Garabaldi is back!

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

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

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

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!

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

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.

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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

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.

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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...

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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).

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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

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!

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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!):

More videos of Minna singing here.

The weekend also involved the children of the community. I especially love how this little guy below is "playing along" on his guitar.

From Shabbat Shira Weekend Sing-in (2011)

Here's another shot I like.

From Shabbat Shira Weekend Sing-in (2011)

Mazel Tov, Minna!

Washington Square at dusk, Winter 2011

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

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

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

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)

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!

"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)

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

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!

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: