We've entered the sixth week in the the counting of the Omer, the potent seven-week period of spiritual practice that connects the season of liberation, Pesach, with Shavu'ot,  the festival that commemorates the receiving of Torah at Mt. Sinai. Each of the seven weeks is associated with one of the seven "lower" sefirot, the Divinely Emanated Qualities that comprise the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. As each day is counted, we focus on embodying that week's quality, in combination with each of the seven--49 permutations in all. This week we find ourselves steeping inYesod, ​Foundation or Tzadik, examining and refining the ways we channel love and discipline, will and humility, purpose and receptivity, into relationship. I've always found the Omer period--which originated in Biblical times as a theurgic rite, a kind of daily agricultural mindfulness practice to support the growth and abundance of the all-important spring wheat crop--an extraordinarily creative time. Many inspiring Omer counters, volumes of poetry, and art projects have welled forth from this attention to keeping count and applying the lens of two particular spiritual qualities to each day of this seven-week journey. Today, the 37th day of the Omer, combines the qualities of Gevurah (strength, boundary, discipline) with Yesod (the foundation of right relationship). That recipe inspired the poem below.  

Cleaning the Pot
The pot of oatmeal
that almost boiled over,
which would have 
become encrusted, 
hard to scour clean,
had I left it
to sit on the stove
after pouring out 
the cooked oats,
rinses easily
when I 
pour in warm, 
soapy water
right away
and rub lightly with a sponge--
same as those
boiling words,
spilled out between us, 
which would’ve 
stuck and hardened
and made for a 
messy clean-up,
maybe stayed caked that way
for decades,
had we not poured on
the cleansing waters of remorse,
forgiveness,
and rubbed a bit
with a light touch.
 
                     ––Diane Elliot, Gevurah sheh’b’Y’sod , 5782
 

My great grandfather Abraham Katz, peace be upon him, a jeweler and silversmith, emigrated to the United States from Kyiv, Ukraine in the late 19th century. His daughter Ann, my paternal grandmother, was born in Chicago in 1892, one of seven children. On retreat in my friends' cabin last week, this poem woke me up. I dedicate it to Great Grandpa Katz, to my Grandma Ann, to all the family left behind, and to the Ukrainian people now fighting and fleeing for their lives. 

Lace
 
The day after Russia invaded 
Ukraine, I awoke to sun streaming 
through the lace curtains in the 
cabin on Sonoma Mountain, etching a
delicate filigree pattern of light
and shadow on the soft green
duvet cover, light and shadow
fluid, stretching and shifting with
Earth’s turning and the play of
sun on leaves outside, eyelets 
of light connected by threads 
of shadow, the same light shining 
on the opposite side of the world, 
on the people in Ukraine and 
Iraq, Beijing and Bangkok, 
Calgary and Cameroun, similar shadows 
falling on us all, reminders of 
how delicately and artfully and 
inextricably our lives are interwoven— 
such delicate filigree!--and of how 
suddenly, deliberately and brutally 
they may be torn apart. 

                    © Diane Elliot 2022
 
 

My body is a
small factory,
breathing in oxygen,
 
releasing carbon dioxide,
making my carbon
breathprint
 
on the world,
disturbing in my
own small way
 
the balance of
our atmosphere–
unless I match
 
my breath for breath
with a tree or three
or a grass thick meadow
 
or a mist fed row of lavender,
a patch of aloe hoarding water,
a sun-sucking cornfield
 
or shaded sea of hostas.
Each person, each animal
needs their garden, orchard,
 
swath of forest–
green partners in
making air, in turning
 
what would otherwise
be toxic waste
into grace,
 
a dance of breath
exchanged and interchanged,
transformed in trust,
 
this truest teshuvah–
returning what we
do not need, what
 
is not and never 
was just ours,
to the other
 
who requires it
to live and thrive–
and in this way
 
sustain and maintain
the integrity of
the breathing, pulsing
 
whole. Green beings
channel the
Breath of Being
 
to us, and we
to them upon 
this breathing planet,
 
whirling like a
great enwombed 
egg on its flight
 
path around our 
flaming star factory, 
which breathes its own
 
fiery breath, a mighty
yet minute participant in
the great in and out
 
that animates every
thing with the influx
of ever moving life-
 
breath we call
soul. Each factory
needs its forest, each
 
forest its star,
each star its
fathomless mystery,
 
the Great Dark
Breath. Barukh
Atah HavaYah
 
Ha-Makhazir neshamot
lif’garim mehtim,
An endless source
 
of blessing are
You, Breath of Life,*
who continually returns 
 
soul, breath by
breath, to the cold 
and lifeless.
 
​         –Diane Elliot  12-28-21

* with gratitude to Rabbi Arthur Waskow for his translation of the four letter Divine Name, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, as "Breath of Life" and his many teachings about the ways we exchange breath with trees and plants.

This has been a time of much loss on many levels: personal losses as beloved ones become ill and pass away, as our work and roles shift unpredictably in response to the pandemic and changing conditions; communal loss, as members of our communities with black and brown skin continue to be singled out, hunted down, suppressed, and our most cherished stories about who we are as people and nations shatter over and over; and global loss, as the oceans warm, the ice caps melt, rainforests turn to ash as skies darken with the smoke of out-of-control fires, whole species disappear, and masses of people, seeking food and water and basic safety make arduous journeys across impossible terrain, only to be turned away at human-made borders. How to be with our heart-brokenness, even as we direct our energies toward what we can still do to repair, renew, comfort, and hold? To continue to love as we grieve? This poem speaks to the potency of remembering, of fully receiving the legacies of our personal and human histories, the pain and the strength, if we're to keep our hearts open and available in the face of this Great Undoing.

​The Last Glass
 
I loved that last glass,
the only one remaining 
from its set.
Thick, dependable, sturdy,
just the right height
for catching the pressed juice 
of carrots and apples, 
incised on its underside:
“made in Russia,”
 
like my grandfather,
Sam, Sam Asher,
the silent one
who grinned his
broken-toothed smile,
who rarely spoke,
and called all of his grandchildren
“Bobby,” even us girls.
 
Perhaps he meant to say
“Baby,” but “Bobby” was how
it sounded, in his sparse Russian-Yiddish
flavored English. There were other
Ashers in Chicago, cousins,
an older sister—Tante Sarah Levin--
but by the time I was born
most were gone--
 
disappeared, the family broken,
the many we never knew. 
Had they been sturdy, dependable,
strong? How had they disappeared--
one by one, or all at once,
from their shtetl outside Vitebsk, 
where they’d been living 
in uneasy peace in the first decade
of the twentieth century, 
at the time when young Sam 
ran away, boarded a ship,
made it to Baltimore, then headed west?
 
Was he the last remaining one,
all the others, siblings, parents, in-laws
broken or disappeared
long, long before his
heart cracked one day in a hospital bed,
long, long before that last glass
slipped from my hand
and shattered in the sink?
 
                    --Diane Elliot, July 15 2021
 

Last month I had the honor of being invited to help confer smikhah (rabbinic ordination) on my dear friend and colleague, the amazing Rabbi Irwin Keller. Irwin had spent several years studying in the ALEPH rabbinic program and many, many years before that serving as the spiritual leader of Congregation Ner Shalom in Cotati, California. ​