This is a short post to say that I will be away for the next five days in Columbus, OH, at the Aleph kallah. I hope I’ll see some of you there! (If you want to attend, mention my name and you’ll get $75 off!). I’m also writing to tell everyone to trust. Why? Because we teach what we need most to learn.
I’ve been in New York City for the last two weeks with my son while he attend the American Ballet Theatre summer intensive. Last week he was exhausted and dehydrated. So, I’m worried about leaving him with someone else this week. I need to trust that he will be okay. I need to place him in God’s hands and trust that all will be well. I need to trust that there is good reason for me to go to the kallah. This year I even have a sponsor paying for me to be there, so I have to trust that there is a reason for that as well.
So, today, this short post is about trusting…in God…in a plan…in the fact that it is all working out as it is supposed to…that all is well…that all will be well. Just trust.
Today while I was on Twitter, I watched video someone posted called “How Jews Pray.” I found it very interesting.
(Wait for the commercial to end and you’ll be able to watch the WeJew.com video.)
I’ve often thought about how we, as Jews, pray…or how anyone, for that matter, prays. Most religions have prescribed prayers, those written out for us, that we recite on certain occasions, such as when someone dies, during a wedding, or during morning or evening prayers. We may also have specific prayers we say or read during church or synagogue services. And then we have personal prayers, those we simply create on the spot with words formed from emotions born in the heart. These tend to represent an outpouring of the soul and may have elements of traditional prayers but are more often simply stated in our normal spoken language.
The question then becomes, does God hear us no matter how we pray? Or does God hear us better - more loudly and clearly - when we pray in one form or the other? One person in the video mentions that traditional prayers were written by someone else, therefore, they might not really offer “up” the words of our own hearts.
I think that sometimes the prescribed, traditional prayers offer us a nice “form” for our prayers. They are known and easy to use. If we can fill them with meaning and spirit, thus making them meaning-full and spirit-full, then they work for us. If not, then we need to use a more personal form of prayer. (Or we can use both depending on the situation, perhaps.)
I like to use Rebbe Nachman of Breslov’s form of prayer. He taught that people should go out into the fields and walk and talk to God. He called this ‘hitbodedut.’ This Hebrew word means “self-seclusion,” and basically involves time alone talking to God in an unstructured, spontaneous, and individualized manner about your deepest concerns, the things you appreciate, your frustrations, what makes you happy, etc. Rebbe Nachman felt that nothing was too mundane to discuss with God during hitbodedut. You can talk about work, money, relationships, desires, your behavior and motivations, struggles to correct character flaws, how to achieve your human potential, your efforts at personal growth, your goals for the future, your sense that you cannot connect with God. You talk to God intimately and informally, like a friend to a friend or a child to a parent. Rebbe Nachman’s primary disciple, Rabbi Nosson said, that since we are all children of God, (Deuteronomy 14:1), “It is good to express your thoughts and troubles to God like a child complaining and pestering his father.”
Rebbe Nachman taught that the best place for hitbodedut is in the forests or fields; I often combine this prayer practice or time with a daily walk. He said, “When a person meditates in the fields, all the grasses join in his prayer and increase its effectiveness and power.”He also suggested practicing hitbodedut in the middle of the night, when our worldly desires tend to be at rest.
When I consider how we should pray for our prayers to be heard, I always remember one story that speaks to the fact that the most important thing about prayers is the kavanah, or intention, with which we say them. So, let me relate that story to you:
There was a shepherd who sat on a rock and prayed every day while his sheep grazed. He prayed in the only way he knew. He would say such things as: “God, I love you so much that if I had only one loaf of bread, I would give it to you. God, I love you so much that if it were raining, I would give you my raincoat.”
One day a rabbi came along and heard the shepherd praying. He stopped the poor man and said, “You are not praying correctly. Let me teach you how to pray.” Eager to be able to pray in a way that could be heard by God, the shepherd spent the day learning the prayers the rabbi taught him. In the evening the rabbi went away and left the shepherd alone.
The next morning, the shepherd sat down on his rock and opened his mouth to pray in the way the rabbi had taught him, but he had already forgotten the words of the prayers. Try as he might, the words would not come to him, so he sat silently on his rock and never prayed again.
After a few days, God noticed that he no longer heard the shepherd’s prayers. He asked several of his angels to go down to Earth and discover what had happened to stop the shepherd from reciting his daily prayers. When they found him sitting silently on his rock, they asked him why he no longer prayed. Shocked that God had even noticed that he was not praying - that God had even heard his initial prayers - he answered, “A rabbi told me the correct way to pray. I didn’t want to pray incorrectly, and I believed that God would not hear my prayers if I did not recite them with the right words.”
The angels looked at each other and smiled. “We are going to make an exception for you,” they said, “and allow you to see and hear a little of what goes on in Heaven. Come with us.” And with that they took him by the arms and took him to where God sat surrounded by angels. “Listen to how the angels pray to God,” they instructed the shepherd.
To his amazement, he heard the angels saying, ”God, I love you so much that if I had only one loaf of bread, I would give it to you. God, I love you so much that if it were raining, I would give you my raincoat.”
The moral of the story is clear: No matter how you pay, if you pray with a true desire to connect with God and out of love for God and from your heart, the words don’t matter. (And, yes, there are many more stories like this, such as those where people simply recite the Hebrew alphabet, that show the importance of intention. This is just one I happen to like a lot.) So, choose your own words or those written down for you by someone else. They all work if you fill them with meaning and spirit.
I’m a firm believer that things happen for a reason. That’s a hard concept to get your mind around when something bad happens just when thins are gong well, like when my son’s friend has graduated from high school and then has a long board accident that causes her to end up in a coma just as she should be getting ready to go off to college. Or when after just one week in New York City with my son, who is attending a summer ballet intensive for six weeks, I slip and fall on the steps outside our apartment and twist my knee making it hard for me to walk — which is what I do most in the city.
Usually I look for symbolism first: Hmmm. Left knee. Knees, or joints, are about willingness to move forward and flexible attitudes. The left side is the feminine side. This makes me wonder if I’m afraid to make the decision to go with a new agent who has agreed to represent me. This means change and the possibility of actually getting to write my books — to use my creative nature — and to succeed.
Or maybe it’s about anger. I was angry when I fell. Maybe I have to learn not to be so angry. And I need to learn to accept my situation, one with which I’m not so happy at the moment. (My son and I were arguing about our living arrangements.) I need to appreciate what we do have — an affordable place to say, good health, each other, the chance for him to dance and learn and grow.
Maybe, if I haven’t done any major damage to my knee, I’ll be forced to go to a gym and work out to strengthen my legs and the rest of my body. I had started to work out last week, but I didn’t really want to continue. I was balking…and I really do need to get in shape. Maybe this will force me to do so, create a great opportunity to do so.
Some might say I just simply got hurt. It’s possible, that something just happened…no rhym or reason. What can I learn from the experience, though? Not to storm off angry. Not to let things get to me. To be more accepting. To be more appreciative.
No matter what happens to us, even when things are going well and they take a turn for the worse for seemingly no reason, we can always learn something, we can always find an opportunity in diversity. If that is true, than there really is a reason behind every event. Without it, we might not grow and develop and get to the next place we find ourselves. Everything benefits us in some way. The old adage says, “That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” And we’re told that God only never gives us more than we can handle in any one life time. I believe we are given those issues and circumsances and exeriences for some reason.
So, even this must have a reason…must offer me some way to grow.
Did you know that fear and excitement show up the same way in your body? If you were hooked up to a machine that monitored your response to fear or to excitement, your body would respond the same way to both experiences. That means the body can’t tell the difference between the two.
In Hebrew, fear and awe are the same word: yirah. When you feel awe, you have a sense of excitement as well. Imagine that you’ve just experienced an awesome sunset or waterfall or meeting with someone new. That awe comes with a sense of excitement. However, as far as your body is concerned, you could just as easily be afraid. That’s why awe of God and fear of God constitute the same emotion. If you find yourself in God’s presence, you might feel all three emotions — fear, awe, excitement. Yet, all three basically are the same emotion. They exist on the same spectrum of emotion. They body perceives the as identical.
Given this information, why not choose to feel excited — or awestruck — instead of afraid? Fear simply stops you in your tracks and keeps you stuck. It imprisons you and becomes your jailer. Excitement and awe, however, energize you and make you want to move forward. They provide you with the impetus to keep going.
So, today, choose excitement over fear. Choose awe over terror or nervousness. Move forward instead of staying stuck. Or, when you feel afraid, rename the emotion; simply call your fear “excitement” or “awe” and see if the way you feel doesn’t change along with the new name.
What is it about a deadline that makes you actually get your work done? I’m a journalist; deadlines constitute a way of life for me. I deal with them day in and day out. I don’t typically like them, but I deal with them. I meet them-always.
When I don’t have deadlines imposed on me by someone else, however, I don’t get much done. I tend to meander through my day without a lot of focus. However, if I institute a self-imposed deadline, wallah! I get things done. Why is that?
Now, by a self-imposed deadline I don’t just mean that I tell myself, “Nina, by this Friday, you must have this story written.” Usually, I have a much more significant type of deadline. For instance, a while back I told myself, “Nina, by the time your writing group meets again, you have to have your book proposal updated and ready to be sent out so you can tell them you did it.”
What’s the difference? In the first case, it wouldn’t matter if I missed the deadline. Nothing would happen. I might be disappointed in myself, but that’s about it. In the second case, although technically nothing would happen if I missed the deadline, I wouldn’t be able to tell my fellow writers I had accomplished this goal. This fact drove me forward to finish the project. My writer’s group members didn’t know I had imposed this deadline, but I wanted to be able to say I had accomplished something during the two weeks between our meetings. However, had I told them it was my goal to accomplish this task by this meeting date, they might have been disappointed in me. This would have employed the “accountability partner” element into the process, something that can also drive you to meet your deadlines.
Currently, I’m in the process of preparing to leave home and travel to New York City for a seven-week stay. I’ll be working from there; I can basically do everything I normally do from there without problem. I can’t, however, print documents. So, I looked over all the work I might want to accomplish during that time, and I realized that all the book proposals and query letters I might want to send during that that seven-week period had to be sent now…before I left. That gave me a deadline. (Not to mention that more than half of the agents and publishers are in New York City…) And, despite the fact that it put a lot of extra stress on me (that I didn’t need) and I lost a lot of sleep in the process, I ended up meeting my self-imposed deadline. I sent out more proposals and queries in a two week period than I’d sent out in a year (or more).
So, why do we need deadlines? Why do I function better-or why am I more productive-with a deadline hanging over my head? Obviously, I need the pressure of a time crunch and a perceived consequence to get my work done. However, it would be so much nicer to just get my work done without all that pressure and stress and lack of sleep.
I deduce that I don’t lack passion for what I do, for passion definitely drives us to complete our work (if we are passionate about that work) without a deadline. I deduce that the fear of rejection, failure and success all weigh into this equation. They hold me back from simply doing what I want to do on a daily basis. They cause me to procrastinate and “meander’ through my day being less productive than I’d like. A deadline forces me to move through my fear and simply do what I need to do-what I know I want to do and must do to achieve my goals-to fulfill my purpose and see my passion come to fruition.
Some of the most successful people in the world live with self-imposed deadlines every day. For instance, Jack Canfield, “America’s success coach,” and the author of many books that address this subject, says that our goals should all be chunked down into pieces that are then assigned tasks with deadlines. If we then move forward step by step doing something little each day to meet those deadlines, we achieve our goals-we become successful.
So, maybe this need for deadlines simple represents human nature. Maybe it has less to do with moving through fear than simply getting organized and finding a way to make achieving our goals a “task” of life.
It would be nicer, though, to simply sit down each day and find the inspiration to get these things done. Inspiration comes from within; it’s not something imposed upon us. It’s easier, though, to be inspired to paint a picture, choreograph a dance, write a book, or go for a walk than it is to do the busy work…the stuff that feels like work. And therein lies a big part of the problem as well. Those of us who call ourselves “artists” would rather just create art than do the business of art making. Without the business…no art shows up in the world.
All this to say: I’m doing the business these days. I’m imposing deadines, and I’m getting a lot of things done. And while it’s stressful sometimes, and some days I feel really tired, I’ve been, oh, so productive. And you know what? That feels great. It’s also fabulous to think that I’ve increased the chances of actually manifesting what I desire enormously through all this concerted effort and focused action.
So, why don’t you try imposing a deadline or two on yourself? You might be surprised at the results you achieve.
The Hebrew word kabbalah comes from the Hebrew verb “lekabbel,” whose root kbl means “to receive” or “to welcome.” Thus, Kabbalah means “receiving” or “reception.”
Most people define Kabbalah as a wisdom tradition or mystical tradition received from teacher to student, handed down from generation to generation. Thus, we receive it from someone. We become the receivers of this wisdom. In fact, we are told that Moses originally received this mystical knowledge from God at Mt. Sinai.
These days, many people receive their kabbalistic information from books, rather than from teachers. Although this may not seem like a handing down from teacher to student, I believe it still qualifies as such. And in this way, more people actually receive certain teachers’ kabbalistic wisdom.
If we look at the fact that Kabbalah represents a mystical commentary on the Bible, or Torah, we see that it also provides a learning tool for interpreting the texts, the world, and the mysteries of life, which means that it allows us to receive an education.
However, if we define Kabbalah in a manner that comes closer to its etymological origin and to its true mystical purpose, Kabbalah more specific revolves around receiving God’s light. We become receivers of this Divine light by using a variety of Divine techniques and methods.
We receive light, much like we receive sound waves. For this reason, this definition reminds me of a description of a Kabbalist that Mitch Chefitz included in his book The Seventh Telling, The Kabbalah of Moshe Katan. He equates Jewish mystics to radio receivers.
With a slight turn of the head we learn to tune in to the Divine vibration, the Infinite message being sent at all times. Maybe that’s what Kabbalah is all about-being a receiver-learning to tune in to the Divine sound waves and to hear them and understand them, and to use them. Being open so that we can receive the light, become a vessel to hold that light.
The question then become, which way is your head turned? (This reminds me Rebbe Nachman’s story of the Seven Beggars; one beggar seemed to have something wrong with his neck, but he just had his head turned in such a way that he could only hear God…) Is it turned in such a way that you have good enough reception that you can hear God. What do you have to do to improve your reception? What do you have to turn away from or towards to be able to hear the Divine voice more clearly?
Kabbalah really comes down to more than just receiving. It’s about becoming a good receiver. And that’s a fine art. It’s the art of turning your head, like the reciever on a television satelite dish, in just the right direction so you can get the signal. It’s the art of placing your vessel in just the right place, turning the mouth until it is positioned just under the flow of water so it can fill.
Now we clearly see the Hebrew word teshuvah, which means “to turn” but usually is used to mean “to repent.” We can turn away from un-Godly things and ways and patterns and pursuits. And when we do, we are able to receive God’s word. As we receive the word through study and by listening for that “Still Small Voice” that we now can hear, we also receive the Divine light.
Today I weeded another section of my extremely large garden. Every spring it becomes totally overgrown with weeds. If I’m not quick, they become shoulder high or taller and go to seed. This year, I got to the job too late.
Actually, I have way too many other things going on in my life to worry about the garden. I won’t even be around most of the summer, so I don’t plan on planting anything new. I just wanted the weeds gone and the sprinklers set up.
Besides, last summer the sprinklers went on the fritz without me knowing it and many plants died. Also, the gophers found a lof of other plants extremely tasty and ate them while I wasn’t watching. That’s what happens when you are too busy to tend to a garden. Gardens need care and attention.
As I was pulling weed after weed and bemoaning the loss of so many beautiful plants, I began thinking about Shavuot. I was asked to teach during the all night learning session at Chadeish Yameinu, my Jewish Renewal community, but I declined. I had been up until 2 a.m. two nights in a row, and they wanted me to teach at 2 a.m. I couldn’t do it. So, I didn’t even attend.
Shavuot marked just one more holiday I have missed, one more Jewish event I have not attended, one more day when I have not been able to focus on my spiritual practice or on my spiritual or religious studies. It marked one more day when I was too busy to pay attention to the garden of my soul.
Like any garden that goes untended, the garden of my soul also has begun to grow weeds and the plants ahve begun to die. I’ve forgotten some of the lessons I once knew, and bad habits, like gophers, have begun to live there and kill off the good habits. This has happened because I’m not paying attention; I’m not focusing on keeping the garden healthy and thriving.
It’s time for me to make time to weed, till, fertilize, plant, water, prune the garden of my soul. It’s time for me to take time — make time — for the spiritual side of my life once again.
For it’s the soul that actually gives us life. Without that, we become like a plant a gopher has eaten. The unseen part – our roots – are gnawed away, and the seen part – our body — withers away and dies.
Yes, it’s time to begin weeding the garden of my soul and then tending to it with love and care. How about you?
Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time at my computer early in the morning. I don’t mean at 6 a.m. I mean at 12:30 a.m. and at 1 a.m. and at 2 a.m. My days are so filled with marking things off my to-do list, handling emails and phone calls, social networking for business, running errands, and being a taxi driver for my children, that my real work — the writing — only gets done late at night and early into the morning.
When everyone in the house has gone to bed, a peace fall over the house. Even though I’m home alone during the day, the birds and squirrels keep me company with their constant chatter. At night, they, too are silent, except for an occasional horned owl. Since I’m on the West Coast, my email box also stops filling with new mail in the early morning, because the rest of the people around the United States have long ago gone to bed as well. The only people still awake seem to be on FaceBook and Twitter.
Sometimes, if I want some company…or I just want to procrastinate…I go to Twitter, where I find a few cyber friends with whom to interact. In the darkness of my office, with just the light over my desk, I send out little messages across time and space. It’s an odd connection, but it makes me smile more often than not.
And then I go back to my writing…maybe a blog post or a piece for my San Jose Jewish Examiner.com column. Sometimes it’s an article for a dance magazine or a trade journal. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, it’s a piece on something close to my heart. Or possibly I’m just knocking out a project that I need to complete.
In the quiet of the early morning, I can finally focus. The house is quiet. The world is quiet. My mind is quiet. Well, the last may not be quiet true. My mind is filled with words, but I can finally hear them.
If I take a few minutes just to sit quietly, I can hear other things: my breath, the cat climbing onto the clean clothes in the living room (where she isn’t allowed to sleep), the fountain trickling behind me, the hum of the printer, the Still Small Voice. Ah…I remember that voice.
That voice tells me to put aside the other projects and write from my heart. It tells me to finish my unfinished projects. It tells me to persevere. It tells me I’m on the right track. It tells me to slow down and listen.
And then it tells me to go to sleep. The rest can wait until morning…well, until I wake up. The problem comes when I do slide into bed beside my sleeping (and snoring) husband, and I cannot sleep. My thoughts, my words, have become too loud. In the quiet of the morning, they have become amplified, and it takes a long time for me to find a way to turn down the volume and sleep. If only I could find a program that would type all those words into my computer for me as I lay there in bed and as I slept. Oh, the writing I could accomplish.
But would it record the Still Small Voice as well? Or can we only hear that when we are awake, when we are conscious? I think, somehow, the sound of that voice might not be picked up by even the best microphone.
Feeling joyous on Shabbat constitutes a great mitzvah (commandment or good deed) in Judaism. No matter your circumstances, you must be joyous on Shabbat. Plus, according to Rebbe Nachman, it’s impossible to feel a connection to God unless you can experience joy. Indeed, mitzvot, or commandments, are supposed to connect us to the Divine, and, we are told that we should perform them joyously.
If you want to prepare for Shabbat by moving towards joy, begin by smiling…then laughing. If you are having trouble finding something about which to smile or laugh about, read this post I wrote for my San Jose Jewish Examiner column. It will provide the fodder you need.
(Hint: You’ll find some old Jews telling some old…some new…jokes. No joking.)
May you be blessed withShabbat shalom, sabbat peace and connection, and Shabbat simchah, Sabbath joy!
The holiday of Shavuot begins this year on the evening of May 28th. I started thinking about the holiday, it’s meaning and how to celebrate it more meaningfully when I saw a photo of my old rabbi from Congregation Etz Chaim in Lomard, Il, dressed as Moses and holding a staff and the tablets with the 10 commandments. He was on the roof of the synagogue, the peak of the roof rising behind him like Mount Sinai itself. (That’s one way to celebrate, I suppose…and so like him!)
What’s Shavuot really all about? Most of us know the basic facts: After leaving Egypt, the Israelites camped at the bottom of Mount Sinai and Moses went up the mountain not once but twice to speak with God. And for the first time in recorded history, God revealed himself and spoke to an entire nation of people, not to one lone visionary. Every Israelite at the foot of the Mt. Sinai saw and heard God reveal the Ten Commandments.
I think, thought, we can make it so much more personal, take it so much deeper than just the giving of the 10 commandments. We can look at how God gave entered into a covenant with us, made us a nation of priests and priestesses, and gave us the Torah…and ask ourselves what each of us now can do with that.
Indeed, Shavuot commemorates the face-to-face encounter between God and the Jewish people. Our tradition tells us that we all stood at Sinai, every Jewish soul, even those not yet born. The making of the covenant and the giving of the Torah serves as a shared experience among all Jews, past and present. We each entered into that covenant, that relationship, with God, and we accepted that Torah, that teaching. We connected ourselves with God and God’s wisdom for eternity.
Within the Ten Commandments, there are actually two sets of laws. One reflects man’s relationship with God, mitzvot beyn adam l’makom, and one set that reflects man’s relationship toward his fellow man, mitzvot beyn adam l’chaveyro. The revelation at Mt. Sinai continued beyond the tenth commandment, including an additional 603 ethical and religious laws to bring the total to 613 commandments. Of those 613 commandments, 248 are positive commandments, said to correspond to the number of bones in the body, and 365 are negative commandments, said to correspond to the days of the year. When viewed together, they suggest that we Jews devote every part of our bodies, every day of our lives, to following God’s Torah as revealed to all of us, born and unborn, that day at Mount Sinai.
I see this as an indication that we are imbued with Torah. Each and every one of us carries the Torah and its commandments within us. For what is Torah but wisdom and lessons and inspiration? Indeed, we are told that Moses brought down from that mountain not only the commandments but the oral Torah and the mystical tradition we know as Kabbalah.
All of this we commemorate on Shavuot. Every day, however, we have a chance to offer this Torah ourselves not only through our actions - by performing mitzvot- but also by actually offering our wisdom to others. We can inspire each other with our actions, our words, our experiences. That’s how we can continue the tradition of giving Torah every day. Maybe that’s part of our covenant with God, to actually take the Torah and make it alive, make it our own, transform it into something personal, and then share it. We need to pass it on l’dor v’dor, from generation to generation, making it constantly new and relevant.
Most Jews celebrate Shavuot with all-night study sessions. This tradition comes from the fact that the Israelites at Mount Sinai were so consumed with their fear-rather than their awe-of God that they could not listen to the revelation being given to them. (Exodus 20:15-18). Thus, our ancestors decided this holiday should be commemorated with all night study to prepare for this momentous event instead of going to bed as usual. To correct the mistake of failing to listen, in the future they prepared well to receive the Torah with “Tikkun Leyl Shavuot,” the “Preparation on Shavuot Night.” On this night before the full day of Shavuot, Jews study late into the night, sometimes till dawn, in the hope that once again God might choose Shavuot to reveal to Israel the hidden mystical truths underlying creation.
Here’s what I suggest, however. Let’s not wait for God to reveal these truths. Instead, let’s search within ourselves, we who are created in God’s image and who were there at the mountain that day. We may not have listened but we heard. Plus, we have a spark of divinity within us, a neshamah, a soul, connected to God. We have our own mystical truths to share, our own Torah to give that will inspire and enlighten others.
So, on Shavuot, why not write down or tell others your story? The written Torah is filled with stories that teach, enlighten, inspire, and show Jews how to live. Your story or stories can accomplish the same end. Or stand up and speak your Torah, offer it to others just as God did to all of us at Mount Sinai. Someone will gain something from your wisdom.
Yes, this Shavuot, let’s not wait to see if God reveals truths and lessons to us. Let’s channel the Divine Energy ourselves by offering our own Torah to our friends, families, and communities. Ask for Divine Wisdom. Meditate and pray and connect with God. Draw on old stories and apply them to your own life and experiences, thus renewing them and making them relevant once again. Or simply tell new stories of your own.
Everyone has a Torah. What’s yours? Give it this Shavuot.
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