you.
May his memory be a blessing.
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The services will take place at 11 a.m. on Thursday at the American Jewish University (formerly, the University of Judaism) where Rabbi Lieber was long the president. He is survived by his wife, Esther, and his children, Michael, Danny, Susie and Debbie. Notes of condolence may can be sent to his wife at, 305 El Camino, Beverly Hills, CA 90212.
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I had not been aware of this, but Rabbi Lieber served as a chaplain in the Air Force. He was born in Poland and grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
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It took them a few days to get around to it, but the New York Times finally wrote a nice obit-- focusing on the contribution that the Etz Hayim was for Judaism.
Walking around Jerusalem -- as I hope, God willing, to be doing in only about a week -- one often sees a sign like the one to the right. It's a death notice -- one that Minna found posted outside a pet store -- announcing not only where the funeral will be (on the very day the notice was posted), but also where, in the ancient tradition of the Jewish people, the mourners can be found afterward, so the community can visit them during their week of initial mourning.
Minna went to the funeral earlier this week for the deceased, Rabbi Mickey Rosen, and I expect she will be writing about that experience soon on smamitayim -- about how clear it was to her while she was there that Rabbi Rosen left a deep mark on many people. [True to her word -- as usual! -- Minna did write about the experience. See second half of this blog post.]
So, I will only say a little bit here about Rabbi Rosen's emotional and spiritual impact -- just that he was the founder of Yakar, a synagogue and place of learning that deeply impacted many people, including my former rabbinical school colleague, Barry Leff who wrote a hesped recounting how much he was impacted by Rabbi Rosen and by Yakar and the songs of prayer he participated in there.
The Przysucha (Yiddish: Pshiskha, pronounced Pe-shis-kha) school of Hasidism believed in a service of God that demanded both passion and analytical study. There was little or no study of kabbalah in Przysucha, and the emphasis was not on trying to understand God, but on trying to understand the human being. It was clear to them that one could not stand with any sense of integrity before the Divine Presence unless one first had some clarity of who one really was.
Directly or indirectly, Przysucha had declared an internal war upon the hasidic leadership of its time. It simply refused to accept anything that smelled of falseness and self-deception, be it the honor due to a zaddik or a particular religious practice. Przysucha equated pretension and self-deceit with idol worship. During the early part of the nineteenth century, when the center of the hasidic world was in Poland, R. Simhah Bunim transformed Przysucha Hasidism into a movement and thus rose to become a, if not the, dominant personality in the Hasidic community.
May his memory be a blessing.
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Rabbi Rosen only had a small impact on me personally, although I vividly remember how his talit seemed to be constantly in a process of falling off and being pulled back up when he spoke before his congregation. But it does strike me how what I wrote above has weaved within it -- even in just the title of this blog post -- three themes that I am striving to weave into a whole in my own life as a person, as a rabbi and as a spiritual caregiver:
the thread of scholarship (davka academic scholarship (in addition to other kinds of Torah learning))
the thread of spiritual care (with the community caring for Rabbi Rosen's family )
the thread of spiritual inspiration (with Yakar's songs of spirit)
I will be cycling from Tel-Aviv to Eilat in support of Jewish community and to raise money for two leading Jewish environmental organizations. Sponsor me!
