Social Distancing made me "normal" in the Jewish community

Breslov Hasid making hisboddidus
(courtesy of Wikipedia)

For literally decades, I have been an anomaly in the Jewish community. As a Hasid who lives far away from the nearest synagogue, I have endured a lot of guilt-tripping from fellow Jews about why I should not live where there is no minyan, and lectures about "not cutting myself off from the community."  To a lot of people, being Jewish is so tightly tied to city living that potential converts living in rural areas have sometimes been turned down because "you just can't do Judaism" in the country.

And to a lot of Jews in the city, I ceased to exist once we moved to the country.  (At one point, several years ago, when Caryl and I needed some assistance, neither the Twin Cities nor Duluth Jewish Social Services would claim us, since we were not in their jurisdictions.)

Then along comes COVID19 and social distancing.  All the synagogues are ordered to close -- and right before Passover yet.   Suddenly the whole Jewish world is finding themselves trying to figure out how to practice without a minyan, without family, without personal contact.  How do you fill the time on Shabbat?  How do you make a Seder?  If you can't get parsley or horseradish, what else can you use?  Can you say kaddish on Zoom?  Etc.

 I have spent a lot of time online answering these and similar questions.  Years of hisboddidus (Rebbe Nachman's form of solitary prayer and meditation)   prepared me for this isolating  crisis.  Suddenly my experience here in the North Woods has become a valuable resource.  No longer the community crackpot, I am suddenly an expert on how to cope with the new normal as a Jew.

Kabbalah teaches that there are Holy Sparks everywhere that need to be lifted up out of  exile.  Sometimes, the Baal Shem Tov taught, we are sent by God to remote places, specifically to find these Sparks.  I won't be so egotistical as to claim that moving to Pine County, Minnesota was a mission from God. But I will cite the teaching that each Jew is like a letter of the Torah, and that if even one letter is missing, the Torah is incomplete.  My "letter," as eccentric as it may seem to some people , has value. No sincere effort, no experience in God's world is ever wasted. Not even for us outliers.

I will close this essay with a little video I did about lighting my campfire on Lag B'Omer here in the North Woods.   Just because we weren't able to gather in huge crowds around the bonfires this year doesn't mean we could not celebrate.  When I made this bonfire, I had in mind to be spiritually connected to Jews around the world.  And I felt that connection deeply, in my heart and soul.

UPDATE:  Here we are, a year later, and still in the pandemic.  The video below combines footage from last year with some of my current thoughts on how this pandemic parallels the plague in the time of Rabbi Akiva.

Cleaning for Passover: Don't be a fanatic!

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, the great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, once got so caught up in an obsession about getting rid of chometz (leavening) before Passover that it almost drove him crazy.  During Passover, not only is it forbidden to eat chometz, it is forbidden to own it or derive any benefit from it at all.  So he started worrying about whether or not there would be chometz in the water used during the festival.  What if someone had dropped a piece of bread down the well?  That could taint the whole water supply.  Even the tiniest bit of chometz would render the water unusable for the whole eight days of the festival.

After much deliberation and minute examination of every possible halachic detail, Rebbe Nachman finally came to the conclusion that the only way to be absolutely, positively sure there was no chometz in the water would be to camp out next to a spring in the woods where the water bubbled up fresh and uncontaminated.  The problem was, the only such spring was a long way from his home.  If he went there, then he would be away from his family, his friends, his disciples, and the whole Jewish community.  Was that any way to celebrate a festival?

In the end, Rebbe Nachman decided that such ultra-strictness was unnecessary, even on Passover.  Being overly rigid killed the joy and led to depression.  Don’t be a fanatic, he taught, and do not worry yourself sick with unnecessary restrictions. “The Torah was given to human beings, not the ministering angels.”

That’s good advice.  And lest you think this obsession with “the letter of the law” is limited to Orthodox Jews, let me assure you that it occurs among secular people also.  Rebbe Nachman’s lesson came to mind a while back when I received an email about a vegan woman who had decided to take her practice to the ultimate ethical vegan level and refuse to eat anywhere meat, fish, eggs, or dairy were being served.  Basically, this meant hanging out only with other vegans in vegan restaurants, vegan homes, or at vegan events.

This ultra-strictness also resulted in her walking out on a reunion of family and friends that she had really been looking forward to, because they were serving meat. It was not enough that the organizers were willing to provide her with a vegan meal. Unless everyone there refused meat, the entire event was, to mix cultural metaphors, not kosher.

Many people in the vegetarian community probably lauded her utmost devotion to the cause. But if I were to do that, it would mean never eating with anyone but my wife.  We are vegetarians (not vegans) and we live in a rural area where most of my family, neighbors and associates are not vegetarians, let alone vegans.  If I followed that woman's advice to the letter, I would end up in an isolated social bubble, not unlike what would have happened if Rebbe Nachman had decided to camp out next to the spring in the forest during Passover.

It was this kind of fanaticism that Rebbe Nachman warned against.  Yes, we must clean house, search out all leaven and remove it, change the kitchen utensils over to the Passover set, etc.  But don't drive yourself insane doing it.  Don't make it a burden that kills the joy of the holiday.

This is why we have the bitul chametz procedure for declaring any leaven we might have missed to be null and void.  This is not a mere legality.  The rabbis who enacted this rule long ago were aware of the human tendency to obsess over things. There is always the possibility that we missed a bread crust the kids dropped somewhere.  Or maybe a guest you invited for the Seder isn't as thorough as you are, and dropped some crumbs from his pocket on the living room rug.  Or a mouse stored grain in the walls of your house... A person can go on and on about this kind of worry.

However, if we have done due diligence to remove all the leaven we know about, then renounced all ownership of what we might have missed, then dayenu, enough. Time to move on and celebrate!

49 Gates of Light: A Course in Kabbalah

 

Count the Omer with 49 Gates of Light!

It's back!  The latest "incarnation" of Rabbi Yonassan Gershom's seven-week course of daily kabbalah lessons, coordinated to "counting the omer" on the Jewish calendar.  You can now get the new 2010 revision  in epub format -- readable on the iPad, Nook, and most ebook readers or computers.  

Newly updated and now in full color, this is not just another book “about” kabbalah.  It’s an experiential set of daily lessons, designed to help you learn the Tree of Life diagram and apply the principles of kabbalah in your own life.   Includes all the stories and lessons of the 1987 and 1993 editions, the "Wizard of Oz" as a kabbalah teaching parable, plus many new diagrams and illustrations.  128 pages in all.

The print version of this book retails for $36 (color printing is very expensive) but you can have the same book in epub format for only $10 on Lulu.com -- order here and download instantly!

Here’s how it works:  Each day, you will explore one of the 49 “flavors” of consciousness with a specific Hebrew mantra to open the Heart (spelled out in English letters), a story or teaching to study to develop the Mind, and something active for you to do on the path of Action.  The 49 lessons are co-coordinated to the “Omer” period on the Jewish calendar, which is the seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot (Feast of Weeks.)  However, you can also do this program anytime as a set of personal lessons any time of the year.   

The Tree diagrams and lesson pages are color-coded to match the rainbow pattern on the B'nai Or tallis (prayer shawl) designed by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, as well as the Seven Days of Creation and other kabbalistic themes.  Each week focuses on one of the Seven Lower sefirot (levels) on the Tree diagram. 

The process works on many levels, and you are free to make it as simple or complex as you wish.  If you are not the type of person who likes to analyze, simply read the daily page, do the mantra and experiential meditation, then journal your thoughts and reactions.  If you do this faithfully for the entire seven weeks, you will be amazed at your spiritual progress.  

However, if you are not content to “just do it” and want to know how the process works and why, the introductory and sections will give you the theory, along with diagrams of the Tree and more in-depth ways to use the book.  Also included is a glossary of Hebrew terms and some interesting background history.

Buy and download your copy now! 

(Or, if you want to spend 36 bucks for the print version, you can get it here. )

Baby Chicks are not Easter Toys!

Or Passover toys.  Both Easter and Passover are spring festivals (In the Northern Hemisphere at least).  Jews are not as strongly focused on chicks and bunnies this time of year, so I suppose this post is directed more at my non-Jewish readers, but my plea to both is the same:  Please don't buy baby animals that you can't keep for their entire lifetime.   It's not fair to your kids, and not fair to the animals.

Day-old incubator chicks
(Photo courtesy of USDA)

Those cute fuzzy chicks are going to grow up -- very quickly -- into full-sized chickens, most likely roosters, because the hatcheries keep the more valuable females for the egg trade.  In addition, you really can't keep just one chick, because these are flock birds who do not thrive in solitude.  That sharp, incessant peeping of a lone chick is a signal of extreme loneliness and distress.  He is calling for help from his flock mates -- who aren't there.

Chicks hatching under a mother hen bond with her and their nest mates even before hatching.  The hen clucks softly to her eggs, and the chicks begin peeping softly to each other from inside their eggs -- a very different sound than the distress call.  By the time the hatch is over, they are already a bonded family unit.  Incubator chicks can't bond with a machine, but they probably do bond with each other.

A mother hen sitting on her nest
in my backyard.  The pale yellow
spot by her breast is a new chick.
(click photo to enlarge)

Separation from the flock is very traumatic.  So is being kept under bright lights in a pet shop, because normally the chicks would periodically take shelter in the warmth and darkness under their mother's wings.  Being exposed to bright light and strange people all day long is like being out in the open and constantly threatened by a predator, with no place to hide.

A minimum of three chickens is needed for a happy flock.  Unless you live on a farm, just what are you going to do with three roosters?  Every year, animal shelters are inundated with unwanted chickens and ducks after the holiday, birds that have grown too big and too noisy for urban backyards.   These birds are very hard to re-home, because most people don't want a crowing rooster anymore than you and your neighbors do.

This little chick was hatched
by the hen above, and grew up
knowing his mother

Even worse, some people release them into the wild, mistakenly thinking they will get along just fine.  They might for a while -- but when winter comes, they will freeze to death, because domestic ducks cannot fly south like their wild cousins, and chickens are jungle birds, not well adapted to snow like pheasants or grouse.  A number of years ago I rescued two half-grown chicks that somebody had dumped at a freeway rest stop.  (Read that story)   And I found my white gander, Prince, waddling down our country dirt road.  He is still with us at the age of 13 and may live to be 30.  None of these birds would have survived in the wild.

There is also a very real danger that children can accidentally kill a baby chick or duckling simply by holding it wrong.  Birds do not breathe the same way we do.  They have no diaphragm.  Instead, they must rely on the expansion and contraction of their little chests to breathe.  If you hold a chick too tightly -- as children often do -- he can smother in minutes.   Unfortunately, this happens more often than we want to hear about.   There is nothing more traumatic than having a child's pet die in her hands.

The bottom line is:  Jewish law says that you should not acquire any animal unless you can feed and care for it properly.  As readers of my blog know, I myself have chickens, and I am not against keeping them, if you can properly care for them for their full lifespans -- which is an average of 8 to 10 years.  If not, then it is better to buy your kids a plush toy.

Rabbi in a Hoodie: I know what it's like to be stereotyped

My heart goes out to the family of 17-year-old Treyvon Martin, who was gunned down while walking home from the store in a hooded sweatshirt -- which apparently caused self-appointed neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in a gated neighborhood to see him as "very suspicious" and possibly on drugs.  And did I mention that Treyvon was black?  Never mind that it was raining and he probably put his hood up to keep dry.  That combination of factors -- young black guy at night in a hoodie -- somehow made Zimmerman "fear for his life" even though Martin was unarmed.   Reports of what happened are conflicting at this point, but one thing is clear: the 911 operator told Zimmerman not to follow or confront Treyvon and he did so anyway.   So who was really threatening whom?



Rabbi Gershom in a hoodie



One has to ask -- as protesters across the nation are doing -- whether Zimmerman's fear was based on any kind of reality or a stereotype in Zimmerman's head.  In solidarity with those protests, I post this pic of myself in a hoodie -- one that I wear all the time while doing outdoor chores here in northern Minnesota. 



Now, as an old white guy, I can't claim to know what it is like to be a black youth in America.  But I do know what it is like to be stereotyped.   When I'm not wearing a hoodie, I usually wear a large knitted yarmulke (skullcap).  That, along with my full untrimmed beard, makes me look like a "terrorist" to some people.  There are also those here in rural Minnesota who do not know what payos (Orthodox sidecurls) are, and see them as something effeminate.  So it's hard to tell sometimes if I am being profiled as a Muslim or a gay male.  Or, for that matter, maybe they do know I'm a Jew and don't like me for that. 

What I know for sure is that ever since 9/11, if I travel outside my local area where I am a familiar sight, I find myself being followed by security people in stores, stared at by strangers on the street, or trailed through small towns by police cars.  I have also been pulled over by cops for things like a burned out tail light a whole lot more often than ever happened before 9/11.   I haven't had any occasion to fly lately, but I have no doubt that I'd be seen as suspicious.  Would I be kicked off the flight -- or worse -- because some passenger "felt uncomfortable" with me on board?

Geraldo Rivera wants to blame the death on the hoodie implying that if Treyvon had not been wearing one outside his own neighborhood, the whole thing would never have happened.   Does this mean I should never "look Jewish" outside of an Orthodox Jewish community?  Does it mean that if I get harrassed, it's my own fault for wearing a yarmulke in public and looking like someone's idea of a terrorist?

In fact, I do admit that there have been times when I have tied my payos at the back of my neck like a ponytail and worn a stocking cap or a baseball cap -- precisely because I did not want to be bothered with stares at some public event.  As a white Jewish guy, it is relatively easy for me to pass as a gentile.   But a black guy can't change his skin color.  About the only thing we can both hope to do is change people's attitudes.  We all need to take a long hard look at how we treat each other. 

The commandment "do not oppress a stranger" occurs, in one form or another, more than any other commandment in the Bible.   Maybe the reason for that is because this is one of the hardest things for human beings to do, to trust someone who is different from themselves.  With Passover coming in two weeks, we should all give some serious thought to Exodus 22:21, "You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." 

2012 heat wave: Spring has never been so early here!

Lately the news has been full of photos of cherry blossoms and daffodils blooming a month early in places like Washington, DC.  Here in Pine County, Minnesota, things are not that far along yet, but signs of spring are still unseasonably early. 

On the right you see a bouquet of budding twigs that include (from left to right) forsythia, false spirea, pussy willows and black maple.  For many years it has been our custom to cut a bouquet like this for Passover, then watch as the buds slowly open during the eight days of the festival.  Well, this year we are going to have to do something different, because Passover is still almost three weeks away and buds are swelling now.

Nor are budding trees the only early signs of spring.  The Canada geese are back, along with robins, starlings,  red-wing blackbirds, song sparrows, juncos, mourning doves, and the phoebe who nests in the rafters of our shed each year.  Pheasants are calling, grouse are drumming, and last night -- believe it or not -- I heard spring peeper frogs and the ones we call "clacking frogs" calling in the marsh across the road.  This is the absolute earliest that any of this has happened here as far as I can remember.

Those swelling maple buds meant that I didn't get any maple syrup.  Normally you start tapping the trees when the days are around 40 degrees and the nights are still below freezing.  But when the temperature soars into the high 70s like it has done this March (smashing local records for days in a row), the nights stay warm, the trees bud out, and the sap flow stops.  Everybody I've talked to around here says the same thing:  Their maple trees dried up overnight.  I never even bothered to tap mine.  Which is probably just as well, because we are also in a drought.  All of our snow seems to have moved way down south.  Arizona is getting buried, while Minnesota stays high and dry.  We only got one decent snowstorm here all winter, and within days it had melted away.  Yesterday we got a nice steady rain, which was a good thing, because with all that dried grass around, not to mention some very early lightning storms, the fire danger was extremely high.

All of which adds up to one thing:  Climate change is real, and it is here.

Spring is here, cleaning for Passover, birds are back!

I haven't had much time to write on my blog lately -- between making maple syrup, cleaning out the chicken coop, and cleaning the house for Passover, I haven't been online much in the past couple weeks.   So this is just a quick note to let all my readers know I'm fine, and very much enjoying the return of the birds.  The bird migration north is in full swing.  The phoebes that nest on my land (one in the open garage and the other under the eaves of the chicken coop) are back.  Of course, I have no way to know if they are the exact same birds that nested here last year, but we have had phoebe nests in the same areas for about 5 years now, so it is either them or their descendants. 

This is a photo I took of the young birds in a phoebe nest in 2009 -- they fledged the next day.   I liked it so much, I made it up as a souvenir postcard (you can still buy a copy in my ebay store, The Happy Rooster):

The Canada geese are back in droves, and I've seen Sandhill Cranes flying over several times now.  Monday on the way to Hinckley, my wife and I saw two pair of Snow Geese standing in two different flooded fields -- an unusual sight, we usually see them flying over on their way to Canada but rarely on the ground.  But Sunday night it was very windy so I supsect we had a  bird drop (which is different from a bird dropping) because overnight there were suddenly lots of migrating birds in the trees and bushes.  On the same day, the pond across the street was full of ducks, and I also heard them back in our seasonal woodland wetlands area, where it floods every spring.  All waiting out the high winds, I guess.

Plus there are robins, flocks of Juncos, and song sparrows, pheasants calling, grouse drumming.  I also saw a red-tailed hawk and a pair of Bald Eagles.   And the pair of starlings that nests in a hole in the eaves every year is back.  I keep meaning to get up there and plug it up, but I'm a bit old for climbing second-story ladders now.  Starlings are not really a big problem here, this is the only pair we ever see and I enjoy  enjoy seeing them sitting on the power lines and flying back and forth to feed their young.  When I do get the eaves fixed, I plan to put a birdhouse for them up there.   Otherwise, they might go compete with the Bluebirds or Tree Swallows.

Starlings, you have probably heard, were purposely released in the USA by a guy who wanted to introduce all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare's plays.   There's a chapter about this in a new book, "How Shakespeare Changed Everything," due out on May 10.  (I got an advance review copy.  Since I'm not a Shakespeare expert, I found it very informative -- basically a good book with odd facts to get teenagers or newbies interested in the classics.)  The starling release has over-succeeded.  In many place they are serious pests.  But up here in the North Woods, they are just another species returning for spring.

Crocuses are blooming, the daffodils are coming up, and the frogs are out, too -- across the road is a marsh where the Spring Peepers are almost deafening, along with a species I call "clacking frogs" because that's the sound they make, likeone of those kids' clacker toys.  I've never actually seen them do it, so I'm not sure what the species is.  No singing toads yet, but I expect to hear them soon.  Last year a big toad took up residence in the flower garden outside the front window and we heard him all summer.

Yesterday I dug up my horseradish for the "bitter herbs" at our Seder (on Monday and Tuesday nights) and today I get to vacuum the rugs.   Sunday we kosher the kitchen to get rid of all leavening, bring down the Passover dishes from the attic, etc. (We order matzoh online -- it has already arrived.)   Monday we go buy fresh veggies and begin cooking for the first Seder Monday night.   So I might not get around to blogging again for a while -- until then, wishing you all a Happy Spring (or fall if you are reading this Down Under.)

Living within the seasons

One of the things I quickly learned after moving to the country was how to plan ahead for Jewish holidays, because way out here, there just aren't any kosher specialty stores.  That's why I'm already thinking about Passover in January.

For example, you need nuts to make charoset, the apples-and-nuts mixture served at the Passover Seder.  And the nuts must either be certified free of any leavening products (that is, kosher for Passover), or still in their shells.  Finding Passover certified nuts in small-town America is next to impossible, and nuts in the shell can only be found in December or early January (except for peanuts, but they're legumes, not real nuts.)   So I learned very quickly to plan ahead and stock up on almonds and walnuts and such in December so I'll have them at Passover time in April.  (I also save black walnuts from my own tree in the fall, and wild hazelnuts when I can find them.)

The same is true for many other things people take for granted in the city.  One of the reasons my wife and I  are vegetarians (although by no means the only reason!) is because of the hassle and extra expense of trying to get kosher meat outside of the Metro area.  I suppose I could have learned to slaughter my own chickens (one of the best-kept secrets of the kosher meat industry is that any Jew who knows how can slaughter for own his household, provided he doesn't sell the meat as kosher to others) but I'm just not cut out for that.  My backyard chickens are friends, not food.  And to be honest, we eat much better as vegetarians than we would be for the same amount of money as carnivores. 

There have also been years when I couldn't find fresh parsley for the Seder, either, because the local grocery didn't have it and there certainly wasn't any growing out there under the snow.  In fact, this is why the traditional dipping vegetable at a Russian Jewish Seder isn’t parsley, because nobody in Russia had fresh greens when the ground was still frozen solid at Passover time.  So they used a piece of boiled potato, which falls into the same pri ha-adamah ("fruit of the earth") blessing category as parsley.  Even today, if you go to a traditional Lubavitch Seder, they still use the potato, because that's what their Rebbes used in Russia.  A piece of carrot would do, too.

I also grow my own horseradish for the maror (bitter herbs), because once again, fresh horseradish just isn't available here in April, and the kind in the jar isn't so easy to find, either.  The first year we were here, I had to special order horseradish roots and take 5 pounds -- but at least I had enough left over to start the patch that I've harvested from ever since.  (Of course, I need to remember to shovel away the snow a couple weeks before Passover time, so the sun can reach the soil and thaw it enough to dig the stuff out.)

Yes, I could order these things from the Internet (and I do that with some things, such as vegetarian soup mixes), but that's not the point.  Simplifying my lifestyle and getting in touch with nature is.  Up until recently, nobody had the same fruits and vegetables all year round.  Eggs weren't so easily available, either.  When I made the decision not to eat factory farm eggs and only use those from my own chickens or free-run hens from places I trusted, our winter diet changed radically.  Right now, in the dead of winter, I'm getting maybe 6 eggs a week from my little flock, if that.  So I'm not having eggs for breakfast today.  They will get saved for baking bread and other things for the Sabbath.  My winter breakfasts consist more of hot cereals.

Urban  Jews will read this and probably wonder why I put myself through all this trouble.  But I think I have a better understanding of Hasidic stories when I live closer to the way that early Hasidim lived.  Foods were seasonal back then, and this was reflected in the way our feasts were celebrated. Lots of spiritual reasons are given for serving eggs at Passover time (or Easter for my Christian neighbors), but the most down-to-earth one is, that, in the natural order of things, the hens start laying again in spring.  I think it's important not to lose sight of that.