A German-Trained American Rabbi in Yorkshire

So -- I finally posted something, just not here. For my German speaking friends, family and colleagues I have set up a sister-blog to post the Drashot that I actually write down. (Oy -- I know -- once again bad BAD Paul.) The fact is, Geiger has a policy that all Drashot are written minimum 8 - days before a pulpit visit, that our Director of Student Placement can review and make suggestions/changes to a sermon. I actually believe this to be a positive idea, I am just not always successful in complying as it takes me ten times as long to formulate my thoughts in written German and I am still much more comfortable with five bullet points and free speaking. That being said, complying with my school's wishes is important, and in an effort to push myself, I will publish any Drashot that I successfully get on paper before a deadline. I have to give here also a huge shout-out to my German coach that has been helping me more than I can say getting this stuff done, and that made the ...

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...

I have been thinking a lot recently about the old New Age maxim that we create our own reality. This is a thought form that has existed in many guises throughout history, but hit the global collective conscious in the 60s. The only problem is that we didn’t really create are own reality – all the wonderful energy that went into this seems to have been somehow either misplaced or re-directed into the desire to create the reality of acquisition. Either way, the concept has been nagging at me recently and demanded my consideration. As one who has struggled my entire life with at times paralyzing amounts of self criticism, I have to lay my own challenge to the maxim. On the one hand, the idea of creating one’s own reality is freeing. It means that once we begin the process of challenging and questioning with the hope of living a conscious life-- as opposed to the birth-default mode of living life purely through the will and pattern of tribe/family/faith into which “chance” brought us—...

I haven't known what to write about the latest incident of "tractor terror" in Jerusalem this past week. The first one took place near the open-air market that both Sandra and I frequented, and the violation of one of my "homes" affected me. But the latest one took place one block from HUC in one direction and ended one block from where Sandra and I lived in the other direction. So rather than try to address it, I want to share the words of the Dean of the HUC Jerusalem campus (and one of the finest gentlemen I have ever had the pleasure of learning from) that were posted in the Jerusalem post. Reform Reflections: Life and death on King David street Posted by Rabbi Michael Marmur For much of my adult life I have studied, taught and worked on King David Street in Jerusalem. It is certainly no ordinary work address. World leaders stay there - in recent months we have played host to Bush, Blair, then Bush again, Blair, Rice...

(Picture note: One of my favorite of the Chagall Windows at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. The inspiration for the windows, other than Chagall's purely amazing creativity, was the section of Torah dealing with Israel/Jacob's blessings to his sons. The blessing that inspires this window starts, "Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a spring; his branches run over the wall." Why is בן פרת, literally "descendant that bears fruit" repeated? I think because Torah, above else, has power by forcing us to ask questions and always examine and move forward in our lives, rather than leaving status quo alone. There is always work to do. As descendants of Israel we continue to ask the questions prompted by a repeated word here, and extra pronoun there. And in those Kleinigkeiten we find G-d because G-d is in the process of making connections much more than any temporary answer that we would wish to stand on and claim to be the only truth. At le...

(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 ...

In conjunction with His Royal Highness Prince el Hassan bin Talal of Jordan ( recent winner of the Abraham Geiger Award ) and Dr. Hans Küng , President of the Global Ethic Foundation, Switzerland, the Director of my school in Germany, Dr. Rabbi Walter Homolka ( hier auf Deutsch ), issued the following statement that I wished to pass on to all. We—Muslim, Jewish, and Christian—decry the violent attack targeting the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem this week. The murder of eight students is a tragedy for all people of faith. We strongly condemn this act of violence at a Jewish religious seminary. Such aggression contributes to the vicious cycle of violence that has tormented Israel-Palestine and the region. Gaza has been under Israeli military attack for a week. Dozens of Palestinians have died on Israel’s southern border with the territory, where militants have launched Qassam rocket attacks into Israeli southern towns for more than a month. Just this week, international huma...

(Picture note: In a discussion of G-d, one might as well show a picture of the sunrise over the Sea of Galilee. There must be a connection there somewhere.) It is not particularly easy to give up a comfortable image of "God." The bearded-one in the sky may to some extent be a straw-man used by some to denigrate those that are perceived to have a less sophisticated spirituality. I am pretty sure that I may have even done that a few times, but I am not sure any more of my own wisdom enough to mock anyone else's definition. I cannot personally agree with a personal father/savior anthropomorphism, but I also can no longer throw quite the same stones. This is all merely a long and drawn out introduction to say that the struggle to re-allow spirituality into your life when years ago the concept and trappings both were given up for dead is in many ways a semantic struggle. Since most of us think in words we formulate most of our spirituality in words and are therefor force...

(Picture note: 17th century Italian Ark from the Istanbuli Syanagogue in Old City, Jerusalem.) I suppose that for a future rabbi the fact that Synagogues are such a comforting place is a good thing. After all, if everything works out I’ll be spending a bit of time in them for the remainder of my life. So this wonderful opportunity to continue exploring all shapes and sizes and traditions of Synagogues is as much an exploration of what exactly about synagogues gives this comfort as it is expanding that comfort zone. As the prayerbook daily becomes more familiar, thanks to that melding of activities called “liturgy class” and “improving my Hebrew,” some of the last things that were not comfortable have given away and allowed me to finally face things that are truly uncomfortable. Before anyone comments that this makes no sense, let me try and clarify. When I attended Hebrew University last summer and spent the majority of my prayer time between the two orthodox...

( Photo -- The House Channukia of Chez Andrews-Strasko working really hard to give some light in that darkness, 8th Day of Hanukkah, 5766. Taken from my mobile phone, I think the effects are kinda trippy.) First of all, let's all clear up a misconception. You may have heard that Hanukkah is a "minor" holiday. Aha! The power of language! I am not sure what "minor" is translated from in other languages, but I do know that when most of us hear the word "minor" we tend to translate that as "insignificant" or "only really important in the US because we have to give gifts to our kids so that we don't hear complaints like 'Johnny and Suzi are Episcopalian and they get gifts -- why can't we be Episcopalian?'" Not meaning to be pedantic (ok, maybe I am but I'll try to keep it 'minor') but the reason this connotively incorrect lable is applied is not because Hanukkah lacks significance, but simply because it does ...

(Picture note: I like to walk along this face of the city walls towards Mt. Zion and enter the Old City through the Zion Gate. This is the view. I am having a good year.) Something rather magical has been happening during my time here Israel , and it happens every time I open a siddur and every time I open my lips that I might declare G-d’s glory, as it were— I understand the language. Now maybe this is a silly statement. I mean, after all, our sages warn us of the dangers of praying words that have no meaning to us. Some of the most pious among us meditate seven seconds on every word in the Amidah —so my statement bears a little concern. Up until this time, I have escaped most concern by understanding that I was in a process of learning the language. Certainly none of us pop out of Mother’s womb fully intact as fluent comprehenders of the Holy Language. Surely I must be allotted some time to catch up for the thirty-some years I spent reading King James English as t...

The reality on the ground is always more complicated than the emotion of the moment or of nostalgia of the moment can promise. Yes, in Germany unemployment is still very high, in some places in the East obscenely high. Yes, there is a burgeoning neo-Nazi movement in the East that comes from a people who, due to Soviet techniques and propaganda never confronted the Holocaust and therefor look nostalgically at Hitler. Yes, Germany is a real country with real problems and is by no means a paradise. What it is, however, is a country where it is more safe than only a handful of other countries for Jews to live. What it is is a country that has tried to make Teshuva (Jewish concept of "returning" or even repentance) for its holocaust, unlike pretty much any nation that I can find in history has ever done. It seems most prefer to cover up or forget to mention their crimes in history. What it is, is a country whose most recent revolution began with floods of people fleeing to Hu...

I was going to post this with commentary. I think for now I will just let it speak for itself.

(Picture note: A view from the Blaustein Hall where HUC's High Holy Days services take place. Post note: The post below comes from a journal entry for my Liturgy class, but I felt the concepts important enough to share with a wider audience.) For all the possible directions this reflection could go, I am forced after these holidays to return over and over to the principle of not being a burden to the community. I assume that the memory that will live the longest with most of us that attended HUC’s Yom Kippur Day services will be that of the congregant that required medical care during the service. Certainly the sight of her face growing taut and corpselike and her eyes rolling back in her head remain in my waking memories as well as my nightmares. Those of us in the choir that had the most direct view thought that her second incident was a sure precursor to death. I don’t say this to be dramatic. I have worked in the medical industry for over a decade including a...

(I get to deliver my first drasha as a rabbinical student tomorrow, and thought just for the heck of it I would post the sermon as well. Please forgive the lack of literary polish as I tend to speak with only bullet points and the written version of this was really just meant to put my thoughts together. As for the picture, it really doesn't have much to do with this post, except it is a pretty fine view from atop the Austrian Hospice in the Old City.) Parasha V'zot Habrachah I met G-d face to face a few weeks before I came to Jerusalem. At least that’s what I think happened—I have no other way to describe it. I was driving along an arterial in South Seattle right as it began to rain. Normally this would not be much of a problem, except my vehicle had two wheels and a motor instead of four wheels and a seatbelt, and when I started breaking at a four-way stop, the fresh oil on the road transformed the pleasant ride into a most unpleasant one—my helmet hitting the pavement at aro...

(Photo note: This was the view fom where he had a Shacharit prayer service which took place directly after the stroy recounted below.) I had one of the most profound Jewish experiences of my life last week. Last Tuesday the Jewish month of Elul passed from expectation to reality, and in celebration of this milestone, the Cantorial, Educational, and Rabbinical students participating in HUCs Year in Jerusalem program met at 4 am (yes, really, we did) to hop in buses to travel to a Sephardic Synagogue on French Hill and attend a Slichot service. Now I do realize that a few things need to be defined for my non-Jewish friends reading this. First of all, the month of Elul is the month directly preceding the Jewish High Holy Days and takes on special significance for anyone observing even a baseline of Jewish tradition. Elul is a month of introspection. Sandra likes to say that Elul is the Jewish version of the forth step (we made a searching inventory of ourselves) of the “12 ...

(Photo Note: I just wanted to help everyone imagine a little bit what it is like to watch a concert at BYU's -Jerusalem campus [thank you Mindy for the head's up].) Several years after I graduated from the University of Montana with degrees in Clarinet Performance and Composition I returned during a trip to Montana and stopped by at the U for a visit. At the time, about 10 years ago, I wore my new career as a (at that time) systems analyst proudly. After all, a job offer while I was still in Graduate School with a starting salary of $37,000 sounded like paradise. I was a musician, for Petrov’s sake. I was accustomed to earning in a one-night gig $20 plus tips plus free alcohol—and being happy with that. Plus I had already began a cycle of financial woes that lasted far longer than I care to admit, and I really needed the $37,000 a year. So I dropped out of graduate school and started a karmic cycle that would last, well, until now. That particular visit to my...