LIturgist In Residence
I am very pleased and honored to announce that I have been selected to be the 2014 Liturgist In Residence at the National Havurah Conference Summer Institute. Escort Bayanlar Aksu Escort
Author: Trisha Arlin
In This Light You See Light: A Guided Meditation for Parsha Bo
21. The Lord said to Moses, “Stretch forth your hand toward the heavens, and there will be darkness over the land of Egypt, and the darkness will become darker.” 22. So Moses stretched forth his hand toward the heavens, and there was thick darkness over the entire land of Egypt for three days. 23. They […]
Delusions of Separation and Reference: A Hatzi Kaddish
Bless our need for a name For that which cannot be named. It has made us so creative And gives us structure, Blessed One-ness. In Genesis God created the wild beasts and all the birds of the sky And brought them to Adam to see what he would call them And the man gave names […]
A Mourner’s Kaddish
Layer Upon layer of attempts to describe the Indescribable. We cannot help but be separate, We cannot help but be part of the One. It is our holy dialectic In the face of the unknown And thus our need for A Name that will describe A Name that will explain A Name that […]
Amidah Meditation
A guided meditation that takes you through the essential points of a weekday Amidah. You may stand through this, or sit and imagine yourself standing. Close your eyes. Breathe. Open your heart To praise, hope and gratitude. 1. ANCESTORS Imagine you are standing in front of an ark, praying. You take […]
Adam and Eve Invent Hanukah
.וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יְהִי אוֹר וַיְהִי אוֹר We can’t avoid it. The days are shorter, The nights are longer, And it’s cold: The sun is disappearing! Damn. Isn’t it enough to get kicked out of Eden? Isn’t it enough that We work in the dirt for a living, And give birth to screaming moist creatures with […]
Place Yourself: An Unetaneh Tokef
PLACE YOURSELF in front of the fear. You will be judged, you will die. Place yourself in the center of the universe You earned that spot simply by existing. Place yourself under obligation to God However you understand or don’t understand God. Place yourself on the path of holiness and justice, joy and truth. Bless and […]
A Prayer for Praying Before Blowing The Shofar
This was written as a kavanah For the Women of the Wall on Rosh Hashana 5774 From Rabbi Arthur Waskow: ‘There are three notes on the shofar- Tekiah, “Awake!”, Teruah ,”Open your heart!”, Shevarim, “Sob with all who suffer!” Let us blow the shofar So that everyone can hear: Awake!Open Your Heart!Sob with all who suffer!We pray for all who thus […]
The Trees
“The trees are killing us,” The man said. The Rabbi has escorted us here To this village in the desert, Or what’s left of it, So we can see for ourselves. We are a few European Christians, One Harvard Divinity student. And mostly Jews: American and Australian and Canadian And a couple of Israelis. We […]
Matot-Matei: Questions
Matot-Matei: Questions Bamidbar, Chapter 31 1 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Avenge the Israelite people on the Midianites; then you shall be gathered to your kin.”… … 7 They took the field against Midian, as the Lord had commanded Moses, and slew every male. …They also put Balaam son of Beor to the sword. 9 The Israelites took the […]
The head, exploding
The decision by Maimonides to allow his philosophical and intellectual understanding of the non-corporeal, indescribable and incomprehensible unity that is God to co-exist with his deep commitment to Torah and the halakhic life is absolutely fascinating and productive. In many respects, I consider his response to this dilemma to be the only one possible for […]
B’haalotkha: Light The Lamps
For Rabbi Ellen Lippmann, a leader Numbers, Chapter 8, Verses 1 & 2 “And God spoke to Moses and said, when you mount the lamps, let the seven lamps give light at the front of the lampstand.” Blessed Yah, Ruach HaOlam, breathing us in and breathing us out, This community, Sitting in this shul today […]
Rest and Comfort: Kabbalat Shabbat
On a crisp Fall day, the sky was blue. Two airplanes sliced our world in half And everything changed. On a late spring Monday, it was a happy Boston afternoon. A bomb went off in a crowd And everything changed. On a hot June day, it was a peaceful Jerusalem Teenage boys were murdered And […]
Blessing After Eating the Seder Meal
All who sit around this table: Friends and Strangers, Those who remember and those who are remembered On this Pesakh, Who have shared such a fine meal And such a fine story, We take this moment to acknowledge How blessed we are And in our turn, we bless: Blessed be the eaters and […]
Purim Megillah, Chapter 5
Now it came to pass on the third day Esther got all dolled up Dressed like a queen All for the king. And she waited in the courtyard To attact the king’s attention Knowing she is beautiful Because everyone tells her so. They tell her that’s where her power lies But she knows better. […]
Mishpatim, A Dvar Torah
Bunlar, önlerine koymanız gereken kurallardır. Musa ile konuşan, kuralları belirleyen Tanrı budur. Tevrat ve Talmud’da farklı türde yasalar vardır: Tanrı ile özel bir ilişkiye işaret edenler bizim tarafımızdan anlaşılmayanlar, chukim bir grup insanın bir toplum olarak işlev görmesi için var olanlar. bunlar mispatim Mishppatim, bize sezgisel olarak mantıklı gelen yasalardır, bunlar herhangi bir mantıklı topluluğun […]
Rosh Chodesh
Eternal One-ness, Living outside of timeBlessed HaMavdil,The One Who Divides:We live our lives in discrete incrementsAnd we imagine that long ago We might have been afraid When the moon disappeared. It was so dark at night Like the end of the world. We howled at the empty sky And then, like a miracle, A sliver appeared: […]
New Moon in January: Rosh Chodesh Shevat
Eternal One-ness, Living outside of time Blessed HaMavdil, The One Who Divides: We imagine that long ago We might have been afraid When the moon disappeared. It was so dark at night Like the end of the world. We howled at the empty sky And then, like a miracle, A sliver appeared. The moon, it’s […]
Shemot
Names This parsha is Shemot, which in Hebrew means names. It’s also the name of this second book of the Torah. In English it is called Exodus, which means the mass departure of many people. Life sucks in Egypt for the Hebrew slaves and so they leave. Stuff happens. Exodus. The plot of this […]
This Week I Needed to Connect
11/3/12 This week I needed to connect: To the world To my community To Brooklyn To New Jersey To Breezy Point To my family To the power grid To Facebook To the local news To Mayor Bloomberg To Governor CuomoTo Chris Christie and Barack Obama To good-deed-doers To my rabbi To my cantor To […]
Return to the Land of Your Soul: A Drash for Shabbat Shuva
Return again Return again Return to the land of your soul. In this week’s parsha, Va-yelekh, the people are getting ready to cross over to the land of Canaan, an epic journey. For them Canaan is the future, the Promised Land, but it’s also their past, the home of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. For the […]
A SHABBAT AMIDAH
I speak praise, hope and thanks. I open my mouth, I open my heart. I feel the Ancient Prayer: 1. AVOT VE’IMOT – PRAISE OUR ANCESTORS Bless our inventive ancestors, Who have given us the God of the Torah and the God of the Talmud, the God of our immigrant grandparents and the God of […]
An Interesting Experiment
In a previous drash on Chukkat, I noted the three rituals performed in the parsha: 1) the sacrifice of the Red Heifer, 2) purification of those who have touched the dead, and, after Miriam’s death, 3) the banging on the rock to produce water. The first two rituals are prefaced by the phrase, “This is the […]
Prayer for The Levites
Numbers 8:13-15 You shall place the Levites in attendance upon Aaron and his sons, and designate them as an elevation offering to the Lord. 14 Thus you shall set the Levites apart from the Israelites, and the Levites shall be Mine. Blessed be Yah, Breathing Us In and Breathing Us Out Help me with my […]
Four Children, Five Rabbis
Okay, so Four Children sitting around a table, talking At a seder And they have to ask, Why is this night different from all other nights? Why on this night do we ask so many questions? And who gets to answer? And who must listen? The first child, Book smart. The wise child Knows all […]