Dear friends,
This will be the last post -- at least for the foreseeable future -- on this blog.
I have dearly enjoyed it, but have a clear sense that it is time to move on. Other creative pursuits are waiting!
What I have posted here was ultimately not about teaching; it was a about grappling with myself as a human being. The work goes on...
Thanks for reading.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Women of the Wall
"You forget that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence; and the kingdom of heaven is like a woman."
-James Joyce
-James Joyce
Sunday, April 3, 2011
 |
| my neighborhood |
Joshu asked Nansen: `What is the path?'
Nansen said: `Everyday life is the path.'
-a zen koan
Saturday, April 2, 2011
הִנֵּה מַה טוֹב
הִנֵּה מַה טוֹב וּמַה נָּעִים שֶׁבֶת אָחִים גַּם יַחַד
Hineh ma tov u’ma-nayim
Shevet akh-im gam ya-chad.
The Shabbat afternoon prayer service, called the minha, often ends with the song "Hineh ma tov," a song about humans doing the impossible.
It is usually translated in the following way:
How good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in Unity.
Here's a translation that is closer to the literal meaning:
How good and pleasant it is for brothers to be sitting as One.
Tov, meaning good, is masculine, while maynaim, meaning pleasant, is feminine; achim, meaning brothers, is masculine plural (women are included). Yachad is the closest concept to a Jewish definition of God: perfect Unity.
The song is about transformations: the many become One, the human become the divine. None of it is actually possible... or is it?
The singing of Hineh Ma Tov fulfils its own hope: it is the closest anyone ever comes to Yachid. Singing the song serves as a reminder that we can only reach the eternal in the fleeting present moment. And in the Jewish worldview, we can only do so together.
I recorded a version today -- here.
Hineh ma tov u’ma-nayim
Shevet akh-im gam ya-chad.
The Shabbat afternoon prayer service, called the minha, often ends with the song "Hineh ma tov," a song about humans doing the impossible.
It is usually translated in the following way:
How good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in Unity.
Here's a translation that is closer to the literal meaning:
How good and pleasant it is for brothers to be sitting as One.
Tov, meaning good, is masculine, while maynaim, meaning pleasant, is feminine; achim, meaning brothers, is masculine plural (women are included). Yachad is the closest concept to a Jewish definition of God: perfect Unity.
The song is about transformations: the many become One, the human become the divine. None of it is actually possible... or is it?
The singing of Hineh Ma Tov fulfils its own hope: it is the closest anyone ever comes to Yachid. Singing the song serves as a reminder that we can only reach the eternal in the fleeting present moment. And in the Jewish worldview, we can only do so together.
I recorded a version today -- here.
Friday, April 1, 2011
BOMB, Bomb, Bomb Goes the Gong
O piece of heaven which gives
both mountain and anthill a sun
I am standing before your fantastic lily door
-Gregory Corso
I'm going to be writing an article on the subject of the nuclear bomb in theological imagination for the next issue of WREN Magazine.
If you have any resources you would like to share, I would appreciate them. :)
both mountain and anthill a sun
I am standing before your fantastic lily door
-Gregory Corso
I'm going to be writing an article on the subject of the nuclear bomb in theological imagination for the next issue of WREN Magazine.
If you have any resources you would like to share, I would appreciate them. :)
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
“Gor zeyer mis, meyn ikh zis”
I was reading this article about the origin of Jewish comedy in the Union of Reform Judaism magazine today, in which Dr. Mel Gordon of UCLA argues that Jewish comedy was born in 1661 when the leading rabbis of Ukraine and Poland met in Vilna to reform Jewish communities in response to Cossack massacres. They decided to outlaw all entertainer professions except for the badkhn, or lewd public jokster. Badkhonim made their careers out of using scatological humor and poking harsh fun at religious professionals (rabbis and cantors) and wealthy congregants.
Badkhonim in Eastern European Jewish towns and shtetls were similar to West African griots in their importance to preserving the oral history of the community and their roles as public entertainers. According to the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, the tradition of joke telling centered around wedding celebrations as a mitzvah to entertain the bride and groom:
"Originally, this tradition was linked to fulfillment of the commandment to delight the bride and groom and dance with them on their wedding day. Badkhonim were also called marshelikes, leytsim, letsonim, narn, lustik-makhers, katoves-traybers, and freylekhe yidn, all terms evoking laughter, jokes, and comic songs. Some of the performers were simply jesters in the spirit of Jewish popular culture, appreciated for their humor, their gift for joke telling, and their clowning or comic improvisation. Others were poets or musicians, whose main function was to recite epithalamia (gramen zogn; lit., “saying rhymes”)—that is, poems in honor of the bride and groom. The badkhn was therefore a repository of Jewish religious culture and oral tradition, invested with the role of transmitting songs and music, moral messages, and wise counsel along with the fundamentals of Judaism."
Upon immigration to America in the early 1900s, badkhonim became some of the earliest vaudeville performers. To illustrate what Gordon describes of the Jewish American vaudeville tradition, here's a video of the very entertaining Willie Howard from 1941:
Badkhonim in Eastern European Jewish towns and shtetls were similar to West African griots in their importance to preserving the oral history of the community and their roles as public entertainers. According to the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, the tradition of joke telling centered around wedding celebrations as a mitzvah to entertain the bride and groom:
"Originally, this tradition was linked to fulfillment of the commandment to delight the bride and groom and dance with them on their wedding day. Badkhonim were also called marshelikes, leytsim, letsonim, narn, lustik-makhers, katoves-traybers, and freylekhe yidn, all terms evoking laughter, jokes, and comic songs. Some of the performers were simply jesters in the spirit of Jewish popular culture, appreciated for their humor, their gift for joke telling, and their clowning or comic improvisation. Others were poets or musicians, whose main function was to recite epithalamia (gramen zogn; lit., “saying rhymes”)—that is, poems in honor of the bride and groom. The badkhn was therefore a repository of Jewish religious culture and oral tradition, invested with the role of transmitting songs and music, moral messages, and wise counsel along with the fundamentals of Judaism."
Upon immigration to America in the early 1900s, badkhonim became some of the earliest vaudeville performers. To illustrate what Gordon describes of the Jewish American vaudeville tradition, here's a video of the very entertaining Willie Howard from 1941:
Monday, March 28, 2011
End of the Day
We live most of our hours in the realm of the mundane, between great moments. What are more important, the hours, or the moments?
I'm thinking of this as I am listening to my favorite album, Style Antico's Music for Compline, a set of compositions by 16th-century English composers for the compline, or final church service of the liturgical Christian day.
The Catholic prayer service, called The Divine Hours, or Liturgy of the Hours, was adopted from the Jewish tradition of an ordered daily liturgy. Like the Jewish prayer service, it makes heavy use of the Psalms. In the Catholic tradition, there are three major hours services (middle of the night, sunrise, vespers) and four minor services (mid-morning, noon, mid-afternoon, evening).
The Hours Services promote devotion and mindfulness of God, but are also reminders that mundane hours are sacred, even those when we are so very tired at the end of the day.
Good night!
I'm thinking of this as I am listening to my favorite album, Style Antico's Music for Compline, a set of compositions by 16th-century English composers for the compline, or final church service of the liturgical Christian day.
The Catholic prayer service, called The Divine Hours, or Liturgy of the Hours, was adopted from the Jewish tradition of an ordered daily liturgy. Like the Jewish prayer service, it makes heavy use of the Psalms. In the Catholic tradition, there are three major hours services (middle of the night, sunrise, vespers) and four minor services (mid-morning, noon, mid-afternoon, evening).
The Hours Services promote devotion and mindfulness of God, but are also reminders that mundane hours are sacred, even those when we are so very tired at the end of the day.
In pace, in idipsum dormiam et requiescam.
In peace and into the same I shall sleep and rest.
Good night!
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Release
What do we have to give up to be free, to be truly ourselves?
Recently, my office mate and I were discussing the Hindu concepts of samsara and moksha, and I realized something that I hadn't thought of before.
In Hinduism, samsara is the cycle of death and rebirth that we are trapped in, potentially forever. Moksha is the release from samsara, which is the ultimate goal of all life. When one attains moksha, he is reunited forever with the eternal.
It's easy to think of moksha in terms of escaping, but I think it is better to think about it in terms of letting go.
Escaping the cycle of death and rebirth would be like trying to swim out of a whirlpool. The vortex is nothing of your own making, and all you can do is try your best to overcome the forces dragging you down.
In the Bhagavad Gita, however, Lord Krishna counsels that a person attains moksha after realizing his true self, which can only be done by letting go of all desire, ego, vanity, insecurity, doubt, ambition, and fear.
In my mind, this path to achieving moksha could be animated as an image of a hand opening and dropping the heavy weight it is carrying.
Not restricted to Hinduism, a similar idea is offered in the Tao Te Ching:
In Islam, the Prophet Muhammad is quoted in the Hadith as encouraging believers to reject whatever binds them to the world just as a seasoned traveler would avoid packing a heavy suitcase:
Rather than being morbid, the injunction to be as the dead means to have no cares or burdens, which is a very zen way to travel through life...be it this one or the next!
Recently, my office mate and I were discussing the Hindu concepts of samsara and moksha, and I realized something that I hadn't thought of before.
In Hinduism, samsara is the cycle of death and rebirth that we are trapped in, potentially forever. Moksha is the release from samsara, which is the ultimate goal of all life. When one attains moksha, he is reunited forever with the eternal.
It's easy to think of moksha in terms of escaping, but I think it is better to think about it in terms of letting go.
Escaping the cycle of death and rebirth would be like trying to swim out of a whirlpool. The vortex is nothing of your own making, and all you can do is try your best to overcome the forces dragging you down.
In the Bhagavad Gita, however, Lord Krishna counsels that a person attains moksha after realizing his true self, which can only be done by letting go of all desire, ego, vanity, insecurity, doubt, ambition, and fear.
In my mind, this path to achieving moksha could be animated as an image of a hand opening and dropping the heavy weight it is carrying.
Not restricted to Hinduism, a similar idea is offered in the Tao Te Ching:
In pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is added.
In the practice of the Tao,
every day something is dropped.
In Islam, the Prophet Muhammad is quoted in the Hadith as encouraging believers to reject whatever binds them to the world just as a seasoned traveler would avoid packing a heavy suitcase:
“Be in the world like a traveler, or like a passer on, and reckon yourself as of the dead.”
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
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