This is a travelogue form of sharing experiences Barry and I sometimes send during trips which integrate travel and Jewish spiritual practice. We're sending it to those in our email address book to whom we feel close or because we miss having contact with you. If you find receiving these inconvenient, please let us know and we'll take you off the list.

Barry: I don't fly for long weekends, takes me a few days to recover from the stress. So, naturally, Goldie's invite to rabbi for a friend's wedding in Durango, Colorado became an opportunity for us to spend two and a half weeks in the southwest USA. Round tripping via Phoenix.

Goldie: I'm not at all keen on long winding highways, Still, my love is connecting with friends and family everywhere and these trips provide the opportunity to wander from one amazing person to the next.

Barry: Flying is the price I pay for experiencing nature and people.
Goldie: Driving is the price I pay for experiencing Barry. Just traded my hot little red sports car for a van, really would have preferred a tiny plane. Ah, what one will do for love.

Barry: Except for having our rental car rear-ended in Phoenix, the trip has been filled with delightful hospitality, friendship, learning, exquisite scenery and surprises.

"Ours in the pink adobe house at the end of the street."

Barry: "That must be it on the right. Run up to the front door and see if it's a Jewish home." It seemed a reasonable suggestion, given how few the number of Jewish residents might be in the mining town of Silver City, New Mexico. Beside the front door is a lengthy Hebrew plaque, more lovely than most. The owner looks at us in surprise, "No, the Wegman's live at the very end of the block."

An email invitation to drop in received from a reader of Goldie's web site prompted our visit to Alan Wegman and his wife Ann. We told them laughing we'd already met the other Jew in town. "Oh, he's not Jewish," they responded, "he just liked the plaque."

Goldie: Alan is the public defender in this mining town which he describes as having a Mexico-like third world culture. It is one of the poorest counties in America, in the poorest state in the nation. Unbeknownst to us, it is also a town of great historical significance: The gaping terraced chasms of the mines that gash the otherwise magnificent mountainous horizon were the site of a defining labor dispute.

Barry: The movie Salt of the Earth was filmed here in 1953, by black listed film makers, documenting the successful strike of mostly Mexican miners for equal treatment in matters of sanitation, safety and pay. It was a long, brutal strike and when the picketing by miners was ruled illegal, the women challenged their husbands' macho-ness by forming an auxiliary and creating all-women picket lines. The movie was banned and declared subversive in the McCarthy era.

Goldie: A book by the movie's same name makes important reading. The author emphasizes the power of peoplehood vs corporate greed, in doing so he touches something I've been searching for but can't yet fit into the puzzle of our lives. It has something to do with facing down anti-Semitism the way the Mexicans and Chinese in the story were able to, in tandem with respecting the peoplehood of others. Originally moved to use blacklisted actors, the film makers suddenly realized they were about to cast Caucasians into the role of the native laborers....they turned around on a dime and cast the locals.

"Pg 46 "The Chinese developed a homogeneity, a group presence, that endowed each individual with stature that was a gift from the whole. It brought a power in relaxation to them that few actors achieve. If they brought less skill, they brought the authority and dedication of their own persons and that incomparable thing–the reality of a people."

Pg 40. "We're dealing with something else. Not just people. A people....The point is this: discrimination has forced these people into a conscious as well as unconscious unity. They have respect for themselves as a whole, because they've learned that individual doesn't get anywhere by himself. The fact is they're a people. It's a beautiful thing to see and to reflect."

Barry: Alas, history repeats itself.. The multinational corporate operator recently closed one of the two copper mines, throwing 1200 people out of work. It must be so hard to be a child here, there is nothing to do, no youth programs, nothing.

Goldie: The creative individualism of those drawn to live in the southwest leaves me in awe and a deep appreciation for the quality of care given for our comfort and understanding by each family with which we've visited. Alan placed a two-handled cup for the traditional Jewish washing ritual in our bathroom, having learned this practice is meant to be part of Jewish morning blessing practice, not just reserved for meals or Shabbat. No one has ever done this before, I am deeply touched.

Barry: Alan introduced us to Yo Kalisher who lives way out in the wilderness on an old commune, which is still a communal property. While we languished in the hot springs on the grounds, Goldie and Yo seemed to bond instantly.

Goldie: What my study partner and I call "eternitis" takes over immediately as Yo and I share our takes on ways to go up the Kabbalists' sephirotic tree of life. His spatial abilities as a natural sculptor seem to help him render in words a dimensionality of understanding I have never before experienced. For me it is like going from 0 to 120 mph spiritually in a matter of minutes, he opens up the heart space, tiferet, in ways that will never be the same again for me.

And then there are his sculptures, to touch them is to experience the power of G*d's name through the a new sense. And when he shows the yud hey vav hey of G*d's name chiseled through alabaster, so that the letters are negative space framing the desert . . . you have to experience it. And, the Shin lettered over the fireplace as below.



Barry: As the heat of the day waned and evening colors beckoned, we hiked the mountains with Alan and his street-found Chow dog Charlie, previously known as "Dead Beat Dad" for years of spontaneously siring puppies all over town.

Goldie: Barry and I begin to do our Jewish meditation walks davenning and Alan joins us. This practice has become so dear to us, we lead one formally earlier in the trip in the dramatic Sabino Canyon in Tuscon, at the request of delightful folks who befriended us at the Aleph Kallah, Marilyn and Samuel Devore. Being unaccustomed to cacti being called a "forest," let's say this setting was a both thorny and amazing experience. We're deeply into our process of planning a Jewish Meditation and Nature course for our August week in Elat Chayyim, very excited about it.

Being in the wilderness during Shavuot is becoming a tradition for us. The Arizona heat was so daunting, 103 degrees for days on end. The mostly laid-back nature of folks out here is a joy, we're winding down our NYC-bred affects. One local tension appears paramount, concern about fires starting, they are in a four year drought here, most every plant is a tinder box waiting to be sparked.

Barry: The adaptability of the plant life fascinates. Saguaro [su-wah-row] cacti abound, topped by bouquet-like blooms of their brief seasonal flower. Doves dine on their sweet day time scent, and bats travel 50 miles up from Mexico to savor their night time ferment. Saguaro, often term one-armed bandit cacti in the movies, turn out to have an internal wood-like skeleton. and are technically classified as trees!

A pleasure that keeps growing on us is birding. In Tuscon's Madeira Canyon lands over 12 varieties of humming birds play the trumpeting flowers. Birders' seem to be mentors-in-waiting, so friendly and informative!

Goldie: Few we meet seem to have been born here. Each person is a transplant that took the courage of their hopes and convictions in hand to re-invent themselves here. Our Phoenix stay with Carl and Elaine Hammerschlag puts us in a Paradise Valley home full of joyful visiting young adult children, garnished with such fine southwest artwork that each basket stitch seems to be chanting its own prayer.

Carl is a shamanically wizened Jewish psychiatrist deeply connected to the local native Americans. We met at Elat Chayyim last year and delight in deepening our connection. A now retired, entrepreneurial designer, Elaine regaled us with photos of the 40th birthday girls' party she'd just thrown for a daughter, where everyone who came dressed as a wild west "show biz" women....oooh, I have the perfect hat for that left over from my mom's youth (hmm) and never a place to wear it.



 

Anastazi City Remains n Arizona, note kivas and towers!

Barry: We're actually heading to Durango, Colorado where Goldie will officiate at a wedding on a ranch. Today we were mostly on the road, traversing stunning, dry, precipitous, winding mountainous passes. We paused in Albuquerque for Goldie to catch up on news with colleague Rabbi Lynne Gottlieb.

Goldie: Lynn's congregation has developed land with housing options for a few congregants, art, photography and music studios, in-house klezmer dance and band groups, women's studies and diversity programs, and even a monthly Shabbat service in Ladino in honor of the many Conversos in this region who find the shul a safe place to re-discover and preserve their origins and much more. They plan to soon be able to welcome and train those who seek to learn how to create such new paradigm congregations.

Barry: More after Shavuot, which Goldie has the honor of leading at Rabbi Ayla Grafstein's community, Ruach HaMidbar (spirit of the wilderness) in Phoenix. We can't actually post this yet, no email connections in the area, so your reading may be a bit asynchronous with the writing.

Goldie: Blessings for a Shavuot full of in-coming guidance for the vision you seek.

Second Posting from the South West Trip

Goldie writing, Barry sleeping.

Yes, we are joyously engaged in another working vacation. Shavuot with Reb Ayla's full-of spirit, vigor and nature-loving congregation was set in a park at the base of the mountains, beside a sky-reflecting lake. For us it is very healing to be away for NYC for awhile, even a few steps away from the immediate sense of impending terrorism feels SO SPACIOUS. How much much harder for those in Israel.

Our drive took us through the San Carlos Apache reservation where Barry is reminded of Cape Flats in South Africa, arid wasteland dotted with shacks, shanty towns and dust. Ultimately this sad vista yields to a gem of a morning visiting Frank Llyod Wright's winter home and architectural school, Taleisin West.

So striking to learn that at age 65 he and his third wife built this home and architectural school deep in the Arizona desert. About third of his commissions he did from age 81 to 91, with over one hundred left to go when he died. He set up the site by viewing the desert as an ocean, respecting the land so much, that he put nothing atop a peak, built nothing higher than the tree-line, which he termed the brow of the mountain.

His architectural forms were well-known for steering people through spaces to do and experience what he wanted of them. For example, in the dining room, the ceiling was so low, one is forced to sit, so as to see revealed the view of the mountains. He saw the site as an experimental learning center. Students build their own dwelling for the last three years of their program. Over 360 experimental buildings were built and taken down on the premises over the years.

This almost three-week trip was occasioned by a request to wed friends Lonn Heymann and Susie Greene of Denver. They chose the gem of a recovered old western railroad town, Durango for the four day event. The couple perceived their families as quite secular and hoped they could be drawn in to the religious experience. I love helping to braid two souls marriage. Like moving from the separateness of Shabbat candles into the sensuous melting of Havdalah, holiness happens palpably at such Jewish weddings.

In that odd way some sister and fellow rebbes report, I can't remember being there. What must have been needed played through. Having said that, one image, no two arise: When they danced the sephirot, [a tree of qualities of being each person can refine and balance, according to the Kabbalists] (that's a very shorthand explanation) the couple began to improvise, turning their turnings into a most sensuous, sweet dance, which told the story of each sephirah's impact upon them in the moment. Lovingkindess winding into good boundaries, and so on and they chose to begin with da-at, which we interpreted as transforming knowledge into safe speech. As Barry mentioned, you can check my web site for some more of the nuances.

What some now call evolutionary spirituality, this couple pledged as their awareness, that each of us are created b'tzelem Elohim, in the image of G*d, "becoming what we are becoming." They mutually committed with their rings: "with this symbol I make you holy unto me" and both added the prophetic: "with a love full of justice, compassion, love, honest and trust."

Have you ever noticed that sometimes the Cosmos just wants something to happen, then all of the underbrush on the yellow brick road of life disappears and the way is clear? This wedding was like that, woven by bride, groom and family as preciously as the area's abundance of finely woven, richly symbolic Ute and Pima basketry. I had to hoot when the couple had mutated the words "shomer" and "Shomeret" into calling the person who served as their sacred servant for the wedding weekend, the "shazzam." She chose a best friend, he, a brother. Imagine Barry's surprise when the day after the wedding, he opened a book given to us by Marilyn Devore in Tuscon and on the third page the word Shazzam is defined!

The "shazzamim" were loving appropriately detail-oriented wedding attendants and liaison to yours truly, I miss them already. Shazzam was only part of the magic, the hot springs even let us in after hours for mikveh, the overly shallow drought challenged rivers of melted snow were proved too daunting for us. It seems to me that a person becomes truly bride or groom in the mikveh. There the eggshell of single life breaks and an expanded soul is midwifed from this visit to the cosmic womb; each of them immersed without the other, at separate times, birthing a layer of soul they don't yet fully know that is realizable in relationship. They made a practice of not seeing each other from mikveh til the wedding, for the joy of the practice, the freshness, building up of joyful tension, the glory of how such a ritual dilutes old klippot, husks of traumas gone by and newly planted by the inevitable wedding preparation stresses, mikvah never ceases to amaze me.

The inability to remember being at the wedding, it's not exactly new, it is recent. It has been a long process of drenching my soul with the liturgy, adding practices that take a person beyond "self" in order to be able to achieve a transparency during ritual. Years ago Reb Zalman had adjured me of still having too much ego and not enough transparency operative at such times. Had no idea what he meant back then, was only aware of a necessary feeling of falling when he spoke.

Crafting Jewish renewal and Reconstructionist methods and models to serve a mainstream family like those at the wedding, and mainstream congregations and organizations has taken time and testing. It was Barry's idea, perhaps stemming from the toxic-ly boring suburban congregation he'd lived with since coming to America from South Africa. Living with him in Reading, PA. I mostly learned what didn't work when trying to bring the juiciness of Jewish renewal to the mainstream. On the road, I learned to get the tapes of what congregations hold as their traditions and to spice their norms with tastes of the possible. It was sometimes hard and very important learning how not to put out such a high spiritual volume as to create resistance, not so low as to misjudge the community's capacity to in my mother's words again: "stretch and grow, reach for the sky."

Our journey has included much time in the three gems in the diadem of creation, at least from my vantage point. Nature, friends and intimacy. While hot springing back in Silver City with Yo Kalisher, he told me of Reb Zalman's teachings to him on mikvah - a macho mikveh for occasional use by males, where one is held down by all until he tugs to request release. I'm more likely to adopt the second teaching, four immersions, each begun facing in a different direction, calling under the water from within yourself upon a different name for G*d which you wish to pray through at this time. Wonderful!

That's all about the wedding scene, tomorrow we turn toward Jimez Springs to hang out with friends Shefa and Rachmiel for awhile, then Mesa Verde and Native American connections. Planning to stop in Flagstaff to organize a Kosher Canyon Run for 2004, two weeks white water rafting and Jewish spiritual practice, hoping they'll have space for a charter. Maybe you'll be interested in coming along? I did this once before ago, not as organizer, as student intern and it may be the most fun you can have with your pants on.

Much love, Goldie and Barry [now at the wheel and needing me to navigate]