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.

Toward a modern Jewish New Year for the Animals


Rosh Hashanah, the day that we traditionally celebrate as the Jewish New Year, comes on the first and second days of the month of Tishri on the Hebrew calendar.  But in reality, there are actually four "new years" in Judaism, each serving a different purpose  (based on Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 1a, but arranged in a different order here):

1. The first of Tishri, for the counting of calendar years, Jubilee years, etc.
2. The first of Nissan, for dating the reign of kings and for various legal documents
3. The fifteenth of Shevat, for tithing fruits of trees
4. The first of Elul, for tithing cattle

Only the first of Tishri is a "New Year's Day" in the sense that we now think of it.  The others are more like fiscal years, similar, for example, to how income taxes are due on the 15th of April (in the USA) and not the first of the secular year.

The first of Elul "for tithing cattle" was the cut-off point for determining in which year an animal should be included in the count.  Animals born before that date were tithed in the old year; animals born after that date were tithed in the new year.  Nowadays very few Jews are raising flocks of animals and, since there has not been a Jerusalem Temple since the year 70 C.E. (when the Romans destroyed it), nobody is tithing animals for Temple sacrifices anymore.   Nevertheless, this date remains on the Jewish calendar, although, admittedly, it is not very well known today.

A mother hen on her nest in my yard.
(The white spot by her head is a chick.)
Very few chicks are hatched this
natural way anymore

Recently, there have been suggestions among Jewish animal welfare activists to make the first of Elul, the "Rosh Hashanah for Animals," into a day for focusing on the many teachings in Judaism about the proper treatment of animals.  This would not be the first time that a Jewish holiday got re-defined after the Temple was destroyed.  Shavuot, the "Feast of Weeks," was originally celebrated with processions of people bringing their first-fruits to the Temple.  Today it focuses on receiving the Torah at Mt. Sinai, which also took place on the same date.  Tu B'Shevat, the "New Year for Trees" (#3 in the list above) is now a form of Jewish Earth Day, when people not only plant trees, but also focus on current environmental issues.

In the same way, the New Year for Animals would shift the focus from tithing sacrifices toward learning about how animals are treated on factory farms, comparing that with Jewish teachings about the proper treatment of animals, and making choices about where we get our milk, eggs, and meat -- or maybe even considering vegetarianism as a better alternative.  Given that most Jews today are urban people who rarely, if ever, have contact with farmers or farm animals, I think that developing a modern version of this day would be a great educational opportunity.


Typical ram's horn Shofar

It would also fit with the overall theme of the month of Elul.  Traditionally, we blow the shofar (ram's horn) once each morning during Elul (except on the Sabbath.)  This is to remind us that the High Holy Day season is coming, and that we should "wake up" and take account of our lives in preparation for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  Adding the observance of Rosh Hashanah for Animals on the first of Elul would mean that on the very first day of the month leading into the High Holy Day season, we would examine how we are treating God's creatures.  Perhaps we might start with the words of the Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism:

"A worm serves the Creator with all of his intelligence and ability... A person should consider himself and all creatures as comrades in the universe, for we are all created beings whose abilities are God-given."  (Tzava'as Ha Rivash 12)

(See also Richard Schwartz's article, An Audacious Initiative to Restore the Ancient New Year for Animals posted on August 8, 2012 on Tikkun Daily.)

On rainfall and creating vessels for the "divine outpouring"

There are many places in the Hebrew Scriptures which compare God's blessings to rain, such as:

For I (God) will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams in the dry ground.  I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and My blessing on your descendants.  (Isaiah 44:3)

Raindrops photo by Linda F. Palmer,
courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

There are also many references in kabbalah and Hasidic philosophy about creating vessels (kaylim) to hold the divine blessings.  These are, of course, symbolic -- the "vessels" being things like daily prayer times, giving charity,  doing mitzvot, etc.  But symbols usually have some basis in the natural world.  Last week, that point was brought home to me in very physical way.

On Thursday afternoon, our water pump went out.  I had just finished watering the animals and the container gardens, turned off the faucet, then came inside to wash the eggs. When I turned on the inside faucet, nothing came out.  Did we blow a fuse?  I went downstairs, checked the circuit breakers -- even flipped the one for the pump on and off again -- still nothing.

So I shut off the circuit to the pump in case there was a short or bad connection (did not want to risk a fire), then came back upstairs and began figuring out how we were going to cope with having no water in a heatwave.  If the pump needed replacing, that was going to be an expensive repair -- and we are flat broke.   Luckily I have been collecting rainwater off the roof of the house and the coop for the garden and animals, so I had some backup on hand, but that wouldn't last forever.  I could haul water from the lake if necessary, but did not look forward to doing that in the extreme  heat.  As for drinking water, I drove into town and bought eight gallons in reusable containers from the self-service reverse-osmosis station at our local grocery.

Friday there was a forecast of rain, so I began gathering every bucket, jug, barrel, and other container I could find to collect rain water.  Suddenly the symbolism of the "divine outpouring" became very, very clear.  God's blessings are infinite, but our receiving them is limited by the "vessels" we have created to receive them.   This point is brought home in the biblical story of The Widow's Oil (2 Kings chapter 4), where the prophet Elisha tells a poor woman to collect all the jars and jugs she can from her neighbors, then begin pouring what little cooking oil she had into these jugs.  As long as she had empty jugs to fill, the oil kept coming.  When she ran out of containers, the blessing stopped, but she had enough to sell and pay off her debts.

In my case, no miracle was required, only a downpour of rain -- which came on Friday afternoon.  I put on my swim trunks (to let nature wash the sweat off me) and went out to tend my containers.  Rain was gushing off the roof , and as a bucket filled, I replaced it with an empty one and poured the water into a jug.  I was also very happy to see my main garden getting watered, because I really did not want to lose my vegetables.  The zucchinis, cukes, squash and tomatoes are just beginning to form, and it would be a real hardship to lose them.

When the storm ended, I had enough water to tide me over  the weekend.  My wife (who joined me for a shower in the rain) and I were also washed clean for the Sabbath.  Never in my life had a cold shower felt so good!    As of today (Sunday) the pump still is not fixed (we hope to figure out some financing tomorrow), I'm all sweaty and smelly again, but this experience did give me a very good story about spirituality.

Religious practice, and ritual in general, can be considered a form of container to receive and hold God's blessing. You might not feel deeply inspired every time you go to services or sit down to pray privately, but if you make room for a regular prayer time, you are more likely to receive inspiration than if you never bother to pray at all.  This is why we speak of "making" the Sabbath.   The blessing of the Sabbath is there every week, poured out freely for every Jew to receive.  But unless you make proper preparations -- to create a vessel to receive and contain it -- the blessing of the Sabbath escapes you.  And so it is with any spiritual practice.

(UPDATE:  I did get the pump fixed a few days later.  Turned out it was only a broken switch on the pressure tank, so not as expensive after all.  But this experience did provide me with some interesting insights.)

"The Soul of Every Living Thing" -- vegetarian video with Yonassan Gershom

I just finished editing this video for the Shamayim'v'Aretz ("Heaven and Earth") Institute, a new Jewish organzation promoting veganism as the ideal Jewish diet, as well as Jewish ethics and spirituality in general. They asked for a short video of me as a vegetarian, so here it is.

As I have said before on this blog, I'm not a vegan (although I am a vegetarian) and I'm not even sure it is practical to be vegan outside of big urban centers, because the ingredients are so hard to find in rural areas. Biblically veganism is the ideal diet (Eden was vegan) but I'm just not there yet, and not likely to be in the future. I do eat eggs but, as you will see in the video, I also take full responsibility for my own flock of chickens, which is where my eggs come from.

What I do have to offer my fellow Jews (and others) is some practical experience actually living with nature. So, watch this 5-minute video and tell me what you think. At the very least, you'll get to see some nice footage of my land and animals.