Judaism – Page 47

Pelman participates in Word

Barbara Pelman (photo from Word Vancouver)

Among the writers being featured at this year’s Word Vancouver, which runs Sept. 26-30, is Victoria-based poet Barbara Pelman.

Pelman’s latest collection, narrow bridge (Ronsdale Press, 2017), is her third book of poetry. Its title comes from Rabbi Nachman of Breslov’s famous advice (at least in Jewish circles): “All the world is a narrow bridge – the important thing is not to be afraid at all.” Other than in one poem, however, called “Öresund,” where she tells herself, “I will not fear,” Pelman doesn’t come across in her writing as fearful.

“I’m delighted that I don’t come across as fearful,” Pelman told the Independent, “as I am full of fear, and certainly before each visit to my family in Sweden, I imagined everything that could go wrong and how incompetent I am. And was amazed that I survived intact.

“Generally, I tend to be a worrier (‘a misuse of the imagination’) but fight this negativity all the time. The tension, which I hope comes across, is between a general optimism and belief that, ‘in the long run’ … things sort themselves out. So, I tend to take on things that might terrify me, like art classes or solo trips to Berlin or train rides through Europe, and sign up, so there’s no going back. Not, however, bungee jumping or skydiving.

“When I have to deal with adversity – a separation and divorce, primarily – I talk and I write,” she said. “Both are clarifying agents. The poems in this book put forward a lot of my difficulty in being in the present, without wishing to be elsewhere. As in the first poem, ‘Gentle Reader’ – the desire to desire only what you have, and not what is somewhere else.”

On the family front, at least, Pelman’s journeys have become shorter since the book was published. Her daughter, who had been living in Sweden for three years, moved to Vancouver this summer, meaning that Pelman’s grandson is also now that much closer. He features in more than one poem – “Still Life with a Small Boy” is especially poignant. In it, he and his bubby, Pelman, are out having a hot chocolate and croissant. “Heads together, bending into each other. / They are a world. Outside, the world breaks. / She cannot read the news while she is with him, / tries to be calm, listen while he tells her / his new red bike helmet makes him safe.”

The collection is divided into three sections and includes some poems that Pelman has published before. Her previous books of poetry are One Stone (Ekstasis Editions, 2005) and Borrowed Rooms (Ronsdale Press, 2008), and she also has produced a chapbook, Aubade Amalfi: The Marcello Poems (Rubicon Press, 2016).

“This book had three iterations, each time being sent back by the publisher with suggestions – too much of Marcello and the adorable grandson, for example,” she said of the decision-making process for what would make it into narrow bridge. “So, I rejigged the poems, took out a lot of them, put in more recent ones, and relied on Russell [Thorburn] to put them in order. He sees an organic pattern of the poems, sometimes based on image or theme. I trust his choices, only changed a few.”

The poems in narrow bridge include many with Jewish themes.

“Most of my childhood centred around the synagogue, not in a hugely observant fashion, but, as my father was choir leader at the Beth Israel, I often went to services with him,” Pelman said about the place of Judaism and Jewish culture in guiding her work or approach to life. “Now, as a member of Congregation Emanu-El [in Victoria] and ‘den mother’ for the Calling All Artists project, I am interested and involved in learning Hebrew, chanting Haftorah, and generally intrigued by the culture and traditions of an ancient people.

“Moreover, and this is what I think is really wonderful, poetry and study of Torah have many similarities. Hebrew is a language that I think is embedded in metaphor, and studying Torah is the kind of layering analysis that I am used to in studying poetry. Layer upon layer of meaning and ambiguity. Rabbi Harry Brechner considers art as ‘mishnah’: another way to interpret, to find meaning that is relevant to us personally and globally.”

In narrow bridge, Pelman explores kabbalistic ideas, her own family history and relationships, as well as biblical ones (the poem “Isaac” is powerfully evocative). In at least two poems, she explores the concept of “thisness” – notably in the poem of that name, where, she writes, “Happiness, fed from detail: the thisness of things, / resting in the eye of the beetle, the creak of the board / she leans against, the cold air pricking her ears.” And several poems have to do with the spaces or pauses between, for example, a heartbeat or a pendulum’s swing; those moments that happen all the time but that we rarely acknowledge or even notice.

Aging features prominently, as well. And, while some poems are wistful – such as “Suitcase in the Closet,” where recollections of past travel suffice – others are almost calls to arms. “A woman over seventy should open her travel account, / run her fingers over the globe, and choose / She should trade her sensible shoes for sandals, / her Gucci bag for backpack, her datebook for weather reports,” begins the poem “Go,” a favourite in this collection, though this reader is still a couple of decades shy of 70.

As for how her style or subject matter has changed since her first collection, Pelman said, “I have continued to work with various poets in workshops and retreats, and continue to learn a great deal from poet friends and reading. I think my poems have become shorter, a bit more compressed. I am aware of the musicality of the poem – the cadence, the pacing, the rhythm. But the struggles are still there: how to get started, how to edit, how to know when a poem is done. I have a huge file on my computer, called ‘Working On.’

“And my subject matter has changed as my life has changed,” she said. “The first book dealt with the divorce and finding a new identity; the second book included the death of my father; this book is about travel, and daughters, and grandsons, and the new life of retirement. About balance. But there are still hummingbirds in the hawthorn tree. Jasmine and tulips. Old lovers and mothers.”

Pelman is at Word Vancouver on Sept. 30, 1:20 p.m., in the Suspension Bridge tent at Library Square Conference Centre, one of three poets participating in “Another Taste of Poetry.” She also joins two other poets in Ronsdale’s Fall Poetry Showcase at Dunbar Public Library on Nov. 7, 6:30 p.m.

For more about Word Vancouver – where Jewish community members Mark Winston and Claire Sicherman will also share their work, at 1:20 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., respectively on Sept. 30 in the Alma VanDusen Room at Library Square – visit wordvancouver.ca. The interim manager of the festival this year is community member Bonnie Nish.

Striving and building more

I wanted to share an interesting issue I stumbled into while reading online. It was in a Jewish discussion group. The short version (without violating anyone’s privacy) was that one person would be having surgery in the days before Yom Kippur. She was struggling with the concept that she couldn’t fast, as she had to be eating and drinking frequently, in small amounts, after the surgery.

It took me a while to figure this post out. This was bigger than the observance of a specific commandment. This was a person who was having a weight-loss procedure. Her issues around food were likely larger than fasting on Yom Kippur. The people in the discussion group emphasized how important the surgery was to her long-term health. (Nobody embarrassed her by asking difficult questions.) Meanwhile, another person in the group was having shoulder surgery. She worried about how she would hold a prayer book. This seemed easier to solve, as it was a physical and not a psychological issue. Suggestions flew across the web: a music stand, a lectern, a friend who could help, etc.

As a kid, growing up in the Reform movement, there was a great emphasis put on fasting on Yom Kippur. Fasting was a sign that you were really invested in the holiness of the day. Yet, this wasn’t something done on other fast days, or even in terms of other mitzvot (commandments). My family was involved in the Jewish community every day, but, on Yom Kippur, I remember seeing people at our congregation putting a big energy into fasting that I hardly saw at other times of the year.

When I was in university and when I met my husband, I was introduced to people with many other ways of observing Jewish tradition (or not). His family is everything from secular to Lubavitch, with every variation in between. He pointed out that, if you’re sick, a rabbi would tell you not to fast. He pointed out that, in his extended family, there were people who fasted but did not attend synagogue, and those who attended synagogue daily, but couldn’t fast for health reasons. He reminded me that this isn’t clear-cut, even if it initially looks that way.

When we learn about Judaism, often as kids before bar or bat mitzvah age, we’re presented with a lot of information in binaries. It’s black and white, but that is also the way most grade school children absorb any new information, not just Jewish content. As we age, we learn that, in fact, the world is often more complex. It’s often multiple variations of grey (never mind chartreuse) instead.

Health issues, child rearing, our work lives – these all affect how we observe holidays. There is no universal measuring stick that indicates how this works, either. Things change over our lives, and having kids or an illness can affect our observances. Some people fast easily, and others build sukkot (temporary hut dwellings) without a fuss. Others cannot fast without serious issues, and I’d bet there are plenty of people in the Jewish community who hesitate, for one reason or another, to erect a sukkah on their own.

The thing that hopefully does remain constant, for everyone, is the emphasis on striving to be better people in the year to come. Wherever you are, in your Jewish practice, or in the way you treat others, or in your business dealings, you can probably grow and improve. We can choose to make change in our lives.

There are, of course, people out there who are Jewish but don’t think about mitzvot, attend any synagogue or fast. However, some of these same people may pride themselves in being ethical in their business, in how they treat others, or in how they treat animals. They may not even realize that these, too, are Jewish values.

There are also so many ways in which these are particular Jewish concerns that link us to other faith communities. One of the pillars of Islam is jihad and, no, it’s not all about holy war. For faithful Muslims, this concept is about striving – striving to be a better student, family member or worker, to be more religious or spiritual, and onwards. Christians often speak about love, but also it must be put into action. It’s work to make compassionate acts towards others a priority, no matter your religion.

Whatever your community, you can offer others a supportive presence that helps them become the people they aim to be. It’s in a community, whether it’s physical or an online discussion group, that we can unwrap our concerns and get help in solving obstacles that keep us from doing what we’d hoped in life (Jewishly, or otherwise).

I love Sukkot and am looking forward to spending time in the sukkah outdoors. However, it’s also a time to welcome people in as guests – and to build that supportive space. You may not build a sukkah or wave a lulav and etrog, but you can be a builder. Begin by supporting others as they strive towards being their best selves. It starts with a smile, a welcoming invitation or a positive response. Happy 5779! May it be everything that you hope to become!

Joanne Seiff writes regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. See more about her at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Is God’s very good world OK?

(photo from jpl.nasa.gov)

Rosh Hashanah commemorates God’s creation of the world. During the 10 days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, we evaluate our deeds and do teshuvah (repentance) for cases where we have missed the mark. And, during Sukkot, we leave our houses and live in temporary shelters to commemorate our ancestors’ journey in the wilderness. Hence, these weeks provide an excellent time to consider the state of the planet’s environment and what we might do to make sure that the world is on a sustainable path.

When God created the world, He was able to say, “It is tov meod,” very good. (Genesis 1:31) Everything was in harmony as God had planned, the waters were clean, and the air was pure. But what must God think about the world today?

What must God think when so many species of plants and animals He created are becoming extinct at such an alarming rate in tropical rain forests and other threatened habitats; when the abundant fertile soil He provided is being depleted and eroded; when the climatic conditions He designed to meet our needs are threatened by climate change?

An ancient rabbinic teaching is all-too-relevant today: “In the hour when the Holy one, blessed be He, created the first human being [Adam], He took him and let him pass before all the trees of the Garden of Eden and said to him: ‘See my works, how fine and excellent they are! All that I have created, for you have I created them. Think upon this and do not corrupt and destroy My world. For, if you destroy it, there is no one to set it right after you.’” (Midrash Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:28)

Today’s environmental threats bring to mind the biblical 10 plagues. When we consider the threats to our land, water and air from pesticides and other chemical pollutants, resource scarcities, acid rain, deforestation, desertification, threats to our climate, etc., we can easily enumerate more than 10 modern “plagues.” The Egyptians were subjected to one plague at a time, while our modern plagues threaten us simultaneously. And the Israelites in Goshen were spared most of the biblical plagues, while everyone on earth is imperiled by the modern plagues.

Instead of an ancient pharaoh’s heart being hardened, our hearts today seem to have been hardened by the greed, materialism and waste that are at the root of current environmental threats. While God provided the biblical plagues to free the Israelites, today we must apply God’s teachings in order to save ourselves and our planet.

There seem to be almost daily reports about record heat waves, severe droughts and wildfires, the melting of glaciers and polar ice caps, an increase in the number and severity of hurricanes and other storms, and other effects of climate change. All of the above, and much more, is related to a temperature increase in the past century of a little more than one degree Celsius, so it is frightening that climate experts project a temperature increase of three to six degrees Celsius in the next 100 years. Some leading climate experts have stated that global warming may reach a tipping point and spin out of control within a decade, with disastrous consequences, unless major changes soon occur.

All countries, including Israel, are affected by climate change. Israel is already suffering from one of the worst droughts in its history, with below average rainfall in each of the past five years, and the Kinneret, a major water source, at dangerously low levels.

Israeli climate experts are concerned that, with additional climate threats, there will be a rise in temperature causing many severe heat waves; a significant increase in the Mediterranean Sea level, which would threaten the narrow coastal strip of land that contains most of Israel’s population and infrastructure; and a significant decrease in rainfall, estimated at 20%-30%, which would disrupt agricultural production and worsen the chronic water scarcity problem in Israel and the region. Making matters worse, much of that rainfall would come in severe storms that would cause major flooding.

Fortunately, there are many Jewish teachings that can be applied to shift the earth to a sustainable path. Briefly, these include our mandate to be shomrei adama (guardians of the earth), based on the admonition that we should “work the earth and guard it” (Genesis 2:15); the prohibition of bal tashchit, that we should not waste or unnecessarily destroy anything of value (Deuteronomy 20:19-20); the teaching that, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (Psalms 24:1), and that the assigned role of the Jewish people is to enhance the world as “partners of God in the work of creation” (Shabbat 10a); and the ecological lessons related to the Shabbat, sabbatical and jubilee cycles.

As coworkers with God, charged with the task of being a light unto the nations and accomplishing tikkun olam (repair of the earth), it is essential that Jews take an active role in applying our eternal, sacred values in struggles to reduce climate change, pollution and the waste of natural resources. Jews must work with others for significant changes in society’s economic and production systems, values and lifestyles. The fate of humanity and God’s precious earth are at stake and, if we fail to act properly and in time, there may be “no one after us to set it right.”

Richard H. Schwartz, PhD, is professor emeritus, College of Staten Island, president emeritus of Jewish Veg and president of Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians. He is the author of several books, including Judaism and Vegetarianism and Who Stole My Religion? Revitalizing Judaism and Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal Our Imperiled Planet, and more than 250 articles at jewishveg.org/schwartz. He was associate producer of the documentary A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal the World.

Do you know your priorities?

During the months of Elul and Tishri, when we’re in the midst of the High Holiday season, things are busy. Kids are in (and out) of school and activities, parents are facing the fall rush of activities in their own work lives. Things are rushed. However, if you’re going to synagogue and have even a moment to reflect, you’re being asked to examine yourself. What have you done right this year? What’s gone wrong? What could you do better?

Some years, I’m thinking about my failings, or I get mesmerized by the long list of things that one could do wrong when we list the confession of sins. Other years, I’m so concerned by holiday meals or my kids’ behaviour that I sing along, but my focus is not really on the most important holiday tasks at hand.

Recently though, I got to thinking about this a different way. Instead of focusing exclusively on how we’ve gone wrong, or how we could do better, I wondered, of all the things in the world to fix, what are my top priorities? How could I focus on a few things that are most important?

When we wish people happy new year, we often wish them a happy and healthy year. It’s hard to work towards happiness – and, to be honest, I’m not sure I’d know when I got there. Working on health seems like a given to some people, and is completely ignored by others. What does it mean? Well, for some it means taking medicines, or being able to afford their medicines. For others, it might mean exercise or better food choices, or even being able to purchase healthy foods.

We also mention, in Jewish tradition, an effort to strengthen our commitment to Judaism. Maybe that means going to services more, doing more mitzvot (commandments) or doing more to help others. It might mean offering your kids tools so that they can learn about their faith. For some, it means helping others get to Jewish events – offering a ride, for instance, if the person is unable to drive or walk – or making them feel included and valued when they get there.

People also may have big holiday meals with family and friends. This can be wonderful, and trying. I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes family gatherings force us to confront things that we’d rather not deal with. (Maybe it’s an uncle’s politics or a child’s misbehaviour, or the aging of a beloved parent.) Do you prioritize family? Do you commit to supporting and caring for your family, both those related by blood and those who you choose? Are you willing to travel long distances to see relatives? What about your family friends, those to whom you choose to feel related?

Awhile ago, I was chatting with someone about all my uncles and aunts. She expressed wonder at how many relatives I had. It took me a bit to realize what she meant. Where I grew up, in Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C., many families had moved to work in the U.S. capital. It meant that they weren’t near their families, so we created extended families. All those aunts and uncles were close friends with my parents. I played with kids at those folks’ houses, ate dinner at their holiday tables and learned from them about what it was to be part of a loving family. Our Jewish customs varied, our DNA was different, but our effort included everyone.

The person I spoke with seemed alarmed and uncomfortable with the fact that I called all these people who weren’t blood relatives aunt or uncle. Yet, it was a time and place when many people didn’t live near family.

Some families had been decimated by the Holocaust, so it seemed entirely logical to us. In our circle, there were people who didn’t have grandparents – they had died in Europe. Some had no cousins, either. This was true among people I knew as a kid, and continues to be true. In my husband’s family, for example, I know people who lost many relatives and whose family structures, even in 2018, continue to resonate with that trauma.

This extended family friend concept is also related to our priorities. For me, personally, it’s key, and I choose to continue this practice. Why reinforce alienation for those who lack supportive extended family? My kids have a “tante” who made quilts for their beds and sends them gorgeous handmade gifts. She’s not my blood relative, but we’re part of her family. And we serve as honourary aunt and uncle for a 2-year-old in Montreal, as well.

Recently, I received an email that pointed out the Winnipeg Jewish Federation’s priority action areas for fall 2018, and I loved it. This action document lists many of our community’s Jewish concerns and priorities – many of which, no doubt, are similar to the Vancouver Jewish community’s concerns and priorities.

The Winnipeg Federation document is a good start. While some may think that the points are ambitious, other aspects are simply part of how a community – an extended family – should act. We should care about others, full stop. We should try to include everyone in Jewish life regardless of what they can afford. While it may seem like an enormous goal to “mitigate poverty,” it’s easy to pick an apple tree in the neighbourhood and donate the fruit to the food bank. Nor is it a big deal to bring your kids to visit an older person to help reduce their isolation.

Instead of focusing on the enormity of the individual points, we can instead point to our priorities for the new year. For instance: it improves our health to attend gatherings, socialize and engage in learning in multi-age settings.

I don’t know about expecting happiness, but we can adjust our priorities to include health, well-being and Jewish supports for one another. This is possible – and, to borrow Theodor Herzl’s phrase: “If we will it, it is no dream,” so make your priorities and dream bigger. It’s well worth considering. Happy 5779, everybody!

Change can’t happen in a day

Judaism is an aspirational religion that, while accepting the reality of failure, believes in the human capacity to transcend and achieve levels of excellence in our everyday lives.

“You shall be holy, for I the Lord God am holy.” (Leviticus 19:2) “You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:6) These are but two of the more potent examples of the aspirational quality of our tradition and its immense respect for the capacity inherent within the human being. As beings created in the image of God, there is nothing that we cannot do, a factor which created a tradition defined by commandment and expectation.

A significant manifestation of this future is the commandment of teshuvah. We expect people to honestly assess the content and the quality of their lives, regret and admit their failures, and commit to embarking on a new direction. This expectation is brought to a climax during Yom Kippur, where the Vidui (Confession), which lies at the nucleus of the Yom Kippur liturgy, places before us the realities of our sins and challenges us to honestly confront what we have done with our lives.

It is, therefore, deeply troubling to recognize the profound failure of Yom Kippur as a force for change. The passion, seriousness and devotion that accompany many of us throughout Yom Kippur peters out into a form of amnesia during the break-fast meal, as we return to our behaviour of yesterday.

Yom Kippur is a synagogue success story. More people show up than on any other day, pounding their hearts with great devotion as they cry out, “Ashamnu.” (“We have sinned.”) However, Yom Kippur’s impact on Jewish life seems to be marginal.

This is not a new phenomenon. It may be the meaning behind Isaiah’s critique of the Jewish people and their fast days: the people indeed fast, “starve their bodies” and “lie in sackcloth and ashes,” however, this is not the fast day that God desires, but rather a day in which we “unlock fetters of wickedness and untie the cords of the yoke and let the oppressed go free.” (Chapter 58) To paraphrase Isaiah, the quality of repentance is not judged by what one does on Yom Kippur, but by what one does afterwards.

The problem with Yom Kippur in the synagogue is that it is too complete and comprehensive. It creates the myth of putting all of one’s life and behaviour up for judgment, where we confront every one of our failings and repent for them all. The list of sins in the Vidui is too extensive to have any impact on the life of a real person. For a prayer, and within the isolated environment of the synagogue, it is fine. As a force for facilitating change in real life, the comprehensive nature of our service makes it impossible to be a significant factor in everyday life.

Change, growth and improvement are rarely radical epiphanies, but are rather slow and gradual processes. As Maimonides in his Guide for the Perplexed teaches us, radical transformation away from that to which one is accustomed is impossible. (3:32) According to Maimonides, God and the Jewish tradition had immense patience with the idolatrous, slave mentality of the people who came out of Egypt and did not require them to accept or adopt either beliefs or practices that were radically different from that to which they had grown accustomed. We must do the same both with ourselves and with others.

If Yom Kippur is to be the force our tradition aspires it to be, it must cease to be the culmination of the process, and instead serve as its beginning. The purpose of the all-inclusive lists cannot be to ask an individual to review all of his life, but to create a menu from within which every individual can find one dimension, one quality that they can commit to working on.

Yom Kippur must cease to be a forum for New Year’s declarations and instead become a catalyst for a new culture among the Jewish community, a culture that fosters individual responsibility, reflection and a commitment to being a teshuvah person. As a teshuvah person, one commits to the ongoing and difficult path of constantly aspiring more from oneself. As a teshuvah person, one neither views oneself as an ideal, nor fools oneself into believing in overnight conversions.

Our tradition teaches us, “It is not for you to complete the task, neither are you free to desist from it.” Nowhere is this saying from The Ethics of the Fathers more relevant than in the task of building a life of value. This year, let us take teshuvah out of the synagogue, disconnect Yom Kippur from its myriad rituals and place it at the foundation of our everyday lives.

Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman is president of the Shalom Hartman Institute and author of the 2016 book Putting God Second: How to Save Religion from Itself. Articles by Hartman and other institute scholars can be found at shalomhartman.org.

Courage in a time of change

Rabbi Irwin Kula speaks in Vancouver on Sept. 16 at FEDtalks, the opening event of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver annual campaign. (photo from JFGV)

The world is in a time of historic shifts and the way we interpret and respond to what is happening can make each individual a player in this civilizational drama.

This is the promise of Rabbi Irwin Kula, who will speak in Vancouver on Sept. 16 at FEDtalks, the opening event of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver annual campaign. Kula is co-president of Clal, the National Jewish Centre for Learning and Leadership.

“We are living in one of the most dramatic, exciting times in human history,” Kula told the Independent in a telephone interview. “Whenever one lives in a dramatic transitional moment, the call to responsibility is also dramatic. The fear and the anxiety that we are feeling is all understandable. But managing the fear, managing the anxiety and, therefore, managing some of the loss that comes in these great moments of transition, is how we move on the journey.”

Kula promises audience members more than an interesting talk.

“Anyone who is going to be in that room, anyone who is willing to speak about it this way, really has an opportunity to be a part of not only the solution but one of the great adventures in the human drama right now,” he said.

At Clal, Kula is part of a team that is “reimagining Judaism for this era.”

“And not only Judaism, but religion in general,” Kula said. “What is religion and Judaism going to look like in an information age? In an age of globalization? In an age when the borders and boundaries of their identities are more permeable?”

Kula is an eighth-generation rabbi and holds a degree in philosophy. He has served congregations in Jerusalem and St. Louis, Mo., and, over the last 30 years, has been involved with Clal, which describes itself as a “do-tank” – “The thinking actually has to apply to people’s doing,” he explained.

Kula works “at the intersection of religion, innovation and human flourishing,” he said. “Those are the lenses I use.”

Kula analyzes how information, entertainment, media, retail and other components of society are affected by innovation. In his 2007 book Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life, Kula considers the relationship between what we desire and how we live.

“Yearnings is a fancy word for desires,” he said. “The central insight in the book is that what animates us, what animates our lives, are our desires. They are sources of great wisdom for who we are as human beings. We know our most intense desires – our desire for love, our desire for the truth, our desire for meaning, our desire for happiness, our desire to be creative and have a purpose and to contribute.… The interesting thing about looking at our desires is, the more one can understand our desires, the wiser our lives are.”

Whatever the day’s headlines, Kula said, maintaining optimism is critical to making positive change in the world.

“Being an optimist doesn’t mean you have to be Pollyanna,” he said. “You can be an optimist and be 51-49 about it. The difference between being a 51-49 optimist and 51-49 the other way may be the biggest difference of all.”

And when the nightly news brings stories of authoritarian ascendancy or other alarming developments, the long view is an antidote.

“I use a long-term, macro-evolutionary take,” said Kula. “This is where Martin Luther King, I think, is right. The arc of history bends toward justice. But it doesn’t bend linearly. It’s not one plus one plus one plus one. It’s sometimes two steps forward and a step backward. We are in now a very, very significant moment of transition. There’s a lot of ways to talk about that transition – postmodern, information age, technological age – and all of the changes are hard to metabolize. So, it takes a very serious responsibility for elites and cultural creatives and people who experience themselves at the cutting edge of these changes to take very seriously the costs and pains and dislocation of these changes for different people. That is what I think we are all called to do.”

People may look at the state of the world and feel helpless or hopeless. But the better response, Kula said, is not only to acknowledge the ways in which we might affect improvements, but also to take individual responsibility for the situation.

“Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher, said, in the face of trauma and in the face of political tragedies, the first thing to ask is how am I complicit in what is transpiring,” said Kula. “Not in a giant moral drama of blaming, because, if we are actually interdependent … then what’s happening with people with whom we deeply disagree is connected to us. It’s not some other, evil person over there.”

This is not to say there is not evil in the world, he cautions. But, asserting that those with whom we disagree are evil can potentially misallocate cause.

“In America, there aren’t 60 million evil people who voted for Trump that want America to be destroyed and become a homophobic, primitive, psychologically regressive place in the world,” Kula said. “It behooves us, says Maimonides, to address very seriously what have I missed and, therefore, perhaps been complicit in allowing this to emerge?”

Courage and a sense of adventure can help us navigate times like these.

“If we mitigate a little bit the fear and just stand at that burning bush and not be so scared, know there is tremendous possibility,” he said.

For tickets to FEDtalks, at the Vancouver Playhouse, visit jewishvancouver.com.

Fringe mixes drama, comedy

Naomi Vogt performs in Big Sister, written by her real-life sister, Deborah Vogt. (photo from Fringe)

The Vancouver Fringe Festival has started and there are (at least) a few shows that readers should try to fit in around the High Holidays. Jewish community members Deborah and Naomi Vogt, David Rodwin and Gemma Wilcox are presenting very personal works that examine issues with which we all deal, such as self-esteem, family relationships, finding and losing love, and the search for meaning. And they do it with humour and energy.

Local playwright Deborah Vogt and her sister, actor Naomi Vogt, “are still making tweaks” to Big Sister (Revue Stage), Deborah Vogt told the Independent. “However, I’m not sure if there will ever be a ‘final version,’ given that the script is a reflection of our ongoing conversation as sisters attempting to learn more about each other. Additionally, Naomi loves to ad lib and so the play will be slightly different every evening depending on who is in the audience. However, the dream would be to take it to other Fringe festivals, especially Edinburgh (the world’s largest Fringe Festival – and my personal dream). There is something very special, however, about premièring this show in the city that we grew up in and the community that we know and love.”

The idea for the show came up last summer at the Edinburgh Fringe. “Over there, I saw so many beautiful, personal solo shows that tread the line between monologue and standup. I thought, ‘I would love to do this, but I can’t act. Who do I know that could perform a solo show that I could write?’ The answer was obvious: my sister. We spent two weeks traveling together shortly after the Fringe, where we brainstormed ideas for shows in between hikes and wine bars. We abandoned most of those ideas when we realized the only story we could honestly tell was that of our relationship as sisters, and specifically how our relationship has changed over the last few years in the wake of Naomi’s 75-pound weight loss.”

Camp Miriam makes an appearance in Big Sister, said Vogt, “because my sister Naomi went there for a few summers as a preteen and our mother went there for many, many years when she was younger…. The show focuses on Naomi’s weight loss, and talks about what being a fat kid at camp was like. Naomi loved Camp Miriam, but we also acknowledge that no camp experience is easy if you don’t look like the other children.”

Naomi Vogt performs the whole play. “For the most part,” said her sister, “she is playing herself, but the version of herself that I have written through my perspective. And, on occasion, she plays me as well. I just have to sit in the audience every night and hear the ways she’s manipulating my words. Part of the joy of the show is the various power dynamics at play – as a playwright, I have shaped Naomi’s personal story but, as an actor, she is able to change my words at any moment.”

There were many challenges to writing Big Sister, said Vogt. “First of all, it was difficult trying to find the balance between Naomi as my real human sister and Naomi as a character. We wanted this show to be entirely truthful, while still presenting a piece of theatre. And this show touches on painful aspects of both of our lives (in a funny way, of course), so trying to write that without overstepping my place or lying to the audience about what actually happened (two sides to every story, right?) was difficult to manoeuvre.”

In a nutshell, the show is about weight loss. “It touches on how being heavy can affect all aspects of life, and particularly sibling dynamics,” said Vogt. “Both of us have lost weight … but Naomi’s journey was far more significant than mine. Through telling her story of weight loss, we’ve learned a lot about each other, our childhoods and the community we live in.”

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photo - David Rodwin shares his sometimes-heartbreaking dating experiences in F* Tinder — David Rodwin shares his sometimes-heartbreaking dating experiences in F* Tinder. *(photo by Julia Farr)*

“F* Tinder is 100% autobiographical,” said David Rodwin. “Only the names have been changed. But I only have 75 minutes to talk about dating 120 different women over two years, so there’s a lot I have to leave out. But every story I tell, I do so as accurately as I can recall – with a theatrical flourish.”

F* Tinder: a love story (Performance Works) began as a book, when a friend who was writing his first book challenged Rodwin to do the same.

“I’d moved to San Francisco after my last serious relationship ended in L.A. and, over a year and a half on Tinder and other apps, I’d experienced some bizarre and noteworthy experiences in the lawless dating wilds of the Bay Area,” he said. “So, I had an unorganized collection of short stories I’d been developing…. Around that time, I met the one woman I truly fell in love with. That inspired me to write like crazy. But (spoiler alert), when she dumped me, I got writer’s block for the first time in my life.

“Though I wasn’t able to continue sitting alone at my desk typing out these tales, I couldn’t stop telling them to friends and in storytelling shows like The Moth, which I’ve done for years. Finally, it became clear that, rather than just a bunch of short anecdotes, this was a full evening of stories with its own narrative integrity…. And though I’d written half the book, I threw out everything and started over because I find that writing with my mouth creates a more natural, humorous and vibrant live performance than when I type something, memorize it and recite it.

“It’s a thrilling and terrifying process for me each night, not knowing quite how it’s going to go and I hope it creates a more visceral, authentic and deeply intimate experience. And it’s a technique I inherited from my mentor Spalding Gray. But it’s meant that the show has changed a lot over time. The first version was 60 minutes long, then it grew to 90 minutes. Now, it’s 75 minutes. But there have been multiple versions of each one…. I’m also able to adjust certain sections to fit specific audiences. I’ve even added a curling joke for my Canadian audiences, making fun of Americans’ inability to understand the sport.”

Rodwin continues to work on the book F* Tinder and, later this year, he said, “I’ll begin directing a web series of F* Tinder set in San Francisco, and also a feature film of my previous show set in Los Angeles, called Total Novice. That one has an even edgier narrative than F* Tinder, if you can believe. Let’s just say I was a ‘nice Jewish boy’ who went to Princeton and I was a very late bloomer who became fearless (and occasionally stupid) in my pursuit of things that I considered off limits when I was younger.”

F* Tinder includes Jewish elements, said Rodwin, “because they directly affected how I look at relationships.”

In the show, he shares how, on one Shabbat, while chanting prayers he’d said for 30 years, he stopped midway through the V’ahavta, “when I said, ‘And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children.’ It suddenly hit me that I didn’t have children, and I couldn’t fulfil this prayer in a literal way. I always thought eventually I would. But, at 45, when I read that, I fell silent, contemplating how I’d lived my romantic life in such a way that I was childless. And what it meant for me. And what I should be doing with the woman I was in love with. And it directed my next choice in how that relationship went.”

Rodwin shared another touching, and Jewish, element of his show.

“The woman I fell in love with told me she could tell I was falling for her and I shouldn’t do that because she’d already decided we weren’t going to work out in the long term, and she didn’t want to hurt me. So, she told me to build a wall around my heart, or she wouldn’t see me again…. I agreed to do so because I was afraid if I told her the truth, that I was already hopelessly in love, I’d never see her again. Now, I’m not a biblical scholar, but the next morning a piece of Torah came to my mind, out of the blue, while she lay sleeping next to me. Deuteronomy 30:6 – I’d studied it eight years earlier with Rabbi [Sharon] Brous and I didn’t understand it, so it stuck in my mind. The phrase, ‘You must circumcise your heart … so that you may live,’ baffled me. But, that morning, it suddenly made sense to me, and I decided I had to circumcise my heart and careen it against the wall around her heart until I either broke through or I broke. And people can come see the show, to discover the surprising ending.”

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photo - In Magical Mystery Detour, Gemma Wilcox explores the detours that happen in life and how we can find and trust our own centre — In Magical Mystery Detour, Gemma Wilcox explores the detours that happen in life and how we can find and trust our own centre. *(photo from Fringe)*

There are many twists and turns in Magical Mystery Detour (Studio 1398) by Gemma Wilcox. Set in the United Kingdom in 2012, the action is prompted “by a letter from her dead mother, [and] the protagonist, Sandra, and her dog, Solar, take an unexpected car journey from London to Land’s End, Cornwall, at a pivotal and sensitive time in her life.”

Created in the summer of 2012, Magical Mystery Detour premièred at the Boulder, Colo., Fringe Festival that year.

“It is a semi-autobiographical piece, heavily based on aspects of my life at that time,” Wilcox told the Independent. “I wrote this show very shortly after the death of my mother and the ending of a very significant love relationship with a man I thought I would marry and have children with. It was inspired by the tender and vulnerable process of dealing with and letting go of my mother’s death, the getting over and releasing this powerful love relationship, as well as some of my magical journeys through the sacred, beautiful landscape in the southwest of the U.K.

“The show reflects some of the themes I was fascinated by and exploring at that time in my life,” she continued, “such as learning how to trust and surrender to the detours that happen in life, when we think our life is going in a certain direction, but then it dramatically changes. I was also interested in exploring how we can find and trust our own centre when those we love are not there anymore, and when we feel lost or that life is too chaotic or not going the direction we want it to.”

Wilcox was born and raised in London, and moved to the United States in 2001. She has been based in Boulder since 2004. “I moved to the U.S. to explore yoga and embodiment practices, was in the Shakespeare Company in Austin, Tex., for a couple years, and found my theatrical/creative family in Boulder, as well as touring across the U.S. and Canadian Fringe festival circuit every summer for the past 11 years,” she said.

Magical Mystery Detour is one of a handful of shows that Wilcox and director Elizabeth Baron have worked on together. In creating it, said Wilcox, Baron was incredible, advising “me on how to stay both open and vulnerable as a performer, whilst also staying protected and safe and able to show the many shades and subtleties of a character.”

Wilcox writes comedy-dramas. “I find that it is highly important to balance the ‘light’ material with the ‘darker’ material, humour with seriousness – for me as a performer, and also for the audiences,” she said. “It is easier to receive and digest more poignant or shadowy material when juxtaposed in appropriate moments with humour and lightness. Humour is a huge aspect of my work – humour that comes from identifiable and sometimes embarrassing situations or honest admissions.”

For the full Fringe lineup, visit vancouverfringe.com. The festival runs to Sept. 16.

The mitzvah of challah

On Rosh Hashanah, the challah is round and sweet, symbolizing our collective wish for a good, sweet year. (photo by Przemyslaw Wierzbowski)

It was two years ago that I fell in love with challah. I attended a challah baking workshop at a Jewish retreat and, at that point, the extent of my challah knowledge was that it’s sold in delis, comes in a plastic bag with a twist tie and makes great French toast. I was a challah virgin. This was around the same time that I was test-driving a more observant Jewish life, and figured it behooved me to learn more about our people’s famous braided egg bread. Little did I know how profoundly the workshop would affect me.

There we were, 40 or so Jewish women, up to our elbows in yeast dough, patiently following the instructor’s directions. She explained what each ingredient symbolizes, and how making challah each week is an auspicious time for Jewish women to pray for what they want and need. I was hooked. When it came time to make the blessing over the challah, that’s when I lost it, and became emotional. Something about a sisterhood of Jewish women gathered around tables doing something their mothers and grandmothers had been doing for generations struck a chord deep within me.

As I said the blessing, with my eyes closed and my hands atop the soft dough – “Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melech ha’olam asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu, l’hafrish challah” – tears poured down my cheeks like they would never stop. The woman sitting next to me (almost a complete stranger) heard my sniffling and put her arm around me. I’m sure she was puzzled by my tearful response and, truth to tell, I was embarrassed, but I was overcome and just couldn’t help myself. Somehow, the mitzvah of making challah, and all that it symbolizes in our collective identity as Jewish women, hit me.

It mattered, in a deep-seated way, that I was part of something much bigger than myself – something inextricably tied to my Jewish roots, something to which I had paid scant attention over the years. I knew this activity would become a meaningful part of my life from that moment on. Challah is far more than just a food to sustain my family and me physically. It fills us spiritually as well. And that’s the most beautiful taste in the world.

Long story short, I now bake challah on a regular basis, for others and myself. It reminds me of who I am at my core. It draws me closer to my community of Jewish friends and acquaintances, and places me smack in the middle of what is real and true – my Yiddishkeit. Who knew that combining a few essential ingredients could produce such an inexplicable gift in my life?

It’s no secret that every Jewish custom is significant on a spiritual level. With Rosh Hashanah approaching, I set out to learn how to make one of the many unique symbols of the Jewish New Year – the round challah. The rest of the year, we make braided challot and dip them in salt, but, on Rosh Hashanah, the challah is round and sweet, symbolizing our collective wish for a good, sweet year. Its circular shape, which represents the cycle of life, has no beginning and no end, thereby symbolizing the continuity of the Jewish people. You could also say it’s a metaphor for the endless blessings that God sends us. Another interpretation is that the round challah resembles a crown, symbolizing the supreme power and authority of God.

As Rosh Hashanah nears, it’s a time for personal introspection and the beginning of our individual and collective teshuvah (return or repentance). We get ready to reflect, repent and ask for forgiveness. It’s a time to elevate ourselves and direct our thoughts and deeds toward a higher, more purposeful end. At precisely this time, when our thoughts turn to repentance and resolutions for improvement, the round challah reminds us that the opportunity for teshuvah is never-ending. This Rosh Hashanah, may we all be successful in elevating ourselves from our current reality into a higher, more spiritual state of being, on both an individual and collective level.

For those of you who want to learn more about the significance of baking challah, there’s a fascinating book called The Mitzvah of Challah by Esther Rivka Toledano (ArtScroll Mesorah Publications, 2018). The author dives deep into what is undeniably a mitzvah granted especially to women. She shares the history, the halachic (Jewish legal) guidelines, several recipes and lots more. The book goes far beyond the basics for those who really want to understand and embrace the mitzvah of challah.

May we all have a sweet, happy, healthy and prosperous New Year. L’shana tova u’metuka!

Shelley Civkin is a happily retired librarian and communications officer. For 17 years, she wrote a weekly book review column for the Richmond Review, and currently writes a bi-weekly column about retirement for the Richmond News.

To embrace teshuvah

“King David Playing the Harp,” by Gerard van Honthorst, 1622. All of the biblical heroes are imperfect, as are we. (photo from artsandculture.google.com)

One of the beautiful ideas behind Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is the notion that we need to reflect, review and rethink who we are and what we have achieved in our lives. We should never see who we are and what we have created as the ultimate expression of who we ought to be. There must always be a gap between who we are and who we ought to be, between reality and our aspirations. When our aspirations are fulfilled, there must be something wrong with our aspirations.

This is the fundamental idea behind teshuvah and its challenge to us – to embark on a process of self-criticism and reflection. To embrace teshuvah is the ultimate aspiration of our humanity, for the highest level that humans can achieve is not one of fulfilling all our values, but of constantly maintaining a tension in which goals serve as a foundation to evaluate the lives we have created and to challenge us to move forward and beyond.

An expression of this idea is found in the biblical depiction of heroes, all of whom are imperfect. We are never given a hero who embodies everything. Sometimes, it’s embarrassing. The biblical heroes seem too human, permeated by too much imperfection. The Bible is teaching us that being a hero doesn’t mean that one is devoid of imperfections; it means that one must do something about those imperfections.

By elevating these people to be our ideal, it challenges us to emulate them. You are going to fail like Moshe or Avraham. You are going to sin like David. There are going to be multiple dimensions of your life, whether it’s in your worship of God, with your spouse, with your children or with your friends, where you’re not going to be who you ought to be. Welcome to the human story. Our religion has no fantasies about human beings. It has aspirations from human beings.

For human beings to embody the aspiration of self-criticism and reflection, it is not only the individual who must be open to change but also the societies within which we live. People around us often want us to remain who we are. People don’t want us to change. They have gotten used to and comfortable with our imperfections, for it gives legitimacy to theirs.

Some rabbis in the Talmud were deeply worried about the social pressure to maintain mediocrity and lock everyone within the status quo of their failings. As a result, in Tractate Baba Kama 94b we find the following teaching:

It once happened with a certain man (thief) who desired to repent and make restitution (to those from whom he stole). His wife said to him: “Fool, if you are going to make restitution, even the clothing which is on your back would not remain yours.” He consequently refrained from repenting. It was at that time that it was declared: “If robbers or usurers are prepared to make restitution, it is not right to accept it from them, and he who accepts it does not obtain approval of the sages.”

A thief’s desire to complete his or her process of self-correction by making restitution is clearly understood and valued. The problem is that this standard may inhibit them from beginning the process. A lifetime of harm cannot be erased and, as a result, may lock us in our imperfections under the argument that one can never really begin again. “Fool, if you are going to make restitution, even the clothing which is on your back would not remain yours.”

In response, the rabbis teach that we have a responsibility towards each other to enable these new beginnings. A Jewish society is one where we make sure that reflection, self-criticism, self-evaluation and the ability to accept new horizons and new ideas are things society fosters and encourages, even at a high cost. We are individually responsible to not merely refrain from hindering each other’s growth, but that we must be willing to forgo what is rightfully ours in order to ensure that our fellow citizens will grow and change.

A Jewish society is not simply characterized by a high level of kashrut or Shabbat observance. A Jewish society is one where we allow others to do teshuvah, where we are not threatened by others’ desires to move in a new direction. A Jewish society is one that understands that to be fully human is not to accept our failings: to be fully human is to aspire to overcome them.

Shana tova to us all.

Seeing God’s humanity, our own

A mosaic of the Akeida in Bet Alfa National Park in Israel. (photo from hartman.org.il)

For many of us, the approach of the Jewish New Year offers an opportunity to take a moment from our harried lives to reflect on life’s “big” questions. It is a time for many of us – across the religious spectrum – to think about our relationships with ourselves and our families, with our tradition and with God. For those of us who choose to spend Rosh Hashanah in synagogue, the holiday offers the opportunity to participate in a communal reading of some of our most sacred and paradigmatic collective narratives, which in turn have the potential to illuminate some of our most pressing personal dilemmas.

Two of the most important biblical stories we revisit every Rosh Hashanah are the binding of Isaac (known in the Hebrew parlance as the Akeida) and Abraham’s argument with God regarding the fate of the inhabitants of Sedom. These two accounts represent two different religious anthropologies: one of sacrificial self-surrender and one of assertive moral challenge. As I have previously written, the personal moral empowerment displayed by Abraham in the story of Sedom – his insistence on his own ethical intuition and God’s acceptance, in turn, of those claims – is, for me, the foundation of the covenantal relationship.

The account of the Akeida, on the other hand, presents a distinct moral dilemma: How do we begin to understand a God who would ask His most loyal follower to sacrifice his beloved son? There are many ways to approach the theological puzzle that is the Akeida. This Rosh Hashanah, as we pause to examine not only our relationship to the divine, but our personal family relationships as well, I propose rereading the story of the Akeida by looking at God’s character through an anthropomorphic lens.

Before I begin describing God in human terms, however, it is important to remember that we have a long and deep tradition of doing so. The Bible is replete with images of God experiencing “human” emotions. Throughout the biblical narrative, we are presented with a God who is alternately angry, jealous or ego-driven.

During the Jewish people’s sojourn in the desert, for example, Moses, like Abraham before him, finds himself in the position of having to plead with God not to destroy a people – in this case, the Jews of the desert generation. The Bible describes God in nakedly human terms, as Moses finds that he has to, in some way, appeal to God’s ego. The Midrash describes Moses grabbing hold of God and saying to Him, “I’m not going to let you do what you want to do to the Jews.” Moses even appeals to God’s public relations considerations: he reminds God that He not so recently delivered this desert people from bondage in Egypt; if He kills them now, the other nations will say that He took them out of slavery only to slaughter them in the wilderness. Moses tells God in no uncertain terms that he will not help facilitate a people’s destruction.

Moses has to convince God not to allow His “emotions” to overpower Him, not to let His anger consume Him. This is but one example of many throughout the Bible and the Midrash of profound anthropomorphism, of portraying God as a character full of human weaknesses, with the potential to be both vulnerable and volatile.

In examining the story of the Akeida, we are compelled to ask, How could the God of the covenant – the God who promised Abraham that a great and multitudinous nation would emerge from his son Isaac – command that Isaac be killed? How are we able to understand the covenant in light of this seemingly unfathomable dictum? In attempting to understand the God of the Akeida, and what the Akeida might mean for us today, I have found it helpful to look at God as a parent.

God made the covenant with Abraham. But, after He did so, He got nervous, He suddenly felt scared. He had given over enormous power to human beings and He felt His ego being threatened. Thus, when God commands Abraham to “Take your son,” Abraham senses intuitively that it is not a moment in which to approach God with his moral claims. When God says, “Take your son,” Abraham understands that the God who is speaking – the God of the Akeida – is a God who experiences His own authority as under siege.

Abraham knows that the moment of the Akeida is not a moment for encounter or dialogue, but a moment that requires silence. It is a moment when Abraham knows that his only choice is to be quiet and submit. Abraham, a lover of God, senses the divine mood. When Abraham stood in front of God at Sedom, it was, in part, because he felt that it was a time when he could approach God; he sensed that God was in a willing position, that there was a possibility that He would be receptive to Abraham making covenantal demands.

Abraham’s response to God is analogous to a child’s response to a parent who the child knows is feeling challenged or threatened. There are times in a family’s life when a child knows intuitively – as Abraham knew intuitively – that there’s an opportunity for discussion, a moment when he can be critical of his parents, and his parents will be receptive to what he has to say. But there are other moments when a child understands that his parent is feeling insecure; moments when the mother or father is terrified of losing his or her authority. A child knows that is not the moment to try to encounter the parent in critical relationship; it’s not the moment to remind the parent that, in the past, he or she has encouraged critical reflection. That is a reality of family life: parents can become terrified of losing their position of power; they can become frightened that their children misjudge their encouragement of critical reflection as a negation of their parental authority. So, in some way, I attribute to God the same weakness or the same dilemma. He feels threatened. He feels that He must assert His power and test His child.

Before the Akeida, Abraham is referred to as ohavai elokim, a lover of God. Subsequent to the Akeida, he is referred to as yerei elokim, a fearer of God. The question we are faced with is why must God demand Abraham’s submission and fear? Why was his love not enough? To understand the God of the Akeida, we have to understand that God has conflicting forces within Him. The Midrash on the Akeida paints a very strange portrait of a God who says to the Jewish people, “Please pray for me. Please pray that my attribute of compassion will overcome my attribute of justice.”

Who is this God that must pray to human beings for help in overcoming His impulses? Who is the God that needs to ask human beings to remind Him of compassion? The Midrash illuminates for us the reality of a God who is struggling to reconcile the opposing forces within Him. It is my view that the Akeida is a moment of God’s struggle within Himself. God tests Abraham because of God’s own internal difficulty balancing justice with compassion, fear with love.

How can we talk about God experiencing an internal struggle? The great contemporary biblical scholar Yohanan Muffs argues that it is only in human terms that we can most authentically grasp the nature of the divine. I share Muffs’ view that God’s humanity, so to speak, is essential to a true understanding of Him. Yet it is not only 20th-century thinkers such as Muffs, Abraham Joshua Heschel and I who have portrayed God in starkly mortal terms. Drawing on the tradition of the Bible and the Midrash, the rabbis of the rabbinic period routinely discussed God as having an interior emotional life. While this approach did not fit in with medieval philosophy, which maintains that God cannot take on any human form, that any change or emotion in God is a sign of imperfection, the great figures of the rabbinic period were not frightened to speak of God in the language of human psychology.

It is this tradition that empowers me to think of God in terms of psychodynamic maturation: to cite His shift from being a figure of complete and total authority to a figure who works in concert with human beings. It is the deep rabbinical tradition of ascribing human qualities to God that enables me to see a God who decides to become accountable to human beings.

And it is this precedent of anthropomorphism in the rabbinic canon that informs my view of the God of the Akeida as a parent struggling with his identity, grappling with the competing values within Him. He loves Abraham and He has planned great things for him, but God is beset by his own internal dilemmas, by his own conflicting emotions. This is the God of the Midrash, the God who says to Moses, “Hold me back, Moses, I’m losing myself.”

If this is a bold way of discussing the divine, it is no bolder than the way the Bible itself discusses God. Rather than diminish God in our eyes, looking at God in human terms enables us to understand Him on a deeper level. The God who experiences emotion, who experiences internal struggle, is a God who can enter into a relationship of mutual accountability with human beings. The God who experiences His own psychodynamic reality is the God of covenantal spirituality.

This Rosh Hashanah, as we examine our relationships with our parents and our children, with ourselves and with our tradition, we are all faced in some form or another with the challenge of balancing compassion with justice, authority with love. As the Jewish New Year draws closer, let us allow ourselves to draw on the wisdom of our shared narratives as we struggle to reconcile the competing values within us.

Rabbi Prof. David Hartman (1931-2013) was founder of the Shalom Hartman Institute. Articles by Hartman, z”l, and other institute scholars can be found at shalomhartman.org.