Listening to different voices -- in pursuit of multi-cultural competency

In my first semester at Grinnell College -- a small Liberal Arts college amid the cornfields of Iowa -- there were only two African-Americans on my dorm floor, one (my roommate) grew up in a middle-class, mixed-race neighborhood outside Chicago and the other who came from an inner-city neighborhood. I remember how angry I got at the second guy when he characterized Grinnell as being a place lacking diversity. "We have students from all over the country," I exclaimed! "We have foreign students!"

It was only after college, when I had lived in New York City for a bit, that I came to realize how right he was. We might have been from all over the country, but almost all of us were white, middle class kids who had come to college straight out of high school and who would finish college in four straight years, without having to drop out to work for a bit, as so many people do today. No wonder -- to borrow the title of the book I am reading, today, for my Adolescent Development class at NYU -- all the black kids sat together in the cafeteria.

The little story I just told about myself is part of the tale of my own development of what we sometimes call multi-cultural competency. It is, significantly, not a story so much about what I learned about another culture. It is more a story about myself -- how I came to grow in my self-awareness about how I am different than others. This kind of approach to multi-cultural competency is counter-intuitive for many -- "isn't ending prejudice about learning about how we are all the same?!?!" they might say.

But as this power point presentation on multi-cultural competency that I used in the Clinical Pastoral Education unit I supervised last summer maintains (I adopted it from something I found on UCLA's web site), the most important step in cultural competency is to start to come to an awareness of difference. Only then, can you really listen to the truth of who the person is who you are interacting with.

I came to realize today that some of the books I am reading for my classes this week and last are part of my journey of growth in multi-cultural competency, and will hopefully help me to do a better job of facilitating my students' growth in this area in future.

Last week, for the same class I am now reading Why are all the black kids sitting together, I read Carol Gilligan's Meeting at the crossroads, a book about the development of girls as they approach adolescence. I really like how Gilligan uses the concept of voice, and how listening to voices forms a central place in how she understands her work. For Gilligan, understanding the development of girls starts, not with some gathering of theoretical knowledge, but with listening to girls and trying to come to some understanding of how they construct -- how they understand -- the world that they inhabit.

Similarly, I believe that coming to an advanced level of cultural competency does not come from reading about other people and their cultures in books. It comes from listening deeply to the person in front of you, and coming to an understanding of how they understand the culture(s) they inhabit.

Another book I'm reading this week is C.J. Pascoe's study of how teenagers understand -- and develop -- masculinity. The book -- with the provocative title, Dude, you're a fag -- may be the best book I am reading right now. In her appendix, Pascoe talks in detail of how she approached the challenge of being both a participant and an observer in her time in the West Coast high school she was studying. Pascoe makes a convincing case that she never could have gotten her teenage subjects to trust her as they did if she had tried to set herself apart as some kind of objective adult observer who would treat a student with harsh judgment and scolding if he, for example, tried to hit on her sexually.

But that hardly means that Pascoe did not have a framework of boundaries that helped guide her in negotiating such a challenging interaction with her subjects. Instead, following what she learned from Nancy Mandell, Pascoe took a "least-adult" and "least-gendered" approach where she would more likely react to such sexualized behavior with humor -- humor meant to desexualize the interaction -- than with shock; in this way, she was able

to maintain rapport without submitting to the student's attempt to sexualize the relationship.

It strikes me that there is some application to chaplaincy here, especially about how we think about setting and maintaining boundaries with our patients. Our patients often try and test us with the boundaries we try and maintain. Can we take "least-gendered" or "least-social" attitudes with our patients in ways that would be helpful?

For Pascoe, maintaining these "leasts" was a matter of negotiation with her subjects. She shared with them that the purpose of her research was to study masculinity and they eventually took to have pride that they were being studied by this liminal figure who not only wasn't a boy, but also wasn't really a girl (she was an outsider who took notes, not a fellow student) nor an adult (she wouldn't "tell on" them or punish them if she witnessed them breaking school rules). This negotiation became itself a source of data. As my professor said in class last week, "you turn the way people react to you into data."

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Consent is another issue where there are strong parallels between the issues in research and in chaplaincy. Even though I really liked Pascoe's book, I was a bit disturbed when I read (her excellently written) introduction describing the yearly assembly in the high school she studied. It occurred to me that the students might feel like she was making fun of them if they were to read what she wrote. They also might feel betrayed: my guess is that she did not share with them during her research that she was forming these kinds of conclusions -- conclusions that labeled some of their behavior as sexist and racist.

The question it raised for me is whether you can -- or should -- share the results of your research with your subjects as you go. Gilligan describes, in a way I found convincing, how she did so in her book. And I know that I try and share my "results" with my students as we go through a unit (although I admit this is a very challenging part of my theory to consistently put into practice).

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Multicultural competency is one of the hardest things we try and do in our work as chaplains and chaplaincy educators, but it is one that I find most rewarding. There is so much to learn from our students and the others around us. I love it!

Another view of life at NYU

Yesterday, I happened to notice that the young (and non-Jewish, I believe) man sitting next to me in my "Texts of the Judean Desert" class with the venerable (and _very_ fast talking) Lawrence Schiffman appeared to be blogging _while_ taking his class notes on his computer. So, later, I went web surfing to try and find what he was writing.

Here is what he posted. Most of what he posted fits with my recollection (although I don't think he exactly understood what Prof. Shiffman was saying about the Cohen). But it comes from a _very_ different point of view than my own! (Which gives it a bit of a refreshing feel . . . . and shows a bit of just how entertaining Schiffman can be . . . he's very funny! . . and smart.)

Is there any place left for the mission? (What's really wrong with health care)

“There’s a sense we’re here for the mission, and it truly permeates."

That's what the head of the emergency department at New York City's St. Vincent's Hospital was quoted as saying in today's New York Times article about how the Greenwich Village hospital may be about to go under.

Just last week I was telling some of my classmates at NYU about my own hospitalization over a decade ago at St. Vincent's. It left a deep impact on me and helped drive me towards the rabbinate and a career in chaplaincy education.

The St. Vincent's I encountered was a special place. I admit that I can't say anything about the quality of medical care -- I have no way of judging that (I'm not a doctor). But what I can say is something about the quality of compassion I encountered. I remember St. Vincent's as a place where a doctor who had nothing to do with my case took a moment out of his day to talk to me when he saw me sitting by myself, consumed with fear, in a hallway. St. Vincent's was a place where a chaplain of great skill -- likely a Catholic -- came to see me in the middle of the night when I was finally taken up to a floor from the emergency room; she left me feeling comforted amid my pain and terror (and helped inspire me to become a chaplain, myself). St. Vincent's was a place so committed to spiritual care that a chaplain from my own faith was also sent to see me the next day. St. Vincent's was a place, most importantly, where I saw the staff universally treating each other, and their patients, with honor and regard; it was a place where it was possible to be human amid all the machinery of the modern hospital, a great goal to aspire to, but that most hospitals do not reach. It was a place that clearly had a mission, something far beyond making some money off their patients.

I am sad to see St. Vincent's fall on such hard times. It, indeed, is a sign that the health care system in this country is profoundly broken that amid all the insurance companies and the rules and the Medicare that there's no room left for a place with such a mission.

Am I back (finding the questions)?

This is my third blog post of the day, and the tenth of the last two weeks -- that's after posting only once in the previous two months!

        So, am I back? Am I back to regular blog posting, again? And, what kept me away for so long!?

        The last question is not much of a mystery. The first few months of this academic year were incredibly exhausting. I was starting a doctoral program in New York, still working and teaching in Reading, PA and undergoing a huge amount of preparation -- written and otherwise -- to go up for my certification as a Clinical Pastoral Education supervisor (I made it!). The Jewish holidays made it even busier. It was a wonderful and exciting (and successful!) time, but I've been doing a lot of catching my breath ever since.

        The question of "am I back?" is a more complicated one. But I know I want to be back. In one of my NYU classes, our teacher urged us to keep a journal. She said it's important for doctoral students in their early stages to keep track of their intellectual journeys. That's because, she said, that, even if you know what your research area is, it can take you a long time to really know what your research question is.

        I was thinking of that this weekend when I was reading Carol Gilligan's Meeting at the crossroads for another class. In that book, Gilligan said that she and her fellow researchers thought they had their research question and design all mapped out. But years into their work, they realized they weren't doing it the way they wanted to at all. So, they changed everything, which led to the creation of Gilligan's influential "Listening Guide" (which she describes in that book).

        Anyway, I've never been much good at keeping journals in a conventional sense. But blogging has worked for me. So, if you do see me blogging much here in the future, I will not be doing it just for you, dear reader (whoever you may be!). I'll be doing it for myself as well -- trying to help myself figure out where exactly my path is heading (in terms of my research and my work!).

A new book on clinical pastoral supervision

I haven't got a chance to read it, yet, but I'm excited about this book that came in the mail, today. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first attempt to write a serious resource on clinical pastoral supervision in decades. As a person who was very recently studying for certification as a supervisor without the help of such a resource, I am very pleased to see that someone has put something together!

Here's what the editor had to say about his Courageous Conversations in an email he sent out supervisor types:

I wanted to let all of you know about the publication of my new book
Courageous Conversations. The book has 16 chapters from a variety of authors
including Donald Capps, Carrie Doehring, Mark Hart, me, Gordon Hillsman, Teresa
Snorton and covers such topics as supervision in the postmodern world,
theological anthropology for transformational education, sexuality in
supervision, supervision in the intersubjective space, etc.

David Steere says on the back of the book, "This book presents its editor's
efforts to put together with his colleagues conversations capable of shaping
pastoral supervision for the next 15 years. It is an excellent update for anyone
doing supervision, particularly in the implications of postmodern thinking in
their practice. Each contributor presents from a solid theoretical basis a
wealth of clinical experience, and a willingness to put their ideas on the line.
Forthright discussions of sexuality, ethics, mutual self disclosure, empathic
participation in one another's lives and spiritual experiences approach the
courage suggested by its title." Please consider this book for your center,
your individual use, and for those in the certification process with
you.

Many Thanks, Rev. William R. DeLong, Ed.D.Vice President
Mission and Spiritual CareAdvocate
BroMenn

Keeping it real -- doing Midrash with the pastoral care pros

I used to think of myself as a person with very little visual imagination. But, a couple of years back I heard about a different way of working with my chaplain students when they share the experiences that they have with their patients -- a way that asks us to pay special attention to the images that come to mind when we hear about these powerful encounters and to then try and connect those images with the "big questions" (about the meaning of life and death and of God's place in the world, etc) that they bring to mind. After exercising my imaginative -- my Midrashic -- "muscles" by leading these workshops (called verbatim as theological event) for a while, suddenly I found that I had grown to have a rich visual imagination, one that was always able to offer visual images in these workshops.

So, I have been anxious to share this work with other Jewish chaplaincy professionals and to put before them this idea that we can increase our imaginative capacity by exercising our midrashic muscles together. So, at the National Association of Jewish Chaplains (NAJC) conference in Boston last month I presented a workshop I called, Working the midrashic muscle -- using images to uncover the Holy in the mundane. Over 20 people attended the workshop, and they all seemed very excited about the work we did together, offering up many of their own images and associations with our Holy texts and traditions.
I started out by sharing with them how I think about midrash in this context -- because I don't think midrash is just any kind of imaginative thinking. It's an especially Jewish way of doing imaginative thinking, a way that connects us with our tradition -- with God, Torah and Israel -- on the way towards our finding meaning in our most powerful experiences. In thinking about this, today, I was reminded of how Ari Elon -- in his From Jerusalem to the edge of heaven -- contrasts midrashic analysis with scientific analysis:

Science grinds raw symbols in the mill of analytic conceptualization; midrash turns concepts into raw symbols. Scientific discourse abstracts; midrashic discourse makes things concrete. (pg. 37)

That is, midrash -- to use the language of pastoral education -- takes us out of our heads and into our hearts (where feelings and images lie). Midrash draws us towards our meaningful experiences -- towards the concrete details of those experiences and the emotions connected with them -- instead of doing what an intellectualizing analysis does (take us way from the reality of our experiences). Midrash helps us to keep it real.

So, here's what I did in the workshop, step-by-step (and you can follow these steps to do your own personal midrash work, either in groups or with individuals, or just for yourself):

1) Reentering the experience. I asked for a volunteer to describe an experience that felt particularly meaningful, but where the person did not necessarily know why it felt so meaningful. In recounting the experience, the most important thing is to try and put your ideas and judgments about your experience aside for a while. This is because what you already think about these experiences will block you from coming to new insights -- from singing a new song, a shir hadash/שיר חדש, if you will -- about the experience. One of my favorite quotes from Heschel's The Sabbath -- "Things created conceal the Creator" -- helps me here. It reminds me that we often need to put our own creations -- including the creations of our thoughts -- aside to see the Holy in the world.

The path to putting our the creations of our thoughts aside -- the path to keeping it real -- is to focus on the concrete details of the experience when we retell it, especially the things we perceive with our senses, with sight, taste, touch, smell and hearing. And so, as the facilitator, I tried to help the volunteer when she seemed to be moving towards her thoughts in the recounting: "What did you see at that moment?" "Can you tell me about what you saw on the person's face?" "What was the light like in the room?" "What did you smell?"

This volunteer told about seeing a person go into the room of another resident of a long-term care facility she was working at. The one resident gazed down at the face of the other resident, who was in a bed. Something meaningful seemed to be happening between the two faces amid silence. And then the person in the bed breathed her last breath, and the still-living resident left the room.
This simple, wordless encounter is very short and it did not take long for the volunteer to retell it. And yet I am amazed to think about how full and rich the hour of discussion following it was. We were able to slow down, in effect, and search together for our midrash about it. And so here are the rest of the steps we went through. [I do, by the way, owe a debt to a book called The Art of Theological Reflection by Christian scholars Killen and De Beer for helping me think through these steps.]

2) Paying attention to feelings. I asked people to share the feelings that came up for them as they were listening to the retelling of this encounter. I reminded people that feelings are not thoughts, and that feelings are very often things that have resonance in our bodies -- if we're feeling tense, for example, there might be a tightness in our shoulders. Looking to see if there is resonance in our bodies can help us tell the difference between a thought and a feeling.

Many feelings, some of them, contradictory, came up. One person felt sad. Another a sense of connection. There was joy, too. Even some feelings of loneliness.

3) Look for images that relate to the feelings. Images don't necessarily have to be visual. One person's image was just of a flow, from this world to up above. Others were more visual and some were borrowed from art or popular culture. One, very topical one, came from the hit movie Avatar -- the floating, jellyfish-like things, from the great, connecting tree in that work. Another person imagined vertical strands, with beads of lights on them.

The images, at their best reflect what we think the essence -- the ikar/עיקר -- of the encounter is (sometimes, people call this the heart of the matter). Although there is certainly not a single ikar to be found -- the essence may be different for each person who heard the retelling of the encounter.

At this stage, what we have done is stam/סתם, or plain -- secular -- reflection. We could have gone straight from here to the final step -- trying to assign a new meaning to our experience. But then we would not have done spiritual reflection; we would not have done midrash. To make it midrash, we need to bring our encounter -- the personal experience we found meaningful -- into dialogue with the Holy Sources we find meaningful. In a Jewish context, that means a dialogue with our collective and historical experience, as reflected in our Holy texts and elsewhere. It means a dialogue with God, Torah and Israel.

The below diagram reflects how I think about this. We take our meaningful personal experiences and read them together -- interpret them -- in a dialogue with our Holy texts. The result is a new midrash

And, so, there is a fourth step to do this work of bringing in God, Torah and Israel.

4) Dialogue with our sources of Wisdom and Holiness. Sometimes I call this step, Holy Writ, but I am avoiding that terminology here because I want to make clear that this stage is not limited to ancient sources like the Bible -- it doesn't even have to be religious sources. It can be any source of wisdom or meaning for us, including poems or motion pictures (movies -- especially ones by deep-thinking, if not so religious, Jews like Woody Allen or the Coen brothers -- are particularly important for me here). [PS. If you haven't gone to see the Coen's A serious man, don't wait a minute longer!]
But -- not surprisingly in a group of Jewish chaplains, many of whom were rabbis -- most of the sources in this group were ones from Jewish Holy texts. One person saw a malach -- an angel -- with a shofar, in effect blowing the person upward. Another person thought of the death of Moshe (Moses), with a kiss from God.

Another had an association that made me see the encounter from a totally different perspective -- he thought of the dramatic reunification of the two deeply estranged brothers, Jacob and Esau, as adults and how they made peace in a moment that had so much potential for violence (and how they seem to have never met, again). This raised the possibility for me that there may have been unseen forces and history keeping the two residents apart before the magical moment of unification the person telling the story witnessed, adding added drama to what she saw.

I got a wonderful surprise from another association. There was a man in the room who had been silent through the whole workshop, and his silence made me wonder if he was somehow disapproving of what we were doing. But then he offered this beautiful association from the daily liturgy (from Talmud Shabbat 127): "These are the things for which a person not only enjoys their fruits in this world, but also their principal -- hakeren kayemet, in Hebrew -- in the world to come: honoring parents, practicing deeds of loving kindness (gemilut hasidim) . . . visiting the sick, making marriages possible (haknesat kalah), and accompanying the dead. . . "

The final one is generally understood as attending funerals, but this person's midrash was to extend it to the moment in this story -- to being with a person as they were dying!

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I think this final association is especially worth of the lablel, midrash, as it is, in effect, a new story (see new story's place on the diagram above). My good friend, Rabbi Benjamin Katz reminded me that my diagram promised the creation of something new -- a midrash at the end. I'm still working to clarify how we can best do that!

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5) Meaning and action. This is where we try to pull the insights we have come found together. We ask ourselves, have we learned something new? Have we taught ourselves (or others) something new about how to be better caregivers? Better people? Better Jews?

There are so many ways this kind of work can be helpful. At the beginning here, I suggested that this is a process of "working our midrashic muscle," of strengthening our spiritual imagination to make us more sensitive to seeing the Holy in the world and to help others also come to a greater awareness.

Those "others" can be other chaplains, as they were in my workshop. Or they could be patients or congregants. This work can be healing (one participant suggested it could be an important part of self-care for chaplains in danger of forgetting how important their work is amid its many stresses -- I agree!).

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One participant said the workship reminded her of Rabbi Dayle Friedman's "PaRDeS" method (which you can find in the book, Jewish Pastoral Care). But she drashed it a bit of switching things around into a PaRSaD method:

• 
  
  1) Peshat (plain meaning): the first step in my process -- the retelling of the story with the focus on the plain concretes (of things like touch and smell).


• 
  
  2) Remez ("hint"): the feelings.


• 
  
  3) Sod ("secret): the images.


• 
  
  4) Drash: the association with Holy text, and the new meanings -- and midrash! -- we make out of it.

[Or at least that's how I best remember what she said. I hope I got it right! (I'm not sure who it was? Ruth Smith? If it was you, let me know!]

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Rabbi Katz shared wth me that many in theatre have worked on this facilitator's work in step 1 of asking people questions to help them focus on the concretes of their experience. Minna has often suggested that it might be helpful for us both to get some acting training together. Maybe we will!

Goodbye Holden -- and Franny and Zooey

 Even though I rarely think of J.D. Salinger, just the other day I mentioned him -- and his most famous character, Holden Caufield -- in a paper I wrote for a class I'm taking on adolescent development. As an alienated teenager, myself, I took a literature class where we read Salinger's Nine Stories. I had a passionate teacher who helped Salinger's work come alive for me. I wasn't really sure what these stories were about exactly, but, whatever it was, struck me as something very important, something very genuine -- and something worth striving to understand.

 

Now -- at the ripe old age of 91, many years from the teenager's world of Holden where everything adults did or cared about seemed "phony" -- Salinger is dead.

 

I am grateful to have had his work as part of my life. It made me feel less alone, especially as a teen, to know others were feeling alienated -- and were searching for something "more."

When you know it's true, but it's hard to describe - research and chaplaincy

This morning I was reading about ethnography -- especially about the idea of participant-observer techniques -- for one of my classes. This is a area whose researchers believe passionately that there is much more to understanding (the incredible -- and beautiful! -- complexity of) humans and their behaviors than numbers. This is an idea that's not very much in fashion these days. Especially in the wake of the Bush administration and his insistence on "metrics" (which eventually led to the No Child Left Behind act's requirement that educational research involve so-called experimental methods as the "gold standard"), people don't seem to think very much of research that does not have percentages in it. People want research to be "objective."

But my work as a chaplain and chaplaincy educator has taught me that, if you really want to understand something about how the person you're caring for is understanding what is happening to them, you have to be willing to "get in their shoes" for a bit. And you can't really do that without taking a part of yourself there with you. And, yes, you will lose any claim to objectivity (as if there really is such a thing!) when you do that, but it's the only way to really get closer to another person. That's why relational theorists of personality talk about intersubjectivity as an alternative to the subjectivity-objectivity dichotomy. It's really just a more honest way of understanding what happens when we try to get closer to other people -- we inevitably are affected by the other person and vice versa (and so we need to pay attention to that mutual process if we really want to come to a meaningful understanding of the other person, especially an understanding of how they experience their world and make meaning out of it).

Yeah, I know. What I've said above is really complex (and maybe very confusing and not convincing to you). That's the problem I felt in my heart when I was reading, today. On the one hand, I felt this tremendous excitement to have found this community of researchers who speak a truth (the truth about qualitative research methods) that I find so compelling. On the other hand, I felt this sadness (about how hard it has become to convince other people of this truth).

I was also reminded of what one of my old journalism colleagues (Mark Magnier, where are you now?) taught me -- if you want to really get the story, you need to get to as close as possible to where it's happening. So, too, if you really want to get the story about what is happening for an individual (or a group of people) you need to get as close to them as possible. That means (detached) observation will never be good enough. You have to actually interact with others, maybe even live and eat with them. That's ethnography!

Peace, love, nyc, children and (cargo) bikes

Greenwich Village was a children's paradise when I hit Sixth Avenue a little before 9 this morning. Parents and grandmoms were seen walking their excited, happy little ones to school in the bright sunshine. But some of the kids weren't walking This (unhelmeted!) mom has her two little ones on a cargo bike (would you call it a tricycle when it has two _front_ wheels?). I love the flowers and the birds in the _cargo_ basket! (Almost a _hippy_, peace and love touch).

Of course, I really _do_ think bicycles are about peace and love -- it's such a kinder way to treat the earth to be able to live a lifestyle where getting around doesn't always mean burning more hydrocarbons. And it's kinder to your body, too!

I have to admit that I haven't been on a bicycle, myself, in about a month now, although most days I walk to work or school (or synagogue). I need to work harder to motivate myself to get on the "two wheels!"

I also saw one woman this morning on a little two-wheeled, folding scooter with her child standing in front of her (sorry I didn't get a better pic of her, but, if you look real hard, you can see her kid's legs on the front of the scooter in the pic on the right). And, yesterday, I saw a couple carrying their kids (and their gear for work after they dropped the kids off) on two bikes -- one of which was an Xtracyle!

It's really so incredible how bicycles have become a more normal part of New York with all the bicycle lanes and paths and such they've built! ישר כח ("more power to you!") bicyclists of New York!

Jewish Pastoral Care -- moving beyond the days of the Pioneers

Recently, a fellow rabbi who is aspiring to become a chaplaincy educator contacted me with an urgent question -- how can I prove to the authorities in our field that I am endorsed? I felt a range of emotions at this question -- anger, guilt, anxiety -- how is it that yet another person, just as I had to only a couple of years ago, is again facing this strange question alone, as if it was the very first time anyone had dealt with it? Why was this person being forced to, in effect, reinvent the wheel?

But there was an even more important question here: why was a Jewish person being asked to do something (prove endorsement) that has no equivalent in the Jewish tradition (and that has its roots in the Christian world)? And that question raises another one -- one that seemed to be at the center of so much that was discussed at the recent National Association of Jewish Chaplains (NAJC) conference in Boston earlier this month (where I presented a workshop): How can we make pastoral care Jewish?

You see, the question is no longer whether pastoral care is Jewish or not (although Mychal Springer of the Jewish Theological Seminary, a certified chaplaincy educator/supervisor who is continuing to blaze new trails in the field, shared that she continually has to work to convince some of her rabbinical students of that). This still-infant field has been around long enough that there is no longer any question that the Jewish people need to have their own professionally trained spiritual caregivers, just as the Christian people have long had theirs. But sorting out what exactly we can legitimately borrow from our Christian colleagues and what we need to create out of our own traditions -- and providing established, accepted structures for training and supporting our spiritual caregivers -- that work is only just beginning.


Take the example of endorsement. This is a concept born out of Christian, especially mainline Protestant, traditions about their clergy. You see, most of their clergy cannot take any position without getting permission -- getting endorsement -- from a bishop or other ecclesiastic authority. This fact is rooted in their theology and belief practices, where God's authority is mediated through some kind of structure and/or priesthood (the most salient example being the Pope's position as a kind of chief priest of the Catholic church). But we have no such structure or priesthood (at least not since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE!). So, as a proud Jew -- proud to be part of a faith tradition where any Jew, for example, could officiate Jewishly at a wedding -- it offends me to be asked to do a Christian thing like prove endorsement (and that's where the anger I mentioned above comes in).


But here's what makes it, and many of these other is-it-Jewish issues, more complicated: the chaplaincy education authorities have mixed the religious part of endorsement in with something that is not religious -- the need for me and other folks to prove that we are held ethically accountable (about things like, God forbid, sexual harassment) by some body. This requirement is perfectly legitimate, and I have no reason to feel angry about being asked to fulfill it.


So, why did I also feel guilty when I heard from my colleague? Because I could have been a part of preventing him from having to go through this. I could have been part of an effort, for example, to put together a pamphlet for Jewish folks called, for example, "Things You Need To Know If You Want To Become a Chaplaincy Educator/Supervisor," and that could have had clear answers for my colleague about endorsement.


Although, of course, I shouldn't really feel guilty about this -- it's not my job to fix all things for all Jewish people interested in chaplaincy, pastoral care and Clinical Pastoral Education. I can't hold all the responsibility for that. But, we -- we meaning all of us who are the Jewish leaders in this field -- bear a communal responsibility to do the work to build foundations for those who are following behind us. The days of the pioneers -- the days of our Avot and Imahot -- have to come to an end in our field and the days of the nation builders have to begin. That is why the NAJC conference -- and the work wrestling with important questions that was done there -- is so important. I was so pleased to see important pioneers/nation_builders like Rabbi Springer taking leadership roles there and was cheered to see my fellow chaplaincy supervisor -- and doctoral classmate -- Rabbi Naomi Kalish elevated to president-elect during the conference.


Rabbis Springer and Kalish -- as well as myself -- are all supervisors certified by the Association of the Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE), the leading US group for certifying and training chaplaincy education supervisors. While I have at times been critical of aspects of the ACPE (note my words about its endorsement requirements, above), I am extremely proud to be associated with this organization and consider it to be an amazing force in the worlds of pastoral care in general and of Jewish pastoral care in particular.

But the NAJC conference raised my awareness that much work in Jewish pastoral education is being done in other ways. I was excited, for example, to hear about work Rabbi Fred Klein, the Director of Community Chaplaincy at the Greater Miami Jewish Federation and the Executive Vice President of the Rabbinical Association of Greater Miami, is doing to train lay people to visit patients. Rabbi Klein says he is borrowing techniques from Clinical Pastoral Education in that effort. There are also pioneering efforts to bring Clinical Pastoral Education and other forms of pastoral training to Israel (there will be another chaplaincy conference in Israel -- only the 6th (I was at the 5th last, year, where I gave a workshop) -- this coming May 4-5; more info in the December NAJC newsletter). Another example of alternative means of educating people about Jewish pastoral care is the kind of conference Hiddur put on back in November on the spiritual journey of Jews after midlife. [I was sad, however, to hear Hiddur is scaling back its activities -- another "ripple" from the national financial crisis that has hit the Jewish service world so hard, I assume. I heard that Hebrew Union College's Kalsman institute has also scaled back dramatically as well.]


It's an exciting time!

We have our dreams -- Midrash, Jewish chaplaincy and MLK

I have Rabbi Daniel Lehmann, now president of Boston Hebrew College, to thank for showing me that Martin Luther King day can be more than just a day the banks are closed: we can treat it in the ways the Jews treat all their holidays, as an opportunity for study -- for study of Torah. Implicit in this kind of Torah study is an assumption that Torah goes far beyond the canonical texts of Judaism like the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud. It can extend to anything that connects us with wisdom and Ultimate Meaning -- that feeds our dreams as Jews of a pursuit of a more perfected, more just, world. Even to the works of an African-American preacher from Atlanta, Georgia.

King's work -- especially his famous I have a dream speech -- is certainly once such source of Torah. But, as you can see if you really study it as Torah, King gives us an example in that speech of a particular kind of dreaming much akin to our practice of Midrash. That is, King does not just put forth dreams in some way disconnected from his tradition. Rather, he spins his dreams using the images and language from that tradition -- subtly paraphrasing and quoting from the Bible and his other foundational sources to make his points, his dreams, clear.

Last week, I gave a workshop -- entitled Working the midrashic muscle -- using images to uncover the Holy in the mundane -- at the annual conference of the National Association of Jewish Chaplains. In that workshop, which I'll write more about here soon, I made the case that in order to create our own new Midrash from our own spiritual experiences, we need to bring those experiences into dialogue with our tradition -- with God, Torah and Israel.

That's really what King did, from his own tradition(s) in the I have a dream speech. Five years, ago, I created the handout you see a small version of on the right (a full pdf version you can use yourself is freely available here) for a study session I led as part of the MLK Day activities Rabbi Lehmann had organized at the Gann Academy where he was then the head of school. In the center of the handout is the text of the speech itself. On the edges are the many sources that King borrowed from in the speech, including Amos, the Declaration of Independence and Shakespeare. It's fascinating to see how he used these things to construct his speech!

[If you are going to use the study handout, I recommend you enlarge it about 1.5x onto 11x17 paper.]

On this MLK Day, I hope you can find the courage to dream. And that, in doing so, you will not be alone -- that you will have the full force of the rich traditions of your people(s), and their Holy Texts, behind you -- true dreaming, true pursuit of justice, is a shared experience!

Death of a giant . . . who wrote about the Bible and love

I never got to learn with Professor Yochanan Muffs, but I know how deeply his work impacted many other scholars and lovers of the Hebrew Bible. He struggled, and continued to teach, for many years in the face of a debilitating illness, and, in that way, was also a great inspiration to many. So, I was saddened to learn, today, that he had died. Here is the information the Rabbinical Assembly sent out about his funeral and shiva:

We are sad to inform you of the death of our distinguished colleague and Professor of Bible at JTS, Rabbi Yochanan Muffs,z"l. The funeral will take place tomorrow, Monday at 9:30 am at Congregation Ansche Chesed, 100th iSt and West End Ave. in New York City, 212-865-0600.

Yocheved will be shivah at her home, 280 Riverside Dr. At 100th St with minyan Tommorow through Thursday and Motzaei Shabbat at 6:30 pm and Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday at 7:30 am, Thursday at 7:20 am, and Sunday at 8:30 am.

May his memory be for a blessing

It shouldn't be this hard -- thinking...

It's been a week since I achieved certification as a supervisor in Clinical Pastoral Education. There's been a lot of joy and gratitude as this arduous educational process finally came to an end for me. But there is also an undercurrent of sadness. Only about 60% of the candidates who went up this time were approved along with me. These rejections are a personal trauma to the people who were turned down, but they are also a trauma for the project of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) as a whole -- how can we expect the field to thrive if there is not a steady crop of new supervisors coming up to educate the chaplains and clergy of the future?

Can you imagine being willing to join a field where there's a 40% chance that you will be turned down after a 3-6 year educational process? Few would be willing to do that, which means that the proverbial "best and the brightest" are not very likely to choose our field, and that is a tragedy.

Now, granted, some proportion of that 40% will be approved on a second or third try. But does it really have to be this hard? Is it really worth discouraging people from joining or staying in this field?

I don't think so. We need to do what other fields -- including law, medicine and doctoral education -- have done over the last thirty or forty years. We need to remove much of the uncertainty from the educational and certification processes. Students need to know how long it will take them to finish. They need to be able to feel confident that they know what they need to do in order to finish. Neither of these things are true now.

The place to start is with the committee appearance process itself. A few years ago an association (ACPE) task group created a report that included some excellent recommendations for reform, most importantly that the committee a candidate appears before should be -- as it is in the Phd defense process -- made of people who have an ongoing relationship with the candidate and his or her work. But the ACPE leadership, unfortunately, rejected the most important recommendations.

Another reform I would recommend would be to make graduate education a component of the process. Supervisor candidates are expected to demonstrate substantial competency of theoretical knowledge from the fields of education and psychology. Yet, few supervisory education programs include graduate courses in those subjects. Having had very little previous formal education in these fields, I was forced to engage in a process of self-education with only minimal guidance. Now that I am in a Phd program (I started at NYU's program in Education and Jewish Studies in September), I can really see the difference that learning under the guidance of top-notch professors devoted to your success makes. I did a good job of educating myself to the level required for associate supervisor certification, but did it really have to be this hard? I don't think so, and I'm conscious that I had the advantage of being a life-long autodidact with a strong academic background. What about people who don't have those advantages? Shouldn't they have the opportunity to become supervisors, too?

My doctoral work is just at its beginning and I'm not sure exactly where my research is leading me. But I hope it helps me to make a contribution to the field of CPE in a way that will help it to raise both the quality and quantity of its supervisors. The field has so much to give. I hope to be able to help that tradition grow!

Becoming super – I made it!

One of the confusing things about Clinical Pastoral Education – the main way of educating chaplains and others who provide spiritual care to the ill and dying – is that we don't call the educators in this field teachers or professors. We call them supervisors.

This is because of the educational model we use, one borrowed from medical education where the main part of the learning happens on the job under the supervision of a kind of highly trained professional mentor (see this recent New York Times article, which suggests more use of supervision in training schoolteachers). I am one such professional mentor – supervisor – but I am not yet fully certified (a process that typically takes around five years start-to-finish). But on Thursday I came one giant step closer when I appeared before a committee of senior supervisors in Atlanta and was granted status as an Associate Supervisor.

I am grateful to so many people for helping me on the way, but mostly to Minna for both moral and practical support, especially when I was putting together my written materials for this appearance, and also to my supervisor – a true mentor of mentors – Gregory Stoddard.

At this time the Jewish supervisors who passed this way before me also come to mind. They are a small, but, thankfully, rapidly growing group, each one of them a pioneer. I am glad to join their ranks, not just as supervisors in the chaplaincy field, but as people who have a special voice – a special Torah – to contribute to the education of rabbis and other spiritual caregivers in the Jewish world. With our long tradition of bikkur holim (visiting of the sick) and of aveilut (the caring for mourners), we Jews have a lot of wisdom to offer the rest of the world when it comes to caring for people whose spirits are wounded.

But rest of the world has things to teach us as well. The world of Clinical Pastoral Education has a lot to teach us about the importance of paying attention to the emotions and reactions of the caregiver his or her self when they come into contact with the suffering. And that attention to emotions can also teach us much about how to forge emotional connections between our people and ourpeople's holy texts and holy values.

Just another Secular Sunday

After what seemed like a full month of Sundays devoted to holidays, this weekend finally bought a "Secular Sunday" that was available for _normal_ things like going to the mall or doing the laundry. But Minna and I decided to keep celebrating one more weekend! We did that by taking a little trip together to some great places in upstate New York -- Storm King, one of the best places anywhere to see outdoor sculpture, and Dia: Beacon, a huge former factory that's now dedicated to displaying large pieces of art. It was Minna's first time at Storm King (I'd been there a number of times before) and the first for both of us at Dia: Beacon (I really loved it!).

The pic above is _not_ Minna in front of a rock -- it's a sculpture (Catskill) at Storm King by _another_ Bromberg, Manuel Bromberg.

An Xtracyle in New York City!

I was really excited to see this one -- the first Xtracyle I've sighted in New York City -- on my way to school, today. It's a cool one, with room for two (small) passengers. Here's a closer pic of it:

Leaving Galus -- from Pa. to NYC and back (at the world's B-day)

In
my four years of hospital chaplaincy and chaplaincy education in a
hospital in Reading, PA, I've often had reason to reflect on the
meaning of exile, and what the possibility for return -- maybe even
teshuvah -- might be. And, in the last two weeks of adding
the pursuit of a doctorate (in Education and Jewish Studies) at NYU to my very busy schedule (now
including a monster weekly commute), I've started to feel something
exciting coming together -- a kind of leaving of exile, galut or galus -- that
involves not forgetting the long exile, but actually embracing and holding onto what has been
meaningful about it so I can use it for my own people and their quest.

Moshe -- who the Christians call Moses and
the Muslims Musa -- has often come to mind amid this. He went into an exile from
his homeland in Egypt -- into a time in the wilderness before he returned to
Egypt to redeem his people out of slavery. But Moshe did not return
empty-handed. He encountered not only God there, but also his non-Israelite father-in-law
Yitro, or Jethro, who would give him much wisdom to bring back to his people about how to live in community, about how to carry out the task of leadership.

It is my dream to also bring back wisdom to my people from my long time in galut. My exile has been in the world of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), a means developed by Christians, mostly mainline Protestants originally, to educate their clergy about ministering to their sick and suffering in the very setting -- the hospital -- where this work is centered. CPE's wisdom -- its Torah -- has to do with understanding how it is that people can be formed into effective caregivers and spiritual leaders. Our tradition of rabbinic and Jewish leadership education has been doing this for millennia. But we're not systematic about how we do it. We have so much to learn from others. And I feel myself now well on the road to that task of learning and teaching. In my seminars at NYU, it's so great to feel like I have returned to the conversation again -- the conversation about how it is we will preserve the Jewish people so that it will thrive, and about how education -- as it has always been for us people who love our books so much -- can, and must, stand at the center of that. It's an exciting place to be.

Tonight begins the time of the year when we blow the shofar, when we celebrate the New Year and the birthday of the world. It is a time of beginnings (even as we contemplate the possibility of our ending), of fresh fruits and new things.

I am so grateful the Blessed Holy One for bringing me to this place!

Baruch Dayan Emet -- sadness at the death of the son of Israel's first astronaut

Bob Tabak, a chaplain at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania who was at the same Israeli spiritual care conference I presented at in May, posted the below on the National Association of Jewish Chaplains list, today. I share his sorrow:

I was at the 5th annual Israel Spiritual Care Conference in May.
The keynote speaker was Rona Ramon, widow of Israeli astronaut Ilan
Ramon who died in the Challenger explosion. She is one of the most
recognized Israeli public figures, and her talk about her search for
spiritual meaning, and struggling with her family after the highly
public loss was deeply moving, especially to our Israeli colleagues.

Her son, Asaf Ramon, an IDF pilot age 24 died this weekend in a
training exercise when his plane crashed. The loss to the immediate
family is shared by the Israeli society. I include a message from
Tiskofet/Life's Door, one of groups organizering spiritual care in
Israel. Our condolences to the Ramon family and to all in mourning.
Hamakom yinachem otam...

--Bob Tabak

______________

קהילות תשקופת ומעגן שולחות את תנחומיהם לחברה יקרה ועמיתה רונה רמון ולמשפחתה על מותו הטרגי של אסף ז"ל אין מילים בפינו, אלא להביע את תמיכתנו בשעה זו של צער וכאב

פרופ' בן קורן, MD דבורה קורן, MSc

יושב-ראש מנכ"לית

תשקופת ומעגF

The
Tishkofet and Maagan communities join with our dear friend and
colleague, Rona Ramon and her family on the tragic death of Assaf.

In the absence of words, we offer our deepest feelings of support and comfort in this time of pain.

Prof. Ben Corn, MD Dvora Corn, MSc

Executive Chairman Executive Director

Tishkofet and Ma'agan

Baruch Dayan Emet -- sadness at the death of the son of Israel's

Bob Tabak, a chaplain at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania who was at the same Israeli spiritual care conference I presented at in May, posted the below on the National Association of Jewish Chaplains list, today. I share his sorrow:

I was at the 5th annual Israel Spiritual Care Conference in May. 
The keynote speaker was Rona Ramon, widow of Israeli astronaut Ilan
Ramon who died in the Challenger explosion.  She is one of the most
recognized Israeli public figures, and her talk about her search for
spiritual meaning, and struggling with her family after the highly
public loss was deeply moving, especially to our Israeli colleagues.

 

Her son, Asaf Ramon, an IDF pilot age 24 died this weekend in a
training exercise when his plane crashed.   The loss to the immediate
family is shared by the Israeli society.  I include a message from
Tiskofet/Life's Door, one of groups organizering spiritual care in
Israel.  Our condolences to the Ramon family and to all in mourning. 
Hamakom yinachem otam...

 

--Bob Tabak

______________

קהילות תשקופת ומעגן שולחות את תנחומיהם לחברה יקרה ועמיתה רונה רמון ולמשפחתה על מותו הטרגי של אסף ז"ל אין מילים בפינו, אלא להביע את תמיכתנו בשעה זו של צער וכאב

פרופ' בן קורן, MD                    דבורה קורן, MSc

יושב-ראש                                 מנכ"לית

                                תשקופת ומעגF

 

The
Tishkofet and Maagan communities join with our dear friend and
colleague, Rona Ramon and her family on the tragic death of Assaf. 

In the absence of words, we offer our deepest feelings of support and comfort in this time of pain.

 

Prof. Ben Corn, MD       Dvora Corn, MSc

Executive Chairman      Executive Director

                 Tishkofet and Ma'agan

                       

Death of a street poet -- Jim Carroll

I had recently started listening again to Jim Carroll's great 1980 album, Catholic Boy. It's an album -- with its vivid descriptions of colorful street characters -- that I associate strongly with New York City, so, with my starting to go into New York regularly now for my coursework, it just felt natural to put Jim Carroll on my iPod as I walked that (sometimes!) magical City's streets. Carroll helped me fall in love with New York as a young adult and to see it as a place of infinite possibilities (even amid pain and suffering). So, I was saddened to hear yesterday that he had died on Friday (at the age of only 60). Thank you for everything you gave, Mr. Carroll!

How does one go to grad school in NYC from 130 miles away?

Step 1 -- schedule your classes on two days a week (so you only need  to overnight in New York one night a week).



Step 2 -- find the smallest hotel room in New York.



What you see on the right is one of the cabins in the new (old?) Jane Hotel, which was originally built for sailors who were in port and for a long time was one of the very last of the rundown SRO (single room occupancy) hotels in New York for the down-and-out. The rooms are _tiny_ and the bathroom is down the hall, but, at $99 a night (plus tax) and with a Greenwich Village location I had to give it a try.



I'll let you know how it goes!

---

Here are a couple of more pics:



The 4th floor hallway where I am:










Dual-flush toilet in the bathroom down the hall (I had never seen one in the States before; they are pretty common in Israel, and I suppose in Europe as well).






My pillow!

From The Jane Hotel

Two for the price of one -- repositioning the equipment

I had left my Xtracycle at work, today, and wanted to go back and get it this evening. I had no one to drive me there, so I decided to try riding back to work on my folder and then putting it in the Xtracycle for the "back haul".

It worked! Another car-free day as part of my efforts to be just a little bit kinder to the planet (while getting some exercise, too!).

Here is a front and rear view of the bikes together. Pretty wild looking, no?

High on the High Line -- dreams can come true

The columns and beams to the right have that early 20th century look of overbuilt steel, complete with the little bumps that are the heavy rivets communicating "I am solid" and "I am steel" about the whole structure.

The stairway on the left, however, communicates nothing lightness with its see-through railing mostly made of thin wire and its stairs full of little holes.

The marriage of the two sharply contrasting structures constitutes something that almost felt like a miracle to me yesterday when I stumbled across it while strolling on the West Side of Manahttan. For years, the older structure was a symbol of the abandonment, neglect and lost potential that seemed to characterize New York City -- especially in the 1970s -- for so many years. New York lovers like myself dreamed that a structure like this -- which once boldly carried freight trains over the busy streets of Manhattan, even sometimes passing through buildings -- could be reclaimed as parks or public transit systems. But, amid the abandonment of spending on public amenities in the United States that began with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, these dreams seemed to be just that -- dreams that would never find reality. It seemed impossible that Americans would ever rediscover the 19th century belief in building parks that gave us such treasures as Central Park, etc.

So you can imagine the joy that I felt on walking up these newly built stairs to find this scene amid yesterday's beautiful weather:

The weed-like plants on the lower right are a reference to what you would have found not long ago if you had been up there on what's now called the High Line -- weeds growing amid abandoned railroad tracks. Now it's been converted into a beautiful walkway. You can even see the mighty Hudson River from up there as the next two pics attest:

From New York walking sept. 1 09

One of the High Line's most dramatic features is that it actually goes through buildings, which you can see in this pic here:

---

I was in New York for something else that very much related to the possibility of dreams coming true -- a meeting with Dr. Charles "Chip" Edelsberg, the executive director of the Jim Joseph Foundation, which has made a $5 million gift to support New York University's Education and Jewish Studies program. I have the honor of being a beneficiary of that gift, which is providing me with a stipend and full fellowship for the doctoral studies I am beginning next week.

It was a thrill to hear Dr. Edelsberg's passion about the Jewish people and about the potential for improved and more professionalized Jewish education to play a role in sustaining our people and the seriousness of their engagement with Judaism and Jewish identity. I feel privileged to be supported in being a part of that process. In meeting my new fellow students, I also felt privileged to be part of such a group of bright, young, impassioned leaders and researchers.

My passions are about rabbinic (and other Jewish leadership) education and about education around pastoral care. There are so many exciting things going on in rabbinic education these days, especially with the recent founding of two new rabbinical schools -- the trans-denominational school at Hebrew College in Boston (where Minna goes!) and the modern Orthodox program at Chovevei Torah in New York. But in order for the wonder of all this newness to move on to becoming established and sustainable -- as it must for the benefit of the Jewish people -- we must become more professionalized. That means studying what we are doing more seriously and it means learning more about what people in related sectors are doing, so we can bring in their tools and insights. For the last four years, I have been immersing myself in one such related sector full of tools and insights that can help us on the path to sustainable excellence -- the world of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). I hope my doctoral research will help us bring the wisdom of the CPE world into dialogue with the great wisdom of our Torah and of our leaders in the education of rabbis and other future Jewish leaders.

I am not sure yet exactly where my doctoral work will take me, but I had many new thoughts during my time with Dr. Edelsberg and my new peers, yesterday. One was about the importance of continuing education. Only so much material can be covered while people are in school and many things can only really be well understood once somebody gets on the job. CPE is all about educating people about what it is that they are already working on, so there is much that the CPE world has the potential to give to efforts to help our teachers and rabbis continue to grow, especially to grow in ways that will help sustain them in their often highly challenging work, and to help keep them from burning out and fleeing the field.

One of the great things about being in dialogue with leaders in the field like Dr. Edelsberg is it can make you aware of other people who are doing work parallel to your interest. Yesterday, Dr. Edelsberg mentioned teacher induction programs. These programs help formalize and support mentoring relationships for new teachers. This is something that can inform how we do rabbinic education and the education of Jewish educators. Everyone seems to agree that new professionals need mentors, but seldom are real resources put towards supporting the creation of mentoring relationships. If you really want to assure that all of your rabbinical students, for example, find mentors, you need to provide resources to support that. The mentors need to be trained in mentoring. Their efforts at mentoring need to be rewarded and assessed in some kind of systematic way.

And providing mentoring relationships for students is only the beginning. Where new rabbis and new Jewish teachers really need mentors is when they _start_ their new jobs. There have been some programs -- like the recently canceled Star Peer program -- that have provided mentoring and other support for a privileged few of new rabbis, but I don't know of any rabbinical school that provides such support for all its students.

I am so glad to be starting this new part of my learning and Jewish journeys! I hope it helps dreams to come true!

Cargo without clunkers

With this being the last weekend for the government's "Cash for clunkers" program to help people replace their gas-guzzlers with more fuel-efficient cars, gas mileage is much on people's minds these days. But what's long excited me is the idea of moving myself and my gear with _zero_ mileage -- moving things with just the power of my two legs.

I had some file boxes and books to move, today, so I attached my "Wide Loader" (see below) to my Xtracycle and got out some straps.



Here are a couple of more shots of the bike loaded:





I heard about a new kind of cargo bike option today, by the way. It's this company called CETMA Cargo that custom builds some very wild cargo bikes and racks like the one in the pic below (not sure how the guy in this pic intends on avoiding obstacles given the visibility issues!)



I'm enjoying what I'm doing, today. True, not the fastest way to move a few boxes, but I'm getting some good exercise in the bargain and having some fun to boot!

Late adopter

My father, of blessed memory, loved high-tech and made his living working in that field. But, yet, he was no gadget freak -- he needed real convincing that a new technology, whether it be personal computers or email, really was worth adopting.

He's passed the late adopter thing (as well as the love of technology) on to me, so it was only yesterday that I finally took the smart phone plunge -- and at that it was, Minna, not me, who actually made the purchase. We have iPhones!

Late adopting, actually, despite what this guy says, is a pretty rational strategy -- the newest of the new is usually too expensive and too untested, and I've usually regretted the times I was an _early_ adopter (like with mp3 players; I brought one with me on my Israel year and 2000, and it was a real disappointment).

Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good about this iPhone so far. . . . I think I waited just the _right_ amount of time.

Thanks, Minna!

[X-posted to smamitayim]

First tomatoes

These cherry guys are still green, but we did get our first two ripe tomatoes off of two of our full-size plants, today -- they were delicious!

Yeah, it's a bit late for the first tomatoes, but we got them in the ground kind of late. Well, and not really in the ground, too (as we have no ground). Here they are in their containers:



Some of the leaves, however, are looking a little sad, which had us worried with all this talk about an epidemic of tomato fungus:





I'm trying to stay hopeful, though and am looking forward to these guys turning red!



[X-posted to smamitayim]

A light unto the nations?

Murder in the name of a political or ideological cause has always struck me as the worst of all crimes. Yes, I indeed cry for the friends, family and loved ones of those murdered or wounded last night in this horrible shooting last night in Tel Aviv at a center for gay youth. But I cry, too, for all the people Israel and all the citizens of the State of Israel. We have a myth among the Jews. I use the word, myth, here not in its conventional sense (of a story that's not true). I use the word, rather, to refer to a core belief -- a story of faith -- that we tell about ourselves; that we tell to remind ourselves of who we really are: The myth that Jews don't kill Jews. The myth that for all our disputes and grievances with one another, that we settle them (or, more often, just learn to live with them) with words, not guns. NOT GUNS!

I do not know who this person was who, dressed in black and with an automatic rifle, walked into that basement room last night. But the wound left is deep and broad. It is a wound to all that our people have tried to stand for down through the generations -- for a reverence for life, and for shalom.

I still believe in the myth. I still believe we have a gift to give the world, a light to show. . . . But, today, it's harder to believe in it. It's harder to hope.

Oh, Lord, may it be Your will that this horror -- this pain -- will lead us to find a way back to following Your instruction, Your Torah of peace. Please, Lord, let it come now, speedily, in our days.

Memories of Israel

It's hard to believe that we've been back in the States for less than two months now, but it was a nice reminder of our days in Israel yesterday when the photo CD from the Hazon/Arava Israel ride arrived in the mail. I'll be posting some more photos from it soon, but here's one of my faves.

________________________________

Here's another great photo from the ride (the two of us, plus, Harry, a very cool guy who rode on his folding Brompton!), along with a link to some five dozen or so of my favorites from the pics they sent us.

From Hazon ride 2009 (great pics!)

[X-posted to smamitayim]

A "new" X

Last time I posted here (about a month and a half ago -- wow, what a long time) I also featured a pic of this little porch. But some things have changed! The bins that I was then "making soil" in (in part by ripping up cereal boxes into bits) now feature actual tomato plants (with baby tomatoes on them!). And, somehow, the bicycle that was also in that first pic has "grown" in this one. Unlike the plants that needed weeks (not to mention sun and water) to grow, the bicycle did all its growing, today -- I got my Xtracycle kit out of my storage unit, where it had been languishing for over a year now, and used it to stretch my bike another foot and a half and make it so I could carry the 65 lbs. or so of books that are on the back there (with my rabbinic ordination certificate in the cardboard on top of it all!).

Here are all the books, etc., unloaded at their destination and sitting by the elevator to get to my office upstairs. I've never really had a good place to hang my ordination certificate before, but my new office seems like a perfect place!

Here's another view of the bike loaded before departure:

It's so exciting for me to have an Xtracyle, again. True, I've still been able to bicycle commute and grocery shop without it. But shopping with a _regular_ bicycle seems so limiting after you've owned an Xtracycle -- you're always wondering if all the groceries, etc. will really fit, or if you can _really_ carry that large size of bleach home without busting your panniers (I'll never forget the time back in LA when I busted one of my brand new REI "Around Town" panniers the first time I used them by buying lots of large size liquid items at Smart and Final . . . bummer!).

It's not that the Xtracyle has _infinite_ cargo carrying capacity, but it's just so much more than you can hope to get on a standard bike. At K-Mart, today, I didn't even think twice about buying a lamp; it would have been really hard to figure out how to carry it on a standard bike. You can see the box with the lamp in it in the rear of the Xtracycle below, on the right side, along with a the rest of a total of some $110 worth of stuff I picked up at K-Mart and the supermarket.

The bike I _stretched_ is an old Giant Sedona I bought in LA around 2001 or so. I rode it all over LA, including up into the Sepulveda Pass (where my rabbinical school was) and along Mulholland Drive, which could be pretty exhilarating, especially after a rain when usually hazy LA became clear and beautiful. I call it "the junker" because it's in kind of rough shape. But now that I've X-ed it, I'm going to upgrade it some and have ordered about $300 worth of new parts, including two new wheels and a rear disc brake. The disc brake will come in pretty handy when the bike is loaded with a lot of stuff and when it rains. For now, I am getting by with _no_ rear brake. This is not as dangerous as it sounds (contrary to popular wisdom, front brakes are much more effective than rear brakes, especially when you are descending), but it's far from perfect. I have no rear gears hooked up either (turning the bike, effectively, into a 3-speed). This is not by design, so much, as just by practicality -- I'm just not enough of a bike mechanic to do the full conversion in one day. I hope to hook up the rear gears at least in the next few days. . . . . But, who knows if will really find time. . . . It's been a great summer, but one where I've been so consumed by my work (supervising/teaching six student chaplains we have with us for the summer) that not much else has gotten done (witness how I haven't blogged here at all!) . . . . Though, I can't really blame the lack of blogging just on being busy. I think I am a little overwhelmed by all the (good!) things going on in my life right now to be able to step back enough to reflect on them and write about them. Besides all the good times with Minna there is the fall -- when I start a doctoral program at NYU!!! . . . . I am so excited about that program. I've wanted to be doing doctoral work for a long time. And I think this is the next logical step for someone who has the kind of ambitions I do -- I don't just want to be involved in chaplain education (as a Clinical Pastoral Education, CPE, supervisor). I want to be involved in educating other _supervisors_. I want to be a voice in shaping the future of both rabbinic and pastoral education. I want to be able to say something about how people can be nurtured to be more compassionate and to be more effective leaders. I'm interested in that both for clergy and for doctors and other medical staff. . . . So, the doctorate is the place to go. . . So, I'm excited . . . And scared, too!!! :)

At times like this in my life, it's important to find ways to stay grounded. Cycling helps me do that. A cycling that is not just for exercise, but is part of a lifestyle -- a lifestyle that has an intent to be kinder to the earth by burning less petroleum than I would if I was driving just to do errands around town. A lifestyle that helps remind me that food is not something that just magically appears in the supermarket, but starts in soil that comes from the Earth that God gave us. A lifestyle where I do not just toss everything I don't consume into a landfill but where I try and recycle some of it (you can't really see it well, but the leftmost bin in the first pic above is a covered compost bin where we've been putting our food scraps).

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Although I think the latest X configuration should do me for a while, but I think my future -- especially if there is a longer bike commute (with more hills) waiting for me -- may hold some serious upgrades. I love the idea of a Big Dummy like this guy has (the Big Dummy is frame purpose-built for an Xtracycle -- no _stretching_ needed, which eliminates the "flex" Xtracycle users know so well). I also find the Stoke Monkey electric assist system for the Xtracycle to be a fascinating concept. . . . . Yeah, I know, electric _assist_ sounds like cheating. . . . But I find pretty compelling this way that the Stoke Monkey folks answer that criticism:

Most electric bike products are designed for people who don’t, won’t, or can’t ride regular bicycles, even without passengers or cargo. Stokemonkey is different, designed for avid bikers who will continue to ride on their own power most of the time, but want a more capable car alternative some of the time. We don’t believe in replacing human power with electricity; we believe in replacing cars for work that even the strongest cyclists seldom if ever choose to handle without a car. Developed in a car-free household, Stokemonkey is for fellow riders who want to become more completely independent of cars in their daily lives.

Now if Stoke Monkey didn't cost nearly $2,000 maybe I would already have one! :)

[x-posted to smamitayim]

Making soil

One of the most beautiful ways to get in touch with the never-ending miracle that is God's act of creation of our world is to engage in the acts of creation that God has gifted us with the opportunity to participate in. Years ago, I used to garden some, mostly vegetable gardening -- tomatoes and green peppers and such. I haven't had access to land to do that for a very long time. I still don't, but now I have access to the little back porch above and I spent some hours today preparing containers for tomatoes and herbs. I realized that I hadn't bought enough potting soil for the containers, so I went in search of other organic matter to give the soil some bulk and maybe some nourishment and water-holding capacity for the plants, too. First, I threw in some vegetable scraps we had been saving with the idea of starting a compost bucket. Then I went in search of cardboard and paper and tore up every bit of unnecessary food packaging we had hanging around (why does breakfast cereal come in boxes, anyway?). Above you see me tearing them into bits and pieces.

It felt good to be taking things that would go into a polluting, land-consuming landfill and to try and put them to a productive purpose. It reminded me of how much I love the earth. . . . And the God who gave it to us.

Have a great week!

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Here is a closer-up view of the cardboard on its way to "becoming" soil (along with a pic of me "in the act").:





And here is how things looked when we were a bit closer to done planting:



In case the last pic made you think Minna _can't_ smile, here she is smiling!




[X-posted to smamitayim]