Tag Archives: Shema

אחד – ONENESS

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From my blog:

Am I awake or asleep? Maybe a dreamlike state in between the two.

I leave my apartment 4:45 am to continue my journey

But all I am thinking about is my bed, snuggling between my warm blankets, head on my pillow. But then I thought of the people who used to walk, to travel for days, weeks during THIS day to get to the Beit haMikdash (the Temple) and I figured I could suck up the half an hour walk to the Kotel.

I didn’t even have to really pay attention to where I was going, I followed the people, each person coming from his/her home, learning center, dressed all differently, to walk to the same place.
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Present and Accounted For

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Naomi Minsky (Year '13, PEP '15) came to Pardes this year
for the Year Program, and will be returning next year as a
member of the Pardes Educators Program!

nmSince my teenage years I secretly wanted to pursue a career as a doctor. This is not because I am scientific and enjoy learning about the human anatomy. In fact, I go into panic-mode at the sight of blood. I was attracted to helping others live life to the full. Thankfully I have found an alternative route to achieve my aim.

Unlike medicine Jewish education does not literally save lives. However, it supports people to have meaningful experiences and relationships. It is a way to help others appreciate Judaism and approach it with confidence. My Bat Mitzvah involved facing the community and saying the shema prayer. The whole time I looked directly at my grandparents. They were sitting in the front row saying the words back to me. I am indebted to my Jewish education teaching me that the shema is an affirmation of Jewish identity and love of G-d. I felt the beauty of the experience as I was connected to my family, community and religious tradition simultaneously. Jewish identity today is multifaceted, for some it is Continue reading →

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Toxic Davening

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From my blog:

When you are praying the words “Shema Yisrael”, “Listen Israel”, but instead you hear the sound of people yelling at you.

When there are more photographers and journalists than people praying.

After months of hesitation and apprehension I visit the kotel for Rosh Chodesh. I go to finally see what it is like to be a part of Women of the Wall, an organization that some of my friends have been very active in all year. I have come up with every excuse in the book to not go: “I’m too tired, I really need to sleep”, or “I don’t want to get arrested for being there when I don’t even know how I feel about it”. But after realizing I have successfully not gone for 9 months, and I only have 1 or 2 more opportunities before I leave Israel this time, I pushed my self to wake up and go.

I was waiting on line with this huge group of Argentinian Jews who, from overhearing their conversation, had just come from Poland. And they looked like it, exhausted, drained, and happy to be in Eretz Yisrael. With the look in their eyes, like they know the last week of their lives changed them forever, even if some haven’t realized it yet. Continue reading →

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Women and Men at the Wall

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Hello Pardesians!

I went to Women at the Wall this week, and I have to write about it! It was an incredible experience in so many ways!

I had gone to Women at the Wall once before, but I think this was the biggest turnout yet! Also, what gave it a different flavour was a group of 70 Haredi men who launched a counter protest from the men’s side. Every time that the women began to daven, the men would do everything possible to drown out the sound of the women’s voices, including playing the shofar! At that moment, when the shofar was used to drown out the sound of the Shema that was coming from the women’s side, all I could feel was anger and shame! This is a symbol that is used as a call to prayer, and here it was being used to mask prayer. I was glad that I could be there.

Have a wonderful, safe, and joyous Pesach everyone!

Love,
Stuart.

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Singing and Kol Shofar at Women of the Wall

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Singing and dancing at the Kotel

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?

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[Alumni Guest Post] Rosh Chodesh Adar! by Yishai Paquin

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Yishai Paquin (Year '11-'12) is an avid photographer.
Here he shares a spiritual insight that he gained 
through photography:

Sometimes reminders come from unsuspected places. I was learning how to edit photos today when my instructor mentioned that dark layers are for light and light layers are for dark. It is the same basics for printing in a dark room also. Then it hit me! This is what I have been looking for in my photography, a spiritual push! It was not intended to be anything religious but I saw that in darkness there is light and in light there is darkness. Also in darkness a little bit of light will be seen, the great hope! So I have found a link between my spirituality and my photography. May it be the Almighty’s will that it will all work out with uplifting quality!

Sigh Here:

x

And a Poem for the Month of Adar:

Elevate the joy of Being!
Eternal connection of Life,
Elevating the mundane; what is mundane?

To the Life-Giver,
The Holy of Holies!
This Spark I carry!

Human I am meek yet mighty,
Haman dwells close by,
He too will be transformed.

A flicker of hope,
Amelek and a heart of flames,
Afire, adrift, ashore, AMEN!

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[Student Profile] Ben Gurin & Sydni Adler

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sydben

Sydni Adler (Year ’13) and Ben Gurin (Year ’13) met during the Summer of ’10 in Washington DC, as participants on the Mechon Kaplan program of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. Together with their cohort, they took classes on Social Justice and Judaism, and each interned for an NGO; Sydni worked on campaign finance reform at ‘Common Cause‘, and Ben worked at ‘Jewish Funds for Justice‘. Over the course of that summer, the two of them gradually became best friends, as they found themselves constantly gravitating towards one another.

Unfortunately, the young duo had a geographic problem: Ben was a Midwesterner, a third generation legacy student at Indiana University; and Sydni had grown up on the West Coast near L.A., and attended college on the East Coast at Swarthmore. For several months after their Mechon Kaplan summer had ended, they spoke by telephone daily, even though “they weren’t in a relationship”, and then Ben came to California to check out HUC in L.A during Fall Break in October. He visited for several days with Sydni and her family, and then asked her out while she was behind the wheel on the perilous 101/405 Interchange… to which Sydni responded, “Could you just give me 10 minutes?” Continue reading →

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[Alumni Guest Post] Ayeka: The Cherry on my Spiritual Journey’s Cake

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By Mira B. Shore (Summer ’09, ’10; Year ’12)

As a self-identified progressive, liberal, secular Jew growing up at Jewish Day School, I spent a lot of my time and energy speaking about why prayer and G-d were NOT a part of my life. I actively ran from prayer. Once I had my bat-mitzvah, there was nothing my parents could do to get me to synagogue. I prided myself on my rebelliousness and frequently claimed my atheism as a controversial badge of honor.

For university, I continued on my secular path by attending Sarah Lawrence College, named the #1 least religious college in America by The Princeton Review in 2011. While Sarah Lawrence was the perfect school for me in all other ways (academically, socially, professor/student ratio, philosophy, classroom dynamics, etc.) it was very taxing on my Judaism. After my sophomore year, I decided to go back to Israel and study at Pardes to try to find something I felt I’d lost.

Deciding to come to Pardes in the summer of 2009 was a difficult decision for me as a proud, secular Progressive, and I was concerned about how it might feel alienating. I was right. Continue reading →

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I Am That I Am

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Originally posted on my CowBird:

I AM THAT I AM. Julie is 52 and plays the dulcimer. She is a teacher and a doodler. She strikes a note. “Listen up, Israel,” the first note says to the next.

Danielle is 20 and is Pro-Israel, Pro-Palestine, Pro-Peace. She tells me: “To get to the Holy Western Wall, you must first pass through another wall, a wall of security. Some can’t pass, but we do, and we enter in silence where old women cry on one side and old men wrap tefillin on the other.” She says this in Ohio when we drive through the rain.

My father’s name is Barry. My father dislikes excessive apology. My father dislikes prayer. My father dislikes being forgotten. My father says THANK G-D, says G-D FORBID, says nothing when I say “What do you believe?”

Erica is 22. She has one body and ten tattoos.

Yishai lives in Jerusalem. He wears a black hat and doesn’t trim his beard. He married my sister in the summer. He argues when I question: “G-d forgets? Of course I’m going to disagree with this, but I would admit He sometimes acts as if He does, so really the argument would turn to semantics.”

Zev is a child, but wants to be an albatross. “What is one?” I asked him. “One is one! One is everything! One is alone!” Then he smiled and danced away.

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