Susie on Debbie

When learning Torah we often speak of the importance of Gamatria, the numerical equivalent of Hebrew letters and words. Gamatria provides pointers and signs of meaning in the text.

The word Chai = 18 . Eighteen was the number of years of my friendship with Debbie. I know it's a cliché but my life was richer with Debbie as my friend.

One of the many things we enjoyed over the years was our walks at Caulfield Park – Debbie would call me, or I her, and she would say cheekily “let’s meet on the inside of inside.”

The “inside of the inside” was the MIDDLE of the park. It also just so happened to be where the Caulfield Bowls Club is. The venue of Debbie’s future yom tov Drashes.

Debbie and I were very different: She had an international background, going to different schools around the world. In year 12 she was dux of her school. I, on the other hand, was born and raised in St. Kilda and went to Scopus all my school life and barely scraped through year 12. When she was into quantum physics, I was into Sufism. Even our dogs, were so very different. Walking in the park, there was Debbie with Gadget, a big boofy black Labrador and me with Zoe, a petite delicate apricot Poodle. But they looked out for each other those two dogs.

We also had our similarities: Debbie’s Hebrew name was Devorah Bat Chana. Mine is Chana Bat Rachel. Ok, maybe I am stretching a long bow here. Later Debbie was renamed by Rabbi Hoffman “Chaya Devorah” so I guess we had the chet in common.

Our names Debbie and Susie were so typical of our generation. Perhaps, in rebellion, we both named our daughters Orly years before we knew each other. Our sons David and Johnny were friends at school – Caulfield North Primary. And Benny, I am not leaving you out. You were there sometimes. In your stroller when we walked the park. You used to get grumpy at us because we were so caught up in conversation we didn't stop to let you play.

Debbie and I also learned Torah together. I was privy to hearing the Drash she would give over on Shabbat. But, truth be told, more often than not I would hear it after she gave it as I didn't make it to shule. We enjoyed learning from each other, laughing together and hearing each other’s views on life and love. Most of all we looked out for each other, as good friends do.

Last night after the minyan – I went looking out for her. Searching for meaning. The chochma, the coach mah as Mark spoke of at her funeral. Inside her room. I sat on the chair which I sat on when visiting Debbie over the last few months, on days she was too tired to get out of bed. Next to this chair was a little table with all sorts of books. Debbie loved poetry and there, lying on top was a little book of poetry by Wallace Stevens. I flicked through it and couldn’t find anything in there that spoke to me. Then, underneath, I found another little book of poems by Robert Frost. In here, I found this poem that Debbie used in one of her shiurim in this very room. And it spoke to me from that deep place.

The Secret Sits: “We dance round in a ring and suppose. But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.” 

If that wasn’t enough of a sign I glanced to the bottom of that page and saw it was page number 54. I didn’t think of the Gamatria for that at the time but I did know what it meant to me. Debbie and I were born on the same month September of the same year. This was our 54th year.

So, “let’s meet”... Debbie... “on the inside of the inside”... here tonight.

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I was reminded later by Yvonne Fein that 54 is 3 x Chai. I thought about this for a while. Jewish mysticism teaches how and why three is a mystical number. A young Israeli man, Shai, then told me The Hebrew letters for 54 – Nun Daled translates to a word which means a type of travelling. Could Debbie and I be an aspect of that great divine play which Debbie often pointed to? Two opposites who meet to create something new: a strong and deep friendship travelling through time and space.

—Susie

Sahananda on Debbie

My Step-Sister Debbie died sometime last night of cancer on the other side of the world.

I suppose I knew Debbie best when we were both teenagers.  I don’t actually remember first meeting her, but for a while she lived in London with David, Helen,  Danny and later Aviva.  She was only fifty miles from where I was living in Cambridge and I got to see quite a lot of her.

Thinking about Debbie brings back a raft of memories of the flats in Moscow Road; the constant sound of dripping water out the back, and the city smells and sounds of Bayswater.  Inside the flat the smell of last night’s whisky and cigarettes.

For about six years Debbie was a big part of my life, and in some ways, despite being a younger sister was very influential to me.  I think her easy friendship and sense of fun helped me out of a rather grim part of my life and brought a bit of sunshine to my disposition.

I had lived a rather sheltered life for a teenager, and Debbie introduced me to the importance of Jeans, the music of Bob Dylan and Cat Stephens, and I’m not sure about this, but I think also encouraged me to play guitar which I still enjoy to this day.

I have many happy memories of staying in Moscow Road, and Debbie and I would take Aviva to the park so that we could smoke surreptitious cigarettes.

I have always felt that Debbie grabbed life and extracted happiness from it.  She was creative, and I remember her poetry and writing, but she was also adventurous.  She had a lot of friends who she was happy to share.

Later, when the family moved to America, I spent a very happy summer with her and Karen Swirsky in Leonia, Debbie again sharing her friends and spurring the two of us on to adventures.

Sadly, we have been separated by continents much of the rest of our lives.  I have seen her on, I reckon, three occasions in the last thirty years, but when we have seen each other there has always been an instant reconnection.

I feel I know her quite well from her books, which I feel express her in a stark and honest way.

The last time I saw Debbie was eleven years ago, she was a bit fraught over some domestic difficulty, and we took the dog for a long walk and I was happy to be her sounding board.

I love Debbie, and I am sad that she has died and that there won’t be another chance to take the dog for a walk and have a chat.

—Sahananda

Dena Lester on Debbie

Debbie had a small group of very close girlfriends – I am honored to have been one of them and that is why I am making this speech.

We met in Israel 29 years ago at breakfast in my kitchen by accident.  I saw this tall, beautiful, skinny and tanned girl with a head of thick shiny black hair, an enormous even white smile and dark burning eyes.  I was immediately fearful that my husband, Jonathan would fall in love with her.

Thus in that spirit of challenge, began our adventurous and exciting friendship.

I have been privileged to witness Debbie in many forms:

Debbie the wild and independent young woman – investigative, ambitious, tumultuous and excessively interesting.

Debbie the new wife  – keeping an orderly apartment and tight budget in Agrippas Street, Jerusalem while taming her frenetic husband Jack who kept us all doubled up in laughter with his crazy antics.

The struggling writer - Punching out words on a noisy typewriter, looking hard for the content of the stories she was so driven to tell.

Debbie the mother – nurturing her children as babies, toddlers and youngsters in the best way she could.  I can still see her pregnant – glowing and shiny, ripe and feminine.

Some of my happiest years were those that we shared raising our six children.  The chaos and laughter and even craziness of that atmosphere has etched itself permanently in our children’s psyche’s and on mine.  I miss those days so much. 

The Shabbat dinners with Debbie, Jack, my late husband Jonathan and I – our kids running wild as Jack terrified them with his psychotic chasing game called Stalker which would all end in hysterical laughter (and sometimes tears…).

I loved our discourse, it was never boring.  We raised our children while talking philosophy, theology, psychology, politics and mysticism.  Rare were our conversations about nappies, the best schools, other people or what we wanted to buy next.

In our 30’s we were both drawn on different paths into mysticism.  As her books describe, hers was a deep enquiry whose gifts of knowledge were not endowed without cost.

On her path of fire Debbie immersed herself in a fury of learning – how to daven, how to read classical Hebrew, Aramaic and Rabbinical commentaries.  I was astonished as I had learnt Hebrew and prayer at a religious school and even was frum as a teen, but she had it all wrapped up in a short number of years.  Her intelligence and intellect were simply hard to grasp.  She indeed had a very great mind.

As if under a spell, she was on a mission to penetrate the depths of the deeper meaning of our heritage – a task that consumed and absorbed her.

Her mission was not always pretty – nothing comes from nothing and it was necessary to enter the darkest of spaces and experiences to find the light, to create the alchemical gold from the burning of her base metals.

While all of that drama was going on, the house was kept in order, the children attended school, the dogs were walked around the park daily and the sun kept rising in the safe and comfortable suburb of Caulfield with its contemporary post holocaust renaissance architecture as we would joke.

I have thus come to believe that the greatest stories emerge from the most mundane environments.

It was in these years of internal turbulence that she found her purpose as a teacher of Torah – not just the Torah of words, but the Torah of the heart.  The Torah of self transformation, the Torah of correct behavior, the Torah of conscious living, the Torah of Acceptance and the Torah of truth.

This is the Torah that belongs to the world and that is why she had a following of so many people from so many backgrounds and even different religions.

Then out of the blue she got sick.

I can still remember every detail of that phone call.

Over the past 4 and a half years since that call, Debbie has been dealing with the cancers that eventually ended her life last week.

This final chapter of her story,  painful as it is, represents the time where her personality evolved and transformed in a most unbelievable way.

As the cancer grew and spread, any negative view of the world and people that she may have held, started to diminish.  She came to understand almost everyone and judge almost no one – a huge achievement for any human being. 

After a couple of years she could even clearly sit present in the moment – forgetting her predicament – a goal that sounds so simple but is almost impossible, honestly, for most of us to attain.

She became so compassionate – as spoken in her close friend Sari’s words last night – despite her pain and suffering, she became more concerned with the pain and suffering of others.

As her body became less mobile and energetic her heart opened wider letting all of our vulnerabilities become rendered irrelevant.

I loved the way she enjoyed listening to my problems, totally immersed in the trivial details of my daily issues and grievances as if they were as important as her own serious trials.

As the disease in her body, mutated and morphed into all kinds of horrible sicknesses, I began to call her Job – to her face of course – because she just seemed to receive more and more – enduring  the suffering with acceptance and resignation.  Mostly peaceful in her powerlessness.

She told me many times that she was ready to die and not afraid.

There are two moments in our friendship that will always be burned in my memory.

One was when my husband Jonathan was laying in a sudden coma in hospital.  We, two naturally non-demonstrative friends who rarely hugged or emoted in public were on the balcony near the intensive care unit.  We were entwined in each other’s arms, on our knees, tears pouring out of our eyes, crying out loud to Hashem and petitioning Him with prayer.  Please, we wailed, please make Jonathan better; we will do anything you ask…  But because it was his time the answer was silence, however, I will never forget that moment of union with her and how deeply she cared.

The second was on the day she was admitted into hospital a few weeks ago – I held her hand and she squeezed my finger looking directly into my eyes with a mixture of trepidation and sweet compassion – her eyes were saying I am sorry, but I have to do the job of dying now.  I will never forget that moment as long as I live.

I am so very grateful for Debbie and I will always love her very much.

As much as I will miss her though, I am relieved that she has finally been freed from the bondage of that body.

I offer thanks to Doug and her other close friends who were so present for her in the way that she needed over the past years.  May you be blessed and showered with light.

I pray that all of her family, especially her beautiful children David, Booji and Benny will grow strong and great through the adversity of the untimely loss of their mother, sister and daughter. 

She would want nothing more than to see you all live lives of purpose, usefulness and integrity in which ever fields you choose.  I know well that you all will.

Right now in my fantasies – Debbie is looking down from up high in flowing white robes with an after life body glowing with spirit.  Maybe even right now Jonathan has joined her and they are having a chuckle at my expense as the tears stream down my face in the world of the living.

—Dena Lester

Esther Takac on Debbie

Debbie was a beloved teacher, inspiring speaker, passionate writer. Others have and will speak of her many talents. But I speak here tonight of Debbie as a wonderful friend.

Debbie and I met in Jerusalem, the city we both loved.  Both interested in the written word we agreed that the streets of Jerusalem breathe and invoke poetry - the cobbled pathways, the olive and fig trees, the cityscape of minarets and church spires, the density of peoples, and hopes and dreams and hurts.

But we both returned to live our lives in Melbourne and most of our friendship took place in the comfort and conventionalism of Caulfield. In fact in the last twenty years of our friendship we have barely shared any time outside Caulfield, bar a trip to Confest in Northern Victoria. As Debbie would joke one risked getting lost anywhere north of Dandenong Rd.

But, and that was part of her richness, my friendship with Debbie stretched our lives way beyond the routine of our Caulfield suburban lives, the domesticity of our days as mothers of young children and then working mothers running households.

Debbie’s mind and heart were open to the enormity of the world, in all its complexity and richness. I remember trips to the supermarket, often with toddlers in tow, where our conversations ranged wide and deep. I sometimes wondered what other shoppers might have made of the topics we discussed between the freezer section and the toilet paper.

And so too, many evenings as the orchestrated chaos of family dinners beckoned, we kept each other company, cradling the phone on our shoulder, trying to avoid neck ache, as we cut the onions and chopped the salads, sharing our day, all the while our words taking us far beyond the confines of our kitchens.

We loved to walk – along the beach – in any sort of weather, surrounded by the crash of the waves, the stretch of the skies, talking, always talking through the issues of our days.

And around Caulfield Park – that circle of green that holds the secrets of so many – around again and again and again. We promised to meet at out special spot – the inside of the inside – because yes Debbie knew how to laugh at herself and see the funny side of her own serious interests in kabbalah and mysticism.

So what did we discuss as we walked the beach, the park, the streets, the phone wire? What didn’t we discuss?

Our husbands and partners and when we loved them and when they drove us crazy.
Our siblings and parents and when we loved them and when they drove us crazy.
Our children when they flourished and brought us naches and joy.
And our children when they struggled and brought us angst and sleepless nights.
And so David and Booji and Ben, I heard your mum worry about each of you in turn, the focus of her concern and energy and anxiety.
And I also know how proud she has felt – of each of you finding your own way in the world, managing thru these last difficult years.

And when I looked across at you three sitting side by side at your mother’s funeral I saw three beautiful young people that I know she loved very much.  As she herself writes: David with your tall intellect and open hearted naivety. Orly quick minded and quick tempered, petite and fiery. And Benny, always her baby, broad shouldered, handsome with a heart of liquid gold.         

But I have gotten off the track. We spoke of many other things – writing and books and creativity and the fickle world of publishing. When my book won an award, it was Debbie most of everyone who understood its significance and rejoiced for me and with me.

And we spoke of Jewish learning and Torah and Kabbalah and Avivah Zornberg. And Israel and the Middle East. And Hamakom and Shira Hadasha and what makes community. And she spoke of the new physics and I listened but didn’t really understand. And I was always aware she had an amazing mind, and a beautiful gift with words.

But as much as all that she was also a loyal and generous friend.
When my father Sam died 10 years ago, by his own hand, Debbie was there for me, to  walk the streets and the beach and the park and help me come to some understanding, some acceptance of the event. We both knew we shared non mainstream parents with shards of grandeur and dysfunctionality.

And together with her Torah and her spirituality and her insights that were real and genuine, she also had a wild and dare I say wicked side, a playfulness and sense of humor. It was only 2 weeks ago in her hospital room that Leonard Cohen was playing “I’m your Man” and Debbie on her way to the toilet, danced seductively across the room. Full of courage in the face of her illness.

Debbie was full of life, with a generosity of spirit and a breadth of vision. An appreciation of the dappled nature of life, the light and the dark, the joy and the pain. And that is what made sharing a friendship with her so textured and precious, so rich.     

Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave and impossible to forget. I will miss her deeply.  I already do.   

—Esther Takac

Rabbi Ralph Genende on Debbie

Several years ago Debbie shared this story with her kehillah as part of her Kol Nidrei drasha. It is a tale from the treasure house of the great Hassidic story teller Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav. The story she told was about a mountain spring of pure water. This spring existed beyond the world, beyond time. Far away from the mountain spring, deep inside time, was the heart of the world. The heart yearned for the spring, it burned for it, but whatever it tried to traverse the distance between them, it lost its way, because the closer it came to the mountain upon which the spring dwelt, the more perspective it lost, and the less it could see of it. The yearning, burning heart of the world was doomed to remain far from the object of its desire, the spring of pure water.

At close of each day, when darkness approached, the heart would sing farewell to the spring, and when the spring heard the sad song, it would respond with a beautiful melody of its own. The dying of each day was filled with the call of the broken heart and the response of the spring of pure water; their music filled the world, and thus another day was born.

Rebbe Nachman called each day a new song, born of the death of the previous day. Each day has its own unique melody. The cry of the broken heart, he said, is the source of the greatest blessing of them all; the gift of a brand new day.

Debbie Masel knew too intimately the cry of that wounded heart; the yearning of a broken body. She also understood with immeasurable insight the melody of that stream, the pellucid clarity of its waters, the depth of its murmuring soul, its unfathomable מים חיים.

She knew about suffering and she knew about the vital life-giving river of Torah. She discovered not only the music of each new day, but also how to share it, how to put it into words; how to articulate the ache of her singular heart, how to express the beauty and energy of Torah. And how to open the eyes of others to the dappled, desperate beauty of each brand new day, each new text of Torah she was teaching.

Debbie may have come to Torah late in her life, when she was almost 40, but she came to it with a vengeance, a passionate intensity. As she put it: “Words had always called me, but never like this. These words didn’t just stir and touch, they stirred a memory, touched a boundary…through the prism of the mystic Hassidic commentators…I saw my world and my place in it with fresh eyes, as if for the first time.”

Rabbi Soloveitchik, in his tribute to the Rebbitzen of Talne, speaks about the dimensions of wisdom. It has, he says, a three-fold connotation. Firstly innate intelligence; secondly erudition or the accumulation of knowledge and thirdly intellectual curiosity. Debbie possessed חכמה at all three levels. She had a wonderful mind sharp as a razor, sensitive to nuance and attuned to paradox. As her Mum, Helen points out in her vocational tests in New Jersey she got the highest ever recorded score for an aptitude for law.

Beside her innate talents, she accumulated an astonishing amount of knowledge: she knew poetry, she knew literature, she had a predilection for modern theoretical physics picked up from her stepfather whom she greatly admired, David Wolfers. She also knew Torah, chassidut, Kabbalah and of course the Ishbitzer. She was probably one of the few individuals in the world to really understand the writings of the martyred Rebbe of Piacezna, Rabbi Kalonymus Shapira. She not only edited his most famous work אש קדש The Sacred Fire, but as her mentor of the past ten years and our mutual teacher for the past three years, Rabbi Henoch Dov Hoffman remarked “She was plugged directly into his mind. She inspired us to see the chasidut that we diligently studied together from the perspective of the feminine spirit of Miriam’s spring bubbling up from the ground.”

Debbie also possessed in heaps that third component of wisdom – intellectual inquisitiveness; she was curious to know, had an unquenchable thirst for Torah in depth and an uncanny ability and drive to find outstanding teachers of Torah: Rabbi Hoffman, Aviva Zornberg who recognised in Debbie “a rare and passionate truthfulness a rich humanity and a profound engagement with her faith”, her teacher-friend Yitzchak Haviv, her Lubavitch Kabalah teacher, David Tsapp. Aviva sent the following message:

“Debbie from the other side of the world, I heard from Doug that in these last days you would wake from dreams of visiting many faraway places. You wanted to know, “Where we might go today?” and I was obscurely comforted by your dreams and by your readiness to travel…

In all this travelling, you remained a faraway place, which was very close to me. Like the Torah you loved, which is ‘not in the heavens…nor across the sea…but the very close to you,’ your ardent soul was easy to connect with across the distance. How brave you were and how full of life! But your bravery grew out of a daily confrontation with fear and uncertainty. And your vitality was rooted in a deep knowledge of terror. In your poignant and truthful memoir, Soul to Soul, you write about the role of fear in your life. You adopted something I once said about the ‘principle of becoming, of allowing the possible to happen’ and you made it into your mantra. You lived with the sense of infinite possibility…

Why did these last years have to be so painful? Who can know such things? And yet, when I think of your suffering, I think of one of the deepest teachings of the Piacezner Rebbe. In the dark fire of the Holocaust, he spoke of the G-d who suffers with us in our pain. This spoke to you. You wrote: “In my moments of suffering I acutely feel the presence of G-d.” You felt this strange intimacy at such moments. And, in all of the world, you came to find so much love.”

She was able to discover these teachers because in her words “Chochma (wisdom) is as the Zohar say, Koach Mah ‘the power of what’, of allowing oneself to be empty, to not know…a saying I heard in a totally different context, years before I discovered Torah, took on a new meaning: I used to be a moron, then I became an idiot, and now I am working on becoming a complete fool. This is the whole journey from dispassionate intellect to mindful heart – from thinking one knows everything to knowing one knows nothing.”

Of course, what these words of Debbie also remind us is that Debbie was not a saint or a detached intellectual. She was a real and vital human being all too aware of her feelings and failings, recognising the harsh, bruising reality of relationships and what Yeats called the ‘foul rag and bone shop of the heart where all the ladders start.’

For David, Orlee and Ben she was their very chilled mum, accepting, caring, guiding and fretting about them, reading David’s university papers, being there for Orlee as she did when she saved her as a child from a wilful pony, helping her Benny write that letter to release him from a traffic fine. David, Orlee and Ben, I want you to know she may have been laid back but she loved you ferociously. You were always top of her mind during these past years, as you were Helen. She worried constantly about you worrying about her.

For her siblings and half-siblings she was the adventurous, daring one, creative, surrounded by friends, with a sense of fun – in their words: “She grabbed life and extracted happiness from it”. She retained a good relationship with her former husband, Jack and his wife Pauline and would joke that in Pauline she had the best wife-in-law.

And then there was Doug, her best friend, her עזר כנגדה , the one who more than anyone else understood the sorrow and anguish of her changing face; Doug who schlepped her to and from those dreadful treatments; Doug who shared her Jerusalem muse (and we will hear their Jerusalem poems shortly).

Debbie not only enjoyed the company of words, she loved the companionship of her friends and the camaraderie of her Shira Chadasha community. We, her friends, feel as bereft as Rabbi Yochanan when his chavruta, his study partner, Reish Lakish died and he cried out: “Where are you, oh son of Lakish…” Where are you, oh Devorah, daughter of Chana.

On Friday, 1 July, Parshat Chukat, Debbie sent what I believe is her last email to her students, called the Mystic Kiss. In it she wrote: “Only I can determine how I will respond to vicissitude because my happiness or otherwise is in my hands. G-d writes the text of my life, but I write the commentary”.

‘This week in Parashat Chukat, siblings Miriam and Aharon come to the end of their lives. Miriam’s passing gets one line. Aharon’s takes nine verses. Many centuries later, Rashi noted that while Aharon, like Moses, died ‘at the mouth of G-d’ the same is not said of Miriam. Rashi’s rather surprising explanation is that for G-d to be seen “kissing Miriam would not be respectful of the was on High.” G-d can give Moses and Aharon the mystic kiss, but to be seen reaching down and kissing their sister Miriam would involve some kind of divine embarrassment! Many centuries after Rashi, in 1942 in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Rebbe of Piaceszna gave us a beautiful interpretation of this strange remark. It was seemly for men to give G-d the ‘mystic kiss’ because G-d always reaches down to men, giving them Torah and mitzvot. Women, as “others”, in their yearning to learn Torah, reach up, and draw it down. But Miriam reached up and kissed G-d, drawing Torah down.’

This piece of Torah was her favourite in Aish Hakodesh; it’s also about her life and the unique feminine way of channelling Torah. The brevity of the Torah’s description also underscores the unbearable anguish of her passing; a loss that leaves Moses lost and forgetting what he knew so well – she had been the one who knew how to draw water and life and blessing from the intractable, how to extract sweetness from the seemingly hard and obdurate below. Without her Moses was lost; he didn’t know how to speak to a rock.

Devorah guided by her martyred mentor learned how to find the radiance concealed in the darkness, the sweetness embodied in the hardness, the melody in the harsh light of the new day. In Rabbi Hoffman’s words: “If anyone sees Devorah’s rock please tell me so I can again sense her waters bubbling up from the ground.”

I know where I will look – in the commentaries she wrote, In tof in שיר השירים in the words she carried into the souls of her loved ones, in the teachings she etched into the hearts of all us who were blessed to have met her.

Shalom, dear friend, or in Aviva’s words: “Debbie – lechtech beshalom; lechtech leshalom! May your journey be in and to peace. We who admired and loved you – we pray that your ardent soul may find its true rest – tehi nafshech tzerurah betzror hachayim.

—Ralph Genende

Mark Baker on Debbie

On Tuesday I went to visit Debbie in the hospice, having just returned from an overseas trip. I waited outside the door as Orly woke her to tell her she had a visitor. I didn’t know what to expect, what state of mind she would be in. ‘Marky Baker,’ she greeted me. They were her only words for the duration of my visit. She was too weak to speak. So the conversation was up to me. What do you say a person who is dying – a person to whom you’ve come to say your last goodbye? I fumbled for words. I told her first that her book had sold out in Melbourne and that I was desperate for a copy. I told her that in exasperation we’d asked my daughter who was in Israel to try to find one, which she did at Steimatzky’s. This pleased Debbie. She smiled at the thought that her book was selling internationally. What do I say next? I was nervous, uncomfortable. I took her hand from beneath the covers and held it. ‘Is it OK if I hold the rabbis hand?’ I asked. She smiled at that one too. I then tried to find more words. Silence. And then in a moment of awkwardness, I possibly said the wrong thing.

We had a pact, you see. It was a game that had been going on since her cancer was diagnosed four years ago. In those early months, she had difficulty breathing. I remember coming home from shul one day and saying, My God, she really is going to die. But the chemo solved the breathing problem, and she regained her strength. As September approached, I asked her to give the Kol Nidrei drasha in our shul. It meant a lot to her to be there to give the holiest of sermons. Those Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana services had found a sanctuary in her home between the days of Hamakom and Shira Hadasha. For years we had prayed there, turning her living room into the kodesh kodashim, the holy of holies, and retreating for breaks into her kitchen or the garden outside, where David, Orly and Ben roamed in this wonderful intersection between home and temple, the familial and formal.

In this first drasha after her cancer was diagnosed, I remember her setting down one of her most important teachings. It drew on a poem written after the First World War by Robert Graves. ‘There is one story,’ the poem begins, ‘and one story only that will prove worth your telling.’ For Debbie, that story was not the temporal one that is measured by the clocks of our own lives, but a larger meta-narrative, a sacred journey that repeats itself, over and over, like a Torah scroll that starts and finishes each year.

When I first met Debbie about twenty years ago as our neighbor in Caulfield, she hadn’t yet discovered this story or her power to discern it. She would dress in the clothes of a child of the 1960s CE, not BCE. I remember she used to talk about physics and the black holes of the universe, but she hadn’t yet linked these interests with Jewish writings. In her last book, Soul to Soul, she talks in a modest way about the journey that eventually led her to find the confidence to become a teacher of Jewish texts. But we all know that she was more than a teacher. Debbie had discovered the sacred narrative of life, and over time came to embody it for us. She didn’t so much reinvent herself as reimagine her suburban existence in a story that appeared to transcend life itself, assuming the proportions of a biblical character, and dare I say it, the voice not of a teacher, but of a prophet. If I speak in the abstract about Debbie, about the idea of Debbie, it’s not because she wasn’t a person of flesh and blood – a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a teacher – but because everything in her life was inserted into this sacred story, in which the word and flesh became indistinguishable, and in which her voice gradually enveloped us in a revelation of fire.

Debbie was first diagnosed with cancer on Shavuot, the festival of revelation. And it quickly became apparent that the narrative she had chosen to live by was consuming her life. She had discovered the narrative through the writings of the Esh Kodesh, the holy fire of the Piazecner Rebbe who wrote his Torah commentaries in the Warsaw ghetto. From the pit of darkness, he observed the suffering of the world, clinging in his radical loneliness to the cleft of a rock from where he carved his commentaries in the presence of an impenetrable God.  Debbie’s commentaries on the Torah are written from that same rock. She lived the world of gilgulim, the circular stories of tortured souls passing like Moses through the wilderness, and yearning from those hard places of abandonment for connection and repair.

If God, as she wrote in her final email, writes the text and we are the commentary, then it had to be that she would die on this Shabbat Matot, about which she expounded exactly two years ago:

Hi Everyone, It's been a busy but enjoyable week. Fatigue is still an issue, but I gather it is an issue for many of us in the depths of this Melbourne winter (the sunny days are lovely though, and the rain is nourishing). … this week's double parsha brings us to the end of the Book of Numbers, and effectively to the end of the story, as most of Deuteronomy is a remembering of the journey. …This process is initiated, as Moses instructs the Israelites to look back over their 40 year journey and understand that, although it didn’t seem so at the time, every step had its place in the divine plan. May we come to know our own winding paths as treasured, sacred narrative.

At the end of her first Kol Nidrei drasha I said to her, start preparing for next year. She smiled. She had accepted the game. And in that year, her voice grew more fiery, her friendships and her words deepened. On that second Yom Kippur, she taught us the unforgettable lesson that grew from her first insight, that all of our lives are lived like a bird on a wire, on the thinnest wedge of the knife, always in the balance. As she spoke about the film Man on Wire, about the artist who had walked the tightrope between the New York skyscraper Babels that had been set on fire, she showed us how to balance our lives. She showed us what it means to live on that line under the axe of omnipresent death – between where we come from, a drop of water, and where we are going to, a place of maggots and worms – by living with the knowledge, the Daat, of lifnei mi atid lated din vecheshbon, before whom we have to give a reckoning.

From her kitchen armchair set by the light of her garden, Debbie helped many friends who came to visit her survive on that wire, and she guided and held onto those who had reached the end of the wire as she knew she would. Most of all, she showed us how to do it, how to balance the two ends by teaching us that there is no beginning and end, and that if you live death as you live life we have nothing to fear, and that once we let go of our fears, we can dance to the end of love and embrace the void which lies at the centre of the circle, in the black hole of the universe where creation and nothingness meet in what she would call, the divine kiss.

Don’t get me wrong; Debbie wanted to cling to that wire of life more than anything, to hold onto her children, David, Orly and Ben, her family and friends and nurture them as a mother, daughter, partner and a teacher. She was terrified of her cancer, but she understood that there was no safety net except for the webs of chesed we weave from ourselves to one another. ‘Next year!’ I told her after that drasha. ‘We need you to open up the gates for us.’ ‘Now, you’re being greedy,’ she answered. But there she was, one year later, against the odds thrown at her by the medicos in their white coats, and greeted instead at our shul on Yom Kippur by the angels in white gowns led by Orly, those cherubim and seraphim who surrounded her, including many of her Shira friends who are mourning on this day from Israel. And that was the drasha of a lifetime, the drasha in which she told us that her survival was no miracle, because she could not claim miracles for herself when others had been denied it. She taught us that year what it means to live under a mountain hanging from a thread of hair, or on the scales of our deeds, and to knock with all your spirit on heaven’s door until it could be pried open.

And so at the end of the drasha, I played my winning card. I told her once again, ‘Next year,’ as though she was Jerusalem. And this time, she didn’t say I was being greedy. She simply said, ‘There will be no next year.’ I left it there for a couple of months, and watched with all of you as her strength faded until one day a couple of months ago she called me and said. ‘I’ve written a book.’ ‘But…’ I started to say, realizing that I hadn’t understood how this woman of flesh and blood had become spirit, one of the great souls of our times, as Nathan said to me in an email last night, pure spirit, as Michael said, spirit who inspired us with the sight of one who saw things from the inside.

Soul to Soul: Writings From Dark Places, was her last drasha. The one she said she could not give this year.

Before I went overseas and we were talking about the launch, she asked me if I’d take some copies of her new book to Limmud in Sydney. But the books didn’t arrive on time, and so began a new phase in the sacred narrative, a new gilgul which she must have discerned, drawn from The Company of Words, her first book about her step-father’s dying days, who had written about his suffering servant, Job, and fought death until the book reached his hands. Debbie’s last days were days of waiting. She waited for her book, and when I left just before the launch, she was still concerned that the book hadn’t arrived. She had told me that with all her friends travelling overseas, maybe she would postpone the launch and hold it in the middle of July.

I faltered. I said to her, ‘No, it’s fine. You should do it immediately.’

And so when I returned home this week and went to visit her in the hospice on her last days, she must have known that I had pulled back the winning card. Our collusion had ended. I’d flinched and she knew it. I tried to take it back. My words were horribly wrong. In that moment of nervousness, after she greeted me on Tuesday, I said. ‘We need you for one more drasha.’ My heart sank as I saw her closed eyes clench even tighter around her sunken sockets, and a ripple of pain run across her face. Her narrative had ended. The white words on black fire had been consumed by total darkness. I let go of her hand. And silently I left the room.

At the doorway, I looked back one last time. She had turned her head and with one hand raised, she waved at me. She was still on the edge of the wire. She was telling me that goodbye doesn’t mean the end. That was the real drasha for this year, the understanding that she has given each of us through the eternal legacy of her commentaries and through the imprint of her tselem, her life soul, on our own life soul. Debbie made us realize we have a life soul.

And she taught us that we can open the gates without her. She was the one who taught me a long while ago that there are 49 gates that surround this world. ‘That’s what I’ll call my book,’ I said to her. ‘No, let me tell you about the fiftieth gate,’ she said. ‘The gate that is locked before us.’ ‘How do you open it,’ I’d asked. Debbie taught me: ‘The key to the gate is on the inside.’ ‘So how do you get inside?’ I wanted to know. In all her teachings, Debbie created the poetry of finding our way back to ourselves, our communities, and our narrative, through the secret passageway of our broken hearts. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. That is the songline of the sacred narrative. The way to open heaven’s door is through the break in our world, the white space between words, the silence between our breaths, the sound of the shofar meeting a didgeridoo, the pinpoint of light between life and death.

‘In the end, as in the beginning,’ writes Debbie of the book of Devarim which we begin reading again in two weeks, ‘Moses is missing from the Book that bears his name. Drawn beyond text into the Breath of infinite depth, he is the emptiness that holds our world in place, the mystery at the heart of creation. He is buried where the image meets its Source, where the taking is so fierce it is a giving, the listening so deep it is a song.’

Our friend and teacher Debbie, Devorah, is now lying there behind the pine lid of a coffin. Astir et panai. She is hiding her face, but she is here right now, present in her absence, in her begged or, her rags of light, on that broken hill which summons us to sing a song of yearning for what we have lost and remembered inside the mystery of the one sacred story.

—Mark Baker

The Round Up

Shira invites you to see

The Round Up
(La Rafle)

Saturday, May 7, 2011
at The Classic, Elsternwick

Program begins at 9:00 pm.

The Round Up (French: La Rafle) is a 2010 French film. Based on the true story of a young Jewish boy, Joseph, who starts on his way to school with a yellow star sewn on his chest, to a mixture of reactions from the community. Life under occupied France is one of fragile caution, until one morning, July 16th 1942, when 13,000 Jews are rounded up into the Velodrome, not by the Nazis but by the French Police, in their enthusiasm to collaborate. The film follows the real destinies of families caught up in this little known piece of history.

We will hear from a French survivor before the screening.

Tickets: $15

Bookings: please click here.

Purim Videos

Thanks to all our volunteers who helped make Purim so much fun, and thanks to our brilliant Megillah readers as well! Everyone's costumes, enthusiasm and hearty appetites helped make this one unforgettable Purim!

Alt Neu I am Art

The Tikkun Olam committee of Shira Hadasha is delighted to invite you to the inauguration of the Alt New I am Art gallery. Mark Baker will launch the exhibition, which features a recent work by Yosl Bergner that comments on the prevailing Indigenous predicament. 25% of proceeds from the gallery’s opening exhibition will be donated to one of our major endeavours. The kehillah will fund a graduating prize in honour of William Cooper,* for an Indigenous student in Indigenous Health, and another in Indigenous Education. Over time, we hope to grow these into full PhD scholarships. (Contributions warmly welcomed.)

Click here to download a PDF with more details.

* Check him out if you don’t know his story.

Purim @ Shira!

Shira invites you to a Persian Purim Palace Party!

Shira will be hosting a Persian Surprise on Saturday night after Megillah reading, and we’ll also be having a Megillah Extravaganza and Purim Seuda on Sunday morning. Don’t miss out on the fun!

Megillah reading on both days is free and open to all, as are the Persian Surprise and Purim Seuda! We ask that you RSVP for the Seuda by clicking here.

To download a flyer with more details about our Purim activities, click here.

A Freilichen Purim!

An Approach to Tikkun Olam

An Approach to Tikkun Olam at Shira, Feb 2011

The literal meaning of tikkun olam is mending the world, as in the Aleinu prayer; l'takken olam b'malkhut Shaddai, to repair the world under God's sovereignty. How do we do this; perfect the world, when we fall so far short of perfection ourselves?

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks,¹ in his 1997 address before the Orthodox Union Convention at the Institute for Public Affairs on the topic of Tikkun Olam; Orthodoxy’s Responsibility to Perfect G-d’s World, takes it to be that part which we should “take as Jews, specifically what part should we play as Orthodox Jews, in the wider concerns of the society in which we live.”

God tells Abram to go within himself, away from his lands and birthright and his father’s house, to the land that God would show him.² He tells him that He would make Avram into a great people, “and I will bless you and grow your name, and you shall be a blessing”. So, teasing this famous promise apart a little, yields the promise of the land, the promise of offspring, and the promise of being a blessing — as opposed to (merely) being blessed.

And herein lies, I believe, the secret of tikkun olam; when we, the offspring of Avraham can succeed in being a blessing to all the families of the earth and concern ourselves with the world’s distress, beyond our own personal blessings, then we can make tikkun olam.

But of course, as Rabbi Tarfon put it;³ “the day is short, the work is huge, the workers are lazy, the wage is great, and the Master of the house is insistent. It is not upon you to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it.”

We see in Avram’s blessings, the concentric circles from his innermost self to the outermost stranger — all the families of the earth will be blessed. And this we try to emulate by concerning ourselves with those who need our support both close at hand and also further away. After all, Hillel said not only:⁴ “if I am not for myself, who shall be for me?” He also said; “if I am for myself (alone), what am I?”

Here, then, is the answer to how we do it: we perfect the world one little Sisyphean bit at a time; to the best of our abilities; acknowledging that we are far from perfect, but that we are blessed, and that we can be a blessing for others. We do not each, individually, have to build utopia, but each of us must lift our bit of the sky - and lift it again when it drops.

The world has so many urgent needs begging to be fixed; natural disasters, asylum seekers, famines, diseases, we can’t name them all. Then there are the causes, small and large, from the whales to the ecology. And that’s without getting involved with any political “isms”. So how do we decide which part of the sky we will try to hold up as the Shira community, as opposed to Ms Ploni, the individual, or the Almoni Corporation?

There are tasks for each of us to take on individually, as families as good corporate citizens, but as the Shira community, we have decided to focus on three main streams of endeavour. In no particular order, we will offer support to members of own community who feel they need it; we will work to help disabled Jewish people and their families; and we will work to help Indigenous Australians towards their goal of true equality. Additionally, if anyone comes to us requesting help with something, we will do our best to help. Not everything involves money. But all things take time and heart and effort.

We are presently looking at interacting with existing organisations in Jewish disability and Indigenous disadvantage, since we have something of an aversion to reinventing wheels. One project we definitely want to look at is making the name and story of William Cooper better known. (Do you know about him?)

So, if you feel you have something to offer our communal effort, grab your piece of sky and get in touch.

Magdi Bar-Zeev
Tikkun Olam committee
______________________________

1: http://www.ou.org/public/Publib/tikkun.htm#_ftnref26
2: Bereishit 12:1-3
3: Pirkei Avot 2:20-21
4: Pirkei Avot 1:14

Nehama Patkin Memorial Concert

Celebrate the life and musical legacy of Nehama Patkin OAM
Compere  -  Peter Couchman

Performers include Suzanne Johnston, Rebecca Chambers, Tony Gould, Peter Hurley, Louisa Breen, Vocal Folds 4, and many more!

SUNDAY, 6 MARCH, 2011   2:30 – 4:00pm

ROBERT BLACKWOOD HALL, Monash University, Clayton (Melway map: 70 F11)

Everyone is welcome to attend an informal gathering after the concert when refreshments will be served. There is an additional charge to cover catering costs.

CONCERT ONLY
Tickets available until sold out.

Adult: $22
Student/Concession: $18
Child (15 yrs and under): $15
Children under 2: Free, if not occupying a seat

CONCERT AND REFRESHMENTS
Must book by Friday 25 February.

Adult: $42
Student/Concession: $38
Child (15 yrs and under): $22
Children under 2: Free, if not occupying a seat

TICKETS AVAILABLE FROM:

Monash University Box Office
(Hours: 9:30am – 4:30pm, Mon. – Fri.)

Ph: 03 9905 1111

Or book online: http://www.monash.edu.au/monart (when you enter the site, click on ‘Buy Tickets’)

FURTHER INFORMATION

Website: http://rememberingnehama.com
Email: concert@nehamapatkin.com
Phone: 0419 115 885

Tu Bishvat @ Shira

We had a wonderful Tu Bishvat Seder this year — thank you all for coming and making it so special! If you’d like to download a copy of our Seder, just click here.

Here are some photos from the Seder:

Arafat in Therapy

Arafat in Therapy

Shira member Jeremie Bracka will be performing his show: Arafat in Therapy at 8pm Thursday 10th Feb 2011 at Theatre Works, 14 Acland Street, St Kilda. Tickets are $35. Please purchase tickets through our website and write your name in the payment box. Tickets can be collected 20 minutes before the show at the theatre. (Adult themes, age 15+ recommended.)

Buy tickets here: http://www.fitzroystreetstkilda.com.au/content/arafat-therapy

JEREMIE BRACKA in Arafat In Therapy

"Yasser Arafat in therapy? Now that's an analysis worth watching."

Spanning several ethnicities, Arafat In Therapy is an edgy one-man satire on the Middle-east peace process. From U.N. resolutions to CNN, this show is a piss-take on politicians, peacemakers and human rights.

Jeremie Bracka trained at the National Theatre Drama School. His previous shows include: Lox, Shmocks and Two Smoking Salmons (2006) and Enough About Me...Let's Talk About Jew! which was a critically acclaimed hit at Melbourne's International Comedy Festival 2007 and the NYC Fringe Festival 2008.

Being Real

Being Real in our Judaism, Being Real in our Lives
Yom Kippur 5771
(This drasha is written partly in shorthand, please excuse any mistakes )

I’d like to start with a tip for Yom Kippur. I got this by email before RH:

Alongside the list of viduy, list of sins, in the silent amidah, why don’t we say a list of things you did well. ‘I cared for my friends and relatives’; ‘I gave tzedaka this year’; ‘I was a good spouse’.”

We got a lot of stuff wrong this year, made quite a few mistakes. But I’m sure between all of us in this room we got quite a lot of stuff right as well. We had moments of which we can be proud of, moments we’d like to emulate, return and strengthen for next year.

Elana and I have been coming here on and off for 6 years, 4th visit.
I’d like to point out things on this shuls good list, things I learned from this shul, from all of you.
Singing: I’d remember our first Kabbalat Shabbat – the singing was soaring, running, breaking through the walls of the week into a world of Shabbat. Davening like a footy match. Singing as a spiritual practice. The Hasidic masters noted that the songs we sing on Shabbat are not called shirim but zemirot זמירות – the word for song which also means “to prune” – לזמור. Wen we are singing in davening we are pruning our soul. This is the kind of singing we do at Shira.
A way of being Australian. I see here not only pride in your nationality, but also a willingness to take responsibility for issues. Not a resident alien mentality, but deeply rooted in the place you are. And not just the good news about Oz, but the bad news as well – immigration, aboriginal issues, racism. Jews often make politics completely ethnically based – Israel decides all. Here I learned a model where Israel is always at the heart, but politics are about deeply caring for this land for what it is. Bringin this caring to shul is truly remarkable. That’s what shul is at Shira – a place where we care.
Gender and Inclusiveness: not only the bold decision to include women in the service as much as Halakha would allow, but a deep spirit of including people in the shul no matter their age or background. Two weeks ago a ten year old gave the most moving derasha, sharing his concern for prejudice against autistic people, advocating for his friend. This was just before his mother gave a deep and learned derasha herself. How many other shuls would showcase those voices as their central speakers?
Those are some of the things on the “good list” of this community, I think, and alongside the brow beating, I’d like to recognize those, strengthen that positive center, and build from it to grow ourselves more this yom Kippur.
What combines all of these traits? It’s an attempt to be real. Real in our singing. Real in our membership both in our Judaism and in our australianism. Real in our relationship between genders. Real in our Judaism.

Real-ness. The calling for real-ness in our Judaism comes from the most powerful Talmudic story for me personally.

Yoma 69b:
For R. Joshua b. Levi said: Why were they called men of the Great Assembly [Knesset]? Because they restored the crown of the divine attributes to its ancient completeness. [For] Moses had said: 'The great God, the mighty, and the awesome'. (Deut. 10:17) Then Jeremiah came and said: Aliens are destroying His Temple. Where are, then, His awesome deeds? Hence he omitted [the attribute] the ‘awesome’ (Jer. 32:17). Daniel came and said: Foreigners are enslaving his sons. Where are His mighty deeds? Hence he omitted the word ‘mighty’(Dan. 9:4). But they [the men of the great assembly] came and said: On the contrary! Therein lie His mighty deeds that He suppresses His wrath, that He extends long-suffering to the wicked. Therein lie His awful powers: For but for the fear of Him, how could one [single] nation persist among the [many] nations! But how could [the earlier] Rabbis [Jeremiah, Daniel] abolish something established by Moses? R. Eleazar said: Since they knew that the Blessed Holy One is real, they could not ascribe false [things] to Him.

Just like those prophets, knowing that god is real to us, knowing the our Juadism is real for us, therefore we can’t lie about. We can’t be fake in it.
My inspiration from Shira is about bringing that kind of “realness” to the shul experience, to our Judaism. Tradition can often prevent us from being real. We are doing this today because we did it yesterday – thank God for that, but also how terrible is that.
None of us was here six years ago. This shul is not a place you go to simply because you went last year, because you are expected to by outside standards.
If we are here, it is because we want to be here. We are here deliberately, and we are bringing our full selves.
But alongside that we are sticking to the old recipes. We deeply respect our traditions, we do not change the basic structures that bind us to community and to the past, rather we reinterpret. Powerfully, radically if needed. Why? Because just like those Prophets, Jeremiah and Daniel, because we know our Judaism is real, perhaps even because we know God to be real, we can’t lie about it.
That’s the end of the compliments. Now to the brow beating:
What would it mean for us to translate that concept of real-ness to our wider lives? Since we know our lives are real, we can’t lie about them, we can’t fake our way through them. I’d like to suggest YK is a waking up for us to be real in our lives. We purge our actions, the good and the bad, and awaken a deeper self.
It is so hard to be real in our lives. Not to fake it, hoping that no one is watching too closely. It’s easier to do things simply because we’ve done them before. To say “this moment doesn’t count”. To fake through a moment without giving it much thought. Being truly authentic in the moment, demanding from ourselves that kind of presence.
The Kotzker rebbe said: If you davened today because you davened yesterday – that’s avodah zarah. A powerful statement that our religious lives, our connection to God cannot be by rote, but through full presence and authenticity.
What happens when I say that about my wife? Kiss today because of yesterday – that’s adultery!
And that’s about the good deeds in our lives.
The Talmud says “a person only sins if a moment of silliness, of discombobulation.” If we can stay real, we usually don’t sin.
What does it mean to be “real” in our lives?
We are real when we are being deliberate about our lives. When we are acting in a way that we are willing to be defined by.
Relationships
My parents, my children. My friends.
“In general I want to be good, but not right now” “In general I don’t recoil, be angry, but this is differnet” – so many of those moemnts – those are the “not for real” moments, when we allow ourselves to not be real
What’s the dynamic in the relationship – is this what I want it to be about?
“this counts” – when we are acting as we would like to.
Critique: When we do not compartmentalize, but bring our full presence to bear. Not hiding our opinions or critiques, but bringing them to light so they ca be aired and the relationship can improve.
Financial
Often something overlooked in “Jewish talk”
Moving from simply whats “legal” and “obligatory” to the what is just, right and good
Pirated material, copyright infinrgement – might not count, but it’s not right and good. Taxes. Being upfront and faithful in our business trnasactions.
הטוב והישר doing the good and the just
Not because I’ll get caught, but because I know it to be the right thing
Not an outside barometer, but the inside one
With ourselves
This moment counts. The times when we aren’t cheating ourselves, cutting corners.
Diet
Finding the moment that we would be willing to be defined by

The challenge: to be real this year. In our relationships, in our politics. In our financial choices. In our Judaism.
For me, this is what God is about.
ה' אלהיכם אמת
God is ultimate reality. It almost doesn’t matter if you believe in him or not. God in our culture represents “the real”, creation, din – judgement. All those things are about being real. What does it mean to stand before something truly real? That is yom ha-din. But that is what life is. Only most of the year we can’t take it. Once a year we get together. We don’t eat, because food so often distracts us. Lack of food reminds us how real our bodies are, how fragile our lives.
ואתה הוא מלך אל חי וקים
חיים
Another way to day it is through life. When we talk about the books of life and death opening, not necessarily actual end of life, although that is to often the case. It’s also about” will we be ALIVE this year”? will we take control of our lives, live our lives in full? זכרנו לחיים – remember us into life. Bring us to life. God is the God of life, life-force itself. Being connected to life is being connected to God, and that something worth crying about.
So what does it mean to stand in front of god on Yom Kippur with this desire for real and life?
People who make me feel fake. Real people. Standing in front of them, it suddenly becomes oh so clear all the thigs I need to improve in my life. All the קליפות – the layers of falsity and dried behaviours that I need to peel off. Every time the Aron opens – it is like that.

But come on. It is so hard to be “real” like that. How can we possibly be expected to be like that all year?
Looking at the YK ritual, we discover it is more complicated than that.
The ritual we just read this morning mentions two acts of purification, of atonement: the sacrificial goat, the scape goat who bears our sins and “gets rid” of them very literally.
But there is also the purging of the altar. A strange ritual where the kohen sprinkles the blood of the animal on the altar. This is what we’ll repeat in seder haAvodah in about an hour nad a half.
What is that about?
The Kohen Gadol enters the holy of holies, which is never entered into the whole year, that most intimate, dangerous, delicate place. The place which represents the fact that God chose to dwell among us. ועשו לי משכן ושכנתי בתוכם – the whole idea of the mishkan was the crazy idea that God wanted to dwell among the people. (In hasidut – the person itself)

Once inside the holy of holies, the high priest purges the altar.
What?
As Jacob Milgrom, z”l, explains: all year the sins of the people of Israel rest on the altar. Like a “dirty conscience”, a collective one, the altar collects the residue of all of our mistakes and malicious actions.
What’s so moving to me about this idea is that it accepts the fact that there are going to be mistakes. There are even going to be malicious actions, purposeful hurts in this relationship. God knows that. He never expected otherwise.
This is the secret of the verse: השוכן איתם בתוך טומאותם - God understands that he is residing among us, in our impurtuies. In our inadequacies. That is the secret of true committed relationship.
Friend hwo is dating – I know I want her good sides. But am I willing to be שוכן איתם בתוך טומאותם? And God says – Yes! I am! I know there will be all kinds of impurities, and still I want to dwell with you.
But there is a limit. A point after which that altar gets too crowded with ill will. At that point, God could not take it anymore, so to speak, and would leave his dwelling among us.
That is why we must purge the altar once a year. A thorough cleaning, and a riddance of the ill will that has accumulated. A forgivement of all past greviencas, all emotional debts. And a fresh start.
That is the meaning of the avodah of YK.

To translate this back into our previous discussion:
Yom Kippur understands that we aren’t always going to be “real” in that full sense we described before. That there will be all kinds of moemnts.
But it calls upon us to purge ourselves. to be reminded of who we can be when we are real.
To bring us back into full presence with ourselves.
Through fasting, through prayer, through some brow beating. Through purging singing.

And I think that is what god wants. He wants us to be real. YK is a an opportunity to be real again.

Zusha – scariest story in hassidut.
Zushya of Anipoli – on YK, or maybe on Carlisle street having a coffee – starts to shake – child asks, why are you crying?
I had a vision I was dying, and at the gates they asked me a question:
They didn’t ask me why I wasn’t Moshe Rabbeinu, why I wasn’t Abraham or Sarah, or Devorah the prophet
Why weren’t I Zushya. That’s what they asked me when I met my maker. And that’s why I cried in the middle of Carlisle street: Will I be able to be myself?

Psalm 102

Rosh Hashana Drasha by Melanie Landau

Psalm 102: My days are like a lengthening shadow; and I, like grass that will wither. But You, YHVH, sit enthroned forever; and your memory from generation to generation.

Shana tova. These awesome days cast our attention to our mortality and invite us to use this awareness to propel us forth to express our truths, show ourselves, live the lives that we want to live, and recommit ourselves to our visions for ourselves and for a redeemed world. Relationship is the heart of our life's purpose and the key motif of RH — the question of who we are and what are we doing in the world and with whom we are doing it? RH addresses us on an individual level. This drasha is both an advertisement for our glorious imperfection and an invitation to mediate dangerously in our lives — the danger that comes from being present in our relationships and taking the risk in engaging honestly, showing ourselves, not knowing where it will take us, knowing we haven't been there before, letting go of all that is familiar.

On Rosh Hashanah, we each crown the divine, we each undergo judgement. Who are we to crown God and what is the meaning of this judgement? By crowning God we take responsibility, take ourselves out of the victim role, despite our severe limitations, and we remind ourselves that we can make a difference. Crowning God — putting our attention on something utterly non-human, is a way of seeing ourselves in our human imperfection. RH is about our smallness and our significance — the intensely personal and the resoundingly cosmic.

How should we relate to the judgement of today? Sometimes spiritual practices reinforce the habits and patterns that we have and get moulded to fit in to everything that we already know. We take them and we whip ourselves like we've been whipped as long as we can remember — and when it's not someone else who's criticising us, we've got a whole cacophony on the inside doing it to. We're not to blame for taking on these habits. But the good news is God's judgement is not about being guilty or innocent. They are the wrong categories. No one is innocent — we're human, we're imperfect. Our holy ancestors started out with great examples of these imperfections and that was truly very generous of them. And we could possibly spend our lifetimes accepting our human imperfections with grace and delight.

The judgement that I'm advocating today is an examination, getting to have a good look, a look at ourselves, having the opportunity to take stock, acknowledging and praising us for what we've done and how we've done it. Let's allow our life to flash by this RH. We all truly have much to be praised for. (Think of something you did which you're pleased about.) We can determine if the judgement has been successful, if after it we walk away with anticipation and gratitude, with an increased capacity to delight in our selves and in others and be of service to the world. Naturally any sadness would be a result of our own heartbreak at where we have struggled and where we couldn't act as the good people we really are. I know that no one is an exception to this.

I've participated in a few Vipassana meditation retreats, where you sit for 10 days in meditation. Most of the pain that I felt was the judgement and the harshness meted out by the self to the self. And every so often after it built up it would crack and dissolve with some tears. The very last session they give you a tool called “metta”, that's their version of the 13 midot of hessed, lovingkindness — but why wait till the end! We don't need to wait to Neilah to be swept up in the glorious abundance of lovingkindness, we need it now and always! We're not going to be able to look at ourselves very well if we don't activate this compassion and lovingkindness.

I just participated in a transformative weekend workshop on Ending White Racism led by the great granddaughter of Sir Edmund Barton, the first Prime Minister of Australia and the Father of Federation. Some of you may recall that the Barton government's first piece of legislation was the Immigration Restriction Act, which put the White Australia policy into law that restricted non-white immigration to Australia. She has big plans for Australia and for the role she can play in transforming racism here. She has visions of treaties with Indigenous landowners, of the re-possession of crown land and of the valuing of Indigenous culture and language through the educational and health systems. Interestingly though, she is not coming at this challenge from a position of guilt. Her perspective is that we can't do this work and undo our oppressor patterns unless we are totally delighted with ourselves. Most of the weekend we got to see what stands in the way of us being totally delighted with ourselves and with others. Racism gets to stay in place because it makes everyone feel bad about themselves. It also divides the beneficiaries of white privilege between the “good” whites and the “bad” whites. It was a very early when we got the hurt of no longer being delighted in ourselves. It's not our fault and it's not even our parents' fault. But we no longer need to suffer from the hurt of it. Crowning God, and recognising the relative insignificance of ourselves and our lives in terms of eternity, can be a way to reclaim the full potential of that human limit.

Let's come back to what I've called the heart of this process — the centrality of relationships, its relationship to the story of Hagar we just read and its application as the crucible of our life journeys in personal and collective ways. Our security is based on our relationships. We can and do learn the most fundamental lessons of our lives through relationships. They're not the side dish — they're the main course. We just read about Hagar and Ishmael's banishment from the House of Abraham through Sarah's instigation. What is that doing here on the first day of RH? Well for one, RH links us back through Jewish motifs but back to universal humanity (where Pesach is birth of Jewish nation). To reinforce this we bring to the heart of our service, our collective memory of our oppressive actions. I say our, because we're not going to use this story to blame Sarah, we're going to use this to thank her for opening up the possibilities and the freedom of what it means to acknowledge that we too have that oppressor part — and that even that — as part of us can be acknowledged and transformed. When have we been too scared to act in a way we know is right in the face of someone else's feelings and pressure? When have we transferred our feeling bad to blaming another person, or making them feel bad? We can do it in overt ways and we can do it in more subtle energetic ways. I bump up next to someone, they're bounding energy and beaming light and I need to cut them down because somehow they evoke terrible feelings in me, their light shines on how bad I feel about myself. Other times I may be able to recognise their light and their vitality as a reflection and extension of my own. There's lots of levels we need to forgive our self on and lots of levels and degrees — more and less subtle — in which we can grow.

Let's have another look at the narrative more closely: It seems to me that Sarah's feeling of shame and feeling like a victim was at the root of her sending out Hagar and transferring that shame. It started with her saying that Hashem has made her a “tzhok” (could be laugh or laughing stock) and then Sarah saw Ishmael “playing” or “mocking” and she reacted by asking Avraham to chase him and his mother out of the household. Everything can be read in different ways. God tells Abraham not to worry about the boy and his mother and to listen to Sarah's voice. Maybe that could have meant that he didn't need to do what she said, he just needed to listen to the pain that she was expressing through her words. Her desire for banishment of Hagar and Ishmael came from a place of pain within her. We are called to bring compassion to the one who has acted as an oppressor. It has to begin with ourselves but has to extend to those to whom we don't want it to extend. No one is left out of the circle. We are called to reconciliation. Hagar calls to God and is answered, and God also promises to make a great nation from her son Ishmael. It is only at the time of Abraham's death that the two brothers are finally reconciled to each other, set free from the divisive narrative into which they were born, without choice. US poet Edwin Markham in “Outwitted" could have been describing this reconciliation from Ishmael's perspective, at least at the end of Avraham's life. He writes: He drew a circle that shut me out – Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in!

Last week I had a great privilege at Monash, to teach overseas students in a seminar on "Interfaith Relations in the 21st Century". There were students from Brunei, Malaysia, Pakistan and China, several of whom had never met a Jew. Of course, this was no obstacle to them having lots of ideas about Jews. I started the class with some basic introductions and then I got them to go in pairs and share with each other their earliest memories of hearing about Jews and/or meeting them. After they shared with each other I invited them to report back to the class. People covered their hands with their mouths because they felt bad about the thoughts they had had, the sentiments they had heard and shared. I told them I was delighted — the more they would say to me, the happier I'd be. It makes it safer to have all of that baggage upfront. Someone I met described this encounter as “mediating dangerously” in the good sense. This is so because we push ourselves to the limits with others where it would be dangerous, because we have no map, no idea where we are going but it is in those places that we effect transformation. We open ourselves in the face of negativity coming our way, staying in our knowledge of our own power despite the scrumptious pull to identify in the position of victim.

This Shabbes Shuva marks the 9th anniversary of 9/11 and there are planned demonstrations against the building of Cordoba mosque and cultural centre near ground zero. Part of the controversy around the building of the mosque is the fear of it being interpreted as some kind of triumphalism. On the other hand, people who support its building see it as a chance for Muslims to be able to express their commitment to promoting interfaith dialogue and for recasting the dynamics of Muslim-non-Muslim relationships in the US since 9/11. Not all Muslims are supportive of the proposal. I don't wish to advocate for an outcome in this forum, but I do want to express my concern about the demonstration that will be taking place on Shabbat Shuva that I fear will provoke hatred of Islam and Muslims, failing to distinguish between those responsible for 9/11 and the vast majority of other people. Our community is also in danger of falling in to this undiscerning hatred – fear mongering now spreads like wildfire on the internet — I pray that we use the wisdom of this day to strengthen ourselves to avoid all the ways that we can turn humans, any human — into “others” — thus avoiding the interpersonal wounds we create through demonization and stereotype.

Once we commit to being delighted in ourselves and also deeply understanding when we fall short, it's not a big ask for us to decide to end all family “broigas” and disputes. What do we have to overcome in ourselves to reconcile with every single person in our lives. What feelings of rage and resentment, hurt, humiliation, and betrayal will we need to (feel and then) put down? And if we can do this with ourselves, what is possible on a communal level? I've got great hopes. On a small scale I'm planning an intra-community closed dialogue on Israel making space for the expression of diversity of opinion that blossoms from this community. What becomes possible on a national, international level? With our imperfect humanity and open heartedness let's mediate dangerously in our own lives, and make space for our relationships to grow and transform taking us to new places, one's we didn't know existed. Let's use our insignificance to our advantage by not letting ideas of who we think we are come in the way of what we need to do.

There is nothing better I know than the groan of the shofar; the cry; the breath; to reflect back to us the power and goodness of humanity in our imperfection.

Psalm 102: My days are like a lengthening shadow; and I, like grass that will wither. But You, YHVH, sit enthroned forever; and your memory from generation to generation.

Neila

Yom Kippur Drasha by Ittay Flescher

Just as Yom Kippur is the climax of the 10 days of repentance, so Neila is the climax of Yom Kippur. The heavenly judgement inscribed on Rosh Hashana is sealed during Neilah. According to the Artscroll siddur, one should try and bring oneself to tears during Neila. In order to facilitate the added fervour required for Neila, various customs have been adopted:

• Open Ark
• A respected rabbi leads the tfilla
• Stand for the whole time
• Moving melodies are used
• Avinu malkeinu is recited
• Before neila, a respected leader of the congregation exhorts the people to tearful repentance.

What can I say to make you cry? Nothing. But I can make you think.

The liturgy of yamim noraim with its constant refrains to choose between teshuva or death, invites us to ponder big questions about justice in this world.
-Is there justice in the world?
-Does justice mean everyone gets what they deserve?
-Is God just?

In the Book of Job this question is answered in the affirmative, but in the story of Sodom, perhaps the answer is no. In the story of Sodom God wants to inflict collective punishment on the entire city for the sins of having too much chessed or maybe not enough.

Is there a time when we should argue with God about justice like Avraham did when he said “Will you sweep away the innocent along with the guilty?

Avraham bargained for human life. He scolded God saying
“Far be it from you!
Shall not the judge of all the earth deal justly?” (Gen 18:25)

Why argue with God? Would he really change his mind?

There was once a sage in Sodom, who would walk the streets shouting at the people to change their ways. At first some of them listened. But over time, they stopped listening and returned to their old lives. The sage continued to walk the streets and shout. One day a small boy approached the Sage. ‘Do you not know that they do not listen to you?’
the boy asked. ‘Yes, I know,” replied the Sage. “Then why do you keep shouting?”
“If I still shout,” answered the Sage, “it is no longer to change them, it is so they do not change me.” – Sage in Sodom (Elie Wiesel), told by Donna Jacobs Sife

In today’s world, I sometimes wonder whether we have lost the holy chutzpah to make the case for justice when injustice is being done in the name of God.

In today’s world there are so many crimes committed in the name of religion that faith has gone from being described as something noble and virtuous to something that is irrational and even immoral.

It doesn’t need be this way. In 2008, Karen Armstrong started a movement to change religion. As an academic who researched all of the world’s major religions, she found that every ‘major’ religion put at its core what's become known as the ‘Golden Rule’.

For Example:
Confucianism: “One concept sums up the basis of all good conduct… loving kindness. Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself” (Analects 15:23)
Hinduism: “This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you” (Mahabharata 5:1517)
Islam (hadith): “None of you (truly) believes until you wish for others what you wish for yourself.
Taoism: Regard your neigbours gain as your own gain, and your neighbours loss as your own loss.
Christianity: In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets. –Jesus, Matthew 7:12
Bahai: Lay not on any soul a load that you would not wish to be laid upon you, and desire not for anyone the things you would not desire for yourself.
Judaism: Masechet Shabbat 31a

A certain heathen came to Shammai [a first century B.C.E. rabbi] and said to him, “Make me a proselyte, on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.” Thereupon he repulsed him with the rod which was in his hand. When he went to [Rabbi] Hillel, he said to him, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour: that is the whole Torah; all the rest of it is commentary; go and learn.”

Noticing that these religions had so much in common, Karen Armstrong launched the Charter for compassion in 2008. The aim of this charter was to get as many religious leaders and followers as possible to sign the charter. Armstrong felt that this would be the best way to turn religion from a force for evil, to a force for good. An extract from the charter reads:

Charter for compassion
We therefore call upon all men and women ~ to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion ~ to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate ~ to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures ~ to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity ~ to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings—even those regarded as enemies.

Thus far it has been signed by Dalai Lama, Tariq Ramadan, Desmond Tutu, Rabbi David Saperstein, Queen Nor of Jordan and has institutional support from Cordoba Initiative in New York to the Elijah Interfaith Institute in Israel. It has also been signed by over 50 000 other individual around the world.

This is one way to interpret religion.
I know what you thinking. How naïve is this. Religions exist to separate people by highlighting their differences and uniqueness. If one believed that we were all the same, it is more likely the text of choice would be john lennon’s imagine than it would be a text from any one of the holy books. That’s why when we are called to the torah we say ‘asher bachar banu MI call ha’amim” and not “asher bachar banu IM(with) kol ha’amim.

This Nihilistic view that religion and life are doomed to cause strife and should therefore be abandoned was one that confronted Viktor Frankl in his famous book, “Man’s search for meaning”

His friend says to him, “You must realize that the world is a joke. There is no justice, everything is random. Only when you realize this will you take yourself seriously. There is no grand purpose in the universe, it just is. There’s no particular meaning in what decision you make today about how to act.”

In our hyper “reality” driven world where fame is what happens to the person in Australia who can make the best guava custard snow egg on masterchef, this description seems highly apt.

However, this view must not prevail. In the final chapter of Frankl’s book aptly titled "The Case for a Tragic Optimism" Frankl makes the case that people will benefit from an optimistic perspective of life no matter what their hardships. According to logotherapy, meaning is a tangible, down to earth concept. Frankl reiterates the three ways for people to arrive at meaning: accomplishing something, experiencing something or encountering someone, or turning a personal tragedy into triumph.
Frankl’s golden rule is this:

“Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted wrongly the first time.”
I think the strongest case for optimism and compassion in the world comes from the prophet Yishayahu. The biggest dreamer of them all. He dreams that one day “all nations will beat their swords into plow shares and turn their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, and that they shall never again know war.” (Isaiah 2:4)

I argue that dreaming about utopian visions about what the world could be is not utopian or naïve. It is actually the most Jewish thing to do of all.

Yom Kippur is going to end in one hour. What will you take from this day?
In Isaiah’s time, the people were complaining to him that their Yom Kippur fast was not working. Isaiah tells us what the people had said to him.

They ask Me for the right way,
They are eager for the nearness of God:
They say, “Why, when we fasted, did You not see?
When we starved our bodies, did You pay no heed?”

Yishayhu answers in the name of Hashem
Because on your fast day
You see to your business
And oppress your workers!
Your fasting makes you violent, and you quarrel and fight. Do you think this kind of fasting will make me listen to your prayers?
When you fast, you make yourselves suffer; you bow your heads low like a blade of grass and spread out sackcloth and ashes to lie on. Is that what you call fasting? Do you think I will be pleased with that?

"The kind of fasting I want is this: Remove the chains of oppression and the yoke of injustice, and let the oppressed go free. Share your food with the hungry and open your homes to the homeless poor. Give clothes to those who have nothing to wear, and do not ignore your own kin. (Isaiah 58:2-7)

What Isaiah is telling us is that the best form of fasting and prayer is one that leads to action. In 1955, when Abraham Joshua Heschel joined Martin Luther King in the civil rights march he said. "For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was both protest and prayer. Legs are not lips, and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying." In 5771, please

Pray with your wallet, by donating to good causes
pray with your facebook profile, by promoting awareness of injustice
pray with you time, by volunteering
pray with your eyes, by not turning away from seeing
pray with your ears, by listening to peoples stories
pray with your kitchen by cooking food for the sick
Given that at this final hour of Yom Kippur, Shira doesn’t have “a respected leader of the congregation exhorts the people to tearful repentance.” I will quote from a very person who, if we had a rabbi, might be up at the bimah now. Not because of his Talmudic knowledge or sermon giving ability, but because of his ability to move us through song. The man is of course, Leonard Cohen.

And even though, It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

San Luis Rey

Yom Kippur Drasha by Debbie Masel (Miller)

A few months ago my friend Howard Goldenberg lent me a very little book that asks a very big question. The book is called The Bridge of San Luis Rey, by the American novelist Thornton Wilder, and it opens with an account of the collapse of a bridge in Peru at noon on the 20th of July, in the year 1714, about a century after it was woven from osier by the Incas. In the collapse, five people plunge to their deaths.

The big question is asked by a little monk who observes the disaster. Why, he asks, did these five people die at this exact time? Were they just in the wrong place at the wrong time, the victims of chance and circumstance? Or were their lives and their deaths the direct work of God?

Are we blown about willy nilly like driven leaves, like wind along the waste? Or is everything in this world, all the way down to the fall of every sparrow directed by the hand of God?

Perhaps the biggest question of all is how to reconcile faith in divine direction with a world that tolerates chaos, suffering and pain.

In Wilder’s novel, the little monk is the only one of the many witnesses to the disaster to ask the big question.

The others quite humanly exclaim,
“It could have been me!”
“I was just about to cross…”
“I just crossed over that bridge one minute ago!”
“I’ve been saved by a miracle!”

Disasters inevitably give rise to accounts of miraculous survival.

All of us here who are old enough to remember must have read the ones that made their way around the internet in the wake of 9/11.

“I would have been there, but I had a toothache and got an emergency dentist appointment and so I didn’t get to work on time!”

“My car broke down!”
“I got caught in traffic!”
“I went to help a sick friend!”
“It was a miracle! I was saved by a miracle!”

These stories bring us back to the little monk’s big question. Even those who tell of their miraculous survival must surely also think:

“What about the guy from the 16th floor of the North Tower in the office next to mine whose car didn’t break down?”
“What about the woman across the hall who didn’t get stuck in traffic and got to work at the World Trade Centre on time that morning?”
Was God not watching over them? What does it mean?

In his book on life and death in the concentration camps, Viktor Frankl writes that it is the search for meaning, the faith in meaning, even in the most shattering circumstances, that defines us as human. He says that we must never give up the search for meaning, even in a world that seems incomprehensible.

Yet at the very start of his book, Frankl acknowledges that those who survived the camps, survived by sheer luck. By blind chance. “The best of us,” he writes, “did not return.”

According to Frankl and many other survivors, from our human perspective, life is a lottery. Our ancient sages agree. Yom Kippur, they say is a Yom k’Purim, a day like Purim.
At first glance the two days couldn’t seem more different — one so utterly material, the other so purely spiritual, yet the concept of chance, of blind luck, is a central feature of both.

In the story of Purim, Haman chooses the day for the genocide of the Jews by casting lots. On Yom Kippur, the high priest takes two goats and draws lots to determine which will be sanctified, and which will be flung, like the five who died in the collapse of the Bridge of San Lui Rey, into the abyss.

Along with Viktor Frankl, the sages seem to be saying that from our human perspective, life and death is a matter of chance.

But when we look into this more deeply, it is not a matter of chance at all. There is no option. It is a matter of fact. We are all going to die. God created us mortal. Every year, every day, every moment, people are born and people die.

So when we ask to be written into the Book of Life, what are we really asking of God? Are we asking that it not be us, that it be someone else, someone far away on the other side of the world, someone we don’t know? Are we begging God to send the Angel of Death anywhere but here, the further and more foreign the better?

Or are we asking something more fundamental? Are we asking God to go back to the beginning and change the blueprint of creation, to recreate a new, different world in which death has no part?

Nathan Wolski’s recently published book on the Zohar clarified for me something about the mystics’ interpretation of creation. God didn’t just create the blueprint in which death is so vital an ingredient. God is the blueprint.

The mystics teach that Creation depends as much upon on God’s absence as upon His presence. In a sense, there could be no creation without what might be called “the death of God.” They explain that in His deep desire for a world, God withdrew His infinite light, to make space for creation, for us. In this act of love, of stepping back, He left a divine imprint, a hidden memory of love, breathed into the first human and transferred throughout the generations, from one soul to another.

And now, on the eve of this Sabbath of Sabbaths we are about to step into that hidden imprint of love, created by God’s withdrawal. We are about to enter the soulbreath of creation. The Talmud teaches that if only the Jewish people kept two Sabbaths, they would be immediately redeemed. This is usually understood to mean that if every Jew in the world fully observed two consecutive Shabbats, the age of Moshiach would dawn.A beautiful Hassidic interpretation, however, suggests that “two Shabbatot” refers not to two consecutive Shabbats, but to two Sabbaths that coincide on a single day. That can only be today, right now, when Yom Kippur, which the Torah calls Shabbat Shabbaton, the Sabbath of all Sabbaths, and the weekly Sabbath are one and the same day. Right now, we are entering the holiest of days, a moment of infinite possibility. The busyness of the six days of the week are right now being replaced by the still peace of Shabbat and by the pure spirituality of Yom Kippur, when we divest ourselves, with faith, of what we need to sustain life, and step into the souls of angels. Tomorrow morning we will return to this room and look out onto the park and see joggers and dog walkers and tennis players. We’ll hear car horns blare and trams rumble along Balaclava Road.

But, as the poet Doris Brett said to me the other day, we will be like the birds who sing from the treetops in the park to the tune of their own rhythms, oblivious to the sounds of the surrounding city. We will be here, inside the inside, in the still centre, beyond all that busyness, inside the Sabbath of all Sabbaths, standing before God.

This day is unique in all the year. It is the innermost sanctum, the holy of holies.

To me the most mysterious thing of all is that according to the law of Torah, it is not God, but we who create this sanctuary.

In the Torah, God commands us to set aside the tenth day of the seventh month for our annual Day of Atonement, but the sages stress that it is up to us to decide which particular day this will be. After the end of the lunar cycle, we proclaim the new moon. We determine which day will be the first of the month, and hence, which will be the tenth. We decide that this particular evening, this Shabbat, these clouds, this sky shall be the sky of Yom Kippur. It is we who sanctify time. We decide that on this particular day, our prayers will open all the gates of heaven.

If we can establish the holiness of Yom Kippur how much more can we create the beauty of a regular day?

The Hassidic master, Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav used to say that each day is unique, born of its own song, and we are the singers of that song.
We cannot stop the day from dying, and that is part of its glory, but if we don’t sing it into being it will pass us by like a driven leaf, like wind along the waste, as if it never was.
We can’t change the way the world was made, but we can change the way we wear it.

On Shabbat Shuva Gabbi reminded us that Rebbe Meir, the great illuminator of the Torah, changed an ayin to an aleph and transformed begged or, our shameful coverings of leather, into begged ohr, our radiant rags of light. And from the Zohar, we learn that like Rebbe Meir every one of us has the power to transform each day into a garment of light that illuminates the soul.

In Thornton Wilder’s novel, the little monk who asked the big question was as aware as Rebbe Meir of his power to illuminate his life. He had perfect faith in divine providence.
He knew in his heart of hearts that God watches over the fall of every feather of every sparrow. His meticulous research was only to convince others.

But after years of painstaking study of every detail of the lives of the five who died he was forced to admit that he could not discern a higher plan. He could find no evidence of Divine will in the disaster at the Bridge of San Luis Reh. Nor could he find any rhyme or reason for the happy or sad, short or prolonged lives of a group of Peruvians he chose to observe over a long period of time.

Ultimately, along with Viktor Frankl, he concluded that from our perspective the five deaths were a matter of sheer chance, of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Despite his best efforts, the little monk failed to find any statistical evidence of Higher Will or any verifiable meaning for life, but his pure faith was not damaged. In fact it was strengthened by the awesomeness of the mystery with which we humans are presented. He had never needed proof. His faith in the meaning of life and death had nothing to do with scientifically verifiable facts. Even if it had, he didn’t consider himself worthy to judge the deeds of others, let alone the mind of God, so how from his theological framework how could he know which of the five had been blessed and released from a full and good life into an everlasting world hereafter, and which lives had been cut short due to sin and wilfulness?

What he knew came not from his head or even from his eyes, but from his heart. The faith that he could neither prove nor intellectually grasp was the imprint of divine love that he shared with his fellow creatures and with his God.

Because he happened to be in Peru at the time of the Peruvian Inquisition, his inconclusive conclusions were condemned as heresy and he was burned at the stake, along with his voluminous notes. The locals who gathered to watch the auto da fe were those he had been trying to convince, and instead of being swayed by statistics they were moved by his great burning faith and imprinted with the love he carried.

It was R. Nachman who also famously said that kol ha’olum kulo, gesher tzar meod.. whole world is a very narrow bridge. A few days ago I learned that only one in ten traditional Cambodian dancers survived the Pol Pot genocide in the Nineteen Seventies. Tomorrow at the emotional highlight of our service we will recite the story of the ten Talmudic sages brutally martyred by the Romans. According to Midrash, they were killed to atone for the nine brothers who sold Joseph, while Rabbi Akiva, the tenth, atoned for the complicity of God. The mystics say that God is a living fusion of ten divine attributes. And God commanded that Yom Kippur shall fall on the Tenth of the month. Ten Plagues, Ten commandments, Ten sayings of creation. I could go on. I could search for meaning, and I believe that the beauty and magnificence of Torah is hidden inside that search.
But the only thing of which I am sure is that I will never arrive at a definitive answer. How could I, when I am such a large part of the question?

We are all walking on the woven Bridge of San Luis Rey, but what binds us is greater than meaning and stronger than all the osier of the Incas. Like the little monk, we cannot explain the ways of God. We cannot know who shall be poor and who shall be rich, who shall be humbled and who shall be exalted.

But that is not the main thing. The main thing, said R. Nachman, is lo l’fached klal…not to be at all afraid.

The little monk could not explain the ways of God to man, but he carried the imprint of the love that God first breathed into Adam, who passed it down from soul to soul, all the way to Abraham.The Midrash likens our father Abraham to a jar of perfume which instead of lying untouched in some forgotten corner was moved from its place and opened, filling the world with its sweet fragrance.

From Abraham the fragrance passed from soul to soul all the way to Moses, who in these weeks around the High Holy Days, as we read the closing portions of his Torah, passes it on to every soul who is about to cross the River Jordan. Moses, who is condemned by God to remain behind, nonetheless crosses over. We carry him across in the imprint that he carried from Abraham, whose imprint was carried from Adam, who was imprinted with the nefesh hayyim, the living breath of God, and each one of us passes it on to every single person whose life touches ours.

Even God forbid a child who dies before it has a chance to live is loved by the mother who carried it, and the imprint of that love transforms the mother who loved, and imprints itself upon everyone who comes in contact with her.

Way beyond the few generations who remember an individual, the imprint left by love is woven into the fabric of life, stronger than the osier of the Peruvian Incas, stronger even than death.The American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

If in the next twentyfour hours we are to create a palace in time, if we are to make of this bowling club a holy temple where we prostrate ourselves before God, our prayers must weave themselves into the prayers of our neighbours. All the imprints of love that we carry, from that very first divine breath, imprints still fresh in our lives and imprints of ancient and forgotten light passed down from generation to generation, from soul to soul, must weave themselves now into this very narrow bridge.

This is what it means to be written into the Book of Life.

To leave an imprint of love that weaves itself through time and space, bringing this whole great spinning world together into this moment, this holy of holies, this day that according to our sages is the most joyous of the entire year.

The great joy of Yom Kippur, they say, is equal only to the great joy of the little festival of Tu b’Av, when people let go of their differences and dance, ultimately forming a great circle with God in the middle, equidistant from each one of them. Yom Kippur also culminates in a great mechol, a great dance of mechila — forgiveness, whose every step creates a new imprint of love. As on the little festival of Tu B’Av, each of us, divested of material differences, dances equidistant around God, who is the kol d’mama daka, the gentle sound of silence at the heart of this great spinning world.

As we enter this Sabbath of Sabbaths, let us all be High Priests stepping into the heart of light. Let us celebrate the great divine mystery of life and death that weaves itself into a world in which beauty is so incomprehensibly possible.

Let us open ourselves up with Abraham and with the little monk and fill this room with holy fragrance. Let the love we imprint upon each other travel in time and in space, imprinting itself on others in times to come, times within memory and times beyond memory, until the whole world is filled with the scent of the incense from this holy of holies.

Thornton Wilder ends his little book with the words: “Soon we shall die and all the memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. “Even memory is not necessary for love. “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

Shabbat shalom, Gmar Chatima tova, may we seal and sign each other as we dance together in the imprint of that great love that was, that is, and that always will be.

In the News

Our lovely High Holy Day chazzanim, Ilana and Mishael, have been profiled in the Jewish News!
Read more here.

On Asylum Seekers

By Vivian Parry.
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It is 2010.

Monday morning 9.a.m. I phone Sister Catherine of the Brigidine Justice Community to ask her for her wish list for the forthcoming year. Sisters Bridget and Catherine are responsible for the Brigidine Asylum Seekers Project. The Project aims to provide hospitality, practical support and Justice for Asylum seekers. These two ladies well into retirement age, work tirelessly for the men, women and children arriving in Australia as refugees from places such as Darfur, Burma, and Afghanistan, Home for these desperate people, is now the detention centre at Maribyrnong. Often sick, frightened and unable to sort through the maize of red tape thrust upon them, the Asylum seekers are relieved beyond our comprehension to meet these two patient and caring women. The forms will be explained and documents sorted, letters written, and good clothing, toiletries and treats for the children handed out. The Brigidine Justice Community’s motto is “Strength and kindness” their special saying is “I was a stranger and you made me welcome” The Brigidine Sisters are true to their word..

It is 1939.

My Mother, her parents and sister arrive by ship and dock at Port Melbourne. Aided by Dutch cousins, they have escaped Nazi Germany. My Grandfather, a Dentist whose surgery was destroyed on Kristallnacht (his trigger to finally leave), had a few years before, taken the first of his precautionary measures by storing small quantities of gold as Dentists were still allowed to purchase gold for their work. He was advised by a trusted Colleague to convert this gold into jewelry, a legal, desirable commodity to trade for the family’s freedom. The second precaution he undertook was to write to the American and Australian Authorities asking if he would be able to continue to practice as a dentist in their Country should he have to leave Germany. The replies were affirmative from both. Choosing the Country furthest away from Europe, Australia, the family settled into a flat on the corner of Dickens and Tennyson St. Elwood. My Grandfather prepared the front room as his surgery. The table with his precisely laid out his dental tools, and for the patients, black leather and chrome Bauhaus chairs. A letter received shortly after, destroyed the family’s dreams. My Grandfather would not be allowed to Practice.. There had been a change in the regulations. A sensitive and distinguished man, having served in the first war as an officer in the German Army, my Grandfather forced himself to go against the Law and offered his services by hushed word of mouth to the local migrant Community. Family welfare came before honor if it meant food on the table. The Government sent a spy masquerading as a patient with a bad toothache. My Grandfather was snared in the trap. Broken hearted he paid his fines, the end of a dedicated career.

It is 2006.

My social worker friend at Hanover Family Services called me about a family who had come to Hanover in desperate need, a Father, Mother and their daughter. They had paid their own way to Australia and sought Refugee status. Waiting to have their case heard, their savings were now gone. Hanover through the Salvation Army provided them with accommodation, their needs were so much more. I agreed to pay their utility bills hopefully this would enable them to stay in the house past the allotted three months. I came to know the mother well. I learnt as an Asylum seeker on a “Bridging Visa E” you are not permitted to work. There was no Medicare, no Dole or Centrelink allowance. The local headmaster agreed to let the girl go to his school, Asylum seeker children were not allowed to do so. We visited the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre in West Melbourne. Refugees with No income can make one weekly visit to receive groceries from the Food Bank. The Resource Centre budgets on $6 per person a week. All Asylum Seekers and Refugees waiting on resolution of their case are required to attend the Immigration Department. We went together to Spring St and lined up in the queue, forms ready and signed. A “Check in.” for this family, repeated every three months for the past ten years. As Arnold Zable wrote in the Age May 19th, “With every passing month the agony of indefinite separation from family increased and drove many to the brink of madness.” As one Asylum seeker put it, “the visa reduced him to a nothing … a nobody.”

It is 1940.

My Grandfather is a broken man. My mother, 18 years old and the sole bread winner, rides an old bicycle from the flat in Dicken’s St, to Park St South Melbourne. Upstairs above the row of shops, is the factory where this once talented art student now folds and packs socks. Friday arrives, Pay day. The workers line up and receive their yellow envelopes. The factory owner waits at the door. He takes the packet out of my mother’s hand, removes half the contents inside, folds down the top and hands it back. Not one word is spoken, some money is better than nothing.

It is 2010.

I load up my car with quilts, sheets, pillows, men’s clothing size XXL, warm winter coats, the brand new fry pan in the box. The good second hand kettle and last but not least, babies clothing and blankets for three new born children. I have been a bit lucky. Sister Catherine’s wish list was all scooped from my stockpile in the garage. How fortunate am I to have such generous friends. Many hands make light work, the car is unloaded, the waiting tables filled. We hold each other and hug, no words are needed. I am the daughter of a Holocaust Survivor. My early childhood recollections of my migrant family are indelibly imprinted on my memory. I cannot change the past, can never erase the sadness or take away their pain. I was to young then, I am not to young now. I reflect on the day’s events. In my mind’s eye I see Sister Catherine’s hands bunched together under her chin, her gaze one of joyful anticipation as she imagines giving out these much needed goods. Not just material items but a symbol of hope and the knowledge someone does care. The midday light streaming in through the convent windows seems to illuminate the room with a golden glow. The same soft, warm glow as my Grandfather’s gold…… my inspiration.