Minyan is for your sake

היום אחד וארבעים יום, שהם חמשה שבועות וששה ימים, בעמר

Today is forty-one days, which is five weeks and six days, of the omer
יסוד שביסוד
A day of foundation in a week of foundation

Practice has become my theme of this week of foundation. So on this double day of foundation, I honor the most foundational of the foundations of my Jewish practice---minyan. To do that, I once again share the words of my teacher, Rabbi Alan Lew, z"l, who gifted me with this practice.

There have been many times in these past 15+ years, for many different reasons, that I've wanted to just stop going to morning minyan. But each time, I could hear Rabbi Lew in my head, "Marilyn, you can't just give it up because you don't like it now."

Keeping up the practice is the practice. It both renews and strengthens the foundation.

Minyan is for your sake - Rabbi Alan Lew, Nov 1996

Our daily minyan is one of the great treasures of our congregation. It provides our members and people all over Northern California with a place to mourn, to observe yarzheits, or to simply turn to God in the traditional Jewish way at times in their lives when they feel an urgent need to do so. 

But the greatest beneficiaries of the minyan are the people who attend every day. Why is this so? According to the Midrash Ein Yakov, Yehudah HaNasi once asked three of his students, "Mah Hapasuk Hakolel Biyoter Batorah-- what is the most inclusive verse in all the Torah?" Ben Zoma chose the Shema -- "Hear O Israel, The Lord is our God, The Lord Alone!" Ben Azai made another obvious choice -- "Vi-a-havta li-reacha kamocha -- You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Then Ben Pazi, a much more obscure rabbi then either Ben Zoma or Ben Azai, chose a verse which was also much more obscure -- one of the laws of the Temple Sacrifice from the Book of Numbers: "You shall offer up one lamb every morning and one lamb every night."

"I agree with Ben Pazi," Yehudah HaNasi said. His students were dumbfounded. How could he prefer this apparently trivial verse to a fundamental statement of principle like the Shema, or a great ethical concept like the commandment to love one's neighbor. The reason, I think, is precisely because they were principles and concepts. The implicit message of this Midrash is that it isn't principles or concepts which really count-- rather it is what we do every day. "You shall offer up one lamb every morning and one lamb every night." If we express our faith in specific, concrete deeds, and if we do so rain or shine on a regular basis, then we are engaged religiously in a way that mere thoughts and good intentions can never engage us. 

Daily minyan is the modern version of the single lamb our ancestors offered up every morning and every evening. Praying every day we come to know the full range of human spiritual potential; from transcendant exaltation to stultifying boredom; from the frustration of not quite knowing what we're saying to the joy of being swept up in a spiritual energy larger than our own. Praying every day with others we get a very real sense of how difficult it is to join in real communion with others, and how wonderful it feels when we finally manage to do so; praying every day with others we come to explore that tenuous boundary between self and other which is always the real locus of the spiritual experience. 

The holidays are great; they lend a sense of spiritual structure to the cycle of the year. Shabbat is wonderful. Our practice of Judaism deepens precipitously when we begin to take Shabbat seriously. But daily minyan represents another quantum leap altogether. As both Ben Pazi and Yehudah HaNasi affirmed, it's what we do every day that builds a sense of Jewish spirituality into the warp and woof of our lives. And in the Jewish tradition, daily minyan is the principal medium of daily spirituality. 

This is why we have mounted a campaign to get more of you to minyan this year. Not for the minyan's sake; the minyan is doing fine, and will continue to do fine for the foreseeable future. We are mounting this campaign for your sake. We want you to get a taste of what a daily spiritual practice can do for your soul. Judaism, after all, is a religion of life, and life is what happens every day.

The Continuum of Practice

היום תשעה ושלשים יום, שהם חמשה שבועות וארבעה ימים, בעמר
Today is thirty-nine days, which is five weeks and four days, of the omer
נצח שביסוד
A day of perseverance in a week of foundation

While my Jewish practice is always evolving, koshrut continues to be the one that is most challenging. I guess it would be easier to just accept the traditional constraints, but that works for neither my practical nor spiritual life. When asked about my practice, I say, "I eat kosher." Sometimes that is just accepted; sometimes I'm asked what that means. I explain that it means I have my own way to follow the constraints of the practice as set out by the Torah and the rabbis who interpreted the laws as given there.

Once, when talking to someone about my kosher boundaries, I was asked, "So, do you get to pick and choose which 'rules' you follow?" I'd never thought about it that way, so it took me a moment to reply, "Well................yes."

The whole idea of a practice is that it is constantly moving as your perspective changes with knowledge and time and place and circumstance. It is the continual mindfulness and awareness and critical thinking is makes the practice. I learned that from my teacher, Rabbi Alan Lew.

There is no goal in my practice, there is just a continuum of thinking and action. It is a form of perseverance that serves as a foundation for my life.

We’ve recounted; now the count begins

With the seder, the order of these nights’ traditions, we use the map of Haggadah, of the Telling, to recount the story of our people’s release from oppression; we celebrate liberation. Tonight, the journey continues as we begin to count the 49 days of the omer. We move through time and spiritual space. We count days and we count weeks; we use seven seferot — chesed-loving kindness; gevurah-strength; tiferet-compassion; netzach-perseverance; hod-humility; yesod-foundation; malchut-leadership — as guideposts to give an intention for each day.

For those who want a grounding in the practice, a good explanation for the nuts and bolts of the biblical/rabbinic tradition can be found here, at Judaism 101. An overview of the 7 kabbalistic intentions — one a representation for each day, one for each week — is on the Aish site here.

We each take our own journey, and we walk the path with others. We contemplate our internal life, and we are mindful of what we do out in the world. Moving from liberation to revelation takes work — and it is the work of a lifetime.

Midpoint, not Halftime

היום חמשה ועשרים יום שהם שלשה שבועות בארבעה ימים בעמר
Today is twenty-five days--that is three weeks and  four days--of the omer
נצח שבנצח
A day of perseverance in a week of perseverance

Today marks the halfway point of the count.
We've made it this far,
but the tedium will now start to set in.
The first year I counted on Facebook,
it was around this time that a friend commented:
"How far are you taking this?"
We don't get a halftime break -
it's in the continuation that practice deepens,
supported by this double perseverance day.

It's not a lapse, it's an opportunity

היום שנים ועשרים יום שהם שלשה שבועות ויום אחד בעמר
Today is twenty-two days--that is three weeks and one day--of the omer
חסד שבנצח
A day of loving kindness in a week of perseverance

As we come to the end of this first day of the week of perseverance, a day of loving kindness, I am reminded one aspect of perseverance--to continue even when there is a lapse.

I didn't write a post for yesterday's omer day. Not even a place-holder, a "I don't know what to write but I can continue my practice by making a post." I simply didn't post. I counted--my "official" count is on Facebook, so anyone who is just looking here can check there. But I did not write, and that is what I have set for my omer practice.

Did I fail? Maybe--especially if I don't continue at all, which is something I have done in previous years. But I don't think of that as failure, since there is another year to pick up the practice.

Part of perseverance is taking in the lapses and folding them into the practice. They will happen. But this day of loving kindness gives me the opportunity to not just continue the practice but in some way, begin anew. 

Rabbi Lew would teach that the mind will often, if not always, wonder in meditation. Instead of seeing that as wrong, take the opportunity to take another first breath---and that first breath can be the most satisfying, and the strongest one that keeps you on the path.

Just keep stringing together those first breaths.......

It's all about the balance

היום ששה עשר יום שהם שני שבועות ושני ימים בעמר
Today is sixteen days--that is two weeks and two days--of the omer
גבורה שתפארת
A day of strength in a week of compassion

A post about balance from 2011. An ongoing issue in my life . . . 
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Which brings up the issue of practice in one's life--how to set priorities, how to find balance. I work in a business that can be 24/7, depending on the specifics of the job. When I began to take on Jewish practice, Shabbat was the first observance I took on. It was interesting to watch my non-Jewish clients be very respectful of my stand to not work on Saturdays, while the Jews couldn't figure out why I was keeping to what they considered to be an anachronistic ritual. But it felt good to stop each week no matter what was happening around me--to make a stand for my time to pray, to rest, to revitalize--body and soul.

This practice of blogging the omer is not as concrete as keeping kosher or not working on Shabbat. It is a practice that is particular to me, not a tribal custom. Yet it has its own importance and needs to be honored. And so I carve out some time during the day to write, time that could and maybe should be spent on other things that would be more productive and/or more lucrative.

Keeping to a practice has its own rewards that are not always apparent in the moment. That is certainly true during this omer period. I can say that I am learning that finding balance is not always dependent on equality of time. It's more like the balance of a board on a point--its balance come from equal weight on each side. But sometimes, when the weight is unequal, you just need to move the fulcrum.

Practicing Prayer, Voicing Fears

היום  אחד עשר יום שהם שבוע אחד וארבעה ימים בעמר
Today is eleven days--that is one week and four days--of the omer
נצח שבגבורה
A day of perseverance in a week of strength

The practice of prayer is often hard to connect with, especially when the words are in a language you can neither read nor understand. That is the challenge of Jewish prayer, which has been an integral part of my spiritual practice for more than 15 years. It is a process that involves work, continual work, navigating through the different layers at different moments. That is what makes it a lifetime practice, for it's a ever changing relationship.

Part of the liturgy of the Jewish morning prayer service is the psalm of the day--one more way we, as Jews, measure time. Each psalm can give an intention for each day as we move through the week. What that intention is, like many of our rituals, open to interpretation.

The psalms for Tuesday and Wednesday have spoken to me these past years, giving a voice to my fears for the world:

"How long will you judge unjustly, giving face to the wicked!"Psalm 82:2  

"How long, Adonai, will the wicked - the wicked exhalt!"Psalm 94:3

This year, those fears are intensified for this country, and remaining silent is not an option--we must all raise our voices with these words, or those of our own, to truly live the words that I grew up hearing, that I saw on the wall at Yad Vashem:

Turning point

היום שמנה ימים שהם שבוע אחד ויום אחד בעמר
Today is eight days--that is one week and one day--of the omer
חסד שבגבורה
A day of loving kindness in a week of strength

Reading previous omer writings, I get to connect to thoughts from another time in my life with a perspective of today. Below is a post from May 2011, just before I discovered the existence of The Kitchen. It captures a moment of realization on my path that lead me to where I am today.
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For the past few years, I've been pondering the statement I hear often from friends, "I don't believe in organized religion." It's often said as part of a discussion as to why I have taken on a Jewish spiritual practice. Sometimes I respond in a joking manner, "Have you read nothing about the different factions within Judaism? There's nothing very organized about the religion :)"

But as I get deeper into my practice in this time and space, I understand that statement more and more, as I affiliate with the "official" Jewish organizations less and less. While I belong to a synagogue that is fiercely egalitarian, where women and men have equal footing in ritual practice, the movement with which it is affiliated, the Conservative Movement, won't take an unequivocal stand on that issue. At the synagogue that I grew up in, located on Long Island in New York, women still can't chant Torah, and if I were to attend their weekday minyan, I would not count as one of the ten needed to say kaddish. Yet they are also affiliated with the Conservative Movement, so my synagogue dues help support them.

The Groucho Marx line keeps going through my head, "I don't want to belong to a club that would have me as a member." They want me as a member, but I don't fully belong. While some members would embrace me and my practice, others would block me from fulfilling roles important to that practice. And the big organization that is supposed to support me still won't make a full commitment to egalitarian ritual practice in the name of not upsetting some of their members. I guess I don't matter too much to them, since upsetting me and others like me is okay.

Not a very uplifting message for the day, but one that I must continue to bring up and ponder--not just for myself, but for future generations of Jewish women.

Time and Time

היום שבעה ימים שהם שבוע אחד בעמר
Today is seven days--that is one week--of the omer
מלכות שבחסד
A day of leadership in a week of loving kindness

Pesach ends at the seventh day of the omer.
We mark the day and from now on, the week as well.
A reminder that there are different ways to measure time.

Practice paves the way

היום שני ימים בעמר
Today is two days of the omer
גבורה שבחסד
A day of strength in a week of loving kindness

As part of this year's process, I've made a conscious decision to recycle some old omer posts.

The following thoughts are from 5769/2009 - a couple of years before I found the Kitchen. The years following continued to be tough on my practice--this was only the top of the downhill slide. But I didn't run away, I modified but held on to my practice, and I was able to find someplace to run towards. Now, I get to work on integrating what was to what is into what will be.
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Of the many teachings that I received from my teacher, Rabbi Alan Lew, z"l, I think those that came from seeing how he lived his life touch the deepest. Primary of those teachings is the importance of integrating spiritual practice into your life, not looking at it as something apart from your life. A large part of that integration involves commitment to the practice. It is the commitment that brings the rewards--both when the practice is "working" and when it's not.

As one who loves ritual and needs that time and space to process, I have experienced the joy that spiritual practice can bring. But it's now, when understanding what I'm doing becomes elusive, that the commitment is at it's most potent. I am forced to look at what I'm doing from different angles, different views, to find my way. It is the ultimate in processing, for while I want to run away--I cannot, I will not. For ultimately it is within the processing that I will find the guideposts I need.

The Journey Begins

היום יום אחד בעמר
Today is the first day of the omer
חסד שבחסד
A day of loving kindness in a week of loving kindness

Tonight, the count begins.
In the Torah we are taught to count 49 days,
starting on the second day of Pesach,
bringing us to the 50th day, Shavuot.
Each day we count a sheaf of grain,
watching the growth from the first buds of Pesach
 to the first fruits of Shavuot.
We travel in time and space,
from the liberation from Egypt
to the revelation at Sinai.
We mark the time as the Kabbalists taught,
with 7 connections to the world around us
one for each day, one for each week,
49 combinations, daily intentions to take in and give out.
Come, join in the journey . . .

Picking up the count . . .

Looks like the writing fell apart early last year.....

That's the beauty of practice, you just take the opportunity to start again.
You get to have an experienced beginner's mind.

Looking at Kaddish

היום שבעה ועשרים יום שהם שלשה שבועות וששה ימים בעמר
Today is twenty-seven days, which is three weeks and six days of the omer
יסוד שבנצח
A day of foundation in a week of perseverance

On this day of foundation I take a liturgy class--one of many that I have taken with Rabbi Stuart Kelman. This one was on the various Kaddishes that are said in our prayer services, with much time spent on the Mourners' Kaddish, the prayer said on behalf of a loved one who has died. As often is the case with prayers, the customs go back so far that often their origins are obscured, But because they have been in existence for so many centuries, they are looked at as "law."

The codification of our observances is what unites us as Jews, gives us a tribal connection in this global society. But we need to remember that they are not set in stone. We need to learn what part they play in our lives, how they work, and even look at why they work...or don't. While the connection of tradition is important, keeps us in that stream that has run through the ages, we also need to revisit the customs, and renew their meanings so they can continue to to speak to us today.

In the flow of the language

היום ששה ועשרים יום שהם שלשה שבועות וחמשה ימים בעמר
Today is twenty-six days, which is three weeks and five days of the omer
הוד שבנצח
A day of humility in a week of perseverance


As I continue my daily blog writing for this year's omer practice, I also have to find time each week to write in Hebrew. I have written some posts of some of my trials, tribulations--and even a few triumphs as I continue to work on proficiency in this language that I love. (You can find them by clicking on "Hebrew" in the categories listed in the sidebar.) This year, I can see my relationship with Hebrew represented in this day of humility and perseverance.

Three years ago, I used the day of compassion and strength to write about my Hebrew studies. I ended that post with "I have the strength--and the smarts--to learn Hebrew. I need to add in compassion, give myself the time and space to let the knowledge settle in." Although there have been ups and downs, I do think that has taken place and I've moved forward in my Hebrew comprehension. When I study Torah, I can begin to uncover new meanings by looking at the grammatical structure of the verses and for a Torah geek like me, that's pretty cool.

Being more aware of the flow of the language also makes me a better Torah reader and service leader. People can hear the particular cadence and feel a connection to the writings. Part of the responsibility of a prayer leader is to bring people along with you, help them experience the letting go that prayer can bring. Having an understanding of the language helps me convey the poetry of the words, and allows the kahal, the community, to take them in and cycle them out in their voices, which is part of the point of prayer.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to speak fluent Hebrew. That's a maybe/maybe not. I worry that I won't be able to get enough vocabulary to stick in my brain. But I need use the aspect of humility to be able to learn in my time and not worry what advanced state I should be--again, the message of presence. Remember that like everything else in life, it's a journey. As long as I keep going, persevere, it doesn't matter how big or small the steps.

One day at a time

היום עשרים  יום שהם שני שבועות וששה ימים בעמר

Today is twenty days, which is two weeks and six days of the omer
יסוד שבתפארת
A day of foundation in a week of compassion

Time is relative.

This morning, I was talking with a 26 year old contemplating rabbinical school and to her, five years is a long time. While I could smile, understanding her perspective, to me, as I approach six decades, it's a small segment.

Time is a matter of perspective.

Five years is short as I look back, but to my parents it must seem like a long time ahead, their ages feeding their need of immediacy.

Time is slow when I'm feeling impatient, and fast when a deadline approaches.

It is only in the present that time     just     is . . .

Meditation is one way of staying in the present; marking the omer is another. We stay grounded in each day with its own unique focus of sephirot. We are encouraged not to to look towards the next until we say the blessing and make the count.

The omer reminds us to take each day as it comes, whatever it brings. Perhaps that is the convergence of foundation and compassion.