October, 2024 Megillah

RABBI'S NOTES

The Elul moon is waning, and Rosh Hashana is drawing near as I settle in to write these notes. I’m surrounded with my seasonal tools: two shofars — one of sheep’s horn and one of kelp, a bunch of different High Holy Day machzors, a few other beloved books, a bunch of translations of Psalm 27, the psalm we read every day of Elul, the Sin Buffet cards, the usual mountain of post-its… It’s so quiet this evening. I’ve cleaned up my office, so it is unusually tranquil in here — no stacks of books and papers teetering, actual wood visible on the surface of my desk. It’s simple and still. I feel like the air here is full of High Holy Days. Words, images, drifts of tune float about.

Meanwhile the Autumn Equinox was two days ago. It’s not even 7 PM and it is already getting dark. There is some late-September warmth in the air, but trees are beginning to turn color. Rain would not be a total surprise. A tentative time.

The next time we see a full moon the High Holy Days will have passed and we will be in our sukkahs. I love Sukkot so much! Years before I ever observed much of Jewish life I used to build a sukkah each year with my roommates in LA. It was just so much fun — a carryover from building blanket forts as a kid, I’m sure. Once I arrived up here in this beautiful place, and especially after Mickey came on the scene, building a sukkah felt like an absolutely necessary joy. We devised our own mode of construction: stakes driven into the dirt with a hatchet, bamboo poles duct taped to the stakes, cross poles taped to the top of the uprights. More poles across these cross poles to support the schach — the greenery that makes that beautiful, fragrant, open-air ceiling. Then my wire and beach glass lamp that I bought on the street years ago in Cape Town suspended from the cross poles, fairy lights draped around, Bob’s ceramic ahavah and shalom plaques tied to the poles, a rug on the ground, a table on the rug. Sometimes our sukkah was oval; sometimes teepee-shaped; once it had an entry hall. Often (sorry!) it was decorated with swords of pampas grass. Every year Mickey would say, “Let’s make it small this time.” And every year it was gigantic. And every year it was beautiful!

The year after Mickey died several of my wonderful friends reached out to me and offered to help me build a sukkah. We did our very best, and it was indeed beautiful as ever. Then the next morning I woke up to find that the roof of the sukkah had collapsed. Oh my gosh, I cried and cried. And then I realized that this was actually kind of a perfect thing. My sukkahs have never been totally halakhically correct; but they have always had the mandatory fragility. I just now found this little story on the website of the Rabbinical Assembly: “

At best, sukkot are fragile things. In many diaspora communities, it is not uncommon to experience severe autumn weather during the holiday. Some readers may remember when Hurricane Gloria made her way up the east coast of North America just before Sukkot in 1985. In the community I served at the time, everyone came to synagogue unhappy and depressed that first morning because the wind had decimated the sukkot in our costal community. They were greeted by their rabbi, who happily informed them that any sukkah still standing after a hurricane was probably not too kosher a sukkah in the first place!

Later that day Karen Bowers came over, and we re-decorated the fallen-in sukkah. And it was, in its own way, more beautiful than ever. The sukkah is many things; but one thing it is is a visual, visceral reminder of fragility. It is a reminder that security is illusory.

Now in my little office — which is a little more substantial than a sukkah but not a bulwark by any means — I am noticing these little drifts of High Holy Days floating about my head:

“For in You there is shelter in times of hardship and disquiet…”

“Do for us, please, justice and lovingkindness, for we have no deeds of our own…”

“On Rosh Hashana it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed who shall live and who shall die…”

“Remember us to life, You who delight in life…”

“Spread over us a sukkah of peace…”

I think of how fragile it all is — and how beautiful. I wish you all a most beautiful High Holy Days and a joyful Sukkah of peace.

PAIGE NOTES

Shanah tova! What a blessing to get to bring in another Hebrew year with you all! I will be once again, as I have for the past few years, leading the High Holidays at Kol HaEmek in Redwood Valley. Thus, here’s a sneak peek of an excerpt of my Rosh HaShanah Sermon that I will be offering there.

A few months ago, I sent out a mass message to all my wisest loved ones asking “life inevitably will always be hard, in some way or another, so how do we - how does humanity - endure the hardness?” Some people immediately replied “chocolate!” or “dancing!” seeking to balance out the hardness; one dear person more deeply articulated it as “find softness- even the hard parts of our bodies are surrounded by the softness of our skin.” We balance the hard with soft. 

Sometimes though, that feels impossible. Life just fills up with mostly hardness and there seems to be no room or energy left for softness, so what then? An elder mentor of mine answered, “flexibility and stability!.. If we aren’t able to flex with all the ups/downs, ins/outs, sideways/crossways, good/bad polarizing and find the rainbow of possibility in the middle, our chances as a continuing species are seemingly reduced. We have to have the ability to accept life on life’s terms! Acceptance, backed by love, will move us forward.” This answer reminded me of one of my favorite notions, articulated by Eckhart Tolle, that “the root of all suffering isn't pain but is resistance to pain.” A dear friend expounded on this thought in her answer, saying “I think a big part of enduring hardship is surrendering to it, accepting it for what it is and not trying to resist it or wish it was different. Once you can fully accept that sometimes life is hard and you’re not always supposed to be happy or feel good, it somehow makes those negative feelings a bit easier to endure. Thinking about it like, yup this is bound to happen and it’s horrible or not fair or painful, but it’s inevitable.”

The other dynamic that I see hand-in-hand with resistance is control. My sister, who’s a psychologist, answered that we endure hardness by “knowing there will always be stressors outside of your control and to find ways to focus on what is within your control.” That’s one of the most beautiful and most difficult aspects of being part of something that’s so much greater than ourselves—whether that’s a global Jewish community or just in general Divine Life- that when it’s so much bigger than just us, we truly have no control. Accepting that can help soften the hardness. Accepting that we don’t have control though often requires trust. In part of Rabbi Zelig Golden’s answer to me, he shared, “I have heard it said that we are given challenges commensurate with the healing our soul is ready for and needing.”

You’ll have to come over the hill to hear the rest of the sermon. ◡̈ May 5785 bless us with all the balance, acceptance, flexibility, trust, & softness to not only endure, but grow from and even enjoy, all that this life has to offer. ♡