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Torah portion B’reishit (full reading): SHOT SEQUENCE

10/30/2016

Take 1:1 - 2:3
   We’re rolling. ACTION!
   Cue Lights. Gas. Cosmic clusters.
   BIG BANG. That’s a wrap.

Take 2:4 - 2:19
   Fast Forward. Man in
   Garden. (Voice off): Eat no fruit
   lest you be dead meat.

Take 2:20 - 3:21
   Enter Eve. Zoom in
  on snake, apple, Adam. (Crunch)
   WARDROBE! Bring fig leaves.

Take 3:22 - 4:18
   Jump cut: two brothers
   fight behind gym. Stunt goes south.
   Oops. That’s not ketchup.

Take 4:19 - 4:22
   Sound track by Jubal
   and the Ancestors tops charts
   thirty-six weeks straight.

Take 4:23 - 5:24
   Hayes Office warns, “All
   this begetting will result
   in X-rating.” Cool.

Take 5:25 - 6:8
   Watch daily rushes.
   Aaaargh. Delete, erase, rewind.
   TAKE IT FROM THE TOP.

   copyright Ozzie Nogg 2016

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In My Autumn Garden . . .

10/22/2016

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“To everything there is a season,” says Ecclesiastes. “And a time for every purpose under heaven.” The poetry in these familiar words is unmistakable, but so are the generalities. Everything -- season -- time -- purpose. Now, if we’re free to choose a specific thing and season, I nominate White-Shoes-Are-Declasse-After-Labor-Day, but such trivialities (though concrete) are surely not what Kohelet -- the biblical bard -- had in mind. For the text continues, “A time to be born, and a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to pluck that which is planted.” Ah, good. Our melancholy poet-teacher has stopped beating around the bush. This is life and mortality we’re talking about. This is the bittersweet process of looking back, looking inward and looking ahead as we age. And on this journey through my autumn garden, Kohelet -- and a seed catalogue -- are my chosen guides.

When I was young, spring arrived with fists full of lilies of the valley. They grew in clumps near the back door of my parents' house, and even more than robins or the crocus that pushed its way up through the snow, fragrant lilies of the valley meant spring to me.

My mother loved lilies of the valley. She understood their preference for shade, their need to shun bright light. She approved of the modest green capes in which the tiny blossoms wrapped themselves. At the time, our family owned an impressive collection of empty Kraft Cheese Spread glasses (from pimento and olive, mostly), and mother often filled the glasses with lilies of the valley and arranged the bouquets around our duplex -- on the kitchen table, the dining room buffet, the window sill above her sewing machine. The blooms never lasted long. No matter how often we changed the water, the bell-shaped flowers soon drooped on their delicate necks, bowed their heads, and died. But the plants returned, every spring, to our garden. And why not? After all, seed catalogues promise that lilies of the valley -- when well rooted -- will spread indefinitely, need almost no care, and live for many years.

*

When I was young, summer arrived on the ruffled skirts of hollyhocks. They grew in sturdy rows beside our wooden backyard fence, and even more than monarch butterflies or morning glories scrambling up the porch rail, hollyhocks meant summertime to me.

The hollyhocks stood taller than I. The flowers -- pink, peach, red, white -- big as saucers, sheer as tissue paper -- hung like Lilliputian dresses at an outdoor bazaar. In my hands the blooms morphed into brides with their attendants, princesses surrounded by ladies-in-waiting, a line of headless ballerinas. In my summer garden, make-believe grew real as hollyhocks, but by September the flowers had gone to seed. Not to worry. Horticulturists say hollyhocks are a robust lot, and once established can last a long time.
*

Soon the short days of autumn will be here, with asters, goldenrod and mums blooming through chilly wind, frost and the first snow. But eventually we must deadhead the plants, rake up twigs and leaves, renew depleted soil. We’ll cast away stones, gather stones together, and put our gardens to bed for the winter -- our hopes for renewal waiting like seeds in the earth.

Today, however, I remember a trip my husband and I took to Holland some years ago. In a village near the Zuider Zee we visited a tulip farm where acres of cut tulips were piled in heaps -- luminous purple, blue, orange, crimson, yellow, green -- like splendid dead parrots. While the cut blossoms lay unattended, workers gently placed the tear-shaped bulbs in burlap bags for shipment overseas. The flowers would be burned and plowed back into the earth. “This process may seem heartless,” the tulip farmer said, “but the transient beauty of young flowers is less prized than the enduring wisdom in the bulb.”
*

“One generation goes, another comes,” says Ecclesiastes, and to rail against this certainty is a waste of precious time. Unlike hollyhocks or lilies of the valley, our seasons will not last indefinitely or even (in some cases) many years. This autumn I ask, who will tend my garden when I’m gone? Perhaps the answer -- and some comfort -- lies in these words from a seed catalog:

“Mature tulip bulbs produce offset buds that are clones of the parent bulb, endowed with the same characteristics and genetic code. Nourished by the mother bulb, offsets grow into daughter bulbs, and the original mother shrivels and slowly disappears. When separated from the mother bulb, the young bulbs start flowering themselves, and even if planted upside down, they instinctively turn, turn, turn and grow towards
the sun.”

copyright Ozzie Nogg 2016

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Observing Sukkot in Clouds of Glory . . .

10/16/2016

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To Father’s Cabin
     O old man, good god
Careful man of heaven
Keeper of storm clouds
Make misty weather
And create a tiny cloud
In whose shelter I may go.
Amorphis From their album Tales From the Thousand Lakes (1994)

*

Many joys and sorrows ago, when eggs cost 60 cents a dozen,
our Heroine and her Hero built a sukkah in their back yard.

Then it rained.
Mid-week, the sukkah collapsed.
And even though the sages say one can re-build a sukkah
on the intermediate days,
the couple tossed the rubble in the trash
and chose, instead, to sit in the sukkah at their synagogue
or in the sukkot of friends.

Or not . . .

Truth be told, our Heroine has become lax in matters of observance.
She fidgets in shul and is easily distracted during formal prayer.
And though she is a totally indoor person,
she feels a kinship to the Baal Shem-Tov,
Reb Nachman of Breslov,
and the mystics of Safed
who sought the Holy in forest and field.
Was she not struck with radical amazement atop Mt. Sinai at dawn?
Did she not weep in the quiet boat
on the still waters of Doubtful Sound?
Yes. She did.

So it is that today, our Heroine considers the Talmudic debate
between Rabbi Eliezar and Rabbi Akiba.
   The sukkah, argues Akiba, reminds us
   of the real booths built by our ancestors in the wilderness
   The sukkah, counters Eliezer, reminds us
   of the Clouds of Glory that protected the Israelites during their wanderings. *

Our Heroine sides with Rabbi Eliezar.

Tonight she and her Hero will sit outside on their deck
under a canopy of cumulus clouds
in their symbolic sukkah
wine in hand
(with perhaps a chunk of cheddar)
and thank the Ruler of the universe for this holiday of Sukkot,
festival of our joy
a commemoration of the Exodus from Egypt.

They will also give thanks for having
once again reached this season.

And finally.
Our Heroine will whisper:
   May the Almighty stuff a sock in the mouth of the new Mussolini
   and spread His sukkah of peace over us and over the entire world.

Chag Sameach, everyone.

* In a few sources, these roles are reversed . . .

Photograph and content copyright Ozzie Nogg 2016

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A Shabbat Shuvah Memory . . .

10/7/2016

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I, my younger brother, and my eldest daughter
all observed our Bat or Bar Mitzvah on a Shabbat Shuvah . . .
the anniversaries of which are tomorrow.
And so, in honor of this family tradition,
I offer a Shabbat Shuvah memory.
To those of you who already know this story, slicha.
I figure the message still works, so why reinvent the wheel.

You’ll access the memory when you scroll up and click BLOG
right between HOME and CONTACT OZZIE

Stay well.
Stay safe.
And K'tiva VaHatima Tova.
You should be written and sealed in the Book of Life for a good year.

Oz

For the past few weeks I’ve been observing my traditional pre-New Year customs - wallowing in nostalgia, thinking about people I miss, berating myself over things-I-might-have-done-differently. You know. All the introspective behaviors typical of so many of us at this time of year.

I’ve also been reliving my Bat Mitzvah which we observed in 1948 on Shabbat Shuvah - the Sabbath that falls between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. This week’s Shabbat, to be exact . . .

*
My father was my teacher. He was a rabbi, old-world style, who specialized in teaching (at which he was a veritable Pied Piper) and in reading Torah (at which he was uncommonly skilled.)

When Poppa read Torah, each trop was flawlessly and lovingly chanted. And his dramatic, intelligent interpretation of the text gave listeners goose-bumps, even if the listeners had zero understanding of Hebrew, which was usually the case.

Poppa tried to instill his passion for the perfect trop and his reverence for the Hebrew word in all his students. Generations of them sat at his feet, tried their best and still mangled many a munach in the process. Poppa listened to all of them and said simply, “Again.” His endurance was legendary.

I was a fidgety pupil. The trop came easily enough, but the haftarah for Shabbat
Shuvah - full of exhortation to renounce sin, transgression and return - shuvah - to God, held little interest for me. My delivery was hurried and sloppy and Poppa said, “Again” with regularity.

“How terrible would it be if I made a few mistakes, Poppa?” I asked him. “No one in the congregation will know.”

“If you make a mistake, tochter, you will know,” he said. I was only thirteen and this wisdom was lost on me.

*

Now, if my father was the consummate teacher, my mother was the quintessential seamstress, and so, of course, she made my Bat Mitzvah dress. I could have worn that dress inside-out, so exquisitely was it lined and finished. No raw edges. No tangled threads. If a seam didn’t meet my mother’s standards, she simply ripped it out and sewed it again.

“Why do you care so much about the inside?” I asked her. “No one is ever going to see the inside.”

“A dress may be beautiful on the outside,” my mother replied, “but if the inside is not well made, the dress will soon fall apart. Any good tailor knows that.” This wisdom was lost on me, too.

*

My Bat Mitzvah, as best I recall, went just fine. Did I make mistakes? I don’t remember for sure, but probably, yes. What I do know for certain is that the years since that Shabbat Shuvah have not been error-free.

And so, this Yom Kippur I will again say al chet and ask atonement for my sins. The sins of pride, anger, ingratitude, jealousy, disrespect, laziness - you know. All the sins of which most of us are typically guilty. And this Shabbat Shuvah I’ll remember my Bat Mitzvah and the teachings of my parents. Lessons even more meaningful in my life than the words of my haftarah.

I’ll remember to take more care with my stitches, Ma. I’ll try to tie up all those loose ends and neatly finish the seams. Sure, I’d like the outside to be beautiful, but I’ll try to give greater attention to the inside. I want this garment (which is me, after all) to wear well and not fall apart.

And yes, Poppa. I’ll remember that when I make a mistake - even one that only I am aware of - it’s still a mistake. I’ll ask to be forgiven, but this forgiveness may be the hardest to get, for it must come not from others but from me, myself.

Return, oh Israel, unto the Lord your God, says the haftarah for Shabbat Shuvah. Say unto him, forgive all iniquity and accept that which is good.

We should say that to one another, too. Forgive all iniquity. Accept that which is good. In others and in ourselves.

copyright Ozzie Nogg 1995

A little glossary:

yontifs — Jewish holidays
trop — musical notations used when chanting Torah and haftarah
munach - one of the trop/cantillation sounds
haftarah - a selection from the Prophets chanted after the Shabbat Torah reading
tochter - daughter in Yiddish
al chet - a confession of sins, recited on Yom Kippur

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On Erev Rosh HaShanah, I create my personal Genizah . . .

10/2/2016

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Genizah: from the Hebrew root, G-N-Z, which means hiding, to hide or to put away. Later, it became a noun for a place where one put things, an archive or repository.

Genizah: The storeroom in a synagogue; a cemetery in which worn-out Hebrew books and ritual items
are placed. Therefore, a genizah serves the double purpose of preserving good things from harm and bad things from harming.

*

Last week, our congregation buried hundreds of sacred books and ritual objects in the synagogue cemetery. Out-dated weekday and Shabbat siddurim. High Holiday machzorim with broken spines. Crumbling volumes of the Talmud. Stained prayer shawls. Tefillin past the point of repair. These items had been inspected and deemed no longer useable, and so - out of respect - the items were buried, rather than unceremoniously dumped.

FYI. All those prayers on little scraps of paper that visitors to Jerusalem shove in the cracks of the Western Wall, eventually clog the crevices. Then they need to be collected and buried, too. Twice a year, before Pesach and on the eve of Rosh HaShanah,
the Rabbi of the Western Wall and a dozen workers sweep the ancient stones
with brooms and wooden sticks (in order to reach high enough to grab the prayers closest to heaven), bundle the slips in shroud-like bags and bury them in the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.

This evening is Erev Rosh Hashanah.
So I’ve made a Genizah for myself and will welcome the New Year by burying
by letting go of a bunch of stuff
that clogs up the spaces in my heart and brain.

This year I’ll do my best to bury
grudges
envy
ingratitude
the need for perfection
self-serving prayers
the urge to fix everything.

I will let go of
shoulda-coulda-woulda regrets
judgement
negativity
unrealistic expectations
worries about tomorrow.

Yup. Because none of the above is useful,
I’ll bag it.

Of course, this entire exercise may be a perfect example of
unrealistic expectations,
but it’s a new year --
a time for fresh beginnings --
so what the heck.
I’ll give it my best shot.
Stay tuned.

Finally.
To all those whom I have offended this past year,
knowingly or unknowingly,
intentionally or unintentionally,
I ask for your forgiveness.

To those who have offended me, I forgive you.

L'shanah tovah tikatev.
May you be inscribed for a good year.

Amen and Amen.

copyright Ozzie Nogg 2016

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Ozzie Nogg

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Torah portion B’reishit (full reading): SHOT SEQUENCE

In My Autumn Garden . . .

Observing Sukkot in Clouds of Glory . . .

A Shabbat Shuvah Memory . . .

On Erev Rosh HaShanah, I create my personal Genizah . . .﻿

Ozzie Nogg

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On Erev Rosh HaShanah, I create my personal Genizah . . .