evernote is my new best friend

today i was part of a webinar put on by the ccar. saving time through technology was the subject and i learned some fabulous things. first there were the little features of outlook that i never took the time to learn. then there is this site that allows you to send out a variety of times and dates for a meeting to a group of people in order to determine which might be best. no more hundreds of emails going back and forth.

one other free program is evernote. i am pretty sure that knowing about this program changed my life for the better. evernote is usable on a variety of platforms. therefore i can use the program at my office on the windows machine and at home on my macbook. evernote allows you to tag things similar to gmail, save webpages including tags and folders, post pictures and tag them. the program is so savvy, you can search through the data you have saved on the site (which is like google documents but so much better) and even is able to understand the words in a picture and include those in the values given. this week i am working on two divrei torah. i have saved my notes in evernote as well as a few web pages i found with other divrei torah. i plan to write on my day off, and print on friday at the office. its amazing. i could also dramatically increase the storage to 500 mb/month for $45 a year or something. its ridiculously amazing.

now only if i had an iphone...

religulous

i saw this movie last week and thought it was hilarious. i don't think that it had anything to say about the streams of judaism, christianity, and islam that are not extreme. as a liberal jew i felt perfectly comfortable walking out of the movie and into synagogue the next morning. because i choose to live in the modern world and acknowledge the course of human history and adapt my religious practice as judaism has done since the destruction of the second temple, bill maher can make fun of religion all he wants. he just needs to find some capacity to tolerate me.

Merging: applying traffic rules to our lives

Rabbi Eleanor Steinman

Yom Kippur Morning 5769

Temple Sinai

Toronto, Ontario

********************

Traffic.  The word itself might raise our blood pressure and trigger a rush of hormones in preparation for radical movements to improve our position.  Many of us will plan our day around avoiding it.  I cannot think of one person who actually enjoys sitting in it.  But we live in a large city; traffic is a part of our reality.  Whether it is squeezing our way into a crowded subway or streetcar, or sitting on the 401 or Bathurst, traffic occupies a significant amount of time.  There is not much we can do about it, there are no good methods of dealing with it, it just is.  

Traffic has a negative connotation to it.  For much of the history of this word though, it meant something positive, trade and the movement of goods.  At some point, people and things became interchangeable.  Shakespeare describes, “the traffic of our stage,” in the prologue of Romeo and Juliet.  The progression from things to people makes sense.  Most of us do go from place to place for reasons of commerce.  Traffic, like weather, as if passive forces operating in the world outside of our control. 

I think we go about the world with constant traffic in our souls.  We are pushed and pulled between our responsibilities to our families, ourselves, our communities, our professions, our tradition.  On a day like today we know that we are suppose to be in synagogue atoning for our wrongs and remembering those who have passed away but for most of us, it is almost impossible not to think about work or school.  The assignments and tasks, the growing to-do lists.  Hopefully everyone turned their cell phones or blackberrys off, or better yet, left them at home, but how long will it take from the time you walk out after the sound of the tekiyah gedolah before turning it on and become consumed again? 

What we need is to be better mergers both on the road and in our lives to alleviate some of this traffic.  Picture it, we’re on the road and in front of us is a sign, “Lane Ends in 1 kilometer, merge right.” What do you do?  There are two types of drivers.  One set will merge almost immediately; we’ll call these people early mergers.  The other will wait until the last possible moment, these are the late mergers.  When there is light traffic this sign is ample caution.  We know to slow down a bit, to start looking in the mirrors and find our way into the lane to minimize braking.  A highway though, loses half of its capacity to process cars when it goes from two to one.  Inevitably a queue forms.  This causes more problems because the queue might be farther back than the original sign warning of a lane closure.  Those early mergers see the people going by them on their left as ‘cheaters’ because they do not wait like everyone else. 

According to Tom Vanderbilt in his book, Traffic:  Why we drive the way we do (and what that says about us) the creation of the late merge is transforming traffic by improving flow by 15%.  A late merge begins about a mile and a half from the closure.  The first sign says, “USE BOTH LANES TO MERGE POINT, then a ROAD WORK AHEAD or two, and finally, at the lane drop: MERGE HERE TAKE YOUR TURN.”[1]  The queue formed for the early mergers is cut in half because both lanes are being used until absolutely the last moment. Those of us already early mergers need to learn how to become late mergers, to use as much of the highway for as long as possible. 

We need to learn how to merge things in our lives, to be like the late merger who utilizes as much of the highway for as long as possible.  Work, family, synagogue, sports teams, it feels as though most of us run from one thing to the next. As we attempt to compartmentalize we use a seemingly logical organizational strategy to minimize the chaos, when in fact we just create a longer line of unrelated pieces to drive through.  We need to get better at merging.  Instead of keeping our lives separated we need to allow for more overlap, more opportunity for positively mixing the parts of our lives, otherwise we’re destined to crash. 

I remember when I was in grade one, going shopping with my parents at the mall.  There I ran into my teacher and I was completely confused.  Why would my classroom teacher be at the mall when she belongs at school?  As I went about my day in true six-year-old fashion the idea that people could cross over, that I could run into my teacher I saw at school five days a week on a weekend at the mall, was beyond my comprehension.  Growing up taught us to see people without the context of their places, we didn’t need to think that teachers lived at school. 

Similarly, after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem the scholars of the day hit a roadblock.  With no more Temple there was no means to offer sacrifices, thereby Judaism was headed to crash.  Instead scholars late-merged and were able to advance by establishing rabbinic Judaism to keep us moving on the highway.  We are inheritors of that Judaism and continue to seek to make our Jewish practice relevant.

The recitation of the Shema is another moment of merging within our liturgy.  The Zohar suggests that the verse, Shema Yisrael is an aspiration towards higher unity and Baruch shem k’vod malkhuto l’olam va’ed is lower unity.  The editor of the Baal Hatanya, the masterwork of Chabad Hasidism, explains that, “according to traditional rules of Hebrew grammar, the alphabet is divided into groups of letters, such that the letters in any single group are interchangeable with one another.  The letters, alef, hay, vav, and yod fall into one group, permitting alef to be interchange with the vav.  The letters aleph, chet, hey, and ayin fall into another group permitting chet to be interchanged with ayin.  In this way echad (alef, chet, dalet) becomes va’ed (vav, ayin, dalet).  So, the echad of the Shema is the higher unity seemingly unattainable, but the va’ed is the lower unity, our bringing the oneness of God into our daily lives.”[2]  When we recite the Shema whether in community or privately we seek the merging of these two worlds, we seek a moment in the presence of God, of merging of the unities. 

Merging does not mean letting go of what was behind it is a process of integration.  Just like on the road we do not leave anyone or anything behind, we bring things together in a way that changes them that keeps life moving forward. 

It is time for us to merge our Jewish selves with everything else that we do.  We need to make four changes, two easy and two more difficult.

First, simply, when we give to charitable causes both Jewish and otherwise we need to call it tzedakah.  Whether or not the compulsion to give comes from the association with this Jewish value, the fact of the matter is we are Jews and it is a Jewish value to give to those who are in need and to causes we wish to support and Jews call this tzedakah.

This year, read at least one Jewish book.  All of the clergy here can recommend books that might be of interest.  In Reform Judaism magazine they always are making recommendations.  I am not saying one should sit and read a tractate of the Talmud in English.  I mean something that interests you.  Jewish history, Israel, theology, philosophy, prayer, poetry, I promise there is something that you will enjoy.  We can also do this with our children and grandchildren.  There are some wonderful age-appropriate books.

Now for the harder stuff—come home, come to Temple Sinai three other times this year.  Whether it is for the Renaissance Film Festival, Yizkor services on Shmini Atzeret or Passover, a Temple Sinai Social Club event, a speaker that interests you, daily minyan, the Brotherhood dinner draw, a Women of Temple Sinai speaker, a LOTSSY or Junior Youth Group event, Shabbat services, whatever your interest, come!   Rabbi Harold Kushner writes of one of his neighbors who told him, “I think of your synagogue the way I think of Massachusetts General Hospital.  I’m glad my life is stable enough that I don’t need it often, but when I need it, I’m glad there is a good one around.”[3]  I believe that if each of us found ways to merge Temple Sinai into our lives perhaps just three more times a year we might be able to cope more effectively with everything else we do. 

Finally, and perhaps most difficult of all, think about and figure out your present relationship with God and share that relationship with someone else.  Nothing that any of us thinks about God is wrong.  But, in order to merge better and keep traveling on the highway of life we need to know, at least for the moment, where and how God fits. 

Is God anything like the images and metaphors in our liturgy; our parent, our ruler, compassionate source of mercy?  Perhaps images like a force that operates in the universe unseen and unknown or a person sitting in front of a book writing names in the book of life.  Do you envision an old man with a long white beard or a mother earth type figure causing rain to fall and flowers to bloom?  We need to talk about God because we cannot have a meaningful relationship if we don’t know the terms.  If we start to talk about God, slowly at first, with someone we trust, we will open up the possibility for God in our everyday.  If we search and we don’t find God that is a Jewish answer.  We simply need to be open to whatever we might find. 

These High Holy Days are an opportunity to work on our merging.  We now know the best way to merge on a highway, as a late merger.  Starting right now we can all learn to be late-mergers.  We can stop separating our interests into nice, neat compartments and we can integrate all aspects of our lives so that this year might be one filled with blessings for us and those we love.  Ken y’hi ratzon.

---

[1] Vanderbilt, Tom.  Traffic: Why we drive the way we do (and what it says about us).  47.

[2] Hoffman, Lawrence.  My People’s Prayerbook: The Shema, Nehemiah Polen and Lawrence Kushner, 94.

[3] Kushner, Harold.  Who Needs God, 11.

Eat Your Values!

Rabbi Eleanor Steinman 

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5769 

Temple Sinai 

Toronto, Ontario

*******************

Moshe goes to see his Rabbi. “Rabbi, last week I missed saying grace after meals.”

“Why,” asked the Rabbi.

“Because I forgot to wash my hands before the meal.”

 “That’s twice you’ve broken the law but you still haven’t told me why.”

 “The food wasn’t kosher.”

 “You ate non-kosher food?” asked the Rabbi.

 “It wasn’t a Jewish restaurant.”

 “That makes it even worse,” said the now angry Rabbi. “Couldn’t you have eaten in a kosher one?”

“What, on Yom Kippur?”

  Food choices are complex, anxiety producing, and even guilt-laden.  Often, we know what we should be eating but we make choices based upon our desire.  Increasingly though, people are making choices about what they consume as a reflection their values.

  My friend, Rachel[1] has an addiction to Diet Coke.  She can tell the difference between Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi blind.  She claims that a container of Diet Coke is so connected to her identity that when she informed friends of her pregnancy, the first question they asked was, “what are you going to do about diet coke?”  Her answer, an obstetrician that let her drink it.  Her pregnancy was a typical one.  She and her husband welcomed a beautiful daughter who seems to be untouched by her mother’s vice.  Rachel is not a one can-a-day person.  She can drink a 2-liter bottle in one sitting.  The challenge for Rachel is that drinking diet coke does not align with the other value-laden choices in her life.  A Shabbat and Kashrut observant Jew and an environmentalist, she strives to minimize her carbon-footprint.  Reduce, reuse, recycle is her mantra.  This also informs her eating habits.  When possible, Rachel eats locally grown produce.  Given an option she always will choose organic.  All of those Diet Coke bottles and cans were piling up in her recycling bin, and Rachel could no longer handle the conflict between her Diet Coke and the environment.  After all, several cans of diet coke per day produces enough carbon in the atmosphere the equivalent of flying roundtrip from Toronto to Chicago. 

  Rachel made a big decision.  She is now in the process of giving up diet coke.  For now, she is no longer brings it into her house and is appreciating every sip in restaurants and other people’s homes.  Rachel’s decision highlights a trend happening throughout North America.  There is a heightened awareness about where food comes from and at what cost, people are literally eating their values. 

  Prior to the Industrial Revolution we would not have a choice but to eat local and work hard in our land for food.  Now the process by which food reaches our tables is radically different. 

  What was once a complex process of taking elements from the earth and modifying them is now simplified. Take bread for instance.  First the growing area must be prepared.  The soil should be smoothed and then long furrows are prepared.  Place fertilized in the furrow.  In a semi-circular motion place the wheat seeds.  Water the field.  Monitor the field and check for insect infestation. Check the wheat field regularly. Use a scythe to cut the wheat kernels once the wheat stems turn yellow and the kernels are fully dried up. Or use a "combine" machine to cut off the crop in a neat quick manner. Now it is threshing time.  Gather the wheat in a sheet and pound it on the ground or with a rock.  Check if the wheat kernels have been separated from the stalk.  Voila wheat.  Now the raw wheat can be powdered into flour and crushed and de-branned into cracked wheat.”[2]  Now there is flour with which to bake.  Of course now yeast, water, salt, sugar several hours and miraculously freshly baked bread will emerge from the oven.  The majority of us avoid all of these steps.  We want bread?  We go to the grocery store and select a loaf wrapped in plastic form a shelf.  Maybe if we’re really feeling adventurous we go to our local baker, but that is usually reserved for challah on Shabbat.

  The challenge is, when we Jews make motzi, we say hamotzi lechem meen ha’aretz we offer a blessing to God who enables us to bring forth bread from the earth.  The phrase originates from Psalm 104 “l’hotzee lechem meen ha’artez,”[3] which describes God’s providing the opportunity for the human being to toil in the land that, in turn, enables the human being to bring forth bread.[4]  When we recite this blessing whether around a family Shabbat table or before a communal meal here at Temple Sinai we need to do so with the intention of appreciation for the process that gets food to our table.  Otherwise we are disconnected from the whole process. 

  Food production and consumption is not simply a tool for survival, it is an opportunity. The 20^th-century philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel proposes, “there are three ways in which we may relate ourselves to the world—we may exploit it, we may enjoy it, we may accept it in awe.”[5]  These three world-views are completely human.  The challenge for us is to move from one to the next and not to get stuck.  In 1955 Heschel commented, “as civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines.  Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind.”[6]  Now is the time to reclaim our sense of wonder, to ask questions about where our food comes from, to make our food choices with the same attention and integrity we afford our other indulgences. 

  Agriculture is a major focus of Biblical law.  “You shall not sow your vineyard with a second kind of seed, else the crop—from the seed you have sown—and the yield of the vineyard may not be used.”[7]  “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest.”  You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard…”[8]  Upon entry into the Land of Israel we are commanded, “when you plant any tree for food, you shall regard its fruit as forbidden.  Three years it shall be forbidden for you, not to be eaten.  In the fourth year all its fruit shall be set aside for jubilation before God; and only in the fifth year may you use its fruit.”[9]  It is time to get back to the land in a way that enables us to honor our Jewish values while living in the twenty-first century.   

  We can learn from others about appreciating food origins.  In Animal Vegetable Miracle: a year of food life, Barbara Kingsolver describes her family’s move from Arizona to Appalachia in order to “live in a place that could feed us:  where rain falls, crops grow, and drinking water bubbles right up out of the ground.”[10]  The family was fed up with the talk of environmental concern and decided to minimize their carbon footprint, at least based upon food consumption.  Kingsolver with the assistance of her husband and daughter, document a year of living locally.  They raise their own turkeys, chickens, tomatoes, and beans and make festive meals seem like true harvest celebrations. Most people of my great-grandparents’ generation, “had an intuitive sense of agricultural basics:  when various fruits and vegetables come into season, which ones keep through the winter, how to preserve the others … Which crops can be planted before the last frost, and which must wait … What animals and vegetables thrive in one’s immediate region and how to live on those with little else thrown into the mix beyond a bag of flour, a pinch of salt, and a handful of coffee.  Few people of [Kingsolver’s] generation, and approximately none of our children, could answer any of these questions, let alone all.  This knowledge has vanished from our culture.  We also have largely convinced ourselves it wasn’t too important.[11]”  But it is!

  Kingsolver aligns herself with the slow food or localvore movement, focusing upon the distance that food must travel to reach her family.  Camille, Kingsolver’s daughter and a co-author writes of the problem with bananas.  “Many summers ago, best friend Kate, from Tucson, came out to visit the family farm in Virginia for the first time.  She was enamored of our beautiful hills, liked working in our garden, and happily helped pick blackberries from the sea of brambles that skirt the surrounding fields … But one day, on a trip to the grocery store, we hit a little problem.  When my parents asked if there was anything in particular she would like to eat, she replied, ‘Let’s get some bananas!’  Baffled by Barbara Kingsolver’s refusal, in the car it was explained to Kate that it seemed wasteful to buy produce grown hundreds of miles away when we had so much fresh fruit right now, literally, in our backyard … Plus, think of all the gasoline it takes to bring those bananas here.”[12]

  Barbara Kingsolver’s family decides to make some radical changes to their eating habits and can document the benefits.  We do not need to make such dramatic changes in order to elevate eating from ordinary to sacred, from chol to kadosh.  We can stop eating on the run.  We too can savor every morsel because food is that precious. 

  Today the Jewish community is on the brink of what I believe is a major step forward in the reclamation of our food.  The kosher food production process is being pushed to to meet with our ethical standards, from chol to kadosh.  The Central Conference of American Rabbis following the lead of our Conservative colleagues signed onto the “hekhsher tzedek” movement. 

  Hekhsher Tzedek came out of concerns about the treatment of employees with particular attention focused upon fair wages, benefits, healthy and safety, employee training, quality control and animal welfare, corporate accountability and integrity, and the environment at kosher food production plants.  The idea being the Jewish community cannot responsibly eat kosher slaughtered meat that that comes from a plant where employees are not treated well.  It is not possible to rank one ethical standard above another, fair treatment of workers on par with an aversion towards animal cruelty.

  The initial locus of concern comes from Agriprocessors, the largest kosher slaughterhouse in America.  Recently the owner was charged with 9,000 misdemeanor counts of child labor violations.  The Orthodox Union, the principle provider of kosher supervision announced it will suspend supervision unless new management is hired at the plant.  Undercover reports revealed workers without adequate training, and the employment of illegal immigrants who do not receive health care or adequate pay.  Quickly the movement broadened and questions about all foods we eat as Jews. 

  “Hekhsher tzedek” calls for an additional marker on any type of commercial product, a marker that indicates the food item is produced in a way that meets benchmarks consistent with Jewish ethical standards.  This symbol, like that of certified fair trade or dolphin-safe, would indicate to the consumer that the producer cares.  This mark then enables us, the consumers, to not only shop for food products, but to shop reflections of our values. 

  We are at a new beginning.  Rosh Hashanah is a time for reflection, rejoicing, and for realigning ourselves with our priorities.  Now is the time to make the changes in what we choose to eat.  Now is the time to make changes to our shopping.  Now is the time to reconnect with the processes by which food arrives to our tables.  I know that no one here wants to take advantage of workers or to disconnect from our words of appreciation.  During the next ten days we can start to make small changes.  For some, maybe it is cutting back on diet coke.  Others might want to try saying motzi when sitting down to eat bread.  Try taking the extra twenty seconds to read where the produce going into the shopping basket comes from if there an option between Ontario and elsewhere choose local.  We do not need to make a radical change like Barbara Kingsolver.  We need to make mindful choices. 

Low-fat, no-fat, sugar-free, on sale, full price, two-for-one, organic, locally grown, day-old, farm-raiser, cage-free, kosher, kosher style.  We can bring our own bags or pay for them.  It almost makes a person want to throw up their hands and run for the farm stand.  Quickly our sense of awe and wonder turns to anxiety and frustration.  This does not have to be so hard.  All of these movements; hekhsher tzedek, localvore, diet-coke weaning, take tremendous discipline and require extra time and money.  But I don’t think eating our values needs to be too complicated, it just requires a little bit of time, no money, and a lot of perspective.  When we sit down to eat we need to take a moment of appreciation.  Perhaps simply a deep breath before the first bite is enough.  Maybe, if we’re eating bread a motzi.  If someone made the food, we could do a better job of thanking them – that kitchen sign “kiss the cook” might not be so silly! These are small steps as part of a bigger project to reclaim awe and wonder for the miracle of creation, the process of bringing forth sustenance from the earth, and having sufficient food to eat.  Hopefully then, we won’t have to turn to rabbis for pardon when eating like Moshe!

---

[1] This was originally posted at http://jcarrot.org/what-diet-coke-taught-me-about-food-tshuvah/#comments.  With Rachel’s permission I have summarized her story.

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat Sept. 16, 2008

[3] Ps. 104:14

[4] Translation my own, based upon other uses of “l’hotzee” in other places, especially the Prophets.  Also, I interpret herbs or herbage as plants. 

[5] Heschel, Abraham Joshua.  God in Search of Man.  33-34.

[6] Ibid, 46.

[7] Deut. 22:9

[8] Lev. 19:-10

[9] Lev. 19:23-25.

[10] Kingsolver, Barbara.  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A year of food life.  New York:  HarperCollins, 2007.  3.

[11] Ibid, 9.

[12]Ibid, 310.

shanah tovah

may you and your family be blessed with a year of happiness, good health, unexpected adventure, visits to canadia, laughter, close friends, loving family and peace.

you need to be rich to be an active reform jew it seems

the cost for nfty convention this year is $985 without transportation costs to washington, d.c.

the youth workers conference is $1100 for a double occupancy room, again without transportation.

the us economy is uncertain. who will be able to attend? discuss.

another classic "compliment"

today i read sammy the spider's first rosh hashanah to a room of three year-old students at the request of their teacher. everything went well. i got up to leave. this is the dialogue.

"do you have children of your own?" asked the teacher.

"no." I said.

"what a waste." said the teacher.

charming.