Shabbat: Happiness Only (With a Soundtrack)

I've often pondered this question:

Does the music I listen to influence my mood?
or
Does my mood influence the music I listen to?

The answer, of course, is yes.

Landslide by Fleetwood Mac will always make me tear up...

(Especially this 1975 version. She is so young.)

As will Time by Pink Floyd...

 (Don't forget the alarm clocks at the beginning!)

But the tecnho Orthodox chant at the top of this post has never failed to make me smile. It's damn upbeat, it has a great hook, and you can really dance to it!

The followers of Rebbe Nachman are known for driving their vans around Israel, stopping traffic and dancing in the intersections.

Their eponymous Rebbe was big on happiness, and quotes like this are everywhere in his writing:

Be very careful to feel only joy on Shabbat. There is nothing to compare with the greatness and holiness of Shabbat. The key to honoring the Shabbat is joy. Don't show even a hint of depression or anxiety on Shabbat. Treat yourself to all kinds of delights in the food you eat, what you drink, your clothes...  whatever you can afford. 

The food of Shabbat is completely holy. It is purely spiritual and filled with Godliness. It rises to a totally different place from that of the food of the six working days.

Make an effort to feel the joy of Shabbat and you will find true happiness.

--Rebbe Nachman  
Likutey Moharan II, 17

That's a tall order, but I like that he ends with "make an effort".  Sometimes there is more than "do," there is also "try". 

[This post doesn't serve as an endorsement of the Na Nachs, their theology or practices, which I know very little about beyond the views on joy. I'm sure we disagree about much. ] 

Remembering Yitzak Rabin & Jew vs. Jew

I am not Israeli.
I have never been to Israel.
But I clearly remember the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin 20 years ago, when he was 73 and I was 23. It was major world news, of course. It was so soon after the Oslo Accords, the treaty with Jordan and the Nobel Peace Prize. The world was shocked.

For me, the most shocking aspect was that his murderer was a fellow Jew. At the time, I was fairly ignorant of the deep disagreements between Jews, especially Israelis. I hadn't studied much of Israel's history, and what I did study was a gloss -- I'd had a few Israeli religious school teachers, but the only thing I really remember about them was the arguments over tav/sav pronunciation.

I spent from 1989-1994 in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and as a university student I often found myself as the first Jew my peers had ever known. I put a lot of time into studying Judaism itself,
especially anything that would help me educate my friends and refute my evangelistic enemies on campus. (I had a few knock-out punches ready for the Campus Crusade for Christ whenever I engaged them, and I engaged them every chance I could.) Oh, to be young and on fire!

Rabin was killed by a Jew? How could a Jew do such a thing to another Jew? I still struggle with this question, with Jews who don't seem to embrace my liberal idealism of "This Judaism is good for me," and "That Judaism is good for them," but we all get along anyway.

I knew they were against us.
I didn't know we were against us, too.

Was there really something so divisive that Jews would resort to killing each other?
Of course there was.... and I look back on my naivete with wistfulness and nostalgia.

I used to be very into Jewish Triumphalism, Jewish Essentialism, and Jewish Exceptionalism. Jews are chosen. Jews put more value on education. Jews are smart. Look at all the Jewish doctors, lawyers, and media moguls (but don't talk about Jewish influence and lobbying power...)

What a narrow view of Judaism (and the rest of humanity).

It doesn't give Jews enough room for their shortcomings and doesn't acknowledge the amazing potential of everyone person, Jewish or not, to achieve excellence. [American exceptionalism drives me crazy for many of the same reasons. As soon as you believe that you are chosen, or the best, or #1! you close yourself off to learning from "others" who may know better.]

Maybe there are better ways to do religion, to think about spirituality, and to act virtuously.
Maybe we can learn from other countries who have found better systems, economies, and ways of being in the world.

I used to think that Jews were somehow above hurting others in the kinds of ways we had been hurt so many times.

• Would we oppress people? Of course not, because we know what it is to be oppressed. 
• Would we hold ourselves above others? No, because we know what it is like to be stepped on.
• Would we settle our disputes with violence? No, because we were experts at debate and argument and agreeing to disagree. The minority rabbis may not make law, but they were included in the Talmud.

Then Yigal Amir shot Yitzhak Rabin, and I didn't know what to think.

I still don't know, if Judaism has taught me anything, it's to be OK living with the questions. Living with the uncertainty and looking to many sources for guidance...)

Be kind. Always.

Let's start there.

May the dream of peace be seen in our lifetime.

The Things I am Not

I am not a musician. I can strum a few basic chords on the guitar, and I can sing (mostly) on key, but I have never been able to feel so wholly comfortable playing any instrument that I've been in control of the sound that comes out of it.

Except for once. I was about 12 and taking weekly piano lessons. I was struggling to get a song right and was desperate to give up and walk away. But my mother was enforcing my practice time, so I kept going and kept on making the same mistakes.

Then I had a moment.

My hands were playing the keys, and my mind was hearing the music, but it was as if I were an audience member,or listening to a recording. I wasn't creating the music. I was receiving it.Transmitting it.

I only realized I had played the song when I was done and my mother asked, "Was that you?" For a moment I honestly didn't know.

I tried over and over again, for years, to recapture that moment, but I was never able to. I've taken lessons. Practiced on my own. Started over at the beginning with the basics. Switched instruments. Even when I was my most diligent, I could never get past "technically correct" and copy-cat mimicking what I heard others play.

It may be that I never put in enough time.
It may be that I gave up too easily.
It may be that I needed a better teacher, a better book, or better practice methods.

Even if all that is true, I'm still ready to say:

• I'm not a musician, and That. Is. OK.

• I'm also not an athlete. Also OK.

• Or a visual artist. Definitely OK.

At some age you just have to take an honest assessment and say, "I am talented in these ways and not in these others, and I am going to put my limited energy into

• Improving the talents I have

         or

• Working on obtaining and improving the talents that do not come naturally.

I've chosen the first.

What excites me now are moments like this, where I sneak in and catch Ellie playing along to "All Apologies," by Nirvana, "Box of Rain," by the Grateful Dead, and noodling around on her own tunes and lyrics while she wears an AC/DC t-shirt, sits beneath my 1988 Jim Morrison tapestry and keeps her faithful stuffed penguin Pingu on her pillow.

It's not yet time for her to say, "I am," or "I am not," and that is, most definitely, OK.

Parsha Chayei Sarah: Sarah answers Channah's Letter

Dearest Channah,

What a delight it was to receive your Rosh Hashanah letter. You are correct, my dear sister, I did not believe as I lived my life that I would be remembered so many years later by so many! They even named a weekly parsha after me. "Chayei Sarah" -- the life of Sarah.

Unfortunately, the first line of that chapter announces my death, and rather unemotionally at that: "The life of Sarah was 100 years, and 20 years, and 7 years. These were the years of the life of Sarah."

What an ending. Dying off stage! In truth, it was probably better than I deserved. The last of my words quoted in the Torah were some of the ugliest and meanest I ever uttered: 

"Cast out this bondwoman and her son! The son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac."

Cast

Them

Out

Abraham didn't want to make Hagar and Ishmael leave. I believe he had fallen quite a bit in love with them, especially the boy. Ishmael, at age 14, was finally old enough that Abraham had started to make a real connection with him. 

That was what scared me, Channah. What would I do if Abraham's bond with Ishmael grew and grew while Isaac languished in the shadow, not old enough to join in with his father and half-brother?

What would happen if Abraham -- who was no spring chicken -- up and died while Ishmael was still in our household? Where would my Isaac be then?

No.

Cast

Them

Out

They hated me after Hagar and Ishmael left. Abraham couldn't stand to look in my direction and fretted constantly about his other wife, his other son. Despite God's promise, he could not erase the vision from his mind of them suffering a torturous death in the desert. He screamed himself awake from nightmares. He tore at his garments and went on long, aimless walks, waiving off the company of even his most trusted servants.

I fretted too, wondering if Abraham would ever forgive me, warm to Isaac and take him into his heart, or had I poisoned that part of him? Did he see too much of me in the little boy? Or maybe he saw Isaac's strong resemblance to Ishmael and the presence of one caused the remembrance of the other.

Did you think about Elkanah felt when you made your vow to dedicate his son Samuel to the temple? When you surrendered him to the priest? 

Elkanah also had to make an empty-armed trip home. 

Allegra Villareal
Allegrea's Website

Isaac was distraught. I had taken away his hero, his "Ishma." Each time he noticed the conspicuous absence he would wail, sobbing into my robes. 

"Want Isma!"

"Want 'Agar!"

"Mamma's here," I would tell him. "Shush shush...Ima's here," but he was inconsolable. I was not enough. 

Had I made a terrible mistake? Would they ever forgive me? What could we have built together, the five of us? Me. Abraham. Isaac. Ishmael. Hagar.   

You gave me too much credit when you said I was brave when I let Isaac go up the mountain with his father. 

The truth is I had sacrificed Isaac many years before 

on the altar of my own fear. 

So no, I don't need to be in another book and have my decisions, plans and words laid bare before the world. Have you seen how the rabbis obsess over every little detail? How can anyone come out looking good under such scrutiny? 

I lived to be 127 years old, Channah. 100 years, plus 20 years, plus 7 years...and what is captured in this sacred, holy text is so little of that time. 

Where is 
the struggle

the fear

the uncertainty 

of leaving our home and setting out with no destination and only a promise?

Where is 
the excitement 

the passion

the joy

of living with and growing old with a man such as Abraham, a man who deeply loved his family and trusted completely in his God?

It must be enough to say

Chayei Sarah

Sarah Lived

I Lived

Woodcut by Gustave Dore
depicting Sarah's burial in the cave
1866

Schadenfreude gets harder...

The Kansas City Royals won the 2015 World Series tonight by beating the New York Mets.

I don't have any great love for the Kansas City Royals, but when I was 12 years old, in the fall of 1986, the Red Sox were one out -- one strike -- away from winning it all, and then this happened:

I searched Google for the video and pasted the link, but I can't actually bring myself to watch the damn thing. "It gets by Buckner..."

Don't click it, Sox fans.

That was the last time the Mets won a World Series, and they were two outs away from keeping themselves alive in the 2015 World Series tonight, when this happened:

"Buckner'd it!"
Take that, Mets.

But I've been there. I've been that anguished fan watching it slip away.

I've seen a manager leave a pitcher in too damn long.

I've screamed at the TV when a fielding error or a bad throw to home blew a lead.



I love the human drama of sports, and baseball is (for many reason) my absolute favorite. I don't just love the Red Sox. I love the game, and tonight's game packed in the drama.

Because the Sox tanked this year, not even making the playoffs, I had no emotional connection to the outcome, except that ugly kernel of desire for the Mets to "get theirs" in some sort of sick trade/revenge for 1986.

Then I looked up their roster:
The oldest player in the team is 2 years younger than I am. Over half the men on the team roster were born after the 1986 World Series.

And that game that the Red Sox lost -- that wasn't the Mets' fault -- of course they wanted to win. So did the Red Sox. We just had a terrible mistake that happened to be one of a long line of serious mistakes.

And now I have friends who are Mets fans, and I feel empathy for their pain, not schadenfreude.

I still love the Red Sox just as much as ever, but maybe I'm old and wise enough that I don't hate the other teams simply because they are our opponents.**


So Congrats to the Royals, their city and their fans. It's been a long 30 years, eh?
Great season, Mets. Keep the faith for next year.



** Except the New York Yankees. Yankees Suck!"