משנכנס אדר מרבין בשמחה

“When the month of Adar begins,” our Talmud teaches, “joy increases.”

We want joy to be an easy thing, a thing that happens all by itself when — as Paul Simon has it — we have “soil soft as summer and the strength to push like spring.”

But Adar (at least in this part of the world) is a month that asks us to “push like spring” toward joy when the ground is still frozen, when the nights are still longer than the days.

מצוה גדולה להיות בשמחה תמיד

“It is a great mitzvah” Rebbe Nachman teaches, “to be in joy always.”

But Rebbe Nachman knew that joy is something we have to cultivate. Joy — whether in late winter or whenever the soul is wintery — is not just something that happens; it’s something we find by “always” (i.e. with constant persistence) digging deeper and deeper into our scanter and scanter reserves until we get right down to that one tiny place inside where joy has no choice but to bloom.

And so it’s no wonder that Purim (near the full moon of Adar) is a holiday of being at least a little bit off. The working with what we’ve got, the drinking, the transgressiveness cries out: Joy by any means necessary; Torah and more Torah even if the only Torah we’ve got left is this funky stuff that’s been fermenting underground all winter.

Adar is silly and playful but underneath this there is a warrior-like persistence for joy.

Me? I find myself, in this persistence, digging into many other cultures wildly all over the map for anything that keeps my head joyously above water. I’ve been reconnecting with the Shambhala warrior teachings of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. I’ve been watching Maori-inspired Rugby haka on YouTube. I’ve been listening to this Scottish-Celtic folk rock “Stamping Ground” song on repeat. And the sea chanties, let’s not forget those. Mine turn even saltier at this time of year. (Apparently Adar brings out my inner masculinity. Perfectly Purim-appropriate but we’ll save that for another post.)

Where do you dig for the gritty playfulness and playful grit that will see you through to the liberation of Spring?

Could warm salt water and rum drinks and fresh conch-fritters somehow carry me to any kind of better place? And when those failed there was the dancing into the night with locals in bars that were no more than lean-tos in the sand. I felt, as I wrote in my journal, like a train that had leapt its tracks but kept on rollicking over the countryside. Adventures and mishaps ensued.

So, there I was lying on the deck of our little boat in one harbor and then another, gazing up and up into a cloud-spotted sky and seeing Orion the Hunter beginning his nightly journey across the Caribbean winter sky. I had sailed here before and it was a kind of homecoming to gaze once again into this farther-south expanse of sky, where Orion’s neighborhood flashes with even more bright stars.

And against the backdrop of all of this — the violence and rupture I’d flown from, the perfusing pleasures of warm sailing breezes and drinking and dancing, and the night sky itself — what could I do but let heart and soul sink upward into deepest wonder. Legend has it that our father Abraham was a star-gazer who found answers to his deepest questions from wondering at the night sky. Me? I got this song.

Orion Reclines

Listen by clicking the play button or download your own copy (for free — my song-birthday gift to you!) with the “add to cart” button.

I had already started writing songs — from childhood on, really — but in retrospect this one is clearly the first “keeper” I ever caught. Listening again across the years I feel it stitched with some of the same threads that run through my latest work “at the edge of the unknown.”

Happy 20th birthday little song, may you sail on and on, inviting others to wander and wonder right along with you. May you be for healing.

What invites you into wonder? Let me know in the comments below.

And please do sign up for updates if you’d like to be kept abreast of my latest voicefinding adventures.

I love being able to offer my own songs and help others find their voices as well.

And it is a true blessing to be able to share this process in songwriting workshops, gathering the voices and stories in the room and weaving them together in songs of gifts and blessings, songs of freedom, or songs of lament.

May your exploration of this site help you discover more and more ways to add your own voice to the weave of creation.

The textual basis of the song: “These Are the Words” was written as a final assignment for the class I took on the Book of Deuteronomy (which begins with the words “These are the words…”) in my last year of rabbinical school. All semester we looked at Deuteronomy as the words that Moses wanted to leave to the people who were about to journey on without him. To do this, Deuteronomy retells previously told stories seemingly for the purpose of imparting some kind of lesson and giving us something to carry with us. Our wonderful teacher, Dr. Judith Kates, told us to look back at our time in rabbinical school and retell the story of that journey “Deuteronomically.” It was this prompting that took me even further back to tell an origin story about songwriting itself and its healing and transformative role in my life.

What helps you carry your Torah, your truth in your heart?

I love Jonah first because he is such a human prophet: who among us hasn’t “gone Tarshisha” just when we heard the clearest call to claim our truer destiny. (Click play to hear what I mean about “Gone Tarshisha.”)

But I also love the book of Jonah because it brings together my love of Torah and my love of the sea — both loves which are deep enough to also contain thick strands of awe and aversion and unending unknowing.

With both Torah and the sea, one sip contains the whole but the whole can never be swallowed.

With these twin loves twined in me, I was over the moon to learn that “The Sermon” — the ninth chapter of Moby Dick — was released in audio form as part of a wonderful project called The Moby-Dick Big Read. The chapter, beautifully read by Simon Callow, recounts a sermon on the book of Jonah given by a New Bedford preacher (a “pilot of the Living God”) who calls to his congregation as “Shipmates!” and preaches from a pulpit that resembles the prow a ship. In addition to the message of his sermon, I love the way Melville makes Jonah a 100% contemporary character (that is, 100% an 1850’s stowaway).

The way Father Mapple brings the sea and its sailors under the same roof as Torah feels to me like knitting together two seemingly disparate parts of myself. As if long-lost cousins find they have more to talk about than they ever imagined and sit down for a long exchange. I highly recommend having a listen.

For another wonderful set of Jonah resources, check out the latest issue of Sh’ma (which also includes two of my songs).

The Song: Roll the Stone Away

Listen by clicking the play button or download your own copy with the “add to cart” button. 

All the well wants is to rise
All the deep wants is to cry out to the deep
And what are we,
what are we in this play?
Ours is but to roll the stone away

Digging Deeper

“Deep cries out to deep,” — these words, borrowed from Psalms (42:8), are both moving and mysterious to me.

“How?!?” one might reasonably ask, “How do we access that deepest part of ourselves that can truly cry out to the deepest parts of others and of the world?”

Here’s one possibility:
On the High Holy Days, we stand in front of the ark and call out the 13 Attributes, calling on God, reminding God, if you will, of Divine attributes of compassion, unconditional love, and truth. The Piasetzener Rebbe offers a beautiful teaching on just what is happening in this moment.

First a few words of background:
In Exodus 33:18-23, Moses, yearning for reconciliation and connection in the wake of the rupture of the Golden Calf, asks to see God face to face. God refuses but says that Moses can stand nearby and that “while My glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and will cover you with My hand until I have passed by. And I will take away My hand, and you will see My back; but My face shall not be seen.”

At God’s command, Moses carves two tablets of stone like the ones he broke when he saw the people worshipping the Golden Calf. He goes up the mountain and God’s glory descends and then, in Exodus 4:6: “And Hashem passed by before him, and called out: ‘HaShem, HaShem, God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth….” This “calling out” is what comes into our liturgy as the 13 Attributes (in an interestingly edited form).

So, here’s the Piasetzener in Derech HaMelech (p. 266) on the 13 Attributes (when I translate especially loosely I indicate this in brackets [like so]):

[I]t says in the Kedushat Levi on “And called out Hashem Hashem” that “there is a portion of divinity in every…[one] and that when [a person] calls out and and prays with this divine portion, then that divine portion [of the human being] is calling out to Hashem, and thus ‘And called out Hashem Hashem’: Hashem calls out to Hashem.”

And truly, the essence of prayer is always [accessed] only if Hashem is praying, as in the words of the Talmud (Brachot 7), “How do we know that the Holy Blessed One prays?” thus when…[one] prays, the Holy Blessed One also prays….

But it is not the case that the divine portion within each person always prays — only one who is connected with their own divinity such that their body…and their soul…[are not] like two neighbors who, though they live in the same house, are nevertheless separated and distant from one another. It’s only when the body yearns so much to be in service to the soul that it [follows the lead of the soul]…. Then, when the human being prays, the Holy Blessed One prays, as we said. “From the depths I call out to You, Hashem” (Psalm 130:1). These are not [just] the words of the prayer, but rather “From the deepest part of myself I cried out to You!”…God Godself is calling out and praying and this is easy to understand.

Whether or not you will find yourself in synagogue during these High Holy Days, and whether or not you would agree that this is “easy to understand,” I invite you to experiment with just what it might mean to connect with the divine part of yourself.

And may your prayer, your heart’s truest yearning truly be “deep calling out to deep.”

What helps you connect body and soul and find your own “deep?”

While I love the tradition practice(s) of selihot, I have at least as much experience with another kind of late-late-night, early-early-morning singing practice: lullaby.

Could it be that lullabies and selihot — though one is ostensibly designed to lull a person to sleep and the other to wake a person up — share in some truth of the night?

Curious about just what the truth of the night might be, I asked for others to lend their own voices, and voila! A selihot lullaby for you:

Bide your time
in a world of sunlit lies
Until the truth of the night arrives
Bide your time
in a world of sunlit lies
and let the truth of the night arise

The trust of love
So soft and strong
Soft and strong as silk
The trust of love is soft and strong
soft and strong as silk
the trust of love

familiar sheets
next to your skin
and your prayer-soaked pillow beneath
familiar sheets next to your skin
and your prayer-soaked pillow
awakens sleep

It all comes down
to I-and-Thou
at 3:37am
It all comes down to I-and-Thou
deep in the morning
it all comes down

(For more on how this lullaby was a collaborative creation that I crowd-sourced using Facebook, check out my recent Scoutie Girl post.)

Deep, unconditional compassion and the willingness to let everything else go to simply be with the One with whom you can be truest.

Whether or not you have occasion to sing lullabies, and whether or not you are engaged in the practice of selihot, may you find a way to connect with the truth and the tenderness of the night.

But nothing brought this point home to me more powerfully than writing and singing the “Song of Complaints” with “consumers” at a hospital for people facing severe mental illness.

Alan captured this story on video at a recent workshop:

The participants in the video are Clinical Pastoral Education interns, residents, and supervisors — rabbis, rabbinical students, clergy and seminarians of several different faiths, all engaged in the vital work of bringing better spiritual care to people in hospitals, nursing homes, and a variety of other settings. In the video you’ll hear them not only learning about my students at the mental hospital but bravely adding their own voices as well.

As you can hear from the participants’ responses, lifting our complaints into song together:

• allows us to feel heard
• creates an “us” out of diverse (and divergent) voices
• gives us more permission to be our whole selves
• and one participant even described it as “fun!”

I have brought these group songwriting techniques to settings as diverse as rabbinical schools, yoga studios, hospitals, nursing homes, and summer programs for high school students. We have written songs for facing our fears, songs of “Halleluyah,” and songs about the gifts that are uniquely ours to bring to the world. But simply asking “what are the complaints you have right now” has been as powerful a voicefinding prompt as any. Last time I went to visit folks at that mental hospital, one “consumer” who I hadn’t seen in months stopped me in the hallway just to sing a little bit of the “Song of Complaints” with me.

As we observe Tisha B’Av — a day of fasting and lamentation in remembrance of the destruction of the Temple in the Jerusalem and in recognition of the ongoing human experience of exile — may our songs of complaint, our songs of lamentations, lead us on the first steps of the journey from brokenness to wholeness.

Here’s an excerpt from the beginning of the book to help you discern whether it might be right for you (or someone you love):

It is the morning of Yom Kippur. Already our throats are a little dry and we are unsure of just how we are going to make it through the rest of the day. And then, right there in the haftarah, comes God’s demand of Isaiah: “Cry out full-throated, don’t hold back; lift your voice like a shofar.”

When you hear those words, do they fill you with a sense of despair and inadequacy at the prospect of living up to them in your exhausted state? Or do you feel ready, despite your thirst, despite any nervousness, to use your voice to truly move people, to truly help your community pray? Do you know, in these moments, how to find your own voice again and again? Do you know how, as Leonard Cohen sings, to “ring the bell that still can ring?”

If….
…. your voice gets tired when you lead prayer
…. you worry about how to be loud enough without losing your voice
…. you aren’t sure that you really “can” sing
…. you are wondering how you and your voice are going to make it through the next High Holy Days (or even just through this very week)
…. you sometimes wonder, from the bima, “When is it my turn to really pray?”
…. you want a way to strengthen and nourish your voice so that it will carry you through Ne’ilah and beyond…

…then I wrote this book for you.

While strengthening our voices can certainly happen at any time of year, the Days of Awe present a particular challenge, demanding a level of confidence and stamina that we are not always sure we are up to. Lift Your Voice Like a Shofar, just like working with me one-on-one, is designed especially for rabbis, rabbinical students, and anyone else who uses their voice to bring others into prayer and song. If you want to feel more confident about how to use your voice authentically, may this ebook be of help to you!

Sign up for your free copy of Lift Your Voice Like a Shofar. Your voice will thank you.

Please do share this with anyone to whom it might be beneficial. And feel free to leave a comment below or contact me with any questions.

הִנֵּה לֹא יָנוּם וְלֹא יִישָׁן

Ever-Wakeful Guardian,
we too in this moment stand before you
wide awake.

Awake to Your Presence,
awake to the enormous tasks
of world-repair and healing that these graduates are taking on.
Awake to all they have accomplished
and as hopeful as watchers for the sunrise
to see the dawning of all that is yet theirs to do.

Yet we know that we are sending them into a world
where wakefulness and readiness are impossible for human minds to hold.
A world where myriad voices –inner and outer– urge them,
urge all of us,
to fall asleep to our own destinies,
to become oblivious to our lives’ clearest purpose.

Guardian of Wakefulness,
may it be Your will to plant this great moment of wakefulness,
to plant it within us as the hardiest of seeds,
that wherever we are dispersed,
whenever we find ourselves losing our way,
we will always be able to call on You — who never slumbers –
to feel our own wakefulness stirring,
to see our own new day dawning,
to breathe in
Your Presence
afresh.

And in that moment, may we awaken to this moment once again.

הִנֵּה לֹא יָנוּם וְלֹא יִישָׁן

 So, what helps you stay awake on the journey? Leave a comment below or on Twitter or Facebook and let me know.

And if you’re ready to wake up your own truest voice, come sing with me!

So my reaction surprised me. Instead of getting lost in the worlds and the ideas that he was painting with his voice and his guitar, I found myself feeling heartsick at the wasted opportunity to hear all of the other wonderful voices in the room. I love his songs, but I also yearned to hear the songs of the stranger seated to my left and the stranger seated to my right. What would it be like, I dreamed, to stop the concert right then and there and call forth the wisdom and the insight and the yearnings of the many people in the room?

You see, my own sense of what songs and songwriting are for has been growing over the years. My songs are absolutely an expression of what I and I alone want to say to the world; I own that.  And some of them are certainly meant to be shared in such a way that I sing and the audience listens. But the songwriting work I’m most excited about these days is much more interactive.

I use my own songs and songwriting to bring others into song. I’ve brought my innovative approach to synagogues and assisted living facilities, to yoga studios and rabbinical schools and even to the local state mental hospital.

My dream of stopping the concert and calling forth the many voices in the room? It came true! At my album release concert — in that very same theater! — in addition to sharing songs I had already written, we also wrote two songs together right on the spot. One was the Song of Complaints, to the tune of an old sea chanty; we lifted up our own complaints in song, lightening our individual loads by sharing with one another. And the other was “1,000 Times” a song on the new album to which audience members added their own wisdom about what helps you choose bliss and ease and peace in your life.

In the Jewish tradition, we are called upon to be partners with God in the work of creation. We call God, “The One Who Spoke-and-the-World-Came-to-Be” and in so doing, we imagine all of existence created through voice. This means that the work of creation is incomplete without every single one of our voices — our complaints, our yearnings, our hopes, and our fears and most of all, our stories.

I stood on the stage looking out into the darkness of the theater writing songs with people I couldn’t even see.  We were making a new creation from the collective wisdom in the room and I felt like we were all there living out one of the lines of my new album’s title song: “the sounds of our voices” truly can “still connect us at the edge of the unknown!”

Releasing “at the edge of the unknown” means that these songs can ripple out to create and nourish connections with more people I cannot see. I especially love knowing that my songs are being sung along with, as one listener (and singer-along) wrote: “there r no words for the gratitude i am feeling right now at this moment as i am blasting your cd and singing at the top of my lungs. it is HEALING me!!!!!”

If you’d like your own copy (but be forewarned of the risks!) you can order it right here using the “buy now” button or download it from CD Baby or iTunes.

How do you add your voice to the weave of creation? Post a comment below or find me on Twitter or Facebook. Or, for help finding your voice, come sing with me!