An outlander arrives in J-town.
Not my first time and G!d-willing, not my last.
In a newish role: student, not teacher!
The book is open.
Disequilibrium: distance from home and life partner,
Jitters, does anyone understand who I am?
Do I understand who I am
In this novel circumstance?
[x-posted to bensongoldberg.com]
A couple of weeks ago, I snuck out of Pardes, and instead of learning Torah, I learnt community organizing, best practices, and how to laugh again. It was fun, it was a refresher, and I made some amazing friends. Here’s what I took away from it:
Masa Leadership Summit’s Group 15
“Honestly, you were just a bunch of left-overs. And that’s why you’ve been put together.”
The task for Group 15 at the Masa Israel Leadership Seminar (MLS), more than anything else, was to overcome this origin story and become a true community. We were British, Australian, Western Canadian, and scattered from across the Western States. We went back to small towns, or isolated communities, or simply disorganized ones. We had no natural backstory, no shared history other than that we were Jews and we were there. We’re here. In Israel.
Continue reading
From my blog:
I am in the US and today with my mom and my great great aunt Eki, we made (homemade) gefilta fish! I always have a hesitation when coming home because I have become more observant over the past four years in Israel, but today, I felt very Jewish and really proud of my family’s Jewish identity.
This bowl is famous and massive. There is about 15 to 20 pounds of fish in here!
From my blog:
Imagine spending seven days without your phone, television, or computer. Okay, now add on the incentive of no listening to music, reading, or writing. And now try doing that without speaking or communicating at all. Not just verbal communication; you can’t even look at anyone else. Oh, and one final, small thing – you’re not really supposed to think either. Sounds appealing, doesn’t it?
Well, yesterday, I returned from a 7-day silent meditation retreat in which I joined about 40 other people just as crazy as me in seeing what exactly that experience would be like. The retreat took place at an absolutely beautiful kibbutz in northern Israel called Hannaton, about halfway between Haifa and Tiberias. From this small kibbutz you could see tree-filled mountains and mountain ranges on all sides with tiny, mostly Arab villages here and there, and with the Sea of Galilee right outside the kibbutz’s borders. Continue reading
Singing and dancing at the Kotel
This Rosh Hodesh was my second time attending Rosh Hodesh davenning at WoW. Last month, I was glad to check it out and feel like I was part of something important but between the cameras and security, I struggled to feel like I was davenning.
This Rosh Hodesh, two amazing things happened. 1) I got to sing shacharit and hallel liturgy with gusto, led by Pardes alumna Lauren Henderson and Joanna Selznick Dulkin. I realized that for me, singing was important medicine in healing my relationship with the Kotel. From my very first visit, when I was 16, I have longed to sing praises to God at the Kotel. Singing is how I express myself in prayer most openly. Raising my voice in harmony with the Women of the Wall, especially singing Min HaMetzar, I felt so present with the narrowness of our situation and my prayers felt so real.
All of this is not to say that our davenning went without incident. While no one was arrested, thank God, there were Haredi women screaming at us that our prayers were an insult to God and calling us names. Some of them planted themselves in front of our group and chanted tehillim at the top of their voices, in an effort to drown us out. And when they were not chanting their prayers, they were shushing ours.
And on the men’s side… I was astounded to hear someone blowing a shofar to drown out our Shma. The thought occurred to me that it must be a sin to try to block someone’s prayers from reaching God. (I don’t believe one can succeed at such a thing.) I was upset and appalled at the ingenuity of the method. But then I got to thinking about the shofar and had my second amazing moment.
2) Kol shofar – the voice of the shofar. I remembered a teaching that on the yamim noraim, the shofar is God’s voice crying into our world. And suddenly, I recalled these shofar blasts on Rosh Hodesh not as an interruption in our prayer, but as God’s voice, either praying along with us or crying out with us.
I am still marveling at the healing of both of these experiences.
I realized Monday night that I only have a few more months here when I will have the luxury of showing up at the Kotel, wearing my kippa and tallit, singing my praise in blessing and protest. I made a commitment to myself that night that even though it makes for a really early morning for me (and I am not a morning person) I need to get up and show up to support this cause. And then, I showed up and got to sing and struggle. And now, I find myself looking forward to next month’s gathering with joy that even overshadows the sense of commitment and duty. Who knows what blessings will find me in Iyyar?
Literally running into (or rather, alongside of) DLK‘s team of 10k Jerusalem Marathon route walkers this past Friday morning reminded me all over again of the thrill that was the morning of March 1st – the Jerusalem Marathon. Although I do have to say that as beautiful as the walk must have been a week later on such a glorious day, I was very happy to wake up to a cloudy morning on the day of the race. The chillier the weather, the less chance there is of an unhappy stomach during a run.
As I told DLK and some other listeners by the coffee station last week, I have never done anything in my life about which people were still talking excitedly so many days later. I’ve realized what was so novel to me about this reaction: I do not remember a time where I have been widely congratulated for something I did physically, not mentally or academically.
Gabby Goodman and Kayla Higgins
on Team Shalva
Enjoying some Kosher veggie food in Philly!
How do I explain how student teaching has been so far? I can offer some emotions that I have been feeling.. excited, nervous, overwhelmed, accomplished, confused, frustrated, proud, awe, happy, tired, welcomed… I supposed this just makes you all picture me a crazy roller coaster of emotions! I will try to be a bit more specific. Saligman is an adorable one hallway school. The students all have close relationships with each other and their teachers. I felt likeI was walking into someones home when I began my time at Saligman. Observing classes all week I began to feel like I myself was back in Middle School. If you looked in my observation notebook you would see my notes interrupted by me trying to get the math practice problems on the board or taking notes on Hebrew grammar. I have learned so much so far from my student teaching. I have been constantly impressed at the level of learning in secular and Judaic studies. My actual teaching started last week. By that time I felt like I knew the students and even had most of the names down (which is shocking for those who know about my name remembering challenge!) I was all ready with my slides and handouts. I was ready to cover my three page handout when all of a sudden the class was over and we had only done one page! I quickly made up a meaningful closer and stood in shock when the students didn’t spring up from there seats at the bell. They were really engaged! I had just taught my first lesson in a real day school! I know the students probably saw my crazy big smile as I said goodbye to them and thanked them for their amazing participation. I was so impressed with the thoughtful answers and detailed questions students asked me during the lesson. (Although some of those detailed questions during the Brit Milah lesson were difficult to answer!) All of my frustrations with details on worksheets and worrying about behavior management and content all was washed away by an immense feeling of self pride and belonging. I knew at that moment that with a lot of work, learning and getting to know the pace of the class I would be more than ok for the rest of my student teaching. I feel very respected by the students, even when I wore my neon green wig for Purim. I can now really picture myself as a teacher in a day school. I am so thankful for this experience and I can’t wait to share more about my wonderful 7th graders with you!.
Originally posted on Ayeka Blog
By Aryeh Ben David (Year ’80)
A few years ago a colleague, Rabbi Gordon Tucker, told me the most depressing observation about parenting. He said, “You’re only as happy as your least happy kid.”
What?! That’s not fair at all.
We have six kids. If 5 are happy and one is going through a hard time, then shouldn’t I be 5/6 happy? Or even better – can’t I be as happy as the happiest kid we have?
But he was very insightful and I have found out that there is a lot of truth in his very demoralizing comment.
Recently I gave a session on gratitude to our facilitators. I asked them to write 3 things for which they were consciously very grateful. Then to write 3 things that they were grateful for, but often just took them for granted. Then I asked them to write about 3 things in their lives for which they were NOT grateful.
Everyone wrote. Then we learned beautiful sources from Rav Kook and Rav Dessler.
Then at the end I asked them to write one more time. This time – to take the thing they were NOT grateful for and reframe it – to try and find some way they can also be grateful for the difficult things in their life – things like challenging family members, debt, stress of deadlines, health issues, and more.
Everyone wrote. I told them that we would not share how they had reframed their difficult challenge because it was probably very personal.
To my surprise, everyone wanted to share. Some through tears and some with smiles, everyone reframed. A week later, they tell me it is still resonating.
We’re only as grateful as the least grateful part of our lives.
The word – Jew – means “one who is grateful”. It’s an ongoing challenge for all of us to become more Jew-ish.
From my blog:
After seven months in the States, living a solitary Jewish lifestyle (meaning, an incredibly hollow one, sans community), day after day of ten hour shifts of packing candy on assembly lines, sitting on my tuchus in a call center selling fruit baskets and truffles to rich elderly folks, and waitressing a few hours here and there at a local Indian restaurant, I’ve somehow found my way back to the Holy Land. It’s been a journey, mostly one of monotony and a perseverance of the type that I didn’t realize I was capable of, and at long last, I’m back; back in the Middle East, in Israel, in Pardes, in Jerusalem, in Rachavya, in my old apartment, with the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, as my unlikely neighbor. I think I’d be a better fiction writer if my life weren’t stranger than fiction.
Because Israel is a place of surprises and unlikelihoods converging together to make up an entire country of simultaneous contradictions that somehow function in a strange, kind of symbiotic harmony that on the surface doesn’t appear to function at all except by happy accident, I find myself surprised, and yet Continue reading
In Parshat Bo we are given the first Mitzvah from G-d. The mitzvah of being aware and sanctifying time with Rosh Chodesh.
“This month shall be to you the head of the months;
to you it shall be the first of the months of the year”.
While reading BO I tried to think about if I was a slave and generations before me were also slaves, how would I react to this mitzvah? It is a foreign concept for a slave to want to sanctify time. Time is not a concept that slaves are aware of or have any power over. It is scary to think of the responsibility in having to plan your time wisely all of a sudden. Then I thought, G-d like a good parental figure, had the Jews play an active role in their change, so they felt the personal responsibility to keep it up. They had to take an active role in making their new schedule as a free people. The Jews are given this command and then given the physical task of the pascal lamb. Continue reading