We live in a democracy. And for this I am very grateful. It is imperfect. It is messy. It is confusing. And it works. Better than most systems.

When Simon and I used to do colonial re-enacting in Chelmsford, I used to think I was somewhat disingenuous. You see, back in the day we were portraying, I would not have been able to vote. You needed to be a white, male, Christian land owner. As a Jewish woman, I could not have participated. My voice would not have counted.

For thousands of years, since Jeremiah’s time, Jews have prayed for their governments, their leaders and advisors. My favorite one of these is from the Jewish congregation in Richmond, VA, welcoming the newly elected president, George Washington. It is an acrostic, with Washington’s name spelled out in the Hebrew. The current prayer book my congregation uses includes a prayer for our country at the conclusion of the Torah service. It lays out the vision of leadership that we hope for our country.

My mother died on Election Day in 2008. Her favorite reading, what she read at her own Confirmation in 1939 at Shaare Emeth in Saint Louis was “Grant us peace.” She read it again at my own daughter’s Bat Mitzvah in 2003. It too gives us a vision of the world we would like to see. That I work tirelessly to try to achieve. I still hear it in her preferred version with the “Thees and the Thous.”

Most prayer books do not have a ready made prayer for elections. That has not stopped friends and colleagues from writing their own, which is a very good practice. It brings a certain level of kavanah/intention to the prayer and to the action. It elevates something that could be ordinary and makes it extraordinary.

Today I offer a few of them. I have arranged them first in the singular and then in the plural. The singular ones seem perfect for the act of casting those individual votes. The ones in the plural seem written to be read by a community.

Read them all or just one. Read them online. Print them out. Take them with you to the polls. Reflect on this responsibility, this obligation, this right. Pray for discernment, for wisdom. Meditate. Enjoy the whole experience and remember that there are still many all over the world who are not privileged to enjoy this right.

Whatever you do, vote. Your vote counts. Your vote is your voice. It matters. It is vitally important. Do it today. Tomorrow will be too late.

Tomorrow, when we wake up, we have to roll up our sleeves and get back to work. To fulfill the vision that the prophets exhorted us to. To recognize that everyone, even those on the opposite side, were created “b’tzelem elohim” in the image of G-d. Everyone.

Here they are:

For Wisdom During U.S. Presidential Elections
God of Justice,
Protector and Redeemer,
Grant guidance to our nation
As we select leaders,
Senators, Congresspersons and a President,
The men and women who promise
To uphold the Constitution,
To uphold our values,
To serve and to govern,
To bring prosperity to our land,
To protect our homes and secure our future.

Grant wisdom and courage to voters
To select a visionary President
And steadfast leaders,
People who will serve our citizens,
And all who reside within our borders,
With honor and integrity
To forge a flourishing and peaceful future.

Bless our future President with
Wisdom and strength,
Fortitude and insight,
Balanced by a deep humanity
And a love of peace,
Leading us to a time
When liberty and equality will
Reign supreme throughout the land.

God of Truth,
Source and Shelter,
Grant safety and security to all nations,
So that truth and harmony will resound
From the four corners of the earth.
Let the light of our U.S. democracy
Shine brightly,
A beacon of hope
For every land and every people.

Alden Solovy

With my vote today I am prepared and intending
to seek peace for this country,
as You taught through Your prophet:

“Seek out the peace of the city
where I cause you to roam
and pray for her sake to God YHVH,
for in her peace you all will have peace.”
(Jer. 29:7)

May it be Your will that votes
will be counted faithfully
and may You account my vote
as if I had fulfilled this verse
with all my power.

May it be good in Your eyes
to give a wise and listening heart
to whomever we elect today
and may You raise for us a government
whose rule is for good and blessing,
to bring justice and peace
to all the inhabitants of the world
and to Jerusalem, for rulership is Yours!

Just as I participated in elections today
so may I merit to do good deeds
and repair the world with all my actions,
and with the act of. . .[fill in your pledge]
which I pledge to do today
on behalf of all living creatures
and in remembrance of the covenant
of Noah’s waters,
to protect and to not destroy
the earth and her plenitude.

May You give to all the peoples of this country
the strength and will to pursue righteousness
and to seek peace as unified force
in order to cause to flourish,
throughout the world, good life and peace
and may You fulfill for us the verse:

“May the pleasure of Adonai our God
be upon us, and establish
the work of our hands for us,
May the work of our hands endure.” (Ps. 90:17)

     Rabbi David Seidenberg

Prayer for the Electorate
May the One who graces
each person with knowledge
and teaches humanity understanding,
bless and protect the voters of this land
on the upcoming presidential election,
so that they may place in all their gates
leaders of thousands and leaders of hundreds
leaders of fifties and leaders of tens,
people of valor who revere God,
people of truth who despise corruption.

The One who sustains nations
on order, on truth, and on peace:
may it be Your will
that no misfortune occur by their hands,
and may the nation rejoice
when the righteous abound.
Save them from a wicked path,
from those who speak perversely.
Send wisdom into their heart
and make knowledge pleasant to their soul,
as it says, “Then you shall understand
virtue and justice; equality and every good path.”
And may it be Your will.
And let us say: Amen.

David Zvi Kalman

Grant us peace, Your most precious gift, O Eternal Source of peace, and give us the will to proclaim its message to all the peoples of the earth. Bless our country, that it may always be a stronghold of peace, and its advocate among the nations. May contentment reign within its border, health and happiness within its homes. Strengthen the bonds of friendship among the inhabitants of all lands, and may the love of Your name hallow every home and every heart. Blessed is the Eternal God, the Source of peace.

Gates of Prayer

A Meditation on Voting

Have you ever played with legos or blocks and been so angry you knocked every thing over, smashed it all down? That’s this portion. G-d is really, really angry. G-d created humanity and then wasn’t happy with the result. It is not exactly clear why and Rashi asks that question. Why does G-d want to destroy the world? What is that word, “hamas” that gets translated as corruption or violence?

Some say it is that the people didn’t listen to G-d. They disobeyed the Divine will. Yet, so far there weren’t many orders, “Be fruitful and multiply. Stay away from that tree. Take care of the earth.” Maybe G-d is figuring out that they need even more rules, that free will isn’t all it is cracked up to be.

Some say that G-d was frustrated because in giving us free will, G-d surrendered some of G-d’s control.

Some say that it goes back to when G-d said, “Let us make man in our image.” Since we don’t know, can’t know what that image is and are commanded in the 10 Commandments not to make an image of G-d, somehow this is idolatrous on the angels part. Some midrashim actually say that G-d actually makes 974 worlds before this one. It seems maybe G-d has an anger management problem.

Yet, G-d is a compassionate G-d. He finds Noah. Noah walked with G-d. Noah was a righteous man (in his generation). Blameless. Flawless. Perfect. However you translate taam.

Tzedek. He was righteous. Just. What does it take to be righteous? What motivates an individual to stand up in life-threatening circumstances and behave exceptionally? Barbara Binder Kadden, a noted Jewish educator, asks that question in a d’var Torah about this very topic and looks at the definition on Yad V’shem’s website.

“In describing the Righteous Among the Nations, “attitudes towards the Jews during the Holocaust ranged from indifference to hostility. The mainstream watched as their former neighbors were rounded up and killed; some collaborated with the perpetrators; many benefitted from the expropriation of the Jews’ property. In a world of total moral collapse there was a small minority who mustered extraordinary courage to uphold human values . . . these rescuers regarded the Jews as fellow human beings. . . “

Because that is how we are taught to see “b’tzelem elohim”, created in the image of G-d. We are all created in the image of G-d. Righteousness, is therefore, having the moral courage to stand up to those who are marginalized, precisely because they are created in the image of G-d.

And that is where Noah falls down. He is righteous in his generation, not for all times. He fails to speak up. He fails to argue to save humanity. To save the world. That is what next week’s Torah portion about Abraham teaches us. Abraham walked before G-d. Abraham argues with G-d to save Sodom and Gemorah.

Rabbi Lord Sacks says it this way…

“Noah is the classic case of someone who is righteous but not a leader. In a disastrous age, when all has been corrupted, when the world is filled with violence, when even God himself – in the most poignant line in the whole Torah – “regretted that He had made man on earth, and He was pained to His very core,” Noah alone justifies God’s faith in humanity, the faith that led Him to create mankind in the first place. That is an immense achievement, and nothing should detract from it. Noah is, after all, the man through whom God makes a covenant with all humanity. Noah is to humanity what Abraham is to the Jewish people.”

Remember those legos at the beginning of our discussion. G-d takes the building blocks and begins to rebuild. It isn’t perfect. It is good enough. It reminds me of our trip to South Dakota this summer. We learned that behind Lincoln’s head at Mount Rushmore, there is a secret room, the Hall of Records. And in the Hall of Records there is a titanium vault and inside that vault is a teakwood box. And inside that box are all of the charter documents of this country. Etched on the capstone is this:

“…let us place there, carved high, as close to heaven as we can, the words of our leaders, their faces, to show posterity what manner of men they were. Then breathe a prayer that these records will endure until the wind and rain alone shall wear them away.”

Learning about this secret room gave me goosebumps.The sculptor who dreamed of creating Mount Rushmore wasn’t perfect. He may not have even been righteous, even in his generation. Yet, he left us a lasting legacy and a dream of the future. That room means that, if necessary, the generations that come after us will have the ability to restart this great nation, just like G-d pushed the reset button on the world.

But there are two other things in this week’s portion to give us hope.

The first is the root word, kaf—pay—raish. We know this word. We just celebrated Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The root of Kippur is this word. But here it shows up in a different sense entirely. Why did G-d tell Noah to spread k-p-r on the ark. What is this substance? Usually it is translated as pitch or tar.

At this week’s Academy for Jewish Religion’s retreat, I heard another interpretation. That both represent G-d’s compassion.

G-d is a compassionate G-d. Sacks says that “G-d created humanity because G-d has faith in humanity. Far more than we have faith in God, God has faith in us. We may fail many times, but each time we fail, God says: “Even to old age I will not change, and even to grey hair, I will still be patient.” I will never give up on humanity. I will never lose faith. I will wait for as long as it takes for humans to learn not to oppress, enslave or use violence against other humans. ..God has patience. God has forgiveness. God has compassion. God has love. For centuries, theologians and philosophers have been looking at religion upside down. The real phenomenon at its heart – the mystery and miracle – is not our faith in God. It is God’s faith in us.”

Our group thought hard about that connection. One woman said that maybe like Yom Kippur seals us for a blessing the k-p-r seals the ark, keeping the water out. That was an aha moment!

We thought about Noah’s wife, mentioned five times in the Bible but never named. The midrash gives her the name Na’amah. Rabbi Sandy Sasso has written a lovely children’s story about that midrash (Bereshit Rabbah 33:7). Na’amah was a woman of beauty, musical talent, and a doer of good deeds. The rabbis of the Talmud found that threatening. But what if we think about her this way. Her music tamed the savage beast creating peace amongst all those animals and preventing the original cabin fever. Her song enabled her family to pray. She inspired her husband and her children to work together allowing them to dream, to plan and to rebuild the world.

Sh…I’ll tell you a secret. We don’t have to go to New York to learn (although it is nice). We have everything we need right here in Elgin! People who are willing to wrestle with the texts and come up with their own meaning.

This gives me hope. And it makes sense. After the Flood, G-d regains equilibrium and promises never to destroy the world again with a flood. The sign of that promise, the sign of that covenant is the rainbow, the perfect balance of sun and rain.

Have you ever gone looking for a rainbow. You think the conditions are right. It is late afternoon, the sun is out and it is raining. You won’t find one. Or at least I haven’t. No, I think you have to be surprised by a rainbow. And then it is time to say the blessing. Yes, there is a special blessing for seeing a rainbow. Like all blessings, it begins, Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Ha’olam. Blessed are You, Lord our G-d, Ruler of the Universe, Zocher Habrit. Who remembers the covenant.

Debbie Friedman, of blessed memory, has a lovely setting of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw_XdHboBMI&feature=player_embedded

This is a covenant. And the reason that a rainbow appears is to remind us of that covenant. A covenant is a promise, a legal contract. If you do x I will do y. G-d promises to never destroy the world again.

What is our responsibility? What then is our y?

To make sure that happens. To partner with G-d. To be like G-d. To be compassionate. To be kind. To love our neighbors as ourselves. To love every living creature and recognize that each is created in the image of G-d. To find the Divine spark in everyone.

That is the hope that the rainbow brings. That we can be partners with G-d. That we have everything we need. Because of G-d faith in us and G-d’s unlimited compassion, we can begin again.

Today is Bereshit, perfect for a weekend of baseball. Because it is the answer to an old Jewish joke. What is the first mention of baseball in the Bible? In the BIG inning. Which we will read shortly.

This is not the only Biblical connection between baseball and Judaism. “We also read in the Torah Eve stole first, Adam second; Joshua sent a blast to the wall; Rebecca went to the well with the pitcher. Abraham tried to sacrifice Isaac; and Goliath was struck out by David.”

While I have known these jokes for decades, and saw them again recently from another rabbi, apparently they came originally from an old Keeping Posted magazine that we used to get as kids in religious school.

But seriously, with apologies to the Sound of Music, the beginning is a very good place to start. Why? What is so important in these first few chapters, we just read the first chapter this morning of the Book of Genesis? It is not especially good science. But that is a sermon for a different time.

I think there is a message there. Rabbi Harold Kushner who wrote When Bad Things Happen to Good People wrote a book I find I need to reread every year. How Good Do We Need To Be. He argues that these opening chapters of Genesis teaches us that G-d loves us, even if we don’t listen, even if we disobey, even if we are not perfect. He argues that the purpose of Judaism, of any religion, is not to be perfect but is to be whole, and to know that we are loved by G-d and there is enough love to go around. Even if you are jealous of your siblings, you squabble with you spouse, you place unreasonable expectations on your children. And he does it with a baseball metaphor.

Life is like the baseball season, where even the best team loses at least a third of its games, and even the worst team has its days of brilliance. The goal is not to win every game but to win more than you lose, and if you do that often enough, in the end you may find you have won it all.
Kushner, How Good Do We have to Be

Works for me! When we lived in Evanston, I had a little white radio, AM/FM that looked like a baseball. My brother had the red one. I would hide under the covers, listening to WGN and the Chicago Cubs. It was on that radio that I heard about the death of Robert Kennedy and on that radio that I heard of the plane crash carrying Roberto Clemente. So, yes, I was a Cubs fan in my youth. Then we moved to Grand Rapids. My brother became a Tigers fan. I remained a Cubs fan. Danny played T-ball. My father coached. Then he had a heart attack and I became his proxy, helping the other coach. There is nothing better than sitting outside on an early, warm spring day watching kids play baseball. In this wonderful creation.

In college I became a founding editor of the Tufts Daily, the sports editor. With my precious press pass, I could attend opening day at Fenway Park, which back in the day the opening was against the Tigers, not the Yankees. A Red Sox fan was born. It is a hard life, a Jewish life to be a Cubs fan, a Tigers fan and then a Red Sox fan. My spiritual director used to say, and I checked with him this year, that G-d could never allow a Cubs-Red Sox world series because someone would have to win and then the world would have to come to an end. It would be of epic proportions, it could usher in the messianic era. And since that is not the series we have this year, maybe he is right.

Seriously, there has been much written about the Cubs and Judaism lately.

The Israeli ambassador to the US Ron Dermer, made a stop at Wrigley this month, saying “The Cubs might be the most Jewish team in America. They’ve experienced a long period of suffering and now they’re hoping to get to the promised land.” 108 years is a long time to wander in the desert. Even longer than the Israelites. A Jerusalem Post columnist, Rabbi Stewart Weiss called the Cubs, “The Jews of the sports world. “long-suffering, mocked and maligned, preyed upon by Giants, Pirates, even birds and fish, always seeking the Promised Land of postseason play yet never quite making it there. For 2,000 years, Jews wandered the world, hoping that one day they’d reach the Promised Land, the land of Israel. And so, we finally did. For 108 years, the Cubs have wandered the baseball world, hoping that one day they’d reach the Promised Land, the World Series. And God willing, one day they will! Maybe this will be the year.”

My college thesis advisor, Sol Gittleman, who wrote, “Reynolds, Raschi and Lopat: New York’s Big Three and the Great Yankee Dynasty of 1949-1953.” He paid for his first year of college on the proceeds of betting on his first world series. He knew that “Baseball’s not just baseball. It’s integration, immigration, law, transportation, travel, Manifest Destiny, race, labor and business relations, ethnicity, technology – a whole series of topics that really represents American history.”

Now Sol has always been a Yankees fan, never a Dodgers fan. And he could talk to you about the power of rivalries. There exists a strong rivalry between the Red Sox and the Yankees. Some would say bitter. But when that rivalry spills over to physical violence, which it has, in Connecticut for example. That is not OK. That is NEVER OK. A better model is when Simon and the Phelans, both rabid fans for their college teams can sit calmly side by side at breakfast discussing tomorrow’s game. Because it is only a game. And you have to play the game.

It’s math too. A way to learn multiplication tables of threes.

And spirituality.

Theologians have recognized its metaphysical qualities. The Wall Street Journal said, “That slow pace requires fans to pay close attention for hours in the hopes of a transcendent moment.” Sol and I would say it teaches us about meditation, prayer, patience, grace and greatness, compassion.

Irwin Keller, in an article that a congregant sent me this week, said, “Because being a Cubs fan has something to do with faith. Not faith in a specific outcome, but faith for its own sake. Faith as practice…Whereas the theology of the Cubs fan had (and has) something to do with our embrace of the “is” rather than the “might be.” It is the belief without proof. Without promise of reward. Patience just because…If only we could live our lives this way! With such constancy. With exquisite endurance, faith that doesn’t flag, joy even in the waiting.”

There is even a book by John Sexton, Baseball as a Road to G-d.” I have added it to my goodreads reading list.

And hope—which brings us back to today’s Torah portion. Shortly we will read about mikveh mayyim, the ingathering of the waters, where we get the word mikveh from. But the work mikveh and the word tikvah, hope are related.

And ritual—think about how a baseball player comes to the plate and makes all sorts of hand motions before actually hoisting the bat to his shoulder. That’s ritual. Think about all the things you’ve heard about billy goats and lucky shirts, Chicago dogs, watching or not watching. Those are rituals too.

And about family—for many watching sports together is that “dor v’dor”, from generation to generation moment that we sing about. I know that Simon says he feels closer to his father sitting in the Michigan stadium with 100,000 other people than any other place. I know that there are many in Chicagoland who have waited for this moment their whole lives and want to share it with family, parents, children, grandchildren. L’dor v’dor!

And abut this very place. When standing at the Field of Dreams diamond in Iowa thinking about the main hope of that movie, “If you build it, they will come.” It is not unlike Herzl whose belief “If you will it, it is no dream.” So my prayer this morning, is, please G-d, no more wait until next year. If you will it, it is no dream.” Please G-d, let this be the year.”

One last joke. From Aish.com with a change of names. Manny and Maurry, both in their 90’s, had played professional baseball together and, after they retired, had remained close friends. Manny suddenly fell deathly ill. Maurry visited Manny on his deathbed. After they talked a while and it became obvious that Manny had only a few more minutes to live, Maurry said, “Listen old friend. After you die, try and get a message back to me. I want to know if there’s baseball in heaven.”

With his dying breath, Manny whispers, “If God permits, I’ll do my best to get you an answer.”

A few days after Manny died, Maurry is sleeping when he hears Manny’s voice.

Manny says, “Maurry, I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is, yes, there IS baseball in heaven. The bad news is, you’re scheduled to pitch the top half of tomorrow’s double-header.”

In the BIG inning. Let’s go read it. And go Cubs.

The anecdote to my last post and my sermon from Shabbat Chol Mo’ed Sukkot.

To every thing…turn turn turn
There is a season…turn, turn, turn…
And a time for every purpose under heaven…
A time to be born, a time to die…

We know this book. Ecclesiastes, Kohelet. We just read excerpts of it. We know it from popular literature—and music. Shakespeare. Lincoln. Tolstoy. The Byrds. Thomas Wolfe. There is nothing new under the sun, so says Kohelet.

But read on Sukkot? Surprising, no? Here comes this book that seems like such a downer, right in the middle of “the time of our joy.” Why?

They say that every rabbi writes the sermon they need to hear. Since we have been working on Joy for all of the High Holidays, for 40 plus days maybe this is the culmination. See what you think.

The book’s name in English comes from the Greek ekklesiastes, a translation of of Kohelet, meaning something like “one who convenes or addresses an assembly”. In fact, the book’s opening verse tells us that it was written by Solomon in his old age. The rabbis agreed that it was Solomon. This is not the Solomon of his youth when tradition says he wrote Song of Songs. Here, he sounds like an old, cranky, bitter man.  (My husband, older than I am disagrees with that analysis)

Of course, this is Judaism, so there is an alternative reading. That this was written or edited by Hezekiah. The same king who may have also written Isaiah, Proverbs and Song of Songs. Because of the Persian loan words and some Aramaic it cannot be “really” be earlier than 450BCE and since Ben Sira quotes from it in 180 BCE it cannot be later.

And while I get fascinated by the linguistics, I am not sure I really care. This is beautiful and important poetry. Poetry and wisdom we need to wrestle with the meaning.

Why is it read during Sukkot? I think it is like why we recite Yizkor during the Pilgrimage festivals, Sukkot, Passover, Shavuot. At the times of our greatest joys we are keenly aware of those we miss. At a wedding we break a glass to remind us of the sadness we feel, that our world is not yet complete. The Israelites picked up the shattered pieces of the tablets of the 10 Commandments and put them In the Ark to remind them of their dreams not yet fulfilled. Kohelet is like that. We need to remember not to get too caught up in the joy, in the festivities and to carry over the joy we do have to the rest of the year.

We want that sense of joy. We crave the sense, the knowledge that we are loved. Part of the reason this seems like a bitter old man is the translation we use. We just read, “Futility, futility, all is futility.” Other translations, including the one Thomas Wolfe used is “Vanity, vanities.” That doesn’t sound very encouraging.

But what if we go back to the Hebrew. Hevel. Breath. All is breath. That is much more encouraging. Sure, breath seems to flutter away. It was a cold morning. Who saw their their breath today? I hope so! It’s a good thing. My mother, she had COPD, a chronic lung disease. Every breath was precious. She even had a t-shirt, “Remember to breathe.” Breath is life. Breath is G-d. Breath is everything. Without breath, there is no life. No ability to praise G-d.

Our liturgy is filled with these connections to breath. Elohai neshama… O my God, the soul which You have given me is pure. You breathed it into me.

Kol haneshma, Let every living soul, everything that has breath praise G-d. Nishmat kol chai, The soul of every living being shall bless Your Name,

So we are going to take a couple of minutes and do something different. We are going to concentrate on that breath and the sukkah. I have taken a guided meditation by Shimona Tzukernik who writes for Chabad.org and expanded it to emphasize breath. So sit comfortably.

Close your eyes. Breathe in deeply. Breathing in, breathing out. It is a cold morning. You can see your breath. Notice it float away. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in love. Breathe out stress. Everything is breath.

U-lekachtem lachem ba-yom ha-rishon pri eitz hadar, kappot temarim, va-anaf eitz avot, ve-arvei nachal

“You shall take for yourselves on the first day of Sukko) the magnificent fruit of a tree, the fruit of a a goodly tree, what we call an etrog, together with the leaf of a date palm, fragrant boughs myrtle and willows of the brook.” (Leviticus 23:40)

Imagine that you are sitting in a sukkah. Its walls are panels of fragrant wood. On the floor beneath you dance patterns of light and shade, cast by the sechach, the scented roof of leaves above your head. Take another deep breath. Imbibe the peace within your sukkah’s walls. Ufros aleinu sukkat shlomecha. God spreads over you a gentle sense of peace. Breathe in that peace.

The sechach, the roof through which you can see the sun, the moon, the stars, is a shadow cast by a heavenly tree. It is ancient, wide, alive. Nestled within the inner branches, you notice a fruit—a citron, an etrog. It is the heart within the heart of the Tree of Life, and pulsates with G‑d’s infinite love—for you.

You long to internalize this love. Breathe in deeply. Feel your spine stretch and open. Sit up straight and tall. It is the shape of a palm frond, a lulav. Its pointed tip tapers beyond you, transcending your rational mind, reaching above you, beyond the sechach, into the heart of the tree. Feel the point quiver as the lulav and etrog make contact. G‑d’s love begins to flow down your lulav-spine: downward between your shoulder blades, down, down to its base of your spine, Breathe in that love.

You feel the warmth of that love at the base of your spine. The love begins to rise up. Radiating. Filling you. It reaches your heart. Look inward at the ventricles of your heart, the corners you reserve for love and hatred, forgiveness and grudges, abundance and stinginess; surrender your need to control the myriad emotions of life to a Higher Being, to the Divine Being, to the Shechinah. Feel the love of the lulav penetrates your heart, as it pieces your heart, your very soul. It awakens you to your higher self. It allows you to let go of the pockets of darkness you use in defense of your ego-I. The darkness gives way to light and love . . .

Your heart has become one. Whole. Complete. It too is an etrog pulsating with love—for G‑d, for the G‑dly spark within your soul and for the world. Joy surfaces as this hidden, innate love is released. Breathe in that wholeness, that sense of peace

The love and joy flow outwards, filling your lungs, enabling you to breathe deeply. Rising upward toward your mouth. Your lips are the shape of a willow leaf. Silent leaves fluttering on the winds of love and joy. You have no need to speak; simply being bespeaks the loftiness of your soul.

The energy flows ever upwards, entering your eyes and seeping into the center of your forehead. Illuminated myrtle eyes. Take a moment to envision your life through the lens of abundance and joy. Observe the way you awaken in the morning, interact with others, the way you pray and play when drenched in love and joy.

Elohai neshoma. The soul that You, O God have given me is pure. You breathed it into me.

Sit in your sukkah, spray of etrog, palm, willow and myrtle. You are in a circle of love; you are a bouquet of joy. Breathe in that sense of love, joy, peace, hope. Everything is breath. It is not futile. It is not vain.

Last Sunday I started a blog post that I didn’t yet share. I will now, with some edits since then. For 40 days and then some we have written about joy. For 35 years I have tried to find joy during Sukkot. This is yet again not that year.

The sukkah is up. It is quiet in the house. Sukkot has begun. The quiet is a welcome respite.

This Sukkot is unlike any other. It always comes just 5 days after Yom Kippur, barely giving rabbis and congregants a chance to catch our breaths.

This year was no exception to that. Since taking off my white robe on Wednesday, we’ve had two Shabbat services, Hebrew School out at Pushing the Envelope Farm with 3 other synagogues, Sukkah building and brownie baking. Even a baby naming, definitely one of the best parts of my job as a rabbi.

Then the Crop Walk together with local churches to support our soup kettles and food panties, Church World Service and American Jewish World Service. I was asked to pray at the beginning of the walk.

It was a nice honor. I talked about the walkers being our harvest, our crop and I tied it into Sukkot. I reminded people that the harvest starts with a seed, some sun and water, a little hope. And I taught Ufros Aleinu Sukkat Shlomecha. Spread over us the shelter, the sukkah of Your peace. One of my favorite songs. Because peace, like a sukkah is so fragile.

Then we walked. Mighty humid for a mid-October day. The car thermometer read 79 when I got back to it. This is the kind of work I do all the time. Build bridges between people. Create safe, non-judgmental spaces. This is the kind of work I love to do.

When I finally got home it was time to get our own sukkah up. But shalom bayit, peace in the house is hard to maintain. It’s up. But not without some fights at the house. This may seem odd to you who know me.

On Friday morning I was honored with a Partner in Peace award by the Community Crisis Center. It seems like a lifetime achievement award. For 35 years I have worked for peace and for safety of women everywhere. The fact that it is almost Sukkot adds to the joy and pride that I feel with this award. Listening to my own biography brought me to tears and I was speechless when I began to make my speech. I speak in public all the time. It is part of the job of rabbi and teacher. So I was surprised when I forgot what I was planning to say. I wanted to tell people there that while I received the award, I don’t do this work in a vacuum. It represents the work so many of us have put in to make the lives of women better, safer. And I really mean that. This award is a group award.

Instead, I told a piece of my story. And why I do the work that I do.

You see, 35 years ago, on the very day I received this unexpected award, on the 2nd Night of Sukkot, which would be Monday this year, I became one of the 1 in 4. One in four women who are sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetime. That was me.

I have read this past week that every woman has their story or one or two or three. And it is not OK.

• It is not OK that I was gang raped on a kibbutz while celebrating Sukkot, the harvest festival, known as the time of our great joy.
• It is not OK that as part of this election cycle we have been subjected to discussions of “locker room banter” that is anything but locker room talk, having spent lots of time in locker rooms as a woman athlete and as a sports journalist.
• It is not OK that men in power think they have the right to do anything to any woman they want, because they have power or money or celebrity.
• It is not OK that some worry about transgender people will attack some unsuspecting woman in a bathroom, when in fact, the statistics are precisely the opposite. Trans people worry that they will be the ones attacked. I was attacked just outside a bathroom because I went into that bathroom.
• It is not OK to joke about sexual assault.
• It is still not OK.

I have spent the next 35 years dealing with it. And sometimes not dealing with it. And I still deal with it. And it is still not OK.

I have worked on it by working for women and girls everywhere.

• I have been a domestic violence and rape counselor in Boston.
• I have worked to end gun violence, all the way back to the Million Mom March
• I have worked for peace in the Middle East
• I have served on the Jewish Domestic Violence Taskforce in Massachusetts.
• I allowed my story to be told as part of a film made by Bimah at Brandeis students about Mayyim Hayyim, the Community Mikveh and Education Center in Boston which has been instrumental to my healing.
• I chair the Faith Committee of the Family Violence Coordinating Council for the 16th and 23rd Circuit Courts here in Illinois.
• I have partnered with the Community Crisis Center and the Long Red Line—One Billion Rising.
• I even wrote part of my rabbinic thesis on domestic violence.

And none of it is enough. If people continue to joke about sexual assault, none of it is enough. If people will not believe survivors, then none of it is enough. If people continue to think that rape culture is funny or isn’t real, then none of it is enough.

When this first happened to me, I was told not to talk about it, because there was shame attached with being a rape victim. Newspapers didn’t print victims names for that reason. That is slowly changing by each individual the survivor’s choice. We, as survivors, get to choose how we tell our story and when. And I know that for me there is always a personal risk and cost, that I have learned how to manage over the years.

This past week has been brutal. I thought I had worked through most of it. Over and over and over again. I have had very good counseling and a very good network of friends and a wonderful support team at home. The news this week about sexual assault has been troubling at best. Triggering at worst. It has no place in the election. The worst, for me, was a high school classmate claiming, joking on Facebook that he was assaulted by Hillary. He may not be a Hillary supporter. He may support Trump. As I told him, those are his rights in this democracy. But joking about sexual assault is not funny.

There are now 9 women as of this writing that have come forward to claim that Donald Trump made unwanted sexual advances. He claims he didn’t know them or that they fabricated their stories or that they were put up to it by the Clinton campaign or that they simply were not attractive enough. Those are not acceptable responses. Those responses are a blame the victim (or anyone else) stance.

Some have never told their stories before. They are not unlike Holocaust survivors or army veterans. They wondered who would believe them and if they would they be vilified in the press.

I am like Michelle Obama. These events have shaken me to my core. This is not the world I want for my children and grandchildren. This is not the world that I have worked tirelessly for.

I can no longer remain silent. I cannot be silent.

I liked the meme that was posted by a friend who is a Church of the Brethren pastor months ago.
“They came for the Mexicans and I didn’t speak up I wasn’t a Mexican. They came for the Muslims and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Muslim. They came for the disabled and I didn’t speak up, I wasn’t disabled.” It is based on a Niemoeller quote that I used as part of my Yom Kippur sermon on the power of speech.

I didn’t post it at the time, because I am a congregational rabbi and I am not allowed to tell people from the pulpit who to vote for. I worried about each of those groups and worked quietly behind the scenes. I couldn’t find my voice. I felt paralyzed. Then I felt ashamed for being late to the debate. As I type those sentences I realize that is the feeling that many sexual assault victims have.

I can no longer be late to this debate. I can no longer feel paralyzed. I can no longer remain silent.

I have watched the election get more and more heated. More and more bizarre. I live in a neighborhood with Confederate flags, one nearly on my block that I see every day. I wonder what they are teaching their children in that house. I helped take down a Nazi flag at a flea market that was being sold as “war memorabilia” by a documented white supremacist. I spoke up quietly and behind the scenes.

But now, they came for the women and now I have to speak up. I cannot remain silent any more. I am one of the one in four.

There have been moments of peace this Sukkot. We have enjoyed warm weather, lots of meals in our sukkah and guests. But this is not yet the time of my joy.

I pray that the taste of blood disappears again but fear it will not until after the election. I pray that one day I can truly sit in my sukkah and none will make me afraid. Unfortunately, that night isn’t tonight. This is not yet, the time of my great joy.

Our next guest blogger, Ken Hillman, has become a dear friend. He had a student in our religious school. He now teaches in that very religious school, serves on the education committee, the prayerbook subcommittee and chairs our tikkun olam committee. He and I often spend Sunday mornings on our way to the synagogue, debating the issues of the day—global, national or very local. Recently he attended a KickStart training session where he had the opportunity to study with master liturgist and poet Alden Solovny. What Ken’s poem is really talking about is finding joy in belonging, in having friends:

I’m in.

I am here and I am in.
This was just not some arbitrary accident of birth nor rationalizing my sense of worth
Nor a flimsy tentative act of faith shaken by scientific evidence of the age of the earth.
Taking action for a friend who wants me to transcribe the reasons why even though I know not what tribe…

I’m in.

I’m in
the stories I’m in the  book
Im in the history
I’m in my goodly tents
Chosen and blessed
And blessed and Cursed

I’m lost but I know where I am

I’m here.

I’m here.
I’m here and it’s quiet

The outside quiet broken up by the staccato sounds of life and ritual, The musical cacaphony quietly blanketing The insanely loud sound of nothingness… it is the quiet of the nothingness that I fear. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow nothingness I will fear no nothingness… but I search for somethingness something something I cannot concentrate/it’s just too quiet in here

It’s quiet
It’s quiet and I am afraid.
I am afraid that my nothingness speak up and expose me. I am afraid that might unmask show itself to be emptiness. I am afraid of emptiness.

I am afraid
i am afraid but I am not alone
I open my eyes and I see it is always light.
I look around and see my fight

To keep my nothingness from turning into emptiness

I find myself surrounded by those with whom I share
My journey my searching my soul to bare
I adorn myself in ritual and find myself rising above the din

Nothingness.

I’m in

I’m here and I’m in

Ken Hillman

Yesterday the Rev. Denise Tracy spoke about the unending joy she feels from when she first met each of her three adopted children. Frequently someone will say to a new mother, “Don’t you just love them when they are an infant, or one or two.” Or something like, “Enjoy them now. Just wait.” My husband usually argues with the speaker saying that he enjoys each of his children at whatever age they are right now. He would never want a child, any child but especially his children (now adults) to not develop into their full potential. He enjoyed each stage.

• Diaper changing, middle of the night feedings and those first smiles
• The terrible twos and all those nos.
• First moments of school and the excitement of learning new things
• Early morning battles over what to wear and getting out on time for a bus
• Growing independence, the ultimate goal
• Reading books that the child loved
• Long discussions in the car on important topics
• Off to college and coming home to celebrate holidays
• Sharing articles and photos and quick notes via Facebook or email
• Spending time hiking or cooking

Perhaps the greatest thing has been watching the now adults want to make the world a better place. Earlier this week you may have read our daughter Sarah’s take on that. And we are so very proud of her real desire to match her career with wanting to help others.

We raised them that way. It is probably fair to say that I married my husband because of his strong commitment to social justice. Which is something he got in his household and at his temple, Congregation Sinai in Chicago. The Reform Movement has been known for its commitment to ethics and social action. This commitment is my husband’s passion. It is not uncommon for us to serve at a soup kitchen, run a children’s program at a family shelter, build a house with Habitat for Humanity, be leaders of a Girl Scout troop, rebuild a hiking trail, build a playground. Almost everything we do “for fun” has been one kind of project. Even starting the Merrimack Valley Project, a community organizing model, on our dining room table was fun. And it provided a group of lifelong friends, laughter and a chance to do real advocacy on issues we were passionate about. Jobs, hunger, homelessness, fire protection, grocery stores and food deserts.

Sometime during rabbinical school there was an article that came out in Time or Newsweek about the spirituality of America. Turns out about 90% of America believed in G-d. But how we acted out our spirituality differed greatly. One way on the list was serving at a soup kitchen. I had never thought of it as spiritual. It was just something we did because it was the right thing to do. I never thought of serving at soup kitchen as something that brought me joy. It was just something we did because it was the right thing to do. But it does. Time after time after time.

Today’s guest blogger is the Reverend Denise Tracy who is the president of the Coalition of Elgin Religious Leaders (CERL) and a retired Unitarian Universalist minister. She has consulted with the Alban Institute and is active in many local social justice causes. However, her greatest joy came from the first meeting of each of her children. Here is her story:

I have traveled to:

•  Egypt, where I climbed one of the small sister pyramids and did Tai Chi as the sun rose and the moon set,
• Israel, where hidden in waving grasses of Capernaum, the foundation of an ancient church hid in the meadow,
• Delphi, where the mist rose as we climbed and temples appeared and disappeared in a hush of mystery.

But of all the mountains I have climbed and countries I have visited, I have found unending joy in the meetings of the three creatures who became my children.

Our first child was born in Thailand and we had to wait two and half years to travel to fetch her.  Our gestation was longer than that of a whale. When we went into the adoption agency to meet her for the first time, after years of pictures and reports, they led us down a flight of stairs, and there she was, dark hair shining, playing with a set of plastic vegetables, placing them on a pink plate ready to feed her baby doll. I stood on the stairs, quietly, viewing the child that I had waited so impatiently to meet. I realized in that moment that for this I had hungered my entire life.  I was to be her mother.  When I sat next to her and she climbed into my lap, I breathed in her hair, my spirit rejoiced. When she turned the crank on the little music box that played “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and I began to sing to her, her eyes opened wide and she hugged me, I thought I would never again feel such joy.

Our second child was waiting for us in a crippled children’s home. She was 14. Hands, feet and legs crippled by DDT ingested by her field worker mother.   Beautiful face and the report said adaptive skills- excellent.  We went to Thailand to meet her and bring her home.  She had 600 brothers and sisters, in the orphanage that had been her home for 12 years. When we arrived at the Crippled Children’s home, all 600 children were gathered in the courtyard to see the people who were taking their sister away to America. 600 children. Some were missing arms, legs, faces. Some were lying on little wheeled platforms, using stumps of arms to support themselves. Crutches, wheel chairs, all varieties of handicaps. When we entered the doorway, all of the children rose as high as they could, if they could and each one bowed to us, showing us tender respect. We were adopting one of their family, giving a home to their sister. I started to cry. Our daughter stepped into the courtyard across from us and shyly walked toward us, as the other children bowed and watched. When our daughter reached us, she placed her hands together and bowed. We bowed in return. Love abounds. Alleluia!

Our third child was a relative’s child. The mother was a crack addict and prostitute, who had given birth to a crack addicted baby boy.  She failed drug tests and lost custody. We received a call asking if we would like to adopt him.  We said yes and asked if we could meet him, before making the final commitment. We put our daughters on the school bus and drove three hours to meet this13 month old boy.  We played with him, fed him green beans. He was woefully behind developmentally. Hardly crawling, no words, hands crunched into fists because of the cocaine in his system.  He was all blond hair and blue eyes…After three hours the social worker was to take him back to his foster placement. As she reached for him, he shrugged her off, grabbed my husband’s pant leg, pulled himself to almost standing, let go with one hand, reached up, looked at my husband and said in a voice clear as a bell, “DaDa”.  In the silence our tears fell. “Looks like he is yours.” And he was. Whoopee!

The moments of meeting our children are those minutes that imprinted in me a sense of unending wonder and joy.  When they were teenagers or when we were called to school for some disciplinary issue or when we were creating some plan for each of them to overcome their unique handicaps (for they all were considered special needs), I would remember the moment of meeting, that wellspring of wonder and my heart would ease.

There is so much to be happy about. But true joy sits quietly in the heart and waits until the weight of the world can be born no more. Then it quietly rises like the light of the sun at dawn.  Joy appears from the corners of our lives and heals us and gives us hope.

There is so much to be happy about. But true joy sits quietly in the heart and waits until the weight of the world can be born no more. Then it quietly rises like the light of the sun at dawn.  Joy appears from the corners of our lives and heals us and gives us hope.

Our next guest blogger is my own daughter, Sarah Klein. She is a corporate trainer, a Jewish educator, a great writer and deep thinker. She loves to run…and I love running with her. I can’t begin to say how very proud of her I am. Here are her words:

A couple years ago I came across a project called 100 days of happiness. It helps you to track things that make you happy as well as being conscious that there is happiness in every day. The goal is to find something that makes you happy everyday for 100 days and document it through pictures. I’ve tried it from time to time a few times now and I have never completed the challenge.

But, there are still important things that I have learned from it. First and foremost, there is happiness in the everyday. I love the smell of crisp fall air or leaves crunching under my feet on a long walk. Many people love their pumpkin spice lattes, but I think there is nothing better than taking a sip of the first salted caramel mocha of the season. Clearly, my happy thoughts are in autumn right now. But, they can be anything. A beautiful flower can brighten my day. My sweet sister making me a special breakfast puts a smile on my face. My niece looking up to me and wanting to spend time with me is truly a gift. I love the silly faces my puppy makes when he is on a mission to hunt a squirrel or a fly or in desperate need of a belly rub. The list could go on and on with what makes me happy. And I hope that is true for all of us. I challenge everyone reading this to try 100 days of happiness. In fact, writing this is making me want to give it another go.

For me though, joy and happiness are very separate things. Joy is much deeper. It’s not the fleeting moment of my salted caramel mocha or laughing at Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show. That is happiness, but I don’t think it’s joy. Joy is more than a moment; it’s a way of life. And I think unfortunately many people miss it. Joy can be different for everyone and I am lucky I know what it is for me. The way I find joy is through helping others. Between my happy moments that is what fulfills me, satisfies me, keeps me going. For me that is joy. I am lucky enough that I get to experience that in a few ways.

When I was in high school, I started teaching religious school. I’m not going to sit here and pretend I had a great passion for teaching at the time. That’s not to say I didn’t like it, but at the time it was a way to make money while in high school. I had friends who worked at local ice cream shops, others who had retail jobs. I taught. Over the year, I became a better teacher and I really started to love teaching. I love when my students get that “ah-ha” moment after they’ve struggled with something. I love being able to help people grow and change and learn. It’s something that developed over time. And, it is something I bring into my professional life as a corporate trainer. In training, I get to help people learn and achieve their potential. It’s a great feeling at the end of the day to know I have made a difference in someone else’s life. When training or teaching, I get to do that. And that is my version of joy.

There are so many ways to help people. Helping makes me feel as good as the people I’m helping. Even if that is a clichéd sentiment, it still reigns true. Another way I have been able to help people is through my running journey. My running path started with my first half marathon, the Disney Princess Half Marathon. Anyone reading this who knows me knows Disney makes me happy so this race was a natural choice.

But, I’m not talking about happiness right now; I’m talking about joy. The joy of this race for me was running this race with my mother as we raised money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. For me this was a perfect example of joy. I was able to do things that make me happy –running (endorphins and all,) spending time with my mom, doing something healthy, and completing a challenge. But, I also was able to make a difference in the lives of people with Leukemia and Lymphoma and that was the most special part for me as I crossed the finish line. Since then I have crossed many finish lines including one for my first full marathon. Did I have fun at all of those events? Sure. It’s been a blast completing some of my personal fitness goals.

Lately, there has been something missing on my running journey though. It’s the helping people. So now, I’m back at it again. This year my mom and I are raising money for an organization extremely close to my heart, Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. We are again running the Disney Princess Half Marathon as well as a 5k and a 10k that weekend. For anyone out there keeping track that’s 22.4 miles for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. So why is this so special to me and why does it bring me joy?

I was a patient at a Children’s Miracle Network Hospital (Boston Children’s Hospital.) As part of my battle with chronic daily migraine, I was diagnosed with Lyme Disease at BCH in 2002. Having a constant headache and Lyme Disease is not something I talk much about, but both are an important part of my story. CMNH is very personal for me not only because I was a patient, but also because I have friends and family who have been patients. There is a quote that really stuck with me recently I found on Pinterest of all places. Stephanie Sparkles says, “I love when people that have been through hell walk out of the flames carrying buckets of water for those still consumed by the fire.” I’ve been a sick kid so I understand how children and families going through similar things feel. I still struggle with my illness as an adult, but there is never a day that I let it stop me or beat me. I want to be a light for sick kids, a sign of hope that there can be a bright future. I want to show kids that are in CMNH that they can do anything including running 22.4 miles and get their happily ever afters. That brings me joy. So check out my fundraising page, considering donating. Maybe it will bring you happiness or joy, but at minimum it will definitely help others.

http://princesshalfmarathon.childrensmiraclenetworkhospitals.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.participant&participantID=2756

Having our dear friends here for part of the weekend was wonderful. It provided a Sabbath of the soul which was all too needed. We laughed, played, had deep conversations late into the night.

One of those deep conversations was about work. What is it about work that we like? That is fun? That brings us joy?

Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin wrote a book, Being G-d’s Partner, How to Find the Hidden Link between Spirituality and Your Work. I always keep an extra copy in my office. It is that good. I love the story in his introduction about the moving men who packed his house with such care, with such joy. They had found the spirituality in their work. The book is like a What Color is Your Parachute for Jews, for anyone really.

He addresses finding a career that is right for you. He addresses how to be spiritual at work. Balancing the work-life in this modern world. He addresses Leviticus 19 as the ultimate business ethics exam.

I am fortunate. I have found a job and a career that brings me joy. Yet I struggled to express it in that conversation. So here is my answer.

• It brings me joy when the house is full for dinner on Shabbat, when there is good food, good conversation and singing. When people can experience the joy of Shabbat.
• It brings me joy when I can help a family celebrate a life cycle event, meeting them where they are, whether it is welcoming a new baby, studying with a Bar/Bat Mitzvah student, planning a wedding, or visiting someone in the hospital.
• It brings me joy when I teach our young students and their eyes light up and they put the pieces together.
• It brings me joy when I teach on Shabbat morning or at adult study, when people see the connections between our ancient tradition and our modern world.
• It brings me joy when I reach out to one of our “senior-seniors” and listen to what they are reading and make them a little less lonely.
• It brings me joy when I am able to reach out beyond the synagogue and work on the issues illustrated in that business ethics exam. When I welcome the widow, the orphan, the stranger. When I feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless.
• It brings me joy to hang out at a local coffee shop and have more of those deep conversations, with congregants or those interested in learning more about Judaism.

I am not sure that it is a full list. And it is a complex job that it is fair to say is not always fun. However, I am, indeed, very very fortunate. How does work bring you joy?