abayye

Creation in education, creation in faith -- a paradigm shift

2012-02-15T10:55:00.002-05:00

Our stories -- the stories we choose to tell -- make us who we are, and the way we choose to tell stories tells others who we are and who we most hope to be. The Jewish tradition has two great central foundational stories -- 1) the inspiring tale of redemption from bondage that is the Exodus from Egypt, and 2) the creation of the world (and humankind) from the formless and void. Both foundational stories have God as a central actor -- either God as redeemer or God as creator. In the Jewish tradition, we understand both of these roles as involving -- at their most fundamental level -- God's compassion for the human being.

But one of these stories can be more troubling in our globalized, technological world which features both the deadly high tech of atom bombs and the deadly low tech of suicide bombers. We hope for a world where a sense of what is in common between all of us will lead us closer to a world of peace. But the Exodus story, and the subsequent giving of the Torah at Sinai, emphasizes difference -- how God loves the people Israel in particular and how God gives them this particular book that is their own very special text.

So, while the Exodus story continues to inspire, I think that -- in the Jewish world and beyond -- it is the story of creation in the book of Genesis that is becoming a more central text for religious leaders and thinkers who are interested in peace and who are interested in battling hate. The story there tells us that all humans were created in the image of God. From this, thinkers learn not only of the infinite value of each human life, but also of the seemingly paradoxical concept that each human is unique and that each human is somehow the same as all others (as we all come from the holy mold, and we are all in some way a reflection of The Most Holy). The later paradox -- the fact that we are all each completely unique, but somehow also very much the same -- is at the heart of this Creationist paradigm shift: to embrace our commonness, we must embrace, and seek out, how different we each are from each other.

Although I know this kind of message most from the Jewish world -- I heard a wonderful lecture on the human as created in the image of God from Yitz Greenberg at a retreat a few Shavuots ago -- I was very pleased to hear it also from a Christian leader who addressed a pastoral care (and diversity) conference I was at last week. Emmanuel Y. Lartey, a professor of pastoral care and theology at Emory University, said "the Church is born diverse" in framing his keynote address at the annual ACPE conference last Thursday. That is, Dr. Lartey was holding up the image of creation in the Book of Genesis -- an image where God brings forth every kind of living creature -- as the central one, both for his theology as a whole and for his understanding of how we should cope with difference. For Lartey, difference (or diversity) is not just something to be tolerated. It is something to embraced. It is something to be moved towards with passion and energy: "It's not enough to have multiculturalism," he said. "Often we are satisfied if there are representatives of many" different types of people in a gathering we are at, he said. He continued, by saying that we might think "it's sufficient to pat ourselves on the back and say there is a person of color there." But, he went on, "we need to push beyond that . . . to a deeper sense of interaction. . . . In this struggle, we must recognize and pay attention to differences in our styles of learning and our personalities."

As an inspiration for this vision of embracing, not just tolerating, diversity, Lartey cited in particular a Jewish thinker -- Emmanuel Levinas, who presents a particularly powerful articulation of the paradox in creation (of the human in the image of God) I cited above. Levinas speaks of our alterity -- of our fundamental otherness and understands ethics as being rooted not in thought, but in relationship, in the 'face-to-face' relationship possible between two human beings.

Lartey -- in line with a lot of the relationalist thought about personality from contemporary psychoanalysis -- says that the diversity we should embrace is not just between us and others. It is also within our own selves -- "within us and not only without us is diversity," he said. "We ourselves are complex mixtures of heritage . . . this too is normative."

As educators, Lartey says, these kinds of ideas command us to do anything but form our students into our own image. "I should not try and make them me -- they should try and be the best" that they can uniquely become.

Education is at the heart of my own interests and my own hopes for contributing towards moving us to a world of peace. The two basic themes of 1) the centrality of relationship, and 2) the necessity of embracing the uniqueness and difference between us are key to everything I've been thinking about.

I have written very little on this blog since October when a long, arduous process to becoming certified as a full supervisor in the ACPE came to an end (successfully, I'm happy to say). I haven't been sure how I wanted to use it (or if I should transition to another means of publically sharing thoughts, like Twitter). But I've decided to re-embrace this blog as a kind of public journal about the reading and thinking I am doing about what I might do for my dissertation (I'm in a PhD program at NYU in Education and Jewish studies).

This week, I'm reading a bit about the Ethics of Caring as articulated by Nel Noddings, a feminist and philosopher of education who is often compared to Carol Gilligan, a groundbreaking feminist psychologist and researcher who is now a professor at NYU and who was the teacher of one of my favorite NYU professors, Niobe Way. I haven't read Noddings before, but I hope I'll find something there that speaks to me and that I can write about here.

It's good to be writing and sharing again -- now to the reading!

____________________

On this issue of creation (as opposed to the redemption from Egypt) it is interesting to note, by the way, that Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah) has always had creation as its central image. . . . It's interesting to wonder whether the growing interest in Kabbalah is connected to the trends I identified above about the pursuit of peace as creating a greater interest in the creation story as a central spiritual image.

I have been studying Kabbalah here at NYU with Elliot Wolfson. Yesterday, while studying a 16th century Lurianic text on creation, Wolfson introduced an interesting idea to me: It is not so much that the Kabbalists -- in spinning their intricate visions of the creation process -- were trying to describe creation itself. Rather, what they were really trying to do was explain the world as the saw it -- a world that is full of difference and diversity. How could such a world exist if it all came from the absolute Oneness that is God?

Blood covered up -- a death in Cumru Township

2012-02-07T12:56:00.005-05:00

His name was Julius Johnson. Other than the fact that he was only 16 and that he was clearly a boy in trouble we know almost nothing about him. The local newspaper has never run a picture of him. They have never talked to his mom or his friends or anyone else who might be grieving for him. They've never asked what he might have done that was good in his short life.

Every time I pass by the riverfront spot where he died on a bike trail less than a mile from my house my heart breaks. It's not that I defend what he did that day. As a not-so-young bicycle rider, it's very disturbing to me that a trio of teens would attack people like they assaulted the 65-year old bike rider who shot Johnson dead and wounded a 15-year old companion of Johnson in the neck. (A third, unwounded, teen is currently incarcerated.)

But a life was lost that day. The local paper – the Reading Eagle – has not seen fit to ask any questions about that young life. The local authorities quickly ruled the shooting justified – so quickly that they could not possibly have done any investigating besides just deciding to believe the shooter's account. And then the authorities took the very unusual step of withholding the shooter's identity. The paper – forsaking their duty to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted” – has not asked any questions about why this unusual step was taken. Was the shooter a relative or a politically connected friend of the legal authorities? Did he have a history of using deadly violence? Was there any kind of delay after the first shot was fired – a delay during which the (unarmed, by the way) teens would have had a chance to withdraw? I don't know the answer to any of these questions – because the paper not seen fit to ask them.

The only kind of questions the paper has chose to ask could be paraphrased as "how come the authorities didn't make sure those young animals were caged up that day." One columnist for the paper wrote in his column:

You live by the sword, you die by the sword. When the teens decided to attack that man, they put themselves at risk.

Maybe, but I'd like to point out that these kids were not carrying any swords that day. Or knives. Or guns. Or any weapon of any kind.

The attitude of this columnist illustrates what's most wrong with America today. It's what's indicated when the words "I don't care about the poor" can so easily roll off the tongue of a presidential candidate. It's the belief that there's a "us" and a "them", and I don't need to think about "them" very much, especially if they're poor or a different color than me. It's the opposite of thinking we're all in it together.

Julius Johnson may very well have been a dangerous criminal. But he was also a boy. He was also a son. He had a mother (one who had called the authorities on the day of his death because she was concerned he was not in school). It's not right to treat the loss of his life like it was nothing more than the disposal of some unwanted garbage.

We should, instead, understand that loss as a tragedy – one that should cause us to ask some deep and troubling questions. We should stop covering up what happened. We all need the truth.

May the Holy Blessed One comfort his mourners.

Still broken -- too many seeking certification as chaplaincy educators are turned down

2011-11-03T23:18:00.003-04:00

Less than a month ago, I had reason to celebrate when I was approved as a full supervisor in the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education, something I had spent years working hard for. But tonight I feel sadness in hearing that some of my colleagues were turned down for certification at a meeting of this association -- the leading American group for the training of chaplains and other spiritual caregivers -- in Atlanta.

Any healthy education and certification process is designed for its members to move in an orderly and predictable way towards completion. There will always be some who are not able to finish and drop out for one reason or another. But they should be a small minority; sadly, this is not true in our association. Too many are turned down. The pain of this experience -- of working so hard to prepare and traveling to a distant city to appear in person before a committee -- is substantial for most who are turned down. It's a suffering that is unnecessary; it does not help us create better supervisors.

I pray that those who were turned down in Atlanta will find healing and the strength to "get back up" and continue to pursue their professional goal. And I pray our association will find its way towards collectively seeing the wisdom in reforming this broken certification process.

Filling the gaps -- the essence of Midrash

2011-10-24T21:15:00.003-04:00

A couple of quotes from Daniel Boyarin on the nature of Midrash:

The text of the Torah is gapped and dialogical, and into the gaps the reader slips, interpreting and completing the text in accordance with the codes of his or her culture. . . . Midrash is a portrayal of the reality which the rabbis perceived in the Bible through their ideologically colored eyeglasses.

What I like about these quotes (from pg. 14-15 of his seminal Intertextuality and the reading of Midrash) -- despite the fact that they're just plain wonderfully clear! -- is that it opens the way towards an understanding of Midrash that can span both the ancient product of our rabbis and today's efforts to create contemporary Midrash. It puts the text of the Torah at its center and characterizes an important key aspect of that text that has shaped the way the Jews have related to their Holy texts through the millennia -- by charging into the 'gaps' to (incredibly!) both preserve the integrity of the ancient words, while also infusing them with free and contemporary meaning.

I am grateful to have been assigned to again read these words of Boyarin. One of the great gifts of this semester of my doctoral work is that I am privileged to study with two of the greatest contemporary readers of ancient Jewish texts -- Jeffrey Rubenstein and Elliot Wolfson. I'm enjoying it!

Approved! (A full cup)

2011-10-10T17:36:00.005-04:00

I am proud to be able to say that I was approved as a Full Supervisor today in the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education, the premier group for training chaplains and other spiritual caregivers. It's been a long road, but one with much great learning on it. I am excited and grateful to so many for their help, Minna first of all and, of course, also my training supervisor Greg Stoddard of Reading Hospital. Also thanks to Rabbi Mychal Springer who gave me the opportunity to work at the Jewish Theological Seminary this past summer.

Now to celebrate!

Steve and the Holy of Holies

2011-10-06T11:17:00.006-04:00

I never owned a Volkswagen Bug, but nearly 30 years ago I proudly bought (and still have a copy) of the "Compleat Idiot How to Keep Your Volkwagen Alive" guide, first published in 1969 by an aerospace indus try 'dropout'. With its 'groovy-looking' and clear diagrams of repair tasks, the guide seemed to promise a better and simpler life amid the technology -- like the motor vehicle -- that we depend on for all the best of what we can do, but that also threatens (think, global warming) to destroy us. It said, 'there's another way.' We can have material things that serve us, instead of us having to live a 'rat race' existence where we feel enslaved to those things and an obsessive need to consume and constantly acquire more and more. It said, "small is better."

Until recently, I had never owned an Apple computer. But I always admired them. They also carried with them this promise -- one Steve Jobs credited in part to the influence on him of the Whole Earth Catalog -- of a better way to live. A way that did not mean we always had to pursue having lots of complex gadgets. One that said that it was possible to own things that were beautiful -- beautiful with an almost Japanese aesthetic that found beauty in the small and simple.

This is part of why so many of us seem to mourn so much at hearing of the death of this man who was, in fact, not someone most of us knew at all. He stood for something much beyond his actual deeds. He stood for that 'small is better' belief and aesthetic. His very life was a beacon of hope for America and its future. He embodied the possibility that the great and terrible rent that came upon this country in the 1960s amid the Vietnam war -- the split between Counterculture and Nixon's Silent Majority, a split that has grown into the current great gap between Red and Blue states -- could be healed. Rather than being in conflict, the goals of the Counterculture and of commerce could come together. This greatest success of American companies in our time -- this Apple -- showed that one could made piles of money by bringing Counterculture values to life. In a sense, Jobs was a modern-day priest, someone who appeared almost magically to be able to enter the Holy of Holies of our time, a place that would have destroyed an ordinary human with its beautiful and terrible power. Jobs could see clearly things that were obscured for the rest of us. The music world despaired of finding a way to distribute music on the Internet that could also allow money to be made. Jobs, on the other hand, saw a way to make it simple -- just sell the songs individually for $1 (minus a penny) each. It seems almost obvious in retropect, but only this 'priest' could both see it and pull together the resources to make it happen.

Jobs' greatest inheritor is Google, another company that has found fantastic financial success while pursuing a sense of higher values -- especially its famous "don't be evil" maxim -- as well as pursuing simplicity in the user experience. It remains to be seen what the future of these two great American companies is and whether they will continue to uphold their values. But as we approach this Yom Kippur, we can bring a hope -- a prayer -- not just for individual existences to prosper in the year (and years) ahead, but also a hope for the nation and the world: a hope that we will find a way towards a small-is-better prosperity in the model that this 'priest' (or prophet) modeled for us. A prosperity that does not mean destroying our planet. A prosperity where we can be truly satisfied with what we have. A prosperity where every person has the opportunity to live out his or her dreams. A prosperity that frees us from violence, homelessness and pain. A prosperity that does not forget the widow, the orphan and the stranger.

Tzom Kal.

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Of course, there are other reasons we have so much emotion at Jobs' passing. First is how young Jobs was -- only 56. It shows that no matter how blessed a person might be in many parts or their life -- including the wealth needed to afford the very best of medical care -- many years are not guaranteed to any one of us (certainly, a theme with resonance on Yom Kippur).

I also feel like I _owe_ Jobs (or at least Apple computer). Apple has _taught_us so many things that we often paid them nothing for. For example, Apple taught me that a notebook computer was something I both _needed_ and could afford. I will never forget that group project session in 1993 when I was finishing up my first masters degree. Another student pulled his Powerbook 100 (see pic above) out of his bag and pulled up the group project we were all working on -- we finished it together right there and then in that student lounge instead of each having to go home (or to a computer lab) to work on our individual sections independently. It blew my mind and I knew I had to have one. I ended up buying an early IBM Thinkpad instead, a device that helped transform how I worked and thought. IBM got my money for that purchase -- not Apple -- but I never would have spent the money if the Powerbook 100 hadn't 'taught' me what its value could be. Similarly, the iPod and the iPhone taught us -- and other music device and smartphone manufacturers -- what was possible. We have all benefited tremendously. It is certainly true, however, that Apple rarely has invented anything new. I had an mp3 player by RIO before the iPod was ever released. But it never really worked right. Apple under Jobs has known how to take complicated technology and put it all together with data and media in ways that _seem_ simple -- or at least are experienced as simple by the user. They just work. They teach us how it is done.

Choosing life . . . . . in a world of brokenness

2011-10-04T13:15:00.003-04:00

Who is in charge of your life? God? Yourself? Others?

If you were in synagogue a few days ago on Rosh HaSahnnah, it would be understandable if you might have felt as if your only option is to submit to some predetermined fate about the course of your life. The great image of the High Holiday season -- articulated dramatically in the ונתנה תוקף/U-netaneh Tokef prayer -- is that of God high in the heavens, writing in a book that determines the course of your year to come. We sing together the words:

בְּראשׁ הַשָּׁנָה יִכָּתֵבוּן
On Rosh HaShannah it (who shall live and who shall die) it is written.

וּבְיום צום כִּפּוּר יֵחָתֵמוּן
And on Yom Kippur (this coming Shabbat) it is sealed.

And, yet, the prayer also gives us something to do in the 10 days between these two holidays -- a path to reduce the severity of the decree written on Rosh HaShannah:

וּתְשׁוּבָה וּתְפִלָּה וּצְדָקָה
מַעֲבִירִין אֶת רעַ הַגְּזֵרָה
Teshuvah, prayer and tzeduckah avert the severity of the dec

But what exactly does this "teshuvah, prayer and tzeduckah" mean? I could try and help a bit by translating all the words into English -- repentance for teshuvah and charity for tzeduckah -- but that leaves us still wondering what is really meant by repentance and by charity (or, for that matter, even prayer). What, for example, are we meant to repent from? If it's from sin, what does sin mean for us?

Whenever I think of the nature of Judaism, I always think of the choice of our ancient Sages to end the Torah with the heartbreaking image of Moshe standing on the edge of the Promised Land, knowing that he will die there and never see the land of his forebears. The Sages could have instead chosen to end the Torah with the next book in the Bible -- Joshua -- and its tale of a triumphant reentry into the land punctuated by dramatic military victories carried out with God's help. But our Sages chose to end the Torah in the wilderness -- in a place of exile and brokenness. There's a powerful message in that for us -- brokenness is not just something for Moshe, it is for all of us. That is where we live. We live knowing we will die, and even that we may die in pain and disappointment. We live knowing the world is full of suffering -- even the death of children to cancer -- that we cannot hope to make sense of.

It would be easy to lose hope knowing that we live in a world that is broken, and that is unlikely to be completely fixed in our lifetimes. It would be easy to become discouraged. We could -- and sometimes do -- lose faith like the people Israel did on their 40-year journey in the wilderness.

But God calls us back with the demand that we -- even on the edge of the place of potential doom that is the sealing of the decrees on Yom Kippur -- embrace the best that it is possible for us to be as humans. To be humans who choose to acknowledge our mistakes and errors and then to repent from them. To be humans who choose to acknowledge God's greatness through acts of prayer. To be humans who choose to try to make the world around them more just -- especially for the weakest and most needy among us -- through acts of righteous giving. In effect, to be humans who choose life. . . . even amid the threat, or even nearness, of death. Even amid knowledge of the brokenness amid us and around us.

Some weeks back, I wrote here about how I was hit by a car while bicycling. I was not hurt badly and did not need to go to the hospital. Yet, I have found myself thinking about the accident often, and have been wondering why I seem to think it was such an important event for me.

I am still not sure. But I know that I keep thinking of the moment when I realized the car was going to hit me. To my surprise, it was not fear that gripped me. Instead, I was able to intentionally do the thing that I had learned would be most useful towards increasing my survivability in the face of an impact -- I relaxed. I allowed myself to roll up onto the hood of the car and then fall back down on the ground. In effect, at that moment when it seemed like I had no control over what would happen to me, I still grabbed for what agency I still had to work towards my goal -- my goal of choosing life.

As chaplains and spiritual caregivers, or just as people, we often meet people whose time left on earth appears to be short -- as if a 'car' is coming towards them -- or who have experienced much loss, including the loss of independence or of loved ones. We often struggle to find ways we can be of some comfort. I know of no magic words for those moments. But I do know it is always still possible to choose life for the moments that remain to us, to be a force for good -- for teshuvah, prayer and tzeduckah -- in the world.

May the year ahead be a happy and healthy one in which you are sealed in life -- and one in which you are able to find your own way towards choosing life for yourself.

Shannah Tova.

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Above, you may have been confused by the picture of a bicycle. It is Bira single-speed cruiser bike with coaster brakes (also featured below on top of a labyrinth of all things that I found in the East River park with the Williamsburg Bridge in the distance). For me, cycling is one of the little ways I try and choose life a bit more often. I got the bike from NYU's bicycle share program and rode it down from the Village today to Bowling Green downtown (where I write this blog post courtesy of free wi-fi in the park).

NYU's bike share program is just a pilot that will hopefully soon be supplanted by the ambitious plans for a municipal share program. Based on the great success of bike share in Paris, this program hopes to revolutionize how people get around the City. In Paris, people rent the bikes from automated stations with credit cards. The rentals are meant to be short term -- just to ride to the next bicycle station where you drop it off (the rates are designed to encourage people to quickly return the bikes). I hope it really comes to be -- as planned -- by next summer!

From NYC biking

Ten Years

2011-09-11T17:09:00.004-04:00

That's how long I worked in the World Trade Center (Tower 2, 27th floor) and now that's how long it's been since those towers have been gone. I was in California, in my first weeks of rabbinical school when the disaster happened. I had recently returned from a year in Israel -- the year that the Second Intifada began, bringing with it the resulting atmosphere of fear where we were all afraid that the bus you were on might explode at any moment.

So many people have things to share today on this anniversary, but I mostly feel a need for silence and quiet contemplation, so I won't write much here. The one thing I will share is that, although I have often felt deep pain -- especially in those first weeks -- about the event, I have much less often felt anger. I have much less often felt a desire for revenge, than I've felt a desire for healing -- a desire that the world will be healed in a way so that people are less likely to become so drunk with their anger as to commit such unspeakable acts.

The sadness that is in me today is not just about the losses 10 years ago. It's also because I'm not sure that we've moved much farther down the road towards that more healed world. And that's a loss, too.

May it be the will of the Blessed Holy One that we should all know peace and wholeness. May it come soon, speedily, and in our days.

Finding hope amid the pain of mental illness

2011-08-30T10:52:00.004-04:00

There was an interesting New York Times story a few days ago about a Protestant minister who is running writing workshops for psychiatric patients at a mental hospital in Queens. It's incredible work -- using the Holy scriptures and images to help inspire some of the most suffering people among us to access their creative voices. And through that, to find some of the things they lack the most: a sense of agency -- of having some kind of control in their lives (the opposite of helplessness) -- and having hope.

Minna is also in the midst of her own version of this important creative work -- she is running a six-week voice and singing workshop at a local state mental hospital. The stories she has brought back of these patients creating their own songs -- and asking for help for each other by singing them together -- have been so inspiring for me, and I hope soon to share a detailed description of some of this work. Two of my students this summer also ran a workshop for mental health clients at a day center where the clients composed their own prayers.

We often think of mental illness as so 'other' -- as something strange and far off that only happens to people who are locked away in some giant, cold instutution. But, in fact, it is widespread and touches us all. It is hard to find hope amid its inexplicable afflictions. Kol HaKavod -- more power to you! -- to all who do this Holy work of helping find voice and hope amid it!

Scary, but not hard -- getting hit by a car

2011-08-21T18:01:00.002-04:00

"I've been hit harder before," I told the driver of the PT Cruiser as I tried to convince her I wasn't hurt bad and that she really could get back in her car (which now sported a dented hood after decking me and my bicycle Friday afternoon) and drive away. "I hope not!" she exclaimed.

It was true that I have had harder falls before (both on a bicycle and once courtesy of an angry man I was arguing with about sidewalk etiquette back years ago when I was a journalist working in lower Manhattan). But I've never been hit by a car while on a bicycle before. And I'm grateful that -- even though she _didn't_ see me before she pulled out of the parking lot she was in onto busy Commack Road -- she _did_ see me (rolling up onto her hood before falling back onto the ground) in time to stop her car before the wheels crushed me.

But, despite coming out of it with only mostly minor scrapes and bruises (even my bike is _mostly_ ok) -- I've been thinking about the accident a lot since it happened. I know all too well that bicycle accidents can have emotional impacts well beyond any physical ones -- an accident I had when I was a freshman in college (I was 'doored' in Boston) scared me away from serious bicycle riding for over 20 years. Cycling, on some level, requires a certain kind of fearlessness even to get on the road at all. At the very least, you need to _trust_ that the drivers in the cars constantly passing you on your left will not hit you if they see you.

I'm not sure if I've lost my 'fearlessness', but I did get back on the road for a little bit today, riding around Sag Harbor with Minna and her Mom. Minna and I are here after almost a week of bike touring as vacation. We rode from our home in West Reading, PA, to the Jersey Shore (no, I did not see Snooki!) where we picked up a ferry to lower Manhattan and then the Long Island Railroad to my Mom's house. It was one of the best bike tours I have ever done. Not in terms of scenery (although we did have some very good riding, especially the last 10 or 15 miles in PA on the way to cross the Delaware in Washington's Crossing). But in terms of the _real_ goal of a bike tour -- 'getting away' -- it really worked. I forgot about all the stress of the hardworking (but great!) summer I had just had teaching pastoral care at JTS (Jewish Theological Seminary), and about the upcoming final year of coursework (and much uncertainty) for my doctorate at NYU. All that mattered was the road and pushing one-pedal-at-a-time to cross it. And all the places we passed by and through. The bucolic fields of PA. The slums of Trenton (where are you now, Stephanie Plum?). The historic tow path along the Delaware and Raritan rivers. A shady tree where we had collapsed for a rest and where a man sounding like Tony Soprano in a Cadillac SUV asked us if "you guys are alright" because "you're on my property." The great taste -- enhanced by our exercising so hard -- of fresh tomatoes and peaches from a farm stand where we took a break. . . . But mostly it was just great having an adventure together, just the two of us -- very cool.

Now a couple of more days here near the sea where I will be able to get daily to the salt water to help heal my scrapes (and the wounds on my psyche and soul) and then back to 'the world" . . . . and soon the chagim (High Holidays) and a chance to ask God for another year. . . . . I hope it is a rich one for everyone!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Hot city, hot bikes

2011-07-22T18:49:00.005-04:00

It was truly broiling today as I walked to the subway this afternoon in New York amid the near-record temps, but I still stopped to take a pic of this strange thing (one thing I love about cycling is seeing all the creativity people put into modifying bikes to different tasks). I think it's a tandem that's been converted into an electric (front hub) cargo bike. ..... At least I think the homemade part of the setup below is meant for carrying large amounts of cargo, although it's hard to be sure.

From New York Cargo Bikes

Speaking of homemade setups, here is a pic (circa 1947) of Minna's Mom on a homemade child seat her father made for the back of this bicycle.

And here's another shot of today's cargo find.

From New York Cargo Bikes

Shabbat Shalom

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P.S. If anybody ever tells you that a rainbow never grows in Brooklyn, I have this pic from the other day (that I snapped on the way back to my Brooklyn sublet from the subway) to prove different.

Finding a way back to gratitude (the chaplain's role in the face of mental illness)

2011-07-21T20:23:00.002-04:00

"I needed to focus on what I still had, and to be grateful for that."

Those were some of the inspiring words I heard today from a survivor of profound mental illness at a session on mental illness my students (and other summer chaplaincy students) went to in Westchester. The speaker had been a highly successful young woman with a strong faith in God and a strong connection to her faith tradition when she was struck in her senior year in high school by the onset of a major depression that lasted for years and led to multiple suicide attempts. Not suprisingly, she became angry at God.

She credits her recovery largely to an excellent, partnering relationship with a therapist and to medications that addressed her despression and psychosis. But, for this person of faith, finding the way to a place of recovery also meant healing her relationship with God, and finding a way to once again see God as a partner, rather than battling with God. "I put my life in God's hands and asked Him to help me," she said.

This was not just a matter of finding trust in God, or reenvisioning who God is -- it was also a matter of profoundly reenvisioning her understanding of herself and her capabilities. That is, like so many people who suffer an illness or injury, she had to learn to accept a new understanding of what's possible for her -- one that no longer included being a high-performing student at a top university. And, most importantly, she reframed her world view to find gratitude for what she now had.

Gratitude is a profoundly spiritual category. By raising up the importance of gratitude in her life, this women gave me a picture of what role a spiritual caregiver could play in her recovery. The spiritual caregiver is not the one to cure or help control an illness. But, working alongside medical personnel, the spiritual caregiver can assist a person in an accompanying spiritual reframing -- one that can lead them to a much more satisfying and complete life when their mental illness is controlled.

I intentionally say 'controlled' and not 'cured.' As another speaker today said, mental illness is similar to diseases like diabetes or high blood pressure or asthma -- it can't be cured, only controlled. Under stress, the sufferer may experience a loss of that control -- higher blood pressure or a renewed episode of depression.

Stress, the speaker said, is one of the two main categories of the true causes of mental illness; the other is genetics. It's never that a person is 'evil' or 'weak' (although almost all people with mental illness will sometimes blame themselves that way).

She also had an elegant definition of what qualifies a series of symptoms as mental illness and not just a tough time -- if there is either 1) extreme emotional pain, or 2) disability (like being unable to work). Many people have only one of these, like the high functioning person at work who returns home to be emotionally unavailable to his or her family amid alcohol use or some other addictive behavior.

I was so glad to have the chance to learn with these two experts today, both of whom suffer from mental illness themselves, and to see a stronger vision of where the place for the spiritual caregiver might be amid this suffering. I wish them both further strength!

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By the way, the first speaker I spoke of never said she was grateful for her illness itself. In fact, she seemed uninterested in even trying to understand why it happened to her. For her, her illness is something that is just a part of her life. Her gratitude is something that is rooted in the here and now -- in focusing on what she has, and on the kind of relationship she wants to have with God.

Jewish pastoral care -- guided by sources, not theology

2011-07-21T07:51:00.002-04:00

Being a Jew in the field of chaplaincy education is always a bit of an adventure -- the very term 'chaplain' can bring up Christian connotations in people's minds, as does the term 'pastoral care.' So, as a Jewish person, I am always trying to navigate between what I feel I can comfortably borrow from my Christian colleagues -- whose hard work and devotion to caring for the suffering have brought us the gift of an established way of thinking about how to train spiritual caregivers -- and what I must reject as being inconsistent with my Judaism. And, more importantly, what gifts do I have to bring out of my tradition to the broader field of pastoral care?

I had opportunity to think about this yesterday when I made a presentation on Midrash and Jewish pastoral care to some chaplaincy students at a hospital in Baltimore. I opened with one of my favorite quotes from Abraham Joshua Heschel: "A Jew is asked to take a leap of action rather than a leap of thought."

Heschel is often described as one of the greatest Jewish theologians of the 20th century. But can a man who -- as this quote indicates -- so clearly rejected with centrality of the cognitive (of thought) really even properly be called a theologian? I remember what one of my rabbinical school teachers told us about how to properly read Heschel. Don't look for organized thoughts, he said. Heschel organized his writing around sources (Holy texts from the Bible, Talmud and elsewhere) and so to understand him, you have to read his works the same way -- by revolving around the sources.

I think you might be able to say the same thing of the whole of Judaism. Our tradition -- our way -- is not so much organized rationally around structured thoughts, as it is around sources, the holy texts that guide and instruct us. At the beginning of our summer chaplaincy program at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the head of JTS' Center for Pastoral Education, Mychal Springer, gave a lecture about the nature of Jewish pastoral care (a talk that will become a book chapter soon). I noticed as she spoke that she was organizing her statements in the kind of Jewish way I described above -- she was going from holy text to holy text and talking about how that text instructs us, how it helps us to know who we are as spiritual caregivers when we stand before a suffering person.

In the field of Clinical Pastoral Education, we often ask the people training to be its educator/supervisors, "what does your theory tell you to do in this situation." I have always bristled at this question. "What theory?" I have thought. "I have no theory, I only have sources."

One thing that may be coming out of this wonderful summer of teaching pastoral care in a Jewish institution that once nurtured me so much as student is a greater confidence of embracing my "theorylessness" and my "sourcefullness." It's a genuine part of what makes me a Jewish supervisor, and not just a supervisor who happens to be Jewish.

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By the way, this way of thinking about about sources as _instructing_ us is related to some thinking I have been doing about how to define spirituality in an inclusive way that accounts for a Jewish approach. Here is an _insruction-centered_ definition of spirituality I came up with for a paper last semester (thanks to Even Senreich for helping inspire this definition):

Spirituality refers to a person’s sense that there is something larger and universal that exists beyond his or her person, and is, most importantly, a source of ultimate instruction about what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad, what is meaningful and what is not. This source might be other humans (as in a member of a nation deriving ultimate instruction about when it is right to kill from a sense of his or her membership in that nation), or it might be something beyond the human (eg, God). The person might be part of that source, or completely separate from it. The magnitude of a person’s spirituality – both in general and in a particular moment – is measured by the extent he or she feels instructed by his or her source when faced with the most difficult and existential questions in life.

Finding our voice at the edge of the unknown: a workshop at JTS

2011-07-15T18:31:00.004-04:00

It's so easy to get lost. When you're caring for somebody who's really ill or really suffering, their pain -- including feelings of hopelessness they may have -- can overwhelm not only them but also us. Skilled chaplains learn to walk alongside people in their pain and uncertainty -- to get down in the pit with them -- but skilled chaplains also need to be able to step out of that pit, to reconnect with God and their holy sources of support, purpose, and meaning. Through this kind of act of reconnection from places of despair, the chaplain can also help the suffering person to find their own way out of the pit and to reconnect with the sources of holiness and meaning in their own lives.

This week, Minna and I worked with pastoral care students at the Jewish Theological Seminary to help them grow in just this type of work. We brought together elements of workshops we had done separately before. Minna's great skill is with voice -- both using her own voice as a singer and helping others to find their own voices in her role as a voice teacher and spiritual guide. My focus has been on what I call personal Midrash or spiritual reflection -- a way of finding meaning from our own experiences with the help of our holy texts and other resources. The moment where I really felt our work coming together into one was when Minna used a holy resource -- an ancient Midrash on the Song at the Sea -- to ask people to reflect on their own moments of victory and of uncertainty in their life experience.

Minna asked us to stand and sing the opening lines of the song together -- the song the Israelites sang in joyous gratitude after God saved them from Pharaoh's soldiers by splitting the sea. As the sound of each other's voices washed over us, Minna asked us to imagine something with the help of an ancient Midrash, one that suggests the Israelites actually sang the song while still crossing the sea. "Imagine your own preemptive victory song," she asked. "Your own song anticipating a victory in your life."

As I switched in my own mind to imaging myself singing of victory while still in a moment of fear and uncertainty, I was stunned to realize I had moved -- while singing the very same words! -- from an expression of thanks to an expression of sincere prayer; to an expression of humbly asking God for the victory, for the redemption from moments of fear. Around me, I heard the words of the song coming from my own mouth and others:

Ozi v'zimrat Yah, va'y'hi li lishu'ah.
עָזִּי וְזִמְרָת יָהּ, וַיְהִי-לִי לִישׁוּעָה
Yah is my strength and my song and has become my rescue.

As one of the rabbinical student participants expressed, being amid people singing the same words created a community experience -- I was being pulled along by the others in my prayer amid my fear. They were helping me find my own way out of the dangerous sea.

Later, I wondered what an experience like this could mean to a person truly standing at the edge of the unknown amid illness, suffering and profound uncertainty: to feel pulled along by others, or even just one chaplain, an act of healing that would be assisted by Holy resources like the song, but that would also be rooted in the most physical of experiences, the experience of using our own physical voice. This is truly what I would call spiritual reflection, or even personal Midrash -- the use of our spiritual imaginations in dialogue with our Holy resources.

After our singing and reflection, Minna invited us to actually write our own preemptive victory songs, to create something that we could carry (and that could also carry us) as we face uncertainty or the unknown in our own lives or in the lives of those to whom we minister. In the songs we heard, one student beautifully combined parts of a holy resource we talked about during our presentation -- Psalm 30, which we say in the morning liturgy just before Pesukei d'Zimra/Verses of Song -- with her own pleas and questions, including questions about the role of women and women's voices in Judaism. Another student adapted the tune of the Beatles' "Long and winding road" giving it words that reflected her own current life concerns and questions, and concluding with the original song's plea for help to find the way.

I was also impressed with the way one student's song reflected a kind of deep tension that many of us feel with our holy resources -- they are both sources of profound meaning for us, but can also be difficult and troubling. She took a hymn whose melody she loves but whose words she finds troubling and adapted it with new words. And the part of me that sometimes feels I'm stumbling through life was moved by one student's story of riding a bicycle race with a bent wheel. In his song, I saw a resource for continuing on in the face of difficult circumstances and disappointment.

The workshop had opened with one of Minna's own songs -- a beautiful song called Edge of the unknown that she wrote while she was engaged in her own pastoral training (the video is from a performance she did in Reading a few months back):

I had also shared with the student's some thoughts I have about the theology of the book of Psalms, a book that (in Psalm 30) cries out with the words (verse 10):

'What profit is there in my silence, in my going down to the pit
מַה-בֶּצַע בְּדָמִי, בְּרִדְתִּי אֶל-שָׁחַת:
Can dust praise You? Can it tell of your truth?
הֲיוֹדְךָ עָפָר; הֲיַגִּיד אֲמִתֶּךָ.

It was a great experience!

Shabbat Shalom!

Fat commuter on a bicycle . . . another demographic

2011-07-07T08:46:00.003-04:00

Sometimes, I did feel discouraged watching all those young legs passing me as I climbed the Williamsburg Bridge this morning on my summer bike commute from an apartment I started subletting in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to the Upper West Side where I am running a pastoral care training program (CPE) this summer. But mostly I felt exhilaration. What a joy to be high above the East River in the sparking sunshine and the cool of the morning. To pass through the still quiet streets of trendy Soho and then the long ride up the Hudson with the George Washington Bridge in the distance.

It was the second time this week that I made the trip of about 11 miles. I think about two one-way trips a week are about all my work schedule and my large, middle-aged body will really allow. But I'm grateful to the Holy Blessed One that I am able to enjoy this activity. Just as I am grateful to the Holy Blessed One for my students this summer and this special opportunity to teach at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and to return to some of my old haunts in
Brooklyn -- I went walking towards the more trendy neighborhoods of Williamsburg last night.

It's both incredible to see the transformation and also to see how much is still the same since my college days when I had a summer job delivering photofinishing, including to Katz Drugs that is still there on Graham Avenue just a few blocks from my new sublet. So many multi-generational Latino families were out on the street with their children. On the one hand, the area where I'm living is quite ugly (a lot of industry) and has a lot of giant public housing projects. On the other hand, sometimes walking through those projects and seeing the families and the
beautiful playgrounds with sprinklers running for the kids to run through in the heat, it looks like a pretty wonderful place for a kid to be able to grow up. In fact, Minna's father was raised in a project just a couple of miles away; I'll have to ask him sometime more about what that experience was like for him.

The New York Times had an interesting article and then some reader letters this week about the struggle to get another demographic -- women -- to embrace bicycle riding. The City has been doing great things to try and make it easier for more people. Incredible!

Garabaldi is back!

2011-06-15T19:25:00.000-04:00

The above statue of the great Italian nationalist (along with about a third of Washington Square Park) has been 'trapped' behind construction fencing for nearly two years now, making the already crowded sidewalks around NYU nearly intolerable (especially when there was snow on the ground this past winter). So, I was really heartened when I went down to NYU today to see this key corridor is finally open, again. The park was at its very best today amid the great weather -- full of energy, music and young people.

Garabaldi, once again you are part of a blow for freedom! :)

Many rivers to cross -- chaplaincy and bicycling in the Big Apple

2011-06-15T18:57:00.004-04:00

Ok, so I only crossed one river (and, ok, that river is really a strait), But, my 35-mile bicycle ride, today included two thrilling passages high above the sparkling East River, as well as many great views of the Manhattan skyline and of the Hudson waterfront. The most exciting part for me, however, was that this was no pleasure ride -- it was a test run for regularly bicycle commuting later this summer from Bushwick, Brooklyn (where I will be subletting an apartment), all the way to the far Upper West Side and the Jewish Theological Seminary where I am running a chaplaincy education unit.

So, the ride you see in the map and link below was a working one: from JTS where I am staying right now to a student's clinical site in Queens this morning where I visited the amazing program the student is placed at this summer -- I rode complete with a tie and sport jacket in my pannier so I could 'clean up' when I got there!

Google map of route.

After my time with my student, I took off the sport jacket and tie and headed for the Williamsburg bridge and then NYU. I went through so many amazing neighborhoods, seeing the incredible ethnic diversity of Queens and Brooklyn's working class neighborhoods and their immigrant inhabitants. Seeing all these people striving to make lives here, I was reminded of the incredible power of the human spirit, a spirit that so often drives humans to acts of love and achievement even when they might have once faced great suffering at the hands of others. I was reminded, as I have been so many times during our chaplaincy program this summer, of Psalm 137, the Psalm that inspired the reggae song Rivers of Babylon. That a song authored by an ancient Hebrew poet could so move modern-day people from a very different culture in the Caribbean speaks to the universal nature of its theme -- the theme of the experience of exile. The pain of exile. And the refusal of the human spirit to just sit there in it.

My hope for my students this summer is they will find the strength to accompany their clients as they visit their places of painful exile. They will not flee from these spaces, I hope. But they will also be there with an outreached hand to help pull their clients up as their powerful human spirits seek new homes, new meanings and new freedoms.

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One part of the ride I really enjoyed today was going through Flushing Meadow Park, the site of New York's two world fairs and the place where some of my earliest happy childhood memories (of being in the Space Park!) happened. Here is my bike near Yitzhak Rabin Walk there:

One day's salad, the next day's compost

2011-06-12T11:40:00.001-04:00

A sign of summer and the end of spring: I pulled up the last of our lettuce and arugula (a spring crop), today, to make room for the tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers we hope to have a bounty of come late summer.

We had definitely enjoyed some nice salads from these leafy greens, but they had -- as is their like as the weather warms -- begun to go to seed and become more tough and bitter. So, instead of putting these last of the greens on our dinner plates, I am allowing them to 'compost-in-place' to form a sort of mulch along with the sheets of wet newspaper you can see 'between-the-hills' in the pic above. The hills themselves have been newly planted with cucumber seeds (I am afraid our local groundhog may find the seedlings-to-come to be tasty, but I am hoping he/she will leave at least some of them for us!).

One (non-chemical!) defense against the likes of our furry groundhog friend and the beetles that have already ravaged some of our tomato plants is the upside-down planting method, which we tried out successfully last year. We're experimenting now with some irrigation methods for the upside downers (note the 'upside down' two-liter A&W bottle in the foreground below). This page, taught us how to do this, although, as is our wont, we refused to actually follow the instructions! :)

From Planting Day (6/12/11)

Gardening -- like bicycling -- is an important means of self care for me amid the challenges (and joys!) of being in ministry. Last summer, it was a great gift to me to be able to spend early mornings quietly tending to our little backyard garden before getting ready to head to my busy workday of teaching a chaplaincy summer program. This summer -- while I have the new joy of being able to spend time in New York City, the place of my birth -- I will less often be able to walk out to my garden first thing in the morning. I was glad to be able to be able to be in it for a few hours, today!

For a moving reflection on how your backyard might be a source of spiritual nourishment, see the words of our friend and teacher Natan Margalit on his Organic Torah blog.

Have a great week!

Making Israel the curriculum -- receiving (and transmitting!) Torah in a spiritual age

2011-06-05T20:36:00.005-04:00

Today, another class at Boston's Hebrew College was ordained as rabbis to take up the mantle of being teachers and exemplars of Torah among the people Israel. They have all come to this day with the help of wonderful teachers and a community of peers -- a nurturing environment that we all must be grateful for as its existence helps form the next generation of inspiring spiritual leaders in the Jewish world.

But this must be a time not only for joy and gratitude, but also for sober reflection. We who care about the future of the Jewish people and the existence of a compelling cadre of spiritual leaders must ask ourselves tough questions about the education of rabbis. What works? What of the huge body of the thousands' years old Jewish tradition needs to be fit into these few years of education, and what is not necessary? How can we best assure that the products of this expensive education will be 'good' rabbis? And, at a time when opinions about the politics of the State of Israel are more contested than ever among the Jews, we most especially must ask about what role we expect the Israel year to play in this five or six year education process.

Once, there was little controversial about the idea that future rabbis should spend a year of their education in Israel. We expected our rabbis to be, without exception, passionate supporters of the State of Israel and its policies. We expected our rabbis to love Israel and its state without exception. And, so, an Israel year was expected to be part of a necessary process of the future rabbi strongly bonding with the State of Israel.

But, as diversity in opinions has grown among American Jews about the State of Israel's policies, many rabbinical students have come to resist this conception. Some have even claimed that being forced to spend a year in Israel would violate their core ethical beliefs. Others have questioned whether contemporary Jewry -- a Jewry that looks to rabbis as a source of spiritual inspiration and comfort as opposed to sources of political opinions -- really needs its rabbis to be experts in the land of Israel. And some have just questioned whether the substantial financial sacrifice of spending a year overseas is justified when any course taught in Israel could be just as well taught here in the States.

Of course -- as Danny Gordis’ recent article in Commentary criticizing Hebrew College makes clear – not everybody is happy with this change and some, like Gordis, appear to wish we could just magically turn the clock back to a time when American Jews had no questions about Israel. I certainly don’t agree with Gordis on many things, but, as a passionate supporter of a State of Israel myself, it is also challenging for me to accept that there will be rabbinical voices critical of Israel. Unlike Gordis, however, I know a vibrant Judaism is only possible if our emerging spiritual leaders have a place to express these kinds of voices as they go about their spiritual journeys.

Unfortunately, most of the discussions about Israel quickly devolve into contentious, unpleasant binary debates where there is no room for exploration and genuine sharing – only for people to be labeled as either pro-Israel or anti-Israel. With this unproductive unpleasantness as seemingly the only conceivable option for discussions about Israel, sometimes people within rabbinical schools become afraid to have discussions about Israel and the reasons for the Israel year. Rabbinic students are given weak, vague explanations for the requirement like it is “very important” and that they should, in effect, just “trust us” that they should do it.

That’s just not good enough in a spiritually focused age. For those of us among rabbinic educators who, like myself, are passionate about the need for rabbinic students to do an Israel year, it is incumbent to come up with justifications, and curricula, that address spiritual needs and growth. Today’s rabbinic students know that contemporary Jews expect more than just deep knowledge from their rabbis -- today's Jews also expect true spiritual leadership and thus rabbinic education needs to be fundamentally a spiritual experience that helps its students grow in their ability to use, and be, spiritual resources for the people they serve. All of our rabbinic schools understand this new importance of bringing spirituality into their curriculums overall.

Thus, I think we need to also reconceive the rabbinic Israel year in spiritual terms. It should not be about acquiring knowledge or even forming an emotional connection. It should be about the student developing his or her ability to employ the land of Israel as a spiritual resource. Below, I will put forth some specifics about how I think Israel year education can be transformed to do this. I will propose a new focus on the experiential aspects of Israel education in a way that allows each student to craft his or her own learning using reflective practices, social media tools and structured spiritual mentorship. But first I want to share a personal experience that may give you a better idea about what I mean by "employing the land of Israel as a spiritual resource."

Shortly after arriving in Jerusalem for my year there as a rabbinic student I found myself walking up a beautiful hill in the early morning darkness amid a huge stream of fellow Jews. We soon passed through the (not-quite-ancient-but-still-very-old) gates of the Old City and traversed narrow pathways of well-worn Jerusalem stone – the same kind of stone that makes up the Western Wall, where we would soon arrive.

In my country of birth, the United States, the holiday of Shavuot – supposedly one of the most important on the Jewish calendar because it, like Passover, is one of three holidays where ancient Jews made a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem and because it marks God’s giving of the holy Torah at Mt. Sinai – had never yielded much meaning to me. But here, as the sun started to rise and the small group of non-Orthodox rabbinical students and other liberally-oriented religious Jews I was with started to pray, I felt this holiday’s incredible power – as God, Torah and Israel (both the land and the people) came together in a heady mix sparked by our collective pilgrimage up to the Temple Mount.

Nowhere other than in the land of Israel could I have had such a powerful spiritual experience associated with the Shavuot holiday. As a rabbi, I do not think I have anything spiritual to offer to others that is not rooted in my own spiritual experience with things I find meaningful. Thus, this unique spiritual experience of the holiday – an experience that was in no way connected to any classroom experience or even to an informal experiential curriculum –was an essential part of my rabbinic education. It is a spiritual resource that is mine to call on every Shavuot. It allows me to enter every Shavuot with genuine spiritual excitement – excitement I can share with others of the faithful to help them find paths to personal meaning.

That is, this experience helped me grow spiritually – in particular in my ability to use Israel as a spiritual resource with Jews back in the States. Amazingly, the act of teaching out of my own genuine spirituality makes that teaching experience a support for my own continuing spiritual health and growth – teaching others reminds me of what it was like to experience Shavuot with fresh eyes, and thus renews me.

Art Green, the founder and current rector of the Hebrew College rabbinical school, touched on this in his remarks at the ordination. “The moment of giving will be the moment of receiving,” he said of acts of teaching (as we approach in only a few days Shavuot, itself, the holiday that marks the giving of the Torah to the people Israel). He told his graduating students that it is through such teaching that we retain access to those powerful moments where we felt called to become rabbis in the first place and to teach Torah among the people Israel.

It is this kind of spiritually focused educational vision that an Israel year should be about for rabbinic students. It should be about their developing spiritual resources through learning derived from their own powerful personal moments – even the ‘terrible’ ones – that they can experience in that most amazing of tiny countries that sits on the fault line between West and East and that has inspired so much passion, both love and war, through the ages. (For an example of how the ‘terrible’ can also lead to rich learning, see Minna’s beautiful Yom HaAtzma'ut reflection from 2009, where she talks about how, on the one hand, the experience of Israel could be sweet and inspiring for her, but how it could also steal her voice away and make her feel foreign and strange.)

But how can we make these kind of experiential and spiritual educational experiences more likely to occur for rabbinic students in Israel and how can we leverage these experiences into spiritual growth in these students’ ability to meet spiritual needs of others back in the States?

One way, of course is to have group trips and retreats be a part of an Israel year, and most programs do employ these techniques. But this alone is lacking for two key reasons. One, is that spiritual growth and learning is a fundamentally individualized process -- you can't expect a group oriented activity to "meet the student where they are" on their spiritual learning journey. But, more importantly, group activities alone don't consolidate people's learning. To consolidate learning, there needs to be some form of disciplined reflection on the 'action' that happens in the experience. There are many well-established tools for helping consolidate this learning, including journaling, group-based reflection in a case conference format, spiritual direction and structured mentorship. The application of these tools is strengthened by encouraging a maximum student 'buy-in' -- the student should be encouraged to take charge of his or her own learning by, in consultation with a mentor, drawing up his or her own individualized curriculum, or learning contract, that expresses the student's hopes for how he or she will make "Israel the curriculum" for him or her.

I think I can help make this happen. My training as a pastoral care educator (I am a certified Clinical Pastoral Education supervisor) has shown me how structured and disciplined reflection on powerful experiences – like talking with the dying in hospitals – can be leveraged into dramatic spiritual growth. And my experience with social media and video ethnography has shown me how new technologies can be employed to enrich this reflective learning process.

With Skype, for example, students in Israel could meet with a mentor or spiritual director back in the States to develop learning goals and educational opportunities, as well as reflecting on those experiences. Students could keep video journals of their experiences. The mentor and the student could develop ongoing discussions about those video journals. Alternatively, the student could use blogging or Twitter as a journaling tool.

Minna and I found blogging – including posting many photos – to be a powerful way to find learning in our experiences when she did her own rabbinic Israel year a couple of years back. Check out this blog post for Minna’s own take on why actually being in Israel can be a key part of a rabbinic student’s learning, as well as on how engaging in shared writing or other reflection helps consolidate the fruits of experiential learning. Also, check out this great blog being kept by a JTS rabbinical student for another example of how blogging can be learning – a way of making Israel the curriculum.

A truly deep experience of Israel – the kind of experience we feel in our bones – can be an invaluable part of a rabbinic education, an experience that can only happen in that especially sensitive time for spiritual growth that are the heart of the rabbinic education years. But those experiences cannot happen if we stifle our students with a demand that they can only be either pro- or anti-Israel. Students who are in Israel need the same kind of deep support for their spiritual growth that they have become accustomed to in the States. They need a curriculum that recognizes that the Israel year is a particularly rich time for experiential learning. They need a curriculum that recognizes that each student will have their own individualized path to discovering how their Israel experiences can act as spiritual resources for them and allow them to become more able to give Torah to the people they minister to as rabbis back here in the States – and, in doing this giving, be more able to receive Torah themselves.

Hag Sameach! – may you have a Shavuot rich in Torah, both giving and receiving.

Return to Manhattan -- on two wheels!

2011-06-01T18:06:00.003-04:00

The most exciting thing I'm doing this summer is leading a chaplaincy education group at JTS, my old alma mater (and a place that had so much to do with my early days of spiritual formation and growth in my early 30s as I was just starting to consider becoming a rabbi). But that is not the only _return_ I am going through -- it's also a return to living again (albeit only for about three days a week) in Manhattan, where I once lived for over a decade. So much is wonderfully familiar, but there are also great changes. One of those changes is the amazing (I could barely have imagined it would happen!) transformation of New York into a bicycle-friendly city.

I got a taste of the new _friendliness_ today when I chose to ride the 6.5 miles or so from JTS to FEGS Manhattan PROS, an amazing daytime program for people with mental health issues, where two of my students are interning this summer. Almost the entire ride was down the waterfront of the mighty -- and beautiful! -- Hudson River. This was a waterfront that was long almost completely inaccessible to pedestrians and bicycles; now there is a beautiful and generous bike path down its full length in Manhattan. It was so great to partake of it! Cycling is such an important part of how I care for myself amid the strains (and rewards!) of being in chaplaincy and chaplaincy education. Even on a very hot day like this one, the feel of the air quickly brushing past me as I ride through it always makes me feel a sense of freedom (as well as a little bit cooler). I even went on a short ride on my lunch break yesterday; upper Manhattan is such a great place for it -- and I was able to stop at the amazing Fairway supermarket to buy some stuff for lunch, etc.

I am grateful for Minna for helping me see how this summer of working in NYC could be about more than work -- that I could also approach it as a personal "adventure in New York City," one of the two cities (along with Jerusalem) that I love most in the world (as well as the place of my birth!). . . . The personal adventure of this summer is part of a larger personal adventure I've been on in NYC. As I type these words, I am in the basement of the Tisch School of the Arts, NYU's main place for training filmmakers and game-makers and alike. It -- like so much of New York -- is a place where the surrounding buzz of creative energy is powerful and palpable. Being here makes me feel like my creative energies, too, continue to burn strong and have something new and powerful to offer the world -- I feel young, again! And so I am glad to be a doctoral student in NYU's Education and Jewish Studies program as I have for the last two years.

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What I'm sure, however, will never be bicycle friendly about NYC is the issue of bike theft. I've tried to defend myself as best I can, first and foremost by using a _junker_ bicycle that I hope will not be so attractive to thieves and vandals. It's an old Schwinn mountain style bike I bought used for $35 about a year ago just for this purpose. I've got three locks on it (one a small cable lock just to keep someone from taking the seat). I put an old rack on it with an old "Around Town" REI basket-style pannier that -- teamed up with a reusable Fairway shopping bag -- gives me pretty significant carrying capacity

In only a few days I will be at the Hebrew College ordination to see some new rabbis take up the mantle of being teachers of Torah in Israel (Minna is going to sing!). And a few days after that we will celebrate Shavuot, the holiday that marks the giving of Torah to Israel at Mt. Sinai. I am reminded -- as I begin these two personal adventures in NYC of leading this summer chaplaincy program and of taking a bicycle to these transformed streets -- that Torah comes in many places, many forms and from many sources, all of which enrich us and lead us towards service of the Holy. My students at this mental health center will be walking the halls of a place that may not seem spiritual at all to many eyes at first. But I know that the Ultimate Questions about spiritual matters like the role of suffering in the world are particularly powerful and present for people coping with mental illness. I am confident my students will bring much Torah to the people they minister to, and, perhaps even more so, that they themselves will learn much Torah from the people so experienced with suffering who they will be caring for. May it be the will of the Holy Blessed One that they will all be enriched by this sharing of Torah!

Getting in touch with our (dirty!) hands

2011-05-18T14:12:00.003-04:00

From Early Spring Planting Day 2011

One of my favorite parts of counting the Omer with Minna every night during this season from Passover to Shavuot is when she recites the final words of the meditation before the blessing:

וּמַעֲשֵׂה יָדֵינוּ, כּוֹנְנָה עָלֵינוּ; וּמַעֲשֵׂה יָדֵינוּ, כּוֹנְנֵהוּ
The works of our hands -- establish them for us! The works of our hands, establish them!

These words -- a quote of the Psalmist (Ps. 90) imploring God to do this establishing -- came to mind, today, as I was working with my hands (and getting dirt under my fingernails) in the little garden in our backyard. It felt especially satisfying to transplant the four little plants in the picture above -- we not only grew each one from seed, but we had saved the seeds from plants we had grown last year. (We had even taken some of the seeds -- soaking in water as they must for a few days before you dry them -- on a short bicycle tour we took to Lancaster County at the end of last summer.)

I stand in my own sort of middle space right now during this middle time in the 50-day count of the Omer -- a short break between a very busy (but productive!) semester of graduate study at NYU and an exciting return soon to the role of a chaplaincy educator/supervisor in a busy summer in a CPE program at The Jewish Theological Seminary (which starts on Monday). In this middle time, it is important for me to care for my spirit as much as I can. Cycling and gardening are two of the most important ways I engage in that self care, so I felt really centered and happy, today, as I worked my hands in the dirt.

May it be the will of the Blessed Holy One that all the work of your hands shall be upheld -- firmly established! And may your own summer be a productive and joyful one.

**************

Another sign of Spring has been these baby birds hatching in a nest their parents built in our porch light. Minna took this picture only a little more than a week ago, but already all of these little guys have (literally) flown the next.

Fly on, little guys!

No L'Chaim -- Osama . . . . and Obama's legacy

2011-05-02T17:41:00.003-04:00

Today, I heard someone say that, while he would not celebrate Osama Bin-Laden's death in the kind of 'party' atmosphere we've seen from crowds on Times Square etc., he might say a L'Chaim when he got home.

I'm not sure if, while he was speaking, he saw the irony in using the words "To Life!" in making a toast to someone's death.

As some of my classmates in a seminar on Jewish Education at NYU wisely pointed out, today, the Jewish religious tradition has plenty of room in it both for celebrating the death of an enemy and for feeling sadness on hearing of such a death. Perhaps our most famous celebration of death are the sounds we hear every Purim of our children making joyful noises with their grogers every time we recite the name of the hated Hayman -- who wanted to kill all of us -- as we chant the book of Esther. On the other side is the midrash that teaches us that God scolded the angels when they wanted to sing in celebration at the death of the Egyptians drowned during our salvation by God's hand at the Red Sea -- the work of My hands is drowning in the sea and you sing a song?!?!?

As this day has gone on, it has become more and more clear to me on which side of our tradition I stand on this -- I will not be making any L'Chaims. I will not be dancing.

I worked for 10 years of my life in the World Trade Center (Tower 2, 27th floor). Although I was not there on that fateful day and lost no one I knew well, I cannot begin to tell you how many tears I have cried over that disaster, that terrible wound to the city I love so much.

So, no, I will not mourn Bin Laden. I am glad he no longer has the power to kill or maim. But I will not celebrate his death, either -- the loss of something made by God's Holy hands.

I am ever mindful of the dream of the prophets -- that vision that the lion should lay down with the lamb, that the swords should be beaten into plowshares and that we should study war no more.

Please, God, bring it soon, speedily and in our days.

*****************

Rabbi Irwin Kula had a slightly different take on Bin Laden's death and our reaction to it. In a post on Facebook, he emphasized the importance of allowing all our voices to be heard:

We human beings are very complicated as we navigate a world we cant help but neatly parse good and evil. We have two choices in response to moments like this both of which have roots and affirmation in our ancient texts...whether understood as god's word or our inner lives manifest:
Proverbs 11:10 "When the wicked perish there is song."
Proverbs 24:17 "Do not rejoice when your enemy falls and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles."
What happens to a culture in which only one of these responses is expressed and validated? What happens to us as individuals when we can only feel the truth of one of these responses?
Seems to me we are never as powerless as our nightmares and never as powerful as our fantasies...

*****************

The Hebrew for the Midrash I cited above is

ואמר רבי יוחנן מאי דכתיב (שמות יד, כ) ולא קרב זה אל זה כל הלילה בקשו מלאכי השרת לומר שירה אמר הקב"ה מעשה ידי טובעין בים ואתם אומרים שירה

It can be found in the Talmud on Megillah 10b (English translation).

**********************

A post I made on Facebook earlier, today:

“If this means there is one less death in the future, then I’m glad for that,” 9/11 survivor Harry Waizer was quoted in the NYT. “But I just can’t find it in me to be glad one more person is dead, even if it is Osama Bin Laden.”

A sign of Spring

2011-04-24T14:08:00.001-04:00

This guy has moved in with us for a bit (nesting in our porch light!) it seems.

As we move into the final days of our great spring holiday -- Pesach! -- I wish our visitor (and everyone!) a productive Spring, full of health and much joy.

Signs of Pesach -- 'herbs' grow!

2011-04-11T11:53:00.002-04:00

With only about s week to go before Passover, it's probably over-optimistic to hope that these little guys (lettuces and such) will yield something for our seder plate. Still, I'm so excited to see them sprouting in our little back yard that I can't help but be hopefull!

More realistic is the hope that the below (a horseradish we planted last year) will yield something to dip in (bitter herbs!) for the seder plate. The roots may only be small (you are really supposed to wait two years before harvesting horseradish), but I think it will still feel very special to have something from our own garden to celebrate Judaism's great spring holiday -- the Feast of Freedom!

May your Pesach be a meaningful and healthful one, one full of joy and liberation -- as if you yourself were brought out of mitzrayim!

Almost there

2011-03-16T16:32:00.003-04:00

In just a few days, the buds on this little White Star Magnolia tree will be blooming with beautiful flowers -- spring is clearly almost here!

From Early early spring 2011 (Wyomissing creek)

And some of this tree's neighbors (in Wyomissing Creek park here in Reading) are already blooming! Minna and I saw the first crocuses and daffodils (and others) on a little walk this afternoon. Here are some of them:

From Early early spring 2011 (Wyomissing creek)

A nice treat to be able to enjoy the first fruits of Spring as Purim approaches!

First sign

2011-03-11T16:38:00.001-05:00

Minna claims this little guy in our front yard will grow up to be a big tulip one day. . . Not too many signs of spring, yet, although it's been raining (a lot!) instead of snowing. The willow trees are starting to bud out. We went for our first walk in the local Nolde Forest in a long time (as a pre-Shabbat excercise and time for talk . . . muddy, but fun) . . . Before you know it, Pesach will be here!

I'm looking forward to more Spring, but I'll miss parts of the winter. It's mostly been a good one for me.

Shabbat Shalom!

An unknown approach to the mystery of spirituality

2011-03-11T11:34:00.004-05:00

I thought I'd heard it all, but Wednesday night I heard what sounded to me like a very original definition of that very-hard-to-define-thing-we-call spirituality. Usually, people put things like "connectedness" or "relationship to the transcendent" at the center of their spirituality definitions. But, under this new definition the thing that makes spirituality, spirituality is the mystery of the unknown. Here's how its author, Lehman College social work professor Evan Senreich puts it:

Spirituality refers to a human being's subjective relationship (cognitive, emotional, and intuitive) to what is unknowable about existence, and how a person integrates that relationship into a perspective about the universe, the world, others, self, moral values, and one's sense of meaning.

Contrast this with a very common definition one finds in the counseling literature:

Spirituality is defined as a relationship with God, or whatever is held to be the Ultimate (for example, a set of sacred texts for Buddhists) that fosters a sense of meaning, purpose, and mission in life. (David Hodge, 2001; emphasis, mine)

Now, I happen to like Hodge's definition (this is not the only one Hodge has offered over the years, but they're all similar). For one, I like Hodge's idea that a person's spirituality can best be thought of as a relationship with something. Second I like the use of the word Ultimate. In my view, this broadens the definition to include people who do not believe in God (or gods). I believe that _every person_ has some kind of view of the Ultimate (or of Ultimate Values), and that, therefore, that every person (atheist or not) has a spirituality (that, from the view of a counselor, could be assessed). Each person's spirituality (or spiritual system) gives him or her a view of what is good in the world -- what is right, what is wrong, what is the thing most important to strive for.

But, I've learned that some think a definition like Hodge's does _not_ cover every person. I guess this comes down to a difference in how we each understand the word Ultimate. I don't think it implies any belief in anything supernatural, but others think it does. If the others are right, definitions like Hodges do _not_ cover everybody.

Senreich -- who was speaking at a meeting of an NYU social work student group called the Integrating Spirituality and Practice group -- is one of those how think a definition like Hodge's is not broad enough to cover everybody. He also doesn't like definitions that seem to privilege certain kinds of spiritualities -- especially Western and Christian ones -- over others. But he is also critical of spirituality definitions that are too broad, ones that don't bring something new to the social worker's usual bio-social models for client assessment.

I like the way his definition seems to well meet this last criterion. The bio-social framework does not emphasize the core aspect of spirituality that Senreich's definition does -- the element of spirituality that is about a person asking "Big Questions" about things that can never truly be known for sure from any scientific source. Things like: Why is there evil and suffering in the world? Why do I have to die and do I go anywhere after that? What is the 'good'? And, of course, why do bad things happen to good people?

But I'm not sure that this element of the unknowable -- of mystery or even the ineffable -- is all of what spirituality is about. I, at least, don't think my (Jewish) spirituality is all about questions like this. It's also about actions, about feeling commanded and such. It's also about a deep connection to a community of people who have existed for thousands of years. Is this all about the 'unknowable'?

I'm not sure what the answer is -- and whether Senreich's definition really works for me -- but I was so glad to run across his ideas. It seems like a very fresh approach.

The tiger and the apple -- educating America

2011-01-19T17:08:00.003-05:00

Rarely do I find myself in agreement with columnist David Brooks (and rarely do I comment on books I haven't read), but there's a lot of wisdom in his column reacting to Amy Chua's Battle hymn of the tiger mother, the controversial new memoir about one Asian intellectual's tough love approach to child-rearing. Brooks says that activities that, on first glance, might look like wasteful play -- like the sleepovers Chua denied her children -- are, in fact, vital places for learning:

Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls. Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group — these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale

The wisdom here is particularly pertinent at a time when we are -- at least in the public schools -- putting more and more emphasis on the most formal elements of schooling: on the so-called basics where achievement can be easily measured by standardized tests. It is notable, however, that this craze to strip schools of play and extra-curricular activities has not extended to the most prestigious of private and religious schools where an enriched curriculum of sports, arts and other non-basics is sometimes even more intense for kids than their formal learning.

It is also notable to observe -- as Steve Jobs sadly drops the reigns at Apple for health reasons -- that some of our very most successful people are ones who got a minimum of formal schooling by the standards of the Chua's of the world. Jobs only finished one semester at off-beat Reed College in Oregon. He credits a very-much-non-basics class he later audited there -- in calligraphy of all things -- for giving him the background for some of his most important contributions to Apple's success. In a commencement address at Stanford University, Jobs later stated, "If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."

The one place where I most definitely disagree with Brooks, however, is when he states that the skill set for participating well in groups is one that cannot be "taught formally, but it is imparted through arduous experiences." Obviously, as one who is completing a course in Group Dynamics and who uses group experiences in Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) to help people develop awareness of group dynamics, I believe that group skills can be taught -- or at least fostered -- in a formal setting. But I do agree that the benefits only come from "arduous experiences" participating in groups. I simply believe also that those experiences can be guided in beneficial ways.

May you find time for play and other informal learning experiences as well!

Goodbye group, we hardly knew ya

2011-01-19T16:43:00.004-05:00

We do have one more class tomorrow, but today was the last meeting of my T-Group that has been part of the intensive three-week Group Dynamics class I have been taking at NYU. Over the nine meetings we had, I felt I was starting to get to know my group members, and I was a bit sad to see it come to an end. It was a very different experience than most the groups (we usually call them IPR, or interpersonal relations, seminars) I have been a part of in CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education).

The most salient difference was that there was a very specific primary goal for the group of using it to learnabout group dynamics (while that's certainly one goal for IPR in CPE, I, at least, have never witnessed a supervisor making it explicitly the main focus for IPR).

Another big difference is that the class was split into two groups. One would meet for an hour while the rest of the class observed, and then vice versa for another hour. I've never heard about anybody doing anything like that in a CPE program, but I can say it's an approach that has some merits. I certainly learned much from the experience of observing the other group, and then writing process reports about what I had observed and about how the theory we have been studying contributed to my observations.

I have a lot of reflecting to do about what I've really learned over these three weeks, but I'm sure that my practice as a facilitator of IPR groups will benefit from it. I'm grateful to my fellow students for sharing with me and for the professor's leadership.

A weekend of song at the sea -- Minna brings voice to Reading

2011-01-16T17:21:00.005-05:00

Minna concluded an inspiring Shabbat Shira weekend with a "sing-in" at the Jewish Community Center here in Reading. It was such a joy to see this part of her young rabbinate -- the part that is about linking Torah and voice to build community and to seek personal and collective liberation -- come into expression in such a wonderful way. She played many of her own songs as well as ones to honor the recently deceased Debbie Friedman. The weekend featured a new group of Community Singers she helped organize. It was a great way to honor the Shabbat where we stand at the reading of the Song of the Sea -- the song that the people Israel sung (Exodus 15) when God saved them at the sea.

Here is a video of one of Minna's most recent original songs (not on any album!):

Washington Square at dusk, Winter 2011

2011-01-12T18:36:00.001-05:00

Scenes like this make me wish I had been a New York City kid. Looks like fun!

A deeper level of pain -- nausea, hate, history and Arizona

2011-01-09T17:49:00.005-05:00

Even though I had never heard of her before, I felt almost physically ill when, after Shabbat was over yesterday, I read about the Arizona shooting of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords by a lone gunman. Short of genocide, there is no more horrible crime than political assassination. It is an attack on all of us, on the very idea that we can rule ourselves through a peaceful democracy. JFK, RFK, MLK, Sadat, Gandhi, Rabin -- it brings tears to my eyes just to write these names down together, and they are just a sample of the many who have died at the hands of assassins in my lifetime.

Sometimes -- when I read about the recent assassination of the Pakistan's governor of Punjab -- I manage to comfort myself by thinking that such things don't happen "here." But, as the Arizona shooting -- where at least six lives were lost, including that of a Federal judge and of a nine-year-old girl -- is a reminder, I'm just fooling myself when I think things like that.

But, as great as my initial disgust was, it went to a whole other level when I heard Giffords was Jewish. The entire long history of Jews being murdered for ideological or political reasons -- a history where the Holocaust is only the most horrible of so many occurrences -- suddenly came rising up in my heart and mind. I am sure I am only one of countless Jews who were suddenly asking themselves these kinds of questions: Did he choose her to try and kill because she is Jewish? Is it possible that this horror that has happened so many times before is happening, again? Can such things happen in the country that has been the safest for the Jews in all history? Am I safe? Are people going to try and kill me because I am Jewish?

We live in an age when so many people want to deny that that there is such a thing as a hate crime or hate speech. For those of you who feel that way, I offer you my reaction when I heard Giffords is Jewish -- the fear this crime brings up in me because I am Jewish and because it happened to a fellow Jew.

What make a hate crime a hate crime is that it does not stand in isolation -- it is the connection of that crime to a systematic pattern of hate, discrimination and violence against a particular group that makes it a hate crime. When someone draws a noose on the dormitory door of an African-American student leader, it is that history of violence -- and the fear that history engenders -- that makes it more than a crude, sophomoric prank. That's why it's different when white and black people use the "N" word. In the mouth of a white person directed at a black person the "N" word automatically creates associations with all the crimes white Americans have committed against its African-Americans -- lynchings, slavery and acts of discrimination. This is true even if the white speaker did not intend any of these associations. But, in the mouth of a black person -- a person who is not part of the crime-committing group -- the "N" word has no such power to associate with mass oppression.

Certainly, I do not know if the shooter in Arizona was acting out of antisemitism, so I cannot say if it was a hate crime directed against the Jews. But I know it is possible.

This coming Shabbat is Shabbat Shira, when we read of God saving the people Israel by splitting the sea, thus guaranteeing the success of their effort to escape the oppression and slavery they knew in Egypt.

May it be the will of the Blessed Holy One that we will all be freed from the oppression and violence that comes from the hate amongst us. And may all of the wounded and bereaved from yesterday's shooting find healing and comfort.

A pioneer in Jewish healing has died

2011-01-09T17:13:00.002-05:00

I only saw Debbie Friedman perform twice. The first was at a healing service, long before I became a rabbi, with Michael Strassfeld at the Ansche Chesed synagogue on the West Side of Manhattan. And while I did not become the kind of big fan of Friedman's effort to blend folk music with Jewish spirituality that so many of my friends did, the example of that healing service was a key inspiration to me. It helped show me, as Friedman did for so many people, the potential for Jewish spirituality to create deep meaning even for those who felt alienated from the more traditional expressions of Judaism they had grown up with -- especially for people who are suffering.

May her memory be a blessing for all of us.

They just don't get it -- the theology of True Grit, recoil and the mark of Cain

2011-01-05T10:22:00.003-05:00

Hollywood just seems stunned by the Coen brothers' True Grit. The movie reviewers all seem to know they like it, but they seem struck dumb as to why they like it. And, as this story from today's New York Times expresses, they can't quite get why the public seems to like the movie more than the reviewers do. In their reviews, the movie pundits seem somehow tentative, as if they are wondering if the Coen's are putting some joke over on them and they're afraid they're the only ones who don't get it.

Well, they don't get something, but it's not some joke that the Coens are putting on. What they're not getting is the religious and spiritual nature of this movie. They think, the Coen's are so dark -- so how could they be doing something to do with faith?!

But a deep faith does not have to mean seeing the world through some kind of rose-colored glasses. Real faith -- as those of us who have worked the halls of hospitals as chaplains know so well -- can mean a willingness to be able to admit to just how terrible and unjust a suffering person's situation might be. True faith might mean maintaining a belief in God's incredible goodness and healing power even in the face of profound injustice in the world. And true faith might also mean -- as it does for Mattie, the main character of True Grit -- choosing to take action in the face of injustice. For Mattie, the injustice of her father's senseless murder is a call to try and restore what justice can be restored. In a sense, she is following in her father's footsteps -- the father, who, in her words, was acting as his "brother's keeper" when he tried, with no gun of his own, to talk his drunken, rifle-toting tenant out of foolishly confronting others with violence -- when she chooses to be her father's keeper, by pursuing justice from the tenant who murdered him.

The Coens -- like the original novel that they follow more closely than the original film that featured John Wayne -- adore the 14-year old Mattie as this kind of courageous, faith-motivated Angel of Justice. She, not the Rooster Cogburn character that so dominated the original movie, is the center of this film. It is not the first time the Coens have so adored a gun-toting, justice-seeking woman in one of their films -- the sheriff Margie in Fargo acts as a kind of glowing, compassionate corrective to the bleak landscape of cold snow and killers around her.

But there is a profound difference between Mattie and Margie. Mattie is not just pursuing justice, but also revenge from someone who personally wronged her -- pursuing it with violence. Cogburn warns her of the implications of using violence when she shows him the giant pistol she inherited from her father -- he warns her about the "recoil".

And it is recoil (spoiler alert!) that nearly kills her at the end of the movie. As she triumphantly kills her father's murderer with a rifle shot, she is surprised by the rifle's recoil and falls into a pit full of snakes, one of which bites her, nearly fatally and at the cost of her arm.

In a story so full of biblical imagery and passages, we should not ignore the significance of the snake, the very animal that stole our innocence in the garden of eden story. Mattie literally makes a "fall" here. This fall -- this loss of innocence -- comes from her choice to use deadly force. The very same deadly force used by her father's murderer -- the murderer who walked the earth with a dark mark on his forehead, a literal "mark of Cain" branding him, the man who would kill his "brother" rather than keep him.

True Grit is really about us -- us Americans. It honors our love of faith, a love that seems unique in the contemporary Western World, and how it can bring out the very best in us. But it is also a warning, a warning that our sense of righteousness can also lead us into temptation -- the temptation to kill rather than love. After all, it is up to us to decide whether this world will be one of love, or one of violence.

____________

By the way, one of the best things I have read about True Grit is this column by Stanley Fish. He, also, seems a bit confused by True Grit and its religious nature. But, in the final paragraphs, he shows he does recognize it for what it is

I wrote briefly about True Grit before. There's a link in that blog post to an NPR story about the novel that also has an excerpt from its opening pages -- worth reading! (As is the novel.)

The mystery of groups (in chaplaincy training)

2011-01-04T18:30:00.006-05:00

A funny thing about Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE): almost every CPE program has a "group" component -- usually called IPR, for Interpersonal Relations Seminar -- yet nowhere in the (ACPE) standards is a specific rationale given for this. Nor is an IPR even required as part of a unit of CPE under the written standards. It's almost as though the importance of an IPR is just supposed to be "understood."

Yet, I think it's anything but obvious why chaplains, or other pastoral caregivers like clergy, need an IPR as a required part of their training. After all, IPRs are not based on anything rooted in religious or spiritual traditions. Rather, the theories underpinning most applications of IPR come from the secular field of group therapy. The names providing the theoretical underpinnings for most IRPs come from among the giants of group therapy -- Agazarian, Bion and Yalom. Why do these names stand beside those of Moses and Abraham in clergy training? Surely, a less mysterious reason than -- well, every CPE program has an IPR -- has be be given.

I hope to gain greater clarity about these issues in the coming weeks while I take an intensive three-week class at NYU in Group Dynamics. While the professor does not have to answer the question of why there are IPRs in CPE -- this class is a required class for students in counseling who may very well be called upon to lead group psychotherapy sessions themselves -- I will have this question on my mind throughout the course.

This, of course, is not the first time I have sought to address the question of why IPRs are in CPE -- every

time I run a CPE unit myself I have to explain it to my students (the slide presentation to the left is something I use for that; more thoughts on groups here). But I am grateful to have a chance for a fresh look at this question.

Up until this time I have had an "it's all about the group" approach to CPE. That is, I haven't really thought of IPR as being a very distinct part of the CPE curriculum. The entire curriculum is a group experience in my view and all the theories we have about how groups behave and develop apply to the entire program, not just to the hour or two a week of an IPR (which, I prefer to call "Open Agenda" as my first CPE supervisor did).

Today, in the first session of my NYU class, as I watched the professor work, it occurred to me that it is possible to think of IPR in a very different and more focused way than I had before -- as a distinct part of the program where the goal is to teach students enough about group process and theory that they might develop the skills to be able to run group therapy-like groups themselves.

Such a more focused approach -- one that is specific about using the IPR group as a tool for learning the dynamics of groups (as my NYU professor asks us to engage in group-therapy-like experiences together to become our own "laboratory" for the purpose of learning group dynamics) -- might make sense especially in a first unit of CPE: the standards for Level I CPE include as an outcome that students will after the unit be able to "recognize relational dynamics within group contexts." (Standard 311.5)

My own spiritual development has not involved much of group-therapy-like groups (with the exception of a few tricks I've learned from Parker Palmer). But I know that, for example, some -- like Philadelphia rabbi Ira Stone and other organizations -- have adapted the 19th century Mussar tradition, to set up modern groups -- each called a vaad/וועד -- to, in the words of Stone's web site become a "community of learners dedicated to transforming themselves, their relationships, and

their institutions by fully integrating the values of Mussar into daily practice and daily life." Each vaad typically meets on a regular basis in a way similar to group therapy groups meet regularly -- although the focus of a vaad has a clear spiritual overlay.

Both of the books assigned for my current class are ones I already own -- a huge classic text by Yalom (the "bible of group therapy" according to my professor) and a more approachable how-to-style book called Groups: proc

ess and practice. Our professor has asked us to read the first couple of chapters of this book for tomorrow's class. Here are some of

the discussion questions she gave us for our reading:

Chapter 1

1. Why do we use groups for counseling purposes? Can you distinguish between counseling in groups and doing group counseling?

2. What is the difference between group process and techniques?

3. Why is a theory about groups necessary for working with groups?

4. What are the four different kinds of groups discussed in this chapter. Please be prepared to give examples of these kinds of groups – from your own experience or from other's experience.

5. Regarding multiculturalism in group work – what is the definition of culture? How is culture likely to be relevant in groups?

Chapter 2

1. What are you thoughts about the list of personal characteristics of the effective group leader listed on pages 30-38?

2. Which of the group leadership skills presented on pages 38-46 seem most important to you and why?

Chapter 4

1. Please be prepared to describe the process of forming a group described in this chapter. What do you think about it? Any issues left out? What are likely to be the hardest struggles in forming a group? Any ideas about how to respond to these struggles?

I look forward to learning more about group theory in the coming weeks, and to having more opportunity to reflect on my own group practice. I doubt I will abandon my "it's all about the group" approach. But I may come to a different understanding about how to run the IPR/Open Agenda portion of my programs. And I hope to be able to become more clear in explaining to my students why we have an Open Agenda portion of a CPE program. It's just not good enough to just leave it a "mystery."

A new view of New York -- courtesy of NYU Bike Share!

2010-11-23T16:11:00.006-05:00

"New York is a great biking city," said Mike Sandmel last night while instructing me and and about a dozen undergraduates about NYU's fledgling pilot program to make a beachhead for bicycle sharing in NewYork City. From their blank-faced stares, I couldn't tell if the undergraduates believed Sandmel -- a junior at NYU's Gallatin school-- but I sure did. Since I last lived in New York a bit more than a decade ago, the City government has revolutionized bicycling in New York by installing bike lanes and, more importantly, by raising the consciousness of New York's famously aggressive drivers that they haveto share the rode with human-powered machines.

So, I was anxious to take out one of NYU's bikes for a free spin on these newly bicycle-friendly streets to see what it was like, which I did this afternoon. NYU's program isn't as high tech as Paris' famous bicycle sharing program and some programs at American universities, so there was no electronic card swiping system or anything like that. But like those higher-tech programs, NYU's bikes don't have to be returned at the same place you pick them up -- you can return them at any other NYU bike sharing location, all eight of which are located in the lobby of one of NYU's dorms.

So, that's where I started this afternoon. They gave me a helmet, a key to the bicycle's lock and told me where the bike -- one of NYU's current fleet of 30 Biria one-speed cruser bikes-- was parked. The bike took a little getting used to -- I'm more used to having 27 or so speeds, and, more importantly, the bike has coaster brakes, which means you stop by pushing backwards on the pedals. I kept trying to stop by squeezing the handle bars -- but this was a futile effort! But it was so exciting to be out on Manhattan streets in the beautiful fall weather. With no destination in mind, I headed east on 4th street, eventually ending up at the East River. There, I turned south along the water all the way to the lower tip of Manhattan -- where I got great views of both tourists and Miss LIberty herself -- and then turned back north along the West Side.

I was impressed by the quality of the bike signage on the way. On the southbound leg, there were signs for the turnoffs for both the Manhattan and the Brooklyn bridges. As I headed up Greenwich Street, there was a (bicycles') sign for the East Side, which directed me to head east on Clarkson and Carmine, which took me almost all the way back to NYU.

The NYU program is part of NYU's sustainability program. It's open to all NYU students, faculty and staff, and started this past summer on the initiative of students like Sandmel. He says he hopes to get a senior grant this year that would allow the fleet to expand to 60.

There's been some growing pains. While a bike has yet to be stolen (something that is inevitable in the nation's bike-stealing capital, says Sandmel), bike lights and bells have fallen victim to theft and weather. The single speed and the coaster brakes make for a very tough, low maintenance bike, however. The organizers had tried to set up a reservations system, but that didn't work -- people just didn't show up, said Sandmel.

It was such a thrill to be out in New York on two wheels, today. It really gave me a sense of freedom to be able to see Miss Liberty and all the other waterfront sights without having to make a large effort. I hope that someday New York will have a city-wide bike sharing program on the kind of scale Paris has, but I'm so glad to be a part of this little start NYU has made by setting up New York's first bike sharing program. Thanks to Sandmel and others who made this possible!

Minna in concert! (On the edge of the unknown)

2010-10-03T23:54:00.002-04:00

Here is a taste of Minna's concert before some chaplains and chaplain supervisors tonight (10/3/2010) here in Reading, PA. It's a song called The edge of the unknown. She really wowed those attendees at the regional meetings of the ACPE (Association of Clinical Pastoral Education)!!

Falling in the fall -- making it zman simchateinu

2010-09-29T18:28:00.001-04:00

The best time for me this Sukkot was a moment when I was comfortably lounging on some cushions one Sukkot afternoon -- we were blessed with so much good, warm weather this holiday that it was truly luscious to be outside with nothing to do -- and remembered a time when I could have died.

It was a time maybe a year a go when I was riding my bicycle in small circles in the little alley behind where we were living then while Minna watched from our tiny porch. Suddenly and unexpectedly -- I can't even tell you how it could have happened -- I lost my balance. This kind of thing hardly ever happens, but it was not totally unfamiliar. I assessed my situation. I realized that I was going to fall, and there was nothing I could do to prevent it. Time slowed down, somehow. A kind of acceptance came over me. This, even though I could hear a car in the alley, and as I turned my head towards it, it became quite clear to me it was heading in my direction. Still, there was no panic. Again, I assessed my situation. I figured the one thing I could do was bend my neck to move my head a little bit away from the car's path, which would make it less likely I was about to be hit. I felt no fear. If anything, I felt joy. I felt happy with the way I was conducting my life. I liked the little alley, and savoring it by riding my bike around it.

In some senses, the whole of our lives are a fall. We know that, eventually, death awaits us all. Joy -- the kind of joy I think our Sages must have been thinking about when they dubbed the holiday of Sukkot as זמן שחתנו/zman simchateinu, the Time of Our Joy -- comes amid finding some kind of true acceptance of our (fragile!) human condition and embracing it.

Sitting in this intentionally temporary shelter -- this hut -- with its very temporary roof made of organic materials and full of holes (enough coverage to make more shade than sun, but such that you can still see the stars) reminds us of the fragility of all things, and that true shelter comes not from any material, but from something higher. The tradition commands us to dwell in this place that reminds us of our fragility. And it instructs us on some things to do there in this "time of joy" -- eat, have guests. Fellowship.

It is no accident that this holiday comes in the season that we also happen to call the fall. One of the holiday's roots is in the harvest time of the land of Israel -- the autumn harvest that is naturally both a time of joy and also of a consciousness of fragility. It is a time -- amid the harvest -- of plenty, when there is more than enough food for everyone to eat. But it is also a time when every person dependent on agriculture for life would be wondering, are the rains coming after this long dry season of no rain at all? Will there be enough to sustain our crops for the full year? Will there be enough?

This Sukkot there was sustenance aplenty for Minna and I. And, of course, I mean not only food. But there were guests, and some wonderful times with them under the corn stalks that made up our roof. Sometimes we were driven out of the Sukkah by rain, but even that was joyful as we laughingly moved the food, table and chair together into more permanent shelter. I am grateful for this experience of being reminded of how fragility and joy can, perhaps paradoxically, be so intertwined with each other. It was truly a time of our joy.

_______________

PS The car missed me, thank God!

PSS Hag Sameach!

Sukkah City USA!

2010-09-20T13:53:00.005-04:00

The weird structures to be glimpsed on the right (and the left in the distance) are part of a collection of futuristic, whimsical sukkot that have descended on Union Square in New York City (as part of the Sukkah City project).

Here are a few more pics of my favorites:

The woman in the above shot was explaining to the cop what a Sukkah is.

It was a beautiful day to be able to take a short lunch break and see something extraordinary!

________
More shots of Sukkah City here.

Click on the below image for a full-size image of the flyer:

Welcome to our (first!) sukkah

2010-09-19T20:19:00.001-04:00

That's what Minna seems to be saying (electric screwdriver in hand). With around $35 in lumber and a kit from the Sukkah project, Minna (with only minimal help from me, I have to admit) got the frame of our sukkah just about all up, today. This is the first time since I was a kid that I've lived somewhere that had enough (unshaded) outdoor space for a sukkah, so I'm pretty excited. And with the Jewish holidays so early this year, the weather really might be nice enough not only to eat in the sukkah, but maybe to sleep out there, too!

Thanks, Minna!

How and why do we use rabbinic texts to form rabbis?

2010-09-14T19:53:00.001-04:00

It's a new semester at NYU (the first of my second year in the Education and Jewish Studies PhD program here), and I'm starting to get excited again about my classes -- and my work here!

Last semester was my introduction to social science research methods, especially the kind favored by researchers interested in social change -- ethnography and in-depth interviewing -- and I started to get excited about the idea of doing that kind of work studying a rabbinical school or chaplaincy training program.

This semester, it looks like I'm going back for a bit to my philosophical, theological and textual (as in Jewish text study) roots. I'm really excited about a Philosophy of Education class I'm taking with Rene Arcilla. In this class, it seems to me the prof wants to do something that is profoundly counter-cultural in today's results! results! results! focused culture (educational and otherwise) -- he wants us to consider not how philosophy might help us raise kids' text scores, but rather how education might be a part of how we approach life in general. That is, how education might help us make our lives (individually and collectively) more 'good' and more human. . . . For a guy committed to a faith tradition that sets up Torah study as a central spiritual value and practice, that's a pretty exciting approach. Arcilla wants us to read some classical philosophical texts touching on education -- Plato, Rousseau, Dewey -- and to do with them what I want students to be able to do with classical Jewish texts: make them our own.

Arcilla thinks of this, in part, as a task of translation -- the task of translating our world/lives into the language of these texts (to become "slightly bilingual," as he put it). The main task, he says, is to use these "historically distant" texts to help us examine our own perspective and assumptions. We should treat them as "messages in a bottle found on a beach" and not try and subject them to historical analysis, or try to read them in light of their historical contexts (something that might indeed be appropriate in a different class).

I'm looking forward to seeing how Arcilla does this, especially because it sounds so much like what I think the best Torah teaching is like. It has me thinking again about different directions or approaches for my own future dissertation work. It reminds me that much of my interest is rooted in the frustration I heard so often from other students in my rabbinical school career -- "why are we studying Talmud? What does this have to do with my future rabbinate?"

So often, the only answer teachers seemed to have was "trust me, it's important." A better answer, I think, is to say that Talmud study is about rabbinic/spiritual formation (and maybe, also, to be able to say something about how text study has formed you, the teacher). That is, it's about learning to think like its authors -- to think (and feel and teach) like a rabbi. But that, alone, is not a good enough answer. And maybe my research will be about putting some "flesh" on the mere bones of that answer -- of working on formulating a better theory (backed by evidence!) of how Talmud (and other Jewish text) study forms rabbis. What works and what doesn't -- and what kind of study forms the kind of rabbis we want to form (ones, I hope, who have some pastoral and emotional sensitivity and depth, in addition to being smart and well versed in the Jewish tradition). [My first Talmud teacher, Devora Steinmetz, has written a great article about some of these issues -- where she claims that Talmud study helps create people prepared to routinely deal with the most difficult questions, the ones where there is no clear wrong or right answer -- but I don't think it's electronically available.]

I was just thinking of all this while I was reading an article for a class I'm taking on Talmud Narratives with the world's premier scholar on Talmud stories, Jeffrey Rubenstein. In the article, Jacob Neusner discusses two famous rabbinic stories -- that of Honi the Circle maker (who audaciously demanded that God bring rain) and that of the escape of Yohanan ben Zakkai from the besieged Jerusalem to found the great rabbinic academy at Yavnah (where tradition tells us the first great document of rabbinic Judaism, the Mishna, was composed). Neusner's claim (once radical but now pretty much the conventional wisdom) is that these stories do not in any way depict actual historical events. They are written as didactic tales -- stories to make a point, to teach a lesson.

That alone didn't really get my attention. But what did was Neusner's further claim that the stories' intended audience is rabbis -- they "project a picture of what a rabbi should be, which is a master of Scripture and Torah." [213] That is, they are stories by rabbis, for rabbis.

I am excited about the days ahead!

The Eagle sings Minna's song

2010-09-11T21:37:00.002-04:00

The local paper ran a wonderful profile of Minna, today!

The hunter becomes the hunted

2010-08-27T19:15:00.002-04:00

This green guy is one of the greatest enemies of the tomato plant -- the dreaded Tomato Hornworm, which can make incredible amounts of tomato foliage disappear in no time at all (although Minna claims the end result is a most beautiful moth that some treasure).

This guy, however, has ended up as a meal for someone else -- or, rather, many someone elses (the white spots are wasp larvae).

So, as we come to the end of a most rewarding garden season, we aren't getting much in the way of tomatoes or cucumbers anymore -- but still plenty of fascinating lessons about how the world can work.

Purple harvest comes to Sag

2010-08-19T17:57:00.003-04:00

Minna and I brought some of our backyard harvest -- including this Purple Cherokee that we planted upside down -- to Sag Harbor with us for a couple days of relaxation before we both head into busy fall seasons. The Cherokee was a truly delicious reminder of the best of what this summer has been for the both of us and of the harvests we hope for the future from the work we have been doing and the foundations we've been laying. The summer started with Minna's ordination and continued with her first summer working as as a rabbi. We ,moved into a little house (including a yard and central AC!). And I ran my third unit of summer chaplaincy education, and prepared to enter into my second year of doctoral study at NYU.

So we took this week for a little bit of relaxation between the great busy-ness we have behind and before us. The first three days were a little bike tour of around 70 miles total mostly around Amish country. We went through French Creek State Park -- where we had to navigate around a bridge that was out! -- on the first day. It was beautiful there amid the rain, but the best part was on the next day when we went on only a short ride from Morgantown to New Holland. It took us through some incredible Amish country where we saw many people working their fields with horses. As we came over one rise, we saw what was a very confusing scene at first -- a man with a team of four large horses standing at the edge of a cornfield. There was a mechanical roar as well, though. Why, we asked ourselves, would this man choose to use horses if he thought it was ok to use a mechanical tractor as well? And then we saw it -- eight huge horses, shoulder-to-shoulder, coming straight towards us through the corn. Four were pulling the most incredible muscle-powered machine I have ever seen -- a mechanical combine harvesting the corn without the aid of any electrical or internal combustion motor -- and the other four were pulling the huge cart the harvested corn was going into. We also saw a couple harvesting tobacco by hand in a field and we bought watermelon and nectarines from the people who grew them: incredible sights -- testaments to the faith of others, really -- mere miles from our home and from the tough urban streets of Reading, streets where blood is spilled much too often and where faith is a much-needed support for many, especially in these hard economic times.

I am grateful to the Blessed Holy One for the many harvests we have been able to enjoy in these days, including these precious few days of rest, and the wonderful weather we had today for a bike ride to the beach with Minna's parents, and a nice swim there.

_______________________

Here are a couple more pics of both the harvest and the ride -- and links to more pics of both:

Minna's parents (on left) riding by Long Beach

From Bromberg beach ride 2010

Eggplants!

From Harvest 2010 (August)

Powershot -- my camera

2010-08-04T16:49:00.003-04:00

I was surprised today to hear one of the hosts of Slate's Culture Gabfest podcast enthusiastically endorsing not a movie or play, but an electronics product. Host Julia Turner went on and on about how her camera takes "perfect" pictures in situations that may be perfect to the human eye -- twilight and candlelight, etc. -- but are anything but perfect for taking pictures with a camera.

I don't know if I would go quite so far in my praises, but ever since Minna bought me the same camera -- the Canon Powershot S90 -- before we went to Israel in the spring (thanks, Minna!), I've really rediscovered the joy of photography with the help of this great little camera!

It's a bit on the big side for a point-and-shoot, and -- at around $350 -- it's on the more expensive side for this type of camera. But considering how close it comes to SLR quality in such a small package, I really think the price is a bargain.

If you want to know what it can do, just keep reading this blog -- almost every picture that I've posted in the last few months was taken with this camera.

[BTW, it was this New York Times column by David Pogue that turned me on to the S90.]

Looking forward to next year (saving seeds)

2010-08-03T06:59:00.001-04:00

We harvested our first Purple Cherokee tomato, today. We only have a few fruits growing on the (upside down!) plant, so we decided that we need to start saving seeds from it now if we're going to use them grow our own plants from scratch next year. So, the seeds will sit in the jar above for three-days or so -- long enough for the gelatinous material around the seeds to dissolve in the water -- before we clean, dry and store them.

It's exciting to think we might be able to have a garden again next year!

Our cancer year -- goodbye Harvey

2010-07-29T05:14:00.003-04:00

I was moving some books, yesterday, when I came across my copy of Harvey Pekar's Our cancer year. Pekar, who died earlier this month, is mostly known for his offbeat American Splendor, comic book series, which was adapted into a 2003 movie of the same name. But he also wrote one of the most gripping, and raw, accounts of what it is like to have cancer and, especially, to endure the torture of chemotherapy. His autobiographical Our cancer year does not just chronicle his experience as the patient, but also the experience of his wife Joyce as the caregiver, struggling to both take care of herself and also be a support for Harvey, a man who suffered from depression and despair in the best of circumstances, not to mention when poison was being poured into his veins.

Thanks, Harvey, for being willing to share your struggles with us!

X-Bike, Y-Bag -- mixed kinds on a cargo bike

2010-07-27T18:34:00.005-04:00

That's a Yuba bikes "Go-Getter" bag on the left of my Xtracycle above. I was so excited when it finally arrived, today -- I love my Xtracycle, but the standard cargo slings (see the black one still on the right of the bike) have always left a lot to be desired in my view. I wanted something that is more like a standard pannier -- a bag with a closable top -- but just larger. That's what the Go-Getter -- meant for Yuba's Mundo bike, a direct competitor to Xtracycle's products -- promises to be.

I had some trouble figuring out how to mount it, but finally decided it should sit on a Wide-Loader platform, which means I might have to keep the Wide-Loader on there permanently. That's going to make me a little wider on the left; I'm not sure if I'm going to like that -- but I am going to try it for now.

For a test ride, I packed the bag full of books and bottles and such -- a nice, heavy load. Minna followed me for a short jaunt down to the local creek and back -- it was fun! The bike felt great.

I'm looking forward to lots of use for this new bag (more pics here -- including one of how I keep the bag from hitting the wheel)!

You are with me -- #23

2010-07-27T09:06:00.004-04:00

The Schechter Institute in Jerusalem (one of my many alma maters) has been publishing an online commentary to the greatest of the biblical books for spiritual care -- the Book of Psalms. Today, they released their commentary for the ultimate of the psalms of comfort, Psalm 23, that so-very brief work that opens with lines famously translated as "The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want." Benjamin J. Segal, the author of the commentary, labels this great psalm simply as "With Me," reflecting his claim that the psalm revolves around these words from the middle of its fourth verse. But, while Segal says that the simple concept that "God is with me sits at the core of the psalm, he also claims that the psalm treats the concept in a very complex way, with a progression that could reflect one that many of us go through in our journeys in life and in faith. At the beginning, the psalm expresses a simple faith in the presence of God -- God as a source of physical sustenance and protection. But, as the psalm progresses, this faith changes -- into a faith in God as a source of spiritual sustenance, a sustenance that can support us even in the darkest of times. Even in the dark shadows cast by evil, injustice, or even death.

This kind of spiritual sustenance is what can not only comfort us, but also inspire us to do things that would have seemed not only impossible, but even miraculous. I am reminded of how Nelson Mandela was able to find this kind of sustenance in another very short work, the Victorian poem Invictus -- something that helped him find not only the courage to survive decades of bitter imprisonment, but to be able to emerge from it unbroken: still able to love other human beings and unbelievably still able to move past anger to profound forgiveness and reconciliation. (Minna and I this week watched the brilliant Clint Eastwood movie of the same name, which documents one small part of what Mandela did after his imprisonment.)

Jews everywhere have been reclaiming the Book of Psalms as our own in recent years and finding comfort and wisdom within its ancient words, traditionally credited to King David. I am so grateful for this free contribution Schechter is making to this movement of reclaiming!

Lunchtime harvest

2010-07-22T12:59:00.002-04:00

Minna picked some cukes and tomatoes for our lunch, today. It was the biggest single-day's harvest of cucumbers we've gotten, yet (we try not to let them get as big as the one monster below, but we've discovered that if you peel and seed them, that they're still yummy).

From Lunchtime harvest

Bees, like this little bumble below, are part of what makes it all happen -- the wonders of pollination!

From Lunchtime harvest

Our tomato plants (as have our cukes) have grown into quite a jungle (see, below). I feel proud of its teemingness (I looked it up -- that's really a word), but I'm starting to understand why some people like to prune their tomatoes into orderly single stems.

From Lunchtime harvest

This one has so outgrown its little tomato cage that I found some scrap poles (actually an old cane and a mop handle) that a neighbor had thrown out to prop it up a bit.

From Lunchtime harvest

More pics can be found here.

I'm so grateful to be able to have a garden this year!

Cargo -- and kid -- biking in NYC

2010-07-18T00:38:00.004-04:00

I got pretty excited after Shabbat went out tonight when I watched the video in this New York Times story about "glamour moms" carrying their kids around NYC on cargo bikes. It was especially exciting that the opening shots are in my "old neighborhood" -- right by Astor Place and one of the NYU buildings where my classes met just a few months ago.

I was a _little_ disappointed that the most widespread of the cargo bikes here in the States -- the Xtracycle, like the one I own -- was not mentioned in the article. I have seen a couple of them around Greenwich Village, including one that is set up to carry two young children.

Cargo biking does seem to be on the rise. I only recently became aware of a competitor to Xtracycle -- Yuba -- that is putting out a very similar product that is purpose-built with an extra-long bicycle frame (n

ot surprisingly, Yuba was founded by a former member of Xtracycle). I'm not ready to buy one, but I did order one of their bags (see photo on the right, which another Xtracycle owner posted on his Flickr page). I hope it lives up to its claim to be usable on the Xtracycle because it has some features -- like rain protection -- that I've really missed on the standard Xtracycle cargo bags/slings.

Almost all of my cycling this summer has been just very short trips on the Xtracycle to work or to go grocery shopping. No day-long rides like in summers past. And this will be the first summer in five years or so where I have not done any bike touring like the Hazon Israel ride we did last year from Tel Aviv to Eilat. I miss the riding for sure, but I've been enjoying the things that have replaced it -- the little house we've moved into and all the little tasks of getting set up and all the time with Minna. . . . . And I still ride at least a little bit every day. :)

The lone pine

2010-07-15T06:00:00.003-04:00

Privileged to (finally) be living in the same town and to have reasonably sane schedules (for the summer, at least), Minna and I have been trying to spend as much time outside together in the evenings -- which has taken us once or twice a week to the nearby Nolde Forest state park and its hiking trails amid an ancient-seeming forest. So, I was surprised, yesterday, to read that the hills of Nolde had not always been forested, and that there was only the "lone pine" in this picture when a textile magnate bought the land for his private estate in the early 1900s. It was a reminder that even things that seem like they have always been there -- and are so-called natural creations -- were, in fact, created by somebody. Were created by the dreams that come out of the human heart and mind.

This summer has in many ways been the realization of many long-deferred dreams for me. After years of living in dorm rooms and small apartments, I have moved into a house. In its small yard, I have been able to grow my first vegetable garden in some 20 years. Being able to pick a piece of produce off the vine and eat it, fresh, right away is part of a dream I had since college of living a little more right with the Earth, of being a little less of a petroleum-gorging machine trapped in the rat race of a technological civilization. A dream of living close to the things and places we interact with daily. This summer, I walk or bicycle to work every day and only actually get in a car a couple of times a week. I feel free from the hunger to acquire more material things. I feel a great peace.

The hospital only a few hundred yards away where I am working this summer, however -- with all its incredible technology for extending life (and all the pain and loss its inhabitants experience amid injury and illness) -- is a constant reminder that I am not leaving the material, or technological civilization, behind in any complete or permanent way. One day I, too, may need all those machines. One day I, too, may be struggling in a hospital dead. And one day I will die.

"Life is a narrow bridge," Rebbe Nachman of Bratlav taught us. "The most important thing is not to be afraid."

This summer I have been less afraid. I have been sustained by the realization of past dreams -- both my own and of others. But I am also sustained by my dreams of the future, by my own hopes to build a "forest" -- a forest that looks like it has always been there. My dreams there have to do with the education of rabbis as spiritual caregivers. It's a field that in some ways is very ancient, and in other, important ways, is only in its infancy. Come the fall, God willing, I will return to my doctoral studies and NYU and to my focus on pursuing future dreams. May it be the will of the Holy Blessed One that those dreams will yield rich fruit -- many pines where only one once stood. And may it be the Holy One's will that I will be able to find balance on that journey -- to be able to continue to enjoy the fruit of past dreams as I pursue the new ones.

Men who hate women

2010-07-07T07:28:00.003-04:00

That’s the original title of the first of Stieg Larsson’s blockbuster, world-wide top-selling novels and the subsequent film, both retitled The girl with the dragon tattoo for the English translation. The film came out on DVD yesterday, so we were able to watch it online on Netflix last night.

It struck me that this film treats violence against women -- including two scenes depicting brutal rapes of the title character by a man appointed to protect her -- in a very different way than is typical of Hollywood films. In Hollywood, violence against women tends to be depicted in a sensationalist, almost fetishistic, way that seems to communicate a very troubling underlying message -- that women a) need to be careful, and b) they must stay in the protection of men (ie, they are not capable of protecting themselves).

It was refreshing to watch a film with such a different approach -- an approach that felt so much more true to life. In life, it is a terrible truth that many, maybe even most, women are victims of sexual violence in their lifetimes. This violence is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated by any decent society. It has to be stopped, and it is women themselves who are capable of taking the lead to stop it (a lead that men surely need to follow). And, so, in this film, we are offered the character of a strong, exceptionally talented woman who is capable of her own defense. She, tragically, like so many women, is victimized. We watch the rape scenes with only revulsion -- with no titillation. It hurts to watch them. We want to stop them.

We have to stop them.

The Phoenix

2010-07-04T08:10:00.006-04:00

A week ago, I had cut this then-bushy basil plant back to next to nothing -- now it's starting to come back with these little new leaves!

Here's a pic of the whole plant:

And here's a pic of our Wapsipinicon peach, which yielded our very first tomato of the season, a few days ago. It's growing at a fantastic pace now, with lots of tomatoes all over it. A couple more had ripened over Shabbat, so after Shabbat was over, Minna (by flashlight!) harvested two. They were really delicious, much better than the first one had been, so I'm really looking forward to the rest of these ripening!

Happy 4th of July!

______________________

Did you notice the new upgrade on Google Docs, by the way? They seem to have added a whole host of new features to make it more like a traditional word processor like Microsoft Word (including things like a ruler at the top of the page).

That seems to hold the promise of being able to control the printed appearance of documents in a way that was not possible before. But to get all those new features, they seem to have taken away a number of ones that were my favorite things about Google Docs. You don't seem to be able to post directly to your blog, anymore. And there's no more "hide controls" (which freed up a lot of screen space) or "edit html." I hope, at least, that soon they will add a "view draft" feature or something to allow you to get some of that screen real estate back.

Google does address some of these concerns here. This is some of what they say:

What else is different?

You'll probably notice that some features from the older version of Google documents aren't available yet. Don't worry: we'll be adding a lot of them soon.

These features from the previous version of Google documents, however, won't be available in the new version:

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Living large (movie)

2010-06-29T22:30:00.002-04:00

Tonight, we went and saw סיפור גדול/sipur gado l (otherwise known as "A matter of size") at the Goggleworks here in Reading -- we liked it!

This Israeli movie tells the improbable story of a wash-out from a weight loss club who forms his buddies into a Sumo wrestling team (with the help of his Japanese boss at a local sushi restaurant). Both of us enjoyed it, although afterward we debated how Israeli the movie really was. But we both agreed that there was something particularly Israeli about how the movie understood what large bodies are about. While it's true that Israelis can be just as cruel to overweight folks as Americans, in this country our prejudices about fat people are not only that they're ugly, but that they're incapable -- especially incapable of doing physical things. But in this movie, there seemed to be an assumption that large folks are capable of physical things, and that it was not some great leap for them to be training for a physical activity. One idea we had was that perhaps this assumption of physical capability was tied to compulsory national service. Whatever its roots, it was a refreshing cultural difference.

I recommend it!

First tomato!

2010-06-28T16:43:00.000-04:00

Today, we picked our first tomato of the season -- a Wapsipinicon peach. It's one of the heirloom varieties we are trying this year. It was a little bit fuzzy on the outside and had a mild, low acid flavor. Here's a close up:

From First tomato (peach!), 2010

A typical summer storm blew in a bit before Minna decided to "take the plunge" and pick it (and thus the wet spots on her shirt above) -- it was a bit of a gamble as the ripe color isn't too much different from the unripe color, and we weren't sure we knew how to tell it was ready.

You open Your hand and satisfy the needs of every living creature by Your will!

As the Psalmist says . .
From First tomato (peach!), 2010

Bone, grit -- and being your brother's keeper

2010-06-27T23:16:00.001-04:00

I don't often write about movies I haven't actually seen, but when I heard a sound clip on NPR's Fresh Air from Winter's Bone -- a story of a teenage girl seeking her fugitive father so her family's house will not be taken in lieu of his bail -- I was taken back in time. While this voice was, on the one hand, very contemporary, it also took me back to 1880, and the voice of Charles Portis' own fictional girl teenager improbably pursuing a fugitive across dangerous territory in his 1968 novel True Grit (later made into a film that won John Wayne an Oscar). Both voices seemed somehow out of time, almost biblical in their plainness and spirit.

It had been decades since I read True Grit, so I searched the Web in search of excerpts. Reading the below from the opening pages of the novel (excerpted at the bottom of this NPR article here), I was surprised to find myself choked with tears. The narrator -- the teenager Mattie Ross -- is describing, in the plainest of words, how her father was killed by his drunken tenant while the two men were away on a business trip together. The tenant, Tom Chaney, felt he had been cheated at cards and had grabbed his rifle to go in search of the men he had gambled with. Mattie's father, without a weapon, went in pursuit of him in an effort to stop him. He did not get far before Tom Chaney turned on him without a word:

Tom Chaney raised his rifle and shot him in the forehead, killing him instantly. There was no more provocation than that and I tell it as it was told to me by the high sheriff of Sebastian County. Some people might say, well, what business was it of Frank Ross to meddle? My answer is this: he was trying to do that short devil a good turn. Chaney was a tenant and Papa felt responsibility. He was his brother’s keeper. Does that answer your question?

I cannot tell you for sure why those words touched me so, but it brought to my awareness that I have been working very hard to be my fellow's keeper in recent weeks, as well as how dangerous such a path can be. But what really made me cry may not have been the fear; it may have been the realization of my determination -- no matter the risk -- to follow that very basic, implicit command that stands nearly at the very beginning of the Torah -- the command to not be like Cain. The command to indeed be the keeper of one's fellow. Even when it is very hard.

This week will see the Fast of Tammuz, a day commemorating the disaster that was the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans, an event that would be followed some three weeks later by the destruction of the Temple itself, a disaster that might have destroyed the Jews as a people, but did not. We were sustained by our faith, by the knowledge that our Torah is a Torah of righteousness and justice -- a Torah that demands we care for our fellow. And for the widow, the orphan and the stranger.

May it be the will of the Holy Blessed One that you, too, will be sustained by the Torah of truth and justice, and find true grit when you need it.

Less is more -- pruning: in life, in gardening and in spiritual care

2010-06-27T12:12:00.004-04:00

Up until about an hour ago, this poor guy was a very bushy, healthy-looking plant of basil. But, under the influence of this gardening video, I decided to prune it back almost to nothing -- all in the hope that I could slow down its growth, and thus extend its life.

I've been looking for ways to slow things down in my own life as well. I remember a couple of months ago, sitting on a couch with a fellow doctoral student at NYU and working on a project together. It was the first chance I ever had to really interact with this colleague, and I was surprised to find how

The stalks from the three plants I pruned
From Pruning (late June)

much we had in common about how we thought about our lives and our work. For both of us, it is important to do more than one thing at a time. And, as challenging as it might be to try and do something like hold down two full-time pursuits at one time, that it was a kind of challenge that we both very much needed -- the contrast of having "feet in two different worlds" helped us to be more grounded. It helped us to not get caught up by our tendency to become obsessed with one thing, like that "one thing" is everything. It helped us keep our perspective both focused and balanced.

So, I hope not to give up this multi-tasking aspect of my life. But, over the last 12 months or so, it's been more like I had three full-time pursuits than just two and it's been quite a strain at times. Mostly, I feel incredibly proud of myself reflecting back on the last 12 months. I became a certified chaplain education (by being approved as an Associate Supervisor in the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education) -- something that I achieved in about as short a time (less than three years) as is theoretically possible. I started a new path as a researcher of education (as a doctoral student in the Education and Jewish studies program at NYU). I found the time to go to some key conferences and meetings, including the Jerusalem Spiritual Care Conference (that included a historic delegation of American CPE supervisors, seeking to give Israelis guidance on how to set up their own professional spiritual care certification and training) and the National Association of Jewish Chaplains conference in Boston (where I gave a workshop on personal Midrash). I also recently attended both the Network for Research in Jewish Education conference where I presented some of my work to other education professionals, and the Oraita spiritual retreat where I studied ancient Jewish sources relating to spiritual (and self-) care with other rabbis. And I continued to work as a CPE (clinical pastoral education) supervisor amid all this, as well as finding time and energy to keep growing my relationship with Minna and to be her partner while she embarked on her own multi-task of starting work as the spiritual leader of a congregation, while finishing her five-year path towards rabbinic ordination.

But I've, nonetheless, been glad to have the change-of-pace that is my summer work -- where I am focused on mostly one task (running a full-time unit of CPE, with my six students, all either seminarians or people who recently finished their seminary education).

Here are the leaves that I picked from the stalks.
From Pruning (late June)

It's a reminder that what I really love most is being a teacher -- the kind of teacher who has the privilege of having intense relationships with his or her students and the privilege of having the opportunity to perhaps have a profound impact on their respective journeys as people, as professional workers in ministry and as spiritual caregivers and leaders. Although I also very much want to be involved in research about education, all of my passion and insight for that research has its roots in my personal experience working with students.

So, for this summer I'm pruning myself back for a bit, trying to slow down some and focus in one area (as well as on things that are just fun and restorative, like gardening). My hope is that this pruning will yield not only immediate benefit (a more-rested, less-stressed Alan), but also will yield a richer harvest when I reenter the researcher/student part of my life when I return to NYU in the fall!

_____________

Getting back to my _real_ garden for a bit (ie, the one with plants and vegetables), I have some things I want to share beyond the pruning (by the way, if you're interested in learning how -- or if -- to prune tomatoes of their so-called "suckers", there's good info and a video here).

First, I was really excited to see our first flower on our eggplant, today, which means that there is some real hope of having our own crop of these most special of vegetables!

From Pruning (late June)

The excitement is because we've sometimes come close to losing hope for this plant. As you can see from the pics below, something is eating its leaves.

From Pruning (late June)

Here are a couple more pics showing the current state of progress:

Looking up at two of our upside-down ones -- a cuke in foreground and a tomato behind
From Pruning (late June)

My hope is this one will grow enough that I can "train it" to the lattice of the fence (actually a door) here.
From Pruning (late June)

Peppers starting to yield!
From Pruning (late June)

And the cucumbers are starting to have their first flowers!
From Pruning (late June)

And they are climbing up the strings I gave them to the top of the fence!
From Pruning (late June)

First fruit

2010-06-23T20:18:00.003-04:00

The peppers were the tortoise to the tomatoes' hare (translation: I had expected our tomatoes to yield the first fruits of the summer, but we ended up harvesting a pepper (yellow banana variety) as our very first fruit this very evening). We ate it raw as we stood outside -- it was delicious!

Thank You, Holy Blessed One, for sustaining us and upholding us and enabling us to once again reach this wonderful place!

All tied up

2010-06-21T21:38:00.003-04:00

Well, I'm not much of a knot tier (and I've never grown cucumbers before), but I'm hoping that these guys will reach out their little tendrils (it's creepy; they really do grab ahold of things) and climb up the twine to the top of the fence here where I hope they will happily live on the trellises.

Meanwhile, the rest of the garden is starting to look like a jungle. It's been some 20 years since I've had the opportunity to grow plants in the ground (last year's efforts were all in containers). I think we might have our first tomatoes in two weeks or so!

Smiling your way through the binding of Isaac

2010-06-15T16:59:00.001-04:00

We've had many great teachings here at Oraita so far, but I especially appreciated Rabbi Professor Max Ticktin's fresh approach today to studying one of what can be the most troubling Holy text of all -- the sacrifice, or binding of Isaac. He brought us a number of modern texts -- including one by Woody Allen -- that struggle with this text in an effort to find meaning, meaning relevant to our own lives, today. One, written by his wife, makes a creative use of a psychological perspective to redeem God's role in "testing" Abraham, and sees a lesson for us all in the story for how we might relate to our children in healthy ways.

I hope to share much more with you soon!

What is Midrash, what is Holy imagination (the view from Oraita)?

2010-06-13T21:44:00.003-04:00

Midrash -- from the Hebrew language root for seeking or demanding -- is sometimes described as a Jewish method of Bible interpretation. But this is much too narrow a view. Midrash is about imagination. In its classic form, it is the imaginings -- imaginings often in the form of story -- of our Sages about the things they found in their Holy scriptures. They added story onto story, in the process creating new meaning that made the biblical text their own, relevant to their lives and concerns.

We, too, as I have argued elsewhere, can make our own Midrash -- by composing our own new stories that we can layer along with the holy texts of our tradition. Some, however, would say that even my definition of Midrash is too narrow, and that Midrash need not even relate to the biblical text.

This week, I am at Oraita -- a gathering where rabbis and Jewish scholars come to learn together. This meeting is focusing on Midrash. Natan Margalit -- Oraita's director -- made his own effort today in opening the meeting to say what Midrash, or the conversation about it, is about: "Truth is a conversation of discipline and passion over time," he said, borrowing from Parker Palmer. He continued, "This conversation we share -- that's where truth is." He made reference to the metaphor of water, the idea that the Torah is like water and that our conversation about Torah is like drops of water: "Torah wears down that resistance to truth."

I'm looking forward to learning with the scholars who are here, including JTS' Burt Visotzky, who says he will be teaching four classic Midrashim that touch on a Jewish approach to a topic so important to the practice of pastoral care (to being a spiritual caregiver to people who are suffering) -- theodicy (why God would allow bad things to happen to good people, etc).

I hope to bring this learning back to my community -- and my chaplain students -- to enrich our learning together this summer.

It's exciting!

Ordained!

2010-06-06T16:04:00.000-04:00

Rabbi Minna Bromberg at Hebrew College in Boston, June 6, 2010.

Here are some more pics.

Neither them, nor their reward -- suffering, and how to talk about it

2010-06-04T17:48:00.002-04:00

One of the things I am grateful for from my recent trip to Israel for a spiritual care conference, was the opportunity to hear Rabbi Dr. Einat Ramon teach a text that I had learned many times over the years, but had almost forgotten about somehow. I'm no mind reader, but I think I know something of why Ramon chose this text to introduce herself and her group of Israeli colleagues to an American delegation of chaplains who had come to advise the Israelis on how to professionalize pastoral care: because the text speaks to a particularly Jewish way of understanding suffering -- and to tell the Americans (mostly Christian) that, for all the Israelis desire their help, a Christan approach suffering is not what was desired.

I think Ramon was wise to introduce herself with this text but I also think the beliefs and spirituality expressed in it are too universal to be claimed only by Jews -- which is why I started my teaching to my (all Christian) chaplain students this summer by learning it with them at the beginning of this week.

The text from Talmud Brakhot (full text and translation) tells of us three times when an ailing rabbi is visited by one of his colleagues. Each visit has key elements in common. All three ill rabbis are asked by their visitor about how they feel about their sufferings -- are your sufferings welcome, even beloved, to you? "Neither they, nor their reward," is the answer. Then the three stories diverge from each other for a bit -- some words and such pass between the two participants. But then, finally, as all three stories approach their end, the visitor says the same thing -- "give me your hand." The ill one reaches out his hand, and he is lifted up.

There is something so empowering about the right our tradition gives us to say "neither they, nor their reward" in the face of our suffering -- to be given permission by the example of the most faithful of our Sages that it is possible to detest our suffering while still loving God and remaining true to God and our tradition. To be free from feeling we are commanded to welcome all our suffering as somehow being God's work.

I was reminded of something else when I taught this text to my students this week -- that the problem with the insensitive questions that so many untrained chaplains ask is not the content of the questions. It's how and when they are asked.

We were studying the part of the story where one of the Sages asks some seemingly insensitive questions of his ill friend that seem to be imposing his beliefs on him: "Why are you crying?" he asks the ill one:

Is it because you didn't study enough Torah in your life? Because you shouldn't be worrying about that -- we have a saying that says the only thing that really matters is if you directed your heart to God.
Is it because you didn't make enough money in your life? Because you shouldn't be worrying about that -- not everybody gets to be rich.
Is it because of the lack of children? Because you shouldn't be worrying about that either, children can die after all.

Learning this text again with my new students helped me see is that these are not just examples of bad questions or statements -- they're also universal examples of the major things that come to a person's mind as they realize their life may be coming to an end. They ask themselves what kind of person have I been and what kind of life did I lead? A good one or a bad one? A full one or an empty one? The three questions above correspond with three major categories where people ask these life review questions:

Spirituality -- did I do right by God or my faith tradition? (This text, in accordance with the Jewish tradition, uses Torah study to represent spiritual good.)
Material matters (I would include not just material wealth here, but career accomplishments)
Family matters (children)

So, if the ancient rabbi's questions were problematic, it was not the content that was their problem. The content they represent correspond with universal things that many suffering people would like to talk about. The problem comes in how these topics were broached. Did the suffering person volunteer that he or she wanted to talk about them or did the caregiver impose them? How is it that a caregiver can appropriately invite a person to talk about the things that are most dear to him or her -- that concern him or her most at a time of deep crisis in his or her life?

I hope the rest of the summer with my students will be devoted to answering that final question. And that we all, including myself, will grow to have a clearer idea of what the answer might be.

I'm excited about it!

____________

I write these words in Boston as a moment not of of suffering, but of joy approaches -- the ordaining of my life partner Minna on Sunday as a rabbi (at Hebrew College here)! The image to the right, from our recent trip to Israel, is one of Minna doing one of the things she is very best at -- singing . . . . and through her singing, helping people find joy and meaning in their lives and in their relationship with the Holy.

Minna, I hope it is the will of the Holy Blessed One that you will have many years of raising your voice and putting your hands together in service of God, Torah and the people Israel. And that many -- all the seekers among us! -- will know some small piece of the incalculable joy and meaning you have brought to my life. Long may you run!

________________

Shabbat Shalom!

Upside down!

2010-06-03T19:35:00.001-04:00

Even though the full recommended week hadn't passed since I first put seedlings in my home-fashioned upside down planters (more about how I planted them here), I turned one of them this morning.

As of this evening (as I bbq-ed my dinner), it hadn't fallen out yet!

Here's a couple of other views of it:


From Planting upside down

Living large

2010-05-30T20:12:00.004-04:00

Like many Americans, I have spent much of my life being larger than is considered to be healthy, and thus searching for a way that works to take (and keep!) off a few pounds. Exercise, of course is part of any successful effort. But "the gym" and other forms of working out for working out's sake are just not for me -- it bores me out of my mind, and doing such things in groups (they call that classes, I guess), which works for so many, is also not for me. So, my search for a good exercise life has always been a search for exercise I can get as part of transporting my body, etc., from place to place, or some other kid of activity that's main purpose is not the exercise itself. So, bicycle commuting, cargo biking (eg, grocery shopping by bike), walking to work, volunteering to help a friend move some boxes, hiking in a pretty place -- those have been the ways I've sought exercise.

The last few weeks, now that we've moved into a small house with a little bit of a backyard, I've been able to reconnect with another by-the-way means of getting exercise -- gardening. Now, gardening doesn't have to involve much sweat, but I double-dug the two plots to the right with a fairly small shovel, and that was a lot of work! Of course, the exercise benefit is hardly an ongoing thing, but I'm really hoping (especially, if we avoid a reoccurred of the late blight fungus that meant we only got a small -- but yummy! -- yield from the tomatoes we planted in containers last year on our small porch in our small apartment) for another benefit: lots of healthful eating in the summer. Lots and lots of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers especially -- that's what I hope for. That would be really living large!

I am grateful to be able to have a chance to grow things, again. Years of living in apartments in in cities have meant I went quite a few years without a place to grow anything. The main benefit of gardening, of course, isn't really either the exercise or the produce. It's what it can do for your soul. The feel of God's earth in your hands. The joy of watching something grow. This year, we even grew most of our tomato plants from seed ourselves -- some of them seeds we saved ourselves from the Mr. Stripey tomatoes we enjoyed so much last year. (That's some of the seedlings, below, sitting on top of our compost bin).

_____________________

One way of trying to stem off the effects of another possible blight is just to plant a lot of tomatoes of different varieties (last year the blight didn't kill off our plants, but just reduced their yield -- we lost a lot of tomatoes to disgusting looking fungus on them!). Today, I went even farther than before in my search for tomato variety. I had heard about planting tomatoes upside down before, but it was only after reading this recent New York Times article that I started to think seriously about trying it. I followed the instructions on this web page for making upside down planters out of five-gallon paint buckets (about $4 each with the lids at Home Depot). That's me to the left carrying the new containers to their temporary homes -- they live upside-up for about a week to build a root system. Once that's done, we'll flip them over and hang them from somewhere sunny

(You can find more pics of how I handled this task here.)

One thing that made me especially excited about today's plantings is that we found some Purple Cherokee's at the local farmer's market (from this vendor). We had bought one from the same folks last year and really enjoyed the few of its fruits that were not taken by the blight, but we hadn't been able to find any until now -- the first day of the year the farmer's market was open!

We also found some horseradish plants at the farmer's market, which we had been having trouble finding. It's late in the season for planting horseradish, but I'm still hoping to have some of my own homegrown "bitter herbs" at my next seder!

It was a fun day of planting!

Mixing work and play in the (post?)modern world

2010-05-27T21:49:00.002-04:00

As I prepare to begin another intense summer of teaching pastoral care in a hospital and Minna prepares to make the transition (ordination at Hebrew College on June 6!) from rabbinical student to full-time rabbi, we decided to take a few days to ourselves during which we got to one of Minna's favorite places near her childhood home -- the Morton Wildlife Refuge near Sag Harbor, NY. But work came with us. That's Minna above answering a synagogue-related email on her iPhone (while maybe-not-so-wild turkeys sneak up behind her!).

The challenge of making time for play while still being available, as professionals, to the people and tasks that require us is one that almost everyone seems to face, today. But it's an especially challenging issue for people who are clergy or in related forms of ministry. People -- especially those facing the crisis that is illness, injury or loss -- expect us to be able to be present for them. As Minna's teacher Art Green said in a recent talk in Rome to Catholic sisters, "this ability to be present can only come out of your own spiritual life. To live a life of giving to others, you need to be nourished by God’s presence in your own life. To hold people, in their pain as well as in their joy, you as a rabbi (or a priest, or a sister) have to manifest your own strength, which is really not your own at all, but God’s, in which you are rooted by your own faith."

That's why coming to a place like Morton is so important when we are able to get away. For Minna, Morton is not just a place to relax. It is a place to rediscover what she already knew but that she might have forgotten among all the work and stresses -- who she really is, what she really cares about. For Morton -- for her -- is a place of spiritual centering. A place that makes meaning for her. A place that has been with her as she has made the many twists and turns that have been the journey of her life and her spirit. . . . The value of this _kind_ of self-care is a big part of what I will be trying to share with my chaplain students this summer -- not just time off, but time that nurtures the soul.

The ocean at Morton:

From Morton and such (publics)

Of course Morton, while a place I am happy to be at, doesn't quite have that meaning for me, having one first discovered it (courtesy of Minna) a couple of years ago. I was reminded of that first visit this time -- when Minna fed chickadees who landed on her hand -- as she invited this one to come land on her hand:

From Morton and such (publics)

It was a good time on a too-short trip. But at least I got to ride a bicycle there (Minna snapped this pic of me in the Morton parking lot on her Dad's bike):

From Morton and such (publics)

The Rabbinical Assembly annual convention was also going on in New York during these days and I got a chance to reconnect with some old rabbinical school colleagues, etc., who were in town for the convention. It was really great to see them and my old dean, Rabbi Brad Artson. This connecting with other rabbis -- people who face similar challenges and joys -- is another important kind of self-care.

For all those who have a long (or even a short!) weekend coming up as Memorial Day approaches, may you find true restoring rest -- rest that makes it possible to do the meaningful work you have out in the world!

_____________

PS Here's another pic of Minna at Morton. I really like this one!

From Morton and such (publics)

Religious, but not coercive -- a new kind of faith for Israel

2010-05-05T17:27:00.004-04:00

They came ready to listen, but with lots of questions: Israelis involved in trying to establish a real profession of chaplains and spiritual caregivers here met Wednesday evening with a delegation of American chaplaincy leaders -- like Teresa Snorton, above, the executive director of the Association for Clincial Pastoral Education -- to pepper them with questions about how to go about setting up professional standards. But the Israelis heard about more than just professional standards. They were also impressed with the open and diverse vision of spirituality the Americans brought. "It's very religious, but not trying to convert," said one Israeli participant. "That's something that's very rare in Israel."

The concerns and questions the Israelis had were not so different than those Americans tend to have about chaplaincy, but I was impressed by a difference in emphasis. One participant asked if "someone who does not believe in God can qualify to do [chaplaincy] training." And while there are many Americans who do not believe in God, this seems to a much more burning question for Israelis than Americans. I shared my answer -- yes, certainly, but the chaplain student would still be able to talk to others about questions of holiness, about what makes ultimate meaning for them.

A big concern was about the length of the training. The Israelis did not seem too happy to hear about it taking years to become certified as a chaplain or a chaplain supervisor. Rev. Snorton assured them that some other efforts to apply CPE outside the United States have found reasonable ways to handle this challenge.

The Israelis also had questions about whether there was a place in this kind of training for people into "New Age" kinds of spiritual expression.

Admissions criteria also seemed to be a very big concern for the Israelis. My guess is that this reflects a difference in the Israeli scene than what chaplaincy training has come to be in the States. In the States, the high standards bar doesn't come at the beginning -- it comes at "the end," when a student seeks professional certification. I don't think things will end up that way for the Israeli system.

From Israel Spiritual Care Conference, 2010

But, of course, I don't know how the Israeli standards will end up -- that is, as John DeVelder, here representing the United States' CPSP, said when he spoke yesterday, for the Israelis themselves to figure out, to figure out there own way of making an "indigenous" application of Clinical Pastoral Education that is particular to the Israeli scene. Helping Israelis to find their own way -- rather than telling them what to do -- is a main motivation for putting together the American delegation, an effort organized by the National Association of Jewish Chaplains and its executive director, Cecille Asekoff

My hope is to be, like Snorton, a part of helping with that effort -- standing beside Israelis as they find their way forward to making this important work a part of their healthcare system.

The hope – an Israel that’s more free and open (and that’s true to itself)

2010-05-04T16:05:00.005-04:00

I started the day, today, at the annual Israel spiritual care conference – only the sixth one – and ended it listening to a group of school kids sing HaTikvah at the dedication of a new building for the Machon Schechter seminary here.

It wasn’t until I heard the words of Israel’s national anthem – HaTikvah means “the Hope” in English – that it came to me what it is that links these two seemingly disparate events: They’re both part of an effort – mostly slow and quiet in this loud and hyperactive little country – to gradually bring the best of the West, the West’s cultivation of a diverse and open society, to Israel in a way that stays true to Israel’s soul.

John DeVelder said it well at the conference: he talked about bringing the best of the well-developed American field of chaplaincy training to Israel in a way that is “indigenous”— so it’s not “American only.” DeVelder, the leader of chaplaincy and spiritual care training at the Robert Wood Johnson hospital in New Jersey, was there representing the CPSP, a smaller alternative group to the larger Association of Clinical Pastoral Education (of which I am a member and certified Associate Supervisor). Teresa Snorton was also there representing the larger group as its executive director. They were there as part of a trip from the States organized by the National Association of Jewish Chaplains and its executive director, Cecille Asekoff. “I want to thank Cecille for having the dream of doing CPE in Israel,” said DeVelder.

Cecille Asekoff From Israel Spiritual Care Conference, 2010

The dream, or hope, is to have a developed profession of chaplains and other spiritual caregivers here. It might be hard for Americans to conceive of what an infant field chaplaincy really is here. I talked to one young rabbi, today, who is pioneering a spiritual care program in a cancer unit of a large hospital here. He told me that Israelis have very little sense that a rabbi can provide any other care than facilitating rituals (like marriage, etc.). The American tradition of talking to a religiously trained person is just not part of the Israeli landscape.

My sense is that’s largely the result of the larger split between the religious and the secular societies here, a split that is much more “black and white” than in the States. Secular people see very little possible role for a rabbi in their lives. But that doesn’t mean Israelis aren’t spiritual and it doesn’t mean that they don’t need spiritual help when they’re hurting, whether it’s from illness or some other source of grief. The effort to bring serious training of spiritual caregivers – that is, Clinical Pastoral Education – here in a serious way is essential if those spiritual needs are going to be met. It’s part of an effort to break down the boundaries that sharply separate secular and religious and instead make a place for an active faith life for all Israelis.

Breaking down those barriers and making a place for an active faith life for all – even those who call themselves secular – is very much what the Schechter Institute is all about. When I was a student there about 10 years ago during my rabbinic training, the new building was just a dream – a vacant lot near the old building. When I was here a bit over a year ago, it had just barely moved up to a hole in the ground. And now a real building is clearly taking shape. The institute has many programs, but one especially close to my heart has been the efforts to train indigenous Israelis – both men and women in this country where nearly every rabbi is a man – to be rabbis who are serious about Judaism and Jewish texts, but who are also open to the reality of what modern life is for most people.

It’s such a privilege to be here right now and to have the honor of seeing leaders like Snorton giving something back – giving Israelis advice on how to create a broad vision of spiritual care training here. She ended her talk by sharing a definition of what spiritual care should be: “spiritual care is the art of meeting people at their point of need, to assist them in making meaningful connections between their current crisis, their faith and their life as a whole.”

I love this country so much and would so much like to be a part of bringing CPE to these shores. May it indeed be the will of the Holy Blessed One!

_______

Here are some more pics from the conference:

Miriam Berkowitz, author of Taking the Plunge, teaches about Mikveh as healing waters:

From Israel Spiritual Care Conference, 2010

Teresa Snorton, executive director of the ACPE, shares her counsel on setting up professional standards (it's so great that you came so far to help chaplaincy in Israel, Teresa!):

From Israel Spiritual Care Conference, 2010

Naomi Kalish -- ACPE supervisor, president-elect of the NAJC (and my classmate at NYU) -- gave a great teaching, using a text from Avot D'Rabbi Natan like it was a verbatim.

From Israel Spiritual Care Conference, 2010

And, finally, here's a picture of the new building at Schechter:

From Schechter dedication, 2010

Getting back to the Land -- care for the caregivers

2010-05-03T10:46:00.006-04:00

That's the Mediterranean sea behind those two bleary-eyed (but happy!) faces above. Minna and I were just an hour off the plane at Ben-Gurion in Tel-Aviv. I'm here for the 6th annual Israel spiritual care conference (it's so great to see professional chaplaincy start to get established here in Israel!). Minna came along as part of a long-term ambition for our lives together -- to make coming to Israel a regular part of what we do and not something that only happens every decade or so. I was so excited over the last week or so, thinking about coming here and often found myself daydreaming about walking along the streets of Jerusalem again and hearing the language of the Hebrew Bible spoken out of the mouths of children as their first language. Coming here is a way of my caring for my own spirit.

I'm looking forward to the conference, too, tomorrow and Wednesday. There's a delegation of Clinical Pastoral Education supervisors from the States here for the conference, so this could really be a watershed event for chaplaincy training in Israel, an educational pursuit that is only in its infancy here.

It's exciting!

_______

Here's a view, by the way, of the ocean from where we drank some coffee after we dipped our toes in the sea.

From Israel Spring 2010

[x-posted t0 smamitayim]

A walk down Thompson

2010-04-21T19:01:00.002-04:00

After class at NYU, today, I didn't feel like heading straight home and wasn't in much of a mood for studying, so I decided to take a walk south from Washington Square park down Thompson Street and West Broadway to the World Trade Center (where I worked for 10 years) to catch the PATH train there and check out what's changed and stayed the same in the 10 years or so since Lower Manhattan was a regular part of my life.

It was a wonderful walk through neighborhoods that ranged from residential to high fashion to financial district -- the incredible mix that has always made Manhattan, and cities in general, a kind of fascinating wonderland to me. I thought of my father, of blessed memory, who taught me the joy of the "nostalgia walk" where you can marvel both in how much things can stay the same from years ago and how much they can change. [Washington Square park, itself, reminds me of my father. Back before NYU came to dominate the neighborhood so and the area became so gentrified, there were many small industrial businesses in the area, including my Grandfather's machine shop on E. 11th St. As a child, my father took me to the machine shop for visits. That, too, was a child's wonderland with all its fascinating pipes and parts to see and touch!]

My walk ended at the new PATH station -- which, unlike the one of the pre-9/11 days -- can be accessed directly from the street. That's the station in the pic below. You can click on it to see a full album of my little walk.

From A walk down Thompson

Numbering my days

2010-04-21T13:46:00.005-04:00

If you've been looking at this blog lately, you'll have seen that most of the posts have been more personal -- about biking and gardening -- than professional (about chaplaincy or education). That might make you think that I haven't been working very hard these days -- nothing could be further from the truth! I've been working really hard.

But ever since Passover -- ever since we've entered the season of the Omer -- I feel like I've been living in the wake of the חג/hag (festival), especially in the wake of command for us to joyful on our holidays (ושמחת בחגך).

That command has not always been an easy one for me. I'm not an always upbeat person by nature -- and I'm often downright grumpy and sometimes even depressed -- so sometimes this command has felt like a condemnation of who I am at my core. And it's certainly a painful thing to feel like your faith tradition -- the thing that should be guiding you to all that is good and liberating and holy in life -- is condemning who you are.

But this Passover I really felt myself coming to a place of peace with this command. And I worked hard -- prepared long and seriously -- to make it a Passover of joy, a Passover where I felt like I was living my best through all of the holidays many commands. I even took Hol Moed -- the intervening days, the days that are kind of half holidays according to the tradition -- seriously: I worked during them, but also made sure to take the time to relax and enjoy the beautiful spring weather we've been having this year. Preparing for the holiday and taking its rhythms seriously brought me much joy this Passover, and I can honestly say it's the best I've ever had.

When I first started to get serious about Jewish observance, it was the crown jewel of Judaism -- the Sabbath, or Shabbat -- that first really gripped me. Judaism commands joy and celebration -- עונג/oneg -- on Shabbat. But it doesn't command us to maintain that holy state all the time. It leaves us six days for work. That's the rhythm we're commanded to live by. It's one where most of the time is given to work, but where the most important thing happens during that shorter time one day a week.

So, I've been working -- especially on my graduate studies I've been working and thinking and growing -- but what's seemed relevant to share lately is how I've been finding joy, and how that relates to the rhythms of the Jewish calendar. So I will write here specifically about chaplaincy and education, again. But what I have been writing about lately -- well, that, too, is Torah. And I'm glad to share it.

I hope you, too, will find joy!

Night moves

2010-04-18T06:48:00.001-04:00

Doing as much as possible by bicycle has always been a dream for me. So, when Shabbat got out last night, I was excited to start moving into our new place (only about a half mile away) by taking a few loads over via my Xtracycle.

Here's a closer view of the bike loaded

From Moving 2010

Note that the Xtracycle"Wideloaders" (see below pic) are installed on both sides, which allowed me to strap on the large plastic containers (normally I don't ride with the Wideloaders on).

And so here is me about getting ready to get the bike going . . . . . it wasn't so easy to get it started rolling with so much loaded on it (before it's moving it kind of wants to tip to the right or the left and it takes some effort to hold it upright)!

From Moving 2010

It was a fun challenge!

Dreaming of summer -- and tomatoes!

2010-04-08T22:09:00.001-04:00

It's been such beautiful spring weather lately that we've mostly just been trying to enjoy the "now." But in one way we've been thinking ahead. We've planted some tomatoes inside from seed with hopes of transplanting them in the ground later. Some of the seeds were ones we saved from a tomato plant -- from the Mr. Stripey variety -- that we really enjoyed last year.

It was great to see the little "Mr. Stripey's" start to make their way into the world!

Putting my feet up -- Hol Moed 2010

2010-04-02T16:39:00.001-04:00

The traditional main days of the Passover holiday come at the beginning and the end of the eight-day holiday period, but the four days in between -- the so-called intermediary days or hol moed/חול מועד -- are meant to be a time of celebration as well, a time where work is permitted under Jewish law, but where one is encouraged to take it easy. So, Minna and I were able to get lunch together in a park near the hospital, and enjoy the beautiful early spring weather.

Here's Minna on the bench we sat on.

From Hol Moed 2010

And here is the two of us:

From Hol Moed 2010

It was nice to get a bit of a rest after what were two wonderful -- but exhausting! -- seders.

Shabbat Shalom!

PS We also planted some tomato seeds inside, today. In six weeks or so I hope to plant them outside!

No bikini waxing on Passover, says feminist Talmud scholar

2010-03-25T14:56:00.005-04:00

Ok, so that's not what the great Judy Hauptman was really saying in the fascinating talk she gave at NYU yesterday (although if the tabloid New York Daily News was covering it, that might have been the headline). What she was sharing was some of the intimate details from daily life in ancient times that she was has been uncovering as part of a new project to create a feminist commentary on the Talmud (an effort, believe it or not, that is being largely funded by the German government and is being led by professor Tal Ilan at the Free University in Berlin).

Hauptman's main points were about what was happening in the ancient kitchen. The evidence indicates, she says, that women were in charge there, not only doing the cooking, but also making sure that Jewish law was being followed, even on Passover, the Jewish holiday that, with its ban on eating leavened products, is the very most demanding when it comes to laws of food. "The women were baking the matzah," Hauptman said.

That is not to say that she thinks the ancient world was some kind of feminist paradise. Men were still very much in charge. "The men produce the laws," she said. "But the women are [in charge] in the kitchen." This implies that women knew quite a bit about halakha (Jewish law) even if they didn't learn it in the Beit Midrash (study halls), she said.

This view that many women knew halakha well extends also to how Hauptman understands the role of Beruriah, one of the most famous women in the Talmud and a figure who some think represented a most unusual thing in the ancient world of the rabbis -- a woman who was a great scholar. But Hauptman does not think Beruriah was such an anomaly. "I think she was like many other women who knew halakha [but] she's not a scholar."

That is, Hauptman thinks, Beruriah may have made it into the text of the Talmud because she was indeed exceptional among women in terms of her knowledge of halakha. But that does not mean she studied it alongside men in the Beit Midrash.

So, how did bikini waxing come into this? Hauptman was talking about the rabbinic discussion of whether תכשיטי נשים -- literally, women's ornaments (or jewelry) -- can be used on Passover. The common understanding of this term is that it refers to paste jewelry -- jewelry made of water and flour. But Hauptman says it also might refer to flour paste used as a depilatory (for the removal of hair).

It was really a treat to see how excited Hauptman -- a person who has been studying Talmud for so many years -- was about her new studies as part of the feminist Talmud commentary project. "I'm learning new things about women in the Talmud," she said. "There's so much I did not know."

________________________________________

PS The main Talmud text she brought about Beruriah is from Pesachim 62b.

' שמלאי אתא לקמיה דרבי יוחנן א"ל ניתני לי מר ספר יוחסין א"ל מהיכן את א"ל מלוד והיכן מותבך בנהרדעא א"ל אין נידונין לא ללודים ולא לנהרדעים וכל שכן דאת מלוד ומותבך בנהרדעא כפייה וארצי א"ל ניתנייה בג' ירחי שקל קלא פתק ביה א"ל ומה ברוריה דביתהו דר"מ ברתיה דר"ח בן תרדיון דתניא תלת מאה שמעתתא ביומא מג' מאה רבוותא ואפ"ה לא יצתה ידי חובתה בתלת שנין ואת אמרת בתלתא ירחי כי שקיל ואזיל א"ל רבי מה בין לשמו ושלא לשמו לאוכליו ושלא לאוכליו א"ל הואיל וצורבא מרבנן את תא ואימא לך

Christian chumetz

2010-03-24T22:46:00.002-04:00

In case you thought -- as our Festival of the Matzah approaches -- that only the Jews have eating restrictions related to holidays, here is this reminder (courtesy of Taco Bell) that some Christians do, too!

From what I understand, some of the fast food restaurants around here in Berks County, PA, add fish sandwiches to their menus during Lent, although I've never been able to confirm this.

[I also was never able to figure out what this "Lenten Section" was that I found two years ago.]

It's crowded in here -- life at NYU

2010-03-23T17:44:00.002-04:00

One of the images I associate with college life is that of a wealth of common space -- big, broad green spaces and, inside, usually near empty lounges full of big couches. That is _not_ what it is like at NYU here in Greenwich Village -- life here is like life in NYC as a whole, crowded (but also full of youth and energy!).

Or so's been my theory. So the one thing that stood out for me in today's York Times story about NYU's ambitious expansion plan is this data, documenting just how tight things are compared to the competition:

By 2031, the university aims to have 240 academic square feet per student; it now has 160, according to its own study, compared to Columbia University’s 326, Harvard’s 673 and Yale’s 866.

I'm still glad to be here. :)

Is he leading us out? (close calls and Feasts of Freedom)

2010-03-22T09:27:00.004-04:00

As Pesach fast approaches, I have been taking time to reflect on the ways that I have been led out of my own personal places of bondage over the past year. One thing that has gripped me more than once over my life is the terror of not being able to get medical care when I need it. I have let this fear influence me to stay in jobs and situations that were toxic to me -- just because of terror of living without health coverage.

I do not know exactly what this new bill will mean overall, but I do know that it will mean that I -- as an American citizen -- will never again have to stay in the bondage of a terrible job, enduring the efforts of abusive supervisors trying to harass me into quitting, just because of my fear of being left without health insurance. That is real freedom.

The vote in the House was close -- 219 to 212 -- which might seem discouraging at first. But let us not forget how many _votes_ over the millennia -- votes that now seem like almost everyone must have been for them at the time -- were in fact quite close calls. The first of those close calls was the decision to follow Moses -- משה/Moshe -- out of the bondage of slavery. It might seem strange that the People Israel would turn away from Moshe's leadership, from the gift of Torah at Mt. Sinai and from the path to the Promised Land. But turn away they did -- many times, including in the incident of the Golden Calf. But in the end they followed Moses to the edge of the Promised Land and then his follower, Joshua, into the Land itself.

President Obama, may it be God's will to give you the strength of Moshe -- the strength to endure many trials and much criticism -- in your efforts to do right.

And may it be God's will that we all should be guided out of our places of bondage in the coming year -- and that we should have the strength to follow that way out.

חג כשר ושמח

Spring (and Minna) blooms in Brooklyn!

2010-03-21T20:47:00.004-04:00

Today was a beautiful day and we started it in Perth Amboy, so we decided to sneak across the Verrazano bridge to get to the Brooklyn Botanical gardens and the early flowering trees (Magnolias). We got to Prospect Park and the zoo there, too!

From Early spring at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden (2010)

Bicycling the key to reviving moribund Reading, PA, economy?

2010-03-18T17:55:00.004-04:00

When I tell people I live in Reading, PA, the only thing most people can connect to from their own memories is a long-defunct railroad that lives now only on the Monopoly game board.

But today when I, on a whim, asked the new Google Maps bicycling route feature how to get from Newark airport to LAX, it suggested you cycle where no Interstate Highway fears to tread -- right through Reading!

I don't know if I'll ever achieve my dream of some day cycling from coast to coast, but if I do, I'll take the Thun trail on the way!

Click here for the route (part of which I've excerpted in the graphic below)

.

A late adopter learns a new trick: twittering in spring

2010-03-18T11:29:00.002-04:00

It's taken me a long time, but I've finally found a reason to _try_ Twitter -- I want to know what's blooming at the botanical gardens (please, God, let me find the time this Spring to get to some of them and not miss the glory of Your early blooms!), and they all have Twitter feeds.

So, don't expect much in the way of "tweets" from me, yet, but I'm in there (as abayye).

"Commuting" via the High Line in spring

2010-03-17T14:27:00.000-04:00

On my back to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and Reading, PA, today, I "commuted" north for a bit where freight trains once ran and only weeds once grew -- through the wonderful High Line park built upon an old elevated freight railway that runs above the streets of Manhattan on the once industrial West Side.

If you click on the above photo to view it full size, you will see that there are crocuses blooming amid the grasses, signalling that spring is here and that Pesach quickly approaches. . . . . I hope I am able to get to one of the botanical gardens in time to see the explosion of daffodils and bulbs of all kinds!

Below is another shot from today as well as a link to some more photos.

From Early spring on the High Line, 2010

Riding in the rain

2010-03-14T17:34:00.002-04:00

Despite the rain, today, I went out on this route with my bicycle, one of my favorite routes.

I've been doing hardly any riding at all this winter, so it was a good feeling to see that I could still handle this, fairly short (only about 15 miles round trip), but still challenging (steep!) run.

The route from the above link is something to be excited about, too -- it's made with the new bicycling directions from Google maps (my actual route was slightly different, but it's pretty close).

Fun!

The killer research (plus?) app -- Zotero

2010-03-11T16:06:00.005-05:00

I don't like to gush about new hardware/software when I've only hardly used it . . . . . but I'm so wowed by the half-hour I just spent with Zotero -- a free and open-source on-line service for keeping track of your files and research -- that . . . well, here goes! :)

Zotero does the one thing I've been desperately wishing for ever since I started writing research papers back in September -- it not only lets you store pdf's online of the articles you're reading (which Google Docs does a great job of), but it also allows you to keep notes on all those files and organize them fifty-million some-odd ways. There is a program they like at NYU called refworks that lets you do _almost_ all of that -- everything but have easy access to the articles themselves! . . . . Which makes me feel like a well-groomed elephant who can't find his trunk. . . Or some such animal-based metaphor. :)

Zotero, on the other hand, gives you the full package. And I suspect that Zotero's utility is far beyond the graduate research area. I'm looking forward to using it more!

Rexxy is back

2010-03-09T19:40:00.001-05:00

I got my Xtracycle out of the shop the other day just in time for the warmer weather we've been blessed with -- it's got some substantial upgrades! I had them put an Old Man Mountain rack on the front and disc brakes on the back, as well as Power Grips on the pedals. Both wheels are brand new, too.

I'm in New York City, today, so I didn't get to ride it. But I did see another Xtracycle -- a three seater (with two kiddie seats on top of the back) heading down 13th street near Union Square. I'd seen this Xtracycle around Greenwich Village before, but this was the first time I saw it in motion going through traffic, complete with the little ones on the back.

Here's another view of my Xtracycle:

I hope to ride more often!

The fired this time -- teaching or perishing in the USA

2010-03-04T15:44:00.003-05:00

An entire school of teachers fired in Rhode Island because of low test scores. This is what seems to pass for educational reform these days -- blame the teachers. Or shut down the schools you don't think are doing well enough and start new ones. Or pay more to teachers who manage to make their kids -- by hook or by crook -- score a bit higher on a standardized test.

So, amid all this craziness, I was cheered to read this New York Times article. It's about people who are taking a different tack -- instead of blaming teachers, they're looking for ways to help them become better teachers. They're doing this by studying the one thing in education no one, if you can believe it, seems to think is worth studying anymore -- how kids actually learn (and how teachers can address that). The article gives an example about learning and teaching math:

It’s one thing to know that 307 minus 168 equals 139; it is another thing to be able understand why a third grader might think that 261 is the right answer. Mathematicians need to understand a problem only for themselves; math teachers need both to know the math and to know how 30 different minds might understand (or misunderstand) it.

The counterproductive overfocus on standardized test scores -- and the related overfocus on so-called basics like math and reading at the expense of art, history, literature and critical thinking -- is also brought to mind by the about face of education historian, and former darling of the Conservative pundits, Diane Ravitch. She now thinks the standardized testing championed by George Bush's No Child Left Behind act is counterproductive.

Maybe the times are changing!

A path to Jewish identity and a more healed world -- hearing the call of ethnography

2010-02-28T17:38:00.002-05:00

One of the most painful questions for me to hear from fellow rabbinic students when I was working as a teaching assistant in the Ziegler School's Beit Midrash (study hall) was the one about, "why are we doing this anyway?!?! Why do we have to study Talmud? I'm never going to use this as a congregational rabbi, anyway!"

It was a painful question because, while I was passionately convinced it was important for future rabbis to immerse themselves in Talmud study, I had trouble articulating (to myself and others) why I thought it was so important.

In time, through my journeys after ordination of teaching rabbinics at a Jewish high school and then becoming a chaplain and a chaplaincy educator, I've come to understand it as being about something I call pastoral, or spiritual, formation -- it's about developing a particular, a rabbinic, way of thinking, or of understanding the world.

This kind of purpose for a way of education -- even of a text-centered way of education -- is not unique to rabbinic or clergy education. Lawyers, too, engage in a kind of study that very often does not have direct practical application to what they will do when they get out in the field (and, many law students complain, is of little help to them in passing the bar exam they must take in order to enter legal practice). But the educational method of being forced to answer the professor's difficult questions about a case they are studying helps the students develop a particular way of seeing the world, a lawyer's way. Similarly, other professional training methods -- like that of engineering school -- do more than teach content or technique; they shape (form!) a particular kind of person with a particular kind of values and a particular kind of way of understanding the world.

As I am learning from my studies at NYU (I am in the first year of a doctoral programin Education and Jewish Studies), the language of "a way of understanding the world" is one well-known in the social sciences. There is one research method -- ethnography -- that is particularly well-suited to getting at how people understand their world. Ethnography is very different from what people generally think research looks like. We, for example, all the time hear news reports about what people think, usually in the form of polls based on questionnaires administered through random phone calls.

The problem with polling is that it doesn't really get at what is happening in an in-depth way and, therefore, is especially weak in discovering something new that is developing or that has not been identified before by researchers. The strength of ethnography, on the other hand, is in its ability to get at depth. It involves a researcher, often for a year or more, immersing his or herself full-time in an institution like a school or a hospital and trying to watch what happens both with an open mind -- a mind open to discovering new things -- and a skilled mind -- one trained to look for how the people in the setting are making meaning of what is happening to them. Although sometimes this means just observing, it often means becoming a "participant-observer."

This became very clear to me the other night when I did some observation as part of a assignment for my qualitative methods class. I tried to sit quietly with my notepad in the corner of an ICU waiting room. Mere seconds passed before a distressed family member approached me and asked me to pray for her child. I spent 20 minutes talking with this person, and in the course of that learned a great deal about how she was understanding what was happening for her, what her relationship to God and her faith was, and what the most important tasks were for her and her family while their loved one struggled for life. I realized that while -- I could not claim to be some objective observer while I was talking to her -- that I could never have learned so much about how she was understanding her world if I had not been participating while observing.

One ethnography I am reading right now is helping me think about how this works. In My freshman year, the author -- a 50-something college professor -- spent a year "undercover" as an older student doing her first year of undergraduate work, including living in the dorms amid the 18 and 19-year olds. She admits that her experience could not be the same thing as a "real" student's. But "[a]t the same time, it is the experience of living [college] life that offers the insight and vantage point need to ask relevant questions and understand the context of the answers given. It is this that I hoped to accomplish by becoming a freshman." (15; emphasis, mine)

Indeed it is the art of knowing the right questions and understanding the context that affects people's answers that makes the difference between insightful research and unhelpful research, and it is here where the Gallup poll kind of method -- for all its "objective" science and methods -- falls short.

I am interested in adding to our understanding of things that are new -- things in flux, but terribly important. The Jewish world is changing. Our young people have more choices than ever; there is nothing making them be, or identify as, Jewish. How, amid this, can we ensure not just the future existence of the Jewish people, but that Judaism and Jewishness will be something that will deeply enrich the lives of those who choose to be Jewish and that those "choosers" will be able to add their own stamp to the millennium-long story of a faith and peoplehood that has been vibrant and ever changing in each generation? We certainly can't do it if we don't deeply understand how people are making meaning of their world and their choices, especially the choices about identity.

On my own path to finding the meaning of Judaism and Jewishness in my life, a most important stop was the illness and death of my Father, of Blessed Memory, as well as my own experience of illness and hospitalization. Amid my pain -- and the rupture in my way of making meaning of my world that illness and death constituted -- certain people of faith, as well as the wisdom of my faith tradition, touched me in special ways and helped transform how I understood my world. I was cemented on my path to seeking Torah and God's ways.

I am hardly unique in this. Many people, for example, have found the experience of "saying Kaddish" for loved one to be transformative in a way that pushed them to greater Jewish identification, observance and commitment. Recently, Yossi Prager, the North American executive director of a foundation that as been part of some of the most creative projects in the Jewish world in recent years, came to talk to one of my classes. He told us how a "saying Kaddish" experience had transformed the foundation's founder from a non-involved Jew to one who became observant and dedicated his fortune to the future of the Jewish people.

At these "saying Kaddish" times -- these border spaces, or liminal moments, in a person's life -- the rabbi, or other person of deep faith, can play a particularly important role. But it is hardly guaranteed that this role will be a positive one. Harm -- painful words and actions -- can also be done at this time. And there are important -- but subtle -- ethical issues involved in working with vulnerable people, with people who are at liminal spaces in their spiritual lives.

What kind of person is the one more likely to be the "good rabbi" at these moments? How does a rabbinic education -- including Talmud study -- function to make it more likely that this person will be the good rabbi, the one who can be "interrupted" from his or her agenda enough to recognize real pastoral or spiritual needs? The one who will be able -- in the words of the first Psalm -- to encourage the hurting person to seek to become one who seeks to occupy his or herself with God's Torah day and night?

Our rabbinic schools are in flux in a way that reflects the flux happening in the Jewish world in general -- there is a greater emphasis on spirituality and mysticism (even the great center of a "scientific" approach to rabbinic education now labels itself as being about "spirituality and scholarship"), as well as on charismatic models of leadership. Alongside this trend to spirituality is a related trend to put more of an emphasis on pastoral care. The new Orthodox rabbinical school (Yeshivat Chochevei Torah), for example, considers its emphasis on pastoral care training to be one of its greatest distinguishing factors from other programs and one of its greatest reasons for being.

There is a great connection between these two new emphases -- spirituality and pastoral care. I know from my own learning journey that pastoral care training (clinical pastoral education) has brought greater and deeper spirituality into my life -- especially in terms of an ability and comfort around talking about the role of God and faith in my life -- than I ever would have expected. But I can only say so much from my own journey. How do others make the link between these two trends? Are they mostly manifestations of the same thing or are they two separate, but parallel, trends? How are these trends affecting the formation of the rabbis being trained amid them? Are they more likely to become the "good rabbi" I talked about above than the students of a previous generation? And what about questions of admissions? How do administrators understand how they are assessing whether a candidate will be a successful rabbi or a successful rabbinical student (not necessarily the same thing)? [Wendy Rosov's dissertation on pastoral formation at an American rabbinical school suggests that rabbinical schools had traditionally expected candidates to be fully formed before rabbinical school, but that this may be changing.] And what are the ethical issues around teaching students who are themselves at such a liminal moment in their lives?

Ethnography is one way I could get at these questions, and I am starting to dream about spending a year at a rabbinical school studying this kind of formation. Another thing from the My freshman year book is helping me with these "dreams." The author talks about how she focused her work. She could have gone out in search of the kind of "sexy dirt" of college life -- the "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll," if you will. But that's not what interested her. Rather, she writes:

I highlight topics that engage the classic notions we have of "the university" as a world of ideas, as a residential place where diversity and community and integrity are nurtured. I wanted to see how student culture articulates with the institution of the American university, including the vision we have of it, its mission and its future. (5; bolding, mine)

This contrasts with the way of thinking I learned in my first career (as a journalist). There, we were taught to identify what was "sexy" (although, I have to admit I never was able to completely adopt this way of thinking, which probably partially explains why I didn't go farther in that field). But the way of thinking of a social science approach, in terms of approaching a study of rabbinic education, would free me to ignore the "sexy" and instead focus on the rabbinical school as a world of ideas where community and learning are harnessed in service of nurturing or forming rabbis. I could focus on understanding the processes of how this happens and how both students and faculty understand these processes. That's exciting!

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I'm nowhere near the place yet where I will be able to do an ethnography. The next step for me, I think, will be to engage in an analysis of some of the publicly available materials from some schools -- like what they post on their web sites -- to get some idea of how they are thinking of themselves and the work they do with students. What messages are these promotional/informational materials meant to send to students? What do these materials say about what their creators think will be attractive to qualified candidates? What do they say about what they think the role of the rabbi is in the Jewish world and how that is changing?
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I am dedicating this blog post to בבתא (Babatah), an אשת מלחמה (women of war) of the time before and during the last great revolt against the Romans in ancient times, the end of substantial Jewish settlement in the Holy Land until modern times. I have been studying her as part of a class I am taking with the great Dead Seas Scrolls scholar Lawrence Schiffman.

All we know of her is from the fragments of the 30-some-odd legal documents we found of hers in the cave near the Dead Sea where she likely died as the Romans starved out the last of the Jewish rebels. At first these documents meant little to me, but I have grown to feel something of her spirit as I imagine her standing up to the non-Jewish authorities who appointed a non-Jew as one of the guardians of her son after she was widowed. The documents tells us she even traveled to stand before the provincial governor to protest this injustice. In the end, she lost this small battle, just as all the Jews of the Holy Land would lose the larger battle against the Roman oppressors. Maybe it was a hopeless effort on her part from the beginning -- our knowledge of ancient law suggest that perhaps it was. But she stood up for her rights, anyway. She was determined.

Babatah, as I stand before the huge mass of forces that stand against the future of the Jewish people and seek my own place in the battle for that future, I take courage from your example and dedication. You were truly one of the עַם-קְשֵׁה-עֹרֶף -- one of the stiff-necked people!

Why we are sad and depressed (and how we can become "happy")

2010-02-28T13:45:00.003-05:00

This fascinating New York Times magazine article -- Depression's Upside -- reminds me of a scene from Annie Hall The depressed Woody Allen character stops a good-looking couple on the street:

Allen: Here, you look like a happy couple, um, are you?
Woman: Yeah.
Allen: So, so, how do you account for it?
Woman: Um, I'm very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.
Man: And I'm exactly the same way.

In other words (according to Woody Allen, at least), chronic happiness -- as attractive as it might look from afar -- comes at too great a price, the price of being incapable of having interesting thoughts and doing interesting things.

The main psychologists profiled in the Times article say more or less the same thing, but from the opposite perspective: They claim that depression has a function -- the function of allowing people to do the kind of thinking required to come up with creative and effective responses to really tough (and interesting) challenges and questions, including challenges that lead to grief. Evolutionary psychologist Paul Andrews, for example, is quoted as saying about the person who has experienced a divorce or a tough breakup:

“I started thinking about how, even if you are depressed for a few months, the depression might be worth it if it helps you better understand social relationships,” Andrews says. “Maybe you realize you need to be less rigid or more loving. Those are insights that can come out of depression, and they can be very valuable.”

This idea that depression (maybe it's better to just say, sadness) actually has a function that should not be routinely medicated out of existence with Prozac and alike reminds me of some books I have encountered over the last few years that have influenced me, including Healing the soul in the age of the brain and Thomas Moore's Care of the soul. I was also reminded of the New Yorker's recent article on grieving around death, which asks the question of what the function of grief might be.

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I am also reminded of some thoughts I've recently had about the first Psalm (for which I have the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem to thank for the inspiration; check out their new blog on the Psalms). Psalm One starts out:

אַשְׁרֵי הָאִישׁ-- אֲשֶׁר לֹא הָלַךְ, בַּעֲצַת רְשָׁעִים;

וּבְדֶרֶךְ חַטָּאִים, לֹא עָמָד, וּבְמוֹשַׁב לֵצִים, לֹא יָשָׁב.

Which is typically translated something like this:

Happy is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the path of the sinners,
nor sits in the seat of the insolent.

But I don't think happy is a very good rendering of what the Psalmist meant here (with the word אשרי/ashrei). The results of following God's ways -- the ways of Torah, as the next verse says -- are not simple happiness; rather, they are a deeper kind of fulfilment and satisfaction -- perhaps, blessed, is a better word, as the King James and some other translations use (even though it is impossible to literally translate ashrei as blessed).

Similarly, the Schechter blog's commentary on this psalm says of translating ashrei as happy:

[C]learly the term is more profound than that, i.e., deeper than our contemporary use of the word “happy.” Ashrei implies peace, satisfaction, fulfillment and tranquility of worldview. (Martin Cohen, noting the term’s centrality, points out that it appears a total of twenty-five times in nineteen different psalms!) Thus the speaker opens with the only “reward” he acknowledges, but that is less reward than description, and the image of the fruitful tree expands upon it. His claim is that the person of faith is“ashrei,” having a deep conviction of the rightness of his ways, of their long-range influence and permanence, and of their benefit to the world.

This kind of deep conviction in the rightness of one's ways -- in the path one is taking through the challenges of life -- is something I value much more than simple happiness. And as tough as the times of depression I've experienced in my life have been, I believe they have played a role in my finding my way towards my true convictions and towards my being able to make my walk through life to be in line with those (challenging!) convictions. In this sense I feel very much to be ashrei at this point in my life. And I have HaShem to thank for that -- especially for the beautiful Torah, including the Psalms, that HaShem has given to us.

Jews, chaplains and Clinical Pastoral Education -- why we need each other

2010-02-18T18:52:00.001-05:00

People often come up to veteran chaplain John DeVelder and tell him that he doesn't know "how much good" he does. But DeVelder thinks that's not good enough for a professional chaplain to know he or she is doing a good job. "I never know how much harm I do unless I have clinical training," he told a group of rabbis and chaplains who gathered today for a Yom Iyun -- a day of learning -- under the auspices of the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America.

DeVelder -- one of a handful of Protestant ministers who, as chaplaincy education/supervisors, have played a prominent role in introducing professional chaplaincy training to Jews --- is a passionate advocate for professional chaplaincy training, especially in a multicultural and multifaith age. Chaplains -- who in many cases may be the sole spiritual caregiver in a facility -- are being called on to minister to people outside their own faith, and therefore need the professional training to be able to offer "generic" spiritual care that does not involve imposing their own beliefs on vulnerable people, intentionally or unintentionally. But DeVelder says that does not mean the caregiver must leave his or her faith behind. "I bring my religiosity with me, but my practice," he said, "might be called a generic spirituality."

The push towards professionalism and inclusivity is undoubtedly a good thing, said DeVelder, but he also believes it is important to be aware it comes at a cost. "What seems to be lost [in adopting the language of spirituality] is the flesh and blood work of the chaplain . . . what might be described as particularity," including prayer.

I was thrilled to have a chance to hear DeVelder in this setting as I -- along with so many Jewish chaplains -- are struggling with these very same issues. I have been witness in my life to the unethical and harmful acts of untrained (although often well-intentioned and caring) educators and caregivers, and I have devoted myself to becoming a Clinical Pastoral Education professional largely to be a part of working against that. But I also know professionalism is not enough. There has to be genuine heart and caring, too. And I can't get there without my Jewish faith -- my own way of relating to the Blessed Holy One and the holy mission to care for each other that the Blessed One has commanded us with and shown us the way to with Torah. My journey is to find a way of walking the line that preserves that link with my faith tradition and faith community while leaving me also open to intimate encounters with my patients and my students.

The Jewish speakers at the conference who spoke after DeVelder shared some of their own journeys on this kind of challenging path. Rabbi Gary Lavit, director of pastoral care at the Hebrew Home and Hospital in West Hartford, CT, spoke passionately about how he uses spontaneous prayer in his work. And Rabbi Joseph Ozarowski -- author of the very best volume on traditional Jewish textual sources for pastoral care, To walk in God's ways -- and Rabbi Charles Sheer, director of Jewish studies at the Healthcare Chaplaincy -- both talked about how traditional Jewish legal sources relate to crucial end-of-life questions. Both rabbis were seeking paths that allow compassionate end-of-life decision-making that is in accord with the challenges of Jewish law.

Along with DeVelder, I believe that we cannot have an effective practice of pastoral care that does not involve our having engaged in an intensive examination of how our own beliefs and values affect how we minister to others -- including how we might unintentionally do them harm by not striving to come to an understanding of their needs and desires. That's what the clinical training that is called Clinical Pastoral Education is all about. But we also should not become so "generic" that we lose who we are as Jews, especially the ability to use the tools of our own spiritual care and textual traditions -- the great stories of our tradition! -- when the time comes.

Ozarowski, for example, reminded us of the power of the final chapters of the book of בראשית/brereishit (Genesis) as Jacob approaches his death and offers blessings and charges to his sons -- including instructions for his burial many miles away from the place of his dying. Read these words from the perspective of a person facing the end of his life, Ozarowski urged us. It's a powerful lesson, he said.

I agree!