Rabbi Chaya Gusfield, Jewish Renewal, rabbi, spiritual director, chaplain
Everything we know leads back to the river of loss and the lessons woven within her gentle ripples and harsh currents.
Each day we choose the dip.
Some days the dip is forever tears.
Other days the tears become a mikveh, we step gently into the waters of the womb of God, offer a blessing, and emerge with a New Name.
Another day comes. We begin again.
This is the drash (sermon) I gave at my rabbinic ordination in January, 2006. It is still relevant today. As I celebrate my 16th year as a rabbi, I share this with you. The Torah portions mentioned were read in synagogues during the prior two weeks during 2021/5782.
In this week’s Torah portion, Vayechi, Jacob blesses his son Joseph, by giving Joseph’s sons Maneshe and Ephraim a blessing. He says “y’varech et hana’arim v’yikare b’hem shmi v’shem avotai avraham v’yitzchak .” (Genesis 48:16) “Bless the young ones, may MY name be called through them and in the name of my forefathers Abraham and Isaac”
Simply stated, “May the memories of the ancestors be upon them as a blessing.”
We also see in Shmot, next week’s parashah, God says to Moses, “Ze shmi l’olam, v’zeh zichri l’dor dor.”(Exodus 3:15) “This shall be My name forever. This is my memorial from generation to generation.”
Once again, the name is used for a blessing.
In our tradition, we say of loved ones who have died, “Zichronam livracha” “May their memory be a blessing.”
Sometimes we say, “alav or aleha shalom”…May peace be upon him or her.
This is one of our most precious meditation practices. When we mention the dead and stop to say zichrono livracha, or aleha shalom, we have the opportunity to continue our conversations with them, to receive blessing, and to offer them blessing, through the process of remembering them.
One day, I received an unexpected call from someone I didn’t know from New York who was trying to reach someone else at Kehilla Community Synagogue and stumbled upon my name and number in the process. She told me that she knew my family from when I was a child. My whole family. And then she said, “I knew your sister Julie, zichrona livracha.” She said that they were the same age. It made me stop. The fact that she said her name and then followed it by zichrona livracha took my breath away. I don’t believe I had ever heard anyone say Julie’s name with that blessing before. I asked myself, what was the blessing that I was suppose to receive by remembering her in this moment? I thought about it for many days. What is the blessing? My sister died a tragic death and for most of my life remembering her did not always feel like a blessing. It was a difficult memory. It brought great pain and suffering to our family.
I suspect that there may be people in your families who have died for whom remembering them wouldn’t always feel like a blessing. And yet, our tradition asks us to remember them as a blessing EVERY TIME we mention their name. Is this a mean trick–a way to ignore reality? I believe it offers us an opportunity. An opportunity for healing.
Reb Marcia invites us to see a bracha (a blessing) as the process of humbling ourselves by bending the knees (birkayim), reaching into the pool (breycha) and experiencing the fountain of blessings as ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES.
Zichrona livracha –“may her memory be for endless possibilities”. Whether you are the survivor of someone who experienced a tragic death, whether you have only difficult feelings about the person who died, or whether all you can remember are sweet moments, by saying zichrono livracha, we open the door to endless possibilities. To anger, radical amazement, deep grief, a softening of the belly, the warmth of our heart, deep humility. The key is that there are endless possibilities…The door is open to those who have died, and to our own healing process.
“Zecher tzaddik livrecha l’chayei haolam haba” “Remember this good person for a blessing for life in the world to come.” By saying this expression when we remember someone who has departed, we send blessings to them-endless possibilities-in the world they inhabit.
We come together today in sacred community, a day filled with many brachot, many blessings. A day that offers us endless possibilities from the deep pool of blessing.
Please join me in dipping into that pool by bringing into your heart and mind someone in your life who has died, to remember them for a blessing of endless possibilities.
The door is open to continue your conversation with them. We may think we know what this conversation should be, but just for today, just for today, allow the conversation to arise on its own-in the quiet and sacredness of this community.
Zecher tzaddik livracha — May their memories bless our lives….
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One of my favorite things to teach is ways to approach Jewish prayer so that it opens a place in your heart that is deeply personal. The recipe I use is approaching prayer as medicine, unlocking it’s healing remedies through learning, singing, creative writing, sharing, and listening in a small group. We write about how we connect to the prayer and our classmates listen for the words that jump out and touch us. Participants have shared that after this class, prayers they thought they knew were awakened more deeply for them. And the new prayers landed in their hearts.
Please consider joining me or telling a friend about my upcoming class of Prayer as Medicine, four Thursdays at 5 p.m. PST, starting December 2 and ending Jan. 13 (ever other week). Limited to 8 participants, cost is $144. Send me a note if interested. https://rabbichayagusfield.com/contact/
New art endeavors. I end this post with a few new pieces of art I have made. If you like my art, let me know if you would like some cards made with your favorite piece. I’d be happy to order you some for a small donation to cover costs. Check out Chaya’s Gallery https://rabbichayagusfield.com/home/chayasgallery/ to see your choices! They aren’t titled, so take a photo and send it to me. I’ll make you some cards….
Much love, Chaya
I have been deployed to listen and accompany others to help them feel the presence of something unnameable, unpronounceable, something Timeless. To deepen and find meaning in those moments. To cry, to laugh, to wonder, to appreciate. To feel.
I call myself a Spiritual Midwife or Accompanist, but in a way, I am a spiritual voyeur. I think “oh, what a beautiful moment of God”, or “how she is uplifted by the Sacred, or “how I love to witness the journey, the movement, the aha”. And then I feel it, too. Through their experience. How delicious.
And then it happens to me. It sneaks up on me, surprises me with a whisper or a melody or a movement. It is indescribable, but I know. I know I am having one of those moments myself. I want to share it, but somehow, I know it is just between me and the Shechinah.
A voice argues with me. If I can get you to feel what I felt, maybe something indescribable will happen to you, too. And then I remember each moment belongs to the moment, not to a different one. Yet, I give in. I will try to describe it anyway.
I have been shaking/waving the lulav for many years now during Sukkot. In my sukkah, made from colorful items, photos of our family and biblical ancestors, solar lights, with homemade and found objects. Like straw walls or screens, or the large palms that fell from a tree.
I know how to say the blessing for waving the lulav, to stand facing East, to shake the lulav 3 times each time I wave it. I wave it towards the East in front of me, then to the South, to the right, then towards the West, in back of me, then to the North, to the left, then up to the Sky and Heavens, and finally down to Earth. I end with the lulav close to my heart. Six directions, and then always arriving home at the heart.
I know different kavannot that remind me there is meaning to this ritual. Of unification, feeling the Presence, acknowledging the fragility of life, dreaming of the possibility of rain. I know when we shake the lulav during the prayer songs of Hallel we are to bring the lulav close to our hearts whenever we sing the name of God (Adonai). Hodu ladonai ki tov, ki l’olam chasdo, or Ana Adonai Hoshiana, or other psalms containing the name of God. We sing, we shake to the rhythm of the phrase, always to return the lulav close to the heart at Adonai. In the past, shaking the lulav during prayer songs has always been an effort. I fumbled, not knowing how to divide up the shaking to fit each word with the melody.
This year was different. Alone in my sukkah with the Pandemic Hallel Sukkot zoom service on my Ipad, this time Something happened. I focused on only one thing. When we say the name of God-Adonai, the lulav must be brought close to the heart. I discovered that’s all that matters. Once we bring God to our hearts, everything else falls into place and the dance of the shaking does its magic.
There is no effort, just God, close to my heart.
Once I feel God close to my heart, the rest of life is just dance.
I.
The dead. The alive. And those in between.
They are always with us. They always have been. They always will be.
Whether they are invited or not, we hear the hum of their unmistakable presence.
As we learn how to talk about the unspeakable, and when we fail miserably.
By our side, sitting on our shoulders, they comfort us during the nightmare, and whisper reminders of caution when memory is clouded by rage.
They carefully place breadcrumbs for us to follow when we are seeking a path to travel.
We feel them smile when we arrive home.
Our parents. All of them.
Ex-lovers who died before we could become family.
Future lovers, waiting in the wings.
Childhood friends, and even those we had hoped would play with us on the playground, but never did.
Babies we didn’t plan for who never came to be, babies yet to be born, and those who only dreamt of their birthday.
The dead, those alive, and those in liminal spaces, are always with us.
We dance with the memories of those we have yet to meet, woven into our moving hips.
II.
We wail with the ancestors we never knew. Some fled their homeland of Poland leaving families in lost graves. Never to return.
We journey to find them, behind locked Jewish cemetery gates crafted in the shape of menorahs. The cemetery is so large, one wonders how they were ever lost.
We celebrate with the grandson of a distant cousin becoming a bar mitzvah. In Argentina. During a pandemic. Masked on Zoom.
We have known these prayers and melodies for many lifetimes. They fill our eyes with life and heal wounds we didn’t know we had. They touch places that have no words.
We love a great-niece we have never held or touched or smelled. She cracks a smile and babbles through cyberspace. Making sounds of sheep. 
The heart hears. The soul sees her neshama.
They all find a place at our delicious Shabbes table. Every one of them.
There is homemade challah. Even dessert. Sometimes there is an apple cake. Or chocolate almond cake so rich you wonder if heaven might taste like this.
We hear the unexpected cries of the shofar in the neighborhood. Is it close? Or from another time and place?
We send sacred blasts back to the unknown shofar blower. We have always known each other. We don’t need to know their name.
They arrive for Shabbes and find a place at the table. They bring sweet wine.
We breathe for the man in the bed struggling to find his breath. We hold up the nurse who is caring for him and so many others with COVID-19. She is tired. We comfort her with song and sweets.
We swim in the river with the children, and we bury the ones who died during the Great Deluge. The First Flood, and the ones that continue.
Grief permeates. Swirling throughout our dreams.
Joy and despair from every time and space make their home within us. They find a place at our Shabbes table and raise a glass.
They are always with us. All of them.
L’chaim
Deborah was a woman who was adored by many and who adored life. As she celebrated many birthdays, her body began to contract into itself and cause her a great deal of physical pain, while her mind and heart expanded, reaching to the desert, reaching to the wisdom of the Jewish ancestors, and reaching to the ancestors of the land in which she lived. She learned and learned and wanted more than anything to continue to learn what there was to this life of hers and those around her. And yet, it was whispered that when she was on her death bed, when she had one foot in this world and one in the other, she was heard to say, “there was never anything we really needed to learn. We are born with all we need to know.”
A few years before Deborah died, the contraction of her muscles gave her such unbearable pain she said she was ready to be drawn to her kin. She decided to stop eating and drinking.
Yet, she forgot that she had a special and very unique gift that was greatly needed in her community. You see, Rosh Hashanah was approaching next month and there was no one who knew how to blow shofar for the elders who lived at the Jewish Home. They were in a search of a baal tekiah, a person to blow the shofar, especially with the holiness that sacred act involved. Someone remembered hearing Deborah blow the shofar in years past, and how much it had moved them. They approached her gently, “Deborah, might you be willing to blow the shofar this year?” At first she said she was tired and had no koach, no strength, for such a holy act. She was ready and preparing to die. But they said, “let us hold the shofar to your lips. Give it a try”. (Shofar is heard!) They had never heard anything as beautiful, filled with wailing, filled with the sounds from a place there were no words for.
They encouraged her to eat a little something and blow the shofar for the Jewish elder community for Rosh Hashanah and at the end of Yom Kippur. And of course at the beginning of the month of Elul she had to begin blowing shofar every day to prepare. Every day someone from the community came to her home to hold the shofar to her lips. She blew. Hearing the shofar coming from her lips awakened Deborah. She began to eat and spend her days practicing for RH, and helping the community prepare during the month of Elul. And that year, and for several years after, everyone in the Elder Jewish community was blessed to hear what they needed in order to return.
To return to the home they had always imagined. And Deborah, well I can only imagine what she was blessed with. And when she died, she said “there was never anything we really needed to learn. We are born with all we need to know.” Deborah’s story reminds us that the shofar call is one tool to help us remember what we already know.
As I blow the shofar this year, may the shofar’s call surprise you, awaken you, and transport you to places you had always imagined to return. And, maybe to a place you hadn’t remembered until now. And like Deborah said, “there was never anything we really needed to learn. We are born with all we need to know.” Ken yhi ratzon.
Sounds of the shofar
crying out
wailing
raising the alarm
How many years have the voices of many gone unheard?
Can we hear their Tekiyah?
their cry of summoning?
Can we hear their Teruah?
their cry of alarm and urgency?
Can we hear their Shevarim?
their weeping cry of brokenness?
What do you hear? What do you yearn to hear? What must we hear?
*Last year before Rosh Hashanah, Abbe and I collaboratively wrote this piece. This year she posted it on a rabbi list serve and we were thrilled to find that many people used it in their Rosh Hashanah services. Enjoy!
Inspired by being asked to bow our heads in prayer, put our hands together in prayer, and by the ”prayer” emoticon.
PART I
How does your body pray?
My Jewish body prays in silence,
in word, in song, in study, 
rocking,
wrapped in a tallit,
standing, sitting.
Prostrating on the ground.
Hands up to God, pounding the chest gently.
Holding a prayerbook.
Wearing a kippa or head covering.
Let us ask each other, how does your body pray?
And mean it.
Bring curiosity-what language sings the prayer of your soul?
What gestures bring you into exhale?
When I dance,
this Jewish body is transported to synagogue, rocking, hands outstretched, reaching to the Oneness.
Let us ask each other, how does your body pray?
This Jewish body prays in communities, large, and small.
Offers prayers to bless our children and to heal our families and neighbors.
Sings to celebrate weddings, and is silent to mourn our losses.
This Jewish body offers words of thanks and intention when studying and eating.
Blows the shofar, wailing, crying, alarming at the beach and in shul.
Recites, sings, and studies liturgy of 2021 and 200 BCE-from the prophets, the rabbis, the mothers, that land in the middle of our lives, impossible to ignore.
How does your body pray? I mean it. I want to know.
PART II
Centuries of our people exiled, erased, and expelled
Violent forced conversions.
Cellular wounds explode, memories rise
We don’t pray with palms together, fingers pointing to the sky, with head bowed,
Except when we know our lives have depended on it.