June, 2023 Megillah
RABBI'S NOTES
I’m going to break the Fourth Wall here and tell you that I wrote almost all of a completely different column, then found myself pondering one small aspect I had arrived at near the end. I realized, as I sometimes do when I’ve started down another thought-road, that this is what I really want to think about with you. Thank you, and here goes. Before I went to rabbinical school, I spent two years at USC working towards a Ph.D. in ethics (I dropped out;no regrets). While I was there I took a class called something like “Biography and Autobiography,” taught by the great anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff of blessed memory. The class had a huge effect on me; I draw on what I learned there all the time.
Our final assignment was to interview someone important to us and write their biography. At that time my housemates and I were hosting a family of Cambodian refugees, which was an enormous, transforming experience for all of us. Among much else, it had a lot to do with my decision to become a rabbi,but that’s another story. At any rate, I wrote my final biographical paper about Pruong Pin, the young father who was living with us (this though he knew about four words of English and I even fewer in Cambodian, so I couldn’t really interview him!).
We students turned in our papers and, for a final class session, Barbara filmed some of us reading our essays. This was before i-phones and being filmed wasn’t an everyday thing. I remember standing there facing the camera, my teacher and a few classmates, reading my biography of Pin, with tears rolling down my face and a case of the shakes. Barbara asked me why I was crying, and I think I must have responded that it was just overwhelming to be listened to closely about something that was so important to me.
I wondered at the time about my response. It’s not like I never got attention or people didn’t care what I think. But there was something so powerful about being witnessed in the way I was that day. Barbara had already read my paper. She must have sensed that it was meaningful to me to share this experience. And she took this extra step—for me and, if I remember right, for a few other classmates as well—of using the filmed reading as a way of allowing us to witness each other with intention.
I think now of the many times in the context of our Jewish community that I have shared things important to me, and the tremendous feeling of honor that comes from being witnessed as I did so (not least writing my monthly Rabbi’s Notes). I think too of many of the women of our community standing naked at the edge of the river or the pond over the years, one by one, sharing their heartfelt intentions for their lives, then being lovingly watched as they dipped into the mikveh water and emerged into our arms. I think of young people, and some not-so-young people, blessing Torah for the first time as they became B-Mitzvah and sharing their Torah with family, friends and community.
I think of regular old Shabbat morning services, where the structure is just about the same from week to week, but within it people speak of friends and family in need of healing, mourn deaths, celebrate milestones and, again, listen deeply to the thoughts of friends standing in front of the minyan to teach Torah as refracted through their own experience.
I think of the gorgeous teachings shared over the years on Rosh Hashanah afternoon by many different members of our community, sometimes polished, sometimes less so, but almost always vulnerable and heartfelt. I think of the Elders’ Conversation, where there has grown over the many years a quality of attention that is deeply moving. I think of visiting people in the hospital, seeing them in times of frailty, and how beautiful and close to the surface their hearts often seem then.
Somehow these days I’m especially noticing this quality of witnessing. I’ve been reading some of Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s recent words about the epidemic of loneliness and thinking about all of us emerging, in different ways, to different degrees, from the extreme isolation of COVID. I’m thinking about people who moved up here during the pandemic and maybe don’t really know many people here, or—equally important—feel known by others. I’m thinking about the many ways people can feel like they don’t belong, in their families, their neighborhoods, their shuls….
It is absolutely crucial to be seen and heard in life. Ella Russell of blessed memory, our beloved mikveh lady* for many years, used to teach that the act of witnessing was as important as the act of immersing. She taught that when we heard a woman speak her kavvanah, her heart’s intention, before going into the cold water, we could hold that intention for her so, while in the water, she could completely let go of thought and memory. When she emerged we would welcome her back to her truth.
This quality of witnessing, of holding each other’s truth—whether for a moment or through a lifetime—might be one of the most important things we do for each other as a community.
When we listen to each other teaching Torah or joining in a conversation or sharing concerns and joys at a service or a party or a mikveh, we are learning about the topic at-hand. Every bit as much, however, we are seeing each other, hearing each other, knowing each other. We are holding each other’s truth. And we all so deeply need this.
It also seems that there are few things as joyous and as nourishing as being able to witness someone’s truth. Even difficult truth. There is something so precious about people allowing themselves to be seen, to be heard. Right now I am remembering back many years to the Local Heroes performances, led by Lynne Abels, in which many of us wrote and performed short personal monologues. Lynne encouraged us in the class to find what felt true and important to us—sometimes what made us shake and cry—and to craft that into a 15-minute performance. I was in the very first group. We wondered if anyone would come to the show. To our shared amazement, the line for tickets was down the block. And so it continued season after season. There was some hunger to witness each other, whether we knew the performers or not. It was an opportunity to see and hear someone else at their water’s edge, saying what they decided was important for them to say. It felt huge
In our little Jewish community these days some people have known each other for half a century. Others have just arrived. Some we only know on Zoom. We are different ages, with different backgrounds. There are close and sustained and sustaining friendships among some of us, and hopefully more will begin and deepen. But however well we do or don’t know each other, by coming together in intentional ways—to pray, to study, to discuss, to play, to struggle, to plan, to share our lives—we can hold each other’s truth. We can stand at the water’s edge and watch each other dip underneath and re-emerge. The act of witnessing is as important as the act of immersing.
I want to notice and appreciate that we have over the years, instructed and inspired by generations before us, created a space for speaking and hearing our personal truths in a sacred context. I hope that for each of us, however we enter this space, we find it to be a sanctuary.
(*“Mikveh lady” is the name given in many traditional mikveh spaces for the attendant who guides, watches, and helps a woman immerse. Only she knows which women come to the mikveh, and she's not telling.I don’t know what they call the mikveh attendant who helps people of other genders take their dips. Ella used that term, and we’ve kept it for others since who have performed this role.)
PAIGE NOTES
Chodesh tov!This past new moon, we welcomed in the Hebrew month of Sivan.We revel in this time as we finish Counting the Omer, physically harvest our barley, and spiritually harvest our growth through the sephirot (Kabbalistic attributes of the Divine). Like the wildflowers all around us, we begin to bloom to our fullest potential.
With that in mind, I want to share a personal update. After six years of rabbinical school, I have finished my final course! From the first entire year in Jerusalem through now, it has been a profound journey of insightful teachings, wise mentors, powerful prayer, and spiritual deepening for me.
This final year of it, in addition to my studies, I have had the pleasure of launching here on the coast a monthly philosophical lunch with the Jewish high schoolers, a monthly youth education gathering, and a monthly Rosh Chodesh Chanting Circle. I have led Shabbat tefillot, served on the Young Adults Board as program lead, and had the honor of meeting every week one-on-one with Rabbi Margaret! I am so grateful for the opportunity to learn from, and work with her and all of you.I am looking forward to more work with the community here, cultivating more access for people of all ages and preferences.
When I was 16 and knew I would be a rabbi, I was terrified to tell my 101-year-old Orthodox great-grandfather, “Zeidelu.” My grandmother and he, her father, had escaped from Pultusk, Poland during the Holocaust and he had never quite assimilated into modern American culture. I felt he would be against female rabbis. When I told him in front of my whole family, he looked at me and slowly responded, “I’m a rabbi.” All of our jaws dropped. No one in my family had known he had been a rabbi. Without knowing it was my inheritance, I had spiritually tapped into my ancestral calling.
Seven years later, I made a pilgrimage to Pultusk and was awed by the tiny town nestled in grand woods with a glorious river flowing through it; it was the exact environment I sought to live in. When I finally stumbled upon Mendocino years later, I knew I had found my Pultusk. Though my great-grandfather lived four more years after that conversation, he will not be there the day I become a rabbi. However, when the hands are laid upon me—which is the literal meaning of smicha, the Hebrew word for rabbinic ordination—I know they will belong not only to the rabbis of my seminary, but also to Zeidelu, and to the trees of Pultusk and Mendocino, too.
with awe & blessings,
erev rabbi paige lincenberg
