Jewels 2017

One year, my Yom Kippur sermon was on the theme of forgiveness. The next day, a woman came to see me, very upset about the sermon. She told me how, 10 years earlier, her husband had left her for a younger woman and she has had to raise two children by herself for the past 10 years. She asked me angrily, “And you want me to forgive him for what he did to us?”I told her, “Yes, I want you to forgive him. Not to excuse him, not to say that what he did was acceptable, but to forgive him

My son was nestled in my lap last night, slumbering at last, while I trolled the Internet for entertainment. Somewhere in a moment between status updates on Facebook and searching for shirts on oldnavy.com, I felt a gentle nudge on my arm. I looked down, and he was awake, his eyes as round and bright as twin moons shining in the pearly glow of the laptop screen. His mouth bent and stretched into a smile, and he poked me again. “Hey Mama, cyberspace can wait.” “But there’s a really good sale that ends tomorrow, and if I want to save

Fifteen years ago I experienced a serious bout of depression that was devastating and painful. The mental anguish and the hopelessness that entered my world at the moment when I was at a wonderful place in my career were overwhelming. It was as William Styron has termed it, a period of “Darkness Visible” with a suffocating closure of life and joy. Through getting the right help, therapy, and medication, and through the support of good and devoted friends, I was able to survive and emerge from that challenge. The aftermath of that experience and subsequent battles with depression have left

Age has been on my mind all my life. When I was a kid I had a giant shock of black hair that was like a helmet because it was stiff with a product called ‘Slickum’. To comb it, I had to dip my head in the sink and wash my hair every day. That’s the first time I can remember thinking, “What if this is the secret to a long life? Dipping your head in the sink every morning. How do we know?” Since then there have been hundreds of other odd activities – eating a Tootsie Roll just

It’s hard to believe that G-d hasn’t been watching out for me when I’ve had so many obstacles with drugs, rejection and people not believing in me. It’s been a long and continuous road. But it’s hard to just chalk it all up to myself. I have to believe there’s something greater than myself. Lady Gaga, an American recording artist. www.ladygaga.com

I’ve learned the difference between being purposeful about an issue and being self-righteous about it. I have been self-righteous about too many things in my life. This did not sustain my involvement in the issue, nor did it lead to a solution. I wound up, to borrow from Rumi, shedding more heat than light on the problem. When I find myself imagining how I will tell the tale of my involvement in a cause, chances are I am in danger of crossing into self-righteousness. When I am personally unresolved about how to tackle a particular issue, when I go to

In 1972, around the time I turned 16, we woke up one morning to an extra-large headline: “16 TERRORISTS DIE DURING FRUSTRATED ESCAPE FROM NAVY BASE IN TRELEW.” During the morning break at school, everyone was talking about it. Right before class, the teacher pulled me aside and said, “I overheard you and your classmates. Matalon, don’t always believe what you read in the newspaper. These people were murdered.” My country, Argentina, was under military dictatorship, and the “Trelew Massacre,” as it became known much later, was the cold-blooded murder of 16 political prisoners who had surrendered before a judge and

The world is a little too full of “can’t” — and there’s not enough “why not?” What’s more frustrating than to be told a problem isn’t solvable or a goal unattainable? My law school professors rewarded me for spotting issues and problems – but why not for coming up with solutions? A good friend of mine pitched dozens of companies fifteen years ago with the design of a slim machine on which you could read books without paper.  They laughed. Trying and failing is no excuse for not trying again.  Coming up with reasons not to take chances, passing the

I thought I had come of age several times over by the time I reached my 30s. After all, I had become a bat mitzvah, learning to read Torah and Haftorah and reciting prayers and speeches about my entry into adulthood as a Jew. I had gone through Confirmation at 16, taking part in a level of intellectual inquiry and analysis which surely brought my Jewishness to a more mature and sophisticated level. I had gotten married, for goodness sake! I wore a white dress and took solemn vows in front of God and my family, entering into a covenant

A woman spoke with me after her double mastectomy. She couldn’t accept her body. We sought a new metaphor. Your chest is a sacred altar, and your breasts, the paschal lambs. “I look at myself now,” she later said, “and feel that I am sacred.” I believe to begin again one has to search for a new, personal metaphor. Start slow. What is comparable to the skin you wear every day? To what would you liken its color and landscape? Is it sand, vanilla wafer, maple syrup, wheat, parchment? Are you a mysterious, flaking scroll? Are age spots floating lily

I recently reflected on the fact that I had been happy for a sustained period of time. I don’t mean that sense of happiness attributed to Pollyanna – God knows my heart is breaking over the environment of violence and dehumanization in which we live. I realized the joy I was experiencing was actually feeding me hope, energy, and tenacity. Reflecting on the root and meaning of this resourceful rejoicing, I realized it was emanating from my work with people of other faiths to create a deepening peace movement in our city, country, and world. Then I remembered these words

The first Shabbat in Elul, two weeks after my father’s death, my family gathered around the Shabbat table. Everyone was home from summer camp and jobs, and for the first time in months, all the members of our immediate family filled their traditional seats. As we chanted Kiddush, I began to cry. The sweetness of the moment was overwhelming. All those I love gathered together, in our home, celebrating Shabbat.I thought ahead to Rosh Hashanah Dinner. It never occurred to me that last year would be the last time. Who would I sit next to in synagogue? What will the

ELUL – the alliteration of this beautiful word evokes love. The word is composed of the first letters of the phrase from the biblical Song of Songs “ani l’dodi v’ani lo. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” Love is Elul’s theme and is the force that lets us grow older with wisdom and compassion. The spiritual work of aging is to cultivate our capacity to give and receive love by going within to understand our strengths and purpose and reaching out to nurture and heal relationships that will form the fabric that supports, inspires and comforts us

Just as the courageous Zionists who established the State of Israel were energized by Theodore Herzl’s dictum, so do Americans draw inspiration from the notion that determination can turn our dreams into reality. As someone who grew up without a strong sense of roots, I have always been drawn to the belief – embedded in the long journey of the Jewish people – that you could sustain a spiritual, emotional, and cultural identity in the face of impossible odds. And I deeply understood the Zionist idea – that there is always a homeland at the center of our story. For America’s

I have officiated at more than 500 funerals and held the hands of many loved ones as they slipped away. All of my spiritual training, however, did not prepare me for the excruciating experience of my father’s life ending in my arms after his battle with cancer. The death of a parent is commonplace – 12 million Americans bury a parent every year. The world is a different place after a parent’s death, just as the world had been forever changed because of their life. Maybe that’s why the relationship between humanity and God is likened to a parent who

Bill Gates said recently, “Humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity, reducing inequity is the highest human achievement“. We now live in a world of reality television, a world of accountability with instant messages, Skype, Bluetooths and Blackberries. We are always on call. We are enveloped in wars televised by CNN, instantaneous and clear though thousands of miles away. But what if a camera were on your life? How would you fare? What are you willing

Genuine compassion is irrespective of others’ attitudes toward you. But, so long as others are also just like myself, and want happiness, do not want suffering, and also have the right to overcome suffering, on that basis, you develop some kind of sense of concern. That is genuine compassion. Now unbiased, even toward your enemy; so long as that enemy is also a human being, or other form of sentient being. They also have the right to overcome suffering. So, on that basis, there is your sense of concern. This is compassion. The Dalai Lama is the supreme head of

What I have learned thus far is that we all can and must keep learning all the time. We learn from experience, we learn from others – often those whom we least imagine to be our teachers. We learn from whatever we can do to get outside ourselves – to spend time in a different culture, asking others who experience the world very differently to tell us how to deliberately choose to do things that are hard to do. It is intentional that the American Jewish World Service places young people in service programs in the developing world where they

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said that we should live our lives as if painting a work of art. When I first read this as a new rabbinical school student, I felt troubled. Before beginning my studies, I had wrestled with thoughts of suicide. I was aware that my compulsive self-endangerment and lies had caused enormous pain to those closest to me. Now, out of the hospital and on the slow path of healing, I felt like damaged goods. My artwork had smudges. Years later, I read that infrared photographs of the Mona Lisa revealed that Leonardo da Vinci had repainted parts

It’s when you’re all around a dinner table. / Sitting. / And talking and laughing. / When nobody has their phone on. / When dinner starts at 6:00 and continues until 2:00 because no one has anywhere else to be. / No bars to stop at or social appointments to fulfill. / When the entire community knows that no matter how funny the rumor or how juicy the grapes on the grapevine, gossip is not ‘cool.’ / It’s when you find that you really, truly, honest-to-God care about what the people around you have to say. / When conversations couple

When I was in 8th grade, Mr. Ben Yudin, my comparative religion teacher extraordinaire, asked the class a question. “What are the four words you can say on any occasion?” The answer was, “This too shall pass.”I remember telling my father that night that I would never walk up to a bride and say, “Congratulations, this too shall pass.” My father replied that it’s precisely the couples who understand that the exhilaration of their wedding day will pass, who go on to have good marriages. Since then, those four words have become a sort of mantra in my life. “This

According to the Rosh Hashanah ritual of tashlich, we toss scraps of bread into a living body of water, symbolizing the casting away of transgressions for which we seek forgiveness. So every Elul, I find myself ankle deep in the Santa Monica Bay, heaving bread into waves where a few short weeks earlier I was splashing with my kids. As soon as the rabbi intones the liturgy, seagulls swoop in. “Like swallows returning to Capistrano,” a fellow congregant once told me. “The birds probably set their biological clock to tashlich.” Not only do we return each year with our sins,

“Ready or not…here I come!” As the mother of three girls, this is a familiar refrain in my household. When we play, I think about my own childhood experiences…the anxiety of being the “hider,” the search beginning before I was “ready.” The chagim are coming, ready or not. Every year, I remember to get ready a little too late, sometimes not until halfway through the liturgy on Rosh Hashana. I need to schedule a reminder on my Google calendar, “Don’t forget to prepare your soul for the New Year!”As the director of a mikveh, I’d prefer a splash of water.

“Clever” seems eager to begin at Homeboy Silkscreen and, at 22 years old, he has assured me he is ready to retire his jersey from the barrio. He moves with me easily through the factory, shaking hands with those printing shirts or catching them as they are spit through the conveyor-belt dryer. Until he turns a corner and sees “Travieso,” a 24-year-old from an enemy ‘hood. They stare at their feet. They mumble. They do not shake hands. I will discover sometime later that the hatred they hold for each other is profundo. This is a personal pedo, and the

The instructor filled an empty jar with rocks. “Is it full?” Then he poured a pitcher of pebbles into the jar. “Full now?” Next he poured sand. “Full?” Finally, he poured water. “Now it’s full.” “What do you learn from this?” One student answered, “That no matter how busy you are, you can always fit it one more thing?” “No, the important thing is: you have to put the rocks in first. If you fill your jar first with the pebbles, sand or water, there will be no room for the rocks.”[1] Put the rocks in first, those important things

The month of Elul is a time for introspection, rebuke, and apologizing. Therefore it’s with a bit of embarrassment that I ask for your forgiveness. In our desire to get out this year’s collection of Jewels, it seems as if we jumped the gun and started the month of Elul one day early! In honor of Shabbat, we will take a day of rest from Jewels and all get back on track with the Hebrew calendar. Jewels of Elul #5 will resume on Saturday evening! As a reminder, If you are enjoying the diversity of opinion and insight of the

Each year as Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur approach, we are reminded that sin creates distance. Distance creates factions. So we proclaim the unity of God, but the fractures in our community and in our own souls widen. Thus, teaches the Sefat Emeth, the first tablets were broken by sin, but on Yom Kippur Moses returned with the second tablets, all of one piece. Teshuva, repentance, had created wholeness again. We create distance when we are afraid, and even more when we are ashamed. Just as sin is a pushing away, love is a drawing close. To believe in God’s

“I wear prayers like shoes. Pull them on each morning to take me through uncertainty.” writes Ruth Forman, contemporary poet, in a work called I Wear Prayers Like Shoes. The poet goes on about the shoes: “They were mama’s gift to walk me through life. She wore strong ones.” Imagine if everyone in the world were walking around on prayers! Truth is everyone has a shoe story: new shoes for that first day of school, new shoes for the High holidays, new shoes for a job or a new fitness program or a birthday, ball or wedding. And, in fact,

I almost never dream. On that rare occasion when I do, it’s the typical dream that Freud would be proud of. I fly through the air. I can’t find the room in which an important test is being held. I’m driving too fast. I see almost no relationship between my dreams and my accomplishments. I do have hopes, wishes, aspirations, goals – but they are rooted in reality. Dreaming is fantasy and fantasies rarely produce accomplishments. The concept of “dreamers and their dreams” may be intended in a metaphoric way – as a euphemism for aspirations. I’ve always had aspirations.

When is the right moment to sit and contemplate the difficult times we encounter? Why don’t I just get in touch with those things that are painful to think about, very real, hard to stay focused on?   How do I set aside time for inner reflection, slowing down enough to notice those thoughts and feelings that cause discomfort and even agitation. Elul is a time for thinking about the “whens” the “whys” and the “hows.” It is the new year that affords us this opportunity, even demands it of us. To move forward, to heal, to forgive, to grow so

In the spring of 2005, Eva Robbins commissioned me to write a setting for Psalm 27. At the time, I had no idea why she chose this text nor where her ask might lead me. Eva explained that the text was recited each of the 29 days of Elul – to prepare for the high holy days. Intrigued, I wrote this song (download here) and thought it might be interesting to ask 29 friends to write short introspections on how the prepare for the holy days. Jewels of Elul was born.  I wrote the following as the introduction to the