http://beyondthenear.net/blog Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:57:25 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en So here I am. What does that mean? Remember when I was 15 (maybe you don't, but I do) and I first had that crazy thought that maybe I wanted to go to rabbinical school? Remember how the second I began to show an interest in Judaism, people started to assume, without ... http://beyondthenear.net/blog/2009/10/19/responsibility/ There's a lot to write about but for now I'll stick with what I was talking about before, which is davenning. Jeremiah asked some really good questions about what kind of work I believe davenning takes and what exactly it is that I mean by davenning in the first place. ... http://beyondthenear.net/blog/2009/09/27/the-work-it-takes/ While I'm restoring my iPod in an attempt to get it to be less annoying, I may as well write something. There are some great things going on at my shul. Great people with great projects and great innovations and the like. All of the people in charge, I believe, are ... http://beyondthenear.net/blog/2009/09/22/the-davenning-experience/ Holy updates Batman! An… um… update? My life is made of midrash. This is how I usually look at things, midrash is kind of my obsession. What this means, basically, is that I seem to very intuitively see connections, echoes, reflections, patterns in my life that make the whole look cohesive ... http://beyondthenear.net/blog/2009/09/21/my-life-in-midrash-new-beginnings/ This is inspired by something Jen wrote about celebrating chanukkah (the post itself is friendslocked, but she's worth reading in general cause she's made of awesome). It's wonderful being in Israel during Chanukkah and seeing the chanukkiot in the windows and outside the doors here. It's wonderful to see people ... http://beyondthenear.net/blog/2009/01/03/thuoghts-on-chanukkah/ I've heard it said before that Yom Kippur should be joyous. Rosh Hashannah is Yom HaDin, the Day of Judgment, not Yom Kippur. The month of Tishrei which leads up to Rosh Hashannah we focus on Cheshbon Nefesh, an accounting of our souls, and we do teshuvah, repentance and atonement, between ... http://beyondthenear.net/blog/2008/10/17/a-joyful-yom-kippur/ This past Tuesday morning at Moreshet Yisrael Nancy gave a dvar torah about v'ahavta, the first paragraph of the shema, and about loving God. I was suddenly reminded of the last time I had heard Parshat V'etchanan in which v'ahavta appears. On Shabbat Nachamu last year I took weekend trip ... http://beyondthenear.net/blog/2008/08/17/dvar-torah-on-vetchanan-and-shema/ Sometime before I came to Israel, I took on the custom of covering my head at, pretty much, all times. Sometimes I wear a kippah, sometimes a scarf wrapped in such a way that I hope it is obvious that what I am covering is the top of my head ... http://beyondthenear.net/blog/2008/08/03/covering-my-head/ 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 ... http://beyondthenear.net/blog/2008/06/04/sichot-and-first-order-theology/ 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 ... http://beyondthenear.net/blog/2008/06/02/shmirat-halashon/