Awakening - A Sermon for Yom Kippur 5775

Thanks to recent conversations with my doctor friends, I’ve learned a litany of jokes about anesthesiologists and rabbis. Here are a few:

What’s the difference between a rabbi and an anesthesiologist?
They both do the same thing, but a rabbi can do it to 1000 people at once!

Or how about this one:
What’s the difference between a rabbi and an anesthesiologist?
An anesthesiologist needs drugs to put you to sleep!

There’s one more:
What do anesthesiologists and rabbis have in common?
They both share the same motto: putting them to sleep is the easy part, waking them up is much more challenging!

As it happens, we tend to take the field of anesthesia for granted since it’s so routine today, but, up until even the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most patients regularly chose to take their chances over enduring the pain of a surgical procedure.  This has made our modern ability to diminish or even eliminate pain perhaps the most significant medical innovation of all time. 

But the challenge, as we all so deeply know, is that the pain we experience in life is not limited to the walls of the operating room, and, just like with physical pain,  it often feels too much to bear. The crushing conditions of our world can leave us feeling so overwhelmed, that we will do anything to numb ourselves to the distress they create.

Now sometimes, this is necessary. There is a reason people go into shock when something devastating occurs. It is our body’s way of protecting us from the otherwise too harsh impact, and it softens the blow. Although this sort of sedation is not meant to be a regular part of our daily existence, it is not hard to understand why it has become just that.

Take the ubiquitous 24/7 news feeds of the television, internet, and social media that on the one hand leave us no reprieve from the horrors of our world, but ironically, on the other, shorten our attention spans and ultimately desensitize us to whatever is actually happening. Remember Malaysian Air flight 370? Or the 191,000 now dead in Syria? Or closer to home, the state where the latest school shooting took place? It was North Carolina, 4 days ago. [ii]

In the 1960’s, psychologists explored our human tendency to habituate by measuring ordinary people’s nervous system responses to the repeated ringing of a loud bell. Although everyone reacted strongly initially, their reactivity became somewhat weaker for the second bell, and increasingly diminished, until finally they did not register any response at all.  It turns out that we can become so accustomed to our experiences that we reach a point where we just don’t notice them anymore. They just become imperceptible to us. [iii]

The truth is, out of self-preservation, we numb ourselves all the time. As a society, we know the destructive and unfortunately expansive nature of the disease of addiction. But no matter the method of distraction - with pills or alcohol, working non-stop or even with our faces lost in our hand-held devices and screens - we end up with the same sense of detachment.

Perhaps even more troubling is that we sedate ourselves even in anticipation of something that might hurt later. On some deep inner level, we humans tend to fear the fullness of our potential. We think that if we love deeply, we risk the possibility of that love not being reciprocated or one day losing that love. If we strive for our deepest desires, we might still fail, so we settle for the confines of our self-imposed limitations.

We numb ourselves too with our defensiveness, our guarded or half-apologies, unwilling to admit full accountability for fear that we might actually have to feel the weight of our hurting someone else. We do this as well with our withholding of forgiveness; frightened to make ourselves vulnerable for fear we might get hurt again.

And even in common conversation among friends, we tend to prefer dulled agreement to the discomfort of true dialogue and debate. We watch the news that matches our own opinions and belief, surround ourselves with like-minded allies, labeling anyone who disagrees as ignorant, or worse idiotic.  And by so doing, we protect ourselves against the uncomfortable confrontation of divergence and challenge.

But whatever the reason, willed or not, individually or communally experienced, what is certain is that this emotional blunting does not actually protect us. In an attempt to shield our hearts, we end up hardening them, and in so doing, we actually remove ourselves from our lives, relinquishing ourselves, our relationships, and our world to the currents of chaos.

The real world is full of heartache and despair.  Many say that the world of religion offers a reprieve, something to take us out of this world and into the world of heaven.  It is not a modern idea.  Two centuries ago, Karl Marx penned his infamous critique.  Religion, he said, is “The sigh of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a heartless world, the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”[iv]

Even though Marx was a Jew, either he didn’t listen very well in Hebrew school, or perhaps he slept through the rabbi’s sermons. When it comes to Judaism, Marx couldn’t be more wrong. Judaism is not, nor has it ever been, a religion that reconciles us to the world as it is, that sets out to dull our experiences. Former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and all around brilliant teacher Rabbi Jonathan Sacks addresses this in his powerful book, To Heal the World. He writes: “In Judaism, faith is not acceptance, but protest, against the world that is, in the name of the world that is not yet, but ought to be…Its aim is not to transport the believer to a private heaven.  Instead, its impassioned, sustained desire is to bring heaven down to earth. Until we have done this, there is still work to do. ”[v]

Remember that motto from earlier? Putting them to sleep is the easy part, waking them up is much more challenging? Turns out it’s not just for anesthesiologists and rabbis. It is a fundamental and binding truth, not reserved only for the orthodox or the folks who come to services every Shabbat, but for any and all of us who call ourselves part of the family of the Jewish people.  I want you to hear that: this is for all of us.

Jewish practices are designed consistently to open our hearts and direct our awareness towards our world, each other and our souls. They stir us out of our everyday rhythms and unconscious living. Sacks again: “However free or affluent we are, on Passover we eat the bread of affliction and taste the bitter herbs of slavery. On Sukkot, we sit in shacks and know what it is to be homeless…To imitate God is to be alert to the poverty, suffering and loneliness of others. Opium desensitizes us to pain. [Judaism] sensitizes us to it.” [vi]

And make no mistake: these Days of Awe are designed to be the annual wake-up call for our hearts and souls. This is the whole point of why we blow the Shofar; its heart piercing call literally wakes us up to ourselves, our lives, our world. And as it turns out, we’ve been self-sedating for a long time.  Listen to the words renowned philosopher and commentator Maimonides wrote 900 years ago about the purpose of the Shofar that we still read each Rosh Hashanah: “Awake, you sleepers from your sleep. Arouse you slumberers… Do not be like those who miss the truth in pursuit of shadows and waste their years seeking vanity. 
Look well to your souls and consider your deeds….”[vii]

And if there was ever a single day designed to shake us out of the stupor of our everyday lives, it is today. Yom Kippur challenges us to snap out of our routine lives by literally putting us in the most raw and uncomfortable situation we can imagine. And it’s not just the fasting, intended to awaken our awareness of the pain of thirst and hunger. Or the beating of our chests, beckoning us to crack open our otherwise locked-tight hearts.  Yom Kippur, its rituals and liturgy all facilitate a process that is nothing less than a spiritual near-death experience. No sedation allowed. On Yom Kippur, we spiritually die in some way to awaken us to our lives as they are, so that we might, at the day’s end, re-enter our lives reborn, heart more open than ever before. Truly, Yom Kippur is meant to turn our lives and our world upside down.

The Talmud records a curious incident. Joseph, the son of Rabbi Joshua, fell into a coma. Everyone thought the boy wouldn’t survive, but one day, he woke up. And upon reviving, he said: “Olam hafuch ra-iti: I saw an upside-down world. The people who are on the bottom here were on the top there, and the people who are on the top here were on the bottom there.” His father, astonished at his son’s vision, declared: “My son, olam barur ra-itah, What you saw was the clear world.”[viii]

To be Jewish is to believe in the possibility of an upside down world, that there is a difference between the world-as-it-is and the world as it ought to be, and our lives-as-they-are and our lives as they ought to be; that the world-as-it-is is not a clear world, but it could be one day. And that, according to Judaism, is up to all of us, if only we can remain awakened to that awareness.

Consider this powerful story about the man who invented dynamite.  One day, his older brother died, but the newspaper printed his obituary instead, giving him the unusual experience of reading his obituary while he was still alive. The title read: ‘Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday….’ Like a cold bucket of ice water had been poured on his head, he threw down the paper.  “I’ve never thought of my life that way! That’s not how I want to be remembered. That’s not what’s important to me.”  And right then and there he decided to direct his entire fortune into rewarding people for bettering this world and bringing it closer to peace.[ix] The inventor of dynamite is the creator of the Nobel Peace Prize!  What is done cannot be undone – but we can be awakened, our hearts can be unlocked, and our wounds can be healed; our pain can even become the instrument for our healing, but for that to happen, we have to feel, even if it hurts.

For in truth, the angst we have about what might happen pales when we realize the unmet potential of our lives.

The fear we sense from withholding repentance diminishes when we understand that without real teshuvah, our lives and relationships are left in limbo, actually held in an anesthetized state.

The threat we experience when opposition confronts us abates when we awaken to understand that the Truth is only revealed when contrasting perspectives flourish.

We are not permitted to seal our hearts and abandon hope. When we see pain and suffering, we must not turn away; we must open our hearts and let them sense the echoes of isolation, fear, and despair that our eyes and ears cannot perceive. And then, we must dare to bring comfort and healing. In fact, it is our very experience with pain that actually gives birth to empathy, compassion and, true comfort!   18th century Chassidic teacher Reb Shlomo of Karlin once said, “If you want to raise a person from the mire and darkness, it is not enough to reach your hand down and pull that person up. You must go down into that darkness and with great strength pull yourself and your friend up.” True for healing the pain of our world; true for healing the pain of our lives.

When Yom Kippur ends this evening, we will sound the shofar one last time. The resonating and greatest blast of all, Tekiah Gedolah, will fill the vast air of this holy space and echo in our ears, hearts, and souls.   Did you ever wonder why we end these High Holy Days with the shofar? Why do we need to hear it again if the Holy Days are now over?  Because the real work of awakening is only just beginning.  When we return to our homes and ordinary lives, you can bet that the sedating ringing of our everyday existence will still be there, just as it always has been.  The challenge for us is to take our now open hearts, awareness and and yes, even our pain with us into the New Year, enabling us to act against and above the currents of our existence as-it-is, and by doing so, awaken and transform our lives and our world.

In this New Year of awareness, compassion and healing for us all. Shabbat Shalom. Shanah Tovah.

[i] This sermon is inspired by the life-changing lessons I’ve been taught by my teachers at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality.  I am forever indebted to them for opening my eyes and heart to the most compelling and profound currents of Judaism and Jewish practice that I have ever known.

 [ii] Even Jewish legal principles have demonstrated this propensity to tune out or habituate to what was once only an exceptional threat of danger but has become the constant and thereby normative existential peril we face daily in our world. Previously, Jewish law permitted the overriding of normal legal and moral restrictions in the case of something called "hora-at sha'ah" - an exceptional moment. The age in which we live, with the constant threat of terror, forces one to essentially adopt the notion that every moment in every day is hora-at sha'ah. But making every moment an emergent moment essentially normalizes such urgency, thereby nullifying the entire exceptional purpose of hora-at sha'ah in the first place.

[iii] Lew, Alan. Be Still and Get Going. p.16.

[iv] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm

[v] Sacks, Rabbi Jonathan. To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility. pp.18, 20. 27

[vi] Ibid. p. 28.

[vii] MT Hilkhot Teshuvah 3:4

[viii] BT, Psachim 50a

[ix] As told by Rabbi Alan Lew in This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared

Soul-Seeing in Elul

(This sermon was delivered on Friday, August 9th, 2013 - Shabbat Shoftim)

Late one night in the city of Chelm, known to be populated by fools, Shmuel happened upon his friend Avrum.  Avrum was down on his hands and knees, underneath a streetlight, searching for something.  Shmuel inquired as to what Avrum was doing. “I’ve lost my keys,” he replied.  “Perhaps you’ll help me search.” Shmuel joined him.  After half an hour, they still had no success.  “Avrum, where exactly did you lose those keys?” Maybe we can concentrate our efforts.”  Avrum replied, “I lost them in that alley over there.”  Shmuel was dumbfounded.  “So why are we looking here!?!?!?” Avrum looked over at his friend: “Why are we looking here?  Because the light is better here-  that’s why!”[1]

The story seems a little silly, yet we know it hits on a real truth – one that likely resonates deeply with many of us: that too often we choose to look where the light is best, where it is easiest to see, even if that which we are seeking is located someplace entirely different.  When navigating our own lives and making our own choices, we generally take familiar, well-lit paths - those routes we’ve traveled many times, ground we’ve traversed before.  It’s more predictable, more comfortable that way.  It’s also why we tend to fall into the same patterns of thinking and behavior over and over and over again, despite our “best attempts” at a different outcome.

That’s why the period of time in which we find ourselves calls to us to try something different.  This Shabbat marks the first Shabbat in the month of Elul, the 30 day period that serves both to close out the past year and to prime us for the year ahead.  Each day of Elul beckons us to step out of our comfort zones, to search our lives, our thoughts, and our actions in ways that aren’t always easy, to acknowledge both the enlightened parts of ourselves, but also to confront the darker parts of our souls, all with hope that such a search might positively impact our own process of teshuvah – that call for repentance and return that is the essential demand of the High Holy Days – now less than a month away.

There are, in fact, many long-standing traditions associated with the month of Elul to help this process along.

Traditionally, the shofar is blown every day during Elul (except Shabbat), sort of like a repentance alarm clock, to remind us of what is coming. And in case you don’t have a shofar, and want to get in on the daily shofar call, there’s an app for that!

Some recommend that in anticipation of the High Holy Days, the every person should focus on repentance, prayer, and tzedakah in advance for at least one hour every day.  An hour a day – not so bad.

Others advise compiling a cheshbon hanefesh – literally an inventory of the soul – in which one documents their successes and failures over the past year generally in light of their relationship with God, other people, and themselves, as sort of a preparatory document and teshuvah business plan as it were. 

But before any of these recommended steps can happen, I believe there is a critical pre-step which might be the most important thing any of us can do if we seek to engage in this challenging seasonal work of teshuvah.

Many of you have heard me sing the praises of Rabbi Alan Lew of Blessed Memory and his incredible master-work titled, “This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared.”  It is, in my opinion, the best book out there about the High Holy Days and what they can mean.  If you are considering acquiring any book at all about the High Holy Days, this is the one you should have.  Much of this pre-step is inspired by his book as well as the following story that he shares in it:

While hiking on Martha’s Vineyard with his son, a storm came up and they had to take shelter in a little shack with a big picture window.  Rabbi Lew sat looking out the window in the rain at the birds and other nature, none of which he found very captivating after about 5 minutes.  His son, on the other hand, was having a much more interesting time.  He was not looking out through the window at what was outside, but rather at the window itself.  The window, he pointed out to his father, was a very active world in and of itself, a nature preserve for insect life.  It was clear that the window wasn’t just something through which to view the world; it was a world in and of itself, a place with a life of its own. 

The shifting of our gaze from the big broad world out there and how we engage in it, to the window through which we see the world – our own lens of experience and consciousness -  that is where the work of Elul and the High Holy Days begins.  Because that screen of our perspective mechanisms is, according to Rabbi Lew: “not just a blank transparent medium.  Rather, it is a world unto itself, a world teeming with life, and that life affects everything else we see.” [2]

If the main work of the teshuvah process in Elul is to travel back over the past year and essentially sight-see the course of our lives and relationships, determining high lights and low points along the way, then the pre-step to that process, this deeply inward focusing, might be understood as soul-seeing, where we move our search light away from the outside world and point it in a different direction, illuminating the activity taking place in the window through which we view that world.  The concept sounds complicated, but it’s really not.  Think about the expression of what it means to look at or see the world through rose colored glasses, and you’ll have a great example of what this means.

This week’s Torah portion, Shoftim, offers us deeper insight into the type of soul-seeing we need to do before embarking on the interactive work of teshuvah.  Usually interpreted as a portion focused on the establishment of an ancient judicial system, the Torah reads: “Judges and officers you shall appoint for yourselves in all your gates.”  What gates are we talking about? According to Hasidic tradition, those gates mentioned in the text are more than the big city gates.  As Rabbi Lew also points out: we learn that there are 7 gates - or better windows to the soul of every human being.  2 eyes, 2 nostrils, 2 ears, and the mouth.  Everything that passes into our consciousness must enter through one of these gates. And appointing judges for those gates comes to mean that we seek to acquire discernment over that which influences our consciousness, that which passes through our gates.  So, the passage from the portion really beckons us to look deeply into our own systems of discernment and opinion and even belief, to understand that all of it is a lens that colors our impression of the world and our relationships.  [2]

As many of you know, I spent the last 2 weeks of July in India as a part of American Jewish World Service’s 2013 Rabbinic Delegation. Inspired by the Jewish commitment to justice, American Jewish World Service works to realize human rights and end poverty in the developing world.  One of the most difficult parts of the trip was coming to understand that how I see the world and the characterizations I understand as defining concepts like failure, success, liberation, and oppression are not universal, but are in fact specific to the western cultural lens to which I am conditioned.  At one point, the women in our rabbinic group had the opportunity to meet with the women of the rural village in which we were working.  We asked the village women to tell us about their system of marriage and family.  They shared that in India, marriage is not about individuals, but rather it is about families. When a couple is married, they do not live separately in their own house but rather move in to the groom’s parent’s house (in which sometimes grandparents still live), where they will continue to live.  Boy did we have a hard time with this, and our immediate evaluation of their system was really negative.  What a system of oppression – where were the rights of the individuals to choose whether or not to partner with another,  and where were the opportunities for them, if they even did choose each other, to start their own life together without the burden of their entire family, I wondered?  But then the village women asked us to tell them about our system of marriage and family life here in America.  And when we explained first that marriage in and of itself wasn’t mandatory, but for those who chose it, marriage was really about the individual choices of 2 people to share their lives – nothing more and nothing less, the village women stirred a bit.  “But where do you live?” they asked.  And when we said that often newlyweds share their own apartment or home together, without other members of the family living with them, they became even more uncomfortable.  “But how do you take care of your parents and grandparents when they get older and need you?”  And let me tell you – any negative judgment that I was feeling about their ways was shared equally in the negative judgments they were feeling about our ways.   And so, when the conversation moved to the topic of poverty eradication and human rights, we had to understand that the things we assumed were base-line, shared systems were actually completely different.  That’s not to say that the village women didn’t yearn for empowerment opportunities for themselves, nor did it mean that they didn’t want to improve the living conditions in their village no less their country – in turns out we shared the same values and desires, but the way they envisioned what that might look like proved entirely different than any Western ideal I know of.  It wasn’t until we were able to acknowledge our own lens of assumptions that we were able to find common ground.

The same is true for our own selves and souls.  Before we can do anything that begins to address the world outside of ourselves, we have to develop a keen awareness of the driving personal forces behind the thoughts we think, the choices we make, and the actions we take.  And there is no real way to account for, and certainly not to atone for our choices and actions, until we can be aware of that window in each of us, which refracts every one of our assumptions and thoughts, no less behaviors in the world.

Because we can’t begin to look outwards and assess our engagement with the rest of the world until we attempt to search out those places where the light doesn’t always shine so brightly.

So this start of Elul, take some time, maybe it’s a few minutes, maybe it’s an hour a day, and take a good look at your own window.  Spend some time there and study closely what you find.  You just may discover something that you didn’t even know you’d lost, but once found, will lead you on a path of return, assuring that your life and the lives your life touches will be all the better for it.

---

^[1] Joel Ziff, Mirrors in Time, A PsychoSpiritual Journey through the Jewish Year

2 Lew, Rabbi Alan.  This is Read and You Are Completely Unprepared.  

Counting Up?

Earlier this week, I reviewed the concept of Sephirat haOmer/ the Counting of the Omer with our adult Bar/Bat Mitzvah class.  When I explained that we Jews mark the 49 day period of time between the 2^nd day of Pesach up to Shavuot  by literally counting each day, some of the students began to panic.  Truth be told, we studied the Counting of the Omer in the class last year, and there was no problem then.  So what was so problematic now?  Well, the class has been learning together for almost 2 years, much of their work in anticipation of being called to Torah on this Shavuot.  When I announced “Today is the 21^st day of the Counting of the Omer…” many misunderstood me to mean that there were 21 days remaining until Shavuot, assuming that they had miscounted, leaving 8 fewer days for them to practice, review etc.   But this wasn't a misunderstanding based on an error in calculation of time.  There were in fact still 29 days left until Shavuot. This was a misunderstanding about how we approach markers in time, because there is a major orienting difference between the way popular culture marks time verses how Jews do!

Generally speaking, at least in most circles of modern American society, the concept of counting down is the way we do things.  Think about the drum roll as David Letterman finally announces “…and number one on the top ten things that…”; or the anticipation in the “5,4,3,2,1” before midnight on the secular New Year; or even crossing off each day on a calendar in anticipation of experiencing a big event, thinking to yourself, ‘only _x_ many days until…."  In mainstream culture, we heighten anticipation and excitement through counting down.

Judaism teaches us something entirely different.  Jews always count up.  Not just on the counting of the Omer where we announce each day: “Today is the __x_ day, that is the __x_ day of the __x_ week of the Omer.”  We count up when it comes to marking Holy Days too: the 1^st day of Sukkot, the 2^nd day of Sukkot – not the 7^th to last day of Sukkot, the 6^th to last day of Sukkot, etc.   

And although I can’t be sure of the exact point in Jewish history that this understanding emerged, I imagine much of it comes from a  famous Talmudic machloket (disagreement) between the Houses of Hillel and Shammai, not on the way we count the Omer, but rather on the way we handle the Chanukah lights. (See Talmud Bavli Shabbat 21b).   Shammai’s school appreciated the idea of a countdown, and as such, believed that on the first day of Chanukah, we should light all 8 candles, and each subsequent day, take 1 away; Hillel’s camp took a different approach, saying we should light only 1 candle on the first night, and then continue adding 1 each night until all the candles on the menorah were lit on the final night.   Later rabbinic teachers offered reasons for their positions, asserting first that Shammai’s suggestion corresponded to the days of the holiday that remained, whereas Hillel’s corresponded to the days that had past. They offered a second reason: Shammai’s corresponded to the parallel sacrificial ritual of the Biblical Sukkot, whereas Hillel’s followed the legalistic notion that we “ma'alin ba'kodesh, v’ain moridin -  we increase in matters of holiness, not decrease.”  And because Jews today start with 1 candle and increase to 8, we deduce that the judgment went with Hillel.

So in matters of holiness, we count up, we build up, we lift up.  The drum rolls and anticipation of modern countdowns are one thing, but cultivating a sense of increased importance, an accumulating momentum that carries within it the experiences that have  come before it, proves entirely different, more challenging, and also more rewarding in the end.  To view life through the lens of the countdown insinuates an under-valueing of what has led up to any given experience.  It places emphasis entirely around the destination, with little if any value placed on the steps and stops along the path.  To see life through the lens of the "count up" enables us to celebrate our arrival at the finish line, but at the same time, to honor the significance of the journey we've travelled to get there. 

And so, for our Adult Bar/Bat Mitzvah students, I hope they know that the hours and hours of study they have undertaken are what will make Shavuot, when it arrives, most meaningful. And although they may sigh of relief once their aliyah is over, I hope they will also look back with great pride on the entire experience in all its fullness.  For the Jewish people, I pray our annual spiritual journey from the freedom of Passover to the receiving of Torah on Shavuot is enhanced and deepened by each opportunity we have to add another day to our Omer counting, as we build to 49.  And for all of us, regardless of faith, I dream we  might each honor and raise up every experience we have, both positive and negative, as a means of becoming the best of who we are meant to be so we can serve our world in a way that not only makes it better, but makes it whole.   

You Are What You Eat!

You Are What You Eat

I'm writing this on the 6th day of Passover, thus I find myself thinking a lot about food! The conscious choice to eliminate all things leaven for 1 week (7 or 8 days depending on your tradition) and to make sure to eat matzah each and every day is something that stays with me, both in my mind and my tummy! It's not without purpose. Eliminating leaven and eating matzah is supposed to remind us, in a most primal sort of way (you can't do much without food) that eliminating the "puff" and getting back to the most basic of things, can help us not only center our own lives, but make a difference in the lives of others too. But this being day 6, after 144 chametz-free hours, the visioning of all things leaven kicks in. Food is on my mind, but am I being mindful about it? Only another 48 hours will tell.

The first time I actually ever thought mindfully, I mean really mindfully, about food was when my first child was born.  Up until then, I never truly understood or behaved in a way supporting the notion that the food I put into my body was more than something to immediately satisfy my palate and its various cravings.  That the food I consumed could determine not only of my own, but my children’s health on all levels (physical, emotional, even spiritual) completely escaped me up until that point.  A light went off (as I imagine it does for so many) when, while nursing my son, I realized that if I chose to eat something made primarily of "ingredients" that ended in "ide", "ate",  "ose", or frankly of anything more than 2 syllables, my son would be "nourished" by that same "stuff."  And regardless, something that requires that many "quotation marks" probably isn't ok.  So, I began to seek out whole, organic produce and protein sources for my family.  Through that experience, I realized something else: that the food we consume actually impacts the health and balance, not only of our own bodies, but of our local community, and even the larger world as well.  When we make choices to consume locally produced foods, in-season, we assure that our local food economy is sustainable.  When that happens in each community, sustainability becomes possible all around.  People are healthier, and happier as it turns out. 

The downside: organic produce and protein are expensive.  It is not something that everyone can do.  But it doesn't have to be all or nothing either.  Even making small choices makes a difference.  Puchasing locally produced, in-season produce intentionally, once a week, is a great start.  Planting your own garden is another.  Another great idea is to support a CSA. 

Starting this Summer, my synagogue will be the delivery sight for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) through Angelic Organics.  By purchasing “shares” of vegetables and/or fruits, local family organic farms harvest and then deliver organic fruits and veggies to be picked up. 

Supporting a CSA is a great idea because it helps provide local farmers a secure market and in turn, you receive tons of organic fruits and/or veggies in season and as fresh as they can be – literally from farm to you!  It is an easy and great way to support those who literally live off the land as well as get in tune with how, when and what the land actually provides. 

If you go to NSCI or live near it, join my family in this.  A half veggie share (meaning a box delivered to NSCI every other week from mid-June through October) costs only $340, which you can divide in two payments of $170 each.  Full veggie and fruit shares are also available, as are extended season shares.  To get started, just go to: http://web.me.com/angelicorganics/Angelic_Organics___Chicago_CSA/Angelic_Organics___Buy_Our_Vegetables.html

They'll even give you $20 off if you use coupon code NS20. 

If you don't live near NSCI, you can search local CSAs in your town on the internet or check out your local farmer's market.

You know, Passover also marks an ancient agricultural time for planting. It precedes the major harvest that occurs 7 weeks and 1 day later on Shavuot. Tomorrow or Saturday night, Passover will end. But the work of the land will just be beginning. Our ancestors travelled to Jerusalem on Passover and Shavuot to pray and give thanks for a bountiful harvest that would sustain them and the entire community for the coming season. Perhaps their ancient ways can inform our choices and actions today.