DLTI-Food for the Body & Food for the Soul

I started writing this first DLTI retreat report Wednesday, Yom Revii, when the torah says God created the sun, moon and planets. Here it is almost shabbas and I am determined to finish the holy work (smile). Here at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center there is no end to light being created, reflected and absorbed.

Light comes from the center itself which has a sign when you drive up saying “We are blessed by your arrival.” Imagine that everywhere you went you were welcomed in this manner. Something to think about. I may have to post such a sign on my door when I get home. The food served here is great and nutritious. Every meal includes fresh salad bar with lots of ingredients many of which are grown right here. Yummy breakfasts of fresh fruit, whole grains, French toast, pancakes, cereals. Lunch usually has a wonderful soup and fresh baked bread while dinners include Mexican tortillas, beans and rice and Indian veggies like dal. One night we even had this wonderful salmon. You many wonder about the importance I am placing on the meals but you can’t shine if you don’t have energy and that takes good fuel. Enough said.

Light comes from our teachers, Reb Marcia, Reb Shawn, and Hazzan Jack, each of whom push us to stretch our souls, our ideas and our confidence. Reb Marcia is teaching us to slow down, think about the words of prayers we recite and focus on opening the channel to the Divine. Reb Shawn has written a lot of liturgical music, plays guitar and is helpful in explaining how music can enhance or distract in the service. Jack is a talented hazzan, musician and not only knows the nusach but is able to show and teach it to us. The three of them overlap in helping us, prodding us and mentoring us. Of course there needs to be someone who makes sure all the other retreat and group “stuff” is gets down and Daniel, who is a doctor in his other life, is doing that, taking care of us in direct ways and being a listening ear when we need it.

Light is radiating out of my fellow DLTI students too. These 62 souls are as full of talent as the peach my holy brother Avishai picked me from one of the trees was full of juice. With such a big group I haven’t connected with everyone or even learned everyone’s name yet. Some are rabbis and cantors and some are on their way to being rabbis and cantors. We stood in a line according to age and discovered that one student is 20 and all the ages were covered up to 70ty. We are a mixture of professions and we are from the USA, Canada and beyond. It is wonderful to be among so many as interested in services and prayer as me and I am looking forward to getting to know everyone during these retreats.

This program focuses on prayer and prayer leadership skills so of course we students are leading most of the services. We received a sign-up sheet in an email and I quickly talked to my future DLTI room mate who lives near me and suggested we sign up for the first morning service. It seemed a good idea to seize the moment, carpe diem, and not wait to get assigned. She agreed and I immediately sent a note to Daniel. We were assigned the service as well as a third partner from Berkley. It was interesting but challenging to work in a partnership. I am used to leading services alone and not collaborating. In phone calls and emails we discovered many of our service ideas were 180 degrees different. How could we ever make this work? Each of us had something specific we wanted to lead or teach. We talked about what had to be included and what could be left out. We fought and compromised but the service we led was fantastic.

I led chanting with my shruti, my holy sister used her drum and led teachings and my holy brother did a wonderful seven directions movement prayer. The synagogue space is beautiful with lots of windows through which you see the trees and the sun. Yes back to the idea of light! It wasn’t perfect but if it was why would I be here? After we did the service we re-did it in a lab and Reb Marcia and Reb Shawn gave us ideas in what we could to improve. Each of the services has had a lab afterwards however the mincha and maariv labs were done only with the students involved while the shacharit labs are done in front of the whole group as a teaching tool. As confident as I am I will admit it was scary sitting in the hot seat with Reb Marcia as your prayer angel. I think I may have to make buttons with Reb Marcia and Reb Shawn’s faces on them and the words “I was blessed by Reb Shawn and Reb Marcia during a shacharit lab at DLTI-6”! Even if I did get a bit defensive and lost all my thoughts at one point I also learned a lot.

I haven’t finished but shabbas will be here in an hour and I have to go shower and get dressed. Hopefully these words carry joy and light and love to all of you who choose to read them.

DLTI-required reading and preparation

In less than two weeks I will be at the first week retreat of DLTI-6, Aleph's Davenning Leaders Training Institute the program with Rabbis Marcia and Shawn. I am excited about going for many reasons but two that come to mind are the learning possibilities as well as meeting some new spiritual companions. I thought I would write at least one post before I actually go to the retreat, something while at the retreat (if I have time) and then something afterwards when I have had a chance for the experience to soak and settle in. So much now is in my "head" as I imagine what MIGHT be all the while brushing thoughts out of my head as if I was meditating. I tell myself to simply let what comes come without over complicated expectations.

It is clear how the Aleph leadership views DLTI and what their goal is. It says in the acceptance letter sent to me by Rabbi Zevit "DLTI is an intense, creative, individually transformative and community-building process. The long days and combination of self-study and experiential learning makes physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual demands on all participants while providing exposure to the deep structure of prayers, nusach, Torah leyning, conscious use of self, your own spiritual development and group dynamics. Our goal is to create prayerful community out of which our prayers arise – a dynamic model we hope you will bring back to your own community in whatever current or future leadership role you may have."

These words sounded good to me the first time I read them and they still sound good to me but what is my goal and how did I get here? Well I have found I like being surrounded by others interested in Jewish learning, leadership, spirituality and who make this a priority in their lives. Through years of discovery, trial and error, acceptance and rejection I have found what works for me in spiritual path, observance and practice. The French have an expression I love, "bien dans sa peau", literally translated as being "good in your skin" but which means you are comfortable with yourself. It is exactly how I feel; comfortable, solidly connected and yet open. I am connected to teachers and students some of whom I know personally and some that I only know in the pages of a book, in the words of a prayer, a chant or a teaching. By being open to the paths and practices of others I can refine what I already have and perhaps even add something new.

This will be the second group sponsored by Aleph that I have become a part of. For the last two years I participated in Kol Zimra 3 (KZ3), professional development for rabbis, cantors, lay Leaders and others led by Rabbi Shefa Gold and her husband Rachmiel that stresses the use of Jewish chant for worship, healing and community building. Rabbi Shefa says on her site that "The chant can attune us to ever-deepening levels of meaning, unlock the treasures of the heart, and give us an opportunity to generously serve each other." The program is one with a lot of heart and I was happy to see how to weave it into my davening. I came away with many chants, several friends, a new community and a love for the land of New Mexico where our retreats were held.

We stayed in a modest dwelling in Albuquerque near the Rio Grande and my bedroom window faced east towards the Sandia mountains. The word "sandia" means "watermelon" and at times the sun's rays would turn the mountain sides into the pink hue of this fruit. One of my favorite times to daven is at sunrise and I say this even though I am not by nature a morning person. Each day I would rise early, shower, make a cup of green tea and slice up an apple. I would take my food, siddur, tallit and tefillin out on the patio and watch the sun come up and color creep into the day. The added bonus was the multi colored hot air balloons that would go up in the sky along with the words of my prayers. Such a beautiful mixing of God's creations as well as the creations of people. As each retreat passed I had been wondering how I might continue my journey after KZ3 ended. DLTI was suggested to me by some of my new Jewish chanting friends who had attended in previous years. It seemed right and when my KZ3 room mate told me she was going and we could room together it just sealed the deal.

So much for the "how did I get here" part which literally could go on and on with so many stories. As I write this part of the blog post I sit in Borders book store with a medium skim latte, my Schottenstein Weekday siddur and three of the books from the DLTI required reading list beside my computer. I have to confess that it is the books that have gotten me excited to post. When accepted into Kol Zimra, Rabbi Shefa Gold suggested a reading list of which I only owned one title, "Jewish Spiritual Practices" by Yitzhak Buxbaum. I quickly purchased every book and added a new section to my Jewish library. That is not to say that every word of every book was a pearl (nor even to say that I have finished reading all of the books!) but I discovered wonderful books with with learnings on healing with sound that I had never been exposed to .

Now I find with DLTI there is once more a reading list, some required and some merely suggested. Interesting to note that so far there is no overlap from the KZ3 list however I already owned three of the required reading titles on the DLTI book list; "The Path of Blessing" by Rabbi Marcia Prager,

“My People’s Prayer Book-P’sukei D’Zimrah” by Lawrence Hoffman, and

“My People’s Prayer Book-The Sh’ma and its Blessings” by Lawrence Hoffman.

I had bought and read "The Path of Blessing" ten years ago and am curious to see how the re-reading of it goes. The other two I got as liturgy reference books. I immediately went and purchased several more of the "My People's Prayer Book" series, "The Art of Public Prayer" by Lawrence A. Hoffman, and "Making Prayer Real" by Rabbi Mike Comins.

At this point I have read more than 100 pages of "The Art of Public Prayer" and am finding his comments on signs versus symbols and worship systems fresh and interesting and overall the book is an easy read. "Making Prayer Real" is a series of essays and I am finding the candid attitude and open style of the various writers very accessible as well. What with all the book purchases I am definitely going to see what I might be able to get rid of to make room on my shelves. "The Path of Blessing" I have only begun to re-read, barely 30 pages done. I think it is the most mystical book so far with a language that borders on song or prose. I almost see Reb Marcia dancing or painting as I read the words. I wonder if it is the subject that makes for the difference or the attitude of the writers. I will compare what I read with the others and see what we come up with. In any case if I am excited about what I am reading that is good. Nothing worse than to have to struggle through page after page of a book you just can't find interesting.

The last part of the preparation is to work together with others to create a service. In order to increase our leadership and service skills everyone has to work together with other students and lead services for the rest of the group. There will be no solo led services which means you have to learn to work with others paring down what your prayer essentials are and attempt to make something harmonious. When I read we were going to have to do this I thought of it rather as a notice that if we didn't enlist in the "service" we would be "drafted" and much like the real thing we might not have much say about what we did. So I suggested to my room mate that rather than wait we just sign up immediately for the very first service open to student leadership which was the shacharit service of the morning after we arrived. Nothing like jumping in head first! We not only got what we wanted but received another student to work with.

That then is where I am, in the midst of text, in the midst of word and in the midst of service. I can't wait to see where it all leads.

In the Beginning: It Won't Be Perfect

I resisted the urge to blog for years partly because I know these posts can live forever and I wasn't sure such a lifetime was good for my thoughts. Never one to scratch my name on trees or bathroom walls or put my hand in newly poured cement to be sure someone knows I was here it just seemed ridiculous that what I had to say or what most people had to say needed to take up space.

Plus, I have never been great at spelling or grammar and so there it would be, all my errors hanging out waiting for someone to point out what was wrong. Yuck. Then I remembered getting a tour of the White House once when I was little. I can't tell you how old I was or what time of the year it was however I do remember that when the guard turned his head I took my hands and placed them on the wall. My fingerprints would be in the White House for all time was what I was thinking as I looked at where my hands had been. The guard hadn't been as distracted as I thought for he leaned down and whispered "you should know that we clean the walls." I wasn't heartbroken but annoyed that I wasn't as clever as I thought and sad that my attempt had failed. I guess I did want to leave my mark, my fingerprints somewhere. Interesting.

So what really changed my mind about blogging? The last couple of years of traveling to interesting places like Peru and Eastern Europe that friends enjoyed hearing about, my involvement with Rabbi Shefa Gold's Kol Zimra Jewish chanting program, my mom getting older and finally acceptance into Aleph's DLTI program. I actually had a couple of friends who requested that I blog about my experience of this last item and I as I started the required readings I found I had things to say. So there. I decided I did need a place to post some of my thoughts and I would just have to allow that it won't be perfect.

What to call the darn thing was my next problem. I eliminated anything too cute or too weird immediately. This space would be for me, Menuhah, to grow, to learn, to develop and to report on how the whole thing was going. Developing. I let the word roll about in my mind and then I even looked up the definition in my computer dictionary and found the following:

develop |diˈveləp|verb ( -veloped , -veloping )1 grow or cause to grow and become more mature, advanced, or elaborate .ORIGIN mid 17th cent.(in the sense [unfold, unfurl] ): from Frenchdévelopper, based on Latin dis- ‘un-’ + a second element of unknown origin

Perfect. Developing menuhah is a work in progress because mine, like most, is a life in progress and definitely not perfect. So be it.