Jerry Chasen's Blog

Passover this year found seventeen of us in Athens as part of a rather elaborate celebration of my mom’s 80th birthday.

This is the balance of the commitment ceremony. There are an odd number of vows. In the service, Mark and I alternated reading sentences in the vows, starting over again when we’d gone thru it once. That way, we each said all of the vows.

When Mark and I decided to have a commitment ceremony, it was immediately clear to me that I couldn’t recite anyone else’s words. So we explored what we wanted the ceremony to say, and then I wrote it. Written in rhyme (natch), the ceremony explores the nature of relationships, looking at traits common to none, some, all and specifically, ours. The entire ceremony was originally presented in a program book, and posted here are two posters made from the program book. The audio for this is done individually, so each section of the ceremony is recorded separately.

As it happens, the morning of the day on which the first Seder fell in 2009, was also the return to the skies at the time of creation. There’s tremendous power in “starting over”, especially when it’s conscious!

Reflections on both the state of Israel, and my state of mind. The photograph is of a wall in Israel after the 2007 conflict with Lebanon that was spray painted with the Star of David, and the Hebrew “Am Yisroel Chai”–the People of Israel Live.