40 Yiddish Words You Should Know
As a native New Yorker this brings me right back to corners of Manhattan and of course Brooklyn. For me Yiddish added such spice to the local dialect and lexicon, I could not imagine a world that was not colored by its rich hues.
Shalom!
Friday, February 4, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
How To Never Forget On International Holocaust Remembrance Day by | Jewcy.com
Because, to paraphrase, to forget is to repeat. And not just to Jews...
How To Never Forget On International Holocaust Remembrance Day by Jewcy.com
How To Never Forget On International Holocaust Remembrance Day by Jewcy.com
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Witches & Witchcraft - My Jewish Learning
Witches & Witchcraft - My Jewish Learning
The literal demonizing of women, sometimes to the point of death. Apparently the Jews of olde were not immune to this. (Cue weary feminist sigh.)
The literal demonizing of women, sometimes to the point of death. Apparently the Jews of olde were not immune to this. (Cue weary feminist sigh.)
Catching up 5: Elul, 5771 - Selichot:
(In which I start off with my first HHDs with awe . . . )
On the desk next to me is a yellow ticket. Its heading reads: "We invite you to celebrate the 5771 High Holy Day Season". Below my name is inscribed this passage from Isaiah: "The Gates of Return are Always Open."
This is my comp ticket to the High Holy Days 5771 at Temple Israel, BostonTemple Israel, Boston. I did not think I would get to celebrate Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur at the synagogue where I was actively converting. I had made my peace with the fact that I would need to find a more suitable venue that reflected my (at the time) current life circumstances somewhere else. For this I held no animosity; how could I? This is where I was in life - just starting two part-time jobs after a hard stretch, struggling with new rent and old bills. I might as well rally against the wind.
But then my rabbi sent me a letter regarding my conversion, which included this comp ticket. Although she might not have known what this gift meant, I certainly did. I exaggerate only slightly when I say my heart cried a little out of thanks at the sight of it. I could now share my first HHD with the people I had been going to Shabbat service and Torah study with. I could be in the place I was starting to think of as my spiritual home.
Two new friends from the temple invited me to go with them to Slichot. I accepted and proceeded to bombard them with questions. What was this? Like a midnight mass? Uh, not quite, they replied, wisely saying nothing else so that experience could fill in my blanks.
The first part of the evening was a discussion on the six questions (according to the Babylonian Talmud) you will be asked on the way to heaven. We split up according to what question called to us. I ended up in the room where we tried to discern what is meant by dealing honestly with people in our business practices. If I thought, it was going to be some tinder-dry conversation I was quickly corrected. The topic may have been "business practices" but the theme of ethics quickly spread out over many facts of everyday life. Soon everyone was adding their experiences into the mix and all I could do was sit back and smile (of course, after adding my own .02). Here was this wonderful give-and-take, two-Jews-in-a-room-with-three-opinions dialogue that I loved about Judaism. After decades of unchallenged Roman Catholic-obedience to scripture and then, later, Pagan wanderings in search of its own Book of Shadows, I had finally come home to a circle where spiritual Truth was vigorously sought after - even if no definitive answer was ever found.
After a break we ended up in the Temple’s main hall which had been transformed into a sanctuary. We were given candles and programs. "Leil Slichot," read the cover. "Beginning the Inward Journey to Forgiveness" its subtitle. I searched through my mental files for any Catholic and Pagan experiences with a similar philosophy but could find none. It was hard not to tremble in my seat. I felt as though I was standing on that razor-fine edge that separates the old and the new, the mundane from the unexplored. Whatever this was going to be tonight, for me it would be an absolutely new dawn.
The lights were lowered and the rabbis began reading from the program text. Torahs were solenly brought in, heralded by the hallowed sound of the shofar. It was a calling that stood my spine straight up. As each scroll was "clothed . . . in light"(Leil Slichot 4) the rabbis spoke of being a community before God, a family coming back to Sinai, a people following the footsteps of their ancestors back in time to a definitive moment. This stirred me in deepplaces I had long forgotten. Although I had heard the word before only briefly in song and did not know its dictionary meaning, I was beginning to feel the true resonance of the Hebrew word, Am.
Next came Havdalah. Rabbi Freedman stepped forward to mark the distinction between the end of Shabbat, the separation of the holy from the profane. "From this one Havdalah candle we light the candle of Memory . . . that helps us find a path back to you . . . " (6)
Now that we had come together, it was time to start turning, turning back, returning. "O Merciful One, I am afraid to look at all the times I have turned away . . . I am sorry, forgive me, help me begin to return to myself . . . " (10)
The words left me in a warm state of wonder. Return, return to what? Me, myself...my Self? Well, what was that, anyway? Roman Catholicism would have me believe that was an eternal sinner forever pleading on bended knee for salvation. Modern-day tenets confirmed this, painting me as abhorrent for being queer and to be shunned as handicapped for being trans. I was not to be celebrated or advocated for; I was to be pitied, kept from sight and reminded to be ashamed as often as possible.
I wish I could tell you that Paganism left me feeling more empowered but I had run into door-slamming fundamentalists there, too. One priestess dis-invited me from an all-women ritual after learning of my trans status, confessing she was doing was ‘probably wrong’ but kept the door closed all the same. (As a friend once wisely observed, "a fundie is a fundie is a fundie.")
So what was Reform Judaism saying via Selichot? I heard that night that my queer trans soul was actually worth coming back to; that I wasn’t some sort of cosmic mistake or social leper to be shunned at the door; that my presence there wasn’t embarrassing to this congregation and those leading it; that, like everyone else gathered there, I had been "drawn from the reservoir of the Holy. (Mishkan T’filah 35)
Now came "Sho.fa.rot...Awakening". More shofar blasts. "T’ki.ah! Wake Up! Sh’va.rim! Look! Tru.ah! Return! And the shofar signals my turning to You. (10)"
This night ended much as it had began, with select voices singing Shlomo Carlebach’s Return Again, uging us to "return again/to the land of your soul." I left the temple that evening thinking about that deep topography, seeing it with my gladdened heart as a true land of beauty, wonder, goodness and purity.
What a way to start my first High Holy Days
On the desk next to me is a yellow ticket. Its heading reads: "We invite you to celebrate the 5771 High Holy Day Season". Below my name is inscribed this passage from Isaiah: "The Gates of Return are Always Open."
This is my comp ticket to the High Holy Days 5771 at Temple Israel, BostonTemple Israel, Boston. I did not think I would get to celebrate Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur at the synagogue where I was actively converting. I had made my peace with the fact that I would need to find a more suitable venue that reflected my (at the time) current life circumstances somewhere else. For this I held no animosity; how could I? This is where I was in life - just starting two part-time jobs after a hard stretch, struggling with new rent and old bills. I might as well rally against the wind.
But then my rabbi sent me a letter regarding my conversion, which included this comp ticket. Although she might not have known what this gift meant, I certainly did. I exaggerate only slightly when I say my heart cried a little out of thanks at the sight of it. I could now share my first HHD with the people I had been going to Shabbat service and Torah study with. I could be in the place I was starting to think of as my spiritual home.
Two new friends from the temple invited me to go with them to Slichot. I accepted and proceeded to bombard them with questions. What was this? Like a midnight mass? Uh, not quite, they replied, wisely saying nothing else so that experience could fill in my blanks.
The first part of the evening was a discussion on the six questions (according to the Babylonian Talmud) you will be asked on the way to heaven. We split up according to what question called to us. I ended up in the room where we tried to discern what is meant by dealing honestly with people in our business practices. If I thought, it was going to be some tinder-dry conversation I was quickly corrected. The topic may have been "business practices" but the theme of ethics quickly spread out over many facts of everyday life. Soon everyone was adding their experiences into the mix and all I could do was sit back and smile (of course, after adding my own .02). Here was this wonderful give-and-take, two-Jews-in-a-room-with-three-opinions dialogue that I loved about Judaism. After decades of unchallenged Roman Catholic-obedience to scripture and then, later, Pagan wanderings in search of its own Book of Shadows, I had finally come home to a circle where spiritual Truth was vigorously sought after - even if no definitive answer was ever found.
After a break we ended up in the Temple’s main hall which had been transformed into a sanctuary. We were given candles and programs. "Leil Slichot," read the cover. "Beginning the Inward Journey to Forgiveness" its subtitle. I searched through my mental files for any Catholic and Pagan experiences with a similar philosophy but could find none. It was hard not to tremble in my seat. I felt as though I was standing on that razor-fine edge that separates the old and the new, the mundane from the unexplored. Whatever this was going to be tonight, for me it would be an absolutely new dawn.
The lights were lowered and the rabbis began reading from the program text. Torahs were solenly brought in, heralded by the hallowed sound of the shofar. It was a calling that stood my spine straight up. As each scroll was "clothed . . . in light"(Leil Slichot 4) the rabbis spoke of being a community before God, a family coming back to Sinai, a people following the footsteps of their ancestors back in time to a definitive moment. This stirred me in deepplaces I had long forgotten. Although I had heard the word before only briefly in song and did not know its dictionary meaning, I was beginning to feel the true resonance of the Hebrew word, Am.
Next came Havdalah. Rabbi Freedman stepped forward to mark the distinction between the end of Shabbat, the separation of the holy from the profane. "From this one Havdalah candle we light the candle of Memory . . . that helps us find a path back to you . . . " (6)
Now that we had come together, it was time to start turning, turning back, returning. "O Merciful One, I am afraid to look at all the times I have turned away . . . I am sorry, forgive me, help me begin to return to myself . . . " (10)
The words left me in a warm state of wonder. Return, return to what? Me, myself...my Self? Well, what was that, anyway? Roman Catholicism would have me believe that was an eternal sinner forever pleading on bended knee for salvation. Modern-day tenets confirmed this, painting me as abhorrent for being queer and to be shunned as handicapped for being trans. I was not to be celebrated or advocated for; I was to be pitied, kept from sight and reminded to be ashamed as often as possible.
I wish I could tell you that Paganism left me feeling more empowered but I had run into door-slamming fundamentalists there, too. One priestess dis-invited me from an all-women ritual after learning of my trans status, confessing she was doing was ‘probably wrong’ but kept the door closed all the same. (As a friend once wisely observed, "a fundie is a fundie is a fundie.")
So what was Reform Judaism saying via Selichot? I heard that night that my queer trans soul was actually worth coming back to; that I wasn’t some sort of cosmic mistake or social leper to be shunned at the door; that my presence there wasn’t embarrassing to this congregation and those leading it; that, like everyone else gathered there, I had been "drawn from the reservoir of the Holy. (Mishkan T’filah 35)
Now came "Sho.fa.rot...Awakening". More shofar blasts. "T’ki.ah! Wake Up! Sh’va.rim! Look! Tru.ah! Return! And the shofar signals my turning to You. (10)"
This night ended much as it had began, with select voices singing Shlomo Carlebach’s Return Again, uging us to "return again/to the land of your soul." I left the temple that evening thinking about that deep topography, seeing it with my gladdened heart as a true land of beauty, wonder, goodness and purity.
What a way to start my first High Holy Days
Friday, January 21, 2011
Israel as Redemption
Between last night's lesson on the Eretz/Am/Medinah aspects of Israel at my Introduction to Judaism class at Temple Israel, Boston and Leon Uris' Exodus, which I am currently in the middle of, one word keeps surfacing: redemption, as in to redeem.
Merriam/Webster Online has some interesting definitions for redeem , including but not limited to: "to buy back", "to get or win back", "to free from what distresses or harms", and "to change for the better". All of which makes for an intense focal point, especially from a religious point-of-view and a historical context. (For as many have pointed out, and rightly so IMO, you cannot contemplate the current nation-state of Israel or its founding in 1948 without taking into account the millennium old persecution of the Jews, right through the Balfour Declaration and the Holocaust. And, I would add, the legal purchasing of the land in Palestine during the early days of Zionism.)
How much does this concept in all its meanings actually define and ultimately justify in the end? An ongoing discussion that needs to continue.
Merriam/Webster Online has some interesting definitions for redeem , including but not limited to: "to buy back", "to get or win back", "to free from what distresses or harms", and "to change for the better". All of which makes for an intense focal point, especially from a religious point-of-view and a historical context. (For as many have pointed out, and rightly so IMO, you cannot contemplate the current nation-state of Israel or its founding in 1948 without taking into account the millennium old persecution of the Jews, right through the Balfour Declaration and the Holocaust. And, I would add, the legal purchasing of the land in Palestine during the early days of Zionism.)
How much does this concept in all its meanings actually define and ultimately justify in the end? An ongoing discussion that needs to continue.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
My Shabbat State of Mind
Wait, I remember thinking when I first started to read up on Shabbat early on in my Jewish odyssey. Hold up, hang on. You expect me to give up Friday nights? That traditional kick-off to the weekend, the frothy just reward every Monday-through-Friday nine-to-fiver suffers through a workweek to chug down with both hands? That happiest of happy hours, the evening of long dinners out, of movie dates and dancing late, bowling teams in smoky lanes and football games under the fabled bright lights?
Not that I ever rallied for the home team from the stands and I can’t remember the last time I had drunk my way to a Saturday morning hangover. All the same I still felt very possessive of my Friday evenings. The thought of surrendering all those long held oft-praised adolescent-based glories - or at least the potential of them - seemed unthinkable, unreasonable, impossible.
Worse, as a Jew who would practice Shabbat I was also expected to ‘keep’ Shabbat from Friday sundown to Saturday evening. Granted, Reform Judaism did not insist on the same prohibitions as Conservative and Orthodoxy streams but it did strongly suggest that there be some restraint of those distractions that define the rest of the week - for a whole twenty four hours, no less.
Really? I thought. Look, I was already going to Shabbat studies on Saturday morning. I tried to spend some
time in a natural setting afterwards, whether it be a stroll through the greenery of the Riverway (a.k.a. that ‘dirty water’) or a meditative stroll along the Harborwalk contemplating the ‘world of creation’. Wasn’t that something? Wasn’t that enough?
At this time I had just started going to temple for Shabbat regularly - but only with the escape clause in my purse that said I could stop any time I wanted. Because I have to confess it felt weird to be going into a house of worship on a Friday - every Friday - especially as the rest of Boston headed off to the movies at Lowe’s, another round at Ned Devine’s or packed the ‘D’ or Riverside cars (not coincidentally, the same Green Line train I took to get to Temple Israel) for the game over at Fenway.
Of course, I was still thinking in a post-Catholic mindset, counting time on the Christian clock, turning the page of the Gregorian calendar. In the United States and other Catholic theocracies the world always revolves around Sundays. The week starts on Monday, slogs through Wednesday, quickens on Thursday. Once the whistle blows on the assembly line Friday at 5:00 p.m. you’re allowed two nights and a day of debauch (whether that debauch is defined as drinking, dancing, drugging, sex or shopping, or some combination thereof) squeezed into about 32 hours...40 if you’re really adventurous.
Then comes Sunday, worship day. Dress in your fineries, cue the organ music and incense, sunlight through stained glass, priestly intonations and confessing of all your hard-earned sins. Stop by the bakery on the way home, pick up The Globe or The Times, cook the day-long meal, kick back on the couch to watch the game.
Not so much on the Jewish clock. If you are going to Shabbat then it’s a Friday night that brings you through the synagogue’s doors. And guess what? The world outside is not going to stop for you. Restaurants, bakeries, baseball teams do not care. The Red Sox are still going to play that double-header, your non-Jewish or non-observant Jewish friends are still going to par-tay. Shabbat is pretty non-negotiable. You can catch one of a half-dozen possible Catholic masses to fit into your Sunday schedule but there is only one sunset on a Friday.
That seemed huge to me and perhaps rightly so. As author Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg points out in her book "Surprised By God," religion is supposed to be larger than the practitioner of it. What’s the use of any belief system that allows us to be equal with our Higher Power, and therefore can barter with, mold and shape to our own needs and fears?
Religion washes over us like a wave from the sea, not a stream from a showerhead we can turn on and off. Spirituality contains this hidden non-negotiable element of surrender in this respect. It says if you want to have a relationship with your Higher Power then you are going to have to pay attention. It kindly, lovingly demands a laying down of our arms (if not our pride and iPods, too). It just won’t work if we’re constantly checking our cell phones, thinking about tomorrow’s staff meeting or downloading the latest Lady Gaga or Justin Timberlake.
* * *
So I thought, okay, I can do this. Judaism wants just twenty-four hours, a single day out of the week. Is it really that so much to ask? Beside, I was starting to really connect with my spirituality again through Shabbat services and Torah studies in a way I hadn’t in decades. This was beginning to have real meaning for me, an emotional and intellectual investment. Did I really want to do anything that would intrude on this ongoing meditation, this love affair I was fostering with the universe and its Creator?
Then September came around - a new season, a new semester. I had a course problem. The only way I could get the minimum credits for financial aid was to take a Saturday afternoon class. Okay, I thought, I can do this. It didn’t impede on my Friday night services or my Torah studies. This was workable.
Only it wasn’t. The class was a three-hour lecture from noon into the middle of the afternoon. I had just enough time to wrap up Torah Study and bail on oneg to go catch the Green Line T to make the Red Line south to JFK/UMass and then race to grab the shuttle to the campus. On the good days I managed to land at my desk with literally minutes to spare. Most times it was five or ten minutes late. The class - Ancient and Medieval Art History - was engrossing and challenging, demanding my full attention and fostering critical thought. Which of course is what any good course should do.
But it also picked me up of my Shabbat and unceremoniously dropped me in the middle of a classroom. My weekly love affair now ended hours earlier than I wanted it too. Soon I began to resent it. Then I remembered I had made this choice and therefore needed to deal with its consequences. It was only for a few months, right? Dammit I could do this.
And I did, too, although not without some serious pangs. I’m pretty sure no one was happier than me the following Saturday morning at oneg. I was back, I had returned with some new lessons learned, not only in how to tell the difference between Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Etruscan columns but in gauging the true depth of my Shabbat experience and my need to stay connected to the universe, give thanks and continue to have that beautiful wave wash over me.
* * *
Here’s what I found out - the more I went to Shabbat, the more I wanted to go. The more time I spent on a Saturday wandering the Harborwalk or along The Riverway, the more I wanted to look at nature through Shabbat-steeped eyes. The more I entered that Shabbat space the less I wanted to leave it. I began politely turning down friends’ invites to coffee chats or the movies and especially any Saturday protests. Hey, this is Boston - weekend protests in the Common is almost a given. Yet I knew to participate in one would totally shatter whatever Shabbat meditation I found myself in. Hard to keep an appreciation of God and The Torah and the gift of this world while screaming some clever political slogans.
Nowadays I schedule my Fridays so that I have the afternoon-leading-into-evening off. I try to do all my cleaning, food shopping and cooking done beforehand. I like the idea of being presentable in house, dress, body and mind to greet and invite the Shabbat bride via "L’Cha Dodi"into my Life for the day.
Does this mean I won’t buy food if I need to, or clean a plate I have dirtied (or shovel snow, as this *is* Boston in winter right now)? No...but I am trying very hard to keep from doing any extraneous activity which would tear me out of my Shabbat state of mind, rip me away from that special guest. No, twenty-four hours doesn’t seem enough now, not nearly enough.
I’ll end with this thought. Recently someone else new to this process admitted she wasn’t going to be able to make it to Shabbat. "I just can’t get out of work to make it there on time."
I totally respect where she is at. There was a time I thought I could live without Shabbat services. And with no disrespect to her, but these days I feel I would have a very hard time living without it.
Not that I ever rallied for the home team from the stands and I can’t remember the last time I had drunk my way to a Saturday morning hangover. All the same I still felt very possessive of my Friday evenings. The thought of surrendering all those long held oft-praised adolescent-based glories - or at least the potential of them - seemed unthinkable, unreasonable, impossible.
Worse, as a Jew who would practice Shabbat I was also expected to ‘keep’ Shabbat from Friday sundown to Saturday evening. Granted, Reform Judaism did not insist on the same prohibitions as Conservative and Orthodoxy streams but it did strongly suggest that there be some restraint of those distractions that define the rest of the week - for a whole twenty four hours, no less.
Really? I thought. Look, I was already going to Shabbat studies on Saturday morning. I tried to spend some
time in a natural setting afterwards, whether it be a stroll through the greenery of the Riverway (a.k.a. that ‘dirty water’) or a meditative stroll along the Harborwalk contemplating the ‘world of creation’. Wasn’t that something? Wasn’t that enough?
At this time I had just started going to temple for Shabbat regularly - but only with the escape clause in my purse that said I could stop any time I wanted. Because I have to confess it felt weird to be going into a house of worship on a Friday - every Friday - especially as the rest of Boston headed off to the movies at Lowe’s, another round at Ned Devine’s or packed the ‘D’ or Riverside cars (not coincidentally, the same Green Line train I took to get to Temple Israel) for the game over at Fenway.
Of course, I was still thinking in a post-Catholic mindset, counting time on the Christian clock, turning the page of the Gregorian calendar. In the United States and other Catholic theocracies the world always revolves around Sundays. The week starts on Monday, slogs through Wednesday, quickens on Thursday. Once the whistle blows on the assembly line Friday at 5:00 p.m. you’re allowed two nights and a day of debauch (whether that debauch is defined as drinking, dancing, drugging, sex or shopping, or some combination thereof) squeezed into about 32 hours...40 if you’re really adventurous.
Then comes Sunday, worship day. Dress in your fineries, cue the organ music and incense, sunlight through stained glass, priestly intonations and confessing of all your hard-earned sins. Stop by the bakery on the way home, pick up The Globe or The Times, cook the day-long meal, kick back on the couch to watch the game.
Not so much on the Jewish clock. If you are going to Shabbat then it’s a Friday night that brings you through the synagogue’s doors. And guess what? The world outside is not going to stop for you. Restaurants, bakeries, baseball teams do not care. The Red Sox are still going to play that double-header, your non-Jewish or non-observant Jewish friends are still going to par-tay. Shabbat is pretty non-negotiable. You can catch one of a half-dozen possible Catholic masses to fit into your Sunday schedule but there is only one sunset on a Friday.
That seemed huge to me and perhaps rightly so. As author Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg points out in her book "Surprised By God," religion is supposed to be larger than the practitioner of it. What’s the use of any belief system that allows us to be equal with our Higher Power, and therefore can barter with, mold and shape to our own needs and fears?
Religion washes over us like a wave from the sea, not a stream from a showerhead we can turn on and off. Spirituality contains this hidden non-negotiable element of surrender in this respect. It says if you want to have a relationship with your Higher Power then you are going to have to pay attention. It kindly, lovingly demands a laying down of our arms (if not our pride and iPods, too). It just won’t work if we’re constantly checking our cell phones, thinking about tomorrow’s staff meeting or downloading the latest Lady Gaga or Justin Timberlake.
* * *
So I thought, okay, I can do this. Judaism wants just twenty-four hours, a single day out of the week. Is it really that so much to ask? Beside, I was starting to really connect with my spirituality again through Shabbat services and Torah studies in a way I hadn’t in decades. This was beginning to have real meaning for me, an emotional and intellectual investment. Did I really want to do anything that would intrude on this ongoing meditation, this love affair I was fostering with the universe and its Creator?
Then September came around - a new season, a new semester. I had a course problem. The only way I could get the minimum credits for financial aid was to take a Saturday afternoon class. Okay, I thought, I can do this. It didn’t impede on my Friday night services or my Torah studies. This was workable.
Only it wasn’t. The class was a three-hour lecture from noon into the middle of the afternoon. I had just enough time to wrap up Torah Study and bail on oneg to go catch the Green Line T to make the Red Line south to JFK/UMass and then race to grab the shuttle to the campus. On the good days I managed to land at my desk with literally minutes to spare. Most times it was five or ten minutes late. The class - Ancient and Medieval Art History - was engrossing and challenging, demanding my full attention and fostering critical thought. Which of course is what any good course should do.
But it also picked me up of my Shabbat and unceremoniously dropped me in the middle of a classroom. My weekly love affair now ended hours earlier than I wanted it too. Soon I began to resent it. Then I remembered I had made this choice and therefore needed to deal with its consequences. It was only for a few months, right? Dammit I could do this.
And I did, too, although not without some serious pangs. I’m pretty sure no one was happier than me the following Saturday morning at oneg. I was back, I had returned with some new lessons learned, not only in how to tell the difference between Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Etruscan columns but in gauging the true depth of my Shabbat experience and my need to stay connected to the universe, give thanks and continue to have that beautiful wave wash over me.
* * *
Here’s what I found out - the more I went to Shabbat, the more I wanted to go. The more time I spent on a Saturday wandering the Harborwalk or along The Riverway, the more I wanted to look at nature through Shabbat-steeped eyes. The more I entered that Shabbat space the less I wanted to leave it. I began politely turning down friends’ invites to coffee chats or the movies and especially any Saturday protests. Hey, this is Boston - weekend protests in the Common is almost a given. Yet I knew to participate in one would totally shatter whatever Shabbat meditation I found myself in. Hard to keep an appreciation of God and The Torah and the gift of this world while screaming some clever political slogans.
Nowadays I schedule my Fridays so that I have the afternoon-leading-into-evening off. I try to do all my cleaning, food shopping and cooking done beforehand. I like the idea of being presentable in house, dress, body and mind to greet and invite the Shabbat bride via "L’Cha Dodi"into my Life for the day.
Does this mean I won’t buy food if I need to, or clean a plate I have dirtied (or shovel snow, as this *is* Boston in winter right now)? No...but I am trying very hard to keep from doing any extraneous activity which would tear me out of my Shabbat state of mind, rip me away from that special guest. No, twenty-four hours doesn’t seem enough now, not nearly enough.
I’ll end with this thought. Recently someone else new to this process admitted she wasn’t going to be able to make it to Shabbat. "I just can’t get out of work to make it there on time."
I totally respect where she is at. There was a time I thought I could live without Shabbat services. And with no disrespect to her, but these days I feel I would have a very hard time living without it.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Jews in the Civil Rights Movement - My Jewish Learning
When I was studying which religious structures aligned best with my social-activist spirit, I kept coming across stories like this.
In a world all too ready to embrace the latest anti-semitic tall tale, may these never be forgotten.
Jews in the Civil Rights Movement - My Jewish Learning
In a world all too ready to embrace the latest anti-semitic tall tale, may these never be forgotten.
Jews in the Civil Rights Movement - My Jewish Learning
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)