נר תמיד - Eternal Flame

Often after peak experiences on meditation retreats, and in other environments where deep inner work occurs, one's openness, awareness and sensitivity remain incredibly acute for the same amount of time after one's retreat as the length of the retreat. But it's been almost three weeks since the week of Burning Man, and I'm still "burning".

Someone who saw how at home I was on the playa asked me, "Have you been to Burning Man before?" Though this was technically my first time, something deep paralyzed my intellect, and I said, "Yes". And that's the deeper truth, in many ways.

This experience wasn't, as some people may perceive it, some big party in the desert. But rather, I feel like the real work of my life suddenly thrust itself into my hands out there - many of my stories and identities suddenly begged to be reexamined, many issues that I tried to put on the back-burner (no pun intended) since adolescence suddenly demanded my utmost attention, begged to be articulated and processed.

Burning Man was simply a catalyst, in other words, for many processes that had slowly , subconsciously been unfolding in me. The "burn" that still consumes my body and melts my heart with each sweet interpersonal connection I make, isn't something outside of me. It's my inner light.

And being mine, it's eternal (at least to my eyes). Though there's not a bone in my body that isn't called to return to Burning Man next year, the alchemical reaction that ripped through me three weeks ago has reached its plateau, thrust my electrons into a altogether higher frequency. A pulse at which they've now stabilized.

What is left, my נר תמיד, is reignited by every bit of love and connection I feel each day. What were once intellectual beliefs are now sensuously, juicily alive. Shocked by Burning Man off their lazy perch in my mind, they've scurried down into my body, whirling ecstatically at the center of my heart and dancing through all my fleshly spirit.

While I used to (and undoubtedly will, again, at times) need to separate from people to visualize them as divine vessels, I'm finding that it's now much easier to unfold to and ground in others and experience the Divine Flow (שפע)and Play (Lila) through people, whether on the subway, in the classroom, or in spiritual community.

At this awesome time of year, for the first time in memory, I feel ready for these days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur - able to articulate in my renewed awareness of this eternal light what is important to me: to trust, manifest, root/ground, have a soft belly and a soft heart, love freely and honestly, play and dance (in both the embodied and cosmic/Lila sense) - and lastly, be filled with gratitude and radical amazement.

Liminal Spaces

I'm sitting in Terminal 4 of Phoenix airport, with its desert-toned carpet swirls, waiting for my plane to Honolulu for a week-long family reunion/60th anniversary celebration (my grandparents'!). I had no idea that getting from Brooklyn to Newark Airport on public transit would comprise such a large portion of the time that this cross-country journey has taken.

That first step west after a summer of Clinical Pastoral Education, processing my emotions and becoming more self-aware than I almost ever have been (even in intentional community at Elat Chayyim), has left me slightly frazzled. I've unplugged from that setting, like a patient removed from life-support, and my body is trying to return to "normal" functioning without the vital organs that my CPE peers proved to be.

After saying "goodbye" to Central Park, I descended into the shadows of the subway. Exhausted from a fairly sleepless week of final papers and packing, New York sped alongside me as unsentimentally as electricity. But suddenly I took in every pulse and stutter of this current. All seemed to hover, uncertainly, light as a feather.

While the city seemed so hard and concrete around me this summer, in contrast to the soft rawness of my life, suddenly our consistencies reversed: now the city was soft, tentative in its motions and utterances, rich with a sea of unique lives, unfolding moment by moment. And I was heavy with sadness, waves of nostalgia which Sufjan Stevens packaged in song, and delivered to my wide open ears.

Now I've somehow thrust myself into three weeks of lightness and play of various sorts: a Hawaiian cruise with my dad's side of the family, a week in San Francisco, and, finally, Burning Man!

Sky High

On Friday, after a joint pastoral visit with Abby Treu to several patients on both of our units, I dashed to Columbus Circle, challah in hand, took a subway to Grand Central, and took the Metro North to Jay's house for a quiet weekend upstate. Jay picked me up at Garrison train station, just having finished a week-long Dzogchen retreat with Lama Surya Das at the Garrison Institute, so was in a pretty loving/lovely state.

That evening, after some meditation, davenning and dinner, we had an extended debate between fully keeping Shabbat and going to Merritt Bookstore in Cold Spring for the release of the new Harry Potter book (preceded by two hours of Hogworts related games, and followed by a midnight reading of the first chapter). As soon as we walked out to my car, we both decided the quiet of Jay's house and of Shabbat was what we really needed, and opted for a night walk along the road to see the few fireflies who dared flicker in the unseasonably cold evening air.

On Saturday, we took our traditional Shabbos walk. Jay took us to a trail I'd never been on before, which lead us on a two and a half hour loop, up Candlewood Hill. This is one of the highest points in Putnam Valley, and gave us a 360 degree view of the hollows and valleys around us. From this place, all the houses we knew existed in this county became invisible, hidden under the impenatrable green forest that girds the Appalachain Trail.

Our hike brought us just meters away from a family of deer and their gangly fawn, unabashadly, but gracefully eating grass in someone's lawn. As we walked all sorts of berries were ripening on the roadside. I had some idea which ones weren't poisonous, and with a bit of an adventurous spirit, at my own "trail mix" of unripe blackberries (or were they raspberries. Or perhaps elderberries?). When we got to the top of Candlewood hill, there were little blueberry bushes, which only grow at a certain altitude, and yielded their sweet fruit to us.

After we descended back into the valley, and stumbled out of the woods back onto the paved road, a middle-aged couple with five dogs walked by, trailed by an arthritic Golden Retriever, which the man slowed down to accompany. We ended up walking near him. After a word of hello, he asked us if we had just climbed Sky High. "What?", Jay asked. "The hill up there. Some people call it Candlewood Hill, but folks from around here call it Sky High".

Coming out of the woodwork

I've been working in two units in Roosevelt Hospital: the HIV/palliative care unit (where I've spent most of my time), and the Addictions unit (where I lead a weekly Spirituality Group). During my first few weeks of work, I came back to Jay's apartment exhausted, and passed out for at least a few minutes. Over the past few days, I've been slightly more energetic.

But also during this time, the HIV/palliative care unit has suddenly been flooded with several patients who are psychologically unstable (and seem more appropriate for the psychiatry ward). I ran into the Roman Catholic chaplain here when he was doing rounds on my floor, and he said that these people come out of the woodwork when the city gets hot (as it has been since Monday - unbearably so. Fortunately, Jay and I now do have working AC).

During my CPE group's sharing today, I mentioned that I was feeling disoriented - by this program and its daily challenges, existential and otherwise; living in a new place (NYC, no less!); and, most recently, trying to find God in patients with dementia, in rooms where (to the patients) objects appear and disappear, space and time are shattered rather than continuous, like a melting ice sheet.

As the day progressed, I became more acutely aware of some growing feeling, like the slight tingling people claim they feel before lightning strikes, but more persistent. It seems like the disorientation I felt earlier was just God's way of getting my head out of the way so the powerful ways in which this summer's changing me could finally register itself with some permanence in my bones.

New York's hot

Jay's air conditioning doesn't seem to be working, and summer has struck New York. I can really feel it after climbing four flights of stairs to his apartment. The heat combined with the excitement and anxiety around starting my program to train as a chaplain has left me coated in sweat and waking up frequently at night.

Hopefully, by the middle of next week, in addition to having functional AC (that Jay will bring from his house upstate), I'll also begin visiting patients in the two units I'll be assigned. This week has mostly been spent on clearance (between the Clinical Pastoral Education program and Continuum Care, of which Roosevelt Hospital is a member, there's a good deal of being poked and peeing in cups that has to happen in order for me to be given an ID card, and in turn to begin visiting patients).

Where are you?

I've had a few people hold me to my promise of providing the intimate details of my day to day life in this uncomfortably public forum. So here I am. With (finally) a more than a moment to breath, and perhaps enough time - while I marinade tempeh in BBQ sauce for Shabbat dinner - to give you all a little download.

My most recent activity, after I sailed out of Boston with my belongings packed in the back of my car, and my apartment meticulously arranged for summer subletters, has been retreat-hopping. I drove directly from Boston to the Nehirim retreat, which Jay has run for four years. This year, thanks to a generous grant, it was completely booked and more diverse than past years, with a larger representation of trans folks and students than ever before.

And, Steve Greenberg came.

After a fabulous weekend of learning, hiking, dancing and singing with this amazing group of Jewish spiritual GLBT warriors, I went with Jay to the annual Hadar Shavuat retreat. Another amazing weekend with another dynamic group of Jewish folks, many of whom were either rabbinical students, or pursuing higher degrees in Jewish studies. Some of the teachers included Rabbi Gordon Tucker (author of one of the more lenient teshuvot on gays in the Conservative movement), Rabbi Melissa Weintraub (founder of the Palistinian-Israeli Encounter Tour for rabbinical students) and Rabbi Shai Held.

And would you believe it? I'm worn out from all that retreating, and in dire need of some non-communal space, and silence. So Jay and I are up at his house for the weekend. And next week, God willing, I'll give you another update as I begin my summer CPE program at Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan.

The Great Purge

I'm recovering from a 24 hour stomach bug, and feeling totally drained. It wasn't so nice that this happened while I was out in Phoenix, visiting my grandparents for the first time in a long while, especially given that we only had slightly over three days together. But my grandparents and I were lucky to have a nice Friday, and particularly Saturday night together (when we went to a wonderful sea-food restaurant, and saw the play, "Souvenier", about Ms. Florence Jenkins, with the original Broadway actress in the lead).

I treated the illness as a deep purge, and despite the gross feeling of being sick, found something really cleansing (in my good moments) about it, and finally decided (after many unsuccessful attempts at eating) to give my body a break, and fast. As happens when I fast at other times during the year (particularly Yom Kippur), a lot of deep insights came up for me. In my bad moments, I felt terribly lost, confused, and fearful - calling into question my path toward the rabbinate, and just about everything else.

Returning to school tomorrow will be interesting. As you may know, there were only two people (including me) in my mekhina or preparatory year of rabbinical school at Hebrew College. Since this program is strongly influenced by traditional forms of Jewish study (particularly chevruta, or partner study), my learning was greatly impacted by learning with my classmate. Unfortunately, our learning styles were very different - and to my great surprise - after really enjoying studying in chevruta with 8 or so people for an entire year last year in Israel, I found chevruta study this year almost unbearable.

For better or worse, my classmate just decided to withdraw from the program the other day. The upside, of course, is that I can really look forward to learning. Now that I'm the only person in my class, the administration is really focusing on how to make this semester as worthwhile and effective for my particular needs as possible. Being treated as our own class often meant that we were isolated from the rest of the rabbinical program; quite claustrophobic for a class of two. So hopefully I'll be able to take advantage of what is otherwise a downside to my current situation - not having anyone to learn with, by default - and learn with several different people within and outside of the rabbinical program.

A trip to the Bahamas?

I could hardly believe the words as they emerged from my mouth: I was going on a trip to the Bahamas! Jay and I have an annual tradition of going somewhere sunny once a year, usually in January or February, and found a cheap flight to the Bahamas. But that was about all that was cheap.


We arrived in Nassua, ate lunch at the beach, and then headed back to the airport to catch our second flight to Eleuthera (a quieter, less touristy island than Providence Island, where Nassua, the main city in the Bahamas is). We arrived on the island, and stayed about a 10 minute walk away from the beach.


There's really not too much to say about the vacation. It's what you'd expect: we went there for the sun, so every day was spent at the beach, every evening spent at a new point on the island from which to watch the sun set.


One of the highlights, though, was the third day, when Jay and I rented a boat (neither of us having had much boating experience in our lives), and took ourselves snorkling for the day. It was my first time snorkling, and I was stunned by the hidden world that wrapped around the coast of a deserted island: two foot long king crabs, a rainbow of bizzare looking fish, black sea urchins, translucent blue schools of fish rushing by me, immediately below the surface.


We decided to explore Providence Island on our last day in the Bahamas, and check out the city of Nassua for a few hours, before we headed to the airport, and back to the (finally) wintery East Coast (it was 70 some-odd degrees in Boston when I left for the Bahamas, and I saw the president of my university cross the street with short-sleeves and a picnic basket, throwing into momentary question the purpose of our trip).



This city of Nassua was huge, and its architecture looked Spanish. It was full of tax-free shops, cars and tourists. Though its noise reminded us why we didn't stay there for the previous four days, and the parrot in a small cage in the corner of our motel courtyard made us sympathetically sad, we had fun visiting a fort and a few other historical sights in the city.

New Year's Reflections

I'm sitting at Jay's desk in his upstate house (which he calls, "Off the Go"). As I type these words, I try to polish the dull, rusting hulk of this blog. I haven't thought about writing in it for a while, and hoped to allow it to simply fade into cyber-oblivion. But I have demanding readers, and they want to know what's going on.

So, in a few words: I just went on a week-long silent meditation retreat with David and Shoshana Cooper at Elat Chayyim's new home in the Berkshires, Isabella Freedman. Over the past 7 years, I've practiced various forms of meditation (Zen, Vajrayana, Dzogchen, Vipassana), and had a few affairs with regular practice. I've sat various shorter retreats, and a total of 6 week-long retreats (all Vipassana). But this last week was something special. I felt, in David and Shoshana, like I may have finally found teachers - a role that my life has apparently yearned to fill with somebody. We'll see.

Near midnight, I sat in the meditation hall. Sensations of excitement: increased heartrate, spurts of thought, some wordless expectation. Relaxing again into the rushing surf of sounds as they unfold in this eternal present. Heaters turning on and off, someone moving their legs on their cushion, a latecomer to the 11:30 PM sit opening and closing the door quietly and shuffling to their seat. Jay, who led that sit, rang a single bell. It was midnight for a moment, and then it passed. But awareness remained, resting on the crest of a wave as it rushed through the shoreless ocean - and God was the realization that the wave is merely part of the ocean.

Help Protect GLBTQ Rights!

The Jerusalem Pride Parade is being threatened, almost out of existence, yet again. Please help make it happen! If it provides any extra impetus, here's my account of participating last year.

Dear Friends,

We are writing to you about an urgent situation. As many of you may know, the Gay Pride March in Jerusalem in June 2005 was marred by violence when a member of the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community broke into the march and stabbed three participants. This individual been put behind bars but the larger Orthodox community is now threatening more widespread violence as this year's march approaches on November 10th. Our partner agency, the Jerusalem Open House (JOH) is the guiding force behind this event of pride and tolerance. The police in Jerusalem have said that this will be the most heavily secured event in the history of the state of Israel. Over 7000 policemen are being called upon to protect members of the LGBT community.

Noa Sattath, Executive Director of the Jerusalem Open House, has told us:
“An organized campaign led by (mainly Jewish, but not only) fundamentalist religious leaders is well under way. The riots against the march have already begun as thousands of Ultra-Orthodox extremists are blocking roads, torching tires, and throwing stones. The riots continue daily and are expected to get worse as the March approaches. The current situation, in which a violent group is pulling all of its weight in order to silence and deny the basic rights of another group may set an extremely dangerous precedent for freedom of speech and the rule of law in Israel.”

In light of the extremely volatile situation, the police requirements for private security measures (security measures that must be funded by the Jerusalem Open House) have increased dramatically. These security measures include fencing of the route of the march, establishment of a field hospital to treat participants who might be injured by extremists, a large private security force, and many other aspects. The huge security costs have completely exhausted the budget of the Open House. We, as Jews, cannot stand by while our sisters and brothers at the Jerusalem Open House are forced to the edge of bankruptcy for trying to fulfill the basic right to safety, dignity and freedom of speech in their homeland.

In the next week, CBST is launching an urgent fundraising drive to raise money for the Jerusalem Open House. The only way to raise such a significant amount of money in such a short period of time is bit by bit. Whether you can contribute $100 dollars individually, or join with others to raise $100 collectively, every donation is crucial in our drive to ensure the survival of the Jerusalem Open House in these dire times. Donations to our "Jerusalem Open House Emergency Fund" can be made via this link or by sending a check made out to CBST with the designation "JOH Emergency Fund". 100% of the funds raised will be used for costs generated by the anti-gay rioters November 10th.

Thank you for your support of the Jerusalem Open House, freedom of speech and the rights of all people to peacefully assemble. Your support can make a difference in the world right now.

B’virkat shalom,

Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum
www.cbst.org Eric Rosenbaum, CBST President


For more information on the events unfolding in Israel, please see the links on the following page.

Links to articles about the Jerusalem Gay Pride March:

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3321178,00.html
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3321454,00.html
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3321676,00.html
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3322116,00.html
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=114225
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=114335
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3319767,00.html
http://www.planetout.com/news/article.html?2006/11/01/2