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Hanukkah in 62 Seconds

December 6, 2015 by Patrick Beaulier

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiCMe3xOXYw

Filed Under: Chanukah, Community Member Blogs, Podcasts & Videos, Shabbat & Holidays, Your Questions Answered Tagged With: bible, festival, food, holiday, Holidays, Jews, Judaism, prayer, Punk, Religion, service

It Gets Better

October 7, 2015 by Patrick Beaulier

glbtsmall

 

Click here and take the pledge and help spread our message of hope. It Gets Better.

THE PLEDGE: Everyone deserves to be respected for who they are. I pledge to spread this message to my friends, family and neighbors. I’ll speak up against hate and intolerance whenever I see it, at school and at work. I’ll provide hope for lesbian, gay, bi, trans and other bullied teens by letting them know that “It Gets Better.”

Filed Under: Community Member Blogs, LGBTQ & Women, Podcasts & Videos, Random (Feelin' Lucky?), Rants, Your Questions Answered Tagged With: advocate, bible, bisexual, dan savage, gay, gay jewish, homosexuality judaism, intersex, it gets better, itgetsbetter, Jewish, Judaism, lesbian, lgbt, punktorah, queer, Religion, support, synagogue, Torah, transgender

Tisha b’Av, A Holy Day of Sadness

July 23, 2015 by Patrick Beaulier

Tish b’Av, a holy day of sadness, commemorates the destruction of the first and second Temples, a day when we read the Book of Lamentations and on which many fast. Is there any benefit to living in the past, focusing on tragedy? Or can we perhaps learn a lesson from tragedy?

Rabbi Michael Bernstein of Congregation Gesher L’Torah reminds us that “joy and celebration are intrinsic to the Jewish people’s strength, well-being, and longevity.” Yet there are times, like Tish b’Av when we take on sorrow through recalling the painful experiences of being Jewish and our less than stellar history. One of our great sources of spiritual insight, Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, who himself may be best known for the phrase “It is a great commandment to be joyous at all times,” was reported to have suffered from depression.

However, Rabbi Nachman grew from his depression and really knew the human condition. He provided a profound way of understanding the place of sadness in our lives. Rabbi Nachman said that there is a very real and human susceptibility to sadness as well as anger that brings bitterness, fear, depression, and despair. Those feelings, whether they come from tragic occurrences in our lives or for no conscious reason, cannot be avoided. However, they do us no good to dwell on them or to get lost in them. In the words of a great teacher of mine, Mike Smith, “it is empowering to honor the past – to learn from it and it is disempowering to live in the past –to be stuck there. Living in the past is like carrying a heavy sack of all our past hurt, anger, resentments, despair and then creating the future by tossing forward this heavy sack of the past. Now, try having a powerful life that way”

One of my favorite Jewish Renewal authors and pastoral counselors, Estelle Frankel, wrote in her book, Sacred Therapy, “spiritual awakening begins with learning how to navigate our way through dark times. “Night” is a recurrent theme in Jewish myth, signifying the fertile and transformative power of the unknown – the hidden face of the Divine in the world. After all, Jacob wrestled throughout the night and alone. His transformation to Yisrael could only happen when he struggled with his darkness – what Karl Jung called his shadow – those parts of ourselves that we reject and on which we expend lots and lots of energy hiding from ourselves and the world. Frankel continues, “all life moves in cycles from darkness into light, from contraction into expansion, brokenness into wholeness. … a kind of exile, a state of being disconnected and dislocated from our true place.” However, just like the Israelites, there is the possibility of redemption from our own mitrayim (Egypt).

There are times when we must flail away in the muck of what James Hollis wrote about in his book, The Swamplands of the Soul. Getting stuck in those swamps does us no good. Avoiding them is even worse – we drink, we sex, we work, or we buy our way out of our swamps, trying to fill the inner hole and choosing denial as our method of managing our dark nights of the soul. However, avoiding our darkness leads to addiction, neuroses and even physical illness. Taking the time to explore, to feel, to share, to express and even to get support allows us to traverse these swamplands. Deriving meaning and growth from the swamp is the dry ground onto which we can eventually step.

By being with our pain, there is a sadness which Rabbi Nachman called “the broken heart” –, perhaps triggered by a memory of what was lost, changes that we did not desire, all the endings the befall us in our lives. He said that broken heartedness is free from anger and blame – it is rooted in the humble awareness that all human beings experience sorrow and pain – broken heartedness is a validation of our humanity. Another great teaching by Rabbi Nachman proclaimed “There is nothing so whole as a broken heart”.

Rabbi Alexandri, the third-century Palestinian Talmudist described G-d as the seeker of shattered hearts, writing, “when a man uses a broken vessel he is ashamed of it, but not G-d. All instruments of G-d’s service are broken vessels, as it is written in Psalm 34:19, “G-d is close to the brokenhearted.” All we have to do is share ourselves – with others, with professional counselors, our rabbi and with G-d. G-d then shows up through others.

As we begin the last book of the Torah, Devarim, with the realization that Moses will not enter the promised land, let us look at his broken heartedness and not his depression. Some commentators wrote that Moses really was lamenting that he did not allow the Israelites to grow from their mistakes like a parent who allows his children to skin their knees, following behind with a box of band-aids. Moses was broken hearted that he was not a better leader and that is why he did not get to enter the Promised Land. Let us look back on our own lives at our losses, at our missed opportunities, at our fears, at our humanity. Rather than falling into regret and resentment and anger at ourselves, at others or even at G-d, let us feel the pain. Let us feel it – sit with it – breathe into it – NOT get stuck in it. Then ask, how did I grow from it? Embrace the fact that all of that stuff got you exactly where you are sitting right now. What was the meaning? How did you grow? Then, simply thank G-d for the gift of life, for life is short and can end in a moment. Let us commit ourselves to taking risk, to riding more roller coasters, to playing large and not small or safe – flying by the seat of our pants. Then, when we do leave this life, we can see how we made a difference for just being here. Learning from our mistakes and then teaching others. Loving and being loved. After all, as another teacher once taught me, “life is about loving, connecting and contributing. Everything else is hiding out and wasting time”.

Written by Rabbi Mitch Cohen, director of the Neshama Interfaith Center and part of the Darshan Yeshiva Conversion to Judaism program.

Filed Under: Podcasts & Videos, Random (Feelin' Lucky?), Shabbat & Holidays, The Three Weeks/Tisha B'Av Tagged With: convert to judaism, convert to judaism online, darshan yeshiva, online conversion, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi mitch cohen, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier

PunkTorah Radio: Kosher Vegan Cookbooks and Birthday Trees

February 3, 2015 by Patrick Beaulier


This week is all about Kosher Vegans, Tu B’Shvat and a big OneShul announcement!

PunkTorah Radio: Kosher Vegan Cookbooks and Birthday Trees

Also, subscribe on iTunes!

Filed Under: Community Member Blogs, Jewish Media Reviews, Podcasts & Videos, Random (Feelin' Lucky?), Shabbat & Holidays, Tu B'Shevat, Your Questions Answered Tagged With: bible, cookbook, Counterculture, food, holiday, Holidays, Jewish, Jews, Judaism, kosher, newkosher, Parsha, Punk, rebel, Religion, shevat, Torah, Tu B'Shvat, vegan, vegan cookbook, vegetarian

YouTube Is My Siddur (or, Why I Can’t Stand Prayer Books)

August 26, 2014 by Patrick Beaulier

youtube

By Rabbi Patrick

For many years, I have struggled to find a siddur that reflects the poetry of my life. I have trouble finding a book that speaks with honesty about human life, about Jewish life, and at the same time understands that humanity is not a species that lives in the literal, but lives in the metaphorical.

While I love vintage clothes and furniture, vintage faith is not where I am in life. I cannot pray Kaddish knowing full well that the growth of the Kaddish into the Mourner’s Kaddish may have been a response to the Catholic Church’s teaching of plenary indulgences. I cannot thank God in Asher Yatzar for making my body perfectly, only to shoot interferon beta 1-a in my stomach so that my immune system will stop eating my spine like the unlimited soup, salad and bread sticks at Olive Garden. I find myself wondering if false prayer is Lashon Hara to God, and if in the Amidah the phrase, “may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you” is more like an admission of guilt (dear God, I know I am faking my way through this Artscroll nusach Sephardim, so please bear with my insincerity) instead of a testimonial to the Sacred about a desire for holiness.

Unfortunately, going in the opposite direction does not work either. I have tried picking up progressive siddurim and using them, only to find that they are the same old texts of before, warped into an agenda that reads more like a political treatise than a response to the everlasting God. The tortured metaphors of progressive siddurim are at once an attempt to make everyone happy by reinterpreting the Godhead to the point of neutering, and yet, trying desperately to leave the flavor of the “old time religion” in a half-hearted attempt to console the traditionalist (or at least, what the progressive thinks the traditionalist is). Prayer in the progressive sense becomes more like a negotiation between the author and the reader, than a rapture between I and Thou.

It’s a no win situation. Really.

When I was in business school, I was taught something that has forever impacted the way I view the world:

The message is in the medium.

In my own experience, the greatest thing that happened to the Internet was video. And it’s in video that I find my siddur. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Community Member Blogs, Judaism & Belief, Podcasts & Videos Tagged With: convert to judaism, convert to judaism online, darshan yeshiva, online conversion, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier

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