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Tag Archives: Yom Kippur

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This High Holiday season, we are going bespoke

17 Thursday Sep 2020

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community, High Holidays, loneliness, Rosh Hashanah, Shofar, Yom Kippur

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the most highly choreographed religious experiences across all Jewish denominations, from intimate shteibels to vaulted sanctuaries. 

The setting, songs, and community surrounding us combine to impart a sense of occasion and are indeed key to the experience of awe and holiness of the High Holidays. The physical setting is a portal through which we achieve the spiritual. 

The entire Jewish world has been stressing since Pesach about the impossibility of High Holidays under current pandemic restrictions. Indeed this is when every synagogue seat is filled, we reconnect with distant friends and family members, and we experience the effervescence of community at its best. The loss of this social component is especially acute now, at a time when our resilience is otherwise depleted and we most need the warm embrace of community. 

Additionally, we have a clear concept of what an authentic HIgh Holidays feels like, and praying individually in our homes, (or joining a zoom service) doesn’t fit that definition. 

We can attempt to replicate this authenticity at home, by importing elements of the synagogue service, but we are likely to find the result disappointing in comparison to the ‘real’ thing. 

While, unfortunately, there is no substantive replacement for the social deprivation resulting from synagogue closures, there may be another way of imagining what an authentic service might look like. 

This reframing, borrows from two options available to us when planning a vacation; a ‘package’ versus a ‘bespoke’ tour. 

A package tour is hassle free; you pick a destination, and the tour operator worries about all the logistical details. You just show up and are conveniently shuttled to location, guided through salient attractions, wined, dined and entertained. You are spared the review of schedules and hotel ratings, the burden of making choices or experience of loneliness, and any hiccup or disappointment will not be your responsibility. 

In some respects, Jewish institutions offer us the packaged tour version of Judaism. 

They offer us the convenience of an expertly designed religious experience and deliver the congregational numbers required for Torah reading and Kaddish, to lift our prayers in a chorus of song, and embody the concept of Kehillah Kedosha, sanctity in community. 

While these are aspects vital to our Jewish experience, other aspects can be achieved only through the bespoke tour approach. 

Planning a bespoke vacation requires a significant investment of research and reading, and demands difficult choices. It can be more expensive, expose you to inconvenience, and  you’ll have sole responsibility for any disappointment. 

You will also have the opportunity to gain some expertise, whether by familiarizing yourself with the local history, phrasebook  or map. You can personalize your itinerary, decide to linger at the cafe with a charming view or get delightfully lost in a labyrinth of alleys.

Reframing this year’s High Holidays as a bespoke experience can liberate us from the daunting pressure to recreate the High Holidays version we are used to. Rather than consoling ourselves with a homemade ‘reproduction’, we can take charge of curating our individual High Holidays. We can be more deliberate in the pace of our prayers, lingering over piyyutim or liturgy that resonates, and indulge in a tune we are fond of. 

In becoming active agents and designing our religious experience we can become more attuned to and discover new ways to kindle our spirituality. 

This year, we will miss the solemn peak of Rosh Hashanah as the Shofar is sounded in a packed synagogue, the pomp and circumstance of Kol Nidrei in a crowded sanctuary. 

May we return to them next year with a fresh lens and renewed energy. Less as passive consumers  and more as active contributors to the religious communal experience. 

Shanah Tovah

Posted by dinabrawer | Filed under Uncategorized

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Borrowed White Dresses: Reframing Tu B’Av

16 Friday Aug 2019

Posted by dinabrawer in Jewish Festival

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bridging differences, Freud, Hassidut, narcissism of small differences, talmud, Tisha B'Av, Tu B'Av, unity, Valentine's Day, Yom Kippur

 Pastorale by Leonid AfremovIn recent years the fifteenth of Av, known as Tu B’Av, has had a renaissance with the emergence of White Parties, a sort of Jewish Valentine’s singles event.

Tu B’Av is described in the mishnah as a summer mating festival in which girls would go out dancing in the vineyards: ‘There were no days as good (yamim tovim) for the Jewish people as the fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur, as on these days the daughters of Jerusalem would go out in borrowed white garments, so as not to shame one who did not have her own’. (Taanit 4:8)

What is particularly striking, is the mishnah’s equation of Tu B’Av to Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year. The talmud questions this comparison: ‘Granted that Yom Kippur is a good day, because it is a day of pardon and forgiveness and the day on which the second Tablets of the Covenant were given. But what is special about the fifteenth of Av? (Bava Batra 121a, Taanit 30a).

The talmud segues with a number of disparate reasons for the significance of Tu B’Av, none of which appear to be connected to each other or provide a convincing reason for its comparison to Yom Kippur. 

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichov (1740–1809), in his work Kedushat Levi, draws on two of the reasons offered in the talmud and through a mystical lens offers a compelling reading of the Tu B’Av ritual, setting its significance en par with Yom Kippur. 

Yom Kippur is all about our renewed connection to God. Likewise, the name of Tu B’Av itself points to our unity with God: ‘Tu’, the letters tet and vav (whose numerical value adds up to fifteen), are a stand-in for the letters yud (ten) and hay (five) which spell God’s name. The word Av means father. The task of Tu B’Av is therefore that of reconnecting to God as our Father or parent. In this context, the mating ritual described in the mishnah seems even more out of place. 

The talmud suggests that the restriction on intermarriage among the twelve tribes was lifted on Tu B’Av. The Kedushat Levi notes that each tribe had a unique trait, represented by the color of a stone in the choshen (the High Priest’s breastplate). Their intermarrying on Tu B’Av points to their ability, through a deep awareness that they are all children of one Av, one heavenly parent, to set aside all differences and distinctions, achieving unity.  This process is in turn enabled by another feature of Tu B’Av, as the day that marked the waning of the sun’s brightness. The Kedushat Levi reads this dimming light as a useful ‘darkness’, one that blurs distinctions and mutes colors, again enabling a coming together in unity.  

The concept of unity through a blurring of distinctions is also reflected in the mating ritual of Tu B’Av. The daughters of Jerusalem represent the souls of the Jewish people, and the mating symbolizes the coming together of the Jewish people and God. Unity among the Jewish people, a prerequisite to their unity with God, is enabled by wearing white. White is no color, yet it encompasses all colors. When spinning a disc divided into segments of various colors, the entire disc will appear white.  

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak’s read of Tu B’Av as facilitating unity among people and with God satisfies the comparison to Yom Kippur. It also frames Tu B’Av as the process for healing the rupture between God and people on Tisha B’Av, which is caused by hate and fracture among the Jewish people. 

We live in times of deep schism and widespread alienation. Unbridgeable differences fuel bloody conflicts in many parts of the world. Hatred for those of different religions, ethnicity or orientations has been expressed in mass shootings most recently in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio. 

We often encounter suspicion and diffidence across the political divide, and perhaps most unexpectedly among those who should be united by common goals or affiliations. This phenomenon was labelled by Freud ‘the narcissism of small differences’:

It is precisely the minor differences in people who are otherwise alike that form the basis of feelings of strangeness and hostility between them.                                                                (The Taboo of Virginity, 1918)

Elaborating on this concept, organizational psychologist Adam Grant points out that the smallest nuances and variations in views can at times be more divisive than major ones. He cites a study in which vegans showed nearly three times as much prejudice toward vegetarians as vegetarians did toward vegans. While to omnivores the difference between the two groups may be negligible, vegans viewed vegetarians as ‘wannabes’ and somehow not fully committed to the cause. In another of Grant’s examples (that we may more readily recognize) Orthodox Jews evaluated non practicing Jews more favorably than Conservative Jews. While there’s a wider gap in practice between fully ritually observant and those who are not at all, the smaller differences in values of those who observe differently to you can be more threatening and divisive. 

All this explains the ease with which we settle into factions and splinter, and find ourselves in the ruptured state of Tisha B’Av. Tu B’Av proposes an antidote. It suggests that at times it is useful to dim the lights, to close our eyes to the distinctions that divide us, or to enrobe ourselves in white, encompassing multitudinous colors, in order to discover what unites us. 

But that is not an easy task. Two strange details of the Tu B’Av ritual may shed light on how we achieve this. 

The girls have to borrow the dresses and they dance. The Kedushat Levi points out that a borrowed dress is something received without much effort. Dancing in its purest form is an involuntary reaction of our body to the rhythm of music. Both of these features suggest that the healing of Tu B’Av is something that cannot be achieved through our own independent effort – what hasidut terms hit’aruta d’letata, but only through gifted inspiration from above – hit’aruta d’leilah.

Just like a borrowed white dress that is not your own, or like breaking out in a jiig to the sound of another’s irrepressible music. 

 

Wiping the Slate Clean

17 Thursday Sep 2015

Posted by dinabrawer in Jewish Festival

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Forgiveness, silence, Yom Kippur

This is dedicated to two dear friends, Rochelle and Alan Bernard of blessed memory who passed away 5 years ago today,  4th of Tishrei (11 September 2010).

Rochelle was like a big sister to me, she listened, had very wise words and I learned a lot from her about true Gemilut Hasadim, altruistic kindness.

Rochelle & Alan Bernard

Rochelle & Alan Bernard

Below is an idea I shared on BBC Radio2 ‘Pause for Thought’, inspired by Rochelle, Rachel bat Moshe.

Wiping The Slate Clean

My memory is pretty good, I can recall books I’ve read, people I’ve met and important dates. But I also tend to remember insults and injuries long past and sometimes I have a hard time letting go. I’m good at forgiving but not so good at forgetting.

Sometimes I wish I was more like my dear friend who had a remarkable capacity to forgive and forget. Several years ago she was betrayed by someone very close to her and although it was obvious to me their relationship was broken beyond repair, she was determined not to let this be the case. She made a conscious decision not to dwell on the pain caused but to let it go, by willfully forgetting the past in order to start a new chapter.

And yet while I admire her greatly, I know I am made of different stuff. I just cannot willfully forget. I will always remember. For me the solution lies not in suppressing memory but in changing the way I react. In this I am guided by a passage from the Jewish daily prayer:

‘My God, to those who curse me, let my soul be silent’

I have learned that silence is an important part of forgiveness. By not responding to hurtful words or talking about a painful past I am able to create the space and the possibility for a hopeful future.

I may not always forget, but through silence I can soften the edges of bad memories until the gradually fade of their own accord making my forgiveness complete and irreversible.

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