I.What is "Sh'ma Koli?"
Vision and Purpose
"Sh'ma Koli" means "hear my voice." In monthly newsletter form, this means creating a vessel through which I can give voice to my emerging work. I love having my fingers in lots of different pots including making music, teaching sociology, studying meditation, leading Jewish worship, and so on until I run out of fingers. "Sh'ma Koli" will bring much of this together all in one place by letting me share some aspects of my response to the call: "Hear My voice." Each issue will include news about my musical ventures, classes I'm taking and teaching, research I'm dreaming up, and other projects as well as a new piece of creative non-fiction. Additional features (like this month's book recommendation section) will come and go as I feel so moved. Of course, "Sh'ma Koli" will also contain information on how to literally hear my voice by coming to or booking an upcoming gig, calling the lullaby line, buying a CD, or listening online.

I know that folks who are familiar with my songwriting and the directions it has taken in the past year or two will find the strongly Jewish flavor of "Sh'ma Koli" to be a natural outgrowth of my recent work rather than a complete departure. Regardless of your familiarity with my previous songwriting, I intend for "Sh'ma Koli" to be accessible to people of all faiths or no faith at all. Anyone who feels they need more background information about the work I've done up until now should peruse the website.

I want very much to hear your voices as well. Your input is welcome whether in the form of critical readings of my writing, helping hands on one of my music projects, or sharing your own story with me. I can be reached at minna@minnabromberg.com.

Several acknowledgements are in order as this first issue comes to fruition. I am indebted to everyone I met at last summer's ALEPH Kallah, but especially to my fellow "Kesherites" for creating a nurturing environment conducive to all of our growth. My sister-in-law (and in-love), Audrey J.B. Hyvonen has inspired me with her own monthly newsletter and continued creative work. I offer my deep gratitude to everyone who has ever led me to believe that my work in some way feeds their soul, to those authors, musicians, teachers, activists, and artists whose work continues to nourish me, and to the kol d'mama dakawhich I hear wherever I let It in.

II. Kavannah: The Heart's Direction
May fearlessness pervade my smallest actions.

III. Offerings: What I Can Give and What I Need
New Album(s) I have two new albums in the works: one live recording and one studio project. The live album, "Live at Lena's," was recorded on September 29, 2001 at Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, NY and should be available any minute now (mid-February at the latest). Its twelve songs include six previously unreleased originals such as "Kotzker Rebbe Blues," "Spanish Civil War," and "Adam and Eve Had Two Sons." Covers include a rousing audience sing along rendition of Stan Rogers' "Mary Ellen Carter" as well as a touch of reggae. The quick turn around time of "Live at Lena's" is allowing me to be more leisurely about "Ida's Line" -an album I started working on last summer with my cousin Jacob Navarro out in Anacortes, WA. I hope to continue working on "Ida's Line" this spring and summer.

House Concerts
I need 18 people (or more) to help bring my music to their communities starting next spring. My goal is a series of Jewish-themed small-venue concerts. Possible venues include large livingrooms, synagogues, and Hillel Houses. Ideal audience size is 20-40 people per concert. We had a wonderful time doing back-to-back shows at my folks' house in December. Please consider helping me organize a concert in your community. Contact
minna@minnabromberg.com

Next Issue
Stay tuned for updates on the Minna-drash: A True Story
" praying in public i "
I have begun in the last six months or so to meditate and pray in public. My practice is not directed at the public, but when I happen to be in a public place and happen to need to meditate or pray...these things happen. The fact that this would effect some fascinating interactions is not surprising, but I have been very surprised by the content of these interactions. The story below is the first of several encounters about which I hope to write.

Last August I was flying from Chicago to New York. I had a three-hour stopover in Columbus, an airport that seems like the kind of place where, on any given day, more people get stuck while trying to go somewhere else than arrive or depart intentionally. With three hours to do with whatever I wanted -as long as I could do it in the terminal-my first order of business was finding some food. About a month before I had decided to see what it would be like to try some version of keeping kosher. So far this experiment meant not eating meat and the practice still felt very new and tentative. It felt precious. It felt like the new skin after a scab or a blister peels away. Fresh, pink, and powdery. Smooth, bold and full, but also in need of protection. Every act of eating still felt wonderfully careful.

I slowly walked to a bar and looked at the menu. I found that I could buy a bagel and cream cheese. I waited deferentially for three traveling businesswomen to finish ordering their vodka and cranberry juice. I got my Lenders-esque bagel and peeled open the small round containers of cream cheese. I washed my hands in a water fountain and whispered my blessings. I ate unhurriedly. Bad food has never tasted so good. The cream cheese texture and flavor predominated while the rubbery bagel served as a squishy platform.

When I was finished -with hours still to spare despite eating slowly-- I decided to daven mincha (the afternoon prayers) so I found a nearly empty seating area at one of the gates. I looked out the window to see if I could use the sun and my wristwatch to determine which way was east. I used to know this trick from the summer I was assigned to teach astronomy at a 4-H camp because when you teach astronomy to small children you spend quite a bit of time on the sun -not much else to see in the daytime. Outside the plate glass windows, a world beyond the tacky carpet and uncomfortable chairs, I looked at how the shadows from the orange traffic cones fell on the tarmac. My watch said it was 2pm. If I put my back to the sun and aligned my watch so that the lay of the shadows was the line half way between the hour hand and 12 o'clock, due south should be12 o'clock. Or was it that if I align 12 o'clock with the lay of the shadows then due north is half way between 12 o'clock and the hour hand? In the end I put my watch back on my wrist, guessed at east, and sat down in the row of chairs which best approximated facing Jerusalem.

There was only one other person in the seating area, sitting a few seats down in the row in back of me and thoroughly engrossed in his book. I started by sitting quietly in meditation for a few minutes. I felt completely inconspicuous. I wondered if I was slightly more conspicuous when I opened my siddur (prayer book) to the page marked by a torn and jagged strip of looseleaf paper and began to sing quietly. I stood up for the Amidah (the service's central prayer), and immediately began to feel self-conscious. I tried to remind myself that self-consciousness comes on when we forget that most people most of the time are too involved in their own self-consciousness to even notice our behavior let alone pass judgment, and this seemed to ease my momentary anxiety.

I began to go deeper and deeper into this central prayer offering thanks and praise for my ancestors, for quelling the forces which would do me harm, for making this year a year of blessing. I was getting lost in the middle when a man entered the gate area several rows in front of me. At first I thought he was an Orthodox Jew because he had a long beard and fairly formal clothing, but then I noticed that he didn't have a yarmulke. He came hurrying over to the windows and looked around outside. He seemed puzzled and started pacing along the wall of windows toward me. He looked as if he needed something from me or from the man sitting in the row behind me. When I lifted my head he asked frantically, " which way 's east? Which way' s east!?! "

I indicated that I hoped it was the direction in which I was facing and bowing; he nodded and hurried back to the far corner where he began to pray. His kneeling and prostrating toward Mecca suddenly made my swaying slightly toward Jerusalem feel like the world's least noticeable choreography. His ease in praying in his way made any concerns I may have had about my own conspicuousness vanish. We continued like this, praying not with each other, but near each other.

Two different travelers on two different paths, but in some way we needed each other. He gave me an unforgettable lesson about how to be unabashed in the Columbus airport and I gave him reassurance about which direction to face. But beyond this moment of interfaith quid pro quo, the poignant urgency of his question -and the way it still rings in my ears-drove home the need for direction in devotion --not just the direction of our bodies and our bowing, but our kavannah, the direction of our hearts. Each time I begin I can start with the question, " which way is the right way? which way is east? "

V. Book Recommendation
Meditation From the Heart of Judaism, edited by Avram Davis, Jewish Lights Publishing, 1999.

Several months ago I borrowed this dazzling anthology from a friend who had borrowed it from a friend only to find out more recently that it is our first required text for the Jewish Meditation Teacher Certification Program in which I am enrolled. It's a wonderful collection of essays from a wide range of teachers and practitioners of Jewish meditation. I highly recommend this book though be forewarned if this is to be your first taste of writings about Jewish meditation: it offers such variety that as an initial introduction it may be slightly overwhelming. I avoided literary heartburn by reading it in nibbles over the course of several weeks. As Jewish meditation continues to flourish, this volume will doubtlessly be a central text.

One of my favorite things about the book has nothing to do with its content though. Rather, I am in love with its serendipitous bookmark. The book's original owner -my friend Menachem who loaned it to Tehilla who loaned it to me-used the stub of a boarding pass as a bookmark. Seems like a pretty run of the mill second career for a boarding pass stub, I know, but reading a book with a friend's stub made me feel like I had some company. What was even more remarkable was that I happened to read the back of the boarding pass stub. All these years of flying and I had never noticed this sentence, " please retain this stub as evidence of your journey. " I don't know where this little treasury is destined to go from here. Maybe back through the lending chain to its original owner or maybe forward, working its way through our circles of friends. But I hope that we can help it retain its stub as evidence of its journey and of our own.