Minyan Replay with Rabbi Lizzi — Tisha B'Av

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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 time zone, in the spirit of the time on the calendar,

this period of time during the nine days.

So what I'm gonna sing here is an adaptation of Psalm 137

maybe you've heard it by the

waters,

the

waters of Babylon. We lay down and wept and wept for these ion. We remember. We remember. We remember these ion by the

waters,

the

waters of Babylon by

the waters the

waters we lay down and wept and wept them for these irons.

We

remember, we remember these ion by

the waters, the waters are

these ion. We

lie

the waters, the waters are these

ions. Are these iron we lay down and we're

these irons.

All right, since I'm experimenting with not using the guitar in deference to the period of time on the calendar in which we sit the nine days,

I wanted to see what happens when you fill the space with other things.

Thank you. Thank you all for the thank you all for the positive reinforcement there. Maybe we can play more with it later. All right, I promised on Monday that I would bring a little bit of framing for this time on the calendar. Maybe we'll end with that tune too. You all are you all are being so kind.

So Miriam, who did a reading group on this book a few years ago, knows this is the time on the calendar we break out. This is real, and you are completely unprepared, as we talked in our staff meeting the other day, maybe one of the greatest book covers ever made. And I don't think you can get the original book cover anymore. I think you can only get it in paperback. But this book is a journey through the period of time, leading from Tisha Bab through Sukkot. So it really treats the entire season, not just the High Holidays as a season, but like this period on the calendar, these nine days, all the way through the end of Sukkot as a unit, as a kind of journey, and a part of that journey right now is being

what we might say at rock bottom or approaching rock bottom,

and this coincides in time with The beginning of the book of Deuteronomy, and so we we know, as we started reading on Monday, Moses begins retelling the story of what happened to the Israelites on the journey through the wilderness. There's not much that happens in the book of Devarim. It is mostly Moses's subjective retelling of the incidents, you know, everything that happened on the way, one of the, one of the many tragedies that is mapped onto the day of Tisha baav. Not just, you know, It recalls the the destruction of the first and second temples in Jerusalem, yes. But there's also a kind of historical it's like a magnet this day for many different tragedies in the life of the Jewish people,

and one of them, you know, and including many expulsions from different European countries over the course of time, the Wannsee Conference in Germany. Even if it didn't happen exactly on Tisha Bob, it happened over.

Round to Shabaab in the same sort of season. Anyway, one of one of the more mythic

events ascribed to this day is that it was on this day that the spies in the Torah came back from scouting out the land with their negative report that then scared all of the other Israelites into being too afraid and chaotic and blaming and defensive, and

what's the word like in fighting, creating so much infighting and negativity amongst themselves that they could not do a big, hard thing together. You know, they cannibalized their own

ability to do a big, hard thing by just, you know, their own fear and finger pointing at one another. And Moses retells this story at the beginning of Davari and so, so I'm going to read out of this book. I just needed to give you a little bit of that framing. Once again, Moses and the children of Israel stand at a moment of transformation. Once again, they stand at the edge of the promised land with an opportunity to go up and to take it. Last time they stood at this point, this moment of opportunity, they failed to seize it, and they became alienated from God and began a protracted period of exile as a consequence. Now they are being given a second chance 40 years before they stood on exactly the same spot facing exactly the same situation. And now it is time to see if they have learned anything, if they can move past this experience and get on with their lives, or if they failed to learn, will this same calamity continue to replicate itself until they do? Will the unconscious, unresolved elements in their lives that brought them back to this moment continue to do so? Or will they finally get past them? There are two ways. There are two ways of looking at the way our tradition has collapsed history on this day of Tisha, Bab, we can regard the Ninth of Av and the weeks surrounding it as a cursed time. And indeed, there is some idea of the prohibition of weddings during this period. Or we can regard the Ninth of Av as a time when we are reminded that catastrophes will keep recurring in our lives, until we get things right, until we need until we learn what we need to learn from them. Tisha Bob comes exactly seven weeks before Rosh Hashanah beginning the process that culminates on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Tisha Bob is the moment of turning, the moment when we turn away from denial and begin to face the exile and alienation as they manifest themselves in our own lives, in our alienation and estrangement from God in our alienation from ourselves and others. And so teshuva, which in Hebrew, means turning or repentance, is the essential gesture of the high holiday season. It is the gesture by which we seek to heal this alienation and to find at one mint connection with God, reconciling with others, and to anchor ourselves in the ground of our actual circumstance, so that it is this reality that shapes our actions, and not just the habitual, unconscious momentum of our lives. I want to stop for just a moment to see if the ideal, the idea of habitual, unconscious momentum of our lives, strikes a chord with anyone, just in terms of, you know, when you think about things like, feel free to unmute habitual unconscious momentum of our lives go ahead.

Oh, I think anyone who's raised children understands the habitual, unconscious momentum of our lives, like you're just moving forward. I think so many people feel like they barely have time to think between work and raising, getting the kids up in the morning, getting them fed, and it's like, I know, as my kids are becoming more independent, I'm like, Oh, I am actually thinking about other things now. I am actually

expanding. You know, and maybe if I'm more self aware, I would have done that, but I

didn't know. I mean, I think I can relate to that so much also, because part of the habitual, unconscious momentum when you're in a dynamic with another human, whether it's a child or some you know anybody you live with is, you know you can be more self aware and self conscious and bring that self consciousness to trying to be kinder and more generous and more patient. But very often it's like, I mean, like every single day I have the same ritual with my daughter here at the table, which is like,

she's very easily distracted, and so we have to remind her to eat. There's food right in front of you. Eat it. We need we need to go. We need you to go. We need you to put on your shoes. We need you to put on your coat. We need you to get on the bus. We need you, you know, like, and then Judah will be over here in the other room, and he's already done eating, and he's distracting her. And it's like, Judah, we need you to leave a deer alone so she can eat, you know. But I mean, it's literally every.

Day, and so talk about unconscious, habitual momentum. I worry a little bit that now there's going to be for the rest of her life, some kind of complex around eating and quickly, and people are waiting for me and you know, but that like we set these patterns up early and can't even help continuing to fall into them,

whether it's kids or anybody else. Okay, any other comments before I before I keep reading? Yeah, yeah. Ellen, well, I think it, you know, plays into our political views too, right? And our psyches that we have developed from a young age,

you know, especially maybe around the issue of autonomy, and it comes out in both of our views. But it's, it's your, your, you know, you always talk about this Lizzi how the amygdala takes over

and old default patterns that we fall into. Also,

it just have so much momentum in our life. Yes, thank you. And, you know, and it's interesting as we talk about the Jewish story and about, you know, that sort of activation of that, you know, of the primitive brain, yes, because, like, we as a people, as a Jewish people, I mean, I, I feel like I can speak authoritatively about the Jewish people, in a way I can't speak about other people and tribes and ethnicities and races, but as a Jewish people, you know, we have actually incurred trauma and persecution, and so some of the

some, some of the protective mechanisms and stories we have developed to tell ourselves, to protect ourselves, really made sense in a particular context, in a particular time, and then when we keep that story with us, it's sort of like, you know, wearing a life preserver in the deep end of the water when you can't swim, makes a lot of sense. But if you get out of the pool and you keep on the life preserver because, you know, it was keeping you safe, and it's very important that you wear the life preserver because it was keeping you safe and and you need to be kept safe because, you know, you were in the deep end, but it's like, Sweetie, you're not in the deep end anymore. Your feet are on solid ground. No, I have to keep on the life preserver. But Sweetie, you're bumping into things and hurting people with it, you know? And like, there's a whole like, imagine how scary that is for the person who feels like they need that thing, right? And I think many of us, it's very hard to, you know, sort of detangle what like, When are the moments we need those protective mechanisms that we've really honed, that are really part of our collective identity to keep us safe, versus, know, actually, like we're okay, you're okay, you are You are safe, and so now you have other options. You don't have to default into some of those, you know, sort of trauma responses, but it's very hard. Oh, it's very I'm so glad you brought that up. Ellen, yeah, we also, I always share a story when we try to change or look at different things. So mother and daughter are cooking a roast beef, and they Is this a true story? Is this a good joke? You know? Well, I'm sure it happens somewhere, but it's allegory. Okay, cut the ends off of the of the roast beef, or the beef? Well, it's supposed to initially, there's a ham, but we're Jewish, so we'll say roast beef, all right. And it's sticking in the oven. And the daughter says, Why do you cut off the ends? And she said, the mother says, I don't know. We asked your grandmother, because she always did it. So they go, the grandmother, Grandma, why did you cut off the ends? And she says, Well, I don't know why you did it, but my pan was too short. Yes, exactly. And then it becomes a tradition, this whole tradition of cutting the ends off the roast beef, when, in fact, it was just to fit it in the pan many generations ago. Thank you. That's a good one.

Yes, and then I'm gonna read what Sherry wrote here. And on another side, when someone's going through the trauma, they may long for the repetition and the just the habitual and the usual. Yes and not to have everything feel so hard and like such chaos and so much upheaval,

and just to have everything feel normal, you know, to yearn for to yearn for the boring. Okay, I'm going to keep

reading Rambam, the great medieval philosopher and synthesizer of Jewish law, said that chuva, this kind of moral and spiritual turning is only complete when we find ourselves in exactly the same position we were when we went wrong, when the state of estrangement and alienation began, and we choose to behave differently, but enact in a way that is conducive to atonement and reconciliation.

But the objection is raised, what happens if the circumstances in question don't repeat themselves? How do we make complete teshuva? Then don't worry, says Rambam, they always do. The unconscious and unresolved elements of our lives, the patterns, the conflicts, the problems that seem to arise no matter where we go or with whom we find ourselves, continue to pull us in the same moral and spiritual circumstances over and over again until we.

Figure out how to resolve them. They continue to carry us into harm's way, until we become aware of them, conscious of them, and begin to change them.

And we all have recurring motifs in the dark, unresolved corners of our lives, in the domestic unhappiness we replicate from one marriage to another, in the problems that seem to follow us from one job to the next in all the mistakes that turn out to be the same mistake over and over and over. And that is why Moses begins the book of Deuteronomy, the second telling with his own version of the story of the scouts. He realizes the Israelites are in precisely the same spiritual and moral predicament they found themselves in 40 years before the unresolved elements of their lives have brought them here.

And then he goes on talks about the way that this the people saw them themselves, and the scouts, and the projected fear that the scouts brought onto the people. And then the way that Moses tells the story very differently and shifts the blame from the exaggerated and ultimately dishonest story the spies told, and shifts the blame to the murmuring of the people who heard the report. The people are no longer innocence, misled into disobedience. You know, through misinformation, Moses subtly alters the narrative in this retelling to place the burden of guilt on them and not the spies.

And he says, and now I'll go on. This is about Tisha Bob.

We see precisely the same kind of thing in the Tisha Bob story. Why was the temple destroyed? The Rabbi's asked, they answer because of sinatriam, gratuitous hatred, because the Jewish people had fallen into factional bickering, because they had broken up into warring cults and were busily engaged in fratricidal religious disputes, Each one claiming to be the true Israel and denying the legitimacy of others.

Gosh, I can't think of any community now that engages in fratricidal bickering that is to the detriment of the overall cause that all of the people agree that they are going toward. But just because it's so much easier to disagree with and point the finger at someone close to you,

I can't, I can't imagine how that might be relevant and in our discourse today. Okay. Isaiah Gaffney, an Israeli professor of ancient history, is always brought onto Israeli radio and TV to participate in panels with other learned commentators around Tisha Bob and on this holiday, there is invariably a commentator from the Israeli left who explains that the temple was destroyed and Israel was conquered by the Romans because of intolerance, because of the intolerance of the religious right of the day. And then a right wing commentator comes on and explains that both the temple and Israel itself fell to the Romans because of the failure of the Jewish people to unite against the enemy militarily. And then invariably, it falls upon Gaffney to explain that there was one reason for the fall of the temple, and one reason alone. Rome was absolutely invincible, and its huge armies were marching through the world, mowing down everyone in their path, and nothing could have stopped them from taking Jerusalem, no matter how tolerant the religious right nor how unified the armies of Israel might have been.

So what were the rabbi's of the Talmud doing when they blamed the destruction of the temple on gratuitous hatred among the Jews? What was Moses talking about? Why did they blame the people for what happened when the objective evidence of history seems clearly to exonerate them?

He writes, the answer is that neither the rabbi's nor Moses cared a fig about history. They weren't historians. They were spiritual leaders, and spiritually, the only question worth asking about any conflict, any recurring catastrophe, is this,

how am I complicit in it? What is my responsibility for it? How can I prevent it from happening again.

When things go bad, there is an enormous temptation to blame it on externals, on the evil of others or on an unlucky turn of events. Spiritually, however, we are called to resist this temptation, no matter how strong it may be, and no matter how strongly rooted in fact or reason or history it may seem spiritually, we are called to ask, What am I doing to make this recur again and again, even if it is a conflict that was clearly thrust upon me from the outside, how am I plugging into it?

What is it in there that needs me to be engaged in this conflict?

Our power in this world is considerable, but it is also circumscribed. It is only here and now, in this moment, in this place, in the present, that we can act.

We cannot act in the past. We cannot act in the future. We most certainly cannot act through someone else's experience. So.

From a spiritual point of view, we need to ask, What can I do here and now in the present reality of my own experience?

Let's just take a moment to sit with that. Let's just breathe that in for a moment,

in the way we do in the morning. I

grounding our feet on the surface that they're on

your bottom, on the chair or bed or seat,

letting your shoulders relax and your spine be more erect and aligned.

Breathing more deeply,

just feeling within your body, the most basic thing that you can do in any moment,

which is to breathe,

creating space between stimulus and response,

reminding us that we do not have to

repeat and repeat and repeat the unconscious habits and patterns that we're so used to.

This is a wonderful moment. If there is something that came to mind as you were listening to me read Rabbi Allen Li's words.

If there is a pattern or a dynamic with a person or an issue

that you feel like this is naming for you right now,

just become a little more aware of it,

maybe write it down, to come back to later, to think about

or talk about with a friend or journal about

this is the beginning of the high holiday season. This is the beginning of reflecting on how we become better versions of ourselves and then collectively improve the Jewish community and our role on planet Earth. I think there's a lot of room for improvement, and it can begin with us.

I'm going to

take us all the way

up to the Shma.

So if you're wearing your Talib,

gather the four corners of your seat. Seat around yourself.

Remember that we are held in love. Every mistake we make,

we get to turn back and make Teshuva and are accepted in love. The ahava,

we do all of this work, the ahava

in love through love with love for ourselves, for others

that God has for us,

holding all those four corners of your T together,

eyes closed.

Shimmel

Yisrael,

hell, I don't know.

Hello, he knew.

I don't

know.

Rabbi,

and

you will

love with

all love with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength. And these words which I speak to you today shall be on your heart. Sidebar, they're always on your heart. The coats go rabbi says they're on your heart. The thing is, you need to open your heart and let them in. That's why they're all of avecha on your heart. They're always there, but we need to open ourselves. You shall repeat them to your children and speak of them when you sit in your home, when you walk along the way, when you lie down and when you rise up. I feel like that's such a perfect line for the minion. We do in the morning, when many of you are sitting in your home, but some of you are already at work and some of you are going to listen to.

Us on the podcast later, when you're walking along the way, some of you are still in your beds, and some of you are making breakfast when you lie down and when you rise up. And here we are speaking these words. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand. They will be symbols between your eyes. You will write them on the door posts of your house and on your gate.

And these will all be reminders

to take care not to be lured away, to serve other gods and bow to them such that the skies close up and there will be no great rain for the ground, and the earth will not yield its produce. And the tradition says, Be careful, because that is what leads to soon perishing from the good land that the boundless one has assigned you. And therefore we do all of these things.

And

met

the event A Hoover Amen,

le omba,

Deena,

Le omber,

Kaya Sharon,

Me To

covid, all right, that

was Getting a little intense, but man, fun, right? So fun, so much truth, so many good words to describe, to describe the way all of this shows up in our lives.

And how much, how many different ways to bring positivity and goodness. There are

true and upright, correct, straightforward, reliable, beloved and dear, nice, lovely, but also fearsome, mighty, sweet, good and beautiful. Is all these words for us, for all time,

all right, I do realize it is 830 and I

want to make sure we pray for healing. So thank you, Martin for getting us started,

and anyone else, feel free to put the names of people you want to pray for in the chat, or to speak their names out loud.

Mama B, Mama Shirley, May and all the minion mamas, Maya, Felicia, Karen, cousin Sharon, Erin et Mary, Dora, Shelly,

Miriam G

ever, everyone in this Minion, every single person,

everyone on irene's list from near and far,

everyone on Delia's list, A Prayer for no more war.

Jackson, Kathy. Jan Bergson, hi zeld About Miriam, Kirsten, Barbara and Sherry. Bradley, Susan, Celia, Martin, Richard, right back home. Martin, Chris

Aiden, Shalom about Abraham vino. Sorry, you may know Hasid about Jaime.

Everyone on Glen's list here, Michelle, about Malka. Malka bad Liba, Mark, Ray

Lizzi about Michelle and Mindy.

All right, I'm going to go into the sealing prayer. And if there are more names you want to say or drop in the chat, please feel free we send them over Fauci Ma complete healing.

And

na

el Na

Re

far now la

el

Na

Re Far

re

far ry,

complete

healing of body and spirit for everyone whose names you mentioned, For anyone struggling with addiction, For anyone struggling with loneliness, suffering with mental health, struggling to feel whole, struggling to feel loved,

presenting our blessings of healing and of love and of care, and if sinatram gratuitous hatred was what led to the destruction and exile and alienation of Our people, so then let ahavatinam gratuitous love, excess Love, Love for no Reason, love that shows up in you know, going to going to somebody's parents funeral or Shiva, who maybe you didn't know. But the truth is, just having somebody show up to know that you are loved and supported by your community. My gosh, what a way to show ahavatchinam, to give food away, or to give money away, or to give clothes away, to give something that you actually love and enjoy away, but to somebody who needs it more. All of these are ways of practicing ahavathi Nam,

to put yourself on the line for somebody who maybe has no one to advocate for them. Ahavathi nam let us be generators of senseless love.

Okay, I'm gonna shift to Kadisha at home now, speaking of sending out love in the directions of so many people who maybe have given us love, and our way now of giving it back is to just say their names in memory. Who do we want to remember this morning?

Your mom? Your father? Mark nur love, thank you, Susan, for sharing a little bit about him with us on Monday. Nathan Pollock, your father. Center on

my aunt Nancy Jacobson.

Nancy Jacobson and Miriam Kelly greens, mom, Teresa Owen,

anyone else and Would anybody like and find meaning in leading Kaddish this morning?

No, I can lead.

All right,

yes, God, she may, Rabbi Deena

family,

but I gala of his man, curry, bien

the

AVA.

Me call Bucha to Bucha. Vine, Iran, bi Amma, vmru, a man name, hey, shalom. I mean, hey, Shalom. RABBI, Mishkan Elena, feel call us for ale. Beam rule, a man mostly Shalom. Vim. Ramo says shalom, Elaine, call us for a call.

May the memories be blessings.

Now, just because you know we're having so much fun with this loop pedal, let's do, you know, Debbie Friedman, so say shalom, which is so great. It's so such a great tune, but it's in a round and so, you know, it layers. So let's do that one. Let's do that one. Thank you, Mary. Oh, thank you Irene, for leading, leading us in Kaddish. Here we go.

Oh, say Shalom. BIM, Roma, pu ya se, shalom. A Le New, ve,

alcohol, Yisrael, ve al Ko yo schwe tebel A

mein

o

me shalomate,

el, ve Al

Ko, Yo,

schmi, teith, shalom, Vi, no, veal.

Ko,

Koi, Tei Bel,

omit

shalom,

amen. Amen.

All right, I'm

going to read one last little section here from Rabbi Lou's book, and then anyone who wants to keep noodling on this together,

I'll turn off the recording, and we can keep chatting.

He writes, why do we keep having the same arguments with our children, with our parents? Why do our relationships always fail in precisely the same way? Why do we always fall into the same kind of conflict at work? Sure, there may be plenty of evidence in the history of your life to suggest that it was always, always the other guy's fault. The first husband was a real schmuck. Look at what happened with that second marriage. And that guy that you are in work and in conflict at work with is like the last of the schmoh. He can't, no doubt about it. And that guy you were in conflict with last week also a terrible schmohawk, but we aren't talking about history here. We're talking about our spiritual growth. And in terms of our spiritual growth, what we really need to ask is this, what is my complicity? Why do I always end up fighting with schmohawks? Why does every man I have a relationship with end up taking advantage of me? How can I make things better in actual now,

in the here and now of my actual experience, the only time and place in which I am empowered to act. What is the recurring disaster of our life? What is the unresolved element that keeps bringing us back to this same moment over and over again? What is it that we keep getting wrong? What is it that we persistently refuse to look at and fail to see?

Tisha baav is the day on which we are reminded of the calamity that keeps repeating itself in the life of our people, and against all reason, against all the overwhelming evidence of history. Moses and the rabbi's insist that we are not powerless in the face of that.

Calamity. Moses and the rabbi's insist that we take responsibility for what is happening to us. Moses and the rabbi's insist that we acknowledge our complicity in the things that keep happening to us over and over again. Rabbi Alan Lou

copyright, 2003

not much has changed, huh?

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Shabbat Shalom, you.