A Prayer for All People

A PRAYER FOR ALL PEOPLE By Rabbi Jill Hausman: Eternal Source, as you are The One who gives life to all, We pray for all our brothers and sisters, Of every race, religion, nation, and neighborhood. Help us to see you in every human face; To feel you in the warmth of every human heart. Teach us to love and to heal each other; To make peace and to respond to each others’ needs. As we inhabit one Earth, we are one human family, With one Divine Parent. As you send blessings to us, Please bless all of our brothers and sisters, With good health, prosperity, insight, wisdom, and joy, And help us to be a blessing. If we have a vision of a time of peace and harmony, Surely we and You, Eternal One, Have dreamed it together.

An Out of Body Experience - V'Zot HaBeracha

On Simchat Torah we read the very spare account of the Death of Moses (Deut. 34:5). At the beginning of the Chapter, The Holy One shows Moses the Promised land: north from Jerico to Gilead, east of the Jordan River, and even farther north to the territory of Dan. Moses sees southward to Jerusalem and continuing south, all the way to the Negev in the very south of Israel, and all the way west to the Mediterranean Sea. The sages point out that this is a physical impossibility. No one on earth, even on a mountaintop, could possibly see all that standing in one place. I suggest that this is a description of an out-of-body experience, one in which Moses traveled outside his physical body to see the entire land. Then in verse 5, the Torah tells us that "Moses died there," "by the mouth of God." Rabbis have suggested he died by a Divine Kiss. Perhaps he never re-entered his body, and became wholly that non-physical energy which we experience on earth as Soul. He left the physical and never returned to that incarnation, easily, it seems, and hopefully, with great joy, having seen what he journeyed to see for forty years, fulfilled and blessed.

It's All About Perspective (Yom Kippur 2023)

I'm going to tell you 3 stories, and then ask you what they might have in common or what they illustrate. The Baal Shem Tov told this story: Once, a musician of great but unknown talent. came to town. He stood on a street corner and began to play. Those who stopped to listen could not tear themselves away, and soon a large crowd stood, enthralled by the glorious music whose equal they had never heard. Before long they were moving to its rhythm, and the entire street was transformed into a dancing mass of humanity. A deaf man walking by wondered: Has the world gone mad? Why are the townspeople jumping up and down, waving their arms and turning in circles in the middle of the street? "Chassidim," concluded the Baal Shem Tov, "are moved by the melody that issues forth from every creature in G d's creation. If this makes them appear mad to those with less sensitive ears, should they therefore cease to dance?" A second Story: R. Aryeh Levin, originally from Eastern Europe, who immigrated to Israel in 1905 and died there in 1969 has been called a Tzaddik In Our Time, the name of the book one of his students wrote about him (P. 339, 413). He lived in Israel during very difficult economic when there was much poverty, which included Rabbi Levin himself, and difficult political times, times in which the British jailed and executed many Jewish patriots living in the territory of the Palestine Mandate. Rabbi Levin's friend the eminent scholar R. Chayim Berlin, made a vow with one of his friends, R. Yitzchak Blaser, that whichever of the two died first, the other would visit in a dream and tell him about the world beyond. Indeed, after his death, Rabbi Blaser appeared to R. Berlin. One of the things he related was, The Profundity of the Divine judgement is immeasurable." Perhaps on the basis of that information, R. Levin taught that Rabbi Akiva used to say, whatever the merciful God does, is done for the good. And Nachum of Gamzu used to say, This too is for good. Rabbi Levin explained that while R. Akiva's approach is that whatever happens, some good will come out of it, Gamzu taught that whatever happens is goodness itself right now, even though we may not perceive it. In other words, from God's perspective, it is all good. A third story, based on the metaphor of one spiritual teacher:* There was an apartment building with many floors. The people who lived on the first floor would look out their windows and see garbage, crime, dirt, homeless people sleeping on the street, and hear loud noises. The people on the middle floors would look out their windows and see a park with trees, grass, and hear birds singing in the trees. And the people on the top floor would look out their windows and see beyond the park, a beach with palm trees and an ocean. When someone from the middle floor met someone who lived on the first floor and remarked how beautiful the park was at that season, the person on the first floor exclaimed, oh no! There is no park here, there is only dirt, crime, and deprivation. And when a person from the upper floor remarked to the people on the first floor and the middle floor, isn't it wonderful to live in a place where we can see the beach and the ocean? The people on the lower floors said, there is no beach, there is no ocean here. You are mistaken. What do these stories have in common? What are they saying to us? I would like to suggest that these three stories tell us that the difference in how we see life is more about us than about life itself. The author Ken Keyes wrote: "we see things not as they are but as we are." We can see that this is true in our conception of God through the ages. The God of Torah is, as the 13 attributes of Exodus tells us, compassionate, gracious slow to anger, great in kindness and truth, forgiving and cleansing (34:6-7). But also God is portrayed as angry, jealous, and whose destructiveness is to be feared (Ex 20: 5 and elsewhere). The people who lived at the time when the Torah was written lived in a time of more hand-to-hand combat, destruction, and fear. We can also see this in the human conception of the Greek Gods, who were seen as having the human traits of capriciousness, jealousy, unpredictability, and taking revenge. As we have changed and evolved, our conception of God has changed. The Torah says, that God made us in God's image (Gen. 1:27); but truly we make God in our image. Perhaps a quotation by the quantum physicist Max Planck will clarify this point further. He said, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” A corollary to that is, when we change, the things we see will change. It's as if we are each living in our separate alternative universes. They are parallel universes, but your universe is completely or almost completely different from mine. I have spoken and written about one of the Chassidic masters in 19th Century eastern Europe, Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk. In his commentary on the Torah portion Behar in Leviticus, he enlarges on an image his brother, Rabbi Zusha of Hanipol, described: a pipeline of blessings from above. Rabbi Elimelech wrote: "When the holy One created the world in goodness, God created pipelines that carry Shefa, an abundance of blessings to fulfill humankind's needs. The blessings are ceaseless, but when we fall from our spiritual level and lack trust in our creator, a true provider who supports and sustains everything in never ending abundance, one causes a stoppage, a disruption of the Shefa, with impure thoughts and lack of faith and trust. A person needs to trust completely. Trust in God with all your heart, and the abundance of blessings will run interrupted always then you shall never lack for anything." So what stops the flow? My teacher, Rabbi Joseph Gelberman z'l of blessed memory wrote about this in his little book, Spiritual Truths. He suggests that persistent negative thinking is the culprit (P. 23). He was from the Chassidic lineage of the Baal Shem Tov and Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. These Chassidim found the keys to the kingdom, so to speak, in advocating joy always as their main value. They saw the results of choosing joy in their own lives. Rabbi Gelberman used to say, I am not always happy but I am always joyful. He also stressed that joy is a decision and a choice. Our task then, is to move from the bottom floor of the apartment building, where what we see is unpleasant and unpredictable, to the middle floor and hopefully move to one of the top floors where we see beauty and appreciate being alive. The Torah tells us in Bechukotai, a portion at the end of Leviticus, that it all comes from us. We think that events are coming at us, but really, the Torah says, "the same will be done to you" (Levit. 26:16). In other words, the world is actually mirroring us, not acting upon us. What we experience is a reflection of our own thoughts, words, deeds and emotions. It doesn't seem that way, but everything in Torah is testable. We don’t have to take the teachings of Torah on faith. My grandmother used to say, "try it, you'll like it." And that's what I'm suggesting here. All change begins with the person and shows up in our experiences. As I said on Rosh Hashanah, everything is energy and energy can be changed. Thoughts produced that energy and thoughts can be changed. You all remember the Broadway production of Peter Pan, which was shown on television in 1955 and has been available on video for decades. It starred Mary Martin and I think it was shown each year for many years. In the script, one of the children asks Peter Pan, "Can you really fly?" Pan answers, "I’ll teach you how to jump on the wind's back and away we'll go! How do you do it? You just think lovely, wonderful thoughts – and up you go! Now, think lovely thoughts." The children suggest: Fishing, hopscotch, candy, picnics, summer, sailing, flowers, Christmas! And they all rise up into the air. There is more wisdom here than we know. Some of you know that I insulate myself from TV news because it doesn't increase my happiness, and can pull anyone down. We can preferentially look at the good and have a vision of ourselves as happy, living the lives we want to live. We can open our hearts. Albert Einstein once said, "there are two ways to live your life – as if nothing is a miracle or as if everything is a miracle." This view, appreciating and enjoying everything about our lives, helps us to rise up to a higher floor and live there. We are each in our own alternative universes depending upon what we are willing to think about. The power rests with us, and as I said in my talk on Rosh Hashanah, I have taken the word impossible out of my vocabulary, as God asked Moses in the Book of Numbers, is God limited (11:23)? The flow of the shefa, of blessings, is unlimited. It is limited only by what we are willing to think about, to choose, and to become. There is no price to be paid for happiness. It is its own blessing and we can start to live that blessing today. Let us free ourselves from persistent negative thinking, from fear, from a limited perspective, and rise to see the beach, the palm trees, and the beautiful ocean of blessings that can flow to us. Eloheinu means our power. May we use our power, the power to join with the Divine, for good for ourselves, for each other, and ultimately for the Oneness of all. May you have a blessed year of happiness and joy. *Caroline Myss

Seeing The Possible (Rosh Hashanah 2023)

There is a famous midrash that every blade of grass has a constellation of Angels urging it to Grow! Grow! (Midrash Rabba 10:6). Actually the real story is that every herb has forces or angels that strike it so that it will grow. And so it is with us: growth is a physical, emotional, and spiritual imperative that we may not always like, but cannot ignore. One of my favorite quotes about this is by Norman Mailer: "There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same" (The Deer Park). Perhaps that is why we read: Fortunate are the people who know the sound of the Shofar – who get an opportunity for a reset each year (Holy Days Siddur). As you all know, there are only two commandments concerning Rosh Hashanah: to do no laborious work and to hear the sound of the Shofar. That's it. It's a wonderful thing about Judaism that we have an actual date scheduled each year to grow. Not that we don't grow every day: our bodies change over time, our perspectives change, our relationship to the Divine changes, and our urges and desires change. In Judaism, however, we make an appointment to consider ourselves and the trajectory of growth that we would like to see in the coming year. It is as if God has said to us: I will give you 4 great gifts: intelligence, creativity, choice, and Holidays to have time to contemplate and use your creativity and choice to the fullest. This day is our opportunity to do what God commanded the Kohen Gadol, Aaron, the high priest, and later, the High Priest Joshua during the time of Zechariah: "Remove your dirty garments." (Levit. 16:23, Zech. 3:4) In other words: see what's really there, underneath the outer shell of your clothing, the pure light and pure love of you, all your possibilities. Love is our natural state. How do we know that? Because it feels so good when we love. We are going with life when we love. In Prov. 5:15-18 we read, "Drink water from your own cistern, Running water from your own well. Your wellsprings will gush forth In streams outside. They will be yours alone, … Let your fountain be blessed," This can mean, Bring yourself from outside yourself to your true nature. See the majesty that's really there. There is a wonderful quote I recently heard about: a nun, Macrina Wiederkehr, who was a spiritual teacher in a monastic community in Arkansas wrote: "O God, help me to believe the truth about myself no matter how beautiful it is!" We are here to feel loved, supported, nurtured, and to learn the inner truth about ourselves. R. Jonathan Sacks commented on the section of the prayer, Unetane Tokef, which means, the power of this day: "the great shofar is sounded and a still small voice is heard. It is the still small voice of our intuition, of God whispering to us. We intuit that we are truly great, but can't prove it, mostly to ourselves." There is a question asked in Judaism: When will God appear, today, if you listen to God's voice – the still small voice. This voice can guide us and each of us can hear it if we listen. The Chassidic masters said, everything is God. This means, in a certain sense, we are God too. The scientists, the quantum physicists, and all the spiritual teachers say, Everything is energy. Which is it? It, of course is both – everything is energy, God energy, and we are energy, God energy. If everything is energy, it's easy to see that energy can be changed. It's possible to change our energy. When we need to confide, to be comforted, to cry out, we relate to God as a personality, as contemporary theologian Elliot Dorff has written (Contemporary Jewish Theology P. 113), but at other times, we can relate to God as creative energetic force, as life itself, as Love, as Goodness itself. Not that there is no physical reality, but that there is an opportunity to make more changes to our state, our inner and outer states, than we have been taught. Much more is actually possible than we think. Here is an amazing fact to consider: Each year, each of our bodies create billions of cells: About 330 billion cells are replaced daily, equivalent to about 1 percent of all our cells. In 80 to 100 days, 30 trillion will have replenished—the equivalent of a new you. That means that we are all made of new cells – our cells are young! This creates much more opportunity for us to use the gift of intuition and creativity to make the life we want. I recently read about two studies from the Mayo Clinic that concluded that optimists live an average of 7 years longer than pessimists and live in better health. This tells us that by our mental and emotional states, that which we think and feel, we make actual physical changes in our bodies. Rabbi Joseph Gelberman, z'l, my teacher of blessed memory taught that each of us should be a possibilist. Here's a story from another research paper I read about. A group of men volunteered to participate in a study in which they went to a summer camp location for a week. They were given cues from their youth: the same music, sports, cultural references, in order to have them relive their lives of years ago and trigger them into believing they were young again. The men arrived with bodies that were typical of their ages - 60's and 70's - and somewhat creaky: They were measured, weighed, and their vitals were taken. At the end of the week, they were playing softball and other sports as if they were over 40 years younger. Their physical bodies had actually changed in measurable ways. I've spoken in previous years about taking the word hate out of my vocabulary. This year I've taken the word impossible out of my vocabulary and so can you. Had Sarah and Abraham not believed that having a child in their old age was possible, we would have no Judaism, and perhaps, no monotheism. If the Israelites had not believed Moses that they would have a miraculous deliverance from Pharoah's pursing army, there would be no Torah. In Rabbi & Author Rami Shapiro's first year at Hebrew Union college, he was told that he could either be a prophet or a clerk. Prophets tend to be unpopular. Rabbinic Clerks are accepted and respected. It's no fun being a clerk; it's exciting being a prophet, especially being a prophet to oneself: a leader of the self in marvelous directions. The prophet Jeremiah (15:19) gave us guidance for this. He wrote, "Assuredly, thus said The Eternal: If you turn back, I shall take you back, and you shall stand before Me, If you Extract the noble, or the precious, from the base, or the worthless." That's our task – to find the treasure of the possible within ourselves. The quantum physicist Max Planck wrote: All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind." So what does God think about life? That it is good. "Ki Tov," God said in Genesis (1:4). In our Holy days Machzor, our prayerbook which speaks about God as object outside ourselves, when we read, "God is exalted," it doesn't touch us unless we realize that there is no separation: the God in us is exalted, we are exalted. How can we exalt ourselves, extracting the precious from the worthless and fusing our energy with Divine energy? One way is to follow the wisdom of someone who spent her life extracting the best from the worst. I've adapted a quotation from her. Perhaps you can guess who said this: “People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies. Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you. Be honest and frank anyway. If you speak with respect dignity and care, you may not be respected. Be respectful anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight. Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your Divine Self. It was never between you and them anyway.” It's a quotation from Mother Theresa. She says that all struggles, conflicts, and challenges are really inner, with the self. As another teacher said, there's no one out there (Werner Erhard, EST Training). Another way to extract the precious from the worthless is by being a possibilist. By believing in goodness, in the miraculous, in the power of love, the power of optimism, the power of thought, the magic of the life force of the Divine within us; the possibility of our own exaltation in living as our best and highest self. If everything is actually energy, God energy, then anything is possible. Energy can be changed. We just have to begin to see the possibilities.