Preparation for Passover Participation!

Passover is almost upon us! A holiday that we eagerly await and celebrate joyfully.  Passover, with its timeless story of the escape from freedom to slavery, the symbols of the Seder which delight all of the senses, and the excitement of joining together around the Seder table with family and friends to retell the ancient story is looked forward to with great anticipation. As adults, we know the deeper meaning of the holidays - the Passover story of freedom, and the importance of passing on our tradition to the next generation.
 

But with children, where do we begin?  As it says in the Pesach Haggadah: For the young one, who does not know enough to ask the question, you shall begin with the story, explaining it simply: “This is what God did for me, when I went forth out of Egypt.” The Haggadah’s message not only reminds us that we should begin where a child can understand, but that the celebration of the Jewish holidays is meant to be experiential.  After all, we are taught that “In every age, one must regard himself as if he himself had come out of Egypt”.  So, make your celebrations experiential and try to involve everyone present!

Children love stories and one of the best ways to get children involved in the celebrations of both Purim and Passover is by reading or telling them the story at an age-appropriate level.  Doing this in advance of the holiday will whet their appetites and prepare them for the events to come.  Children also love to play dress-up and act.  To get them involved in this year’s Passover Seder, have them act out the story as you read it from the Haggadah, or make paper bag puppets and act it out for them.

  
Children also love songs, especially simple ones with repeating choruses.  Try to interject singing  into your celebrations.  Try playing CD’s in the car or at home a few weeks ahead so they’ll be familiar.  If you don’t feel confident singing by yourself, bring CD’s or an iPhone loaded with mp3’s to your celebration and everyone can sing along.
 
Almost every Jewish holiday has special foods that accompany the celebration.  Involve your child in the preparations - have him help you shop for the ingredients.  Give her simple tasks to do in preparing the Seder plate for Passover.  As you mix the different elements for the charoset, ask your child what the foods smell and taste like.  Are they sweet? salty? sour? crunchy? soft? Children can also make special table decorations for each guest, which can be used every year for your celebration of the holidays. 

Need help with resources?

Passover recipes, customs and rituals, and how to put together a seder plate

An extensive collection of songs for Passover is available for free download at the Jewish Birth Network

Passover trivia? Try this quiz

Hag Sameach!  Happy Pesach! 

A Question for the New Year: What will I become in the future?

What is it about the High Holy Days that draws so many of us into the synagogue?  Even if we have not been more than a few times or perhaps not at all during the past year, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur bring us here to pray, to reflect, and to be a part of community.  As we enter the doors of the synagogue once again, we are reminded that the gates of repentance are always open, that no matter how often or how infrequently we may have come to synagogue over the past year, we are always welcome here.  Sometimes it is difficult to find the path back towards God and Torah and being amongst other Jews.  Judah Halevi, the medieval poet said: “When I go forth looking for You, I find You seeking me.”  In the process of searching for God, and returning to synagogue, we find ourselves. 

Judaism is a religion of questions and questioning.  So, too, at this time of year, as we approach the Yamim Noraim, we must ask ourselves the important questions, the hard questions.  How do we take stock of our actions and our interactions with loved ones, friends, neighbors, even business associates during the previous year?  How can we even begin to confront these hard questions?  We start by letting go of the fear of ourselves, and acknowledging that we are not perfect, and that we do have the capacity to change. We must ask ourselves: “What have I done? and What have I become?” (Rabbi Jonah of Gerona in his Gates of Repentance, a treatise of the 13th century). To Rabbi Jonah’s wisdom, I think we must add one additional question: What will I become in the future?  Our tradition calls the process of self reflection cheshbon hanefesh, literally, “taking an account of our soul”.  It is what the period leading up to the Yamim Noraim is all about.  This time of preparation is not easy but it is also a gift, an opportunity to begin anew, as we consider not only our interactions and actions over the past twelve months, but the process of teshuvah, of repentance and change.  Each day we begin with ourselves, unafraid to confront the past, for as we return towards God, we come to learn that these actions of the past are no longer what we have become or must be in the future.

My family and I wish each of you a Shanah Tova U’Metukah, a year filled with health, joy and the sweetness of life.  May this new year of 5774 be a year of health, happiness, and growth for you and your family.

Elul: 40 Days of Preparation

The month of Elul, the month leading up to the High Holidays, which begins this year on August 7, 2013, is a time for rethinking, self-reflection, and meditation.  During this month it is customary that every Jew - not just scholars or rabbis - take time to join in Jewish study, read the Bible, and rethink and take stock of his or her life.  Why 40 days of preparation? This custom is explained in relationship to the earliest of reconciliations between the Jewish people and God:  the 40 days which Moses spent on Mount Sinai after destroying the first set of the Ten Commandments.  Moses had come down the mountain and saw the people with the golden calf.  He punished the people, destroyed the calf and then went back up the mountain to fast and pray for 40 days.  These ended - on Yom Kippur - when Moses received the second set of Ten Commandments from God as a sign of God's forgiveness and reconciliation with the Jewish people. In identifying the 40 days Moses spent on the mountain with the days leading up to Yom Kippur, the Jewish community tries to spend those 40 days as Moses did - in prayer and study and in rethinking one's life in order to merit God's forgiveness.  The month of Elul is 30 days long, and there are ten days from the first of Tishrei to Yom Kippur.  So, the 40 days begin with the first of Elul.
 
There are two major customs associated with these forty days.  Each morning of the month of Elul, with the exception of Shabbat and the last day of Elul, the shofar is blown.  This is meant to be a spiritual wakeup call, and is also a reminder of the shofar blowing that will be heard on Rosh Hashanah.  The second custom is the reading of Psalm 27 at every service.  This plea to God for help and deliverance from our enemies is understood at this time of year as a plea for deliverance from our own internal enemies, from the challenges we face daily that may have caused us not to be true to ourselves.  As Elul comes to an end, our spiritual preparation, prayers and self-reflection intensify with special prayers of Selichot, prayers of asking forgiveness from God and for spiritual healing.

For your own spiritual preparation leading up to the High Holidays:

Jewels of Elul

Seasons of Our Joy - Arthur Waskow

The Jewish Holidays, A Guide and Commentary - Michael Strassfeld

Days of Awe - Shmuel Yosef Agnon

Preparing Your Heart for the High Holy Days: A Guided Journal by Kerry M. Olitzky and Rachel T. Sabath

Spiritual Reflection During Elul

We are now in the month of Elul, the Hebrew month that leads us into the Yamim Noraim, the High Holy Days.  Many Jews use this time period to think back on the year that has passed in anticipation of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. A few years ago my colleague, Rabbi Debra Orenstein, introduced me to a very meaningful spiritual tool to prepare for the Days of Awe.  The custom is to use the last 12 days of the month of Elul (this year from Sept. 5, 2012 onward) until Rosh Hashanah to review and meditate each day on one month from the last year. On the day of Erev Rosh Hashanah, you review Elul, the month just gone by.

Some people will begin each day in meditation or make a quiet space to reflect on the month they are focusing on each day.  If you are in the habit of praying the morning prayers, Rabbi Orenstein suggests that you might find this to be a particularly good time to reflect.  “The daily prayers in the Amidah, asking for wisdom, forgiveness, healing, justice, a good year, and peace, among other aspirations – create a beautiful vision against which to measure the past year.”  

This reflection can be done with a study partner, a friend or spouse, or written in a journal.   You might look in your calendar – paper or electronic, from the past year to remind yourself of where you were during each of the months of last year.
Spiritual reflection can lead to a deeper self-awareness of self, of community, of the world, because it helps us to do teshuvah – literally to return to who we really are.

We also do this kind of reflection together as a community during these Days of Awe. And when you are in synagogue for all of the services of Selichot, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur, if you pay close attention to the themes that run throughout the liturgy of these days, you can see the threads of self-reflection, communal confession and prayers of selichot, asking for forgiveness. But it is really to our benefit to prepare for these 10 days before they begin and then by continuing to let the questions go through you as you go through the ten days of teshuvah – return. 

My family and I wish each of you a Shanah Tova U’Metukah, a year filled with health, joy and the sweetness of life.  May this new year of 5773 be a year of health, happiness, and growth for you and your family.

Elul: 29 Days to Prepare for the High Holy Days

Welcome to Elul!  The Hebrew month of Elul ushers in the introspective period of time prior to the Yamim Noraim, the High Holy Days. We are given a gift of time in which to move closer to God, to ask ourselves if we have made the most of the year that has passed and to think about what we would like to do differently in the coming year.  During Elul we pray prayers of Selichot, prayers of repentance, each day.  During Elul the shofar is sounded each morning, as a reminder that it is time to wake up and prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The daily prayers include the recitation of Psalm 27, in which we ask that we might “dwell in the house of God all the days of my life.”

Many people follow the tradition of dedicating the 29 days of Elul towards preparing for the High Holidays through study, prayer, and journaling.  We use each day as an opportunity to grow and to be inspired to make each day count.  We have these 29 days to begin anew, to make a change in our lives, to figure out how we can do better in the coming year.

Take some time each day during Elul to consider the past year, to remind yourself of where you were personally and where our world was during the past year and to focus on thankfulness, forgiveness, and repentance.  This may not seem like an easy thing to do given our busy lives, and the emotional challenges that it may present, but it is a practice that has great wisdom in helping us to prepare to more fully experience the High Holidays.

Here are a few resources to help in your Elul spiritual preparations:

Jewels of Elul - Seven years ago Craig Taubman, Jewish composer, artist, performer began publishing Jewels of Elul, a collection of inspirational reflections for the month of Elul. Each year a diverse group of contributors share stories and insights to help us reflect on changing our selves and our world. You can receive Jewels of Elul each day in your email inbox. (If you don’t want to subscribe you can simply go to the page every day and read the new one).

Institute for Jewish Spirituality Podcasts - The Institute for Jewish Spirituality teaches mindfulness meditation and contemplative practice, and offers free podcasts that can be listened to online or downloaded.  Listen to podcasts to help prepare for the High Holidays in the chagim (holiday) podcasts section.

My family and I wish you and your loved ones a Shanah Tovah Tikatevu v’Techateimu!

Getting Ready

Over the last few weeks as we are preparing to travel to Israel, I’m getting more and more excited, and also a bit nervous and a little stressed. Next week I’ll be off to the Hava Nashira songleading workshop, then out west to a bat mitzvah, and then we’ll be on our way. Getting our house ready for the people who will be house-sitting for us is a whole project in itself! Getting everything together to pack - what to pack, will it fit in the suitcases, while wondering how different things will be since I was last there 16 years ago and pondering how much of my textual skills I will remember since it has been a few years since I last studied texts this intensively, and how much music theory do I really remember for learning the oud, is part of the excitement. Over the past few weeks I have started to move more and more into the rhythm of this renewal time. I’ve enjoyed a short get-away alone with my spouse - a very rare opportunity to spend uninterrupted time without the kids. I’ve been able to go to the kids sports games and practices where I am able to focus just on them, being fully present, instead of my all too-often experience of being there bodily while thinking about congregational needs or missing games altogether because of meetings or classes. I’ve been home for dinner and bedtime almost every night - while I have made it a priority to be home for dinner even if it means a very short turn-around, most weeks I am out at meetings and classes many nights and miss reading books and our other bedtime rituals. I’ve been walking much more and taking the time to exercise - a few months ago I put on a pedometer and was shocked at how little I move during the day, too often driving when I could walk, because I have to get somewhere quickly, or because I will need the car later. I expect to do a lot more walking in Israel. Most of all, renewal is about slowing down, about taking the time to see things from a different perspective, as I have learned from my youngest who wants me to go out into our yard nearly every day to see how the apples are growing, and wants to water them to help them grow, even in the rain.