Elul -To My Little Sister
I asked for one of the pictures I had brought with me, the one of my sister and me. The back of the old photograph was stamped with the year “1986”—I was five, and she was one. We were sitting together in the backyard, under some blanket or tablecloth, and when I look at these two sweet faces, not so different-looking than those of my own children, I can see the love and closeness we felt toward one another. During these years, I called her “my baby,” helping feed her or get her dressed for daycare. Yet now, as I am holding the picture, the word coming in is “regret,” and as the tears begin to flow, I am feeling tightness and tingling down my neck and arms, meeting the picture that has captured what would turn out to be only a fleeting moment in our relationship. My sister, our sisters, my spirit, our spirits, all of Israel—I’m encouraged to feel it all, the feeling of regret and love we once shared. Only after coming home, integrating, did I remember the great liturgical love song sung just before Rosh HaShanah services start, which is dedicated to our “little sister,” a metaphor for all of the parts of our human existence which have been exiled or lost that we wish to call back.
A member of the Kabbalistic circle of the Ramban in 13th Century Gerona, not much is known about Rabbi Avraham Hazan except through his devotional prayers found in Sephardic, Italian, Algerian, and even Karaite liturgies. His best-known work, the piyut “Achot Ketanah,” is an amazing weavework of poetic referents throughout the Hebrew Bible, describing the journey of the Jewish people, the Jewish soul, even the Divine feminine Herself, from a place of sickness and exile to health and redemption. As a psychedelic Jew, especially one trying to tend to my lineage and my relations, the poem’s refraining plea for the Holy One to end generational curses, year after year, strikes me deeply.
Rabbi Avraham Hazan begins:
Little Sister, her prayers prepared
Her praises to You she has declared
O God, please from illness may she be spared
Let the year and its curses come to an end!
Rabbi Avraham invokes the character of the little sister at the end of Shir HaShirim, protected and infantilized by her brothers in one verse yet able to assert her independence and sexual maturity in another, as well as the sister of Moshe, Miryam, who pleads for her healing after she is struck with tzaraat (leprosy). Psychedelic and other expansive experiences can bring us to a heightened awareness of our relationships, especially those which are complex, frayed, and entirely broken. Whether with our own soul, our family members, or close relations, we may reflect on the role we played in their suffering, and ask for healing and reunion. We do our part, and the rest is left to the Holy One. The piyut continues:
She calls upon you with words so pleasant
With song and praises, a worthy present
Please lift your eyes, fear not to glance
Enemies consume her inheritance
Let the year and its curses come to an end!
This beautiful, innocent child—she sings to her Divine parent with such loving words. Yet, like Jerusalem, consumed by its enemies, the Holy One cannot do enough to protect her from the world and its ravages. Perhaps asking for healing is not enough! We must demand action and remind our Protectors about their sacred responsibility. When it comes to the neglect of innocents, there must be accountability. What must we do for ourselves to be fully integrated and healthy enough to step into that confrontational space when we are ready for it, to demand that we be taken care of?
Tend your sheep that lions chased to the field
And pour your wrath on those who destruction wield
Your right hand’s tended vine they steal
And leave her nothing of its yield
Let the year and its curses come to an end
The little sister all but disappears in this most fury-filled stanza. The outrage is real and palpable, but demand for accountability becomes a demand for vengeful wrath—can we listen to it? Can we make space for that, or are we so afraid of or dysregulated by anger ourselves that we must deny or ignore it when we hear it voiced by another? Can we understand some modicum of motivation for violent aggression or retribution against perceived enemies, especially when there is not much left to lose? Is it too much to hold?
Raise her from contempt to the height of sovereignty
She has wilted long enough in the pit of obscurity
As vileness is exalted, her heart she pours out
She makes her home with those who are without
Let the year and its curses come to an end!
We have faith that the lowest will become the highest, just as the highest has become the lowest, that whatever can be destroyed can be repaired, that the world is guided by an Eventual Equilibrium. And as that balance finds its place, our personal pain, and our national anguish, sensitize us to not merely empathize with those who suffer in this lifetime, but to count them as our neighbors and our allies. This is the path of the Jewish soul—to descend from a place of unity and truth into a reality that is partial, broken, and full of doubt, yet vector back toward ascension along with our other human siblings.
When from the pit will You Your daughter take?
And free her from the dungeon, its yoke to break?
And with glorious escape great wonders make?
And end her ailments for her sake?
Let the year and its curses come to an end!
The little sister returns now as the daughter—the focused pleading of the sibling subtly moves from the voice of a helpless child to an adult speaking to another adult. The imagery here, the pit and the dungeon, harken back to Joseph and his brothers, when it is Judah, our eponymous ancestor, who realizes that their childish jealousy will ultimately lead to his mortal demise. From the pit in the desert to the dungeon in Egypt, Joseph—the beacon of beauty, embodied sexuality, and the beginning of the balance between the feminine and the masculine—must be set free. It is no less than a complete miracle to be healed in this way.
Be strong and rejoice–the plunder is past
Place hope in God’s strength, the covenant shall last
Rise up to Zion and the Holy One will say:
“Clear out the path, Make way, make way!”
Let the year and its blessings commence!
The last stanza of many piyutim have the quality of breaking the fourth wall, for suddenly and sometimes abruptly resolving what has unfolded during the course of the poem’s narrative. This stanza begins with one of the most striking lines of the entire work: כִּי שׁוֹד גָּמַר—the plunder is past. One of the greatest lessons I have learned from the medicine is that what has hurt me most in my life is no longer happening, that my loss or fear or trauma has happened, but it is now over. This insight was very hard won for me, and ongoing–could the Jewish people ever embrace this? Can we return to our ancestral traumas, not just to revisit them and be rewounded, but to work on them and heal them up, to make way for what is farther up the path for us now?
May this past year’s many, many curses end for our people and all people who are suffering in sickness and desolation.
May this coming year’s many, many blessings bring our people and all people to a present moment where we have grown around our pain to receive the abundance of the Holy One’s love and trust.
Hodesh tov,
Z
