Episode 51: Under the Torah and Dreaming (with Rabbi Jill Hammer)

7:35PM Oct 11, 2023

Speakers:

Eliana Light

Jill Hammer

Keywords:

liturgy

prayer

jewish

sefer

feel

talk

sense

images

rabbi

language

tradition

dream

encounter

pray

feminist

translations

love

embodied

practice

ritual

Shalom my friends, welcome to the Light Lab Podcast. My name is Eliana, I'm so grateful to be with you across time in space for today's episode. It's challenging to start, of course, I'm coming from the past, we're on day three of the current escalation of violence. And it's been challenging to figure out what to do next. Do I even mention it in the podcast? Is this something that those of you will week and a half from now who are listening, when that episode will come out? Is this something you will be dealing with, but no matter what happens from now the loss of life that has already been inflicted, will continue to remain so. And I am trying to give myself permission to just grieve, grieve for the loss of life, and take care of myself in doing so and take care of each other. And I hope you're able to do the same. It's also been comforting in a strange way today to think about the holidays, to see reflections from the High Holidays and Sukkot, which was last week for me. And there have been a couple of times today where I've been thinking about Hanukkah, the next holiday upcoming. And it's been touching, actually, a nice reminder that the Jewish sacred calendar is a spiral and brings us to the sacred times, and that they continue in whatever way they need to. So no matter how things are, when you are listening to this dear listener, I hope that you're able to take that moment for yourself and your own breath. And allow space for your own feelings. And I hope that you can use this time, a little bit as a distraction, because that can certainly be helpful in moments like this. And also as a chance to dig into Jewish learning, and spirit and liturgy as a reminder that you are not alone in this, we hold each other across space horizontally, and we hold each other across time, vertically, I suppose. I'm not really sure which one but in any case, we're all holding each other. And I'm really grateful that I get to bring you this interview today because I've been sitting on this interview for a very long time, waiting for the right moment to release it. Today we're talking to Rabbi Jill Hammer, PhD, author, scholar, ritualist, poet, dream worker, midrashist, Kohenet, co-founder of the Kohenet Hebrew priestess Institute, Director of Spiritual Education at the Academy for Jewish Religion, and the author of some incredible books, Undertorah: An Earth-Based Kabbalah of Dreams, that's her most recent book and I just got it I'm very excited to explore, Return to the Place: The Magic, Meditation, and Mystery of Sefer Yetzirah, which has been such an incredible journey for me. I'm almost at the end of that. The Hebrew Priestess: Ancient and New Visions of Jewish Women’s Spiritual Leadership, with Taya Shere, The Jewish Book of Days: A Companion for All Seasons, and Sisters at Sinai: New tales of Biblical Women and the Book of Earth and Other Mysteries, so many incredible volumes. She's the translator of the Romemu Siddur and of Siddur Hakohanot, Hebrew Priestess Prayer Book. She's written a children's book, The Garden of Time. She lives in Manhattan with her family. I had the honour of praying with her incredible partner Shoshana Jedwab, who's a sacred drummer, when I used to go to Romemu. And I remember, Rabbi Hammer leading the most beautiful Yizkor Memorial ritual, one of the holidays I was there. I loved being in her sacred presence. And Rabbi Jill Hammer is the author of the text Orah Hi, which I am so so grateful to her for and I feel so lucky that I found it that time that I was looking for, for audio who for a song sheet, and the reason that I wanted to wait for this episode is that I'm very excited to tell you that we get a chance to learn with Rabbi Hammer about the text of Orah Hi on November 5, in the evening, 7 to 8:15 ish Eastern Time, we're going to be doing a virtual gathering celebration of sorts for the release of the album Orah Hi which you heard about in the last episode that we aired. And it was such a dream, I was so nervous to ask Rabbi Hammer if if she would come and teach and explore with us the text of Orah Hi and she was so gracious. She's also excited to come teach. We'll do some learning with Rabbi Hammer, we will watch some videos we'll sing together, and singing together in these tough times, no matter what the world looks like, in a month from now, I think is still going to be very important. So you're all invited, you can register at lightlab.co. In the show notes of this episode, there will be a link at elianalight.com, plenty of ways to register or at bit.ly/ORAHHI. That's bit.ly/ORAHHI. And so now my friends, no matter where you are, or how you are feeling, I hope that you're able to take a moment of learning and joy. And give a listen to this conversation with Rabbi Kohenet Jill Hammer.

Welcome Jill to the Light Lab!

Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.

I am beyond grateful. And I'm so excited to dive into your thoughts and ideas about prayer and liturgy and translations and the divine feminine. But first, as we do on this podcast, I would love for you to reflect a little bit on your childhood. When you were a kid growing up. What was G?d to you? What did you think G?d was when you were a kid?

What a great question. And one I'm not asked very often. I'll say two things. The first thing is that my mother claims that I wrote a poem about G?d when I was just, you know, three or four years old. And she said the poem was something like this. Someone created the world. We don't know. But it is so. Someone created the world. But we don't know. But it is. So I suppose, you know, I'm still meditating on that, you know that? I suppose back then. Either I had the sense or maybe I was picking up from the adults around me, you know that there was some question about this thing called G?d, you know, and yet I also had a very strong sense of connection to G?d. I talked to God a lot as a child. I suppose G?d looks something like a fluffy cloud. And, you know, was around, you know, in a way that I felt that I could talk to, and, and feel the presence of in some way. And although my, you know, names and faces for G?d have shifted since then I think that sense of presence is still there. I'll also say that I find G?d now in many of the places I found G?d then in the often in the natural world. And then the beauty of no trees and sky and hills.

Beautiful. I love that little poem. I know from from my work with little kids, little kids love to talk about G?d and explore and expand their imaginations are so wide and vast. And that's something to learn from. Also, as I grow up, I've also connected back to those connection points I felt as a child. I'm wondering, since we're reflecting on this time, what was prayer, like in your life? Did you grow up with liturgy as part of your Jewish practice in your family? What did T'fillah look like for you?

My family went to synagogue, which was Temple for us, relatively infrequently. I didn't start going more frequently until I was a teenager. We went for the High Holidays. We went maybe a few other times. And I liked shul, but it wasn't my prime, which I didn't call shul them. But you know, I liked prayer, but it wasn't a big piece of my experience. For me, prayer was much more spontaneous. It was much more like my half of a conversation. You know, that was really what prayer was like for me. And I didn't have too many formal words for it until later on in my life. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. It sounds like even from a young age, you felt that there was something going on in the world and in our lives beyond just what can be seen or tested. There was something deep deeper. And I know for me, I also felt right, that connection, to love or to nature. And that seemed very far away from the G?d that I was hearing about at synagogue. So I'm wondering for you, how did those ideas intersect? Did they clash? Was there ever, that dissonance between the things that you were feeling and maybe the things that you were learning?

My parents very much found their spirituality in nature. They didn't articulate it so clearly to me until later on, my mother later on, said to me, you know, nature is my G?d. But I don't know that she said that to me when I was a child, but I certainly felt that from them, that that was really where they found their meaning. And so, even though like a lot of Jewish kids, I didn't talk about G?d and the natural world much in my education, I didn't have that sense. Later on, when I really became a text head, you know, when I was very interested in connecting to Jewish culture through Midrash, you know, through the Bible, you know, through poetry through text and all kinds of ways, I think that I missed that piece. That was an important piece for me that I didn't want to be left out. And later on, during and then particularly after rabbinical school, I began to return to a sense of G?d, embodied in the cosmos, and to try to find some Jewish language for that, you know, in my in my own way, and to connect to other people who were looking for that kind of theology and prayer language in which we could find the divine in an imminent way in in the world, but when that we were encountering.

Right, in the world that we are in our ancestors approaching and connecting to G?d in the world that they were in, how can we do it imminently in the world that we are in. I love that I'm, I'm thinking about, you know, continuing on this Jewish journey or this life journey, the spiritual journey, as a young adult, high school moving into college in the years after that, were there any experiences that you had or teachers along your way that really planted the seeds of spiritual connection, Jewish learning, prayer, what prayer could be what are those experiences or people that might stand as markers on what we might call your Jewish spiritual journey?

Well, my first rabbi, Rabbi Stephen Arnold, who you know, made a lot of space for me as a as a soul, you know, as a person, you know, was certainly somebody I would name. And there were many poets that I encountered, you know, in my college years and beyond that mattered a lot to me in this on this journey, Marge Piercy, Alicia Ostriker, Rachel Adler, you know, who were really working on this and, and in a feminist mode, in addition to in addition to just an experiential mode, those people made a big difference to me. And, you know, later on really, when I was a little bit older, I encountered the Jewish Renewal Movement, Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Rabbi Phyllis Berman, and Rabbi Shefa Gold, you know, many names from that, from that area of the world. And they had a big impact on me, you know, the sense of, you know, prayer is something that could be ecstatic, that could be informed by mystical practice. t didn't have to be so full of liturgy, but could pay as much or more attention to the practice of kavanah. That style of prayer, you know, had a big impact on me and still, you know, is a is a huge is a huge factor in the way that I pray and am. You know, and then currently, I mean, there's so many communities I'm part of that I learned, I learned about prayer from those communities. Now, my spouse, Shoshana Jedwab, is an incredible liturgy creator. You know, her prayer has mattered so much to me, you know, Taya Ma Shere, who's my co founder at Kohenet, Hebrew priestess Institute, Rabbi David Inger, and Cantor Basya Schechter and all the people around them. I've been really blessed to have such a, to have such a rich field of liturgists, you know to, to learn from.

Beautiful, beautiful, all incredible this real ecosystem of embodied spiritual prayer. I love that you brought up poetry as early influences and I know poetry is a big part of your work. I would love for you to speak on where you see maybe the connections in the intersections between prayer liturgy and poetry because I certainly see some but I would love to hear where you see it.

I think the thing about prayer language and poetry language that for me is very similar or really identical is that this is a language that is deeply layered in its meaning. That it is, it is possible to come back to it and find new insights, new images, new ways of connecting. I think that's what poets strive for is a language that has depth. So that one can't encounter it in a shallow way. And a one has to take it in, in a deeper way. And ideally, that's what liturgy should be, you know, I think when liturgy is, is or feels shallow, and it was when people, you know, tend to find it distancing. But when when it's able to encounter liturgy at depth, then one can have a significant experience, you know, and I think poetry is very, very similar. And really much liturgy is I mean, it's written as poetry. And then it's incorporated into the liturgy, because it's poetry that people find to be expressing something that matters for the culture as a whole.

And part of being able to access that depth, especially for those of us who don't have Hebrew as our first language is through translations. I'm a big fan of your translations, I think they bring out those poetic those deep, those multi layered elements. I'm wondering, if you have a theory of or a practice of, what are your values around translation? When you approach a text, what are you hoping to do with the text? What are you hoping to open for the pray-er?

All translations are, you know, really very much filtered through the translator, you know, so each translation I think, really has it's a really is a window with never the window, you know, on the on the original text. When I translate, I'm trying very hard to encounter the meaning of the words without too much in my head, you know, from, you know, from other translators. And I'm also trying to, in some way, convey at least lightly my experience of the words, so that I am trying to convey some of the feeling that I feel in the words. So sometimes my translation is not exactly literal, though, I try to stay pretty close to the text, but I'm trying to choose words that will convey the literal meaning, but will also convey some of the feeling that I and some of the atmosphere that I experienced when I pray when I pray those words. So when I have the opportunity to translate to translate the Romemu Siddur, which I was really surprised to be asked, and, you know, it was so wonderful. I also had been praying with that community for a long time. So I had a sense of what what mattered to people. And when I was trying to pull out of the liturgy, the, you know, the sense of sacred experience, you know, the sense of connection to ancestors, and I was trying to focus less on, you know, the aspects of hierarchy, you know, things that were more distancing. And I think I succeeded. You know, and I got a lot of feedback that suggested that, and, you know, in the Kohenet community also, you know, I'm trying to translate not only with a mind for my own sensibility, you know, sort of the kind of, you know, human more than human relationship that matters to me, but also to try, try to use what I know about what that community needs and values to infuse the liturgy. You know, with something that will work for people.

I hadn't thought about that before. But of course, it makes so much sense to have the translation be rooted in the experience of the community that is going to be using those words, so powerful. I love your translations from the Romemu Siddur. I use them in my teaching a lot to show that both of these or all of these, however, many translations we're looking at can be "right" in air quotes, and one is not more "right" than the other. That translation opens up so many different new doors and worlds for us in the world of the text. I'd love for you to explore a little bit and to share with our listeners about Kohenet and the genesis of Kohenet, particularly thinking about what was the need that you saw Kohenet as filling for our purposes, particularly as it relates to T'fillah as it relates to language and as it relates to G?d language.

Around the time that that Kohenet began, you know, I had graduated from rabbinical school a couple of years before, I guess, you know, it was it was around three years by the time but by the time Taya and I met, and I was feeling at that time, there was a lot of feminist liturgy happening. There were a lot of feminist literature's writing there was a great deal of interest in things like what were called Women's Seders, right, and, you know, different kinds of Rosh Chodesh groups, right ways of, of accessing a feminist, you know, a feminist Judaism, and, you know, multiple feminist Jewish cultures. I also had the sense that there was not enough space for it, and that it was often a kind of a boutique thing that was offered one night a year, you know, or, you know, one night a month for, you know, those people, you know, who, you know, have the space to show up. And I wasn't sure if it was being taken up, you know, the way that a plant takes up water, you know, that was being taken up into the, into the main body of the culture. You know, it felt more like it had been farmed out into this kind of area of, you know, this is something that really interests you, or bothers you, you know, you can go over here and get it. But, you know, there were certain things that had become standard, like, you know, in putting the matriarchs in the, in the prayers, for example, and then, you know, beyond that there wasn't as much interest in doing kind of the radical work of really picking apart Jewish culture to say, Where are the power dynamics here, and where is the patriarchy inflicting this in a way that is continuing to cause it to potentially cause harm to people? And, and at the same time, I have the sense that Feminist Judaism, could take a deeper dive into its own devotion. A, that there was very much a sense of the powerful intellect driving this, right, the sense of, you know, analysis, and the sense of justice. But spiritual tradition is a devotional tradition, right? So you have to be able to express it devotionally that, you know, was anybody out there actually praying to G?d She and seeing what that was like, right? I mean, of course, there were, but you know, there was there was a sense for me that there wasn't enough space for that, right as a as a daily communal practice. And so part of what I was looking for, and it was it was an educational environment where people could experience Judaism in a deep way where they can learn to be Jewish practitioners, and an artists and healers and leaders in a way that would let them encounter a feminist liturgy and a feminist praxis and add depth. And that was really what I was looking for. And at the same time, I also was interested in you know, when, when Jewish liturgy is, is doing its thing, it's not only talking about G?d, right? It's also constantly talking about the ancestors. Right? And the, you know, the ones that G?d made this original covenant with. And that framing affects everything, right? We talk about the rabbis. We talk about the patriarchs, right? And even when we include the matriarchs, right, they're still being fit into a category that isn't, isn't really theirs. So I was interested in a history, right, that would allow us to actually see, you know, the prohetesses and the wisewomen, and the, you know, the magical folk and the secret, right, and the mistakes, right, and, and those people as our ancestors and not see them as a kind of a side dish, right to the, you know, the Rabbinic line, but what actually see that as our role models, and so that was what I was after, and, you know, and when I met Taya, and we began working together, we were excited to reclaim this notion of Jewish priestising, right, bringing forward a sense of the sacred, that was informed by these earlier practitioners that had been marginalized. And that was informed by a way of talking about deity. Right, that could be in the feminine, right, and, you know, in a, you know, in the, in the non binary, which is something we also explore a lot now, that could be imminent, you know, a sense of embodiment, you know, that that could be part of prayer, and that we really could have not just a one off, you know, Seder, you know, in the, in a ballroom, but like we could actually have a full Jewish experience from within this kind of earth based embodied ecstatic feminist theology and practice. I that's a long answer, but that's really what we were hoping for. And it was seeing that lived out in so many different ways through so many different people who have come through our doors has been really, really moving.

It has an I've had the opportunity to learn in Kohenet spaces and pray in Kohenet-held spaces, and it really is a powerful thing. In terms of taking up the water. I'd certainly say that these ideas of a non-patriarchal devotion have been seeping into the rest of Jewish culture in a really powerful way which has been incredible to see. I think something Kohenet has been really brilliant at is calling forth the memories of our non-male ancestors who engaged in hom- based Jewish ritual and mysticism and earth based Jewish ritual, bringing that forward and allowing us to partake in that. Were there, in your research that you found, traditions of liturgy and prayer, that were held by women or done by women that were kind of lost to Jewish culture as a whole that you've brought back up to the surface?

Much of what we imagined about what biblical priestesses and you know, earthy practitioners of various kinds might have gotten up to we really have to imagine, and we don't have enough of the actual detail. It like, we have the Witch of Endor, right, and in the Book of Samuel, but we don't really hear what her rituals are, what her prayers might have looked like. And so some of that really is imagination. But there are really amazing bodies of prayer, like the kind that you're talking about. One of the things that we study, some is incantations of Sephardic healers, right, who are using, you know, and Ladino incantational tradition, right for healing, right, and for purifying, you know, people who are, you know, who were seeking healing or transformation. And it's an amazing literature. And I don't know that I would say that it's been lost, but it certainly wasn't well known to me, you know, until I began looking for the scholars who, who knew about it, there is a sizable tradition, in the Ashkenazi world of Yiddish and Hebrew prayers written for, you know, written for women and others who weren't literate, and were fully literate, right in the, you know, in the traditional liturgy, and also wanted their own devotional tradition. And you know, so those are prayers that we look at, there's a whole body of ritual, for example, one of our, one of our graduate students, about to be graduates Kohenet Annie Cohen works with is this whole body of liturgy around graveyards, right, and around continuing to connect to ancestors and ask for their goodwill, sort of in the, you know, in the world of a living, there were a variety of rituals around that. Right that Jews don't, you know, at least in my culture don't know much about, right, so folks like that have been sort of reclaiming, recovering, you know, finding, you know, some of these, some of these literary traditions. You know, and then I think a lot has to be created for our time, because even when you read some of these earlier traditions, you know, it's not necessarily the language we would use, right, or the, or the questions that we have. So, you know, it still requires some, some creativity on our part to, uh, you know, to figure out, you know, what would be the liturgical traditions that might work for us? Right, but having, you know, having that, you know, that earlier layer, is, is, is really powerful, you know, to realize that, even if we were taught, you know, oh, these people didn't write anything, or they didn't say anything, and we don't have anything from you know, from anybody who wasn't, you know, who wasn't a rabbi, it's really not true. There are ways that it's true. There's a ways that those people got, you know, a big chunk of the historical pie and in a way, that's, you know, that continues to be difficult to learn about what other people were doing. But we still have, for example, incantation bowls, right? These were, you know, from like, sixth century Babylonia, these amazing ceramic artifacts that were written with incantations to protect the household, from demons from illness from bad spirits. Probably not everybody who was writing those were men. The bowls themselves say that. So that's another kind of liturgy that people were now drawing on and making new incantation bowls. And so there are things to, you know, to play with and to and to be in dialogue with.

Yes, I learned about incantation bowls, I believe, from your book Return to The Place. And it's it makes so much sense to me, that sometimes the language for prayer that we've that we're using, is about how it sounds and how it feels not always about what it means. And that's opened up a whole lot of a whole lot of worlds for me, pulling on that thread about creating the things that we need now. Through Kohenet and through your other work, what have you seen or been part of that has been created for now? What are the needs? What are the needs of the folks in the program and also maybe the broader needs? What do you think our prayer and liturgy needs are? What are the creative things that you've seen that help fill and shape that?

For me that that question always revolves around, sort of what are our embodied experiences, right, that we need to be lifting up. I want to mention here Kohenet, Sarah Shamirah Chandler, who has done a lot of work to take rituals, you know, agricultural time, you know, agricultural ancient times, like the Mishnah, and the Bible and to recreate them for a contemporary audience. You know, that's an amazing thing that's happening. I just had a conversation with Jericho Vincent, who founded the Temple of the Stranger, right, who's creating a kind of deep meditative movement, liturgical tradition for, you know, for celebrating important Jewish moments. There's, there's just so much great stuff out there. I'm thinking about Kohenet, Rae Abileah, who was working on the climate ribbon, which was a ritual for people to deal with climate grief and talk about climate justice. There's, there's so much happening out there, I think the thing that feels most pressing, for me, is a way of expressing the transformations that our culture is undergoing right now. And asking for a new relationship to our world. Right, we've been very much thrown into a mechanical relationship with the world, right, where we have all these things, and we don't really know where the things come from. Right, and we don't necessarily have, you know, a, you know, a reciprocal relationship with the things, you know, we just use them, and then we get rid of them when we don't need them anymore. And this is, you know, in some ways, just the, you know, just the context of modern life, but it's also a big problem, right? It's also part of what has gotten us to a climate precipice, you know, because we don't know how to stop this juggernaut of, of things and of treating the world in this way. And to reframe that, right to, to come back to a world, you know, as David Abram says, that is, you know, that is alive, where we are alive, and we're encountering a world that's alive, and feels not only, like, it makes it better to be alive, it just makes the world better to encounter it that way. But it's also necessary for us to reshape our relationship to each other, and to other creatures and to the planet. So that is what I'm most interested in right now is how do we create a liturgy that speaks to that. Right, and that means not a liturgy that's just about G?d and us, and then there isn't anybody else. Right, but a liturgy that opens up to plants, to animals, right? To the ancestors to stars, right, not just as look at so cool, G?d made all these things, but, you know, actually creating relationship between us and all the other entities with which we share space and time. So that's what I'm, that's the kind of thing I'm trying to write when I write. And it's the the kind of liturgy that I'm attracted to in this time.

That's really beautiful. Our friend, Rabbi Josh Warshawsky, talks about liturgy as a reminder to us of what our community thinks is important, right? What are the values that have been passed down? And so that's an amazing way to bring that forward to say what are the values that we're trying to focus on, and letting the words that we say, enhance our connection to the world around us and bring it to life? Something that I find in this work that I often take for granted is the ability to use feminine or non binary language for G?d. In my own prayer life, it happens abundantly, probably more often than not these days. And yet, I work in some synagogue institutions where I find myself not doing it or needing to do a whole speech about it, if I do it. I'm, I'm wondering, if we could not take it for granted for a second, I'd love to hear in your understanding, in your own experience, and what you've seen from the people in Kohenet and others, what is the power of calling out to G?d in non-male language? Why is it, why is it important? What does it do for us as individuals and what can it do for us as communities?

I have always had the sense that speaking to G?d and no, in in the feminine or in, you know, any gender that isn't the you know, the dominant, you know, the dominant male gender that we usually see in Jewish prayer, does something alchemical to the prayer. You know, I really started it out because I saw other people doing it. I was curious about it. It seemed fair, it seemed right, right. Why should why should we have to always be talking to G?d in one way and seeing G?d in this one when obviously, you know, G?d isn't a person. So, you know, G?d doesn't only have one gender, you know, why do we always have to talk to G?d this way. But when I did it, I came to find that it wasn't just about, you know, well, this would be the right thing to do. But that it, it changed everything. Like it allowed me to connect to a history of divinity connected to Goddess, right, connected, you know, like a whole other mythic layering of history that was that mattered to me, you know, that I, that I knew about that matter to me. It allowed for different kinds of imaginings. You know, I always tell people, whenever people ask about my spiritual journey, I always tell people that the dream I had, where G?d was a pregnant woman, and that that dream just allowed me to have a whole different relationship with what I thought G?d was. So my experience is that often you don't even know what changes will, will come up or what, what new portals and our garments of the Divine you might encounter, right, by trying another image, right. And when we say you can't have that other image, you know, then you're setting off a whole possibility of you know, of encounter. So for me know, praying to G?d as Goddess, you know, has been utterly transformative, it has just completely made my spiritual life more, more at home, you know, I just feel more at home, in my body and in the prayer. And after years of doing that, I no longer find that I need to do it all the time. Although it's still a really important piece of my, my knowing. I'm really grateful to the folks at the Nonbinary Hebrew project, for example, you know, I want to also name the organizers of of the Queer Mikveh, you know, who are creating a kind of amazing ritual, you know, around queerness, or of cats, and everyone else there, Rebekah Erev, who are, who are making, you know, space for queering gender in a variety of ways, and that I think that kind of liturgy is also going to have massive impact on people. But for me, you know, the place that I that my heart really was, was in this, you know, what happens if I say She, and when I pray, you know, what happens if I say You and I mean, you know, this other kind of textured being, you know, what will happen? You know, what will that be like, you know, and for me, it was it was really transformative. And I think for many people, it still is.

It certainly has been for me, and I agree with you also, that the more I do it, the less I need to do it in the sense that, once I understand that it's all poetry, I can use all the colors in the crayon box. I don't have to say G?d isn't a literal King. Well, yeah, G?d isn't a king, G?d's also a tree, and rushing water, and the air and all these other wonderful, beautiful images. I'm wondering, because of course, it changes all the time, but these days, for you, in your own prayer life, is there an image, a metaphor, a name for G?d, that you find yourself coming back to?

Well, I have settled really deeply into into the Shechina, which isn't a word for the divine presence that comes up in rabbinic literature and means sort of a tangible presence of the Divine, and the mystics sort of take this term and, and really run with it and speak about it almost as a kind of feminine alter ego of G?d, you know, who in some way provides a an interface between the world and the Divine. And, you know, and that is a name that I have a deeply settled into as one that is authentically, you know, from an ancient Jewish tradition. And also, it feels like speaks to some contemporary, you know, ecological needs, and some, you know, and some contemporary feminist needs. So, that's a name I use a lot. In our household, I actually am quite proud, you know, we raised our daughter to say, G?d or Goddess quite interchangeably, and without noticing much, you know, which one and, you know, that, you know, that's still, you know, our practice there. So those are names that we use too. And I think if there was another one, you know, I really, I really think of G?d as Cosmos. You know, and I'm thinking about, you know, I've done as you know, a lot of work with Sefer Yetzirah with this, you know, ancient book of Jewish mysticism, you know, that speaks about the Creator. You know, HaYotzeir, the one who, who makes the Artist, you know, and that's probably, you know, another name that's very dear to my heart. You know, the Yotzeir, the Yotzeiret, the one who is the one who's always in the workshop. You know, Making, that's, I think, a very precious name of the Divine for me.

Beautiful. Keeping along with this theme of Sefer Yetzirah, the reading and studying it, the main thing that I've taken away, I'm still not through it, I found it, you know, I really have to sit with it and be with it which is great. It's not it's not light read but I recommend it to everyone, is that it's all about language, and G?d using language, G?d as using language to create, and us using language to create. Where do you see the intersection between Sefer Yetzirah and our prayer life?

For me, the exploration of Sefer Yetzirah has, has been such an important piece of prayer for me because it is a book that invites us into how can I actively in reverently be part of the Creator's intention for this world. And is, is always offering practices for how to open our consciousness, right to be to recognize that we are part of something much larger than ourselves. And for me, that's really what prayer is. So even though Sefer Yetzirah is not technically a book of prayer, although I would call it a ritual in a certain way. It is, it allows for a whole new relationship with prayer, right, that is really meditative. Sefer Yetzirah says, you know, when the when the heart is, you know, and the and the mouth are running, you know that what you should do is return to the place. So it really invites this practice of coming back to center, and in a way that I think a lot of people doing mindfulness practice would, would immediately resonate with. You know, and Sefer Yetzirah also offers rituals that acknowledge our need for a sense of sacred space. For example, in Sefer Yetzirah, the Divine seals the six directions of the cosmos, with different combinations of letters of G?d's name in order to provide kind of safe and orderly creation for, for all the creatures to exist in. And I think this is an amazing practice, you know, that we could do when we sit down to pray, you know, of sort of naming and delineating our sacred space. So I think it's a book that can really be played with, you know, in a liturgical context. The other thing I think, one of the things I think, Sefer Yetzirah has to say about prayer is that for Sefer Yetzirah words, and things are not different. Right? The word is a manifestation of the thing. And the thing is a manifestation of the word. They're, they're both connected, you know, in a very intimate way. And I think that's so important, because we have a tendency to allow language to become disconnected from a thing itself. I think particularly as Jews, we have to struggle with this, because we're, you know, we're such a tech space people, that we can create all kinds of stories about the world, you know, and that can sometimes cause us to become more distant from what's actually happening, what we're actually experiencing. And for Sefer Yetzirah the word is always a doorway back into the thing. And it always allows for meditation on the experience of embodiment. And that I think is crucial. For me, when I think about prayer is not allowed, not to allow the words to take us away from the real, but to be a window, and a doorway back into the real.

I've found the book, in connection with classes I was able to take with Victoria Hana, where we really experienced the letters is, you know, having grown up in a traditional liturgical practice where the goal was to mumble all of the words, sometimes I still like the mumbly bits, I find the meditative. But now I just want to slow down. Like it used to be I want it to slow down and focus on a paragraph, note, just a line, no, just a word. Now just shh, right, those foundational letters, the sounding of the letters themselves being gateways into prayer has been has been really profound for me.

And beautiful.

l'm wondering, I know we're winding down just a couple more questions. Your latest book Undertorah is about dreams and dream work. And just again, like Sefer Yetzirah, I'm wondering what for you is the intersection between your work in dreams and T'fillah, our prayer and liturgical selves?

I love this question, because I love this connection. For me, one thing that is amazing about dreams is that dreams allow us to experience images that provoke feeling and thought. Alright, so, you know, I fall asleep a dream, right? I come across, you know, a bear in the snow, right? Or I come across a machine that does something I don't understand, or whatever it is, I come across in my dream, right and when I meditate on that image, I may I may discover something about my reality that I didn't realize or that I wasn't looking at quite that way. And I think that images in prayer can do something similar. You know, there is a way that prayer can be like dreaming, right? That we're we're allowing the images in the prayer book to sort of flow over us. And those images are awakening things in us, right awakening feelings, awakening memories, awakening ideas, this feels related to me to the work of Dr. Catherine Shainberg, who is, you know, a teacher of a Kabbalistic image meditation practice, and you know, who talks about how we're always dreaming. And we're always, we're always in this flow of images. And prayer provides us with a particular kind of flow of images. But how interesting it would be to take some of those images from our dreams and put them into our prayer. Like, what would it be if I met that bear on the snow in my dream and said, oh, maybe you are an image of, of the Divine for me, like, what would it be like for me to, uh, to bring that image into my, into my prayer? Or, you know, when I interviewed people for the book, Undertorah, I talked with people about, you know, some of their most profound dreams. And some people shared with me, you know, images of, you know, giant trees, or trees that had consciousness. And what would it mean to take that image, right, and bring it into our prayer? I think dreams have this radical capacity to allow us to think beyond what we've been told that we can think. And it would be great if prayer could be that too. You know, if prayer was a space for us to dream into, who could I be now? Right? Who could G?d be for me? Right? Who could I be in relationship to the world? And that's, that's the thing I would like prayer to be able to accomplish. And I think dreaming is like that, and could maybe add to that.

I love that notion of what prayer is and can be to, to dream into being the world that we need, or seek or see, and to also dream more deeply into the world as it is now. That's so beautiful. I am, I'm wondering if there's someone who is either familiar with a traditional liturgy or not, but wants to open up into these pathways, what might you suggest to them as a good place to start? And if there is a community of prayer community that wants to open up into these pathways, what might you suggest to them as a starting point?

Specifically in relationship to dreams? Or -

I think in relationship to, in general, what we've been talking about embodied, more kavanah? You know, getting away from the patriarchy is a good a good place to start.

Well, I mean, there are there are many places, I mean, people are always welcome at the at the Kohenet Shabbat Services, where we try to we try to keep this prayer tradition alive. So if people will get on our newsletter list, they are more than welcome to come to those. I think there's so many communities who are working on this strongly. Um, I'm thinking about Shabbat, Sha'ar Zahav, and the wonderful prayer book that they put out a while ago, you know, that has such an incredible prayer language. You know, the, the Romemu Siddur was in part, you know, created to, you know, to offer that kind of opportunity to people. But I'm, I'm a little reluctant to offer specifics, because there are so many places, I don't want to leave anybody out.

Right. So, so maybe instead of thinking about outwardly, what's a practice that an individual might be able to do alone, or while they're in a traditional prayer space? Yeah, that that seems like, we'll focus in on that.

So first, I would say, slow down, find the prayers that are most meaningful to you. Don't feel you have to rush off or to be with the community, although I understand the appeal of that. And see if you can find places in the Siddur that allow you to sink in, you know, that were the words are calling to you. And you know, and be with those places and see what comes up around them. I would also say bring your favorite poem to shul, bring something you've written to shul, bring a dream, bring forms of prayer, right, that will, will open you up and help you feel more alive. I also invite the practice of you know, let's say for Yetzirah offers of really just being present, that when you know when you are in prayer, to just notice what's happening in your body, and what's happening in your feelings. What you want to express, who do you think you're talking to? Or why are you, you know, what are you, qhat are you doing inside your prayer? And let those things drive the form of the prayer? And I guess the last thing I would say is not all great prayer is communal. A lot of my prayer happens when I'm on my daily walk. You know, so I know I know that communal prayer is so important for Jews. It's really good to find ways to pray that are just for you. And often I think that then allows us to, to come to community, you know, in a, in a fuller way. It's okay to change the prayer, it's okay to, you can change the gender, you can change the language. You know, if you're working within a holistic framework, there's still things that you can change, you know, you can, you can translate the prayer the way that you want. So I so I would say also find a way to be empowered around this and if the language is putting you off, if the the images are putting you off, some people like to just sort of work with the images and let the difficult stuff come up and just deal with that some people like to do it that way. But if that's not your cup of tea, like pick a different image, pick, you know, pick different phrases, try that, see what happens, the important thing is for for the pray-er to be able to pray, I prayer isn't just supposed to be keva, which means the fixed, the fixed liturgy of the prayer, it is supposed to have kavanah, it's supposed to have intention that is part of prayer. And I want people to feel that they can touch that. I think also, also, there's one last thing, in the modern world, you know, sometimes we are a little embarrassed to go that deep with prayer. You know, that there is a sense of, you know, oh, I'm being too naive, or I'm, you know, I'm being I'm being childish. Or maybe I'm being, you know, not cool enough, you know, if I'm, you know, so deeply into this in a way that moves me. I think that sense of ironic dissonace doesn't always serve us. It doesn't always allow us to break our hearts and to, you know, open to joy and to be fully human. That I think is the the experience that prayer really most wants from us.

To be fully human. Beautiful. That can be our blessing for us, for our listeners, to be fully human. Thank you so so much for joining me in this conversation today.

Thank you. I'm really honored to have gotten to talk to you today.

And thank you so much for listening. Christy Dodge edits our podcast. Yaffa Englander does our show notes. Rachel Kaplan is our Podcast Producer, thank you so much to this amazing team. You can find show notes, links to everything at lightlab.co, and we hope you'll register to join us on November 5 for some learning with Rabbi Hammer and a celebration of Orah Hi wherever you are. We hope that you're taking care of your heart as we take care of each other.