(Picture Note -- Sandra and I at the beach in Tel Aviv -- I am really going to miss this place.) During our first weeks in rabbinical school, we were told that our program was a combination professional school, graduate school, and seminary. Although I believe that there is truth in this analysis (after all, our hours spent in class seem to reflect three programs rather than one) I think that there is also an indefinable fourth school at play—let’s call it the discard-all-preconceived-notions-school— perhaps we might even call it the “pay close attention and you might learn something really valuable” school. HUC chooses to call it the “Israel Seminar,” and for anyone who decided this year to allow for the possibility that someone in Israel might know something more than they about this region, the Israel Seminar provided an education that money simply cannot buy. I had my own share of preconceptions about Israel . As a self-proclaimed moderate I believed that I possessed ...
(Photo note: I thought a photo of building in the New City would be an apt metaphore for the rest of the post.) Folks, this is a monumental moment. The Abraham Geiger Kolleg at the University of Potsdam , the rabbinical school that I will be attending beginning October 2007, will be ordaining three rabbis at the newly rebuilt synagogue in Dresden on Thursday (September 14, 2006). This is the first rabbinical ordination in Germany since the Holocaust. I want everyone to take a minute (really, please do this) and think about this. Raise your hands if you would have predicted this 20 years ago. Right—me neither. Let there be no confusion about this – this is a testament both to Jews and to Germans. This is a pure and tangible example of healing through all the things that lead to healing—hard work, sweat, necessity, opportunity, and dare I say, a universal and spiritual imperative to heal . I knew this was coming and knew it was a big deal, but the article that one...
In the course of my rabbinical studies I have already been gifted with amazing opportunities and experiences. This summer as I study in Jerusalem at the Steinsaltz Yeshiva , however, one of the most intense of these experiences has arisen -- I was invited to sing with the choir at the Great Synagogue of Jerusalem for Selichot and the High Holy Days. Well, streaming vids are worth several terabytes worth of words, so I am posting a link to a video here -- sorry, I cannot imbed it and the site is all Hebrew -- that might help shed a little light on the nature of the experience. Several groups filmed Selichot this year at the Great Synagogue -- the sound is not great but certainly gives a little idea as to the nature of the music. For those of you that are not Jewish, and maybe even for some that are, this might be a bit of an alien experience. This video is 25 edited minutes from a 3 hour service that lasted until 1 in the morning (and unfortunately does not contain the early part...
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