Excitement, Especially Now

Dear friends, 

This week I’ve been getting excited. Yes, the world rages on. The stupidity knows no bounds. One of the worst leaders we’ve known is speaking at the UN as I write. But a few gatherings with New Shul friends this week have reminded me that on Wednesday evening we get to bring together this unique band of seekers and find the best way to begin a new year.  

My excitement began, as it often does, with the music rehearsal. It’s not just that this group is incredibly talented, which it is. It’s not just that we’ve been making music together for a few years now, and find each other in the music so naturally. It’s not just that the songs themselves feel like coming home. It’s not just that if there’s one thing we need right now on the path to healing, it’s to sing. It’s that on a real level, we’re all friends, and we feel lucky to be doing this together. What a rare and marvelous combination of beauty and love. 

A couple days later I got the opportunity to spend some time with Ellen Gould, who along with Holly Gewandter created this Shul 25 years ago. She spoke about the transformative experience that the Shul’s meditation chevrutah has provided. The weekly meditation has helped her and her husband Daniel find peaceful ways to navigate sickness, troubles and distractions, and have given her a deep understanding of Jewish ideas she thought she’d never connect with. But what lies at the base of the experience are the powerful bonds with people in the group.  

Hearing Holly and Ellen describe the creativity that exploded in the Shul’s early days is exhilarating. Immersive theatrical rituals, finding new ways to transform prayer into art, sitting at downtown bars to dig into the nature of the universe.  It always reminds me what we’re doing - channeling all of the gorgeous Greenwich Village world of arts and ideas into this old tent, this singing shtetl, this group of friends who insist on keeping it real, relevant and full of love. 25 years strong! 

Finally, this week I had the good fortune to meet up with a few friends at Susan’s studio to study. We read pieces of a medieval text, as happens in little study groups. But as often happens when New Shulers get together to learn, something real took over. People shared out of a space of vulnerability, responded out of a place of listening and care, and asked questions that aren’t exercises in cleverness. We weren’t there to defend our positions, to protect the fortress of what we know, but to see things we haven’t been able to see, and to discover something new. In our search for understanding we found a place of trust. 

On Wednesday evening we come together to do all of this and more. Beyond the music and the ideas we have a couple special additions to the holidays this year. Three things I'm especially excited for: We're going to have not one, not two but three young people, recently B Mitzvahd chanting Torah, and another three performing short pieces of ritual theater. On Rosh Hashanah Tashlich, and then again on Yom Kippur afternoon we're going to hear from our recently minted Philosopher in Residence, Dr. David Ponet about two Twentieth century Jewish thinkers who are deeply illuminating about our times, Hannah Arendt and Jean Amery. And on Yom Kippur we will hear from incredible Israeli and Palestinian guest speakers, Osama Iliwat and Rotem Levin about their stories of transformation from men of war to peace activists in search of a new narrative for the Holy Land. 

A new year is dawning on our 25 year old tent. May the light of discovery shine upon us. May the light of friends and music bring us home. May the light we create warm this world.  

Let's begin again.
I can’t wait. 
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Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha