https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LrqNzRn4DE
<big>Greetings and welcome to A Song of Zion, our weekly check-in and virtual minyan for Jews on Daily Kos. This is an open thread, and we treat it as a safe space for Jewish folks here. Non-Jews are welcome but we ask that they listen more than speak. No squabbling, please: if you want to fight, please step outside. (H/T wasplover)</big>
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Musician, singer, composer, record-producer Jenni Asher to become America’s first ordained Black woman cantor. Jenni Asher’s third album’s 12 tracks are each Hebrew-titled, among theme “Savlanut” (“Patience”), “Isha” (“Woman”), “Simcha” (“Joy”), all sung and with instrumentation by Asher due to pandemic restrictions — violin, viola, cello, erhu, double bass and piano. She currently works as a cantorial soloist at Hamakom, a Los Angeles Conservative synagogue, while studying at the non-denominational Academy for Jewish Religion California. Upon graduation next year, she’ll most likely be the first Black American woman ordained as a cantor, and one of only two Black cantors in the US, says the other one, Cantor David Fair.
This is a long time coming. It is more than called for. Vayikra
“Vayikra” —we are called (freely translated) Lev. 1:1-5:26 — Isa. 43:21–44:23.
A time in chaos is the very definition of history in our hands. How do we respond?
History records volunteers in every imaginable endeavor, building networks of hard-working organizations, and as individuals — process-focused, hands-on, thoughtful, determined, united and energetic, up from the earth and across it, with sleeves rolled up and dirt under our fingernails, achieving what's necessary to meet needs of the era.
History records especially women of every nation and culture, standing up together and moving forward, shoulder to shoulder, street by street, and door to door, to do what needs to be done, in peace, in war, in the hazy area between.
With clouds of storm overhead and terror raining down on innocents, it is the more the best time to be alive —Shehekhiyanu, v’kiymanu, v’higgiyanu la’zman hazeh— because time and tide have brought us to where every one of us and all that we can do to help counts.
Our every hope, study, energy, strength, insight, encouragement, skill, question and act for the greater good, no matter how small or work-a-day or tedious the task, becomes part of and makes history as never before. ...every motion on behalf of others, and for one another, precisely because the era is so dire. Even fears, needs, and nightmares inform our ideals for <big>תִּיקּוּן עוֹלָם</big> -repairing the world.
Meaning sacrifice? Well, ideas in Vayikra — as in Leviticus and Isaiah— have been worded that way — ‘sacrifice’ from a Latin term, “to make holy”. But in common parlance hinting more of loss and suffering upon those least able to bear it, and depletion of many who try.
That’ is not sustainable long, not for any of us; and a truly sustainable world for the longterm, for all who seek it, it must be.
In Hebrew our word is korbahn, meaning that which is “brought near” [1]
Near to where? Anciently, the altar of offerings.
Later, our Sages taught it as metaphor: bring to where it matters, offer where it can help.
By tzedakah — acts of justice/righteousness/care for need of individual or community.
By ‘our table’ —a term meaning the intentionally, consciously, awarely designed pattern of our individual, personal daily life.
And by prayer.
Even atheist, I appreciate this concept of prayer: the threshold
of significant living … a step on which we rise from the self we are to the self we wish to be … [affirming] the hope that no reality can crush, the aspiration that never acknowledges defeat: [to learn] the power to do wisely, act generously, live helpfully, [bring quietness] amidst noise, [seek to go] beyond self… Our prayers are answered … when we are challenged to be what we can be.
Rabbi Morris Adler, A Torah Commentary for Our Times, UAHC Press, 1990, p. 101
What if you or I have seen defeat or sorrow? We are not alone in that. But look around, look back — l’dor va’dor, anonymous earlier generations mounted the barricades and fought through to inspire, teach and strengthen us. They came before us, and the history they made is the foundation upon which we here today stand. And live.
Achievements and failings alike, they set us examples, shining their light for us through the darkness.
And today, now we take that light in hand and look around us.
We are not alone. We are ones, and “two and two and fifty make a million.”[2] Nearly all of us can look into our communities and find experienced, skilled organizations, large and small, where friends unknown, unmet as yet, are putting in time and heart to do what’s needed, ready to welcome us in alongside them.
Is that not inspiring?
is this not an inspiring time of so many lifting one another up despite the worst? Of so many hands reaching across old divides to bypass the toxins of rage that vicious forces seek to plant in us to separate us. Of joys and sorrows and struggles shared, of losses and agonies borne and solaced, defiant in the face of tyranny.
Was there ever a time of such urgent heart and seeking mind, of such drive for wisdom and muscular, material justice?
Was there ever a time our generations were needed more?
And so, we matter.
We here now.
And discover our offerings not sacrificed away, but seeds sown that grow into beauty, because of the touch of living hand, because of a moment, an hour, a year, a shared leap of work and faith, an action singing a message, a carrying forward of the substance of life. Gardens may blossom in our footsteps, to nourish all who follow.
Whenever there is constructive action we can set our hands to, despair and fear are transmuted into determined hope.
If we turn ourselves to the work at hand, whatever work we each can reach to.
It all matters. We experience it when we do it.
If now now, when?[3]</big>
הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי. וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי. וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁיו, אֵימָתָי<big>
We are in history, and we’re called to make it.
We’re called to plant any beautiful thing we can. We’re called to bear witness to hell, never let it break us, but see and bring and receive help, aid, and friendship instead. We’re called to lift up life, and turn division and difference and distance into shared diversity, tougher together across every obstacle raised against us.
We’re called to look ahead for the long haul, not momentary victories alone, but to pace ourselves so we move ahead, invincible, drawing vision as breath, as sustenance, drinking deep of pain and wonder alike, to rest in memory, rise, and return stronger to the fight.
And we are called —together and always— to keep on calling.
Vayikra.
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<small><small>[1] The Torah: A Modern Commentary, p. 750). <br>[2] One Man's Hands <br>[3] Pirkei Avot at sefaria.org. <br>Parasha revised from 2017.</small>