Wedding Wonders

Last week, I went to my friends' extraordinary wedding in Washington, DC. The couple is not from a traditionally orthodox background, and so the wedding was not traditionally orthodox. The couple is, however, very Jewishly aware and active. The groom, with whom I'm more closely acquainted, came to YU, and became very close with Rabbi Reichman, who came down to the wedding with us. The ceremonial part of the wedding was completely orthodox, and all of the YU guys who came down were the eidim and only men came up for the sheva brachot.
What was special about this wedding?
The wedding invitation was a purple-scroll that they got from India. It was beautiful, unique, and from what I gathered, rather inexpensive. The location was a historical synagogue, preserved for its wonderful architecture, and currently rented out by various private institutions as a disco club and also as a shul for Friday night services. The people attending the wedding were mostly from the Mid-West, as the couple both grew up in Iowa. Their friends were mostly not religiously observant at all, but they came to the ceremony with a wholesome open mindedness and respect for religion that you seldom find in New York.
The music was provided by a klezmer quintet, which was wonderful. It had a uniquely and authentic Jewish sound and feel, but it wasn't the blaring-in-your-ears that some other Jewish weddings I've been to have. The dancing lasted for a little while, and then the couple's friends made toasts for them. Now, while some might have said that that it a goyish (gentile) custom, I thought that it added so much to the substance of the wedding. The wedding is transformed from another identical reproduced color-by-number wedding that you've been to a hundred times (although this wedding was already quite unique). But it became much more personal when the friends and family got up to speak. The toasting and well-wishing only added to the celebration. It also allowed the bride and groom to spend time with one another during the wedding, which is unheard of, unfortunately, at many orthodox weddings, after the yichud (seclusion) room.
The YU chevra (group of friends) who came down for the wedding made the ceremony sections of the wedding fun. Two of the guys had guitars they were playing, one had a flute and I brought a bunch of percussion instruments that I played and passed around. The singing at the chassan's tisch (groom's gathering around a table before the wedding where documents are signed) was fun, and one friend with a guitar brought his guitar with him under the chuppa for the last bracha of the sheva brachot, to share the singing with everyone. The groom spoke beautifully and genuinely at the chassan's tisch, where he spoke about the specialness of the date on the Jewish calendar. He gave a blessing that G-d's love for the Jewish people should be as strong as the love that he feels for his bride today. This was a very real blessing, and it brought home the image of G-d being compared to a bride-groom and a lover of Israel.
I think that what I liked so much about this wedding was that it created a balance between traditionally Jewish and Halakhic considerations with a spirit of individuality that allowed the wedding to have a unique flavor. Is it wrong of me to value that individuality? I don't really question my enchantment with it-- it is natural for a person raised in America in the modern world to appreciate individualism. In fact, I would argue that most, if not all Jewish weddings today, have a piece of this, with the schtick that people bring-- with the markered-up tee shirts they through over their expensive outfits, the signs that they make, and whatever little chachkas that people find to dance with before the bride and groom. These are all efforts to accomplish this same goal of appreciating the couple as unique individuals. I would hope and expect that at my wedding, people would not be dancing merely because it is a mitzvah, or because that is what is done at a wedding, but also because they might be genuinely gladdened by my simcha, and need to express that outpouring of happiness with me. This as a feature of a unique relationship that I have with the person, and perhaps that she has with us as a couple.
I am not saying that everyone should have a wedding that looked like my friends-- that is precisely not the point that I want to make here. I do think, however, that individuals who get married ought not be afraid to do things differently that have a singular, distinctive quality such that it is not an extravagant cookie-cutter wedding, but shines as something that they can share with their friends and family, and with each other!

Community Constraints

I went to a retreat this past weekend with a group called "Jews in the Woods." The political structure of Jews in the Woods is something resembling small-scale communism. There is no official leadership. The people who run a given shabbaton are volunteers called "comfy chairs," and the responsibilities of food/housing/transportation/learning etc. are all given to different members of the "community." These responsibilities shift every time Jews in the Woods meet.
There is no set location for Jews in the Woods. This past weekend, we were at a nature preservation center, but my impression is that they move around to different locations every time.
Everything they served was vegetarian. There were gendered male and female sleeping spaces and bathrooms, and there were also non gendered sleeping spaces and bathrooms. The shul had two mechitzas-- the non-gendered section was in between the men and the women sections.
The shabbat began with a meditative ice-breaker, where everyone said what she wanted to bring into shabbat, and what she wanted to leave outside of the sacred space that we were entering. We sung and danced kabbalat shabbat and ma'ariv, and sat on the floor for dinner-- there were not enough tables and chairs for everyone-- and anyway, that would have been altogether too conventional.
The plates were bio-degradable, made from processed sugar cane. We all brought our own cups, and there were no disposable utensils. The environmental consciousness is the trademark of Jews in the Woods, it seems.
On Friday night after dinner, there was a learning session on the Ishbitzer's philosophy in his mei hashiloach. The group was very receptive to it, and not altogether too shocked by his drastic positions about God's will. The Ishbitzer apparently held that there is G-d's will that is pure and changes depending on circumstances, but since we cannot always be surrounded by the "clouds of glory" that served as divine inspiration to the people of Israel in the desert, we need a system of laws that are Halacha. Otherwise, people would basically be able to intuit, through their own clear thinking, how to behave. He likened the principles that govern Halacha to idols that we make for ourselves to worship.
Now, the population at Jews in the Woods, it seemed was mostly very serious young Jewish people who currently associate themselves with Conservative communities around the country. This philosophy didn't seem to surprise them much, since their norm is to trust their moral intuitions about egalitarianism, homosexuality, etc. One eloquent student at JTS commented in the class, "well of course, we all know that categories are bad, and that bad things happen when we make categories." Everyone sitting in the room (including me!) agreed. I reconsidered a moment later whether I actually think that, but when anyone (especially someone as eloquent as he) starts a sentence with, "well, everyone knows that..." the person has primed the room for brainwashing. But I digress. It occurs to me that while categories do limit possibilities, they also enable much to be. I think that while it would be nice to have the ability to intuit God's will, in order to be part of a community, conformity to community standards is sometimes at hand. Granted, I don't encourage all of one's decisions to be based on those limitations. But I do think that we would be lacking as a community if we were always thinking about being as individualistic as we could be.
On Friday night, I had this incredibly Community-Rabbi moment. There wasn't just one chazzan for all of kabbalat shabbat. Every paragraph was led by another member of the community. In the middle of Lecha Dodi, the person who had chosen the first tune was supposed to switch to another tune, but he went blank, and couldn't come up with the tune that he had come up with. He was sure it had been brilliant, and stood there, silently for 5 minutes, trying to remember what the tune was. He finally remembered some of it, I think, and it came out half-baked. During the silence, I felt the leadership in the community lacking. No community Rabbi would have allowed such a silence to last for that long for no good reason. There was Kavod Hatzibur to consider, as well as the embarrassment of the chazzan himself, that seemed to be growing. I pointed this out to my friend, and he said, "that's the whole point of this community! Individuality and personal expression are much more important than the community as a whole." Now, I'm not the one claiming to be communist, but I know that the community is worth more than it was granted, waiting for five minutes for a single person to recall the tune to the second half of lecha dodi. This occurs to me as truly lacking in a community like that. How ironic. When the individual is the only concern, communism is only a mask for the Korach-like effort to make each individual the center of attention. I think that people can shine within a community, and I don't really object to women participating in services (everyone coming to the first Migdal Or service tonight-- I hope to be there!), but I don't think that that is licence to forget a hierarchy of values and priorities.
I've been very negative about the weekend until now, so I'd like to now present some highlights. On Motz"ash, we had a drumming group while most of the group danced around freely to our rhythms. There were a couple of people on African hand drums, I grabbed a washing cup, and a few other people took pitchers and and aluminum pans. The music was fun, and people really enjoyed it. During kriat HaTorah on shabbat, the Sefer Torah was found to be passul (rendered invalid to read-- one letter was missing half of itself), so we had to read out of a chumash instead of the scroll. Instead of simply reading from the chumash as they would have from the Torah, the Jews in the Woods saw this as an opportunity to be creative. One aliya, a person sang the English translation every verse with the cantillation that the hebrew had. The next aliya, every pasuk, someone read the targum unkelus (traditional translation into aramaic). Then, someone who knows Yiddish fluently was laining one aliya, and he translated every verse into yiddish. Simultaneously, someone else signed the verses is ASL.
The creativity was amazing and free. There was a free spirit that was contagious and inspiring. This creativity does not exist in the conformist communities that we grew up in. I wonder if there is a way to strike a balance, or if this is a choice we make. I think that there must be a way. Ideas? Thoughts? Please share!

Sensing Presence

My drum teacher told me that he's a self-help book nerd, and that he read a book where the author interviewed Wayne Gretzky about how he plays so well. He told them, "I slow down the game in my mind." What an amazing concept. Wayne Gretzky sees a chess board of hockey players, and methodically and carefully in his mind, he manipulates the game to his advantage.

My teacher recommended that I do the same thing with drumming. He said that I'll be able to fit much more into the space of time if I slow it down in my mind. It's nothing I'm not capable of. If you clap slowly-- let's say, 90 times a minute, you will hear the claps and spaces in between. When you add a clap in between every clap, making 180 claps a minute, the minute seems much more full. In your mind, more time has passed. Now, try four in between every clap-- including the first one, that is. This is the basic sixteenth note-pattern. I was having trouble playing around with this pattern. Drummers will accent and delete given parts of this pattern at will. When I read the notes, I can do that. I can also do it when I play slowly, but when I'm playing the sixteenth notes, the pace is overwhelming. "Slow down the music in your mind." He told me to close my eyes. Feel the music at the moment. I did. It helped.

My voice teacher told me something similar-- when I have a difficult melodic pattern, told think about it. "Just let your ear do the work." My voice knows what to do... I need to slow down the quick notes in my mind and let the music come out. I told her what my drum teacher told me, and she said, "Yes! I like your teacher!"

All this talk about slowing down music in my mind made me wonder. How can I slow something down in my mind. I can only experience time as it happens, no? No! precisely not. Time passes the way we let it pass. When you're having fun, it flies. When we're caught in a moment, it can last forever. When we dream, five minutes can span hours and hours. How are these things possible? The passing of time seems to be something completely subjective. But it is a common experience that brings us into the same moment as one another. The clock ticks the same second on your watch and mine, and we can sing a song together because we can share moments. What does it mean to slow down the music in my mind? Let each note have its own value. Be present. At any given second in the song-- let that second count.

This concept might extend into the world of space as well. I don't really know that much about this, so if anyone else has more background in visual art, please contribute, but I think this might be an expression of the same basic concept. When I look at a space on the wall, I perceive the space as being a certain size. Fill that space with a picture of a flower. The space seems to expand, doesn't it? Now imagine the space covered with a picture of an ocean. It's huge! But is is also kind of limited. A song on the radio seems like it could be 5-10 minutes of material covered over the course of 2 and 1/2 minutes, but now compare those two and a half minutes with the same time sat in silence. And if we compare a slow song the same length to a fast song the same length, what are the differences? It's so odd, how we perceive time and space.

My mother does something called Energy Mirrors, which is a kind of energy-healing system. They do a lot of what other people would call meditation and focusing on being present. The well-selling author, Ekhart Tolle writes all about presence in our activities. For some reason, the way we perceive time can be greatly affected by our state of mind. Imagine someone tells you he'll spend a half hour with you. Now, fill the half hour with quickly checking email, receiving two short phone calls and then telling you what happened to him on the way to meeting you. Then, fill the hour with him looking into your eyes, listening to you, and smiling at you. Where is the presence? And what presents!