Shalom everyone and welcome to another episode of the light lab podcast. My name is Eliana light and I am here with my good friends Cantor Ellen Dreskin.
Hello, everybody.
And Rabbi Josh Warshawsky.
Boker tov, Good morning.
So good to be with you both. I love starting, we're having a day when we get to chat with both of you. And I have, as we like to do an opening question, and that question is, what is your superpower? Not the superpower you wish you had but a superpower you already have. Josh, we'll start with you.
I was trying to think of superpowers that were super meaningful or super important. But you're right. It's not the superpower that you wish you had. It's the power that you have. And I guess my superpower is for some reason, I have a very good memory for obscure movie quotes. And movie themed songs. Or even like, like the the movies don't have this theme songs don't have words, but like a movie theme. Or a quote. One time my brother asked me, I asked my brother - What is the theme song for the Transformers movie and he texted me back bump up a bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, and I knew exactly what he meant. And then I could sing it based on the number of m's and all the bumps. It's just strange and powerful super power.
That's incredibly powerful. A, maybe it has to do with how well you are familiar with niggun, like wordless less melody, you know, because if someone sent you a text, I was like, what was that niggun? And it said, Yeah, lie, lie, lie lie. Like you would probably also get that.
Thank you giving me another usage for my power.
Reflecting back to you A and B. Let's do trivia together. I have weird memory for music. So do you probably do. Ellen, what's your superpower?
Well, I would like to start my presentation this morning with a bomb be the bom bom biddy. You know that one? Right? Yes. I would like to say that my superpower is singing harmony. I was just asking someone else in my family last week of what is it chemically or DNA or et cetera, that my mind goes straight to harmony. Every single time I hear a song even before I've learned the song, I'm interested in a second note or a third note, or what's that harmony that's not there yet. And I don't know why my heart goes there. And somehow my brain hears it. And I do know people whose are hard wired that way. I'm very grateful for this. I'd always rather sing harmony than melody every single time. So it's a superpower that gives me great joy. It gives
It gives us great joy to those of us who see fifth, you are very grateful for your harmonic superpowers. Really? Oh, gosh, I can't wait till we get to sing in the same room again.
Amen. What about you, Eliana? What's your superpower?
So I was thinking about this. And thinking about what's been reflected back to me. I think for me, sometimes it's hard to see what my own strengths are. And I have very often had it reflected back to me that I have a very calming presence, which is sometimes very confusing, because I have anxiety often. And you know, Josh, at least knows Ellen I don't know if you know that sometimes, like right before a program or a project or something like I can have a panic attack, I can go into absolute freakout mode, I can be crying, I can be hyperventilating, things aren't the way that I want. But as soon as we start, like something happens, and there we go. And the fact that I can be a calming presence for others, even if I don't feel so calm myself, feels like a superpower. Because providing that space for other people does help me kind of regulate my nervous system and be calm and be in the moment. So I guess being a calming presence is the superpower I didn't even know I had!
I think I don't know, in our musical theater conversations to talk about is it the King and I - I whistle a happy tune. And I love the line of I wish all happy and when I fool the people I fear I fool myself as well. That when whistling makes me seem confident or energetic or and and if I - Everyone thinks I'm so calm. And you know what, when I see how calm everybody thinks I am I kinda start to feel oh, and I love that about what you're saying.
Yeah, I love that too, even though I can't whistle.
No, but it's finding those ways. When we when we become calm for ourselves. We don't realize that we're becoming calm for others.
Absolutely.
You do it for me Eliana.
That's so kind! Well, listener, you can think about what your own superpower is. And you'll find out why that is appropriate as we move on because we are once again in our amidah series. In our last episode, we focused on the avot v'imahot, the section on our ancestors. And as Judith Houtman puts it, in our very good friend, My People's Prayer Book in the Amidah edition of My People's Prayer Book, she points out that that first section was focused on the past, all of the things that the Holy One has done for our ancestors and connecting us to our ancestors as we are standing before the Holy One. And now we are moving into the gevurot section. Gevurot means might or powers, powers. And as she says, we're moving into the present. What do we see the Holy One as happening now? And what are the possibilities for the future? So moving from the past, now into the present, and the future? So let's dive deeply into gevurot. Ellen, why don't you start us off?
I would be happy to. So we begin. You're already in like you say in present tense. Here we are, the first line. The first sentence alone so packed. Atah gibor leolam adonai mechayeh meitim. Here's a topic for conversation. Does your Siddur say mechayeh hakol? Does it say mechayeh meitim? Atah rav lehoshia. Ah, and there it is that think that that is the biggest elephant in the room right there. We could say atah gibbur, you are strong or or powerful, Adonai. Mechayeh, we have that word chai in the middle of it. So we know it has something to do with giving life to or enlivening. And then here's the question. Is it mechayeh metim? Bringing life to the dead? Or mechaye hakol? Bring the life to everything? And why would there even be two choices? So I'll let one of y'all would like to maybe open up that can of worms a little wider? And we'll we'll chat a bit.
Well which siddur do you have, Ellen? And what does it say in there?
Well, I am in Mishkan Tefillah, which is the Reform Movement siddur. And it's really interesting to me, because I grew up and the classical reformed synagogue in Texas, always, if we did it in Hebrew, it would be mechayeh hakil, giving life to all. And it was only and I went from the union prayer book, in my childhood to gates of prayer in my adolescence and young adulthood now to Mishkan T'fillah, where there were five different versions before this version of Mishkan T'fillah. Let's put metim back in because the Reform Movement had taken mechayeh metim out because of its implication of resurrection, which was not part of the reform movement's understanding, part of the reform movements faith, so let's go to mechaye hakol. Nah, maybe it's maybe just because we don't agree with it necessarily, do we throw it out? No. So Mishkan T'fillah in the next division brought it back. Mechaye hametim and let's drash it. Let's interpret it. And now I'm looking at a version in Mishkan T'fillah that says mechaye hakol with metim in parentheses, atah rav lehoshia. So I'm curious as to what y'all grew up with. And and how does that phrase sit with you?
I certainly grew up with saying mahaye metim, and probably not thinking about it very much. Honestly. I Josh, you're nodding your head. Is that kind of same? That same?
I was in that same boat too. Yeah. Yeah. And not only that, but not knowing that there was that there were other possibilities out there, even when I was growing up.
I think so often, for me as a kid, it was about learning, the cadence and the ritual and the words. And it wasn't until I was older that I actually looked to the side of the page to see what I was talking about. And that that seemed kind of true across the board. Something with mechaye hametim, I remember starting to have some questions, actually, you know, when I was younger, and my bubbe passed away, and when I was a kid and started exploring or experiencing loss for the first time, really starting to think about well, what does Judaism say about what happens after we die? Which I think is the crux of this question. What does it mean to take this mechaye hametim poetically? Do we reinterpret it as Reviver of the dead, you know, something that it also says in the my peoples prayer book series, Marc Brettler, the Bible scholar says that, in Akkadian prayers, a similar phrase to mechaye hametim, reviving the dead meant restoring the gravely ill to good health. But eventually it was expanded in its meaning to incorporate a belief in resurrection, and then reinterpreted, which means that our ideas about resurrection from mechaye hametim are already a reinterpretation of perhaps in original reading, which means could we reinterpret it again? You know, for example, I have here the romemu siddur, which I love so much, with translations by Rabbi Jill Hammer, and it keeps mechaye hametim, you know, which is interesting, you might think a liberal Siddur would go the other way. But the question is, what do we make mechaye hametim mean to us now?
I love, I never h eard that about the Akkadianprayers and the idea of reviving the dead meaning not not the actual dead, but those who are near the dead, restoring them to good health. I think that's an interesting way to interpret it. I was gonna say to reinterpret it. But if that was the original interpretation in the Akkadian, that's really interesting. And it reminded me of the idea that in the Talmud when we talk about what sort of things are supposed to say when you see a person after a long period of time of not having seen them or heard from them at all right? If you haven't seen a person or heard from them in a month, you would say shehecheyanu, who has allowed us who has brought us to this, this living moment in time again, with that word chai in there. And if you haven't seen a person for 12 months, you haven't heard of or heard from person in 12 months, you say baruch mechaye hametim, blessed is the one who resurrects the dead. And again, this is not a person who is actually dead. But the rabbi's were already using this phrase to say, Oh, well, you know, it's sort of like a turn of phrase for them. But that's how they were meaning it and intentionally the original meaning for them was someone who has brought you back to life brought you back into my life. And I like that idea of, of not not being from the actual dead. And then the other thing that I was thinking about with mechaye hametim is, you know, I imagined I envisioned like a Golem, sort of that the metim wasn't somebody who is dead, but somebody who is that there was not life in this being. And then this was breath breathed into life, the way that we experience what human beings were created in, in the original creation story. And that this coming into life is not actually like resurrecting those who are dead. But who brought each one of us to life and who brings humanity that sort of applies also with mechaye hakol, who brings all these different things into life. How can you read it is what is sort of the life force, the lifeblood, this soul force within us, that's, that's bringing us into this active portion of our lives.
I think that, that's great. I wonder about I love the idea that when we haven't seen someone for a year or more, that the blessing is mechaye metim. Like I said, the person wasn't dead, but also the new life that it breathes into me to see someone after that period of time. And I, I hope that as we go forward in our times, now, certainly that that prayer is uttered more and more often, as we are able to see each other face to onsite, more and more often. Sometimes I get impatient with the prayers that I want to interpret them outside of our human existence. And that's one of the reasons I really appreciate and perhaps it is because I did grow up with mechaye hakol, that I never thought of this prayer, the gvurot as exclusively about humanity. That I find the word dormant, really useful here, that in our seasons, and in our lives, there are times when things lie dormant, or in hibernation, or underneath the surface. And for me, every time one of those things, or people or trees or flowers, manifests itself, I want to say mechaye hakaol. So many things, if we look at it, just from a human point of view, we think that other things are dead. And we think that resurrection is a human question. But it's a life, it's an all life question. And I think mechaye hakol goes far beyond resurrection, resurrecting any human beings to the constancy of things lying dormant and then being recreated in other ways or reinterpreted or re enlivened. It's, I love this prayer for that reason.
I really appreciate that reading of it. But I also want to take it a step further in the sense that it's not just trees that lay dormant that still have life within them. The dead leaves that fall from the trees become a part of the earth and are treated back into life, like life and the universe and whatever it is, goes on whether we are here or not. And that is the discomfort I think that we have with death. I'll say it, I'm very afraid of death. I have tried throughout, throughout my kind of path of spirituality and mindfulness to become more okay with it, but I'm not there. And I think that's okay. Within Judaism, there are many different ideas of what happens after we die. There's a book Does the Soul Survive? by Rabbi Elie Kaplan Spitz, which if you're interested in Jewish ideas of the afterlife, because Judaism itself is very broad and vast, and there's it's not just resurrection within Judaism, there's also ideas of reincarnation, and there's ideas of past lives and new lives floating all over these different traditions within Judaism. For me, the the idea that's the most compelling to me that I heard I actually, once when I was a counselor at camp, I think I was having like, one of my many existential crises as I do. And I asked Rabbi Hillel Norry, I don't know if either of you know him, he was working at camp. And he said that for him, life is like, imagine if you have a goblet and a flowing river. And our life is like the goblets scooping out the river. And then death is pouring the water back into the river. And that river is G?d. And that we are the vessels that are being scooped into vessels of G?d. And then when we're gone, we just pour back into that flowing water. I love that image. It's still really, really hard for me to connect to but as I was telling the story, I was thinking about the word metim, and the connection of the letter mem. I've talked about the work of Victoria Hanna on this podcast before, and the book of creation and kind of the mystical foundation ness of the letter mem. Mem is Earth, mem is, the earthly waters, and metim starts there and ends there, which I think is very powerful, reminding us that even if we are gone, no matter what we think of what happens to our soul after work on our body remains on Earth. Our body remains as part of the world as part of the Olam of space and time in some way.
I love I love thinking about the letters that were that you just described. And I'm thinking about specifically the mem sophit, right, that final meme is complete. It's, you know, it's that life cycle of going back and forth, like you're talking about with the river and also with the things that are a part of our bodies in nature that are also going back into the earth and continuing this cycle. And so maybe, I guess we're reading I wonder if there's a way to read this resurrection as as the continuation of life. As that that life life continues, Life finds a way life moves, life goes on and on as the global life as opposed to the individual life of a human being.
I think that the relationships and the interconnection there I'll bring in a pop an old pop reference. One of my favorite movies is a movie called Phenomenon with John Travolta, and at a certain point, in a conversation about life and death, John Travolta takes a bite of an apple and draws that the apples not dead or I'll eat the whole apple and the apple is gone. But the apple is not gone. But I just integrated the apple in to me, You just watched me do it. And now the apple is still exist, but in a different form, and doing different things in the world than it did when it was hanging on the tree. That kind of constant interconnection and it does speak. Eliana, I know that that you're going to bring us up on another topic here that is going to connect this prayer even more so to the natural world?
That was a really good segue, Ellen. I seriously, I'm proud of your outcome. Because you're absolutely right. We have this point here. Almost like an interlude within a paragraph that doesn't change. We have lines that either get said or omitted or switched depending on what time of year it is and potentially what country you are in. So right now we are recording this in January, which means traditionally we would say mashiv haruach umorid hagashem, I there's that mem again, geshem, which in this Rabbi Jill Hammer translation, I love how she says this, you whirl the wind and bring down the rain. When I grew up, we would say this line in kind of fall winter. And then after pesach we wouldn't say anything else. In Israel where I believe that this developed, you say morid hatal, which is you bring down the dew. But as I got older, I noticed more people in the United States adding that morid hatal section. And how do you know when it's time to do one or the other? Well, on Sukkot, there is a prayer for Geshem, for rain, that's added to the musaf section, the end of the service or in some congregations if they don't do musaf, the beginning of the service. In Rosh Hashanah in high holiday melodies, a plea for rain, and then we add in the part about rain. And then at pesach, after the rainy season, we do tal, the same thing a piyut, a liturgical poem, beautifully asking for dew to fall. And so we add in the part about dew. And you're right, Ellen in the sense that it connects us to the earth, that it connects us to the cycles of the seasons. But I think it also brings up something challenging, which I think is what is challenging about gevurot, and maybe about all of tefillah, which is what does G?d have the power to do? And what does that say about what we understand G?d to be? So I'd love to hear y'alls thoughts on that.
I think it's really fascinating the choice to place this particular phrase in this particular blessing, right, it could have gone anywhere. And we repeat it in various different places. But the the moment that we that we chose to say mashiv haruach umorid hagashem, this prayer about bringing rain comes in this in this cycle about about bringing life and sustaining life. And then we're going to get to this next section, which is about, you know, more active verbs of things that that we hope they got, or that we claim that G?d is doing in the present tense. And you know that so that's one that's interesting for one and the second is in the, in the Daf Yomi cycle, we just finished well, or almost a month or two ago, at this point, the book of Ta'anit, which is the book all about fasts, and there's many, many pages, all about drought, and praying for rain, and different people asking for rain and the kinds of people that can ask for rain and the there should be people that take care of their community and have good relationships with people and also a good relationship with G?d and, and that the people that are asking for rain are people that we're hoping aspirationally are the ones that are going to be are going to merit the rain, that rain is a blessing. And that's interesting thing to think about rain as blessing, right, as opposed to rain falls is as a natural part of the seasons. And that's why we particularly and specifically asked for rain in this season and not that season. If it was just a blessing, we could ask for it anytime. But this we ask for in this season, because we know that we don't ask for blessings when we know that it wouldn't be it's not going to come about. Right where we would be guaranteed in a desert time in an arid season, if we ask for rain, it's just not going to happen. We don't ask for things that are against nature, we ask for things that we hope are going to be sustained by the natural cycle of life already.
I really appreciate that, because I love it that what you just brought up that it's an acknowledgement of the patterns that we know are part of our natural world. And we don't ask. And here's my question, in our conversation now is are we actually asking for anything here? Or are we acknowledging, are we in in so much of this prayer for me, I don't want to say just because that cheapens it perhaps but we are acknowledging the enormous power of the cycle of life and the cycle of the year and the cycle of and the natural cycle of things dying, and coming back in other forms. I find this to be most uplifting. And I love that we don't go against rain but we affirm what is going on in nature and in our lives. It's really beautiful to me.
Ellen, thank you for that. Once again, your interpretation has opened my mind to a new understanding of this, which is why I love studying these tefillot as texts with both of you. You're right. We're not asking for rain. We're just saying rain. It's a thing. And we look at the Holy One as the source of rain, reminds me how I've been thinking about blessings a lot lately. We've talked about this on the show before but that if I want to truly show gratitude, for example, for a piece of food that I'm eating, I would want to name all of the people who had a hand in growing it, I'd want to name all of the scientific developments that led to the development of this particular seed, I would want to think the process of agriculture itself, and how agriculture developed over millennia, like there are so many, and the cycle of the seasons, and every single drop of water that ever fell on the plant, and every ray of sunshine that shone on the plant, and I don't have the time, or the mental capacity to say thank you to all of those pieces, because I don't know them all. And I don't understand them all. So instead, I think G?d, because it's all of it. Right, in the sense that when we say when we call the Holy One, the source of rain, for me, it's not like, you know, there's a guy with a watering can like deciding when to tip the watering can but that we're saying, this is a part of the fullness and the wholeness and the oneness of life. It's complicated, and it's big, and it's beautiful. And it's also simple. Rain comes down, and we need it. And here it is. So thank you.
I love that idea. I love the sort of bringing it back all to the oneness of this of this natural cycle. And and, and Ellen what you were saying about the fact that we're not asking in this particular moment got me thinking about when do - Is there a moment we're asking? And actually, the original the Geshem prayer that we say to begin this season, when we say that like Eliana mentioned in Sukkot, that prayer actually does ask for rain, right? It talks about each one of our ancestors. And when they needed water, Abraham needed water when he sent his servants to go find Rivka at the well, and there are all these different places where water was present, and all these different ancestors lives, can water be present in our lives, like water was present in their lives, and we ask for water. But we ask for it to begin the season of rain, we asked for it and acknowledge that this is the moment when that rain would most likely happen for us. And then everyday from then from then forward until the moment when that season ends, we just acknowledge what we know and hope is already happening in the cycle of seasons. So I never thought about it that way. And I love I love that that we have we do have a moment where we're asking, but that moment makes sense. And then after that it's all about acknowledgement.
And dare I put in the side notes here the whole metaphor of Torah and mayim Torah being life giving waters and and now the word that's just screaming at me from the whole prayer is over and over in the mechaye, mechaye, mechaye, this is this process of life, you know, in this universe in which we live that that's what's going on here.
I love that. And that process of life and that sort of that sustaining cycle kind of brings us into this next section, where we're talking about the words that that continue this paragraph. So I'm gonna I'll read the paragraph for us now it's a little bit longer. So I'm going to read the whole paragraph. I think maybe I'll do show you a line by line translation maybe but that's -
Sure! That'd be great.
I'm just gonna use the translation that's here in the Lev Shalem Siddur. So if we have other translations that we want to bring up after that let's do that also. So here we see this there continue the paragraph it says mechalkel chayim b'chesed, you sustain the living through kindness and love, mechaye metim, there we have that phrase again, berachamim rabim, with great mercy you give life to the dead or however we want to understand and translate that you can go back 30 - 30 minutes if you if you didn't remember we talked about before. Somech noflim v’rofeh cholim u’matir asurim, translation here is you support the falling, in present tense, heal the sick, loosen the chains of the bound, umekayem emunato lisheini afar, and keep faith with those who sleep in the dust. Mi chamocha ba’al gevurot umi domeh lach, who can be compared to you who is like you Almighty, who can be compared? Melech memit umechaye umatzmiach yeshuah, the sovereign who brings death and life and causes redemption to flourish. What do we notice? What do we see? What are we experiencing here?
Wow, we could really go word by word on this, couldn't we, we could go line by line on this. I mean, I'm struck again, by the use of the word chesed, which continues to come up. Chesed, being something different than love, you know, we translated as loving kindness, which I always think of action and affect. That it's very easy to be kind without big without being nice. Now I'm thinking of into the woods, speaking of all the musical theater references, nice is different than good, right? You can be nice without being good. This is kindness that is coupled with love feeling that is coupled with action, which always speaks to me and then the translation that I have here for another word in that kind of quote, rachamim, compassion. Rabbi Hamer translated as you bring life out of death in your womb of compassion as the root of rachamim, rechem, also means womb, and there we have the continuation of this theme of life giving and life supporting.
Do I dare no doubt mistakenly read rachamim as the plural of rechem? Is it a masculine word, perhaps a rachamim. So now I'm thinking looking at this sentence for the first time as mechaye hakol, or giving life berachim rabim, everything is a womb. And a whole lot from a whole lot of different wombs and a whole lot of different starting places all this is going on in in myriad ways, I want to say. One thing that I just like to share I know that I learned this 15 years ago, maybe more maybe 20 years ago from Amichai Lau Levie. And we were sitting out on the grass at URJ Kutz camp. And Amichai was visiting Kutz camp years ago. And we were talking about this prayer for some reason. In this particular list, he wondered about this list as a progression. Somech noflim, raising up the fallen, not all fallen can be raised. The rofeh cholim, so so there's healing needed to be done. As one goes on perhaps healing in terms of recovery might not happen so it becomes umatir asurim, sometimes our bodies become a prison, an unpleasant place to be and sometimes freeing the captive is bringing on the end of life sometimes. So freeing one from one's bodily vessel, umekayem emunato lisheini afar, and keeping faith even after death has come to those who sleep in the dust. And then I take it to this whole, and then those who are sleeping in the dust wake up in different forms, I suppose, after a while, but this idea of, of this process of leaving this life and becoming something else, is a compassionate process, of falling of, of having some sort of healing of being released from one's body of still having that spirit and that faith, I find it to be getting deeper and deeper every time I think about it.
I think that's fascinating to think of it as a progression of looking through that cycle. And noticing and naming the cycle here in this prayer. I've never thought about it that way. I'm also I actually, you know, when I was reading this translation and thinking of somech noflim, I'd never read it as as supporting the falling, that the noflim is also in the present tense and that there are people who are falling and who are struggling at all these different points in our lives, and how can how are they being lifted up? And when I see these words here, you know, there's another there's another two words in this paragraph that bring us immediately back to another prayer. It says mi chamocha ba'al gevurot, who is like you, oh, One who does these wonders? And that brings us right back to the prayer we say right before the Amidah in on weekday in the mornings, which is the mi chamocha prayer. And when you look at the paragraph right before mi chamocha, we also get a couple of these listings of things that we're hoping that G?d does. This great and glorious G?d, ram v'nisa gadol v'norah, this this big mass majestic G?d, mashpil geim, lowers the prideful, magbiah shefalim, lifts up those who are in the dust, motzi asirim, releases the captives, that same thing that we say before, which is matir asurim, podeh anavim, redeems those who are poor, v'ozer dalim, helps those who are low, who are downtrodden, veoneh leamo be'et shavam elav, and calls out to those people, whenever they call out to G?d. Listens, answers the prayers of those who call out to G?d. And so I think of that and think of this, this mi chamocha naming here. And we get this idea that we're in conversation that we're in conversation with G?d and that God is doing all these things. And also that we should be thinking about mi chamocha, who is like you, the answer I think is supposed to be us in the mi chamocha prayer previously, who is like you, it's us who are supposed to be doing these things. We're supposed to be lifting up those who are downtrodden and listening to those who are in the dust and helping those helping to free those who can't free themselves are all these things are, are how we can create be an active role in being like G?d. I know Eliana, I think there's an activity that you do with middle schoolers. Will you tell us about that?
Yeah, absolutely. It's this, this is just I just learned so much from everybody. Because before I talk about that, I just want to say before I forget, I'm thinking now of that phrase ba'al hagevurot, which Rabbi Hammer translate as translates as owner of the great powers, or master of the great powers, which means we can borrow the powers. Right? If you own something, you can lend it out, you can rent it, maybe it's like fire where it's like I have some and now you have some where if we consider G?d as like the source of these things, then G?d can outsource them to us!
Do you want an obscure movie reference? Because you're my superpower, well, the that Marvel movie just came out called the Eternals. This is a spoiler. So if you want to just turn the podcast off for 30 seconds, just skip ahead. But in order to combat whatever evil happens at the end of the movie, all the, all the eternals each have their own superpower. But they put on these rings where they can share all of their superpowers. And they can take they can share with each other, and this person can use this person, this person can use this person's, and then all can come together to use a greater power than each one and then can use on their own, they can borrow from each other. I love that idea. Sorry to bring us to Marvel movies.
Well, I heald my, I heald my ears during whatever you just said, because he said this spoiler alert. But I often wonder - Is that what it means to be created that btzelem Elohim? Is that part of the G?D qualities within us that we also have superpowers that we don't know about? Or don't access as often as we might?
Absolutely. So, when I work with middle schoolers, I did this activity for the first time a couple years ago, right? So many children at that age, understandably, are feeling a tension within themselves of what they see in the world. And what the Torah and T'fillah at a very surface level says G?d is capable of, right? It's that evergreen tension between, well, if G?d can heal the sick, why is my grandmother still sick? If G?d can do this, why is the world like that? Which developmentally is a good and important tension for there to be. I think a big question in my mind, as an educator, is, what do we do with that tension, to show it love and support, and to get us over into perhaps a more expansive understanding of G?d and holiness. But that's a question for another time. But one of the ways we do this is looking at this paragraph, you know, I'll say something like, Does G?d have hands? And they'll say, No, not really, I guess not. Okay, who has hands? You do, it's like an easy way to get us to that point. And then I have the make a list to go through the tree lat of the gvurot paragraph and make a list of all the things it says G?d it does in the present tense that G?d is capable of. And then divide the students into groups and give each of them one of them, right, give one lift up the fallen, one of them heal the sick, one of them for the captive, one of them faithful to those who sleep and dust, and one of them mechaye hametim, reviver of the dead, and I give them 10 or so minutes to make a list of how people could do these things. People in general, and also them as middle schoolers as individuals. And I remember the first time I did this activity, I was really worried. I'm like, what is the mechaye hametim group going to come up with. And it was incredibly powerful. They needed no help from me, they said things like, we can tell the stories of those who have died to keep their memory alive. We can support those who are still here with our with our love. And it was incredibly powerful to say, if we let these students take this prayer seriously, while giving them permission to see it expansively, then it opens up a whole other doorway for them to see themselves in it. One thing I wanted to mention before we finish with this piece of the teillah is the biblical intertext that we find again, thank you My People's Prayerbook for once again, pointing us in all these wonderful directions. The line sheinei afar, those who sleep in dust. It's a really interesting image. And it's from the book of Daniel verse 12:2. Daniel is a book I don't have a lot of experience with but it's very end of days-y, the whole end of Daniel is about this kind of end times war and the line is for Rob beam mache. ADMA afar so there's that unmodified? Verbatim misheinei admat afar yakutzu aleh lechayei olam ve’eleh lacharfot lidron olam. Many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth will awake some to eternal life, others to reproaches to everlasting abhorrence. That sounds scary, but it's about the reviving of the dead in this kind of literal way. So that brings it in there. But then the line meimit umechaye, kind of life-er and death-er, or as Rabbi Jill Hammer translates here, keeper of life and death gardener, which I really love comes from First Samuel 2:6. Hannah, who is really for the Rabbi's, like the proto typical pray-er, she prays when she is wishing for a son. And then after she has a child, she prays again and this is from that prayer. Adonai memit umechaye morid sheol vayaal. The Lord deals death and gives life casts down into sheol and raises up. So even within these two pieces of intertext, we are seeing life and death continuing to play out here.
What's so interesting to me as well as the way it plays out? And why would the authors of this prayer or even why would Hannah begin with meimit? With - It's the death part that comes first, that as I want to say, perhaps a natural part of life, but that that death can be renewed? I don't know if I'm making any sense at all. In which case, I apologize. But isn't it interesting that G?d accepts responsibility or we give G?d responsibility first, for the fact that death happens, and it's not it's imperative the death happened in order that life can continue? I think there's important lessons here for us.
Perhaps it is, just like we said, we see we acknowledge that rain happens, we acknowledge the death happens, is a part of life. Also, in looking at the translation, I realized that it's probably not death gardner, there's probably a missing comma because the phrase matmiach yeshuah, semach is a shoot, right like from a plant like the flowering, like semach David, the offspring of David which we'll get to later when we go through all of the middle brachot. So it's probably keeper of life and death comma gardener of salvation, which I really love. The idea of a death gardener is interesting because it goes back to the thing at the beginning about the leaves fall and we all fall and we go into the earth and we in our death kind of become part of the garden of the earth.
Right and and we are possibly not capable of doing all the things that need to be done in order that life can continue in that way. But if you if you garden and till and plant in what you think what would appear to be dead already, or gone, and find that something new can grow. That's, I don't know, death gardener I get the big black robe in the siphon all that stuff. And now I'm gonna kind of smile and think about it for the rest of the day I guarantee.
And with that, we'll be right back.
Welcome back everyone. So just as in the avot v'imahot paragraph we also noticed an insert for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and the days in between the 10 days of awe, the aseret yemei teshuva, 10 days of repentance. We also have a line here that continues on that mi chamocha theme mi chamocha av harachamim zocher yetzurav bechayim berachaim, who is like you our loving origin, who remembers all beings for life and peace. Continuing on that thread of mi chamocha but also of rachamim and chaim, and for this time of the year remembrance, adding in that theme. I want to point out, I've heard I mean, we were talking about wombs before I don't remember who I learned from but I can try to find it. A translation of av harachamim, as Wombed Father, father with womb, meaning all of the different parts of the parental unit or all of the different things that are needed to create life as one as one which is incredibly beautiful to me. And then we end with this vene'eman atah lahachayot metim. I love this translation by Rabbi Hammer you are faithful to enliven what dies. You are faithful to enliven what dies, and we end with this chatima. Baruch atah yud hey vav hey, mechaye hametim. It ends with this theme of the paragraph or mechaye hakol, depending on which one you are looking at. Blessed are You breath of life who circles death back to life. Which I love another translation we haven't heard before. But we're just continuing on this theme of life. Yeah, Ellen.
I didn't mean to interrupt your memory I'm having a childhood memory here because I was going back to them the mechaye hakol the mechaye hametim, as to which we did at the close of the prayer when I was growing up. Of course it was in English then. But the Hebrew in the old Siddur from my childhood, replaced the chatima, replaced that last baruch atah line with noteah betocheinu chayei olam, which we know from the blessing after we read Torah now, but this was the chatima gvurot when I was growing up in the reform Siddur, Who implants within us eternal life. And it pertains. So clearly, I think to some of the things that we've been talking about today, that that is what the Reform Movement was using as a chatima for this prayer when I was growing up.
That's really cool to think about, I'm so glad but you have that memory, that we could spark that in you. So now that we've kind of gone through this bit by bit, let's think about this last part, and who gvurot as a whole, sharing a few translations. First, I want to share the one that I wrote for a family Siddur a couple of years ago, I haven't actually looked back at it since and so now after this episode, I probably will take a look back at it again. But here's what we have. We ascribe to you the power of lifting up the lifeless of the turning of the seasons, of sustaining life through loving kindness, of raising the falling, healing the sick, freeing the wound, and the hope that remains even in one who is brought so low. And as we are made in Your image, we can tap into these powers as well. These are such incredible things, what compares to One-ness, to the miraculous power of love, growth and hope, the power of life and death, the ability to save, we experience your blessing Holy One, through the miracle of bringing life to the lifeless. Let's hear another translation.
That's beautiful. I have a much more interpretive translation. This is in Mishkan T'fillah. And it's by Rabbi Richard Levy. It says, we pray that we might know before whom we stand, the power whose gift is life, who quickens those who have forgotten how to live. We pray for the winds to disperse the choking air of sadness, for cleansing rains to make parched hopes flower, and to give all of us the strength to rise up toward the sun. We pray for love to encompass us for no other reason, save that we are human, for love through which we may all blossom into persons who have gained power over our own lives. We pray to stand upright befallen, to be healed, we sufferers, we pray to break the bonds that keep us from the world of beauty. We pray for open eyes, we who are blind to our own authentic selves, we pray that we may walk in the garden of a purposeful life, our own powers in touch with the power of the world. Praise be the G?d whose gift is life, whose cleansing reigns, let parched, men and women flower toward the sun. Amen.
Amen. And I'm wondering for the three of us, what is something that we're taking out of this conversation, either to our next experience of gvurot within the liturgy, or just in the rest of our life? What is sitting with us that we want to remember to take from this conversation?
I'm trying to hold on to where the gvurot lie within us, right? This this like both the cycles of growth and the cycles that we can see and experience in the world, but also the way in which I can internalize, the growth that we're aspiring for G?d and how we can hold on to them and internalize them for ourselves as well. How do we take what we see and actualize it in the world?
Add to that my feeling of the eternality of at all. Atah gibor leolam. You know timewise and it goes back a little bit Eliana to what you said about picking up the the goblet of water from the river, of the how temporary my life is and my ability to access these strengths while I'm here. And the faith that these strengths are something which are a continual part of the fabric of life, that will that have existed long before I got here, and will continue long after I'm gone.
Adding to that, the idea that just acknowledging what is there is a prayer and a blessing. Not necessarily asking for more, though there is a sense in which some pieces of liturgy are like wink wink, nudge nudge G?d, you know, we call you the one that heals the sick. So get with the healing, but we don't have to interpret it that way. It is an acknowledgment of what happens. Rain happens. Healing happens. Freeing happens, love happens and death happens. And some of those things we have the power to make more of or less of in the world. And some of it we don't. And that recognizing where we have the power to act, and where our power comes in, accepting, or noticing. That's something that I'm going to be sitting with. And speaking of sitting with, let's take a moment at the end of our time together to do a practice. So for this one will start sitting down. Again, if you're able, if you're driving or something, you know, you can pause the podcast come back to this later, but I invite you to sit in a way where you can feel connected to the earth. This goes back to the beginning of the Amidah to our avot and imahot, of our ancestors that are in the earth, through your feet or through your seat, rolling your shoulders back, opening up your chest, allowing your hands to fall to your lap, down for grounding or open for accepting. Imagining that there is a string tied to the top of your head lifting you up to heaven, and that you are also grounded in the earth. And beginning to notice the pattern of your breath. Allowing it to deepen with each exhale, inhaling to lift and exhaling to ground. Inhaling to lift and exhaling to ground. And I invite you to notice that breath, notice that breath in and out. Motice how breathing in is what is sustaining and giving lifeforce to your body. Every time you breathe in mechaye, I am being enlivened. Everybreath in, mechaye, every breath out a little letting go a little expulsion. Also keeping you alive because you can't hold it in. Every breath out mechaye. Breath out mechaye. I invite you to bring your awareness to your heart. See if you can try that from inside your body if it helps to put your hand on your heart you can but try to do it without that. Where is your heart? Can you feel it beating? With every beat, mechaye. I took a deep breath, this is Sylvia Plath, I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am I am. I am. Feel into that lifeforce of your heart breathe into that lifeforce. And breathe out. Breathe that lifeforce into the rest of your body, or as a part of your body that needs a little more lifeforce today. Is it your neck, your toes, your ankles, your knees. Breathe in the lifeforce from your heart. Breathe it into your feet, and your toes if you can, you can move them feeling the lifeforce in them. Breathe in the lifeforce, from your heart. Breathe it out into your knees, your thighs, your calves, breathing in the lifeforce. Out into the tips of your fingers, out into your wrists, your arms. Breathing in mechaye, into your shoulders, into your chest into your stomach. Breathing in lifeforce and out into your neck, into your face and to the very top of your head. And whatever state in whatever way your body exists in the world today, breathing in your mechaye, breathing in life, life life. We continue to find our own gvurot, our own powers in the world, borrowing them, with love on the ba'al gevurot. And we continue to work towards the world that we want. Where more people are free, where fewer people are sick, or fewer, fewer people are downtrodden. While continuing to recognize the blessings that are already here, blessings of rain, blessings of dew. There's so much to be grateful for. So many systems going on in the world so much in this One-ness and say thank you to the Holy One. For all of it. I want to say thank you to both of you for being here for this really meaningful conversation. Thank you so much.
Our pleasure. Thank you, Eliana. This is a lot to think about.
Thanks as always for creating this space.
And thank you to your listener for listening. Thank you so much to Christy Dodge at Allobi for editing. Thank you to Yaffa Englander for doing our show notes and our social media. Thank you for listening and sharing and continuing the conversation with us. We're so so grateful to you. We're going to end today by listening out of suggestion from Josh and Ellen to a song of mine called The Fruits of Our Tree and understanding that there is so much in the world to be grateful for so many systems and that when we say thank you to G?d for encompassing all of it, so we'll leave you with that thought, wishing you a week full of blessings and we'll see you soon.
