Opposing view points.

Whenever I need a different opinion on a Jewish matter, I turn to one place: askmoses.com

It's ann interesting, very pro-Chassidic, as far as I'm concerned, site. There is always a conflicting opinion to be had and since I have little other source of Jewish scholarly knowledge (sad, I know), I turn there.

Tonight's matter: the 9th petition in the Amidah: right for us to ask God to cause suffering for the wicked?

Well?

Friendship,

What's friendship? Here's the contest, tell me what friendship is in one sentence. What it means to you. What it is to have a rapport or dialog instead of two monologues running on at once.

It is encouragement? Support in the face of adversity? Surely these things are a part of friendship, necessary to a healthy one.

But then, what is the course of action when these basic elements of a relationship break down. Do you abandon your friends when they do not support your decisions? Where do you turn if this becomes the case?

This one is difficult. Too hard I think. I could really use some support.

T'filah, davening, Amidah, Sh'ma; all that Jewish prayer.

I feel the week coming on, I really do. But I'm reminded of this week gone past. This week with all the good and bad.

I had a discussion with a good friend who gave some rather insightful advice, but more importantly was struggling herself. She was questioning why prayer was so rigid, citing the old baal t'filah practice of improvising the prayer followed by the chatimah, or last line of the prayer basically.

I must say I agree for the most part. That sort of prayer is ideal in some situations, if and only if the community enjoys that type of prayer and the baal himself is extremely knowledgeable in the prayer he happens to be leading. (Don't bash the he things, that's just the way English works. Could always be a woman. :])

But this weekend was an interesting prayer service experience for me. The NFTY-STR fall kallah, all our little youth groups gathering in one big movement. The premonition came quickly: the cover of our little print out siddur read, "party like a Rock STR...live like a jew!" We do it all the time, but it bothers me. Jew is capitalized. It is a proper noun so grammatically it should be and it is the name of our own people so why do ourselves this discredit? Move on, it's Shabbat, bring it in without conflict please.

Page 4:
Chatsi Kaddish
Barchu
"If we were forced to choose just one, there would be no way to deny that Judaism is the most important intellectual development in human history." - David Gelernter.
Ahavat Olam

Now, I can't imagine too many people even noticed this apart from me. But where was Ma'ariv? Surely that reading has little place replacing a prayer whose chatima involves the coming of night. Surely this self rightous quote does not replace our praise for God. So why there? And where is that prayer? I am reminded of that conversation I had so strongly...baal t'filah be dammed. This seems to have little knowledge involved.

Amidah for the service:
Avot
G'vurot
K'dushat HaShem
Shalom Rav

Four prayer. Four of seven included in our packet. I was perturbed.

And this post just wouldn't be the same without that delicious irony as the cherry on top; the weekend's theme: Pluralism. The study theme.

This especially got me thinking. What is the reasoning behind these alterations, surely there is one. Am I wrong in thinking these prayers should have been included? Am I wrong in believing it's wrong to leave them out? Was it wrong that we were told to Stand before Sh'ma and do what was our custom before the V'ahavtah? Was it wrong that it was printed before Sh'ma that is was the minchag of the temple to stand and hold hands during our holiest of prayers?

So what is pluralism then? Is there a line between tradition and pluralism? If so, where is it? Can a service be a service without these prayers? Is it a part of "pluralism" to leave these parts of the service out? Or, is it too far to leave out prayers for whatever reason?

I am torn, more heavily to one side, but that is irrelevant. What is pluralism?

It must have been 5th grade

Maybe 6th. But the rest of the story I remember all too clearly. It was Sunday School, after Hebrew of course, because I didn't even know that Alepf was silent so I still had to catch all that up before my b'nai mitzvah as it was. I didn't need to the pressure of feeling "Secular" surrounded by the "Jewish"kids saying prayers and all.

But thinking that Hebrew is all that makes that distinction is dead wrong. It was a nicer than normal day in class, considering it was mostly a quiet day and my fellow school mates were keeping to themselves; I didn't much like them back then. We were working on 5 adjectives to describe ourselves and I had come up with 3 when the teacher regrouped us.

"How many of you," she began, "described yourself as 'Jewish' on your list?"

I looked down and sure enough "Jewish" was no where to be found. In fact, I didn't even think of Jewish as a word to describe myself and was shocked when 2 or 3 of the kids raised their hands.

That was a long time ago, today Jewish is probably the number one word I would identify myself with. It bears so much more weight than just 'funny' or 'cute.' It means so little in relation to my personality, but so much in relation to my morality and belief. It's a different sort of descriptive word I find.

But how, is the problem, how do I incorporate this Jewish thing into a modern life? Can I be the Jew I want to be in the society in which I live? More and more the answer seems to be a begrudging "no."

Tsit-tsitot and kippot, shacharit and kabbalat shabbat, prayer and study, kashrut and shomrei shabbos. Things, Jewish things fundamentally, that I try or what to try to observe or do.

I wear my tallit katan and kippot, I try to pray shacharit so often and go to Friday night services at Shul, I pray when I can and study when I can.

Those last two. About those.

Keeping Kosher is something I want to try to do. But how? Tonight at dinner the only food available to me was a double cheeseburger and fries from McDs, not my favorite food at any rate, but sustenance. So what was I to do? I ate. I have given up on keeping Kosher at this point. There are too many instances where it is too easy to violate, unless I go veg...thoughts thoughts.

Observing the Sabbath. I had my own way. I didn't do school work, instead I took a day off to study, pray, sleep late, and just generally rest. It was good. It wasn't in keeping with what some might call Shomrei but, I observed in my own way. Now however, this Shabbat, I have a dilemma. I have an AP American History test on Monday for which I must read quite a lot of material, Sunday is not enough to cram. I have to do school work on my day of rest. My recovery from school work.

How do people make this modern Jewish thing work? how do you do what you want to do? How do you observe in your own way?

How do you do it in the modern day??

I miss it, I really do.

It's a lifestyle I once had. Today, I would consider it abysmal and foolish. Then, I was just confused and wanted no part of it. But right now, I feel like I want it back.

My old school was private, Jewish, and Orthodox, well to some extent. Every morning we would pray, I would sit there, confused. I hit a friend with a prayer booklet once; how was I to know it was wrong? I was young, but not young enough to be chastised by someone I didn't even know.

I yelled "BUM" every time it came around in services. I thought I was real funny. But It's not as if I understood the prayer, how was I to know better?

I didn't know why we had to walk 3 miles to a river to toss bread in or why there was a giant sukkah in the entrance of the school about this time of year. I didn't even like these things, more importantly, no one gave me a reason to care about them.

Yet, looking at my friend's older brother who went to this same school would have been enlightening today. He was learning Hebrew, not the "here is how to say cat" kind of stuff they taught us second graders, but the real thing, no vowels and all. He understood the walk to toss the bread and the sukkah as I do now.

But despite my improved knowledge, I can't help but feel that I missed out a lot of my Jewish education. I feel like I could have known so much more. Between daily Hebrew classes and a rabbi always on call, I could have explored so much. Would it have been worth it, though, in such a halachic community? Could my Judaism have survived without a sense of self-righteousness? I suppose these are the answerless questions.

That explain it though. That explain why I want what I want. I want Jewish understanding that I would have had in South Africa. I want to know everything I can learn. Jewish prayer, language, holidays, culture, history, everything. I want to know everything I missed out on.

I feel like I owe Reform Judaism my outlook on many things, but I feel like it owes me a Jewish education. I can't really blame the movement for my being Jewishly illiterate for so long, but I need a scapegoat. It's hard to have to blame oneself. But I was young and foolish, and the opportunity for an improved Jewish education in constantly on the horizon.

This semester in the shackles of a painfully boring secular education; next semester in Tzuba, next semester in Israel.

Clique.

The more I learn, the less I know.-someone who probably knew more (or less?) than me
; Voltaire I think.

Nearing the end of T3M this summer, we discussed what we had learned in that two week class. My head was jam packed, but when it came my turn to talk about what I had learned; I put two fingers barely an inch apart and said simply "about this much."

And it's true, I have so much more to learn. Every little thing reminds me.

As I sat in my little Reform Shul's little Shabbat Shachrit minyan minus 1, I tried my hardest to pray. I generally concentrate on my prayers but recently I've found my mind drifting at all times, apparently (and most unfortunately) prayer included.

I lack a familiarity with the usual minyan there.

For this reason, I find myself missing those minyans at Kutz, even the minus 8 minyan once. They taught me a lot; they kicked my Jewish identity up and down the long beaten path; they shaped my own minchag; they changed the way I looked at prayer. I miss those early morning minyans.

I also miss Israeli dancing. Celebrate Shabbat in the most touristy American fashion we can: "super chouette!" I loved it, just watching was enough to keep me exhausted. i loved that song sway like a palm tree though, I danced once or twice to it.

But I digress, I want that kol echad sort of feeling I had in that pagota back here. It's a lot to ask and daily davening cannot be replaced by one Shabbat minyan a week, it just can't. But at one point during our little Reform/Recon service, somewhere between readings from Heshel, from Kol Haneshama, a Recon Aleinu and saying Kaddish with nine people present, I felt such a familiarity rush back to me that I prayed a prayer that wouldn't usually be a prayer as loud as the Hazzan if not louder.

Tsadik katamar yifrach Ke'erez bal'vanon yisgeh.

Every week we say it, every week I'm the loudest. It just feels right to me, the message, the melody, everything.

I've been singing it all day can't get it out of my head, so when I got home just a few minutes ago, I looked it up. Thank you audio searches. But for some reason, I couldn't find a lyrical version. This frustrated me, my favorite psalm and no lyrics? Bah.

But the third non-lyrical version hit a switch. That familiarity switch: I know this song! This prayer is the Israeli dance song I love! Of course sway like a palm tree!

The righteous man will flourish like the palm tree!

This makes all too much sense all of a sudden, but this loosely based coincidental realization just leads back to the beginning of this post.

If I didn't know this about my favorite psalm and favorite dance tune, what else don't I know? Even such a simple thing had slipped my notice, who's to say more important things haven't? Of course they have, this post would be a waste if the only thing I was thinking about was this psalm, there's just one more thing on my mind. One more thing that the internet doesn't have to know; one more thing that no one but myself has to know. For now at least.

So, if there are two things to be learned from this, (1) never stop nearing, you won't know nearly little enough, and (2) sway like a palm tree.

Untold frustrations of self image, or confessions to a blank web page

It's weird you know, I face this mess of a life I've created everyday. Here is kind of an unedited, unabridged version of what I think about it:

Simply, I have made many mistakes in the past. Probably too many. I don't like to think of them as mistakes, I like the term "learning experiences' but that stupid euphemism just doesn't describe them. Things you learn from are soon forgotten, their lessons remembered; mistakes, on the other hand, stay with you. Sometimes not even mistakes. Sometimes it's just a shit-happens issue. For the life of me, I cannot decide which of the two is worse.

On second thought. It's late. I'm tired. If I have the energy, passion, or some incentive to write more about this tomorrow, maybe I can give me conscience some reprieve.