Tips For an Easier Fast
by Judy Baumann, R.D.
Deuteronomy, Nitzavim 30:1-14
Poetry by: Alice Rudnick
Songs of the Holy Temple
by Reb Shlomo Carlebach
New York, Elul 5748
Reprinted from Cong Kehilath Jacob News
So, how long ago was last Rosh Hashana? How long ago were we together for 24 hours and at the end heard the trumpet of the Messiah? How long ago did we kindle the lights of Chanukah? How many minutes ago were we drunk on Purim and ate matzo on Pesach? The truth is it was a second ago and the truth of the truth is all the holidays are with us all year long. A Jew always blows a shofar, a Jew tasls all year, a Jew sits in the Succah all his life, a Jew dances with the Torah into all eternities.
So we are inviting each other again for an even deeper Rosh Hashona / Yom Kippur, a more heavenly Succos, and a more beyond heaven Simchas Torah.
When I was a little boy, I always asked my father, "Where are the songs of the Holy Temple?" And I never got a good answer because I could not believe that Jews can live without at least our- song from the Holy Temple, a song of King David, a song of beyond time and space, a song that reminds us that we are part of G-d.
A few years ago, late at night, I saw a frail Jew by the Holy Wall who drew my attention. He really prayed. I waited until he finished and he begain telling me he had arrived that day from Russia after ten years in Siberia. I asked him, "How did you survive Siberia?" He said, "I was singing all the time." Suddenly I had this flash and I asked, "Did you sing the songs of the Holy Temple?" And he was quiet for a long time tears of ten years of Siberia and maybe two thousand years of exile came out from his holy eyes. And he said, "My whole family are Chassidim from the time of the Baal Shem Tov, and my holy grandfather told me in the name of the holy Baal Shem Toy, that the way we chant prayers on the High Holidays is the way they were singing them in the Holy Temple - the way King David composed them."
That evening changed my life. Whenever I give a concert, I always include the prayers of the High Holidays. The melodies reach, like the Shofar, to the deepest chambers of our souls.
Just imagine Baron Rothschild, suffering from amnesia, standing on it street corner, dirty and filthy, begging for dimes. The first thing he needs is to remember is that he is Rothschild and then to wash up and change his clothes, and then to go back to his home. All year long everyone in his own way is suffering from amnesia. We forgot what a Jew is, we forgot what a human being is, we forgot who G-d is. Rosh Hashana when we blow the Shofar, we remember everything. On Yom Kippur, we wash up and on Succot we move back into our heavenly abode -- to the palace we are meant to live in.
There is war in the world and hatred because the world has amnesia and his forgotten what it is to be human. There is so much trouble in Israel because the whole world refuses to remember that G-d gave us the land. Let this Rosh Hashona wake up the world. Let this Yoiyi Kippur clean us and the whole world. Let this Succos, when we bring sacrifices for all the seventy nations in the Holy Temple, restore dignity all the nations of the world.
There were never so many homeless people in New York as today and this phenomenon is actually all over the world. It is as if G-d is reminding us that if true humanity, true belief in G-d has no home in the world yet. Succos we are building a new home for G-d, for all of Israel and via Israel for the whole world. Let the New Year be the year we have been waiting for.
Love,
Shlomo
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High Holy Days Holy Teachings & Torah
The last written message Reb Shlomo gave over to the hevra.
New York, Elul 5754.
One of the most important aspects of Rosh HaShona is not to say bad things about another person. As you want G-d to give you a chance, give everyone else a chance to also begin again.
So my dearest brothers and sisters, it's only after Rosh HaShona when our beginning is so strong, when we get a taste that our inside has never been blemished and we go to the holy cleaner, the master of the world who takes out all the stains from our hearts, and the dust from our souls. And He is doing it while we are singing and dancing -- on Yom Kippur we tell him all our mistakes because we have so much inner strength already.
Please, please, give each other strength. Don't ever stop giving compliments to each other and most of all to your children, whose self confidence depends on you! On Rosh HaShona, every second counts like a thousand years.
Our holy master Reb Nachman says, "The greatest gift we can give somebody is to give him back his self confidence."
When we make a mistake, not only we do wrong, our soul is shriveling and we look down at ourselves. A whole year of mistakes -- Gevalt! How do we look at ourselves? It doesn't take much to give up on somebody else -- but to give up on ourselves is always Federal Express.
To have the guts to really begin again, takes a lot of inner strength. So Rosh HaShonah, the holiest day of beginnings, we don't mention our mistakes in order to have the strength to stand before G-d like newborn babies. Our holy rabbis teach us that the sound of the shofar is the sound of our innermost soul and heart but also the sound of a newborn baby. It is everything. It wakes us up, gives us strength, reminds us how holy we are and how holy we can be, and also how close we are and how easy it is to be the best and most exaulted.
Blessings and love.
Shlomo
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Cry Over Every Stitch
As told by Reb Shlomo Carlebach
Transcribed for Connections by Miriam Rubinoff
Brooklyn, Elul 5748.
The heilege Porisover Rebbe had a chassid, a tailor who made just enough for bread and herring. A nobleman came to a shop, took a liking to him, and appointed him his tailor. When you are the tailor of the nobleman, you don't need a Rebbe and you don't eat bread and herring anymore. He kept away from Yidden, kept his nose in the air, and was a very outstanding tailor.
One day, the nobleman came with material from Paris, and he said to the tailor, "This is the best material I ever bought, and I want you to make me a quilt like you never made before." The tailor thought, "I am the best tailor in the world. I once was a chassidisher Yid; all I had was bread and herring, and now, thank G-d, I have bagels and lox."
He made the suit, and it really was beautiful. He brought it to the nobleman, who put it on and couldn't get it off fast enough. He yelled at the tailor, "This is the most terrible suit I ever wore." Cursing him, he took out his pistol and said, "If I ever see you again, I'm going to kill you, " and he took the suit and throw it out of the window. The tailor picked it up and ran for his life, thinking it's time to go to the Rebbe again.
He said to the heilige Porisover, "Rebbe, believe me, it's a beautiful suit. What did I do wrong?" The heilige Porisover replied, "I'll tell you what. Undo the suit, and then put it together the same way. Just put it together, and tomorrow night take it to the nobleman, and G-d be with you."
The taller was up all night, crying over every stitch. The next day, he brought it to the nobleman and said, "Please give me just one more chance." The nobleman put it on and said, "This is the masterpiece of the world. I never had such a suit. You outdid yourself," The tailor went back to the Rebbe. "Rebbe, what's going on?"
The Rebbe said, "I want you to know, arrogance smells so bad. Even for a low person like the nobleman, the smell was so bad he couldn't stand it. There was no other way; you had to start all over again. This time, when you put the suit together, you cried over every stitch, all your arrogance was gone and you pleaded: "Master of the World, have compassion on me. I have a wife and children. Please G-d, let the suit be beautiful." And anything you do with great humility, with tears and with prayers, is so beautiful, so good."
You know, friends, once a year the Ribono Shel Olam tells us, take everything apart and put it together again. On Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, when you do teshuva, you take everything apart. The whole world is falling apart, everything is wrong. And then comes Succos. I build the Succah and put my life together again. But do you know what I do over every stitch? I yell, "Master of the World, this is the best I can do for You, but I'm begging You help us." And on Simchas Torah, I put on this new suit and go back to my house. Suddenly I realize, the world is so beautiful; there is no day when there is more humility in the world, for this is Moshe Rabbenu's day.
On Simchas Torah, every Jew dances with children and the biggest rosh yeshiva dances with Moishele the water carrier, and it's clear to him: Maybe Moishele knows the Torah better than I do. Maybe the way I put my sefer (book) together was with a little bit of arrogance, and this smells so bad. So on Simchas Torah, everybody is taking the sefer apart and putting it together again-and gevalt, what a Torah it is.
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God, Our Mother
by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
In Biblical texts written during the age of the Patriarchs, God was seen in masculine terms. Since the Bible refers to us as "children of God" it was easy at that time to project the sense of "Father" on the Deity. In the beginning of the Genesis story, there is the statement that "the Spirit of God hovered over the waters". The image it evokes is of a mothering spirit warming, brooding and caring for the new earth-egg and hatching life on Earth.
In digging deeper, especially in the writings of the mystics, we find traces of the feminine peeking out from underneath conventional theologies. For example, one of the Hebrew divine names, Shaddai, can be read as "the one with the nurturing breasts." In the Kabbalah, the divine in-dwelling presence was seen as the Shechinah here, too, seen as "the mother." So, too, has the corpus of divine revelation been seen in feminine terms as the Torah and the manifestation of the divine in time as the Queen Sabbath.
In Christianity, the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, has often been depicted as a dove. The Hebrew word for holy spirit, Ru'ach Hakodesh, takes its verbs and adjectives in the feminine since Ru'ach Hakodesh is a feminine word.
In Catholicism, the image of Mary as the one to whom one can come with any prayer and request has been celebrated. There is even a prayer called the Memorari which contains words that say no petition addressed to her will go unanswered. In the Far East, in India, the feminine aspects of God have many names: Lakshmi, Durga and Kali. And, in China and Japan, one looks to Kwan Yin or Kanzeon as the source of compassion.
While each tradition seeks to find ways of accommodating the feminine into its theology, there seems to be a warm and loving quality of compassion, Rachamin or "womb-feeling", that we experience when we think of the divine feminine. The blues expression, "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child" points to the times when we do feel like a mothered child. It makes such a difference when one begins to pray, especially out of the awareness of one's diminishments, to address God as Mother.
As adults, and children before that time, we are sometimes in need of the help that we got as children. Our pride of self-sufficiency and "can-do" attitudes we experienced as young adults needs to be set aside when we are in need of help with medicines, incontinence, preparing our food, etc. This can be difficult for us, especially if we have to rely on our own children, who we parented, to help us. However, if we could see our caregivers as compassionate hands of our Divine Mother, we could let go of shame and embrace the blessings of Her loving angels.
I think also of the differences we experience when talking to God as Father versus God as Mother. When we go to God, the Father, we often take on the habit of offering something in return for His help. We offer charity, social service, some form of giving from ourselves that somehow is meant to even the score of what we are about to receive. Not so when we talk to God, the Mother. She asks nothing of us --- but to let us be embraced by Her.
No wonder Catholics say in their prayer, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, be with us sinners now and at the hour of our death." In Judaism, we speak of people who have had the glorious death of dying by the Mother Shechinah's kiss. As elders, it would serve us well to shift the root metaphor by which we address God, from Father to Mother. It is much easier in this way to affirm that underneath it all are the "Everlasting Arms" (see Deuteronomy 33:27).
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Tips For an Easier Fast
by Judy Baumann, R.D.
Yom Kippur falls on the tenth of Tishri and brings to a close the ten days of repentance that begin with Rosh Hashanah. To aid in focusing our minds on repentance and atonement, we are told to afflict our bodies through fasting (no eating or drinking) and other forms of abstinence... In this column that deals with food, I find it interesting to see how our approaches to fasting on Yom Kippur change over the years. Older elementary school children often view the act of fasting as a privilege of adulthood. As they approach Bar or Bat Mitzvah-the age at which one is supposed to fast- youngsters persuade their parents to let them skip breakfast and perhaps lunch. Teenagers, I think, physically tend to have an easy fast, but for some adults the idea of fasting is anxiety provoking! The discomfort and headache many people experience during the Yom Kippur fast are so extreme that they forget the appropriate agenda of the day, which is to make us more aware of our frailties and of the extent of our dependence on the physical world around us.
Several years ago, I read an enlightening article by Rabbi Richard J. Israel (YF: an observant reform rabbi who is an expert on bees and Judaism) about how to prepare for fasting on Yom Kippur (National Havurah Committee's newsletter, 1983). What a difference some modest lifestyle changes make! My anecdotal research seems to suggest that his theories do make the day go by with much more ease.
* Most of the unpleasantness associated with a fast comes from a lack of fluid rather than from lack of food. The afternoon before Yom Kippur drink a great deal of fluid-perhaps up to half a gallon. At the time you may feel you are going to float away, but some twenty hours later, you will be glad you did it. Water, milk and diluted orange juice are good drinks. Avoid beer or other alcoholic beverages, as they will dehydrate you.
* The nausea and headaches many people report while fasting have nothing to do either with food or fluid. They are usually the result of caffeine withdrawal. Whether you consume small or large amounts of caffeinated coffee or cola, start tapering off a week or so before the fast. You will find it much less painful to cut back on your caffeine when you are still eating and drinking than going cold turkey during the fast. People who drink several cups of coffee a day taper to half decaf and half regular a week or so ahead of time. Then they gradually work their way down to only decaffeinated coffee by Yom Kippur. My husband and I drink less than two cups of coffee a day and no cola drinks. We now switch to decaffeinated coffee a few days ahead of time and usually have a headache-free Yom Kippur.
* The night of Kol Nidre (the eve of Yom Kippur), eat a light, healthy meal-heavier on grains, pastas, and vegetables than on fatty meats and gravies. If you try to compensate for your fast by overeating beforehand, you may feel both uncomfortable and hungrier the next day. Another method of making for an easier fast, according to Richard Israel, was for grandmothers in Europe to "feed their families huge meals of potatoes and kugels the week before the fast, and then a big meat meal the final evening. That should work too. The carbohydrates would store up the necessary fluids, and the meat, which takes much longer to digest than carbohydrates, would produce a comfortable full feeling farther into the fast. But this system seems more appropriate to a culture in which people were not far from fasting most of the year. It is not clear that in our time we want all those extra calories."
* Israel's final word of advice applies to break-the-fast: do not gorge yourself. A fast is not a scheme for rapid weight loss. All but about half a pound of your weight loss will be in water. To protect itself, the body slows down when it is deprived of food. Calories taken in right after a fast stay with you longer than those you acquire when you are eating normally.
* On a slightly different note, an article in the September 1996 Diabetes Forecast (magazine of American Diabetes Association) discussed fasting for persons with diabetes. Some persons using insulin or oral hypoglycemic agents (diabetes pills) can safely fast. Eating healthy foods and drinking adequate fluids is important, as is blood glucose testing. The key is to consult with your doctor or diabetes educator well ahead of time, so you can adjust your medication and exercise regimen. Judy Baumann is a Registered Dietitian in Lexington, Kentucky. (c)1996, 1997 Jewishfamily.com. The above article was web posted at: http://www.vjliving.com
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Deuteronomy, Nitzavim 30:1-14
Poetry by: Alice Rudnick
Now it shall be:
when there come upon you all these things,
the blessing and the curse that I have set before you,
and you take them to your heart while
among all the nations where The One has thrust you,
and you return and hearken to The One’s voice, according to all that I command you today,
you and all your children,
with all your heart and with all your being,
The One will restore your fortunes,
And have compassion upon you.
Draw near and I will meet you,
Seek and pursue peace, Speak to Me and I will hear,
My love will never cease.
The One will make you excel in all the doings of your hands
in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your animals, and in the fruit of your soil, for well-being,
if you return to YHVH your G-d with all your heart and with all your being.
With every breath give blessing,
And blessings will abound,
Within the living of your lives,
My glory will be found.
For the commandment that I command you this day:
it is not too extraordinary for you,
it is not too far away!
Open your ears to Me,
Hear the small still voice,
Listen with an open heart,
My truth will guide your choice.
It is not in the heavens, for you to say:
Who will go up for us to the heavens and get it for us
and have us hear it, that we may observe it?
and it is not across the sea,
for you to say:
Who will cross for us, across the sea, and get it for us
and have us hear it, that we may observe it?
Open your eyes to Me,
Observe creation’s Source,
Sharing visions, being seen,
My mercy lights your course.
Rather, near to you is the word, exceedingly,
in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it!
All of us are of the One,
We’re meant to comprehend,
What we see as separations,
Together we transcend.
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