MY URBAN KVETCH

Courage and Cowardice: A High Holidays Meditation Inspired by IKAR

Each year, IKAR asks its members to reflect on the year gone by, and submit personal stories on a particular theme - these essays and paragraphs are then published in a book that's distributed at IKAR during the High Holidays. The texts in this booklet provide an additional layer for those who are meditating on renewal, repentance and change and who may not always feel connected to the traditional liturgy or even to its modern tunes. Last year's theme was epiphany (and you can read last year's contribution here). This year, the theme was courage and cowardice (you can read more about this exercise here). My submission is below. Wishing you all a reflective, inspiring, healthy and peaceful new year.

Years ago, on a Friday night on the Upper West Side, I was on my way home from Shabbat dinner when I saw a woman walking on the sidewalk. All of a sudden, she pitched forward into the street. I sprang forward into the street which, thankfully, was free of motor traffic; helped her out of the street and back over to the sidewalk. I asked if she was okay and she muttered something about having forgotten her medication in a cab. I stayed with her another minute or so, asked her again if she needed anything and then headed on my way. My heart was beating very fast. I had done the right thing, without thinking about it. But I also heard other voices in my head – the voices that distrust late-night New York life, the ones that speak on behalf of my self-preservation and warn about sketchy behavior and potential danger.

Last month, I was driving in a not-so-great part of Los Angeles, but it was daytime. A pale, scraggly, lanky man crossed the street with a case of beer, then staggered and fell on the sidewalk, thrusting the beer ahead of him as he fell. Then he started crawling toward the beer, as if he was too unstable to stand, or as if his legs had ceased to function. I was stopped at a light - I watched with concern, but stayed in the car. I was late, there was traffic all around me, I felt pressure to ignore him, assume he’d get help from somewhere else. As I advanced through the light, I glanced back, and saw someone was helping him. A case could be made that my role was to keep an eye on him until someone else arrived who could help. But I still felt guilty for watching him as he suffered, and waiting for someone else to help him. It was not my finest moment.

So Long, 5772, and Thanks for All the Pomegranate Images

When I was young, I couldn't wait for the mail to arrive. If I was home, around 11am, I'd start to wonder, and to listen for the thud that I knew would come sometime in the next hour or so. Would I get a letter? A magazine? And from whom? An invitation to a birthday party? A letter from my Camp Ramah buddies? What would it be?

Now that we are in the era of electronic mail, I never have to worry about whether or not I will get mail. I will ALWAYS get mail. Perhaps less on Saturdays because of Shabbat, and certainly reduced volume for the Jewish holidays, but the email always comes. There's no thud to look forward to, no thick envelopes, or thin ones, or magazines - they all arrive in the same package. And the postman doesn't even have to ring, not even once.

Never is the constant flow of electronic mail more assured then preceding Jewish holidays. Chanukah is its own problem and may get its own post toward the end of the calendar year. But from about mid-August and for the next month, I get almost-hourly reminders that the holidays are coming and that there are no end to the number of holiday-related products I could buy or opportunities I could become involved with or organizations which are taking this opportunity to remind me that they're there and relying on my support for 5773. And I do support them. Some with dollars or shekels, others with social media support, and others by not unsubscribing from their constant email solicitations because - even though they're annoying - I know they do good work, and if they ever become not annoying with their solicitations, I would want to know about it. So I stay subscribed, only in the most extreme of cases putting my foot down, because I believe that some day, they'll change.

But that doesn't stop the frustration every holiday season as the emails start. And don't seem to stop. And I can't spend my time responding to each one, although I'd like to. So, I thought I'd write them an open letter.

IKAR's Sexy Shofar Man Wakes Up L.A.

Courtesy of IKAR, a progressive egalitarian spiritual community in Los Angeles come the stirring sounds of a man, his shofar, and his red hoodie. Who is this elusive shofar-blowing man? What is he doing in the streets of L.A.? IKAR explains:

[T]he upcoming High Holy Days are nothing short of a call to transform our lives, our city and our world.  So we sent our Sexy Shofar Man to hit the streets with his sweet shofar blowing to beckon the people of Los Angeles to wake up and think about what’s possible in 5773. 

We call them the High Holy Days, but Yamim Noraim can best be translated as "Days of Awe." These are days in which we step out of our daily routines and wake up to the mysterious gift of life itself. The message of the High Holy Days: everything is possible.  Things don't have to be as they are.  We don't have to be the people we have become.  We can repair, redirect, reframe the contours of our relationships and our lives. Reflect deeply, dream boldly, and discover a renewed sense of wonder and purpose.

“Street Shofar” is directed by Isaac Feder and features Michael Brous (AKA, brother of IKAR Rabbi Sharon Brous) as Sexy Shofar Man. Still tracking down the person in charge of wardrobe, who gave SSM his soon-to-be-signature look.

To find out more about IKAR - and to join me and other creative and eclectic individuals there for the holidays - visit: www.ikar-la.org.

 

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"Covert Affairs" Goes to Israel

Those of us who have been watching the USA Network show "Covert Affairs," also sometimes known as "poor man's Alias, but with Piper Perabo playing gorgeous spy Annie Walker and with a hot blind guy working tech," have been delighted by the occasional appearance of Israeli actor Oded Fehr actually playing an Israeli. The delight has continued as Fehr, playing Mossad agent Eyal Lavin, often breaks out into Hebrew when he's impatient, a detail that is doubly delightful because a) the Hebrew is actually correct and well-pronounced (Fehr, after all, is legit Israeli), and b) the impatience with Americans that causes Lavin to mutter almost to himself in his native tongue is authentic and well-known to many of us who have visited Israel over the years.

There have been three appearances by Eyal Lavin so far over the course of the three seasons - the most recent one a few weeks ago, in "This is Not America" (see trailer embedded below), and it was one of the most Israel-centric television episodes I've seen. From the opening sequence, featuring music by Matisyahu, to the use of Hebrew, both with and without subtitles, and even extending to some cultural truths ("when I get voicemail, I hang up" and "everyone's been touched by terror - it's the reality of life in Israel") there's more Israel education in this one episode of this spy show than there is at most Jewish events. (More commentary after the jump.)