#Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

[entheognosis]

Anyone who has had a truly “spiritual” moment, a moment of breaking through our day-to-day reality and touching the divine, knows how difficult it is to communicate that experience to others— or even to recapture it later for ourselves.

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Spiritual seekers need one another as mirrors. A member of the Hopi nation once asked me about our holy days. I was telling him about Passover, our celebration of freedom, and Sukkot, our Feast of Tabernacles, and how they fit in with the cycles of the year. "I think I get it," he said finally. "You people don't want to be in slavery. And you want to pass this on to your children. But when you tell your kids on Passover, 'We have to go away from here; we can't stay here because it will cost us our freedom,' your kids will say, 'Yeah, but what are we going to eat?' So you teach them how to bake bread on stones, how to roast a lamb if you are hungry, how to find dandelion greens, and so on. When the kids ask, 'But where will we stay?' you show them how to build a lean-to, so they will have somewhere to live." An Indian perspective on the mitzvot to eat the Passover lamb with matzot and bitter herbs and to build a sukkah on Sukkot gave me a completely different insight into my own traditions.

-Jewish with Feeling, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. 2005, p. 198-199

[pargolettasworld]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nDq2g1yXc4

At the cantors’ conference last week, I had the pleasure of meeting Akiva the Believer.  He is a really interesting guy, soft-spoken and laid-back, and he is all about drumming.  He comes out of the Jewish Renewal movement, and was in fact ordained by the late Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi as a Master Temple Drummer -- a position that I’d guess you didn’t know existed (I sure didn’t), and I’m pretty sure Akiva is the only one to occupy.

Jewish Renewal is an interesting movement, combining immense creativity, a not inconsiderable amount of woo, and a concerted effort to combine Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah, early Chasidic ideas of ecstatic prayer, and radical gender equality.  This is not a movement that is ever going to sweep mainstream Judaism -- but I do think it’s one that should be listened to and taken seriously.  Jewish Renewal is out there modeling practices that other movements are interested in, particularly figuring out ways to combine traditional Orthodox prayer structures with modern aesthetics and ideas of social justice and practice useful interfaith dialogue.

Do they have all the answers?  Of course not.  But their efforts in looking for those answers have provided some radical and honestly pretty cool suggestions for what modern Judaism could look like.  I’m not sure I’d want Akiva’s drumming at every service of my life . . . but I would want him at some services, and I think the Jewish world would be much poorer without the mystical offerings of Renewal.

[queerbiblestudy]

”Jewish with Feeling” by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi with Joel Segel

“I believe that evolving names and ways of speaking with God that work for each individual and community is an important part of making a spiritual connection. Using such language out of a sense of understanding and choice, rather than having it imposed on us, does a great deal to counter the infantilizing effect that gets us to raise such objections in the first place. In trying to expand and deepen our understanding of God as much as possible, we must also refine our understanding of the blinders that our terminology—and even the very structure of our language—often imposes.”

[transition-with-the-torah]

It's a thing to add in Tehilim 27 during Elul. Due to using a free siddur via Open Siddur Project that doesn't seem to include additions like that, I had to go looking for some options, and it's kinda interesting to see how different translators have handled this.

JPS, 1985 version courtesy of Sefaria. There's something about seeing O LORD that rings as old-timey.

The Complete Jewish Bible with Rashi Commentary, courtesy of Chabad. Feels a bit serious when you start seeing hearken.

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi's version from this 2017 Open Siddur Project upload (description says it was first published in 2009). It feels more like an interpretive, kavanah focused translation, which isn't a bad thing or anything. Mostly, this comes across as more casual and sorta 'modern' flow.

Someone leading the evening minyan at my local-ish synagogue read in English, and I tried to type out everything. I think they use Siddur Lev Shalem, but there is a possibility it's Siddur Sim Shalom. It starts on page 92 either way. I'd say it seems a touch formal, but it doesn't set off old-timey vibes.

[asemicaustralia]

“Anyone who has had a truly “spiritual” moment, a moment of breaking through our day-to-day reality and touching the divine, knows how difficult it is to communicate that experience to others— or even to recapture it later for ourselves.”

— Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

Created in ArtSet and Procreate on iPad

[Image description: White abstract calligraphy in vertical lines on a colourful abstract background of dark teal, turquoise, dark yellow, cream, white and pink]

[chicagohomecleaner]

Prayer from the Heart: Davvening with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (1993)

[jewinme]

The Two Winged Soul ~ "There is a basic notion that every soul has two 'wings.' These' wings of the soul ' are Love and Awe. When the soul is free, fresh and open, and available for inspiration, it flies on these two wings. With one wing it is hard to fly; you must have two." Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

See my website for today's new post. Be inspired and connect to your deeper soul's purpose. Follow my blog if you want to understand more... 👇👇👇

Follow me @shanniealv

#blessed #jewandgentile #womanofvalor #faith #kabbalah #torah #love #god #jewishcommunity #hashem #hasidic #yeshua #loveoneanother❤️ #keter #awakening #jesus #christianity #religions #messiah #oneness #jewish #islam #soul #israel #sabbath #unity #adamandeve #treeoflife #divinepurpose💜🗝 #treeofknowledge

[pargolettasworld]

Putting my two cents in as a scholar of Jewish liturgical music! Part of the broader context of my work is looking at liturgy and ritual as both text and social function. I'm working on a smallish project right now that deals specifically with how Jewish communities in North America are developing new rituals to address some of the changing circumstances of Jewish community life, and I just got back from a cantors' conference where I gave a workshop on how to think about ritual in this kind of context (Phase I of the mini-project).

I look at this PDF from JVP, and I'm seeing a partial but incomplete understanding of how ritual works. JVP understands the need for specific action and the requirement of intentionality. They get that one of the basic functions of ritual is to answer existential questions about one's place in the world, one's understanding of a moment in history, either communal or personal, and one's wish to honor and acknowledge those moments. So far, so good.

JVP falls down in a couple of important aspects. The first is the lack of a narrative component. Their description of a mikveh is so broad and general that you lose any sense of what a mikveh is for. Why is a mikveh? What specific, particular transformation is the mikveh supposed to accomplish? Or, why are you doing a mikveh, specifically, instead of another water-based ritual like baptism or other New Age immersion rituals? What they've described is in fact much more like New Age immersion rituals, which violates their own caution about appropriating other traditions for your "mikveh!"

The second place where they fall down is an idea that the cantors and I discussed quite a bit in our workshops last week. That is the idea that, in order for a new Jewish ritual to be something that a community will accept and work with, it has to be "sufficiently Jewish." That is, it has to have some kind of recognizable connection to normative Judaism -- even if that connection is a radical alteration or the use of a text in a different context than the one in which it's usually used. Every community is different, and their standards of what is "sufficiently Jewish" will vary, so part of the challenge for the cantors in the workshop was to figure out how to locate the boundaries of what their individual communities consider "sufficient Jewishness."

Because JVP does not seem to recognize either the function of mikveh within Jewish tradition or be able to explain the narrative of the ritual, they don't offer the connection to normative Jewish practice that would help Jews to understand how these alternative understandings of mikveh are Jewish. Modern Jewish practice, especially in North America, is pretty flexible, and accommodates everyone from the frummest of Orthodox folk to people like Akiva the Believer, ordained as a Master Sacred Drummer by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. But the reason this variation works is that the people devising new rituals have taken the time and effort to gain a really solid understanding of what ritual is, why rituals work, what they're supposed to do, and what the baseline of Jewish ritual looks like.

JVP has not done this work. They can't point to any connection between their idea of mikveh and the traditional practice, and therefore they can't explain the nature of the interventions that they're making in the practice. They don't quite understand ritual as a concept, and they don't seem to be able to explain the Jewish background of a ritual. Therefore, they've put something together that is insufficiently Jewish. I suspect that's why a lot of Jews are pinging so hard off of this document. It does not have the background or thought to be sufficiently Jewish, and therefore the ritual comes across as being largely meaningless.

Also, their understanding of "fermentation" as a water-based process is just woefully inadequate. Do NOT eat any pickles that these folks offer you.

ok please explain why you all hate teacup mikveh so much

because the appeal of creative ritual seems pretty clear given mikvaot are some of the most inaccessible jewish spaces there are. i mean teacup mikveh specifically was created during the pandemic but even otherwise

unless it's for conversion, most mikvaot can't be accessed if you're read as a woman and unmarried (unless you lie), or if you have a visibly trans naked body. does that not describe most of jumblr?

[gliklofhameln]

Rabbi Hendel Lieberman, a Lubavitcher hasid and friend of Schachter's in New York, lowering a food can into a sukkah, ca. 1960. Photograph by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, 1924-2014.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Today we are all Jews by choice. Usually we say this of those who undertake the great transformative journey of converting. But if we look a little bit deeper, in an open society we are all Jews by choice. ... Nobody is looking over our shoulders: we are completely free to decide whether and to what extent we want to make Judaism a part of our lives.

... If I want to feel a spiritual presence in my life, I can't wait until all the evidence is in about whether God exists or not. I have to begin with an affirmation—a declaration, as it were, of what's important to me. I have to make a leap. The promise of Judaism or any spiritual system is that if we make that leap, things will begin to open for us. Transformation will start to happen.

The leap that Judaism asks us to make is not a leap of faith, but a leap of action. Ta'amu u-re'u, as Psalms 34:9 tells us: Taste and see. This will only become a reality if you dare to get your feet wet. Do you hunger for spirituality? Take on some form of spiritual practice and you will begin to satisfy that hunger. Start as small as you want. Our tradition has a saying: perform one holy deed, and another will quickly come in its wake.

-Jewish with Feeling, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. 2005, p. 115-116

[ask-jumblr]

Thank you @dafyomilimerick​! Seems I was too quick to jump to “Ah! A Chabad-leaning BT.” Have tagged with both in this reblog.

What are some prayers that can be said without a Minyan? I would prefer prayers that are in the Tefillat Hashem Siddur. Thank you.

.

[queerbiblestudy]

“Jewish with Feeling” by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi with Joel Segel

“We are attached to the idea of a good God, just as we are attached to the idea of a good parent. We want God to love us, to cherish us, to protect us from harm. We can see how we might deserve some unpleasantness for our transgressions, if that’s the way the universe really works, but those punishments must be fair. A God who abandons us is a deadbeat God, unworthy of our allegiance.

“These attachments amd expectations quickly shatter in the face of reality. We see the innocent suffering all the time. It is startling how often the expression ’only the good die young’ comes to pass, how often the best and most inspiring among us get stricken with cancer or die in an accident. WHY? we feel like shouting. ‘Why does that wonderful, gentle, righteous person have to die?’ or ‘Why me?’ or ‘Why my child?’ Sooner or later some of us may feel, ‘If it’s for this you created me, God, you could have saved yourself the trouble.’ Can you imagine how those who lived during the Holocaust may have said, as Job did, ‘Cursed is the day my mother conceived me’?

“We cannot possibly express genuine love of God or our fellow beings if we always put a lid on this kind of existential anger. If we do not express this anger, we turn it on ourselves. Just as you might send out thanks to the universe when you feel lucky or blessed, take the time to send out your rage as well. No one who hasn’t taken a vigil for the night and had it out with God can get to the place where their love and faith become real. We see a magnificent example of such rage in the movie The Apostle. Sonny, a Southern preacher, a deeply religious, enormously charismatic, and yet tragically flawed man, suddenly has his family life shattered and his beloved church taken away from him. His life in pieces around his feet, Sonny retreats to the house he grew up in, where he paces back and forth in his undershirt until dawn, sweating and shaking his fists, raging and shouting and pleading with his God. ‘I can’t take it! Give me a sign or something. Blow this pain out of me. Give it to me tonight, Lord God Jehovah. If you won’t give me back my wife, give me peace. I don’t know who’s been foolin’ with me, you or the Devil…But I’m confused, I’m mad—I love you, Lord, I love you, but I am mad at you. So deliver me tonight. What should I do? Should I lay hands in myself? What should I do? I’m your servant. I always called you Jesus, you’ve always called me Sonny, what should I do, Jesus?’

“The Hasidic master Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, no stranger to depression and disappointment, illness and untimely death, offered a startling response to living with the problem of evil. He points to the liturgy of Ne’ilah, the final prayer of atom Kippur, in which the pleading congregation invokes Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in turn. ‘Abraham knew you from youth.’ we begin. The usual interpretation, of course, is that Abraham, the progenitor of monotheism, embraced the idea of God when he was still a young man. But Rabbi Nachman reads the line as meaning, ‘Abraham knew you from your youth,’ as if to say, ‘We knew you from the beginning of human relationship with you, when you were still young in the God business.’ Nachman seems to recognize that God, too, is still learning. We are struggling together.

“Rabbi Nachman was not the only one to consider this idea. The whole Torah—from the Garden of Eden to the Flood to Abraham to Moses and beyond—can make much more sense if we think of God as an emergent God, evolving hand in hand with humanity and creation. Like many such pronouncements, Nachman’s formulation would seek heretical if taken as absolute.

“On the experiential level, though, it helps us to understand and accept the evil in the world by imagining an infinite that, at least as manifested in the human sphere, is learning and evolving with us over time.”

[challahbeloved]

“There is a teaching in Kabbalah that tells of the original ‘vessels’ crested by God “in the beginning,” which God filled to the brim with Divine Light. The full force of God’s Light was too much for these vessels and they shattered, showering shards of vessel and sparks of light everywhere. Eventually, shells formed on the outside of these sparks of light, hiding the sparks within them; this is the basis of the material world we live in today.

The Hasidic masters taught that these sparks of divinity reside in everything, animate and inanimate, and that each of us has it in our power to redeem the imprisoned sparks and send them back up to their divine Source, to rejoin Divinity. The Kabbalah teaches that this release and reunion of sparks is accomplished by every holy act.

What defines such an act is not only the outer prescriptions of behavior in the Jewish tradition, but also what we are doing on the inner plane. When we are offering the outer act of love, obedience and service, that is only the shell of it. On the inner level, we are sorting out sparks, offering them up, creating a tikkun, a 'fix' or 'rectification’ for the original catastrophe of the shattering.

That, at least, is the classical formulation. From another point of view, there was never a catastrophe; only a loving, intentional, and creative act. The fact that things are not totally symmetrical creates the possibility, the im-balance that allows for this particular reality. The 'fall' from the Garden of Eden, then, was not a fall at all; it was a 'set-up' to allow the human being to individuate, to become a self-conscious, individual being.”

— Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Gate to the Heart (2013 edition). Page 7.

[herrlichersonnigertag]

tagged by @dykemulcahy :)))

currently listening to: Doesn’t Lenny Live Here Anymore by Phil Ochs, Morning Sun by Melody Gardot

last movie i watched: Princess Mononoke, which I absolutely SOBBED over, ugly crying, shaking, etc.

currently watching: re-watching The Mandalorian with my boyfriend, a little of West Wing

currently reading: The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon, and Jewish with Feeling by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (❤️❤️❤️), also just finished The Jew in the Lotus by Rodger Kamenetz, which I highly recommend!!

tagging @leonardcohenofficial @fieryphrazes @goatmilkoatmilk @tallsinspace and @elena-fishy ❤️❤️❤️

[eclogues]

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi