ICE

acrylic on canvas

16 X 20”

June 2025

 September 18, 2025

Gratitude is indeed a spiritual practice and every day, I see the imperative of really experiencing in a deep bodily way everything that I have and I try and just imagine, for a moment, what else I could want. Can you imagine what this life could hold? What a crazy gift we have been given? 

But as Rosh Hoshana approaches, I start to understand the value during these days of returning to the broken heart. Not as a way of self berating, or feeling guilt or shame, but as a way of being a walking representation of a truth of this world. 

Rabbi Henry Hollander in a recent newsletter drash, shared that someone he was speaking to was talking negatively about Downtown LA, the place Henry’s shul and cultural center intentionally stands. Henry responded that downtown LA is a truth of the world. It may not be pretty to look at, but there it is. The poverty and the lack of resources and the people falling through the cracks. 

Our brokenhearted mess, our inability to effect change, is a truth of the world. 

Perhaps no where is this more glaringly felt for me in the current moment than with the mountains of deaths this past year in Gaza, and with the remaining hostages breathing by a thread. Perhaps it is no more obvious to me than to walk around the luxurious warmth of LA, knowing that so many of those who wash our homes and watch our children and do all the manual things we don’t want to do so we can do the heady stuff are being stolen in front of my wordless eyes. 

We stand in shul knowing that we did not do enough and there’s no way to go back and do it again. Lives were ended, generations were halted, and people were snatched and thrown to other parts of the Earth without warning...  and here we are. Here we are. 

A few weeks ago, 1 million Israelis rised together as one and entered the streets and begged for change. Begged for this all to end. Yet here, we remain broken hearted. What can we do, what are we, what is our life, what are our deeds? 

And who can change things, who can we rely on, who can we beg,  but the Holy One  Blessed Be He, the One who started this all, to show us the way to make this all change all end, to show us the way. 

Kings? We have no King but You.  

I have struggled for some time with self harm. Not often, but in moments of intense stress. It is not conscious, it is not premeditated, and I have worked and wondered with a therapist on this; where does it come from and how can I stop it, when I don’t even want to do it, when my own hand rises against me? 

The brain, she says, is returning to some long forgotten solution to crisis. It is trying to help you, albeit in an unhealthy way. So we thank my brain for its attempt and try to offer it a new one. It is not a personal failing, though it is still my hand that does it, so I do and don’t claim responsibility. 

We do not always have final control in a state of terror. 

But keep track, she says, notice when you’re seeing signals of too much stress arising. Take care of yourself then. Before it accumulates and your brain can’t hold it and returns to another time. 

Every time I lather my face, in sunscreen or face wash, the moment my right hand touches my right cheek, it remembers, without me reminding it, of past afflictions. I interntally flinch and am surprised by the memory. Every time. 

The body never forgets. The violence we wreck, whether consciously or subconsciously, whether we have done repentance or not, remains as a memory, and as a bodily reality of this world. 

Our footprints are a truth of this world. 

I’ve been listening to the new song of an old Brooklyn friend, Emily Zimmer, who was an instrumental part of the gang of artsy Jews we built with back East.

It captures to me the hope and the brokenheartedness of this time. 

May we receive full clarity this year, of what we can do to nurture ourselves, our families, our communities, and everyone we touch in this world.

Even if the memory and effect of the violence is still there, even if we don’t even know what we have done or haven’t done, may we be guided to rebuild.  

We need to do the work, and we also need be working in tandem with the energy and goals of the universe. 

So here we are.

Here we are. 

In the image, if you turn it, there is a face looking out. It reflects a sense of hopelessness I felt and feel as I see terror go on around me. Watching as people are stolen. The knowing.