Shana tova! Rosh Hashana weekend was a whirlwind, but I'll share the highlights with you while the spirit's still in the air.
I davened at Kedem for most of the services (Friday night and Saturday and Sunday morning), which was really beautiful. I really enjoyed being in the company of other students (mostly from Pardes and the Conservative Yeshiva), especially because we all put our souls into the davening and made sure that we sang with energy! There was one particular piyut (a liturgical poem) that we sang that wasn't in the machzor (the RH/Yom Kippur prayerbook), but everyone was given the text on a handout. It was a call and response between the prayer leader and the congregation about crowning G-d king (a common theme in the RH liturgy), and it was so upbeat that people were dancing in the aisles!
All of the learning surrounding the themes of the high holidays during the past three weeks had a significant impact on my prayer experience this weekend. I was able to connect to the overarching structure of the liturgy much more easily than I had in years past, and the Hebrew came much more naturally. Nevertheless, the height of my prayer experience was during tekiat shofar (the blowing of the shofar - the ram's horn). The drama was heightened because we don't blow shofar on Shabbat, so we didn't hear the shofar until halfway through Sunday's services. The anticipation had certainly been building with each mention of the great sound of the shofar in the liturgy, and I was a bit nervous that hearing the shofar wasn't going to live up to my lofty expectations. It's a mitzvah just to hear the shofar on RH, and as my halakha teacher said, just hearing it is enough, even if it doesn't stir your soul in any particular way. But this Rosh Hashanah, as the tekiah gedolah (the sustained note on the shofar) was sounded, I truly felt G-d calling me to tshuva, to return to my true self.
The other major part of the weekend besides the davening was the eating - but feasting is more like it. I had four enormous meals over the course of the weekend with friends, families, and teachers (and their families), and sharing the experience of renewal in these intimate settings really rounded out the RH experience. And luckily for my stomach, tomorrow's a minor fast day! It's Tzom Gedaliah, and according to chabad.org, this means the "fast on the third of Tishrei, commemorating the assassination of Gedaliah ben Achikam, governor of the First Jewish Commonwealth in the Holy Land; after this assassination, Jewish autonomy came to an end." I was talking w/ some friends today about these minor fasts that appear on the calendar but don't get much attention from Sunday school teachers covering the Jewish holidays - this one in particular seems very obscure and hard to connect with, and one friend was saying how she may not fast tomorrow because she doesn't like to take on new practices without first studying their history and meaning. This sounds like a pretty reasonable position - why do something so obscure just to do it? Isn't it more meaningful if your practice is rooted in an informed context? On the other hand, there's a Jewish principle called "naaseh v'nishma" which means "We will do and then we will understand." Often Jewish practices have to be performed in order to experience the full meaning, even if a person doesn't fully understand all of the whys underlying them. Understanding comes through the fulfillment of the mitzvah (and in subsequent study).
What's your opinion on this concept? How do you experience taking on a new practice or ritual in your life?
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
L'shana tova tikateivu - may you be written for a good year!
It's the morning of Erev Rosh Hashanah, and I'm trying to dash off a few brief (but not so awkward) lines (Mom, that's for you :) ) I've had so many experiences this week that have impacted me immensely, so I'd like to share them with you.
I'm really excited for Rosh Hashanah to begin tonight - probably more so than I've ever been. It's amazing to be preparing for the holidays here in Jerusalem, because the energy is just collective - everyone's been buzzing about shul and meals and making those phone calls to apologize and just starting anew, and everyone you meet on the street says shana tova! It's simply incredible. Even our cab driver last night said "Shana tova - a year of good studies and good boyfriends to you all!" On Tuesday night, there was this pre-RH street fair basically 2 blocks away from my apartment, with live bands, food vendors, artisan tables, and street performers, and the mood was SO joyful. Just the fact that that even existed was amazing - the wonders of a Jewish state :).
In my social justice class at Pardes, we had a speaker come on Sunday that was INCREDIBLY powerful and made us all think and reevaluate our priorities. His name was Rabbi Levi Lauer, and he spoke in very extreme terms about our imperative for pursuing justice in the world. He talked about how it was "theologically obscene" to think that G-d cares more about whether we flip lights on and off on Shabbat than if we work to make sure that human beings aren't sleeping on the street, and he also told us how when he gets up to daven (pray) in the mornings and gets to the Amidah (the pinnacle of the prayer service where you outline your requests for G-d), he won't pray unless he feels that he's done anything in the last 24 hours to merit asking G-d for ANYTHING. These kinds of social justice questions are the ones that keep me up at night, and I often wonder - is studying here really the best use of my time and resources? Couldn't I be out helping people and have a much greater impact on the world? I had been thinking about this stuff a lot before Rabbi Lauer came to speak, so his words really struck deep into my heart, and I was crying throughout his lecture.
My friends in the class and I have been doing a lot of processing since that talk, trying to understand his ideas and make them work for us, and I realized that while he was speaking in very black and white terms, he really was advocating for a balanced life - one where social justice priorities receive just as much weight as specifically Jewish priorities, and where we carefully craft our lives so that our Judaism is expressed in every action that we do. One thing that does keep me going though is the notion that G-d had to recede from creation in order to make room for human initiative, and it's our job to complete the work that G-d began. There's room to fail, but there's also great possibility that we'll succeed, and there's so many chances each day for us to begin that kind of creativity.
And to begin - I'm heading out in a few minutes to volunteer at a soup kitchen near the shuk (the open air market). It'll be packed today with families preparing for Rosh Hashanah, so they'll need all the help they can get.
L'shana tova tikateivu to all - may you be written in the book of life for a good year, a year of new adventures, new friends, new foods, and new beginnings.
I'm really excited for Rosh Hashanah to begin tonight - probably more so than I've ever been. It's amazing to be preparing for the holidays here in Jerusalem, because the energy is just collective - everyone's been buzzing about shul and meals and making those phone calls to apologize and just starting anew, and everyone you meet on the street says shana tova! It's simply incredible. Even our cab driver last night said "Shana tova - a year of good studies and good boyfriends to you all!" On Tuesday night, there was this pre-RH street fair basically 2 blocks away from my apartment, with live bands, food vendors, artisan tables, and street performers, and the mood was SO joyful. Just the fact that that even existed was amazing - the wonders of a Jewish state :).
In my social justice class at Pardes, we had a speaker come on Sunday that was INCREDIBLY powerful and made us all think and reevaluate our priorities. His name was Rabbi Levi Lauer, and he spoke in very extreme terms about our imperative for pursuing justice in the world. He talked about how it was "theologically obscene" to think that G-d cares more about whether we flip lights on and off on Shabbat than if we work to make sure that human beings aren't sleeping on the street, and he also told us how when he gets up to daven (pray) in the mornings and gets to the Amidah (the pinnacle of the prayer service where you outline your requests for G-d), he won't pray unless he feels that he's done anything in the last 24 hours to merit asking G-d for ANYTHING. These kinds of social justice questions are the ones that keep me up at night, and I often wonder - is studying here really the best use of my time and resources? Couldn't I be out helping people and have a much greater impact on the world? I had been thinking about this stuff a lot before Rabbi Lauer came to speak, so his words really struck deep into my heart, and I was crying throughout his lecture.
My friends in the class and I have been doing a lot of processing since that talk, trying to understand his ideas and make them work for us, and I realized that while he was speaking in very black and white terms, he really was advocating for a balanced life - one where social justice priorities receive just as much weight as specifically Jewish priorities, and where we carefully craft our lives so that our Judaism is expressed in every action that we do. One thing that does keep me going though is the notion that G-d had to recede from creation in order to make room for human initiative, and it's our job to complete the work that G-d began. There's room to fail, but there's also great possibility that we'll succeed, and there's so many chances each day for us to begin that kind of creativity.
And to begin - I'm heading out in a few minutes to volunteer at a soup kitchen near the shuk (the open air market). It'll be packed today with families preparing for Rosh Hashanah, so they'll need all the help they can get.
L'shana tova tikateivu to all - may you be written in the book of life for a good year, a year of new adventures, new friends, new foods, and new beginnings.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Rak b'yisrael (only in Israel)
Sorry for my delay in posting now that I'm ba'aretz (in the land - aka Israel) - this is really the first afternoon of free time that I've had since arriving! I won't try to detail the whole last week, but basically I've been getting used to my classes, setting up my apartment, and adjusting to the 7 hour time change! Here's what I'll be taking for the semester:
Talmud - Masechet (volume/tractate) Rosh Hashanah until "achrei hachagim" (after the holidays) and Masechet Ketubot for the rest of the semester which is about marriage (ketubot are Jewish marriage contracts)
Chumash (Torah) - The book of Shemot (Exodus)
Biblical Hebrew Grammar
Parshat HaShavua - the weekly Torah portion
Halakha - Jewish law and practice
The Social Justice track - looking at Jewish texts about tikkun olam - the concept of repairing the world - and reflecting on the reality of our lives and how we can work to improve the world. This isn't just a class - we'll go on field trips, listen to guest speakers who work w/ social justice organizations in Israel, and head up Tuesday afternoon volunteering projects.
Hasidut - the "spiritual" side of Judaism, for lack of a better term - taking a multidisciplinary approach to learning about this sect of Judaism through story, song, and spiritual debriefing with a chevruta (study partner)
Women and Halakha - I'm taking this class at the Conservative Yeshiva both b/c I'm really interested in the material and b/c I wanted to have a connection over there, something a bit different from Pardes. This'll be continuing for the whole year, and we'll cover all of the different topics concerning women and Judaism - modesty, prayer, sexuality - the whole gamut. I'll probably be debriefing about that course on here a lot.
I've also been waking up at 5:30 every morning to go run, which has been tough b/c it's hard to get to bed early at night, but hopefully if I can keep this up I'll really start my day off right.
Finally (for now) - I'm living w/ two other Pardes girls, Shira and Joanne, who are really great, and we've been working on collecting furniture and dishes and things for our rather unfurnished apartment. Today I made an announcement at Pardes that my roommates and I were looking for a refrigerator, and a friend gave me the name and number of a guy who does a lot of used furniture dealing. We took a cab over to his place tonight, around 7pm, and we arrived on this dark, narrow street where we couldn't even find the number of the place that he told us. We were expecting a storefront, but the street was totally residential. I called Shai, the dealer, and asked him where to go, and he said, "Oh, I'm not home, but just go up the stairs in front of you and go down the hall - I left the door open so you could look at the stuff." Sure enough, we pushed his door open and found an apartment with tons of stuff packed in, and he said over the phone, "Everything's for sale - just tell me what you're interested in!" We picked out the fridge (which was pretty messy but he promised he'd clean it out before delivering it), a coffee table, a washing machine, and a mirror, all for pretty cheap. But only in Israel do independent appliance dealers sell stuff out of their homes without even being there to make the sale. Wild.
Talmud - Masechet (volume/tractate) Rosh Hashanah until "achrei hachagim" (after the holidays) and Masechet Ketubot for the rest of the semester which is about marriage (ketubot are Jewish marriage contracts)
Chumash (Torah) - The book of Shemot (Exodus)
Biblical Hebrew Grammar
Parshat HaShavua - the weekly Torah portion
Halakha - Jewish law and practice
The Social Justice track - looking at Jewish texts about tikkun olam - the concept of repairing the world - and reflecting on the reality of our lives and how we can work to improve the world. This isn't just a class - we'll go on field trips, listen to guest speakers who work w/ social justice organizations in Israel, and head up Tuesday afternoon volunteering projects.
Hasidut - the "spiritual" side of Judaism, for lack of a better term - taking a multidisciplinary approach to learning about this sect of Judaism through story, song, and spiritual debriefing with a chevruta (study partner)
Women and Halakha - I'm taking this class at the Conservative Yeshiva both b/c I'm really interested in the material and b/c I wanted to have a connection over there, something a bit different from Pardes. This'll be continuing for the whole year, and we'll cover all of the different topics concerning women and Judaism - modesty, prayer, sexuality - the whole gamut. I'll probably be debriefing about that course on here a lot.
I've also been waking up at 5:30 every morning to go run, which has been tough b/c it's hard to get to bed early at night, but hopefully if I can keep this up I'll really start my day off right.
Finally (for now) - I'm living w/ two other Pardes girls, Shira and Joanne, who are really great, and we've been working on collecting furniture and dishes and things for our rather unfurnished apartment. Today I made an announcement at Pardes that my roommates and I were looking for a refrigerator, and a friend gave me the name and number of a guy who does a lot of used furniture dealing. We took a cab over to his place tonight, around 7pm, and we arrived on this dark, narrow street where we couldn't even find the number of the place that he told us. We were expecting a storefront, but the street was totally residential. I called Shai, the dealer, and asked him where to go, and he said, "Oh, I'm not home, but just go up the stairs in front of you and go down the hall - I left the door open so you could look at the stuff." Sure enough, we pushed his door open and found an apartment with tons of stuff packed in, and he said over the phone, "Everything's for sale - just tell me what you're interested in!" We picked out the fridge (which was pretty messy but he promised he'd clean it out before delivering it), a coffee table, a washing machine, and a mirror, all for pretty cheap. But only in Israel do independent appliance dealers sell stuff out of their homes without even being there to make the sale. Wild.
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