Cantor Vera's Corner
Cantor Vera's Message
January 2022
Dear chevre,
When I lived in Western Massachusetts, sugaring season became my favorite time of the year. Each February, Mike and I made a pilgrimage to a sugar house for at least one big pancake breakfast, returning home triumphant, licking our lips and our fingers, with a jug of maple sap distilled down into pure sweetness. We learned to watch the weather carefully each January—would a thaw properly warm the tree blood, thin it, and give the whole system an extra injection of sunlight? Would the hard freezes return after, as they should, to send the tree back into the mode of storage and sugar production? Maple trees need that alternation of warm and cold to set the sap cycling properly, sugar leaping up through the xylem of the trees. A winter where the temperature stays even will not see a good sugaring-off. Constant cold or warmth may make our wardrobe choices easier but seriously disrupts the natural maple sap cycle.
This January, Tu biShvat, the birthday of the trees, falls on the same weekend as Martin Luther King Jr. Shabbat (and Shabbat Shirah, with special choral contributions to our Saturday morning service!). We can learn from the trees as we consider our society’s lurching (at best) gains in advancing racial justice and equity in every arena from healthcare access to criminal justice to hiring to voting. We can learn from the trees as we digest the bitter news of the omicron variant’s virulence and face another winter of uncertainty just as the expansion of vaccinations and booster shots seemed poised to let us relax a little closer to normal. Our spirits rose and fell—and are hovering now, unsure of which direction our country and our pandemic will take us in. What was safe a few weeks ago might not be safe now. Information comes in confusing floods, and the disorientation is familiar but no easier.
In place of the confusion, I invite you to tap into a feeling of being rooted. Our blood is running in our veins, cycling through our own cells, carrying sugar with it, just as the sap does. Tu biShvat invites us to think of ourselves as different kinds of fruit, even as trees. At our Zoom Tu biShvat seder with several other local congregations, I hope that each taste of fruit and each sip of wine or grape juice will help us live a little more in our bodies. Rituals help remind us that, as a Jewish people, we are rooted in a cycle longer than any one winter or pandemic.
Thinking about ourselves as trees for a ritual hour can teach us to ride our world’s ups and downs with greater hope, allowing us to grow from the vigor of the contrasts rather than to be exhausted by trying to control them. Judaism reminds us, through Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), that in different times, different actions and attitudes are needed, opposites right up against one another: planting and uprooting, tearing down and building up, hugging each other and keeping far from one another’s arms (Kohelet 3:1–5). In the words of the Reverend Dr. King that will form the backbone of our MLK Shabbat service, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” This may be, once again, a time to refrain from embracing. But the time for embracing will surely come again.
Tu biShvat is coming. Right now, in Israel, the almond tree buds are bursting at their seams, flowers breaking forth. Right now, in New England, the different spongy maple parts clothed in winter bark are preparing to send the sugar up through the tree’s veins. The cold will come again, without question. How much sweetness, with hope and prayer, can we make while the sun shines and then again when the energy falls low and dormant?
On my Tu biShvat table on the 16th, I’ll put a little cup of maple syrup, to taste this truth. Our progression through pandemic isn’t linear. Our walk toward justice leads us over some staggering heights and drops. But like the sap, still—in Batya Levine and Rabbi Noam Lerman’s words—we rise.
Cantor Vera
We Rise
We rise… humbly hearted
Rise… we won’t be divided
Rise… with spirit to guide us
Rise!
Chorus:
In hope, in prayer,
We find ourselves here
In hope, in prayer,
We’re right here (x2)
We rise… all of the children
Rise… elders with wisdom
Rise… ancestors surround us
Rise!
We rise… up from the wreckage
Rise… with tears and with courage
Rise… fighting for life
Rise!
When I lived in Western Massachusetts, sugaring season became my favorite time of the year. Each February, Mike and I made a pilgrimage to a sugar house for at least one big pancake breakfast, returning home triumphant, licking our lips and our fingers, with a jug of maple sap distilled down into pure sweetness. We learned to watch the weather carefully each January—would a thaw properly warm the tree blood, thin it, and give the whole system an extra injection of sunlight? Would the hard freezes return after, as they should, to send the tree back into the mode of storage and sugar production? Maple trees need that alternation of warm and cold to set the sap cycling properly, sugar leaping up through the xylem of the trees. A winter where the temperature stays even will not see a good sugaring-off. Constant cold or warmth may make our wardrobe choices easier but seriously disrupts the natural maple sap cycle.
This January, Tu biShvat, the birthday of the trees, falls on the same weekend as Martin Luther King Jr. Shabbat (and Shabbat Shirah, with special choral contributions to our Saturday morning service!). We can learn from the trees as we consider our society’s lurching (at best) gains in advancing racial justice and equity in every arena from healthcare access to criminal justice to hiring to voting. We can learn from the trees as we digest the bitter news of the omicron variant’s virulence and face another winter of uncertainty just as the expansion of vaccinations and booster shots seemed poised to let us relax a little closer to normal. Our spirits rose and fell—and are hovering now, unsure of which direction our country and our pandemic will take us in. What was safe a few weeks ago might not be safe now. Information comes in confusing floods, and the disorientation is familiar but no easier.
In place of the confusion, I invite you to tap into a feeling of being rooted. Our blood is running in our veins, cycling through our own cells, carrying sugar with it, just as the sap does. Tu biShvat invites us to think of ourselves as different kinds of fruit, even as trees. At our Zoom Tu biShvat seder with several other local congregations, I hope that each taste of fruit and each sip of wine or grape juice will help us live a little more in our bodies. Rituals help remind us that, as a Jewish people, we are rooted in a cycle longer than any one winter or pandemic.
Thinking about ourselves as trees for a ritual hour can teach us to ride our world’s ups and downs with greater hope, allowing us to grow from the vigor of the contrasts rather than to be exhausted by trying to control them. Judaism reminds us, through Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), that in different times, different actions and attitudes are needed, opposites right up against one another: planting and uprooting, tearing down and building up, hugging each other and keeping far from one another’s arms (Kohelet 3:1–5). In the words of the Reverend Dr. King that will form the backbone of our MLK Shabbat service, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” This may be, once again, a time to refrain from embracing. But the time for embracing will surely come again.
Tu biShvat is coming. Right now, in Israel, the almond tree buds are bursting at their seams, flowers breaking forth. Right now, in New England, the different spongy maple parts clothed in winter bark are preparing to send the sugar up through the tree’s veins. The cold will come again, without question. How much sweetness, with hope and prayer, can we make while the sun shines and then again when the energy falls low and dormant?
On my Tu biShvat table on the 16th, I’ll put a little cup of maple syrup, to taste this truth. Our progression through pandemic isn’t linear. Our walk toward justice leads us over some staggering heights and drops. But like the sap, still—in Batya Levine and Rabbi Noam Lerman’s words—we rise.
Cantor Vera
We Rise
We rise… humbly hearted
Rise… we won’t be divided
Rise… with spirit to guide us
Rise!
Chorus:
In hope, in prayer,
We find ourselves here
In hope, in prayer,
We’re right here (x2)
We rise… all of the children
Rise… elders with wisdom
Rise… ancestors surround us
Rise!
We rise… up from the wreckage
Rise… with tears and with courage
Rise… fighting for life
Rise!
Cantor Vera's Video Teachings
Cantor Vera's Writings
D'var for Pesach 5780/2020 (video)
"Practicing Failure, Cultivating Resilience," d'var for Yom Kippur 5780/2019
D'var for Kol Nidrei 5780/2019
"Israeli and American Jewish Identity," d'var for 1st Day of Rosh Hashanah 5780/2019
"The Geir Without and Within," d'var for 1st Day of Rosh Hashanah 5779/2018
"Ki Hinei Kachomeir: Desiring our Yeitzer," for Kol Nidrei 5779/2018
Cantor Vera's Report on Trip to San Diego and Tijuana with T'ruah in July 2018
"Practicing Failure, Cultivating Resilience," d'var for Yom Kippur 5780/2019
D'var for Kol Nidrei 5780/2019
"Israeli and American Jewish Identity," d'var for 1st Day of Rosh Hashanah 5780/2019
"The Geir Without and Within," d'var for 1st Day of Rosh Hashanah 5779/2018
"Ki Hinei Kachomeir: Desiring our Yeitzer," for Kol Nidrei 5779/2018
Cantor Vera's Report on Trip to San Diego and Tijuana with T'ruah in July 2018