sweet new year

 Standing at the threshold of 5781,  feels similar to standing at the threshold of my patients rooms- feeling the anxiety and fear in my chest,  along with a deep yearning to connect, to be with, and to experience the sacred. 

This year has been one for the books- life as we've known it has been flipped upside down. The fear and anxiety has taken grip of us all, as we peer into the unknown,  as we desperately try to hold onto something; anything, that will ground us and connect us. It has been a year of disconnect-- from our friends,  our communities,  our loved ones. We've been tossed and turned and broken into so many pieces. I can still see the body bags, the un-claimed souls who were gently placed into trucks to be brought elsewhere; souls in transit. 

The trauma we've been through is palpable; tangible; permeating our very beings. 

There has been anger; pouring into the streets, stemming from centuries of systemic racism and hatred, reaching its boiling point in a society steeped in disconnect--

Where the world has become one big pot of binary thinking- its left or right; you're Democrat or republican,  you're for settlements or against, you're religious or you're not-- with not too much room for the nuance and the color in all of.it.

A year where the rage has turned into literal fire. That is now sweeping thru the west. 

And all we do is sit and point fingers. And wonder why everyone else isn't behaving..

But 5781 is at the doorstep. We are about to cross over. And in this time of darkness and hiddenness; where essentially we put our masks on for the holiday of purim and never took them off---we ache to really see each other and not just each others eyes--

We remember the threshold. And that in the pain and fear of the unknown, there is also a desire for connection and a potential for healing. Realizing that we're all in this together-and that we need each other for picking up all the broken pieces, to become whole again.

Wishing us all a shana tovah- a year that is blessed with health, with love, deep compassion,  a year in which we find ways of connecting deeply with the "other", a year that we find peace in ourselves and in the world at large, a year that knows an end to our suffering and a year in which we can begin to see the glimmers of light thru the brokenness...in our way to becoming whole once again..

שנה טובה ומתוקה-כתיבה וחתימה טובה !

some late night thoughts this purim -

Corona. Community. Epicenter. Upside down-ness. Apartness. Quarantine.

Everything that feels so inexplicably not Purim.

This Purim feels impossibly hard to celebrate and feel joy. And it reminds me of one, less than 10 years ago; where just 2 weeks before I lost a good friend suddenly, without warning. There was a terrorist attack just mere days before, where a terrorist entered a home and killed 5 family members over Shabbat; and then there was the tsunami in Japan that wiped out 15,000 in mere hours. It was a Purim that felt impossible to dance; impossible to feel any kind of “joy.” What is joy in a time of uncertainty; in a time of pain; of sadness; of fear and anxiety?

That year, I drank. I drank for my friend in honor of the wine he was in the middle of making in California vineyards; for all the wine he had hopes and dreams of making (especially in Israel); I drank because I didn’t understand. I drank because the words “עד דלא ידע” have us drinking to a place of “not knowing “ - more accurately,; drinking to a place where we don’t know the difference between Haman and Mordechai. What does that even mean? I think it means that we are drinking to a place “beyond knowing”, where we look around us at the world, at the upside down ness, and we have all the questions, and we can take a moment and recognize that maybe, just maybe, there is something to the not knowing. Because in the not knowing, there is no difference betw good and evil; it all becomes one. And this oneness becomes all-powerful - for just a moment in our drunken haze, we can get a glimpse of the Divine - of the back of G-d’s crazy tapestry, that is woven all together.

It was in those moments of some crazy drunkenness, that I was able to wrap my head around the power of the “lo yada”, the power of the not knowing. And it is this that gives me strength during this time -

Working as a chaplain in the very ICU at the epicenter of this virus ,and being on the double end of this thing; in my Jewish community, which finds itself at the center as well--I have been witness to both the fear, and anxiety that this unknown has caused - that there are things beyond knowing; this virus is so powerful in that we literally just throw our hands (washed of course) up and say “we have no idea what is happening right now” - and and and --in the same breath, we see the power and the sense of Oneness that this unknowingness has created - the sense of community; of humanity. That we’re all in this together. That we might not understand G-d’s crazy world, but we can reach out to each other with love and compassion - and that that is created in this space of unknownness.

I was blessed to witness this tonight - when my friends who are journeying with me in a crazy year of transformation, healing and growth in our chaplaincy program- stopped by the door with amazing care baskets for my kiddos who are quarantined (including costumes for purim!) - coming from people who dont even celebrate Purim, but who know what it means to be compassionate, loving humans--

It is this Oneness that becomes all the more clear, in the beyond knowing-ness. I bless us to stay healthy, loving, compassionate, and to be able to see the beauty and power in the לא ידע, the not knowingness of our world.