Author: Carole Bass

Our Ancestors Who Trusted

~ Carole Bass ~ 1 Comment

I’m not an expert on Jewish prayer, or on Hebrew language or grammar. Far from it. But sometimes a single word captures my attention, and I spend a lot of time puzzling over what it means to me.

Sometimes it’s just a comma—or the absence of one.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about part of the prayer known as Ahavah Rabah, which translates as “abundant love.”

The prayer begins:

With abundant love you have loved us, Lord our God. With great mercy you have been merciful to us.

Okay, we’re expressing gratitude and, as you might guess, working up to a request. The prayer continues:

For the sake of our ancestors who trusted you, and to whom you taught the laws of life, so grace us and teach us.

The word that grabbed me here is “ancestors.” The Hebrew is avoteynu, which literally means fathers or patriarchs. Modern translators often consider it to be gender-inclusive. But some egalitarian prayerbooks add the parallel feminine word, imoteynu, yielding “our patriarchs and our matriarchs,” or “our fathers and our mothers.”

Avoteynu was good enough for me until a few years ago. That’s when I identified my very own Jewish ancestor—my great-grandfather Bernard Akerman—and learned the names of his parents.

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One Drop At A Time

~ Carole Bass ~ 1 Comment
Along my running route

What I have done in the past month:

Spent four days helping out with the grandkids.

Helped a friend going through a health crisis.

Visited another friend recovering from surgery.

Worked on volunteer projects for two different organizations.

Increased my running routine by almost 25 percent—outdoors, in sometimes wintry weather.

Worked on my family history research.

Finally figured out how to remove years worth of ground-in dirt from the kitchen floor. (Ready? OxiClean!)

Participated in an online class through my synagogue.

Increased the dosage of my medicinal Japanese knotweed supplement by four drops, one drop at a time.

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Trial Run

~ Carole Bass ~ 2 Comments

I’m trying to restart my running practice. It’s going medium.

Ten years have passed since I was last healthy enough to work out consistently. Ten or 12 pounds have accumulated. A decade of chronic illness and forced inactivity have turned my muscles into mush—except for the muscles that are overworked and locked into spasms that keep me awake at night.

I’ve been running three times a week for a couple of months now. By running, I mean a slow jog, in one-minute intervals that alternate with walking: a total of just eight minutes of running.

That’s the Week 1 workout. Ten weeks in, it’s where I still am.

The progress, I guess, is that I’m still doing it. That my body is tolerating the stress, sort of, and that I remain committed to making it work.

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Fault Lines

~ Carole Bass ~ 2 Comments

It’s not my fault.

It’s not my fault.

It’s not my fault.

Sometimes I believe that, sort of. But mostly that’s when things are going well, and there’s a lot less to blame myself for.

At times like this — times of backache, of fatigue, of having an idea in the morning for what to write about, but forgetting it by dinnertime — it is so hard to escape the feeling that it’s my fault. If only I went to bed earlier. If only I stopped eating before bed. If only I took better care of myself in unspecified other ways. Then my body and my brain would have a chance to heal, and I would feel better.

“You’re very ambitious,” someone said to me a few months ago. I was surprised and a little taken aback. In my mind, I’m someone who used to do a lot — but never enough, of course — and can no longer do a lot. Some days and weeks and months I can do very little.

But she’s right, there are lots of projects I want to work on. In that way, I’m driven. And the fatigue and the backache and the memory problems are not all that hold me back. There are also the fault lines: the narrow ravines and yawning chasms that I’m afraid to cross.

Fault lines like: I can’t start on one project because three or four others also call out for my attention. If I’m working on one, I’m neglecting the others. And that’s my fault.

Or: I can’t start on a project because I’m intimidated. I’ve never done it before. I don’t know what I’m doing and it might not be good enough. I might not even finish. And that’s my fault.

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Unify our hearts

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In the old days, I was healthy, strong, and oblivious to the terror that lurked inside me.

Every morning, I would put on my tallis (prayer shawl) and tefillin (hard to explain) and recite an abbreviated version of the Jewish morning liturgy. I dutifully included all the elements that are considered essential to fulfill the commandment of daily prayer. I stood when you’re supposed to stand, sat when you’re supposed to sit. Sometimes my mind wandered, but I tried to focus on the meaning of the Hebrew words, which I sort of understand.

Those words speak of gratitude and appreciation: for the morning light, a functioning body, clothes to wear, sun and moon, rain in its proper time. They speak of God’s attributes: mercy, kindness, compassion. They ask for divine help in the form of forgiveness, health, prosperity, and aid in fighting our battles.

In the old days, I focused on the gratitude and the attributes.

I read the plea for healing as thanks for good health; the plea for prosperity as thanks for my comfortable life. And I read the traits ascribed to God as directives for how I should live: as God is compassionate, I should be compassionate. As God cares for us, I should care for others. I was unsure what I thought about God — I still am unsure — and it seemed best to read these prayers as an instruction manual: This is how I want to live my life. This is how I’m supposed to live my life.

It was a good approach. Jewish religious practice is, for me, a program for life. Morning prayer was a way of setting my daily intention to get with the program. It was a way of directing not only my thoughts but my actions. Although many of the prayers address God directly, I really was talking to myself.

A good approach — but it was missing something.

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Leaf Grief

~ Carole Bass ~ 2 Comments
In praise of dead trees.

2020 was a bad year for the trees in my life.

I know: it was a horrible year for everyone, filled with death and chronic illness and devastating poverty and, for those of us fortunate enough to escape all of the above, the fear and isolation that come from living through a deadly plague.

But right now, I want to talk about our trees.

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These Are The Names

~ Carole Bass ~ 1 Comment

These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each coming with his household: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; Dan and Naftali, Gad and Asher. The total number of persons of Jacob’s issue came to 70, Joseph being already in Egypt.

So began last week’s Torah reading in synagogues — physical or virtual — around the world. 

It’s the beginning of the book of Exodus, the harrowing and thrilling story of how the ancient Israelites left bondage in Egypt; struggled against God, their leaders, and themselves; and finally began to forge an identity as a people responsible for and to itself. Think “The Prince of Egypt” and Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”: Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery/None but yourselves can free your minds.

So much drama. And yet the book of Exodus begins not with God splitting the sea, not with the plagues, not with Pharoah or the birth of Moses. It begins with genealogy: a list of ancestors, an accounting of who was where at what time.

Some of the matriarchs in my family tree.
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Pardon me

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For missing the mark with idle fingers that play solitaire instead of writing …
For missing the mark with stubborn legs that stay planted on the couch instead of carrying me to bed on time …
For missing the mark with an unsatisfied mouth that snacks late at night …
For missing the mark with hands that have not even begun taking down the sukkah …
For missing the mark with narrow eyes that see all of my flaws but few of my virtues …

For all of these, I forgive myself, I pardon myself, and I purge myself of shame and guilt.

Well, not really. But I’m trying.

For the first time since this blog’s inception in 2015, I did not write about the Jewish season of repentance and return. I didn’t write about Elul, the month of preparation for the High Holy Days. I didn’t write about Rosh Hashanah, the celebration of the new year. I didn’t write about Yom Kippur, the day of atonement on whose liturgy I based the confessions above. I didn’t even write about Sukkot, my favorite holiday, the Jewish Thanksgiving (although I’m sitting, as I write this, in our sukkah — the temporary hut that commemorates the fall harvest and underscores the transient nature of our lives).

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‘The family of things’

~ Carole Bass ~ 4 Comments

I’m skipping ahead to the end.

When I read books and watch movies, I never skip ahead to see what happens. I want to find out what happens when it happens. To understand the ending, I want to understand what comes before.


Photo: Txllxt TxllxT/Wikimedia Commons

But today, as I did my morning yoga stretches in the still-warm-enough backyard, I heard a faint, persistent honking. Looking up, I saw a near-perfect V formation of wild geese, flying south.

Instead of reminding me of what comes next — late fall, cold weather, winter — it made me think of the end of “Wild Geese,” the Mary Oliver poem that inspired this blog:

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

My “Wild Geese” journey — my Mary Oliver Challenge — began at the beginning of the poem:

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Hineini: here I am

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Decades ago, I belonged to a therapy group that drew on both talk and movement. One week we did an exercise in which group members took turns leading the others in improvised movement: dancing, swooping, jumping, anything they felt like doing. When a leader had enough, they would pass the role on to someone else.

Afterward, as we sat in a circle, people said that I seemed half-hearted when it was my turn to lead. I confessed that they were right: I was tired, my back hurt, and I didn’t feel like moving at all. I felt like lying down on my back and resting.img_20200428_170718701_hdr-1

Well then, they asked: why didn’t you do that?

My response: I didn’t think I was supposed to. I thought we were supposed to move, and so I moved, even though I wanted to lie still.

In a way, that’s the story of my life: trying to live up to other people’s expectations of me, or what I think they expect, even when I need something different. (Well, that’s part of the story of my life. Another part is where I disregard what other people think and feel, because I’m so sure I know better. Fortunately, I think that part is mostly behind me.)

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