Rabbi Arthur Waskow

ELEVEN DAYS IN SEPTEMBER: AN OBSERVANCE FOR REMEMBRANCE, REFLECTION, AND RENEWAL

Dear friends:

This is a suggested approach for use in observances of "Eleven Days in September: Remembrance, Reflection, & Renewal."

This inclusive observance is one among several possible approaches that we are preparing. Feel free to share it with others, and to mold it to your own situation. Please let us know what you are planning, and please help our work continue.

This particular observance is intended to be held at a riverside, or lake, or creek, or seaside. It has eleven elements:

The song "God's Gonna Trouble the Water" (or if you like, another song about water); a reading from Moby Dick about the attraction to water that New Yorkers felt in his day, drawn to where the Twin Towers used to stand; seeing water as a mirror for reflecting on our lives; reflecting on what America is in our own eyes and those of other continents and countries and of Planet Earth; reading and discussing a passage from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel about looking into the mirror when we see another doing harm, to see what harm we ourselves are doing; sending into the water brief words on paper that express our own commitment to take responsibility.

1. Together sing ""God's Gonna Trouble the Water"" or another song celebrating water. Sing a verse or two again between each section. With additional and alternative words:

Wade in the water.
Wade in the water, children.
Wade in the water.
God's gonna trouble the water.

[We're gonna travel the water.]
[We're all gonna open the water.]

Red Sea's water is chilly and cold.
God's gonna trouble the water.
We're gonna cross it, young and old —
God's gonna trouble the water.

Hudson River is dark and deep
God's gonna trouble the water.
Memories of courage safe to keep.
God's gonna trouble the water.

All earth's waters — wild and wide,
God's gonna trouble the water.
Time to make peace with the other side.
God's gonna trouble the water.

2. Reading excerpts from the first page of Moby Dick by Herman Melville. One person may read a few sentences, then another pick it up. If possible, have one copy for sharing between each pair of people. (That saves more trees and teaches cooperation.)

Begin by saying: Friends, we gather at the edge of the waters that bind all continents, all earth together. They bind us to the waters at the tip of Manhattan Island as Manhattan's waters flow into the waters of all earth. Waters can wash away our terror and our rage; waters birth us, fulfill our thirst, give us a mirror to see ourselves in.

We begin with a teaching from one of our deepest lovers of Manhattan and its waters, and of the waters that nurture all of earth: Herman Melville, in the opening passage of Moby Dick. Listen for the uncanny moments of prophetic truth in this deeply American wisdom:

Read: Call me Ishmael. Some years ago . . . I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; ... — then I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. ...

If they but knew it, almost all men [and women] in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs — commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there. ...

Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortals fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster — tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. ... Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling. ...

And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:

"Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States."
"WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL."
"BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN."

Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

Say: Friends, can we call ourselves Ishmael, look in the mirror of these waters to see the Ishmael in ourselves? Can we take joy in the democratic grandeur of a "Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States"? Can we look deeply into those bloody battles that Melville somehow chose so long ago to mention, "BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN"? Can we look deeply into the "ungraspable phantom of life"? — For this is the key to it all.

SING A VERSE OR TWO OF "WADE IN THE WATER"

3. Together recite:

Each of us is Ishmael,
drawn toward the sea,
the mother of life.

Each of us stands at the tip of the Manhattan Isle,
hearing the ghosts of those who died here,
yearning toward the mother of all life,
dying to bathe in her from the burning fire
that drives us through the windows into space.

Each of us stands like Ishmael on our voyage,
Urgently seeking what we know we cannot master,
Standing like Ishmael between the
"Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States"
and "BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN."

Each of us see
in that mirror of the waters,
all the rivers,
all the oceans,
the image of the ungraspable phantom of life;
for this is the key to it all.

We look to see not Narcissus,
Our own selves pompous and deluded,
But the deepest Self
In which we see each other.

ALL our Others —
For this water washes all the earth.
From this water drink
Atheists and
Buddhists and
Christians and
Confucians and
Hindus and
Jews and
Muslims and
Wiccans and
the Indigene
of every continent.

We gather at this water to
See and hear each other,
all of us.

And to reflect upon our selves.

SING A VERSE OR TWO OF "WADE IN THE WATER"

4. Someone speaks:

Who are we? —
First, we are America the Beautiful.

All sing from this verse of "America the Beautiful":

"O beautiful for patriot's dream
that sees beyond the years,
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
undimmed by human tears — "

Someone says: Those cities are still beyond the years,
Not yet undimmed by human tears.

Where are those cities gleaming?

Not in America, and not Afghanistan.
Not in America, and not in Palestine or Israel.
Not in America, and not Nigeria.
Not in North America, and not Colombia.

The tears still fall:
The sick still weep in pain,
Too poor to buy the medicine to heal them.
The mothers still weep in exhaustion,
home from a fourteen-hour day
to find their children quarreling and bitter,
or dreamy-eyed in a chemical Eden with no Tree of Life.

[Some American among the poor, or perhaps an immigrant, speaks of what is beautiful and what is ugly in his /her own life. As personal and vivid as possible.]

And not all our patriots yearn for the healing of all cities. Yet these waters cool the throats and wash away the sweat of all the continents.

SING A VERSE OR TWO OF "WADE IN THE WATER"

[People from "other" continents speak in terms of their own personal stories, of what effect US, governmental, corporate, or military power and such aspects of American civil society as religious, labor, and environmental groups have had on them, for good and ill.]

5. And we are the peoples of Asia.

SING A VERSE OR TWO OF "WADE IN THE WATER"

And Africa.

SING A VERSE OR TWO OF "WADE IN THE WATER"

And Latin America

SING A VERSE OR TWO OF "WADE IN THE WATER"

And Europe.

SING A VERSE OR TWO OF "WADE IN THE WATER"

6. And we are Planet Earth.

Someone speaks, as personally as possible, of how US power or money has despoiled some aspect of the earth: oceans befouled, ozone layer depleted, the CO2 level scorching the earth, and on the other hand, of how ecological concerns and commitment to heal the earth have often radiated out from the US to other countries.

SING A VERSE OR TWO OF "WADE IN THE WATER"

7. Read this passage from and about Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel:

In 1943, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, in the very midst of World War II, asked us to reflect:

"Who is responsible [that the war has soaked the earth in blood]?" And he answered by quoting the Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Jewish mystical movement of Hassidism: "If a man has beheld evil, he may know that it was shown to him in order that he learn his own guilt and repent; for what was shown to him is also within him."

Surely the Baal Shem Tov was addressing the spiritual situation of an individual who in order to grow must take the world not as an external object but as a moral mirror — who must treat the discovery of evil as a spur to look inward, to examine what evil lurks in his/ her own heart.

But Heschel takes this insight in a new direction. He applies it to a whole society, a whole people, when it sees political evil at a national level:

"We have failed to offer sacrifices on the altar of peace; now we must offer sacrifices on the altar of war.... Let Fascism not serve as an alibi for our conscience.... Where were we when men learned to hate in the days of starvation? When raving madmen were sowing wrath in the hearts of the unemployed?

"Good and evil, which were once as real as day and night, have become a blurred mist. In our everyday life we worshipped force, despised compassion, and obeyed no law but our unappeasable appetite. The vision of the sacred has all but died in the soul of man."

By 1943, Heschel knew that members of his own family and already more than a million other Jews had already been savagely murdered. Yet he could call Jews themselves, along with all of Western civilization and culture, to face their own share of responsibility for having let the disaster happen.

And he could fuse questions that were conventionally seen as distinct — economics (mass unemployment) and religious/spiritual experience ( "the vision of the sacred").

Heschel did not take this unblinking look in the mirror as an excuse to back away from a radical condemnation of Nazism. He did not oppose the war on which the Allies were then engaged. Yet he could in the very midst of that war write, "Tanks and planes cannot redeem humanity. ... The killing of snakes will save us for the moment but not forever."

He could look deep into that war, within it and beneath it and beyond it, to ask not merely what were its causes, but what was its meaning? And he found spiritual meaning in taking responsibility upon himself, ourselves, for having helped create the world in which "the mark of Cain in the face of man has come to overshadow the likeness of God."

If Heschel could write in this way in 1943, what would it mean for an American to think this way in 2002?

Contemplating water, can we look into its depths where we are mirrored, and — without condoning murder, ask ourselves the question, What is our own responsibility?

SING A VERSE OR TWO OF "WADE IN THE WATER"

8. The group sits in silence to reflect on what they have just heard. Then it divides into pairs to absorb and reflect on it with each other. The focus for their conversation is: "What responsibility can I take upon myself, what can I myself do to reduce the causes of violence and social destruction in the world?" Eleven minutes might be set aside for this discussion, and the pairs might be asked to make sure that each person has roughly equal time. (Ring a bell halfway.)

SING A VERSE OR TWO OF "WADE IN THE WATER"

9. Ask each person present to write on a small piece of paper what she or he will do to take responsibility to reduce the causes of violence in the world.

10. Each person places these bit of paper on small paper boats and pushes them into the current, or folds the papers and casts them into the water.

SING A VERSE OR TWO OF "WADE IN THE WATER"

11. This observance might take about 90 minutes. The group could then share supper and return to have a general discussion, drawing on what they have already heard and said, to explore aloud what various members are prepared to do, either on their own or as part of the group. They exchange email, phone, or other addresses and arrange to keep in touch.

SING A VERSE OR TWO OF "WADE IN THE WATER"

This outline for one possible approach to observance during the Eleven Days was developed by The Shalom Center/ A Division of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, with support from the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the New World Foundation.

See the other articles under: "11 Days in September"

The Shalom Center and ALEPH welcome your help in preparing this and other efforts for remembrance, reflection, and renewal this September. You can help by Emailing us (Awaskow@aol.com) your own plans for us then to send out further — to sow as seeds for additional creativity. And you can help by sending us a contribution in money as well, to support this work.