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R. Rachel: Start a recording.

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R. David (he/him): Hello, everybody! Welcome to Worth a Thousand Words, the spiritual imagery of the Jewish High Holidays. If you're looking for the Schwarzman Bat Mitzvah, that's a different Zoom room.

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R. David (he/him): Otherwise, you're in the right place. Welcome, everybody! We are on the runway to the High Holidays. It is July 28th.

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R. David (he/him): Today, we are going to just start lbering up. It's been a while since we high-holidayed, and perhaps some of us have never high-holidayed before. We'll spend some time looking at how liturgy, and in particular the images of liturgy.

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R. David (he/him): Work, and what it means to work.

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R. David (he/him): And then, after harvesting some of that.

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R. David (he/him): and setting an orientation for where we're gonna go, we're gonna start going there by taking a deep dive into the liturgy we call Unatana Toketh, which is core to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We're not gonna finish it today, we'll get more of it tomorrow.

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R. Rachel: Whereby tomorrow, he means next week. Next week.

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R. David (he/him): What is time? What is time? What is time?

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R. David (he/him): So, welcome, everybody. We will have recordings of all of our sessions on the website, which we will recirculate after we are done here today, and we'll use the same link from week to week.

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R. Rachel: So before we officially begin, we're going to make a blessing over our Torah study, over our learning together.

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R. Rachel: Honoring the fact that everything that's about to come out of our mouths

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R. Rachel: is Torah, and is worthy of sacred attention.

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R. Rachel: And I just want to draw your attention to the ladder on the right-hand side of our slides.

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R. Rachel: Some of us have seen this graphic before.

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R. Rachel: I've been using it at CBI the last couple of weeks.

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R. Rachel: On the left-hand side of the letter, it says Pesach to Shavuot, and it has 7 rungs for the 7 qualities we cultivate.

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R. Rachel: Over the course of the 7 weeks, Between Passover and Shavuot.

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R. Rachel: And on the right-hand side.

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R. Rachel: It reminds us that we can also go back up, and so we are at the bottom rung of this 7-week ladder.

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R. Rachel: Which must mean that Rosh Hashanah is a little less than 7 weeks from now. Amazingly.

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R. Rachel: Baruch Ata Adonai, Elohayna Malacha Olam.

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R. Rachel: Asher Kidshanu Ba Mitzvotavitsi vanu la Asok B'ivre Torah.

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R. Rachel: Blessed are you, Adonai our God.

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R. Rachel: Sovereign in all space and time.

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R. Rachel: You make us holy in connecting command.

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R. Rachel: And you command us to immerse ourselves in words of Torah.

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R. Rachel: And that's what we're about to do.

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R. Rachel: So, Rabbi David, you will take notes?

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R. Rachel: So we're going to,

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R. Rachel: Shift the way the screen share is working, or maybe you don't need to in order… there we go, in order to be able to take notes.

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R. Rachel: We wanted to start by brainstorming a little bit.

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R. Rachel: What are our associations?

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R. Rachel: With high holiday liturgy, with high holiday prayer.

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R. Rachel: And we're gonna attempt to divide them into two boxes. What are our thoughts? What are the things we think? Thoughts, questions, whatever comes up.

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R. Rachel: And on the other hand, what are our feelings? What's arising in the heart?

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R. Rachel: And in the spirit.

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R. Rachel: When we think about all of the prayers we are about to start saying together.

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R. David (he/him): And particularly if any of them conjures up images, and… We have some.

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R. David (he/him): To get us started on the left, because those find their way in.

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R. Rachel: Also, I want to reaffirm that there are no wrong answers here.

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Donna: We won't.

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R. Rachel: to hear from the room about

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R. Rachel: What do you think? What do you feel? What do high holiday prayers bring up for you?

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R. Rachel: Cheryl, I see your hand.

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Sherrill Cropper: I… Actually have a strong anticipation.

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Sherrill Cropper: I like to be together with community. More people come for the High Holy Days than they often come during just services.

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Sherrill Cropper: And I feel like it's an opportunity for laying down stuff and picking up stuff and starting anew.

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R. Rachel: Mmm.

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R. Rachel: Anticipation, laying things down, picking new things up.

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R. Rachel: Alright. What else? What else is in the room?

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wendy: I find the holidays a way to refresh.

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wendy: And reboot my year… A way to hopefully this year start anew.

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R. Rachel: Love that.

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R. Rachel: Refresh or reboot.

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R. Rachel: Are there… are there any, are there particular prayers that you think of when you think of the high holidays?

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Nancy: I'm gonna turn a toka.

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Donna: Alright.

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R. Rachel: We might have sort of cheated by putting that name in front of you already, but excellent, yes. Unatana Toquef is one of them. We'll be going there tonight.

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wendy: I think of, health and healing

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wendy: And starting the prayers and the time.

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wendy: In a way that makes us healthy, and looking forward to a new year of healing and health.

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R. Rachel: Delia, I see your hand.

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Deliah: I think of two things. The one image you already gave of the veils being thin and the gates being open and closing again, but also of, the full prostration on the floor and surrendering to

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Deliah: Whatever.

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R. Rachel: So just a word of explanation for anyone for whom that's an unfamiliar concept. There's a prayer on the mornings of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur called the Great Alainu.

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R. Rachel: Where it is customary not just to dip our knees and…

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R. Rachel: bow our heads a little bit, but to actually, for some of us, get down on the ground in prostration. Oh, the hands are popping! Alright, Iris James Ellen Ruth.

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Iris: Yeah, that full prostration is a real opening feeling for me, and what I was wanting to share first

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Iris: Being in the sanctuary, and being with all of the people who are there, and knowing that

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Iris: we're doing this around the world together. I feel very heartened in the context of challenges that we've all faced through the thousands of years, and currently.

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Iris: So it's… it's a very uplifting feeling of connection and love.

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R. Rachel: Connection across space, connection across time.

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R. Rachel: Right. James, and then Ellen Ruth.

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James Nerlinger (Cincinnati, Ohio USA): There were two parts.

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James Nerlinger (Cincinnati, Ohio USA): Of the services that really, really… Hit for me last year.

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James Nerlinger (Cincinnati, Ohio USA): Probably the biggest one, though, the one I'll mention here, was the ISCOR.

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James Nerlinger (Cincinnati, Ohio USA): Honestly.

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James Nerlinger (Cincinnati, Ohio USA): Yom Kippur.

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James Nerlinger (Cincinnati, Ohio USA): Hmm.

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James Nerlinger (Cincinnati, Ohio USA): although I didn't have a name up there, it did, bring to mind my father.

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James Nerlinger (Cincinnati, Ohio USA): Who I lost.

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James Nerlinger (Cincinnati, Ohio USA): I don't know, 17 or so years ago, and

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James Nerlinger (Cincinnati, Ohio USA): It was emotionally a heavy hit. It really broke down, so…

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James Nerlinger (Cincinnati, Ohio USA): That's… that's definitely the thing I would say I probably feel the most.

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R. Rachel: We will be dedicating one of our classes to Yisker, also.

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R. Rachel: Ellen Ruth?

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Ellen Ruth Topol: The music has a profound effect on me.

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Ellen Ruth Topol: just in general, all of the music, but specifically, two songs stay with me the whole year, and one of them is Leonard Cohn's Who by Fire, and the other one

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Ellen Ruth Topol: It is Rabbi Shaw Mars.

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Ellen Ruth Topol: Higher and higher and higher and higher. That really helps, descent for the sake of assent.

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R. Rachel: Mmm, beautiful. Higher and higher.

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R. Rachel: We fall in order to rise.

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R. Rachel: And I see from Adam in the chat, Avinu Molkenu.

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R. Rachel: The slow F minor piano part makes him think of the end of summer and settling into fall.

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R. Rachel: Alright, so we've got seasonal… seasonal shifts, temporal shifts… Nancy, I see your hand.

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Nancy: I…

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Nancy: really building upon what Cheryl said, to me, it's very much about community. Being in community together, doing this together, and it also makes me feel closer to my family that's spread out across the country, because I know everyone

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Nancy: in that family is, you know, all of my family, you know, my sisters and brothers and my cousins, you know, they're all going to temple, and they're all going to high holiday services, and so there's a sense of being in community, not only with

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Nancy: Congregation Shir Me, but with that greater community of people I know who are all sharing in the same

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Nancy: Ritual at this time of year.

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R. Rachel: So a community connectedness and family connectedness, again, across space and time.

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Nancy: Yes.

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R. Rachel: Tenzin, I see your hand.

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Tenzin Pelyang: Yes, and, you know, connected with this about community, there's also, for me, a sense of connection deeper with myself, connection with community, with myself, and with the whole of this tradition.

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Tenzin Pelyang: Yeah. I mean, there's so many pieces to, you know, all the days and all that we do, but,

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Tenzin Pelyang: Just deeply connected, yeah.

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R. Rachel: I see Rabbi David is noticing that none of us has said God yet. David Green, where are you at?

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David Green: God, of course.

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Donna: Well played.

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David Green: To, to, to extend on Nancy's… Alright.

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David Green: I was… I was… for those of us whose… whose exposure to synagogue was nothing but high holidays growing up.

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Donna: Hmm.

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David Green: It… it kind of creates a longitudinal you know, it's… it's…

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David Green: it takes me back to the beginning of my sense of Jewishness.

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R. Rachel: Way to put it.

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R. Rachel: Right, and I… I would venture that even for those who might go to synagogue at other… might have grown up going to synagogue at other times of year, too.

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R. Rachel: There still can be a connection

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R. Rachel: To childhood in some way, or a connection to where we started.

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R. Rachel: Every year, when we come around to this spot.

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R. Rachel: Jill and Meg, and then Delia.

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Jill and Meg: This may be in along with refresh and Reboot, but I just really look forward to,

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Jill and Meg: The opportunity to… to, you know, apologize and to…

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Jill and Meg: you know, just feel… make amends. I love that, you know, to… opportunity to reflect and…

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Jill and Meg: Just… start again.

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R. Rachel: Absolutely.

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Jill and Meg: And… and I like the,

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Jill and Meg: The reflection aspect, looking over the past year.

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R. Rachel: Looking back, Looking back in order to look forward.

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Jill and Meg: Exactly.

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R. Rachel: Delia, how about you?

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Deliah: My surrender to whatever was divine energy, aka God. I just don't like the God word.

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Deliah: It's too limiting.

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R. Rachel: Which, by the way, is one of the reasons that we often, in our slides.

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R. Rachel: put an asterisk after the word God.

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R. Rachel: Which is to say, if this word doesn't do it for you, reach for a source of meaning that does.

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Deliah: Divine Infinite Energy. It's my thing.

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R. Rachel: Infinite Radiant is. Got it.

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R. Rachel: Alright, so this is… this is turning into a pretty rich list of what comes up for us.

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R. Rachel: When we think about the coming holidays.

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R. David (he/him): How does liturgy, the stuff in the Book.

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R. David (he/him): Help us get there.

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R. David (he/him): Just a question to think about for a minute. Yes, we're all looking at the same liturgy unless we're not paying attention, and there's a whole rabbinic tradition of, you know, looking through the book, or looking in your heart, and that's wonderful.

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R. David (he/him): What we're gonna be looking at over the next 7 weeks is why the liturgy

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R. David (he/him): looks the way it does, not because Talmud said so, or the Rabbi said so.

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R. David (he/him): But that these liturgies encode certain things.

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R. David (he/him): That operate on us, whether we are aware of them or not.

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R. David (he/him): But if we can become aware of them, We can use them.

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R. David (he/him): To deepen and heighten our experience.

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R. David (he/him): And that's where we're gonna go to next. How do we connect the liturgy as such to all the things that you started talking about here? Like, what's the connection between them? So…

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R. David (he/him): In this.

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R. David (he/him): It turns out, you know, many Jews know this about us. We are a people of the book.

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R. David (he/him): so is Christianity, so is Islam.

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R. David (he/him): We have books. We have so many books. We have libraries of books. Jewish tradition is written in books. Before there were books, there were… there was parchment and scrolls. It's a book, book, book, book, so many books.

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R. David (he/him): But once upon a time, we didn't actually have books.

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R. David (he/him): There was no printing press.

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R. David (he/him): So where did this stuff come from, and why is it there?

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R. David (he/him): I spent a lot of time thinking about that.

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R. David (he/him): And in this, I was first drawn

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R. David (he/him): to one of the Ten Commandments.

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R. David (he/him): Don't make for yourself an image.

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R. David (he/him): Or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth below.

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R. David (he/him): Or what's in the water below the Earth.

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R. David (he/him): Islam abides that as well.

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R. David (he/him): you would never make a picture of Muhammad, peace be upon him.

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R. David (he/him): we didn't have a Kodak moment with Moses.

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R. David (he/him): And we certainly wouldn't depict God in a picture.

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R. David (he/him): And that's the basic thing, right? You know, we wouldn't take an image and venerate it. We don't… we don't do iconography in Jewish.

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R. David (he/him): And if that was an… if that was the only reason, I'd be like, yeah, that's a good reason, so that we don't turn pictures into things we bow down to. We have that whole golden calf problem.

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R. David (he/him): And whether it's in three dimensions or two dimensions, it doesn't matter. We don't venerate things, we don't venerate images. But at the same time.

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R. David (he/him): Maybe there's something really important about having images, Even if we don't

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R. David (he/him): Because it turns out, and neurobiologists have confirmed this, that even though we are a people of the book, all humans actually operate our operating system

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R. David (he/him): It's based on images.

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R. David (he/him): We think in terms of images. We don't think in terms of words. We think in terms of images, whether we're aware of it or not.

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R. Rachel: you know, a mental image. I have a mental image of a thing.

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R. Rachel: That's… how I hold the thing in my consciousness.

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R. David (he/him): Right. Even when I say I'm looking for my phone, which I do very often, even when I'm physically on my phone, I sometimes look for my phone, the way the brain telegraphs that to me, haha, telegraphs.

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R. David (he/him): is by conjuring up the image of the phone, not the word phone, the image of the phone, which another part of my brain then wires to me with the word phone. But pre-word, there is image.

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R. David (he/him): What activates us, what motivates us, what inspires us, what frightens us, what classifies us, what defines us.

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R. David (he/him): To the extent we define ourselves for each other, is images.

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R. David (he/him): So how do we square the circle? Where we're not supposed to make images, But yet, we know

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R. David (he/him): That images are so moving to us.

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R. David (he/him): Well, it turns out… That poets have known about this for a long time.

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R. David (he/him): Poems are all about using words to conjure, Images.

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R. David (he/him): Good song lyrics conjure images by what they describe.

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R. David (he/him): And there's a whole book, relatively recent, as of last year, called Seeing Into the Life of Things.

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R. David (he/him): by Roger Kamenetz.

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R. David (he/him): Now, some of you may have heard of Roger Kamenetz. He wrote several amazing books. One of them is Stalking Elijah, another is The History of Last Night's Dreams. The one he's possibly most famous for is The Jew in the Lotus, which is the story of how the Dalai Lama

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R. David (he/him): summoned a whole bunch of rabbis to Dharamsala, India.

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R. David (he/him): to tell them the story of how the Jews were able to stay alive and keep Judaism alive in exile.

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R. David (he/him): And one of the… one of their secrets that Roger begins this book with is essentially the images of reenacting

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R. David (he/him): Being sacred at our tables, in our kitchens, or

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R. David (he/him): being liberated from Egyptian bondage. That's Passover. We don't read about it, we are to experience ourselves that way.

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R. David (he/him): And that got Roger thinking.

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R. David (he/him): Does someone want to read this first bullet?

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R. David (he/him): This might describe a little bit of how word becomes image.

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lindabkramer: Images and poems have a unique quality.

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lindabkramer: To come alive at all they require the listener or reader to participate.

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lindabkramer: If I speed read, the words apple or pear pass by as lifeless as a semicolon.

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lindabkramer: that if I bring imagination, I see red and apple, and taste sweetness and pear.

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lindabkramer: The poet's art revives my image-making capacity.

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lindabkramer: I dream as I read.

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R. David (he/him): That's why poetry works, right?

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lindabkramer: Winning.

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R. Rachel: works.

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R. David (he/him): When it works.

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R. David (he/him): The same can be said of liturgy.

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R. David (he/him): The thing that's in the Machser, the thing that's on the screen, The words that go by.

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R. David (he/him): What this series is ultimately about is inviting us into the images that liturgy is feeding us, because the liturgy is specifically crafted to do that using images.

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R. David (he/him): And maybe…

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R. David (he/him): The difference between making an image and having an image is our own agency in using our imagination. If our people were walking around with Kodak cameras.

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R. David (he/him): It would be so much less impactful than our own engagement with the materials.

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R. David (he/him): But that asks us actually to engage with the materials.

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R. David (he/him): To have that poetic state of mind, to have visionary experiences with materials that maybe we have looked at all of our lives because Avinu Malkenu is Avinu Malkenu.

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R. David (he/him): It's about developing this rich multi-sensory matrix of feeling. Again, a quote from Roger Kameness. He wasn't describing liturgy, he was describing images.

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R. David (he/him): But the same thing applies.

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R. David (he/him): And that's gonna be our goal.

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R. David (he/him): To actually unpack those images.

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R. David (he/him): Now, what makes liturgy work, therefore, are the words.

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R. David (he/him): conjure up the images, because they're actually describing images. We just haven't called it that for most of our Jewish education, if we ever had any. I wasn't taught this way.

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R. David (he/him): Rabbi Rachel, I bet you weren't taught this way.

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R. Rachel: Absolutely not.

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Donna: I know.

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R. David (he/him): Has anyone ever thought like this? Probably not, but it's scaring us right in the face, and we're gonna prove it to you for 7 weeks. The way liturgy works is it creates this liturgical imagery.

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R. David (he/him): By talking about, well, gates that open and close, for instance.

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R. David (he/him): And we're gonna have emotions That respond to that image.

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R. David (he/him): That's the point.

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R. David (he/him): What makes liturgy effective, then, is that it's speaking to a lot of different people.

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R. David (he/him): who may be wired very differently, but they're having a collective experience. Nancy, you talked about this. Here I am in, you know, Congregation blank, but my people and my family and whomever, they're having the same kind of experience. Maybe they're not thinking the exact same thing, but we're using the same proverbial playbook.

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R. David (he/him): So it speaks to me as a person, and we as a collective, and you can expand that sense of collectivity outward as much as you want.

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R. David (he/him): In so doing, it does something that, in English, we can call reconnect.

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R. David (he/him): it religates, which is literally what religion is. Religate, religion, reconnect.

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R. Rachel: It binds us back together again.

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R. David (he/him): By putting thought and feeling And spirit in the same circle.

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R. David (he/him): Nancy, I see your hand.

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Nancy: I was just thinking, as an art history major, how Christianity views this very differently.

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Nancy: You walk into any church, you are surrounded by countless images of gods and saints and Christ, and it's all over. It's in the stained glass windows, it's on paintings that are there, it's on sculptures.

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R. David (he/him): Some synagogues now also have the stained glass window, right.

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Nancy: So, but it's typically in synagogues I've been in, it's…

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R. David (he/him): Yes.

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Nancy: stars, it's… it's… it's images of flames, or… but they're not concrete. They're very,

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R. David (he/him): strap.

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R. Rachel: abstract.

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R. David (he/him): Yeah, we'll see some of that starting tonight.

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Nancy: thing that I was thinking of, of how many times I've had to learn about every single saint, and all the different, like, in,

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Nancy: art, you know, in different things.

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R. David (he/him): Right.

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Nancy: It's interesting.

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R. David (he/him): Because Judaism is asking us to do the image-making.

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R. David (he/him): And that's important. Ellen Ruth, I see your hand, and then we're gonna finish this and actually start doing it.

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Ellen Ruth Topol: I have 3 things I'd like to say. The first is it doesn't… it doesn't tell us not to focus on images. It says not to focus on engraving images.

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Ellen Ruth Topol: And I was wondering what Graven meant. I was trying to look it up, but I was getting distracted.

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R. David (he/him): Back then, carved, hewn, you know, using words is fine.

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Ellen Ruth Topol: I'm sorry, can you say that again, Rabbi David?

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R. David (he/him): Carved or hewn?

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Donna: Mmm.

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R. Rachel: is probably an easier word to come across in the… in the… Captions.

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R. Rachel: So, like, taking a hammer and chisel to carve stone.

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R. Rachel: To make, like, a statue.

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R. David (he/him): Oh, Yvonne, you've muted.

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R. David (he/him): Go ahead and unmute.

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Ellen Ruth Topol: I was wondering if it had to do with the word grave, Graver in English.

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R. David (he/him): No, that's just… that's just English.

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Ellen Ruth Topol: Okay, and then the other thing I wanted to say is about imagery and the way our brains work. So, imagery is in the right hemisphere of our brains, and when we take

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Ellen Ruth Topol: words…

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Ellen Ruth Topol: and put it together with images, we're making a connection in our brains, and that's a good thing. Love that. Yes, exactly. And then the last thing I wanted to say is, this poet, William Carlos Williams, wrote.

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R. David (he/him): Yeah.

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Ellen Ruth Topol: I wanted to write a poem for you to understand. For what good is it to me if you don't understand it? But you have to try hard.

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Ellen Ruth Topol: And I think that applies to what we're trying to do for the next 7 weeks.

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R. David (he/him): That sounds right. That sounds right. So the game plan is this. This all works really well in theory.

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R. David (he/him): This is the theory.

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R. David (he/him): But in order for us to actually translate it into our high holiday experience, what does it need?

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R. David (he/him): It needs some understanding, which is what this 7-week series hopefully will offer. It asks some emotional limbering, and not to be passive with it.

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R. David (he/him): And it needs some time and space.

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R. David (he/him): So, as we unpack the images, we're going to invite you To literally take them home.

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R. David (he/him): Look at them.

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R. David (he/him): And feel into them.

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R. David (he/him): It's in dream work, Roger would call this calling the image back to mind.

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R. David (he/him): Because it's not just mind, it's also heart.

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R. David (he/him): If we don't do this, Then the words of liturgy are just words of liturgy.

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R. David (he/him): It's the difference between the cookbook and the meal. You can't eat the cookbook.

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R. David (he/him): The purpose is to actually experience the liturgy, and there's a lot of it. It's literally overwhelming, even in the shortened versions that we use.

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R. Rachel: lead, It's still a lot, and we know that.

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R. David (he/him): So any bit will work.

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R. David (he/him): Our purpose being to crack open the shell.

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R. David (he/him): And what comes forth is our humanity.

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R. David (he/him): and our… Divinity.

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R. David (he/him): So, with that, Prelude.

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R. David (he/him): Let's get started.

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R. Rachel: Before we look at high holiday images per se, we wanted to offer a few examples of images

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R. Rachel: that are resonant in our tradition all year round. And we came up with 4 of them.

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R. Rachel: One of them is the image of the Sabbath bride, or Sabbath queen.

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R. Rachel: Right, during Kabbalat Shabbat services, we sing Lachadi, let's go greet the bride, we fling open the doors of the sanctuary.

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R. Rachel: And welcome, Shabbat!

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R. Rachel: With the anticipation that we might bring to

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R. Rachel: You're at a wedding, and everybody stands up when the bride comes in.

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R. David (he/him): It's a wedding!

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R. David (he/him): How do you feel at a wedding?

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R. Rachel: It's a wedding! Every week! Every week!

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R. Rachel: Right?

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R. Rachel: One of them is Passover.

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R. Rachel: Where our liturgy tells us, in every generation, one must see oneself as if one personally went forth.

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R. Rachel: from the land of Egypt. So at every Seder.

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R. Rachel: My job, your job, our job, is to imagine ourselves into the Seder story.

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R. Rachel: It's not about something that happened to them back then.

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R. Rachel: It's about something happening to us right now.

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R. Rachel: That feeling of liberation.

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R. Rachel: And then the others that arose for us had to do with light.

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R. Rachel: Lighting a Havdalah candle, lighting Shabbos candles, lighting Hanukkah candles.

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R. Rachel: How it feels when you start with one little light.

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R. Rachel: And then you have 2 little lights, and then you have 3 little lights.

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R. Rachel: These are some of the images that our year-round liturgy opens up for us.

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R. Rachel: What do they do for us?

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R. Rachel: What do they make us feel?

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R. David (he/him): And go greet the bride. Boom. Emotions. Quick.

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R. David (he/him): Put them in the chat box or call them out.

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R. David (he/him): It's a wedding, you all look so sad.

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Deliah: Open to joy.

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R. David (he/him): Yay!

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R. Rachel: Joy. Beautiful. Openness.

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R. David (he/him): Joy, open, love, yeah.

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R. David (he/him): Yeah, we're all duded up, and…

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R. David (he/him): It's celebratory, it's… it's… we can't contain ourselves. This is not the moment to be buttoned up. Great!

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R. David (he/him): Passover.

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R. David (he/him): We had to regard ourselves. Do you remember what it was like?

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R. David (he/him): carrying bricks?

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R. Rachel: Do you remember what it was like to feel constrained and then feel free?

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R. David (he/him): Taskmaster's lash on your back.

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R. David (he/him): The bitterness in your mouth. I mean, that's why it's there, right?

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Donna: Hmm, sorry.

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R. Rachel: And at Passover, we also have, right, all of these additional

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R. Rachel: emit things to spark image. We have tastes, we have smells, we have, right, the harosset, the crack of matzah, all of those tangible things.

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R. Rachel: Help to build that sense.

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R. David (he/him): Same thing. But if you don't be the same thing.

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R. Rachel: Those objects, you can do it in here and in here.

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R. David (he/him): Yeah. Same principle, just turned up to 11.

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R. Rachel: Because the highlight is turn everything up to a.

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R. David (he/him): Up to 11.

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R. David (he/him): So let's go.

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R. David (he/him): And we're gonna help

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R. David (he/him): Connect what we're doing here to our respective services by probably grabbing some of these images and using them in our slide decks.

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R. David (he/him): Right? So, Let us proclaim the holiness of this day.

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R. David (he/him): Okay.

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R. David (he/him): For it is awesome.

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R. David (he/him): and tremendous.

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R. David (he/him): For on this day, your sovereignty is…

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R. David (he/him): Exalted, and your throne is established in love, you sit on it in truth.

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R. David (he/him): What is this trying to get you to feel?

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R. David (he/him): Quick. Don't think too much.

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R. David (he/him): What is it trying to get you to feel?

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R. David (he/him): And how is it doing it, Delia?

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Deliah: Expansiveness.

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R. David (he/him): Yeah, keep going.

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R. Rachel: I've seen the word AW popping up in the chat box repeatedly.

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R. David (he/him): Great.

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R. David (he/him): Keep it coming.

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Sherrill Cropper: Larger than ourselves.

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R. David (he/him): Larger than ourselves.

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Deliah: I'm not alone.

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R. David (he/him): I'm not alone. Keep it coming.

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R. David (he/him): You may not… you might not all agree.

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Lilith Blackmoon: A sense of purpose.

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R. David (he/him): Kite?

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Nancy: I actually like this version because usually I associate it… it is awesome and full of dread.

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R. David (he/him): That's what… Wow!

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Nancy: I remember, you know, growing up, that's what we said.

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R. Rachel: It's how it has usually been.

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R. David (he/him): Often rendered, yes.

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R. Rachel: as you.

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R. David (he/him): So, dread!

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R. Rachel: One or both of us say every translation is a Midrash?

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R. David (he/him): Yup!

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R. Rachel: Because the Hebrew… Nora?

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R. Rachel: could mean either one of those things. Tremendous, awesome,

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R. David (he/him): Yum… So, how is the liturgy actually keying up these emotions? What… what imagery is it using?

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R. David (he/him): What do you see?

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00:33:46.490 --> 00:33:49.180
R. Rachel: We're giving you some actual images to cue that up.

378
00:33:49.180 --> 00:33:50.520
Ellen Ruth Topol: At the…

379
00:33:51.380 --> 00:34:08.399
Ellen Ruth Topol: At my sister's Passover Seder, I was having trouble, and I had to read King over and over again, especially because right now, in our society, no King's Day, and I wanted to substitute it with a different word.

380
00:34:08.760 --> 00:34:12.610
Ellen Ruth Topol: So, when I see your throne.

381
00:34:13.360 --> 00:34:14.960
Ellen Ruth Topol: I…

382
00:34:14.969 --> 00:34:16.419
R. David (he/him): throne! It says throne!

383
00:34:16.429 --> 00:34:18.769
Ellen Ruth Topol: It makes me uncomfortable at all.

384
00:34:18.770 --> 00:34:19.500
R. David (he/him): okay.

385
00:34:19.500 --> 00:34:20.960
R. Rachel: Good, I'm glad you said that.

386
00:34:20.969 --> 00:34:23.099
Ellen Ruth Topol: Threatening and time.

387
00:34:23.400 --> 00:34:24.260
R. David (he/him): Okay.

388
00:34:24.800 --> 00:34:27.419
Tenzin Pelyang: I was going to say something, similar.

389
00:34:27.420 --> 00:34:28.770
Ellen Ruth Topol: more prevalent.

390
00:34:28.770 --> 00:34:29.690
Tenzin Pelyang: Oh, am I…

391
00:34:29.690 --> 00:34:35.620
Ellen Ruth Topol: put up higher. I'd like to substitute that word with something else, but I'm not quite.

392
00:34:35.620 --> 00:34:40.120
R. David (he/him): Understood. Thank you, Ellen Ruth. Let's make space for others. Tenzin.

393
00:34:40.120 --> 00:34:49.819
Tenzin Pelyang: Yeah, oh, I mean, I appreciate all the, you know, abstract, you know, awesome things people were talking about, but this image of

394
00:34:49.820 --> 00:35:08.080
Tenzin Pelyang: you know, the throne and the hierarchy and the king thing gets in the way of all of that. And since we're talking, you know, since we're talking about images here, like, this is a big one for me that is, you know, that I have to work really hard to not, let it take over.

395
00:35:08.080 --> 00:35:09.670
R. David (he/him): Yeah. Oh, good!

396
00:35:09.670 --> 00:35:13.299
R. Rachel: So glad this is coming up, because we're going to spend a lot of time here.

397
00:35:13.640 --> 00:35:14.270
R. David (he/him): Yup.

398
00:35:14.620 --> 00:35:21.330
R. Rachel: I want to lift up… Delia has put in the chat box one creative way of understanding the word melech.

399
00:35:21.530 --> 00:35:22.420
R. Rachel: King?

400
00:35:22.700 --> 00:35:28.090
R. Rachel: is to see it as an acronym for the mind, the heart.

401
00:35:28.240 --> 00:35:30.359
R. Rachel: The kidneys, or the mind, the heart, the body.

402
00:35:30.360 --> 00:35:31.020
R. David (he/him): sharp.

403
00:35:31.020 --> 00:35:31.559
R. Rachel: So it's not…

404
00:35:31.560 --> 00:35:31.920
R. David (he/him): Sure.

405
00:35:31.920 --> 00:35:35.790
R. Rachel: But the image that the liturgy is giving us is a throne.

406
00:35:35.790 --> 00:35:36.280
R. David (he/him): It's a throw.

407
00:35:36.280 --> 00:35:38.070
R. Rachel: The sovereign would sit on.

408
00:35:38.070 --> 00:35:41.270
R. David (he/him): It's literally a chair that he said.

409
00:35:41.270 --> 00:35:43.099
R. Rachel: Which is why that picture isn't…

410
00:35:44.350 --> 00:35:50.300
R. David (he/him): Right? Heavenly throne. So here, there's this heavenly throne, and I don't know if God has a tushy.

411
00:35:50.400 --> 00:36:07.170
R. David (he/him): But, you know, leaving the anthropomorphism aside for a moment, and leaving the gendered aspect out of it for a moment, the actual image doesn't focus on that. The focus is, here's this throne.

412
00:36:08.240 --> 00:36:10.440
R. David (he/him): That you are approaching.

413
00:36:11.230 --> 00:36:13.369
R. Rachel: That we are approaching, right?

414
00:36:13.370 --> 00:36:17.709
R. David (he/him): You, we, all of us. And how do you feel when you're approaching the throne?

415
00:36:19.680 --> 00:36:20.460
R. David (he/him): Quick!

416
00:36:22.600 --> 00:36:26.989
Iris: I actually feel a sense of being welcomed.

417
00:36:26.990 --> 00:36:27.840
R. David (he/him): Kate?

418
00:36:27.840 --> 00:36:33.360
Iris: You know, that is… I… the honor to me is warming, and…

419
00:36:33.360 --> 00:36:33.870
R. David (he/him): What?

420
00:36:33.870 --> 00:36:40.779
Iris: me to prayer. A Rabbi says that you have to feel awe before you can pray, not that you pray and then feel awe.

421
00:36:41.310 --> 00:36:48.930
R. David (he/him): Okay, so let's look at the words now. We proclaim the holiness of the day. It's awesome.

422
00:36:49.410 --> 00:36:51.130
R. David (he/him): It's tremendous.

423
00:36:51.270 --> 00:36:57.270
R. David (he/him): which is value neutral. Some do render it as dread, we'll get to that very shortly.

424
00:36:57.910 --> 00:37:01.590
R. David (he/him): Your sovereignty is established, it doesn't say king.

425
00:37:02.900 --> 00:37:07.700
R. David (he/him): your throne is established. How is it established? In the.

426
00:37:08.420 --> 00:37:09.020
Iris: Wow.

427
00:37:09.320 --> 00:37:10.320
R. David (he/him): Love.

428
00:37:10.320 --> 00:37:13.000
R. Rachel: Susan… Susan noted that in the chat.

429
00:37:13.250 --> 00:37:13.950
R. David (he/him): Yeah.

430
00:37:13.950 --> 00:37:16.929
R. Rachel: I also got words like small and humbled.

431
00:37:17.310 --> 00:37:19.580
R. David (he/him): Right. Oh…

432
00:37:19.580 --> 00:37:22.369
R. Rachel: Less than, so we're having a lot of feelings.

433
00:37:22.370 --> 00:37:24.490
R. David (he/him): A lot of feelings here.

434
00:37:24.620 --> 00:37:29.420
R. David (he/him): And that's… Right out of the gate, the point of it all

435
00:37:29.590 --> 00:37:33.770
R. David (he/him): We can approach this throne, and we're gonna talk more about that.

436
00:37:34.100 --> 00:37:41.289
R. David (he/him): with love or dread. We can feel welcomed, or less than.

437
00:37:42.810 --> 00:37:46.199
R. David (he/him): Right? And this is just the first slide, isn't it great?

438
00:37:46.200 --> 00:37:47.200
R. Rachel: The prayer itself?

439
00:37:47.200 --> 00:37:47.640
lindabkramer: Wow.

440
00:37:47.640 --> 00:37:50.950
R. Rachel: doesn't say… Either one of those.

441
00:37:51.100 --> 00:37:52.170
R. David (he/him): Right.

442
00:37:52.380 --> 00:37:52.870
R. Rachel: All it's.

443
00:37:52.870 --> 00:37:53.250
R. David (he/him): It's what.

444
00:37:53.250 --> 00:37:54.160
R. Rachel: is…

445
00:37:54.320 --> 00:37:54.810
R. David (he/him): See your hand.

446
00:37:54.810 --> 00:37:56.120
R. Rachel: is established.

447
00:37:57.290 --> 00:38:03.169
lindabkramer: Can the throne be the chair at the wedding? That will lifting up the people?

448
00:38:03.450 --> 00:38:04.819
R. Rachel: Oh, that's a cool idea.

449
00:38:04.820 --> 00:38:06.120
R. David (he/him): I love it! I love it!

450
00:38:06.120 --> 00:38:11.379
R. Rachel: Lilith, is that what you were gonna say? You're thinking, right, of the… of lifting the bride or groom off.

451
00:38:11.380 --> 00:38:11.760
lindabkramer: Yeah.

452
00:38:11.760 --> 00:38:13.979
R. Rachel: a chair for the Serve for a Circle Dance?

453
00:38:14.440 --> 00:38:16.869
lindabkramer: But that was catching me.

454
00:38:17.080 --> 00:38:20.849
R. David (he/him): Great! So, so Lilith and Linda are now gonna go out for coffee.

455
00:38:21.750 --> 00:38:35.309
R. David (he/him): automatically, the second you start thinking about it, this is not passive anymore. We are now engaging with the text. Now, recognizing that there's so much here, the images on the right.

456
00:38:35.640 --> 00:38:45.379
R. David (he/him): are images that are chosen by the Reform Movement and the Renewal Movement, for Unatana Tokaf.

457
00:38:45.670 --> 00:38:48.890
R. David (he/him): What do you notice about them, abstract art, Nancy?

458
00:38:51.420 --> 00:38:52.370
R. Rachel: Or anyone.

459
00:38:52.370 --> 00:38:53.640
R. David (he/him): There it is, there it is, right?

460
00:38:53.640 --> 00:39:00.030
Nancy: Both… both flames. You know, they're… they're… Fire and power.

461
00:39:00.430 --> 00:39:07.099
R. David (he/him): It's fire, it's power, Rachel was… It's Rachel up!

462
00:39:07.100 --> 00:39:07.640
lindabkramer: Yup.

463
00:39:08.050 --> 00:39:15.050
R. David (he/him): Reaching to the sky, writes James, right? And that's what Unatana Tokif starts with. Now.

464
00:39:15.850 --> 00:39:19.799
R. David (he/him): You've collectively given it two different feelings.

465
00:39:20.230 --> 00:39:24.930
R. David (he/him): And the music Can go either way.

466
00:39:25.050 --> 00:39:34.200
R. David (he/him): Some of you are used to this.

467
00:39:35.010 --> 00:39:40.559
R. David (he/him): That's maybe dread… How we're sort of like this.

468
00:39:40.750 --> 00:39:46.219
R. David (he/him): And there's tradition for that. There's also…

469
00:39:46.520 --> 00:39:59.049
R. David (he/him): It reaches up, it's in a major key, it brings us back.

470
00:39:59.810 --> 00:40:12.809
R. David (he/him): There's a very soft. Totally different.

471
00:40:14.960 --> 00:40:21.849
R. David (he/him): And all of them are consistent with the tone poem, the image that we are

472
00:40:22.200 --> 00:40:24.760
R. David (he/him): Being given to start us off.

473
00:40:25.900 --> 00:40:27.460
R. David (he/him): So, step one.

474
00:40:27.840 --> 00:40:30.479
R. David (he/him): What's your relationship with power?

475
00:40:33.530 --> 00:40:36.360
R. David (he/him): If we're going into the Jewish high holidays.

476
00:40:37.790 --> 00:40:42.490
R. David (he/him): We're gonna need to get real about our relationship with power.

477
00:40:44.910 --> 00:40:47.739
R. David (he/him): And that may shift over the next 7 weeks.

478
00:40:47.740 --> 00:40:48.070
R. Rachel: will.

479
00:40:48.070 --> 00:40:48.430
Donna: Fine.

480
00:40:48.430 --> 00:40:55.610
R. Rachel: These metaphors of… God's power and our relationship to it.

481
00:40:56.500 --> 00:40:57.460
R. David (he/him): And of course.

482
00:40:57.460 --> 00:40:59.520
R. Rachel: There's an Avini Molkenu in a few weeks.

483
00:40:59.600 --> 00:41:06.120
R. David (he/him): And of course, it has to be a metaphor, because… and good luck describing God, right? So, of course.

484
00:41:06.440 --> 00:41:13.280
R. David (he/him): Words are going to evoke metaphor imagery, just to get us into an experience, because

485
00:41:13.420 --> 00:41:18.930
R. David (he/him): we can't be precise about divinity. We just can't be. So this is where we start.

486
00:41:19.660 --> 00:41:21.530
R. David (he/him): This comes from somewhere.

487
00:41:21.900 --> 00:41:30.020
R. Rachel: So there are a couple of different places from whence this might come. The story that our tradition has told about it.

488
00:41:30.330 --> 00:41:40.769
R. Rachel: And you'll find this in the writings of Reb. Isaac of Vienna, who died in the year 1250. It says, this prayer comes to us from the Crusades. Maybe some of us have heard this before.

489
00:41:41.210 --> 00:41:47.499
R. Rachel: that it was written during the Crusades by a Reb. Amnon of Mainz in Germany.

490
00:41:48.510 --> 00:41:52.429
R. Rachel: Who wrote it because the bishop demanded that he convert?

491
00:41:53.320 --> 00:41:56.940
R. Rachel: And he said, oh yeah, give me 3 days to think about it.

492
00:41:57.230 --> 00:42:01.330
R. Rachel: But during the 3 days of thinking about it, he felt terrible that he was even thinking about it.

493
00:42:01.690 --> 00:42:08.789
R. Rachel: And then the bishop had him summoned, and the rabbi said, oy, I can't believe I even dilly-dellied, please cut out my tongue.

494
00:42:09.720 --> 00:42:14.849
R. Rachel: And the bishop said, no, your sin is that your feet didn't bring you back, I'm gonna chop them off.

495
00:42:15.130 --> 00:42:21.550
R. Rachel: Whacked off his feet, Whacked off his fingers, It is a horrific story.

496
00:42:24.030 --> 00:42:31.729
R. Rachel: And 3 days later, this poor guy, it's Rosh Hashanah, and somehow, I guess, they didn't actually cut out his tongue. He asked to be placed by the ark.

497
00:42:32.130 --> 00:42:35.769
R. Rachel: And he spontaneously recited Unatana Tokaf.

498
00:42:36.270 --> 00:42:38.910
R. Rachel: as his personal prayer to God.

499
00:42:39.330 --> 00:42:40.830
R. Rachel: And then died on the spot.

500
00:42:41.930 --> 00:42:45.400
R. Rachel: That's our story of where this comes from.

501
00:42:45.870 --> 00:42:50.029
R. Rachel: From the suffering we underwent during the Crusades.

502
00:42:50.140 --> 00:42:56.500
R. Rachel: And during the Middle Ages, and during the pogroms, and all of these horrific things that our people have been through.

503
00:42:57.670 --> 00:43:00.240
R. Rachel: There's one small problem with that story.

504
00:43:00.630 --> 00:43:05.919
R. Rachel: Which is that a manuscript for this prayer has been found in the Cairo-Ganiza.

505
00:43:06.070 --> 00:43:10.690
R. Rachel: A Geniza is like a burial place for sacred… for… for…

506
00:43:10.870 --> 00:43:16.840
R. Rachel: parchment that has sacred words on it. So to this day, if a sidur, a prayer book, becomes too beat up.

507
00:43:16.840 --> 00:43:18.229
Suzanne Graver: to use?

508
00:43:18.230 --> 00:43:23.729
R. Rachel: We don't throw it away. You either put it in a Geniza, Or you bury it.

509
00:43:24.010 --> 00:43:25.870
R. Rachel: in a Jewish cemetery.

510
00:43:26.320 --> 00:43:30.499
R. Rachel: Let's see, we do the latter, because we don't happen to have a Geniza here.

511
00:43:30.840 --> 00:43:36.690
R. Rachel: But in Cairo, they had this vast place where parchment was, you know, this is where you throw all your old parchments.

512
00:43:37.630 --> 00:43:44.800
R. Rachel: And we've found this prayer, and we know that it was written down in the 6th century. That's well before the Crusades.

513
00:43:45.440 --> 00:43:49.469
R. Rachel: And some parts of it seemed to have been written in the 300s.

514
00:43:49.890 --> 00:43:50.520
Donna: Hmm.

515
00:43:51.430 --> 00:43:55.560
R. Rachel: So it doesn't actually come from the Crusades, it's much, much older.

516
00:43:58.110 --> 00:44:04.520
R. Rachel: But in both of these origin stories, the kind of mythological one of it comes out of our suffering.

517
00:44:04.750 --> 00:44:07.529
R. Rachel: And the historical one that it comes out of…

518
00:44:08.070 --> 00:44:10.689
R. Rachel: Are suffering at various periods of time.

519
00:44:10.990 --> 00:44:17.000
R. Rachel: One way or another, these words were written by people, by Jews, like us, who were…

520
00:44:17.480 --> 00:44:19.729
R. Rachel: Grappling with these same themes.

521
00:44:20.560 --> 00:44:27.980
R. Rachel: So the feelings that we are having are not new to us. Our ancient ancestors had them, too.

522
00:44:28.540 --> 00:44:47.699
R. David (he/him): they were just responding to historical circumstances. So whether it was the Crusades, being a Jew in Crusades Europe or Crusades Jerusalem, not so fun. Terrible. Or being a Jew in exile after the destruction of the Second Temple.

523
00:44:47.790 --> 00:44:49.230
R. David (he/him): Not so fun.

524
00:44:49.340 --> 00:44:54.129
R. David (he/him): or being a Jew in early Christendom after the Council of Nicaea.

525
00:44:54.300 --> 00:44:55.239
R. Rachel: Also, not so fun.

526
00:44:55.280 --> 00:44:57.279
R. David (he/him): not so fun.

527
00:44:57.280 --> 00:44:57.850
R. Rachel: a seam.

528
00:44:58.150 --> 00:45:04.150
R. David (he/him): Month… right, so… It turns out the world is unfair and has suffering.

529
00:45:05.510 --> 00:45:06.839
R. Rachel: This just in.

530
00:45:07.890 --> 00:45:08.500
R. Rachel: Oh, wait.

531
00:45:08.880 --> 00:45:09.950
R. Rachel: We all knew that.

532
00:45:11.410 --> 00:45:12.750
R. David (he/him): And the liturgy.

533
00:45:12.750 --> 00:45:14.990
R. Rachel: We resist knowing it.

534
00:45:15.160 --> 00:45:18.070
R. Rachel: Right? Who can go about their day thinking about that all the time?

535
00:45:19.000 --> 00:45:23.329
R. Rachel: And then here comes the high holidays, and here comes this prayer reminding us

536
00:45:24.050 --> 00:45:26.020
R. Rachel: Oh, this is something you need to wrestle with.

537
00:45:26.450 --> 00:45:27.520
R. David (he/him): Bye.

538
00:45:28.060 --> 00:45:35.229
R. David (he/him): Why do we need to deal with this at Rosh Hashanah? Why are we starting this course here? This does not seem like fun.

539
00:45:36.860 --> 00:45:37.510
R. David (he/him): Think about it.

540
00:45:37.650 --> 00:45:40.109
R. David (he/him): For reals, why are we starting with this?

541
00:45:41.350 --> 00:45:42.780
R. David (he/him): The world is unfair.

542
00:45:43.890 --> 00:45:45.749
R. David (he/him): Bad things happen to good people.

543
00:45:49.100 --> 00:45:52.199
R. David (he/him): Why are we starting here? Why is this…

544
00:45:52.470 --> 00:45:58.899
R. David (he/him): inexorably connected to Unatana Tokaf, and what are we to make of it? Because we're dealing with a throne up there, Iris.

545
00:45:59.520 --> 00:46:05.579
Iris: Well, for me, it… it connects with the covenant, and that we are…

546
00:46:06.710 --> 00:46:17.240
Iris: I… for me, I'm going back into myself and feeling what I feel about being Jewish, and making the connection with that awesome

547
00:46:17.550 --> 00:46:23.129
Iris: energy, and feeling that I'm part of it. It's within me, I'm within it.

548
00:46:23.300 --> 00:46:26.430
R. David (he/him): Yeah, yeah, you said something about covenant.

549
00:46:26.600 --> 00:46:28.450
Iris: Yes, I did.

550
00:46:28.550 --> 00:46:33.350
R. David (he/him): Is there another sentence about Covenant? And then Rachel's gonna read, and then Lilith.

551
00:46:33.930 --> 00:46:45.099
Iris: Yeah, I think that we are renewing the covenant in so many ways throughout our lives and years, and in this part of the arc of spiritual fulfillment that we're journeying.

552
00:46:45.340 --> 00:46:55.439
Iris: That is, for me, this is a time of being more aware of the covenant, what that means, and what values do I live in order to fulfill the covenant.

553
00:46:55.440 --> 00:46:58.340
R. David (he/him): Aha! Aha!

554
00:46:58.560 --> 00:46:59.790
R. David (he/him): Aha!

555
00:46:59.790 --> 00:47:05.430
R. Rachel: So, I'm seeing in the chat from Meredith and from Megan, right, these are… these are eternal truths.

556
00:47:06.160 --> 00:47:17.589
R. Rachel: These are truths that we sit with just as much as our ancestors sat with, and our descendants will sit with, because they will almost certainly still be true unless Mushiach has come.

557
00:47:18.800 --> 00:47:21.350
R. David (he/him): And if it's gonna happen, please, before we write our sermons.

558
00:47:21.350 --> 00:47:31.909
R. Rachel: Right, and Sherrill was noting this has to do with external issues versus interconnection with the divine, right? So the tension between, on the outside, the world might be a trash fire.

559
00:47:32.560 --> 00:47:34.699
R. Rachel: It sure was during the Crusades.

560
00:47:35.120 --> 00:47:41.090
R. Rachel: It might be again now, but on the inside, What's our connection with…

561
00:47:42.340 --> 00:47:43.290
R. David (he/him): gone out.

562
00:47:45.970 --> 00:47:47.049
R. David (he/him): And has it gone out?

563
00:47:47.690 --> 00:47:49.909
R. David (he/him): If this covenant, the answer's no.

564
00:47:51.840 --> 00:47:53.490
R. David (he/him): Lilith and then Nancy.

565
00:47:54.330 --> 00:47:57.780
Lilith Blackmoon: My thought is, like.

566
00:47:58.140 --> 00:48:14.309
Lilith Blackmoon: you can't grow until you understand, like, the root, the truth, you know? And so you can't just be like, oh, everything's fine and dandy, when it's not. So you need to accept before you can solve problems.

567
00:48:16.250 --> 00:48:16.780
R. David (he/him): Hey.

568
00:48:16.960 --> 00:48:20.160
R. David (he/him): So, some sense of surrender to…

569
00:48:20.450 --> 00:48:28.930
R. David (he/him): the enormity of all that is without becoming fatalistic, because this is also about improving our lives, right? This is not, woe is me.

570
00:48:28.930 --> 00:48:29.320
Lilith Blackmoon: Yeah.

571
00:48:29.320 --> 00:48:31.539
R. David (he/him): Right? So that's on the table, yeah?

572
00:48:32.340 --> 00:48:49.719
Nancy: Well, as you put in when you were singing the first version of Unatana Tokaf, that's how I really heard it all my life growing up, and this is the prayer I remember the most, and associate with the high holidays, and I think that there's a lot of imagery in it when you start

573
00:48:49.720 --> 00:49:02.890
Nancy: We're about who by fire, and who buys sword, and I remember just thinking of the list, and at times, like, why aren't we updating it? But then, I… I look at the.

574
00:49:02.890 --> 00:49:04.700
R. David (he/him): Who buy AI, and, you know.

575
00:49:04.700 --> 00:49:14.590
Nancy: But I look at what's going on, and it saddens me that there is still who by stone, and who by, I mean, sword, and all these things.

576
00:49:14.590 --> 00:49:15.889
R. Rachel: They'll die by fire.

577
00:49:15.890 --> 00:49:16.330
Nancy: Yes.

578
00:49:16.330 --> 00:49:19.429
R. Rachel: water, and plague, and weaponry.

579
00:49:20.470 --> 00:49:21.710
R. David (he/him): So let's go!

580
00:49:22.610 --> 00:49:23.090
Donna: What the.

581
00:49:23.090 --> 00:49:24.599
R. David (he/him): very next words.

582
00:49:26.160 --> 00:49:28.560
R. David (he/him): I'm going to render the Hebrew

583
00:49:29.330 --> 00:49:32.620
R. David (he/him): the way that I do it in community.

584
00:49:33.050 --> 00:49:36.989
R. David (he/him): Would someone like to render the English line by line?

585
00:49:37.240 --> 00:49:41.470
R. David (he/him): Not the whole thing, just line by line. Maybe, actually, maybe Rabbi Rachel, you'll do it.

586
00:49:41.670 --> 00:49:42.280
R. Rachel: Sure.

587
00:49:42.890 --> 00:49:44.780
R. David (he/him): And that…

588
00:49:44.780 --> 00:49:45.670
R. Rachel: Truth.

589
00:49:47.540 --> 00:49:49.089
R. David (he/him): And then I pause.

590
00:49:59.860 --> 00:50:03.260
R. Rachel: You are our judge and eternal witness.

591
00:50:03.540 --> 00:50:09.330
R. David (he/him): So stop. Image. A judge. A witness. Where are you? Quick.

592
00:50:10.050 --> 00:50:11.190
Lilith Blackmoon: courtroom.

593
00:50:11.450 --> 00:50:12.500
R. David (he/him): Yeah, sure.

594
00:50:12.670 --> 00:50:17.000
R. David (he/him): a moner.

595
00:50:17.000 --> 00:50:20.969
R. Rachel: You write and seal, inscribe, and recount.

596
00:50:21.280 --> 00:50:25.520
R. David (he/him): The tiskola nicht.

597
00:50:25.520 --> 00:50:27.859
R. Rachel: Remembering all that we forgot.

598
00:50:28.600 --> 00:50:30.840
R. David (he/him): remembering what? Quick.

599
00:50:33.930 --> 00:50:36.200
Nancy: All our actions over the past year.

600
00:50:42.880 --> 00:50:45.729
R. Rachel: and opening the Book of Remembrance.

601
00:50:46.030 --> 00:50:47.730
R. David (he/him): What? Oh, whoa, whoa.

602
00:50:48.500 --> 00:50:49.380
R. David (he/him): By the way.

603
00:50:49.380 --> 00:50:49.750
Donna: Hmm.

604
00:50:49.860 --> 00:50:52.270
R. David (he/him): It's… it's on the screen.

605
00:50:57.210 --> 00:50:59.310
R. Rachel: Which reads from itself.

606
00:51:03.620 --> 00:51:06.570
R. Rachel: Acts of each human hand.

607
00:51:07.040 --> 00:51:12.029
R. David (he/him): So, did you remember inscribing your acts in a book?

608
00:51:12.030 --> 00:51:13.150
R. Rachel: Have you been writing things?

609
00:51:13.150 --> 00:51:13.589
Donna: in a book?

610
00:51:13.590 --> 00:51:15.010
R. Rachel: All year, everything you do?

611
00:51:15.890 --> 00:51:16.740
R. David (he/him): Yeah, you have.

612
00:51:17.990 --> 00:51:19.860
R. David (he/him): Quick, how do you feel?

613
00:51:20.330 --> 00:51:21.190
R. David (he/him): quick.

614
00:51:23.480 --> 00:51:25.530
R. David (he/him): Get the words in, don't overthink.

615
00:51:26.250 --> 00:51:29.499
R. David (he/him): You've got a book that has recorded everything you do.

616
00:51:29.500 --> 00:51:30.760
Deliah: Acknowledged.

617
00:51:31.060 --> 00:51:31.980
R. David (he/him): What else?

618
00:51:33.050 --> 00:51:36.420
Iris: But it says it's reading from itself.

619
00:51:36.490 --> 00:51:38.509
R. David (he/him): itself. It's very Harry Potter.

620
00:51:38.510 --> 00:51:43.720
R. Rachel: The book is reading itself out loud. That's not a thing most books we know are able to do.

621
00:51:44.040 --> 00:51:44.519
Iris: I'm dead.

622
00:51:44.520 --> 00:51:47.449
R. Rachel: Chet, I see fear from Susan.

623
00:51:47.840 --> 00:51:50.869
James Nerlinger (Cincinnati, Ohio USA): Yeah, I'm pretty worried about it. I've done some pretty bad things this year.

624
00:51:51.380 --> 00:51:52.689
R. David (he/him): Okay.

625
00:51:52.800 --> 00:51:57.099
R. David (he/him): You feel seen, you feel acknowledged, you feel judged?

626
00:51:57.470 --> 00:51:59.630
Sherrill Cropper: I'm glad someone's keeping track.

627
00:51:59.630 --> 00:52:00.650
Donna: Right.

628
00:52:00.650 --> 00:52:02.080
R. David (he/him): Okay.

629
00:52:02.080 --> 00:52:07.310
R. Rachel: and grateful, and, right? All of those things. It's not an or, it's an and.

630
00:52:07.530 --> 00:52:16.160
R. David (he/him): It's multivalent, like, just like we saw in the very beginning.

631
00:52:16.160 --> 00:52:18.679
R. Rachel: The great shofar is sounded.

632
00:52:22.080 --> 00:52:23.639
R. David (he/him): How do you feel? Quick!

633
00:52:26.420 --> 00:52:27.680
R. Rachel: Hear that sound.

634
00:52:29.070 --> 00:52:30.430
R. David (he/him): I'm not sure this is gonna work.

635
00:52:37.120 --> 00:52:38.060
R. David (he/him): How do you feel?

636
00:52:38.620 --> 00:52:39.380
Nancy: awakened.

637
00:52:39.380 --> 00:52:40.240
Donna: Awaken, yeah.

638
00:52:40.690 --> 00:52:41.460
Tenzin Pelyang: Believe. There it is.

639
00:52:41.460 --> 00:52:42.960
Nancy: Cold. Cold.

640
00:52:42.960 --> 00:52:43.679
Donna: A lot of…

641
00:52:43.680 --> 00:52:44.120
Tenzin Pelyang: moved.

642
00:52:44.120 --> 00:52:46.080
R. David (he/him): Yeah, yeah, yeah, all of that.

643
00:52:46.080 --> 00:52:48.589
R. Rachel: Awakening, alive, I'm seeing in.

644
00:52:48.590 --> 00:52:49.809
R. David (he/him): Boom! Beautiful!

645
00:52:49.810 --> 00:52:50.670
R. Rachel: alive.

646
00:52:52.190 --> 00:52:56.639
R. David (he/him): They're called Amada Kai Shama'a.

647
00:52:56.640 --> 00:52:59.520
R. Rachel: A still, small voice is heard.

648
00:53:00.200 --> 00:53:01.269
R. David (he/him): Now, how do you feel?

649
00:53:02.540 --> 00:53:04.279
R. Rachel: The word awe just popped.

650
00:53:05.050 --> 00:53:05.580
Deliah: connected.

651
00:53:05.580 --> 00:53:06.830
R. David (he/him): Well, yeah.

652
00:53:08.950 --> 00:53:09.850
wendy: humble.

653
00:53:10.280 --> 00:53:10.630
R. David (he/him): Yeah.

654
00:53:11.260 --> 00:53:12.160
Tenzin Pelyang: scene.

655
00:53:12.500 --> 00:53:13.090
R. David (he/him): Yup.

656
00:53:17.300 --> 00:53:23.179
R. David (he/him): You see? This is keying up images that cause emotion.

657
00:53:23.300 --> 00:53:25.510
R. David (he/him): That's the point.

658
00:53:26.670 --> 00:53:29.979
R. David (he/him): Hafezun!

659
00:53:29.980 --> 00:53:32.530
R. Rachel: Even the angels rush to attention.

660
00:53:36.520 --> 00:53:38.389
R. Rachel: They are grasped with awe.

661
00:53:38.570 --> 00:53:40.180
R. David (he/him): Whoa, angels?

662
00:53:40.360 --> 00:53:40.950
Donna: Angel?

663
00:53:40.950 --> 00:53:50.389
R. David (he/him): a grasped with awe. Some of us are not gonna get into all the angel talk. Fine. But assuming that there are angels, and, like, they're seized with awe.

664
00:53:51.200 --> 00:53:52.540
R. David (he/him): They're angels!

665
00:53:53.190 --> 00:53:56.080
R. Rachel: If there sees with awe, how am I supposed to feel?

666
00:53:56.110 --> 00:53:57.460
R. David (he/him): Whoosh!

667
00:53:57.900 --> 00:54:02.379
R. David (he/him): Viambro hindi o madin.

668
00:54:02.380 --> 00:54:05.769
R. Rachel: As they declare, it's the day of judgment.

669
00:54:07.390 --> 00:54:12.060
R. David (he/him): Leave cold outside my body.

670
00:54:12.060 --> 00:54:15.520
R. Rachel: Heavenly powers stand at attention.

671
00:54:16.540 --> 00:54:20.850
R. David (he/him): Baden.

672
00:54:21.160 --> 00:54:24.669
R. Rachel: In your eyes, all are seen as they are.

673
00:54:24.920 --> 00:54:29.569
R. David (he/him): The hola by aiola.

674
00:54:29.570 --> 00:54:32.559
R. Rachel: Now we come before you, one by one.

675
00:54:36.200 --> 00:54:37.919
R. Rachel: Hassing before you?

676
00:54:38.100 --> 00:54:41.990
R. David (he/him): Keep anime around.

677
00:54:41.990 --> 00:54:43.250
R. Rachel: A flock of sheep?

678
00:54:44.220 --> 00:54:44.830
Donna: Hmm.

679
00:54:45.450 --> 00:54:47.079
R. David (he/him): Have you ever felt like a flock of sheep?

680
00:54:50.020 --> 00:54:53.100
R. Rachel: even just part of a flock of sheep. You don't have to be the whole flock.

681
00:54:55.490 --> 00:54:58.470
R. David (he/him): Wh-wh-wh-wh-why, why? Why?

682
00:54:58.700 --> 00:54:59.859
R. David (he/him): What's with the sheep?

683
00:54:59.860 --> 00:55:01.569
R. Rachel: Why do we have this metaphor?

684
00:55:02.610 --> 00:55:04.169
Deliah: God is our shepherd.

685
00:55:05.700 --> 00:55:09.949
R. David (he/him): How does it feel to be a sheep? Do not tell me wooly and warm.

686
00:55:09.950 --> 00:55:10.449
Lilith Blackmoon: It's a field.

687
00:55:10.770 --> 00:55:12.229
R. David (he/him): To be a sheep.

688
00:55:12.920 --> 00:55:15.469
wendy: Define safety and comfort.

689
00:55:15.800 --> 00:55:16.950
R. David (he/him): Okay.

690
00:55:16.950 --> 00:55:17.800
R. Rachel: Yup.

691
00:55:17.990 --> 00:55:19.969
Deliah: Vulnerable and protected.

692
00:55:20.410 --> 00:55:22.560
R. David (he/him): Vulnerable and protected.

693
00:55:23.860 --> 00:55:30.120
R. Rachel: Alright, and Delia mentioned, God is my… the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Those lines familiar to anybody?

694
00:55:31.140 --> 00:55:34.779
R. Rachel: Psalm 23, we'll say them at Yisker, we hear them at funerals.

695
00:55:34.810 --> 00:55:44.969
R. David (he/him): We'll see them in 5 minutes. Right, right? So the words of Unatana Tokaf are throwing image, image, image, image.

696
00:55:45.470 --> 00:55:47.679
R. David (he/him): It's like, it's, it's…

697
00:55:48.080 --> 00:55:54.219
R. Rachel: God is a judge, God is a witness, there's a book of remembrance, there's a great shofar, there are angels.

698
00:55:54.640 --> 00:55:55.720
R. Rachel: And we're sheep.

699
00:55:57.430 --> 00:55:58.680
R. David (he/him): And God's a shepherd.

700
00:56:00.350 --> 00:56:03.309
wendy: Yet we're being protected and kept safe.

701
00:56:04.370 --> 00:56:07.549
R. David (he/him): Which is very different from…

702
00:56:14.790 --> 00:56:18.270
R. Rachel: This prayer goes a lot of places.

703
00:56:18.600 --> 00:56:20.190
R. David (he/him): At the same time.

704
00:56:21.910 --> 00:56:26.210
R. David (he/him): And that, I think, is deliberate. What is the liturgy trying to do here?

705
00:56:28.890 --> 00:56:31.409
R. David (he/him): This was very deliberately crafted.

706
00:56:32.120 --> 00:56:32.590
Lilith Blackmoon: Obvious.

707
00:56:32.590 --> 00:56:33.510
R. David (he/him): What's it trying to do?

708
00:56:33.680 --> 00:56:35.310
Lilith Blackmoon: Getting us to think.

709
00:56:36.370 --> 00:56:37.500
Lilith Blackmoon: We're flat.

710
00:56:37.620 --> 00:56:39.330
Lilith Blackmoon: Question…

711
00:56:39.330 --> 00:56:40.850
R. David (he/him): Yup? What else?

712
00:56:47.120 --> 00:56:50.410
R. Rachel: Why do you think there might be so many images all in a row?

713
00:56:51.660 --> 00:56:52.839
R. David (he/him): Nancy, I see your hand.

714
00:56:53.130 --> 00:56:59.179
Nancy: This was just about the flock of sheep, and… You know, my images that…

715
00:56:59.340 --> 00:57:03.900
Nancy: You know, we're all chic. We're all the same.

716
00:57:03.900 --> 00:57:22.329
Nancy: And in essence, like, we're coming before God, and there's no hierarchy of, you know, who's the, you know, how much money you make, where you are, whether you're the manager, whether you're the mailman, or whoever you are. Beautiful. We're all part of God's flock, and we all have

717
00:57:22.670 --> 00:57:28.720
Nancy: standing. That's just kind of one of the notions to me of a flock, rather than…

718
00:57:28.950 --> 00:57:31.310
Nancy: The way so many people see the world.

719
00:57:31.660 --> 00:57:36.419
R. David (he/him): So that's partly about us. And what does the shepherd do?

720
00:57:37.210 --> 00:57:40.719
R. David (he/him): The shepherd doesn't, you know, kick the sheep in the teeth.

721
00:57:41.320 --> 00:57:42.840
R. David (he/him): What does the shepherd do?

722
00:57:46.230 --> 00:57:48.609
R. David (he/him): Yeah, I see, I gotcha. Gotcha.

723
00:57:48.870 --> 00:57:49.920
R. David (he/him): Gotcha.

724
00:57:50.690 --> 00:57:53.079
R. David (he/him): Where'd Waldo go? Hey, Waldo, come back.

725
00:57:53.670 --> 00:57:54.290
R. David (he/him): Gotcha.

726
00:57:55.410 --> 00:58:04.630
R. Rachel: I want to lift up from the chat, Adam pointed out that the idea of all deeds being inscribed in a book can be comforting to people who have been victimized.

727
00:58:04.860 --> 00:58:07.689
R. Rachel: Because it means that what was done cannot be erased.

728
00:58:08.060 --> 00:58:09.850
R. Rachel: Even if the perpetrators try.

729
00:58:10.610 --> 00:58:11.260
R. David (he/him): Boom.

730
00:58:12.800 --> 00:58:13.570
R. David (he/him): Okay.

731
00:58:13.570 --> 00:58:17.169
R. Rachel: Something about being… things are seen and remembered.

732
00:58:17.630 --> 00:58:19.460
R. David (he/him): Nothing doesn't matter.

733
00:58:21.400 --> 00:58:23.049
R. David (he/him): Joan, you just unmuted.

734
00:58:24.380 --> 00:58:26.639
Joan Green: Yes, I'd like to go back to that.

735
00:58:27.020 --> 00:58:30.850
Joan Green: Rendering of the staircase.

736
00:58:31.250 --> 00:58:33.630
Joan Green: Which nobody's mentioned.

737
00:58:34.810 --> 00:58:39.720
Joan Green: Because to me, that was a strong message that it is…

738
00:58:39.950 --> 00:58:52.769
Joan Green: We are now called, which is what we just talked about, we are loudly reminded to tend to the job at hand, which is to climb this stairway

739
00:58:53.670 --> 00:59:01.059
Joan Green: And… and be present for the truth, and for all there is.

740
00:59:01.190 --> 00:59:03.019
Joan Green: For us to gain from the day.

741
00:59:03.020 --> 00:59:04.660
R. David (he/him): I love that.

742
00:59:04.660 --> 00:59:06.299
R. Rachel: Instruction is to go up.

743
00:59:06.920 --> 00:59:09.320
R. Rachel: Here's the stairs, here's the ladder.

744
00:59:10.460 --> 00:59:18.500
R. Rachel: God, asterisk, whatever that word means to us, is not just up there, out there, far away.

745
00:59:19.680 --> 00:59:26.410
R. Rachel: But many of the images of the high holidays do give us That… Sense of God.

746
00:59:26.790 --> 00:59:30.339
R. Rachel: And there's a ladder or a staircase to get us there.

747
00:59:30.710 --> 00:59:37.569
R. David (he/him): Right, so notice straight away, we've got the image of the chair up there.

748
00:59:37.920 --> 00:59:44.409
R. David (he/him): But we also have the book that reads from itself, And a shepherd right here.

749
00:59:44.730 --> 00:59:47.149
R. David (he/him): Which one is God? Answer.

750
00:59:47.780 --> 00:59:49.020
R. David (he/him): Yes.

751
00:59:51.720 --> 00:59:53.500
R. David (he/him): Far away and local.

752
00:59:55.090 --> 00:59:56.580
R. David (he/him): So let's get into the book.

753
00:59:56.580 --> 01:00:02.660
R. Rachel: So, some of these images come from Older sources.

754
01:00:03.640 --> 01:00:06.700
R. Rachel: Anybody want to read the Pirke Avot for us?

755
01:00:07.340 --> 01:00:09.029
R. Rachel: It says, know what is above you.

756
01:00:09.300 --> 01:00:10.979
R. Rachel: Just unmute and read it aloud.

757
01:00:13.020 --> 01:00:21.130
Meredith J. Goldsmith: Know what is above you, a seeing eye, a hearing ear, and a book in which all your deeds are written.

758
01:00:23.800 --> 01:00:24.370
R. David (he/him): Boom.

759
01:00:26.530 --> 01:00:29.959
R. Rachel: That was written down… PRK of Oat was written down around the year 200.

760
01:00:30.920 --> 01:00:34.719
R. Rachel: So that's how, you know, this idea is at least that old.

761
01:00:35.830 --> 01:00:40.620
R. David (he/him): How would you act if you knew that there was a seeing eye and a hearing ear and a book in which all your…

762
01:00:41.620 --> 01:00:42.860
R. David (he/him): Stuff was written.

763
01:00:43.930 --> 01:00:45.050
R. David (he/him): How we act.

764
01:00:48.400 --> 01:00:55.270
R. David (he/him): Remember, God's gonna… I mean, the God of the shepherd's gonna, you know, I got you, you're under the staff, all good, and…

765
01:00:56.600 --> 01:00:57.640
R. David (he/him): How would you act?

766
01:01:03.680 --> 01:01:04.609
R. David (he/him): That way now.

767
01:01:07.260 --> 01:01:07.770
R. Rachel: I see in the.

768
01:01:07.770 --> 01:01:09.139
R. David (he/him): Not just on Rosh Hashanah.

769
01:01:09.290 --> 01:01:11.690
R. Rachel: That book keeps us accountable.

770
01:01:13.630 --> 01:01:15.399
R. David (he/him): And it reads from itself.

771
01:01:17.050 --> 01:01:18.419
R. David (he/him): Call it conscience.

772
01:01:19.500 --> 01:01:25.519
R. Rachel: So even if we don't want to read it, even if we don't feel like looking at it, even if we wish we had never written it.

773
01:01:26.180 --> 01:01:26.900
R. David (he/him): Oh, up.

774
01:01:27.230 --> 01:01:27.900
R. Rachel: It's gonna…

775
01:01:27.900 --> 01:01:28.510
R. David (he/him): Truth.

776
01:01:28.510 --> 01:01:29.960
R. Rachel: It's gonna read itself.

777
01:01:30.360 --> 01:01:31.749
R. David (he/him): Go up. This is the time.

778
01:01:31.750 --> 01:01:34.200
R. Rachel: For facing all of the things.

779
01:01:36.690 --> 01:01:38.200
R. David (he/him): Starting with Unitonic TalkF.

780
01:01:38.200 --> 01:01:43.009
R. Rachel: The idea of the book gets echoed in the Talmud a few hundred years later.

781
01:01:43.330 --> 01:01:46.410
R. Rachel: Tolman says there are 3 books that are opened on Rosh Hashanah.

782
01:01:46.980 --> 01:01:53.869
R. Rachel: One for the entirely wicked, One for the entirely righteous, and one for the in-between.

783
01:01:54.480 --> 01:01:58.629
R. Rachel: Alright, so if you are entirely wicked, you get inscribed in the Book of Death.

784
01:02:00.120 --> 01:02:04.729
R. Rachel: If you are entirely righteous, you are immediately inscribed in the Book of Life.

785
01:02:05.510 --> 01:02:06.600
R. Rachel: Guess what?

786
01:02:07.440 --> 01:02:08.790
R. Rachel: That's nobody.

787
01:02:09.430 --> 01:02:11.430
R. Rachel: All of us are in-betweens.

788
01:02:12.860 --> 01:02:19.470
R. Rachel: So the Talmud says, well, since if you're neither completely bad, Or completely good.

789
01:02:20.660 --> 01:02:22.870
R. Rachel: Guess we'll just have to wait and see how you behave!

790
01:02:26.020 --> 01:02:29.300
R. Rachel: How does that feel? That notion that…

791
01:02:29.690 --> 01:02:37.060
R. Rachel: There are these, you know, different books, and one of them is an okay book, and one of them is a terrible book, and we don't know which one we're in.

792
01:02:40.030 --> 01:02:44.210
R. David (he/him): And I'm sure a lot of us actually don't believe the world works this way, because bad things happen to good people.

793
01:02:44.210 --> 01:02:45.190
R. Rachel: So yeah, absolutely.

794
01:02:45.610 --> 01:02:51.180
R. David (he/him): Right? So let's just put that right out there. But yet the liturgy's trying to get us to feel something. What?

795
01:02:52.280 --> 01:02:54.149
R. David (he/him): Donna, I think you were trying to speak.

796
01:02:55.360 --> 01:02:57.290
Donna: Okay.

797
01:02:59.720 --> 01:03:03.760
R. David (he/him): Nope, you've just… You've just, muted yourself, did you mean to do that?

798
01:03:03.760 --> 01:03:05.730
Donna: No, that question…

799
01:03:05.840 --> 01:03:19.440
Donna: That question was on my mind, like, you know, if you're in between, or if you're really wicked, and I was thinking, well, good people die, so what's the point of being good?

800
01:03:20.030 --> 01:03:23.629
Donna: You know, if you're not a… if you're…

801
01:03:23.630 --> 01:03:25.189
R. David (he/him): Fast dismissed, you know.

802
01:03:25.190 --> 01:03:31.379
Donna: Yeah, no, that's… so I just, I was having a little bit of difficulty, you know…

803
01:03:31.460 --> 01:03:34.010
R. David (he/him): Theology's on the table here, for sure.

804
01:03:34.160 --> 01:03:34.720
Donna: Right.

805
01:03:34.720 --> 01:03:39.370
R. David (he/him): For sure. So what's the… what is this… Talmud knew this.

806
01:03:39.650 --> 01:03:44.219
R. David (he/him): Talmud knew this, Pirkeavot knew this, and yet the images are there.

807
01:03:44.380 --> 01:03:45.150
R. David (he/him): Why?

808
01:03:45.950 --> 01:03:50.899
R. David (he/him): What is the image trying to get us to feel? That's always going to be our question.

809
01:03:50.900 --> 01:03:55.639
R. Rachel: Adam just wrote in the chat that everything depends on what we do.

810
01:03:56.880 --> 01:03:58.839
R. David (he/him): We have profound agency.

811
01:03:59.410 --> 01:04:01.679
R. David (he/him): Every moment matters. Great, what else?

812
01:04:06.410 --> 01:04:15.459
Joan Green: The, the entirely wicked and the entirely righteous don't exist in life.

813
01:04:15.730 --> 01:04:19.729
Joan Green: So, really, it's… this just says, it's everybody, you.

814
01:04:20.180 --> 01:04:20.980
R. David (he/him): Yeah.

815
01:04:20.980 --> 01:04:21.540
Joan Green: And…

816
01:04:21.540 --> 01:04:27.149
R. Rachel: You have now quoted the Baal Shem Tov without knowing it, the founder of Hasidism.

817
01:04:27.640 --> 01:04:37.770
R. Rachel: said, there are no completely good or completely wicked people. It's not possible, that's not how humans are made. We are all some mixture of the two.

818
01:04:38.510 --> 01:04:39.980
R. David (he/him): Including the people you're most pissed at.

819
01:04:39.980 --> 01:04:47.739
R. Rachel: sometimes we all do the right thing sometimes. It's just a question of where are you on that, on that, you know, how much of one and how much of the other.

820
01:04:48.490 --> 01:04:54.789
R. David (he/him): Right, so if the fate of those in between is postponed from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, how many times do we have to do Unatana Tokaf?

821
01:04:56.940 --> 01:04:59.800
R. David (he/him): Nancy just got the memo.

822
01:05:01.340 --> 01:05:04.110
R. David (he/him): This is why we do Unatana Tokif on Rosh Hashanah.

823
01:05:04.620 --> 01:05:07.169
R. David (he/him): and on Yom Kippur.

824
01:05:07.660 --> 01:05:09.790
R. Rachel: Which is not to say that

825
01:05:10.420 --> 01:05:13.030
R. Rachel: What we do during those 10 days

826
01:05:14.430 --> 01:05:17.799
R. Rachel: Literally changes our fate for the coming year.

827
01:05:18.160 --> 01:05:19.240
R. David (he/him): We'll get to that in just a moment.

828
01:05:20.460 --> 01:05:22.190
R. Rachel: But it does do something.

829
01:05:22.380 --> 01:05:24.950
R. Rachel: That will change the coming year. And we'll get to that.

830
01:05:24.960 --> 01:05:30.830
R. David (he/him): as… Imagine as if it all depended on.

831
01:05:31.190 --> 01:05:37.540
R. David (he/him): Of course, we could say that at any moment, but as a people, to know that we're all doing this together.

832
01:05:39.530 --> 01:05:45.240
R. David (he/him): That's huge, and the liturgy is trying to get us To feel that.

833
01:05:48.040 --> 01:05:48.770
R. David (he/him): Okay.

834
01:05:49.310 --> 01:05:50.370
R. David (he/him): What's next?

835
01:05:53.170 --> 01:05:54.479
R. David (he/him): The great shofar.

836
01:05:55.000 --> 01:05:56.659
R. David (he/him): What is this great shofar?

837
01:06:01.340 --> 01:06:05.539
R. Rachel: Seeing in the chat, might it not be said or remembered daily?

838
01:06:05.980 --> 01:06:11.560
R. David (he/him): Sure, of course. Every day can be a mini Yom Kippur. You want every day to be Yom Kippur?

839
01:06:12.420 --> 01:06:13.750
R. Rachel: That would be a lot, man.

840
01:06:15.160 --> 01:06:15.780
R. Rachel: Suzanne.

841
01:06:15.780 --> 01:06:18.650
R. David (he/him): The… the… get inside the imagery.

842
01:06:19.070 --> 01:06:23.640
R. Rachel: Great shofar, right? What is… What is this… what are we meant to feel?

843
01:06:24.470 --> 01:06:30.510
R. Rachel: How did you feel when you heard the small show, the normal shofar a few minutes ago?

844
01:06:33.560 --> 01:06:34.580
R. David (he/him): How'd you feel?

845
01:06:34.850 --> 01:06:35.260
R. Rachel: People say…

846
01:06:35.260 --> 01:06:36.190
R. David (he/him): Stirred up.

847
01:06:36.190 --> 01:06:36.870
R. Rachel: Alive?

848
01:06:36.870 --> 01:06:39.180
R. David (he/him): Awe, alive, alert.

849
01:06:40.600 --> 01:06:49.269
R. David (he/him): When we talk more about this later, the word in red here, the great B'Shofar Gadol Yitaka, Takiyah.

850
01:06:51.170 --> 01:06:54.199
R. David (he/him): is sounded. One of the sounds is true

851
01:06:54.920 --> 01:06:56.949
R. David (he/him): That literally means alarm.

852
01:06:57.810 --> 01:06:58.370
Donna: Huh.

853
01:06:59.870 --> 01:07:04.570
R. David (he/him): So, the great chauffeur, the great shofar, the shofar, the supernal shofar.

854
01:07:04.570 --> 01:07:04.970
R. Rachel: the, the.

855
01:07:04.970 --> 01:07:06.289
R. David (he/him): And the whole world…

856
01:07:06.960 --> 01:07:09.870
R. Rachel: The cosmic fire alarm is ringing.

857
01:07:09.870 --> 01:07:10.280
Donna: Hmm.

858
01:07:10.280 --> 01:07:11.620
R. Rachel: For all of us.

859
01:07:12.400 --> 01:07:14.200
R. David (he/him): And what happens when that happens?

860
01:07:18.940 --> 01:07:21.619
R. Rachel: And… Still a small voice.

861
01:07:22.620 --> 01:07:25.500
R. David (he/him): So we go from the loudest thing to the smallest thing.

862
01:07:27.200 --> 01:07:27.880
R. David (he/him): Right?

863
01:07:28.930 --> 01:07:32.980
R. David (he/him): The absolute loudest thing 2…

864
01:07:34.280 --> 01:07:35.450
R. Rachel: Small voice.

865
01:07:39.000 --> 01:07:40.190
R. David (he/him): experience a prophet Elijah.

866
01:07:40.190 --> 01:07:49.069
R. Rachel: on that passage, right? There was an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake. There was fire, but God was not in the fire.

867
01:07:49.540 --> 01:07:52.410
R. Rachel: After the fire, there was a still small voice.

868
01:07:52.710 --> 01:07:55.250
R. Rachel: That's where the encounter with God happened.

869
01:07:57.900 --> 01:08:00.390
R. Rachel: In the tiniest little voice.

870
01:08:00.970 --> 01:08:02.680
R. Rachel: The voice of the conscience.

871
01:08:03.100 --> 01:08:04.459
R. Rachel: The voice of the heart.

872
01:08:05.700 --> 01:08:12.839
R. Rachel: So, right next to each other, we have the biggest, vastest sound And this little intimate whisper.

873
01:08:14.930 --> 01:08:20.140
R. David (he/him): And sometimes we need the big sound to make the space, to empty it all out.

874
01:08:20.850 --> 01:08:23.750
R. David (he/him): And then, having been hollowed out.

875
01:08:38.640 --> 01:08:46.679
R. David (he/him): We call the mom of the Kalishama, and… We suddenly are turning inward.

876
01:08:46.890 --> 01:08:50.170
R. David (he/him): To hear the subtle, the nuance.

877
01:08:51.859 --> 01:08:54.609
R. David (he/him): And a few of you, I'm watching the heads go up and down.

878
01:08:56.390 --> 01:09:02.539
R. David (he/him): This is what the liturgy is keying us to do. That's the imagery that's operating on our emotions.

879
01:09:02.640 --> 01:09:07.309
R. David (he/him): Operating on our psychology, because it's speaking in terms of images.

880
01:09:09.620 --> 01:09:11.500
R. Rachel: of the throne?

881
01:09:11.660 --> 01:09:16.109
R. Rachel: on which God sits. There was also the image of God as a judge.

882
01:09:16.460 --> 01:09:19.909
R. Rachel: Which is why in front of you, one of the things you see is a scale.

883
01:09:21.210 --> 01:09:22.559
R. Rachel: Scale of justice?

884
01:09:23.270 --> 01:09:30.370
R. Rachel: The two Hebrew words that may or may not be familiar, Gevurah and chesed, Gevorah means judgment.

885
01:09:30.750 --> 01:09:39.390
R. Rachel: Judgment, justice, consequences… Chesed means… Loving.

886
01:09:39.390 --> 01:09:40.660
R. David (he/him): loving kindness.

887
01:09:40.660 --> 01:09:41.590
R. Rachel: Mercy.

888
01:09:42.010 --> 01:09:43.120
R. Rachel: Sweetness.

889
01:09:44.880 --> 01:09:47.190
R. Rachel: In the imagination of our tradition.

890
01:09:47.750 --> 01:09:50.770
R. Rachel: Both of these qualities belong to God.

891
01:09:51.319 --> 01:09:54.510
R. Rachel: And, and, and… Are embodied in us.

892
01:09:56.130 --> 01:09:58.860
R. Rachel: The question is, which one is God gonna bring to the table?

893
01:10:00.110 --> 01:10:04.239
R. Rachel: Based on how I've acted over the last year, which one of these am I going to meet?

894
01:10:05.680 --> 01:10:12.260
R. David (he/him): If you… if you buy that transactional model, right? Some of us… for some of us, there's just a different way of understanding it.

895
01:10:13.900 --> 01:10:16.419
R. David (he/him): The liturgy doesn't say Gevorah.

896
01:10:16.910 --> 01:10:18.869
R. David (he/him): The liturgy says chesed.

897
01:10:19.800 --> 01:10:22.330
R. Rachel: Your throne is established in love.

898
01:10:23.550 --> 01:10:26.079
R. David (he/him): That everything about this

899
01:10:26.510 --> 01:10:34.989
R. David (he/him): has an element of love to it. It may be tough love, I love you, teenager, but if you don't clean your room, I'm going to kill you.

900
01:10:36.110 --> 01:10:37.770
R. Rachel: Nobody's ever felt that way.

901
01:10:40.160 --> 01:10:42.960
R. David (he/him): It is… it is intended to be love.

902
01:10:43.280 --> 01:10:47.599
R. Rachel: But yeah, sometimes love does come in the form of boundaries, right?

903
01:10:48.260 --> 01:10:53.230
R. Rachel: What kind of parent would I be if I never put down any boundaries for my kid? And what kind of kid would I have?

904
01:10:55.440 --> 01:11:01.310
R. David (he/him): So those are the images that we're confronted with straight out of the gate.

905
01:11:01.710 --> 01:11:09.880
R. David (he/him): And then the heavenly powers, and we are… Compared to sheep, approaching the shepherd.

906
01:11:13.210 --> 01:11:16.490
R. David (he/him): It's such a pastoral scene, right?

907
01:11:17.550 --> 01:11:29.050
R. David (he/him): I mean, they call it the Pastorel. You can see the flowing grass, and trees, and flowers, and sheep.

908
01:11:29.160 --> 01:11:30.999
R. David (he/him): I mean, who could be afraid of that?

909
01:11:32.600 --> 01:11:33.340
R. David (he/him): Right?

910
01:11:33.710 --> 01:11:36.620
R. David (he/him): The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.

911
01:11:37.730 --> 01:11:39.560
R. David (he/him): The check is in the mail.

912
01:11:39.830 --> 01:11:41.540
R. David (he/him): Who was it that said it?

913
01:11:41.540 --> 01:11:42.250
R. Rachel: Delia?

914
01:11:43.320 --> 01:11:43.930
R. David (he/him): Yep.

915
01:11:44.510 --> 01:11:45.170
R. David (he/him): Yep.

916
01:11:45.970 --> 01:11:52.559
R. David (he/him): God lays me down in green pastures, leads me beside still waters. God restores my soul.

917
01:11:52.920 --> 01:11:56.430
R. David (he/him): Guiding me in paths of righteousness, yeah. Meredith.

918
01:11:58.580 --> 01:12:02.580
Meredith J. Goldsmith: I had a question, because this love…

919
01:12:03.350 --> 01:12:07.159
Meredith J. Goldsmith: I don't… I… historically, I haven't felt that.

920
01:12:07.610 --> 01:12:13.340
Meredith J. Goldsmith: I felt way more judgment, the decree…

921
01:12:15.660 --> 01:12:18.590
Meredith J. Goldsmith: All of that, like, I don't feel mercy.

922
01:12:19.170 --> 01:12:20.030
R. David (he/him): Get off the field.

923
01:12:20.030 --> 01:12:20.720
Meredith J. Goldsmith: luck!

924
01:12:21.470 --> 01:12:22.130
R. David (he/him): Huh?

925
01:12:22.370 --> 01:12:26.369
R. Rachel: Allow me to put forth the proposition

926
01:12:26.650 --> 01:12:31.030
R. Rachel: That both of those things are… all…

927
01:12:31.460 --> 01:12:34.759
R. Rachel: If I read this piece of liturgy as a poet.

928
01:12:35.580 --> 01:12:41.999
R. Rachel: Both of those… both love and judgment are all over it. Forgive me, I'm getting a call from my son's summer.

929
01:12:42.000 --> 01:12:44.469
R. David (he/him): Go, go, go, go, I got it.

930
01:12:44.600 --> 01:12:47.589
R. David (he/him): So, yes, Meredith, it's both and.

931
01:12:48.360 --> 01:12:58.919
R. David (he/him): there are some clergy and some eras in Jewish history that have very much focused on the love part.

932
01:12:59.530 --> 01:13:08.860
R. David (he/him): And there are others that have very much focused on Trying to arouse Fear and austerity

933
01:13:09.100 --> 01:13:17.320
R. David (he/him): As a way of… Cultivating compliance and… And all of that.

934
01:13:18.260 --> 01:13:20.039
R. David (he/him): Turns out, different people

935
01:13:20.330 --> 01:13:29.400
R. David (he/him): are more likely to resonate with one or the other. What makes liturgy liturgy is that it's multivocal, that it actually says both.

936
01:13:30.390 --> 01:13:33.019
R. David (he/him): And in an amazing book called Tanya.

937
01:13:35.260 --> 01:13:38.109
R. David (he/him): Jewish life was analogized to a bird.

938
01:13:38.710 --> 01:13:41.150
R. David (he/him): Where one side is the love.

939
01:13:41.560 --> 01:13:44.860
R. David (he/him): And the other side is the awe of fear.

940
01:13:45.420 --> 01:13:50.370
R. David (he/him): which one Do you need, according to the author of this book, to fly?

941
01:13:50.500 --> 01:13:55.430
R. David (he/him): If you have one, you fall. It doesn't matter which one you've got. If you only have one, you fall.

942
01:13:55.580 --> 01:14:01.369
R. David (he/him): If all we have in our Judaism, all we have in our Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is foreboding

943
01:14:03.440 --> 01:14:10.460
R. David (he/him): How are we going to be incentivized to change? How are we going to be nourished and held so that we can? How is it safe?

944
01:14:10.580 --> 01:14:15.509
R. David (he/him): in order for us to do these things. But on the other hand, if all we have is love.

945
01:14:16.270 --> 01:14:18.690
R. David (he/him): And everything's okay.

946
01:14:21.140 --> 01:14:28.600
R. David (he/him): That, that, anyway, that's the thinking. So here, this liturgy is bringing both before us very explicitly.

947
01:14:32.300 --> 01:14:39.879
R. David (he/him): And it's sociological which ones we have been more likely to hear. But the liturgy itself is both.

948
01:14:42.230 --> 01:14:45.890
R. David (he/him): And I think very deliberately and wisely so.

949
01:14:48.550 --> 01:14:52.020
R. David (he/him): How many, just hands up, have experienced

950
01:14:52.240 --> 01:14:59.990
R. David (he/him): the foreboding and the I don't feel the love thing that Meredith was describing. Yeah! Yeah, sure!

951
01:15:00.140 --> 01:15:01.530
R. David (he/him): Absolutely.

952
01:15:03.570 --> 01:15:09.679
R. David (he/him): Rabbi Rachel and I are here to tell you, and we're giving you the actual words of the liturgy and their imagery.

953
01:15:09.910 --> 01:15:11.440
R. David (he/him): And their derivation.

954
01:15:11.800 --> 01:15:16.069
R. David (he/him): We're not making stuff up, woo-woo. This is classical Jewish.

955
01:15:17.020 --> 01:15:22.310
R. David (he/him): It's all based in this multivocal, multi-sensorate imagery.

956
01:15:23.740 --> 01:15:25.660
R. David (he/him): God's the shepherd.

957
01:15:27.010 --> 01:15:29.809
R. David (he/him): Is not beating anybody with the staff.

958
01:15:31.260 --> 01:15:35.280
R. David (he/him): We're passing gently, one by one, under the staff.

959
01:15:35.780 --> 01:15:37.260
R. David (he/him): To say, I see you.

960
01:15:38.350 --> 01:15:43.629
R. David (he/him): Look at Ezekiel. Who wants to read Ezekiel? This is straight out of the Jewish Bible, folks.

961
01:15:45.180 --> 01:15:46.170
R. David (he/him): Who wants it?

962
01:15:46.620 --> 01:15:47.649
lindabkramer: I was reading it.

963
01:15:47.790 --> 01:15:48.550
R. David (he/him): Yeah.

964
01:15:48.550 --> 01:15:57.519
lindabkramer: As a shepherd seeks out his flock when animals and his flock are separated, so I will seek out my flock.

965
01:15:57.960 --> 01:16:05.210
lindabkramer: I will rescue them from all the places to which they were scattered on a day of cloud and gloom.

966
01:16:07.540 --> 01:16:08.830
R. David (he/him): Jewish Testament.

967
01:16:11.350 --> 01:16:17.700
R. David (he/him): And this is the idea that Talmud brought when it brought forward These themes that got

968
01:16:17.950 --> 01:16:22.730
R. David (he/him): pushed into liturgy. On Rosh Hashanah, all the creatures pass before God, like sheep.

969
01:16:25.410 --> 01:16:27.670
R. David (he/him): And nowhere are we being beaten with it.

970
01:16:28.450 --> 01:16:30.510
R. David (he/him): So what does it feel like to be a sheep?

971
01:16:32.450 --> 01:16:38.310
R. David (he/him): To pass under the staff and be seen and counted. I see you, you're mine, I gotcha.

972
01:16:39.350 --> 01:16:42.870
R. David (he/him): To me, that evokes safety, not punishment.

973
01:16:44.390 --> 01:16:45.670
R. David (he/him): protection.

974
01:16:46.830 --> 01:16:48.020
R. David (he/him): Not judgment.

975
01:16:48.360 --> 01:16:50.689
R. David (he/him): I'm seeing a bunch of hands, Tenzin and Joan.

976
01:16:51.400 --> 01:16:54.959
Tenzin Pelyang: Yeah, look, am I unmuted? Let's see, maybe…

977
01:16:54.960 --> 01:16:56.449
R. David (he/him): Yeah, you're good, I gotcha. Nope.

978
01:16:57.320 --> 01:16:59.219
R. David (he/him): Nope, push a button again, Tenzin.

979
01:17:01.790 --> 01:17:19.389
Tenzin Pelyang: Got it. So, appreciate what you said about, you know, if we only have love, some people talk about idiot compassion, you know, it's important, but I don't know, I don't find the word judgment helpful. Discernment? Wisdom?

980
01:17:19.390 --> 01:17:23.330
Tenzin Pelyang: Something like that, you know, yeah, that's all I have.

981
01:17:23.330 --> 01:17:43.010
R. David (he/him): For some people who have a God who judges, that's the classical liturgy. We may need to be translating this into conscience, into discernment, right? But it's the same effect, because the liturgical image, the imagery, is

982
01:17:43.100 --> 01:17:44.390
R. David (he/him): the scale.

983
01:17:44.690 --> 01:17:52.000
R. David (he/him): Or the throne, the going up, or the passing under the staff, or the book that reads from itself.

984
01:17:52.220 --> 01:18:01.010
Tenzin Pelyang: But Rabbi David, the part that's not the same is when there's… when fear is being used as, you know, the motivator.

985
01:18:01.010 --> 01:18:01.600
R. David (he/him): height.

986
01:18:01.600 --> 01:18:03.109
Tenzin Pelyang: That's… that's a little different.

987
01:18:03.420 --> 01:18:11.440
R. David (he/him): It is different. And that's why we can re-render fear as awe. It's the same word in Hebrew.

988
01:18:12.900 --> 01:18:13.590
lindabkramer: Yeah.

989
01:18:13.590 --> 01:18:18.160
R. David (he/him): In the days of old, Yom Kippur was a happy day.

990
01:18:18.470 --> 01:18:23.450
R. David (he/him): when the ladies of Jerusalem, this is straight out of Talmud, I see a bunch of hands.

991
01:18:23.900 --> 01:18:25.719
R. David (he/him): Would dress in whites.

992
01:18:26.360 --> 01:18:29.020
R. David (he/him): And dance in the vineyards looking for love.

993
01:18:29.130 --> 01:18:31.550
R. David (he/him): There was not a shred.

994
01:18:32.000 --> 01:18:37.639
R. David (he/him): of the foreboding That the rabbis over the centuries added.

995
01:18:39.100 --> 01:18:42.869
R. David (he/him): Yom Kippur becomes a day of second chances.

996
01:18:42.870 --> 01:18:43.540
lindabkramer: Yep.

997
01:18:43.540 --> 01:18:44.889
R. David (he/him): A joyful day.

998
01:18:46.260 --> 01:18:51.219
R. David (he/him): Not all of us resonate with that, because we need a little bit of that old-time religion.

999
01:18:51.920 --> 01:18:53.140
R. David (he/him): okay.

1000
01:18:53.380 --> 01:18:59.229
R. David (he/him): The point being, the liturgy Has all of these images wrapped together.

1001
01:19:01.130 --> 01:19:08.479
R. David (he/him): To queue up the experience that you need in the liturgy, having the emotions that the liturgy keys up.

1002
01:19:10.820 --> 01:19:16.400
R. David (he/him): And if we don't give space and time, or a little bit of prep for those emotions.

1003
01:19:17.020 --> 01:19:20.379
R. David (he/him): We might as well be having a freeze-dried apple.

1004
01:19:21.990 --> 01:19:23.440
R. David (he/him): Just saying Apple.

1005
01:19:24.590 --> 01:19:26.079
R. David (he/him): Cheryl, I see your hand.

1006
01:19:29.500 --> 01:19:34.140
Sherrill Cropper: Thank you. Although I understand

1007
01:19:34.290 --> 01:19:37.829
Sherrill Cropper: The allegory of Sheep and a shepherd.

1008
01:19:38.090 --> 01:19:47.580
Sherrill Cropper: and the comfort and the care that's required in that. I personally don't find that as…

1009
01:19:47.800 --> 01:20:04.070
Sherrill Cropper: safe and comforted of feeling as I do when I am individually feeling connected to the divine. You know, when I stop and take a moment, you know, hey, I'm here. You there?

1010
01:20:04.220 --> 01:20:14.699
R. David (he/him): Got it, got it. You may need to do a little bit of personal translation. I wonder sometimes if our spiritual ancestors were,

1011
01:20:15.630 --> 01:20:23.510
R. David (he/him): were fishermen, would they be talking about dolphins? Our spiritual ancestors were shepherds, so they used what they had.

1012
01:20:24.710 --> 01:20:35.059
R. David (he/him): Right? So make the move you need to make, but ask, what is this liturgy inviting me to do? Get there, whichever way works for you.

1013
01:20:37.570 --> 01:20:38.250
R. David (he/him): Right?

1014
01:20:38.450 --> 01:20:41.280
R. David (he/him): Rabbi Rachel, we're, we're, we're finishing up with…

1015
01:20:41.280 --> 01:20:42.969
R. Rachel: We're still on a flock of sheep.

1016
01:20:42.970 --> 01:20:47.150
R. David (he/him): We're finishing up with sheep, and we've already been here, pretty much. Okay, great.

1017
01:20:47.150 --> 01:20:47.760
lindabkramer: I have to…

1018
01:20:47.760 --> 01:20:48.470
R. David (he/him): Soap.

1019
01:20:48.470 --> 01:20:56.880
lindabkramer: I would like to interject something that may be a field… far afield from this, but when my son was born.

1020
01:20:57.160 --> 01:20:59.069
lindabkramer: We had difficulty.

1021
01:20:59.360 --> 01:21:02.150
lindabkramer: Arriving at a name.

1022
01:21:02.590 --> 01:21:04.989
lindabkramer: And I wanted to call him Adam.

1023
01:21:06.160 --> 01:21:10.760
lindabkramer: And my then-husband said, Well, why Adam?

1024
01:21:10.990 --> 01:21:18.560
lindabkramer: I said, well, we could call him Shepherd, Shepard Adam, because Adam was a shepherd.

1025
01:21:18.560 --> 01:21:20.780
Donna: Wow.

1026
01:21:20.780 --> 01:21:23.919
R. David (he/him): Okay, so here are some of the images.

1027
01:21:24.310 --> 01:21:31.890
R. David (he/him): And they're just… Our quick effort to put visuality It's going up.

1028
01:21:32.480 --> 01:21:33.440
R. David (he/him): It's…

1029
01:21:33.700 --> 01:21:37.170
R. Rachel: grown. Abstract R.

1030
01:21:38.470 --> 01:21:41.870
R. Rachel: It's the book that reads from itself, The Shepherd's Crook.

1031
01:21:41.870 --> 01:21:42.490
Donna: True.

1032
01:21:43.430 --> 01:21:50.579
R. Rachel: And also, just those images of uplift, and reaching out, reaching up, reaching beyond ourselves.

1033
01:21:53.610 --> 01:21:57.199
R. David (he/him): All of this is a lovely intellectual exercise.

1034
01:21:57.740 --> 01:22:05.960
R. David (he/him): Unless… We can feel our own personal way.

1035
01:22:06.730 --> 01:22:13.620
R. David (he/him): Into the experience of these images.

1036
01:22:15.760 --> 01:22:18.700
R. David (he/him): Otherwise, we are tourists in the liturgy.

1037
01:22:19.790 --> 01:22:20.170
Donna: Hmm.

1038
01:22:20.170 --> 01:22:21.800
R. David (he/him): I'm gonna say that again.

1039
01:22:22.310 --> 01:22:26.049
R. David (he/him): All of this is a nice intellectual exercise.

1040
01:22:26.570 --> 01:22:31.470
R. David (he/him): Unless… We can feel our way.

1041
01:22:31.920 --> 01:22:35.220
R. David (he/him): into the experience?

1042
01:22:35.660 --> 01:22:41.430
R. David (he/him): that these images are inviting us into. So…

1043
01:22:43.290 --> 01:22:46.300
R. David (he/him): This will ask of you some creativity.

1044
01:22:46.690 --> 01:22:54.340
R. David (he/him): some imagination, that's what Roger was talking about. Maybe an inner leap of faith without

1045
01:22:55.140 --> 01:22:57.599
R. David (he/him): getting all theological, thought about that?

1046
01:22:57.980 --> 01:22:58.960
R. David (he/him): Look at it.

1047
01:22:59.180 --> 01:23:01.449
R. David (he/him): Choose one, just for the moment.

1048
01:23:04.320 --> 01:23:06.709
R. David (he/him): One that maybe is more alluring to you.

1049
01:23:08.290 --> 01:23:11.839
R. David (he/him): Can you feel? Can you put yourself in it?

1050
01:23:12.410 --> 01:23:15.099
R. David (he/him): Can you put yourself in the grass?

1051
01:23:15.480 --> 01:23:22.860
R. David (he/him): Can you put yourself Hearing that chauffeur blast, and it resonates through your body.

1052
01:23:24.610 --> 01:23:29.510
R. David (he/him): Can you feel yourself hanging in the balance?

1053
01:23:35.440 --> 01:23:38.219
R. David (he/him): That's actually gonna be your homework.

1054
01:23:40.800 --> 01:23:43.710
R. David (he/him): To look at these images.

1055
01:23:45.020 --> 01:23:50.090
R. David (he/him): This is not a five times a day thing, although Roger Kamenetz would say to do that.

1056
01:23:50.230 --> 01:24:10.140
R. David (he/him): You bring the image to mind, and you journey into the image, and you tell a story about the image, and you talk to the sheep, and you lay on the ground, and you see the sun, and you feel seen by the shepherd, and you hear the shofar, it's time for lunch, right? And you have a relationship with it.

1057
01:24:10.420 --> 01:24:14.359
R. David (he/him): So that when you feel the shofar call you on Rosh Hashanah.

1058
01:24:16.110 --> 01:24:20.699
R. David (he/him): You're actually laying down tracks in your head and in your heart.

1059
01:24:21.870 --> 01:24:25.909
R. David (he/him): to experience this. That's the homework.

1060
01:24:26.500 --> 01:24:28.600
R. David (he/him): That we're going to invite you into.

1061
01:24:28.600 --> 01:24:29.130
Suzanne Graver: Hmm.

1062
01:24:29.130 --> 01:24:38.390
R. David (he/him): And we're gonna unpack how you actually did that, because the images are gonna move by pretty quickly on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

1063
01:24:38.840 --> 01:24:43.799
R. David (he/him): Unless you want the service to be 10 hours long, right? So…

1064
01:24:43.940 --> 01:24:46.460
R. David (he/him): You're not gonna grab everything, it's too much for anybody.

1065
01:24:47.590 --> 01:24:48.950
R. David (he/him): But something.

1066
01:24:50.400 --> 01:24:51.190
R. David (he/him): Pick one.

1067
01:24:51.740 --> 01:24:52.520
R. David (he/him): Pick two.

1068
01:24:53.500 --> 01:24:56.150
R. David (he/him): We're going to invite you to look at these images.

1069
01:24:56.770 --> 01:24:58.830
R. Rachel: We will make this,

1070
01:24:58.830 --> 01:24:59.990
R. David (he/him): All available to you.

1071
01:24:59.990 --> 01:25:00.380
R. Rachel: slide.

1072
01:25:00.380 --> 01:25:01.409
R. David (he/him): You'll get an email.

1073
01:25:01.410 --> 01:25:07.019
R. Rachel: And the video from tonight's class, but please forgive me for being absent for a few moments.

1074
01:25:07.200 --> 01:25:13.280
R. Rachel: Having a kid away at summer camp is an adventure for the parent as well as for the kid.

1075
01:25:14.220 --> 01:25:14.800
R. David (he/him): Right.

1076
01:25:15.200 --> 01:25:19.389
R. Rachel: So… This is what we ask of you between now and next week.

1077
01:25:20.340 --> 01:25:21.939
R. Rachel: Look back through the slides.

1078
01:25:22.820 --> 01:25:25.140
R. Rachel: Try it. And think and feel.

1079
01:25:25.910 --> 01:25:29.010
R. Rachel: What do these images bring up for you? The throne?

1080
01:25:29.460 --> 01:25:31.520
R. Rachel: Being riveted to attention.

1081
01:25:32.280 --> 01:25:34.549
R. Rachel: The rousing alarm of a shofar.

1082
01:25:34.900 --> 01:25:38.469
R. Rachel: Your book that will read from itself your ass.

1083
01:25:40.420 --> 01:25:42.980
R. Rachel: And being shepherded and counted and seen.

1084
01:25:43.810 --> 01:25:49.710
R. Rachel: You will see that after this slide, there's another one, slide 18, called On Liturgy and Prayer.

1085
01:25:49.930 --> 01:25:51.710
R. Rachel: Which we ask you to read.

1086
01:25:52.730 --> 01:25:54.289
R. David (he/him): You of you may have seen it before.

1087
01:25:55.840 --> 01:26:06.979
R. Rachel: Take us back up one, if you would, please, Rabbi. Next time we meet, next week, we are going to finish Unatana Tokaf, because there are a couple more images at the end that we haven't gotten to.

1088
01:26:06.980 --> 01:26:09.580
R. David (he/him): Who by fire, who by flood, who by air?

1089
01:26:09.580 --> 01:26:13.000
R. Rachel: It's a bit of a turn, so we'll dive into those.

1090
01:26:13.610 --> 01:26:16.099
R. Rachel: I'm gonna go deep into the shofar service.

1091
01:26:16.620 --> 01:26:22.330
R. Rachel: And if those words don't mean anything to you now, don't worry, they will.

1092
01:26:22.330 --> 01:26:22.770
R. David (he/him): No.

1093
01:26:22.770 --> 01:26:23.840
R. Rachel: End of next week?

1094
01:26:24.960 --> 01:26:25.600
R. David (he/him): They will.

1095
01:26:27.180 --> 01:26:35.800
R. Rachel: I want to reiterate that both of us are available for thoughts, questions, reflections. If things come up, feel free to email either or both of us.

1096
01:26:36.740 --> 01:26:47.850
R. David (he/him): We're gonna stay on, our tradition is to have a session, and then stop the recording, and folks who want to just stay on and schmooze are welcome to. We're not going to probably cover new material.

1097
01:26:48.790 --> 01:26:57.409
R. David (he/him): But we want to invite folks who want to get to know each other, and who maybe haven't had a chance, just to stay on and schmooze if you wish. We'll do that each week.

1098
01:26:57.410 --> 01:27:00.550
R. Rachel: Forgive me, dear ones, I do have a kid situation.

1099
01:27:00.550 --> 01:27:07.060
R. David (he/him): You have to go. Okay, so I'm gonna say thank you, everybody. I'm gonna stay on, and stop…

1100
01:27:07.060 --> 01:27:10.619
R. Rachel: stay on, and I look forward to it next week. Thank you for bearing with me.

1101
01:27:10.620 --> 01:27:14.800
R. David (he/him): Thanks, everybody. We'll see you this time next week, and we'll stay on.