Abacaxi Mamão

When I heard the shofar in shul on Rosh Hashanah, the broken notes spoke to me in a deep, visceral way. It sounded like a simple instrument that was trumpeting, loudly, the brokenness of the world. I don't know if the shvarim (which literally means "broken") and truah blasts had ever hit me in quite that way before.

The world feels so broken to me right now.

The world has collectively and countries/municipalities have individually decided to dispense with any virus mitigations that might cut down on transmission, aside from recommending that everyone get vaccinated and stay up-to-date with boosters. A vaccine-only strategy is not enough to cut down on transmission. It is not enough to prevent more and more people from becoming disabled due to Long Covid or, G-d forbid, from suffering any of the specific sequelae that can happen after a Covid infection, including significant cardiovascular complications or neurological and psychiatric complications, if not death. It is not a pretty picture! Some of these complications happen to people after even very mild cases of Covid.

It's just hard to believe that people really care about other people getting sick, including very seriously and/or with ongoing, complicated symptoms, when they won't even bother to mask or ensure good air filtration/ventilation when gathering with others.

Broken. The world feels broken.

It felt good to hear that sharp, painful, sinking realization echoed in the cry of the shofar in shul on Rosh Hashanah.

In contrast, the tekiah always sounds siren-like to me. It's an alarm. It's a call to arms. It's a piercing sound, designed to enter straight into the heart and inspire one to action.

The three sounds together--two broken and one sharp and piercing--felt like a really good thing to hear this Tishrei. (I did not hear any shofar blasts in Elul this year, since I didn't attend any shul in Elul.)

"Wake up! Wake up!" the shofar seemed to say. "Don't you see that the world is broken? Look at the brokenness--really look at it!--and resolve to repair what you can."

Labels: Covid-19, life, Rosh Hashanah, Torah (broadly defined)

Two years ago, I celebrated Pesach (Passover) as what felt like literal redemption from death by Covid. I felt deep, visceral gratitude. I felt...saved. There was a sweetness in my mouth and it wasn't just that tap water tasted weirdly sweet after my sense of taste and smell came back! (So weird! Tap water tasted as sweet as flat orange soda.) I felt the sweetness of living after I was worried that I literally would not survive the night. 

Being able to taste salvation on my tongue and feel it throughout my body, as my lungs filled with air and as my muscles recovered from 18 days in my apartment--it was palpable and a unique experience. Singing Hallel with an actual feeling of joy and gratitude for redemption from a dark and lonely place was a singular experience. Coming out of Covid infection, hypoxia, pneumonia, solitude at home, into the Paschal celebration was unique and I hope nothing similar ever happens again, or at least not for a very long time, because I hope that I'm never again (or at least not for a long time) that close to death. It's not something I want or need to feel every Pesach! The memory of it from 5780 is enough to sustain me for the rest of my life, I think.

(I know that salvation sometimes feels like a Christian idea to us Jews, but Pesach is also about salvation from slavery, from life that feels close to death. Pesach is the time that we celebrate historical redemption of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. It's not unusual to expand that idea of redemption from slavery to redemption from other things, sometimes symbolically seen as analogous to the leaven that we rid from our homes.)

A year ago, things were different. I celebrated Pesach with a bit of optimism and hope that my sojourn through Long Covid was coming to an end. I had more energy over Pesach than I'd has in awhile and, in fact, I'd been experiencing a bit of an upswing in energy levels since Purim time.

This year, things are more complicated. I'm fatigued. Again. Always. I would say that it's been a long slog of fatigue that has been omnipresent--always there or the threat of which is always lurking--since early-ish December. The fatigue got better in the spring of 2021, so I was hoping for a recurrence of hope in the spring of 2022, but so far, no.

I was listening to Christina Perris's song "I believe" while walking to return a book to the library today. It's a great song, but for some reason, I was thinking about Pesach as I was listening to it, and I heard the lyrics in kind of a new way--as the Venn diagram between Covid/Long Covid (they're one and the same for me) and Pesach. I was especially thinking of what the Israelites must have felt as they left the known horrors of slavery in Egypt, facing the Red Sea (that they thought would kill them), and the vast unknown of the desert on the other side.

I am not an Israelite newly freed from the shackles of bondage in Egypt facing the great unknown of what's to come, but...I sort of am. Maybe we all are, as we work out way through the third year of this pandemic, which many declare "over" and that is, yet, still sickening and killing many throughout the world.

Here are my thoughts about some of the specific lyrics of the song:

I believe if I knew where I was going I'd lose my way

I wish I knew where I was going, where this (Long Covid) is going. What is my life going to look like in the next year? The hope I felt a year ago--that it was heading in the right direction--is not at the forefront of my mind this year.

---

I know that we are not the weight of all our memories

I think part of what's hard about the trauma of having survived Covid and then unexpectedly thrust into a life of chronic illness with Long Covid is that it's not just memories--it's also ongoing. All around us, people are masking (or not), testing positive with Covid (or denying that it's a threat at all), and there's an element of ongoing trauma. Any time a person who has a sore throat and a cough says, "I'm sure it's nothing" and doesn't get tested or wear a high-quality mask around others, we're reminded of both our memories (the horror of our initial illness and ongoing chronic conditions) and that it's not yet over--for us or for others, as much as they might declare it so.

"The weight of our memories" is also a good subtitle for any Jewish celebration. A lot of what we do with our festivals is recall our pasts and ensure that our memories remain alive and visceral, even long past when the historical events occurred--whether that's freedom from the bondage of Egypt, salvation from genocide in Persia, the terror of the destruction of the Temples, or other events from our recollected, national, historical/mythological past. We weigh those memories down heavy--with liturgy, with food, with celebrations, with gatherings--so they don't float away or disappear.

---

And I have felt the pain of losing who you are

The pain of losing who I am could be the subtitle for a Long Covid memoir (a bitter one, were one to write one like that).

 It's...insane. It's quite painful to go through a traumatic Covid illness (as I and many others did--others who end up with Long Covid were only mildly ill at the beginning, but some of us were quite ill at the outset!) and then to emerge into, in my case:

1. a world that was completely changed from the one I left (I was last outside in NYC on March 19, 2020 and then got sick before I was able to emerge again in early April, and the difference was shocking--from busy, bustling streets to empty streets, except for a few people jogging wearing bandanas like cartoon bank robbers or old timey bandits), which causes its own kind of dislocation. When I emerged, I was in the same place as I was a few weeks ago, but that place had completely changed. I have never survived a major natural disaster, but I imagine that sense of dislocation is even worse. The place is the same, but completely changed, which makes us feel like we're somewhere entirely new.
   
   
2.  a personhood/selfhood/life that was completely different from what existed before, with no road map or set of directions or, really, much professional support (with a few exceptions)

---

And I have died so many times, but I am still alive

I got nothing on this, except that I wonder if the Israelites leaving Egypt felt this way. I imagine that living as a slave involves many things that feel like small deaths. I also imagine beholding the ten plagues and then walking into/through the split Red Sea and out the other side all felt something like cheating death. They had died many times, and yet they were still alive.

I did have the "but I am still alive!" feeling many times during my acute illness, especially towards the end, when I went to sleep at night worried that I wouldn't wake up in the morning. Each morning, when I awoke and saw that I was still alive, it gave me a bit of hope, a jolt of gratitude, and a smidge of low-key euphoria.

---

I believe that tomorrow is stronger than yesterday

And I believe that your head is the only thing in your way

I wish that you could see your scars turn into beauty

I believe that today it's okay to be not okay

I think that this may be my favorite part of the entire song. It sums up a lot, doesn't it? I don't currently believe that tomorrow is stronger than yesterday, but I hope it's true.

 

I also think that strength can mean different things--the strength to deal with chronic illnesses and the challenges of life--not only physical strength. And in that sense, perhaps one becomes stronger over time, as one collects more and more tools for dealing with it all. At the beginning, we're like babies, aren't we? Unskilled and generally flailing, wailing, just hoping that some kind-hearted experienced person around us helps us out. Then, toddlers, stumbling and bumbling along, trying to make our way. Eventually, children, teenagers, and hopefully sage adults with wisdom to illuminate our paths.

I also don't believe that my head is the only thing in my way. I think other things are in my way, too. (But my head does do a considerable job getting in my way at times! I just don't think that's what's going on here and now. Or, at least, not the only thing happening. It probably is at least partly in my way; it usually seems to be.)

I do believe that my "scars turn into beauty" all the time. I think I might be an insufferable person without my scars, and while I would prefer never to have collected such an impressive assortment, I'm glad that I've found ways for them to help me become a (slightly) less insufferable human being.

It's always okay to not be okay. That's one of my main/big takeaways from Long Covid. You're not okay? That's okay! Feel not okay, maybe tell others if you have folks around who will care enough to listen, and stop fighting it. It's not okay. Things are not okay. Feeling into the "not-okayness" of life and accepting it with compassion has been important for me over the past year.

Before I decided that it was okay to be not okay, I sometimes worried that I was falling into depression because I was so sad and/or angry in 2020 and 2021.

 

Then, one day (or maybe over the course of many months), I realized that I felt sad and/or angry because there was much to be sad and/or angry about. Sadness and anger are well-adjusted, balanced human reactions to saddening and angering events, like a mass-disabling event that is Covid-19. They aren't signs of pathology. It would be pathological to contract Covid due to the government ignoring the oncoming pandemic for too long, then become disabled through that viral infection, and not be sad and angry about that. Also, if you aren't sad and angry about the successive waves of Covid that have battered the world then I think you should probably consult a therapist for some fine-tuning of your emotional responses to tragedy.

It's okay to not be okay when things aren't okay. And even for awhile afterwards, if things somehow end up okay and a miraculous cure is developed for everything that Long Covid has wrought on our bodies--it will be okay to not be okay for awhile afterwards, too.

(Positive psychology and toxic positivity can go jump in a lake.)

---

 

Hold on, hold on

'Cause I have been where you are before

I think this is what celebrating/observing Jewish holidays is about to me--"I have been where you are before." Over and over again. Anywhere we find ourselves (individually), it's somewhere we've been before--as a people. 

It's not a road map for navigating it always/necessarily, but it's a comfort to be somewhere familiar. Any situation in which you find yourself, there's some kapitel Tehillim (chapter of Psalms) that lets you know that someone has been there before you.

---

This refrain is very moving to me: 

This is not the end of me, this is the beginning

 

This line is, for me, the nexus of the Venn diagram between Long Covid and Pesach.

I imagine--because it says so in the Chumash--that the Israelites who were fleeing bondage in Egypt thought that they were simply going to die in the desert. They thought that they had been released from life that felt like death--slavery--into actual death. I have, sadly, heard people with Long Covid say, "I wish the virus had killed me. This existence is no kind of existence." (I am very grateful that I've never felt that way myself. But I can understand why others would.) Surviving death just to end up in some other form of severe hardship is like, "What the hell, God? How is this any better than that?"

For me, life is better than death in many, many ways. Even a life that has felt so, so hard over the past 2+ years. As long as I can take walks and appreciate the various stages of leaves on trees and flowers blooming in the ground, I am glad to be here.

But Long Covid has, in many ways, felt like an end. Or an End, capital E. So much of what made my life meaningful in the past is no longer accessible to me. It's hard not to see that and bemoan all that was and is no more. The Ancient Israelites who fled slavery in Egypt would have understood. The desert was (is) a scary place and they missed the squash that they ate in Egypt.

But what if--hear me out here and feel free to disagree with me?--the end of one thing is always the beginning of something else? I think it often is and it's often terribly frightening because we do know what's ending, but we don't know what's beginning.

The unknown of Long Covid is the goddamn worst. The worst. The Worst--capital W. Will I ever stop being so tired? Will I ever remember all the words I once knew and be able to recall them without first searching for them fruitlessly through my mind? Will I ever stop typing the completely wrong word all the time when I write?

Spring is a time of hope and I think Pesach is a time of holding onto hope even in the face of tremendous fear and darkness--whether that's the Egyptians pursuing hot on our  heels, the yawning Red Sea in front of us, or the desolate desert beyond it.

The month of Nisan, which always takes place in spring in our Jewish lunar-solar calendar (and is the reason for the solar part of our lunar-solar calendar) is a beginning. We Jews thankfully have many beginnings in our year--the mishna in Rosh Hashanah says that we have four. Having many chances for beginning and renewal are so important to a people who has suffered a lot and faced many endings.

I'm hoping to refine/edit this and add references to the relevant Jewish texts and have something sharable in time for Pesach. (I've written this all from memory except for the song lyrics and think it would become more dvar Torah like if I added in some Jewish textual references.) 

Or maybe I'll just leave it in its rough form and, instead, do my taxes.

Labels: Covid-19, life, music, Pesach, Torah (broadly defined)

Labels: Purim, Torah (broadly defined)

Draft written and saved in July 2009. Re-discovered in February 2019. Published after some light editing.

---

I cried (at least) three times at the Kolech conference today [July 2009] and I don't think I've cried at a JOFA conference since the first one in 1997, when I realized, at the tender age of 17, that I wasn't all alone in the world!

I don't know if that's because things are so much worse here in Israel, or so much better, or if it's just because I was overwhelmed with gratitude for all the women (and the very few men) who are doing so many amazing things.

Labels: gender, Jewish community, music, Torah (broadly defined)

Written 10/15/2009.

Rediscovered 2/21/2019 when I remembered that I had a blog and decided to go back and clean up some of the drafts that have just been sitting here, for all this time, while I have been freelancing and getting two masters degrees and teaching first grade.

Almost ten years later! Technology is crazy.

---

Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.
I was dating a handsome young man at the time, and he was extremely supportive of my professional life and frustration with my job. Thanks to his encouragement, I asked for, and received, a raise that I deserved.

But he also asked me what I really wanted to do with my life.

Unable to answer--I was interested in so many things! How could I ever choose just one to pursue?--I rephrased the question: I asked myself, "What makes me feel most me, most excited to be alive, most connected to the world around me?" The unequivocal answer was: "Learning Torah and writing."

Labels: dating, life, Torah (broadly defined)

Draft written 11/30/2011 about an event that took place earlier that month.

Rediscovered in 2019. I still remember this incident well! I think I saved it as a draft in 2011 instead of publishing it because it seemed terribly disorganized after I drafted it. It's not really any better now, but I think I'm going to hit "publish" anyway!

---

On a recent JOC hike, there was a call for mincha. When someone asked what we were going to do for a mechitza, I said that we didn't need one, since the woods in the state park are not a regular place of worship, and that standing off to the side would be sufficient.

Someone then told me that I had to stand in the back, since the women were permitted to see the men but the men were not permitted to see the women. He said that he was a rabbi--he did this "professionally," he added--and that I "had to" go behind the men.

I disregarded him and stood a good seven feet from the nearest man, decidedly off on the side and not "behind" any man. Afterwards, he came up to me and said, "You really know your stuff. Are you a rabbi's daughter?" I said, "No, I've just learned some Torah."

The idea that the only way a woman can acquire halakhic knowledge is through her father, or, if I had been married, her husband, is enraging to me. It is also often true--women who are the children or spouses of rabbis often have greater halakhic knowledge than those who are not. But one should not assume the inverse, that one who has a modicum of halakhic knowledge is necessarily related to a rabbi! She could have acquired that knowledge herself! Using her brain! And the Jewish education that her non-rabbinic parents scrimped and saved and impoverished themselves to provide her!

Any woman accustomed to davening with a minyan in sometimes strange settings (museums, airports, wedding halls, airplanes) would know about not needing a mechitza. Men presumably know less about this, since they more frequently daven at pickup minyans at which nary a woman is present or at which they just totally ignore the nearby women who are not davening. It's crazy/not crazy to me how you can be a frum man and not give any thought at all to the mechitza and have it be an invisible non-factor/non-presence in your life, while I feel like any time I go to shul, I am constantly being forced to see, confront, or literally bump up against it. You know, at shuls where the first row of seats in the women's section, which is behind the men's section, does not leave enough space for a non-dramatic bow during the Amida without literally bumping up against the mechitza.)

Any woman who doesn't want to stand behind men should know that standing next to men is perfectly fine. Gentlemen, just keep your eyes forward, towards mizrach, if you don't want to behold my womanly figure! I am stating this here for the record, as a public service.

Sigh. What a world. Also, don't pull your "I'm a rabbi!" business on me!

I wanted to say, "Just don't look if you don't want to see me" to the rabbi, but I didn't. I just stood there on the side and did my thing. But bullshit on the claim that in a non-mechitza setting (that is, a setting in which no mechitza is necessary), women have to stand behind the men. Seriously, bullshit. We'll stand next to you and you keep your faces in your siddurim/smart phones if our clothed-in-autumn-hiking-attire, several-feet-away presence is distracting/disconcerting/tantalizing to you.

I could also have said, when he said that I knew my stuff, "Well, you don't seem to know yours; where'd you get smicha?" but I'm too polite (except online, obviously) to even think of things like that at the time, not to mention actually verbalize it.

Do you know what else is bullshit? Pointing to your klaf to justify your ridiculous sexist beliefs instead of citing a source. I was all ready to go into simchas beis hashoeva from maseches Sukkah on him, but I didn't.

(Citing a source to support your sexist beliefs is also bullshit, of course. Hello, I am a walking, talking, cognizant human being, standing right in front of you!)

I noted that the other mincha-davening women opted to stand in the back, not in the side. Not sure what that means or says about the situation. More of an observation than anything else.

Note: For anyone who thinks this is atypical, it is not. It is 100% typical of my experiences with davening and learning in most Orthodox settings. Especially mincha/maariv. That really gets men upset! How dare a woman show up and try to converse with HaKadosh Boruch Hu in their holy space?

And, yes, this is what happens when women learn Torah on a high(ish) level. Also, when they combine that with a degree in history and women's studies from Harvard. It is a potent and dangerous combination.

Why put up with this nonsense? Why not daven alone rather than with a bunch of non-egalitarian men?

I think I put up with it to the extent that I do (and I don't always--I almost always opt out of tefilla altogether at this point in my life, and very occasionally daven in fully egalitarian settings) because I haven't yet seen a multi-generation egalitarian community with a high level of Jewish knowledge (meaning, my level would be about average or a bit more than average, but not above the 66th percentile) that retains a sense of rootedness and community. There are communities that have some of those things, but not all of them. And it's pretty rare in the Orthodox world, too. But somewhat more common. I think. I mean, I think more Orthodox communities hit more of those marks more of the time. Rampant, reprehensible sexism is one obvious cost.

I maintain some tiny shred of hope that interactions like the one I had on that recent day will create lasting change. He wasn't upset that I disregarded his "halachic" pronouncement and stood off to the side, instead of behind. He seemed impressed. It was more of an exchange than a confrontation. That suggests that change is possible. He will think (I hope) before sending women to the back next time!

Change is remarkably hard in a situation in which men have all of the power. Even "liberal" men are generally loathe to cede that power to women, even to smart, dedicated women. Some interesting things are happening on the leftward fringes of Orthodoxy (women learning at high levels in multiple institutions, Yeshivat Maharat, partnership minyanim) and in the non-denominational traditional egalitarian community (Hadar--Kehilah and Mechon/Yeshiva, Conservative Yeshiva, Fort Tryon Jewish Center, and other things I don't know about).

But as I said, I also skip communal davening and go to fully egalitarian options when it's too much to bear. I am glad that both options exist for me, and I hope for a world where nobody ever sends women to the back. Ever!

Labels: education, gender, Jewish community, life, Torah (broadly defined)

Make that fifteen seconds.

Labels: meta, teaching, Torah (broadly defined)

Apparently it has.

My life as a Jew and my life as a writer are intimately bound up in one another. My voice and the leadership roles that I have taken in the Jewish community have all been through my writing. As someone who was often relegated to the backs and sides of communal spaces as a child growing up in the Orthodox community, and who still feels strongly a part of that world through my allegiance to advanced Torah study, my voice is most easily, and least threateningly, shared through the written word.

My broad, overall goals as a writer are: to engage creatively with all aspects of Jewish life and learning; to share a passionate, caring voice that is eager to engage with both the enormously fulfilling and more heart-breakingly difficult aspects of being a modern, committed Jewish woman; to share my love for both asking questions and seeking answers; and to use my strong grounding in classical Jewish texts to struggle with contemporary issues.

One important sub-goal of my writing is to close the chasm between the emotional and intellectual selves in the world of Jewish learning. In my experience, too much of classical Jewish learning shuns the emotion in favor of the intellect. I seek to bridge that divide by using classical Jewish sources to shed light on our emotional inner lives, and through that, on the emotional truths that permeate so many classical Jewish texts, from Tanakh and its commentaries, to Talmud, halakhah, and its commentaries, to the siddur and its myriad commentaries.

Another one of my goals as I move forward in my continued involvement in the organized Jewish community, especially the community of yoshvei beit midrash—those who sit in the study hall—is use the medium of the written word to tease out the interplay between Jewish text study, Jewish prayer, and mental health issues. These complex relationships exist for many, but are rarely, if ever, spoken of in public.

That's it, really. Just sharing!

Labels: Jewish community, Torah (broadly defined), words

Part 1 here.

It was July 1997.

I had just turned eighteen years old and had spent at least twelve years working my ass off in day school so I could get good grades and get into a good college. I had gotten the good grades (mostly), been accepted to the good college, and was about to take a year off to go and study in Israel. First, though, I worked full-time in June and August in Boston, so that I could spend July in New York City, living with a lovely couple with three sons on the Upper West Side, and studying Torah full-time.

I couldn't get enough of Torah. Torah had been like a drug for me towards the end of high school, which was a bit of a rocky time for me emotionally. It was some sort of panacea or a life raft. I clung to it with all my might, in the belief that it, and only it, had the power to save me by righting all the many wrongs that I identified in the Orthodox Judaism in which I had been raised.

I was young and idealistic. I had had a young (far younger than I am now), idealistic, male teacher in high school who had promised me that women learning Torah on a high level would remake the world of halacha and cure all that ailed The System. I believed him. (See this and this for more on that youthful vision, particularly as it relates to Orthodoxy vis-a-vis feminism.) I loved learning Gemara, in particular. At the summer program for high school students that I attended in July 1997, I learned from the best teacher I had ever had, a recent graduate of their unique "I can't believe it's not smicha [rabbinic ordination]!" certificate program. (Yes, it was called that even then.) All the cool people--the thoughtful people, the people who cared about the things that I cared about--seemed to be professional learners and teachers of Torah. I thought I might study in Israel for a year, go to college, and return to this institution or another to collect my own "I can't believe it's not smicha!" certificate. I was the cream of the Modern Orthodox intellectual crop; I was hope for the future of Modern Orthodoxy. I was told that it was for people like me that the founder of my day school had created it. I had questions, of various theological sorts, but they were taken seriously and I was promised that, in time and with enough learning, I would find answers.

And then I went to Israel. And there, in what I always thought of as yeshiva, they told me, "The world is not ready for women to learn Gemara five days a week."¹ I knew that this was not true, since I had been learning Gemara five days a week since I was twelve years old, and had just done it for the entire month of July--five mornings a week and one or two evenings a week of night seder--and the world had not said, "Boo." I was not the only one who wanted Gemara five days a week. Several of us, in the highest Gemara class available to us first year students, petitioned the administration for more Gemara, and they said no. We gave them a very logical reason for wanting more Gemara, namely, that with Gemara on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, we spent each Monday reviewing the complicated material, especially the ever-convoluted rishonim, especially as taught through the not-always-textually-accurate-although-it-claims-airtight-logic Brisker method, from the previous Wednesday, since it had all but been forgotten in the intervening four days. They told us that if we stayed in Israel for a second year, at their esteemed institution, that we could have Gemara five days a week.

Labels: gender, Jewish community, life, Torah (broadly defined)

Last week as I was learning Torah in the beit midrash, I felt my 12-year-old and 18-year-old selves peering over my shoulder and each sagely nodding their approval. I'm not sure I can explain what that felt like. Trying to is making me rather teary, and I'm not even sure why.¹ It was an eerie and uniquely wonderful sensation.

Let me start from the beginning.

It was September of 1991. I was twelve years old, and about a month away from celebrating my bat mitzvah with a birthday party at the local art center with all of the girls in my grade. The only thing that marked the occasion as specifically Jewish was that I gave a d'var Torah on Parshat Noach. (My birthday was in the Hebrew month of Tammuz, but that was an inconvenient time to celebrate a bat mitzvah.) I had survived nine years of day school education and already learned most of Chumash and the first few books of Nach.²

We sat down in the classroom next to the lunchroom-auditorium and opened up a paperback Gemara textbook with a reprint of the first chapter of Tractate Berachot from the Vilna shas and took out our highlighters.

The teacher read, in that sing-songy Gemara voice:

מאימתי קורין את שמע בערבין? משעה שהכהנים נכנסים לאכול בתרומתן עד סוף האשמורה הראשונה דברי ר' אליעזר. וחכמים אומרים עד חצות. רבן גמליאל אומר עד שיעלה עמוד השחר

Me'eimasai korin es shma b'aravin? Mehsha'ah shehakohanim nichnasin lehechol b'trumasan ad sof haashmorah harishona...

He read and translated and we all diligently took notes. We highlighted assiduously--one color for each sugya, or section. Tests required us to recall key phrases:
"'Come and hear,' not 'Come here'!" I remember the teacher joking.

I remember, at some point that year or the next, sitting on the ledge in the grassy courtyard of my school, helping a classmate understand a difficult section of Gemara. It suddenly occurred to me that this was really, really fun. It was a kind of game, or logic puzzle, and when I had cracked it, it felt wonderful!

I had never really had that sense about anything purely academic before. I pushed myself to excel in school because that's what was expected of me, so that's what I had come to expect of myself. I really enjoyed the few art projects we got to do in elementary school, where I had also enjoyed writing and "publishing" short books, and had liked learning life sciences in seventh grade, but had no particular passion for anything else I studied in school. I was terrified of getting bad grades and I worked very hard to prevent it. I kept the fact that I enjoyed learning Talmud to myself for the next several years.

When classes were first tracked, in seventh grade, I started out in the regular, non-honors track for limudei kodesh [Judaic studies]. Over the course of high school, I gradually moved up into the honors class.³ Sometime around tenth grade, my first year in the honors limudei kodesh track, I was first willing to admit to enjoying learning Torah, especially mishna and Gemara. The summer before eleventh grade, I went to an open [to women] beit midrash in my neighborhood and learned the mishnayot of Masechet Kilayim, by myself, with my buddy, Pinchas Kehati. I learned lots and lots of Hebrew words for different kinds of squash. It was thrilling. I don't really remember why, but it was. After that experience, I decided to enroll in what was called "Super Talmud," wherein I spent two extra periods a week studying Gemara, on top of our usual 9-10 weekly periods of Gemara. This meant that I had class until 7:30 pm one night, instead of the usual 5:43 pm high school dismissal time. During eleventh grade, I read As A Driven Leaf and considered spending the summer between eleventh and twelfth grade studying Torah, full-time, in Israel. I had one phone conversation with the infamous Baruch Lanner about it, during which he made a strange comment about my stellar PSAT scores that sounded vaguely sleazy to me. I decided to go on a less intellectual, more social, and most importantly, free, summer program in Israel, instead. I think that it was during this time when I started learning Torah, on my own, in the beit midrash of a local shul between mincha and maariv. Perhaps that was the following year, though. I brought the mishnayot of Masechet Sukkah to Israel with me, and learned some of them.

By the fall of my senior year of high school, I was committed to spending the following year studying Torah, full time, at a yeshiva in Israel. I later found out that others called women's institutions "seminaries," but I never heard that word in high school. As far as I knew, both men and women went to yeshiva in Israel after high school and before college, and the programs of study were roughly similar--hours of gemara every day, with some chumash and halacha on the side. I was interested in an alternative to the institution I ended up attending, which I thought might offer some of the amenities of the men's programs, including prepared meals (to allow more time for learning) and a more sophisticated approach to Talmud study, but that didn't pan out. (The program didn't happen.)

Labels: childhood, life, Torah (broadly defined)

Labels: Israel, mental health, Torah (broadly defined)

The American Jewish World Service (AJWS) has officially launched a searchable online database of Jewish social justice texts designed to support rabbis and Jewish educators who want to teach about Judaism and social justice.

The database, called On1Foot, is an educational resource that allows users to search and browse hundreds of biblical, rabbinic and contemporary Jewish texts about social justice, upload new texts and create custom source sheets using the texts and suggested discussion questions.

Useful for the development of sermons and divrei Torah, classroom training and volunteer enrichment, family education and Bar and Bat Mitzvah preparation, On1Foot was created with the following goals:

• To make the full catalogue of Jewish texts on social justice available and accessible to users. 
• To extend the breadth and depth of Jewish social justice education. 
• To serve a central forum for discussion within the Jewish social justice movement. 

By increasing access to these texts, the site will increase the frequency with which Jewish educators and clergy teach about social justice and facilitate text study in this context. Clergy and educators can now more easily create substantive, expansive and interesting teachings that go beyond the simplicity of pursuing justice and allow for nuance.

On1Foot has brought the expertise of a wide array of Jewish social justice organizations across the United States and around the globe together in one place; the site will facilitate collaborative conversation about issues of justice, equality and social activism. On1Foot is a project of American Jewish World Service and is co-sponsored by AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps, Hazon, Tzedek, Mechon Hadar and Uri L'Tzedek.

Labels: links, Torah (broadly defined)

Two separate items. I am not suggesting a relationship between them.

First, here is another great American Jewish World Service d'var Torah, this time on Parshat Miketz. I wish it recommended reputable organizations that are doing just what the d'var Torah suggests--preventing hunger and famine, rather than responding to it after the fact. Anyone know of any good places to donate towards this cause?

Secondly, I was in Bethlehem last week, including on St. Nicholas Day, and saw a great Santa Claus decoration. There is no reason at all why Santa Claus should be pasty white--St. Nicholas was from what is now Turkey.


I don't know if I am in a place right now to write extensively about Bethlehem. It was a different world from my world in Jerusalem (West Jerusalem, that is), and many aspects of the trip were quite difficult for me. I was happy to read this recent New York Times article ("Palestinians Work to Jolt West Bank Back to Life," December 23, 2008) about increased tourism in Bethlehem and other West Bank cities, since that seems like it would improve life for everyone in the region.

Happy holidays to all who are celebrating something at the moment!

Labels: Israel, links, parsha, Torah (broadly defined), travel

Things are, quite frankly, not going so well in the beit midrash, and thus in life. I am not enjoying learning nearly as much as I have in the past. I'm not really sure why, except for one idea that I am finding extremely difficult to articulate. I look around the beit midrash, see others happily and excitedly engaged in learning, and it makes me sad.

So I have made a list. Because lists are easier.

1. I used to learn to escape from deep truths and the emotionally difficult parts of my life. I loved learning and did it a lot. It was a great escape on many levels, especially studying Mishna.
2. Then I decided to stop escaping from deep truths or I stopped being able to escape.
3. Then I disliked learning Torah, since I only knew how to learn in this bifurcated, sanitized-from-emotions, way. Learning Torah reminded me of that former life of escape from emotions that I had rejected. Also, whenever I learned (and I think this is related), it felt boring and irrelevant. Cut off from the meaty part of life, somehow.
   
4. So I didn't learn for a long time (1998-2004).
5. But I missed learning.
6. When I started learning again, I found that I didn't feel like I was leaving my emotional life at the door, so to speak. I felt like I was somehow bringing my whole being to my Torah study. And I found that I loved learning as much as I had before (say, back at #1).
7. But now I am not enjoying learning, to a large extent. It's like I'm back at #3. And I don't know why.

At the end of this past summer, which was spent studying Torah, I wrote that "I have a renewed conviction that one can and should bring one's personal and emotional life to bear on one's limmud Torah." I somehow suspect that the institution where I am currently studying, or the program within the institution where I am studying, does not support this "bringing the whole being" model of Torah study. Somehow, it feels like I am being asked, or forced, or encouraged, to check who I am at the door, and enter the beit midrash sanitized from emotion and personal history. I think if I stood up in the beit midrash and said "I think that one can and should bring one's personal and emotional life to bear on one's limmud Torah," I would either be laughed at, ignored, or just simply not understood.

Do any of you understand what I mean by that? I tried to explain it to someone in person recently and he really didn't understand what I meant. Or, rather, he said that he felt that that's how all limmud Torah is, by its very nature. He didn't understand what the alternative was, that I was rejecting, which made me feel he didn't understand what I was saying.

The kind of learning I am interested in doing is the kind of learning that informs and is informed by the actual lives we live. By my life, and my struggles, and my values. I want Torah study that illuminates rather than represses, that connects and unifies rather than divides. I want Torah that engages me at my core. I want to be able to learn Torah the way that I talk to my closest friends or read the newspaper: with my whole being, informed by everything I've done and that has been done to me, by my feminism, my attention to detail, my liberal proclivities, my concern for humanity, my interest in how legal systems can create positive change in the world, by my need for creative expression. This is my Torah, and more that has yet to be written.

I feel guilty articulating this. I was raised with a certain rigorous intellectual standard for Torah, and the accompanying feeling that anything that actually touched or affected people was fluffy nonsense. Gemara should be about pure Gemara (or, sometimes more accurately, about rishonim). Halakhah should be about serving God, not articulating deep emotional truths. I still cringe when people try to make Torah about politics or current events. How is that different from what I want? I don't want some watered-down version of Torah just for the sake of making it personally meaningful--do I? Am I just a casualty of the "me generation," where if it isn't about me, it isn't worthwhile or important? Just how self-absorbed am I, anyway?

I have two other goals besides learning Torah in a way that engages my whole being and that involves bringing my whole self--warts and all--into the beit midrash. (No, I don't have actual warts. Just metaphoric ones.) Another list:

1. I also want to know everything. Really. I want bekiut that I don't have at the moment. And I want to acquire it in some way other than, say, reading through the Shulkhan Arukh, which I find to be boring. Maybe I just haven't found the right way to do it or the right person to do it with. I don't know.
   
2. I want better skills. I want a larger Aramaic word bank in my head. I want to be able to read through a page of Gemara with less difficulty, and even to attack Tosfot with some expectation of success.

I have loved learning Gemara, halacha, and Tanakh in the past, and I want to love learning it again. I don't know how to fix whatever is wrong. Heck, I can't even really articulate it that well! (I'm not even 100% sure that the problem is this (see above), and not something else more pragmatic, like not being in the right shiur or not being interested in the particular material I am studying.)

Does this sound like anything any of you have ever felt? I am hoping that if people ask me questions or challenge me to be more articulate, I could better explain what I mean.

Someone help me, please!

Labels: Jewish community, life, Torah (broadly defined)

See this nice d'var Torah on Parshat Chayyei Sarah. I'd never noticed that Rashi before, or that Rivkah's father and brother first attempt to send her off without asking her before they changed their minds and ask her.

I do wonder what the role of Rivkah's mother is in all of this. She is mentioned, after all, in Genesis 24:

כח ותרץ, הנערה, ותגד, לבית אימה--כדברים, האלה

28 And the damsel ran, and told her mother's house according to these words.

נג ויוצא העבד כלי-כסף וכלי זהב, ובגדים, וייתן, לרבקה; ומגדנות--נתן לאחיה, ולאימה

53 And the servant brought forth jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment, and gave them to Rebekah; he gave also to her brother and to her mother precious things.

נה ויאמר אחיה ואימה, תשב הנערה איתנו ימים או עשור; אחר, תלך

55 And her brother and her mother said: 'Let the damsel abide with us a few days, at the least ten; after that she shall go.'

Labels: gender, parsha, Torah (broadly defined)