May 31, 2020

It is Sunday morning. I woke up early today, unable to sleep, my mind replaying the horrifying image of George Floyd’s final minutes of life. I feel compelled to write to you this morning to express my rage, my heartbreak, my helplessness–yet again–as I sit from my place of white privilege and watch as yet another black person’s murder is captured on a cellphone for all the world to see. “Thank God a young person had a camera to video it,” Governor Tim Walz said. Thank God indeed. And yet, my God, when will this stop?

I write even though I don’t know what to say. We have so much to learn, especially those of us in our congregation who have the privilege of walking through the world with white skin. Our country is on fire with protests, even as COVID19 continues to take lives every day, a disproportionate number of whom are black and brown people. I am speechless beyond crying out. I don’t know how to fight the systemic racism upon which our country was built, or how to use my white privilege to heal even one tiny piece of this land, and so I pray and write to say at the very least that I stand as a witness to this injustice. I commit to conversations with my white sons about the glaring inequality and violence in our country. We see you, black America. You are not alone. Black Lives Matter.

I would like to share a few resources for those of you who might be looking for ways to learn or engage more in response to this time in our history. The URJ came out with a statement on Friday that is worth reading. As always, they lead the way in the Jewish world in responding with eloquence and conviction to hatred and violence:

https://urj.org/blog/2020/05/30/urj-statement-witnessing-protests-rage-and-our-torahs-unbending-demand-justice-0

For those of you who have 18 minutes to watch something thoughtful and powerful, here is Trevor Noah’s response as well. It does have some curse words for those of you who might be inclined to watch with children:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4amCfVbA_c

Lastly, there are lots of resources out there, so here is just one article from KQED that outlines a few ways to be a racial justice ally:

https://www.kqed.org/arts/13881199/5-ways-to-show-up-for-racial-justice-today

May God’s grace and protection shelter us all,

Rabbi Chabon

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As I sit in my office writing, the world outside is literally on fire.  The smoke in the air is suffocating, and this from a fire all the way in Chico.  The air feels like a fitting backdrop to the state of our world: on fire in every direction. There is immense fear, and unexpected grief; there is shock and numbness in response to yet another mass shooting; there are deeply moving acts of solidarity and comfort; there is rage, despair, strength and inspiration.  Nothing feels stable, except in moments of grace and connection and love.  I used to believe that God watches over us, maybe even guides us, throughout our lives.  Lately I’ve come to believe that God is simply with us, throughout our lives, in our pain and joy, our companion as we walk through the fire.

I feel God’s comforting presence most strongly when we come together in community to pray and sing, to affirm our hope and courage in the face of fear and doubt.  I have always wanted that kind of spirit to infuse our Nishma service at CBT, but never more so than this month, when we need the healing medicine of prayer and song.  The goal of Nishma is to weave together traditional Hebrew melodies, beautiful music and time for contemplation in our creative, spiritual Shabbat laboratory.  If that’s the kind of medicine you are needing right now, please join us at 10:00 on Shabbat morning in the social hall for our Nishma service. We will also be dedicating our hand-made Ner Tamid during the Torah service, which will be a moment of gratitude and celebration for all.

And parents!  This month our beloved Morah Rebecca from Gan Gani will be providing Torah-themed childcare!  It’s a win-win situation all around:  happy kids spending time with a wonderful teacher, and  happy parents getting to nourish their souls.  See you there!

Shabbat shalom,

Cantor Chabon

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The older I get, and the more deeply my heart breaks at the lack of compassion and respectful communication in the world, the more I believe that our healing and survival are going to depend on people learning to talk to each other.  Specifically, people who have opposing views of the world need to learn to listen to one another, to see God within the heart of people with whom they vehemently disagree.  I see the world splintering into us’s and them’s everywhere I turn: citizen and immigrant, Democrat and Republican, men and women, Christian and Muslim and Jew.  Rather than opening our hearts to one another at a time of national and spiritual crisis, we are building walls around our convictions and hiding in the comfort of like-minded communities.  If that does not change, we will soon forget that we must hold onto the conviction that we are more united than we are divided.

Sometimes those conversations happen directly, with intention, in a structured way.  That is the ideal scenario, to facilitate the dialogue in a healthy environment of open-mindedness and shared goals.  I would love to see more of those conversations at CBT in the coming months and years.

Sometimes those conversations happen spontaneously, unexpectedly, which can, and often does, lead to harsh words and undesired consequences.

And sometimes, those conversations happen as a result of a different kind of community building: when you bring people together to pray or sing or do service work side by side, they begin to talk to one another differently out of that shared experience, to see more humanity in the other.

Whatever the path to changing the way we talk to one another, I am in favor of it.  I choose honesty and giving each other the benefit of the doubt.  I choose prayer as a vehicle for healing.  I choose hope.  It is in this spirit that the Shir Joy band and I are returning this Sunday morning at 10:00 to offer the music for Orinda Community Church’s Sunday morning worship service.  We share many values with the members of this beautiful, open-minded community, but our lens upon the world is necessarily different because they are Christians and we are Jews.  We could let this boundary stop us from praying and making music together.  Or we can accept an invitation to blend our worship experiences, to praise God by different names, so that we remember, perhaps for just one hour on one Sunday morning, that even small acts of reaching out can shift the balance towards the good.

I hope to see many of you there.

Shabbat shalom,

Cantor Chabon

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Have you ever wondered why Yom Kippur is the best-attended day of the entire Jewish year? So many Jews belong to synagogues, send their kids to religious school, and only show up on the most serious and intense day of our ritual calendar.  It really tells you something about the Jewish people!

Why, for example, isn’t sukkot the holiday that brings in the greatest number of people?  Sukkot is one of our most joyful, stress-free, meaning-rich holidays, and the majority of Jews miss it entirely.  After we all survive the roller-coaster of emotions that we experience on Yom Kippur, Sukkot is like a Divine gift, a sweet little ritual dessert to reward us for all of our hard spiritual work during the high holidays.  It does take effort to put up a sukkah, but it is worth it every time.  The weather is always ideal for sitting outside for a meal with friends, for reading, even for sleeping on a warm fall night.

In honor of this wonderful harvest festival, I want to invite you to our second-annual drumming in the sukkah, on Saturday night, September 29th (this upcoming Saturday!) from 6:30-8:30.  Our Shir Joy drummer, Debbie Fier, will bring lots of drums and rhythms, I will bring songs and chants and we will provide drinks and dessert.  This evening is open to the whole community and children are encouraged to come!  Our sukkah was filled with beats and songs and great energy last year.  It promises to be even more wonderful in year two.

The cost is $10 for adults and children are free.  We will do havdalah in the sukkah to end Shabbat together.  I hope to see you all there!

Cantor Chabon

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Last year, I began to cultivate a friendship with Reverend Jim Burgquist of Orinda Community Church, after he invited me, Rabbi Gutterman and the Shir Joy band to provide the music for his worship service one Sunday morning.  That experience was so joyful, and so hopeful, that it dared us to dream of creating that kind of interfaith experience outside the walls of a church or synagogue.  That dream led to many conversations and cups of coffee, which led to the The God Experiment, an interfaith event that will weave together music, storytelling and a sprinkling of spirit, with the hope of infusing holiness and unity into a secular space.

Jim and I met many times at the Peet’s in Orinda to envision this evening together.  We knew we wanted to bring stories and music from our faith traditions, and that we wanted to invite other talented performers and musicians to join us.  So we reached out to our very own Ariel Luckey and Lisa Zeiler, and percussionist Kevin Weber, to bring their talents and passions to the stage with us.  We wanted to gather in the evening, in an unexpected, public space, with wine and beer and great sound and spirit.  The rest would just flow, which it has.

So what exactly is The God Experiment?  The experiment is both the transformation of a mundane space into a holy one, and the merging of interfaith folks in an unusual environment.  Can sanctity be created by people who don’t normally pray together, in a space that is usually reserved for entertainment? Can we, with intention, cultivate the belief that we are indeed more united than we are divided?

Can you come to The God Experiment if you don’t believe in God? Why yes you can!  This evening is for doubters, seekers and believers.  It is for people who are curious and people who are longing for joy and community.  It is for all of us.

Our first gathering of The God Experiment will be on August 26th at Neyborly–Poet’s Corner in Berkeley, doors at 6:00, show at 7:00. It promises to be a sweet evening!  Our flyer with more information is below. Tickets can be purchased here.

I hope to see you all there!

Shabbat shalom,
Cantor Chabon

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Fourteen years ago, as I was considering taking my first pulpit at a synagogue in Walnut Creek called Congregation B’nai Tikvah, I had a life-changing conversation with Stephen Richards, our cantor emeritus. I was hoping for some assurance in talking to him about what my experience would be like if I became the cantor here. He told me that he couldn’t, of course, predict the future, but he could reassure me that this synagogue would be a wonderful place to raise young children. He knew from his own years here what a kind and loving community it is.

With those words echoing in my heart, I took the job, and three short months after I started as your cantor, I was pregnant with my first child, Ezra Gabriel Chabon.
Cantor Richards was 100% correct about how it would feel to raise my boys in our synagogue. Ezra was just 8 weeks old at my second High Holidays, but I didn’t feel like the task was impossible, because I knew that I had the support and love of CBT to hold me up when sleep-deprivation and colic brought me down. I will never forget the first time Ezra toddled up to the bima and climbed into my lap to close the service with me. This truly is a very special place.

And now, 14 years later, we have reached another milestone. It is with tremendous love and joy in our hearts that Steve and I invite you to celebrate with us as Ezra becomes a bar mitzvah, on Friday night, June 15th, at our 7:30 Shir Joy service. Ezra will participate in the service and Rabbi Gutterman and I will offer him a special blessing in front of our beautiful ark. One of the most important parts of this lifecycle event in the life of a family is that the boy becomes bar mitzvah not in isolation, but with his community. You, our CBT family, will be witnesses to Ezra crossing the threshold into young adulthood, just as you have watched him grow into a young man.

We anticipate a very large congregation on the 15th, so please come early, carpool, and keep your eyes open on Springbrook for the shuttle that will be driving people up the hill from the overflow parking lot.

Many thanks and blessings,
Cantor Chabon

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The author Elizabeth Gilbert once said in an interview that she thinks that she and her sister ended up as authors because as children, they were taught how to do boring things for long stretches of time. And that out of the boredom grew creativity.

How many of us remember the experience of waiting for the bus with nothing to do but wait? Without a cell phone to distract us? When was the last time you just sat and did nothing? No screen, no talking, just sitting and being in the moment? Have we all forgotten how to watch the world go by?

Once a month I go to spiritual direction, which is essentially God therapy for clergy. I inevitably race into my spiritual director’s office after grocery shopping or driving carpool, or sitting in traffic for too long. When I walk in she always asks me, “Would you like to get quiet for a while?” My instinct is always to say no, to take advantage of my time by talking. But instead I always say yes. Yes, let’s just sit and be quiet and see how I’m really feeling today.

My mind shuffles through the broken record of usual refrains that are always on the tip of my tongue. The lists, the inner critic, the familiar voice of my mind trying to dominate my heart and soul. Then I breathe, and sit, and breathe some more, and force myself to just be, so I can find out what’s actually going on for me in that moment. And sometimes-often, actually-if I’m quiet for long enough, I do hear something. I see an image spring up that represents the state of my soul, or I remember a conversation I’ve forgotten, or I hear a snippet of a song that was lying dormant for the past month. And I trace the steps of those hints, those breadcrumbs, and I find my way back to where I am, right now.

Those images and memories almost always lead to a moment of clarity, an aha! moment that sets my mind on a path to discovering something important, or learning something I’ve needed to learn. A path to creativity and understanding. Or, as Gilbert says in that same interview,

“Oh, my God, this is a spark of creation that I’m working with, and this is magic, and this is life seen through new eyes.”

I don’t think that Elizabeth Gilbert is Jewish, but she certainly has a Jewish teaching to offer the world. Shabbat is, on the one hand, a day of gratitude. Of being thankful for all that we have, since the rest of the week is spent trying to acquire more.

But even more than that, Shabbat is a day of just being. Of stopping. Of being present with our families and loved ones. Of doing nothing so that our own creative thoughts and feelings can rise up from the ashes of our trampled work weeks. Shabbat is a day of creation from inaction, of inspiration born of stillness. It is a lifeline for any person willing to surrender to it.

My wish this Shabbat is for all of us to have just one moment–one minute, or one hour!-when we are all present enough for the light of connection and inspiration to emerge from the depths of our worn-out bodies, to guide us to life as it should and could be someday.

Shabbat shalom,
Cantor Chabon

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At our Passover seder every year, we always try to bring a few new songs and readings to enhance the seder, while of course continuing to do everyone’s favorite melodies and passages to honor their childhood customs.  It is such a wonderful way of keeping our family traditions alive, while also adding new ones to make sure that Passover stays relevant and fresh.  What a great symbol of the kind of transformation happening across the Jewish world today!

This year, we decided to close our seder by singing Matisyahu’s One Day, a song of hope and faith in a world where people believe that we are more united than we are divided, and that our common humanity will heal the world.  The day after our seder, our next door neighbors told us that they opened their windows and doors so they could listen to us singing our hopes and dreams into the night sky:

All my life I´ve been waiting for
I´ve been praying for
For the people to say
That we don´t wanna fight no more
They´ll be no more wars
And our children will play
One day, one day, one day!

Soon after Passover I discovered this incredibly inspiring video created by Koolulam, an Israeli mass singing experience whose mission is to spread joy through music by bringing together diverse groups of Israelis.  On February 14th, Koolulam gathered 3000 strangers for one hour to learn One Day, and then sing it together in three languages, as a symbol of coexistence.  It is impossible to watch this video and not feel your hope in humanity renewed.

I have watched this video so many times, in moments of despair about our country and our world, and in moments when I want to enhance the hope and joy that I am already feeling.  I share this video with you as a way of reminding us all this Shabbat that sometimes a simple act-bringing people together to sing-can have a transformational impact on our spirits and souls. May we all be inspired by the courage and joy of the people in this video to take leaps of faith for what we believe in and to always hold onto the belief that love wins.

Shabbat shalom,

Cantor Chabon

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