Summer School

[This is a modified and reposted item from much earlier today.]

Hi, everyone, and Shavua Tov [ a good week] to you all!

Of course you know why there hasn't been a post since July 4th: classes began, and school days have run from 8:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., with a mid-afternoon break for a walk to the apartment and dinner, after which it's another hike back to the Shalom Hartman Institute and return for the evening lecture.

It's difficult to imagine how the text scholars, historians, military advisors, political commentators, poets, and others from whom I have been learning manage to make the days pass so swiftly. Each effortlessly demonstrated the same high level of scholarship, humour, and utter devotion to the human dimension of their fields. At no moment did I ever feel that anything they were teaching, however abstract it may have seemed initially -- was even a single degree separated from the concerns of my professional and personal lives. Frankly, that's been a major source of the exhaustion at day's end: what they are teaching spans concerns of pulpit, community, family, and citizenship.

Afternoons last week were intense. Our teacher was Aviva Zornberg, one of the most extraordinary teachers I have ever been privileged to hear. Her topic: "Women Lost and Found" -- a study of how three biblical texts about women and their roles revealed unexpected insights into the nature of their longing to live in the presence of God. The classes took us from century to century, across Jewish sects and denominations -- reflections from rationalists and mystics, modern and ancient commentaries, and even from modern literary critics and essayists, philosophers, and seekers -- not all of them Jewish.

It was not the texts that were difficult, it was the vulnerability we all seemed to experience as we pored over the pages while Aviva linked each brilliant illumination of the text to the next. We read classical commentaries, hasidic texts, materials from Kabbalah, philological insights, ancient law, psychology, and matters of Jewish social and ethical history. Just when you thought she couldn't top what she had said a moment earlier, Aviva  pulled still more rabbis [I said rabbis] out of her literary magician's hat.

Everything fit together so elegantly. I suppose the price of such a steady stream of deeply moving insights is that you are left emptied and in need of more time to think about what she has taught. Like the writer of that song about Don McLean's "Vincent" -- remember it?: "Killing Me Softly"? -- Aviva's guided tour of the texts were utterly compelling reflections on the experience of life and the convoluted, entangled ways in which we  respond to each other under the weight of love and conflicting certainties about our "place" in each other's life. While the focus was utterly inescapably about the experience of women, I believe we all felt elevated to have such a nuanced glimpse into the struggle to attain  love,dignity, and community.

After each class, I found myself unable to leave the building without a break to refocus on the sky, the hills, the trees filled with lemons, oranges, olives and pomegranates and shrubbery bursting with more varieties of flowers that I could catalog.. In fact, on the second afternoon of Aviva's class, I was so lost in thought that I could not find my way back to the apartment and had to call Laurelle to be my GPS for the day.

I couldn't believe it when the first week ended and I found myself wishing for one more day with each of these memorable teachers.

Meanwhile, Laurelle and Keithen have found their own way to attain the bliss of contented exhaustion while I am in classes. One day they volunteered to search the massive illegal dump of  "rubble" created by the Moslem authorities when they bulldozed emergency exits for their underground place of worship at the Temple Mount. The bulldozers literally destroyed two thousand-year-old, irreplaceable archaeological treasures. But through a bit of good fortune, the destroyed materials were traced and an archaeological project funded to save whatever could be extracted from the vast mounds. Yes, Laurelle and Keithen found some archaeologically-significant items -- Herodian marble and other goodies -- that delighted the project supervisors -- but no samples to bring home!

Other days they visited the Jewish Quarter in the Old City and went back for another immersion in the Machane Yehuda market. One afternoon we arranged for a young yeshiva student from Canada to serve as a companion for Keithen, taking him to an Israeli movie theatre where he watched the latest Transformers movie in 3D with Hebrew subtitles while Laurelle explored still more of the Old City and revisited some interesting shops. Yet another day was devoted to a visit to the largest shopping mall in Israel.

It's late -- Shabbat ended hours ago. We had a lovely afternoon with a rabbinical colleague and Patti Cohen and Arthur Blank following services at Shira Hadasha, a modern Orthodox congregation that has created a remarkable new spiritual community in Jerusalem -- home to Orthodox, Conservative, Hasidic and Reform Jews singing so powerfully that it seemed to create a unique space within the crowded congregation. I recognized perhaps fifty Conservative and Reform rabbis in attendance, including Ismar Schorsch, retired head of the Jewish Theological Seminary in  NYC, one of my own rabbinical school teachers whom I hadn't seen in 35 years, and a large number of scholars and rabbis whom I recognized because of their startling resemblance to their book jacket photographs.

I owe you a more detailed look at several other places:  the City of David excavation now open to the public, Masada, the Dead Sea, the Shabbat Chattan [Sabbath honouring the groom from the Haifa wedding we attended and at which I was privileged to have an unexpected role in the ceremony] -- how are we going to have enough time to share all this before we return?  

Let me share just a couple of moments to which I want to return: moments of spontaneous laughter and tears. They've occurred more than once. Laurelle and I cried when we reached the plateau at Masada at sunrise. Laurelle wept -- not only that we made it up the Snake Path, but that we were really there. At the wall, in the City of David excavation as our guide pointed to hillside cave-tombs and said: "This is likely where the Davidic line were buried." In the hurly-burly of the Machane Yehuda market, walking through the Shrine of the Book, examining wedding garments and ritual objects from a dozen Jewish cultures across time at the Israel Museum. It has been very very moving to be here, my friends.

Laughter as we talked with new immigrants from the U.S. who had come for a summer and ended up saying they couldn't go back -- and didn't.  Laughing as we rocked our way uphill wearing our Sketcher Shape-ups and realized how much more difficult it was than wearing simple sandals (no wonder the ancient Israelites left the invention of MBT-styled footgear for a later millenium.

I'm at the limit of what I can do tonight. Don't forget that we really are thinking of you, hoping your summer is rewarding, and feeling grateful that you are with us at least in words and occasional photos when we figure out how to upload some more.

Again, have a good week, and check back soon -- the gap between postings won't be as long!

Yours,

Rabbi Larry