When Was It?

Bereavement, News, Practice, Support, Teachings, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
“I Beleave that everything has Fealings.” Portrait of Nicole, age 10, with her original artwork, by Helen Redman, 1974
When was it, which war was it?
Tell me please, when children and women were not used as fodder?
When was it that raping and kidnapping innocents wasn't done to hurt your enemy?
Which time was it that the Jewish People planned to systematically kill, rape, maim, use children as shields and starve them to make it look like they were lying or guilty of genocide?

Let's see, when was it, which war was it? NEVER. 

None, it's never been the case, not once when children and women weren't used.
Never ever.
 
The rape of innocents has been going on since the beginning of our time on this earth, and it isn't just women that get violated.

But which war was it, in what century, that this wasn't true, tell me please?

Now, which time was it that the Jewish people planned a genocide?
Never.

Have children and innocents been hurt in the most recent war against the State of Israel and the Jewish People? Yes, yes they have, but has some IDF cabal of soldiers and leaders planned an attack on children and to kidnap women and rape them and keep them hidden in bunkers or hospitals underground beneath the elderly and the young? 

Nope, not been done, never will be done.

Which soldier in a fit of rage and pain and fear hasn't made a mistake or gone berserk?
Not one. 

You cannot kill another human being and stay soft or exposed or remain innocent. 

In order to pick up a gun or attack another person, army, city, or the men who've got your wife and grandmother in a room raping them--something must be done. 

Every person who has to kill someone gets broken, and then more broken. After a while, some folks just cannot come back. The shooting and hurting becomes a pattern, or a habit, or the rule of law. It's an order you follow, because you are one small person in a huge group trying to change something, You aren't in charge,  but if you don't fire your gun, your brother, your sister, your friend next to you will die; so you shoot your gun and hope you hit the target that it's meant for.

Does that make it right or excusable, or forgivable? Can you live with yourself afterwards? Not always, can one feel good about killing a man who has or will hurt hundreds more people or even one more person? Maybe not good, but perhaps not quite as terrible as the soldier who has to clear a building to find a terrorist and finds out that children are being used as human shields for that terrorist. How does one feel okay after something like that? Not possible.

Does that make it a genocide?

Nope.

Which soldier doesn't come back from a conflict without PTSD? The answer is NONE.
Which family system isn't impacted by violence in a war, on any side? The answer is NONE.

Which nation or group of people besides the Jewish people has been blamed or accused of being evil, inateley foul, prone to depravity, money grubbing, big nosed, nosy, scheming, climbers, reachers, ugly, secretly planning to take over the entire world, harsh, tribalistic, entitled, deserving of violation due to their ultimate vile nature, secretly plotting to kill all Moslems, Christians, Palestinians, Iraqis, Russians, Poles, Czechs, Bosnians, Syrians, Egyptians, Sumerians, Persians, Africans......?

The answer is NONE.

No other nation, no other group of people has consistently, across thousands of years, been thought of or blamed or seen as the reason for their own suffering and the suffering of the world, besides my people.

When do I reach my breaking point, when does this pacifist, left leaning, two-state supporting, interfaith leader, Earth loving, Humboldt Honey lose her perspective or ability to even go out in public for fear of encountering a sign that says "End the Genocide" in reference to her cousins and friends having to go to war and find themselves bereft of wholeness?

The answer is NOW.

I'm done. I won't abide it any longer. I do not have perspective, range, flexibility or the ability to sit down and have a conversation with you or anyone on this topic unless you acknowledge all of the above and NEVER use the word genocide in reference to the Jewish People as perpetrators.

Which genocide against my people has been denied over and over by people all over the world, over and over, again and again? My people's violation, systemic, planned, enacted and historically verified genocide is an actual genocide, and the most recent one is not the first one or time that folks have tried to kill us for just being Jewish, not for any other reason. That's genocide.

Now, is the current political situation in Israel one I support? Did I vote for another FUCKED UP white male to be in charge of a horrible situation? Nope, I didn't. Let's see did I vote for the crazy rapist, jerk who was President a few years ago here in the U.S. and may be again? Nope, I didn't? Did I vote for or put into power the Russian oligarch who is attacking the Ukraine or Idi Amin or Chairman Mao or Pol Pot or Stalin or Hitler or Reagan or Bush or any of the men who have perpetrated horrors on huge swaths of human beings since the beginning of time?

NOPE.

Are there a bunch of Jewish names in a list of horrible leaders, sure there's some Jewish men and a few women too, who have gone to war and made choices I don't agree with. But, we've never tried to eliminate another entire group of people because they were Muslim, Palestinian, Gazan, Christian or Atheist or.... ????

A few Jews in the kingdom of Shushan did try to wipe out the followers of Haman in Persia, a long time ago, We did that in response to the royal decree granting those people permission to take our land and kill us.Free pass to kill the Jews in your hood and take their stuff too! Rinse, repeat, this has been done across the span of history, different men in power, but the same strategies and sanctioned destruction of us, just for being us.

Some Maccabeans also killed indiscriminately when they recaptured Jerusalem from the Assyrians, but they killed a bunch of Jews too, the ones who had assimilated, or who they thought had, so they weren't really trying to kill a specific brand of human, just the ones they had a problem with. So, I don't count that as a genocide.

So, if you wonder why I'm not out and about or on Social Media, or able to have a conversation about this, perhaps now you'll understand a bit more. And, there's the whole other side of this for me, which is, as a survivor of rape and an empath, I am literally in a state of trauma a great deal of the time right now and having to navigate the waves of pain I am feeling from all over the world and this conflict. 

I do know that the Holy One is with every single being who is suffering, who is dying, who has died alone or scared. Each person has their own angel, their own personal angel with them to help them. Each blade of grass has an angel clapping for it to grow. None of us are alone in our suffering. Someday, maybe other people will figure this out and stop trying to hurt people because they themselves are broken. Until we figure out how to love and listen with our whole beings, not just our left brains, but our right brains and our souls, there will be harm on this earth. 

May the day come soon and swiftly when we all wake up and feel what it means to be ONE body of beings spinning together on ONE precious Planet in our own particular tiny slice of ONE particular Universe that is just ONE tiny fingernail of a fragment of the HOLY ONE.

Am Yisrael Hai, Life for the people of Israel by Marjorie Feldman

All Shook Up and Calmly Connected, We are All One

News, Poetry, Practice, Relationships, Support, Teachings, , , , , , , , , ,

Summer sun drenched chamomile flowers, from my garden and from Janet Czarnecki’s Redwood Roots Farm. They dry gently for two days before getting put into quart sized mason jars and saturated with organic jojoba and/or almond oil. These flowers, soaked in sun, moon, stars and blessings are squeezed out into a rich oil that I use in my salves and also just as a singular oil. It takes six to nine months from start to finish, which doesn’t include how long it took the flowers to grow and develop according the Creator’s Great Flower Plan–so really start to finish is a very long time indeed!

On December 21, 2022 my world was rocked and rolled, smashed, dashed and seriously shaken (not stirred) by a 6.4 earthquake in my neighborhood. “Won’t you be my neighbor…” (cue the Mr. Roger’s theme song). Earthquakes are pretty much, usually no big deal here in Humboldt County. I’ve been living in earthquake country for over 30 years. I remember taking a beginning geology class, when I first attended Humboldt State University (now Cal Poly Humboldt). The professor pointed out how we were at the meeting place of three, count them three, different tectonic plates and that this was one of the most seismically active areas in the world. It turns out that living here means getting used to (as if that’s possible) our mother earth shaking her shoulders or twitching a muscle or sometimes stomping her foot down or doing some version of the twist and making us all shout. She likes to stretch and dance to her own wild song.

There’s great beauty and joy in experiencing an earthquake. I know, you think I’m crazy. I speak my truth here. I love feeling the power of the ground moving and knowing that it is absolutely no big thing for the earth to do this. We are puny human specks on her surface. I love feeling that she can just shake her hair out or choose to do some serious downward dog stretching and we’ll all just be folded back into the ground.

וַיִּ֩יצֶר֩ יְהֹוָ֨ה אֱלֹהִ֜ים אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֗ם עָפָר֙ מִן־הָ֣אֲדָמָ֔ה וַיִּפַּ֥ח בְּאַפָּ֖יו נִשְׁמַ֣ת חַיִּ֑ים וַֽיְהִ֥י הָֽאָדָ֖ם לְנֶ֥פֶשׁ חַיָּֽה׃ God יהוה formed the Human*“the Human I.e., the progenitor of the species and the point of origin for human society. Heb. ha-’adam; trad. “man.” In the eyes of ancient Israel, the typical initiator of a lineage was male, and so the first human being would also have been imagined as male. See further the Dictionary under ’adam. from the soil’s humus,*soil’s humus Heb. ‘afar min ha-’adamah, rendered to emulate the wordplay with Heb. ha-’adam “the Human”; more precisely, “loose dirt from the soil.” NJPS “dust of the earth.” blowing into his nostrils the breath of life: the Human became a living being.” https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.2.7?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en

Much has been written about how Adam/הָֽאָדָ֗ם does not correctly translate to “man.” The word for man in Hebrew is ish and for woman it is isha. Adam means the human, coming from the dust/earth/humus. So, if we get folded back into our earth mama, we are just returning home.I don’t have a death wish, I am not a human hater, but I am so very tired of the way humans think and behave, as if we were in charge of the whole shebang and can do whatever we want to our Holy mother and not have consequences.

There are always consequences. Earthquakes are not happening because we behave like idiots abusing our power and polluting our water, air and ground. But, we forget that we are guests here on this orb. We are part of her, but we are not her in the simple 2+2=4 kind of a way. I do grok that there is a relationship between fracking and earthquakes, but I am not a scientist. There are relationships between us and each blade of grass, frog, snake, river, mountain, star, snowflake, human, fox, or wild bird. The rabbis speak of each blade of grass having an angel clapping for it. There is no distance between us and this planet or us and each other or us and the Divine, we are all One.

Feeling that sense of oneness is a different thing entirely. When the bed started rocking, I was terrified and scared as we were rolling back and forth as if we were on a ship at sea during a storm. My husband and I instinctively and immediately wrapped our arms around each other, becoming one big flesh burrito and we held each onto each other for dear life. We said “I love you” and held tight. My feeling scared was extremely brief, within seconds of the quake beginning I found myself having a profound Yirat Ha-Shem/Yirat Shamayim experience.

Yirat doesn’t translate easily, it can mean fear or awe or anything on the continuum between those feelings. English doesn’t do feelings and spiritual feelings especially not the realm of English unless you are a poet, and then English can get you there. So, I was briefly fearful but in a Yirah way and then it was so deeply, in my soul, cells and bone deep, a feeling of Awe of Heaven/Yirat Shamayim and Awe of the Holy One/Yirat Ha-Shem.

יראת יי יראת שׁמים

I want you to imagine you are me and have a relationship with the Divine as someone you are involved with, not someone you believe in or are separate from. This Holy Being is present for you more than any other human or creature. If you can’t imagine this then hopefully my words will penetrate enough to give you an inkling of what I actually felt while holding my beloved, skin to skin, embraced and embracing and feeling held not just by my man, but by the Holy One.

I have no fear of dying and in this moment it turns out when I was on that edge, I had NO fear of dying. I only had a sense of Yirah/Awe that I was with my Beloved Creator/The Holy One, completely with. If now was the time that my physical form was ending, it would be just fine. I was in the arms of the person I love the most in the world, we were warm, skin to skin, almost one being and I felt complete in that moment. I have had an extraordinary life. I just felt so okay (which is an English word that cannot begin to express what I felt, but is the only one that comes close to the idea of being really calm and at peace in the middle of the shaking). There was no me separate from Kevin, or me separate from the Earth, or me separate from the Holy One. I was One with the movement and whatever came next would be within the arms of that Holiness and Love.

I’m in the air, held by Holiness, no matter where or when I leave this earth.

And then the rocking stopped and the noises began (the beeping of the surge power protectors and outside sirens and mysterious booms) and our concern for the house, our stuff and most importantly our goddaughter Victoria, who was staying with us in the upstairs attic room of our home, about a thousand miles away from our bedroom. We got up, found slippers and clothing and our phones to light our way. There were books askew in the living room, a whole shelf of Kevin’s CDs had fallen down (about 500 CDs), many picture framed ancestors were flung about and glass was everywhere. In the dining room the floor was wet from our water jug having spilled and the ceramic crock holding it was on the ground and again glass was all over the place from pictures that had fallen. The kitchen was a true disaster with a great deal of my precious dishes and glasses shattered on the floor along with oils and spilled bottles of foodstuffs that were on the counters.

We still hadn’t reached our beloved Victoria though, so we called out to reassure her. We then went through Ana’s room (one of our Goddaughters, who was house-sitting elsewhere) and then through the bathroom, at the bottom of the steps, where we found and enfolded a shaking and tender person. We got her some shoes and walked her through the chaos, in the dark, to the living room sofa where we all convened. Holding each other, comforting one another and endeavoring to help each other to settle down, as much as we could, in the rubble amidst the aftershocks and in trauma response mode.

Victoria on solid ground, at the Byodo-In Buddhist Temple, feeling safe and held long before the 6.4

It has taken me several weeks to clean up from the quake, there are several areas of my home that I cannot handle cleaning up alone or for more than a few hours at a time. I have a great helper, my Goddaughter Ana, who is kind enough to throw away the things I can’t bear seeing thrown away. My outside pantry closet was the home of all my medicines, my oil processing, my supplies for making salves, very expensive organic oils in gallon glass containers, herbs and bottles for putting oils and syrups in. Our wine is kept out there, as well, and all of our suitcases. So, it was a giant jumbled mess of goo, oils, broken glass and weird smells as things combined that shouldn’t have. I didn’t want to see or deal with this.

I finally opened the door and looked in a few days later. I saw that two quart jars of the chamomile oil had miraculously not broken. They had tumbled, they had fallen, they were askew, but they were held and kept safe by hands from the other side. The flowers in the picture, at the beginning of this post, took me hours to separate from their stems. While I was doing this and touching each flower and saying prayers, I felt a presence, a sweet, gentle presence and I recognized her as Veda Raskin. Veda left this earth, when a tsunami of hormones, rage, pain and confusion in her brain slammed into her and she took her own life. She did this shortly after her 17th birthday. I’ve known Veda since she was in her mother Karen’s tummy growing. I’ve seen her grow and become a phenomenal young woman. Her death was worse than an earthquake, it was a bomb across continents of hearts and the damage to her family and friends continues. There is no broken glass to sweep up or repairs that can be made.

Altar for the Raskin family, with the seven day candle from when she died, and lots of her father Bryan Raskin’s glass work and a photo of Veda with her sister and parents. In this picture here, Veda looks ghostly, next to her sister Acacia, in the pink shirt.

I’m the kind of gal that gets messages from those who aren’t in bodies anymore. Their souls continue on and they care about those they love. They love, in the present tense, even after they leave, in the past tense. So, I called Karen and mentioned that I felt Veda’s energy while I was playing with the chamomile. She told me that chamomile was Veda’s favorite flower, something I did not know, but clearly was so. We cried together and I felt glad that I could offer a moment of beauty in the ugly and hard.

So, when the earth shook here, six months later and these two precious bottles of sacred oils survived intact turned out to be Veda’s chamomile blessed ones, I felt her again. She was here holding me, holding her family and preserving her oil. Pre-Earthquake, I’d mentioned to Karen that I’d be sending her the oil I pressed, once it had steeped for a good long while. This chamomile oil now had earthquake energy coursing through it as well. The the smell and feel of this batch is truly beyond any other batch of oil I’ve ever made. It’s shimmering in every way, in a very Veda way. She can come through, in the heavenly scent of this oil. She can comfort in the healing of tissues that soak up her oil and penetrate deep into the bodies of those that she touches through this oil. In this way, she is giving and loving and present for all those who can open to feel her.

Me, I’m an open book times a thousand, which is why I have the kind of experiences I do. This is also why I help midwife people across towards their deaths as well as helping, as a doula, for those coming in. There’s a great teaching about how a child is in heaven slowly integrating down to this earthly plane while in utero. The mother, on this side of the equation, is lifting off and rising up towards heaven to meet her child, even when you are as heavy as can be, there is a feeling of floating or being held or carried by Holiness that can come upon you. So, there’s this crossing between worlds going on and it’s going on all the time.

There is no final ending, there is just moving between.

This doesn’t mean we don’t feel broken and lost and that our time engaging with our loved ones who die, doesn’t feel like an ending. It is and it isn’t. It’s an end to our physical relationship with that person. Their souls and their songs, energy and beauty carry on.

And so must we, while we are here. We must do the good that they no longer can, we must give and laugh and love more fully with our beloveds, who have left this realm. We have to grieve and mourn them as well. It’s not easy being a fully feeling human, but the other option, is unacceptable and leads to humans who desecrate the earth and others and who forget how we are all ONE.

Here’s a video of me and my oil making mess and also oil making magic.

A pocket of Hope in my Heart/Lev for Kislev

Bereavement, News, Practice, Relationships, Support, Teachings, , , ,
Spring Flowers from tiny seeds and bulbs hidden deep in the cold wet earth of Winter that will emerge again. Ceramic tile by my brother Paul Barchilon.

It’s been a very folded in kind of time. I’ve been away from writing, from social media, from connecting with so many people and from engaging outwards. On November 30th, 2022 it will be two years since my beloved Lev/heart sister Jolie, May her memory be for a Blessing/zichrona l’vracha, left this earth. And, it’s gutted me in more ways than I could have known. It was not just her leaving this earth, it’s the violence of it, the sudden nature of her being gone so quickly. There have been many other really hard wind lashings in my world over the last few years that have depleted me down to the dregs. I’ve felt more like tissue paper than sinew and flesh. Tissue paper doesn’t have much to bring to the table when life gets hard.

So, as this crescent moon marking the beginning of this winter month of Kislev comes in, I’ve decided to plant a tiny seed of hope. How do I move forward when the waves of wounding and wrongness are so big. The answer has been, I don’t. I have just been lashed to the ground. You can’t fight a class five storm, you just have to survive it, surrender to it, hope that wherever you are now will be protected enough that you can emerge. The landscape will be radically different, landmarks and people and roads and ways that were familiar are all changed and unrecognizable or simply gone.

My hubris and arrogance have been scoured away or whittled down as well. To find myself failing and fallen in many areas of my life has been brutal, but also just what is. I’ve had to surrender to the truth of being unable to rise up and meet challenges or situations that I was formerly completely able to navigate. Not so much anymore.

Despite trying to create boundaries around my grief and all the tasks connected to managing Jolie’s death and her estate, the gates continually are breached. All the skills I used to have only working in small measures and moments. The terrain of difficulty has remained firmly the same. Added to Jolie’s leaving there’s been the ongoing serious illness of another beloved, the suicide of a 17 year old whose family I am close with, a global pandemic and pandemic-related craziness and many other deaths and painful challenges. I’m also responsible for managing my husband’s software design business, our own aging bodies and their changes, our parents needs and their homes and I could go on and on. I want to be present for those I love and the responsibilities I’ve taken on and doing so is no longer easy. I have felt whipped about. I’ve had to move within this landscape as best I could, and finding out that my best just doesn’t always make things work, or better, adds to the feelings of failure and grief.

So, hiding in my bedroom, under the covers, listening to a book on my phone or watching some program on my ipad, distracting me from the piles of paperwork or condolences I haven’t written is where I’ve been. The protection I’ve had, which so many people don’t have, is a safe and warm place to be, despite the storms raging outside and around me. The protection of a loving husband and his ability to provide for our financial needs, the protection of family support and friends who reach out to me and who put up with and are there, even if it takes me weeks or months to get back to them, all make a difference. The gift of being able to order food delivered to my door, so I don’t have to cook or shop so much. Having groceries delivered sometimes and having a Goddaughter on hand to clean and help me. These protections have been crucial and I feel blessed even from down under.

The piles are so big and the backlog of stuff that I have to do seems absolutely insurmountable. So, I avoid them a lot of the time, and many things fall through the cracks as a result. As I find ways to poke out my head a little, I rely on the seasonal reality of life. There will be ebbs and flows, rain, snow, storm and then sunlight, gentle breezes and grasses poking through the earth. The moon will wax and wain and so will I.

While studying up to lead a women’s Rosh Chodesh ritual for this month of Kislev, I read about how the word for this winter month can be broken down into two parts: Kis/Pocket and Lev/Heart. This pairing penetrated through the blankets and layers and I realized I wanted to tuck something into that pocket in my heart. I wanted to tuck Tikvah/Hope into the warm, blood red musculature of my heart. Not a tissue paper heart, my hardworking through it all, pumping every second since it was formed in my mother’s womb over 58 years ago, my strong and true heart. While I’ve been heart-broken in so many ways, my actual heart has continued to pump out a steady beat, a ba bum, baa, baa bum. So, in this time of cold and dark and grieving I have planted a seed in the folded pocket of my heart. I invite you to do the same, put your hand on your heart, let it rest there, feel your heart and find a pocket there to fold a seed into.

May there be space for your seeds to rest and reach out tendrils and roots and to sprout when and where you need them to.

From my heart pocket to yours with great Love,

Delicious Divine Date-Nut Balls

Food, News, Recipes, , , , , , ,

Ingredients:

  • ¼ cup dried cherries (unsweetened, or apple juice sweetened)
  • ½ cup dried apricots (unsweetened, or apple juice sweetened)
  • ½ to ¾ cup dried unsweetened pitted prunes
  • ½ cup raisins, golden and regular
  • 6-8 pitted dates
  • ¼ cup shelled pistachios
  • ½ cup shelled walnuts
  • ¼ cup shelled hazelnuts
  • ¼ cup shelled almonds or pecans
  • ¼ cup rosewater
  • 1-2 teaspoons cinnamon
  • ½ teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1 cup dried shredded coconut, unsweetened

This recipe is hard on the hands and very sticky. The first step is to soak the raisins, or the cherries, or the dates, or the prunes, or the apricots in the rose water for at least fifteen minutes. It doesn’t matter which dried fruit you soak. I usually pick the fruit that seems the driest. Start chopping up all the dried fruit into very, very small pieces. Do not attempt this in a food processor, you will break your food processor, most likely. This is a job done best by hand with a good strong heavy knife. Chop, Chop, Chop! Put all the chopped fruit into a large wooden bowl or a glass one. Sprinkle the cinnamon and nutmeg and add the leftover rosewater from the soaked fruit.

In a food processor chop up all the nuts until they are pretty finely ground. I am allergic to almonds, so I don’t actually use almonds in mine. You can use pecans, or any combination of nuts that you like. The pistachios and hazelnuts are particularly yummy though in this recipe. Once the nuts are finely ground, put them in the bowl with the fruit and mix with your hands for the best result. You will have very sticky fingers.

On a large plate put the shredded coconut in a layer covering the plate. If you want to lightly toast the coconut prior to this step, that is also a good idea. Or, you can just use it as is. Have a clean plate handy. Make round balls about a teaspoon or so of mixture to make one ball. Roll in your hands until the mixture is round then put the ball on the coconut plate and roll around until it is all coated, then place the finished ball on your clean plate. Repeat until you’ve used up all the mixture. These will keep for a very long time in the fridge. If your mixture feels too dry, add some rosewater or a drop of balsamic vinegar. Keep these balls in the fridge in a covered container. They actually taste best at room temperature, so take them out before serving them.

Added benefits of these are they are a great dessert with no sugar, other than the natural sugars from the dried fruit and they help with constipation due to the high content of prunes.

A Woman Awash

Bereavement, News, Practice, Relationships, Support, Teachings, Weighty Matters, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
My Matrilineal Mothers, My great, great grandmother celebrating her 100th birthday

This picture inspires me, every day. I look at the faces of these Eastern European Jewish women, these warrior women, who endured, or whose progeny endured pogroms, violence, poverty, plagues, the Shoah, and who knows what else. They not only endured it, some of them survived to pray and to make family, connections, friendships, partnerships and eventually me and my children. We are the seedlets from their wombs. I love their strong proud faces, their soft smiles and the looks of endurance, the crags carved into their faces. And, and…none of them are a size four! All of the women pictured here are zaftig, even the birthday girl/woman/crone. These were women of girth and ground. Women who stood their ground and who worked and lived hard. This is my lineage.

Perla Barchilon, age 19 perhaps, she was married to my grandfather Jaimé at the age of 16. He was 20. She had five sons, who lived, and was a painter in Morocco. She’s in my blood as well as my children’s.

I have this Sephardic lineage running through me from the line of my father and his family. That lineage is more exalted and wealthy, and this line comes with art and rich stories. I know more about the men in this lineage. But I knew my grandmother Perla bat Doña Aicha Bendavid v’ Don José Barchilon, zichrona l’vracha, and her artwork is all over my home. My grandfather Chaim or Jaimé Cohen ben Don Aaron Cohen v’ Dona Sol de Ohana, z”l was the patriarch of my life and in their Moroccan home I learned to cook, to appreciate rich colors, smells and the life of warmth and passion that Morocco is. That lineage flows through my blood and I consider myself more Moroccan than any other nationality. My father’s grandfather was the head Rabbi of Tangier.

The Eastern corner/wall of my sanctuary/cave/meditation room, with a painting by Perla bat Aicha, z’l, of a Morrocan street.

Somehow, I’m here/Hi Ney Ni. I hope I make it to 100 and have grandchildren or great grandchildren standing behind me and a giant cake full of candles, like the matriarch above. I’ll be very ready to go at that point, but my death date or pull date, as I like to call it, is in the hands of the Divine. While I’m here on this earth, there’s lots and lots to do. There is also so much information, data, waves of images and messages, emails, texts and Instagram posts, tweets, alerts, podcasts, zoom chats, protests to attend, meals to cook, medicines to make and folks to help die and folks to help heal and…..it goes on.

As Rabbi Tarfon z”l who lived and died in the first century B.C.E. says:

“You are not obliged to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it; if you have learned much Torah, great shall be your reward, for He who hires you will surely repay you for your toil; yet the requital of the pious is in the future.“

from Pirkei Avot a text written down based on oral teachings in the first century B.C.E.

So, I’m not obligated to finish this work, but I am not free to desist from it either. This is not just my mantra, it is the mantra of most of the hardworking, justice seeking, world healing folks I love and connect with. The English translation here is not reflective of the feeling that the Hebrew has or the poetry of the teaching.

The future quoted here is Olam Ha Ba in Hebrew. This translates more closely as The World to Come, which could be tomorrow or in a thousand years. It’s in the hands of the Creator or you, what the World to Come is, it’s a verb form, a world that is coming, it’s not yet here, but it’s on the way. If you are able you can feel it, or sense it. The veil between this world/Olam Ha Zeh and Olam Ha Ba is very thin for some of us.

I long for Olam Ha Ba, sometimes with such an ache in my being that the tears and sobs flow out of me for hours. There’s just too much damn suffering, ugliness, meanness and stupidity down here on this planet for me to bear sometimes. And yet, bear it I must. I cannot bear it though, if I watch the news or listen to the news or imbibe the news in any form currently available.

I’m afraid I’m going to be burned at the stake for admitting that I do not participate in the news cycle. I don’t own a television, I don’t stream CNN live or watch the Trevor Noah Show or listen to NPR or Rachel Maddow or NBC, CBS, BBC, etc… you get my point. I get plenty of news from all of the people in my life who share tidbits with me. I generally know about something big within hours of it happening. Sometimes a day will go by before whatever “news” crisis, on the planet folks are spinning about, circles around and reaches me. I do not let the currents of world events, as reported on by others, who often wish for me to be hooked by their versions of the story, dictate my direction or life.

That being said, there is a trusted source of information that I am completely involved in. That makom/source is my cellular core knowing. This knowing will literally take me down to the ground when there are mass deaths or huge traumas on the planet. I have an internal weather vane that is tuned to certain frequencies. In the last two years, I’ve gone to ground in a huge way, before the news informed the world of these horrors. When Covid hit this world in a big way, I was already in a cave of my own making. I curled up in a ball, like a fox or a bear and I hibernated. I do this when I need to replenish or when the waves of the world hit me like a tsunami.

I could barely get out of bed for months, not because I was physically sick, but because the pain of the thousands of people dying in fear and alone was a tidal wave for me. I’m very sensitive, not really the right word, to death, my internal channel is tuned to the other side. When there are mass events of death, I feel it, not because I’m watching the news coverage about it, because I don’t do that, but because I’m just wired that way. I was bone deep tired and unable to rise up. I was sheltering in place before that was actually called for.

So, I went to ground, curled up in my cave/bedroom. I emerged very infrequently to eat an apple or take a bath. My husband had to fend for himself mostly. He’s used to my weird and wild ways. He would lie down next to me and tell me he loved me and ask what he could do, if anything. Mostly, he just accepted me and loved me. He is an Agnostic and doesn’t believe in a Divine Creator and cannot comprehend 98% of what I tell him I am experiencing. Miraculously, he doesn’t need to understand me, or take me apart and make sense of me, to love me. He’s just wired that way, wired to love me and I’m wired to love him and it works, amazingly well.

My mensch and I, photo taken by my Beau-Pere Kenny’s very talented sister Ellen Weissberg Whyte.

When I touch my man or am held by him, all my cells align and take a kind of deep breath. It’s a truly profound experience for me and it still happens to this day, 33 years since we first kissed, I feel the current of wholeness course through my body. It makes my toes curl, my heart race. I am giddy and soothed all at the same time.

There’s nothing subtle or mild about me or how I feel, love, pray, and live. I’m a lot to handle and as the husband of a dear friend of mine once said about me. “Jeez, could you have some f—–g enthusiasm already!” Which I translated as the usual, you’re just TOO MUCH!

And, I am too much, for a lot of folks, which isn’t really important, because I’m used to that now and I’m in really good company…but back to my cave. I didn’t share the depth of what was going on for me with anyone besides my husband. A few folks were worried about me since they weren’t seeing my posts and I was generally absent from so many activities online and elsewhere. Even when I’m in my cave, I still take care of what has to be taken care of, what is mine to take care of, like my parents and my children. Or when someone’s son in my community was murdered and they needed support to get their son’s body washed and prepared for burial, according to Jewish tradition. They needed to witness and lovingly wrap their beloved in a shroud with prayers during Covid. Everybody worries about you and thinks you’re crazy for extending yourself and endangering yourself to make that happen. But, this is exactly the kind of thing that pulls me, like a magnet from underneath the covers or the depths of my sanctuary cave. The call to serve and to do what is mine, not someone else’s to do.

The other call that came in, when I was deep in the depths of the pain of the world, was when George Floyd, z”l, was murdered. It was like an electric shock to my system and I just jumped out of my bed and started cooking and making medicines and cleaning and doing everything I could, in what I like to call Full-On-Nicole fashion. Even though the pain was searing, the call to make kindness alive and to help folks feel heard and seen and loved during this time of trauma and exposition of the true nature of our society, was stronger than the need to be curled up feeling the anguish. For me, the call came in and it came in loud and strong and clear.

George Floyd , zichrono l’vracha, by Marjorie Feldman, framed by Howard Feldman

I didn’t see the death of this man on the news. I felt it in my bones. I am a woman awash with the world’s doings. Life on this planet, the life of this planet is not something I am separated from, none of us are. When there is harm or grace, we all feel it. Whether it is a slight blip in our heart-beat or it takes us down to the ground, or out to our studios, or into the streets, we are all part of the same story.

In my tradition we say a prayer called the Shema, we say it three times a day. It cannot be completely translated. It’s a call to being and a chant and a reminder. The prayer itself is just a few words, but it is followed by a few paragraphs of prayers reminding us that if we adhere to this teaching the rain will fall in its season and the cattle will be happy and all will align, but if we fail to heed this call and we worship idols (like the television, entertainment industry, sports games, the stock market or the Kardashians) the rain won’t fall in its season and there will be famine, plague and basically consequences to our NOT taking care of each other and the planet. This is not the Holy One cursing us, this is us cursing ourselves, causing the damage by not heeding the call of the Shema.

Listen, Hear, All you tribe of Israel, all you who wrestle with the Divine, the idea of the Divine, Hear this, all of you who struggle to make the world a place of decency and kindness, who stumble and fall down, who make mistakes, but get back up again, and again, listen you tribe of humans of all colors and religions and creeds and genders,

WE ARE ALL ONE!

We are all One, the Divinity is All One, is all encompassing, is everywhere at all times, holding us, watching us, shepherding us, rooting for us, wailing for us and with us as we stumble and fumble about. The Creator is with us and is through us and is us.

This call to Listen, to Hear, which implies you are directing yourself towards something perhaps not always loud or obvious, something that requires your active attention; this is something that I cannot ignore. I’ve always been a being who feels the blood trickle down my leg when the person next to me falls down and the skin on their leg cracks open, I get this in my body, it’s not an idea in my head, it literally fills my head and body like a gong sounding through my whole being.

I am awash in the feelings of this world and often of the next world as well. Sometimes folks who’ve crossed over are looking for support or help, especially if they died suddenly or violently, or they just have something they need to communicate before they move on to their next bathing of light, where they can be awash in the Creator’s love for them. Sometimes folks here on this earth are in so much pain it leaps out of their bodies and finds its way to me.

So, crazy as this makes me look and sound to those of you in the world who cannot see the dead moving through the room, like a waft of steam rising from a tea cup, or who don’t recognize the connections between things as being all part of some giant and unwinding narrative we are players in, I am very much affirming, again and again, that I am a woman awash in all of this.

Why do I need to assert this? There are many reasons, but the strongest call right now has to do with wanting to witness for folks that you can be fully awake, aware, and open, and also closed, quiet and taking care of yourself. There is no one way to serve. Maybe you need to go to ground, take a sabbatical or a break or just crawl under the covers for a week or months. It doesn’t necessarily mean you are depressed or mentally ill. It might just mean you are a human feeling the throbbing heart of our times and needing to be with all of what that is. Or maybe you do better going to a rally or a protest or writing hundreds of postcards or keeping track of all the lies and stories on the screens so that you can be a witness to what is actually being said. As long as it doesn’t poison you and make you forget how to enjoy the buds on the trees or the way the Holy One paints the sky each night, or the smile of your beloved, or just that we’re all in this together, imbibe away.

We’re most of us in good, good, really good company. We all have work to do that is uniquely ours. I hope you find your way through and into the places you need to be in and that you notice when your engagement with the “news” takes you away from loving, living and giving.

The real news is this, we are here on this earth for an eye-blink, even if we live to be a hundred years old, and while we are here, we have a task to continue working on, the work of making the world a better reflection of the love, kindness, intelligence, justice, harmony and Oneness it was meant to be and it is becoming, even if we cannot see its emergence yet.

My Mother’s mother Isabelle, bat Minnie, zichronah livracha, May her Memory be for a Blessing, my mother Helen Redman and little baby me. The mothers’ blessings passing through me back to the original Mother of us All, a long line and an amazing legacy of women successfully giving birth and surviving to make it to this moment and this time. I’m so grateful to all those who have come before me. May I live up to my lineage.