I.In this Issue

Immediately after hitting the "Send" button to spirit the first issue out to you all, I had that same queasy feeling one might have after dropping an "I think I'm falling in love with you" letter irretrievably into a mailbox. So I was quite pleased that most of the feedback I got seemed to suggest that "Sh'ma Koli #1" was better received than any sort of crush letter I've ever heard of. I am still learning a lot about creating the proper tone especially in the area of balancing humility with "letting my little light shine," but I'm working on it. Aren't we all.

In that spirit, this issue is dedicated to the memory of Audre Lorde (a brief quote of hers appears in this month's "Minna-drash"). Though I only know her through her writing and the impact she made on so many, she smiles down on me from a postcard taped to the wall above my computer screen. She never fails to inspire courage and her words are often with me.

This issue includes news about "Live at Lena's," an update on the Jewish Meditation Teacher program I'm doing, and a piece about liberation through loving muchness. Enjoy!

May I learn to love and serve more freely, knowing that all of my love is simply an emanation of Unending Love.

Live at Lena's
"Live at Lena's" is now available. As a live recording, it has a much different feel than either of my first two albums. We decided to record on the spur of the moment and the sharpness of said spur is clear throughout. It's loaded with new songs and full of stories that I seem to find very funny regardless of the audience's reaction. A slight case of postpartum depression notwithstanding, I am very pleased with how it turned out. My friend Liz did beautiful artwork for the album including everything from her exquisite hand lettering to a picture of my niece's undiapered butt, which will no doubt be a source of embarrassment to her for the next 20 years.

House Concerts
I have been very excited by the response I've gotten to my call for help in planning small-venue, Jewish-themed concerts. As my timeline for making progress on my Ph.D. has become clearer, it's making more sense to try just a few this spring and work on planning more in the longer term. I am playing at Bard College early in March, hoping to make it to Virginia in April, and still pursuing some local possibilities (there seems to be some enthusiasm building in Hyde Park). So, if you are interested in helping me organize a concert in your area, my scheduling possibilities are much more open now (fall 2002? summer 2003?).

Meditation Teachers Certification Program
The last week of January I was in California to meet and learn with my 35 amazing classmates in Chochmat HaLev's Jewish Meditation Teacher Certification Program . The directors of the program are Nan Fink Gefen and Avram Davis; each of them provided an inspiring model for those of us who aspire to teach. It was an intense and beautiful learning time and I still feel a bit at a loss for words. Mostly I find myself continuing to be very thirsty for learning as much as I can about Jewish meditation and spirituality and eager to pass on whatever I can to others with similar thirsts. Chicago is not Berkeley (or LA, or New York, or Philadelphia), but there are some amazing things starting to bubble up here.

Aunt Minna's Lullaby Line
I realized that in the last issue I made an offhand reference to the Lullaby Line, but that some of you might not know what I meant. Aunt Minna's Lullaby Line is a free (long-distance charges not included) 24-hour service with a voicemail lullaby that changes every month or so. It can be reached whenever you need a song at 773/DEVOTED (773/338-6833). The Lullaby Line section of my website has more info as well as a couple of audio file lullabies.

Next Issue
As many of you know, I'm a Ph.D. student in Northwestern University's sociology department. I've never read The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, but I imagine that the experience is something similar to being out past the fifth year mark of a Ph.D. I am happy to report that I'm feeling like I'm getting a second wind. Still miles to go and the finish line is not yet in sight, but I'm filling up with a sense that the finish line actually might exist, which is a change for the better. For the April issue, I plan to have my dissertation topic focused enough to fit in this space. Wish me luck.

IV. Minna-drash: Loving Muchness
(Note: The Hebrew term "drash" refers most broadly to a teaching or an interpretation of a text. It's an abbreviated form of the word "Midrash" which is why it fits nicely at the end of my name.)

"I speak without concern for the accusations that I am too much or too little woman that I am too Black or too white or too much myself...."

--Audre Lorde, z"l (may her memory be for a blessing)

In a small group exercise at a recent retreat we were asked to imagine what our lives would be like if we were "already there." I explained confidently to my discussion partners that I would be less impatient and less demanding. I wouldn't need so much reassurance from other people. I wouldn't need very much applause or reward. We had been talking about getting rid of ego and this must be what that would look like. Shrinking seemed like the right answer. Yes, I said, I would need less.

My voice had an eerily familiar feel to it as it came out of my mouth. A mixture of hope and doubt so frothing and full of each other that they made me open my eyes wide in order to fit the words past my lips. Only later did I realize where I knew this voice from. It is a close cousin to the voice of a younger me who by age 10 or 11 was an accomplished (if miserable) dieter. Never mind that every previous self-improvement scheme had failed. This one would stick. Here was the exact same recipe of hope and doubt: a familiar hollow frothiness as enticing and empty as any of the hundreds of low-cal "chocolate" shakes I knew how to make for myself in the blender. Their millions of tiny air bubbles the fuel of their own failure. This is the voice of the slave recently forced to cut his own straw to make bricks who continually mistakes his unflagging brick-making abilities for freedom.

I stopped talking so the next person in my discussion group could have a turn. But as soon as I shut my mouth, an insistent quiet voice came into my head and said simply, "The truth is, I would love more freely." It neither whispered nor shouted, it didn't mumble, but it didn't ring out either, it said exactly what it had come to say without the need to puff itself up or make itself smaller. It did not equivocate. Almost a sigh, "The truth is, I would love more freely."

This idea of loving more freely has occurred to me in many different forms especially in the last few years. Too biting a truth to describe its repetition as an endlessly opening flower, this one is more like the stacked rows of a shark's teeth. Just when you think it's safe to go back in the waters of complacency…. Just when I think I have fully learned this lesson and worn down its every pointy edge, it comes at me again. And behind each worn out row is another row, sharp and shiny and new all over again.

One of the most powerful teachings I have heard on the subject was given by a wonderful teacher and rabbinical student named Jan Urbach. I was visiting Sag Harbor (my hometown) last August and heard her commentary on Parshat V'etchanan (Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11). Contained within V'etchanan, the V'ahavta commands us to love God "b'chol l'vavcha, uv'chol nafshecha, uv'chol m'odecha." This is usually translated as "with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might" (Deut. 6:5). Jan had us focus on the last of these and taught us that the term translated so frequently as "your might" --m'odecha-can be literally translated as "your muchness." The muchness part of the word makes its first appearance in Torah when God sees the newly created human and declares that this human is "tov m'od" (very good). The light, the earth, the trees and shrubs, the creepy-crawlies and the swimming things, the birds and the beasts, each of these was described as "tov" (good) but the human was described as "tov m'od" (very good). I believe that the Hebrew allows a further translation of "Behold this muchness is good."

Though we are specifically told to love with all of our muchness, Jan described the ways in which we so frequently shrink from it. We judge all these parts of ourselves that we think of as overly much: we are too loud, too demanding, too energetic, too sarcastic, too…(you may fill in your own private concerns here).

What does this yoke of "loving with all of our muchness" point to? The last section of the V'ahavta reads, "I am Hashem your God who brought you out of Mitzrayim to be your God, I am Hashem your God." While Mitzrayim can be read as Egypt, I have also heard that the word can be translated as "the narrow place." So from the beginning of the V'ahavta we are commanded to love God with all our muchness and then in the end of the V'ahavta, we are reminded that we are brought out of the Narrows in order to come into relationship with the Sacred. The only way we can fully do this, the only way we can get out of our own continuing Narrows is through the path of loving with all of our muchness.

I would extend the meaning of "b'chol m'odecha" even further to suggest that we not only need to love with our muchness but we need to love our muchness itself. And because we are commanded elsewhere "v'ahavta l'reyacha camocha" (love your friend/neighbor/beloved as yourself) this love-of-self has no room to become a purely inward exercise. The self-centered quest is simply an "individual portion" of a world-centered quest. This is not another self-improvement scheme; it is a commitment to using all of our "inner resources" --as my Grandpa Larry was fond of saying-- to heal the World's brokenness. It is only when we love our own muchness that we can love with our own muchness and that we can take on the mitzvah of loving our neighbor. I am reminded of a speech I heard given by Carol Munter, co-author of Overcoming Overeating and When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies. She invited us to "imagine the power that would be unleashed if women," and I would add men, "stopped body shaping and started world shaping."

One need not actually be zaftig (literally: "juicy") to love with muchness…but I have to say it doesn't hurt either. In other words, I am not making an essentialist argument, but I do believe that we each find our own muchness in our individually lived experiences. Fat women hold no monopoly on muchness nor do I think that all fat women would agree with my interpretation of the experience of the Narrows. My large size is not the same as my muchness, but the former helps me find my way to the latter. The fact that my own size so frequently bumps me up against the expectations, limitations, norms, and general narrowness of the culture(s) in which I live creates a context in which I have ample opportunities to practice loving with my own muchness. Certainly my size is not my only "muchness indicator." I cannot control the way my laughter splashes and pounds like water falling over rocks or stop the small wadis in my eyes from so frequently overflowing their tear duct banks. I am, as I must imagine we all are, awash in muchness; our scuppers ship it green with every plunge.

When I say the V'ahavta, I accept the yoke of loving and serving with all of my muchness. I take on the responsibility of participating in liberation, choosing over and over again, many times a day: love over hate, freedom over Narrowness, blessing over curse. I make a commitment to listen intently for the quietly shark-toothed inner whisperer saying, "The truth is, I would love more freely."

As you read this, we are preparing for Passover, a time when we will again commemorate communally our liberation from the Narrow Places. Blessedly this seasonal opportunity recurs every year as there is more to say on this than can be contained here or in any book any of us might write about muchness. I must end by trusting that simply to begin is sufficient. An open door and a prominent lit up sign which reads in big red letters on a white background: EXODUS. A way out of the Narrows: Dayenu (It would have been enough for us).