Episodes
Friday Oct 30, 2020
Friday Oct 30, 2020
This is a full-on "sermon" (delivered on Rosh Hashanah, "the Birthday of the World," in 2020) in which I look frankly upon the Sarah and Hagar narratives -- mistress and slave/servant/mother-- through the lens of the issues of "privilege" we are processing today. Schleiermacher -- among the half dozen most influential theologians in Western thought-- correctly argued that a certain consciousness of the gift of life is the fundamental basis of all true religion, leading to humility, passion, grace, and a connection to God-- yet in the Genesis narratives it does not lead to all these great things, it instead leads to an unfeeling competition for resources, and deep division. Sound like America today? I take us through the intricacies of the narratives, of the interplay of power and powerlessness, of the nub of this country's divisions through one true story from my life, and to a potential spiritual resolutation through another true story from my life, ending with Hannah (the haftarah on Rosh Hashanah) breaking the pattern trapping us.
Wednesday Oct 14, 2020
3 Dimensions of Time Intersecting in Shemini Atzeret & the Poetry of Louise Gluck
Wednesday Oct 14, 2020
Wednesday Oct 14, 2020
Shemini Atzeret has the special distinction of being all of the following: 1) The only holiday that has no official traditional explanation. (Atzeret means some form of gathering, but we are left to speculate whether it's a special harvest ingathering, or a human gathering at the end of Sukkot, or a kind of makeup "extra day" of Sukkot for those who arrived late, but all these are speculative: no reason is given.) 2) It's still one of the four High Holidays (the others being Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot) and is a real holiday unto itself, and 3) It concluded the High Holiday period. One dwells in the sukkah but does not say a blessing for doing so. Shemini Atzeret is very special and odd.
In this short podcast, I try to explain it as the confluence of different ways of experiencing time. Biblical scholars for decades have reflected on how the book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) views time as circular while the Torah and Prophets view time as linear (leading to a Messianic horizon). In this podcast, I show how Sukkot is the ultimate "linear" experience of time, like traveling forward, and that Shemini Atzeret, with its signature chanting of Kohelet/Ecclesiastes, is the ultimate experience of circular time, and eternal time. We go from living in the present moment to a very special eternal moment as the "finishing strong" of the entire High Holiday period. I use Louise Gluck's (whose name I mispronounce -- it should be pronounces as "glik") poem "The Denial of Death" to make my point.