On Nittl Nacht and Asarah B’Tevet 5781

It’s a dangerous time of year
For a Jew, for a queer, for all of us outside this

Last night the light was sliced in two
And Mars perched atop the half faced moon.

I don’t know portends and prophecies.
I know the sharp pained air and the
Crunch of sudden snow turned sleet
And the double sirens, the din of dogs
Howling through the longest night.

A fast is the easy part,
The siege, the hard.
The beginning of the end
And the end of beginnings;
Two years breached a wall.

How do we mark diaspora?
Inscribe it on the doorposts
Bind it between our eyes,
Always in the peripheral
Forever on the sly.

Pretend to have a home that isn’t you.
Make that every moment.
Weep
Oh thou
Weep

Erev Shabbat Chanukah – Close of Kislev

Shabbat Shalom y’all! See you in a new week.

Remember Kislev, the month of rest and sleep and dreams is coming to a close. Yoseph, our dreamiest ancestor, is in full dream prophetic mode. Spend some time this Shabbos. What do you dream, big and small? How can you rest in ways that renew your energy? How can we support each other in the realization of our dearest and first dreams?

Our Rabbis teach Yoseph spent 22 years before the fulfillment of his dream that his brothers would bow to him (spoilers for next parasha). And so we humans should give a dream 22 years to happen before we give up. Don’t give up yet! The World that is Coming is here every week, when we rest and dream and let our minds hope for a better world.

In love. In solidarity. In wholeness. 💜

Shammai’s Olam Haba – Blessing the Other Side of Light

The second night – Chanukah 5781

I now know two other folks also lighting double Hanukkah candles to fulfill both Hillel and Shammai’s rulings. And I remembered suddenly a reading that Shammai’s rulings are the rulings of Olam Haba, The World to Come.

We Jews know the World to Come is the world that we are now creating, the world we are unfolding through our actions. It is not magically separate or distanced. It is not in the heavens, but here.

So here’s to bringing us all a little closer to The World of Redemption. Even something as seemingly small as lighting a hannukiah in another way brings with it a beauty and complexity of meaning that leads us to deeper connection.

What does it mean to realize that even as we make light, we also can lose light? What does it mean to mourn the loss of the dark times? How can we recognize the great balance, that we are never perfectly fulfilled in this life, never able to always increase the light, but that we nonetheless strive towards it? And how do we bless that darkness too?

For the First Night – A Dedication

Erev Chanukah 5781

It’s almost Hanukkah in Mississippi.
I was going to write something up – I had notes about the Torah parsha, about the 1st night Hanukkah reading cause it’s my boy Nachshon!, about lighting up the dawn and the loss of the soft moon’s light.
But life gets in the way.

I did something big and scary today. And right after, I remembered it’s Ira Rubin’s yartzheit. My heart is in my throat. I feel so much guilt and shame – that my brain hadn’t made me remember, that I hadn’t looked at my calendar, that the sun was near to setting and I … I forgot.

Ira would have smiled; maybe shrugged, maybe laughed. He would have been excited about my adventure, more interested in that – or maybe the mussar he’d started reading – than my guilt and hurt over him. I never told Ira in words what he meant to me and now the words seem flat, lackluster. He at least knew my deep respect and immense fondness/love for him. He would be gentle about my mistake, crack a little pun, dimples in his smile. He would remind me that I can’t forget Torah even if I forget a date.

What I can never forget, what a calendar can’t take away – Ira Rubin is a shammes, a helper candle. He left us and joined ancestors erev Hannukah. Even now, six years after his death, his memory still brings me laughter and tears. Even now I think of him in shul, lifting that one eyebrow and tilting his head into a laugh as he cradled the Torah. Every day I wish I could be as kind and gentle and thoughtful as Ira was. Every day I hope to be.

I’m crying that Ira isn’t here. I’m crying because so much of Ira is here even though his body isn’t.

While I write this, we’re driving over the river that marks the boundary between Louisiana and Mississippi. Somewhere behind me is the person I left behind, when I left here. Somewhere back there are the small sparks of my soul left scattered across the deep south.
Somehow, I am still here. Crossing over another river, another state line, another boundary.

Hineni. I am ready for this.