spirituality – Page 2

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.

Chatting with my father’s G-d

I am 69 years old and I have been living with multiple sclerosis for the last 29 years. During that time, my disability has affected my spirituality, and vice versa.

I grew up with Orthodox Jewish maternal grandparents in the same house as my less-than-Orthodox parents. Spirituality is about love if it is about anything, and my earliest memories of spiritual experience are all tied up with my love for my grandfather and his for me.

I was very close to my grandfather, Shmuel (Samuel) Silberberg. He died when I was 12, but until then, for as long as I can remember, I sat with him in the synagogue in the rows closest to the ark. There was a sense of belonging – those old guys were connected. Looking back, it is funny that I had a strong sense of belonging where I definitely did not belong. Young girls were not wanted there. But my grandfather belonged, and it was clear to all that he thought I belonged with him. He was not argued with. Even my father, Moishe (Morris) Novik, sat with the other 50 regular guys in the middle toward the back. He sat where he belonged, which was not up front with me and the old guys.

After my grandfather died, there was no more sitting with the old guys in the synagogue. I got sent upstairs to sit with my mother and the rest of the women. It just wasn’t the same. There was one row of old women who had that aura of belonging, but the other women were chatting or moving around. My connection to Judaism drifted away.

Around 1978, I went to visit my parents in New York. To my chagrin, I realized that my children, ages 8 and 6, knew nothing about being Jewish and knew plenty about Christianity. Oops. If I didn’t give them a sense of being Jewish, our dominant Christian culture would move in. When I returned to Vancouver, I searched for a place our family would fit. For a single, lesbian, politically active welfare mother, this wasn’t easy. But the children and I persevered, and we found the Peretz Shul (officially the Peretz Centre), a progressive secular Jewish place of education and culture. Our Jewish identity was saved – we had an anchor. I came to see spirituality as the sense of belonging that I remembered and that I needed for my children. Every Sunday I took them to the Jewish school and, once a month, there was a potluck lunch following. The kids had secular bar and b’nai mitzvah, and all was well.

By 1988, the woods and physical movement were my spirituality. My son had moved out on his own and my daughter was staying with family in California, so I hiked, cross-country skied, and spent time in British Columbia’s backcountry. The woods and mountains were my holy places, my grounding and my anchor. I found it impossible to wander in the beauty and not feel in every fibre of my body that I was part of something so much bigger than I.

Enter primary progressive multiple sclerosis. In this type of MS, disability gets steadily worse, without pause or remission. And my world was – and is – turned upside down. In the midst of this chaos and uncertainty, where was my anchor now?

In 1989, I took a medical leave from the travel agency I owned and moved to an A-frame home on friends’ property in Mission, B.C. No electricity, no running water. I chopped lots of wood. My MS moved slowly. I could happily live in the bush while trying to sort out what it all meant. I was blessed to find a weekly aboriginal healing circle, through the Mission Indian Friendship Centre, that warmly welcomed and grounded me.

Back on the farm, I walked with the dogs to the waterfall and talked to G-d, the G-d who was and is very much my father’s G-d. He had a personal relationship with G-d and, as a kid, I learned from watching him. When we went to the cemetery, he chatted with his dad and mom. He would stand by their graves and have long, friendly conversations, and I would watch with awe how the talks were never solemn, just friendly and intimate. When he was done, he would always ask if I had anything to add. I would shake my head and he would smile. There was never any pressure that I should talk.

The important lesson I learned was that it is OK to talk to dead people. And they will listen – they are interested. I spoke about this lesson at my father’s funeral. When one of my children or I had a problem, some people would say, “I’ll pray for you.” My dad would say, “I’ll talk to my friend upstairs for you.” He was just a regular guy who spoke about his friend upstairs in the way he would talk about any neighbour. For me, as a child and even now, this relationship is soothing and comforting.

With the chaos that MS brings to my life, sometimes a breakthrough comes when I can step back from the insurmountable roadblocks and see them instead as stepping stones on my path. This is difficult for me. My first impulse is to kick, scream and deny every new loss. Yet it is crucial to see the stepping stones so I can move forward. I remember that from hiking.

In 1990, I was back on my porch in Vancouver and missing the aboriginal healing circle. I thought, “Wait, I have my own ritual.” Around this time, my son, who had just become a father, said, “Mom, it’s time to go to synagogue.” And I said, “I know where to go.” We went to Or Shalom, where I found much grounding and a sense of community. I told a friend at Or Shalom that I hadn’t been to synagogue in 30 years. She just said, “Welcome home.” And home it was to me, my son and my granddaughter. Over the years, people have asked, “How did you manage to get your son to come to synagogue?” And I tell them it was his idea.

A few years later, in 1994, I wanted a way back to the woods. I had heard of therapeutic horseback riding, and I thought that, with the horses, I could get there. My first lesson, just 10 minutes of riding, felt great. I was convinced that this was going to sort out my hip joints, legs and back. That happened, and the surprise was that my soul and psyche were also woken up. I always felt like I had just done something grand. I, who don’t often feel proud of myself, suddenly felt quite proud for getting on this obstinate horse, Brew. He was an elderly, beautiful chestnut gelding. But strong-willed, like me. Before I got on a horse, I would always have a minute where I thought, I am insane to climb all the way up there. But, as soon as I got up there, I felt wonderfully alive. The day I rode Visteria, a big 16-hand chestnut mare with an amazingly smooth walk, it was like gliding along on top of the world. My hips unlocked and I felt my spirit rising.

For a few years, those horses were my anchor, my connection and my strength. Riding gave me back the joy of moving. I began to realize again how much my sense of spirituality was connected to physical movement. Hiking, long walks, swimming and horseback riding put me in a place where I could be connected to G-d, where I could feel myself part of a larger whole. But, with MS, there was one loss after another. I went through several aids: cane, then walker, then scooter, then horses.

Before the MS diagnosis and the losses in mobility, did I talk to G-d? Not much. The first conversations I remember happened in my year in Mission, during my daily hikes to the waterfall, with G-d and the dogs my daily company.

Now, with my mobility much more compromised, I still find G-d time where I can. The conversations now centre on “meaning.” What does this new life mean? What am I supposed to be doing? And so often G-d answers, “Go write.” I complain about the endless health maintenance that leaves so short a day, and G-d answers, as she always has, “Go write.”

Can I say exactly where spirituality is in my life and what it means for me? I am still a tad confused. Primary progressive MS slowly and persistently takes stuff away, so, in the 29 years of the illness, I have reinvented myself over and over and over again. The long hikes are just a memory, and I don’t often get out of my house to my synagogue anymore. Now that my physical movement is so limited, will I find a way to grow more spiritually?

Still, when I need spiritual guidance, I ask my father to talk to his friend upstairs. My father smiles and says, “You can talk yourself now, you know.” We both know that I do have my own conversations. But I still like using him as my go-between.

Ellen Frank was a writer, activist, mother, grandmother and retired travel agent, author of Sticks and Wheels: A Guide to Accessible Travel on the Lower Sunshine Coast (Ouzel Publishing, 2006), Taking the Reins (Kindle, 2011) and several articles published in anthologies and in periodicals, including the Jewish Independent. She lived with primary progressive multiple sclerosis from 1988 to her death in January 2017.

Inspiring Jewish connection

The recent Toronto Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project group in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. (photo from Nicole Pollak)

In its flagship program, Momentum, the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project (JWRP) provides Jewish women and men, typically mothers and fathers, with a free journey throughout Israel (airfare is not included).

The trips – the women’s and men’s trips are separate – are designed for people who are not shomer Shabbat (Shabbat observant). As well, 90% of participants must have children at home under the age of 18, and participants must be physically and emotionally healthy.

Rebbetzin Lori Palatnik founded JWRP in 2008. Since then, it has become an international initiative bringing thousands of women and hundreds of men to Israel each year from 19 different countries.

“The goal is that the women have 10 incredible, uplifting, inspirational days together … and then go home and bring that back to their families and communities,” said Toby Bernstein of the Chabad Romano Centre in Richmond Hill, Ont.

Bernstein led a group of women on the program in December 2016, noting, “We decided to do this trip to encourage some of the women in our community to be more connected to Judaism.”

Bernstein took with her 10 women, “women who come to synagogue services, a couple Hebrew school moms [and] a couple preschool moms.”

These women joined 250 others from the United States, Canada, Russia, Greece and England.

“It was an inspirational trip, because there were classes every day [about] what it means to be a Jewish mom, a Jewish wife, to be a Jew altogether … what’s the purpose of life,” said Bernstein. “It got a lot of people thinking, so it was inspirational. Even me, who grew up with all of this, grew from [the trip] and gained new insight, new inspiration…. It was beautiful to see the women growing and taking it all in.”

One of the participants was Nicole Pollak, a business owner in Toronto along with her husband, Aaron; the couple has a 3-year-old, Sydney.

Pollak went on the trip with both of her sisters after her younger sister, Melissa Jacks, who sends her children to the Chabad Romano Centre, was invited to join by Bernstein.

“My sister came to me and said that Chabad Romano is going to be running a JWRP trip and asked if me and our older sister, Allyson Theodorou, were interested in going,” said Pollak. “We applied, and all three of us went on this trip together.

photo - Left to right, sisters Allyson Theodorou, Nicole Pollak and Melissa Jacks during a tour of the Old City, outside Jaffa Gate — Left to right, sisters Allyson Theodorou, Nicole Pollak and Melissa Jacks during a tour of the Old City, outside Jaffa Gate. *(photo by Megan Epstein)*

“We thought it would be an amazing experience to do this together, and to learn more about Judaism and Israel,” she said. “And I, personally, have been studying with a rabbi for about eight years. So, I really liked the idea that it was an educational trip to teach us more and give us more insight into Judaism and the religion, and thought it was a good opportunity to get some Jewish inspiration.”

Before leaving, Pollak had to do what she could to ready her daughter for her absence. “From an emotional standpoint, preparing my daughter that I was going to be away for that amount of time was very difficult for a 3-year-old,” said Pollak. “I don’t think she has a concept of time – 10 days, for her, could be 10 hours, 10 minutes or 10 weeks … [so it was hard to tell] her that I’m going away and what that means and that I’ll be calling her every day. Preparing for the trip on my end, it was not really that difficult. It was just a matter of packing and organizing.”

Pollak’s husband was very supportive of her going on the trip. When Pollak became anxious about leaving, it was her husband who helped push her through it.

“There were a couple of times where I contemplated whether I was even going to go. I thought it was going to be too stressful for the family for me to be gone,” said Pollak. “My husband was the one who said, ‘I support you whether you want to go or if you don’t want to go, but I’d be very disappointed if you didn’t go. I think that would teach our daughter we don’t do things because we’re afraid, instead of showing her to do what we want – to learn, to have an adventure or explore life. He was pushing me to go because he thought it would be an incredible opportunity to go to Israel, learn and spend that time with my sisters.”

From the moment Pollak arrived at the airport, she could feel the camaraderie of the women traveling, all with similar feelings about leaving home, and she began focusing on the trip and getting as much out of it as she could.

Each day of the program in Israel involved one or two discussions, lectures, lessons and classes, sightseeing and tours, and the opportunity to see something cultural or religious in the region. For Pollak, the learning was the best part of the experience.

“One of the things we learned was that there are three major mitzvot for a Jewish woman: lighting Shabbat candles, making challah and going to the mikvah,” she explained. “We had the opportunity to light Shabbat candles and to participate in a challah-making class. And, on our visit to Tzfat, we visited a mikvah and had a tour.

“One of the things they talked about is, if you’re a secular Jewish woman and you don’t have a lot of religion in your life, you should start with lighting Shabbat candles. My older sister, Allyson, had never lit Shabbat candles in her house in her whole life and she’s been married 18 years. In Israel, she bought Shabbat candles and, last Friday night was the first time ever she lit them in her house. That’s pretty amazing.”

As for challah-making, the sisters have committed to getting together sometimes on Friday nights and making challah for Shabbat. As for the mikvah mitzvah, Pollak plans to investigate it more before deciding whether she wants to make it a part of her life.

With respect to the sightseeing, visiting the Kotel was a major highlight for Pollak, especially after having had a class about prayer before going in a spot overlooking the wall.

“I heard a lot of people saying … they don’t know how to pray, they don’t know what that means,” said Pollak. “People will often go to the wall and pray for world peace or for their entire family to be happy or healthy. They pray for these big things because they think that, when you talk to G-d, that’s what you ask for – big things.

“Something they emphasized in that class was that praying is not about just big things, it’s about little things, too; it’s that we should pray about everything. You can pray that you want your little son Johnny to do well on his math test. You can pray that you hope that your daughter wins that award, or that next week your haircut is going to be great. The message was, pray for what’s important to you.”

photo - Nicole Pollak at Eretz Bereshit, overlooking the Judean Desert — Nicole Pollak at Eretz Bereshit, overlooking the Judean Desert. *(photo by Allyson Theodorou)*

Another class that hit home for Pollak was one about judgment and perspective. In it, a story was shared that she has been telling people ever since. It was about a little girl who is standing in the kitchen with her mom, holding two bright red apples, one in each hand.

“She says to her mother, ‘Mommy, do you want one of my apples?’” said Pollak. “The mother says, ‘Yes, I do.’ So, the little girl proceeds to take a bite of one apple and then takes another bite from the other apple. The mother stops and thinks to herself, ‘Oh, you little brat.’ Then, the little girl puts her hand out to her mother and says, ‘Here, Mom. This one is sweeter.’

“That story really hit home and depicted that we judge based on what we see and not on what really is. I realized that it’s easy for us to judge based on what we think is happening. That story took me through the trip and really made me stop in my tracks every time I looked at someone or if I heard a story and judged what was going on with that person.”

Once back in Toronto, Pollak thanked G-d for the life that she has. She also discovered that her husband, mother-in-law and friends really stepped up and looked after her life while she was away. Her husband, she said, “appreciated me more, just like I appreciated him more when I came back.”

As a result of the trip, Pollak has decided to find ways to live her life with more intention and more appreciation for her marriage, focusing on the positive things in her life, as well as understanding the responsibilities of being a Jewish woman in one’s home.

“I think coming back made me realize that I have a responsibility bigger than I thought from a spiritual standpoint and that I’m going to live and work to do more of that,” she said.

A Vancouver JWRP group is being formed under the auspices of Vancouver Torah Learning Centre for a July 17-24 trip to Israel. For more information, contact Devorah Brody via e-mail at [email protected] or visit jwrp.org.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

For the love of G-d and man

Our Bible, according to my estimation, tells us repetitively to love G-d. How can we comply with this mandate? I love my wife, kids, a few highly select friends who owe me money, even the cat. And I love lamb chops with garlic and lemon. But my Creator and Judge? There’s an inter-dimensional enigma here. An emotional warp. How can it be?

photo - James Henry Leigh Hunt by Samuel Laurence (1817–1884) — James Henry Leigh Hunt by Samuel Laurence (1817–1884). *(photo from National Portrait Gallery NPG 2508 via Wikimedia Commons)*

Strangely, Leigh Hunt, an English poet who probably never met a Jew, answered the question with a Jewish slant. He was a Londoner who lived 2,000 miles west of Chassidism’s headquarters in Poland. He was an aristocratic Englishman who, unlike his Polish contemporaries, wore a frock coat and did his best work on the Sabbath. He was a good Episcopalian, but somehow saw the world through Jewish eyes. The poet, in an inspired mood, wrote a work of 18 short lines, singing the same love-thy-neighbor theme that’s in our prayer book. Unintentionally, it is a very Jewish poem: an angel alights in the room of Abou Ben Adhem, an exemplary soul who:

“… saw within the moonlight in his room
making it rich like a lily in bloom.
An angel writing in a book of gold
the names of those who love the Lord.”

Abou Ben Adhem, in a flash, sits up in his bed only half-awake, but alert enough to know that his visitor is not his cousin from Cincinnati. Am I in your golden book, he wants to know. (“Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold.”) The angel sadly shakes his head.

But the man with a heart for humanity is not disheartened. “Well,” he says, “put me down as one who loves his fellow man.”

The angel notes the words of Abou Ben Adhem and disappears. Next night, he’s back in the dim bedroom “with a great wakening light” and his fateful list of those who love the Lord. “And lo, Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.”

Loving your fellow man is like loving G-d, an insight initially proclaimed by our Tanach.

I’ve heard it said that the hardest part of being a good Jew is loving your fellow man. Now I didn’t originate that – it’s probably in the Talmud or maybe in the Tanach from some bitter prophet like Jeremiah. But, sadly, it’s true. Didn’t G-d Himself tell us we’re a stiff-necked people? Easy-going, sweet, lovable people don’t cure polio, don’t split the atom and don’t win Nobel prizes. They’re too busy displaying their love. There’s some furnace running in the core of great people that keeps them from election as most popular kid in school or fraternity/sorority presidency. You wouldn’t have enjoyed a beer and a bowl of pretzels with Einstein. Your Uncle Louie was probably much better at small talk.

In all the English vocabulary, the hardest word to define is love. It has no synonym, only antonyms. It thinly communicates when it describes our relationship with our fellow creatures, even the four-legged ones. But it miserably fails to describe our feeling to our Creator, even though I count the mandate more than 150 times in the Tanach.

In nature, love flows down, not up. A river originating in a mountain peak flows down to water the animal and plant life at its base. I’m convinced that parents, especially mothers, love their children more than kids love their parents. Survival of the species demands it. Our limited human understanding comes closest to defining divine love by loving our fellow human creatures. And, while we’re talking about love and G-d and man and English poets, let me remind you of Alexander Pope, another famous English Bard. He’s clearly on my side: “The proper study of mankind is man,” he says. “Presume not G-d to scan,” which to my understanding says the Creator lies beyond our telescopes.

What is love? We understand friendship. We know all about lust. We understand why your heart glows when your wife makes kreplach in chicken soup, your favorite. And even closer to your emotional warmth is the sensation of holding in your arms your newborn child. But words fail when we try to cozy up to the Lord. There is awe, respect and reverence, but love?

I’ve never met anyone who loved G-d and could explain that exotic emotion. It cannot be expressed any more than a fish expresses his love for water, his medium. Maybe the prophets and Leigh Hunt were on to something. Love thy fellow man. That, itself, is an awesome challenge. But may be the only road to the celestial palace.

Ted Roberts is a freelance writer and humorist living in Huntsville, Ala. His website is wonderwordworks.com.

Meditating mindfully

Or Shalom is hosting one of the leading innovators in the field of Jewish meditation next weekend – Rabbi Jeff Roth of the Awakened Heart Project will lead a half-day retreat at the synagogue on Dec. 4.

Roth, who has been practising and teaching meditation for decades, teaches his own synthesis of Eastern techniques with a Jewish heart, which he calls Jewish mindfulness meditation.

Rabbi Jeff Roth of the Awakened Heart Project will lead a half-day retreat at Or Shalom on Dec. 4. (photo from Jeff Roth)

“I was already a rabbi when I started studying Asian meditation,” he explained. “Everything I learned, I learned through a Jewish lens. I never took on a practice without altering it slightly.”

When asked if anyone has objected to his synthesis of Jewish spirituality with Asian contemplative techniques, the rabbi said, “What I integrate is the truth of the nature of mind and no one has any objection to that. I ask questions like, What is the influence of conceptual thinking on the mind? What are the effects of different thoughts?”

Roth teaches a type of meditation that involves experiencing the mind and body with a healing, nonjudgmental awareness. It is rooted in the mindfulness movement first brought to North America in the 1970s, which has steadily grown in popularity, even finding a significant place in new medical treatments and corporate environments. And Jews have played a large role in the movement, demonstrated by leading teachers like Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Jon Kabat-Zinn and others.

Drawn to the mystical teachings of Judaism as a young rabbi, Roth said they remained “intellectual” for him until he began practising meditation. “In the quiet, in the silence, I became a mystic,” he said. “It became a direct experiential realization.”

Among his students now are many rabbis. “I teach rabbis they need to come to the silence, the witnessing, to have a deeper spiritual experience,” said Roth, referring to the practice of “just witnessing” that characterizes mindfulness meditation. By just witnessing thoughts, feelings and sensations, say its exponents, mindfulness meditation calms the body and mind and allows deeper, non-conceptual awareness of experience. “From a Jewish perspective, ‘just witnessing’ is not enough, however,” he said. “You need to be the compassionate witness.”

Roth said he draws his central inspirations from the teachings of the Chassidic masters, especially the Baal Shem Tov – Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, 1698-1760, founder of the Chassidic movement.

“The Baal Shem Tov said ‘everything is God and nothing but God,’” Roth explained. “The whole thing to do is to align ourselves with the truth of being, which in the Torah is expressed as ‘ein od milvado’ (‘there is nothing else besides God’).”

A turning point in Roth’s development came in 1981 when he received teachings from Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement, which became the scaffolding of his theology of contemplation.

“Reb Zalman taught me about the four worlds, or levels of manifestation, that occur within the Holy One of Being,” said Roth. The contemplation of how the four levels of manifestation happen in our minds and bodies can guide our mindful exploration of experience, he said. “The four worlds have become a central metaphor in my teaching. I have been working out that teaching for the last 35 years.”

book cover - Me, Myself and God Roth’s latest iteration of that “working out” can be seen in his recent book, Me, Myself and God: A Jewish Theology of Mindfulness (Jewish Lights, 2016), from which he will be presenting practices and Torah teachings at the Dec. 4 session.

“We’re trying to understand the fundamental forces that alienate us in our experience of life, in order that we might live more from a place of awakened heart, which is connected to all experience and allows us to manifest with more love and compassion in our daily lives,” said Roth. “I want to emphasize that acting with love and compassion – that’s where we’re going with the whole thing.”

For more information on the retreat, which will take place from 2:30-5:45 p.m., and be followed by a potluck meal, visit orshalom.ca.

Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He writes regularly for the Forward and All That Is Interesting, and has been published in Religion Dispatches, Situate Magazine, Tikkun and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.

Unique rabbinical road

Sandra Lawson is studying at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. (photo from Sandra Lawson)

Sandra Lawson, an African-American lesbian who converted to Judaism after being raised in a secular home, is now studying to be a rabbi at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, in Wyncote, Penn.

Born in St. Louis, Mo., Lawson’s dad was in the military, so the family moved around a lot, though mainly stayed in the Midwest. Her dad was a military recruiter and career counselor.

“My dad was raised a Christian, but I really had no religious upbringing when I was a child,” Lawson told the Independent. “I knew about Jesus, and we would occasionally get invited to church, but there really was no religion in our house.

“On my mom’s side, we had a back story of an ancestor who was Jewish. Like folklore, it really meant very little to me until I started on this Jewish path myself.”

This path began when Lawson was an undergraduate student and needed another class to graduate. The only course available at the time was one on the Hebrew Bible, which Christians refer to as the Old Testament. The teacher was a Christian academic from Kenya.

“When I got to the class, the teacher told everyone they needed to get a Bible for the class,” said Lawson. “But, he said to not get a King James version, as, he said, it’s a bad translation.

“This class opened my mind a little bit to the Bible as a piece of literature. He made the Bible acceptable for me. It wasn’t a book to be feared. Years later, I have a Jewish girlfriend and her sister invites me for Shabbat dinner. I thought, I like this. It’s really cool. I shared with my girlfriend at the time that an early ancestor was Jewish, but that I know nothing about Judaism.”

From that first Shabbat dinner, Lawson went to her girlfriend’s family home every Friday night.

“They weren’t Orthodox,” said Lawson. “They were just a modern family that would stop everything for Shabbat. It was really cool. I loved the ritual. I loved how open the family was. I loved how they accepted and treated me.”

Around this time, Lawson met Rabbi Joshua Lesser of the Reconstructionist Congregation Bet Haverim in Atlanta. Lesser hired Lawson as his personal trainer and, over the course of the two or three years she worked in that capacity, their friendship evolved and he invited her to his shul.

“I was hesitant,” admitted Lawson. “I shared with him the story of my great-grandfather. Eventually, I did go and I fell in love with the community – not necessarily Judaism, at the time – but I loved the community. That’s how I got interested.

“I started going to services regularly. The community has straight people, gay people and kids but, mostly, it is a space where I felt like I could be myself – something I’d never experienced before in a religious community.”

Lawson went on to learn more about Judaism and, in 2003, she told Lesser she was thinking about converting. In the conversion classes she took, the teacher helped her see a broader view of Judaism.

“I loved the class,” said Lawson. “I loved learning about the Jewish calendar and reading the Bible again, as a piece of literature. I loved learning about Jewish history.”

After about a year of studies, the class was over. And, on Oct. 13, 2006 – the day before her 35th birthday – she converted to Judaism.

Lesser asked Lawson to be a congregational representative on the board for the gay members of the synagogue. A year later, when gay marriage was a hot topic in the presidential election debate, Lawson took her stance a bit further.

“It was sort of funny, because I didn’t know anyone in my gay life who was even thinking about trying to change marriage laws,” she said. “We were all just happy that we could be legally gay. Josh [Lesser] asked if I wanted to join the gay and lesbian task force, as they were coming to Atlanta to do some training. I was like, sure. And he’s like, the good thing about it is, they need more diversity. They need more black and brown voices on these issues.”

Lawson later joined a clergy-based group working on the issue. This group, according to Lawson, was all over the map as far as sexual orientation and most everything. But, what they did agree on was that the state had no business legislating what you did behind your own closed doors.

“The more I started to do volunteer work, the more I realized I wanted to have a more powerful effect, more ability to effect change … that I would need the title of rabbi … and here we are today, as I work on becoming one,” said Lawson.

“Obviously, I’m different. There aren’t a lot of rabbis that look like me. I think being on the edge of the fringes of Judaism allows me to be more flexible or more creative in the things I do.”

One of the required classes that Lawson took last year was on entrepreneurship and thinking outside of the box. During that time, she was approached by the Jewish owner of a local vegan café she went to often, asking if she would be willing to lead services at the café on Friday evenings.

“I went back to class and told my teacher about it,” said Lawson. “I wrote it up as a grant … so I had the grant to lead services at this Lansdale café (outside Philadelphia).”

They have been running services at the café for months now. Every Friday, Lawson shows up with two vegan challot and grape juice. Arnold (the café owner) sets up the place and invites friends and customers to stay for the service.

“Every time, we’ve had at least a minyan,” said Lawson. “It’s been a lot of fun. People can show up as they are, with their sandals, their shorts. We sing. We do a little Torah and welcome the Shabbat.

“People come because they want to see what’s happening in the café … I think it was last week, Arnold had a flautist there, and people came to hear this guy play the flute. Also, I think, in May, there was a couple there who were not Jewish, but they had been taking a Christian class on Judaism. The class was finished, they saw this service and came to learn more about Judaism.”

Next on Lawson’s mind is leading services outside. “I don’t know how I’m going to pull it off yet,” she said. “Right now, I’m in this stage of trying to get a lot of buzz around different ways that people can do Shabbat.

“My dream, I don’t know when it will happen, is to have a Shabbat morning service in the future, in a park. I’m someone who, I see God in nature a lot. To be running in the woods, when the sun is coming up, is the best way for me to pray in the morning. I know a lot of people could connect their Judaism to nature. I haven’t quite figured it out yet, but I hope to.”

Lawson is set to graduate rabbinical school in 2018.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Affirming transgender rights

Citing both changing social practice and traditional Jewish values, the international association of Conservative rabbis passed a resolution on May 22 calling on Jewish institutions and government agencies to embrace the full equality of transgendered people.

The Rabbinical Assembly’s Resolution Affirming the Rights of Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People begins, “Whereas our Torah asserts that all humanity is created b’tzelem Elohim, in God’s divine image….” It discusses historical evidence of “non-binary gender expression” in Jewish texts dating back to the third-century Mishnah. It calls on synagogues, camps, schools and other institutions affiliated with the Conservative movement to meet the needs of transgender people and to use the names and pronouns that people prefer. It also encourages Conservative institutions to advocate for national and local policies on behalf of transgender people. In light of its passing, the Jewish Independent spoke with several local rabbis from across denominations about the resolution and about transgender inclusivity in their communities.

“The statement feels comprehensive and as positive and embracing as it should be,” said Rabbi Hannah Dresner of Or Shalom, which is part of the Jewish Renewal movement. “We need always to try to get to the heart of what the halachah (Jewish law) and the mitzvot are trying to do for us. The way they were concretized in another century does not limit them for all time. Halachah is a process. I think it is beautiful when any part of the community pulls up a chair at table and says we are participating in the ongoing evolution of halachah. This is at the heart of what it means to continually create Torah, to turn Torah over and over, to continually participate in the exchange between the Holy One and human beings, which is God giving the written Torah and our response by taking it in and answering in the voice of our humanness. This is at the heart of what the halachic process is and should be in any sphere.”

LGBTQ people are fully welcomed at Or Shalom, and people are called to the Torah by their preferred gender identification. Or Shalom is currently working on infrastructural and ritual changes to be more explicitly and fully inclusive of LGBTQ people in all spheres. “There are alternatives that are easy and sweet,” said Dresner. “We just have to do our work.”

When asked what he thought of the Conservative resolution, Rabbi Dan Moscovitz of Temple Sholom, a Reform congregation, replied with typical humor: “Great, welcome to the party.” He said he views the resolution as a return to the deep values of the tradition, not a departure. “This is at the core of who we are commanded to be as human beings – to find the tzelem Elohim (image of God) inside of each individual and to not be confused or distracted by outside appearances, generalizations or labels,” he said.

The resolution is largely the same as that passed by the Reform movement in November 2015. As early as 1965, the Women of Reform Judaism called for the decriminalization of homosexuality. In 1977, Reform’s Central Conference of American Rabbis adopted a resolution calling for legislation decriminalizing homosexual acts between consenting adults, and an end to discrimination against gays and lesbians. In the late 1980s, the primary seminary of the Reform movement, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, changed its admission requirements to allow openly gay and lesbian people to join the student body. In 1990, gay and lesbian rabbis were officially affirmed and, in 1996, so were same-sex civil unions. In 2000, a resolution followed fully affirming sanctified Jewish unions for same-sex couples and, in 2003, there was a resolution affirming the full acceptance of trans- and bisexual people, a stance confirmed and elaborated in the 2015 resolution.

“We have trans members, both adults and children, who we embrace and welcome fully,” said Moscovitz. “We call up to the Torah by preferred gender and gender-neutral pronouns which are present on our gabai [person who calls people to the Torah] sheet…. All bathrooms are multi-gendered or non-gendered.”

Moskovitz cited the case of a bar mitzvah boy who now identifies as a female and was offered a mikvah ritual as a transitional symbol, as well as a new Hebrew name and the reissue of the bar mitzvah certificate as a bat mitzvah.

The Conservative movement has been slower to change its position on LGBTQ sexuality than the Reform. In 1990, the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS), which sets halachic policy for the movement, stated their desire to “work for full and equal civil rights for gays and lesbians in our national life.” Nevertheless, the CJLS maintained a ban on homosexual conduct, the ordination of homosexuals as rabbis and same-sex marriage unions until 2006, when LGBTQ people were first admitted for rabbinical ordination; in 2012, the Israeli Masorti (Conservative) movement followed suit. In 2012, the CJLS allowed same-sex marriages, with the U.K. Masorti movement following in 2014. The 2016 resolution is a milestone for the Conservative movement.

Rabbi Jonathan Infeld of Congregation Beth Israel, which is part of the Conservative movement, applauds the new document. “Kevod ha’ briyot [the dignity of all created beings, cited in the CJLS resolution] is very important…. For me, the over-arching concept of respecting all human beings and making them feel welcome, bringing them into the Jewish community is vitally important and is the keystone of the resolution.”

Infeld said the resolution is an expression of foundational Jewish values. “It is critically important to recognize the humanity and holiness of every person and that’s the essence of the resolution,” he said.

Beth Israel has private, non-gender-specific washrooms available, and calls to the Torah for an aliyah are done on the basis of the gender with which the person identifies, he noted. “We don’t loudly announce our stance so much as we are very happy to have trans and gay people in our synagogue as a natural part of the social fabric of our shul, by being warm and welcoming to everyone who walks in the door,” he said.

Speaking to the JI only days after the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub, Infeld said, “The Orlando massacre is another reminder of the need to fight discrimination on every level and recognize the humanity of every person.”

Unlike non-Orthodox denominations, Orthodox Jews maintain traditional rabbinic stances against homosexual conduct, and behaviors such as cross-dressing or identifying with a gender aside from one’s birth gender. Nevertheless, there are a number of Orthodox rabbis and Jewish groups that are openly LGBTQ and/or call for greater inclusivity in Orthodox communities. And, in recent years, a number of Orthodox statements have been issued – mostly from within the Modern Orthodox world but also from others – calling for the expression of love, support and inclusion of LGBTQ people without condoning LGBTQ behaviors.

“We do not judge anyone here,” said Chabad Rabbi Shmulik Yeshayahu of Ohel Ya’akov Community Kollel. “We love and welcome everyone. We follow the Orthodox halachah that the Torah only allows union between a man and a woman, but gay, lesbian and transgender people are welcomed in our community and no one will judge them or condemn them. We do not ask questions about people’s behavior or police them. We love people, and we do not make everything they do or don’t do our business. We have had and do have gay and lesbian couples here and, in the past, even one Orthodox gay couple, and they were not judged, no one is saying anything to them. Everyone is welcome here.”

Matthew Gindin is a Vancouver freelance writer and journalist. He blogs on spirituality and social justice at seeking her voice (hashkata.com) and has been published in the Forward, Tikkun, Elephant Journal and elsewhere. He has written more on the Rabbinical Assembly resolution on forward.com (“Jewish values tell us to back equality for transgender people – it’s in the Torah”), medium.com (“Repentance in the wake of Orlando”) and hashkata.com (“All a horrible mistake: The Bible’s supposed condemnation of homosexuality”).