Strength, Discipline, Compassion: Omer Day 10 and Yom HaShoah

Every weekday at 8:00 am, Mishkan Chicago holds a virtual Morning Minyan. You can join in yourself, or listen to all the prayer, music, and inspiration right here on Contact Chai.

https://mishkan.shulcloud.com/form/reg-morning-minyan-evergreen

Links referenced in today's episode:

Rabbi Ariel Root Wolpe's Omer song:
https://soundcloud.com/ariel-root-wolpe/hineni-muchan-umzuman-i-am-ready?

Velveteen Rabbi Omer explanation and image of Kabbalistic Sefirot: https://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2018/07/seven.html

Taffy Brodesser-Akner's NYT Piece, "The Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn't Write": https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/06/magazine/holocaust-story-education.html

Aish Omer Meditation:
https://aish.com/daily-omer-meditation/

Kululam: 600 Survivors and their descendants sing Chai - I'm Alive! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vuh1-jDi7Qw

Become A Builder!
https://www.mishkanchicago.org/support/be-a-builder/

Transcript

Transcript

All right, lifting up my Dallas if anyone wants to join me in doing this, or you can just take a moment to allow yourself to feel enveloped by the fabric of tradition spreading out before you and after you deep into the past and far into the future, wrapping you in love

Baruch atah, Adonai, Aloha, share Keith channel, but Mitsu itself, and then just

breathing into it, Sitting up a little bit straighter, breathing a little more deeply.

And I will, I will turn I will hit play on this tune. Thank you. Thank you Corey for sending it so as as you may know, starting on the second night of Passover, we begin counting the Omer. Have you guys been doing this in minion up until, like, up until today? No. Okay, great. Thank you. And there. All right, so just a little by way of introduction. When I learned about this, you know, you it, it is a ritual that is dictated in the Torah, like in the same places that it describes Passover. It also describes counting, counting the days between Passover and the Feast of Weeks Shavuot, which is exactly seven complete weeks of seven days, so 49 days. And then on the 50th day, you have the holiday of Shavuot, and you're supposed to count them. And back in temple times you counted them. And also, like brought a sheaf of barley to the temple. And that was that, you know, an offering. It was gratitude, it was abundance. It was bringing in the spring. It was acknowledging the spring harvest. And then when the temple was destroyed, you still had the mitzvah to count the Omer, but you couldn't bring a barley sheaf. So they had to make it interesting somehow or meaningful somehow. So it became like a reflection on our spiritual qualities. And so, you know, by great coincidence, or maybe by no coincidence at all, there are seven weeks of the Omer and seven major Sefirot in COP, in Kabbalistic thinking about the human body, about the world, about how God shows up in our world that govern that sort of, yeah, like govern our spiritual life. And so the seven weeks are going through each one of those. Fi wrote the seven times seven. Keith, loving kindness and gevurah, discipline, rigidity, strength, ti, Ferret, integration, or radiance, going down the body and and through our psychology, and thinking about how all of these, you know, seven things, map onto each thing. So what I'm going to do today is, while playing this, I'll pull up today is the 10th day of the Omer so we'll count it, and then we'll look at like, what is the set of spiritual qualities we're intended to reflect on today? And that can be an intention for the day. That's true. Ellie, it really is like Jewish chakras. And the first place I read about this was in Caroline Mrs. Book, the anatomy of the spirit. Anybody remember that one? So that was like 20 years ago, maybe more than that, 30 years ago. But highly recommend. And she'll introduce you to the Jewish chakras, aka the Sefirot. She's not a Jewish writer, so you could also learn about it through, you know, books about Kabbalah or the spherot. And here we go. Here we go. And I'll just, I'll show you this on I'll play it up visually, and wait, is that? Yeah, can you can? Can you see that? Yes. Okay, so this is Rabbi Ariel root wolby. She's beautiful person. Artist lives in Atlanta, and music maker, and the words here you can see him as human. Behold, I am ready and prepared. Le Cam mitzvata, serata, Omer, she Keith to be Torah, to fulfill the mitzvah of counting the Omer, as it says in the Torah, okay, here we go.

I am ready.

I Know zoom, I Oh, Sweet To i All right, so I'm going to, I'm going To see what Corey put in here from the Velveteen Rabbi with the explanations of the spheroid. Ah, you can see it right here. Here. Maybe it might be easier for you to pull up on your own computer, but Keith air is crown, and the idea is that's actually beyond what we can access with our own human will power. You know, maybe we get Moments of Grace, but, but the Keith air Sefirah is not part of the counting. And the truth is what we see here, like hochma gevura or Keith and gevurah, we really begin down here with these seven. Hochma and bienna are also kind of up they're considered up here. They're almost like sides of the brain. And then he said, and gevura kind of start as sides of the body. Anti ferret is like the heart center. Netzach is often thought of like right leg, left leg. Yes. Sod foundation is like reproductive system area, but like connecting us to real, like earthy, and it's sometimes Yeah, like, really kind of earthy, like base and basic desires and yearnings and pulls. Then mahout is like the ground the like, where it all comes together in the in the world, here the physical world. And so here we are, seamless integration of the blessing, yes. So here we are last week, week one was the week of Keith, and now we're over here in the week of Guru. And so this is actually really helpful, because now you can see if, if we are in as we are tifura, because this is one week and three days of the Omer. And we'll count that in a moment. I found one particular, like one particular meditation from esh, which is no. Orthodox Jewish engagement organization. It's totally fine. I'd be curious to know before we read it, like, how might you create a COVID an invitation, a reflection on the integration of T ferret and gevurah? Judgment, they're calling it judgment. But that's its strength, its rigidity, its discipline, it's power. So I'll let you think about that for a moment. Yes, also justice. That's good. So all right, let me give you the blessing. Let's see I have to go out of that in order to give you the blessing to see it. Here we go.

Do All right,

so I'll

make this nice and big. Can you all see that ish, yes. All right, great. So feel free to join me in saying Baruch atah, Adonai, elohinu, Melech Ha olam Asher, Keith Shanu, but mitsutano, al sprat ha Omer, you can say Amen, even if it was hard to say the blessing. And then we're gonna go to Deen right here. HaYom Asara, yamim, shahem, shavua, uslo, shot ya meme la Omer. Today is 10 days, which is one week and three days of the Omer. Okay, so before, before we look at what Aish wants us to reflect on today, anybody have any reflections or invitations that come from the combination of, it's T ferret che big Vora that the integration or the radiance that is inside of the headline, the bigger category of gavra Laurie, go for it.

Yeah, I believe that I have this, this this philosophy of, I call it Bebo beauty in beauty out that in any given moment there is something beautiful to see, and so the discipline of looking for it, that when you're in a moment that may seem dismal, looking for that, that that piece of beauty, and then that that you can eternalize and send out. And so that's where I see the that's where I see the blending

Bibo beauty in, beauty out. The truth is it is a discipline. It actually is a discipline to practice that it doesn't just happen to you. There are some people who are just naturally, the way they look at the world is through rose colored glasses, giving people the benefit of the doubt when they do things that are harmful, and just naturally seeing the beauty. And I don't know, many of those people, and those people are extraordinary. When you meet them, you're like, How can I spend more time with you? But but most of us need to actually practice that. And the truth is, I wouldn't be surprised if many of the people, I think are just naturally gifted are actually practicing, and they're just really good. You know, the more you practice, the better you get. All right? Anybody else? Oh, Ellie. Oh, sorry, Eric. Were you speaking to

Yeah, yeah, but Ellie can go first.

Great. I highly commend my aunt's insight. And I had a very similar experience. And since it was Earth Day yesterday, I'm a scuba diver, a long time scuba diver. Last year, I was going to a place, and I was very afraid of what I might see, the decline of the reef, the destruction. I was so terrified, and I was crying in my mask when I went underwater. And then all of a sudden, I started thinking about, well, what can I find here that's beautiful? And as soon as I did that, things were popping up everywhere, baby corals, and then I saw hummingbirds and parrots and everywhere I looked and I saw, you know, octopuses mating and things that I had never seen in 30 years of scuba diving. So I think it's true. I think when you start to put away the fear and just open your mind to what you can see and what you find, it's everywhere. Thank you. Tia.

Eric, Eric, and then pretty and then we'll

go on. Yeah, I haven't gone through this in detail, but I've heard that. You know, there's one depending on the year one configuration of the calendar in which we read the Torah in 49 part shot. And you can also. Map that onto the structure of the Omer. So, yeah, I mean, I just checked today would be miquettes, which is where Joseph, kind of, you know, shows his authority over his brothers, but then reveals himself, and everything comes out. Okay, so, you know you can see that.

See, what do you mean? See, see, oh,

you'll see the, see the interplay between giver and to ferret there, between the exercise of authority and things eventually coming in to balance the way they're supposed to be. Oh,

that's That's beautiful. That's also, it's a really different way to read gevurah is to read the word authority into it. But I think that's kind of the point of the Hebrew word is, like it has a lot of different resonances and in the context of authority. So for anybody who is a boss, a manager, a supervisor, a parent or a child who is taking care of a parent or in any kind of a role that exudes sort of positional power. How? How can you read these different qualities? So he said on day one, loving kindness, gevurah, which some which means boundaries and sometimes harshness. But then T ferret this integration, like, how can you, how can, how can all of us bring a kind of grace, sometimes that comes with boundary settings, sometimes that comes with mercy. You know, the T ferret I feel like is this, it's this balance that's beautiful. I love that, and I love Joseph in that moment, the moment he practices forgiveness. But he also had a, you know, couple weeks there. I don't know how long it was that he was, like, tormenting his brothers, but like, there, there needed to be some justice, which he also, which he also did in his own way. All right, so, oh, wait, Prudy, you had something too,

yeah. If means Judgment also, yeah, I think that what occurred to me was that opposing that to beauty is is somewhat not necessary. That, as we see in our current world, climate and particularly here, the capacity for judgment and critical thinking is very precious and absent, and so it's beautiful to to me to be able to practice

so I love that. And I think what you're pointing to is is a different combination. So here is gavra, and I think one of the things we're talking about so much right now, I think what you're what you're pointing to, is like, the absence of due process is a problem, right? We, like those of us who are looking around right now at the deportations, we're saying, like, look, it may, in fact, be, I listened to the first half of a New York Times story this morning about, like, Who are these people that are on the airplanes that are going, you know, being sent to El Salvador, to this prison, like, what evidence is there that any of them have committed crimes are part of gangs, and the simple fact that the Trump administration is not allowing there to be a process of justice in any way, like some of them may be guilty of things, but we don't know, And that's the thing that's missing. And so like, judgment has the power to be actually a beautiful and even restorative process, right where this Sunday, where we're going to be joining the Lawndale Christian church community as they open up, and, you know, sort of do the ribbon cutting on a restorative justice center. And that's going to be for 18 to 25 year old young men who have committed crimes, and instead of going to prison, they're gonna get to remain in the community, living in this residential center and going through a process of restorative justice, which means sitting in rooms with the families. Oh, did they really? Rebecca? I have to go listen to it, like sitting in rooms with the families who to whom they caused harm, and crying together and hearing the harm that they caused and apologizing, and then working on the precise, the precise qualities of growth that they need to grow into in order to go back into society, but not not being severed from society, rather justice being a process of integration of tea ferret. Anyway, I'm glad that you brought sort of the law into this pretty as well, because that's over here too. If

I could add one thing I was thinking, I was thinking of Doge, and it's lack of judgment, and,

yeah, we're cut.

But without thinking, without any judgment,

right? Yeah, so gavura is, is, like, what's the word? I'm like, rigor there's, there's like, a rigorousness, a discernment that comes with this as well. And, yeah, T Ferret, I feel like this is the heart center. That's you. Know, it's represented by the heart center and, and I think, like, yeah, there is a, there's a kind of wisdom to this, you know, to how we apply and when we apply that rigor and that discernment and that and that justice. And it's really different, you know, as a justice system, versus, like, as a parent or as a partner. You know, all of these have different contexts, and I think different contexts that lead to ferret, you know, this sort of radiance or integration to be applied differently, doesn't it also mean strength? Yeah, gevurah means strength. It also means a guy, like in modern Hebrew, like a giver is a dude, a Gibert is like, Mrs. You know, but you know which? It's the, you know, the word for strength as a person, so a quality that all of us walk around with inherently. But the question is, how are we using it? How are we applying it? So, okay, here's the, here's the meditation from Aish, this guy, Simon Jacobson. He kind of popularized, in modern, I don't know, for modern Jews, this whole practice. So here you can see a practical guide to becoming great in 49 days. I'll drop this here. Gail also dropped in a suggestion for an app. So the seven emotional attributes are, here they are. And I just clicked on on gevurah, and then we'll go to day 10, ti ferret of gevurah, compassion in discipline. So he's translating ti ferret as compassion, which I have never seen before. Makes me wonder what he's translating. He said, Oh, he loving kindness in discipline. All right, fine enough compassion and discipline. He writes, underlying and driving discipline must not only be love, but also compassion. Compassion is unconditional love. It is love just for the sake of love, not considering the other's position. Tiffer is the result of total selflessness. In the eyes of God, you love for no reason. You love because you are a reflection of God. So does my discipline have this element of compassion? And the exercise for the day is be compassionate to someone you have reproached. That's a different read. All right, so actually, this is a great, this is a great intention to hold on to. We're going to go into, we're going to go into Shema, because it's 828, how did that happen? And part of what we will do as as we go into Shema, holding this as our as our cavana, as our intention is, if we're saying God is one, you know, God is everything, then that includes the people we hate. It really does as little as we as little as we may like to admit that that includes the people we hate. And so how can we bring some love, some of this compassion that it sounds to me like, what he's saying is this comes from this is a little bit of what Rabbi Stephen talked about on Shabbat here, the fact of everyone being created in God's image. And the fact of our being created in God's image means that we owe love to everyone and underlying love, even if we don't like them. And then the question is, what does that look like in in the practice of Gura and strength justice? How do we not operate from a place of anger, retribution, hatred, but from a place of compassion, even even with the people we can't stand. So invite you to grab the four corners of Your seat. Seats. I

Shema, Yisrael Adonai, Eloheinu Adonai,

the I have to eight Adonai, elohevari, mitza deha,

A movie.

Take a moment for healing sending out healing to think about who it is that you want to send out your healing prayers to this morning. Go ahead and drop them in the chat if you want, or you can say them out loud if it's easier, if there's anybody you're praying for that you want to just say their name out

loud. I'm just seeing seeing all of these names populate. I hope you are saying them out loud on your screen as we sing, like everybody you know, Sherry's people and Emmett people and susannas people and Gail's people and Susan people, Lexi's people and Megan's people and Lori's people. And Sarah says people, yeah, please, please, go ahead and as I sing, go ahead and say the names Out Loud of everybody and Ellen,

Mija,

mocha li Madol. Dona, Mika, Moha, na da, Bucha, no, I take He loved.

Oh, Lord O say, fellas, no Raha.

Sha Sha Shi behoo, lish,

Asa, Fauci, Kuna,

Adonai law,

I don't Know him. Long. I don't know

him. Lord baharu hai, GA Israel, a

sending a rifu shalema, healing of body and spirit to everyone on your lists. Oh my gosh. I'm very tempted to go through and say every single person's name, but it's a lot of people. It's a lot of people, and I'm seeing them all, and I hope that, I hope that many of you said them all as well. All right, we're gonna say Kato mourners, Kaddish. Now, I don't think anybody's ever spent so much time counting the Omer as we did in this morning minion, but that's great. I'm glad we did, because now we're well practiced, and we can just jump in next time to thinking about the thinking about the particular combination we get next week. Oh, the other fun thing is that every Wednesday, as long as we're doing Wednesdays, in my case, and for the sake of this Minion, we will always have tea ferret Shep, but whatever. So next week will be tea ferret Shep, but whatever. She but ti ferret actually. And so we'll think about integration inside of integration, and then integration inside of endurance, and then integration inside of splendor, and then integration anyway. So that'll kind of become our thing. Okay? Who this morning are we remembering and saying Kaddish for Barry Coss marker love Theresa Owen,

my aunt Nancy Jacobson, my Uncle Sean sobolski And my cousin Noah shacham Ellis.

Jean and Phyllis, Joan curlo,

Charlotte, in many communities, the practice during Kaddish, at least when I was growing up, everybody stood and what I was always taught was we stand for the people who have no one to say, Kadesh for them. And that included, you know, all of the people murdered in the Shoah, like family members we didn't even know were family. So tonight begins Yom Hashoah in Israel, it's called Yom Hashoah the HA gevurah, the day of remembering the Holocaust, but also heroism and strength. That's another translation for the word the quality of gevurah. And so just thinking about how heroism shows up even in hopeless places. Oh, Pope, Francis, John Lusa. Yeah. All right. Any any other names for coddishes? And is there anybody who'd like to lead this morning,

I can lead if no one else wants to, but folks can join me. Join in

Great. All right, I am going to share the screen here. Oh, wait, no, I gave you counting the Omer, didn't I? No, no,

that was cut. Oh, that wasn't. That was cut. No, here we go. Okay, it disappeared, yeah,

I brought it back. Okay, okay,

you skadel Fauci,

May, Rabbi, Bucha base,

amen.

Amen. SHA visa

to Bucha

Amen, Shama

Amen,

oh, I'm sorry.

I've got the sorry about that

Rabbi. I mean, I mean, may their memories be blessings, all of them, every single one of them. I want to, I want to close out with a tune that thank you to Irene for sharing with me a few years ago. Did any of you read the taffy brodessa ackner piece in The New York Times Magazine a couple weeks ago called This is the story about the Holocaust. I never wanted to write it. It's, it's a really, it's a really good piece, and I recommend reading. Somebody can pull it up while I'm talking, or while we listen to this tune, and drop it in here. But she herself. It's a combination of personal narrative and reflection. Here's the ultra religious yeshiva Jewish upbringing I had that was so focused on the holocaust that when I became a writer, I wanted nothing to do with writing Jewish pieces or writing about the Holocaust. So it's about her own personal story. But then it's about the fact that, like, she had a good friend growing up whose father survived the Shoah, like was, you know, a child in Hungary and had a story, and her friend was always asking her to write the story about her father, and she was like, No, I don't want to, I don't want to write a Holocaust story. But then it became clear that this man was close to dying, and if nobody wrote his story, nobody would have written his story. And then Holocaust survivors are disappearing, like people who saw with their own eyes, felt with their own bodies, you know, fears like, like, have those experiences, and you know something she writes about, and that I'm sure is, you know, true for many people here as well, is, you know, the suspicion of Holocaust stories being used to justify, you know, being used to justify violence because violence was done to us. You. Because we were victims that justifies or that excuses when Jews do violence to other people. Because, of course, we've been victims. We're the ultimate victims. And she's like, and I didn't want to play into that, but you know, she, she says, like, I, I, you know, maybe thou doth protest too much like, this is an important story, and if we don't tell it, it will be forgotten. And not only is it being forgotten, it like it is being forgotten under the age of 35 apparently, in America, you know, some vanishingly small number of people actually believe that, 6 million, you know, that people believe that the number of Jews killed is grossly exaggerated, that, you know, stories of the Holocaust are basically made up, that it's, you know. And the further we get from this time, the more people question the memories of it, even though so many of those memories are, you know, recorded like actually written down, and were written down not by Jews, but by Nazis. And in any case, she talks about a particular song that when she hears it, it gets her every time, and it's called Hi, which means life. And the words are like, hi, hi, hi, life, life, life, life, this. This song was sung by my my parents, my grandparents, and here I am singing it. I'll be able to give you the actual words when we listen to it here, but so I'm just going to hit play, because this is self explanatory on the video itself. Wait, hang on, hang on. Need to show you the video. The whole point of the video is a video.

Okay, here we go. Yeah, I'll probably be crying by The end of This too.

You Find me On Fire.

All right, and I guess I should say, for anybody listening on the podcast later, what we just heard was a recording of a song called Chai, which means life, that was sung by 600 Holocaust survivors and their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren,

produced by

Kulu Lang. Produced by Kulu Lang, alright, and now I'm gonna stop

the recording here. Most important.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai