Topic: Holidays

Tu B’Shvat: Bonna Haberman, MLK, Jim Joseph and my Dad…

By Nigel Savage on January 10, 2019 in Holidays, Newsletters, Nigel, Tu B’Shvat

My first Tu B’Shvat seder was with Bonna and Shmuel Haberman Browns, in London, in 1986. Bonna z”l was an amazing woman, who died too young. (This was my tribute to her that The Forward published at the time of her death.) It was memorable and beautiful enough that I hosted or attended a seder every year from then until last year. And then last year, half an hour after we got back from my 33rd annual Tu B’Shvat seder, my mother phoned to say that my father had died. So Tu B’Shvat has always been important to me, and its implicit themes about cycles of life have now been reinforced for me by the inextricable ways that its memory is bound up for me in memories of my Dad and of Bonna. Eight years ago Devora Joseph Davey gave us funding, through the foundation created in her father’s name, to create a Tu B’Shvat haggadah, and we’ve republished that every year since. This year, both in honor of my father, and because Tu B’Shvat in 2019 falls on MLK weekend, we’ve substantially revised our haggadah. Lisa Kaplan, Elan Margulies, David Rendsburg, and Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein led the charge, and my great thanks go […]

What is Tu B’Shvat and Why Do We Celebrate It?

By Nigel Savage on January 9, 2019 in Holidays, Newsletters, Nigel, Tu B’Shvat

by Nigel Savage Introduction to the new Hazon Tu B’Shvat Haggadah You can trace the recent history of Tu B’Shvat seders like branches on a tree. The first one I went to, in London in 1986, was hosted by Bonna Haberman z”l and Shmuel Browns, mentors to me and many others in the renewal of Jewish ritual. I made my own seder the following Tu B’Shvat, and I’ve made or attended one every year since. Seders, like trees, grow branches, and the branches sprout fruit in all directions. Historical Roots The roots of Tu B’Shvat stretch back to the beginnings of organized Jewish life. We learn from the Mishnah (Tractate Rosh Hashanah) that “the New Year of the Trees” divided the tithing of one year’s crop from the next – the end and start of the tax year, so to speak. After the expulsion from the Land of Israel, Tu B’Shvat went underground, like a seed, ungerminated, lying beneath the soil of Jewish thought and life. The expulsion from Spain in 1492 scattered Jews in many directions, and some landed in Tzfat. Like a forest fire that cracks open seeds dormant for decades, Tzfat’s kabbalists rediscovered Tu B’Shvat and began […]

Turning Yom Kippur into Action

By Hazon on September 26, 2018 in Holidays, Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, Spirituality

Dear friends — If you’re like me, you probably spent some of your Yom Kippur last week thinking about how to better live up to your ideals — how to be kinder, more just, more in touch with the sacred. Well, here’s an advertisement for how to put that resolution into practice. Having spent twenty-five years exploring spirituality, therapy, meditation, medication, self-help, human potential, sacred sexuality, entheogens, and a dozen or so paths to the holy, I think that meditation retreat has been the single most effective tool in the never-finished project of becoming more alive, more awake, and more invested in pursuing justice. I’m sure this isn’t true for everyone, but it has definitely been true for me and for many of the “spiritual friends” and teachers who have inspired me along the way. In my experience, no awesome spiritual state, no study, and no political action can transform the mind and heart the way that meditation does — and no amount of daily meditation can do the work of a multi-day meditation retreat. That’s true whether you’re suffering and looking for healing, or comfortable and interested in doing more with your one, precious life. Contemplative neuroscience has now […]

Hazon Book Club, Sukkot, the Farm Bill and the midterms

By Nigel Savage on September 21, 2018 in Climate Change, Farm Bill, Holidays, Newsletters, Nigel

Thursday, September 20, 2018 | 11 Tishrei 5779 Dear All, I hope you had a good and strong Yom Kippur. Someone yesterday asked me: how do we take all this intensity and good intentions and vulnerability and desire to change and actually integrate that into our real lives? And my immediate response – which, on reflection, I think was absolutely right – was that’s exactly what Sukkot is for. Because here is this festival – Sukkot – which literally celebrates our new openness. Instead of just walling ourselves off from other people and other issues we open ourselves to our neighbors and the world around us. And now, instead of teshuva done in a necessarily heavy way – noting our failures, apologizing, promising to do better – now we have a sense of our best selves and so we do teshuva from a place of joy and celebration. So – may your best intentions for yourself come to fruition. And if you fail – get back on the horse. And that’s literally the perfect segue to two things. First – the Hazon Book Club. I told you that for the first time ever we were inviting people to read a […]

Listen Ya’ll! | D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog

By Hazon on September 21, 2018 in Activism, Education, Farming, Food, Holidays, Jewish Texts, JOFEE, JOFEE Fellowship, Reflections, Resources, Shmita, Spirituality, Sukkot, Tzedek/Justice, Weekly Parsha

by Alex Voynow, Jewish Farm School Parshat Haazinu [NOTE: Applications for the next JOFEE Fellowship cohort are open now through October 5! Apply today!] In Ha’azinu, Moses sees the Israelites for who they are: humans, scarred by 40 years of impatient wandering and in no mood to listen obediently. Moses is 120 years old and holds so much wisdom; this is the last day before his death, and he has some things to say. He has the story of his life to tell, which in his epic personal union with the Israelite people is also the story of God. He needs them to understand, like the tender, concerned patriarch that he is, how to live in God’s favor so they can blossom into the promised land and not mess up this covenant (fast-forward: oops). What he has to say is so important that he does something that really resonates with me. Moses speaks language that heaven and earth themselves will understand, and in a language that will more likely move the people: in song. He launches into a 48-verse poem doing his damnedest to sum up his life’s spiritual learnings. I’m not going to get into it because it’s densely […]

Five Ways to Prepare for Rosh Hashanah

By Nigel Savage on August 23, 2018 in Holidays, Newsletters, Nigel

by Nigel Savage Thursday, August 23, 2018 | 12 Elul 5778 Dear All, Be brave and make plans to see people. Host people or reach out and ask someone if you can come over to them. We talk about the black fire and the white fire of the Torah (ie the letters, and the white space around them), but the white fire of the holidays is not what we do, but what we don’t do. Not being on email. Not reading the news. Not looking at a screen. The white fire is being with ourselves (sometimes a very hard thing to do) and being with others. Walking. Sleeping. Eating. So look at your calendar and host a meal, or host another meal, or make plans with family or friends. Don’t leave it to the last minute. Read or reread Alan Lew’s This Is Real And You Are Completely Unprepared. It’s a beautiful beautiful book, and becoming better known with each passing year since his untimely death. And don’t just read it – plan on taking it to shul. It’s always good to take a book with you to services. That’s a fine thing to do. We’re enjoying the bounty of the world […]

Indigenous Rights and Reconciliation | D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog

By Hazon on August 17, 2018 in Activism, Education, Elul, Food, Holidays, Institutional Food Values, Jewish Texts, JOFEE, JOFEE Fellowship, Reflections, Resources, Shmita, Spirituality, Tu B’Shvat, Tzedek/Justice, Weekly Parsha

by Jared Kaminsky, Shoresh Parshat Shoftim The parsha of the week is Shoftim, which means Judges. As Moses nears the end of his life, he wants to ensure there is a system of governance in society. Shoftim gives detailed ordinances on many topics of law, including appointing judges, laws that kings should follow, creating cities of refuge when crimes are committed, and the rules of war. For example, the parsha states that appointed judges are forbidden from taking bribes and there must be two credible witnesses for a conviction. Another ordinance demands that kings must not have too many horses and must always carry around two Torah scrolls to remind them that G-D is above them. The Torah even provides a city of refuge for those who accidentally murdered someone to live in safety! While many of these laws do not apply to modern society, there are some important insights into preventing corruption and treatment of humankind that we can still learn from. Moses recognized that every generation has the obligation to critically examine and apply the laws of the Torah. As Jews we should examine the laws that govern the places we live and work to protect the rights of […]

The Binary of One | D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog

By Hazon on August 9, 2018 in Education, Holidays, Jewish Texts, JOFEE, JOFEE Fellowship, Reflections, Resources, Spirituality, Weekly Parsha

by Sofia Marbach, Wilderness Torah Parshat Re’eh I set before you today a blessing and a curse; The blessing, that you will heed the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today; and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn away from the way I command you this day, to follow other gods, which you did not know. — Deuteronomy 11:26-28 Yikes! The first lines of Re’eh present us with a terrifying binary: choose to follow closely each commandment or consider yourself cursed by God. If we opt out of the choosing, what does Judaism leave for us? The text goes on to list detailed instructions for violence against those who might persuade you to worship the gods of other peoples, and against the idols of those who tended your land before. This is the kind of violence that mirrors and reinforces patriarchal systems of dominance and oppression lived today and throughout history. So how do we grapple with guidelines for patriarchal violence in our holiest book — a violence that divides us into binary understandings of the world? How do we connect to tradition as “People of the […]

Choosing our History | D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog

By Hazon on July 19, 2018 in Climate Change, Education, Farming, Food, Food Justice, Holidays, Jewish Texts, JOFEE, JOFEE Fellowship, Reflections, Resources, Shavuot, Spirituality, Weekly Parsha

by Henry Schmidt, Shalom Institute Parshat Devarim The Torah may be our past, but Devarim, the shared name both for this week’s Torah portion and for the fifth book of the Torah, is our history. What is the difference between past and history? Our past is simply a chronology of events, one after another, that bring us to the present. It is what one may observe if they traveled back in time and watched things unfold. History, on the other hand, adds important layers; history is the past we choose to tell and how we tell it. The establishment of history is an inherently political process. Whoever has the most access to public discourse or public thought typically gets to shape the narrative of the people. In the case of Devarim, this power rests solely with Moses. Though he shall not see the promised land and must cede this honor to his successor, Joshua, he still possesses the most powerful role of this period for the Jewish people: he gets to tell them their own story. After all, Devarim translates to “the words,” and these are “the words” of the Jewish people. We already know that the Jews eventually receive […]

Why Do We Wander? | D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog

By Hazon on July 13, 2018 in Adamah, Animals, Education, Holidays, Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, Jewish Intentional Communities, Jewish Texts, JOFEE, JOFEE Fellowship, Reflections, Resources, Shavuot, Spirituality, Weekly Parsha

by Eliezer Weinbach, Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, Hazon Parshat Maasei Earlier this year, Isabella Freedman hosted a Moishe House retreat called “Wandering Jews.” Led by New York Times contributor Eli Reiter, twelve people in their twenties and thirties got together to discuss their experiences and wisdom regarding travel as a Jewish person. They discussed things like kashruth and shabbat observance while abroad. The question is: Why bother? When the Torah lists all the stages of the journey through the desert, as per the text from Numbers above, it really does discuss each part. All forty-two stages, in fact! The question is: Why bother? God commands that when the Jews do finally enter the land, they are to travel three times a year to Jerusalem. Wasn’t the journey to the land long enough?! Why bother?! Travel is hard. Sitting at home is easy. Hiking is hard. Watching Netflix is easy. Adventures change you. Inaction keeps you the same. Wandering is change. On a very basic level, you are moving from one place to another. But it’s so much more than that. I could quote Emerson on “roads less traveled” or Kerouac on basically anything, or any of the myriad formulations regarding […]

Fear and Donkeys | D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog

By Hazon on June 28, 2018 in Animals, Climate Change, Education, Farming, Food, Holidays, Jewish Texts, JOFEE, JOFEE Fellowship, Opportunities, Reflections, Resources, Shmita, Spirituality, Teens, Weekly Parsha

by Henry Schmidt, Shalom Institute Parshat Balak I thought Balak was a story about a donkey. That is to say, when I sat down to write this blog post, I expected to write about the talking donkey we’ll soon meet. Understandably, a talking donkey tends to get a lot of attention. However, this time I found the ending of the parsha (Torah portion), an ending I had always overlooked, to be what especially spoke to me. Let’s start with an overview. Balak, King of Moab, sees the growing people of Israel and how they have conquered all of Moab’s neighbors, leaving Moab directly next to the potential threat of this dynamite group of nomads who seem to be on a roll. Worried about the Israelite’s winning streak, he summons Balaam, a pagan sorcerer, to come and curse the Israelites. “‘There is a people come out of Egypt; it hides the Earth from view, and it is settled next to me. Come then, put a curse upon this people for me, since they are too numerous for me; perhaps I can thus defeat them and drive them out of the land. For I know that he whom you bless is blessed […]

Mayim Chayim and Honoring our Mother | D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog

By Hazon on June 21, 2018 in Education, Food, Food Justice, Holidays, Jewish Texts, JOFEE, JOFEE Fellowship, Reflections, Resources, Shavuot, Spirituality, Tzedek/Justice, Weekly Parsha

by Alex Voynow, Jewish Farm School Parshat Chukat In Chukat, our mother dies. “Miriam died there [at Kadesh] and was buried there. The people were without water and they joined against Moses and Aaron.” ~Numbers 20.1-2 Miriam’s death gets one line, and then the narrative is quickly redirected back to the patriarchs. I was amazed at the amount of lines the Torah takes in Chukat to explicate the condemnation of Moses, the laws or ritual purification, and the military proceedings of the Israelites, while one verse is all we hear about the death of Miriam the Prophetess. Miriam provided the water. And just as in the central focus of the movement at Standing Rock, “Water is Life.” Mayim chayim. If you say mayim repeatedly, you also begin to say ima — mother. In the Torah, we lost our mother Miriam, our life source. She is barely mentioned again. So, the central question for me and for us that comes up is: whose story is this? Who wrote this book? There is an obvious reality that women were centrally important to the life and culture of the Israelites, yet they are seldom mentioned, celebrated, or mourned. I see this as the Torah’s infidelity […]

Korach: Disruptive Visionary or Disgruntled Rabble-Rouser? | D’varim HaMakom: The JOFEE Fellows Blog

By Hazon on June 14, 2018 in Adamah, Animals, Education, Food, Food Justice, Holidays, Israel, Jewish Texts, JOFEE, JOFEE Fellowship, Resources, Shavuot, Shmita, Spirituality, Tzedek/Justice, Weekly Parsha

by Eliezer Weinbach, Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, Hazon Parshat Korach וַיֵּרְדוּ הֵם וְכָל-אֲשֶׁר לָהֶם, חַיִּים–שְׁאֹלָה And they and all their belongings went down, alive, into Sheol Numbers 16:33 I was traveling once, and my tour guide, a wizened Arab, asked me if I wanted to see the pit that swallowed Korach’s followers. Intrigued, I followed my guide through the desert. After some time, through a haze of heat and mirage, we saw smoke billowing from a fissure in the ground. My guide doused a towel with some of his water, and tied it to the tip of his staff. He cautiously approached the fissure, and held his staff over the smoking vent. To my surprise, the wet cloth began to burn. As he was walking back to me, I could hear voices carried on the warm desert wind. Faint voices, singing, or perhaps chanting. Softly enough that I wasn’t sure if I was hearing anything at all. “What are those voices?” I asked my guide. “Those are the children of Korach,” he replied. “They are slowly lowered into the hellish heat of the Earth and then raised back out, rotated like a roast on a spit. When they finish […]

Not just “Counting the Omer;” also making it count…

By Nigel Savage on March 30, 2018 in Counting the Omer, Newsletters, Nigel

By Nigel Savage Friday, March 30, 2018 | 13 Nissan 5778 Dear All, Sefirat Ha’Omer – the counting of the Omer – is rooted in the Biblical mitzvah of counting the 49 days between the Jewish holidays of Pesach and Shavuot, when the first sacrifices of the barley and wheat offerings were made. The kabbalists of Sefad added their own psycho-spiritual overlay to it. Now, here in 2018, we have the chance to take this ancient tradition and breathe powerful life into it. Counting the Omer is the journey from “freedom from” to “freedom to.” This has never been more salient than in the West in 2018. We have – many of us – the blessings of “freedom from.” From totalitarianism or starvation or civil war. But the question of “freedom to” – freedom to what end; how do we use our freedoms; how do we not hurt ourselves from the cumulative impact of our freedoms… these are the big questions of our era. So Saturday night – second night seder, for those of you who are sedering outside of Israel – is the start of this seven-week period. Let’s make it count. These suggestions are rooted in all of Hazon’s work. Week 1 (April […]

Tu b’Shvat is not just for kids

By Hazon on January 18, 2018 in Nigel, Tu B’Shvat

Tu b’Shvat is “the new year for trees.” But, above and beyond the history – the tax year in temple times; the kabbalists in Safed; the JNF; the contemporary Jewish environmental movement – the deeper question is, what can, could, or should Tu b’Shvat mean to me today?

← Previous 1 … 4 5 6 … 13 Next →

Navigation