Sonoma County, CA * (415) 779-4914 * Irwin@irwinkeller.com
We are living in dark times. At least that's what people keep saying. So how can we use our mythic imagination of darkness to guide us on the difficult road ahead? Torah and Midrash might have an idea worth considering.
This story, this exodus story, is our master story for this moment. We know it well. We retell it every year. We have digested it along with so much parsley and saltwater. It is in our cells. We know it starts with enslavement. And we know it ends with freedom.
Recorded at Congregation Ner Shalom, Cotati, CA. Re-Auguration Shabbat, January 20, 2017.
How anxiety can become fear if we don't do something better with it. Based on a teaching of Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. And with a detour into a road trip. Recorded January 6, 2017 at Congregation Ner Shalom, Cotati, CA.
I've tried to imagine what it will take to create something of beauty and sweetness in this country. I've tried to observe and absorb what people are saying. Where the attention is going. I've wondered what kind of work each of us now needs to take on to face the future. And it's hard to know exactly, because so many different things could happen, and the landscape changes a little every day... So here is my first draft of a Recipe for the Coming Era. Modify at will. No specific measurements. Just shit arayn.
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The sukkah is a practice of impermanence. Our homes, our bodies, our lives – they are all sukkot. They are temporary. Flimsy. They bend with the wind. They get soaked with rain. We decorate them with the harvest – with our own harvests. All of our best features: qualities, talents, learnings. These adorn the sukkot of our lives. They are beautiful. But even they, like the gourds and apples and palm fronds on a backyard sukkah, eventually compost.
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On Yom Kippur this year, I was unhappy with the drash (sermon) I had written, and grew more unhappy with it during the service in anticipation of delivering it. Finally when it came time, I couldn't do it. So I scratched it and just spoke from my heart (and some elements of what I'd written ended up coming back in more organically). The question I arrived at: might we be more self-loving and less dispirited if we see the world and ourselves as unfinished, as works-in-progress? (Kinda like this drash.)
But just to appease you, in case you're not happy about extemporaneous, here's a treat. Danny Maseng's gorgeous Elohai N'tzor, sung by Ner Shalom singers, Rachel Friedman, Annemarie Goslow, and my brother-in-law Doron Hovav, accompanied by Lorenzo Valensi on guitar.
Starting the new year with the first podcast of Itzik's Well. Rosh Hashanah drash, recorded at Congregation Ner Shalom, October 2, 2016. Just hit play to listen to it on your device. Or read the text version by clicking here.