Drew, Substitute Torah Teacher

There's a much longer and more substantive post brewing, but for now here's a recording of a parsha class I gave last night.

http://shlomoyeshiva.org/audio/Parshat%20Tazria%20&%20HaChodesh.mp3

Shabbat shalom

Exile

I walked out

the walls
domed ceiling
ringing with prayers

songs
offered up
the night before
welcoming
the queen

and I saw
a small girl
crying

lost

separated

in what little I know
of the holy tongue

not thinking
to speak the language
I know

I asked where her parents where
what was wrong

she paused
looked at me

turned
and walked

and I went
to offer up more
songs

Baruch Dayan Emet

First, everyone should know I am safe at home in Jerusalem, following the terrorist attack at the Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva.

Earlier this evening, I attended a hachnasat sefer torah (welcoming a Torah scroll) at my yeshiva. The last few letters of the Torah were filled in (thank G!d, my Rosh Yeshiva made it back from the states just in time to fill in a letter), and we sang and danced through the streets for hours.

People came out of their homes, celebrated with us, kissed to Torah, and threw candy from balconies. The Torah was finally placed in the aron (ark) in the synagogue where I often pray, no more than 200 ft from our apartment door.

It was a gevaldt! I celebrated with fellow students, teachers, the teachers of my teachers, and friends of the yeshiva or the shul. I recorded some of the comments made early in the evening for the yeshiva podcast (which I'm adminstrating), but everything was in Hebrew. Standing just outside my home, dancing and singing with a new Torah - feeling the joy of adar, the new month, feeling amazed at the blessing to be able to live in Jerusalem and to spend my days learning.

Kelly and I were planning to head to a costume party this evening, but heart about the attack before we left, and ended up spending the night at home speaking to friends and loved ones, checking in. One of my teachers lives in the neighborhood where the attack took place.

We were actually supposed to be on a trip to Bethlehem meeting with Palestinian peace activists with an organization called Encounter, which was canceled out of a concern for safety.

I'll be davvening tomorrow night at the yachad minyan at the conservative yeshiva - and I think about Rebbe Nachman's Azamra where he speaks about the qualifications of a prayer leader. Only one, he says, who can connect the good points in each person, and combine them into a song is able to be a messenger of the community (what we call our prayer leaders in Hebrew).

It occurs to me that when events like these occur, the only recourse we have is that of prayer. Shabbat is coming, a day when we won't be checking our computers for updates - a day when prayer is one of the few acceptable (holy) activities.

Beyond our understanding, all we can do is stand in the presence of the one who sustains the world, and pour out our hearts.

May we hear only good news.

Shabbat shalom

Really?

In order to obtain a work visa, I was told I needed a letter from a rabbi in my home country, verifying my Jewishness. I asked a friend and teacher who happens to be a Reform rabbi for such a letter, and he graciously sent one my way.

I took my letter to the Jewish Agency for verification. The man at the Jewish Agency googled the rabbi's name, and when the synagogue web site came up on the first page of results, that was good enough. Didn't even click the link.

Malachim

Kelly hasn't been feeling well, so we didn't make it to Bethlehem on this trip - we'll go next time. This morning, I went with her to the doctor's office, and while she was dealing with some bureaucracy, I headed downstairs to the pharmacy to get a prescription filled. Taking my number, I found a seat and wished I had brought a book or something.

A few moments later, an older religious man sat down next to me. He said something in Hebrew I didn't quite understand, and I tried to explain to him that I was in ulpan and didn't know what he said, at which point he switched to fluent English. As it turns out, he was from Atlantic City, NJ (before the casinos were there). He launched into a whole conversation about the nature of slavery - if, given that many times in the Torah we see the paradigm of servitude between brothers/tribes/families, might it be that there was something more than just "I'm stronger than you" contained within the notion of slavery. Something which, in the modern world, it is difficult for us to understand, given our social and cultural conditioning, and the changes in the world over the past century or so. He wasn't proposing an answer, just throwing out the question.

Later (you wait a lot at the doctor's office), we talked about ahava/love and yirah/fear/awe, (though neither is a good translation), and how it seemed that the avodah/work of the Jewish people these days seems much more connected to ahava than yirah. With all of our scientific advancement, we've somehow lost our sense of awe, and those of us who grew up in America haven't really ever had to fear anyone. I told him where I was studying, and we talked about Reb Shlomo's kiruv work (bringing people back to Judaism) and how ahavah is much more likely to draw someone near than yirah.

Our numbers were eventually called, and we went on our respective ways.

Last week I was at the laundromat, and talked for a good long while with a German medical student here for a two-month stint doing surgical rotations. We had met the previous Friday night at Shabbat dinner - she spoke then about how touched she was that the room full of Jews didn't seem to care whether or not she was German, and on how much she was touched to hear us singing zemirot (Shabbat songs).

While doing laundry, we talked about the perpetuation of a feeling of victim-hood amongst Jews, Israeli and American, and about how German children grow up knowing that they were the perpetrators of horrible things, and how it affects their relationship with Israeli politics. When she expressed surprise at the fact that most young American Jews she met were more religious than their parents, I tried to give her an overview of the past few generations of American Jewry - trends of assimilation, and the desire, with newfound safety, to regain some of what was lost. She asked about my tzitzit, and I told her the story from the Talmud about the man who goes to the prostitute and is stopped when his tzitzit hit him in the face. As I finished my folding, we talked about her medical work - she said the most amazing thing is that no matter where you go, exotic diseases aside, the human body is basically the same.