PREPENT5771 Day 31 9.9 HIGHLIGHT and DELETE

High Holy Days Journey with Amichai Lau-Lavie: 40 ways in 40 days to find your focus



Early on the morning of the first day of a new year I rise to praise and thank and think and say hi to that magnificent red bird singing outside in the tree. Gratitude for the magnitude of what is.

And now off to sing together with my community, and bring IT on.

Later, this afternoon, after the prayers and the poems, the singing and the stories, we will head down to the river, to shed the past.

Tashlich – one of the oldest, quaintest, loveliest of Jewish traditions is voodoo – or perhaps, joodoo… take a crumb of bread, leftovers from lunch, and imagine it as every mistake, wrongdoing, regret of the past year – and throw it in the water.

The trees shed their leaves at this time of year, and we are invited to do the same.

So take the time to make a short list of what you want to highlight and delete? What do I really want to change this year and thank for being part of my life and cast into the depths of the water?

Yes, the same items may pop up on my list again next year – but with full intention of cleaning up my act and living more cleanly, more happily, this is the best I can do.

Or, maybe it’s not the mistakes, the ‘sins’ that we shed – but just the excess, the too much that overweighs our lives.

Make room for more of what you really want, need, yearn for.

Imagine your office, home, closet, ‘favorites’ file.

What items are of the least importance, need, usage? What can you get rid of to make more room in your life for what you really need?

What can you shed?

Take breadcrumbs, soap bubbles, rose petals or just your breath, and highlight, and delete.

Yehuda Amichai wrote about it this way:

The waters cannot return in repentance

The waters cannot return in repentance
to where would they return?
To the faucet, the sources, the ground, the roots,
the cloud, the sea, into my mouth?
The waters cannot return in repentance,
every place is their sea, their days of old, their waters of old,
every place a beginning and end, and a beginning.

Yehuda Amichai

Shana Tova!


Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas as we move forward and, as always, you may find more information about our High Holy Day services by visiting,www.higholidays.com.
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PREPENT5771 Day 30 9.8

High Holy Days Journey with Amichai Lau-Lavie: 40 ways in 40 days to find your focus



DIP

‘The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings.’ (Emreson)

Nobody knows why we begin the year with honey. Where does the custom of dipping apples in Honey on the first night of the New Year originate? Who knows? Who cares?

It’s one of those rare Gastro Judaic moments of meaning, with no prior knowledge required: just dip and drip.

Apples are dipped, and fresh challah, and food is cooked with it and we dip and drip and sweeten the occasion.

It’s the marking of a honeymoon: the month that just passed – 30 days or preparing for this door to open, 30 days that begin today.

Many years ago on this night I found new love and we found new ways of dipping honey.

Find new love tonight, in the eyes of those you love around you, in the moment of celebration, of brief pause from the hustle and bustle to dip something, anything in honey, and pause to taste, and let it linger, and start again.

Here’s to a sweet year.


Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas as we move forward and, as always, you may find more information about our High Holy Day services by visiting,www.higholidays.com.
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PREPENT5771 Day 28 9. 7 CLEAN (UP YOUR ACT)

High Holy Days Journey with Amichai Lau-Lavie: 40 ways in 40 days to find your focus



When my mother was a little girl, her older sister Evelyn used to wake her up in the middle of the night and make her clean up her room: ‘What if the Queen was to visit in the morning?’

‘The Auntie Evelyn Standard’ of cleanliness is a bit too much on the oppressive compulsive for my taste, but this morning I woke up with her voice in my head: Royalty is coming to visit. Or, at least, that is one way to think about the New Year, the Holy Day, the new page about to turn: important visitors are coming, within, and for real.

So I got up early and cleaned up that heap of clothing on the chair in my bedroom, and the laundry pile, and the kitchen sink. Nothing major. More comprehensive cleaning will follow in the next few days – sink, bed, heart, body, mind.

But Auntie Evelyn (who, God bless her, is still alive and well in her late 90’s and goes to bed with full makeup on ‘just in case’) can now visit and inspect. And also my mother (I wish). And, the visitors, within and for real, the regal presence of the New Year, the fresh scent of hope and love and happiness and best greetings and best foot forwards and a brand new day.

My intention, 29 days ago was to live cleanly.

Here we go.

Or, to quote Mary Poppins whose accent is very much like Auntie Evelyn’s: “with every job that must be done there is an element of fun –you find the fun and POOF the job’s a game..”

Clean up some mess today.

Etc. happy cleaning. We’re almost t/here.

20 min. update: off to the gym now…


Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas as we move forward and, as always, you may find more information about our High Holy Day services by visiting,www.higholidays.com.
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PREPENT5771 Day 28 9. 6 FIND POETRY

High Holy Days Journey with Amichai Lau-Lavie: 40 ways in 40 days to find your focus



A poem for the 28^th day of preparations, this focus-finding journey to at-one-ment, on the last day of Summer, just 2 days before the New Year begins.

It is your turn now

It is your turn now,
 you waited, you were patient.


The time has come, 
for us to polish you. 


We will transform your inner pearl 
into a house of fire.


You're a gold mine. 
Did you know that, 
hidden in the dirt of the earth?


It is your turn now, 
to be placed in fire.


Let us cremate your impurities.

From: 'Hush Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi'
Translated by Sharam Shiva

Intention: make time and space in my life for the type of direct inspiration that poetry, in all its forms, provides, this coming year.

20 min. update: fast walking all through downtown.


Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas as we move forward and, as always, you may find more information about our High Holy Day services by visiting,www.higholidays.com.
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PREPENT5771 Day 26 9. 4 LISTEN

High Holy Days Journey with Amichai Lau-Lavie: 40 ways in 40 days to find your focus



Last night I went to visit, break the Ramadan daily fast, study, sing and pray with Shaykha Fariha Fatima al-Jerrahi and her community at the Sufi Mosque in Tribeca

http://www.nurashkijerrahi.org/main.htm.

On the Jewish calendar it was the night of Slichot – prayers of forgiveness, intensified as the New Year approaches. At the Shaykah’s table it was a night of Sulcha – reconciliation and reconnection of the Children of Abraham. There was sweet tea and Turkish delight and a man who sang Rumi in Persian. We talked about Abraham, and how and why he would take his son – either Isaac or Ishmael or both – up the mountain in a fundamentalist movement of faith. We talked about the ram that saved the boys, and the ram’s horn that is used on these days to wake up to faith, trust, inner listening.

We listened to each other, and talked about listening:

The shofar has one small hole on one end, and a wider opening on the other end. It resembles the process of teshuva – self reflection: You start by focusing on yourself, your breath, presence – and widen the focus of your attention as the shofar widens – to include those around you, further out into the whole world. And from the particular – to the universal. A wake up call for the human soul.

Take time to listen, quietly, for a few minutes, to silence.

Listen.

Here’s the beautiful intention of the dear friend who will be blowing the Shofar again at our higholidays in Downtown NYC. Rabbi David Kline is a scholar, master baker, and expert shofar blower:

A Shofar Blower’s Intention:

The special act of Rosh Hashanah is the blowing of the shofar. The emphasis – the purpose of the sacred act is to perfect our listening - listening to this peculiar, haunting sound. The blessing that is reserved for this occasion is all about the act of listening. It is not a blessing for a successful act of making sound or for the success of the shofar blower: “ We bless the Creator who makes us holy by instructing us to hear the sound of the shofar."

When I make this blessing before blowing the shofar, as I’ve been doing for many years, I feel honored and privileged. With the horn in my hands I feel tremendous responsibility.

Months of rehearsing still don't allay my terror of spoiling the moment by a weak or worse set of calls. I want, more than anything, for the sound of the shofar to vibrate in souls. And when the sounds are clear and strong, I feel worthy, up to the task, proud of my service, honored by my role.

As the people listen to the shofar, I listen to them. And when the congregation, as one, exhales afterwards, I know I am competent, and I feel our shared prayer, as we each listen to each other breath in and out, as loud and as silent as a shofar.

May we be blessed to deeply listen to each other, always.

Rabbi David Kline.


Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas as we move forward and, as always, you may find more information about our High Holy Day services by visiting,www.higholidays.com.
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PREPENT5771 Day 26 9.4 PAUSE

High Holy Days Journey with Amichai Lau-Lavie: 40 ways in 40 days to find your focus



“Modern times often cause us to go on automatic pilot, continually multitasking and busying our lives with digital stimulation, information overload, and schedules that stress our brains and overwhelm our lives. Finding time to pause amidst this chaos has become an urgent need few of us take the time to satisfy.”

From the buddha's brain

Last Sabbath of the year, and at least a good part of it is spent reading this book that I picked up a few months ago.

A reminder: to relish the pause, to unplug and take this concept of Sabbath/sabotage seriously. Fight the temptation to overcome the email excess. Turn off the machines.

Pause. And consider – what will next year’s Sabbaths look like? What is something I can think, plan, dream, plot, put into action mode right now so that the seeds I plant nourish my time all through this coming year?

Pause. Nap. Sabbath.

20 min. report: weights, sit-ups, cardio. Bike later?


Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas as we move forward and, as always, you may find more information about our High Holy Day services by visiting,www.higholidays.com.
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PREPENT5771 Day 25 9. 3

High Holy Days Journey with Amichai Lau-Lavie: 40 ways in 40 days to find your focus



GET SOMETHING NEW

My mother used to get my brothers and I new white shirts for Rosh Hashanah, and then we’d wear it for Friday nights through the winter, and get another new one for the Seder. The tradition of wearing some new clothing on the first day of the New Year is part luxury and part law. One of the blessings in the Rosh Hashanah liturgy is Sh’heceynau – the blessing of celebrating the present moment and good new things. Jewish law requires that the blessing be attached to a concrete moment – or object – of newness. A new shirt, or even a bite out of an exotic food you haven’t eaten ever or in a long time, is another possibility.

In recent years I sometimes went for a new pair of socks or a new suit or belt. This year I’m back to a new white shirt.

This is where the Yard Sale exercise from a few days ago comes in handy – once I’ve gone through the closet and got rid of some clothes whose time has come and gave those away – I have room for something new.

It is a long holiday weekend, and shopping, if intentional, can be a spiritual experience. Go for it.

On this last Sabbath of 5770 with summer fading away into fall, I wish us all the simple pleasures of enjoying what we already have, with people we love, unplugged, more present.

Shabbat shalom.

20 min. report: cardio


Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas as we move forward and, as always, you may find more information about our High Holy Day services by visiting,www.higholidays.com.
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PREPENT5771 Day 24 9. 2 SEND A WISH

High Holy Days Journey with Amichai Lau-Lavie: 40 ways in 40 days to find your focus



One of the fun things about growing up religious and was that I got a lot opportunities to express my artistic side. There was Purim of course, with early attempts at drag, there were challah covers and succah decorations, and there was my annual shana tova greeting card factory. I used to make them by hand, weeks ahead of time. to family members and friends. There were early attempts at collage. Some of them still hang in my parent’s house.

The custom of sending Shana Tova cards is quite old, and quite lovely. After going through address books and blacklists and wish lists you take the time to make or buy or download cards and think of who to send them, add a personal message and send a wish for the New Year.

Online has made the instant send to groups of people much easier and more convenient but I think there’s still merit to the old ways – personalize, if only a few. Either way, day 24, getting closer, can you send a New Year wish to 6 people.

I have kept my shana tova factory going. Each year a new card. I’ve seen them on fridges still.

Here’s this year’s version – sent to you, albeit collectively, please take it personally:

5771: Sarah and Isaac/Shana Tova

And here’s info about this year’s card: Sarah and Isaac/iCON #1:

This year’s wish is ‘expect the unexpected’ and the image was inspired by a visit to the Prado Museum in Madrid, earlier this summer. There were a lot of Madonnas holding the baby. A LOT. And after spending some time looking at each one and how different they each were I got to thinking about how this primal and expansive symbolic image of mother holding son is so much more primal and expansive than the already fantastic religious dogma it supposedly portrays. Each artist created the same scene but told radically totally stories. I thought it would be interesting to imagine another version of mother and son, Old Testament icon series, #1:

Sarah, age 90, is holding her newborn son Yitzchak. Expect the Unexpected.

I partnered with the super talented artist adam courtney to create this collage. The baby, I knew had to be a very young Yizchak Rabin, and the mother, Arabic, anonymous. This is an icon of birth, but also a Pieta.

The handwriting in the background is a letter written by Freud to his daughter.

It’s about the impossible becoming possible – like a 90 year woman becoming finally pregnant, in a land that may see peace between the children of that woman and other women and other children.

Shana Tova. May peace prevail.


Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas as we move forward and, as always, you may find more information about our High Holy Day services by visiting,www.higholidays.com.
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PREPENT5771 Day 23 9. 1 SO SORRY

High Holy Days Journey with Amichai Lau-Lavie: 40 ways in 40 days to find your focus



It is now one week before Rosh Ha’Shanna, seven days to 5771. The heat is on. Increased traffic in noticed on Jewish cooking sites and High Holidays ticket sales are in full volume.

Are you ready?

We’ve been prepenting here for over three weeks. Now its time for the final touches.

One of the musts of the season is saying sorry to whoever we’ve hurt. Including ourselves.

The blacklist we worked on last week had in it those with whom we’ve been having unfinished business this past year – on any level, for whatever reason – but that we’d like to settle, get off our chest, plate, consciousness, mind. Some of us have done some work on that – writing emails, making phone calls, arranging for uncomfortable meetings and hopefully – reconcile or make peace. (this goes to the summit talks in DC today! Can both Netanyahu and Abbas REALLY express the sorrow and sorry and try and resolve?? Slicha in Hebrew is so close to Sulcha in Arabic - same word, same pain, same hope. )

The ‘I’m sorry’ exercise is in this department. With perhaps less grander visions than peace in the Middle East. Start at home.

Who do I need to apologize for?

And what do I need to apologize to myself for?

Surely this reflective act deserves a few moments of heart and mind focus.

In Hebrew this is called ‘Slichot’ the word ‘forgiveness’. Slichot is the general name for a genre of atonement prayers reserved for this season. Sephardic Jews have been singing them since this 40 day count began. Ashkenazim begin this coming Saturday Night. Both take the time this week to review the lists, swallow hard, and say I’m sorry where and when necessary.

Start with self.

And I want to take this public opportunity to say to whoever is reading, including friends and relatives who’ve been reading and commenting - here’s a sincere, general I’m SORRY if I’ve done anything to harm, upset, disappoint or hurt you.

I went through my list and I THINK I’m covered. But if I’m not – and you think I have something to apologize for – PLEASE: If you see something, say something.

And, now I’ll turn to start again, with saying sorry to myself, for all the ways I did fewer gods than I should or more wrong than I ought to, in the service of self-love.

Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas as we move forward and, as always, you may find more information about our High Holy Day services by visiting,www.higholidays.com.
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