Carmel Louis, Teacher of Mindfulness
On October 14th at 8:45 am, my watch battery died. The date is significant because it is the morning when we finally left two weeks of quarantine in Tel Aviv and held our new grandson in our arms for the first time.
As I write these words, I am sitting on my return flight home. Recollecting two magical weeks with Sagi, Sarah and newborn Carmel Louis, I can see now the significance of lacking a functioning watch.
What time was it? It was the present moment in every moment.
I have tried to be intentional for many years, studying and practicing mindfulness, even having the chutzpah to teach it. But for the first time, I experienced complete presence without working at it.
Carmel Louis was my teacher.
What time was it? Without my watch and with my phone tucked away, it was just this moment.
It was time for Carmel to cuddle in my arms, listening to me sing “White Cliffs of Dover.”
It was time for Sagi and Sarah to give Carmel a bath. (He screamed throughout!)
It was time to bless Carmel for Shabbat.
It was time to push Carmel’s stroller to the tayelet (the walkway beside the Mediterranean) to see the sunset.
It was time to take three chicken pot pies out of the oven, one for dinner, one for Josh, and one for the freezer.
It was time to sit on the balcony beside Sagi’s herb garden as Sarah nursed Carmel.
It was time to stare endlessly at Carmel Louis Fainshtain Drill, mesmerized by every expression that passed across his tiny face.
Before I post these words, I will have returned home, turned off my away message, and begun responding to my emails. I am grateful for the lessons taught by Carmel and I will maintain them as I reenter the hectic pace of rabbinic work during a pandemic.
I hope that the lessons I learned will not only stay with me, but be helpful to you as well.
- Do one thing at a time. Multi-tasking means that you’re going to miss something.
- Practice doing nothing at all except for gazing at something perfect and beautiful in God’s world. If you don’t have Carmel handy, practice with the view from your window, your pet, or a loved one on Zoom.
- Be completely aware of your blessings in every moment. If you feel down or fatigued or worried (as we are apt to feel in these days), reframe the moment. Despite your experience at the time, look for and count your blessings. (Sarah described feeling so tired when she heard Carmel cry just one-half hour after a middle of the night feeding. Then she looked into his little face and was flooded with love.)
- Put your phone down and take off your watch. I know that I cannot do this in my normal days as I did for two weeks on Mapu Street in Tel Aviv. But I can do it for an hour every day. And I can do it on Shabbat.
Let me know how you do! Drop me a note anytime! What time? The present moment in every moment will be just the right time!
With blessings, Rabbi Paula Mack Drill
Origin stories
I love origin stories.
I don’t care what the critics say. Give me Henry Cavill, Tom Welling or Christopher Reeve as Superman. Give me Christian Bale, Val Kilmer or David Mazouz as Batman. Give me Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield or Toby Maguire as Spiderman. Give me Richard Donner or Zack Snyder. Give me Tim Nolan or Christopher Nolan. Give me Sam Raimi or Jon Watts. Give me any of these actors and directors, so long as they are giving me an origin story, and I’m hooked.
And I don’t even mind if the origin stories they deliver are competing in details or factually different. So long as the origin story offers me an insight into what drives my hero‘s motor, I’m hooked. And I can go back for more, again and again.
I find myself far more sympathetic to a character when I know that character’s origin story. I want to understand their roots of insecurities, their foundations of confidence, their source of aspirations. The beauty of the origin stories for me is that the creative interpreters—the writers, actors and directors—are ultimately responsible for dictating how we understand what motivates our favorite characters to act. No choice can made, no action can be taken in the foreground without the origin story hanging in the background.
Adam and Eve, in the Book of Genesis, get two (!) origin stories juxtaposed against each other. I imagine the writer and director getting together to offer two different vantage points from which we can watch the story unfold.
Moses, in the Book of Exodus, is given a detailed origin story, one depicting the harrowing circumstances surrounding his birth, the fateful moment he asserts independence from his assigned station of royalty, and the transformative event that calls him to God’s service.
When it comes Noah and Abraham, —the father of the post-flood human race and the father of the Jewish people, respectively—however, the Torah gives us no origin story. Instead, we’ve relied on the artistic and creative storytelling abilities of rabbis through the centuries to propose the origin stories that would provide greater insight into, understanding of, and appreciation for these towering characters. These origin stories are collected in the body of literature we call The Midrash.
My issue with The Midrash is that, while we have attributed some of these proposed origin stories to great and authoritative voices from our past, we all too often rely on them as if they were written by God God-self or discovered in the text of the Torah. In so doing, we relinquish the opportunity to connect the origin stories of these characters with our own experiences. While at some point in my life I may have smashed my father’s idols on a metaphoric level, I would much rather relate to Abraham‘s story of hearing God‘s voice in his life in the context of my own experience.
It is said of the Torah that she has 70 faces. I prefer that one of those faces be a reflection of my own. In studying the stories of Noah and Abraham, I can wrestle with what it means to be sufficiently righteous in this world to merit saving. I can ponder what sacrifices I would be willing to make in order to perpetuate goodness in this world. I can picture children, parents and spouses struggling to discern God’s willing voice in this world.
In the absence of origin stories for Noah and Abraham, the Torah makes room for my own. This origin story is mine.
Rabbi Craig Scheff
Z’man Simchateinu
One day before the beginning of Sukkot, Z’man Simchateinu, the Time of our Joy, I became a Bubbe for the first time. It is an honorific title for which I have waited fairly patiently and for which I am humbly grateful. I write “fairly patiently” because while I did not annoy my children with expectation, I certainly practiced Bubbehood with all of the children at OJC and let it be known that I was ready! And I write “humbly grateful” because while I am filled with an uncanny, indescribable joy, I am well aware of so many people who will never become grandparents for one reason of life or another. May we always have humility when acknowledging a blessing.
And so, I acknowledge my blessing. Carmel Louis Fainshtain entered the world and Z’man Simchateinu took on vast new dictionaries of meaning. This is truly a time of great joy and yet it is not complete. Due to the vagaries of COVID-19, Jonathan and I arrived in Israel in time for the birth, but we will be in quarantine for a total of 14 days. I can offer Sarah comfort and whatever wisdom I recall, but only over FaceTime. Jonathan will be sandek at the bris of his first grandchild, but via Zoom.
Is it still Z’man Simchateinu if it is not complete?
And now it actually is Sukkot, Z’man Simchateinu. Being in Israel for the holiday is absolutely a time of great joy, but again, it is not complete. Here in our quarantine apartment, there is no sukkah. Josh purchased lulav and etrog from the shuk for me, but I daven alone on the balcony.
Is it a time of great joy or will I allow Covid-19 and this quarantine to diminish it? Talmud has something valuable to offer to my question about the incompleteness of joy. In Sukkah 11b, we find an argument between Rabbi Eleazer and Rabbi Akiva:
These booths were ענני כבוד clouds of glory, this is the statement of Rabbi Eliezer. Rabbi Akiva says: They established for themselves סוכות ממש actual sukkot.
Every year for the past 35 years before this one, I have spent time in an actual sukkah, making kiddush with my community, welcoming guests, eating autumn meals; and throughout the week, embracing the idea of my vulnerability and the world’s fragility. The three temporary walls and star-pricked skhach roof teach me to reject the idea that any of us has control. With or without a sukkah, we now know in our very souls that none of us has control. One message of Sukkot is that the only true safety and shelter is found in God‘s protection.
If the actual sukkah is the antithesis of real shelter, the Clouds of Glory are the ultimate shelter. Our ancestors who wandered through the wilderness should have been vulnerable in every way, but instead, they were completely safe, sheltered by God. God’s cloud shielded the Israelites from the desert’s harshness and protected them from enemies.
The time of our great joy is about both vulnerability and protection. Humanity has never been in as much turmoil and fear during my lifetime as we are now. And yet in the midst of the upheaval, here I am welcoming a brand new precious life. Incomplete joy, Judaism teaches, is the only kind of real simcha that we ever have. We gather at holidays and remember those we’ve lost. We celebrate a wedding and smash a glass to remember tragedy even at the beginning of a new marriage. I celebrate Sukkot without an actual sukkah. I have a new grandson whom I cannot yet hold in my arms. Yet it’s all joy if it’s connected to acknowledging the blessing of God’s loving abundance.
This year, I may not have a sukkah mamash (an actual sukkah) but I most certainly have the experience of being protected by Ananei Kavod (God’s Clouds of Glory).
Moadim l’simcha, may these days of Sukkot be filled with joy for you!
Rabbi Paula Mack Drill
Two Rabbis, One Voice, Three Opinions 
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