thinking jewish

Moving Right Along

On the edge of a lake at an ongodly hour, I join eleven other somebodies in a prayerful opening to the day. Two weeks into my stay here on the farm, we finally reached a point of spiritual nirvana, when we can count on meeting our goofy little quorom of ten and be able to sing and and move and whatnought. Such needs, finally met, such happiness. Hurrah.

I watch these teenagers doing their various things, each celebrating their early-morning Jewishness in extremely different ways - so much more learned and engaged than I ever hoped to be at their age. They give me hope, they make me proud, they make it all worth it.

It seems, the more that I follow the up and down motion of emotions in this work, that the biggest gauge of my personal fulfillment in this world is not the substance of peoples' engagement, but the extent to which they dedicate themselves, the extent of their enthusiasm. When someone drags themself down a grassy hill at 7:30 in the morning, they prove themself - for sure. Dedication breeds optimism. And, around these parts, we've got plenty of that. And so I thrive.

Week one is over, week two about to begin - a day of rest lies in between. I look forward to the interactions - to the singing, the learning, the joking, the playing. I look forward to the struggles, and God knows there will be plenty more. There have to be more. There's still so much work to be done.

I feel replenished, and re-determined, and, most of all, excited.

Damn excited.

Shabbat shalom.

On the Farm

Five men and a woman sit around a dinner table at a local family eatery. Across the table, one of the men wears a sweatshirt plastered in Hebrew writing. To my left, another still wears his kippah as he orders the Cheeseburger Special, without the cheese. And I, uncomfortable but fascinated by the varying expressions of Jewishness around me, sit bare-headed and order my grilled fish and vegetables.

...

Thursday morning, market day, the Jews prepare for the second Torah reading of the week. But peoples' primary concerns seem to be more centered on how long the reading will be than on what it's content is. Interactions become terse, and the larger importance is lost.

...

The rain keeps falling, and the kibbutzniks remain stranded in this island of reality on a lake. They try to learn and grow and pray and challenge, but to the left and to the right there remain hinderances lining up to get in the way. One new speed bump after another seems to be being built; so many people seem to recognize it, but so few are able to do anything.

...

I begin my daily wrapping of leather straps in the normal fashion. Five minutes later, I realize just how hot it is outside, and I begin to sweat. My skin swells and, by the time I take off my tefilin nearly an hour later, impressions have been etched so deep into my skin that I worry I have been branded for the rest of my life.

...

A minor, E minor, G, D minor... the musically untalented has finally begun to learn how to play a chord. At 24, he is finally taken on a new trade. Add that to the rituals of diet coke, high-fiber bars, talmud torah and bowling.

Life is great.

Passions

On an especially drunken night in my Freshman year at Cal, I found myself, with a friend, in the dorm room of another student and his roommate. We all talked for about an hour until, for reasons I do not remember, the topic of Israel came up. And the guy who's room we were in had plenty to say on the subject.

The Intifada had just recently broken out, and there were many a vocal Israel hater in the world.

But never before in my life had I come face-to-face with the hate-filled speech of someone determined not only that Israel was in the wrong, but, more so, that the state did not even have a right to exist. I argued with him for at least a half hour, and as the conversation devolved, the statements coming from his mouth became ever more and more painful to hear - a slow progression from numbers and figures to diatribes against the Jewish state and the whole notion of Jewish power.

Finally, I'd had enough. I fled the room and escaped to my dorm hall, where I crouched down on the ground outside my room and sat in shock. I could hardly move. I was shaking. The world around me seemed to come crashing in.

Everything I had been raised to believe and know to be true and right in this world seemed to suddenly be up for question. The very essence of much of my Jewish identity was unexpectedly challenged in an especially visceral manner, and I was unprepared. I did not know how to react. Instead, I felt personally under siege - the world was out to get me. Even Israel could not be my Jewish refuge.

The world was instantaneously an excruciatingly scary place.

The danger with being a passionate individual is that there comes a time when you realize that not everyone cares as much about something as you do. And then there comes an even worse time when you realize that some people even disagree fully with you, and will spend the rest of their lives working against every bit of action you take. It is a painful moment. Very painful. Even scary.

How do you exist in a world where basic truths of your existence seem to be up for discussion? How do you stay committed and energized and excited about the issues you hold dear to your heart when you finally appreciate the level of apathy that surrounds you?

And how do you take the antagonism towards your passion not as a personal attack, but, rather, as a rallying cry to keep on fighting the holy fight?

We all have our passions - each person has something they care about, that they will spend their life working towards. But I wonder if there's a better way we can understand these passions to realize that, just because one person's passion conflicts with mine, it does not mean that I am working against them. Cannot the other realize that my passion is for me, and there's for them? That one person's work does not preclude their ability to think and act in their own way?

Isn't that what it means to live in a liberal, pluralistic, post-modern world?

Road Hazards

Down the street from my mother's house is a gated community like most others in Southern California - picturesque and perfect. All the houses look alike. Inside the gates you are unaware that another world exists. Who even needs to leave?

The community is built along two long, straight roads. To get to a house at the far end, you have to drive down the length of the nearly half-mile long road. And, every 10 yards or so, there is a speed bump. Not just any speed bump. These speed bumps are specifically designed so that, no matter what, every 5 seconds you must slow down to a near halt and pass over its height.

It's aggravating. It is impossible to avoid. It affects every single person who drives through the community, like it or not.

Sometimes I wonder to what extent we build speed bumps in our own Jewish communities - what things do we do that bring the speed of Jewish life down to a snail's pace for those that need it, or those that do not.

A speed bump is very different from training wheels. Training wheels are the perfect way to learn how to ride a bike. They give you a taste of the full experience, but with a safety net on both sides to make sure you are not overwhelmed. Speed bumps affect everyone - those still using training wheels, and those already driving an SUV.

Sometimes we seem to approach Jewish community with such a fear that people will speed down the road at a blinding pace, that their racing will hurt those in training wheels, or that the wide open road will scare those not yet ready for it beyond a comfortable place.

And so we pour concrete. More and more concrete. Slow everything down. Make them stop. Bump after bump after bump.

But speed bumps are distracting. And to those who don't need them, infuriating. Some even choose to move out of the gated community altogether. We don't want that. Certainly we don't.

Is there a better way to give people training wheels and, at the same time, take a hammer to the speed bumps that seem to crop up everywhere? I sure hope so. Let's at least give it a try.

Imagination

What's a Jew look like to you? Take a glimpse at the movie below to see Jews in the Japanese imagination. Pay special attention to when they show Jews praying.

Shalom Campers

One hundred and seventy Jews walk onto the farm. Our home is invaded, overrun. And we're all the more happy for it. What surprises will they bring with them? Who are they? What do they want?

Each has a story. Each is an individual.

But 170 people are a lot to take in. At the onset, they blend together into a giant mass of strangers. They all look the same. They all look incredibly young.

They knew the motsi. Check. And birkat hamazon. Double check.

I see so many kipot. And some even have these weird strings hanging from their shirt. Interesting...

The clock is set.

Three and a half weeks to cram information into little brains; almost a month to pry open their heads and get them thinking, questioning, and thinking some more.

Figure out who you are. Figure out what you want. Figure out what this all means. I'm here to help you try.

Ready. Set. Go.

Out of Sync

Around the intense heat of an over-sized bonfire, thirty Jews gather to mark the end of twenty-five hours of rest, prayer, learning and community. The wood crackled as it popped into the oblivion of ash, smoke and fire.

Lai lai lai lai lai...

The time-space continuum warps and the Jews are left repeating a blessing twice. We just said it. And then we said it again. And then, for a second, it seemed like we'd say it a third time. Round, and round, and round, like, perhaps, it would never end.

And then time and reality kicked back in to its motion, and the blessings moved on. The disunity ended. All of the group were again saying the same words to the same tune at the exact same time.

Fall in line.

Twenty-four hours prior I sat on a dirty floor of a highly-trafficked dining hall with friends. One in particular, a fellow struggler, tried to shrug off the day's frustrations. And I tried to help.

He just wanted to be accepted as himself in this world. He wanted others to chill, to let him be, to accept his dissonance, to realize that this is a heterogeneous society - to challenge his ideas and, at the same time, deal with his actions, 'cause they have no practical affect on their ability to live the way they do too. I saw my struggle in him. And was reassured. And felt strengthened.

Maybe it's just make believe...

This morning I gabbai-ed the most complicated Torah service that the Jewish people has ever witnessed. Honors and readings and more honors and more readings and a Mi Sheberach here and there and here again. And, somehow, it all worked. There were five thousand different prayer books being used by three thousand different people. We moved along. And sand. And were happy. And just enjoyed life and living and being in a beautiful place on a beautiful Shabbat morning.

Dissonance.

And then tonight, I had the honor of watching five new leaders take over their youth movement. At the pinnacle of the event, the Torah was passed from person to person, generation of leadership to the next. As each individual held our sacred text, you could see the myriad of meanings that the scroll held to each person that carried it.

Learning. Stories. History. God. People.

Amen.

One Hand Clapping

There comes a time, every now and then, when you take a look around, figure out just where you are, notice where other people are in relationship to you, and try to understand what to make of it all.

There are times when you take that time out of life, you realize that you're standing all alone. You treked out into the desert, assuming you had an entire people following you, but really they all stayed back in Egypt. Maybe it was wrong to leave so soon. Maybe slavery was good afterall. Maybe they made the wrong choice in deciding to stay.

But, either way, you're in the desert, and you're all alone.

Given, there are other peoples living in the desert. But they're not your own. Do you just pick up camp and go off to be a Moabite, or an Amorite? They seem much more like you anyways.

But you're not a Moabite! You are who you are. You have to stay. You cannot leave. You have to go back. Back to the beginning.

The problem with combining your job with your theological, inspirational and philosophical passion is that every now and then you realize just how far you are from being where you want, no, need, to actually be in life. You look around and everything is out of order.

Everything is annoying. Everything is wrong. Everything is slightly off.

And no one seems to get it.

But don't they?

One hand cannot clap. One person cannot lead. One person can definitely not be a community.

One person.

One hand. Clapping.

Infectious

At the end of the first of the Matrix movies, as Neo, our protagonist, flies around the make-believe world of mind-control, there is a voice-over of his message of warning to the machine slave-masters: he offers his people freedom; freedom will prevail over slavery; once the process of opening up people's minds to the real world around them begins, it cannot be stopped.

Ideas spread like wildfire - especially when they contain in them teachings of openness, of freedom and of change. Once you have seen a wider world out there, one beyond the confines of the cage, of the chains, of the shackles, there is no going back.

Open up someone's eyes to choice and plurality and freedom, and never again will they choose to be enslaved by homogeneity.

It is infectious.

Those in power will, naturally, rebel. They'll fight back, they'll complain, they'll enslave even further.

When the colonists rebelled against the Stamp Act, new laws were legislated. When the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley became a threat, the administration cracked down on all student gatherings.

But, in both of these instances, those involved had already tasted freedom. And that taste is delicious. It cannot be forgotten.

So too is all this true in the world of the People, in the world of the Far Side. The Far Side is, in fact, a place of mind - a place where people live out there happy free lives, unshackled, aware of the world of possibilities around them.

They know what it means to be a Jew: to wrestle with obligation and tradition, to pray with sincerity, to experiment and learn and learn and learn and learn. They reject whole-heartedly a one-way approach to life. There are many.

It is a land open to all. Come and join us.

There stands before you two pills: one blue, one red. Take the blue pill and go back on your merry way.

But I warn you now.

If you take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

There's no going back.

Odor

Throughout this farm on which I find myself for the next two months permeates a smell, a faint scent. I smell it in the Dining Room. I smell it in offices. I smell it in meetings and in programs.

It is a musty smell - you must do this, you must think this way, you musn't be that way. This is proper, that is not, this is how we do things, and this is how you're supposed to as well.

The latest whiff surrounds a culinary faux pas. lunch today was a delicatessen delight: cold cuts, vegetables, bread and cheese. At a camp that often claims to not serve milk and meet together, the event was a sufficient catalyst for discussion and debate around the dining tables.

It's not right. It's hypocritical. Yum! This is great. You should be offended. Quit being offended. I'm offended that you're offended! Stop being Orthodox. Accept me. Accept that. Accept yourself.

So many opinions. Such an uproar. And, in all the hubbub over a few damn pieces of cheese, the real lesson falls on deaf ears: what is kashrut? Where does it come from? How has it evolved over the last three thousand years? Why do Jews keep kosher? Why don't some?

Sometimes, people are so concerned with winning the argument at hand that they forget the important facts behind it. They forget that how I choose to live my Jewish life has no impact on another. They forget that the real goal is nuanced learning.

I must do this? I can't do it that way? Common. We're American! We can do whatever we want!

Knowledge. Wisdom. Acceptance.

That's a much better prize. That's what I want.

Meanwhile, I'm investing in some Lysol air freshener.