January, 2023 Megillah
RABBI'S NOTES
I woke up one morning not too long ago and felt alive. I hadn’t really felt that way for the past nine months, not since Mickey died. This wasn’t a big bursting sensation…more of a modest and familiar sense of looking forward to the day. Nothing special was planned, as I recall; it was just a day about to start: coffee, cat, newspaper, e-mails, zooms, phone calls, going somewhere, doing something, whatever it was going to be. But I noticed the feeling as I opened my eyes and looked up at the ceiling. Okay, let’s go.
I’ve long had the notion that, when someone close to us dies, we die in some measure too. That’s why Jewish tradition, and just about every other cultural and spiritual one, has practices for mourners: to woo them back to life, one cup of tea and slice of kugel at a time. But after Mickey died, I felt it: I was dead, or nearly dead, more in the grave than in the house with all the kind people who came to be with me. Sometime after that I read the astonishing essay, “Time Lived, Without its Flow” by the British poet Denise Riley, who wrote it after the death of her adult son. Riley writes about the weird feeling of being outside the forward flow of life, even while everything and everyone else seems to be on track:
The weak metaphor of ‘time stopped’ would sap the force from a description of this new state. Hard to put into words, yet absolutely lucid as you inhabit it daily, is this sensation of having been lifted clean out of habitual time. This condition of being ‘outside time’ is so quietly astonishing when you’re first in it.
If there is no temporal flow, there is necessarily the lack of “futurity.” It is difficult to get purchase on even the simplest plan or intention. Over time, though, I regained my grip on the forward flow of life. I came back to work. I visited with people, went places (not very much, but sometimes), and I even laughed once in a while. Occasionally, I was even interested in something. One day a couple months in I was doing something or other, and I caught myself thinking, “Oh my gosh, I’m having fun!” At another point I noticed that my feelings had moved from solid planes of aching grief interspersed with moments of whatever-else to mostly whatever-else interspersed with bursts of grief. When people would ask me, “How are you doing?” I moved from saying, “I can’t answer that” to “Up and down” to “Not so bad, I guess” to mostly “Pretty good” and occasionally even “I’m fine thanks.”
But I can’t say that I’ve felt really alive since Mickey died. I’ve been in a kind of twilight for the most part, kind of attenuated. I’ve generally been glad to do whatever I’m doing, but I could walk away in a minute from any of it. Lack of purchase, no traction: “Time Lived, Without its Flow.”
Then came that sense of readiness the other morning. Life. It surprised me. I’ve always felt—intellectually, but usually emotionally too—that it is the greatest gift to be alive. To have a body, to have the capacity to have relationships, to think, to imagine, to have senses, to create, to want, even to suffer. It feels so rich, so precious, and yes, so finite, to have the breath of God (ruach) imparted to us at birth, inhabiting us until death. I am trying to notice life inside myself; it’s sort of like trying to feel my blood moving through my arteries and veins.
I am trying to sense the flow of life energy—not to demand it, but to appreciate it.
I don’t want to be too bold about this; I am still deep in mourning and the process of change that a huge life loss brings. I am committed to giving that evolution all the space it needs for as long as it goes on. At the same time, I am noticing the breath of life too, in me and all around.
It makes me think about the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, whose sap freezes underground and has to be called upward at Tu B’Shevat (February 6th this year). Just like there is life inside all of creation, there is life inside me. It is the same energy, the same breath, the same blood. To be in a living world, part of a living world, which also relates and senses and creates and wants and suffers, this is everything.
The Kabbalists have an idea that the world is filled with sparks of God, all encased in klipot (shells), and that the work of life is to release bound sparks. I think we do that with each other—release sparks, call each other to life. I think we do that in the larger world as well, calling pieces of land and houses and neighborhoods and gardens to life, and being called to life by them as well.
I can’t help thinking of the beautiful last words of my favorite play (Angels in America: Perestroika by Tony Kushner):
Bethesda Fountain’s not flowing now, they turn it off in the winter, ice in the pipes.
But in the summer it’s a sight to see. I want to be around to see it. I plan to be.
I hope to be.
This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all, and the dead will be commemorated and will struggle on with the living, and we are not going away. We won’t die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come.
Bye now.
You are fabulous creatures, each and every one.
And I bless you: More Life.
The Great Work Begins.
In this cold winter season I wish us all, wish myself, More Life.
We’re both looking forward to growing our MCJC gemach into something that fits and serves and weaves our community. What do you wish you could borrow from someone in the community? What might you have to offer? Who would you call?
PAIGE NOTES
Chodesh tov! Kabbalah teaches us that every Hebrew month embodies the energy of either Jacob or Esau, holding the essence of either good inclination or dark inclination, respectively. This new month of Tevet is one of only three months in the category of Esau. Not only are we in the dark cold days that no longer have the Hanukkah lights, but also Tevet is the month in which the walls of both the First and Second Temples were breached. We are invited to be with, and learn from the darknesses. Rather than resisting, we can take the extra time spent indoors to truly listen and feel. This can of course be done more healthily with the support of our loving community, so I look forward to more gatherings with you throughout this darker journey, so that we may feed one another’s flames.
I am surely basking in the light of these past couple months of formally serving as the MCJC rabbinic intern. First, we officially relaunched our Youth Education Program: the Sunday before Hanukkah, I gathered with eight local Jewish kiddos and their parents to craft homemade menorahs out of small redwood logs. We shared stories, including the mystical Talmudic tale about Adam & Eve’s first Winter Solstice, and began to deepen as a new constellation within this community. Additionally, I reached out to some of our local Jewish high schoolers and took them out to lunch in the middle of the school day. Many of them mentioned how much they had been wanting a structured space like this in which to explore their Jewish identities and to get to know each another in this way. We intend to continue monthly gatherings for both high schoolers and youth.
I have also started inviting myself to tea with individual congregants. Some of these people may be facing physical struggles, and others I feel drawn to, but my intention is to offer some pastoral care, support, and loving companionship. If you have any interest in meeting with me, please send me an email at
Each of these gatherings is deeply connective and nourishing for me, and the culmination was the beautiful Rosh Chodesh/Hanukkah/Havdallah bonfire I co-led with Rabbi Margaret on December 24th. We will be continuing a form of this Rosh Chodesh tradition every month, and I look forward to whatever riches arise from that connection.
With blessings on your month of healthy darkness exploration, paige
