About this past week's Parshah...Bereisheet

“God blessed the seventh day, and declared it to be holy.  For it was on this day that God ceased from all the work that God had created.” Genesis 2:3

This past Shabbat we began rereading the Torah from anew.  Having rolled the Torah back last Tuesday during the holiday of Simhat Torah, to its beginning in the Book of Genesis, we are now prepared to reread the same words our ancestors have read for thousands of years; however, this time we are a year older, a year wiser, and a year more experienced.

A few years ago, while visiting a science classroom, it dawned on me that the above verse taught me a life lesson, which I had never before considered.  The idea that the completion of a project has the potential to make the project “holy” is a profound concept.  When one puts in all the effort, holds nothing back, and turns a dream into reality holiness follows.

What a wonderful lesson I thought to myself as I observed this class.  To learn that as a being “created in God’s image” (Gen 1:26) we not only have the ability to think for ourselves, to process, and to reflect, but we can also “create.” And then to learn that we can create holiness, I thought about how proud I felt that these students were confronting issues with personal meaning and self-reflection that many adults never have the chance to address.

Yesterday we started reading from the beginning once again, I was reminded of the quote “the one thing you can never have twice, is a first impression.”  However, when it comes to the Torah, since we read it every year from anew, we are always being offered the chance to have a new first impression.

BUT, like the infomercials claim, “that’s not all”!  Although the purpose of this column is to share some educational insights through a Jewish lens, and since education is the ultimate driving force behind what I do, I wanted to take this column one step further.  For those of you interested in taking the conversation from abstract “Torah portion” to the concrete “family dinner table”, we offer you the following guiding questions:

• After the first five days of creation God ended the day by claiming it was “good”, but after the sixth day (the day God created people) God said it was “very good” (Gen 1:31).  What is it about people that make us “very good” in God’s eyes?
• Adam and Eve were created by God and had a special relationship with God, but even they weren’t “perfect” in God’s eyes.  When we make mistakes we learn from them.  What was a mistake that we made this week that we could do better next time?

                                                                                                              

Have a wonderful week, shavuah tov!

"Peoplehood" vs "Religion" is it really an either or?

This morning I was greeted with my daily eJewish Philanthropy update, with the featured lead story titled "Who is a Jew? Peoplehood versus Religion".  Now admittedly, I did not think twice when I glanced at last week's posting of the following Avraham Infeld quote:

"Being Jewish is defined by membership in the People and not by religion."

BUT, in all fairness, out of context this quote didn't seem as "revolutionary" an idea as it does today. For those of us who don't see participation in a religion as one of "membership" the quote seemed simply apropos.

However, upon reading Infeld's supporting and explanatory column this morning, I have to say that he makes the strongest case that I have heard yet for "Peoplehood" as an alternative description to Judaism in place of "Religion".  Especially in the United States, where one often defines oneself by getting caught in the wide cast net of established broad and general terms, having to face the tough question of "who am I [as a Jew]" is often avoided amongst all the loud noise.  What Infeld has done is raise the idea that if I did actually ask myself this question, would the answer simply fall into one's religiosity?  I don't know for sure, but I would definitely enjoy listening in on the conversations.

What do you think?  Peoplehood or Religion...am Yisrael chai, or dat Yisrael chai???

Putting "Community" in a Community Agency

So what does it mean to be a "community" agency?  This past year this question happened to be discussed in multiple meetings, informal settings, and as food for thought in impromptu conversations on my campus.

The results of these dialogues essentially fell into one of two camps.  The first, was the accessibility to the agency.  If the agency could be reached geographically from all over a certain community, then this camp felt comfortable defining the agency as a "community agency".  However, the second camp was much more philosophical in its definition.  Although geographic acces was nice, this group was much more interested in a "communal approach" to what "type" of Jew would feel comfortable attending, joining, or "accessing" this agency.  To this group "community" had much more to do with klal Yisrael than it did to zip codes and toll roads.

I have spent the better part of my career in the "community day school" world...the community day school world who defines itself according to the second description above.  But the reason I share this thought is because when I went on the BBYO trip this summer, it was clearly obvious that BBYO also defines itself in this second way.

From even before day one of the trip, during our training, through the very last day of the experience, participation in Jewish life, support of Jewish knowledge, and reinforcement of the teens Jewish identity, was all about accepting them wherever they were along their journey of Jewish self-discovery and practice.  Once we accepted them for who they were Jewishly "community" took over from there.  Our job was to build a community of differing opinions, shared thoughts, and multiple perspectives into one Jewish community.

For me, it was like being "home"...thanks BBYO!

And of course, here's a few more photos...

 Havdallah in Rome...

 ...enough said!

We even tried some Tikkun Olan (repairing the wold).
Straightening this building out didn't quiet work as planned???

Building community!

My BBYO Summer Experience

As many of you know, this summer I decided for the first time in my career that it was finally time to take a "real" vacation.  So, in the classic nammie way, my vacation brought three of my favorite subjects together; travel, Jewish education, and teens...hence the BBYO connection.

Basically, to cut to the chase, Lisa and I decided we would chaperone a BBYO trip through Europe.  The following are a few photos of the experience. With all good intentions I thought I would be able to blog each day...yeah that changed on Day 1!

Anyway, in hopes that over the next few days I can at least share some of the highlights.  Here are a few shots from the first two days.  Enjoy!

Touring Pompeii

The group at Pompeii with Mt. Vesuvius in the background

On our way up Mt. Vesuvius

Hiking up Mt. vesuvius with a view of the Mediterranean Sea

Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of the Four Rivers, 1651)
centered with the Egyptian Obelisk at Piazza Navona, Rome

Fontana del Moro (1576), located at the southern area of the Piazza Navona, Rome

New Year's Traditions...

So, this year I learned of a tradition that has apparently existed since Talmudic times...eating black-eyed peas on Rosh Hashanah!

However, in all fairness, the way I discovered it was through a visit to a friend's house on January 1st where I learned that apparently this was a "Southern" custom. Ken, originally from Texas, was boiling a wonderful and aromatic pot of black-eyed peas (along with a variety of other meats, vegetables, and spices) when my look probably just said it all. To this Brit the custom might as well have originated on Mars, it was that "foreign" to me!

Then, preparing to write this New Year's blog I did a little research on this intriguing custom only to find out that this is in fact a Jewish tradition that dates back thousands of years and was first recorded around 500 CE in the Babylonian Talmud!

"Abaye said, 'Now that you have said that an omen is significant, at the beginning of each year, each person should accustom himself to eat gourds, black-eyed peas, fenugreek..." [Read more]

Although I did not partake in this particular custom this year, it is certainly on my agenda for next year! However, I guess I did partake in a sort-of "food" custom this New Year's...I became a "Sardine". I guess technically, I became a "Committed Sardine".

And what's a "Committed Sardine" I hear you asking. Well, the best way to describe it is to use the 21st Century Fluency Project's own description as follows:
First, an aside. A blue whale is the largest mammal on earth. An adult blue whale is the length of 2 1/2 Greyhound buses put end to end, weighs more than a fully loaded 737, has blood vessels large enough for an adult to swim down, a heart the size of a Volkswagon Beetle, and a tongue 8' long and weighs 6000 lbs. A baby blue whale is estimated to gain more than 50 pounds an hour from birth to age one. (now that's a high fat diet - certainly not Atkins). The blue whale is not only the biggest, but the loudest animal. At 190 decibels, a blue whale's call is louder than a jet (140 decibels), and much louder than a person can shout (70 decibels).

A little known fact is that a blue whale is so large that when it decides to turn around, it can take 2 to 3 minutes to turn 180 degrees so that it can swim in the opposite direction. As a result, some people have drawn a strong parallel between blue whales and our school systems. It just seems to take forever for schools to turn things around. Our ability to adapt to changing times helps explain at least in part the rise in demand for vouchers, charter schools, home schooling and virtual schools. There are some people who just don't believe or don't want the public school system to turn things around in time.

But compare the way a blue whale turns around (slowly) to how a school of fish turns around - specifically a school of sardines - which has the same or even a greater mass than the whale, does the same thing. A school of sardines can turn almost instantly. So the question that comes up is - How do they do this? How do they know when to turn. Is it ESP? Do they use cell phones? Are the using the Internet

The answer is simultaneously a little simpler and quite a bit more complex. If you take a careful look at a school of sardines, you'll notice that although the fish all appear to be swimming in the same direction, in reality, at any time, there will be a small group of sardines swimming in a different direction, in an opposite direction, against the flow, against conventional wisdom. And as they swim in another direction, they cause conflict, they cause friction, and they causes discomfort for the rest of the school.

But finally, when a critical mass of truly committed sardines is reached - not a huge number like 50 percent or 80 percent of the school, but 15 to 20 percent who are truly committed to a new direction - the rest of the school suddenly turns and goes with them – almost instantaneously!

Isn't that what has happened with our attitudes towards drinking and driving? Isn't that what became of our feelings about smoking? Isn't that exactly what happened to the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union? Isn't that what caused the Internet to suddenly appear overnight. Each and every one of those events was an overnight success that took years in the making. Overnight successes that took a small group of people who were truly committed despite the obstacles, challenge, yabbuts, and TTWWADIs to make the necessary change.

Noted anthropologist Margaret Mead once wrote:

"Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world -

indeed it is the only thing that ever has."

That's why we're Committed Sardines - Thinking Outside The Can!

This New Years I became a Committed Sardine! When will you?