This Is Where It All Beginsby Rabbi Judy Kummer  Human beings have often pondered the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. As a gardener, I think more about the cycle of pollination and the growth of seeds and plants and flowers, which lead to more pollination and ultimately to the growth of more seeds. I thought of this recently as I was watching a bumblebee drowse lazily among glorious flowers in a garden, pollinating the blooms and allowing for the creation of more seeds and flowers.
In the musical Hamilton, they sing of “the room where it happens” -- and it seems to me that this is where the start happens, where the stage is set for new life. Odd to think about that miracle while watching a bumblebee drowse in the middle of a flower! With the High Holidays come opportunities for each of us to begin anew. We are tasked with doing teshuvah, engaging in a process of spiritual stock-taking; we examine what works and what doesn’t in our relationships and in our lives, and we tinker to bring things more in alignment with what is life-affirming. This moment, for each of us, is the room where it happens. It’s odd to think that at any moment, our new beginning may start, if only we would be willing to do some introspective work and chance trying something new, to set ourselves off in a new direction. This new course might prove more life-affirming than the path we’ve been on. May we be the bumblebees in our own lives, bringing about change as we move through life. May we find the strength to look deep inside and engage in a process of imagining the new and then bringing it into reality. And may our efforts lead to blossoming! Rabbi Judy Kummer is a board certified chaplain in private practice, offering in-person and remote skilled spiritual care visits, eldercare programing and lifecycle events. She has served as Executive Director of the Jewish Chaplaincy Council of MA and other nonprofits, and has served congregations in DC, NY and NJ. She is happiest outdoors hiking in the woods, swimming in a lake at sunset or tending to her Boston organic garden.
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Hineni- A Heart-centered Etude for this Seasonby Maxine Lyons  I am practicing “active hope”– focusing my efforts to align with others dedicated to showing up to be counted together, to make a positive difference in this broken world and to express gratitude for the source of life. Hineni - Here I am - proclaiming the abundance and beauty of nature, to the wind that guides my steps in the forests and at the beaches, moving me along on my path to refresh mind and body. Hineni - for my diverse gardens, encouraging me to attend to the natural fullness of life, imagining the garden also being the blessing of our hearts: planting seeds that nourish all beings, grateful for the relief I feel in the growth of flowers, berry bushes, cherry tomatoes and tall grasses that open the door to true wonder.  Hineni - ready to begin my preparations for the holiness of Elul, to practice teshuvah, to calm those parts within me yearning for solace, for compassion and acting from hope.
Hineni - turning to more openness, choosing softness and restraint in place of anger and despair, for bold new steps to correct my mistakes, and growing closer to the slow but steady evolving of the spirit. Hineni - to my sweet, ever-changing grandkids who enchant me with their precious “Hi Grammy” voices spoken with charm and delight. Hineni - to my children with whom I share many joys and sadness, learning from their wisdoms and struggles. Hineni - to close friends whose reciprocal love, trust, and affection we share together over time and space. Hineni - to show up for some hurting souls looking to regain some part of their fullness amidst life’s assaults and tribulations. Hineni - to my life’s companion for holding each other close, enjoying many light moments, entwined in our warmth and love together. Hineni - for growth and kindness in the coming year, to embrace and surround myself with goodness, the promise of peace and to pass it on to others! Maxine Lyons is a retired educator for older adults, practiced in creating life reviews for one’s Elderhood, and currently writing her own. She is an active participant in interfaith work participating in weekly services with unhoused community members through Walthams’ Chaplains on the Way. She is also an involved Grammy with two wonderfully adorable five-year-old grandchildren. by Rabbi Katy Z. Allen Shana tova! It has been a difficult and complicated year.          As we enter the new year, may we allow ourselves   May we discover that life can still   Shana tova! Wishing you and your loved ones a healthy, sweet, and meaningful year.  Rabbi Katy & Gabi (photos by Mary North Allen, z”l) Returning to PotentialBy Akiko Yonekawa  As a child growing up in Los Angeles, I had simple plans for adult life: to be an artist, teacher, actor, and/or mom. In my actual adulthood, I have had occasion to be one of those things - high school teacher - though I no longer teach. As the years progressed, I developed interests in religion and art history, so for a while I wanted to be a rabbi and then a museum educator. I am, to date, neither rabbi nor museum educator. I had been convinced as a child that the goal of aging was simply to become a grown-up. As a bona fide grown-up, I am having second thoughts.
I spent many years in high school and college in dark rooms lit by slide projectors displaying art from various countries over many millennia. I studied abroad in Italy where I spent hours in churches with my neck craned back, admiring frescoes and marveling at architecture. I learned about color theory, composition, printing techniques, and photography. All to understand better how artists do what they do. In all that time, I held onto the idea that adult life was about being something. I wanted to be successful. I wanted to be an art historian. I wanted to be a rabbi. Now solidly in mid-life, I don’t want to be anything. That is, I am in the process of attempting to untether my identity from my profession or any of the other things I do. I am shifting my focus from being to doing. Two years ago, I went to a nature journaling workshop with a local artist named Claire Walker Leslie that changed the way I see the world and put me on a path of return to a love I had as a child. For several hours, we talked about observing nature through drawing. We walked around a cemetery on a rainy afternoon drawing hosta leaves, ranunculus buds, ducklings, racoons, and treescapes. Most of my drawings looked nothing like what I was seeing. Especially the racoon. They were little more than scratches on computer paper - but my eyes were opened. I had spent years as an outdoor educator, but I had never seen nature the way I did when I was drawing it. Two years ago I also left my job as a high school teacher. Since then, I have not had a typical job. I spend my time doing many things, chief among them nature journaling. With my sketchbook and pen in hand, I observe flowers in my neighborhood, trees outside my window, and birds perched on branches. Without the pressure of worrying about being an artist, I am free to do art - to turn to the natural world around me and return to my instinct to create. Akiko Yonekawa is a Jewish educator living in Massachusetts and California. She is a lover of adventures, Jewish camp, nature, and French fries. She has worked in a variety of educational settings including schools (early childhood through high school), camps, museums, and synagogues. Tending The EarthBy Rabbi Marisa Elana James  We do live in overwhelming times, as have so many of our ancestors, but I suspect that my great-grandparents’ lack of the internet and 24-hour news cycle made it somewhat easier to cope.
Part of me wants to know about every wildfire, every tornado cluster, every new “thousand-year flood,” every point of data that helps me articulate what needs to change. And another part of me is simply exhausted, flattened with helplessness in the face of so many tragedies, unable to transform my outrage and sadness into something that might be useful. I live in Manhattan, and every day I walk past a two-block long patch of scrub on the side of the road, full of weeds and invasive vines and wildly overgrown. Early this summer, I noticed one day that someone had cleared a small patch of ground in the mess. A few days passed, and the cleared space increased to about two yards, and a circle of stones lined a patch with new soil. One day, a butterfly bush appeared, along with some perennials. After a few weeks of deep curiosity, I finally walked by and saw a young woman digging, expanding the size of the cleared patch. No, she didn’t work for the parks department, she just lived nearby, and felt that she could revive a piece of this land into a haven for pollinators, and set to it herself. She has no ambition to transform the whole two-block stretch, but she’s created a small, beautiful oasis in an unexpected place. I needed this reminder, and perhaps you do, too - that there are no small things when it comes to protecting and nourishing this world. If each of us finds our patch of earth and tends it, the small pockets of beauty and health and justice we create will build on each other and inspire others. Small things are also reminders of the whole - I find it overwhelming to consider the extent of deforestation around the world, but when I sit in the park on clear evenings and feel gratitude for the gorgeous elms giving shade to the humans below and homes to the birds and squirrels, I feel deeply how much I love this world, and how much it is worth saving. Find your patch of earth and tend it, in whatever way. 5785 needs us to show up, ready to dig into the soil and help good things grow. Rabbi Marisa Elana James (she/her/hers) is a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and the Director of Social Justice Programming at CBST(Congregation Beit Simchat Torah) in New York. Marisa and her wife, contrabassoonist and translator Barbara Ann Schmutzler, live in New York City. A Photographic Essay of Teshuvah In Seven “VersesBy Rabbi Steven J. Rubenstein, BCC  1. God said, “Let there be vegetation of all kinds to create a sense of awe and wonder in my creatures and let them be stewards over this garden of beauty, protecting it and preserving it as a legacy for future generations.”
2. And humans harvested from the bounty of the land, but they did not follow God’s commandment over the decades, destroying the land for their personal gain, taking more than they were entitled to in the same way that they took extra manna in a previous generation. 3. The earth became dried and arid in response to God’s anger. 4. The people of the earth repented. They did teshuvah, asking God to restore the earth so that they could rediscover the awe and the wonder that once was a part of their world. 5. Before God heard their cries of teshuvah, tears from the face of God fell upon the earth, covering the flowers and the fauna that had not been hurt by humankind. 6. In time, God did what the humans of the earth asked of their Creator, and they were able to harvest the fields that fed them and their livestock. 7. Soon, the bees returned to pollinate the flowers that spread sunshine to the world, reminding humankind what it means to orient themselves to the sun and the moon, as God had created them, teaching us how to be grateful for all that God offers us as the world is created anew each day. Rabbi Steven J. Rubenstein, BCC ~ Director of Spiritual Care at the Jewish Home, Rochester, New York and author of “In the BIG-inning; A Rabbi’s Collection Inning by Inning” available through Diamond Dan Publications, and a newly ordained Zayde. Past, Present, and Futureby Thea Iberall, PhD  I'm at a shoreline retreat rocking on the dining hall porch. I'm thinking about how vulnerable everything is: people, the land, nature. I'm thinking about my own fragility. Flags above me are flapping in the breeze, a precursor to the remnants of the hurricane that will be hitting us tomorrow. I'm scrolling through the news on my phone: a white politician wanting to win an election, a famous black man complaining about biased treatment by an airline crew. The ocean has a steady presence, like a heater in the walls.
I’m reading about American life in 1850. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing revving engines, machines, and coal. A Whig was running for president. A famous former slave was complaining he can't travel in whites-only train cars. Someone already knew greenhouse gasses could heat up the Earth. People were glad the Great Compromise was reached because it stopped a civil war. A huge sigh of relief, no matter how vulnerable the Compromise made runaway slaves and everyone else. Little did they know 11 years later the Civil War would begin anyway. 750,000 would die from bayonets, rifled muskets, and dysentery while armies slashed and burned whole forests, and sharecroppers drained Southern lands of nutrients. It's like us. Little do we know what's in store after the next election. We might sigh in relief, or not. But then what? Will some blue or red states secede from the Union? Maybe there will be another civil war. Whatever happens, we’ll still be burning fossil fuels and heating up the planet. I had dysentery once. How bad will the remnants of the hurricane be? I'm rocking and the wind is rising. I can feel the ocean's presence, the salt in the air, an underground hum, how we fear the dark. I drove here using gasoline. T’shuvah means reconnecting to our core nature. It means coming back to the place that matters in us. We have a choice to fight the chaos or else complain about its dreariness. Waves are rolling landward and picking up energy. The path is unknown, and there are consequences to our decisions. Whichever one decides, first take a breath and prepare before the frissoning storm. Thea Iberall, PhD, is on the leadership team of the Jewish Climate Action Network-MA. Iberall is the author of "The Swallow and the Nightingale," an ecofiction novel about a 4,000-year-old secret brought through time by the birds. In this fable, she addresses the real moral issue of today: not whom you love, but what we are doing to the planet. Iberall is also the playwright of "We Did It For You!" – a musical about how women got their rights in America, told by the women who were there. Along with her family, she was inducted into the International Educators Hall of Fame for creative teaching methods. In her work, she bridges between heart and mind and teaches through performance, the written word, poetry, sermons, workshops, and storytelling. www.theaiberall.com. On Gardening and Our Spiritual Gardensby Ivy Helman  Hafik in the garden “And the divine sent the human out of the Garden of Eden, to till the soil, from where humanity had been taken.” - Genesis 3:23
Our connection to the land runs deep. It is recognized in the Torah. It is also a difficult connection, one that takes work and care, and one that I am learning more and more about as my partner and I take over the care of her grandmother’s garden. Since taking over its care in the second half of the summer, we have made some small changes, additions really, to an already beautiful space. We will see what returns next year. We acknowledge that we began some planting too late in the season to really expect everything to make it through the winter. But we were too excited at the prospect of more color in the space. That’s the thing with gardens, isn’t it? One’s excitement may not pay off as one never really knows what will work and what won’t and for how long. As an example, for years before we took over, there was a beautiful Rowan tree in the front, and then three years ago it just died. We convinced my partner’s grandmother to leave the tree there for a year just to see if maybe it would come back. It never did. While there is a beautiful Japanese Acer in its place, I still think about that Rowan tree. The constant work, care, and concern we have with our gardens or our houseplants (for those of us who do not have such access to outdoor growing spaces) is such a good metaphor for one’s relationship to the divine. Yet, ironically it is also a contradiction. Humanity was kicked out of the Garden to work the land and struggle doing so, and yet the struggle of working the land serves as a metaphor of the work, care, and concern required to connect to the divine. Stick with me here. Just as we evaluate the changes we need to make in our garden, do we evaluate the changes we need in our spiritual gardens? If you are reading this, we are here in Elul together because for the most part we have been cultivating our spiritual gardens for years. There probably aren’t large structural changes that need to be made. But that doesn’t mean that every year there isn’t something we can improve, just like in our actual gardens or with our houseplants. This year, in my spiritual life, I have decided to take things slowly and deliberately, just like in the garden we now have responsibility for. Where can I make small changes in my relationship with the divine that might flower in the next year? What part of my spiritual garden needs a little more water? From where can I remove a few weeds? I hope to make space for new spiritual growth. Ivy Helman, Ph.D. is a faculty member in the Gender Studies Program at the Faculty of Humanities at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. Her research interests include feminism, ecofeminism, religious studies, embodiment, art, and queer theory. In addition, she regularly contributes to the blog: feminismandreligion.com. Contact email: [email protected]. The Thread of Elulby Carly Sachs What does thunder say and what storm
or visitor has come to quench the secret thirst of the soul and how different the soft knocking of the heart and can you bathe in the waters of the breath? The dharma of a warrior is not to fight, but to love, and how do you trust that your vulnerability is your strength. Discernment is knowing that to hold and to release are not two beads, but one thread. Carly Sachs is a writer and yoga teacher. She is the author of the steam sequence and Descendants of Eve, and the editor of the anthology, the why and later. She bakes challah weekly in Lexington, KY. You can follow her baking journey on Instagram at challah_at_y_all. GoldenRod’s Teaching for Elulby Kohenet Sephirah Oshkello  As we journey through the Wheel of the Year , it is a gift to cultivate the soil and learn from the cycles of the earth.
Elul - a month of reflection and growth; emulated in the GoldenRod sparkling all around us amongst the shifting seasons in Vermont. Elul and GoldenRod connect us to our sovereignty, reminding us that we have agency on who we want to be, how we behave, and the legacy we leave behind. A month and a plant to deepen our connection to Our Beloved (self, community, earth, Goddess). As Psalm 27:4, which we chant during Elul says: One thing I ask from Goddess, one thing I desire That I might dwell in Your house all the days of my life To behold Your graciousness, and to enter Goddess's sanctuary. The GoldenRod reminds us of ways to dwell in Goddess’ sanctuary. Her yellow flowers open to the heavens as she stands tall in her full radiance. These beautiful flowers attract pollinators to support life and healing on earth. Her backbone is tall and straight - knowing her purpose and feeling confident in who she is. Growing amongst supportive community while making room for other Dancing in the wind with her companions, yet not sacrificing herself. At times bowing in gratitude and humility in reverence and gratitude for all of the earth’s abundance Always ready to share the sweet gifts with all life forms, yet receive what is needed for her own growth. GoldenRod shines her light, brightening up the world, providing food for the pollinators Grounded in earth, bending in gratitude and humility. How can you learn from the wisdom of the Golden Rod so that you can create a life that dwells within the Earth’s sanctuary with reverence and joy?...... Can you try practicing this month: -Pausing to feel the sun’s embrace on your crown -Rooting in the earth with bare feet -Standing tall in all your radiance, accepting and loving who you are -Taking enough for yourself and sharing the abundance with those in need -Bowing in gratitude, humility, and joy. Thank you for crowning us each as sovereign beings reminding us to strive for our highest self while staying grounded as we shine our light with love and humility, finding sanctity within the Earth. Kohenet Sephirah Oshkello is a holistic nutritionist, compassionate health coach, Hebrew Priestess, and Founding Director at Living Tree Alliance. She organizes community festivals and education programs for Living Tree Alliance that integrate the New England seasons with the Hebrew calendar. Living Tree brings wisdom, joy, and connection through regenerative agriculture and earth based Jewish programs. As a holistic practitioner at Sephirah Nutrition & Wellness, she supports and guides motivated people to heal from chronic inflammation, emotional eating, blood sugar imbalance and digestive distress through earth based integrative nutrition. |
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