We have finally gotten around to adding a book section to JBC.org. It’s something that a few of us thought might be helpful and of interest to our readers. It still needs some work but I think it’s safe to say that we already have a decent assortment of recommended reading on a variety […]
May 15 2008
I’m really not a fan of the “new atheists” which is something I’ve written about on my own blog in the past. It’s not that I have anything against atheism because I don’t. Rather it’s that I don’t agree with the approach the new atheists seem to be taking. I for one don’t believe that somebody needs to believe in God in order to be a good person in his or her life. However it would seem at least according to the “new atheists” one has to reject a belief in G-d in order to be a good person. One of the more vocal proponents of this has been, Sam Harris, who essentially seems to feel that religious moderates are as culpable as religious extremists because we somehow provide cover for the fanatics and fundamentalists. I actually feel (most of the time) that the atheist/religious debate has nothing to do with me or others like me but I occasionally seem to get caught in the crossfire. It seems that the religion that they are talking about is not the religion I practice and the G-d they don’t believe in, I don’t believe in either. Unfortunately, that apparently doesn’t matter to people like Harris because he seems to be happy to lump me in with the most extreme of religionists.
Anyhow, I have recently watched two online debates where one of the “new atheists” faces off against a member of the tribe. The first was between Christopher Hitchens and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach of Shalom in the Home fame. Both of these guys in my opinion can be obnoxious and lack decency. Having said that (and despite the fact that neither of them came off great) that first debate clearly had IMO Hitchens as the clear winner, but you can watch the video here and decide for yourselves.
The second debate which I saw (this past weekend as an online rebroadcast) was between Sam Harris and Rabbi David Wolpe. Some may disagree but I think Rabbi Wolpe held his own quite well and that at best this debate ends in what I would call a stalemate. Having said that, I wouldn’t be surprised if the “True Believers” on either side of the issue came away from this debate thinking his/her side won. Me, I don’t think either of them came away with a clear win and that’s fine by me. What was more important (at least to me) is how Rabbi Wolpe (who BTW is a Conservative Rabbi) presented a view of the Jewish religion that was both flexible and capable of evolving. Watching him throughout this debate, I repeatedly thought to myself ” wow, if this guy is the voice of conservative Judaism, then, man I’m in the right place.”
As Jews by choice not only are we constantly trying to situate ourselves within our own faith but were also trying to do this while navigating the larger world. As I see it part of doing this is understanding that we also (albeit in a very small way) are representatives not only of ourselves but (for better or worse) of the entire tribe. Watching the rabbi throughout this debate helped me to realize that whether we are standing on one foot or sitting in a chair, we have a responsibility to represent our beliefs, our communities and ourselves in a dignified and honest fashion and I think that Rabbi Wolpe, in this debate, managed to do just that. I can only hope that if and when I find myself in a situation where I am dealing with somebody from another faith or from no faith, that I can be even just a little bit, like Rabbi Wolpe was in this video.
Anyhow, watch, enjoy and as always please feel free to let me know what you think if you do end up watching the video. If for some reason the video below isn’t displaying correctly you can also view it from the AJU site by clicking here.
Below is a blurb about the debate from the AJU site.
American Jewish University presents best-selling authors Sam Harris and Rabbi David Wolpe in a debate about the existence of God and the role of religion and faith in society. Sam Harris is a renowned atheist and author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. Rabbi David Wolpe, of Sinai Temple, is the author of Teaching Your Children About God and Why Be Jewish. This debate is moderated by Los Angeles Times religion editor Steve Padilla.
May 14 2008
As a sort of companion post to Avi’s Jerusalem video, I wanted to share an article I recently came across from the online Asia Times, entitled “Why Israel is the world’s happiest country.”
It’s rare to think of Israel in any terms other than negative ones these days. Our unenviable geographic position, our corrupt government, the almost daily rocket attacks on us, and the current water crisis all give more than ample cause for despair. But then someone like the author of this article comes along and casts an entirely different light on Israel, giving us renewed faith in ourselves and our purpose on earth.
The foundation for the author’s analysis of Israel’s happiness is twofold. He plots a chart (reproduced above) which reflects the suicide rate on the x-axis, and the birth rate on the y-axis of 35 industrial countries; as you can see, Israel is a dramatic outlier on this chart. He also focuses on Israel’s faith and values, contrasting them with those of other modern societies, including Europe, America, and the Muslim world. In all, it’s an anecdotal argument, but rings true nonetheless. Here are some of the highlights:
Envy surrounds no country on Earth like the state of Israel, and with good reason: by objective measures, Israel is the happiest nation on Earth at the 60th anniversary of its founding. It is one of the wealthiest, freest and best-educated; and it enjoys a higher life expectancy than Germany or the Netherlands. But most remarkable is that Israelis appear to love life and hate death more than any other nation. If history is made not by rational design but by the demands of the human heart, as I argued last week , the light heart of the Israelis in face of continuous danger is a singularity worthy of a closer look….
Israel’s love of life, moreover, is more than an ethnic characteristic. Those who know Jewish life through the eccentric lens of Jewish-American novelists such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, or the films of Woody Allen, imagine the Jews to be an angst-ridden race of neurotics. Secular Jews in America are no more fertile than their Gentile peers, and by all indications quite as miserable.
For one thing, Israelis are far more religious than American Jews. Two-thirds of Israelis believe in God, although only a quarter observe their religion strictly. Even Israelis averse to religion evince a different kind of secularism than we find in the secular West. They speak the language of the Bible and undergo 12 years of Bible studies in state elementary and secondary schools….
The faith of Israelis is unique. Jews sailed to Palestine as an act of faith, to build a state against enormous odds and in the face of hostile encirclement, joking, “You don’t have to be crazy to be a Zionist, but it helps.” In 1903 Theodor Herzl, the Zionist movement’s secular founder, secured British support for a Jewish state in Uganda, but his movement shouted him down, for nothing short of the return to Zion of Biblical prophecy would requite it. In place of a modern language the Jewish settlers revived Hebrew, a liturgical language only since the 4th century BC, in a feat of linguistic volition without precedent. It may be that faith burns brighter in Israel because Israel was founded by a leap of faith.
May 14 2008
A few days ago I stumbled across an online version of a an old National Geographic documentary (which I’m sure was part of a larger series) on Jerusalem. It was produced back somewhere around the mid 80s, so it’s a little dated now but interesting nonetheless. It basically presents a snapshot of what the city means spiritually to people of different faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and more importantly how they came to call Jerusalem home.
To be honest I didn’t really have any expectations as I began to watch the video but to my surprise, I actually learned several new things. For example I didn’t realize that Jerusalem was something of a sanctuary for (some) Armenians during the Armenian genocide of 1915.
As a Jew by choice who is never been to Israel and therefore never been to Jerusalem. I thoroughly enjoyed watching this documentary and as I have already mentioned managed to learn a thing or two about the city and it’s people. If you’ve got an hour to spare I highly recommend checking out this video because it’s both entertaining and informative. Basically I think it’s a good free online resource for those of you who have never been to Israel and would like to learn a little about this holy city.
Anyhow enjoy and if you do watch it feel free to let me know what you thought.
If for some reason the video does not display or play correctly you can try watching it from here. Please note that this video is (apparently) hosted somewhere in China, so it my take a while to load but it does load, or at least it did load for me, when I watched it this morning.
Below is a blurb about the episode from Amazon.
Within a square mile, enclosed by stone wall, live 26,000 people. Representing a multitude of nations, religions, and cultures, the people of this city rejoice in the historical and spiritual significance of their home–Jerusalem. National Geographic examines the lives of some of the residents in its 59-minute documentary Jerusalem: Within These Walls. The area of the Old City is divided into four quarters–Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Armenian–each of which surrounds an emblem of its culture: the Western Wall of the Second Temple, the Dome of the Rock mosque, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Cathedral of St. James. As the spiritual center of the three Western religions, Jerusalem may always be a city of tension and turmoil, yet its undeniable beauty and importance force people of differing beliefs to live side by side. Jews of 120 cultural backgrounds live in the Jewish quarter. The Zadok family immigrated from Yemen, where Jews faced tremendous persecution. In Israel they still hold onto many of their traditions, including elaborate wedding rituals, noted for their ornate finery. The video also introduces the third Jewish couple–a Belgian man and his sabra (a native-born Israeli) wife–to move into the Old City after its liberation from Jordan in the war of 1967. We then move to the Muslim quarter, where we meet a family who has lived in Jerusalem for 1,300 years. A young man embraces both tradition–as a furniture repairer–and modern life–as an actor on an Israeli Arabic TV show. In the Christian quarter, Father Timothy is presented, a Greek monk who has dedicated his life to serving the church that stands where Jesus was crucified. Finally, we meet an Armenian man, who escaped the holocaust of his own country, was sold into slavery, and finally was rescued by a Jerusalem orphanage. Telling a remarkable tale of survival, of both the city and her people, this video shows Jerusalem in all her splendor. –Jenny Brown
Product Description
May 13 2008
I would take a guess that most people who read this blog fall into one of three categories when it comes to the Bible: 1) the Bible is literal and cannot be interpreted any other way; 2) the Bible is mostly allegorical and should not be taken literally; and, 3) the Bible is part literal but also contains allegorical elements. Personally, I fall into category three. I believe that most of the Tanach is literal but not necessarily literal to our own understanding. For example, I believe creation happened in six days but I believe those “days” are “G-d days” and not literal 24-hour earth days. I also believe there are allegorical stories in the Tanach (such as Jonah and the whale).
I have always been interested in archaeology and world religions. Over the past ten years or so, I have become very interested in Biblical archaeology. I have subscribed to Biblical Archaeology Review and I absorb everything in the pages of the magazine. I came across an article (Ancient Biblical Interpreters vs. Archaeology and Modern Scholars – Jan/Feb 2008 issue) which reviewed the book How to Read the Bible by James L. Kugel. Mr. Kugel is an Orthodox Jew who writes extensively on the Second Temple period of Jewish history and commentaries/interpretations of the Bible.
…Where past Orthodox Jewish scholars have called critical Bible scholarship names and ridiculed it, Kugel calls it “an extraordinary intellectual achievement,” “little short of dazzling.” He writes that the scholars who made these discoveries compare to Einstein, Freud, and Darwin.
In the past Orthodox Jews have steadfastly rejected “modern” scholarship, but what are they to do now? They cannot say that Kugel is a secular scholar or that he is antireligious or anti-Orthodox. They cannot say that his book is by someone less learned than they…
Where do you stand on the literalness (or non-literalness) of the Bible? How would you answer the quandary proposed in this snippet of the article?
May 13 2008
One of the questions I was asked in my first (of three) meetings with the beit din at my conversion dealt with what I would do if I had a question regarding Jewish ritual. “Would you look it up yourself, or would you ask a rabbi?” asked the black-coated, bearded personage on the dais.
Now, I had read enough books to know that they are nearly always accompanied by the caveat that they are presenting one version of the laws and how to perform them, but that if the reader is actively seeking psak (halachic advice), he or she should seek out a competent rabbi to ask. I also knew, though, that this was an extremely loaded question, and one close to the hearts of most communal rabbis. I once heard Rabbi David Hartman in Jerusalem talk about when he was a congregational rabbi in Montreal. He said he would wait by the phone for people to call him with questions about kashrut, or Shabbat, or taharat hamishpacha, but no one ever did. (He said this with a twinkle in his eye, and went on to describe the REAL issues people were concerned about.)
I got the answer right: call a rabbi. I knew this was the right answer not only because it would please the rabbis sitting before me and get me one step closer to the dunking I so desired. It was also correct because the books tended to give a VERY frum version of events, and since I was planning on adopting a more modern form of Orthodoxy, I knew that my corresponding rabbi would probably give more lenient advice.
As some of you may recall from an earlier post, I have a rav. (Keep your shirts on.) He was my moreh derech (teacher and advisor for my conversion), my congregational rabbi, and someone I count as an advisor and friend to this day. His advice to me has been thoughtful, well-researched, and tailored to his knowledge of me. (Getting an answer from him on the phone could sometimes take a while because he would tell me where he had researched my question, the various opinions he’d discovered, the one he thought I should go by, and why.) While a member of his congregation, I was content to follow his advice in most matters, and we stuck very close to the standards he laid out for the community in matters of practice.
But over the years, I have continued to struggle with this issue. (I know my friends and fellow congregants do too, so I know I’m not alone in this.) There are times when I feel comfortable getting a ruling on something I don’t know about, and I’m happy to ask a she’elah (question) and go along with the answer. But there is an etiquette about asking she’elot (questions): If you’re ready to hear the answer, whatever it is, ask. If not, don’t ask. At least not yet. (Nechama’s comment on Chavi’s recent post about her rav helping petitioners think about the issue more clearly, rather than coming out with a black-and-white answer shows a rabbi sensitive to this tension.)
While A Simple Jew’s interview with R’ Dovid Sears linked to on Chavi’s post shows that R’ Sears is not entirely comfortable with the tension between personal initiative and rabbinic authority, I feel differently. I sometimes talk about the advantages to Judaism of having converts and ba’alei teshuvah inject new life and new accountability into the tradition, and I stand by that. I’ve known a rabbi who had very narrow views about Reform Jews (and Reform converts, yet) who, after meeting and getting to know me, became much more thoughtful and sensitive about those issues. I’ve gotten psak from a rav one year, then mentioned the psak to him a few years later and had him say to me, “I said that?” And when I was given psak to try covering my hair temporarily, but then stopped a few years later, no one said anything. I think that converts and ba’alei teshuvah, coming from a non-frum background where science, debate, and asking “Why?” all the time are par for the course, can actually raise the bar and the level of quality of Orthodox life. They encourage more complacent Jews to reassess their own practice, force them to explain why they do what they do, and demand better grounding in the Jewish sources (and less in regional practice) from their rabbis. One of the reasons my father lost interest in Judaism was because no one in his family understood (or cared about) Jewish practice, and hence failed to transmit it as anything important to him. Complacency leads to stagnation. But revisiting, rethinking, articulating, debating, explaining… All that’s to the good.
At this point, my Orthodox practice, especially around my kitchen and in my beliefs, is pretty unassailable. However, I do continue to harbor some issues around hair-covering, women’s dress code, kitniyot (see Avi’s post on this hot topic), and taharat hamishpacha. These arise from one or more of the following:
1) varying practices in different Orthodox communities,
2) the practices’ murky origins,
3) the sometimes indistinct lines between minhag (custom) and halachah,
4) the accuracy (or lack thereof) of food science (on food issues),
5) social pressure on rabbis or civilians to conform or to appear sufficiently frum in the eyes of others, and
6) my own comfort level.
I know Orthodox converts are expected to observe faithfully the 613 commandments. But the truth is I don’t know a single Jew who does. This doesn’t make anyone a hypocrite or a bad Jew. Most people are doing their best, and those who try but don’t get it right 100% of the time are still pretty amazing people, and admirable Jews.
My take-home message from this is that Judaism is a choice for everyone who embraces it, every day. We may grow in some areas, and backslide in others. We may go through phases where certain things are important to us, and other things less so. We may occasionally be called upon to question our core values or to renew our commitment to them.
Where rabbinic authority can help is if we have someone whom we trust and admire, who can know and understand us for who we are, with whom we can discuss our tensions and questions. And freedom of freedoms: You choose your own posek.
May 11 2008
I’ve been meaning to post this for nearly a week, but last week just escaped me. So here I am, today, to share a thoughtful nosh posted up on A Simple Jew’s blog from last week. The blog post focuses on a Q&A with Rabbi Dovid Sears about the "spiritual marketplace" mentality and the ger/ba’al teshuvah. A Simple Jew references an e-mail that the rabbi once wrote in which he says that he thinks "most ba’alei teshuva and gerim, being independent-minded people, often have a certain ambivalence toward authority …" and ASJ asks the rabbi to elaborate on this idea.
I think there’s some truth to the statement. There have been many discussions about having a rav and not having a rav, who we study or don’t study with and why, and how to grow spiritually and how to study as Jews by Choice. Rabbi Sears says,
Obviously, to break away from one’s previous culture and/or religion takes a lot of will power and independent thinking. Most people pretty much follow in the footsteps (or skid marks) of their families and especially their peers. These powerful character traits of will power and independence run pretty deep in baalei teshuvah and geirim. But like all character traits, they have a positive side and a negative one. The positive side is the idealism, courage and strength it takes to pursue the truth, even if this entails making enormous changes in one’s life. The negative side is that the BT/ger often has a hard time relinquishing that fierce, independent spirit in submitting to a teacher and tradition.
Now, the next quote is sort of specific to the Orthodox Jew — though since I know most of us on here aren’t Orthodox (yet anyhow!), you have to read the statement as applying to all BT/gerim in any branch of Judaism. I’ve often been told that I wear my Jewishness on my sleeve, or that I’m "over"-Jewing it. But I think that as a JBC, it takes a certain amount of time for us to ease in and find our comfortable space as Jews to the point that we aren’t, as he says, wearing "a neon on sign" that shouts "I’M NEW HERE!"
Probably the hardest thing for most newcomers to frumkeit is finding their niche. We have to shop around first — there is no way around it. But the danger is that we may never really stop shopping. We’ll take one of these and one of those, and a few years later discover something else appealing on the religious shelf. This can be almost comical when it comes to things like dress and minhagim. The new BT may decide he likes a Satmar hat, a yeshivishe short jacket, sneakers, jeans and a knapsack. He might as well wear a neon sign on his back blinking on and off "Baal Teshuvah!" (Of course, this is an extreme example — but the same mentality in more moderate forms is not so rare.)
Rabbi Sears goes on to say,
Despite all of these challenges, though, as one gets one’s feet on the ground, reality begins to set in. We begin to see that to really make spiritual progress, we must submit to a mesorah and a derekh and a teacher. "Sit in the dust at their feet and drink in their words with thirst" (Avos 1:4), the Mishnah says of apprenticeship to the sages. Not only does this lead to normalcy — but to the tempering of the negative side of those personal qualities that were so useful in getting us to the front door. Now it is time to truly enter.
I probably haven’t done the post or Rabbi Sears’ thoughts justice, but I think the whole thing is worth a read, even if you aren’t aiming at being frum. I know that I don’t have a rav, but that I find my answers and guidance in books and Torah and through the gleanings of our sages. At some point, though, I will have to submit to needing a teacher, someone to help me stop putting off certain things (oh, I’ll start keeping kosher next week, and I’ll be shomer Shabbos soon, and okay, I’ll start doing this and doing that).
At the same time, Judaism is sort of an evolutionary process for the JBC, nu? Shopping around is part of the process, of course, but the rabbi makes some interesting and thoughtful points.
Shalom!
May 10 2008
“First Abayudaya Ugandan Ordained at Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies” this is the title of an article I just stumbled upon on the AJU website . Gershom Sizomu is from Uganda. His ancestors converted to Judaism less than 100 years ago. The Jewish community in Uganda has quite an interesting story which you can read more about in the article. But in short, the community grew from one man’s connection to Judaism. An excerpt from the article explains it better than I ever could:
The story of the birth of this community, less than one hundred years ago, seems an astonishing tale. During an effort to convert traditional Ugandans to Christianity, a tribal leader, Semei Kaungulu, was urged to influence his followers to submit to the new faith. Kaungulu, who was like a king to his people, was given the bible to read as support material for promoting Christianity. Instead, Kaungulu found the first five books of Moses to make more sense than the New Testament. He became so enthralled in the teachings of Torah that Kaungulu circumcised himself and began to observe Shabbat and the laws of Kashrut.
This is a very interesting article and amazing story. Check it out for yourself. Don’t trust my reporting skills…:)
May 10 2008
While perusing the latest issue of Moment Magazine late this afternoon Tamara and I came across something I think is worth sharing with the rest of you. In honor of the 60th anniversary of Israel is the Center for Online Judaic Studies has launched 25+ free educational website’s exploring issues related to Jewish culture and history.
Without having spent too much time on the site myself (thus far that is) it certainly looks like a great resource for JBC’s, soon to be JBC’s or anyone who’s interested in learning more about Jewish culture and history.
Anyhow I thought I’d post about it here in case anyone else is interested. I know I’ll be spending some time checking it out.
Enjoy!
May 07 2008
And who says all frummies are right wing and think alike. Check out the latest YouTube video from FrumSatire. This guy continuously cracks me up. I don’t know, I guess I really like dry, sarcastic humor.
Enjoy.
May 07 2008
First African American woman convert to be ordained as a Reform Rabbi, reports the JTA. Below is an excerpt but if you wish to read the full story, check it out on JTA. \
Raised by Pentacostal parents, Stanton-Ogulnick spent her childhood and young adulthood as a spiritual seeker, making the rounds of various Christian denominations before finding her home in Judaism. She converted more than 20 years ago.
“People look at me and ask if I was born Jewish,” she says. “I say yes, but not to a Jewish womb. I believe I was at Sinai. It’s not as if one day I scratched my head and said, hmm, now how can I make my life more difficult? I know — I’ll become Jewish!”
Stanton-Ogulnick made her choice to join the Jewish community as an adult, well aware of the difficulties that might arise. Her daughter Shana, now 13, didn’t get to choose; she was dipped in the mikveh as an infant.
The year they spent in Jerusalem, Stanton-Ogulnick’s first year as an HUC student, was the most difficult. Shana, then 7, faced daily prejudice at school.“She was beat up, and once was literally kicked off the bus,” her mother says with quiet anger. “We’d been in Israel three months and her only friend was a cat.”
One day, Shana came home from camp beaming because one of the other children held her hand.You can read the rest here.
Hat tip to Jewschool and Kol Ra’ash Gadol where I found the article
May 06 2008
This past Shabbat we read the Torah portion of קדושים, referred to commonly as the Holiness Code. Friday night our intern gave a sermon that referenced the fact that God commands Moses to speak to the entire congregation of Israel (kol adat Yisrael) and not just the children of Israel (b’nei Yisrael) that we usually read. So, as I prepared for our Torah study session Saturday morning, reading through my Rashi commentary and the commentary in the Eitz Chaim, I kept this in mind. And something occurred to me. In the entire section of the portion that follows “kol adat Yisrael” and the injunction that “You shall be holy because I, Adonai your God, am holy,” there is not one reference to death as a punishment for not obeying the commandments. There is reference to punishment, to being cut off from the people, but not specifically to death. It is not until chapter 20 when Moses is again commanded to speak to the children of Israel (b’nei Yisrael) that we have a mention of death as a punishment–this time in reference to worship of Molech). It had been brought up that it is believed that whenever God told Moses to speak to the children of Israel he wouldn’t speak to everyone all at once, but rather explain the laws in smaller groups of people. But, with the Holiness Code the entire congregation of Israel is commanded to hear and to be present, therefore emphasizing the importance of what was to follow. I feel that it is significant that death is not mentioned when speaking of holiness, almost as if God did not want the idea of death as a punishment brought up while the entire congregation was hearing about how they should be Holy. What a wonderful concept–that holiness involves behavior and punishment, but excludes the idea of death. I think it emphasizes on doing good and holy things for the sake of them being good and holy, and not because we fear the consequence of death. (For a more in-depth meditation on the idea of being holy, see Chavi’s post here.)
I don’t know if any commentators have addressed this; we only took a few minutes with it Saturday morning and Rashi, Rambam, the Eitz Chaim, the Plaut, and the Women’s Commentary all were silent on this. As my rabbi pointed out, when no one else is saying anything about it, you’re either a genius or an idiot (he usually says this in reference to himself; I was amused that I have finally warranted the phrase). Granted, there was not a lot of time to check all of his books, but you can bet I’m going to look into this further.
May 05 2008
This Haaretz article just found it’s way in to my feed reader.
Reform Jews open Israel’s first state-funded non-Orthodox synagogue
Israel’s Reform Jews dedicated the first non-Orthodox synagogue to receive state funding on Monday, after a long court battle that accented the rift among streams of Judaism in Israel.
The Reform Yozma congregation fought for the better part of a decade for state funding equivalent to what Orthodox congregations receive. After arguing their case twice before the Supreme Court, they got what they wanted: a prefabricated, two-room building on a plot of land in the center of Modiin, a new town between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
“This is a substantial step in recognizing different streams of Judaism in the state of Israel,” said Rabbi Kinneret Shiryon, who leads the 240-family congregation.
The government has long funded Orthodox synagogues, even paying
rabbi’s salaries.The Orthodox establishment dominates Jewish life in Israel and hotly opposes recognition or assistance to the more liberal streams - Reform and Conservative Judaism.
Compared with the United States, where more than a third of Jewish adults
consider themselves Reform, Israel’s 25 Reform congregations are struggling for recognition.You can read the rest here.
I think this is great news! I see this as a real win, not only for Reform Jews but for other non-Orthodox streams as well, not to mention anyone who believes in Jewish pluralism.
Anyhow Mazel Tov to the congregants and leadership of Kehillat YOZMA!
May 04 2008
I’m sure that most of our reader by now have already heard about the latest in the fiasco in Israel regarding converts and the “Who is a Jew” question. But in case you haven’t here is a snippet from a recent Jerusalem Post article covering the story.
The Jewishness of thousands of converts was cast in doubt after the High Rabbinical Court of Israel severely censured the head of the country’s Conversion Authority for performing conversion in a non-kosher way.
In a decision that was published last week, the three-man panel of rabbinic judges upheld a ruling from an Ashdod Rabbinic Court that retroactively annulled the conversion of a woman performed by Rabbi Haim Druckman, head of the Conversion Authority, 15 years ago.
The decision to annul the woman’s conversion was made after it became known that she never adhered to Orthodox Jewish practice after her conversion. As a result, the Jewish status of the woman’s four children was annulled. In addition, the woman’s husband, who is Jewish according to Halacha, was questioned.
Along with its decision to uphold the Ashdod court’s decision, the judges also cast doubt on the validity of all conversions conducted by Druckman since 1999.
Over the years Druckman has personally converted hundreds, perhaps thousands and in his capacity as head of the Conversion Authority he has overseen thousands more.
“If this decision is upheld it will destroy the Conversion Authority,” said Rabbi Moshe Klein, Druckman’s deputy. “And if it is not upheld, it will undermine the good name of the High Rabbinical Court. Either way it is a disaster.”
You can read the rest of the story over here.
To be honest my first thoughts upon hearing about all of this were a) that I’m not the least bit surprised and b) I actually don’t care that much about it. However having had the opportunity now to sit with this news for a couple of days, I can say that it’s helped me glean a few insights in terms of my own sense of Jewishness and direction. However for the time being I’m going to hold off on what this development means to me personally, because it all ties in quite nicely to another post I am working on and hope to publish later on this week.
This decision is just wrong on so many levels and I certainly could take this article as an opportunity to do some serious orthodox bashing and to be honest I was initially tempted to do so but I’m not going to, because there’s already enough ortho versus non-ortho bashing going on and thats bad for everyone.
However I will say this.
Even if it’s too soon to tell how all of this is going to play out and whether or not this ruling is going to have any real and lasting effect on the ground in Israel. It is another clear example (in a long line of recent examples,) illustrating the Orthodox world’s ongoing slide towards the right and towards extremism.
I think Orthodox and non-Orthodox converts alike need to see this for what it is, proof that no matter how Jewish you try to be (and feel you are) and how many conversions you undergo, chances are there’s always going to be someone, some group, who isn’t going to acknowledge you as a Jew. It sucks, it hurts and it’s unfair but it goes with the territory, so we might as will all get used to it.
The best Advice I can offer I myself or anyone else when it comes to doing Jewish, is think it through, take your time and be honest about what you are doing and why you are trying to do it.
When it boils down to it I don’t rule out doing an orthodox conversion myself at some point and I certainly can understand why others would want to pursue one, but to pursue an orthodox conversion for any reasons related to the status of future children or to please a husband and/or a community is obviously a mistake as is clearly pointed out in this article. It just puts you at risk of creating bigger problems for yourself down the road and as this article shows, maybe even be putting other converts at risk. Sincere converts who probably don’t deserve to be.
Anyhow that’s my two cents, what do you all think?
May 04 2008
Years ago, when I belonged to a Reform synagogue in the U.S., I went to the rabbi’s weekly Torah study for adults on Sunday mornings. On one such morning, while waiting for the rabbi, the students began a conversation that eventually steered around to the Shoah (Holocaust). Never an easy phenomenon to contemplate or understand, one person in the room asked in frustration, “Where was God? Why didn’t He stop it?” A woman sitting across from him looked up from her text and fixed him with a very stern look. “God DID stop it,” she said emphatically.
I’ve never forgotten that conversation, and in fact I think about it almost whenever I think about the Shoah.
It’s commemoration season in the Jewish world. In a dizzying, emotional roller coaster ride, Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) was last Thursday, and this week Yom HaZikaron (Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers) and Yom HaAtzma’ut (Israel Independence Day) fall on Wednesday and Thursday.
It’s not an easy schedule to stay atop. Soon after the conclusion of the festival of God’s deliverance of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt, we’re remembering our wholesale destruction and the descent of European civilization into barbarism that marked the Shoah. The date for Yom HaShoah was chosen in proximity to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising which took place during April and May of 1943, and in Israel, the whole name for the day is Yom HaZikaron l’Shoah u’l’Gvurah (Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day). In this way, rather than focusing only on the terror and villainy, we recall our suffering in the context of Jewish resistance and heroism, and the brief period during which—before the eyes of the world—we gave as good as we got.
The contrast between observance of Yom HaZikaron in the Diaspora and Israel is dramatic. Whereas the Diaspora looks on Israel’s foundation as wondrous, and its founders and defenders (some of whom are scattered throughout the Diaspora) as heroic, Yom HaZikaron as a day to remember the fallen is rarely observed. Yet in Israel, when people freeze in their tracks during the two minute siren on Wednesday morning, most are remembering someone they loved, or at least knew personally. Brothers, sons, fiancés, and spouses who fell in wars or attempts to stop terror attacks, family members and friends who went to work, out for pizza, or to buy watermelon and never came back, children who went to school or on school field trips and stepped within fatal range of snipers—all of these fallen are remembered.
As the sun goes down on this Yom HaZikaron and our sadness begins to lift, Israel will begin the momentous celebration of its 60th birthday. There are newspaper pages filled with notices of events all over the country to celebrate, and foreign dignitaries will be flying in from all over the world (from President Bush to the Prime Minister of Mongolia) to attend the festivities. While some groups of anti-Zionist haredim in the neighborhoods adjoining mine will be donning their annual sackcloth and ashes, most Jews will be saying Hallel with a blessing, thanking God for the wonder of the establishment of the State, the culmination of 2000 years of longing and prayer.
Every year, I struggle with how to relate to these days. Although the libraries of books, plays, film and documentary (plus my grandmother’s diary kept during her year in Weimar Germany in 1929-1930) bring the period around the Shoah to life for me, I’m also sensible that the Jewish calendar is full of days and periods of mourning and semi-mourning, of half fasts and full fasts to mark the major calamities that have befallen us over the years. Sometimes having yet another day to contemplate the senseless persecution and murder of my people is a bit much for me. And as a still-new immigrant, Yom HaZikaron is not the same experience for me that it is for Israeli-born citizens and veteran immigrants. I’m grateful for this, though as the years pass—and my and my friends’ children grow older—I know this will change.
The one day of the three I truly relate to is Yom HaAtzma’ut. The bravery, moxie, and sheer chutzpah of the Jews (many of whom had just arrived from Europe with numbers tattooed on their arms), together with the unmistakable hand of God, are a joy to celebrate. (So much so, in fact, that my husband and I chose this as our wedding day.)
Yet perhaps the emotional roller coaster was put in place because of the relatedness of all of these events. The Shoah made world Jewry all the more determined to forge for itself a state, using every means (diplomacy, fundraising, trading, negotiating, concession-making, and finally, war) to ensure that Jews would never be left at the mercy of others again. Yom HaZikaron is to remember those who gave themselves entirely to the enterprise of establishing and maintaining a Jewish home for all of us. And Yom HaAtzma’ut celebrates the miraculous outcome of all of these efforts.
I do believe that God stopped the Shoah. (Perhaps not as soon as we would have liked, but then, man wasn’t much help, either.) And students of history know that in the end, to the aid of a handful of Jews actively resisting the Nazis and their accomplices, came hundreds of thousands of non-Jews.
May 31 is Memorial Day. While we may not all have family who died in the Shoah or who fought to defend Israel, many of us have family, friends, or neighbors who fought in World War II. I encourage everyone to get in touch with someone living who was a soldier, liberator, righteous Gentile, or witness, and hear their stories. (Often high schools or colleges have programs to which the public is invited.) This month I’m thinking about my Uncle Joe, who participated in the liberation of Italy, and my Great-uncle Sammy, who was killed during the landing at Normandy. These citizen-soldiers, and countless others, became God’s instrument to stop the killing, and enabled the Jews to live—and build—another day.
And that, my friends, is worth commemorating.
May 02 2008
Cross-posted on True Ancestor
They said it couldn’t happen. Some are still saying it never did.
Many claim to have witnessed it, survived it, fought against it. They are heroes to many, but sometimes they are called fools, liars or worse by many others.
Every year, those who perished are commemorated. As the grass blushes over their anoymous graves, their memories are invoked, against a tide of denial and hatred, by the ones who survived, or the ones born to the survivors.
The survivors’ stories are ones of super-human determination to simply be human in the way that they were born to be human.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has (again) put it concisely:
Judaism is the world’s most sustained protest against empires, because imperialism is the attempt to impose a single truth, culture or faith on a plural world. God, said the rabbis, makes everyone in His image, yet He makes everyone different to teach us to respect difference. And since difference is constitutive of humanity, a world that has no space for difference has no space for humanity.
The act of remembering beyond this lifetime — of consecrating a terrain of experience on which you may never have stood, but which is mapped in your bones — is the central project not just of Jews but of any individual who insists that the world can be made whole, or at least better.
If you haven’t already, please pause a moment — soon, today; even now – in remembrance of all those who have perished at the hands of empires.
Shabbat Shalom.
May 01 2008
Hi All,
I originally wrote a pretty acidic post about Jimmy Carter’s recent groping of Hamas founder Khaled Meshaal in Damascus, but given the great job Chavi did in her recent post on being holy, I thought a post on a situation I’ve faced recently was in order. As many of you may be aware, I live along the North Shore of Lake Superior, a location which, though naturally beautiful, in the Jewish universe is roughly equivalent to Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine: “If there’s a bright center to the universe, you’re on the planet it’s farthest from.” I am relatively isolated, and although my shul is less than a half hour drive from my house, it is the only shul (other than a very, very small Orthodox one without a rabbi) for a 170 mile radius. It is quite a liberal community - i.e., most of the members are fairly classical Reform - and while I have many close relationships, they are not usually built on an approach to Judaism with which I am most comfortable. While I live a relatively observant life, sometimes being such a lone soldier gets wearing. I’ve been in places where I was in the middle of lots of Jews - Minneapolis, New York, Israel - and in each place it seemed less work psychologically to live an observant lifestyle. But up here, constantly being one of only a handful of people who live an observant life can get very draining.
Sometimes I find that I need to just slip back and take stock of where I am and where I want to be, and to get back to the core of who I am as a Jew. I might get less diligent with daily prayers, do less Jewish study, and wear a baseball cap instead of a kippah. Sometimes the external aspects of observance distract me from my own Jewishness, as weird as that might sound. But for converts, there is a part of us which, while Jewish, hasn’t always been, as much as we may believe our souls have always been Jewish. Sometimes I find that I burn out on observance, and in order to recharge, I need to take some time to get back in touch with myself, and with the reasons I made the decision to become a Jew in the first place.
That’s what I’m thinking about while we count the Omer this year. I am remembering the initial parts of Judaism that drew me in, the things I fell for so many years ago. And to do this, I need to approach things less compulsively, and more out of the sense of wonder that is sometimes hard to recapture. The seven weeks of the Omer are when the Jewish People wandered in the wilderness between liberation from slavery in Egypt (Mitzrayim = the “narrows”), and the majesty of receiving Torah at Sinai. Last year, I was in Israel for the last week of the count, and I spent Shavuot in Mitzpe Ramon hiking the Makhtesh and reading Torah by myself. And in doing so, I got in touch with something at my core that will always be a Jew, connected to our Mesorah’s words and the land of Israel. This year, I am going to spend the weeks of the Omer remembering why I made the journey to Jewishness in the first place, hitting the reset button to unstop the logjam I’ve allowed my observance to become in some areas, and looking forward to moving forward again, taking on more, at Shavuot. Doing so will allow me to approach my observance more mindfully, to mean it more, and that must be a good thing, right?
I have talked to Avi about this before, and Chavi’s post touches on it, but do the rest of you experience the need to do this once in a while?
kol tuv!
Yair
Apr 30 2008
Chaviva (one of our regular contributors) was recently featured on Oy! Chicago, a (you guessed it) site covering all things Jewish in the Chicago area. It’s an interesting little snapshot into her “Jewish” life (hey they even mentioned JBC.org,) so it’s worth checking out.
Here is a snippet to get you started.
Chaviva Edwards is a super-blogger with a really long commute. The Buena Park dweller takes the CTA down to the University of Chicago where she works as an assistant to Nobel Prize winners and other big thinkers in the economics department. Originally from Nebraska, the 24-year-old is a lifelong fan of Chicago, but will head east this fall to start her graduate work in Judaic studies at the University of Connecticut.
So, whether you’re a fellow tea-drinker or a fan of her Jewish blog: Just Call Me Chaviva, her weight loss blog: Fat Miss America, or the blog she helped launch and still contributes to, Jews by Choice, Chaviva Edwards is a Jew you should know!
Click the link, read the rest of the story and find out why Chaviva is a “Jew YOU should know!”
Apr 26 2008
Pesach is over now, and Israeli motorists have begun attaching Israeli flags to their cars in honor of Israel’s upcoming 60th birthday.
To honor the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence, Britain’s chief rabbi, R’ Jonathan Sacks, has compiled a double CD of readings (read by R’ Sacks himself) and songs celebrating the millennia-old attachment of the Jewish people to the land of Israel. Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz published an editorial on Friday, 4 April 2008, announcing the soon-to-be-released CD.
To put Israel’s significance to the Jews and the rest of the world in some context, here is some of R’ Sacks’s text from the CD:
Judaism is twice as old as Christianity, three times as old as Islam. Yet there are 82 Christian nations, 56 Muslim ones, but only one Jewish state. A country smaller than the Kruger National Park, less than one quarter of one percent of the land mass of the Arab world, Israel is the only place on earth where, in 4,000 years of history, Jews have formed a majority. The only place where they’ve been able to rule themselves and defend themselves. The only place where they have been able to do what almost every people takes for granted: live as a nation shaping its own destiny, and create a society according to its own values.
Only in Israel can a Jew speak the Jewish language, see a Jewish landscape, live by the Jewish calendar, walk where our ancestors walked and continue the story they began.
Yet still it has to fight for the right to be.
… Why, after everything, is it still so hard for the nations of the world to grant the Jewish people a place to live without fear? Israel is the West’s oldest nation. Its religion is the West’s oldest faith… Why must the people who first taught the world the sanctity of life so often be made to walk through the valley of the shadow of death?
We live in a time when there is widespread effort to discredit the connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel. Many see the return of Jews to this part of the world as at best a consolation prize for the Holocaust (which, according to many who believe this, never actually happened), and at worst, a totally illegitimate land-grab by a pack of Western colonialists with no prior history in this region. The purpose of this compilation, in Horovitz’s words, is “to retell the unique, extraordinary story of the Jewish people’s attachment to its land, and its miraculous return home, ‘to a whole generation, or two, of Jews who were born after the epic events and take Israel for granted.’”
What’s on it? According to Horovitz, “The primary focus, and the major proportion of the two compact discs, is the music—an eclectic selection featuring not only the most traditional of Hebrew texts and the most popular of modern Israel’s patriotic standards, but also tracks and artists so diverse that few first-time listeners will be familiar with all of the material.” Complete liner notes are available here at the Home of Hope website.
Where can one buy it? I looked on the Web to see where it’s being sold, but was unsuccessful. However, the Israel: Home of Hope website has a page where almost all of the tracks can be downloaded. If anyone succeeds in finding a commercial outlet for the CD, please post it in a comment.
The overall message of the collection seems to be one of hope, and of caution. While R’ Sacks notes that despite the mighty empires that have attacked and conquered Israel over the centuries, “all those empires have ‘been consigned to the dustbins of history while Am Yisrael Chai, the people of Israel lives.’” R’ Sacks notes that the various exiles of the Jews from their land “came about because of the inability to live peacably with each other. This divisive tendency is the single most recurring danger in Jewish life. There’s only one people capable of destroying the Jewish people, God forbid, and that is the Jewish people.” Following a theme that has appeared several times recently on this blog, We have seen the enemy, and it is us.
David Horovitz ends with an additional hope for R’ Sacks’s work:
[R’ Sacks] should … utilize [the discs] to kickstart a new invigoration of Diaspora Jewish outreach. Diaspora Jews must be challenged not to remain seated, listening passively to his astute sermonizing. He needs to urge them to use his rhetorical ammunition to determinedly fight for Israel, and for their own status, by spreading this honest Israeli narrative in the court of global public opinion. For more empathetically, accurately, movingly and persuasively than most any other attempt, Sacks’s self-styled “unusual project for a chief rabbi” captures the profundity of our connection to Israel, the insistent maintenance of our identity through centuries of bleak and bloody exile, and the dizzying “affirmation of life” that enabled us to rebuild our homeland after the unspeakable evil of the Holocaust and through the past six decades.
Apr 26 2008
It was two years ago, nearly to the day, that I became Chaviva bat Avraham v’Sarah. I say became, but it’s true that I didn’t really become anything other than the person I was meant to be and had always been, the person hidden and seeking, finally come home to Torah and her people Israel. So on the occasion of the blessed anniversary, I thought I’d share this little morsel of a recent experience, interwoven with this past week’s parshah, K’doshim. It’s a d’var Torah, I suppose, and I think it has some good and worthy wisdom for the convert and the ba’al teshuvah. Kul tov, friends!
Setting the Scene: I’m walking down Touhy Avenue in the heart of West Rogers Park in Chicago, Illinois, on the first day of Pesach around 4 in the afternoon. I’ve just left a park where I was with a friend and her children and husband, and I am walking down the street to the far edge of the neighborhood to catch a bus to go to a seder in a far-away suburb with not-that-observant friends, but still I am within the eruv and in Orthodox territory catching a bus on a holiday. I’m wearing a skirt that hits just below the knees, a jacket, and am carrying my bag. I’m completely cognizant of my surroundings — in fact, I’m almost overly aware when I’m in this neighborhood because I want to seamlessly blend in. Not for others, but for me, and this might be lost to some who know me. But most of the time, it isn’t really about them, it’s about me. (I want to feel like I’m a part of this observant community, because it’s a chance to experience who I might someday be. I envy their community, the closeness of shops and shuls, the living and breathing organism of a self-sustained and thriving Jewish peoplehood. It’s a microcosm of what it must once have felt like to be surrounded by people you know and trust and who see the world through nearly the same prescription glasses as you.) I’m passing stores, closed with signs that announce they’ll reopen after the two festival days of Pesach — I don’t see this anywhere I typically travel in Chicago. You see, the first two days of Pesach are like the Sabbath, they are without many of the mundane things we absorb the rest of the week and the commerce of the community is still. At least, I imagine it as such.
The incident: I’m crossing a street, and glance over to the North where there is a sports bar. A man is sitting on a bench on the east side of the storefront, and standing behind him and staring in through the bar’s windows at a gigantic television displaying baseball is a teenage boy — kippah, tzitzit, black pants, white shirt, an observant Jew. I smiled in amusement, and at that moment he turned and looked at me. We locked eyes for a few minutes, and then I crossed the street, looking back every now and again, and there he was, still there, peering desperately into the window. It would have been perfect for a picture — I would have captioned it "Pesach Paradox" — but it was, well, Pesach. I smiled and laughed quietly to myself.
The point: After my "How do I carry things when I go to Orthodox shul for the first time?" crisis last week, I’ve been thinking more about the issues of "how observant are you" and "what makes a Jew observant" and "I’ll out-frum you!" and "why do you do x and y but not z?." I have realized that, despite what some may think or say or preach, no one is perfect. Not even the most pious Jew is truly the most pious Jew. There is no perfection in Judaism, and this is why we’re here: to perfect the world, to better the world, to try as hard as we can to reach the perfection in which G-d created the world. And of this, this is what we must remind ourselves constantly, every day, with each moment we breathe — we seek perfection, we do not embody it.
I was reading the parshah for this past week, Kedoshim, and it’s one of the prolific parashot of Torah. G-d speaks to Moses saying, "You shall be holy, since I the Lord your G-d am holy." And reflecting on my week and the incident with the boy in the window, I think this is brilliantly connected. Rabbi Louis Finkelstein has said that Judaism is a way of life that seeks to transform every human action into a means of communing with G-d, and Martin Buber wrote that Judaism does not divide life into the sacred and profane, but into the holy and not-yet-holy. Thus, how can we even criticize our actions to the most minute points if each action is either holy or not-yet-holy; there’s a spark in there somewhere that shows we are trying to connect, even if we may not recognize it as so. Etz Chayim’s commentary states that "Everything we do has the potential of being holy," (p. 693) and "We can be as holy as we allow ourselves to be."
I feel better about where I’m going, and with the constant reminder that I’m not into labels and denominationalism, I am allowing myself to be as holy as I can in my current incarnation. And despite the guilt that arises when I’m on the bus on a Saturday afternoon, watching kippah-toting Jews and skirt-donning women walk their strollers to shul in the eruv nearby, or the twinge of regret I feel when I eat out, I know that the person I am is moving along a path where things that once were not yet holy are now holy and other things are finding their way into the holy. On Shabbat, I now disconnect from the electronic world as much as I can, I avoid writing to the best of my ability, and I go to shul, and this is how I edge into holiness.
And as a result, over the past two years, everything I do is coupled with a consciousness that I had never experienced before. Being a Jew means being 110 percent aware of everything — the food you eat, the places you go, the people you see, the company with which you surround yourself, the person you want to become. Not because it’s a competition, but because it’s a process, though sometimes I think we lose ourselves and forget what this consciousness is really saying and doing for us.
This is what is often called Jewish guilt. It’s that knowledge that everything has the potential to be holy, but knowing that we can only be as holy as we allow ourselves to be. The secular Jew, the religious Jew, the lost Jew — we all experience it. It’s an inescapable glue that binds me to you, Diaspora to Israel, past to present.
So, it is with all of this in mind, mentally in tow, that I shall be holy — as everything I do has the potential to be holy — for the Lord our G-d, my G-d, is holy.
Apr 24 2008
This post is cross-posted on my personal blog. This is the second part of a two-part blog, but since it’s pretty darn long, you can read the first installment of my Pesach, which includes my first-ever experience at an Orthodox shul, by clicking HERE. And if you don’t want to read it? Well, let’s just say it was the best shul experience I’ve ever had. And now, for the post …
I’ve been trying really hard to be productive with my day, but ugh, the internet is so vast. It’s like a physical manifestation of thousands of years of d’var Torah and mishnah. There’s so much! So little time! And every shiny new object pulls me in. But I’m here to talk about the seder I went to Saturday night, at last.
I arrived at shul on Saturday a little after 7 p.m. for the evening services. The rabbi at the Orthodox shul was guaranteeing that he’d have everyone out in time for the candle lighting so the seders could start ASAP and not run into the wee, wee hours. There were friendly glances from those who’d met me the night before, and as usual the kids were running around in the cutest way possible. The davening was mesmerizing and the songs magical, and the rabbi’s sermon (which had to fill up a space of about 20 minutes for some reason about the rules of davening and the time) was interesting, discussing the Sephardic and Ashkenazic traditions of blessing the wine before the second cup and so forth. The service ended, Chag Sameachs were issued, I grabbed my (free!) box of Shmurah Matzo and we headed off to the host’s apartment.
As it turns out, the host was having his first seder, with the help of his
mother and father (a rabbi from the DC area) who were visiting for the holiday. The group for the seder consisted of five men in their 40s/50s, the parents, myself, and another girl six months older than I. It was definitely an interesting (and boisterous) group of individuals. I was hopeful, excited, pumped! We got to the apartment, unloaded our matzo boxes, and after some confused shuffling and figuring out what to say, we three women lit the candles. Then, we piled into the small dining area into our assigned seats — my card said "GUEST."
The host and his father were sharing the seder leader duties — they would be bouncing thoughts and gleanings off one another and the attendants, as well as sharing glimpses into vintage, historical haggadot. The bonus of the seder was that we had the rabbi — a man who had been in the business professionally for 36 years, and who has been teaching for 41 years, not to mention having been a chaplain in the military. This man, he knew people, important people. He had wisdom about Jimmy Carter and the present "situation" — yes, these people were Washingtonians, with grace and wisdom, not to mention stories that were a fascinating addition to the seder table. The singing was melodic and familiar, and although the haggadot didn’t have transliterations, I could follow along — I just couldn’t sing with the crowd. I hummed the melodies and listened to the atuned and seasoned Jews around me, the smiles on their faces, the community and friendship, the freedom that emanated from this group of Jews gathered in this holy and historic ritual — it made me feel alive.
We had the typical food — gefilte fish and matzo and charoset — but there were interesting tidbits to the seder table, including, instead of parsley, we had potatoes. It’s a Polish tradition, and I thought it was beautiful, not to mention helped us get through the heavy portions of the non-meal. The rabbi told us stories about The Rebbe, shared wisdom and asked us questions. I was so proud that when the rabbi’s son (the host) asked if anyone knew what Pesach meant I could share, without hesitation, that I knew what it meant. I shared my tidbit about matzo in the Middle Ages. I listened as those around me asked and answered questions — these people, they were engaged, constantly engaged, in the conversation about our history, our lineage, what it meant to be an enslaved, then free people.
We finally arrived at the meal around midnight — three hours after we had started the seder. This caused complications when it came to the afikomen, since there are rules about the latest time in which you can consume it. And who got to search for the hidden afikomen? Yes, you guessed it, me. I played it off like a chore, but in my mind I was elated. I, this Jew by Choice at a seder table with these Orthodox Jews (note: the rabbi and his wife are Conservative), got to be the child, the Jewish child I’ve always envied for knowing Hebrew and the rituals better than I. It meant the world to me, this I cannot lie about. After some searching and help from a few people, we found the afikomen, ate our dessert, and then the afikomen. There was more discussion, more politics and gleanings, more wisdom and discussion of ritual and then the night was done. It was nearly 2 a.m. and we were all exhausted, but awake and conversing, laughing. We were alive and free. We plodded down the hall, the other girl and I singing a song and arm in arm shuttling down the hallway and down the stairs and out into the night we all went. One of the men flagged me a cab and I was off toward home.
The thing is, it was the most appropriate seder experience I could have asked for. The thing about it is, Pesach is a festival of freedom. Pe, the mouth, and sach, that speaks — the mouth that speaks. Only when we are free can we speak our minds, can we speak openly and with our hearts on the tips of our tongues. And on that night, I truly understood what freedom felt like. I was free to be myself, a Jew, among these people, and it was liberating to experience such a holy, religious, meaningful and touching seder. It was nearly five hours long, but it was the most all-encompassing light inducing moment I’ve had in a long time. It reminded me of how I felt at the Chabad House in Omaha all those years ago at the simple Shabbat table with song and food and laughter and conversation. I felt enlightened and whole.
So it is, friends and passersby, that I conclude my discussion about the first night seder. I am indebted to the rabbi and his wife and their son and those who opened their minds and hearts to let me attend the seder, to share in the mitzvah with them. It’s one of those things that will rest in my mind, gather dust, and be relived each year at Pesach.
Kul tov!