Me, around the same age as my sister Paula when she died. I am sitting next to her grave (called the Lollipop grave) in Boulder, Colorado. This gravestone was commissioned by my parents, because while holding Paula they saw her interest in one of DeWain Valentine’s watercolors, a heart shaped abstraction hanging in his studio. “Paula pointed to it with great animation and when we recalled that, after her death, we decided to commission DeWain to make it into a sculpture to mark her grave.”
Today, May 16, 2014 marks 50 years since my sister Paula died. I was inside my mother’s womb three and a half months from being born on that day. In this picture I am somewhere between two and three. My sister died three months short of her second birthday. Her death has marked my life as well as the lives of all our family. Death is a certainty for all of us, but no one wants a child to die or expects it.
I am truly a child of death, born into the grieving arms of my amazing and brave parents, who had to find love and presence to give me while being devastated about the loss of their firstborn beautiful child.
Every year at this time I light a Yahrzeit candle for her and remember her physical presence on this earth. This Jewish practice is so important to me and gives me a comfort that is beyond words. I feel connected to my sister across time and space and I remember her and honor her and recognize that her short time on this earth was real and deserves honoring.
Yahrzeit Candle and memory altar for Paula on anniversary of her death.
My parents have gone through various different ways of mourning her over the last fifty years. There is no way to navigate the territory of the death of a child right or wrong. It is all wrong.
Everything about a child dying feels wrong and those who have to cross that territory know this in a way that others who have not cannot really speak to. I have not lost a child to death and I pray I never do, but that is not within my control. Death is a certainty, there is no way out of it.
The mainstream culture runs kicking and screaming from this reality, racing as fast as they can from the idea that we all have a date stamp on us, one that we don’t know and cannot see.
If you are a practicing Buddhist, you spend a very long time imagining and looking at your own death in all kinds of different scenarios. If you are a Tribally aligned person, from anywhere around the globe, you recognize that the spirits of those who have died are here on this earth either to help or teach or hinder us based on many different factors. If you are an African Dagara Shaman like Malidoma Patrice Somé , you have a frame-work of belief that holds you, as the progeny of an ancestor, responsible for their wrong actions and the beneficiary of their good actions. If you are Hindu, you are engaged in a circle and chain of lives lived across space and time over and over in various forms. If you are Mexican you will make a feast and an altar of memories and offerings for your dead once a year and recognize and remember them together. Here, we just foolishly hope death will go away and try to avoid the topic. I’m summarizing very deep and profound beliefs here and could write many long essays on each of these, and perhaps I will, or as we say in my tradition, “go and study.” If something here stimulates you to learn more or go deeper, maybe even into the burial root ground of your soul.
I have studied and do study death more than most folks in our society. I am a co-founder of our community’s burial society called a Hevra Kadisha. I prepare folks for burial according to Jewish tradition. I have been called by death from within the womb-safe belly of my mother. I met my sister in that liminal space between, before my birth and after her death.
She was my angel in all the dark nights of my childhood, a sweet presence that helped me find hope, or pointed out the right direction.
I visited her grave as a child and have always held a place for her in my heart.
When I was a teenager I would visit the graveyard with my friend Gretchen Reinhardt and we would attempt to rescue or put back together gravestones that had been vandalized.
I was never afraid in that graveyard. All those dead were my friends. It was a quiet, calm place where I didn’t have to feel all the pain of those around me. No one was teasing me or hurting me and I never felt like an alien in the cemetery. I was at home there, I still am. Death and I have always been in relationship.
Which is why everyday of my life feels like an amazing gift that I need to live fully and well. I am not running away from the knowledge that I will die, that all those I love and cherish will die. I am acutely aware of this and I know it in my cells and in my blood. My umbilical cord blood was saturated with the pain of my sister’s passing, my very core has been colored by her passing. This is not a sad story though, while at the same time being the saddest story.
I am more than okay now as I round the corner towards fifty and I pass this spot on the calendar and I touch her once again in the cycle of remembering. I know that there is more to death than an end. I know this in my body, heart and mind, in my Lev (Hebrew for Heart/Mind) and in my soul and it is not just a comfort to me, it is a lifeline and a guiding force in my life.
I know this post will make my mother cry, but she and I have a long and deep understanding about honesty and truth-telling and being real with each other. We both have made and will make mistakes, but we are linked so very deeply in our connection to dealing with death honestly and with whatever we have to bring to the table around it. Others in my family do not often want to talk about Paula, but perhaps they will read this or maybe they won’t. My father used to take me to her grave as a child, this was not something I did with my mother. As an adult when I am in Boulder I visit her grave and place a stone on it.
Jewish folks bring stones to a grave, stones to mark that our memory for those who have left this earth is as long and durable and tangible as that of a stone or a rock. A rock has been around for millenniums and this symbolic act is our way of saying, “YOU are present for us still today.” It reminds us to do good and enact justice for those who are living. It reminds us to not throw stones, but to remember that everyone is precious and will be mourned by someone, so we shouldn’t go around killing folks EVER!
A rock says, I silently mark this territory and bear witness for you, even when you are in the ground yourself, I will still be here as a reminder of your presence on this planet, at this place.
Visiting my sister’s grave October 2014, leaving stones and saying prayers and remembering.
I have a mother who is an artist and who has been marking my presence and journey on this earth since before I was born into it. She has marked me with paint and pastel, with pencil and with cloth. Reminding me and anyone brave enough to visit this place of pain, death and life that we are always MORE THAN ONE.
We are all connected one to the other, now and forever and always and always.
I love you mommy and I love you Papa. I grieve for your loss, even still and especially, today fifty years later.
Thank you for loving me so deeply and magnificently!
Here I am, inside my mommy, right before I was born, more than one always!
May 14, 1989-Wedding Day, Billboard Photoshop made by Helen Redman
“Isn’t it always love that makes you hang your head, isn’t it always love that makes you cry and isn’t it always love that takes the tears away and I wouldn’t have it any other way.” –Karla Bonoff
So, tomorrow marks 25 years of being married to the same phenomenal man, my husband, who prefers if I do not talk about him in this public arena. So, I won’t go into the intimate details, but I do have to share a little about what is true for me as I am in this very real moment of my life.
I have been exhausted and overly engaged with the suffering, broken nature, wounding and pain of so many folks and the planet in the last year. Overly engaged is of course a judgment call and a loaded statement, and it’s how I sometimes feel. This morning I woke up feeling so congested with everyone’s pain that I was basically just a large mass of leaky tears. I feel the suffering of others in my body, I always have. I feel their pleasure and delight as well, their anger and their fear. I remember when the Empath character was first introduced on Star Trek and I was so happy to see someone who I could actually feel kinship with, it helped me feel less like an alien. Of course she was an alien, and often I feel like one as well.
“Kirk has suffered a cut on his forehead and when he touches Gem to see if she is all right, she recoils in pain. Gem composes herself and then touches Kirk’s wound. With a flash, the wound is transferred to Gem’s forehead. A doubting Kirk touches her wound and notes the blood on his finger. Suddenly, the wound on Gem’s forehead heals as well. McCoy, observing, is clearly impressed by her ability to heal and surmises that Gem is an Empath. Her emotional system is so sensitive that it feels the pain of another and that pain becomes part of her, before she dissipates it.” – from The Empath Episode
There are days when I wish I didn’t feel so much, didn’t love so much, but mostly
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
So, this morning my husband had to hold me while I cried, something he is very used to and has gotten better at over the years. We had to rouse ourselves to get our youngest son, Ethan, ready for his first IB test (International Baccalaureate). My boy asked me last night if I would make him a hearty and special breakfast. He wanted a home-made mama pancake and some plain yogurt with strawberries, bananas and cashews. So, I moved myself to get out of bed and make his breakfast before his first big major test of the IB.
I asked my husband to put some good music on and Karla Bonoff is who he put on for me. This was a mixed blessing, since every song made me start crying anew. And, yet the excellence of an artist at the top of her game is also something I feel deeply and when I experience beauty and harmony it also moves through me and washes every cell in my body with delight. My husband knows music as medicine and as balm and as stimulus. He knows it in his core and he wields this like a master wields a sword or a paintbrush and colors all of our lives with exactly the right music at the right time.
While endeavoring to do what I needed to do for my son, I was also trying to keep my tears from this lovely seventeen year old boy, who doesn’t need to know about my sadness right now, or ever really. His job is to do well and be well and not to navigate the territory of my empathic nature. It is generally not the job of our children to take care of us, even though sometimes they have to when they are young. When we are old, it will be their duty, but not while they are young, it is not their job. Unfortunately, life doesn’t always allow for this and many of us take care of our parents or feel their pain in different ways. This is the “tears of love” that one sometimes wishes we didn’t have to feel. Parents should feel the pain of their children, when they know about it. It is NO FUN at all when they are suffering, and it’s what motivates you to keep them from that pain if you can. You don’t have to be an empathic being to feel the fear and hurt of children.
My parents rejoiced deep in their bones when this man came into our lives. They knew he was a good man and that they could worry less about me and my wild and crazy ways. I had found a home, a good home, with a safe and kind man.
So, I bow now, deep and low to my husband, who is not a religious man, who works hard everyday for our family, who loves to joke and who loves music and books and art and all of us. He found me lost with two small children over 25 years ago and something in him said she’s the one. He fell in love also with my first two children, who were four and one at that time, and he took them to raise and be his own. He truly rescued us, and even though most folks don’t believe in fairy tales, I always have and do, and my prince did show up and has consistently shown up for all of us.
My tears have abated now, since I am writing about something truly extraordinary, the beauty and love of my marriage and the long journey of being with one extraordinary person over many years. It feels like five minutes, really. I need another 2,000 years with this man, but I know every day I get with him is a gift. Maybe, if our souls are linked across time, I will have 2,000 more years with him and perhaps I’ve had millions of years with him, I cannot know that.
What I do know is that it takes work and a constant commitment to love and to keep loving through the arguments, disagreements, frustrations, stresses and all the messy territory of sharing your life with another human being who is different from you. But it also takes a very special magic ingredient of overwhelmingly deep love and rightness. I could never have made it through 25 years with one man if he and I weren’t so absolutely right for each other. He is my Beshert, my other half, my soul-mate, my heart-mate, my choice-mate. His presence in my life is purely a gift. I won’t share him with you, but I will wish for all of you, someone like him, someone who makes every day better for you, who comes back to you, who pushes through with you, who tries to improve for you and who commits to you 100%.
Well, here I am again at 4:33 a.m. in the morning, sometimes I just have to get out of bed and start sharing. I had to drag myself out of the kitchen, after the tea water was ready. “I am not putting away dishes now, this is time to write and be creative in.” This is what I was saying to myself, as I walked out of the kitchen, then I saw the cat vomit on the floor, cleaned that up, and now I’m sitting at the computer.
My tea is next to me. I don’t really know where to begin, at least not without crying. For the past few days, I’ve been mostly in the body of a little boy who was in a head-on collision with his dad. His name is Chase Jesiah and he has a gorgeous smile and beautiful eyes. Jesiah comes with his grandmother to services I lead at our congregation. My services are always open to children, but most kids don’t feel too inclined to do that kind of thing. He always gives me hugs and thanks me and enriches anything I am doing. He will be okay, I believe this with all my heart. He’s been in Oakland at the children’s hospital there and has had lots of surgeries and doctors and nurses and family around him. He’s also surrounded by the prayers of our community and all the angels I can send his way.
His father, Wade, is in critical condition and at another hospital in Santa Rosa and will need a solid year most likely of recovery from his injuries. His father has not been surrounded just by loving kindness, but by judgments and difficulty. He is suffering also. I have only ever known Wade as a kind presence at his mother’s side at the funeral of his grandmother, Jesiah’s great grandmother, or when he has come to a service to pick up his son. I know the grandmother Hadasah best, because she has been a member of our congregation for years and years. Anyone reading this can just imagine the horror of all of this for the entire family and community. Everything else pales in comparison. I also do not know the outcomes for any of the other folks injured in this collision. I have been completely focused on praying for Wade and Jesiah and their family.
I’ve also been tending to my husband post his minor surgery and dealing with my own body’s exhaustion, post traveling to DC and helping my daughter recover from her third surgery which happened right before Passover. Then there was making Passover happen, then before that going back eleven months there has been a steady stream of accidents, deaths, financial challenges, friends and family in tremendous pain, illness, confusion and suffering, folks getting divorces, cancer, losing homes and hope. It’s been a really long and hard period of time, a marathon really of epic proportions.
I keep asking the Holy One, when will this stop, when will there be a break?
Apparently the answer to that question is: There won’t be.
So, how does one run a marathon? At full speed all the time, nope I know that doesn’t work. Slow and steady the whole time, well life isn’t like that, sometimes you have to really extend and work super hard to help folks or deal with something and you can’t be slow and steady. Stopping and starting, will that work? No, that doesn’t work either, at least not when it is a race, but I think some combination of all of these are how I am navigating this. And, I’m not running this particular marathon by myself. Everywhere around me is a throng of bodies in motion. We are all running, aiming towards the finish line, hoping it is coming soon, but the rules of this particular jaunt dictate that the finish line keeps being moved.
I really just want to curl up under a tree next to a river and not encounter another human being for a VERY long time. I want to cry and sleep and read and swim and watch the fish meander about. I want to listen to the sound of the water as it rushes past the rocks and the wind as it moves gently through the trees. I want to make stick and stone sculptures with whatever is at hand. I want to pray and never stop and not be interrupted. I want to feel the angels that are near me and just be with them in light and praise of the incredible gorgeous beauty of the Holy One and the Creation.
At least for this moment I can do that in my mind. I also just want EVERYONE I know and love and encounter everywhere to get it that they are loved and held by the Holy One. I don’t care if they are atheists or scientists or even if they actually belong to a religious community. I just feel that if people could actually see and feel the presence of wonder and holiness everything would be so much better for them. Duh!, but for some reason folks don’t see or feel the Grace and Beauty and Wonder that I do. And I cannot make them feel that, no matter how hard I try. I want to so bad, I want to just be like a magic fairy that waves her wand and makes everything appear golden and laced with mist and jewels and dew so that folks stop their angry responses and their despondency and their criticisms of self and others melts like butter in the sun.
I feel like I am the luckiest woman in the world. I have so much goodness and love in my life and even though I am tired and I want a break from all the beautiful people I love and who love me, I still am grateful for them and for all their unfoldings. So, tonight I will lead a healing circle for Jesiah and Wade, for all the folks in our community who have people to pray for, not just these two folks, but lots of others as well. We will imagine all those we love filled with light and being held by our love and prayers and by the angel of healing Raphael.
Then I will lay all of my wishing and wanting down and I will light Shabbat candles and usher in 27 hours of PURE MAGIC. It’s my time of prayer and sitting by the river in my heart and just not asking for anything, of trusting and reconnecting with all that is good and right in the world, because along with all the hard stuff, there is soooooooooooooo much that is good and right in the world.
Between now and then, I need to get some sleep, cook some food for the potluck meal at the Temple tonight, deal with my desk, plan the service I am leading, try and get a swim in and if I’m lucky have a few moments to just sit on my deck and enjoy the flowers. If I don’t get to that part today, for sure I will tomorrow, since this marathon mama does no running on Shabbat!
Here is the basket of goodies and cards that includes the chain of beads we prayed over and made to send to Jesiah and Wade.
This series of three combined into one long posting together here was written last year right before Passover/Pesach in the Spring of 2013. The story is relevant now, but the time references are from last year. I have also been preparing for Pesach right here in real time this year.
“It’s a small world after all.” That was my favorite song when I was little and I guess, in many ways, it still is. As I rush around getting ready for Pesach (Passover) and also for a trip to Spain and Morocco WAHOOOOOOOOOO! I’m a little bit more crazy than usual. And, I am trying to ride the WAVE of this time, rather than get smashed by it.
My name, Barchilon, comes from my paternal grandmother’s Moroccan name Perla Barchilon. My paternal Moroccan grandfather’s name was Jaime Cohen. When my father came to this country after WWII he didn’t want the name Cohen. It was way too Jewish and so he took his mother’s name Barchilon. Barchilon is a Jewish name too, it comes from the city of Barcelona, most likely. When my grandmother Perla’s ancestors were expelled from Spain in 1492 (the year the Jews were forced to flee Spain, convert or be killed), like many immigrants, the name of place left became the new name. The name Barchilon may also come from the Hebrew bar shelanu, or some form of those words which mean “son of ours.”
This journey I am going on with our son Ethan is through his school, the Northcoast Preparatory Academy. When I heard about this trip I told him, YOU ARE GOING! Then he asked me to come along. What’s money anyway? Who needs it? So, despite the cost and the challenges I decided to come along. My mother and my step-father graciously offered to help and since this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for me with my sixteen year old, I am on board. My husband also felt that it was of great benefit and supported the choice.
Part of why this trip appealed to me for our son Ethan, is that he and the other students going are acting and performing in a play in Barcelona. This play, “The Sheep and The Whale” was written by Moroccan playwright Ahmed Gazhali. The play is about crossing the Straight of Gibraltar and about illegal immigration, the hunger for a better life, murder, violence, poverty, and the longing for home and country that lives in the heart of many immigrants. It is based on a true story:
“ June 8th, 1992, at 2 AM a small wooden boat transporting 20 Moroccan illegal immigrants sank in the Straight of Gibraltar. A Russian freighter, that happened to be passing through the Straight as the drama was unfolding, managed to save one person and to pull out several bodies from the sea. In order to return the survivor and the bodies to the Moroccan authorities, the freighter was obliged to pay right of entry fees to the Port of Tangier. Negotiations dragged on until dawn…This event occurred a few days before Aïd Elkebir, The Festival of Sacrifice.” ~From the Moroccan newspaper, L’Opinion, 11th of June, 1992
Well, my father illegally crossed the Straight of Gibraltar as a young man on a fishing boat under a tarp of fish. He was with one other young man, they were both fleeing Nazi-Occupied Morocco to join up with the Free French Forces who had a large fleet ship in the port of Gibraltar. My father made it to that ship and joined the Free French Forces. He emigrated to this country after the war and that’s how I got here, although I was born in Paris. My father will turn 90 in Paris, while my sixteen-year-old son plays an Islamic Moroccan immigrant in a show in Barcelona. How could I not have my son be part of this story about crossing the Straight illegally and going to Marrakesh and Barcelona?
My father’s family lived in Morocco for over 500 years, it is only in his generation that they left Morocco. Before they left Morocco, they were in Spain, and before that they lived in the Holy Land of Ancient Israel and Palestine. I have one Uncle still living in Morocco, my Uncle Maurice Cohen, whom everyone calls Bébé (which means baby, since he was the youngest). My Uncle Bébé is now 86. He was a Moroccan tennis star when he was younger. Another small world connection, Ethan loves tennis and is currently number two on the “ladder” at his school. We will see my uncle when we go to Marrakesh, he lives in the mountains about two hours from there.
It feels absolutely monumental to me that I am getting to have this experience, earth-movingly huge. I am crossing the globe, this small planet with my son, flesh of my flesh of my father’s flesh, of his parents flesh, etc… back to our homes from not so long ago and from VERY long ago. Our family stories cycle in many many ways. This particular circling is one of choice and joy and yet, I can’t help but be thinking about all the folks forced to flee their homes seeking a better life or respite from war, famine, and oppression.
My own life has been one of abundance and love, with plenty of hurt and mess too, but not because of oppressive governments, war, religious intolerance or grueling poverty. The story of my people is one we tell every year in the present tense, never in the past. As long as there are people oppressed and endangered the story of fleeing oppression is not over. My son accompanies me on this journey, where he plays an illegal immigrant, a man torn in two by his need to connect with his people, his family and his home in Morocco and also a man who loved a woman and hoped for a different life. The character named Hassan is forced to confront his story on the freighter amidst great turmoil. He’s been living a life of lies with his Parisian wife and the story unfolds on stage and in real life, every day.
So, as many of you sit down for your Seders or celebrate spring in all the various ways we do in this country, I hope you will remember that the story is not over. Our re-telling and remembering must be followed up with ACTIONS to make this whole small world a place of peace, justice, kindness and goodness. A place where the flavors, colors and tastes of home are not forfeited as the price for the possibility of living with dignity and hope. Isn’t it time, really time, now to see everyone on this planet as members of our own family and to embrace them, not shun them, for their differences, languages, practices, gifts or wounds? It’s a small world after all.
Nicole will be winging her way to Barcelona and Marrakesh as you read these words, she will try to pen some thoughts while in the lands of her ancestors, and she sends you wishes for sumptuous feasts around your tables, with room for guests unknown and perhaps who don’t have home, but who might find it at your table if you invite them in.
The picture here is from a building on Calle Perla. My grandmother’s name was Perla, my Sephardic grandmother. I am surrounded everywhere by the history of my family. Every street feels familiar, every balcony seems like it could have been mine. The city feels like a friend, someone I had to leave behind but who never really changed.
Today I went on an Orange Donut Tour with Lisa, the other Chaperone on this trip and my friend Shullie’s parents Rona and Bernard. I am at the Ristorante Compostela waiting for them because I just couldn’t walk much further. City life is all about walking, walking, walking.
Walking is wonderful and my weight and feet make it hard for me to do everything at the same pace as thinner, more determined to see and do everything folks and also all those younger folks.
I love the neighborhood where we are. Each quarter or area has its own flavor and energy and unique character. There are currents here that, like in a fast moving river, you cannot always see or be aware of in advance and that catch one unawares. The whole Catalan vs. Spanish issue here is huge and I don’t know the signs of who is who yet. So, for example, I have been trying to learn and speak as much Catalan as I can, really just Thank You and a few other words. Thank you in Catalan is different. It is moltas gracias (spelling phonetic, no idea how it is spelled in the actual language). So, while I was at the Ristorante Compostela, which was not in Gracia, where I am for the most part, but which is in the Gothic Quarter, where the Cathedral of Barcelona is and where the Pope stays when he is in town, I said “Moltas Gracias.” The waiter looked at me like I was vermin practically. Clearly, I had left Catalan without knowing it. I did have the best coffee (cafe con leche) of my life there though, so I guess I can handle the look. Actually had two, ’cause one just wasn’t enough.
It is 5:05 a.m. as I write this, sleep is complex here as well. I am in the home of a single mom, Belen, who has rented out three of her rooms to guests from Airbnb. The others here are the other mom Lisa, who is a chaperone with me on this trip, and two German Opers who look to be in their early twenties, perhaps. They are sharing a room. It is great here and for $32 a night, completely unbeatable.
The toilet is a tiny room, with just the toilet, and no room to really pull your pants down though, so you kind of have to have the door open a drop to get that part done, then sit down and close the door to do your business and then vice-versa on the way out. And, this is not because I am big, the space between the door and the toilet is about five inches and the word water closet describes the space pretty accurately. The flush handle is the old fashioned pull down kind.
The tile in this place could be hundreds of years old at least, the flooring is all tile. The shower is outside in a small room but is magnificently hot and strong. The stairs up to the bedrooms are about six inches maybe wide, so I have to put my feet sideways on them to get down and brace myself on the walls as I navigate the twisting small steps.
I will fill in more about the students next time, but wanted to get this off to those of you following me on this adventure. Today, I will accompany the children for their presentations at the host school here as they talk about Arcata and NPA in the English class at the IES school here in Gracia. Then, Ethan’s host family has invited me for lunch, which is called diner at 3, which is when they eat that meal. What we call dinner is eaten around 9pm.
MOLTAS GRACIAS for accompanying me on this journey, in your hearts, wishes and thoughts I feel supported! Big Love from the Casa de Belen y Mario (14 month old angel who is the baby here).
Bread and Salt
Mireia Nicole Kiss with Flowers
I am sitting at the Vegetarian Indian restaurant not far from where I am staying in Gracia, Barcelona. I slept until 12:41 today and I needed it. The last few days have been very long and very intense, full and wonderful as well as a little too rushed for me. We leave tomorrow, for Marrakesh, and from the moment we landed it has been a running at full speed kind of experience. The kids especially have been put to every imaginable test and are rehearsing for their play, interacting with new families and experiences and foods while adjusting to life in an ancient and large city with thousands of people on the streets. It is about as far away from Humboldt as one can imagine. The show last night was phenomenal and I only regret that my technological acumen is shoddy and hope that between Marceau’s camera and my ipad mini I managed to capture most of the play. I have yet to see if any of it came through.
So, today, Saturday morning, which is Shabbat, no matter where I am, required a slower pace and I guess those extra hours of sleep guaranteed that. Best moments are so plentiful for me here, to put it in Rabbi Naomi Steinberg’s language: “this celebration is in the top 5,000,” a reminder that we shouldn’t rate joyful or prayerful moments. Very hard to do.
Comparing and rating are easy to fall into. Being in the moment with exactly what is going on requires something different from me. When I allow the present to flood my being and stop focusing forward or backwards, true magic occurs.
Friday afternoon, was just such a moment. I took a brief siesta on the sofa of Ahmed and Mireia before the small Shabbat I was going to observe before the show in the evening. Ahmed is the playwright of the Sheep and the Whale and together with his wife Mireia they are Jiwar a residence for artists that hosts workshops and creates home for folks to come and be creative. Their house in the center of Gracia in Catalonia was our home away from home, complete with a lovely garden courtyard. I should say that the whole endeavor wouldn’t work without the help and support of Mireia’s parents also, because in Spain, la familia is part of everything. So, the two small sons of Mireia and Ahmed were often there in the home or hanging with their lovely grandparents and the whole endeavor runs better because of this extended family that is not an anomaly, but the norm in this part of the world.
After my tiny siesta on their sofa, I prepared a little Shabbat moment for us on their table. It was a first Shabbat moment for them. Ahmed, my new Moroccan brother and Mireia, his Catalunian wife and my new sister. These two folks, immediately felt like my family, the nicest, warmest best folks ever. I want to be part of their family forever and hope for many years of connection to all of them. While Mireia and Ahmed were on their computers, I made myself at home in their kitchen, something I do in most homes I enter. I found some salt and located a small bowl from their china cabinet. I had brought some wine and some bread and arranged the flowers I had given them and finally I set out the candles.
I invited them to join me and unfortunately, at first, we all regretted that it was just the three of us. We wanted the kids and the grandparents there. But, as it turned out, I couldn’t get through any of the prayers without crying and there were tears in everyone’s eyes. I am not sure if this would have been the case with a fuller cast of characters. In the play that Ahmed wrote and Ethan and his classmates performed, there is a line about Europe and Morocco having had bread and salt together. This line kept playing in my mind and I reminded Ahmed of it. He said, he had never had bread and salt together like we were and that this line in his play, written over twenty years ago, came from some memory inside his being, but not from his actual having lived it. This exact moment we shared together on Shabbat eve, was the first time that his internal tribal kind of memory experience and this actual living present moment came together and made a new kind of sense. Europe, America and Morocco, Christian, Jewish and Muslim all breaking bread together with flowers, wine, salt and olive oil. The water for all of us, was our tears and the warmth flowing through our hands and hearts in hope and shared companionship.
I long for these moments in my heart all the time, with everyone. The times when barriers completely dissolve around a shared table. When the conversations, tastes and flavors of our lives all become common and precious and the feeling of family is palpable.
I hope you will all find ways to break bread and salt with anyone you encounter and especially those you imagine might be other than you. The more we sit around each others’ tables and share our lives, the smaller and more whole this aching and wounded planet becomes and the task of mending all the brokenness becomes as doable and perhaps as simple as sharing a meal.
Room with a View
View of Cemetery from Riad in Marrakesh
The View from the terrace at the Riad Spa Luxeux Bachawya. So, this is a cemetery across the street from where I am staying in a home that is over 1500 years old and that was the home of Moroccan royalty. My first day in Morocco so full already and now I am home and resting. It is 6:16 pm my time as I write these words. I put my friend Arik Labowitz’s first CD on and I will try and put down what is in my mind and heart while I listen to his divine Hebrew and the flute of his music mate Maxine.
After taking the taxi from here to downtown Marrakech and finding Ethan and the other NPA students along with their host families at the American Language Center, I walked from there, about twenty minutes to find my Uncle BB. He was waiting for me at the McDo (McDonald’s) across from La Grande Poste. There he was looking very young for 86, thin as ever with his very large nose, the nose of my grandfather, the nose that identifies one as a Jew, even if practicing Judaism is the last thing on your mind. BB, like my father, has no interest in his Judaism. BB and I walked to his car, parked about five blocks away, an old blue chevrolet. He took me on a long drive into the mountains to get the “best tagine” in Morocco. It was very good. I do not have much to compare it to. What was the best was just being with family. My ties to family are beyond description and this is something all of us know, or should know. A feeling of complete home that emanates from the connection.
In Spain and here as well, folks are “chaleureux.” This word does not translate well, it is more than being warm, it is being hot and friendly and warm all combined. Warm, just doesn’t communicate the feeling. Everyone holds hands, hugs, kisses, and is physical. There is a palpable heat that is from connection, not just from the sun. It is so different from the colder world of the United States. I feel so at home here, I am not an anomaly here. My size, largesse of expression and behavior as well as of body is just fine. It is pretty wonderful to not feel other and of course I am other. I have a very different life that what most folks do here.
BB kept referring to himself as gatté, with an accent on that last “e”. This means spoiled. We spoke of many things and he is more like a young boy than an old man in his eyes and in his expressions. He has no children, but many friends. His wife of 40 years died not too long ago and so he speaks of her still very much. It has been many years, but she is still present for him. He told me about his piano playing, something I had no idea about. It turns out that Ethan and him will have so much more in common than just a blood tie. Ethan plays piano and tennis and has some of BB’s last child qualities, a well-taken-care-of-ness. It is a kind of ease that comes with being the last baby around. As a mother, with Ethan, everything is precious, every moment there is a sense of “this is the last time.” Perhaps this is true for all last children. I like comparing them in this place and time, even though, they are also very different.
I am going to go lie down now. Just wanted to get these few words off to those of you wondering about how I am. Tomorrow, Ethan and I will leave NPA here and go off with BB to his home in the mountains for an overnight stay with him. Every single hour here is packed with more feeling and emotion than I can possibly convey. It will take me many months to capture any of this in depth. I am grateful for the stream of consciousness style writing that flows easily for me. I am also wanting to spend time with each feeling and thought and that is something I cannot do here. Everything is on full speed ahead and I am already aware that by this time next week, I will be flying home to California.
Shalom/Salaam
Omar and The Bowls
Thinking about serving, serving the Divine, serving others, serving family, serving a meal, being served and encountering a servant. While I was in Morocco this last April, I met Omar. Omar is my Uncle’s servant. There is no easy way to say that. The word itself is primed and full of meaning. It connotes both positive and negative things for me. My first encounters with servants were in Morocco as a child. My grandparents’ home had three full-time servants; Hassan, Sadia and Fatimah. Sadia and Fatimah did the cooking and the cleaning and my grandfather was tended to by Hassan.
I vividly remember being surrounded by these large warm women, who smelled heavenly, unlike anything I’ve ever encountered before or after. The combination was something like sweat, cinnamon, heat, roses, musk and cumin, vanilla and linden flowers. If I could swim in this scent or be near these women again, I don’t think I would ever emerge. I can’t describe it properly, but their smell, their warm arms wrapping around me and carrying me around or chasing me around the kitchen is something I carry with me and which I long for. It is the smell of work, of service, of excellence, of laughter and care and anger and heat and heart and some mystery too. It is the opposite of contained or relaxed or mellow and so very not of this place here.
My whole trip back to Morocco has really been a trip back inside of myself and into myself. I find I am reluctant to land fully here in this country, because so much of who I am is actually embedded in where I have been and in these memories, but also in the work of service. It’s a very foreign concept in this country. We don’t have servants, or at least most folks don’t, and unless you are active in a religious community or other non-profit organization “serving” is not always viewed as positive. The idea of being an actual servant to someone is frowned upon and rightly so, for many, many reasons in most work situations. I am not trying to justify servitude to a flawed system, servitude to a wealthy unjust boss or factory here. This kind of service though is not the only kind of service. I see no use in hiding from what is true for me and what I know from my life and my experiences that are the positive side of service.
My own service to others is a primal choice on my part in many ways. It is something that gives me tremendous energy and is a kind of tuning or truing. There is a tuning fork in my soul and when I am following the call of the Holy One, the sound inside of me is so pure and so whole and so right that I can’t imagine it being otherwise. That feeling doesn’t always manifest, often if I am asked to be of service or find myself pulled into it, I am not happily singing inside. I can be resentful, tired, frustrated, worried and so many other things, all of which are human and okay for me to be. The difference between those feelings and the feeling of being in tune is an order of magnitude difference.
The proper alignment puts me in a groove and there is the touch of the infinite there. I could lift a car off a person, or have a conversation with a star as it is being born somewhere light years away or back here on earth I might find myself helping someone to cross over the river Jordan singing them to their next destination. It’s just not a common experience or a mundane one. I feel blessed and lucky and grateful whenever I find myself there, amazed and renewed, awed and lost and full of tears. It’s the feeling of being a true servant, of serving the Creator and of wanting to do it again and again and to do it well and joyfully and of being so glad I was asked to do it. There is trembling and awe and a deep shaking and rushing to find the core of the task and to rush to do it well. In the Jewish tradition there is a teaching that one should RUSH to do a Mitzvah, not hesitate or stand back, but rush and hurry to do what is being asked. We don’t do this for people we don’t love or beings we don’t revere. If you are in service to a tyrant, you might rush out of fear, but you would never rush out of joy to serve.
I’m not serving a tyrant, so my movements are ones of speed and force towards the hope of helping or healing or finding the right words or actions or moment to grow some love in the world. I am so not alone in this. And, I am so very far away from serving humbly and with grace. Which, brings me back to Omar.
Oukaimeden, Atlas Mountains
When we arrived in Oukaimeden, where my Uncle lives, about 9,000 feet high in the Atlas mountains, there was snow on the ground. It is a ski-resort during the winter months and my 86 year old uncle BB still has a ski rental shop there along with his home. This is where Ethan and I came to spend our one night with him. Omar lives downstairs in the small cabin and my uncle lives upstairs. Omar has a wife and two married children in a village about twelve and a half miles away. He rides a large motorcycle and could be anywhere between forty and sixty. I couldn’t tell. He made the fire in the cabin when we first arrived. In Marrakesh we were burning up with heat and the temperature was in the 90s. In Oukaimeden we needed a fire. Omar prepared dinner, he served us dinner and then sat in the kitchen while we ate it, he cleared our plates and did all the cleaning up. He smiled at me, he smiled at Ethan. He speaks no French. I speak only a little Arabic. I said Shukran about fifty times. Shukran is “Thank You.” Omar just smiled.
After dinner we prepared for bed. My uncle gave Ethan and I his bed and he slept on the sofa near the fire, something he insisted he did regularly so he would be warm. Omar prepared the sofa and went downstairs. Ethan and I said goodnight to my uncle and climbed into the large and lumpy and cold bed that was graciously given to us. We read a little bit from The Crucible by Arthur Miller and then we tried to go to sleep. There are no street lights in Oukaimeden, most of the homes don’t have electricity.
It was VERY dark and very cold and just a little spooky. Ethan got up to use the bathroom which was a tiny room full of dusty, grimy, half-used bottles and looked like most bathrooms I’ve seen that belong to older folks or those who are otherwise-abled and who can’t see or get to the dirt. Ethan came running back into the bedroom and he was hyperventilating. He said that while he was peeing a giant spider the size of half his hand started to drop down from the ceiling towards him in his exposed state. He ran back into the bedroom.
Needless to say, I wasn’t too excited when it was time for me to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. There was one tiny light and everything looked creepy. I didn’t want to wake up my uncle so I was trying to be quiet but also doing the Nicole is tapping on the floorboards in a funny way dance. This was my “Spider if you are here, please do not come out, there’s a large person here and it’s better if you stay away” dance shuffle. I’m sure all spiders understand that this particular combination of footwork, shuffling, tapping, scooting, and slight jumping that I was doing is universal code for “do not disturb or emerge.” I tried to use the toilet, but was so terrified of the spider and unsure if my message had been properly translated or received. I made it through the event and quickly rushed back to the bedroom. I didn’t get much sleep, but at least I didn’t need to go into the bathroom until morning again and clearly, along with French and Spanish, I can now add Spider Language to my repertoire.
We had a lovely morning walking the area and then got ready to head back to Marrakesh, which was a three hour drive on twisty roads in the old blue 1976 Chevrolet with no air-conditioning being driven by my 86-year-old uncle who told me he needed a new glasses prescription, ummmm, that’s a whole other story. I wanted to buy some ceramics, small things, to bring home and my uncle said Omar would help us negotiate better prices and would accompany us part way down the mountains on our way back to Marrakesh. I was very happy to have the help. We had to drop something off at the only hotel in Oukaimeden and so I was sitting in the car with Ethan waiting. Several men came up to the car with their arms covered in necklaces and jewelery of every kind. I didn’t want to buy anything, so I tried to ignore them, but to no avail. All of a sudden Omar was there, he took off all the jewelry on one man’s arm and he picked through it and handed me ten necklaces. I tried to shake my head no, but Omar would have none of it.
No money was exchanged and I couldn’t communicate with any of these men. My uncle came back and I explained what had happened. He told me that this man owed Omar for something and now that debt was partially forgiven. I said, but I didn’t pay Omar and what is Omar getting from this? I asked my uncle if I could give Omar some money, but he said absolutely not and it would insult Omar. I arranged to give my uncle some money and asked him to do something extra for Omar or his family and then we went down the mountain looking for ceramics.
Omar stopped us at a roadside hill that had thousands of ceramic tagines and bowls and tiles in piles making up columns and columns and rows and rows of red clay, unpainted bowls stacked on top of each other which were entirely covering the hill leading into the factory. There was a tiny path with small steps through these columns into a large dark building. To my right, once my eyes adjusted, I saw a man who was kneading a large bunch of red brown clay with his feet; stepping in and out of the clay in a large square tub. As my eyes got more comfortable, I saw thousands of bowls and dishes leaning every which way in stacks of tens and twenties and more. It was a jumble of sizes, shapes and colors. I walked through trying to find something small I could safely pack in my bag and bring home. I found some beautiful white and blue bowls with a thin strip of silver lining on the bottoms and around the lip of each bowl. I asked the merchant the price and he said they were the most expensive ones and quoted me a price I didn’t want to pay. At that point I noticed some others that I also liked and they were smaller and didn’t have the silver. He told me those were made in this factory here, unlike the others I had previously selected. He quoted me a price and Omar nodded and I paid him.
On our way back to the car, Omar handed me the two other bowls, the expensive ones. He had bought them for me without my noticing. I couldn’t understand. I asked my uncle why and he told me Omar said I was family and he wanted me to have them and to have joy and that it made him happy to think of me with them. This man, who I only just met, was rushing to do something for me. He owns no home, he has worked for over twenty years or perhaps thirty for my Uncle, and he couldn’t stop trying to serve me, to offer to me. I didn’t and don’t know how to properly thank him. His gift was coming straight from his heart. He had the largest grin on his face, so happy with himself. This generosity and desire to please was radiating off of him. I told my uncle to thank him and tell him that I was so happy with the gift and that I would treasure these bowls and think of Omar always when I used them in my home in California.
I gave my uncle some more dirhams and asked him to pass them on however and whenever he could as he saw fit for Omar or his family. Even if I hadn’t had a penny to give, Omar would have been and done exactly as he did. He wanted to make me happy, he wanted me to smile, he wanted me to be served and he wanted to do the serving. He served me. He is serving me still, because I can’t get him out of my mind or heart. His simple kindness, his generosity, his humility, his smile, his strength. All these qualities and more dance around in me and beg me to pay attention.
Serving with joy, serving with kindness and with no thought of reward, serving out of a sense that the person before us is family or Holy or just deserving, this is the service I want to embody. How am I family to Omar? I am family to him because we are all family. My Omar bowls have a special place in my home and every time I see them or use them, Omar is with me. The jewels he gave me also connect me to the Moroccan soil, they come from the red earth and the mountain caves of the African continent, the birthplace of humanity. When I wear them, I feel myself connecting back to the Atlas mountains and to an ancient reality, to a warmth and strength and beauty and even to the large, prehistorically large spiders that come down in the night.
Nicole serves herself by writing to you from her home in Bayside, where she has a lot more to say about serving, but she’ll keep you on edge, waiting for the next installment in her Spain and Morocco narratives.
The Shiviti Prayer: I have set the Holy One Before Me Always
This lovely carving was given to me when I resigned/retired from being the Administrative Assistant for our congregation Temple Beth El. I was amazed because no one on the Board at that time knew my personal prayer practice, which has involved this prayer for years and years. It was what I call a b’eshert moment.
Beshert means “inevitable” or “preordained.” It can apply to any happening which appears to bear the fingerprints of divine providence, such as bumping into an old friend you were just thinking about.
But it is used most commonly about marriage and shidduchim (“matches”). Singles pray to “meet their beshert,” their life partner, the other half of the broken eggshell with whom they will find love and fulfilment. – Rabbi Julian Sinclair from the Jewish Chronicle‘s article Beshert
When you look at this picture you can see how complex Hebrew prayers and teachings really are. The Hebrew here is textured and layered. The four letters here that are largest are the ones we don’t ever say or even write down without being very careful. There is POWER in naming. Any tribal person will understand this as will all those who have ever named a child or a pet or a business.
So, we don’t mess around when we are talking about the most HOLY name. Because we cannot ever really get our minds around the entirety of a Divine Being, we do something different.
We use the word Ha-Shem which literally means The Name. This reflects the concept in Judaism that you cannot quantify or confine the Divine; unnameable, infinite and vast. Ha-Shem is not like my name or yours. Since the Divine cannot be quantified or qualified, we engage in various ways to describe or connect to the energy of the Divine. This stands in contrast to the idea of the Divine being split into various other beings or forms, but for me and for many others, there is no real contradiction. It doesn’t matter to me what you name or call your Holy Being, what matters is how you BEHAVE in this world and your adherence to goodness and to honoring those on the planet with us. If connecting to Isis or the River Spirits, Vishnu, Buddha, Jesus, Ha-Shem or any and all of the myriad ways Holiness unfolds and comes to each of us, makes you a better human and enables you to love those near you and this beautiful earth, then pray and sing and meditate and praise and delight in that Being or Beings anyway you can.
As Jews, we adhere to the idea of b’tselemAdonai which can be interpreted to mean in the image of the Divine (and much, much more). The word Adonai is used here and is another placeholder word for describing a quality of the Divine. When you need a master or lord, someone who you can turn to to make things change. Many folks reject this idea of a Holy Being who is a lord and master. I know I struggled with it for years. I no longer do. I am so in awe of the Divine and so aware of how tiny I am, there is just no question that I am an agent of Holiness, but not the whole shebang. The BIG BANG or the BIG DIVINE BANG Energy is certainly greater than I am. A great book to read on this topic is God & the Big Bang by Daniel C. Matt.
Adon in Hebrew can be translated as master or lord, so this name for the Holy One is engaged when we pray and are not using the four letter Tetragrammaton name like the letters above. The word Adonai is not that often written out in the Torah. Usually, folks say this word instead of reading the Hebrew four letter name. Please see further explanation of this in the Angel Song article.
Additionally, b’tselem Adonai is an incredibly deep and complex concept, which I hope to expand on more in the future. I love the teaching by Rabbi Gershon Winkler that I heard many years ago from him. He was talking about how everything in our narrative was created before the human was. This is also accurate in terms of evolution. We are kind of last on the list. All the organisms and lava flows and acid rain and amoebas and creatures of myriad kinds unfolded before we did. Rabbi Gershon refers to this idea of b’tselem Adonai as having multiple layers and one of them is that we are in the image of the bear, the tortoise, the slug, the tree, the dolphin, the ladybug etc… Being able as humans to connect with more than who we are, and able to engage with all of creation and to be present with it is an amazing and unique gift. For myself as well, and for others, the flawed translation of Genesis 1:28 that says in English “conquer, subdue, vanquish or rule over” the earth is not only what the Hebrew means.
This is a whole other topic, so I will only say, for now that:
It is our job to be in relationship with and look over and out for all that is on this planet.
It is our job to connect with the frog and the mountain and to find ways to see Ha-Shem and ourselves in those. It is not our job to subdue them or violate them for our pleasures or purposes. Like animals, we need to nourish and sustain ourselves, have safety and home. We certainly have gone beyond our limits on that one.
Returning to an idea of Holiness that is not nameable and that is complex for me is one way to connect to the energy of Holiness that runs through every blade of grass and every moment of my life. When I put boundaries on the sacred and limit it to one kind of parent or one kind of being, I am not in the flow that will empower and link me to ALL of creation and all of what I want to honor and love.
So, all of this to say, I prefer to use the word Ha-Shem or the Holy One or any other myriad kinds of place holders, when referencing the Creator or the Energy of Creation. I don’t even want the words I use to insert a boundary on that which is beyond boundary, so I change it up. The word GOD is just too laden, heavy, connotes a bunch of things I may not mean or want to have associations linked to by what I am saying to folks. When I name or not name differently, that inserts a prompt in the mind and a reminder in mine, what is she talking about? That question is the beginning of a spark that ignites a flame of desire, and wonderment, or at least I hope it does. No, go and study some more!
With huge unnameable amounts of Love and Joy in service to the Giant Holy Being without name,
Open Heart Open Hands 
