Every Thursday during the school year, Reb Shmuel our Rosh Yeshiva has a sicha. Sicha means conversation. He starts with some thoughts of his own on some point of relevance to religious life… truthfulness, faith, tefilah, humor, study, it can be anything really. He shares with is his thoughts, looks at his watch, and says “your turn.” And we have a conversation.

This past Thursday was the last day of Yeshiva for the year. Reb Shmuel in his sicha talked about the sichot we have had over the course of the past year. Usually I remember what Reb Shmuel says in his sichot. Reb Shmuel is a very smart and a very wise man. This sicha I actually don’t remember very much of. What I remember is the reactions to it, some of which I found disappointing. Someone asked if Reb Shmuel had a vision for a structured way of implementing the values he attempts to communicate in his sichot into the Yeshiva throughout the year. I found this disappointing because the sorts of values that he talks about in his sichot are largely personal values that one must implement personally, not through a program prescribed by an institution. I felt that this person, along with others who expressed similar sentiments about the lack of structured implementation, missed the entire point of the sichot over the course of the year, and probably largely missed the point of Yeshiva as well.

Someone else asked “Where is God in all of this?”

Reb Shmuel said a bit about how he doesn’t like so much to talk about God in God terms because it often feels as though when people start to talk about God, they are talking about something that doesn’t mean anything, using a language that doesn’t mean anything. He said that nevertheless, bli neder, he would try to come up with a sicha about God perhaps for the coming year, since people seemed to want to talk about it.

I raised my hand.

Reb Shmuel talks about God all the time. All of his sichot are about God. See, I take his sichot very seriously. I listen and I try to assimilate and incorporate the things that he talks about into my daily life, and into my outlook. Some of his sichot are very concrete, very tachlis, like this is how you daven properly, this is how you build a kosher sukkah, this is how you hold a lulav. Some of them are more conceptual, more abstract, like about the nature of truth and truthfulness, or faith and faithfulness. They are all about how we live our lives, and they are all about God.

I remember a few months ago I was having a conversation with someone here at the Yeshiva. It was a conversation about personal conduct, about doing right by other people. And God came up in the conversation. We talked about God, matter of factly, comfortably, unselfconsciously. And I remember, after the fact, realizing that that was the first time I had ever been able to talk about God in that way… to talk about God without making disclaimers, without defining terms, without specifying what kind of God we are talking about here… God was just there in the conversation, perfectly at home.

Another time, I was having a conversation with another Yeshiva friend, one of those deep intense conversations that I tend to have with people, and he asked me the question “Do you ever just… talk to God?” The question seemed a little odd to me, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint why. I thought about it and gave him an answer about the times in my prayers when I explicitly include personal thoughts, supplication, etc. like tachanun and the end of the Amidah, but it didn’t seem like the right answer. I remember thinking about it the next day and trying to write about it… and I realized why the question had seemed so odd… it was because I don’t need to think in terms of “talking to God.” I have come to a point in my life where God is a constant presence.

In Shaiya’s medieval philosophy class we talked a little bit the other day about first order and second order theologies. Basically, second-order theology involves the questions of what we mean when we talk about God, what kind of God we do or don’t, can or cannot believe in, what it does and doesn’t mean to worship, etc. Academic discourse about God belongs in this category. First order theology is the realm of faith, worship and practice. My whole life, since the age of 7 or so, has been about second-order theology. This is where The Conservative Movement especially puts a great deal of emphasis. This year, as I mentioned way back last July, I made a decision to take a step back from second-order analysis of my Judaism and my theology and just work on practice. Now theology and philosophy and halachic theory have all slowly been reasserting themselves into my consciousness over the course of the year, and that is fine. But what I’ve been amazed to discover is that through the living of this life, thorough choosing to open myself to what text and practice has to teach me, I have, somewhere along the way, developed a first-order theology. God is in my life now in a way that I would not have thought possible for an overly-analytical type like myself. God is there when I wake up and thank God for returning my soul to me after sleep. God is there when I pray three times a day. God is there when I study. God is there as I work hard to live according to the standards of ethical personal conduct that our tradition mandates. God is there when, in my imperfection, I do things wrong and seek the rachamim that enables me to pick myself up and try again, to always strive to do better next time. And God is in the community that we create here with communal prayer and study, sharing shabbatot and holidays. God is there in the family that we become.

These are the things that Reb Shmuel’s sichot are about. How we live and think and practice Jewishly. And these are the things that bring God into our lives.

After the sicha ended, after I had expressed these thoughts, Reb Shmuel called me over and told me that he has never felt so appreciated in all of his life. And it made us both smile.

A couple of years ago I made a decision to work on watching my tongue. I decided to take on lashon hara as my project for the year and I became very aware of what I said and I also became very aware of what others said and what conversations I did and did not participate in. Over the course of that year or so I felt like I did a pretty darn good job. Not good enough, because of course it is never “good enough” (which doesn’t have to be a bad thing) but I felt like I made a lot of personal progress.

This year I feel that I have not done so well.

I have noticed this year an unwillingness on my part to say anything about L”H when I hear it, or even to refuse to take part. This is a big problem. It is a problem for me personally and it is a problem in the Jewish world. This is not one of those areas in which one can say “oh that’s just not so-an-so’s strong point.” Shmirat HaLashon is essential in Jewish life and especially essential for our professional body. I’m sincerely disturbed by the lack of care i have observed given to this area.

So I’m laying out a proposal. I am making a deal with myself. I want to be a rabbi. Not so that I can have the job-title “Rabbi” but because I want to achieve a certain level of mastery in Jewish learning so that I may contribute to the Jewish world and the Jewish people by helping others to live fulfilling Jewish lives, have their lives enriched by Jewish learning, and so that I may live properly as a Jew myself. Becoming a rabbi entails more than just learning though. You can get a master’s or a doctorate just learning. Being a rabbi is being a master in our tradition which is not just a learning tradition but a legal and ethical tradition as well. Study is in our tradition is optimistically considered more highly than performing mitzvot for the simple reason that study leads to mitzvot. If you study with no intention of putting into practice what you learn, then you have merited something certainly… and you might gain a title out of it… but how can it be anything but empty until you implement it in your own life?

I’m making Shmirat HaLashon my project again. And not just for a year, but for good. I was reading lessons from the Chafetz Chaim that year, and I think I might do so again… but what I might want to do, rather than reading summaries written up in English flooding my inbox, I might make it a project to read the original. Maybe set a weekly goal. I will make it my business to watch what I listen to, what conversations I participate in, and to try to steer conversations away from lashon hara when I see it rearing its ugly head. I have already incorporated a reminder into my daily tefillah. Now I am making it public.

We’ll see how this goes. Wish me strength and success.

There is a Ramah shabbaton happening this weekend in Jerusalem. The Ramah directors are all here, and they came to the Yeshiva the other day to talk to us. Rabbi Resnick was here… it was weird to see him again. It was 15 years ago that I was at Ramah Berkshires. He looks exactly the same as he did then… he doesn’t seem to have aged. I asked a question about how the educational program is set up, about the curricula etc. and was told about things that I have no recollection of from when I was there. So I asked if that was the way it had always been set up, since I didn’t remember it being like that. The fellow speaking asked when I’d been there and I said ‘93. He said “That’s way before my time.” I said “Rabbi Resnick was there…” he was sitting in the back. “‘93??” he said, “that was a looong time ago.”

There are a lot of people here who went to Ramah. One of my best friends, Alex, is a rosh eidah at Wisconsin. He started Ramah when he was 12 and never left. He talks all the time about Ramah and about how wonderful it is, how it cements a kid’s Jewish identity and reinforces what they get in day school, but in a fun social community context that teaches the kid to love Judaism and Jewish community.

I didn’t have that experience at camp. I hated Ramah. I didn’t get along with anyone there, I had no friends, everyone made fun of me. I had a counselor that I liked who got fired a couple of weeks into camp. No one was interested in the things that I was interested in, no one cared about learning. The boys were cruel. The girls were crueler. I didn’t learn to daven, I didn’t learn z’mirot, I didn’t learn to love Judaism or Jewish people. If anything the experience pushed me away from Jews, Judaism, Jewish community. I had no community in this place, the clear message I got was that I do not fit.

I have no desire to bash Ramah in general. I think it is a great concept, and that it works so well for so many of the people who go attests to its effectiveness… but it is strange to hear everyone talk about Ramah in such glowing terms when I had such an awful experience there. I mean, it was a really bad, even scarring experience. It was my transition year between elementary and junior high school, and it pretty much set the tone of my entire junior high school experience. People say how wonderful Ramah is for Jewish kids. I mention that I didn’t have a good experience and the response is, completely reasonably, “well, nothing works for everyone.” And it is absolutely true… but since I’m one of the ones for whom it didn’t work, because I know what that is like, what that experience is, of being lonely and homesick and isolated with no one seemingly willing to help, I have to think about that segment, that 1% or 2% or 5% or 7%, whatever it is, for whom Ramah is a horrible experience. I went into Ramah excited. All of my uncles and cousins had gone to Ramah and loved it. My sister went to Ramah and as far as I could tell she’d loved it. It was expected that we were all going to go to Ramah and that it would be a wonderful Judaism affirming socially fulfilling experience. I was looking forward to it… to being at camp, to sleeping in a cabin with other Jewish kids my age, to writing and receiving letters, complaining about the food, singing songs, hiking, learning to row and canoe, making bizarre crafts to bring home… everything that I’d learned that camp Ramah was about. I was prepared to have a wonderful time at camp. And I didn’t, despite my best efforts. And this experience contributed not insignificantly to a not insignificant amount of pain and isolation in my life.

So when people say about Ramah and the people for whom Ramah doesn’t work that “nothing works for eveyone,” I have to think precisely about those people who are so often dismissed as the insignificant minority that we can’t kill ourselves worrying about. That is me slipping through the cracks. That is me slipping away from shul and from USY and from Judaism. That is me getting lost. And I think that one of the biggest problems that people like me have to face is, davka, that there are not enough people in charge to think “that is me.” It’s always an experience of “that is an Other whom I do not understand or relate to” and so they have little or no incentive or inclination or ability to be there for that person, to help them though the experience, to figure out how to MAKE IT WORK for them.

So I think what this means is that I have to work at Ramah. If I can be that person to one camper, if I can be that “this is me” for one young Jewish kid lost in the crowd, then that will be a significant and worthwhile thing. For every kid that we don’t dismiss, that we can catch as they start to fall through a crack in the system, is as though we have saved Judaism in its entirety.

I went to the Yeshiva yesterday (Friday… part of the weekend here) to talk to Reb Shmuel who is one of our Roshei Yeshiva. I needed to talk to someone about some particular concerns that have been arising for me with regards to my halachic observance and my place in the Conservative Movement, and my concerns about rabbinical school. He gave me some good advice and some reassurance, let me know that what I was thinking and feeling was reasonable and not completely out of left field.

He also told me that he was very glad that I was here at the Yeshiva, that it was good to see someone who was as intelligent and serious and self-aware and articulate as I was and who was working on their Judaism and their learning like I was… and he told me that he thought I could really benefit from another year here at the Yeshiva.

Now I’ve been thinking about this pretty much since I got here. But hearing Reb Shmuel say it… well, he made it seem real, like a real option. It felt like the moment I knew for sure that I was coming here in the first place. I think it would be really unfortunate if I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity I have here to learn that much more in a serious immersion environment that isn’t geared toward a career in the rabbinate… because that is not what I want out of rabbinical school. I’m not looking for a job, I’m looking for learning. I want school, not training for a trade.

After our meeting I sat down to go over a sugya that my chevruta and I had been having particular trouble with on Thursday. After a few minutes of struggling through with the Jastrow and the Frank, who should walk in but… my chevruta!

“Harris!”

“Gella!”

“I’m so glad you’re here!”

“I’m so glad you’re here!”

“Do you want to-”

“-go over the sugya?? Yes!!”

So we sat down and wracked our brains over who was saying what to whom, what point they were trying to get across, what they meant precisely by the word “gibul” in the context of kemach and in the context of dyo… eventually one of our friends who is in the next talmud level up came over and helped us with the Rashi… which clarified things quite a bit, but not entirely. Reb Shmuel walked by a few minutes later and we asked if we could check with him if we were understanding it right. He confirmed most of our conclusions and helped us with the rest. When we were confident that we understood and thanked him he said “Go over it a few more times.” Harris and I looked at each other hesitantly for half a second and then went back over the sugya, alternating the reading and translating and clarifying/explaining three times. After the third time we looked up at each other again. After about five seconds of silence…

“We have to do this with everything.”

“Yes. Yes, we do. Three times reviewing everything we study.”

“When are we going to find time to do that?”

“I don’t know… but we have to.”

“Yes. We absolutely do.”

It was a wonderful moment. Wonderful because we came to a realization of what we needed to be doing with our learning to get the most out of it, and wonderful because we were 100% on the same page about it, because we each knew that the other was completely committed to this.

Harris is 18, and here with Nativ. He will be leaving in January for the second half of his program on a kibbutz. I don’t know what I will do without him.

We weren’t looking for it, it just popped out at us.

We were rolling the Torah in preparation for Rosh Hashannah. We were taking the Yeshiva’s sefer torah to Kibbutz Bror Chayil because they did not have a kosher scroll. We were planning to just roll to the place where we would be reading and make sure that that section was fine, because generally you do not look for mistakes in a Torah except in places where you would inevitably find them on Shabbat or Yom Tov when you would have no way of fixing them, and you assume, unless you have reason to think otherwise, that the Torah is kosher.

But when you see a big ass crease in the klaf, you can’t help but see where the roof of the dalet is separated from the leg. Hm, what to do? Well, we had an offer from Moreshet Yisrael to use on of their sifrei torah, so the first thought was to just go ahead and get it from them, but sometime between finding the problem and getting a second opinion from Reb Shmuel (which of course concurred with Reb Hillel’s) Hillel decided to run over to a safrut shop and get supplies to go ahead and fix the Torah instead.

Dude!

So I got to help fix a sefer torah. And by help, I mean that, well, I was there when we found the mistake, and I held the sefer open while Hillel fixed it, and I pointed to it several times and speculated as to whether or not the ink had dried and stuff like that. Oh, and also I yelled for people to come watch Hillel doing his safrut thing, cause I mean, how often do most of us get to see someone working on a sefer torah?

We brought the Torah home that night and rolled it back and forth a couple of times since we had time and supplies to make sure both sections were clean. We found and fixed a couple more mistakes… really minute ones which I would not have caught.

Here’s something that’s been troubling me a little bit lately…

I am here to work on practice. On practical Judaism skills, as it were. I’m here to gain fluency where I am missing it. I’m here to get myself accustomed to practices and halachot that came as pre-rejected in my family when I came into this world. I do not fault anyone for the situation I find myself in with regards to my Jewish education and/or practice… I think that the way I grew up in Judaism was more or less the way it had to be and I am where I am and it will all be good.

Here’s the thing… I’ve recently had people start to try to challenge me and my practice on philosophical and theological grounds. Not in a hostile manner, mind you… innocently and in a well-meaning fashion, engaging in the sorts of conversation that I am usually eager to take part in. I find myself now, however, asking to be excused from such discussions. I don’t want to have my inconsistencies pointed out to me right now. Right now I’m trying things on, testing things out, learning and taking on practice as I find it. For once in my life, I’m trying to not think too hard.

This goes against everything that anyone including myself knows about me. I am always the first to challenge myself and to insist on knowing why I am doing something before I do it. Theology is my thing. I’ve been working the theology and philosophy angle of my religion my whole life. Why now am I making a conscious effort to turn down (not off) that part of my brain? Will my friends and teachers think less of me for this? The new people I’m meeting?

I get the sense that a lot of these folks are accustomed to people who never bother to think through their practice and just do either what they’ve been taught or what they feel like doing. I have stock answers ready for why I do certain unusual things (like wearing tzitziot) but I’m not ready to talk about why I’m making an effort to observe the three weeks and the nine days leading up to Tisha B’Av, a day commemorating the destruction of a Temple I was raised not to mourn for. I’ve been thinking hard about this stuff for as long as I’ve been able to think. Right now is the time to learn how to do Judaism rather than just thinking about Judaism.

I’ve moved in with a fellow who is formerly Chareidi, still largely Orthopractic, as we say, strongly egalitarian minded and who teaches here at The Yeshiva. He has Orthodox smicha (meaning he is an Orthodox ordained rabbi) and he is a wonderful resource and living with him makes it very easy for me to learn and take on observances that I would not be able to otherwise. I talked to him last night about this and he thinks that it is not a bad thing at all, that he thinks that it is important to have the traditional groundwork before you go smashing the system and breaking the rules. While he agrees with the documentary hypothesis and believes in biblical criticism, he would not want to teach it to his kids without first teaching them Tanakh in the traditional manner.

I talked this morning with my friend Josh who is a Conservative rabbi. He also thinks that I’m doing an ok thing in terms of my exploration of practice… though his initial response was “You realize that your “not thinking too hard” is probably more self-reflective than what most folks do when they’re trying to think about what they’re doing”

That made me smile.

This past shabbat was filled with even more awesome than the last. First of all I had dinner at Lisa and Alans. The Magills and their magildren were there and I got to talk to Danny a bit about stuff which is always really nice. I was wearing my purple scarf on my head (cause I felt like not wearing a kippah) and Alan said to me “You know Gella… you’re looking very traditional. Very (small c) conservative. Except you’re wearing pants. It kind of throws the whole thing off.” There was a pause. I thought about this for a minute. Then I started giggling. “What? What’s funny”

I hesitated.

“You only think I look conservative because I have my tzitzits tucked in.”

Much laughter. More on this subject in the next post.

Dinner was lovely, and there was, of course, scotch to follow. Funnily enough, it was Danny’s scotch. See, Lisa and Alan’s friend Adam was there, and he had brought a flask of scotch. Danny’s response? “Oh, I have some nice scotch with me. Lets open that up.”

Danny Magill, ladies and gentlemen. It was an 18 year old Glenfiddich. Very nice.

In the morning I went to Kehillat Kedem, a progressive egalitarian minyan that also meets at a school, and consists largely of American students, many of whom were folks I’d met in the Beit Midrash. Some were from CY, some from Pardes. Again, everything was conducted in Hebrew. This time around I did bring my Sim Shalom and my tallit. Turns out they use Sim Shalom there. I went to Kedem because Hillel invited me for lunch and told me that it was where he was going, so I decided it was worth checking out. The first guy to daven was someone I’d seen in the beit midrash. He had an interesting style of davening/reading… he really pronounced his ע and every dagesh. It was almost like listening to Arabic. I was given the third aliyah. That’s a nice thing about being new somewhere… you always get an aliyah. After services Hillel introduced me to some people, and I actually introduced Hillel to someone… a young rabbi dude (JTS trained) whom I had met at tfillah and who (sidenote) actually took me for a little walk around the area past kikar tzarfat. I think his name is Adam Rosenthal.

Ok so here are some pictures from that walk… NOT to be confused with pictures taken on shabbat. I do not take pictures on shabbat.

This is a tomb from the time of the Hasmoneans. It’s just… there. In the middle of this residential neighborhood.

This is the ancient graffiti on the wall… they think it’s a boat.

This is a giraffe. It is in a playground. Apparently it is famous.

So back to shabbat…

After shul Hillel and I and his brother Gilan, his brother in law Ariel, and a girl named Aviva all headed over to Hillel’s place for lunch. Hillel’s roommate Ben joined us. Conversation was lively and we discussed Aviva’s job as a Tzahal prosecutor of terrorists, Ariel’s research project on Jewish right-wing nutters, Yiddish, genealogy, and various other things. After this we played Taboo, which I had never played and which was fantastically fun.

After a little bit of quasi-napping during which Ariel and I discussed the nature of Conservative institutions, two other folks showed up for Seudat Shlishit, Juan and Abby to whom Hillel had introduced me at shul. They are JTS student. They are geeks. They are awesome. And they could easily be my new best friends. We were regaled by Juan with stories of naked men doing strange things in and around mikvaot.

…

It wasn’t what it sounds like. But it was hilarious.

After Ma’ariv and Havdalah (we also had Mincha in there after lunch) Hillel set up his laptop and projector so we could watch a movie on his wall. We watched The Chosen, which I hadn’t seen in a very long time. We all had fun (mostly Hillel and Abby) pointing out mistakes in the film regarding Chassidic and Jewish practices, things that the characters were doing and saying that would never happen in real life (and also that didn’t happen like that in the book) etc.

Abby and Juan walked me home and we stood on the corner of HaPalmach and Kharlap talking about JTS. They said some very nice things to me which I will not soon forget. They have also informed me (not suggested, but *informed* me) that I will be at The Yeshiva for two years, not one. We shall see.

I am happy. I am happy that I can make friends like that, and that people get excited to meet me. I’m happy that I’m here.

I had an interesting and surprisingly pleasant experience on Court Street some time ago. I was coming out of the bank and about to make a phone call when I heard a voice next to me ask “What are you, a Reform rabbi?” I turned and middle-aged man who certainly looked Jewish but showed no outward signs of affiliation was smiling at me as though he’d just made the greatest joke ever. I was wearing my green hat/kippah, and it was this that elicited the question. “No,” I told him, “I am not a Reform rabbi, but I do hope to be a Conservative rabbi soon. “Oh… oh, really…” he said. “Tell me something… the Conservative Movement, that committee, they just came out with that decision on gays, that thing that didn’t make any sense…” I sighed inwardly. This was going to be one of those conversations.

“Well,” I began, “it was actually three different position papers that were adopted…”

“And they said completely different things, right? Does that make any sense?”

“Here’s what happened,” I said firmly. “Three position papers were passed out of five that were submitted. The three papers basically said two different things: one position, Joel Roth’s position, states that the prohibitions against homosexuality still stand as they always have, that homosexual unions cannot be sanctioned, and that gay people cannot be rabbis. The other position, the one by Dorff, Nevins and Reisner, says that the only thing that is prohibited is the one specific sex act between males, and that homosexuality and homosexual relationships are not prohibited, that gays can have unions, not halachically tantamount to marriage but recognized by the community and presided over by Conservative rabbis, and that gays can and should be allowed to be rabbis.

“What this means,” I continued, somewhat surprised that I still had this man’s attention, “is that both are considered by The Movement to be halachically viable positions, so it now falls to individual communities, congregations and institutions to decide which position they are going to adopt.”

“Well, isn’t that a very divisive outcome?”

“One can look at it that way,” I conceded. “Or, you can view it as an affirmation of our movement’s commitment to pluralism.” This was, of course, a very simplistic statement on my part, and one which I would not be satisfied with were it given to me as plain as that, but this man was genuinely… I guess impressed is the only word. “Wow. That’s really interesting.” He looked up, pondering. “Yes… very interesting.” It was clear that he’d never thought this deeply about the issue. I was able to give a new perspective to a stranger on the street. I told the man that he should go to the Rabbinical Assembly’s website and read the teshuvot for himself. He thanked me and we walked on in different directions.

As I walked toward the subway I thought to myself “This is really what it’s all about.” And I felt good.