come on baby, light my fire

so, my very generous family bought me a kindle!! i'm so excited. so far, reading on it has been just lovely. now, all i want to do is sit and read books on my fancy dancy new machine.
the first book i bought was the help, and i've clicked through 20% of the pages already :) (i have no idea what that translates to in paper page numbers.)
i am now opening up the comments section for suggestions of other books i should read. what have you read recently that knocked your socks off?

whoa! whoa! i gotta go!

putting together a course schedule is one of my absolute favorite activities. just ask my sister. she loves it too. so, though it was a little bit insane to try to put together a schedule at multiple institutions all of whom are on different calendars, i might have done it!

the goals i set out for this year in israel were threefold:

• improve my Hebrew to the point of (near) fluency
• meet fascinating people
• make personal and professional connections with israeli institutions that i think are cool

okay, maybe fourfold:

• have fun

my schedule, as is turns out, it perfectly styled to do just this. most of my classes are in hebrew, and are with israelis, and are in progressive settings, and i even get to study at some really innovative institutions like Elul and Alma!

since i'm studying at so many different places, some are still in the fall semester, and some have already started the spring. so, last night i went to a new class for the first time and tomorrow i have the last session of another class. :)


if all goes as planned, by the time we get deep into february and we're firing on all cylinders, my schedule will be:


sunday: zohar study group (hartman institute)
monday: halakha (HUC)
tuesday: talmud (HUC), israeli music as prayer (HUC), medieval thought (CY), rabbinical students program (Hartman)
wednesday: bet midrash elul, kabbalah (CY)
thursday: medieval jewish thought (alma in tel aviv!)
friday: free day!
saturday: shabbat!


i'm sooooo excited. :)

there's a thousand words that I could say

today i depart for a year(ish) in Israel. i have an apartment, an idea of where i'll be studying, and i'm even done packing up all my stuff! still, it doesn't feel real yet.

anyone who is visiting this blog is probably doing so for the first time right about now, since I finally came out of the blog closet by way of a mass e-mail. for the 2 or 3 of you who already knew I had a blog: get ready for lots more entries! and instead of random spurts of brainarrhea, I'm converting this blog into a place for pictures and stories, thoughts and reflections.

anticipating the question about the name of the blog, please see my very first entry!

it's all about the wordplay

i've been wordling.
here is my resume:

and here is my masters capstone paper:



and some notes from rabbinic civ class:

Can’t help loving that levir of mine

Sunday night's Hallmark Hall of Fame made-for-tv movie, Loving Leah, combined many of my favorite things - Lauren Ambrose (of Six Feet Under), Michael Buble songs, (Everything!) cheesy stories of improbable love, and Jews. The basic plot of Leah, based on the play by Pnenah Goldstein, is that a young orthodox woman in Brooklyn loses her rabbi husband and ends up marrying his brother, a non-practicing Reform Jew (but he’s a cardiologist, so….). Throw in Ricki Lake as the Reform rabbi who counsels them both, Tonye Patano (of Weeds fame) as the wise and sassy housekeeper and you’ve got yourself a Hallmark movie.
Unlike some movies and TV shows (I’m looking at you Seventh Heaven), I’d say this one actually did a relatively good job on the Jewish content. We got an accurate shabbos: motzi in a Reform synagogue, candlelighting, baking challah; home life: kashering the oven (“a man is coming to use a blow torch on your oven today” was one line that had me in stitches), head & hair covering; and funeral customs: rending garments, funeral and unveiling, with a dash of yibum (levirate marriage) featuring the halitza shoe!
The women’s fashion, in particular, was spot-on. Leah transitions from ultra-frum with a sheitel to modern orthodox with a hippy head scarf. Even her choices when dipping her toe into the waters of mainstream clothing and below-the-knee-but-above-the-ankle length skirts seemed totally believable. I have nothing to say about the rebbes and their generous beards.
I only caught a few missteps in their portrayal of Jewish practices and customs. I gasped when they ordered in and ate out Chinese food. I had expected them to make a point of mentioning that the restaurant had a hekhsher, or turning it into another moment of conflict – “I can’t eat those egg rolls! Vey Zmir!” Rabbi Ricki also gave a strange attempt at explaining the afterlife, which no rabbi should ever try to do ‘on one foot.’
The elephant in the room, however, was named Yibum. This biblical commandment is where the movie gets its romantic underpinnings. This custom in which a childless widow must marry her deceased husband’s brother-in-law in order to carry on his family’s name was troublesome even for characters in the Torah. These days, as Loving Leah’s gloriously bearded rabbi appropriately explained is mostly a formality and it is a foregone conclusion that halitza will happen and both parties will be released from this obligation. The romanticizing of this ritual irked me. Jake and Leah could have found themselves in some dangerous, abusive territory. Trapping your sister-in-law into marrying you and moving her away from her friends and family doesn't necessarily end up a smoothly soundtracked love story.
But most of all, I was irritated because, like in so many movies that have come before it, there was a distinct message: people are happier if they are not so darn religious. In Loving Leah, like in Renee Zellweger’s Price Above Rubies and a Melanie Griffith’s A Stranger Among Us, the orthodox world is insular, stifling, and ultimately, wrong for the heroine. The Orthodox Woman, we learn, is secretly yearning to break out of her prison so she can let her hair down, wear brighter colors and date sexy non-rabbis. I do know some folks who did feel repressed and imprisoned and are much happier since they have left that world, but I also know people who have become their best selves since they took on more mitzvot and became part of a religious community. Are there movies that don't present religious women in this way?

ack! i have readers!!

so, much to my irrational surprise, a few people have actually found this blog. i was operating under the delusion that if i didn't tell anyone, i would be able to experiment with this blogging business in complete anonymity. silly me. they always find you.
you will now find that the ante is upped. i am beginning to craft some pieces about school, an area of my life i had originally elected to leave off of this blog. however, now that the boob tube is gone, i have to fill the void in with something and intellectual/spiritual growth seems like a nice replacement for the fictional or titilatingly non-fictional exploits of people i don't know.

so here goes...this week, before the school year begins, i'm doing a significant amount of review and preparation for the high holidays. though i have attended services every year, and even taken some high profile roles such as running the kids program or reading torah or leading a discussion, i have never been responsible for the entirety of the liturgy and the overall experience. it also cannot go without saying that the my rabbinical studenthood adds a level of expectation. i took this job because i knew it would force me to work on being "rabbi," but now i actually have to do that. i am constantly defining and redefining what it will mean for me to be a rabbi - professionally, personally, and politically.