Rabbi Margaret Holub, Rabbi of the Mendocino Coast Jewish Community (MCJC) visited Ner Shalom to lead us in Shabbat services on September 11, 2020. These are the words of the drash she shared.

Psalm 27

This year when Elul drew near I felt like I wanted to hear the shofar every morning.  I’ve never really gotten that together in years past. Since we’re in Zoomtimes I put out an invitation to my crew saying I would read Psalm 27, which is the psalm for this season, and blow the shofar every day (except Shabbat, when one doesn’t blow shofar) at 9:30 AM.  I figured this would make me do it.  And it has. 

To my surprise, it has been the psalm even more than the shofar which has penetrated my soul and awakened me in this holy month.

I’ve always thought that Psalm 27 was sort of an odd pick for the role of taking us through Elul.   Elul is the month for heshbon hanefesh, for taking account of our lives.  If I were writing a psalm for Elul it would probably say, more or less:  “Get it together you lazy bum.  Look at all the crap and misery you’ve caused this past year.  Get to work fixing it. Repent repent repent.  Or else…”  It’s lucky for all of us that I’m not your psalmist. 

With the help of friends I gathered up a stack of different renditions of the psalm, and I read one or another each day.  I thought that tonight I would just walk us through our Psalm 27, share some of those interpretations, and say a little bit about how it’s coming alive for me. 

It begins:  ADONAI uri v’yish-i.  ADONAI of course is code for that Name we can’t even say.  Some of the versions in my stack render it: “The Infinite Presence,” “Infinite light and boundless energy,”“Awareness” “Yah,” a simple “You,” and the favorite of my crowd: “Love” — uri v’yish-i.— is my light and my salvation, “”and expanse,” “sunlight in the mind…”

Centering attention from the very beginning not on my rotten soul and all my evil deeds but on the Unnameable, the Infinite, on Presence, on Yah.

When forces come close to devour me…  A phrase that didn’t mean so much to me in years past, but oh it does this year.  I feel half-devoured, broken open, broken.  A shared devourment, under unbreatheable skies, in a segregated neighborhood and country, hiding from infection, heart breaking, remembering nineteen years ago today and all the sorrow since.  There is no go-bag for all this, nowhere to go. 

Though an army would besiege me, my heart would not fear. Yeah, for moments at a time.

Indeed She will hide me in her shelter in the day of evil; He will conceal me in the concealment of His tent.  I love this verse!  I feel in it something from deep in a childhood I don’t think I ever had, being enveloped in a wide, draping maternal skirt, wrapped and hidden and held tight.  To this day I love swirling dresses, tents, hiding in a shield of fabric. 

Now my head is raised above my enemies.  Look!   I am so small and being held up so high.  I am lifted on a rock!   Look!  Can you see me, way up here?

And those beautiful words with the gorgeous tune:  Achat shaalti may-et ADONAI otah avakesh…  There is only one thing I want from Love, Presence, Awareness, Yah — and that is to be here forever!

My real-life mother and father may have tried to protect me, but they never had a skirt like that of HASHEM.  Earthly losses, yes, earthly threats, most certainly.  Always.  Now.  This Elul. 

Lulei he-e-man-ti b’tov ADONAI b-eretz hayyim.  Had I not trusted that I would see the goodness of Yah in the land of the living.  Dot dot dot.  It would be unbearable, unthinkable not to trust in this way.

I couldn’t have written these words.  They are words I have to try on, like the swirly dress, and crawl inside, like the tent.  They don’t come naturally to me.  The words, “Get it together.  Be a better person,” I could write those, even if I couldn’t necessarily fulfill them.

This Elul for me has been an invitation into trust, into faith.  Every morning at 9:30 I try on trust.  I try on affirming that, whatever dreadfulness comes upon me and all of us, we will be able to meet it.  I think I am starting to get it, for moments at a time.  Whatever happens, whatever continues to happen, whatever has happened and still reverberates into this moment, we can meet it.  I am trying on the sentence here, “We can meet it with an open heart.”  I think I’m even willing to go that far.  Whatever happens, we can meet it with an alive and beautiful soul.  We can.  Not that we won’t be afraid.  Not that we won’t falter. 

Kaveh el ADONAI hazak v’ya-a-metz libekha.  Hope strongly, passionately in HASHEM and, when you can’t, She will strengthen your heart.  Strength of heart, openness of heart, these are available to us, even when we can’t fully muster them ourselves. 

I hope we won’t need any more strength, any more openness in days to come than we are already calling on today.  But if we do, it is available to us.  The dress, the tent, the rock, they are ready to hold us when we call.

Barchu dear One Shechinah Holy Name — when I call on the Light of my soul, I come home, I come home