Ten Days, Two Countries, 34 Teenagers: A Physical and Spiritual Journey with the Youth House to Prague and Israel

Two and a half weeks ago, on a Tuesday evening in the Negev desert, I was encamped with 34 teenagers from our Youth House and seven other staff members at Khan HaShayarot, a Bedouin tent complex. (Well, OK, so it’s not really a Bedouin tent - it’s for tourist groups. But it’s staffed by actual Israeli Bedouin Arabs, and it really does consist of a bunch of large tents in the desert adjacent to a camel pen.) We had already eaten dinner and were preparing for a campfire with guitar and singing and s’mores, which, as we all know, are a traditional Bedouin campfire snack.

The time had come for us to recite ma’ariv, the evening service, and we created for the group a decidedly non-traditional tefillah experience. We lined them up as quietly as possible by the entrance to the camp, and then walked them one at a time out of the camp to a slight hill overlooking the camp. Each person was placed far enough from anyone else, to allow them to find their own quiet inner-space, distant enough from their friends so as to be able to hear the special silence one only hears in the desert.  There was some light from the camp below us, and the moon offered us a shadowy sense of the hills around.

Silently, we took in the desert scenery, and I reminded everybody that we are a people that came from the desert, and that prophecy - the Torah, the words of the Prophets - has always been channeled to us in the desert. We then faced north, towards Jerusalem, and recited the words of the Shema and the silent Amidah. After yet more silent reflection, we returned, one at a time, to the camp and the campfire.

Danny Mishkin, director of the Youth House, asked our teens at this point, before the s’mores, to write down a few words about the importance of being on a journey and how that related both to our trip to Prague and Israel and to being Jewish in general. We sat quietly, and everybody spent a few minutes writing in their bound siddurim, which we prepared specially for the trip, incorporating open space for journaling along the way.  

The thoughts expressed were striking. One of the participants wrote the following:

“Tonight was THE most memorable experience thus far. I have never felt as connected to God. Standing in the desert at night with the stars, praying as one group, singing Oseh Shalom made me tear up.”

Another connected the experience to the departure from Egypt:

“As I was walking to the top of the hill, I couldn’t help but think of the Jews leaving Egypt. We have always been a moving people… never fully at home until we received Eretz Yisrael.”

A third related the struggle for the modern State of Israel to the long Jewish journey of the soul:

“It is obvious that in Jewish history, things did not always come easy, such as the land of Israel itself. Endless days of travel breeded an unexpected but needed bond between Jews with the same end goal. By experiencing the same emotions of joy, sorrow, and by just achieving a general sense of what our people collectively had to go through just for the sake of a religion makes this bond unbreakable.”

You might make the case that the essential message of the Torah is that being Jewish is about the journey. Think about it: Noah is sent on a journey by boat that will guarantee a future for humanity (and Noah’s ark does not actually GO anywhere - it has no steering mechanism). Abraham is called upon to leave his father’s house and his homeland to go on a journey to an unknown place, which will some day be called Israel (after his grandson Jacob). Joseph is sent on an unwilling journey to Egypt, and then the rest of his family follows him. Moses is tasked with leading the Israelites on the ultimate journey of redemption: up out of slavery, and back to the land of Israel. And on and on.

It is the journey that defines us as Jews.  In this day and age, when we are free to choose our identities, free to opt into or out of our tradition, it is the experiences, the memories, that will inform who we want to be, whether being Jewish matters and how we want our Jewishness to manifest itself in everyday life.  

Our parashah today, Parashat Vayiqra, is also about an ancient aspect of the Jewish journey. As our bar mitzvah, Yoel, pointed out, it is about a series of essential sacrifices. But all the more so, as Yoel also argued, the sacrificial system that is laid out in the Torah and that was practiced by Israelites for nearly 1,000 years in the First and Second Temple in Jerusalem, was only a point along the way to developing a much better system of accessing the Divine: tefillah, prayer. And he is in good company here. Maimonides, the 12th-century physician and commentator, one of the biggest names on the Jewish bookshelf, said the following about sacrifices in his philosophical work, Moreh Nevukhim, the Guide to the Perplexed:

“Sacrificial service is not the primary object, but rather supplications, prayers, and similar kinds of worship are nearer to the primary object.”

In other words, the Torah describes the sacrifices in detail. But that form of worship was not God’s ultimate plan for us. Maimonides, writing more than a millennium after the destruction of the Second Temple, believed that prayer was the higher goal. Sacrifice, after all, was limited; it only took place in the Temple, and was performed by an intermediary: the kohen, the priest, who took your sheep or ram and offered it up to God. “But,” Maimonides states, “prayer and supplication can be offered everywhere and by every person.”

So why did God give us all of these mitzvot if the higher goal was prayer? Because, said Maimonides, the Israelites needed to be weaned from the idolatrous ways of the Egyptians and the Canaanites in a way that did not challenge what they were familiar with too severely. God’s plan was that eventually we would offer the words of our hearts rather than the bounty of our flocks.

What we do today as Jews when we gather in synagogues, or when we offer berakhot before and after meals, or when we communicate with God alone, is the superior form of worship. The spiritual journey from sacrifice to prayer amounts to a democratization of our connection with God.

Vayiqra, ladies and gentlemen, is one leg of our spiritual journey. And we as a people, and as individuals, are on a constant journey. Every single one of us here.

Some of us might be aware of this - there are active seekers among us, looking for that next spiritual high, searching for meaning within and without. You know who you are.

Most of us, however, are probably not aware of our journeys. Our lives are complex - we are thinking about many things - the job, the family, the kids, the next vacation, or how am I going to make the next rent check, or how am I going to help my cousin who is battling drug addiction, or how on Earth am I going to broach the topic of end of life choices with my parents? We have too many things to worry about. Who has time to be concerned with our spiritual needs?

But we all have them. Jews and non-Jews. And, I think, Jews more than most, because, at least in the Diaspora, we have always been on the outside. We ask ourselves, what does it mean to be Jewish? How can I be both Jewish and American? Why should I care, and if I don’t care, what then is my relationship to this ancient tradition, handed to me by my parents and grandparents?

As Jews, we have always been on a journey, both physical and spiritual. The physical one was often forced upon us, and for our ancestors who suffered oppression and anti-Semitism wherever they went, it was this struggle that kept them Jewish. Today, in 21st century America, where our greatest enemy is indifference, we need to send ourselves on journeys to accomplish that task.

So where are we going? To quote the Hasidic Rebbe Nahman of Bratzlav, “Kol mah she-ani nose’a, ani nose’a raq le-eretz Yisrael.” Everywhere I go, I am going to Eretz Yisrael. Not physically, but with every step, we are moving closer to Israel in spirit.

All the more so regarding the trip that we took with 34 Great Neck teens. The mind of the average high school student is in a bunch of different places at any given moment - they are thinking far more about all of the uncertainty and awkwardness of being a teenager: How will I fit in with this crowd or that? How can I convince my parents that I am more mature than they give me credit for? How do I balance school work with time for myself?

And our job was to cut through all of that classic teen stuff and help them along their spiritual journey. Because that is what visiting Israel is all about.

What made this trip work was not just Israel. It was not the combination of Israel and the Czech Republic, although that was really cool. It was not the tefillah, or the Kotel, or the desert, or the Bedouin tent, or the guide.

More than any of those things, it was the journey itself. It was voyaging together from here to there as we reflected on our experiences, as we sang and danced and welcomed the Shabbat on a Jerusalem rooftop. It was how we marveled at the tenacity and the tenuousness of the residents of the Terezin ghetto, who created a secret synagogue in a barn, as we sang in that synagogue Hannah Senesh’s famous poem Eli, Eli to remember them and their striving to connect with their faith under such conditions.

What made the trip successful was the internal journey, the spiritual traveling that took us not from New York to Prague to Tel Aviv via Amsterdam, but from the Diaspora of the mind to the Promised Land of the heart, from the cool distance of the teenage identity struggle to the close connection with our ancient religious and national heritage.

We did that. And the greater we, the we of this community, should be proud of that. You gave these kids a series of memories that they will carry with them for the balance of their lives, that will always serve to reconnect them to Jewish life. So kol hakavod!


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, March 8, 2014.)

A Jewish Value for Fat Tuesday - Tuesday Kavvanah, 2/21/2012

Our Director of the Hebrew High School and Teen Engagement, Danny Mishkin, is in New Orleans and Biloxi, Mississippi this week with 36 teens from Temple Israel (and more from other local congregations) on a community service mission to help communities that are still rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina.  Danny uses every opportunity that he can to help inculcate our teens with Jewish values, and in speaking with him yesterday, I asked him to identify those values that he places at the top of the list.

"I want them to consider that their wants do not necessarily outweigh the needs of others," he said, and cited the words of the first-century BCE sage Hillel from Pirqei Avot:

הוא היה אומר, אם אין אני לי, מי לי; וכשאני לעצמי, מה אני; ואם לא עכשיו, אימתיי
He used to say, "If I am not for me, who will be?  If I am for myself alone, what am I?  And if not now, when?" (Avot 1:14)

In other words, sometimes we hold a narrow view of the world, one in which our desires seem the most important, to the detriment of others.  Hillel's suggestion is that while we must take care of ourselves, we also cannot lose sight of those around us.


Our hope is that the teens participating in this trip, where they will be rolling up their sleeves and contributing  physical labor in an effort to repair the Gulf Coast and, writ large, the world, will not only help people in need, but will also gain unparalleled insight into a key Jewish value that they will carry with them into adulthood.  On Mardi Gras, when Louisiana parties with abandon, this is an all-the-more-essential lesson.  I look forward to hearing their stories when they return.



~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

Food for Thought - Photos & Commentary from my Youth House Class

As a part of my class at Temple Israel's Waxman High School and Youth House about making good contemporary food choices based on Jewish values, we took photos of ourselves with food products.  Some of these products are labeled with positive terms regarding sustainability and reasonable treatment of employees and animals; some of the labels are, at best, misleading.

Most of the label definitions below come from http://www.sustainabletable.org/intro/dictionary/.

"All Natural" - Currently, no standards exist for this label except when used on meat and poultry products. USDA guidelines state that “Natural” meat and poultry products can only undergo minimal processing and cannot contain artificial colors, artificial flavors, preservatives, or other artificial ingredients. However, “natural” foods are not necessarily sustainable, organic, humanely raised, or free of hormones and antibiotics. The label “natural” is virtually meaningless.

"Organic" - In order to be labeled “organic,” a product, its producer, and the farmer must meet the USDA’s organic standards and must be certified by a USDA-approved food-certifying agency. Organic foods cannot be grown using synthetic fertilizers, chemicals, or sewage sludge, cannot be genetically modified, and cannot be irradiated. Organic meat and poultry must be fed only organically-grown feed (without any animal byproducts) and cannot be treated with hormones or antibiotics. Furthermore, the animals must have access to the outdoors, and ruminants must have access to pasture (which doesn’t mean they actually have to go outdoors and graze on pasture to be considered organic).

"Whole grain" - The first ingredient of this product is listed as "Corn (Whole Grain Corn, Flour, Meal)."  This suggests that at least the larger portion of the corn contains the bran and germ.  Can't say much regarding the nutritional value of this product, however.

"Organic" yogurt - see above.

"Organic" cream cheese.

"No antibiotics ever administered" - No antibiotics were administered to the animal during its lifetime. If an animal becomes sick, it will be taken out of the herd and treated but it will not be sold with this label.


"Vegetarian fed" - Unless the label says “100 Percent Vegetarian Diet,” there is no guarantee that the animal’s feed was not supplemented with animal byproducts or is organic.


"Barn roaming" - This is not a legally-defined term.  This chicken was probably stuck in a barn for all of its 49 days.


"Complete traceability to farm" - This might be useful in the event of an outbreak of disease.


"No growth hormones" - Raised without added growth hormones. By law, hogs and poultry cannot be given any hormones - so the use of the label on these meats is unnecessary, or perhaps misleading.

"Kosher, soaked, salted, and rinsed" - The chicken was slaughtered according to Jewish dietary laws, including that the slaughtering knife was checked for nicks beforehand to minimize suffering ("tza'ar ba'alei hayyim" - the mitzvah of avoiding cruelty to animals).  The soaking / salting / rinsing process is to remove all blood from the meat, in accordance with the verse from the Torah (Leviticus 17:13-14): "If any Israelite or any stranger who resides among them hunts down an animal or a bird that may be eaten, he shall pour out its blood and cover it with earth.  For the life of all flesh - its blood is its life.  Therefore I say to the Israelite people: You shall not partake of the blood of any flesh, for the life of all flesh is its blood."

"Cage-Free Eggs" -  Birds are raised without cages. What this doesn’t explain is if the birds were raised outdoors on pasture, if they had access to outside, or if they were raised indoors in overcrowded conditions. If you are looking to buy eggs, poultry or meat that was raised outdoors, look for a label that says “Pastured” or “Pasture-raised”.


Here are the ingredients for this product:


Water, Soybean Oil, Vinegar, Whole Eggs and Egg Yolks, Modified Corn Starch, Sugar, Salt, Lemon Juice, Sorbic Acid, Calcium Disodium EDTA, Xanthan Gum, Phosphoric Acid, Citric Acid, Dl Alpha Tocopherol Acetate (Vitamin E), Natural and Artificial Flavors (Contain Soy Lecithin), Beta-carotene (For Color), Phytonadione (Vitamin K), Paprika, Oleoresin.


Eggs being only the fourth ingredient, the egg content can be no more than 1/4 of the total, and probably considerably less.

 "Organic" milk.  See above.

"No GMOs / No bioengineered ingredients" - The product was produced without the use of genetically-modified organisms.


"Made with organic spinach and flour" - Great, but what about the rest of it?

"Not treated with rBST / rBGH" - Milk from growth hormone-free cows.

"All-Natural" - see above.
"Handmade" - I have no idea what this means.

"Organic" - see above.


*****


Thanks to all who participated!  To learn more, visit:


http://www.jewishfarmschool.org/

http://www.hazon.org/

http://www.sustainabletable.org/

A Year at the Youth House

(Originally published in the Temple Israel Voice, May 13, 2011.)

As this is the last Youth House column of the school year, and therefore the last one that I will write as Youth House Director, I would like to walk back through my brief yet moving tenure in that position.

The view from my second-floor office has, like all the rooms in the Youth House, glass walls; it affords me a slightly removed perspective on the goings-on in the building. I see the door and those coming in and out; I can supervise the lobby and some of the well, and I can get a sense of some of the classrooms. Over the past year I have learned that in working with teens, there are times to watch from above, and times to roll up one’s sleeves and dive in.

We began the year in an understated way, with a burial of holy books in the back yard. In the second year of the genizah project, we did not have as much material to bury, but we had just as much fun digging in the soil and getting ourselves dirty, concluding with a somber ceremony. The next event was a trip to Lido Beach on the south shore, and although Moji was almost carried away by the riptide, we all managed to return safe and slightly tanned.

The High Holidays for 5771 were front-loaded, so Itamar and Joe pulled together Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur programs for teens even as we were trying to get our classes off the ground. The Limo Scavenger Hunt, an annual tradition, took place in the middle of Sukkot, and one of the stops was in the Adelson sukkah, which was brightly lit with what some call “Christmas lights,” although I prefer the term “holiday lights.” Just after Simhat Torah, we took off for the Fall Retreat at Camp Ramah in Nyack. The weather was crisp, the food was great, and the sky was clear enough for star-gazing on Saturday night. We bonded and hiked down to the Hudson for Sunday morning tefillot before taking the worst-ever bus ride home.

On Martin Luther King Day weekend, we took a trip to Jiminy Peak, my hometown ski area, to play in the snow, and donned tefillin while crowded into a budget motel room. February saw the madly successful trip to Israel, which took 39 teenagers to Eretz haQodesh, many of whom for the first time, with the extraordinarily generous support of the Khorshid Dina Harounian Israel Education Fund.

On Purim we read Megillat Esther for the whole congregation, and during Pesah we took over the sanctuary to lead services, and our parents and friends swooned to the lovely voices of our teen volunteers. And then the following week we sauntered out to the Catskills for our Spring Retreat, where we made our own pizzas and discussed aspects of being holy.

And let’s not forget that we hosted nearly 150 guests for the USY Chazak Division’s annual Spring Kinnus, a gargantuan feat that many in our community contributed to.

A new program called Team Tikkun, coordinated by Zina Rutkin-Becker, helped a group of our teens determine their charitable goals and find appropriate charities that met them. Their efforts to repair the world, accomplished with the generous assistance of the Benjamin Ziegelbaum Memorial Trust Fund, will give back to others in powerful ways.

Five of our seniors went out on another Temple Israel first: March of the Living, a program that takes high school juniors and seniors to Poland and to Israel; as I write this, they are celebrating Yom Haatzmaut in Jerusalem.

And of course, throughout the year were scattered our assortment of Family Friday Night dinners, sometimes accompanied by our own service, and more often in conjunction with Cantor Frieder’s moving, musical Neranena service. And we also had regular shul-ins, all-night-long gatherings of junk food and teen camaraderie.

Congratulations to our fearless President, Ari Panzer, for stepping up to the plate as a leader and helping to cultivate a new Board. Yishar koah to Joe and Itamar, for making all of our activities worthwhile, fun, and educational. Immense gratitude goes to Moji for being there to help me make all the important decisions, and to the rest of the teaching staff - Tziona, Brandon, Lauren, Rabbi Stecker, and Cantor Frieder - for making the academic side of the Youth House flourish this year.

As we make a transition to our new director, I will be spending more time watching from above than getting my hands dirty. But I will surely be at the Youth House to teach as well as to help out when I can, moving forward. Join us to help build on what was a stellar year.

7th Day Pesah 5771 - Making the Case for Jumping into the Synagogue

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel, Monday, April 25, 2011.)

Hag Sameah.

We read Shirat HaYam this morning - the song of victory that the Israelites sang upon crossing the Sea of Reeds dry-shod. There is a well-known midrash about what happened immediately before they crossed; that the waters had not yet parted, and a brave individual named Nahshon ben Aminadav jumped in, taking the proverbial leap of faith. The water came up to his neck before God parted it. Nahshon, we assume, crossed the dry land with wet clothes. But kudos go to him for jumping in.

A news story crossed my desk this week about a church in suburban Minneapolis that encourages attendance on Easter Sunday by having a lottery drawing for prizes: big screen TVs, video game consoles, and so forth. They spent over $8,000 on these giveaway items. The spiritual leader of this congregation, Pastor Eric Dykstra, claims, “I have no problem bribing people [he apologizes for being crass] with crap in order to meet Christ.” They expected upwards of 5,000 people to attend services yesterday; I did not get a chance to check followup reports to see if they met their goal.

As somebody who spends lots of time thinking about how to bring people into this building, and many hours working hard to make sure that the programming that we have here (services, dinners, schools, adult ed, youth activities, etc.) is appealing to as many people as possible, I was intrigued by this story.

“Really,” thought I. “Maybe we have been overthinking all of this. Maybe all we have to do is give away some ‘crap.’”

You know, to guarantee a minyan every week day, we give away a free iPod. And to make sure that Rabbi Stecker’s upcoming class on Jewish insight into relationships is well-attended, we raffle off a brand-new Blackberry at each session. And think of the possibilities for the Youth House...

Has it really come to this? Not that I buy into Christian theology, but if you’re looking for salvation from the eternal fires of hell by going to church, shouldn’t that be a bigger draw than a Nintendo 3D DS?

Pastor Eric thinks we should get people into shul by any means necessary. I am not sure I agree.

On the other hand, only about 20% of our Religious School students meet the synagogue attendance requirement. I would love to find a way to bring those parents of the other 80% into the synagogue and to help them realize, “Hey, if I do not bring my children to the synagogue to take part in Jewish life, who will?”

Of course, we’re all in a constant struggle for time, and we all continuously wage the battle of investment vs. results. If I buy this 47” LCD TV (for example), will it be worth the money? Will it be better than the TV I have right now? Will it raise my electric bill?

If I send my kid to Syracuse instead of SUNY-Binghamton, will she have a better chance of getting into law school? Will the difference in out-of-pocket expenses allow me to buy a new car?

And, of course, if I go to synagogue, will I get anything out of it? Won’t staying home be a better use of my time? And hey, I could go to the mall and check out big-screen TVs...

Well, what DO we get out of coming to the synagogue? Here are some possibilities:

A few moments in conversation with God
Much more time in conversation with the person next to you
A sense of community
A connection to my people, my past
Hope for the future
Herring in cream sauce (just kidding)

Alas, no TV. But isn’t all that stuff more valuable?

Or maybe I’m living out some kind of curious rabbinic fantasy. Maybe tangible items ARE indeed worth more than the spiritual nourishment that tefillah and communal participation provides. Maybe our spiritual needs are being drowned out by the endless options for consumption. Maybe the qol demamah daqqah (the “still, small voice”) cannot be heard over the din of YouTube videos and the endless clicking of the smartphone keys of texting teenagers.

Meanwhile, I want to contrast the church raffle story with another one: a New York Times article from last week about Kiryas Joel, the village in Orange County whose population consists exclusively of Satmar Hasidim.

By the numbers, here’s a snapshot of Kiryas Joel:
* Lowest per capita income in the US
* Lowest median family income (avg. is about $18K/yr)
* Highest average family size
* Median age is under 12 years old (half the population is not yet bar/bat mitzvah!)

And yet this town shows none of the typical problems that poverty statistics like these would ordinarily show: Virtually no violent crime. No homelessness. No drug use. No malfeasance. And the residents live a fairly spartan, yet committed lifestyle - Dr. William Helmreich, a sociology professor at City College, comments as follows: “They spend whatever discretionary income they have on clothing, food and baby carriages. They don’t belong to country clubs or go to movies or go on trips to Aruba.”

Kiryas Joel represents a kind of idyllic extreme: they have cut themselves off from the larger society, and it works. All (or virtually all) of their children are committed to Jewish life and practice. There is no need to auction off TVs in shul; the very idea would be ridiculous.

Well, OK, so we do not live like the Satmarers do. We are not exclusively immersed in Jewish life and practice, like Nahshon ben Aminadav was in the Sea of Reeds. And frankly, I’m happy about that. We are comfortable living in the modern world with a general affirmation of traditional Jewish practice. That is indeed what we do at Temple Israel, and in the Conservative movement at large.

Ever since the philosopher and traditionally-observant Jew Moses Mendelssohn joined the ranks of the Berlin intellectual elite in the middle of the 18th century, we Jews have lived as part of the fabric of the greater society.

But frankly, we have something to learn from the Haredim in terms of their commitment. Somewhere between Kiryas Joel and the Easter Sunday auction of durable goods, there is a sweet spot of dedication to Judaism without isolation from society; Nahshon’s wet clothes on dry land. And that’s where we need to be.

We are not opting out of gentile America, where the fastest-growing religious identification is “None.” However, as we move forward, we need to make the case for ourselves and particularly our children about why to come to Temple Israel - for school, for services, for youth group activities, and so forth.

Everybody who is here today has made a choice - to put aside all other possible things that you could have done today to come to Temple Israel. You gain something of value, of spiritual value by coming here. We have to take the reasons that we gathered a few minutes ago, and make that case to others.

Two days ago, Shabbat morning services were led by members of the Youth House and other teen members of this community. Many of you told me how happy you were to see teenagers up on the bimah, and at least two parents asked me why we do not do this more often.

Frankly, I too am happy. It was wonderful to see our young adults lead us in tefillah and demonstrate their knowledge and commitment to Jewish life as well as their fine vocal talents.

But later that afternoon, I was left with mixed emotions. The service was months in preparation and promotion. And all told, there were no more than 20 teenagers here in the sanctuary that morning, and I am counting a few that never ascended the bimah. We have over 80 kids enrolled in the Youth House; over 300 teens in this age range (grades 7-12) who are members of Temple Israel and on our email list. Where were they? And this on a Shabbat in the middle of school vacation, with relatively few academic and sports-related activities.

I would love for Temple Israel to put together a task force for discussing what we do during tefillah and creating a vision for synagogue services here, such that our community feels more ownership and connection with what we do on an average Shabbat morning. Such a discussion would, I think, energize our services, and might just bring in a few more attendees, including children and teens. Furthermore, in the coming years we will be re-designing the Youth House program, with an eye toward increasing participation not just among our community, but non-members as well. These are good things.

But the greater need is to bring more children into this room more often. We need to focus on Beth HaGan (the nursery school) and the Religious School to bring those parents here with their children. We need to develop and promote the Tot Shabbat service and the Junior Congregation service to feed into synagogue attendance, and not merely cater to those who voluntarily show up. And really the only way to compete with all the other choices and stresses that families face is to prove to them that there is value in attending.

How do we do that? Simple. We figure it out for ourselves, and then we talk about it. All of us who are here today made the choice; we should be sharing that choice with others. We in this room agree that Judaism is valuable, and I think that most of us would also agree that the Conservative model is also valuable. We need to share it with others, and set the bar higher. We need to dip a bit more than a toe into Jewish life, and model that for our families and friends. I don’t mind walking around in a wet suit and tie on Shabbat; and I hope that you will do so with us.

Hag sameah.

State of the Youth House, 2011

(Originally published in the Temple Israel Voice, 4/1/2011.)

Once Purim has passed, the rest of the Jewish school year always seems to speed toward Shavuot and hence the end quite rapidly. From my vantage point as the interim director of the Youth House, it has been quite a year. Rabbi Stecker, the lay leadership and I set a few goals for the Youth House this year, goals that were not entirely met, but that we hope will continue to be on the table as new leadership takes over. Here they are:

1. The Youth House should be open to all local Jewish teens in grades 8 to 12. While it has always (at least in recent memory) been available to non-members of Temple Israel, it was generally something that you had to know about to join, and only those who were enrolled had access to YH activities. This year, we have tried to expand the pool of participants by sending out our updates and information not just to those who come on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but to all TI member teenagers in our age range, and also non-members for whom we have email addresses.

For nearly every YH event this year, there have been two prices: one for students enrolled in the YH academic program, and one for everybody else. This has in fact encouraged non-enrolled students to come our activities, because we have made it clear that all our welcome.

We have a wonderful facility and an excellent program for teens that has the potential to attract many others whose families have never been associated with Temple Israel. With wider promotion and more savvy social networking, the Youth House could very well become the primary center for Jewish teens on the North Shore.

2. Youth House programming needs to be more flexible to accommodate the busy schedules of our teens. Parents and kids are more selective about what they choose to participate in, and are less likely to commit lots of time to the Youth House. The Youth House needs to function more as an a la carte activity center: classes can be available on Tuesdays, Thursdays, or both days, and there will be the monthly social action program Team Tikkun as well as other social action programs on Sundays, and some sort of regular trip to Israel, and the fall, spring and winter retreats, and March of the Living (we have 5 Temple Israel members participating this year), and so forth. Rather than functioning on a membership model, the Youth House might work well with a variety of options for participation. The bar will be set low for those who want only minimal participation, and many options will be available for those who want more.

3. The Youth House needs to develop greater involvement with USY and Kadima. We are not alone! There are other Jewish teens on Long Island, and all over the country and the world. Although we have had a few participants in various regional USY events from year to year, we think that the Youth House program would benefit from more involvement. In a dramatic attempt to raise the interest in USY, we are holding the Chazak division’s Spring Kinnus here at the Youth House next week (April 8-10). There will be around 150 teenagers from all over Nassau County coming to stay with us and socialize as they celebrate Shabbat in an appropriate context. This has not happened at Temple Israel in recent memory, and is a credit to our Youth Director Joe Pearlman for helping to put it together. (By the way, we probably still need help housing teens; contact me or Joe ASAP if you can help!)

Kadima is the Conservative youth group for kids in 6th through 8th grades, and although we have had a few Kadima events this year, we think it would be a benefit to the Youth House to develop this program further as well. It would also serve as a feeder to USY.

4. There should be an annual subsidized Youth House trip to Israel. Children who fulfill the requirements of the entire Religious School program and continue attending through Hebrew High School should be taken together on a trip to Israel some time during the 11th or 12th grade. This would be a positive incentive to attend, and would be something that the kids would all look forward to. Our trip to Israel has, in fact, galvanized the Youth House membership, and has in fact generated new members. To have such a trip annually would be a great community-building program.

5. The Youth House needs some official documents: a handbook and a mission statement. I began work on a handbook last summer, although the day-to-day running of the institution as well as my other job (that of the Associate Rabbi of Temple Israel) conspired to prevent me from finishing it. The Youth House, it seems, has been running on momentum for a number of years; given that I am the fourth director in five years, continuity has been somewhat lacking, such that the goals and objectives are now unclear. A good policy handbook would give everybody affiliated with the institution - parents, teens, educators, etc. - clear guidelines for how it works, what to expect, and so forth.

Meanwhile, the Youth House needs its own mission statement, distinct from the Mission Statement for Education that was drafted by Project Re-Imagine a few years back, to help focus the academic and social offerings. It is not enough to continue doing things just because they have always been done that way; every now and then we must re-evaluate, and the time has come.

* * *

There are many challenges to the building of a successful youth program, and we have many pieces in place already. But as I stated during one of my High Holiday sermons, the Youth House does the holiest work of any part of Temple Israel. As such it is all the more important to continue to reshape and redefine it. I look forward to being part of that conversation as the new director starts pouring fresh ideas into the mix in the coming year; I hope to hear your voice as well.

Vayiqra 5771 - Israel: the Mundane Made Miraculous

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel, 3/12/2011.)

When I was 17, during the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, I spent two months in Israel on the Alexander Muss High School in Israel (HSI) program. To this day, HSI takes high school students all over Israel while they learn Jewish history from Genesis to the present.

That summer, I was transformed - I knew immediately upon returning that I was no longer an ordinary American Jewish teenager from a small town in rural Massachusetts. I had been “turned on” to Israel and all that she offers.

I had hiked through wadis (dry river beds) in the desert, climbed Masada, learned to identify a Herodian stone at 10 paces, marveled at the ancient sites of Jerusalem and crawled the beaches of Tel Aviv, walked the Bahai gardens of Haifa and got lost in the alleyways of Tzfat.

(In retrospect, they gave us a stunning amount of freedom - we were given almost every weekend free to travel about the country in pairs or in groups. Somehow we always came back to our campus in Hod Hasharon, perhaps despite our youth and naivete and raging hormones. In retrospect, I wonder if my parents knew that we had such freedom? I don’t think I spoke with them by phone for the whole 8 weeks that I was in Israel, something which seems almost impossible today.)

But the coursework was demanding - names, dates, places, concepts, peoples, movements, and so forth. It was a college-level course for which credit was offered, and as such there were classes and exams and study sessions and grades. And it was wonderful. I’ll never forget our first tiyyul, to the archaeological excavations at the undeveloped Solomonic city, Tel Gezer, where for thousands of years the upright stone monoliths have stood guard over their idolatrous High Place.

And I’ll never forget my first trip to the Kotel, where the tears welled up instantly, from nowhere, as I reached out to touch the warm, ancient stone.

And I’ll never forget the ½ hour bus ride to downtown Tel Aviv, where pavement-based urban pleasures could be found in abundance for American kids with a few spare shekels.

I learned to judge the quality of falafel, the aroma of spices that complemented the mashed chick peas and the freshness of the salad offerings. I learned to haggle in the shuk. I learned to identify the best Israeli chocolate. I even learned a smattering of spoken Hebrew, despite being around Americans all the time.

And I fell in love with those ancient rocks, the holy city of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, the place where our ancestors came to offer up their finest of their flocks in service to God.

And I swooned to the spiritual hum of the cemetery in Tzfat where the 16th-century Spanish kabbalists are buried.

And I looked out from the top of what was then the tallest building in the Middle East, the Shalom Tower in Tel Aviv, to see the extent of the greatest Jewish city on Earth.

There are two things that my 8-week academic experience did NOT do for me, two things which our Youth House trip did in fact accomplish in its 10 short days. I’ll come back to that.

There is an astronomical difference between two months in Israel and 10 days. Our group of 39 teens was challenged to pack in a whole lot more in 10 days than is really possible. We covered an impressive range of the things that I’d seen on my first visit in 1987. We woke up early every morning and had long days - so long that the staff was exhausted.

But even though these kids had given up the luxury of sleeping late for a week of winter vacation back home, or in some cases sleeping late on Caribbean vacations with the family, there were rarely complaints about being awoken at 6 AM (or occasionally 5) or being pushed with programming until 10 PM. On the contrary, they learned quickly that every hour was precious, that every time they got onto the bus there was another marvel to behold.

There were for me two particularly holy moments during the course of this trip. One occurred on the southern steps of the Beit HaMiqdash, the Temple Mount complex, in the Ophel Archaeological Park that contains some of the most impressive excavations. On that morning, we got out of our hotel early, saw other parts of the park, and davened late; it was already 9 AM when we were wrapping our tefillin on the steps, facing the southern wall and the now-blocked entrance where our ancestors actually ascended to enter the Temple complex while it was still functioning, 2000 years ago. (The steps have been largely reconstructed, but in places you can actually see and walk on the originals.)

We paused right before we sang Psalm 150, the last Psalm of Pesuqei Dezimra (the introductory morning psalms), the last one in the book of Tehillim, the one that identifies all the instruments that were used in service to God when the Temple was functioning. I asked everybody to picture themselves in the shoes of our ancestors, climbing these steps for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make the very same sacrifices described in Parashat Vayiqra that we read about today, while the Levitical choir chanted and played the very instruments identified in the Psalm.

הַלְלוּהוּ, בְּתֵקַע שׁוֹפָר; הַלְלוּהוּ, בְּנֵבֶל וְכִנּוֹר.
Halleluhu beteqa shofar, halleluhu benevel vekhinor
Praise God with the blast of the shofar; praise God with the harp and the lute. (Psalm 150:3)

And perhaps for a moment we felt it, because there is nowhere else on earth that you can feel the presence of our history, the lingering buzz of God’s presence, even though the Temple itself has been gone for two millennia, and the Shekhinah, the lowest sefirah of God’s mystical emanations, has long since departed the precincts of the Temple Mount.

That was the first holy moment.

The other one came six long days later and in a place that was effectively two thousand years away. On our second Shabbat afternoon, in the coastal city of Ashkelon, where we were graciously hosted by Israeli families who identify with the Masorti movement (that’s what the rest of the world calls Conservative Judaism), and after lunch we took a short walk to the beach.

We relaxed, we dipped into the Mediterranean waves, we played games, and we watched as our guide Amos collected fragments of ancient Ashkelon that were casually sitting on the beach, and he told us what they were and from which period: a Byzantine plate, a Roman sewer pipe, miscellaneous jug handles, and so forth. It was the moment that brought together ancient and modern, in the context of an actual contemporary community of Jews like us that live in a real Israeli city that is somewhat off the beaten path. It was the nexus of the Israelite past and the Israeli present; the culmination of a week and a half of history in its modern guise. (As an added bonus, some of us even got a tan.)

On the beach, my mind flickered back over the length of the trip, and I recalled the moment on the southern steps of the Beit HaMiqdash. And I remembered the words of the poem called Tourists, by Yehuda Amichai, which we had read together as we wrapped up our tefillin. It’s short, and I’ll recite the whole thing for you right now:

Visits of condolence are all we get from them.
They squat at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial,
They put on grave faces at the Western Wall
And they laugh behind heavy curtains
In their hotels.
They have their pictures taken
Together with our famous dead
At Rachel's Tomb and Herzl's Tomb
And on Ammunition Hill.
They weep over our sweet boys
And lust after our tough girls
And hang up their underwear
To dry quickly
In cool, blue bathrooms.

Once I sat on the steps by a gate at David's Tower,
I placed my two heavy baskets at my side. A group of tourists
was standing around their guide and I became their target marker.
"You see that man with the baskets? Just right of his head there's an arch
from the Roman period. Just right of his head."
"But he's moving, he's moving!"
I said to myself: redemption will come only if their guide tells them,
"You see that arch from the Roman period? It's not important: but next to it,
left and down a bit, there sits a man who's bought fruit and vegetables for his family."

That is what Israel does like no other place - it brings together the ancient and modern, and makes the mundane miraculous.

There are two things that we did in Israel two weeks ago that I did not do when I was there 24 years ago:

We prayed as a group, honestly and transformatively. And we lived with actual Israelis, if only for a Shabbat. Those are the things that made this trip a success.

Join us after qiddush and hear from the students themselves what they experienced, because this was their trip, not mine.

Shabbat shalom.

Final Israel Trip Update

By now, everybody is home and exhausted, but no doubt still reeling from our packed 10-day jaunt.

The dramatic finish to our trip began with Friday's visit to the museum of illegal immigration to Israel during the British mandate period in Atlit, just south of Haifa. After driving down the coast to Ashkelon, we had a fabulous Israeli-style lunch at a wonderful grill restaurant called HaGehalim ("the coals"). We met our host families and split up for a few hours to prepare for Shabbat.

As the sun set, we welcomed the Shabbat Queen for the second time in Israel with the Masorti (the international name for what North Americans call Conservative) congregation in Ashkelon, Kehillat Netzach Yisrael. This is the synagogue where (our Religious Activities Director) Itamar's father had been the rabbi for many years. They were very happy to host us, and we all had a huge Shabbat dinner together at the synagogue, after which we sang boisterous Shabbat songs with the help of the local chapter of the Noam youth group (the Israeli equivalent of USY). We went home to our host families simply buzzing with the excitement of Shabbat evening, and slept well.

Shabbat morning we davened again with the Netzach Yisrael community, and then enjoyed a program facilitated by Itamar's older brother Alon, a current resident of Ashkelon, about our different impressions of Israel. After lunch we took a walk to the beach, and enjoyed the sun and the sand, and a few of us even got a little wet; Amos found for us a selection of Roman, Byzantine, and Crusader stone fragments on the beach. When we returned, the Noam group ran another program for us, and we concluded Shabbat with havdalah under the stars, holding hands and singing together as we reflected on the long roster of experiences of the last 10 days.

In my mind, the Shabbat in Ashkelon brought all of our experiences together. After following the steps of our ancestors in Jerusalem, tracing a path through Jewish history in the medieval period and the roots of the modern State of Israel, visiting the homes of and socializing with actual Israeli peers brought together the past and the present in a way that only Israel can do. As Moji remarked to me at one point, we had to start in Jerusalem and end up in Ashkelon, because that is the only way it makes sense. As the modern Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai captured so well in his poem, Tourists (Tayyarim), which we read on the steps leading up to the southern entrance to the Second Temple, Israel is not just a pile of ancient rocks; the real story is just as much the people who live there today.

While we waited for our pizza delivery Saturday night, each and every one of us had the opportunity to talk about our experiences, and the results were wonderful. It was quite apparent to the staff, and perhaps to the participants as well, how much all of our teens had grown in a mere 10 days by addressing issues of Jewish history and identity, by experiencing the Jewish state and exploring their relationship to it, and by immersing ourselves in the prayerful moments of Jewish life in the land of our ancient forebears and modern cousins. And, of course there was the social component - we all made new friends, learned to share and participate in the group, and gained new perspectives on respect. And then there was the ice cream...

Also, I hope to organize a couple of things in the upcoming weeks: (1) another group aliyah on Shabbat morning at Temple Israel, when we can all recite the "gomel" prayer for returning safely from a long journey; (2) an opportunity for trip participants to share their experiences with other Youth House kids; and (3) a trip reunion party. Keep an eye out for these.

One final note: many of the teens donated money that had been given to them as tzedakah to individuals, but we also took up a group collection on the bus. We collected a total of $326.70 (after all the shekels had been converted back to dollars), which we voted as a group to donate to Alyn Pediatric Rehabilitation hospital (www.alyn.org) in Jerusalem. As a special request, a fraction of the money will also be given to Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (www.fidf.org). Kol HaKavod!

Thanks again to the Khorshid Dina Harounian Israel Education Fund and our other donors who made this trip unforgettable.

Let me once again thank you for the opportunity to give your teens an Israel experience that they will never forget.