Opening The High Holidays

In this special episode recovered from The Mishkan Vault, Rabbi Lizzi speaks with renowned tech entrepreneur Harry Gottlieb about the spiritual technology of teshuvah and the power of the High Holidays in our modern world. 

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

Transcript

Transcript

Rabbi Lizzi:
In the winter of 2018 when Mishkan was about seven years old, I went to an event for young Jewish entrepreneurs here in Chicago, and I met someone who was new to this sector and incredibly enthusiastic about it. This guy was a serial tech entrepreneur between jobs, and so he had some time on his hands and a lifelong interest in Judaism. And what was fun for me as a rabbi was that he brought like a real beginner's mind to it. You know, like all the assumptions that many people, especially those of us who grow up in the Jewish tradition, just take for granted about what the High Holidays are about, what any holiday is about, what its purpose is, what Judaism has to say about all the big issues. A lot of people feel like if they attended Sunday school and had a bar mitzvah, they just feel like they know all that stuff and bring no curiosity to it, and in many cases, honestly, have written it off, like it's just not that wise or deep. But here was someone who was genuinely really, really curious about all these things and had a million questions. And so we found ourselves in a kind of Harvard, like a learning partnership to discuss the meaning of the High Holidays, and we recorded it, and he created a podcast series called opening, with the first episode in the series being called opening the High Holidays. He first released it on SoundCloud, and since he posted it in the summer of 2018 it's garnered something like 4500 listens at the time we put it out there, Mishkan did not even have our own podcast or platform to share it on, but we do now. I'm Rabbi Lizzi Heideman. You're listening to contact high the podcast of Mishkan Chicago, and we are excited to re release opening the High Holidays. It turns out this ended up actually being the only episode in the series, so we are thrilled to share it here. I really want to thank Harry Nathan gollib, for all the time you spent interviewing me and my rabbinic colleagues to create such a beautiful testament to our ancient, beautiful, Complex, deep, wise tradition. And my prayer is that you, dear listener, are moved to make these high holidays your most meaningful ones yet, and that in your taking the art of Teshuva to heart, and if you don't know what I'm talking about, you will soon, I hope that the ripple effects will not just be felt by you and your nearest and dearest, but also out in the world, beyond transforming the world one soul at a time.


Harry Gottlieb:
I have gone to plenty of high holiday services in my life,

nothing of note has ever really happened.

I mean, I'm generally glad I went, glad to be sitting there. Mostly makes me feel Jewish. I'm not unhappy fulfilling the obligation, maintaining the tradition, and the years I've skipped the High Holidays, I've felt guilty, but the years I've gone to the High Holidays, I haven't felt much, a little but not much,

for sure. Rosh Hashanah in the autumn feels a lot more like the new year than January 1. It feels more like a time of renewal, but I think it feels that way because it's when the school year begins, and Yom Kippur, every year the rabbi, say that you can only atone in the synagogue for sins against God, your sins against people. You need to take care of that by finding them and apologizing. And I did that once, made made good on an overdue apology, but honestly, I wasn't sure I'd done any sinning against God. For that matter, sinning against God, what does that even mean? What does God even mean a supernatural, omnipotent being who created and controls everything? Because that's, that's pretty much the impression you get reading the translation of the prayers during the High Holidays. I mean, God all will be in awe of you.

Let your great name be hallowed in the world whose creation you willed.

All things past and present are known to you. Eternal God,

you give life to the dead. That's quite a trick. And then we open the Torah, the Hebrew Bible, and the same God is telling Abraham to kill his own son with Moses. He exacts vengeance on the Egyptians by killing off all of their firstborn in one night. His laws condone slavery, require animal sacrifice and prohibit same sex love. So that last item, the prohibition on same sex love. That was the part of the Torah I read on my Bar Mitzvah when I was 13. Not that I had any idea what I was reading, because, of course, it was in Hebrew, and I just memorized it by listening to my teacher's recording. I didn't read the translation until I was 26 that was an eye opener. Anyway, I don't know what to make of this god.

I should mention that my name is Harry Nathan Gottlieb, obviously I'm Jewish.

I founded a couple of companies in Chicago. One is called jellyvision, the other is called Jackbox games. They're both software companies, but what the software does is support communication. So writing is always at the heart of the experiences we create for our users. It's supported by animation, music and code, but it is in using the magic of words that we try to help people, inspire people, bring them joy, create moments that matter. And I guess I have always assumed that the words of the high holiday services have done that for Jews for more than a millennium, but it has not done that for me. And I sense that part of the reason why is that I felt that Judaism, this tradition, which is all about questioning, wrestling with the tradition intellectually, was asking me to leave my brain at the door when I walked into services, and then I

was introduced to this. Rabbi,

good evening. Rabbi, good evening. And how does this evening find you well? Rabbi, we were both attending an event with a mutual friend who couldn't believe he'd never introduced us before. About a month later, she and I met at a pizza place, and over lunch, she was recounting a story from the Torah, and in the middle of it, she casually uses the phrase the god character. The God character, yeah, the god character. I mean, it's not like God in the Torah is the reality of the God of the universe. It's a character.

I had never heard a Rabbi say this before, like it's the thing everybody sitting in synagogue knows, but nobody just comes out and says it, well, it's not like this is my bold idea. I think as long as Jews have been talking about Torah, there's been a kind of self awareness, self consciousness, that the God in the Torah is a

character that doesn't reflect the reality of whatever we think is God, the real God, you know, so in the Talmud, you get this. And Maimonides, Maimonides, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon one of the most influential Jewish thinkers of all time. He lived in the 12th century. He really, he really popularized this in talking about how, you know, God doesn't have a body. God doesn't have anthropomorphic character traits. We can't really say anything positive about God. Any any sentence that begins

with God is is a lie. Because, you know, human beings, we're we're limited in what we can grasp with our minds, and so we refer to and talk about God in ways that we can understand and relate to, but we shouldn't confuse that for reality.

I gotta say, the more I spoke to this rabbi, the more I thought, maybe there's an opening here There. Maybe there's an opening into Judaism for me. Who are you? Lizzi Heideman, I should say rabbi. Lizzi heidiman, yes, of course. Your title, your credits, where you're from. I'm the rabbi and founder of Mishkan Chicago, which is a local, organic, inspired down to earth, spiritual community, post denominational, new Jewish spiritual space in Chicago. It's not that new Mishkan started in 2011 but I got to tell you, it feels new and old all at

the same time. Who

share

Deena,

if you'd like to join me. I'll take you on a journey that I've been on for the last few months, led by Rabbi Lizzi and with insight from some of her colleagues. It's been a journey with an intended destination of walking in the high holiday services this fall, and knowing enough or being prepared enough to have something happen. Asher.

So we were four or five days out from having left the van, and we were up on this mountain, and it began to rain, and then it began to thunder and lightning,

and there was no cover anywhere, you know, I mean, because we were above tree line,

and there was a sense of being entirely powerless,

you know, sort of at the mercy of the elements. And it was extraordinary, you know, like, as long as I wasn't dead in that moment, I was, like, just surrounded by the power of like the world,

and connected to it and part of it, and I was like, 15, and I don't, I don't think I had language to de.

Describe that that felt like a God moment, but I looking back for sure. You know, I was not in my head. I was very much in my body. I was with people. We could process it afterward and and there wasn't much to really say other than like, Oh, wow. Wow. But that was kind of all that need to be. We got understood. Yes, yeah. So, so now that you're a rabbi, looking back on this experience, what do you what do you make of it?

The language of God, the king, God, the judge, God, sort of the the fierce and the terrible, you know, it's like, it's an, it's a metaphor that I don't think works for a modern audience, but just the experience, if you take sort of the anthropomorphism out of it, you know, and connect to, like the deepest place of when you've actually felt that sense of both connectedness and also smallness in the universe. There's something like whoa about that that's both empowering and also scary. So I don't think that High Holidays needs to necessarily feel scary, but I do think that if we're lucky, we can have a moment of feeling that profoundly connected to ourselves, to the people around us, to the world. What the High Holidays are an opportunity for is placing ourselves in a space that's conducive to that kind of experience and opening ourselves up to it. Think that might be hard. I think open ourselves up requires being vulnerable, which is not that hard when you're at the top of a mountain in a life threatening storm. But I can't say I've ever felt vulnerable sitting in synagogue, let alone felt a collective sense of vulnerability among everyone. One way, I think we can help ourselves get to that place of openness and vulnerability is by walking in having thought about what's really going on for us in our lives, the things that are broken, the things that aren't working quite right in our relationships, at work, at home, in relationship with ourself, maybe in relationship with God or sense of a higher power, and maybe done some journaling about it, or at the very least having thought about it and coming in knowing these are the things, these are the things I want to Hold in mind as we go through these prayers and to see what breaks open, if you just kind of hold that reality of what's really going on in mind, that's where your prayer comes from. At this point, I realized how little I understood the purpose of the High Holidays. I mean, when someone would ask me, What are the High Holidays, I would answer, well, it's the Jewish new year and the Day of Atonement. I now realize it's kind of like someone asking me the question, Who is Albert Einstein, and giving them the answer, he was a German Jewish scientist who immigrated to the US in 1933

I mean, it is correct, but it's also kind of missing the key point.

The High Holidays are about closing the gap between who you are presently, who we are currently, and who we would like to be. You know, the vision of myself that I know is possible that I have in my head, and

that if I can just even make minor adjustments in my life to orient myself, to turn myself a little bit toward that person who I envision myself as having the possibility of being, I will create a world of change within myself and actually in My relationships and in the world around me. And so it's this continuum between Tikkun atsmi, the changing of my own soul, and tikkun olam, like the changing of the world. And I think that's like nowhere more clearly demonstrated than in on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Sounds very serious, but it's actually considered one of the most joyful days on the Hebrew calendar, because with Atonement comes forgiveness and comes closeness and love, and I create the possibility for a more loving world around me. That idea of turning turning toward the person you want to be, turning away from what you no longer want to be. The Hebrew word for that is Teshuvah. It turns out that during the High Holidays, celebrating creation and atoning for sin are not just ends unto themselves. They are, more importantly, a mechanism toward the goal of teshuvah, toward the.

Goal of transformation, one aspect of chuva, symbolized by Yom Kippur and atoning, is returning, turning around, getting back on the right path. I mean, the whole Jewish notion of of sin is you've just gone astray. This is Rabbi Sharon browse Rabbi Lizzi, mentor and colleague and founder of ecar in Los Angeles. She was being interviewed by Krista Tippett for the NPR program on being and you can turn it around. And you know the principle, the fundamental principles of Teshuva of return, is that human beings have free will. We have the capacity to make great mistakes, and we have the capacity to turn it around. And of course, there's certain things that there is no full Teshuva that can be affected for because the damage is irreparable, things like murder and sexual assault and some kinds of public humiliation that it's impossible to ever fully turn back. But for everything else, our tradition says it's possible to turn your life around and to make amends in a way that will heal the breach that you've caused in the relationship, either, you know, with yourself, with God, with someone in the community, with the world, and then another aspect of teshuva, symbolized by Rosh Hashanah and creation, is turning towards something new. Teshuva is Teshuva is a constant process that we're all in all the time,

trying to become the people we want to be, and then trying to even more finely Hone, you know, once we've whatever it is, lost, the weight, gotten the job, had the kid you know, found the boy, whatever, whatever it is that, you know, was the sort of nearer term goal, then trying to reorient ourselves to whatever the next goal is. You know, we're not static. We live these dynamic lives that are in constant evolution. And so we're in constant we're in a constant state of teshuva. If we were to pick one thing going into Rosh Hashanah, to work on, to look at, to examine, I think an important thing to examine would be, what am I turning toward? And this is where the shofar comes in.

And we have this shofar which blasts in our ears, and it's not supposed to be beautiful and melodious. It's supposed to really wake you up and say, Look at yourself.

Are you the mother you want to be? Are you the friend you want to be? Are you the American you want to be? Are you the human being that you want to be in the world?

So before the High Holidays, I need to spend a little time contemplating the things that aren't working in my life. Feels broken. Yeah, so, and I walk into Rosh Hashanah with with this, with my bag of stuff that's broken and and some idea of where I want to turn and not just broken, I realize that's sort of a could be a depressing way to come into the holidays, just with your bag of broken

my bag of broken stuff, my broken toys, I

actually really like the metaphor of like the Israelites marching through the desert for 40 years, and they had they carried both sets of tablets with them, the tablets that Moses smashed on the ground when he was devastated After seeing all of the Israelites worshiping a golden calf, worshiping an idol like the you know, basically the one thing that you know God said not to do, and they all did, those who will not live by the law.

So who picked those pieces up. Is there some, some Midrash, some ancient rabbinic commentary about that? Oh, my God, are there 12 of them? Oh, probably. I don't know. That's a great that's a great question, right? Who picked up all of the pieces of the broken tablets? Somebody did, and they put them in the same arrow, in the same arc, as the new tablets. Quick Time out. I want to hit pause on the interview here for a second to notice something when you listen to the exact words she's using, it sounds like she's certain that there was, in reality, in history, a man named Moses who smashed two tablets given to him by God, and there were people who must have picked them up. And there are plenty of Jews who believe this. And yet, as we know this rabbi and most of her rabbinic colleagues think of the God in the Bible as a character in a story, and Moses is another character who may or may not have some basis in history. It's a little confusing, right? But you've almost certainly read a novel where the story and characters illuminate a universal human truth. It's not historical truth, it's human truth, and if you get that, then you get where these rabbis are coming from. But you know, I've had to get used to how these rabbis are always talking about these Jewish stories as if they were history, while believing that they are mostly not history. For them, the events described in Torah are the found.

Foundational stories of Judaism, and they take Torah seriously by emphatically declaring that our foundational stories were written by our ancestors, human beings who were inspired, maybe divinely inspired, to make sense of the ineffable, impenetrable mystery of reality. And it's by interpreting our ancient stories to extract universal human truths that they use Judaism to help us through the challenges in our lives today,

speaking of which, back to the story of the Hebrews carrying around the broken and unbroken tablets of the 10 Commandments together and the Ark of the Covenant. And so the idea is like, what's working and what's not working are carried together

because we're whole people. Our hearts aren't actually bifurcated into, you know, what's working and what's not working. No matter how lonely a person may be or how broken you may feel, there are aspects of your life that are working and that are worth celebrating. And as great as your life may be, as much as you feel like you have to celebrate, there have to be things that still need work. So we come to the High Holidays with this bag of both, and we use it on this emotional journey with The intention of becoming more whole. La, la, la,

la,

ah,

so I get that the driving purpose of the High Holidays is teshuva, but, you know, it still confuses me a little. What's that? Why isn't Yom Kippur first? I mean, it seems so much more logical to atone for your sins of the previous year before going into the new year. But it's reversed. New Year first, atone, second. Yeah, if you look at that way, it does seem illogical, but Jewish tradition, the Jewish way, is all about uncovering new and different ways of seeing the world. So there's, there's just a completely different way of understanding why Rosh Hashanah is first. Yeah, the High Holidays really function, like the journey of birth to death and actually then to rebirth. That that's sort of what happens to us collectively between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the kind of the bumper sticker for Rosh Hashanah is hayom harato Lam, which means today the world is conceived, and so we're kind of we're being gestated together. We're experiencing the newness and also the possibility for who we might become in life. We spend the day thinking about that. And then there are these 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. And then on Yom Kippur, we walk in, and there are these spiritual practices that involve fasting and

not putting on fancy clothes and lotions and makeup and other things that sort of

put us in the world. We take ourselves out of the world, and we imagine for a day what would it be like to not be in this world in all of the physical ways that we're so used to inhabiting this world, and it's a little bit like practicing our own death. And we wear white, which for many people, is like wearing the burial shrouds you would be buried in tahrikine, like very simple clothes that kind of equalize us in the same way that death equalizes us. And at the end of Yom Kippur, after this day of going through the highs and lows of

atonement and forgiveness and self reflection, you come out and you eat and you drink and you dance and you sing, and you enter this new year with a renewed sense of who you might be, because you're not dead, because you're alive.

You

I mean that all sounds great,

and

it is hard to imagine honestly, going on this emotional journey contemplating how to close the gap between who I am and who I want to be

with.

Keith, this giant tome of prayer is sitting on my lap when for the hours of the service, I'm being asked to run through these prayers, reading words, not just the Hebrew, which I don't, I don't understand, but the English translations

Don't, don't really mean anything to me.

So I think it's really important for you to know that the prayers in the book aren't prayer. You are the prayer. You're the prayer. You carry that inside you. Every person carries it inside them, whether or not they speak or know Hebrew or have access to the prayers in the book, the prayers in the book are just, they're like, they're like a means to the end. They're like a tool that you use if you know how to use those tools, but if you don't know how to use those tools, then then put, then put the tool away, because actually you have within you what the tool is trying to help you do, which is have an authentic moment of connection of the truth of your life with something bigger. One of my teachers, Rabbi amihalavi, my name is ami khalavi. I'm the founding spiritual leader of the lab shul community in New York City. He grew up Orthodox, like highly observant, and he knows all the prayers intimately, but he knows that words sometimes get in the way. I think one of the problem is that we got so stuck with words,

left brain, literacy, alphabet, it's only one small part of making sense, trying to make sense of this grand reality we're living in. So the music

that accompanies or proceeds or follows the words, the silence We sit in the ambiance of the room. We're in the tenderness of someone holding my hand as I'm holding theirs when we sit in the circle, the feel of the fabric of my prayer shawl, the smell of the challah, the sight of the candles.

We have a lot of senses to tap into the numinous and somehow we're putting all this energy on words.

But in so many areas of life, language, words are a primary human pathway to understanding, to meaning, right?

Words give us meaning,

and words rob us of our individual connection to mystery. I

i On Rosh Hashanah synagogues all over the world read the story of Hannah. She's She's a wife, and all she wants to do is be a mother, and she is infertile, and so she comes into the temple and prays, which people didn't do in those days. What you did in the temple was ask the priest to offer sacrifices in your behalf. That's how people interacted with their notion of God. By giving God stuff, goats, sheep, birds, wheat, grain, the first fruits of your field. But Hannah, Hannah shows up at the temple empty handed, and in her anguish about not being able to have children, just starts crying to God, moving her lips silently pleading. And the high priest thought she was drunk because he watched her mouth move and no sound came out, and he basically goes over to her and says, like, Hey, lady, like, take your drunk ass out of here. And she says, no, no, my lord. Like, I'm a woman who's bitter of spirit, you know, I'm pouring out my heart to God. And he basically says, I'm so sorry. You're right. You just keep doing what you're doing. And she becomes the model for the way that we pray now. And so just to think that first authentic prayer experience, there was no Siddur, there was no Marx, or she's saying here that there were no prayer books, it was just her own pain and the authenticity of her direct speech to God that was the only address she could think of to address her pain. And that's what we do, or that's what we have the invitation to do.

I guess I don't know exactly what to do with that invitation. I mean, I don't expect to walk into Rosh Hashanah in a state of agony like Hana. I'm relieved and sort of amused to learn that the words in the prayer books aren't actually prayers. The prayers need to come from inside me, but I still don't think I know how to pray. I think you do, Harry, you do. Anybody can pray. Everybody can pray. And probably has in different moments. You know, if you think about the times when you really yearned for something and expressed.

Either internally or externally, a deep wish or desire or gratitude, you know, just like a for unearned blessings that come into our lives, everybody does that. Okay, yeah, I've, I've, I've done that. So I should think of that as prayer. It is prayer. I get what she's saying here, but it feels like she's generally talking about the lower end of prayer, just like there's a range for all human experiences. There's the joke that makes you chuckle, and there's the joke where you're laughing so hard you're crying. There's small talk at a party, and then there's the conversation with your best friend about your kids or your marriage or your work, where you have a life changing epiphany. So I guess there's the prayer where you're saying, Oh my God, I hope I make it to the next gas station. And then there's the prayer of, see, that's the thing. I don't know what the other end is, but maybe it's when she said this, if we're lucky, we can have a moment of feeling that profoundly connected to ourselves, to the people around us to the world. I think that may have happened to me once, maybe I was 14. It was my last day of my last year being a camper at summer camp, North Star camp for boys in Hayward, Wisconsin. If you were one of those kids who went to summer camp for a while, you might relate to this. North Star camp had a farewell ceremony in the evening of that last day, and at the end of the ceremony, everyone walks outside onto the tennis courts at the top of a small ridge across a little valley, up on another small ridge, the camp's initials NSC formed with logs were set ablaze.

Everyone was together, completely silent,

and I remember standing there shoulder to shoulder with my cabin mates, our fingers wrapped through the chain link fence around the courts, staring out at those letters glowing in the dark Wisconsin night.

And I remember this feeling in my chest and my throat. I remember my eyes welling up with tears, feeling this bitter sweetness that I imagine boys had felt at this same moment at the end of camp, going back to the late 1940s

I felt connected to all of that, and to the campers and counselors around me, and even to the nature around me, the lake, the hills, the sky. I

don't know if that's near the other end of prayer, the high end of prayer. I don't know, but I never felt anything like that again, let alone during high holiday services.

I can't read your expression. What is that? You're not buying it. What? No, I am. I am. I can see how a wish for something or an expression of gratitude can be a kind of prayer. But when I'm sitting in high holiday services, I think it's hard for even that to happen. Sometimes I find myself watching the Jews who know what they're doing. You know they know the Hebrew, they're bowing at the right time, they're turning east at the right time. And

I'm sort of embarrassed to say this, but I find myself self consciously trying not to give away to the people sitting around me that I don't know, the prayers,

yeah. I mean, I've just, I've always felt like, you know, there are these professional Jews who know what they're doing. And then there are US amateur Jews who don't but should

just drop, if you can the sense that there is something that you should know that you don't know, or that you should do that you're not doing, and just try to really Be present for the experience You are having.

They hallelujah

O,

oh,

I am happy that you are giving me permission to close the book and ignore the words and just meditate on a few things that matter in my life. Yeah, and I guess I will be

doing this in this gale force wind of Hebrew for three hours.

Great.

It's true. It's an

interesting choice of words, the gale force wind. The word in Hebrew for wind is Ruach, which means spirit, and also wind. I think the Ruach of a service, the spirit of a service really like comes through in its music and.

That music is really what has the power to carry you through, through that experience of wanting to connect. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks talks about how words may be the language of the mind, but music is the language of the soul, and we're trying to speak the language of the soul, but the words they they do mean something to you, don't they certainly, but not all the words. Every time, when I think about these prayers, these poems, I mean, they're poems, they're they're sometimes even like journal entries of the author.

I sometimes will pick out a line or even just a word, and focus on that just one word and see where that takes me. Can we try that? Yeah, pick a prayer. Pick a prayer. Any prayer, how?

Okay, how about this prayer? Mi mikha mocha. Mikha mocha. How about that one good choice, good choice, strong choice.

Okay,

so I'm gonna just read what it says.

Who is like You? Adonai, among all those called gods, who is like you, majestic in holiness, you are awesome, doing amazing deeds. Your children experienced Your Majesty firsthand when you split the sea in the time of Moses. This is my God. They responded, and they said, Adonai will rule forever and ever. And it is said for Adonai redeemed Jacob and saved him from those who were stronger. I like your biblical you know, like the biblical narration with oomph and strength and diction.

Thank you, Rabbi. So

to me, this sounds like any one of scores of prayers. So what is the part of this that jumps out at you where you're like, No, this is the part that means something to read that last line again for Adonai redeemed Jacob and saved him from those who were stronger, right? This is about someone feeling scared and then feeling saved. It's about survival. So maybe you've been through a health scare and come out on the other side, or had a tough time in school or at work or in a relationship or your marriage, maybe you went through a breakup, I don't know, the scary period after losing your job or getting through a major money worry, even surviving the death of somebody you loved. This this prayer gives thanks for getting through any dark period in your life when you thought maybe you wouldn't make it through in your life, when you think about this prayer and you think about the things that you've gone through,

that you felt saved from, rescued from,

what's what got You through them,

well, love

and hope and persistence,

And this is what that prayer sounds

Like, a

Oh,

no, No, motherhood. Rahu.

Nah,

and The

a

ah.

Haruna

I know you know how thrilled I was when you used the term the god character, because I practically stopped you mid sentence when we were having lunch.

So I'm relieved that I'm not stuck with a Judaism that's asking me to believe in an anthropomorphic deity who controls our lives. But then,

what? What is God like? The big question, what is the god of reality, the, you know, the real thing, the one that I said before, we can't describe, yeah, but So at the risk, Rabbi, You right. Well, okay, fair and yet we need something. I think many of us don't imagine. It's a man in the sky, and then we can't wrap our brains around we can't say anything. Maimonides seem to acknowledge that, that we're not there yet, that we need language. And so okay, like, How would I describe, how would I describe the God that I believe in? Yes, let's go with that. So I take a lot of inspiration from the four letters that spell God's name in the Torah, yud, hey, Vav, Hey, that you can't really pronounce. Like, the closest thing to pronouncing those words is breathing,

and

the closest meaning that those letters have when strung together is

being like, B, E, I, N, G, past, present, future, like was, is will be. Was is will be haya hovei in Hebrew, and yud, hey, Vav, Hey. Was is will be being, and it's just a description of reality. It's like, what is, what is, is God. And so then when Moses says to God, or the character of God in the Torah, tell me who you are, what's your name and the character of God says to Moses, a, here, I share a here, I will be what I will be.

Essentially, I am being. I am I am existence. I am reality. Everything is God, yes, everything, and also, more than everything.

Oh, so when we say schma, Yisrael, Adonai, Eloheinu, Adonai, Chad, this is the central prayer of Judaism. God is one. Listen, Jews, the Lord, your God that you pray to, that you invoke in all these prayers, is one, and is oneness, you know, isn't like one as distinct from other gods. It's more like God is unity. God is oneness. And you're part of that, and I'm part of that. And if I really get that, then I'm going to treat you the way that I want to be treated, and I'm going to love you the way I want to be loved. And in particular, this is important with people with whom, who we really don't like, you know, who we don't feel inclined to love. But the direct outcome of knowing that oneness has to be love, which is why the very next word after the Shema is via hafta, and you will love, damn. Will love glory.

Ah.

Not long after that first lunch, Rabbi Lizzi and I had she suggested I attend a small conference in Los Angeles. It was centered around seven emerging congregations and their founding Rabbi's, the rabbi's you've heard so far, Lizzi, Amichai Sharon and four of their like minded, entrepreneurial, spiritually gifted rabbinic buddies. So I go to this conference of the Jewish.

Emergent network. That's the name of the group. There are maybe 125 people there, and I think 80 of them were Rabbi's. I've never been in a room where the rabbi's outnumber the non Rabbi's. It's it's a little intimidating, but I recommend it. I spent a lot of time talking to another one of those seven Rabbi's named David Ingber. He founded a congregation in New York City in 2006 called Roma Moo Rabbi David is he is so filled with spiritual intensity that he sometimes has to talk with his hands because there aren't the words to describe what he's trying to say. Anyway, I asked him, What is the mission of Judaism?

And he puts his hand on my shoulder and looks me in the eyes and says, Judaism is trying to get us to look beyond the illusion of our separateness and see the reality of our singularity. And

he then explained to me that this idea, which goes back generations and generations, that God is unity, that we are part of, an ubiquitous singularity is captured in Hebrew by the words ein ODE.

You know rabbi, the thing that I find comforting about Judaism's conception of the mystery of the universe as an all encompassing unity is that it comports with our our current scientific understanding of the origins of the universe, yeah, right, all matter was concentrated and exploded apart in the Big Bang, and we are a teeny, tiny part of a single reality, just more spread out, showing up in All these different forms, humans, tigers, trees, mountains, moons, stars, corn on the cob, corn on the cob.

Everything

that relieves me, because it makes me feel like my brain and my body, my head and my heart can be sitting in the same room during services, but now when you're interpreting prayers, making meaning out of them, is that how you're thinking of God as a oneness of which you and everything and everybody is a part? No, not always. Sometimes I think of God in more human terms, because I need to, like when I was in rabbinical school, this particular prayer that Guru wrote in the Amida latagi, Borla Maronite, Mikay, May timata. Rabbi, hoshia, Mika said, Mika, Mim rabbi, do you mind translating? Okay.

Adonai, you are always strong. You give life to the dead. Your deliverance is abundant. You nourish the living with kindness. You cause the dead to live again with great compassion.

Okay, you know, I think this is the prayer I was making fun of at the start of the program, probably up until that point, I'd never really thought about those words. And if I had, I thought I had some poetic BS for I'm not sure what they're talking about, but I can tell you then, like going through a period of time where I a little bit felt dead to the world, like where there was a screen between me and life that was making it so that I didn't feel like life was getting through. So then to pray to be resurrected, to have life be brought to me by a strong God who wants me to live.

Yeah, you know, all of a sudden, like I needed that.

You

that transcendent moment at summer camp, the one I said I'd never experienced anything like that since, well, recently, I did a spiritual experience not like anything I've ever had before in a Jewish space. It took place at the Jewish emergent Network Conference. They call it the Gen conference, by the way. Anyway, one of the sessions I attended at the conference was called the God salon.

And it was being led by the Jewish emergent network fellows. This was a group of seven, mostly newly minted rabbi is only a couple years out of seminary, and the reason I wanted to go to this session was to see Rabbi Lizzi, fellow and mentee, Rabbi Lauren Henderson, who was just smart and soulful. So the god salon turns out to be an experimental Jewish service in the form of a buffet where each of the rabbinic fellows serves up their own spiritual dish. So one of the dishes involved just three ingredients. First, a stone. There was one place under each person's chair. I reached down and got mine. I still have it. I'm holding it now. The second ingredient was a type of traditional Jewish song with lyrics that are just sounds, the intent being to distill the spiritual power of music to its essence, no words to get in the way pure music. This type of song is called a nigun, and one of the young Rabbi's Jonathan bubis, told us the story of a famous rabbi who taught his followers how to sing into goon. First you sing out loud with everyone else, then you sing to yourself, then you sing to your soul, and then your soul does the singing. Now I gotta admit that I find the word soul maybe even more challenging than the word God, but I thought I'm here, whatever that all means, I'll try it. So we all closed our eyes with our stones in our hands and began singing together.

And I'm a little self conscious because I cannot sing on key, so I just sing quietly. And Rabbi Jonathan leads us in a guided meditation. The third ingredient

he he asked us to imagine walking through the desert,

feeling the warmth of the sand beneath our feet,

seeing the expanse of the desert before us

and asking us to imagine that where we were heading was home.

Something happened to me during all of this very unexpectedly, because there wasn't some big lead up. I mean, I walked into this room 20 minutes earlier, still eating my Falafel sandwich, but at some point during this nigoon,

I found myself moving my lips to the song, but not making any sounds.

And then

I think I stopped even moving my lips, but I felt like I was still singing,

and my chest felt like it had opened

and literal tears were rolling down my literal face onto my hands,

And I swear I felt this

connection

to everything.

Why? When the session ended, I had a chance to catch my breath and process what had just happened, because I was not fully aware of what was happening while it was happening. And I thought, I wonder if that is what prayer feels like, if that is what it means to be the prayer.

Oh, Lord, prepare me. Okay, you good? Yes, all right. I think this is my last question. Great.

No good.

Can you tell a story of when the High Holidays really worked for you? You personally?

I believe Yom Kippur every year, feeling exhilarated and hopeful and empowered. I feel lighter and not just because I haven't been eating for 25 hours. I feel enlivened. And there's something that happens. It's something in that imprecise and unscientific cocktail of not eating and singing and coming in without the usual defenses of makeup and, you know, the right clothes and the right shoes and the right bag and the right perfume and deodorant and all of that. And just like being in a space with people to

to sing and to be and to feel and to encounter tradition. And by the end of the holiday, by the time we make Havdalah, which is the beautiful, short ceremony, and we just, we sing, people don't want to leave, we stay on the stage and dance for another 20 minutes because, because the feeling of being alive, I.

Think is so intense, and we don't want to leave that feeling, and we want to carry it with us. So then the question is, how do you carry it with you? But I think that's possible. I mean, I totally get that. Because, in a way, it's like you get through Yom Kippur and you've kind of, it's like you finished a marathon or an Iron Man. I mean, it sounds like what it's supposed to be. It

sounds like you went through your death and you're back alive again. That's exactly right. Like, like you came back to life, exactly right. Like, like you were standing on the top of a 14,000 foot peak,

and the wind was howling

and a storm was furiously raining down in you and your fellow climbers, and you weren't sure you were going to make it through,

and you experienced the awesome power of reality. And let me ask, did you have a moment up there when you were 15 that helped you understand what really mattered, where you needed to focus your life?

You're Of course you want the answer to be yes. Like it all came clear in that moment on the mountain. It wasn't on the mountain, because on the mountain, you're in it, you're so in the experience, you're flush with reality. It's really after it's over, and the experience has a chance to settle in your body once you're once you're safe, and you know that you're alive, that you have the opportunity then to really think about what it all really means. And so it would be, I think, unrealistic to expect from the High Holidays. During the High Holidays that there's a moment it all clicks for you, and then your life is transformed. I think really, the way it's supposed to go is that we will have flashes of insight throughout the High Holidays, and then over the course of the coming weeks and months and the year to come, it will begin to integrate into us. If we allow it to, I get it so the High Holidays, it's Where the sparks first fly. Right this

Victor,

it okay. So I am setting out this high holidays to improve my chances of having something meaningful, something surprising, the spark of something transformational happen. I am aspiring to engage in teshuva, and so to do that, besides having all these conversations with Rabbi's, I have been preparing and I invite you to do the same. Let me suggest, first of all, listen to the music in advance. You know how it's way more fun to go to a concert when you've already heard the music? Well, even though the High Holidays is a lot more than a concert. Same idea, Mishkan, Chicago, for example, has all its high holiday music up on SoundCloud. Hopefully your shul does too. If not, they should think about doing that. Secondly, there's a great web resource called 10 Q. It'll ask you one question a day for 10 days to get you thinking about what's good in your life, what's challenging, what matters to you. And it saves your answers in a vault and sends them back to you before next year's High Holidays. It lets you see how you are transforming over time. Longitudinal Teshuva right there. Third, consider joining your spiritual community and celebrating. It's the Saturday night a week before Rosh Hashanah. It's a great way to start to learn some of the music. Maybe you'll meet some new friends. Fourth, check out the website for Judaism Unbound, one of my new favorite podcasts. They've got this great daily email they send out during the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah. And if you didn't write all these things down, Mishkan Chicago has links to all of it up on its website. A big thank you to Scott merowicz for his financial support of this program. I sampled a bunch of sounds for this. And want to acknowledge Castle Rock, Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures, EMI films, the on being project klezmer accordionist Keith verb Boulder, Don heist on the shofar. Cantor, Moshe sternheen Cantor, Moshe, ganchoff and movie Cantor Neil Diamond, not to mention Rabbi Lizzi and the Mishkan dabbien team, who performed all the rest of the music you heard in this program, which if you live in Chicago, you can hear again at the Mishkan High Holidays special, thanks to Joey Weisenberg and Shir Yaakov feIt who compose many of these gorgeous melodies. I bow low to my new found teachers from the Jewish emergent network to Melissa balaban and the team that organized the Gen conference, a shout out to my friends at sukat Shalom, who've been so encouraging of my efforts at experimentation, thanks to my dear friend and personal conduit to the Jewish world, Mark ackler, and last and most, thanks to Rabbi Lizzi Heideman, from whom I have learned so so much.

Shabbat replay is a production of Mishkan Chicago. Our theme music was composed and performed by Calvin Strauss. You can always see where and when our next service.

Will be on our calendar. There's a link in the show notes, and if you appreciated the program, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts. I know you've heard it before, but it really does help on behalf of Team Mishkan, thank you for listening. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai