Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Awesome - Canyon-style, not Pizza-style
We’re now at the trailing edge of the Days of Awe, the period from Rosh Hashona to Yom Kippur when we’re all supposed to, as the ancients advised us, get our shit together - for the next year, at least. For literalists, there’s some kind of enormous book which we’re all editing at once, trying to ensure that we’re down for a year of good things. You might call this the original cosmic wiki, but then again, you might not. I’m not so literal about it, myself. I prefer to think that this is my annual wake-up call, drawing my attention to what I say my priorities are, how my behavior demonstrates what my priorities really are, and maybe what I can do to narrow the gap between them. We accept responsibility for the errors we have control over and we ask to be released from oaths we did not mean to take. The ceremonies are full of uplifting stories and sobering ruminations. I am not a very religious guy but these services seem to make a difference in my life and I am always glad to participate to the extent I’m able.
For ten years or so I’ve gone to the East Bay to daven for the high holy days with a fantastic congregation in Berkeley, Chochmat HaLev. But it’s quite a shlep and parking out there is a megabitch, so I have been looking for a local alternative. I do live in a jewey ‘hood and there’s plenty of synagogues I could try to visit, but I was looking for something in particular, the unique “renewal” approach that blends old and new schools with a wide range of music, meditation, frankness and humor. That’s a tough bill to fill but it turns out it was eminently fillable - Keneset HaLev is a congregation that holds its HH services in the county fair building at the arboretum in GG park, a pleasant 15 minute walk from my front door. Crossing my fingers (in full recognition of the irony), I signed up for their gig.
My hopes were well-satisfied. Keneset HaLev consisted of about fifty or seventy souls, a fairly intimate crowd compared to my prior experience with Chochmat; they met in a small room off the main exhibit hall that was sparsely decorated with a small ark standing in a front corner in a hand-crocheted cover. Kel, Z and I arrived about ten minutes early, during their preliminary chanting and meditation; up front were three “leaders” - a slender youngish bearded man with an etherial smile, a heavy-set older bearded man with a sly grin, and a lovely young woman who looked like La Gioconda (and who turned out to be the chazzan, or cantor - and also a performer with the SF Opera). For twenty minutes Zach sat and listened, or quiety played. This took us ten minutes into the services, at which point he sort of supernovaed and became unmanageable. Kel gathered him up and took him home, but I was able to stay behind, for once. And in staying, I was able to expose myself, over the course of the night and the following day, to the following nuggets of inspiration, which I (as is my wont) share here with those of you willing to wade through them and imbibe with me a few sips of the nectar of these special days.
The evening service began when the bima (pulpit) crew stationed four shofar-blowers at the four corners of the room and called a “tikiah,” a long blast on the ram-antler horns that sound once a year with their call to prayer and introspection. The shofar ceremony traditionally happens during the day services but they explained that they wanted everybody to hear it, even if they couldn’t come the next day, even if they had to leave early that night. Zach was mesmerized by the sound that reverberated in each of our heads, through all of our hearts, that penetrated our souls despite our resistance to their call. It’s an ancient and eerie sound. Zach crawled under his chair and stuck his fingers in his ears, but he was grinning up at me for all he was worth. It was shortly after this that he made a bee-line for the table with spare shofars, to grab one and try to blow it himself. His fury at being denied this satisfaction was what led to his early departure, but at least he got to hear the sound that took down Jericho.
The younger male leader reminded us toward the outset of the service that the word used for “god” in the liturgy is a placeholder. The letters are not pronounceable, and the word we use in their place is best translated as “lord,” in the feudal sense. He mentioned several other ways of making the reference to god, and urged us to use whatever word that made the most sense to us, regardless of what anyone else was saying. Fill the god-shaped space in the prayers with the word that speaks to you, and make the generic statement personal to you. I didn’t often take him up on that offer, but I appreciated the sense of freedom.
A parable, from the older leader: a young man and an old man meet in a train carriage. They’re heading to the same town and start chatting. The younger is very excited to attend a lecture by a famous scholar. The older man tells him, I know that guy - he’s really not all that. He’s wrong a lot, and when he’s right it’s usually because he had good teachers who really knew what they were talking about. The younger man, outraged by the insult to his esteemed instructor, punches the old man in the nose and storms out. That night at the lecture, of course, he discovers that the old man he’d punched is in fact the scholar he sought to defend. After the lecture he runs to the scholar and begs forgiveness but the old man says he can’t forgive him. Why not?, the younger man pleads. In reply the elder tells him, You are apologizing to me because you know that I’m a famous scholar, but when you punched me you thought I was a nobody. So find a nobody, and ask him for forgiveness.
The Unetana Tokef prayer consists mainly of a litany of boolean possibilities for the new year, most of which are rather somber. Who will live, and who will die? Who by starving, and who by thirst? Who will find riches, and who will be cast down? The list is lengthy and makes for rather heavy reading. As I went through it I found my mind churning, and as I tried to take a mental step back and regain my concentration I found my own diad on the tip of my tongue: Who shall be dazzled by distraction, and who shall bless himself with focus? Hunger and thirst, death by fire or drowning, many of the traditional references seem remote to me - but distraction and focus are my daily challenges. I bet I keep this one handy for a few months, at least.
The older leader spoke about the general theme of “awe” that’s prevalent during this time, and reflected that modern people don’t do awe very well. The word “awesome” has lost all meaning. The same word should not describe both the Grand Canyon, and a pizza you had last week. However, in the overall interest of keeping things light and friendly, among the rebbes he quoted over the course of the services were Rav John Cleese, Rav Woody Allen, and Rav Buckaroo Banzai. In the end, I think it’s all about the overthrusters, anyway.
During the torah service, one scroll was withdrawn from the little ark for reading, with community aliot (which is the way I like it). However, they also pulled out the second scroll and just handed it off to the congregation, so we could hold it and shnuggle a little. The leader admitted that there’s a cult of veneration about the physical entity of the torah, but it’s really just a book - the important thing is what it stands for and what’s in it. However, sitting on my little stacking chair, resting the parchment scrolls against my shoulder and inhaling its dusty animal ancientness, it was hard not to feel a personal connection. When I eventually passed it along to the next people in the row, I did find myself a little lonely.
Also during the torah service, the elder leader was expounding on the story that had been chanted in hebrew, the story of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar. The story is a complicated and unpleasant one, and then we split up into one-on-one discussion groups to talk about it under the instruction of a psychotherapist, each of us trying to achieve our own comfort and understanding with it. However, before any of that, the leader explained the basic facts of the story, describing the response of the patriarch at one point as, “Abraham is like, ‘no freaking way’!” We do have a prayer extolling the virtues of the patriarchs and matriarchs; ours is not an “ancestor-worshipping” religion, but that prayer reminds us that those people did some pretty crazy stuff and took some significant risks, physically and spiritually. However, the “no freaking way!” reminded me in the midst of that, that they were really just people - not saints or angels or other questionable entities. People do well, or poorly, or not at all sometimes. That’s an example I can try to emulate - being a person.
There’s one central prayer in the services called the Amidah. This is a prayer to be said one-on-one, you to your holiness (be it god, heart, buddah, whatever). It’s a lengthy plea for understanding, enlightenment, and harmony, to have the good sense to know what’s right and the strength to do it. Usually I just pull my prayer shawl over my head, face east, and get into it, but this time we were in the FREAKING ARBORETUM so instead we all headed out together into a nearby meadow lined with redwoods and exotic trees. Each of us found a place to stand and daven, and we each engaged the amidah at our own pace, in our own voice, with a connection through the earth under my feet and the boughs over my head to a larger and deeper world that has never been part of this process for me before. It was deeply moving, at least up until the groundskeeping crew started chainsawing some overgrown shrubs nearby. But that was okay too. Sometimes nature brings challenges. That’s the nature of nature.
Finally, it is worth noting that much of the liturgy is set to tunes, some of which are very ancient and some of which have been re-written more recently. My favorite tunes are a few that clearly come from the ‘60s or ‘70s, which I learned at summer camp and weekend retreats in my childhood - tunes that are soaring and beautiful and get to my emotional core in a way that always surprises me (since I don’t understand the hebrew words at all). It’s been a long time since I’ve heard either of my very favorites of the favorites, the hippie-dippie versions of Shalom Rav and V’al Kulam. Yes, we wound up singing them both. For me, that alone would have made for a memorable and meaningful experience. But it was not alone, and neither was I.
Shana Tovah, blogopolis. Hope you’re getting the most out of your days of awe. And if not, don’t fret - there’s a whole year to work on it.
For those who didn’t get to hear it last week, here’s a link to some shofar-blowing. Tomorrow night is erev Yom Kippur. The days of awe are coming to a close. Lucky for me I got more than my share this year already.