Kiruv

It’s the common name for Jewish Outreach, at Aish we get a healthy dose of experience with this. Aish HaTorah is in fact of the biggest and well know Kiruv Organizations; our Rosh Yeshiva is Noach Weinberg who is one of the great Rabbis of our generation. Another organization is Chabad and they have been my main source of Jewish upbringing those two and Birthright Israel are the reasons I’m studying at Yeshiva. And as I spend more time learning and practicing Judaism I find that I to am a one person Kiruv Organization. At Yeshiva I interact with all sorts of different people from every imaginable background and at every amazing place in their spiritual and practical awakenings. I woke up this morning and davened Shacrit at shul. I followed the whole thing; I even got there late figured out where we were pretty quickly and off I went. I got to make an alyih to the Torah because I’ve been going to morning services for most of the month. I was thinking that I’ve be become very comfortable in the Jewish world. When I got up to the Bimah and saw the torah in front of me, I got so nervious I’ve resited in many ways becoming a part of this world, there are many things I still disagree with, and yet I am a part of it, making an alliyah is a part of being part of the community. When I boy becomes Bar Mitzvahed he’s calling up to read from the Torah, before he gets married he gets called up. It’s recognition of a relationship to the community. It was very cool even if my knees were shaking the whole time. After wards people shake your hand and tell you, you did a good job, everyone’s doing a little Kiruv of their own. I spent Thursday in Meron, it was Lag Ba’Omer the 33^rd day of counting the Omer. In Meron every year there is a crazy festival, Around Rabbi Shimon bar Yokai’s grave on the side of a mountain, 200,000 Jews come in and out and dance and sing all night long. Me and my friend Noach went, we met up with a much of other Aish guys who had made the journey. After the sun went down it started up huge sound system’s got turned on and everyone davened and snag and danced. In one big room chassid’s crowed and danced it was like a mosh pit I lasted for 10 minutes before I got out, in other open areas pits were being stuffed with cotton and oil for the bonfires that dot the mountain, they much like everything and everyone else burned all night. It was amazing dancing in that crowd stationed everywhere were less crowded areas with food and water so tired Jews could sit down and reenergize before going back out. On of our rabbis was there popping out out of nowhere explaining and showing us all the sites. Amazing experience it reminded me that what initially got me into Judaism was the music the ecstatic feeling you get when singing songs on Shabbat and the feeling of unity it brings. Noach and I were talking about the crazy scene trying to think of how to describe it, and I can’t not fully anyway. I can’t describe the feeling you got being there, how the moon hung over the festivities glowing orange while fires burned, children age three got their first haircuts and everyone celebrated the glory of Hashem. And I thought about myself at the beginning of my journey on Birthright, when I first got to Aish and how uncomfortable I still felt and how I feel now. Now That I understand the mitzvahs so much better and practice some many more of them. It’s a duel process knowing where your limits and limitations are and challenging yourself and also giving yourself time to understand them. And then over time you begin to feel it, all the way down inside and then you can begin to share it slowly and tentatively you can even start to explain yourself to other people and more importantly to yourself. Because it’s a scary thing, it requires time when you feel like you don’t have it when you just want to get your life going. But I’ve realized it all been worth it. Amazing, simply amazing.