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Standing Prayer

6/15/2020

It has been a wild two weeks of despair and hope in the world--the spiral upward of covid deaths, the murder of George Floyd in the wake of so many other murders and lynchings of black Americans, the intensity of protests and uprisings against this ongoing racial violence all over the world, the meeting of peaceful protesters with tear gas, rubber bullets, police in riot gear clubbing and arresting those marching in the streets for human rights and respect and decency. And there has been dancing, heart-wrenching expressions of pain, and singing and wailing and mourning, and then more organizing. This past Shabbat I participated in a morning service with the Aquarian Minyan, in honor of the 80th birthday of one of the Minyan's longtime leaders, Shoshana Dembitz. Invited to give a kavannah, an intention for the Amidah, the time of silent communion with the deep self and with the Divine, which precedes the reading of Torah in the traditional order of the prayer service, I offered these words...

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A Poem for L'ag b'Omer

5/12/2020

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Dear Friends,
We've turned the corner in our Omer counting journey for 5780–away, we pray, from the sorrows and oppressions of enslavement, and toward the gift of revelation, the space of spiritual intimacy that, in our ancient Torah tradition, is known, simply, as "Sinai." Last week, as I contemplated what I might present duringe ALEPH's L'ag b'Omer women-led extravaganza, organized and stewarded last night by Rabbi Geela Rayzel Raphael and her stellar team [available for viewing here], this poem emerged. May the energies of this season conduct us toward a time of less fear and urgency, more ease and peace and just distribution of the riches of our world–a deep integration of Torah wisdom.
Khag sameyakh,
Diane

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Rosh Hodesh Prayer

3/27/2020

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We enter this new Hebrew month of Nisan–the month of spring, the month in which Jews the world over recall our liberation from the constriction of the "narrow spaces" of enslavement––in a state that, for many of us, seems to be mightily constricted. Some of us are quarantined at home. Some of us are sick; some very sick. Others of us are constrained to move into the public sphere, to risk our own well-being as we perform jobs deemed essential to the continued functioning of society and to the well-being of the rest of us: farm workers and those involved in food production, grocery store workers, bus operators, communications workers, and most crucially, health care workers. How can a time of such restriction, fear, grief, and constraint be perceived and known in any way as a liberatory passage? as a birthing, hedged all around by the possibility–and the reality–of dying? At Passover seders, as we retell the ancient story of slavery and liberation, we often ask, who are the Pharaoh's of our time? How does Pharaoh live within each of us? What are the plagues of our time? How do we perpetuate or participate in them? What transformation is called for, and how do we open to receive its energies and help manifest new structures in the world?

I'll also be asking these are other questions this year,

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"Lifting Our Heads" in a Time of Turmoil

3/13/2020

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This piece was part of a communication written today for the alumni of my Embodying Spirit, En-spiriting Body embodied Jewish training program.

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The Ikar of Purim: Going Beyond Either/Or

3/1/2020

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Here in northern California, winter has chewed us up a bit, wetted us down slightly, and spit us out its other side, into the beginnings of a prematurely green and flowering spring. In the Jewish world, we've entered the Hebrew month of Adar, z'man simkhateynu, a period of weeks meant to be entirely given over to joy. How, you may ask, can we release ourselves into raucous and bawdy celebration, when so much is topsy turvy in the world? Read on to get a sense of how the spiritual technology of joking, joy, and upsidedownness might be just what the doctor ordered, building the spiritual muscle needed to survive and thrive in these hair-raising times.

The Ikar* of Purim: Going Beyond Either/Or
Notes for a Teaching on Purim
5780 ~ 2020
*ikar means “the essence” or “the main point”

“This realization of Oneness is the ultimate experience of love.”
––R. David Aaron, Inviting God In, p. 174

Guiding Questions:
What ties the mitzvot of Purim together?
Why is Purim the only holy day that the Sages declared would still be observed in
y’mot ha-mashiakh, the time of a healed world?

Five days ago, we entered the month of Adar on the Jewish calendar. The is last month of the year, since the most significant of the Jewish calendar’s four new years begins in the spring, on the 1st of Nisan (next month), the month in which the celebration of Passover and the Exodus from Egypt take place. The Talmud teaches: “Joy is increased in the month of Adar.” Kabbalistically its energy is said to be “the joy of Oneness,” and the whole month is called z’man simkhateynu, the season of our joy. The holy day of the month is Purim, celebrated on the 14th of the month, and in some places on the 15th.

So what do you know about Purim? What associations do you have with the holiday? What are your curiosities?

The story of Purim, told in Megillat Esther (the Scroll of Esther), takes place at an unspecified time in the city of Shushan, a great city in ancient Persia. The word “purim” means “lots” and refers to the lots cast by Haman to determine the day on which he planned to have his men attack and destroy all the Jews of Persia.

Yom Kippur, on the other side of the Jewish calendar, is sometimes called Yom HaKippurim, the Day of Atonements or Coverings, which can be parsed “Yom Haki-Purim,” “a day like Purim,” because on it, lots were also drawn—by the High Priest in the Jerusalem Temple to determine which of two goats would be sacrificed to atone for the entire people and which would be the proverbial scapegoat, sent into the wilderness, symbolically bearing the sins of the people on its head.
Of course, the spiritual technologies of these two days are very different. Yom Kippur is a solemn, awesome day of fasting and prayer; a day on which people wear white garments reminiscent of the kittel, the white linen garment in which they’ll be buried; a day when we aspire to be wiped clean of past errors and reborn, freed from constricting and wrongheaded ideas and behaviors. Purim, on the other hand is a bawdy holiday of raucous play, dressing up in costume, feasting, getting drunk, joking and satirizing one’s enemies and the direst of situations. What could possibly be the relationship between these two very different holy days?

In her excellent booklet on the kabbalistic roots of the Tu BiShvat Seder (you can order it at https://astillsmallvoice.org/product/ssv-tu-b-shvat-hagada-2/), which is the holiday we celebrated last month, on the full moon of Shvat, Sarah Yehudit Schneider writes this:

If life is a spiritual path, our primary task is not the accumulation of facts, but the integration of truth so deeply into our flesh, that our instinctive and reflexive response to the world shifts accordingly. This is the Jewish definition of enlightenment. (p. 33, my emphasis)

So we might ask, how do our khagim, our holidays, contribute to this great spiritual project? For one thing, every Jewish khag has its origins, either in an earth-based ritual, a historical event, or both, and involves mitzvot or minhagim—specific physical actions and symbols designed to help us inscribe the message of the holy day in our body-minds. And on the mystical level, every khagbrings a particular flavor of tikkun (repair). Here’s what Schneider says about tikkunim in general:

Every tikkun has two parts. First, is that it always includes some actualization of potential, meaning that some undeveloped capacity of soul becomes visible to the world. Second, is to gradually refine the consciousness one brings to that effort. (p. 28)

The mitzvot and customs of Purim include the reading or hearing of the Megillat Esther, Esther’s Scroll; creating satirical and raucous plays that reenact or embroider upon the story; dressing in outrageous costumes; making music and dancing; giving tzedakah and caring for the poor; delivering sh’lakh manot (gifts of at least two different kinds of food to at least one neighbor; many people make up little goody bags they distribute at Purim parties); and feasting and becoming so intoxicated that you can’t tell the difference between the phrases “arur Haman” and “borukh Mordecai,” “cursed Haman” and “blessed Mordecai.” This last teaching actually appears in the Talmud (Megillah 7b): “khayav inish liv’sumei b’Puraya ad d’lo yada ben arur Haman l’borukh Mordekhai, a person is required to become intoxicated on Purim, to the point that they can’t distinguish between ‘cursed is Haman’ and ‘blessed is Mordecai.’

What, then, is the particular tikkun or fixing effected by the mitzvot of Purim and how do they reveal our soul capacities and refine our consciousness? If as the Kabbalists teach, the healing of this month is through joy and laughter, what is being revealed and repaired? What do you imagine these observances have to do with one another and why did the Sages teach that Purim would be the only remaining holiday and Megillat Esther the only text still read, along with the Five Books of Moses, in y’mei ha-mashiakh, the world that is coming, that time of universal radical sacred hospitality? (to learn more about “sacred hospitality,” read Adam Horowitz’s recent wonderful blog on the subject at medium.com: https://medium.com/@adamhorowitz/toward-an-infrastructure-of-sacred-hospitality-5657611e79df)

“Megillat Esther” literally means “the revelation (gilui) of hiddenness (hastair).” It’s taught that, on the deepest level, the Hiddenness revealed through Purim is the encompassing Oneness that takes us beyond either/or, good/evil, friend/enemy—beyond dualistic thinking. The phrases arur Haman and borukh Mordecai have the same numerical value in Hebrew, 502, which in itself adds up to 7 (5 + 0 + 2), the number symbolic of Creation. On this day, through joy and revelry, we’re encouraged to elevate our consciousness to a level beyond the everyday, to take a magical mystery tour back to the Garden of Eden, which had the undivided Tree of Life at its center (the Tree that later splits into the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil). We dress in costume, making fun of our limited identities, shattering set ways of thinking with laughter, bearing witness to the fact that this whole, crazy world, as the Baal Shem Tov taught, is actually God in drag, the Divine Oneness cloaked in variety and multiplicity. “This realization of Oneness is the ultimate experience of love.” (Aaron, Inviting God In, p. 174)

And the agent of this revelation, in the Purim story, is none other than the Divine Feminine, the Shekhinah herself in disguise—Esther. The story itself couches its potent political message in humorous stereotypes and satire, mocking and defying the powers that be. Mordecai refuses to kowtow to Haman, the hubristic minister; Esther turns the tables on a dunderhead king, Achashverosh, who has banished his previous queen, Vashti, when she refused to dance naked before his drunken party guests.

In the Passover story, God must intercede directly, performing miracles that controvert nature—the plagues, the splitting of the sea, the drowning of the Egyptian armies. The God of Nisan, of the Exodus, acts violently to extract the Israelites from Egypt and set them free to serve the Divine. But in the Purim story, nothing supernatural happens—the miracles are hidden, God’s name is never mentioned, and the Divine plan is implemented solely through the courageous choices of human beings who speak truth to power.

Of course, there’s a dark side to this story—the death of Haman and his sons, the mandate for the Jews to take revenge upon Haman’s gangs. Even if we accept the tale as a kind of canonical superhero comic book, a revenge fantasy on the order of Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 film, Inglourious Bastards, it’s still challenging to cut through the carnage to the ikar (essence) of the khag—the deep knowing that we can never fall out of God, that love is woven into every occurrence and challenge of life. The mitzvoth of caring for the poor, gifting of food to friends, feasting and rejoicing, are all intended to liberate that love energy, to remind us that beneath all our differences, we are each a unique expression of the One. It’s for this reason that the Sages asserted that Purim would be the only holiday celebrated in mashiakhvelt, a holy day that elevates us even beyond Yom Kippur’s wiping away of sin—into a state of consciousness, of wholeness of being, in which Oneness is universally perceived and, in the absence of the good/evil dichotomy, joyful celebration is eternally possible.
How might you celebrate Purim this year?

© Rabbi Diane Elliot 2020

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November 11th, 2019

11/11/2019

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I had the joy and privilege of taking a short retreat at the Vedanta Retreat in Olema last week, about an hour and a half from my home in the East Bay. Each time I visit the women's retreat house, I'm overcome by gratitude for the deep silence, broken only by the wind, the rustling of leaves, and the bellowing of cattle in the nearby pasturelands. Deer grazed just beyond my window, oblivious to my presence behind glass. The unseasonably beautiful, warm, dry weather warmed my bones. And I could feel in my bones how thirsty the land is. Grasses dried brown, trees still leafed out but definitely showing signs of dehydration. My body resonates with the body of Earth, how she is changing, how dampened is the once-rich buzz of insects and bird chatter. Yes, it's autumn, heading toward winter, and yet.... This poem surfaced yesterday.

Gravity

…the force of
attraction, the irresistible
magnetism that, in
our cosmos brings
things together. Some
call it by
the name of
love, the hidden
and mysterious pull
that draws two
bodies toward one
another, holds one
in another’s orbit,
so that together,
they may circle
some larger star.
This being so,
then it’s love
that binds us,
molds us, shapes
our dreams—love
against which we
chafe and struggle,
love to which
we submit, love
that sustains, fulfills,
and sometimes empties
us. When, at
the end of the film
Gravity, the woman
astronaut who has
been stranded alone
in space, having
made it back
into Earth’s atmosphere,
splash lands in
the ocean, drags
herself onto a
beach, hugging the
wet sand as
if it were
her dearest, only
child, we know
with her, for
a certainty, that
we all are
wedded to this
Earth, and we
are her children.
We aspire and
shine only in
her orbit, in
deep and abiding
connection with her,
she is the
mother, drawing us
to her wet
and shining breast,
and she is
our spaceship, lonely
and untethered in
the black infinity
of an eternal
night, our only
lifeline, our only
hope, our cherished
garden, our only
and so temporary
home.

© Diane Elliot 2019

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The Ikar of Purim: Going Beyond Either/Or

November 11th, 2019

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