Minyan Replay with Rabbi Lizzi — Sukkot Edition

At our Virtual Morning Minyan on October 5th, Rabbi Lizzi shook things up by welcoming minyan members into her sukkah. That's right — today's virtual minyan was partially in-person!

The song featured in the intro to today's episode was "Great Day" by Eddie From Ohio.

Every weekday at 8:00 am, Mishkan Chicago holds a virtual Morning Minyan. Our Thursday sessions are hosted by Mishkan's Founding Rabbi, Lizzi Heydemann. You can join in yourself or listen to all the prayer, music, and inspiration right here on Contact Chai.

https://www.mishkanchicago.org/series/morning-minyan-summer-fall-2023/

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For upcoming Shabbat services and programs, check our event calendar, and see our Accessibility & Inclusion page for information about our venues. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook for more updates.

Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

Hello and welcome to this half hour dose of weekly Jewish spirituality brought to you by Michigan's Thursday morning minion. Jews have a tradition of praying three times a day and at Michigan we have a daily virtual minion at 8am Central to get your day started. folks join us from across the country and across the world as we begin each day with words and songs of gratitude, inspiration, healing and Torah. If you miss us in the morning, join us here every week for the replay of our Thursday minion hosted by me Rabbi Lizzi Heitmann without further ado, I invite you to breathe a little deeper connects a little more with yourself with God with Torah with this community and with the world around you wherever you are whatever your timezone.

All right, we're gonna go into shock right now. Sort of our joyful entree and welcome to

Eric and Elisa in person here in the sukkah. wait Hang on.

I want to make sure people get actually to you.

Yay. We might even have one more person coming later. I sort of told people to stave off because of the rain and then I was like or just come and sit in the wet suka you know that works do we you know we pray for rain right?

So you have a prayer for Rantau

starting this coming Shabbat we shift and instead of praying for do to just kiss the plants in the morning during the summer. We pray for rain to help prepare the soil and how make and how make everything ready for next year's harvest. So as we go into high level soon, I'll invite everybody to think about not just like what is joyful and working in this moment, but also like what are the prayers what are the seeds we're beginning to sow

for next season. All right.

I want to invite anybody who's wearing a Tallis to go ahead and grab the four corners of your seat seats

by Ruha I don't I

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have to eight I don't I don't have the whole of Africa on Africa. Bahama Odessa there how you had very much a lair. I share I know he mitzvah ha ha Yo my love of Africa. The Sheena and tam live on aka the D bar. It's a bomb that she took up of a taka overlay Alexa hahaha Dara Shakalaka with comesa Bookshare timely Oh, yeah DACA the how you literature fraud being a NASA will Kotov.

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all right.

So as we go into as we go into Halliwell, which we're going to do in a moment, well, actually, you know what, let me let me pause before before that, put down my book.

stead of going right into Hello, we're going to do a section from

we're going to do a section from the Amidah which is called yet Alafia VO We do it specially on festivals and well this is a festival Rosh Hodesh

So, this is also an opportunity if you look at the if you look at the translation, yeah, la rise, the VO arrive. You know this is this is in that tone. The Jews sometimes get on our festivals when we start getting a little demanding of God. You know sort of like

like,

like look

Gotcha. Um, as long as we're in conversation, there are some things that would be nice. So like rather than me expecting you to read my mind or expecting you to read the minds of the Jewish people, why don't we all say to you yeah les via via via via a via ceviche or maybe if I can, you know, you could take care of us. You could be kind to us.

You could show up for us, you could send the Messianic age already Hashem, you know, and then we hear it and we think to ourselves, okay, what am I doing to bring that about?

Yeah, and then

the Yagi being here, I say the year I'd say the Yi Shan Mei Mei Yi packing the yeas

zero Nain off ego

emo J.

Moshe Ben daddy

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Hey,

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All right, I'm heading all the way down into Hallo.

And here's what I want to just begin us with these words from the end of our high holiday Bible.

So

you shall dwell in boots for seven days, the Torah enjoins us, so that you will know with every fiber of your being that your ancestors dwelt in booths during their sojourn in the wilderness when they were leaving Egypt. This is a commandment we fill not with a gesture or a word, but with our entire body. We sit in the sukkah with our entire body. Only our entire body is capable of knowing what it felt like to leave the burden of Egypt and oppression behind to let go of it. Egypt in Hebrew is meats rhyme, the root of this word is Tsar narrowness. Egypt was the narrow place only the entire body can know what it feels like to be pushed from a place of dire constriction into a wilderness, a spacious open world, only the body can know what it felt like to be born. Only the body can know the fullness of joy. And this is a commandment that can be fulfilled only with joy.

And this is a commandment that can only be fulfilled with joy. All the holidays and their rituals are to be observed with joy. But there is a special joy an extra measure of joy connected to Sukkot, the twine the Chara mentions this three times in connection with Sukkot. Perhaps this is because Sukkot is a holiday of the Fall Harvest. We rejoice at Passover but it's not full joy because the spring seedlings are just beginning to come up just beginning to break the plane of the earth just beginning to show themselves in the world. We don't know if they will make it to harvest or not. We rejoice a chub load but it is only the early harvest the time of the first fruits and although there is a special joy in this there is also anxiety. The full harvest won't be fall until the full harvest won't be till fall until Sukkot and it Sukkot there is no anxiety there is nothing to hold back. There is only rejoicing the full harvest has come.

And perhaps this special joy we feel it Sukkot is a cathartic joy in direct proportion to the anxiety of the High Holidays. The high priest has gone into the Holy of Holies emerged alive and pronounced the unpronounceable name of God. We will live another year the rains will come the crops will grow. We are here.

Perhaps this joy is the special joy of being stripped naked. The joy of being flushed with life of having nothing between our skin and the wind and the starlight. nothing between us in the world.

We've spent the last many weeks stripping ourselves, acknowledging our brokenness, allowing ourselves to see what we don't usually look at embracing the emptiness at the core of our experience reducing our lives to a series of impulses that rise up and then fall away again. And we have even let the reigns of denial slip a little bit. We've relaxed our fierce determination to ward off death at any cost. We've invited ourselves to entertain the possibility that we will not live forever.

On Rosh Hashanah it is written we acknowledge and on Yom Kippur war, we acknowledge that we will die. And it may well be one of us who does. And so now we sit flush with the world in a house that calls attention to the fact that it actually gives no shelter. As I discovered when I put out my computer and it rained on my computer.

It is not really a house, it is the interrupted idea of a house a parody of a house. According to Jewish law, this booth we must dwell in for seven days need only have closed walls on two and a half sides. And we must be able to see the stars through the organic material, the leaves and branches that constitute the roof. This is not a house. This is the bare outline of a house. It has like the architectural feature called the broken pediment, the notch in the roofline, the facade of a house, which leaves the mind to complete the line, and thus implant the idea in the mind, of a line more forcefully than an unbroken line would have. And so it is with the succah. With its broken lines, it's open roof, it's walls that don't quite surround us. And the idea of the house calls the idea of a house to mind more forcefully than a house itself might do. And it exposes the idea of a house as an illusion. The idea of a house is that it gives us security shelter and haven from the storm. But no house can really offer us this. No building of wooden stone can offer us protection from the disorder that is always lurking around us. No Shall we put between us and the world can ever keep us secure from it. And we know this, we never really believed in this illusion. And that's why we never feel truly secure in it. And so the sucker a house that is open to the world that freely acknowledges that can it cannot be the basis of our security. Inside of it, we let go of this need, the illusion of protection falls away. And suddenly we are flushed with our life flush with feeling following our life doing its dance one step after another.

All right, if you are able, I invite you to stand. And since I'm holding a guitar, I'm going to hand this lulav unnatural to our

sick of volunteers here, hold it, hold that part down and then I'll tell you how to turn it up. Hold them together. The aerogen The lulav are like the heart and the spine and the eyes and the mouth like all different body parts we hold together with two hands and then that part yeah, Elisa gotta pee. Tom. Yours doesn't have a pee Tom. Some kid broke it off.

Yeah, exactly. You hold them down.

It's the idea. Yes, exactly. Exposing the illusion of the Peto in the first place. Okay, so you hold them together. And then we'll say the blessing for for holding for raising the lulav today by rural lifestyle. Adonai Eloheinu Melech Ha olam a share keep Shani Uber MetroTech Bitsy Vanu knitted ality lat Lou love, turn that little guy over, you hold them together and then as we sing, you'll shake and there are these moments when you shake and you shake forward into the right to the left and back and up and down. And if you don't do it in that order, it's totally fine.

And now we're gonna go

into Halliwell now with that introduction

by Ruth Carter I don't I like a new man if

I share kitchen Oh, let me throw tab it's Ivana the crow at ha ha

me Kimi me I fire damn ash porque ya remember y'all know Chevy even the DVM immediate amo Moshe via Carota by 8am Hi my name Smee ha Hallelu yah

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mom's time Hi,

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Hi Dan

Hey Harry

nades own Beliefnet Dawn full of ers

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just to say even if you don't have a lulav and Metro, you can still shake it and what I mean by that is your body I think during Halloween we stand and interestingly some of the same songs we did sitting down in the first part of the morning and so get a Zimra there's nothing about the psalms that demands that one stand per se, however, I do think come on in the tradition wants us to move you know and so planning come on and we're just started Hello. And so even if you don't have a lulav and Etro you can feel free to shake your body or move in whatever way feels right to you you can do it in front of the camera or you could do it not in front of a camera.

Oh, thank you so much Ricky for putting the putting those words in the chat and I'll just read them aloud in honor of my earlier comment on the Kabbalah another meaning is to wave right or South if you're facing East I guess which is Besaid loving kindness left North Devorah which is strength forward East like from your heart center to ferrets which is like that integration that Beauty Up Down East at Uptown and West Thank you Ricky

hi and we're gonna continue

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alright so we're gonna shake as we do all these HoH dues

and as you've seen you know I'm a little rusty with this but also part of Harlow and part of doing it on festivals is like bringing out bringing out different tunes that you wouldn't necessarily use all year but you might use here in this season for this year so using Hanukkah tunes around Hanukkah and see if you can spot this one

for Sukkot

oh man I keep starting too low or too high here

nope nope nope

and this is where we do like the all the shaking on the hoodoos

All right I guess that's where we'll do it that's where we'll do it

now we're gonna move it up a little solo

oh no I was right the first time

do that oh nine key to

Nike Quito

Quito

go do that Nike

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y'all

on Nike to be late

TO EVERYTHING

there is a season

and it's time for every purpose under heaven and we'll sing the rest of it at the end is minion I want to make sure we get in on

of course the literature of Sukkot is the literature of Ecclesiastes of TO EVERYTHING there is a season

pig.

Daddy

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leash you again

Hi Tyler Roche be nice

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double nine

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Hi yo masago 911

That's that rate day that we were singing great day. Today is the day that God has made that Hi yo Mossad Oh 911 Nice Maha bow just this day, not yesterday, not tomorrow, right now. All right, so this is where I wanted to invite everybody to take a moment

and consider what you are building toward what you are

looking forward to.

So even as we are in this moment, we know you know, there'll be a next moment in the next moment. And just as just as we described before, we're like free of the anxiety of what was we've made it through the High Holidays however we are about to start praying for the rain for the rainy season and for the rain to start preparing the ground for spring Believe it or not even though we've got winter to get through in the meantime and so as we go into this on that I don't I hope she Anna which is this pleading this you know pleading and shaking

take a moment to think as we say help us God helped make us successful how make each other successful what helped me ask for what I need to get to where I want to go take a moment to actually focus on what are you know what's your birthday wish?

Like what are you blowing out the candle hoping for?

As we say these words I'll say them and then you repeat back and feel free to unmute actually so that we can have like the whole chorus of all the cacophony

and yes, feel free to put it in the chat

I'm gonna go under my little go under my little prayer hat here my prayer tent All right

Ah, now

I hope she gonna do

oh she

I hope she

hearts

hearts

I mean, I mean, you know, and as we shake the lulav together with the Etrigan the you know, I mean if you if you didn't already perceive this, it's like there's something very reproductive system me about the whole about the whole setup altogether. This is also a thinly veiled pro fertility ritual. And so I just want to I want to put it out there in its most expansive sense. In what way is are you going to be sharing of yourself in this year to come?

By Ruth Ababa Shimanto. Nine, their new family paid?

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and realizing we are a little bit over although what were we expecting it's a holiday with Hello. I want to make sure we do Padishah tome, mourners Kaddish and then I'll read and then I'll read the end of the

what you call it the end of Rabbi lose peace because we're coming up on the end of the holiday. Who are we remembering this morning? Who who we even want to invite in to our sukkah, you know whose spirit whose presence we are blessed by who we just want to say their name

and Szalinski and Milton Szalinski.

beautiful mural Kornbluth. Everett Frank

you guys definitely want to know, okay.

Is there anybody who would like to leave Caddyshack Tom today

All right. May their memories be blessings? Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, Irene that you? Yeah, that is I'm just looking pages. I have it up because I can't see your thing. It's just Oh, here we go. Awesome. Good doll Vyas Kadosh ma Raba.

Beyond ma D Roc who say b m li ma who say because your home your main home will create a call base Israel but I got a lot of his man kabhi be Unruh our man name? Yeah

me on my yes Barak for us to bark we use for our business from mom business a visa dog is alive. This allows me to code SHA three who the a la Maccabi aka serve Shiva. Touche because up and neck masa de me Ryan br ma V and ru our main

your Haish Shlomo Rocketman Shemaiah for Hyeme Elena, y'all call you sir ale VM RU. Amen. O se Romanov. Who Yeah, especially Alina y'all call you sir ale. The alcohol use V TV will be in Rue Amen. A name. I mean, I mean, memories be blessings. And now we'll close out with this one.

In the right key

maybe

and then everybody who's in my Sucka if you want to get close so you can see the words yourselves Feel free.

To everything turn turn.

There is a season

and the time for every purpose under heaven.

A time to be born time to die. A time to plan to time to reap a time to care the time to

time to

to

to everything turn turn turn.

There is a season

time for every purpose under heaven.

Time to

time to break down a time to dance a time to mine

time to cast away stones

stones to gather

to every big

turn

there is a season

time to every purpose under heaven

A time

a time of hate and time.

Time that you may embrace

embracing.

To everything turns out

there is a season

and the

time for every purpose under heaven.

Time to gain time to lose a time to render time to set a time for love and time.

I swear it's not you

yay. Fun.

All right. Well, here's the last little the last little bit, Mark. This is, this is real and you were completely unprepared. Alright, this is what I'll send you out with this morning.

All right.

Form the Buddhists remind us is emptiness. Yesh. beingness the Jewish mystics insist, is Iein nothingness, that emptiness is also form. Iron is also yeesh. The forms from which we derive comfort and security may well be an illusion, and may well be a shell that stands between us and our experience. But they are an inescapable illusion, an inevitable shall form is an inevitable part of our spiritual landscape. We can't live apart from it. But once a year, after several months of reconnecting with the emptiness at the core of form, we leave the formal world behind we sit in a house that is only the idea of a house, a house that calls attention to the illusory nature of all houses. And there is joy in this a joy born of the realization that nothing can truly protect us. Nothing can save us from death, and it's no use defending ourselves, we may as well give up and there's a wonderful release in this giving up. And I feel this joy as I sit in the sukkah drinking soup cooled by the rain. Tomorrow morning, I will wave the lulav and the Metro forest species we are commanded to take up during Sukkot. In my right hand I will hold the long spine of the palm branch with two Willow Springs tied to the left and three sprigs of Myrtle to the right and in my left hand I will hold the yellow Citroen, full of Pucks and ridges. And I will waive these things twice. Once as I sing hymns of joy and praise to God and once as I marched around the synagogue and solemn procession crying Save me please save me. The sexual imagery couldn't be clearer, the palm frond phallus with the Myrtle and Willow testes, the ridge and speckled yellow fruit Nor could it be more appropriate. What sex and agriculture have in common is that they point simultaneously to both the power and the impotence of the human condition. We have no idea how to form a life. We can't make it happen by ourselves. And yet we are absolutely indispensable to the process. We have no idea how a seed bears fruit. We can't make that happen either. Yet, if we don't plant the seed and nurture it and water it and harvest it, no fruit will ever come. These things can't happen without us, but neither can we make them happen on our own.

So tomorrow morning, I will walk around the synagogue celebrating our power and our impetus impotence, our miraculous capacity to bear and nurture life and our utter dependence on something greater on God for it. And I will feel a deep sense of joy as I do because this is the truth of my life. This is the CUSP I actually stand on it every moment of my life. Every moment of my life. I'm utterly powerless and infinitely powerful. Every moment of my life I am inescapably hammered into place by everything that has ever happened since the creation of the universe. And at every moment I am free to act in a way that will alter that gray flow of being forever.

And here at the core of our life here at its paradoxical center, there is a mysterious, inescapable, senseless joy.

This is the overwhelming senseless gratitude we feel when we are finally awake. And it makes no difference what we awaken to whether it is pain or pleasure, life or death, all of it is of a piece, all of it the ground of a deep joy when fully inhabited when wholly attended to, nor doesn't make any difference that we will inevitably sleep again, and drift back into our house, or one remarkably like it without even realizing that we have it makes no difference that there will once again be walls between us and the rest of the world. In the fullness of time those walls will also come down and the great horn will sound calling us to wakefulness again.

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