A Bad Day For Art

Wendy Wasserstein and Nam-June Paik, Baruch Dayan Ha-Emet. You will both be missed.

Shameless Plug

My wonderful friend Shane Hipps has just published a book called The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture : How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church (Zondervan). He argues that the glut of new media (cell phones, the internet and everything else) has had a meaningful and serious impact on Christian theology and worship, not necessarily for worse. He’s a pretty smart cat (and a Mennonite pastor) so if postmodern Christianity is your bag of chips, do check it out.

Where Credit is Due

You know that picture of Rosie the Riveter in tefillin that I posted a while back? Well, the Photoshopper (actually, I think it was a different program, but whatever) in question has come forth for identification. Her name is Miriam, she does a blog called Rose Colored Glasses, and you can check out the original Rosie post here.

Thanks, Miriam!

Nashot HaKotel

Chodesh tov, everyone!

As today is the first day of the Jewish month, Women of the Wall met, that is to say, got together to pray at the kotel (Western Wall) and, per court order, hold the Torah service nearby but not at the kotel. For those of you who don’t know the background, WotW has been fighting for now like 17 years for the right to pray at Judaism’s holiest site in ways that the ultra-Orthodox Rabbinate finds offensive: in a group with women leading prayer, singing (women’s voices are problematic to ultra-Orthdoxim), wearing tallit and tefillin, reading from a sefer Torah, etc. Now, all this stuff is actually kosher for women to do according to a pretty vanilla reading of Jewish law, and WotW sidesteps a lot of possibly thorny halakhic issues by not, say, including divrei kedusha (so no barechu, no kaddish, no kedusha/hazarat ha shatz on the shmonah esrei, etc), making sure there are no men present, etc. It’s not really cutting edge halakha that they’re doing.

They’re a pretty righteous bunch, have been back and forth with the Israeli courts for years and years, finally now the decision is that they can pray at the kotel for Shacharit and Hallel, but with no tzitzit or tefillin, and then they have to move over to Robinson’s Arch, where the ritual garb can be donned and we can read from the sefer Torah. Politically, it’s a really defining issue around religious freedom–who decides what Judaism is permitted at our holy, collective, public places? Should we protect religious minorities or force them to adapt to the majority–that is, the body in power? At what expense? Even after this lukewarm court decision was handed down a few years ago, they continue to meet every rosh chodesh (at the women’s side of the kotel, 7am, day 2 if it’s a 2-day RC) to worship together and to push the envelope as much as possible (today, we wore tallitot under our coats for Shacharit and Hallel, etc.)

I’ve had a very complex relationship with the kotel generally. It used to be this real place of spiritual power for me, so obvious that the God-energy is really really strong there, it has only been the site of worship for thousands of years, after all. And then, after a while, it started to feel icky there–like there was definitely a lot of energy, but it didn’t feel all nourishing and yummy, but rather kind of weird and intense and desperate. I didn’t like the way people treated the wall as an object of veneration–that’s avodah zarah (idolotry), and isn’t God everywhere, after all?

WotW gives me a way to connect with this space that feels healthy and good. I love going there on RC mornings, all sleepy still, and davenning with an incredible group of women for the sake of Heaven, for the honor of God, and for the sake of principles and values that I hold, for trying to make positive change. That there are politics involved doesn’t make it any less about God. Rather, this morning, as we were moving through the psalms and hymns of praise, looking up at the cold blue winter sky and the smooth-rough beige stones, in an incredible group of people, I felt closer to Heaven than I’ve been in a long time. God’s there (I mean God’s everywhere), and God radiates love for all of us, both “them” (who were trying to shut us down, sure that we were tampering the purity of Divine worship) and us (insisting that this, too, is worship.)

It was a big-ish group today, there was a tour of women from Toronto who came. I got to be the gabbi during the Torah service and lead musaf, which was a pretty wonderful feeling. Most of the women who came up for an aliyah (and the woman who read Torah) got pretty emotional there, crying and saying the shehecheyanu (thank you blessing) and effusing on how meaningful it was for them to be able to take part in Torah with this group, at the kotel. Watching how cathartic it was for them drove home how extraordinary it is for all of us, how lucky it is that we have already the opportunities that we have now, and how vital it is to keep asking for more. God is big enough to give out as much as we can make room to receive.

My Sacred Text is Fun to Play With

So Dan over at JewSchool is starting a new project, Radical Torah, in which I’ll be participating. Each week, number of people, mostly rabbinic types, will be blogging in the parsha (Torah portion of the week). I’m going to try to do something every week if I can, it’d be a great practice for me personally if nothing else. I’m not sure how “radical” my Torah is–it might just be Torah–but I’m happy and honored to be on board. Anyway, check out the site.

In any case, I’m gonna cross-post this week’s drashette here:

Kotzer Ruach and Responsibility
by Danya Ruttenberg // January 27th, 2006
Va-era וארא, Tevet, RadicalTorah.org

This week, God instructs Moses to tell the Israelites that God has promised to free them from Egyptian enslavement, to enter into a covenant with them and to bring them to the the Promised Land. “And Moses spoke thusly to Israel, and they did not hear Moses, because of kotzer ruach and too much hard work” (Ex. 6:9). Kotzer ruach. Literally, shortness of spirit. Rashi explains that “If someone is in a distressed state, his breath and his soul (his ruach and his neshama) are short, and he cannot “ha’arich b’nishamato.” That is to say, “he cannot draw long breaths” or “he cannot lengthen his soul.”

When someone is in a distressed state—when one has been on the receiving end of abuse, violence, systematic oppression, or any one of a number of other kinds of hurt or neglect, he or she is likely going find that his or her very soul has been truncated, cut off, violated in the most primal possible way. And, as in Exodus, in that state it’s nearly impossible to hear God’s voice, even when that voice is trying to tell you that there is an end in sight to your suffering, and anguish. Lo shamu—not, “they did not listen,” but, “they did not hear.” In a state of extreme pain and disconnect, they simply weren’t able to hear—not even God’s promise of salvation.

Our liturgy tends to focus on acknowledging the wrongs we’ve committed: wrongs against others, wrongs against oneself, and of course wrongs against God. This is fitting, and appropriate both in terms of spiritual health and in terms of our communal well-being. And yet, particularly if we’ve suffered significantly at the hands of others, it can be quite difficult and problematic to focus on how we’re the “bad” ones after all the very real bad that has been done to us. This reluctance is understandable yet dangerous—it goes without saying that some of the world’s greatest atrocities, as well as most of its smaller, more daily ones—are perpetuated by people who were hurt, wounded—genuinely victims—but who have been so locked in their own narrative of suffering, in their victim mentality that they refused to take responsibility for their actions.

During the rest of this parsha, God works at trying to get Israel out of the oppressive situation in which they have been situated, and in the next parsha, God mandates the holiday of Pesach, which (let’s pretend the ancient Israelites used our Haggadah) requires the acknowledgement of all the suffering that has been endured. “Avadim hainu.” We were slaves. The source of kotzer ruach is named, out loud, given the weight of truth and reality. Taken seriously by others. It’s a crucial first step, the place from which the healing can begin. We can say to God, “This is your job”—to deal with the Egyptians, to get us to someplace safe, to be our partner in covenant. (It’s also obviously our job here on Earth to deal with those who perpetuate oppression and inflict trauma.) It’s only after we’re given the space and opportunity to name the ways in which we have been hurt that the other vital work, of assessing our own responsibilities and actions, can begin.

[X-posted to “Radical Torah.]

keepin’ on keepin’ on

Things here are trucking along. I’m mostly at cafes trying to get some work done during the day (ohh, Israeli breakfast, how we love you! Eggs, salad, cheese, olives, bread, granola, juice and coffee for one good price!) and catching up with folks at night. Saw a 14 year old kid rip it HARD on jazz piano the other evening at the Yellow Submarine. May try to catch Shalom Hanoch in concert tonight, and there’s good davenning scheduled all Shabbos long.

It also looks like I have a hevruta (study partner) to start doing some review for the Scary Talmud (Review Awfully Necessary) Graduation-Level Exam (STRANGLE) that I’ll be taking, n’sh’Allah, in August, a major hoop before starting one’s final year of the program. (There’s also the Written Hard Ordination Assessment (WHOA) that happens in December, but one thing at a time). So we’ll start slow, a little Moed Katan, see if we can’t start rocking the daf (page).

All in all, life is sweet, very very sweet. Things could be way worse.

Now, a few links just ’cause I wanna:

One of my favorite reads lately, the Muslim feminist funny smart goodness known as Koonj: The Seagull.
I’m also a big fan of the Christian crafts and wackiness over at Going Jesus. Not a blog, but necessary and required:Mahna Mahna!

Happiness

I have a new favorite place to work. The coffee’s great, the salad was dangerously delish, the wireless, outlet and sunlight situation is entirely acceptable, and I’ve been here so long that they’ve given me a free cappucino on the house. (Wait ’till they realize how often I’m going to come back and camp out….)

Anyway, here and getting properly settled. Pelephone aquisition and attempted registration at my two institutes of higher learning-to-be to happen later in the week. I think this afternoon I might make a strawberry pie. Strawberry pie! They were too pretty at the shuk, and they’re not getting eaten fast enough. Life is so good.

So, J’lem- (and TA-)dwelling people, where do they keep the fun these days? Shows, parties, events, etc.?

one thing I learned this week

Is that one should never, ever try to kasher a kitchen on the afternoon of Erev Shabbat. Especially not in the winter, when darkness falls 4:30 or so, and one still has cooking to do. Whoa stress.

Other than that (and the deluge of windy rain in which I was caught on my way back from shul Friday night), it’s lovely to be back.

refuah shlemah

for everyone who was injured in Tel Aviv today.

refuah shlemah

for everyone who was injured in Tel Aviv today.