New Jewish music

My friend and masterful musician Eyal Rivlin has just released his first CD of Jewish chants on a major record label. Take a moment to listen to some of his beautiful work, and consider supporting a wonderful up-and-coming Israeli-American artist!

www.HebrewChanting.com

and on the web at www.Amazon.com and iTunes

(search: "Temple Coming Home")

Hag sameach!

Free download ... enjoy!

http://download.yousendit.com/D829767911E74A65


Ushpizin @ Geela Rayzel Raphael 1993

Welcome to our sukkah, come and be our guest
You'll eat, drink, and study, sit- enjoy your rest.

Chorus:
Ti-vu Ti-vu Ushpizin ee-lah-een
Ti-vu Ti-vu Ushpizin Ka-di-shin.

Welcome Father Avraham, G-d put you to the test
Bring your faith and hesed, join us as we bless.

Welcome, Mother Sara, Let your laughter ring
Bring your wisdom and your light, join us as we sing.

Welcome Father Yitzhak, in the afternoon you prayed
Bring a meditation, join us here today.

Welcome, Mother Rivka, we've heard your voice so clear
Come and bring your oracles, come and join our cheer.

Welcome, Father Yaakov, you wrestled through the night
Come and bring your vision, help us get this right.

Welcome Mother Rachel, you weap on our behalf
Come and bring us mandrakes, come and join our laugh.

Welcome Mother Leah, seven kids born to you,
Come and bring fertility, help us to renew.

Welcome Brother, Yosef, a colored coat you wore
Come and bring us happy dreams, sit with us some more.

Welcome Sister Tamar, a widows clothes you wore
But come and bring your cleverness, we'll greet you at the door.

Welcome holy Moses, you met G-d face to face
Come and bring your leadership, we've saved you a place.

Welcome Sister Miriam, you danced across the sea
Come bring your tof and timbrel, dance to set us free.

Welcome Brother Aaron, our glorious High Priest
Come and bring us holiness, come and join our feast.

Welcome brave Devorah, you battled brave and strong
Come and bring your torches, join us in our song.

Welcome Queen Batsheva, found your beloved true
Mother of King Shlomo, his wisdom came through you.

Welcome Melech David, you danced a mighty dance;
Its time for the Mashiach, its time we had the chance.

Welcome Grandmother Ruth, you chose to be a Jew,
Come and bring your loyalty, bring Naomi too.

Welcome Melech David, you wrote many psalms
Come and bring your etrog, myrtle, willow and palms.

Fair trade Judaica

In the spirit of the season, I want to draw your attention to a wonderful new resource for planetary t'shuvah -- a new Web site at www.fairtradejudaica.org/. The site features fair trade Judaica products.

The Fair Trade Judaica site contains thorough and accessible information on fair trade and Jewish values, rooted in the exhortation to pursue justice: Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof. It explains how to identify fair trade products, stressing principles such as fair pay, worker independence, safe and healthy workplaces and environmental sustainability. And it links us to producers and distributors of everything from kippot to challah covers to kosher coffee!

G'mar chatimah tova

Run, don't walk

I'm in love.

And, since school is now officially under way, and those glorious summer days spent hand-in-hand with a great book are wistfully over, I'd like to share the two keepers of the season. Really folks, you gotta read them. You can't possibly live one more day of your life without them...

Beware of God: A collection of stories
by Shalom Auslander
He's a recovered Orthodox Jew, 30something, and hands-down the best American Jewish writer living today.

A chimpanzee suddenly achieves "total conscious self-awareness.... God. Death. Shame. Guilt" — a burden he cannot bear.

A yeshiva student wakes one morning with a brawny, goyishe body and is reviled by his community.

A man enrages all major world religions with his discovery of original Old Testament tablets preceded by the disclaimer, "The following is a work of fiction."

God suffers from migraines, stalks a modern-day prophet and appears as a large chicken, among other incarnations. "Beautiful day," an adman says, making small talk at a pitch meeting with God. " 'I made it myself,' God answered loudly."

A Girl Named Zippy: Growing up Small in Mooreland, Indiana (memoir)
by Haven Kimmel
It's hard to believe that someone in their early 30s could write such a poignant, touching and compelling memoir about her childhood -- but she did. And it's a childhood blissfully sans drugs and abuse and psychotic meltdowns.

Less a formal autobiography than a collection of vignettes comprising the things a small child would remember, the book is set in a small town of only 300 people. Her prose is lush yet simple, and it is infused with pearls of third-grade wisdom: "Julie in a dress was like the rest of us in quicksand";

and "There are a finite number of times one can safely climb the same tree in a single day";

or, regarding Jesus, "Everyone around me was flat-out in love with him, and who wouldn't be? He was good with animals, he loved his mother, and he wasn't afraid of blind people."

Redemption in 5768

Well, I have redeemed myself. What better way to start out the new year than self-redemption?!? To explain, I'll need to tell a background story ...

Two weeks ago we had our orientation Shabbaton at the college -- for all mekhinah and first-year rabbinical students. This was my second (and last) Shabbaton, and relative to most of the other people on the trip (the bulk of whom are mekhinah year), I'm considered an "old hand." I've been around for a year. I should know something by now.

This fact made it all the worse when, without any warning, the dean of the college came up to me right before dinner and asked me if I would do motzi -- the blessing over bread. The person originally slated to do so wasn't there, and they needed someone to fill in. Motzi, motzi, motzi, could I do motzi? The words raced through my head like I was on some sort of steroids. My eyes bugged out of my head in what must have been an abject look of horror and I said: "Yeah, sure, okay."

Well, you don't become the dean of a rabbinical college if you have no abilities in social subtexts, and I didn't fool her for a minute. "Are you sure about this?" she asked very sweetly, and perfectly sincerely. "You can say No you know."

I beamed right back at her, bobbed my head up and down eagerly, and heard my mouth actually saying the words: "Uhhh, okay no then. I think I'll say no!" Then, realizing what I was saying was just so totally and completely lame, I added on the equally lame explication of: "I just need to mentally prepare myself for these types of things. I just need a little more warning."

If any of you reading this aren't able to grasp just how totally and completely pathetic it is to be in rabbinical school and tell your dean you can't lead motzi, let me put it this way: This would be like telling someone you don't know the tune to Happy Birthday. It would be like telling someone you need to "mentally prepare yourself" -- for several days no less -- to start a group singing it. It's just ... pathetic.

As the final candle on the cake as it were, guess who lead motzi instead of me. Guess! guess! Her 4-year-old daughter.

Oye. That really hurt. I literally spent the rest of the afternoon pulling aside my closest friends and telling them in a sharp, horrified whisper: "Oh my god, you're not going to believe what I just did! I just told the dean I wouldn't lead the motzi! What the hell is wrong with me!?!"

It's been two weeks, but I have redeemed myself. The dean might not know it -- but I know it. I was up at the congregation where I work in Allentown for Rosh Hashana, and attended a nice dinner with a group of 18 people from the congregation. Without any warning at all, they asked me if I would lead kiddush (the long blessing over wine), whose melody I learned 6 months ago and have never done in front of anyone. I said SURE! -- having exactly zero confidence I would really remember it -- and proceeded to belt out the first line before coming to an abrupt stop when I discovered that the Rosh Hoshana version was different than the Shabbat version. Whoops. Sorry everyone, I told them, I guess I don't know this version.

They shrugged and didn't appear to care. Then, when the woman tapped to do motzi couldn't do it, I grabbed the bread right out of her cold, clammy hands and belted it out in all of my a-tonal off-kilter glory.

And THEN, just to really drive the point home, after the meal I launched into an impromptu rendition of Brich Rachamana (a song sung after meals). And despite being one of only two people in the group of 18 who really knew it, I kept plowing ahead. I sang and sang and sang, and if I sounded like hell, I didn't care. There was pretty much nothing that was going to stop me from doing what I was there to do this time around!

Amen.

Back at school

I must admit, my buddy Erica and I have been a bit bummed lately. Ugghhh, school is starting. Not that it isn't great ... it is. But, truthfully, we still feel tired from last year... Eighteen hours of classes per week. The expectation we will study "two hours" for every hour we are in class. Twenty hours of work work on top of that.

Just thinking about it made us want to role over in our respective beds and pull the blankets over our heads. I, for one, wanted more sun time eating funnel cake on the Jersey shore.

Like all things in life though, no matter how much you dread something, the fateful day will arrive. And it did. The alarm woke me up way earlier than I wanted to get up. I played bumper cars for 45 minutes of rush hour City Line Avenue traffic to arrive in time for Shacharit. I wearily walked into the building, made my way to the assembly area, and was stopped dead in my tracks when I discovered I could barely get in the door.

It was Opening Circle, the one day a year when virtually all of the 70+ students and 20+ faculty and staff converge, and there was nary an empty seat in the house. Crammed into our humble daveening space, the room positively hummed with energy. There were so many people in there, we ran out of the Kol HaNeshamah siddurim, and then, we even ran out of the Orthodox and Conservative siddurs kept for backup.

Ahhhh, it was great to be back. And, as another classmate who was in Mekinah year with me last year commented: It's a great feeling to be out of Year Zero and officially in Year One. Now, just five more years to go ...

My classes for the semester:
Biblical text (Torah text study)
Biblical Civilization (Learning the history and social contexts of the Bible and its authors)
Leshon Hazal (aka rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic)
Lifecycles (aka how to officiate at lifecycle events)
Modern Hebrew (It's Greek to me; only in Hebrew)
Ed supervision (aka teachers and education directors get together and swap stories)