VolleyRav

Truth Even Unto Its Innermost Parts...

2006-05-22T21:44:00.000-04:00

This year, the last of my closest friends graduated from Brandeis. While preparing for all of the commencement excitement, I was tuned back into life on campus (beyond volleyball) and what I found, though not entirely surprising, made me wish for better things for the university’s future than what I found displayed in the words and actions of today’s students and administration.

A little over a month ago, the Brandeis administration made the decision to remove an art installation, featuring the works of Palestinian children, from the campus library (to read more about this see Democracy Now or Haaretz or The Boston Globe). The exhibit, brought to campus by an Israeli student, intended to force the university community to truly confront the complex issues surrounding life in Palestine. While I understand the university’s concerns over how the installation was created and administered, the choice to remove the installation entirely, rather than adjust the issues at question suggested to me that as a community, Brandeis is unwilling to truly engage the real questions of nationalism as they affect Jews, Israel, Palestine, and the future of our globalized world.

Flash forward to commencement. At the same university where the art works of Palestinian children were silenced, an honorary degree was conferred on Tony Kushner. This decision suggests the university administration might, in small doses, be willing to approve nuanced opinions about Israel and Jewish nationalism for mass consumption by the school community.

Of course, this honorary degree recipient was met by student protest (see The Boston Globe). Indoctrinated as children, even after four years of college, these young Zionists were unwilling to hear any critique of their ideology. These students challenged that at a school named for the great American Zionist Louis Brandeis, they shouldn’t have to give their university’s approval to a critic of Zionism. I would like to remind my now-fellow-alumni that Louis Brandeis was also a Supreme Court Justice, and a brilliant mind, and probably would have been just as thoughtful, self reflective, and keenly critical in his approach to Zionism today as he was nearly a century ago. Given today’s political climate, I believe Justice Brandeis would have had very different opinions about Jewish nationalism, and would have encouraged us to be open to thoughtful critiques so that we might grow as individuals, as a community, and as Zionistist (or Post-Zionists, or in relationship to Zionism in another way).

So what do we make of all of this? Some of what I knew to be true as an undergraduate still clearly holds true today. Brandeis can be a bubble. For some, that bubble is a continuation of the insular Jewish world in which they were reared. I would think that Brandeis as university would be committed to bursting that bubble, committed to college being a life altering experience, not only in terms of growth through emotional maturity and independence, but also an intellectual revolution. I believe that Brandeis has already been just that for many students, and could be that for all of its students, if it would commit itself to the task.

Being a Brandeis grad should mean something, but not just anything. It should mean that you were forced as a student to really challenge the beliefs and ideas that you brought with you to school, to think critically about the world around you, and to love deeply the pursuit of all kinds of knowledge, even when that is dangerous or subversive or has the potential to call into question all that you ever knew before.

As students and alumni, faculty members and supporters, we must challenge our school to live up to its motto. Truth even unto its innermost parts – even when it is difficult, even when it is controversial, even when it is painful.

“If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence..” — Justice Louis D. Brandeis

If It's Spring...

2006-05-16T18:58:00.001-04:00

...There must be OUTDOOR VOLLEYBALL!!!!

Over the last two weekends I've shirked all of my other responsibilities and headed for the green grass and sweet sun (for great weekend volleyball fun in the Philly area check out East Coast Volleyball). Between school, work, and preparations for a great summer at Camp JRF (www.campjrf.org ), life has been completely overwhelming over the last few weeks. But, over the last two weekends, I have been able to step out of my car, drink in the fresh air, and exhale all of the stress and anxiety that comes with the end of the semester.

Recently, davvening has been so unfulfilling, places and words that often provide release and comfort have felt stale, and I've been at a loss for what to do.

But then, then there was spring. Thank God for spring. Thank God that there is such a time each year when the portable fluorescent nets go up on the fields at Oaks and Horsham. Thank God for doubles and the weightiness of the outdoor leather ball. Thank God for games to 11 points, and tournaments that last from dawn to sunset. Thank God for coolers and Gatorade, for grass stains and mud cakes. Thank God for sunglasses and SPF 45. Thank God for all the volleyball from B through Open.

Sitting in class today, wearing my t-shirt from this weekend's tournament, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and had a vision of the sweet sun and the green grass. I saw the ball pop out of my hands and followed my body straight through the kill. I knew that I would keep davvening and find new meaning again in that practice. And I knew that until that day comes, I will always have the sensation of liberation that comes from a full day in the sun, heart soaring, body flying, friends laughing, and the ball bouncing and sailing all the while through.

Thank God for volleyball.

Reflections on the April 30th Save Darfur Rally

2006-05-09T04:39:00.000-04:00

It has been a while since I posted, but I thought I would begin my blogging efforts anew with some reflections on the Save Darfur Rally.

Will The Genocide End?

After three months of intense planning, the April 30th Save Darfur Rally has come and gone. Since then, new talks of cease fires and peace agreements seem to emerge weekly if not daily, suggesting that there might be some chance at peace in Darfur.

For more information about the situation on the ground in Darfur I recommend:
Africa Action
Save Darfur

Rally Reflections

The rally itself was an interesting and moving experience. It was amazing to see so many people gathered together to call our government to action. It was also a tremendous relief to know that after all of the hours of organizing we put 50 RRC community members were able to get to Washington DC and have our voices counted among those decrying the genocide in Darfur (see the pictures here: RRC Rally Photos).

Still, the rally left me with more questions than answers about Darfur, alliance formation, and the relationship of the Jewish community to this tragedy.

Before the rally I wrote a response paper for my Women's Studies class outlining some of my concerns, so I thought I would share an excerpt from there and then share my final reflections:

"When I initially became involved in organizing to end the genocide in Darfur my thinking about organizing was rather straight forward and uncomplicated. There is genocide. It must end. I live in a country whose government has the necessary political and economic capital to affect change, so I need to lobby that government to take appropriate action. As energy around the crisis in Darfur began to build I found myself involved in a variety of coalitions working to affect change in the Darfur region. As I looked around these (virtual) rooms I realized that it felt as if not all of us were there for the same reasons. At that time I couldn’t pin point my exact discomfort, but I knew that there was something complicating our work beyond logistics and political obstacles from the outside.

In Working Alliances, Janet Jakobsen describes women working to end slavery as “moral agents.” She explains,

“Each place women’s morality at the center of activity, but each locates this center differently. As centers of analysis and action shit, hierarchical relations and binary oppositions look different and thus, each actor works the binaries differently. By asserting a particular agency, activists not only constitute their own position, but work to reconfigure others (34).”

After reading Jakobsen I began to identify what it was that was causing this peculiar reaction to my experience organizing around Darfur. Most of the organizing work that I was heading was in specific relationship to the Jewish community. The American Jewish World Service had been instructed by the Save Darfur Coalition to manage the Jewish community’s organizing efforts, so as a seminary organizer I was linked primarily with other Jewish seminary organizers. My ill-ease in this experience came from the realization that while we were all working for the same change, just as the women in Jackobsen’s Abolition analogue, and we were all working from a point of Jewish moral agency, just as Jackobsen’s women situated themselves in terms of women’s moral agency, each group constructed this agency very differently.

Suddenly I was confronted by fear. I realized that while I constructed the center of my moral agency in Jewish teachings surrounding the sanctity of life, I quickly began to see others in the Jewish community constructing moral agency around the rhetoric of “chosenness,” the sense that Jews are separate, and different from others, compelled by God to act as a “light unto the nations.” What disturbed me about this construction of moral agency was not the “choseness” dogma itself, though it is not a tenet of Judaism that I affirm in my own life, but rather the racism that is bred from this principle. Around the organizing table racism began to surface as an implicit rational for organizing. The thought of Muslim – Muslim violence perpetrated by Arabs against non-Arabs was too sintelating for the right wing Zionist factions not to pick it up.

I didn’t know what to do, and I still really don’t. I can’t imagine not fighting to end genocide. But the lessons of the Abolitionist Movement Jackobsen describes are also well learned. How much of a victory has been achieved if genocide has ended and been replaced not by peace, but by re-colonization?

In the end, I’ll go to the rally on Sunday and I’ll have my voice counted among those who will no longer stand idly by. I will also go with my eyes open, and with my voice shouting loud, not just to end genocide, but also to think critically about why the Jewish community has gathered in such large numbers to address this crisis."

Postscript:
At the rally there were thousands of Jews. While I enjoyed seeing many friends and familiar faces, I wondered what kind of coalition had really been achieved, whose voices we were really hearing, and whether we had gathered together truly to help affect change in Darfur, or to let ourselves, as Jews, off the hook - as if to say "we stood up and shouted "Never Again," now we are absolved of our responsibility."

But what troubled me even more so was the under current of racism that I couldn't help but feel. Israeli flags being flown. A young boy, sitting on his father's shoulders, carrying a sign that read "Arabs in Khartoum, just because we don't believe in Mohammad does mean you can kill us!" So much racism embedded in our community, so much propaganda and misinformation. Standing there in Washington after hours and hours of work I felt so torn - as an individual I feel so powerless to affect change, and so I do the only thing I can do and shout. But when I shout among thousands I can't help but wonder if it is the voices decrying genocide the world hears, or the voices of racism and fear.

A WEEK IN EL SALVADOR: First Reflections

2006-01-11T18:56:00.000-05:00

Even after two orientations, I had only a vague idea of what my eight-day trip to El Salvador was going to be like. Every time someone would ask why I was going to El Salvador or what I would be doing there, the only answer I could manage was that I was participating in a delegation of rabbinical students sponsored by the American Jewish World Service, and that we would be doing some sort of work and talking about justice.

Eight days later, I returned from a trip that was, in many ways, life changing.

For eight days I encountered the poverty and promise of the Global South (“developing world”) first hand. I met Salvadorians who risked their lives for the values they believe in, and learned about religious leaders who were martyred when they joined their battle. I saw the power of grassroots organizing first hand. I was moved to tears by the amazing strength and inspiring work of people who may never live with the kind of economic and political privilege afforded to me as an American. I learned about Liberation Theology and the impact of the Church in El Salvador, and was reminded of the obligation to defeat injustice that I will inherit as a member of the clergy. I questioned power structures, even as I was aware, sometimes painfully, of the challenging power dynamics my very presence imposed on my experience.

For eight days I lived among a diverse community of impassioned Jewish leaders and was surprised that after 4 years of working in Jewish pluralism, and living at Brandeis, I was only just beginning to realize the true power and beauty of bringing yourself fully to a pluralistic community. I was inspired by daring teachers and challenging colleagues. I was filled with an immense sense of awe at the possibilities for the Jewish communities future, even as the group challenged me to think critically about my own Jewish future.

For eight days my world was turned upside down, and for that I am most grateful. Back in the United States, I am only now really able to begin processing this intense experience. Over the next few days and weeks, as I process the insights gleaned from this short trip, I will continue to blog and write my reflections – stay tuned.

The Game...Or High School Football as Civil Religion

2005-11-29T16:46:00.000-05:00

It wasn’t going to be much of a contest. Our Mounties had already won the right to play at Giant Stadium for the State Championship, and Bloomfield’s season was already long gone. But there we were, parking on Broad Street and heading for Bengal Stadium. When we arrived at the field we learned that the visitor’s stands that had been our home in past years had been dismantled and we, clad in our Mountie blue, were forced to join the red and white Bengal fans in their home stand.

We climbed the concrete edifice to American culture and found a place to stand, learning that by arriving fifteen minutes late we had already missed the first chorus of “The Mountie Song” marking the first of several Montclair touchdowns. With our team ahead by seven, we settled ourselves among friends and took it all in – screaming fans, blaring bands, cheerleaders, mascots and gridiron heroes. This is the ritual of high school football.

For the last ten years, at 10:30am on Thanksgiving morning the Montclair-Bloomfield high school football showdown has been my home. When I was in high school I was dressed in my blue and white marching band uniform, piccolo in hand, I played “The Mountie Song” hundreds of times each year, there to support my school, and my friends, players whose football legacy would begin and end in Montclair, and players who would go on and make their marks in the college and pro games. Now, six years into the alumni experience, I arrive at the game in jeans, pea-coat and baseball cap. While I still burst with Mountie pride, I go now mostly to renew friendships and anchor myself in what I believe to be the capstone ritual of my hometown.

This high school football ritual is one that many people don’t understand, and for me, one that is both one of the easiest and most difficult kinds of things to explain. I love it because it connects me to time, to place, to home, and to community. It reminds me of why I find Montclair so special, and why I still choose to call it home even after I’ve long since moved away. There's also something particular about the high school athletic tradition that makes me feel like the kids out there are playing not only for themselves, or their school, but for the values that I learned growing up in Montclair, the values that I want to see triumph in this great nation. On a more basic level though, I think I go because it is viscerally appealing. It's tradition, it's familiar, it's comfortable – it's blissful, hot chocolate filled ritual....

“I’m Mountie born and Mountie bread
When I die I’ll be Mountie dead
Ra, Ra Go Montclair, Montclair
Ra, Ra Go Montclair, Montclair
Ra, Ra G Montclair, Ra!”

This year, I only stayed through half time. Just enough time to see my friend’s younger brother perform as band drum major, and say hi to a few old high school friends and teachers. It was enough, our hands were freezing, our team winning, it was time for turkey. So I said my goodbye’s, hopped in the car and headed to the other half of my American civil religion celebration.

Congrats to the Mountie's on their 14-13 win, good luck in the Championship!

Team...Jewish community from an athlete's perspective

2005-11-16T16:02:00.000-05:00

It's been almost a month since my last post, and even though I feel relatively unmoved to write today, I thought it was important to write something, lest you think that I had abandoned the blog all together.

So here are a few quick reflections which I've been meaning to set down for a while about team, and by extension about community.

In the life of an athlete "team" serves several specific and inextricably linked functions.

1) Team allows you to play the game. Athletic goals can only be achieved through team. Even Michael Jordan couldn't have played and won on his own. It is only through team that we can have success.

2) Team provides motivation. Not only is your team your vehicle for victory, but it is your source of motivation. On the most successful teams players work out, practice, and play their hardest out of a sense of obligation to the group, as well as because of the sense of friendly competition within the group.

3) Team is your support. Physically and emotionally athletic teams are one of the best examples of human systems functioning at their highest level. Each piece depends on the other, and you can only truly speak about a player when you talk about their relationship to the group and to other players. On great teams these relationships are both practical relationships on the court and emotional ties that extend beyond the court creating the foundations for solid communication and interaction on the court.

4) Team is family. I know that most students of congregational life will tell you that a congregation's tendency to manifest aspects of family dynamic is unhealthy. I'm here to question that assumption. Necessarily acting like a family creates an incredibly challenging professional environment, and may inhibit certain aspects of practical organizational function. However, watching teams functioning, seeing how they unwaveringly support their members on and off the court, how they work through difficult times and stress between players, how they navigate life and create a lasting sense of community greater than the individual demonstrates to me that there are many aspects of the familial relationship, as manifest in team dynamic, that should serve to bolster congregational life. Teams create an inherent sense of obligation, of belonging, of responsibility, of love, and of purpose while providing a framework for actualizing goals. They do this without ever needing an outside force to tell them this is how it should be, they form organically, and this is what we want for our communities. I believe if teams didn't function on some level as families than they wouldn't achieve the kind of success that they do. Further I believe that team interaction with coaches, administrators, owners and managers could potentially provide the kind of model for congregational life that we need - one that encompasses the best of the family dynamic while retaining the professional distant needed to make the congregation qua organization a success.

I owe a great debt to my college volleyball team. With their help I learned to be the best athlete I could be, I learned to work harder and do more than I ever thought possible. With them I learned what it means to live in community, giving love, support, encouragement, and motivation when I had it to give, and receiving compassion and support when I needed it most. Over the past few years, and particularly in the past few days, I have watched how teams (both mine and others ) have rallied around a player or group of players not only to win championships, but to navigate crises, and even just manage the every day with a sense of kavod for the group as well as the individual. I hope that one day I will feel as passionately about my Jewish community, my shtetl, as I do about my team, because it will prove that we have truly been able to embody the kind of communal civilization that we in the line of Kaplan envision.

Questions New and Old for the New Year

2005-10-19T21:57:00.000-04:00

Feeling like years have past instead only of weeks, I'm finally back in Philadelphia. Boston was a whirlwind experience, with bad luck and frustration turning into wonderful learning and a sense of possibility, and back into a sense of the limitations of time and space all in what really amounts to a few short days.

So rather than to offer some kind of set of abstract reflections on the holidays in total, instead I thought I would post a short list of the ideas with which I wrestled (either on my own or with colleagues and friends) over the last few weeks. As always, my thoughts are lists of questions that begat questions, that will probably beget other questions, perhaps one day I'll have answers, but maybe my role will always be to start, rather than end conversations...

THE CONGREGATIONAL LIFE CYCLE:
If congregations and communities grow like living organisms, than in their first few years they are in need of constant care and nurturing, but may also be surprisingly resilient. How do we nurture these nascent societal organism so that they grow to be healthy, strong and vibrant? What kinds of mistakes are critical and which are the ones that are just natural products of the growth experience?

HIGH HOLIDAY SYNAGOGUE ATTENDANCE:
Why do Jews, at astonishing rates, go to synagogues on the High Holidays? What is it about these days in particular that creates a sense of obligation about synagogue attendance? What does this say about the way Jews manifest their Jewish identities as functions of their participation in communities? Is the heightened sense of importance around synagogue attendance on the High Holidays an American construction? How? Why? If so, what does that say about how Jewish and American civilizations interact?

THE EVOLUTION OF RECONSTRUCTIONISM:
How does the method for reconstructing Judaism look different for this century than it did for the last? What does this mean for Reconstructionist ideology? Theology? How does this development (and ensuing tension) manifest at the RRC? Within the larger movement? How does the lack of a concrete way to articulate Reconstructionism today, distinct but not necessarily entirely separate from Kaplanian Judaism, complicate the movement and college's abilities to identify themselves and their goals?

THE FALLACY OF POST-DENOMINATIONALISM:
It seems to me that post-denominationalism is really a fallacy. Jews who say they are post-denominationalist all have (one would hope) coherent sets of beliefs and structures for practicing Judaism, and these beliefs and practices all fit somewhere on the greater spectrum of Jewish civilizational life. Movements represent benchmarks along that spectrum, so even if one stubbornly refuses to admit to belonging to a movement, their ideas nonetheless will fall somewhere near one of the movements on that spectrum. Refusing to identify and affiliate simply means a frustration with organizational structures, or unwillingness to be labeled, but it can't refute the existence of naturally occurring movement. So, what is my generation's obsession with post-denominationalism really all about? It seems that most of the achievements of this so-called movement toward post-denominationalism have been to open the eyes of denominationalists to see that their denominations have lost ideological integrity. By removing labels the post-denominationalists have succeeded not in proving the worthlessness of denominations, but instead in demonstrating how the movements themselves, hiding behind labels, have stopped doing the difficult ideological work necessary to constantly define and redefine their conceptions of their places (theologically, intellectually, spiritually and culturally etc) in the Jewish civilization as that civilization and the ones that surround it shift with the passage of time and developments of new ideas. Post-denominationalism challenges individual Jews and communities to do this necessary work by refusing to let us hide behind the comfortable labels of our movements. In the end however, this process can not, and should not, result in a Jewish civilization with one uniform approach to Jewish life, but instead should help Jewish civilization develop into a reemergence of Jewish denominations, perhaps in a new configuration and with new relationships with each other, but necessarily creating small focal points around which to create communities that span the spectrum of approaches to living within today's Jewish civilization.

Turning...

2005-10-08T17:18:00.000-04:00

This the season of turning. Leaves lose their green in favor of bright hues of red, yellow, and brown. Days turn from long to short. And we are taught that this is the time of the turning of our hearts back toward God, toward derekh eretz, and most profoundly toward ourselves.

I came here to Massachusetts for this holiday season brimming with hope. I hoped that seeing my friends would be a welcome escape from the pressures of everyday life. I hoped that I would pull everything necessary together to lead meaningful services for my High Holiday pulpit. I hoped to renew relationships with people and places, and also to renew myself, and my own soul. I hoped for time to reflect, repent and resolve...I've found little of what I'd hoped for.

I arrived in Boston, and it was easy to see that time and tension are wearing thin on my best friends, and our relationships with each other are beginning to reveal their battle wounds. A temporary status to be sure, but we all feel it, and so rather than removing the stress from my life, it removes one kind of stress only to replace it with another (though one I admit I'd much rather deal with).

The holidays themselves, thus far, have been a very mixed experience. On Erev Rosh Hashanah, when all I had to do was sing and stand at the bimah next to the congregation's regular rabbi things were going quite well. But then, I took the bimah alone the next day, and it was clear that despite my best efforts, I couldn't bring the gap between myself and the group. Living lives of different experiences, and particularly different Jewish experiences, our expectations for the day just never quite seemed to align. I yearn for relationship with the davvening community when I lead services, but on Rosh Hashanah, I felt like I was performing, and worst of all performing without any ability to read my audience. I don't think the experience is really my fault, I was prepared and executed my goals well enough - but I had constructed goals from my very comfortably Reconstructionist perspective, and I just don't think that's what they were looking for - but I have so little experience outside of Reconstructionist frameworks, that I wouldn't even begin to no how to do things differently - and I'm not sure that I would even want to.

The second day of Rosh Hashanah, this ambivilance, whether or not I need to venture further outside of the Reconstructionist canopy than the traditionalist minyanim of my college days, is bulstered by my experience at Dorshei Tzedek. Though I was never a regular while in school, I occasionaly visited for a Shabbat or holiday, and it felt, as many Reconstructionist congregations do, much like home. Not exactly home to be sure, but a close proximity. It was exactly the meditative, passionate, engaging religous experience I needed. I felt squarely that I need not learn to do anything other than what makes me feel like this.

Just as the week looked like it might be on the upswing, my computer has stopped working, and I broke my car key in the car door (which is taking an enormous amount of time to fix). Amy Sales, a mentor and friend, suggests that I'm living out a sort of pattern. When I was at Brandeis last for a visit my purse was stolen, at Brandeis again and I break my key. She extended the metaphor that I had stubbornly tried to push out of my mind:

We spend our time during the holidays trying to unlock the gates of teshuvah, the gates of understanding, the gates of repentance, and the gates of forgiveness. We approach the gates of memory, hope, and of life itself, all in attempts to gain access to the ultimate gates - sha'arei tzedek the gates of righteousness, and justice. - But what happens when the keys -teshuvah, heshbon hanefesh, tefilla, tzedakah- you have used for so long no longer grant you access to even the most familiar gates?

Searching for answers, and wanting to hide from the frustrations of the past few days. I ventured out into the rain and walked the mile or so from my friends' apartment to the Brandeis Library.

I walked in and my heart was immediately at ease. I came to put together readings for the Yizkor service (hoping to salvage some of the experience as service leader for my High Holiday pulpit). I headed up the stairs, home, to the mezzanine. As I walked up the stairs, I imagined that at the top of those stairs I'd see Hillel, Raphi, and Sharon, studying in the same place they had each day of our time here. But on Shabbat, nearly two years later, they are not there.

As I walk through the stacks of books and I drink in the familiar smell, air, light - I think of my father. He is here in this library, more profoundly than he is anywhere else. Not merely because 30 years ago he worked among these stacks, but because he lives in the overflow of learning and possibility held within the cover of each book. I pick up an old mahzor - hoping that within its pages I will find the comforting guidance of my father who feels so long past. I turn immediately, as I always do, to the cover page, to see who owned this book before it was gathered to this place. "From the Library of Jacob R. Marcus," the Mahzor reads. I pick up another "Rabbi Milton Steinberg" it says simply. They call to me, "feed on our strength" they say, "learn from our wisdom," "read our marginal notes and be fulfilled." I read, and I sit, I close my eyes and ideas and emotions fill my heart. Though I feel drained, I feel finally restful, no longer choking back tears at the week's frustrations and disappointments. I have heard my father's message left buried in the pages of these books. He is here to guide me, and I will learn, and I will feel whole again.

I belong in this library, more than I belong anywhere else.

Slichot

2005-09-25T00:47:00.000-04:00

Just because life is frazzled and hectic with preparing for the high holidays and trying to get course work done is really no excuse for having gone so long without posting. That being said, it's nearing 1am, and really time for me to get some sleep, but before I do, some reflections on slichot...

I remember with such clarity my very first slichot service. Perhaps I had been before in my youth at my parents' synagogue, but I can't recall. What I do recall vividly was my first slichot at Brandeis. It was my first year, and I think that even the concept of slichot was new to me then. Friends from my freshman hall were going to walk across Massell Quad at ten minutes to midnight for the service in the Berlin Chapel. I remember the night being dark, dew already formed on the grass, the chill of the New England fall air accentuating the sense of urgency of our prayers. We walked in and stood at the back of a full room, split by a mehitzah. I had no clue what it was that I was supposed to be doing, except that this night was supposed to mark the beginning of the most serious steps towards teshuvah and heshbon hanefesh, a kind of culmination of Elul in preparation for Rosh Hashanah. The night was short, and intensely moving, even if I participated more through observation that through my own words and actions. It was if I stepped back in time, into a shtetl of Eastern Europe, but a shtetl that felt not remote and far off, but familiar, warm and comforting.

Looking back, I long for the ability to once again step in and out of this shtetl life. Five years later, much better versed in the art of davvening and the structure of liturgy, I yearn for a prayer space that is just that - a space for us to come together as Jews and pray. A place that lacks choreography, that lacks decorum and pretense, but is filled with hearts, minds, and bodies overflowing with prayer and longing to experience the Divine. I know this shtetl that I long for never really existed, it is my own strange, utopian fantasy world of dvekut. But I can't help too but feeling I was never closer to that ideal than during my time at Brandeis, and I let it go all too quickly. Now, in a synagogue service in a cavernous hall, paid for by donors whose names loom large over head on plaque filled walls, I close my eyes, I see my shtetl, it looks and feels like the Berlin Chapel, chilly and damp, paint peeling, voices pleading, crying out for God...I wonder if this world ever existed, I know only that it is there for me in my minds eye as I search for God and yearn for forgiveness.

Battlefields and Playgrounds

2005-09-11T17:49:00.000-04:00

After a day of laundry and reading, I started out to Phoenixville this evening to play volleyball (or so I thought). When I arrived at the YMCA I learned that my game had been cancelled. This was exceedingly frustrating both because of the time I wasted driving all the way out there, and also because gas is so ridiculously expensive. Still, there was really nothing I could do about the lost time and gas, so I hopped back in my little Volvo and headed back towards home. Driving down the winding roads of some of the Philadelphia suburbs' most beautiful and historic communities my frustration began to wane as I allowed myself to enjoy the peaceful solitude of a Sunday drive on a summer evening. Soon thereafter I reached Valley Forge, and the battlefield's national park. Though relatively close to my new home here in Philadelphia, I had yet to visit the battlefield, and I realized that it had actually been many years since I'd visited any of America's great battlefields. Driving through the once-battlefield now-national park I was struck by the way that the site of such utter violence and destruction, heartache and tears has become one of our nation's truest signs of humanity's best intentions. People running, walking, sitting, sleeping - Americans interacting with nature and with history, smiles on their faces they turn this place - once the throws of one of the longest and deadliest wars in our nation's history - into a beacon of peace, and respite. Perhaps it is because today is the anniversary of the attacks of 9.11.01 that I am both awed and perplexed by our capacity as humans to return symbols of death to oases of life. Perhaps it is because we have entered into the month of Elul with it's emphasis on teshuvah that this image, of how time and intention can heal the widest wounds, pierces my soul so deeply. Whatever the reason I found this experience to be so compelling, I leave it now for you to consider - How much teshuvah? How much tefillah? How much tzedakah does it take to turn out battlefields to playgrounds?

Biloxi Blues...Or the hurricane that came to wake the nation

2005-09-07T21:13:00.000-04:00

It would simply be impossible to post this week without talking about Katrina. The devastation in many ways is unimaginable, impossible to grasp hundreds of miles away, and yet feels incredibly immediate. Katrina was a storm of biblical proportion, in every way possible. What I wonder is, when the flood waters recede will America be offered a chance to renew our covenant? Our commitment to humanity, peace, and the welfare of life on Earth? - or will our time prove to have expired? We know now what they knew too in Noah's time - we could have done more to prevent this flood, we could have protected ourselves and each other and avoided some of this devastation, but we refused to look stubbornly passed our own personal desires and aspirations, ignoring the social, economic, and environmental responsibilities that come with being citizens of the planet. So the South will rebuild, New Orleans, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida. Rebuilding is not an unfamiliar task in Southern history, and if memory is any way to judge the future, perhaps this reconstruction, as it unmasks the hidden (or not so hidden) racism and classist tendencies of American society, will bring with it a brighter future.

New Beginnings

2005-09-01T21:38:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my new blog! After the relative success of "My Maccabiah" this summer, I thought I would continue to blog throughout this year, sharing my thoughts, feelings, rants, and raves as I wind my way through rabbinical school and life here in the city of brotherly love. Hopefully I'll be updating this blog fairly regularly, so stay tuned!