Meditative Breathing
Our breath, our inner wind, keeps us alive. I learned from Reb Zalman and from Rabbi Arthur Waskow, that the divine name YHWH represents the breath of life. The sounds of our breath are the very sounds of that sacred unpronounceable name. God is as close as our breath. Although there are many powerful breathing exercises, we don’t really need to be fancy. Breathing is itself a moment-to-moment miracle. Just to stop and breathe with awareness can instantly center us, reduce stress, and connect us to our souls.
Refugees at Sea: Can we help their waters part?
Breathing Meditation
Sharing Circle: The Sea
What is the meaning of The Sea in your life?
Blessings of Scent
This website can bring you a video or recording of wind’s image and sound, but it cannot convey the feel of the wind in your hair, scent of a pine forest in the Cascade mountains, or the heady perfume of orange blossoms and jasmine in an Israeli spring. For that you have to go outside and breathe!
Scents Feed the Soul
Neuroscientists and psychologists tell us that the sense of smell is closely connected to memory and emotion. Scents can tie us to our traditions (the smell of challah baking or latkes frying), and to Nature and places of the soul. (more…)
The Shofar: Holy Wind, Holy Sound
Breath and wind are instrumental in playing the sacred instrument, the Shofar, or ram’s horn (or sometimes an antelope horn) that is blown on Rosh Hashanah and at the end of Yom Kippur as a call to repentance, a spiritual wake-up. The word shofar is from the root of sha-per, to improve. Its hollow nature, open to the life breath of the blower, encourages us to open ourselves to the divine spirit operating through us. (more…)
Tikkun Olam: The Shofar Calls to Justice
The blowing of the shofar is also a call to take action for justice in the world.
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The Darkness Before Creation
When I explore my own nature, or experience the sacred, most often I feel a deepening into darkness. Although dominating theologies create binaries, in which light is good and darkness is evil, when we recognize the multivalent nature of all that is, we see wave upon wave of dark and light.
by Rabbi Fern Feldman
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