This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation

\ \ This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared\ \ \ \ \ By Rabbi Alan Lew\ \ \ Time Warner\ \ \ \ Copyright © 2003\ \ Alan Lew\ All right reserved.\ \ \ ISBN: 0-316-73908-1\ \ \ \ \ \ \ Chapter One\ \ \ The Soul Stretches Out to Contain Itself \ A MAP OF THE JOURNEY\ YOU ARE WALKING THROUGH THE WORLD HALF ASLEEP. It isn't just that\ you don't know who you are and that you don't know how or why you\ got here. It's worse than that; these questions never even arise. It\ is as if you are in a dream.\ Then the walls of the great house that surrounds you crumble and\ fall. You tumble out onto a strange street, suddenly conscious of\ your estrangement and your homelessness.\ A great horn sounds, calling you to remembrance, but all you can\ remember is how much you have forgotten. Every day for a month, you\ sit and try to remember who you are and where you are going. By the\ last week of this month, your need to know these things weighs upon\ you. Your prayers become urgent.\ Then the great horn sounds in earnest one hundred times. The time of\ transformation is upon you. The world is once again cracking through\ the shell of its egg to be born. The gate between heaven and earth\ creaks open. The Book of Life and the Book of Death are opened once\ again, and your name is written in one of them.\ But you don't know which one.\ The ten days that follow are fraught with meaning and dread. They\ are days when it is perfectly clear every second that you live in\ the midst of a chain of ineluctable consequence, that everything you\ do, every prayer you utter, every intention you form, every act of\ compassion you perform, ripples out from the center of your being to\ the end of time. Anger and its terrible cost lie naked before you.\ Grievance gives way to forgiveness. At the same time, you become\ aware that you also stand at the end of a long chain of\ consequences. Many things are beyond your control. They are part of\ a process that was set in motion long ago. You find the idea of this\ unbearable.\ Then, just when you think you can't tolerate this one moment more,\ you are called to gather with a multitude in a great hall. A court\ has convened high up on the altar in the front of the hall. Make\ way! Make way! the judges of the court proclaim, for everyone must\ be included in the proceeding. No one, not even the usual outcasts,\ may be excluded. You are told that you are in possession of a great\ power, the power of speech, and that you will certainly abuse it-you\ are already forgiven for having abused it in the past-but in the end\ it will save you.\ For the next twenty-four hours you rehearse your own death. You wear\ a shroud and, like a dead person, you neither eat nor drink nor\ fornicate. You summon the desperate strength of life's last moments.\ A great wall of speech is hurled against your heart again and again;\ a fist beats against the wall of your heart relentlessly until you\ are brokenhearted and confess to your great crime. You are a human\ being, guilty of every crime imaginable. Your heart is cracking\ through its shell to be reborn. Then a chill grips you. The gate\ between heaven and earth has suddenly begun to close. The multitude\ has swollen. It is almost as if the great hall has magically\ expanded to include an infinity of desperate souls. This is your\ last chance. Everyone has run out of time. Every heart has broken.\ The gate clangs shut, the great horn sounds one last time. You feel\ curiously lighthearted and clean.\ Some days later you find yourself building a house; a curious house,\ an incomplete house, a house that suggests the idea of a house\ without actually being one. This house has no roof. There are a few\ twigs and branches on top, but you can see the stars and feel the\ wind through them. And the walls of this house don't go all the way\ around it either. Yet as you sit in this house eating the bounty of\ the earth, you feel a deep sense of security and joy. Here in this\ mere idea of a house, you finally feel as if you are home. The\ journey is over.\ At precisely this moment, the journey begins again. The curious\ house is dismantled. The King calls you in for a last intimate meal,\ and then you set out on your way again.\ \ This may all sound like a dream-a nightmare-and it is. It is a deep\ dream of human existence. It is also a description of the round of\ Jewish rituals that are observed every year between midsummer and\ midfall-roughly early August to mid-October, although this varies\ slightly from year to year. It is a gesture-by-gesture description\ of the stages of the Days of Awe, each one constituting a passage in\ this ancient journey of transformation:\ * Tisha B'Av, the day of mourning for the destruction of the Temple\ in Jerusalem, the day of the crumbling of the great walls.\ * Elul, the last month of the year, when the great horn of\ remembrance is sounded to begin the month of introspection that\ precedes the Days of Awe.\ * Selichot, the last week of fervent prayer that precedes Rosh\ Hashanah.\ * Rosh Hashanah itself, the head of the year, the day of\ remembrance; the day of the one hundred blasts and the two books.\ * The Ten Days of Teshuvah, the Days of Awe proper; the period of\ intense spiritual transformation that begins with Rosh Hashanah and\ ends with Yom Kippur, ten days fraught with meaning and dread.\ * Kol Nidre, the eve of Yom Kippur, when the great court is convened\ above and below.\ * Yom Kippur itself, the Day of Atonement, the day we rehearse our\ own death, the day that comes to a close with the clanging shut of\ the great gates.\ * And finally Sukkot, a joyous coda to the journey, the autumnal\ harvest festival, during which we build and inhabit the sukkah, a\ booth, the barest outline of a house.\ R. Buckminster Fuller's students once asked him to name the most\ important figure of the twentieth century. Sigmund Freud, he said\ without a moment's hesitation. They were shocked. Why Freud? Why not\ Einstein, about whom Fuller had written extensively, or some other\ figure from the world of science or economics or architecture, to\ which he had devoted his considerable energy? So Fuller explained\ himself. Sigmund Freud, he said, was the one who had introduced the\ single great idea upon which all the significant developments of the\ twentieth century had rested: the invisible is more important than\ the visible. You would never have had Einstein if Freud hadn't\ convinced the world of this first. You would never have had nuclear\ physics.\ For all Freud's animus against Judaism, his idea was an extremely\ Jewish one. In fact it may not be too much to suggest that it is the\ Jewish idea. Judaism came into the world to bring the news that the\ invisible is more important than the visible. From the beginning of\ time, humans had seen the world as a play of competing forces, which\ they had personified as gods. The sea struggled against the earth,\ the rain either overwhelmed the forests and fields or famished them,\ men and beasts hunted each other, hatred and vengeance, love and\ compassion, struggled for hegemony in the human heart. But Judaism\ came to say that beneath this appearance of conflict, multiplicity,\ and caprice there was a oneness, a singularity, all-powerful and\ endlessly compassionate, endlessly just.\ In the visible world, we live out our routine and sometimes messy\ lives. We have jobs, families, and houses. Our lives seem quite\ ordinary and undramatic. It is only beneath the surface of this\ world that the real and unseen drama of our lives is unfolding, only\ there that the walls of the house crumble and fall, that the horn\ sounds one hundred times, that the gate between heaven and earth\ opens and the great books of life and death open as well. It is\ there that the court is convened, that we rehearse our own death,\ that the gate closes again, and that we finally come home to the\ mere idea of the very house that crumbled and fell in the first\ place. If the purpose of ritual is to render the invisible visible,\ then what is the profound, universal, unseen, and unspoken reality\ that all of this ritual reflects? What journey of the soul, what\ invisible journey of transformation, does all of this make visible?\ On this journey our soul will awaken to itself. We will venture from\ innocence to sin and back to innocence again. This is a journey from\ denial to awareness, from self-deception to judgment. We will learn\ our Divine Name. We will move from self-hatred to self-forgiveness,\ from anger to healing, from hard-heartedness to brokenheartedness.\ This is the journey the soul takes to transform itself and to\ evolve, the journey from boredom and staleness-from deadness-to\ renewal. It is on the course of this journey that we confront our\ shadow and come to embrace it, that we come to know our deepest\ desires and catch a glimpse of where they come from, that we express\ the paradoxical miracle of our own being and the infinite power of\ simply being present, simply being who we are. It is the journey\ from little mind to big mind, from confinement in the ego to a sense\ of ourselves as a part of something larger. It is the journey from\ isolation to a sense of our intimate connection to all being. This\ is the journey on which we discover ourselves to be part of an\ inevitable chain of circumstances, the journey beyond death, the\ journey home. This is the longest journey we will ever make, and we\ must complete it in that brief instant before the gates of heaven\ clang shut.\ The journey I will describe in these pages is one of self-discovery,\ spiritual discipline, self-forgiveness, and spiritual evolution. It\ is the snapshot the Jewish people pull out every autumn of the great\ journey all human beings must make across this world: the journey\ from Tisha B'Av to Sukkot, from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, from\ birth to death and back to renewal again. Seeing yourself in this\ snapshot will help you chart the course of your own spiritual\ evolution. Every soul needs to express itself. Every heart needs to\ crack itself open. Every one of us needs to move from anger to\ healing, from denial to consciousness, from boredom to renewal.\ These needs did not arise yesterday. They are among the most ancient\ of human yearnings, and they are fully expressed in the pageantry\ and ritual of the Days of Awe, in the great journey we make between\ Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.\ In ancient Israel the seventh month of the year was an anxious time.\ All the other civilizations of the ancient Near East were sustained\ by great rivers. The Egyptians had the Nile, the Babylonians had the\ Tigris and the Euphrates; but Israel was completely dependent on\ rain. The rains came in the eighth month. So the seventh month was a\ time when the nation of Israel felt its life hanging in the balance.\ This utter dependence on the heavens seems to have given the ancient\ Israelites an intense sense of their dependence on God. It may very\ well have been this dependence that sensitized the Israelites to the\ existence of God in the first place. The ancient Israelites felt\ themselves to be part of a vast interpenetrating whole, a cosmos in\ which the weather and their own moral condition were active and\ interdependent constituents. The round of holidays we now call the\ Days of Awe gave form to this sense.\ Rosh Hashanah is never mentioned in the Torah. Rosh Hashanah means\ "the head of the year," and it marks the start of the New Year in\ today's Jewish calendar. But in biblical times, the New Year began\ exactly six months before, in Nisan, the month in which Passover\ occurs. The Day of Atonement-Yom Kippur-is mentioned in the Torah.\ It appears along with Passover, Shavuot, Sukkot, the New Moon, and\ the Sabbath in the recitations of the sacred calendar which appear\ in the Books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.\ And the Lord spoke to Moses saying also on the tenth day of this\ the seventh month, there will be a day of atonement. It will be a\ holy gathering to you and you will afflict your souls and offer an\ offering made by fire to the Lord. And you will do no work on that\ very same day, for it is a day of atonement, to make atonement for\ you before the Lord your God.\ While there is no mention of Rosh Hashanah in these calendars, there\ is a special day mentioned ten days before Yom Kippur, on the first\ day of the seventh month, precisely the day that would later become\ Rosh Hashanah. In biblical times, however, this day was called Yom\ Ha-Zikaron, the Day of Remembrance, or Yom Zikaron Truah, the Day of\ the Blowing of the Horn for Remembrance. But who was to remember\ what? Was it a day when God was supposed to remember us? Were we\ supposed to remember God? Or was it a day when we were to begin to\ become mindful of our moral circumstances in preparation for the Day\ of Atonement that would soon be upon us? Was the sound of the ram's\ horn (the shofar) a mystical nexus between heaven and earth or, as\ suggested by the Rambam (Maimonides, a medieval philosopher and\ legal authority and a towering figure in the world of Jewish\ thought), was it a wake-up call for us? Was it crying out to us,\ "Awake, awake, you sleepers from your sleep; examine your deeds,\ return in repentance, remember your Creator; those of you who forget\ the truth and go astray the whole year in vanity and emptiness that\ neither profits nor saves, look to your souls"?\ Examining the length and breadth of the tradition that would\ follow-following the tradition through its biblical, talmudic,\ medieval, and modern periods-the answer is, clearly, all of the\ above. God's mindfulness of us is the sine qua non of this holiday\ season. If there were no consciousness out there aware of us,\ responding to us, this whole round of holidays would make no sense\ at all. Neither would life. The rains would fall at random, the\ heavens would shut themselves up, and we would live and die without\ meaning. Equally important is our awareness of God. We shouldn't\ imagine that this was any less problematic for the ancient\ Israelites than it is for us. If they found it easy, they wouldn't\ have needed one hundred blasts of the great shofar to bring them\ back to an awareness of the Supernal Oneness or its inescapable\ sovereignty over all creation. But what seems to have been most\ clearly true of this Day of the Blowing of the Horn for Remembrance\ is that it was both connected with and preparatory to Yom\ Ha-Kippurim, the Day of Atonement.\ But what was atonement in biblical times, and how did the ancient\ Israelites prepare for it? Atonement was a moral and spiritual\ purification, and the ancient Israelites believed that there were\ three ritual occasions that possessed an almost magical capacity to\ effect atonement: (1) the propitiatory sacrifices one made at the\ Great Temple, (2) the day of Yom Kippur, and (3) death itself. But\ as powerful as these occasions were, none of them could bring about\ atonement without the prerequisite of a verbal confession-an\ acknowledgment of the precise nature of our impurity spoken out\ loud. A Vidui-a confession of sin-had to be recited as we offered\ the propitiatory sacrifices; it had to be recited on Yom Kippur; and\ it had to be recited on the deathbed as well. This recitation\ activated the considerable power each of these moments possessed.\ Continues...\ \ \ \ \ \ \ Excerpted from This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared\ by Rabbi Alan Lew\ Copyright © 2003 by Alan Lew.\ Excerpted by permission.\ All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.\ Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.\ \ \

1The Soul Stretches Out to Contain Itself: A Map of the Journey32Everywhere He Went, He Was Heading for Home: Teshuvah193I Turned, the Walls Came Down, and There I Was: Tisha B'av354The Horn Blew and I Began to Wake Up: Elul645This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: Selichot936The Horn Blows, the Gates Swing Open, and We Feel the Winds of Heaven: Rosh Hashanah1137What the Soul Does While the Gates Are Still Open: The Ten Days of Teshuvah1518The Soul Hears Its Name Being Called: Kol Nidre1769Death and Yom Kippur Atone21210The Gates Clang Shut: Neilah256Epilogue: The Stars Are Shining on My Head: Sukkot263Acknowledgments275

\ Publishers WeeklyLew's exploration of the Days of Awe begins not with Rosh Hashanah-which is not featured until chapter six-but with Tisha B'Av and the month of Elul. These observances, Lew feels, set a tone of rigorous introspection in the Jewish calendar. He follows the story through Yom Kippur and Sukkot, drawing on Jewish tradition, his own experiences and a few Buddhist stories (Lew is a self-described "Zen rabbi") to take the reader on a journey of spiritual transformation-"from birth to death and back to renewal again." Lew is far more concerned with inner motivations and awareness than with external rituals, a refreshing and sometimes startling perspective. He is a perceptive thinker and a highly skilled writer, making this book a hard-hitting yet compassionate cry for spiritual renewal during the High Holy Days as well as the rest of the year. (Sept.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalHas the title got your attention? Indeed, Lew (One God Clapping: The Spiritual Path of a Zen Rabbi), spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco, conveys a sense of urgency about the Jewish High Holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, as well as the key holidays and rituals that surround them: Tisha B'Av, Elul, Selichot, Teshuvah, Ne'ilah, and Sukkot. Taken together, they constitute a journey from birth to death to renewal, a journey of self-discovery, spiritual discipline, self-forgiveness, and spiritual evolution: "This is the longest journey we will ever make, and we must complete it in that brief instant before the gates of heaven clang shut." In order to help us prepare for the journey, Lew draws from Talmudic text, lore and commentary, Kabbala, some Zen Buddhism, psychology, and literature, as well as his own personal experiences. He is a patient and compassionate guide as he conveys the message that we must take our holy tasks seriously, but if we don't make it this year we can try again next year. A fresh look at a more than 2000-year-old mandate, highly recommended for collections of Judaica.-Marcia Welsh, Dartmouth Coll., Hanover, NH Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.\ \