Tag: spirituality

Safe spaces, diverse voices

Bradley West and Shayna Plaut (photos from conference organizers)

As part of Winnipeg Pride Week in May, local organizers put on the first-ever Queer and Faithful Conference.

A grassroots event created to give voice to LGBTQ2+ people of colour and their experiences with faith and spirituality, the conference featured two panel discussions with opportunity for informal roundtable discussions. The keynote speaker at the May 25-26 conference at Robert A. Steen Community Centre was writer, facilitator and performer Jenna Tenn Yuk. She spoke about exploring identity and the intersections of race, queerness and faith through personal storytelling, spoken word poetry and facilitation; encouraging interfaith conversations around intersectionality, privilege, social location and other aspects; creating safer spaces for LGBTQ2+ people of colour in faith-based environments; and ensuring safe spaces to ask questions and explore the issues as a community.

Bradley West, who has been involved with Winnipeg’s queer community for more than 20 years, and Shayna Plaut, a former Vancouverite who now lives in Winnipeg, were part of the conference’s Jewish panel.

“I think the conference came about because there were people who had been talking about the importance of keeping their faith, while also celebrating their gender and sexual diversity, and there were some people who were finding that to be a little difficult,” West told the Independent.

Explaining that it was an uncomfortable topic for many people in the broader queer community, he said, “In fact, one of the members said, on Saturday, that, ‘because faith rejected us so soundly, we have rejected faith.’ We need to create a safe space where we can come together and have these conversations – where people from the various faith communities and also from the queer community can come together in a mutual space.”

While such conversations have been going on for some time, typically led by faith leaders and queer community organizers, the aim of the recent conference was to offer a more personal approach.

“The organizers wanted to have voices of the people who are more marginalized in our community, because of their skin tone, or religion, or spirituality, or faith,” said West. “They wanted to make sure it wasn’t just centred around white voices; white, Christian voices….. Oftentimes, when we are having conversations about faith in this Canadian landscape, we default to the dominant voice which, in our historical context, is Christian.

“So, they definitely had a lot of Christians who were there and who were involved, but, in terms of the planning and the panel speakers, and in terms of how they wanted people to think, was thinking of how we might be able to create an open dialogue with each other … to be able to, first, honour our own faith journey, but then also to understand the faith journey of others, especially when that faith journey is very different from our own.”

According to conference organizers, 70 to 80 people attended over the two-day period, with attendees coming from Winnipeg, as well as from surrounding areas, such as Morden, Selkirk, Steinbach and Portage La Prairie.

“From what I experienced, everyone … was approaching it with a spirit of reflection,” said West. “They were definitely gently challenged by the speakers to reflect on their own personal participation in terms of do you really believe your faith is the only faith or the true faith … and does that subtly reinforce this idea that those who are different are ‘less than’?”

The speakers, he continued, “were gently challenging people to think about how we interact – not only with the different denominations in our faith, but everyone of Abrahamic faiths, with different strings of denominations, and also those outside of some of the faiths … different groups practising different versions of the larger faith. Sometimes, we have a tendency to think that our journey and our view is the view that is shared by everyone in our faith … and so, there were those gentle reminders to reflect on that. Overall, as a participant, I would say there was a sense of a call to self-reflection, and there wasn’t any resistance in terms of the intent to self-reflect, for sure.”

For West, one thing that struck a chord was that, even though he was in a room full of strangers at the beginning of the event, everyone got to know one another very quickly. “I think it was very much about, yes, we have differences, but we also have commonalities and, as we move forward, we need to look at both … have a bifocal lens in honouring our differences – not minimizing or whitewashing, or asking us to abandon our differences in order to get along … just focusing on our similarities. We’re going to honour that and work together, and look at how we’ll create spaces and places within our own lives. And then maybe, by extension, our own communities will allow more of these dialogues.

“The gathering had the flavour of us coming together and having these conversations, and continuing to do so outside of this space,” he said. “That core that comes from great changers, like [Mahatma] Gandhi, talking about that idea of, if you want to change something, first, change yourself, because, wherever you go, there you are. If you change yourself, you’ll automatically change the spaces you go into, because you are no longer the same person.”

Plaut’s faith has changed over the years. Born into a Chassidic home in the United States, her family decided to follow Conservative Judaism when she was 5.

“The joke I like to say is, I’m queer, I’m Jewish, I’m a mom, I have seven tattoos, 13 earrings, and I keep a modicum of kosher,” said Plaut. “I teach at the University of Winnipeg and work in the field of human rights and journalism.”

When asked to help organize the conference, Plaut jumped at the chance. She took on the role of food coordinator and ensured all the food was vegetarian, so that everyone could eat, regardless of their religious or dietary restrictions. She also took it upon herself to make sure that not only the Abrahamic faiths were represented, but also Hindu or Sikh, by reaching out to some of her students.

“Folks would use their own experiences and explore some of the strengths that they found within their faith and also some of tensions,” said Plaut about the conference. She said that some people feel like they have to choose, in terms of their identities – religious, cultural and sexual – and that the conference encouraged an exploration of various faiths’ strengths and limitations in terms of guiding people, and what it means to find acceptance within a faith.

The conference attracted a range of attendees.

“Many of the folks who came, not all, but a good proportion, may not have identified as being queer themselves,” said Plaut. “Many of them were grandparents, actually, or parents who wanted to know how to better support their children or grandchildren. They wanted to learn.”

While organizers worked hard to share with and connect people, they left it up to the participants whether to exchange their contact information with one another. Some attendees expressed interest in continuing the conversation beyond the conference and organizers are working on determining the next steps. Many of the participants joined the nearly 50,000 marchers at the Winnipeg Pride Parade, which took place June 1.

“It was amazing, our biggest Pride ever in terms of participants in the parade,” said Plaut. “There were over 112 organizations that registered either floats or walking groups.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Learning to lead prayer

Rabbi Uri Kroizer from the Ashkenazi track with his students. (photo by Itai Nadav)

Some 50 prayer leaders recently completed the first session of the inaugural Ashira program. The program’s goal is to train prayer leaders (schlichei tzibur) from across Israel to direct creative prayers in one of the following three tracks: Ashkenazi, Sephardi and contemporary liturgy.

This unique program, which is held at the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in Jerusalem, is a joint initiative of Rabbi Avi Novis Deutsch, dean of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, and Yair Kochav, one of the founders of the Tahrir cultural platform. Both are graduates of the New York Federation’s social leadership Cohesion Lab.

At one of the meetings at the Schechter campus in Jerusalem, Novis Deutsch explained, “Musical prayer is at the crux of the soul – it is clear that enabling people to study prayer touches their souls. We can discern true happiness in the classes. As the director of many programs at the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, I can sincerely say that when you teach Torah you sometimes see happiness, but when you teach prayer you constantly see happiness on the students’ faces.”

The Ashira program is comprised of 15 weekly five-hour meetings, where students study both theoretical and practical aspects of prayers and it is sponsored by donors from Vancouver and various parts of Israel.

From December 2018 to just after Passover 2019, when you walked down the hallways of the building, you would hear different styles of music from the classrooms.

“The students represent a broad variety of Israeli communities – some are studying in rabbinical programs, some are prayer leaders, and all have a love for Jewish liturgical music,” said Novis Deutsch. “The Ashira program furthers social cohesion; it is a collaborative project with the leaders of prayer renewal in Israel. Many of those who participate in the program never thought that they could be prayer leaders. Ashira allows them to imagine this possibility – it reduces their anxiety about leading prayers and gives them a voice.

The program’s premise is that, to find your voice as a prayer leader, you must acquire an in-depth knowledge of the tools, styles and procedures in this field.

“Before we embarked on the program, we assembled 12 leaders in the field of Israeli music and started a process, which gave birth to Ashira,” explained Yair Kochav. Of the three tracks, he said the Ashkenazi and Sephardi work with the existing liturgy, teaching it to the new prayer leaders, while the “contemporary liturgy track fuses the first two tracks with modern Israeli reality.”

photo - Sephardi track director Hacham David Menachem (holding the oud)
Sephardi track director Hacham David Menachem (holding the oud). (photo by Itai Nadav)

According to Kochav, each track is divided into three sections: theoretical, musical and practical.

“This gives students a multifaceted experience of the essence of prayer and what motivates people to pray,” said Kochav. “Each identity and motivation must receive its own space. There is a certain apprehension that the traditional liturgy will disappear due to the growth of a popular modern Israeli liturgy. Therefore, students in all three tracks meet to discuss the similarities and differences of each liturgy.”

Rabbi Rani Yager, from the Shalom Hartman Institute, who heads the contemporary liturgy track together with Yair Harel, said, “The most important lesson that I learned in this program is that prayer is a need felt by people in all communities: it is not connected to one’s religious or ethnic background, nor to one’s gender. People are willing to discuss this need, to learn and to share their feelings. Singing together requires courage, and the enormous need for prayer engendered this courage.”

Rabbi Uri Kroizer and Dr. Naomi Cohn Zentner direct the Ashkenazi track and Hacham David Menachem and Drori Yehoshua direct the Sephardi track.

Students study the musical scales of each liturgical style; each student plays an instrument and/or sings during the classes. During the breaks, students meet in the hallway and eat dinner together (organized by different students each week) and discuss current events.

“Those of us in the Ashkenazic track, who come from different backgrounds, meet weekly and make space for the voices that we bring from our homes,” said Shira Levine, who received her master’s from the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies and is now a rabbinical student of the Hartman/Oranim program. “I have learned much from Rabbi Kroizer, who is an expert in Ashkenazic liturgy and a real mensch. I hope to study Sephardic liturgy in the next session.”

Osnat Ben Shoshan Pruz, a participant in the Sephardi track, said, “The program opened a door to a significant and immense world in which I have participated for many years. Ashira provided me with an opportunity to study, in depth, areas that I had not previously had a chance to examine. I have acquired numerous tools and knowledge in liturgy, Talmud and Jewish philosophy.”

“The program changed the manner in which I sing prayers, which goes beyond the pages of the siddur,” said David Arias, a Schechter Rabbinical Seminary student who participates in the contemporary liturgy track.

The next program starts in the fall. For more information, visit schechter.edu/schechter-rabbinical-seminary/about-the-rabbinical-seminary.

Revisit the Jewish fabric arts

When I was very young, I learned to embroider. My mother was a fabulous seamstress, but sewing was not my thing. Later, around middle school, an aunt taught me how to knit. I picked up crocheting but never really liked it or excelled at it. However, I took knitting to all levels, including a dress for myself, and, later, I returned to various kinds of needlepoint, coming to love them.

On my and my husband’s bedroom wall, there are framed embroidery pieces, each with its history, which I collected in the 1970s. I would have liked to have in my collection some work from Jewish women, who had done embroidery before immigrating to Israel from various countries, but they had stopped doing such work, and all the pieces I have were made by Arab women, who continued the craft.

It was with this background that I thoroughly enjoyed perusing the new-to-me pages of Jewish Threads: A Hands-on Guide to Stitching Spiritual Intention into Jewish Fabric Crafts by Diana Drew with Robert Grayson (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2011). The author explains her journey from sewing to fabric crafts, from editing for the division of Random House that published books on handicrafts to being awakened spiritually while editing for spiritual book publisher SkyLight Paths.

In Jewish Threads, there are 30 projects and 30 interesting stories (written by the author’s husband) about each artist and their project. The contributors come from the United States – Alabama, California, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington – and Israel.

The book has four parts: at home, in the synagogue, celebrating holidays and through the Jewish lifecycle. For the home, there are wall hangings, a needlepoint and a purse. For the synagogue, there is a runner, a Shulchan Aruch cover, placekeepers and Torah mantles. The holiday section includes challah covers, a quilt, a vest, puppets, a matzah cover, an afikomen holder and a seder plate. And, lastly, the Jewish lifecycle section includes quilts, a challah cover, a tallit and tallit bags. Another five “inspirations” include several chuppahs, a tallit bag, a wall hanging and a bimah cloth.

The techniques include quilting, appliqué, embroidery, needlepoint, cross-stitch, crochet, knitting, felting and needle felting.

Although decidedly not for beginners, each project lists details for getting started, what you’ll need and step-by-step instructions, sketches and how to finish. The “final threads” chapter offers how-to’s for quilt-making, lettering, a stitch guide, resources and projects for sewing circles, parents and children and holidays.

Sybil Kaplan is a journalist, lecturer, book reviewer and food writer in Jerusalem. She created and leads the weekly English-language Shuk Walks in Machane Yehuda, she has compiled and edited nine kosher cookbooks, and is the author of Witness to History: Ten Years as a Woman Journalist in Israel.

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.

Divine Sparks at the Zack

Barbara Heller’s exhibit, Divine Sparks, is at the Zack Gallery until Oct. 8. (photo by Olga Livshin)

Barbara Heller’s new solo show at the Zack Gallery, Divine Sparks, could be divided into three distinct themes, each one representative of a world culture: the Sephirot, the Mudras and the Future Reliquaries. Each of the three resonates with one of three religions, Judaism, Hinduism and Christianity, respectively, but Heller, a master weaver, sees divine sparks everywhere. Her tapestries, big and small, invite gallery guests to contemplate what unites us, no matter our ethnicity or religious affiliation.

Symbolism infuses Heller’s images, starting with the centrepiece of the show, “Tzimtzum,” or “Transcendence.” The large tapestry is a stylized ladder. The midnight blue rungs at the bottom coalesce into a dead bird, but the higher your eyes travel, the lighter the colours become. Two pairs of wings punctuate the climb of colours from dark indigo to white radiance.

“The ladder has many interpretations,” Heller told the Independent. “It can be a metaphor for our life, a liminal space between birth and death…. For me, the rungs are stepping stones on the path of spiritual attainment, of transcendence.”

Heller has shown this tapestry at several exhibitions already, to great acclaim. Recently, it won the American Tapestry Alliance Award.

photo - Barbara Heller made a series of small tapestries of her feather collection, Sephirot, specifically for the Zack show
Barbara Heller made a series of small tapestries of her feather collection, Sephirot, specifically for the Zack show.

“Originally, I wanted to display this tapestry with real feathers piled along the bottom,” the artist said about “Tzimtzum.” “I have amassed many beautiful feathers, and friends kept bringing me more, but I discovered it was almost impossible to send real feathers anywhere. I displayed the tapestry in Poland a couple years ago, and they told me that real feathers have to be quarantined for weeks before being allowed into the country. And they can’t be from endangered species. I wasn’t sure about that.”

Since the plan involving the real feathers fell through, Heller made a series of small tapestries of her feather collection, Sephirot, specifically for the Zack show.

“I already had lots of yarn died blue for the ‘Tzimtzum,’” she said. She called the series Sephirot after the kabbalah’s spiritual qualities of understanding, wisdom, love and judgment, among others.

“Some of the feathers are almost photographic,” she said. “In the others, I played with colours and sparkles.”

The second series in the show, Mudras, obtained its name from the hand gestures prevalent in Hinduism, Asian dancing, yoga and meditation.

“Typically, mudras are used as a way to direct energy flow in the body,” Heller said. “According to yoga, different areas of the hand stimulate specific areas of the brain. By applying light finger pressure to these areas of the hand, you can ‘activate’ the corresponding region of the brain. In addition, hand mudras also symbolize various feelings and emotions.”

Heller’s Mudras is a series of small, uniform-sized round images of various hand gestures. The hands are woven of golden yarn and appliquéd to dark-green fabric with a vague “computer motherboard” pattern. Parts of real electronics – wires, chips, connectors – are incorporated into the design of every gesture, as if to emphasize the similarities between computer circuits and the neuron circuitry in our brains.

“I collect old electronics and take them apart, and use them in my weaving,” said Heller. “This series was fun to make.”

The other series, Future Reliquaries, is an older one. Also depicting hands embedded with parts of electronic devices, it reflects humanity’s developing love affair with technology.

Several tapestries of the series are rather large. In each one, a human hand in golden yarn stands out from the background of an ancient traditional pattern. “Different tapestries sport different patterns: from Persia, Indonesia, Turkey, Navajo,” Heller said.

Like in the Mudras series, the interlaced computer piece are symbolic of our interconnection with machines.

Heller wrote: “This series deals with three apparently separate but, in my mind, connected histories: weaving, computing and religion. Weaving is a binary system of up/down, just as computing is a binary system of on/off…. Religion is not only a store of faith; it is a store of history and social values…. Today, we are creating a new religion. We are worshipping the technology.”

Heller’s tapestries contemplate the future status of today’s electronic remnants in the context of ancient fabrics. “As holy relics were housed in reliquaries, often made of gold and gems, I’m trying to populate my tapestries with the future relics – the computer chips and wires.”

Beside the large hands, there is also a selection of tiny ones, where each miniscule woven hand is linked to topics such as keys or clocks, science or beauty, birth or death.

Heller’s exhibit is part of larger happenings in Vancouver this month – a symposium of the Textile Society of America. The symposium takes place Sept. 19-23, and many galleries around the city besides the Zack are displaying textile or weaving exhibitions to coincide with it.

As a well-known local artist, Heller has been one of the event organizers from the beginning. “We have a wealth of local textile artists, and about 400 people are coming to the symposium from all over the world,” she said.

The planning for the symposium began three years ago. “We made sure that the hotel reservations were available on the dates that didn’t include Yom Kippur,” she said. “Unfortunately, a year ago, the hotel informed us that they had to change our reservation dates.”

So, now, the first day of the symposium falls on Yom Kippur, as other reservations were not available, and the society has posted an apology on its website.

The Zack Gallery offers a bus tour of three textile exhibitions in the city on Sept. 20. To learn more about the tour and to register, visit jccgv.com/art-and-culture/gallery. For more about Heller, visit barbaraheller.ca.

Divine Sparks opened on Sept. 6 and continues until Oct. 8.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

Encounters with the divine

Barbara Pelman speaks at the opening of the exhibit Encounters, which is at Congregation Emanu-El in Victoria this summer. (photo by Frances Aknai)

On June 3, the exhibit Encounters opened at Congregation Emanu-El in Victoria. It is the culmination of the most recent Calling All Artists exchange, a project that has been going on for more than a decade.

“Bible has to be interpreted to be relevant,” said Barbara Pelman, coordinator of Calling All Artists since its inception. “All Renaissance art is Bible interpretation. That’s what we do with this project.”

In 2004, Pelman was the head of the adult education committee at the synagogue.

“Rabbi Harry [Brechner] came up with the idea to gather a bunch of artists and writers for a few study sessions to teach them a particular theme and its rabbinic interpretation,” she recalled. “I thought it was a wonderful idea. The sessions were conducted once a month for five months. Afterwards, the artists would offer their own interpretations of the theme, and the synagogue would have an exhibit of their works.”

While the congregation also produced colourful chapbooks – mini catalogues of the exhibitions – in previous years, they did not do so this year.

Over the course of the project, the artists have studied a variety of subjects. The first exchange was based on the topic of Paradise, and the exhibit was held in 2005. In subsequent years, themes have included dreams and prophecies; creation; the Book of Ruth; death and afterlife; and reinventing rituals.

“We missed a few years since the beginning,” said Pelman. “Once, we thought that maybe we are finished with the project and won’t do it anymore, but everyone involved said, ‘No! No! We should continue.’ Another year, holidays interfered.”

This year’s theme examines divine-human interactions.

“What happens in these encounters? What does one look like and how is it reported and remembered? What are some examples in biblical and rabbinical tales? How do we understand divinity and how does that understanding affect our worldview? These are some of the questions the artists of different genres have been exploring,” Pelman explained.

She said that not all participating artists are members of the congregation, or even Jewish. “The project is open to the community,” she said. “This year, 30 people signed up for the project; 17 artists remained to the end to exhibit their works. Five of them are not Jewish, but all of them are interested in learning.”

Studying with the rabbi is a mandatory part of Calling All Artists, Pelman said. “This entire project is about learning from those who know more than we do. The point is not to exhibit but to learn. That’s why the art is not vetted.”

photo - Encounters features a range of artistic genres, including pottery
Encounters features a range of artistic genres, including pottery. (photo by Frances Aknai)

Participating artists represent a wide variety of media and genres, as well as skill levels. Some participants are professionals; others do art as a hobby. The exhibits feature photographs and paintings, fibre art and pottery, sculpture and poetry. Every piece is accompanied by an explanation of the work by the artist.

Pelman is a poet, so her involvement in every year’s project has been a poem. For her, divinity is not an all-knowing old guy somewhere above. “It’s the biggest and best part of you, of us all,” she said. “How do we find it? How does it inform our muse?” This is what she contemplates in her poem for this year’s explorative journey.

Pelman worked as an English teacher for many years. She taught high school, college and university classes, and she has been writing poetry for a long time. “I have three poetry books published,” she said. “The last two by Ronsdale Press, a Vancouver publisher.”

Another frequent participant in the project, artist and writer Isa Milman, said, “I participated in the first Calling All Artists, The Paradise Project, in 2005. It was a spectacular experience. The combination of Rabbi Harry Brechner’s teaching, the group of artists who gathered and learned from each other, wrestling with text that most of us were unfamiliar with, was truly energizing. The process involved five sessions spread over a few months, to learn from Harry’s teachings and engage with one another, as we entered a spiritual quest for meaning. Then we went off to put our learning into practice and create our responses.”

Milman has taken part in a number of Calling All Artists projects. “I’ve written poems as well as created paintings for these projects,” she said. “Learning with Rabbi Harry is an inspiration. He’s a gifted teacher and a wonderful spiritual guide. My Jewish education was extremely Orthodox and doctrinaire and I rebelled against it. Learning Torah with Rabbi Harry is so different. It’s an invitation to engage and converse, which I so welcome.”

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

On death and dying

Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan, director of inter-religious studies at Vancouver School of Theology. (photo from Laura Duhan Kaplan)

“Most of the world’s religions speak of dying to self,” said Dr. Eloecea, a Christian psychotherapist speaking at the Inter-Religious Conference on Spiritual Perspectives on Death and Dying at the Vancouver School of Theology May 22-24. “If we can do this before the time death approaches, suffering is greatly diminished for ourselves and for those around us.”

“Dying to self” refers to giving up egotism and self-centred attachments. Eloecea’s words echoed a theme that appeared in many of the sessions I attended, which was that of a holistic spiritual path of surrender and humility that unites life and death.

Rabbi Dr. Laura Duhan Kaplan, formerly of Or Shalom Synagogue and now director of inter-religious studies at VST, discussed how she had been spurred by reading Plato to take a closer examination of Jewish views of death and the afterlife. “Plato said living well is preparing for death. But what is death?” she asked.

Duhan Kaplan explained how the texts of kabbalah offer accounts of a soul’s journey after death. The soul travels through stages of physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual purification, she said. According to Duhan Kaplan, this account of the afterlife is based both in kabbalistic theories of the soul’s development and glimpses of higher consciousness by current spiritual seekers. As Duhan Kaplan presented them, these texts are a guide to a lifetime of self-reflection, humility and non-attachment.

The stages of the soul’s ascent after death are tied to the rituals and rhythms of the traditional Jewish year of mourning that follows the death of a loved one, she said. “When I decided I would research Jewish views of the afterlife I had no idea I would discover what I did.”

Duhan Kaplan spoke of the dreams and spiritual experiences she had after the deaths of her father, mother and mother-in-law. She said the stages of her parents’ journeys offered particular gifts that related to their stages of spiritual ascent in the next worlds. The movement from the shivah period through the year of saying Kaddish to the yahrzeit and Yizkor corresponds to the soul’s difficulty in letting go, the emotional purification, the visit to the lower Gan Eden, the “paradise of understanding and good deeds,” and then the return to the storehouse of souls to merge with the divine. This description captures just one thread in the rich tapestry of connections Duhan Kaplan wove.

Other teachers at the conference presented different lenses through which spirituality relates to death. Acharya S.P. Dwivedi, poet and interfaith activist, presented the traditional Hindu view of karma, reincarnation and freedom from rebirth through non-attachment and identification with the transcendent self (atman). Dwivedi described how in the Hindu view the jiva (individual soul) moves from birth to death, experiencing happiness or suffering in accordance with the good and bad actions it commits, until finally it finds its true identity with the atman – the innermost self that is one with all of existence – and lets go, returning to its source and not again being reborn.

Syed Nasir Zaidi, Muslim chaplain at the University of British Columbia, discussed the importance in Islam of confronting and making peace with death. “Death should be our strength, not our weakness,” Zaidi said, emphasizing how thoroughly internalizing the reality of our own death and ceasing to fear it can enrich our spiritual path. Zaidi pointed out that, according Rumi, it is death that gives value to life, making it precious. Zaidi also explained that, in Islam, peace with death is accomplished through confident submission to God’s will in a life of virtue and acceptance of life’s unfolding as an expression of God. “Abraham told his children they should not die before becoming Muslims,” Zaidi said. “Obviously, this doesn’t refer to being members of the religion of Islam, but rather to having submitted to God, which is what being a muslim [submitted one] means.”

Some presenters offered specific practices. Eloecea shared a series of meditations aimed at producing positive thoughts to change the state of the brain, to shift from the egotistical self and its entrapping habits. Lynn Mills, a PhD student at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, Skyped in to present a liturgy for people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, which consisted of psalms and prayers to be recited in their presence. This had two parts: the first was a morning liturgy for every day, the second a way to celebrate the person’s life before memory loss prevents them from knowing friends and family and remembering the stories they share.

A variety of other topics were covered. Mark Stein, a Jewish chaplain, tackled the issue of what to do when non-Christians (or anabaptists, who only baptize believing adults) are called upon to give baptisms for sick or stillborn children. Can a Jew baptize a child? Should they? Stein spoke of the need for chaplains to support people in these extreme situations. He spoke of the transformation this could cause in a chaplain, leading them not only to embrace a pragmatic flexibility but to an openness – seeing God’s work as something also happening beyond one’s own religion.

One recurrent issue was medical assistance in dying, about which there was a panel discussion moderated by Duhan Kaplan on the opening night of the conference. Rabbi Adam Rubin of Congregation Beth Tikvah spoke as a member of the panel. He noted the lack of a consensus about medically assisted dying across Jewish traditions, but affirmed a few core teachings. “First, because of the infinite preciousness of every life, we’re commanded to do everything we can to preserve life,” Rubin told the Independent. “Second, we must do everything we can to attenuate suffering. Some traditional rabbinic authorities hold that this imperative means that one can give a level of pain-killing medicine (morphine, for example) that might even endanger the life of a patient, in order to reduce the patient’s suffering. In addition, some authorities allow the removal of life-sustaining machines or apparatuses if they extend suffering, in order to allow the normal course of physical decline to take place. This is a tricky and controversial subject within Jewish tradition,” he said, “but the general idea is that there’s a place for ‘allowing nature to take its course’ if it is likely to reduce suffering. All of that said, there is a (rare for Judaism!) consensus in traditional Jewish law that it is absolutely forbidden to take one’s own life or to assist in taking someone else’s life.”

Rubin warned of the dangers of simplistic notions of consent or decision-making that don’t take into account the full range of pressures and emotional factors that might influence a person’s decision. “People are not robots, making ‘clean,’ rational decisions in a vacuum,” he said. “So, my approach, and my take on Jewish tradition, is that we must fight the things that might lead to someone wishing to end their life.”

In addition to the talks and panels, there was an afternoon session for musical and meditative reflections on the first day of the conference. Jewish music ensemble Sulam (which contains both Duhan Kaplan and her husband Charles Kaplan) performed, as did the Threshold Singers; the music was followed by Zen priest Myoshin Kate McCandless giving a presentation on meditation and chant in support of end-of-life care.

The keynote event of the conference, which was open to the public, was called We Die Alone and Yet We Don’t. It was a conversation with Dr. David Kuhl, facilitated by Duhan Kaplan. Kuhl is a professor in the department of family practice in the faculty of medicine at UBC. He helped design and develop the palliative care program at St. Paul’s Hospital, and is known for his 2011 book What Dying People Want: Lessons for Living from People Who Are Dying.

Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He is Pacific correspondent for the CJN, writes regularly for the Forward, Tricycle and the Wisdom Daily, and has been published in Sojourners, Religion Dispatches and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.

Fighting for peace, or to win?

We need to redefine our “opponents.” In the news, it’s whites against blacks, Palestinians against Israelis. But we don’t have to accept these categories. In Pittsburgh, you can find black and white, Jewish and Arab Steelers fans united against the New England Patriots. (photo by Bernard Gagnon)

The past several weeks have been difficult, but also very easy. Difficult, because it feels like civilization could be spiraling into an irreversible Armageddon of hate, violence and destruction. Easy, because I feel like I know where I stand. I have moral clarity. The neo-Nazis marching down the streets yelling anti-black, antisemitic chants reminiscent of 1930s Nazi Germany are wrong. The people who counter-protest for equality, shouting that hate will not prevail – they’re right. They’re the good guys. The “bad guys” think they’re superior; they think it’s OK to disparage others because of their race or the colour of their skin. “We” believe in the dignity of every human being. Simple.

Until recently, when I had one of those moments of disconcerting humility. I saw a Facebook post of Trump Tower surrounded by big, white garbage bins. The caption read something like, “As usual, Trump surrounded by white trash.”

I am mortified to say that my initial reaction was to chuckle. The joke tickled the funny bone of my youth, growing up in small town New Jersey, where the “white trash” used to make fun of us and “we” would look down on them. But I felt horrible for my reaction, and was forced to ask myself, am I really so much different than those I am quick to blame?

I was similarly disturbed when I saw a video of counter-protesters in Charlottesville screaming at the white supremacists marching. They chanted, “You lost, we won. Go home!” Their argument being – our military defeat ended your right to be in public? Is that what we think? If so, when we “lost” and Donald Trump “won,” should we have conceded, packed it up and stayed home?

Of course not. Defeat makes us dig in our heels and fight back harder. When “we” do it, it’s right, but when “they” do it, they’re a bunch of cry-babies.

This summer, I had the tremendous privilege of participating in a four-day retreat with Pathways, a program sponsored by the American embassy that brings together Arab and Jewish English teachers in Israel to teach them “negotiating skills.” The program was powerful, intense, optimistic, and hopelessly depressing.

I was somewhat familiar with Pathways prior to the retreat because they’d done a workshop at my school with our 10th graders. Our students met with Arab kids from Nazareth, engaging in exercises that stretched their ability to think outside the box, and beyond themselves. They learned how to listen, cooperate and confront challenges with a variety of new and different tools.

One tiny example is when the students were paired to arm-wrestle. The challenge was for each kid to “bring the other’s hand to the table as many times as you can.” Intuitively, the kids begin to wrestle, but one clever boy said to his partner, wait, if we work together, letting each other win, we can both do much better than if we actually fight. The point being – you don’t have to lose in order for me to win. In fact, when we help each other, we both win more.

So, when, at our teachers’ retreat, we were divided in pairs and given the task to play a two-dimensional Connect Four game, I was prepared. Each of us was given a different set of instructions that we were not permitted to share with our opponent. This meant, of course, that we were playing by different rules. The challenge to both of us was to get “as many points as you can.”

My secret paper instructed me to get as many XOXO combinations as possible. I quickly figured out from his strategy that he was going for XXXX. Great. If we could have spoken and I could have explained to him the idea, we would have designed the board to maximize our mutual success. There was nothing that required us to get more points than the other person, only to maximize our own. However, we were not allowed to discuss, and my opponent was out to win. He didn’t understand that I had different rules. He thought he was clobbering me.

In our first round, I was happy to let him take his wins and I took mine. It looked to me like we were neck and neck. But, somewhere in the middle of the second round, his smug attitude was getting to me and I wanted not just to win, but to take him down. I started to block him, and I was scoring big, and he had no idea. It was fun.

When we got to the end and they revealed all the instructions and asked us to tally our points, we were both in for a surprise. It turned out that not only did we have a different set of rules, but I received more points per row than he did. The game was totally and illogically stacked in my favour. It would have been nearly impossible for him to win, even if he had all the information from the start.

It was an interesting exercise, but my partner didn’t really get it, not even after it was over. He protested that it was unfair – that I had all the advantages. And, while it was a game, I felt uncomfortable with this Arab person not understanding why I, the Israeli, had all the advantages and he never stood a chance. A little too close to home. And it was a bit depressing that my partner couldn’t understand that the whole point of the exercise was that it didn’t matter who had more points. It was never about winning and losing.

Sadly, it reminded me of another moment at the retreat, when I was seated by a different Arab man. He told me he lives in Abu Tor, a mixed Arab and Jewish neighbourhood on the border of East Jerusalem. Without thinking, I blurted out, “Hey! My best friend just moved to Abu Tor!” As the words came out of my mouth, I realized that many Arabs are not so happy that Jews are moving to Abu Tor. Indeed, he replied, “Yes, well, I’m sure her area is much nicer than mine because many more resources are invested in the Jewish section than where I live.”

I could have countered with the fact that most Jerusalem Arabs reject citizenship, or that they teach their children to hate us, but the truth is that I just wanted to cry. Because, basically, he was right. Why should he live in the same municipality as my friend and get inferior services? At the same time, why do I have to fear getting stabbed or blown up when I walk down the street? These two questions do not justify each other, they exacerbate each other.

With the “game” stacked unfairly on both sides, how are we supposed to learn to cooperate? We both wanted to; that’s why we were there. But we had to work extra hard to change the rules. And, if we couldn’t figure it out at a retreat where we were all there because we wanted to learn to live together, then what hope did we have out there, where everything is about who is right and who should go away.

From where do we get this need to win? When my kids were 6, 4 and 2, they had an amusing game. When we’d go from the house to the car or from the car to the house, the two older kids would race. They’d run howling and laughing, until they reached their destination, whereupon one would scream, “I win!” and the other would burst out crying. Then the little guy would come hauling up the back announcing proudly, “I lose! I’m the rotten egg!”

When do we go from the stage of enjoying the game and laughing simply because others are laughing, to needing to win and watch our opponents cry?

I’ve always hated competitive games. I happen to be pretty good at many of them and I come from a very competitive family, so I can easily get swept up in the challenge of winning. But I hate when I beat another person and it makes them sad. With my kids, it was often hard to balance the honesty and integrity of playing my best with the desire to see their pride when they win. Fortunately, today my kids can beat me at almost anything, but watching them try to clobber each other is painful.

Still, thanks to Pathways, I discovered an unexpected positive side to this not-always-pleasant phenomenon. When the Arab students came to our school, the kids from both schools were very nervous. What would they talk about? What would they do together? How would they get along with people who they had grown up to believe were their “enemy”?

In one of the first activities of the morning, they divided the kids into groups by table. Every table was mixed, with both Jews and Arabs. To start, they had to make a paper chain of things that everyone at the table had in common. They would write one thing on each piece of paper and attach them together, while everyone had one hand tied behind their back. The kids were laughing, joking, learning about each other and cooperating. By the end, each table felt a strong sense of solidarity. “Table 6 rules!” And “Table 3, we’re taking you down!” could be heard across the room. In less than an hour, having a longer chain than Table 3 had become much more important than who controlled the Temple Mount. It was beautiful. And scary – are we fighting about obstacles to peace, or are we locked in a cycle of violence because we can’t bear to lose?

So, how do we “win”? In Israel, we’ve tried with military might – if they see how much stronger we are, they might just admit defeat and back off. They’ve tried with terror – if we don’t feel safe walking our own streets, maybe we’ll give in, pack up and leave. But these strategies don’t seem to be working. Humans are not wired to accept defeat.

The problem is, as we learned in Charlottesville and as we see here in Israel every day, we can’t win by causing our opponents to lose. To win, we need to rethink the rules and reconsider our objectives.

We also need to redefine our “opponents.” In the news, it’s whites against blacks, Palestinians against Israelis. But we don’t have to accept these categories. In Pittsburgh, you can find black and white, Jewish and Arab Steelers fans united against the New England Patriots. And, at the supermarket, it’s everyone against the jerk in the express line with more than 10 items, who we all want to clobber, regardless of race or religion. And, sometimes, admit it, we’re the jerk in that line.

God knows that none of His children are perfect, but He loves us all just the same. If God is anything like me (and I was created in His image), what could possibly please Him more than if His children could create a new game – a game in which everybody wins?

So, as we enter the last part of Elul, a month of self-reflection, let’s try to shake up the rules – to question what we know and what we think we want. Let’s convert some of our anger into curiosity. Let’s turn a few of our screaming chants into invitations. Not because we’re wrong to be angry or to protest, but because, if we can find each other’s humanity, perhaps we can change the game entirely.

Emily Singer is a teacher, social worker and freelance writer. Singer and her husband, Ross, were rebbetzin and rabbi of Vancouver’s Shaarey Tefilah congregation until 2004. The Singers spent two years in Jerusalem and then moved to Baltimore, Md., where Ross was rabbi at Congregation Beth Tfiloh and Emily taught Judaic studies at Beth Tfiloh High School, until they moved to Israel in 2010. They have four children.

Atheism has a long history

The title of a book review in Biblical Archaeology Review caught my eye, “Ancient atheism.” I read, “A common assumption is that atheism – a lack of belief in gods and the supernatural – is a recent phenomenon, brought on by the advent of science during the Enlightenment.” I ordered the book immediately: Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World by Tim Whitmarsh (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015).

Bumbling, staggering, veering and lurching: these are the words that come to mind when I think of my path towards a Jewish identity. As the product of a secular household, my only contact with Judaism was my brother’s bar mitzvah and a yearly Passover seder at a family friend’s home. I was born in 1939, the beginning of the Second World War, yet the word “Holocaust” was never mentioned during my childhood or adolescence. The topic of God was not broached. The exception to the rule was that my brother and I were sent for seven summers to a Jewish camp in the Adirondacks, in New York state. There, we became familiar with Friday night services, which included singing Jewish songs and a few prayers in Hebrew.

Fast forward to 1970, after 12 years of marriage, the birth of four sons and a sincere attempt at keeping a kosher home (it lasted three years), creating Passover seders and Chanukah parties and the decision to prepare our sons for bar mitzvahs, my husband and I divorced.

I enrolled immediately in courses at Concordia University. English and French literature introduced me to the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. This led to a bachelor’s in French literature, which was followed by many courses in a master’s program called The History and Philosophy of Religion.

My search was on. I was determined to find out what religiosity and devotion to God entailed. I studied Judaism (modern and medieval), Jewish mysticism, Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism. I wrote scholarly papers on these subjects. Later, I would take up the study of Modern Hebrew at McGill University. Upon moving to Vancouver, I studied Biblical Hebrew for three years and enrolled in the Judaic studies program at the University of British Columbia. Jewish law, Jewish ethics, Proto-Hebrew, I loved it all; but I was no closer to feeling comfortable during the High Holiday services at any synagogue.

I tried Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and Jewish Renewal congregations. I could not make that leap of faith required to pray to God. The secular humanist group had replaced Hebrew with Yiddish. I wanted my Hebrew! The result is that, every year, during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I felt uneasy, out-of-step and different.

I continued studying Modern Hebrew. I became editor of Jewish Seniors Alliance’s magazine, Senior Line. Studying, writing, volunteering and participating in the Jewish community were rewarding and gratifying activities, yet I felt like a second-class Jew. Was there something wrong with me?

Then along came Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World. As the May/June 2017 Biblical Archaeology Review notes, “In clear prose, Whitmarsh explores the history of atheism from its beginnings in ancient Greece in the eighth century BCE through the fourth century CE, when Christianity was adopted as the state religion of the Roman Empire. Whitmarsh says up-front that he is not interested in proselytizing atheism – but rather in studying its first thousand years. He argues that the history of atheism is an issue of human rights because denying the history of a tradition helps to delegitimize it and paint it as ‘faddish.’”

In reading this book, I came to understand, as Stephen Greenblatt is quoted on the back cover as saying, that “atheism is as old as belief. Skepticism did not slowly emerge from a fog of piety and credulity. It was there, fully formed and spoiling for a fight, in the bracing, combative air of ancient Athens.” And I agree with Susan Jacoby’s comments – also cited on the back cover – that it “is a pure delight to be introduced to people who questioned the supernatural long before modern science provided physical evidence to support the greatest insights of human reason.”

I devoured Battling the Gods, relishing the research and the historical insights. Homer’s epic poems of human striving, journeying and passion were ancient Greece’s only “sacred texts,” but no ancient Greek thought twice about questioning or mocking his stories of the gods. Whitmarsh states that “this book thus represents a kind of archaeology of religious skepticism.…This loss of consciousness of that classical heritage [the long history of atheism] is what has allowed the ‘modernist mythology’ to take root. It is only through profound ignorance of classical tradition that anyone ever believed that 18th-century Europeans were the first to battle the gods.”

Whitmarsh writes, “The Christianization of the Roman Empire put an end to serious philosophical atheism for over a millennium. The word itself, indeed, acquired an additional meaning, which was wholly negative: rather than the rational critique of theism as a whole, it came to mean simply the absence of belief in the Christian god.”

With Whitmarsh’s sentence, “The conclusion seems inevitable that the violent ‘othering’ as atheists of those who hold different religious views was overwhelmingly a Judeo-Christian creation,” my self-respect was restored. I now understand that I come from a longstanding tradition of atheists. My beliefs have history and credulity behind them. I will continue to study Hebrew, write, volunteer and participate in the Jewish community. In accepting my skepticism, I join the minds and hearts of the ancient Greek and Roman skeptics and atheists who came before me.

Dolores Luber, a retired psychotherapist and psychology teacher, is editor of Jewish Seniors Alliance’s Senior Line magazine and website (jsalliance.org). She blogs for yossilinks.com and writes movie reviews for the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library website.

Despair tempered by hope

On the Sabbath preceding the fast of Tisha b’Av, the ninth of the Hebrew month of Av, we read in our synagogues from Isaiah, and this reading is one of the three “Haftorahs of Rebuke.” The fast completes the cycle of the Jewish year and commemorates the destruction of the Temple in 586 BCE by the Babylonians and, 656 years later, on the same date, when the

Romans destroyed the Second Temple.

The prophet Isaiah, from whose book we read, was the son of Amos, a native of Jerusalem. He came from a respected family that moved in royal circles and was a prophet in Israel from 740 to 701 BCE. These were stirring years, for the kingdoms of Syria and Israel both fell to the Assyrians in 721 and only by a miracle was Jerusalem delivered from their grasp 20 years later. Isaiah brought the message of the holiness and sovereignty of God, seeking to interpret the crises of history in the light of Divine guidance.

On Tisha b’Av, we read from Lamentations and the writings of another prophet, Hosea. In describing Jerusalem, he wrote: “for their mother hath played the harlot … she that conceived them hath done shamefully….” (Hosea 11:7)

There is an interesting story connected with Hosea. He was married to a woman called Gomer, beautiful but faithless, who eventually ran off with one of her lovers, later becoming a slave and a concubine. Despite her degradation, Hosea continued to love her and bought her back from slavery. He did not take her back as his wife, but as a ward who he hoped would one day repent and be worthy of his protection.

During this period, Hosea had a strange awakening. He felt that this traumatic personal experience was symbolic of God’s love for Israel. The loving husband who had been abandoned by a faithless wife could be compared to God’s beneficence towards Israel, who repaid Him by worshipping the golden calf. God had redeemed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and made them His special people. Yet, instead of keeping their part of the covenant made at Mount Sinai with God, they adopted the idolatrous practices of the Canaanites, forsaking their God for heathen idols.

However, just as Hosea continued to feel love for Gomer, he realized that God’s love for His people would not change. Just as he did not despair that his wife would one day repent, he believed that God’s everlasting mercies also encompassed His sinning people and that their exile would lead to self-knowledge and a return to God.

When Hosea realized the similarity between his wife’s conduct and that of Israel, he felt that his marriage to Gomer had been preordained and was God’s way of speaking to him.

So, while we mourn the destruction of the Temple and the many tragedies that have befallen our people through history, we can still take comfort in the fact that God’s compassion is ever available to us when we truly repent. In Judaism, despair is always tempered by hope. Because of this, we conclude the Tisha b’Av reading with the words: “Turn us unto Thee O Lord, that we may be turned. Renew our days as of old.”

Dvora Waysman is a Jerusalem-based author. She has written 14 books, including The Pomegranate Pendant, which was made into a movie, and her latest novella, Searching for Sarah. She can be contacted at [email protected] or through her blog dvorawaysman.com.