Found Objects

2008-05-23T01:05:00.000-07:00

Last Post.

2008-05-16T13:00:00.000-07:00

Last night I met with a few women friends in my class. All of us are older. We were in a lot of ways the long shots in the class, the “old ladies” with extra pounds or disabilities. All have survived serious losses of one kind or another. All of us were told, by someone, at some point, that we didn’t belong in rabbinical school, that the admissions committee had made a politically correct mistake in saying “yes” to us.

We got together in the backyard of a private home, around a hot tub that wasn’t originally intended as a mikveh. Like us, it didn’t look quite kosher but the truth is that it holds the ritually required amount of water, to which we added some frozen rainwater, to make it “living water” as required by Jewish law. A legal work-around, sure, but one that more official mikvaot use in very hot, dry places like Los Angeles. Like us, this funny-looking mikveh was the real deal (from a liberal Jewish point of view.)

We sat in the dark under the moon and talked for a long while about our years in school and the journeys that brought us there. We talked about supportive and unsupportive families, the friends and loving partners who got us through each day, the grit it had taken, and the losses incurred. We talked about what lay ahead.

Most of all, we listened to one another.

Then one at a time, we immersed in the awkward pool, saying the blessing, dunking until every part of the body was under, and at the end, helping each other out. We didn’t want any casualties, so close to the end.

We joked about the fact that none of us could afford a slip or a fall, not now, not with Sunday so close.

Two of us were exhausted from travel (job-hunting!) and went home to bed. The rest of us went for dinner at midnight.

It’s a holy time. It’s a joyful time. It is the end and the beginning.

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I'm going to be ordained with my class on May 18, this coming Sunday. I began blogging in Oakland, just before I left for Jerusalem. I continued in Jerusalem, and here in Los Angeles. With this entry, I'm ending my blog.

Over time, I have found the format at www.43things.com to be more useful for motivating myself and for marking my progress. If anyone is still reading this, and still curious, by all means, check out my entries there at http://www.43things.com/person/adar.

May the Eternal bless and keep us all.

Five Years Ago

2008-03-27T01:56:00.001-07:00

The fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq has come and gone, with 4000 dead American soldiers, and who knows how many maimed soldiers, dead and maimed "contractors," and dead and maimed Iraqis. Five years ago I was living in a basement in Jerusalem. I kept a blog for the purpose of connection with my family, and as war grew close, I kept the blog to distance my family from the my experiences. I've never written about those weeks, until now.

I remember saying to one of my friends, before I left the States in June, 2002, that despite the Intifada, I felt that I'd be quite safe "unless we get into a war with Iraq, and that just isn't going to happen." Then, after I got to Jerusalem, I watched my own government move steadily towards policies that seemed quite insane to me.

I was caught up emotionally on two levels. First of all, I was living in the Middle East, in Israel, where the memories of Scud missles in Tel Aviv were still very fresh. Secondly, in January, my eldest son saw fit to celebrate his 21st birthday by enlisting in the Navy Reserve. I was proud of him, terribly proud, because he did so out of the conviction that he could not take advantage of the contributions of others without making a contribution of his own. I was also worried half out of my mind, because by then the serious sabre-rattling had begun.

As the buildup began, we heard large planes flying quite low over Israel, on their way East. Every time I looked up and saw one, I would think about all the young people in it, young people like my son. I talked with Israeli moms, who were old hands at this. We had a new bond, since most American moms they knew did not have sons in the military. I learned about keeping my chin up in public, but that in private conversations with other mothers, I could talk.

By March, I was distracted by the training we received in preparedness in Israel. We were instructed in the fine art of preparing a "miklat" -- a sealed room in our own homes. Unlike the silly instructions to wrap entire homes in Saran and duct tape that circulated in the U.S., we were issued rolls of heavy-duty plastic and tape and told to go home, pick a room, and seal it up. We were given detailed instructions in how to do it, and told to stock the room with food and necessities for 10 days. Somewhere I still have photos of the plastic cocoon I constructed in the bathroom of my little apartment. I couldn't take a shower without pulling it all down, so for the period of the war scare, I bathed from the sink. The cocoon was stocked with canned tuna, peanut butter, chocolate, water, my radio, and the best bottle of Scotch I could afford. I honestly believed that if I actually had to use that thing against "WMD" I was a dead woman. Of course I couldn't write that to people back home.

We had bomb shelter drills, both at home and at school, and we were issued gas masks by the Home Front Command of the IDF. In addition to Hebrew, scripture, and rabbinics, we took classes in gas mask use. I was horrified to learn that if I had to use mine, I would be unable to see (I'm severely nearsighted, and you can't wear glasses in the thing) and unable to hear much of anything useful (I'm hard of hearing as well.) Breathing is better than either seeing or hearing, of course, but the idea of being stuck somewhere in that thing, unable to tell what was happening around me was a truly scary prospect.

I could never tell whether the Israelis seriously thought we were in danger or not. There is a weird mix of hyperbole and bravado that takes over there when things are bad, and we'd been living in a miasma of it for months, with the Intifada. Either things were very, very bad indeed, or it was nothing at all, and I was not culturally savvy enough to sort it all out. We were told that there was nothing to worry about UNLESS we got word from the IDF to crack the seal on the gas mask box and try it on -- then we would know that the situation was very serious. We were assured that we'd get a call from the school about the same time.

We students reassured each other that no Muslim leader in his right mind would bomb Jerusalem, anyway. Given the press that Saddam Hussein had been getting, that wasn't terribly reassuring.

Purim came and went, and then, one night when I was home in the apartment, working on a translation, I suddenly got the feeling that something was different outside. The street had gone silent, at a time of night when it was generally rather noisy. I had no TV, only the radio, and when I turned it on, there was an official announcement of -- something -- that I couldn't make out. The announcer sounded upset and was speaking even more rapid Hebrew than usual. Panicking, I turned on the computer, and discovered that the IDF had indeed put out the word: open the box. Put on the gas mask. Adjust the straps. Then put it back in the box.

The news was confusing. Apparently the U.S. had invaded Iraq, and there was a lot of shooting. There were conflicting rumors about the fighting, where it was happening, and how it was going.

I realized, with a shock, that I had not heard anything from the school. I called the woman who acted as a sort of ombudsperson, and she was surprised I hadn't gotten a call earlier in the evening. It seemed that I'd been inadvertently skipped on the list. It seems silly now, but that fact drove me completely over the edge.

For the next week, we toted our gas masks with us everywhere we went. I remember going to a class, and putting it under my chair. It was one more thing to wigwag around, along with my Bible, my dictionary, my books, and assorted paraphenalia. Gradually we got used to them. About the time we did, it was time to give them back to the IDF.

Of course, it eventually became clear that there never had been any WMD in the first place.

I hope I am never again that close to a war. As it turned out, we were never in any real danger, but the perception of danger was an experience I will never forget. I know enough now to know that I cannot accurately imagine what it must be like to be a civilian in the middle of a real war.

It seems to me that we speak far too lightly about the effect that war has on civilians. In the service of being "patriotic" we speak piously about things that most of us know nothing about.

Why I Changed My Mind

2008-03-19T22:06:00.000-07:00

The bumper of my car sports a John Edwards sticker. I haven't been able to bring myself to peel it off, because I had so looked forward to voting for Sen Edwards for president.

Until he bowed out of the race, I was fond of saying that I couldn't believe that there was a woman running for president, a woman I admire, with a real chance of winning, and I was supporting the white guy. But I really believed that Edwards was best for the country, and he was my guy.

Since he bowed out, I've been supporting Senator Clinton. I didn't trust Senator Obama's youth, his shorter time in government, but mostly I didn't trust all that talk about "change." It seemed to me that in every other election, we've got someone talking about "change" and then what we get, if we elect that person, is a mess of some kind. I voted for Bill Clinton because he represented change but what we got was eight years of the Arkansas mafia gunning for him, with the Republicans gleefully cheering them on. I remember people voting for Jimmy Carter, because he represented a change, and the Carter years were a wreck, reaping the various whirlwinds sown years before.

So I was skeptical about "change." I felt like I was too smart to fall for that again, and I felt rather sad for the young people I saw who were all excited about it. Here we go again, I thought, and wished they'd support Senator Clinton. Also, I hated the way the press and the public has accepted the misogyny directed at her; it seemed to me that it had become acceptable to be publicly misogynist, when it was at least not acceptable to be publicly racist. I identified with Clinton; she grew on me.

Then today I read Senator Obama's remarkable speech on race. I heard on NPR that this wasn't the product of a speechwriter, either: he wrote it himself. It is a risky, gutsy, honest, sophisticated speech (how's that for an interesting string of adjectives?) I would love to see this country engage honestly with the issue of race. I would love to see us all admit that we're suspicious of each other, but that we want our lives to be better than they are. I would love to see the lively discussion that Obama calls for; I would love to participate in it. I cannot imagine a better antidote to the Bush Presidencies Part Deux and their damage to our international standing than this intelligent, honest man with the very un-WASPy name.

I'm still rather skeptical about "change" as the theme for a campaign, but that's because I'm cranky and jaded and my move into political adulthood coincided with Watergate, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter. But I am enthusiastic about voting for a wise and well-educated person of courage, and that's what I see in Barack Obama.

I don't know how much "change" he can really pull off. But I'd love for him to have the chance to try.

St. Patrick's Day

2008-03-14T02:35:00.000-07:00

There's an interesting op-ed piece in today's NY Times about Irish-American heritage. Online, it's followed by an even more interesting argument, in bulletin-board form, about all sorts of related issues: Irish vs.Irish-American identity, the relevance of the Great Hunger, the Celtic Tiger, and more.

When I was an Irish-American kid in Catholic school, the main thing on St. Patrick's Day was to remember to wear green so you didn't get pinched. I remember asking my grandmother about it, she who went to great lengths to impress the family's Irish heritage on me. I was surprised to find that she didn't have much use for St. Patrick's Day. St. Patrick himself was fine -- she was down with most saints -- but the American celebration seemed to her to be an opportunity for Irish-Americans to make themselves appear to be superstitious, drunk, and harmless. She wasn't interested in leprechauns; she wanted me to appreciate a great heritage of scholarship, poetry, and toughness. Specifically, she drilled it into me that our ancestors had had to be tough, simply to survive to come to America. Peter and Bridget Carroll nearly died on the coffin ship, and were so anxious to put it behind them that the family forgot the its name. She told me they were from County Roscommon, that they had survived a great disaster, and that when they got here, all they wanted was to have a farm of their own. Peter worked on the railroad, and Bridget made lace, and they traveled with the railroad until they had enough money to buy a rocky little "holler" in Dickson County, Tennessee. They lived there all the rest of their lives and are buried there today. They were not wanted in America, and they came anyway. They spoke Irish, as did their children, and by my grandmother's generation, it had become a weird little private language that was spoken by no one except the Carrolls and Cunniffs of Dickson County Tennessee.

The Civil War was not their war, as far as they were concerned, and they stayed clear of it. Living in the battlefield of Middle Tennessee, they fought their own war ingeniously: every time an army came through, Peter and the boys would hide in the root cellar, and Bridget and the other women would go to the door and try to convey that their men were off with That army -- Confederate, if it was Rebels at the door, and Union, if it was Yankees. It was not their war, and they wanted no part of it. They survived.

My grandmother's memory inspired me to take a course in Irish History in College, and to keep reading ever since. The best book, though, is out of print: Harp, by John Gregory Dunne. It made sense, for me, of some of the tensions in family life that I hadn't realized were also a legacy from the dark entry our ancestors made to the Promised Land of the United States.

I am sad that so many Irish Americans are ignorant about our history. I would like for some of my cousins (the ones with names like Hannity or Limbaugh) to remember that there was a time when our great-great-grandparents were not welcome here. Did we learn nothing?

I'm proud to be Irish-American. I still feel like JFK is "my" president, in a way that none before or since ever have been. I notice names that might be Irish, and I follow Ireland in the news. But if you want to buy me a beer on March 17, make it a proper Guinness, not that silly green stuff.

It's done.

2008-02-27T02:32:00.000-08:00

I am sitting at my kitchen table right now, listening to the printer clatter out one page at a time on the "Best" setting. My thesis is done, and I'm printing out the two copies I need to deposit with the school registrar, with my advisor's signature.

"Money & Menschlikeit: A Jewish Ethics of Personal Finance" has taken me most of a year to write. At the moment, I have no profound thoughts. I just want it to finish printing so I can get a few hours of sleep before I have to meet Dr. Adler at 10:30 a.m. Maybe I'll have profound thoughts tomorrow. Or maybe I've used up all my profound thoughts writing the thing. I have no idea.

One of the people who has known me longest, Jim Scott (my ex-father-in-law, not my son) said to me a few months ago, "You've been working on this subject all your life." That's true. I don't have all the answers now, but I've got some dandy questions.

I'm angry.

2008-02-22T22:24:00.000-08:00

Salon.com published an article this week entitled The Gay Marriage Slump.
It's a rather vapid little piece wondering why, after all the fuss about "gay marriage" gay couples aren't storming the courthouses to register as domestic partners in states that allow it. (Notice that word, "allow." Says a lot. Harumph.)

This was my letter in response:

"Why we aren't registered"

My partner and I have chosen to get married in a religious ceremony, but not to register as domestic partners here in California. Our reason? The Registered Domestic Partner thing is NOT the equivalent of a civil marriage. If we register, we get to file the nightmare tax returns that another letter writer mentioned (one set for the state, jointly, and another set for the feds, individually). We get "marriage taxed" by the state, but we still don't get a lot of the rights of married people.

Add to that that my partner is a retired federal employee. Thirty plus years in the U.S. Navy and in federal law enforcement, and I'm ineligible for her health insurance and any other benefits a REAL spouse would receive.

Why would we pay extra taxes, when we get fewer rights? Forget that!

We've married in the eyes of our religious community. We're together until death do us part. But I will not cooperate in the government's marginalizing of our lives, and I sure as heck will not pay taxes for "rights" I am denied.

_______________________

Why post this letter again here? Because I realize I'm really angry about this. I'm tired of being a second-class citizen. I'm sick of people imposing their religious views or (let's call it what it is) their bigotries upon me and my beloved.

I pay taxes. I am married to a woman who spent her entire adult life serving her country. Yet we do not get the same rights that any straight couple who go to Vegas for the weekend can have simply by saying "I do."

I am a Jew. I don't eat pork because I believe I am commanded not to eat pork. I don't insist on a law that won't let anyone eat pork just because I think the Bible says "Don't eat pork." Meditate on that, the next time you chow down on a pulled pork sandwich or shrimp cocktail -- I am not imposing my religious beliefs on you. Don't impose yours on me.

It's called the separation of church and state, folks.

2007-12-10T11:10:00.000-08:00

I got some interesting feedback from that last post -- seems that folks think that they'd be interested my study projects.

So here we go, rather late in the process, but what the heck:

1. I'm working on a paper about the Vow of Jephthah (Judges 11). I think that the response of Jephthah's daughter may hold some promise for adult women who have a history as victims of child sexual abuse (putting that very carefully -- some identify as "survivors," some prefer other designations). Tradition holds up role models for obedient children, but not so much for those who have been betrayed by those they should have been able to trust. (Yes, Tamar is a wronged woman who stands up for herself, but she's an adult, and the wrong is quite different.)

2. My thesis is driving me crazy. I'm working on an ethics of personal finance, which ought to be very straightforward, but some of my own emotional responses to it, mixed up with some emotional responses to other events in my life have complicated things. It's frustrating, and approaching a crisis, frankly, because I need to produce something deliverable pretty soon.

2007-12-08T17:23:00.001-08:00

It's been a long time since my last post - I don't know if anyone is still reading here or not.

I enjoyed blogging during my year in Jerusalem; it seemed like a good way to reassure the people I love and make a record of the year at the same time. Then, when I got back to L.A., it was still about keeping in touch.

Trouble is, most of what I do is work and study. I love what I study, but I wasn't sure it would make for exactly interesting reading, especially when it was mostly questions. And work more and more involved things that didn't belong in a blog, so there just wasn't much to say.

I love my work. That came back to me last night, as I presided over a Chanukah potluck and Shabbat for my current congregational pulpit. I'm just a bi-monthly rabbinical intern; I officiate at a Friday night service twice a month, more or less, and when there are lifecycle events I do those. If someone is in the hospital, I visit.

Last night was my first night back after a gap, since my father died and I had to miss the late October service, and then for a variety of reasons, there was no November service. I arrived feeling tired and blue, under the weather with a bit of a cold. Once we got to the potluck part of the evening, I circulated from table to table, reconnecting with people, checking in, finding out who had had minor surgery (why didn't you let me know you were in the hospital??? Call next time!) and who was having some family troubles (let's make an appointment to talk, here's my email) and who had had a great trip to Israel and who has finals this month and ... you get the idea.

By the time I finished my rounds, something in me had shifted. I'd been feeling blue and tired because my thesis is driving me crazy and the mourning after my father's death has been difficult. After a few hours of leading prayers and listening and checking in and rabbi-ing, I was back in touch with the work I love.

This is a really peculiar job. A lot of it is just showing up: being present to the moment, looking in people's eyes, listening, tapping into the tradition and texts I have learned when that's what they need. Showing up: reading the service at the burial of a woman who has no family left to bury her. Some of it has to do with orienting a Jewish frame for people's ordinary lives and decisions. Most of it is not about great scholarship or great leadership or great anything, just calm presence and occasionally, a nudge in a new direction. God-talk is not comfortable for many liberal Jews; I'm going to accomplish more by living out the Divine Attributes than I am talking about them.

"Adonai, Adonai, El, Rachum v'Chanun erech Apayim v'Rov Chesed, v'Emet, Notzer chesed l'alafim, Nosseh avon v'feshah, v'chatta'ah, v'Nakeh." (Exodus 34:6-7)

[TheName, TheName, God, Merciful and Gracious, Slow to Anger and Abundant in Kindness and Truth, Preserver of Kindness for thousands of generations, Forgiver of iniquity, of willful sin, and of mistakes, and the One who Purifies.]

Yes, there are times and places for a prophetic voice, and I can afflict the comfortable when that is called for, but I have to admit, I find the ordinary round very satisfying. I love my work.

2007-09-03T16:30:00.000-07:00

When people ask me where I'm "from," I always pause for a moment, because it could mean a lot of things.

I still have a mild Southern accent, even after 21 years on the West Coast, and sometimes the question is really, "Is that Tennessee or Texas that I hear?" It annoys me when people assume I am from Texas. I have never mis-pronounced "nuclear" as "nukular" in my life, not once. If that's the question, then I say I'm from Williamson County, Tennessee. If I say "Brentwood, TN" then they say, "Oh, Nashville," but when I was a kid, Brentwood was not a suburb. Brentwood was barely a post office when they brought me home from the hospital in 1955, and Nashville was another world.

Even if they are not asking about the accent, questions remain. Most nights I sleep in an apartment in Marina del Rey, CA., one of the many little towns that Los Angeles ate sometime in the last century. It is not really "home," however; it is where I sleep most nights, because Hebrew Union College is too long a commute from Oakland.

My heart is up in Oakland, CA, although it's hard to put a specific address on it. Linda has a home on the San Leandro border where I am found whenever I get a chance to go north, but I've never really lived in it. The homes where I lived in Oakland now belong to other people. My sons live and work in Oakland. Temple Sinai, my Jewish home, is still in Oakland. Many of my dearest friends are there. Most of these things and people are somewhere near Lake Merritt, which was the first place in Oakland that felt like home to me: I drove off the Grand Lake Exit from I-580, lost, looked around me, and loved the place.

Every weekend that I travel up there, I get to see it from the air if the clouds cooperate. The view from Southwest Airlines is beautiful: I see the lake, and the neighborhoods around, and it always makes me happy.

So, what did you do on summer vacation?

2007-06-18T15:45:00.000-07:00

Linda Burnett and I were married in a little ceremony at Temple Sinai in Oakland, CA. The officiants were Rabbis Steven Chester and Jacqueline Mates-Muchin, and the witnesses for the brit ahuvot were Mark Snyder and Dawn Kepler.

Maryann Simpson helped us get organized and dressed, Rabbi David Novak led the sheva brachot at lunch, and guests joined us in giving tzedakah to the Alameda County Community Food Bank as a way of sharing the joy.

Family and close friends were with us, and celebrated afterwards at lunch. It was a great, great day.

2007-06-18T15:41:00.000-07:00

From our honeymoon:

THIS was the stop on the trip I had looked forward to the most: Piraeus, Athens, Corinth, and Mycenae. Those are magic words for me: I have loved the Iliad since I was about ten years old.

We arrived in Piraeus, the port city of Athens. Simply bobbing in the harbor there was exciting: this is the port from which the thousand ships launched (Helen's face? Iliad? Trojan War? right.) Nowadays it is full of ferries, freighters, and passenger ships, not triremes and other warships, but still. It didn't take much imagination to be all excited at the idea that this was the very place where Agamemnon sent Clytemnestra into a rage by sacrificing their daughter Iphigenia for a favorable wind.

We had a favorable bus ("21 Purple") and anyway, we were headed inland. Our tour group was a motley crew, including a woman dressed like a ninja (I later found out she suffers from porphyria and cannot tolerate sunlight), several gimpy types like myself (we actually discussed knee replacements -- one woman had had TWO), a Gnostic priest and her honey, a very young couple in camouflage and khaki, and Linda with yours truly. Our tourguide's name was Georgia, and she stepped very gracefully among questions about everything from goddesses to bathroom locations.

Driving out of Athens, we saw the Acropolis from a distance through smog that put L.A. to shame. Granted, it was a rainy, overcast day, but this was impressive smog. The photo I'm posting has been cropped, blown up, and seriously enhanced; I won't waste bandwidth with the original. Still, we can say we saw the Parthenon.

We drove onwards to the next feature, the Corinth Canal. This is a modern wonder, and from an engineering point of view, it truly is a marvelous thing, even if from above it is basically an enormous ditch. It connects the Ionian and Aegean Seas, and makes the Peloponnesian Penninsula into an island. We stopped there and looked at it. We also found a bathroom there, which for a busload of women is another modern engineering marvel worth noting.

We rode for another long while, to intermittent commentary from Georgia about olive trees and ancient politics, until a mountain topped with ruins came into view. "Look up there," said Georgia, pointing. "That is the site of the Corinthian Temple of so-called Aphrodite." Seems the locals actually worshipped a version of the Middle Eastern fertility goddess Astarte, and called her Aphrodite to make it all nice. The Temple was, among other things, an enormous cult brothel, but looking at it, all I could think was that a man had to be awfully determined to get up there. Anything for piety, I suppose!

That acropolis was one reason that Corinth got such a bad name in the ancient world. It was full of sailors and adventurers and cult prostitutes -- no wonder Paul of Tarsus, aka St. Paul, felt the need to lecture the inhabitants on the virtues of agape, or brotherly love! Judging from the ruins, it was also a lovely city. I'll post some photos so you can see what's left of the ancient agora [city center]. The acropolis was not accessible to us (45 min of hard climbing) but the agora was very accessible, and had a museum nearby of artifacts that are still being discovered as they excavate the city.

We made some interesting discoveries there. The city bema was the presidium the big platform on which public speaking was done. I've heard that, but I'd never seen a bema before, and there it is. It happens that this particular bema was the one on which Paul of Tarsus was examined by the Roman authorities after complaints from the local synagogue. We saw bits of the local of the Greek city assembly,synagogue, also: only two small pieces are identifiable, and they were recovered after reuse as parts of other buildings. There is a capital from a column in the museum that has menorot with etrog and lulav, which we spotted almost immediately. There is also an inscription that has the last three letters of the word "synagogue" in Greek along with the first four letters of "Hebrew." According to the guide, that's all that is left of it, and those parts had been recycled as building stone for other, more recent structures.

We saw several bas relief sculptures of a battle between Amazons and Greeks, and beautiful sculptures. All in all, we could have stayed longer, and seen more, but it was time for Mycenae.

We drove some more, and that was when Georgia began to make ominous noises about Mycenae. "We will wait to eat lunch," she said, "It's a very big climb, not good after lunch." Those among us with orthopedic issues sat up and took notice. How much of a climb? Pretty good climb, she assured us. We looked around, and you could feel the resolve hardening in that bus: we'd come to see Agamemnon's city, and by golly, we were gonna see it!

We drove on and on, and Georgia told us about the quarry the archaeologists have found, from which huge stones of the special composite stone were carved for the Lion Gate and the Tomb of Agamemnon. It's miles from Mycenae (since we passed it on the way, we were sure of this) and no one knows how they hauled stones of as much as 100 tons all that distance in the 15th century before the common era. The inhabitants of Mycenae are mysterious to us; they may have been ancestors of modern day Greeks, but nothing is sure.

Finally we saw the double hills that were Heinrich Schliemann's clue that this was indeed the site of Agamemnon's city. Mycenae lies between them, with a view for miles and natural defenses on all sides but one. Approaching, we could see the excavation like a brown scar between the green hills. We parked, descended from the bus, and began the climb up the hill. Georgia was right: it was daunting. I left everything but my camera on the bus and began to put one foot in front of the other, climbing up the path. To our right, archaeologists continued the work of excavation, digging trenches to explore what lay beneath the soil.

The path curved upward to the right, and in the distance, I saw the Lion Gate ahead, looking just as it had in the photos. It is a huge structure, with great lion bodies topping it, a marvel of construction and a work of art. You can see in the photo that it dwarfs the people beneath it. The stones are enormous -- they reminded me of the foundation stones in the lowest levels of the Western Wall in Jerusalem-- and they came from a quarry over ten miles away. This is the only approach to the city, and it is fortified not only with a thick wall, but with daunting psychological defenses: the message is look, we can move these stones, and we will eat you as these lions would eat sheep. Personally, I would not choose to invade this city.

But the gate was open, the Myceneans long gone, so in we went. We saw the grave circle that Schliemann uncovered, not the grave of Agamemnon, as he hoped, but the graves of even earlier kings, wearing golden masks. The gold is all in the museum, and there was not time to visit it, but the graves, to me, were more evocative of the time. What an incredible place! By then, my right leg was screeching at me, but I wasn't sorry I climbed the hill -- it was worth it.

Finally, we visited the Tomb of Agamemnon, also known as the Treasury of Atreus. Both kings had been buried in this great beehive shaped tomb, because after Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon (in his bath!) she had his body unceremoniously put in his father Atreus's tomb. Still, it's pretty darn impressive, a giant human-made hill enclosing a hollow beehive of the mammoth stones from that quarry miles away. The entrance is the only part that photographs well, but as you can see, it is if anything even more impressive than the Lion Gate. The lintel stone (above the door) is the largest stone of all, weighing over 100 tons.

Later we had lunch at a nice place ("Agamemnon's," of course) and took the long bus ride back to the port. We arrived tired, bruised, gimpy, and happy, just in time for the crew of the Veendam to shoo us aboard and pull up the gangway. Then, like the ancient Greek armies, we sailed out of Piraeus and into the sea.

2007-02-03T16:37:00.000-08:00

I love to bake bread.

Yes, I know, in a traditional mode, one does not bake bread on Shabbat. One bakes challah on yom shishi [Friday] but one does not bake on Shabbat.

My understanding of Shabbat, though, is that it is a day different from all other days, a day of rest, a taste of olam habah [the world to come], a day for enjoyment and family. And it is the one day of the week I bake. My sweetie and I spend Shabbat afternoon sitting in the warm kitchen, gradually assembling a nice soup, shmoozing with family and friends, smooching if family and friends don't show up, and I make bread.

Once upon a time, about 30 years ago, I made all the bread for my family. Breadmaking was sanity, health, and love. Now I do other things (perhaps saner things?) for sanity, health, and love, but on Shabbat afternoon, I love to bake a loaf of bread. Not challah -- usually a double measure of bread, one loaf of plain and one of whatever suits my fancy that day. Meanwhile a soup of odds and ends and leftovers and canned tomatoes simmers on the stove, and the door is open to whoever appears.

In difficult times, Shabbat keeps us going. For me, right now, the loaves of bread rising in the warm spot near the cooktop speak of the miracle of yeast that comes back from dry deadness, the elasticity of love.

2007-01-04T23:43:00.000-08:00

I'm entering the home stretch of my rabbinical school years. The last year or so I've not posted so much, because frankly, I thought that the fine details of halakhah and ethics courses would be less than spellbinding reading for my friends and family.

I have the last third of my internship ahead of me in the coming term, 125 hours at the Jewish Home for the Aging in Reseda, CA. I love that work very much: I feel like I'm making a real contribution and it includes the bonus of meeting fascinating people and hearing their stories.

My coursework is winding down. I'm meeting tomorrow with the Registrar at HUC to go over my transcript and make sure nothing is lacking, but as it stands now, I'll take a couple of courses this spring, and have only a tiny bit left for the fall. People have been asking me all through this process what could possibly take five or six years, and now I have the transcript to answer that question.

The big project on the horizon is my rabbinical thesis, and I'm completely at sea on that one. I hope to have some news in the near future, but for now it consists of ongoing conversations with several faculty members.

Increasingly, I miss my home up in Oakland. My sons are moving on in their lives: the "baby" who started college when I started HUC now holds a B.A. in Psychology from UC Santa Cruz. His older brother is out in the working world, full of plans and building a life. A couple of years back I reconnected with an old sweetheart, someone who'd been my friend for the 15 years since we went separate ways, and we're planning a wedding in May. Wherever "home" will be after my ordination in May 2008 (b'ezrat Hashem!) right now it is with the people I love, and they are all 400 miles north of Los Angeles, along with many dear friends.

I've just overhauled the template for this site, since Blogger.com offered some new possibilities. Welcome to 2007; I wonder what it will bring?

2006-12-06T19:31:00.000-08:00

My friend Emily DeVoto has a marvelous blog, The Antidote: Counterspin for Health Care and Health News. It is exactly what it sounds like, a critical take on health and health care news. On Nov 30 she posted something that I thought I'd pass along: Something's Fishy.

The gist of it is that while it's good for our health to eat fish, some fish are being over-fished for their survival. That hardly seems fair, and beyond fairness, long term it could be really bad news. Her blog entry includes a PDF with a neat little fold-out thingie for your shopping bag that tells you which fish are your best buy from a survival point of view (ours and theirs.)

The good news, as far as I'm concerned, is that anchovies are still on the menu. I realize that may not thrill everyone, but I'm happy. Sardines are good, as is carp. The "big three," shrimp, tuna, and salmon, are more problematic (for more info, read her post and the PDF.)

2006-11-13T20:37:00.000-08:00

It has taken a week for the news from last week's election to sink in: we are going to have a Democratic Congress. I thought I'd be ecstatic if that happened, but now I find I'm just sort of tired and cautiously optimistic.

There is so much to do to repair the damage of the last five years, and I do not envy the new Congress that has to do it. The national budget is hemorrhaging of red ink, Iraq is Terrorism Central, we have (in the words of Colin Powell) "broken it and bought it," and still the bodies keep piling up in Baghdad. The rest of the Middle East is festering, our allies are looking at us sideways, wondering if we can be trusted, and we've repudiated the Geneva Conventions, for crying out loud. Meanwhile our ports are vulnerable to attack, but my eye drops never go near the airport without a Ziplock baggie.

The world hasn't felt this dangerous to me since I knelt with the rest of the second graders in the hall at Overbrook School, praying that God would keep Castro from firing off those nukes at Miami. The difference is that this time I feel like we've mostly done this to ourselves.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know: terrorists. Even there, I'm sorry, I am not going to let my government off the hook: why didn't we hunt down Al Qaeda when we had them cornered in Afghanistan? Why did we squander every bit of the international goodwill after 9/11 on this stupid mess in Iraq? Why was Iraq deemed more important than the real threat of nukes in Iran and North Korea? Why have we run this so-called "war" without any sacrifices at home, with tax cuts and lattes all around?

And why, why, why do we keep calling the terrorists "jihadists" which is, to their ears, like calling them "the guys in the white hats"? Do our news media and our government not understand that when we do that, we are affirming that yes, indeed, we're the Great Satan?

Augh.

As for me, I am still praying. This time I'm praying for Nancy Pelosi and the other new leaders we've elected, praying that they will be wise and prudent and will not blow their precious political capital on dumb stuff like revenge. I'm praying that they will find a way out of these various messes. I'm praying that they can hang onto their souls while they do it.

In the meantime, I shall get back to my homework.

2006-11-11T18:38:00.000-08:00

It's Motsei Shabbat -- the evening after Shabbat -- and I am enjoying the afterglow of a lovely day. I attended services today at Temple Beth Sholom in San Leandro, CA. Behind the large 60's synagogue is the tiny "Little Shul" from the 1890's. It is a haimish [homey] little place, and I felt instantly comfortable there.

Rabbi Harry Manhoff presided, but most of the service was led by a young woman from the congregation, and the Torah was chanted by several adults from the shul's Hebrew program. Very impressive!

The rest of the day was spent eating good food and chatting with friends at home. What could be more perfect?

2006-10-29T15:48:00.000-08:00

In "Freakoutonomics," in the current issue of The New Republic, Jonathan Chait writes:

"Over the last quarter century, the portion of the national income accruing to the richest 1 percent of Americans has doubled. The share going to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent has tripled, and the share going to the richest one-hundredth of 1 percent has quadrupled."

This is serious, serious stuff and I recommend the entire article. Income inequality in this country has grown steadily in the past few years, and the rate of increase has skyrocketed recently. Chait points out that one of the ways we see this is in the economic dissatisfactions of the middle class: despite the fine performance of the economy on paper, those gains have gone to the most privileged in our country. Meanwhile, the poor have gotten poorer, and the middle class have gotten nowhere at all, and prices have done what prices do in a roaring economy -- they've gone up.

Another item I recommend: Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette. It's an interesting view of the woman and the time: the ferment in the streets of Paris is visible only on the margins, an occasional downbeat reference almost lost in the sybaritic consumption, opulence, and sheer silliness of Versailles. The opening scene says it all in shorthand: a servant tends to Marie's toes while she languorously drags a finger through the icing on a cake.

Marie knows that she is a woman whose primary function is as a symbol and a womb: she is there to cement a bit of realpolitik and to bear heirs for the Bourbons. In the meantime, she is free to enjoy herself within the rules of the Versailles court, which means that the only part of her that enjoys much freedom is her purse. Goodies insue, until the revolution comes and the party is over. The movie ends then, allowing the viewer to contemplate the situation without the distractions of the prison and the guillotine.

I've seen some interviews in which Coppola says that she was interested in the idea of the teen monarchs, able to do as they like. Maybe so, but the movie also stands for me as a warning to those of us who enjoy prosperity in days that are not prosperous for everyone.

Marie Antoinette never said, "Let them eat cake." The movie and several other accounts portray her as a nice party girl who did the charitable things expected of her, and who shopped and consumed for fun. She loved her family, was a good mother, and was not much sillier than anyone else around her. A generation earlier, we might not remember her at all. We remember her and her luckless family because they didn't realize that privileges can be revoked until it was too late.

In a country where "the share going to the richest one-hundredth of 1 percent has quadrupled," we cannot afford to be so blinkered. Wake up, America: get your fingers out of the cake -- smell the republic burning.

2006-10-28T19:50:00.000-07:00

I have put some new materials up on the website: this week's Torah study and Hebrew lesson, a guide to saying and writing blessings, and a poem connected with the Nachamu, Nachamu exhibit.

2006-10-28T17:47:00.000-07:00

This Wednesday, Nov. 1, the exhibition "Nachamu, Nachamu: The Heavens Spread Out Like a Prayer Shawl" will open at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, CA. I had the privilege of being one of the rabbinical students in the midrash class that participated in the process with the artist, Victor Raphael, and the further privilege of introducing the artist and part of the work at the school's Opening Day, on August 20, 1996.

This is the speech that I gave that day, and the picture to the right is one small part of the installation in Room 105. If you are in or near Los Angeles, I strongly recommend you come to HUC and see Victor's work; it is transcendant.

----------------------------------

What do you get when you combine one teacher of midrash, eleven rabbinical students, and a world-class multimedia artist?

How do you put windows into an HUC classroom without blowing holes in the wall?

The answers to those questions lie behind the copper-clad door of Room 105.

Last year eleven unsuspecting students signed up for a one term class on “Homeletical Midrashim” taught by Dr. Lewis Barth. We did not know that we were embarking on what would become a year-long project, indeed, that four members of the class would be ordained before the work was complete.

The class studied the 16th Pesikhta of the Pesikhta de Rav Kahana, a 5th c. collection of midrashim. Pesikta #16 is a homily on the haftarah for Shabbat Nachamu, “Nachamu, Nachamu Ami” [Comfort, Comfort My people]. About two weeks into the course, Dr. Barth told us that this was not an ordinary midrash class. Donors Nancy Berman and Alan Bloch had offered HUC the commission of a work of art. Our task was to learn Pesikta #16, and then teach it to an artist named Victor Raphael. He would then create an interpretation of the midrash, a major work of art, for permanent installation at HUC Los Angeles.

In the process, we learned and taught midrash, but we also learned about the nuts and bolts of working with an artist on a commission from an institution. Victor came to our class to teach us about his work process, a fascinating multimedia journey involving digital photography, computer-based techniques and hand-painting in gold and metal leaf. We made a presentation at the Bloch and Berman home, to teach the midrash to them and to Victor, following with a discussion of the structure and imagery of the homily.

Some months after the class was officially over, we met again with Victor to see the work in progress and to help with some of the decisions about the artwork. Victor, Dr. Barth, and our class met with Dax Clark to look at the project from the point of view of building maintenance issues.

Over this time, the initial “work of art” became instead an installation that would, we hoped, transform one of our HUC classrooms into a space for sacred study. Another anonymous donor made it possible to upgrade the lighting and the wall-covering.

This midrash class was an education for all of us. It is our hope that the result of all this work is a worshipful study space, a room that offers comfort and inspiration for both teachers and students. The images are grounded in Jewish texts, and they emerged from a conversation among many different members of the Los Angeles Jewish community: Nancy Berman, Dean Barth, our class, Victor Raphael, Dax Clark, and others.

The title of the work is,

“Nachamu, Nachamu: The Heavens Spread Out Like a Prayer Shawl.”

Now, I would like to introduce the artist who has carried out this remarkable work, who worked with us so patiently and generously: the artist Victor Raphael:

Victor was born and raised in California, earning a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles. His artwork has been collected by numerous private and public institutions, including the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and exhibited internationally, from Denmark’s Museet for Fotokunst to Tokyo’s Metropolitan Museum of Photography.

Please welcome our artist, our friend, our companion, and teacher, Victor Raphael.

2006-10-26T21:32:00.000-07:00

Today was the sort of day I hoped for when I applied to rabbinical school.

I rolled out of bed at 6, and by 7 was rolling out of the garage, on my way to pick up a friend I drive on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We chatted happily, arrived at HUC, and I spent the entire morning studying Ezra 9 and 10 with Dr. Tamara Eskenazi, the hot-button chapters on intermarriage. We "turned it and turned it" and while I am not yet willing to say I know what those chapters say, I do feel safe in saying that the ways I have understood them in the past are quite wrong.

I wished Pearl good luck with her senior sermon and hopped back into the car, driving north to the San Fernando Valley to my internship. On the way, I stopped for a bite of lunch and quickly scanned the Los Angeles Times. (One thing I love about Los Angeles: not since I lived in Chicago have I lived in a city with a truly great newspaper. Even with the recent cuts, the Times is bliss for this confirmed newspaper junkie.)

The Home was all abuzz with preparations for the dedication of a new building, and the residents I serve were a bit buzzy by association. It was a good day for the student rabbi to come and hold hands, and listen to stories, and sing a prayer or two. I stopped for a bit to chat with the activities director, to share concerns about a couple of residents and to see how she is doing.

Then, when my hours there were done, I hopped back into the car, and (the one blot on the day) I joined the crawl of traffic back down Hwy 405 southward. Normally I stay in the Valley and study until the traffic breaks up a bit, but today I had a shiur [lesson] at my Ethics teacher's home, so there was nothing to do but get in the car and try to arrive on time.

It was well worth the annoyance of the drive: Professor Arthur Gross-Schaeffer is a rabbi, an attorney, and a CPA as well as a distinguished ethicist. He outlined for us his methodology for dealing with ethical questions, an elegant system. Beyond the content, though, it was a pleasure to be in the room with a man of erudition, holiness, and humor. I sincerely hope this isn't the last time I study with him.

And now here I am, pecking away at my laptop in the Starbuck's on Venice Blvd (it stays open late, and it's on the way home) since I don't have a high speed connection at home. I'm very, very tired, but equally happy. I learned a lot today.

2006-10-22T13:30:00.000-07:00

This past Shabbat I led services at the Jewish Home for the Aged. My affection for this congregation grows every time I attend services with them.

During yesterday's service, one gentleman snagged me during hakafah [the parade of the Torah around the congregation] and reminded me, sotto voce, that I needed to announce Rosh Chodesh [the beginning of the Hebrew month.] Oops, right, Cheshvan starts Sunday. So, when I returned to the bimah, I thanked him for his reminder and stopped the service to backtrack briefly to announce the coming New Moon.

After the service, a woman in the congregation took my elbow at the oneg [snack after services, literally, "delight"]. "Rabbi," she said in heavily accented English, "We should have out the Torah when we bench Rosh Chodesh." Ahhhh! Right. I thanked her, and said that I would do it differently next time. Then she paused and looked sharply at me and said, "I haf not embarrassed you, I hope? I don't want embarrass you." I assured her that I am a student, I am still learning, and I am grateful for kind corrections like hers. And indeed, she made a point of speaking to me about it privately, quite a trick in that setting.

Now you may be thinking, oy, does this go on all the time? And the answer is, yes, it does. I am quite competent in leading a typical Reform Shabbat morning service, but this is something a bit different: at, JHA, we daven [pray] out of the old Conservative siddur [prayer book] and do a very traditional service. I worried terribly about it when I got ready to lead for the first time. I was going to make mistakes, I knew it. I hate making mistakes.

And I definitely make mistakes, and they let me know about it. The surprise has been the gracious, generous way that these old Jews give me their criticisms. They speak from the heart, in the spirit of teaching, and there is no meanness, no "gotcha" in it. They honor my dedication to the rabbinate, and I honor their years and deep knowledge.

The knowledge base in the congregation is diverse: at least one person (a woman, no less) studied for several years in yeshiva in Europe until the Germans invaded her country and the yeshiva was destroyed, with most of her classmates. The gentleman who reminded me about Rosh Chodesh seems to carry an internal Hebrew calendar with all the complex details. At the other extreme, some know the prayers only by rote. All have decades and decades of Jewish living under their belts, though, and I am absolutely sure that every soul there knows things I need to learn.

Mitzvot [commandments] are a relative matter, I find. I am there to visit the sick, to honor the generations older than myself, to help those who need a little help, to pray, and to assist in the performance of mitzvot. They, for their part, have found a mitzvah to perform too: they are teaching the next generation -- me.

2006-10-16T17:54:00.000-07:00

I spent this past weekend up in Oakland, soaking up the good home vibes. Linda met me at the airport, and the boys and Cheryl met us for dinner. Saturday morning Linda and I went to services together.

Sukkot is over, but I am touched by the degree to which my home and family are a "sukkat shalom," a shelter of peace, for me.

Now I am back at school, trying to figure out whether I'd be better off doing a Talmud project using Word or Excel, no kidding. I may have become proficient in Hebrew, but I'm still fighting with my software!

Oh, and NEWS! Fridge Door Torah is now up and running on my website. It's a program for learning Torah and prayer book Hebrew at home, as a family. Enjoy!

2006-10-08T19:54:00.000-07:00

"The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, then having the two as close together as possible." -- George Burns

2006-10-04T19:30:00.000-07:00

There is nothing in the world that makes me as angry as Jews trashing other Jews.

What set this off? Nothing much, really, mostly casual comments I heard in half a dozen different places over the High Holy Days. It seemed that everywhere I went, all of us were absorbed with two things: how much the world seems to hate Jews, and what a shanda those other Jews are. There's always a bit of chat about those orthodox Jews, those Reform Jews, those Conservative Jews, those uneducated Jews, those Israel-no-matter-what Jews, those Israel-hating Jews, those fake Jews, those bad Jews who aren't kosher enough, those other Jews.

News flash, landsmen: we can't afford this stupidity, this baseless hatred between Jews. You, with the catty little comment about those other Jews, and you, with the juicy bit of gossip about a particular bad Jew, you and you and you: shaddup already. We have enough enemies, we don't need to be our own enemies.

I know, I know, there are historical roots, a nice way of saying that we've been doing this mishegoss for a long, long time. Ezra was furious with the people he found in the land, many of them distant cousins (dare I say, Jews?) The Macabees weren't just fighting Greeks, you know, they were fighting with other Jews. The Sadducees and the Pharisees and the Zionists and the Essenes and goodness knows who else were squabbling about the right way to be Jews, and before you know it, the Temple's in flames and Jews are the new slave labor du jour for Roman public projects. Much as we hate to admit it, the history of the modern state of Israel has been scarred again and again by hatred among Jews. The rabbis of the Talmud believed that the Second Temple was destroyed on account of sinat chinom, baseless hatred, and yet we do not seem to learn.

I'm not talking about disputes for the sake of heaven, those arguments recommended to us by the rabbis of the Mishnah. It is good to sit down and try to parse out just what we should be doing about kashrut, or what is the just and ethical and Toraitic way to act in a given situation. It is good to struggle with the texts and the Law, to dig and drash for understanding. And it is no surprise that sometimes, when five of us sit down to drash, seven or eight possible good opinions come from such a discussion.

But where is it written that once we notice that we do not agree, the next thing to do is to get out the knives? So many mitzvot, so many commandments, stand between us and the bad behavior: we are commanded not to gossip, not to embarrass, not to kill. We are not to tell lies, including half-truths, we are not to pick on strangers, including, I would argue, the Jews who are strange to us.

We are a mere 2.5% of the U.S. population. We are an even tinier 0.22% of the population of the world. We need one another.

I'll do better if you'll do better. Better yet, let's do better together.

End of rant.

2006-09-25T16:17:00.000-07:00

Shanah Tovah! Happy New Year!

My new year began with services just outside Angels Camp, CA, a beautiful little town in the foothills of the Sierras. The Motherlode Jewish Community invited me to lead their Rosh HaShanah services. We davened, we ate, we studied, and we had a good time getting to know one another. I wish them (and you, dear reader) a sweet New Year.

I also had the pleasure this week of attending a meeting of the Jewish Welcome Network at the East Bay Federation offices. JWN is a group of Outreach professionals who meet from time to time in the Bay Area. It was good to reconnect with old friends there, and to hear about their successes and challenges. I am delighted to become a member of the JWN.

I have been thinking a lot lately about Outreach, specifically about Rabbi Alexander Schindler z"l [may his memory be for a blessing]. Rabbi Schindler was the president of the Union for Reform Judaism (then called the Union of American Hebrew Congregations) when he challenged the Union to be more welcoming of converts to Judaism and to interfaith couples. I only had the pleasure of meeting him once, in a very brief exchange in a hotel elevator during the UAHC Biennial in Orlando, FL. My temple president had pointed him out to me earlier, explaining who he was. When I realized I was riding an elevator with Rabbi Schindler the next day, I gathered up my courage and stammered out, "Rabbi Schindler, you don't know me, but I am deep in your debt. I became a Jew only a few years ago, and I'm told that I owe the welcome to you." He looked at me with eyes like bottomless pools, smiled gently, and put his hand on my head. The elevator dinged, the door opened, and he walked out. I rode up to my floor in a daze.

I can't tell you exactly what took place in that exchange. I felt transformed by the experience, charged to do something, I didn't know what. I had no idea that in two weeks, I would receive a call from the UAHC, offering me the opportunity to come in and interview for a position as Regional Outreach Director for the Central Pacific office. I had even less of a notion that after six months in that job, I would be filled with a desire to study to become a rabbi.

Rabbi Schindler died only a few months later, and we are much the poorer for the loss of his vision and guidance. I am just so grateful that I was privileged to meet him, that once.

2006-09-06T17:11:00.000-07:00

Year 5 of of HUC has begun for me. Officially, I am a 4th year student because I will not be ordained until 2008 (b'ezrat HaShem, with the help of God). But some 5th year things have already happened: I have given my 5th year sermon, and, well, it is my fifth year in the school.

I'm very excited about my classes. I'm taking Jewish Ethics with Dr. Rachel Adler, Intermediate Talmud with Dr. Joel Gereboff, American Jewish Community with Dr. Bruce Phillips, and Ezra/Nehemia with Dr. Tamara Eskenazi. This year I will be a Kalsman Institute intern, but since those plans are not yet final (my interview with a possible supervisor is tomorrow) I will wait to share any details.

I've already got more homework "than I can shake a stick at," as my grandmother used to say, and all of it is interesting.

More later!

2006-07-25T01:13:00.000-07:00

It's finished! I just completed the first round of work on my professional website, www.RuthAdar.com. It has a photo, resume, sample sermons, all that sort of thing.

It is still rather bare-bones, but there is enough there for now. I've still got two years of school, after all!

2006-05-22T00:42:00.000-07:00

I'm tired to the bone, and too wound up to sleep.

Today (well, yesterday) was my last day as the spiritual leader of Congregation Etz Chaim in Merced, CA. We had Family Education -- something that scared me silly when I first started, and became my favorite part of each weekend there. Parents and their (mostly small) children gathered at one home, and we learned about a holiday or concept, talked, shmoozed, hung out, had fun, and made something to take home. It scared me, initially, because my experience with teaching had been in traditional age-segregated classrooms, and I wasn't sure what to do with an age range of 6 weeks to 12 years and their parents. As with many things, it was less complicated than I tried to make it: mostly it was a time for Jews to be Jews. The children became buddies and the parents enjoyed each others' company. In a place where each child is likely to be the only Jew in his/her class, that kind of community and identity forming time is priceless.

The weekend began in Oakland, on Thursday, with two conversions, gentlemen who had been studying with me for two of the last three years. We went to the same mikveh [ritual bath] that my rabbi had taken me to for my conversion; it was a powerful experience for me to bring my own students there. The rabbis who served on the beit din [rabbinical court] are both friends and mentors to me, and on a purely private level, it was a sweet morning for me, as well as a beautiful day for our new Jews and the community.

Friday evening we had services, as always, in the music room of the Methodist Church. I was late, the only time I've run late, because I had had dinner with a family in Gustine, CA, and the drive to Merced from there took twice as long as it should. Every decrepit farm truck for miles around assembled to putt-putt their way east on Hwy 132. I finally gave up and enjoyed the scenery, after trying to use my cell phone and discovering that T-Mobile hasn't covered that bit of nowhere just yet. The slough brimmed with runoff from the Sierras, and all the scrub was bushy and bright green. Vineyards were luxurious with new growth. It was a great, frustrating ride.

The service itself was a nice one, a simple one as usual. Our two new members did hakafah [processed the Torah around for kissing and admiration] and the aliyah [Torah blessings] and after I finished reading, one was our hagbiach [lifter of the Torah] and the other our golel [roller and dresser of the Torah.] I did that on the spur of the moment, talking them through it, but I think it may become a regular part of the process for me, teaching the new Jew how to properly do Torah honors. They did wonderfully.

The weekend went that way: we followed the usual routine, with the addition of a party on Saturday night, and I had my first taste of how it is to say goodbye to a congregation I have served. At Family Education, this morning, we talked about Havdalah [the ritual that marks the end of Shabbat and the beginning of the new week] and talked about beginnings and endings. Then we did a special Havdalah, to mark the end of the "old rabbi" (eeeek, that was me) and the "new rabbi" (another student, who will arrive in the fall.)

Then I drove north and west, up towards Oakland, my fourth year at HUC finished at last. I am grateful for all I have learned, and for the people who honored me by inviting me into their lives. But I am really, really going to miss the children.

2006-05-10T10:43:00.000-07:00

Done!! Over!! Baruch Hashem! [literally, Bless the Name!... but it could also be translated, WHEW!]

I've passed Codes (the Shulhan Arukh class that was so challenging) and I think I did well on both the Talmud finals, oral and written. My Hebrew and Aramaic skills are dramatically improved. Best of all, I've learned so much this term that if I made of list of it here, I'd bore you to death. This has been a very fruitful term.

I have a few details to deal with: a graduation ceremony, some tests at the doctor's, cleaning my apartment. I am looking forward to getting serious on the thesis, which has been in mothballs during this oh-so-interesting term. The good news is that I feel capable of getting at the texts that I need without so much help from translations. I've scheduled an appointment with one of the librarians to learn how to get the most out of a wonder called the "Bar Ilan Responsa" software -- a thingie that will allow me to search the Mishnah, the Gemara, the Midrashim, and a bunch of other texts. It is a powerful tool but I had avoided it because I was intimidated; well, no more!

I'm looking forward to having a little free time in which to catch up with current events; the snippets I get on NPR during my morning drive are more tantalizing than anything else. What on earth are folks in Washington thinking? Why hasn't the Enron trial gotten more coverage? Will the Democrats ever get their act together?

Inquiring minds want to know.

2006-05-08T18:36:00.000-07:00

I confess it: I'm avoiding study, just for a moment. For the last several days, I've been completely immersed in preparation for an oral exam on the beginning of Tractate Ketubot of the Talmud, a scenario for my Codes final, and the study of a lot of Jewish legal history for the in-class finals. It is all good, and it is all going around in my head at high speed.

Provided that I don't panic and freeze, I should be all right. Whatever happens, it will all be over by Wednesday noon.

2006-04-20T17:26:00.000-07:00

At the Jerusalem campus, they say that the spring routine is "Purim, Passover, and Packing." Purim and Passover are past, and in L.A. I don't have to pack, but my fourth year is nearly over.

I have one week of classes, and finals. Then, b'ezrat Hashem [God willing] I will put on a black gown and "march" on May 15 to receive the degree of Master of Arts of Hebrew Letters. Some of you may be saying, "oh, good, she's done!" to which I reply, with a sigh, well, no.

We get the degree at this point in the program. There are two more years for me before ordination. At the moment, I can't think past May 10, the day of my last final exam.

Before then, I will lead a service at school, chant Torah at school, give a presentation, take four finals, (two in-class, two take-home), prepare two candidates for the culmination of their conversion process, and, um, I forget.

This week I was sad to hear about the death of Rabbi Gerald Raiskin. I worked with Rabbi Raiskin several years ago, and knew him as a kind man and a gifted teacher. He served Peninsula Temple Sholom in the Bay Area from its foundation, and I know the congregation will miss him very much. The Jewish world is poorer without him.

2006-04-12T11:21:00.000-07:00

Pesach sameach! (Happy Passover!) (in a few hours!)

I'm "off" for two weeks of the holiday, if having multiple papers and other things to prepare is "off" -- at least I'm with family, and the work is all interesting. Northern California is like "Seattle with palm trees" -- rain, rain, and more rain -- I've never seen it rain like this in April, and neither has anyone else.

One bit of lovely news is that the congregation I serve as student rabbi, Congregation Etz Chaim in Merced, now has their website online.

Hard to believe I've already been there three years. My final weekend there will be May 19-22.

Meanwhile, I'm taking a break from Pesach preparation to check in here, since it has been a month since last I posted. This has been an intense term in a different way: I've studied a lot of text, seen my skills improve dramatically, and learned a lot walking the floors of UCLA Hospital with Father Tom Clerkin, one of the chaplains.

The farther I get into the practical training part of my studies, the less I can say about them, which means less to write about here. I take confidentiality very seriously, of course, and if it seems that I say "almost nothing" about what goes on at the congregation or, this term, at the hospital, it's because it is better to say nothing than to get too close to something confidential. What I can say is that I love this work, love it more than words can say anyway.

It is a privilege to be invited into people's lives at moments of stress and crisis, as well as at the ordinary moments. It is a special trust to accompany someone on a journey of sickness, or to traverse a bar mitzvah with a family. I have had the pleasure of working with several people studying for conversion, whose earnest searching has been a special inspiration.

Meanwhile, at school, there are the texts, the sinews of the tradition, tying one generation to another. This term those have included Talmud 4 and the Shulhan Aruch and its commentaries (with a few side trips into the Mishnah Torah to satisfy my own curiosity.) I know more about what the sages say about sick people, and dead people, and mourners, and the marriageable, than I did a few short months ago. And I'm almost done: two weeks of Pesach, one week of classes, one week of finals. Then graduation (Master of Arts in Hebrew Letters -- very cool.)

Then two more years of study. I can't think about that now.

2006-02-26T13:02:00.000-08:00

This past week or so has been a week of challenge.

Robert Fulghum wrote a book he titled, "I Knew It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It." I confess that I have not read the book, but I love the title. I love it even more after 3 1/2 years of this rabbinical school adventure.

Yes, I knew it was on fire when I lay down on it. I sensed that rabbinical school would be the challenge of a lifetime, and the cautious encouragement I received from friends and mentors confirmed my suspicions: rabbinical school is not for sissies.

However, I had done other things that are not for sissies. I'd given birth twice without chemical assistance. I got my master's degree in half the time usually required, because that was the time I had. A pair of muggers tried to grab my bag on the streets of Chicago, and they regretted trying. I've run my own business, and turned a profit as a working artist. I got my kids out of a house that was falling down in an earthquake, and rebuilt the house afterwards. I pride myself on a certain degree of toughness, and I loved it when one of my sons referred to me as a "titanium magnolia."

Truth be told, I'd gotten a little bit overconfident. The secret behind all those things that I'd done well is that they all played to my gifts. Rabbinical school is another sort of adventure entirely; it plays to my vulnerabilities. I'm shy, I'm insecure, my hearing is not good, I have learning quirks that make languages with different alphabets difficult, and I have mobility issues. None of these things are assets for a rabbinical student.

This week it was the language stuff. I do not question that I need the skills that are so difficult for me to acquire. I know that with enough effort I can take my skills to higher and higher levels. I've been blessed with a Hebrew tutor who is a genius with special-needs students, and with friends and family who cheer me on as if this were an Olympic event (which is what it feels like.) By week's end, I was already seeing improvement. By term's end, I trust that I will be where I need to be, if I keep working.

Certainly, the main purpose of rabbinical school is to train rabbis. I trust that by the time I am ordained, I'll well and truly be a rabbi. But even now, even just 2/3 of the way into it, I like what I see when I look in the mirror: I see a woman who who loves Torah enough to struggle for it, who is tough enough to be the dunce in the class. I see a woman with a lot more compassion than she had at the beginning. Last but not least, I see a woman who can read the Shulchan Arukh out loud with fewer mistakes.

Onward!

2006-02-06T23:12:00.000-08:00

Today I gave my 4th year sermon at Hebrew Union College. The text is chapter 16 of the book of Exodus:

---------
"More than Israel has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel."

Ahad HaAm’s famous words are borne out in this week’s Torah portion.

We read about our ancestors, a raggle-taggle band who had a miraculous escape from one of the mightiest armies on earth.

Six weeks into freedom, their food ran out.

Dalia just read us the verses in which the children of Israel grumble that they wish they were back in Egypt.

According to the Ramban, they had been living on leftover matzah from Passover for six weeks.

They went berserk.

They turned on Moses and Aaron, as they had done before and would do again, and God responded with mercy, a promise that there would be a meal of quail that very night, and that the next morning, bread would rain from the sky.

The bread, however, came with instructions: one omer each, no more and no less, with a double portion on the sixth day. On the seventh day, Shabbat, no gathering, and no cooking: just eat the extra portion from the sixth day.

And that is how our people learned to keep Shabbat: they tried to look for manna on the seventh day -- and there wasn’t any.

They learned to gather the second measure of food the day before, and to keep it for Shabbat.

God did not merely command us concerning Shabbat: God provided lessons, forty years of lessons, every week in the wilderness:

Sheshet yamim tilketuhu, uvayom hashvi’i, Shabbat, lo yihiye bo.
Six days you will gather it; on the seventh day, Shabbat, it will not be there.

Our people were sustained in the wilderness by a miracle food that appeared six days a week. On the seventh day, they learned to rest. Granted, later there would be harsher lessons, when some people refused to learn: Their lives ended violently, but the metaphor remained: Jews cannot survive long without Shabbat.

Nowadays Jews live in a different kind of wilderness. We live scattered in diaspora, shuttling between work and home, our families flung far and wide. If we are students, there are lessons to learn, papers to write, internships to attend; if we are teachers, there are papers to grade, meetings to attend, research to do. For all who work in the world, there are jobs and bills and taxes to pay, appointments to keep, groceries to shop. There are all the small, time consuming annoyances: the car that needs service, the doctor’s appointment, carpooling and sitting in traffic.

Just as the ancient Israelites were starving for food, we are starving for time.

The idea of Shabbat seems as crazy and counterintuitive now as the idea that bread could rain down from the sky.

How can we build a "palace in time," as Abraham Joshua Heschel so famously called it, when we have no time to spare?

Spare?

Who ever said that Shabbat would be made of spare time?

Shabbat is the prime time of Jewish life, it is the heart and soul of our tradition!

We have measured our weeks with it ever since the wilderness, and remembered it under the darkest of circumstances. Our day of rest and connection is what set us apart from all other people in ancient times: we alone were truly free one day in seven.

Its oddness and inconvenience today is our witness to the world that human beings are not merely born to work: we are born to live, and to love, and to learn.

Shabbat is the great treasure of the Jews, and today it is an endangered treasure.

We look at our overloaded schedules and think, I just don’t have time:
I struggle with the keeping of Shabbat, especially when I am at my pulpit, and I imagine that many of you do, too. And in that respect, we are exactly in the position of many of the congregants we serve: ask the average Reform Jew if he keeps Shabbat, and he’ll tell you that doesn’t have the time.

It is up to the leaders, folks, up to us, to make Shabbat the priority that it must be.

Unlike our ancestors in the wilderness, who did not know what Shabbat could do for them, we have the benefit of thousands of years of hindsight:

"More than Israel has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel."

We know that Shabbat will keep us, if only we can figure out how we are going to keep it.

And IF we keep Shabbat, we can teach it by example: we can guide this generation of Jews, keeping them safe and connected through the wilderness of "no-time."

Jewish families can rediscover the pleasure of a meal together, of seeing friends at the oneg Shabbat.

Shabbat could enfold our interfaith families! Shabbat honors and supports every member of the family; it is the ultimate welcome.

There is time, on Shabbat, for everyone at the table, for a game of Scrabble, for prayer, for lovemaking, for serious conversation, for silliness and stillness and all the things we are too rushed and tired to enjoy, the rest of the week.

How shall we keep Shabbat?

We have all the resources of the tradition at our service, those and the good sense that our Reform forebears bequeathed us.

I challenge us here at HUC to an honest conversation about Shabbat, a conversation that goes beyond guilt or competitive piety, a conversation that asks, What works? What doesn’t? What does it mean, to rest? What do we need from a Shabbat service? What is a waste of Shabbat? How can we both keep Shabbat and serve our congregations? How can we help one another keep Shabbat?

Shabbat is God’s lovely gift to the Jewish People, a gift we sorely need.

There is a folk tradition that if all Am Yisrael were to keep Shabbat one week, all together, it would bring the messiah on his mule through the Golden Gate of Jerusalem.

I don’t know about that, but I do believe that if enough Jews would keep Shabbat, week to week, it would transform our communities. I believe that the joy of Shabbat could re-enliven our people beyond our wildest dreams.

"More than Israel has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel."

Let us talk, let us plan, let us dream.

Let us keep Shabbat!

2006-02-04T23:17:00.000-08:00

I ran across this quotation by Eleanor Roosevelt today, and thought I'd share it:

Great minds discuss ideas.
Average minds discuss events.
Small minds discuss people.

Next time I'm tempted towards lashon hara (gossip) I'll keep that one in mind.

2006-02-03T17:03:00.000-08:00

I try to pay more attention to found objects than to lost ones, in general, but a news item today made me sad:

http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/ci_3471933

The Merritt Bakery in Oakland succumbed to fire yesterday morning. I'm glad no one was hurt, since it sounds like the fire happened very quickly, but I am sad that the old place has been damaged so badly. The food was certainly not haute cuisine or health food, and the service was occasionally quite strange, but it was always friendly and warm.

I've drunk a lot of Diet Coke in that place, usually chatting away with my sons and their friends, catching up on their lives. It's in the part of Oakland I think of as home, and was a grand meeting-place for soul food lovers, blue hairs, and family gatherings. I'll miss it.

2006-01-15T17:48:00.000-08:00

I hate tule fog. It's pronounced "tooley" fog and according to this article, takes its name from tule reeds that grow in low creekbeds in Central and Northern California. Tule fog happens in the same sort of places one might find tule elk, which are considerably more entertaining than the fog. I have spent some very happy hours quietly admiring the herd of tule elk up in Point Reyes National Seashore north of San Francisco, one of my favorite spots on earth.

Back to tule fog. It's a thick soup of low-lying fog that rises during the night and then lingers, sometimes all day, in low-lying areas. It's a California thing -- it is different from Monteagle Mountain fog in Tennessee (another creepy species of fog) in that it is a low-altitude phenomenon, and in that it is so completely separate from whatever is going on around it. It can be a nice sunny day in California, but if you go to a tule-fog spot, and it was cool last night, there will be a wall of tule fog. Driving into it is like transporting into an episode of The Twilight Zone -- am I still on earth? Does that semi behind me remember that I was up here? How quickly dare I slow down? Do I recall exactly how far ahead was the ancient Pinto with the traditional explosive rear end? Questions like that prey on the mind in tule fog.

The drive up to Merced this past weekend was plagued with tule fog. Today, though, has been gorgeous, crisp and clear. I'm writing this from the LaVal Rd. exit just north of the Tejon Pass on I-5, tanking up on a bit of caffiene before I charge over the top. KVPR , my trusty NPR friend for the northern part of the drive will suddenly disappear from my radio -- in fact, pretty much everything will disappear from my radio for a while. The Tejon Pass area isn't real wilderness (for one thing, an interstate highway runs through it, for another, there are a bunch of little towns hidden up here) but it is rugged enough that it cuts one off from civilization quite thoroughly. There's a 25 mile stretch with no gas or services, just beautiful glimpses of chaparral and secret valleys with a glimmer of a lake or two.

At night it's just dark, lit up by headlights and taillights. Traffic is usually pretty heavy, and I think it must look pretty amazing from the sky, a ribbon of red and white light winding for miles through the pass.

I'll stop at one of the nowhere exits up there, the ones with no lights to mess things up, and check out the view of the night sky. It is clear and windy and cold tonight up here, perfect for stars, and no tule fog anywhere.

2005-12-29T12:48:00.000-08:00

Friends and family have been listening to me tear my hair over writing these past few weeks. I thought I'd share one example of the things I've been working on. This is a writing I did for the "Recovering the Machzor" class.

Eleh Ezkerah ["these I will remember"] is a traditional reading for Yom Kippur afternoon. It is a long martyrology and traditionally, it is punctuated by a refrain, said by the whole congregation, suggesting that these martyrs died for the sins of the congregation. This theology is out of line with that in the services elsewhere in that day, or indeed, in most of Jewish thought.

I disliked the traditional reading, especially the way that it seemed to wallow in gruesome detail, and have attempted to write an interpretation of it that has less gratuitous gore and a theology that I think is more helpful to modern Jews. See what you think.

Numbered readings are set to be read by anyone in the congregation (by this point in the day, the sheliach [service leader] is losing his or her voice and people are restless or sleepy -- readings by congregants are a good idea.)

Sections in italics are to be read by the entire congregation, together:

1. Eleh ezkerah: These I remember.

These I call to memory, late in the long day:
The voices of martyrs, stilled by tyrants,
The voices of our ancestors, murdered by mobs.
I remember the Ten Martyrs, the ten Torah scholars
who were murdered by the Emperor of Rome:

Shimon ben Gamliel was beheaded for daring to teach Torah.
Ishmael, the High Priest was flayed alive.
Akiva His flesh was torn off with iron combs.
Chaninah ben Tradyon was burned alive with his Torah scroll.
Hutzpit the Interpreter asked to say the Shema one more day.
Elazar ben Shamua was one of Akiva’s best-known students.
Chaninah ben Chakmai was killed by poison.
Yeshevav the Scribe urged his students to love one another, before his murder.
Judah ben Dama is lost to history, except as one of the Ten Martyrs.
Judah ben Bava was stabbed to death for ordaining five new rabbis.

Eleh ezkerah: These I remember.

2. Eleh ezkerah. These I remember:

I remember the martyrs of medieval Europe.
“Convert or die!” they were told, and many of them
chose death rather than to deny their Jewish heritage.

Rabbi Amnon of Mayence bled to death after after torture, a prayer on his lips.
The Jews of the Rhineland were murdered by Crusader hordes.
The Jews of Jerusalem were burned alive in their synagogue by the Crusaders.
The Jews of Blois were murdered in 1171 for the blood libel, a vicious lie.
The Jews of York died in Clifford’s Tower in 1190, rather than convert.
The Jews of Provence were blamed for the Black Death, and massacred.

I remember the Jews whose names are now forgotten,
martyrs who suffered and died rather than abandon the covenant.
They were hunted like animals, and they died in public.
No voice rose to speak for them, none came to their aid.

Eleh ezkerah: These I remember.

3. Eleh ezkerah, These I remember:

I remember the Jews of Sepharad, the Jews of Spain and Portugal.
All they wanted was to live in peace, but the monarchs of Spain and
the King of Portugal offered them a cruel choice: convert, go to exile, or die.
Many fled, some were converted by force. Many remained secretly faithful
to Judaism. Vast numbers of them suffered cruelly at the hands of
the Inquisition, only to be burnt to death in the auto-da-fe:

Thus were the great Jewish communities of Sepharad destroyed:
in Seville, in Cordoba, in Cadiz, in Barcelona, in Granada, in Malaga,
and in Toledo Jewish prayers and Jewish voices were heard no more.
The civilization that produced great poetry and science, philosophy
and medicine was scattered to the four corners of the earth, driven
underground, and burnt to death in the city centers. Their neighbors
denounced them, and crowds cheered for their blood. No voice rose
to speak for them, none came to their aid.

Eleh ezkerah, These I remember.

4. Eleh ezkerah, These I remember:
I remember the Jews of Eastern Europe and Russia, the dwellers in the shtetl:
those who died in pogroms, in the Chmielnitsky massacre, at the hands of Cossacks.
I remember the slaughter of children, I remember the destruction of families and homes.
I remember their precarious lives, their pitiful deaths, and I say:

Eleh ezkerah, these I remember.

History took a more murderous turn. The cruel choice of the past –
Convert or die! – became no choice at all. The time of martyrs gave way
to an even more terrible time, when there were no choices, only death,
only murder, only annihilation. Anti-Semitism, racism, and other bigotries
were the scourge of humanity: no choices. Not only did we suffer, but
other races and nations have felt their brutal virulence.
And still, the world stood too silent, did too little:

Africans were bought and sold like farm animals, while the world watched.
Native Americans were hounded, hunted, and murdered, while the world watched.
Armenians were the target of genocide, while the world watched.
Jews were the prime target of the Nazis, slated for obliteration.

What can we say, in the face of the Shoah?
There are no words, no meanings, no understandings, nothing to make sense of it.
The cold machinery piled us in nameless graves,
burnt us to cinders, ground us to dust.
What can we say about the loss of Jewish families,
Jewish minds, Jewish learning?
What, what can one say in the presence of burning children?
And all of this, all of this, while the world watched.
Even today, there are those who deny it ever happened.

But eleh ezkerah: These I remember.

5. Eleh ezkerah: These I remember:
I cannot forget the rare kind face, the furtive hand extended in help.
I cannot forget those who risked their lives to save a single Jew.
I cannot forget the righteous gentiles, who spoke up for us, who went to the camps with us.

Eleh ezkerah: These, too, I will remember!

6. Eleh ezkerah: These I remember. These I cannot forget.
Never again! Never again while a silent world watches.

I may not stand by while my neighbor bleeds.
I may not stand by while my sister is hunted and hurt.
I may not stand by while my brother is starving.
I may not stand by while anyone is homeless.
I may not stand by while there is injustice – never again!

Eleh ezkerah v’nafshi alai eshpechah!
These I remember and I pour out my soul within me!

7. Remind us of the covenant of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs,
The covenant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel.

Remind us of the covenant of the ancestors, as You said,
“And I will remember for them the covenant of the ancestors
whom I removed from the land of Egypt in the very sight of the nations,
to be a God to them; I am the Eternal!”

Do with us as You promised us:
“Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not spurn them,
neither will I abhor them so as to destroy them utterly
and break My covenant with them, for I am the LORD their God.”

Remind us that we are Your partners in creation and partners in redemption: we are Your People and You are our God.

Have mercy on us, Eternal our God, and help us to act on Your behalf in this world!
We who are schooled in the suffering of the oppressed,
let us remember to act on behalf of the orphan, the widow, the hungry,
the homeless, the hunted, the helpless of this world.

Eleh ezkerah! These we will remember!

2005-12-20T08:01:00.000-08:00

This term's coursework has come together in disturbing and wonderful ways; I have spiritual and mental indigestion as a result.

The centerpiece for the term has been a course on Jewish views of Pain and Suffering with Dr. Rachel Adler. We've read widely in there, from the phenomenology of pain to the problem of theodicy, from very traditional views such as yissurim shel ahavah, "sufferings of love," which attributes the suffering of the righteous to the love of God, to the postmodern thinking of philosopher and Talmudist Emanuel Levinas, whose experiences in Europe during World War II led him to insights about good and evil too complex to attempt here. (Check on the link if you are interested. Levinas is amazing.) I'm in the midst of thinking through (again!) my own ideas on the subject. Human evil I can attribute to free will, but the agony of individual suffering is harder to fathom if I insist on a God of goodness and truth?

In Midrash with Dr. Barth, we looked at a homeletical midrash from the Pesikta de Rab Kahana, a collection of sermons from the fifth century and earlier. The specific sermon was composed for Shabbat Nachamu (Sabbath of Comfort) that comes after Tisha B'Av, on the text from Isaiah 40, "Comfort, comfort My people." The sermon looked at the verb "comfort", which can mean to give solace, or to strengthen. What is comfort? What comforts? What is NOT helpful as comfort?

In Recovering the Machzor, (a study of the prayer books for the High Holy Days) with Rabbi Richard Levy, we've been reading texts that deal with these issues, too. Some of them have gotten under my skin so deeply that writing about them has been almost a necessity.

In the process of all these classes, I found myself returning again and again to a folder of exegesis of the Book of Job that I've been keeping ever since I attended a program on Job at the Shalom Hartman Institute my year in Jerusalem. There are a LOT of ways to read that book.

The world around me seems like a sea of pain and suffering, sometimes, between the small and large horrors on the news, and the homeless and sick people I see on the street.

In the meantime, I feel like I've had my own little (very little) tutorials in tsuris [Yiddish for "trouble"]. The burglary reeked of "why me?" especially when the burgles found nothing much to steal and decided instead to vandalize my belongings. I know, free will and all that, but my involuntary reaction to it (sleeplessness, fright, depression) seemed downright unfair. Then after my move to a more secure apartment, I had a more serious tutorial in tsuris -- the temporary blindness and severe pain from a freak eye problem.

One thing I am sure about: I agree with Rabbi Yochanan in Berachot 5a-b (in the Talmud) that I do not love suffering, and I do not love its alleged rewards! I agree with Emanuel Levinas that to talk about the sufferings of others as "instructive" is atrocious. My own experiences with suffering may serve to make me more compassionate, I think, if I choose to use them in that way.

So yeah, it's been a busy term so far.

2005-12-04T10:09:00.000-08:00

It's been almost a month since my last post. This fall has been pretty intense: my apartment was burglarized, I moved to a new, more secure apartment, I developed an eye injury that provided me with a week of the Helen Keller Experience: I'm hard of hearing, and losing my eyesight temporarily was educational. Thank goodness for friends and family and a good doc; I'm fine now.

All that minor tsuris notwithstanding, I've been learning a lot in the classroom, too. One class made a particularly strong impression on me. I finished a reading on the Holocaust and asked myself, what have I done about genocide lately? As a Jew who claims to say "Never Again!" --what have I done about Darfur? The answer: nothing. An entire race of people are being systematically wiped out with as much cruelty as possible, and I've done nothing in the past six months.

I'm working at changing the "nothing" to "something." One part of that effort is to let you, my friendly readers know about some online resources for Doing Something:

-- Take a look at the SleeplessInDarfur blog. A woman working with one of the aid agencies in Khartoum is keeping a diary of what she sees on the ground.

-- Check out the American Jewish World Service page on their Darfur efforts.

-- Did you know that our Congress has cut the aid it was going to give to the African Union, the organization with peacekeeping troops trying to mitigate the situation in Darfur? For recent news about Darfur, check the Save Darfur newspage, and the Humanitarian Information Centre for Darfur.

I've written the White House and all my representatives. I invite you to do the same.

Never again.

2005-11-06T17:58:00.000-08:00

This is a d'var Torah [word of Torah] I gave at the Hebrew Union College Minyan last Shabbat. I've included links to explain words that may be mysterious to some of my readers. "Noach" is the transliteration of Noah's name in Hebrew -- say "noah" and then put a little gutteral on the end.

Ruth

_______________________________________________________

D’var Torah given at HUC Minyan, Los Angeles, November 4, 2005

Parashat Noach reads a little differently this year.

We are accustomed to the familiar tale of righteous Noach, best of his generation, building an ark, climbing into it with his family and a vast assortment of animals to become the second Adam, the first man in The World, Part II.

But Parashat Noach reads a little differently this year.

Since the last time we read it, in Marcheshvan of 5765, we have become a generation to see some terrible things, things reminiscent of the death and destruction in Parashat Noach.

We are a generation who have seen the deaths of 289,000 souls in a monster tsunami.

We are a generation who have seen the destruction of a great city by water.

We are a generation still watching as a record series of giant storms batter the beaches of the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, claiming over 1500 lives from Florida to Texas to Mexico and Guatemala, in the islands of the Bermuda and the Caribbean.

We are a generation who are witness to the horrific earthquake on the India-Pakistani border in which 73,000 have died already, and as a result of which countless more will die of cold and disease before the winter is done.

We are a generation who have learned more than we wanted to about killer waves and broken levees and about the limits of our impressive technologies.

For us, it is perhaps all too easy to picture the sight outside of Noah’s Ark, as it bobbed on the waters that covered the Earth:

We can photoshop the picture from things we have seen, this year, on CNN.

When God spoke to Noach, God said, “Aseh l’cha tevat atze-gopher,” -- “Make yourself a box of gopher-wood,”and Noach made himself a box. And in that box, Noach and his family and a good sized zoo were safe from the storm that destroyed the world.

Oddly enough, a box figures into the story for us, too: for many of us, the natural disasters have happened “in a box” –in our TVs, on our radios, on our computers.

When God spoke to Noach, God said, “Kinim ta’aseh et-ha-tevah” –“Make nests in the box.” The word is usually translated “rooms,” but a ken, is, literally, a safe little nest. So I can imagine that Noach, taking his orders literally, as Noach was wont to do, made a floating box full of comfy little nests, little rooms of comfort and safety to ride out the storm.

And again, reversing it all, most of us have sat in our safe nests, watching our boxes, which contain the natural disasters of the last year.

Funny thing, boxes.

In Midrash Tanchuma, the rabbis tell us that the safe little box full of nests became a nightmare of its own for Noach and his family. Noach and his sons did not sleep for a year because all the animals needed feeding at odd hours. Imagine the endless feeding, the endless cleaning, the cranky animals.

Some of the animals were dangerous, too: in an angry fit, one lion bit Noach, and he was forever after crippled from that bite. The rabbis quote from Tehillim, “Bring my soul out of prison, that I may give thanks” (Ps 142.8) and they said that the line refers to Noach’s prayer to be let out of the prison the ark had become, because life inside that perfectly made box had become perfectly dreadful.

We, too, can suffer from box-fatigue: the newscasters are calling it “compassion fatigue”: a tiredness that comes because we have seen too many disasters on our little boxes. It is tempting, sometimes, to just turn it off, or to give up completely. It is tempting to surrender to our tiredness and our own daily problems.

The rabbis, however, do not give us that option. One of their criticisms of Noach was that he did not do enough to help his fellow human beings. He followed orders, but did not try to save anyone else, or even warn them of the impending disaster. Noach, the man whose very name means “comfort” was a little too comfortable: He was content to build his box, to feather his nests, to save his own neck and not much else.

What, then are we to do?

Look again in Parashat Noach: God spoke to Noach, saying to him,

“Tzeh min-ha-tevah, ata v’ishtecha, u-vanecha, unshe-vanecha itach…” --

“Go out from the box, you and your wife, and your sons, and the wives of your sons, and bring out with you every living thing that is with you.”

Tzeh min ha tevah – get out of the box! Get out of the box and bring everyone with you!

We are called out of the box, out of the prison, out of our comfort zones,out of our safe little havens, out from the easy way, out into the big, muddy world:

Whether it is to raise funds for reliefor to change the policies of governments.

We are commanded to bring ourselves and our fellow human beings out into freedom.

This week we buried a woman who changed the world by refusing to change her seat on a bus.

Rosa Parks, I suggest to you, was the “anti-Noach”: She was uncomfortable and she made others uncomfortable. Rosa Parks dragged us out of our national comfort zone. And I think that we can all agree that her memory is indeed, a blessing.

We read Parashat Noach a little differently this year, as we work to care for one another, to practice compassion and lovingkindness towards those in our daily lives and those we see on our TV boxes, as we step outside our comfort zones, to do what good we can.

May each of us find our way to be a blessing.

May it be God’s will. Ken y’hi ratzon.

2005-10-28T15:49:00.000-07:00

It's almost Shabbat -- what a week!

I moved. This afternoon I returned the keys to the old apt to its owner, and while I think I'm going to miss him, there are other things about the place that I will not miss.

I moved to a new home, near the water. This is the closest I've ever managed to the ocean, and honestly, as close as I want to get. (As someone once said, if you can see the ocean, it can see you, too.) I can smell it, even if I can't see it from my window. Lovely cool breezes.

In the coming week, I have to get back into the routine of school, and catch up on all the work that I neglected while I was moving. Lots to learn, lots to do.

2005-10-18T23:09:00.000-07:00

Sukkot sameach! Happy Sukkot!

I began the holiday last night at the home of one of my teachers. It had been pouring rain all day, so the sukkah was a bit soggy; we ate dinner indoors. Still, it was a pleasant evening of new friends, sweet challah, and truly awful puns.

I've been thinking about shelter a lot lately, as I pack to move to my new apartment. I'm lucky to have a place to live; there are way too many people in this city who don't have a home.

The L.A. Times has done a series on skid row recently, and the articles are heartbreaking. I am not sure what I can do to help, besides contributing to organizations that serve people on the street, but that doesn't feel like enough.

2005-10-06T09:08:00.000-07:00

"I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness." -- Abraham Maslow

"Only in the present can I act."

Only -- I can't act in the past or future. So there's no point in worrying about them, except to take action in the present to make amends for the past, or to take action in the present to prepare for the future (although that one is tricky, since the future is a variable.)

in the present -- I read once that in the months after the Kennedy assassination, Mrs. Kennedy was inundated with requests/offers for causes she could become involved in, work she could do. She felt confused and overwhelmed, and asked a priest she trusted which she should pursue. "Look in your lap," he said to her (supposedly -- I don't know if this story is apocryphal or true.) What was there? Her children. Since I heard that story, I have sometimes asked myself, "What's in my lap?" and have found it a very clarifying way to proceed. What needs taking care of now, this minute?

can I -- No point in worrying about things I can't do and options I don't have. And no point making up projects for other people, since they are not under my control. What can I? What can I? Where does my power lie? How can I use it?

act -- Thinking is good, but acting gets things done. I should not act without thinking, but if I think without acting, I'm wasting my time, the precious present.

2005-10-02T23:27:00.000-07:00

In less than 24 hours, it will be Rosh HaShanah, and I'll be leading services in Merced. This is my third time leading services for the Days of Awe, and the first time I haven't been in an absolute panic over it.

Right now I'm saying goodbye to the old year, which was full of awful and awe-filled things. If this little blog has gone over the line at some time in the past year, I am truly sorry. My aim is to share some thoughts, and to stimulate your thoughts, but not to cause pain.

As for the coming year, it is full of promise. May yours be a year of grace and goodness, learning and sweetness!

2005-09-13T16:30:00.000-07:00

I will never forget my first sight of New Orleans. My parents, my brother, and I had taken a 24 foot motorboat from Nashville down the Cumberland, the Ohio, and the Mississippi Rivers, and we pulled into the Port of New Orleans the night of July 4, 1971. Coming through on the river, it was romantic as hell: fireworks over the city, lights everywhere, little bits of music and cheering floating over on the air, gorgeous. After the sinister miles south of Baton Rouge, where the Mississippi started spreading out into BayouWorld and it became very difficult to discern the channel (but alarmingly easy to discern alligators, even in the dusklight) the festivities in New Orleans were a welcome sight.

Then we put-putted into the Port proper, and I got the living daylights scared out of me. A port full of ocean-going freighters is no place for a 24 foot runabout. The wakes of the big ships were like mountains, even in the cautious waters of the port. We'd fly up to the top of one, as if the boat were going to lift off on an early moonshot. Then we'd plunge down the other side, farther and faster than could possibly be a good idea. I was sure we were going to die.

At last we pulled into the lock to Lake Ponchartrain. Ever since, I've thought of the lake as a safe haven, even though it was also an accident waiting to happen. The thing is, New Orleans is all about accidents waiting to happen. It's like Key West, and Macau, and other places where bidness goes on, some of it pretty evil bidness, much of it pretty necessary bidness, and the tourists come and go.

It had that old-city smell, almost but not quite a bad smell, that carried the scent of rotting things, and urine, and secrets. I fell in love with it instantly, and have fantasized from time to time about living there. I've always said, though, that I am too much of a wimp for a New Orleans August: the wet heat, the carnivorous bugs, the threat of storms. I've always admired people who could stand up to a New Orleans August.

I had no idea.

2005-09-08T18:12:00.000-07:00

There are many good places to send money to help in the Southeast, and many good people trying to cope with the many people who were displaced by Katrina. If you haven't already done so, consider sending cash to the Union for Reform Judaism Hurricane Relief Fund or go to the Red Cross website to volunteer and/or contribute.

My high school classmate, Rebecca, forwarded an email to me last week from Father Tim Hurd, in Zwolle, LA:

-----------------------------

Katrina did not send wind or water this far west, so we still have power etc. What has happened though is that buses of evacuees are being herded into every nook and cranny of the state. here at St Joseph's in Zwolle we're expecting another 100 or so to arrive at any time. The parishioners and local people here are trying to be helpful and are remarkably and tremendously generous/

The greatest problem/fear: There are at least two kinds of evacuees.
1. Those who left as family units before the storm: they have some sort of transportation, a few belongings, etc.
2. Those who are being picked up along the highways, those who would not/could not leave before, those being plucked up out of the sewage/mess in New Orleans, the stragglers that can't find family, that have nothing, that are totally exhausted, famished, some are vomiting, they're all angry: at God, us, the state, the feds, the sun, the grass,..... this group is really a mixed group. There are crack heads going through the DT's, the people who are HIV+, inner-city thugs, people who are desperately trying to find someone they know/knew.... all mixed in ......suffering, hurting people...

Those are the people who we are being asked to house and are or will be staying here; those are the group from which we'll be getting another 100 or so..... probably for 2 months at least--could be 3-4 months they're warning. Our community here is mostly poor to lower middle class, mostly based on the Timber industry (which is running out of diesel fuel). Zwolle is a simple, somewhat backward town ( imagine a Mayberry/Deliverance cross!?) with hardworking, good people. We're scared, they're scared, everybody's scared....

It seems harsh, but our local law enforcement is begging the state to divert some of them elsewhere. But we'll do whatever we need to do.

I'm tired and obviously leaning to the exhausted side--so forgive please if I seem dramatic to you......
We'll keep going, jump into the unknown (it looks better than the 'known' at this point).
Pray for us, please. And give a prayer of thanks when/if you look in your underwear drawer and see more than one pair........

---------------------------------

I wrote to Fr. Hurd and asked him if cash would help, and if so, where to send it. His reply:

Bless you....

Our address here is:

St. Joseph Catholic Church
P.O. Box 8
Zwolle, LA 71486

We've run out of sorting/storage/distribution space for clothes and such and I am trying to find out where to send on those things. I'll try to get back to you with that.

Thank you.

Fr. Tim

-----

It's now Elul, the month leading up to the High Holy Days, and I've begun practicing the chants and prayers for the solemn services. One of the prayers, the Unetaneh Tokef, reminds us that we do not know who will live or die in the next year, who by fire and who by flood. As in 2001, those words are particularly sharp this year, since we have just had a demonstration of how unpredictable life can be.

There are lots of different ways to theologize about it, and lots of reasons to be angry and targets for the anger, lots of analysis and lots of words that can be said, but in the meantime people are hungry and homeless and there are caregivers stretched to the brink. I encourage you to join me in finding your own way to help the sufferers. If not now, when?

2005-09-05T04:23:00.000-07:00

What good is a federal government that is so slow to react to the peril of an entire region?

Daughter of the South that I am, I have always believed it was a good thing that the Confederacy lost its war. Slavery was and is wrong, will always be wrong, and no amount of romanticism or revisionist history will ever make it even a little bit right.

But I looked at the news this past week, and I wondered: what good is a federal government that is so slow to react to a threat to the lives of such a large segment of its citizenry? I wondered if Jefferson Davis & Co may not have had a point, when it came to one of the issues other than slavery: the fact that to much of the rest of the United States, the South is a joke, an afterthought, a scapegoat. Exactly what is the purpose of this vaunted Union?

Rep. Maxine Waters took a bus to Louisiana to see events first hand, and to rescue whom she could. She represents South Central Los Angeles, and I imagine she would agree with me that the racism and classism we are seeing in this national tragedy are not confined to the South. I just find it hard to imagine that a major city outside the Southeast would be allowed to go for days and days and days after such a disaster. If a hurricane headed for New York City, do you think the reaction would be so slow? When a major earthquake hit Los Angeles in the 1990's, people were not left to fend for themselves for days and days, living in filth and squalor. L.A. has seen its share of riots and looters, but no one seemed to think that simply abandoning the city and bulldozing the site was a solution to anything.

It's no secret that I disapprove of the current administration in Washington. They've bungled this job, just as they have bungled a lot of things. That almost goes without saying.

But I think I'm through being a "good sport" about people making fun of my regional accent, of jokes about the South and Southerners told by people who'd be really, really annoyed if someone behaved that way towards almost anyone else. Quit using the South to reassure yourselves, America, and look into the mirror: African Americans (AMERICANS) and poor Americans (AMERICANS) are suffering because in the minds of too many, New Orleans was a play-city, a joke town, that didn't need the money to pay for the maintenance of real levees.

Even "wealthy" (as in, had a car so they could leave before the storm hit) New Orleanians are suffering, with every thing they have worked for all their lives under many feet of filthy water, and no real idea when they can even assess the damage. Many of the "wealthy" don't have a home to go back to, a job to go back to, a bank account at a bank that is above water, or a clue what they are going to do when they run out of cash or the relatives get sick of them.

My guess is that many of those people sent good wishes, and money, and firefighters, and assistance to people suffering in New York, and Los Angeles, and Oklahoma City. I know for a fact they've been paying federal taxes just like the rest of us, on the notion that when they needed the federal government, when they needed the rest of us, we'd be there for them. They paid taxes on the notion that if we can send pork barrels here and there, we can pay for legitimate needs like FEMA and flood control.

I'm sick. I'm angry. Don't you dare make fun of the way I talk.

2005-08-29T15:16:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder what possessed me to go back to school at age 47. I know that a few of you have wondered the same thing. It isn't easy, it certainly isn't convenient, it isn't cheap, and it is sometimes pretty darn lonesome, since the people I love are several hundred miles north of here.

Today is a day when I don't have to wonder. It is the first day of classes, the day when I am given a pristine new syllabus, full of promise and mystery, and I can see the new things I will learn stretching out over the photocopied pages. It's the day I get a fresh steno book (my preferred notetaking device), a comfortable pen and assortment of markers, and begin to chart the journey into new water. It's the day I walk in with no homework (yet), and pretty much boundless enthusiasm for the work that will weigh heavier by this time next week.

I love the first day of school.

2005-08-21T16:49:00.000-07:00

I love radio, and I listen to lots of it. Radio has been my window on the world ever since I was a kid, sneaking into the den at night to turn on my father's huge AM/FM console radio after everyone was asleep. I'd listen to Havana and Little Rock and other foreign places; I remember one thrilling night when the "skip" was good and I heard Chicago and New York City.

When I am homesick for the Bay Area, I can turn to 740 to listen to KCBS after dark. When I was in Israel and homesick for the United States, I discovered that I could listen to NPR via the internet, and was soothed by Bob Edward's voice. On my drives up the Central Valley, I tune from one tiny religious station to another; I started when "Passion of the Christ" came out and I wanted to know if it was bearing any anti-Semitic fruit I should (as a good student rabbi) know about for my congregation's sake. It wasn't; mostly the radio preachers seemed bothered by the same assortment of historical glitches that were bothering me.

Sooo, a few days ago, as I drove down Wilshire Blvd., I turned to an LA radio station to which I'd rather not give any advertising. Rush Limbaugh was blowing hard, as usual, and I listened to hear what he was up to these days. I don't like Rush, but I like to know what his listeners are hearing. Even for Rush, though, this was a new low.

Rush was trashing Cindy Sheehan, the Gold Star mother who had taken her grief and her questions to President Bush's vacation spot. First he implied she's a fake (her protests are "staged") and then he compared her protest to "forged documents," which sounds to me perilously close to calling her a liar.

Casey Sheehan gave his life keeping the oath he took when he swore to protect the Constitution. Cindy Sheehan lost her child. She has every right to grieve, every right to be angry, and our vacationing President should have the common decency to take 10 minutes to say, "Ma'am, I'm so sorry," in a tone of voice that suggests actual sorrow.

Personally, I think she's asking some excellent questions, too. Why *did* we go there? Tha'ts less and less clear, as the administration has virtually admitted with its changing account of what it is: "War on Terror?" "Operation Iraqi Freedom", "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism?"and so on. Best of all, exactly what is the connection between the bloodbath in Iraq and the U.S. Constitution that Casey swore to defend?

And why, if it is so important that we be in Iraq, are we not sending everyone's children, instead of volunteer reservists who have been turned into virtual slaves, stuck in Iraq for long past the time for which they committed? Why are there no young Bushes in the service, if it's so important we be in Iraq?

Why are we simultaneously conducting a war, cutting taxes on the wealthy, and cutting veterans' benefits?

Why, why, why, Mr. Vacationing President?

I'm going to avoid that dial on the radio for a while. I can listen to a lot of stuff and be calmly interested, but I can't listen to that man trash a grieving mother. She's said some things I don't agree with, either, but were I to meet Cindy Sheehan, I would have only one thing to say to her:

Ma'am, I am so sorry.

2005-08-18T15:37:00.000-07:00

The stories from Gaza are all over the news today. A soldier talks about obeying his orders, given him by a democratic government in search of peace. A government official talks about "land for peace." Anguished settlers cry and fight and finally hole up in synagogues, only to be carried out by young soldiers. A Palestinian spokesman minimizes the loss -- it wasn't their land anyway. Someone at the UN warns that Israel shouldn't think that this will make up for occupation.

I have never been a fan of the settlement movement, and my first reaction when I heard that Sharon had decided to pull out was that it was high time those people got out of there. I never visited the settlements while I lived in Israel, because I was told by the school that it was unsafe for me to go there. I did have the opportunity to meet and talk with people who lived there, and who believed passionately in what they were doing. Even after the conversation, my convictions were unchanged: those folks had no business there.

This summer, when I saw the orange kippot [skullcaps] and the orange-striped prayer shawls for sale in Jerusalem, to express solidarity with the settlers, I was impatient. In my mind, nothing good could happen until Gaza was empty of Israelis.

Intellectually, I still hold those opinions, but my heart breaks at the photos and the stories on the radio. The settlers moved to Gaza as a patriotic act, and from the day they moved there, it was dangerous. In 1970, they provided a settled buffer against Egypt. They built their homes and their greenhouses and grew organic vegetables; most of the cherry tomatoes in Israel came from the Gaza greenhouses. They were told by the government, and most especially by their hero, Sharon, that they were heroes of the Jewish People.

Now Sharon tells them that they are simply in the way of peace, that they have to move, that they have to start again, somewhere else, in that very unforgiving land. Other settlers in the West Bank are watching, as are the Israelis living on the Golan. Sharon may know where this will end, but he isn't telling.

Meanwhile Hamas hoots and hollers that they've driven out the Israelis, that if they keep on killing and shooting and bombing buses full of civilians, eventually Israel will go away. And some fool at the UN -- I didn't catch his name -- minimized the losses of the settlers and said that this really doesn't accomplish much; it's a step in the right direction, but that's all.

I had to shut off NPR at that point.

Jews are losing their homes, are being carried away from homes they have lived in for 30 years. Other Jews -- young men and women who are their cousins and siblings -- have to do the carrying. This is hideous and horrible, and utterly necessary. Without this move, peace is never going to come.

What I wish is that the other parties, the Palestinians and their supporters, could see this action for what it is. No one has been "driven off" -- a democratic society is making a historic step towards peace. And yes, it is unilateral, but so far I cannot see what the Palestinians have been willing to accomplish via negotiations: remember Oslo? remember Camp David in 2000?

I do not know what the answers are. I do know that while I do not agree with the settlers (on almost anything) I honor their losses, which are beyond my complete comprehension. For their sake, and for the sake of the Palestinians who will have Gaza to themselves, and for the sake of everyone in that region, I hope that this has accomplished something. For now, I just feel sad.

2005-08-12T14:29:00.000-07:00

It may be only August 12, but summer is over for me -- I'm sitting in my "office" in Merced (aka Starbucks) back in the swing of my student pulpit, with an email box full of information about booklists, class schedules, and the usual beginning-of-term negotiations.

I feel a little frantic, but good. There's already too much to do, and officially, school doesn't even begin for a week.

This week begins Devarim [Deuteronomy]. The Torah seems to stop and repeat itself, sort of, only with more detail about the laws. September is like that. The beginning of the 4th year of rabbinical school is like that, too. We gather together, we take a deep breath, and we do it again.

2005-07-21T05:47:00.001-07:00

I was on my way home from a shopping trip at "Kanyon Malkha" (the big shopping mall in Jerusalem) in a taxi when some familiar vocabulary came over the radio. There's just been some kind of "event" (involving words with many peh's and tzadee's, aka stuff blowing up) in London as I write this. I still don't know much -- there was something about Shepherd's Bush station, which I initially thought was President Bush, but describing him as a Shepherd [Ro'eh] was just a little *too* weird. Thank goodness for my cabbie-cum-Hebrew teacher, who cleared that one up.

He and I agreed it sounded like "ha terror" and that it sounded "rah" [bad], and "meshuggah" [crazy]. He asked where I was from, and I explained that I'm from California but lived here three years ago as a student. "Ahhhhh! So you understand," he said in Hebrew. "Yes," I said, and we rode in silence for a while, listening to the news on the radio.

When I got to the hotel, the shomer [guard] who has been waving me into the hotel for days now went diligently through my bags. Security has been increased here, just in the space of a cab ride.

I'm writing this now so that friends won't worry. (Seriously, I'm fine. I am having dinner tonight with my friend Ellen.) Soon I will write about some of my other adventures here -- it's been too hard to get to a computer to post much. Suffice it to say that as always, I'm glad I came to Jerusalem.

2005-07-18T06:30:00.000-07:00

On this summer's travels, I have grabbed email in some odd places, little internet kiosks here and there. This place takes the prize, though, and is so novel that I feel the need to post about it. I'm in the Old City of Jerusalem, a few yards off the path between the Kotel (Western Wall) and the Cardo (shopping /archaeological area). There are about ten terminals crammed into a little stone closet here, and people are tapping away in assorted languages.

Jerusalem is a different city than the one I remember from three years ago. Business is up, traffic is wild, and even the tourists are riding buses again. The current big conflict has to do with the expulsion of the settlements from Gaza. All over town, you see ribbons in either orange or blue, expressing opinions about it. Orange signifies opposition to expulsion; blue signifies support for Sharon's plan. I've seen more orange in more odd places lately -- seems that there is a new fashion for tallitot (prayer shawls) with orange stripes.

I have my own opinions on this, mostly that Israelis didn't belong in Gaza in the first place, so no orange ribbons for me, and definitely no orange striped tallit! It is interesting that ritual wear has become a medium for political expression.

And then there are the things that do not change. I took a stroll Shabbat evening on King David Street, enjoying the breeze and the dark blue sky. Traffic was almost nonexistent. People were out walking, enjoying the cool air after a brutally hot day. The Old City loomed in the background, reminding us that this is truly the city on the edge of forever.

2005-06-18T17:29:00.000-07:00

The summer reading proceeds... I alternate between reading philosophy and psalms, Levinas and poetry. Good stuff; I even understand a little of what I'm reading.

I rediscovered an old obsession this past week, and I think I've reframed it in a way that makes some sense to me. I have been knitting since I was a kid, but I mostly quit when I began to study Hebrew. The two didn't mix, and my priorities were clear.

Well, I'm still studying Hebrew, but I've been watching some of my classmates with a bit of envy as they knitted. I always enjoyed it when they asked me to help straighten out a minor knitting crisis, and always hated handing the knitting back. And a couple of weeks ago, when my son pointed out a knit shop near his home, I ventured inside. Before two minutes had passed, I was fingering alpaca yarn and reminding myself that that stuff is expensive and anyway, with my hot flashes, I don't need sweaters and scarves.

I chatted with the proprietor (a woman who knew an addict when she saw one) and realized I miss the knitting itself much more than I miss the product. She suggested I look into knitting for charities, and I rummabede around on line to find Project Linus. I bought a few fat skeins of bright yellow wool-and-acrylic (washable) and a set of double-pointed needles and went to work. Now the problem is in setting the blasted thing down!

Some sick child is going to enjoy that blanket, all lacy and warm and soft. And my shoulders are a lot looser. I still can't study while knitting -- I'm no multitasker! -- but for spare moments, this will be a tonic for me.

2005-06-05T13:11:00.000-07:00

Bliss.

I could just quit there, with the single word, but then it wouldn't be very good communication, would it?

I'm back home, getting ready to have lunch with one of my kids, sitting in a coffee shop on one of my favorite streets in the whole wide world, and I'm just happy.

So what else is there to tell? Driving up I-5 in the middle of the night is interesting -- the traffic is lighter, and the stars were so beautiful I had to stop a couple of times at dark exits just to open the car window and gawp at the sky. I know there is a Milky Way, but I hadn't seen it in a while.

I stopped for gas at 2:30 am at a station in... oh, gosh, I forget... and chatted for a few minutes with the lonesome kid behind the cash register. We compared ring tones on our cell phones: his latest composition, and my silliest one (that I never use when school is in session or at work, because it really IS stupid but funny.) Then I got back in the Volvo and drove on up the road.

I listened to an old drama from the 50's on the radio: DeForest Kelley in "Fleshpeddler," on Suspense Theater. I have no idea why they cast a guy with a Georgia accent to play an agent from NYC, but it was fun to hear a familiar voice in an unfamiliar role. It was a creepy little story, too, from the same era as "Twilight Zone" and "Outer Limits."

I like driving at night, if I can have a hefty nap at the end of it.

2005-06-01T13:08:00.000-07:00

I found a lovely blog recently, Octogenarian. If you are interested in Israel, Jews in America, and/or common sense, I recommend the writing of this retired journalist. I've already emailed with him to get permission to tell his stories in sermons.

High Holy Day prep is underway at my house, along with a bunch of neglected housekeeping. And if you recall from earlier posts that I was working hard on a paper towards a theology of Jewish Peoplehood, I am happy to report that (1) I finished it and (2) my teacher says it's a good beginning. Sweeter words I cannot imagine. I've already made a list of next steps.

2005-05-31T17:50:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in the previous post, I attended a training of trainers co-sponsored by Mosaic, The National Jewish Center for Gender Diversity, and the ADL. I learned LOTS at the training -- it was a remarkable experience -- and had the pleasure of screening two documentaries I recommend to anyone interested in GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender) topics.

I've reviewed the two films, Keep Not Silent: OrthoDykes and No Dumb Questions on the movie review blog I share with a friend, thumbsupordown. They are both remarkable films, and I recommend them if you are interested in these subjects!

2005-05-19T11:42:00.000-07:00

Today is a pause between the Gerecht Family Outreach Institute (a terrific learning experience and a chance to see some old friends) and a training for diversity trainers in Denver, CO, sponsored by
Mosaic: The National Jewish Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity and the Anti-Defamation League. The agenda item for today is laundry, needless to say!

I've also been catching up on the news, and have run across something I want to share, because it does not seem to have gotten much attention. (I've been getting my news via radio from NPR and CBS -- if it isn't on either of those, seems to me it hasn't gotten much attention.)

Have you heard about the Downing Street Memo dated 23 July, 2002? (Clink the link if you would like to read the text for yourself.) Here is the paragraph that made me sit up:

"Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action. "

Those words were written in JULY 2002, by Matthew Rycroft, a British diplomat, after a visit to the U.S.

I, for one, believed in the WMD's. I was really surprised when they didn't find any (after all, I'd gotten the daylights scared out of me in Israel, carrying around a gas mask in case Saddam shot poison gas at us.) I was skeptical about President Bush's motives but was convinced because Tony Blair and Colin Powell and all these other very respectable folks seemed convinced.

It was all lies. The Brits knew it was all lies back in July 2002, before the lies were even made public. This whole thing was planned because our President Bush wanted to invade Iraq.

I grant you, if Saddam Hussein were my head of state, I'd be glad if someone got rid of him. But the lives of Iraqis have gone from one bad thing to another, not from bad to good. Nothing I'm hearing from Iraq suggests that it is a bearable place to live today. Yes, there were free elections, and the people who voted in them took their lives in their hands to go on the street to vote and they STILL don't have a functioning government.

And let's not forget the byproducts: the world has been given a new workshop for terrorists, a new rallying point for Al Qaida and Hamas and all those lovely people. The terrorists have had access to weapons we failed to secure.

Apparently our news organizations don't care. They care about selling you Michael Jackson testimony, and American Idol speculation, and other similar swill. News organizations don't care because they have become profit-driven, or grant-dependent. (NPR does not get off the hook here, either.) They don't care because their research shows that we don't care.

I'm asking you to care. If you don't like being lied to about the war in Iraq, write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper (and TV, and so on) and tell them that you care more about the war in Iraq than you do about the latest titillating details from the Jackson trial and who won American Idol. Tell them you don't understand why the Downing Street Memo hasn't gotten more airplay.

If you are a Republican, and think the Downing Street Memo is no big deal, I ask that you care enough to tell your media sources that you care about real news, about our men and women dying in Iraq, about other things that are Real in the world. Tell them that you're fed up with titillating crowd-pleasers on the news. I respect you enough to believe that you don't really think that the bread-and-circuses approach to news is OK.

Write to someone. Raise Cain. Please.

2005-05-16T18:37:00.000-07:00

Today I indulged in one of my favorite pastimes: exploring California. For months now, I've been eyeing an alternate route over the Tehachapi Mountains north of Los Angeles. Normally I take the I-5 over the Tehon Pass, through the "Grapevine," a spectacular piece of engineering through the Angeles National Forest. It's no small shakes, but after two years of drives to and from Merced, I know that road by heart.

Another, longer way south turns east after Bakersfield and takes Highway 58 over the Tehachapi Pass through the mountains, where the Tehachapis meet the southern end of the Sierra Nevada. The road turns south from there to cut across the western end of the Mojave Desert. That road called to me from the map: it whispered sweet nothings about beautiful mountain and desert views. I had resisted the call for months (classes to go to, services to lead) but today I stopped in Bakersfield, slept until I woke up, and then headed east for Tehachapi.

One unusual glitch: whoever heard of a rainy day in May in Southern California? When I left Bakersfield, the rain was spitting a little, nothing much, but as I ascended into the mountains, I also ascended into the low cloud ceiling and more rain. I was grateful for the bright orange Cal Trans truck ahead of me: I followed that truck through the fog and trusted that its driver knew the road, because I could barely see the taillights of the truck, much less anything to do with the road. I imagine it's a gorgeous road up to the pass, but I've no idea. I'll go back someday and see, I guess.

At one point, I got a little nervous about the road (lots of fast vehicles passing me and the Cal Trans guys) so when I saw a California Historical Site Marker for something called the Tehachapi Loop I thought, "What the heck is that?" and then "What the heck?" and turned on the road to Keene, CA.

Keene is a wide spot in the road with about 400 residents; it was damp as I drove through but people seemed friendly. The little road curved back 3 miles into the brush past Keene's cafe and post office, and I thought to myself, hmmm, was this smart? But it certainly was interesting. All the wildflowers that had been flashing past my window on Hwy 58 were now close enough to touch. The terrain was rough, befitting a place where the Pacific and North American plates have been jamming up against each other for millenia: the only flat ground had been carved out to make a road, to build a house, or to build the railroad through the pass. Everything else was vertical, lots and lots of hills and hillocks, bounding up and down the mountainside, studded with huge rocks.

When I found the brass Historical Marker by the side of the road, I pulled off to read it. Turns out that the Tehachapi Loop is one of the great railroad engineering feats of the 19th century. I looked out over the valley below the road, and there was a loop of railroad. It was nice of the railroad people to leave a freight train sitting there to help me see it. It took me a few minutes to understand what I was looking at, but after some staring through the rain, I got it: the engineers who designed the railroad track had been faced with a problem when they tried to design track to go over the Tehachapi Pass throught this wild, vertical country. In addition to tunnels (through the hills) and bridges (over the valleys) and a circuitous route (around the devilish hills) they needed a way to gain 77 feet in elevation in a single spot, a seemingly impossible feat. That was accomplished by designing a giant loop of railroad track that crosses over itself, gaining the 77 feet. (If you find this hard to visualize, click the link and the diagram may help.)

All this work was done by hand, by Cantonese railroad workers. They called the loop "Walong" which means "Chinese Road" or "Coiled Dragon" depending upon whom you ask. The railroad from Caliente to Tehachapi, including the loop, is a marvel, and a testament to the Chinese contribution to California history. Even now, that track carries over 40 frieght trains a day, and it is one of the busiest sections of rail track anywhere in the world. I was sorry to hear that there's no passenger service over the loop; apparently the bus from LA to Bakersfield is quite a bit faster than the train would have been, which is why there's an Amtrak bus from LA to Bakersfield.

I got back on 58 and saw lots more great stuff: the town of Tehachapi (it's a rail town, with streets labeled A,B,C, and D) and the town of Mojave, where I had lunch. I left the rain behind at Mojave -- it was stopped by the height of the mountains, and when I looked back, I could see a few clouds leaking through the pass, as I had.

I saw the Silver Queen Mine, a huge plant visible from Hwy 14. There's lots of mining up there, silver and gold and borax and goodness knows what else. I saw all sorts of beautiful wild things blooming: brittlebrush , Mojave aster, creosote bush, and Joshua Trees in bloom. The Joshua blossoms have a strong odor; when I pulled off the road to look at a tree to see if those were blossoms or fruit, I got a snootful of their amazing stink. The Mojave is a wilderness with a flavor of its own; the wildness reminded me of the Judean Desert, even though the plants are quite different and instead of Bedouins, the Mojave has test pilots!

The last bit of my detour took me down Soledad Canyon Road, in the Tehachapis. The photos at the page I linked to don't do it justice; it is a beautiful, winding road following a small river and the railroad down the canyon. I saw a lot of interesting geological bits in the canyon, outcroppings of what looked like basalt in one place, and what I think must be the tailings of an old copper mine on a slope above me. (I hope it was an old copper mine -- I hate to think what else might have made that strange green color.)

I'd like to take that route again sometime, armed with a more information and more time. There were a dozen side roads that looked interesting, and some small museums (like the one in Keene) which I hated to pass by.

I told someone recently that I'm a fool for new ideas. That's true. I'm also a fool for an unexplored road. I think those two qualities are linked -- I just love going where I don't know what I might find!

2005-05-14T17:53:00.000-07:00

The papers went in on time, just barely. Since then, I've visited Jamie and Aaron in Santa Cruz and come to spend my final weekend of the year in Merced. Summer's here: it's hot today.

I thought I had a lot to say about a lot of things, but the wind's gone out of me. (Mark your calendars.) I'm very tired after this past year. Even after dropping two classes, this term was a heavy load. I spent most of my time working on my theology paper, an examination of Jewish Peoplehood. I kept writing it and rewriting it because I learned a little more with each iteration; I still haven't learned everything I want to learn from that paper, but it's in Dr. Adler's hands now.

I was disappointed with my exegesis of Ruth 3. I thought there was more "there" there, but I couldn't find it. Compared to the other texts on which I've done an exegesis, it looked like a piece of cake, which just goes to show you: very little in the Bible is simple. I found some things I think will be useful for the theology paper (which has now graduated into being either an obsession or a hobby, depending on how you look at it) but I was disappointed with that exegesis.

I restarted my Hebrew journal a few weeks ago; this summer I'm working on Hebrew and Aramaic, honing my skills. Maybe I'm writing the theology paper again, too.

I had the honor of naming another baby last night: Lirit bat Benyamin v'Rachel. I do love naming babies!

2005-05-04T15:53:00.000-07:00

I'm coming down to the wire now... three items left on my to-do list, and then Year 3 of Rabbinical School is over.

Watch this space for some serious rambling when I finish it all!

2005-04-24T21:50:00.000-07:00

I spent a little time browsing the MAZON website this evening. MAZON calls itself "the Jewish Response to Hunger" and they've got a lot of interesting facts on the site.

These facts about hunger in Israel shocked me:

22% of Israeli citizens – approximately 1,100,000 people – are food insecure.

Of those Israeli citizens who are food insecure, 60% are Jewish, 20% are Arab, and 20% are new immigrants.

According to the National Insurance Institute, nearly 30% of Israeli children – approximately 690,000 – live below the national poverty line.

Over 20% of Israel’s elderly live below the national poverty line.

-----

If you want to do something about hunger in Israel, or hunger anywhere else, check it out. This is another way to include a stranger at your table this Passover.

2005-04-24T18:30:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again: I miss my grandmother.

Mary Fulghum Menefee died in April of 1974. You'd think, after 31 years, I'd be able to handle her yahrtzeit (the anniversary of her death) in a calm and collected way, but the truth is that I never know how it's going to hit me. Some years, I just feel sad. Some years, I fall apart.

My earliest memory of her is of sitting in her lap, on the front porch of the house on Otter Creek Road. We were in the big white rocking chair, rocking back and forth to a mostly tuneless little song she used to sing on such occasions: "Loving time, loving time, loving time, loving time..." She had a soft, cushy lap and I liked to curl up in it and abandon myself to the rocking while I sang along with her.

She loved to rock in that chair. Sometimes she'd rock so enthusiastically that at the "top" of the rock there would be a moment of weightlessness, as if we were going to launch into flight and sail over the geraniums and fly off over the hills of Brentwood, maybe to do circles around the WLAC radio tower on the next ridge. She used to tell me that one time, when I was too small to remember, she got a little carried away on the "rock" and we tipped over backwards; she held me up in her arms so that I didn't hit the ground, and I just laughed as if it were a game. I don't remember that, but I believe it. Meme loved to fly in planes, to drive too fast in cars, and I don't see why the rocking chair would have been any exception.

Meme was a religious woman, one of those Irish-Catholic ladies for whom Sunday Mass was an opportunity to say a rosary and talk to the Blessed Mother. She and the Blessed Mother had intense conversations, I gathered, judging from the tightness of her jaw and the way her fingers pinched when she prayed the beads. It wasn't until years and years after her death, at another family wake, that I finally got a clue what all those prayers might have been about. The person who told shouldn't have, so I won't repeat it. I'll just say that my grandmother didn't have an easy life.

She always wanted to travel overseas, especially to go to Ireland, and my grandfather wanted none of it. I had a secret plan that when I was grown, I'd take her to Ireland, but she died before that was possible, carried off by pancreatic cancer. I know it is useless to hate a disease, but I hate that disease: it made her miserable, it destroyed her dignity, and it gave her an awful death. As a good Catholic, she believed that suffering on earth would be rewarded and made right in heaven. I watched her suffering, and at 19, I could not understand. I am not a good Catholic. The only way I can make any sense of that good woman's pain and misery is to say that it makes no sense to me at all.

She's still around. I can see little bits of her in my children, and it is consoling to know that those bright blue eyes seem to be a strong element in our DNA. Mine have faded to green, but theirs are as bright as hers. I think of her when I see scarlet lipstick, or a fancy hat, or when I hear "Ave Maria" played on a violin. I think of her when I set the table with my good china; we picked it out together at the Cain-Sloan Department Store when I was about twelve. She's where I got my stubbornness, and my love of words.

It's that time of year again.

2005-04-09T20:40:00.000-07:00

I'm doing laundry tonight, which fragments time and concentration. Instead of working on my paper, I'll blog about it while I'm waiting for the washer to wind down.

I'm working on a project near my heart right now, a theology of Jewish peoplehood. The questions behind it have been bubbling away for a while now.

I became a Jew at age 41. The rabbi who worked with me, who was my midwife into the Jewish People, warned me that many Jews of the world won't accept a Reform conversion. I had noticed already that the Jews of the world don't agree on much of anything, so I wasn't too troubled by that idea. My resolution was that if there was a problem, it was THEIR problem, not mine. I still find that that's a good working atittude: My reality or validity or authenticity does not depend on a poll.

Still, I've had experiences that challenged my resolution. El Al security didn't like my WASPy name or my Irish American face, and my story didn't make any sense to them. (You became Jewish just because you wanted to? What, are you nuts?) I wish I had a nickle for everyone who has said, "Gee, you don't look Jewish." One of the downsides to being a student rabbi is that the snappier comebacks to that one are now very unprofessional and not an option!

On the more professional side, I can quote chapter and verse on the requirements for conversion, and on
the elements of Jewish law that say that with a very few exceptions having to do mostly with marriage (a convert may not marry a Cohen, a member of the priestly families). Jews are Jews, whether they come through the waters of the womb, or the waters of the mikveh [ritual bath, part of conversion.]

This winter, when I read that Franz Rosenzweig defined Jewish peoplehood in terms of "blood," I felt my dander rising again. It's one thing to hear this stuff from an am haaretz [ignoramus], it's another entirely to see it written in one of the great Jewish philosophical texts, The Star of Redemption. Worse, this isn't a slur on the Reform movement, or my rabbi's semichah (ordination), it was a bald statement that if you don't have Jewish blood, you aren't really Jewish. Reading it, I felt angry and repelled -- it looked racist, and it also looked like the undertow to all the comments on my face and name. I asked my teacher, Dr. Adler, about it. "I wondered if that was going to bother you," she replied.

It bothers me. I don't want it to bother me, but it bothers me. It happens that for her class, I am supposed to write a paper in which I hash out some of my own theology. I decided to take this thing on, and wrestle it to the ground: I'm writing a paper about theologies of Am Yisrael [The Jewish People] and specifically, MY theology. I want to know precisely where I stand on this, and my gut feelings of connection to Am Yisrael are as much a part of the data as anything I think about it. I know that nothing I write is going to change anyone else's mind, but that's not the point: I want to be clear in my own mind.

I am a Jew. I've been a Jew since June 17, 1996. My soul feels like it's been Jewish forever (which it turns out, is part of this equation, at least according to some of the theologians.) The question is, exactly what does that mean? How am I a Jew? What does it mean to be a Jew?

Stay tuned.

2005-04-03T23:25:00.000-07:00

This past Thursday there was a gathering of rabbis and rabbinical students at Congregation Valley Beth Shalom, in honor of the birthday of Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis. We were told that it was the largest such gathering in Los Angeles history, with rabbis from all the movements of Judaism, and teachers from the Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox movements. I had the privilege of listening to Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, and then hearing a panel of Rabbi Greenberg, Rabbi Schulweis, Rabbi Harold Kushner, Rabbi David Hartman, and our own rosh yeshivah (head of our rabbinical school at HUC) Rabbi David Ellenson.

All of the speakers were wonderful. I always have the urge, when I see Rabbi Ellenson, to point and declare loudly, "He's MY rosh yeshivah!" but that day, I was grateful to have all of them as my teachers. Rabbi Hartman, particularly, helped me refocus my heart on the rabbinate. It's so easy to get lost in the assignments and the schedule and whatnot -- in the minutiae of filling requirements -- and sometimes it is good to pause and think again about what I am doing and why.

His speech was one I expect to see published someday, and I cannot do justice to it here, but one idea particularly struck me. The Jewish way to mend the world is to create little microcosms of the world as it can be: Shabbat, for instance. We live them the best way we can, and hope that all the participants will carry away a little bit of olam ha-bah (world to come) into the ordinary days and activities of their lives. We start small, and work on the faith that if we do our little bit well enough, it will spread.

This week I kept Shabbat more carefully than I have in a while. I set the table, and had an assortment of folks to dinner. We lingered and talked, enjoyed each others company, prayed and laughed. I woke up with my back out (something about putting the leaf in the table the day before, I think) so I didn't get to services, but it was a lovely contemplative day nevertheless, with phone calls to and from my kids and friends, a day of leftovers and love.

I'm glad that Rabbi Hartman reminded me why I started this crazy plan: I really do want to change the world, and I believe that the best way for me to do it, is to do Jewish. Keep Shabbat, clean for Passover, learn Torah, teach Torah, tune my eyes to see the b'tzelem Elohim -- the image of God -- in everyone I meet. That's why I'm in school, that's what all this is about.

Nice to remember.

2005-03-31T07:10:00.000-08:00

Baseball season is about to start!

I love baseball. I discovered it relatively late (in my 30's) and have been an Oakland A's fan ever since. My first game was at Dodger Stadium, a game between the LA Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds.

Periodically, I still thank the friend who took me to that game for introducing me to baseball. She just went to spring training with her partner-in-crime, and wrote a report in her blog that is almost (almost!) as good as being there:

http://outtakes.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_outtakes_archive.html#111157470040001615

Linda: thank you for baseball.

2005-03-20T16:57:00.000-08:00

I am bone-tired, and I am only halfway home.

My student pulpit is 300 miles north of Los Angeles, and the drive up and back is a challenging routine. The challenge on the way up is to escape LA traffic and get to Merced on time, while taking enough stretching breaks that I can walk comfortably when I get there. The drive home, on Sunday afternoon, is a bigger challenge: I start out tired sometime after noon, and I need to be in class in Los Angeles, with whatever prep is required, by 8:30 am.

Some weeks I breeze right through it. One week a tire blew out, and I didn't get home until Monday afternoon. This is a more typical week, since we had Purimshpiel last night, and more Purimstuff this morning with the kids, and my neighbors at the motel had a baby. I kept waking up, looking for my crying baby, and then remembering that Jamie is 21.

So by the time I got down the road a bit today, I felt my eyelids fluttering. I stopped in one little town for a nap, after setting the alarm on my car and reclining the front seat. The nap helped a bit, so I drove on here to Tulare, where I have a regular stop at the Starbucks, for caffiene and an email break. It's 5 pm, and I've got, oh, I'd say three hours ahead of me, if I don't need any more naps.

The other side of the long drive is that it's full of wonders. Driving up, on Friday, I saw what this winter's monster rains have done to the wilderness lands north of LA. I drove through the sections of the Angelus Forest that burned last year, and saw the charcoal skeletons of trees surrounded by several shades of green, along with carpets of wildflowers. Everything is lush; the vegetation is drunk on rain. The Californian in me thought, "hmmm, large fuel load" (thinking ahead to fire season) but gosh, it's beautiful now.

So far on this weekend I've driven through three different storms, and seen two rainbows. That's a new record for me.

Onward.

2005-03-17T19:32:00.000-08:00

My upstairs neighbors are very noisy. I know this because they are loud enough to bother me tonight, and I'm hard of hearing. My kids have mentioned the noise to me when they've visited, but usually it isn't a problem. Tonight that TV is really roaring.

Apartment living puts us in each other's faces (or ears) sometimes. Usually I think of that as a bad thing, although tonight I had some other thoughts about it. I remember when I was home-hunting in the summer of 2003, and a friend suggested to me that there was a sweet little house to rent in a great neighborhood. I was categorically not interested -- and a lot of it was that I feel safer in an apartment. As annoying as the upstairs TV can be, it's also a sign that folks are around. The walls are not paper (they're very nice plaster -- it's an old building) but they are thin enough for us to be aware of each other. I like that.

We human beings are social beings; most of us would rather have neighbors to fuss with than no neighbors at all.

Oh, and since it's St. Patrick's Day, a proverb that works for Israel, too: Ní tír gan teanga. [No nation without a language.]

2005-03-13T15:45:00.000-08:00

I turned 50 last Thursday, and it was maybe the best birthday ever. Linda, Maryann, and Aaron came down from the Bay Area to celebrate; we had a dinner party with some of my classmates, and then the next night Maryann and Linda swept me off in a limousine to dinner and a show. We saw Menopause, the Musical, and Aaron, who accompanied us, was the soul of patient, bemused gentlemanliness. [It takes a brave man to sit through that show.]

Birthdays aren't silly, and they aren't just an occasion for teasing about numbers, either. This year, it was reminder for me that I'm blessed with good friends and wonderful sons. I'm happy to be here.

2005-03-03T17:10:00.000-08:00

Today was the first day of the last "quadmester" of Year 3 of rabbinical school. My class spent the past two days taking stock of where we came from, where we've been, and where we are going. It dawned on us that things are about to change. After this quad, we'll scatter for the summer. Several classmates are going to Jerusalem for a year. Another is moving to the east coast. The education students are graduating. And those of us who remain will have choices about our classes. We will have electives from here on, and there will be no more of the long days in a room all crammed together.

Those of you who have been following my adventures since Summer 2002 may remember that I wrote from Jerusalem that we'd become like a bunch of siblings. We studied together, we spent most of our waking hours together, and in that first year or so, we squabbled periodically. (OK, we squabbled a lot.) We've logged a LOT of hours together. Somewhere along the line we quit squabbling (mostly) and became more than just a class. We're not rabbis yet, we're at some interesting place in not-quite-land.

I'm coming up on a personal milestone, too: in a few days, I turn 50. I am absolutely certain that the person I was at 30 wouldn't even recognize me today. It makes me wonder what 70 will look like.

I decided in the middle of the last quad that these years will never come again, and that doing the program at a breakneck pace was destructive and pointless. So I'm slowing down, an extra year, to soak it ALL in. This week I mapped out my goals for the next three years, and I'm excited about them. Lots of learning and growing yet to do.

2005-02-22T23:53:00.000-08:00

Have you ever read The Last of the Just, by Andre Schwarz-Bart? It's one of the best novels I've encountered in a long time. We were assigned it for our Modern Jewish History course. The teacher asked us to write reaction papers:

Andre Schwarz-Bart’s The Last of the Just opens in a scene I once happened upon unawares, strolling around York, in the north of England. Clifford's Tower still stands not far from the river, empty and padlocked. At the foot of the building there is a little car park, and a small placard made of a formica-like material. It states baldly that in March of 1185 there was a persecution of Jews in York, and that in a lull, the remaining Jews took shelter in the tower, hoping for the protection of the King, protection that never came. Rather than convert or fall into the hands of the mob, they committed mass suicide. The wording was utterly dispassionate; no regret was expressed. I remember that the sunny morning went suddenly airless; I could not move.

In much the same way, I was transfixed by this novel, reading it through a long night in one sitting. It opens and closes in conflagration: in the first chapter, the body of Rabbi Yom Tov Levy is tossed upon the fire, his ashes scattering in the air; the novel ends in a plume of smoke from the crematoriums of the Shoah. The journey from ashes to ashes is made by a series of Lamed-Vovniks, of Just Men, of the Levy family. The designation of “Just Man” (Lamed Vav) is a paradox, a blessing as heavy as a curse. Each generation inherits the blessing and the destiny; each generation has its own grief.

The book manages to convey both the real historical situation of many Jews of Europe through those centuries, and at the same time to maintain the mystical story of the Just Men, and to maintain the mystery around the story as well. In the beginning, Schwarz-Bart explains that there are 36 Lamed-Vovniks, and that “if just one of them were lacking, the sufferings of mankind would poison even the souls of the newborn, and humanity would suffocate with a single cry.” (p. 5) And yet this book is titled The Last of the Just! What does this say about our post-Shoah world?

The theological questions are daunting. In the beginning God rewards the faithfulness of Yom Tov Levy by establishing his descendants as Just Men: what kind of reward is that? What kind of God gives such a destiny as a reward? Such questions are raised very gently at first, cushioned by the piety of the early Levys, but they become sharper as the book goes along, just as the cruelty of non-Jews sharpens as the story progresses. The questions crescendo in the dark doxology that closes the story: what kind of God is this, and what does it mean, to praise such a God?

The book has a brief coda: the narrator closes with the feeling that Ernie Levy is somehow not completely gone, but “there was only a presence.” I am left wondering if perhaps the real God in this story is not an exterior God, but the inner goodness of the Levys themselves. “Presence” is the common English translation for “Shekhinah,” the name for the Presence of God in exile. Perhaps, the book whispers, we are looking in the wrong places for God.

2005-02-16T17:46:00.000-08:00

The edible Ezekiel scroll (Ezekiel 2:9 - 3:3) explained:

I saw this article on www.newscientist.com and immediately began imagining what the technology could do for text study.

B'tei avon [Bon apetit!]

2005-02-04T10:33:00.000-08:00

I blew most of my blogging time this week on a rant about a movie.

One of the films nominated for the Oscar for Best Film this year is Million Dollar Baby. I reviewed it very briefly in the movie review blog I keep with my friend Linda. I thought it might be the best film I'd ever seen, but it was a short review, because most of what makes it so good involves a plot twist that should not be revealed in a review.

This morning, in Salon.com, I read an article about the growing controversy about the morality of Million Dollar Baby. I was amazed, because I thought one of the things that recommended the movie was that it was a very moral film, not a gooey postcard, but a gritty, tragic movie about life and choices.

So I wrote my rant and labeled it as a spoiler. I'm still left with a question, though:

If we can't even discuss sin, how can we avoid it? My impression is that the critics wouldn't have been happy unless this film turned out to be a gooey postcard, implying that ultimately if we make the right choices, everyone will live happily ever after.

I have news for those critics: doing the right thing and living happily ever after are not always in a simple cause-and-effect relationship. Sometimes there are no happy choices, just the better and the worse ones. And sometimes, in real life, it is nearly impossible to see which is the better and which is the worse, which is when those of us lucky enough to have an ethical tradition to fall back on have to go to that tradition, and go to any other source of revelation we have, to get the best answer we can get. And even then we may very well not like it.

Phew. It's a beautiful day, and I'm indoors reading Rosenzweig and ranting about sin and movies. I think I'll take a walk.

2005-01-29T01:36:00.000-08:00

I'm coming out from under a week of either a moderate flu or some unnamed viral thing; this has been a weird week. Most of it is lost: all I know for sure is that I dragged myself in to school on Monday to lead services, munched it up only slightly, and then sat numbly through classes the rest of the day. Tues, Wed, and Thurs I was home, mostly asleep, which was a good place to be given the splitting headache, even if I did spend an awful lot of time having creepy dreams.

Now I'm tired, but steadily improving; I am still not fit for running around, but my appetite is back and I have been awake more than asleep today. I will spare you the more graphic symptoms!

I am blessed to have friends who called to check on me, and other friends who took notes for me, and I'll catch up somehow. Right now I'm just up late on Shabbat, and I've been out of touch with the world for a very long time. All that adds up to "lonesome," which is, I guess, a sign of returning health.

We learned a week ago in Codes that in the Shulchan Aruch Rabbi Joseph Caro wrote that on Shabbat, a sick person's suffering is lessened, because it is Shabbat. I asked Dr. P. what it would do to a person suffering with, say, cancer, to hear that he was supposed to feel better because it is Shabbat. He pointed out that context is everything -- that for the 16th century Jew, the Day of Rest could be a relief, simply because you fervently believed that it would be, as did everyone you knew.

This gives me pause to think about colds, flu, and other viral nasties. I am rather resigned in my approach to them (as my father-in-law used to say, if you drink liquids and take vitamin C, a cold will run only one week, while if you simply go about your business, it will run for seven days.) I figure on about a week, I figure it will be both unpresentable and miserable, and that the only thing to do is outlive the scourge. Now I wonder what my viral experience would be like if I believed it was always only a three-day deal!

2005-01-24T01:46:00.000-08:00

Tu B’Shevat

Driving up highway 99
I have learned to pay attention to the almond trees.

In January, they are the gaunt witnesses of winter:
They seem to be dead.
There is nothing as useless-looking as a tree in winter.

Secretly, the roots dowse the soil
In search of water,

The tender tips practicing
the alchemy of plants.

In winter, it is easy to forget hope.
Hope is hidden away, under the earth.
Hope is inside the bark, at the green core.

Driving up highway 99
I have learned to listen to the trees.
Winter will pass,
Sap will rise,
Leaf will follow bud
And blossom will follow leaf
Come summer, there will be almonds.

2005-01-18T02:49:00.000-08:00

I received this in an email and thought it sounded like a great idea:

Not One Damn Dime Day -- Jan 20, 2005

Since our religious leaders will not speak out against the war in Iraq, since our political leaders don't have the moral courage to oppose it, Inauguration Day, Thursday, January 20th, 2005 is "Not One Damn Dime Day" in America.

On "Not One Damn Dime Day" those who oppose what is happening in our name in Iraq can speak up with a 24-hour national boycott of all forms of consumer spending. During "Not One Damn Dime Day" please don't spend money. Not one damn dime for gasoline. Not one damn dime for necessities or for impulse purchases. Not one damn dime for nothing for 24 hours. On "Not One Damn Dime Day," please boycott Wal-Mart, Kmart, Target...

Please don't go to the mall or the local convenience store. Please don't buy any fast food (or any groceries at all for that matter). For 24 hours, please do what you can to shut the retail economy down.

The object is simple. Remind the people in power that the war in Iraq is immoral and illegal; that they are responsible for starting it and that it is their responsibility to stop it. "Not One Damn Dime Day" is to remind them, too, that they work for the people of the United States of America, not for the international corporations and K Street lobbyists who represent the corporations and funnel cash into American politics.

"Not One Damn Dime Day" is about supporting the troops. Now 1,200 brave young Americans and (some estimate) 100,000 Iraqis have died. The politicians owe our troops a plan - a way to come home. There's no rally to attend. No marching to do. No left or right wingagenda to rant about. On "Not One Damn Dime Day" you take action by doing nothing. You open your mouth by keeping your wallet closed. For 24 hours, nothing gets spent, not one damn dime, to remind our religious leaders and our politicians of their moral responsibility to end the war in Iraq and give America back to the people.

Commercial speech must not be the only free speech in America!

2005-01-16T09:12:00.000-08:00

Yikes, yikes, yikes...

ALL my classes are wonderful this term. That's very dangerous. I can easily spend way too much time on any of them.

I realized this morning, as I cleaned the bathroom, that somewhere along the line the Pepsi Generation became the Oil of Olay generation. Yes, I use that stuff. I use an amazing amount of stuff: I remember when soap and water was it, maybe something on my lips to keep them from chapping. Time passes, hmm?

I remember watching my grandmother get ready to go anyplace, and marvelled at the amount of stuff she could put on her face. She'd layer on creams, foundation, powder, blusher, eyeshadow, mascara, and top it off with ruby lipstick and a dab of Calandre perfume. I remember, much later, seeing a film of a kabuki performer getting dressed, and feeling nostalgic, then a little amused, when I realized what the nostalgia was about.

Meme's lipstick was an evidence of her character: NO ONE wore bright red lipstick in 1970. Vogue was all beiges and corals, but not for her. Vogue, in fact, was something to giggle at. We'd look at it to get "ideas" but if you wanted a nice dress, well, go to Cain-Sloan's department store downtown. Cain-Sloan's is gone, and downtown is unrecognizable, but Vogue is still there, and still mostly ridiculous.

2005-01-08T17:31:00.000-08:00

This was NOT what I planned for my week long break (after the due date for the papers.) First of all, one paper just lingered -- I made the mistake (?) of getting interested in it, so I asked for an extension. Then, more seriously, the storms came, the arthritis flared, and my back went out. I think the back going out has something to do with all the unrelieved sitting I'd done on the papers, so it is really is my own silly fault. Next time, more exercises, I guess.

I'm taking a quick break now from my busy schedule of lying prone on ice packs with periodic breaks for physical therapy and Motrin. I've readjusted my food plan so that every Motrin is accompanied by food. I'm trying to be a good kid about this thing. I just want to whine because it was Supposed to be Time Off, but not this Off!

Meantime a monster of a winter storm is whupping up on Southern California. I'm glad I'm not homeless, trying to drive in this mess, or stuck in a car somewhere up on I-5's Grapevine. It could be worse. It could be a lot worse.

2005-01-04T17:38:00.000-08:00

This year is getting off to a rough start. The tsunami news is bad, the war news is bad, and right this minute I'm sitting in a coffee house next to a woman who is deep into some sort of altered state. I don't know what to do, except go on with what I'm doing, and I have to say, I'm a little scared of her. I'm scared for her, too -- there doesn't seem to be any safe place for too many people like her.

She's talking to God, and alternating between direct discourse and a monologue about how God makes it impossible to be a good messiah. I was sitting here checking my email when she started, and I truly don't know what to do; every time someone from the shop has approached her, she's been angry with them. So maybe it is best I appear to pay no attention.

LA seems to be full of street people with nowhere to go, lately. They are more apparent in the wintertime when it is cold and rainy because they are out when everyone else is keeping warm someplace. I have no idea what to do for them, and I hate that feeling. I particularly hate it when someone is suffering, as this woman clearly is, and there's not a darn thing I can do for her except possibly scare her much worse than she's scaring me.

"What kind of prayer would be worth praying?" she said, and I must say it is an excellent question.

2004-12-31T18:13:00.000-08:00

I love living on the Jewish calendar. This is only ONE of my New Years.

2004 could have been a lot worse -- at least, for me -- but it certainly had its bumps. And it was an awful year for some folks.

Here's hoping for a New Year of blessing and peace, of growth and friendship, of challenges met and wisdom gained. My own life feels so rich and blessed I hardly know where to begin giving thanks.

For all of you who are my friends, who have encouraged me on my way, thank you so much for being there. Life is good: Keep coming back.

2004-12-30T22:03:00.000-08:00

If any of you are curious about my student pulpit, there was a very nice article in the Merced Sun-Star which is still available online.

Finished the history paper last night, praise be. The lesson plan in the second part is not the best thing to emerge from my word processor, but I never could imagine why any group of laypeople would even be interested in the historiographical debate around the relationship between Sabateanism and Lurianic kabbalah. (See, I knew you'd be interested.) Although it did give me an idea for a learning series that might be fun: a series of six meetings or so on "great debates" in Jewish tradition, with a focus on how our sages and rabbis go about a "dispute for the sake of heaven." It could be a very interesting way to look at the tradition, especially since we all still love to argue.

2004-12-29T23:38:00.000-08:00

After a brief break to celebrate Jamie's 21st birthday, I'm back at work. Everything must be done by Jan. 3.

Someone asked me today what I'm planning to do on New Year's Eve. "Type," I replied.

I've been a mom for 23 years; it's 21 years since that last trip to the labor room. I looked at the pictures from the party and realized, yeah, I'm definitely getting older. That isn't a bad thing, but it is certainly an odd thing. The gray hairs don't bug me, but the lines and the effects of gravity sure do!

Anything I might be cranky about, though, pales before the news from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and other places affected by the tsunami. I am upset with the response -- or lack thereof -- by our government; not sure yet what I want to do about that.

Incidentally, if you are looking for news about the affected areas, or for ways to help, check out The South East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami blog.

2004-12-24T08:58:00.000-08:00

I'm disgusted, what about you?:

The families of American servicepeople are being forced to go to food banks and to seek other kinds of financial help because the breadwinner's military service is bankrupting the family:

'People may work with the bank to pay a little less on their mortgage each month,' Cerf says. 'But all the rest of their bills are the same — utilities, car bills, clothes for the kids. Food is generally the last thing on their budget.'" (USA Today, Dec 24, 2004)

Think about it: imagine those spouses and families. Your spouse, or your dad, used to live at home and make decent money. Now, though, he or she is thousands of miles away, in a very dangerous place doing dangerous work. On top of that, there's much less money, and you are forced to go to the bank to "work things out" so you can stay in your house, forced to go to the food bank so the kids won't go hungry, forced to accept charity for things like Christmas presents.

One of my sons (the Navy reservist) asked all his family and friends to give money to the Alameda County Community Food Bank, instead of giving him birthday presents when he turns 23 on January 9.

2004-12-22T16:05:00.000-08:00

Here is another reason I love to live in California -- a photo of the northeastern United States taken from space this week:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16767

It's my favorite temp here right now: coolish but not cold, sunny days, nippy evenings. Southern California in the wintertime is very, very nice.

The papers soldier on: I've almost finished the one for Jewish Thought, after which Midrash, Prophets, and History lie in wait for me. It's hard not to pause over some new and wonderful idea, and JT has been full of those. I never thought that Kabbalah would be either interesting or useful -- everything I'd read about it, and the current pop-culture popularity-- had turned me off. It seemed to me that it was a body of text that allowed for cherry-picking for colorful texts, and a bunch of mystical-sounding stuff useful to charlatans, and not much else, whatever it might have been in the past.

Well, I was wrong. I am seeing possibilities in the theological model of the sefirot (I'm not even going to try to give you a link to explain that phrase) for dealing with everything from the problem of evil to more mundane issues, like why it is that the road to hell is so often paved with good intentions.

Back to work.

2004-12-17T18:08:00.000-08:00

OK, that last post was a big pity party. Here's something better:

I just found out that for $25, a person can sponsor a USO care package for a U.S. serviceman or woman serving overseas. I am personally very grateful that neither of my young men are far off in a scary place right now, but lots of other mothers' children are far from home and in need of gratitude and TLC.

Whatever your feelings about the war, take a look at USO Cares.

Shabbat shalom.

2004-12-17T16:14:00.000-08:00

I am drowning in assignments. Our break, such as it is, runs from Dec 24 until Jan 10 and I am pretty clear now that the real break will run for the three days I celebrate the boys' birthdays with them. This year Jamie will be 21, and Aaron 23.

Right now, looking at the pile on my table and spilling out of my briefcase, I feel 102. Worst of all, I am aware that my biggest problem is my attitude: I'm tired, I'm cranky, and I don't wanna.

Mount St. Helen's is still there, majestic on my laptop screen. Yes, Virginia, there is a place called "outdoors."

2004-12-15T15:15:00.000-08:00

I've handed in my Pastoral Counseling paper, and Homiletics is over. Tonight I plan to get as much done as possible (maybe finish?) the Jewish Thought take-home exam. Then all I have left are papers and projects for Midrash, Prophets, History, and ... hmm... I'm forgetting something. Something.

Yup, I'm a little ragged around the edges. I had a sobering weekend, with the blowout of a tire on my car at 70 mph on the freeway. I'm OK, the car is OK, the tire is, of course, toast, but it could have been so much worse that I am giggly and grateful whenever I think about it. Delano, CA, is a pretty nice place.

In case there isn't enough strangeness in your life this week, take a look at the Humm section of the Llama Question and Answer website. (It was chosen by Llama Life II Magazine for their first ever Notable Llama Website Award.)

I like llamas. Sometimes I think it would be fun to have a llama to tote my books and follow me around; a briefcase llama, like the ones I saw in Peru, trotting after their people, carrying panniers of files. I don't think my landlord would buy the argument that it isn't a pet, it's an assistant, though.

Also on my list of fantasies: the laundromat/beit midrash [house of study]. Where else are there big tables and time to pass?

Yes, it's the end of the term. Be well, and may all your tires roll safe and sound.

2004-12-10T08:59:00.000-08:00

Chanukah sameach! [Happy Chanukah!]

I'm on my way north in a few minutes to spend the weekend with my congregation up in the Central Valley. I'm toting a briefcase full of things I should study, papers in progress, etc., but I know it is unlikely I'll get to any of it. These weekends are full all by themselves. I'm looking forward to a baby-naming tonight, along with the usual Chanukah excitement: dreidels, singing, making sufganiot [Israeli jelly doughnuts], and latkes [potato pancakes], and of course, rivers of candle wax!

Glad to see that my baby brother is reading this blog, although I am truly sorry about the Moon Pie in the keyboard! I know it is a long way from Leiper's Fork to Merced (geographically anyway -- in other ways, they are closer than you might think) but if you want to have my share of sufganiot, it's yours!

2004-12-08T08:12:00.000-08:00

I think I've mentioned it before, but I've grown inexplicably fond of the Mt. St. Helens VolcanoCam. If you haven't seen it, take a look -- although today it is completely fogged in, with some rain drops on the camera lens, for good measure.

I never know what I'm going to get when I click on that link. Sometimes it is a magnificent view of a still-magnificent mountain, with a curl of steam from the crater. Sometimes it is fogged in, partially or completely. Sometimes, at night, when the crater is glowing, all I can see are a few lit-up pixels. Occasionally it is bizarre, as it is when a bug takes a siesta on the camera lens.

Once in a while I catch a magnificent sunset.

2004-12-04T20:19:00.000-08:00

This Shabbat was darn near perfect. Aaron rode down for a visit this weekend, and arrived just after dark on Friday. This afternoon we went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which I hadn't yet visited. (Last year my mobility problems were just too bad for art museums, and this year I' ve been too busy.) Anyway, Aaron's my favorite bud for museum wandering.

We moseyed around an exhibit of Mexican and Peruvian pre-Columbian art -- some of it wonderful, some of it quite terrible (as in terrifying) but all very interesting. I'd never heard of the civilization in the far west part of Mexico; I've forgotten the name now, but their art was spare and elegant. The Aztecs, Incas, and other more familiar folks were also well represented.

Then we rode an elevator up to the Islamic art collection, which was small but powerful. I love looking at Islamic calligraphy, and there were some very lovely examples. It set off some interesting thoughts concerning the Jewish Thought quad on Kabbalah - - surely there is a connection between the reverence that the Moslems had (and have) for words and for the power that the Kabbalists perceived in words and even letters. I'll have to ask my teacher about that one.

We had a great time, wandering around, looking at things, and talking about them. When the museum closed, I took him by my favorite used bookstore, and we poked around in the stacks there. Didn't bring anything home with us, but it was a lovely day.

Now I'm tired, and off to bed. More study tomorrow -- time with Aaron, too. It's so nice to have him here!

2004-12-03T16:15:00.000-08:00

In amongst all the sturm und drang over school (and yes, it's definitely that time in the term) -- I made a lovely discovery. I learned how to cook turnip greens.

Now, you might say, what Southerner gets past the age of 12 without knowing how to do this? For me, though, the trick was that I could not figure out how to get it to "taste raht" if there were no pork in it. Not only is this a "no pig" rendition of greens, it is actually a vegan (no animal products at all) dish. (My brother, a BBQ-eating good ole boy probably choked on his RC Cola at that idea!)

First, get a pound of turnip greens. Not collards, not mustard, TURNIP greens.

Wash them, and if any part of a leaf seems to be more like baling twine than a food item, pick that part off. (Note: do not put the strings down the dispose-all, unless it is an industrial strength appliance!) Drain the edible leaves, and rip them into reasonable sized bits.

Chop an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic. Put a tablespoon of mild olive oil in a BIG saucepan, heat it, and when it is hot, add the onions and garlic. Saute those until they are translucent. Add the washed, drained, shredded greens. Add just enough water to make it look swampish.

This is where it gets a little hinky. Add 2 teaspoons of "Liquid Smoke," 2 packets of Splenda (if you are a sugar avoider like myself. Otherwise, 2 teaspoons of some sort of sweetener, brown sugar or molasses.) Add about 2 tsp of salt and a couple of shakes of Tobasco. Allow this to simmer on the stove for about an hour.

To serve, grab a slotted spoon and fish out some greens. Drizzle with apple cider vinegar. Particularly yummy with Hopping John (another concoction for another time.) Bliss.

Shabbat shalom, y'all.

2004-12-01T23:38:00.000-08:00

I love studying Midrash. Here's a passage from Leviticus Rabbah, a fifth century collection of sermons and commentary:

----------------------------------------

Petichta verse (opening verse): Proverbs 29:24 -- The one who divides with a thief hates his soul -- he will hear an oath and will not tell. [In Leviticus 5:1, it says that if someone knows of wrongdoing, and hears a proclamation of an oath but does not testify, he bears the iniquity of the deed.]

Once there was one governor of Caesarea who used to beat the thieves and execute the receivers [fences of stolen goods.] The citizen were ridiculing the governor [for this policy] and said to him, "Do as is fit!" [meaning, execute the thieves!]

On the next day he sent out a hearld and he said, "All people to the open area."

He brought weasels and gave morsels to them, and closed up their dens. They seized the morsels and carried them to the dens. Finding the dens closed, they returned them [the morsels] to their place [to the original place in which they found the food.]

[He did this] to teach that all [the crime] was from [due to] the receivers. [The thieves would not be a problem, if there was no where they could take stolen goods.]

----------------------------------------------

This was surely not the first case in history of a head of state with a bunch of weasels on his staff!

2004-11-29T01:33:00.000-08:00

Need to laugh? Check out the tunes on this page:

http://foodsafe.ucdavis.edu/music.html#songs

The songs have been recorded by Dr. Carl Winter, a food toxicologist at UC Davis who also happens to be a musician. He's taken a lot of pop music and mangled the lyrics very entertainingly: imagine "Fifty Ways to Eat your Oysters." I imagine John Lennon would have laughed at "You Better Wash Your Hands."

OK, it's ridiculous. So enjoy.

2004-11-21T08:55:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting here, enjoying breakfast and "Weekend Edition" before vaulting into the day. Breakfast is particularly nice: I've figured out something that tastes good, doesn't make too bad a mess, and is nutritious: a quarter of a block of silken tofu, a cup of frozen berries, and a cup of milk, all blendered together into a smoothie. I have to wash the blender, but that's no big deal, and then all that's left is a dirty glass.

Who grew the soybeans, raised the berries, milked the cows? Who made the tofu and froze the berries? The only people I saw were the people at the grocery store -- and what I know about them is that they went on a months-long strike last year and basically lost most of what they were hoping to accomplish. It makes me wonder about the people I can't see. How many of them, how many of their kids, had a good breakfast?

I'm part of one food-related epidemic here in the U.S.: I'm part of the obesity epidemic. The spiritual approach I'm taking to the problem (having realized that for me, it is indeed a spiritual problem) is making it harder for me to ignore the other epidemics. There's an epidemic in the media (print, TV, billboards, you name it) of advertising to persuade consumers that they'll be happy if they eat huge pizzas, sugared cereal, sugar water, or other weird concoctions that are anything but nutritious. I can't help but wonder what it would be like to see those ads everywhere if I were part of a different epidemic: the epidemic of working people -- or people who want work, and can't find it -- who have to choose between rent and food.

I don't have any answers. I'm trying to shape my life into a better question: I know I'm hungry, but do I hunger for anything that will truly satisfy? I don't think that you have to be a tzaddik [an ideal righteous person] to see that Justice would be more satisfying than a Big Mac, that a good breakfast for everyone would be more satisfying than French Fries and Donuts for All.

2004-11-17T23:27:00.000-08:00

I read this and all I could think to say was, "Amen.":

This is the true joy in life:

the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one;
the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap;
the being a force of nature
instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances
complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

—George Bernard Shaw

2004-11-15T21:55:00.000-08:00

I am going to recommend a website to you, but before you take a look, be aware that it contains some graphic images of war. Fallujah in Pictures is not a pretty sight: it is a series of graphic photos from the war, along with portraits of American soldiers who have died there in the past ten days.

Whatever your opinion on the war, I think it is important to stop once in a while and think about what we are doing there. All those young soldiers are gone. The wounded children in a couple of the photos will be missing limbs for the rest of their lives. Every person dead or injured in the photos was or is someone's father, brother, son or friend (I didn't see any photos of women.)

It's so easy to sit here in the US of A and have opinions about this. Living in the middle of a "situation" is far different than living outside of it, as I learned in Israel.

2004-11-10T23:40:00.000-08:00

The new "quad" off and running, yikes -- for those of you who aren't fluent in HUC-speak, that means my classes have changed a bit, my schedule not at all. The new goodies: Early Modern Jewish History, Midrash 2, and Jewish Mysticism/Kabbalah. Lots to prepare, as always, and the faster I run the behinder I get, but that's ok, I'm learning.

One not-so-great thing is that Mondays and Wednesdays are now completely in the basement. As I've mentioned before, our class is large; the class behind us is also large. We are too big for most of the classrooms at HUC-LA. Last year we had most of our classes in the student lounge and in the beit midrash, which was not good because those really should be common areas, not classrooms. This year, my class is taking most of its classes in some new rooms in the basement. On the one hand, we are learning some lovely Torah. On the other hand, it is really odd to spend an entire day in a windowless room with poor ventilation. At lunch we can wander a bit, if lunchtime is not taken up with something.

On the other hand, we really are learning some lovely stuff. I've been very resistant to the idea of studying kabbalah, but so far, I'm enchanted. The translations are a bear, and don't make sense until Dr. Fishbane helps us see how to decode it, but it is a whole new way of thinking about Torah.

The text of the sermon I mentioned in an earlier posting, about Jewish tradition, kashrut, and vegetarianism, is now online. You can find it at NewReformJew.org -- scroll down and click on "Prophetic Priorities." Oh, and by the way -- the NRJ folks aren't allowed to mention it, but since I don't work for them, I can: if you click on their ads, it helps support their site.

While I'm mentioning sites I like, are you familiar with Mark Fiore? He's a political cartoonist in Northern California.

If you think webcams are fun (I do) check out the Mt. St. Helen's VolcanoCam. Some of the photos of the mountain are breaktaking, even when the volcano is quiet.

I don't live in Tennessee history anymore, but I have found a column in the Nashville paper, The Tennessean, that I enjoy very much. It's Learn Nashville, and is a local history column. George Zepp, who writes it, does more than research local curiosities -- he's a storyteller. Take a look.

OK, enough ads. I'm short on sleep and should have been snoozing an hour ago. Be well.

2004-11-03T23:09:00.000-08:00

We the People spoke, and we're going to have four more years of the Bush Administration. We the People also decided that marriage needs "protection" from gay folk. We decided that we want a more conservative Supreme Court.

I'm just now figuring out that as a queer, Californian, Jewish, female citizen of the United States, I may have a vote, but I'm a lot farther out of sync with 55% of We the People than I ever imagined. That came as a shock, a big shock. When I saw the lines at the polls yesterday, I felt hopeful, because I really believed that I may fit into several minority categories, but that my head and my heart weren't all that different from most of my fellow citizens.

There have been a lot of Bibles thumped in connection with this election. I'd like to do a bit of Bible thumping myself right now. I wish I could remind the President that while he and I may disagree on the interpretation of the message of the Biblical Prophets, there are clear, simple messages there that he and his party need to heed. We have millions of people in this country going hungry. More children fall below the poverty level every year. Our city streets are littered with our mentally ill and our homeless.

We've turned the profit motive into a graven image; we worship it by glorifying the bottom line. White collar criminals go to Camp Cupcake, and the whole process -- if there is even a process, if they are even held responsible -- is treated as entertainment for the rest of us.

Yes, we have enemies in the world. But going to the other side of the world to stir a hornets' nest in Iraq has not helped us in that respect. And please, enough with the "fight them there so we don't have to fight them here." On your farm, Mr. President, do you deal with a yellow jackets' nest by poking a stick into it?

Why aren't our ports more secure? Why is the security at our airports 90% nuisance and 10% real security?

We keep hearing about innocent men on Death Row, and yet we keep on executing people. We have held God knows how many people in Guantanamo and places like Abu Graib without due process, without charges, without conscience or mercy.

We raise young men and women who don't recognize that an order to torture is a bad, wrong order. We cut funds for colleges so we can build more prisons.

We are wrecking the world of which we are stewards. Anyone who thinks that global warming is an unsubstantiated theory was not paying attention when the hurricanes mowed through the Southeast six weeks ago.

God knows, Mr. President. God knows what we are doing. God knows what you are doing, you and the people who work for you. That was the message of Amos, and Isaiah, and Jeremiah: God knows. And God is paying attention.