Jewish Roots

I was exploring this excellent site this morning, this site is a wonderful opportunity for Jews all over the world to explore their roots and heritage, you don't need much to start your search for relatives long since past. And you never know you might be able to trace your family to a great Rabbi, like the Vilna Goan, or the Baal Shem Tov, or maybe Rashi and who knows from there you could be a direct decedent of King David for those of us who foster Messianic dreams :) enjoy.

Pesach

More on my personal Passover coming soon, for now enjoy a little information me and a friend wrote up earlier.

Pesach in a Nutshell:

Jews were in Egypt for 220 years. Moshe talks to G-d and G-d says go to Pharaoh and bounce out of Mitzraim (Egypt). "Let my people GO BOOOOOOO! Mitzraim in Hebrew comes from the root word which means restriction. And on this day about 3000ish years ago, after the plagues and all that jazz, we bounced!!!!

Pesach is a holiday that focuses on the Jews leaving Mitzraim as a physical and a spiritual entity. Leaving Mitzriam means to free yourself from all those things that keep you from being self actualized. Exile from your own personal Mitzraim (Egypt) is the goal!!!!

So we don’t eat leavened bread. Reasons being is bread is representative of our ego. So we clean our entire house for "chametz" (levening of any type as if we were cleaning our internal egos) and we eat matzah.

Matzah is flour and water that cooks for 18 minutes...after 18 minutes it becomes chametz...(from my understanding) and it is referred to as the poor mans bread!

So we are like kings and queens getting freed from Mitzraim physically and spiritually but we keep our ego in check by eating matzah. Why? Well we need to remind ourselves that at one time things were not so good and even though we are kings and queens we are still humble before Hashem.

Like Most of the Others

Like most of the others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent and at times a stupid hell raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right. I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going. - Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary

The Dead Sea

It's just about time for Passover and I can hardly believe it. It's been a crazy week in Israel it all started with me dislocating my shoulder at the Dead Sea. A few friends and I packed up our stuff last Wednesday thinking that we would camp out for a few days at the Dead Sea we got everything together and off we went. After setting up camp, and chilling out we decided to go on a hike. We explored the mud flats, they are crazy composed of mud and salt they form an ever changing surface with crevices opening up out of no where and semi-fresh water pools further inland. You can read about my first experience with this in the post Yom Tov and the Dead Sea. When we got to a pool where there is a jump off it’s about 20 feet or so into to a pool we had to do it. Both my friends went and then it was my turn. I'm a little afraid of heights so I was a little nervous about this even though I'd done it before. When I jumped I knew something was immediately wrong I could just feel my shoulder slip out of its socket when I hit the water I knew for certain this was going to be trouble. I called out to my friends who were enjoying the beautiful scenery and water and said quite simply "I'm not okay, I need help." my shoulder was hanging on its side and the pain was building.

Then came the hard part, I was in the water I needed to get out and the banks are made for slippery mud. After some very careful maneuvers I got out and was laying in the mud, at this point I tried to get my shoulder back in unsuccessfully for the first time, effectively covering myself in mud, after some time it became apparent I was going to have to get help, something I didn't want to do but knew was necessary. So I had to get up, every move was a struggle. Now I don't mean to over dramatize this but if you've ever had your shoulder dislocated its awful your whole upper body becomes useless and if the shoulder shifts one way or the other even slightly the pain gets intense really fast, so this is what I was dealing with. I thought that if I could get to solid ground I'll be able to slide the shoulder back into place, hell I'd done it many times before why not this time? And so after walking a little ways I got back on the ground and tried but with no success. All I did manage to do was cover myself in sand and dirt, I now looked like a Celtic warrior covered in war paint but no better off then I was before. Now I realized I wasn't going to be able to fix myself and we were going to have to go to the hospital, which I adamantly did not want to do but we had to. After getting some help and getting back on my feet we started the slow walk back to camp, I knew the sun was starting to set and if we didn't make it back to the road soon it was going to get a whole lot worse. And so we walked every step was a challenge the ground beneath my feet was slippery and I had a useless upper body, I was hurt and hurt badly. Luckily for me I have amazing friends, they were calm with me and did everything they could so make sure I took the easiest way but it wasn’t easy there was crevices to bypass, the walk there took us 25 minutes, the walk back took over and hour, finally we made it to camp I sat down exhausted and then the mosquitoes descended. I felt like the Pascal Lamb waiting for slaughter I was in my bathing suit. My shoulder had been dislocated for almost three hours already and then I was a helpless victim to the mosquitoes.

They swarmed, I couldn’t stop them from biting me finally the army came and gave me a lift to the road, the medic checked me out tied my arm to my side to stop it from moving and I got to take a ride in the Hummer it was in retrospect really cool. But at the time it was hard that thing jumped around like a tin can and I just wanted it to be over. And so we got to the road luckily for us we found a cab on its way to Jerusalem, after some savvy negotiations, we hopped in and headed for the hospital. Now finally I could rest before this point of the experience my mind had been focused on an objective, get my shoulder back in, okay I can’t do that get up, walk to camp, get over this obstacle, etc. I was focused on the task at hand with all that out of the way for the first time in three hours I had time to think a little. Its an amazing thing being that present for so long, most of the time we’re not at all present with ourselves. As your reading this it’s very likely your brain has taken you off somewhere else. Something I’ve written has triggered a memory or idea, whatever. But when you’re in that much pain, when you know you need to do something to relieve it your mind stays focused the past, the future don’t exist only now matters. It’s actually quite amazing. And so I had sometime to think and this is what came into my head, for the last month and a half or so I’ve been on a crazy adventure with my friend Mattisyahu, we’ve been traveling together on and off exploring the country, checking out different yeshiva’s and figuring out what our faith truly means to us and how that translates how we see the world and how we interact in it. It’s been amazing, everything we’ve needed we’d gotten it was all perfect, miracles happened everyday. It was easy to have faith to trust in Hashem to know that everything we were doing was right and it was all what needed to happen. At that moment my arm was hanging on my side and things we’re bad. At that moment it would have been easy to say why? Why did this need to happen and ignore the fact that everything happens just as it should. The bottom line is you can’t just trust in Hashem when everything is going great you have to trust in Hashem always. And knowing that, really knowing it and internalizing, was tremendously helpful when nothing seemed to make sense in the world. The month or so we’d been traveling before wasn’t the test that was just the show, this moment was the test to see if we’d really gotten the point. Because even then everything we needed was right there in front of us. We’d been traveling just the two of us for a while this time our friend Ari came along. If not for that the situation would have been infinitely worse having that 3^rd person made everything easier, I didn’t have to be left alone at any point something that would have been very hard for me, the cabdriver on his way back to Jerusalem who did us a favor, amazing every moment of it.

And so we made it to the emergency room, it was something being there, covered in mud and sand over four hours into the ordeal it was already 9:15pm. I check it and waited and waited it wasn’t until 11pm that I finally got to see a doctor when I did the pain lessened quickly after one failed attempt they slid my should back into place it was an amazing feeling, I felt like I’d been reborn suddenly I could focus on what was going on, how dirty I was, how bad I smelled, etc. I got an x-ray which was negative I didn’t facture anything, I could go home. I got home at 12:15am the whole ordeal started at 5pm, my shoulder was dislocated for six hours, I took a shower and went to bed, I spent the next three days exhausted sleeping. Just another crazy experience from the holy land, it’s been a week now my shoulder is still sore but it’s getting better, I start rehab on it in a few days, fortunately I know what to do to back it better, as always everything I need is right in front of me, if only I’m patient enough to see it for myself.

A Big Place

The world is a big place, don't let anyone tell you otherwise, being in Israel has made me re-realize that. I've been thinking about the interactions of people Jews, Arabs, Americans, the list goes on. And what I'm beginning to realize is that the world is a big place. We're all trying so hard to do what we believe is right, and we can't understand anything else, its because we’re all so limited in our perspective of what we ‘think’ the world should be. Just a thought. Eretz Israel.

Heart and Soul

Right now I'm having a conflict between my heart and my mind, I want to come home I miss everyone and its hard being away and missing so much it has been over five months now that I've been gone. On the other hand I know intellectually or as people around here would say in my soul that I need to stay in Israel for a while longer. I still have much I want to learn and questions I want to answer and things I want to accomplish and I also know that if I were to come back now, I would end up coming back to Israel which I don't want to do. I want to come back and be back completely and not still in Israel in my head. And thats just the reality I'm living for now. Eretz Israel.

End of Zman

Its officially the end of Aish's winter Zman(semester) and I'm(and every other yeshiva student) off for the next month. In reality I've been out of yeshiva for around the last two weeks. I went to Tel Aviv for the last weekish with a friend and just hung out, kicked around and was lazy which was a nice change of pace. I'm very excited about a couple of planned hikes and maybe a trip to Egypt over the next month. For now I'm enjoying the change of pace, Shalom Alechem.

A Maniac Adventure

I went back and read a bunch of my previous posts over the last five months or so and I realized and Interesting trend and that is the posts tend to swing up and down, going from fierce optimism and joy down to a somewhat manic(pardon the pun) depression and borderline despair. And I thought I should say something about that and simply put that is just how is is around here, the yeshiva experience isn't easy, its very difficult evaluating every aspect of your existence and wondering if you've been living it correctly, or if there might be a way to get more out of each day and each moment. And like I said it can be a difficult process and conversely an extremely rewarding process, I've met people here, and experienced things that I wouldn't trade the world for, I've grown and changed in ways that I never could have imagined this trip has(thus far) been everything I imagined it would be and so much more because I never could have foreseen any of this. And I just feel like I need to make that clear, because despite my many struggles here I'm happy and more in love with the world then I've ever been the peaks and valleys are just more extreme here because I don't have my family around or most of the things that make me comfortable. One day in the not so distant future I'll take those things back and I'll hold on to them fiercely. But for now I'm here floating in the wind... just a little bit, seeing where life takes me(is it April already??).

Class Notes: End of Zman

As usual all of the material below comes straight out of my notebook:

Traits of a Jewish leader: the true essence of a Jewish leader is they are a person who believes in and will stand up for the Jewish people.

Daas Torah: An extension of knowledge in Torah to all aspects of ones existence.

In the absence of truth, nothing is true and everything is permitted.

When you’re doing mitzvahs remember to do it for the sake of heaven, i.e. mitzvahs are designed to give one an awareness of the thing itself and its easy to think your simply doing it to do it. The correct attitude is to remember though the mitzvahs you’re improving your awareness about life itself.

Generalizations are valuable because they are generally true.

Stay out of Egypt! “So that he will not return the people to Egypt…for Hashem has said to you, you shall no longer return on this road again.” – Devarim, Parshas Shoftim, 17: 14-16

What is important in life? We’re addicted to things, we think they’ll make us happy but they don’t and in the end we feel empty. What’s important is to find something that will last.

You've got to pay for your dinner

I've been a wanderer as of late, been roaming around Israel taking it all in loving every minute, serving god with joy and not wasting a moment. I took a trip to Tel Aviv last weekend before stopping off in Jerusalem for the night and then heading up to Zefat the next day. Now I'm back in Jerusalem likely headed back to Tel Aviv. In Tel Aviv I had a relaxing long weekend, it mostly consisted of sitting on the beach, listening to the waves crash against the shore. We went out and I remembered how much I hate that scene, how ridiculous it is and how happy I am that I've found something so much better to do with my time. It was a good few days and it helped me reorganize my priorities. I also got to watch some March Madness which was a big deal for me, there are a lot of things that I don't mind being away from while I'm here, a lot of sacrifices I've made. And I'm okay with that but I like sports and won't give it up, don't see why I would ever need to. I was talking with one of my closest friends back home, the baseball season is starting, they're all going to a Met's game soon, and I feel that pang of loss it might sound dumb and certainly I miss my family more, miss being with them on holidays and just hanging out but its something like that that really brings the distance home to me. So it was nice for me to hangout with some friends and watch basketball. When I got back to Jerusalem I was actually happy to be back and went to a few classes the next day before getting on a bus and heading up to Zefat, I went up there to check out a different yeshiva named Shalom Rav. Its this crazy little place, the Rosh Yeshiva there is an amazing guy and my talks with me over the course of the day were inspiring. So the yeshiva was great its definitely right up my alley and one of the few places I've looked at that I could imagine myself at, I also had a chance to check out Livnot it's a volunteer organization, and I'm thinking I might go help them out for a week during the break, all you have to do is walk into their office and tell them you want to help and they give you a bed. In Zefat they're doing excavations of buildings covered in the last earthquake. So its pure manual labor but I think it could be a lot of fun. Not to mention its important to me to do something to help physically change the Land of Israel, its given me so much that I feel like I should return the favor and this could be a great opportunity to do so. What constantly amazes me about these trips I take is how, when you start looking for it, and praying for it god's hand becomes truly real and obvious in the world. For instance my friend and I went to eat dinner, we got delicious chicken sub sandwiches and walked out without paying. Neither of us even realized this until the next morning when we were eating breakfast, after paying for it we had two shekel's change which we threw into the charity box. After having a debate about what to do about last nights dinner we but decided we needed to pay, as we reasoned it out, one way or the other we we're bound to and so we walked down the road and paid. The owner was in shock that we would come down and when we came up two shekel's short he waved us off. Now thats not much and it's also not a mind blowing experience, but when you begin to train your mind to see these things, its amazing how easy god allows us to see his works. I can point to many bigger crazier things happening that are for me have been pivotal in my return to god. But its important to appreciate the little moments, god is in the details after all. Shalom Aleichem.