Rabbi Gurevitz' creative works: Podcast, blogs, videos and more
In case you didn’t see it, today’s New York Times had a fascinating article about the modern-day existence and use of Manna. What is fascinating is that the description of what Manna is, when and where it is found, how it is created in nature, its texture and its variety of tastes attributed to it, fits incredibly well with what the Bible tells us about the stuff.
Here is the biblical description (text from Mechon-Mamre) – then click here for the NY Times article.
This year, the Rosh Hodesh group at Congregation B’nai Israel was inspired by Merle Feld’s spiritual memoir and poetry collection, ‘A Spiritual Life.’ We dipped in to read many of the prose narratives and poems, adding our own personal stories to hers. Inspired by her writing, we sought out and found the spiritual in everyday life, and found how our own everyday lives were enriched by the cycle of the Jewish year and ritual practices. Last month, we read one of her most well-known poems, We all Stood Together. Another author, Chava Weissler, wrote a response to this poem a number of years ago, which you can read here. Taking these two sources as our text, the women in the group described their own ‘Standing at Sinai’ moment. On the day before Shavuot, when we stand again at Sinai to remember and receive Revelation, I share some of these creative pieces with you.
I’m standing at Sinai. I feel isolated and left out. I’m supposed to feel something that everyone else is feeling. I don’t. Is there something wrong with me? I fake it, so I don’t stand out. I’m 12. I feel little. Maybe some day, when I grow up, I’ll fit in better.
A young woman, I danced with Miriam at the shores of the Red Sea. And I look up to Miriam as a friend and mentor. And now I follow her to the foot of Mt. Sinai with curiosity and eagerness. I find the trembling of the earth and noise overwhelming. It’s awesome. I feel that the God that Miriam spoke about is present. I am excited and afraid at the same time.
I am a 50 year old woman and I am taking my place up front, not only for myself, but for the other women and those on the margins in order to witness God’s message. I feel, though, not totally a part of the community. I am only observing, contemplating the happenings; communing with God.
My children cling to me, and I am afraid they will be lost in the crowd. I keep them close as we women proceed slowly, surrounded by our children, always worried – do they need food or drink? Will they stay close? The oldest may stray. I remind her to watch her little brother. Maybe I will hear the message too.
I’m standing next to a friend. But we’re not talking. We’re comforted by the security of knowing the other is standing there next to us. I’m trying really hard to understand – to comprehend the moment. But I’m confused. The sounds and sights are disorienting, and I can’t figure out what the essence of this Revelation is. Should I close my eyes and let the sounds wash over me? Will I find enlightenment in the stillness in the midst of the chaos? Or have I misunderstood? Perhaps the essence of Revelation is about what we’re all doing here together – perhaps its all about this mass of people. Perhaps I should open my eyes and take in who we all are – is it the connections that invisibly bind us all together that is the true essence of Revelation? Eyes open or eyes closed? Sight or sound? Inside or in-between? I’m hear the sights and seeing the sounds. Perhaps it is all ECHAD – ONE.
The skeptic: What is going on here? What’s with the pushing and the shoving? We’ve been shlepping around for years and nothing happens and today we’re supposed to Get the Message? Yeah, right. I’ll get the news second-hand. Why ruin my shoes?
The mother with two absent boys is thinking of others – while the business executive wants the mother to fully experience and the mother with three little children says she is too busy and can’t fully benefit. While I am deeply emotional and hope to have the answers for the rest of my life.
I am hiking. I stop. Here. This is the place. Picking up a stone, I stare at it. Everything is here. Holy, holy, holy.
I am afraid of the unknown. We are foreigners in someone else’s land. The immenseness of the place is overwhelming. I’m a stranger in a strange land.
I teach Eighth Grade at Congregation B’nai Israel; something that I have come to enjoy immensely as I watch teens who are just post-bar and bat mitzvah grapple with expressing themselves and their own sense of Jewish identity. We spend the year on personal theology and making ritual meaningful, ethics and values applied to our lives and our world and, with the help of a 19 year old emissary from Israel, an exploration of life and culture in Israel in a way that our teens can relate. In the midst of it all we have a weekend retreat with a theme that focuses on a multitude of ways to live Jewishly and express Jewish values.
At the end of every year, our closing circle ritual consists of reading a few short excerpts from the wonderful book written in memory of murdered journalist, Daniel Pearl, ‘I am Jewish.’. Most of the excerpts we read are written by other teenagers or young adults from all over the world, illustrating the diversity of ways to express Jewish living. Then each student takes a few minutes to write their own reflection based on what Jewish means to them at this point in their lives. What is warming and wonderful is to see how they are all able to offer a genuine reflection. They feel it, and they mean it. Here are a selection of the reflections from this year’s closing circle:
I am Jewish because I was born a Jew. My parents are Jewish, and so were my mom’s ancestors. Being Jewish is who I am. I was born Jewish, but it was my choice to be a true Jew.
I am proud to be Jewish. I love the fact of how I am different from my friends. I have different holidays and different food, but being Jewish makes me who I am and it will always be a part of me.
I am Jewish – this means that I am a minority which is quite different from everybody else. This makes me feel special inside.
I am Jewish and I am proud of being Jewish. The stereotypes may bring one down, but a true Jew will be proud and not let the mean thoughts strip them of their Judaism.
I am a Jew – means that I belong to a community that comes together through hardships and times of happiness and holidays.
I am Jewish. That means that you follow what you believe and that will bring you to God. Although this God is the same for everyone, each and every person must find their way through the Torah and find God.
For me, being Jewish means thinking about my Jewishness in everything I do, whether it is writing a paper about religion in school or talking about a famous Jew with my friends. I love being a Jew and I am proud of my Jewish heritage.
I am Jewish because I go to Hebrew School and Temple. I am also Jewish because I read from the Torah at my Bat Mitzvah.
To me, being Jewish means that I belong to something. Not only do I belong to a temple but I also belong to a group of people.
To me, being Jewish is being lucky. I get to be a part of a people that I share beliefs with, that I go to Temple with, that I want to connect with. Being Jewish is who I am.
As a Jew, I feel that the religion is not something that is to be used in a way that is stressful. To me, services should be an enjoyable atmosphere. I enjoy every aspect of Judaism, such as the freedom to make decisions, and the feelings. I think that it is crucial that we are able to survive, and be respected. I follow a Jewish way of thinking every day and that is why Judaism is most important to me.
I wanted to share the following with you, not so much to offer my own opinion on the matter, but because I think it is interesting, important, and raises questions that are worthy of considered discussion. Click the link to read a full article in Tablet Magazine that provides background to the story and current details.
In summary, there was a very critical response by some in the San Fransisco Jewish community to the showing of a documentary last year at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival about Rachel Corrie. Rachel was a peace protester who was tragically killed in 2003 while blocking the way of a bulldozer being operated by a soldier of the Israeli Defense Forces who were carrying out duties to demolish a Palestinian home. The exact circumstances are still debated. Rachel’s mother, now an activist for Palestinian rights, came and spoke at the Film Festival when the documentary was screened. In response to the voices that protested the showing of the documentary, the San Francisco Federation, after months of deliberating, issued guidelines that would dictate its funding, indicating that they would not provide financial support to ‘programs with groups that do support divestment or that otherwise “undermine the legitimacy of the State of Israel.” Within this boundary, though, the guidelines are fairly open-ended. Acceptable, for instance, are “presentations by organizations or individuals that are critical of particular Israeli government policies but are supportive of Israel’s right to exist as a secure independent Jewish democratic state.“‘
So, what is the story here? It does not seem entirely unreasonable for a Jewish Federation to withhold funding from programs that seek to boycott Israel or who deny Israel’s right to exist. Or, in fact, for an appointed board of any Federation to create its own policies that determine how it spreads its grant money – surely they have a right to do that? Of course, a Federation looks to the entire Jewish community to donate to a common pool out of which many organizations and programs are funded. So they do have some responsibility to represent the entirety of that Jewish community if they wish to continue to receive their support.
One concern is that the guidelines will stifle free speech and openness to express opinion within the Jewish community on certain matters. For example, if an organization wants to present a lecture that focuses on sharing Jerusalem in a final peace settlement, some might believe that to propose such an option is ‘to undermine the legitimacy of the State of Israel.’ Likewise, if a Jewish group or speaker talks about ‘the occupied territories’, rather than ‘Judea and Samaria’, might this also be interpreted by some as ‘undermining the legitimacy of the State of Israel’? This, after all, is a matter where Israel and the United Nations do not see eye-to-eye. Is a plurality of opinion on this topic permissible among Jews who would like to run programs about Israel? (Clearly the answer is ‘yes’. The question is whether the lack of available funding to some voices from within the community from the Federation is a matter of concern.)
The community most upset by these guidelines is the Academic community in San Francisco (the fuller article in Tablet, linked above, helps to explain why). They have expressed their concerns in an advert taken out in the Forward – you can read it below.
So… what do you think? Is the San Francisco Federation acting responsibly? Is it squeezing out legitimate Jewish voices who want to see Israel safe and successful but have a care and concern for Palestinian human rights too? Does a pronouncement about funding have a silencing effect, leading to Jewish groups self-censoring what they will discuss in public forums? Or are we treading precariously at a time when Israel doesn’t need the American Jewish community adding fuel to fires?
Forward Ad: Prominent Bay Area Jews Warn About SF Jewish Federation Guidelines 4/10I said that I was more interested in raising the questions and hearing responses from others (either via the comments on this blog, or via facebook, or in person at the congregation), but I will offer one thought. I believe that this is not just a black and white issue where the Federation is either right or wrong. Perhaps the Federation realized that too and thought they were trying to find a compromise position. I’m not sure they got it quite right, but I think the complexities of this story are such that knee-jerk responses are not particularly helpful. There is much to pause and consider here.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz
I’d like to bring your attention to the blog of Professor Stephen Healey, a dean at the University of Bridgeport. His prior position was as Associate professor of World Religions and it was due to his expertise in that field that I originally met Stephen. We both spoke on a panel at a World Religions day at Greens Farms Academy, Westport last year, me sharing some core beliefs of Judaism and he sharing some core teachings of Buddhism. He subsequently visited our Comparative Religion class at Merkaz, our Hebrew High School program, this year, to introduce core concepts in Buddhism to students there.
Earlier this week I spoke at the University of Bridgeport on Jewish perspectives on a two-state peace in the Middle East. While I offered some of my own perspectives on what such a peace may look like, based on some pragmatic assessments on what Israel might or might not ever be willing to contemplate as part of a peace settlement, I also attempted to convey a range of Israeli and Jewish perspectives, covering more left and right wing points of views, secular and religious Zionist perspectives. In doing so, my goal was to share, before an almost entirely non-Jewish audience, what the Israeli side of the issue looks like, in its diversity, and the kind of beliefs, concerns, and demands that ‘the other side’ needs to be aware of and understand if we are to be able to move forward toward peace. Professor Healey was the respondent to my presentation, before we took some questions from the audience during which I was pleased to hear respectful and thoughtful critique and alternative points of views from members of the Muslim community that our Tent of Abraham program has begun to establish trusting friendships with. The tone of the conversation was very much about being able to express and hear this variety of perspectives, without anyone feeling the need to ‘win’ the debate.
I look forward to being able to continue the learning and dialog in contexts such as these.
Below is Professor Healey’s summary of the evening. You can read more from his thoughtful blog, RITN: Religion in the News here:
Tonight in an event at the University of Bridgeport, I had the good pleasure to hear Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz’s views of the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. Gurevitz serves as a rabbi at Congregation B’nai Israel in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Gurevitz began her presentation with a reflection on perspective. She argued that, depending on one’s perspective, the founding of the modern state of Israel is either a great blessing or a great catastrophe. Neither perspective, she said, is truer than the other; both are true insofar as they define the perspective from which the founding of Israel is viewed.
She expressed strong support for the two-state solution, which she described as a return to the borders of 1967, with some additional land swaps to be negotiated. For that to be possible from a Jewish perspective, she argued, security issues would need to be dealt with in a decisive fashion. There is an existential feeling of the threat of violence among Israelis. Israelis needs to be convinced that violence is contained and will not spread as a result of a return of territory. She added that religious and political ideologies make accomplishing this quite difficult. She also identified three additional issues that will make the path to peace a challenging way: that there should be no preconditions to beginning a dialogue about the two-state solution, that regional issues are interrelated with Israel-Palestine, and that from a Jewish perspective Palestinian refugees cannot be settled permanently in Israel. Tough news, but this is where real dialogue about this issue begins.
She concluded by holding out the prospect for peace, and referred to J Street, which is dedicated to finding a secure Middle East Peace. J Street also conducts polling to identify Jewish attitudes toward issues related to peace. She asked the audience to seek to identify a broad range of Jewish perspectives, and not to conclude that one view—even if it does receives most media attention—adequately represents the feelings, fears, hopes, and aspirations of the entire Jewish community.
Rabbi Gurevitz’s approach demonstrated, at least for me, that being committed to a perspective does not preclude, but may even facilitate, engagement with other points of view.
A friend posted this youtube from the International Medical Corps on facebook. I hope you will be moved by it – seeing the incredible work that they have been doing in Haiti. The Union for Reform Judaism provided a very substantial grant to help them in their work, out of the over $1.2 million that was raised by them for Haiti Disaster Relief. This video was their way of saying ‘thank you.’ And to International Medical Corp, we say ‘thank you’ for being our hands, turning our financial aid into real, life-saving medical aid to the people of Haiti.
This sermon was delivered at B’nai Israel on Friday, April 9th, for the Shabbat before Yom HaShoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is printed here upon request from several congregants who heard it that evening.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz
Warning: You are likely to find the following words profoundly disturbing.
“As recently as 1960, our race was 90 percent of America’s population. Today, true statistics be told, we’re less than half. And we’re dropping fast, while the dark peoples multiply like rats all around us, and as more tens-of-millions of them invade our country from all over the world. Our race is drowning literally in seas of colored mongrels.
… Since 1973, our jew controlled government orchestrated the murders of 40 million helpless white babies thru legalized abortions, and replaced them with twice that many dark aliens. Meanwhile, the jewish controlled mass media (properly called the jewsmedia), promotes race-mixing, 24/7/365.
In recent weeks we’ve heard that Ann Coulter was taken to task in Canada and reminded by the vice-president of the University of Ottowa prior to the speech that she later cancelled there due to student protests, that she should review what constitutes hate speech under Canadian law. For instance, he told her, ‘promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges.’
Yesterday, at our religious school prayer service for 4th, 5th and 6th graders, I had planned a short service around a selection of poems and biographical extracts from witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust, in remembrance for Yom HaShoah – Holocaust Memorial Day, which we commemorate this Sunday. I quickly changed direction after the first few minutes. After we had lit six candles, as many Jewish communities do, to remember the approximately 6 million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust, a teacher asked to add a thought and, rightly so, brought our attention to the further 3-4 million who were not Jews, but were also murdered in the Holocaust, because of their political beliefs, or because they were gypsies or homosexuals. It was more than just bringing awareness to the suffering of others – to show that hate has many targets. I could tell that it was personal and, being so, there was a passion behind the teacher’s sharing.
Suddenly it became clear that there were likely to be others in the room who had a personal, family story that emerged from the terrors and tragedies of the Holocaust, and that to uncover some of this was likely to be far more meaningful and powerful than even the best selection of written reflections read from a prayer book. But when I asked who had a personal, family story that they knew of, I was quite unprepared for the number of hands that went up. In addition to most of our teachers, I think that almost half of the hands of our 4th, 5th and 6th graders went up. I put aside the prayer book and, instead, about 8 people, some adults and some children shared what they knew of their parent’s, grandparent’s, great-aunt or uncle’s experiences, those who survived and those who did not. There were amazing stories of escape, deeply sad stories of those who lost entire families, camp experiences, and much more.
When we stood for the El Male Rachamim prayer at the end, remembering these souls, that they be bound up and united with the Divine Source of All and be at peace, the deeply prayerful energy in the room was palpable.
The Holocaust deeply engages us at an emotional level in so many ways. But yesterday, in addition to the remembrance of the horrors of the Shoah, the incredible stories of survival, the terrible tragedy of lives ended, and the remembrance of the power of hate to strip us of our humanity and cause incredible harm and destruction to others, I was also reminded of something else. While we have such a rich tapestry of written prayer in Jewish tradition to dip into, our ultimate Source for connecting to the power of prayer, the power of community, and our yearning for a sense of the Divine Presence that accompanies us and bears witness to our lives, is our own experiences. So often when I speak with youth about different ideas of God that we find in our tradition, again and again I come back to encouraging them to trust their own experience. If they have experienced good people suffer, then it makes little sense to declare faith in a God that punishes with suffering. If they have experienced love and support during difficult times in their lives, perhaps it makes sense to believe in a Presence that can add to those feelings of love and support when we need them the most.
And when we want to pray for a world where there is no place for hate, where swords are turned into ploughshares, and where each of us sees ourselves as the hands of a God that will help to make our world a better place for all people, we need to create space in our prayer rituals to get in touch with our own experiences, to draw on family history and heritage, and remember the feelings and emotions of those experiences. Because then our prayers will be real, and meaningful, and heart-felt. And then our prayers are truly powerful and truly have the potential to be transformative.
The following was published last week as the Editorial by the Hersam-Acorn consortium of weekly, local newspapers. I share it here with those who haven’t seen one of those local papers, and those who live outside the Fairfield County area. In addition to occasional, festival-related editorials, I also have a monthly column that appears in several of the consortium’s papers in the second week of each month, called ‘Raise it Up’. (Past articles can be found by searching under ‘Gurevitz’ here).
Wishing you all a very Happy Pesach!
The following is cross-posted from Dr. Lisa Grant’s blog, ‘Israel Stories’. Lisa is Professor of Education at Hebrew Union College and is currently on sabbatical in Israel. She is a member of our congregation. In her blog she shares reflections on some of her experiences. In this, her latest posting, Lisa reflects on the experience of using public transportation in Israel, and brings attention to the gender-segregated public bus routes that run through ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods that have literally put women at the back of the bus. The Israel Religious Action Center and other Israeli human rights organizations are fighting this very troubling turn to religious extremism in the public sphere in Israel.
One of the simple pleasures of being on sabbatical in Jerusalem is that my main mode of transportation is my feet. I also take the bus a lot, especially since the trip to school is uphill from my apartment and I’m usually carrying books and my computer. When I stay in town, my circuit is pretty small, probably not much more than one and a half square miles or so. In that space, I can find all of my local friends, school, shuls, theatres and other cultural venues, the gym (of course!) and any shopping I want or need to do. For someone who spends an awful lot of time commuting back and forth to New York City during my “normal” life, this is a lovely respite that adds lots of extra hours to my week for other pursuits.
There are times, of course, when this narrow orbit feels a bit constrained and then I head to Tel Aviv, usually by sherut, a 10-passenger shared taxi that goes from downtown Jerusalem to the central bus station in Tel Aviv which makes the Port Authority bus station in New York look like a luxury spa. From there, I then take another interesting conveyance, a shared mini-bus that drops you off anywhere you’d like along a specified route.
Occasionally, I get rides from friends who take me home after an evening visit, or even if they see me standing at a bus stop. It’s those rides that make me think about how different it is seeing Jerusalem and the rest of Israel from inside a private car as compared to from one or another mode of public transportation.
The buses and shared taxis are windows into the rich and complex social fabric of this not altogether Jewish state. On any given bus trip, you are likely to see a wide range of skin colors and hear a polyglot of languages including Hebrew, Arabic, English, Russian, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese and who knows what else. The passengers are schoolchildren, the elderly, commuters, tourists, soldiers, foreign workers, certainly rabbis and even a few priests. It’s one of the few places where a Jew might sit next to an Arab, not that they’d actually speak to one another.
Now, if I really lived here and wasn’t just a part-time sojourner, I know I’d have a car and that would change a lot. I got a taste of that this past weekend when I rented a car and was able to visit four different friends who live in suburbs of Tel Aviv and Netanya and in the lower Galilee. It felt great to be in a peppy little car where I could set my route and schedule, going wherever and whenever I wanted. But, it also made me realize that being in a private car creates a buffer to the outside world. The only link is the radio that gives regular traffic bulletins and news on the hour that reports the usual murder and mayhem but of quite a different ilk from what you’d hear on a typical American FM station – rockets fired from Gaza to a field outside of Ashkelon, IDF soldiers killing two Palestinian teenagers in Nablus who attacked them with a pitchfork, a Supreme court ruling overturning a Jewish town’s attempt to block a Bedouin family from moving in. But all of this is just background noise when you are zipping along the super highway and mainly concerned that the drivers around you won’t do anything crazy or stupid.
The car radio is a disembodied voice; in contrast, the bus is a live performance. Phone etiquette is pretty much non-existent and at times, it seems as if everyone is talking on the phone. If they aren’t talking, they’re eating, and if they aren’t eating, they might be davening tehilim (psalms) or studying a daf gemara (page of Talmud).
Private transportation is personal and liberating. It’s also protected. It’s up to you where to go and when to stop. Public transportation demands more direct engagement with the world. You have to accommodate more to the route & schedule. Of course you can plug into your IPod and tune out but if you pay attention, you see things you might otherwise ignore, the throngs who converge at the central bus station, and constant reminders of the persistence of poverty among Israel’s underclass – Ethiopians, Arabs, foreign workers, African refugees, and many many more.
Public transportation is also supposed to be fully and equally accessible to all members of society and that what I normally see when I climb onto a bus or sherut. But, sadly, even this basic right is at risk here. Last Saturday night I went to a demonstration with an estimated 2000 other people to protest the increasing number of gender segregated bus lines. The impetus for this comes from the Ultra-Orthodox community whose male members find it objectionable to have any kind of social contact with women so they have been relegated to the back of the bus, literally and truly. There are currently between 58 and 63 such gender-segregated inner and intra-city routes. In some cases, the only option for travelers is to sit in a gender segregated section regardless of who their travel companions might be. Despite condemnation by the Supreme Court , the Transportation minister and the quasi- public bus company continue the practice.
Though the abuse that Women at the Wall receive on a monthly basis from Ultra-Orthodox men when they gather to pray on Rosh Chodesh is getting a lot more press (at least in blogs and Facebook), these segregated bus lines are a far more insidious erosion of democratic values and respect for human rights that effect people daily not just for an hour or once a month. The demonstration was a hopeful sign that people are waking up to the reality that segregated bus lines are not just an issue for those who can’t afford a car. The gathering was a wonderful mix of Orthodox, Secular, Conservative, and Reform Jerusalemites. It was organized by a broad-based coalition of human rights organizations including a new forum of young adults who are active in building bridges across different social and religious sectors and working together to make Jerusalem a more tolerant and pluralistic city.
There were all kinds of signs and placards at the demonstration and the requisite number of speeches from activists and politicians. Perhaps the most compelling sign was a small, hand-made one that said something like “Segregated bus lines is an issue for the entire country, not just Jerusalem.” Indeed, even for those who never step up onto a bus, this issue gets to the bedrock of what it means to live in a civil society where everyone has equal rights. As such, it seems that it’s high time for everyone to get out from behind the protection of their private cars and join the cacophony of the daily show of life on the public routes and buses of Israel.
© 2024 Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz
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