Rising Higher
Dear friends,
At 1:45am I lost myself in dance along with every other smiling, happy person in the theater. Mualem, the Moroccan master of Saha Gnawa was singing, and the band was hot. It was impossible to stay seated. That moment captured the transcendence of the entire night. This all-night tradition of Shavuot is called a Tikkun, a healing, or righting of the wrong. Dancing to that North African rhythm of an ancient Muslim chant at my shul in Greenwich Village, I knew we had made that Tikkun of the soul that we were seeking.
We have been overwhelmed by more and more incredible messages and calls from so many of you and the hundreds of folks who spent the night with us on Shavuot. “I came in tears,” one friend told me, “and left convinced that the medicine is action, connection and community.” Another wrote - " My form of religion never involved believing in miracles. But, as I was watching the Kumah Festival, all I could think is: "This is miraculous!"
From the opening moment, when Baba and Jenny stepped onto the stage and until sunrise, when the brave dozen of us who stayed the full night walked out onto First Avenue, there was a palpable sense of amazement at the power of music and art. The amount of talent in that theater was staggering. The lobby stayed buzzing with conversation deep into the night.
It’s hard to single out specific moments because each person I speak to had different ones. Baba Israel called it an act of creative endurance, staying focused on art, feeling ourselves rise higher and higher into the celestial realms.
At 3am Shaul Magid’s teaching ascended into a conversation about eagles. Eagles, he taught us, shed their feathers, and renew themselves every year. This is what Shavuot is about, he said. We leave who we were behind and create ourselves anew on the same frame we’ve been inhabiting since birth. It’s a renewal of spirit and soul that allows us to fly. When we opened the night, as the whole space filled with hundreds of candles, the New Shul Band sang the words of Harav Kook, the rabbi of Palestine in the early 20th century: “You have soaring wings, mighty eagle wings: don’t deny them or they will seem like an illusion to you. Demand them, human being, and they will appear to you immediately.”
The New Shul has never done an event like this. I’ve never planned and led an event like this. Nobody there had ever been to an event like this. It was a Hitchadshut, a renewal, a shedding and growing of new feathers.
At 5:23am, I closed my Kabbalistic teaching about compassion with an invitation. “Let’s sit in the silence for three minutes until the sun rises at 5:26.” We sat in our tired exhilaration, spoke the words of the Shma Yisrael, and wished each other good morning.
I’m filled with gratitude to the around 90 artists, speakers and teachers and around 40 staff and volunteers who made this beautiful event, to Robbie and Nina Kaufelt for the bulk of the financial support, to Brian Binsack the technical/creative director, Susan Meyers the lead producer and Daphna Mor and Frank London the co-artistic directors.
Tomorrow morning we will be gathering for another simcha – Sequoia Israel’s Bat Mitzvah (our co-host Baba’s daughter!). It will be yet another musical gathering that I’m certain will elevate us with the promise of the next generation. We were going to meet in Greene Garden in Brooklyn, but because of the forecast will be meeting at the historic University Settlement in the Lower East Side. Join us!
Stop the war. Feed Gaza. Freedom and safety to every person, from the Middle East to the USA.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha