Confusion like in a mist,
Absent clarity, like the dark airfield in Kiev,
Rational mind seems the only operating system
Mistrust of the irrational, this past year,
Wasteland of spirituality, in the brain dead orthodoxy
saturating my community,
Cynicism,
Agnosticism,
Disbelief,
Anger,
A heart of stone,
Arrival.
Noise…Pushkena…bustling with suitcase pushing pilgrims,
Blaring speakers spewing
techno-‐pseudo-‐hassidic musak.
Thongs of black hatted Haredim,
Low life Israelis, in T shirts and tattoos,
Many boys running in between, peyos flying,
Cigarette city, smoke clouds,
Trash everywhere,
Stench of slops and sewage,
Smoke infested lungs, where
Rows of asthmatic sufferers sit in the clinic
hooked up to oxygen and inhalers, Stalls selling kitsch,
Toy guns everywhere,
Hands waving in circles of dancing pilgrims shouting “Rebbe Nachman!”
A cross-‐section of Israeli society,
A spattering of westerners,
Pretty boys from Brooklyn sporting Breitling watches,
And tight jeans,
Dazed kipah sruga-‐sporting intellectuals from the Gush
looking so out of place Peyos flying everywhere,
Uman is as usual.
Though this year without the na nachs…
And absent the Berland groupies…
And Reb Itche Meir who flew in and then left just before Yom Tov
(“Rabbeinu is in Jerusalem not here”)
I am doubtful
That this year
Anything can happen to me
After all, look at the last decade
Resolutions followed by the inevitable self-‐betrayals
Despite the spiritual experience
The flesh is too predictable
The addictions are too ingrained
The work too overpowering
The resentments too familiar to let go.
I am, after all, too far gone,
I have already given up on myself.
Sunk too low..
Floating-‐no, more like drowning
In the “vacated space” the challul hapanaui
No rope to lower down to me this time, to grasp on to
I have been in free fall now for a year or so
Victim of my head games
The incessant reading of scholarship
(Albeit secondary literature)
The critique of naïve Hassidut
The full acceptance of scientific scholarship
Dissecting texts like a surgeon,
The surrender of faith,
The realization of the construction and evolution of Halachic praxis
The insight that all collectives
However wellbeing,
End up trashing individual liberty
End up violent…
Sooner or later it was bound to catch up with me
I’d cut everything else into pieces
Only the quiet agnosticism remained,
Peppered by the guilt and remorse of losing my beloved father in law,
A relationship spanning decades,
Strung between his strong -‐at times overpowering-‐ personality
And the debt owed to his guidance, instruction and moral role modelling.
Now bereft of him,
With whom do I spar with in my mind?
Who do I measure up to?
In the aloneness of the alone
I feel only the absent divine,
Back here once more,
Against my better judgment
I walk the Pushkena street
Towards the Rebbe.
Entering the back way into the tomb’s hall to avoid pan handlers
Book sellers,
Screaming pilgrims,
The pushing and shoving that inevitably accompanies
any other gifts this hallowed place might offer
focused on the tomb itself the tzion
where, 10 men deep…each reciting the 10 Psalms… the Tikkun Klali
I am unable to get close to the tomb.
This is a palace of mirrors…it brings out the best and worst in men,
each bringing his own troubled life to the Rebbe
there is weeping going on here in this crucible of soul making,
(broken souls are especially attracted here).
The familiarity of faces,
Ones I recognize over the years
One’s who recognize me and nod
Others I want to shake hands and receive a blessing from
The sons of Reb Shmuel Shapira known as
The angel, and the zaddik,
Rabbi Elazar Koenig, Reb Itzche Mayer,
The anonymous familiar faces from Breslov yeshiva,
Old City, Jerusalem
My apartment colleagues,
Every year a little grayer
Their boys, now men with their own kids;
Then beloved Reb Chaim Kramer whose obstinate commitment to Rabbeinu
Is reflected in the ever greater library of English translations
He churns out heroically
And the ever enlarging complex
(he calls it affectionately the Ritz Carton!)
housing the western English speaking perplexed who wander in.
And Motta Frank whose new wooden complex
Overlooking the lake,
And facing those three large weeping willows
Is the perfect setting for broken young souls
he has gathered and rehabilitated,
Whose davening comes closest to Carlebach I’ve ever heard
Men whose pure affection for one another
Melts my heart, for it’s pure horizontal spirituality.
At dinner, Reb Chaim asks me to speak without warning
And I confess to one and all
my disconnection with the core beliefs
With my soul
With my ongoing sellout to expedience
At so many levels.
I just don’t want to fool myself here of all places.
I call Rabbeinu the dry cleaner, the washer of souls,
Afterwards people come up to me to thank me
for resonating with their own doubts
Am I some dark hero?
Even here?
In the “heretical” bastion of Hassidut Breslev
Spreading my paradoxical heretical Breslov thought
As I walk Pushkena Street
where young men remind me of a talk two or three years ago
that left an impression
Or some poem on my blog.
I am welcomed by my wonderful dedicated physician colleagues in the clinic
Who consult me on this or that neurological issue.
It is so easy to pick up where one left off a year or two earlier,
Even Uman becomes routinized…
The same apartments, same pre-‐packaged food, davening, mikveh,
It has lost its revolutionary spirit-‐ of course, it had to-‐ from the early years.
Now even the cameras from local TV stations seem old hat
The reporter asks me the same questions,
I respond with evasive responses,
Always moving the conversation away from the exotic Hassidic dress
to the endemic virulent national anti Semitism
Behind the recent gang assaults, vandalism etc.
I remain incensed by their voyeurism
And the photographer’s nerve to actually enter the prayer hall of the kloiz
As if they’d be allowed into a Cathedral to film a Mass in Kiev!
The sounds are the same, in the kloiz, from the 15000 strong kehilla
Singing in unison, the silence before the shofar,
the clapping on crowning the divine (hamelech hakadosh)
Unique to this place alone.
These sights and sounds really do still move me,
As does the throng of white kittel-‐coated men around the lake
For the Tashlikh ceremony,
Where the recently constructed evangelical cross
reminds us we are not in Jerusalem.
Sights and sounds, now familiar, that I can predict,
that I know will move me
In a sea of discomfort and irritation
A sea of insanity.
This a year a woman prays by the lakeshore, alone,
her head bowed in piety,
Fully covered, she shocks me with her bold assertiveness,
that women too can be here
And demand the Rebbe’s attention,
the first woman I have seen since arrival,
My heart is moved as I remember how desensitized we are
outside this men-‐only enclave.
How artificial this place is in segregating off women
I am reminded of my father’s time in internment camp Tatura where he said
not a woman was seen for two and a half years, men literally went crazy.
I still love to walk in the silent “new cemetery”
where elders of the Breslov community are buried
and a memorial to a pogrom some hundred years ago
was recently erected for some three thousand Jewish victims,
The bare field overgrown with weeds hiding the few headstones left,
(in contrast to the Christian cemetery next field over,
festooned with flowers and well maintained memorial stones,)
in this space of loneliness and silence
the breeze comforts me from the now late afternoon hot sun.
I find solitude and comfort here.
The communal recitation of the Tikkun Klali, the 10 Psalms
blaring from loudspeakers along Pushkena street,
Yet after all is done, men stand still, as all
In unison shout the thundering doxology :
“Shema” and “Hashem hu Ha-‐elokim”
In this precious moment I feel the unity of the “ecclesia”
of Israel, Knesset Yisroel
And the petty resentments melt
In a sea of hope that the power of prayer
might be able to breach the gates of Kafka’s heaven
that are normally sealed shut.
The middle class stand-‐offish snootiness
I cannot normally shed recedes if only for a few moments.
I join in the cry.
This year I hold out little hope
This year I will not melt
This year I have all but given up hope
On myself.
After all the attempts
After so many years of coming
Trying,
Resolutions
Failures
Moral failures
I can almost predict the future,
The neural pathways set over decades.
No one moves me intellectually here,
(Besides a conversation with Dovid Sears who gets it)
No one seems to appreciate Rabbeinu’s paradoxical and radical Torah,
his message. The Breslov homespun wisdom,
produced for the mildly perplexed, espoused here,
is either puerile, simplistic, self-‐help styled.
The Mea Shearim /Charedi/ kannaim types
(looking for acceptance in the world of Hungarian style Jerusalem)
try to impose their approach on the rest.
(They booed Chazan Bienenstock during Mussaf last year,
because he used a non-‐Breslov tune, so he resigned.
-‐this man has a voice of a nightingale!!
His plaintive “hineni” before Mussaf
made me cry each year, it broke my stone heart,
I could almost rely on him!
Now silenced, now gone because of these
authoritarian purist thugs who dominate the kloiz.)
Uman isn’t valium nor opium for the masses, but it sure seems that way,
People desire certainty and seemed to have found it here.
Coming to the tzion is more like looking into a mirror
A place to come and see your real self,
With no filters, the pure plain truth is made available
If you can stand it
If you are willing to face it.
This year standing before the Rebbe
I easily confess,
My character faults are ever present and in the din of the study hall
They stand in line readily as might witnesses in a trial.
I have no where else to go, is a thought that recurs
On this season of self-‐judgment .
The myth of Rebbe as defense attorney before the heavenly tribunal
Comes as very appealing to me.
(One must confess all the crimes to one’s attorney
lest he might not prepare adequately for the trial!)
So the list came to mind easily.
There is, as always, relief in confession
And here, one of the few places in Judaism,
where it is tolerated.
I ask for no forgiveness
The inner Kritik allows no mercy
I just pray for a melting of the stone heart
And leave the rest to some alchemical process to begin work
On this philosopher’s heart of stone.
Sleep is critical here in Uman, what with the jet lag,
long hours in prayer and sensory overload.
Yet sleep is a precious commodity, vital for restoration and recovery.
If the window should open to the bedroom,
The noise from the street at all times of day or night awakens one.
I have found that rising around 3am is good for inner work
And walk back to the Rebbe a bit dazed in the chilled, poorly lit street night
At this time the study hall adjacent to the tomb,
is fairly quiet with some asleep in the rows of benches,
others quietly reciting the 10 Psalms.
Some weep by the tomb, heads resting on the slanting marble top.
Here at 3 am one can wait a little for it is only about 6 men deep
After about 15 minutes I can struggle to reach the cool marble
In supplication and tears.
Now the heart begins to melt.
As the events of the year fly by in a kind of video reel
(like the old Pathe news)
And the people in one’s life one cares,
about come to the forefront of the mind
To make mention of for blessing in the coming year
I feel a weight of responsibility in making mention without omission
Of those near and dear
The sick and feeble
The children and grandchildren
The parents uncles and aunts
My siblings and their families
Those of have left this world the last year like Abba and Arthur
Those who are about to undergo critical life threatening surgery like Jeff
Those in need of comfort from loss
My patients in needs of healing
The list goes on for an hour
Making mention of the people in my life I love,
Situates me at the center
And magically centers the meaning of my life away from the ego
And more towards my role and relationships
In other people’s lives.
Bringing their needs to the Rebbe allows this sacred space
to be filled with “the other” Which always was my self image as a healer.
I also reflect on the people I have hurt and injured
The acts of commission and omission
My character flaws in full relief
that seem to inflate by the year
The crustaceous nature that increasingly resists change
The Rebbe accepts all, even me
That is of comfort.
I ask for myself of course,
I ask only for his attention
Nothing more
My coming here
My being present among the thongs
Is sufficient for me. It is humbling.
If there is this world of spirit
And his presence has meaning in this Breslov myth
If the claims are correct in a world of rational analysis
(Knowing such claims are cross cultural
Pilgrimages are common to other world faiths
Each claiming truth)
Then in my heresy
In my post modern reading of Breslov lore
This needs to be sufficient.
Penitence? T’shuvah? I’m not there.
I return home a little lighter as the morning dawn lights up the sky.
Next morning the rain has made the streets slushy
And my black pants are spitted with mud.
The drizzle lightens up but the day remains gray.
Fewer gather on the street to give the Breslov sigh
A deep shout from the belly that a dozen or so shake the background noise
that rises above the usual din.
(Reminding me curiously of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s analysis
of the two types of prayer)
I seem to see many more children than usual
People must be able to afford the tickets to bring kids these days.
And the few women that stay off the main street
yet are seen in sidewalks and gardens furtively here and there.
The steel blue eyed police, paramilitary and military police
line the street corners with their presence
Ready for any trouble
Smoking like chimneys
Gathering in small groups in a circle chatting away aimlessly.
This year they stood by motionlessly as a bunch of neo-‐Nazi hoodlums
Destroyed the welcome tent, this is the ultra-‐nationalist movement
That we in the west are supporting against the Russians
They are now in power.
Skin heads beat up a man thinking he had money
Tearing all his pockets
Not realizing it was Yom Tov
Brought to the clinic with black eyes and a cracked rib
An ever present reminder we are in someone else’s back yard.
That this place remains dangerous.
Yet we trash the environment
It is so sad to see the debris, the detritus everywhere
Especially in the lake
Cartons with Hebrew lettering
floating flotsam
point accusingly at we the culprits.
The second night I am feeling something moving inside
A relief of the burden of self
A lessening of the Kritik’s voice
And a compassion of self and others
Evoked by the very unconditional loving Rebbe
Present in this sacred shrine.
This night a hundred or so men are singing softer more harmonic tunes
outside in the larger hall In a circle of slower dancing I am drawn to it and
join the singing for some time
I feel the inner joy of participating in this
older mature group of men who have made this trip
To honor the Rebbe
To be with him for the New Year
(As he predicted in his book,
the mere drawing in of one in a depression
Into a circle of dancers almost against his will
Will change his mood by the sheer force of the group)
And so it happened to me.
I noticed tears well up as I danced this slow dance
Arms locked in arms
Able to return now with a calm I had not felt in a long time
To my room.
My sleep was calmer too
I felt as if “things were being taken care of”
Like when I can rest easy, since I hired a good lawyer
And slept and dreamed of events that validated me.
The second day I went on a “walk about”
with my two beloved companions
Crossed a small stream with green plants
being wafted by the current ever so gently
As if they had accepted the fact of the current
and instead of resisting
Allowed the current to bring them food and nutrients.
It mirrored how I was allowing this whole experience to waft over me
Allowing Rebbe to work on my heart
Allowing the good parts of Uman that I knew well
To filter in and ignore the klippos
(it is so easy to let those negative aspects
destroy the experience, believe me)
and I felt joy in the walking
in the now glorious sunshine
in the companionship of good friends
to whom one can be totally honest with
and in the body’s longing for exercise
(so long denied of late for all sorts of excuses)
Along the way people stop to say hello
Ask questions
In my white hair
Flanked by my companions, arm in arm
Walking in the center of Pushkena
People stop and chat
Ask advice
In a thousand faces
One recognizes old faces
From earlier years
That is sufficient to stop to wish the new year should be sweet
Brochos flow easily here
It is the currency by which brotherly love is transacted
And at times I give advice as if an elder!
A man overhears my reading of a lesson from Rebbe
Then asks me for advice
(His father had been a Breslover for years
and it pains him that recently
Father had “left the fold” to join Chabad!
I told him we are all drinking from the same fountain
To let it go, the truth would emerge,
It calmed him.)
Another told me of his evil desires when women entered his shop!
Despite white knuckling the urges he felt powerless over this issue.
He knew how Rebbe warred against the sexual urges
and felt broken by his failure. I chuckled inside!
He was coming to ME for advice on this issue!!
Maybe I needed to go to him!
(I told him that these challenges were precisely meant for him
That the Nesivos Sholom writes that
the whole purpose a man is placed in this world
Is to fix some flaw in his soul root.
But how to know what his purpose is?
What is the flaw?
He claims the very urge that drives one time and again
Into failure, that is the sign, the litmus test,
that one’s soul’s root needs fixing in that particular area.)
So I advised not to give up! Keep on trucking!
And try to develop the mirror image of those desires within the divine,
Develop a relationship to the feminine divine the Shechina!
Learn Tikkunei Zohar, learn about HER,
it might help you in this area.
He went away satisfied.
Another (Brit) asked me about Rebbe’s claim
that different organs carried different emotions
like the spleen liver and kidneys.
How did I as a physician feel about modern scientific approaches
to the organs of the body and Rebbe’s claims.
Despite my inviting him into the idea of allegory and metaphor
he remained resistant to anything but the literal truth
so I quietly disengaged for this theoretical discussion and politely let go.
As I returned to the tomb for the last time
I knew the journey had not been in vain
The Rebbe had done his magic
I had been open to it
In desperation
And I was not disappointed.
And I was grateful.
This time I return home with humble resolutions
To be compassionate in my relationships
To commit to exercise and diet,
To engage in recovery process on my work and other addictions
To find time to write and study,
And to try once again at an honest engagement in Halachic praxis.
I return having raised a significant contribution
to the Breslov Research Institute;
(And a commitment to help Motta Frank in his holy work
of rescuing young men;
Finally, an interesting conversation with Ozer Bergman
on the possibility of a collaboration
On a new book on managing addiction
in light of Rabbeinu’s teachings,
In light of the new heroin epidemic
that is killing young men in our community.)
