Rabbi Chaya Gusfield

Rabbi Chaya Gusfield, Jewish Renewal, rabbi, spiritual director, chaplain

Reflections on Love


Filed Under: Chaplain Reflections, Grief Writings, Healing, Prayer, Reflections on Love
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This Poem Was Always by My Side

They are always with us.  They always have been.  They always will be.

As we eat, breathe, and mourn. As we grow, and when we make mistakes. As we love and as we struggle. They are with us.

By our side, sitting on our shoulders, they comfort us when we call out to them, and even when we don’t. They carefully place breadcrumbs for us to follow when we are lost or searching.

The dead, those alive, and those in liminal space.

Our parents, ex-lovers, relatives, unborn grand and great grandchildren, future lovers, childhood friends, and even those we had hoped would have been our friends but weren’t. Aborted babies and babies yet to be born.

We dance with the memories of those we have yet to meet, woven into our moving hips.

We wail with the ancestors we never knew. Some fled their homeland of Poland leaving families in lost graves, behind gorgeous locked Jewish cemetery gates. Never to return.

We celebrate with the grandson of a distant cousin. He is becoming a bar mitzvah in Argentina, during a pandemic. On Zoom. We have known these prayers and melodies for many lifetimes.  They fill our eyes with life and touch places that have no words.

We love a great niece we have never smelled.  She cracks a smile and babbles through cyberspace. Making sounds of sheep.

The heart hears. The soul sees her neshama.

They all come to our Shabbes table.  Every one of them.  It is delicious.

There is homemade challah. Even dessert. Sometimes it is an apple cake.  Or chocolate.

We hear the unexpected cries of the shofar in the neighborhood.  Is it close?  Or from another time and place?

We send the sacred blasts back to the unknown shofar blower.  We have always known each other.  We don’t need to know their names.

They arrive for Shabbes and find a place at the table.  They bring 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.

We swim in the river with the children, and we bury the ones who died during the Flood. The First Flood and the ones that continue.

Grief permeates. And guides our dreams.

Joy and despair from every time and space make their home within us.  They find a place at our Shabbes table.

They are always with us.

Even the sounds of the frogs and the quail can be heard.     L’chaim


Filed Under: Grief Writings, Healing, Reflections on Love, Writings on Suicide
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Safety Box

After the vaccine, we slowly begin to engage in a list of “safer” activities, previously postponed.

A dentist appointment, getting hearing aids, a gathering at the house.

I walk  to the bank to retrieve the thumb-drive. Photos of my parents who have been dead for several years.

My ancestors speak to me there in that small, windowless room, in the back of the bank.

Just me and the long, metal box. And their voices.

They surprise me. They demand something of me.

They grab, grasp, reveal.

They confess, plead, regret.

They celebrate, invite, even sing.

“Listen to the voices speaking from the box,” they ask.

Two green jade necklaces laying silently on top of crumpled envelopes. Gently welcoming me inside.

A handwritten letter from a man grieving the lack of his integrity. The friends he lost because of his lies.

The 80th birthday celebration invitation-a photo of when young dad was in the army.

The black and white folded form ketubah*-with Hebrew names I never knew.

The letter from my older sister: the last words she left us before she took her life. The cry of her desperate 21 year old  handwriting on a small piece of yellow lined paper.

Her words drip with history and detailed planning.  How much she misses us and how sorry she is. I feel her love for each one of us; sister, brother, mother, father. And the regret for her life.

She decided to die before she was called home.  Or maybe she was called, and we just can’t understand. We always call her Julie, but she signs the paper left on the bed-stand in a motel room with the name Julia.

My grandmother’s three thimbles that helped sew those marvelous creations.  Satin, velour, beaded dresses, and jackets with padded shoulders and intricate buttons. Oh how I miss her warm, rocking lap.

My mother’s rushed and excited note to her parents, conveniently saved in their wedding announcement. “Darlings, you won’t believe what I have to tell you!”.  (“Don’t forget my handwriting” mom whispers to us across time.) 

After dementia wouldn’t let go, fifty announcements of their new address carefully designed with loving photos, colorful hope, saturated with grief. Stuffed into envelopes ready to go.  Never mailed.

Silver dollars saved for decades from every Chanukah or special occasion. How many hands touched these coins?

The birth certificates of those I never knew.

The court decree of the Guzuvsky name-change to Gusfield. Running from anti-semitism.

Why do they call it a safety deposit box? It takes my breath, squeezes my throat, and tears me open with aching connective tissue.

It’s not a safe box.  Let’s call it an invitation from the beyond.

 

*Ketubah is the Jewish marriage document


Filed Under: Healing, Prayer, Reflections on Love
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Letter to the Generations that Follow

The torn, faded photo books filled with nameless, unrecognizable people, frozen in time, sit in our drawers, move in boxes from house to house.  May you find them at the perfect hour.

We wonder where each bead came from, and where they might find you in years to come.  Adorning you in celebration.

Carefully crafted pieces of art whose paintbrush strokes with saturated or diluted colors, reach out to you in a whisper.  Hoping to stir.

We leave you a tin box with index cards of recipes.  Some handwritten with spills of food.  Smells that linger. Some cut from the local newspaper Cooking Corner.  Each recipe whose food blessed our seders*, our Shabbat gatherings, and our shiva minyanim*.  Eaten with delight, or during moments when we were barely able to swallow. There was ancestral comfort.

Will our poems be found after 200 years in order to save a life? Will they end up in ceremony or ritual?  Will that ritual bring the water needed for repair?

We can only hope. We can only hope.

May our lives be joined with yours, bringing a tender remembrance to all that is welcome, and may our fragrances dance throughout your life and be only for a blessing.

When you allow these connections to slowly fade, may they find new places to heal and surprise.

As you let go, may you find a gentle peace, meant just for you.

And let us say, Amen.

 

*seders: home Jewish ritual celebrating Passover

*shiva minyanim: gathering at the mourner’s home for seven days after the burial of a loved one.


Filed Under: Chaplain Reflections, Healing, Prayer, Reflections on Love, Spiritual Direction
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A Prayer for a Friend

She came to me in humility

In humility I respond

As I connect, or yearn to connect, with something greater than anything we know in this earthly plain.

Let the yearnings of my sister friend be felt, through a sense of easing.  Let the breath release, let the inner and outer match, and medicine flow through her body and spirit.

I pray that what she eats and where she walks and her moments of sleep bring her shalem-wholeness.

May the sky and the earth and the waters hold her.

She came to me in humility.

In humility I respond.

 

(I was honored to be asked to write a prayer for her when she was in need. Maybe it will help you, too.  When I have the opportunity to pray like this, it is also healing for me.)


Filed Under: Reflections on Love, Uncategorized
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Remember

I remember mere fragments of my childhood.

Ice storms that quieted the day’s regular patterns.

Practicing the violin as I looked out at the ice and snow and saw cold everywhere.

In second grade we learned about clouds. We looked up every day.  Talking with God. Without language.

Lilacs, purple, abundant, outside my window.  The bunnies and the cherry trees.

In the summer heat of Illinois, the smell of the chlorine at the large, crowded, noisy, public swimming pool.

The taste of the wetness as I stayed under water looking at all the white legs kicking.  My first kiss.

I don’t remember when I learned there were legs of many shades or when I wondered why I only saw white legs there.

Maybe it was in India, 5 or 6 six years old. Attending a British Catholic school run by white nuns. I am the only white child. And Jew.

At 14, I wondered about Jesus and reading the New Testament. An act of independence, searching.

When did I feel shame for my body, being a woman? I don’t remember when I became a feminist. When I became angry.

Or the moment I understood that mental illness and patriarchy were interwoven.

I ran after my mother’s tennis balls.  Now she is attached to the couch.

(When did I start to slow down, have trouble getting up off the floor, or taking my first steps in the morning?)

When did I fall in love with you?

Sitting on the beach and watching you pray to mama ocean.

I remember my big dark hair, curls, depth, wild.  My hair is grey.  When did that happen?

 

 

 

 


Filed Under: Grief Writings, Healing, Kaddish Musings, Prayer, Reflections on Love
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A Prayer for Yarzheits (or any other ritual time of remembrance)

I remember and honor you with love and humility.

You taught me through words and deeds.

Forgive me, if I did not let that be known to you during your lifetime.

May my thoughts, words, and actions help your soul rise and soar.

I pray with all my heart that you continue to be deeply connected to all that has lived, is living, and will live.

Through this remembrance, may we all be aligned with God, God of our ancestors, and one another.

And let us say, Amen*

 

*There is no traditional prayer when lighting a yarzheit or yizkor candle. The simple prayer above was inspired by the study of the teachings of Rabbi Eliezer Papo regarding honoring our parents. I hope you can use it.  Below is a closer interpretation of that prayer.  We were especially struck by the fact that he included father-in-law, mother-in-law, etc., not often found in a prayer of remembrance like this.  Our interpretation includes all who are close.  Our dear ones.

Prayer for Yarzheit or other time of Memorial (unveiling, yizkor)

Written collaboratively by Rabbi Shalom Bochner, Rabbi Eli Cohen, Rabbi Chaya Gusfield

Inspired by the teachings found in Pele Yoetz.  Pele Yoetz is a book of Jewish Musar literature (Ethics) first published in Constantinople in 1824 by Rabbi Eliezer Papo.

Our God, God of our ancestors, may I be aligned with You. May all the good deeds that I do, whether in thought, words, or action, be received by You with compassion and with favor. May all I do be for the merit, rest, and elevation of the life force, spirit, and soul of  XXXX  (insert name of father, mother, father-in-law, mother-in-law or any of those close who have gone before.).  May it be Your will that XXX ‘s soul (any dear one’s soul) be deeply connected to all that has lived, is living, and will live, eternally bound in the bonds of all life.


Filed Under: Reflections on Love
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This is a Shehechianu Moment

Welcome to my website!  Now Chaya’s Garden is part of the website.  A new beginning, a time of creativity and gratitude. It’s raining.  Let the rain heal and nourish the earth and all that inhabit her.  Thank you Ellen Tobe for all your brilliance, design, patience, and skill in making this happen.  I have learned so much from you.