I Guess We’re Pretty Far North, Huh?

What’s weird: Davvening mincha (afternoon prayers) at 9pm.

Partway There

I’m currently ensconsed in a sweet, small Northern European town very much like many sweet, small, Northern European towns–a thoroughfare with cobblestone streets, churches that look like Martin Luther might have tacked a list of demands onto them, lush gardens, lots and lots of bicycles, rivers and bridges. My stopover was long-ago booked through Zurich, so given that a loved one is currently camped out in Bonn, it seemed only logical that I would swing by to say hi. It’s only a brief sojourn, but really lovely.

I hope to get some work done (in fact, I’m opening a Word document right this second) but it’s also so nice just to feel like I’m a bit on holiday.

T-Minus

Well, I leave the Holy Land tonight.

It seems somewhat cruel to go from Shavuot to Ben Gurion in just the space of a day, but… c’est la and all that. This is the next thing, and as much as I grouse about it, I know it’s time.

Thanks, Jerusalem, for a magnificent three years. I’ll be back.

I’m taking an extended stopover on my way back to the US, so dunno how much posting there might be. Some, hopefully. If not, see y’all on the other side.

Torah from Heaven

I’ve had some incredible Shavuots, both here and in the States, but for some reason, every year that I celebrate it in Jerusalem (this is the third or fourth time), there’s some limitation on me. This is at least the second time I’ve been too sick to be able to stay up all night learning, as is the custom. Tonight I’ll go to a friend’s for dinner and some Torah–some of which from his 86 year-old Jewish scholar grandfather–and then hit a class or two out in the big world (lots of synagogues and yeshivot have amazing programs with some of this town’s most stellar teachers and rabbis) as energy and health permit, but with this insane, hacking cough, there’s definitely not going to be a 5am trip to the Kotel (Western Wall) for me–that’s just more than my body can handle at the moment. Last year there was some other external reason why I couldn’t stay up, I forget what, but I made it to about 2 or 3am and then it was time to go home. I’d love to stay up all night in theory, but I don’t have a lot of attachment to it in practice. Some years, that will be the right thing, and some years, the tikkun needs to happen on the level of physical care rather than mental/spiritual marathons. I’m sure that even with my shortened period of study I will find some delicious learning tonight, and that the heavens will indeed open up, pouring fourth Divine radiance, like they do. But this might just happen without a visit to the Kotel at the end, is all.

By hook or by crook, I made it through counting the omer this year, said the bracha last night on 49. Sometimes it’s the small miracles that make us boggle.

Hag sameach to one and all. May you experience revelation in many ways, great and small.

Rabbi-Tron!

Once again, a bunch of very smart and wonderful people are set to enter the Rabbi-Tron (the magical ordination machine) tonight. This is always a momentous occasion, this one all the more so for me personally since I began rabbinical school with a whole bunch of these folks and, had I not taken this year off, I might have been up there with them–with the hocus-pocus clergy-making magic and my most excellent colleagues (and friends). After so many hours of sweat, tears and Aramaic dictionaries, I can testify to the particular excellence of this bunch–and can be properly awed at how far everyone has come since we showed up, all bushy-tailed, that first day of orientation 5 years ago. I’m just sorry that I’m not able to be there with them to kvell in person, but unfortunately I haven’t gotten this inverting time and space thing to work for me to the extent that I would need to. Dangit.

Nonetheless, to my friends becoming rabbis tonight–mazal tov, congratulations, you have earned this (truly), and good golly, I can’t wait to see what you all do next.

Golly

It’s my last Shabbat in Jerusalem. For quite a while, anyway.

Huh.

About the Weather

It’s raining. It pretty much never rains in the summertime here. Never mind the snow/hail thing that happened in March, or the unseasonable heat we’ve had the last week or so.

I really, really hope that the weather isn’t completely broken. Are we going to remember this as the year that everything changed, and recount to our children fondly the time when it was wintery in the winter and summery in the summer?

My friend Owlmother once commented about the future she could imagine, driving around with her (now 5 year-old) daughter in December and explaining about how, before all the power shortages and blackouts, people used to put up beautiful displays of Christmas lights. I hope and pray that she’s wrong. I really do.

Coming and Going

I’ve spent the last three days running ragged, showing some loved ones around Jerusalem.

It’s been great fun, and a swell excuse to see lots of parts of the city I haven’t in a long time, and eating really well (because what, I’m going to take them to the inferior hummus joint?) Ultimately, though, I really do prefer living here to being a tourist. It’s amazing how much more aggressive the cab drivers are at the touristy spots–I’ve never had to fight so hard to make a cab driver fork over change or agree to drive wtih the meter on. Nonetheless, it’s a swell town, this Jerusalem.

I Heart the Onion

Yeah, they pretty much nailed it this time:

Women Now Empowered By Everything a Woman Does

OBERLIN, OH—According to a study released Monday, women—once empowered primarily via the assertion of reproductive rights or workplace equality with men—are now empowered by virtually everything the typical woman does.

“From what she eats for breakfast to the way she cleans her home, today’s woman lives in a state of near-constant empowerment,” said Barbara Klein, professor of women’s studies at Oberlin College and director of the study. “As recently as 15 years ago, a woman could only feel empowered by advancing in a male-dominated work world, asserting her own sexual wants and needs, or pushing for a stronger voice in politics. Today, a woman can empower herself through actions as seemingly inconsequential as driving her children to soccer practice or watching the Oxygen network.”

Klein said that clothes-shopping, once considered a mundane act with few sociopolitical implications, is now a bold feminist statement.

“Shopping for shoes has emerged as a powerful means by which women assert their autonomy,” Klein said. “Owning and wearing dozens of pairs of shoes is a compelling way for a woman to announce that she is strong and independent, and can shoe herself without the help of a man. She’s saying, ‘Look out, male-dominated world, here comes me and my shoes.’”

Eating energy bars specially fortified with nutrients “for women” has become a feminist trend, as well.

“Unlike traditional, phallocentric energy bars, whose chocolate, soy protein, nuts, and granola ignored the special health and nutritional needs of women, their new, female-oriented counterparts like Luna are ideally balanced with a more suitable amount of chocolate, soy protein, nuts, and granola,” Klein said. “Proto-feminist pioneers like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony could never have imagined that female empowerment would one day come in bar form.”

Whereas early feminists campaigned tirelessly for improved health care and safe, legal access to abortion, often against a backdrop of public indifference or hostility, today’s feminist asserts control over her biological destiny by wearing a baby-doll T-shirt with the word “Hoochie” spelled in glitter….

Other acts of empowerment include gossiping about the sexual proclivities of male acquaintances, lunching with other women in small groups, taking calcium-rich antacid tablets, and reading The Nanny Diaries.

The study also cites the act of pumping one’s raised fist in a gesture of female solidarity against the oppressive forces of air pressure.

Full “story”.

Art is Good Food

Just realized that folks have put some work online by one of my longtime favorite artists, Bill Viola (who is currently collaborating on a live opera that I’ll miss entirely, waaaah).

A lot of his work (this piece below included) is engaged wtih various questions or themes around medatative spirituality. See also the piece hanging temporarily on the home page here–in a gallery, it’s projected on a gigantic screen hung in the middle of the room, and takes about 10 minutes to do what you see in 30 seconds. The other side of the screen projects almost the exact same scene of immolation/union, except with fire instead of water. Yum.

Here’s a very old piece called “Migration.” It’s meant to go much slower than what you’re used to from YouTube. In a gallery, one finds that the slow pace of his stuff has exactly the effect of putting one in a calmer, more medatative headspace. His later stuff is incredibly painterly–videos that look like canvases and that move so slowly that you really have to enter the piece on its terms and abandon your own.