Minyan Replay with Rabbi Lizzi — Parashat Pekudei

Every weekday at 8:00 am, Mishkan Chicago holds a virtual Morning Minyan.  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-spring-2024/

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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. Jews have a tradition of praying three times a day and at Mishkan 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.

Without further ado, I invite you to breathe a little deeper. Connect a little more with yourself with God with Torah with this community and with the world around you wherever you are whatever your timezone take this moment to wrap myself in the eternal embrace of the divine in the form of this chalice feel free to join me or if you've already done this just take a moment to enjoy being inside it and under it

i ricotta I don't either no middle column a shared kitchen or women's whatever it's even in the heat cetaf Put seat seat

just taking a moment to reorient my

my internal posture I haven't really changed I'm just still just sitting here but my internal pastor to being in worship full space a prayer space a connected space with all of you

connecting to the Divine inside of me beyond me around me

opening up all of my portals my pores eyes ears, Smell Taste touch knowing that all of these are ways in for the divine

and all of these are ways out for the divine in me and you

can morning

okay

let's begin with

Madani.

Gratitude for waking up in the morning

for being here today

moda

grew

okay

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imune

baby beanies

Better

please

bear with me

As

it is

you didn't I bet

take a deep breath in into your belly,

infusing all your muscles and bones and ligaments and all the things holding you together and fusing them with oxygen

breathing out all the gunk your body stored up overnight you just want to breathe out and

make go away

the trees needed trees need it your house plants need it but you don't need it.

Take it in again.

Breathe out

right I'm gonna keep going here through our little morning hate, hate.

Our morning blessings.

And this is a prayer of peace. And a prayer of the truth is actually you know what, this is a prayer of healing too. And I know that oftentimes when we're coming to minion, we're thinking about healing for ourselves healing for our world healing for people in our lives. And we often get to the healing prayer after the smile as we get close to the end of services. I kind of want to start there this morning. I'm just feeling so much in our community and from so many people I talk to, we have people going through heart surgery, we have people going through brain surgery, we have people going through chemo, we have people who are depressed, we have people who are in who are in recovery.

We have people who are lonely.

So I just let's let's begin this morning by bringing all of them to mind. Feel free if there are people who you want to drop their names in the chat or even you know, say their names as Yeah, you know, go ahead and unmute.

And this will be a prayer for peace for them.

Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead and drop names in the chat. I know it's a little early for this people might not be ready for it.

Value Eric and Centrum go engineer

Ken Ken Forrester

is out here in Viva Vassar.

Jerry Jackie and

Andrew Susan

Cliff Amari

Mike Stevens, in recovery from open heart surgery.

In shallow Menachem Amina Becerra, you may know

one of my best friends who was diagnosed with breast cancer recently, my age.

Anyone who's going through the process of trying to get pregnant with IVF and given yourself shots every single morning, hoping and praying, waiting, uncertain.

Certainly sending a prayer of comfort and love to every one of the captives being held right now every one of their families not knowing what will happen tomorrow.

People in Gaza are starving, waiting for food and medicine, not knowing if they will be okay.

Just sending a prayer of love and a sense of being cared for.

For all of us who are watching the World unfold around us with such a sense of lack of control. That we also should feel a sense of where we have control, like your body right here that you can maybe touch it and know that you are here. Even if you can't control every

everything in it.

The way that every cell chooses to choose

to react to the environment it's in all of that we can't even control our bodies but you're here and I'm here and song is here

and I can pray for a sense of peacefulness

yeah he shall

then

may I'm in

Chava

Yay

Yay

get in

sending Shalom send in peace, love

care for Ashley my reflector nephesh or what type of healing a body healing of spirit and actually I'm going to turn from here right into

and if you're able to stand I invite you to stand

and if you're not, I invite you to sort of, you know attain a kind of mountain posture in the way that you're sitting

and to face east if you're able or to you know, thinking just like drawing your faces

I'm Evan.

Jose Shala Maria Tico

you're the answer that I really

put our honeymoon to vomit additional volumes, I mean, savory sheets, where I've had Assa T ON TO MANY scaffold out of my hair.

I Was

Your

Man Oh,

every day you light up the world and the heavens with kindness every day you renew them, and you make them good. These works of creation. Help us to in your image, become good works of creation, help us make peace, make Shalom, and not the Hakone everything else which is of course a reference to wrath violence badness, which is where this original original line actually comes from, comes from one of the prophets where it says Yotes there, Yoda there or horshack, Jose Shalom over Ray at era, it calls God, the creator of peace and shaper of evil, which is very intense. You know, if you want to stop for a moment and think about not just the flowers and the sunshine and the rainbows in our world coming from God but also the instincts inside of us

to be mean, and undermining.

And revengeful vengeful, violent, that all of that comes from the same source.

And in fact, we believe

have that as Jews, we don't think there's a separate God like a Satan that controls all the bad stuff and that the world is somehow some kind of battle between Satan and God that's like that's not Jewish theology.

Jewish theology is that there is I don't, I had one. And somehow within this oneness we exist and we exist with the rainbows and the sunshine and the flowers, and the instinct in every single animal to survive, which drives some of us in some moments when we feel threatened like little animals to respond in the same way. And we to

create violence. And so the rabbi is when designing these prayers, said, You know, we know that we know that's true. And so we want to remind ourselves as we say, these blessings that we are, oh say, shalom, we can be creators of peace. And that God, okay, God does create everything, but like everything, everything being kind of a euphemism

for the stuff that is also really hard to swallow.

Blu ray at HOCl, the everything

someone wrote to me a day or two ago, and she said, I'm looking at the paper.

And I'm seeing a picture of a Gazan child who looks just like my daughter, Jewish woman in our community. And she said, an all I can do is cry.

What can I, what can I What can we do?

I took me a couple hours to write back and I said, I think crying is a pretty reasonable response.

You know, our traditions not trying to clean up the world for us and tell us it's easy, or tell us it's simple, or that we are simple, that human beings are all good, or all evil, there are times when we look out and we just see humanity in its most heartbreaking fullness and complexity.

And maybe we cry.

And maybe we laugh. But recognizing as we say this blessing every morning, all of this is part of the universe that the Yotsuya or avora Kosha the creator of light and dark, creator of shalom of peace and everything created us into and so as we dive in in the morning, we ask what instincts inside of us will we harness will we lift up

and then we go into I have the rumba deep abundant love

we harness inside of ourselves deep abundant love I

think it's a

little easier to concretize this if you think about somebody that you really really love you just want to wrap your arms around and squeeze

you know just getting the most

pure heartfelt

whether it's like parental or sibling or friendship or romantic but just love love love

and that imagine that kind of pouring out from your heart not just for that person but as a habits in life

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you're not seated and you want to be you can sit down you can gather the four corners of your seat seats around you retaliates as we pray for the end gathering of all our people of all our fragmented parts of all of the parts of our world that feel so disparate so hard to imagine coming together in love but nonetheless affirm every morning that if we can imagine them coming together in love than by God, maybe God will help them come together in love their hobby at

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call him me

say Shane, kill Paul, you shot the towel via heart to McCollum to the shown the graph titles Chicago Santa Emmett, lo da la Kalia said Ha, they are have

to be grateful to you every day and to bring you Hashem together in love Hava I will Hurtado and I have a clarity mo eastren the

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hold up how Hohner Chicago homebuilder Hi. There how you who had very him her ala share I know he mitts up ha ha your home.

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was Azusa with beta alpha v Shara hair

all right.

I'm going to I'm going to play a song for us this morning. That I've been thinking about all week. I'm thinking about it all week since Friday. There was supposed to have been a concert in Chicago at the House of Blues on Friday night. Matisyahu. Maybe some of you are familiar with him.

He's a, an American, Jewish reggae artist. And

he, I mean, he's had he's had many iterations in his career and in his life, if you look him up on his Wikipedia page, he grew up man I don't know when New Jersey or White Plains or something like that out in the Northeast. You know, in Reconstructionist congregation you know, Jewish American kid grew up Reconstructionist eventually like got really religious and so for a while he was like the American Jewish reggae guy who wore payas and seat seat and like that's how he performed and it was really cool because it was unusual like how often do you see like a from yet like a really religious Jew with wide appeal with like number one hits on you know the top 40 chart

Very unusual and like Jews and non Jews, like mostly non Jews who are, you know, coming to hear him because, like, he's got great music. He's a talented artist. And he happens to have written one of the songs that I feel like has become an anti war anthem, in, you know, in our generation one day. Anyway, his show at the House of Blues was cancelled on Friday night, because of Palestinian solidarity, protests, and kind of the promise that they were going to come out in full force and make it really uncomfortable for him to perform. And they objected because he's a Zionist, he believes that the State of Israel should exist, you know, he's, you know, he's like, done concerts for IDF soldiers.

He, like many American Jews, is Jewish and has a relationship with the State of Israel.

You know, I haven't asked him for his opinions on the war. And on the 30,000, dead Gazans like I you know, I assume that he's as troubled by what he's seeing as many of us are, and yet, that for him is not a reason to like, throw the baby out with the bathwater. But furthermore, he's an artist, he's a singer, he's performing in Chicago, the idea that his concert would be canceled as a political statement to essentially drown out and erase the voices of Jews and Jews who might have a relationship with or support Israel in any way, in any way at all, is deeply troubling to me. And so, like, let alone the guy who wrote the anti war anthem of our generation. So I wanted to I wanted to play, I wanted to play that song for us, and a particular rendition that

that we've actually done before in this space. There's a

there's an organization in Israel, they're sort of like

they do. They do big collective music, kind of performance art moments gathering 1000s and 1000s of people together in an hour to teach them a song. And then they sing it together. And so in this particular case, they did it in Haifa, which is a mixed city, meaning it's, you know, many Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians living in the same city

and brought together to sing this song. And so I wanted to share this particular song in this particular space this morning, as a prayer for peace

and a prayer that we can see each other in our fullness in our disagreements, including in our most heated disagreements, and still be able to see the humanity in one another and be able to appreciate the artistry that

that people bring. And so Alright, I'm gonna

I'm gonna share my screen here.

And I'm going to read the I'm going to read the what's on the screen for anybody who might be listening to this on the podcast after this after this session, so this says Kulu them

make it big tell me like jump on if you can't hear it or can't see it.

Actually, hang on I feel like I'm going to need to change in zoom my settings so that this comes through the computer

All right.

Okay,

RIGHT?

Singing is believing it says

All right, we're gonna do caddy Chateau mourners Kaddish

close out our morning here together

Does anybody want to share the names of the folks that you're thinking about this morning?

I'm saying Kaddish for my mother Uriel corn bla

land do you want to lead us this morning? Sure. All right. Is there anybody else before you begin

Okay, May her memory be a blessing Thank you

you've got all the credit she may robber Amin be Ahmadi brought here. brothy retail the unleased masa Tae This is known as the OMA sauna. This is all beit Yisrael Daga la Viessmann curry V. Maru, I'm in your hasty Rabban with a Rothley Alemu all Nehemiah eats Barak Easter Barfi per RV it Romain Vina say Peter Darvey to allow the Talaash me to Chris arbery flew the a la mean call beer Fatah the Shiratama to staccato Vanessa Mana tadami Ron Villamar been real I mean,

hey Salam Arabba means some I have a Hyeme Elena will call you sir I'll be real.

Says Shalom de Roma boo yah Sasha alone. Elena movie I'll call you sir at all. We'll call your straight to avail female UMaine easy for Natalie brockagh Thank you.

Wow, and looking here So Elizabeth rose thing about David Rose her father, and then Admiral letting you all know that I've concluded the cycle of Kaddish for my

Mother Florence ADA Feldman so grateful to this morning minion and rabbis Lizzy and Steven for our support I cannot believe and Merle that it's been 11 months.

Are you still here and Merle?

Yeah, I know.

Why no? How are you feeling? I'm good. I had a conversation with my mother. sure how she was doing when he said what she always says marvelous.

Which was so sweet. Yeah, it feels like a whole. I'm, you know, I was so used to it. So, it's an adjustment not to say

thank you.

Wow, I mean, really, truly.

What you're describing sort of that adjustment from from saying Kaddish every day thinking about your mother every day to then not doing it.

That's that's an argument I have heard in in favor of the Ashkenazi custom on the High Holidays. For people, you know, people may be aware, during the Oscar that the service that specifically for remembering somebody who has died like a close family, a parent, parents, sibling, child, spouse.

And the Ashkenazi custom is to leave the room, if you still have both of your parents alive.

If you're not actually saying Kaddish for one of those, you know, primary family members. And somebody said to me once, you know, the reason why that's an important thing is because it's an experience, nobody really understands until you've been through it. Like what you're describing that, you know, that whole it's like, and so there should be a place that honors the experience that really, like you'll get there, all of us will get there at some point. But until we get there like to not to not rush, you know, to enter that space.

And that you're you're experiencing now something that

that is a human, that is a rite of passage for all humans, but

you know, that not everybody understands. Yeah, I'm very grateful for having had this time with her to sort of

stretch out the tail of the process. That is that what it felt like, like every morning, yeah, remembering her actually kind of stretched out her presence in your life every single day. Yeah. I love how wondering how she's adjusting to where she is. And I would talk to her, and she would answer me.

Sometimes yell at me.

Yeah.

Yeah. So it's been good. Thank you.

You've been listening to contact high a production of Michigan, Chicago. If you were inspired or informed by this episode, please leave us a five star rating on Apple podcasts so that others can encounter our work. And if you appreciate what Mishkan is doing, I invite you to join as a builder or make a donation on our website at Mishkan chicago.org. Shabbat shalom.