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.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
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.
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.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
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!
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!
Monday, February 06, 2006
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!
---------
"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!
Saturday, February 04, 2006
Friday, February 03, 2006
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.
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.
Sunday, January 15, 2006
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.
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.
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