Preparing For Kol Nidre

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

Transcript

Transcript

0:04  
I'm pulling my Talit out, wrapping it around my head and my body, holding it here for a moment to just allow myself to intend to be in divine space, every place is God's house. Every moment is infused with God's presence. But let's be honest, most of the time we're not really paying attention. Most of the time, our divine antenna are not receiving the message. So just taking a moment now to wrap myself and to intend for the next half hour to really be a receiver, to have the words that I say and the air that I breathe and the consciousness that I hold, to really try and have it connect with the holy one, with this room full of people, all striving to connect with the Holy One and with our tradition during these powerful 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Baruch, atah, Adonai, alohinu, merekala, masher, Keith, Schnabel, bemitzvotev ditsi, ditsivanu, lihita, teif, butzitzit. I mean,

1:32  
it was

1:41  
also so nice to have like 200 people with us on Monday morning. Wasn't that amazing? And I feel like, is there anybody who's here now that discovered that, discovered that this was a thing on Monday, and now you're back? No, maybe, maybe yes, maybe no. But it really it felt like such a what?

2:11  
Who were all those people? It was wonderful to see them. They were from all over the world. It was great.

2:16  
Yeah, we sent a note out to our builders on October 6, just like letting them know about it, and then, and then we just, you know, we sent something out to the whole list on October 7. But it looked to me. I mean, I it was, it was so many people. It was so hard to, you know, see who was who. But it looked like mostly our builders, like our community, people really wanting a space to be in community. Yeah, ham, it was really. It was meaningful. Thank you, Felicia. All right.

I got plans for us today that have to do with Yom Kippur. Those are my plans, but we're beginning with modani.

Can you all hear my guitar? Okay?

3:18  
Moda, NIFA,

3:30  
Rabbi,

3:40  
sitting up a

3:47  
little bit straighter and letting your shoulders relax and release and be, letting your jaw relax and release, and giving yourself a little jaw massage, stretching up, letting your neck muscles relax and stretch to the left and right, waking up in your body and In your spirit, offering gratitude for Being alive today.

4:22  
Ru grateful.

4:42  
Grateful, am I?

4:45  
As I said before you, living spirit of the world, this soul you gave me your great faith in me. Me, may I be grateful, may I be good.

5:26  
A

5:36  
go from here into a prayer thanking God that our soul this morning is pure as it is every morning. Well, we can also thank God for the gift of being able to go to the bathroom and eat and other things that require openings that open and closings that close in the right order at the right time, so that we don't just fall all out over the all over the place. Baruch Hata, Adonai, Elohim, a share yet. Sorry. Adam, the hochma, make the person with wisdom. Vara Vona kavimna Lim making inside of us tubes and empty spaces. Galoolief, he say, Keith, Schnabel ham e of Charlie, hekayam vladha afilu shat, because if one of them were to be open at the wrong time or closed at the wrong time, it would be impossible to stand before you even for a moment. Baruch atah, Adonai rufah, so blessed are you the healer of all flesh and the one who does wonders. Amen Elohim, mash and a tatabi, tehorahi, Blessed is the one who gave us a soul that is pure every single morning. And Irene, yes, yes. And I'm thinking this morning, since you you brought it up, we have a community member who, for the past couple of weeks, has been out with her granddaughter in New York awaiting a liver transplant, and she got it, and she's doing well, which is just such a such a blessing and such a such a miracle. Yeah, I feel like that blessing is both both awe and gratitude for the human body as it is constructed by nature, and then awe and wonder at what the human body can do when paired with the intelligence and wisdom of scientists and doctors In partnership with the amazing natural abilities were given

7:43  
Aloha inishama, Shana, ta ta ta, ho, Rahi alo hain. Shama, Shana, ta, ta, be te Ho, Rahi alo hain. Sham Shama Shana ta be tehu rahi alo hain. Shama Shana ta ta be te ho rahi alo hain. Neshamasha,

8:36  
so in two days, really, like almost three days, because it's the evening of the second day, we're gonna be standing together and going into Kol Nidre going into Yom Kippur, a day when we spend most of the day standing, you know, if you're able, and knocking on our hearts, recalling all of the different ways that we have missed the mark, that we have fallen short of being the best version of ourselves, that we could be, not perfect. Nobody's striving for perfection, but just naming that every so often, we slandered somebody, like we talked shit we did, and maybe it felt good, maybe it connected us to the person we were talking to. Maybe we thought it was connecting us to the person we were talking to, and then we felt a little bit gross after like, wow, I didn't, I didn't need to say that in order to say that in order to connect with that person. There's probably a different way to do that. We gave into temptations. We drew others into temptation. We gave bad advice by. We said yes to things when we didn't really know, or no to things when we didn't really know, and we sounded confident when why? Why did we do that? We didn't need to. We could have just said, I don't know. Could have just given different directions or pointed somebody towards somebody who actually did know. There are just so many ways, like mostly small that we can do better, and we so we spend a lot of the day in that space. And the truth is, a lot of people spend a lot of every day in that space. And so Yom Kippur is just like sort of heaping, you know, heaping even more guilt and maybe even shame onto the shoulders and into the hearts of people who it's like, God, you know, God I don't like I try so hard every day. And so I sort of want to remind everybody that that's one day a year, and every single day we start here. We start every every day here with the reminder that your soul, that you wake up with every morning is beautiful, and it was created and shaped by God to be pure, and it is. And we can do things that sort of like smudge it, get a little bit of dirt or dust on it, and then we can, you know, lovingly, wipe it off and try again your you're supposed to carry. Have two, two pieces of paper, one in each pocket, one that says, in one pocket, bisvilini, rahalam, for me, the world was created. And then in the other pocket, it says anohi, afar ve a fern. I am dust and ashes. Because on some days you wake up and maybe you feel like the world is your oyster, like you could do anything. And on that day, maybe you need a little bit of humility. Maybe you need to be reminded, you know what? You just, like everybody else, are made of dust and ashes, you will die as well. So like, don't get don't get too don't get too proud. You're just like everybody else. And now go out there and be your wonderful, fabulous self. But like, also remember, you know, and then some days you may wake up feeling like I'm nobody and I'm nothing, and I don't even know why I'm here. And on that day, you need to take out the piece of paper that says, For you, for you, the world was created, and you were created for this world. The world needs you, and you've got a great soul.

12:38  
Elohim, Shama Shana kata be teho rahi, aloha. In Shama Shana tabi

12:54  
te hora,

12:56  
hi, baru Ha taranaya Ha mahazir Nisha, modif Kareem may team Blessed are you the one who restores life to our lifeless bodies every single morning, amen. Okay,

invite us if you're able to stand or just sit up a little bit straighter so that you can then take a bow as we go into Baruch Hu.

Feel free to come off mute as we Do the back and forth of Baruch Hu. Barhu,

14:00  
Baruch, Hata, Adonai, Elohim, melecha, Olam, yor shaho Say Shalom. UVO a taco,

14:09  
you light up the world and the heavens with kindness. You renew them each day, and each day you make them good, these works of creation, and you make us good every day too. And we believe that we can change. We believe that other people can change, and we believe that we were all created with the ability to transform or Hadash out CEO and Tair Venice que la mejor aleuro Baruch had on a hotel me or Blessed are you the one who shines a new light over all the places in the world that are broken, and we believe that they can be healed and transformed too? Blessed are you the one who creates light and blessed are you the one who creates love and creates us in love? We gather the four corners of our seat, seats in love.

We hold them over the over our eyes, closing our eyes. Baruch, Hata, Adonai, habucher, but amois Rael the ahava, blessed are you the one who chooses us to love. May we choose to love and we give each word of the Shema one full breath. Shema,

15:40  
Yisrael, Israel,

15:41  
Adonai Elohim,

15:51  
the ED I

16:10  
behave

16:20  
moving he shot,

16:27  
taking

16:33  
A

16:39  
moment now for a healing prayer in the form of mecha Mocha, a prayer for redemption, a prayer for being brought through something hard, something challenging, something you're not sure if you can make it through, or something that somebody you love is not sure if they can make it to the other side of if anybody wants to unmute and share who it is you're thinking about this morning or put their name in the chat. Please feel free. Got everyone on irene's Very comprehensive list that includes so many people here in this room, Andrew, Barbara, Leah, Ari, Miriam, Zach, Katie, Avalon, Paul John, Jim Sam, Jackson Dale, Laura shoshi and Geffen. Miriam, Roberta, Miriam, Joe, Deborah, Mika, Leah, Ari, Haya, zeldabad, Miriam, Sherry and Scott middleman, Linda Cohen cliff and Dory Dan Jay, Mary, Marie, Kim Sadie, all of those in harm's way with the coming storm that includes in our community. Susanna Darwin, sending you so much love and praying for your home, and it says the Jewish establishment everywhere. Jackie Frank, Bill, Susan family thought I saw a moment ago, right Israeli hostages, the wounded in Israel and Palestine and Lebanon. Oh. Yeah, everyone in the path of the hurricane, really? I mean, it's kind of beginning today, huh? Jeff, Dane, Terry, Donny, Jennifer, Michael Rona, Rhonda, Michelle about Malka. Lavash, Ben moisha, Noah her Schnabel, Aliza, Mark, Mindy sumo she, bemoisha, Judy, Neil, Shane, Kate joy, Lois and humane existence for all humans and people can continue to, can continue to type in the chat here and send all of them. This lullaby, this prayer, this song of Hope.

18:45  
Mir, Hamo,

18:56  
Mika, Moha, nada,

19:19  
Nora tehills, goes,

19:24  
Oh say, fellas, shiraha,

19:35  
Shiba, who get Uli

19:41  
le, she Maha, Asa, Fatiha,

19:51  
ya Ho, durim li hu.

20:14  
Oh, I don't know him low,

20:34  
praying for Aiden, shalom. Vinav, ramavinu, masara, he may know hasida, but Chaim the Rifka, Adonai GA al Yisrael, blessed? Are you the one who rescues our people? Okay? Amen, amen. Rufus, alema, okay, I want to read you one of my favorite sections out of one of my favorite books. Which can anybody guess? What time of year it is? So? Okay, no big shocker, real and you're not prepared. Nobody is surprised. Raise your hand if you're not surprised. Okay, so this is from the chapter on col Nidre, and it's a very beautiful chapter. Highly recommend. I'm skipping I'm skipping the first couple of pages of the chapter. He talks about how you can hear heartbreak in the music itself, how the premise of the tune, with its low lows and its high highs, is heartbreak. And he says the first thing about col Nidre is that it starts at this moment of heartbreak. This moment is its first assumption. I hear in it the Soul of all humankind, the soaring aspirations of humanity and the force of a terrible gravity that brings it all down. I hear the heart of humankind cracking open. He talks about where the prayer comes from because it's kind of shrouded in mystery. And it begins, it begins like this. You know, hang on, I'm going to just show you. It begins with, where is this?

Hmm. Alda Tama Comdata, Kahau, beshiva, Shel Mala UVI yeshiva, Shel Mata Anu matirill, imha avario nim with the permission of God and of this community in the yeshiva on high, the Heavenly Court on high and the heavenly court down below, We give ourselves permission we are permitted to pray with all of these avaronim. And so here it says transgressors. Avar is to cross people who have crossed over. So who are the avayonim, and why does a court need to convene in order to give us permission to pray with them. There's a strong and persistent folk belief that the word avaronim refers to marranos, the Jews of Spain who had to pretend to convert to Christianity, but had remained secretly Jewish, and who returned to the Jewish community to say Col niedre every year. The avaronim, the Proponents of this theory argue may well have been a transliteration of the word Iberians. If you take the consonants the way that Hebrew does the consonants of each word, Iberian, bu or n avayonim, Iberian, maybe, maybe another theory is based on a Talmudic dictum that a public fast in which sinners do not participate, excuse me, in which sinners do not participate is not a true fast. Meaning, if you're going to do a public fast for whatever you know, to bring rain, to repent for something, then there better be actual sinners repenting. Otherwise it's not a real fast. So Avar is the word for transgression. Perhaps the avarionim are the transgressors. And the rabbinical court is saying, yes, pray with all of them, all of us. In other words, it's giving us permission to pray with. With ourselves. We are all of our yonim. We are all imperfect, we are all sinners. But I think this word suggests an even deeper reality that all of us share. Not only are we imperfect, we are all impermanent in its simplest meaning of our means to pass, we are all the avario nim we are all the ones who are just passing through every single one of us. The tragic pain of the soul, the pain we hear in those first grieving notes of Kol Nidre, is the pain of loss, the pain of impermanence, and this is the first hurdle the soul must clear as it makes its way through the world, the first disappointment it comes to grips with everything passes, everything around us dies, the people we love, the things we love, the world around us, our parents, our grandparents, our children, our spouse, our strength, our capacities, the redwoods of California, the skyline of New York, all of it sliding away, all of this perfection sinking into the earth. And we know this, and we try to hold on as hard as we can. We try to hold on to our strength, to our youth, we try to hold on to each other, but we may as well try to hold back the waves of the sea. And so this first note is sounded is the song of the soul, and so many of us never get past it. Comments before I go on.

26:34  
Yeah, I'll speak up. It's Susanna. What was amazing was how quickly and easily, I was able to look around at everything in our house and leave it, just let it go, and collected a few things, but I'm prepared to lose it all, and that's just stuff. And then if you expand that out to your person, your character, your soul, it's kind of liberating.

27:13  
I'm I'm so glad you're with us this morning, Susanna. And for those who don't know, Susanna is in one of the counties where they said over the radio, if you stay here, you'll die, right? But

27:26  
pretty much, I mean, we're our house is on higher ground, but the fact that there probably won't be power, probably won't be water, and, you know, you run the risk of basically being in the way. And so my wife and I are in a very safe, very comfortable place away from the storm, and so I'm confident we'll be fine. But thank you,

27:50  
really, I've been thinking about you these last couple of days. And I mean, it's really, what a what a thing to look around your house and say it's just stuff, and then get in the car and leave with

28:05  
the cats, you know, with the cats. But yeah, and I think of a couple of things that shoot, I'd like to have had that, but, you know, it's just stuff. I

28:23  
yeah, oh, my goodness. Shall I keep reading? Please keep reading. One summer, a group of us took a seven day excursion into the deep wilderness of southeastern Alaska. We arrived in the wilderness during the end of the life cycle of the chum salmon. It's a remarkable cycle. The salmon rage up the wild rivers of Alaska to spawn, and the moment they do, they begin to lose their life force. They begin to die. They rage, they spawn, their life force dims, and then they die. You can see this happening before your eyes. Their scales begin to blacken and fall off. Their jaws become locked in a kind of permanent rage. And you can see it because something else happens in this final stage of their lives, which is really quite wonderful. They begin to jump out of the water, very high and very often. And it's extraordinary to see kayaking through the tevencop Bay in southern Alaska, we were constantly surrounded by salmon leaping out of the water. Why do they do this? Some say it's a vestigial instinct left over from the days when they were running up the rivers and had to leap over many impediments. Some say they leap for joy, either the pure joy of the LEAP itself, or to celebrate that their lives have successfully run their course. They have spawned. They have kept the life cycle going. Someone on the trip said that they looked like pilgrims, leaping from one dimension into the next, from Earth into heaven and then falling back again, stitching these dimensions together. As they did. This is nothing less than a picture of the journey of the soul that it takes through this world, the picture of the soul's journey to express itself, to create and spread what it was put here on this earth, to create and then to make a leap of great joy. And the soul makes this joyous leap in spite of the fact that it knows that as soon as it expresses itself, it will begin to die and fade away. We rise up and we fall away. We express our unique and indispensable contribution to the great flow of life, and then we pass on. We become one of the avaronim. And then what he says is that many of us are afraid to be who we are, precisely because we sense this. We sense that once we have risen up, we may fall away. Many of us would rather try to keep our lives unexpressed in potential, because we believe that if we don't express our lives, we can hold on to them, or maybe we're terrified of not expressing ourselves well enough and failing. As long as we dream of that great novel we were always supposed to write, we never have to run the risk of the unbearable tragedy of writing it and failing. Then what do we have? So we never make our joy asleep and we remain weighted down by the burden of our unexpressed dreams. Kol Nidre expresses all of this. So that's page 183 and rule I'm gonna, I'm gonna lead us into Kadisha tome, because it's 833 and for anybody who wants to stay on, to talk and process, because we are, in fact, going into the day when we read col Nidre, when we stand and we sing it, and we kind of stand in the consciousness of everything we just heard, but also relinquishing that which has held us back and opening ourselves to the potential that this new year holds, I put that out there as an offering. Oh, good Martin. I want to hear more about that. I'm going to turn to Kadisha Tome and go ahead and put the names in of everyone you're thinking about here. Everett, Carroll, Nancy Pryor Noam shy, Theresa, Owen, Nancy Jacobson and Mark nur love. Is there anybody who would like to leave Kaddish this morning?

32:42  
I can leave cash.

32:43  
Thanks. Irene

32:45  
is good all visco May, Rabbi Amen, Yama diva who say, We am lock Mark who say, baka ya home of your me, home of kae, the whole base Israel, but a gala of isman. Kareem vmru. Amen,

33:11  
Schnabel dekucha, the Ayla, the Ayla, merakasa, bashirasa, tush, bakasa, Vinaka, masa da Amiran V Alma vmru, ama Amen. Shlama, Rabbi Amen. Shamaya, buchaim, Elena via call Yes, rail vmru,

33:38  
amen, amen.

33:39  
Oh se Shalom. Bimro, Mav, Huya, shalom, Elena, y'all call Yes. Rael, y'all call your Schnabel. V emru, amen, amen,

33:53  
may all their more memories be blessings. Um Ah, let's close with a song, and then we'll turn the recording off and be able to Talk a little more. We'll do Psalm 27

34:40  
Oh

34:46  
tava

34:59  
Keith. 59

35:22  
like Oh,

35:36  
ta, oh Tama.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai