By Rabbi Dr. Kari Tuling
Shalom to all of you, dear members of Temple Micah. I have spent the summer getting to know many of you while also preparing for the High Holidays and the coming year. It has already been a rewarding experience, and I appreciate the warm welcome I have received.
As we move toward the High Holidays, I thought that I would share with you an insight I learned five years ago, just before the pandemic lockdowns started. In early December 2019, I scheduled a meditation retreat for mid-January. Los Angeles in January is beautiful; that’s the time to visit. The sky is a clear blue and the hills rolling green and the air smells like sage.
Meditation can feel like an extravagant waste of time, particularly after you’ve paid good money to fly across the country to sit in silence on a concrete floor. There are ample concrete floors back home; why, I wonder, am I here?
And then silence.
Few of us can live our lives so fully and so mindfully that we do not regret some aspect of our actions. Few of us can escape that sense of self-reproach. I am acutely aware of my own failures, but I have been learning, step by step, how to be as gentle with myself: as gentle as I would be with the children who misbehave in services. Yes, there is a right path. Yes, I will get there. It’s okay not to know everything, to be uncertain, to learn as you go.
But on the third day, or perhaps the fourth day, I am irritable, tired of eating beans at every meal, and a little bit sore from sitting. I have learned that tomorrow we will be getting up before dawn to go greet the sunrise on the hills above the retreat center, following the model of the mystics of Safed. I am not thrilled with any of this, as I hate to be up before dawn for any reason. Granted, I love services; I really do. I particularly enjoy these all-clergy experiences, as we all really get into the davening, and listening to people harmonize is a holy, beautiful thing.
Participating in a morning service is about the only reason I would ever want to be up that early, but even then, I am dubious that the setting and the time will add anything to the religious experience.
But it’s apparently a tradition at this retreat, and we are all strongly encouraged to participate, so I drag myself out of bed and make some truly terrible lukewarm instant coffee in the cafeteria (because the big coffee urn has not yet started percolating) and wait for the remainder of the group to show up. It is still full dark outside, with no lights on the horizon.
It is cold. I had not thought of this. It’s 40 degrees, I don’t have a proper jacket with me; I had left my down coat in the car in Connecticut when I went to catch my plane. I am only wearing jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, a light sweater, and a jean jacket, and I am cold. It did not occur to me to pull the comforter off my bed, as some of the other participants have done.
But we start out before I can do anything about it. I don’t know where we are going, so I don’t dare venture back for that blanket. We start climbing the hills, and I am hoping that perhaps we only go a few feet away so that I could slip off, get something warmer, and return. But we climb for quite a while, and not on any obvious path. I give up the idea of going back. At this point, I would not be able to find my way back to the dorms in this full darkness. I could end up really lost. And cold. That sounds like the path to disaster, so I continue to climb.
It is cold. While we are moving, I am keeping warm enough to avoid shivering, but only barely.
Eventually, after a 20-minute hike, we arrive at the spot, which is an outdoor retreat center sanctuary. If you’ve ever been to a Jewish camp, you know what it looks like: rough benches in concentric half-circles, with a wooden ark amidst a clump of trees. In this case, scrub-oaks, centuries old. There is just a hint of light on the eastern horizon, but otherwise full dark. It occurs to me that it’s Thursday, and we’re about an hour from dawn. Oh, Good Lord, we’re about to do a full Torah service in the dark in 40 degree weather, outside in the wee hours of the morning.
I am now super irritable. I did not know I needed my coat. This whole thing would be much better if I had a coat. I would also like to have gloves. And socks. And boots. And maybe also a hat. They did not tell me that I would be this cold. No one mentioned, in the instructions, that I would need to pack for this eventuality.
I. Am. Cold.
I start stomping to the music to warm myself, deeply irritable, deeply upset about everything,
wrapped in myself.
We reach the silent meditation section and the crowd fans out to find a private spot to pray. It’s what rabbis and cantors do when they’re in a group like this. I normally find myself an interesting bit of nature to examine during these long silences. I am still feeling deeply grieved.
A crow takes up residence in one of the scrub-oaks and caws at us, a raw sound. I look at him, and realize that he is also watching me, as intently as I am watching him.
No one ever promised you warmth, I think to myself. Why do you believe you must never be cold? I am still hating the service; I am still having to move constantly to avoid shivering. But the awareness is dawning on me, just as the light is increasing around me: Sometimes you will be cold. That’s the way of the world. Accept that.
The crow caws at me again, guttural.
We assume that all our needs must be taken care of, that we must not suffer. Yet suffering is also part of human experience. Accept that.
It’s not that we should seek out suffering; if I had a coat to wear, I would wear it. But it is unreasonable to expect that I should never be cold.
I have written a lot about suffering over the years; my book includes a chapter on suffering. We are commanded to end suffering. We should not be leaving people shivering in the cold. We are commanded to clothe and feed the stranger, the widow, the orphan.
But we are not guaranteed that we, ourselves, would not ever suffer.
Even as I am stomping the ground and feeling sorry for myself, I start to lose myself to the moment: to the music when it resumes, to the crow who continues to call to us, to the dawning sun filling our outdoor sanctuary with light.
We receive no promises that we will not suffer. There is no manager to take your complaint, no cosmic ombudsman who will straighten out this little misunderstanding and correct the errors on your account. It can all go horribly wrong, do so surprisingly fast, and be breathtakingly awful. I am lucky to be alive.
That morning, however, I was just, simply, cold, and nothing more.
In my irritability, in my overweening sense that my own needs should somehow be the universe’s concern, I easily could have missed the unfolding beauty around me; my profound good fortune to be alive and healthy, to be present to that moment, to be able to sing and worship in that holy space. Praying with others, singing together, a holy beautiful thing.
There is something in your life now that is infinitely precious, something you must appreciate and cherish right now, before something shifts or changes, before life moves on. You cannot prevent the changes that come; you cannot stop the flow of time; some of the changes will be good and some will not.
Know this, all of this, and be present to it: that is your charge today. Know deeply, thoroughly, that each of us is indescribably, infinitely blessed.
This article was originally published in the Sep-Oct-Nov 2025 issue of the Vine.