CROSS COUNTRY #23 For Sooth

Barry: Tarry not thou knave, for here is a posting to be read. By my trothe we do labor to create this epistle.

Goldie: The fates have brought us to Ashland Oregon, home to The Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The name of the fates are Rabbi David Zaslow and his wife Devorah who thoughtfully allocates her story teller’s study to us as a temporary lovely home.

Barry: "How sweet it is," a phrase coined by Willard Scott, applies to this town. Here drivers are so courteous they brake for anyone walking on the sidewalk within ten feet of a curb. Gals at the checkout in the supermarket smile and chat unhurried, people appear relaxed and happy.

The throw away fliers list practitioners of every type of therapy known to humankind and some that are not. So is the apparent happiness because of all the available therapy? Apparently not. Therapists have forsaken incomes for living in a nice place.

Goldie: Two main features dominate. The town park was designed by the same person who did the park under the Golden Gate Bridge by San Francisco. Here a rapidly cascading stream flows through the length of the city park....the thinnest in width of any park I’ve seen, it joyfully serves via carefully planned rest stops along the stream with a gazebo here, bench there, playground over there and flowers everywhere.

Barry: Culture abounds. We surrender hours to a fine, private bookstore called Bloomsbury Books. Art galleries and restaurants are in profusion. And then of course there is Shakespeare.

I don’t know the origins of it, but in a town near here we had the pleasure of watching the Spam Parade. Perhaps it’s done tongue in cheek or spam in eye to the highbrow stuff.

Goldie:.....kids dressed as singing spams in cans, the Spam Parade Queen, a Spam Ode Country Band, and a satire on the ubiquitous nature of spam now even being an internet concept....once upon a time I met three brothers on a cruise and asked their line of work of them. Their response: "We debone ham so it can go in the can." May their efforts be for a blessing, someone has to do it, even if I personally won’t eat it.

Goldie: We saw Henry 1V part two last night. Front row seats acquired at the last minute, someone must have traded them for another night ("Always ask for the best!" my Aunt Annie z"l would say, "then be prepared to negotiate." )

With a star-lit sky for our ceiling, the Elizabethan replica theater framed the passion and excellence of the all-male cast and the producer’s interpretation was accessible and powerful. Finally my image of Falstaff has sound and face....self-deprecating humor rich in wisdom and the king’s son’s quietly uttered "heavy lies the head that bears the crown" rendered forever memorable. Accessible, unadulterated Shakespeare, what a concept! 

Barry: They have a free outdoor music and dance show prior to the actual production. It’s called The Green Show and changes nightly. We picnicked beside one covering the history of people’s music for wartime. The newspaper in our laps read "Kosovo accord is reached", an antiwar protester debates us so furiously that we have the triple experience of watching an old war scene, reading about a current war, and defending our views from a frontal attack.

Goldie: Reb David Zaslow’s sizeable havurah’s recently acquired building is such a sweet davenning space that he and I sat down together to privately pray minchah. Working on daily spiritual practices has become a theme on this trip because a community in Seattle has requested teaching on this.

Minchah, the afternoon prayer service had various offerings associated with it during Temple times. Since I am not in the least interested in re-instituting the sacrificial system, my minchah question has become: "What do I have to offer in what remains of today?" A useful question at 4 or 5 pm when one’s blood sugar is low and a full day has already been put in. It helps that chanting a psalm which opens on the theme of happiness (the Ashrei) is a thrice a day tradition.

A sea-change can be felt in these questing spiritual communities, wherever we find them. I find less interest in their being introduced to meditation and new liturgical music - these have become beloved norms. Most such groups have beautiful, well-established Shabbat services and home practices. Increasingly the interest is on how to expand the renewal of Judaism into one’s daily life, and on advancing and enhancing existing skills and practices.

At the Ashland teaching, a woman asked "Could one even make housekeeping into a Jewish spiritual practice?" Some suggested chanting a sacred phrase, or perceiving oneself as a modern-day Levite. Rabbi Gail Diamond suggested when I left my first husband and set up a home without funding for housekeeping, that I consider my house to be sacred space and to treat each facet as one might the polishing of a Torah’s silver crown. That said, it helped some, though housekeeping still isn’t my field.

Barry: The next day we visited the old gold mining town of Jacksonville - the entire town has been placed on the national register of historic places.

Memorable to us was the Jewish-style deli. Goldie told the waitress she was a rabbi and could she speak to the proprietor. The waitress scurried back, whispered to a lady who came out looking around, and around and was startled to see this little female in a pink hat wave to her.

She came over to the table, was given a blessing for prosperity by said female, and walked off totally disoriented.

Next door was Sachs Dry Goods - specializing in hunting and Christian religious message t-shirts. Not a Jewish presence here.

We checked out the cemetery which is 150 years old and has sections for all religions as well as Oddfellows and Freemasons. I’m really into conscious cemeterying now.

Someone who attended Goldie’s teaching invited us to visit their glass art studio in nearby Medford, Oregon. The founding artist, Avinoam, grew up in Alaska, longing for and so exploring the qualities of light. Together he and his wife Shari fashion Jewish ritual objects out of fused or blown glass.

Goldie: If you could choose a new last name, what would it be? This couple chose "Zohar" - the name of a foundational mystical text, rooted in the transmission of light. We exchanged gifts....from me to Shari, an edition of the journal "Bridges" on the subject of Jewish women artists. They presented us with a piece perfectly attuned to their name, a challah plate colorized to follow the Kabbalistic color scheme designed by Reb Zalman for the B’nai Or tallit (prayer shawl).

I will cherish this plate of many colors and the memory of the bustling hive of creativity in their warehouse studio. Hebrew letters being painstakingly cut out of glass over here....sheets of glorious colors melting into each other over there.

The challah plate’s vivid irridescent colors are a reminder of the power of color as a portal for meditation. For those who have or have had vision, color can be a satisfying meditation alternative to sitting or chanting. We are all variously kinesthetically-abled. I’m hoping to create an spiritual art studio as part of The Academy’s NYC Center for Jewish Meditation and Spiritual Practice, anyone have space?

Barry: By now the chill that had been blanketing the west coast is starting to leave and it is becoming uncomfortably hot. This makes it easier to decide on our next stop - Crater Lake, elevation 7000 ft and still under ten feet of snow.

Addenda: Among the many responses we have received have been some helpful corrections and information.

1. The restaurant in Santa Barbara’s correct name is Casanova.

2. In answer to our query regarding the Chinese funeral we witnessed, Simcha Raphael, author of the most fascinating and excellent Jewish Views of the Afterlife (Aronson Press), notes that the Chinese funeral practice of strewing into the air strips of paper with symbols cut into them might mean: "that the pieces of paper are a writ of pardon, permitting the soul of the deceased to enter Heaven. Interestingly, it parallels a line in Sephardic burial liturgy about the soul of the dead being receiving a "pinkas"[permission slip is probably a good translation