Minyan Replay with Rabbi Lizzi — Purim Prep Special

On Thursday, March 21st, as we observe the Fast of Esther, Mishkan will join Hadar for "Reading the Megillah After October 7th".  From 8:30 am - 1:30 pm CDT, we will reflect
on the crises in the Megillah and in our world today. Join us at the link below:

https://www.mishkanchicago.org/event/reading-the-megillah-after-october-7th/

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, 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. Oh, well, here it is the Wednesday before the holiday of Purim. And I have spent the last two afternoons at the mansion Academy, which is the name of our religious school, leading to fill out a leading prayer for the kids between kindergarten and fifth grade. And we've been singing poram songs.

And so now they're all in my head. And I think it's not physically possible for me to lead a normal morning weekday minion and not lead poram songs because that's just the spirit of the moment. That is the Zeitgeist and maybe you didn't know it yet, but you're about to know it. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna put on our screen here. Our our usual the, you know, just the cdr. And what did I do with oh, there it is.

I will be bringing on a I will be bringing on a different screen at moments throughout to sing different songs. And and so yes, so I'm seeing, I'm seeing Irene, who would you just wrote in the chat not really feeling poram this year. And I want to I want to talk about that a little bit later. At because I think there have been times throughout our people's history many times when they didn't feel like poram Because the world felt so broken. And it felt like we as Jews, were so much a part of that brokenness, and that the Purim story felt a little too real, like so real, that it felt like how can I how can I celebrate, when the elements of the story don't feel like a story. But they feel like they're describing reality.

And I imagine

those of us looking at the story will look at that and experience different pieces of it

as more real this year, and it's important to talk about and that's I'm going to get into that. But what I but what I want to say is when the rabbi's of Tom would wrote the words mission, NASA Dar, from the moment you enter the month of Aadhar, which we are in now this started last week, that you know, the Hebrew month is about like a 28 days ish. It's a lunar month. And so it begins when the moon is basically hidden, you know, like a tiny, little thin crescent. And then you're at the middle of the month, basically the 15th of the month, when the moon is completely full. And then of course it wanes again, and then you get to the end of the month, and many Jewish holidays poram included, occur on the full moon. The other holidays that occur on the full moon on the 14th or 15th of the month, have to do with pilgrimage, you know, like making making pilgrimage to Jerusalem. And so you wanted the light of the full moon to be able to walk in the dark through long stretches of desert where you know you couldn't see anything. poram however, is not a pilgrimage holiday.

And it has much in common the costumes the drinking the revelry, the kind of wanton abandon that definitely kind of takes takes control on this day. It has a lot in common with other Spring Festival holidays, Mardi Gras. I don't know truthfully, of all of the other all the other ones, but I'm guessing there are other traditions

that have some kind of similar holiday around this time of year.

It seems like poram is fulfilling some kind of almost primal function in the human hearts and in the Jewish heart. And it's a holiday that is really unlike almost any other Jewish holiday. And so when the rabbi said mission that NASA dire, my Bimba, Simcha, when you enter into the month of other you will amplify your joy.

They knew what kind of world they lived in,

then knew what kind of world they had inherited. And they nonetheless insisted that we as Jews somehow figure out how to harness joy in the midst of a world full of pain and brokenness and brokenness that is very much part of part of us. That we are on the receiving end of and also on the dishing out end of and they insisted we have to find joy Mark beam Vissim heights, a commandment and so

That is the spirit in which I offer this this morning. I'm glad you wrote that Irene because I think a lot of people aren't feeling for him this year. And maybe the reading I'll do a little bit later will speak to some of that. And we can talk about it more together as well. However, I am going to take the rabbinic injunction the rabbinic advice. There have been a commandment to find joy in this moment. And we're going to do some of the morning davening to some of the poram tunes. And we're going to do some of the poram tunes, just because it's fun and different and why not? And of course, we'll end with Kaddish I'll do some learning.

Now we're going to going to look at the actual words to the song that I was just referring to. And then we're going to use it for mo Danny All right, this was the what you're looking at was the song sheet for the kids yesterday

me share me share me share me share me share me send me share me show me show me

send me send me send me Michelle Michelle Michelle Michelle. Me Shelly

the Shani is nice

the Shani is nice

hold that thought

I've never done this one before. So let's see what happens

Alright, well if you haven't already said mo Donnie, let's try it like this. low down on the left Vanessa LSI the Chi

Chi Chi

Chi Chi

Chi.

Jeff says

Jeff has

low

tide

Smar T

Tabby

lion Neha Neha Nyan and an ally unnayan name Ai

Chi

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Mi Shani is that

Rabbi Stephen said a really beautiful thing. This past week IT services

when closing his trash out, he said how is it that we are supposed to, you know find joy to party even during this holiday?

You know given and I haven't heard what what's behind what's behind what Irene wrote here. But for anybody who's feeling that feeling right now of just not feeling for him right now. And he said, here's the thing about the commandment, to be joyful, and to to party to have a smooth death, you know, a royal feast. He said, after peace comes after the lion lays down with the lamb, you know, and no one feels fear anymore.

There needs to be people who remember how to laugh, and how to dance and how to sing. And how does and how to support one another with joy. And so we need to practice that in the midst of the madness so that we can be the people who remember and who can give that gift, you know every year to ourselves but also to everyone else who really might be struggling to find their way back to laughter back to Joy. Yes, the joy is a sacred responsibility. You know that we have to be the Fire Keepers the tenders of joy when

It begins with ourselves of course, you know if it's, it's always you can always tell if

if somebody's kind of phoning it in phoning joy in, which you know, sometimes like, as a parent or as a friend, if you've got stuff going on, you need to show up for somebody else with joy, you know, and you just kind of compartmentalize. Okay, I'm going to put everything over here and show up with joy. And that does take a kind of psychic toll.

But also, it is a gift to us and to others.

And so we do kind of have to figure out how do we maybe not compartmentalize, you know, our the chambers of our heart and ourselves, but how do we infuse joy?

As a practice, into our life, into ourself into our conversations? How do we do it? How do we do it? I'm just going to read what Jesper wrote here, who makes me think of ribbing Nachman instructing us to make our sadness dance, not standing on the sidelines, but bringing our sorrow to the party.

Yeah, and I imagine allowing the party to dance with your sorrow

All right, I'm gonna put up that other screen here. Oh, beautiful. I mean, it sounds like how we smashed the glass at the wedding. I think it is exactly like that.

Here we go. I'm gonna sing this missing this silly one up here.

I had the kids being on the floor since they didn't have Gragas yesterday. So if you want to rush rush rush by banging on your desk or stomping your foot. If you don't have a downstairs neighbor. Feel free to join me.

God glory God glory God God de la Yeah, who do my cell phones Rashami smear Oh, very good. Hi, Valerie Shah Russia rush rush. Have an IV Shah rush rush Rush.

Rush rush Rush. Rush.

Forum de poram day, a happy holiday where your mess where your crown dancing around. Round other Gragas rush rush rush, round other Gragas rush rush rush round other Gragas rush rush rush, rush Sunny.

Hot Purim hyper REM.

Masek cote Raneem smear after a good day. Have on every shot. Have on every chef have on every shot rush, rush, rush, rush

and I'm going to flip back to our CDR this is gonna be tough back and forth here. There's probably some easier way to do it. But God didn't bless me with the gift of technology. All right.

If you are able to stand I invite you to and you just want to kind of bow with your neck as you are wherever you are. That's going to be okay to your shoulders.

Taking a moment to stand up a little straighter or at least kind of have your spine be a little more aligned before we then bow.

Virus Oh

John I hum for

I don't I? I'm Barack Lou Lumba Ed. Yes, viral. I've done nine numbers.

reshot rush, rush rush have on every shot or structure, have an Orisha rush, rush rush, rush

your

taco or had a shutdown type error of any scaffold that may have rally or rollback and flatten out your tear. How many are row I have Ira I've typed I know you loved us with an unending love guide you heaped upon us blessing we gather a reports corners of our seats seat here. For those of you coming to our forum Schpeel you will then then McGill reading you'll see we always point out I think it's always an important thing to point out that in you know poram is really different from so many of our holidays so many of our holidays are filled with lots of rules of how you have to celebrate them. I mean by extreme contrast think of the next one coming up for him with all of the rules of you know keeping your kosher kitchen and you know taking out all of the flour and all of that anything that had homemade scented anything that had any kind of yeast or grain and or flower or anything like that and then you know taking two days off at the front end two days off at the back end, special tour readings.

So many other things am

I'm saying hello, and poor him,

basically has four meats vote. I mean, there are some other things that are that are connected you know, these things that you say in the prayer service and you know, reading the Megilah. Of course, well reading the McGill is one of the one of the meats vote,

giving my time note letter of your name giving

gifts of money to the poor, to the needy, three, giving me schlock my note, gifts of food to one another. Some of you I know, participated in Michigan's Michelle Obama note kind of thing, where we sent around me show off my note to people to, you know, at the end of at the end of the forum party, and,

and, and basically just giving people food, you know, it's like reverse trick or treating, instead of like, Hey, gimme, it's literally going from your from house to house to share food,

or from friend to friend to share food.

And then finally,

partying. That's the last one. You know, and it's just so unusual. The, you know, the paucity of things that you have to do on poram, to fulfill the holiday.

And the other thing that makes this holiday very different from any other Jewish holiday is on Passover, for example, and on many other Jewish holidays, the hero of the story is God. God is the focal point of the story, the hero of the story. And in the poram story, God does not show up. God's name is not in the Megilah. And you know, and you don't see it in any form. You know, God has many names, but you don't see it in any form. And so one thing the rabbi's say is Well, yeah, but maybe that's exactly it. God is hidden. You know, God is always hidden in this world. And that clue the rim is about that in the poem story is Esther, who's who's who is also hidden right? Her original name is Hadassah, but she takes on the name Esther so nobody will know she's Jewish.

And Esther is related to the word has stare, which means to hide. And one of God's names is actually hysterical imeem, the one whose face is hidden. So maybe Esther's name is actually a clue that God is in the story even if God is not named. And so I just kind of point that out as we go into this ahava rabada deep abundant love we remind ourselves every morning how deeply we are loved by precisely that presence that we often don't feel or see or smell or touch. But believe and affirm Is there is there with us at every moment is embracing us even in this moment right now. Have that Rabatt I have Daniel and we just you know like the tsetse that we hold in our hand before we go into the Shiva and affirm the oneness of all things, we affirm the duality kind of the the the paradox of both the hiddenness and the presence of the of the divine in our life. Sometimes we really feel it sometimes we really don't and we just hold on we hold on tight

and hold it close to our heart you can hold it over your over your eyes as we say the Shamal

that paradox of presence and absence presence and hiddenness

and we just breathe for a moment breathe it in

Breathe it out

rule a TA I don't I have a theory about mo use for al the I have a

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don't lie head oh hey no

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that I have to say a dozen I don't have the whole website overhaul now Shaha overhaul and

then how you had varying ala share I know he met service. how young I live. I've asked her that she needed time for the buyer to bomb. That ship to harbor Bay tassa overlaps the kava Dara shabiha with comesa short time the Otalia Dafa that how you Atletico tuffeau to ban a NASA will Kotov time zone at bay tassa V Shara.

Oh, let's do a healing prayer right now for you and for everyone you were thinking about

This morning, and as a kava nap for that healing prayer, let's do one of these.

I love what Felicia wrote here. Authentic Joy not performative. Joy is what this is. For me, it's easy to practice joy when we are happy. Radical joy as a practice is finding joy in the saddest times in our life. We must practice time and practice time and again on repeat. And then Susan Nair love shared with us that, I think probably Rachel Goldberg, which you know what she wasn't a rabbi last year when she shared it, but she is now I went to her ordination a couple of months ago, she wrote, and quoting Rebby Nachman of Breslov, it would be very good for a person to be brokenhearted all the time.

But for the average person, this can really degenerate into depression. You should therefore set aside some time each day for heartbreak, you should isolate yourself before God with a broken heart for a given time. But the rest of the day, you should be joyful. So he was a he was a fan of compartmentalization. Like finding time figuring out where to put put the sadness. And I do think also that's part of what this prayer service is about. Honestly, having a moment for remembering our loved ones having a moment for remembering who it is we're praying for.

Thank you for your list. As always, I read all the people you love. Allah Testoni Jude Katie, Tessa panic pollack.

Love and your loves Eve quinceanera Jamison, Ken Forsberg

to marry Chris Nellie Natalie

sharing them on Linda Andy and

everybody on Martin's lists

beautiful, beautiful everyone

right for Israel, Palestine and it's trauma and the traumatized world and it's all of its people.

Anyone finding themselves in the position of having to do something hard that they feel like they didn't ask for sign up for like being sick or caring for somebody who is struggling, but showing up and and bringing their whole heart to it.

I'm sending a prayer to my next door neighbor Bell who's 97

who you've heard me talk about before. She's one of the most impressive old ladies I've ever met an old soul probably when she was five years old. She was an old soul but now she's 97 But she is transitioning now to the next world and I sort of spoke to her and with her last night and I want to offer this as a prayer for her transition that it should be comfortable and full of ease

that she should be reunited with her ancestors

and for everyone else who's praying for healing that this be a prayer of healing of body and spirit?

Wait

wasn't listening

ah

healing a body, mind healing

Be ready.

Hashtag I love his man carry even me

Okay.

Before we say Kaddish, I wanted to read a little piece from this book that I just got here. It's called four times such as these

new new Jewish books are coming out all the time. And

the subheading on this one is called a radicals guide to the Jewish year. So for anybody who may be had Michael Strauss fells the Jewish holidays, you know, or Rabbi gets Greenberg's the Jewish way or any Jewish Book that is oriented around the calendar. This is something like that. But it's written by two people who are sort of, I would say, like self defined radical leftist. So a lot in this book, I'm like nodding my head with and a lot. I'm like, Huh, you know, sort of scratching my head and going interesting. But I wanted to read, but like, that's okay. We can sit with things that we're not like, fully, you know, like every page nodding our head, that's totally fine. And I think it's important part of a Jewish spiritual practice is being in a room with a book, you know, and going, Okay, interesting. I'm with you, huh? Okay. I'm arguing with you. Okay. I'd love to talk to you about that. So anyway,

I want to thank Jenna Pollack for recommending this book to me. So I'm in the chapter on a dar and in the chapter on poram. And after they've described the,

after they have described by Baba the story of the holiday,

they go into some of their analysis, so I'm going to share this with you now. They say spiritually poram is a time of personal and communal release. There are many dress showed stories on the connection between poram and Yom Kippur war. You hear it in the name Yom Kippur is like a day like poram Yom Kippur for him. At first, they seem in stark emotional and spiritual contrast, joy and mirth contrasted with solemnity and grief, collective lifesaving contrasted with the reenacting of our deaths, masquerade, dress up, acting as a part of as acting a part contrasted with baring our souls to ourselves, each other and God. The Jewish tradition loves teaching through contrasts, reminding us of the multitudes contained in all the moments of joy and grief. See, also breaking the glass under the Hapa, nice Iran, juxtaposing poram And young people or helps us tease out the themes of vulnerability and redemption. So core to both holidays connecting poram and Yom Kippur also helped take poram help us take more and more seriously and young people are more joyfully on porn we ask, Where can there be play theater, humor and joy? It is seriously important and on Yom Kippur war, we ask what are our individual and collective responsibilities? So that was spiritually politically for him has much to teach us about struggles for justice in the face of overwhelming state sponsored terrorism. The story reveals the power of using diverse diversity of tactics Vashti goes on strike, Esther salts, more to high lobbies, and people take on solidarity fast with Esther, Haman parades more to hide through the streets in an act of spontaneous political theater. mortify challenges estar to use her position for power for the great position of power for the greater good to risk something real saying perhaps you have attained a royal position for just such a crisis. A hacia Barrows facilitates the wealth redistribution of Heymans state to Esther. When attacked, the Jews take up armed resistance

alongside the deeply alongside and deeply woven into the story of resistance and rebellion. It is essential to confront and be accountable for acts of violence by Jews that this story spawned and encouraged. Not only do Jews take up armed resistance, they enact revenge killings, the legacy of the violence in this ripples through our text, tradition and history. Hamas is an aggregate which the text understands means he is a descendant of Amalek. Now, already by the time of the Talmud, the rabbi's understood that there were no living descendants of Amalek, and that the commandments to blot out the memory of Amalek from under the heaven, which is written in Deuteronomy was nullified. rabbinic commentators continued to struggle with how this could be, even if it was impossible to act on a commandment to destroy a whole people. Some interpret this as permission to act in self defense, while others interpreted

In spiritually and metaphorical ways that we are to blot out Amalek mentally, to oppose and work to root out any instinct in oneself or others toward violence and oppression. And of course, on the holiday of Purim itself, you use the Gregor to literally blot out the name of a man following the line in Deuteronomy which says to blot out her mom's name.

In our times, extremist Zionist Jews have taken this biblical commandment as an instruction to perpetrate violence against Palestinians, specifically around poram. On Purim in 1994, Barack Goldstein, a US born Israeli, murdered 29 and wounded 125 Palestinian Muslims in Hebron. And he would have certainly murdered many more but they managed to, they murdered the people in the room managed to take him down while he was reloading his gun.

Through this massacre, or though this massacre was condemned in Word by official bodies of the Israeli government, Goldstein's grave, and Kiryat Arba has become a shrine and a pilgrimage site for right wing extremists. And I have to tell you, I've been there, I've been to his grave site, and it is lined with stones and

an honors, you know, it's clearly it is a pilgrimage site for many people. They set it outside of the city, the the city officials didn't want the grave to be in the city because they felt like they didn't want they didn't want to create a pilgrimage site out of this guy's grave. But you know, so they put it outside of the city. But now there is a park around it. And it is absolutely a pilgrimage site. And the way even that the language on the grave is written it's sort of like he was a righteous fallen, you know, sort of a righteous person.

Anyway, it's an it's, it's very, it's quite disturbing. So they go on today, Jews are still wrestling with how to integrate this devastating reality with how we observed for them, a holiday traditionally marked by joyful celebration. One way of thinking about this is to go back to Miguel at estar. In chapter nine Jews perpetrate extreme violence on non Jews and the text is confusing about whether that violence was self defense or outright aggression. In contrast, with centuries of inherited wisdom about mourning the death of Pharaoh's army during the Pessac story, there is no liturgical disruption or ritual mourning the violence in the Gilat estar.

This text has inspired violence and harm that continues to impact Palestinian lives in our lifetimes. So we must create new rituals to shine a light on and disrupt this violence. Our traditions, existing wisdom for reading violent texts can help us read and McGill to Esther. There are traditionally several places in the chanting of the Megilah, where the music changes from the cancellation formula to Esther, to the cancellation of the book of Asa, Lamentations, particularly at certain moments in the story of terror and mourning.

And that happens early like early in the text when it becomes clear that Haman has a death wish for all the Jews. So that's written in that's read out sung in lamentation stroke.

But noticeably, however, this does not happen in chapters eight through 10, where the text describes how the Jews would attack those who sought their harm.

Instead, this cancellation is reserved for violence only against Jews. We the authors of the book, Rabbi Arianna Katz and Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg.

We believe this a tightrope is fitting for all acts of terror and violence in the text, including those perpetrated by Jews.

Anyway, you can find this book again, somebody just asked what's the title for times such as these.

And we're actually going to be doing that at Mishkan. This year. There's just one particular verse where you know, it goes, the text describes going from, you know, the self defense of like three or 500 people, to 75,000 people. It's kind of a staggering numeric differential between like, day one and day two of the self defense of the Jews. And so we're going to be reading those pieces in a allotrope and even inviting people to sit on the floor and just in in recognition of the resonance of this moment, you know, in the same way that you like, take wine out of your cup at Passover, recognizing the plagues visited upon the Egyptians were should lessen our joy of the moment and yet and then we go back into the moment. I would love to talk about this with you.

After we say mourners Kaddish and turn off the recording here, so for anybody listening to this on the recording later,

this is just a plug to come to minion where we have interesting conversations.

I'm going to pause

Here we're gonna go into Cadiz Chateau mourners Kaddish and then I really would love to to like jump into this with you with you people with anybody who's got you know 15 or 20 minutes to stay on a chat.

Okay? Some interesting poram learning Okay? Cadiz Shia tome

Who are we remembering this morning?

I am remembering my mother Muriel currently.

I'm remembering my mother Barbara Horowitz.

Anyone else

all right, may their memories be blessings Susan and Glenn is there what would either of you like to lead us in Kaddish?

Okay, I'm happy to. Okay, thanks.

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Sasha from the Miramar who Yat Sen shalom, Elena we'll call you Surah Al we'll call yesterday tividale The Maru on the main

memory be a blessing

all right, maybe I'll do one more poram song before we before we turn off the recording here. Oh you guys this is one I never learned as a kid. It's so silly. It's so silly. And you probably won't have ever heard it before either. But it's also an ear worm and I it's in the spirit of the day.

Okay, we're going to do this crazy one over here.

Where's plan capo?

When you hear the whole Miguel la you will have a bull run thriller and you won't have to sit still when you hear the home again.

It is a story of bravery. It is a story of deception and

it is a story of victory happened on the 14th die when you hear the McGill you will have a broad umbrella and you won't have to

when you hear the home again

listen to the tale of Vashti and

listen to Taylor and cousin more

listen to the tab a questionnaire and it happened on the 14th

the name of Haman stamp your feet here the name of him and spin your Grog around here the name of Hey ma'am allotted

on the 14th

When you hear the whole lie you will have

thriller and you won't have to sit still. When you hear the home again.

Jen everyone take a stand each and every one remember what was done each and every one plays a part and have been on the 14th about

oh, we're gonna finish it out with this one. Oh today well marry marry me Oh today will marry marry. Oh today will marry marry be and match some home and Tasha

sang for him some math and I hope we see you this Saturday night either in person or online.

To celebrate.

You've been listening to contact high a production of Michigan Chicago. If you are 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.