In the spirit of my last post, I've revamped this blog -- giving it a new name and changing "location."

Come visit at http://jewishasyouwannabe.wordpress.com.

      

In case you missed Rosh Hashanah or went to bed early on secular New Year's Eve, you're about to get another chance to start a fresh new year.

This coming Friday at sundown, we begin celebrating Tu B'Shevat (it means "15th of Shevat") also known as "the New Year of the Trees." This is the time of year when trees are just beginning to bud.

In Israel, it's customary to go on picnics and plant new trees (which won't happen on the day itself this year, as it falls on Shabbat). Jews everywhere eat the seven "fruits" of the land of Israel mentioned in Torah: wheat, barley, pomegranates, dates, figs, olives and grapes.

In the U.S., Tu B'Shevat doesn't get much attention. It's not one of the major holidays on our calendar, and besides, we're still in the depths of winter. In much of the country, the ground is either blanketed in snow or too cold and hard for digging a hole. What slender sapling could survive sub-zero temperatures, anyway?

But Tu B'Shevat isn't just about trees. There's a mystical, spiritual dimension to it, and that's what I want to share with you...

There's a fair amount of tree imagery in Judaism. The Torah is called etz ha'im, the "tree of life." Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. After the flood, the dove brought olive branches back to Noah. The prophet Zechariah had a vision of a menorah with an olive tree on either side. Oil was pouring straight from the trees into the menorah, symbolizing renewal and the promise of peace. This vision is evoked in the image on the seal of the state of Israel - a menorah flanked by two olive branches. The Torah says people are like "trees of the field." We grow and mature and bear "fruit:" our good deeds (mitzvot) and acts of loving kindness (gemilut hasadim).

In Hebrew, the word "shevat" means "branch." As my rabbi pointed out in his Shabbat sermon a couple weeks ago, metaphorically each individual Jew is like a branch connected to the main trunk (the People) and drawing spiritual energy from our roots (Torah and the Jewish communities we're connected to. In a neat linguistic twist, "shevat" shares the same root in Hebrew as the word for "tribe"). 

When a branch is cut from a tree, it loses its vitality and becomes a dead stick. The same thing can happen to an individual Jew who is cut off (deliberately or unwillingly) from our source. 

Tu B'Shevat falls in a season when the branches of many living trees are bare and stark against the winter sky. These branches appear lifeless, but deep within the tree, life-renewing sap is forming and it's flowing outward through them.

Winter is naturally a time of introspection, and Tu B'Shevat is a great opportunity to reflect on our connection (however firm or tenuous) to Judaism and the Jewish people, and decide what we want to do to strengthen it.

In English, we speak of "branching out." But before we can do that, we need to go deep within, drawing on the source of our strength and vitality. Tu B'Shevat is the perfect holiday to think about how we want to grow spiritually this year and what type of fruit we want to bear. If you've lapsed in your new year's resolutions (who hasn't?), here's your second chance!

This Tu B'Shevat, turn over a new leaf. Or go out on a limb...

      

OK, so I had this grand plan to post an entry every single day of Elul. I envisioned short, helpful posts coaching you about how to make the most of the month of Elul, the "prep period" leading up to the High Holidays. It's kind of like studying for finals.

But true to form, it looks like I'll resort to cramming once again. We're already up to 13 Elul (aack! almost half-way through!) and this is my first post.  Talk about a bad example. I've been a spiritual slacker. 

But clever coaches can turn their own foibles into lessons, right? So here goes...

One of the great lessons of Elul is that time doesn't wait for us.

Rosh Hashanah will come on 1 Tishrei, as it always does, whether we're ready or not. The New Year will begin and the "old" us will plunge right in, dragging along our good intentions and bad habits.

If you, like me, have been asleep at the wheel these first 12 days of Elul, running along on auto-pilot and letting time sweep you along like a boat left to the whims of the river's current, it's time to grab the rudder.

Remember that song by REM, "Stand?" It could be the High Holidays Theme Song:

                "Stand in the place where you live 
                Now face North 
                Think about direction 
                Wonder why you haven't before"

Stop what you're doing and be conscious of where you are, right this minute. How did you arrive at this point? Is this where you want to be, spiritually?

Now consider where you seem to be headed. Is this the path you want to be on? Have you been traveling first-class, economy or steerage? Who set this course? How do you want to change it?

Remember what Rabbi Hillel said: "If not now, when?"

      

Tonight marks the beginning of the holiday of Shavuot. There are four essential things you need to know about this holiday:

1) Its name gives us no clue as to what the holiday is about.
    When it comes to naming things, Judaism seems to run out of inspiration at times. Shavuot means "weeks" and refers to the period of 7 weeks (known as the "omer") between Passover and the sixth of the month of Sivan. Okay...that's a catchy one. Kind of like referring to your birthday as "years."  
    Shavuot does have another, slightly more descriptive name: "yom ha-bikkurim," the day of the first fruits. Aha, a clue. Back in Biblical times, Shavuot was an agricultural festival that marked the end of the grain harvest. It was the day when farmers brought an offering of two loaves of leavened bread (symbolized today by our twin loaves of challah every Shabbat) to the Beit Ha'mikdash (Holy Temple) in Jerusalem. Shavuot was also the start of a new growing season, so farmers would start bringing the first fruits of their other harvests to the Temple. This ritual kind of fell apart after the temple was destroyed.
    But this isn't the reason we still celebrate Shavuot today...

2) Shavuot is one of the most significant, pivotal moments in the history of the Jewish People. 
    That's right. Even though it lacks the fame of Passover and the High Holidays, Shavuot is a "biggie." It marks the event that turned a rag-tag bunch of ex-slaves roaming around in the desert into a "a holy nation, a People set apart." 
    Shavuot commemorates the moment when G-d gave the Torah to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai. Every single member of the community was standing at the base of the mountain and was part of the revelation. It's described in the Torah as a powerful, rather psychedelic moment -- the mountain, which was smoking and shaking, "hovered" over the people, who "saw the thunder and heard the lightning." A shofar blasted and grew louder, causing everyone to shudder. From a cloud at Sinai's peak, G-d called Moses to come up the mountain (and to warn everyone else to stay back). And then G-d uttered the now-famous Big Ten.
    That was the creation of the covenant between G-d and us. And by the way, Tradition holds that we were all standing at Sinai -- even those of us who are first-generation Jews and can't trace our Jewish roots back beyond ourselves. Spiritually speaking, you were there, an eyewitness and participant at the birth of the Jewish nation. That's one of the things I love about Shavuot -- it actively engages you in the drama. There were no bystanders, no detached third-party observers. It was G-d, Moses and us, wrapped in swirling smoke and the wail of the shofar.

3) You get to pull an all-nighter.
    It's a tradition to participate in a "tikkun le'il Shavuot," which means you stay up all night long and consume lots of sugary snacks and caffeine while studying Torah and Talmud. It's fun to do this with a group of people -- after 3 a.m., the comments start to get really interesting.

4) Shavuot is not a good holiday if you're lactose intolerant or vegan.
    No one is completely sure why, but it's a custom to eat dairy food on Shavuot. Some commentators think this is because the Torah is supposed to be as sweet as milk and honey on our tongue. So Shavuot services typically end with an ice cream party for the kids and plenty of cheese blintzes and cheesecake at kiddush -- a real nightmare if your system can't handle dairy products, or if you follow a vegan diet. Luckily, modern times have brought us reasonable facsimilies for all that milk and cheese. So you can have your soy-cheesecake and eat it too.

Hag sameach! Enjoy the revelation!

      

I haven't posted anything lately, because since Purim, I've been working like a slave in ancient Egypt, cleaning the house for Passover.

It's an annual ritual -- one I dread and loathe.

Many people have written about a supposed "spiritual dimension" to this yearly drudgery. In exalted terms, they describe how removing every last crumb of hametz (leaven) from our houses prepares us to deeply experience the meaning of Passover.

Yeah....right.

Who are these people? Have they really ever cleaned for Passover? I suspect they haven't -- you can't spend weeks digging bread crumbs out of the crevices of your furniture and wax rhapsodic about it.

It's time to cast aside this nonsense about "spiritual betterment" and be honest.

There's nothing vaguely spiritual about folding yourself in half and swiveling your head around like Linda Blair in the Exorcist so that you can peer into the recesses of your oven and scrub at baked-on, caked-on hametz residue.

Shoving the refrigerator aside to reveal the greasy dust, lost magnets and errant food remnants underneath is not -- I repeat, not -- a transcendent experience. The grunts and expletives you emit while mopping up the mess are not prayers or hymns of praise.

I have never encountered the Divine while scraping ground-in chocolate cake out of the carpet.

This year, I say we acknowledge a dirty little secret -- the annual pre-Passover cleaning marathon is not good for the soul. It does nothing for the soul. In fact, my soul puts its feet up and laughs as it watches my body crawling around looking for wayward balls of Trix and dessicated bits of bagel that might have rolled under the stove.

So why do I bother with all that obsessive-compulsive spring cleaning when I could be doing something spiritual, like reviewing the haggadah and meditating on its subtleties? Why do I battle the enemy hametz for a Pyrrhic victory when I could just sweep all those hateful crumbs under the rug and be done with it? My seder guests won't know the difference, right?

True. But I will, and there's the rub. Purging my house of hametz has become a necessary prerequisite for celebrating Passover. It alters the space (my house is never as clean as it is on Erev Pesach) and sets the stage. Cleaning is part of the theatrical experience that is Passover, when we reenact yet again the story of our People's unbelievable liberation from bondage.

And when that dramatic retelling is over, there are crumbs everywhere! Bits of matzah freckle the tablecloth and the floor. And I don't have to worry about it, because it's not hametz! After weeks of freaking out about the possibility of a forgotten granola bar lurking in the back of a cupboard, and shrieking at my family, "Don't eat that toast in here! This room is a hametz-free zone," I can finally relax and enjoy my own liberation from the bondage of dust cloths and scrub brushes.

And that, my friends, is what you call the sweet taste of freedom.

Hag pesach sameach! Have a happy and kosher Passover! 

      

More Purim mitzvot to do.....

Gifts of charity to the poor (Matanot L'evyonim) -- Find at least two poor people and give them a generous amount of cash. It's nice to give them mishloach manot, too. What if you can't find individual recipients for your Matanot L'evyonim? You can fulfill the mitzvah by putting money in a tzedakah box or sending a check to a charitable organization. One I like is MAZON, A Jewish Response to Hunger. This is a national nonprofit that makes grants to soup kitchens, food pantries and other organizations (Jewish, non-Jewish and secular) that fight hunger.

The fast of Esther (Ta'anit Esther) -- this is one of Judaism's "minor" fasts, inspired by Queen Esther, who fasted as she prayed that the Jews would be saved from the wicked Haman. The fast starts at dawn on Monday (Erev Purim) and ends after the Megillah reading in the evening.

The half-shekel offering (machazit ha'shekel) -- when the Holy Temple was still standing, Jews gave a half-shekel offering during the month of Adar. Today, we make the donation in synagogue before or after the reading of the Megillah. If you don't have a half-shekel lying around, don't worry. Give in your country's currency (if you're in the US, the equivalent of a half-shekel works out to be about $2.12, so probably you'll want to give several multiples of a half-shekel).

Listening to the Megillah -- yes, this is a mitzvah. It's so easy, because you're required to listen, not read along (so don't worry if you don't know Hebrew). On Monday night and again during the day Tuesday, anyone over the age of Bar or Bat Mitzvah (13 for boys, 12 for girls) is required to hear the whole Megillah. Whenever the reader says Haman's name, stamp your feet, twirl your grogger, hoot or boo.

Get schikered (drunk) -- On Purim, the Talmud commands us to get so tipsy we can't tell the difference between ("ad lo yada" in Hebrew) Mordechai the righteous and Haman the wicked. When someone passes you a little cup of schnapps or whiskey during the Megillah reading, drink up!

Eat up! -- Late in the afternoon on Purim, we're supposed to have a Purim seudah (feast). There are no special prayers or rituals associated with this meal. It's just a great excuse to get together with family and friends for some good food.

Hag Purim sameach! (Happy Purim!)

      

Time to start getting ready for one of our craziest and most complex holidays -- Purim. It's been called the "Jewish Halloween," but that's only because of the costumes. Otherwise, Purim and Halloween have nothing in common.

Between now and March 9, when Purim begins at sundown, I'll post some quick entries to help you get in the mood.

Let's talk about one of the mitzvot of Purim: giving Mishloach Manot, or gifts of food, to friends.

Start by selecting a variety of foods -- fruits, nuts, cookies, candy, pretzels, chips, small packages of tea or coffee, little bottles of schnapps or other liqueur, fancy little jars of jam or olives, chocolates, and so forth. You don't have to do all of the above -- just make sure you have at least two different types of food, so recipients can say two different blessings (for example, the blessing before eating fruit and the blessing before eating cookies or other sweet pastries).

If you're feeling creative, you can give a theme to your Mishloach Manot (also called Shalach Manot). Try making Purim Italiano Mishloach Manot (a box of pasta, a jar of spaghetti sauce, a small bottle of wine, a wedge of Parmesan, etc) or Healthy Purim (fresh fruit, organic granola, green tea, veggie chips, whole-wheat scones, etc), or a Chocolate Lovers' shalach manot (everything from chocolate hamantashen, chocolate-covered raisins, mole sauce, fudge -- let your imagination run wild).

Next, you'll need some sort of container to put the treats in. If you feel like splurging, buy pretty gift bags, boxes or baskets. I prefer to keep it simple (and cheap) -- a brown paper bag with some Purim stickers works just fine (and is ideal if you're short on time or money). If you have kids, put them in charge of decorating the bags. I've also seen (and received) Mishloach Manot goodies in containers shaped like Chinese take-out boxes, fabric bags (muslin and organza are common choices) and even paper plates covered with foil or plastic wrap. There are no hard-and-fast rules.

It's customary to deliver the mishloach manot on Purim day. And that's it -- you've done a mitzvah and endeared yourself to your friends!

Next time, we'll talk about another mitzvah of Purim, gifts to the poor....

      

Here's a note from a reader:

"Information on how to approach a synagogue or rabbi for the purpose of furthering one's education would be much appreciated. Which folks are more open to converts? Perplexingly, it sometimes seems the more conservative, the more open."

In Pirkei Avot ("Chapters of the Fathers") -- a book of incredible Jewish wisdom, insight and inspiration -- the Talmudic sage Yehoshua ben Perachyah advises: "Asei l'cha rav," which means, "Provide yourself with a teacher." Unfortunately, good old Yehoshua doesn't give us any "how-to's."

So I'll try to fill the breach.

You ask: "Which folks are more open to converts?" Ideally, everyone should be, whether they're Reform, Reconstructionist, Renewal, Conservative, Modern Orthodox, Traditional Orthodox. We are instructed in Torah to welcome the "ger" in our midst (the literal translation of "ger" is "stranger," but it's traditionally understood to mean a person who has converted). 

In reality, however, some communities are more open than others because they aren't hung up on narrow ideas of who "belongs" at their synagogue. Other places are so locked into preserving their "identity" that they really don't want any "new blood."

The only way to find out is to go shul-shopping. Visit synagogue offices on a weekday and ask about the community. Does the staff eye you suspiciously or do they seem overjoyed to see you? They should load you up with a schedule of events, a copy of the newsletter, a few pamphlets about their classes and then introduce you to the rabbi, if he or she is available. 

Then go back to the synagogues on Shabbat. Are the congregants welcoming (during my first visit to the synagogue I eventually joined, a woman walked up to me and said, "Hello. Are you new? Are you married?"), or do they bury their faces in their prayerbooks and ignore you? How does the service feel? Not to sound hokey, but what's the vibe? Are people davening (praying) with earnestness and sincerity? Or do they seem listless and bored? Do they smile at you and one another? Are ordinary congregants actively involved in the service (i.e., leading the singing, reading from Torah)? This is a sign of a Jewishly literate and educated congregation that could connect you with capable teachers.

Which brings us to finding a "rav." Of course, you could use the cold calling method, in which you contact a rabbi out of the blue. I don't recommend this approach. Many years ago, I called a rabbi about conversion. He was the head of a community about 15 miles from me. "Do you plan to move here and join my congregation?" he asked. When I said no, that I was just looking for someone to study with for conversion purposes, he suggested I call a rabbi closer to home. He told me he only worked with candidates  who would eventually become members of his community, so that he could make sure they continued to live a Jewish lifestyle after conversion (hey, at least he was upfront).

I suggest that you hold off on approaching a rabbi until you've seen him or her "in action" a few times. This is the safe way to scope them out. Every rabbi has his or her own unique style, which is determined by age, gender, personality, upbringing and Jewish life experiences. Finding yourself a rav is a little like dating -- you don't want to commit until you have a good sense of who the person is.

And with all due respect to Yehoshua ben Perachyah, why confine yourself to just one rav or one synagogue (I belong to a Conservative and an Orthodox shul. And I go to Torah class at a Chabad house). Jewish learning takes many forms and happens in many contexts. I believe you can learn something from every single Jew you meet. Take lots of classes and workshops with lots of rabbis and with knowledgeable lay leaders too. If you're lucky to live where there are a lot of choices, sample them all. Take a class at a Reform temple one week, then go to your local Chabad the next. And if there's a Jewish community center (JCC) in your town, that can be another place of learning for you.

Wherever you go, I want you to know that you do not have to say you converted to Judaism. Not that it's a deep dark secret, but if the conversion process is complete, you are a Jew and should be accepted as one. Any synagogue in the world is your spiritual home. You have a right to be there, as much right as someone born into Judaism. Don't feel that you have to explain how you arrived at the threshhold.

I've emailed all my rabbi friends (they cover the spectrum) about how they suggest finding the right teacher. As their responses come in, I'll post them.

Shabbat shalom!

      

We lost important members of Am Yisrael last week -- Rabbi Gabi and Rivka Holtzberg, of blessed memory. They ran the Nariman Center, the Chabad house in Mumbai. They left behind a two-year-old son, Moshe'le, who managed to escape with his nanny when the terrorists attacked. The Holtzbergs were not yet 30 years old.

The center was a gathering place for Jews who lived in or were visiting Mumbai. There are reports that three guests at the center were also murdered.

Regardless of our affiliations within the Jewish community, an event like this unifies us as a people. Whether you're Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, secular, on-the-fence or at the margins, the death of a fellow Jew is a loss. Judaism teaches that each life is unique, and each of us has a special purpose in the world. Each member of our community (in the broadest sense) is precious.

The rabbi and his wife reached out to countless Jews, welcomed them for Shabbat meals, helped them deepen their ties to our people. The work they performed was valuable and vital and touched many lives.

As a Jew, when you hear of a death, the appropriate utterance is "Baruch ata HaShem, elokeinu melech haolam, dayan ha'emet" (Blessed are you G-d, Ruler of the Universe, the righteous judge).

When something like this happens, it's common to feel powerless and depressed. But Judaism, being a religion of action, has helpful guidelines in place.

It's customary to perform mitzvot in honor and memory of those who died. You can light the Shabbat candles or give tzedakah in memory of the Holtzbergs. To help the Nariman center continue its work, please consider sending a contribution to www.chabadindia.org in their memory.

One of my rabbis sent an email of consolation to members of our congregation. I want to share with you what he wrote:

"We might not know what to say. But now we know what to do. Stick together...Carry on...Let's fight darkness with light."

May all those who lost someone in Mumbai find comfort, and may the memories of their loved ones be a blessing.

      

Giving thanks is a quintessential Jewish activity ...<< MORE >>