The Bike Crash

also, sometime in early November - ערב שבת, פרשת לך לך

The Bike Crash

The rains started on Friday.
down a hilly shortcut
my bicycle buckled under the weight
of my efforts
back wheel sliding in
like a baseball player
and over the handle bars I skimmed
hipsarms knee

wet
dirty
with bloody skin exposed

I continued on in the downpour

I continued on to hesitant hopes
and tiresome thoughts.
A long bus ride ahead
alone in a sea of deceitful screens

I am not sure what relief is
but it may have been 
sushi rolls in the sunlight at Kikar Rabin

[untitled] Sunday Morning

sometime in early November, TSH" 'A

I'm thinking about poetry.

There's a yellow cat

sleeping in the grass below me.

My spotty coffee in my spotty mug

sweet.

The door's open and

the light is perfect

second-hand sun

reflected from my next-door neighbor's windows.

"You're very affected by environment,"

he told me 
inquisitive, "I like that."

and I grasped that cotton duve

as I lay atop feathers in my bed.

I wonder how long it may be 

before I stop getting turned on

from him loving me.

I'm thinking about poetry

and how the Rebbe entered my dreams last night.

Impersonal, frightening

and full of love

nothing had to be said.

He sat at a desk

writing letters of tikkun olam

My question hung

in the thoughts of my dream

never asked

never answered

never mattered.

Empowering Our Girls to Face a Violent Society

As another UN International Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women comes to pass, one organization in Jerusalem teaches girls and women to face these harsh realities with inner-strength and be part of the solution…

חשון - תשעה

November 25th is the International Day to Eliminate Violence against women.  The UN Secretary General has coined the name “UNiTE” for the campaign, and has been making efforts to rally the citizens of the world for the cause.  According to UN figures, 70% of women worldwide experience violence in their lifetime; whether it be rape, abuse (physical or emotional) or harassment.  Beyond the tragic emotional and social damages this causes on society, the UNiTE website also points out the economic repercussions of this violence.  Cases of intimate partner violence alone incurs tremendous costs on our nation–  costs that drain our tax revenues in medical treatment, shelters, the criminal justice system and sheer productivity loss.  In the US, an average of $5.8 billion is lost from intimate partner violence each year.  These figures are a cry to the world community to pay attention.

In Israel, 60% of female sexual assault victims are under the age of 18, according to a 2013 study done by the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel.  These same young women will one day provide the backbone for our nation.  Girls in Israel, as in many other nations, face pressure from the media and cultural traditions to focus on their physical image, rather than their intellectual or ingenuitive talents.  WIZO (Women’s International Zionist Organization) released a list of the 10 most offensive advertisements to women in Israel, which highlighted the provocative pervasiveness of these gendered messages.  From the earliest ages women are taught how to use domesticity and beautification, through either implicit or explicit messages, instead of tools for economic development, technological innovation and social justice.  Although there is nothing fundamentally wrong with training girls to build loving, stable, domestic lives and to care for their physical selves, what we should be worried about is the exclusive valuation we place upon them, through frameworks which often results in disempowerment.

In 2003, Yudit Sidikman and Jill Shames came together to address these issues, with their passion for martial arts, and created the nonprofit, El Halev.  El Halev works with girls and women of all ages, ethnicities, religions and physical capabilities in Israel, using  martial arts and self-defense programing.  These programs teach  empowerment using  methods that strengthen participant’s physical, verbal and emotional responses to violence and self-awareness.  If you walk into El Halev on any given day when classes are in session, you will hear the fierce voices of women and girls shouting “NO!”.  

Other older participants have also reflected that before completing an El Halev course, they had never known how to set boundaries and say “no.” NO.  This skill was simply not taught to them as young girls. Tali Rachamim completed El Halev’s specialized self-defense course IMPACT:

“I was in a battered women’s shelter.  Yudit and her assistant Rivka, they came to teach us self-defense… Before, I couldn’t speak at all, I had no self confidence.  I didn’t know that I was capable of shouting at all.  Saying ‘no’ was hard for me all my life, but now I can say “NO!” and shout, and make it clear that I don’t want this...”

Three years ago El Halev kickstarted the “Lioness Club” (Moadon Leviah), which trains girls ages 12 to 17 to cultivate leadership qualities, confidence and open-mindedness through martial arts and self-defense programing.  Jill Shames, co-founder of El Halev and Leviah instructor, believes that “in order to change society, sometimes you have to build a new society,” which is exactly what El Halev strives to create for the next generation of Israeli girls.   Leviah girls cooperate to create support groups, which provides a safe environment to deal with and talk about experiences of violence, and encourages personal growth to do so with confidence.  The Leviah Group in Nof Ayalon are currently developing a performance workshop to share what they have learned with other youth groups in the area.  “Youths are more likely to listen to other youths,” Jill says, “If you want to learn something, there's nothing like teaching it.”  This method of empowerment, shines through all of the participants of El Halev.

Jill puts hours into researching the latest scientific studies on developmental exercises and then implements them into the program.  With girls as young as 7, Jill opens class with a respectful bow and mindfulness meditation, in the spirit of traditional martial arts.  She explains that meditation is probably one of the most important parts of the training.  By learning how to mindfully take each breath, and to calm the mind, the girls develop awareness of their surroundings and can make the mental space for clear decision making.  Another exercise that she does with younger girls is the “Wonder-woman stance”.  The little ones line up, put their fists on their hips and stand tall and open.  Jill walks by the girls asking her to say her name loud and clear, “You can be proud of that name,” she passionately  responds to each of them.

This is the message El Halev is trying to bring to  young girls who will  one day will shape Israel’s future.  One of the trade-mark initiatives spearheaded by Yudit is “Break a Brick.”  Participants are faced with a cement brick and are asked to punch through it.  On November 4th, a coalition of ten organizations addressing violence against women in Israel, gathered in El Halev’s event hall for a series of inspiring lectures and discussion groups.  Ideas were exchanged and connections made, all in the hopes of formulating a united front of Jerusalem nonprofits working to empower women.  At the end of the conference, Yudit set bricks in front of each  participant.  One by one, women of all body types, old and young, stepped forward and shouted “I am breaking this brick!”  Participants used  the momentum of their bodies and convictions to smash through the challenge.  Each person left that day with brilliant smiles and a piece of brick, wrapped in red ribbon, to take home as a reminder of the strength we each  carry within us.

Ruminations in a Turkish Airport

 

January 5th, 2014

In transit
waiting to go there from here
mind somewhere
not anywhere
real.

A tall hunk of Turk

shakes a bottle of whipped cream
slowly, surely swirls on top of my
grande espresso frappaccino
that was real.

YvesSaintLaurent
adorns an Arab princess
sitting cross-legged beside me
playing drop berry on her blackberry,
hands her daughter a pink barbie,
Ou cherrie!
I've just come from Paris.

At Burger King I wonder
how the megabillion pompous CEO
makes way in Texas
to outdo MacDonald's internaciónal
is like
big hairy balls.
How atrocious.

Mind wanders while
my hand holds a ticket
fingers touch a picture with an identity
in a booklet stamped with certainty
port-date-signature

That picture was me
for only a moment in time
the identity only applies sometimes
when convenient or not.

חול

 

מוצאי שבועות, תשע״ד

גלות

On the eve of chol
the finite aftertaste of kodesh
evaporates on the tongue
washed out with the waters
of a malachdik shower.
Droplets of Godliness
wrung dry in a head towel.
Chet's oy's and ley's
fall flat on the carpet floor
and crumble into twisted fibers.

On the eve of chol
tucked under fleece covers
the moon sits tall on her milky thrown
and glares behind the window glow
on the glossy page of my calendar.
I cannot see the date.

Bad decisions make good stories, chapter 1

סיון - תשע״ד

     The day after my brother graduated from college, I got in his 1999 Subaru Forester and booked it out of Claremont, California. It was about 97 degrees as I cruised down the endless strip mall that is Rancho Cucamunga, but my sweat and heavy breathing was from the sudden relinquished weight of family's emotional complications that had rumbled along the entire weekend. I was totally stoked for the chance to go on my second cross-country solo college road trip and had been planning and fantasizing about this day for months. Two years earlier, I had packed up my little blue Hyundai, named Fernando, and drove 3,200 miles west from South Hadley, Massachusetts to Bellingham, Washington after my own graduation. I never wrote about that three and a half week adventure, but it lives on in the occasional listener who asks me to tell a story. This time, my task was to get my brother's car from Southern Cali, back "home".

     A week before my his graduation, I left my friends and community in Jerusalem where I have been living for the last several years. When I bought the plane ticket back to the States on a cold and depressing Jerusalem night, my pragmatic intention was to save money working for my Dad and to have a loving and supportive (and insulated) home to sit at the computer each night googling, "whatthefucktodo". Essentially, moving back in with my parents for the Summer was to be my grand finale of what has become almost a year dedicated to "healing" from a wrenching heartbreak before Rosh Hashanah and the struggles of emotional and financial survival alone in a new country. On the Jewish calendar, the road trip finished off the last week and a half of the omer count before the holiday of Shavuot, a time that carried powerful spiritual significance; revelation, completion, rebirth, and the wheat harvest. When I logged off my computer that winter night in Jerusalem, I stayed up by the light of a candle till dawn finishing Jack Kerouac's, The Dharma Bums. I dreamt about Jaffy romping around in the Sierras singing mantras.

    There was a billboard of a woman and man smooching in Rancho Cucamunga that read: "More affordable than divorce, LOTIONS & LACE"; I could not stop smiling I loved America and freedom so much right then. The sun blazed optimistically and the surrounding San Bernadino mountains were beautiful and foreign to me.
     60 miles of strip mall later, I hit the town of Hesperia, right before heading north on Highway 395 to Yosemite. I had spent an hour on the phone from Jerusalem with the ranger's station trying to sneak in a reservation for a campsite in the Valley and succeeded. My mind was set on making it there, all 355 miles, that night. In Hesperia, I popped out of my car, grabbed a bright red shopping cart, jumped on the back, and rolled into Super Target. For half an hour I rode my cart like this down those gargantuan, incandescent aisles. I grabbed things off the shelves without stopping - tortillas, chocolate, coconut oil, carrots and apples. Grocery stores are excellent places to compare cultures.  My entire independent adult life has been spent in Israel, so each time I return to America, it becomes stranger and stranger.  Twenty meter long sections dedicated entirely to "Pancakes & Waffles" and "Pasta & Tomato Sauce".  Essential American gastronomic values that I had forgotten about.  This Super Target in the boonies of Southern California was an excellent observation place.
     I made my purchases and after eating a quick lunch of carrots, almonds and a Starbucks mocha frappaccino in the parking lot, I flew out of Hesperia at 85 miles an hour into the desert. "Born to Be Wild" came on the radio as I drove past suburban developments, ATV parks and eventually, nothing.

     With a little bit of time on the open road, I began to relax a bit more, get serious, enjoy the sensations of no air-conditioning. I had been waiting months for this road-trip and I sure as hell didn't want to spend it in my head. I gorged on gorgeous red Californian cherries, and bobbed about to Mexican polka music on my broken stereo.  The joshua trees, scattered sporadically on the flat, arid earth reminding me of a Dr. Suess illustrations.  I dropped in and out of memories, sweet and sour.  Nearly two hours later, I came to a crossroad where I saw a funky little antique shack on the side of the road. I pulled over for a stretch and to see what desert treasures I might find. In a matter of 15 seconds I realized that my wallet had been left behind in a Target shopping cart.

       I called Lost and Found with shaking fingers. They said nothing turned up. The wind was strong, sand was blowing in my eyes and wind chimes crashed in loud clanks all around me. I crouched behind the antique shack so I could hear through my phone. 
      When Shauna from Godknowswhere customer service at Bank of America got on the line, I began to cry, "I'm in the middle of the desert, I have less than a half of a tank of gas, my license and all of my money is gone" choke "and I'm over fifteen hundred miles away from my home, so I guess" choke "I'm calling to report a lost card."

     "Oh, honey" Shauna said sweetly, "let me freeze your checking account right away so we can make sure no money is drawn from that lost card. Once I finish this though, you'll have to go to a Bank of America branch in person order to reactivate your account. I'm so sorry, I hope everything works out!"

     Then I called my mom and nearly caused her an accident on the highway. She was on her way to LA and hadn't left California yet, meaning, I could make it back with what gas I had and be rescued. In her voice I heard the shocked, my-child-is-going-to-die stuttering. There was 180 miles between myself and my only saving grace, so I followed my mother's advice and made a last attempt in Hesperia.

     By the time I got back to Target, it had been three hours since I left. I got the same answer at the counter in person as I did over the phone. No wallet. "But I'm stranded! I'm from Washington State on a road trip!" I told them. They gave me nervous unfortunate faces, "I'm so sorry, good luck ma'am." 
     I made my way towards the exit though not before I had ravaged through every shopping cart I could see. I walked slowly towards the door trying to keep my inner devastation in balance. My grand adventure of a road trip was one big failure after an entire year of what felt like failures. My head kept spinning: After all this savvy travel experience I'll be branded forever as an irresponsible airhead by my family. I won't get to go to Yosemite. Where the hell am I going to spend Shabbos? Through blurry teary eyes, I saw a little Mexican family approach me.

     "Are you Emily?"

     I froze and sniffled. "Yes."

     "This must be yours..." The man handed me my Steve's Packs Jerusalem Wallet with my Ben Ish Chai charm for hatzlacha, a picture of the Rebbe, and all my cash and cards still inside.

I burst into tears and laughter, and reached to give this man an enormous hug.

     "Actually, it was him who found it and saw you," he pointed to the little boy at his side. I embraced the frighten child too, and then the mother just out of the love overflowing from me at that point.  It must have looked like a scene from a Lifetime documentary.  The little family smiled at me hesitantly, accepted my thanks and also wished me "Good luck".

     I walked back out into the blistering parking lot, giddy, nervous, and shaken.  My absent mindedness, caused by foggy day dreams and emotional baggage had thrown me off balance.  After a stretch, I sat back in my seat and I told myself to focus on the road, turn off the music and breath.  Thanks, God. That was a close one, I hummed to myself, genuinely grateful to the workings of Divine Providence.  Though it wasn't long before a bit of cockiness crept back and decided that the plan to make it to my Yosemite campsite was still on.   It was 4:30pm.
     Soon the Eastern Sierra Range shouldered the western side of the highway. As the sun began to retire, the mountains turned purple, the ground reddish brown and the sky an illustrious pink as the sun set across lonesome Highway 395.  

The heat settled into the earth and a cool breeze came down from the north, a high quiet fell. I was so tired. The front of the car was green and black from the buggy mass accumulated throughout the day. 
     At 10:00 pm I consulted my navigational and realized I wouldn't get to Yosemite till close to one in the morning and I simply couldn't keep my eyes open much longer. In my wallet there was $50. It dawned on me then that I couldn't withdraw any cash from my card because of my now frozen account and the nearest Bank of America branch was 125 miles past Yosemite, not far from my relative's ranch in Calaveras County. Adding park admissions and the gas required to make it in two days to the ranch left me with nothing extra. There would be no motel that night. I pulled off the highway onto a dirt road with scenes from Kerouac stories on my mind. I was at the foot of the Sierras on a stunning open plain. I would sleep in my car that night and watch the stars.

     I knew well the dangers of being a young woman alone in the middle of nowhere, so I made the decision to lock my car doors in case an intruder came while I was cooking my dinner, I could then jump into the car and lock myself in to be safe.  I slipped into my wooly long underwear, put on my headlamp and made quesadillas, singing Chassidic niggunim to myself as the temperature quickly dropped. The night sky was a blanket of stars.  My heart felt so relieved. From the back seat, I jumped out to get my water bottle in the front. The door shut behind me and there I was. Alone in the Eastern Sierras in nothing but my skinnies with everything I owned locked inside the Subaru.

"ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS!" I screamed in hysterical laughter up to the Holy One. I sat in the dirt for a few seconds in total confoundment as to how my life came to this point. It was freezing, and I began to shiver.  I didn't know if I could last the night huddled in the grass.   Do I try to flag someone down from the highway in the middle of the night, or do I wait till morning? How much better are my chances of avoiding rape and murder if I make myself hypothermic through the night hours exposed, or if I put myself out there and flag down a possibly awful surprise? I didn't bother spending too much time lingering on the decision, and pulled up my pants. In this time of ridiculous crises, the only line that came through was a classic quote from the Dalai Lama:

“If you have fear of some pain or suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it. If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry.”

Worries aside, I strolled out to the side of the highway, flashed my headlight and started waving my arms for help.  I had reached a point where the happenings of the day had so much overwhelmed by my sense of outrageousness, that I no longer had hesitations about potential consequences.  Going out to the side of the highway in the Eastern Sierras was one of the purest moment of surrender and self-trust in my life.

     It took half an hour before a car finally pulled over. As the window slowly rolled down, I took a deep breath and accepted my fate: An elderly couple in a fancy car had come to my rescue and they had AAA.  The lady had a laugh that resembled my sweet great Aunt and thus I decided they were completely trustworthy. In no time, a stud muffin in a pick-up truck pulled off the road and opened the car in seconds. Carole and Jerry inquired about where I would be staying that night. Awkwardly, I tried to explain about my next plan to sleep in a gas-station parking lot. They would have none of it, and invited me to stay with them in their home just north in Mammoth Lakes.

     I went to bed that night in a luxury vacation home surrounded by pines.  Their guest room was so pristine I felt the need to tiptoe around the immaculate vacuum tacks in the carpet and had trouble pulling out the sheets from the professionally tucked bed. I slept soundly, smirking at the Universe. Early the next morning, they offered me coffee with whipped cream while the pair made peach jam. Their kitchen was warm and cozy, designed like a country log cabin.  Vintage skis were mounted above the stone fire place and family vacation photos lined the bookshelves.  I felt calm and relieved, and started to feel the enthusiasm build for day two. Jerry, Carol and I chatted over our coffee and they soon learned I was Jewish and from Jerusalem. Jerry began to get giddy and didn't hesitate before sitting down to introduce me to the Book of Daniel. He told me all about the return of Jesus as the messiah and how almost all the Christians of the world had gotten confused thinking he was God. This man was missionizing me and given the circumstances, I was totally at his mercy. Of course I started to get nervous and began an internal dialogue with Hashem asking why He was continuing to play these nasty jokes on me.  I was spared by Carole who saw my discomfort as her husband preached. Graciously, I took my leave, noting their address to send a thank you note.

 Finally I made my turn west onto Highway 120, and opened up another conversation with God.  Nice. I began, "Saved" by Jehovah's Witness'.  You seem to have a sense of humor awfully similar to my mother's.

שיוער שבועות, מחשבות על הפרש של השם ״חג עצרת״ לחג השבועות

בס״ד

סיון, תשע״ד

There are four names given for Chag Shavuot and one of them, which is what Chazal used most commonly in the Talmud, is "Atzeret" - עצרת

The basic meaning of the Hebrew word, atzeret is "assembly" or "convocation", connoting kingly references. Yet is it also connection to the root ATZaR - עצר meaning, "stopping" or "closing"

What is the connection between the meaning of the name Atzeret and Chag Shavuot?

Lets explore a more soulful path...

On Pesach we eat only matza and eliminate all chametz from out lives whereas it is permissable on Shavuot to eat chametz.

"Matzah is passive, it is not allowed to rise and ferment, whereas chametz is self-fulfillment."

(Rav Greenberg)

-->     On Pesach we are celebrating our Redemption from slavery in Egypt; a process which requires an unrisen ego, a release from the grasping mochin d'katnut (narrow mind). This is a spiritual metaphor for matza.

-->     On Shavuot we are celebrating the giving/recieving on the Torah at Mt. Sinai; a conlusory moment to the fulfillment of Redemption. Also, Gd had brought us "up" to a spiritual level where our consciouness' was expansive enough to even recieve the Torah.  It is important to note that this sort of "rising", is not likened to the ego, as previously drawn from the matza metaphor. This is a spiritual metaphor for chametz.

Matza and chametz are brought together in the Korban-Todah (Thanksgiving Offering) which is comprised of one animal, thirty matzot and ten regular loaves of bread. The Korban-Todah is the offering prescribed for Shavuot in sefer Vayikra. Thus, it is in todah, Thanksgiving, that we close, עצר our  spiritual process of Redemption.

"Chazal called the Festival of Shavuot by the name, Atzeret, to teach us that the Festival of Shavuot does not stand by itself" (Rav Greenberg)

This idea indicates that Pesach does not end in 8 days.  Rather,

The spiritual process we begin on Pesach is continued, via the tradition of counting the omer until the conclusion of Shavuot

     The Kabbalistic tradition even instituted a cyclical chart of sefirot [Divine Attributes] combinations to associate with every day of the omer, each combination placing a unique spiritual focus for that day of the omer.

             -->     For example, tonight is "Malchut b'Malchut which can be connected back to our key word עצרת and it's kingly association. Literally ״לשון מלכות״ as several of the meforshim describe it.

Lets Process...

1. Sforno writes about the meaning of Atzeret: "To stand for some time in the holy places, to serve G-d in those places with Torah or prayer or [sacrificial] service."

עצרת היא - ענין העצירה הוא לא בלבד לשבות ממלאכת הדיוט, אבל היא עם זה אזהרת עמידה איזה זמן במקומות הקודש לעבוד במקומות ההם את הא-ל ית' בתורה או בתפלה או בעבודה, כענין "ושם איש מעבדי שאול נעצר לפני ה' ביום ההוא", והוא אומרו "קדשו צום קראו עצרה"... אמר אם כן שזה היום אחר חג הסכות אשר בו שלמו כל שמחות הרגלים הוא קודש להיות יום עצרת שיעצרו במקומות הקדש, ותהיה שמחתו שמחה של תורה ומעשים טובים... ספורנו, ויקרא כג:לו)

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel refers to time as a sanctuary: "Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to be attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year."

Theses two texts combine both meanings of the word עצרת (kingly "assembly" and "stopping"). Have you ever experienced the act of Atzeret as holy? How might you relate to the grande finale event of Matan Torah as a stopping in time?

2. The Sfas Emes writes: "On the matter that Chag haShavuot is called Atzeret, in the words of the Sages, it is written that the Torah was commanded to us by Moshe, etc., to Kehilat Yaakov (the Jewish People), and therefor it is in the days of the sefira[t haomer] that the Community of Israel will do [these commandments] as one [people], they will earn thereafter to Torah on Shavuot."

בענין מה שנקרא חג השבועות עצרת בדברי חכמים, דכתיב תורה צוה לנו משה וגו' קהלת יעקב, וכך הוא בימי הספירה נעשין בני ישראל קהלה אחת וזוכין אחר כך לתורה בשבועות...

שפת אמת, שבועות תרנ"ב

Chag Atzeret is known for it's quality of achdut (oneness), as it is the only time in the Torah that the Am Israel are referred to as one, singular entity by God. How does the quality of achdut aid the spiritual process of Redemption? Why might that quality, over others, be the one that earns Am Yisrael the Torah.

sources:

haRav Mordechai Greenberg, Yeshivat Kerem b'Yavneh

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, exerpt from The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man

Sforno perush on the Chumash

Sfas Emes perush on the Chumash