this was spurred on by a post from shachar— isn’t it wonderful??
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuit_Blanche
and this, also from shachar:
February 7, 2010
*whew*
when i awoke at seven this morning, i had no idea today was going to be an unexpected day. you know, one of those days that keep you going going going until you’re back home at nine in the evening and have no clue where the hours in your day went.
i started class @ 7.45 am, as usual (now that i’m attending chassidus in the morning). i went to two other classes and then popped out mid- ulpan (with tehilla, which was unfortunate because her class is one that i really enjoy) to attend another ulpan course. that is, to catch the tail tail end of it and chat with the teacher.
this new ulpan course is called ulpan morasha. i’ve talked with the secretary many times on the phone, but that still didn’t get me anywhere. anywhere productive, anyways. so i decided to stop by (btw, this seems to be a very israeli thing— you get nothing accomplished unless you drop by wherever, in person, and talk to real live people) today and catch the moreh, the teacher, @ the end of class.
i didn’t have any real trouble locating the building (thank gd, ’cause that’s usually half the battle right there in this city). the ulpan class is situated in what looks like a rec center for all ages. it had flyers posted for yoga, language and craft classes. finger paintings and intaglio prints were hung on the walls of the long corridors.
with the help of a few english and non- english speakers, i was able to locate the moreh, tamar. the ulpan office is such a fascinating place to be in— there’s so many languages spoken at the same time it’s a bit unreal: french, russian, hebrew, english, dutch, chinese.
when i finally had the chance to sit down and speak with tamar, she tested my hebrew. it was decent enough. tamar said she had split the class into two: one half being intermediate and the other, beginner. if i had enrolled a week earlier (aka on time), she said i could have been in the intermediate half, but since i was showing up a week late, i was positioned in the beginner’s half. not too bad though— she said i could move up if i proved my learning abilities.
during our conversation, a man came up to tamar and asked her if he could enroll in her class as well; one of the office secretaries was with him and she attempted to translate into hebrew (even though tamar obviously spoke english well). he said he was willing to learn but a problem sometimes came up during the process; he couldn’t think of the word in english or hebrew, only dutsch.
he said, “the only way i can think to describe it is… like moses. you know, he sometimes had trouble speaking.”
and i said, “a stutter?”
and the secretary translated into hebrew to tamar what the dutch man had said; the women looked at each other and tamar said, “oh, a speech impediment— that’s ok, bseder, don’t worry about that. i’ll see you on tuesday.”
and that was it. she turned around and continued talking with me. i’m learning to love how israelis just get to the point.
this reminds me of a happening that occured the other day:
i stopped by an outdoors shop to check out tents for fun and see what information they had to offer on the israel trail, a trail that traverses the country from north to south and takes about 45 days, if you take it at a relaxed pace.
i ended up chatting with one of the clerks, a young guy, about the trail and when i asked him, “do you have ultra- lightweight tents for two people?”
he said, “yes,” and continued to stand there for a few beats.
i looked at him quizzically. why wasn’t he fetching these aforementioned tents of which he spoke?
i said, “umm, may i see one?”
as if he were startled, he jumped up and said, “yes, of course! here they are over here.” and he proceeded to show me all their lovely, ultra- lightweight, reasonably- priced backpacking tents from some israeli brand i had never heard of.
after exhibiting a few more tents, he told me a bit more about the trail. i asked, “do you have a business card i can take with me, so i can give you guys a call if i have any questions?”
he said, “yes,” and, again, continued to stand behind the counter, not moving an inch.
i said, “may i have one?”
and, again, it was as if a lightbulb turned on— “yes, we have one right here!” and he kindly found a card for me to the side of the desk, behind the counter.
after leaving the store, i realized that, in asking my questions, i hadn’t been direct— i asked if something was available, i didn’t ask for that something. so now i know: if i’m going to living in israel for a while, i need to learn to be more direct. hopefully, intensive ulpan will be able to help me with that.
anyhoo… ulpan. tamar asked me to come in tomorrow and get notes from another student. i told her i could come in for a little bit in the morning, but then i had work at ten. she said, ok, as long as i can rearrange my work schedule, i shouldn’t have any problem catching up in class.
after ulpan morasha, i had hoped to return to mayanot for lunch but realized i didn’t have time for it— i had a new cleaning job @ 2 and by bus, i wouldn’t have been able to make it to work until 3. so i hopped the #4 and rode it to northeast jerusalem, french hill.
the woman i ended up cleaning for was… well, young. younger than i had expected. she looked a few years older than me. she was married and had two kids, her youngest just three months old. she was kind, offered me water and then i got down to business. i finished up at 5.30, a good three hour shift, and headed home afterward. i was exhausted; i unfortunately didn’t get the chance to catch lunch so i was running on water, two dates and a handful of banana chips for six and a half hours. as soon as i returned to katamon (thank gd the #4 goes straight from french hill to mayanot) i picked up a hearty salad at cafe cafe, which is just down the street from mayanot, and a couple chocolate covered raisins (i’m not as addicted as i once was..).
and now, i’m back. exhausted. hayley and i skyped liz in a funny conference call/ im-ing thing—- liz was in nj, chatting and typing; i was in one of the empty classrooms, chatting and typing; and hayley, poor hayley, was in class (not mandatory for me but mandatory for her, now), typing.
oh well, it was good to have the three musketeers back together again… even if it was over awkward skype.
shavua tov, have a good week, y’all!
February 5, 2010
please note the new links to the right– marlon’s another unprofessional title and liz’s the wandering jewess (the latter is not so new but deserves recognition all the same). each have their way with words and, my, is it inspirational.
today was a looong, challenging day. after attending a couple classes this morning, i went to the student visa office downtown. there was more chaos involved but in the end, i received an appointment to actually apply for the visa—yes, four months in and we’re still going through this bureaucracy dance.
i stopped by the vegetarian- organic buffet for lunch, the village green, and walked down to my cleaning job @ 2 on emek. after work i sauntered back to mayanot. as soon as i walked in, i was ushered into chevrusa and then, thank gd, at seven pm, i had the first moments of the day to myself. it felt like such a relief, to finally be able to breathe.
so i called my mom and carrol. it was great to touch base.
afterward, i tried working out a few things… plans for the near future, budgets, etc. but in doing so, i think i discovered that my credit card isn’t very happy. that is to say, i think it was used by someone who is not me :( but i’ll have to call in tomorrow morning to check it out. let’s hope it’s just a fluke!
February 4, 2010
yes, i had a dream i stood beneath an orange sky….
i went to another one of shlomo katz’s shirs today. great great stuff. and i loved his giving- over so much, i wanted to share a few notes with you. shlomo carlebach, rebbe nachman and a whole lot of chassidus was brought down by shlomo katz; the words in bold are from a shir given by carlebach, the ones in non- bold are my written notes.
reb shlomo (carlebach) spoke in a rather nonconvential way — it may take some getting used to, an accquired taste. also, i’ve omitted quite a few esoteric ideas from the original shir for ease of posting and ease of reading; please excuse the patchwork format.
celebrating the mistakes
this is one of the deepest torahs of reb nachman. this month we are wiping out amalek.
amalek is a whopper of a concept in judaism. on the literal level, they’re an ancient nation that are only recorded to exist in torah and are instrinsically evil (read: “evil”= devoid of revealed gdliness); jews are intended to, at the very least, stand against them and, at the very most, wipe them out completely. what does this mean on a deeper level? amalek represents the negative, the holding places within us that we need to acknowledge and then flush down the toilet.
amalek is the archenemy of israel, amalek is the archenemy of every human being… who is he? we are not talking about physically, a little brother amalek running around, we are talking about amalek!
… this is one of the torahs of reb nachman.
amalek is the one who comes to you and tells you, “you can’t do it, you are not strong enough to do it.”
can’t do what? can’t acheive your goals, can’t reach your enlightenments, can’t do great things. the question is, how long will it last, says amalek. it won’t last long and you’ll just fail and fail again. you’ll come to the point where you won’t even try because amalek says, if you try you’ll fall and it’ll hurt even more than not trying at all. so don’t try.
to be in fear of doing something good, to shine, is paralyzing.
imagine one day i wake up and i say “master of the world, from now on i mamash want to serve you.” so brother amalek comes as a little voice’le (“le” is a diminutive in yiddish) inside of you and says, “who are you kidding? i know you, you are a failure. you were a failure until now, i know you will do it for maybe for three days and then it’s over.”
i want you to know something awesome. i could swear that ninety percent of marriages that end up in divorce, during the [chuppa] ceremony some people were standing there, amalek, and they were saying to each other, “i’d love to see how long this lasts”. shooting, shooting arrows, shooting arrows.
so i want you to know, reb nachman says that there are two things a person needs to be aware of. you can always begin but even more so, you also have the strength to finish it… really till the end, and you see, it takes a lot of courage to begin but this is not the courage we need. the deepest courage we need is really holding out.
you know what holding out is? not that i am successful from beginning to end, that i am a failure every day but i am holding out, holding out.
i may be a “failure” every day but i am holding out, holding on.
this is the deepest. whatever you think of people, that’s what you think of gd. whatever you think of gd, that’s what you think of people. you know what amalek is telling us? “face it, do you really think that one day the world will be paradise, the world will be good?”
look, gd is trying for so many thousands of years and it doesn’t work.
what doesn’t work? perfecting the world, bringing the world to complete goodness.
amalek is telling me the same thing about gd [as he is telling me about myself and] about the whole world. “forget it, don’t waste your time, it won’t happen.”
so you know what we’re doing on purim?
purim is the next major holiday in the jewish calendar. it falls on feb 28th (29th for jerusalem) and celebrates the story of esther and mordechai in megillat esther. this is also jestingly known as the “jewish halloween” since most people dress up in costume.
so you know what we are doing on purim? we are celebrating that it will happen…
that the world will become paradise
and on purim we are living on the level that it happened already… on purim, we are mamash living in another world.
…the gemara says that “yom kippur,” that yom kippur is a little bit like purim but not really.
yom kippur is the day of atonement in the jewish calendar.
on yom kippur i am standing before gd and i am telling gd all my failures and ask for forgiveness. that’s very nice but this is not the highest because who gave you the right to say something bad about yourself?
on purim when i wipe out amalek, i’m wiping out the “right” to talk poorly about myself.
——
on purim, we give shalach manos, we send gifts of nosh and snack to each other via messengers. like cookies and fruits and such.
we are sending gifts to each other not face to face. why not face to face? i want you to open your hearts. do you know what i am doing with my failures? i am hiding them. i don’t want you to know about them, when i am successful i can tell you. when i am bankrupt it’s hard for me to admit it, i am not calling up and saying “thank gd another failure, mazal tov, i failed again.”
do you know why we are sending gifts? i am sending gifts to let you know that even that part which you are hiding from me…. i give you strength, i am giving you strength to that part which you think you have to hide.
it’s okay because that’s the way gd wanted the world to be, you only learn from mistakes.
” a person doesn’t conquer the words of torah unless they fall by them first”
and here i want you to open your hearts in the deepest way. there are two kinds of learning in the world. there is learning that one and one equals two. if you are not a complete idiot you take your two fingers and one and one is two, or take your toes. (whatever is more available, unless you have socks on.) that’s why the hippies were such good mathematicians. they could come and they always had their toes available, mazal tov.
but then there is a different kind of learning. do you know something, i’m getting married and i buy a book on marriage, it was $5.95, second hand. so i am learning and i know every word on the book, do i know how to do it? no, because the real things in life… you can only learn by mistake. and you see, when you fail and make mistakes, this is the deepest teaching, this is the deepest process of learning. i want you to know, when you study the talmud and you say you understand it, you are out.
… i’ll tell you something very deep. i’m sitting on the subway in new york going to borropark, how far can you go? next to me is this absolute beautiful girl and i can mamash swear that she is my soulmate. i ask her “what’s your name?” “channale,” pssh, take out my pen fast. “what’s your number?” “435-6611,” gevalt, i write down her number. next day i call her up, take her out, and four weeks later we are married. does it blow your mind?
no. the craziest thing is i am sitting next to this girl, i don’t have a pen and i don’t have a paper and she is leaving the next stop. she says to me, “435-6611″. going down from the subway i am repeating it to myself but by the time i get home i don’t know anymore if it is 6611 or 1166. do you know something? for 2000 years i dial every combination and one day gevalt, she is on the phone. do you know how deep this is?
2000 years of dialing, 2000 years of searching for the right number, the right match
so will you tell me that it is the same marriage as the one if i had my pen and paper in my hand?
no, something else.
——
so this is just the beginning of the shir. if i have the koach, i’ll post more of it later. if you have any questions, comment below! i know it can be a little hard to grasp and there’s a lot of vocabulary and context to understand— so if you need clarity, i can try to do my best to provide it.
or maybe you won’t read it at all. i know :) i suppose posting this for you means also posting it for me— regurgitation helps solidify ideas that would otherwise be too high or too transparent to grasp.
February 3, 2010
i just returned from a shir @ simchat shlomo… and i feel like i’m on top of the world.
i went to classes today and they weren’t bad. i went to the p.o. to check up on a package (none to be found… yet), took a shower and headed out to nachlaot. it was a most leisurely and refreshing walk— i took a small, spontaeneous detour, which added a little spice on the way.
i met up with shifra (from boulder) @ asher’s— he’s the guy who does macrobiotics. he offers meals to the community out of his home for a small fee every sunday, tuesday and thursday. kinda like part soup kitchen/ part hole in the wall restaurant/ part college co-op/ part granma hippie’s kitchen.
there was nearly a full table of guests when i arrived and asher was in the kitchen, serving up food for people, buffet- style. it was a wonderfully simple spread: cooked veggies, raw veggies, different kinds of cooked seaweed, raw pizza, mashed sweet potatoes and salad. not the spunkiest food ever but the effect is amazing— i walk out of there and i don’t feel stuffed, yet i’m satiated for the rest of the day (or night). so this is what is feels like for our food to work properly, efficiently, the way it was meant to— no sugar highs, no blood sugar crashes, no sudden cravings or unnecessary snacking to snack.
truly, this is power food.
one thing i love about asher’s table is that you never know who’s going to show up—- both friday night and today, it’s been such an ecclectic, international crowd. amazing what kinds of people power food will draw.
after dinner, shifra and i headed to simchat shlomo (less than a two minute winding walk from asher’s) for a class with r’ shlomo katz. i had never taken a class by him before though i’d heard great reviews and, well, i really liked his music. so i went and wow, wow, wow… it was amazing. as they say here, “it was SO high” :) it was on the holiday purim and r’ katz brought down shlomo carlebach like none other. he gave it over with serenity, upliftedness, complexity and passion all at the same time… amazing amazing. i cannot WAIT for his shiur next week :)
after class, shifra met tmol shilshom. a.k.a. i introduced her to tmol shilshom, my favorite coffee shop. we ran into nili and her friend on the way and we had a brief, pleasant chat. (backstory: nili and i have been trying to do coffee for nearly three months now; i’m sure it’ll happen one of these days.. she’s just a very busy gal).
anyhoo, when we arrived to tmol, shifra ordered a chai and read “anatomy of the soul” while i got a sachlav and worked on postcards. she shared with me her incredible, energy- experience in tsfat this weekend… without going into detail, i’ll just say it was wild stuff. stuff that would make stoic men gape in awe and tzaddikim shrug.
——
it was a quick walk home.
i passed the usual suspects: one of the biggests parks in the city; the president’s house, guarded by men who most likely recognize me from the frequency of my passing- bys; the bird- farm attached to the high school dance academy (the male peacock rested where he always does, on the corner of the tin roof of the chicken coop); the graffit’d picture of a girl, graffiti-ing; and then, finally, mayanot.
——
my mind is reeling with the possibilities for the near future— so much so that it may propel my body to leave mayanot sooner than planned.
February 1, 2010
isn’t it funny that the moon waxes and wanes in a different direction in this part of the world?
……..
The moon is most happy
When it is full.
And the sun always looks
Like a perfectly minted gold coin
That was just Polished
And placed in flight
By Gd’s playful Kiss.
And so many varieties of fruit
Hang plump and round
From branches that seem like a Sculptor’s hands.
I see the beautiful curve of a pregnant belly
Shaped by a soul within,
And the Earth itself,
And the planets and the Spheres—
I have gotten the hint:
There is something about circles
The Beloved likes.
Hafiz,
Within the Circle of a Perfect One
There is an Infinite Community
Of Light.
~hafiz, “circles”
February 1, 2010
i thought some of you wordaholics out there would appreciate this (marlon?), and particularly those of you with years behind you (i won’t mention any names… *ahem* carrol)
http://gartalker.wordpress.com/2010/01/31/words-that-are-going-extinct/
just a nice reminder that wordpress puts up some pretty neat featured blogs on their homepage.
——
in other news…. i got another job, and this one’s gonna rock. i can tell.
the awesome lady that i every so often clean for is going on vaca with her husband and their house (aka their cat, vashti) will need to be sat. for three weeks!! i am sooo stoked because
a) it’s a nice place with
b) an amazingly spacious and well- equipped kitchen so
c) i’ll be able to cook and bake and have shabbos guests over and
d) it’s ridiculously well located and
e) it’s less than a five- minute walk to my caretaker job.
woot!!
so so so excited :) especially about the cooking part! of course, the oven is fleshig, so that means i can’t bake anything dairy (from milk to butter) in it, but that’s ok because there are always substitutes that i can use like almond milk or margerine.
btw, margerine is “margerina” in ivrit. good to know!
January 31, 2010
edit: this is a scroller, take a breather :)
shabbos was so amazing this week i didn’t want it to end… which is incredibly unusual for me.
this weekend, mayanot had a mini shabbaton in tsfat (pronounced “tsfas” if you’re ashkenazi.. this pronunciation may slip into my writing here and there). i realized i wouldn’t be able to go to tzfat because i was working until 3 pm on friday and didn’t feel comfortable in asking for more time off after last week when i asked to leave an hour early for shachar and lynne.
so the girls left around 8 am and i went to work friday morning. it was such a relaxing morning— i awoke early, took a shower had a leisurely breakfast and took bus 18 to the shuk. once i arrived, i realized i had quite a bit of time to kill before work @ 10 so i meandered the aisles, which were relatively calm for a friday morning, and bought several items for my shabbos hosts (mainly dried fruits— i’ll explain why soon). i discovered a b’datz dried fruit and nut stall at which i had never shopped and decided to stop by because of their reasonable prices. surprisingly, one of the guys working there was trusting enough to give over a handful of bags to me and let me pick out my own fruits of choice (usually, they measure out what you ask for, tie up the little plastic baggy and ask, mah od? what else? until you tell them zeh’u, that’s it).
from the shuk, i wandered down agrippas to king george (a main street kinda of paralleling yafa st, the main main street in downtown jerusalem) and stopped in a few stores to window shop. one neat place i went into was a half a block down from my second couch surfing host, idit; it was a book shop that truly belonged in 1974 boulder. it was much bigger than the storefront led you to believe; it snaked downstairs and revealed several different alcoves filled with yellowed books, in english and hebrew, and vinyl records. i didn’t have much time to spend there but when i left, i told the store owner i’d be back— he handed me a bookmark business card, smiled and said, shalom. it was cute in a sincere way— he was bespeckled older man, but not too old, wearing what he had left of his graying hair in a ponytail, sporting a knitted sweater and an old- fashioned valediction, shalom.
i sauntered to work and arrived a few minutes early. and, as soon as i walked into the door, my morning energy shifted. dramatically. i was greeted, ordered and reprimanded all in the same, first breath. and that set the precident for the rest of the day. there were a lot of eye- rolling moments (and “just remember, don’t take it personally” moments) throughout the day but, somehow, i managed to work ’til the end of my shift without quitting. honestly, there were a couple times where i imagined myself saying, “i quit” and then walking out all hollywood style… but then i reminded myself that this couple really needs my assistance, no matter how much they gripe and shout.
anyway, as you can imagine, i was completely drained by the end of my shift, emotionally and physically. within the last part of my shift, i ended up sitting on a chair in a room adjacent to my employer and within a minute from sitting down, i was knocked out and dreaming. i kid you not. that is, knocked out until my employer yelled for me…
anyway, i wandered to the old city after work, where i was planning to stay for shabbos, picked up an ice cream bar @ sammy’s (sammy and i are like this *crossing fingers*) and headed to the hertiage house.
i settled into the hostel and shabbos came in swiftly; i walked to the kotel for a brief walk-by and headed to nachlaot for shabbos dinner. at this point in the evening, i was exhausted— i couldn’t remember the last time i felt so drained. but, i decided to venture on— i had promised my host, asher, i would attend his dinner and past the exhaustion, i was looking forward to meeting him. my friend, shifra (from boulder), ate lunch by him earlier in the week and couldn’t stop raving about his food and interest in macrobiotics. i was intrigued so called him up for shabbos dinner and he kindly invited me to dinner.
after the half-hour walk to nachlaot, i was feeling pretty good considering i felt as if i didn’t even have the koach, the strength, to do the walk @ the kotel. a kind woman showed me to asher’s place (his neighborhood in nachlaot is like the labyrinth) and i entered; we made introductions, more guests arrived, and yadda yadda yadda we had the meal.
it was much more than just a shabbos meal, though— this shabbos was also the holiday of tu b’shevat, the birthday of the trees. basically, we get to eat a lot of fruit (in the form of a seder, like the one on passover) and thank gd for such awesomeness :) this holiday is particularly special for me because this was the first real holiday i celebrated with my chabad shluchim in eugene.
we started with the seder before the meal. we had our four cups of wine (like on passover) and a LOT of different fruits— pineapple, apricots, dates, figs, coconut, starfruit, apples, prunes and nuts (like walnuts since they come from trees). then came the meal— lots of vegetables, raw and cooked, delicious lentils, salads and dips dips dips :)
it felt so great to give my body the nutrition it craves— and afterward, i felt satisfied. isn’t it amazing when you have healthy, nutritious food you can feel satiated, and when you have empty, crap food you can eat and eat and still not feel full?
i <3 eating well :)
it was an evening full of enriching food and lively company.
—-
today, i awoke @ the heritage house @ 10 am— they kicked us out by 10.30 and, again, i took a stroll to the kotel. i walked to nachlaot for the second time and ended up @ ezra’s new place (fyi, i stopped by ezra’s sukka during sukkot when he still lived in the old city). it’s a beautiful apartment, perfect for hosting guests and letting in sunlight.
by the time all the guests arrived, the livingroom must’ve been packed with thirty or more people (i guess that’s what happens when you post an invitation on fb). it was a joyous and entertaining gathering despite crowded spaces and, as r’ levinger always says, where there’s room in the heart there’s room in the home.
we had another tu b’shevat seder (including more wine and, interestingly, mangosteen), lunch and afterward i stayed on as a part of the clean up crew.
unfortunately, by the time i left ezra’s, it was raining and i neglected to bring a coat :/ so on the wet, slippery stone streets of jerusalem, i raced back to the old city to make it to a third meal that my friend, jen, invited me to @ isralight. i was super late but jen was welcoming all the same. it was the first time i had attended an isralight function and jen had raved about the wonders of the program. indeed, i was impressed: there must’ve been at least forty or fifty jews, all ages and from all backgrounds, in attendance. rabbi mottle wolfe, who was leading the seder (my third and final seder of tu b’shevat 5770, i was sad to realize halfway through), was eloquent, personable and humorous. after the seder, jen introduced me to him and we had a nice little chat about eugene, oregon.
my experiences this shabbos brought to light the world outside mayanot— that, no matter how many good things it offers, mayanot can still be very insular and, therefore, not offer me what i’m truly craving. what that true craving is, exactly, i can’t say… but i know it’s there because this shabbos, it hummed. it was on the same frequency as asher and ezra and all the people i met; with fresh vegetables and singing to the trees. it atuned itself perfectly with people from chile, from ukraine, from new jersey and it piped up, louder and louder, with every seder i attended.
this craving, this essence- tuning fork, made itself known yet again; i can’t continue ignoring it.
and this is why my last day at mayanot now cannot come soon enough.
——-
to leave you off with an inspirational tidbit to close an inspirational shabbos… this came from rabbi david aaron’s book called, “seeing gd”. he tells the story of a tzaddik named rabbi buber who ascends to an incredible spiritual high one day and suddenly hears knocking at his door during his high. the rabbi coaxes himself down into the world once again, but remains in a mystical stupor as he answers the door. one of his followers, a chassid, is standing at the door and the rabbi invites him in and they sit down. the chassid tries to tell the rabbi his issues but the rabbi is obviously still distracted by his spiritual experience. the chassid says, am i interrupting something? should i leave? and the rabbi responds, no, no, please continue, and the chassid says, no, i can tell your mind is someplace else— i can come back another time. the chassid gets up to leave and the rabbi walks him to the door. they say their farewells and the chassid leaves.
the next day, the rabbi hears from a friend that the chassid killed himself during the night.
That’s when Buber realized how fake a mystical high can be. If it doesn’t open one up to hearing the call to duty, if it doesn’t increase one’s ability to respond, it is an empty experience. Many people want to have a so-called “God experience.” The name for that is spiritual materialism. Just as some people like to amass cars, clothes, and big houses, other people like to amass spiritual experiences. But that’s not what a relationship
with Hashem is all about.
A true encounter with Hashem means seeing, hearing and responding to Hashem in your life. In Hebrew this is called teshuva, a word often mistranslated as “repentance,” but really meaning “answer.” To do teshuva is to answer Hashem’s call. In that light, we can understand the oft-used Biblical expression, “stiff-necked people.” What’s a stiff-necked person? Someone who, when called, does not turn to listen, just keeps going. Teshuva means turning to say, “Yes, I’m here. What can I do for you?”
January 27, 2010
shauna does it again.
if she, her husband and their little bean can eat, and eat well, on $18 a day for this week, i can aim to eat on $7 day for a week, too. the only *big* difference between them and me is a kitchen, but i’ll be having one soon enough. when i depart mayanot on february 14th, i’ll be moving back into the heritage house for an indeterminate stretch of time. and that means— a dairy kitchen and a meat kitchen to cook in ’til my heart’s content! it’s a challenge i’m willing to take on in two weeks; with the shuk a good walk from the old city, i can purchase inexpensive vegetables for lunches and dinners, buy quinoa and beans for protein and fruits for dessert. i’ll just have to budget… and, oh, to be able to find kosher corn tortillas over here *sigh*
liz and i briefly chatted on skype a few moments ago :) she arrived home safe and sound… and i got the chance to see her room in new jersey! it felt good to know that she can still be a part of my life here in israel, even after she’s left.
