Sderot

A trip to Sderot with my class opened my eyes to what its really like being a settler on the frontier. In case you don't know Sderot is in the Western Negev, it is part of Israel and has been since its independence. No group has ever said that Israel doesn't have claims to Sderot, except those groups who desire the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people. Sderot has been hit by over 4000 rockets since Israels disengagement from Gaza in 2005. On Monday when we went there no rockets had fallen for fours days mostly due to the ceasefire Israel signed with Hamas. The next day rockets fell again. Being there and seeing it with my own eyes was a powerful experience. Its something that is hard to describe. Seeing bomb shelters at bus stops, at kindergartens, every where talking with people who live with the reality that the Israeli government doesn't seem to care about them. That the world is happy to ignore their problem while condemning Israel for human rights violations. And I have to say after my trip I agree Israel is in violation of human rights violations, against their own people, people who they're unable to defend, people who they seem okay with ignoring. I know the whole group walked away with incredible respect for the people who live in Sderot, for more information check out the Sderot Media Center.

Restore my Soul

Life has this funny way of amazing me. For instance its always amazing to me how much my thoughts can shift in such a short time. Last week at this time if you had asked me my plans for a year from now I'd have told you I'd likely be a reform Jew, as in I spent sometime in yeshiva learned a little something and now I've regained my sanity. My oh my how a week can change things. Now today at this moment sitting here typing this, my soul feels restored. I feel good about my decision to be in Israel, learning Torah, and growing. It can be confusing and hard, as I've tried to document on this blog, but when you get a bit of clarity nothing else seems right. I've always known that I'm old fashioned. In a world where family values seem like a thing of the past, where people don't understand what it is to commit to something greater then themselves individually, I feel a bit like an old man. And yet in a Torah community, the moral and ethical values I've cultured my whole life are not just accepted but embraced. Before I left for Israel I spent a Shabbat at one of my Rabbis houses in Westchester and I starting talking with a friend of his. A younger guy with a young family, and he said something to me that I'll never forget, something that resonates with me until this day/ He said you'll never find a community like this in the goyish world. Obviously the religious world isn't a perfect place, far from it. But that doesn't change the fact that the people I meet and am comfortable with are good people, committed to working on themselves and to Tikkun Olam i.e. the repairing or bettering of this world. And thats a community I want to be a part of. It's hard to me to think about and even harder for me to say in such a public forum. I've always had difficulty committing myself to anything much less something that in its core exposes a world view with an absolute reality. But slowly more and more I find myself okay with that and that my friends is a beautiful thing. Shalom Alechem from Eretz Israel.

A Tree of Life

Taking a break from the majority of my religious practices is and has begun to give me a bit of clarity on them. I can't claim I'm totally clear on anything(although that would be really excellent) but I do feel like a little space has given me much needed perspective. A major part of any Jew's daily practice is prayer, something that I generally find to be very rewarding. I connect to prayer mostly because its such an emotional practice, question why are men obligated to pray three times a day with other people and women are not? Because men are generally more emotionally challenged then women. Remember of course that generalizations are good because they are generally true. And I've realized what may seem like a silly point to people, the more I pray, the more often I open up my siddur and read those ancient words, the more connected to god I feel. And more to the point the more I feel open to religious practice in general. The more I just meditate, sit in a corner alone and try to focus my mind on simply being, the more I feel like I simply exist and the less seriously I take the minutia of Jewish halacha. After not opening up my siddur for a solid week or so I thought about one passage in it that I really connect to, its beautiful even in the English, although the Hebrew is for obvious reasons better. It's a passage not read everyday, it is in fact reserved for placing the Torah back into the ark , after the tri-weekly Torah reading. Here it is:

"A tree of life is it(the Torah) for those who grasp it, and its supporters are praiseworthy. Its ways are ways or pleasantness, and all its paths are peace. Length of days are at its right; at tis left are wealth and honor. HaShem desired, for the sake of(Israel's i.e. the Jewish people) righteousness, that He make great the the Torah and (make it) glorious"

Everything in parenthesis I either added for emphasis or clarification or was added into the English translation because Hebrew doesn't have a lot of the connecting words that English has. I think that statement is incredibly beautiful and its a wonderful meditation to think about, all is ways are pleasantness and all its paths are peace. Shouldn't this be everyone's objective shouldn't we all be striving to live or lives in peace and pleasantness? I kind it's a little idealistic for me to think about but still what if we all worked towards this goal? This passage and many others are why I'll never be able to just give up on Judaism even when I have my doubts. Shalom Aleichem.

Scaps of Paper

I have a habit of writing down quotes or things that pop into my head suddenly on pieces of paper, usually I end up with tons and tons of little scraps of paper that I don't do anything with, thats usually the case however today I found one of those scraps of paper and I thought I'd share its contents on this blog, enjoy:

Joy that is shared is doubled
Grief that is shared is halved

Who is the victor? The one that holds the weapons of battle in his hand. - Zohar 1 221a

If there is a concept of damage, then there is certainly a concept of repair.

The world is not a small place, its just well managed.

Part of life is a quest to find that one essential person who will understand our story. But we choose wrongly so often, over the ensuing years that person we thought understood us best ends up regarding us with pity, indifference or active dislike. Those who truly care can be divided into two categories: those who understand us and those who forgive our worst sins. Rarely do we find someone capable of both. Jonathan Carroll, Glass Soup

The Jerusalem Times

I’m not even going to try to lie here I’ve been freaking out for the last week or two, I’m not entirely sure what it is but I have my guesses. After almost eight months away from home I’m starting to feel the pressure to come home and just do something. I’m also thinking about my level of religious commitment and questioning whether or not I really believe it. I can’t help but wonder how much I’ve been influenced by the environment that I live in. This is a topic that is discussed in the writings of our sages. They talk about how your environment influences you so you’d better find a place to live where you’ll be positively influenced, so you’ll be influenced in ways you want to be and can live confidently in your beliefs. I’m sure when I go home I’ll find myself in a similar position that I am here, except in reverse. Here I’m always defending other beliefs, insisting that though flawed Reform and Conservative Judaism have something valuable to offer, and not just Judaism but also many other schools of thought that run contrary to Jewish thought. I for better or worse believe strongly in the mosaic. I believe that no one philosophy has a monopoly on the truth, that inevitably since the truth isn’t just for the Jewish people so to other religions and philosophies have discovered/ have had revealed to them elements of essential truth. Interestingly enough I know that when I get home I’ll be forced to take the other side of this argument. I know I’ll be dealing with people day in and day out who simply won’t understand choices I make regarding lifestyle. I’ll be faced with friends who don’t believe in objective truth. And will therefore find positions I may take as ludicrous. I know all these things, and it is my sincere hope that though my actions and words I’ll be able to help others see the world though my eyes, even when my vision may be a bit cloudy.

I’ve been in a real funk for a solid week now, I have no desire to be a practicing Jew, no desire to pray, eat kosher food, keep Shabbat, wear a kippa, nothing. This is by far the most apathetic I’ve been towards my religion in a very long time. I feel like in many ways I haven’t gotten anywhere in all these months, all I know for certain is that being a Jew and raising a Jewish family is the most important thing to me. But what does all that mean? How to I translate that into a coherent philosophy? With those questions I still struggle as I know many, many other people out there do as well. I think about the messianic age about what that really means for humanity. Is it just an abstract concept speaking of a time where the human race will get past our petty differences and see each other for what we really are, sparks of heavenly light; little tiny infinitely lacking specks of god. Or is it an actual physical reality, the Jews will rebuild the third temple, etc, etc, etc. I don’t know I wish I did. What I do know is despite all these questions I have unanswered time and life marches on.

Oh yea, I finally cut my hair it’s short again, I know I told people I wasn’t going to cut it until I got home but I hadn’t anticipated what summer here is really like. Its hot, I mean seriously hot all the time, after a talk with my dad I decided I was being borderline psychotic not cutting my hair when I was struggling with the heat just because I had some abstract idea in my head that I wanted to go home with a crazy mess of hair. It would have been fun though... oh well maybe I’ll just have to stay here another six months so I can let it grow back… just kidding, Shalom from beautiful (and hot!) Eretz Israel.

Today's Moment of Zen

Every once in a while you come across something and your struck with the thought, man I really wish I had thought of that, this quote is just such a thing for me, its from Kurt Vonnegut’s Man without a Country his final work. And it is simply breathtaking, enjoy today’s moment of Zen:

“If you want to really annoy your parents and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”

Adam and Eve

God and evolution it’s a big debate these days in America and all over the world. If god created the world then how do we explain evolution? I’ve heard a lot on the topic during my time at an orthodox yeshiva and I got an email from a wonderful cousin of mine posing this question: See if you can find out if any of your Rabbi's have an opinion on how God created the world versus evolution??? How do they explain evolution if Adam and Eve were created by god?? Before I start with my own take on the subject which is my opinion based on the arguments I’ve heard along with my own research and questioning I’ve going to mention that there is a wonderful book written about this topic called Genesis and the Big Bang, by Dr. Gerald Schroeder he’s written many books trying to reconcile a rational faith in god without throwing out science. He’s also a regular speaker at Aish HaTorah and I think can provide valuable insight on the topic. So now that that is out of the way lets get down to business. Before the now prevailing theory of the origins of the universe came into being, namely the big bang theory scientists thought that our universe was static, that it had always existed. Now we know better, we understand that the universe isn’t static that it in fact had a definitive beginning, that at some point it started. That’s incredibly interesting especially given that the Torah begins with (source www.chabbad.com):

1. In the beginning of God's creation of the heavens and the earth.
2. Now the earth was astonishingly empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the water.
3. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

This is an interesting way to start the book isn’t it? Especially given that god doesn’t create the stars and the planets until the fourth day.

14. And God said, "Let there be luminaries in the expanse of the heavens, to separate between the day and between the night, and they shall be for signs and for appointed seasons and for days and years. 15. And they shall be for luminaries in the expanse of the heavens to shed light upon the earth." And it was so. 16. And God made the two great luminaries: the great luminary to rule the day and the lesser luminary to rule the night, and the stars. 17. And God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to shed light upon the earth. 18. And to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate between the light and between the darkness and God saw that it was good. 19. And it was evening, and it was morning, a fourth day.

If god didn’t create the stars and the planets until the fourth day then how do we explain light on the first day? I think its metaphorical when god said let there be light, light actually means energy, which isn’t far fetched at all after all we know that everything that exists in the entirety of creation is nothing but particles of light energy that have slowed down and condensed. So I think given this example we can begin to understand that the biblical account of creation isn’t at all far fetched. So how does evolution come into play here? And how do we account for it? When we examine the text we can begin to see that the Torah gives a step by step account of creation first light, then the heavens and the solid matter, then the waters came upon the lands, then vegetation spread out over the earth, next up is the creatures in the waters, then land animals appear, and the beasts of the earth until finally man is created. Not an altogether bad description of the evolution of life in the universe I think you’d agree. As for Adam and Eve there are lots of opinions about this and I’m not going to try to deny that there are some people who would try to deny evolution. I believe there is no issue with the idea of a biological evolution guided by god we can look at how evolution works, i.e. natural selection, environmental pressures, mutation of genes, etc; as long as we understand that Adam and Eve were the first two true human beings in the spiritual sense, created in the image of god.

7. And the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and He breathed into his nostrils the soul of life, and man became a living soul.

This is my best understanding of this concept to date, like I said previously there are many far more qualified people to discuss the topic then I. However I hope I did my best to explain a rational, coherent view of this topic. And while there are some religious people who would disagree with this method of viewing the text, I find no contradiction in believing that evolution is real and that god is real. I think unfortunately too many people confuse the two topics. When we’re looking for god in evolution I think we need to understand that were asking two different questions. Evolution is a problem that means it has a solution we can work on it and come up with theories and test hypothesis and find answers. God is a mystery for which we’ll never truly have a definitive answer, I know that my life has become infinitely more enriched since I allowed god into my life. But I don’t expect to ever have a definitive answer of whether or not god exists. I can rationalize and give theories and proofs for why god must exist, but I know ultimately that people who don’t want to believe simply won’t open up their minds and hearts to the possibility, so be it. It is my opinion that one can reconcile both science and theology and find a comfortable space for the two in their lives. Please note any errors that we made are mine and mine alone and don’t take my answer as any kind of definitive proof. This is how I see the question and these are the answers I’ve accumulated that make sense to me. If there is anything I’ve been unclear about I’d love to get input and I’ll do my best to make it clearer. Shalom.