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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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
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/
****
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
Hi everybody.
Welcome to, I think what is today is today the second of Nissan and also April 10 2024. Nice to see all of you. Nice to be here. I wanted to start off with a really different moda uneme Oda knee tune from the ones we usually do not different, like never been heard before, because this is actually one that I grew up with the cam Isaiah Israel. Shout out to Andy Ray Feld, Dr. Andy Ray Feld, who was my song leader, as a kid who taught this one to me. And in the spirit of new things, growing new things being birthed new things coming to fruition or the seeds beginning to take hold in the earth. I just sort of feel like yeah, let's do some new things. Let's sing some new songs. Or here's some new tunes. So I invite you to sit up a little bit straighter. Exhale, relax your shoulders. Breathe deeply into your belly. Exhale, feel your shoulders relax even more. Feel your jaw relax I know it's the morning so all the parts of our body are still sort of waking up and just begin to breathe into them with gratitude that you are here that you are alive
know me live on now last time and Kai Shan has has been each my team this damn robber I am
that's how it goes.
I mean if I never Tyvek a
jacket has
been a smarty pants
Rob I am gonna
there's like an echo in there where you could go.
Rob I am gonna tell.
Rob I am gonna tell
Dan melesa David Kay
chat has has
been the shmatte at best and
Rob I am
Rabbi I am.
I am grateful I am aware I breathe in this soul that you have given me this morning.
fact that I am here that I am awake that I'm alive demonstrates the compassion of the Creator of the Universe breathing me into being this morning. I am grateful. I will do something good with this soul that I have been given today. I mean
all right. All right. You know what, let's go into this one. This is like a It's not it doesn't officially go here. It doesn't officially go anywhere because it wasn't officially put in the morning cannon because it wasn't written to like I don't know, 15 years ago, somewhere in Israel at like a spiritual festival or something. But being that it is the month of Nissan being that the whole theme of this month is newness, creativity, planting seeds that will come to fruition later beginning to harvest beginning to harvest the seeds that have been planted before we had kids plant parsley seeds back at poram time that are beginning to like become these little saplings that you know one could put on your Seder plate in two weeks. And so, yes, in the spirit of the flower is beginning to pick their heads up and all of us beginning to feel a little newness and potential inside of ourselves. All right. This one actually has like a call response kind of thing which you can do from your seat. Don't unmute, but it's like repeat after me. Adam
rubbish. My
calm ha ah
we'll have my and then all together.
I mean Margie. She's
they're goofy. They're goofy. They're Nish Manti let's do it again Adam
this Shama in
coma Hi my name is
Danny smile at you can repeat after me again love the year love the sky he the fire
Jaffa of water
I can feel it in my body in my spirit in my soul Hey Hey, hey hey hey hey
hey hey ya hey
ya added
the Shemitah
comma as my name I named my big goofy
variable c
Benes, Mattie.
Oh, y'all. Oh, y'all, I've been thinking about the fours, you know, we got four questions, we got four children in the Seder, and four directions. For these main elements. I mean, it kind of depends on how you count, but like earth, water, wind, or air fire. And we are all combinations of all of these things. Now it's very reductionist and inaccurate and incorrect to reduce any of the four children to their label. In fact, I wanted to show you to do this is from the this is from the Haggadah called a different night. And this is from the family haggadah version of it made by Oh, and their names are up here. No, I'm Siona and David Dijon, I think. And so they do this whole exploration of the four children, right? Can I get our by by name, there are four children. And a five column one is wise it had Russia, one is wicked or rebellious. It had time that HUD should know your daily show, and one kid just doesn't even know how to ask. And so first, they show you these four pictures, and they give you almost like archetypal pictures of the wise one who's thinking pensively head in hands, the wicked one who has this little smirk on his face, the one who is kind of innocent, and the one who literally doesn't even if you can't even tell if they can talk yet, you know, they literally don't know how to ask. And so then the following pages are an exploration of the idea of for children, the idea of reducing children or anyone to label. And so I just I wanted to read some of this out loud, I don't know if you can see it, I can't actually it doesn't look like oh, I can make it a little bit bigger. Thus far, the Haggadah has given guidelines to the parent who is full of earnest enthusiasm to pass on an historical and cultural quote, message to the younger generation. If ever, there was an event which appeals to the parents desire to bring their youth culture centered children to appreciate the old values of cultural and ethnic pride and identification. The Passover Seder is it. See the straw man they're holding up here? Here lies a dangerous pitfall for the parent educator, the leader of the Seder is likely to concentrate on the text of the Haggadah, without sufficiently taking into consideration the audience, the younger generation, and their level of interest, absorbed with the sales pitch, the salesperson often forgets the customer. Right? And so, I know many, many people have expressed a sense of dread There are ambivalence about the Seder and because they don't know what's going to happen at it. And some of that has to do with generational differences of how we think about the material in the text. And we can we can talk more about that after minion. But just to say, it's not exactly like this is a new phenomenon. First of all, it's not exactly like there was ever a feeling of total cohesion around the table and everybody thinking and wanting the same thing, kids and people have always been different and always had a different orientation. And always come at things, you know, with different, you know, different experiences and therefore different questions, that doesn't make them wrong. And that just reflects the difference that like the amazing differences in our communities and in our families. Okay, so the pitfalls of labeling. This is Gary have been our own kibbutz author, I instinctively recoil from static stereotypes that label persons simplistically. Therefore, I choose to interpret the Midrash of the four children as a diverse set of strategies for addressing four different facets of each and every child, and ourselves. Each personality combines these facets in different ways. For example, the wise and rebellious facets can be combined. For evil, the cunning mind is used to inflict pain to one's parents. The Oh, the cunning mind is used to inflict pain on one's parents, or anyone. Alternatively, the combination can produce a revolutionary Aleuts pioneer seeking not just to undermine the traditional order, but to create new frameworks of meaning. This requires an intelligence which is not conservative like the traditional, quote, wise child, but which looks beyond the horizon beyond the existing laws and their Pat rational. Yeah.
Great, questioning our own wisdom, the truly wise question, the wisdom of others, the truly wise question the wisdom of others, because they question their own wisdom as well. And the foolish because it is different from their own. Anyway, lots of good stuff in here, happy to happy to look more at it and send you all the link. But they spend, I mean, this, this haggadah spends many more pages on the idea of the four children and different pieces of art, I wanted to show you this. I'm going to go to here, ancient modern, that either play into the kind of archetype building, or really undermine it here, there's one that I really like here, that one. Well, in some, it's not clear who's who. And in some, it's very clear that everybody contains a little bit of all of them. It's not like this is one of my favorites. All right.
And
back to davening I want to invite anybody who is able to rise if you want to rise we go into the Barco we orient ourselves facing east
and actually, it's a great moment right now close your eyes. And think about what you are orienting yourself toward in this day. setting an intention for as you move throughout your day and you move with purpose. And what's the greater purpose you are serving
watch or home
doesn't have to be doesn't have to be the same thing as yesterday. Feel free to feel free after after we do bar who to share in the chat like what do you what do you feel like you're orienting yourself toward this day? I love the idea that all of us are walking around. Yes, bowing toward praying toward the Master of the Universe, but distill down and internalize for each one of us in a slightly different way today. For me, it is joy, finding joy, bringing joy and humor
lie lie. Lie Lie Lie Lie Lie.
Lie Lie Lie.
Lie I
am I awake?
Am I prepared?
Are you listening
to my prayer?
Can you hear my voice? Do you understand them I
oh wait am I pray
at Dad
oh nine
yellow line
I wrong I don't I am Yotsuya or Rubery Jose Jose Shalom we're at
or Hadash mazziotta Evany SCAC hula Murali Roberto kata I don't I hear you're there hi Mara oh hi Vera I have done a lot on a lot you know have like $1 via Terra Malta lino.
Oh, great, big, deep love. envelops us embraces us. Your abundant compassion keeps upon us in every waking moment, morning, noon and night. Help us learn. Help us learn how to walk in your ways. Help us feel you as a gentle as a gentle parents or friend or lover Hashem help us feel you in the wind, water, earth and fire help us feel a sense of enlightenment and learning through our lives
there any new little rod to come die badly vain.
Boullier arch matha navel they all never
shake gotcha ha gotta love Annie Smith.
She ended i Hi. Hi.
Just want to bring your attention to this little line that we sang the Fed live of a new bring our heart together, I have VA lira to love and to have a sense of awe or fear. I was once told by a spiritual teacher there are two basic orientations toward every moment and toward the world. love or fear. Now that may also be somewhat reductionist, I mean, if you watch in inside out great Disney movie, Pixar and they're making a new one. But but they'll say no, it's not just love and fear. They'll say it's joy, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. And that those are actually the orienting drives. However, there's debate obviously about what are the most basic foundational drives inside of us. Let's go with this one for a moment for the sake of for the sake of the case that our tradition is making. That our hearts are frequently pointed in many directions. We are pulled we're distracted, we are compelled in many directions. Your head live of a new bring our hearts together, the tradition asks please urines begs praise like I have to love, help us get back to love from all of the places that we are distracted, Li era and to find a sense of our majesty, which includes a sense of smallness in the face of all that we can't control which might feel scary. Help us open up to love and to majesty and to a sense of both our greatness in the world but also our smallness. Which means orienting to capitol, why you and then we gather in the four corners of our Tsetse to all of these disparate little parts into one hand, and we hold them in front of our eyes. We pray that all our people may be brought from the four corners of the earth, to feel love, and a sense of awe and Grandeur and Majesty before your name for karaf tantanoola Shem ha hagadol celebra Emmet bring us together? In truth, low dose Lucha to be grateful to you only had a copy of that and to bring you together God Hashem in love. Oh man, what a prayer. bring us all together from the four corners of the earth to bring more love into this world.
By rule attire. I don't I have Auclair but mo use rail that I have
me hold our seat seat over our eyes and close and take a breath as we say each word of the Shema. Shemaiah yes Ray
Hi Jonah. Hi
Hello Hey no I'm not gonna lie
there are hafta eight I don't know how the whole of aapke whole NAFSA of home Odessa. There how you who had very high ala a share I know he emits other ha ha yo malaba But Sheena Anton live an activity bar to bomb but she have to have a beta over laughter Fodera chakra of comesa Showtime the Oh Alia DECA the how you literature fote been Inessa who could have ta Mama's zoic beta alpha v Shara.
Ah we often use me ha Mohan as a healing prayer. And now we can use it as both a healing prayer and the awareness that this this reminder the rabbi gets Greenberg says we do this we say me come over every day twice a day, because of the staggering pedagogic challenge, which is reminding us that liberation. For us and all people is possible. It doesn't seem likely it doesn't seem pragmatic or realistic, right? Like talk to whatever geopolitical scholars read the newspaper, you will be depressed. And he says, Therefore, we need to recall in our own historical memory that this happened for us, and that this can happen not only for us, but for any one for all people. And if it happened for us, and we're here to tell the tale, then we need to be part of telling the story and bringing about the story for all people. And so thank you everybody who's putting in your names for healing. Because often when we're in the midst of constriction and pain and suffering we also don't believe that we can be healed. And we need to believe it. I see names coming in. Return Ameri backhauled Ross al Brenda Tracy, Natalie Nellie are Israel and Palestine Rachel Sherry, Meghan lo Roberta Jasper. Um where's everybody in the minion so beautiful? Erica Pam Todd LAN.
So please continue to share names as we sing. Bring a determined energy to this this morning.
The AMOLED Bailey my daughter nice me Come on. Then. tobacco dash neurotic you know he or she he or she may lash out spa Tae young Colombo do really I don't know human love
you slow
today no matter how you die by golly no I don't I'm smart or tomorrow dogs
don't get
me main and then to every one of the names that you have put into the chat
for anyone who's listening later on you say the names or write them down or just you know kind of imagine them into the into the air around you I'm I'm always imagining somebody listening to this on the CTA like you know doing all the things sitting up straighter breathing a little deeper closing their eyes putting their hand over their face for the Shema saying names out loud for for the healing prayer and people next to them not even noticing because the fact is nobody notices anything on the train anymore because everybody's just looking at their phones. So you know. So wherever you are, I hope you feel comfortable to participate and sending refresh Leymah to everyone I mean I in fact I might just like everyone in this Minion, you all you show up here every day, you show up for your own spiritual lives and you show up to learn and you show up to pray for people who need health and wholeness and healing. And I just want to lift all those prayers up higher and send them out all right. This week's Torah reading to Azurea woof It's, uh, you know, things that it's just deeper in tech that dig deeper into Leviticus, you know, deeper into all that stuff about being impure having to be outside the camp, ritually impure, having you know, the things that make you ritually impure childbirth, for example, having some kind of weird skin disease that they don't totally understand. And ritual impurity does not imply necessarily, like spiritual or moral impurity like childbirth. It's not like they thought that made a you know, woman or a person who's giving birth bad or wrong, it just, you know, I mean, speaking personally, I wouldn't have wanted to be relied upon for anything having to do with you know, Temple, not like our temple Mishcon, but like, I wouldn't have been I wouldn't have wanted anybody to rely on anything for me spiritually speaking 33 days or 66 days even after giving birth. It's like they codify some of this stuff, but it can be uncomfortable because it's like well, yeah, but what if you want to what if you feel moved to be a leader feel moved to be back in the camp and they're actually creating some boundaries around you know, Who's In Who's Out and what allows you to come back in what enables you to come back in and, you know, so that's, that's kind of like that's what we're looking at here. You can see here this is you know, beginning beginning in the middle of the chapter or in the middle of the Parsha but chapter 13.
Being a bear hair I don't I almost shed a heroine lame or key a bug or bizarro, this is Sage Oh, sad pocket, or the ferret, the HIA or bizarro,
when a person has on the skin of their body a swelling or rash or discoloration and it evolves into a scaly affliction of the skin of the body it shall be reported to Aaron the priest or one of his sons, the priests and the priest shall examine the affliction on the body. If there is a hair in the affected patch and it has turned white and the infection appears to be deeper than the skin of the body. It is a leper simplex infection. When the priest sees it, he shall pronounce the person tema a teammate Ohto he shall pronounce the person impure but then it goes on and talks about the different colors and the hair inside of it. I mean, it's like it's kind of I mean, it's appropriately kind of descriptive as you would want a manual for a priest diagnosing purities and impurities based on symptoms, you would want it to be specific. But it's not for everybody, you know. But if you're a priest, you got to be an expert in this stuff. Anyway, this I wanted to show you is the this is the, the weekly, Torah, the weekly parsha breakdown from Hadar that they make for kids. And as is often the case, the stuff that people make for kids is just as useful and helpful for adults. So first of all, you can see up here on the left, they're giving you the entire Book of Leviticus letting you know where we are in it, here we are in Tasmania, this is called de Vash by the way, honey, sweetness, okay. So they give you a description of the Parsha tell you what kind of happens in it and little scavenger hunt and and then they begin to get into Midrash and two other ways of understanding the difficult stuff in the Parsha and so but Baba where isn't? This is Haftorah
so these are these are commentaries and I just read this to you if the Cohan sees that Surat has covered a person's whole body that Cohen shall say this nega is to horror pure if everything has turned the same color there to horror pure meaning if it seems to be like complete well, but yeah, how do you understand that? A little bit of white Sarhad makes a person tummy impure but if their whole body if they're this scaly skin affliction, turns their whole body white there to horror. How does that work? The the rabbi's the sages want to know, a Midrash tun Houma. Coolcat says this is an example of a strange law that cannot be explained. It's called a hook. Just we just have to accept it. But still, some of our partial name commentators have existence have suggested explanations. This is actually really this is useful knowledge about how myths vote are analyzed by the by the rabbis. Some are Misha team, meaning their laws that make sense. Like you can get the rationale for them. But then some are like this. It's they're hooking him there. It's a hook. It's like, no, truly, I don't get it. And it doesn't rationally make sense. And so at that point, the the the fundamentalist says it's not we shouldn't even bother trying to explain it's not up to us to try to explain we accept it, we practice it because it was given to us because it's in the Torah, period, full stop. The laws of cash route, honestly are a little bit like that. Although they also show you, it doesn't stop people from trying to explain, like and make meaning out of these who came. So here's some meaning making. If that Surat spread all over a person during their quarantine time, that's a sign that being in isolation, made them lose all moral feelings. So calling this person to may would not lead them to improve their behavior. This is Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, Germany 150 years ago, very important thinker and commentary writer. So out and then they go ahead and explain this. According to Rabbi Hurst. The purpose of isolating a person with a nega was to give them the chance to reflect on their past behavior and make a decision to become better. But when it becomes clear that that's not working, there's no point in making them in identifying them as Tommy and making them putting them outside the camp. Bring them back there to where they're, they're pure. And then they ask these questions. So according to this, what does two mile really mean about a person? What does purity and impurity actually mean? Would it be better to beat on a? or remain to horror? Why? What's good about having opportunities to improve? What's challenging about those times? Why might it be bad to not have opportunities to grow and get better? I like that question. Because I think often with with this stuff about being placed outside the camp, we can get very literal about it and be like, Oh, that's just it's so isolating. It's so rude. It's so mean. It's not it's not good pedagogy, but they're zooming out. And saying yes, this does sound challenging. But aren't challenges sometimes okay and important in life? Like, would our lives be better without challenges? Important question. All right, I'll leave it there because I see that it's 836 and we should do Cadiz Shia tome. And I wanted to close out with an Eliana light pre Passover song about Passover cleaning. Because this Minion today has been as has been the spectrum All right. Kadisha tome, where did you go? Did I miss it? Did I just scroll by it? Out there it is. All right. As we go into the Shia tome, on the heels of this learning, who do we want to honor this morning? Saying Kaddish for your father David Rose
Elizabeth, do you want to lead us in Cottage this morning? Dexter? You?
I'm sorry. You're asking me? Yeah, sure. I could do that.
Thank you.
You could dalvey Kadesh amoeba, I mean BMR D Rafeal. TV and lift muscle J the hyphen of Yama found the higher to Kobe to Surya Begala, who is noncollege Amin Amin yeah hey Baroque beige, the bath be a part of Vietnam Vietnam sa vita di vita live it allows Medicare shockwave rehab, the LME cobia whatever share at Twitch plateau and FMO tied them around me at the amount of Emiru me Amin, Islam llama rap I mentioned I have a high Molina vehicle sal de Maru, a madman Issei shadow and in my mouth. We are essentially a loaner vehicle so LBR Kalia, Shweta Val femur, a man man,
man, all of their memories be blessings. Mean. Okay. We're going to close out with a tune by Eliana light. who is a singer? songwriter? Jewish educator? Does anybody recognize what's going on in this picture? By the way? Anybody seen the Cat in the Hat? The book the Dr. Seuss book? Yeah. Well, okay, there's a Dr. Seuss book called The Cat in the Hat where these two kids are home alone. And the Cat in the Hat shows up and decides to make the whole house a mess. But the way that he does it is he puts a whole bunch of items, he balances a whole bunch of items on his head, arms, put whatever. So this picture is imitating that Cat in the Hat, except all the items she's balancing are all of the different Jewish ritual items for the entire Jewish year. So this CD and I highly recommend speaking of things that are designed for children that are actually deeply educational for all people. The whole album Eliana sings about Jewish things, is really good for learning about all kinds of things to fill in Nitti lightyear dying, washing your hands before eating bread. Anyway, this song that I'm going to play for you, is about the search for humates. Looking around your home, for all of the nooks and crannies, all of the, you know, schmutz that comes from bread and bread products. Again, this is actually tying pretty well into the theme of what we what we were looking at in the Torah, not because bread and bread products are inherently bad, but because they take on a symbolic quality during the holiday of Passover. And that symbolic quality is that they are holding us back from from freedom from the you know what we are moving toward what we are trying to orient toward and move toward, and that if we're going to stay back and you know, metaphorically like wait for our bread to rise, we will miss liberation. And so we clear it all out to create the space for us to have the room to move and the freedom to decide what does come next. But in a very physical literal sense. We clean out our homes. And the making of hamentashen a month ago for poram is like the beginning of the process of getting your flour, dumping it in a thing making cookies and beginning to get it out the door sharing it with other people. So I'm going to be starting that process this week. At the very end of it right before Passover like the morning of the Seder, or the night before. There is a tradition of going around the house with a feather, a candle and a spoon and looking for and scraping up you know and actually like planting planting housemates you know like in on a little dish or something you know we're gonna cup around around the house so that your kids or you and your friends can discover it like and make the process fun. So here is this song ready okay oh I wait you know what I think I need to I think I need to set this up in a way that lets you hear it better oh god I'm so bad at Slack or this whatever program this is why why Lizzi Why are you so no okay
okay and then
D to D I think okay
okay I think this should work give me a thumbs up if you can hear it
candle lamps and come soon research that ladder with a feather Campbell lamps be cleaned every room man floor now we have to search once more we don't use a better camera lamp spoon there is no bread to be found pigs around we play hide and seek follow around better Campbell and a spoon
we search for a better tomorrow morning runs away after that we'll only aim for a whole days when all the bread is gone
no
we'll see a blessing to this little tuna with a feather candle and spoon I don't know are syracuse new york
research ladder with a Barbie slash state and a shoe. Wait a minute. We got it
yay
Yeah, fine. Right. All right. I am going to end the recording everybody have a great day. Obviously I'll stay on to chat with anybody who wants to chat.