we will build this
world from love
even now we will build
it good morning and welcome to today's
soul brew
created voices from around the world
bringing you
on a journey of inspiration and
introspection leading up to the high
holidays
i'm rabbi bluth host and producer of the
soul brews with the best attic center
for spiritual well-being
and this morning we've got a treat we're
going to hear from hadar kohen
hadar is a feminist multimedia artist
healer and educator originally from
jerusalem
her mizrahi jewish roots influence her
approach to justice
to healing and to spirituality
she's the founder of feminism all night
jerusalem in exile
and is a inspiration
for art and for devotion hadar
leading up to the high holidays what is
your soul brewing
good morning everyone um leading up to
high holidays my soul is brewing
song and prayer and ritual
to help us facilitate a practice of
forgiveness and returning back to god
and
to spirit my name is hadar cohen
i am currently based in los angeles i'm
a feminist spiritual jewish educator
healer and artist and i am
honored to be sharing with you a
practice today for
the month of elul the
hebrew month of repentance of
chuva of doing this really deep
introspection work
so that we can be ready for the high
holidays so that we can be fully
prepared to receive
the wisdom that high holidays has to
offer us so
rosh chodesh the news from the new moon
of the month of elul
there is a sphardic practice to sing
slight
every night and every day slijot
literally translates to forgivenesses
and they are a set of prayers and poems
that we sing to awaken ourselves into
the practice of forgiveness so
what exactly does forgiveness mean
you know forgiveness is actually one of
the hardest things um in my opinion to
do which is why we have a whole month
every year to practice it um because
there's a lot of times where we hold on
to
grudges against others where we hold on
to toxic patternings within ourselves
that is hard for us to really forgive
ourselves or
other people who have hurt us or even
the world for existing
as it does and um
so you know this practice of song
really allows us to let go
of some of the patterning that the mind
offers us
around um holding on
and inviting in
god or spirit or the universe or
whatever
your word is for this um quality of
being that is greater
than all of us um to really heal
and to answer our prayers and
to invite us into a period of
transformation so that we can be
renewed and no longer have to hold on
to things that don't serve us anymore so
i'm going to be sharing a song from
slichot
that is called a nenu and it's a really
beautiful
song anenu literally means answer us
and the plural um and
the way that slight works is that you
know usually it's like call and response
um so it's usually like a community of
people singing together and there's
a leader who sings one line and then
everybody responds so
you're welcome to join me i'm gonna i'm
gonna sing the whole
song in hebrew and then i'm gonna do a
little bit um
improvised version with a niggun a
wordless melody in there
so you can follow along
and really the goal of me sharing this
practice with you
is to give you an experience and give
you a practice that you can try on your
own
this like meditation on forgiveness and
this calling out this reaching out
to god or to spirit to truly answer us
um and you know sometimes we can be
really exact and really detailed about
what we want from
god we can be like god's like this year
i want this i want to let go of xyz
and sometimes i could actually be really
open it could be vague it could be
abstract we might not necessarily know
what is holding us back and what we need
to let go of so
either way um what i love from this song
is that this word anenu is so simple
it's just answer us meet us come to us
um jewish tradition teaches us that um
during the month of elul
god comes down to the courtyard so god
is kind of like a king who
usually sits in their palace and you
know you have to cross all these
guards and get your back checked and
security and
um get you know like screened in all
these ways in order to just even get
to like the edge of the palace and then
you to get inside is a whole other
ordeal
um so you know god can sometimes be
really far away but during the month of
elul
what jewish tradition teaches us is that
god actually comes outside from the
palace into the courtyard into the
public space
so it's a lot easier to meet um god it's
a lot easier to
have that encounter we don't have to
work as hard as we might have to
in the other months because god is
coming to meet us too
um so that is kind of what this song is
all about
so i'm gonna sing it and feel free to
join me along either with the words or
just through closing your eyes and being
present with it
and then for each one of these things so
that's like a stanza and then you would
repeat after me so
um i'm actually just going to repeat
each line twice so you'll have an
option of repeating it so i'll do a line
like that and then you can repeat after
me
[signing in Hebrew]
and then you're welcome to just do it
with a niggun version and just hold down
to the word of an anu that
hi hi
thank you so much for joining me for
this practice i hope this song
was supportive and your elu journey
and i'm wishing you much blessings and
prayers for this month
we will build this world from
love even now we
